OTHERS' VIEWS
![[OPINION] Ending Congo’s Forever War - Adekeye Adebajo](/media/k2/items/cache/cf4af012dfa243cb6d7677a645f59e48_L.jpg)
The seemingly intractable conflict in Africa’s volatile Great Lakes region, sparked by the Rwandan genocide 30 years ago, is raging anew, as local and foreign-backed forces plunder the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s vast mineral deposits. Resolving the crisis will require close coordination among regional and external actors.
LAGOS – Violence is once again surging in Africa’s volatile Great Lakes region. This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide that left 800,000 people dead and another two million displaced. These refugees fled into the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which became the epicenter of an increasingly intractable conflict – what some now call Africa’s Thirty Years’ War.
Since the ouster of the kleptocratic dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, successive DRC governments have been unable to secure the country’s borders and govern large areas in its east, where about six million people have been killed and another seven million internally displaced. The lawlessness of this vast territory has enabled local and foreign-backed forces’ systemic looting – especially in recent years – of the DRC’s large deposits of cobalt, coltan, copper, gold, diamonds, and other minerals.
African regional bodies, external powers, and the United Nations – which has deployed peacekeeping missions in the DRC for 25 years – have failed to curb the violence. To prevent an escalation, and ultimately end the conflict, the DRC’s domestic, regional, and international interlocutors must understand the complex dynamics at work.
At the heart of the current crisis are severe tensions between the DRC and Rwanda, whose autocratic president, Paul Kagame, is expected to extend his almost quarter-century rule in July’s election. Kagame has accused the DRC government of supporting genocidal Hutu militias, seeking to expel Congolese Tutsis, and refusing to negotiate an end to the fighting. The DRC, meanwhile, has rejected talks with the March 23 Movement (M23), a Rwanda-backed rebel group in eastern Congo, and called on Kagame to withdraw Rwandan troops from the DRC and demobilize the M23.
Neighboring Uganda and Burundi have played a more ambiguous role in the conflict. Both are accused (as is Rwanda) of smuggling gold and other resources out of the DRC. But, despite its uneasy truce with Rwanda, the Ugandan government has launched a joint operation with the DRC against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic extremist group operating in both countries. Burundi has accused Rwanda of supporting Burundian rebels in eastern Congo and recently sent troops to the region under a bilateral agreement with the DRC government.
Exacerbating the dire situation in the mineral-rich eastern provinces of Kivu and Ituri are the widespread human-rights abuses committed by the Congolese army and some Mai-Mai (local self-defense forces) vigilantes. And this is to say nothing of the more than 100 militias that operate in the region. Last year alone, these armed groups displaced one million people. In February, violent clashes broke out as the M23 surrounded the large city of Goma, North Kivu’s capital. The ADF and the Coopérative pour le développement du Congo (CODECO) have reportedly killed hundreds and committed acts of sexual violence.
Peacemaking efforts in the Great Lakes are equally complicated. In 2022, Félix Tshisekedi, the erratic Congolese president, brought in peacekeepers from the East African Community (Burundi, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda), of which it is also a member, before criticizing their unwillingness to fight the M23 and engineering their departure. Then, last December, Tshisekedi invited in a Southern African Development Community (SADC) mission – comprising 2,900 troops from Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania – despite vociferous opposition from Rwanda. But the SADC peacekeepers are unlikely to engage in a full-scale war with Rwanda and the M23, which is what Tshisekedi ultimately wants. Moreover, the recent deaths of two South African soldiers in the DRC has caused alarm among South African policymakers.
Worryingly, the UN peacekeeping mission is set to withdraw from the DRC, at the request of the Congolese government, by the end of 2024. The three African members currently on the UN Security Council – Algeria, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone – are working closely with Guyana to ensure continued financial and logistical support for the SADC mission, while cautioning the UN against leaving a “security vacuum” in the DRC.
Foreign governments are also active in the Great Lakes region. The United States, which was instrumental in halting the M23’s march toward Goma in 2013 by withholding aid from Rwanda, has recently sought to mediate between the DRC and Rwanda. It has also taken a tougher stance toward Rwanda in recent years, suspending military assistance, urging the country to withdraw troops and surface-to-air missiles from the DRC, and condemning its support for the M23. Equally important, the US has questioned Rwanda’s contributions to UN peacekeeping efforts in the Central African Republic and South Sudan, which Rwanda often uses to deflect pressure from its actions in the DRC.
Self-interest has motivated most other foreign powers. Despite partly echoing America’s criticisms, France has increased its financial support for Rwanda, which has deployed 2,500 troops to Mozambique to protect a gas-processing plant owned by French oil giant TotalEnergies from local insurgents. In February, the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding with Rwanda for the exploitation of critical minerals (despite its plundering of the DRC’s resources), incurring the wrath of Congolese officials. China, with which the EU is competing for raw materials, has invested heavily in the DRC’s cobalt sector.
Resolving the Great Lakes crisis will require coordination among regional and external actors. Western countries must condition aid to Rwanda on its withdrawal of troops from the eastern DRC and its ending support for the M23. Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi should also face severe consequences for the looting and illicit trafficking of the DRC’s minerals. Lastly, Rwanda’s role in UN peacekeeping missions must be scaled down substantially.
Domestically, the DRC must tackle widespread corruption, improve democratic governance, and rein in genocidal forces and Western mercenaries. And the African Union should bridge the gaps in peacemaking efforts, including by bolstering the SADC mission so that it can work more closely with UN peacekeepers. But most importantly, the UN must avoid a hasty, ill-planned withdrawal from what Secretary-General António Guterres has rightly described as “a protracted and largely neglected humanitarian crisis.”
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![[OPINION] Price war in our skies - Etim Etim](/media/k2/items/cache/32c8ac063eefcb9cf42bc43773ec0e57_L.jpg)
A price war has broken out in a submarket of the nation’s aviation sector, and the passengers are the major beneficiaries. But in the long term, this may hurt the airlines and put the fliers in a bind. A price war or price competition occurs when businesses in a particular industry compete against each other by repeatedly lowering their prices in an attempt to gain market share and drive out competitors. Since Nigeria’s carrier, Air Peace Airlines, launched its Lagos-London route over two weeks ago with a drastic slash in airfare, its main competitors on the route, BA and Virgin Atlantic, have announced reduction in ticket prices to levels not seen before. From N15 million for a first -class seat and N5 million in an economy, the two British carriers are now charging over 80 per cent lower in response to Air Peace’s introductory offer of just N5 million for first-class and N1.5 million for economy.
For a six-hour flight, this was the most outrageous pricing in the industry. Other carriers like South African Airlines, Morocco Air, Ethiopian and Turkish Air who do not fly direct from Lagos to London have equally reduced their fares. There has never been such a fierce price war in the nation’s aviation business before. Allen Onyeama, Chairman of Air Peace, said in a TV interview last week that the foreign carriers are engaging in price war to drive his airline out of business so as to return to their cut-throat pricing. He appealed to Nigerians to fly Air Peace, not just out of nationalistic considerations, but also for their strategic self-interest. Price competition is rampant in many industries. Notable examples of recent price wars include the 1992 airline price war in the US during which American Airlines, NorthWest Airlines and other US carriers matched and exceeded the reduced prices of one another, resulting in increased sales volume but huge losses. There was also the 2020 Russia-Saudi Arabia oil price war which led to a 65% quarterly fall in the price of oil.
Price wars could hurt the competing businesses as revenues and profits dip; and in some cases, weaker competitors who cannot cope may go out of business by the time prices eventually stabilize at lower level. But in this case, if Air Peace is forced out of the London route, the international carriers, which apparently have the tacit support of their home governments, will jack up the fares again, and Nigerians would be the ultimate losers. This is why we must stand by the Nigerian flag carrier. Companies that typically win price wars are those with better cost structures and widest profit margins. Among the three – BA, Virgin and Air Peace – the British carriers have deeper pockets and can cope better with the raging price war. This war will last for the remaining part of the year, but I suspect that the British authorities will employ other tactics to frustrate the Nigerian flag carrier and weaken its resolve and resilience. The British carriers may also continue in the fight by lowering the quality of inflight services just to cut costs.
By entering the market with impressively high standards, Air Peace has captured a good size of the market. Its mostly Nigerian passengers are clearly enthusiastic about its offerings, and from all indications, the Nigerian carrier is currently enjoying overwhelming home support from both the public and the government. But it is not enough for the airline to rely on emotional nationalism alone. The airline should create loyalty programs to keep its customers. Many passengers have also accused Air Peace of price gouging and price discrimination in its domestic routes, especially during the peak seasons of Christmas and Easter holidays. The airline has a responsibility to be fair to its domestic passengers too.
On a final note, competent management and good corporate governance are important for the success and sustainability of any business. Many family-owned Nigerian businesses have failed to thrive once the founder is no more. For how long will Air Peace remain as a one-man business? With the rapid expansion and growth of the airline, Onyeama may consider bringing it to the capital market to open up the business for wider ownership, more diverse management, good governance and market discipline. He should also fortify the airline’s communication portfolio with competent professionals so that he will appear less and less on TV, and cede that responsibility to others.
![[OPINION] Abeg, where is ‘White Lion’? - Tunde Olusunle](/media/k2/items/cache/b6011a4fa8b93de2fa20671c598e012a_M.jpg)
There’s always the tendency to ascribe our failings and flailings in our developmental and democratic growth as a nation, to our amoeboid leadership recruitment process. I differ slightly though from this perspective. I contend that prospective leaders must first be identified and groomed before they can be deployed to the various sectors we expect them to function. Tunji Olaopa’s 2022 essay titled “Nigerian Civil Service and the Trajectory of Public Administration” illuminates the evolution of Nigeria’s civil service which was inaugurated in 1954. He alludes in the paper to “a very strong and professional civil service regarded as perhaps the strongest of the colonial legacies bequeathed to Africa”.
Olaopa speaks to the “quality of the officers who founded the civil service and the institutional quality of the public service itself.” He lists Nigeria’s “civil service pioneers” to include: Simeon Adebo, Jerome Udoji, Samuel Manuwa, Ahmed Talib, Abubakar Koko, Sule Katagum, Joseph Imoukhuede, Ojimiri Johnson and Fola Ejiwunmi. This generation of public servants Olaopa notes is what we now describe as the “golden age of the public service in Nigeria.”
The second generation of public administrators and civil servants who grazed the limelight between the 1960s to the early 1970s are those popularly described as “super permanent secretaries.” This is the generation of Allison Ayida, Sunday Awoniyi, Liman Ciroma, Philip Asiodu, Abdul Aziz Atta, Festus Adesanoye, Olu Falae, Solomon Akenzua, Francesca Emmanuel, Ahmed Joda, Gilbert Obiajulu Chikelu, Gray Longe, M.A. Ejueyitchie, among others. Olaopa reminds us that the actual core of this generation who were festooned with the broche of “super permanent secretaries” were so described because they were called up at a period of grave national emergency. It was during the Nigerian civil war and they were requested to avail the country of their “administrative acumen, competencies and wisdom,” to steer Nigeria through the war and stabilise the polity thereafter.
Olaopa observes that beginning from the 1975 civil service purge by the Murtala Mohammed/Olusegun Obasanjo government and onwards to the era of the Ibrahim Babangida Structural Adjustment Programme, (SAP), a de-institutionalisation process had begun. The concomitant value-orientation of the inherited civil service had been damagingly eroded. He laments that his generation of permanent secretaries came at an age when, according to him, the service “was already deeply embroiled in the dynamics of the bureau pathology that had debilitated the civil service”. He laments that his generation of public servants was mentored by the icons of decades past who connected them to the ideals of the golden age “in terms of their passion, professionalism and knowledge-propelled zeal for service.” Such was the archetypal stuff the pioneering Nigerian civil service was made of.
I needed to lay this background to underscore the rigour, the exertion, the perspiration which typified the discovery and grooming of those who operated the levers of public administration in decades past. They were an integral part of the conceptualisation of government policies and also contributed largely to their actualisation. I should equally remind us that the famous, now ancient, “fattening rooms” of the Kalabari, Efik and Ibibio in south-south Nigeria admitted women in their puberty and prepared them for womanhood. Among others, they are grilled on marital etiquette, their culinary capacities improved upon even as they were tutored in acceptable social customs and comportment. They were usually admitted to facilities away from their families and could be so boarded for various lengths of time, the minimum being for one month.
Reports in recent weeks and months have alluded to the disappearance of Yahaya Bello, the immediate past governor of Kogi state from the prying lenses of the public and press. The initial rumour was that he had made himself a permanent guest of Lugard House, Lokoja, the government house of the intriguing state capital which sits at the confluence of Nigeria’s two largest rivers, the Niger and the Benue. Not satisfied with the eight full years of his despotic, even demonic over-lordship in Kogi state, he has chosen to encamp permanently within the same facility on an extended post-disengagement vacation. Elsewhere in the media, it has been suggested that Bello is now a permanent member of his successor, Usman Ododo’s convoy on all his travels. Ododo is his official shield from investigators on his trail.
After hectic, sweaty public service immersion over long spells, the tradition has been for public officers to embark on extended holidays and rest. Willie Obiano, the immediate past governor of Anambra state, left for the United States on extended rest, immediately after he handed over to his successor Chukwuma Soludo in March 2022. Babatunde Fashola was chief of staff in Lagos state; governor of the state for eight years and minister under the Muhammadu Buhari regime for eight years. He served notice during his valedictory conversations that he wanted to return to be “president” of his home, after being a virtual absentee for 20 years! The practice of former governors pursuing “residency programmes” in the very same addresses where they operated for years, is novel.
As governor of Kogi state, Bello hailed and serenaded himself, by himself with his oriki whenever he had a microphone. He introduced himself with flourish as “His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello, CON, the Executive Governor of Kogi State”. Humility, civility and restraint had no place in his thesaurus. He beaded himself with the moniker of “white lion” and rechristened Government House, Lokoja the “lion’s den”. Yahaya Bello apologists and boot-lickers defaced the public space with billboards celebrating their idol, throwing him in the face of a populace so mercilessly trampled upon by him. He never left people in doubt about his limitless powers as a governor cum demigod who could do whatever he wanted and get away with it.
Bello cast a permanent pall on the people of Kogi state. Mentions of his name were in cover-mouthed whispers. Remember the depiction of the former Ugandan carnivore, Idi Amin Dada, in the film titled The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin. The character, Maliya Mungu was his undisguised hitman. Bello reportedly recruited spies in various WhatsApp groups who reported the direction of discourse to him and fed him with the names of his critics. He mutilated the payrolls of hapless civil servants and paid them preposterous percentages. Workers and pensioners dropped dead like flies during his reign, unable to cater for the basic needs of their families. By its very characteristic, the economy of Kogi state is fuelled by the civil service. Staccato remittances of workers’ salaries were therefore going to affect the burgeoning business community in the state.
Elections were weaponised in the vilest of fashions. Bello’s goons were condemned to win every and any election “by force, by fire.” There were mortal consequences for failure. His aides moved around on election days with platoons of vagrants and policemen, scaring voters with gunshots, seizing ballot boxes and rewriting poll results. For dissenting with poll riggers in her unit, hapless woman politician, Salome Abuh was on November 18, 2019, burnt to death in her home in Ochadamu. Bello’s men reportedly dug trenches around Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s community, Ihima, all in a bid to disenfranchise her during the February 2023 senatorial election which she contested. Yahaya Bello indeed corroborated the action saying he was helping to build a security hedge around her during the election.
Yahaya Bello is the first governor I ever heard about, who launched a post-disengagement media and public relations salvage project. Some officials and members of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE), about a month ago honoured an invitation to visit Kogi state to tour some of Bello’s so-called legacies. Curiously, for all the time the team led by the president of the NGE, Eze Anaba, spent in the state, the most senior state official they encountered was the Kogi state information commissioner. They could neither meet Bello at whose instance they visited nor his successor, Usman Ododo. I sent private notes to some of our colleagues who went on the needless voyage asking them a few questions: Apart from being herded through so-called Yahaya Bello’s achievements, did you go to the streets to find out the last time civil servants and pensioners were paid their monthly entitlements 100%? Did you check about the last time workers were promoted after writing promotion exams? Did you find out how many permanent secretaries own official vehicles? Did you try to obtain contract award documents about Yahaya Bello’s so-called “legacy projects”? Did you endeavour to compare with the costs of similar projects elsewhere? Did you ask for example to be driven through the “State Secretariat/House of Assembly/DSS road”? Do you know that all through his years in office, Yahaya Bello didn’t rehabilitate that all-important road?
Bello is validating the title of a classic novel by the legendary American thriller writer, James Hadley Chase. Back in 1957, Chase wrote The Guilty Are Afraid a blockbuster which gained global appeal and readership in its days. This is the same Bello who was showcasing his boxing skills to the world on social media, virtually calling for a match with Anthony Joshua. We have seen him working out on the treadmills too, thumping his chest as he reminded us that he will flatten Mike Tyson in a fitness contest. So why wouldn’t Bello move around freely, “flex” as we say in contemporary Nigerian lingo, the way his former contemporaries are free birds? It is uncharacteristic for the lion, king of the wild to be mirrored cringing beneath the bed of his successor.
We are indeed talking here about a “white lion,” a very rare albinoid species native to the Timbavati region in South Africa. Public discourse in recent weeks has thrown up the thesis about Bello evading arrest by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) for the monumental heist his regime committed against Kogi state during his reign as King Herod. The weekend edition of Aljazirah newspaper of April 6 and 7, 2024, had Bello’s photograph and that of the EFCC chairman, Ola Olukoyede with the headline: ‘Ex-Gov Yahaya Bello Seeks Safety in Kogi Govt House’. Bello is said to be reaching out to former first lady, Aisha Buhari, even as the EFCC is hot on his trail. The president, Bola Tinubu, is said to have distanced himself from Bello’s plea to be given a soft landing in his matter.
Yahaya Bello is a very good example of the post-1975 degeneration of the public service to which Olaopa alluded. He was neither scouted for leadership nor was he trained for the job. He was reportedly an anonymous personnel of the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission, (RMFAC). He reportedly made good for himself ostensibly through corrupt enrichment and floated a transport company, Fairplus Transport with a handful of minivans. With this, he sold the impression of a nouveau riche to delegates to the 2015 gubernatorial primary of the All Progressives Congress, (APC). Bello emerged second behind the late governor Abubakar Audu in that contest. He was hoisted to the gubernatorial high stool courtesy of some unprecedented judicial interpretation of the constitution, upon Audu’s mysterious death before the results of the governorship election!
We must revert to the leadership grooming process of the pre-independence era and its immediate aftermath to begin the sanitisation of governance and leadership. And beyond the EFCC, Bello should have his day in court to defend his appalling human rights record during his eight-year sojourn in Government House, Lokoja. Hopefully, victims of his queer and insensitive governance model will have the last laugh.
Olusunle (PhD) is a Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA).
![[OPINION] Rotimi Sankore: June 6, 1968 – April 12, 2024 - Chidi Anslem Odinkalu](/media/k2/items/cache/f14c694c27af0b72cb0710a299d31707_M.jpg)
On December 26, 1991, Algerians voted in the first round of parliamentary elections. Over 40 parties fielded candidates. As returns started coming through, it became clear the country was in the throes of a political earthquake. The Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) took 189 of the 231 seats decided in the first round of elections for the 430-seat parliament, trouncing the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), which only got 15 seats. FIS candidates were in the lead in 140 of the 199 districts left to be decided in the 2nd round, all but guaranteeing that the party would “attain a two-thirds majority, the amount needed to ratify constitutional amendments”. On January 11, 1992, the Algerian military forced the resignation of President Chadli Benjedid, before cancelling the election.
The following year, Nigeria was due to go to a much-delayed election to choose a successor to its military ruler. With a pervasive commitment to native exceptionalism, however, no one thought it could happen in Nigeria and, despite the events in Algeria the previous year, there was no plan for an annulment scenario.
When on June 22, 1993, Ibrahim Babangida, the Army General who had ruled Nigeria since August 27, 1985, announced the annulment of the presidential election of June 12, 1993, he induced shock around the country to the point of inaction. Alao Aka Basorun, a leading lawyer and 14th president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), telegraphed popular scepticism about Babangida’s intentions, accusing him repeatedly of harbouring “a hidden agenda” but not even Aka had foreseen an annulment.
As the Babangida transition program grew more interminable, civic groups interested in policing it agreed to coalesce into the Campaign for Democracy (CD). At the time of the annulment, it was led by Beko Ransome-Kuti, a medical doctor and younger brother to Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
Without a plan, the leadership of the CD was initially unsure how to respond. At the emergency strategy meetings called by Beko in his Imaria Street home in Anthony Village, Lagos, there was clear ambivalence as to how to respond to the annulment. Amidst the confusion, there was one exceptional young man who came prepared with clarity and rigour about how to respond.
Rotimi Sankore, who died at 55 of complications from cancer, was the clear intellectual and strategic leader of the argument that won through into the nationwide shutdown that followed the annulment of the June 12 elections in 1993, ultimately forcing Ibrahim Babangida to “step aside” from power in August of the same year into infamy.
Born as Rotimi Johnson on June 6, 1968, he was the son of Jimi Johnson, a pioneer in Nigeria’s art and theatre, and one of the stars of The Village Headmaster. Among his early mentors, Rotimi counted Wole Soyinka, who was a close friend of the family as well as Soyinka’s cousin, Fela.
Rotimi was a precocious polymath from an early age. It was close to impossible to find a subject under the sun on which he was not reasonably informed. He could easily have been home-schooled but, Nigeria being what it is, he reluctantly got persuaded that it was useful to own a university degree. In reality, the degree certificate needed him more than he needed it.
A graduate of Communications Studies and Language Arts, Rotimi spent his undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan (UI), where his extraordinary breadth of networks and insight became a huge resource to the student movement. While embedded in the leadership of the student movement at UI, Rotimi was also a stringer and writer for the Guardian newspaper in Lagos.
Recognising him as the Svengali of a student union government whom they thought implacable, the UI authorities expelled Rotimi in 1990. Following legal assistance in which Olisa Agbakoba and the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO) were instrumental, he eventually graduated with the help of a court order which nullified the expulsion.
Rotimi was a versatile thinker who prospered in every genre of journalism. Until the period immediately following the arrival of the regime of General Sani Abacha, he worked with or wrote for The News and Tempo weekly magazines; as well as with The Guardian. In London, he wrote for The Guardian, Index on Censorship, and The Journalist. Among other titles, Rotimi also wrote for the Mail & Guardian in South Africa, the Global New African magazine, and New African Woman.
After the crisis of the June 12 annulment, Rotimi masterminded several civic and advocacy start-ups, including the Journalists for Democratic Rights (JODER) and later CREDO, an organisation that advocated around Africa for the protection of free expression and associated political rights. In exile to the United Kingdom, Rotimi became a member of the executive council of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), eventually going on to lead its Black Members Council as the Chair.
He became the pioneer editor of the Belgium-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) website for African journalists reporting on public accountability, corruption, democracy and rights-related issues. At the turn of the Millennium, Rotimi founded the Africa Human & Social Development Information (AfriDevInfo), which pioneered the use of data and statistics for journalism and policy advocacy during the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Rotimi was also a broadcast journalist. Until his passing, he led the editorial board of the Nigeria Info Radio Group, part of the AIM Media Group with 13 stations in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt and Onitsha (incorporating Nigeria Info FM, WaZoBia FM, Cool FM and Arewa Radio Stations). In this role, he also contributed to programme development on the sister television station WaZoBia TV. At his death, Rotimi was executive director of the Africa Centre for Development Journalism. His weekly current affairs programme, Public Square, was the flagship of NigeriaInfo FM 99.3 and drew the highest ratings in the country among its genre.
Rotimi was a pioneer in data journalism as a tool also for policy education and was especially passionate about access to public health information and education for under-served and excluded communities, particularly girls. In pursuit of these concerns, he regularly advised many international institutions, including the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA); the UNAIDS; the World Health Organization, (WHO); the Geneva-based Global Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health; the Africa Development Bank (ADB); and the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa.
Contemporaneously with his journalistic undertakings, Rotimi invested considerable energy in fostering the advancement of solidarity with women’s groups. He was an early inspiration for the creation of the Women’s Rights Project (WRP) at the CLO and became a founding member of one of Nigeria’s leading women’s rights organisations, the Women Advocates Research & Documentation Centre (WARDC).
Beyond Nigeria, Rotimi was instrumental in the development and adoption of the Gender Protocol of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). He was also a major actor in advocacy for the ratification of the African Union’s own Protocol on the human rights of women in Africa.
In an intrepid career, Rotimi excelled as a journalist and advocate for the public good, an enterprise to which his life was dedicated. It was fitting that his battle with mortality would inspire his terminal piece of earthly advocacy.
In late 2022, Rotimi was diagnosed with what was supposed to be malaria which proved to be stubbornly resilient. Following bouts of unsuccessful therapy, he asked for a full health check. The results returned at the beginning of 2023 querying cancer. Further tests confirmed the dreaded “C”, indicating extensive metastasis. A grim prognosis gave him weeks to live at best but Rotimi beat that by over one year during which he deployed his considerable reach and expertise to comforting people affected by cancer.
Confronted with the reality of his mortality, Rotimi chose to meet it with a determined sense of humour until the end and with eternal optimism. In conversation in the last week of his life, he was resolute: “My brother, we cannot let the bad guys have it all their way”.
Rotimi Sankore is survived by a daughter, his mother, and a brother.
A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
![[OPINION] The Lagos Boy’s Coastal Highway - Festus Adedayo](/media/k2/items/cache/9eaea39c5eca31e576c4ed47bdf5826e_M.jpg)
Whether real or imagined, none of the metonyms for “Lagos boy” is complimentary. The “Lagos boy” moniker once came up in the late 1980s. Commodore Olabode George, then Military Governor of Ondo State, had just been removed from office after spending two years. The African Concord magazine then did a post-mortem of his turbulent rule. Newly purchased boats for the coastal part of the state were alleged to be second-hand. By then, for analysts writing about the George years, rigor-mortis hadn’t set on another uproarious component of his time in office. It was his wife, Feyi George’s “Queendom.” So she came up for examination, too. Her Excellency was quarrelsome and garrulous, something that was strange to people in that part of the country, no matter how high they climb. In the hinterland, even if your yam seedling flourishes beyond measure, yielding a big harvest, native wisdom asks that you shawl it from prying eyes with your two palms. But Feyi was the wife of a “Lagos boy.”
Shortly after her arrival as the First Lady, Feyi met grey-haired market women, old enough to be her mother in the Erekesan Market of the state capital. Singing her praises and dancing to welcome her to their midst, Mrs. George’s Lagos spirit suddenly clambered over. Why are Lagos top-shots fond of being descended upon by spirits? Then she said; I paraphrase, “you are older than me but today, I am your mother.” Later, on an official tour, Feyi George went ahead to openly slap Mrs. Tola Ajayi, a Permanent Secretary and wife of a judge. The woman did not allow the slap thaw. She handed Her Excellency multiple hot slaps. So when George was asked what he would want to be remembered by and he said, “…that a ‘Lagos boy’ passed through this place,” African Concord summed it up that George had used “Lagos sense” for the people of Ondo State.
“Lagos sense” and “Lagos boy” connote so many things about the Lagosian. Writers like Cyprian Ekwensi drew the picture of a dreadful Lagos. The “Lagos Boy” could mean smartness, suavity, celebration of inanity, fraudulence, erecting facades on dross to make it look real, and so on and so forth. Even before the colonialists came, Lagos, once known as the “Venice of West Africa,” was dreaded by inhabitants of the hinterland. It was surely the city to make quick bucks. A city once described by Matthew Gandy (“Learning from Lagos” New Left Review, 2005) as “a smoky expanse of concrete and shanty-towns, sprawling for miles across the islands, waterways and onshore hinterland of the… Lagoon,” Lagos was home to money-doublers and soul-scarred gamblers. It was where you could make quick money through mere hubris. Some other writers have described Lagos as “a place of desperation to make it by hook or crook,” with some others giving it the fitting description of “a huge Dickensian space full of heartbreak.” Paul French, in his Lagos: Africa’s capital of Noir, said Lagos had popularly been described as “the capital of crimes such as 419 and internet fraud also known as the ‘Yahoo Yahoo’”.
Lagos was and is however not all about con. It is a land of bravery and unmatched can-do spirit. Historically, it is a representation of boldness and venturesome traits. Indeed, the Ibadan cognomen as where the robber’s superior argument acquits him, at the detriment of his accuser, will seem to be more appropriate as a metaphor for the daringness on the streets of Lagos. Lagos could not stand bad rulers. This was demonstrated, first by Madam Alimotu Pelewura, the lyalode of Lagos. On December 16, 1940, Pelewura gathered over seven thousand “angry and overburdened women” who represented every branch of petty traders in Lagos to protest the Income Tax Ordinance of 1940/1941 on the female gender. The protesters closed all markets with over a thousand mobilized women milling round, particularly Broad Street, Bourdillon and Marina. Pelewura led the women to petition the office of Sir Bernard Bourdillon, Governor and Commander in Chief of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. One hundred and ninety two women signed that petition drafted by lawyer and statesman, Oged Macaulay, son of Herbert Macaulay, a prominent Lagosian and nationalist known by the sobriquet, Ejo N’gboro – the snake on the Street.
Lagos’ fight of injustices and inequity was myriad. Lagosians fought the “Battle of Salt Water” called Ogun Olomiro. They rose against the king of Lagos, Oba Akitoye, for his inability to tame the monster of water scarcity. They did not mind the fact that the Oba’s own army too couldn’t get water as the soldiers drank salt water from shallow wells which they dug by hand. It led to the 1851 dismantling of Lagos by the British who deployed canons to level the city to the ground. It was also a precursor to the signing of the treaty with Oba Akitoye, as well as the ceding of Lagos to the British by Oba Dusunmu. The intransigence and daringness of Lagos are reflected in one folksong composed by indigenous Lagosians. They sang: “The British leveled Oluwole/(Oyinbo wo Oluwole); Lagos kept silent/(Eko o wi nkan); The British stylishly took over Marina/ (Won f’eso, won gba Marina); They now said they would dismantle Lagos Island/ (Won tun ni awon mi a wo Isale Eko); They must have thought we were dumb!/ (Won sebi kurumo ni wa!). Late Yoruba Fuji musician, Sikiru Ayinde Balogun (Barrister) later popularized this folksong of Lagos’ resistance to British colonial lords.
Travelers to Lagos, long before independence, through the petro-dollar years and even till today, are handed stern warning to be wary of Lagos and Lagosians. They are sleek, ephemeral and unreal. Perhaps because of its daily infiltration by strange persons of different persuasions, the Lagosian has come to be classified as immune to some of the traits associated with a Yorubaman. He didn’t totally represent the gentlemanly Omoluabi ethos that undergirds the value system of the children of Oduduwa. A trustworthy Lagosian is as scarce as a hen’s teeth. He would grab and run with what doesn’t belong to him. It was repeatedly said that a Lagosian would sell particle to you as an article.
Bola Tinubu is the Lagosian who occupies the highest office in Nigeria today. Ex-Senator, two-term governor of Lagos State and currently president of Nigeria, he has come to approximate the character trait of Lagos. He is the Lagos posterboy and in this case, one who personifies the “Labelabe” leaf. This leaf is a sharp-edged plant that grows by river banks. My people thus say that it is almost impossible for worshippers of the water goddess to pay obeisance to their goddess without the connivance or abetment of the Labelabe. Due to its lacerating sharp edges, the leaf is also used in preparation of potion for protection from evil doers. While chanting incantations on the potion, the reciter chants, “If anyone runs into the Labelabe leaf, they will be soaked in blood.” If Tinubu lost some votes of his Yoruba people in the 2023 presidential election, it may not be too far from the truth to say that his morally prude Yoruba kinsmen from the hinterland who believed that anything Lagos was fraud were the ones who withdrew their votes.
I went into this long epistle about Lagos to situate the recent tirade against the Tinubu government by ex-Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar. Abubakar’s grouse is with the 700km Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway recently awarded by the Tinubu government to the president’s known friend, Gilbert Chagoury, owner of Hitech Construction firm. Atiku made us aware that Tinubu awarded the contract at a whooping sum of N15.6 trillion, an amount almost the total of all Nigeria’s 36 states and FCT budgets for 2024 of N15.91 trillion. This is against the backdrop of the known fact that the lengthiest highway in Africa, which runs from Cairo in Egypt, to Cape Town in South Africa, is going to cost the sum of $1.6 billion. The road is 1,156 kilometers. Atiku has received knocks for raising the shroud off this stinking corpse. Many people have asked whether Nigerians expected Tinubu to award the road contract to his enemies. Some equally submitted that even Atiku had promised to sell Nigeria’s refineries to his friends if elected the Nigerian president. So when David Umahi, Minister of Works, went on a converts-winning evangelism to media houses last week to seek Nigerians’ buy-in into the prudence and fidelity in the road project, the dead body he and Tinubu buried in a shallow sepulcher still left gaping tell-tales.
Gradually, Atiku has led Nigerians by the helm of their garments to see the sickening level of the putrefaction oozing out of the project. For me, Atiku’s greatest submission on the project is that a contract of such magnitude was awarded without any competitive bidding. Where is this ever done in any sane part of the world? As much as Umahi attempted to cover it by showing that such practice was a construction custom, the minister would need to cover his face in shame for this lame defence. How can a road contract the size of the budgets of all Nigerian states be sealed without bidding? To worsen it, the contract was awarded to a known business crony of the president, a fraternity which, before his presidency, Tinubu openly gloated over. Add these two together and you get a fertile ground for grand corruption.
You may not like Atiku’s face and the constancy of his cantankerous politicking but if you are bothered about how corruption has become the necklace on Nigerian governments’ necks, Atiku’s arithmetic should worry you. He seems to be saying that, for Bola Tinubu, the monkey, a known banana glutton, was on the verge of jumping at the banana tree again. Umahi’s waffles and the ill-logics of his defence of the wobbly legs of the humongous contract are sickening and worrisome. From the Umahi waffles, it is obvious, as Atiku alleged, that government only began to think about the percentage of counterpart funding after the project award. He provided evidence. There were so many shameful anomalies that Atiku’s eagle eyes sighted on the road contract. Though Umahi deployed a number of engineering bombasts to convey the quality of the road the Tinubu government has on its hands in the 700km Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, he couldn’t ward off the army of wriggling maggots that have made this project their dormitory.
Another very fundamental aspect of Atiku’s toothcomb examination of the N15.6 trillion project is that the Nigerian parliament was too engrossed in a slumber to know that incongruities were passing by its backyard. So when the president, a couple of weeks ago, told the world that the parliament’s “integrity is intact” and going ahead to deride “those who are talking about malicious embellishment in the budget” as people who do not “understand the arithmetic,” Nigerians can now understand the quid pro quo chemistry behind Nigeria’s executive and legislature’s dalliance. Among a litany of questions, Atiku had asked why the National Assembly approved N500m for the road project while the Tinubu administration released N1.06tn, a figure over 200 times the amount in the Appropriation Act.
If anyone thought Atiku was embarking on this verbal pugilism because he loves the Nigerian people, in the words of Americans, they have another think coming. In Nigeria, both government in power and the opposition are like the discomfiting and excessively big “Ipa”, (scrotal lymphedema) a disease that makes a man’s scrotum swell disproportionately. Yoruba will ask what good the “Ipa” does for the buttocks. Nigerians are the palm kernel and Nigerian politicians are the two stones, one underneath and the other on top, which are both attempting to access the fruit of the kernel. The two stones don’t like our palm kernel. It is a ploy to mouth the edible seed.
Some people have said that the Tinubu government is just acting true to type by aping the paterfamilias of some governments before it. It is being said that, in the so-called Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, Aso Rock just wants to help its business partner link a road from Lekki to its hotel corridor. If some few billions of Naira get drowned in the process, so be it. Simplicitas. As Atiku asked, if they must piss on us, they should, at least, cover it with some pearls and sequins by calling it rain!
Adebanwi’s Guggenheim
We live in a world where virtually all news that emanate from Nigeria are depressing stories of bloodshed, banditry, government’s insensitivity, corruption and all-what-ought-nots. Thus, when news of Nigerians who go outside the perceptional loop flows in, it does the reverse. One that hit the airwave last week was that of Nigerian professor, Wale Adebanwi, who bagged the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The fellowship was said to have been awarded on the awardee’s trajectory of prior career achievements and exceptional promise. Adebanwi is the Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies and Director of Centre for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, U.S. In a pool of thousands of academics, Adebanwi was finally chosen as one of the 188 winners of the 2024 awards.
Anyone who knew Adebanwi decades back as he burnt the midnight candle would not be surprised about what he has made of his life. I first got to know him around 1989 as he sneaked into Prof Alaba Ogunsanwo’s crowded class at the University of Lagos. I later learnt he was combining stringing jobs in Ibadan with the Tribune with some other tabloids, even as he schooled in the Mass Communication Department of the university. We were to later meet again in 1994 at the University of Ibadan as graduate students of the Political Science department. He finished tops in our Master’s class with a CGPA of about 72 per cent. He was to later hold two Ph.D degrees in Political Science from the University of Ibadan and another in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Bill and Melinda Gates Scholar.
Wale was instrumental to my eventual career path as a journalist with the Tribune and has since been a lifelong advisor. If you use Wale’s life as a guiding path in any endeavour, you seldom would come to grief. But for him, a life of academy would have been for me a mirage. The Guggenheim Fellowship was spot on in the choice of Adebanwi as a scholar who is generating new possibilities and pathways across the broader culture. I can testify.
Once on a visit to his Oxford University office where he served as first African ever to be appointed as the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations and Director of the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, I was proud of my Nigerianness.
All the above, however, pale into insignificance when compared to Adebanwi’s humanity and humaneness. Perhaps borne out of his upbringing as son of a clergy, Wale’s life personifies piety and goodliness. This is to say congratulations to the Iresi, Osun State-born scholar who makes my generation very proud.
![[OPINION] The burden of an ill-conceived electricity tariff increase - Sunday Onyemaechi Eze](/media/k2/items/cache/534a776bc96a548869af81ca046d46e2_M.jpg)
Nigeria is a nation with a long history of perennial challenges of public power supply. The country seems to have unfortunately accepted the anomaly as part of its national life. Since one came of age, the power sector bears the trade mark of inefficiency. The problem of insufficient power supply has remained unchanged. The old reasons adduced for poor performance in the sector more than two decades ago are not different either. Despite the poor supply situation, citizens still pay through their noses for an underperforming power sector which delivers little or no quality services. Many Nigerians cannot remember a time when they enjoyed constant public power supply up to 15 hours per day. A lot of money has been spent and much more still allocated to the power sector but no remarkable progress was made.
However, what ordinary Nigerians constantly experience is poor service outcome, routine tariff increase and general inefficiency. The latest assault on Nigerians is the announcement of new tariff regime and classification of customers, currently placed on new categories of bands A-E. The citizens had no input when decisions were taken on this band classification. Effective from April 3, the charges of selected customers on Band 'A' has increase to over 300%. Days after, federal government has hinted on extending similar measures to other band categories.
The unit cost of electricity for those placed on Band A was jacked up from ₦68 per kWh to ₦225 per kWh excluding VAT. Those on other bands are denied electricity supply in a failed attempt to meet up with the obligations of band A customers. The prevailing lie in government circle was that the increment only affected a small percentage of Nigerians and that government still subsidises electricity. Officials implementing government policies are often economical with the truth regarding the impact of anit-people policies. In this case, the only thing that matters to them is saving without considering the economic impact of such savings on the well-being of the people.
Government failed to understand that industrial customers whether big, medium or small placed on Band A will factor in the cost of fuel, diesel and the increase into the prices of the goods and services they provide. Therefore, whether customers are placed on Band A or other categories with or without electricity, the burden of every company's expenses is transfered to the ordinary people - the customers/consumers.
When will government concede to the mood of the nation and inputs of the masses before taking any decisions on issues directly affecting them? Pundits say the band idea is a ploy to assist the cash-trapped DiSCos to raise fund. This is happening in a country where power outages last more than 24 hours daily or even days in most places. It is also happening in a country where the national power grid had collapsed more than 58 times between 2017-2023. How could government remove subsidy on electricity but goes on to subsidise hajj fare to the tune of over N90bn? Is Nigeria ready to move from a poor nation to a developed one?
Nations occupying the front row in industrial growth and development attain such feat with serious investment in power supply. There is no gain saying the fact that, access to uninterrupted public power supply has become a tall dream in Nigeria. The more money is spent on the sector, the worse it becomes. Bogus contracts entered into by government with industry players like Siemens to remedy the situation has suffered several set-backs and the end is not yet in sight. The long wait for remedy continues while government officials have often admonished citizens to keep hope alive. Both past and present governments do not seem to have a grasp of the fundamental problems bedeviling the power sector. If they do, Nigeria cannot be shamelessly talking about 4,500mw of electricity since 1960.
One major problem facing the sector is the appointment of people without requisite knowledge and experience. The endemic corruption in the sector and lack of purposeful goals have also contributed to the obvious failure. Almost all ministers of power since 1999 except Engr. Bello Suleiman were/are square pegs in round holes. They were/are green horns occupying compensatory political positions earned on recommendation or political party affiliation. As novices, they come on board bereft of ideas or blueprint to drive government agenda. It is a disservice appointing an accountant or a lawyer minister of power.
Policies often put in place by these appointees to address the challenges are mostly badly thought out; externally influenced or geared towards inflicting more pains. Since year 2000, tariff increase has been the only visible item dominating and governing the Multi-year Tariff Order (MYTO) while other germane issues like customer privileges are relegated to the background. In fact, Nigerians wake up to multiple tariff upward reviews every two to four years without additional power infrastructure to support the aging ones or addressing the needs of several rapidly expanding communities.
There is no home grown solution to the intractable problems of power except borrowed directives handed down by World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These borrowed ideas deepen and worsen the economic woes of the poor citizens. A country where little children always jump up in excitement and shout "Up Nepa" when public power supply is restored after days of black out has no business increasing the cost of electricity or services not adequately rendered. Those in charge should go back to the drawing board, comprehensively work hard to improve on the sector instead.
The power sector was painfully balkanised, claimed and annexed in favour of some highly placed individuals just like the Europeans did to Africa in 1885 Berlin Conference. The companies were shared as business status symbol serving the interest of a few. Provision of excellent services for Nigerians was secondary on the power sector reforms agenda. How could a country allocate such all-important national asset to incompetent, non-experts in government or their associates whose interest only hinges on making quick money. The Nigerian bidding system is so magical that one wonders how these ill-prepared investors schemed their ways through the processes without anybody flagging their glaring incompetence. The process deliberately accorded certain privileges to bidders/owners who cannot differentiate between a fuse and feeder pillar.
The country should as a matter of urgency innovate and diversify in areas of power generation. This could be regionalised based on the corresponding resources within every geographical zone. The north east is blessed with potentials in solar energy. The north-west is endowed with the blessings of hydro-electricity and wind. The north central can boast of a good level of coal deposit and resources for hydro-power supply. The south east is blessed with little water, gas and abundant coal deposit. The south-south and south west have resources in hydro-power and gas. The world is going green and Nigeria has to run with the idea together with the world.
Unfortunately those at the helm of affairs and friends of people and institutions close to the corridors of power have only succeeded in allowing the sector to thrive but generally restricted it from flourishing. They have succeeded in bringing the sector down on it's knees and resorted to untenable ideas and prescriptions not peculiar to Nigerian circumstances. With the enormous human and financial resources invested in the power sector, after 64 years of existence, Nigeria has no business being in the league of nations lacking adequate power supply.
This electricity tariff increase is ill-conceived and equally ill-timed. It should be halted. Let Nigerians breathe.
Sunday Onyemaechi Eze is a Media and Development Communication Specialist.
![[OPINION] NEF And Habitual Histrionics - Wole Olaoye](/media/k2/items/cache/ee21bc532c615e7d04e8faabda019db4_S.jpg)
“We regret voting for Tinubu in 2023. We won’t repeat such a mistake again, say Northern Elders”. That was the banner headline carved out by the media from the latest intervention of the Northern Elders’ Forum, NEF, in Nigeria’s political space.
I chuckled. It’s an old trick. Mother Fowl knows what to do when it wants more corn.
The struggle for domination in the business of selling political-spare-parts is older than Nigeria’s flag independence. In every corner of the political space, there have always been self-styled Elders, Youths, Professionals, Critical Stakeholders, Vanguards, Progressives, Custodians and all sorts of unelected persons elbowing each other for prime access to the media space.
Northern Elders
The Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF), founded eleven years ago by Prof. Ango Abdullahi, former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, is one such contraption. It claims to speak for the entire northern region of Nigeria and has vigorously pursued whatever agenda it sets itself in the geopolitics of Nigeria. There are many such elite interest groups scattered all over the country; so, NEF hasn’t really done anything wrong.
I do not grudge the NEF their right to freely associate. It’s a free world where other ethnic nationalities in the country are also entitled to cobble out their own special purpose vehicles for political patronage or other self serving fallouts of programmed activism.
Until recently, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed was the most visible face and spokesperson of the organisation. In the recent past, he has been the chief of staff to Senate President during the tenure of Dr Bukola Saraki. He is now a Special Adviser On Political issues in the office of Vice-President Kashim Shettima. There is something to be said for media visibility in the political space, especially when you give the impression that your exertions are altruistically based on the common good. Nigerians recognise a selfish quest even when disguised as heroism.
Last year, the NEF controversially declared that the presidential race should still be open to candidates from the Northern part of the country because the North had a deficit of four years in the Nigerian power roulette: “Since 1999, the South has ruled the country for 14 years and the North for 10 years” it said.
Many people have, over the years, wondered which North the NEF claims to be speaking for when its silence or equivocation over serious heists that have bedevilled the Middle Belt area of the region has been louder than a thunderclap? Can it truly claim to speak for every section of the North in the same way that the Ohaneze speaks for the Igbos?
Arrogance
The arrogant presumptuousness that attends some of its pronouncements is remarkable. During the campaigns last year, it claimed that no region had ever suffered under any leader than the North did under the Buhari administration and no region benefited from more undeserved advantages than the South did. That was at a time when nepotism had become a defining stamp of President Buhari’s government and the children of political bigwigs were unfairly smuggled into juicy public appointments, thereby distorting the federal character composition of many parastatals and agencies.
NEF’s claim that, at the right time, it would advise Northerners on who to vote for, was seen by analysts as proof that the elderly members of the organisation were still living in the past.
I don’t play ethnic games, nor am I interested in ‘politricks’. I insist, however, that if we must navigate our way out of our serious national problems, we have to re-interrogate our assumptions, shun the “We-Vs-Them” attitude that brought the First Republic to grief, and reject blackmail as a negotiation tool.
To say all this is to reassert my right to love the North and other parts of Nigeria as I do, and help the area achieve its great potentials without pulling down the larger household. If Nigeria must exist, then it must work for all Nigerians, not just a section of it.
The Forum’s recent claim that President Tinubu has failed to secure the country, and that the northern part of the country has been the most hit as a result of the president’s incompetence was downright laughable, considering that, measure for measure, Buhari who hailed from the North had a poorer record (within an 11-month timeline) than the incumbent president in many areas of governance. For example, it took Buhari six months to appoint ministers. He fiddled most times while Nigeria burnt. His statements during crises were divisive. Indeed, ethnic killings became rife under his administration. Remember the Naira recolouring scandal? What about the eventual bastardisation of the Ways and Means procedure?
NEF was largely silent when it mattered most in the eight years of the Buhari government. That fact in itself does not disqualify the Forum from commenting on public affairs; it only means that it should use its tongue to count its teeth before doing so.
According to NEF’s new spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, the fact that the criminals were ‘allowed’ to kidnap the school children was a sign of serious security lapses.
“It is unacceptable for Nigerians, particularly those in the northern region, to continue living under such insecure conditions. Unfortunately, just months into the Tinubu administration, there have already been clear signs of failure in providing the vital aspects of security of life and property to citizens.”
Many netizens are now asking NEF, where were you when the list of terror sponsors of Northern origin was released? What is your comment on the development? What solutions do you proffer?
Ncef
And talking about solutions, another unelected body which describes itself as a coalition of statesmen in Nigeria under the aegis of the National Christian Elders Forum (NCEF), has blamed foreign invaders masquerading as religious extremists for the spate of killings and bloodshed in the country.
“Nigeria is facing a racial and cultural domination agenda disguised as religious intolerance… In Plateau and Kaduna states the owners of the land have been driven into IDP camps while the names of the villages have been changed to Fulani names. In Plateau State, over 102 villages were reportedly taken over by Fulani invaders while in Kaduna State, over 109 villages have been dislodged. The owners of the land are in IDP camps”, says NCEF.
To reset the country on the path of normalcy, the NCEF recommends the following:
Immediate implementation of the report of the 2014 National Conference.
Immediate ban of nomadic cattle rearing and abolishment of the RUGA project mooted by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Dismantling of terrorist cells and infrastructure.
Any business investor that requires land should apply for land like other citizens.
Preferential treatment should not be accorded any group in Nigeria.
The ethnic nationalities should assert their right and ownership over their ancestral land and assert the dominion of their thrones in Nigeria.
The ethnic socio-cultural groups should consider these issues in greater detail. The demand for devolution of power should be intensified by the ethnic nationalities.
President Tinubu should appoint a Special Investigator to conduct a Commission of Inquiry into the causes, as well as expose the actors, in the various acts of terrorism and religious insurgency that overwhelmed Nigeria since 2009.
The Forum called on the various indigenous ethnic nationalities to come together to renegotiate Nigeria.
It appears to me that, going forward, anyone who wants to be politically relevant and ‘appointable’ will have to ventilate a larger, more all-encompassing vision rather than the same atavistic tricks in the service of narrow agendas which have kept the various regions of the country, especially the North, on their mendicant knees.
Congratulations, Pelumi
Hearty congratulations to the travel content creator who is the first woman to solo drive a car from London to Lagos, and now Lagos Tourism Ambassador, Pelumi Nubi. As they say in cyberlingo, Naija no dey carry last!
![[OPINION] Calling on the Minister of Works… - Bolanle Bolawole](/media/k2/items/cache/982ad2eff1525e152e87917888a7dd4b_S.jpg)
If a roll call of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s performing Ministers is made today, the likelihood is that the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, will make the list. The former governor is one of those we can call a square peg in a square hole. I have followed the way he has been going about discharging his duties. His on-the-spot assessment of projects under his ministry has revealed the canker-worms of corruption and abuse of office that have eaten very deep into the fabrics of our society. For anyone familiar with the system, civil servants are, perhaps, the most corrupt section of the society. They are the engine room of corruption but undue attention is, unfortunately, devoted to politicians. Not that those ones, too, are not corrupt but the system works in such a way that without the connivance and active participation of civil servants, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for politicians to steal a dime. Who teaches the politicians how to steal? Who shows them the way? Who leads the way to the common till? Who knows where the pounds and pennies are stored? Who prepares the papers and helps the politicians to cover their tracks? A thieving civil service is the bedrock of corruption in Nigeria.
In one video of Umahi I watched inspecting a road construction project under his watch, the Minister lampooned the site engineer for incompetence, unprofessional conduct, disobedience of lawful orders, connivance at the application of substandard materials, manipulation of relevant information and cover-up – all of which were tailored towards cutting corners to save costs and achieve poor quality delivery to feather the nest of contractors and the collaborating civil servants. Good quality materials are quoted but poor quality materials are used instead. Quality and quantity are compromised and the country is thereby ripped off to the tune of millions, even billions, in local and foreign currencies. What is creamed off is shared between the collaborating and conniving contractors and civil servants.
We pay through the nose for good quality jobs but end up getting poor quality jobs. We lose on both ends. Contracts here are usually inflated. The cost of five, six or even 10 projects elsewhere is the cost of one here. After which we end up with poor quality jobs and get no value for money. A road that is meant to last, say, 10 years hardly lasts ten months – or even weeks! Infrastructure is decrepit here because of over-invoicing and poor quality delivery. In every sector, we should have more to show for the quantum of resources poured into it. Take, for example, the billions in hard currencies that have been poured into power supply, only for us to sink deeper and deeper into the miry clay of power outages!
Sabotage, occasioned usually by those saddled with the onerous but sacred responsibility of watching our back, ensuring that the right thing is done and that we get value for money, is the reason we hear of trillion Naira budgets year-in, year-out but do not see commensurate results. Much of the money budgeted ends up in private pockets. Budget padding is just a tip of the iceberg. Budget round-tripping is worse than budget padding. What this means is that the same projects are circulated in the budget each year, money is voted and the money so voted is collected and shared but no sod is turned on the said projects. Year-in, year-out, the same ritual is performed. Like Prof. Wole Soyinka’s “Abiku”, such projects keep coming repeatedly, sowing tears and sorrows in the polity while a few elements smile to the bank with looted funds.
Umahi is a politician but it would appear he has a sense of duty. The way he interrogated the site engineers and contractors in one of the videos I watched gave me the impression he did not want to compromise professionalism on the altar of filthy lucre. He may not be an angel but, as they say, there ought to be some honour even among thieves. Honour appears to be glaringly missing among Nigeria’s teeming, thieving population. And this is where the First Republic politicians – and civil servants, to boot – were better, far, far better, than their current counterparts.
Corruption is everywhere but its colouration, texture and intensity differ from place to place. A story is told during COVID-19 to show how the same corrupt act was more damaging to Nigeria than Ghana: A group of foreign investors travelling to both countries forgot to take their COVID-19 vaccine. At the point of entry in Ghana, Ghanaian officials demanded a bribe from the foreigners, after which they were led to the appropriate vaccine centre to take the vaccine before being allowed into the country. On the Nigeria side, the foreigners were allowed to romp into town after settling the officials without being compelled to take the necessary vaccine. The foreigners were the ones demanding to be allowed to take the vaccine but the Nigerian officials insisted there was no need. “God will protect us”, they told the foreigners, and waved them on!
Why am I calling on Umahi here today? It is because I noticed that the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, completed just a few months ago, is already collapsing at no less than three points on the Lagos to Ibadan axis – at Ogere, around Foursquare Church camp at Ajebo and the Guru Maharaj Ji section as you drive into Ibadan. I have driven myself on that road on a couple of occasions in the past two weeks. Recall that this road took decades to complete. Only God knows at what cost eventually. Oh, what road users suffered on that road while construction was ongoing! On a couple of occasions, I slept on that road due to traffic standstill. To think that the same road has started collapsing a few months afterwards calls for concern.
What went wrong? Is it poor workmanship? The contractors used were some of the country’s best; so, what went wrong? Is this a question of poor quality or substandard materials? A case of cutting corners? The usual Nigerian factor? What exactly went wrong? Is it inappropriate usage that is the problem? The indiscriminate traffic and parking of heavy duty vehicles constitutes a menace not only to other road users but also to the road itself. Every road is built to specification and failure to adhere can ruin such roads before their life span expires. Who exercises such control on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway?
The novice that I am on this subject, I ask questions, like Peter Abelard, so that I may get answers. Said Abelard: “Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood” And I have the confidence Umahi will be willing to look into this matter and offer illumination, like he did on the Lagos – Calabar expressway. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway is said to be the busiest road in the country. Often, our problem is also the lack of maintenance culture. We allow matters to get to a head before we act, whereas it is said that a stitch in time saves nine. The Ibadan-Ife expressway is another road that Umahi should take a look at. As it is today, that road is a dead trap. Efforts to rehabilitate it has woefully failed. Ditto the Ife-Ilesha junction axis of the same stretch of road. Once a road expires, such as these ones have, the right thing to do is scrap them and lay new asphalt, and not waste money doing patch-patch work that does not work. The cost of bad roads – in lives and limbs, time lost, maintenance and repair of vehicles and inconveniences suffered generally – cannot sufficiently be quantified in Naira and kobo.
Are contractors who do shoddy jobs made to face the music? Are their godfathers called to question? Site engineers who compromise on quality ought to be fired and not given a slap on the wrist like Umahi did to the ones in one of the videos I watched. Until people get punished for doing the wrong thing, we are going nowhere in this country!
![[OPINION] Cybercrime and punishment - Simon Kolawole](/media/k2/items/cache/b1b0d38888f63123fc70b41c7320210e_S.jpg)
There’s a new trend in our land which many are complaining about but which I doubt they are doing much to address. It is the use of the Cybercrimes Act to file criminal charges for alleged defamation where the civil laws should ordinarily suffice. First, what is defamation of character? I will adopt this definition by AllLaw.com: “Defamation is typically defined as a false statement someone makes about you, which they publish as a statement of fact, and which harms your personal and/or professional reputation or causes you other damages, including financial loss and emotional distress.” This is obviously to protect innocent people from reckless and malicious statements and publications.
In the Cybercrimes Act, passed under the Jonathan administration in 2015, defamation is what is classified as “cyberstalking” under section 24 (1)(b) which says it is a crime for “any person to knowingly or intentionally send a message or other matter by means of computer systems or networks that: (b) he knows to be false, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety to another or causes such a message to be sent.” The punishment is a fine or maximum three years in jail, or both. The key phrase is “knowingly or intentionally”, unlike libel where intention is irrelevant.
Essentially, with the Cybercrimes Act, you can go to jail for posting a defamatory statement online, whereas it is libel if you write the same thing in a newspaper and slander if you say it on TV/radio. That means for a defamatory online post, you could be arrested, detained and charged to court by the police and jailed by a judge. Yet, the only difference is that one is printed (libel) or said (slander) while the other is online (cyberstalking). That is, while you can be sued for billions of naira in a defamation suit because it is civil, you can go to jail for cyberstalking — and it doesn’t matter if the offensive words are the same! You would agree with me that there is something inconsistent in this.
Today, I am joining the campaign for the decriminalisation of libel. I propose that defamation should be treated as defamation, whether it is analogue or digital. The UN Human Rights Committee has been campaigning for the decriminalisation of libel for over two decades. Ironically, a country like Canada still has laws on criminal and blasphemous libel, even if hardly enforced. The UNESCO recently reported that more than 160 countries still criminalise libel. It is dead as a federal law in the US but some states still retain it. Many countries have, however, abolished it while it has become obsolete in a country like the UK which has not prosecuted any criminal libel case since the 1970s.
I must necessarily accept here that sections of my primary constituency — the media — do not paint themselves in glory in matters of defamation, but that has nothing to do with my position. For one, journalists are not above the law. Nobody has the right to defame people without evidence. The only absolute defence in cases of defamation is truth. If what you have published is the truth and you have the evidence to defend yourself in a court of law, you are good. May I also say here that since newspapers and broadcast outfits have online presence, they are liable under the Cybercrimes Act as well. That is why we just have to take our professional responsibilities as seriously as they demand.
Because of the legal gulf between the seriousness with which the courts treat libel and cyberstalking cases in Nigeria, people would rather go through the Cybercrimes Act than pursue a civil suit. There is frustration with the agonisingly slow pace of libel cases in the courts. The satisfaction that comes with the Cybercrimes Act is that the offending party will, at least, be swiftly arrested and detained. Apologies and retractions may follow and the offended party could get some relief. Libel cases, on the other hand, can sleep in a court for 20 years with no head or tail. It is said that justice delayed is justice denied. The slow pace of libel cases incentivises miscreants to keep defaming people.
I, therefore, understand why aggrieved Nigerians would prefer the Cybercrimes Act. Recently, one of those who tried to defame Nathaniel Bassey, the gospel music minister, apologised and retracted his accusation when the police confronted him with the Cybercrimes Act. If it was a civil case, the apology might still be hanging somewhere. The social media easily accommodates mischief makers — some are even paid to defame people. They are especially cruel because they think they are unreachable, unlike a conventional newspaper that has a physical address, phone numbers and known names. That is why some people think the Cybercrimes Act serves the mischief makers right.
Before I proceed, let me state clearly — as clearly as I can — that my support for the decriminalisation of defamation is not an endorsement of anyone hiding behind freedom of speech and a smart phone to defame people. Cyberthugs and mobsters think they can hide behind avatars to say whatever they like without repercussions. People’s lives and businesses are being sadistically ruined by malicious posts. They think they can get away with anything. When they are called upon to answer their father’s name, they start blabbing about free speech. Tell me one country in the world where you can defame people without facing the consequences because of “freedom of speech”.
And, yes, I am a victim too. I am regularly savaged with lies on social media. It reached a climax with the dirty politics around the 2023 polls. The pick of the pack of lies was that President Tinubu gave me N500 million. It was circulated by a journalist I had known since 1994. I was his desk editor at THISDAY in 1998. He didn’t know my colleague was in one of the WhatsApp groups where he shared it. I usually laugh at these lies and attacks but this was someone I called a friend. I decided to ask him why he did it and he cheekily replied: “Can’t you take a joke?” If I had decided to keep him busy with the Cybercrimes Act, he would have been crying and alleging ethnic or political persecution.
Regardless, I still consider matters of this nature as purely civil and not criminal. Actually, I have no problems with the Cybercrimes Act itself. It was natural and necessary: society was evolving and we needed to modernise our laws in line with the realities of tech-enabled crimes. The Cybercrimes Act was well conceived. It covers a comprehensive list of criminal online activities: hacking, denial-of-service attacks, phishing, malware, identity theft, electronic theft, distribution, sale or offering for sale of hardware, software or other tools used to commit cybercrime, etc. My only objection is the criminalisation of defamation and I believe it should be expunged. I will now defend my stand.
One — as I have already pointed out — I think defamation should be defamation, no matter the platform used to perpetrate it. What is civil in print or broadcast should not become criminal on the internet. I am proposing commonsense here. There is the need for consistency in punishing defamation. If you killed someone unlawfully, it shouldn’t matter if you used a hunter’s rifle or an AK47 for the crime — it would still be regarded and punished as murder or manslaughter, depending on the circumstances: whether the homicide was premeditated or provoked. After all, armed robbery is a capital offence even if it is an ordinary pen, and not a pistol, that was used in the act.
Two, if we keep saying Nigeria is under-policed, maybe we should stop engaging the police in matters that are not core to their duties. It is not the job of the police to protect the reputation of an individual, as the Cybercrimes Act currently makes it. Their job is to protect lives and property. Nigeria is battling with security issues in every region and every geo-political zone today, but many of our police men and women are busy with duties such as VIP protection, settling disputes between mechanics and car owners, and arresting a tailor because what a customer ordered is different from what she got. Meanwhile, robbers, kidnappers and terrorists are making life miserable for Nigerians.
Three, there are more serious cybercrimes — compared to the defamation of an individual — that the police should be made to tackle. People spreading ethnic and religious bile online are a threat to the peace. They can set the society on fire. This cannot fall under free speech. We cannot hope to live in a peaceful and orderly society when miscreants are using falsehood and conjectures to demonise some Nigerians simply because of their region or religion. If someone issues a death threat online, that is also worth pursuing under the Cybercrimes Act. It is about life and death, and the Nigerian state has the responsibility to protect the lives of its citizens. But defamation? Oh, please!
What shall we do then? Shall we continue in defamation that free speech may abound? God forbid. I would propose two things. One, advocacy should be focused on decriminalising defamation by expunging section 24 (1)(b) of the Cybercrimes Act, 2015, and other provisions on “criminal libel” (which government officials use to protect themselves from public scrutiny). Let us retain defamation as a purely civil matter. Two — and this is a critical judicial reform Nigeria needs — the courts have to start treating defamation cases as important. Cases shouldn’t go on endlessly. The judiciary must help sanitise our society by protecting people’s reputations from being unfairly maligned.
All said and done, I would like to appeal to social media users to think about their incendiary and hurtful words before posting. There is a mad race to the bottom on the internet — who can say the vilest words and plant the most outrageous rumours in order to get engagement? — but they should put themselves in the position of their victims. As Rotarians would say, is it fair to all concerned? How on earth would you say a couple’s son was fathered by another man without proof? It is all a game to you, right? Some are obviously hustling for Elon Musk’s dollars by spreading falsehood and mischief. Nevertheless, I maintain that defamation should be treated as a civil offence in our laws.
AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…
DIRGE FOR DEPUTIES
Is deputy governorship a poisoned chalice? Someone would call that “JAMB question”. Comrade Philip Shaibu has, expectedly, been removed as the deputy governor of Edo state after a protracted fall-out between him and Mr Godwin Obaseki, the governor. According to the boffins at Daily Trust, that is the 17th deputy governor to be removed since the fourth republic birthed in 1999. That is quite some turnover. Given that only three governors have been legally removed during the same period, that is alarming. We need to study the trend and work out a solution. Maybe we don’t need deputy governors? Maybe we should make it more difficult for them to be removed? Questions.
VISA TIPS
Mr Larry Madowo, the CNN correspondent, took to X (how long are we going to keep saying ‘formerly known as Twitter’?) to complain about the cost of getting a Nigerian visa and paying for biometrics each time. He wondered why a Kenyan needs a visa to visit Nigeria when he doesn’t need one for Ghana. First, I would advise Madowo to apply for a multiple entry visa next time. For as long as he opts for single entry, he will pay each time. Biometrics are captured each time you apply for a visa and you will need to pay for it too. He can ask the US embassy in Nairobi. Well, Ghanaians don’t need a Nigerian visa because of a treaty. Nigeria and Kenya do not have that treaty yet. Reciprocity.
RISK AND ‘REWARD’
So, Idris Okuneye, the transgender celebrity better known as Bobrisky, has been sentenced to six months imprisonment without an option of fine for “abusing” the naira. Bobsrisky, who finally identified as “male” before a court of law, had pleaded guilty to the charge and being a first time offender, the social media sensation would ordinarily be expected to get a lenient punishment. That the maximum punishment was applied makes me wonder if Bobrisky was being punished for something else — you know it, you know the elephant in the room. The debate now should be if the law on naira abuse is really necessary or if imprisonment should be a punishment at all. Brutal.
NO COMMENT
When the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) approved the tripling of tariff for “Band A” consumers under the pretext that they are already enjoying a minimum of 20 hours of power daily, we knew it was just cruise. It would only make sense if the new tariff were applied only on days Band A consumers enjoy 20 hours. Well, this is the truth: the sector badly needs massive infrastructural investment before we can enjoy steady power — but where is the capital? The DisCos are now playing a different tune. The new lyrics: “We are suffering system outage/That is why there’s power shortage/Apologies to our customers/We’ve got a problem with the feeders.” Wonderful.
![[OPINION] If this is not genocide then what the ‘hell’ is it? - Femi Fani-Kayode](/media/k2/items/cache/2757a43e75b6d7f3a473dc4ff94979f0_S.jpg)
“We do not have evidence of Israel committing genocide in Gaza”- Gen. Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defence of the United States of America.
Never in the history of humanity and in the comity of nations has such an asinine, puerile and indefensible statement been made by a high-ranking Government official.
It reflects the dishonesty, wickedness, insensitivity, depravity, deceit, hypocrisy, double standards, moral bankruptcy, unconscionable inhumanity, malodorous disposition and spiritual turpitude of the Biden administration.
You cannot wish away or dismiss the truth no matter how bitter and you cannot deny the facts no matter how ugly.
Andrew Mitrovika, a columnist with Al Jazeera, captured the events in Gaza graphically and clearly when he wrote the following. Permit me to quote him extensively. He wrote,
“The cataclysm that you and I are witnessing in Gaza is a genocide in the awful making.
It is not an “onslaught”. It is not an “invasion”. It is not even a “war”. It is a genocide.
The apocalyptic scenes and sounds in Gaza are proof that a cruel, occupying army is intent on achieving its overarching aim: the annihilation of what remains of an already shattered slice of land and the indiscriminate killing of helpless, exhausted children, women and men.
Over decades, a succession of immune Israeli governments and their useful proxies, the rampaging settler militias, have waged incremental genocide, bit by bit, with the explicit approval, consent, and encouragement of Western governments – who, in a predictable show of performative solidarity with a ruthless ally – have bathed their tourist attractions in blue and white or the Star of David.
Go ahead, you craven enablers, show the world your true and rank colours. We will remember.
Make no mistake: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – along with his racist gang of brutish (by nature, temperament, and vernacular) cabinet ministers – have been aching, for a long, frustrating time, to abandon the let’s-teach-Palestinians-a-lethal-lesson spasms of violence in favour of the much more satisfying wholesale destruction of the Gaza Strip.
The monstrous plan is as plain as Netanyahu’s wretched character: Be done with Gaza by erasing Gaza.
Anyone, anywhere, in any forum who denies this fact is either a liar, blind – or willfully, happily, and comfortably both.
This is not “righteous” payback or vengeance. It is – I repeat, for the legion of complicit hacks and stenographers who, remarkably, have never noticed, let alone given a damn, about the perpetual suffering and trauma of Palestinians – a genocide.
If my blunt indictment stings, I challenge any of the historically illiterate columnists and American TV news celebrities who have rushed to Israel to burnish their credentials as “foreign correspondents” – with their hairstylists, makeup artists and writers in tow – to disabuse me, and much more importantly, the Palestinian diaspora and their allies, of our belief that a murderous genocide is unfolding in that besieged enclave.
These insufferable hypocrites are again tarring Palestinians as “evil predators” while praising Israelis as “solicitous saints” for warning grateful Palestinians in Gaza that they’re going to kill them en masse.
These fawning Israel loyalists have likely not once stepped inside the barbed-wired walls and fences that encircle Gaza or interviewed any of the millions of human beings who, for generations, have endured the loss, theft, deprivations, indignities, humiliations, and, of course, lethal ferocity committed by an apartheid state.
It is a familiar, surreal minstrel show that reduces an old, complex story into a pat, easy-to-digest clash between black and white for countless equally callow, geography-allergic Americans who are convinced that carrying a passport is “woke”.
The white hats – the Israelis – are always the innocent victims. The black hats – the Palestinians – are always the guilty perpetrators.
Hence, the cavalier disregard for the almost incomprehensible human consequences of Israel’s blatant annulment of that, by now, silly, anachronistic term: international law.
Stop the stuff of life – food and water – from getting into captive Gaza. Fine.
Stop fuel and electricity from being delivered to homes and hospitals. Fine.
Bomb United Nations schools sheltering desperate Palestinian families from the incessant carpet bombing. Fine.
Attack ambulances to bar them from ferrying mangled children to darkened hospitals where they require urgent care. Fine.
Unleash white phosphorous to burn Palestinians to the bone. Fine.
Dispense with the canard of “precision strikes” to prevent “civilian casualties” and revel, instead, in turning Gaza into Fallujah, circa 2005. Fine.
Seal the prison that is Gaza tighter to make escape and hope impossible. Fine.
Then demand that 1.1 million people move to nowhere within hours or face, in all likelihood, a certain death. Fine.
On appalling cue, the usual gallery of preening presidents and prime ministers has deplored the atrocities committed by the black hats – while applauding, as a necessary and welcomed rebuttal, the atrocities committed by the white hats.
So please, would fantasists stop imploring the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague to do something, anything, to hold “both parties”, including, Israel, to account?
It has not happened and will not happen because the ever-compliant ICC knows that it must not offend, and will not offend, the powers that be in Washington, DC who run the whole fraudulent farce.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu – who, just a few weeks ago, was excoriated for being an indicted crook facing a corruption trial on a slew of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust charges as well as having an authoritarian’s DNA – has been rehabilitated by US President Joe Biden and obsequious company as the Middle East’s shining avatar of resolve, resilience and morality.
Such is the diseased “moral” compass of Biden and his pedestrian confederates in London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Canberra and Ottawa.
Still, it’s hardly surprising that feral colonial powers – given their hideous record of killing and disfiguring so many innocents, in so many scarred places – would offer their blanket endorsement to another colonial power responsible for killing and disfiguring so many innocent Palestinians in Gaza and beyond yesterday, today and tomorrow.
But know this: Biden et al do not speak for millions of citizens who they purport to represent, but who will continue to stand steadfast with unbowed Palestinians and their just and humane cause.
Despite all the nonsense and posturing by the “international community” about “resolving the crisis through diplomacy”, this dystopian-like horror has been the “end game” all along: pulverise every square inch of Gaza and its people into dust and memory.
The risible “two-state” solution is a sick illusion promoted by slick, Ivy-league-educated diplomats like US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the other Israeli war-crime apologists who preceded him – fused, as they were and are, to their “partners” in Tel Aviv like conjoined twins.
Blinken has travelled to Israel at the behest of his boss to “greenlight” genocide. We will remember that, too.
A malignant regime, motivated by a poisonous combination of ultra-nationalism and fanaticism, knows that its sinister goal is in tantalizing sight.
There will be more horrors to come. But Palestinians will not be broken. They will persevere and prevail. It will be hard and take time, but they will rebuild” (CONCLUDED).
Andrew Mitrovika, the author of these powerful words, has hit the nail on the head.
His views and indeed his conclusion that genocide is indeed being committed in Gaza represents the thinking of millions of people all over the world.
Western leaders and all those that are still lost in their vain and self-inflicted fantasy of “no evidence of genocide in Gaza” should read his powerful and insightful words carefully and come to the conclusion that what is happening in Gaza is downright evil, ought to be described for what it is and roundly condemned.
Claiming that there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza is like saying that there is no evidence of the holocaust in Nazi Germany and that there is no evidence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade or slavery in America, Europe and the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th century.
It is like saying that there is no evidence of the hideous atrocities, horrific barbarity, daylight robbery, psychological torture, emotionel abuse, wholesale deprivation, unalloyed humiliation, shameless graft and mind-boggling pillaging that the western colonial powers of Great Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Germany unleashed and foisted on their former colonies in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East.
It is like saying that King Louis 11 of Belgium did not kill 10 million Congolese Africans, that Vladimer Lenin and Josef Stalin did not kill 25 million Russians, that Pol Pot did not kill 2 million Cambodians, that the Hutus of Rwanda did not kill 1 million Tutsis, that the Turks did not kill 1 million Armenians and that the Americans did not literally exterminate the Red Indian population in their country.
It is like saying that there was no terror attack in New York on 9/11 and that there was no terror attack in Moscow a few weeks ago.
It is like saying that the Spanish did not eliminate a quarter of the native and indigenous population of South America, that the British did not wipe out millions of the Irish and 3 million Bengali Indians, that the Serbs did not murder 20,000 thousand Bosnians and that Argentina did not exterminate its entire black population.
It is like saying that 20 million people were not killed in WW 1, that 50 million people were not killed in WW11 and that America did not drop a nuclear bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands.
It is like saying that the ethnic cleansing of 80,000 of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia by the Germans never took place and it is like saying that the mass murder of 3 million Igbos by Nigeria never took place.
It is like saying that the war that is being waged in Gaza by Israel is against Hamas and not against the Palestinian people.
It is like saying that the war started on October 7th after the attack on Israel by Hamas and not 75 years ago after the unleashing of the horrific Nakba on the Palestinians and the illegal occupation of their land by the Jews.
It is like saying that the Israelis have always owned all the land in Gaza and that the Palestinians never lived in or had a historical stake in it.
It is like saying that the Zionists did not murder hundreds of innocent and defenceless Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin.
It is like saying that the Christian Falange Lebanese militia, with the full support of the Israelis, did not butcher thousands of Palestinian Muslims in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.
It is like saying that the 1948 “Nakba” in which 750,000 Palestinians were butchered and ethnically cleansed, forced from their homes and scattered and displaced by the Zionists never took place.
It is like saying that the terror attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7th in which 1000 Jews were killed never took place.
Finally it is like saying that the air strike by the Israeli Airforce on Eid in which three sons and three grandchildren of the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, were targetted and murdered never took place.
Those that insist on perpetuating the monstrous mendacity that there is no genocide in Gaza and that indulge in such egregious falsehood, self-serving perfidy and outrageous lies are not only malicious, mischevous, malevolent, ignorant and sociopathic but also totally and completely insensitive, misinformed and possibly insane.
They look but they refuse to see and they listen but refuse to hear.
They have no truth in them and they are nothing but ferral psychopaths and intellectual barbarians.
They are a coven of dark, dangerous and deviant manipulators and an unholy gathering of shameless and sinister cultists, charlatans and gangsters who are in the grip, power and service of satan.
That is precisely why many refer to them as agents of the dark forces and acolytes of the principalities and powers that rule our world and refer to the Zionists whose interests they seek to further and protect as founding fathers of the Synagogue of Satan and devil worshippers.
For the record there has never been a war in history like the one in Gaza in which 80% of the country has been decimated, 100% of the population displaced and 50% of those that have been killed are children.
In his contribution, Christian Hedges, an American jourmalist, whilst on his assignment and coverage of the war in Gaza said “children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered but never have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport”.
All this and yet the American Secretary of Defence, General Lloyd Austin, has the effontry and nerve to proclaim that there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza!
Someone needs to ask this misguided and facetious man just how many Palestinians need to be slaughtered before it fits into his definition of genocide!
It is painfully obvious that he has a low intelligence quotient, he has a myopic and shallow mind and that his reasoning and logic is little better than that of a village idiot.
Only the cruel can deny the horror of Gaza and claim that what we are witnessing there today is anything other than mass murder, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes, collective punishment, starvation and genocide all of which constitute specific and clear violations of both international law and the law of war and all of which have made Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Ministers, his Intelligence Chiefs and his Military Commanders candidates for prosecution at the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
Those that claim that this is not the case are devious-minded specious liars and blood-lusting warmongers who are feeding fat on the blood of the women and children of Gaza and who deserve to burn in hell.
Not only have Joe Biden and his entire Government become enablers of the crime of genocide but, given the fact that they are providing vast sums of money and deadly arms to the Zionist state to achieve their bloody enterprise, they are also complicit in it.
The blood of 35,000 innocent and defenceless Palestinians, including 15,000 children, are on their collective hands.
This blood will cry to God in heaven for vengeance and speak against them into eternity.
Joe Biden and his administration will ultimately regret the blind, irrational, inexplicable, indefensible, unjustifiable, unrestrained, unconditional and relentless support that they continue to offer the Jewish state which, given the events of the last six months, has transformed itself into a murderous, totalitarian fascist apartheid settler- colonial state and a hideous enclave of bloodthirsty genocidal maniacs, child killers, mass murderers, land grabbers and vicious, cold-blooded Nazis.
It is fair to say that all the demons have left hell and now reside in Israel.
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![[OPINION] Dear Husband - Funke Egbemode](/media/k2/items/cache/96851949a5595ef30412841142383da7_XS.jpg)
Have you been wondering why things are not the way they used to be between you and your wife? Is she giving you cold shoulders instead of warmth? Hugging her pillows instead of you? Ah, you should worry. Do you have more one-word answers from her instead of full sensible sentences? She spends more time on the phone talking to people than you her husband. She spends more time on Netflix, African Magic and Zee World than she does with you. She sits with the children in their room while you also watch football or play video games in another part of the house? Then, she waits for you to sleep off before crawling into bed. Trouble is brewing. A storm is gathering and you should worry.
You are steadily, totally becoming your wife’s flat mate. You are losing her. She has simply stopped arguing with you. She agrees with everything you decide, instead of trying to state her points or correct your errors or mistakes. You are in trouble and you know it. She is leaving you while living with you. Your relationship is now on silent mode and trust me, if you value that marriage, you will swallow your ego, eat your pride and roll up your sleeves to repair what’s left of your home.
Let’s look at some little foxes that trouble homes and marriages quietly, smoothly, silently until everything is all done and gone. Let us be frank, there are old fashioned wives, raised by traditional mothers who deal with bad husbands and bad marriages without raising their voices. Today, we will not focus on their old-school ways. No. Today is about the type of husbands who push their women and marriage into the silent mode.
1. The Mean Landlord
This is the husband who bullies and threatens his wife with quit notice at every turn. Here are some of his favorite refrains;
“I’ll soon send you back to your parents. "
“Keep talking to me like that and you will be needing another accommodation soon”.
“In my house? Do you want me to kick you out”?
“If you close from work late tomorrow, don’t come back here”
There are husbands who stop at just the threats. But there are those who go all the way. These are the ones who lock their wives out, throw their wives belongings in the rain at every opportunity, after very quarrel.
If you, dear husband, treat your wife like this, any number of things can happen to you, and believe me, the silent treatment is the least of them. Remember, not all wives are brought up to nicely stay on their lane in a bad marriage.
2. The Unprotective Lover.
This one wants to be called “Lord” but can’t protect his clan and family. He just doesn’t know that being called husband goes beyond whisking out your whip and giving your woman the best time in-between the sheets. He’s clueless when it comes to shielding his wife from the elements, and I don’t mean the rain, wind and sun.
Bro, your mother loves you to bits and this is the first time she’s sharing you with another woman, your wife, that is. She will lovingly want to continue to protect her son, because that is what she has always done. It’s part of her job description. She will lovingly try to elbow your beautiful wife out of the way, even out of her kitchen. She may even want to continue to shop for you, pick your ties and sit with you for hours after work. She does not hate your wife, she is just being Mummy. But your wife is the Lady of the Manor, this new manor. Not your Mum, not your sisters. Nicely, gently tell your family that your wife is the First Lady. Do not allow her in-laws to frustrate her, talk down on her, make her feel like an alien in her own space. Be the crown that you ought to be. Don’t let her withdraw into her shell. Don’t let her rechannel her love into her job or business. Don’t let her stop being the girl you married. You won’t like the other version of your wife. Protect the version you married, please.
3. The Financial Bully
This one starves his wife and family of comfort, just to prove that he’s the boss and breadwinner. Every quarrel has financial implications. Heard of a man who went to lock up his wife’s shop and shut down her business because she was beginning to do well and could pick her bills herself. The guy felt he was losing his grip on her. So he shut her business. After all, he set it up. The financial bully if offended meted out such punishment as going to work with the keys of all the cars in the house.. His wife must jump “okada” and “Keke Napep”. That’s her punishment for being rude, for talking back, not getting dinner ready on time or allowing the househelp to make his soup.
4. The "Pagan' Husband
This one leaves all things spiritual to his wife. All he wants to do is make money and provide comfort for his family. He believes money answers all things. Good guy. Good provider. He’s lucky if his wife is “spiritual” and always around to raise the children the right and godly way. But if the wife is like him, the children are left to societal vagaries and peer pressure. Then he just wakes up one day and find out that the child he named ‘Samuel’ is now an Atheist. The one he named Kabir has 10 piercings, wears lipstick and hides to eat and smoke during Ramadan. This husband is simply unavailable and his comeuppance, his amen junction is usually very traumatic later in life. Because he throws money at his problems, his wife and children tend to seek comfort far from him, many times in places and people he’d never touch with any kind of pole.
There are many things a man should know before going into marriage. There are many things fathers should teach their sons, little things mothers must impress on their boys. Though they may look little, however, they are lessons that must be leant because they can make or mar the best of marriages and good intentions.
For instance, the financial bully most likely will find out that his wife, after years of frustration, has built a four flats somewhere and has a secret business. The mean landlord may one day kick his wife out and find out she does not come begging with her friends and family. She just moves out and move on.
So which of these groups do you belong? Which of these sins are you guilty of?
![[OPINION] BBC, Betta Edu, and her Ministry of Corruption - Farooq Kperogi](/media/k2/items/cache/4d731655cad6665d14294c974a32992b_XS.jpg)
THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) aroused the rage of Nigerians this week when it revealed in its periodic newsletter called “EFCC Alert” (which it shared with news organizations on Monday) that it had recovered up to 30 billion naira of the money allegedly stolen by suspended Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation minister Betta Edu.
The rage wasn’t directed at the EFCC, of course. It was directed at Betta Edu for the deficiency of morality it must take for her to steal that much money in just six months of being a minister. The rage also comes from people’s extrapolation of how much unconscionable theft of our public wealth must be going on in this administration undetected. What sort of moral climate conduces to such stratospheric pillaging of the public till without a tinge of compunction or fear of consequences?
Just when Nigerians were roiling in the storm of EFCC’s revelations, Edu’s lawyers denied them and threatened to sue the BBC for publishing them, even though scores of news outlets also published the same story.
Her lawyers allege that the story about the recovery of N30 billion from her and the investigation of 50 banks connected to her, which we read inseverallegacy and digital-native news outlets, was repurposed from the BBC.
Well, that’s not accurate. As I indicated earlier, EFCC’s bulletin, called the “EFCC Alert,” is the source of the story, and it was shared with multiple news organizations, including the BBC.
If the information about the extortionate amount of money allegedly recovered from Edu is false, the blame for this should go to the EFCC, not the BBC—or, for that matter, any news site.
In order to write this column, I searched for the EFCC Alert to see what exactly it contains. I would have reached the same conclusions about Betta Edu as the BBC and other news organizations did if I were still in the news business.
Here’s the original, verbatim wording from the “EFCC Alert” that informed the BBC story:
“Update on Betta Edu investigation. We have laws and regulations guiding our investigations. Nigerians will also know that they are already on suspension, and this is based on the investigations we have done, and President Bola Tinubu has proved to Nigerians that he is ready to fight corruption.
“Moreover, concerning this particular case, we have recovered over N30 billion, which is already in the coffers of the Federal Government.
“It takes time to conclude investigations; we started this matter less than six weeks ago. Some cases take years to investigate. There are so many angles to it, and we need to follow through with some of the discoveries that we have seen. Nigerians should give us time on this matter; we have professionals on this case, and they need to do things right. There are so many leads here and there.
“As it is now, we are investigating over 50 bank accounts that we have traced money into. That is no child’s play. That’s a big deal. Then you ask about my staff strength.
“And again, we have thousands of other cases that we are working on. Nigerians have seen the impact of what we have done so far, by way of some people being placed on suspension and by way of the recoveries that we have made. You have seen that the programme itself has been suspended. We are exploring so many discoveries that we have stumbled upon in our investigation.
“If it is about seeing people in jail, well, let them wait. Everything has a process to follow. So Nigerians should wait and give us the benefit of the doubt.”
It’s entirely possible that the EFCC meant that in the past six weeks, it has recovered 30 billion naira from multiple corruption cases of which Betta Edu’s is one. There are many clues to that in the “alert.”Perhapsthe EFCC chairman has challenges with articulate, elegant, and clear communication in the English language.
However, in the absence of any countervailing facts, it’s reasonable to assume that the EFCC Alert meant that 30 billion naira was recovered from Betta Edu and that more than 50 bank accounts belonging to her are being investigated.
After all, the title of the bulletin is “Update on Betta Edu.” It also talks of “suspension” (and Edu is the only public official we know of that is on suspension on account of corruption), although it uses the pronoun “they” to refer to the subject of suspension, implying that it could be more than one person.
Nonetheless, in referencing the recovery of 30 billion naira, the EFCC Alert talks about “this particular case”; it doesn’t say“these particular cases.”So, it’s wholly within the bounds of reason to conclude that “this particular case” refers to the title of the news bulletin: “Update on Betta Edu investigation.”
I hope the EFCC will clarify this issue for us—and, of course, be more careful in its public communication in future.
But it doesn’t really matter if Betta stole 30 billion naira in six months and salted away money in 50 bank accounts. The truth is that the ministry she supervised is a cesspool of some of the most fetid and audacious corruption that Nigeria has ever seen since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999.
Right from its inception, it was conceived as the hotbed of graft, as the featherbed of in-your-face venality. Its origins are traceable to the Muhammadu Buhar regime’s National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), which was conceived to putatively contain poverty and deprivation in Nigeria.
NSIP had within it such programs as the N-Power Programme, the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme, and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), which is made up of the MarketMoni, FarmerMoni, and TraderMoni schemes.
Former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo headed NSIP. But the Buhari cabal later realized that NSIP was a prolificcash cow that lined several pockets and missed its supposed targets. I was one of the earliest people approached to expose what the cabal was convinced was humongous corruption in the NSIP that ran into tens of billions of naira—complete with what seems like fool-proof documentary evidence.
As I said at the time, I refused to be used to amplify the internal discord of the common oppressors of the Nigerian people. When Osinbajo was using TraderMoni to induce poor people to vote for Buhari, the cabal had no problem. They only discovered his “corruption” after the fact.
So, they reached out to other fringe sources and figures to give publicity to the corruption in NSIP, which caused Osinbajo to threaten to sue a whole bunch of people. They achieved their aim of calling attention to the rot in NSIP, which justified taking it away from the vice president’s office and constituting it as a separate ministry.
Thus, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development was born. The Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration renamed it as the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
Because it was conceived in corruption, born in more corruption, and nourished in even more corruption, it can’t be anything but corrupt. It has become the posterchild for bizarre, eye-watering, consequence-free corruption.
Recall that on April 10, 2020, Maryam Uwais, then Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment, told Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily program that she couldn’t account for the billions that she and the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs putatively gave to weak, poor, and vulnerable Nigerians to ease the hurt of the coronavirus pandemic because, “Those who benefit from the conditional cash transfer of the Federal Government as palliative to cushion the effects of the lockdown caused by the deadly Coronavirus don’t want to be addressed as poor people. That is why we can’t publish their names.”
For her part, Sadiya Umar Farouq, Uwais’ superior, turned heads when she said she expended billions to feed schoolkids who weren’t in school because of COVI-19. Betta Edu was merely walking a well-trodden path in the ministry.
If Tinubu wants to be taken seriously, he should not only outright terminate Edu’s appointment as a minister, but he should also scrap the entire ministry she heads. That ministry has no reason to exist.
![[OPINION] Onitsha Port and Other Matters - Okey Ikechukwu](/media/k2/items/cache/e4c1845b193271e1759c17dca80a820a_XS.jpg)
The conversation about an Inland Port facility in Onitsha, Anambra State is not New. And it came up last week at a private gathering. Many will recall that the ‘port’ was formally commissioned by late Dr Alex Ekwueme, Vice President to late Alhaji Shehu Shagari. It never really functioned in real terms. It is still the pet dream of many and all issues pertaining to it are presumably being discussed on the platforms feasibility, economic common sense and basic marine science and knowledge of regional ecology.of plain and verifiable aquascience.
We submit here that the project is a desirable one. It is also feasible from the angle of provision of port infrastructure. It has, in addition, been routinely declared desirable from the standpoint of those who are quick to point to the volume of container traffic from Lagos to Onitsha and other parts of the South East. But isn’t it possible that this is already beginning to look like a White Elephant Project that would be counted as a major investment in the South East, if successfully executed? Just asking.
What needs to be re-evaluated, perhaps, fully is its feasibility from the angle of security of goods and route; as well as its viability from the angle of the simple required maritime ecosystem. For some people, the mere fact that it was conceived to ease trade, reduce the cost of imported goods in South East markets, create jobs and generally enable the South East and environs realize their full economic potential makes it an eternally important economic infrastructure.
Papers have been written on it over the years, with Environmental impact assessments (EIAs), cross references with nations that had to devise means of raising water levels when needed; and a near-consensus among experts on the economic benefits.
One of the major overlooked, and largely unacknowledged, problem is the probability of not ever really getting enough water for the primary business of a port. You need water for a river port and the Onitsha end of the river Niger does not have enough. Dredging is a good idea, but it will give you a bigger ditch and wipe out the means of livelihood of water dependent local economies.
The confirmed practice elsewhere, of “gating” and later discharging the water to secure enough depth, is usually on the cards whenever this matter is on the table. All things considered, the challenges that come to mind regarding the proposed Onitsha River Port are: (1) How the river dams along the Niger, Benue and their many tributaries have reduced available water at onitsha by over 68%; (2) Possibly unrealistic projections about the prospects of the project; (3) The credibility of some of the existing Environmental Impact Assessment (AIE) reports, especially against the background of climate change and other environmental factors; (4) Direct politicization of the economic value of a river port in Onitsha, as against Port Harcourt and Calabar.
We must also consider the following; (1) the game plans of individuals who wish to upgrade their relevance by fighting to secure vital “federal project for Ndigbo”, while sometimes knowing that it will either not work or that it will not bring the alleged benefits, and, also; (2) The questionable security along the inland waterways, especially with active militants, Egbesu Boys, and freelance oil bunkerers, creek-dependent mischief makers and others. Will the vessels really make their way through the creeks, while vehicles on our roads in broad daylight and even trains are unsafe?
Some of the discussions about Onitsha Port actually remind one of discussions about electricity supply a few years ago. The Federal Government was then building massive gas turbines for electricity supply. Everyone was talking about the mega watts that would be added to the national grid after the power-generating turbines were completed. But no provisions were made for gas. The then minister confessed at a private forum that there was also no “gas plan” and that much of our gas was already mortgaged to foreign customers. When he was pointedly asked: “So if the turbines are ready now, as we speak, they won`t contribute a single megawatt to national power supply, because no arrangements have been made for gas”? The shocking answer was “Yes”!
So those who are looking forward to a vibrant port in Onitsha should think of a “water plan”. The dams built across the rivers Niger and Benue, and their tributaries, over the years have reduced the overall water volume. There are now tiny islands, and unprecedented siltation, at the Onitsha end of the river. While the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources is serious about irrigation and dry season agriculture, it must remember that the long stretch of the Niger across Kebbi State, itself a veritable food basket unknown to many, takes more that its fair share of the needed water.
We may digress a bit here, to urge the Ministry of Environment to work more closely with the Agriculture ministry and the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), because of the current global response to the devastating impact of dams on people and the environment within the past 60 years. It is a fact of our collective experience, across all continents, that dams have altered ecosystems, ruined food chains and obliterated local economies for hundreds of thousands of kilometres of waterways all over the world.
The confluence of some cold rivers with warmer ones have been permanently altered worldwide, while some flowing waters have been made to stagnate and create saturated water that wiped out fresh water aquatic life. Some rivers are now fragments of their former selves and others have dried up completely, as can be seen when you drive from Enugu, through Anyigba, to Abuja.
It is on record, for instance, that massive fish populations were killed on the Snake River, Idaho, in the US by dam construction; leading to the decimation of salmon species, among others. An Idaho State Senator, Frank Church, who originally supported dam building later rose in defense of natural waterways and spoke against dams. It was the same Frank Church who, after he saw the damage to the environment, eventually wrote the Wild and Scientific Rivers Act, passed in 1968.
No one can deny historic significance of the Suez Canal and its economic value to this day, but the general global concern today about the fate of streams, rivers and other natural waterways comes from the realization that long-term damage is being done to ecosystems, following the unsustainable violation of natural habitats by damming. The negative impacts on the global food web and even the climate are staring us in the face everywhere.
Available global evidence shows that one of the main reasons freshwater fish numbers have declined all over the world, leading to a loss of 80% of fresh water wild life since 1970, is the damming of rivers. Let us recall the verdict of the World Commission on Dams, in 2000: that dams had displaced between 40 – 80 million people, making it the single human activity with the greatest capacity to create Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
Even in the US, the initial excitement that greeted the epidemic of dam building in the 1940s and 1950s was followed by fierce and bitter battles between environmentalists and dam builders. The issue at the time was that dams blocked and impounded the waters of some of the most important rivers of the American west.
It was already established, years back, that over 22,000 kilometers of free-flowing rivers in the US are protected by Frank Church`s Act.
But our waterways are available for all comers. The fate of communities displaced by dams all over Nigeria today is rarely a topical issue. What does NIWA really do today? How many people still take a ride on sections of the River Benue that were once used for water transportation? Who drank up the water and created empty water channels and dry rivers with massive bridges between Lokoja and Anyigba, and all over Nigeria? I am certainly not the one!
Let those who, threatening to build a river port in Onitsha remember that there is also a scaling up of plans to build more dams across waterways that discharge into the Niger trough. Let them also not forget that this is happening years after the US came upfront on a campaign to “decommission” many dams. Recorded successes in this regard, with measurable positive environmental impact, include removal of the dam on the Elwha river in Washington State. One year after the last dam was removed in 2014, the Chinook species of fish, which had not been seen there for more than 100 years reappeared.
More than 4,000 Chinook spawners were counted above the former dam site. It is also in the US that people are taking proactive steps to reclaim their lives, by removing dams that interfered with their ecosystems and way of life. The Mohawks, in New York State, recently removed the Hogansburg dam on the St. Regis River, thus becoming the first US sub social group to remove a federal dam. This action of the Mohawks opened up nearly 700 kilometres of stream, liberated the natural habitat of migratory fish and restored many local economies.
After the last dam was removed from the River Elwha, for instance, river fish populations flourished. In a world where Brazil’s environmental agency has suspended the licensing process for the Sao Luiz Tapajos dam, the second largest hydroelectric dam in the country, we have no official attitude on dams. In a world where the World Bank recently suspended financial support for the Inga 3 dam on the River Congo, and where Chile`s largest power generator, Endesa, stopped six hydropower projects, we have no position on dams. Even the Chinese have stopped their plans to construct a series of dams across the country`s last free-flowing rivers, the Nujiang. The Peruvian authorities also suspended the construction of several dams across the Marañón River at about the same time that Geute Conservation Sur, an organization dedicated to the defense of ecosystems with high conservation value, is providing legal analysis to develop a new law for river protection in Chile.
The concern about water and free waterways is such that the world is focusing on transboundary cooperation between nations for conscious and deliberate management of the ecosystem and water volume throughout the length of major rivers. Are we doing the same in our country? The conflict between China and Thailand over development on the Lancang/Mekong River says a lot about what is going on all over the world in connection with waterways today. To think that the government of New Zealand has gone so far as to “recognize” the Whanganui river by giving it the same constitutional rights as a person? This was done as a way of showing that free-flowing rivers have great impact on food security, water access, biodiversity conservation and propagation of the overall global ecology.
In sum, and bringing the matter back home, let us think of think feasibility, viability and advisability of the port; as we think of dams, the environment, the disappearance of river-dependent local economies and the collapse or conspicuous shrinking of fish markets in various parts of the country.
![[OPINION] Dangote and a War Foretold - Dare Babarinsa](/media/k2/items/cache/0cda82f9eff95d2e5c33444b54ab51d7_XS.jpg)
It would be good if we all realise the truth that nobody is going to build our country for us. As of now, the country needs to be built, brick and mortar, little by little. It is a good sign that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has set up an Economic Team that looks quite formidable. No longer would the crucial business of the economy, the most important aspect of building our country, be left only in the hands of politicians. Looking at the team makes one to have the confidence that the government is serious about its self-imposed assignment of making tomorrow better than yesterday. The new team includes such giant private-sector players like Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu, Amina Maina, Funke Okpeke, Segun Agbaje and Rasheed Sarumi.
The effect has started showing. In Nigeria, whatever goes up does not come down, except you-know-what. But the naira exchange rate to the dollar and other international currencies is going down. We also hope that the price of petroleum and allied products would also stabilise. That is the opportunity and promise that Dangote Refineries, Lagos, has offered our country. In the months ahead, we would be able to grasp the full implication of Nigeria having the largest and most modern petroleum complex in the world.
The Dangote Refinery is sitting on 180 acres of land at the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos State. It is going to be producing diesel, aviation fuel, petrol and other petroleum products. It has the capacity to process about 650,000 barrels of oil per day. When fully operational, it is expected to provide direct and indirect employment to 135,000 people in Lagos State. The refinery has cost almost 20 billion American dollars.
Already, even before the refineries start firing in all cylinders, its competitors in Europe and other theatres are jittery. Several refineries in Europe, which for some decades have been exporting petroleum products to Nigeria, are going to face a hard time. First, the Nigerian market would no longer be available for them. Second, Dangote petroleum products may also be ready to give them a good fight in the European market. This would be the first time an African company would directly threaten European companies in the theatre of Europe. There is no doubt that the months ahead would be very interesting.
However, it is not yet time for chest-beating for Nigeria. The old establishment is quite influential in the power loop of Nigeria and may pull one or two stings to make things happen here. The Dangote Group is already feeling the heat where it hurts most. For many weeks it could not buy crude oil to refine. Without crude oil, the refinery is not more than a tourist attraction. To start its operation, the Dangote refinery had been on queue with other competitors to get crude from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company plc. The NNPC has the monopoly to sell Nigeria’s crude. To get a share of the market, you have to be in the good book of the power-that-be. That is a delicate dance which the Dangote Group is learning in a hurry.
Of course, economic independence, which is more difficult and protracted than political independence, is not going to come on a platter of gold. In a recent newspaper interview, Professor Ehiedu Iweriebor of the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College of The City University of New York, defines Dangote Refinery and its related projects as the “Freedom Projects,” because of its expected impact on the Nigerian economy. “The plant would reduce Nigeria’s import dependency, its vulnerability to external pressure and also empower the country to begin to generate its own prosperity through the production and export of value-added goods rather than raw materials export,” says Iweriebor. “It means that Dangote refinery can supply refined oil to Nigeria and to parts of Africa. It will detach these regions from the dependency on Western suppliers for expensive and critical fuel supply.”
What should we expect from those whose refineries are going to shut down while the Dangote Refinery is revving into life? It would be naïve for us to expect them to do nothing. Oil is the life of the industrial societies of Europe and the Americas. In the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Arab oil producing countries started the oil embargo against the West which gave birth to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The United States and its allies threatened to take military action if the stalemate was not resolve. In the end, many Arab countries had to back down. Today, the United States has a very large military base in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, and many other countries in the Middle-East. In the wake of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, there are thousands of American troops and sailors sent to the Middle-East.
Economic consideration has been a proper pretence for war. Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq believed that the tiny kingdom of Kuwait was sabotaging his country’s interest by refusing to cooperate with Iraq at OPEC meetings on the issue of oil production quota. He also accused Kuwait of slant drilling that allowed Kuwaiti oil drilling to have access to Iraqi oil. Then he decided to invade Kuwait and the job was accomplished within 72 hours. The Western world could not imagine Saddam to be in charge of the oil fields of Iraq and Kuwait at the same time. The result was the ultimatum issued to Saddam: withdraw or face war. In 1990, Saddam faced war instead and the consequences are still with us till today. By the time of the second Iraq War in 2003, Saddam was driven out of his luxurious presidential palace and was made to have a date with the hangman.
Nigeria had faced the same kind of crisis with international oil politics. On the eve of the Nigerian Civil War, the Western World was in a dilemma about which side to support. Most of the active oil fields were in the newly proclaimed Republic of Biafra under the leadership of Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. The Federal Government, under the leadership of General Yakubu Gowon, was in charge of a larger territory, mostly without oil. Gowon realised that crucial to the war efforts was the control of the oil fields. One night, Colonel Benjamin Adekunle led a flotilla of naval ships that took his troops to the rebel held island of Bonny. Thy arrived there around 5 a.m. and took the Biafran troops by surprise. After a firefight of more than one hour, Adekunle landed on Bonny, captured the oil fields and changed the tide of the war. The victorious troops formed the core of the new Third Marine Commando Division and its leader took the sobriquet, the Black Scorpion.
This time around in 2024, firefight would not solve the problem. The challenge of a Nigerian company sending European firms out of the market in Africa and Europe is not going to be taken with folded arms. The Tinubu Economic Team needs to draw up contingency plans for this eventuality. We have seen what is happening on the international air routes with the new muscles of Air Peace, the largest and most capable Nigerian Air Carrier. Suddenly, the foreign airlines who have resulted into a price-war, struggling to disrupt the emerging leadership of Air peace on the international routes. The dogfight in the sky promises to be interesting and messy.
The lesson is that we are capable of building our country. It is wrong for us to expect others to help us do the job even when we wrongly believe we can pay. The Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, helped Mao Zedong to power in the Chinese Civil War which ended with the victory of the communists on October 1, 1949. However, when the relationship between China and the USSR deteriorated, Soviet engineers removed the rail-tracks they had already laid across China in order to disrupt the Chinese economic programme. China responded with the campaign for self-reliance and built its own rail system, its cars, its air-craft and its aircraft carrier. Chinese built China. Let us build ours.