Alan Louis Charles Bullock (1912-2004) was one of the foremost British historians. His book, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny”, caught the attention of the world for its exhaustiveness and pondering on the meaning of evil.  He said: “If evil means anything in this world, it means the corruption of people to behave in an inhuman way.” He would know. He was reported seeing the most obvious evidence of evil in the Nazi death camps. Of course, since Nazi days, the world has witnessed comparative horrors even though Nuremberg trials were intended to prevent subsequent such mass killings. Hate and its manifestation was let lose in some other places in what was to be known, for example, as Bosnian Serb massacre or the genocide in Rwanda. Can we easily forget 9/11 which anniversary was marked only last week suffused with sad and terrifying memories of the attack on the World Trade Towers in New York by Osama Bin Laden’s minions? The establishment of the United Nations Organization today known simply as the United Nations (UN), succeeding the League of Nations, followed to forge understanding among nations another attempt to prevent future holocaust. The UN charter, therefore, sets out to maintain international peace and security; to protect human rights; deliver humanitarian aid; and support sustainable development and Climate Action. How far has the UN gone in achieving these laudable objectives, especially in checking evil and what would have happened if the UN had not existed? The 193-member states are having the yearly meeting at present in New York during which speeches are being made and voluminous papers are ritually presented.

How far we human beings and organizations, global or regional, have gone in proving right Prophet Isaiah’s prediction and warning unwarranted remains to be seen. The great prophet had said: “Take counsel together and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: For God is with us.” God being referred to in the prophecy is the Holy Spirit, the Will of God and Whose Name is Imanuel. All in Christendom are quick to tell us that we are in the Age of the Holy Spirit; the proverbial End-Time and He is to appear when mankind has reached its wit’s end. We now know through the enlightenment of these times that the signs of His time comprise perplexities, distrust and conferences that lead to nowhere. In his exceedingly invaluable work, A Gate Opens, Herbert Vollmann says: “It is the great time of perplexity, in which one conference follows another, when distrust is everywhere, unrest and great uneasiness, when hopeless confusion spreads ever more.” He goes on: “…it is a time when it becomes physically manifest that nothing that is not resolved and carried out according to the Will of God can last; all else must perish, ‘it must come to nought.’”

Horrors of death are in all parts of the world. Only on Tuesday, a family of four was shot dead in their home in Illinois. Between our own South East and Middle Belt, 38 soldiers were killed in less than a month. The devastations resulting from the Ukraine- Russian war and the war in Sudan continue. Imagine it: There have been 174 school shootings with injuries in the United States since 2018; 15 with injuries or deaths last year, the most gruesome since Education Week publication began tracking the incidents since 2018. The statistics was 35 in 2021; 10 in 2020; 24 each in 2019 and 2018. Permissiveness is on the rise as well. A dress code has just been introduced in the United States Senate which allows whoever among the Senators to wear shorts, jeans and shirt on the floor of the Senate. Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach, commenting said: “It bothers me big time. You get people walking around in shorts; that doesn’t fly with me.” A lady Senator, Shelly More from West Virginia called the relaxed rules “terrible.” Another lady Senator mocking the Republicans that control the Upper Chamber on the rule, said: “I plan to wear a bikini.”

Many a man can’t but wonder: Where does evil come from? The question arises from a conclusion borne out of conviction that evil does exist. Lance Morrow, the distinguished journalist and columnist of Time Magazine spent some time reflecting on the nature of evil and to what end is it perpetrated. In what was captioned, “Evil: An Investigation,” he said of Bosnia which he visited in 1992,   “… it struck me at that time as an extremely evil place. It struck me as an atmosphere of evil, evil has descended upon this place. And I had a palpable sense that people were doing terrible things.” In one of his essays on Evil, he asks: “Is there more evil now, or less evil than it was five years ago, or five centuries ago?”

Evil is certainly on the rise, and it will go on escalating and soulless until it burns itself out, until its minions exterminate themselves. Man has always wondered about where evil comes from. But reflected as he has on the question, the answer seems ever elusive. Some believe that, like good, evil is a Creation work without which life on earth would be unchallenging, drab and monstrous. They equate both poles of the good-evil continuum with the day-night counterpoise. Some others assume that evil came into the world with the fall of Lucifer, a once wondrous beauty to behold, who was actually charged with the supervision of the flowering of man in this world, but who went his way and dragged a great many weaklings to the murky swamps. Very few, it would appear, seek the roots of a solution in man and the exercise of his free will, that inalienable attribute of his spiritual nature which obliges him to live the way he wishes, a choice for which he bears personal responsibility — however, an attribute without which he will not be man.

Good portends beauty, luminousity and lightness, but evil scum, darkness and heaviness. The fact that each goes by a different name suggests different ancestry. For  the name expresses the nature and essence of the bearer. Good, therefore, cannot give rise to evil nor can evil come out of good as is assumed in some circles, since like begets like or, put differently birds of the same feather flock together.

Creation is a work, which like all works, natural or man-made, is not without a purpose. The Author of the Creation work stands outside His work as an artist outside his carving or painting. But His work bears His Will, in this case to provide an opportunity for the flowering of the human of the human species. After all, does a seed germinate and come to flower which is not immersed in the soil under the right conditions of temperature, moisture, air and nutrients? Creation lives, sustained by radiation connections with its Author. In these connections lie mediated powers which the growing seed grains may tap for their strengthening. The human spirit seed grain stood pure in the beginning, using this pure power aright and reaping bountiful beautiful harvests in the Law which obliges reciprocal experiencing in the excise of the free will. But that was before. Due to various reasons, the knowledge of how to tap aright was lost and consequently his harvest like sowing turned evil.
That knowledge of how to tap aright was simultaneously lost  with the eclipsing of the knowledge of Creation which arose from the Fall of Man. Man fell when he cut off himself from all help with self-inflicted damage to his pathfinder. Man, who as his language admonishes him, is not his body. Man whose body is his tool is a spirit. The body is the tool or vehicle of the spirit and the spirit manifests through the body. It was willed that it affects the body through powerful radiations, impressed through the blood system on the hind brain from the connecting point with the body at the solar plexus. The hind brain is the spiritually receptive part of the brains. It receives messages in pictorial form and passes them on to the frontal brain or the seat of the intellect, as I explained last week. The frontal brain decodes and makes earthly meaning out of the pictures such as dreams. The frontal brain draws from its environment in reverse manner. Man is in a state of balance when both parts of the brains are functional. When as is the case today, one is over-cultivated at the expense of the other, the equilibrium is lost and man is cut off from promptings, guidance or information from higher Light Realms. The spirit is trapped in materiality which negates the purpose of his sojourn on earth — a spiritualized and complete man, the man who, according to higher knowledge, “has furthering and ennobling effect on the whole Gross Material Creation.” That is the secret of the seemingly inexplicated material suffocation confronting us human beings today. With severance from help, man begins to reason upside down which may be expressed eloquently and for which he invites applause, but is empty, lacking in upbuilding substance.

The fall of man happened when the frontal and back parts of his brains developed disproportionately, the frontal but more known as big brain bigger from overuse, the back or small brain atrophied from little or no use. He thereby went ‘out of balance’.  Nature loves symmetry balance. We do not speak of big eye and a small eye, a big arm and a small one. Likewise, a time there was when both parts of the brain were of equal size. A reminder of that time plays back even today at a definite stage in the development of the forming body in the womb which growth rapidly traverses in nine or so months all epochs of human history. In a state of mental balance, the inhabitant of the body intuitively draws higher and noble features from connections with his high origin. It can be seen from the foregoing that to trace the origin of evil, we must permit ourselves knowledge of other correlation of life. When a person does good, thinks aright to benefit others, his goodness is reinforced by rays from luminous realms in On High. The author of goodness thus becomes strengthened in goodness, happy, unfettered by pressure, and joyous and full of warmth. But an impure thought brings deposit on the soul, casts shadows and darkness around it. The thought is strengthened through attraction from similarly unworthy conduct by others. The author, connected by radiation threads, is linked with his dark thoughts. The expanded shadows envelop him, and increase with every unworthy act. And a time comes when the soul becomes dark such that it is cut off from help and enlightenment. He is completely on his own, impervious to correction, ennobling values dead to virtues. With narrowed horizon, he becomes callous, vicious, uncaring, unfeeling, calculating and cruel. Wrong doing becomes a propensity and evil. The origin of evil thus remains with man himself who uses the neutral power streaming from On High out of self-will, to do evil and produces evil forms and correspondent ugly forms for himself in the beyond. Envy for instance produces the form of a snake as his garment with his human face impressed on the figure. For many the figures are unbelievably weird. And so the Lord, Jesus Christ, said: “It is that which cometh out of the man that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts…”

When man became dark, he became thereby a tool of Lucifer whose self-will brought about his downfall. Evil is alien to Light Realms, and totally strange to the Creator Who is an embodiment of goodness and purity and from Whom all virtues flow down to this earth. There are, therefore, no two powers, but one, which is why goodness always overcomes evil and Light triumphs over Darkness. What has made evil to be widespread is that thoughts of hate, murder, lust, avarice, debauchery, and envy to mention but a few pervade the world. Such is the conduct of a majority of mankind that he has made his world homogenous with the Dark World, called nether region more widely referred to as hell where aberrations are the order of the day. A bridge has been built down there.

As revealed in higher knowledge available on earth today, the consequences are that more than 50 percent of human beings on earth at present do not belong here. And that is talking in general terms. In many places we can reckon with more than 80 per cent. In the present time there is an awakening through the pressure of the Light on all that is dead, or in slumber such that the aberrations are animated. The higher the degree of the animatedness the higher the rate of evil, in acceleration and intensification, while the good soars, floating protectively and as if in an impenetrable armour from minions of Darkness and their arrows of evil doing. Once the majority of mankind change to doing good, concerned with what is honourable and noble, the societies will change in reciprocity, gradually at first but open afterwards, with all dross gone, in a flourish of beauty and splendour. In the words of Goethe: “He, who desires good, should first of all be good.”

In a bid to prevent the looming indefinite strike, minister of labour and employment, Simon Lalong, has expressed optimism that the issues at stake would be resolved following a crucial meeting with Vice President Kasshim Shettima.

Speaking to State House correspondents after the meeting yesterday, Lalong emphasised the government’s commitment to the welfare and prosperity of Nigerian workers.

He stated, “We have fully spent time with the Nigerian labour, and the posture of the president too is towards the welfare and prosperity for workers. We have no doubt.”

When questioned about the strike threat by the labour unions, Lalong remained reassuring, saying, “Don’t worry about that. That’s why I said it’s a friendly engagement we are doing with them. We don’t have any fears about some of the things they put forward and also the suggestions and the package of the federal government.”

On his part, the secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), George Akume, expressed confidence that labour leaders are committed to the nation’s welfare and are unlikely to resort to a strike action.

Akume emphasised the government’s determination to improve the standard of living for all Nigerians and create prosperity.

He stated, “Labour leaders are very patriotic Nigerians, and we want to believe correctly that nobody will want to cause a strike. It’s not in the interest of the workers; it’s not in the interest of anybody.”

Akume highlighted the government’s ongoing efforts to address the nation’s challenges.

He pointed out that the current government came into power on May 29th and has a tenure of four years, indicating that substantial changes cannot be expected overnight.

It’s not often that you meet Supreme Court justices, serving or retired. I first met retired Justice Sunday Akinola Akintan casually at a reception in Abuja, for my friend and radical lawyer, Yinka Olumide-Fusika, who had been admitted to the inner bar. Then, we met again about one year later, this time, through his book.

Years after his retirement from the Supreme Court in 2008, Justice Akintan wrote a book, entitled, “Reminiscences: My Journey Through Life,” which Olumide-Fusika, SAN, asked me to review. What struck me was one of Akintan’s motivations for writing the book. It was an answer to T.O.S Benson’s advice not to be buried without writing a book, which would be a waste of a life’s worth of library. 

If his lordship decided to write just to remember the road he travelled and to share his odyssey, it would still have been a good book. But it was even better because in a profession where the burden of office elevates discretion almost to the oeuvre of a cult, his desire to shed light is a valuable gift. 

There are a couple of rare insights in the book. One of them, which has assumed significant monstrosity over the years, is how the judiciary could not see that getting more and more involved in deciding electoral outcomes would drag it in the mud. 

Or maybe the judiciary saw it but decided, with a helping hand from the inner bar, to take Oscar Wilde’s advice to overcome the problem by yielding to it. And now, it’s beyond entanglement; the Bench is enmeshed!

Over 10 hours of studiously reading a judgment which five judges of the Court of Appeal must have thought was their utmost to deliver justice still left behind a trail of disenchantment, suspicion and criticisms. Not a few, rather sadly and regrettably, still believe it was the judicial equivalent of a grudge match.

As it was…

The judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) last week in the case involving the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar; Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP); and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) in which the panel dismissed the petitions against the February 25 election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has once again put the judiciary in the spotlight.

In the midst of the outrage that followed the judgment, especially among the supporters of Abubakar and Obi, I turned, once again, to Justice Akintan’s book for help to find my way through the maelstrom. And he should know. He’s seen election petitions since 1979.

It’s a measure of how we have learnt to forget that the account of the retired justice of the Supreme Court of what happened 20 years ago reads like excerpts from today’s newspapers. If we had paid any heed then, it’s unlikely that the country would be in a place today where the outcome of virtually every election depends not on who voters choose at the ballot, but on who the courts decide.

In Reminiscences, Akintan writes that one of the two most significant things that happened to him when he returned to the Port Harcourt division on a rare second tour of duty as Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeal, was dealing with matters arising from the 2003 general elections. 

There was something about the 2003 election that set his hair on edge and raked his conscience over the coals of the sacred pledge he had made to himself and his family at the beginning of his career not to stain his name. Post-election litigations up and down the country were fierce and bitter. 

But the one between ANPP’s presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari and candidate of the PDP, Olusegun Obasanjo, after the 2003 election was so bitter and so fierce that Buhari called for nationwide protests, because he said the judiciary had been compromised.

Clear, present danger

That was only a foreshadow of what was to come. As the years went by the judiciary came under increasing strain. The stakes, for politicians, got even higher. “They exposed the judges and the entire staff of the judiciary to contacts with the politicians,” Akintan writes, “with the attendant possibility of exposing them to corruption.” What was then a possibility is now a consuming danger.

Akintan was assigned 52 petitions in Port Harcourt alone. On top of that, the President of the Court of Appeal told him he had to go to Jos for eight pending governorship election petitions, which the president of the court obviously needed a trustworthy judge to handle.

To avoid contact with litigants and their lawyers, never mind the felicity of some determined folks even thinking of sending him Sallah ram directly or by proxy as we heard in a recent case in Kano, Akintan moved his base from Port Harcourt to his home town, Idanre, Ondo State.

In spite of the severe scarcity of petrol at the time, it was from Idanre that he commuted weekly to Jos through Abuja. Even in Jos, he still could not trust his driver would not be used to get him.

“Once we arrived in the court in Jos,” he recalls, “I used to collect the car ignition key from my driver to ensure there was no breach of the car being taken into town for any reason.”

According to Akintan, by the time he retired from the Supreme Court in 2008, the system had almost been overwhelmed with politicians working hand-in-gloves with lawyers to suborn elections. Trust and confidence had become casualties.

“The position grew so wild after the 2015 elections,” he writes, “that the number of election petitions far outstripped all other cases filed in all the courts in the country. Many of the senior lawyers who had cornered the very lucrative briefs from the election petitions amassed stupendous wealth.” 

Unfortunately, and in spite of the valiant efforts by a few conscientious judges still on the Bench, the cloud of suspicion has, regrettably, thickened. 

Abuja special status

Apart from Akintan’s personal decision to be different, there was something else in Reminiscences that caught my attention: the judgment in Joseph Ona & another V. Diga Romani Atenda (2000), 5 NWLR (Pt. 656) 244 in which he played a leading role. This judgment by the Court of Appeal, in my view, addressed one of the vexatious points in Obi’s petition that a candidate must have 25 percent of the votes cast in Abuja or else cannot be declared validly elected. 

Until I read the summary judgment in the book, I was under the impression that Abuja residents had two heads; that apart from having a special political status, the dichotomy between “settlers” and “indigenes” was also real.

But in the judgment in the case under reference – a case of trespass, harassment, humiliation and defamation in a land dispute – which was, in fact, referred from the High Court to the Court of Appeal for determination, the court made it clear residents of the Federal Capital Territory are by no means special.

In the words of Akintan, “It is (therefore) totally illegal for any of them to claim any special right over any other Nigerian occupier of the territory.”

Conclusion of the matter

If there is no dichotomy in the status of residents, and they have no exclusive proprietary right over and above citizens anywhere in the country, how can they claim a casting vote that holds the country to ransom at elections? It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court answers this and other questions that would come before it in the Abubakar-Obi appeal. 

What I hear former Supreme Court Justice Akintan say, clearly in Reminiscences, is that the fewer court-imposed candidates we have – and one might add, the less crooked the political parties, the election management body and the media – the better for the electoral system and the judiciary.

The People’s Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has asked the Supreme Court to hold that the judgment of the Presidential Election Petitions Court dismissing his petition against the election of President Bola Tinubu was allegedly coated with disparaging words and bias against his person.

Atiku said expressions against his petition, such as “clever by half,” amount to a violation of his right to a fair hearing and a grave miscarriage of justice.

The five-man panel of the PEPC led by Justice Haruna Tsammani had, in a unanimous decision about 15 days ago, faulted Atiku’s legal team for failing to provide credible evidence showing that he won the February 25 presidential election with a majority of lawful votes cast.

But Atiku’s legal team, led by Chris Uche, SAN, filed 35 grounds of appeal at the Supreme Court.

In his 34th ground of appeal, Uche contended that the choice of words and expressions by the lower court shows the lower court’s contempt and disdain for the appellants.

Uche maintained that the lower court failed to use civil, modest, moderate, and temperate language that is befitting of the exalted position of the court in line with the Revised Code for Judicial Officers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, promulgated by the National Judicial Council.

He argued that coming to court was Atiku’s right, and the PEPC was not expected to make light of it through disparaging words.

He called for the setting aside of the PEPC judgement on the grounds of bias, among other reasons.

“While discountenancing the arguments and contentions of the Appellants, the lower Court in the Court’s judgment used expressions such as ‘ludicrous’ (page 721 of the judgment), ‘clever by half’ (page 557 of the judgment), ‘dishonourable practice’ (page 507 of the judgment), ‘smuggle’ (page 557), ‘fallacious’ (page 721 of the judgment); ‘foul play’ (page 560 of the judgment),’cross the line of misconception’ (page 644 of the judgment); ‘collect evidence from the market (page 765 of the judgment); those who are not used to reading preambles’ (page 726 of the judgment);”hollowness in the argument of the Petitioners” (page 727 of the judgment); etc.

“The use of the said words and expressions substantially affected the lower court’s consideration of the Appellants’ case, peremptorily striking out their witness statements on oath, their exhibits, their pleadings, and discountenancing the evidence of their witnesses, and thus occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice,” Atiku’s team submitted.

The Kano Police Command has imposed a 24-hour curfew in the state to forestall breakdown of law and order.

The development is a sequel to the verdict of the Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal in Kano, which voided the victory of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf.

The police said a combined team of security operatives have been dispatched across the city to enforce the curfew.

The Kano police said, “Going forward, Kano State residents are called upon to note that combined Security Forces have already been dispatched to the nooks and crannies including the entry and exits of the State.

“To ensure enforcement and strict compliance of the Twenty-Four Hours (24hrs) Curfew order as communicated by the State Government via letter with Reference No: K/SEC/H/435/T.1/153 dated 20th September 2023 taking effect from 6pm of Wednesday, 20th September to 6pm of Thursday, 21st September 2023.

“Violators will be arrested and made to face the full wrath of the law.” The police said it was important the residents remained law-abiding in the best interest of all.

The police decision is borne out of a rising apprehension in the state following the judgment that declared Nasir Gawuna the APC winner of the elections.

Residents were reportedly scampering to safety while others closed their places of business for fear of attacks similar to the March arson after Governor Yusuf was declared the winner of the elections.

Former President Muhammadu Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said, on Wednesday, that the ex-President regretted some of the decisions he took while in office and felt he could have done some things better.

According to Adesina, who spoke in Osogbo on Wednesday, such is normal for any human being.

The ex-presidential spokesman was a guest at a programme tagged ‘Media Dialogue with Femi Adesina’ organised by the Association of Veteran Journalists in Osun State.

He said before Buhari left office, he had a two-hour chat with him, during which he asked all manner of questions.

“There is no living human being that will not regret certain things. It is one of the questions I asked the President.

“Before we left office, I sat with him for about two hours and I asked him every question under the sun; there was no question I didn’t ask him. There were things he (Buhari) felt could have been done better,” Adesina said.

He, however, defended Buhari’s controversial naira redesign policy, saying it was for the good of the nation.

“You will recall that even during that time, there was no kidnapping. I remember some people went to kidnap an APC chairman or is it secretary in Kano. After holding him for three days and nobody was calling to ask how much they will collect because there was no cash, they just slapped him three times and told him to go.

“Even kidnappers were out of business because there was no naira and do you know that we have a cleaner election because of that policy?

“Nine serving governors couldn’t go to the Senate. They contested but lost. Have you ever seen a governor who will contest an election and will not win? But because there was no money to spread around, they couldn’t win. The policy was not bad in its entirety. There were issues with it but it was not bad in its entirety,” he said.

[Punch]

If Nigeria were a different country, a society that draws a moral line no one is allowed to cross, the Minister of Women Affairs, Uju Kennedy-Ohaneye, would be out of her job by now. For some unclear reasons, she intervened in the case of the embattled Dean of Law, University of Calabar, Prof. Cyril Osim Ndifo, who is being investigated for cases of sexual assault. Her interference, the subtle threats she made to the young women she called on the phone, and her stunning lack of understanding of what sexual assault entails, jointly disqualify Kennedy-Ohaneye from holding a “Women Affairs” ministerial position. She gave herself away as unworthy of representing women’s interests, and the right thing was for her to be replaced.

Worth comparing to her case is the kissgate scandal that sank the head of the Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales. Amidst the euphoria of World Cup victory, Rubiales kissed midfielder Jennifer Hermoso on the lips. He said the kiss was consensual, but she insisted it was not. The case outraged many, made headlines internationally, and put Spain under the spotlight. Rubiales swore he would fight to the end but eventually capitulated to the value system of his country and resigned.

Unlike Rubiales, however, Kennedy-Ohaneye’s resignation (or sack) is not imminent for at least two reasons. One is that she was appointed by a leader with zero moral legitimacy. He would look quite hypocritical if he tried to enforce the standards he himself does not embody. Number two is significant because it speaks to the larger context of her survival—our society no longer has abominations. By that, I am not merely asserting that we no longer teach children not to whistle at night or jump over a pregnant woman’s outstretched legs. No, what I mean is that our society has let down moral standards so frequently that there are no longer boundaries. If you have the means, there is simply no border of behaviour you cannot cross. Anyhowness reigns.

One of the reasons I bring this up is connected to the incident with ex-president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and his alleged disrespect for traditional rulers in Oyo State. In a society where public events—including those attended by high-ranking government officials—are hardly ever structured, it is unsurprising that the Obas disregarded the protocol requiring them to stand up to acknowledge the governor’s presence. Meanwhile, should all those norms not be part of the rites of their installation?

Since the video of Obasanjo talking down at the royal fathers over their disrespect for the state governor went viral, I have been almost entertained by how people construed his brashness as disrespectful of “our culture,” “our traditions,” and “our values.” The shock that attended that incident illustrates what I have come to see as the Nollywoodization of public consciousness. Nigerians have been so enamoured with the cinema portrayal of Obas as “kabiyesi” (the one who owes no one accountability) that an encounter with reality shocked them to their bone marrow.

Obas simply do not have much of the ascribed cultural or constitutional consequence under our modern political system. That they are allowed to exist as relics of the past is a political strategy that can be dissipated at any time and without serious repercussions. No traditional ruler in any part of Nigeria is too big to be sacked. In fact, it is easier to sack an Oba than to sack a regular civil servant. A governor can wake up from a drunken stupor, sack an Oba, and nothing will happen. Obasanjo could have handled the situation like an elder, but he was not entirely wrong to remind the Obas where they belong on the political food chain. Any Oba that thinks himself too big for the ìwòsí meted out to them should stay in his palace next time.

Anyway, what is more amusing about the outrage that attended the incident is how people jumped to defend the integrity of “culture” and “traditions” to the extent of questioning Obasanjo’s Yorubaness. Perhaps the most hilarious of all the public statements rashly released in the wake of that incident was the one written by the Oluwo of Iwo, Abdulrosheed Adewale, an Oba that still goes by the clownish title of “His Imperial Majesty.” His statement said Obasanjo should be made to apologise for the “desecration” of traditional institutions to prove he is truly a Yoruba man. His press release is a study in irony because if I stopped ten people on a Yoruba road and asked which so-called traditional ruler has contributed the most to the diminishing of the Obaship institution, nine out of them would mention the Oluwo. His public image is that of a lout, a mere boor who could not be ennobled by his so-called “revered stool.”

Unfortunately, he is not alone in thinking of culture/tradition in such reduced terms. People take the veneration of symbolic items as what is there to “culture,” and begin to demand what is akin to idolatrous reverence for them. Each time the issue of homosexuality arises, it has become customary that someone will justify the criminalisation of sexuality by making the “culture” and “tradition” defence. They will tritely claim that our African culture is somehow superior to that of the West that lets its queer population breathe. Such limited understanding of what constitutes culture is why they prioritise the promotion of provincial (and primordial) identities over its capacity as an ideology that, if appropriately fashioned out, enhances social flourishing.

Culture is powerful, and a society unmindful of its force will find itself weeping over the disgrace of an Oba while leaving aside its far more worthwhile potential to structure a people’s imagination. In primary school, we were given the elementary definition of culture as a people’s way of life. We can look at our society today and understand that culture is also how people make life. Culture matters because it determines thoughts and actions, the spectrum of ideas that people consider good, moral, and worth promoting. That is why what society considers “abominable” matters. They are the standards that condition how far society will go on any issue and how far it also will not.

Look at the whole architecture of governance in Nigeria and you will see that both the Obas that represent the “traditional” institution and the ones of the modern political system symbolise this abject lack of standards. Both join hands to desecrate our democratic potential, enrich themselves at the expense of the people, and have no interest in “culture” unless they can manipulate it to promote our subservience to their politics. So, yes, we know things are bad, but it is not the royal fathers who routinely commit ethical infractions that should school us on the “desecration” of culture/tradition.

That our leaders no longer set a baseline for public officers shows the extent of our cultural degradation. That we too lack the means of making them accountable shows that nothing has meaning anymore. Our culture, no longer retaining what it should ideally consider abominable, has become self-defeating and significantly contributes to our social and economic backwardness.

It says so much about our country that the government as well as our citizens appear oblivious to the monumental human misery in Morocco and Libya. Given the magnitude of the catastrophe in the two North African countries, the federal government should have offered relief measures aside coordinating efforts at the level of individual citizens and corporate bodies to render support to the beleaguered people. Unfortunately, I would not be surprised if Nigerians are too consumed by their own existential challenges to be aware of what happened in Morocco and Libya. For such people, I will attempt to break it down. 

It all started the evening of 8^th September when a powerful earthquake struck a densely populated area near the Moroccan Atlas Mountains. The earthquake struck at 11 PM local time, which explains why in some cases, entire families were wiped out. With communities in the foothills completely flattened by massive boulders loosened from the mountains, no fewer than 2,946 people have reportedly died while the number of injured has been put at 5,674. Since when it rains on the continent, it pours, less than 48 hours after the tragedy in Morocco, ‘Storm Daniel’—regarded as the deadliest and costliest Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone ever recorded in history—landed in Libya after wreaking enormous damage in Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Two dams in the Libyan coastal city of Derna were destroyed, turning streets into rivers, as thousands of desperate people were swept away with their houses and other possessions into the Mediterranean Sea. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) last weekend put the figures of death at 11,300 with 10,100 people declared missing. 

I have read numerous heartrending stories describing these two African tragedies, some of which are almost of apocalyptic proportions. In the Morocco earthquake, for instance, Tayeb ait Ighenbaz was faced with the kind of choice nobody should pray to make: With his parents and his 11-year-old son trapped in the rubble, he had a few seconds to decide who needed his attention first. At the end, he saved his son but lost his parents. “It all happened so quickly. When the earthquake happened, we all ran to the door. My dad was sleeping, and I shouted at my mum to come, but she stayed behind to wait for him,” he lamented while recalling how he had to dig quickly to pull his son out of the rubble. “I couldn’t help my parents because the wall fell over half of their bodies. I saw my parents dying,” Tayeb reportedly said with tears. 

Meanwhile, the situation in Libya has been described as “disastrous beyond comprehension” by an official of the World Health Organization (WHO). When the two dams collapsed in Derna, according to him, “the water was released like an atomic bomb.” In a note of anguish, the Libyan Minister of Civil Aviation, Hichem Chkiouat, lamented on Monday that many of the corpses have remained where the water left them. “Bodies are lying everywhere – in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings. I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared,” Chkiouat told Reuters. A female local blogger, Sondos Shuwaib, recounted her horrifying experience. “There were corpses next to me, and corpses above me, and corpses beneath me…I am not able to comprehend what happened,” she wrote. “Sometimes I thank God for my survival – but when I remember my family…I wish I had died with them.” 

The account of Husam Abdelgawi, a 31-year-old accountant, who spoke to the BBC, is equally gripping. Woken up by a barking dog, he was confronted with what he described as a “ghastly, unimaginable scene, worse than death itself to witness”. When water flooded his house, Husam and his younger brother were lucky to float on power cables still tethered to their poles which helped to ferry them towards a nearby building they entered through a third-floor window. It was from there they made it to a fifth-floor rooftop. “The bodies of women and children were floating past us. Cars and entire houses were caught up in the current. Some of the bodies were swept by the water into our house,” Husam recalled. 

With heavy rainfall accompanied by storms increasingly becoming a problem in a desert country, we need to learn the lessons of Climate Change we are yet to imbibe in Nigeria. But those are issues for another day. Video reports of what happened in Morocco and Libya resemble scenes from horror movies. But while people all over the world are showing solidarity to the traumatised survivors in both countries, Nigerians are moving on as if nothing happened. It is true we have our own challenges, but I have also heard that the worst kind of poverty is when you believe you have nothing to give, especially to others in distress. As it is with individuals, so it is for nations.  

With almost a million people affected by the tragedy in a country of 6.88 million people, where there are already more than 300,000 displaced people because of war, Libya faces a very difficult future. Morocco is also challenged but it has enough capacity to pull through. Climate change, according to President Bola Tinubu in his maiden address at the United Nations General Assembly, “severely impacts Nigeria and Africa. Northern Nigeria is hounded by desert encroachment on once arable land. Our south is pounded by the rising tide of coastal flooding and erosion. In the middle, the rainy season brings floods that kill and displace multitudes.” But he also did not forget to highlight the tragedies in Morocco and Libya, with a pledge: “The Nigerian people are with you.”  

The president must match his word with action. The federal government, corporate bodies, and our citizens must rise for the people of Morocco and Libya in the spirit of African brotherhood and human solidarity.     

Endorsing The ‘Dave Umahi Protocol’ 

Concrete roads require significant technical expertise, whereas laying bitumen roads is simple. This has resulted in all manner of people with political connections, including certified crooks, being in the business of road construction in Nigeria. It is therefore little wonder that many of the expensive asphalt roads across the country hardly survive beyond two rainy seasons before they collapse. Apparently determined to change that narrative, the Minister of Works, Mr Dave Umari has decided to go for concrete roads. And not surprisingly, the contractors are fighting back.  

I have never met Umahi, but it is difficult to fault his argument that concrete roads are better suited for our environment. “We’ll redesign our roads in reinforced concrete pavement…I know that there are a lot of fights from contractors, but I am David, I am known for fight, and I will fight this because I have reported myself to Mr President” said Umahi last weekend at the State House. The former Governor of Ebonyi may be a David but if he imagines the only Goliath before him are the contractors then, he needs to be schooled in Abujapolitics. The real fightback will come from the National Assembly where budgets are usually cannibalized to take care of ‘constituency projects’, including perishable roads without designs—the kind of thing that Umahi wants to fight. 

Arguments for concrete roads are quite compelling and I will rehash some that I once highlighted on this page. One, concrete roads have a long lifespan of between 25 and 50 years and do not require frequent repair or patching, unlike asphalt roads. Two, concrete roads can support trucks and articulated vehicles carrying heavy loads with less impact than asphalt roads. Three, concrete roads do not get damaged by such things as leaking oil from vehicles or by weather conditions like excess rain or extreme heat. Four, it is now empirically proven that a vehicle, when run over a concrete road, consumes between 15 to 20 percent less fuel than when on asphalt roads. Five, concrete roads are more environmentally friendly since asphalt (bitumen) produces highly polluting gases at the time of melting. Six, asphalt (bitumen which we import) is produced from petroleum, a wasting asset, whereas concrete (cement) is produced from limestone that is available in abundance, especially in Nigeria. 

However, a major concern about concrete roads is that of safety. In rainy seasons, vehicles tend to slide on concrete roads, making them easily susceptible to accidents. In our kind of environment where motorists hardly obey traffic rules, that is a serious issue that we should not gloss over. There is also the challenge of maintenance. Since repairing concrete roads means replacing damaged slabs, that may also make its maintenance cost higher than that of asphalt. Notwithstanding, my vote is for concrete roads.  

We can learn from India, which has the second largest network of the roads in the world (6,331,791 kilometres as of December 2022) after the United States. In India, the first concrete road was built in 1914 and because it remained pot-hole free for about 60 years, that has continued to encourage the trend in the country. If insanity means doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different outcomes, there is no reason we should continue to build asphalt roads that are often washed away after heavy rainfall when we have the option to build concrete roads that are more durable.  

On Monday, I received a mail from a reader who wrote “with a sense of despair on how far things have degenerated in our dear country”, as he related his experience last Sunday on the road from Lagos to Auchi, Edo State. He left Lagos at 9am but ‘was fortunate’ to have arrived his destination by 8.30pm (11 and a half hour for a journey that ordinarily should take no more than four hours) whereas many other travellers spent the night on the road. Around Sabongida-Ora, according to him, two trailers got stuck and blocked the road. “Communities along the road had erected barriers, but the tragedy of Nigeria was such that it became an avenue for youths to collect money from truck drivers before opening the barriers. Now this was where my luck came. I saw people going and coming by Okada and immediately hired one to take me to Afuze, a distance of about five kilometres”. He eventually continued his journey from Afuze to Auchi on another stretch of terrible road. “Next day I left for Abuja and that road is another sad story of where we are as a country.” 

Why must we continue to waste money on building seasonal roads? Yes, I am following the debate. The contractors are protesting because they consider what I now describe as ‘The Umahi Protocol’ abrupt. I believe the Minister should dialogue with them on a transition plan. I also believe there should be a national policy on this issue. Unlike concrete roads that require specifications, asphalt roads, especially the kind being built by most contractors in Nigeria, are easily washed away after a heavy downpour. That explains why as many as five contracts can be awarded on the same road within a decade. According to Umahi, the president has already bought into his idea to change from asphalt to concrete for road construction in Nigeria. He can also count on my support.  

Bangladesh has successfully implemented various mechanisms to promote and support Small, Micro, and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which have played a significant role in the country's economic growth and poverty reduction, which Nigeria could mimic and adapt to our peculiar economic situation.

Let me start by presenting an in-depth overview of the Bangladeshi SME model and the lessons that Nigeria can learn from the Bangladeshi initiatives, for consideration and implementation

Specialized Financial Institutions:
Bangladesh has established specialized financial institutions dedicated to SME financing. Which is similar to the defunct People’s Bank of Nigeria that was established by the Ibrahim Babangida regime, which was headed by the late Maria Shokenu as the Managing Director and the late Dr Tai Solarin as Chairman. The Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) and the SME Foundation are two prominent institutions that provide financial assistance, training, and technical support to SMEs. These institutions offer collateral-free loans, credit guarantees, and venture capital to address the funding gap that many SMEs in Nigeria face. Nigeria can learn from this approach by establishing similar institutions that focus on providing accessible and affordable financing options for SMEs.

Simplified Business Registration: Bangladesh has implemented policy reforms to simplify business registration processes and reduce bureaucratic hurdles for SMEs. The country introduced a "One-Stop Service" system, where entrepreneurs can complete all necessary registration procedures in a single location. This streamlined process has made it easier for SMEs to start and operate businesses. Nigeria can adopt a similar approach by simplifying its business registration procedures and reducing administrative burdens for SMEs. In order to achieve this, some of us analysts have advocated for the decentralization of the Corporate Affairs Commission to enable the 36 State governments to be able to register SMEs, with an integrated ICT with the Abuja central system.

Access to Credit: Bangladesh has taken steps to improve SMEs' access to credit by establishing credit information bureaus and promoting credit scoring systems. These initiatives have helped financial institutions assess the creditworthiness of SMEs more accurately, leading to increased lending to the sector. Nigeria can learn from this by implementing credit information systems and encouraging the use of credit scoring mechanisms to enhance SMEs' access to finance.

Skills Development and Entrepreneurship Training: Bangladesh has prioritized skills development and entrepreneurship training for SMEs. The country has established numerous training centers and vocational institutes that offer specialized courses and workshops to equip entrepreneurs with the necessary skills and knowledge to run successful businesses. Nigeria can replicate this approach by investing in vocational training programs and entrepreneurship development initiatives to enhance the capacity and competitiveness of its SME sector.

Export-Oriented Industrialization: Bangladesh has focused on developing specific sectors, such as garments and textiles, through export-oriented industrialization. The government has provided various incentives and support to SMEs operating in these sectors, leading to significant growth in export earnings. Nigeria can learn from this by identifying key sectors with export potential and providing targeted support to SMEs operating in those sectors to enhance their global competitiveness.

Public-Private Partnerships: Bangladesh has fostered strong public-private partnerships to support SME development. The government collaborates with industry associations, chambers of commerce, and private sector entities to design and implement policies and programs that benefit SMEs. Nigeria can adopt a similar approach by fostering collaboration between the government, private sector, and industry associations to create an enabling environment for SME successful development in Nigeria

Nigeria can look to Bangladesh as a model for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) development. Bangladesh has made significant strides in promoting and supporting SMEs, which has contributed to its economic growth and poverty reduction.

Lastly, Nigeria can learn from Bangladesh's success in promoting SMEs through export-oriented industrialization. Bangladesh has focused on developing specific sectors, such as, shoe and leather ; while Nigeria should encourage and support shoe and leather products manufacturers in Aba, and other manufacturing hubs, exporters of sesame seeds, gum Arabic from the Western and Northern states of the country. By identifying and supporting key sectors with export potential, Nigeria can boost its SME sector and enhance its global competitiveness.

In conclusion, Bangladesh's SME model provides valuable lessons for Nigeria. By establishing specialized financial institutions, simplifying business registration processes, improving access to credit, investing in skills development, promoting export-oriented industrialization, and fostering public-private partnerships, Nigeria can create a conducive environment for SMEs to thrive, driving economic growth, job creation, and poverty reduction.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame says he will run for a fourth term in 2024 — a move that could extend his hold on power to nearly three decades.