The Nigerian Army, on Thursday, retired 53 regimental colours used in the order of battle.

The ceremony, held at Eagle Square, Abuja, also witnessed the issuance of colours to 28 newly created units, bringing the number of units in the Nigerian Army to 81.

President Muhammadu Buhari, dressed in military uniform, presided over the ceremony and the presentation of colours.

The event has in attendance members of the National and Executive Council, members of the Diplomatic Corps, Executive Governors of the States benefitting Units, Service Chiefs, past Chief of Army Staffs, senior military officers, both serving and retired, captains of industries, as well as other important dignitaries.

Since 2007, new units have been established and operationalised in line with the increasing operational commitments of the Nigerian Army, as well as provisions of the extant NA Order of Battle (ORBAT).

In an update on the ceremony on Tuesday, Director, Army Public Relations Officer, Brig. General Onyema Nwachukwu, in a statement, explained that “historically, the origin of colours dated back to the early days when men fixed their family badge to a pole and held it aloft in the battle for the dual purpose of indicating their position and as a rallying point should the occasion arise. This tradition was sustained by medieval chivalry as armorial bearings were placed on their banners so that these could be seen well above the melee.

“At the beginning of the 16th century, when armies were beginning to adopt a system of regimentation, each Unit was allotted a Colour, a custom which persisted till the present day. In the NA, the first known account of Colours dated back to 1863 when the company designated for Nigeria moved from Gold Coast (now Ghana) to Nigeria with their company’s flag, which represented their Colours or Guidon as they are called by the British.

“However, Colour Presentations in the NA for the first time was in 1922 when the then British monarch, His Majesty, King George V, awarded Colours to each battalion of the Nigerian Regiments, which formed part of the British West African Frontier Forces (WAFF), in recognition of their services.

“The Regiment as a whole was also granted a colour, which has an inscription written in Arabic captioned ‘’Victory is from God Alone’’ and till date, this inscription is being used by the Nigerian Army on the Logo and also on NA officers’ cap badges of the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and below as well Non-Commissioned Officers.

“The Colours of a regiment are presented by the heads of state or monarch, prime minister and Commanders-in-Chief of the Country or State, under which the regiment exists. The National and Regimental Colours carried by NA units during parades and ceremonial activities are an important source of identity and pride not only for the units involved but for the NA and the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN).

“The sight of the Colours creates a feeling of pride in soldiers and ex-soldiers. From ancient history, Colours have served as an inspiration for heroic acts of self-sacrifice and become the symbol of the fighting spirit of a regiment, for they bear the campaigns, battle honours and badges granted to the regiment in commemoration of the gallant deeds performed by its members from the time it was raised.

“The association of the Colours with heroic deeds of the units emblazoned on them has led to the custom of regarding the Colours with veneration. It is, therefore, the desire of combat and combat support units to be presented with National and Regimental Colours in special ceremonial parades with the President and Commander-in-Chief of AFN in attendance. Colours are presented to combat and combat support units and regiments only.

“It may interest you to know that the last Trooping and Presentation of Colours Parade for the NA units was conducted in 2007. Since then, new units have been established and operationalised in line with the increasing operational commitments of the NA, as well as provisions of the extant NA Order of Battle (ORBAT).

“Colours are usually retired after 10 years of service. Most of the Colours in the NA have been involved in multiple operations in various geopolitical zones of the Country, as well as foreign countries, hence deserving retirement and the presentation of new Colours.

“It is against this backdrop and in line with the traditions, customs and ethics of the NA, Trooping and Presentation of Colours Parade 2023 will be conducted to retire torn or worn out Colours, as well as to present the National and Regimental Colours to the newly established and operationalised NA units in line with the increasing operational commitments of the NA, as well as provisions of the extant NA ORBAT.

“A total of 81 units will, therefore, be participating in the Parade, 53 Colours will be due for retirement, while 28 Colours will be presented to new NA units. The event is a unique ceremony, not only to the units eligible for Colours presentation, as many are looking up to this ceremony to witness the height of military discipline and regimentation.”

[TheWill]

Nigeria’s February/March elections undid many things. One of them was the 63-year-old myth that no wealthy and ambitious candidate could emerge president. Until the last presidential election.

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s president between 1963 and 1966, came close. But while ownership of his extensive and authoritative newspaper chain made him influential, he was not wealthy. In any case, he was only a ceremonial president.

The other leaders, especially the elected ones, up till now, had neither money nor ambition. And all, without exception, were also not prepared for office. A number of them even said so publicly.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu would be the first Nigerian leader to have money and ambition and also to publicly say he is ready and prepared to rule and still get elected. Considered to be one of Africa’s wealthiest politicians, he has extensive business interests and investments from real estate and stocks to media.

He would be the first elected president to defy the so-called “owners of Nigeria” who have over the years been obsessed that power in the hands of a wealthy and independent-minded candidate might put the beneficiary beyond their reach.

As it turned out in the February 25 presidential election, ambition alone would not have been enough to get Tinubu over the line, especially after his own party leader President Muhammadu Buhari’s banknote redesign on the eve of the elections threw the country into financial chaos. Money, ambition and dare-devil courage combined to snatch the chestnut of Tinubu’s aspiration from the fire of adversity.

“Do you know why he won the election?,” US diplomat and election observer asked recently. “He got the money; he had the best national organisation that worked for him and the ground game.”

What this means for governance, whether it brings more freedom and accountability or inhibitions and opaqueness, would be interesting to see in the days ahead.

But the loss of kingmaker leverage is not the only lesson from the 2023 elections. The unravelling myth of the sitting president as alfa and omega in determining a successor, is lesson number two.

In the last election, Buhari showed himself as the master of strategic ambivalence. He did not want Tinubu as his successor. Yet, in his valley of indecision, he knew that the surging wave would land the shore, and was quite pleased, in spite of his misery, to go with the flow. It was not always like that. 

President Olusegun Obasanjo made his own wave. As military head of state, he moved heaven and earth to install Shehu Shagari as civilian president in 1979. And in his second coming as civilian president he went over, above and beyond the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) at the time to choose Umaru Shehu Yar’Adua as successor.

And I remember that after he fell out with the party and tore his card, he told a visiting reconciliation party to Abeokuta comprising President Goodluck Jonathan that after God and Jonathan’s parents he was the most consequential person in making the former president.

It now appears that those days are going, or gone. What the 2023 elections show is that every serious and determined candidate can make their own victory.

The governor-king has been undone, too. And that is lesson number three. For decades, Tinubu, for example, ruled the roost in Lagos. He survived the wiles and deadly onslaught of the Obasanjo era, going for years without one kobo for Lagos councils from the Federal Government which illegally seized their statutory allocations following a dispute over the creation of additional councils by the Tinubu administration. 

Yet, in what his associate and Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola SAN, recently described as “blindsiding”, Tinubu lost Lagos to Labour Party’s Peter Obi, a rookie in the presidential race. But it was not only Tinubu who suffered defeat in his stronghold. 

Other party stalwarts, including seven governors, failed to get election to their new retirement home – the Senate. Six states featuring the governors’ preferred candidates on the ballot also flipped. 

Lesson number four: Abraham Lincolns come once in a blue moon. Famous among things for contesting and losing eight elections, two of them the presidency, Lincoln could have been a distant political cousin of Nigeria’s former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, in another life. Atiku, the presidential candidate of the opposition PDP, was on his sixth attempt in 30 years. 

He did not lose the last election, though. He won it for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) which may have found it far more difficult to keep power if Atiku had let his decades of political experience guide him. 

Unlike Lincoln whose multiple losses taught him that the only way to win the 1860 presidential election was to keep the Republican Party united, Atiku’s strategy to win was keeping his party divided. 

Even Buhari, another serial loser, had learnt that his fabled 12 million voter-base in one section of the country could not win him the presidency. It took Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) an alliance with Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and three other parties to win at his fourth attempt in 2015. 

In Atiku’s world of contrarian politics, the PDP “split” not into two but into four parties – Labour Party, NNPP and the Wike-led Integrity Group. In his next life, no matter the degree of temptation or provocation, it’s unlikely that Atiku would yield to the dissociative political maths of subtraction and division.

Kenyan political veteran, Raila Odinga, shared the fifth lesson during the LEADERSHIP Awards and Conference in Abuja shortly before Nigeria’s election, but we were not listening: “Don’t trust technology too much,” he said, or something to that effect. “They can fail or be made to fail.”

In spite of Odinga, we believed otherwise. The bimodal voter verification system (BVAS) was advertised as the gamechanger, but widely believed as the miracle-worker. Unfortunately, the system was undermined by glitches in a number of areas and the electoral management body which seemed unprepared for a Plan B, found itself seeking refuge in a backhanded electoral guideline that it was not obliged to transmit results electronically.

Machines fail, just as people fail them. But whether they fail or are made to fail, the recourse must be clear beforehand and consequences applied.

And yes, the ground game, infamously called “political structure” still matters. That is the sixth lesson of the last election. Even though Obi despised those who criticised the Labour Party for not having political structures, he still relied significantly on the structures of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to mobilise support. 

Obi commanded the social media army. Unlike the APC and PDP, however, his extra-terrestrial troops were largely absent in many of the over 176,000 polling units where party agents needed to be physically present to oversee voting, counting and collation of results. If, as Joseph Stalin said, it is who counts and not who votes that matters, then LP lost the election before it was even held.

Lesson number seven: Polls are like mini-skirts. They are short enough to attract attention but long enough to hide the subject matter. They disappointed catastrophically in the U.S. elections in 2016. It was the same in Nigeria. Nine polls, including those by Bloomberg, CNN, ANAP/NOI among others, projected Obi would win. Only three, including Stears Polls, were close to the mark.

Even where strong anecdotal evidence suggested that the polls would be wrong, the pollsters did not let such evidence get in the way of their will. In the light of what eventually happened, there would still be enough humble pie left for pollsters, their sponsors and subscribers to eat before the next major election in Nigeria.

Lesson number eight is that ideology is an elite fiction. Ideology is dead! The tribe is resurgent. Long live the party! Peter Obi, a self-confessed capitalist trader, ended up flying the flag of LP! Apart from Tinubu who has maintained his progressive bonafides and AAC’s Omoyele Sowore who has remained unapologetically anti-establishment, other candidates have elevated political flirting to an art. 

The courts have blessed this infidelity by ruling that it is the party and not the individual candidates that matters. And since the difference in policies and ideas among the major parties is a matter of form rather than of substance, candidates have become rolling stones gathering no moss. 

With no real incentive to debate or discuss issues in spite of elite consternation over the lack of ideology, candidates relapsed to their primordial strongholds, invoking religion and ethnicity for redemption.

Post-election Nigeria feels like Humpty Dumpty. On top of the serious challenges of inflation, unemployment, stark economic deterioration and insecurity facing the country, not to mention the growing sub-regional instability, the incoming government has to first pick up the broken pieces of hope before it can start the difficult job of putting the country together again.

During the governorship and state house of assembly elections in March, the president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) enjoined Nigerians to go ahead and collect any monies distributed by vote-buying politicians but still vote their conscience. Ideally, it should be shocking that a country’s president—especially one who came to power as an anti-corruption crusader—would shamelessly endorse an electoral infraction. But he has let us down so often that pointing out this error will be a waste of everyone’s precious time.

The more annoying part of that thoughtless statement was that it negated his previous posturing on the naira redesign policy to protect electoral integrity. When he met King Charles in the UK in November, he insisted the policy had come to stay because it would protect Nigerians from those who would use their lush resources to manipulate the election outcome. After reiterating that he would ensure a level playing field for contestants, this conviction would swing only months later. So, if ensuring election integrity was not a deep resolve, why take people through so much pain and hardship?

This man and the “Sai Baba” men watched as Nigerians, already severely impoverished by his uninspiring leadership since 2015, underwent the diminishing effects of the poorly conceived and shoddily executed naira redesign. The dwindled loss of livelihood especially crushed the small-scale producers who work in the agricultural produce sector and operate within the informal economic system. We are not a society that knows how to count and account for lives and resources, so we will never be able to adequately comprehend the full scale of the debilitating effect of that policy. However, it is still certain that people died from the stress, and some of the crippled businesses will never recover. All for what?

Naira redesign policy was a disaster that Buhari superintended over as a military dictator. Even though he saw the brutal outcomes of the policy, he still repeated it 40 years later. As it turns out, there was no larger vision for either our elections or democratic processes that drove the agenda. There was no gain for democratic institutions to which they were committed, it was just another one of the sadistic ideas that Buhari cranks out of his sociopathic mind each time he feels that Nigerians have not suffered enough. If there was no profound objective to be derived from the whole redesign policy, and he himself could advocate people taking money from their corrupt politicians, why did he not just leave people to collect their N5000? Why break things in the guise of trying to fix them?

That was the sort of ineptitude that defined Buhari’s regime. Several policies unleashed severe suffering but were hardly followed by any bigger plan to make the outcome meaningful. They banned food importation to stimulate local agriculture, but all we have to show for the economic ingenuity is the soaring costs of food prices. He closed the borders for almost two years to galvanise local manufacturing, making life even more unaffordable. After accumulating losses and hardship, they re-opened them. They could not point out anything remarkable they achieved through it. They said those ideas were why countries like China flourished, but ended up proving that half education is bad especially when running a country.

In not wanting to deal with either the complexities of planning or the messiness of human behaviour, Buhari’s regime treated social engineering as a process that could be automated. For instance, to make Nigeria a cashless economy, his administration restored far less cash into circulation than they took out in the form of the old notes. They imagined they could force people to use electronic means without first ensuring that the infrastructure to support such a massive scale of transaction was in place. That is his standard approach to governance: throw people into a desert and expect them to either stimulate their creative impulses and invent food, or eat sand and die.

Even his anti-corruption agenda was half-hearted. With too many Faustian bargains he had made to get to power, the best anti-corruption agencies achieved under him was to pursue the small fry while the real thieves of the Nigerian patrimony sashayed freely.

Last Friday, while giving his farewell message at the final Sallah homage at the Presidential Villa in the FCT, he reportedly said, “Having been a governor, minister, and the president twice, I think God has given us an incredible opportunity to serve as your president. And I thank God for that. So, please whoever feels I have done wrong to, we are all humans. There is no doubt I hurt some people and I wish you will pardon me. And those that think that I have hurt them so much, please pardon me.”

Here are two things he should note: First, we do not think or feel we have been hurt by his leadership, no. Those words suggest that the visceral impacts of his punitive leadership are simply a matter of individual perspective rather than objective reality. We have receipts that substantially demonstrate that he stole eight years from us. From rising and multidimensional poverty to out-of-school children rates, insecurity, corruption, and overall diminished quality of life, Buhari’s failure is not a matter of mere opinion or emotions. We live the insalubrious effects.

Second, saying we are all humans is fallacious. Who would look at the past eight years of his inhumane administration and not wonder if Buhari has a drop of humanity in him? When you look at Buhari, when you study his characteristic nonchalance to the high hopes and aspirations of Nigerians that his administration serially frustrated through their ineptitude, you cannot but understand why humans invented the concept of Satan. Some people’s wickedness is so unique that you need idioms of the supernatural to explain that degree of malevolence. Under Buhari’s watch, people were routinely kidnapped, and there was at least an instance where a community had to organise a fundraising to get money to retrieve their children abducted from school; entire communities were imperiled by rampaging herdsmen; prisons were serially attacked; terrorists and bandits killed poorly-armed security personnel in such high numbers that their bosses allegedly resorted to burying them secretly in order to hide the casualty rates; even the Nigerian Defence Academy was breached, and an Airforce Fighter jet shot down. Despite all the restlessness that defined his tenure, the man gaslit Nigerians by insisting we were doing better than ever before. How does that lack of fellow feeling qualify him to be categorised as “human”?

Buhari admitted he got all he wanted by becoming the president, but what of Nigerians? What did they get in return? Now he says he will no longer be burdened by the country’s issues. If over-solicited after May 29, he promised to relocate to Niger republic across the border. He might have said that as a joke, but that is in fact quintessential Buhari. He has a pattern of expecting others to do things he ought to do because he is lazy and inept. He is never responsible for anything. He got into power by pretending to be poor because he was incorruptible even though his election was sponsored by people whose hands were soiled by public corruption. He achieved little, and now expects Nigerians to clean up his failures.

For him to ascribe his failures to the fallibility of humanity when he barely even tried is another failure in itself. As someone who has had the privilege of living off Nigeria’s resources his entire adult life, Buhari failed spectacularly because he took and took and took but never gave back. He has not only failed as a leader, but also as a human being. He does not deserve forgiveness from even an all-merciful God.

‘One life taken in cold blood is as gruesome as a million that may go down in a pogrom’—Dele Giwa (1947-1986) 

Having read the 2010 book, ‘Sudan: Darfur and the Failure of an African State’ I am not surprised that the power struggle between the two most senior military leaders in Sudan has exploded into a shooting war in which Khartoum is now effectively another killing field. “Nothing in Sudan has just happened; the catalogue of disasters, diseases and death have all been man-made,” wrote Richard Cockett, a former editor of the London ‘Economist’ more than a decade ago. “Even the killings in Darfur were allowed to take place because it suited the interests of some politicians and nations. The oil hungry Chinese, meddling Western politicians, spineless African leaders, shamefully silent activists, land greedy Arab tribes, myopic Sudanese politicians, all share responsibility for the tragedy of Sudan.” 

With the United Kingdom, Canada, and other Western countries finding it increasingly difficult to evacuate their nationals from a country where law and order has broken down, we must commend the federal government for the efforts to move Nigerian students to Egypt. There are also lessons to learn from the remote and immediate causes of the current tragedy in Sudan. Youth protests for greater accountability and a better living standard ultimately toppled Omar Al Bashir’s 30-year dictatorship in 2019, after which the military hijacked power. And those young Sudanese who risked their lives must now be asking themselves salient questions. But interrogating this familiar tragedy on the continent raises so many issues competing for attention that Sudan may have to wait for another day. 

For us in Nigeria, especially, latest reports about the leaked American intelligence documents describing an effort by Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group to recruit rebels as part of an “evolving plot to topple the Chadian government” should concern our authorities. According to the report published in the ‘Washington Post’ on Monday, the documents detail a discussion in February this year between Wagner’s leader, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and his associates about the timeline and facility for training an initial group of rebels in Avakaba (a city in Central African Republic), close to the Chadian border, and the route that Wagner would use to transport them.  

There are many critical issues here but let us isolate just two. A crisis in Chad is a crisis in Nigeria, given the proximity and associated security issues. Besides, in a divided country like ours with abundant mineral resources, what stops these mercenaries from extending their network to Nigeria once they succeed in installing a puppet regime in N’djamena? These are the kinds of scenarios that the Intelligence community in other countries would be looking at and I hope our people are watching the situation in Chad.  

However, as important as the Chadian issue or even the crisis in Sudan may be, it will help to also pay attention to developments in Malindi, Kenya, where dozens of corpses of the ‘Good News International Church’ members are being exhumed. These unfortunate victims of religious brainwashing were reportedly persuaded by their pastor to starve themselves to death on their way to heaven. Meanwhile, the Pastor himself is alive, even when some of the emaciated survivors of his chicanery are refusing help. “When we tried to administer first aid to give her sips of water with glucose with a spoon, she sealed her mouth and was signifying that she doesn’t want any help,” it was reported of a woman. A man in his 40s said he was in his senses and should be left alone. “He even called us enemies of him going to heaven.” 

With videos of some Nigerian ‘Men of God’ stepping on the heads of their congregants or asking them to eat grass, which they gladly abide by, we should pay attention to what is happening in Malindi. Some of these characters have asked their members of the opposite sex to go naked and do all kinds of crazy things. With a cocktail of ignorance, poverty and superstition, millions of Nigerians can easily fall prey to these conjurers. If we are therefore not careful, the tragedy of Malindi is not too far away. In any case, we have also seen that in the Boko Haram/ISWAP insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions of our people in the Northeast: It is also about going to heaven where, according to what they believe, several virgins are waiting for these bloody zealots! 

 We will have to leave religion and the tragic developments in Sudan, Chad, and Kenya for the moment. My concern today derives from a story in the PUNCH newspaper of Tuesday. According to the report, two people accused of being behind a thunder strike at Ikyve in the Konshisha Local Government Area of Benue State were buried alive by irate youths. Let’s take the story from PUNCH: “A man identified as Henry Ihwakaa alongside his wife and a child were reportedly struck by thunder on Saturday in the community. Irked by the incident, youths from the area were said to have mobilised and apprehended the father of the alleged thunder victim, Ihwakaa and another elderly man purported to be his collaborator. 

 “The youths were said to have dug a shallow grave and buried them alive. A community leader in the area, Baba Agan, who claimed to have reported the case to the police at Tse Agbaragba, the headquarters of the local government, said before policemen could get to the village, the two elderly people had died. ‘There was a light rain that day (last Saturday) accompanied by thunder which hit a young man, his wife, and a two-week-old child and the three people died. As a result of that, youths in the village mobilised and went to the house of the father of the young man whose name is Henry and the father’s name is Ihwakaa. They attacked him and an elderly man, dug a grave and buried them alive,’ Agan said. 

 “It was, however, learnt that when a police team arrived at the scene, the two victims had already died in the grave and their bodies were exhumed. When contacted on Monday, the state Police Public Relations Office, SP Sewuese Anene, confirmed the incident. Anene said two suspects have been arrested in connection with the incident while an investigation was ongoing. The PPRO who said only one person was buried alive, however, warned members of the public against jungle justice, urging aggrieved persons to always report any case of disagreement to the police for necessary action.” 

 Since I read the story on Tuesday, I have been very disturbed. That people would bury another person alive is beyond frightening. And so is the rationalization for the gruesome murder. But if there is anything we can take from the immortal words of the late Dele Giwa with which I opened this column, it is that no matter our pretensions to the contrary, the Nigerians crisis is not much different from that of Sudan.

I have written before that the list of extra-judicial killings in Nigeria is as long as that of the “offences” for which the victims are accused. Following the daylight murder in July 2012 in Ekiti State of a 70-year-old woman, Mrs. Rebecca Adewumi, who was tortured to death by rampaging youths because her rival claimed to have seen her (Mrs Adewumi) in a dream tormenting her son, I did an intervention titled ‘Apani Ma Wagun, Olokiki Oru’. In 2008, after a commercial motorcycle (Okada) rider hit a woman on Aba/Port Harcourt Expressway in the Rivers State capital, he claimed that he saw three cats crossing the road and that it was after hitting one that it turned into a woman. The hapless victim of a careless Okada rider was instantly pounced upon and clubbed to death.

 Whichever way we look at all these issues, they are by no means isolated. They tell a compelling story about our country and the absence of the rule of law. A United States-based public affairs commentator, Dr Churchill Okonkwo, once summed it up this way: “From the political class that hire thugs to kill opponents; the bandits, kidnappers and ‘killer herdsmen’ that kill at will; the mob and onlookers that stone a suspected petty thief to death and ethnic warlords that burn and kill for every little communal dispute, our cultural orientation appears to permit killing without a good reason.”  

 It is difficult to fault Churchill. We place no premium on human life in Nigeria. And we can see the consequences in every area of our national life, including our politics, notorious for impunity and absence of accountability. That’s why some could gather after a natural occurrence like lightning to accuse another person(s) of being responsible and then proceed from there to conduct life burial. I hope the police will bring the perpetrators of this most heinous crime in Benue to justice.  

 Meanwhile, I am aware that in a season of transition such as we are in today in Nigeria, the main obsession is about power politics. I have no problem with that. But it will also serve us not to miss the essence of this tragedy. That a discernible jungle ethos now defines living and livelihoods in Nigeria should concern critical stakeholders. When you run a system in which the life of the ordinary citizen can be so casually taken on such flimsy grounds and in this most bestial manner, all else is forfeit. 

 Oby Ezekwesili at 60 

Love her or hate her, Mrs Obiageli (Oby) Ezekwesili, who tomorrow marks her 60^th birthday, has made a significant impact in our nation. A chartered accountant, public servant, and activist, Ezekwesili has at different times played critical roles on the Nigerian scene, the African continent and in the global arena. Although she started out in the private sector, she was always at the forefront of the conversation on how to bring transparency and accountability into government business. And she has lived by what she preaches. 

 Right from the time she was first appointed head of the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (popularly known as Due Process Unit) by former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the inception of the current democratic dispensation, Ezekwesili has remained a force for good. But what I particularly remember is the critical pioneering and leadership role she played in the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) as founding chairperson. 

 On her stewardship in government where she held different portfolios, including Solid Minerals and Education, there can be no better tribute than the one by President Olusegun Obasanjo that I have been privileged to read: In every public role she has played, according to the former president, Ezekwesili has demonstrated uncommon integrity, dedication to duty and strength of character. 

It is therefore most fitting that Ezekwesili today enjoys the reward enunciated in the Biblical book Proverbs 22 verse 29: When you are diligent in what you do, you will stand before kings, not mere men. Ezekwesili has, at different times, been named in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 100 Women, TIME 100 Most Influential People, New York Times 25 Women of Impact, Albert Einstein’s Foundation’s Genius:100 Visions of the Future etc.

As my own dear sister, Oby Ezekwesili turns 60, I wish her happy birthday, long life, and good health. 

If the Yoruba of South-West Nigeria think the world is going to wait for them to get their act together, they’ve got a thing coming. They are going to serve new cultural and economic overlords even within their own portion of the earth.

Other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria owe the Yoruba nothing, except their rights as bonafide citizens of Nigeria. It is time for the Yoruba of the South-West to review the state of their nation, regroup and regain their groove.

They can’t go about, like cry babies, bemoaning their losses to more strategic, tactical and intentional groups in Nigeria. No one gives you power or grants you privileges anymore, you earn it.

Every civilisation, or cultural tendency, is powered by the financial, technological and organisational savvy of the dominant citizens. Those currently running the South-West must understand this truth.

The easiest way to explain this is to invite you to look at the power of semiotics, or symbolism. You may have noticed that the sartorial preferences of a Nigerian President usually become more visible and dominant in Nigeria.

As soon as the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) became President of Nigeria, the “Shagari cap” became more visible. Even now, the symbol on the cap of President-Elect Bola Tinubu has almost become universal, though he has yet to be sworn in as President.

There is probably no contention that the South-West is the Athens, the region with the highest number of educational institutions and educated citizens, of Nigeria. Ogun State is said to have the highest number of universities, polytechnics and teacher training colleges.

Though the South-West may have the highest number of tertiary educational institutions, it may have lost its place as a centre of publishing in Nigeria. The Heinemanns, the Onibonoje and the Joop Berkhout Spectrum Books, may need to be reinvented.

And writers, such as J.F. Odunjo, Areoye Oyebola, O.A. Lawal, Adekunle Ojelabi, Oba Adekunle Aromolaran(current Owa of Ijesaland), Femi and Dotun Oyewole, who wrote textbooks for primary schools, also need to be reinvented.

Whereas more than half of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product is generated in the South-West, it is not clear that ownership of the wealth generated in that region belongs to the Yoruba.

At the nearly 20 most significant markets in Greater Lagos, like Alaba, Ikeja Computer Village, Ladipo spare parts market, Balogun on the Lagos Island, Oshodi, even the most indigenous Oke Aarin Market on Lagos Island, the Yoruba are practically outnumbered.

The more formal sector of the South-West economy is pretty much in the hands of foreign direct investors who graciously “award” insignificant portions of their shareholding to Nigerians, to fulfil the righteousness imposed by the Indigenisation Act.

This brings you to the conclusion that the South-West is living on old glories, the efforts of past heroes, like First Republic Premiers Obafemi Awolowo and Ladoke Akintola. You could add to that the efforts of South-West governors of the Second Republic, who looked at the challenges set by First Republic politicians and dared to excel.

Apart from governors of Lagos State, who have consistently worked to expand especially the transportation infrastructure of Lagos State, practically anyone who has been governor in the South-West of the current Fourth Republic has been “winos,” who always complain about dearth of funding.

You should please note that the new industrial startups that you see all over South-West Nigeria are not a result of government initiative. They are driven by private efforts. And that is why those initiatives provide their own water, electricity and even the access roads to their works.

What the state governments do, in all this is to impose unreasonable taxation and rates, while the staff of relevant government agencies exact unreasonable and exorbitant bribes and gratifications from the companies.

Of course, this is bad for business. The reasons why these companies won’t be in a hurry to vacate the South-West is because of access to the biggest port in Nigeria, the large inventory of trained personnel and the relative peace compared to other parts of Nigeria.

It may be hard going for South-West Nigeria that no longer seems to have the mix of academics and fine administrators as in the olden days. Imagine the winning mix of politicos, like Jonathan Odebiyi, and academics, like Sam Aluko, turning novel ideas around with public service administrators, like Simeon Adebo.

You can only get a repeat of the great feats that included the farm settlements, Wemabod Estates, industrial estates in Ikeja, Oshodi in Lagos and Lafia in Ibadan. Such combination also yielded the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), The Polytechnic Ibadan and Cooperative College Ibadan.

Those competencies yielded blue chip companies that later became Oodua group of companies that included Cooperative Bank, WEMA Bank, Vitafoam, Vono, Vegetable Oil of Nigeria, Nigerite and the sundry rubber plantations in today’s Ogun and Edo states.

You know too well that the cocoa plantations that made Nigeria the second biggest exporter of cocoa seeds, after Ghana, were a result of the efforts of the Western Nigerian Government, and not the Federal Government.

Whereas other parts of Nigeria, especially the northern region, seem to be interested and intentional in creating a pool of personnel that will take their people on to higher economic and political grounds, the South-West is doing the opposite.

There is an intense pull-him-down agenda that either castrates its brightest or sends them abroad as migrants who end up deploying their competencies to make North America and Western Europe better economies.

In case the South-West is still interested in regaining the economic paradise that it lost, the leaders may borrow from the admonition offered by the God to the people of Israel who were suffering so much deprivation as a result of their intransigence and wayward ways.

In Chapter 7, Verse 14 of the Bible Book of 2nd Chronicles, God promised, “If my people… shall humble themselves, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I shall hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

In addition to praying, the Yoruba must regain their moral high ground, what they call “omoluabi,” or gentleman’s credo, and redirect their energies, aptitude and attitude to more rewarding ventures.

While it is imperative to rekindle the drive of the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria, it is urgent to resolve the differences that have led to several factions of the Yoruba Afenifere pressure group.

Also, the South-West must develop a new cadre of merchant class and technocrats, men and women with brave hearts, daring and ready to draw water from a rock! If they fail, their children will continue to flock abroad, to live as outsiders, regardless of their accomplishments.

Now that the outgoing government of President Buhari has decentralised a few items on the Federal Exclusive Legislative List, maybe the South-West will have no more legitimate excuses for their collective failures.

They can, at least, make electricity, water, roads and railway lines available to their citizens and take advantage of their proximity to Lagos State to truly deliver the dividends of democracy to their long-suffering masses. The Yoruba of South-West Nigeria can no longer continue to complain about the earned and legitimate fortune of the Igbo, but roll up their sleeves to do the necessary work.

The World Malaria Day is observed each year on April 25, to underline the need for malaria control and total elimination. Adjunct to this is the galvanization of global efforts towards advocacy and sustained political will and investment all aimed at ending the scourge of the disease in identified communities.

Since 2000, global partnerships and investments in the fight against malaria have yielded positive results – preventing some 2 billion malaria cases, saving 11.7 million lives, and putting eradication within reach.

At a historic Global Fund Replenishment meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in 2022, billions of dollars were pledged by donors to boost the fight against HIV, TB and Malaria. However, an unprecedented shortfall of more than 50% in global malaria funding is now holding countries back from maintaining life-saving malaria programmes at current levels, from and reaching everyone currently living with the risk of contracting malaria.

Consequently, according to the 2022 Malaria Report, 96% of malaria deaths globally were found in 29 countries, with Nigeria sadly among the four countries which accounted for just over half of all malaria deaths globally in 2021; alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Niger and the United Republic of Tanzania.

A number of biological threats have also emerged, putting existing and future progress at risk. However, recent investments in R&D have produced the most robust pipeline of malaria interventions in over a decade to address these threats. Despite this remarkable progress, many proven interventions are still waiting to be implemented at scale. Countries and partners are working tirelessly to hold the line against malaria, implementing innovative approaches to tailor and deliver lifesaving tools to the most vulnerable and hard to reach communities.

However, funding gaps are contributing to declining progress in the countries with the highest burden of malaria. Countries will not reap the rewards of these investments without further commitment to scale-up and roll out these innovations where they are needed most. For Africa to move forward, we really have to get rid of malaria once and for all.

Despite previous recorded successes in program implementation, there is an ever-increasing need to step up our efforts and escalate investment. Now is the time to take decisive action to deliver on our goal of zero malaria, spur overall development and achieve 2030 targets. The commemoration of World Malaria Day requires us to bolster the fight against this life-threatening disease once and for all.

The theme of this year’s World Malaria Day: “Time to Deliver Zero Malaria: Invest, Innovate, Implement” highlights the need for urgent action and further investment to ensure existing investments deliver maximum impact in the fight to end malaria. As a United Nations (UN) Malaria Ambassador for Nigeria, I would like to add my voice to the global call on countries and partners around the world to:

•Invest more in malaria programmes to bridge critical funding gaps and accelerate progress towards total elimination of malaria.

•Innovate further to deliver improved solutions to end malaria that are tailored to those who need them most.

•Implement national strategies to accelerate progress against this age-old disease, by demonstrating leadership, adopting innovative and sustainable approaches, and scaling up national malaria programmes to deliver lifesaving tools to those at highest risk.

On this World Malaria Day, I urge joint action to prioritise our interventions to fight Malaria. In addition to the human suffering, the economic toll of this disease on global productivity is very high, and even more impactful in these times of economic fragility. More than ever, we must collaborate to ensure that no child or person dies of malaria again. As we celebrate our progress, we must also drive further progress toward malaria elimination in Nigeria and Africa at large by focusing on two key areas:

*Ensure that malaria elimination remains high on Nigeria’s public health and development agenda with strong political commitment from leaders at all levels; and

*Advocate at all levels to ensure sufficient funding to sustain the progress made so far, as we jointly seek to end malaria for good.

*Encourage my fellow private sector leaders to implement Malaria prevention and treatment programmes in their companies, as we do across our businesses in the Dangote Group.

Happily enough, our fight against the malaria scourge has been buoyed by the emergence of a new malaria vaccine – R21/Matrix-M, which was developed by the University of Oxford and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), which approved the R21 vaccine use after it conducted its in-house checks, said Nigeria expects to get at least 100,000 doses of the vaccine in donations soon.

All efforts must be made to sustain the adequate sourcing and application of this innovative vaccine in the fight against malaria; akin to the noble efforts made to ensure the eradication of polio in Nigeria and Africa. We at the Aliko Dangote Foundation pledge to spearhead the collective effort to ensure adequate provision, supply and application of this malaria vaccine.

In my role as the Chairman of the Nigeria End Malaria Council (NEMC), my Foundation and I will continue to engage with the National Malaria Elimination Program (NMEP) and key stakeholders to support the efforts of NMEP to address malaria in our workplaces, communities, and especially high burden areas to renew commitments to help Nigeria attain its goal of malaria elimination by 2030.

Together, we can save our children, families, nation, and continent. The time to act is NOW!

Alhaji Dangote, GCON, is the  Chairman of National Malaria Elimination Council (NMEC), United Nations (UN) Malaria Ambassador for Nigeria.