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[OPINION] Ayobolu @ 60: The question of character - Louis Odion, FNGE

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Reuben Abati (“Monumental”) memorably characterises such moment as “when the phone stops ringing”. It is the ultimate nightmare of the public intellectual or just any member of the tribe at the point of — or shortly before — evacuating public office.

It is not only about the imminent forfeiture of privileges and advantage, but also the anxiety about accountability before a national jury.

For the columnist, questions are bound to be asked about just how much he practised what he had preached so magisterially before assuming public office. Observable conduct — by way of deeds or words during the stated public engagement — will be weighed against the corpus of values earlier trumpeted from the outside.

For this purpose, public intellectuals will include others involved in the knowledge economy like academics and think-tank experts, mediating between public authorities and the society.

Segun Ayanbolu could, by any stretch, not be said to have suffered any difficulty in the referenced transition between theory and praxis, despite having been exposed to the corrosive toxin of partisan politics as the Chief Press Secretary to then Governor Bola Tinubu at a very challenging moment in Lagos.

Upon returning to the media in 2008, it was clear that the critical flavor of his punditry had not diminished, which is perhaps a testimony to the character and integrity he demonstrated for the nine years he sojourned at Alausa.

Again, such seamless adaptability — this instinctive capacity for role changes without loss of identity — would seem very much in evidence in his choice to sneak onto the “sixth floor” (the sexagenarian club) recently without as much a stir or noise.

On account of his remarkable life and sterling accomplishments in journalism, not a few friends had, at the approach of the Diamond milestone, contemplated the idea of staging a commemorative shindig. But once he got wind of the plot, Ayanbolu frantically pleaded to be spared the “stress” of an “Owambe”, moreso not when most Nigerians are facing a difficult time.

Were things “normal”, self-effacing Ayobolu would probably still have found another excuse not to have a loud celebration. As attested by Tunde Olusunle in an earlier tribute last year entitled, “Segun Ayobolu: Grit, Quality, Versatility on Diamond Eve”:
“For all his staggering attributes as a very formidable scholar, a distinctly rigorous inquisitor, a sound and profound political scientist, an inimitable reporter, an engaging writer, a perspicacious editor, he savours his reticence and unobtrusive carriage.

“In a world where dunderheads, impostors and wannabes hug the klieg lights, posturing as modern-day standard-bearers, stars and men of letters, coveting conferments and adulation, he cherishes his quiet.

“He prefers to immerse himself in his study, lapping up multidisciplinary knowledge, further enriching his subsisting, even overflowing intellectual capital. His elected choices to remain ‘backstage’ in a manner of speaking, receives authentication from his minimal photographic prominence, even on the internet. And we are talking about a colossus in his own right.”

That is the essential Segun Ayobulu — one with social conscience.

In a more recent tribute on Ayobolu’s 60th birthday, President Tinubu wrote: “Segun has remained one of my steadfast associates and loyalists for many years. He served me with complete dedication and loyalty as my Chief Press Secretary when I was Governor of Lagos State. He has not failed to offer his service and intellect to us in many other areas since we left office. He remains a committed member of our progressive family.”

Overall, as anyone who has followed his writings in over three decades will readily attest, Ayanbolu’s journalism remains largely a relentless crusade for progressive values, never shy to advertise a fanatical devotion to Awoism.

As CPS to Tinubu between 1999 and 2007, he never failed to situate his many polemical skirmishes against political opponents of his boss within the broader context of never-ending progressive struggle against reactionary forces in nation space.

Of course, there can be no easy winner or loser in such ideological contestation. While recognising that the public engagement could indeed be tricky, Patrick Baert and Josh Booth, however argue that the intellectual has to reconcile themselves with some fundamental tensions and contradictions around four axes namely, “hierarchy versus equality, generality versus expertise, passion versus distance, and the individual versus the collective.”

With particular reference to the political realm, Eunice Goes, an associate professor at Richmond University in the U.K, is a bit more exact. In an intervention in defence of one-time Labour Party’s poster boy, Ed Miliband, following attack by the conservative press, she outlines the obligations of the intellectual as helping “politicians to make sense of the world.

“They offer cause-effect explanations of political and economic phenomena; they offer diagnosis and occasional prescriptions to policy puzzles. At times of great political disruption, when old certainties about how the world works are questioned, this role is particularly important.”

Doubtless, learning matters. It should however be added that learning is nothing without character, as Mahatma Gandhi forever warns. Of course, the truest test of character occurs not at the moment of comfort or convenience. Rather, it comes at a crossroads, at that perilous hour of temptation. Ayobolu’s was tested with Tinubu’s exit in 2007 and the change of guards thereafter at Alausa. He was among the few “tested hands” retained by the Fashola administration to help “stabilize” the system. The climate looked conducive for him to, in fact, be more consequential in the new order.

Though promoted as a Special Adviser, he would soon cause a major stir by resigning voluntarily “on principle”, and went back to his first love — journalism.
Indeed, as months began to roll by for the new administration at Alausa, it was clear Ayobolu was no longer finding fulfillment. In his shoes, many would have easily tagged along, for survival.

Many would have casually forsworn old loyalties or traded their convictions for new convenient principles without scruples, if only to secure continued flow of bread and butter. True, addiction to the comforts of the moment can be numbing for such slaves to office. But in not succumbing to temptations then, Ayobolu was probably reminded of Awo’s timeless admonition never “to get addicted to things you cannot afford as private citizen while in public office.”

Here is wishing Ayobolu, the one with quick smile, happy diamond jubilee.

[OPINION] Garlands For A Champion - Wole Olaoye

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I grew up on a diet of welfarism as espoused by the great manager of men and resources, Obafemi Awolowo, first Premier of the then Western Region of Nigeria. It is to that great man that many of us who later went on to play leadership roles in various aspects of our professional and national lives, owe our worldview— especially our conceptualisation of the essence of governance and leadership.

Awolowo insisted that a government derived its legitimacy from being able to protect and advance the cause of its people. Thus, he democratised the playing field by ensuring that everyone had access to primary education. His famous reaction to the subject was, “I want free access to education for all. I do not want the children of my drivers to be drivers to my children, neither do I want the children of my cooks to be cooks to my children.”

Leadership

Awolowo set a high store by leadership. To him, it was nothing less than a sacred trust. If political leaders led by example, he argued, the people would follow suit: “Those of us placed in a position of leadership must be prepared to grasp the nettle if we unite in doing so, and if, in addition, we set a worthy example in probity, unselfishness, and self-sacrifice, the people will follow, all too readily, in our footsteps.”

It was under that general philosophical base of equal opportunities for all that the government of the Western Region operated under the philosopher-politician, Awolowo. Had Providence inserted the man in the affairs of his Yoruba race during the Oyo Empire days many centuries before his premiership, historians argue, he would have wound up among the many Yoruba gods celebrated today.

At the Summit of the Organisation of African Unity, OAU in Kinshasa in 1967 where he represented Nigeria, Awolowo declared: “Today, Africa is a continent of COMPETING BEGGAR-NATIONS. We vie with one another for favours from our former colonial masters… Unless a beggar resolutely shakes off, and irrevocably turns his back on his begging habit, he will forever remain a beggar. For, the more he begs, the more he develops the beggar characteristics of lack of initiative, courage, drive and self-reliance.”

That call for Africans to lift themselves up by their bootstraps is today being championed on the continental scale by institutions such as the African Development Bank led by Nigeria’s Dr Akinwumi Adesina. Since assumption of office as President of the bank after a stint as Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Adesina has pursued a development policy based on five development priorities creatively code-named the High-5s.

His

Having assumed office on September 1, 2015 as the eighth elected President of the African Development Bank Group, Adesina vigorously encouraged African countries to buy into the five cardinal programmes of the bank namely: (1) Light up and Power Africa; (2) Feed Africa; (3) Industrialise Africa; (4) Integrate Africa; and (5) Improve the Quality of Life for the People of Africa.

Africa has never remained the same since the rolling out of the High-5s. All over the continent, there is ample evidence that a forward-looking development partner is at work, transforming the landscape and helping to create new capacities thereby making Africa a more attractive land of promise and sustainable viability than ever before. Overall, AfDB’s impact has been panoramic as evidenced by its 6,338 projects embarked upon all over Africa since 1967.

Considering that he was born in Awolowo’s Western Region of Nigeria, I have no doubt that the philosophical underpinnings of Dr Adesina’s commitment to uplifting the continent and making Africans stand tall in the comity of nations, is partially inspired by his experience growing up under the very inspiring premiership of the late sage of the region.

Since Awo’s transition in 1987, his name and ideas have remained in public discourse, proving that those who live in the service of humanity will never die. The Foundation established in his honour is an independent, non-profit, non-political, non-religious, non-sectarian research institute committed to the promotion of a socially edifying interaction between policy and scholarship. The organisation prides itself as being dedicated to the principles of public welfare, responsible, free enterprise, social democracy, a federal and republican Nigeria, an economically self-reliant Africa- and a stable and equitable global system

So far, the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation has lived up to its billing, especially in the weight of personages that have won its now coveted Leadership Prize. The prize is given in recognition for outstanding performance in the areas of leadership and good governance. Candidates are assessed on the parameters of integrity, credibility, discipline, selflessness, visionary leadership, accountability, tenacity of purpose, among other qualities. The selection committee is chaired by the venerable Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.

Awo Prize

Adesina is the fourth recipient of the prestigious honour, the first three honourees being Nobel Laureate Prof Wole Soyinka (2012), former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa (2014), and lawyer-educationist Chief Afe Babalola (2018). Adesina will be formally presented the 2024 Leadership Prize at a ceremony in Lagos on March 6, Awo’s 115th birthday, in the presence of Heads of state and government, top diplomats, captains of industry, development partners and leaders in academia and the various professions. General Gowon will chair the occasion.

How marvellous to contemplate the intricate web of life: Soyinka, an admirer of Awolowo and world acclaimed intellectual and humanist who was our teacher at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU) when Adesina was a student; factor into the mix the freedom fighter Thabo Mbeki from whom student leaders used to collect revolutionary anti-apartheid posters at the ANC offices in Obalende, Lagos, in the 70s — and who went on to become the President of South Africa after the legendary Nelson Mandela; and then add Afe Babalola, brilliant lawyer and counsel to Irikefe Tribunal in the heady days of the 2.8 billion oil money saga when this writer faced the tribunal as a witness from Great Ife — and has since made a bigger name as an educationist and community leader… and it would be clear that excellence defines the path of the past recipients. Adesina is in good company.

Awo would have been proud that such a forward-looking beneficiary of his free education policy in the old Western Region is now a continental champion and global player in matters of good governance and economic development.

Endorsements

Like honey to nectar, Adesina has been attracting endorsements galore. Former Nigerian President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan who was one of several world leaders who nominated Adesina, said: “He epitomises and combines qualities of extraordinary leadership that are often rare to find: great visionary, incredible courage, the ability to take on huge and difficult challenges, extraordinary dedication and commitment to deliver programmes and policies that transform the lives of millions of people”.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair also praised Adesina’s leadership: “His contributions to the African continent and global leadership have been exceptional. Under his leadership the African Development Bank has delivered bold interventions to address some of the greatest challenges of our time,”.

A double-barrelled tribute was jointly issued by Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Global Center on Adaptation CEO, Prof. Dr Patrick Verkooijen: “We can think of no person more highly qualified or deserving of this prestigious award. Dr Adesina is forged in the same mould as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a shining example of leadership.”

Having followed the trajectory of this worthy son of Africa from the 70s till now, I am proud to raise an elbow to Dr. Akinwumi Adedeji Adesina, Africa’s Mr. Optimist and recipient of the Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership 2024.

African youths don’t have to look too far for a role model

Segun Odegbami: Paseiro… going, going, gone!

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When the story of Nigeria’s national football team, the Super Eagles, through history will be told, it will never be complete without the mention of a certain Jose Paseiro.

Without doubt, he will be listed amongst the national coaches that took the Super Eagles to the finals of the Africa Cup of Nations, but did not clinch it, yet he was rewarded more than any other coach in the history of Nigerian football.

Jose Paseiro is a 64-years old Portuguese coach recommended by the renowned Portuguese coach, Jose Mourinho, to the former president of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, on the eve of completing his tenure. His link to Mourinho was his biggest credential. He did not have any known pedigree in football to deserve to be engaged by one of the biggest teams in Africa, one with the enviable reputation of the Super Eagles. Paseiro got the job offered to him on a platter of wood. It was so cheap, he started work on a verbal contract. It was so ‘cheap’ that when his monthly wage was slashed half-way into his 2-year contract, he accepted and held on to the job that many consider a holiday since he was working from his base in Europe most of the time.

Paseiro did not disappoint those who questioned his credentials and why he was hired. For the period of almost two years that he spent as coach of the national team he hardly won any international matches, could not produce a good consistent team, did not impact domestic football in any way, stuck stubbornly to a goalkeeper that the entire country saw as not the best, and did not produce a single, exceptionally-gifted player. He took Nigerians through a frustrating period that left them without a shred of hope going to AFCON 2023 at the start of the year. That was his report card before the championship in Cote D’Ivoire.

Against the grain of all expectations the Super Eagles did well, even though they would not be remembered for any spectacular performances, or special moments during the championship. Their passage through the group matches, the round of 16 and up to the quarter-finals were ‘tales of the unexpected’. With a little bit of luck the team scraped through the matches with relative ease. By the time they arrived at the semi-final match, the players had become confident, were playing with much more ease and had succeeded in making Nigerians to have hope despite all the obvious technical flaws in the team and Paseiro’s bewildering technical manipulations during matches. Tactically, most of his substitutions of players made the team weaker not stronger. No one could decipher his tactical intentions. Obviously, he may not have had any.

The team had two Captains. One did not even kick a single ball throughout, and the other one became the leader that the team had lacked for some time, and played himself into reckoning as the Most Valuable Player of the championship!

In the midfield, the Super Eagles did not have a single truly outstanding player. The team’s talisman, Africa’s newly minted Best Player, failed to ignite any fire, scoring only a single goal in 6 matches. Fans waited throughout the championship for a ‘souvenir’ from him, a memento to take away, a moment of a great solo performance. It never came in all the 6 matches!

At the final match, the team was dismantled by Paseiro’s lack of tactical depth as well as the players’ capitulation to the pressure of the electricity in the air, an atmosphere that would weaken any faint hearts as it did the Super Eagles.

The tactics adopted unchangingly by the Nigerian team was simple, elementary but effective until the final match. He did not have a second strategy. It was the same tactics that we learnt 45 years ago, in 1979, during the 3 months training of the Green Eagles in Brazil.

A defensive funnel strategy that requires every player to fall back in the shape of a funnel into their own half of the field as soon as the team loses possession of the ball. They will then mark the spaces and not the men, always outnumbering the opposing players in Nigeria’s goal area, making it difficult for them to create goal-scoring chances – typical Jose Mourinho tactics. That’s why the Nigerian defense was difficult to break down most of the time.

Jose Paseiro seemed contented with achieving his personal goal of a semi-final place in AFCON. In 2024, such a level of ambition is pedestrian, totally unacceptable because it is not justified by the humongous wage he earns at a time when the country as a whole is going through excruciatingly difficult times and the country is poor.

Although, Paseiro is not connected to the sad tragedy that struck the country when at least 6 Nigerians died from the pressure generated during the semi-final match, the result of poor tactical changes during the match, pressures that would have been avoided if he knew what he was doing tactically.

The country has been very generous and grateful to him for the service he rendered specifically during AFCON 2023 which took us to the final match. He has been rewarded beyond whatever contributions he made to the country’s football. No other nation on earth would have given him a house, a land in Abuja, all the bonuses he collected, and a National Honour, for coming second in a championship. It must be the most generous gift in the history of football in the world. He should go, leave Nigerian football alone and enjoy the largesse.

The Nigeria that Nigerians envision after the present ‘crucible of fire’ that the country is passing through, is a country with the ultimate dream to emerge refined and ready to take its rightful place amongst the greatest countries on earth in many fields, including football.

The goals are lofty and, definitely, beyond what a foreigner or White man without solid grounding in football can achieve for Nigeria. Jose Paseiro does not have what it takes to take the Super Eagles to the next level.

The conversation now should be who should be given the responsibility to replace him amongst the NigerianCoaches that are more qualified than Jose Paseiro to handle the national team. There are a few waiting in the wings that deserve to be given the opportunity.

Gratitude

I wish to thank the following that made my AFCON 2023 Roadshow possible –

Vanguard Newspaper, Peculiar Ultimate Concerns Ltd, Goldberg Lager Beer, Airpeace Airlines, His Excellency, Senator Otunba Gbenga Daniel; His Excellency, Chief Bode George; Engineer Oluwatoyin Jokosenumi; Engineer Tony Ojesina; Lola Visser-Mabogunje and Remi Okuboyejo (both of them in Abidjan).

[OPINION] Tinubu and the Scarcity of Optimism - Chidi Amuta

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In more sensible places, President Tinubu’s job approval rating is so woeful that he should have been job hunting by now. In the United Kingdom, the opposition would have called for snap elections to test his popularity and probably throw him out of 10 Downing. In the United States, his party faithful would have been so embarrassed as to defect to the other side of the aisle with their votes. An engineered congressional revolt would either make him sit up or show him the exit door through an impeachment process. These consequences are very remote in Nigeria’s brand of democracy because we are Nigerians.

In a classic twist of irony and mass mockery, this presidency is riding on a political slogan –“Renewed Hope”- that literally laughs at the people and deprecates its very authors and vendors. Yet the mockery of that slogan lies at the very heart of our experience now. At a time when an administration is supposed to be renewing our hope in the future, we are experiencing the most drastic erosion of the basis of all hope. At a time when a government is supposed to be renewing our hope in government, the machinery of government has been turned into a cult of deceit. At a time when the political class is supposed to be reinforcing our hope in the nation, the very foundations of our nationhood are being eroded by a combination of incompetence and self delusion. As a result, optimism, the very intangible glue that holds nations together with each democratic transition is in dire scarcity among most Nigerians. Show me a collection of Nigerians at home or abroad, in the city or in villages and the shortage of optimism becomes the standard greeting. It is a series of rhetorical questions thrown by everybody at everybody: Where are we going? Where is this country headed? What is the agenda of this administration? What will happen to us? So, what next?

Among Nigerians of nearly every class, tongue or faith, it would be a hard search to find too many people who are still optimistic about anything, both about the prospects this government, their own personal lives or those of their businesses or indeed the very future of the country. The youth are either petrified or are fleeing in droves to other lands. The elderly look back at better earlier days and sometimes break down in tears about promises broken, good times gone by and a sweetness turned into bitter bile. Paradise in peril! Traditional rulers have turned into prophets of doom or professional counselors on the dangers of allowing the population of the poor to overwhelm those who can still find the next meal. The other day, the Chief of Defense Staff had cause to caution fellow Nigerians against the growing habit of raining curses at our fatherland. When people are hungry, frustrated and angry, they can curse even their parents and even mouth abominable heresy!

On the sad faces of their parents, even our children confront the bleakness of the present and are speechless when it comes to asking about the future. There is hardly anyone left to run to for reassurance. Irrespective of their position and the direction of their prayer compass, our clergy are getting tired of urging patience and perseverance among their faithful. A nation of inconsolable pessimists. That describes Tinubu’s Nigeria at the moment.

But democracy feeds on optimism. When a democratic outcome dims the prospects of optimism and blurs the horizon of hope, democracy itself becomes bedeviled and imperiled. When elections approach, the electorate is fed on one key diet by campaigning politicians: optimism and hope in a better future. People are told that the coming election is an opportunity to replace declining hope with a new optimism. Incumbency retreats, satisfied that it has done its best. Aspirants mount the rostrum to preach grounds for new optimism. It is optimism about the nation and about the prospective leadership of the nation. The campaign mobs echo the anthem of optimism and the democracy wagon rolls on.

In the dying days of the Buhari administration, the campaigns were fed by an unusual hunger for renewal and perhaps some optimism for a reprieve from the Buhari heist. Anything would be better than Buhari. After eight years of Mr. Buhari’s virtual locust invasion in the name of governance, people expected and fervently hoped that whatever replaced the clueless Daura general would be better.

No one dreamt of higher poverty figures. No one expected a rudderless economic environment. No one expected a higher rate of insecurity. No one expected the continuation of an economy bedeviled by debts and lacking enlightened management. Indeed, no one expected a nation literally overrun by enpowered killer herdsmen of doubtful nationality. Worse still, no one expected a totally indifferent national leadership inured to all feeling and compassion for the sufferings of the people. Of all things, no one expected that in our life time, so many Nigerians will become hungry and very angry as to die on queues for rice!

A prevalent note of some optimism pervaded the 2023 presidential campaigns. People looked at the three major political gladiators and concluded that even the worst of the bunch would be better than the incompetent Buhari. The mood of the electorate was to guide Mr. Buhari out of the China shop and hopefully fix the broken parts after his untidy exit.

Democratic succession is a ceremony of optimism. People hail the winner and minimally hope that a better leadership will inspire confidence in a better government and a better nation.

Afterall, Tinubu had run a tolerably progressive and effective government as Lagos state governor. He had improved revenue collection, patched the worst roads, summoned the courage to confront and reduce Lagos’ refuse heaps and generally deployed propaganda to market his efforts. His administration fed on a large diet of populist propaganda sustained by the political loyalty of ancient lineages and cells of vicious thugs and urban cult squads.

Even if Mr. Atiku became the winner, there was something to refer back to. Mr. Atiku Abubakar had mostly one asset in his resume: he had been the deputy to the bullish Obasanjo who ran a tolerably enlightened federal government. Obasanjo had drastically reduced our nation debts internal and external, reformed the banking system, introduced a modern payment system and digitalized telecommunications. He had fired up the optimism of Nigerians and their faith in the future of the nation because individuals could make some money for themselves. A man who had been in the room where these decisions were taken deserved a second look and a chance to try his hands at the wheels. That was Atiku’s flag and appeal.

Mr. Peter Obi of the fledgling Labour Party came in from a cold anonymity. An Onitsha Market trader who had been a successful two term governor of Anambra state, Obi came with a decent moral pedigree that is rare in Nigeria’s brackish political culture. A strange new kid on the political block, his appeal to the youth to ‘take back your country’ resonated with Nigeria’s bulging youth population. Obi reached out to the youth and urban poor with a trenchant new message. On election day, the nation showed they had heard him and his results upset the apple cart of national ‘politics as usual’. The echoes are still reverberating.

Then the system anointed Mr. Tinubu. Irrespective of the divergence of popular opinion that greeted Bola Tinubu’s emergence as President of Nigeria, the minimum irreducible expectation by February last year was that come May 29th, we would herald a new more hopeful Nigeria since nothing in anyone’s imagination contemplated a worse nightmare than the Buhari interregnum. No one could fairly deny Nigerians their democratic entitlement to optimism then.

From the entrance gate of power at Eagle Square, the man set out to inaugurate key policy measures aimed ostensibly at reversing the toxic trends of his clueless predecessor. But ironically, each bold policy move by Mr. Tinubu has produced the direct opposite of its intended objective. He has taken off a troublesome petroleum subsidy and inaugurated sporadic fuel scarcity and unaffordable gasoline pump prices. He has unified the Naira exchange rate and driven the Naira to its lowest exchange rate since it was introduced on 1st January ,1973. He has initiated a food security initiative but hunger has emerged as a national security threat of epidemic proportions for the first time in our national history.

The virus is not in the very policies themselves. It is instead in the methodology and embarrassing lack of method in the man’s policy madness. Key policies were announced ahead of the setting up of a functional government. Major initiatives have been announced and bandied ever before any systematic thought was given to their consequences by any group of enlightened minds. A president that set out as a swashbuckling conquistador had no horsemen to back up his charge.

He announced his signal reforms ever before he chose a cabinet. And when the cabinet came into place, it was an over bloated rough and tumble assembly of (48?), an inchoate assemblage of odd men and anonymous women most of them with neither background, tested skills nor pedigree. A cabinet of political debt collectors was the first let down of the Tinubu government for a nation full of optimistic expectations.

Tragically, Mr. Tinubu has allowed the impression to grow in the streets that he is less than competent and prepared for the office of President. Contrary to this growing street perception, however, President Tinubu has been quite busy. The man has been working for Nigeria at least in his estimation and those of his devotees and acolytes. In all fairness, he has periodically unleashed a hailstorm of uncoordinated policies, actions and responses in all directions to qualify as a busy chief executive. The uncoordinated things he has said about our national problems is even more copious than what he has done. And yet, the nation seems stuck in a swamp, neither making progress nor retreating to past safer shores. Even worse, Tinubu’s job approval rating seems constantly in the red. A shrinking percentage of Nigerians appreciates his exertions.

None can deny that Tinubu has taken some positive actions and indicated positive directions. He plans a students loans scheme to assist indigent university students. He has dished out money to state governments to buy and distribute rice palliatives to hungry and poor Nigerians. He has called state governors to support the setting up of state police formations to help tackle insecurity. He has found money to reduce the Central Bank’s foreign exchange exposures to foreign airlines and the banks. He has unleashed EFCC, police, army and DSS goons to chase after Bureau de Change operators in the streets of Abuja and other major centres as if to physically chase down the rampaging exchange rate with little effect. He has suspended an errant thieving minister, sacked and began prosecuting a former Central Bank governor and sent sniffer dogs after other major thieves. The main bastion of corruption, the NNPCL, remains largely untouched and hardly even mentioned. He has approved the construction of some major highways and rehabilitation of others.

In this avalanche of executive actions, there is clear evidence of a president who wants to work for the nation. And Tinubu likes to be praised and appreciated. But that accolade is not quite as readily forthcoming as he would have liked. Lagos is a small constituency and his impact then could be felt and seen at a glance. Nigeria is a diverse behemoth with large problems and elephantine appetites and expectations. Mr. Tinubu’s efforts may not meet the desires of the Nigerian public square. No one can say also that Tinubu has shown the mental grasp of the Nigerian situation that the office of president requires. His solutions are too eclectic and peripheral. His choice of key personnel is too pedestrian and xenophobic. Outside his Yoruba home base, Mr. Tinubu seems to be devoid of friends of substance outside the charmed circle of political merchants. In these respects, he compares rather miserably with either an M.K.O Abiola or an Olusegun Obasanjo.

Worsening social and economic conditions have shredded Tinubu’s best efforts so far. People are very hungry and angry too. Most are watching themselves slide into unbudgeted poverty. The miserable semblance of a middle class that used to decorate our urban landscape has vastly evaporated. People who used to drive cars now commute to work in buses. The well heeled who used to own multiple cars as a show of their affluence, have shrunk to one or two functional fuel -efficient boxes. A crushing exchange rate has forced people with children studying abroad to begin bringing them home in trickles. Holiday schedules are being watered down.

With these problems ravaging the nation, Mr. Tinubu is unlikely to find enough cheer leaders at the ringside. And somehow, the national epidemic of hunger and hardship is beginning to eat away his solid Yoruba South West support base. If that persists and grows, he may have difficulty aspiring to a second term in office. More consequentially, the Northern mob support that helped him on to power is badly hit by the present hunger and hardship epidemic. They are not likely to chant “Sai Baba” at his future rallies unless he can find food for the hungry and cash for the impoverished and more pork for their politicians.

It ought to worry Mr. Tinubu and his handlers that in spite of his best exertions, the critical mass of the Nigerian nation is yet to either fall in love with him or see him as a symbol of hope and national cohesiveness. He is still seen by the social media mob as an embodiment of the ‘trouble with Nigeria’, a power usurper and illegitimate occupant of the Villa. Worse still, he still continues to carry the moral burden of his untidy resume and grisly background.

The only way to improve his job approval rating and mass appeal would be to erase the multiple problems currently threatening the livelihood of most Nigerians. To begin to do this, Tinubu must use his first anniversary in power to push the re-start button: a new cabinet of problem solvers, a think tank of non-political experts, inauguration of a target-driven administration and a more nationalistic outlook.

[OPINION] From Udoji Award to Oronsaye Report - Simon Kolawole

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It is in order to say President Bola Tinubu is actually showing some balls with many decisions he has taken since he assumed power, although the jury is still out on the reforms. Last Monday, he “ordered” (we Nigerian journalists are madly in love with that word, aren’t we?) the implementation of the Oronsaye Report. We must quickly remind ourselves that it is a seasonal practice. President Goodluck Jonathan, who set up the seven-member panel in 2012 to “restructure and rationalise” governmental bodies, “ordered” the implementation in 2014. President Muhammadu Buhari also “ordered” the implementation in 2020. Let us now hope or pray that this will be the final “order”.

We have this obsession with proliferating governmental bodies in Nigeria. For example, we used to have the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) regulating the entire petroleum industry. Someone had a brain wave that we can further atomise it, so we now have the Nigeria Upstream Regulatory Commission (NURC) and the Nigeria Downstream and Midstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA). Someone will soon develop the idea of creating the Nigeria Downstream Regulatory Commission (Diesel), the Nigeria Downstream Regulatory Commission (Petrol) and the Nigeria Downstream Regulatory Commission (Kerosene and Others). Please, don’t quote me.

How did we get here? Let me guess. Setting up agencies is our own way of “job creation”. Normally, it is private businesses that should be proliferating and creating jobs in a market-driven economy, but since this has become a very difficult thing for us (maybe because the economic policies, operating environment and infrastructure are very hostile to innovation and growth), we have found the short cut by creating agencies upon agencies. The newly established National Commission for the Coordination and Control of Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NATCOM) announced last year that it was going to employ and train about 300,000 Nigerians. Yes, 300,000 Nigerians.

Let me guess again. For a tiny group of people, the sweetest jobs in Nigeria are the ones with the coat of arms on the business cards, so proposals for the creation of new government agencies and institutions are never scarce. The moving spirits, or the political enablers, are probably thinking of replicating a bank or a fintech firm with an MD, EDs and GMs. Some agencies have been created since because someone had an idea of the lucre on offer. It does not matter if the agency will be duplicating the functions of another or if it will be useless altogether. Even before some agencies are legally created, the executives are already waiting in the wings. This is stranger than fiction.

How did we get here? As I was saying, when the oil boom happened to us in the 1970s, we lost our senses. As a result of the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973, crude oil prices had risen fourfold within five months. From an average price of $3 per barrel in 1973, it was going for $12 by December 1974. Nigeria became overwhelmed with the flood of petrodollars and the accompanying pathologies. In 1970, our earnings from oil exports was a modest $200 million. Between 1973 and 1978, we earned an overwhelming $32 billion, averaging over $5 billion per year. Imagine your salary is N150,000 and you hit a windfall that now pays you N4 million monthly. You will surely be agog and go gaga.

With so much money, we began to expand the size of government without paying the necessary attention to need, efficiency and service delivery. In 1972, the Udoji Public Service Review Commission was set up by the military government to examine the organisation, structure and management of public service. In 1974, the commission made far-reaching reform proposals, but government was more excited about the recommended 100 percent increase in salaries and benefits across board — to be backdated to 1972 and paid in arrears. That would be politically more popular and beneficial. We had the oil money, so why not spend it cheerfully? Why worry about tomorrow?

Everybody was happy with the Udoji Award, save for the economists who warned of a looming inflation. We had plenty petrodollars, so the exchange rate was about 60 kobo/$ (aka “The good old days”). It was cheaper to import biscuit than make it in Nigeria. Mr Joseph Atobisi, an activist, wrote two years ago, “Civil servants developed appetite for imported commodities like sugar, canned milk, stockfish, dumping available local alternatives. More workers bought cars and expensive furniture. Nigeria soon became an import dependent nation. Manufacturing started collapsing. Unemployment spiralled. From 5.40% in 1973, inflation rose to 12.67% in 1974 and 33.96% in 1975.” It is what it is.

One of the pathologies of sudden oil wealth — or should I say natural resource windfall — is the bloating of government expenditure, notably through wage bills, overheads and white elephant projects, under the philosophy of “nina lowo” (“money is meant to be spent”). We thought our problem was not money but how to spend it. This was at a time most rural roads were untarred and most villages unelectrified. Norway, which also enjoyed the oil boom, chose to insulate most of the windfall from its economy by setting up a special fund and continuing to be a fiscal state. Although we built infrastructure from the windfall, we also created a culture of bloating government budgets.

Another pathology of the several oil booms since 1973 (starting with the Udoji Award) is the humongous expansion of public service. Government jobs could be instantly created and workers easily employed — based more on political considerations than a desire to enhance administrative capacity and efficiency. Every oil windfall came with federal, state and local governments bloating expenditures, multiplying the agencies and thinking oil money would flow forever. We can argue that with a growing population and the liberalisation of the economy from the 1980s, we needed to expand public administrative capacity — but that was probably the smallest rationale on our minds.

We created an agency to make sure that fuel prices are the same all over the country and called it Petroleum Equalisation Fund. People reported for work every day. At no time were fuel prices the same but marketers still got the bridging payments in billions. We created an agency whose job is to enforce federal character in federal employments and named it Federal Character Commission (FCC), even when it is clear that federal character is always missing. People report to that office daily and they even have a DG. I can count at least 200 useless agencies. We have never had the intention of stopping the creation of more agencies or bloating public expenditure. It is always good for politics.

The National Assembly, in particular, appears to be trigger-happy when it comes to unleashing new agencies on us, although the blame equally goes to the executive and states. As reported by PUNCH published in 2022, the 9th Senate passed bills establishing 376 institutions and agencies. How they would be funded is none of their business. We created the Nigerian Independent Warehouse Regulatory Agency, National Poverty Eradication Commission, Erosion Control and Prevention Commission, etc etc. The bill to set up the Electoral Offences Commission (a job purely within the ambit of the police) is in the pipeline. A group recently proposed a Cement Price Control Agency!

In the last three decades, we have decimated the Nigerian Police Force by creating several agencies to duplicate or take over their functions. The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), the Directorate of Road Traffic Services (which we call “VIO”), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) are all performing the functions of the police. Barely two days after Tinubu “ordered” implementation of Oronsaye Report, the house of reps passed a bill setting up the Peace Corps to also do part of the job of the police. We play too much in this country.

Even before deciding to implement the Oronsaye Report, Tinubu had ruffled features by putting directors and permanent secretaries on a maximum tenure of eight years so that civil servants will stop gaming the system and holding on to those positions forever. The policy was introduced by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua but Buhari reversed it. Let us now see how far Tinubu can go with the Oronsaye Report. There is a reason it had been gathering dust for 10 years without the political will to implement it. Vested interests will lobby to get some agencies exempted. They know what to do. We talk about how to make Nigeria work but work against it when our interests are at stake.

Finally, let me caution us that the Oronsaye Report is not a silver bullet, but it is a good development that Tinubu has set the ball rolling. He has a tough job ahead and he should know that. More so, the Oronsaye Report is dated, so there will be more knotty issues to deal with. For instance, what happens to the agencies that were created after the White Paper was issued? What happens to those commissions and agencies that are not under spotlight but are richer than some states? Shouldn’t we look at them too? Most importantly, Tinubu has to focus on an overall reform of the public service for optimal service delivery. Nigerians deserve better output from the bureaucracy.

And Four

Other Things…

FORWARD MOVEMENT

We have been told several times that we needed to ditch the “military constitution” because it is against “true federalism” but I am very happy that many states are moving forward with the same constitution. Aviation and railways are on the exclusive list, but states are building airports and running airlines. Lagos state has just inaugurated its second train service, the Red Line, covering Ebute Metta to Agbado with stations at Oyingbo, Yaba, Mushin, Oshodi, Ikeja, Agege and Iju. The first phase is projected to transport 750,000 passengers daily, reaching 1.1 million once it is fully operational. The Blue Line from Okokomaiko to Lagos Marina was inaugurated last year. Progress.

MARKET MESS

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has taken a series of policy measures in the last few days to stop the naira from bleeding, to create a sense of stability. We desperately needed some calm. The naira was already heading for N2,000/$ and someone joked that it might enter 2025 before all of us. The MPC decision on interest rate has been praised by many market analysts who are hopeful that the economy will respond positively. The instability in recent times has been very devastating, although I find it comforting that there has been a swift and decisive response and Mr Yemi Cardoso, the CBN governor, has done a good job of trying to calm our fears. We are watching with bated breath. Relief.

RICE AND DEATH

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has gone into the business of repackaging and selling contraband rice to help implement Tinubu’s “renewed hope” agenda. Well done. But, predictably, there was zero risk assessment and zero crowd control, so seven people lost their lives in the stampede at the zonal headquarters in Yaba, Lagos, where the sale took place. In response to the tragedy, customs suspended the exercise, belatedly saying it was “part of the service’s resolve to ensure the safety of Nigerians and to enable it to properly articulate its next line of action, in order not to defeat the vision of the initiative”. Why was I expecting to hear customs had fired someone? Negligence.

NO COMMENT

The Nigerian government has introduced the expatriates employment levy (EEL), fixed at $15,000 per employee. According to the geniuses behind the policy, the levy is intended to “discourage” companies from hiring expatriates for jobs Nigerians “can do”. The EEL is expected to generate $13 billion per year. Imagine if the UK, US and Canada reciprocate by charging $15,000 on each Nigerian immigrant working in their countries. Meanwhile, will expats doing the jobs Nigerians cannot do also pay the levy? If you really want to “discourage” expats, why not deny them work visas? And how will you raise your $13 billion after discouraging expats from coming to Nigeria? And you know what? The company that got the contract is owned by expats doing the job Nigerians can do! Wonderful.

[OPINION] Why Nigeria needs to open up entire power sector - Atiku Abubakar

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On Monday, the 188MW Geometric Power Plant in Aba, Abia State, was commissioned. By this weekend, Aba Power Limited, a subsidiary of Geometric Power, will commence the supply of electricity to a section of Enyimba City. It has taken long, two decades in coming. But soon, the much-needed electricity to unleash the full potentials of Aba, the industrial and commercial nerve centre of Abia, will surely make up for the long wait.

I congratulate and appreciate the efforts of Prof Barth Nnaji and his team to deliver on this project despite all the (political and) business environment obstacles.

His tenacity and demonstration of the ‘can-do spirit’ is exemplary. It is remarkable that the governor of Abia state had stayed the course of the project that he had made an initial contribution to as a private sector person. Equally worthy of congratulation is the enterprising people of Abia.

This significant milestone is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, it improves peoples access to electricity – and thereby improves the overall quality of life of the people of Abia. This is a privilege the people of Abia must be thankful for. As we all know, more than 40% of Nigeria’s 220 million people do not have access to electricity.

Secondly, it is a big boost to businesses. Aba is one of Southeast’s industrial nerve centres. The other is the Nnewi axis. Inadequate power infrastructure is identified as the most problematic factor for doing business in Nigeria. More than 70% of firms in Nigeria use generators.

Thirdly, the project is delivered by the private sector – and an indigenous one to boot! It demonstrates the resilience of the private sector despite all the business environment issues. It also demonstrates the capacity of the local private sector to deliver on such huge and complex projects.

Why does this excite me?

I have all along been concerned that:

1. The Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) has over the years suffered from inadequate investments, failure of generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure.

2. Nigeria’s core infrastructure stock is very low, estimated at 35-40% of GDP, below the international benchmark of 70% and below South Africa 87%, Indonesia 70%, China 76% and India 58%.

3. The finances required to bridge Nigeria’s infrastructure gap are in the region of US$100 billion per annum – over the next 30 years. Nigeria does not have the resources to provide all of its infrastructure needs without sacrificing investments in education, health, and other social services. It should be remembered that Nigeria struggles to budget no more than US$30 billion annually.

For these reasons, I have been an ardent advocate of private sector presence in Nigeria. I have all along advocated for a private sector friendly business environment so we could leverage its enormous resources, including finance, skills, and technology. I doubt if the Abia state government would have been able to execute this mega project with the resources at its disposal.

My policy document outlines how Nigeria could prioritize investments to increase the stock and improve the quality of economic and social infrastructure across the country. We believe that narrowing the enormous gap that exists between the demand and supply of key infrastructure facilities in Nigeria is key to improving the competitiveness of our businesses, opening new economic and entrepreneurial opportunities, and promoting enterprise growth.

To achieve this, we pledged to undertake far-reaching institutional reforms and introduce innovative infrastructure financing models that will be appealing to the private sector to take risks and invest capital.

To this end, we pledged to:

· Facilitate the establishment of a private sector-led Infrastructure Debt Fund (IDF) to mobilize domestic and international private resources for the financing and delivery of large infrastructure projects across all sectors of the economy.

· Establish an “Infrastructure Development Unit” (IDU) in the Presidency, with a coordinating function and a specific mandate of working with the MDAs to fast track and drive the process of infrastructure development in the country.

· Strengthen the capacity of the ICRC to promote Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in the construction and management of infrastructure across the country.

· Broaden the scope of InfraCredit to complement the operation of the IDF by de-risking investments in infrastructure to build investor confidence in taking risks and investing capital.

· Open up the entire power sector from generation to transmission for private investments.

Going forward, the goal of every developing country must be to achieve universal access to electricity, ensuring that every citizen benefits from reliable power for daily needs, education, healthcare, and economic activities. This would be in line with the SDG 7 (Sustainable Development Goal 7), which aims to ensure affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. In this wise:

· Nigeria must double efforts to support the likes of Prof Nnaji. Nigerian governments both federal and state must provide the Business environment that will make the private enterprises more competitive by (1) reducing their costs of set-up and operations (2) improving their margins and (3) making government policies more predictable.

· In particular, the authorities must create an environment that will enable distribution companies to recover full costs for power supplied to their consumers with firm commitment to a metering program for all customers. The scourge of electricity theft must be dealt with through a viable partnership between investors in the distribution companies and the government with legislative support for prompt action against electricity theft.

· Attention must be paid to improve access to Credit by enterprises willing to invest in the power sector.

· Government must incentivize the private sector to increase greenfield investments in the development of off-grid solutions to intensify electrification, particularly of rural communities not yet serviced by the grid.

Abubakar, Nigeria’s Vice President of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007, was the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 elections.

[OPINION] As Katsina Elders Were Saying - Okey Ikechukwu

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An Igbo proverb says that the man who complained about the relocation of the village market because its current location suited his wife is not thinking of the needs and fortunes of the larger community. The Igbo will also tell you that a coffin merchant who says to a customer “I will give you a discount when you come for the next purchase” must be viewed with misgivings by all men and women of goodwill. There is also the Igbo saying that whoever makes a living by impunity, presumption and braggadocio will have a very hard time when widespread hunger, draught and famine compels everyone in the community to deploy his farming skills.

Which brings us to the outcry of Katsina Elders, among other allegedly ‘Northern’ voices, when news of the relocation of some departments of the Central bank of Nigeria and aviation ministry hit the airwaves. Like Senator Ndume, who opened with a rather virulent salvo, the Katsina Elders forum asked President Tinubu to either reconsider the decision or face the clear possibility of losing Northern support in the 2027 elections. The statement was that blunt; and to the point.

But what is this much-vaunted point? The reaction was very likely in anticipation of the potential socio-economic impact of a relocation of institutions of state on Northern Nigeria. The group accused some individuals of ill-advising President Tinubu, calling the presumes mis-advisers enemies of Nigeria who aim to undermine the unity of the country.

By implication the, Katsina Elders are saying that the unity and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is secured and maintained by the continued presence of certain government institutions in Abuja – or in the North, generally. Now, that is absurd, is it not?

Not quite done on the matter, the forum accused the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, of supporting the federal government’s plan to relocate anything at all. Quite an “accusation”, wouldn’t you say? The group also asked why Wike was “inviting the Israelis to come and provide security to (sic) Abuja.” That is the business of Katsina Elders – I mean what a minister does, or does not do, in Abuja; right?

This group of wise elders said nothing when Miyetti Allah, a trade union of cattle dealers, set up a fully kitted alternative national security outfit, with its pilot test case in Nasarawa State. The group said nothing when the son of Professor Ango Abdullahi, Chairman of the Northern Elders Forum, was kidnapped from a Kaduna-bound train. The young man was held captive for months, until the full ransom was paid. Not even the subsequent kidnapping of Ango Abdullahi’s relation and her four children, shortly after the release of his son on ransom, was a matter of interest to Katsina Elders.

Even now, the Katsina Elders have not seen anything to worry, or talk, about concerning the routine pillaging of the North by marauders of northern Nigeria origins. Instead, they are very deeply concerned about what President Tinubu should do, in order to please the North and get the support he would need to win the 2027 elections. In strident tones, the group said:
“… we are telling Mr. President, as long as he is interested in coming back in 2027, … to reverse these unconstitutional decisions. Whoever is advising him to take such decisions is an enemy of the country.”

Perhaps the revered Katsina Elders would recall a lengthy submission of four years ago, by the Northern elder statesman, Ahmed Joda. The latter sought to remind his brothers and sisters that Northern Nigeria was not developing its human capital. He also told them, in that well-publicized open expression of concern that the North no longer had the time to do so anymore; and that the region was now ill-equipped to fit into either the knowledge-driven world of today or the new world of tomorrow. He summed it by saying that the North needed at least 20 years of super-accelerated development of its human capital in order to be taken seriously in today’s world.

Is the foregoing the concern of most of the people speaking for the North today? What you see, instead, is the pursuit of the illusion of dominance. No one is asking whether the larger half of the youths of the region possess the skills for tomorrow, or anything that could make them part of a 21st century world in any way.

Everyone now overlooks the major point in Joda’s intervention, which revolved around the fact that the triumphalism of cattle herders will not take the North anywhere in the immediate and long terms. The herders’ illusion of invulnerability rests on a conspiracy to use national security framework to promote insecurity in specific regions of the country. Can this last forever? Has the headship of institutions of state helped the North, or created a “replacement generation” that can lead the region into the future – even here in Nigeria?

There are abandoned, ungoverned and even ungovernable, spaces all over Northern Nigeria, due to terrorism and banditry. The North’s dominant elite lives in Abuja, while playing games with the very criminals that are wiping out northerners and laying their lands desolate.

An article which appeared on this page on April 17, 2019, titled “As the North Goes Under”, spoke of how a serving Secretary to the Zamfara State Government “…explained how he abandoned his farm and ranch because of cattle rustling and fear for his personal safety.” He confessed that “it was impossible to deploy law enforcement agents, even for himself, in any meaningful way” because they were mostly outnumbered, ill equipped and answerable to Abuja. As I write, matters have worsened very dramatically in Zamfara State over the years.

Remember that the government of Katsina State once signed an agreement with bandits; for them to stop robbing and maiming hapless citizens under Governor Maisari? What became of that agreement, and what did Katsina Elders say about it; and about the series of kidnappings going on in the state? What did they say, at that time, about the months-long kidnap of a Katsina State traditional ruler, and of the recent kidnap of a home-going bride and the 63 women accompanying her in the same Katsina?

Remember that Bauchi State signed an MoU on service delivery with development partners a few years ago? Remember also that the same Bauchi State has schools and other social amenities that are better not talked about here. The situation is hardly different in Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto, Kano and other northern states. Even states with over 10% of their geographical spaces occupied by marauders have been drafting and implementing budgets and development projects covering these areas, where no one lives.

Is it just elite myopia, leadership illiteracy and abysmal ignorance at work here? Most of Nigeria’s poor are northerners. It is always the case, whether or not most high profile political and economically rewarding positions are held by Northerners. For the first time ever, beginning with the tenure of President Buhari, the North came out with the greatest evidence of a people’s failure to follow the rules of political and economic self-preservation.

What you find at most major social events organized by prominent politicians in most parts of the country today, but specially the North, is that the guests are overwhelmed by shabby looking youths. They are either generally prowling the vicinity, directly affronting guests, or raiding laid out serving-food tables. They are very hungry, and not yet very angry about that. They are looking for bits of leftover, a little cash gift here and there, perhaps a half empty bottle of water, oo a soft drink. Nothing more!

And the big men themselves are usually not embarrassed by the spectacle.

It should be easy for the Katsina Elders to see the disconnect between today’s world and the illusion of relevance they are trying to sustain. School enrolment, the acquisition of vocational skills, professional development, and overall academic performance have not improved, and are not improving, in the North. But go and take a look at the recorded expenditures on education in the last ten years alone.

The North has not shown a significant increase in the number of people registering for SSCE, NECO and similar competitive examinations. And Northerners is being progressively wiped out by “their people” who come here from Chad, Mali, Niger and further away. Many Northern youths are begging in the streets, or in the forests, while those from outside Nigeria now dominate even the herding business; as they turn everywhere into a no-man’s-land. More and more foreigners may be the ones with Nigerian ID cards in the North. The total number of registered candidates for all competitive examinations from the 19 states of the north continues to stand much lower than that of one serious state in the South. Yet, the Katsina Elders are not looking in the right direction for their problems.

The roaming bands of marauders who have no conception of even Fulani/Muslim brotherhood may yet be the undoing of Northern Nigeria, unless the Northern elite wake up on time – if it still has time. The merciless, mindless and truly gruesome regular killing, the kidnappings and the rapacious banditry now has a life of its own. A new breed of wild young men, with predominantly predatory and anti-social skills, and who would rather pick up any healthy-looking man rather than say ‘Ranka dede’, are on the ascendant in Northern Nigeria. This is bad! Very bad for us all!

When you combine the foregoing with widespread drug abuse, poverty, open-ended criminality and elite insensitivity in one location, there you have the ingredients for brewing what is keeping most northern big men to Abuja and environs. Can they be in exile forever? I think not! Abuja itself is no longer safe. Many high-profile, and presumably impregnable, estates and exclusive neighbourhoods in Abuja are no routinely attacked; at the pleasure of bandits and kidnappers.

From the angle of business and simple economics, local economies have collapsed. Re-desertification has taken over the places abandoned by victims of insurgency. Farming and animal husbandry are in limbo, in places where they used to thrive. There is now no peace mind of for those who had the chance to make a difference but failed to do so. Thus, the elite must now spend so much on armed escorts and sundry security measures.

To the Katsina elders, as I said at the beginning of this piece, “…the man who complained about the relocation of the village market because its current location suited his wife is not thinking of the needs and fortunes of the larger community. …whoever makes a living by impunity, presumption and braggadocio will have a very hard time when widespread hunger, draught and famine compels everyone in the community to deploy his farming skills”.

[OPINION] Running Nigerian economy on palliatives? - Marcel Okeke

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In dealing with one of the initial shocks of the fuel subsidy removal in June 2023, many agencies of the Federal Government and a good number of state governments ‘officially’ reduced working days of the week to either three or two days, instead of the normal five. This initiative was a sort of palliative to lighten the burden of civil servants who were faced with an outrageously high and rising cost of transportation, triggered by rise in the pump price of fuel (Premium Motor Spirit, PMS) sequel to fuel subsidy removal by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration on 29 May 2023.

However, while the reduction in work days may alleviate the plight of the civil servants, productivity at the state and Federal levels was utterly sacrificed. In other words, the main reason for hiring these civil servants was played down—all culminating in unquantifiable loss of the ‘output’ of these public servants. On the aggregate, nationwide, Nigeria would have lost immeasurably in terms of the productivity that would have added up to the much needed economic growth and development.

Productivity is a measure of economic performance that compares the amount of goods and services produced (output) with the amount of inputs used to produce those goods and services. Productivity is said to increase when more output is produced with the same amount of inputs or when the same amount of output is produced with less inputs. But in the subsisting ‘palliative regime’ in Nigeria, the same number of civil servants is being used to ‘produce’ the same or less services at the Federal and sub-national levels: all because of the adverse impact of government policies.

Ever since the adoption of the two or three days (working) week in June 2023, almost every initiative of the Federal and state governments have principally to do with palliatives. There have been hues of ‘salary awards’, cash transfers and motley in-kind palliatives. It is on record that the Federal Government at a point late last year, announced a dole of five billion Naira to each of the states for an assortment of palliative packages for their citizens. The utilization of this fund got ‘soaked’ in the politics of each of the states; and the governors mainly used their political party ‘network’ to reach out to select beneficiaries.

Till date, many of the state governments are still contending that they were given only N2 billion and not N5 billion; and that the money was only to be repaid. Howbeit, it remains very doubtful if the right targets (the very vulnerable) got the government’s largesse (palliatives) in most of the states. This is why, over the past months, rather than things getting better, many more Nigerian have been pushed into the poverty trap in the face of sharp increases in the cost of living.

The import of all these has been continuing deterioration of the nation’s social fabric: sharp increases in crimes and criminality, upheavals and skirmishes, youth restiveness, organized protests, etc. All these have combined to heighten socio-economic tension, even as insecurity keeps posing existential threat to all. The polity is now such that government at all levels is contending with a hungry, angry and restive citizenry. The upshot of this reality has been packaging and re-packaging of all manner of palliatives to (perhaps) merely assuage the frayed nerves and ire of the populace across the country.

In the past couple of weeks, there have been public protests in not a few towns and cities in various parts of the country: Kano, Kaduna, Oyo, Ogun, Lagos, Abuja, Edo and Osun states, etc. As the protests keep spreading like wild fire, governments (states and federal) seem yet preoccupied with ‘dousing’ the tension (anger, hunger, poverty) through palliatives. This is perhaps why, instead of expeditiously coming up with a new/improved salary structure (or minimum wage), the Federal government seems more bent of paying ‘cash awards’ and ‘crumbs’ to calm the Organized Labor (OL), as it were.

The upshot of this has been that in the past eight or nine months, the OL has been in an endless dingdong with the Federal government over the form and content of palliatives as well as the new minimum wage.

While these remain open-ended, the Federal government has resorted to giving ‘food palliatives’; under this arrangement, the Tinubu administration, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, is working on releasing 42,000 metric tonnes of assorted food commodities to support the vulnerable population across the country. As this is ongoing, various state governments in a variety of ways, are institutionalizing the ‘palliatives culture.’ In Lagos state, the commercial hub of the country, for instance, a ‘Special Dispensation Palliative Advisory Committee’ has just been set up.

Chaired by the Governor, with his Deputy as alternate Chairman, the eleven man inter-party panel is to determine the content and variety of palliatives to be put in place by the government, going forward. It will also determine the timing and mode of distribution—to reach the teeming populace. At the Federal level, too, President Tinubu has equally empaneled a tripartite economic advisory committee—essentially to come up with “immediate measures to stabilize the economy.” Made up of representatives from the Federal and state governments as well as the Organized Private Sector (OPS), the panel is to help initiate steps to speedily “bring life back to the economy.”

The situation is not different in other states of the country: it is either the government is buying and distributing foodstuff or buying and deploying buses to ‘ease’ transportation challenges in its domain. These buses are made to charge ‘subsidized’ fares as palliatives for the people. Since June 2023, the Federal government had during festive seasons ensured ‘low fare’ charges by the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) for users of the railways across the country—all in the spirit of palliatives.

Some state governments have so integrated the ‘palliative culture’ into their mode of operation that they rather give crop seedlings (yam, maize, cassava, etc.) to their populace than introduce them to mechanized farming. In point of fact, the seedlings (and in some cases, fertilizer and other inputs) are sold by government (agencies) at subsidized rates—again, as palliatives.

In truth, a panoramic view of all these ‘palliative interventions’ will put to question whatever has been the economic development blueprint of the governments. If there has been any realistic economic roadmap, would palliatives or ad hoc provisions been necessary? Indeed, in the absence of a realistic destination (roadmap), every road (palliatives and doles) just takes Nigeria to somewhere (economically). And that has been its plight for upwards of one year now. At present, the Nigerian economy badly needs direction, stimulation and leapfrogging for a quantum leap. Palliatives will always remain what they are: crumbs!

The author, Okeke, a practising Economist, Business Strategist, Sustainability expert and ex-Chief Economist of Zenith Bank Plc, lives in Lekki, Lagos. He can be reached via: obioraokeke2000@yahoo.com
In dealing with one of the initial shocks of the fuel subsidy removal in June 2023, many agencies of the Federal Government and a good number of state governments ‘officially’ reduced working days of the week to either three or two days, instead of the normal five. This initiative was a sort of palliative to lighten the burden of civil servants who were faced with an outrageously high and rising cost of transportation, triggered by rise in the pump price of fuel (Premium Motor Spirit, PMS) sequel to fuel subsidy removal by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration on 29 May 2023.

However, while the reduction in work days may alleviate the plight of the civil servants, productivity at the state and Federal levels was utterly sacrificed. In other words, the main reason for hiring these civil servants was played down—all culminating in unquantifiable loss of the ‘output’ of these public servants. On the aggregate, nationwide, Nigeria would have lost immeasurably in terms of the productivity that would have added up to the much needed economic growth and development.

Productivity is a measure of economic performance that compares the amount of goods and services produced (output) with the amount of inputs used to produce those goods and services. Productivity is said to increase when more output is produced with the same amount of inputs or when the same amount of output is produced with less inputs. But in the subsisting ‘palliative regime’ in Nigeria, the same number of civil servants is being used to ‘produce’ the same or less services at the Federal and sub-national levels: all because of the adverse impact of government policies.

Ever since the adoption of the two or three days (working) week in June 2023, almost every initiative of the Federal and state governments have principally to do with palliatives. There have been hues of ‘salary awards’, cash transfers and motley in-kind palliatives. It is on record that the Federal Government at a point late last year, announced a dole of five billion Naira to each of the states for an assortment of palliative packages for their citizens. The utilization of this fund got ‘soaked’ in the politics of each of the states; and the governors mainly used their political party ‘network’ to reach out to select beneficiaries.

Till date, many of the state governments are still contending that they were given only N2 billion and not N5 billion; and that the money was only to be repaid. Howbeit, it remains very doubtful if the right targets (the very vulnerable) got the government’s largesse (palliatives) in most of the states. This is why, over the past months, rather than things getting better, many more Nigerian have been pushed into the poverty trap in the face of sharp increases in the cost of living.

The import of all these has been continuing deterioration of the nation’s social fabric: sharp increases in crimes and criminality, upheavals and skirmishes, youth restiveness, organized protests, etc. All these have combined to heighten socio-economic tension, even as insecurity keeps posing existential threat to all. The polity is now such that government at all levels is contending with a hungry, angry and restive citizenry. The upshot of this reality has been packaging and re-packaging of all manner of palliatives to (perhaps) merely assuage the frayed nerves and ire of the populace across the country.

In the past couple of weeks, there have been public protests in not a few towns and cities in various parts of the country: Kano, Kaduna, Oyo, Ogun, Lagos, Abuja, Edo and Osun states, etc. As the protests keep spreading like wild fire, governments (states and federal) seem yet preoccupied with ‘dousing’ the tension (anger, hunger, poverty) through palliatives. This is perhaps why, instead of expeditiously coming up with a new/improved salary structure (or minimum wage), the Federal government seems more bent of paying ‘cash awards’ and ‘crumbs’ to calm the Organized Labor (OL), as it were.

The upshot of this has been that in the past eight or nine months, the OL has been in an endless dingdong with the Federal government over the form and content of palliatives as well as the new minimum wage.

While these remain open-ended, the Federal government has resorted to giving ‘food palliatives’; under this arrangement, the Tinubu administration, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, is working on releasing 42,000 metric tonnes of assorted food commodities to support the vulnerable population across the country. As this is ongoing, various state governments in a variety of ways, are institutionalizing the ‘palliatives culture.’ In Lagos state, the commercial hub of the country, for instance, a ‘Special Dispensation Palliative Advisory Committee’ has just been set up.

Chaired by the Governor, with his Deputy as alternate Chairman, the eleven man inter-party panel is to determine the content and variety of palliatives to be put in place by the government, going forward. It will also determine the timing and mode of distribution—to reach the teeming populace. At the Federal level, too, President Tinubu has equally empaneled a tripartite economic advisory committee—essentially to come up with “immediate measures to stabilize the economy.” Made up of representatives from the Federal and state governments as well as the Organized Private Sector (OPS), the panel is to help initiate steps to speedily “bring life back to the economy.”

The situation is not different in other states of the country: it is either the government is buying and distributing foodstuff or buying and deploying buses to ‘ease’ transportation challenges in its domain. These buses are made to charge ‘subsidized’ fares as palliatives for the people. Since June 2023, the Federal government had during festive seasons ensured ‘low fare’ charges by the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) for users of the railways across the country—all in the spirit of palliatives.

Some state governments have so integrated the ‘palliative culture’ into their mode of operation that they rather give crop seedlings (yam, maize, cassava, etc.) to their populace than introduce them to mechanized farming. In point of fact, the seedlings (and in some cases, fertilizer and other inputs) are sold by government (agencies) at subsidized rates—again, as palliatives.

In truth, a panoramic view of all these ‘palliative interventions’ will put to question whatever has been the economic development blueprint of the governments. If there has been any realistic economic roadmap, would palliatives or ad hoc provisions been necessary? Indeed, in the absence of a realistic destination (roadmap), every road (palliatives and doles) just takes Nigeria to somewhere (economically). And that has been its plight for upwards of one year now. At present, the Nigerian economy badly needs direction, stimulation and leapfrogging for a quantum leap. Palliatives will always remain what they are: crumbs!
- The author, Okeke, a practising Economist, Business Strategist, Sustainability expert and ex-Chief Economist of Zenith Bank Plc, lives in Lekki, Lagos. He can be reached via: obioraokeke2000@yahoo.com

[OPINION] When 'sorry' means nothing - Funke Egbemode

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We called them the ‘happening couple’. Flex (real name was Felix) was a 500 level medicine student while Tunrayo was a 200 level Law student. Though the two of them were very busy ‘effico’, they spent every free moment together. They went to the bukateria together, walked hand-in-hand to the library and the cinema. They were a reference point especially when we girls wanted to ‘yab’ our NFA male classmates who were in the habit of giving excuses to their girlfriends as to why they couldn’t take them to see a movie at Oduduwa.

We simply sneered at them.

‘If a 'medical' student could make out time for his girlfriend, please what is a Philosophy student reading?'

Stuff like that.

Anyway, shortened version of the story of Flex and Tunrayo was that their love was not hidden, at least not to those who lived with or knew them. Those who didn't know soon did when tragedy struck. Yes, death, avoidable death, came too soon, before their story got to a happy ending.

Tunrayo ‘somehow’ got pregnant and Flex metamorphosed into a guy she couldn’t believe existed somewhere inside the fine-boy-no-pimples doctor-to-be she fell in love with. Flex didn’t want the pregnancy. Indeed, he told Tunrayo to ‘let them remove’ it. There were hospitals that would do it in minutes. There were pills. Pregnancy will slow him down. In fact, it will destroy his life. The two of them did not need the distraction of a pregnancy, least of all a baby at that point in their lives.

True, neither Law or Medicine will nicely make room for pregnancy or a nine-month vacation without a major breach in the course-calendar. Happening couple or not, both Flex and Tunrayo were young. Flex was 22 while Tunrayo was 19. Of course, things fell apart. The 'Baby Doctor didn’t want a baby and so started avoiding Tunrayo. No more lunches at ‘Forks and Fingers’ or dinner at ‘New Buka’.

Flex stopped going to the movies altogether and avoided the library like it was a lepers colony or a tuberculosis ward.

Love left the Garden of Eden and Tunrayo was inconsolable. She became a shadow of herself. And as the semester break approached, she became really afraid and distracted. How did you face your parents with a teenage pregnancy and disappoint your mother whose friends were already calling ‘Mama Lawyer’. Going home was like being sent to the Guillotine. So, out of fear, Tunrayo stayed back on campus and as we later heard, she turned up dead in a quack hospital in town. She died alone, along with her dreams, her parent’s dreams , with her unborn baby.

Flex wept and mourned. We were told he got there just before Tunrayo's body was taken to the mogue and that he kept saying he was sorry.

Dear Mum and Dad, tell your girls ‘sorry after an abortion had gone wrong means nothing’. If she does not die, she may be scarred, irreversibly. My dear girls, don’t put yourself in a meaningless sorry situation just because you think it would please the man or make him stay. Do not put your life and future on the line just for a man to say ‘sorry’ and move on while you carry the scar and bear the trauma.

Too many times, the words and emotions backing ‘sorry’ don’t mean much or anything at all. It’s okay to be sorry, feel remorse and apologize but the man or woman who has inflicted the pain cannot erase the affliction. The scars sometimes are life-long ones. That’s why it’s better to stay safe than to be sorry. Be careful what you promise. Be wary of what you are promised. Think of the consequences before you lay yourself bare to the situation that might lead to gnashing of teeth. Do not forget yourself in the ecstasy of the moment and let someone else take and take and take until you are spent, only for him to come back and say sorry when it no longer matters.

What about husbands, fathers, wives, mothers who leave for greener pastures letting their partners raise their children all alone? And then they come back 20 years later when the ‘soup don done’ and the children are all made, bearing ‘sorry’ as if it is ‘aporo-epa-Ijebu’, the solution or mixture that cure all ailments. Excuse me, who sorry hep, please?

Do not be like Mama Titi whose husband left with three children only to return 18 years later, his amputated tail in between his ungodly legs and bearing a dammed and cursed sorry bouquet. And I repeat, 'who sorry hep?" Unfortunately, Mama Titi did not move on. She pined and waited for that 'sorry"for all those 18 years. One day turned into one decade but she trudged on, taking on extra jobs, doing all kinds of petty businesses to feed and put the three children through school. All she did was work and cry. Of course, 18 long years of pity party will take a toll on even the strongest healthiest woman, and it did. She had a mild stroke just before her last child graduated. All the years of hussle and hassle have impacted her body. Let’s not talk about what the loneliness did to her mind and spirit. The years of hard grind and heavy lifting a left its mark, leaving her looking older than her 60 years. And then Baba Titi returned profusely apologizing.

‘It was the Devil’s work’

‘My eyes are open now’

‘She used juju to cage me’

‘I have wronged you and your Ori’

‘I’m sorry’

Annoying sorry, who needs it? What can roll back the 18 years of tears. Who will take away the toll of playing Father and Mother to the children on Mama Titi’s health?

Who am I to say don’t take your prodigal wife or husband back? It’s not my decision or anybody’s for that matter.

That’s not even the point of this piece. The crux of this article is what you do while waiting for the return of the prodigal.

If your wife left you with the children and went off with a richer man, should you just cry, pine away and wither with the years? If she bleached and partied 10 or 15 years away and then returned with a skin that is looking like yet-to -be -cleaned Shaki (tripe), offering you a bouquet of sorry and tears on her discolored cheeks, what will you do? Everybody will probably beg a deserted spouse to welcome home a deserter, right? Even the children most likely will join the plea club. Not a problem. The decision is solely yours.

My own sermon and view is this: do not let a deserter find you on a dung heap when he or she returns. Take care of your health. In fact, pay extra attention to your health. Live, laugh, move on. Do not waste years you cannot retrieve, crying and beating up yourself with what-if-whips. If he or she is having a blast wherever they are, please enjoy yourself at least if you cannot afford a blast. Bond like never before with those children he or she abandoned for you. Live, I repeat, live. Add values to your life. Let the deserter not meet you at the same spot they left you. Develop yourself. Enrich your life. Make sure you can see through tears of loneliness. Do not become a heap of ruin and rot because your partner chose the easiest route. Make your own luck. Enjoy as much as you can while fulfilling your parental obligations. If he’s having a blast, have a blast too. If and when he decides to return with ‘sorry’, meet him with ‘sorry’ too, in case he finds evidence of your ‘blast’.

I came in peace.

I’m going in peace.

[OPINION] Why Nigeria’s Best is Always in Its Past - Farooq A. Kperogi

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A version of this article was first published in my June 21, 2014 column. It is still relevant today.

The other day I was reflecting on Nigerians’ new favorite pastime: endless griping about the increasingly disabling dysfunction of the country. And I realized that one theme that often stands out when we bewail our present conditions is that we almost always sentimentalize the past.

In other words, many Nigerians find relief from the worries of the present by taking a mental escape to the past.

For instance, when Nigerians bemoan the “indigene/settler” dichotomies in many states of the country, they like to recall, for example, that as far back as 1956, a Fulani man from Sokoto by the name of Malam Umaru Altine was elected the first Mayor of Enugu, the political capital of Eastern Nigeria. His religious and ethnic identity didn’t stand in the way of his election—as it certainly would in contemporary Nigeria.

They also remember that when the late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi was governor of Kano State in the Second Republic, he appointed many non-Kano indigenes, including Christians from the South, as advisers and directors. There are several other examples of inclusiveness from the past that we invoke to deplore the politics of intolerance and exclusivity of the present.

[It should be noted, though, that Vice President Kashim Shettima, as governor of Borno State, blazed a trail in appointing southern Christians as cabinet-level advisers and aides. He appointed a certain Ifeanyi Onwubuya as his Chief Detail. Chief Kester Ogualili was his Special Adviser on Community Relations. One Christopher Godwin Akaba served as his Special Assistant. Babagana Zulum, Shettima’s successor, appears to be continuing with the tradition.

Lagos State governors, including the current one, have also historically been ethnically ecumenical in their choice of gubernatorial aides and advisers. They usually have advisers from representative parts of the country. There are probably other “inclusive” governors like Lagos and Borno governors that I am not aware of. I welcome any information that helps me to expand my knowledge of this.

But, of course, this won’t earn our praise or become a reference point of inclusivity, even if it is only merely tokenistic, because it’s still in the present. It takes the passage of time to valorize gestures like this.

And when Nigerians bemoan the worsening insecurity in the country, especially in the northeast, they never fail to recall that Borno State, the main theater of Boko Haram’s unceasing carnage, used to be so peaceful that its license-plate slogan is “home of peace.” Now, that slogan reads like a cruel joke.

On almost every imaginable subject—infrastructure, electricity, standard of education, tolerance, security, governance, leadership, etc.—our past has become our refuge from the scourge of our present. About the only area that Nigerians don’t look to the past for inspiration is telecommunication. No one looks back to the days of NITEL with nostalgia even in the face of the crappy GSM services that private telecom operators provide now.

I know of no society that valorizes its past, in even the most trivial indices, with as much wistfulness as Nigeria does. Here in the United States, to give just one example, rather than a sentimental longing for the past, I notice a tendency toward chronocentricity, that is, the notion that the present is superior to anything that preceded it.

For instance, when Americans discuss race relations, they look back at their past with disdain. Even though they are far from achieving racial equality, they all seem to agree that they have come a long way; that every subsequent generation is more racially tolerant and broadminded than the one that anteceded it.

As some Black American leaders have pointed out, the fact that racial incidents like the Trayvon Martin murder case captured the national imagination and became the subject of intense national debate speaks to the unusualness of such cases and indicates how much progress has been made in race relations.

Although Americans also complain about declining standards in education, it isn’t as much a national obsession as it is in Nigeria. In fact, studies now show that young Americans actually read more print (and—obviously—electronic) books than did previous generations.

In many societies, people say things like “this is the 21st century, for God’s sake!” to rail against people who are narrow-minded, who are ensconced in their primordial cocoons, who are opposed to progress. Implicit in this utterance is the idea that the current age is an improvement on the previous ones; that history proceeds in a progressive, not a recursive, direction. Of course, this is not entirely accurate, but it does capture a certain level of confidence about the present—and optimism about the future.

Nigerians don’t have even this illusory luxury. The past is a lot more comforting than the present and is therefore a better template for the future. But why wouldn’t it be? As a nation we seem to be moving from bad to worse in almost every sphere.

At a time when most closed societies are opening up and open societies are becoming even more open, we are becoming more wedded to subnational loyalties than ever before.

And stealing of public money no longer makes headline news unless it’s in millions or billions of US dollars. What is more, we have become so desensitized to death that unless people die in their hundreds, newspaper editors don’t put it on the front page.

Even universities that are called “ivory towers” because of their putative insulation from the reality of everyday life are affected by this national culture of worshiping the past. University teachers look to the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to reclaim the idea of the university.

I have never heard or read any Nigerian university teacher brag about improvement in scholarship and pedagogy in the universities in the course of the years.

No future can be envisioned out of this depressingly dark present. That is why we glorify and idealize the past. But a country whose past is better than its present in most indices of human development is in a bigger trouble than it realizes. And, most certainly, a country whose future lies in its past has no future.

But, wait! Are we, perhaps, guilty of a phenomenon that psychologists call “rosy retrospection”? That is, the human tendency to look at the past more positively than the present because it has faded from our active memory.

When I look at the archives of the past that we sentimentalize today, I see the same lamentations of decline and dysfunction that we have become accustomed to. Is it a case of every epoch is the worst until it is succeeded by another— and the passage of time and the frailty of human memory wash off is ugliness?

Bille People in Both Rivers and Adamawa States?

My friend Professor Moses Ochonu called my attention to a status update shared by the sensationally impressive polyglot known as Adedeji Odulesi in which he talked about an ethnolinguistic group called Bille, which he said is found in the “Demsa and Mayobelwa” local government areas of Adamawa State and in the “Degema Local Government Area” of Rivers State.

He said the dialects of the Bille language in Adamawa and Rivers states are still mutually intelligible, i.e., they understand each other in spite of the wide geographic, historical, and cultural separation between them.

“Both claim to be brothers and do visit one another,” he wrote. “The Bille from Adamawa are said to have visited their kith and kin in Rivers in 2001, 2012 and during the installation of their new king.”

If this is true, it’s truly intriguing and thought-provoking because it defies our conventional understanding of language and people. It would serve as another evidence of the labyrinthine complexity of ethnic identities in Nigeria.

After reading of this, I decided to search up “Bille language” and “Bille people.” The results I got were jarring. All the articles I read about the “Bille people” talk of only Rivers State. There is no mention of them in Adamawa State.

On the other hand, articles about the “Bille language” talk about the language in Adamawa State. There is no indication I can find anywhere that the language can also be found in Rivers State.

Yet Odulesi isn’t a flippant person. But is there a Bille person in either Rivers State or Adamawa State who can confirm what Odulesi said about them? I would really appreciate it.

Should this turn out to be true, it would be a chapter in my forthcoming book on collective identity construction in Nigeria. Please share with people who are from these places.

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[OPINION] The Plateau State Legislators’ Debacle: Between Law and Justice - Mike Ozekhome, SAN

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Error is becoming a norm in Nigeria. It has become our tradition. We have become a country of oddities; a country of one error per minute! We have become unshockable. Sadly, we spend the bulk of our time discussing inanities that ordinarily should not be heard in any serious forum. When some of us speak out boldly about these issues, some bootlickers, fawners and ego masseurs who seek favours from government of the day accuse us of partisanship; or of attacking national leadership; or Justices of the Court. Last year, in Kano State, for example, we read about a certified True Copy of a judgment of the Court of Appeal, affirming a judgment and simultaneously overruling it at the same time. The said judgment not only created great uncertainty, it also cast aspersions on the Judiciary and the legal profession, which are expected to set professional standards for others to follow. The earlier we addressed, boldly, these unfortunate anomalies emanating from our courts, the better for the legal profession and the entire Judiciary. Those who know or follow my works as a constitutional lawyer, human rights activist and Pan- Nigerian very well know that I defend the Nigerian judiciary passionately with every fiber in me. This is because the judiciary is the only and last hope of the common man and woman. But we must be careful not to allow sentiments becloud our true sense of judgement and thus get consumed by the ricocheting consequences. Some persons insist we are still learning. I thought learning leads to improvement? Like late legendary proverbsmith, Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola once metaphorically and laconically asked, if it takes a man 20 years to learn madness, how many years will he require to practise it? The focus of this write-up concerns not only about the serious implications of the recent Supreme Court judgement in Mutfwang & Anor v. Nentawe & Ors; SC/CV/1179/2023, (unreported), delivered on 12th January, 2024, to the effect that the nomination and sponsorship of a candidate are pre-election matters which constitute internal affairs of political parties, but also how the judgement highlights the grave injustice done to about 22 Legislators of Plateau State whose victories were snatched by the Election Tribunals and the Court of Appeal and handed over on a platter of gold to the APC losers. This is one judgement, aside the cases of Sen. Hope Uzodinma & Anor v. Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha & Ors (2020) JELR 86967 (SC) and APC V. Sherriff & Ors (2023) LPELR – 59953 (SC), that have sparked national debates and which will never melt away in a hurry.

The article seeks to know how the said Supreme Court judgment in respect of the gubernatorial election in Plateau State re-iterating that the nomination and sponsorship of a candidate for any election is a pre-election matter and an internal affair of a political party, impinged on the earlier judgements of the intermediate court nullifying victories of 22 PDP Legislators and handing them over to APC Legislators.

THE BACKGROUND
Recall that the Court of Appeal had held that the failure of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to comply with the orders of the High Court of Plateau State, Jos, directing it to conduct valid ward, local government and state congress elections before nominating its candidate for the various elective posts in the state was an incurable fundamental flaw. Relying on this finding, the Election Tribunal, under a petition brought by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its members sacked many lawmakers elected on the platform of the PDP. Under Section 246 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), the Court of Appeal is the final Court of last resort on appeals emanating from the decisions of Election Petition Tribunals in disputes arising from the conduct, outcome and legality of National Assembly and States House of Assembly elections. The implication of this is that no appeal can be filed before the Supreme Court after the Court of Appeal had decided on the matter. However, as noted by the apex court in the recent judgment involving Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State, both the tribunal and the Court of Appeal were in grave error when they entertained the matter and the appeal respectively, as they lacked the requisite jurisdiction in the first instance.

GROUNDS FOR REMOVING LEGISLATORS
Can disobedience to a court order (which in any case was not correct, as found by the apex court in the Mutfwang Governorship appeal), be a ground to remove a legislator in the face of the clear provisions of sections 106 and 109 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), which respectively deal with qualification and disqualification for the office of members of the House of Representatives and Assembly? I think not. A long line of cases vindicates me. See for example, Onor & Anor v. INEC & Ors; SC/CV/1194/2023; (Unreported), delivered on 12th January, 2024. Thus, as found by the Supreme Court both in the Muftwang case and Onor & Anor v. INEC & Ors (Supra), disobedience to an earlier order made by a court (which was not even the case in the two matters) is not one of the qualifying or disqualifying factors of a Governor or Legislator. In the Onor & Anor v. INEC & Ors (Supra) which I handled, the apex court held that the punishment for a disobedient party is to take up contempt proceedings as provided for in the Sheriff and Civil Process Act, CAP 407; LFN 1990; not to use it to disqualify an elected person and take away his victory. Thus, brings us to the issue of jurisdiction.

WHAT IS JURISDICTION?
Jurisdiction is the authority of a court to proceed with the adjudication of a dispute. In Attorney General of Anambra State vs. Attorney General of the Federation (2005) FWLR (PT. 268) 1557, I.T Muhammad, JSC, held that:
“Jurisdiction to a court of law is equated to blood in a living animal. Jurisdiction is the blood that gives life to the survival of an action in a Court of law, without which the action will be like an animal that has been drained of its blood. It will cease to have life and any attempt to resuscitate it without infusing blood into it would be an exercise in futility.”

APC’S GROUSE BEFORE THE PLATEAU STATE ELECTION TRIBUNAL
The grouse of the APC and its members before the Plateau State Election Tribunal and the Court of Appeal was premised on what they alleged to be invalid primaries conducted by the PDP. They had argued that the PDP had no structure in Plateau State (whatever that meant). But the trite position of the law now is that the issue of membership, nomination, submission of forms and sponsorship of candidates for elections are internal affairs of a political party as clearly provided for in Section 84(1) & (14) of the Electoral Act, 2022. Section 84(14) of the Electoral Act makes provisions before whom and where any issue emanating from the conduct of the primaries can be determined. It is an Aspirant that participated in the primaries that can complain to the Federal High Court. No other party has the vires to. Thus, section 84(14) of the Electoral Act, 2022, provides:
“Notwithstanding the provisions of this Act or rules of a political party, an aspirant who complains that any of the provisions of this Act and the guidelines of a political have not been complied with in the selection or nomination of a candidate of a political party for election, may apply to the Federal High Court for redress.”
The appellate courts, in ringing tones, have upheld this trite position of the law in a plethora of cases: Enang v. Asuquo & Ors (2023) LPELR – 60042 (SC); Onubogu v. Anazonwu & Ors (2023) LPELR – 60288 (SC); Olabisi & Anor v. APC & Anor (2023) 59640 (CA); Odey v. APC & Ors (2023) LPELR – 59695 (CA); and Dickson v. LP & Ors (2023) LPELR – 60837 (CA). Indeed, the appellate courts have gone ahead to hold that a person or political party that attempts to peep through the fence to query the internal affairs of another political party wherein he /it was not a candidate in the primaries is nothing but a mere busy body and meddlesome interloper. See the cases of APC V. JEGA & Ors (2023) LPELR – 59866 (SC); Akpatason v. Adjoto & Ors (2019) LPELR – 48119 (SC); Daniel v. INEC & Ors (2015) LPELR – 24566 (SC); APGA & Ors V. APC & Anor (2023) LPELR – 59914 (CA); and PDP V. Edede & Anor (2022) LPELR-57480 (CA). Matters such as the Plateau Legislators cases where victories were snatched from the PDP winners and handed over to their opponents in the APC on a platter of gold were therefore carried out without the requisite jurisdiction of the Tribunals and the intermediate court. The Supreme Court said this much in the case of Mutfwang & Anor v. Nentawe & Ors (Supra).

CONSEQUENCES OF A COURT DETERMINING A MATTER WITHOUT JURISDICTION
It is trite law that any exercise carried out by a court of law without jurisdiction is a complete nullity. The tests for determining whether a court has the jurisdiction to adjudicate on a claim were laid down by the apex court in the causa celebre of Maduokolu vs. Nkemdilim (1962) 2 SCNLR 341. The apex court held in that case that a court is competent to adjudicate a claim when:
a. It is properly constituted concerning the number and qualification of its membership;
b. The subject matter of the action is within its jurisdiction;
c. The action is initiated by due process;
d. Any condition precedent to the exercise of its jurisdiction has been fulfilled.

ONLY A CO-ASPIRANT HAS THE LOCUS STANDI TO COMPLAIN
As clearly provided in Section 84(14) of the Electoral Act and Section 272 (3) of the 1999 Constitution, it is the Federal High Court and not an election tribunal that has the jurisdiction to adjudicate on pre-election issues and this must be carried out within 14 days. Also, it is only a co-aspirant in the primary being disputed that has the locus to challenge the conduct of the said primary; and not his opponent in another party. See the cases of Alahassan & Anor v. Ishaku & Ors (2016) LPELR – 40083 (SC); Otegbeye & Anor v. APC & Anor (2023) LPELR – 60030 (CA); Labour Party v. INEC & Ors (2023) LPELR – 60548 (CA); YPP V. APGA & Ors (2023) LPELR-59799 (CA); and Usman v. APC & Ors (2020) LPELR – 50308 (CA). Delivering his own judgement in the Mutfwang appeal (it was unanimous), Justice Emmanuel Agim held that the APC and its candidate who had challenged Mutfwang’s election were not members of the PDP and so could not competently challenge the primary elections held by the PDP. He also held that the tribunal and Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to have entertained the matter in the first place. He lectured further:
“The petition by the APC and its candidates is an abuse of the court process. I wonder why the matter came to court at all. This appeal is allowed. The legal profession should wake up or render itself irrelevant. The judgment of the Court of Appeal is set aside. My only worry is that a lot of people have suffered as a result of the Court of Appeal’s decision. It was absolutely wrong. The appeal is allowed.”

CHALLENGE TO PRIMARY ELECTION IS A PRE-ELECTION MATTER
Section 285(14) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, as amended, particularly (a), (b) and (c), delineates the circumstances which come under pre-election matters and; which can be challenged within the electoral framework. It encompasses an Aspirant's grievance regarding non-compliance with the Electoral Act; or National Assembly regulations during political party primaries; disputes by Aspirants concerning their participation; and compliance issues with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). It also includes legal actions by political parties challenging INEC's decisions, including disqualification of candidates; and complaints related to non-compliance with electoral laws in selection or nomination of candidates; election timetable; voter registration; and other preparatory activities for an election. See the cases of Anyakorah v. PDP & Ors (2022) LPELR-56876 (SC); APM V. INEC & Ors (2021) LPELR – 58375 (SC); Akpamgbo-Okadigbo & Ors v. Chidi & Ors (2015) LPELR – 24564 (SC); Salim v. CPC & Ors (2013) LPELR – 19928 (SC); Akinremi & Anor v. Suleiman & Ors (2022) LPELR – 56903 (CA); and APC V. Suleiman & Ors (2023) LPELR – 59911 (CA).

COURT OF APPEAL AS FINAL COURT ON LEGISLATORS’ MATTERS
It appears that the Court of Appeal being the Court of last resort in respect of all appeals from the decisions of election petition tribunals in disputes arising from the conduct, outcome and legality of National Assembly and States House of Assembly elections becomes functus officio once it delivers its judgement and cannot reopen a matter it has pronounced upon with finality. In other words, a judgment once delivered by the intermediate court on National and State Houses of Assembly matters cannot be varied where it correctly represents what the Court decided. Nor shall the operative or substantive part of such judgement be varied or substituted. See the cases of Oyetibo & Anor v. Oyinloye (1987) LPELR-2883(SC) at 11-13. Dingyadi & Anor v. INEC & Ors (2011) LPELR 950 (SC); Udende v. Suswam & Ors (2023) LPELR-61304 (CA); and Owoo & Ors v. Edet & Anor (2013) LPELR – 22042 (CA).

THE COURT OF APPEAL’S RECENT DISMISSAL OF THE APPLICATION FOR A REVIEW INSTITUTED BY THE SACKED PDP PLATEAU LAWMAKERS
The sacked Plateau Legislators in an attempt to reclaim their lost positions in the light of the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Caleb Mutfwang case and it's obiter pronouncement on the legislators' injustice, filed a fresh application before the same Court of Appeal that had dismissed their appeal from the Plateau State Election Tribunal, requesting a review of the said judgement that sacked them. The appellate court however, as expected, on 28th February, 2024, dismissed the suit, describing it as a waste of judicial time, frivolous and lacking in merit. It further slammed a fine of N128 Million Naira (N8 Million per Applicant) on the already beleaguered Applicants.

BUT CAN A COURT THAT ACTS WITHOUT JURISDICTION IN THE FIRST PLACE NOT VARY ITS OWN JUDGEMENT DELIVERED WITHOUT SUCH JURISDICTION BY WAY OF A REVIEW?
The apex court had observed (on the Plateau Legislators’ case, albeit obiter), while delivering the judgment in the Governor Caleb Mutfwang appeal, that the lower tribunal and Court of Appeal erred as they acted without jurisdiction to have entertained the petitions sacking the lawmakers from the PDP over a matter bothering on internal affairs of their party. Couldn't this issue of lack of jurisdiction as observed by the apex court have been further explored and subjected to the jurisdiction of the same Court of Appeal that delivered the judgement by way of review? Were the legislators wrong to have asked for a review? Let us have some guidance from earlier decisions of the Appellate courts. In Iteogu v. LPDC (2018) LPELR-43845(SC) 18-26, the Applicant had asked the apex court to revisit its decision concerning him which had been decided by the apex court in 2009. This application for revisitation stemmed from the fact that on the 12th July, 2013 and the 13th May, 2014, respectively, the Supreme Court had held in the cases of Aladejobi v. NBA (2013) 15 NWLR (Pt. 1376) 66, and Rotimi Williams Akintokun v. Legal Practitioners’ Disciplinary Committee that it had no jurisdiction to entertain an appeal directly from the LPDC. The Applicant’s posture in his case was that in those cases, the apex court had held that it lacked the jurisdiction to entertain appeals directly from the LPDC. He had therefore urged that there was the need to revisit his own case and declare that the decision or judgment of the apex court delivered in 2009 pertaining to him was given without vires and so set it aside and have his status restored as a legal practitioner. The apex court, per Justice Mary Ukaego Peter-Odili, JSC, while dismissing the application for review, held at pages 18 -26, inter alia, that aside the exception of the “slip rule”, the Supreme Court may only depart from its earlier decision in subsequent cases and thereby overrule itself. She emphasized that this:
“does not however mean that the previous decisions in those earlier cases differently decided would be given a new lease of life on account of this new development. The reason for this is self-evident as Oputa JSC stated in Adegoke Motors Ltd v Adesanya & Anor. (1989) 5 SCN113: (1989) 3 NWLR (Pt. 109) 250 at 274 thus:"We are final not because we are infallible, rather we are infallible because we are final." …. In other words, the Supreme Court enjoys the finality of its decisions. Except for clerical mistakes, accidental slips, or omissions, it seldom re-visits its decisions by way of review, variation or setting aside. Once the Supreme Court has entered judgment in a case, that decision is final and will remain so forever. The law may in the future be amended to affect future matters on the same subject, but for cases decided, that is the end of the matter.” (Emphasis supplied)
See also Anyagham v. FBN PLC (2021) LPELR – 55905 (CA); Emezie & Ors v. Linus & Anor (2016) LPELR – 40514 (CA); and Onuh & Anor v. Ogbe (2019) LPELR-48361 (CA).

THE PLATEAU LEGISLATORS’ FIASCO
In the light of the above judgment of the Supreme Court, was there no remedy for those legislators who were wrongly sacked by the Court of Appeal? It is important to note that 22 PDP members in both chambers of the Nation’s and Plateau State Legislature were sacked by the Election Tribunals and the Court of Appeal, a development that left tongues wagging and ruckus generated across Nigeria. The legislators affected included two Senators - Simon Mwadkwon and Napoleon Bali; four members of the House of Representatives – Dachung Bagos, Beni Lar, Isaac Kwalu, and Peter Gyendeng Ibrahim; and 16 members of the Plateau State House of Assembly. They were all in PDP. Their constituents overwhelmingly voted for them. But the tribunal, supported by the Court of Appeal, felt otherwise. They took away the legislators’ victories and donated same on a platter of gold to the APC legislators who were roundedly trounced at the polls. The Plateau State people’s votes were rightly counted but the courts refused to make the votes count. This is what I have termed “Judocracy” in my OZEKPEDIA neologism, “as a genre of government practised only in Nigeria, where Presidents, Governors, Legislators and LG Chairmen are thrown up as having ‘won’ in an election. Their victory is immediately challenged. They get enmeshed in these legal calisthenics for the next 2 to 3 years of their corruption-ridden governance. Then, suddenly, they are conceived, incubated and delivered in the hallowed Chambers and precincts of our law courts, rather than through the ballot box. The will of the people is thereby subsumed in the decision and judgement of courts of law, the non-representatives of the people”. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8ByKVWWj)

SHOULD THIS PLATEAU STATE LEGISLATORS’ DEBACLE HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO THRIVE UNREMEDIED?
Our case laws are decided based on precedents. Precedent is retrospective and ensures that a given posture is maintained even at the risk that harm may be caused by it.
The apex court in the Mutfwang’s case noted (albeit, by way of obiter), that the Court of Appeal was wrong when it sacked those legislators lawfully elected under the platform of the PDP, as it lacked jurisdiction to do so. However, precedent is saying, “Yes, we admit that there was an error. Nothing can be done about it.” I humbly disagree with this perpetuation of injustice under the thin guise of “my hands are tied”, or “that nothing can be done about it”. Surely, something can be done about it. I agree with Emmanuel Agim, JSC, when he noted in his judgement that, “it is high time the legal profession woke up before it became irrelevant”. This admonition is in tandem with the admonition of venerable Justice Chukwudifu Oputa (JSC), in Adegoke Motors Ltd v. Adesanya & Anor (1989) 3 NWLR (Pt. 109) 250 at 274, 275, to the effect that “When therefore it appears to learned counsel that any decision of this court has been given per incuriam, such counsel should have the boldness and courage to ask that such decision be overruled”. I also find solace in the complimentary and immortal words of Lord Denning in PARKER V. PARKER (1954) 2 All ER 22, where he illuminated thus:
“What is the argument on the other side? Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand still while the rest of the world goes on, and that will be bad for both”.
Afterall, law is but a mere handmaid to deliver justice, which is why “ubi jus ibi remedium” (Bello v. AG Oyo State (1986) 5 NWLR 820).
Going by this, I humbly submit that when it comes to the critical issue of the court deciding a case in which it lacked jurisdiction in the first instance, then certainly, such a court has jurisdiction to revisit the said judgement and review it under certain laid down conditions. This is not a blanket or open-ended cheque for exhumation of buried cases. No.

A COURT CAN REVIEW ITS JUDGMENT
Thus, by reason of a long line of decided cases by the Supreme Court itself, a court has the constitutional power to enforce, review or set aside its own judgements under special circumstances as provided for by law. This is not tantamount to the court sitting on appeal over its own judgements. In Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc v. L.G. C. Ltd (2020) 2 NWLR (Pt. 1707), pp. 17-18, paras. D-C, the Supreme Court, per Abba Aji, JSC, held that the court has the power and leeway to set aside its own judgement and rehear a case, inter alia, under the following circumstances:
“…where any of the other parties obtained judgement by fraud or deceit…. When judgement was given without jurisdiction…”.

WHY THE PLATEAU STATE LEGISLATORS’ JUDGEMENT OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN REVIEWED BY THE COURT OF APPEAL
Surely, the judgement in the Plateau Legislators’ matter was dubiously obtained as there was no disobedience to any court order at all as rightly found by the Supreme Court in the sister Mutfwang case. All the cases had emanated from the same facts and circumstances. Secondly, both the Election Tribunal and the Court of Appeal lacked the requisite jurisdiction to have entertained the Legislators’ case the way they did in the first instance.
The reason or rationale behind this position in the above Stanbic IBTC case was graphically painted by Oputa, JSC, in Adegoke Motors Ltd v. Adesanya & Anor (1989) 3 NWLR (Pt. 109) 250 at 274, 275, inter alia, thus:
“We are final not because we are infallible, rather we are infallible because we are final. Justices of this court are human beings, capable of erring. It will certainly be shortsighted arrogance not to accept this obvious truth. It is true that this court can do inestimable good through its wise decisions, similarly, the court can do incalculable harm through its mistakes. When therefore it appears to learned counsel that any decision of this court has been given per incuriam, such counsel should have the boldness and courage to ask that such decision be overruled. This court has the power to overrule itself (and had done so in the past) for it gladly accepts that it is far better to admit an error than to persevere in error.” (Emphasis supplied).
Thus, where a judgment of a court was obtained without jurisdiction; or is tainted with illegality; or was obtained by fraud, the court surely has the vires, constitutional power and jurisdiction to revisit such judgement, even if time had since elapsed. This is because time cannot and does not run against illegality or fraud. A party cannot be allowed to benefit, or continue to benefit from the product of its own illegality and void conduct. This position was emphasized by the Supreme Court in Nwosu v. APP & Ors (2020) 16 NWLR (PT 1749) 28, where it held thus, through many of its justices as follows:
Per Eko, JSC:
“No person is allowed to benefit from illegality as illegality confers no right”
Per Peter-Odili, JSC:
“It is difficult in the light of the damming facts well pushed in this appeal wherein illegality was enthroned to be surveyed into endorsing of such acts and to allow the perpetrator of such profane acts to derive or profit from his own wrong”.
Per Amina Augie, JSC:
“The court cannot close its eyes to it (illegality) and allow itself to be used as a tool to perpetuate illegality, in whatever form or guise”
See also the cases of GTB V. Innoson (Nig.) Ltd (2022) LPELR-56657 (SC); Enterprise Bank Ltd v. Aroso & Ors (2015) LPELR – 24720 (SC); Oladosu & Anor v. Olaojoyetan & Anor (2012) LPELR – 8676 (CA) and Eco Bank v. Teak Naturale Investment Ltd & Ors (2017) LPELR – 42389 (CA).
The Court of Appeal which was approached by the grieving PDP Legislators sure had the power and jurisdiction to have calmly looked at and reviewed its judgements which have since been irretrievably punctured by the Nigerian people and the apex court itself (albeit, obiter). It should have meticulously reviewed its earlier judgements, all of which were delivered without following judicial precedents as laid down by the Supreme Court on the very issues dealt with in those appeals. Law is about justice. Being Siamese twins, one without the other is an orphan. The Plateau Legislators’ cases hallmarked a dangerous precedent where neither the law nor justice was followed or attained. The Court of Appeal ought to have seized the opportunity of the fresh application to correct itself. If for nothing else, at least for the sake of posterity, justice, fairplay, equity and good conscience. I so humbly submit.

[OPINION] Bravo to Oronsaye - Donu Kogbara

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The Federal Government is about to begin the implementation of the Stephen Oronsaye report, 12 years after it was first compiled.

It should help slash the cost of governance and I heartily approve of its recommendations, including the scrapping and merging of 220 out of 541 government agencies, management audits of 89 agencies and discontinuation of government funding for professional bodies.

Another recommendation – merging the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA; Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN; and Voice of Nigeria, VON – directly impacts on my profession and makes total sense.

Understandably, there are howls of protest from those who have been feeding fat on government largesse for decades. But I congratulate Oronsaye, 100% for saying what needed to be said.

When this report first appeared, Oronsaye said that if the committee’s recommendations were implemented, the government would save over N862 billion between 2012 and 2015.

One imagines that the savings figures are even higher now.

Let’s hope that President Tinubu’s administration has the courage to ignore negative lobbyists and do the needful quickly, ruthlessly and efficiently, without finding loopholes to unethically exploit.

A sense of elsewhere

I grew up in the UK – went to school there, worked as a journalist in London for most of my adult life and had an essentially British mindset. But my roots were Nigerian; and I constantly suffered from what an equally-conflicted Asian immigrant friend – a lecturer at the University of Warwick – described as a “sense of elsewhere”.

Not everyone who resides outside his or her ancestral land has this problem. Some immigrants become so emotionally attached to the countries in which they have settled that they feel totally settled in them and don’t feel connected to – or even curious about – the countries from which their forefathers hailed.

I have encountered Americans whose parents, grandparents or more distant forebears were born in Europe, Asia, Africa or wherever, but have no interest in visiting Europe, Asia, Africa or wherever.

They are culturally and psychologically American to the core and would not feel remotely conflicted about serving in the US army if the United States were to wage war on their “mother” countries.

Similar types of people can be found in the United Kingdom and many other destinations. But there are also immigrants who suffer from a strong “sense of elsewhere.” And I was one of them…so much so that I refused to be regarded as an immigrant, described myself as an expatriate or visitor and never applied for British passport.

What a “sense of elsewhere” boils down to is a niggling, nagging, ever-present feeling that there is another place to which you truly belong and should probably make strenuous efforts to connect with.

This persistent restlessness eventually overwhelmed me and, in a desperate bid to exorcise it, I moved to Abuja in 1999.

I was in my late 30s, emotionally fragile and terribly short of cash but so tremulously full of high hopes and absolutely determined to be at peace with myself.

Little did I know that the “sense of elsewhere” can cut both ways and that I would soon start to feel like a sad cliché again and to be haunted by a gnawing suspicion that my soul and this Nigerian place were not as compatible as I had imagined.

Within weeks of my arrival, the thrill of having relocated to my ‘real home’ had worn off and I began to miss the UK, badly!

My brother is – let’s call a spade a spade – just as neurotic and self-aware as I am and we once had a marathon discussion about the demons that tormented us and concluded that we, rather than the locations we inhabited, were the causes of the alienation angst that assailed us, whether we were in Europe or Africa.

“Wherever we go, we’ll always be unhappy and somewhat disorientated at intervals because we, alas, will always be there”, was my brother’s grim verdict. And I couldn’t have agreed more.

The painful, inescapable truth about some of us is that we are psychological cripples, to some extent, and will never fit in anywhere comfortably enough.

Samuel Johnson said that “patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel”, but I envy people who possess ardent, unapologetic allegiances to one country, people who have an unambiguous and passionate attachment to one tiny corner of the globe, people who don’t walk around thinking: ‘What the hell am I doing here?’

I suppose, in a world that is always going through one major disaster or the other, the average fence-sitting victim of this “sense of elsewhere” syndrome does not deserve much sympathy because many of us are, despite our possibly tedious complaints, basically OK.

Though still based in Abuja, there are so many things I hate about Nigeria; and I yearn for good old England every single day.

But even though I have endured several trials and tribulations here, including being kidnapped in 2015 in Port Harcourt, I know that if I ever get around to relocating, it won’t be long before I start to feel as if I left part of my ever-bleeding heart in Nigeria.

The trouble with being saddled with a “sense of elsewhere” is that you wind up not being an authentic citizen anywhere.

[OPINION] Aaron Bushnell: No sacrifice greater than laying down his life - Owei Lakemfa

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JUST 25. I mean Aaron Bushnell, a soldier of humanity. Inside his United States Air Force uniform, he wore the conscience of sacrifice for a people he may never have met. He was trained by the most powerful military in the world to obey the last order. But he was not going to obey the order of the US Commander-in-Chief, President Joe Biden, an elderly grandfather making excuses for the continuous massacre of Palestinian babies and children, even in hospitals where they seek medical care. As a principled soldier, the last order Bushnell was willing to obey, was that of his conscience.

He was not going to sit by, watching genocide visited on a people, not by aliens, but by their neighbours whose past knew genocide. He was not going to be part of an establishment which at every turn and corner, blocked the urgent ceasefire, necessary to save tens of thousands of lives. As a soldier, he knew that unless decisive steps are taken, these figures would easily climb to hundreds of thousands sent to avoidable early graves.

What greater love can a human have than to sacrifice his life for others? On Sunday, February 25, 2024, at approximately 12:58pm local time, the Development Operations engineer of the United States Air Force, donned the uniform of his service and walked smartly to the Israeli Embassy. As he did so, he said: “…Aaron Bushnell, I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine, in the hands of their colonisers, is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

When he got to the embassy gates, he doused himself in inflammable liquid and set himself ablaze, shouting continuously: “Free Palestine! Free Palestine!! Free Palestine!!!”

As a first responder security man tried to put off the flames, rather than help, an obvious secret service agent, merely trained his gun at the burning Bushnell. This prompted the former to shout: “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguisher!” In this brief moment, we see two species of human beings: a conscientious one, intent on saving life, and a conscienceless secret service agent ready to shoot a dying man engulfed in flames.

The flames that extinguished the life of young Bushnell were in the United States, but they were seen all over the world. They were flames of love for humanity. It was a symbolic act, but worth far more than the combined rhetoric of those sitting in the White House, Downing Street, Elysee Palace, Bellevue Palace or the comfortable chambers of the United Nations.

I will not put it past people who have lost their humanity, to claim that Bushnell was a psychiatric case. Such persons cannot understand how a person could sacrifice his life this way. Their Biblical progenitors would have blamed Jesus Christ for needlessly losing his life for the helpless and defenceless, and standing up against the Israeli establishment.

This explains why US Secret Service Spokesperson, Joe Routh, told the press that the security services responded to what appeared as “an individual that was experiencing a possible medical/mental health emergency”. But it was not Bushnell that was in a mental health emergency, it is the millions of human beings that stand by watching genocide perpetrated before their very eyes.

I had thought that after colonial Germany from 1904 to 1907 wiped out half of the Namibian people; the Turks between 1915 and 1923 exterminated 1.5 Armenians; Hitlerite Germany, exterminated six million Jews; Belgium under Leopold II massacred 15 million Congolese; and the 1994 Rwandan genocide, humanity would never again allow genocide. But with one going on today in the Palestine, I am convinced that a large section of humankind has lost its soul.

Amongst those who remain human, is Netherlands Deputy Ambassador, Angelique Eijpe. She, after 21 years in service, including in Gaza, resigned in protest against the Dutch government’s support for the genocide in the Palestine. She tried to dialogue with government officials under Prime Minister Mark Rutte, but failed. She participated in weekly sit-ins by civil servants of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, expressing dissent against the government’s policies in the Palestine. But little or nothing was achieved. So, Eijpe decided to resign.

She said of her resignation letter: “I wrote about the moral standing we have lost in the Netherlands. For example, the government has refused to define what’s going on as war crimes or potential war crimes. We have abstained twice in the UN General Assembly where it comes to voting for a cease-fire. We are here in The Hague, the capital of peace and justice, and our credibility has really suffered an extreme blow. Some civil servants in the US and Europe are taking a stand against their governments’ support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Several have resigned because they no longer feel able to implement government policies they disagree with.”

One of the most courageous steps taken by a country to stop this genocide was that by South Africa under President Cyril Ramaphosa. Where the Apartheid Zionists in Israel were being protected by the US and some European countries, South Africa dragged a yelling Israel to the International Court of Justice. The international court in January 2024 gave an interim ruling ordering Israel to stop its acts of genocide, including the wilful destruction of hospitals and homes, and allow humanitarian assistance to be provided the civil populace. But like an international outlaw protected by a powerful mafia, Israel has continued to ignore the ruling and common sense.

Bushnnel’s sacrifice reminds me of that by John Brown who on Sunday October 16, 1859, decided to strike a blow for enslaved Black peoples who were regarded as no higher than mules. Brown lost his two sons in that battle while he himself was captured.

The seriously injured Brown was brought to court in a stretcher and sentenced within one week. But he scored a moral victory over the lynch mob that tried him and the establishment that put them in place. On being sentenced to death, he told the court: “I see a book kissed here which is the Bible, and which teaches me all things; that I would have men do unto me, so must I do unto them. I endeavoured to act up to that instruction. I fought for the poor; and I say I was right.” History proved the saintly John Brown right. That same history, will prove Aaron Bushnnel right.

May his soul rest in power.

[OPINION] Tiger by the Tail - Akin Osuntokun

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I remember, with nostalgia, our secondary school days when the James Hardley Chase novels were such a delightful companion. Even though it was not a recommended text, it was difficult to find a peer or cohort unfamiliar with the thrillers. In the ‘Tiger by the Tail’ Chase told the story of Kenway Holland, ‘a respectable, married bank official who jeopardises his happiness and his future by one night ofmidsummer madness. The sudden temptation to kick over the traces while his wife is away lands Holland up to his ears in a vortex of political intrigue and murder. Set against a background of gangster politicians, blackmailers, gunmen and hard-boiled characters, the action of this explosive thriller takes place over a period of only thirty hours!’

‘Tiger by the Tail’ is also a metaphor commonly used to describe a situation where someone puts himself in a dangerous or difficult situation, often unwillingly or without fully understanding the consequences’. The applicability of the ‘Tiger by the Tail’ narrative to contemporary Nigeria is that when Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu became president, he was confronted with two options. Both of which are fraught with danger with equal potential to bring him down. One is to go down doing the right thing or go down doing the wrong thing. Realising he was handing over a lemon, could this be the reason why former President Muhammadu Buhari suddenly chickened out on his open secret scheme of imposing Ahmed Lawan as successor?

Three years ago, I sought the counsel of my economist friend on what to do with a hypothetical small fortune. Without a whiff of hesitation, he said the best store of value was dollars and that I should make a habit of it. My friend was doing no more than prescribing the most rational option in the circumstances and counselled me not to bet on Nigeria and the naira. At the macro level, it is this lack of belief in Nigeria that is fueling the run on the Naira and the runaway from Nigeria syndrome. Never really a nation, Nigerians are getting increasingly alienated from Nigeria, made worse by the fact that at all potential turns for good or bad, it has become habitual for the country to embrace the latter option.

This lapse is boldly written all over the budget statement put out by the President a few months ago. It is what is at play in the audacity and callousness of national legislators awarding themselves with top of the range brand new Toyota landcruisers. It is responsible for the prioritisation of a sixty billion naira mansion for the Vice President and five billion naira renovation of the state house annexe in Lagos. To what mentality do we attribute the reappointment of Mele Kyari as the Group Managing Director, GMD, the man at the centre of the oil subsidy scandal?.

In similar character, the so-called Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, recently announced it spent nearly four hundred billion naira on the last general elections. This was when the naira was about six hundred naira to the dollar. The calculation in dollars run upwards of three hundred and fifty million dollars. Yet, at the end of the day, the electoral body delivered the worst general elections in the history of Nigeria. The double tragedy was not merely the certification of the rogue results but the determination of the judiciary to declare winners regardless of the outcome of the election. The major significance of this electoral cycle is that it is the judiciary not the voters who decide the winners and losers in Nigerian elections.

The pregnant yesterday that gave birth to the monstrous baby of today is to be found in the craven rent seeking hysteria of the Nigerian ruling elite, (particularly the Northern faction). In an impossible claim of patrimony and gluttonous obsession with the Niger Delta oil, the late Dr Bala Usman came up with the cuckoo theory that ‘the sediments with which, and in which, this petroleum deposits are found, did not drop from the sky…These sediments are made up of soil containing vegetable, and other organic materials, including human, and animal, faeces and remains, which were washed away from farmland, pasture and forests all over Nigeria and outside and carried by the Niger to form its delta and all the minerals in it”.

In a similar display of Northern hegemony masturbation Dr Usman Bugaje followed up with a made to measure rant “There are no oil producing states…. the only oil producing state is the Nigerian state itself… Whatever mileage you get in the sea, according to the United Nations Law of the sea, is a measure of the landmass that gives that long 200 nautical miles or more into the ocean, is because of that 72 per cent of the land mass of this country, which is the North. What they claim is the off shore oil is actually the oil of the North.”.

Brimming with Southern Nigeria irredentism, Professor Itse Sagay responded in kind “You will observe that because of the long stay of the North in power at the centre, they manipulated the process and cornered all these oil blocks to the disadvantage of the South; today, you have all the juicy oil blocks in the hands of the North. Now that Jonathan is the president, he should ensure that he corrects this imbalance by allocating more oil blocks to people in the South to make up for the inequity in the sector.”

The worldview and ideological position of these fellow travellers is significantly antithetical to the ethic of socioeconomic development and subversive of federalism. It is a raw display of the culture of prioritising consumption over productivity at its most insidious. It bespeaks a mentality that negates the potential of Nigeria for national cohesion and socio-economic development.

In his contribution to the food security policy, the poster boy of the prevailing Nigeria’s gangster politics, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, lived to his billing once again. He alleged that the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, had credited the bank accounts of the state governments with thirty billion naira apiece. He said he got the rumour from “unverified reports. Well, according to the Oyo state governor, Seyi Makinde,’FIRS cannot give money to any state. It is not possible. All revenues accruing to the country goes into the federation account and it is distributed to all tiers of government. There is nothing like N30 billion being given to states for food security’

Noteworthy is that just about all the tragedies that had visited Nigeria have a direct or indirect causation in the Oil curse. Regardless of the prima facie case of Odumegwu Ojukwu, many observers share the belief that the recalcitrance of both sides to compromise was fed by the discovery of oil in the Niger Delta (moreso the Nigerian state).

If oil played a role in fostering the civil war, it became the essence of the Nigerian political economy after the war. Following upon the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel contrived surge in the price of oil in 1973, the Nigerian military head of state, General Yakubu Gowon famously gave voice to the full blown descent of Nigeria into a rentier economy when he wondered out loud that the problem of Nigeria was not money but how to spend it.

My visits to the Niger Delta region had been intermittent and confined to the urban metropolis of Benin, Warri, Port Harcourt and Yenagoa. For the first time, I sighted the interior islands a few years ago and it was a disheartening and harrowing spectre to behold. The unique topography made it extremely difficult and exorbitant to extend pipe borne water facility to their habitation. Provision of the infrastructure will require multiples of the cost of laying similar facilities elsewhere in the country.

Yet I was not prepared for the horror of the spectacle I was about to witness. The people were defecating and taking their bath in the same creek water they scooped to drink and cook! Lest I forget, the same water was polluted with oil sleek from the operations of the illegal oil refineries that dotted the banks of the crisscrossing creeks. I did not see anybody casting fishing nets into the river. Maybe it was futile to do so. My friend and escort directed my attention to the skies above; it was eerily quiescent and overcast but more importantly it was bereft of the chirping and flapping of flying birds-proof positive of toxic air pollution.

It is not only in the Niger Delta creeks that crude oil stood in the way of income yielding utilisation of the land and waters for agriculture, it also did in the rest of Nigeria. The difference is that while the reality was shoved down the throat of the Niger Deltans, other Nigerians made the choice of opting not to till the ground on account of the disincentive to work fostered by the avalanche of petrol dollars. Parallel to the pathetic situation in the region was the inadvertent mocking refrain of General Theophilus Danjuma.

Whatever his good intentions are (echoing the peculiar Gowon refrain five decades before), Danjuma struck at the heart of the resource curse syndrome when he complained that he has so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it. And where did he get this troubling riches that do not require the ethic of productivity? His oil bloc in the swamps of the Niger Delta. Given the squalid living conditions of the same Delta region inhabitants, should he have any difficulty identifying potential beneficiaries of his largesse?

Once again, Nigeria is squirming in the throes of an existential crisis. Dangling like the sword of damocles over the country are the harrowing exactions of the twin vicissitudes of the deregulation of the pump price of premier motor spirits (PMS) aka the removal of oil subsidy and the floatation of the naira.

Moments of challenges and difficulties are often replete with opportunities to advance with a giant step forward. Nigeria has for long being victimised by an unworkable constitution. At my last outing, I posed the option before Nigeria as that between ‘Rawlings’ and Restructuring.The former is a Rawlings style revolutionary cleansing and the other is a voluntary and conscious constitutional restoration of federalism. The jury is out. Let us seize the moment