I dedicate this column today to two illustrious Nigerians who have achieved great things and made giant contributions to our society in their different forays. In the order in which our paths crossed, the first is Dr. Aderotimi (Rotimi) Adelola and the second is Professor Babafemi Badejo (BB). My path and Dr. Adelola crossed at the Omegabank (formerly Owena Bank). The Revd. Segun Agbetuyi had been hired to reposition Owena Bank and Dr. Adelola was one of the fine technocrats he recruited to help get the job done. My path and Agbetuyi crossed when the union leaders opposed to his radical restructuring efforts attempted to bribe me into publishing a story that would damage Agbetuyi and his restructuring agenda.

The unionists came to my office with cash stashed in two cartons of beer. After listening to them, I rejected their offer and drove them away with the bribe money. As they amassed their bait; the union leaders had boasted that Agbetuyi would smear himself once their damaging report was published by the high-flying Saturday PUNCH, which I edited together with the daily, The PUNCH. Saturday came, no dice! It was then Agbetuyi realised I had turned down the unionists’ offer. He anxiously wanted to meet me and sent Sola Oloidi, the Bank’s Public Relations guy at the time. 

When I got to the Apapa head office of the bank at the time, Agbetuyi himself was downstairs waiting to receive me. That was how a relationship with the bank and its key managers developed and blossomed for many years. Its PR department became a second home to me after I left the PUNCH - what with the likes of Segun Ilori, Ademola Akinbola, and Ayo Arowojolu holding sway there at one time or the other! I printed the bank’s Omegabank newsletter for a spell of time until Soludo’s bank consolidation dabaru of the banking sector.

From Omegabank, Dr. Adelola went on to accomplish other milestones, one of which was as the longest-serving Secretary to the Ondo State Government under Gov. Olusegun Mimiko (aka Gba-sibe). What you are about to read are excerpts from the “Foreword” to Adelola’s “Working under the Sunshine: Reminiscences on how a State Government in Nigeria created values for the People”. Incidentally, Professor Femi Mimiko who wrote the “Foreward”, is not only the blood brother of Gov. Mimiko, he was also my classmate at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife. Femi read Political Science while I read History/Political Science. I invite you to enjoy the bit of the “Foreword” that space constraint will allow us here.    

“A major lacuna in Political Science, Public Administration, and governance scholarship, which we have so often referenced, is the tendency to undertake analysis of social formations, and the workings of their political economy, only at the macro level, to the exclusion of the nuances presented by the sub-national realm. The immediate implication of this marginalization culture is that the particular is often lost in the treatment of the general. A preponderance of academic inquiry into, as well as the softer levels of discourses of Nigeria, fits within this disturbing mould.

“To be certain, Nigeria’s system, by a combination of the state formation process, the character of the state, organisation of its politics, and the structuring of its economy suffers from the lingering challenge of throwing up responsive governments capable of answering to the yearnings and aspirations of the people – their own ‘revolution of rising expectations,’ as it were.

“The central government in Nigeria, without much regard to the theoretical precepts in federalism, under which the federating units and central government are supposed to be ‘coordinated and independent’, remains the very locus of power, authority, and influence; animating the other levels of government. The truth, which we have to deal with, is that this governance structure detracts from the possibility of throwing up leaders with the vision and technical capacity requisite for transformationalism. It instead has proven itself adept at producing leaders, many of whom are ‘short in capacity, limited in vision, and too compromised, to be the anchor for national unity and development.’

“In specific terms, the nature of the compromises that many a political practitioner must make to access power, heavily concentrated in the central government – under the rubric of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) – are such that constrain the prospects of emergence of leaders ‘of such quality and commitment requisite for a fresh berth for the country.’ Small wonder, the outcomes in mediocre performance, often paraded in the Nigerian leadership landscape since independence in 1960.

“This, however, does not suggest that the ecosystem of governance in Nigeria is completely bereft of flashes of captivating performance at the sub-national levels – local and State. Yet, under the restrictive analytical framework referenced here, the failure of the Nigerian central government is often projected over the entire country, denying observers the opportunity to engage with significant and impressive efforts at transformational leadership at the other levels of governance. The point being made here is that in the wholescale focus on the macro level, and prioritization of the central government in analysis, the dysfunctionality often associated with that level of government in Nigeria is magnified and projected over the entire social formation, without regard to regional specificities.

“For a fuller, truer, and more nuanced sense, it behooves any serious analyst to look beyond the bigger picture and apprehend critical trends at the lower (sub-national) levels, some of which may be significant enough to shape the nature of the analytical narrative, and the conclusion reachable. It is also not impossible to have what constitutes best practices across governance landscapes within a country. Except the details of such possibilities are tracked and interrogated, it becomes difficult to exact the advantages thereto as we keep at the task of reinventing government, to the ends of good governance, conceived by Goran Hyden in his 1992 work on the same subject, as ‘the conscious management of regime structures to enhance the legitimacy of the public realm…’

“This is one of the primary reasons why Adelola’s (book) deserves the attention of scholars and practitioners of development alike. As the title suggests, the book is a dissection of the patterns of governance of a sub-national unit in Nigeria, over eight years, under a civil democratic dispensation. In the words of the author, it is an effort to elucidate ‘the workings of the people-oriented State Government under the transformational leadership of Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, CON, and the first Governor of Ondo State to serve an undisrupted two terms in office.’ “

I agree with Professor Mimiko that Abuja is not Nigeria, just as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu or his government is not all there is about governance in the country. Focus must not only be on the government at the Centre but also on States and Local Governments just as Dr. Adelola has appropriately done in his reminiscences. 

Professor Badejo I met during COVID-19 in company of other egg-heads at the University of Lagos Staff Club where we met to discuss the state of the nation and the way forward. Since then, we have become like family. Thus, his latest success did not come to me as a surprise. Let’s savour it with him as much as space would permit us!

“The Award Committee of the 2025 Africa Annual Events and the University of Texas at Austin have conferred the prestigious Nelson Mandela Distinguished Africanist Award on Professor Babafemi Badejo, a political scientist, lawyer, and diplomat, in recognition of his lifelong dedication to African studies and service to the African people. In a statement, the committee announced that the award “named in honour of the late Nelson Mandela, is a lifetime achievement recognition given to individuals who have demonstrated resilience, courage, and commitment to African liberation, the promotion of freedom and rights for Africans, and outstanding leadership in public service”. Past recipients include renowned scholars and leaders such as Bonny Ibhawoh of McMaster University, Canada (2018), and Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Abuja (2024).”

Advocate for African development and professor of Political Science and International Relations at Chrisland University, Abeokuta, Badejo’s career has been dedicated to shaping African governance, peacebuilding, development, and international relations. His extensive research, publications, and policy engagements have significantly influenced discussions on Africa’s role in global politics, security, and socio-economic advancement. He has also played a practical role in peacebuilding efforts across several African countries during his tenure at the United Nations.

Badejo’s work reflects his strong conviction in celebrating African culture and consciousness. His intellectual contributions span key issues such as corruption, leadership deficits, and the evolving nature of democracy in developing nations. The award coincides with Badejo’s 70th birthday, marking a significant milestone in his career. The recognition, according to the statement, serves as an inspiration for future generations of African scholars and leaders. 

In his acceptance speech, Badejo described the award as both a privilege and solemn responsibility. “To be recognised in the name of Nelson Mandela—an enduring symbol of Ọmọluabi, Ubuntu, courage, resilience, justice, and African dignity—is truly remarkable.”, he said. Addressing Africa’s challenges, Badejo emphasised the continent’s leadership deficit and the external forces that exploit its vast natural resources, pledging, however, “a renewed commitment to research, peace, and governance reform in Nigeria and the continent”

We say congratulations to Dr. Adelola and Professor Badejo and wish them more power to their elbows!

In all functional democracies across the world, from the OECD countries to the continent of Africa, the successes and failures of democratic governance are directly proportional to the readiness of the governments to pursue institutional and governance reforms. These reforms prioritize the public service first as the inevitable complement of democracy (to paraphrase Joseph Schumpeter), and second, as the mechanism for implementing good public policy. Democratic governance, in other words, depends on how optimal and efficient the public service is as the powerhouse of government’s policy commitment to its citizens. This is the reason why the difference between a prosperous democracy and a failing one is the commitment to institutional reforms.

However, complementing democracy is a task that would not come automatically. The political and bureaucratic leadership must make a conscious effort to make reform an enabling framework that achieve the capability readiness of the public service. It is only within this context that we can start talking of a democratic order that is founded on the responsiveness of the public service to the aspirations of the citizenry. The struggle to initiate reform designs and blueprints, and follow through with their implementation does not often come easy as the trajectories of reforms in Africa often reveal. 

But we only need to look at comparative efforts across the world to see why the capability readiness of the public service is key especially in a developing country like Nigeria. The experience of Japan after the disastrous bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War is a significant example of how a country could leverage policy and institutional reform to get back on its feet. The establishment and efficiency of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and its operational philosophy mirrors the significance of the governance policies that brought the Asian Tigers into reckoning. Apart from a strict governance regulation, including protectionism, that influenced the market in specific regulatory manner; as well as the deployment of sociocultural principle, like the Keiretsu principle that organized the private sector into a cooperative economic structure, the public service was also organized around the idea of technocratic and meritocratic “embedded autonomy” which implies that the bureaucracy was insulated from political exigencies and eternal pressures. Now, the governance resolve of post-war Japan and the Asian Tigers has become a governance and reform lesson no country can ignore.      

The inauguration of any democratic government is always interesting. Electioneering campaigns regal the citizens with promises of good policies. This comes from the recognition that governance and institutional reforms form the bedrock of development planning that articulate government programs, especially for effective and efficient service delivery to the people. Once electioneering is done with, the move from election victory to governance articulation is meant to concretize clear development performance and outcomes that bear significant impact on the lives of the generality of people. What is rather interesting, from a Nigerian perspective, at least, is the heightened attention that public service institutional reforms received in the early years of a government’s administration which all too gradually get sidelined in a way that undermine the progressive transformation of the public service into a formidable complement of democratic governance. 

Inevitably, government is then constrained into an arbitrary engagement with governance and administrative matters and problems that leads to setting up ad hoc committees and task force structures which elevate the already burdensome cost of governance problem. This is further aggravated by the penchant for administrative discontinuity that insists, quite illogically, that a government must reinvent the reform wheel rather than deepening and consolidating the reform agenda of the previous administration, or at best incorporating some of its elements into a new framework. The reformer in me worries about the danger that reform complacence or the trade-off of solid reform measures for short-term political gains poses for Nigeria’s transformation trajectory.

The administrative history of institutional reforms in Nigeria is laced with cogent examples of what I am saying. Let us start with the Gowon administration and the Udoji Commission report of 1974. It was the keen awareness of the significance of the public service in the context of enhanced, expanded and deepened role of the state, and what it could contribute to the development planning and management in Nigeria needed as a post-independent country, that led the constitution of the Commission to recommend a way to get the public service capability ready for the objective of national development. And yet, the administration turned deaf ears to the fundamental implications that the recommendations of the creative managerial disruption of the system the Udoji Commission proposed. Those recommendations were meant to take the Weberian “I-am-directed” public service beyond its post-golden age era into the future that demands some critical reforms to withstand modern administrative and national exigencies of a newly independent country. At a critical moment when political will was required to take the recommendation beyond the pages of the report, the government faltered.   

The government’s political will was not lacking in the need to implement the Dotun Phillips report of 1988, initiated by the Buhari administration and carried through by the Babangida administration. The study group was given the objective of a professionalized civil service circumscribed by a managerial philosophy into the institutional context of presidentialism. However, there was an underlying conception-reality gap that disrupted the significance of the report and its recommendation, and this was further aggravated by the inflexibility of the administration’s endorsement of Decree 43 as a legal instrument for the implementation of the recommendations. When some aspects like the politicization of the office of the permanent secretary who ceased being accounting officer and whose tenure was coterminous with that of Ministers therefore failed in the face of reality, and in a governance context of command and control, the system chose to throw away the baby with the bathwater rather than getting back to the drawing board and initiating amendment to the legal instrument as part of a learning journey. 

Unfortunately, the succeeding reform commission—the Ayida Panel—got the marching order to simply reverse the trajectory that was already leading away from the traditional model for doing government business to a managerial reform blueprint. This was a foolhardy attempt at rescuing the form of the golden era of public administration of the 1960s and 1970s without the full benefits of the new managerial revolution that demands professionalism and performance management. By the time we arrived at the Obasanjo administration, and the commencement of the democratic experiment in 1999, Nigeria has sufficiently learnt some administrative and reform lessons that led to the inauguration of the National Strategy for Public Service Reform (NSPSR), the most comprehensive reform blueprint ever in Nigeria’s reform history. The approval and opportunity for the civil servants to reform the system led to the establishment of the Bureau of Public Service Reform as the lead agency and engine room for continuous learning, change management and the incremental institutional improvement of the public service. Implementing the NSPSR raised lots of fundamental issues, like whether or not the civil service can reform itself; whether or not to policy choices should be made based on selectivity or comprehensiveness, and the issue of getting the basics and details of institutional reform right so as to be able to manage the sequencing of the reform around building new systems and models on the restructured Weberian bureaucracy. 

In a 2005 study of the administrative trajectories of twenty-nine African countries, Ladipo Adamolekun introduced a useful typology for reckoning with the administrative progress of African states. He characterized the 29 African states into four different categories: the advanced, committed, hesitant and beginning reformers. Nigeria fell into the ‘hesitant’ reforming African state. Unlike the committed and advanced reforming states, the hesitant reformers, like Nigeria, manifest the symptoms of not always seeing through reform designs, innovation and ideas, just like we saw with the Udoji reform. To be hesitant is to be enthusiastic about reform ideas, commit to seeing them through, but stopping short of implementing the key reform innovation in ways that impact the efficient service delivery capability of the public service. 

The perfect example that articulates Nigeria’s reform hesitancy is the failure of successive Nigerian governments to deal with the cost of governance issues that has been limiting Nigeria’s institutional coordination and functional capacity. Nigeria operates one of the most expensive governance systems in the world. This derives from the multiplication of structural and institutional processes and dynamics that not only burden budgetary allocations through the large chunk of money spent on recurrent expenditure, but also undermine functional efficiency due to wastage and redundancies. This phenomenon was consequent on the breakdown of the internal establishment control mechanism built around the control tool of organization and method (O&M) and the treasury control of establishment that regulates the capital and recurrent ratio of the budget. The core elements of this controls were the manpower forecasting and planning system of identifying, planning and acting upon human resource requirements and problems related to the conceptualization of the role of the state in the running of the national economy, as well as the trend analysis of service’s growth in size and expansion of the scope of responsibilities. 

The Oronsaye Report—or, the Presidential Committee on the Rationalization and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions, and Agencies—was meant to first articulate a rationalization framework that reduces all parallel, ad hoc and redundant structures; and second, achieve governance accountability that will instigate more efficiency in the conduct of government business. The overall objective was to get the MDAs to achieve more with less. The Committee was guided by five fundamental principles: (a) the economic challenges and the need for Government to make more efficient use of its resources to achieve its development objectives and goals; (b) the fact that Nigeria had undertaken reforms in the past; (c) it was imperative to reform to meet the challenges of a better socio-political and economic society; (d) there was no need to create another body to perform the functions of an already existing statutory entity. The fact that an institution was inefficient and ineffective should not warrant the creation of a new one; and (e) the reform would ensure efficient and effective management of Government structures and functionaries to guarantee better service delivery and good governance. 

And yet, given the fundamental significance of the Report of the Committee, no government from the Jonathan administration to date has been unlock the binding constraints nor muster the audacity to fully implement the recommendations of the Committee. Several reasons can be adduced for this. The first is that the long-term demands of reforms are counteracted by the short-term tenures of many administrations. Second, since there is no making an omelet without breaking eggs, reform implementation requires offending vested interests that would be affected by the hard-political decision these reforms require. Third, reforms possess deep and expensive psychological implication due to the trauma that would attend, for instance, the rationalization and consequent rightsizing of the MDAs will demand in terms of specific downsizing and severance compensations. 

However, since institutional reforms are inevitable, it becomes imperative that the Tinubu government has to facilitate specific systemic and structural changes in order to get the basic rights. These include the following: (i) elimination of the dysfunctional non-value adding processes including silos operations which create red tapes and operational bottlenecks; (ii) the efficient activation of the performance bond that MDAs signed with the President as the means of instituting the performance management system; (iii) strengthening of MDAs’ programme and project management capabilities; (iv) the recalibration of research and policy analysis functions of MDAs through the re-professionalization of their Department of Planning, Research and Statistics (DPRS); (v) the identification of core skills requirements of the MDAs that touch on the implementation of the Renewed Hope Agenda, and their sourcing and deployment through retraining, fresh recruitment, contract appointment, staff exchange, sabbatical, donor technical assistance, etc.; (vi) strengthening the merit system through more rigorous entry-level assessment and induction system to mitigate the extent to which the service inherits low-quality education and deficits from the tertiary institutions; (vii) reprofiling of public service institutional capacity to better optimize the potentials of PPPs to boost service delivery; and (viii) the imperative of launching a national waste reduction strategy that involves (a) the unbundling of the expenditure structure of government; (b) productivity audit of the MDAs, (c) getting MDAs to articulate their productivity and waste reduction plans based on agreed national benchmark, (d) launching of the productivity metrics and tools for holding MDAs accountable to national productivity targets, and (e) launching of the new national assets and facility management and national maintenance system.

However, and preparatory to institutionalizing the above, it is logical and expedient that the Tinubu administration establish the Program Management Office (PMO) in the short term to act as the MDAs’ institutional life support model. This becomes functional, for instance, in generating project management ideas which can then be mainstreamed to activate performance-managed operations in the MDAs. This will serve to reinforce the MDAs with required skills and competency upgrade needed to deliver high performance that urgently backstops the Renewed Hope Agenda. This involves, among other things, a backend review of the capability readiness of the MDAs (or at least carefully selected ones based on criteria that are aligned with the eight national policy objectives and priorities of the federal government). There is also, following on this, the need to activate the performance management system components of the Federal Civil Service Implementation Strategy. This demand that the federal government institutionally insist, through the support of key players provided by a consortium of experts and firms, that the MDA deliver on the performance bonds signed with the government.  

The Tinubu administration has what it takes, in terms of extant reform blueprints and designs, professional expertise and technocratic know-how, and the political will to break the jinx that has bedeviled other administrations in terms of passing on reform ideas that could have turned the tide of efficient service delivery to Nigerians. All that is required is taking the first step, say, by going full throttle with the implementation of the Oronsaye Report, and dealing a final blow to the cost ofd governance problem in Nigeria’s governance framework. 

Since the rift between Nyesom Wike, the former Rivers State governor, and Siminalayi Fubara, his successor, blew open in October 2023, I have written four articles on the saga in this column. The last piece before this was titled “Wike-Fubara high-stakes feud: Blame Tinubu if Rivers implodes” (BusinessDay, May 27, 2024).

That intervention was prescient, as, indeed, Rivers State has now imploded politically. Recently, on March 18, Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s trigger-happy president, declared a state of emergency in Rivers, sacking its governor, deputy governor and members of the House of Assembly. In parallel, Tinubu appointed a retired vice admiral and former Chief of Naval Staff, Ibok-Ete Ibas, as the state’s Sole Administrator.

In a democracy, that’s a political cataclysm of great proportions. But, as I said in my May 2024 article, the blame rests squarely with Tinubu. For self-serving political calculations, Tinubu took sides in the conflict and empowered one party against the other, thereby fuelling the crisis and enabling it to fester and snowball into an apocalypse. Thus, for me, the state of emergency must be viewed not only through its constitutionality, but also its political context. So, before we come to the constitution, let’s start with the political.

At the heart of the Rivers State saga are, politically, three evils: they are: godfatherism, political corruption and abuse of powers. On the first, it’s no secret that Wike handpicked Fubara as his successor. But as is often the case between political godfathers and godchildren, the relationship went sour. Wike wanted to entrench himself as the ultimate godfather of Rivers’ politics and turn Fubara into his poodle, but Fubara was determined not to be Wike’s lapdog. That “insolence” drew Wike’s ire and triggered his deep animus towards Fubara. As Wike himself said in October 2023, he was fighting for his political life. Hear him: “All of us want to be politically relevant; all of us want to maintain our political structure. Everybody has a base. If you take my base, am I not politically irrelevant?”

Of course, Nigeria’s quintessential political godfather is Tinubu. Although he left office as Lagos State governor in 2007, he handpicked all his successors, who became his serfs. Mutual belief in godfatherism makes Tinubu and Wike kindred spirits. Thus, instead of supporting the elected governor of Rivers State, Tinubu sided with Wike against Fubara, expecting him to submit to his “godfather”. But Tinubu’s bias wasn’t just about shared values. He was more motivated by self-interest. Tinubu needed to reward Wike for controversially helping him to secure the crucial 25 per cent in Rivers State in the 2023 presidential election. But, more importantly, he wants to capture Rivers State and much of the South-South in the 2027 presidential race. Hence, he made Wike the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, and steamrollered through Godswill Akpabio as Senate President.

Q: “At the heart of the Rivers State saga are, politically, three evils: they are: godfatherism, political corruption and abuse of powers.”

But, as I wrote in a column titled “Wike is not a fit and proper person to be FCT Minister” (BusinessDay, November 20, 2023), being the FCT Minister, the equivalent of a state governor, made Wike extremely powerful and emboldened him to leverage the office to control the politics of Rivers State. Truth is, Wike is irrelevant without political office; it is what gives him oxygen. To quote him again: “If you take my base, am I not politically irrelevant?” But it’s being the “Emperor of Abuja”, and backed with federal might, that enables Wike to wield political and financial patronage powers, which he uses to fuel his “base”, remain “politically relevant” and foment trouble in his state. Yet, Tinubu’s self-serving relationship with Wike prevented him from being even-handed; instead, he strengthened Wike politically and weakened Fubara. Even now, Tinubu sacks Fubara, a democratically elected governor, but keeps Wike, the agent provocateur, in office as a crony minister. It is utterly perverse, an abuse of political powers.

But there’s also the abuse of judicial powers. The Supreme Court validated the membership of the 27 members of the Rivers State House, who, as recorded in the House’s Hansard, unlawfully defected to another party and should have, under section 109 of the Constitution, forfeited their seats. But once their seats were validated, the 27 lawmakers, Wike’s loyalists, triggered the governor’s impeachment. The judiciary is certainly complicit in the crisis.

Which brings us to the constitutionality of the state of emergency. Of course, section 305 of the Constitution empowers the president to declare a state of emergency under some grave circumstances. But the state of emergency that Tinubu declared is flawed substantively, procedurally and morally. In terms of substance, there is nowhere under section 305 that gives any president the power to declare a state of emergency and then sack a democratically elected state governor and other elected state representatives.

In 2004, when President Obasanjo used a state of emergence to sack the then governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, Chief Rotimi Williams, who chaired the Constitution Drafting Committee that drafted the 1979 Constitution, which the 1999 Constitution mimicked, said: “There is no provision contained in any part of our Constitution which confers such a power on the President.” In constitutional interpretation, judges are guided by the original intent of the drafters. So, while would anyone ignore the views of Chief Williams, whose committee drafted the 1979 Constitution? Those views were shared by Mohammed Adoke, the Attorney-General of the Federation under President Jonathan’s administration, who advised Jonathan not to sack the governors of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe after declaring a state of emergency in those states in 2013. According to Adoke, “the removal of a Governor is nowhere provided for in the mechanism for implementing a State of Emergency.”

But faced with the Obasanjo model and the Jonathan model, Tinubu and his Attorney-General, Lateef Fagbemi, opted for Obasanjo’s authoritarian approach, ignoring the views of constitutional drafters, lawyers and scholars. Ideally, the Supreme Court should clarify the matter. Unfortunately, there’s no judicial independence in Nigeria. With the Supreme Court seemingly in cahoots with the presidency and given its penchant for perverse rulings, few trust the apex court to be an impartial arbiter.

Which brings us to the constitutional process. Section 305 (6)(b) of the Constitution provides that a state of emergency must be approved by “two-thirds of all the members of each House of the National Assembly”. That’s a high threshold, meaning two-thirds of 109 senators (i.e., 72) and two-thirds of 360 members of the House of Representatives (i.e. 240). Now, how can any parliament determine those numbers by a voice vote? Yet, that’s what Nigeria’s supine and rubberstamp National Assembly did! The President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Afam Osigwe, said the so-called “ratification” was “unconstitutional”. Truth is, both substantively and procedurally, the state of emergency is illegal and unconstitutional.

Yet, there’s also morality. Tinubu strongly condemned Obasanjo’s state of emergency proclamations in 2004 and 2006, which, respectively, removed the governors of Plateau and Ekiti States. He brutally attacked President Jonathan’s state of emergency in the terrorism-ravaged states of Bornu, Adamawa and Yobe in 2013 even though their governors were not removed. But now, Tinubu defends his power-grabbing state of emergency by saying: “I have a country to run.” Really? Well, leaving aside Tinubu’s customary hypocrisy, he’s acting as a tyrant, an autocrat. That puts Nigeria’s social cohesion and democracy in danger!

I bring you greetings today from our customer service space in this column. This is an area of the field we are not only passionate about, but we also offer speed conversations, corrections and training, where necessary.

These gum-chewing receptionists in hospitality spaces who forget what their job descriptions are get my goat all the time.

Although I have written copiously about this from different angles, it’s never enough. I travel a lot across the world, and some of the worst customer service faux pas occur in Nigeria. And I love my country dearly, but we must understand that customer service failures are directly related to poor relationships and poor footfalls in a business, especially in the hospitality business. Why should I come back to your hotel if your staff were crappy, rude, uninterested and unprofessional?

So I arrive at Nigeria’s commercial city, Lagos, for a meeting, and I check into one of my favourite hospitality places. And by the way, it’s a highly elevated space, not well known but very well apportioned with beautiful, breathtaking grounds. I had not been there in a while, but the ambience was as beautiful as I have always remembered it.

But something had shifted, just a little bit, and it had to do with attitude and service. Upon my return to my room later in the day, tired from my many meetings, I found that my toilet was not flushing (pardon my French). The first person I complained to had the audacity to ask me if I had touched something or if, in fact, I understood how the flushing button worked. I asked him if they had some technology-orientated flushing button that prevented my daft head from comprehending flushing toilets. Of all the things in the world, you are trying to project your toilet-flushing conundrum to your guest. My fault; I can’t flush the toilet. Yup, this cannot be housekeeping’s fault or even the hotel’s fault for pretending that my room, which I want to believe was double-checked before it was allocated to me, was fine.

Customer service rules include but are not limited to clearing up the bad customer experience and replacing it with a good one so you forget the bad experience while working on a make-good proposition, but more importantly, communicating properly. Who trains front office staff in communication and public speaking? Who teaches housekeeping and waiters how to manage an angry and hurt guest? How do hotel staff manage crises?

This comment about whether or not I know what a toilet flushing entails could never rear its head if the staff knew what to say.

In fairness, they tried to move me to another room, but I was too tired.

The following morning after I left for my business of the day, the technicians, etc., fixed it. But I knew that I had been checked into a dodgy room when, by evening, my convenience space was flooded. Yeah! You did not guess. It’s a plumbing fault. A fault they knew about all along but tried their luck with the wrong person. So my room had workers going in and out, much to my discomfort, most of the day.

The entire enchilada impacts your entire business and determines whether you have return customers. These are the crème de la crème of the hospitality industry. Guests who can swear by your soft feather pillows, the pleasantness of your staff, polite staff and the absolutely decadent food at your restaurant. When I say pleasant staff, I do not mean the ones who are trying too hard; they simply irritate you. Those who want to carry you and your luggage, who greet you five times and who ask if you are enjoying the meal before you have started eating. These are a complete put-off. I wonder who taught them to drive you insane. Subtlety is the name of the game. Not six waiters hovering around you when all you want to do is eat in peace. Out here, the attention is often more about your tip than caring about you, which is so sad!

Back to meals, at one restaurant where I had gone for breakfast, I requested cold milk, qualified with “very”. The young waiter proceeded to give me lukewarm milk. So I asked her, Did you not hear me? ” She goes, “Sorry, let me go and get you cold milk.” Some other waiter was to deliver something in my room for 1pm. At 2:30pm, I had to go and remind her. “Sorry, Ma, I wanted it to be chilled, so I put it in the fridge.”

She had told me at 1pm, then she failed miserably. Could you not have called me to intimate me? “Sorry, Ma.” I don’t know if sorry cleans up this customer service mess. Something needs to be done. It adds to the minus of Nigeria’s image.

I rest!