The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Reprieve for UNIZIK, others

    Reprieve for UNIZIK, others

    Reprieve came last week for two federal universities embroiled in internecine leadership crises when the presidency weighed in. Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK) Awka, Anambra State and Federal University of Health Sciences, (FUHSO) Otukpo, Benue State had of recent, been entangled in internal crises that threatened the peace and orderly conduct of academic activities.

    The crisis in UNIZIK followed the appointment of Prof. Bernard Odoh as the vice chancellor and Rosemary Nwokike, registrar in very controversial circumstances. That of FUHSO, Otukpo was sequel to the illegal suspension of the vice chancellor by the pro chancellor and chairman of the institution’s governing council, Ohieku Muhammed Salami. The unilateral suspension pitted Salami against ministry officials.

    The senate, stakeholders at UNIZIK and the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU had kicked against the appointments; raising a number of flaws in the manner the governing council led by Ambassador Greg Mbadiwe went about it.  They alleged that the procedure for the appointments was deliberately skewed to exclude key stakeholders of the institution in utter breach of the laws. Some aggrieved staff of the university had even gone to court to challenge the contentious appointments.

    There were also other allegations regarding the academic qualifications of Odoh to head that institution. Interestingly, the Federal Ministry of Education was quick to respond to the situation, nullifying the appointments for being in “gross disregard for constituted authority and not in line with extant provisions”.

    The letter from the permanent secretary had asked the pro-chancellor and chairman of the governing council to hold on other appointments pending the resumption of duty of the newly appointed minister of education.

    But this did not change anything. Rather, things seemed to have headed for the worse when the governing council issued a seven-day ultimatum to aggrieved staff to withdraw all court cases arising from the appointment of the vice chancellor and registrar or face disciplinary action. It was thus, a matter of time for the chicken to come home to roost.

    In the case of FUHSO, Otukpo, the unilateral and illegal suspension of the vice chancellor of the institution by the pro chancellor and chairman of the governing council was at the centre of the crisis. He had also carried the action in contravention of extant rules. All efforts by the ministry officials to get him retrace his steps were said to have been rebuffed leading to tension in that citadel of learning.

    So it did not come as a surprise when the presidency dissolved the governing council of UNIZIK and sacked the newly appointed vice chancellor, Prof. Odoh and the registrar. A statement by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga said the “sacking of the governing council and officials followed reports that the council illegally appointed an unqualified vice chancellor without following due process”.

    It noted that after the controversial appointment, the federal government stepped in to address the tension between the senate and the governing council. Apparently dissatisfied by the failure of the governing council to heed the initial advice of the ministry of education, the presidency was left with no other choice than to act in the way it did. The dissolution of the governing council and sacking of the controversial appointees were therefore logical outcomes of that intransigence.

    The presidency did not also spare Salami, as he was relieved of his position as pro chancellor and chairman of the governing council of FUHSO. The decision followed Salami’s illegal actions including suspending the vice chancellor without following the prescribed procedures.

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    The presidency also noted that despite the interventions of the ministry of education to have the illegal suspension revoked, Salami refused and instead resorted to abusing and threatening officials of the ministry including the permanent secretary.

    There was also a presidential order for immediate swap of the positions of pro chancellors and chairmen of the governing councils for the Federal University of Oye-Ekiti and Federal University of Lokoja. This saw Victor Ndoma-Egba serving as the pro chancellor of Federal University of Lokoja taking over at the Federal University Oye-Ekiti while Kayode Ojo who previously held a similar position in Oye-Ekiti assumes the new role in Lokoja.

    The change is said to be “part of President Tinubu’s initiative to foster diversity and national cohesion in the management of the country’s universities” It is not clear why national cohesion and diversity could not be achieved with the duo in their previous positions or their actions that impinged on those national objectives.

    But the swapping of the two positions would suggest something went wrong with the initial choice of Ojo as the pro chancellor of federal university, Oye-Ekiti. His geo-political zone gives this out.  Ndoma-Egba is from the South-south. So diversity or national cohesion could also have been served by his retention in any of those institutions. But not with Ojo in Oye-Ekiti. It is not unlikely there may have been issues in Ojo’s tenure at Oye-Ekiti that accentuated the imperative for ‘balance and national cohesion’.

    Overall, it is good a thing the presidency took steps to restore order and decorum at UNIZIK and FUHSO. The warning to the councils not to create distractions in the universities that will obstruct the focus on improving the standards of education in the country says it all.

    Not a few Nigerians were embarrassed by the show of shame at UNIZIK and FUHSO. If a vice chancellor could be appointed and sacked at will by the councils without regard to clearly established procedure, then all the grounds for the decapitation of the university system would have been set.

    The universities being human organisations are not immune to disagreements. But the challenge in such situations is not in the existence of disagreements as such but their resolution in keeping with established rules and regulations.

    That is one area the conduct of the pro chancellors at the two universities will continue to confound keen observers. It is reassuring that when controversies arose in both universities on the procedure for appointing and sacking a vice chancellor, the Federal Ministry of Education (the supervising ministry) took appropriate measures to redress the anomaly. Unfortunately, those efforts were rebuffed.

    Both pro chancellors trudged on as if the ministry had no statutory role in the matter. Salami was even alleged to have gone as far as abusing and threatening directors of the ministry including the permanent secretary. What emboldened him to act in that manner exposes his unsuitability for that high profile position.

    But the two incidents raise issues on the choice of people appointed as pro chancellors and members of the governing councils of the universities. The universities are very key in the development matrix of any country. The aphorism that no nation develops beyond its level of its education says it all. The universities should not just be seen as another set of parastatals for the patronage and compensation of politicians after elections.

    It is vital that those with the requisite expertise, experience and maturity in managing complex organisations are engaged in such positions. The brazen impunity that manifested in the appointment and sacking of the two vice chancellors are symptomatic of all that is wrong with our national politics.

    This rot is manifest in the leadership deficits that hold this country down. It is evident in the amateurish, incompetent and ill-educated people that suffuse leadership positions at all levels of our national life. It can be discerned from the indecent haste to cut corners and abridge rules. You can also find its manifestation in the rancorous elections that shut out experienced and capable people through organised violence.

    You cannot continue to place nothing on something and expect good outcomes. That is the leadership dilemma the country has had to contend with. It is high time we reformed our political recruitment processes ensuring competence, integrity and credibility in all appointments. Political expedience over merit and track record will continue to be our albatross.

  • Terribly Rabiu

    Terribly Rabiu

    The terrible thing about Rabiu Kwakwanso is that he wants to be Aminu Kano.

    But he does not think like him, talk like him, organize like him and, more importantly, perform like him. He is an imitation, even self-mockery of the Talakawa hero.

    He likes to believe he is a man of the people. But he is like Chinua Achebe’s M.A. Nanga in A Man of The People. Just as we have false prophets and fake products, we also have false inheritors. So, his Kwakwansiya movement is not a movement of ideas but of sentiment.

    The people want an Aminu Kano rebirth, a new ferment like of old, so we have impostors trying to exploit it.

    Now he wants to fight Lagos with his platform. He said Lagos wants to colonise Kano. He is not ashamed to say so. He is attacking the new tax proposals and the emir as the permutations to overthrow Kano. Pity for him. Let him analyse the tax proposal and tell where it colonises Kano. Kano is supposed to be the commerce hub of the north. It has fallen out of that orbit.

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     He never helped it in his over 16 years in government. If he is fighting the tax policy, it is because he wants to reap where he did not sow. His rant is a confession of failure more than a complaint, fearmongering more than love of his people. Recently, the young rioted and was emboldened by his Governor Abba Yusuf.

     It backfired as they almost overturned the Government House. Rather than rant over tax, let him pay attention to his neighbour in Kaduna who is installing economic infrastructure for the future. Governor Uba Sani said the north should not lie to itself and its people but do something about it. Kwakwanso is blaming others. His governor Yusuf wants to make the north an enemy of the president because the president wants justice for Talakawa, not vampire elites like Kwakwanso.

     Kwakwanso seeks a feudal tax system.

     The Arewa Consultative Forum’s chairman was suspended because of the move to try a coalition against the president. He wanted to make it North versus South, and that shows that they brought their cards too early. Who is behind the ACF chair’s error? Why can’t Rabiu and Yusuf reverse the suspension? Enough of Kwakwanso being a Nigerian first. He is not even a Talakawa man. He is their cynical exploiter.

  • Bullet in the buttocks

    Bullet in the buttocks

    “Therefore, you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things,” Romans 2:1

    The Owu chief had a first life, and it was not as a soldier, a politician, or, obviously, even a head of state. In Ohi Alegbe’s interview with his first wife for African Concord decades ago, she taunted Olusegun Obasanjo as a “bush man because his favorite food is pounded yam and bush meat.” But that is not the story that often haunts me about the man. It is the picture of a soldier on the run. It was vivid in a passage in The tragedy of Victory authored by Alabi Isama – Obasanjo’s nemesis.

    During the Civil War, Obj had taken over from Benjamin Adekunle, alias Black Scorpion, as the Commander of the Third Marine Commando, and he went on an inspection in the battlefield. Biafran soldiers opened fire. Obj fled for his life but not before a bullet hit him on the buttocks. The bullet had the mercy of altitude, or the fear of height. It sailed low below his waist. Maybe because Obj looks more shrunken than tall. They say, the higher you go, the cooler it becomes. The bullet reversed the maxim. If the bullet had soared, it might have taken a fatal course. Shall we thank the Biafran soldier for his failure as a marksman? Lieutenant Colonel Iluyomade was a witness and confirmed it to me in an interview.

    Well, Obj had always lived a charmed life and benefitted where he did not labour. After all, he did not want to fight in the war. When Alani Akinrinade and others suggested to Gowon that he take over from Adekunle, he said in Yoruba, “You want them to kill me in battle?” He might have ruminated over it as the bullet made a tent of his bottom flesh. Yet, he takes credit for the victory. Even though when Biafra surrendered, he knew nothing about the firestorms in the battlefront. The guns rested, Akinrinade invited him to glory, to sign the documents on behalf of the federal army. He became a war hero.

    That was Obj the craven. He abides contradictions of the lower sort. He evinced it last week when he spoke at the Chinua Achebe Lecture at Yale University. First, the organisers gave no jewel to the bard’s memory. Achebe was no Obj fan, and, as Bayo Onanuga stated, he rejected his award while president. In his statement from his abode at Bard College, Achebe lashed out at Obj for turning “my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the presidency.” Obj accused President Tinubu’s era, among other things, of chaos and insecurity. Achebe ribbed him over the chaos and insecurity in the country, with special focus on Anambra State when he played godfather, unseated a constitutionally elected governor in Ngige, and reveled in its hysteria of success.

    In my column in The Sun newspaper of October 24, 2004, I wrote: “The Achebe of compromise was not the one we saw in the past week. It was the Achebe of unflinching righteous indignation, an Okonkwo abandoning Obierika and reaching for the jugular.” As I noted in my TVC Breakfast show comment, Achebe would scream in his grave to see Obj exploit a platform in his name.

    Where did Obj get the moral authority to attack the president, when he was a failure writ large for history.  He also listed other Tinubu sins; “conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence and underdevelopment.” He capped it by calling for the sack of INEC boss Mahmood Yakubu. The paradox is that he is more guilty of all these than any leader, perhaps except IBB. On INEC Chief, did he not anoint Iwu’s skullduggery as electoral umpire? So much so, he was renamed  Iwuruwuru. Did he fire him? a tear for OBJ.

    His long list of Tinubu sins is repetitive. But let us afford him the benefit of nuanced wisdom and accept that ‘conflict’ and ‘discord’ post subtle differences. For conflict, did he not singlehandedly remove a party chairman Audu Ogbe at his home with military-style, or Ngige-style bullying? That was in Ogbe’s home after a sumptuous pounded yam meal served by the woman of the house. For discord, where did the phrase “do or die” come from? It was 2007, and he said it in Ajegunle Lagos because he wanted to “capture” Lagos. When he lost, he told INEC not to announce the results that everyone knew Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) had won. The announcer kept the result for over 24 hours and the whole country waited with bated breath. It was security operatives, especially Nuhu Ribadu, who warned him not to overturn Lagos result or the city would burn. Hence, he yielded. The victory cemented Asiwaju’s image as “the last man standing.” We can see where the man’s malice was brewed.

    For division, can we forget how he capsized the houses of assemblies in Plateau, Bayelsa, Ekiti, and impeached governors without following the law with as few as six men? Lalong as a speaker spent 40 days and 40 nights in Lagos detention as chronicled in my book of that title. Is the Edo State House situation not his legacy of impunity? The phrase “overheating the polity” ceased after he quit office. I wonder what he meant by ‘depression?’ Did he mean sad? What would have made people sadder than most Nigerians lived on less than a dollar a day on his watch. Even at that, he spent billions of dollars to pay debts when our poor could not have one dollar. In my column for The Sun on December 5, 2004, I wrote: “That’s why he (Obasanjo) should teach the rest of the country as the baba of the land the reason his farm is fruitful and the nation cannot say so of itself.” What a genius. Or when he spent $16 billion on power but darkness persisted? That money could have restored our power infrastructure.

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    Did he not call our teaching hospitals centres of excellence? Only mortuaries excelled. On youth restiveness, could he stop the Niger Delta ferment? No. It was Umar Yar’ Adua, who cast oil on their spirits. Confusion? What of his third term? He wanted to remain Nigeria’s baba till death. Can we forget the savagery of Odi and Zaki Biam? His defiance of the courts? What of the harvest of deaths and assassinations during his presidency? In the polls in Ondo and Edo, no death was recorded. In OBJ’s time, cemeteries had great appetites.  He is the patriarch in Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, who destroys everything he touches.

    Obj has been angry for a long time. Hence, he must pull down every leader after him. He has spared none, civilian or military. Before that, he wrote My Command to diminish all the war commanders and lionise only himself as the good soldier. He was called PHD in the 1980’s, meaning Pull Him Down syndrome. He has not changed. He is guilty of what Yoruba call Kenimani. Only I should have.

    If he wanted to critique the Tinubu policies, the earthy fellow is welcome, but he did not do it. He should have analysed the economic policies, his tax policies, his job programme and his fight for local government autonomy. That is maturity. Rather, he went the same way of the Civil war, of allowing himself to be shot in the butt.

  • Wale Macaulay: Flashbacks

    Wale Macaulay: Flashbacks

    He was ‘The Don.’ That’s what I called him. In the 1970s, we were both struck by Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel, The Godfather, and I started calling him by that nickname. To me, he was ‘The Don,’ without the negative connotations.  News of Wale Macaulay’s death at his Isolo, Lagos residence on November 4 hit me like a thunderbolt. He was 65.  He made a name for himself as an actor, director and producer, and was regarded as a Nollywood veteran. 

    Our interaction started early because we were classmates at Aunty Ayo’s Preparatory School, Ikoyi, Lagos. He attended St. Gregory’s College, Lagos. We reunited in the 1990s after he returned from England, where he had studied film and television production.

    It was a dramatic reunion. He was at the time married to Lola Fani-Kayode, a well-known television producer and director.  It was a promising union of talented creatives, which was disappointingly short-lived. They were still married when he launched his unprecedented Christian music choir called ‘Kazimba’ in the mid-90s. He appointed me as the group’s ‘writer,’ a role that brought me into contact with members of the choir, some of whom later became stars, including Sammie Okposo, Yinka Davies, Tunde Obe, Wunmi Aboderin and Zubby Enebeli. It was a massive choir that reflected the size of the founder’s vision.

    ‘Kazimba’ came before its time. Its first concert at the upscale Waterparks, Ikeja, Lagos, was unsuccessful because the local Christian community was not ready for such a group and such a performance.  In preparation for the show, the choir had rehearsed for several days at the high-profile Master Sound Studio, Obanikoro, Lagos. Wale was devastated. As we drove back to his residence at Anthony Village, Lagos, he was inconsolable.

    The group’s second concert at the same venue was better attended because he collaborated with House on the Rock, the church he attended at the time. But the attendance figures were not good enough to cover the huge cost of staging the concert, including hiring the venue and the use of the high-profile Benson and Hedges production crew. The choir’s costumier was Lady Di, Charly Boy’s wife. I remember one of Wale’s siblings saying jocularly that he acted like a Hollywood impresario. He was a stickler for high standards. 

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    He was better known as an actor. His performance in Tunde Kelani’s 2001 film, Thunderbolt: Magun, was one of the high points of his acting career. The film, described as exploring “the themes of the intersection between African belief in supernatural forces, modernity and sexual politics,” was listed among bestselling Yoruba movies. It was screened at the Pan African Film Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Milan Italiano Film Festival in Italy, and the African Film Festival in New York, USA. He notably starred in other movies, including Violated (1996), Most Wanted (1998), Small Boy (2008), Protégé (2013), Accident (2013) (for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 2013 Nollywood Movies Awards), and Lunch Time Heroes (2015). 

    Apart from his screen appearances, he acted on stage. He played the lead role in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame, staged by the Thespian Family Theatre at MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos, in 2014.  He was the protagonist in another Ola Rotimi play, Kurunmi, staged by the National Troupe of Nigeria at the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos, in 2008. In a review of the performance, Mufu Onifade said Wale’s “charisma and natural smoothness on stage could not but exhume the reputation of the National Troupe from its state of oscillation between known professionalism and strange mediocrity.”  He also featured in some M-NET movies and the popular TV drama series Super Story, among others.

    He wrote plays and songs too. His published play, The Rape of Gidiolu, was performed at MUSON Centre, Lagos, in 2005. He directed the play, which is focused on human rights.  A recording of the stage performance was screened at the biennial International Council Meeting (ICM) of Amnesty International in Mexico, in August 2005.

    He constantly involved me in his artistic projects.  I felt flattered. We both felt a deep sense of loss when the manuscript of his play, Princess Zarah, was nowhere to be found.  It was based on Cyprian Ekwensi’s prose fiction The Passport of Mallam Ilia. It was my favourite among his various manuscripts that I read.

    Importantly, Wale featured in The Herbert Macaulay Affair, a 2019 Nigerian film based on the life of the great man known as the father of Nigerian nationalism. He was a scion of the family, and a passionate promoter of the departed patriarch.  

    When I visited him at his Isolo residence last year, we discussed projects connected with Herbert Macaulay. He looked unbelievably frail. He mentioned his health challenges. That was the last time I saw him, but we spoke often over the phone. I had promised to visit him at 9ja Studio, Magodo, Lagos where he had stayed for a while before his death. He had been involved in a production project driven by his cousin and founder of the studio, Frank Adekunle Macaulay, which had been completed but was yet to be unveiled. I had looked forward to seeing him again during my vacation last September. It’s sad that I was unable to visit him at Magodo. We had a phone conversation some weeks ago, and he told me he was returning to his Isolo residence. I didn’t know he was about to leave for ‘the other side.’

     He was a man of faith. At different times, he was a member of Winners’ Chapel, Daystar Christian Centre, House on the Rock, World Evangelism Bible Church, and Christ Embassy.  He once told me that he would like to meet the biblical Moses, in order to find out from him how he was able to manage the Israelites during their 40-year journey from Egypt to the “promised land” of Canaan.

    Whenever I called him a star, he would respond with a chuckle, saying, “Stars are in the sky.” Farewell, Wale, my unforgettable cousin, brother and friend.

  • Lukarawa terror alert

    Lukarawa terror alert

    The alert by Defence Headquarters (DHQ) of a new terror group, the Lukarawa in Sokoto and Kebbi states would seem a fresh dimension to the metastasising insecurity in the country.

    The news must have unsettled Nigerians, especially the northwest that has been battling the festering challenge of banditry. In the last couple of years, banditry manifesting in kidnapping for ransom, despoliation of villages and senseless killings has left that region a ghost of its former self. This has in turn, taken a huge toll on agricultural production as farmers refuse to go to farms for fear for their lives.

    So, the emergence of another terror group in that region carries with it all the trappings of a canary in the coal mine. But is the terror group really ‘new’ in the security trajectory of the northwest region? That is perhaps, one issue this column seeks to explore.

    DHQ spokesman, Edward Buba who announced the emergence of the ‘new’ terror group, said Lukarawa is linked to Islamic State (ISIS) and its members crossed into Nigeria from Niger Republic. He said when the terror group first settled in Sokoto and Kebbi states, the locals accommodated them and did not report to security agencies until they started to cause havoc.

    According to him, this is the first time the Sahelian jihadists are making incursions into our country taking advantage of gaps in cooperation between Nigeria and Niger, the difficult terrain and under-governed areas to spread their ideology. The ideology they are propagating was not disclosed but the military said the group emerged last year after the coup in Niger that led to the breakdown of cooperation between that country and Nigeria.

    The key issues raised by the military are that Lukarawa is a new terror group that emerged after last year’s coup in Niger Republic; they are just making their first incursion into Nigeria and the communities accommodated them without informing the security agencies. Its corollary is that the security agencies had no prior information on their presence before the last coup in Niger Republic.

    All these seek to place culpability for the emergency and current threat posed by the Lukarawa terror group on the shoulders of the local communities in Sokoto and Kebbi states. That may well be.

    While a peep into  accounts of people from those areas show some similarities with the military narrative on how the terror group settled in the villages, there exist remarkable differences in terms of their time of settlement, the knowledge of their presence the security agencies had and why the locals allowed them in the first place.

    A study conducted in 2021 indicated that the Lukarawa group was initially invited from Mali by local leaders in Gudu and Tangaza local governments of Sokoto State in 2017 to address the growing banditry incursions from Zamfara State. 

    Another 2022 study by Murtala Rufa’i,  James Barnett and  Abdulaziz  Abdulaziz showed that Lukarawa rejected the title of Boko Haram, rather preferring to be called Mujahdeen or Ansaru, the franchiseof Al-Qaeda. It started by protecting the locals in its strongholds, attacking military formations and civilians considered to be informants to the military.

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    The study also revealed that when local leaders in Gudu and Tangaza LGAs of Sokoto State invited the Lukarawa group in 2017 to address banditry incursions from Zamfara, they solicited for cash, cows, logistics and weapons to help the group protect them and even recruited youths to join them. The report said they are Malians who speak Arabic and Fulfulde.

    A resident of Tangaza LGA, Mallam Bello Tangaza corroborated the invitation of the group by locals for protection about six years ago after being assailed by banditry manifesting in kidnapping and cattle rustling as security agencies could not offer much help.

    According to him, those initially invited were 10 well-armed men because of their track record as a vigilante group. He said after the police failed to rescue some of their kidnapped community leaders, the group moved in and rescued them together with rustled cows and sheep.

    But things went awry when the group went beyond their mandate to enforce, collect levies and indulge in other illegal activities. They preached some weird ideology, checked people’s phones and broke memory cards they found to contain music. They also flogged people who played or downloaded music from their phones. The community leaders who initially invited them got tired of their excesses and sought their quick exit. When community and religious leaders got tired of their excesses, they provided valuable information to the authorities.

    But the threat was downplayed. This enabled the group to re-group and re-emerge in 2021, aligning with bandits and Fulani communities. That was perhaps, when their escapades assumed monstrous and lethal proportions.

    It is not clear at what point the community leaders sought the assistance of security agencies to quit the group from their area. But one thing not in doubt is that the security agencies had knowledge of the presence of the group, even if they misread their motive or underestimated their capacities.

    A local government information officer in Tangaza, Bala Ibrahim Gidan-Madi had then also confirmed that a former commissioner of police in the state, Murtala Mani had visited the communities as part of efforts to beef up security.

    When the matter was first reported by the media, then spokesperson of Sokoto State police command, Cordelia Nwawe had said they were not bandits but herders from Mali with their wives and children, cattle, cows and donkey.

    “They came to same area annually from Mali in search of water for their cattle…they went back since Tuesday, November 27, 2018 and no attack on any person or damage to farm crop was recorded”, she had said. The police enjoined Sokoto and its environs not to panic but to go about their lawful duties without fear or apprehension.

    Just before last week’s alert by the DHQ, Sokoto State government raised alarm on the presence of the terror group in five LGAs of the state. Spokesman of the state police command, Ahmed Rufai gave further insight on how long the terror group had stayed in the area when he said, “they have been in those areas for some years now.  They are armed with weapons and part of their agenda is to impose their own kind of religious practice on the people”.

    There are clear issues in the attestations and copious evidence provided by the locals and the police authorities. The first is that the Lukarawa group was initially invited by local leaders to help them fight back the menace of banditry. But the group soon turned a verity of Frankenstein monster.  Second, the group came from Mali and may have crossed in from Niger because the later shares boarders with Nigeria. They are largely Malians.

    Again, they are not ‘new’ in the northwest as their presence dates as far back as 2018. They had in the past, reportedly mounted attacks against military formations even if in isolated and feeble circumstances. The state government and the police had clear evidence of their presence but may have been handicapped in confronting them just as was the case with banditry.

    So, it was not entirely correct for the military to lay the blame for the incursions of the Lukarawa group solely on the locals who took resort to self-help due to the inability of security agencies to protect them. Assuming without conceding the locals failed to report their presence to security agencies, it smacks of intelligence failure for the terror group to operate for that long without notice.

    The coup in Niger, leading to breakdown in cooperation may have a hand in the spread of the terror group. But it was not the major factor. There has been evidence of Lukarawa presence in Sokoto and Kebbi states for some years before that coup.

    At any rate, with the diplomatic faceoff between Nigeria and Niger and threat of military action by ECOWAS against the latter, one had expected strict manning of the borders to prevent infiltration of the enemy. But that did not appear to have happened given the excuses by the military on Lukarawa exploiting the difficult terrain and under-governed areas after the coup to spread terror.

    What seems to have emerged from all this, is that security agencies were either handicapped in confronting the Lukarawa terror group or they underestimated their capacities for evil.  Ironically, we seem to be repeating the same mistakes that led to the escalation of Boko Haram insurgency.

    It has been argued with varying degrees of persuasion that had the early activities of Boko Haram founder, Mohammed Yusuf been promptly checked, this country would have been saved the enormous toll in human and material capital expended on that unending war. But, was there any prospect of security agencies meaningfully engaging the Lukarawa group invited to protect the locals against the menace of bandits then? That is the dialectical poser.

  • Why Trump won

    Why Trump won

    The victory of Donald Trump has been described in many ways by many pundits. Some say it is a triumph for the working class when others are saying it is the failure of the Harris campaign to make the case. Some are saying it is immigration while others are battening down the logic of hyper-inflation. Some highlight the moral anathema of the LGBTQ folks while the Christian evangelicals hail a born-again Jesus at the polls.

    Of course, a loud voice hypes racism and gender bias while others are stoking the argument of Joe Biden’s fumbles as president. Before I went to bed on election night, it looked like a toss-up at about 4 am Nigerian time. By the time I woke up about three hours later, the battleground of all battleground states was smiling at Trump. Pennsylvania had broken for the con artist, lecher, liar, felon, fraud, racist, egotist, fear monger, impresario. The other battleground states, in the end, were an anticlimax.

    For the evangelicals, they are right. For those who say it is Joe Biden’s stumbles, they are right. Who says it is working class rebellion? They are right. They are not wrong who stress race and gender. Anyone is right after an election victory. They were right the last time. They are right this time. What they have not said is what one of America’s iconic football coaches of all time said about competition: “Winning is everything.” What Vince Lombardi said about American football years ago was right for Donald Trump.

    It may be simplistic to say it is racism. Not all simplistic facts are wrong, though. They just have to be proven. Trump knew his society, and he knew how to snatch power. He understood the zeitgeist of America. When he entered the race for 2016, he announced himself as the voice of the forgotten part of America and identified a bogeyman: the immigrant as a leech and moral scum. It flattered the hope of not just the forgotten part. He appealed to who Sarah Palin called “the real America” that had masked itself under the concept of neo-liberal accommodation.

    That America prospered. Its workers, educated or not, enjoyed what we call the American dream: a living wage, a car, a house, medical care, a vacation, etc. Then came globalization. Some of the worker’s privileges were going abroad, the jobs atrophying and the wages dropping. As Harvard professor Michael Sandel argued over 26 years ago in his book, Democracy’s Discontent, now vindicated, globalization was undermining the majority of the American worker and society. One area stood out: education. Many have always equated democracy with enlightenment. But it is often not so. Almost 70 percent of Americans do not have university degrees. So, when the jobs were scaling down wages, it was an attack on the suffering majority.  Nigeria and most of the world is no different.

    These people loved their country, accepted immigrants, hugged the idea of tolerance. But standard of living was going to change all that. This is not just the story with the United States. It is the case with the United Kingdom, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, France, et al.

    Rather than attack the pain, the liberal elite started urging the less educated to go to the university, and that was the story of the future. The Ideal will collapse in the face of realism any day. Meanwhile, the same jobs that paid their big mortgages was funding many people in India, Mexico, the Philippines for far lower wages and higher profits for the corporations. The result was a gaping inequality. This has been the worst chasm between the rich and poor in history as demonstrated by the French economist Thomas Piketty in his book, Capital in the 21st century.

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    This has generated resentment in the country for a long time, and a clever Trump saw this and exploited it. As I stated last week, Michael Wolff wrote in his book, Fire and Fury, that Trump said the “white trash” – that is the poor Caucasians – were like him except that he was a rich man and they were poor. There is a part of America that is called traditional red states. They are Republicans. They used to be Democrats until the 1960’s. Lyndon Johnson flipped their love when he signed the civil rights bill that allowed blacks to vote. After President Johnson signed the bill, he told many people, as recorded by historian Doris Kearn Godwin, that the Democrats may have lost the south forever. Republicans like Richard Nixon exploited the moment and they crafted a platform that would transform American politics: it is called the southern strategy which broadcasts, “God, guns and gays.” Guns for evangelicals. Guns for gun rights, a special part of the culture and hacks back to large American swath from south to west as delineated in the novel Lonesome Dove by Larry Mcmutry. Gays as a fight against LGBTQ. That was a cultural tour de force. They combined that with conservative view of economics centred on tax cuts.

    After Nixon, the other man who exploited it was Ronald Reagan, and he had the Soviet Union and American power, prosperity and hubris to brandish. The difference between him and Trump was that America working class was still happy. The other was that while Reagan had the Soviet Union as the enemy, Trump had immigrants.

    Over the decades, the state of the American middle class has worsened. The consequence of this decline is a sense of the besieged. The person who thought he loved immigrants started to see them as the problem. They are the ones taking the jobs, taking away their peace. They are the criminals. Is it not an irony that it takes a criminal to tell them that they have criminals in their midst? It is the paradox of human civilization. Even God chooses the sinner to evangelise the sinner, Paul of Tarsus to Apostle Paul. Trump the sinner became the preacher.

    So, why did the evangelicals stand with him even though he lies and is convicted? Why do the workers cohabit with a crooked billionaire even though it is the people of his class that took away their jobs and prosperity? It is because he is the one who made the pitch and told the story, and flatter their secret hopes. The majority of blacks, men and women voted for Kamala, but they feel the economic crunch the most. Why? They say elections are about three Cs: condition, candidate and culture. Trump had all three working for him.

    Hence, they voted for Trump. It is about race because they need someone to blame, and it is what Jean Paul Sartre described as “hell is other people.” If they say it is  inflation, or the economy, at least, Trump would have made the case. How was a majority non-college educated class to understand the ins and outs of economics. Nobel Laureates  said Harris plan was better. On the border, why did they not listen when Biden came with an immigration plan but Trump stopped it from passing the Congress so he could use it as a campaign ruse. Why did that not resonate?. It is not because Harris did not make the case. Sentiment, especially of race, had made the case for trump.

    It is the unravelling of Jacob and Esau story in the Bible. The first time Jacob was asked who he was, it was the father who asked. He said he was Esau. That was not what he was. He grew rich but had to face the facts later when he wrestled with an angel. When the angel asked who he was, he confessed he was Jacob because he was desperate to live and escape the wrath of this brother who was coming after him. that was who he was.

    Americans said who they are in the last election. When things are fine, they can abide the outsider. When it comes to the crunch, identity matters. Hell, as Sartre wrote, are the immigrants. What of the minorities who went for Trump? They are bonding with their oppressors, the so-called Stockholm syndrome. It is basically the Hispanic who have crossed over and deny that Trump called them murderers and rapists. Trump knew how to talk to them, He knew how to win, and he is a true follower of Lombardi.

     Life is Hobbesian and Machiavellian. The end justifies the means. Jacob took Esau’s birthright. Yet, he got away with it and even was embraced by Esau, who forgave him. It is better, as Trump has shown, to be Jacob, steal, prosper and win, than Esau,  who is cheated, spends all is life waiting to exhale and revenge but accepts the victory of the cheat. It is the perennial pattern of history. It belongs to the cynic.

  • Many hurrahs for Otti

    Many hurrahs for Otti

    Governor Alex Otti did something few have done before in Nigerian politics. He defeated his own party, and harrumphed with gloating after the triumph. If for nothing, it shows who commands the politics of Abia State today.

     He showed to all that it was not the Labour Party that won the election for him when he swept his way to the governor’s house of the state.

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     He has been doing the work for a long time. He has written, he has mobilized, he has stayed home to tap into the roots. He fought and fell and rose up again. He has abided by the Ballad of Sir Andrews: “I am struck and wounded, I lay me down and rest awhile, and I’ll rise and fight again.” He rose after falling and he is the patriarch of Abia politics today. Abia has always followed its own path in the politics of the southeast. It was PPA when PDP was the mainstay of the east. Now, they may say it is LP but it is LP because it is Alex Otti. It is not Alex Otti because it is LP. He is one man who has commanded his troops. It is not Peter Obi, who helped him. It is because of him that Peter Obi can say his movement has a state. Obi should thank Alex for that. Or else, it is no shishi for him. Abia is the doing of one man’s genius, and that man is Alex Otti.

  • ‘Living minimum wage’

    ‘Living minimum wage’

    Ironically, as a number of states get set to implement the new N70,000 national minimum wage law, there are indications that workers across the country consider the new wage old and needing a review.

    Indeed, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President Joe Ajaero was reported saying the NLC may be forced to demand a review of the new minimum wage.  “We demand a review of our salaries in lieu of its eroded values,” he said at the 8th Quadrennial Delegates Conference of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) in Abuja, on October 30. He added: ‘’We must together demand the re-commissioning of Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries in keeping with the agreement we had with the federal government on the 5th day of October, 2023.”

    The high cost of fuel resulting from the removal of  fuel subsidy is among the main factors responsible for the cost-of-living crisis in the country; and making the government-owned local refineries operational is expected to lower the cost of fuel with accompanying amelioration of the cost-of-living crisis.  

    President Bola Tinubu, who removed fuel subsidy in May 2023, signed the N70,000 minimum wage bill into law in July 2024, after months of intense negotiations with labour leaders who had demanded a much higher minimum wage.  The labour unions had initially demanded over N600, 000 monthly, arguing that the country’s cost-of-living crisis warranted such a high figure, compared with the old N30,000 minimum wage.  

    Disturbing figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated relentless inflation in the country. According to its latest Consumer Price Index report, month-on-month food inflation rate, for instance, increased in September, notably affecting prices of staples such as rice, maize, beans, and yams. There were also significant price increases in housing rentals, transport, and medical services.

    Responding to the NBS report, the Director of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Dr Muda Yusuf, was reported saying, “The reality is that the dynamics driving inflation are yet to be effectively subdued.” He observed that these factors include “the depreciating exchange rate, surging fuel price, rising transportation costs, logistics and supply chain challenges, high energy cost, climate change including resultant incidents of flooding, insecurity in farming communities and structural bottlenecks to production.”

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    Taming inflation demands tackling these challenges, which are mainly the consequences of reforms introduced by the Tinubu administration.  The World Bank recently said the reforms were crucial for the country’s long-term stability. “Turning back or opposing the reforms would only make things worse,” said Ndiame Diop, World Bank country director for Nigeria, at the launch of the Nigeria Development Update (NDU) report in Abuja.

    Predictably, the World Bank’s position drew public criticism in a country struggling with a crushing cost-of-living crisis. However, Diop added that the ongoing reforms “must be accompanied by reforms enabling the private sector to create more and better jobs. With targeted support to youth and women.” This was a way of saying that the hard results of the Federal Government’s reforms can be softened. The World Bank report also noted the need for structural reforms, such as reducing trade barriers, improving infrastructure, improving the business environment and supporting household businesses for inclusive growth.

    If the ongoing reforms were inevitable to achieve a better future for Nigerians, the authors and promoters of the reforms should understand that it is counter-productive to carry out such reforms without considering and implementing sufficiently ameliorative measures.

    The alarmingly deteriorating cost-of-living crisis in the country is a bad advertisement for the Federal Government’s reforms. It is important to ask what the three levels of government have done, and what they are doing to save Nigerians from hardship occasioned by the reforms.  They are expected to urgently find solutions to the cost-of-living issues in the spaces they govern.  

    No argument that reforms negatively impacting Nigerians are a necessary means to a positive end will make sense if the people can’t breathe. At the Distinguished Personality Lecture organised by the National Institute for Security Studies (NISS) in Abuja, on October 30, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, a former governor of Edo State, noted that Nigerian workers were poorer now, despite the increased minimum wage.  “Inflation severely impacts purchasing power, making it difficult for workers to maintain a decent standard of living,” he observed.

    An interesting development underlined the reality that the minimum wage boost is not only cosmetic but also ineffectual. Sensationally, Niger State Governor Mohammed Bago made the headlines after announcing that the state would in November not only begin paying a minimum wage of N80,000 to its workers, which is N10,000 more than the stipulated new national minimum wage, but also aim to “eventually achieve a minimum wage of one million naira.”

    According to him, “The N80,000 approved is sustainable, and with our progress in agriculture, we are confident we can increase it further in the future.” He added: “We are establishing civil service farms so that our workforce can be more productive. With this approach, we could eventually achieve a minimum wage of one million naira, but for now, we are starting with N80,000.” This can be interpreted as a subtle admission of the inadequacy of the new wage.

    Was the governor serious? Did he expect the public to take him and his words seriously?  The chairman of NLC in Niger State, Abdulkarim Idris Lafene, observed that the N80,000 minimum wage which would be paid by the state government “is not fully aligned with the current economy, considering the high cost of goods and living expenses.” However, he added, “We are hopeful that the minimum wage will eventually reach one million naira, as the governor has indicated.” Unbelievable!

    Governor Bago of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is 50 and became governor in 2023. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2023.  He may be dreaming of a second term which would take him to 2031. So, he may have time to reach the point of possibly paying one million naira as minimum wage in his state. But he sounded like a politician saying what he thinks the people want to hear.

    Reports say 22 states are about to implement the new national wage law, with some of them ready to pay their workers slightly above the stipulated N70,000 minimum wage. The states are: Lagos, Rivers, Bayelsa, Niger, Enugu, Akwa Ibom, Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Jigawa, Gombe, Ogun, Kebbi, Ondo, Kogi, Ebonyi, Delta, Edo, Borno, Kwara, Kano, and Kaduna.   

    Fifteen states adjusted the fixed minimum wage upward, possibly to give the impression that their governments are worker-friendly.  They include Lagos and Rivers (N85,000); Bayelsa, Niger, Enugu, and Akwa Ibom (N80,000).  Others are: Delta and Ogun (N77,000), Ebonyi and Kebbi (N75,000), Ondo (N73,000), Kogi and Kaduna (N72,000), Gombe and Kano (N71,000). But the variations are tokenistic.

    Evidently, the new national minimum wage is not a living wage in the country’s current circumstances. Nigerian workers in the public and private sectors deserve what some describe as a ‘living minimum wage.’

  • A government counsel and freed minors

    A government counsel and freed minors

    It emerged as a disgusting spectacle in the social media space. The first video clip depicted a scene of malnourished and worn-out children in their numbers, arraigned in an Abuja federal high court for alleged treason and related offences.

    Some of them collapsed on the dock, crying and gasping for breath while their equally haggard-looking colleagues held on to them. Some lawyers, apparently standing in their defence were also seen in the dock jittery and furious at the unfolding but seriously embarrassing development.

    They were heard calling on the prosecutor to, “take them to the clinic, take them to the clinic. Where is the prosecutor. Imagine, how can you arraign children”, amidst the wailing of some minors desperately in need of medical help. It was a chaotic and touching scene to behold as other minors watched on.

    The scene undoubtedly, ruffled public sensibilities attracting immediate condemnation notwithstanding the offences for which the minors were charged. The fact that the small boys had stayed three months in detention since the #EndBadGovernance protests in August, was enough to assail the conscience of even the most callous.

    Surprisingly, a second video clip also made a quick appearance. This time, it was a counsel to the federal government, Rimazonte Ezekeil addressing the press, apparently to correct the negative impression created by the court scene. But he spoke in a manner that left many bewildered and more angry.

    Hear him, “These boys we brought to the court today, all of them are adults. Most of them are married men. None of them is a minor. Some of them are university graduates. The small, small kids you are seeing here, they came with some of their parents to great their loved ones. They are not even the real suspects standing trial in this case”.

    He dismissed the claims of the defence counsel that they are school children and minors and alleged they were meant to tarnish the image of the police.

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     Ironically, the children he said were university graduates and married adults had been paraded and seen by the public. Their ages as recorded in the charge sheet ranged from 14-17 years.

     If it was a desperate attempt to pull wool over the eyes of the public, it turned out a colossal disaster. His statements created more problems for the government than the embarrassment mere arraignment of sick and malnourished children in court had engendered.

    But the government counsel was not alone in this disappointing voyage in self-deceit. The Nigerian Police Force also spoke of the incident in very disappointing manner. In a statement, its Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi claimed the court incident was stage managed; scripted.

    “Today (Friday), an unexpected incident in court saw six of the suspects suddenly rush out and faint, drawing media attention in a deliberate and scripted manner to draw negative attention.  Medical aid was promptly provided to those individuals” he said. But he was quick to add that under the Nigerian law, individuals who have reached the age of criminal responsibility are answerable for their actions, regardless of their age.

    The dismissive and offhanded manner the Nigerian police and the government prosecutor viewed the fate of the minors, was in sharp contrast with the outrage it generated both within and outside the shores of this country. Without prejudice to whatever offences the minors were alleged to have committed, it was deemed callous and insensitive for the police to have detained the minors for three months only to arraign them in the very decrepit and dehumanising manner they were seen in court that fateful day.

    The weight of empathy and sentiments evoked by that court outing were such that no responsible government, especially one that derived its mandate from the people could afford to ignore. Sadly, those who brought the minors to court in the manner they appeared, completely lost sight of the possible backlash.

    Something went awry with their reading of the situation. The difficult bail conditions set by the presiding judge further narrowed the chances of the minors for temporary reprieve. It aggravated the outrage.

     It came as a bold relief when President Bola Tinubu ordered immediate release of all the minors and the setting up of an administrative committee to examine all the issues surrounding the arrest, detention, treatment and release of the minors.

    That was not all. The president further directed that all law enforcement agents involved in the arrest and the legal processes be investigated, and if any infractions are found to have been committed, disciplinary action should be taken against the person.

     The court process has since been discontinued and the charges struck out by the trial judge. This paved the way for the immediate release of about 119 minors to the governors of Kano and Kaduna states. Vice President Kashim Shettima who presided over the release, said it was an act of magnanimity by President Tinubu despite “incontrovertible digital video and photographic evidence of the perpetrators and actions, some of which were uploaded by the actors themselves”.

    The reprieve for the minors has since drawn applause from so many quarters.  The president must have been touched by the spectacle of malnourished children who ordinarily should be in school, arraigned in court for offences many of them may never have heard of in their lives. He saw through the facade of  excuses presented by the prosecuting counsel and the police.

    Even if that scene was stage managed and scripted to attract media attention and portray the government in bad light, the scene succeeded in achieving that. But the fault is that of the police and the prosecuting officials. They should have known ahead of time, the predictable outcome of bringing those children to court in the conditions they were seen. If they faked fainting, their malnourished and sickly mien gave out the treatment they got in detention.

    That is where the probe directed by the president cues in very appropriately. It has been argued with varying degrees of plausibility that one of the major challenges leaders face is that of bad advisers. The case in point may be a vivid example. It is obvious from the response of the president that he may not have been properly briefed on the detention and circumstances of the minors. His quick directive for their release and investigation of all those that played a role in it suggests that.

    The police have serious questions to answer on the handling of the minors in detention. They claimed the fainting was stage managed, yet they took the sick and fainted minors to get medical attention. They were also derelict for not anticipating that arraigning those children in the manner they were seen in court, was bound to assail public sensibilities. So it is not just a matter of their action being scripted and in any case by who?

    There is no attempt to justify acts of lawlessness either by adults or minors. But these minors are victims of the system, often manipulated by the elite to achieve ends of self-serving or political colouration. Many of them were arrested allegedly waving Russian flags. They may not even know the difference between Russian flags and any other.

     Some of them were also rounded up indiscriminately during the protest, going by their accounts after their release.

    It is a mark of intelligence failure that within the three months the minors were detained, the police was unable through discrete interrogation, to unmask their sponsors and source of the flags some of the minors waved.  Maybe that is part of the puzzles the investigating committee will resolve. But, some lessons have definitely been served. 

  • Our boys

    Our boys

    The saga of the boys who “collapsed” in court reminded me of Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. In the immortal tale, it is not clear what the crime is and what the punishment should be, and the criminal, to many readers, was actually the hero.

    It reminds me also of the paradoxes of life. The pretender becomes the contender, and accepted as such. The innocent becomes the victim and the victim the innocent. The underdog is the big dog, the street urchin leaves the tale with a royal treatment, walking on red carpet, given a royal bath, a table was prepared for them in the presence of their enemies with one of them battling with epic victory over a large chicken part. Their cups run over, not only with drink from such lordly cups but they don’t even drink such juices or minerals or even such clean water. I hope the delicacy and hygiene do not startle their body order into shock and then illnesses.

    It is a classic Nigerian narrative. We have the underdog and we have those who say they will always stand for the underdog, even if that underdog is like Jas, a little girl in the puzzling novel and winner of the International Prize for fiction, The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Jas is abused but she is also, at age 10, an abuser under a delusion of self-innocence and who who must flee the suffocation of her parents and the puritanical tyranny of the village. I recommend the novel, A spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo, for local context.

    It is a tale of instant amnesia. We forget when we call them malnourished that they were never well-fed in their whole life. Atiku and Obi wept at their lean looks in court but when did they say anything about them on the streets of Kano or Katsina or Jigawa before then? Suddenly, they were the heroes of the street poor.

    It was a time to act. The theatre began with the boys who fell in court. A person who falls from hunger does not cry. It is because he has lost all energy that he falls. In one word, he has fainted. It is just as though the critics lost all sense of biology or even drama. One of them was rolling on the floor. Faint and rolling? Does not add up. So the real actors were the cheerleaders, begun by Atiku and Obi and followed closely by the NGOs who must impress their international donors so they, too, should not faint from hunger. It is not that they are blind, but that they chose not to see or chose not to say what they saw. There was also the part of the lawyers, especially a SAN called Dauda, who says the boys should not be tried for treason, and that they should be tried only in their states. I remember a dialogue with Gani Fawehinmi. He said if he has a case between the rich and the poor, “I will find the law for the poor.” Gani’s heart was in the right place. But who will find the law for the poor, especially if it is about a dozen boys recently killed by the armed forces in the north for banditry, and they were in the age bracket of the minors in court.

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    Attorney general Lateef Fagbemi said there was enough law to sue the fellows. But from what the AG said, we see another part of the drama: amnesia. We forget that these boys stole, broke into homes and shops and impoverished some hard workers forever, destroyed a tech centre, torched buildings. In Kano, they did not see the books but eyed the computers, bathrooms accessories, etc. They called for the army; they hoisted Russian flags. I wonder why those lawyers and civil agitators who love this society so much have not wondered who paid for and sewed the flags? Who taught the boys who never saw a soldier in office or could not read about them to suddenly become lovers of the jackboot? Who were the politicians behind them?

    The NSA said N6 billion was traced to politicians. Has anyone addressed what Fagbemi said about having enough material to prosecute them? What happened was just a long and grueling drama about a society that loved to lie to itself.

     It calls to mind the ironic title of the Pulitzer prize-winning novel, All the Light You Cannot See about the Second World War. The author propounds a poser: the brain resides in a dark place in our heads but can make a lot of light. Which contrasts to Jose Saramago’s novel, Seeing, about those who have eyes but cannot see. A report in a mainstream newspaper dramatised the hunger by interviewing one of them. In one paragraph the “minor” said they did not give them food for days. In the next paragraph, he complained about having poor breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you know al majiris, they are happy if they have a meal a day. Remember when El Rufai was governor? They attended school just for food and then, they were gone!

    It is the drama of sight and ignorance, joy in self-deceit and the grandiose posing as grandeur. When the president said the boys should be set free, it was a way of completing the drama for a country that was in search of a climax. If you watched or read Luigi Pirandello’s play, Six Characters in Search of An Author, then you appreciate the chaos and self-indictments of the hour, especially from opportunists. It was many countrymen in search of a climax. When President Tinubu released them, he said it was out of a paternal compassion. Yes, that was part of it. But unwittingly, he mocked all of them who critiqued. By feeding, he said, when did you ever feed them like this? Atiku, Obi answer. When he bathed them, he asked, when did you get clean shower for them? When he gave them new clothing, he asked when did you visit a tailor for the poor? It was, in a sense, like Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 25. Of course, President Tinubu has a right not to use his right to prosecute. And if the boys commit an offence again, it will be, well, you said we should not prosecute. So have at it. The critics created the cynical part of the presidential benevolence. It is what Apostle Paul wrote, “God will send them strong delusion so that they can believe a lie.”

    Other than Fagbemi, the best response came from the Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani when he said he received them, and he predicated their embrace on their sense of contrition, and would bring them into a skills acquisition centre. The governor is already building three acquisition centres at Soba, Rigachukun and Samarun Kataf in the Northern, Central and Southern senatorial districts. It is part of his Skills City.

    I recall in my days in Wudil, Kano, our NYSC training camp. An almajiri, named Aminu, was always there to run errands for me. I became fond of him, and I learned a few Hausa words from him, like abinchi, Rua, yauwa, kyau, daadii, madalla. Also, he knew some English, hence we could communicate. During the training month, malaria overwhelmed me. He showed so much compassion during that period before I left the camp for treatment. When I returned, I didn’t see him again. But he defined for me a special understanding of the almajiri till today. It is that sort of comportment that those set free should evince and all should encourage, rather than the hysteria over phony fits of hunger.

    Atiku’s exam ‘expo’

    When Atiku came out with his economic package, I thought he would give us food for thought that will bring food for the poor.

    But what we saw was poverty of thought. He could not deny that President Tinubu ought to remove fuel subsidy and collapse the foreign exchange regimes, rather he said it should be phased gradually.

    He was either insincere or lacked a sense of history.

    Did Jonathan not try to phase it? Did it work? To phase it is to create a scenario of trying to bail water out of a kitchen through the window while the tap is still running. It is like trying to redeem a threadbare cloth. Once you sew a part, the other part tears open. I tackled it in my recent talk at Cambridge University. They forget that everyone will expect another phase after the first and after the second, and the prices will anticipate the decisions. What you will have is a giddy, runaway inflation. Economics is not only about economics but sociology and psychology.

     Hence, Kissinger wrote during the economic depression of the 1980’s that “the economy is too important to be left in the hands of economists.” Especially those who helped Atiku to draft his. In fact, Atiku and his team were not original but copycats who were listening to half-baked analysts in newspapers and television. If Atiku could not get his certificates right in primary school, at least he should not act in public like one who likes exam ‘expos.’

     He even repackaged Tinubu’s economic stimulus plan by calling it social protection.  It was what philosopher Michel Foucault called narrative of discourse, where you want to change the focus by a subterfuge of language.

    This is another act of fraud from Atiku. If you must do an exam expo, please limit it to the classroom.

    Trump and White Trash

    The presidential election victory of Donald Trump reminds me of the two consequential presidents of the past 50 years and how they have the same things in common. I refer to both himself and Ronald Reagan. In a biography on Reagan by Edmond Morris, he referred to the United States former president as an airhead.

    The charge stormed the media. How could anyone describe the president for whom an era is named an airhead, that is empty upstairs?

    Yet, that is the claim that many will say of Trump. And both have great and enthusiastic following, and are defining an era in American history, and possibly the world.

     Like Trump, Reagan hardly knows the Bible but leads a groundswell of evangelicals. He is rich, but leads the poor.

     They are racists, but are embraced by even the minorities who they poohpooh. During his campaign for president, Reagan entered Mississippi and declared his support for “state’s right,” which is an echo of the fight to save slaves from the south.

     It was a coda for racism. Reagan asked those who did not have jobs to go to MacDonalds, where the pay is miserable. In his Book, Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff narrates a time, Trump was flying to a place in New Jersey and somebody said it belonged to white trash, and a naïve person asked, “what’s white trash?” Trump said, they are like me. The difference is that they are poor.” You can understand why he backs the poor whites, though he does nothing for them.