E-hailing drivers under the aegis of the Amalgamated Union Of App-Based Transport Workers Of Nigeria (AUATWON) have down tools to protest low fares in their operations. 

The strike is also against high commission rates set by Uber and Bolt — the two biggest ride-hailing service providers in Nigeria.

The downing of tools was also premised on the increased petrol pump prices in the country following the removal of fuel subsidy announced by President Bola Tinubu at his inauguration.

Last week, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited adjusted the price of petrol from N197 to over N500 across its retail outlets, leading to an astronomical surge in the prices of goods and services.

In an official statement on Wednesday, the association said the latest removal of subsidy, which has increased the prices of petrol by over 270 percent, coupled with the “unreasonable 25 percent commission charge on every trip, has further put the business and investment in an unprofitable state”.

The app-transport workers said they were struggling to survive and can no longer cope with the situation.

Hence, the drivers are asking for a rise in fare by 200 percent and a reduction of commission by 50 percent.

The operators are also demanding that the companies put an end to the unlawful deactivation of drivers, and implement an “open collective bargaining with AUATWON”.

“We’ve passed our demands to the application companies but they’ve refused to attend to them,” the statement reads.

“We are using this opportunity to call on the fleet managers, driver-partners, and app-base transport workers across Nigeria, to support this strike fully and understand, that our service(s) must be withdrawn during this protest and moratorium or waiver should be given to all drivers on rentals or higher purchase.

“This is a solidarity step we must take together to protect our investment as fleet managers, secure our business as workers, and secure our job as app drivers.

“We are confident this will give us a better and profitable industry that will encourage every stakeholder.”

…Says Allegations By Whistleblower ‘Completely Fraudulent, Unsubstantiated’

…Absolves Kyari, Komolafe, Others Of Corruption Allegations

…Directs Publisher To Apologize To Kyari, Others For Malicious Publications

An Ad-hoc Committee that was set up by the House of Representatives to investigate the alleged loss of over $2.4bn in revenue from the illegal sale of 48 million barrels of Crude Oil in 2015 including crude oil exports from 2014 to date has cleared the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd of any wrongdoing.

The Committee which was constituted on December 20th and headed by Hon. Mark Gbillah Terseer submitted it’s report to the House on Wednesday, June 7.

In it’s recommendations, the Committee states that there is no evidence of wrongdoing against the Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPC, Malam Mele Kyari with regards to these allegations

It also absolved the current Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) Engr Gbenga Komolafe who was the Executive Director of NNPC Upstream department when these allegations were made.

The allegations about 48 million barrels of Nigeria’s crude oil stored in China being sold illegally without the proceeds being remitted into the account of the Federation surfaced in 2015 immediately after the advent of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration but only became rife after an online news platform-Point Blank News owned by a Nigeria on asylum in the United States of America Mr Jackson Ude published the story with attachments that included a letter to the then Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) from a Nigerian law firm called Lords & Temple.

The law firm had claimed to be solicitors to a Mexican company called SAMANO SA DE CV and its President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) a certain Jose Salazar Tinajero.

The law firm claimed in the letter that Mr Tinajero was approached by an unidentified group in China in 2015 about the intention of the NNPC to sell 48 million barrels of Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude which they alleged had been stolen from Nigeria and stored in tank farms in China.

The letter from Lords & Temple also claimed Mr Tinajero provided the information about the stolen crude to then NNPC Group General Manager (GGM) Crude Oil Marketing Department (COMD) Malam Mele Kyari who was the NNPC Group Managing Director (GMD) when the letter was written by the law firm, the late Chief of Staff to the President and Retired Air Commodore Umar Mohammed Gololo.

The law firm claimed their client became aware in October 2015 of the efforts by the NNPC to sell the allegedly stolen crude in China and wrote an email to Malam Mele Kyari through an associate of their client a certain Marco Antonio Ramirez expressing their interest to buying the crude but did not receive a positive response from Kyari or the Nigerian Government.

The law firm also claims officials of their client were exposed to the threat of life harassment and persecution for seeking compensation from the Nigerian government for the information they provided about allegedly stolen crude oil cargoes in China and subsequently wrote additional letters to the then Minority Leader of the Senate Senator Godswill Akpabio and the former Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS) Malam Lawal Musa Daura about their claims.

The letter from the law firm was accompanied by attachments which were published by Point Blank News and included alleged authorization by NNPC bonny terminal for the sale of 9 million barrels of crude oil in storage in unverified tank farms in China which was allegedly part of an approved quantity to be lifted from the Bonny terminal, alleged storage information from the tank farms in China.

It aldo contained copies of alleged email and WhatsApp exchanges between representatives of SAMANO SA DE CV (Jose Salazar Tinajero and Marco Antonio Ramirez) with Kyari, an alleged picture of SAMANO representatives with Kyari at Transcorp Hilton, alleged picture of Jose Salazar Tinajero with Air Commodore Umar Mohammed (Rtd) and copies of letters written by Mr Tinajero on behalf of SAMANO to the President which the law firm confirmed was not delivered.

During the course of it’s investigation, the Committee discovered that neither Ramirez or Tinajero has provided or has been able to provide the identity of the so-called group in China that alerted Mr Tinajero to the existence of up to 48 million barrels of Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude oil in China to ascertain the veracity of their claims.

It was further discovered by the Committee that contrary to claims by Lords & Temple in their letter that their client was in possession of documents including bank transfer details, names of vessels and their captains to show that the allegedly stolen crude was illicitly sold by some officials of the Nigerian government and the NNPC, none of these documents or any other documents have been provided by either Rarnirez or Tinajero to corroborate their allegations.

From records made available to the Committee, it was able to establish that Nigeria produces about 250,000 barrels of bonny light crude daily and is exported mainly from one terminal (Bonny) so it would take about 6 months and 12 days for up to 48 million barrels of Nigeria’s bonny light crude to be produced.

“It is not feasible to think for over half a year the entire quantity of this very sought after type of crude oil grade produced by Nigeria and exported from this terminal was stolen out of the country without trace. 48 million barrels of crude translates to not less than 48 vessel cargoes of crude oil using the
usual maximum loading quantity of averagely around 950,000 barrels per vessel with adequate draft at the terminal.

“It is not feasible that up to 48 vessels which have identifiable IMO numbers would be utilized to steal Nigeria’s crude oil without a trace when a letter of credit (LC) is usually required to be issued for each crude oil export from Nigeria,” the Committee said in its repprt.

In the Committee ‘s report, the DSS was said to have confirmed receipt of a letter from Jose Salazar Tinajero to the former DSS DG on behalf of SAMANO SA DE CV alleging existence of stolen crude oil from Nigeria in China.

Considering the magnitude of these allegations the DG responded to the letter expressing the interest of the service to verify these allegations and requesting that SAMANO provide the service with related documents and evidence to assist the service in carrying out its investigation.

The DSS did not receive corroborating evidence or documents from SAMANO and after very high-level correspondence and communication with the authorities in China, the DSS concluded in correspondence to the committee that the entire allegations by SAMANO were a scam intended for a pecuniary benefit;

The report added, “Mr Jose Salazar Tinajero has previously been arrested in Paraguay for trying to smuggle gold, bronze, zinc and other metals into the US city of Atlanta. He was also indicted in the US city of Maryland for fraudulently reporting the social security number of another US citizen who he has no relation with and for utilizing addresses he had no connection with or presence at for companies he registered in the US. Please see attached documents in related Annexure.

” Marco Antonio Ramirez has previously been indicted for crimes in the United States and was found guilty in Nigeria of defrauding Nigerians to the tune of $ 2.5 million and is currently serving a jail term in the Ikoyi prisons. Alhaji Ahmed Hamma Saleh himself was defrauded by Mr Ramirez after he paid what he believed would be an investment towards American citizenship.

“The credibility and character of the individuals who made the allegations of stolen Nigerian crude oil cargoes in China are clearly questionable and was emphasized by their desire for monetary compensation from the Nigerian government for information that was not corroborated and did not lead to any recovery by the Nigerian government which is the premise upon which compensation can be considered in line with the whistleblower policy of the government after a formal agreement in that regard which did not happen in this instance.”

On the interface and exchange of messages between the group and Kyari, the Committee in it’s report stated that Kyari in 2015 was the NNPC Group General Manager (GGM) Crude Oil Marketing Department (COMD) when these individuals made these allegations and considering the issues under investigation were directly under his purview before the Petroleum Industry Act, he was delegated by the government to interface with them during the course of the government’s investigation.

He was also constrained to manage the relationship with Ramirez and Tinajero the main proponents of the allegations and their new Nigerian cohorts to ensure the government was able to obtain the facts.

The report added, This explains the existence of photographs, email, WhatsApp and text correspondence with some of these individuals as he could not carry out the government’s bidding without directly interfacing and relating with these individuals.

“Malam Mele Kyari’s termination of his interaction with these individuals after the government determined their allegations were false and fraudulent displeased them because of the privileges they felt they enjoyed and informed their obsession with making personal accusations against him.

“There is no evidence of wrongdoing against Malam Mele Kyari with regards to these allegations.The current Commission Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) Engr Gbenga Komolafe was the Executive Director of NNPC Upstream department when these allegations were made but was not involved in the investigation of these allegations as the government did not involve.

“He was previously a member of a presidential committee investigating crude oil theft in 2014 as NNPC
representative but this committee was unrelated to these allegations and the committee completed its assignment before these allegations came to the fore.

“The is no evidence of wrongdoing against Engr Gbenga Komolafe with regards to these allegations. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by the then NNPC with regards to these allegations.”

The committee advised the National Assembly (Senate and the House), anti-graft and other
agencies of government not to waste taxpayer’s funds on further future investigation of these
allegations as they appear to be completely fraudulent and unsubstantiated.

“The security and anti-graft agencies should be advised to prosecute any of the individuals who
initially made these allegations if any one of them continues to peddle these false allegations
after the committee’s investigation;

The Abuja Height court handling the case against the related individuals is advised to resume the hearing and prosecution of the case so justice can be meted out appropriately if any of the individuals are found culpable.

“Mr Jackson Ude and Point Blank News should be advised to issue a public retraction of their publication of these allegations on their website and other media outlets considering the damage this publication has done to the reputation of related government officials and should strongly be admonished to be more circumspect in their future publications,” the Report concluded.

The Federal Government has designed a National Pay Policy (NPP) to check arbitrariness in the workplace and to ensure appropriate remuneration for Nigerian workers.

The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the National Salaries Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC), Ekpo Nta, made this known on Wednesday in Abuja.

Speaking with Daily Sun, Nta said the policy will calculate the number of hours a worker spends in the office and the quality of work done which will determine salary payment.

He said: “What it entails is that when people are working in any country, even in your own private organization, you have a policy guiding them. For example, for a fresh appointment in government, you know that you will work for 35 years or at age 60, whichever comes first, you leave that system.

“So, those are the kinds of policies you have to put in place. In other to earn that salary you have to be at work from a particular time in the morning to a particular time in the day or night for those who do shift. For those in the information sector, you don’t even have opening and closing times. So, it’s all these that cumulate to determine your remuneration. Are you going to get a fixed salary? Are you going to get additional allowances?

“Are you going to get fringe benefits because sometimes fringe benefits might not be in terms of cash? Do we give you a voucher to go to the hospital or do we give you a staff bus to take you home? These are parts of what will be defined as your pay policy. How many times do I need to pay you in a year? Should it be every month? Should it be every week? And how many times should I give you an increment? You know for some people you have an automatic increment after one year.

“How many times should we review your salary? Should inflation affect your salary? If inflation is so high should it make you continue what you are earning and if not what percentages should we use or what indices do we use? These are what will constitute a pay policy.

“Besides, as an employer, before you recruit, you should be able to know your income and determine how many workers to employ. In addition, you want to look at your purse in determining a policy. If you, as a person want to recruit a driver for your home, you have to decide how much you are generating to be able to pay a driver.

“So, you can say you can employ a driver but you will not be able to pay N30,000 per month. That now becomes a policy in your home. If you want to have two drivers, two things will happen. It’s either you increase your budget of income to be able to meet two drivers or you negotiate with the driver to come between 8 in the morning and 12 noon. These constitute what you call your own local policies at home.”

Former lawmaker of the 8th National Assembly, Shehu Sani, has labelled Kaduna State former Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, as a religious bigot.

In a Twitter post on Thursday morning, Sani shared photos of four renowned Christian clerics in Kaduna who were killed by terrorists under El-Rufai’s administration.

The former lawmaker noted that El-Rufai never condemned the killing of the clerics, nor did he pay the family of the deceased condolence over the sad events.

“Imagine a Governor of a State for eight years and these High profile Clerics were murdered by terrorists in his state,and he never for once bothered to visit their families for condolence Or even speak personally on the tragedies. If I don’t find a word bigger than a ‘bigot’, I’ll coin it,” Sani tweeted.

See a screengrab of the Twitter post below:

Senator Sani’s assertion is coming amid backlash on El-Rufai after a video of him promoting a Muslim-Muslim ticket in Kaduna and Nigeria surfaced on the internet.

The Governor of Kaduna State, had in the video where he spoke in the Hausa language, told the audience before handing over to his successor that the Islamic dominance in Kaduna had been successfully replicated in Nigeria and that it will continue for a long time.

El-Rufai also stated that the victory of President Bola Tinubu had silenced the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), adding that he will sustain an Islamic-dominated government for 20 years and unending in Kaduna State and Nigeria at large.

Former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, has asserted that President Bola Tinubu would have lost the 2023 presidential election to Atiku Abubakar of the Democratic Party (PDP), if not for the help of former Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.

According to him, El-Rufai and former Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, and some governors elected on the platform of the All Progressive Congress (APC), backed Tinubu to power despite opposition.

Naija News reports that Fani-Kayode stated this in reaction to the backlash on El-Rufai over a viral video of him on the internet where he spoke on Muslim-Muslim tickets in Kaduna State and Nigeria at large.

In the video, the former governor, who spoke in the Hausa language, noted that their plan for the last eight years in Kaduna is to maintain a political leadership of a Muslim-Muslim ticket.

While asserting that there was no Christian that could say that he or they were marginalized, El-Rufai said the ruling party’s plot is to remain in power with a Muslim-Muslim ticket for the next 20 years.

According to him, by then the Christians would have come to the realization of the reality of Muslim-Muslim leadership in the state.

In a Twitter thread, however, on Thursday morning, Fani-Kayode said El-Rufai is not a religious bigot as many have called him.

He defended the former governor saying he worked closely with him under two administrations and he was never any of the names he is labelled with at the moment.

“When Nasir El Rufai, Bello Matawalle and Yahaya Bello took President Muhammadu Buhari to court and defeated him over the illegal and ill-fated cash grab/new notes policy they were considered to be heroes and the entire world commended them.

“Yet sadly today, simply because he made some comments about the Muslim/Muslim ticket before a gathering of Muslim clerics in Kaduna State he is being demonised and labelled as a religious bigot, a terrorist, a fascist and an Islamist fanatic by mainly those who do not share his religious faith, who do not know him, who have never met him and who are in a different political party to him.

“I know a religious bigot when I see one and I assure you that Nasir El Rufai is not one of them. Neither is he a Muslim fundamentalist, a terrorist, a fascist or a jihadist.

“If he were any of these things he would not be my friend and brother and I would be the first to openly oppose and condemn him”, Fani-Kayode wrote on Twitter.

He added: “If he were any of these things he would attract my contempt rather than have my respect.

“We worked closely together when we were in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s cabinet many years ago and we worked closely together during the presidential campaign for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. I know him very well indeed.

“He is a down-to-earth, practical, pragmatic politician who speaks his mind boldly, who is deeply calculating and courageous, who knows and understands the game of thrones and the art of acquiring and wielding power very well, who has no fear of his adversaries and who is determined to do whatever it takes to win. These are all virtues and not vices.”

According to the former Minister, many people denigrate El-Rufai because he has proved over and over again that he is far smarter than them.

“Yet love him or hate him I will tell you this: had it not been for him, Matawalle and the Northern Governors of the APC there would have been no power shift to the south, the Presidency would have remained in the North and Atiku, not Asiwaju would be President today.

“Again had it not been for him and Matawalle, the cabal in the Villa that backed, empowered, protected and encouraged Godwin Emefiele and his Agbor Mafia and that worked so hard to stop Asiwaju from winning the election would have prevailed.

“And of course, that is why all the forces of hell gathered together to ensure that Matawalle lost his seat as Governor of Zamfara. That is the price that he had to pay,” Fani-Kayode said.

The APC chieftain argued further that those who insist on launching a crusade, igniting a religious war and assuming the worse about El Rufai today simply because of his comments about religion in the politics of Kaduna state would do well to consider all this as they continue in their asinine behaviour and insidious tomfoolery.

“If there are people that ought to be regarded as the true heroes of the struggle to make Asiwaju President El Rufai and Matawalle must be amongst them.

“I may not agree with everything El Rufai says or does but what a great fighter he is.

“He has both my affection and respect. He always did and he always will,” Fani-Kayode insisted.

A head of the inauguration of the 10th Senate on Tuesday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has appealed to the All Progressives Congress (APC) Senators-elect to abide by the zoning of leadership positions announced by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party.
Tinubu made the call at a meeting with APC Senators-Elect on Wednesday night in Abuja, according to a statement by the Akpabio/Jibrin Media Team.

The APC last month zoned the position of Senate President to the South-South with Senator Godswill Akpabio as the preferred candidate and Senator Jubrin Barau from North West preferred as deputy Senate President.

Addressing over 40 APC Senators-elect led by Senator Akpabio at the Aso Rock Villa Wednesday night, President Tinubu appealed to all APC Senators-elect to toe the line of the party’s zoning arrangement in electing their Presiding Officers stressing “this is the right thing to do in support of the Renewed Hope agenda” of his administration.

“At this point of our history and challenges facing us as a new administration, all hands must be on deck to salvage the unpalatable situation facing the nation. We must see the situation as a pan-Nigerian Project for the Executive and the Legislature to work out solutions to the challenges of the nation,” he told the Senators-elect.

Tinubu said: “The task ahead to finding solutions to the myriads of national problems cannot come from the Executive arm of government alone but by the working together of the Executive and the Legislature.”

He added that Senators-elect should reach out and pass the appeal to other APC Senators-elect unavoidably absent to toe the party line and put a leash on all personal ambition in favour of party programme and national interest.

“Talk to your colleagues that are not here to toe the party line and give the Renewed Hope agenda a chance to succeed. The elephant is big enough for all members and indeed Nigerians to have a share of the Renewed Hope in due course,” he said.

At the meeting, which lasted late into the night, Akpabio, once again, congratulated the President on the successful presidential inauguration.

He said that since the party announced the zoning arrangements for the leadership of the National Assembly, majority of the party’s Senators-elect, led by him and Senator Jibrin, have reached out to other APC Senators-elect and those from the opposition political parties with positive result and pledge of support.

Heidi, the estranged wife of singer Sina Rambo, is set out to give out her wedding ring to another a duo planning to get married.

Heidi, in a video, announced this via her insta story showcasing the diamond ring and declaring the official separation from her husband.

In December 2022, Heidi called the singer out and accused him of being abusive after the wedding solemnisation took place in October, 2021.

Popular comedy star Osita Iheme has celebrated the long-standing friendship with his colleague and onscreen twin, Chinedu Ikedieze aka Aki.

The duo took the African movie industries by storm after featuring in their debut film, “Aki na Ukwa” in 2002, which paved the way for them to become household names.

In 2021, a remake of their debut film titled ‘Aki and Paw’ co-produced by Play Network Studios and Film One Entertainment was released in December honouring the comic stars who played a major role in creating beautiful childhood memories for many even till adulthood.

Posing with his ‘partner in crime’ who sat on a power bike, Pawpaw acknowledged their friendship which has spanned over two decades

He tweeted: “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is Success and working together is progress. #GodistheGreatest.”

Inadequate electricity supply remains a huge challenge to manufacturers, accounting for their huge investment in self-energy generation, which stood at N76.7 billion in the second half of last year.

Manufacturers’ cost of self-energy generation increased from N45.04 billion in the corresponding half of 2021, indicating N31.66 billion or 70 per cent increase over the period.

According to Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) ‘Bi-annual Economic Review’ for the second half of 2022, it also increased by N8.9 billion or 13 per cent when compared with N67.8 billion recorded in the preceding half.

This document, which was made available to The Nation, presented the summary of the survey of the manufacturing sector by MAN for the second half of last year.

The survey was designed to monitor changes in manufacturing sector performance indicators viz-a-viz the behaviours of macro-economic and policy environments during the period of the survey.

The focus manufacturing indicators include capacity utilisation, production value, inventory of unsold products, level of utilisation of local raw materials, investment, expenditure on alternative energy source, etc.

MAN, in the survey, said electricity supply to the industries from the national grid declined marginally to 11 hours per day from 12 hours recorded in the preceding half.

It, however, said average number of outages per day stabilised at four times in the second half of last year as it was recorded for the first half of the year.

“Irrefutably, the trends show that power supply to the industry is still a huge challenge which accounts for huge investment of manufacturers in self-energy generation.

“Consequently, expenditure on alternative energy source increased to N76.7 billion in the second half of 2022 from N45.04 billion recorded in the corresponding half of 2021; thus, indicating N31.66 billion or 70 per cent increase over the period,” the document said.

It also stated that the huge expenditure on alternative energy was incurred on procurement of diesel, gas, generators and spare parts, inverters and UPS, etc.

MAN, however, put forward a number of recommendations to improve power supply to the sector. Its Director General, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, for instance, called for the development and implementation of a roadmap focusing on off-grid solutions and independent power projects by the private sector.

While noting that this will ensure adequate supply of energy for production and also attract and expand investment, Ajayi-Kadir also harped on the need to carry out further investment in the electricity value chain and commit to adding 10000Mw to the current electricity distributed in the country.

He also said there was the need to embrace and support significant development of energy mix and renewable since Nigeria has huge potential for solar and wind. “Promote energy efficiency and renewable energy deployment in industries and homes,” he emphasized.

The MAN DG also stressed the need to “Review the current status of the four national refineries to determine their current state and commission their resuscitation to produce fuels locally and review the gas price for domestic consumption to be in tandem with the export price which is about $3.25 per cubic meter.”

He also wants quick incentivization of more investment in gas aggregation to end gas flaring; optimization of crude oil production based on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quota and gas production to ramp up revenue now that hydrocarbon is still saleable.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Father’s Day is still next Sunday. But after the Executive Editor of LeVogue, LEADERSHIP’s Fashion and Lifestyle magazine, Nikki Odu-Khiran, asked me if I could write a piece to mark the day, it got me thinking. 

If my father, who passed on May 28, 2000, ever had to write on Father’s Day, what would he have written? Of course, he wouldn’t have written anything. A pensioner who worked as a storekeeper at the Apapa (Lagos) Quays of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) before he retired in 1996, Robert could barely write. 

But my, oh, my, he could hold a crowd with his speech. And if you wanted to get him going, then talk politics, especially about Nigeria’s Civil War.

I can imagine what he would have said about Father’s Day back then. Being a father in his time is different from being a father today. And if my children have to write about Father’s Day two and a half decades from now, they’ll probably be using the same lens of wistful contemplation. Every generation thinks its burden is the heaviest. 

My father would not be surprised, for example, that I didn’t know his real age and never once asked him until he passed. Of course, I wrote 84 in his obit because I had to write something. I got that from asking several sources I thought would know. Not from him. For the over four decades that he lived and as far back as I can remember, I never could ask him his age.

What it meant to be a father was for the son to stay in his place. Father’s authority was final, unquestionable. Mucking about asking him about his age would have been crossing a line. 

Fast forward 2023. My children not only ask me to “surrender” my PIN number and God-knows-what-else, my four-year-old granddaughter asks me my name, my mother’s name, and once teased her own mother to call my wife by name. And that, of course, is woke.

I’m not sure my father would have thought so. Perhaps if he had lived to see his great-granddaughter, he would have half-jokingly, half-embarrassingly dismissed such precociousness as a regrettable 

consequence of the new-age bug.

If my father wanted me to become anything other than a journalist, I’m not sure there was much I could have done about it. You studied what you were told, which was often either law, medicine or engineering. Being a father at the time meant laying down the rules about virtually everything from your child’s hairstyle to their course of study. And being a son meant one thing: obedience. 

Fortunately, my father wasn’t really interested in my career choice. All he wanted was for me to be the best in any career I wanted, a concession which I still find hard to explain, given his dominance in my life. 

My father believed that staying away from booze, parties and girls was the beginning of wisdom and kept a long cane to enforce it. You really couldn’t blame him.  Ajegunle, where I grew up, was one of the most congested slums of Lagos at the time. Booze was cheap, parties rampant, and girls plenty. 

Of course, boys being boys (and occasionally with the connivance of my mother), I sneaked off to parties a few times, stayed out late and swigged a few bottles of beer.  I even wrote frothy love letters with lines from James Hadley Chase. 

However, when I crossed the line like when I went off on my own to see a football match at the National Stadium where dozens died in the post-game stampede, my mother gave me the full measure of a fan belt hung on the door lintel until I was covered in welts and near passing out, while my father turned a blind eye.

Of my many transgressions growing up, bringing a girl home, even when I was over 21, would have been considered a cardinal sin. It didn’t matter that I was out of secondary school and in higher school for my HSC, my father often warned, sternly, that hanging out with a girl when he was still responsible for me meant that I was in a hurry to relieve him of any further fatherly responsibility. His favourite phrase was, “If you get any girl pregnant, you’re done for!”

I’m sort of stuck in that groove. Tried as I have to be a modern-day dad, my children — all in their adult years — still know I felt a bit awkward, especially in the very early stages of their relationships. I think psychologists call it conditioning. 

It’s futile, isn’t it? I mean for a father, these days, to worry too much about the social life of their grown-up children? You worry as they grow up, hoping they will pass every stage of growth when they should. Then you worry when they start making friends, hoping they will survive peer pressure. 

Then you worry when they start going out, hoping they will keep the right company; you worry when they start going to school hoping that for all the huge bills you pay (and for their own sake) they will make good grades and turn out well. 

Then when they finish, you also worry about how they will get a good job; how they would marry and who they would marry; and perhaps when they would have children. And when the grandchildren come, the worry cycle starts again. 

I guess my father had all these worries, too, maybe less so in many ways than my mother had them. Yet, in a way, he had far more control of things than I could ever hope to have over my own children. If he didn’t want me to go out to a party, to see Ian Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me or any of Amitabh Bachchan’s hit movies, for example, which I rarely did, he only needed to say the word and, very often, that was that.

As a father today, however, if I don’t want my child to go to a party, he could bring the party home by phone. And if I don’t want him to go to the movie, he could watch Netflix on a speed dial.

If I told him that too many bananas and sweets could unleash the village masquerades on him, which was what my mother told me obviously for my own good, he could simply ask Google. And I’ve just been told that if I give my son a timeout, thanks to the next big thing, Apple’s Vision Pro, he could simply recreate his own new world indoors.

I wasn’t a sheltered kid. Back in the day, my father was happy to put my school “chop money” into my hand every school day and off I went, either alone or with other students, covering a distance of at least 25 kilometres to and from school through shortcuts and winding street corners on foot. We didn’t have to worry about kidnappers.

It’s a different world today. Being a father when my children were much younger also meant being their driver for school runs, popping up on Open Day and fretting about what age they should get a phone, things my father would have considered helicopter parenting. 

Sometimes, being a modern-day father can feel like the Chartterjees in the legal drama Mrs. Chartterjee Vs Norway, only in the domestic sense, where your own grown-up children take the place of the Norwegian authorities. 

Today’s children have a completely different code of how they want their own children raised, nurtured and treated, different from what your mother or father taught you!

And increasingly, a number of them relate to you differently. On this Father’s Day, for example, if you’re nice, your son might even offer you a bottle of beer! The mere thought of it would make my father turn in his grave. I can almost hear him say, “this generation is done for!” Is it?