The Nation Newspaper

Author: The Nation

  • Substandard projects: Institute mulls punishment for erring managers

    Substandard projects: Institute mulls punishment for erring managers

    The Registrar, Chartered Institute of Project Managers of Nigeria (CIPMN), Henry Mbadiwe, has pledged adequate punishment for erring project managers using substandard and unqualified personnel.

    Mbadiwe said the days when individuals just walked up to a site and started delivering projects without proper accreditation were over.

    The registrar, who spoke at the inauguration of the Governing Council members of the CIPMN in Abuja on Friday, added that necessary collaboration was going on to include project management in the university curriculum.

    Mbadiwe said: “We will ensure that we put enforcement processes in place for those who may want to take the law for granted. First to help them not to break the law but also not to shy away from making sure that offenders are punished in accordance with the law.

    “We are now ready to ensure that only licensed project managers are allowed to head projects. Our Act empowers us to ensure that the project manager of any project whether in construction, ICT, engineering, or whatever, must be the individual responsible for delivering or managing a project from end to end.”

    President of the institute, Babalola pledged to address issues of substandard and uncompleted projects in Nigeria.

    Read Also: Fed Govt’s N819b extra budget filled with ghost projects

    He also promised to ensure that quacks do not pose as project managers in the country.

    Babalola said proper project management was essential to ensure project delivery in the right shape and time.

    He added that the bane of Nigeria as a nation had always been its huge infrastructural deficit.

    He said: “It is a known fact that the key to economic prosperity is infrastructural development. That is why we must be concerned about the quality of the people we trust with project management in this country.”

    A member of the Governing Council, Mohammed Danjuma, said a database was needed to help curb the rise of quack project managers.

    He said: “We should be able to regulate, certify, and also deal with those that are quacks and have a database of the real certified practitioners where we can always go. Before you can engage anybody there has to be a database to check if so and so a person is certified.

     “Whether it is private or public funds, at the end of the day it affects the lives of people. Those are some of the things that I see will require all stakeholders on board to ensure all other disciplines are engaged.”

  • Freudian slip?

    Freudian slip?

    Former Senator Bulkachuwa’s valedictory bluster has cast a pall of influence peddling over Nigeria’s judiciary

    Senator Adamu Bulkachuwa, 83, talked himself into a storm, with his valedictory speech at the 9th Senate.  He suggested he applied illicit influence on his wife, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, former President of the Court of Appeal, to allegedly tilt electoral cases the way of some of his lawmaker colleagues.

    “My wife,” the senator declared in a fit of self-incrimination, “whose freedom and independence I encroached upon while (she) was in office, and she has been very tolerant and accepted my encroachment and extended her help to my colleagues.”

    Self-damnation was never so explicit, and we just wonder whether the departing senator, who lost re-election into the 10th Senate, was earnest or was just carried away in a colourful bluster, which red hot flame may yet consume him.

    He spoke at that Senate’s valedictory session and could yet have added more incriminatory details, had Senator Ahmad Lawan, the former president of the Senate, not made a desperate appeal to stop him.

    Still, long before her husband’s June 10 blather, Justice Bulkachuwa, in her valedictory engagement with the media, when she retired at 70 in February 2020 as President of the Court of Appeal, gave a rare view into her home.

    “My husband is a politician, but politics is a no-go area in the house.  Even my children are aware of that.  No politician,” she insisted, “is invited to the house.  My husband can pursue whatever he wants to pursue as a politician but we hardly discuss politics in the house.  All these help to guard against any influence from any politician.”

    She then poured ice cold water on the allegation that she received N6 billion to thwart the challenge of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, in his judicial challenge to former President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election in 2019.

    “There was a time when allegations were flying around that I was given N6 billion, and I laughed,” she recalled.  “So, if I was given N6 billion, do you think I would still be here?”  Justice Bulkachuwa was originally head of the five-member 2019 Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) before she yielded her place to Justice Mohammed Garba, as a result of PDP’s allegation of perceived conflict of interest, on account of her husband and son, both All Progressives Congress (APC) top hierarchs.

    So, two spouses.  Two conflicting statements.  Which of the two do we believe?

    The President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Yakubu Maikyau, has brushed aside all doubts to call for the investigation and prosecution of Senator Bulkachuwa, calling his “confession” either an attempt to pervert, or an actual perversion of, justice.

    Speaking at the 102nd meeting of the National Judicial Council (NJC), Mr. Maikyau swore to write both the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) chairman to start the process.  Fair enough.

    What is not fair is rushing to impugn the integrity of the retired jurist, solely on what her politician husband said, which could be true or a mere bluster, without giving her fair opportunity to defend her honour.  That appears the hasty route taken by Olisa Agbakoba (himself a former NBA president), who though was a counsel to one of the litigants, back then in 2019.

    Read Also: Bombshell from Senator Bulkachuwa

    “I represented Usman Tuggar in relation to the disputed elections between him and Senator Bulkachuwa for Bauchi North senatorial.  We lost in three courts.  Senator Bulkachuwa seems to suggest why,” he told Premium Times. 

    That could be hot innuendo in view of what the senator said.  But it’s pretty cold as hard fact to try to hang suspected wrong on the wife — and the core lawyer in Mr. Agbakoba ought to have realised that.

    A former chair of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Chidi Odinkalu, also descended on retired Justice Bulkachuwa, reacting to her husband’s statement, as “neither honourable nor interested in justice”, during her stint as President of the Court of Appeal; suggesting husband and wife would be perceived as “trading decisions in their bedrooms.” 

    That again would appear rather sweeping, from a professor of Law and a former chair of NHRC, a body formed to secure people’s rights — except, of course, the professor had additional proof he wasn’t sharing with the public by the time he reacted.

    Malcolm Omirhobo told Premium Times that what the senator said “portends danger to the dignity of the judiciary” — a fair statement — even while going on to lament alleged “phoney judgments” from Justice Bulkachuwa’s Court of Appeal  while she was president.  That’s stacking of cards that should be backed by proofs.

    Still all of these claims, even if they come short of facts to prove them, belong to the realm of understandable outrage, which puts the Nigerian judiciary in a bad light.  That should worry everyone.

    For starters, with these ugly reactions coming from lawyers themselves who feel the pulse of legal practice in Nigeria, peddling of illicit influence to swing judgments and pervert justice would appear well established. 

    To be sure, influence peddling is a human foible which hardly anyone is free of — and it’s not even limited to Nigeria alone.  But with its ugliness so manifest and condemnable, everyone must work towards building a more robust and incorruptible judicial system, that would reduce, if not eradicate, such practices.  That is a pressing task that must be done, if the Nigerian judiciary must enjoy the full confidence and trust of litigants.

    That is why former Senator Bulkachuwa’s reckless outpouring must be taken through the grill of clinical investigation.  It is unclear how the twin doctrines of parliamentary privilege and protection against self-incrimination would impact against such an investigation.  But definitely a serious probe must follow, to establish the truth or otherwise of the senator’s dangerous parting shot.

    Facts emanating from such an investigation should compel the prosecution — or otherwise — of the senator;  or even his wife. The judiciary would be the better for it.

    But not even that tantalising prospect can justify dragging the wife’s career in the mud and impugning her character, because of her husband’s loose tongue.  That would be even more disastrous for the judiciary.  No judicial officer — high or low — should be burnt at the stake of spousal rants.

  • My salvation encounter – Oladiti

    My salvation encounter – Oladiti

    In this account of his Rebirth encounter with ADEOLA OGUNLADE, Samuel Oludare Oladiti an erstwhile film producer shares how he was chained as a madman and his grooming from that incident to becoming an international preacher of the gospel and the Bishop of Victory International Faith Mission, Baruwa, Ipaja, Lagos. Excerpts.

    Tell us about your rebirth encounter? 

    I had a living encounter with the Lord in 1987 after years of going to church without knowing Christ. I was born into the church but was just a number in the church and not a member. The fact that I was born into the church didn’t mean I was born again. I didn’t really understand what being born again meant until 1987 when I had this divine encounter, which eventually led to what I’m doing now.  I never planned to be a pastor. I concentrated on my crafts (film production). I’m a former secretary of a department in the Oyo State Association of National Theatre Practitioners (ANTP).

    How will you describe your kind of lifestyle before you accepted Christ?

    My kind of lifestyle, before I accepted Christ, was a normal youthful lifestyle.  My mother, now late, was a member of the Women’s Choir of Christ Apostolic Church (C.A.C). She often told me you must meet me in the church. I never liked going to church. I liked staying at home watching movies. Whenever I managed to go to church, I wouldn’t stay till the close of service. Just to satisfy my mother, I would just stay to see the pastor that would preach and the topic of his message and leave. When my mother says “Dare, I didn’t see you in church today.” I would say I was in church. This is the pastor that preached and this is the topic of his message. That was the kind of life I lived. I love God, but never planned to do the work of God.

    Was there any specific incident that led you to give your life to Christ?

    My salvation encounter was similar to that of Paul. On that fateful day of September 19, 1987, I was at the Cultural Centre, Mokola, Ibadan, Oyo State to direct the play of a particular troupe when I felt the touch of God on me. I was vast in prayer and fasting. I prayed for cultural troupes against spiritual attacks; knowing that the craft is very demonic. My initial ambition was to be a lawyer, politician, and human rights activist with my crafts in the mould of Prof. Wole Soyinka. While at the cultural Centre, I felt the presence of God around me. I was fasting on that day. I told my colleagues I wanted to leave. By the time I left the hall, I wasn’t myself. When I got to the tarmac, a ray of lightning came upon me and I couldn’t see again. I groped my way to one particular street and started shouting “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” When my brother who was learning tailoring nearby saw me, he was utterly surprised; this couldn’t be my brother. He’s a struggling Christian. When he moved towards me, I told him, don’t touch me! Don’t stop the work of God! Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. He quickly rushed to fetch his master and they bundled me to a fellowship centre.

    What happened to you thereafter at the fellowship centre that they bundled you to?

    This particular fellowship centre had been inviting me for a very long time. When I opened my eyes at the centre, I saw my parents. I recall I told my colleagues I was going to church when I left the cultural centre. From that fellowship centre I was driven to our church, The Blood of Jesus Apostolic Church (Oke Aanu) Ibadan, and a medical doctor was invited to inject me but Baba Durojaiye, the church founder, said I shouldn’t be injected. He said I was not sick and that it was God’s hand that was upon me because of my stubbornness to serve Him.

    Read Also: Ogocity’s Citizen preaches love, salvation

    I learned that before my birth, my mother made a vow to the Lord about me. After Baba Durojaiye advised that I shouldn’t be injected and that the incident was a pointer to my calling to ministry, a particular woman in that church called Iya Adua came to pray for me. People believed in her more than the church founder. As she made to pray for me, saying l’oruku Jesu (In Jesus’ name), I prophesied to her “Thus saith the Lord, you cannot continue practicing witchcraft.” The people around were taken aback by my utterance. They bounced on me and started beating me. They said this man is definitely mad to have accused their revered Iya Adua of witchcraft practice. They chained my hands and legs and took me straight away to a branch of the church and confined me there for almost three months. They concluded I was mad because of my unbelievable utterances and prophecies. Unfortunately and unknown to them I was clearly hearing from God and communicating it to them, but they said I was talking too much.  Even whilst in the fetters (chains) I kept hearing from God and communicating it to them by utterances or prophesies. I am proud to say that I’m a prisoner in Christ. I want to do a film documentary of my salvation encounter with my picture handcuffed on the cover of the film pack.  Six years later, I was fully into ministry. God confirmed His word through me about Iya Adua when she confessed to witchcraft practice and died rotten in her room.

    Tell us more about the vow your mother made to the Lord before your birth

    My mother made the same vow that Hannah in the Bible made to the Lord. It happened that she had a female child before she conceived me. She bore that child into abject poverty and said she never wanted to have another child again in poverty. Unfortunately, she conceived me and she risked terminating the pregnancy because she did not want to bear another child into poverty. In the course of her dilemma over terminating the pregnancy, she went before God and asked for forgiveness. She then made a vow, like Hannah in the Bible, to God that if you give me this one, and is a male child I will give him back to you and he shall be called Samuel.

    What were the efforts that your mother made to fulfill her vow of returning you to God?

    In my childhood, my mother discovered some character traits in me like my passion for her. I loved sitting with her. I was not stubborn. I always dressed very neatly to school such that my teachers looked at me as a student from a rich home, coupled with the fact that I was brilliant, and was also one of the school prefects. Some of my schoolmates and even teachers longed to connect with my supposed rich parents. But I couldn’t show them my parents in their actual state of poverty because they would instantly look down on them as poverty-stricken after all. My mother had a specific way of putting me back on track whenever she saw me going astray.

    At 18 while I was developing my craft as a filmmaker, during our rehearsals she often cautioned me, “Ranti, omo majemu maa ni e (remember, you are a covenant child). I was part of the Arelu and Agbeleku Films Production crew in the 1980s. Anytime she cautioned me this way it provoked me and I would reply to her that since the entire family is suffering in poverty, maybe God would use me through my crafts to liberate us. Since all my efforts to become a lawyer and politician failed, I focused on my craft. If not for that divine encounter on that fateful day of September 19, 1987, there was no way anyone could have taken me away from my craft as a film producer.

  • A Brief Note to ADVAN on Industry Reforms

    A Brief Note to ADVAN on Industry Reforms

    • By Oludele Okanlawon

    A little less than two years ago and just when the advertising industry was getting its hopes up that a new dawn was about to break, there began a spirited attempt to drag it back to the dire place it has always been. It is a place no advertising professional wanted, as it was a contributor to the high advertising agency mortality rate.

    To cut to the chase, the attempt to drag advertising back to the dark place was authored by the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN), which had reacted badly to the release of the Advertising Industry Standard of Practice (AISOP) by the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) which, last year became Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON).

    ADVAN’s reaction to the industry regulator-formulated AISOP was and remains as desperate as that of man trying to fend of late-night pickpockets. Its pique was that AISOP, as formulated, contains provisions aimed taking ADVAN’s knee off agencies’ throat and make them breathe well, something they have been unable to do for decades.

    AISOP, as a framework, spells, clearly, the way and manner of agency engagement/disengagement, terms and modes of payment, media rates and commission, audience measurement and dispute resolution among other issues. A condensation of what it seeks to do, by common consent, is ground-levelling. AISOP seeks to reform the industry in a way that agencies are no longer treated by clients as something close to vassals.

    With something approaching a nuclear gust of disapproval, ADVAN has been railing against the AISOP provision stipulating a 45-day payment period to agencies to agencies for jobs executed. The provision repealed the payment period of 90- 120 days, in the best case, ADVAN had become accustomed to. The protracted payment period AISOP aims to abolish affected not only the business of the agencies, but also those of their suppliers, including media organizations, which are regularly garroted by agencies’ indebtedness to them.

    In addition, AISOP prescribes a payment of a percentage to agencies as a penalty in the event the payment window is overshot. This was envisaged to help agencies accommodate the default charges of their lenders. The potential loss of unfair privileges it has enjoyed via payment to agencies as its whims dictated is something ADVAN is unwilling to countenance. AISOP, it is important to point out, was not sneaked in on ADVAN, as it had a representative on the committee that brought it to life. It was similarly represented on the Nigerian Advertising Code Review Committee, National Advertising and the Conference Committee as well as on the Advertising Standards Panel (ASP).

    What its reaction indicates, uncomplicatedly, is that it was enjoying-to the max-seeing agencies reduced to the status of mendicants, so as to continue exploiting them.

    ADVAN’s view is that contractual agreements between its members and agencies should not involve a third party and proceeded to accuse the regulator of undue interference. This position, to put it mildly, is the equivalent of willful ignorance because there is no advertising environment globally without a regulator or one in which clients pay agencies for campaigns executed whenever the feeling seizes them. What this says is that there are minimum irreducible standards prescribed in every advertising environment to ensure the protection of all.

    “In saner climes” is a fixture in conversations these days.  I take it that ADVAN desires to operate in a saner clime, which would mean it should be happy with the same standards in such environments or similar ones. A few examples will show that clients elsewhere have not been frothing with anger over regulators’ prescription of payment periods. The US has a 35-day payment window. China has a 30-day window. Germany, France and other European markets stipulate a 30-day period. Kenya, South Africa and other African countries have 45-day payment periods, the same as proposed by AISOP.

    Read Also: ‘Akpabio’s victory strategic in advancing inclusion’

    With those saner climes insisting on certain standards, ADVAN’s proposal of the retention of indeterminable payment period is no path to a saner environment.

    The surest route to a saner environment is law and order, things the ARCON Act of 2022 was made for, as it relates to the advertising industry. But it was, like AISOP, met with rejection by ADVAN. The ARCON Act effectively abolished the APCON Act, granting ARCON full regulatory powers over the country’s advertising environment. The act, among other things, mandates ARCON to promote local content and entrench international best practices.

    Its provisions, from all indications, have further incensed ADVAN which, earlier this year, came out with an intention to challenge the legality of the ARCON Act. ADVAN intends, as the notice stated, to join in the suit the Attorney-General of the Federation, Senate and House of Representatives, Minister of Information and Culture as well as the Industry, Trade and Investment Minister.

    Particularly irritating to ADVAN is the section in the ARCON Act stipulating the mode of agency disengagement. The section, arising from ARCON’s policy on engagement and disengagement, states that an advertiser terminating a contractual agreement with an agency must carry out financial reconciliation at the point of disengagement and fulfil all outstanding contractual obligations prior to signing on a new agency. This noble policy is, however, being interpreted as interference. It would have been funny if it did not carry a whiff of a desire to treat agencies shabbily. What ADVAN wants is to continue having the freedom to chase away agencies like a flea-ridden dog.

    Another source of irritation is ARCON’s policy proscribing the use of foreign voice-over artists as well as models in advertisements for the Nigerian market.  A section of the ARCON Act gives muscle to the policy, which aims to grant Nigerians benefits of advertising in the country. ARCON’s local content policy prescribes minimum local content ratio in all advertisements, thereby encouraging advertisers to use Nigerians in their marketing communications campaigns. It envisages that it will stop the financial haemorrhage by Nigerian companies, conservatively estimated at N120 billion annually, as well as loss of jobs.

    What is not to like about this, given that it has the potential to halt loss of jobs and reduce pressure on the local currency?

    Somehow, ADVAN found reasons to be angry about it, as its notice of litigation advertised its intention to challenge the legality of the ARCON Act and the competence of the National Assembly to make the law which, to a large extent, carries the potential to address many of the problems that have blighted the advertising environment for as long as anyone can recall. ADVAN’s intended legal challenge is mystifying, given that it made written and oral submissions at the public hearings conducted by the National Assembly before the law was made. You have to wonder what it thought it was doing if it did not think the federal legislature is competent to make a law regulating advertising.

    •Okanlawon writes from Lagos.

  • Battle royale as winners emerge in maiden WTT Contender Lagos today

    Battle royale as winners emerge in maiden WTT Contender Lagos today

    GERMANY’S Dimitrij Ovtcharov will slug it out with China’s Zhou Qihao in the men’s singles final while Korea’s Shin Yubin confronts China’s Li Yake as the 2023 WTT Contender Lagos ends today at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Hall of Teslim Balogun Stadium.

    For seven days, more than 100 players from 26 countries across the world started the journey to stardom at the first WTT Series in Sub-Saharan Africa and today June 18, champions in the singles and doubles will be crowned at the well-attended finale.

    From the vibes from the fans to the exciting shots from the players, Lagos and Nigeria as a country were treated to world-class table tennis.

    The roll call of players included former World number one Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany and the women’s doubles runners-up at the 2023 World Championships Jeon Jihee and Shin Yubin of Korea were in the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria to compete for points and cash.

  • Naija Super 8 play-offs: Remo Stars vow to tame 3SC in Southwest derby

    Naija Super 8 play-offs: Remo Stars vow to tame 3SC in Southwest derby

    REMO Stars head coach, Daniel Ogunmodede, has said his team will fight to maintain their unbeaten record against Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC), in their upcoming clash at the Naija Super 8 zonal play-offs.

    The match will be one of the six Naija Super 8 qualifying games which will be held at the Eket Township Stadium from 23-25 June. The two teams will duel for the ticket to represent the South-West zone at the Naija Super 8 finals in Lagos from 7-16 July.

    Shooting Stars and Remo Stars have met six times in the top division with Remo Stars winning two games and four drawn games. The statistics put Remo Stars as the favourite against a historic side, Shooting Stars.

    Speaking ahead of what is branded the “Southwest Derby”, Ogunmodede said encounters between the two teams have always been tough and described the clash as “arguably the most interesting derby in the country”.

     “It is always tough playing against them. A friendly game against Shooting Stars is like a competitive game. Both sets of fans do not joke about the game. With this prestigious tournament, it will be the most interesting derby game in the playoffs.

     “We have been the better teams in the derby, historically, and we have not lost against them. But I know they will be willing to earn their first win against us. They have the pedigree and history, but we will fight for our pride,” Ogunmodede boasted.

    Both teams have connections beyond on-field clashes. Shooting Stars coach, Gbenga Ogunbote, masterminded Remo Stars’ first qualification for continental competition, CAF Confederation Cup, in 2022. The Sky Blue Stars ended the just-concluded league season with a CAF Champions League ticket, the club’s biggest achievement.

     “The coach (Ogunbote) is one of the most experienced coaches in the league and younger coaches like me have drawn inspiration from him. He worked at this club and this gives the derby fresh dynamics.

     “We have had a long and interesting season, and we must compete on the same level in the Naija Super 8. The season was great and successful, we gave the boys a few days break and we are back to work for the tournament,” Ogunmodede said.

    All Naija Super 8 play-off matches will be live on SuperSport Football (DStv ch 205 & GOtv ch 61), SuperSport Variety 4 (DStv ch 209), and SuperSport Select 2 (GOtv ch 64).

    Naija Super 8 is organised by Flykite Productions in partnership with MultiChoice Nigeria and sponsors, MTN, Hero Lager, DStv, GOtv, SuperSport, Moniepoint, Pepsi, and Custodian Assurance.

  • Maxxconnection to mark 10th anniversary

    Maxxconnection to mark 10th anniversary

    The leading experiential and consumer experience firm, Maxxconnection Limited, has launched a platform to provide access to basic healthcare for the underprivileged and less privileged in the society tagged Maxxcare to mark its tenth anniversary in Lagos.

    The agency that started operations in 2013 made the announcement at the media conference of activities to celebrate a decade in business at its corporate head office in Ogudu Lagos recently.

    Speaking on the initiative, the managing director/chief executive officer, Owolabi Mustapha said that as a responsible organisation and an organisation that is sensitive about its environment it was necessary that it gives back to the society and also support the government in some critical areas of need.

    According to him, “We have been doing some activities in the area where we are operating from in terms of corporate social responsibilities in the past. Now, we have seen the need for us to support the government in a particular critical area which is healthcare.”

    Mustapha said, “Our focus areas are high density populations such as rural communities, parks and garages etcetera where people cannot access basic healthcare, Maxxcare would then work to support the government to provide these basic primary healthcare to them.”

    He said that the exercise would be periodic and the identified areas would be visited with some medical practitioners and checks would be carried out on them.

    Speaking on the mechanics, Senior Manager, Client Engagement Maxxconnection, Mary Phillips said, “Maxxconnection will take Maxxcare to these places because if you ask them to come to you they might never show up therefore, Maxxcare is taking the healthcare solutions to their neighbourhood.

    “We will have a nice set up and we will bring in medical practitioners and partner other brands to provide refreshment. We want to be sure that people that do not have access to basic healthcare can then have access through the platform.”

    Mustapha stressed that the need for Maxxconnection as a business to kick start in 2013 was born out of the fact there was a need in the industry for an agency that can deepen consumer experience because that keeps changing globally.

  • Nigeria: Arise o compatriots

    Nigeria: Arise o compatriots

    Babatunde Faniyan and Oladiipo Fagunwa, the authors of BEFORE I DIE – An Autobiography by ‘Nigeria’- were being absolutely prescient when they set to work on this book. I say this because no time could have been more appropriate than now, in the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, to unveil a book like it.

    PresidentTinubu, the most prepared ever, in the annals of Nigerian history, campaigned and won on A RENEWED HOPE Manifesto, and has, since being sworn in on 29 May, 2023  demonstrated a sure – footedness Nigerians have, like forever, been yearning for in a civilian administration.

    The book is so  compelling, especially in Nigeria’s gasping circumstances, that I this Sunday, 18 June, 2023, yield your ever inspiring column to one of the Authors, BABATUNDE FANIYAN, also the author and publisher of:

    thinkersdigestmagazine,

     to take us through it’s refreshing and hope – inducing  innards.

    Happy reading.

    A rather strange Book shall soon come across your path. It is an autobiography by  Nigeria.

    All of  twelve Chapters, with titles garnished with exotic Kickers and Riders.

    Some of the Chapter Titles are:

     – In the Womb, Before the Birth of Dawn – My Beginnings – My Roots.         

    – Dawn Breaks – My Life Under British Rule.         

     -Evening – My Children Begin To Cry To Be Separated From This Nigeria.             

    One-Minute-to-Midnight – My quiet moment Before I Die, and Thinking Aloud. 

    Before I Die is a soliloquy of a bereaved and besieged, well known and well endowed, but embattled Being, crying to be saved from calamity and probable death.

    It needs be emphasised that the title: BEFORE I DIE, is not synonymous with, or equate to “I Am Going to Die”.

    The authors do not desire the Death of Nigeria. Rather, the work is a refreshing, revealing and eye – opening outlay of  the pre-colonial history of the Land space now known as Nigeria.

    It is clearly stated that she was not ‘discovered’ by either the Royal Niger Company or by the British, but has been there long before they all came, and has been home to numerous kingdoms, empires and territories for centuries. We see the British, controversially amalgamating, and yoking together, over 300 different ethnic nationalities and tribes, and ruling her from1914 to 1960.

    We also see Nigeria grew from Independence in 1960, into adolescence and adulthood – and later found herself under siege from internal and external misfortunes, and aggressors, and contend that it should be admired for the courage and stamina to come out with this work.

    The Book covers the era of the relay of military regimes and intermittent civilian administrations until the Fourth Republic came in 1999 and has endured till today – with all its growing turbulence.

    Various developments, cries and appeals within the body of the book from independence in 1960 to this day, are focused, mainly on the critical question: Can NigeriaI survive her faulty foundations?

    The book is awash with cogent examples of oppressive, inhuman and fatal atrocities which Nigeria has been subjected to. It is also replete with pleas, supplications and recommendations to stem the stormy, and disastrous tide.

    It epilogues with  steps that should be taken to avoid mayhem before Nigeria dies.

    Such eminent voices of reason include that of former Central Bank governor and later Emir of Kano,  Lamido Sanusi, former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, governor Samuel Ortom of Benue state, Dr. Nura Alkali, a consultant physician at the  Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Newspaper editorials and prominent journalists, among  others.

    Indeed, towards the end of the book, Nigeria herself cries out: ¨I do not want to die!¨ (IF I can help it), which, in essence, is the whole essence of her writing this autobiography, even in her grief.

    Readers will, after going through the book, be sorely troubled, but fully enlightened to draw their own conclusions on what the fate of Nigeria should be in the best interest of her innocent, hard working, long suffering and patriotic Children.

    Any reader with a humane heart will, no doubt, be touched by it, and would be moved to pray for a turn-around for good – BEFORE Nigeria Dies.

    Citizens are disillusioned on a daily basis, and raise their voices crying:  nothing Makes Sense In Nigeria Anymore!

    • You sit in a House as a ‘representative’ of the people, and you earn Thirty-something Million Naira monthly, but the police looking after your security earn less than N30,000 a month. And he has a gun. How safe do you really think you are?

    • You served for 8 years as governor – a priviledged position with the entire monentary allocation of the state in your hands. You retire and are paid millions of Naira annually for life, as benefit. Your cars are changed. A house is built for you. Medical bills are paid for you and members of your family etc. All these for working for 8 years. Still the governor, after the mandatory term of 8 years, goes into the Senate to earn Thirty-something Million Naira monthly, plus all the benefits of a retired governor.

    In the same Nigeria, another man worked with government for 35 years. He retires and is paid N1m after almost dying, chasing the money. Many are not even that lucky; they die without getting  paid anything.

    Meanwhile the Security situation in the country has virtually collapsed. Armed Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram terrorists, bandits of all kind, have taken the country hostage. The convoy of President Buhari was even attacked by Boko Haram.

    Nigeria, in a last ditch effort Cries out:

    Please Save Me!

    I am Nigeria – the most populous Black Motherland on God’s earth. I am arguably the most endowed in mineral, natural and human resources on earth. Enemies within and from across the borders are hard at work to kill me.

    The storm is gathering all over me.

    The mercenaries are getting into vantage positions all around me.

    The vultures are hovering lower and lower from the Sky.

    Who will save me now?

    Nigeria  ends the book with a touching EPILOGUE in which she presents her WILL to the world in case she does not survive for long.

    But the Creator of Nigeria, her Guardian angel and her patriotic children are working and praying hard. They believe that the new political dispensation will be the solution to Nigeria´s dilemma.

  • Protesting varsity students block Zamfara road over insecurity

    Protesting varsity students block Zamfara road over insecurity

    ANGRY students of the Federal University Gusau, Zamfara State, yesterday blocked the Zaria-Sokoto highway to protest Friday’s abduction of five of their colleagues by bandits.

    Abducted were three male and two female.

    The protesters said they were fed up with the incessant abductions in the state and asked the authorities to put an immediate end to the trend.

    Hundreds of travellers were trapped in the traffic logjam created by the road blockade.

  • Chukwueze: Super Eagles focused on beating Sierra Leone, picking AFCON ticket

    Chukwueze: Super Eagles focused on beating Sierra Leone, picking AFCON ticket

    VILLARREAL winger Samuel Chukwueze is confident Nigeria will qualify for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations and go all the way and win it.

    The Super Eagles are preparing to play Sierra Leone on Sunday in the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.

    Chukwueze is among the players in camp and is expected to play a vital part in helping his team to get past the Leone Stars in Group A.

    The Villarreal star is confident Jose Peseiro’s team will qualify for the finals and urged the fans to start preparing to attend the biennial tournament and cheer the team on.

    The attacker further revealed his target with the national team before he retires.

    “Nigerians should expect a win because we have to qualify for the next Africa Cup of Nations,” Chukwueze told ESPN.

    “They should just book their tickets because we are going to win and go there [to the finals in Ivory Coast].

    “We want to win the AFCON for sure because we have great young talents and we have young players who are actually ready to fight.

    “For me, I need to win a trophy with the Super Eagles because I cannot play to the end of my career without winning any trophy with the Super Eagles. This is our time.”

    Anything less than a win on Sunday, June 18, will see the Leone Stars get eliminated with Guinea Bissau and Nigeria qualifying.

    Meanwhile, Nigeria’s delegation to Sierra Leone arrived in the Liberian capital, Monrovia on Saturday morning, aboard a chartered Air Peace airline Embraer 195.

    The aircraft conveying the contingent of 23 players, technical and administrative staff, and a few other officials led by the President of NFF, Alhaji Ibrahim Musa Gusau, landed at the Roberts International Airport at 11.08 am local time (12.08 pm in Nigeria), and was received by the Ambassador of Nigeria to Liberia, His Excellency Godfrey A. E. Odudigbo, the Head of Chancery, Ms Stella Ahumibe, and a few other mission staff.