The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • Leadership hazards and opportunities 

    Leadership hazards and opportunities 

    A leader literally and figuratively occupies the space in the front of the line. That space is riddled with uncertainties and perils. In battle, the leader faces the enemies, whose goal is to shoot and kill. If the enemies are skilful, you may be hit. If they are not, they can misfire. There are also land mines on your path, just in case the machine guns miss you.

    As you lead, your followers are behind. If you are lucky, and they acknowledge and respect your leadership skills, they will give you cover and watch your back. If they don’t, or they envy your frontline position, they can orchestrate your downfall. In the heat of the battle against the enemy, they may plan a mutiny, or they may simply abandon you to your fate. Of course, you may also be an unwitting cause of your fate.

    As in war, so it is in politics, which has led some to find a fitting analogy between war and politics.

    Fortunately, the perils of leadership are balanced by the opportunities that it affords for providing fresh insights for the greater purpose of achieving lasting success for the organisation, be it private, public, or national. Ideas matter, and leadership with ideas inspire. Examples also matter, and leadership with personal stories of effective leadership under grave circumstances with ideas proven to work can galvanise pragmatic steps toward the achievement of shared goals.

    This intertwining of leadership hazards and opportunities has always played out at various points in our national history. Recall the First and Second Republic partisan brickbats within and between party hierarchies. We have also seen a similar trend in the present republic, again within and between the major political parties. For Master History, repetition does not connote failure.

    Yet the way the interconnection played out in the last one week has especially been quite dramatic and hilarious.

    First, let us bring to the fore evidence of the danger of leadership, including the desperation of the opposition coupled with its unskilful use of ammunition. Two related stories caught my attention in this regard. First, on April 2, THISDAY newspaper carried a story headlined “PDP Caucus Accuses Tinubu, EFCC of Conspiracy to Destroy Senate.” Naturally, I was interested in the story. But as I got into the middle, it became clear to me that something was not right.

    The article reported that the Senate PDP caucus was upset that Tinubu was involved in a conspiracy with the EFCC to destroy the Senate and impugn the integrity of its members. Surely, if this was true, PDP caucus had the responsibility to raise the alarm as members of the Senate. The justification is that even though the caucus is in the minority, it sees itself as a good corporate citizen of the chamber. Good for the Senate PDP caucus, I said to myself.

    As I read on, however, I saw less than circumstantial evidence in the allegation against Tinubu. Media agencies associated with him carried critical reports or comments on Senate leadership. Oba Akiolu vowed to deal with Senate. And there was a “savage” attack on Senator Peter Nwaboshi, who had moved a motion on the “refusal of the executive to respect Senate resolutions.” THISDAY also reported that its source contented that Tinubu and his friends “were not happy that senators supported President Muhammadu Buhari, when he was away. They thought we will help them bring down the government because of their ambition.”

    Now, this last accusation is strange when it is combined with the accusation by the same “source” that Tinubu’s friends had attacked the Senate because of its motion on the refusal of the executive to respect Senate resolutions. In one breath, Tinubu and his friends were accused of attacking the Senate (i) because the Senate supported the Presidency and (ii) because the Senate opposed the Presidency. The accusation is a classic case of self-contradiction.

    On top of this, there is no reference to any named individual who made the accusations, only to anonymous “sources”. The most bizarre of this is that no word or statement, written or verbal, was attributed to Tinubu as basis for the allegation of his war against the Senate. It is a case of guilt by association. By which it means that none of the individuals and organisations mentioned as having something to do with the grievance of the PDP caucus can act freely and independently. Their actions or statements must be authorised by Tinubu.

    But the story itself has no legs and it disappears into the thin air as quickly as it appeared. By the following morning, it was gone and this time, there was at least one credible source. The leader of the Senate PDP caucus, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who should know, “said the caucus did not discuss Tinubu at any time.” “It is far from the truth”, he said. “We did not at any time discuss Tinubu at our meetings and nobody accused the EFCC of anything.” Just like that, “the handwork of mischief makers” as Abaribe put it, was discredited. Like the wiretap claim of one that will remain unnamed, this too fell flat.

    But who are these “mischief makers”? One THISDAY reporter “broke” the original baseless story. It was another THISDAY reporter that nailed its coffin with a new reporting. Did the first reporter make up the story? To what end?  Was the fake story planted by Tinubu’s political opponents who found a willing journalist to publish it? Shouldn’t the journalist confirm the story with the Senate PDP caucus before going to press? Or did the PDP caucus decide to wriggle out of an embarrassing story?

    It is telling that even the second reporter avoided mentioning the original reporter or the fact that THISDAY published the debunked story. Whatever answers there are to these questions, the story itself confirms the hazard of leadership. Tinubu has come a long way to be acknowledged as a major issue in Nigerian politics today. The territory he occupies is also the aspiration of others who feel threatened by his intimidating presence. I have no doubt that he gets it that to feel secured and stable in your own skin due to the power of your ideas is one of the most important assets of a leader. Hence his penchant for idea-powered leadership.

    This takes me to the other side of the linkage, the opportunities of fresh insights and ideas for the greater purpose of the organisation. With no time for the frivolity and theatrics that characterise the everyday outing of some politicians and the cat and mouse relationship that politics seems to nurture, Tinubu has taken on the task of regular intervention, with the power of ideas, in the national search for greatness since the beginning of the Fourth Republic.

    The inauguration of a colloquium series that focuses on issues of national significance is a confirmation of Tinubu’s stature in the politics of ideas. Needless to add, great ideas and a dogged pursuit of their execution are what makes a nation great— not dictatorship, not mindless populism, certainly not malicious accusations that have no foundation.

    In his address to his namesake colloquium, Tinubu again demonstrated his grasp of what turns the wheel of economic advancement: shape the economy for the benefit of the people. This is basic, but have we fully embraced its logic?

    If we did, millions will not be out of work today. And tens of millions will not be underemployed. One way we have failed and pursued the opposite of what is required is conform ourselves to the rentier mono economy which makes us consumers rather than producers. We even outsource the production of our only product to multinationals and whine that they defraud us. Hopefully, we have learnt the important lesson from this ongoing recession, that if the lives of our young ones are not to be wasted in their prime, if we are to help them realise their full potentials, we need an economy that works for them, a diversified economy that develops our indigenous resources for what we and the world need.

     

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  • Where on earth is the local rice?

    Last December there was so much hoopla about local Nigerian rice flooding the market. Nearly all states’ government in Nigeria claimed they had harvested enough rice to feed the entire nation and indeed nourish the rest of Africa. Ebonyi State in the Southeast of Nigeria went a step further to set up a task force to raid major markets in the state and rid them of imported brands of rice.

    Chief Audu Ogbeh, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), has been particularly upbeat. He thinks Nigeria now produces enough rice for export. In fact he said last year that we would achieve self-sufficiency this year. Speaking at a roundtable meeting on Rice Supply Chain of the  Agribusiness Supplier Development Programme (ASDP) in October last year, Ogbe said: “By 2017, Nigeria will be self-sufficient in rice production. We are getting close as there is improvement on what we have been getting before. This will boost our economy. The Federal Government Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GES) for input supply to farmers and the ministry was working with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to reposition the Staple Crop Processing Zone.”

    But after the first quarter of 2017, the actual situation is far removed from the minister’s reality. Three points will buttress this assertion. First, locally-produced and processed rice can hardly be found in any major market in Nigeria, as traders still stock and sell imported rice.

    Second, the price of rice has not dropped in the market. Fifty Kilogramme bag of rice that sold for between N9,000 and N11,000 (depending on the grade) about two years ago has continued to sell for between N16,000 and N24,000 per bag. It peaked at about N22,000 last Christmas and has largely remained at that price since.

    A cursory check with dealers in major markets across the country will reveal that there is hardly any local rice anywhere. It is a FALLACY and indeed a LIE to say Nigeria is producing rice locally in any appreciable quantity. Yes, there are efforts at production of paddy and milling, but it is still too insignificant that to speak of self-sufficiency is sheer delusion.

    The quantity of rice consumed in Lagos and the 36 state capital daily required massive investment in nearly all states with mills spread all over the country and value chain well establish and running like clock-work. Where are the giant mills working 24/7/365? This is the status we must achieve to begin to speak of sufficiency.

    But for the Agric Minister to speak of sufficiency when a proper value chain has not yet been established in any state is a marker that the Federal Government does not understand the magnitude of the problem.

    The third troubling point which actually triggered this article is a report in The Nation  by Sina Fadare, headlined, “Silos of rodents” (Saturday March 18, 2017). Here is an excerpt from the report: “The Strategic Grains Reserve Silo projects scattered around the country tells only one tale: vision blurred, dream aborted. The project, which is reckoned to have gulped N280 billion, now harbours snakes, lizards and other reptiles.

    “The Umaru Musa Yar’Adua administration had taken the project more seriously than the previous ones as a lasting solution to food crisis in the country. But while they were billed to be completed within 12 months, many of the 33 silos around the country are yet to be completed (10 years after), not to talk of stocking grains in them…”

    Even six of these silos in Ondo, Oyo, Kaduna, Abuja, Osun and Ekiti states, which are reportedly completed and handed over, lie waste and fallow till this moment.”

    So much for this government’s song and dance about growing the agric value chain. The fact is that about 95 per cent of Nigeria’s major staples, such as rice, wheat, poultry, fish, milk, cooking oil and tomato puree are still imported. Nay they are smuggled. And here lies the double jeopardy: we pretend to have banned most of these commodities, but they are smuggled through our land borders in cahoots with officials of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS). So government loses huge import duty to boot.

    That silos built at huge costs are forgotten and abandoned for about a decade have deep reaching implications. Apart from showcasing the joke which is our much vaunted agric reform, it is a signpost that we have not managed to address our minds to large scale farming that includes preserving, processing of products and the entire  value chain.

    For instance, Nigeria can grow enough maize to feed the whole world year after year, yet our silos are empty and decrepit. And yet again, maize based feed for poultry and fish farm remain very expensive because they are still largely imported. Such is the paradox.

    We claim to have banned poultry products, but how many full-process poultry farms in Nigeria have capacity to produce chickens from the pen to the processing plant, the cold rooms and then to the dinner table? We mean high volumes like 10,000 birds daily? Hardly any. So our reality, which we don’t want to face is that if we manage to shut our borders tight enough to bar poultry imports, we will suffer poultry crisis so serious that it could cause a major election loss.

    Such is our dilemma that we have not been able to scratch the surface of serious agri-business to feed Nigeria’s teeming population. We are paying lip service to agric and being delusional about it. We need to be a little more aggressive; as has been canvassed here, we may need to set up presidential task forces on the critical staples that we cannot do without – poultry, rice, wheat, cooking oils, fish, tomato puree and fruit juices.

    The problem has gone beyond the Ministry of Agric as currently constituted, using the failed old template. There is need for a radical review of the old ways that tell us there is local rice, meanwhile the country is consuming smuggled rice. Is anyone out there! We actually have food emergency!

     

  • The Prophet’s medicine

    Preamble

    This article is a follow up to that of last Friday in which the bee was described as ‘The Insect that Heals’. Both articles are a deliberate diversion of readers’ attention from the economic and political   madness of this moment in Nigeria.

    Such diversion becomes necessary as a relief from the current overwhelming tension in a country where every news item is sad and every hope turns forlorn. A worthy columnist must know when to bite and when to blow editorially if only to sustain the readership of his/her column. This is the time of mental, physical and psychological trauma in Nigeria for which there must be a soothing medicament.

    Appropriate medicament

    Incidentally, the most appropriate medicament for all ailments including trauma is the one prescribed by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) about 1,440 years ago which still remains as potent today as it was when it was prophetically prescribed. And it will keep remaining relevant for the rest period of human existence on earth.

    Prophet Muhammad’s prescription was a practical fine-tuning of the coded medicine primordially prescribed by the first human being who bore the name Adam.

    Prophet Adam, the primogenitor of mankind, was hardly one hour old when he started prescribing medicine against ailments. He was commanded by Allah to teach the Angels the names of all things which they (the Angels) had confessed not to know. By teaching the Angels, Adam thus became a teacher to the Angels and this made teaching the very first profession of man. But, those in the information sector could, as well, argue that what Adam did was more of information dissemination than teaching or prescription.

    First human profession

    There is tendency that a fierce debate might ensue between teachers and journalists on the one hand and both of them and the medical experts on the other over what can be called the first profession of man on earth. But the truth is that all the three professionals are right. By teaching, a teacher informs. By informing, a journalist teaches. And by medicating, a doctor helps to dispel ignorance. Thus, the three professions are mutually complimentary.

    Prophet Adam as a doctor

    By teaching the Angels, what Prophet Adam really did was to cure the worst disease in them as well as in man. That disease is ignorance. Shortly before the creation of Adam, Allah informed the Angels that He was going to create a new living being and put him in charge of the garden to be called the earth. But, feigning knowledge, the Angels kicked against the plan and advised their Lord not to do it. Allah then told them in a tone of finality that “I know what you do not know”. (Q.2:31). It eventually took Adam, by Allah’s command, to heal those Angels of the disease of ignorance in them.

    If Adam had not taught them the names of all things on earth, as revealed in the Qur’an, the Angels would have remained ignorant forever. And, Allah’s messages to mankind, as contained in the divinely Revealed Books, would not have come mankind through them.

    Categories of medicine

    In ordinary man’s view, medicine is the substance required to cure an ailment. Such substance may be natural or artificial. It may also be as crude as herbs or as sophisticated as surgery. However, it is generally believed that a person does not need medicine unless he is ill. That is why the Western conventional medicine is rather curative than preventive. Illness resides in the body just as ignorance makes the mind its abode. Today, in most cases, people neither go to the hospitals nor take medicine unless they are sick.

    Prophet Muhammad’s prescription

    Though unlettered, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had known the different types of medicine before he diagnosed two basic ailments and prescribed two fundamental medicines for them. The first of these ailments is ignorance. The second is poverty. And poverty in this case is not lack of material wealth alone as many people erroneously believe. It is also lack of many things including health and conscience. Thus, in Islam, ailment is basically of two classes: ignorance and poverty. Many people are victims of one. Many more are victims of both.

    Analysis

    A person is said to be poor-sighted when he cannot see well without artificial aid. He is deemed poor in memory when his remembering ability becomes weak. He is also pronounced poor in health when some of his body organs malfunction or when he loses some active enzymes or minerals or vitamins. Thus, man may be poor, not in terms of money or material needs but despite his possession of both.

    As an antidote for ignorance, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) prescribed the Qur’an. And for body ailment, he prescribed honey.

    The role of the Qur’an

    Qur’an is the encyclopedia of life which personifies knowledge in all its ramifications. There is nothing about knowledge, whether spiritual or mundane, in this world or the hereafter that is not fully explained in the Qur’an.

    By recommending the Qur’an as medicine for ignorance, therefore, the Prophet simply provided cure for the ailment of the mind. And by prescribing honey for body ailments he encouraged elongation of life expectancy through a boost to human immune system. It is not by accident that a whole chapter in the Qur’an (chapter 16) is named after the insect that produces honey. Verse 68 of that chapter reads thus:

    “And your Lord revealed to the bee (saying): Build your homes in the mountains, in the trees and in the hives which men shall make for you. Feed on every kind of fruit and follow the trodden path of your Lord’. From its belly comes forth a fluid of many hues as healing (drink) for mankind. Surely in this, there is a sign for those who can reason….”

    Products of the Bee

    Contrary to general belief, honey is not the only product of the bee. There are six others so far known to man. These are: propolis; pollen; royal jelly; bees wax; bee venom and bee bread. More can be discovered as research continues in line with the Qur’anic challenge. Each of these products has specific functions in maintaining and immunizing the human hormone system.

    Characteristics honey

    Honey is one of the products of the bee. It is the most popular of the bee products. It is a special fluid with various hues odours and flavours. For instance there are bitter, white and granulated honeys which most people do not know of. Honey is the foremost known natural product that serves as both food and medicine. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, once reportedly told his patients while prescribing honey for them thus: “let your food be your medicine and your medicine your food”. There is no known nutritional value in terms of vitamins, minerals and enzymes that is not proportionately present in honey.

    Composition of honey

    A raw, pure honey contains about 80 different substances that are most important for human nutrition. Besides glucose and fructose, honey contains all of the B-complex minerals like vitamins A, C, D, E and K as well as trace elements such as magnesium, sulphur, phosphorus, iron, calcium, chlorine, potassium, iodine, sodium, copper and manganese. The enzyme content of honey is one of the highest of all existing foods. Honey also contains and antimicrobial and antibacterial factors.

    The composition and nutritional value of honey differ in relation to the floral sources from which honeybees do pick their raw materials. For example, a recent research supports the claim that dark coloured honey has larger amount of antioxidants than brown. The inorganic contents of honey, minerals and other trace elements, play a significant role in human metabolism and nutrition. Owing to its chlorine content, honey is appreciated as an excellent tonic and helps people to overcome suffering from constipation and other enteric problems.

    Doses of honey

    Whereas no synthetic medicine can and should be taken by any ill person without doctor’s prescription, honey requires no such prescription for anybody who is not allergic to it because it has no side effect. The suggestion in certain quarters that honey can cause piles is based on ignorance. As a multipurpose natural food and medicine, honey can be taken alone or along with other foods albeit in moderation.

    And as an antiviral and antibiotic substance, honey is the best medicine for the eye and the ear diseases as well as tooth ache, insomnia, staphylococcus, constipation, whitlow, burns and wounds. After many centuries of disputing these facts ignorantly, conventional doctors finally came to realize that no medicine is as effective in sealing up surgical wounds and healing sores as honey. Today, honey is used for these purposes in most public hospitals in various parts of the world including Nigeria.

    Products of the Bees

    As mentioned above, the products of the bees are seven. These are: honey, propolis, pollen, royal jelly, beeswax, bee venom and bee bread. Each of these products has a potent value in the life of man. For instance, royal jelly is the secret of the longevity of the Queen of England and even that of her mother called the Queen mother just as pollen was the secret behind the strength of a onetime American President, Ronald Reagan at old age.

    Honey

    To produce honey alone, the bees make contact with about 250,000 plants picking and metabolizing their flower nectars. It is possible for them to contact more plants depending on the richness of the vegetation in which they dwell. (Nectar is the main raw material which the bees use to produce honey).

    Propolis

    Propolis is produced by the bees from the resin of certain specific trees identifiable only by the bees themselves. Through research, propolis has come to be known as the strongest anti-biotic ever discovered by man. This product is used not only to protect the living but also to preserve the remains of the dead as well. At least it is on record that the famous historic Egyptian mammies were embalmed with propolis several millennia ago. This same propolis is the product used by the bees, themselves, to sterilize their bodies against bacteria and secure their hives against viruses brought in by predators. Whenever they sting such predator to death, it is propolis they use to embalm it to prevent its decaying body from polluting the hive.

    Pollen

    Pollen is the secret of strength in old age.  It heals almost all the old age diseases like prostate, arthritis, pneumonia and bronchitis. It rejuvenates the nerves and reinvigorates the hormonal glands especially in the aged.

    Royal jelly

    Royal jelly is the bee product that prolongs life and solves the problem of infertility in men and women. It is the exclusive food of the queen bee which enables her to lay an average of 2000 eggs per day.

    Bee venom

    Bee venom is a natural antibiotic vaccine which strengthens human immunity against all diseases. It works like magic in the human system especially when applied through the natural acupunctural points in the body.

    Beeswax

    Bees wax, as distinct from other products, is used to produce non-chemical cosmetics and to coat pharmaceutical and capsules like multivites to protect the potency of the substances used to produce the.

    Bee bread

    Bee bread is the lava of the young bees. It is used by the apitherapists to prevent or heal children’s diseases.

    The use of each of these products to heal human ailments depends on the extent of knowledge of apitherapy possessed by the user. (Apitherapy is the use of bee products to prevent or heal human or animal ailments). A specialist in this field is called apitherapist.

    The uniqueness of using these products for healing or prevention of diseases is in the fact that they do not entail any negative side effect because of their natural potency. And that is a major sharp difference between them and the synthetic drugs manufactured chemically by the conventional pharmacists.

    Summary

    If most people were knowledgeable about the efficacy of the bee products in preventing and healing diseases, hospitals would have been less congested and substantial percentage of their incomes would have been saved to enhance the quality of their lives. The world of bees is a wonderful world. It takes only those who know it to appreciate it and benefit from its healing miracle.

    Through divine instinct, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had known this almost one and a half millennia ago and he had recommended it to mankind for their survival. The case of the bee and honey is like that of the hen and the egg. No one can tell with precision which of them first came into existence. The fact that honey is still a subject of scientific research today is a further confirmation that the prophecy of the unlettered Arabian man called Muhammad (SAW) is truly divine.

    Conclusion

    Without the bee there can be no honey. And without honey, the bees cannot exist since honey is the food upon which they depend for survival.

    The story of the insect called bee is inexhaustible despite centuries of research on it. It is therefore impossible to tell it all in a one page column of this type. That Prophet Muhammad (SAW) knew this much even as an unlettered person at a time when the world was assailed by blatant ignorance and primitivism is a further confirmation of Michael Hart’s classification of him as the greatest human being that ever lived.

    Information

    Four Muslim brothers across three Universities successfully delivered their inaugural lectures recently. They are Professor Lai Olurode of the Socology Department, University of Lagos; Professors Ishaq Lakin Akintola and Lateef Adetona of Religious Studies Department, Lagos State University, Lagos, Nigeria and Professor Fehintola of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The Message Column joins many well wishers in congratulating them all and in wishing them further higher pedestals in their respective academic careers. Amin.

     

     

  • Magu, DSS and Senate

    The fascinating story of the Senate confirmation hearing and decision on the nomination of Ibrahim Magu as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has a great potential for box office success as a movie. What with the complex plot and intriguing characters! I trust that our talented screenwriters are already working their hearts out to give the nation a thriller in no distant future.

    There are three levels of interconnected plots: the executive level, the legislative level, and the subject common to both, the man Magu.

    Ibrahim Magu is the main character. But who is he and why is he in so much trouble? Magu served under former EFCC chairman Nuhu Ribadu. When Ribadu was relieved of his position by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Magu also lost his job. He moved on to other matters of importance, including making himself available as the presidential candidate of the ACN in 2011.

    Mrs. Farida Waziri took over and she was also relieved of her post as Chair. We have not heard much of her since. In her place, President Goodluck Jonathan appointed Mr. Lamorde EFCC Chairman and he brought Magu back to the commission. Lamorde finished his term and Magu was appointed as Acting Chair pending Senate confirmation. The Red Chamber has declined to confirm him on two occasions.

    Thus far, there is almost nothing interesting in the story. A new president has the right to hire and fire. Both Yar’Adua and Jonathan exercised their rights. No one has a right to complain of being fired. On its part, Senate has the constitutional responsibility of advice and consent or withhold consent. It is not a big deal.

    But in the case of the presidential nomination of Magu, there is a big deal because President Buhari who nominated Magu twice is the head of the executive branch of which the DSS is a part. What is the involvement of DSS and why does it raise a red flag of executive dysfunction?

    DSS is the Department of State Security Services, the agency with the responsibility for investigating and advising the president on matters of state security. This includes the screening of executive branch appointees like ministers, special advisers, heads of public agencies and, in this case, the EFCC chairman. The job of DSS is to advise a president on the suitability of a potential nominee.

    Normally, then, DSS should provide a president with its findings in a timely manner even before the nominee is presented to Senate for confirmation. The reason this is important is that a president does not want to be embarrassed should a potential appointee turn out to have a criminal background or a questionable integrity. DSS is the agency that helps the president to do his homework right. It stands to reason, then, to expect that once a president receives an unfavourable report about a potential nominee, he cannot proceed with that nomination, unless he is prepared to dare Senate or make a deal with that body. The projected persona of this president does not lend itself to the latter conjecture.

    But DSS issued a stinging report on Acting Chairman Magu. In its 14-paragraph report, the agency raised serious issues on the professional integrity of the nominee. This is where it starts to get interesting and weird.

    According to Magu, DSS issued two reports on him on the same day. One was addressed to the Clerk of the National Assembly. The second was addressed to the Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters.

    One DSS report concluded with an advice against the confirmation of Magu. The other DSS report concluded with an advice in favour of the confirmation of Magu. It is not clear if it is only the conclusions of the two reports that are different and the contents the same. There is room for speculation here. I conjecture that the report which supported confirmation of Magu was sent to the Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), while the report which advised against his confirmation was sent to the Clerk of the National Assembly. How else might it be?

    If I am correct, it would explain why the President went ahead with the nomination of Magu. It makes sense that the Special Assistant to the President would have attached the positive report to the nomination. What we know for sure is that Senate received a negative report through its Clerk. As Magu ruefully intoned, “the two reports emanating from the same agency raise questions of sincerity and motive.”

    Without taking side in the matter of MAGU vs. DSS, two reports with different conclusions sent to two different bodies certainly raise questions of sincerity and motive. This would reasonably recommend discarding those reports and starting all over with a new agency or a new committee in DSS to objectively do a background screening of the nominee. It has been one procedural fiasco.

    Now, the substance of the allegations against Magu is weighty, touching on issues of corruption and questionable integrity. He was accused of keeping agency files in his house after he was sacked and it took a search of his residence on the order of the new chairman to retrieve the files. He was also accused of hobnobbing with corrupt individuals. For the man tipped to head the pre-eminent anti-corruption agency of the nation, the indictment is the moral equivalent of a death sentence.

    But can there be conviction and punishment without a hearing? DSS is an agency tasked with the protection of the security of the state. Can it do this without corroborating and confirming allegations against security risks? Magu has complained that he was not contacted by DSS for his defence of the allegations. This is another procedural failure!

    When the Attorney-General finally gave Magu the opportunity to defend himself within 48 hours, he appeared to discharge himself creditably in his point-by-point response to DSS allegations against him. If DSS had confronted Magu with its findings on each of the allegations, it could have received the same detailed response and that would have placed the agency in a better position regarding its report to the presidency and the Senate. It would also have saved it the embarrassment which an obviously biased approach has caused it.

    There is a final point. At the core of DSS and Magu face-off is the crucial matter of the integrity of the executive branch. Integrity here does not simply mean character. It means the integration and smooth functioning of all the parts. We talk about the integrity of a system because without it, dysfunction is inevitable. With dysfunction, total collapse is imminent.

    DSS is a part of the executive branch, the Presidency, to be precise. With a damning report of a presidential nominee going direct to Senate, blindsiding the President who is the head of the executive, it is simply amazing.

    The third plot in this salacious movie is the Senate. Of course, no one really expects the Red Chamber to be kind to the Acting Chair of EFCC under whose leadership many of the distinguished senators or their political associates have been grilled and prosecuted for corruption-related matters. Certainly, our senators can be fair-minded and in this case, I have no good reason to think that they are not. In fact, under the circumstances, I do not know if they could have done otherwise.

    They worked with the findings of DSS on the nominee. Of course, Magu’s response to the Attorney-General is not only in the public domain; the President himself supported his re-nomination of Magu with the justification that the nominee has been cleared of corruption charges by the Attorney-General.

    Why did the Senate not believe the President? Apparently because they consider him an interested party who wants his nominee to be confirmed. A more germane question is “why did the Attorney-General and the DSS not reconcile their positions based on Magu’s response to the Attorney- General?

    Hopefully, the executive branch is an effectively functioning system and is mindful of its grave susceptibility to a debilitating dysfunction.

     

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  • BAT @65: What they won’t tell him

    It has been a week of great songs and dances; a fitting celebration of a great man of our time as he turned 65. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) has earned every encomium heaped on him and he deserves probably more in our dreary pantheon where statesmen are few and heroes are rare.

    To say a word of what has been said about BAT these few days would amount to torturing my readers; what is to be said here ought to be what has not been said. And that is: in the estimation of this column, BAT still has a helluva work to do to achieve and even surpass the philosophical and ideological prowess of the great Obafemi Awolowo; he still must plow the national reach of an MKO Abiola and the nationalist and pan-African stature of the great Zik and Madiba.

    Time is on BAT’s side, but the focus must be sharp to make those benchmarks.

  • This Ali too, must go

    When hubris goes to bed with obduracy, they sire impunity, a wild-eyed son. This is the case with the retired Col. Hameed Ali’s defiance of the Senate. But let’s be upfront with it: this column is of the opinion that Ali, Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), must either GO answer the call of the Nigerian Senate or quit the service. This is the considered stand of this column on yet another matter that has not only vacated the realms of logic and commonsense, but diminishes the essence of the Buhari administration each day it lasts.

    This column was to interrogate the loud tales of agric exploits in Nigeria in the midst of intensified smuggling and rising cost of foodstuff. But this protracted folly has become a numbing distraction not only on this space, but for the Presidency, the Senate and indeed the entire polity. Eventually, the CGC, the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice and indeed the Presidency, only managed to tread that hateful and ignominious path well beaten by a certain Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke.

    At the height of her reign, a certain Alison-Madueke, oil minister in the last administration, was out of control of the Presidency under a certain Goodluck Jonathan and she considered a summon by the Senate beneath her dignity; so she corralled the Justice Ministry under a certain Mohammed Adoke to deploy the law and the courts to shield her.

    So it was that Diezani blatantly shunned the Senate and would not present herself to clear an allegation that she burnt about N10 billion of public funds in luxury private jet shuttles.

    But trivial as some think it to be, the case of also Ali blatantly refusing to appear before the Senate in regulation Customs uniform is even more fundamental. First, it is obvious that he, a public official heading a uniformed corps, would want to choose the way to dress as well as the rules to obey.

    Some have glibly said the Senate is pursuing trivia and neglecting important national issues, but what is more important than maintaining the sanctity of our institutions, obeying constituted authorities and abiding by rules, regulations and procedures?

    In this instance, it is clear that Ali has elected to defy the Senate and put it to public ridicule because he thinks himself answerable to the President and no other authority. It is in the same manner he has undermined the powers and authority of the Finance minister that statutorily supervises the NCS. What is playing out here is hubris at a level not acceptable in public service and in a democracy.

    To prove Ali’s untrammelled insubordination, his initial reason for not donning his uniform is because as an erstwhile army officer, it is beneath him to don any other service uniform. At another turn, he went before the Senate and lied that he was not aware that he was mandated to appear in uniform. And on the third occasion this week, he upped his cheap game by scurrying to the courts to procure some dubious injunction. This is indeed an old annoying trick used by poor governments.

    What a pity! If only Ali was a smart fellow; if only he was a man with a modicum of acumen in human relations and public perception; if the state of the Service mattered and the feelings of the officers and men under his command were of importance to him; if he were a man interested in public good and in delivering service; if he were not consumed by a monstrous ego bottled in his small frame, he would have simply decked his ceremonial CGC uniform to the Senate the first time and ended this sad saga with a joke. But he is not of such noble mould. His is of a zero-sum mind.

    And that segues to the brainwave about vehicles Customs duty. First, it’s a retroactive action and the motive as is apparent, is more an asinine revenue drive than a move to uplift the people or edify the system. It is all about hounding the people and chasing them down, sometimes to their deaths in a depressed economy.

    A thinking man would draw a line, rework the mindset of his men and fine-tune the system. This way, a noble objective would yield bountiful results without trampling the dignity and very humanity of the citizenry. But for Ali, every citizen is a crooked, bloody civilian who must be chased down and whipped into line.

    The reaction of many compatriots is to accuse the Senate of chasing shadows while neglecting important national issues; some even insinuate that the legislators pursue a vendetta of sort against the CGC. But they beg the question. No public servant is allowed to pick and choose the rules to obey.

    Finally, if Ali is doing a great job of revamping the Service, one could excuse his other shortcomings, though they may be grave. But sorry to say that he has not shown any especial capacity to radically reform a horribly rotten Service. Apart from weeding the top echelon of the Service and arming the men to the teeth, people still hold their noses when Nigerian Customs is mentioned in decent circles.

    At the end of his time, the NCS may have become a revenue machine, but not an organic institution that is efficient at watching over our borders and collecting revenues. Crucially, there is no promise that Ali would be able to re-orientate the Service and rid it of the demons of corruption that has seized its very soul. Not likely at all. Like the Ali of 1978, this Ali too really should go!

  • The insect that heals

    The insect that heals

    Preamble

    It cannot be strange to anybody who is well familiar with the Qur’anic contents that there are 114 chapters in that sacred book. Out of these, six chapters are dedicated to the animal kingdom, three of which are specifically dedicated to insects. They are chapters 16, 27 and 29 which are dedicated to ‘The BEE’, ‘The ANT’ and ‘The SPIDER’ respectively.

    Each of these cited chapters is particularly symbolic of the purpose to which it is dedicated. But it takes only those who can reason and engage in further research to comprehend them. However, our immediate concern here is the miraculous insect called ‘BEE’ about which Qur’an 16, verse 68 quoted above is explicit.

     

    The Insect called Bee

    Most people see the bee as an ordinary insect that interacts with human life positively or negatively. They believe that honey is the only beneficial product of the bee. They also believe that if they can live comfortably without honey they can as well cope with life without bees. Such beliefs are unfortunately based on ignorance.

    Honey as one of about seven products of the bee is like a message. No one can gain access to a message except through the messenger. And the messenger, in this case, is the bee that produces it. To appreciate the value of honey and other bee products, it is necessary to know something about the insect called the bee and the effect of its lifestyle on human life.

     

    The Lifestyle of Bees

    Bees are social insects living a communal life under an organized and disciplined government. Bees have male and female genders. Their males are called drones. Their females are known as workers. They all live together in an abode called hive. Such hive may be wild or man-made. Though people had been harvesting honey for thousands of years, it was not until 1851 that the idea of a definite man-made hive came into existence. In that year, an America apiarist, Lorenzo Lorrain Langstroth, discovered the principle of ‘bee space’ and designed a man-made hive that was named after its designer (Langstroth). According to that man’s discovery, bees leave spaces of about 0.6 cm (about 0.23 inches) between wax combs inside which they store honey. Thus, Langstroth’s discovery made it possible to remove individual frames from a beehive and to harvest honey and wax without destroying the hive. Through such effort, it also became possible to control diseases in the hive and to maintain a larger number of colonies. (A colony is a hive effectively occupied by bees while an apiary is a place where several hives are kept.

     

    Types of Bee Hives

    Man-made hives are of three types for now. These are Langstroth, Kenyan top bar and Tanzanian top bar. Kenyan and Tanzanian top bars are similar in shape and outlook. The one was designed in Kenya in about 1958 while the other was designed in 1962 on the template of that of Kenya.

    Each of the Kenyan and Tanzanian hives can contain an average of 20 liters of honey. Langstroth on the other hand can contain as much as about 40 liters or more. Langstroth has a bigger accommodation capacity because of its double or triple Decker design with which it came.

     

    How to hive the Bees

    To get the bees to colonize the hive, what apiarists do is to bate such hives with some pure, genuine honey added to a piece of beeswax and put at the entrance of the hive. On smelling the odour of the honey, the bees will come in their hundreds or even thousands to colonize the hive. Thus, such hives become bee colonies.

     

    Government of the Bees

    Bees are governed by a female monarch called ‘the Queen’. To choose the Queen that will govern the hive, a group of queenmakers among the bees in the hive meet to select some fertilized eggs shortly before those eggs are hatched and incubate them royally. When they are hatched and become princesses, they are then fed with a special food called Royal Jelly to accelerate their growth and facilitate their longevity. After about 16 weeks, one of them is chosen and made the Queen while the rest are either taken out into new hives as Queens or left altogether to slug it out with one another in a royal battle for survival. In such a melee, whichever of them overpowers the others will emerge as the next Queen of that particular colony. The other fertilized eggs that are not selected for the same purpose are left to grow naturally until they become worker bees.

     

     Functions of the Drones

    Drones are the male bees produced from unfertilized eggs. They neither sting nor work. Their main job in the hive is to mate with the queen which they do only once in a lifetime. As soon as they finish mating, the drones fall down and die as they have completed their destined duty. The queen also mates only once in a lifetime but she does not die as a result. Drones are very few in any hive since the unfertilized eggs that produce them are scantily laid by the Queen.

    Drones constitute less than one per cent of any hive population. Their population is invariably determined by the Queen bee that lays very few big and unfertilized eggs from which the drones are produced. On the other hand, the worker bees are produced from smaller but fertilized eggs.

     

    Culture of the Bees

    By the natural culture of the bees, the Queen neither mates inside her own hive nor mated by the drones from the same hive. This is similar to the principle of endogamy (marriage within the same family) which is culturally prohibited in most African clans. Only one Queen can be found in a hive at any given time. And she has no deputy.

    When it is time for the Queen bee to mate, she produces a glandular secretion with which she sends out with a powerful pheromone into the air to alert the drones in other hives around that she is ready for mating. A meeting is then arranged by the worker bees, between her and some interested drones, to mate with the Queen. And the mating is done in the air.

     

    Breeding new Bees

    To breed new bees, the Queen bee must lay unfertilized eggs in the larger chambers of the bee comb while she lays fertilized ones in the small chambers of the comb. The eggs in the larger chambers are meant for the production of the drones while those in the smaller chambers are meant for the production of the worker bees. This is because the drones are naturally bigger in size than the workers. Both chambers are expertly designed in the honeycomb by the worker bees for the purpose of breeding.

     

    The Mystery of Bee Comb

    One of the mysteries of the beehives is the building of the honeycomb by the bees. Researchers in the field of apitherapy know that the bees use wax to build honeycomb but they are still puzzled by the natural skill with which those tiny insects do it. An attempt by those researchers to manufacture similar honeycomb manually as a means of assisting the bees in reducing their workload has proved abortive as the bees have shunned such artificial comb. Honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal cells built by the honeybees in their nest to contain their larvae and store honey and pollen.

     

    Classification of Worker Bees

    Worker bees are classified into groups for the purpose of carrying out specific duties assigned to them. Some go out every morning to scout for flower nectars with which to produce honey. Some are assigned to the duty of picking tree resin with which to produce propolis. Some others are charged with fetching water to be used in the hive. Some serve as guards. Some serve as informants. But except for those assigned to internal duties, all of them travel out in groups into the wild vegetations or plantations every morning as a matter of duty. Those of them that travel to carry out such duties are called foragers.

     

    Division of Labour

    Among the other multitudes remaining in or around the hive, some are responsible for guarding the hive against any foreign attack or aggression. They are the security officers. Some are assigned to carrying out the conversion of nectars into honey. Some others engage permanently in fanning the interior of the hive with their tiny wings to reduce the heat and neutralize the humidity therein. Those are the ventilators. Some specialize in converting resin into propolis. Those are the pharmacists or apothecaries. Some are assigned to the Queen’s kitchen as special cooks and prepare royal jelly for the Queen which is the latter’s exclusive food. Those are the Queen’s royal chefs.

    Some bees are kept at the entrance of the hive for monitoring the environment and for passing any gathered information to the busy workers. Those are the informants. Some are put in charge of nursing the young bees into adults. They are the foster mothers. Some are assigned to the building and maintenance of the honeycomb. Those are the colony architects and builders. Some are assigned to sterilization of the interior of the hive and the ceiling with propolis. They are also charged with the duty of embalming any predators that stray into the hive and stung to death. Such predators are stung to death to prevent any outbreak of epidemic in the hive that the decay of those predators can cause. Those are the sanitary inspectors. All of these duties are carried out by the female bees called worker bees.

     

    Duties of Foragers

    Worker bees, by their nature, do travel very far in search of water or raw materials needed to carry out their assigned duties in the hive. And they follow the principle of ‘esprit de corps’ in carrying out such duties.

    This great division of labour is a daily routine which enables perfection to be attained in the hive. And all these activities are centrally coordinated by the Queen bee from her palatial chamber. The Queen bee herself is about five times bigger in size than the worker bee. She lays an average of about 2,000 eggs per day. And she lives about 40 times longer than those other bees because of the exclusive diet of Royal Jelly which she takes every day. The average lifespan of an ordinary bee is six weeks. That of the Queen bee is two and a half years but she can live for as long as six years depending on the conduciveness of her royal environment.

     

    The Queen’s Succession Procedure

    When the Queen bee becomes old or weak and can no longer lay enough eggs (of between 1,500 and 2,000 per day) with which to sustain the population of the hive, the Queen-makers in the hive meet and jointly decide to depose her by stinging her to death. Then, she is replaced with a new, vibrant Queen.

     

     The Bees’ Friendly and Hostile  Stings

    Stinging is part of the duties of the worker bees. And each of them can sting only once in a lifetime. No bee can sting twice. Bees have both friendly and hostile stings. The one is for healing diseases in human beings. The other is like a missile reserved for an attack on enemies. The natural sac in which their venom is kept at the tail end of their abdomen is called ‘ovipositor’.

     

      Food of the Bees

    It must be noted that the bees work and produce honey and other products for themselves and not for human consumption. Honey is the food of the bees. They work hard during the dry season to produce honey which is the food they will eat during the raining season. Bees do not work during the rainy season because they cannot cope with the wind and storm which often accompany rains. Thus, during the rainy season, they concentrate on taking care of the Queen and on nursing the younger bees. It takes an average bee about 21 days to grow into an adult from the egg status while it takes the Queen about 16 days to develop from the egg status to the royal status of a Queen.

     

    Species of Bees

    There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world. But the most prominent ones in relation to human life are seven. These are Bumble Bees; Carpenter Bees; Honey Bees; Killer Bees; Ground Bees and Yellow Jackets Bees. Some worker bees are stingless. But generally, the world of bees is a wonderful one. It takes those who know it to appreciate its value. Without bees, there will be neither crops nor farmers. It takes the bees alone to pollinate over 80% of the plants that produce foods for human consumption. No amount of narration here can expose all about the communal life of the bees. Their story is inexhaustible. The seven products of the bees, including honey, and their usefulness to human lives will be discussed in this column soonest, God willing. Meanwhile, only Islam could have provided this wonderful knowledge about the bees over 1400 years ago.

  • The insect that heals

    The insect that heals

    Preamble

    It cannot be strange to anybody who is well familiar with the Qur’anic contents that there are 114 chapters in that sacred book. Out of these, six chapters are dedicated to the animal kingdom, three of which are specifically dedicated to insects. They are chapters 16, 27 and 29 which are dedicated to ‘The BEE’, ‘The ANT’ and ‘The SPIDER’ respectively.

    Each of these cited chapters is particularly symbolic of the purpose to which it is dedicated. But it takes only those who can reason and engage in further research to comprehend them. However, our immediate concern here is the miraculous insect called ‘BEE’ about which Qur’an 16, verse 68 quoted above is explicit.

    The Insect called Bee

    Most people see the bee as an ordinary insect that interacts with human life positively or negatively. They believe that honey is the only beneficial product of the bee. They also believe that if they can live comfortably without honey they can as well cope with life without bees. Such beliefs are unfortunately based on ignorance.

    Honey as one of about seven products of the bee is like a message. No one can gain access to a message except through the messenger. And the messenger, in this case, is the bee that produces it. To appreciate the value of honey and other bee products, it is necessary to know something about the insect called the bee and the effect of its lifestyle on human life.

    The Lifestyle of Bees

    Bees are social insects living a communal life under an organized and disciplined government. Bees have male and female genders. Their males are called drones. Their females are known as workers. They all live together in an abode called hive. Such hive may be wild or man-made. Though people had been harvesting honey for thousands of years, it was not until 1851 that the idea of a definite man-made hive came into existence. In that year, an America apiarist, Lorenzo Lorrain Langstroth, discovered the principle of ‘bee space’ and designed a man-made hive that was named after its designer (Langstroth). According to that man’s discovery, bees leave spaces of about 0.6 cm (about 0.23 inches) between wax combs inside which they store honey. Thus, Langstroth’s discovery made it possible to remove individual frames from a beehive and to harvest honey and wax without destroying the hive. Through such effort, it also became possible to control diseases in the hive and to maintain a larger number of colonies. (A colony is a hive effectively occupied by bees while an apiary is a place where several hives are kept.

    Types of Bee Hives

    Man-made hives are of three types for now. These are Langstroth, Kenyan top bar and Tanzanian top bar. Kenyan and Tanzanian top bars are similar in shape and outlook. The one was designed in Kenya in about 1958 while the other was designed in 1962 on the template of that of Kenya.

    Each of the Kenyan and Tanzanian hives can contain an average of 20 liters of honey. Langstroth on the other hand can contain as much as about 40 liters or more. Langstroth has a bigger accommodation capacity because of its double or triple Decker design with which it came.

    How to hive the Bees

    To get the bees to colonize the hive, what apiarists do is to bate such hives with some pure, genuine honey added to a piece of beeswax and put at the entrance of the hive. On smelling the odour of the honey, the bees will come in their hundreds or even thousands to colonize the hive. Thus, such hives become bee colonies.

    Government of the Bees

    Bees are governed by a female monarch called ‘the Queen’. To choose the Queen that will govern the hive, a group of queenmakers among the bees in the hive meet to select some fertilized eggs shortly before those eggs are hatched and incubate them royally. When they are hatched and become princesses, they are then fed with a special food called Royal Jelly to accelerate their growth and facilitate their longevity. After about 16 weeks, one of them is chosen and made the Queen while the rest are either taken out into new hives as Queens or left altogether to slug it out with one another in a royal battle for survival. In such a melee, whichever of them overpowers the others will emerge as the next Queen of that particular colony. The other fertilized eggs that are not selected for the same purpose are left to grow naturally until they become worker bees.

     Functions of the Drones

    Drones are the male bees produced from unfertilized eggs. They neither sting nor work. Their main job in the hive is to mate with the queen which they do only once in a lifetime. As soon as they finish mating, the drones fall down and die as they have completed their destined duty. The queen also mates only once in a lifetime but she does not die as a result. Drones are very few in any hive since the unfertilized eggs that produce them are scantily laid by the Queen.

    Drones constitute less than one per cent of any hive population. Their population is invariably determined by the Queen bee that lays very few big and unfertilized eggs from which the drones are produced. On the other hand, the worker bees are produced from smaller but fertilized eggs.

    Culture of the Bees

    By the natural culture of the bees, the Queen neither mates inside her own hive nor mated by the drones from the same hive. This is similar to the principle of endogamy (marriage within the same family) which is culturally prohibited in most African clans. Only one Queen can be found in a hive at any given time. And she has no deputy.

    When it is time for the Queen bee to mate, she produces a glandular secretion with which she sends out with a powerful pheromone into the air to alert the drones in other hives around that she is ready for mating. A meeting is then arranged by the worker bees, between her and some interested drones, to mate with the Queen. And the mating is done in the air.

    Breeding new Bees

    To breed new bees, the Queen bee must lay unfertilized eggs in the larger chambers of the bee comb while she lays fertilized ones in the small chambers of the comb. The eggs in the larger chambers are meant for the production of the drones while those in the smaller chambers are meant for the production of the worker bees. This is because the drones are naturally bigger in size than the workers. Both chambers are expertly designed in the honeycomb by the worker bees for the purpose of breeding.

    The Mystery of Bee Comb

    One of the mysteries of the beehives is the building of the honeycomb by the bees. Researchers in the field of apitherapy know that the bees use wax to build honeycomb but they are still puzzled by the natural skill with which those tiny insects do it. An attempt by those researchers to manufacture similar honeycomb manually as a means of assisting the bees in reducing their workload has proved abortive as the bees have shunned such artificial comb. Honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal cells built by the honeybees in their nest to contain their larvae and store honey and pollen.

    Classification of Worker Bees

    Worker bees are classified into groups for the purpose of carrying out specific duties assigned to them. Some go out every morning to scout for flower nectars with which to produce honey. Some are assigned to the duty of picking tree resin with which to produce propolis. Some others are charged with fetching water to be used in the hive. Some serve as guards. Some serve as informants. But except for those assigned to internal duties, all of them travel out in groups into the wild vegetations or plantations every morning as a matter of duty. Those of them that travel to carry out such duties are called foragers.

    Division of Labour

    Among the other multitudes remaining in or around the hive, some are responsible for guarding the hive against any foreign attack or aggression. They are the security officers. Some are assigned to carrying out the conversion of nectars into honey. Some others engage permanently in fanning the interior of the hive with their tiny wings to reduce the heat and neutralize the humidity therein. Those are the ventilators. Some specialize in converting resin into propolis. Those are the pharmacists or apothecaries. Some are assigned to the Queen’s kitchen as special cooks and prepare royal jelly for the Queen which is the latter’s exclusive food. Those are the Queen’s royal chefs.

    Some bees are kept at the entrance of the hive for monitoring the environment and for passing any gathered information to the busy workers. Those are the informants. Some are put in charge of nursing the young bees into adults. They are the foster mothers. Some are assigned to the building and maintenance of the honeycomb. Those are the colony architects and builders. Some are assigned to sterilization of the interior of the hive and the ceiling with propolis. They are also charged with the duty of embalming any predators that stray into the hive and stung to death. Such predators are stung to death to prevent any outbreak of epidemic in the hive that the decay of those predators can cause. Those are the sanitary inspectors. All of these duties are carried out by the female bees called worker bees.

    Duties of Foragers

    Worker bees, by their nature, do travel very far in search of water or raw materials needed to carry out their assigned duties in the hive. And they follow the principle of ‘esprit de corps’ in carrying out such duties.

    This great division of labour is a daily routine which enables perfection to be attained in the hive. And all these activities are centrally coordinated by the Queen bee from her palatial chamber. The Queen bee herself is about five times bigger in size than the worker bee. She lays an average of about 2,000 eggs per day. And she lives about 40 times longer than those other bees because of the exclusive diet of Royal Jelly which she takes every day. The average lifespan of an ordinary bee is six weeks. That of the Queen bee is two and a half years but she can live for as long as six years depending on the conduciveness of her royal environment.

    The Queen’s Succession Procedure

    When the Queen bee becomes old or weak and can no longer lay enough eggs (of between 1,500 and 2,000 per day) with which to sustain the population of the hive, the Queen-makers in the hive meet and jointly decide to depose her by stinging her to death. Then, she is replaced with a new, vibrant Queen.

     The Bees’ Friendly and Hostile  Stings

    Stinging is part of the duties of the worker bees. And each of them can sting only once in a lifetime. No bee can sting twice. Bees have both friendly and hostile stings. The one is for healing diseases in human beings. The other is like a missile reserved for an attack on enemies. The natural sac in which their venom is kept at the tail end of their abdomen is called ‘ovipositor’.

      Food of the Bees

    It must be noted that the bees work and produce honey and other products for themselves and not for human consumption. Honey is the food of the bees. They work hard during the dry season to produce honey which is the food they will eat during the raining season. Bees do not work during the rainy season because they cannot cope with the wind and storm which often accompany rains. Thus, during the rainy season, they concentrate on taking care of the Queen and on nursing the younger bees. It takes an average bee about 21 days to grow into an adult from the egg status while it takes the Queen about 16 days to develop from the egg status to the royal status of a Queen.

    Species of Bees

    There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world. But the most prominent ones in relation to human life are seven. These are Bumble Bees; Carpenter Bees; Honey Bees; Killer Bees; Ground Bees and Yellow Jackets Bees. Some worker bees are stingless. But generally, the world of bees is a wonderful one. It takes those who know it to appreciate its value. Without bees, there will be neither crops nor farmers. It takes the bees alone to pollinate over 80% of the plants that produce foods for human consumption. No amount of narration here can expose all about the communal life of the bees. Their story is inexhaustible. The seven products of the bees, including honey, and their usefulness to human lives will be discussed in this column soonest, God willing. Meanwhile, only Islam could have provided this wonderful knowledge about the bees over 1400 years ago.

  • Power Supply: Quiet improvements?

    You know that power supply has improved in Nigeria when your freezer gets frozen more often and you don’t hear the shouts of ‘Up NEPA!’ in your neighbourhood too frequently. Plus the fact that you don’t hear Nigerians complaining bitterly at every turn anymore.

    There has indeed been a quietening down of gripping and whimpering about power outage in the last few weeks – the newspapers, broadcast stations and social media have reported less outage recently. Power supply had always been particularly tough during dry season when water levels in the hydro plants fall. But there seems to be a bit of reprieve this time.

    We guess we will have to watch for a while longer to determine whether the BRF magic is beginning to unfurl or we are merely enjoying some placebo effect.

  • Between politics and preaching

    At a House Fellowship meeting, the leader raised a poser for members to address: On the same day that you received your letter of admission to the seminary to train as a pastor, the governor of your state also nominated you as his Commissioner for Works. As a believer, which of the two opportunities will you pursue?

    Members struggled to wrap their heads around the rationale for the question. A commonly held view is that politics is a dirty game. Therefore, there’s hardly a good reason to choose it over preaching. But politics is also a noble vocation with real consequences for the lives of real people.

    One obvious answer is that one will need to pray about the matter and let God make the choice. However, this approach does not adequately address the question: which of these opportunities will you choose? Rather it postpones the day of answering till after prayer. It is the path that many of us take when faced with a dilemma. For the faithful, it is inevitable, based on the assurance that God will make His choice known one way or the other in a timely fashion. It was the approach suggested by one of the members at the House Fellowship.

    A second member analysed the question from another angle. As a professional with vast knowledge in public work management, he knew exactly that if he were to face this dilemma, he would take it as God’s calling upon him directly to take up the job of Commissioner for Works. Otherwise, why would this position be available and offered to him if not for God’s determination to use him to promote the good of his creatures here on earth? Without little or no skills in preaching compared with professional expertise in public work, it was clear what God would have him choose.

    In response to the fellow member’s position, he was reminded that the question posed noted that the person applied for admission to the seminary. Therefore, even if he or she had very low skills or none in pastoring, choosing the seminary was bound to improve the skill level needed to succeed.

    A third contribution queried the presupposition of a dichotomous relationship between politics and preaching and sought to break down the artificial boundary between the two. It was an ambitious attempt, especially in view of the well-conceived notion of the separation of church/mosque and state.

    Yet as valid as this notion is, it was different from the concern of the participants at the House Fellowship meeting.

    The third attempt was to make this point forcefully and to argue that both pastoring or preaching and serving as commissioner in a political system are activities in the vineyard of God. When both are conscientiously undertaken, they can promote the good of God’s creation. But, when either of the activities is motivated by the worst of ego, they can undermine the purpose of God.

    To pursue this idea further, we may approach the subject from two angles: spiritual and secular. From the spiritual angle, every believer starts from the premise that God’s creative endeavour has a purpose, namely to promote as much good as possible for his creatures. Therefore, as we were taught from the cradle, God sets up the machinery for the promotion of the good by revealing himself to individuals specially chosen as interpreters of his message. These individuals convey to the rest of God’s creatures what is required of them to maximise the amount of good for his people. But in addition, God also prescribes that everyone be assigned responsibilities for the management of the affairs of the society.

    The work of creation is itself a good lesson in teaching by example. If everyone must contribute something to the affairs of the society, coordination is inescapable and some must be in charge. At its idealistic best, this is what politics is about. Therefore, from this angle, politics has a divine origin, or at least a divine sanction. Whether, therefore, I choose pastoring or commissioning, I am doing the bidding of God by furthering his purpose. I only need to do whatever I choose conscientiously and with the fear of God.

    Now, assume that you are not one to embrace spirituality at the expense of rationality; there is also a secular premise to the same conclusion. Forget about creation and embrace the Big Bang. The universe just came about randomly and we all found ourselves in one corner of it, with everyone engaged in various kinds of activities, some innocuous, some dangerous. With the passage of time and the consequences of uncoordinated egoistic activities playing out and jeopardising our individual and collective interests, we put on our thinking caps, summoning our rational faculties to action.

    Shortly, we came up with a workable solution that adopted some control mechanisms to limit our freedoms with the prospect of promoting our interests. We resolved to create social institutions including, among others, religion and politics, which from different directions establish control systems that put us in check. The ultimate purpose of both was to promote the greatest amount of good. To achieve this, we further created functions and assigned responsibilities to individuals, some as clerics, including imams and bishops; others as clerks, artisans, educators, home makers; yet others as presidents, governors, law enforcers, security agents, and yes, commissioners.

    From both secular and spiritual perspectives, the commissioner is as useful as the pastor and there is no good reason to discriminate against either.

    The third contributor then moved the discussion from the realm of the abstract to the abode of the concrete. He suggested, using the case of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and the choice that he faced in 2014, that one can serve God’s purpose and fulfill one’s destiny from a variety of settings. A pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Professor Osinbajo was nominated as the running mate of General Buhari. Should he accept the nomination and give up his pastoral service? Or should the nomination be construed as God’s will to use him for the furtherance of his purpose for humans in this corner of the world? There was no doubt that Osinbajo prayed about his options. There was also no doubt that he sought the counsel of the General Overseer.

    In view of the overall positive assessment of his performance as Vice-President, no one can reasonably deny that Professor Osinbajo is God’s chosen vessel for the job. More importantly, it leads to the conclusion that God does not discriminate between the various vocations and he can use any of them for his purpose. After all, God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

    We could be less charitable as my friend was when I reported the discussions at the House Fellowship to him. Opalaba is not known to carry his spirituality as a banner and he often chides the Pharisee in many of us. He queried the “holier-than-thou” attitude of those who would practise their faith openly only to disguise their night-time reprehensible activities. Therefore, for him, should one make a choice of pastoring over politics in the case before the House Fellowship, it does not by itself tell us anything about the Godliness or goodness of that individual.

    Finally, when we are admonished to seek first the kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added unto us, we must note that the kingdom of God is a metaphor for doing the most good and avoiding hypocrisy.

    To do the will of God on earth is to tend his earthly garden of innocent human beings seeking to make the most of the life that God has endowed them with. In the end, the verdict will not be that you are welcome because you were the most articulate preacher on earth. Rather, it will be “you provided for the needy among my creatures; you fed them when they were hungry; you housed them, when they were homeless; and you clothed them when they were naked. Since you did it for them, you have done it for me.”

     

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