Keeping a library may be tedious and costly but it is profitable at the same time. Last week as I turned sections of my library upside down, I came across so many materials I have decided to regale my readers with week after week. They are a piece of history and they tell that the rain beating this country did not start yesterday. And we have not been bereft of “prophets” railing against the wanton troopers, military and civilian, laying this country waste. Enjoy two of the pieces this week. The first was written by Muyiwa Adetiba and the second by Prof. Kole Omotoso. Titled “Those who fed fat on Nigeria should now come forward and help her” in Face to Face with Muyiwa Adetiba, Adetiba’s piece reads: “We are a proud nation: You, me, and the guy next door. We are all proud people. And, together, we make a proud nation. We look at menial jobs with disdain, preferring white collar ones. We look at farmers with their coloured and dirty hands with contempt, thanking God- and oil – that farming was not our lot.

We welcome the comfort of modern technology but are not prepared to stoop to conquer. Modern technology can be bought, we assure ourselves (the word we use is ‘transfer’) if the price is right. We buy up the best places in Europe; places where only the rich indigenes live, convinced that it is the highest insult to live with commoners. The rich millionaires of the world buy up apartments but we buy up mansions, locking them up for the greater part of a year.  Like all proud people, we love to be flattered. And for as long as the white man could use us to expand their economy, flattery is a small price to pay. So, they flatter us!

We preen like peacocks when they call us the “Giant of Africa”. We literally glow when they call us the richest country in Black Africa, ignoring, like they, too, do, that true wealth is based on population. We dance, with glee, when they sing the praises of our democracy. Oh yes, they flatter us – out white friends. They pump our ego until it stretches taut and massage it and remould it until we cannot even recognise ourselves anymore and we begin to feel we are God’s chosen people.

We forget history. We forget that not too long ago, Zambia was among the richest countries in the world but, today, where is she: Way down among the poorest! We forget that there was a time when Ghana was the pivot upon which all black nations rotated; but now, where is Ghana? A few years ago, at the height of our power and glory, we were ending the World Bank money, presumably because we did not know what to do with it. And while countries like Brazil and Mexico were borrowing to finance capital projects, pride, disguised as prudence, didn’t let us.

Like the Zambian copper and the Ghanaian cocoa, our oil is still there but it no longer commands the respect it used to as “black gold”. Pride, they say, goes before a fall. We have not fallen yet but our pride is evaporating fast. But has our pride fallen so low; have we been humbled so much that we have to go begging for a meagre one billion Naira or even two billion? I should hope not! I should hope that the constant talk with Saudi Arabia is not over one billion Naira. I should hope that our move to secure loans from western Europe is not to secure N2 billion!

Our pride is gone but not all that gone. It is one pride – the little that is left – that can lift out heads up. There are a few Nigerians who could, among themselves, comfortably loan the country two billion Naira in whatever currency. This is the time for them to come forward. These people made money from Nigeria. They milked her, sucked her, bled her – sometimes alone, sometimes with foreign connivance – until she had nothing more to offer. Will those who bled her now stand aside, like innocent bystanders while the nation craves for life blood?

We know them: Those who made money lifting oil, selling arms, importing chicken and fertilizers! The super ten percenters who link foreign businessmen with our government officials and who bath in champagne abroad! We beg them: The Abuja millionaires, the cement millionaires, the road construction millionaires, and the electronic and telecommunication millionaires! (We beg them) to come forward in the name of patriotism to help their country. Nigeria should not be seen to be licking dirty feet because she wants to borrow 1 Billion when, among her sons, are people who own and maintain jets at staggering sums of about a million Naira per year; when some of her sons can still pay cash up to the tune of four zeros for goods purchased.

Two short years ago, millions were raised at a party convention. Millions were donated to build a mosque. Where are these people in our hour of need? Where are those who buy up London and Paris for their girlfriends? Britain, whose economy they have done so much for, is now on the other side of a price war, using the money of Nigeria’s sons in her banks to fight Nigeria. Will the owners of the money stand by and watch?    If they cannot lend the country money directly, they can help in a thousand and one other ways.

Our Teaching hospitals are crying for help; ditto out universities; ditto out research centres; ditto our young and unemployed graduates. I call today on all patriotic sons of Nigeria who made their money through the country to come and help her. Or does it pay them more to lock the money up in banks, vaults and suitcases than to use it (to generate) gainful employment?”

I don’t have the date this piece was published but I should think my respected senior wrote the piece in one of The PUNCH titles (Sunday PUNCH?) before I got to the stable in 1987. I did not meet Mr. Adetiba at the PUNCH but met his reputation. Has anything changed in respect of Nigeria’s leadership deficiency? And has corruption and looting of the treasury abated? What is funny, however, is that sums of money that looked big in those days now appear like peanuts! Nigeria is rugged; the more it is pillaged, the more resources it oozes out! As they say, there is no killing the beetle!

The next piece is from one of our respected lecturers at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Prof. Kole Omotoso. Titled “May both sides win”, it was published in the Sunday Times of December 8, 1991. It reads: “Because we know that no condition is permanent, we have agreed that there are no lasting qualities. There is no qualitative difference between one thing and another and having a choice is burdensome. Anyway, choosing a choice is not and should not be dependent on the quality of one thing or the lack of quality of the other. If there is ever some merit that one thing has over the other, it is not intrinsic to the thing. All that our history has taught us is that there is no victor and there is no vanquished. This, after we had fought a 30-month civil war!

This conclusion of “no victor, no vanquished” showed that we were sure there was nothing to choose between breaking up the country and keeping it one; which showed that both sides won on that occasion; which, as far as we are concerned, was a good thing. Recently, each of our former Heads of State has been asserting the spectacular Nigerian truth that their time was good. That is, they ruled very well and to the advantage of our people and everybody was so happy with them that when they were thrown out without handing over notes, the streets thronged with citizens celebrating their ignominious exit. Innumerable commissions of inquiry sat, wrote and submitted reports of the corrupt practices of former governments and recommended what should be done to the people responsible for such terrible acts of betrayal of the people. So those who were driven out and those who drove them out are justified. They are both right. But what happens when a child asks us: if they were so good, why are things so bad for us now? That, of course, is not the question! All that we must always assert is that the two sides must always win.

Recently, the story came out about the experience of a man who was carrying a couple of cockerels from one part of the country to the other. At the first police checkpoint, he was stopped and questioned as to what he fed the cockerels on as they were so big and good-looking. The owner of the cockerels said they were fed on corn. Whereupon his interrogator accused him roundly for wasting food on cockerels while human beings were not getting enough to eat. He was warned to stop the practice of feeding the cockerels with corn so that human beings would not starve. He thanked them and went on only to be stopped at another road block and be asked the same question. This time, and because the cockerels were praised to high heaven, their owner got lost and said he fed them rice! What did he say that for? They set on him and beat him up for wasting scarce resources on mere birds.

When he finally got away, he had to rethink the answer he should give not to merit these punishments. Very soon, he was at another road block. He was duly asked what he feeds his cockerels on. He made his face straight and said without blinking: “I don’t feed them. What I do is, I give them money and they go and buy whatever food they like!” Those who had stopped him were in raptures when they heard this information. What wise cockerels! What a fantastically democratic owner of cockerels! How wonderful that such a relationship can exist between cockerels and their owner! And they let him go.

Once again, both sides had won! Or both sides have lost! Can there be winning or losing where no condition is permanent and there is no difference between winning and losing? And if both sides win – or lose – can the third party please step out? Let bygones be bygones. We have something here to teach the fractious world. Hallelujah!”

That is the crux of our problems! No standards are set for performance. No punishment is meted out for infractions. Since 1999, for instance, every president and governor has had a field day and has left singing their own praises but has left us, nonetheless, worse that they met us. Yet, no questions are asked. No punishment is meted out. The same people walk about free. Worse, they aspire to other offices where they continue with their shenanigans. No victor; no vanquished! A country of “anything goes”! In a matter of days, Buhari and his henchmen will leave the scene and it is unlikely anyone will ask them any question. No accountability. If people who should call them to account are themselves too eager and anxious to step in and continue the vicious cycle, then, head we lose; tail we lose!

One of the most enduring jokes on social media is centred on “agbado” — the Yoruba word for maize, which is equally known as corn. Many Nigerians might have forgotten the source. Speaking at his 69th birthday colloquium in March 2021, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, then addressed as national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), advocated the massive recruitment of youths into the army so that Nigeria could tackle insecurity and unemployment at once. He obviously goofed by suggesting that 50 million youths could be recruited into the army to address the security challenges. His media office later clarified that he meant to say 50,000 youths as 50 million was way out of line.

“We are under-policed and we are competing with armed robbers and bandits to recruit from the youths who are unemployed. Thirty-three per cent unemployed?” Tinubu said at the event. “Recruit 50 million youths into the army! What they will eat — cassava, agbado (corn), yam — we’ll grow here. Don’t talk about illiteracy… anybody who can hold a gun, who can handle a gun, who can cock and shoot, is technically competent to repair a tractor in the farm.” He was apparently preparing to join the presidential race, so many took this as a hint of his manifesto. Thereafter, “agbado” became a byword. “Corn” became an object of scorn. “Agbado” became a pejorative prefix for a Tinubu fan.

In our history, different presidents have adopted different cash crops which they promoted to a level of significance. Some were successful and some were not. Gen Ibrahim Babangida, as military president, promoted the local production of sorghum as substitute for barley malt, which was being imported as raw material by breweries and the food-processing industry in general. It was a controversial policy, hampering growth in the short run and even sending some factories packing in the process. Many economists argued that the import ban was wrong. Although the beverage industry suffered, we are today one of the largest producers of sorghum. We barely import barley.

Nonetheless, we do not have many success stories in import-substitution, which is usually enforced with an import ban. That is why some economists prefer we focus on our areas of strength rather than spend energy banning imports. When President Olusegun Obasanjo was in office, he vigorously promoted cassava. He set up the Presidential Committee on Cassava Initiative Programme. In no time, we became the world’s largest producers. But producing and adding value are two different animals. The one keeps you at the basic stage, earning you pittance, compared to the other that oils a value chain. Obasanjo started promoting cassava content in bread to promote local utilisation.

Unfortunately, the cassava bread did not catch on. I tried it once or twice. Human taste is acquired over time and it cannot be changed overnight. If we were born eating bread with cassava content, it would be easier to sell. President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was not interested in the cassava initiative and did not adopt any crop, but there was much attention to tomato production and commercial farming under him. President Goodluck Jonathan tried to revive the cassava bread policy. It still did not work, but he also spent energy on rice, building upon what Obasanjo started. Although there was some success in local production, smuggling hindered the goal of weaning us off imported rice.

For some reason, Nigerians have always had the tongue for imported rice (remember Uncle Ben’s?) Locally produced rice is considered as food for the poorest of the poor, particularly because of the quality of production and packaging. President Muhammadu Buhari has raised the profile of local rice in his time, despite the challenges posed by smuggling. He not only banned FX allocation for rice importation but also chose the abnormal route of closing the international borders to check smuggling, in the process hurting trade on the West Coast. Now that Nigeria has significantly increased its rice production, Buhari can claim that all is well that ends well, even at a heavy price.

As Tinubu prepares to take the reins of power from Buhari on May 29, I would now like to challenge him on the “agbado” that he spoke about at the colloquium. I do not know if he really meant it or it was just political speech-making, but agriculture and industry remain the routes offering quick wins for any administration intent on tackling unemployment. Agriculture is the biggest employer of labour in Nigeria and this can even lead to expansion in industry. Not all of us can be farmers, as farming is not considered glamorous here. Some can be involved in light processing in the value chain. Jonathan, in particular, promoted what he called “agropreneurship” to attract youths.

Does Tinubu intend to promote maize? Well, the global maize industry is huge. If we want to use agriculture to partly tackle insecurity and unemployment — two of our biggest headaches — maize is one crop we can target. Nigeria is rated Africa’s largest producer with an output of 33 million metric tonnes (mmt) in 2021/22 but, not surprisingly, the yield is poor, compared to second-placed South Africa, which produces only 15.3mmt. Our yield per hectare (t/ha) is less than 2mt — not even up to half of South Africa’s 4.9 t/ha. South Africa was responsible for 75 percent of Africa’s exports. You can look away now: the US produces 354.19mmt and exports 57.59mmt. We definitely can scale up.

Why is “agbado” so important? Although the world’s 86th most traded product, it is now the most beloved cereal in demand, moving above wheat and rice since 2020. In plain language, it is a growing market. In 2021, the US, as the world’s top producer of maize, earned $18.8 billion from exports, followed by Argentina ($8.88 billion) and Ukraine ($5.86 billion). Same year, Nigeria earned $57,350 from exporting 62,000 mt. You may look at the statistics and get depressed or frustrated, but the better option is to see the huge opportunity begging for attention. The solutions to our problems are in plain sight. All we need to do is focus our energies on the right things and the results will show up.

While providing employment through agriculture and industry can easily absorb youths from the labour market and take them off crime, we are also going to be tackling food poverty. These are the things the countries we call “advanced” today realised long ago and took action while we were busy sharing oil revenue and buying private jets up and down. Maize, for instance, is a staple for billions of people in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. According to a 2021 report by PwC, entitled “Positioning Nigeria as Africa’s leader in maize production for AfCFTA”, some 300 million Africans depend on maize as the main staple crop. All parts can be used for food and non-food products.

Maize accounts for 30−50 percent of low-income household expenditures in Africa, according to the PwC report, and over 30 percent of the caloric intake of people in sub‐Saharan Africa comes from maize. In Nigeria, maize is used to make animal feeds. It is raw material for breweries. It is also raw material for the manufacturing of industrial flours and corn flakes. It is food for us in many forms. The truth, of course, is that we can do far better than we are doing now if we adopt the right practices and policies to improve productivity, not just in maize but in the various cash crops that we are blessed with in this country. Everything I have written here can apply to all our cash crops.

Any problem associated with maize can also be seen in yam, cassava, tomato, name it. There are general problems with agriculture in Nigeria. One is poor yield. This is a problem discouraging many investors. And this is a problem science can solve. Improving yield has vast economic benefits. Another is post-harvest loss. Challenges around conditioning and preservation can be resolved by science as well. Yet another challenge is the value addition. You don’t have to be a farmer. You can go into processing and producing finished products with raw material from agriculture. This is an industry that good policy choices and incentives can address. It is a massive world out there.

Some things are just not working well and the policy makers know it. How can it be said that we are the largest producers of cassava in the world but we do not feature among the top cassava-exporting countries? We are the largest producers of yam but we are virtually non-existence in the export market. One reasonable explanation is that Nigeria has a huge population and we should be grateful that we produce enough to eat. Export can come later. That is not a bad argument but the fact that we are producing so much in spite of the poor yield and in spite of the discouraging living and farming conditions says a lot about where we can be if we get things right. Let’s think about that.

A Zimbabwean farmer, who worked in a small community in Kwara state years ago when Dr Bukola Saraki was governor, had this to say after spending less than a year in the country: “Nigeria’s agriculture potential is scary!” Outsiders see so much potential in us: potential to create quick jobs and get youths off the streets; potential to produce enough food to cure our people of hunger; potential for a wealthy value chain; and potential to export raw materials as well as finished products and earn billions upon billions in forex. It appears we are not seeing what they are seeing, so we keep going back and forth and returning to square one at almost every turn. We need to wake up.

I must immediately clarify that I know agriculture is on the concurrent list and not the exclusive preserve of the president. The federal government does not own any land apart from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). But if Tinubu is going to promote the “agbado” economy, or agriculture and industry for that matter, he has to rally the governors, show leadership by providing the vital policy and infrastructural support, and take it as a personal project that must be seen to a conclusion. We’ve tried to tackle insecurity with bombs, and poverty with handouts. There is a lot more we can achieve with agriculture and industry if we know what we want and are determined to get there.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

‘NO INAUGURATION’

First, Senator Datti Baba-Ahmed, the Labour Party vice-presidential candidate, said there is no president-elect and that the president and the CJN should not inaugurate Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu on May 29. Some legal experts joined in, insisting that the petitions must be decided before inauguration. The clergy is on board, with Cardinal John Onaiyekan saying it is senseless to swear in a new president while petition is pending. This may be a good argument but there is no law stopping inauguration because of litigation. We need to step back and take a deep breath. If we follow this emerging logic, 28 states will not have governors on May 29 because of pending petitions. Weird.

EMIRATE POLITICS

Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, leader of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), has hinted that Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi II could be restored as the emir of Kano when Alhaji Abba Kabir Yusuf (NNPP) is inaugurated as governor. The politicisation of the throne since Alhaji Ado Bayero died in 2014 is gearing up for another phase. Sanusi was appointed in Bayero’s stead after he was removed as CBN governor by President Goodluck Jonathan. The APC took full advantage, with some leaders even promising Kwankwaso, then Kano governor, the presidential ticket. Sanusi would fall out with Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, the governor, in 2020 who removed him and broke up the emirate. Intrigues.

SUDAN SALVATION

The way the federal government reacted to the plight of Nigerians caught in the Sudan crossfire is laudable, although there are also arguments that we should have been more proactive and the evacuation arrangements could have been smoother. Still, I am glad our compatriots returned home safely. The late Chief Ojo Maduekwe launched the “citizen diplomacy” policy when he was minister of foreign affairs. I think we should revive it. Many Nigerians in diaspora are bitter because they feel the government doesn’t care about them. They face challenges that “normal” consular services could have helped address. I will celebrate the Sudan rescue mission all the same. Positive.

AMBASSADOR OSIMHEN

Victor Osimhen inspired Napoli to win the Italian football league for the first time in 33 years, scoring 21 goals in 26 games so far. His equaliser in the 1-1 draw with Udinese on Thursday sealed the Serie A title for the team, which previously had the legendary Diego Maradona as the hero when he led them to their first and second titles in 1987 and 1990 — virtually all by himself. The way Osimhen was celebrated at the stadium on Thursday night made me a proud Nigerian. While our politicians are doing all they can to divide the country along ethno-religious lines, the good news from Nigeria is always coming from Nigerians shining in academics, sport, Afrobeats and Nollywood. Ambassadors.

City FM is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

LAST Monday, a book titled Osinbajo Strides: Defining Moments Of An Innovative Leader was launched by the PYO (Professor Yemi Osinbajo) Collective, a nonpartisan, multicultural group of Nigerians. I wrote one of the 25 tributes therein and, in my essay, described myself as a member of the Osinbajo fan club and said that I was convinced that a huge mistake had been made when APC convention delegates did not give him their presidential ticket last year.

Many people have challenged me for indicating that I could have voted for the APC if the vice president had been the candidate because I have been a staunch supporter of Peter Obi, PO, for the past few months, so am widely regarded as a diehard Obidient. Another reason why I’ve been challenged for singing PYO’s praises is that I have complained about the APC’s multiple failures on numerous occasions, so some folks don’t understand why I would even consider voting for any candidate who has worked closely with Buhari and been at the heart of a poorly performing APC government.

My response to those who think that I am being contradictory at best and hypocritical or two-faced at worst is that life is not always a simple matter of uncompromising black/white extremes! There are also shades of grey and twilight zones and middle grounds. Chimamanda, a global literary icon and Nigeria’s favourite novelist, addressed us at the book launch and made a point with which I could totally identify. 

Chimamanda is also known to be enthusiastically Obidient. But she spoke very, very, very highly of PYO and said that she would have been “conflicted” if he had become a presidential candidate because “he is the only other person I could have voted for”. I’ve heard similar sentiments expressed by many other Nigerians who yearn for a break with the past and believe that PYO and PO, though different stylistically, are both refreshingly atypical and capable of delivering a brighter future to an ailing nation that desperately needs to be rescued by a new kind of leader.

In other words, if PYO and PO’s names had both appeared on ballot papers on February 25, a significant percentage of voters would have struggled to decide which one to choose; and I think that it is fair to say that a large chunk of PYO admirers quickly transferred their allegiance to PO when PYO didn’t get the APC nomination.

And, by the way, I would also have been conflicted if Dr. Kayode Fayemi had won the APC nomination and run against PO because even though Fayemi also has what it takes to drag us out of the rut we are in and has been a loyal friend to me since we were youngsters in London, he is a Yoruba – like Obasanjo and PYO who have between them held the top two Federal Government slots for 16 years.

In an ideal world, ethnic considerations wouldn’t matter. But the world is far from ideal; and there’s no getting away from the fact that PO is from a geopolitical zone –  the South East – that hasn’t had a chance to “rule” since Nigeria emerged from military rule in 1999.

Anyways, to purists who think we should strenuously avoid every candidate who belongs to a useless or toxic political party, I have this to say: I totally get your visceral distaste for the APC but organisations can be massively changed by their chief executives; and those who are mere deputies or ordinary members cannot be blamed for decisions that are made by the Numero Uno and his kitchen cabinet.

Long story short: I think we should learn to focus on individuals who possess integrity rather than on the vehicles they are driving when they commence their journeys because a vehicle that is ramshackle or dangerous initially can become roadworthy in the right hands. 

The Labour Party only started to acquire Realpolitik credibility when PO walked away from the PDP to head it. The APC would have immediately started to smell sweeter if PYO had made it to its helm.

Tnubu versus Shettima

TALKING about life not 

being that simple within the context of political thought processes and electoral choices, I was chatting to some chums the other day. All of my companions were Southerners – some were Yoruba like Tinubu but most were Igbo or Niger Deltan. All were anti-Tinubu for various reasons. Some just felt that he is too old and physically/mentally incapable of investing sufficient energy in a job that is immensely stressful.

Others said that he has a dubious history, is surrounded by scurrilous speculations or facts and have too many image problems. But guess what? Tinubu was abroad at the time and rumours were rife that he was very fragile and on his last legs and may not be president for long. And one of the guys in this social gathering gloomily said: “If it is a choice between Tinubu and his running mate, I will take Tinubu anytime. And if I have to donate one of my kidneys to keep Tinubu alive and prevent Shettima from taking over, I will donate my kidney!” And everyone agreed with him!

Of course these declarations were essentially tongue-in-cheek. And Tinubu doesn’t, to the best of our knowledge, have kidney deficiencies; and even if he needs a transplant, none of us is going to sacrifice a body part to anyone who is not a close relative. But there are serious concerns about Shettima’s trustworthiness in certain Southern circles. And I hope he proves us wrong.

For my masters degree thesis 36 years ago, I was assigned to Prayag Tripathi, a bespectacled, painstaking and thorough Indian professor of English as my supervisor. His job contract, unfortunately, expired just before I submitted the last and concluding chapter of the work. Tripathi personally discussed with and reassigned me to Olu Obafemi, Emeritus professor and 2018 recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit, (NNOM), Tripathi’s respected colleague, Obafemi was to takeover therefrom all the way to my defence of the dissertation. I was deploying radical, Marxist discourse and theories in the interrogation of my thesis and the younger Obafemi was an acclaimed leftist scholar, as evidenced by the voluptuous oeuvre of his creative and intellectual endeavours.

The NNOM which Obafemi earned five years ago, is widely regarded as the Nigerian equivalent of the Nobel Prize. It is awarded for outstanding creativity and excellence, in research and scholarship. I am, myself, a certified Olu Obafemi protege, by the way, having been his student and mentee for over four decades. The scholarship was a lot more serious business those days, beyond the chua, chua, chua, we have today. This is the way Seriake Dickson, former Bayelsa state governor would describe the reverse intellection we have in place today. Academics was not “outsourced,” “cut and paste” or rub a dub as is prevalent today.

Asides from defending the work plan of my proposed research before the departmental board of stern-looking, grey-haired, moustachioed professors and scholars, my supervisor had to vet and approve the drafts of each and every chapter of my long essay. We wrote in long hand in that milieu, so you were compelled to write as legibly as possible. Tripathi reverted the introductory chapter of my dissertation days after I handed it in, and made suggestions to enable me to improve on a second draft. There was this comment he made which particularly struck me and stuck in my mind, or head, ever since. On the margins of this specific page, he drew a box around a part of the script and scribbled: “This is logorrhoea”.

The advent of the internet and handheld devices which have largely simplified life for humanity in many ways, was still light years ahead. To the school library, therefore, I proceeded to check for the meaning of the word. Logorrhoea according to the dictionary, is a tendency to extreme loquacity, loquaciousness or garrulousness. I should quickly add a sentence or two about my erstwhile literature teacher, Tripathi, by the way. It is a measure of the conscientious selflessness of his breed of intellectuals, that Tripathi would go to the university library without any prompting, identify books relevant to my work and loan them on my behalf, in his name. He will subsequently track me to the postgraduate hall (PG Hall), and hand them over to me! He will typically apologise for barging into my privacy and admonish me to return the books to the university book hub when I’m done. Yemi Akinwumi, eminent professor and vice-chancellor of the Federal University Lokoja, (FUL), my classmate, co-resident in the postgraduate hall and brother, is a phone call away. There was a system, there was a country.

Nigeria’s outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, has recently resorted to the manner of triumphalism which is totally unbefitting of an octogenarian, and his office. Last week, he was recorded as putting down the nation’s political opposition, while celebrating the “victory” of his party, the All Progressives Congress, (APC), during the last polls. A statement by Garba Shehu, Buhari’s spokesperson, my good friend and colleague, put the loss of the 2023 elections down to “overconfidence, complacency and bad tactical moves,” on the part of the opposition. As far as Buhari is concerned, the APC was better organised, more strategic and more desiring of victory. He forgot to add that the election was “snatched, grabbed and run away with,” as publicly simulated on the sidelines of the appearance of his party’s candidate in “Chatham House,” last December.

It would appear that so long as the outcome suits him, Buhari is totally disinterested in postmortems to interrogate the electoral process and put necessary measures in place to drive improvements in future polls. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua even in victory over the same challenger, Buhari, in the 2007 presidential election, admitted that the process which produced him as president was flawed. He admonished that the gamut of the electoral process be reviewed for enhanced credibility as a way of deepening democracy. Yar’Adua, unfortunately, took ill in the third year of his regime and passed in May 2010. For Buhari, once he won the presidential election in 2015, and was returned in presumably crooked circumstances in 2019, in a process which impugned the believability of the contest, it was all well and good.

Buhari will not be bothered if the conduct of the 2023 general elections took Nigeria back practically to the “stone age”. In a society committed to conformation with the rule of law, Buhari should indeed have been reprimanded for misconduct during the last election. He publicly advertised his ballot paper against extant regulations. Videos and photographs of this display instantaneously trended on the internet. As a public figure of his stature, Buhari’s action was capable of influencing some voters to defer to the preference of their president. One of the allegations against Moshood Abiola during the 1993 presidential election advanced to justify the annulment of that process was that he wore a dress bearing the logo of his party to his polling unit!

But Buhari who personally approved the mega-billions supposedly deployed to ensure that the votes of every Nigerian count, would not be concerned if the end result was a total waste of our commonwealth. Under Buhari, the mechanism calculated to ensure real-time electronic transfer of election results was invented on one hand, and brazenly violated, on the other hand. Such violations were perpetrated to serve predetermined ends. Under Buhari, sensitive election materials are still being physically hauled and herded around to collation centres, during which they are susceptible to “snatching, grabbing and fleecing with”.

Much as the jury is out on the underwhelming performance of Buhari’s presidency these past eight years, the octogenarian never misses any opportunity for vainglorious adulation. At the commissioning of a housing project in Zuba on the periphery of Abuja the other day, Buhari sustained his predilection towards self-celebration. According to him, his “administration has fulfilled its election promise of change to Nigerians”. Really? Maybe. Buhari may be deploying instruments of obtuse appraisal to arrive at his conclusions. He famously told us before he came into office in 2015, that he will drag Nigeria from “top to bottom”. He has done just that and we are effectively at that basement now. He will be correct therefore to have so positively rated his aggregate endeavours in office. In his revisionist narrative, Buhari wants us to believe he is the best thing that ever happened to Nigeria.

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), spontaneously shot down a recently released 91-page book of platitudes extolling Buhari’s achievements as articulated, by his communications office. The publication is consistent with the tendency towards the propagandist logorrhoea which has typified the night before Buhari fades from the nation’s sociopolitical scene. Famous and respected Kenyan professor of law who is also a good governance advocate, Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba, popularly known as PLO Lumumba made a pertinent observation in one of his characteristically spellbinding public engagements. He theorised that “if a leader has to spend so much time and energy explaining what and what he has done while in office, then that leader has done absolutely nothing”. For Lumumba, “a leader’s achievements should speak for him”. Buhari’s trenchant loquaciousness on the eve of his departure from the presidency, therefore, is tailored to paper up his serial failings, foibles and fumblings.

Flagbearer of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) at the last presidential election, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who is understandably hurt by the gross violations which characterised the last polls, has maintained enviable stoicism. His interventions in public discourse are few and measured, even as he pursues a legal cause to unravel the jigsaw. Atiku is doing this not particularly because of himself but on behalf of every prospective participant in the democratic process. Atiku’s triumphs in his litigations against the president and the state following his persecution by President Olusegun Obasanjo, have profited several modern-day political aspirants and candidates. Some of the judgments have mitigated rascality, impunity and lawlessness in the exercise of authority within the executive arm of government and various political platforms. To adapt the title of the civil war memoir written by Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, leader of the defunct Biafran cessation attempt, Atiku’s pursuit is not because he’s involved.

Atiku is neither downcast nor depressed by the magical turn of events proceeding after the February 25, 2023, presidential election. He runs his regular routine, ever hosting guests, solving problems within his capacity, honouring engagements and doing paperwork. He recently made the rounds checking up on his close associate, Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi, owner of Raypower Radio and AIT, arguably one of the pioneer privately-owned broadcasting outfit, who was beneath the weather. He proceeded to commiserate with his protege and former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha, who lost his mother. He also empathised with Orji Uzor Kalu, Majority Whip of the Senate, whose wife sadly passed in the US. Atiku took the trouble to travel to Kano, to personally visit the family of Musa Gwadabe, Minister of Labour and Productivity under the Obasanjo/Atiku government. Atiku did all of these, in person.

Atiku’s rounds as detailed above, were not driven by partisanship or ethnic considerations. Dokpesi, Ihedioha and Kalu are all Southerners and Christians. Gwadabe was a northerner and a Muslim. Even as the nation spiralled into wanton killing fields on several fronts, not once did Buhari excuse himself from the cosy royalty of Aso Villa, to personally and practically assess any incident. Rather, for every calamity that befell his constituents, a mechanistic “Letter of Condolence” was stereotypically the maximum expression of concern by the president. Expected to detour into Zamfara on a visit to Sokoto State last year, the alibi of “bad weather” was propounded to excuse Buhari’s presidential jet from possible attack by bandits domiciled in Zamfara.

Atiku, by the way, is a consummate fan of the very popular, high-flying English Premier League Club, Arsenal. This indeed is one of our mutual intersections. As “Gunners,” we persevere, we are focused, and we are committed. We have style, we have flair, we are systematic, and we are not given to quick fixes. We are patient enough to experience trends and developments as they evolve. At a time like this, one is reminded of that timeless Yoruba adage which translates as: “The slowness of the cat is a skill, not a lack of will”. It’s game on metaphorically, as legal proceedings get underway on Monday, May 8, 2023. Please get a vantage seat at the lips of the playfield.

Olusunle, PhD, poet, journalist, scholar and author, is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE)

This is neither a tribute to nor a piece in praise of Dr. Mike Adenuga Jnr. Presidents have defied protocol to offer praises, even across the ocean. Kings have broken tradition in offering tributes and titles, captains of industry have queued behind themselves sharing memorable and inspiring accolades to a timeless icon who did his best to moderate the celebrations. Even if one defied these and decided to try against reason, King Sunny Ade’s Fayeyemi tribute is matchless and inimitable, and I could never reach Chief Ebenezer Obey’s depth and artistry in celebration of the man. Thus, there is nothing left to be said in form of praise or tributes that could surpass those already offered by these great men and women.

I have not come to praise the man; I have only come to address the spectators who were held spellbound by the spectacle and were left wondering what could be so great about a man whom most of them have never seen and only ever get to hear of. Often, when one gets sucked into the attraction of the show, the lessons get lost.

This once, we cannot afford to miss the lessons. The stories that contributed to the making of the man provide vital context for his greatness and offer a rich source of learning and inspiration for generations to come. When these stories are left untold, myths and falsehoods can fill the vacuum, perpetuating disempowering beliefs that hinder progress and growth. For instance, some may believe that wealth can only be acquired through unscrupulous means or cronyism.

When President Emmanuel Macron of France wrote in his tribute, ‘you are humble enough to often publicly declare that the confidence of several French companies at the beginning of your entrepreneurial adventure was instrumental in building the success that is yours today’, among other French alliances, he was making reference to the man who explored for more capital through the banks. A much harder way than through the disempowering stories that people tell to explain wealth they do not understand and in the same breath excuse their own misfortune.

The moniker, ‘The Bull,’ is not merely a name with a golden insignia; it reflects some of Adenuga’s most essential characteristics. The Bull is traditionally seen as a symbol of wealth and subterranean powers. It does not just make an entry; it makes an unforgettable one. It does not recognize defeat; any appearance of defeat is a retreat that often proves costly for those who stand in its path. These traits find expression in the success story of Globacom, which is a testament to Adenuga’s tenacity and determination.

Many exited at the point the government cancelled their mobile telecom licenses. Instead, The Bull charged on, refusing the small battle of a legal pursuit and instead focused on the big prize at the end of what was going to be a protracted bidding war for GSM licenses. Adenuga had to call on his grit again when the prize he won came without the trophy. The government had its cake and ate it. The Bull’s bouncebackability came into play again because well over a year later, he got the license that was fairly won in an open bidding process. When the stories get told, you cannot have a single blot on his shield. The Bull played by the rules, even when the rules were shifted against him, his staying power meant his team returned with victory. A hard-fought one but The Bull stayed invincible.
Other companies would have been happy to just start and do a continuous chase of those who had gone ahead of them; Mike Adenuga’s Globacom defied the norm by starting out with a paradigm shift that remains unmatched in Nigeria. Instead of chasing the competition and playing by their rules, by crashing the price of SIM cards and starting out with per second billing – others said this was not possible at the time – the competition had to bend to his game. The horses that started the race earlier were now doing the chase.

Adenuga’s Globacom dragged the industry on the path of perfect competition with his early moves, he then differentiated immediately by offering services the first and second movers had not even thought of. They were left competing with him at one end in a game whose rules he had redefined by his paradigm shifting bullish entry. He left himself alone without competition at other ends, advancing and flexing with technology above what was on offer. Translated to Yoruba, o ti ilekun mo won, o fi kokoro pa mo.

One reference the tributes intersect is his humility. Humility is an interesting phenomenon. You cannot be poor and be said to be humble. Poverty and humility appear to be parallel lines, yet they find intersection because poverty is already a humble position. Albeit a position that appears to be without the choice of the bearer. When it is said that a person is humble, one must pay attention. When you are so rich with means and power but appear to be unconscious of that elevated state of being especially in your dealings with people, that is humility. Some go out of their way to be seen to be humble. That defeats the purpose. Feigned humility is not humility. The Adenuga tributes refer to the sort of humility that the man himself would only come to see in the description of the people who experienced it. The humility of a man who just is.

Attention seeking appears to be humanity’s contemporary collective de rigueur. That could be explained by the ubiquity of the Internet and its appurtenances. Contemporary culture has now birthed a world where billionaires want to evolve into bloggers even as blogger aspire to be billionaires. We have built a universe and culture where staying relevant has become a daily endeavour, yet in all of that world, we all aspire to Mike Adenuga. The one who would rather not be seen, the one who finds comfort and apparent fulfilment in not being heard. Yet the one who has impacted people and institutions so much he brings life to another moniker of his, The Spirit of Africa. A reference that captures the essence of his values and the fact that one needs not be seen to make change happen; one needs not speak to be heard. And to make great impact, intentions and action are greater than fugazi moves, vain aesthetics and puerile drama.
The rich, in observing the tradition of noblesse oblige, have often committed to philanthropy. The Mike Adenuga principle goes above that sense of obligation because giving is entrenched in his persona. In a world where many keep records of those that they helped that never returned to say ‘thank you’, the millions opportune to be blessed by The Spirit of Africa do not get a chance to. Because his generosity leaves no room to collect appreciations. The giving and the changed lives are the essence of it all.

Conversely, you won’t find a person with a higher sense of appreciation, even for the little things.
Writing about personalities can be enjoyable, but there are times when addressing important issues should take precedence. This piece is not solely about an individual’s personality, but rather the enduring values necessary to navigate a constantly changing world. While exploring Dr. Mike Adenuga’s achievements could fill volumes, the focus here is on some of the values that propelled him to success and how we can apply them to our own daily challenges. As we confront new and complex problems, the lessons we learn from those who have gone before us can be invaluable. Dr. Adenuga’s life offers a powerful example of how these values can lead to great rewards, and this is a message that deserves to be heard by this generation and beyond.
He exemplifies E pluribus unum, and of him, there are lessons to be learned for generations to come. This is the legacy one must have a sense of appreciation for. Dr. Mike Adenuga Jnr. GCON, CSG, CdrLH at 70 has left lessons for us in these Platinum number of years, and we cannot afford to lose sight of these precious gems.

•Japheth J. Omojuwa, author of Digital: The New Code of Wealth and founder of Alpha Reach

The cultural and ethnic melding of Northern Nigeria’s Hausa and the Fulani people is so deep, so labyrinthine, so time-honored, and so unexampled that a fictitious ethnic category called the “Hausa-Fulani” was invented by Nigeria’s southern press to describe the emergent ethnic alchemy it has produced. 

Northern intellectuals resented the label at first. For example, the late Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman, the famously iconoclastic professor of history at the Ahmadu Bello University who was ethnically Fulani and who was the scion of the Katsina and Kano royal families, condemned the hyphenation of Hausa and Fulani as both ill-willed and ignorant. 

But several Northern Nigerian elites of Hausa and Fulani filiation have now enthusiastically embraced it. President Muhammadu Buhari, for instance, told the Weekly Trust in 1999 that he loved the hyphenated Hausa-Fulani identity that the southern press invented because it encapsulates the complexity of his own identity. His father is Fulani while his mother is half Kanuri and half Hausa. 

More than that, though, Buhari is culturally and linguistically Hausa. Like most people in Nigeria’s northwest who trace patrilineal bloodline to the Fulani (including most of the emirs), he doesn’t speak a lick of Fulfulde (as the language of the Fulani is called in Nigeria) and is completely divorced from the culture of the “unmingled” Fulani who now live mostly in Nigeria’s northeast and in the bushes elsewhere in the country.

Over the years, the northern political elite not only used the common Islamic heritage of the Hausa and the Fulani people as an instrument to construct and cement the notion of an undivided and indivisible Hausa-Fulani identity, they also encouraged other parts of the country to see them as one, undifferentiated people. 

In time, the rest of the country came to regard the Hausa and the Fulani as indistinguishable. A popular quip among the Yoruba says, “Gambari pa Fulani ko lejo ninu,” which roughly translates as “If a Hausa person kills a Fulani person, there is no case,” implying that the Hausa and the Fulani are homogenous people whose internal strife are no more than evanescent, resolvable sibling squabble.

But the emergence and unabating intensification of kidnapping for ransom and other forms of rural and urban banditry in the Northwest where most of the villains are Fulani and most of the victims are Hausa are rupturing the centuries-old ethnic harmony between the Hausa and the Fulani that Nigerians had taken for granted. 

In response to the rural and urban banditry by mostly Fulani brigands against Hausa people, Hausa people have formed vigilante groups called yan sakai or yan banga for self-defense, but Fulani people say the yan banga self-defense groups often indiscriminately murder innocent Fulani people who are not even remotely connected with abductions and murders. 

This has provoked an endless cycle of recriminations and retaliatory violence between Hausa and Fulani people and is threatening the age-old, Islam-inspired ethnic fusion between them. 

This has been going on for years under the radar of the national and international media until BBC’s BBC Africa Eye brought it to the forefront of global attention in its Jul 24, 2022, documentary titled “The Bandit Warlords of Zamfara.” The documentary showed that although the Hausa and the Fulani share a common culture, religion, heritage, and language, they are, for the most part, divided and rarely mix in rural areas. They fight over land, water, and food. 

Self-confessed Fulani bandits told the BBC that Hausa people enjoy preferential treatments in government jobs, that Fulani people face discrimination in the formal sector in northern Nigeria, and that kidnapping, banditry, and indiscriminate mass murders were the only way they could call attention to their neglect. 

Following the documentary, which so unsettled the Nigerian government that local TV stations that rebroadcast it were fined, there has been an open discussion, particularly in Arewa social media circles, of hitherto culturally taboo subjects such as whether Usman Dan Fodio whose jihad inaugurated the current Fulani ruling families in much of Muslim northern Nigeria was a Hausa-hating Fulani ethnic supremacist.

Islam had been centuries old and already deeply entrenched in Hausa land before Usman Dan Fodio’s nineteenth-century jihad, which many historians have called a “Fulani war.” The well-regarded seventeenth-century Songhai Muslim scholar by the name of Ahmad Baba, for instance, had recognized Hausa land as a bastion of Islam. 

In a 1613 essay titled, “Al-kashf wa-l-bayān li-aṣnāfmajlūb al-Sūdān” (translated into English as “The Exposition and Explanation Concerning the Varieties of Transported Black Africans”), he wrote that “the people of Kano, some of Zakzak [Zaria], the people of Katsina, the people of Gobir, and all of the Songhay” lived under ideal Islamic rule and could never be enslaved by other Muslims.

About 200 years later, when Dan Fodio decided to “reform” the Islam he met in Hausa land, he repudiated the Islam that the Hausa people had practiced. In his 1806 treatise titled "Bayan Wujub Al-Hijra, Ala L-Ibad,” Dan Fodio rebutted Ahmad Baba’s thesis by asserting that what was true of Hausa land when Ahmad Baba wrote, “might not necessarily be true at all other times, since every scholar relates what he sees in his own days.” Dan Fodio’s son, Muhammad Bello, also wrote Infaq al-mansur in 1813, exactly 200 years after Ahmad Baba, and contested the notion that Hausa land was ruled by Islamic precepts.

Now, in everyday dialogic engagements on social media, in the marketplace, and in the streets, Hausa and Fulani people are openly talking about the jihad and its decidedly ethnic character. Hausa people are asking why all the emirs that emerged from the jihad, except for that of Bauchi, were Fulani. (Emirs in Borgu in Kwara and Niger states are not the product of the jihad and are not Fulani.)

These questions are especially important because the Fulani emirs who dislodged Hausa Muslim rulers have been doing exactly what the Hausa Muslim rulers were accused of by Fulani jihadists—keeping multiple wives and concubines, oppressing everyday folks called the talakawa, believing and partaking in fortunetelling, etc. Besides, in Islam, leadership isn’t hereditary, so Hausa people are asking why a supposedly Islamic jihad has entrenched Fulani ethnic monarchies to the exclusion of the native Hausa populations.

These debates aren’t new, of course. For example, in a June 30, 2000, article titled “The Fulani Factor in Nigerian Politics” published in the Weekly Trust, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (who later became the emir of Kano on June 8, 2014, and was dethroned on March 9, 2020) caused a stir among not just other Nigerians but also among Hausa people when he said although the Fulani in northern Nigeria have lost their language and culture to the Hausa, they still cherish the irreproducible cultural and genetic distinctiveness that their ethnic identity imbues them with.  

He isolated Nigerian leaders of putative Fulani line of descent—Ahmadu Bello, Shehu Shagari, Murtala Mohammed, and Muhammadu Buhari—whom he said even their “greatest enemies” respect because they supposedly embodied incomparable and uniquely Fulani values (even when they are/were not culturally Fulani). 

He pointed out that the same could not be said of “other prominent non-Fulani contemporaries of these great men,” including military Head of State Ibrahim Babangida, who is Hausa, and Sani Abacha, who was Kanuri but born and raised in Kano. Sanusi then said the Fulani are “culturally programmed, generation after generation, to imbibe the best spirits of what makes good leadership, to a far greater extent than competing cultures.”

Garba Shehu, now a spokesperson for President Muhammadu Buhari, who is ethnically Hausa from Jigawa, was incensed. In a response titled “Sanusi’s Racist Rubbish” on July 7, 2000, Shehu wrote: “When I read Sanusi L. Sanusi’s article ‘The Fulani Factor in Nigerian Politics’…I came away with the feeling that the writer wanted to do one of two things: to either be ridiculous or to insult all of us who are not Fulani with some racist crap.” 

Shehu invalidated Sanusi’s ethnic supremacist notion of a Fulani culture that makes Fulani people such good, just leaders by calling attention to the atrocities that were perpetuated against Hausa people by Fulani emirs—or what he called the “well-documented acts of brigandage” by the “Fulani oligarchy”— which instigated the emergence of the Northern Elements Progressives Union (NEPU).

 “Where was he when the late Sa’adu Zungur, Aminu Kano, and company fought Fulani rulers who forced Hausa peasants to work the emirs’ farms, snatched wives, plundered what was kept in their trust, and appropriated/mismanaged farmlands and other resources belonging to their subjects?” Shehu wrote.

These sorts of emotive brickbats between everyday Hausa and Fulani people are escalating and becoming mainstream in the aftermath of the bloodstained conflict between Hausa farmers and Fulani herders. In fact, there are now calls, from both Hausa and Fulani interlocutors, for the reformation of the emirate system to strip emirship of its exclusivity to people of Fulani ancestry. 

I think these are transitory, spur-of-the-moment tensile pushes and pulls that may soon abate, but it’s astonishing that it’s even happening.