Two weeks after Prof Yemi Osinbajo left office as Vice President, I have noticed an undue attention on him. Since these unwarranted attacks have the same theme, I am pretty convinced that they are sponsored from the same source with bile, pettiness and envy as the motives. 

Unless you are a man of great evil inclinations, you’ll never find any genuine reason to vilify someone like Osinbajo. For eight years, he did his job very well to the admiration of many Nigerians and several foreign dignitaries; within the limits of what the Constitution permits a VP, and the extent to which the principal delegates. The man has never been accused of corruption, abuse of office, sexual irresponsibility or any unethical behaviour, for which many a politician is notorious.

 He stood by President Buhari solidly; with remarkable counsel even if not known to many and not in the public domain, it is clearly the case. He offered his best to the nation and left honourably in a blaze of glory. He now deserves his rest in the company of his beautiful and equally amiable wife. But some resentful and bitter elements are not contented to let him.

The first venomous piece was written by Bob Majiri Oghene Etemiku and was entitled ‘’Buhari’s blood runs through Osinbajo’s white agbada’’. Published in The Guardian of May 24, the article was livid in rage that the then Emir of Kano, His Royal Majesty Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, had stated that Nigeria had lost a good opportunity in not choosing Osinbajo as its President. Sanusi made the remarks on Labour Day at the launch of a book written by 25 writers and journalists in honour of the former Vice President. I am honoured to be one of the 25 authors of the book.  

 Sanusi’s remark is a truism many still hold dear till today. If it has turned out to be a painful axiom to some, we have no apologies. Vitalis Obidiaghaa (another of the 25 writers) has already written a befitting rebuttal to Etemiku’s diatribe which The Guardian published on June 8.

Just yesterday, I saw another piece of convoluted tirade with the title ‘’Will Osinbajo rue missed opportunities?’’, written by Bolanle Bolawole, a former editor of The Punch newspaper who later served as the Chairman of the paper’s Editorial Board. At the end of the long drivel, Bolawole advertises a lecture he would be giving at the University of Ibadan on the task before President Bola Tinubu. That’s when I realized his motive. In his wisdom, he thought that the best way to presage his fawning lecture on President Tinubu is to be nasty to the man who contested for the job with him. This has become the basic tactic of some of today’s fortune seekers who parade themselves as opinion writers. Just hack down the perceived opponents of the king, and your invitation to the palace would be ready! And we have seen this kind of tactic pay out in many ways in our clime.

As usual with his ilk, Bolawole is questioning why Osinbajo dared to contest in the APC primary. This is a staple query of all anti-Osinbajo elements in Yoruba land. For them, it is the easiest way to denigrate the former VP and reach out to the new sheriff in town. But I won’t dignify the writer with even the most mundane reference to the Constitutional right of all adult Nigerians to pursue their political ambition. Nor would I wonder why he carefully left out the meeting of Southwest elders of the APC led by Chief Bisi Akande where the matter was properly discussed with a resolve ahead of the primaries that it was entirely in order for Osinbajo and others like Amosun, Fayemi to run in the primaries side by side with Tinubu.

Bolawole then asks what Prof Osinbajo got from the Buhari administration for the South West; what role did the former VP play in resolving ASUU strikes; Did Osinbajo confront former Attorney General Abubarkar Malami; what did Osinbajo do when Christians were being victimized and what advice did he give to the President on resolving Boko Haram attacks. Did Osinbajo speak out after the lynching of Deborah Samuel at College of Education Sokoto?

The only query Bolawole did not raise in his article is why the former VP did not prevent the sun from setting! Suffice it to say that no Vice President ever comes out to berate his boss for not taking his advice. I am sure Senator Kashim Shettima won’t do it. But I know for sure that the former VP offered in all circumstances the best advice, counsel and suggestions on how best the nation could be governed. And in all cases he queried, the immediate past VP is known by insiders to have risen up with the right advice to the President and rebuke where necessary to certain ministers. But these matters not being public does not mean they didn't happen, and I expect more details from people like Laolu Akande now that the VP is out of office.

And yes the then VP is also bound by the overall decisions of the government, irrespective of what his views are. 

It would amount to a disingenuous ingratitude for anybody to ask what the Buhari administration did for the South West. The Lagos-Abeokuta-Ibadan rail service; the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway; the concrete refurbishment of Mile Two-Gbagada expressway in Lagos are major federal investments. Without the administration’s FX subsidy and other supports, the Dangote Refinery in Lagos would have been a stillbirth. The honour to MKO Abiola; the recognition of June 12 and Tinubu’s election are all due to Buhari. The total overhaul of the National Theatre is also a very important federal intervention. I challenge Bolawole to tell us what the South-South region, the nation’s treasure base got in the period under review.

In Ikenne LGA, no one you ask would mince words to detail the impact of the VP. And a simple Google search will reveal state of the art hospitals in Iperu and Ikenne towns, solar powered lights on the roads and hundreds more model classrooms in several of the schools among tonnes of other infrastructural and Human Capital Development impacts.

The coldblooded murder of Deborah Samuel last year is a painful reminder of the impunity of Islamic fundamentalists in our midst. Prof Osinbajo vociferously condemns these tendencies. But why is Bolawole not calling out Sokoto State government for its refusal to prosecute the murderers? Why is our former editor so silent on the divisively sectarian and patently inciting messages of Nasir el Rufai in that viral video?

As the new President is settling down, many pundits are working hard to attract his attention. I get that. But I should caution that there is so much for the new President to do; so, all these obsessions with Osinbajo are actually a distraction. It is therefore counterproductive for the new administration and the height of meanness to keep dredging up old tales against the former VP.

May be people like Bolawole who is an operative in the intellectual public sphere in our country should get a copy of the book "Osinbajo STRIDES" so he can properly acquaint himself with the impact the VP has made, not just in the Villa, but since the '80s when he was Special Adviser to the then Attorney-General Prince Bola Ajibola. Afterwards, he can then return to make informed commentary on Prof. Osinbajo. What he wrote in that article is certainly filled with baseless insinuations and claims which Bolawole would have tongue-lashed a reporter for in his days as newspaper editor!

On Monday, the President signed into law a bill establishing an education bank that will provide interest-free loans to “indigent students.” The clumsily titled bill, “An Act to Provide Easy Access to Higher Education For Nigerians Through Interest-Free Loans From Nigeria Education Bank Established in this Act with a View To Provide Education for All Nigerians and for Related Matters” has reportedly been in the works since 2016. According to presidential aides, the initiative will help “indigent students” fund educational pursuits in public institutions, be they in universities, polytechnics, or vocational training centres.

People object to student loans for many useful reasons, but this initiative does not yet look like it will ensnare the destinies of the students who take them. Whether it will be properly managed is another argument altogether. 

Where things get interesting is the income requirement. To access the loan, the student or their family must not make more than a N500, 000 income per annum. For a law that will supposedly provide “easy access to higher education…for all Nigerians,” this is a curious characterisation of who belongs to the indigent class. If a law that supports the indigent pegs the income level at <N42,000 per family monthly, then we have an interesting inkling into what the government classifies as “indigent.”

Nigeria’s poverty rate has typically been measured through dollar figures. Presently, the official and international measure of poverty rate is counted as living on less than $1.90 daily. When the National Bureau of Statistics launched the results of the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index Survey that found that 63 per cent of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor, they did not mark their assessment of poverty through income level. They used other descriptive means. What resonates between those who calculate the average poverty rate in dollars and those who focus on qualitative means is that most Nigerians are poor and such poverty is not only about money but also access to certain facilities.

While a broad category of Nigerians will fall under the <N500, 000 mark, I still wonder at the image of the “ideal” (or un-ideal) low-income family that exists in the mind of the bill drafters and the government officials who pushed into a law. If such a family has a car, the average monthly sum they are not supposed to exceed is less than the costs of filling up the petrol tank under the new fuel pricing regime. I suppose it does not matter to the bill drafters how many people must comprise this hypothetical family, as long as they live on less than N42,000 monthly. Besides, how do they define their idea of “family” given the complexities of the Nigerian socio-cultural realities? Does “family” mean the nuclear variety or the extended one? Monogamous vs. polygamous families, which one?

In these very challenging economic times, earning even N5m annually does not take most families out of the indigent zone. Statistically, the average Nigerian spends more than 90 per cent of their income on food alone. Beyond eating, an average family in Nigeria also must buy diesel for their generator in addition to their paying for electricity, healthcare, security, education, and generally pick the slack in all areas where the government is lacking. You could earn ten times the figure used to set the mark for student loans for the “indigent” and still be impoverished. That is why it is curious that lawmakers would calibrate a loan facility meant for the indigent at N500,000 or less annually.

Even the Nigerian government that pays a N30,000 minimum wage has serially admitted that the sum gives people meager purchasing power. By setting income qualifications for student loans at N500,000 or less, the government shows how incoherently it conceives of the idea of indigence. While they accept, on the one hand, that majority of Nigerians are impoverished and their earnings cannot sustain them, their idea of indigence on the other hand is inchoate. You practically need to be destitute to apply for the loan.

Now, I quite understand that the government does not want the student loan funds abused by people who do not need them. However, tying access to the loans to such poor income earnings means the people for whom the loans are supposedly meant are exactly those who would be unable to access them.

First, in today’s Nigeria, living on N500,000 or less annually—either as an individual or as a family—means your chances of going to school and staying long there enough to aspire for tertiary or vocational education are already slimmed from the outset. It is a no-brainer that the people who live on < N42000 monthly (or <N1400 daily) are the ones least likely to go to even primary or secondary school and highly likely to drop out if they even get started at all. There are many foundational problems that one would encounter if one had to live within those means, and the promise of future loan access will not resolve any of them. Did the drafters of the bill conduct research that showed that people in the <N500,000 or less income category are in greater danger of being unable to pursue their educational pursuits than those who earn N43,000?

Second, the inflation rate in Nigeria is too high for any set sum to be reasonable beyond a few years. Why make a law about income requirements when what N500,000 was worth in January 2023 is nowhere close to either its present or future value? We do not need a soothsayer to foretell that today’s N500,000 will be a chicken feed in 2033. Those who debated the bill must be out of touch with Nigeria’s reality to assume that adjusting income requirements to a sum less than what even the least paid civil servant earns annually makes reasonable sense.

They should have left the income requirements segment open, so each family decides if they want to proceed or not. You could earn N10m annually and still need loan support because your four children happen to be in the tertiary institutions at around the same time. There is no reason to close off a major segment of Nigerians who will actually need the loan facility from accessing it. Life in Nigeria is too precarious to assume that all of us are not hovering around the indigent bracket. Realities differ, and bureaucrats need not be wading through sociological complexities to determine loan qualification. They should have let anyone wanting to take a loan do so, as long as they repay it.

Overall, restricting a facility meant for the “indigent” class to N500,000 and below shows that we are once again dealing with a general Nigerian problem of quantitative illiteracy. Nigeria has a problematic relationship with figures. We treat numbers like they are magical rather than a reasonable abstraction of reality, and that is why we tend to calibrate them inordinately. How can a country where a bag of rice costs around N40,000 bracket consider living on even a mere N42,000 monthly as anywhere outside indigence?

So, how do you intend to provide education for all Nigerians, as the newly signed law boasts, when you have a poor idea of what constitutes poverty in the country? How do you even generate the means of social uplift across all segments when you have yet to develop a reasonable idea of how much it takes to both survive and thrive within the present Nigerian socioeconomic realities? If the government fulfils its promises of increasing the minimum wage anytime soon, even the least paid worker will likely be thrown out of the income bracket that can get the loan. So, who are those indigent people for whom the education bank will be built?

Damilola Adeparusi, a Nigerian chef, has just unofficially overtaken the recently announced record holder of world's longest cooking marathon, Hilda Baci, also a Nigerian, who has just been confirmed and certified as the official record holder of Guinness World Records' cook-a-thon.

On this issue, many have been holding different opinions which have led to altercations between the chefs' supporters since Damilola had entered into the contest. Some believe that it's unethical on the part of Damilola to attempt to break same record that has just been set by a fellow Nigerian, Hilda.

They argue that Damilola ought to have exercised patience at least for some years like Hilda did before she attempted to break the same record which was previously set by an Indian Chef, Lata Tondon in September 2019. Tondon cooked for 87 hours, and held the record for 4 years after overtaken a male American chef, Rickey Lumpkin, who set the record for cooking for 68 hours in 2018.

In opposition to the above submission, another set of people saw nothing wrong in attempting to break a record whether it has just or long been set. It isn't a bad idea for one to test his/her ability irrespective of the time of engagement provided that the rules of the game sees nothing wrong with the move.

They believe that since Guinness World Records' rules and regulations do not specify or set out a duration at which a current record holder needs to hold the record before another can overtake him/her, Damilola had done nothing wrong. To them, it's offensively impolite to cast aspersion on the innocent girl who set to cook for 120 hours to break Hilda's 100 hours cook-a-thon.

Some reckon that it's critically important for Damilola's critics to look into the issue based on what Guinness World Records rules draw up rather than allowing their emotions to override their judgements.

Guinness World Records is open to anyone irrespective of colour, tribe, level of education and others as long as the contestant has the strength to carry out the activity and is ready to follow the rules and guidelines. Except for those who are below 16 years old, everyone is welcome and allowed by Guinness World Records to try his/her luck.

Furthermore, there is no rule that states that if a newly contestant overtakes the previous record holder during the time that the latter awaits to be certified or is just being handed a certificate, the record or the certificate of the holder will be canceled or he/she will be denied entitlement to the record being set. Both contestants, of course, will be issued certificates after Guinness World Record have confirmed and are satisfied that both followed the set guidelines. Record holders can co-exist at the same time.

Hence, I do not think there is a reason to see Chef Damilola's attempt to show the world her ability as an envy or a way to deny Chef Hilda her entitlement. Whether contestants come from same country, region, tribe, community or family, Guinness World Records are less concerned.

Their aim and target is the diligence being displayed by contestants; contestants' thoroughness and attention to rules and guidelines of the game, and contestants' ability to outshine or overtake the previous record holder. The interval or duration between the time record is set and the time record is broken is immaterial to Guinness World Records.

Undoubtedly, records are meant to be broken. Instead of reprimanding and castigating Damilola or seeing her as a stumbling block to her fellow compatriot's success, she ought to be applauded for attempting to bring another glory to her fatherland, Nigeria. If Damilola did not do her best to try to break the record for Nigeria back to back, another person from another country will surely do it, and the consecutive glory may elude Nigeria.

In my view, I do not see Damilola as someone who is in competition with Hilda. I see her as someone who's inspired by her fellow Nigerian to prove her worth, and bring glory to Nigeria like her motivator, Hilda Baci. To engage in marathon cooking isn't an easy task. It's dishonourable to reject anyone of the chefs. Both are heroines that ought to be celebrated.

Ademola 'Bablow' Babalola.

Peter Obi is a hypocrite, he is not ideologically aligned with any democratic process or struggle. Just as he opportunistically appeared at the winners chapel 'Shiloh', Papa Adeboye's Redemption camp, Eneche's 'Dome' and many other places of christian religious gatherings. The 'Yes Daddy' crooner remembered to honour June 12 for the FIRST time too. Peter Obi religious campaign script is POOR and WEAK! His hypocrisy is HELLISH as well as his opportunistic tendencies typically characterised by strong dispositions and drives similar to his mentor Olusegun Obasanjo who benefited from other people's misfortune throughout, particularly the sacrifice of Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola (MKO).

Peter Obi in his usual hypocritical style on June 12, our democracy day, posited: "Today is June 12, June 12 marked in our dear country as Democracy Day . It is a historic day that deserves to be celebrated. On that day in 1993, we the people of Nigeria stated our unreserved preference for true democracy. Though under military rule, we freely chose a transparent voting method. Our votes reflected our true choice as a people. Our choice on that day defied divisions of ethnicity, religion and region." This is certainly not a good idea to demonstrate progressive mindset. It is a dubious mindset of an opportunist who usually benefit from other people's efforts.

Interestingly, Okwute forgot or cleverly concealed his involvement in the activities that truncated the people's mandate. He was the 'man-friday' of the Abacha government and benefited from the inglorious era of despotism. Peter was alleged to be part of the brains behind Arthur Nzeribe's ABN. In the recent past months I have written extensively on the characteristics of Peter 'Gregory' Obi one of which is "Peter Obi A Capitalist With A Socialist Cap" His capacity for mischief surpassed the Minna 'Evil genius'. Peter is sufficiently dubious minded. What a duplicitous mindset.

Unfortunately, many of the social media age children don't know the true story of our democracy vis-a-vis June 12, that's why you see them clamouring for a gold digger, opportunist and an unrepentant liars to become a president. Peter Obi was solidly in support of evil policies and backed Emefiele amid rising inflation, chaotic foreign exchange regime, high interest rate, among other glaring economic challenges. He was packaged as a messiah by those who have successfully highjacked and manipulated the minds of unsuspecting gullible followers excited about magic particularly the restive youths.

His words: “People are talking about the Central Bank Governor, first let me assure you that the CBN governor will maintain his independence, he will be respected. Again, it is not the problem of the person there. CBN has a role in monetary policy. Then, you have the fiscal ecosystem. It’s like you go to a football match and the person who is supposed to be playing a particular wing is no longer there" Again, the loquacious trader turned politician is a master in the art smooth talking. Talks very confidently in a way that is likely to persuade people, but may not be sincere or honest. ...the smooth-talking con-man at his best.

Likewise, Olusegun Obasanjo one of Peter's sponsors: I am usually pained whenever I see Obj talking about democracy or mentorship. He was the greatest showman and beneficiary of God's immeasurable grace. Obasanjo was a direct beneficiary of the struggle of our collective sacrifice. He became President C-in-C of the federal republic of Nigeria on account of Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola MKO's mandate 'June 12'. Sadly, throughout his inglorious era nothing for MKO. June 12 was a no go area. Thankfully some of us pushed for a replacement for our democracy day celebration in honor of MKO and June 12 replaced May 29, the preferred day of the junta.

In conclusion, I like to dedicate this article that focuses on June 12, to ever green memory of Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola (MKO) who championed the Democracy that many of our past leaders have opportunistically enjoyed. Finally, I salute the courage of our patriots who stood up for Equity, Fair play and Justice. Equally, I recognize those who I personally reach out to during the consultation on the desirability of June 12 as our democracy day: former President Goodluck Jonathan, Asíwájú Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Dr Okwe Nwodo, Chief Wole Olanipekun, Prof Wole Soyinka WS, Femi Falana, Yele Sowore and many others. I salute you all. Nigeria will rise again.

Richard Odusanya
Mind Restructuring Enthusiast.