As Nigeria wraps up its election, attention shifts to the judges. With over seven hundred cases filed at the tribunals, the judiciary will be overworked. Yet we expect wisdom, courage, and intelligence to correct all errors, deliberate or otherwise, made by the political branches of government. We rest our hopes on the judges, and their power of judicial review, to rebuke impunity, reverse error and strengthen us toward electoral justice.  

It is ironic that whilst we think that increasing involvement of judges in determining who gets elected as political leader is inimical to consolidating democracy, we are forced to continue to call on judges to intervene in electoral matters for the sake of justice. Of course, courts are called temples of justice because they are fit and proper to receive the intercessions of a people who are brutalized, oppressed, and deprived of justice. So, the irony is not so depressing because when we beckon on judges to act in the name of justice, we are giving concrete expression to the expression that courts are temples of justice.

The conventional theory of constitutional democracy holds that there are two political branches and one non-political branch. The political branches are the executive and the legislature. Members of these two branches are elected by the people and have the liberty to act in furtherance of their interests. The theory of representation by foremost parliamentarian and jurisprudent, Edmund Burke, is that legislators are trustees of the people. As trustees, they are free to decide public interests according to their own understanding of what is in the best interests of the people. A contrary theory of representation argues that the legislator is but an agent of the people: he must do what the people want him to do, not what he thinks is best for the people. Whether legislators are agents or trustees of the people, the common logic is that the legislator act politically. To act politically is to advance the interests of one group notwithstanding that such interest is not rationally compelling. That is why we do not excoriate legislators who fight to ensure that projects are sited in their constituencies notwithstanding that economic rationality does not favor those places. We consider them good representatives. But we shame a judge who delivers judgement in favor of his relatives because of consanguinity.

So, the judicial branch is not so designed. Judges are not representatives of the people. A judge does not represent his family, his friends, or his constituency. He represents God in the religious sense, or rationality in ultra-rationality. Judges do justice. And justice is giving people what they deserve, not what they desire. We can see from this social portraiture that judges have more gravitas and bona fides to act as statesmen in times of troubles than representatives and executives. As we say, politicians care about the next election, but statesmen care about the nation. Judges ought to be statesmen.

The concept of judges as statesmen has a strong implication for sustaining democracy in difficult times and places.  In good times and places democracy is safe even with interest-based politics. The foundations of democracy rest on the rule of law. The rule of law means that all persons and authorities are subject to the law; that the law respects basic equality of all persons and the law is executed without deference to prerogatives and merits, apart from the merits of justice. Overlaying the foundations of rule of law is accountability. There is no exemption from the rigor of the law because the institutions of law enforcement are professionally commitment to fair and equitable implementation. In such a society where justice is routinized in administrative practices, the court plays a passive role and is self-restrained. Judges merely adjudicate in matters where vagueness obscures fair and equitable administrative of justice by the political branches.

But in a society where justice is not routinized as administrative practices become of political capture by a powerful minority or a numerical majority, the court moves from passivity to activism to reestablish the rule of law. The legendary Justice Oputa put this pointedly thus: “Whenever the law is used to foster social, racial, economic or sex oppression, the judiciary should quickly intervene to redress the imbalance and thus restore justice”. The court does not act when justice is routinized. The court acts when justice is denied, especially when it is structurally denied.

This articulation of judicial activism bodes well with a powerful theory about the judiciary propounded by Harvard professor Abram Chayes. It is the ‘governance’ theory of the court. Chayes argues that the court has a right to govern just like the other branches of government when the other branches fail to do the job. Ordinarily, the court forebears to govern trusting the more ‘political’ branches to govern. But where the two fail to govern, the court steps in. Then, judges become statesmen. This explains the various curves of judicial activism.

US Supreme Justice Stephen Breyer traces the context of judicial activism in the constitutional history of the United States. He shows different periods when the US Supreme Court shifted the gear to promote justice or to disrupt structural violation of the people’s rights. For example, he argues that before Justice Warren, the US Supreme Court “overly emphasized the Constitution’s protection of private property ‘as against rights of political participation. In the Warren era, the Supreme Court interpreted the constitution to move away from the logic of property right in the Lochner v. New York case and find a basis in the constitution for ‘active liberty’ for citizens to govern themselves through the principle of ‘one man one vote’. By so doing, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Warren reconstructed the United States away from the legacy of Jim Crow.

The court is a political institution. So said Robert Dahl. The court is a political institution because of the role that it plays in the political management of the society. In his book about the Nigerian Supreme Court. Professor Isa Sagay paints a picture of the Nigerian Supreme Court that rose up to defends fundamental rights against the corrosion of military dictatorship. That heroic Supreme Court of Eso, Obaseki, Oputa, Uwais and others understood that in times of crisis the court become a political institution that defends the rule of law from new threats. The Uwais court would not have done such if the structure of justice had not been eroded by military dictatorship.

The greatest seduction today will be to believe that we are now an entrenched democracy and therefore the court should carve for itself a routinized retail work that does not override the iniquities of the political class. That is a recipe for disaster for the commonwealth and irrelevance for the court. The true description of Nigeria today is, as the University of Guttenberg’s acclaimed ‘Verities of Democracy’ report 2022 puts it, ‘an electoral autocracy’. Nigeria is not yet a democracy by the evident capture of state institutions by ruling elites. The 2023 election has further cemented this reputation. The election has seen the recklessness of Nigerian politicians who refuse to respect the most fundamental tenets of electoral democracy.

We have always had electoral irregularities and frauds. But we have never had this level of criminalization of elections and wanton collapse of regulatory oversight. The election manager, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) refused to apply its own electronic safeguards in a bewildering capitulation to political banditry. Even the basic regulatory tasks like determining the eligibility of candidates to stand for elections and whether candidates have multiple nominations, regulatory oversight that could be established without expending resources, were abandoned. The regulator did not bother to apply simple rules, even rules that it made pursuant to its statutory powers.

The Supreme Court has inherited the regulatory failures of the election manager. It has been saddled with correcting the impunity of the political class. It beholds that the country is disintegrating on account of reckless disregards for basic rules of justice. It sees the continuing immiseration of the people whose anger is boiling over. The judges know that unrebuked impunity has established a powerful incentive structure that will inexorably lead to the total collapse of the rule of law. In such situation, judges must become statesmen to save their beloved country. They have many things challenging them. They will contend with fear for their lives. They will contend with favors from corrupt politicians. But they should brush aside all these and do justice, even if the heavens fall.

All eyes are on the judges. 

Cast your mind back to your secondary school days. English was the only legitimate language of communication. There were students from the hinterland who couldn’t measure up to the requirement and so had to run afoul of the law and face the inevitable sanctions. 

There was the case of one such student who had a problem with pronouncing any word with the fricative sound, ‘sh’. So, he would pronounce education as educasonn and attention as attensonn. Only God knows how many times he had been made to pay fines for expressing himself in  ‘vernacular’, as the local language was derisively tagged. 

On this fateful day, the long-suffering teacher decided that he would do whatever it took to cure our friend of his phonetic disability. He wrote ‘tion’ on the blackboard and ordered the student to say ‘shun’. 

The student said, ‘Tayon’

The teacher wondered if the student had gone bunkers. “Where did that come from? Where did you get ‘tayon’?” He asked the distraught boy.

“Sir, t-i-o-n is tayon. Sorry sir”. 

The teacher hit the ceiling. He called down all the terrors of Hades on the hapless native at the end of which the boy’s problem had become compounded with terror-induced stuttering. “Ta-ta-ta-yon!” 

Wherever he is today, I’m sure he wouldn’t be giving his grandchildren the full details of his linguistic apprenticeship. Suffice it to say that he graduated with his fricative affliction and went on to make something admirable of his life.

Today, the raging discussion in many intellectual circles, especially online, is how to deploy more native resources into the development of our children with the ultimate aim of producing surefooted achievers who can hold their own against the best from other parts of the world. Would it be worth our while to try to implement Prof Babs Fafunwa’s recommendation of using our various local languages as the medium of instruction in schools, especially at the primary level?

Fafunwa actually conducted an experiment to validate his thesis that the use of mother tongue in the education of young people is necessary for cognitive, cultural and nationalistic reasons. His famous Ife Six Year Primary Project (SYPP), carried out between 1970-1979, established that the Nigerian child will benefit immensely if schooled with mother tongue. Fafunwa’s findings ran against the accepted wisdom of the times that the English language was the only possible language that could handle the sophisticated process of imparting education.

When he was appointed as Minister of Education during the Babangida years, Prof Fafunwa tried to practice what he preached by encouraging the use of the mother tongue for teaching in primary schools to enable the children glide painlessly from the local language they were used to, and the colonial one they were being forced to assimilate. The issue was beyond patriotism, explained the celebrated don. It was how nature had ordered cognition. If children are taught in the same language their parents speak to them at home, they learn in a relaxed atmosphere without the obstacle of transliteration.

Several other scholarly studies have since been conducted to validate Fafunwa’s postulation. The renewed interest in the subject will further help in redefining our approach to education and the cognitive tools we deploy. 

Patrick O. Akinsanya and Damilare G. Tella, in their scholarly presentation quoted Fafunwa as saying that since the English child still had problems in understanding his or her language, the Nigerian child suffered double jeopardy because he or she had to learn the second language first, before using it as a tool for learning, and this hampered his or her mental and social development. 

When you separate home language and school language you trigger what has been described as an “epistemological torture” for the African child who is first exposed to his mother tongue at the early stage of his education, whose in-built learning mechanism is internalizing and structuring the grammar and technique of his mother tongue, but he is all of a sudden introduced to a foreign language as he begins schooling. This will  maim him emotionally and have ripple effects on his mental and social development.

I once had the privilege of asking Prof Fafunwa about the feasibility of his campaign for the use of the mother tongue in education. Ever genial and ready to share ideas, he asked if he could shock me. I told him to try. He then said, “Do you know that those village children you’re talking about will learn English faster if English as a subject is taught to them in their mother tongue?” That shocked me. How do you learn English from a Hausa-speaking teacher, for example? But the good professor went on to explain the results of his experiments which had been replicated by other scholars with similar results

The first nine years of formal education (Primary 1-JSS3) are crucial for the educational development of a child. The problem in Africa is not just the structures established by the colonialists to serve their own purpose during colonialism but the sustenance of such archaic structures by African political elite who erroneously think that multilingualism is a weakness rather than a strength.

All that could be traced to inferiority complex or the black-skin-white-mask syndrome which makes the African elite deify the chains that have been holding him down for centuries while despising his own umbilical linguistic ties. According to T. Ngugi, colonialism taught African children “to associate their mother tongues with stupidity, barbarism, humiliation and low status, and the language of the colonisers, English, with intelligence and success. This has made the educated African think that only the language of the colonisers is strong enough for imparting knowledge.”

A further development of this faulty thesis is the contention that African languages are not sophisticated enough to convey scientific ideas. That is a fallacy that should be laughed at, as evidenced by Leopold Senghor’s translation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into Wolof, a lingua franca of Senegal. Other African languages which have a long history of orthography can easily be used for teaching the most complex of concepts.

Another expert, Prof Bamgbose, believes that one of the reasons for lack of belief among Nigerians is the failure to implement the three years use of indigenous language policy, as most people have never witnessed or experienced the use of mother tongue in instruction in a formal setting and have unconsciously downplayed it in the informal setting where they have witnessed it. “Whereas, they entrust their vehicles, electronic appliances and gadgets to artisans who have acquired the skills through the use of mother tongue and purchase furniture, shoes, etc, made by these sets of people with their money. Yet, they argue vehemently against the use of mother tongue in class…”, he notes.

In 1953, UNESCO endorsed he use of mother tongue, stating that, “It is axiomatic that the best medium for teaching a child is his mother tongue. Psychologically, “It is the system of meaningful signs that in his mind works automatically for expression and understanding. Sociologically, it is a means of identification among the members of the community to which he belongs. Educationally, he learns more quickly through it than through an unfamiliar linguistic medium”.

There is now a treasure trove of literature on the similarity between Ifa divination of the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria and the computer. Ifa predated Christianity, Islam and the computer age by thousands of years. Although the alienated modern African may treat it as an obsolete relic of our savage past, its relevance to modern technological advancement is now being propagated by outsiders. If foreign languages can be used to explain Ifa’s binary system and geomantic revelations, why can’t Yoruba language be used to teach Chemistry?

The Chinese, Indians, Japanese and others in Asia have shown us that there is no single route to development. They unashamedly use what they have to navigate their way to their developmental destination. Nearer home, Ethiopia and Eritrea are two African countries noted for their own alphabet which predates many civilisations. If Russians can educate her children in Russian, why can’t the Ethiopian use Amharic? 

I suspect that our reluctance to take the first meaningful step in liberating our future generations from the shackles that have held their forebears down can be traced to a lack of political will. There will be challenges, not least among which are the battle against the mono-lingual tendency of the central government, perception of English language as the global language; inadequacy or lack of trained teachers in the use of indigenous languages; under-development of orthography of some Nigerian languages; etc.

But, firstly, you have to believe in the dream. You won’t know that science can understand vernacular until you summon the political will. 

Often people ask me why I write on certain topics and issues all the time, like bashing the government, and seeing very little good in people in government and government actions and my takes on education, health and power, conflict, politics of ethnicity and more.

My answer is that I do because I believe that such subjects are important for Nigeria and Nigerians as they are for other nations, but when it appears to me Nigerians and our leaders particularly do not react to these topics the way they should, I repeat them in new essays to remind old readers and recruit new ones to participate in the continuing dialogue.

Like we say in local parlance the May 29 don nearly reach, except events of seismic proportion happens, and I know it won’t happen at the court, Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu would be President. He comes on board with so much expectation and with so many problems, such is the fundamental nature of the problems that they have become part of us. However on many occasions we have been provided with the opportunity to get it right but many times we let go of such moments.

The just concluded Presidential polls, presents such moment again, while I have refused to discuss the elections, not as an act of cowardice, but truly, who am I, to discuss, an election many think was fairly accurate despite all the controversies, and many others see as having further divided the nation, or one that has realigned the nation.

There was this young, poor and wretched hunter. His family was nothing to write home about. He was very poor and miserable.

One day, the king of his village died and when they consulted the oracle, this young man was picked to be the next king despite the fact that his lineage has nothing to do with the kingship.

On the day of coronation, he wept so bitterly as he could not imagine the crown being put on his poor head.

After the coronation, he asked that an extra room should be built in the palace compound and the things to be kept in that room are just his catapult, hunting boots, hunting dresses and all his hunting instruments.

Anytime, he is tempted to be proud, arrogant, think too highly of himself or talk rudely to his subjects, he will go into that room and once he sees all his hunting instruments and dresses; they remind him of his humble beginning and make him humble the more.

He said that the room was the most beautiful room in the whole palace.

Though what was in that room was not beautiful, they helped him remain humble before GOD and men. In addition, it also gave him a beautiful and peaceful reign, and perspectives.

Already there is a call for time and patience, how much of it, we have only time will tell, our experience is that the government has to start all over again and the same old music is remixed and a few months after we notice the same old thread in action.

And fearfully, the same issues that the last administration sought to solve or made comic off, are the same ones we will face again.

Bola Tinubu has to, not just by his will but by his powers, thread a new path--or else we may still tow the known path. It is the only road we know for now...road contracts that will be abandoned, commissioning of hospitals without facilities. Schools that would be neglected, strikes within various sectors of the economy amongst many short and longfalls will characterize the administration with a couple of its own fair share of 'elephant and hippo' projects.

As Tinubu is sworn in, and he prepares his cabinet, I am not one of those that will really bother about whether he has a kitchen cabinet or even has a kitchen in the first place. The fact is that one; the kitchen belongs to his wife, whether as wife of the president or first lady...so I would concern myself to his ministers and yes men, and of course women.

The incoming president must stand his ground, we already are starting on a combination of contradictions, whether it is the people’s mandate, with all the ranting and noise, or INEC mandate only posterity will judge.

The fact is that Mr. Bola, will be in the first line of offensive, he will be between making sure it's not business as usual and settling politicians with aggrieved pockets on one hand. Mr. Bola will have to resist the temptation to be Minister for Petroleum, or give Mr. Shetima his veepee the power to be this or that, he should be wary of the politics of senior special assistant or some commission or body doing something and nothing about one industry or sector.

Whoever he picks, or someone suggests and demands, or the party hierarchy nominates, for whatever position, the administration is already faced with a conglomerate of jobless politicians, jobbers and ex-this and that, who require settlement of one form or the other. Can Bola damn them?

There will be a need to create a balance with intellect, hard work and patriotism in the zoning thing that has led us nowhere. How Mr. Bola is able to come out with any fascinating cabinet that will thrill Nigerians is a big question. For example, the questions to be answered will be what will the Ministry of water resources do differently, as many Nigerians would want to see water run from a tap courtesy of their effort.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu is going to be faced with giving or sharing the bounty for very mundane reasons. Ministers who failed as governors, legislators who contributed nothing and persons who lost elections and others whose father and mother was former this, and former that will be everywhere.

Mr. Bola must stop sharing the cake; he needs to shock Nigerians by his appointments. This is my admonishment, Mr. Bola…does not have an enviable job but with passion he can make it a worthwhile one and start to leave a legacy. Get off all the talk, because it is cheap and could come back to hunt and haunt him.

Nigerians want Ministers, advisers, and aides, legislators that will perform miracles. For a nation that has a very low expectation ratio, for sure we are ‘not’ asking for the impossible from Mr. Bola considering the rot he has to contend with, but he must importantly often go into that room, seek inspiration from that room, he must tell the truth…he must be transparent, and accountability to man and God, and Nigerians, how it will end—only time tell!

On New Year’s Day in 1991, 81-year-old Siad Barre, Somalia’s third (and last) president, fled the capital city, Mogadishu, under assault from the combined forces of a prolonged insurgency. 16 days later, in a supposedly unrelated development, President George Hubert Walker Bush of the United States of America launched Operation Desert Storm against the occupation of Kuwait’s oil fields by Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein. Four months later, in May 1991, Siad Barre went into exile in Nigeria where he lived until his death in 1995.

Back home, the vacuum created by General Barre’s departure in 1991 triggered a messy contest between various warlords and militias for control of the country, which posed a grave threat to both Somalia’s neighbours in the Horn of Africa and to the strategic maritime theatre of the Gulf of Aden.

Somalis are not only found in Somalia. They are also in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya. Siad Barre was initially committed to a policy of uniting all Somali populations under one territory. In pursuit of this ideology, he invaded Ethiopia’s Ogaden region in 1977, triggering a war in which Ethiopia eventually prevailed with support from the Soviet Union. Somalia, which had until then proclaimed itself Socialist, thereafter shifted its strategic orientation towards closer cooperation with the United States.

The cost of the degeneration of Somalia into a messy gang-land war was heavy. By the beginning of 1992, one year after Siad Barre’s departure from power, “as many 350,000 people in Somalia died from starvation, with another 80,000 people having fled to neighbouring countries”. Somalia’s biggest neighbour on its western borders, Ethiopia, which hosted the headquarters of the then Organization of African Unity, OAU was itself preoccupied with a political transition after the ruinous misrule of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Dergue regime, and its main priority was to prevent a Somali contagion on its territory. Still reluctant to abandon its foundational commitment to non-interference in the affairs of member states, the OAU could not mobilise consensus on how best to respond to the Somali meltdown. Within Somalia itself, there was no leader who could invite international action with legitimacy.

In that season of the brief interregnum of the unipolar world, there was much talk of humanitarian intervention. Somalia was seen as a good case for it and the United States, fresh from what was seen as the diplomatic and military success of its campaign in Iraq, was under pressure to act. On April 24, 1992, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 751 which deplored “the magnitude of the human suffering caused by the conflict” in Somalia, formally declared it a threat to international peace and security and established the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM).

The best efforts of the limited UNOSOM team were, however, no match for the menace of the Somali militias. So, on December 3, 1992, the Security Council adopted Resolution 794, which complained about the “continuation of conditions that impede the delivery of humanitarian supplies to destinations within Somalia, and in particular reports of looting of relief supplies destined for starving people, attacks on aircraft and ships bringing in humanitarian relief supplies” . It, therefore, authorised member states to “use all measures as may be necessary to ensure” effective humanitarian operations in Somalia. Six days later, on December 9, 1992, a contingent of US Navy SEALS landed on the coast of Mogadishu at the beginning of Operation Restore Hope under considerable media attention.

In March 1994, Operation Restore Hope ended in disarray. One outcome of Operation Restore Hope among many was to force the OAU to urgently re-evaluate its doctrinal commitment to non-interference. At their meeting in Cairo in June 1993, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the OAU agreed to establish within the organization, a Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Resolution, and Management, effectively bringing to an end the fiction that instability in a given country was of no consequence to its neighbours. Sudan’s then ruler, General Omar Al-Bashir, and Eritrea’s Isaias Afewerki were the two voices of dissent against this decision.

From this tentative beginning, the OAU evolved rapidly in seven years to the point of its own replacement in 2000 by the African Union (AU). At its adoption in 1963, the founding charter of the OAU complained of subversion by neighbours against one another and prohibited interference by one African country in the domestic affairs of their neighbours. It was not a very African approach to coexistence in a continent in which looking out for one another had for long been an axiom of good neighbourliness.

In a dramatic departure from this position, the African Union’s Constitutive Act, which was incidentally adopted at the turn of the Millennium, commits the continent’s rulers to “respect for the sanctity of human life” and recognizes a duty and a “right of the Union to intervene in a Member State…. in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity”. To supervise this new commitment, the AU, as the successor to the OAU would become known, established a Peace and Security Council to “promote peace, security and stability in Africa, in order to guarantee the protection and preservation of life and property, the well-being of the African people”. It comprises 15 African countries elected by their peers and represented at the highest levels by their presidents, prime ministers, or kings.

Underlying the mission of the AU supposedly is a commitment to a different and united way of addressing the continent’s security crises. In a contemporaneous retrospective on the failure of Operation Restore Hope in 1994, Ghanaian-born economist, George Ayittey, deplored the contest over super-power control of Africa’s destiny. Cautioning that durable solutions to the continent’s myriad problems can only come from Africans themselves, he launched the now popular mantra of “African solutions to African problems”.

With the persistence of a multiplicity of foreign stakeholders in many of the continent’s problems, however, the challenge always was with figuring out what kinds of problems could be described as African and at what point the solutions could be seen as African. In any event, this doctrine implied that African leaders had a responsibility to take initiative and provide leadership in the search for solutions to the continent’s problems. This has been missing in the three weeks since the mutual antipathies between Sudan’s implacable generals descended into urban warfare in Khartoum.

The result is that the AU has abdicated both initiative and ideas. With nearly 1.2 million refugees before the onset of these hostilities, Sudan housed the second largest population of refugees in Africa behind only Uganda, and the seventh largest in the world. Setting them to pasture is not going to be cost-free to Sudan’s neighbours nor is that merely a humanitarian occurrence. It is also a profound security concern. Equally, the AU does not appear to have heard that some Western countries willfully shredded the passports of African nationals while evacuating their missions in Khartoum.

With over 400,000 internally displaced, nearly 150,000 dispersed across Sudan’s borders into neighbouring countries in Chad, Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and South Sudan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated an exodus of over 860,000 people from Khartoum and its neighbourhoods, the leaders of the African Union have not seen fit to meet at any level even for symbolic purposes other than half-hearted meetings convened on Zoom at almost risible levels. Separated by over three decades, the response of the AU to the unfolding crisis in Khartoum reprises in slow motion the self-inflicted incapacities of the OAU in Somalia.

In the face of arguably the continent’s most serious crisis since the Rwanda Genocide, the AU’s response has been inexplicably somnolent. It has no plan. Chad’s former foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, who heads the Commission of the African Union in Addis Ababa, appears to be slow-walking the organisation to considerations determined by the imperatives of his home country (which shares borders with Sudan) rather than the collective wellbeing of the region and the continent. Under him, the promise of the Constitutive Act is being squandered; over two-thirds of the AU’s budget is funded by non-African countries and nearly half of the member states are unwilling or unable to pay their assessed budget contributions. Under Moussa Faki Mahamat, the AU increasingly acts neither African nor like a Union.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

It is no longer news that Hudu Yunusa – Ari, the suspended Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Adamawa state who has been in hiding has been found. A statement last Tuesday by the Police Public Relations Officer, CSP Olumuyiwa Adejobi, confirmed that Yunusa-Ari was undergoing interrogation in police custody over his illegal declaration of the results of the last Adamawa state governorship election. The news now is that the man has been granted bail amidst continuing investigation. But with the high level of public interest generated over the illegal declaration, it would certainly irritate those who suspect that delay tactics may be used to sweep the case under the carpet. To start with, a few issues about basic facts on the subject are hazy. Who arrested the suspended REC and where, when, and how was he arrested?

If Yunusa-Ari was the one who gave himself up to the police as he allegedly promised in an interview with the famous BBC Hausa service, it is only fair for the public to know that no concrete effort was made to arrest the man who was in the company of top security officers at the point of making the illegal declaration. In addition, considering that the declaration was televised for public viewing and that the man admitted in his BBC interview that what he did was within the law, it is difficult to comprehend what the police is investigating now. Having helped to secure the alleged offender, the police should immediately hand him over to INEC which is statutorily mandated to prosecute electoral offenders.  This position had been determined as far back as 1987 when the Supreme Court ruled in the case involving Gani Fawehinmi SAN, that a body which has powers to prosecute a case is also inherently empowered to investigate the case. What is more, between INEC and the police, who is better positioned to identify a breach of any guideline, rule, regulation or enabling law of the same INEC?

In the celebrated case of the manipulation of election results brought before the court during the 2019 general elections, INEC promptly and successfully investigated and prosecuted Professor Peter Ogban, the then Collation/Returning Officer for Akwa Ibom North-west Senatorial election.  The court rejected the argument of the defence that the Professor had not been investigated by the police. By simply following the ruling in the Fawehinmi case, Justice, Augustine Odokwo who presided in the Ogban case jailed the Professor for 3 years, while holding that INEC did not require police investigation. The same approach is what INEC ought to follow now in the Yunusa-Ari case. If it does otherwise, it could be accused of having a hidden agenda in the instant case. In fact, it is not in the interest of INEC to allow further delay or to do anything to suggest a contemplation of abdication from its responsibility in this particular case whose outcome is eagerly awaited by all lovers of Democracy, home and abroad.

There is indeed a school of thought that believes that the illegality that was perpetuated in the Adamawa governorship election could have been prevented if INEC had promptly handled reports that Yunusa-Ari was visibly partisan in his disposition during the election.  The Peoples Democratic Party PDP had publicly appealed to INEC to redeploy the man after a few provocative partisan activities. Whereas INEC may have rightly ignored the appeal on the ground that Nigerian politicians have an inclination to raise false alarms, it was unwise to have retained Yunusa-Ari to handle the run-off election which followed the inconclusive main election in which a leaked audio had been circulated to suggest that the REC instructed some specific staff of INEC to work for the election of the APC candidate.

An electoral body ought to be conscious and sensitive at all times that it is not enough to seek to be above board; ensuring that people can easily perceive INEC as above board matters more. Even if the allegations against Yunusa-Ari appeared baseless, it would have been safer to rest the REC and replace him with another person of the commission’s choice. For failing to do that, some superior officers at the top now stand the risk of being pulled down by the embattled REC in the coming days. If by sheer luck that does not happen, the huge image problem which Yunusa-Ari’s behaviour has bequeathed to INEC would for a long time to come be hard to repair in a society that is largely dissatisfied with the conduct of the last general election as shown in the about 800 election petitions currently before different election tribunals nationwide. Are all the aggrieved petitioners bad losers?

The case of the suspended REC of Adamawa State was particularly scandalous. First, it amounted to usurpation of the powers of a returning officer for him to take over the duty of announcing an election result. Second, as if he was assured of security cover, senior security officers were with him during the fake declaration of results. Third, both the REC and all those present at the ill-fated gathering knew as of fact that the declaration was premature as it was made about 2 hours before the scheduled time for the continuation of the collation of votes preparatory to the declaration of a winner. In which case, total votes cast at the election had not been determined at the point the REC made his declaration. The implication of what has been said so far is that efforts at arresting Yunusa-Ari would naturally have been less than feeble; and so it seemed.

It is doubtful if the whereabouts of the REC were really unknown to security agencies. As one investigative newspaper revealed, immediately after announcing the fake winner of the election, Yunusa-Ari was flown to Abuja from Yola in a private jet with registration number – (NG) 5N-IKO. The newspaper even published the model and serial number of the aircraft which reportedly landed in Abuja 40minutes later.  It can therefore be argued that the illegal declaration was a well-organized plot which included the charter of a private aircraft to provide a safe escape for the fugitive REC. The owner of the aircraft which is registered in Nigeria for aviation services could have been reached to unravel the person or organization which entered into a contract with his company to fly out the REC.

The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) which broadcast the declaration can also be helpful in identifying the sponsors of the illegal event. I do not however subscribe to the calls on the broadcast regulator to sanction the station. Those calling for sanctions are only interested in underscoring the double standards in broadcast regulation in Nigeria in which the reaction of the regulator would have been drastically different if the broadcast was done by a private station. Certainly, the NTA broadcast was not the handiwork of a roving reporter who just ran into the event. It was a scheduled coverage for which the station must have been given the details of the event including take-off time, duration and sponsor who ordinarily would be charged millions of naira. I hear that these days the NTA is occasionally coerced by persons in the corridors of power to cover certain events pro bono unlike my days as DG of NTA where even the presidency had to pay ahead of coverage.   

If the coverage was free of charge, then the case of Yunusa-Ari may be far more complicated than the ordinary person can see.  Anyone who imagines that it was a project of the ruling party may not be too far from the correct answer. This is because history has shown that ruling parties in Nigeria do everything humanly possible including illegalities for its members to be re-elected. When the PDP was in power, it did all it could to frustrate the Card Reader. On its part, the APC has not only sought to emasculate the BVAS, it has gone into history as the party that has imposed the highest number of partisan electoral commissioners on INEC. Whatever is the case, the prosecution of the Adamawa case and others should not be further delayed if INEC is interested in bringing to book the sponsors of electoral malpractices in Nigeria to pave the way for better elections in the future.

I was very pleased to receive, on a recent occasion [that accidentally happened to be my birthday!] a document sent to me by email, that told me (in so many words) that someone had been so inspired, or impressed, with my use of such devices as folk tales, in my columns that he had subjected the columns to serious study, in an M.Phil thesis, at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
He conveyed to me, the happy news that he, "had passed with a mark of 75%!"
To imagine that someone had gained an MPhil as a result of studying my writing, when I never went to University myself! If I don't admit that it made me feel very good, I shall be a liar!

The MPhil scholar is called Nate Glover-Meki, and his thesis is entitled: "JOURNALISM, LITERATURE & CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN MODERN GHANA - A CRITICAL STUDY OF CAMERON DUODU'S COLUMNS".
I am, (I say again) quite chuffed by this. If any publisher — or institution (such as the Ghana School of Communications at the University of Ghana, Legon) — is interested in publishing it so that it can be made available to a wider student audience, they can contact me. I shall be glad to put them in touch with the author."
I use story-telling (mostly about Gold Coast days) in my columns, not always consciously, but often vaguely, in order that the young people of today will be inspired to help make Ghana regain its affections in the hearts of its people.

Now, I have been labouring under the belief that, as the Twi proverb says, "It's the good thing that sells itself" (Ade pa n'eton neho.) In other words, one does not dissect something that is inherently self-elucidating; it does not need to be explained any further.
However, I got a letter the other day that clearly demonstrates that the letter writer has not understood the purpose of why I do this.
This is sad for a writer to admit, but I have been at this writing game for so long that I have come to realise that it isn't always the writer's fault if he's misunderstood. Some people are just — ahem! — thick/ For instance, one letter writer complained that I "bore" him with the stories I tell about my school days.
Now, I don't mind the fact that he doesn't like my stories, for there is no way that one can please everyone who reads what one writes.
But I do need to explain the idea behind the story-telling, so that in case others entertain the same idea, they might be put right.
You see, whenever I tell a story dealing with the past, I intend to use it to take my readers back, in their own minds, to their own school days. What my teachers did or did not do are meant to trigger stories of the "Me too!" type.

I can't help it because, in effect, that practice comes out of my natural culture: in a Ghanaian village, you cannot sit under, say, a neem tree and tell stories without inspiring — or even provoking — others to tell their own stories.
That is the whole purpose of people gathering under the tree in the first place, or if the story-telling occurs at home, gathering around the open hearth in the family yard at night.
As soon as one storyteller finishes his/her narration, someone else comes in with a story that might be as interesting, or (so the new story-teller hopes) more interesting, than the one just told. It is a competition for bragging rights, no less.
"Ei, as for so-and-so, his stories are awesome!" is not a reputation that everyone can build for himself/herself. Yes, in all reality, such story-telling sessions constitute an undeclared contest.
"Interruptions-by-song" are particularly welcomed. These songs known as mmoguo, make story-telling more interesting than would otherwise be the case, and also help the story-teller to obtain whispered corrections from members of the audience, in case a faulty memory is making him tell parts of the story wrong.
A Nigerian contemporary, Reuben Abati, has developed this idea of story-telling beautifully in an article in the Nigerian Guardian, "One of the most basic rules of writing and journalism [Abati wrote] is that human beings like to read about other human beings — their lives, successes, failures, pains and pleasures, doubts and anxieties, affairs, and occasions and as they read about others, people see their reflections in a hall of mirrors; they relive their own anxieties, and hopefully, they are entertained, or shocked beyond belief, or taught a lesson or two about life, society, being and nothingness."

My friend, the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, also once used this "mirror-to-society" metaphor to explain why he often used satire to communicate his ideas.
My school mates are fond of saying to me, "But how come you still remember these things? I swear, if I hadn't read what you wrote, I would never have remembered that funny incident, ever!" Others take great delight in contradicting my recollections.
School days are simply incomparable in terms of stimulation and enjoyment: you enjoy leaving home and going out to meet loads of strangers, some of whom become 'enemies', but others among whom become new and, occasionally, life-long friends.
(Incidentally, talking of school days, what happened to the story our media once carried, telling of the little girl who sadly died, after being caned by her teacher? It is so typical of the Ghanaian media that I can't remember reading of what happened after the teacher was arrested and taken to court.
This lack of interest in following up their own stories really demeans our media, I think.)
The report of the girl's death conducted me into the "hall of mirrors" inside my head, where some bitter encounters with the cane were waiting to be 'screened'.

One of the sources of the culture of caning in the Gold Coast of my early years, I regret to say, was the Presbyterian Teacher's Training College at Akropong, Akwapim.
Although it was a very good institution (the teachers there included the famous composer and musicologist, Ephraim Amu, who refused to wear European clothes to preach in church and was censured as a result — a very daring as well as talented man- as well as that wonderful teller of stories, Clement Anderson Akrofi. Akropong was nevertheless notorious for inculcating the idea of caning and harsh punishment into the teachers it trained.
The teachers who created its traditions were Swiss/German Calvinists, most of whose "hair-shirt" aspirations bore no relationship whatsoever to the Ghanaian's freewheeling ethos.
(By the way if you follow the link I have given above, you will find that the biography of Akrofi does not mention his most enjoyable book, a collection of delightful stories entitled Mmodenbo By Mmusu Abasa So.)

Most of the pupils who were at the receiving end of the policy of caning now hold the view that caning can be stupid and sometimes, quite sadistic.
I personally knew a girl who was clearly dyslexic but was continually caned by my grossly ignorant Class Three teacher (who, of course, was trained at Akropong!)
Caning her was an exercise in futility.

Indeed, if any teacher caned a pupil in England today for being unable to produce good work, because she suffered from dyslexia — an illness that can be easily diagnosed and cured with skill — not only would that teacher be considered woefully "uneducated", but he would probably be sent to jail.
Sir Jackie Stewart, three-times World Motor Racing Champion, is dyslexic. But see what he achieved.
I realise, of course, that dyslexia may not have been discovered in those days, but what about the common sense of the teacher? He whipped her; but her work never improved; and yet he whipped her the more.

Bloody stupid, if you ask me. And a shame on Akropong as an institution, for not teaching child psychology to the teachers it was training.
One other device I like to use in my writing is the Akan proverb, which I try to explain to enable anyone reading to understand it. Such proverbs strike a special chord with readers who do understand the original language, because it gives them an extra insight into my meaning.

Although election consequences aren’t over until the courts say they are over in Nigeria, this is a time to advise our political leaders who are taking over from Buhari and co; on May 29, 2023 that they need to begin to manage priorities and expectations the morning after May 29, 2023. Specifically, we need to restructure our mindset to be able to reform the public sector for real service delivery and public good. Those who have promised to consolidate on Buhari’s achievements should note that we only regarded that provocative campaign strategy as politics of succession because the Buhari’s eight years should just be regarded as the years that the locusts ate from us. From the economy through critical infrastructure to national building and security, the lanky General from Daura, we all trusted in 2015 disappointed us. And so Buhari’s successor and other leaders from subnational governments and the National Assembly should note that if they assume duties with the food-is-ready mentality, they will begin to manage crisis within the first 100 days in office. This is, therefore, a time to compile some of the institutional weaknesses of the outgoing administration so that they can leverage on revival of existing public institutions and public policies to take the country away from the brink of collapse. Here is the thing, there are enough laws, institutions and policies to run the country in a way that the world will begin to respect us again. And as I have noted here several times in recent weeks, the first focal point should be how to revamp the federal civil and public service for impactful service delivery. Security and welfare of the people as the primary purpose of government cannot be met unless there is an efficient civil service. Doubtless, most of the public service reform gains from Obasanjo through Yar’Adua to Jonathan appear to have been ruined by the ineptitude of the outgoing administration. Even the Oronsaye Report that the Buhari administration touted several times as a policy option to cut the cost of governance has become a mirage, after all.

And so the procrastination spirit that has been the bane of the Buhari administration should not be allowed to creep in at this time that people are saying blessed are you if you are hopeless for you will not be disappointed again.

I would, therefore, like to chip in this one as part of the low hanging fruits a new administration can pluck to begin restructuring of the public sector without setting up another White-Paper panel. As I was saying, a solid presidential bureaucracy will know what to do immediately.

Now to the brass tacks, there is a public media issue that shouldn’t be delayed within the construct of innovation for development we need now. It is the expediency of merging the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture with the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy. This isn’t strange.

And it is not about anybody or the outgoing Minister of Information and Culture or anyone in particular. It is about “innovating our way into the future,” borrowing from the brilliance of the theme of Poju Oyemade’s Platform on Channels Television on May 1, 2023. It is about Africa’s most populous country and anchor of hope of the black nation, Nigeria. It isn’t about a new job or portfolio for a party supporter or a journalist or a public relations guru who helped someone to power in a food-is-ready era. It is about learning, unlearning and relearning at this time. It is about lean government to reduce cost of governance without compromising efficiency and effectiveness at this time. It is about innovation for efficiency in service delivery. It isn’t complicated at all. In this age of digital media technologies that daily disrupt journalism and public relations practice, what is needed is a strategic merger of the old Information Ministry with Communication Ministry. There is no need to keep so many ministries doing the same job. Just like the Ministry of Police Affairs and Interior Ministry. Why do you have Agriculture and Water Resources separately? There are more duplicates listed in the Oronsaye Panel Report since 2011. After all, Dr. Goke Adegoroye’s 2015 classic (book) on reform agenda in public service posits that the federal bureaucracy can’t take more than 29 ministries, after all. We have about 48 ministries now with so many otiose agencies. This is part of the bane of government in Nigeria that is now borrowing to pay civil and public servants. Let’s be innovative now: in all modern economies, there is no separate ministry to manage public relations and spokespersons. This is also applicable to state governments. What is expedient at this age that digital technologies daily disrupt is communication and information technology ministry or Department. That can take care of all information and information technology issue. A ministry of communication and information technology can be charged with communication responsibilities, which include regulating communications, postal services, broadcasting and print media – for the purpose of even regulation. What is the purpose of today’s Information and Culture Ministry? Culture is too important to be merged with Information that isn’t necessary at this time. Check even South Africa, they don’t have any Ministry of Information. That country, South Africa, a member of G-20 and BRICs, an emerging market cartel, boasts of eight of the 10 best universities in Africa in all ratings of global standard. All chief executives from the president to the subnational powers called governors and CEOs of other arms and agencies of government have their communication officers. The intelligence and security agencies including the police service have their public information managers. There is no need for Information Ministries in 21st century Nigeria. I haven’t heard of Information Ministers of different countries meeting anywhere to discuss how to promote the image of governments. There is no room for such management in this age when propaganda can’t be taught in any mass communication schools now unbundled as part of innovation and growth in the information (technology) sector. The only source of unnecessary visibility for the Information Ministries is ‘supervision’ of radio and television stations at federal and state levels. That too has over the years distorted and diminished the role of public broadcasters in Nigeria.

That is why I would like to suggest too to the New Sheriff that will come to town in Abuja from May 29, 2023 that they need to restructure the three federal public broadcasters, namely, Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) and Voice of Nigeria (VON) into one Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). This is the structure of most public broadcasters in global context. Again, South Africa leads the way here with South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC, Africa). The same goes for the powerful and very British, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). These stations in South Africa and United Kingdom are very commercially viable. They practice robust journalism but they are not tied to the apron strings of any ministries of information. The Culture Department, which has marginal oversight function on the BBC rarely reports the public broadcaster to the Parliament when they feel that the public broadcaster, BBC errs in judgment. But then although they have broadcasting codes, there is no central agency that acts as a regulator to accuse, judge and impose arbitrary fines and fees on BBC as we often have in Nigeria. In Nigeria, there is always a regular amendment of the very voluminous ‘Nigerian Broadcasting Codes’ book, which is being regularly criticised for attacking press freedom. The Information Minister can always amend and update the Codes to attack a section of the private broadcasters, especially for political reasons. That is also why the existence of the office of the Minister of Information is inimical to the growth of robust journalism in a democracy.

ON February 4, 2018, I raise this same issue here in an article titled, ‘A Time To Restructure NTA, FRCN, VON.’ In the article, I had pointed out that one of our best journalists here, Ms Kadaria Ahmed had been resourceful because she had a solid career with BBC for 13 years before returning home. In the same vein, I had then drawn attention to the fact that Ms Toyosi Ogunleye, an award-winning Editor at The Punch then could also find it worthy to join the BBC from The Punch because the BBC has a brand reputation that our local brands do not have and may never have as long as they continue to work in bondage of the Information Ministry, even as they (NTA, FRCN and VON) have some of the best trained broadcasters in the country. Read the link below for the details: https://guardian.ng/sunday-magazine/a-time-to-restructure-nta-frcn-and-von/

This is the conclusion of the 2018 suggestion on the point at issue:
‘…So, as the wind of restructuring is blowing even in Abuja now, I would like to advise Nigeria’s Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed to lead the charge to restructure the public broadcasters – NTA, FRCN and VON in public interest. After all, the tone for the re-engineering of the three separate organs was thankfully set in 2011 when the Stephen Oronsaye Panel report and White Paper (2013), which recommended rationalisation of numerous government agencies, also suggested a merger of the three organs to be Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) under one national executive management.

But for the national broadcasters, this is a time to restructure with a view to privatising them ultimately. What good do the NTA, FRCN and VON still serve the Federal Government that underfunds and mismanages them? Don’t get it twisted, the ruined broadcasting corporations, still keep some of the brightest and the best broadcasters who have ironically been working in bondage.

What is more, technology has disrupted the dubious national security fear the military authorities used to hold on to the organs. First, the authorities can muster some robust political will to sell their major shares (of NTA, FRCN and VON) to the members of staff and some interested Nigerian investors. Yes, I mean resourceful investors who can rebrand the broadcasters into a truly African Voice that can also project the culture of the black race in global context.

That radical move will be a reassuring signal that indeed the presidency and the ruling party are irrevocably committed to restructuring of the troubled federation. This certainly is a time for the Federal Government to free the long-suffering NTA, FRCN and VON and let them go and prosper in the field where Aljazeera too, owned by Qatar (through a public trust), is serving the interest of the Middle East….’

The conclusion of the whole matter is that for the new administration to set the tone for restructuring of the federation within the construct of Open Government Partnership (OGP) the Federal Government signed up to in 2016 and expediency of cutting cost of governance, they should begin by merging Information (and Culture) Ministry with the Communication and Digital Economy Ministry. Besides, they should immediately merge NTA, FRCN and VOA into a world-class Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS). All other concomitant reform issues will follow this innovation for our great country.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

‘NO INAUGURATION’

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

EMIRATE POLITICS

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

SUDAN SALVATION

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

AMBASSADOR OSIMHEN

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