The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Frank Macaulay’s UniLife series

    Frank Macaulay’s UniLife series

    Two weeks ago, the launch of UniLife, an innovative movie series set on a Nigerian campus, dramatically demonstrated Nollywood’s evolution. Produced by Frank Adekunle Macaulay’s 9jaStudio, a movie, TV and acting hub, the series, according to the producers, “follows a group of undergraduates as they navigate societal expectations, friendships, and personal growth. The drama intensifies when a student’s mysterious death triggers an investigation, unravelling hidden truths and testing relationships.” They add that UniLife “highlights the real-life struggles faced by Nigerian youth enrolled at university,” and presents “the highs and lows of Nigerian university life.”

     Macaulay’s words: “UniLife dives deep into the real life wahala: peer pressure, cultism, religion, class struggles, the hustle for identity that take place on our campuses.”

    On June 1, invited guests watched the first three episodes of the seven-part series on their mobile devices at the studio’s Magodo base in Lagos, in a setting enlivened with music, wining and dining. Mobile devices are central to the studio’s revolutionary approach, which is based on this logic: “For Gen Z, entertainment is on the go; so smart phones and tablets have become their best bet for consuming content, including drama series.”

     Using its YouTube channel, the studio aims to “achieve one million views per episode within six months of launch, and build a loyal subscriber base on the 9jaStudio Entertainment YouTube channel.” The target audience comprises 18-25-year-olds as well as individuals interested in Nigerian culture, drama, and entertainment.

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    In this first season, the studio streams an episode every Thursday. The last episode is scheduled for June 26.  Episode Five of UniLife, on June 12, was dedicated to “the memory of the incredible Wale Macaulay (1959 – 2024), who played ‘The Dean’ with such brilliance and was our Acting Coach during Screen Acting Boot Camps,” the studio said. The episodes can still be seen after the first season has ended.   Part of the beauty of social media is its archival capacity. 

     The studio’s Screen Acting Boot Camp (SABC) is another striking revolutionary aspect of the UniLife movie series. Most of the cast members are products of the unique residential training programme, demonstrating the studio’s motto: “Training the stars of tomorrow today.” This underlines its “commitment to providing opportunities for new and emerging talent.” 

    According to the director of the series, Afolabi Silver, “Working with young actors in UniLife, SABC made it easier for me and for everybody because we trained them, we understood them. It made casting even easier because I saw a little bit of everybody in the characters that they played.”

    The actors include Wale Ojo, Lucille Love Oputa, Oladaye Folaranmi, Peculiar Adunni Anthony, Rubelle Diamond, Iyang Victor, Mercy Essien Emmanuela, Prince Ejiroghene Badare, Celia Okechukwu and Promise Agbor.

    On the night, there were question-and-answer sessions involving cast members and crew members. These illuminated the making of the series. Cast members shared their experience playing the characters they represented, and crew members gave glimpses into activities behind the scenes. 

    Macaulay, founder of 9jaStudio and producer of UniLife, said the idea “started with wanting to build a studio, it started with wanting to work with young people because I had worked with young people in the UK and then it grew from there.”  Predictably, especially in Nigeria, there were several obstacles on the journey to the launch of the series, he said, adding, “you manage somehow to make it work and that’s something that we are able to do.”

    Executive Producer Olatunde ‘ED’ Ayoola, who spoke virtually at the event, told the story of his involvement in the project. He said: “A couple of years ago, Frank Macaulay, my childhood friend, messaged me and said, ‘hey, I’m going to be in Dubai, where I live, attending a film conference. Are you around to catch up?’ And we did. And it was a wonderful catch up with my dear old friend, Frank. And during the course of the conversation, he described to me why he was in Dubai for the conference, what he was trying to do, the idea and dream that he had about making a series called UniLife.

    “I don’t know anything about the film industry. But as he described it more and more, it wasn’t only the idea of the UniLife series. He shared with me bits of the script and it looked fantastic and sounded fantastic. I was quite captivated by it. But it was more so what he represented. He described to me the 9jaStudio, all the boot camps, the workshops, and the training.

    “It was all about helping people at the very beginning of their journey in their acting careers and supporting them as best as we can to help them achieve their dreams. That’s what got me about this, because I have been looking for avenues to support young Nigerians in their careers.” He decided to support Macaulay’s project.

    The writer of the series, Adeniyi Adeniji, said he created the characters based on people he knew in real life. Macaulay said the episodes for the second and third seasons had been written already. This is a strong indication of promising continuity. 

    Interestingly, after the invitees had watched the first three episodes online, one of them, a lady, remarked that, given the quality of the production and its relatable focus, she expected the studio to achieve the targeted number of views and subscribers quicker than planned.

    Macaulay’s linear approach to marketing the series reflects commendable self-belief. He aims to first establish the pull of the series as an irresistible selling point. Indeed, UniLife has the potential to serve as an effective vehicle for products and services targeted particularly at the 18-25-year-old educated demographic group.

    The night ended on a bright note. This studio has a lot to contribute to the development of Nollywood. Its emphasis on professionalism and best practices cannot be underemphasised. 

  • Honour due

    Honour due

    Sam Amuka-Pemu’s humour is quintessential and inevitably spontaneous.

    The trade of the laugh and its exponents will strain to classify his comedy: black, improvisational, slapstick, blue, or even anti-humour? Yet on his 90th birthday, who could pigeonhole in humour what his friend forever related at the Eko Hotel where he was feted by a cross section of people, including the media and politics, from the Trojan Babatunde Raji Fashola to Information Minister Idris Mohammed to His Royal Majesty, the Olu of Warri, Ogiame Atuwatse III?

     Aremo Segun Osoba recalled the Vanguard publisher walking into his home and warning the former Ogun State governor and his wife, two years ago, that he forbade himself to hit the 90 mark. His reason? He had committed too many sins.

     Osoba’s wife restrained his funeral fantasy by weighing his many good deeds against his iniquities and assured him a portal to heaven.

     That was humour as a friend. I had also witnessed another sort when he was with his gangling friend, Isa Funtua, who often stood beside him like an Iroko beside a banana tree.

    That picture itself  presented its humour. Funtua seemed  shorter metaphorically  as he often bent downwards to seek  Amuka’s attention.

     When Funtua told me “Sam is my brother from another mother,” Amuka retorted with mock gravity, “no mind am o. When you hear him name and my own, how you go say we be brothers?” Funtua knowingly chuckled.

    Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka looked with a critic’s eye at Uncle Sam’s days as writer and described how his satiric pen built the ego of the elite while making them feel happy with themselves. Soyinka, also a satirist, did not classify his humour, but that is what I might call burlesque fury.

    It is a rage that invokes the laugh of indignation. Ike Nwachukwu, a journalist who became a general, confessed to how it was hard for the army to arrest a man who enlarged your ego and made you suspect you should be angry. He knew how to massage his message.

     This author recalled his note to me when I wrote a column on the bloody chapter of the sleepy village Okuama in Delta State.

    In the column, The Shrine of Oil, I had written, among other things, the following lines about oil as the casus belli and god behind the tempest in the footling place.

     “The god is not on earth,” I crooned in my essay. “It is under the earth and water. Oil floats on troubled waters, a sea without a plea. A viscous mammy water flirts. It is a dark, slimy, seductive and crude deity. To the god are all the sacrifices of deaths, rage, blood spills and, of course, the conflicts of tribes and the death of a village.”

    Uncle Sam sent me a note: “Grammar Boy: So “A viscous mammy water flirts…” Congrats to the boyfriend.”

    There was also the other part, the offbeat generosity, the humble, which the BusinessDay publisher Frank Aigbogun and Vanguard pioneering editor Muyiwa Adetiba told the audience.

     Don’t ever admire any of his possessions or it is yours. He once gave instanta his shirt to Dele because he liked it.

    Aremo Osoba said Uncle Sam is an arts collector who barely had three  in his possession because he has given them  away to admirers. Soyinka said in Amuka’s 70th birthday, he requested that he wanted to dance with a certain woman “who was twice his size” and his head rested on her bosom.

    He did not wear a hat to the event in deference to the Olu of Warri, and in his speech, the Ogiame serenaded his 90-year-old son, who had earlier knelt on stage. The king returned the generosity in a moving speech, and gave him a rare privilege. He could wear his hat. The king promised to give a special feather. If he had a feather to his cap that day already, he did not expect a royal one, a literal feather of rare prestige to his nonagenarian hat.

    Another Prince, the suave Thisday Publisher Nduka, ‘the Duke,’ Obaigbena, who mastered the stage called me to deliver the citation.  He also announced that the Hallmarks of Labour Foundation would present a lifetime award to the celebrant, an ambush that the self-effacing Amuka-Pemu could not escape.

    As I walked up stage, I recalled my father Moses who first mentioned his name when I was a little boy in the early 1970’s.  I never expected to tell the world who was that same man. Below is the citation, with a retouch here and there.

    Let me preface this citation with a rumination on the number 13. Some people associate it with bad omen and fear. I have news for you on a day we celebrate a titan of news. He was born on the 13th. Nigeria’s first pilot, Captain Robert Hayes, a friend and Ughelli schoolmate of the celebrant, was born on May 13th, and he marked his 90th birthday in London a month ago. Our own literary supremo, the Nobel laureate and Professor Wole Soyinka, was separated from his mother’s womb on July 13, and he marked his 90th birthday, a year ago. Even out of these shores, the tennis prodigy Coco Gauff, the black athlete who just won the French Open in a sensational comeback, was born on March 13th. I can go on.

    Rest easy, folks. Friday 13 is a day of joy and rejoicing. These personages I just mentioned are great 13 ambassadors as demystifiers, frontiersmen and fearless, our holy trinity of the 13th. They are optimists whose lives say amen and not omen. With their pluck, they conquer ill-luck.

    Our beloved Samson Oruru Amuka-Pemu, son of Pa Amuka-Pemu and Princess Aritsehoma, was born on the June 13, 1935 at Sapele, in the now Delta State, with a royal blood because his mother was a princess of the Olomu kingdom. He attended Government School for his primary education until 1948. In 1949, he was admitted to Government College, Ughelli, known by many then as the Eton of Nigeria. He was the youngest in his class. As a student, the seed of his future started to germinate. He was a member of the music club, debating society and the school Magazine known up till today as The Mariners.

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    He did not make it as a music maestro, although he hobnobbed like a wannabe with the great Bobby Benson. However, he would bring the virtues of great music, its rhythm and sonority, to his future craft. His role in the school magazine was the prophecy of his profession as he became a journalist. I cannot forget this. He was a soccer star on campus. The great journalist Peter Enahoro, known as Peter Pan, also an Ughelli schoolmate, told me he had an inflammable left foot as a striker. Think of Thunder Balogun, Messi, Dombraye, Adokie, of course Haruna Ilerika. Then imagine what our Uncle Sam might have been if he did not exchange the boot for the pen. As a ball juggler, he carried that arsenal -apologies to the gunners here – to the topsy-turvy world of the press.

    After school, he honed his skill as a reporter with the Daily Express under another Ughelli School mate, the great poet and dramatist, John Pepper Clark. But he blossomed in the then Daily Times, the flower of Nigerian Journalism at the time. He rose to become its Sunday editor, but many remember his sojourn as a columnist. We call him Sad Sam today because of his edgy writings, but his life as a columnist began with a column called Off Beat Sam, distinguished by a picture of a Sam blowing from the wrong end of the trumpet, a picture of the writer’s haunting iconoclasm and subversion.

    But his Sad Sam Column was to endure and outlast his contemporaries. It was a writing of understated bombshells, sardonic, irreverent, throwing barbs at the political and military elite in a style I can liken to the laughing gas. It hit the ribs. It ripped them apart while they were laughing. He disarmed with his verbal armory. It was because he did not only write, but he also writhed. He wrote that way because his conscience groaned with glee.

    The entrepreneur’s bug bit him and he wanted to strike out on his own. He set up a publication known as Happy Home. He was in the throes of that adventure when his friend, Olu Aboderin, and himself teamed up to set up the Punch Newspaper. Amuka-Pemu brought his acumen into the new venture, became Sunday editor and managing director. The paper bloomed, became and remains a mainstay of journalism today. His signature shines in it even this morning.

    Things went awry in that chapter of his life, and he had to pull out. Many thought  Amuka-Pemu  was done. But like Ebenezer Obey’s line, Won se b’ola titan/ ola o tan ola kun seyin o. Amuka-Pemu  rose from the dead. He was a revenant. A phoenix. Ashes, for him, was no destination. He became an iconic, unparalleled abiku of the profession. In the words of Soyinka’s poem, Abiku,  Amuka Pemu called “for the first and repeated time.” Or in the poem of the same title by J.P. Clark, he remained “on the baobab tree” of the media.

    He resurrected with The Vanguard Newspaper. The paper pursued a delicate balance between the profound and the profane, bringing to his audience new voices, audacious visual aesthetics and gender experimentation. The paper was a revolution that would later define itself as a forerunner of a new brand of daily journalism. It is still alive and well today.

    But Amuka-Pemu  is not just a publisher, writer, reporter, manager and entrepreneur. He is patron of the Newspaper Proprietors Association Nigeria (NPAN) and a founding member. He represents Nigeria at the International Press Institute (IPI) headquartered in Zurich. As a journalist, he is also a statesman. We all know his role with General Abdulsalami Abubakar in brokering peace and acceptance after the 2015 presidential elections. He is a man who never forgets his roots. He remembers his roots and he was last year decorated as a notable Itsekiri son  with the honour of Royal Order of Iwere (ROI) by the Olu of Warri, His majesty Ogiame Atuwatse III.

     Unknown to many, he is the chairman of the Sapele Boma Boys. The word Boma is a corruption of Burma. Burma boys were soldiers who returned from hostilities after the Second Word War. Amuka-Pemu and others have turned themselves into soldiers for the fortunes of their community. He is also a perennial habitue and patron of the Amala Group whose members refresh their palates every month at another media icon Bunmi Sofola’s place in Lagos.

    Amuka-Pemu is a living legend, a man who pioneered two stalwart papers still standing tall. A patriot, statesman, a grandee of journalism. With a sly tongue and deceptively shy demeanour, Uncle Sam is a reluctant patrician of the trade because he is a great practitioner.

  • Major Ajayi’s death in captivity

    Major Ajayi’s death in captivity

    Incidences of kidnapping are no longer news on these shores. The degeneration of the malfeasance in the last couple of years in the face of the inability of security agencies to get a handle to it has left Nigerians seemingly at the mercy of all manner of marauders masquerading as kidnappers.

    Even with this seeming collective surrender to fate or helplessness, our consciences are still constantly assailed by the existential and mortal dimensions the scourge has continued to assume. Chilling accounts of the fate of innocent citizens in the hands of kidnappers dot the social space. It is either a tale of kidnapping for ransom, ritual killing or to settle scores for perceived wrongs.

    Many families have lost their loved ones; thrown into sudden grief by the devious activities of callous kidnappers who take advantage of the forests to perpetrate their heinous trade. One of such incidents was the death last week of Major Joe Ajayi, an 80-year old retired army officer in the hands of some demented kidnappers.

    Ajayi was abducted from his hometown in the Odo-Ape, Kabba-Bunu Local Government Area of Kogi State in the midnight of May 21. His abductors made an initial demand of N50 million ransom for his release which the family could not just afford.

    As his incarceration lingered, the family requested the kidnappers to allow them forward his medication to him.  But the kidnappers accepted the family’s request only on the ground that it would come with extra cost. It was inconceivable to fathom how a family that could not raise a substantial part of the humongous amount initially demanded could go about the additional cost. They were unable to meet that demand.

    Without the help of his regular drugs, Ajayi’s health deteriorated. And when his captors noticed this, they quickly reduced the ransom to N10 million. In the hope that the kidnapped was still alive, the family quickly agreed to pay the reduced sum. They rallied around, raised the money in the hope of securing his release.

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    “Once the ransom was paid, the kidnappers directed the family to where they would find him, only for them to meet Ajayi’s lifeless body” a source in the community recounted in utter grief. Sad indeed!

    The circumstances of Ajayi’s death denote an uncanny metaphor for the mindless killings and atrocities our citizens have had to go through since the social scourge resonated in our national chessboard. Perhaps, his case attracted the attention it did because of his position in the society.

    Across the country and on a daily basis, many innocent citizens are made to pass through life-threatening ordeals in the hand of rampaging kidnappers, losing their lives in the process without notice. In their homes, work places, along the highways and our railways, nobody seems to be safe any longer. The matter has so degenerated that the fear of kidnappers is now viewed as the beginning of wisdom.

     Apparently pained by the death, the Bunu Leaders Forum in a statement said the gruesome manner the retired major died was on the conscience of Nigerian leaders who neglected their duties to the nation.  For them, the nation failed the senior army officer who had spent much of life in the service of the country.

    Before Ajayi’s case, a former Director General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, Brigadier-General Maharazu Tsiga (rtd) was also abducted in his hometown, Tsiga in the Bakori Local Government Area of Katsina State. The bandits struck around 12 am on motorcycles, shooting sporadically before forcefully gaining entrance into Tsiga’s residence.

    They abducted the retired army general together with an unspecified number of indigenes of the area. But that was not before some people had lost their lives to the senseless shootings.  The incident caused considerable fear and panic and forced many residents of the community to flee for safety.

    Gen, Tsiga spent 56 days in captivity as all attempts to have him freed proved abortive until some huge amount of money was paid as ransom. A retired Brigadier-General, Ismaila Abdullahi had after Tsiga’s release said that his freedom was facilitated by generous financial contributions from fellow army officers, generals, serving and retired military officers and a wide spectrum of other civilians. In a note of appreciation shared on his Facebook on behalf of Tsiga and his associates, Abdullahi detailed the community-driven efforts that secured the release of Tsiga.

    But the statement drew the ire of Defence Headquarters. The acting Director of Defence Information, Brigadier General Tukur Gusau had said in a statement that the article by Abdullahi which claimed military generals contributed money to secure the release of Tsiga from captivity after 56 days was baseless.

    Gusau was apparently unhappy with the inability of Abdullahi to acknowledge the efforts by the military, both kinetic and non-kinetic, to secure the release of the kidnapped general. This could be discerned from the catalogue of what he called the relentless efforts by the military that facilitated Tsiga’s release which he went ahead to furnish.

    To the military can be conceded its claim to series of efforts that culminated in the release of Tsiga from captivity. Nobody is denying them that. But the fact remains that huge sums of money was raised and paid to the kidnappers before Tsiga was set free. Abdullahi did not disclose the amount. But he acknowledged in the post that donations came like August rains.

    Gusau may have been worried by the wrong signal Abdullahi’s claim that military officers, serving and retired, contributed to the donation to free Tsiga could convey. This is quite understandable. But that is the reality of the fate of those who have been unlucky to fall into the hands of kidnappers. It is money or nothing. And if a friend or relation is involved, donors defy ranks and professions especially if it is the only thing that could secure the release of the captive.

    Tsiga corroborated this dimension after his release when he said that the kidnappers do not want to hear anything about God. They are only interested in money. He gave a chilling account of how shortly before they were released, hungry hyenas suddenly surrounded them and how they co-existed with dangerous snakes and scorpions. He attributed his safety to divine providence.

    That was the ordeal Tsiga is alive to tell. But Ajayi has no story to tell as he succumbed in the hands of his traducers. Given his age, one could imagine what he would have passed through without his medication.

    They refused him his drugs. They obviously did not want him to come out alive. Yet, they deceived the family to part with N10 million only to show them the dead body of the elderly man. Where has our conscience gone to and how did we get to this point where human life no longer counts?

    These searing questions highlight the contradictions in the festering criminalities across the country that pays scant attention to human life. These are military officers who served the country in various capacities. They passed through the rigors of military training and must have encountered challenging situations while in service before retiring.

    While in service, nobody dared challenge or threaten their lives. They had full security back up. After retirement, they settled in their home towns only to be taken captive and dehumanised by a band of ragtag urchins masquerading as kidnappers. One could read the minds of the officers as were tortured by these criminals.

    They would have nursed reminiscences of their career in the military; the powers they wielded and how all that could give way to their incarceration by a band of ragtag criminals. That was the situation the Okun forum referenced upon when they said the nation which Ajayi served failed him at the moment of need.

    Ajayi and Tsiga are not alone in this dilemma that speaks of the inability of the government to secure lives and property. The Defence Information reeled out the efforts they made to secure the release of Tsiga. Sadly, nothing of such was heard in the case of Ajayi. If there was such effort, the fact that the kidnappers only released his dead body after ransom had been paid underscores the role of money in securing the freedom of kidnapped victims.

    Fund raising in such circumstances knows no boundaries or professions. And as in Tsiga’s case, the Okun forum also acknowledged military colleagues ‘that also joined to work round the challenge, friends and well-wishers’.

    The issue is not about who contributed money for ransom but the steps the government is taking to roll out effective measures to make kidnapping and all manner of criminalities a risky enterprise. The lesson served by the sad fate of Ajayi and Tsiga is that nobody is spared in the scourge of kidnapping that has stretched the energies of security agencies to elastic limits. Something urgent must be done to tame this monster.

  • Fencing Nigeria’s borders

    Fencing Nigeria’s borders

    Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Musa last week identified two key challenges militating against the war against insecurity in the country. At a security summit in Abuja themed, “Renewed Hope Agenda: Citizens’ Engagement and National Security”, Musa rooted for the fencing of Nigeria’s borders as it will forestall the entrance of armed groups and reduce the escalating insecurity.

    He also fingered good governance at the local level as a means of tackling the root causes of insecurity.

    “Border management is very critical. We have countries that because of the level of insecurity in their country had to fence their borders”, he stated. The CDS cited the examples of Pakistan which fenced its 1,350 kilometres of border with Afghanistan and the 1,400-kilometre border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq which is completely fenced to buttress his point. According to him, it was after Pakistan fenced its border with Afghanistan that they had peace.

    And he asked, “Can we start thinking of fencing our border, we have 1,500km with Niger Republic, 1,900km with Cameroon. Chad is there, all over us, we are surrounded by francophone countries. The Sahel is heating up; if the Sahel falls, it is Nigeria that they are interested in”.

     This is perhaps, the first time in recent memory a top government official is coming up with the idea of fencing the borders with neighbouring countries. But that is not to imply that the multi-dimensional challenges facing the national economy due to the porosity of the borders have not long been recognised. Not at all.

    Not with the penchant by the government to blame the socio-economic and security challenges confronting the country on illegal infiltration by foreigners into the country. One of the key arguments raised overtime to justify the so-called fuel subsidy removal was the unabating smuggling of fuel across the borders where it sells at higher prices, depriving the government of the needed revenue for development.

    At the centre of all manner of smuggling in goods and services to neighbouring countries has been the inability of the government to effectively police the country’s extensive borders.  According to a former minister of Interior, Abba Moro, as of 2013, “there were over 1,499 irregular/legal and 84 regular/legal officially identified entry routes into Nigeria”. The number could be quite higher given that there are other illegal routes and pathways not officially known to the government.

    Even then, official knowledge of these illegal routes has not had any substantial impact on the illegal movement of goods, persons and services in and across the country. It has been difficult to effectively police the vast borders of the country in the absence of border fences, barriers and modern surveillance equipment.

    Matters are not helped by thriving corruption among officials of the Nigerian Customs Services and other sister agencies that man the identified entry points into the country. Complications in identifying certain categories of foreigners due to affinities bordering on culture, language and religion constitute another serious challenge.

    Fencing the borders is a good start to controlling the influx of aliens into the country. It is definitely an expensive venture given the vastness of the borders. But the idea is not to have all our borders fenced in one fell swoop. That could turn out a tall order.

    The first step is to identify those borders that account for the highest traffic in terms of security challenges and smuggling and begin with them. In this regard, the borders in the Northeast from where terrorists strike and run into the neighbouring countries should be accorded top priority.

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    The current war against terrorism is replete with accounts of terrorists either of the Boko Haram, ISWAP or Lukarawa variant striking communities in the northeast and northwest only to return to their bases in neighbouring countries The fact that Nigeria is currently involved in joint security engagement with some of its neighbours in the fight against the Boko Haram insurgency reinforces the importance of gradual fencing of borders in those theatres of war.

    This should be followed up with the fencing of those areas that are notorious for all manner of smuggling activities. Before then, the government should take quick measures to acquire modern sophisticated surveillance equipment for monitoring what goes on at the country’s borders.

    A country unable to effectively monitor and control its borders cannot seriously lay claims to its sovereignty. Is it not sufficiently troubling that insurgency simulated and perfected in the Sahel region is easily deployed to kill, maim and destabilise the country? Ironically, our leaders are quick to blame the cascading insecurity on infiltrators from neighbouring countries as if we are helpless. Sometimes, the way these blames are traded mock the officials behind them.

    A few years ago, when killings by the herdsmen and their despoliation of host communities went out of hand, the government was quick to lay the blame at the doorsteps of foreign herders. Former president, Muhammadu Buhari had in 2018, seven years after the death of Libyan leader, Muammar Ghaddafi, blamed him for the alarming dimension insecurity had assumed in Nigeria.  He told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby in London, that the arms Ghaddafi provided to his supporters had filtered into Nigeria where they are now being used to fuel killings across the north-central.

    “These gunmen were trained and armed by Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. When he was killed, the gunmen escaped with their arms. We encountered some of them fighting with Boko Haram. Herdsmen we used to know carried only sticks and maybe a cutlass to clear the way, but these ones now carry sophisticated weapons” he had said.

    Buhari may have brought the purported Libyan angle to cover up the Fulani herdsmen who have been serially accused in the killings in many communities especially in the north-central. Curiously, Libya shares no border with Nigeria and is not on record that it is destabilising its neighbours.

    So, it is difficult to fathom how Ghaddafi could be blamed for the crimes committed by Fulani herdsmen or Boko Haram that originated from this country. It is possible to encounter guns from that country smuggled into our shores from neighbouring countries. It is possible to encounter other makes of sophisticated weapons in the hands of sundry criminals. But it will be wrong to attribute the crimes committed with such guns to the country they came from just like the ones our security agencies work with. At any rate, those fighting alongside Boko Haram may have been recruited by their sponsors, enablers and financiers whom we are told can be found among top politicians, government functionaries and the military. Borno State governor, Babagana Zulum repeated this accusation just recently.

    But that is beside the point. The real issue here is that the relative ease with sundry criminals, arms and ammunitions flood the country is because of the porosity of our borders. Nigeria has vast and unmanned borders with at least four African countries. Some of these countries’ citizens share remarkable affinity with sections of the country and this blurs efforts to differentiate them. Little wonder the horde of foreigners lurking around the major cities undetected.

     Apart from the security challenges it poses, there also socio-economic dimensions to it. That is why cross-border smuggling has gone on unabated depriving the country the resources to the tackle the crisis of multidimensional poverty that has been the sad tale of our citizens.

    The CDS spoke of good governance at the local level as a veritable way of tackling insecurity. That goes without saying. The uncanny contradiction is how to actualise that high-minded objective when it has remained largely illusory at the state and national levels.

    But that does not diminish the potency of the recommendation. It only reinforces the challenges on the way to tackling the cascading insecurity in the country. And since our leaders are in the habit of rationalising the cycle of insecurity on infiltration by foreigners, it is only proper that securing the borders with neighbouring countries is key to winning the war against terrorism and cross border smuggling. That would seem the heuristic value of the CDS intervention.  Whether the leadership can muster the political will to see this through, is another ballgame.

  • Buhari’s vomit

    Buhari’s vomit

    The battle for peace in the northeast has taken a new dimension with men and arms coming in hordes from the Sahel countries around us.

    I think we should enlist the genius of military contractors, and let those mercenaries come back and tackle the beasts of death and plunder. The fellows were driven home by the Buhari administration, and their expertise has been missing in the region.

    Mercenaries know no mercy. They know stealth and strategy. They evince ruthlessness and result, and they have no respect for the enemy, especially because they are cultural agnostics.

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     They have no roots in the place, and so can root out the bad weeds. They want money, we want peace. A great trade-off. President Jonathan made progress with them, and we need their acumen to add to what we have on the ground.

  • The real coalition

    The real coalition

    At last, the cleric as governor, Umo Eno, made good his word. He echoed the spirit of late Tony Anenih at the SDP convention in the 1990’s.

    Politics still crawled under the shadow of IBB’s transition programme. Anenih described M.K.O. Abiola as talk na do. But in the ethereal rhetoric of a pastor, an Eno would evoke Christ, not Anenih, the swashbuckling ex-police chief. Eno would rather go to the New Testament, and say “let your yea be yea, and your nay nay.”

    So, he did. He was no longer promising. Not for him again the dithering or keeping the nation on tenterhooks.

    He was in earnest about his move. He described his party – his then party – the PDP as a picture of the apocalypse. He might say it is a shipwreck; a plane headed to a crash.

    It is a fuddy duddy dizzy on a cliff’s edge, a hoary end. It is careening out of control. It is falling from the twilight into the dark. Goodbye PDP. Welcome APC. A swansong is not always an ending.

     For Eno, a new window opens. A new testament.

    Some in the PDP see it as betrayal. He walked through the governor’s portal as a PDP stalwart, and he changed garment. As he himself might say, the scripture sees the garment as the emblem of the heart. The outer appearance has no value if the interior has value. It is the heart that matters, not the hype or harp. Paul says in scripture that circumcision or uncircumcision does not profit, unless you circumcise the foreskin of the heart.

    Those who see it as a traitor’s act may invoke what Winston Churchill said in the days of parliamentary turmoil in post-war Britain. “It is easy to rat,” said the boisterous statesman of letters, “But it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”

    The great Chief Obafemi Awolowo was enamoured of that quote since the First Republic Western Region legislature boiled over with such a tempest of movements.

    Eno’s ingenuity lies in the way he did it. He promised and he delivered. As the poet Samuel Coleridge wrote, “anticipation is more potent than surprise.”

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    He was not like a stealth bomber that strikes without prophecy. He fulfilled his own. He was a B-2 bomber. He announced with a roar from afar; he struck and hit a homerun.

    His is different from that of the governor of Delta State, Sheriff Oborevwori, who struck like the F-35 bomber. No one saw it coming. Yet, it was not a one-man action. He consulted obviously.

    The lawmakers were in. The party hierarchs were in. Ditto the local government authorities and the grassroots. As the story is told, even the non-indigenes were also consulted, and that accounted for the groundswell of solidarity when the party dumped the umbrella for the broom. How Governor Sheriff enacted the manoeuvre without a leak should be a stuff for not just historians, but a study in political science, mass psychology and sociology. Elias Canneti, where art thou? Max Weber, wake up.

    If I described the move of the Sheriff as a transplant, then that of Eno is a transfusion.

    “Many people change their minds in politics. Some change their minds to avoid changing their party. Some people change their party to avoid changing their mind.” That was Winston Churchill. But both Sheriff and Eno changed their party after changing their minds. With the people in PDP, they are changing their minds to avoid changing their party. Hence, they were in sync with Abubakar Atiku, but then they changed their mind about moving to a coalition. That hurt the Adamawa chieftain, and he sulked into Osun State recently.

    He still sulked for breakfast in a now viral video when he opted to team with a pariah with a profane tongue whereas he could lock step in a dance with the premier of the state.

    It is the poverty of Atiku. The man does not know how to play politics. He plays with malice. He projects an often dour look that chimes in with his lack of cheer or animation.

     He had no humour for Wike when he conjured the PDP ticket for himself in the last minute in 2022 primary. Rather than humour the Rivers State citizen.  He would not call him, or placate him, or strive for a common ground. Rather he held his ground with bilious insistence and let the party divide under him. He stuck with Iyorchia Ayu, a man who never had a job where he was not fired, including the job Atiku wanted him to hold. He held it at their mutual peril.

    The blind led the blind. He is playing humour of dark harmony with those who have no humour like him. Like Nasir El Rufai, who is now tumbling from party to party having been shooed out of his homestead in Kaduna State. Like Rotimi Amaechi, who makes humour from being hungry. He does not even know that you cannot be hungry when you make a bash costing tens of million of naira. It is what playwright Samuel Becket calls risus purus, a laugh laughing at itself. The tragedy is that the former transport minister is not laughing. That is the laugh.

    We can only say coalition is a will to activity. A mere whirligig. They have to act so as to seem to act. It is a coalition of the losers as I had written a few weeks ago. It is the coalition of the aggrieved. It is the consequence of interior pain. They are not happy that they lost.

    They did not exercise the spirit of sportsmanship. It is the spirit of malice, which the scriptures described as self-corrupting. Atiku likes to act as such because he wants to be in the news. He is ready to do a coalition of people who have no real structure.

    Atiku ran on a structure that had been established, and it is that of PDP. Now he wants to form his own coalition from the air, from nothing. He is supping with people he likes but who, like him, have pockets of followers.

    For instance, how much levers can El-Rufai pull in Kaduna State. He packed up his suite case and looked back at the yard to wave goodbye. No one waved back. No after-wave, so he left in his own waves, soundless.

    Or is it Namadi Sambo, former vice president, who is, to all intents and purposes, almost retired. He is a nice guy. Nice does not win votes.

    Or is it my good friend Amaechi, who has never pulled more than 15 percent of votes in Rivers State except when he sought his second term as governor.

    So, what we have is a parade of chieftains who want to make anger a strategy, apologies to Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN).

    But theirs is a shadow coalition. Pat Utomi may draw some humour here. They are a shadow coalition in that they are not real. They cannot agree on a party. They cannot agree on the members. They cannot agree on a leader. They cannot agree on a platform. They cannot even agree on humour.at least, not yet.

    Atiku is dour. Sambo is quiet. El Rufai is a boor. The Osun guy’s dance is poor and Amaechi is hungry. It is the stage and state of their coalition. “Most men die of their own remedies, not of their own diseases,” wrote French playwright Moliere. So do organisations and even civilisations. Coalition is their remedy and graveyard.

    But their foe that gives them the quake is making his own coalition without noise. Not long ago he had Delta. Then Akwa Ibom. The PDP is begging its men not to go. Even Fubara, who is at war with Wike, is being urged by some of the allies to move to APC. In the south-south, the APC is the dominant party.

    The battle is just starting, or is it? They were the first to start the move to 2027, and they have not even moved a step. Some of them are accusing the APC of starting the move towards 2027 whereas they did not allow the dust of defeat to clear from their homestead before they inaugurated their trot. They are spoiling for a fight. The terrible thing is that they want  spoils first. Remember the Kaduna guy already has decided who will be minister from APC’s cabinet.

    They are like what the poet Okigbo describes as the coming and going that goes on forever.

  • Linking insecurity to 2027 polls

    Linking insecurity to 2027 polls

    The link between rising insecurity in the country and 2027 general elections dominated deliberations of the Senate during its sitting last Wednesday. A motion of urgent importance on the many cases of Boko Haram and armed banditry sponsored by Shuaibu Isa Lau, Taraba North, provided the platform for senators to reasonably suspect a link exists between the escalating insecurity and the coming national elections.

    Senators Sunday Karimi and Danguma Goje did not see the upsurge in insecurity as mere coincidence. They would rather have the Federal Government look deeper into the rising incidents of Boko Haram upsurge ahead of the 2027 elections, especially as they bear the trademark of events of the 2015 polls.

    Senator Karimi, while noting there were cases before the 2015 elections where some individuals threatened violence in case they lost at the polls, lamented that in the last two weeks, several individuals from his district had been kidnapped. “We must ask why? What is the motive behind this? What do they stand to gain? he further asked.

    “We saw similar signs before the 2015 elections where some individuals prepared for violence in case they lost at the polls. The same pattern appears to be emerging now as we approach the 2027 elections. These attacks may not be random; they may be coordinated efforts by those who feel they are losing political relevance and seek to plunge the country into chaos as a strategy to regain power by force,” Karimi further noted. He wants these people unmasked and held accountable.

    Goje supported the view that the rising cases of violence across the country are not just isolated incidents. “We need to ask questions: Why now? Why the sudden surge in violence?” He called for deeper investigations to determine whether these incidents are linked to the political build up to the 2027 elections.

    The suspicion by senators of a nexus between the current upsurge in insecurity and the build up to the 2027 elections is on point. It fits into the pattern of the puzzles that surrounded the emergence of the Boko Haram insurgency and the lethal proportions its activities assumed as the 2015 elections approached. If that experience offers any lesson, then the reoccurrence of similar trends as the 2027 national elections draw closer is bound to raise eyebrows. So, the link which the senators sought to establish between events of the two elections can neither be dismissed with a wave of the hand nor wished away. They present regularities that evoke reasonable suspicion that should compel serious inquisition.

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    Writing in this column last April under the title: “Insecurity and Partisan politics,” I had raised the question as to whether there is a link between the escalating insecurity in the country and the quest by politicians for power? It was also observed that the same question featured prominently when the Boko Haram insurgency reared its ugly head and assumed monstrous dimensions as the 2015 elections approached. The article had also observed that the link is “being talked about even in hushed tones as the momentum of the 2027 elections gathers.”

    The write-up followed resumed killings in Plateau, Benue and Taraba states by suspected herdsmen, and coordinated attacks by the Boko Haram insurgents in parts of north east. Apart from the similarity in the manner of rising attacks, the article also noted the coincidence that in 2015 Jonathan, a southerner, was at the helm of affairs when Boko Haram suddenly raised the bar of insecurity while now, Bola Tinubu, a southerner, is the current president.

    Why insecurity rises when a southern president is about to run for another election is another link worthy of serious investigation. The way it is resolved may well provide a veritable lead to unveiling the motive behind the rising insecurity as elections approach; its motive, sponsors and collaborators.

    The matter has resonated with the position of the senators. Maybe it now offers the needed opportunity to re-examine the puzzles evident in the discordant tunes from the north at the budding stages of the Boko Haram insurgency on what the fight against it really represented.

    Then, a former governor of Adamawa State, Muritala Nyako, had told a meeting of northern governors of the Federal Government’s alleged complicity in the saga, even as he claimed that security officials were passing information to help the terrorists in their deadly operations. He had also alleged that the motive for the Boko Haram insurgency was to reduce the voting population of the north east in the 2015 elections and subsequent ones, and keep the region perpetually underdeveloped.

    Nyako was reported to have repeated the same allegations at a meeting of 12 northern governors with US government officials in Washington DC. The US meeting was organised by the US government, through its Institute of Peace, to explore how Americans can work with state governments in the north to address the Boko Haram insurgency and underlying under-development challenges.

    The claim that Boko Haram was contrived to reduce the voting population of the north in the 2015 elections spoke of the same political link. The only difference is that the blame was laid at the doorsteps of the Jonathan regime. But suspicion of political sponsorship and collaboration with the insurgents by some northern politicians was also evident from the high level of mass abduction of school children in controversial circumstances without any trace.

    The blame game they engendered, and the manner some of the school children were later ferried back without any trace of where they were taken to, raised suspicion of conspiracy rooted in the then coming national elections.

    Insecurity had such prominence that it became an election campaign issue. It became an issue of blackmail as northern governors held former president Jonathan squarely responsible for the upsurge. Suicide bomb attacks on churches and other public buildings provoked so much anger against the government in power then that its loss in the coming election was quite predictable.

    But this conspiracy dimension was not lost on Jonathan. He was later to demonstrate the enormity of the challenge when he disclosed there were Boko Haram sympathisers in his cabinet, at the national assembly and within the judiciary.

    Boko Haram backers and sympathisers are “in the executive arm of the government; some of them are in the parliament/legislative arm of the government while some are in the judicial arm. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies,” Jonathan lamented.

    Jonathan was seemingly helpless in confronting the dangerous shape Boko Haram had assumed within the theatres of war and in government circles. Ironically, he was handicapped in dealing with the complexities of the matter, given that Boko Haram enablers, sympathisers and collaborators could be found within the three arms of the government and among the security forces. It was a delicate situation; so difficult to pinpoint those that have nothing to do with the insurgents. Then, it appeared all was fair in war because the objective was to see that administration out by every available means during the polls. And it came to pass. But the monsters are still lying in wait.

    When Buhari took over as president, hopes were high that he had a solution to the insurgency, given his military background and election promises to diminish the potency of the insurgents within a few months. After a few months in office, he gleefully told the nation that he had won the war against Boko Haram insurgency.

    In his view, Boko Haram had been so diminished that it could not muster sufficient force and capability to attack military formations. But many knew that Buhari’s claims were in utter variance with facts on the ground. His bogus claims drew caution from the outside world as he was reminded that insurgency is so rooted and complex that it is difficult to dismantle in the manner Buhari had presented.

    It did not take long before Boko Haram put a lie to his claims. It has since continued to mount serious attacks against our security forces with no signs of either retreating or surrendering. The fact that its attacks have resumed in such a manner that compelled senators to call for serious investigation of the resurgence of Boko Haram attacks ahead of the 2027 elections says all about the potency of the insurgent group.

    Just last week, Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State alleged that Boko Haram has “informants and collaborators within the Nigerian armed forces, within the politicians and within the communities.” These links are nothing new. Their motive? Sadly, despite the weight of information on collaborators and sponsors of terrorism, no substantial effort has been made to unmask and bring the full weight of the law against them.

    There are now four splinter groups from Boko Haram terrorising society. The message in that spread should be instructive. What has been lacking has been the needed political will to deal with the enablers of the cascading terrorism. Until then, the monsters the politicians created will continue to turn around and haunt them.

  • Naysayers at two

    Naysayers at two

    The clamour will not end. The fierce malice burns. The rage of jealousies, too.

    But at two, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu does not need to convince the doubters. If his work does not, he does not need to avoid his sleep.

    Those who are angry for no just cause are entitled to their anger. Those who are deaf to their hard-of- hearing. Those blind to their unseeing eyes.

    It is like what essayist and philosopher Francis Bacon says to those who deny God. “God never wrought miracles to convince atheism,” crooned the thinker, “because his ordinary works convince it. It is true that a little philosophy inclineth men’s minds to atheism.”

    But Sunny Ade, in one of his immortal songs, sang A sese bere ni o/ eti won aya/ to ba ya/ won a fe ran/ ti won ba ran a wa di.

    Translation: “We have just begun/ their eardrums will tear/ once torn, they will sew it back, when they sew it back, it will be blocked.” The minstrel was lamenting compulsive ignorance, the tenacity of hubris masked as a cause.

    So, if they are saying the president brought hardship on the people, it is not the work of anyone to teach them that the president inherited an economy gasping for breath. They know. The figures were released. They cannot say they did not know that we were mired in ways and means, that is, printing money for survival.

     We were printing ourselves not into debt, but into oblivion. If they did not know, it is a pity they did not hear of the about N30 trillion  hole we had dug. They knew we owed IMF loans. We owed billions to the airlines. We owed subnational debts in the trillions.

    If they know and close their lips, we are no gods to restore a voice to them. If they do not know that all those burdens are history, I am not about to begin a history lesson. Journalism of the robust kind has said it over and over with facts and figures. Just like Poet Birago Diop wrote, “if we tell gently, gently, all that we shall one day have to tell…” The critics and uproarious commentators have heard it over the past two years.

    If they did not like the Lagos-Calabar Superhighway, what do they say today? They said it was a scam. It was a strategy for larceny. It was not going to happen. The president opened 30 kilometres. They cannot reverse it, but they still would not accept it. Nothing anyone can do about  that. It is fait accompli. At two, he opened about a dozen roads for Nigerians. So much for crybabies.

    What about  agriculture, and the work of Pate for medicine or the loans for over half a million students and credit for over 80k poor entrepreneurs? What of the investor confidence that has made the stock market swagger or the rise of the reserves from $3 billion to over $23 billion? The states are flush like never in the past decade, ask Jigawa that paid off 90 percent of its debt or Delta that paid off half of its debt of over N200 billion  under the great Sheriff Oborevwori. See Lithium in Kaduna and sprawls of farms in Niger, Kebbi and Kaduna states. If it is not hope, they can hug despair.

    They want to deny that progress is afoot on security. They forget Birnin Gwari in Kaduna where a market lay like a corpse for a decade; border onslaughts in Katsina, the persistence of fear and trembling Zamfara, parts of Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger. They forget that an insurgent group threatened from Sokoto called Lukarawa. When last did we hear of them? The commentators and gadflies often glad at faults have said nothing of the long list of bandit kingpins that have been eliminated. This page listed quite a number of them.

    It is not my duty to teach critics how to think. But at least I cannot give them eyes, if they cannot see. I cannot give them ears if they cannot hear.

    But I will have, like others, to remind them of what they know. To a philosopher like Socrates, he may be frustrated by that ilk of men. The Greek philosopher argues that we know a lot, and that we forget all we know, and we have to nudge the knowledge out with questions. It is called the Socratic Method. Hence the man said, “if I am the wisest man alive it is because I know nothing.” He says this in humility but he says our senses deceive us, and that we have to dig into our forgotten well to know that we know.

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    Maybe that is the problem with these critics. They are, however, too cocky. Unlike Socrates, they cannot admit that they know nothing. Maybe they know, or their prejudices and hatred for one man have genuinely blinded them to what is before them.

    I was with the president recently, and I discussed IMF with him. He said he had no discussions with IMF. I had said earlier on this page that his policies may have received IMF endorsement but it was a coincidence of policy, not obedience of thought. He confirmed that to me. It was then he said “ways and means, $7 billion debts and others gone.”

    The stinger is inflation. But the cost of food was soaring when there were ebi npawa cries. Then a bag of rice was over N100k and tomato, onions, garri, etc were hitting the roofs. The prices have not exactly touched the earth, but they are tracking down. Rice now sells for about half the price now. I met a fellow at Asaba a few days ago who said this was the first time in his lifetime that a price would drop down after a jump.

    We are seeing it in another core inflation index: fuel. Dangote has announced consistent drops in fuel price. The only time it jerked up again was when the naira-for-crude policy expired. But it was renewed to hope. That idea is genius. Do you think the men the critics brandish can think like that? Atiku? No. Obi? Nada.

    The Financial Times of London wrote a sunny editorial on Tinubu’s performance on the economy. But his naysayers are not seeing it. However, when, in the past, the western press slammed him, they advertised it. They became friends of IMF that they had bedeviled. IMF is an angel now, a devil now. Go figure.

    The naira is not where we want it but it has survived its topsy-turvy hour when men feared it would outride N2000 to a dollar. “I still think the naira is undervalued,” the president told me. I also spoke about the penchant of corporate Nigeria to raise prices when food was coming down, and he said in reference to bank charges, that “Cardoso will handle it.”

    What do the critics say about the loans to indigent students? They say nothing. Over half a million students are getting it. Is that not intervention? Over 83k Nigerians are taking advantage of credit schemes. It has barely started.

    But some are angry. At the bottom are partisan and ethnic caterwauling. They would not accept it even if President Tinubu paved all roads gold in the country. The bitterness of 2023, the fear of the man in Aso Rock, has blinded them to whatever good comes out of his Israel. Last year, when I delivered a lecture at the Trinity University, a number of the students asked if the government could extend the student loans scheme to the private universities. I did not have any answer for them, other than that private universities are for those who have the money to pay. But the public university is for the very poor. My answer may be logical, but it ran foul of their sentiment.

    “I think we are blind. Blind people who can see but do not see,” wrote Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago in his novel Blindness. In that book, a whole town turns blind, and they are lost in the paradise of ignorance of the world around them. He shows the true conscience is the eye.

    When you have a bad conscience, you see bad things. Civilisations have applauded bad things for ages. Democracies have voted out democracy. They saw slavery and thanked God for it. Killed twins and worshipped heaven for it. Forbade women to be circumcised. Women should not go to school. Children who ate eggs would be thieves. Colonialism was good for Africa. Hitler was good for Germans. Today, immigrants are not good for America. Beware of wise men when they are foolish. John Stuart Mill calls it the “foolish majority.”

    In his play Coriolanus, Shakespeare’s hero goes to war and comes home triumphant but the masses do not accept their liberation until he shows them his battle scar. Evidence is not always enough. A deranged elite can con a people to believe a lie, like they did to the poor hero Coriolanus. Hence Apostle Paul warned that God would send “strong delusion” to a stubborn people so that they can believe a lie as he did to Pharoah.

    Those who do not believe in what is before their eyes and sounding in their ears ought to read Diop’s line, “If we tell gently, gently all that we shall one day have to tell…”

  • In search of the good cardinal

    In search of the good cardinal

    Cardinal John Onaiyekan has taken it upon himself to serve as a critic, a reverend without reverence, and he did it again recently. The problem with some clerics of his ilk is that they wear the toga of piety and belch out folly. He is playing to the gallery for the gullible.

     If he says Nigerians are going through poverty, has he addressed the facts that prices are coming down and he should encourage that pattern rather than holler?

    Has he noted that his own candidate also agreed that we should remove fuel subsidies and marry exchange rate windows?

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    Does he, in his hoopla, explain that we were in a quagmire before those policies? Does he explain that the same president has paid off IMF loans, given scholarships to poor students and credit to small business folks? Has he diagnosed the agricultural policies?

    Does he know that the states are flush with money now that even Jigawa has paid off 90 percent of its loans?

    Is he a cleric without context in his thoughts? Men like the good cardinal should follow the contents of scripture about learning, especially the one that says, “for a soul to be without knowledge, it is not good.”

  • One day with President Tinubu

    One day with President Tinubu

    The suave Ambassador Adekunle Adeleke, the State Chief of Protocol, walked into the waiting room and said the president asked for me. The inner caucus of the presidential staff were in the scribe’s office, including the chief security officer, Adegboyega Fasasi and personal assistant Kamorudeen Yusuf. Swathed in a sunny smile was the country’s First Physician, Dr. Ade Tinubu, who has only one patient: the First Citizen.

    After exchange of pleasantries, including Yusuf’s affable jibe at my fila, I was ushered into the president’s office. Poring over a document, President Bola Tinubu did not know my shadow was before him. Principal Private Secretary Hakeem Muri-Okunola welcomed me in and the president heard, looked up, smiled and offered me a handshake and I sat. He continued reading. Muri-Okunola, popularly known as HMO, informed me the president was absorbed in his daily briefings. Private secretary Adedamilotun Aderemi was beside him.

    I asked him how often he received the briefing. HMO said Monday through Sunday, with a chuckle. Prepared every day, the briefing was sometimes oral, but often both oral and written. The office is smaller than most ministers’ offices with its understated elegance.

    Once he stopped reading, I posed a question to him about security in Plateau State.

    “The Plateau State governor was here last night,” he remarked, and he reeled out an idea he was mulling to Mutfwang to put the guns at bay and bring peace and plenty to the Plateau. The idea is at gestation, disruptive and out of the box.

    “I was not in the battleground, but I didn’t sleep,” he said glumly about the bloodbath in the region.

    We veered into agriculture, and his face lit up as he announced a Brazilian $2.5 billion investment in livestock. Feasibility studies had advanced for ranching.  He praised Livestock Minister Mukhtar Maiha, who is mooing well with his new job.

    “We are bringing in 2,000 tractors into the country,” he said. Just then National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu walked in, and quipped, “Hi Sam. Mr. President, how did he get into town and he went through my security net?” The president smiled, and Ribadu sat down, and the dialogue went into a plan to make cattle wear chips, to monitor, tame herdsmen violence and cattle rustling.

    The president remarked that the 33 items were too many before the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting scheduled to hold in a moment. The unwieldy number could chip away at rigorous exchange and debate. He was working a mechanism to beat down the number so any item that escaped his eye or FEC did not end up in fraud. The Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, also entered and we exchanged greetings.

    Just then, Vice President Kashim Shettima entered, and he, too, was surprised to see me. He had a warm exchange with the president and thanked the Jagaban for his help.

    The cabinet was seated, and the president rose, and I followed his retinue to the chamber meeting, next door.

    Before deliberations and after the national anthem, President Tinubu swore in a commissioner for INEC and members of the Code of Conduct Bureau. Three absentees: FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, Attorney General Lateef Fagbemi and Foreign Affairs Minister of State, Bianca Ojukwu.

    Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume was the scribe, and the president was addressed as Mr. Chairman. The meeting started in earnest with a memo from the president himself about insurance for key officers. But Creative Economy Minister Hanatu Musawa’s memo was the next to be read by Akume, about $100 billion programme.

    The president highlighted the Wole Soyinka Theatre, which he described as “a diamond in the rough,” and great revenue potential given its environment. Since her memo did not draw from the public till, the president said it was approved.

    Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo had a few also that received approval but not before the president adverted to the antelope snafu at the Asaba Airport.

    Drama did not come until Works Minister Dave Umahi’s turn. Before that, he seconded virtually all proposals before his own memos. Of course, those of Education Minister Tunji Alausa, Health Minister Mohammed Ali Pate and Agriculture Minister Abubakar Kyari, among others had smooth sails.

    Pate’s memo resonated with the public private partnership to domesticate production of essential drugs to cut import cost and choke the market for fake and adulterated medicines.

    He drew applause for his honour as one of Time Magazine’s 100 influential persons. Kyari updated the president that of the 2,000 tractors anticipated, half had arrived.

    Umahi’s list was longer than anyone else, covering roads in all regions. He announced that 19 projects were ready for commissioning, and 25 others by December. Section one of the East-West Road, a section of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road awaited the blare of traffic.

    Some roads in the Southwest raised some concern. They included the Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road, the Sagamu-Ore-Benin Road and the Ekiti-Akure-Benin road. The third generated a response from Solid  Mineral Development  Minister Dele Alake when he said, for 30 years, it had suffered neglect, and he “wholeheartedly support(ed) the memo.” The president asked, “are you sure” he has plied that road? And he said yes, eliciting laughter.

    Alausa observed that the Sagamu-Ore-Benin road was not only a deathtrap, it had many industries there, making it both a safety and economic urgency.  The Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa Road, said Umahi, was emphasized when First Lady Oluremi Tinubu passed it in her visit to Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU). This essayist also drove through it a week ago when I visited OAU for a reading of my new novel, Juju Eyes. It took me an hour to return to Ibadan but two hours from Ibadan to Ife.

    All three projects were approved.

    But Umahi drew swords with Wale Edun, Minister of Finance/Coordinating Minister of the Economy, when Edun said quite a few firms were prepared to bankroll the projects.

    Umahi threw the first salvo earlier, a comment that jolted the amiable air of the meeting.

     “Since Edun does not like to release money…” But Edun gave no riposte until Umahi had completed his presentation. Umahi said handing the projects over to bankrollers would mire the country in legal obligations because of the contract terms. It was a tense exchange between both men.

    “I won’t sign my pen on any such matter,” Umahi said.

    “You have a bad handwriting,” the president said sarcastically.

    Umahi said he would like to rest and he did not want such matters to keep him up at night.

    “You want to rest?” asked the president.

    “No sir. I mean after eight years. That’s what I mean, sir. I want to rest just like the president after eight years.”

    A laughter across the hall.

    Alausa said the roads were too urgent to bog us down by a committee to look into it. The president had the last word and said he would work with Lateef Fagbemi, the attorney general, to find a way out of the legal mire. The roads, he contended, were too important to be delayed by contracts.

    Whereupon the president asked Umahi about the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency of Nigeria (FERMA), what of all the engineers? Why can’t they maintain the roads? The agency is under Umahi, but it is underfunded. Umahi said FERMA has 7,300 engineers and for FERMA to do its job, it has to be by legislation. The president said urgent memo was needed to seek out how to make FERMA central to road infrastructure in the country. Umahi referred to Iddo Bridge and Carter Bridge in Lagos undergoing checks.

     Just as he was talking, Regional Development Minister Abubakar Momoh took Umahi on about FERMA negligence. He spoke with rage, and Umahi asked the president to take from Momoh’s budget to his ministry in order to fix roads in his domain. Momoh was livid as everyone else laughed.

    A little chuckle over a road that led to Ribadu town in Adamawa, and the president asked, “Ribadu?”

    Another laugh.

    Umahi said it was an important artery in the region. Another drama involved Ribadu when he explained the danger of dredging, some of them in the Lekki area.

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     The president teased him to leave dredging and go to the forests and flush out the bandits.

    Ribadu held his own and said dredgers posed security threats, including oil pipelines. It led to discussion on vandalizations of bridges and manholes, and the president agreed with Gbajabiamila that a special legislation with stiff penalty should be enacted to punish the thieves and the enabling companies.

    The meeting cheered to the payment of IMF loan. Edun said it  made the government creditworthy. The president told me later that it resulted from discipline, adding that ways and means and the $7 billion debts were now behind the country.

    After the meeting, I commented to Alake on the feisty atmosphere. He said it was a carryover from Lagos when Tinubu was governor. It had a collegial air. The president did not hold a patriarchal hold on the debates. It was a FEC of self-expression.

    During lunch with him, I observed to the president it seemed we had just started to govern, given the deliberations.

     He held meetings I observed comings and goings like a fly on the wall. One was from Aminu Maida, who wanted the president’s backing on recent hirings and he was under political pressure to replace merit with corruption. “I believe in merit. Do what is right,” said Tinubu. Another special adviser updated him on CNG.

    HMO returned as the day was winding down to update him on  what was coming up. One of about an anticipated list. His trip to inaugurate Pope Leo XIV topped his priority. “I should get my suit ready,” he said.

    He would take his rest and return, and meetings would last into the night. “When his appointees are sleeping,” remarked his P.A. Yusuf. “The president is working at 2 am.” I had witnessed that once with Dangote, Akinyelure, Segun Osoba, Oshiomhole, Fubara, et al. A busy day, a busy president.