The Federal Government has again invited the Nigerian Labour Congress for a dialogue over its intended nationwide indefinite strike action.

The Organised Labour had warned that the 14-day ultimatum given to the FG would elapse on Thursday, September 21, and if its demands are not met, there will be an indefinite strike action.

In a bid to avert the strike, the Ministry of Labour and Employment has scheduled Monday, September 18, 2023, for both parties to dialogue.

This was contained in a statement signed by Labour Ministry Director of Information Olajide Oshundun on Sunday.

Recall that the ministry had earlier invited the NLC for a dialogue, of which both parties could not reach an agreement.

The statement reads, “The Minister of Labour and Employment Simon Bako Lalong has again invited the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC for another meeting over its planned indefinite strike.

“The Minister who directed the Department of Trade Unions Services and Industrial Relations to convene a meeting with the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) for Monday 18th September 2023 said it was important that the Unions sit with Government to resolve all pending matters to avert further disruption to the economy.

“According to the Minister, the administration of President Bola Tinubu will always engage the organized labour and respond to its concerns after due consultation and negotiations to guarantee industrial harmony which is critical to the attainment of the Renewed Hope Agenda.”

Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan claimed her third consecutive Diamond League title after winning the women’s 100m hurdles at the Eugene Diamond League.

Amusan, who lost her world title last month in Budapest, Hungary, bounced back in convincing fashion to beat strong contenders, including Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, Keni Harrison and Danielle Williams.

The 26-year-old won the race in a season’s best time of 12.33s.

Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico was second in 12.38s, while Harrison of the United States of America came third in 12.44s.

Amusan is the second woman to win the 100m hurdles event in the Diamond League for three successive years, emulating Dawn Harper-Nelson, who won it in 2012, 2023 and 2014.

Another Nigerian, Ese Brume came second in the Long Jump event.

Brume finished second behind Serbia’s Ivana Vuleta.

[DailyPost]

The rise in the cost of crude oil, coupled with the depreciation of the naira against the United States dollar, might lead to a hike in the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, oil marketers stated on Sunday.

It was also gathered that the sharp rise in crude oil price to about $94/barrel and the crisis around forex, had warranted a gradual increase in the amount being quietly spent as subsidy on petrol by the Federal Government.

Dealers in the downstream oil sector explained that the cost of crude oil and the exchange rate of the dollar accounted for over 80 per cent of the cost of PMS.

Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose to $94/barrel on Sunday, the highest figure in 2023. Oil had started the year at about $82/barrel, dipped to $70/barrel in June, but traded above $92/barrel in the past week.

Also, The PUNCH reported on Thursday that the naira weakened to N950/dollar as forex scarcity worsened.

The report stated that the naira fell further against the dollar the preceding day (Wednesday), after closing at 950/$ at the parallel market.

Bureau de Change operators had told The PUNCH that the naira, which earlier closed at 930/$ at the close of operations on Tuesday, was bought and sold at 935/$ and 950/$ on Wednesday.

Although the Federal Government and its Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had insisted that subsidy on petrol had ended, following the deregulation of the downstream oil sector, operators insisted on Sunday that the government was implementing quasi-subsidy.

They explained that with the latest rise in crude oil price, the cost of petrol was meant to increase, stressing that if the government insists on leaving the commodity at N617/litre, then subsidy on PMS had been returned quietly.

The marketers explained that in July when the cost of petrol was raised to N617/litre, crude oil traded around $82/barrel, while the the exchange rate was not as high as N950/$ at the parallel market.

The Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners corroborated the concerns of marketers, as it stated that the price cap on petrol had made it tough for marketers to comply with the demands of NARTO with respect to increasing the cost of transportation for petrol.

“The Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC, in one of his statements, had pointed out that as long as the dollar continues to rise, Nigerians should not expect petroleum products prices to be pegged. The cost of crude oil is also on the rise and it impacts on petrol price, because PMS is derived from crude.

“So in this price deregulation regime, once the dollar increases, automatically it means that the cost of importing petroleum products will also increase. And the cost of every other related service will rise,” the National Public Relations Officer, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chief Chinedu Ukadike, stated.

He added, “So the fuel we are buying today at N617 or N596 depending on where you buy it and based on the nearness to depots, is actually below what the price should really be, going by the rise in dollar and crude oil price.”

Ukadike stated that though the rise in crude oil price would increase Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings, the forex was being used to import refined products.

“I said earlier that what we are experiencing now is quasi-deregulation. The rise in crude oil price has both positive and negative effects on Nigeria. It is positive because it increases our generation of dollars when we sell the crude.

“But it is negative in the sense that we still use that dollar that we have got to import the finished products of crude. That is the problem. For if Nigeria is refining products, then there will be a windfall, but since we import with the dollar that we make, then it makes no sense.”

On whether the rise in oil prices would warrant further hike in the cost of PMS and other finished products, thereby increasing subsidy on petrol particularly, Ukadike replied, “Yes, of course.

“The gap is becoming too much. Also, the exchange rate gap between the official and parallel markets is widening. And these gaps have to be filled by the government through quasi-subsidy on petrol.

“You also know that most of the investors who tried to import products when it was announced that the subsidy on petrol had been removed, are now finding it very difficult to do so.

“This is because after buying the dollar in the parallel market, they cannot recoup what they have invested. So the government must be transparent with this subsidy removal thing. It should apply it to the fullest, so that competition can set it.”

On his part, the President, Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria, Billy Gillis-Harry, said though the cost of crude had been rising lately, the NNPCL should be able to manage it for the benefit of Nigerians, with respect to petroleum products prices.

“Crude oil is selling at a higher price and that price should impact positively, because the major importer of petroleum products is the NNPC and they do that on a swap basis, unless they are telling us that the swap is not efficient.

“For if it is efficient, they should have more money for the size of crude oil they sell, which should impact on the price they pass on to Nigerians. Yes, today it is a commercial company, but it is still owned by Nigerians and is a sovereign company.

“And the fact that Nigerians must benefit from their natural endowment by God should be reflected in the pricing of products by NNPC. That is all I’ll say about this issue,” he stated.

Earlier, the National Secretary, IPMAN, Chief John Kekeocha, had asked the Federal Government to come out clean with respect to fuel subsidy, instead of mandating oil marketers not to dispense the product above a stipulated band.

In August, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, had told State House correspondents that President Bola Tinubu had instructed that the cost of petrol should not increase.

“Mr. President, wishes to assure Nigerians following the announcement by the NNPC limited just yesterday (Monday) that there will be no increase in the pump price of PMS anywhere in the country. We repeat, the President affirms that there will be no increase in the pump price of PMS.”

NNPCL had also in August stated that it was not raising petrol price.

“Dear esteemed customers, we at NNPC Retail value your patronage, and we do not have the intention to increase our PMS pump prices as widely speculated. Please buy the best quality products at the most affordable prices at our NNPC Retail stations nationwide,” the company had stated.

NNPC Retail is the downstream subsidiary of NNPCL that retails refined petroleum products for the group.

Kekeocha had told our correspondent that the decision of the Federal Government to put a cap on petrol price meant that subsidy on petrol had been reinstated.

He said, “The government is not being very transparent with this issue. When you say you have removed fuel subsidy, you don’t come again and moderate prices. Is like speaking with the two sides of the mouth.

“Removal of subsidy means you have removed your hands and the prices have to follow demand and supply. So if the NNPC says it is getting forex (foreign exchange) to import products and reduce prices for marketers, are they going to do the same for other importers? Remember the government gave import licenses to about seven marketers?

“Are they still going to moderate prices for those people when they bring in the products? No! You don’t blow hot and cold at the same time. There is no way they can bring in products and reduce the price and peg it for marketers to sell at a certain level, it means they are indirectly bringing back subsidy.

“If they want to bring back subsidy, let them say it openly, that ‘we are going to come back to subsidy because of the pains the country generally is going through.’ This is because the initial things they are supposed to do they did not do it. We have always been clamouring, let the refineries work.”

NARTO raises concern

The National President, Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners, Yusuf Othman, said despite the high cost of operations in the downstream arm of the oil sector, the government had stopped increasing the pump price of PMS.

He noted that since marketers could not raise their pump prices for petrol, it had been impossible for them to increase their costs for the transportation of PMS, stressing that this had made the cost of doing the business unbearable for transporters.

“NARTO is complaining that the high cost of diesel is unbearable. Even if you discuss it with the oil marketers, all they tell you is that government has fixed the pump price (of petrol) at N617/litre, that since they cannot increase pump price, they cannot increase the fare for us. So we are in trouble,” Othman stated.

He said the government should look into the pump price of PMS in order to enable marketers consider raising the transportation price for transporters.

“This is because without looking at the pump price, marketers cannot increase transportation price. And if they do not do that we have no choice than to continue to park. And if we continue to park it will create unwanted disruption of supply and we don’t want that,” Othman stated.

NNPCL appoints EVPs

This came as the NNPCL, on Sunday, announced the appointments of three new Executive Vice Presidents.

It named Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as the new Executive Vice President, Upstream; Olalekan Ogunleye, Executive Vice President, Gas, Power, and New Energy; and Adedapo Segun, Executive Vice President, Downstream.

The announcement, which was posted on the company’s X (formerly Twitter) handle early Sunday, stated that the appointment of the new EVPs was with immediate effect.

This leads to the compulsory retirement of the company’s three former Executive Vice Presidents, including Abdulkabir Ahmed, Gas, Power and New Energies; Adokiye Tombomieye, Upstream; and Adeyemi Adetunji, Downstream.

In July last year, the national oil firm, formerly known as Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, transited fully into a commercial entity, becoming the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.

[Punch]

President Bola Tinubu on September 2, 2023 recalled all Nigerian career and non-career ambassadors across the universe from their duty posts.

His action, he said, is to transfuse his renewed hope agenda into foreign policy and ensure service delivery to all. He, however, made two exceptions: the country’s United Nations, UN, Permanent Representatives in New York and Geneva. 

Generally, foreign relations can be quite slippery, so an ambassador is the eyes and ears of his country. Therefore, his recall is a serious matter. But making two exceptions tells of the importance of both missions.

Doubtlessly, the most powerful and influential body in the world is the UN with 193 members. Only three countries are outside it: the Vatican and Palestinian States and Western Sahara.

So powerful is the UN that to be absent from it is like being a ghost gliding around unseen. To address the world from the UN podium in New York is the ambition of many Heads of State.

However, while the importance of the Nigerian UN Representative in New York is quite obvious, that in Geneva is less. It is beyond the fact that there are clusters of UN agencies in Geneva. There is the additional fact that our Representative in Geneva also leads the country’s team at the International Labour Organisation, ILO.

Perhaps next to the UN in terms of power, reach and acceptance, is the ILO. However, the latter has some unique advantages over the UN. First, having been established in 1919 as a global body, it is 26 years older. Secondly, it has exhibited greater flexibility and resilience; although the membership of the UN and ILO are similar, while the League of Nations which was established along with the ILO collapsed under the weight of contradictory world politics, the ILO survived. Thirdly, the ILO is a much more democratic universal institution; while the UN is only an assemblage of states, the ILO is a tripartite assembly of governments, employers and workers from all countries. Fourthly, the ILO is an institution where people, be they employers or workers, can drag their home governments to and such complaints would be discussed by the whole world and the affected governments have no choice but to answer queries and put up their defence.

Fifth, the ILO, unlike the UN, routinely sets standards, calls Conventions, which all member countries are expected to sign up to and domesticate. So, whoever occupies the Chair of the ILO would be one of the most powerful men on earth. It is this position Nigeria’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Ambassador Abiodun Richards Adejola, was elected into for a one-year tenure which expires in June 2024.

At first glance, it appeared the Tinubu administration is well-versed in international politics which is why in its clean sweep of the missions, it retained the two UN missions. But a glance at its reason for exempting these missions which is “…in view of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly, holding later this month”, gives the impression that it may not have fully grasped the implications of yanking off the Chair of the ILO within three months of his 12-month tenure.

I was a member of the ILO Governing Board for three years. So I know the enormous prestige its chairman confers on his country. I know the trust and confidence the rest of the world gathered under the ILO places on its chairman to deliver on its core mandate of promoting social justice, human and labour rights and ensuring universal social justice and lasting peace.

Perhaps the Nigerian government needs to be reminded that the ILO is an essential element in the environment for human peace and development.

The ILO was established on June 28, 1919 under the Versailles Peace Treaty which ended World War I. Its establishment was based on the lessons learnt by humanity. These include the fact that “universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice”. The second reason is the realisation that “conditions of labour exist involving such injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers of people as to produce unrest so great that the peace and harmony of the world are imperilled; and an improvement of those conditions is urgently required”. Lastly, that “the failure of any nation to adopt humane conditions of labour is an obstacle in the way of other nations which desire to improve the conditions in their own countries.”

Twenty five years later, under the Declaration of Philadelphia, humanity gave the ILO four additional tasks. These are to enforce the centrality of human rights to social policy, evolve international economic planning, build the consciousness that “labour is not a commodity” and, to ensure that “all human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity“. It ended these with the famous declaration that: “ Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere”.

So, while the UN plays its politics, the ILO exists like the mythical Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders and ensuring the sky does not fall.

To date, perhaps Nigeria’s greatest contribution to the ILO was at its very first attendance in 1961 as an independent country when it caught the world unawares by moving the motion to expel Apartheid South Africa from the world body. At the ILO Resolutions Committee meeting, 163 delegates voted for the Nigerian resolution, none against, while there were 89 abstentions. It was a long-drawn battle with most European government and employer delegates, including those of United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Australia, Italy, Spain, United States and of course, Apartheid South Africa opposing the motion.

The Nigeria team that secured that monumental foreign relations victory was led by then Labour Minister, Chief Joseph Modupe Johnson, JMJ. Other members were Government representatives: Tom Edogbeji, Aitkins Salubi and Tijani. M. Yusuf; Employer representative: Mrs. Moore, and that of Workers: Comrade Lawrence Borha.

Twenty nine years after Nigeria moved that motion, Nelson Mandela, newly freed from apartheid jail after 27 years, stood before the ILO Conference on Friday June 8, 1990 to thank the ILO for that historic decision.

I, therefore, shudder that Nigeria would shoot itself in the foot by yanking off the Chairman of the ILO Governing Body who is just three months into leading that huge world assembly. I join other Nigerians and well-wishers knowledgeable on these matters in appealing to President Bola Tinubu to in the overall interest of our country, allow Ambassador Adejola complete his term as ILO Governing Body Chairman by leaving him in the Geneva mission for the next nine months.

OUTRAGE, yesterday, greeted the justification of jumbo pay for National Assembly members and political office holders by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, which said the lawmakers do not earn outrageous salaries.

RMAFC Chairman, Muhammed Shehu, told NAN in Abuja that it was untrue that public officeholders were getting jumbo salaries, saying: “I want to disabuse the minds of Nigerians. It is not true that people are getting jumbo salaries.“

Last June, the RMAFC boss had said the salaries of politicians, judicial and public office holders would be increased by 114 per cent.

He said the salary of President Bola Tinubu was less than N1.5 million, while ministers earn less than N1 million.

“I know of an average CBN worker that is not even a director, who earns more than a minister. People in NNPC, NCC, Ports Authority earn huge salaries. What is the salary of a governor? What is the salary of a legislator?

Shehu said what was considered outrageous earnings were statutory office running costs, which should ordinarily be managed centrally by the National Assembly Service Commission, NASC.

“I know some people will say members of the National Assembly get up to N10 million or N11 million monthly. Those are not salaries, they are like operating costs of running their offices which in other societies the legislator does not have to see because there is a structure.

“Once you get elected, you make that structure from your constituency office to computers to logistics to the size of your constituency. Wherever you have constituency office, the workers you hire, it is the National Assembly Service commission that is supposed to take care of that.”

However, Shehu clarified that the 114 per cent review had been postponed due to economic challenges, adding that the last time the review took place was in 2007 and that political office holders do not earn outrageous emoluments as speculated by Nigerians.

“From 2008 till date, there had not been any single review. Last year, some individuals took the federal government to court. These were some activists concerned about the salaries of judicial officers.

“In the court, the judge ruled that a judge should be paid about N10 million a month, that was the court ruling.

“We are Nigerians, we are not going to start talking about reviewing salaries of political office holders now because of the challenges that the government is facing.

“As a commission, we are going to do our work but we are not going to say we will do it now. We will do it when the climate is right and then we will take it forward to the stakeholders for them to decide on what to do.”

In spite of Shehu’s clarification, outrage heralded his justification of salary increment for NASS members and other political office holders.

Among those who spoke on the issue are the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC; Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association, NECA; Labour Party, LP, Rights and Niger-Delta Activist, Annkio Briggs; and former Member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Abdul Oroh.

It’s unjustifiable, unacceptable —NLC

President of NLC, Joe Ajaero, said pay raise for public office holders was unacceptable and unjustifiable in a country where everybody was crying over the high cost of governance.

His words: “High cost of governance was one of the issues we raised at our June 5, 2023 meeting with government, to the extent that one of the sub-committees set up on that day was on the cost of governance.

”Unfortunately, the government has messed up the whole thing. We have been complaining about the jumbo pay and other unjustifiable allowances the Federal Executive Council, FEC, members are earning to no avail.

”We are talking about ministers, their several aides and hangers-on. The same thing is applicable to the members of the National Assembly whose salaries and allowances cannot be justified under any circumstances, let alone a struggling economy like ours.

“We have continued to question the reason politicians seek political positions in this country. Every of their action and inaction has continued to justify the argument that they seek political positions for self-aggrandizement.

”For them, political office is not about service, it is not about the people of Nigeria and Nigeria. It is about them and nobody else. We have been asking for wage awards and other measures to cushion the effects of the petrol subsidy removal but the government has been paying deaf ears to our demands.

”How can you justify a jumbo pay for ministers with their uncountable aides as well as members of the National Assembly and numerous aides and hangers-on? We cannot accept this. When it comes to the workers and other Nigerians, there is no money, the country is broke and the country cannot afford subsidies on petrol. It is unacceptable and unjustifiable.”

It’s disheartening —NECA

Also reacting, the Director-General of NECA, Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, said: “While it is important to pay political office holders well to reduce the pressure or propensity for corrupt practices, it is our candid view that in allocating salaries, the principles of justice and equity should also hold sway.

“It is disheartening that at a time the national minimum wage is N30,000 per month, the disparity in wages and salaries in the public sector keep widening.

‘If the government can make provision for the increase in salaries and allowances of political office holders, there is no justification why the same cannot be done for civil servants.

”The current huge disparity is a recipe for de-motivation, which could lead to other challenges in the polity.”

It’s heartless – Annkio-Briggs

On her part, Annkio-Briggs said it was horrifying that jumbo pay for political office holders could be contemplated at a time the exchange rate of the Naira for the dollar and pounds had passed the N1000 mark, foreign debts are in trillions of Naira without means of paying back, the citizenry is suffering and many of them cannot feed or send their children to school.

Noting that some of the senators and members of the House of Representatives were from the Niger-Delta which generates the bulk of Nigeria’s foreign revenue from oil and gas, she said it was sad that the government was not looking at the suffering of the people.

Her words: “We have leaders who are not prepared to make one of the sacrifices they are asking the people to make it. The government is owing the NDDC trillions of Naira. The Federal Government is not giving enough allocation to the Niger-Delta ministry. It is owing the Amnesty programme.

“We have representatives of the Niger-Delta in the National Assembly. If they are asking for a 114 per cent increase, what exactly are they doing? What if there is no longer revenue from oil and gas?

”Niger-Delta people have no reason to be poor. What are senators and members of the House of Representatives from the 36 states and FCT doing on behalf of their people to justify salary increments?

”It is heartless. One day the people will wake up and those sleeping in air-conditioned rooms cannot sleep again.”

It is insensitive —LP

Similarly, the National Publicity Secretary of Labour Party, Obiora Ifoh, said: “The commission, under paragraph 32b is empowered to determine the salaries of political office holders and judicial workers in the country. So, we have undertaken work on it, we have revised it but we are looking at the situation for now.”

Ifoh noted that it was sad that the same administration which was preaching to Nigerians to embrace belt-tightening measures and calling for patience was the same administration pushing for increases in the perks of office for political office holders.

“This is happening at a time when ordinary Nigerians, especially hard-working citizens under the umbrella of the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress, are demanding living wages without a positive response.

“This is also at a time when the ill-conceived and ill-timed removal of fuel subsidy has increased hardship among ordinary Nigerians.

”We should be talking about improving the quality of lives of ordinary Nigerians and cutting waste in government.”

I support a living wage for all — Oroh

Also speaking, Mr Oroh, a former executive director of the Civil Liberties Organisation, CLO, a journalist and federal lawmaker, said: “I think there should be a living wage for everybody whether public office holder or elected person because poor pay is one of the reasons for corruption.

Noting that commissioners, permanent secretaries and judges earn less than N400,000, he said there was no reason for those in the NNPC, NPA and other revenue-generating public corporations to earn more than other public servants.

“There should be a review of wages so that people can live on their wages. There is no social security in Nigeria. The private sector should be encouraged through tax rebates to pay living wages to their workers. We should review it in a way that it will not bankrupt the treasury.

“I agree with RMAFC that there is a need for a review. It is necessary to review wages of public servants, Army, police, and elected officers to reduce corruption. It will also serve as an incentive for hard

[Vanguard]

On Sunday, President Bola Tinubu nominated Jamila Bio Ibrahim and Ayodele Olawande as the minister of youth and minister of state for youth, respectively. 

The position of minister of youth became vacant after the president redeployed Abubakar Momoh to the ministry of Niger Delta development.

The two nominees, if confirmed by the senate, will be among the youngest ministers in the cabinet of President Tinubu.

Here are a few things to know about them.

JAMILA BIO IBRAHIM 

Jamila Jummai Bio Ibrahim was born on February 7, 1986. Her father is Ibrahim Isa Bio, a former minister of Nigeria, who hailed from Baruten LGA, Kwara state. He was appointed minister of transportation by the late Umar Musa Yar’Adu’a in 2008 before he was reassigned to the ministry of sports following a cabinet reshuffle.

Jamila Ibrahim attended NEPA Staff School in New-Busse, Borgu LGA, Niger state, for her primary education. She proceeded to Federal Government Girls’ College, Bwari, Abuja where she had her secondary education, and graduated in 2002.

She obtained a bachelor of medicine, and bachelor of surgery (M.B.B.S) from the University of Ilorin in 2010, and moved to the University of Washington for a six-month course on health management and leadership.

After her brief study stint in the US in 2017, Jamila Ibrahim established a non-governmental organisation (NGO) named Yon Seno Foundation in November of that same year. She was then named a member of the think-tank of the national policy summit in 2017.

She volunteered on the presidential committee on the north-east initiative (PCNI) established by former President Muhammadu Buhari to serve as the primary national strategy, coordination and advisory body for all humanitarian interventions, and transformational and developmental efforts in the region.

According to her resume, she worked with the PCNI for two years and “carried out an assessment of the major health facilities in Maiduguri, to ascertain the level of preparedness and identify the gaps in terms of manpower and mass casualty response”.

Shortly, she was named the secretary of the subcommittee on health, women’s affairs, population and environment of the transition committee of AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq, governor of Kwara, in 2019.

After completing her assignment in AbdulRasaq’s transition committee,  she was appointed the senior special assistant to the governor on sustainable development goals (SDGs) a year later. She became Kwara’s focal person for both the National Human Capital Development Programme and the African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD).

She was also the secretary of the Kwara state “tractorisation” programme and was thereafter named the national vice president of the All Progressives Congress Young Women Forum (APC-PYWF) in June 2021.

Ahead of the 2023 elections, she was appointed a member of the APC presidential campaign committee on sustainable development.

Jamila Ibrahim is an avid fan of Polo and a non-executive director of the Emirates Equestrian Club, Ilorin.

AYODELE OLAWANDE 

Olawande is a seasoned grassroots political youth leader who worked in the office of Ife Adebayo, special assistant on innovation to the former vice-president Yemi Osinbajo.

He attended Christ School, Ado Ekiti, Ekiti state, for his secondary school education before proceeding to Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, for higher education. Olawande then studied at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo state.

He tried his hands in business ventures for a while before making a foray into politics. He was the founder of the Action Youth Movement (AYM) and the ICT director for Ondo APC.

Olawande is the coordinator of the All Progressive Youth Forum (APYF) in Ondo and also a general administrator at The Way Project.

[TheCable]

At long last, the Presidential Election Petition Court delivered its long-awaited judgments on the three petitions filed in respect of the 2023 presidential election. All over the world, many people were glued to their televisions and handsets, just to have a taste of the live broadcast of the judgments. There had been tension in the land on the possible outcome of the judgments, with spin doctors spewing inaccurate prophecies of the minds of the justices who sat on the petitions.

Since the February 23 elections, I have tried my best to be aloof from election related events, preferring rather to await the outcome of the petitions in avowal of my firm belief in due process and the rule of law. These judgments are currently circulating online, running into about 800 pages only. Listening to their Lordships and also going through the judgments, it is clear that there are serious issues contained in the judgments that would require further interpretation.

The joy however is that since September 6 when the judgments were delivered, there has been peace across Nigeria, as it should be. This is desirable and should be sustained, since the parties that were directly affected by the judgments have indicated their choice to pursue the process of appeal as stipulated by law.

We should now all await the final decision of the Supreme Court. It may however be necessary to highlight a few issues that need to be addressed or resolved in relation to these petitions and judgments there being no appeal pending yet.

Testimony of witnesses
I noticed that the Court disqualified some witnesses on subpoena based on the fact that they failed to frontload their witness statements on oath before the Court. In the first place, a subpoena is an order of the Court, commanding a witness to appear in court to give evidence or to tender a document. In some cases, these witnesses are government officials who ordinarily should not be within the reach of any of the parties.

By issuing a subpoena, he is made to be a witness of the Court. In some other cases, they may be hostile witnesses who have been summoned by force to testify. In any case at all, witnesses on subpoena should not be made to depose to any statement on oath

It was the court that summoned the witnesses in the first place and they obeyed the order of the court to appear. In any event, subpoenas do not normally contain any directive for the witness to depose to any statement on oath. How then can the same court that commanded a witness to appear before it to testify turn around to disqualify the same witness, who is deemed to be a witness of the court? It just doesn’t add up.

Electronic transmission of results
One of the contentious issues before the Court was that of electronic transmission of results by INEC. It was the contention of petitioners that had INEC followed its own guidelines for electronic transmission of election results real time, then there would have been no cases of manipulation or suppression of results. In this regard, the Court held that INEC is not under any obligation to electronically transmit election results. The Court relied upon the previous decisions of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal which it held were binding on the petitioners.

First, this was a fresh election and the petition arising from it was between different parties and under totally different circumstances. The Court should have x-rayed the conduct of INEC in relation to the 2023 presidential election simpliciter, being the subject matter of the petition before it. INEC was not conducting the election of the Rotary Club but the 2023 presidential election in which over eighty million people were registered to vote and over N300B spent from the common purse.

If INEC had through its own guidelines voluntarily made a contract with the people of Nigeria, the Court should hold it bound by that undertaking and/or at least extract cogent reasons why it could not be done. A lot went into the 2022 Electoral Act, the high point of which was electronic transmission of results, which was meant to remove or reduce human intervention in the electoral process.

The decision of the Court that INEC is not mandated to transmit election results electronically is with due respect to their Lordships, a huge setback to election administration and management in Nigeria, as we will now go back to the days of manipulation, falsification of results and general violence, thuggery and even rigging.

It has been said that the most potent form of rigging an election is the stage of collation and transmission of results. By endorsing INEC’s lapses, the Court has unwittingly reversed all the gains of the new electoral law on e-voting. The Court was too fixated on technicalities rather than dwelling on the substantive flaws and misconduct of the electoral umpire. We surely should not and cannot allow INEC to run away with all the mistakes and failures of the 2023 presidential election.

If nothing else, we should use the opportunity presented by these petitions to identify the observable lapses associated with the presidential election with the aim of correcting them to avoid the ugly situation where they could be deployed to haunt us in future elections.

Status of FCT Abuja
In the 2023 presidential election, the candidate who was declared as winner did not receive 25 per cent of votes from the Federal Capital Territory. It was the contention of the petitioners that failure to secure the mandatory 25 per cent of votes from the FCT automatically disqualifies any candidate from being declared as winner of the presidential election.

On this issue, the Court held that a candidate who has won up to 25 per cent votes in each of at least 25 states in Nigeria, does not need to win 25 per cent of the votes in the FCT Abuja.

Abuja is one of the states in Nigeria; Abuja is not different from the other states, and does not enjoy any special status. I tend to agree with this decision. The FCT Abuja has only six area councils. The total votes cast for Senator Ireti Kingibe to represent the FCT in the last election is less than the votes cast for the Honourable Member of House of Representatives for Alimosho local government council, one of the 20 council areas in Lagos State, not to talk of Kano or Oyo states.

What then would qualify the voters of FCT to be rated over and above other voters in Nigeria? Is it the mere fact of its geographical location or its administrative status as the federal capital city of Nigeria?

The Constitution itself states in its section 42 that no citizen of Nigeria shall suffer any discrimination, disqualification or disenfranchisement to which other Nigerians are not subjected to by reason of his geographical location or circumstances of his birth.

Is it an offence to be born in Port Harcourt or to live in Awka? Why should I suffer inferiority status because I voted in Ondo State compared to my fellow free born citizens who voted in the FCT? There is no reasonable logic behind this proposition at all. The FCT has no assembly but rather it is the National Assembly that makes laws for it, it has no governor and no life of its own beyond the federal government of Nigeria. Taking it further, by the principle of federalism, it is the FCT that should be rated lower in rank to the States.

Nomination of Candidates
To my mind, the issue of who represents a political party in any election should strictly be the internal affairs of the party in question. Although the Electoral Act now confers locus standi on any interested person to challenge the eligibility of any candidate, this should be guided by the principle that an outsider cannot cry more than the bereaved.

More importantly however, this issue was decided by the Supreme Court in May 2023 and some of the lawyers for the petitioners were said to have been involved in that case and indeed other cases wherein the issue of the status of the candidates had been resolved.

It amounts to professional misconduct for a counsel who is aware of a decision of the Supreme Court that has decided an issue against him and his client to seek to relitigate the same issue. If at all this should be allowed, counsel owe a sacred duty to the court to make full and frank disclosure of the said case, by stating the facts of that case and the decision reached on it.

He can proceed to state the reasons why he is taking a different position in the present case or why he seeks a departure from the previous decision. But by all means no one should ambush the court.

Dr Peter Mbah, governor of Enugu state, has promised to disrupt the state’s incremental growth and grow it sevenfold in his time as the chief executive. On the sideline of an investment summit where his administration’s ambitious economic roadmap was interrogated, he spoke with GEOFF IYATSE on how he intends to leverage a creative finding model in the phase of fiscal challenge to turn the state into an investment destination.

What has been your experience as a chief executive considering where you are coming from?
It’s been quite an exciting journey. Nothing has happened that has taken us unawares because we did an expensive study of the situation. We knew what we were coming to meet. When we made promises to our people, we gave timelines. The reason we backed our promises up with timelines was because we were aware of the things we needed to deal with and we knew the timelines we committed to were sacred, we were not going to deviate from them. We did promise we were going to have an investment forum or round table within 100 days in the office and today we have kept the promise. It is not just about the symbolism or making a promise and keeping it, but it is essentially the substance; the fact that there are huge takeaways and huge successes from what we have done today.

You recall that we got the mandate of the Enugu people entrusted into our hands based on all the promises we made. One of them was to grow the economy from $4 billion to $30 billion. We also said to them that the growth will be driven by the private sector but enabled by the government. We were deliberate because we knew that for us to tackle unemployment and generate wealth, we need private-sector investment. It is not going to come from the public sector.

For the private sector to invest, they also need the government to do certain things. You can hear a lot about the risk in investment. It is not even the emphasis on ease of doing business, which is providing infrastructure, security and the ease of obtaining your business permit as well as construction and property permit. It is beyond that. It is the understanding of how projects are structured. How do you make a project attractive to the private sector? So, you have to identify the aspects of the project that you must de-risk, whether it is the technical risk or commercial risk. This is because businesses are more than happy to take financial risk, but they are not interested when it has to do with political, technical or commercial risk. Those risks are not really what the private sector wants to take. Of course, some businesses can undertake to embrace such risk but most of the time they do not. Since we would want an influx of businesses, we want the state to be the preferred destination for businesses, investments and tourism. That means we have to go the extra mile, which is essentially what the summit underscores.

You have many programmes and projects lined up. What are the priority areas you want to focus on? When you talk about financing, are you thinking about bond issuance?
Our strategy is to have a creative alternative financing model and that is quite broad. The creative alternative financing model means that the current financing model, which focuses on revenue from the federation account, is suboptimal. It is not going to work with this current model. So, we all have agreed that this current model cannot serve us if we want to intervene across critical sectors.

First, you have to look at what you have control over. You have control over mobilising your domestic revenue and your domestic resources. You need to identify how to optimise internally generated revenue. What are those impediments that are stopping you from optimally collecting revenue from the service or the businesses of the MDAs or from expanding your tax net? I am not saying increasing your tax rates but expanding your tax net.

We have done that already in the first 90 days in office. What we have done in our revenue enables the ministry to elevate the service levels to meet the collection of payments and the services people receive. Now, you can, in the comfort of your home, assess whatever service, particularly with the land administration and management. We have automated the systems there so that you can, within 72 hours, apply for your C-of-O and obtain them. You can access almost all the services you need within the land ministry, whether it’s search or registration via digital means. Of course, registration and construction permits can also be done online. We have automated those systems. What does that do to our revenue? We are now able to track payments because payments are no longer collected in cash. You have to assess and pay online and it goes to the state’s treasury single account. There are a lot of things we have done to begin to mobilise domestic revenue.

Now in terms of other financing options. By the way, the projects we have created are very deliberate. There may not be enough time to give a detailed analysis. One of the speakers talked about our area of comparative advantages. And that is the truth. If you look at agriculture, the areas we have focused on are areas we have almost four times factor productivity. Our advantage, our rate of productivity in those areas is four times better than what you have in any other state. If you take soya beans for example, which is one crop that we are interested in, our factor of productivity in soya beans is almost four times. So, the yield you get from planting soybeans on our land is four times more than the yield you get in any other state, even in the north.

We have identified those areas of comparative advantages and those are the areas we’re focusing on. The same thing goes for cassava, palm products and other specific areas we are focusing on. On the value chain, beyond just scaling up our production, we must get involved in processing. That is why we are talking about the special agro-processing zones, which we hope to do at least three across the three senatorial zones.

In terms of harmonisation of our land tenure, which one of the speakers raised; we plan to de-risk land and increase access to land. As an investor, you have absolutely no business worrying about interfacing with the communities. This is because we’ve earmarked about 300,000 hectares of land for agriculture and we are providing access roads to those lands. We have isolated them to different sizes. You have 1,000 or 5,000 depending on the appetite of the investor and how big we have profiled the investor.

There are several initiatives, multiple initiatives we have deployed in the areas of ease of doing business. There are a whole lot of them. In infrastructure, we are also doing a lot because we know that businesses have to make profits. So, you don’t want to burden them with the provision of roads or water. We are providing water, roads and bridges. There is a whole lot we are doing to make. When we say Enugu is going to be the number one destination for businesses and people, we know what we are saying. And as business owners and those with backgrounds in business and entrepreneurship, we understand and know what it takes to invest. Hence, we make sure that the ground is well watered.

Policy summersault is a challenge in Nigeria. What frameworks are you putting in place to reduce political risk and give assurance to investors that the policies that attract them will not be reversed when you leave office?
Out of the three-pronged approach we have taken, our strategic objective is strengthening our institutions. We are not just building this around us as individuals, we are also building the institutions. These are policies that will outlive anyone. At the end of the day, if you have strengthened the institutions through policy frameworks, it will not be easy for one single person to come and reverse that because it is entrenched and that is essentially what we are doing. We are strengthening our public service sector by ensuring that a lot of what we are doing has regulatory and legal frameworks. They are all embedded in the regulatory framework.
We get the buy-in of the lawmakers. We have retreats with them, we have workshops with them to get them to understand the policy direction of the government, and then we will build systems around this. That makes it almost impossible for any one person to reverse the policies. So, we are doing things that are bigger than us, things that would outlive us.

We have seen private sector individuals who started the way you have started but lost track along the way. How courageous are you going into this? Do you have the courage to step on your toes to get the job done?
What may help you to know I dare to just do a check on my background. I came into a sector where we were regarded as late entrants. We were just regarded as one other oil company. Fast forward to 14 years, we became the market leader, having 23 per cent market share with the next company having just five per cent, in a sector that was already mature. That is the oil and gas downstream sector. So, it is not like a nascent market where new players are struggling for market shares. We came in as late entrants in 2008. By 2021, we were the market leader. You don’t go from starting from point zero to becoming a market leader without courage.

When I was going around talking to the people of Enugu about my plans for the state, I used phrases like ‘disruptive innovation’, ‘quantum leap’ and leapfrogging. That is essentially what we are here to do. We are going to disrupt the sub-optimisation. We are going to disrupt the status quo. And we are going to do things differently. Not necessarily better, but differently. Because it will take us from basically shifting the paradigm for us to essentially achieve these goals. We’re talking about ambitious goals.

If you look at the pattern of growth we have had in the last 24 years, we have been able to grow the economy incrementally. We have grown marginally over the last 24 years. But that is not what we have proposed. We have not paid attention to the pattern or the trends. If we did, we would have used the same rates of growth to measure ourselves. But what we have done is to say, look, we are going to grow sevenfold in the next four to eight years. That means exponential growth. It means you have to come up with disruptive innovation. You have to do radical things. Disruptive things. That is why we talk about the creative alternative financing model we have talked about.

But there are structures that we put in place to make sure that our cash flow is not impeded. Yet we are still able to finance major projects. We know we need about N2 trillion in the next four years to achieve the sort of infrastructural development and cutting-edge social services that we want to provide for our people. If you look at the revenue from the federation account, even if you take everything to do a capital project, it is not up to 400 billion in the next four years. From that, you will fund recurring costs. We’re even talking about a slice, a very tiny slice of it. We’re not reckoning with the current financing model. It won’t work. We have to be creative. We have to be innovative. We have to be disruptive, positively disruptive. That is why we talk about this massive infrastructural development and investment flow that we would attract to Enugu. Of course, growing the economy exponentially too.

[Guardian]

The earthquake in Morocco, which killed thousands and left many more homeless, led me to ask questions. About the same time, floods in neighbouring Libya also reportedly killed its own thousands, leaving many more homeless. In both cases, millions of people; nay, entire countries and humanity as a whole, have been left traumatised. What if any of these shoes were on our own foot or did we think, as we are wont to, that it can never happen here? The answers that I got to the questions that I asked told me pointedly that we will be wrong to think so.

1. Has Africa ever experienced an earthquake? “The Horn of Africa has significant seismic hazard associated with the East African rift system. A number of destructive earthquakes, some deadly, have been reported this century. Notable events include the 1921 earthquake that destroyed the port city of Massawa in Eritrea”.
2. What was the biggest earthquake in Africa? “The two largest instrumentally-recorded events in Africa occurred ¬ 300 km north of Lake Albert (250-65 Ma) rifting. These M 7.1 earthquakes struck four days apart in May 1990, both at ¬15 km apart; their tectonic relationship to the Albert rift system or Mesozoic faults remains unclear”
3. Why is Africa generally not affected by earthquakes? “Most of the Continent consists of stable Cratons which are far from the tectonic boundaries under the Oceans, to the west, south and east; so there is little activity”
4. Is Nigeria prone to earthquakes? “For about 10 decades, the seismic record of Nigeria has shown the occurrence of several magnitudes of earthquakes. This is contrary to the belief of some people in time past that Nigeria is a-seismic (that is, not prone to the occurrence of earthquakes). In number and in size, most of the earthquakes witnessed in Nigeria were found to have occurred in her South-west region”
5. Where was the first earthquake in Africa? “The oldest recorded earthquake was in South Africa, and was widely accepted to have occurred on 7th April, 1620”
6. Where are 90% of earthquakes? “The ‘Ring of Fire’, also called the Circum-Pacific belt, is the zone of earthquakes surrounding the Pacific Ocean; about 90% of the world’s earthquakes occur here”
7. Which country in Africa is prone to earthquakes? “Southern Africa, which has already had large- and small-scale magnitude earthquakes. This region encompasses Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Angola, Namibia, and South Africa”
8. Has there been a tsunami in Africa? “A total of three tidal waves classified as a tsunami have, since 1969, killed three people in South Africa. Tsunamis, therefore, occur only rarely here. The strongest tidal wave registered in South Africa so far, on 27 August, 1969, reached a height of 2.9 metres but no human loss was registered.
9. Where are earthquakes most common in Africa? “The majority of seismic activity is concentrated along the East African Rift System, with additional active regions along stretches of the continental margins in north and east Africa, and in the Congo Basin”
10. Does Africa have volcanoes? ”Less well known is the fact that Africa is home to more than 100 volcanoes that have been active during Holocene time (roughly the past 10,000 years), including one of the most voluminous and dangerous lava lakes on Earth, and to a rift system that is actively splitting the continent apart”
11. What are the worst countries for earthquakes? “Japan, located in the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, tops the list of the world’s most seismically active countries with an average of more than 1500 earthquakes of magnitude 4 and above occurring in the country annually”
12. Which country cannot experience earthquakes? ”Antarctica has the least earthquakes of any continent but small earthquakes can occur anywhere in the world”
13. Did earthquakes ever happen in Nigeria? “The first earthquake in Nigeria occurred in 1939 in Ibadan while the first tremor was recorded in Warri in 1933. Many other earthquakes have occurred after these”
14. When was the last time that earthquakes happened in Nigeria? “The last officially reported episode was on November 1, 2018. An earlier event on September 5, 2018 that lasted for three days in Mpape and some parts of Maitama district of the Federal Capital Territory had left (people) apprehensive that an earthquake was about to occur”
15. What seismic zone is Nigeria in? “Nigeria is located in Zone 1, capable of the order of earthquake magnitude 6.0 – 6.5, modified after International Geoscience Group (IGCP).”
16. What is the largest earthquake ever recorded? “The Valdivia Earthquake occurred on May 22, 1960. It was the most powerful earthquake in recorded history, with a magnitude of 9.5. It struck southern Chile. Valdivia left two million people homeless, injured at least 3000 and killed about 155 people. It triggered a massive tsunami that raced across the Pacific.
17. When was the longest earthquake event? “A devastating earthquake in Indonesia in 1861 was the crescendo of a 32-year-long clash between the tectonic plates below the island.”
18. Where is the strongest earthquake ever? The biggest earthquake ever recorded, of magnitude 9.5, happened in Chile, at a subduction zone where the Pacific plate dives under the South American plate”
19. Where is the strongest earthquake? “The world’s largest earthquake with an instrumentally-documented magnitude occurred on May 22, 1960 near Valdivia in southern Chile. It was assigned a magnitude of 9.5 by the United Geological Survey. It is referred to as the ‘Great Chilean Earthquake’ or the ‘1960 Valdivia Earthquake’ The United States Geological Survey reports this event as the ‘largest earthquake of the 20th Century’ Other earthquakes in recorded history may have been larger; however, this is the largest earthquake that has occurred since accurate estimates of magnitude became possible in the early 1900s.”
20. Where is the “Ring of Fire”? “The ‘Ring of Fire’ is not quite a circular ring (but) is shaped more like a 40,000-kilometre (25,000-mile) horse shoe. A string of 52 volcanoes stretches from the southern tip of South America, up along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan and into New Zealand.”
21. Which African country has the most natural disasters? “Mozambique presented the highest natural disaster risk in Africa as of 2022. The country scored 34.37 in the WoldRiskIndex assessment and ranked among the 10 nations in the world under very high risk of being confronted with disasters due to extreme natural events”
22. Is Africa splitting in two? “The East African Rift System (EARS) runs downward through Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique. Africa is slowly but surely splitting in two. The east of the continent is scarred by one of the largest rifts in the world.”
23. Why do earthquakes occur in Africa? “Hot magma rises from the mantle at mid-ocean ridges, pushing the plates apart. Earthquakes occur along the fractures that appear as the plates move apart.”
24. Where is the safest place to be during an earthquake? “An interior room of your house without any windows, such as a bathroom. If possible, take cover inside something sturdy, like a heavy table, desk or doorway.”
25. Can you hear an earthquake coming? “Small shallow earthquakes sometimes produce rumbling sounds or booms that can be heard by people who are very close to them. High-frequency vibrations from the shallow earthquake generate the booming sound; when earthquakes are deeper, those vibrations never reach the surface.
26. How long does an earthquake last? “Generally, only seconds! Strong ground-shaking during a moderate earthquake typically lasts about 10 to 30 seconds! Readjustments in the earth cause more earthquakes (aftershocks) that can occur intermittently for weeks and months.”
27. Can someone or something trigger an earthquake? “Injecting fluid underground can induce earthquakes, a fact that was established decades ago by USGS scientists. This process increases the fluid pressure within fault zones, making them more likely to fail in an earthquake”
28. Can earthquakes be prevented? “We cannot prevent natural earthquakes from occurring but we can significantly mitigate their effects by identifying hazards, building safer structures, and providing education on earthquake safety. By preparing for natural earthquakes we can also reduce the risk from human-induced earthquakes”.
29. How long can a human survive in an earthquake? “Generally-speaking, people trapped in the rubble of an earthquake can only survive about a week. Experts say that, typically, it is rare to find survivors after the fifth to seventh days and that most search-and-rescue teams will consider stopping by then” Finally, which countries have suffered most from earthquakes? “Japan, located in the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, tops the list of the world’s most seismically active countries, with an average of more than 1500 earthquakes of magnitude 4 and above occurring in the country annually. The others are Indonesia, China, Philippines, Iran, Turkey, Peru, USA, Italy, Mexico and New Zealand. Interestingly, countries with the most fatalities from earthquakes are Indonesia (227, 898), Haiti (160,000), China (87, 587) and Pakistan (87, 351). The Morocco earthquake has claimed close to 3000 deaths as at press time.

From the above statistics we can deduce the following: Africa in general and Nigeria in particular are fortunate that we are not in seismically-active zones but this is not to foreclose the occurrence of devastating earthquakes here. Morocco is an example and eye-opener. South-west Nigeria must also watch it. As our people would say: “It is coming, it is coming”; you don’t wait until it comes before you act but must prepare your net to catch it when eventually it arrives. Are we prepared? Are we even mindful of the fact that we must prepare for any eventualities? What body of knowledge do we have, both as a people and as a government, on this occurrence? Building safer structures, providing education and preparing for any eventualities are sine qua non if we are not to be caught pants down. If earthquakes are generally an act of God, floods are mixtures of both. Human activities have depleted the ozone layer, causing the temperature of the Earth to rise astronomically, the melting of the ice sheet, a rise in the sea levels and floods never before experienced. Efforts to control this man-made disaster, which is already creeping in on us before our very eyes, have floundered on the altar of the selfish interest of the superpower nations. On the home front, in Lagos especially, we sand-fill and reclaim land; we convert wetlands to housing estates and business districts; we build on drainages and obstruct the flow of the body of waters. Waste disposal architecture of the State government is not working; most drainage is blocked by indiscriminate disposal of refuse and the lethargy of the relevant authorities has not helped matters.

No one fights water and wins. No one disrespects or distracts it without paying a price for it. Water fights silently; but it also fights viciously. If we wait to behold its rage in forms and tempo worse than the samples and warning signals it has been giving us, then, we will have only ourselves to blame. If we are wise, we will urgently and earnestly learn from the Morocco and Libya disasters.

An oba is put on the throne to keep “the bush at bay.” Collectively and individually, the successful oba is praised as “so’gbó di’lé/sò’gbé dì’gboro/ oba a s’ààtàn d’ojà – the successful king is he who turns forest to home; the one who turns bush to town. Karin Barber’s ‘I Could Speak Until Tomorrow’ (published in 1991) is my book of reference here. An oba that would turn his town’s rubbish heap into a market would not be deficient in legitimacy; he would not owe his ascension to the throne solely to money and its filthy influence. A king whose reign would be well would come courtesy of the blessing of God and man. In the past, “nobody could be a good oba unless he had a very broad-based support in the town” (Ulli Beier). But royalty in Yorubaland today suffers the violence of money; money is the principal speaker that speaks and gets listened to. It is our parliament and our executive; it is the judiciary. It is true that a palace needs money to breathe; it is a necessity, but it should not be the reason for a king and his super elector.

At a project inauguration event in Iseyin, Oyo State, on Friday, the state governor, Mr Seyi Makinde, announced that the vacant throne of the Alaafin of Oyo would not be allowed sold to the highest bidder. “Those of you fighting over Alaafin of Oyo’s stool should stop. Those who have collected money from people should know that Alaafin’s stool is not for sale. The stool is very important to Yoruba land; we will not allow it sold to the highest bidder.” That was quite cool, pleasing and reassuring. The governor spoke as an authentic Yoruba patriot who understands the place of the oba as the ori (head) and what it does in the life of the Yoruba society.

One of the most difficult moments for a governor in Yorubaland is when a prominent oba’s stool falls vacant. The skies, at that moment, wear an incandescent shroud of lightning, thunder claps and storms of intrigues. Dr Omololu Olunloyo was Western State’s commissioner in charge of chieftaincy affairs when the last Alaafin was chosen in 1970. He tells dusky stories of what went into that decision. When a first class king dies and the governor allows the lowering of his guard, his face will suffer the ugliness of pimples. Where the soil is fertile, kingmakers sell thrones for princely sums and princes of means buy stools. Shortly after the immediate past Timi of Ede, Oba Tijani Oyewusi Agbonran II, joined his ancestors in August 2007, the then Osun State governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, asked the most senior kingmaker in that town which royal house’s turn it was to present the next oba. “It is everyone’s turn” was the answer the governor got. It cannot be every prince’s turn, the governor countered the kingmaker, asking him if what he was saying was that the family of the one who just died could also present a candidate. And the kingmaker replied the governor: “Ṣebí oyè bàbá won ni” (Why not? It is their father’s chieftaincy). That final answer was a code (or a red flag) for rent seeking and rent collection – a recipe for interminable litigious crisis. The governor understood what was not said, and, I am aware, he quickly closed all roads to trouble.

Sometimes, it is the princes and their houses who run after kingmakers and assail them with irresistible cash. Throne purchasers pursue chiefs up the hill and down the valley. The same happens to key people around the approving authority, the governor. Even small me, as the governor’s spokesman, I received august visitors from the town of Ede who said they came to thank me. Thank me for what? They said I issued a statement in which I promised that government would “follow due process in filling the stool” and because of that they brought gifts. Where I come from, a child’s most precious possessions are his mother’s and father’s prayers. I got plenty of such prayers against missteps before I became an orphan, and I pray daily for those parental fortifications to dictate what I do, what I say, what I eat. My elderly guests said they brought kola nuts for me; I told them I inherited hectares of kola nut farms from my father but I don’t eat kola nuts. They fixed their gaze on me; I also looked at my ‘appreciative’ throne-seeking visitors and smiled. I showered them with rejective thanks. They left with their kola nuts in their pocket.

Who or what should choose the next Alaafin? The answer is in tradition and religion, encased carefully in lore and anecdotes. Priest and professor of Ifa religion and a former vice chancellor of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile Ife, Professor Wande Abimbola, offered an insight in November 2022 in an interview published by the newspaper I edit. He told this story: “In ancient times, there was a vacancy in the stool of the Alaafin. In those days, Ifá would choose from among the princes. So they had the list of all the princes; they presented all to Ifá and Ifá rejected all of them. After exhausting the names of all the princes, the kingmakers were worried about what to do next. One of them said: ‘there is one person who lives in a village far away. He carries his load of firewood to the town once a week. He goes to the bush, cuts firewood, takes it to the town every week to sell. After selling, he would go back to the village. His name is Otonporo. Why don’t we try him?’ So they consulted Ifá if Otonporo would be fit for the throne, and if the Oyo Empire would be prosperous under his reign. Ifá said yes. At that time if Ifá had chosen you as the new Alaafin, the kingmakers would meet you in the house wherever you were. Otonporo had just put his heavy load of firewood on his head, coming to the town. They met him as he was leaving his abode in the forest. They shouted: ‘Otonporo, da’gi nùn; ire ti dé’lé kokoko’ (meaning ‘Otonporo, throw away your firewood; great fortune is awaiting you in the city.’) Otonporo became Alaafin and ruled for a long time. He was a successful king….” None of the rich princes in the metropolis got the throne; it was one hewer of wood somewhere deep in the bush who got the crown – and brought peace and prosperity to Oyo and its people.

A good leader is to his people what a good child is to its parents. When a child takes the right steps, the mother sings delightsome tunes; when a child opens its arms, it delights its father (omo sí’sè o wù’yá/ omo sí’pá, omo wu baba). Every Yoruba person should be proud of Governor Makinde’s stance on the Alaafin stool. His vow that the stool won’t be sold to the highest bidder is good news. It means we won’t have an Alaafin that has no regard for etiquette and protocols; one who routinely violates values and would be beating up other obas in private and public places. When a government makes a vow to do good, the people would be assisting themselves by helping it to get the promise fulfilled. We should be interested in what is happening in Oyo town and what will happen to the stool there. We should particularly note the governor’s choice of words. What he said was not a guess-work; he was sure of what had happened and may still happen to the process. He hinted that some people had taken money to force an unworthy stuff into the vacant ààfin in Oyo. Who took money and who gave money?

Things happen daily around us; only that we are too blind (or too drunk) to see them. But if the eyes are attentive enough, they should have no problem seeing through the dank alleys of nostrils. It is not as if the decay in our obaship system started today. Maggots and nestling peckers have, long before now, been gutting the Yoruba royalty. Pioneer arts, culture and tradition scholar, Ulli Beier, was here from 1950 through the ‘70s. He observed the Yoruba society’s unique monarchy and its democratic mainframes. He noted that in the selection of an oba, every part of the community had a say in it. He added that the Yoruba held the belief that an oba that lacked broad-based support in the town could not be a good king. In exasperation, he lamented that “now, people more or less buy the office, or they are imposed by the government.” The German uttered those words decades ago. Ulli Beier said more about the journey with so much poignancy in this narration: “In the 1950s, I met a generation of oba like Timi Laoye of Ede, Oba Adenle of Osogbo, the Olokuku of Okuku (Oyinlola) and many more. They were Christians and they understood the changed political situation. They believed in education but they were also strongly committed to upholding the dignity of their office. They also understood the value and wisdom of ancient Yoruba traditions. They were an impressive group of men, of kings. They did not use their office to enrich themselves; and they were absolutely accessible to the people. Now, you have a generation of oba, many of them political appointees who have by-passed traditional election procedures in a shameless way. A surprisingly large number of these new oba have been accountants or big businessmen before ascending to the throne. Some see the office as a means of making money. Various governments keep them in tow by throwing a few contracts their way. You now have an oba who shamelessly asks: ‘where is my envelope?’ – a new euphemism for ‘haven’t you brought any money to give me?’ So, how is Yoruba society going to cope with such problems? Should this ancient institution be abolished? Can it be rejuvenated, and, in such a way that we can keep politics out of it? Can it still play a vital and positive part in contemporary and future Yoruba society? If not, can it be replaced by something else? And what will that ‘something else’ be? Who or what will give a sense of direction and cohesion to the Yoruba town?” (Ulli Beier in Conversations, 2012; page 84-85). Beier asked the right questions: in the face of this thing we called ‘democracy’, shouldn’t the institution of obaship be abolished? Or can it be saved with rejuvenation? How? Who will save it?

The kingmakers in the Otonporo case above had a choice: they could sell the Oyo throne and strut the metropolis in accursed beaded wealth. The priest too had a choice; he could collect money and pick a candidate his oracle did not command him to pick. But both sides did not take the route to personal and communal ruin. They knew that every bad behaviour had very bad consequences. A purchased throne, most times, results in having a bad oba. And, what is the effect of having a bad king? A bad king is exactly the public equivalent of a bad head. A town can survive lack of rains but no society survives the ravage of bad leadership. Leaders without legitimacy reverse gains no matter what riches they inherit – they make bush of their society and ruin their people’s good head. Look around you. It is real. I quote Karin Barber again: “…the ruins of abandoned houses overgrown with bush, the traces of whole ruined settlements, remain as a warning that at any time, the conquest of the bush can be reversed…”  True. The quickest way to reverse “the conquest of the bush” is to invest the powers of the state in the wrong hands. Athens and Sparta were Ancient Greece’s powerhouses. They convulsed and lost their luster to bad choices. The frailty of the polis is a constant warning that we must never plant thorns and thistles where rose is desired. Oba Lamidi Adeyemi died in April 2022; he was a very successful king and a pride to the Yoruba, home and abroad. When he died, the question was: who steps into his shoes and when? That we are still asking that question in September 2023 is to our collective shame as a people.