General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau turned 80 last week on May 18, and for those who know him, or have worked closely with him and has been impacted by his humanism and generosity of spirit, he is a man to be celebrated, a strong pillar of the Nigerian estate, a living memory bank and an asset to his country. I first met him sometime in 1998. General Olusegun Obasanjo as he was then addressed, had just been released from prison by the Abdusalami Abubakar administration following the trumped-up charge of coup-plotting against Obasanjo and others. General Obasanjo himself has told his own story. But his release, some would say escape from Abacha’s trap was a special moment for many. At the time, I was a regular participant at the Farm House Dialogues, founded by General Obasanjo, under the auspices of the Africa Leadership Forum, headed by our very able boss, Ayodele Aderinwale, OFR, now Chairman of JustRite. I wrote many of the Farm House Dialogue Reports and communiques. To cut a long story short, after his release, General Obasanjo went straight home. His house in Ita-Eko, Abeokuta was filled with so many people who thronged the place to see him and congratulate him. The moment I entered the house, the first man that I saw was General Gusau. I didn’t know who he was but as is customary the right thing to do is to greet an elderly person. I was however taken aback when he called out my name as if he had known me from somewhere. I wasn’t a regular face on television at the time, so I used to enjoy the serenity that anonymity offers. Not anymore. But I wondered why the elderly man would call out my name with such certainty. Out of curiousity, I later asked people around: who is that man?

“You don’t know General Gusau?, three persons asked in quick succession. They made it look as if not knowing General Gusau was the equivalent of failing an important examination.

“You don’t know General Gusau and you call yourself a journalist?”, one person quipped. I threw a sour look in his direction. Why should that be a test of my professional ability as a journalist?

“General Gusau is one of the most powerful men in this country. Nobody can run this country successfully without him. You are surprised he knows you? It is his duty to know you. He knows everything that goes on in this country. He has his boys and eyes everywhere.”

Even at that time, I already had an idea that Nigerians are capable of writing stories, blending facts with myths. But the main story of the moment was the widespread excitement over Obasanjo’s return. Those were truly crazy days in Nigeria. The military under Abacha had imposed a regime of terror on the country, such that even babies were not spared. The catalyst for Nigeria’s descent to the lower depths, was the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election won by late Bashorun MKO Abiola. Leaving office, General Ibrahim Babangida left behind an Interim National Government (ING) headed by another Egba man, Chief Ernest Shonekan. IBB had said he was “stepping aside”. Eventually, General Sani Abacha, who had been left behind as Minister of Defence, hijacked the government, drove away the Interim arrangement, and imposed himself on Nigeria in a most brutal manner that did neither the people nor the country any good. Obasanjo was one of Abacha’s victims, although destiny soon played out. Obasanjo would later emerge as Nigeria’s civilian President in 1999, in an arrangement that was meant to correct the tragedy of the Abacha years and the pain that the military inflicted on the country.

The military do not always want to accept all the blames that the civilian population heaps on them. They do not agree that they mismanaged Nigeria, while at the helm of affairs for the better part of the last 63 years. In many accounts, Nigerian military chiefs project themselves as men who saved Nigeria, and provided such quality leadership that the civilians seem incapable of. This is probably the reason why since the return to civilian rule in 1999, the military have continued to cast their shadow over the politics of Nigeria. It is further not surprising that Nigerian public affairs commentators talk about those they call “the owners of Nigeria”. On that day in Abeokuta, all I heard about General Gusau was his reputation as “one of the owners of Nigeria”, a kingmaker, a power behind the throne. In fact, one fellow boasted that nobody could lead Nigeria without General Gusau’s hand in it. I took another look at the man. He looked quiet. His demeanour was calm. I guess you can never judge people by merely looking at them. But to be serious it is certainly not a compliment to refer to any group as “owners of Nigeria- that is totalitarianism: We are not in Hitler’s Germany. We are not in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Born Aliyu Mohammed, on 18 May 1943, the Gusau that is attached to his name is his place of birth in present-day Zamfara State of Nigeria. He graduated from the Nigerian Defence Academy in 1967, and fought in the civil war as a second lieutenant. He has since then remained a prominent figure, occupying one leadership position after another as Brigade Commander, Director of Personnel at Army Headquarters and as Director of Military Intelligence, Head of the National Security Organization (NSO) or as National Security Adviser. General is credited with having set up Nigeria’s intelligence infrastructure. In 1989, he broke up the NSO into three different organizations; the State Security Services (SSS), the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), and the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). It is a measure of the man’s capacity and influence that he is even in retirement regarded as Nigeria’s Number one Intelligence Officer and a major force in the determination of Nigerian affairs. He is one Nigerian who has been here and there, and has been on duty at every critical moment in Nigeria’s post-independence trajectory: He fought in the civil war. He served in Abeokuta as Commander of the 9 Infantry Brigade. He was General Officer Commanding (GOC) at the 2 Mechanised Division in Ibadan, Commandant of the Nigeria Defence Academy, and Chief of Army Staff. He was said to have been involved in the coup that brought General Muhammdu Buhari in 1983, and also in the coup that removed him in 1985. Nor was he popular with General Sani Abacha who removed him as Chief of Army Staff. But whatever travail he may have suffered in the course of his career, has not stopped him. He was Obasanjo’s National Security Adviser when he returned to power in 1999. He was later President Goodluck Jonathan’s National Security Adviser and Minister of Defence.

Twice, in 2006 and 2010, he had sought to be President of Nigeria but the story behind his back was that it would have been a lot too much to hand over Nigeria to the country’s top spy. It was said that nobody would be safe. Nonetheless, General Mohammed as he prefers to be known, has remained even at 80, a major power behind the throne. His influence goes beyond the military where he made a career. Over the years, he has built bridges across the country and constituencies. It is not for nothing that he is regarded as a powerful man.

I was privileged to observe him at close quarters when he served as President Jonathan’s Minister of Defence. He was always quiet, almost self-effacing, yet everyone deferred to him. General Gusau is a major lesson in how to wield power and influence without brandishing it. I would later discover that many top journalists are his friends. Journalists deal with information. They look for sources, in pursuit of the stories behind the stories. The country’s top most intelligence operative was bound to be a friend of the media. When I ran as a Deputy Governorship candidate in Ogun State in 2019, General Mohammed told me our team would not win, if we didn’t make certain choices in Ogun PDP. He was proven right. Ahead of the 2023 general elections, he had done an analysis of the political terrain and predicted what would happen. Again, he has been proven right. Many of us in this country just sleep and wake up, hustle and try to look for ways to pay our ever-increasing bills, but there are others whose day work is entirely devoted to looking into the deeper end of things.

What I admire about him is his love of knowledge, his generosity and his attention to details. I once visited The Gusau Institute – a research centre that he has set up in Kaduna. This Centre is probably the richest personal library in Nigeria today. It is a fully digitalized library, with a collection of books, documents and resource materials on military history and general subjects. I was taken round the library, and I was amazed at what I saw, including a Reuben Abati file containing letters to the editor that I wrote in the Nigerian Chronicle, as an undergraduate at the University of Calabar, opinion articles I wrote as an NYSC teaching assistant at the University of Benin, published in the Nigerian Observer, and my writings over the years that I can’t even trace. I saw publications and writings by just about anybody, including copies of examination papers ever written at the Nigeria Defence Academy. Researchers are allowed access to the Centre. Within the premises, there is yet another building, where General Mohammed has done an excellent job of documenting his own career, with pictures, documents and correspondences. I doubt if there is any other General today in Nigeria who has paid as much attention to detail. The only thing missing is that I have not yet seen a written memoir by the General. He has a story to tell, and this is perhaps the right time to tell that story. I have heard people say that he knows too much, and that a man like him should not tell stories. I disagree. While spy chiefs and military leaders trade in secrecy, the truth is that some remarkable books have been written by intelligence chiefs and military leaders. Sun Tzu was a Chinese military General. His book, The Art of War, is regarded as a major text on military strategy and warfare. What makes an intelligence officer? How do intelligence officers operate? What roles do intelligence officers play in the making of foreign policy, international affairs and national security? How secretive and accountable should they be? These are aspects of the making of Nigeria that require interrogation and I cannot think of any better person to tell such stories than General Mohammed.

I must not end this tribute however without noting General Mohammed’s example necessarily throws up afresh questions about the role of the military in Nigeria’s political space. It may have been fashionable in the 70s and 80s to hail Nigerian soldiers as strong men. It was the age of “the strong man” as a messiah in African politics. But with the wave of democratization that gripped the heartbeat of politics in the 90s, the military involvement in governance and politics began to attract heavy criticisms, By 1993, most people were clamouring for the exit of the military. “Never again”, we all chorused. There seemed to have been a consensus that the period the military ruled Nigeria could best be described as “the years eaten by the locust”, the title of two well-received collections of writings by Fr. George Ehusani. To those who have any faint recollection of that season, it may sound ironic that a top soldier is the subject of a tribute. But have the civilians fared any better in terms of personal example? Every man will be judged on his own account. It is also interesting what has become of the intelligence establishment. The DMI at some point became a place of torture and nightmare. One of the soldiers who headed the place, as things turned worse, reportedly used to boast that he would waste people. Similarly, the Department of State Security (DSS) has had mixed fortunes over the years. How many officers can still come across as officers and gentlemen? The best tribute that the younger generation can pay to General Gusau is to toe the path of professionalism, honour and loyalty. Happy birthday sir.

Several weeks ago, in the heat of the 2023 campaign, I commissioned two social scientists conversant with Nigeria to help me map out the DNA of an Obidient. They went to work. Periodically, they sent me their findings. After stating that deep down, the Obidient movement is not about Peter Obi and Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, Scientist #1 propounds that Obidients are desolate, dejected, and dislocated hitchhikers who saw a shiny wagon on a muddy road and hopped on. Scientist #2, on the other hand, sees them as reluctant anarchists plotting destruction in the bushes, only to be distracted by the sound of a noisy wagon full of hitchhikers enticing them to give the Nigerian project a final chance.

The first time they appeared close to a consensus was when Wole Soyinka intervened in the political process after the election in the infamous Datti/fascism debate. The team thought they had mastered the characteristics of the Obidient. They mentioned one particular trait, anger. They said that these were furious people who were also impatient. They compared them to one specific group during the Civil Rights Movement in the US that forced Martin Luther King Jr. to start to talk about the “urgency of now”.

The social scientists felt that the anger of these people steamed from years and years of being victims of the Nigerian state’s failure. The Obidients, the scientists, argued had become so disenchanted with their situation and the situation of their country that they have relegated the norms of their society to the back burner. They suggested that today’s global village offered new tools to these actors and amplified their sense of violation. When I asked for a better explanation, the scientists told me that what social media exposed them to about situations in other parts of the world heightened their expectations of their country’s leadership. Still, something in their pronouncements did not apply across the board.

Another case in point was when they used the example of Oby Ezekwesili’s intervention in the news story that Pastor Enoch Adebayo said that God would help the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, to fix Nigeria. For those who missed the drama, here is how it happened. According to a news report, Daddy GO sent one of his pastors to represent him at an event. When this little-known pastor, Dele Balogun, went, he read a speech. The day after, the newspapers reported what he said. And as it is tradition, they attributed the message to Pastor Adebayo.

Here is the exact thing Dele Balogun said: “Let us pray for the incoming government that God will support it and give it the grace to do the right thing… Thank God the President-elect has promised to fix Nigeria. If God helps him, Nigeria will prosper in his hands”.

The reaction of the Obidients was swift. They tongue-lashed Pastor Adeboye for keeping quiet when the elections were rigged, and voters were suppressed and killed.

Some people did not see anything wrong with what the man of God said. Any true man of God’s job is to pray for his country’s government. It doesn’t matter whether the government is elected, selected, or imposed.

Unfortunately, the Obidients do not pray like this. And they made Pastor Adeboye know that they don’t play like this.

Just like with Soyinka, the reaction of the Obidient shocked the political arena, including Obi himself. Peter Obi had to come out and disassociate himself from the tongue-lashing the Obidients gave Daddy GO Adeboye for daring to say what God told him. Obi even suggested that the people doing the bad stuff were disguised operatives from other parties trying to give his supporters a bad name.

For saying so, he got tongue-lashed by angry Obidients and supporters of other parties, from Reno Omokiri to Omoyele Sowore.

Even those who shared the news story were not spared. Former minister, Oby Ezekwesili, felt the need to defend Pastor Adeboye and to call Reuben Abati an unprofessional journalist and purveyor of fake news for tweeting the story. In the language of Obidients, Oby Ezekwesili called the story “utter rubbish”.

The social scientists agreed that there are numerous secret cells of Obidients across Nigeria. They said that the largest number of latent Obidients is in the north. They are waiting for a perfect trigger to coagulate around a mission, a name, and a movement. Despite the perception, the social scientists noted that the multitude of tomorrow’s Obidients in the north is not satisfied with their lives in relation to their peers in similar parts of the world. They agreed that a day would come when religion and tradition wouldn’t be enough to cage them and stop them from breaking loose and dethroning those who have diminished their lives.

“For now, it is enough for their leaders to point at others outside their region and blame them for the poor life they live,” the social scientists write. “That strategy is too old, but it is still working. But it won’t suffice for long. And when the north ignites, with abundant dry leaves, tears, and heartbreaks, there won’t be time to worry about trifles like respect for elders and constituted authorities. And the nation will be on fire when the north is on fire.”

In a pivotal reminder, the scientists pointed at Sudan, Egypt, and other Arab African states as examples of places where people who shared the same worldview as those in the north of Nigeria had stood up and demanded change. They believed that, eventually, it would get to the turn of northern Nigeria.

Peter Obi used to say that the society we abuse today would take revenge on our children. That was so yesterday. The new mantra is this: The society we abused yesterday is taking revenge on us. And one thing about revenge is that the first sign that it is in progress is that it decouples all the chains that connect it to a structured and functional law and order society. It baffles those who missed the cue, especially the elders, who are apostles of gradual and ordered transformation that will not upturn years of familiar social order and civilization.

In moments like this, philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, noted: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you”.

Nigeria wrings everyone born and bred in it until they become an Obidient. Depending on the material one is made of, some transform after just one wring, while others require a lot of wringing, punching, and slapping.

For the social scientists, everything came together when Seun Kuti slapped a police officer on the Third Mainland Bridge, Lagos. For the first time, the two social scientists agreed – last last, Seun Kuti becomes an Obidient.

And this conclusion is one that both Seun Kuti and the Obidients will disagree on. And nothing is as Obidient as that.

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef” and “Children of a Retired God,” among others

His bonhomie was unusually absent that night in 2009. He spoke little, his luminous eyes mostly staring at us intensely with an expression difficult to fathom. The “Governor of Example” (BRF) and this writer ended up being the last to leave the putative den of the “Lion of Bourdillon” in Lagos at past midnight.

Not until we were outside at the car park of our host’s Ikoyi home (sufficiently beyond his earshot), did the then Governor Babatunde Fashola (the one who had been Jagaban’s Chief of Staff for five years) share his observation: “Louis, I can tell Asiwaju is very, very depressed tonight”.

Drawing on an intimacy earned from working very closely with Asiwaju, BRF’s diagnosis could hardly be faulted. Lately, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had suffered a series of reversals in courtrooms in Osun, Ekiti, and Edo in pursuit of mandates “stolen” in the 2007 governorship polls in what had become multiple convoluted legal tussles.

Having immersed himself as the chief inspiration and sole financier of the legal kerfuffle unfolding simultaneously on multiple fronts, Asiwaju was thus the one who often bore the burden more. So absorbed, so invested was he in those difficult moments that one could, in fact, be pardoned to imagine that even in his sleep, Jagaban probably still found himself mixing it up with the adversaries he earlier contended with all his waking moment. In the same vein heavyweight boxing champion Joe “Smoking Joe” Frazier once admitted he sometimes found himself in dreams engaged in ferocious fistic combat with eternal rival Mohammed Ali, only to wake in the middle of the night covered in hot sweat.

Such was the exacting climate under which “stolen mandates” were recovered in Ondo, Edo, Ekiti, and Osun after epic battles championed by Tinubu, the man young Nigerians (the millennials and Gen Z) do not seem to know or have been misled to hate and deny credits as arguably the biggest champion of multi-party democracy in the Fourth Republic.

“Why not contest the Lagos governorship instead?” Bello interjected. Alake and Babatope shared that view, perceiving a vacancy in Lagos’ emerging politics after Abacha.

“Well, to be honest, that has not crossed my mind,” he replied and before leaving Concord that day, promised to reach out to his base and consult widely.

The vacuum the Concord editors were seeing was in the abdication by the “Prince of Hope” (Ademola Adeniji-Adele). Upon his release from military detention in 1996, the erstwhile chairman of Lagos Island council had received a tumultuous welcome in Lagos, thus becoming the new darling of the progressive community, having played a pivotal role in June 12 protests in 1994. And when Abacha announced a transition programme, many began to see him as the next governor.

But in a moment of grave indiscretion, Adeniji-Adele would allow himself to be lured into moving the motion for Abacha’s adoption as GDM’s “consensus presidential candidate” at the party’s national convention in Maiduguri in April 1998, at the expense of the revered and consequential Dikko Yusuf. Just like other teleguided parties memorably characterised as “the five fingers of a leprous hand” by Bola Ige.

Confronted by Segun Adeniyi and this writer in an interview we conducted for Sunday Concord shortly afterward, Adeniji-Adele told us in confidence that he had been directly threatened by a notorious army Major close to Abacha, listing that as a pre-condition for him to contest the coming elections. In his own calculation, he did not consider that a significant price to pay “if only to reclaim Lagos and use it to defend Abiola’s interest”.

But the jealous Lagos progressives never forgave that betrayal. It took Abacha’s death two months later for Adeniji-Adele’s political stock to crash from the zenith of fame into the valley of infamy. The revanchist spirit that generally gripped the land thereafter meant that anyone associated with Abacha instantly turned a leper. The heartbroken progressives in Lagos were now looking for a new bride.

That was the moment Tinubu arrived. So, he could not be said to have forced his way into the Lagos governorship in 1998. Rather, unique circumstances of the moment anointed him for the historic journey ahead. His first acid test soon came over alleged discrepancies in the form submitted to INEC.

A lesser mortal would probably have buckled in the heat of the vicious smear campaign that ensued. But sometimes, the truth is not so straightforward. In the rush to submit the nomination form for Lagos governorship in 1998, Tokunbo Afikunyomi, a fellow NADECO returnee, did the filling. In some regards, he mixed up some information.

Unfortunately, once the form got submitted, all the depositions therein became binding. To claim otherwise elsewhere is perjury. Out of malice, political opponents twist this to mean he told lies about his past. It is one of the burdens Jagaban has had to bear ever since.

As an editor of a national newspaper with more than a casual knowledge of what transpired at the time, I can attest to another exaggeration in Tinubu’s much-trumpeted drug story. Ahead of the 2003 polls, someone with deep connections in the national security establishment was interested in AD’s governorship ticket in Lagos. Apparently privy to the original court papers, he twisted the story to present Tinubu as the villain and was looking for any newspaper to publish the story dangling a blank cheque, with a view to tainting him ahead of the AD primaries.

Once he found a platform and the contrived story was uploaded, conspiratorial Obasanjo jubilated thinking he finally got Tinubu in the bag. Malicious mischief was barely concealed in a confidential memo immediately dispatched to the United States by the Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun, earnestly seeking clarity on the rather “disturbing story about Tinubu’s drug trafficking in the U.S. in the past”.

Responding swiftly in no unmistakable language in a public statement, the State Department declared Tinubu was not involved in any drug trafficking nor convicted for any drug crime.

In all the wild goose chase, the real substance of the story was not more than the fact that someone abused Tinubu’s trust. Being naturally a magnet for people, his Chicago residence was open to all folks from Nigeria in the 80s. It turned out that one of those who had been allowed access got entangled in a drug mess, warranting US investigators to list him as a person of interest and his bank accounts frozen in the interim. But after months of forensic investigation, they found nothing against him, except the “offense” that due tax was not paid on some cash found as a fixed deposit, for which a surcharge was imposed.

This essentially is the actual meat of what would be misappropriated to feed the apocryphal tale about “Tinubu’s massive drug involvement in the U.S.”, now grown into a cottage industry in the past two decades, spawning a vast army of media experts and procured pundits surfacing in every election season, elaborately theorising a petty lie.

When it was time to share the spoils of APC’s victory in 2015, it is common knowledge that Tinubu was virtually left empty-handed, without being able to nominate anyone of consequence in Buhari’s first cabinet. Party leaders he earlier helped install also forsook him. The new one he was allowed to nominate on the eve of the 2019 polls was again defenestrated soon after victory was secured. Such serial heartbreaks would certainly leave a lesser mortal broken.

But again, Tinubu’s “aforiti” shone forth.

Perhaps the unkindest cut of all is the betrayal of close disciples who had climbed on his back to power and glory. Like the biblical Apostle Peter who forsook his master three consecutive cock-crows before dawn, thrice many had denied Tinubu too. First, immediately they got appointed in Abuja in 2015. Next was 2019 after APC got re-elected. And later on the road to APC presidential primaries of June 2022 when they reckoned Jagaban was not the anointed of the “Villa cabal”.

Still, the man kept the faith.

Upon being declared winner of the February 25 polls by INEC, wherever he went or whomsoever of consequence he met, Jagaban formed the habit of flaunting his certificate of return as “my own World Cup”. But on account of his tortuous and thorny odyssey to Aso Rock in the past twenty-five years, that may as well pass for a testament in tenacity.

“For Aliko, all is well that ends well. The complex will bring to an end, our country’s many decades of shame, for being unable to refine its crude and having to depend on importation, wasting scarce forex.”

SOME years ago, Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man invited media leaders to a luncheon at then Protea Hotel in Ikeja to mark his 55th birthday.

Some of his guests sat around him at the centre table. They chatted freely. Discussions about our country, the state of the economy soon veered into discussing the absurdity of our country, being a major crude exporter, and also a major importer of refined petroleum products. Our colleague from a major business paper said the local conditions were unfavourable to any investor who wanted to build a refinery. He then made a remark that I believe he would live to regret: “Only a foolish man will build a refinery in Nigeria”.

Aliko who had listened to all our business and political pontifications, interjected: “I am that foolish man”.

A pin drop silence enveloped the table as he dropped the unexpected news: “My company has just decided to build a refinery in the country. But we are doing it big”. Those were his exact words, as the multi-dollar billionaire told us he was willing to spend close to $9 billion on the project.

The media big man became speechless. The rest of us caught the contagion of being flummoxed as well, as Aliko expatiated on the project. He said it will be a petrochemical complex.

As the project was still on the drawing board, he did not tell us it will be the biggest refinery in the world, capable of processing 650,000 barrels of crude daily. All the hint he gave was that it will be ‘big’. Our takeaway was that it will be big like Aliko’s involvement in cement, sugar, pasta and other businesses.

He didn’t say it will include a fertiliser plant and a power plant that can supply enough electricity to Nigeria’s South West, excluding Lagos.

Initially billed for Ogun State, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery surprisingly shifted location to Lagos, just opposite the creek separating the two states. Governor Dapo Abiodun may want to probe his predecessor, Ibikunle Amosun, why he allowed the complex to move to neighbouring Lagos.

The gigantic project is now sitting in all majesty in the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Ibeju-Lekki, covering a land area of approximately 2,635 hectares, seven times the size of Victoria Island.

The complex is the world’s Largest Single-Train 650,000 barrels per day Petroleum Refinery with 900 KTPA Polypropylene Plant.

It comes with a 435 MW Power Plant, which will be able to meet the total power requirement of Ibadan DisCo of 860,316 MWh covering five States including Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Kwara and Ekiti.

The refinery, according to its fact sheet, can meet 100% of the Nigerian requirement of all refined products, including Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene, and Aviation Jet.
It will also be able to produce surplus of each of these products for export.

Designed for 100% Nigerian Crude, the refinery has flexibility to process other crudes. No wonder it is located near the sea shore.

Today President Muhammadu Buhari commissioned the gigantic petrochemical complex.

Just as we rejoice with Aliko Dangote and the Dangote Group family, we need to give kudos to the Buhari administration for ensuring that the complex comes to fruition, by ensuring that it was not starved of needed foreign exchange and taking a stake in it.

For Aliko, all is well that ends well. The complex will bring to an end, our country’s many decades of shame, for being unable to refine its crude and having to depend on importation, wasting scarce forex.

The ‘foolish man’ of 11 years ago has demonstrated once again that he is a man of wisdom, a peerless shrewd investor who sees clearly the ‘bigger picture’, when his compatriots are bogged down by parochialism and immediate monetary gains.

On this day – May 29; 1999. Our beloved country Nigeria returned to the much desired democratic governance. Nigerians at home and abroad were undoubtedly excited about the events leading to the inauguration day. Yours truly, the writer of this contribution was privileged and honoured to be part of the history making events. I remember vividly my role in the Inauguration committee under the leadership of Erudite (Prof) Tunde Adeniran and other distinguished Nigerians, namely: Dame Pauline Tallen, Ferdinand Agu, yours truly and Dr Gbolade Oshinowo of the blessed memory.

Before going further, please permit me to re-introduce the above topic as “Twenty-four Years Setback” for our beloved country Nigeria. May 29, 1999. It was a date to be remembered; a date with history, it signpost the beginning of an era with a windfall of approximately $400 billion dollars from just one source of revenue. Sadly, from the crushing economic pains of the day, to the social dislocations and mounting insecurity everywhere in the land, coupled with the ignoble and dodgy power play at capital city of Abuja, a common thread runs through all these: a nation in dire straits!

Admittedly, a nation progresses or regresses on the quality and values of its leadership. Credibility, trustworthiness are aspects of the integrity most necessary for a leadership worthy to be so-called.  The reputation of Nigeria in the eyes of the outside world remains unenviable, first and above all else, because its leaders have repeatedly proved less than trustworthy. After twenty-four years of democratic government in Nigeria and each of the government came with promises to end bad governance only to end with worst form of leadership. Will May 29, 2023 restore hope? Can the hope that MKO Abiola promise Nigerians in 1993 be renewed or restored?

What is more, poverty has been weaponized as a result of corruption which is the common instrument across the developing world. Corruption ‘impoverishes and kills millions’ citizens of any country where it thrives irrespective of the wealth or resources of such a country. We know that corruption takes away resources, damages the environment, impoverishes the people, but it also kills! A land that is equally afflicted by the unimaginable level of hatred leading to unwarranted divisiveness  amongst others.

More relatively, is the 2023 general elections that has completely exposed the gullibility of many of our compatriots particularly the restive youths. How do you explain the actions and thoughts of the President-elect not to be sworn in on May 29? This is an unimaginable hallucination(s) in the minds of the Obidients movement in particular. The million dollar question is that has that ever happened anywhere in the world before and Where is the precedence? The truth is that some people got it completely twisted in their shallowness.

This delusion of theirs is based on claims they are bandying about a stolen “Mandate”. The lifetime morbid risk of delusional disorder in the general population has been estimated to range from 0.05 to 0.1%, based on data from various sources including case registries, case series, and population-based samples. Delusion is Obviously worse than Megalomania. Therefore, It’s safe to conclude that, there’s no stolen mandate anywhere. Section 14(1)(2)(a) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, states that “The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice. It will be recalled that one of the grounds both the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, H.E, Atiku Abubakar, who came second in the presidential election and his counterpart in the Labour Party, LP, H.E, Peter Obi, who came third, is relying on to challenge the declaration of the President-elect  included the fact that he failed to secure 25% votes in the FCT, Abuja.

In conclusion, I will like to share with us the golden words of Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), a Singaporean barrister and statesman who served as the first prime minister of Singapore between 1959 and 1990. LKY, profoundly posited: “Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they’re educated and they’re properly brought up, then you don’t have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It’s like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it’s got to leave, go outside to pee and to defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts.” 

Finally, as we look forward to May 29 in a couple of days time with a mindset of a date with destiny. I hereby wish to join all our compatriots home and abroad to dedicated this article that focuses on the desirability of May ’29 inauguration of the Tinubu’s ‘Unity-Trinity’ Presidency as a date with history. This is to also congratulate my friend and a fellow compatriot Aliko Dangote on the occasion of the commissioning of the largest plant in Africa and a milestone achievement. This is the beginning of the 4th Industrial Revolution as captured in the ‘Renewed Hope’ policy documents.

• Agenda For The Incoming Administration Of Peter Mbah

In his inaugural address on May 29, 2015, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi roused the state with the promise that his tenure would be defined by the development trajectory he would diligently pursue. Of the many facets he reeled out, two stood out. The first was the promise to pay special attention to Nsukka by giving the area a face-lift befitting a university town. He also told the people that “Ninth Mile is an economic hub that we need to harness to enjoy the benefits of our newly-acquired status as a free trade zone…to create fresh economic opportunities and reduce pressure on Enugu metropolis”. For each of them there was a well-deserved applause; nobody would begrudge Nsukka the face-lift that the State’s second largest town rightly deserves. And there was no denying the fact too that 9th Mile occupies a key position in the state’s industrialization plan.

Expectations were high indeed, after-all Governor Sullivan Chime had sold the Ugwuanyi candidacy in 2015 by declaring that he could not have hoped for a better candidate to continue in what many people considered his superlative performance. So, as Gov. Ugwuanyi’s 8-year tenure winds down, it will not be out of place to interrogate that aspect of his performance. And the verdict is obvious: while he may have delivered substantially on the uplift of Nsukka, the promise to upgrade 9th Mile as the state’s major commercial centre was, to all intents and purposes, empty.

Many people believe that the slow death of 9th Mile is the collateral damage that followed the marginalization of Enugu West Senatorial zone, especially the Agbaja area. While one must admit that it did not start with Governor Ugwuanyi, it became somewhat of a state policy during his tenure. Increasingly on his watch, the concept of Triangular Equilibrium which provided a recipe for equitable sharing of political positions and distribution of development projects among the three senatorial districts in the state was observed in the breach. Appointments were made and projects sited without regard to the triangular nature of the state, but in favour of a growing concept of an Nsukka/Enugu dichotomy that relegated Enugu West, especially the Agbaja area to the background.

Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi

The administration first set up the Urban Renewal Committee headed by two-time State Commissioner, Chief Chris Offor, ostensibly to recommend projects that will transform Nsukka and 9th Mile areas into urban and commercial centres, respectively. In the end, not much of the recommendations by the committee were made open. It is either Architect Offor and his committee made recommendations only for the Nsukka zone or those they made for the 9th Mile area did not find favour with the administration.

Over the years, Enugu West, especially the Agbaja area, has been relegated socially, politically and economically. The slow death of the state’s once-bustling industrial hub is evidence, just like the unfair distribution of political appointments, development projects and institutions across the state.

Within 40 kilometers square of Enugu East senatorial district for instance, one could count as many as 8 flourishing tertiary institutions owned by federal or state governments, private concerns and religious missions. While the new Enugu State University of Medicine and Applied Sciences (SUMAS) has sprung up in Igbo-Ano in addition to the existing University of Nigeria in Nsukka, the best that Enugu-West boasts is the one part of the Enugu State Polytechnic in Iwollo. While the main campus in Iwollo remains a glorified secondary school, another campus is fast developing in Ezzimo, Udenu local government area, home town of Chinedu Onu, Chairman of the institution’s governing board. Within the same period too, the State government is believed to have influenced the siting of a new federal institution, the Federal Polytechnic, Ohodo in Igbo-Etiti Local Government Area.

While a sprawling new State Secretariat Annex now adorns the landscape of Ede Oballa in Nsukka, the city also boasts a new Conference and Recreation Centre in addition to a completed 8 kilometre Opi-Nsukka dual carriageway. Also thanks to the Offor committee’s recommendation, Nsukka now boasts a new 5,000-seat capacity Township Stadium, the 31-kilometre Udenu Ring Road and the ongoing 27-kilometre Ukpabi-Nimbo-Ugbene Ajima-Eziani Road project. This is in addition to the 76 Police Mobile Force Squadron, Ekwegbe, Igbo-Etiti (constructed by the Enugu State government) and several other road, water, health and power projects in the area.

On the other hand, successive administrations in Enugu state have, by acts of omission or commission, systematically jettisoned the initial vision of 9th Mile as an industrial hub. Nothing better indicates this than the fact that all roads leading into the 9th Mile area have, for most part in the last 8 years, been impassable. Once a converging point for travellers from the North, Nigeria’s Middle Belt, Southern Igboland and Enugu state’s eastern neighbours, 9th Mile has become an isolated settlement with all the traffic now diverted to Enugu. Whether you are coming from the East, West, North and South, commuters no longer have access to the good old 9th Mile where roads from all cardinal points once converged.

Sullivan Chime

The promise of restoring the roads that will benefit 9th Mile and save Enugu metropolis the avoidable traffic build-up that Ugwuanyi spoke of at his inauguration, was not kept. At a time calls were rising for the state government to undertake the remediation of the Obollo-9th Mile federal highway, the state government famously chose to rehabilitate only the portion from Obollo Afor to Opi for what one official called ‘VIP movements’. While this effectively cut off access to 9th Mile, it funneled more vehicles into Enugu metropolis through Ekwegbe.

In the end, rather than develop an alternative road network, it was more convenient for government to undertake the construction of ‘the State’s first fly-over’ at Nike to manage the exponential build up in vehicular traffic, instead. For a project that is largely seen as cosmetic and vainglorious, only the Ebeano tunnel under the rail line at Asata has received a bigger media hype.

The systematic neglect of 9th Mile has been showing negatively in the balance sheets of the giant companies that operate in the area. As the once busy highways became quiet, drivers of articulated vehicles who have severally been promised a ‘trailer park’ that was never built, turned the roads into parking lots. Those companies that could not survive the harsh realities, including the multinational Coca-Cola, closed their factory and moved out. Ecobank, one of the first banking institutions to open office in 9th Mile, also shut down and moved out. Years earlier, Guinness Nigeria Plc that had acquired a 19-hectare land for their first Eastern brewery, decided to invest in Aba instead.

The Lion Business Park is a private concern but the state government showed more than a passing interest by packaging it as a quasi-government project. It facilitated the acquisition of over 2,000 hectares of farmland from Imezi Owa, Eke and Akama Oghe communities for the project which was promoted as an economic game-changer that would accommodate hundreds of small and medium-scale Chinese businesses. Six years down the road, apart from the controversies surrounding the land acquisition, the business park has not moved from the grandiose plan it is on paper.

Governor Ugwuanyi is not alone in this litany of woes for Agbajaland and 9th Mile. The promise to restore the Anambra Vegetable Oil Products, AVOP, in Nachi has lasted through the two preceding administrations of Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani and Mr. Sullivan Chime. The International Market that was already under construction at 9th Mile since 2005 was allowed to die, just like the Ebeano bye-pass, the dual carriageway that took off from the old toll gate on the Enugu-Onitsha highway. Flagged off in 2007 by President Olusegun Obasanjo, the by-pass which signaled a future East-North highway, was motorable for all of 3 years before it was abandoned.

Incoming Governor Peter Mbah

The Ugwuanyi administration will, however, be remembered for two projects in 9th Mile. The first is the 2 kilometer Toll Gate – Ameke Ngwo bye pass; the second is the rehabilitation of the 12-borehole water project completed during the administration of Chief Jim Nwobodo as governor of the old Anambra State. While the byepass has helped in easing traffic flow, controversy has trailed the water project since it became evident that the government did not intend to supply any drop to the host communities of Nsude and Ngwo. While arrangements are in top gear to pipe the water to Enugu metropolis, it is likely that Governor-elect Peter Mbah has factored it into the 180-day timeline he gave for taps in the state capital to come alive again. Meanwhile the giant water reservoir at Nsude and the pipes through which water was once supplied to the host and adjourning communities, will remain dry.

Is there a political dimension to what has befallen 9th Mile? Many people believe there is; what else would make a government willingly strangle a hub that was once touted as the pride of the East and the third leg of the South-East’s commercial triangle after Onitsha and Aba?

Okwesilieze Nwodo

The concept of Triangular Equilibrium arose from the history that preceded the creation of Enugu state. The people had emerged from a bruising encounter with leaders of Southern Anambra, as the Onitsha/Awka/Nnewi axis was known, and the obvious marginalization of Wawa people in the old Eastern Region, the East Central state (1967-1975) and the old Anambra State (1976-1991). They would not wish that their own kit and kin, or any part of Enugu State, suffer such marginalization.

The concept fully manifested during the short-lived administration of the State’s first governor, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo. The fairness and balance in the sharing of political offices and siting of development projects during his tenure became, perhaps, the most distinctive feature of that era. The idea resonated with most other leaders of the state who saw in it a charter of equity. It remained a guiding rule for succeeding administrations in the state, until the outgoing administration of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi sacrificed it on the altar of a contrived Nsukka/Enugu dichotomy that relegates Enugu West, and especially the Agbaja area.

The sorry fate of 9th Mile is food for thought for the incoming administration of Peter Mbah. If indeed his private sector background is anything to reckon with, the place to start in his drive for industrialization and job creation is a deliberate policy to restore the once-bustling commercial centre of Enugu State.

Sheddy Ozoene writes from Nsude, Enugu State.

The Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20500.

Dear President Biden,

It is with great pleasure that I welcome the decision of your administration to fulfil its promise to impose visa ban on Nigerian politicians whose actions or inactions led to various acts of terrorism, including money laundering, thuggery, assassinations, destruction of property, and street killings during the Nigerian elections of 2023.

Before going further, please permit me to re-introduce myself. I am an Oil & Gas executive resident in the United States of America and currently sit at the board of First Texas Energy Corporation as chairman. I have also taught in many U.S. universities and colleges for over two decades and remain an Adjunct professor at the Houston Community College System. More relatively, I am a member of the All-Progressives Congress (APC), the ruling party in Nigeria, through which I explored a presidential race during the country’s 2019 electoral cycle.

This letter is a solemn appeal for you to use your good offices to ensure that the visa ban includes Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the APC in the controversial 2023 election. The lingering stench of blood flowing from the said election has its origin in his brain. In short, any attempt to exclude him is akin to any discussion of the January 6 U.S Capitol Attack without a mention of Donald Trump.

The conspiracy of violence that marred Nigeria’s 2023 elections was not only plainly premeditated and planned, but it was also well studied, foreseen, and reported to the public and relevant authorities before it hatched.

For example, in a widely circulated essay, titled “Tinubu’s Blind Ambition Provoking a Civil War, By SKC Ogbonnia”, I had exposed the very conspiracy that came to pass. The essay was published June 16, 2022, eight months before the election, and copied to the U.S. intelligence community, including the Department of State. It is a chronological account of Tinubu’s history with violent extremism. An excerpt reads as follows:

“Keenly aware that he is neither physically fit nor morally sound to mount a presidential campaign let alone govern Nigeria, Mr. Tinubu is already attempting to win by hook or crook. Barely less than one week after grabbing the presidential ticket of the All-Progressives Congress (APC), he is already fanning the embers of war. Very glaring is a recent incident in which armed thugs were sent to disrupt the traders of Alaba International Market, Ojo, Lagos State, who went the extra mile to shut their shops in order to obtain their Permanent Voter Cards (PVC).”

“A selling point in Tinubu’s march to the APC nomination is the assumption that he dictates who wins and who loses in Nigeria’s most populous state of Lagos. But, as an APC chieftain and the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, noted in a recent speech, Tinubu has been able to lord himself over the good people of the state because of low voter turnout. In Governor el-Rufai’s own words, “Here in Lagos, you have over six million registered voters, only about a million voted (in 2019 general elections); five million did not vote.” [end of el-Rufai quote).

“This low voter turnout is rooted in Tinubu’s lack of popularity among the masses. To that end, he has always deployed all manners of terror to suppress the votes of his opponents. Like the attack on the Igbo traders at Alaba International Market, armed thugs were also used to unleash terror on the voters in many parts of Lagos State with a heavy Igbo population during the 2019 elections.”

Despite massive intimidation and voter suppression, which is his stock in trade, Tinubu still lost his home state of Lagos in the 2023 presidential election. Given that he owes his huge fortune to the Lagos State treasury, it did not come as a surprise that the state’s governorship election that came few weeks later became a do or die.

Mr. President, there is a clear pattern. Bola Ahmed Tinubu represents the core of a corrupt oligarchy that weaponized poverty to transpose Nigeria as the epicenter of modern-day slavery and violent extremism. Unfortunately, the man has remained above the law in Nigeria. And when there is no consequence for bad behavior, the bad behavior usually worsens.

Today, Tinubu’s pattern of terror has permeated the entire Nigerian society. Today, street violence has become the order of the day in the African country. A sad case in point is the recent attack on U.S. Embassy staff in Nigeria, which claimed four innocent lives.

Mr. President, it may also interest you that Tinubu is the same character that forfeited $460,000.00 to the authorities in the United States of America, allegedly for drugs trafficking and money laundering. Yet, he is set to assume the leadership of Africa’s biggest economy.

The truth, if it is already not manifest, is that Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a threat to world order. As various intelligence reports attest, though Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency concluded that the degree of his corruption is one of an “international dimension”, his true identity remains unknown. But well-known is the fact that he has been able to avoid prosecution by masterfully deploying his stupendous illegitimate wealth to seize and control Nigeria’s power apparatus.

Therefore, the U.S. ban on corrupt Nigeria politicians only goes to become a shaggy-dog story if Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not the first person on the list. In fairness, someone of his character does not deserve to be allowed into any country of the world. His proper destination ought to be the International Criminal Court at the Hague, where he should be charged with crime against the humanity.

Mr. President, the Honorable Joseph R. Biden, I urge you, I urge you to seize this moment in history. I urge you take a global leadership role on this matter by seeing the world as one. I urge you to make the world a better place by answering the call of the Nigerian masses. Failure to hold Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu accountable is a welcome breeze to intercontinental terrorism, brazen corruption, money laundering, and drug trafficking.

Sincerely,

SKC Ogbonnia, Ph.D.

Houston, TX.

CC: U.S. Embassy and Consulate, Abuja, Nigeria

CC: The United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism, United Nations, N.Y., USA.

CC: Office on Drugs and Crime, United Nations, N.Y., USA.

“The president stands down next week. He said sometime last year that he had done well and history would be kind to him: “I want [Nigerians] to analyse how things were when we came in and how they are when we’re leaving.” Today, he insists he has done very well. But, history has no friend and no fixed address. Its judgement comes now or maybe, later. Just as I write this, a BBC report popped up online. Its headline: ‘Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari leaves legacy of kidnapping, inflation and debt’. And the report’s conclusion: “The fact is that Nigerians were safer, better off and less in debt before Mr Buhari took over, and many will remember him for presiding over the toughest eight years they might ever face.”

Exactly one week from today, Muhammadu Buhari will stop being our president; his place another shall take. But what kind of leader has he been? The best assessment of a leader you get, not from his fanatics – boys who eat directly from the leader’s palm – but from men with cocks that crow as his. I take Babatunde Fashola as the gold witness here. Fashola has been Buhari’s Minister of Works and Housing for eight years and was Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff in Lagos for four years. He is, therefore, very qualified to do a character assessment of the two reigning sharers of Nigeria. And he did it so well on Channels Television on April 17 this year – just last month. I don’t know how many of us noticed how deeply the man did it: Hear Fashola: “I was speaking to someone and I said, imagine there are two football coaches… Buhari is the type of president of a ‘football coach’ that will prepare his team and then go and sit in the coach’s dugout and watch them play for 90 minutes. He trusts them to do well and believes there’s nothing he can do. Asiwaju (Tinubu) would be the kind of coach playing the game (from the dugout) with his men. One coach delegates completely; the other delegates and stays with you. Each one has his strength.”

Why would Fashola say “each one has his strength”? What is the strength of absentee presence, present in absentia? It is too late to invite American economist and politician, Dick Armey, to come and repeat his famous statement that “three groups spend other people’s money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.” Someone said even if it was not late to give the counsel, the man who leads the government here won’t have the time to listen; he would delegate the listening. A leader definitely needs others to get to where he wants to be. That fact, however, does not share a meaning with abdication of responsibilities. A leader abdicates his position when he shares tasks to subordinates without supervision and monitoring and without going back to ask whether the delivery was ever made. A leader leads by not sleeping on duty, by not giving his people’s onions to small grubs of the field. It is not competence to fire the shot and think the job is done. My people say when you shoot a deer, make sure you follow the blood trail; if you don’t track it, the game becomes food for maggots. Where is the sense in planting without weeding? Unwanted, invasive plants will ensure that no meaningful harvest comes from that soil. That is why the grains of Buhari’s eight years are fewer than the chaff – and it is tragic.

Governments are cults. Our outgoing government is not the cabal we were programmed to call it. It is a cult of contradictions – deep and shallow; dark and red with shades of white. Toyin Falola called a cult the ‘Club of Sixteen’. The one in the professor’s story meets in the clouds but it is still not as dark as government. Governments are secret creators, secret keepers and secret killers. But unlike the cult of the earth that lives forever, this one born of pretentious democracy has a lifespan. It must die and it dies at the sight of its successor. We are in that season of elegies for receding powers. Another cult will take over next week. Forget it that the old and the new are sired in the same grove, they must do the ritual (the oro) of regime change; the evil of their greed ensures that politicians fight in the marketplace for women to see their nakedness. You do not have to commune with the gods to know how cults clash. You are seeing it already in Mattawale of Lagos and Bawa of Daura exchanging fists of accusations.

On June 9, 2015, a Senate president and a speaker were to be elected. A security chief rushed to Defence House, Maitama, Abuja, to inform the brand new president that his order for the National Assembly to be cordoned off had been carried out. The host appeared shocked and surprised. Who asked the man to do it? The man told the president who did. The president’s face stiffened. He gave no such order! He raised his voice as he said “You take your orders directly from me. Okay?” Embarrassed, the visitor said “Yes, sir”, saluted his Commander-in-Chief and left to quickly stand down his men. That security chief told this story to someone who told me the very week it happened. The person had no reason to lie. The incident was an early warning that the new government was going to suffer power usurpation from mini-cults, inside and outside. The incident also appeared to be the beginning of a chain of events that have not ended almost eight years after.

The president is a General who enjoys the powers and privileges the epaulets on his shoulders confer. And, the lucky old man has enjoyed every bit of the small and big chops served in the endless party for eight years. But what kind of leader really is the man and how well has he watched the back of the people who gave him the key into the hall of fame?

In days as these, literature provides a ring of forts for the bard. I run to William Shakespeare for guidance and insights in repeated times. How does it feel to put someone on the throne and then, that someone now uses that position to torment the electors? Apart from the class in power, I do not know any other Nigerian whose stocks have not suffered grave depreciation under this scorching sun going down in the West. For eight years, the leader abandoned the led; he even ditched the knights who won the crown for him. Remember Oluremi Tinubu in February 2018 complained aloud that her husband had been thrashed by those he helped to power: “He was campaigning, I did too. We were running three campaigns in my house. And for him to be trashed like that?…Occasionally, I would chip in and I would say, ‘You’re still helping out? Why are you helping out?’…” The drama in Oluremi’s outburst takes me back to Shakespeare. Read about “rebellion, treachery and shifting alliances” in his Henry IV; the forced abdication of the throne by Richard II for Henry Bolingbroke to become King Henry IV, and the regrets of a key ally of the new king who laments the error of putting “down Richard, that sweet lovely rose” to “plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke.” (Part 1, Act 1, Scene 3).

We all remember Buhari’s long walk to power. “After going to the court so many times to challenge results of elections in 2003, 2007 and 2011, and going up to the Supreme Court, I concluded that ultimately it is God who determines who will win elections, and in 2015 I got here,” the outgoing president told a gathering of his party men in Daura in May 2018. His snail ultimately reached the top of the tree but what has he done with that feat? The poet, Niyi Osundare, in a recent poem, asks duck why his “frantic craving for the river” when he knew he lacked the power to swim: “Fierce and frequent was/His quest for that Crown/He crawled, caviled cajoled, cried in countless bids/Till a mongrel coalition rewarded his frenzy.” Then, the poet notes, incompetence proceeded to wed corruption, clan wrestled down competence, tribe triumphed over truth, square pegs sneaked into round holes “and the nation grabs the reverse gear/and speeds, break-neck, into medieval darkness.” Who would issue a rebuttal to this and say the poet lied? Who?

Every home has felt the meaning of “from better to worst.” Those lucky to be alive pant under the weight of the cost of life and of living. A bag of rice moved from N7,000 to N45,000; the price of a loaf of bread took giant steps forward and is not looking back forever. Bandits banded with Boko Haram to wreck the North while the South got kidnapped by pampered scoundrels. But from today till Wednesday, T.V stations will intubate us with documentaries of Buhari’s strides in his eight years. Our president will exit power next week with songs of victory. His fist is beating his chest that under his watch food is cheaper and life is better. He won’t ever agree that the locusts have had a free rein and life has been nasty, brutish and devastatingly short. And, the story could have been positive if the leader had found time to be patient and listen and had supervised his appointees. But everything is lost to the arrogance of fateful aloofness. He chose his track and there were enough warnings that the road taken would lead to no harvest. The warners were called wailers. Regime bell-bearers rang repeatedly that their Caesar could do no wrong; the leader felt so too and flaunted the magic wand of his body language. But, it is not enough for a leader to have faith in himself. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a man of great discernment but he is to soon fall on the sword of his arrogance and impetuousness. He rashly alienates allies and surrounds himself with himself, alone. He listens not to the sense in others; he pays no heed to his wife and the warnings in her dream; he ignores, and even insults, the soothsayer who comes repeatedly with warnings on the dangers of the Ides of March. The emperor is very sure of his own invincibility and says he is more dangerous than even danger: “Danger knows full well that Caesar is more dangerous than he. We are two lions litter’d in one day, and I the elder and more terrible” (Act 11, Scene 11).

Leaders who are bigger than the law will ultimately wreck the land. When a people are in trouble, what they need most is a leadership that knows the way and believes in order. They are lost forever if all the leader wants is power and not the responsibilities that come with it. Read the character called Jack in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Jack is the young man who grows from likability to the very opposite of that noble word. He is the one who loses an election and goes sad, sour and savage. Jack is the strong-willed leader who has no problem making rules but has every problem obeying the rules. When his counterforce, Raph, tells him the danger of breaking the rules, he dismisses him: “The rules!” shouted Ralph. “You’re breaking the rules!” “Who cares?”, he sneered. The rules are made for others, not for him. And, because of him, help is delayed, disastrously, for the whole group. Lord of the Flies is the tragic story of a group of school boys marooned on an island after a plane crash. They start life as peaceful, adorable boys seeking rescue from the deserted tropical island. They soon become savage and cruel to each other; then a pig’s head covered in flies becomes their god unto whom they look for deliverance; they call it the ‘Lord of the Flies’. We worship pigs here too; dead pigs covered in flies.

The president stands down next week. He said sometime last year that he had done well and history would be kind to him: “I want [Nigerians] to analyse how things were when we came in and how they are when we’re leaving.” Today, he insists he has done very well. But, history has no friend and no fixed address. Its judgement comes now or maybe, later. Just as I write this, a BBC report popped up online. Its headline: ‘Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari leaves legacy of kidnapping, inflation and debt’. And the report’s conclusion: “The fact is that Nigerians were safer, better off and less in debt before Mr Buhari took over, and many will remember him for presiding over the toughest eight years they might ever face.”