One of the thematic preoccupations of the book, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance, (2014) is that, inside the forest, there is a consistent superiority war, often fierce, between man and animals. Written by Ayo Adeduntan, Research Fellow at the University of Ibadan, the book averred that, while animals sometimes win this war, succeeding in crushing hunters for supper, many atimes, hunters vanquish these forest dwellers. They fell these notorious animals renowned for bathing in the blood of their human victims. In pursuit of this theme of a superiority duel in the wild, Adeduntan was in a forest called Ìgbẹ́ Alágogo. Hunting expeditions to the Ìgbẹ́ are seasonal excursions that take hunters to Òj̣é-̣Owódé in the Òkè Ògùn area of Oyo State. There, Adeduntan interviewed a hunter called Òjó Ògúnkúnlé of Agúnrege village. Ògúnkúnlé’s narration of how his hunter-master, named Ògúnòṣ̣un, a very powerful hunter, married a buffalo and was eventually demystified by the animal, painted the picture that a mutual damage often occurs in the duel between animal and man.

The narration goes thus: One day, Ògúnkúnlé went hunting and felled a huge buffalo with his gun. Unable to process what to do with his mountainous game, the young hunter walked back kilometers to announce his kill to his master named Ògúnòṣ̣un. While they were both walking back to where the buffalo was felled, about a mile to the scene, a pretty lady walked past them and saluted on her two knees. In a magical reality that may be hard to believe, Ògúnkúnlé inferred that the buffalo was the one who morphed into the pretty lady. He told the researcher, “all of a sudden, we met the animal, the pretty woman” – “àfi pẹ̀kí n la bá pàdé ẹran l’ọ́nà, èyuùn ìyàwó. Arẹwa obinrin ni”. If Ògúnòṣ̣un had listened to Odolaye Aremu, the Ilorin musician who warned that there is always a suddenness to calamity, (pèkí làá ko èèmò) he probably would have been wary of a beautiful woman suddenly encountered in a dense forest. From wooing the buffalo-woman and taking her home, Ògúnòṣ̣un ended up marrying her. Before the marriage solemnization, according to Adeduntan’s account, the buffalo-woman gave a caveat, which I paraphrase: “Now that I’ve agreed to marry you, the day you recklessly call me an animal, you are done for.”

The buffalo-woman gave birth to children for Ògúnòṣ̣un. However, one day, the wife enraged her husband, so much that he thundered, “You good-for-nothing unlucky daughter of an animal!” (‘Àb’órí ì rẹ burú ni, ìwọ ọmọ ẹranko yìí!). A very mysterious anger immediately seized the woman who instantly morphed into her original buffalo form. As she charged at Ògúnòṣ̣un with her menacing horns, the hunter quickly reached for his hunter talisman (Ìgbàdì).The Ìgbàdì is the phial belt which hunters have recourse to, while on hunting expedition. If a ferocious animal suddenly attempted to harm them, they untied the belt. They then chanted some metaphysical verses which enabled them escape the animal’s deadly ferocity. As Ògúnòṣ̣un chanted the incantations, he landed in a prehistoric mountain on the outskirts of the village. He was however not fast enough for the buffalo which used its horn to gore him and tear his ligaments. The buffalo thereafter ran into the mountains and never returned. Ògúnòṣ̣un, said the narrator, as reported by Adeduntan, carried with him for life the cicatrices of a fractured leg. This motif of a superiority duel between animals of the forest and man is also present in D. O. Fagunwa’s Igbo Olódùmarè where the hero of the book, Olówó-Aiyé, fought the spirit, Anjonnu-Iberu, who transformed into a boa and, helped by a ravishingly beauty witch named àjẹ́diran, who gave him a magic fruit, Olówó-Aiyé transformed into an elephant and crushed the boa constrictor.

What provoked this excursion into the world of animals is a discussion said to be gaining currency among some intellectuals in Southwest Nigeria today. It is themed around the rhetorical question: Have current runners of Nigeria, led by a Yoruba, with their prodigal handling of Nigerian economy and society, not succeeded in demystifying the Yoruba myth of administrative and leadership competence? Same discussion, I learnt, is bandied in banters in Northern Nigeria today, amid sniggering laughter. So, in the ancient “war” between Yoruba and Northern Nigeria about administrative and leadership competence, has the North succeeded, like Ògúnòṣ̣un’s buffalo-woman wife, in demystifying the Yoruba buffalo?

Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Premiership of Western Region, with its sterling and highly commended leadership, opened the trough of that narrative. That leadership was followed by another one provided by UPN governors of the Second Republic. Watched over by their leader, Awolowo, those governors also significantly showed the world the colour of developmental leadership. That was the last time the Yoruba had the opportunity to showcase their ability, until Olusegun Obasanjo came in 1999. Though he demonstrated comparative competence to lead Nigeria above all his successors, Obasanjo’s pan-Nigerian claim and overt attack on Awolowo’s leadership of Nigeria made his Yoruba people disown him as theirs. In overt flaunt and gloat, Yoruba had often said to the hearing of whoever wanted to listen that, with their centuries-old sophistication, urbane character, western education and grasp of the modern system of administration, if ever they had the opportunity to lead Nigeria, Yoruba would show the world the stuff they were made of.

2023 was that opportunity. Today, under 15 months, Nigeria has fallen into tatters under a man who answers to all the physical attributes of a Yoruba. The question being asked now is, what happened? Why did people who have always held themselves as crocodiles, suddenly turn out to be lizards? Why are people with reputation of lion, King of the Jungle, now being exposed as mere rodents-eating cats? Muhammadu Buhari, whose leadership is compared to an affliction, is almost celebrated as a mascot now by Nigerians in comparison. Aso Rock claims its reforms are like a surgical operation to correct a medical anomaly. It also says that the pains Nigerians undergo are comparable to one inflicted by the Olóólà, facemark maker, whose knife, which cuts painfully deep down into the bosom of the skin, is a precursor to beauty. To the Villa, our pain is a desirable agony. None of the reform evangelists has however been able to explain the optics we see of reformers living in stupendous comfort while targets of reforms are enmeshed in indescribable hunger. Only yesterday, we were told that the First Lady, Remi Tinubu, spent N701 million on foreign trips, in a Nigeria where the people are dying and hungry.

When they are boxed to a corner, in fitful explanations, Yoruba flaunt an explanation which demarcates the Yorubaness of present Nigerian rulers from theirs. They say occupiers of Aso Rock today are mainly coastal Yoruba. These are people, they say, who are a corrupted version of their own ancestry. Theirs, they go further to say, approximates all those qualities of the Awolowo Yoruba and it is because they are from the hinterland. In my piece of April 14, 2024 entitled The Lagos Boy’s coastal highway, I attempted a description of the coastal Yoruba thus: “Writers like Cyprian Ekwensi drew the picture of a dreadful Lagos. The ‘Lagos Boy’ could mean smartness, suavity, celebration of inanity, fraudulence, erection of facades on dross to make it look real…Even before the colonialists came, Lagos, once known as the ‘Venice of West Africa,’ was dreaded by inhabitants of the hinterland… Lagos was home to money-doublers and soul-scarred gamblers. It was where you could make quick money through mere hubris. Some other writers have described Lagos as ‘a place of desperation to make it by hook or crook,’ with some others giving it the fitting description of ‘a huge Dickensian space full of heartbreak.’

Paul French, in his ‘Lagos: Africa’s Capital of Noir’, said Lagos had popularly been described as ‘the capital of crimes such as 419 and internet fraud also known as the ‘Yahoo Yahoo’’. I also made the incontrovertible claim that, “If Tinubu lost some votes of his Yoruba people in the 2023 presidential election, it may not be too far from the truth to say that his morally prude Yoruba kinsmen from the hinterland who believed that anything Lagos was fraud were the ones who withdrew their votes.” I also said “the Lagosian has come to be classified as immune to some of the traits associated with a Yorubaman. He didn’t totally represent the gentlemanly Omoluabi ethos that undergirds the value system of the children of Oduduwa. A trustworthy Lagosian is as scarce as a hen’s teeth. He would grab and run with what doesn’t belong to him. It is repeatedly said that a Lagosian would sell particle to you as an article.” There are however many exceptions to this as there are equally Lagosians of sterling pedigrees.

By trying to remove themselves from the stain of this leadership calamity, the Yoruba seem to be answering a question posed by William Butler Yeats in one of his poems entitled ‘Among School Children’. In it, Yeats had asked, ‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’ I am of the opinion that, rather than engage in demarcation of hinterland and coastal Yorubaness, (thereby seeking to remove the dancer from the dance) Yoruba should be more frontal in demanding that those in government today should not stain their leadership reputation’s white apparel bequeathed by Awolowo. This will necessitate that they disclaim some Yoruba who have consistently licked the spittle of Aso Rock, all in the name of clapping-on an obvious failure of a child whose waist we adorn with beads not deserved. The Yoruba case in Nigerian leadership is synonymous with the narrative of a head hunter (Oluode) who was caught mourning his hunting dog killed by a tiger. Asked why he mourned, Oluode told them that a valiant tree does not ooze out cowardly secretions (ako igi kìì s’oje) and that what he mourned was his reputation that was at stake. How would the world reconcile itself to the story of a brave hunter’s dog killed by a mere tiger? It was the hunter who was literally killed!

The other explanation Yoruba could give is that what Nigeria has today isn’t the original, certainly nothing of the variant of Awolowo, Bola Ige or any of their leaders’ original copy of leadership. The owners of that original have gone with their slough. It reminds me, again, of one of the hunter-animal liaisons and contests for primacy narratives in Adeduntan’s book. Another hunter, Kìlání Alápó of Alápó village, Ibadan, tells it perfectly. For eight years, Alápó had killed a python under an àràbà tree in a forest called Ẹléṛè.̣ However, in the ninth year of harvesting the python, the snake was nowhere to be found under the àràbà. In its stead, he found the skin of a deer (awo ̣̣ ìgalà). Alápó however went home with his strange find, the àwọ̀. Apprehensive about the slough he kept and its probable consequences, he inquired of a Babalawo who warned him not to destroy it as its owner would someday ask for it (aláwò ̣ ó ̣ wàá bééré áwó). Seven days after, a pretty lady walked into Alápó village, demanding Kìlání Alápó’s home. Seeing this woman, dogs began to bark mysteriously. Adeduntan explained this as the capacity of dogs to “see the numinous.” On meeting Alápó, the woman promptly demanded, “could you please return my slough?” (Ẹ dákun, àwò ̣ mi t’éẹ̣ kó, mọ fé ̣ k’éẹ̣ kó o fún mi). The hunter walked in and handed her the skin. According to the narration, for fifteen years, Alápó consistently killed a deer under the àràbà tree.

Yoruba are in a dilemma. They have an impostor child who, unfortunately, hails from their home of noble leadership pedigree and honour. Like relished epaulettes, the honour of excellence in leadership and administration is what the Yoruba still cling on today. In the same way the python-woman walked back to Kìlání Alápó to demand what rightly belonged to her, the race must demand its àwọ̀ from the impostor.

Good night, Omodewu

On Thursday last week, in Ibadan, Oyo State, I was at the wake and tributes service in honour of Isaac Ajiboye Omodewu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) Oyo State Chairman. The news of his passage on August 18, 2024, in New York, USA hit his home state almost immediately it occurred. It was like a thunderbolt, a blow to many who knew his dove-like character. It was a moment to cower at the feet of the invisible hand of death that plucked a friend, a gentleman personified. Omodewu was laid to rest the second day in his Otu town.

In the events hall where the service took place, you could feel Omodewu’s gentle voice and coy, harmless look. He almost couldn’t hurt a fly. In life, Omodewu was a dependable ally who sought out the comfort of his friends. Until you read about his pedigree, having come out of a home of politicians, Omodewu didn’t strike you as a politician, with all the combativeness and duplicity of politics. I could understand Omodewu’s service as a government appointee but it took a long time for me to connect with his subsequent and unfortunately, last political career path when he became the Oyo State APC Party Chairman. Those who witnessed him in action as party chairman pointed to a leadership he ran marked by unity and consensus-building.

I knew Omodewu in 2011 while we both served under late Governor Abiola Ajimobi. From the way he wove his “been to” status into his utterances, you knew immediately he was one of the Oyo State indigenes who came from abroad to participate in politics. It was later I learnt that he schooled at the City University of New York, USA. He subsequently served as commissioner for local government and thereafter, lands. He was humble and self-effacing.

One thing that I often remember about him was how he, at close to 60 years of age, chose to study law. When he began the course of study at the Lead City University in Ibadan, he told me bluntly that, looking at my example, he was encouraged to go back to school. We also spoke frequently when he was about to go to the Nigerian Law School, which culminated in his being called to the Nigerian Bar in 2023.

Omodewu’s passage tells all of us that death is a bus stop where all of us would alight someday. That gentleman has alighted by his own bus stop. Sleep well, brother.

The Kano State High Court, under the leadership of Chief Judge Justice Dije Aboki, has issued an order restraining the 15th Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero, from proceeding with renovations at the Nassarawa mini palace.

The court granted the injunction following a motion exparte filed by the plaintiffs/applicants, which include the Kano State government, the Attorney General of Kano State, and the Kano State Emirate Council.

The plaintiffs were represented by Rilwanu Umar Esq. and three other legal counsels.

In the court order, Justice Aboki directed all parties involved to maintain the status quo regarding the structural and architectural design of the palace until the motion on notice is heard and determined.

Reports had previously indicated that Emir Bayero began a facelift of the mini palace, showcasing a prototype of the planned renovations.

This development follows Bayero’s dethronement by Governor Abba Yusuf while he was away from the state, which led to the reinstatement of the 16th Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, who subsequently moved into the Kofar-Kudu palace.

Upon his return, Bayero was relocated to the Nassarawa mini palace, where he has continued to conduct court activities despite the ongoing legal battle over the palace renovations.

However, the court order reads, “That an order of Interim injunction is hereby made restraining the Defendant, his agents, privies, or anyone acting under the instruction and command of the Defendant in whatever manner from further demolishing, renovating, repairing, reconstructing and refurbishing the property known as Gidan Sarki Nassarawa situated along State Road, Kano pending the hearing and determination of the Motion on Notice before this court.

“That an order is made directing parties to this suit to maintain status quo in respect of the structural and architectural design of the Res pending the hearing and determination of the Motion on Notice filed before this Honourable Court.

“Plaintiffs/Applicants to serve the Originating Process, Motion on Notice and other subsequent processes in this suit on the Defendant via substituted means to wit, by Pasting and or leaving same at the frontage of the Property Gidan Sarki Nassarawa or give the said Originating Process and other subsequent processes to any Adult aide of the Defendant in the property known as Gidan Sarki Nassarawa situate along State Road, Kano.

“That the case is adjourned to 2/10/2024 for hearing of the motion on notice@

At the just concluded 65th annual conference of the Nigerian Economic Society (NES) in Abuja, one of the highlights of the annual ritual was the conferment of the 2024 Distinguished Economic Service Award on seven eminent Nigerians. And yours sincerely is one of the awardees. This is one award that holds a fundamental significance among all the other ones I have been conferred with. And the singular reason is that this conferment articulates a significant plank in my institutional and governance reforms campaign in Nigeria. That plank insists that there is an intellectual component in the imperative of institutional reform that demands a collaborative engagement between professionals and academics/intellectual. This is because a crucial part of the diagnosis of reform failure in Nigeria is the failure to understand that reform itself has an intellectual and theoretical basis that many reformers are not aware of. We deride theories as if they have no practical import. There is no one engaging with Nigeria and her development dynamics that would not get involved in conversation with economics and economists. This is why associations like NES and the National Economic Summit Group (NESG) are critical to the understanding of Nigeria’s governance and economic predicaments, and how we can find a way or ways out of the woods.

I deeply appreciate Prof. Adeola Adenikinju, president of NES and the entire governing council for this unquantifiable honor. It is an honor I would never have expected, but one I am delighted about so much. That my essentially basic understanding of the economic and developmental component of institutional reform is noticed by an erudite association is no mean feat. My reflection on this critical award therefore enables me to connect my conversations and collaborations with economists and economic discourses with my institutional reform agenda. And all these come together around the trajectory of the mentoring experience I had with the late Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade, great economist, erudite scholar and president of the NES from 1973 to 1974, and indeed my townsman and a singular influence on my professional and intellectual maturation. Those who understand my relationship with Aboyade—the fact that I literally grew up in his formidable but mentoring shadows at Aáwé and in the presidency—would immediately understand why I had no choice in my reverence for economists.

Under the tutelage of Aboyade, my entry point into the public administration scholarship was through public policy implementation research, which had the likes of Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky as the key pioneers. Their groundbreaking 1973 book, Implementation, grounds implementation studies as a subfield of public policy research. Indeed, from that book, I began to notice early in time the role that politics and policymaking play in facilitating a near-seamless implementation process in administrative reforms. Most significantly, the authors insisted that the evaluation of policies and their implementation are two different issues that must not be conflated. As a young researcher, I immediately saw the sense in seeing implementation, according to Pressman and Wildavsky, as “the ability to forge subsequent links in the causal chains so as to obtain the desired results.” Hence, once this causal chain involved in implementation is longer necessary, the more complex the implementation becomes. Or, in the case of Nigeria—as I would eventually see, the longer the implementation chain, the more definite it becomes that bad politics has intervened.

With this as my starting point, it was not too long for me to make a research entry into the discursive space of institutional economics, and the relationship between institutions and the capacities they generate in economic actors that lead to innovation, performance and productivity. The theoretical relationship and disagreements between the old and new institutionalism, especially on the compatibility of individual agency and social structure eventually would play a deep role in articulating the emergence of the managerial revolution that backstopped the new public management (NPM) movement around which the global public administration praxis was designed. The NPM is the managerial attempt to unseat the bureaucratic stasis that has kept the Weberian system ineffective, inefficient and unproductive. Indeed, within the Nigerian administrative context, it has made it quite difficult to birth a developmental state.

The idea of the developmental state clearly serves as the focal point for an ongoing conversation between economists and institutional reformers. The idea of the developmental state tasks the public service system on the need to achieve the efficiency that will operationalize democratic governance to deliver infrastructural development for the citizens. Thus, to achieve economic development, such a state must first be oriented towards institutional reforms that bring the structures and institutions to capability readiness.

From the vantage point of my research into institutional reforms and development policy management, it was so easy but unnerving to work out the historical trajectory as well as the administrative dynamics that facilitated the series of aborted transitions, policy somersaults, the conception-reality gap, the motion-without-movement development hiccups that translate into protracted state and governance failures in Nigeria. And we see the basis of these failures in the (non)performance of the Nigerian economy and the debilitating effects on Nigerians. It therefore should come as no surprise that the role of economists in the Nigerian predicament became all the more heightened. This is where I think my experience as the directing staff coordinating the public policy executive education component of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) remit for three years was so professionally fulfilling. That professional status brought me close to the economic and policy sides of understanding the Nigerian predicament as well as the connection with my expertise in institutional reform. I had the opportunity to facilitate at once policy conversations and discourses around critical issues of the fundamentals of public policy, the public policy design and formulation process, policy implementation and decision science, policy evaluation and tracking, the political undercurrent of policy decision-making, as well as policy exploration and scenario projection that factor the VUCA (vulnerable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) administrative environment into the urgency of building a twenty-first-century policy architecture that the Nigerian state requires to achieve democratic service delivery.

All the above therefore makes the theme of the NES 65th annual conference—“Socio-Economic Development in Nigeria: Imperatives, Implications and Impacts”—all the more fundamental given the present state of the Nigerian economic change management challenges. The conference theme is ready-made as the instigating forum that could have served some brainstorming and learning context for the PBAT governance and economic teams. It was especially a grand tutorial for me as a member of that team in terms of the analyses, forecasting and incisive critiques around the implementation possibilities and prospects of delivering the Renewed Hope Agenda from the perspectives of Nigerian economists. There are two crucial takeovers that my attendance at the NES Conference brought out into very stark relief.

One, it has now become imperative that government needs an ongoing and consummate engagement with Nigerian experienced economists and other intellectuals and experts. This becomes critical, especially with regard to the near absence of a political economy framework that could have served as the analytical and technical perspectives for articulating and sequencing the two major policies of the federal government, namely, the removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of the naira. While these two policies have a sound basis, they are flawed in terms of change management detailing and technical correctness, and their disruptive consequences could have been averted with the benefit of deep economic intelligence and the possible analytical frameworks and policy instruments that competent policy analysis could have been provided for risk analysis, mitigation and management. Here, we already begin to see how the implementation chain—and the possibility of success—is already compromised. Policy implementation and impact cannot just be the result of just policy correctness. On the contrary, it must reflect a dynamic and holistic and not a partial understanding of Nigeria’s economic structure and predicaments.

Two, we have to deal with the critical disjuncture that is playing out between the Renewed Hope Agenda and the policy implementation detailing of the government. We cannot ever hope to make that agenda work if the policies that would empower it are out of joint in terms of implementation sequence. The implementation of policies raises the crucial issue of those for whom the policies are meant in the first place. Thus, if, as democratic governance demands, these policies are meant to be people-oriented, then it implies that the change management strategy must be fashioned in a way that puts the people at the centre without necessarily yielding to unreflective populism. For example, to achieve a reasonable buy-in by Nigerians, the change vision and objectives must embed much more inclusive instruments which are however strategically communicated to Nigerians.

While receiving the award, it dawned on me that I have been drawn into the circle of a wider reform cohort that would further challenge my understanding of what it takes to articulate, track and evaluate institutional reforms in Nigeria. I am very glad for this incorporation, and the opportunity it affords me to sharpen my learning capacity and keep the discussion on the future of the Nigerian state in the right direction.

Olaopa, a Professor of Public Administration, is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja

It seems the contrived, ill-advised controversy over the ‘ownership’ of Lagos will not go away anytime soon as more and more agent provocateurs are deployed on the worldwide web to drive a wedge between the historically liberal aborigines of Lagos and non-Yoruba residents of the mega city. That development is an unkind payback to the aborigines who are, by nature, one of the most liberal people on the surface of the earth.

There are Lagosians and there are Lagosians. Some Lagosians are aborigines, some are Lagosians by birth and acculturation, while some are just residents of Lagos. Don’t confuse one with the other. When you encounter a Lagosian of any hue, his comportment will tell you where he belongs in the classification above, even if we agree to call all of them Lagosians. There is a marked difference between an ‘Omo Eko’ (the Lagosian) and an ‘Ara Eko’ (the migrant resident).

Lagos is like a lagoon. It tolerates any kind of filth but also harbours some choice marine life. In line with its Yoruba linguistic and cultural heritage, its Oríkì says it all: It is the city of wisdom, ready to bend and contort but not break. Who’s contending with Lagos? If you go to Lagos and don’t end up wiser, throw in the towel – you’re unteachable! Lagos, where the man on stilts runs faster than the prized athlete. City of aquatic splendour, solid in the knowledge that if its marshes are not denuded, neither will Lagos. Eko will prevail!

Half-Lagosian
I am as proud of my half-Lagosian maternal heritage as I am of my father’s Oyo ancestry. Growing up in the melting pot that Lagos was, one couldn’t avoid noticing that the temperament of the average Lagosian was founded on the principle of live and let live. Before the early colonial days, Yoruba people from other parts of today’s southwest had been migrating to Lagos in such numbers that the local chiefs and kings gave them large parcels of land to settle. That’s how you have names like Abule Egba (village of the Egbas of Abeokuta) Ijeshatedo, (named after ethnic Ijeshas from today’s Osun State).

Lagos means “lakes” in Portuguese, the language of the first Europeans to arrive at the land already inhabited by the Awori who are a sub-ethnic group of the Yoruba people. By the early 19th Century, it was a small kingdom and a tributary to the Oyo Empire. It sent embassies to the Portuguese colony of Brazil, and became one of the first countries to recognise the independence of Brazil in 1823. With the collapse of the Oyo Empire, Lagos assumed the leading economic position regionally, becoming the most important market in the Yoruba territories as well as growing substantially.

The truth is that Lagos, over the years, has emerged as a forward-looking Yoruba city which opens its hands wide to welcome all manner of people.

Contrary to what obtains in most parts of Nigeria, Lagosians don’t discriminate against non-indigenes. That is why, from time immemorial, they allowed outsiders to acquire properties and settle down. They are so self-assured that they don’t feel threatened by the prosperity of migrants who choose to make the place home.

Tolerance
A visit to Ajegunle will show the extent of the tolerance of aboriginal Lagos people. There, you’d see Ijaws, Ilajes, Uhrobos, Itsekiris, Igbos, Etsakos, Ikas and other micro-nationals who are, to all intents and purposes, now Lagosians. Musician Daddy Shokey, whose forebears hailed from Olomoro Kingdom in Isoko South LGA of Delta State, is an Ajegunle Boy and is celebrated by Lagosians as one of their own. He has earned his stripes.

In terms of jobs, I wager that there is no other state in Nigeria with the number of non-indigenes that Lagos employs. And their promotion and retirement prospects are the same with the locals. Contrast this with what obtains in some parts of the country where non-indigenes are employed only by contract, never on a permanent or pensionable basis, and are not allowed to own landed properties.
I think what has fuelled the fire of the current rancour is the renewed drive to abuse the tolerance of Lagos aborigines after the last elections and the “Oro” festival that accompanied it. Last week witnessed the wide distribution of a podcast claiming that Lagos was a No-Man’s-Land. According to the misguided fellow, all Yoruba towns were founded by Igbos. He went on to stand history on its head, making one wonder why we haven’t restored history to its pride of place in our schools from primary to university level.

Lagosians have refused to tolerate the reinvented insults to their heritage and some of the most unlikely, otherwise taciturn, indigenes have publicly intervened to call the migrant cyberwarriors to order.

Conspiracy Theory
It is quite possible, as some have argued (considering the irrationality of the podcast and other such irritants), that there is an orchestrated attempt to smash the cordiality existing between the indigenes of Lagos and Igbos who, together with other micro-national groups, have contributed positively to the development of the megacity.

Could there be an agenda to set up the Igbos for extermination when the doomsday predicted by Igbophobes finally arrives? If there is, it won’t be the first time such a thing was used to demonise a people and set them up for extermination as happened in the run-up to the Rwandan massacre.
A visit to the genocide museum in Rwanda convinced me that any kind of ethnic phobia built on ultra micro-nationalism is bound to lead to mass depopulation. I had never seen so many human skeletons (and the last clothes worn by the butchered victims) under one roof!

The Other Side
Those propounding the theory of a possible setup of Igbos for mass attack are countered by others who argue that the Igbos are their own worst enemies because their style is grating, chauvinistic and pompous. They also point to the anti-Yoruba, anti-Fulani, anti-Nigeria broadcasts of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu and his acolyte, Simon Ekpa. But would that be sufficient reason to target them for destruction?
They wonder why it is only Igbos who complain of harassment when they are not the only set of non-indigenes living in Lagos. They insist that latter day arrivals among the Igbos are the ones fuelling the problem because they are not acculturated, bringing their gruff attitudes to a cosmopolitan setting. They don’t want Igbos to be chased out of their land; rather they want them to imbibe the Lagos spirit. Whichever way you look at it, you’ve got to salute the generosity of the Lagos aborigine.

As I straddle both sides of the divide, I often wonder what the political elite are doing about these kinds of development. These are the issues that ought to engage the attention of the major socio-cultural groups. Igbos need Lagos as much as Lagos needs everybody, thanks to its magnanimous spirit.
The renewed brickbat over the ownership of Lagos is dangerous because if the aborigines of Lagos (the most welcoming, most expansive, most cosmopolitan people in southwest Nigeria) decide to move against the interests of any single group in Lagos, the sight won’t be pretty at all — and the fount of amity existing between that group and the aborigines of Lagos would have been poisoned for all time.

Leaders of the All Progressives Congress led by Vice President Kashim Shettima; Senate President Godswill Akpabio; Imo Governor Hope Uzodima; Cross River Governor Bassey Edet Otu, Ondo Governor Lucky Oyedatiwa and Nassarawa Governor Abdullahi Sule were in Benin City yesterday, vowing to take over power from the Peoples Democratic Party.

Addressing supporters at the University of Benin Indoors Sports Complex, Ugbowo Campus, Shettima said Edo State needs a strategic thinker, builder and a man with a compassionate heart that can lead his people aright.

He said intelligence is not determined by the size of the head but one’s ability to solve problems that affect the people.

He added he had absolute confidence in Senator Monday Okpebholo and his running mate, Dennis Idahosa, to deliver the dividends of democracy to people of the state.

Shettima urged the people to come out and vote for the candidates of the APC on September 21.
Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio, also said he believes in Okpebholo and his running mate, Dennis Idahosa, to deliver on their electoral mandate.
He said he doesn’t need somebody who can speak “grammar” but one who can perform.

Akpabio said Okpebholo as a senator had been living up to his billings in the Senate, stressing that there is no doubt about his ability to deliver the dividends of democracy at all.

The senator representing Edo North Senatorial District, Adams Oshiomhole, said Governor Godwin Obaseki had been insensitive to the plight of people of the state and there is nothing to write home about on his eight years in office as the governor of the state.

The party’s national chairman, Umar Ganduje, said the state had been mismanaged for the past eight years, marred by insecurity and unemployment, and it was time for them to take it back by voting for the APC.

Okpebholo said he would employ 5000 teachers within his 100 days in office as governor of the state.

He assured market women of soft loans to boost their businesses and promised to build primary healthcare centers in the state’s 192 wards.

Erling Haaland’s double sent Manchester City three points clear at the top of the Premier League in a 2-1 win over Brentford.

City took full advantage of Liverpool’s defeat to move clear at the top by stretching their 100 per cent record to four games despite a disastrous start.

However, Haaland’s form at the start of the season remains unstoppable, even if the Norwegian just missed out on a record third consecutive hat-trick in the Premier League.

The 24-year-old’s powerful deflected effort brought City level before he showed a combination of strength and skill to shrug off Ethan Pinnock and dink the ball over the onrushing Mark Flekken.

Only the post denied Haaland another hat-trick after half-time but he now has a Premier League record nine goals in the first four games of the season.

“He’s just an absolute machine in front of goal and I can’t speak highly enough of him,” said City’s Jack Grealish of Haaland, who had been doubtful due to the death this week of a close family friend.

“It does speak volumes about him as a person and his mental strength.”

[DailyTrust]

Senator representing Edo North senatorial district and former governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole, has publicly asked for forgiveness from Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, the Esama of Benin, for any past wrongs during his tenure as governor.

The lawmaker spoke during a goodwill message during Igbinedion’s 90th birthday celebration on Saturday in Benin, the Edo State capital.

Oshiomhole acknowledged Igbinedion’s support when he was elected as governor of the state, stating that he wouldn’t have emerged as the winner of the election without the support.

He continued, “I have always looked for one opportunity to say to the Esama of the universe that I am sorry for any of the things that I said knowingly or unknowingly or any of the things that I did that a son should never have done to a father.

“On your 90th birthday, I ask for your forgiveness, and I pray that you grant it.

“I want to publicly acknowledge your support for me in 2007 and 2008, without which I might never have become the governor of Edo State.”

DAILY POST reports that the lawmaker is apparently seeking support for the All Progressives Congress ahead of the September 21 governorship election in the state.

Oshiomhole has been building bridges to ensure that the APC candidate, Monday Okpebholo is elected next governor of the state.

[DailyPost]

Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki yesterday called Saturday’s governorship poll to elect his successor as a do or die affair for his party, the PDP.

Speaking at the party’s rally held at Garrick Playground, opposite Ekenwan Campus of the University of Benin, Governor Obaseki said: “This election is do or die. If they do, we will die.

“Next week Saturday by this time, vote for the PDP to become the next governor.”

He said his immediate predecessor, Adams Oshiomhole, performed poorly.

His words: “When I took over office, our pensioners wore black on Labour Day. But today, they wear white.

“When I took office, our youths had no jobs, but today don’t they have jobs? After eight years, is Edo not one of the safest in Nigeria?”

We’II protect votes with our blood – PDP Chairman

Acting National Chairman of the PDP, Illiya Damagum, vowed that members of the party were prepared to defend PDP’s votes in the election with their blood.

He said the election would be a test for democracy.

 “To INEC, I say we don’t want that midnight results announcement. We will be vigilant and make sure that it doesn’t happen,” he said

“And, we know they will rig the election. This is not a threat, but we are very serious and we will defend our votes with our blood and everything.

“To the citizens of this country, please watch the election of Edo, it will be a test for our democracy. If they miss it here, it means they are looking for anarchy. We know they will attempt to do so, but we will resist them.”

We won’t allow rigging, Atiku warns

Atiku warned that rigging would not be allowed in the election.

 “If you remember four years ago they threatened us, didn’t they do that? They said they won’t allow us to win in Edo State,” he said.

“But what did we show them, we showed them that Edo State no be Lagos,’ didn’t we do it?

“So this time again, we are going to show them that ‘Edo no be Lagos.’ They can’t steal votes here, therefore, protect, defend, escort your votes.

“Make sure your votes are entered, make sure your results are announced, of you do that no Jupiter will come and change your votes.”

Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum and Governor of Bauchi, Alhaji Bala Muhammed, said that contrary to speculations of division among PDP governors, they remained  united.

The party’s candidate Asue   Ighodalo said Obaseki has laid the foundation for the development of the state and he would continue from where he stopped.

PDP stalwarts at the rally included Governors Mohammed of Bauchi State,Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State,Senator Aba Moro, Chief Tom Ikimi, members of BOT, members of the State House of Assembly, House Representatives, among others.

Many filling stations in Aba, the commercial nerve centre of Abia State, have shut down due to high cost of sourcing petroleum products from third party marketers other than the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

Investigation reveals that some filling stations in the city that sell petrol to the people at prices between N1300 and N1350 were the ones that lifted the products at costs more than NNPC control prices.

In an interview, the Executive Chairman, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Aba branch, Mazi Oliver Okolo, said that the NNPC had not supplied petroleum products to their members in the past three months.

He said the NNPC had been selling the products to some suppliers, who indirectly sell the product to the IPMAN members at exorbitant prices.

Mazi Okolo said, “Our members now lift petrol at high costs and sell to motorists and other users at high cost,” adding that if the refineries were working, people would buy petrol at an affordable prices.

He therefore called on the federal government to make the 21 NNPC refineries in the country functional to reduce the sufferings of the people.

In his reactions, a member of the National Executive, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chief Godfrey Chukwunyere, said NNPC sell petrol to mega stations, major marketers and the independent petroleum marketers at different high rates in addition to the inexperienced personnel handling the affairs of the corporation

Chief Chukwunyere who called for the total over haul of the petroleum sector, appealed to the federal government to prevail on the NNPC to sell the petroleum products at uniform prices to make things easier for the people.

[Punch]

“I am beginning to wonder how many fools it takes to make the term ‘My Fellow Citizens’” -Honore de Balzac, 1799-1850, in LOST ILLUSIONS

You were probably one of those who eagerly awaited the completion of the Dangote Refinery while labouring under the illusion that it will crash the price of fuel nationwide. Welcome to the unpleasant reality. Underlying that self-deception was the un-stated but implied assumption that Alhaji Dangote was embarking on a venture designed to free Nigeria from fuel importation. Well, “when you assume, you make an ass of you and me.”

Gullible Nigerians, especially many media commentators, had committed the blunder of forgetting that Dangote is a businessman caught in a global race for position among the world’s richest people. He went into refinery primarily to make as much money as he can; and stopping fuel importation is a distant second objective – except that securing a monopoly of the domestic fuel supply would help achieve the ambition.

When the first batch of Dangote petrol hits the filling stations, it will carry an official price tag of N890+/litre – the highest in history and the end is not in sight for pricing.  Additionally, the fuel will arrive with another quality controversy in tow. Never in the history of Nigeria has colourless petrol been offered for sale – until now. The same thing happened with the diesel on offer from the refinery. Dangote and some of his admirers argue that the colourless product is better than anything else. I beg to disagree.

A COUP AGAINST THE PEOPLE – COLA CATASTROPHE INEVITABLE

“How can we rationalise a situation where doctors who earn an average of $300 per month, are expected to cope with such astronomical increases in the cost of living? The recent hike in PMS prices has worsened an already unsustainable economic reality for healthcare professionals and all Nigerians, making it nearly impossible for them to manage” – Saheed Kehinde, Chairman, Nigerian Medical Association, Lagos Branch.

Doctors and their COLA – cost of living allowance – are very crucial; definitely.

If doctors cry out, what would drivers do? The worst part of the entire calamity is still to come for several reasons. But, some issues will serve to illustrate our national predicament. It is simply terrifying. Our lives have been changed forever; unfortunately not for the better for most Nigerians. 

First, Mr Adedapo Segun, the Executive Vice President of Downstream NNPCL, told Nigerians, on television, on September 5, 2024: “The market has been deregulated, meaning that petrol prices are now determined by market forces rather than by the government or NNPC Ltd. Additionally, the exchange rate plays a significant role in influencing those prices.” If that does not open the eyes of those who had been touting the Dangote Refinery as our saviour from high fuel prices, nothing will. However, just in case more is needed to open the eyes of those self-blinded, there is more bad news.

“Further hike looms as NNPC says N897/litre not market reflective” – Report.

For those individuals and groups –NBA, PDP, CNG, Reps Minority caucus and YCE – shedding tears and requesting for price roll back, there is only one advice: Stop shedding tears now; you might need to shed blood later. The Yoruba Council of Elders, YCE, in particular, sounded hypocritical. Tinubu is their President; they voted massively for him. They have a right to talk; but, nobody can take them seriously. This is the direct consequence of their votes!!! From my own projections, market-determined prices will end up ranging from N1, 100-1, 230/litre ultimately. The consequences of that eventuality will be explained later in another article.

DANGOTE VERSUS NNPCL REFINERIES

“Against [official] stupidity, the gods themselves labour in vain” – Frederick von Schiller, 1759-1805, VBQ p 235, available online.

The approval of Dangote’s brand of petrol, when combined with NNPCL’s role as the initial sole distributor of the first colourless petrol offered for sale in Nigeria, has opened several issues for public debate. To begin with, NNPCL’s four refineries, if ever they produce petrol, will distribute conventional yellow coloured fuel. The two types of petrol conform to standards approved in different parts of the world. The claim that Dangote’s fuel meets American specifications constitutes partial information and defence of the brand.

Every car manufacturer selling cars in the US builds engines that meet American specifications – V6, V8 and even V12. Americans generally love big cars. Europeans and Asian manufacturers favour smaller cars – V4 and V6 – but seldom anything bigger. The fuel specifications are consequently different. Because almost all the cars on Nigerian roads are made in Japan, South Korea, and increasingly now China, the fuel specification has not changed for decades. The attempt to bring ‘super petrol’ to Nigeria in the 1970s resulted in massive failure; and it was eventually abandoned.

Nigeria’s refineries will produce conventional petrol; not white petrol. Nigeria will then become the first country on the globe offering two different types of petrol for consumption. That raises a fundamental technical question; which neither Dangote nor NNPCL has bothered to address. Can the two types of petrol be mixed in the same tanks – cars, generators etc — without problems for users? Even the villager can understand the implications of that question.

Obviously, if for some technical reasons, the two brands of petrol are not safely mixable, Nigerian consumers are being exposed to great risks with regard to their investments in generators and cars. The risks are considerable; given the fact that for most low income people, a generator is probably their biggest investment; while for the Middle Class, the family car is the largest investment. Damage those two items and the economic calamity would be incalculable.

In a better governed society, the NNPCL and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources should have answered that question before Dangote’s fuel is released. They should have mixed the two to determine if they are safely mixable and then run the mixture in several cars to test the performance of the mixture in cars and generators.

It is only because we are Nigerians, who frequently refuse to learn from history, that most people in my generation have forgotten the damages super octane petrol did to the small engines of Volkswagen Beetles and other mini cars. What sort of people are we; that we accept fundamental and risky shifts in our lives without finding out if the change would be beneficial? Was it not a mere ten years ago, when we succumbed to the fraudulent noise of CHANGE? How many of us would not be too happy to return to the way we were then?

COLOURLESS PETROL

“Not all changes are for the better.” That was the verdict of a sage who lived about three hundred years ago. Buhari’s and APC’s eight years in government have proved that to us. Colourless petrol might turn out to be indeed better than conventional fuel; but, mixing it with other types of petrol might turn out to be problematic. Colour-coding products that are similar, but different, have been an age-long method in industries for avoiding horrible mistakes. Hydrochloric and sulphuric acids are almost colourless, but, they produce different results. We learnt that from the tragedy of cough syrup killing kids. Colourless petrol might be susceptible to mixture with water or any other colourless chemical. The results could be fatal.

ARE WE NOT OVERATING EDUCATION?

“However, in Nigeria, high illiteracy levels have created a populace that cannot effectively participate in the process leading to good governance” – Dakuku Peterside, VANGUARD, September 3, 2024.

VANGUARD is read more thoroughly than any of the five other papers to which I subscribe everyday – irrespective of whether I agree with the writers or not. Dakuku Peterside is one of my favourites. I was reading his article of September 3, 2024 and this assertion hit me like a sudden slap in the face. Dakuku made a statement which most of us had taken as self-evident. Suddenly, it occurred to me that we might all be wrong; or at least partly wrong.

Education without character or moral courage produces a lot of monstrous situations globally. China, Russia, Cuba, and North Korea have some of the highest literacy rates in the world. But, to me, they are nations of well-educated cattle being driven by sole dictators. Three have the resources to create great economies; but, Cuba is a sad place. It is a poor nation perpetually enslaved.

Back home, Nigeria is more badly governed today with millions of graduates than in 1959 when the number of university graduates could not be up to 1, 000.

Today’s leaders – Presidents and Governors – as well as their appointees are uniformly better educated than those who served with Ahmadu Bello, Awolowo and Azikiwe. Nigeria was growing steadily under the three Premiers and the Prime Minister. Nigeria, since 2014, has experienced negative growth; and we are worse governed than in 1959. Of what use is the education without character? That is a missing ingredient inhibiting our efforts at nation-building.