In the months that preceded the February 2023 presidential election, supporters of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso both badgered me to recognize Kwankwaso’s matchless political might and affronted me for ranking Peter Obi above him. My unrelenting assertions, which have turned out to be accurate, that one of Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, or Peter Obi would emerge president this year riled them to no end.

One day in 2022, a particularly persistent, monomaniacal Kwankwaso groupie asked me in a comment on my Facebook page why I consistently ignored Kwankwaso in my analyses of likely successors to Muhammadu Buhari. I responded that it was because Kwankwaso was only a “local champion” of Kano politics who had no political traction outside the state.

My lighthearted, unpremeditated comment was screenshot and shared widely within Kwankwaso devotional circles on social media. Kwankwaso’s devotees were enraged because they misconstrued my description of their object of political worship as an insult.

But it isn’t. Although many Nigerian English speakers think “local” is a term of disesteem, it isn’t by any stretch of conventional semantic imagination. It’s a value-neutral term that simply means nearby; not far away in relative terms; limited to a town, city, state, region, etc. rather than a larger area.

 As I pointed out in an April 20, 2014, Daily Trust grammar column titled “12 Popular Misusages in Nigerian English (II),” “There is not the slightest whiff of inferiority in the word in all varieties of English except in Nigerian (and perhaps Ghanaian) English.” A “local” person isn’t an inferior person. Nor is an “international” person a superior person. “Local,” “regional,” “national,” and “international” are mere terms to indicate geographic relativity. 

It was always obvious to any disinterested observer that Kwankwaso was a local Kano champion, that he wasn’t in the presidential race to win it, and that he only wanted to leverage his presidential run to help his son-in-law get elected as governor of Kano State. And he achieved his goal.

Kwankwaso won Kano State convincingly in the presidential election, but didn’t even win second place in Jigawa, which used to be a part of Kano State until relatively recently. That’s a classic instantiation of a local champion.

Obi was different. From about the midpoint of 2022, it became apparent to me that Obi would shake and shape the presidential election in ways his opponents hadn’t come to terms with. When I wrote a column titled “The Peter Obi Tsunami APC and PDP are Underrating” on June 18, 2022, several Kwankwaso supporters—and, of course, APC and PDP partisans—sneered at my suggestion that Obi would be more than a social media sensation among naïve, wide-eyed southern Nigerian youngsters.

A few Kwankwaso supporters imputed ridiculous, extraneous motives to my analysis, such as the idea that I wanted Obi to be president because my wife’s father is Igbo from Anambra State. There was also, of course, the inverse of this sentiment from Obi enthusiasts. Some of them playfully said to me that I was “Obi-dient” because I was an “in-law” to Obi. 

I’ve never been obedient (however the word is contorted in spelling) even as a child. I’ve always been rebellious, disobedient, and inquisitorial. It’s insulting to think that as an adult I’d be obedient, even as a joke, to a delusional, manipulative, Machiavellian, identitarian populist.

Yes, I’ve advocated power rotation to the Southeast in several past columns in the service of national cohesion and distributive political justice and would have been happy for either Obi or Kingsley Moghalu to be president, but my assessments of Obi had no connection with this personal disposition. It was based purely on what I perceived. And my perception has turned out to be more accurate than my critics were prepared to accept.

Even though Obi’s support base was delimited by religion, it did transcend Anambra State, the Southeast, and the South. It got to Christian Northern Nigeria. I predicted exactly that. I thought he would win Benue State, but he fell short because of the star power of APC’s governorship candidate, who I understand is a well-loved Catholic priest. I didn’t think he would win Nasarawa and Lagos states, but he did. His loss of Rivers State is obvious electoral fraud.

Obi’s critics said he had no structure to win elections outside his ethnic base. They didn’t reckon that the church was his structure. And it situated him as widely as it could. Even in the remotest villages in Nigeria, pastors preached that Obi was the only defender of the Christian faith that congregants must vote for. It was the biggest, most impassioned, pan-regional mass mobilization of Christians that Nigeria has ever seen.

Few political structures can outrival that. But the structure of the church that enabled him to win pan-regional Christian votes (except in Yoruba land where ethnic solidarity proved to be more potent than religion) also limited and doomed him. It made it constitutionally impossible for him to be president even if he won a plurality of the vote. 

That is why I think Obi is suffering from a delusional disorder when he talks of his “mandate” being “stolen.” What “mandate”? As Buhari will tell him, intense religious mobilization of voters can take a candidate far, but it can never lead to a national mandate. 

Obi couldn’t possibly have a national mandate when he couldn’t get up to 25% of the votes in Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Zamfara, Jigawa, Borno, Yobe, Katsina, Gombe, Bauchi, Adamawa, Kwara, Niger, Kogi, Kebbi, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti, Oyo, Ogun. That’s 20 out of Nigeria’s 36 states. He won or got more than 25% of the votes in only 16 states. With or without rigging, I can bet my life that the outcome would be the same.

When people are ensconced in their hermetically sealed echo chambers, they hear only their own voices and noises. The sounds that exist outside their self-created silos are always inaudible to them. That’s precisely what’s happening to Obi and his devotees. But I look forward to what his petition will reveal.

Anyway, what the outcome of the election has revealed is that Obi isn’t the “local champion” that Kwankwaso supporters told me he is worthier to be called than Kwankwaso. Obi, in fact, won more votes in the North than Kwankwaso did.

Obi got 2,080,847 votes in the North. Kwankwaso got 1,454,649 total votes, most of them from Kano, cementing his position as a local Kano champion. In fact, as TheCable’s March 7, 2023, post-election analysis showed, “Kwankwaso did not get up to 100,000 votes elsewhere aside [from] Kano.”

Apart from winning 12 states (I insist he won Rivers State, making it 13), including two northern states, Obi bested Kwankwaso in 13 northern states: Kaduna, Taraba, Borno, Gombe, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Sokoto, Nasarawa, Plateau, Adamawa, and Benue.

I don’t say this to ridicule Kwankwaso with whom I am on cordial relational terms. In fact, when he visited the United States late last year, he was gracious enough to call me from Washington, DC—after his minions had made an anguished hue and cry about my offhanded, well-intentioned but misunderstood description of him as a “local champion.” 

Although I am critical of his tendency toward infantile personalization of power (which caused him to paint red “Kwankwasiyya” inscriptions on physical projects he completed when he was governor), I have profound respect for Kwankwaso for his transformational infrastructural uplift of Kano, my second state after my home state, and for his remarkably praiseworthy investment in the education of Kano’s youth even while outside government.

I have never ceased to be impressed by the investment of his own personal wealth (to the extent that we can call the wealth of any politician “personal”) to sponsor scores of brilliant Kano youth to acquire much sought-after and relevant higher education degrees in universities across the world. He himself completed a PhD in water engineering from Sharda University in India last year, which signposts his love for education.

Nonetheless, he is still, for now, a local champion. But I think he and Obi have a bright future together in national politics if they learn from their mistakes and make strategic amends. 

Kekong Bisong was my indefatigable metaphysics teacher back in the days at St Joseph Major Seminary, Ikot Ekpene. He is perhaps one of the finest wines that the Catholic church has brewed. In knowledge and in character, he is a good advertisement for the Church. He is not a scholar and a saint only, but also a controversialist. As a distinguished Philosophy Professor, he does not only fancy controversies; he creates them. On this, I can safely say that he is a brewery of controversies.

Whenever he went up to the pulpit to preach, the atmosphere became mute so much so that you could hear the musings of ants. Mute because, we knew he will disagree with even what Jesus had said in the Scriptures. But only to agree later. He does not only disagree for disagreeing sake; he disagrees so he will have reasons for agreeing. It was he who taught us how not to follow the crowd, subscribe to groupthink, belief system, conventional wisdom, etcetera, until when there’s a justification or a raison d’etre. 

On one occasion when he came to the class, he told us a story to validate his point on what he called ‘necessary disobedience’. He started by asking who discovered the mouth of river Niger. Ofcourse, all of us said Mongo Park. He then went on to tell us of a boy who was preparing for a common entrance interview. Fortunately for him, his uncle is a member of the panel and had whispered to him that he will be asked “who discovered the mouth of river Niger.” Ofcourse, the conventional answer even among university professors is that Mongo Park did.

The day came and the boy was again reminded of the name Mongo Park before he departed home to the venue. The interview had started and it was his turn to answer questions. His uncle’s eyes were all on him when a panelist asked: “Who discovered the mouth of river Niger?”  “My grandfather”, the boy answered.  The uncle was so disappointed as the boy keeps repeating” my grandfather.” A member of the panel then went further to ask him why he thinks the answer is his grandfather. He replied: “My grandfather was a fisherman who lived around New Bussa long before Mongo Park arrived. He definitely knew about the mouth of the river before Park. Only that he was not literate enough to tell the story.”

All the panelists were amazed and clapped for the boy. This is what Kekong Bisong called necessary disobedience. For him, the work of the teacher is not to produce conventional ideas and then expect the students to reproduce same at examinations. It is rather to train the mind in challenging beliefs and conventions so as to ascertain what is true and real. This was also what Dr. Bala Usman advocated for when he called for a review of our syllabus to reflect our situation. May God bless his soul!

The ‘partisan behavior’ of some clerics during the 2023 elections, have now forced me into a recollection of Kekong’s philosophy in thinking that these behaviors, inspite of the provision in most Churches, that Priests ought not to take part in partisan politics, could at best, only qualify as holy or necessary disobedience. Apart from my personal experience, a large number of people had called to either complain about not knowing the direction to follow because of the discordant political prescriptions made by their pastors on the party to vote for, or that they and their priests belonged to different political parties and hardly see eye to eye.

The situation chilled me to the marrow because, almost, if not all churches, had representatives in the unfortunate tournament of choosing for, instead of guiding their followers on how to choose their leaders. Even the Catholic Church that used to be our bastion, exemplar, and parapet of hope owing to its rich traditions on Church-State relations, plus the provision of the Canon law that priests should not take part in partisan politics, had some of her Priests involved in this exercise of unprofessional, uncritical and seemingly embarrassing prescription of our present paralysis. What is evident is that, some church leaders, baffled by the development, came out to speak.

The Catholic Bishop of Aba, out of many other church leaders, for instance, said in a statement: “My attention has severally been called to publications and allegations of partisan engagement by priests and leaders of various groups within Aba Diocese but I carefully elected to study the situation from behind the scenes to understand the motivations of the individuals, priests and lay faithful, involved and what exactly they intend to achieve by dragging the Church and my good self into the murky waters of partisan politics. 

“I find it particularly shocking that the individuals who are actively tarnishing the image of the Church in several parishes and communities in the name of active partisanship claim to be acting with my imprimatur.  They feed unsuspecting faithful in various parishes and groups with lies and had become very much emboldened in the last few weeks, perhaps assuming my silence to mean acquiescence.”

The Bishop then cautioned: “The Church has left its doors open to all participants in the 2023 electioneering season to come sell their programmes to the people of God. We have maintained this informed position since the beginning of the campaigns because the Church cannot as a true Mother embrace one or few of its children and throw the others into the cold. We have welcomed everyone into our fold while allowing the voters the freedom to make the ultimate choice at the polls.”

That was Rev. Prof. A. N. Echema – the Catholic Bishop of Aba Diocese. After reading the statement, a friend said to me, had the Bishop seen what happened in Southern Kaduna, he would had called for a declaration of a State of emergency to checkmate clerical partisanship. But on my own steam, I remarked: “Apart from the fact that I was not happy with the way and manner some of the clerics literally bullied their followers into voting in certain patterns aimed at changing the current leadership and the nest that hatched it, I prophesied that there’s likely going to be a church-going apathy after the elections. I say this because, the positions these clerics took, excluded most of their sons and daughters whose dreams, candidates, party and interests didn’t tally; thereby denying them the warmth of the Church’s motherhood for all. But I thought we had gone beyond the issue of party and are now talking about candidates.

Yes, as Bishop Echema observed: “While admitting that the Church can guide the decision of the voters within its fold at very critical points, it must be emphasised that in making that decision, the Church is essentially concerned with the personal attributes of the leaders and their vision for the society.  Membership of any group or society has never formed the basis of the Church’s approval or disapproval of any political leader.”  

Now that the elections are over and it is an open secret that most Christian clerics in Kaduna state, out of deep angst, pointed to the direction of the PDP’s gubernatorial candidate, Isa Ashiru, who, according to the INEC, lost to Uba Sani of the APC, it is important to re-echo the words of Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah at the funeral of Yakowa to the governor-elect, Uba Sani.

Kukah said to the then deputy governor and Yakowa’s successor, Ramalan Yero: “To our new Governor, Archbishop Ndangoso and I listened to all your beautiful testimony. The world looks up to you never to be tempted by the whispers of the wicked whose devilish and selfish hold on power has held our society down. Do not be tempted to think that the Muslims have taken what the wicked have presented as a prize for only Muslims. You have taken over the steering wheel and must obey and respect all road signs so that we can arrive at the destination that we have set for ourselves. “

“Balancing our dreams together “, Kukah continued, “can make ours one of the greatest States in Nigeria. Let us reverse the divisive, ugly and pernicious past which was constructed by men who had the hearts of apartheid. By pursuing the politics of exclusion, these men and women merely destroyed both the noble Faith of Islam and the North that its founders dreamt of. I want to assure you that there are millions of Yakowas outside the Muslim community, and that the monopoly of power by one section or even one gender or generation denies our people a future. This is what South Africa realized. It is what the Americans have now realized in Obama.”

To my mind, the necessary disobedience by the Christian clergy in especially Southern Kaduna should not be interpreted and seen as a creedal hatred against the identity of the governor-elect since the candidate whose coming they heralded doesn’t share the same Faith with them. It should rather be seen as an angry yearning for a change from an APC that could not only manage our rainbow collection of diversities, but also implemeneted, even on the eve of the elections, some uncritical policies that made some of its governors went to court.

Finally, did the clerics stray? No! It was simply a situational intervention; a necessary clerical disobedience to their code of conduct aimed at saying enough is enough. A contumacy that was entered into out of love. They complain that government didn’t manage diversity well; government implemented uncritical policies; the body language of government has not shown that the defense of human life is the essence of democracy. Therefore, they are ready for a new order even if to be headed by the red goat economist. God is the Giver of Power. May He bless our governor-elect and all our leaders with the wisdom to reunite us. Out of the ashes of despondency, and the cynicism of the vulnerable, shall arise a great nation. May God bless our state and nation.

Damina wrote from Holy Family Catholic Church Gidan Bako and can be reached via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Good governance is the kernel of Nigeria’s development. Effective leadership will address a good number of today’s nettlesome challenges. The vexing problems with education, healthcare, security, unemployment, and electricity can be managed or palliated with responsible leadership. But why are we not giving currency to these crucial and experiential issues in our post-election conversations? Why is the repugnant, the vicious, and the divisive governing the public discourse?

I would hazard a guess as to why. To some, good governance is natively partial; it is selective of candidates based on kinship, religious orientation, or some manufactured puritanism. It must be their candidate as president, or doom and gloom befall the country. So, they constitute themselves into a bulwark of cynicism, scorching conversations and the polity with hate, prejudice, and fear.

This is an unpatriotic and jaundiced disposition to domestic concerns. It is clear that to these ones what matters is not whether the president-elect or the leadership is competent, and sufficiently prepared to fix the country; the grouse is that he does not conform with their bias.

But being patriotic does not mean anyone must like the government or the president, it dictates citizens must commit to the peace and progress of the country regardless of who is president. We must move the conversations away from the crude to the sublime. Nigeria is too important for groundless tropes to be the definers of critical discourses.

We should set the right tone and tenor for the next administration. We should begin to study and review the Renewed Hope manifesto. We are collectively plagued by the same problems; we need food on our table; we need qualitative education for our children; we need security of life and property; we need good healthcare; we need jobs, and we need decent living. These are existential perturbations that should arrest our attention.

We keep going through the same mill every cycle and expect a change. As citizens, we should be more purposive about governance, and less obsessed with thrilling distractions.

I must say Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, even as president-elect, has begun on a pragmatic and winsome trajectory. By seeking reconciliation with those he legitimately, fairly, and squarely defeated in the presidential election, and by re-affirming his commitment to be president for all Nigerians and to run a government of national competence, Asiwaju is endearing himself to Nigerians.

His deportment so far has been statesmanly and nationalistic, confounding the suggestions and assumptions of traducers. I hope he keeps this streak. Good governance will frustrate the expectations of scoffers.

Let us revisit the manifesto. In it, the president-elect delineated his plans for the country. My interest is in a cocktail of prescriptions – federalism/decentralisation of power, national security, economy, power, agriculture, education, healthcare, transportation, and foreign policy. These constitute the critical sectors of government. But I am of the view that the administration, most importantly, will be assessed on how well it manages our diversity, on security and the economy.

The president-elect as started well with words of affirmation, of unity, of communality, which will further help in building national consensus. He should maintain this expansive disposition – as always.

President Muhammadu Buhari recently signed 16 constitution alteration bills into law. Of significance is the bill on financial independence of State Houses of Assembly and State Judiciary and those on the removal of the railway, prison and electricity from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent list.

I believe this offers the Tinubu administration fecundated ground to drive its vision of more balanced democracy. Federalism and Decentralisation of power is a prominent feature of Asiwaju’s manifesto. There is still a lot of room for decentralisation of power in areas of crime prevention, stamp duties, certain forms of taxation, resource allocation – as enumerated in the manifesto. It is expected that the president-elect will work with the national assembly to motor his vision.

On the economy, the president-elect has a fine blueprint and prescription. He says his administration will improve existing industries and sectors; adjust the revenue allocation prescription to give states greater flexibility to foster grassroots economic development; build an economy that produces more of the everyday items – both agricultural and manufactured goods; bring the national infrastructure policy to life and harmonise it with the national industrial policy to ensure optimal development of key sectors; review federal budgetary methodology, curb importation of non-essential goods, reform the tax system, as well as implement a naira-denominated monetary policy.

The president-elect says he will tackle insecurity with technology, confidence-building, citizens’ participation, intelligence-led policing, improvement of salaries and welfare of troops, creation of anti-terrorist battalions, bolstering of manpower, freeing the police from VIP security and guard duties, and again, deployment of technology.

In all, the president-elect’s team will largely account for the success of his plan for Nigeria. The president-elect has stated unambiguously that he will run a government of national competence. This is comforting and reassuring. He must succeed for the sake of Nigeria.

We should go back to the Renewed Hope manifesto, to study and review it. Let us talk governance, not this babel of conspiracies and prejudices. Citizenship comes with responsibility. We are evenly plagued by the same problems, of which good governance can palliate or fix. So, let us talk governance.

May the president-elect succeed.

Carlson and Hastie (1997) believe teachers and students agendas need to overlap and be in support of each other, and the result would be a positive learning environment.

Shosanya Babatunde Oluwaseyi a Prolific writer, Historian, Scholar Researcher, Educationist par excellence and Activist who is very passionate about teaching the profession because of the role played by teachers around the world which can never be overstated

Once upon a time a student's name Giada came to make an enquiries about learning an instrument. I happen to be around at the reception and this gives me opportunity to engage her for some minutes and I said I am a teacher! She looks at me and replied and so what ; l was terrified and comport myself and ask Giada is there any problem for being a teacher ? After several conversations with this little girl l realize her frustration in the context of some selected teachers. Since that they l renounce teaching because is not learning. 21st century student understands a teacher are for teaching why learning is for the student.

21st-century student is very aggressive, fast, knowledge and technological lnclined. So, for us that claim to be a teacher it is pertinent to be in the same space with our student if we want to stay relevant of course this might sound awkward more importantly, it's a reality. As a teacher, you cannot teach the way you were taught some decade ago.

21st-century teacher must pay attention for you to remain relevant and claim you are truly a teacher. Find out new acceptable way to achieve your goals in the classroom and connect with the student. If you want to go far, I advise do not disregard student input and knowledge in the class. As a teacher don't be static endeavor to explore new ways of teaching your subject.

As a teacher dig deep on current trend in education and abreast a new pedagogy and techniques in your teaching. Position yourself in the need of students and teach them how to become a problem solver. 21st century teachers should be resourceful, train and retrain yourself in addition must have growth and open mindset and continuously learning with personal development.

It's not a recent news that there is a paradigm shift in learning and teaching. 21st century teacher must align with the trend if you want to still relevant. New technology continues to emerge, as an educator let's explore and learn to be teachable. As far as I'm concerned l'm looking for more responsibility with new innovations in teaching and fresh ideas. In conclusion, calling myself a teacher might be justified in front of students. In addition As an educator we should realize teaching is not learning, rather learning occured solely of teaching. I've always loved to teach and l do believe educators should be a learner and learning is a life long activity. I advise teachers across the globe to Renounce teaching for learning to foster.