
OTHERS' VIEWS
Opposition politicians have revved up their engines again ahead of the 2027 election. They are busy meeting, engaging in visitations, regrouping, and strategising under various platforms. And recently at a two-day event in Abuja themed “Strengthening Nigeria’s Democracy: Pathway to Good Governance and Political Integrity,” some of these opposition figures huffed and puffed, upbraiding the present government and disparaging President Bola Tinubu and the governing All Progressives Congress.
Some of them, like former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, have taken advantage of various public speaking opportunities to condemn the government’s policy options and decisions but offered little or no alternative course of action.
This is dismaying. During the Second Republic when the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria leader, the late sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was the leader of the opposition, he would dissect the policies of the National Party of Nigeria government of President Shehu Shagari, cut it down into granular details and offer clear, convincing and actionable alternatives. Awolowo’s interventions provided useful solutions that would have bolstered Nigeria’s economy and enriched our democracy, but unfortunately, that era lasted only four years and three months as the military struck.
President Tinubu has barely spent two years in office. Yet, political opponents have upped the ante in a desperate move to grab power in 2027. The latest move in this direction was the visit last week of the defeated Peoples Democratic Party candidate in the 2023 presidential election, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, to former President Olusegun Obasanjo at his Abeokuta, Ogun State hilltop residence. Atiku was in company with former Sokoto State governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, former Cross River State governor Liyel Imoke and Senator Abdul Ningi from Bauchi State, all of the crisis-ridden PDP.
The former vice-president claimed the meeting had nothing to do with 2027. Anyone who believes him on that will believe anything. There was also New Nigeria People’s Party leader, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso, who travelled all the way to Lagos from Kano to confer with former Osun State governor Rauf Aregbesola to discuss issues believed to be in connection with 2027. Ogbeni Aregbesola is leading the Omoluabi Group in Osun.
Three sets of opposition groups are discernible at the moment. One group comprises President Tinubu’s opponents in the 2023 election who have refused to see, and perhaps may never see, anything good in the present government, hard as the administration works to reverse the past mistakes and dwindling fortunes of the country. These men contested the last election with the President and were roundly defeated both on the ballot and in court.
However, they have continued to carry on as if the 2023 election cycle has not ended. In this group are former VP Atiku and former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi. Their depleting rank of supporters, called the Atikulated and Obidents, are in league with them in this cantankerous behaviour.
The second group is made up of some erstwhile APC chieftains who claim to still belong to the party but have constituted themselves into opposition elements within. Bitter and vicious, they include former minister of transportation Rotimi Amaechi and some others who rightly or wrongly feel entitled to political appointments and government patronage. Amaechi had detached himself from the APC since he lost out at the APC primaries in August 2022.
The last group is composed of former APC leaders who are completely out of the party but now vigorously working against the party’s interests. Ogbeni Aregbesola belongs in this group.
These three groups of opposition figures are working to take over power in 2027. They are aiming at forming a coalition to unseat APC. None has been consummated as of this time.
It is relevant to ask: why are opposition parties in our climes unduly fixated about taking over power? It may be argued that the zero-sum nature of our politics, the winner-takes-all syndrome, is a contributory factor. But then, the role of opposition parties in a democracy is much more crucial. It is critical in determining the level of accountability and acceptability of governing parties as well as the overall quality of a country’s democracy.
In his seminal work on the “Role of Opposition Parties in Developing Democracies” published in a journal by Democracy Works Foundation, Williams Gumede posits that: “Opposition parties provide alternative visions, policies, and leaders to the governing party. They scrutinise government decisions, policies, and actions – and play oversight over the executive and the public administration. They defend the voters’ interests – not only their constituencies but all the country’s voters.”
Indeed, opposition parties’ capacity to show the electorate they are credible alternatives is crucial to the credibility of the democratic system. The strength of the opposition in a democracy plays a key role in the quality of that democracy and, by extension, the effectiveness of the state. Gumede adds that, “a democratic system is significantly undermined if the opposition does not offer any credible alternatives to the governing party, is invisible in the public debate or does not have a public profile beyond during elections.”
Although many will reckon that 2027 is still a long time and according to a Yoruba adage, the sun out there can still dry the clothes, nonetheless, it is doubtful if the opposition as currently constituted in Nigeria is capable of ousting the APC in 2027.
This is why I surmise this way: the major opposition parties, the PDP, Labour Party, and of course NNPP are neck deep in crisis. They parade fragile leadership with seemingly unending court litigations. Generally, the opposition seems too uncoordinated and lacks focus. Any alliance by such groups can only be fickle and fissiparous. These opposition politicians are being driven by personal ambition, and not the interest of the country.
Also, the matter of power rotation between the North and South over two terms is also an important factor that may work against the opposition. This factor and the machinations over 2027 may have prompted the Secretary to the Government of the Federation Senator George George Akume and APC National Chairman Abdullahi Ganduje to ask the North to wait till 2031 for another shot at power, arguing that President Muhammadu Buhari from the North had done eight years in office and that the South should be allowed to complete its eight years as well.
APC national secretary Senator Ajibola Basiru spoke on this seeming emptiness of the disgruntled opposition groups. In an interview with the Nigerian Tribune published on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, he doubted if the opposition parties had what it takes to successfully cobble a merger or form a united front against the APC.
He declared: “The question is, for the economic policies of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, what are the alternatives that the opposition has brought out, beyond just planning for the 2027 election? If 2027 comes, what do they want to campaign with, and what alternatives are you giving the people? They don’t have any alternative. The so-called opposition groups are just power-mongers. The only job they have is that they want to access government power for personal aggrandizement without any program or policies for the Nigerian people. I’m not a soothsayer, but they will not be able to merge because all the leading opposition figures are driven by personal ambitions.”
Do I agree with the APC national secretary? I think so.
Rahman is the senior special assistant to President Tinubu on media, publicity and special duties.
Nigerian music legend, Innocent Idiaba known with his several aliases has a trajectory that bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the Nigerian nation, if not, then in the instability of his romantic inclinations.
The first thing that draws a comparison between Innocent Idiaba and Nigeria is that of an identity crisis.
For any journalist following the triumphs and trials of Innocent Idiaba, a major issue is how to identify him. Innocent Idiaba first evolved with the moniker, 2Face. That byname first adopted in his early days in Enugu was to differentiate his double identity as a businessman and as an artiste.
From 2Face the name grew into Tuface as the musician sought a stylistic shade to his stature in the industry.
By 2016, having established himself in the industry, he transformed into 2Baba. However, it is remarkable that Tuface is what many of his followers continue to identify him with.
Google searches show that Tuface by far ranks above every other identity that the music star bears. So, some can dare say that given the fact that he is more popularly searched for as Tuface, a name that he has discarded, the musical icon may well be living in the glory of the past.
Only a few in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC would disagree that Nigeria is not living in the glory of the past. With economic and political indicators alarming many, there is no doubt that Nigeria just like TuFace is also living in the glory of the past.
In an interview on Arise News Tv earlier this week, African Development Bank president, Dr Akiwunmi Adesina spoke of how he was able to travel to the United States with less than N500 in his pocket in the eighties.
That old glory of Nigeria was also seen by some of us who made night trips across Nigeria on good motorable roads. There were those of us who also saw bustling factories in Kano, Ikeja, Ogba. Such glories of the past were also seen when university undergraduates were served a quarter chicken for a ticket of 25 kobo.
The back and forth on Tuface’s identity also bears a resemblance to Nigeria and the back and forth with a National Anthem. An anthem is a song that binds a group, a society, state or nation.
In that respect, many will agree that Nigeria was stronger together as a nation in the past than today with ethnic jingoists taking centre stage in the polity.
After Nigeria discarded the colonial anthem, ‘Nigeria we hail thee’ in October 1978, it is significant that ideological rebels and student bodies in the heat of protest often resorted to that anthem to express their displeasure. For them singing the new anthem, “Arise o Compatriots” was reflective of submission to the authority.
After President Bola Tinubu railroaded the National Assembly to return to that colonial anthem in 2024, we have now seen those who in the spirit of rebellion rejected Arise o Compatriots now reprising the same Arise O Compatriots to express their rebellion.
However, what may have drawn out the comparison on Tuface and Nigeria is the instability in his dalliances.
Tuface presently has seven children from three women. It is remarkable that by the time he married Annie in 2012, one of the baby mamas already had three children for him. Another had two. The lady with two, who was actually the First Republic, has since covered up that “dirty” chapter of her life by marrying a pastor.
They now have a thriving Christian ministry operating out of Lagos. US-based Pero Adeniyi, who was the Second Republic with three children for Tuface and from an elitist home was a recurring nightmare for Annie, the Third Republic.
While Annie, may have been Tuface’s longest republic, it now appears that like Nigeria’s Third Republic masterminded by General Ibrahim Babangida, it was a web of intrigues and deceit.
Just as Babangida forced the Third Republic on Nigeria for his interests, Tuface and Annie appeared to have coerced themselves into a Republic out of emotion.
Now about to enter his Fourth Republic with lawmaker, Natasha Osawaru, there is increasing scepticism on the prospects of this Fourth Journey. It cannot be otherwise given the official and unofficial tales of philandering credited to Tuface, an otherwise very nice, respectful and good fellow.
There are very few who believe that this Fourth Republic with Honourable Natasha Osawaru will last.
Natasha, daughter of Desmond Osawaru and Philomena (Igbinedion) Osawaru is the grand-daughter of powerful Benin chief, Chief Gabriel Igbinedion.
Her parents’ wedding about 35 years ago was officiated by Dr Benson Idahosa and broadcast live on television. Dr Idahosa had at that wedding warned against marrying for wealth. It is thus significant that such will not be said for Natasha or Tuface.
Philomena’s mother, Madam Maria Igbinedion, and father, Sir Gabriel were already divorced by the time the wedding took place.
So, for those giving dire warnings to Natasha about Tuface’s unstable love life, she undoubtedly has a history of marital discord in her lineage to know the dangers ahead.
It is worthy to note that at the commencement of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, many who fought for democracy detached themselves believing that it will not last. That is why Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana and many other zealots kept away.
However, the Fourth Republic has now lasted more than 24 years and surprised many. So for sceptics of the Tuface-Natasha affair, they could well be surprised that this his Fourth Republic may endure!
[OPINION] Olukoyede’s record-breaking strides in EFCC and Olu Fasan’s errors of analysis - Dele Oyewale
AdminOlu Fasan’s opinion piece in the Vanguard of Thursday, February 13, 2025 entitled: ” EFCC’s Failure: Olukoyede’s Blame- Shifting is Mere Shadow- Boxing”, clearly brought to the fore precipitate desperation to deny, ignore, lampoon and disregard the obvious and undeniable achievements of the Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr Ola Olukoyede since he assumed office more than a year ago. Besides, the piece equally exposed Fasan as lacking total grasp of the position of Olukoyede on the character traits of many Nigerians in their disposition to the fight against corruption.
Recently, Olukoyede decried the hypocritical tendency of some Nigerians towards the vexed issue of corruption in the land. He rightfully observed that ” Everyone is crying that Nigerians are corrupt, that the system is corrupt, that corruption is killing us and destroying our system, but when we investigate high- profile cases and arraign people in court, the same poeple will carry placards and be supporting corrupt leaders. It doesn’t show that we are serious about this fight”.
Nothing can be more factual than this. There is no ” blame- shifting” or “shadow- boxing” in this but ungarnished reality about the attitudinal trajectory of many Nigerians regarding the issue of corruption. Fasan’s backgrounding of his visceral attacks of Olukoyede and the EFCC on such a disclosure clearly shows malice, prejudice or a naked dance to please some paymasters. We all know that corruption has leprous fingers contaminating the masses of our people. A recent show of shame in Okenne where a former governor standing trial for suspected money laundering charges drew tumultous cheers from the same people he allegedly defrauded, is enough cause for concern.
Across the country, the EFCC is sensitive to the unhelpful embrace and canonisation of many suspects of corruption cases. Rather than hold them at arm’s length, we regularly offer them front seats in social gatherings, religious meetings, tribal festivities and other public functions. Our social media is always awash with rationalisations, justifications and shameful defences of even convicts of corruption. Fasan’s tirade and gratuitous insults on the EFCC and its hard- working Chairman is another parade of corruption in bold statements. How do we make progress in such a society where anti- graft fighters are seen as enemies and their genuine efforts are treated as smelly trash cans?
Talking about the mud Fasan splashed on the EFCC and its operations. How on earth will anyone dismissively describe Olukoyede’s EFCC as a failure? In recent times, it is public knowledge that the Commission uncovered several underhanded dealings across the country, resulting in unprecedented recoveries, arrests, arraignments and ongoing trials of many suspects of economic and financial crimes. It is also clear as crystal that such operational dynamics are without comparison locally and globally.
Is it the Lokogoma, Abuja’s recovery of 753 duplexes and other apartments? Or the arrests and arraignments of 792 suspected cyber terrorists, investment and romance fraudsters? Or the several high- profile cases the Commission is prosecuting in our courts? To denigrate such open attainments, Fasan may either be living in Mars but if he is on planet earth and denied such global records of the EFCC, then, every fair- minded Nigerian should be able to discern mischief and calumny in his commentaries.
Now, let’s get to the brass tacks. Since assuming office in October, 2023, Olukoyede has turned the anti- corruption war into a redemptive engagement. The three-pronged agenda which has become his blueprint for fighting economic and financial crimes is all too known. So far, the EFCC under his watch is witnessing steady turnaround. In 2024 alone, the Commission achieved monetary recoveries in billions and unmatchable convictions and advances in all the cases it is handling. His policy thrust of tackling corruption through preventive frameworks has birthed
a full- fledged department, Fraud Risk Assessment and Control, FRAC, in the Commission. There is no time in the annals of the EFCC that such progress has been made.
Fasan’s diatribe that Ola Olukoyede ” is full of hot air on corruption in Nigeria” is not true. Evidently, Nigerians are feeling the impact of the policy drives he has initiated. The onslaught on Naira abuse and dollarisation of the economy is gaining traction. Till date, more than 50 Nigerians from all walks of life have been convicted on this matter. The whole issue is protecting the local economy from heamorrage and reversing age- long traditions pulling back growth and development. The courageous tackling of internet fraud and associated criminalities is re- building the foreign direct investment profile of Nigeria. Steadily, our nation is bouncing back and it is owing to the relentless efforts of the Commission Olukoyede is heading.
At this point, Fasan’s claims that ” the EFCC is too incompetent, corrupt and politicised to tackle endemic corruption in Nigeria” deserve closer examination. To all intents and purpose, these claims are without any sound basis or empirical strength. Only last year, four former governors were brought before the courts to answer charges of corruption preferred against them. Four former ministers followed the same route and are standing trial on their stewardship. All these are outside ongoing investigations which will soon be made public. So, where is incompetence in all these? Can a lameduck anti- graft agency achieve such a feat?
To the credit of Olukoyede, internal corruption is becoming a taboo in the EFCC. For the umpteenth time, the Commission has come out clearly on its ethics and integrity policies which have since sent 27 officers out of its workforce. A corrupt agency will not go that far. The EFCC’s boss has never claimed to be heading an angelic agency. Rather, he has been forthright in driving internal cleansing to make the Commission free of compromisers and sharp dealers. Fasan glossed over this important credit of the Commission in his hurry to cast aspersions on its works.
Nigeria is better with EFCC. Every well- meaning Nigerian knows this. The international community knows it. We know that corruption fights back. However, calling white black or driving chariots of warfare against the Commission owing to some vested interests would not serve any purpose. Olukoyede is drawing meaningful local and international accolades everyday owing to verifiable proofs of his achievements on all fronts. We can only advise Nigerians like Fasan to be more positive and see the stars on the sky rather than its dark clouds. Olukoyede will continue on his winning strides and Nigeria will surely get better.
Oyewale is head, media & publicity of the EFCC.
Our people say everyone should be careful about the predictions of a fortune teller, or seer, who could not foresee the collapse of his house, or the coming of the downpour that took the house away. Our people also say that it is not forgetfulness when a man who has the duty of saying “watch out” at the approach of danger fails to do so; such that danger overtakes him and his society. I state the above, just-invented proverbs, with reference to the presumed superior and reverential status we have come to attach to the pronouncement of S&P, Fitch, Moody and similar organizations of the family of supposed economic fortune tellers.
But more about that later.
A Thisday Newspaper front page report of last Thursday had this title: “Fitch Ratings: Nigerian Banks Progress towards New Capital Requirements”. The report said: “Nigerian banks are making significant progress in raising core capital to meet new paid-in capital requirements, and they are generally on track to meet the end of first quarter 2026 deadline set by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Fitch Ratings, one of the global rating agencies, disclosed this in a statement posted on its website yesterday”.
Problem number one here is that Fitch is doing us the great favour of revealing to us facts it obtained from our own Central Bank. Alright, I get it: Fitch is explaining the implications of these facts, which implications are also available to anyone who checks the records. But no matter.
The Fitch report was also reported to have told us that the ongoing recapitalization would support a recovery in capitalization from the impact of naira devaluation and provide fuel for business growth, among other things. Listen: “Fitch-rated banks have made notable progress towards compliance. Almost all have raised capital or formally launched the process to do so. The two largest banks, Access Holdings and Zenith Bank, are the first to secure enough fresh capital to meet the N500 billion requirement for an international licence”.
Good news, but then again what are we dealing with here? Revelation, intuitive insight? What is it that we celebrate when we hear of a positive Fitch rating? What makes us feel so terrible, or terrified, about a negative Fitch rating?
There was a major financial crisis between 2007 and 2008, tagged the subprime crisis, which the three big credit rating agencies, Fitch, Moody’s and S&P did not see coming. At least they were nearly as dumbfounded, and confounded, as everyone else. In all fairness, the ratings of these Big Three are usually taken seriously; especially when thinking or speaking of the creditworthiness of governments, corporations, and financial institutions. But, like every human endeavour, these ratings have their limitations and intimations of bias here and there.
It is to the credit of these rating agencies that they are respected enough globally for many investors, governments, and financial institutions to rely on their offerings – particularly Fitch Rating – for some important policy decisions. Fitch Rating, for instance, deploys well laid out, arguably transparent, criteria and painstaking reports to back its ratings. It also has global reach and covers a broad range of entities; including sovereign states, credible corporations, banks, and structured finance products.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, however, there is the possibility, or at least veiled suspicion, of possible conflict of Interest now and again; because issuers often pay for their own ratings. When we also consider that these agencies base their ratings mostly on historical and current data, it become easy to understand why they are sometimes accused of not being forward looking; and of being ill-equipped to predict sudden downturns.
Thus, while Fitch ratings provide valuable benchmarks in many situations and cases, those who use the ratings alongside other financial analysis and risk assessment tools stand a better chance of being secured. That is why many organization, investors and economic trend analysts and students of political economy compare ratings from several agencies, as a form of due diligence, before taking positions on many economic issues.
Let us recall that Fitch, Moody’s and S&P neither anticipated, nor knew how to respond to, the 2008 subprime crisis. They also had no clear ideas about how to deal with the full impact of the crisis. Before the calamitous downturn, these agencies had given very high ratings, such as AAA, to Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that were actually high-risk. This would not have happened if these agencies were as perspicacious as they are taken to be. That the securities quickly lost value and led to the, arguably global, financial crisis when the housing market collapsed, is traceable to this lapse.
On closer examination, the conclusion that inflicts itself on us, regarding the 2008 global fiasco, includes the fact that Fitch and Co. were using what can best be described as a flawed model for the matter they were dealing with. They stood squarely on historical data, which data is likely to easily underestimate the likelihood of future, potential or precipitate widespread mortgage defaults.
There is also the fact, hinted at earlier here, that once it is known that issuers of securities paid for their own ratings, the suspicion that rating agencies could give favorable – or at least tendentious – ratings can be taken for granted. Added to the above is the charge that Fitch as a rating agency is guilty of overreliance on Structured Finance; such that it is always dealing with complex financial products, wherein it is difficult to accurately assess all the risk factors; leading to the possibility of underestimating the risks and dangers involved in certain transactions.
Perhaps the most compelling reason to handle the offerings of rating agencies with some caution, especially bearing the events of 2008 in mind, is the fact that they appear not to react quickly enough to budding signs of trouble. The danger signals, which latter morphed into the House Fire of 2008, became visible in 2007. But Fitch and similar agencies did not quickly downgrade securities. The behaviour delayed market corrections and made the full-scale crisis inevitable. It is now a matter of history and record that, following the 2008 crisis, regulators began to scrutinize rating agencies more closely. They also began to demand greater scrutiny. These demands led to reforms; like the Dodd-Frank Act and to changes in how structured products are rated.
Of course, Fitch has improved its methodologies since then. We shall get to that, after explaining the qpurport of the Dodd-Frank Act.
The collapse of major banks and financial institutions, like Lehman Brothers, exposed weaknesses in the financial system. The evidence of high-risk Lending, wherein subprime mortgage lending and securitization led to widespread defaults and market instability emerged. This exposed the failure, or at least limited capacity, of Credit Rating Agencies, like Fitch, Moody’s, and S&P; and the problem posed by their sometimes overly questionably optimistic ratings on risky financial products.
The Act was an institutional response to the need for better regulation, to ensure that shadow banking, derivatives trading, and proprietary trading by banks came under serious and rigorous scrutiny and regulation. It was also the outcome of a public outcry, demanding that calls for government bailouts cannot be open ended; and that stricter rules should be put in place to prevent future crises of the 2008 variety.
Thus, the Dodd-Frank Act came out with several provisions, to give rating agencies and everyone else a marked lane to travel on. One of such provisions was the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which monitors systemic risks in the financial system. Another is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which protects consumers from predatory financial practices. The Volcker Rule, for instance, limits banks from engaging in risky proprietary trading, is yet another provision of the Act.
In addition to the foregoing, there is the Increased Oversight of Credit Rating Agencies, which introduced accountability measures for agencies like Fitch; such that greater transparency became evident in their ratings. There is also the Stronger Derivatives Regulation, which requires derivatives (like credit default swaps) to be traded on transparent exchanges. These measures provided have improved financial stability, reduced risky practices, and increased consumer protection.
Now, to the matter of why fitch Ratings had to do some things differently.
The global shock of 2008 for national economies and economic actors, and the institutional scandal that nearly overwhelmed Fitch Ratings after the 2008 economic crisis, were fundamental game changers. Fitch and other credit rating agencies were roundly lambasted for underestimating the risks attendant upon mortgage-backed securities and other complex financial instruments. It was in response to the new demands for greater proof of responsible engagement that Fitch implemented some improvements to its methodology and governance templates.
The significant changes subsequently introduced by the Fitch include Enhanced Criteria for Structured Finance, which meant stricter criteria for rating mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). There was also increased stress-testing, to account for extreme economic downturns, in addition to greater scrutiny of loan-level data and originator quality.
It all came down to increased Transparency and more detailed disclosures on rating methodologies and assumptions. The agency put out publicly available stress test results and sensitivity analyses, alongside clearer explanations of rating changes and outlooks. These were in addition to stronger Corporate Governance and Conflicts of Interest Management rules; with rating analysts and commercial teams disaggregated, in order to minimize conflicts of interest.
Then you have the introduction of an independent review function to oversee rating decisions, with stricter policies on interactions with issuers. The more conservative sovereign and bank ratings, as well as revised criteria for rating sovereign debt to better incorporate fiscal and economic risks, were some of the new measures. With these came more stringent assessments of bank liquidity and capital adequacy.
These new measures were meant to place greater focus on systemic risks and the contagion effects in global finance, all in aid of regulatory compliance and oversight. The efforts to comply with new regulations, such as those introduced by the Dodd-Frank Act in the U.S. and ESMA regulations in Europe, crated a new rule for more rigorous internal controls and oversight by regulators and periodic review of methodologies to ensure they reflect evolving risks.
Then what? While it is true that much has changed with the ratings agencies, to strengthen investor confidence and improve the accuracy of their credit ratings in assessing financial and economic risks, the question still is: what has really changed; especially given the “profound revelations” from Fitch Ratings about the status and health of some of our banks?
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There was a major financial crisis between 2007 and 2008, tagged the subprime crisis, which the three big credit rating agencies, Fitch, Moody’s and S&P did not see coming. At least they were nearly as dumbfounded, and confounded, as everyone else. In all fairness, the ratings of these Big Three are usually taken seriously; especially when thinking or speaking of the creditworthiness of governments, corporations, and financial institutions. But, like every human endeavour, these ratings have their limitations and intimations of bias here and there.
They are on all social media platforms. They have a knack for leaving comments on everything posted on social media. They move from Facebook to Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and other social media platforms you can think of. They have an idea of everything. From marriage, politics, governance, public policy, religion, entertainment, and any other issue you can think of, they are experts. They are the social media police.
Today, they are marriage specialists and they have already taken a position on the 2Baba (Innocent Idibia) and Annie’s wedding saga. While some of them have used all manner of unprintable words against the ‘African Queen’ crooner “most of them to destroy him,” those we refer to as social media in-laws are rendering emotional support to Annie Idibia and are already calling Edo State lawmaker, Natasha Osawaru “Ole” for stealing 2Baba’s heart. These “people are acting like them know it all.” Hmmm, some have even vowed that 2Baba will not be allowed to go scot-free.
With users acting as judge, jury and executioner, social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and X have gradually transformed into virtual courts where comments vary from sincere expressions of concern to blatant denunciation and unsolicited counsel.
Social media police who are individuals that often resort to moral grandstanding and personal attacks have vast knowledge of anything and everything that trends and their comments must count.
They have already expressed their opinion on the ongoing feud between Nedu (Chinedu Ani) and VDM (Martins Otse) following the outcome of the latest episode of The Honest Bunch podcast, while also sparing some time to give the former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai free tutorials on governance and party loyalty and in equal measure bashing him on social media platforms due to his recent comments. El-Rufai’s supporters on the other hand have continued to cheer him up.
The other day, these set of persons were chanting “fight, fight, fight” when Paschal Okechukwu, popularly known as Cubana Chief Priest and Grammy-winning artiste, Burna Boy had their clash. Even President Bola Tinubu, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar are not left out as they are tried almost every day by these social media police.
They seem to have a private feed that no one else is aware of or a group of social media spies constantly on the lookout for the newest trends and memes. We can always rely on them to make us laugh and ponder, one post at a time, even though we might never discover the key to their commenting skills.
Clearly, while some comments on social media might be thought-provoking, entertaining, or educational, others can be irrelevant or nasty.
While public figures understand that a degree of scrutiny comes with fame, the level of vitriol and invasion of privacy often witnessed on social media is disproportionate and at times, deeply harmful.
But have you ever pondered as to why these persons consistently show up in the comments section of almost every post that social media algorithms provide us with? Does it have a scientific basis? Guess what, though?
Studies have linked dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is essential for controlling the reward and pleasure centers of the brain to social media addiction. According to addiction expert, Dr. Anna Lembke, with each swipe, like and tweet, our smartphones are turning us into dopamine addicts. In her book, ‘Dopamine Nation,’ Lembke points out that most social media users are now addicts.
According to her, the smartphone is now the “modern-day hypodermic needle,” as most of us can’t do without it and turn to it almost every second for quick hits, to seek attention, validation and distraction with each swipe, like and tweet.
While not taking away the benefits of monetisation, the prevalence of behavioral (as opposed to substance) addictions has increased dramatically since the year 2000. Whether it’s swiping through Facebook, Instagram, or X, every free moment is an opportunity to be stimulated, she added.
“We’re seeing a huge explosion in the numbers of people struggling with addictions,” Lembke added.
Lembke strongly believes that one can beat digital addiction by embracing a more monastic mindset. Additionally, limiting the time one spends on social media can significantly reduce its addictive nature. Set specific time slots to check your accounts and avoid using social media outside the fixed times can also be very helpful.
Now back to the 2Baba marriage saga, the singer in his latest video on the matter assured his supporters that, “everybody is going to be alright and everyone is fine, there is no fight or quarrel.”
While I do not support divorce and it is never an easy decision for those involved, in a situation whereby a relationship has become toxic and irredeemable, it can act as a transforming catalyst, giving individuals an opportunity to reclaim their sense of self-worth and emotional well-being and also the chance to embark on a new chapter of life. The result of staying in an unhappy marriage is that if one is not happy in marriage, he or she will not be able to put anything constructive in the marriage or relationship, and it will only get worse.
Divorce may free both parties from emotional turmoil that a terrible marriage is known for and may enable them put their mental health first and establish a more wholesome atmosphere for happiness and personal development.
Ultimately, while public interest is understandable, those lamenting must understand that celebrities who unfortunately have become the prime influencers and role models to a lot of them are human beings, are not perfect and are often in need of psychological support.
Finally, as 2Baba sang, those that want to criticise him should “talk small small because you no holy pass my brother…you no holy pass my sister.”
Those who make history often do not immediately grasp the depth of impact their actions would have on humanity.
I can sense the unfolding of a remarkable legacy before us, something that looks certain to outlive us, inspire generations, and be cited always as a reference on the power of collaboration – especially between the state, the people and corporate organizations.
Let me start by expressing my profound gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Enugu State Security Trust Fund, for the time and zeal they have committed to nurturing this idea to reality.
I’m particularly delighted by the devotion and inspiring leadership demonstrated by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Dr. Ike Chioke, and the Executive Secretary, Engr. Chinedu Joseph Ani.
You have, alongside other members of the Board, laid out a practical template for collaboration between the state, the private sector and literally everyone, towards creating a formidable funding structure for our security needs.
Your names will always be etched in gold and celebrated, whenever the labour of love that defined your collective work is recalled. I’m also immensely grateful to Engr. Arthur Eze, for graciously accepting to be the Chief Launcher at this epoch-making event.
Yours is a name that inspires pride, and we are proud to be associated with you. You are a pillar of industry, a man with a lifetime commitment to noble causes.
Thank you, sir, for once again leading by example and lending support to a very worthy project.
I began this speech on a very optimistic note. However, it wasn’t typically a cheery experience speaking about the security situation in Enugu State 20 months ago.
Let’s try and recall for a moment what the ever-bustling Ogui Road looked like on a Monday morning about 20 months ago. The entire stretch was a picture of desolation as business premises – from banks to retail shops – remained shut for the entire day.
Of course, it wasn’t a decision borne out of personal choice. They were compelled to do so by the so-called “sit-at-home” order issued by a criminal gang.
At this time on Ogui Road then, the only sound you may possibly hear is the cry of a child in an apartment. You could indeed imagine the anxious parents consumed by fear as they tried to calm the child. I’ve listened to parents recount the heart-wrenching tale of how their children could not sit for some subjects in a national examination, because those subjects had been slated for Mondays. I received countless messages from parents who lamented how their children could not secure university admission, on account of having not written a compulsory subject required for admission.
The complaints were mostly relating to Mathematics, because the subject had been scheduled on a Monday. This was a common experience. I’m sure if we sampled opinions, there would likely be someone here who knows a family where a child had experienced such cruel fate. Attacks on security officials almost became the norm, with a significant number of personnel fatalities as a sad reminder of that grim era. Back then, criminals gleefully posted bodies of security personnel and the arms they had stolen through their brazenly regular attacks.
But what difference 20 months make! Such wanton attacks have been pushed to the darkest recess of history. We have gained control of our streets. The outlaws who once held our people hostage have either been neutralized or fled.
We have substantially reduced crime rate. Statistics attesting to that abound. We can further glimpse this in the fact that night life has returned in full swing. Streets that were desolate and deserted have regained their groove.
I still remember a phone call I got at a very odd hour. I thought there was an emergency. It wasn’t an emergency after all. The excited caller was at a popular social spot, and was eager to show me live footage of bustling night life via his phone.
The pleasant experience arising from the vastly improved security is widespread: The businessman who could not open his shop and incurred losses as a result has found the confidence to do so; the child, who could not go to school every Monday in the past can now confidently do so without any fear; our security men and women can now carry on their law-enforcement duties without any brazen attack. What difference there has been in 20 months! But our job is not done yet; it needs to be sustained.
The importance of security in any society can never be overstated. Our Constitution clearly emphasizes this when it notes, under the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy, that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”.
So, the provision of security is a fundamental reason for the existence of the state – or governments, if you will. Security is arguably the single most important sector upon which all socio-economic goals of states and nations rest. It can make or mar our dreams.
Few things incentivise enterprise as much as a reassuring sense of security. Conversely, nothing kills the spirit of enterprise as fast as a prevailing air of insecurity. We can indeed say that security and development have become inextricably intertwined in the world that we live in today. Investing in development projects without a corresponding investment in security is akin to spending vast sums to build a livestock farm, but yet leaving the doors of the pen open to wolves.
These points and anecdote resonate particularly for us, because at the heart of our audacious growth plan is the goal to make Enugu State the premier destination for investment, leisure and living. Our targets to make Enugu the conferencing capital of Africa and, also, attract three million annual tourists will seem like mere posturing if those tourists do not feel sufficiently safe on the streets and in their hotels.
Securing businesses, keeping the people safe, and improving their welfare are our primary motivation. And it is consistent with the pledge I made while seeking the people’s mandate. We have invested substantially in securing our state, and continue to do so, because there are no half measures in the fight against insecurity.
The various security measures we have put in place underscore this conviction. You actually do not have to search for our interventions in security. They literally stare you in the face. The Enugu State Command and Control Centre is a logistical novelty built via cutting-edge innovation comparable to what exists in more advanced countries. It was a moment of pride for us when it was commissioned in January to national acclaim, by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, His Excellency Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Even when no security official is in sight, our round-the-clock surveillance system that covers our streets and neighbourhoods still ensures strict vigilance. The ultimate goal is to nip crime in the bud.
This crime-fighting device is complemented by the Distress Response Squad, designed to react swiftly to any security breach or threat of it. It is also further boosted by a large fleet of 150 security vehicles embedded with AI-enhanced cameras deployed across the state. The reassuring sense of security that these measures guarantee should not be for a moment in time only. It is important for it to exist at all time. This is crucial to the attainment of our ambition to grow Enugu State to become a $30 billion economy.
But enthroning a water-tight security, such as we are implementing in Enugu State, requires a humongous amount of funds to sustain. I dare say, there’s hardly any state that can solely handle such responsibility. The Enugu State Security Trust Fund is therefore a child of necessity. Its emergence is rooted in the increasing realization that an active civic engagement of citizens, offers more enduring solutions to pressing social exigencies normally exclusively borne by the government.
We are thus witnessing a civic rebirth in Enugu State. I strongly believe this is the day that the timeless campaign that security is everyone’s business finally sinks in. The old saying “all for one and one for all” easily comes to mind here. However, while we take unrelenting steps to squash criminality and threats to businesses, it is just as vital to adopt some non-kinetic strategies.
It is in this regard that the influence of our traditional rulers and towns union ought to shine forth as moral beacons of the grassroots. The non-kinetic approach should involve constant enlightenment to sensitize the people on the importance of being security conscious. Eternal vigilance by everyone is a boost for security.
As a government, we are wholly committed to the values of accountability, and do not view any demand for it as an irritant. This citizen-funded initiative will further widen the doors of transparency. Let us donate, buoyed by the knowledge that we are giving to a worthy cause. Let us donate fuelled by the knowledge that we are collectively building the future we desire – and deserve. Let us donate, knowing that the future we dream of is one ruled by certainties – not one ruled by fear.
This of course includes the certainty that business owners need to flourish, knowing that they no longer have to take extra measures to secure their businesses, which increased their operational costs in the past. No one should be overcome with anxiety whenever they think about travelling to their country-home. This is what we envision; this is what collective action can achieve.
Such collective resolve will ensure that the target of N20 billion we have set for the Security Trust Fund this year, will not only be achieved – but surpassed.
I congratulate everyone gathered here. You are all makers of a proud history and witnesses to its birth.
God bless Enugu State.
Tomorrow is here!
Being a speech delivered during the official launch of the Enugu State Security Trust Fund
This column continues from last week. Isaac Jacob Rochussen, the patrician from the Netherlands who brought Nicholas Said to New York in January 1860, exposed him to his first baptism of American racism.
At an abolitionist church in New York, Rochussen was told that he couldn’t sit on the same row of seats with Said. Like all Black people in white-dominated churches, Said had to sit in the balcony of the church. Rochussen was so exasperated he and Said left the church in a huff.
After taking Said on a voyage to Haiti (where the mixed-race freemen in charge of the government there treated Said like a subhuman because of his pitch dark complexion and Kanuri facial marks), Rochussen was broke and returned to New York.
It turned out that Rochussen was a scammer. He left Said at their expensive hotel in New York. After three months of waiting, the hotel management handed Said a bill equivalent to $40,500. Since he couldn’t pay it, his luggage was confiscated.
“I lost all my clothing, consisting of four Turkish costumes, three full suits of broadcloth, a dozen of linen and fine English flannel shirts, etc. etc. with more than $250 [worth $7,200 now],” Said wrote. “I was almost penniless…. Having no trade, knowing no person to whom I could apply for help—I was truly in a pitiful situation. But God who never forsakes us came to my relief.”
That relief was a $10 loan he got from a reverend gentleman he became acquainted with while staying at the hotel. The reverend told him to go to Detroit in the state of Michigan “where there were a great number of colored people.”
By the time he got to Detroit, Said had become disillusioned with religion, writing that both Islam and Christianity were “against my feelings and common sense.” Nonetheless, his urge to go back to Borno was rekindled.
He suppressed his disenchantment with religion and, in March 1861, applied to the African Civilization Society, which was looking for educated Black people to go to Africa “to instruct the natives in the arts and sciences” and to evangelize the gospel of Christianity.
In Said’s application, he promised that if he was considered for the job, he planned to go to Borno and “spread the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Dean Calbreath suggested that Said didn’t mean it since he had become frustrated with religion. “But it shows how desperately he wanted to go home,” Calbreath writes.
Said got the job and would have returned to Borno but for the start of the American Civil War on April 13, 1861.
In light of the soul-destroying racism he had faced in the United States and Haiti, he had “prayed earnestly to be enabled to do some good to my race” and vowed that he “would willingly sacrifice my life, if need be, in realizing my dreams.”
The outbreak of the Civil War, which was triggered by the desire of Southern whites to enslave Black people in perpetuity, provided such an opportunity.
Nevertheless, when Said rushed to enlist in the US Army to fight in the Civil War, he was told that Black people could not serve in the army. To ensure that no person with even the slightest tincture of African bloodline served in the army, even white men had to have their genitalia inspected because “the skin covering these organs is much darker in persons having a trace of negro blood”!
He took to teaching French to Black people in Detroit and “became quite distinguished, especially among the colored people, for his erudition, his large experience of the world, and his promising talent,” Calbreath quoted a journalist to have written.
A little later during the war, there was a change of policy. The US Army decided to form all-black regiments to assist in the fight against Confederate forces determined to keep the institution of slavery. Recruiters from Boston in the state of Massachusetts came to Detroit.
Said, only three and a half years old in America at the time, enlisted. Within just two weeks of enlisting, he was promoted to a sergeant. The colonel who recommended his promotion said Said’s “linguistic ability was very marked” and that he was the scion of “the ruling class of his tribe.”
After his promotion to sergeant, there was a laudatory profile of him in the Boston Evening Transcript, one of Massachusetts’ notable newspapers at the time. Although his last name was misspelled as “Saib,” he was described as an “intelligent looking negro, perfectly black, modest and gentlemanly in bearing” and that his “acquisitions and behavior go far to dispel the ignorant and vulgar prejudice against the colored race.”
The profile turned him into a celebrity in his all-black regiment called the Fifty-Fifth.
Unfortunately, the racism that initially stopped the enlistment of Black people didn’t abate even during the war from even white people who were fighting to stop Black enslavement.
Black soldiers—whether private, corporal, or sergeant (they couldn’t rise above sergeants)— were paid no more than $7 per month. The lowliest white private, by contrast, received $13 per month. White corporals received $17, and white sergeants received $21. “For Sergeant Said, who had been drawn to the United States because of its democratic ideals, this was only his latest disappointment,” Calbreath writes.
(In 1863, $7 had the same purchasing power as approximately $175.34 today.)
Black soldiers protested the scandalous pay disparity. But the white head of their brigade by the name of Col. James Montgomery not only chastised them for this but threatened to court-martial and execute them. “You want to be placed on the same footing as white soldiers… [but] you are a race of slaves,” he said. “A few years ago, your fathers worshipped snakes and crocodiles in Africa.”
But the Black soldiers were neither discouraged by the racist putdowns nor did they relent. Said used his gift of “precise penmanship and the ‘literary quality’ of his writing” (1145) to write and edit anonymous newspaper columns to call attention to the racially motivated pay parity between Black and white soldiers.
Said’s anonymous columns got the Massachusetts governor of the time by the name of John Andrew to not only lobby the federal government to increase the pay for Black soldiers but to actually instruct the state’s paymaster general to take physical cash to the war front to pay the Black soldiers. But the Black soldiers rejected the state’s money, saying they wanted the federal government on whose behalf they were fighting to pay them the same amount that they were paying their white peers.
Said and his colleagues fought for more than a year without pay but continued to protest at the cost of the lives of some of them, until August 1, 1864, when the federal government decided that Black soldiers would receive equal pay as their white counterparts “and that the pay would retroactive, covering all the money they were owed since enlisting” (177).
For a long time, Black soldiers were not allowed to fight. They merely did back-breaking menial jobs such as shoveling, bagging, chopping, and hauling instead of fighting the Confederate rebels. During his free time, Said taught Black soldiers.
It was only on July 1, 1864, that Said and members of his platoon had a chance to fight the Rebels in a battle. Even so, they “had given them aging rifles that were so faulty they were subsequently sent to the scrap heap,” (174) according to Calbreath.
In spite of their disadvantage, Said (who “must have felt that finally he was living up to the destiny his father had left for him, or the dream he had envisioned for himself as a boy, playing war games at the gates of Kukawa,” as Calbreath put it,) and his comrades overpowered the Rebel forces, forced them to beat a retreat and seized their weapons, even though they also suffered casualties.
A white major and second in command of Said’s regiment, who was later promoted to a lieutenant colonel, by the name of Charles Fox wrote to his wife that he had met Said on September 26, 1863.
It was unusual for a higher-up in the military hierarchy like Fox to have private meetings with low-ranked officers like Said. But he was drawn to Said because his hometown newspaper, which his father bought, read and kept at home, had written a profile on Said. He was fascinated by Said’s growing up in Borno and his travels through Europe and Asia. He called Said “faithful and brave” and said he encouraged him to write his autobiography.
Said was soon enervated by the racism in the army. One of his comrades was executed publicly for opposing a tyrannical white boss. And, in spite of addressing the pay parity between Black and white soldiers, educated Black soldiers like Said couldn’t be commissioned to the rank of lieutenant solely because of their race.
To be concluded next week.
[OPINION] A Salute to an Icon: Chief Ayo Adebanjo, A Titan of Justice and Conscience - Olukayode Ajulo
AdminToday, I join the countless voices across our land in mourning the irreplaceable loss of a towering statesman, a remarkable visionary, an unwavering defender of justice, and an uncompromising advocate for truth, Chief Ayo Adebanjo. His life was an embodiment of courage, an unyielding commitment to the Yoruba cause, and later, an expansive vision for a just and equitable Nigeria- a steadfast advocate for the Yoruba people and later a pan Nigeria advocate. His words carried the weight of history, and his actions blazed a trail for those of us who dared to dream of a better society.
His unwavering spirit and indomitable passion for our heritage inspired countless individuals, including myself. He was a beacon of hope, igniting in us the courage to pursue our dreams and stand firm in our beliefs.
Born in 1928 and call to the English Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1961, Chief Adebanjo was more than a mentor to me, he was a father figure, a relentless advocate for justice, and a guardian of our collective conscience. He inspired us, not just with his words, but with his unwavering resolve to always stand on the right side of history. His indomitable spirit and profound wisdom left an indelible mark on my journey, shaping my convictions and fortifying my belief in the power of justice and unity.
One of the most painful chapters in our history was the unfortunate fallout between his group and Chief Fashoranti, alongside Afenifere. In its depth and implications, it stands as a moment more wrenching than even the agelong Kiriji War- a wound that threatened to fracture our collective identity. Yet, amidst the shadows of division, I am sure it is not at ease that the development as I vividly recall the gleam of hope in Chief Adebanjo’s eyes when Dr. Mimiko insisted and reconciled us as well as led me, the late Yinka Odumakin, and our Afenifere Renewal Group back into the embrace of the main Afenifere fold. That moment, to Chief Adebanjo, was nothing short of the biblical parable of the return of the lost sheep, a testament to the power of reconciliation and the undying strength of our shared heritage.
Chief Adebanjo’s legacy is etched in the annals of history, not just as a voice of defiance against oppression, but as a lighthouse guiding future generations toward justice, truth, and unity. He taught us that true leadership is not about personal gain but about uplifting others, breaking barriers, and forging a path toward a just society.
Though he may have left us, taken his final bow, his spirit remains ever vibrant in the hearts of those of us privileged to have walked in his light. We shall carry forward the torch he so bravely bore, ensuring that his fight was not in vain. Rest in power, Baba. Your legacy is immortal.
Dr. Olukayode Ajulo, SAN, OON
Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Ondo State
Hardly is it suspected that the non-physical defines undercurrents that eventually lead to the physical either as condensation or as pressure. Unaware of the undercurrents we simply conclude that what we do not see or feel does not exist. We have scientists to thank; with their microscope the world now knows that there are living organisms bitterly fighting themselves in a drop of water. Water itself is a combination of molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. The place of heat cannot be overlooked. We boil water, after a while we open the lid of the pot, and what do we find on that lid? Water! Geographers tell us that when hot air rises to a cooler region, we have what they call conventional rain. There is no need to go into the subject of heat today beyond stating that without heat there is no motion. Where there is no motion there is no life. A characteristic of the human spirit is that it is magnetic and there is the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species with its inherent and power of motion. The sun is a star composed of spirit motes the concentration of which gives rise to electro-magnetic waves called sunlight. It is also the splitting of these spirit motes which stream down from beyond what is proverbially known as Paradise and form atoms even found in cell molecules of our body. It is the animating influence of the human spirit on the cell molecules that keeps a person away from cancer if it is not dimmed through crass pursuit of materialism or power.
What I am getting at is that a great many believe that what they cannot feel or see even with the aid of modern day scientific gadgets does not exist. Some, who believe that there is more to life than meets the eye, as it is said, do not know enough about the Beyond that it is vast, indeed defined as all that cannot be perceived by earthly means. As I did state last week, what most modern priests, clerics and scholars have been unable to grasp is that Creation has a structure, and they may need to seek clarity on concepts and pictures as well. The Primordial Creation is the highest, yet there is the Divine Realm which is not part of Creation. And separating the Divine and the Throne of Grace of the All-Highest, Most High God is an ocean of flames which only the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit can cross. This is because their radiations which brought about the flames are the same as the Most High bears. They are parts of Him. The real Creation is the Spiritual Realm, the vastness of which is beyond the contemplative faculties of man to survey or comprehend. The densest part of the subsequent Creation is where the earth has its place. The Ethereal World which we call the Beyond is bigger in size and vastness than this physical world. It has its own gradations and sections.
As we all must have experienced it while in the air, on a flight cruising 35, 000 feet above sea level, that is from the ground, neither trees nor human beings are seen looking down from that height until the aircraft begins to lose height in descent preparatory to landing. It, therefore, cannot be difficult to grasp when it is said that the earth with all its 7.8billion inhabitants is no more than the tip of a fountain pen in relation to our universe. From all this we should begin to have an idea of how far from this earth Paradise is, and how farther still the abode of the Holy Spirit is, at the summit of Creation where He is the eternal Mediator through Whose Power the entire Creation is governed as the Will of the Most High while the Lord Christ governs the Divine Realm after re-uniting with His Father following the brutal end of His Ministration of Love on earth—Both working at the behest of the Father Who is in Them and They in the Father as Trinity. With this vastness alone, it becomes imperative to understand the nature of the Creator, the Almighty Creator of all. Many see Him as no more than an old King in the neighbourhood, at most some distance high up beyond the clouds–even when astronauts have revealed that the moon is about 400, 000 miles away from the earth. Thus, I stated last week that the old knowledge can no longer suffice; it is limited. At the time we were infants we were given only what infants needed and should be aware of at their level. The elemental beings also called Nature Beings, for example, were the teachers of our forebears. Today we know that rocks are composed of chemical compounds which are made in themselves of protons, neutrons and electrons. These are radiations tapped by the Nature Beings in their weaving from Light Rays precipitation. The Law of Motion demands of us that we grow and deliberately, too, from time to time, re-examine our belief systems, religious or spiritual, and summon the courage to throw out of the window those that belong to the age of ignorance, primitive and pervasive superstition. The knowledge of the building blocks, of the developmental stages would necessarily remain. No one would forget he started from a primary school.
Now I want to recall what I wrote in this column in November, 1993, captioned The age of knowledge. It goes as follows:
Knowledge is power, it is often said. And when the man of knowledge comes we rise in salutation, paying him generous homage. His intellect, generally regarded as the seat of that knowledge, is praised. We look at him in admiration. The man of knowledge is celebrated from land to land, from one end of the world to the other. The man of knowledge is he who has read far and wide. He has read the Life of Rousseau. He has studied Alchemy. He has read about Apollonius Hipparchus. He is familiar with Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. He has read T. S. Eliot; Wole Soyinka; William Wordsworth; Achebe; J.P. Clark. He is familiar with John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Age of Uncertainty and the later work, The Affluent Society. The man of knowledge is one who has read Flora Nwapa. He speaks about Vincent Ike with uncommon familiarity. About Amos Tutuola’s Palm Wine Drinkard. And about Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu, Morountodun and Once Upon Four Robbers. The library of the man of knowledge is filled with Niyi Osundare’s works and Odia Ofeimu’s. He is he who has grappled with Segun Sofowote’s English As She Is Spoke which Alfred Opubor described as, in his words, “a confident road map, produced by a teacher who has earned his stripes in the heart of the Nigerian battlefield for language excellence.”
The man of knowledge is one who has read, digested and made the content of William Shakespeare’s works his own. He is familiar with the thought of Heracleides of Heraclea Pontica that the earth turns on its axis and that Mercury and Venus revolve round the sun. He is familiar with Archimedes of Syracuse of “Give me where to stand and I will move the earth” fame. He has read about Herophilus and his discovery of the nerves and differentiation of cerebrum and cerebellum. He has read about Pythagoras and Plato as the fathers of geometry who, it was reported, brought its development to such a stage that the inscription over Plato’s Academy could not but read: “Let none enter who knows not geometry.”
He is regarded as a man of knowledge who speaks as if he was an eyewitness to the French Revolution. He is familiar with the Thoughts of Karl Marx and The Selected works of Mao Tse-tung. He has read Awo’s many books and Zik’s Odyssey. He is familiar with the work of Mozart. He is conversant with the work of Handel. He is one who asked if he had read Winston Churchill’s Second World War, Alone,” he speaks in the affirmative. Has he read Okigbo, the poet? A man of knowledge is one who has read Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. He is said to be one, in the words of one-time action Governor of Lagos State, Lateef Jakande, (LKJ), who reads everything in print and who knows something about everything and everything about something.
In the ages past, the universally accepted knowledge was that stored in stone, skins, trees, scrolls or walls such as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Today, the universally accepted knowledge is that documented in books, and books are kept in libraries. Thus, the man of knowledge today is one who is expected to have waded through libraries. No, I take that again. Today, the universally accepted knowledge is that also stored in the e-books and in the magic, all pervading Internet as well as in links and its portals Mr. Google, Google and its variants—FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter alias Mr. X with Donald Trump as the chief librarian and editor-in-chief. Mr. AI, the thought police of these times, is keeping a watching brief.
Books contain thoughts of the writer who, in the words of Jean Paul Sartre, has chosen to reveal the world and particularly to reveal man to men…his writing has brought about the commonality of language and revealed the world of universalism. Knowledge brings confidence. It engenders a feeling of wellbeing. There is an air of being on top of the world. In the early days, university students were often referred to as the leaders of tomorrow. In testimony to this, in all parts of the world, the men of knowledge have been in power in all countries for upwards of two centuries today. They control influence and privileges.
I remember renowned mathematician Chike Obi pressing hard in 1964, in the First Republic, that a thorough knowledge of Pythagoras’s Theorem should be minimum qualification for Nigerian legislators. He spoke in Parliament. He spoke using the vehicle of his radical, non-conformist Dynamic Party.
Through knowledge, there have been discoveries. The knowledge itself may have derived from observation of phenomena. It has been observed, for example, that energy radiates—although the source of the energy is not generally known. Yet, energy must have a source. Discoveries have brought about great improvements in our lives. Through observations, experimentation, and cognitions, the outworking of life’s principles became established. And these established principles have been used to bring about what they call inventions which have facilitated life. I hasten to state, though, that there are no inventions, there are only revelations because all man needs is already provided in Creation. The invention of electricity by Michael Faraday will live in the hearts of men for all time. The principles of invention have today become widespread knowledge. Subsequent attempts after him have been to polish and perfect his efforts.
Systems, practices and cultures of different peoples are observed and documented to form a body of knowledge. So is the behaviour of man under different circumstances and environments, be it politics, or economic pursuits. Reports of such behaviourial studies abound. In the age knowledge has not lost its innocence, learning mistaken for knowledge and its product, erudition, became a power rated far above wealth. He would have the best women if he could just conjugate in Latin—because it was strongly held, that learning moulds character. Early writers evincing knowledge were courted by kings, by the powerful, and the mighty among men. Learning has been essentially regarded as the route to knowledge. As proof of learning, books have sprouted.
However, if in spite of knowledge, man has not known peace and joy, the secrets of what scholarship is expected to unravel, should the world not spare some moments of thinking of alternatives? Should searching and questioning not have begun bearing in mind that without reservations about what one holds in his hands, he cannot begin to ask questions, the right questions; and without the questions being asked, there can be no answers, and without answers there can be no progress. Should we not ask questions such as Wither our world? The guiding rule of Socrates, reputed to be the wisest man in Greece, stated, “I must first know myself as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.” If our knowledge does not include revelation about ourselves, how can we address what is in our interest and how do we know our goal? What does our knowledge say about the economy, politics and nation-building—all of which are giving way if we care to see, and if we care to hear? What does it say about Life after Life? Afterall knowledge is about truth and truth is about reality. Thus true knowledge being Truth and Truth being Light illumines, dispersing ignorance and lack of clarity.
If we accept that there is life in the non-physical, we must also accept that beings in the non-physical have knowledge. Does knowledge gained here end with a person’s demise on earth? If the answer is in the negative, it is logical to appreciate the fact that human beings in higher planes, in the Light Region or Paradise must carry higher and richer knowledge. We would know that the closer a Realm is to the Source of Life and Light the higher and more pronounced the motion. Are we not told in Psalms 90: 4 “…for a thousand earth years are as one day in the spiritual’’? We read also in 2 Peter 3:8: “With the Lord one day is a thousand years.” It should stand to reason, therefore, that John the Baptist coming as he did from the Primordial Spiritual Realm, the highest spiritual realm, would have richer and expansive knowledge and capacity to receive directly the message of Revelation of the Light than John the Apostle who was from a lower Realm and was on earth. “Verily I say unto you,” so says the Lord Jesus, “Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.” (Matthew 11:11). John the Baptist received the Revelation in the Isle of Patmos and passed it on to a human being on earth, John the Beloved of the Lord, who was spiritually open for it and who translated it into earthly words.
As I did state last week, mankind today have been blessed with so much that they have no excuse standing on the same spot going round in circles, but getting to nowhere in particular.
This piece, updated, was first published on this page in November 1993. It is being rerun because of its relevance in our today’s world that everything, including ideas and belief systems are subject to the Law of Movement. It will be concluded next week—The Age of Knowledge .
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On Wednesday, I attended a valedictory session in honour of the late Stanley Shenko Alagoa JSC, OFR, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court…which is where the ceremony took place.
I was invited because I am close to some of his relatives and I felt immensely privileged to be there while the Chief Justice (Madame Kudirat M.O. Kekere-Ekun) and other super-senior lawyers fulsomely praised Alagoa’s character and professional achievements.
Alagoa is remembered fondly and respectfully for several good reasons. A quintessential Niger Deltan gentleman from a premier league Bayelsa family, he was totally unmaterialistic, admirably erudite, appropriately reserved (hanging out with big men was not his thing) and so obviously principled that he is one of the few Nigerian judges who has never been suspected of collecting bribes.
Here is what the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice – Lateef Fagbemi, SAN – had to say about him:
“He was a stickler for rules and standards…[and] constantly insisting on the need to insulate the court from external influence and to protect the sanctity and integrity of the halls of justice.
“In the valedictory session held in his honour upon retirement from the Bench, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 70, His Lordship made the following bold pronouncements, which continue to resonate to this day:
“‘I will be failing in my duty especially at this time if I do not say a word or two about allegations of corruption in the judiciary. Time was when this canker worm was confined to the Magistracy and Customary or Native courts. With time, it is said to have spread and has now gained ground in the High and say say appeallate courts.
“’This trend must be worrisome to any discerning person as some highly placed persons including distinguished and respected retired Justices of the Supreme Court and other legal luminaries have expressed grave concern over this ugly trend…
“The greatest challenges to the judiciary are politicians followed by businessmen. Traditional rulers must also share in the blame. It is this class of persons that bribe, intimidate, harass or influence judges to depart from their sacred oath of office and the path of honour and rectitude…
“’A judge who hobnobs with this group may well be unwittingly allowing his position to be compromised and possibly jeopardised….A judge who is more at home in social circles may do well to question his suitability for the bench as the two are incompatible….
“’A judge must hold fast to his faith in God and be bold. This done, this class of persons, like bees, can only buzz around but must certainly lack the power and ability to sting….Only men and women of proven integrity and courage should be picked to sit on the bench…’”
You could have heard a pin drop when Fagbemi was reading his tribute to Alagoa; and I wondered, as I scrutinized the inscrutable faces of the judges in the chamber, whether any of them felt guilty or ashamed.
Many Nigerians have completely lost faith in the judiciary, mostly because of dubious judgements linked to election cases.
I am not saying that every single judge except Alagoa is dodgy or that every judgement I disagree with was arrived at dishonestly. I am simply saying that the Nigerian judiciary has a SEVERE image problem and urgently needs to cleanse its tarnished reputation.
Too many professions in this country, including my own, have lost credibility because of the actions of bad eggs who throw ethical considerations to the winds and sell out to the highest bidder, thereby betraying citizens who depend on them for objectivity, truth and fairness. Too many judges, politicians, etc, become greedy grabbers instead of the moral custodians they ought to be.
It is so sad.
DITCH THE WIGS!!!
My many friends and relatives who happen to be lawyers will be furious with me for saying this, but I have yet to come across any lawyer who looks good in his or her traditional headgear!
Those archaic white woollen wigs look absolutely ridiculous on pale skinned foreigners and even worse on black folks.
Whites at least have an excuse for wearing wigs…being that doing so is based on centuries-old Anglo Saxon culture. But what, may I ask, excuse do African lawyers have for copying them in the 2lst century?
Unattractiveness aside, the practice is downright slavishly colonial!
It is time for Nigerian lawyers to emulate their American counterparts who, if you ask me, look a zillion times more stylish.
Afrinvest West Africa Limited provided the above headline in its maiden ‘Afrinvest Monthly Update’ for 2025, as a rider to the main title of the publication. The headline suggests that there is an illusion about Nigeria’s economic progress; and goes on to question whether the nation is now stuck in this illusion of making progress.
It therefore becomes necessary to probe whether Nigeria has actually been making any economic progress, specifically in the past close to two years under the current Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration. This investigation is best done via an assessment of the state of a number of key economic indicators.
In May 2023, when President Tinubu was inaugurated, inflation rate stood at 22.40 per cent; it rose steadily to stand at 28.92 per cent in December, 2023. It continued the spiraling until July and August 2024 when the rate dropped marginally to 33.40 per cent and 32.15 per cent respectively. The rate resumed its surge, and closed 2024 at 34.82 per cent.
In pursuit of the illusion of economic progress, however, the Federal Government seems bent on re-basing the measure of inflation—the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This, apparently, is to come up with an inflation figure that will give credence to a stable and growing economy. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has, in the past couple of weeks, been working assiduously to realize the ‘desired’ result. We wait!
On its own part, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), since May 2023, has deployed everything in its armory of monetary policies to ‘tame’ the rampaging hyper-inflationary trend. Unfortunately, rather than depressing the inflation rate, the continued hike of the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) which the CBN adopted, has caused unintended collateral damage to the economy.
The benchmark or indicative interest rate—MPR—that was at 18 per cent by May 2023, has been hiked to 27.50 per cent by end-2024; a jump of almost ten per cent. One of the upshots of this has been the prevalence of outrageously high interest rates charged by the Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) for all their (credit) facilities.
These interest rates have been ranging between 30 and 35 per cent per annum: rates that have pushed bank credits beyond the reach of most businesses, especially the Micro, Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (MSMEs). The CBN has also gone ahead to hike the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) from about 30 per cent to 50 per cent during the same period.
CRR is the percentage of deposits that banks (DMBs) must keep with the CBN, rather than lending out to customers. Fifty per cent CRR means that for every 100 naira deposited into any DMB, the bank is required to hold 50 naira in reserve with the CBN, and can only lend out the remaining 50 naira to customers.
So, both the high MPR and CRR pose a very tight constraint on the credit creation capacity and other functions of the DMBs, especially in a weak economy. Although the CBN has deployed the hiked MPR in structuring such facilities as the Treasury Bills to attract massive patronage, the gains remain too short-lived and disruptive to the economy.
Specifically, the highly priced (handsome yields) Treasury Bills have been attracting some quantum of foreign portfolio investments (FPIs)—but this is ‘hot money’ that has no capacity to bring stability to the volatile macro-economy. This market environment has also enabled the government (via debt instruments) to remain dominant in the capital/money market; thus, crowding out a good number of private sector participants.
It has therefore remained an illusion that the CBN has generated a huge foreign exchange (FX) inflow to strengthen and stabilize the naira. The ‘hot money’ generated through the FPIs have been leaving the Nigerian shores shortly after they come in. Their impact has been largely on paper, as captured in the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) periodic ‘Capital Importation’ reports.
The state of the naira exchange rate vis-à-vis the dollar and other hard currencies in the past 21 months is even more worrisome. From an official level of below N500/US$ in May 2023, the naira had crashed to a level of almost N2000/US$ before inching up to about N1500/US$ currently. The full floatation of the local currency mid-June 2023 practically rang the death knell for the Nigerian legal tender.
The policy of exchange rate determination by market forces (demand and supply) exposed the acute shortage of FX—leading to lingering excess demand over supply in the market. Although the CBN has tried so many initiatives to arrest the situation, the naira exchange rate has remained sticky at between N1700-N1500/US$.
Again, the battle (by the CBN) to strengthen the naira and stabilize the FX market is yet to be won. The minimal gains of the naira (though unstable) in recent weeks have remained shrouded in propaganda and self-adulation by the monetary authorities. For a currency exchange rate that dropped from N475/US$ to N1560/US$ in 20 months, any perceived progress (or gain) is certainly an illusion.
Another indicator (the price of fuel) presents even a more woeful and pathetic picture of illusion about so-called economic progress of Nigeria in recent times. From below N200 per liter at end-May 2023, the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) has shot up to over N1000 per liter. On May 29, 2023, President Tinubu announced the fuel subsidy removal, and PMS’ price jumped instantaneously to about N700 per liter. This trajectory has been sustained.
The catastrophic impact of the subsidy withdrawal on the economic wellbeing of Nigerians is yet permeating all nooks and crannies of the country. Unprecedented level of high inflation; hunger and penury unleashed on the citizenry. Government’s resort to dispensing of palliatives at all levels of the polity to assuage the pains has proved ineffective and unsustainable.
Institutions like the IMF and the World Bank have been alerting Nigeria on the number of its citizens that have been pushed into poverty trap by the impacts of Government policies. Food insecurity has become an existential threat to millions of Nigerians that have been pauperized by the fallouts of economic policies. Staple food has gone out of the reach of millions—pushing the Government to ‘toy with’ the idea of ‘tax-free’ importation of some food items. But almost one year on, this policy is yet to yield any results!
In handling the ‘volcanic eruption’ caused by the unplanned fuel subsidy withdrawal, the Government, rather than expediting action in improving local refining, had resorted to issuing licenses to many more people to be importing PMS and other refined products. This is such that Nigeria has continued to depend almost hundred per cent on imported PMS for its local needs.
Efforts of private concerns like Dangote Refinery to improve the bad situation met with deadly intrigues, chicanery, and even sabotage by the officialdom. Today, although Dangote Refinery has recorded a pyrrhic victory, the refining industry has been made scary for other discerning investors. Numerous hidden obstacles and landmines are set up for existing and intending investors in spite of liberalization.
Even the much-publicized repair and re-streaming of some Government-owned refineries are yet to improve the horrible PMS supply situation in the country. The pricing of the commodity has gotten linked to the vagaries of oil price movement in the international market, and as such, local players (like Dangote) remain perpetually exposed to external headwinds.
This is why recent celebrations of the return of the Port-Harcourt and Warri refineries were only but part of the economic ‘progress illusion’. The issues (corruption) that saw the collapse of those national assets (refineries) over the years are yet to disappear. In point of fact, since the publicized repair, those refineries have remained in fits and starts.
Government remains yet undecided as to whether to privatize those refineries or to keep on sinking huge public funds, running into billions of dollars, into endless maintenance of the ‘dead’ refineries. Or, perhaps Government is only content with parading the repairs of those refineries as part of its ‘illusory progress.’ Whichever way, every gauge of the economy reveals the nadir of hope.
This has become most obvious in the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) monthly (national) income sharing by the three tiers of government. From some hundreds of billions of naira usually shared by the Federal Government and the sub-nationals every month in the past, the amount has ballooned to trillions of naira in recent times.
But this seeming ‘bumper harvest’ is a mere ‘money illusion’—where the ‘huge’ sums doled out to the tiers of government are not worth much. Money, in Economics, is what money can buy. Therefore the thoroughly devalued and inflation-deflated naira being shared by FAAC has little value to tangibly improve the wellbeing of the people.
It is illusion, all over!
· The author, Okeke, a practicing Economist, Business Strategist, Sustainability expert and ex-Chief Economist of Zenith Bank Plc, lives in Lekki, Lagos.
Those who bear the name Valentine dread the month of February like a plague. Besides close friends who always demand that you celebrate your name in grand style, most confront you with all manner of questions bordering on the concept your name is supposed to embody. Thus, you are asked whether you were born on the 14th of February or whether you were a by-product of a love affair that took place in the month of February. One fact I have come to discover over the years is that people consider those who bear the name Valentine as experts in all known techniques of love, from its fundamentals to its metaphysics.
Despite much research, we cannot say unarguably the exact date the feast started, nor by what route it entered into history. Perhaps it is connected to the life of a certain St Valentine, who was said to have suffered martyrdom in Rome, as Church hagiography would have us believe. Perhaps, as the legend of the saint’s heroic faith suggests, it grew out of the love shown to prisoners by the saintly Valentine. Perhaps it has to do with the period in the year when birds of the earth look for mates. Perhaps it is another case of the substitution of a pagan feast by a Christian feast as a subtle way of blighting paganism at the bud. We do not know. Valentine’s Day is part of history, whose beginning has been forgotten and whose end we shall never reach.
The popularity of Valentine’s Day could be linked to the nature of the theme it celebrates – love. Writing about love, Archbishop Fulton Sheen called it “the most used and the most misunderstood word.” The misunderstanding inherent in the nature of love often provokes people to ask questions such as: How much of what we claim as love is love indeed? Does love have different levels and spheres? Is it possible to love our neighbour as ourselves, as the Holy Writ prescribes? What is love? These are the questions with which the most comprehensive theories, treatises, and analyses of love find it necessary to begin.
To the Greeks, love could be Eros, Philia, or Agape. Plato’s Ladder of Love in the Symposium has different loves for its rungs, up to what we commonly call Platonic Love. St Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between love in the sphere of passion and love as an act of will. The former he assigns to what he calls the “concupiscible faculty” of the sensitive appetite; the latter, to the rational or “intellectual appetite.” Sometimes, people talk about metaphysical, contemplative, material, and acquisitive love, among others.
Whatever form love takes, it implies a complex psychical experience of strong attraction to, intense desire for, vivid appreciation of, and a profound interest in one’s object of love. The object of love could be a fellow being, an institution, a cause, or even nature. It involves tender affection, sympathetic understanding, admiration, and loyalty in reference to its object.
But apart from a few people who recognise the plurality of love in their analyses, most of us, especially the youth, talk abundantly of love, commonly in the sense of amorous appetite. These are people who confess their love for the object of their affection more than for their own mothers. Our elders consider this form of love to be a kind of “possession” or “madness” and would frown at anyone who proposes it as a fit guide in the choice of a marriage partner. They do this knowing that once the erotic side of love diminishes or fades away altogether, the disinterested element fades too; interest in the other’s happiness evaporates, all tender feeling is eroded, and the one desire is to get away. This is what Lucretius called “erotic befuddlement,” what Diderot derisively described as “the voluptuous loss of a few drops of liquid.” It is a spark thrown off by the contact or nearness of two opposite bodies.
In pursuit of this type of love, there is nothing that human beings have not done, or are not capable of doing. The love potion that some ladies brew for men they suspect of unrequited love has no platonic aim. It is not out of generosity but rather to secure the object of their longing. Men spend vast amounts of money wooing women, and women themselves do as much. To attract men, they dress in ways designed to arouse precipitate passion. Eyelashes are darkened with gum ammonia. Cheeks and lips are painted with sticks of minium or alkanet roots. Adjustable eyebrows are used and often pencilled with lampblack or pulverised sulphuret of antimony; sometimes they are thinned into diverse shapes or shaved off entirely and painted as “crescent moons” or other forms. Eyelids are shaded with kohl. All sorts of things are rubbed on the face in the hope of enhancing beauty. Some wrap their fingernails overnight with henna leaves to make them purple. Padded brassieres are used to make the breasts appear poised and … There is no part of the woman’s body, in pursuit of men, that has not been perfected, decorated, refined, stretched, squeezed, bleached, reformed, compacted, or shortened.
Have you heard about Suleiman the Magnificent? While at the apogee of his glory, he had many concubines. During his daily evening walks around his compound, his women would line up along the paths he would take. Usually, Suleiman would examine them like a man inspecting dogs in kennels. He would hand a white kerchief to any woman who attracted him on a particular day. That night, the recipient of the kerchief would return it. This was his method of pursuing amorous satisfaction.
Higher than the aforementioned form of love is what is often called genuine friendship. In this type of love, altruistic motives predominate. It springs from mutual admiration. Here, love is thought to precede desire and to determine its wishes. Marriages built upon this type of love are often successful. Mature lovers discover that marriage transcends the act of procreation or the fantasy of sexual acts. There are some men who think that all a woman appreciates in a man is his ability to brandish the erectile organ to her satisfaction. No. Marriage is more than that. It demands deep understanding and maturity from both partners.
All the foregoing classifications and distinctions—exhaustive though they may seem—belong to the theory of human love. But the diversity of love extends to the Christian understanding of it. Christianity brought about a fundamental shift in man’s thinking about love. Christianity does not see love in terms of emotion or passion but rather in the infinite perfection and creativity of God. God Himself is love (1 John 4:4). “Love ye one another.” In this profound sentence, God summarised all the commandments. Love rules the world and was, perhaps, as Parmenides thought, “the very first thing created by the gods to rule the world.”
The key to peace in the world is for men to embrace the ethics of Christ—love. Confucius taught a version of it in his rule of reciprocity (the Golden Rule). Immanuel Kant espoused it in The Metaphysics of Morals through what he called the “Maxims of Categorical Imperatives.” All great religions teach it. Until we begin to imbibe this Golden Rule (love), the battle to remake the world might as well be labelled a utopia.
The sooner we use Valentine’s Day to promote this kind of love, the better the world will become. Here we are again, celebrating another Valentine’s Day. How do we make it serve the purpose of making the world a better place? This is the central question.
NOTE: I came across this great reflection by Bishop Godfrey Onah of Nsukka Diocese. Kindly share with us: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19sfkWvVFF/?mibextid=wwXIfr
(From the Archives, 2001)
There was a popular song when I was a child titled ‘Come and see American wonder.’ It was not so much about the celebration of the perceived wonders of the United States, US. It was more about the incredulous things emanating from ‘God’s own country’.
Some of us thought that as far as the US was concerned, we had seen it all. But the bizarre ways of President Donald Trump and the antics of his fellow billionaires like Ellon Musk, tell us: ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’; the worst is yet to come.
How does a rational being wake up in his home and say he is donating the population of another country, 10,726 kilometres away, to other countries? Who, but a clown, would say he wants to turn a land like Palestine, which many had fought and died for, into an holiday resort, perhaps into a private golf resort?
But Trump must not be taken for granted because, in his mind, he might have mapped out Gaza, the hotels he hopes to build on the corpses of the Palestinians, and the private profits he and his fellow business people hope to make by seizing the territory.
Nobody should take the American President for a clown. Or if he truly is, then he is a deadly one willing to carry out genocide for the profits he hopes to make.
This is not the first time he wants to donate lands, that he does not own, to other people or business. He has done more bizarre things. Four years ago, as he was leaving office, Trump issued an American Presidential Declaration donating an African country and Member of the African Union, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, SADR, better known as Western Sahara, to Morocco.
This year, he says he has renamed the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. That is a name that has been in existence for over four centuries. In trying to implement this brainwave, Trump’s leg men gathered information that some media were not adhering to the pronouncement. So the Associated Press, AP, reporter was barred from the White House because the news agency insists on sticking to the international name.
He also renamed the 100-year-old Panama Canal owned by Panama as the American Canal. In January 2025, he threatened to seize the canal for allegedly making too much profit. Then a month later, he repeated his threat to invade and take over the canal but this time, for allegedly allowing the Chinese to run the canal.
He also threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark for America’s “economic security”. Trump has also asked neigbouring Canada to become the 51st state of the US and erase its 5,525-mile long border with it. He said of Canada: “If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100 per cent certain that they’d become a state.”
Interestingly, Canada with a land area of 3,855, 103 square miles is bigger than the US with 3,794,083 square miles. So, if Trump’s clowning is to be taken on face value, USA should join Canada and become its 11th province.
However, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February 2025 warned his country’s business leaders to take Trump’s threats seriously. He told them the Trump administration is “very aware of our resources, of what we have and they very much want to be able to benefit from those (Trump) has it in mind that one of the easiest ways of doing that is absorbing our country.”
Trudeau who had dealt with Trump in his first term as US President, added: “Not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have, but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state.”
Trump had gone on to impose a 25 per cent additional tariff on Canada and neigbhouring Mexico which, he says, he has suspended for one month. Meanwhile, he has imposed an additional 10 per cent tariff on imports from China.
In his first seven weeks in office, the Trump administration rounded up 14,000 undocumented immigrants some of who were packed into aircraft and dumped in their countries of origin.
He has also ordered the construction of another immigrants detention centre in the Guantanamo Bay, a Cuban territory US has occupied since 1898. The administration says it is targeting 600,000 immigrants whom it alleges have criminal records.
He is also working hard to cripple the American public sector. He sacked more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on cases involving the January 6 riot. He is also scrutinising thousands of Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, agents who investigated the riot. So, he has no qualms punishing public servants he perceives as enemies, even when they were merely doing the job they are paid to do.
He is also dismantling the US Agency for International Development, USAID, in such a cruel manner that hundreds of its staff posted across the world have no idea what to do. They are virtually abandoned abroad with their families.
Today, US democracy has delivered what is perhaps its most unique verdict and most powerful President since its July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence. Trump, operating outside the majority Republican Party, seized the party with his Make America Great Again, MAGA, group which is now the dominant faction.
He won both the popular and Electoral College votes. The party he dominates, controls both the Senate and House of Representatives. Additionally, his party has a 6-3 majority in the Supreme Court. So, perhaps for the first time in US history, one man has control of the Executive, Congress and Supreme Court. But for the fact that this is happening in the US, it would have been called a dictatorship.
Conscious of his powers, Trump is even by-passing the Congress and, side-tracking the US constitution by trying to run the US based on Executive Orders. Given their number, it would be a miracle if he can remember the Orders he is signing.
Having cornered and virtually conquered his country, Trump is trying to rule the world with sanctions and threats. Europeans who have always been allies of the US are on edge. They are not sure what to expect. So they are meeting to plan some resistance, and possible retaliation if he imposes tariffs and sanctions on them. He will certainly be resisted, but he can do much damage.
Trump is a product of American democracy; the American electorate have to live with their choice, may be for the next four years. Africans say if you give birth to a problem-child, you have to take responsibility for him. Americans have the duty to rein in Trump before he does incalculable damage to both the country and humanity.