The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • E-CMR suspension, adjunct matters

    E-CMR suspension, adjunct matters

    The suspended enforcement of the electronic central motor registry registration e-CMR must have come to vehicle owners across the country as a huge relief. This should be expected given intense public outcry against the policy billed to take effect from July 29. Public grouse with the initiative hinged on its prospects of compounding the burden of vehicle owners already overstretched by a multiplicity of taxes and levies in the face of unfavourable economic environment.

    The measure was also suspected as a creation by the police to harass, inconvenience and extort vehicle owners. The seeming haste in its enforcement and lack of clarity as to the purpose it is meant to serve further fuelled public cynicism.

    But the chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law, John Aikpokpo-Martins had a different angle to these reservations. He slammed the initiative for what he called its blatant disregard for the rule of law. Aikpokpo-Martins questioned the legal basis for the police to issue CMR, arguing that no law granted them the powers to collect fees and issue such a certificate. He threatened legal action.

    The Nigerian Bar Association, NBA has since disowned his statement citing the suspension of the arm of the bar association he hitherto led. But the NBA equally picked holes with police issuance of the e-CMR with an appeal for its reconsideration.

    Apparently responding to these reservations, the Inspector General of Police IGP, Kayode Egbetokun suspended the enforcement of the e-CMR. The police said the suspension would enable them sensitise the public on the initiative. They explained the initiative is among others, designed to ensure the safety and security of all types of vehicles including motorcycles, by collating data imputed into the system by vehicle owners and acting on such to flag vehicles if reported stolen.

    “Similarly, the e-CMR will prevent multiple registration of vehicles and serve as a data base to collect biometric and other data of vehicle owners and individuals, adding value to the national database and incident report portal generated from other Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) towards national security”, the IGP further explained.

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    Ostensibly, the e-CMR registration is to aid the police protect lives and property. Ordinarily, the objectives to be served by the e-CMR should have been well received by the public. Any genuine measure to enhance the protection of lives and property is expected to attract the support and endorsement of the general public. The escalating insecurity across the country is one key reason that support ought to be taken for granted.

     Unfortunately, e-CMR has not been so received. Public opposition to the new initiative is not as much with the objective it is meant to serve as with the fear that it will provide the police a new avenue to extort vehicle owners. The conduct of some police officers at checkpoints and the extortion motorists regularly face in their hands, reinforce this mistrust.

     So, the fear that the initiative stands to be exploited for the selfish gains of some unscrupulous police officers is not unfounded. Apart from having to cough out N5, 375 to obtain the certificate, e-CMR will add to the volume of documents demanded by the police at checkpoints that have been turned to toll points.

     Even now, police operatives demand for so many documents from motorists that it is difficult to say for certain, the number of vehicle documents a driver is expected to carry while on transit. You will be amazed at the number of documents you are asked to provide at checkpoints especially along the highways. E-CMR will add to this load.

    Many years back, it was difficult for motorists, especially private car owners to drive through the Lagos-Benin highway without being contravened/extorted for not having CMR. Once they check your papers and found everything correct, the next thing is to demand for your CMR.

    Then, many vehicle owners had no idea of what CMR was all about. Neither was it listed among the particulars they were required to carry while on transit. Those who found that document convenient to extort motorists knew it was not compulsory. Yet, they harassed vehicle owners to produce it. Opposition to e-CMR may have been evoked by such past encounters.

    In one of our interactive sessions while on the editorial board of a national daily, we had raised this issue with the then Lagos State Commissioner of Police. When asked the documents motorists were required to carry on them, CMR was not among the papers he listed. Yet, the police along the Lagos-Benin section of the expressway always found that document a convenient tool for extortion.

    I had personal encounters with the police along that highway for non-possession of CMR. Their conduct and the inconvenience I faced compelled me to commission a reporter to get one for me for a fee.

    The next time I plied that section of the road, I was waiting to surprise them with that document. But to my disappointment, I was not flagged down in the usual way. Neither did anybody ask me of it in many of the occasions I passed through that highway. It remains unclear to me till today why nobody harassed me again for CMR after the pains I took to secure it.

     The fact that police is about to make CMR mandatory has exposed the illegality of the actions of those who had demanded for it 20 years ago. Why it was only along that section of the highway the police found it convenient to ask for CMR remains also curious. 

    It is therefore not just enough for the Police Public Relations Officer PPRO, Olumuyiwa Adejobi to wave aside public criticism of CMR on the ground that it is not new. It is new because its possession would compel vehicle owners to part with N5,375. It is also new in the sense that it has not been part of the documents motorists were mandatorily required to carry on transit.

    The PPRO was not equally correct when he asserted with an air of finality that no agency can take on the police on the CMR. On the contrary, the initiative can be challenged in court as already threatened by Aikpokpo-Martins. I have heard lawyers say that law is silent as long as it has not been provoked. The propriety of the police collecting rates for the issuance of CMR has been called to question. It may not lie solely within the purview of that institution to resolve the challenge.

    The case of the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, should serve as a veritable lesson. A couple of years back, the FRSC had the notion of unfettered powers to operate on state and local roads until it was challenged in court.

    The Court of Appeal sitting in Asaba, Delta State, had then affirmed the judgment of the Federal High Court in Warri which held that the FRSC can only operate on federal roads. The Federal High Court had on January, 25, 2019 ruled in favour of Darlington Ehikim all the reliefs he sought including a declaration that the FRSC had no right to operate or carry out any activity on state and local roads. The matter is on appeal.

    Perhaps, the case brought by Kunle Edun, a lawyer against the Delta State government, its Attorney General and the Ughelli North Local Government Area for demanding a valid Road-worthiness Certificate for his private vehicle should be instructive enough. Edun had in the suit argued there was no provision in the law of the state for such a certificate as it is only required for commercial transport and haulage vehicles.

    The high court granted the relief he sought. The Appeal Court, Asaba division upheld the ruling of the high court when it held that they are not authorised to demand fee or issue certificates of road-worthiness to private vehicles according to the road traffic law of the state. The state government appealed the ruling. 

    The right of the police to collect fees for issuance of the e-CMR can be challenged; so also the amount to be collected. It is a different ball game if the courts resolve the matter in favour of that agency.

    Must the police charge money for documentation that is billed to be done online? If yes, what amount and is the certificate renewable? Is it possible for the police to use data available in the vehicle registration offices, information in the National Identification Number portal and incident report portal from other government agencies to seamlessly achieve the same objective?

  • Hollow Soul

    Hollow Soul

    Nothing new happens in politics. They just take on new guises. Just like the series of haters of the Tinubu government. Many have said that the government is the first in our history not to have settled down before catcalls for a new era. They began the campaign for 2027 once they lost 2023.

    First, they wanted to delegitimise it through the internet, they crashed. Through street protests, but it foundered. Through an army coup, but no cruise. Anonymous billboards, no airborne. The foreign courts, no visa. Through our courts, what an anticlimax.

    After that, no respite for the victor. If Atiku was not making a sour-grape critique, Pitobi was in tow with his fulminating aside. Tribe and diatribe have become Siamese twins. Now it seems they have run out of patience. They cannot wait for another poll. They want to take it by force. If they cannot coerce the army towards a putsch, they want a push from the streets. They have issued bile upon bile on the name and policies of President Bola Tinubu, but the man does not fight back. He just focuses on his goals. He must be thinking like the German playwright and novelist, Johann Goethe, author of immortal play Faust: The likes of thee have never moved my hate.

    The call for a protest has been coming in trickles. Online soldiers in masks and disembodied voices have risen from a slow, burning cadence to a staccato. Now, the federal government says it is from a group known as Obidients. Translation? Sore losers. LP says it is not them. Obi says, without proof, that they want to arrest him. This essayist has no beef against opposition. It nourishes democracy and puts the government in alert mode on its erring policies.

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    But everything has to be done according to law and decency. Whoever is plotting a street protest should, at least, identify themselves. When students fomented Ali Must Go, the leaders of NUNS did not hide in the shadows. So did the protests against SAP and the June 12 annulment. And many others. So, why are these protesters hiding in the shadows? It is protest by cowardice. If they are democrats, they cannot be hollering for the so-called end to a constitutionally guaranteed term. They want to be who they are: barbarians on the streets.

    If they cannot identify who they are, they have no right to engineer chaos in our society. Refinement separates democracies from autocracies. When a group without a name mobilises citizens against the state, it is because they have no public legitimacy, and no moral anchor, and no legal mooring. They are harbingers of anarchy. Poet T.S. Eliot describes them as hollow men, who have “shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion.”

    The concept of Disobedience is different from these shadowy men. The man who conceived it was Henry David Thoreau. He never intended it to operate by stealth. Two major personages implemented it. They were Ghandi in India and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. They did not hide. History is their witness. The impending one is disobedient but not civil. Maybe Disobedience is their proper name. But they have to get the spelling right first.

    We saw this same obnoxious show before the judiciary handed down its verdict on the 2023 presidential poll. They hung billboard signs through anonymous means, until they were exposed.

    This time, they want to do same. Information reaching this writer reveals that a good deal of the instigators does not live here. Ensconced in their safe homes in Europe, North America and African homes, they claim to suffer on behalf of Nigerians. They say they are hungry and angry on behalf of those who live here. They are the ones who encouraged the ENDSARS imbroglio and were not here when it ran out of steam after some died on the streets of Lagos and made bonfires.

    We do not want the sort of mayhem we witnessed in Lagos. I personally witnessed it and was a psychological victim, and it should not come our way again. The TVC premises was torched, and its newsroom, the best in the country, was tossed by hoodlums. The popular show, Your View, abruptly went off-air and the goons threw all the staff in disarray. They roared to this newspaper and set up a bonfire, and I feared for my personal office library and started calculating the cost of recovering the books. I recalled Thomas Jefferson’s words when his home caught fire. He asked, “Was not any of my books saved?” I was more fortunate than the third American president and author of the Declaration of Independence. My books survived because of prompt intervention.

    Opportunists took over shops and looted at will. The major transportation hub in Oyingbo is a scary exhibition of madmen who burned new buses that the poor have been deprived of ever since. It will take billions of Naira to get those buses back. Some wondered why nearby Jibowu was spared. I am happy they didn’t go there. That transport area has charmed my memory from a little child when as a family we travelled home and I also travelled to school through the hub. We cannot forget online calls from Nnamdi Kanu for his hirelings to burn down the zoo, which is Lagos.

    The ENDSARS was projected more innocently than this impending one. Youths started it with a naivety of mission to solve a specific wrong. They even were praised for their dignity of comportment, the grandeur of the processions, and focus of their agenda. But naivety collapsed to cunning and, later, savagery. It recalls the novel, Butterfly Revolution by William Buttler about teens who were staging a mockery of a revolution until it spun out of hand and led to deaths and tragedy and regrets. Fantasy mutated into a barbarian hour. It is a reimagined Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the Nobel Prize winner.

    Many who do this in Lagos will not dare it in their own states. They are always picking Lagos where governance is head and shoulders above where they come from. They hold Lagos to a higher standard but say almost nothing about the turpitude of their states’ political elite.

    The so-called protests are a picture of unresolved malice. They hate the president, and nothing he does will please them. During the election campaigns, they all agreed that subsidy should go and the naira was overvalued, and we should follow a different path. But having done it, they are up in arms. They are like the children of Israel who complained about Pharoah’s whips but became wistful and romantic about their oppressor after crossing the Red Sea. They wanted to wheel back to Pharoah’s whips.

    They have not set out a suite of policies as alternative. They just holler and affect righteous poses. They remind one of the first few days of the Obama administration. The first black leader wanted to embrace his Republican foes. Rather, the senate leader, Mitch McConnel held a caucus meeting and they decided they were going to browbeat Obama into paralysis and shoot down anything and everything he proposed to Congress.

    In spite of that, he triumphed. That is what these Obidients are afraid of. They fear they cannot force Tinubu to fail. They have not stopped the superhighway projects, the food sent to the poor, the local government reform, the scholarship/ loan for students, the credit scheme for entrepreneurs, etc. What they are exercising is what Goethe, Germany’s greatest writer ever, calls “impotent hatred.”

    They are fighting against ideas larger than they, and they cannot come out of the shadows to identify themselves. They are Nigeria’s craven mob. What they are planning is the mockery of protests, a caricature of public rage. It is opportunism in the guise of a grand idea.

    They are in fruitless search, and they wish they can eliminate this democracy in order to enthrone their candidate. Will that be democracy or despotism? They are not even clever. They are blinded by hate, nurtured by hubris and emboldened by delusion.

    Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) has said “anger is not a strategy.” For these people, we can only say anger is their destiny.

    They cannot unseat the man or derail the president. As Goethe writes, “one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.” They are T.S. Eliot’s hollow souls.

  • Minimum Agbaero

    Minimum Agbaero

    At last, Agbaero comes to judgment. After all the fanciful figures, the President and his team were able to make labour reason. They had been labouring in vain.  One might have called it, like Shakespeare, all labour’s lost. But something came out of it. Not Agbaero’s fantasy, though. They still need to let us know how they swiveled from about half million naira a month as salaries to seventy thousand naira . It will be a revelation of humility.

    It is interesting that they did not only accept, they applauded. They did not only applaud; they shook hands with the president. And after warm handshakes, they waxed into choir. It looks like a comedy of sorts from a people who had made a cartoon image of the president.

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    We know this agreement is the beginning of what will be a tweaking of the salary scale upwards for all cadres of civil servants. Corporate Nigeria has hailed the move. But what of state governments who could not pay the last approved pay? We are waiting for Labour’s next move. At last, Agbaero and co. have now come down to the minimum.

  • Like father like fraud

    Like father like fraud

    A tweet went viral last week from the fingers of lawmaker and son of former Kaduna State governor, Bello El-Rufai. I did not see it until quite a few people forwarded it to me. A former minister also sent it to me with a comment, “This little prick needs to be put in his place.” What did Bello, a member of House of Representatives, write? “Thanks. I left the office early to see him off at the airport. I just told him a lot of you do love him and have been supportive. I shared some tweets to him. We also laughed at a shameless idiot, Sam the houseboy at 70, of the Toilet Paper called The Nation.” He accompanied the tweet with a picture of the back of his father, the former governor who bleeds rather than talk.

    So, that is the quality of a lawmaker in today’s democracy of the 21st century. A father is accused of stealing over N400 billion, the son goes to the toilet to defend him. Is that the sort of family that should spill into the public square? So, if father is an accused thief, son is a liar. What a combo of family.  Who is shameless if not a thief or a liar? The Nation is toilet paper but it was not so when it defended him in the past, when he made headlines against his enemies. It is because he has a toilet imagination that Bello’s father can be accused of stealing and he does not hide himself in the shadows.

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    He calls me 70, where is his fact? His father returned to Atiku, the man he betrayed for OBJ. he has returned to his own vomit. So, it is a case of a traitor cohabiting with a defector. What a marriage. And they say they love this country? Bello himself has been pampered by his father. He never had any real job in this country before he became lawmaker, except a stint at a Chinese firm his father helped him get. He schooled outside this country. I recall challenging his father at Sheraton sometime ago in front of my editor colleagues when he wanted to advertise his integrity. He said his salary was small. I asked him how he funded his children, including Bello, from a government salary that could not pay more than a month’s rent abroad. He could not answer me then. Now I know why, and why his son must defend his father.

  • Politics of money

    Politics of money

    I know of at least one local government chairman who had two abodes. One was in his local government area. The other was in Lagos. Their preferred abode? Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre. They were unnerved by their fidelity to the constitution that required them to operate as full-time employees of the tax payer. They spent at least 29 days in Lagos and one day in their offices. Sometimes, they never visited their LGAs in three months.

    Their reason? They were only chairmen in name and salaries, and occasional largesse from their benefactors. Their boss, the governor, had essentially trumped their roles. They bowed to the usurper. They were thankful to their abuser who enabled them to earn a living while pursuing their businesses in Lagos.  A cynical tryst.

    The Supreme Court verdict seems to have put paid to all that. Seems. The governors fought. They have quilted and yielded like constitutional creatures to the tip court in the land. They yielded but they are not bowed. The law, as Thoreau said, “never made anyone a whit more just.” The law may be right, but man must execute it.

    This is a triumph for Attorney General Lateef Fagbemi, and a quiet tremor of joy to grassroots politicians and, especially, to the Tinubu administration. We must accept it also as a victory for fiscal federalism. The president has been one of the rooftop cheerleaders of the idea, and for him to do it by following the law is a kudos to his constitutional integrity. It was a decision he too has taken against his own past, having served as governor who controlled local government funds. It is a rectitude of reversal. It is a courage of self-recrimination. He saw his dirt and cleaned it in public. It is understandable that governors did not want their powers to “go gentle into that good night,” to adapt Dylan Thomas’ poem. They “raged against the dying” of their powers.

    Yet we must admit that this was an act that makes the Supreme Court an activist chamber. Our federalism anoints two tiers: the federal and states. This naturally means money should go to both. If the law was made to save the money, it means the court in following the money has undermined the power of the state governors. It implied we have two political tiers but three financial tiers. What this means is that the court has made a law by interpreting it. No one can question its power to do so. Courts make laws and they are called precedents. Most who read this see the politics and not the law. But what is the use of the law when it creates injustice? That is the crux of Fagbemi’s point. The governors can only appeal to God.

    But there is a seeming naivety in the jubilation over the guillotine of the governors in this matter. Yes, the allocation will go direct to the chairmen. But who puts the chairmen on the throne? Of course, the governors. The governors control the electoral process. The governors nod who heads their local INEC. The governors can outspend most contenders for local government offices during elections. So, while fiscal federalism triumphs, political localism will contend. The governors may now put their men in offices and direct them on how to spend their money. If an LG chair resists, he may fight the local bear at his own peril. Money, it seems, answers all things. This will engender constitutional tension and stir democratic impulses.

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    The other angle is to see it as a case where local government chairs run to the presidency for cover. The president, where his interest beckons, may “mobilise” the LGs against their governors. I predict that if the governors pick most of the chairs, we may have the governors acting like British system called “indirect rule.” I think the phrase was wrongly used by historians as my former teacher, the late Prof. Tunji Oloruntimehin, asserted. A rule is a rule. We cannot say the managing director is ruling his finance department indirectly because he has a financial manager. So, governors will use stealth and tact to maintain the status quo. The idea of caretakers was an impunity of governors who did not want to pretend to be dictators. One of such was Pitobi who did not pretend to be a democrat when he governed Anambra State. He has kept mum so far on this subject. His lack of garrulity here is refreshing.

    Whatever happens going forward, two things are clear. One, this is a plus for restructuring. Two, we are in an uncharted territory. Will the politics of federalism yield to the financing of it? That is the question. It is a challenge to the integrity of the governors and the resilience of grassroots politics.

    Apostles of federalism have asserted that the biggest part of a nation should not be bigger than the smallest part of it. This is a theory that federalism has not fulfilled in any nation. Even in the United States, the award of electoral votes sanctifies inequality. The concept of federalism often wrestles with the concept of equality. In his America, Alexis de Tocqueville, praised the United States for what he called the “equality of condition.” This implies the absence of equality in class and institutions. But it means equality is an aspiration, not a fact. The system has a potential for rising over its tyrannical structure. Indeed, the U.S. was later to abolish slavery, enthrone gender rights and abolish Jim Crow laws about blacks. But, in fact, the injustices remain, in spite of the legal triumphs. Law only works where good people win. As Edmund Burke, the great conservative, asserted, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It is about people, not the law. After all, the American constitution said all men were created equal, and two hundred years later, it is still a contention.

    What the  governors know and the constitution cannot wipe out is what Harvard Professor Joseph Nye calls soft power. It is often more powerful than hard power, which is the law. The battle in Kano and Edo states between governors and monarchs is the wrestle between soft and hard power. While in the local government situation, the governors may exercise soft power, in the Kano and Edo issues, the soft power lies in the hands of the kings. we cannot rule out “rogue” LG men who governors will tag upstarts. I suspect that if such LG chairmen run to the presidency for help, the president will be in a position to wield both soft and hard powers, and a strong and cunning president will browbeat any gubernatorial sleight of hand by making them slight of hand. That is why I say we are in uncharted waters, and both Fagbemi (SAN) and the president know this. As the Chinese says, we are in interesting times.

  • Soyinka’s theatre

    Soyinka’s theatre

    Our man of theatre now has one. Thanks to President Tinubu for naming the National Theatre for Soyinka. It is a no brainer that Nigeria’s preeminent theatre genius who earned global eminence in that area should have the biggest icon named after him. The Nobel citation refers to him as a writer who “fashions the drama of existence.”

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    We now have a shrine for such histrionics. Soyinka writes, and that makes him an inspiration to theatre. He feeds the stage with his works of drama. Soyinka performs, and that makes him a man of stagecraft. He is therefore both an inspiration and act for theatre. It is a combo of theory and praxis in one soul. Congratulations to the bard.

  • Beyond satire: Columnist as moral compass

    Beyond satire: Columnist as moral compass

    • By Louis Odion

    Treacherous was the moment. Most editors got a whiff of the story but were either afraid or reluctant to publish. Meffy (Godwin Emefiele, then CBN governor) had gone rogue in a perfect depiction of either state capture or paralysis. 

    Unfolding before the nation was a farcical drama in which Meffy, long declared wanted by DSS for a raft of alleged weighty felonies against the fatherland, had not just continued to disobey Supreme Court ruling against the Naira freeze but added the novelty of being chaperoned around Abuja by a battalion of troops of the Nigerian military whose Chief of Defence Staff, Lt General Lucky Irabor, had his spouse, Victoria, planted as a director in an agency reporting directly to the errant CBN governor.

     In ordinary times, only the commander-in-chief is considered worthy of such significant deployment of soldiers. The second round of the 2023 general polls, already touted as the most consequential in two decades, was only days away.

    The pervading suspense in the land could, therefore, only be imagined given that the results of the presidential polls in which a toxic combo of region and religion was weaponised were still being collated across the country. 

    The lead floating in the media was a plot for an encore. That is, a repeat of a not-so-secret release of hefty tranches of banknotes to certain candidates a few days before the first election at the expense of other contenders. Even as the rest of the populace roiled in an induced fiscal pestilence in which Naira notes were clinically drained from circulation. 

     Lagos, the nation’s economic nerve centre, was particularly targeted for “hostile takeover” by the Abuja power cabal in cahoots with Meffy now leaving no one in doubt he had descended into the political arena. 

    At Matori (The Nation newspaper’s headquarters in Lagos), the customary bolt and nut of the big story had been tightened, with discreet help from Tunji Bello leveraging his vast network of contacts in the intelligence community to double-check the facts.

    Regardless, as the production deadline approached, a big dilemma seized the newspaper’s Editor-In-Chief, Victor Ifijeh, whether to approve as the lead story for the next day, considering its “high sensitivity”. At such dire moments of clouds, The Nation newspaper customarily never looks up to another oracle other than Dr. Olatunji Dare for direction.

     So, a frantic call was made to his base in the United States. In this particular case, without hesitation, the old journalism professor gave unqualified approval “however the risk, if only in the defence of truth and democracy”.

    On account of the dramatic turn of events thereafter, The Nation’s lead story on the Monday preceding the state elections in March 2023 could then be described as the tie-breaker in a perilous season of power abuse at the highest level in the land, all obviously calculated to force the outcome of a national poll in a certain direction.

    For the heat it generated right from the break of dawn the next day was so earth-shaking, was sufficient enough to force the hitherto vacillating presidency — conspiratorially silent, some said — to finally issue a clear statement disowning Emefiele in his continued disobedience of the Supreme Court that hoarded Naira cash be released to suffering bank depositors across Nigeria. 

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    The recourse to Dr. Dare in faraway United States by The Nation, it bears restating, is a measure of the absolute trust reposed in his professional and moral judgement.

    Indeed, as the exemplary teacher turns 80 (July 17), there can be no better time to celebrate a life dedicated entirely to the pursuit of the very symbiosis intended in the conceptualization of the idea of town and gown on the one hand, and an unstinting exhibition of the nobility of spirit and moral purpose at a personal level on the other. And one who, with the force of personal example, demonstrated professional courage at a dangerous hour in Nigeria’s history.

    As philosophers already postulated, the ivory towers should serve as the nursery of ideas that nourishes and regenerates society.

    As the first-ever first-class graduate of Mass Communication at UNILAG at a time when tempting offers awaited those in such an elite academic category in the job market, Dr. Dare deliberately chose the far less materially rewarding but socially sacrificial: teaching.

    Though most professorial in thoughts and articulation (having bagged the much-coveted President’s Prize for Meritorious Service from the prestigious Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, and long been proclaimed a full professor until August 2015 when named Professor of Journalism, Emeritus following retirement), Dr. Dare still prefers to be addressed simply as “Dr. Dare” till date. 

    Thus affirming the aphorism that empty vessels make the loudest noise. Certainly not when the title is increasingly bastardised by just any quack and con artist now also prefacing their cognomen with “Professor”.

    In nearly five decades, he has taught and practised journalism at the elite level and is widely acclaimed today more as a master satirist, bagging coveted medals along the line, too numerous to list here.  

    He has reported from more than a dozen datelines on three continents and interviewed several statesmen of global stature.  His professional journalism has appeared in West Africa, Newsday, and The Seattle Times.

    His popular and respected weekly column, “At Home Abroad”, is in its fourteenth year in The Nation.

    Literary scholars will compare Dr. Dare to Charles Dicken, often acclaimed as one of the greatest British writers of the 19th century, in terms of this inimitable facility to command words to inflict otherwise lacerating blows with the most insidious guile. In Nigeria’s contemporary media space, his is now regarded as the gold standard in satire writing. 

    In fact, his satire has been the subject of two M.A. theses in Nigerian universities and articles in learned journals.  It has also been featured in courses on Stylistics in programs in the English Department of some universities.  

    However, faced with clear death threats in 1996 under Abacha’s military despotism, he had to flee Nigeria through the fabled “NADECO route” and had no difficulty in picking a ready faculty position at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, U.S on account of his academic reputation.

    A year earlier, he was awarded the Louis M. Lyon’s Prize for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, recognising his steadfast commitment to journalism’s best practices.                                                                            

    In 1994, when compromise was quite profitable in Nigeria under a military dictatorship intent on silencing dissent, Dr. Dare, as editorial page editor, conscientiously objected to joining The Guardian mission that went to Abuja to beg Abacha as pre-condition to re-open Rutam House following the sweeping clampdown on media houses with the resurgent agitation for June 12.                   

    To the bitter pain of the Nigerian dictator, exile only seemed to have further energized Dr. Dare’s satirist sorties against the evil rule at home at the time.

    When they could not get him, the evil men on a rampage in Nigeria soon pounced on his younger brother in the Army and retired him prematurely. Years earlier, the Dare family had another illustrious son, a promising officer in the police, reported dead in suspicious circumstances.

    A conscientious detective, he had bumped on probable leads to unmasking the faces behind the 1986 murder, via letter bomb, of journalist Dele Giwa. He would not yield to threats from anonymous callers to back off the investigation of a murder in which circumstantial evidence clearly established a prima facie case against Babangida’s ranking intelligence chiefs. 

    Then, one day, the police told the Dare family their son had died in a motor accident without any convincing proof. So much for one family to bear in the search of truth and defence of liberty. 

    As a Mass Comms tutor at UNILAG for ages, Dr. Dare was directly involved in nurturing the character of generations of media practitioners who have excelled in the outside world. By their fruits, says the holy Bible, you shall know them. 

    Today, you don’t have to look too far or think too hard to identify products of Dr. Dare’s sterling pedagogy. Among them is John Momoh, now an icon of broadcast journalism and founder of Channel TV. Another is Azu Ishiekwene, winner of multiple awards and arguably Nigeria’s most syndicated columnist.

    Not forgetting Victor Ifijeh, the self-effacing prodigy who has steered The Nation from a rather small beginning to its present Olympian height in Nigeria’s print media space within a record time.

    Despite a colossal record of accomplishments, Dr. Dare remains a study in modesty. Whenever home and he chooses to stop over at The Nation‘s Lagos office, there is hardly any trumpeting to herald his coming. If he were to meet you at the opposite side of the staircase, there is a high probability that Dr. Dare would be the first to concede the right of way to you. Such is the intensity of his humility.

    But don’t be fooled.

    The saunter of a lion at leisure is starkly different from its ferocious leap when enraged or in offence. An experience perhaps best described by another senior columnist from Arewaland who once found himself in a literary cage-fight with the ordinarily gentle warrior from Kabbaland in Kogi state over a decade ago.

    The equally respected writer had made an innuendo in a piece. But as they say in Dr. Dare’s native Yorubaland, only a coward afraid of the fight will conveniently choose to misinterpret a poignant innuendo to be a compliment. The ink of that insult had barely dried when Dr. Dare responded in kind.

    Here is wishing the king of satire a happy 80th birthday.

    Coping with Lufthansa’s racist discrimination

    Travelling surely comes with its own vicissitudes: fun sometimes and nightmare at another. But one’s recent experience with Lufthansa, a German airline, was worse than a nightmare. 

    First, the flight from Lagos to Frankfurt was delayed more than six hours!

     When we landed in Frankfurt, my connecting flight to Texas, U.S., had departed. Long story short, I spent 48 hours in transit on a journey scheduled to be less than 24 hours. Worse still, it took bouts of epistolary hell-raising before my two luggage were delivered 96 hours after departing Lagos!

     But that was even a child’s play compared to my ordeal on my return trip a week later. Again, the trip was delayed by almost four hours from the take-off point such that by the time we arrived in Houston, the connecting flight had again gone. Eventually, I spent four days in transit, missing an important meeting in Lagos!

    Annoyingly, on arrival, I left the airport empty-handed. It took another 48 hours to receive my luggage.

    Worse still, it turned out that one of my bags was completely destroyed. When I lodged a complaint demanding compensation consistent with international best practices, Lufthansa would not accept liability. Hear their apology:

    “Kindly note that Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004 applies to flights departing from EU member states and flights arriving in EU member states from third countries. As your journey starts in Nigeria and ends in the United States of America, we cannot accommodate your request for compensation according to Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004.

     “We would appreciate the chance to earn back your trust in our service and hope to welcome you on board again soon.

  • Eliminating FGM

    Eliminating FGM

    Last month, Nigeria hosted the 13th Annual Technical Consultation of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision. FGM refers to all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons.

    The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the practice, which is deeply rooted in tradition, has no health benefits. FGM is said to violate girls’ and women’s human rights and can leave enduring physical, psychological, and social consequences.

    Nigeria’s First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, attended the opening ceremony, and called for collective action “towards a future free from female genital mutilation.” Her presence and involvement underlined the need for urgent action towards “transformation in our communities.” 

    The event drew experts from more than 24 countries to strategise on ending the harmful practice by 2030. The practice not only violates human rights but also poses serious health risks, including complications during childbirth and psychological trauma, according to experts. The Technical Consultation served as a platform for knowledge exchange, collaboration, and the development of innovative approaches to tackle the issue.

    About 19.9 million Nigerian women and girls are reported to have undergone FGM, which means that the country has the third highest number of females scarred by FGM worldwide.  The geo-political zones in Nigeria with the highest FGM prevalence are South- East and South-West.

    A gripping BBC story, published in March, about a FGM survivor with Nigerian roots, Valerie Lomari, gave further insights into FGM-related emotional and physical trauma.  UK-based Valerie, aged 52, was subjected to FGM as a 16-year-old in a Nigerian village. After university, she got married and relocated to the UK.  “Being intimate has always been difficult for me,” she said, painting a picture of FGM consequences.  The mother-of-three recalled that “the births were so painful.” 

    Five years ago, she set up Women of Grace, an organisation that supports FGM survivors in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and London. “We educate families and I speak in schools about the dangers of FGM. It is a violation and needs to be stopped through education,” she said. “FGM is a life sentence and I am still living with the physical and emotional trauma… I won’t stop telling my story until this barbaric practice no longer exists.”  She was recently invited to New York to give a speech about FGM at a United Nations (UN) conference.

    Similarly gripping is the story of US-based Atanda Gbadegeshin Adedokun who fears that if he returned to Nigeria with his family, his daughter, Sarah, would be subjected to FGM, and his sons, Joseph and Emmanuel, would be subjected to “facial laceration.”  He hails from Iwere-Ile, Oyo State, where, he said, both practices were “in accordance with their traditional religious worship and culture.” 

    FGM is still being practised in parts of Oyo State, according to a report issued by a Nigerian organisation focused on youth and environmental health.  The Executive Director, Value Re-orientation for Community Enhancement (VARCE), Ademola Adebisi, said: “In the course of my investigation, I discovered that those who hide their children, or even run away with them so as not to undergo this barbaric act, are compelled to bring the children back home to carry out rites, or risk being excommunicated and ostracised, or even called bastards.”

    Read Also: Reps deputy speaker drums support for Tinubu

    This corroborates Adedokun’s account that when he visited his hometown, in February 2022, he was “informed of the mandatory requirement to bring my family back so that we can be ‘sanctified’ before the deity for refusing to have my daughter genitally mutilated, and my sons facially lacerated.”

    VARCE reported the case of one Adeagbo Adebimpe, who said after she was tricked into returning to her hometown, Aroro, Idi Obi, in Oyo State, with her two young daughters, they were subjected to FGM without her consent. 

    Adedokun’s refusal to cooperate with traditionalists in his hometown is based on his wife’s experience as a FGM victim, and his own experience as “a victim of facial laceration marks.” His wife, of Mende origin, was subjected to FGM “when she was a child in Sierra Leone,” he said, and has continued to suffer “severe menstrual pains, lack of sexual arousal and pleasure, and difficulties during childbirth.”

    “I was a victim of facial laceration marks,” he said.  “Till today, it is difficult for me to look at myself in the mirror and any time I gather the courage to do so, I shudder…The laceration and mutilation marks on my face since childhood affected my emotional and mental well-being.”

    According to him, he continues to receive messages demanding that he should return to Iwere-Ile with his family “to be ‘purified’ and ‘sanctified’.” He has been threatened with physical injury and death, should he fail to comply.

    These stories show the gravity of the FGM issue in Nigeria. UNFPA and UNICEF are collaborating with the Federal Ministries of Women Affairs and Health towards achieving the objectives of the largest global programme on eliminating FGM, UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation: Delivering the Global Promise. The UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme is currently in its fourth phase (2022-2030).

    FGM is a global concern. In 2012, the UN General Assembly designated February 6 as the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, “with the aim to amplify and direct the efforts on the elimination of this practice.”  An authoritative report shows that the largest numbers of victims are in African countries, accounting for 144 million cases, followed by 80 million in Asia and 6 million in the Middle East.

    Introduced in 2008, the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme supports interventions in 17 countries, including Nigeria, and influences global anti-FGM efforts through knowledge sharing and advocacy.  

    Importantly, the Joint Programme supports the development of enabling policies and legal frameworks, access to essential services, girls’ and women’s empowerment, and community-led social and gender norms change by working in partnership with governments, civil society, development partners, and communities. This is in line with the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development in five priority states in Nigeria, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Imo and Ebonyi.

    In 2015, former President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, also known as the VAPP Act. Section 6 of the Act prohibits harmful traditional practices like FGM. This raises the question of enforcement.

    Understandably, UNFPA and UNICEF are worried that the world will miss the target of ending FGM by 2030 without urgent action. The country’s authorities should be concerned too.

  • LGs can now breathe

    LGs can now breathe

    The judgment of the Supreme Court granting financial autonomy to the country’s 774 local governments has raised fresh hopes that the third tier of government will again rise to its statutory duties. But, that is not all there is to the matter.

     The renewed optimism is premised in part, on the sterling performances of the local government councils in the past, especially immediately after the return of civil rule in 1999 in contrast with the morbid inactivity the tier of government was thereafter embroiled in. Any alteration in the relationship between the state governments and the local councils that has the prospects of enhancing the operational efficiency of that tier of governance is bound to elicit positive feelings.

    Such was the case last week when the Supreme Court granted copious reliefs to the local governments in the suit brought by the federal government against the state governors on the autonomy of the third tier of government.

    The seven-man panel of the apex court in the judgment delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim, declared that ‘a democratically elected local government is sacrosanct and non-negotiable’ and that the use of a caretaker committee amounts to a state government taking control of the local government in violation of the 1999 constitution.

    The Supreme Court ruled that the state government has no power or control to keep the local government council money or fund and that the council is entitled to local government allocation. In arriving at the decision, the apex court recognised that local government funds could either be paid through the state governments or directly to the councils.

    But it held that since paying through the states has not worked, ‘justice in this case demands that LG allocations from the federation account should henceforth be paid directly to the LGs’.  The court then issued an order of injunction restraining the defendants or their privies from spending local government allocations.

    Other decisions of the court included a declaration that no state government should be paid any money meant for the local government and a directive for immediate compliance with the judgment.

    Read Also: Reps deputy speaker drums support for Tinubu

     By the judgement, the dispute over the financial autonomy of the local government councils has been finally laid to rest. Before the ruling, the federal government was remitting funds meant to the local councils through the joint accounts operated by the state and local governments.

    But the state governors frequently withheld funds accruing to the councils, devising sundry guises to deprive them of their share from the federation account. That unwholesome practice went on for nearly two decades despite the fact that the constitution clearly recognises the local councils as the third tier of government with clearly defined functions.

    Unable to get a fair share of the funds accruing to them, the councils became a ghost of their former selves incapable of performing even the routine functions assigned them in the fourth schedule of the constitution. Efforts by the last National Assembly to amend the constitution to grant financial autonomy to the councils met a brick wall when the bill was sent to the state assemblies for concurrent legislation. That effort was sabotaged by the state governors by mounting pressure on the state assemblies to vote against that visionary piece of legislation.

    That stalled the amendment and gave the governors unfettered access and control over local government funds. The yawning infrastructural gap, insecurity and decay in basic services provided by that level of governance, is a measure of the harm inflicted by the hijack of its funds. Not only did the governors corner and divert the funds, there was no conscious effort to address the array of debilitating challenges assailing the people at the grassroots.

    Ironically, the boundaries of the 774 local governments coincide with the boundaries of the country. By extrapolation, when you develop all these local governments, development would be evenly spread across the country. But the state governors, buoyed by the high level of corruption in public offices would rather hold on to LG funds.

    It was against this background the federal government approached the Supreme Court for its position on the vexed issues which have now been resolved in the favour of the local councils. It is a landmark judgment with a lot of promises for the tier of governance closest to the people.

    By the ruling, funds accruing to the LGs from the federation account will now be directly sent only to democratically elected councils. Caretaker committees appointed by the governors are now illegal and will be denied allocations from the federation account.

    The implication is that a local government council is deemed to exist only when it is manned by democratically elected officials. If the governors want the funds accruing to their LGs to be released, they must conduct election into those offices or have such funds withheld. This has put effective check to all the subterfuge designed by the governors in conjunction with their state assemblies to corner the funds of the LGs.

    There will neither be room for the frequent dissolution of the local government councils when no state of emergency is in place, nor further delays in conducting elections at that level of governance. The ruling will put a check to the alteration of the tenure of the councils by the states working in concert with their assemblies.

    The fate of Local Council Development Authorities LCDAs and Development Centres remains uncertain with emerging developments. The governors will have to devise ways to fund or have them abrogated outright.

    The tenure of the councils varies across the states. There will be no further attraction in manipulating the tenure of the councils to achieve hidden ends. The LGs stand better for it. But that is not all.

    It is one thing for the LGs to be granted financial autonomy, effectively unchaining them from the stranglehold of the governors and another ball game for it to translate to effective and efficient delivery of public goods and services. The fight for LG autonomy was premised on the ground that being closest to the people, functionaries at that level will better understand the peculiarities of their environment and work to address them.

    They must rise to the challenge of the confidence reposed at that tier of governance as the fulcrum for accelerated development of the rural areas. In a country where corruption in public places is the rule, fears have been expressed as to whether elected officials at that level will turn out substantially different. That is left to be seen. But there are two things that will stand as a check against their excesses.

    The first is their closeness to the people. With the periodic publication of the revenues accruing to the councils, it will be possible for the people to get the councils account for the monies they received. Verifying projects at that level will be quite easy. Again, local government chairmen do not have immunity against prosecution while in office.

    So, they can be easily investigated, held accountable for their misdeeds. This is bound to serve as a deterrent against misuse of funds and abuse of office. The immunity clause is largely responsible for the financial rascality of some of the governors. In all, the financial autonomy of the LGs is envisaged to unleash a quantum leap in efficient performance of the plethora of functions assigned it in the fourth schedule of the constitution.

    In the days ahead, we expect to witness substantial progress in the construction and maintenance of roads, streets, functional and better run primary education and healthcare, markets, drains and parks among others. It should be a win-win situation if the LG officials understand the enormous responsibilities and trust placed on their shoulders by the Supreme Court ruling.

    But the dispositions and conduct of the governors could also stand as obstacles. The conduct of local government elections by the State Independent Electoral Commissions SIECs is at issue.  What we have had as elections at the LGs these years, is better described as democracy in its most aberrant form.

    Those elections have neither been free nor fair. They do not satisfy the standards of credible democratic engagement as opposition parties are virtually schemed out through diverse guises. That deprives the system the plurality of views for which democracy draws allure against other forms of governance construct.

    Something has to be done to open up the democratic space at that level of governance. The governors could still use their control of LG elections to financial advantage. SIECs in their present form are an impediment to the autonomy of the local governments.

     The continued relevance of the SIECs is one area the federal government should again call its legitimate means of redress into quick action.

  • Gwoza suicide bombs

    Gwoza suicide bombs

    It had all the trappings of the coordinated suicide bomb attacks that left heavy casualties, shock and awe across the country around 2011. Then, the Boko Haram insurgents, in apparent bid to attract maximum attention to their weird ideological persuasion, had taken resort to attacking soft targets.
    One of their immediate victims was St. Theresa’s Catholic Church, Madalla, near Abuja where a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into the premises as worshippers were trooping out after morning service. That Christmas day attack left more than 35 people killed and many others with varying degrees of injuries as vehicles parked within the premises went up in flames.
    The choice of the church, its heavy toll ruffled feathers raising questions regarding its purpose. Their reign of terror later spread to other establishments and worship centres. A policeman was killed in another attack on a church in Jos, Plateau State. Damaturu in Yobe State recorded two attacks- one targeting security agencies and the other a church on the eve of Christmas.
    Apparently to internationalise their bizarre endeavour, the insurgents took their reign of terror to the United Nations, UN Headquarters at the Federal Capital Territory FCT when a car crashed through two security barriers before ramming into the building and exploded. At least, 18 people were killed with dozens of others injured, some very critically.
    That was part of the early strategy of the insurgents to spread fear and panic across the country. The situation was more pronounced in the northeast states of Borno and Yobe where the terrorists despoiled and captured many local government areas, set up their government collecting taxes and levies.
    It is to the credit of our security forces that many of the local government areas hitherto under the control of the terrorists have since been liberated and normal activities restored. Gwoza, a local government that shares borders with Cameroon, was one of the towns under the control and dominance of the Boko Haram insurgents.
    Penultimate Saturdays’ wedding ceremony in that local government, is a measure of the relative peace that had returned to residents of the area. It saw relatives returning from far and wide to witness the event.
    But their calculations were jolted when suddenly, the unexpected happened. A female suicide bomber disguised as a beggar with a baby strapped to her back, strolled into the wedding reception and suddenly detonated bombs, killing and injuring many of the guests.
    As rescue efforts were on to stabilise and convey the injured to hospital, another female, armed with Improvised Explosive Devices IEDs detonated her bomb. The second detonation happened on the same street with the first one, prompting the security agencies to impose immediate curfew in the area.
    A third female suicide bomber, in quick succession, targeted troops enforcing the curfew. The woman attacked the troops from behind killing a soldier and two members of the hybrid forces.

    Read Also: Suicide bombs kill three in Borno


    Yet, the lethality of a fourth bomb was averted when the female suspect was identified early enough and in panic, she detonated the bombs prematurely and was killed in the process.
    There was also the reported arrest of two other female suicide bombers even as speculations had it that about 30 of such females were recruited and armed to carry out the deadly activity in different parts of the local government. Perhaps, without the timely imposition of curfew in the area, the full impact of the devious onslaught would have been more badly felt.
    Official records put the number of deaths at 32 with over 100 people inflicted with various degrees of injury. The number of casualties could even be more as the fate of those taken to hospitals remain uncertain. A young man, who travelled from Maiduguri to Gwoza for the wedding, gave a chilling account of how he lost three of his brothers and two friends within a twinkle of the eye.
    So, the federal government may be right when they described the attacks as an isolated one. To the extent that the suicide bomb attacks were confined to Gwoza, it was a highly circumscribed endeavour. Its coordinated nature and sequence may prove insufficient to pin down the incident as a mark of resurging Boko Haram insurgency in the country.
    Yet, that is not to diminish the impact, peculiar character of the attacks and the wider issues they elevated to the fore. A member of the House of Representatives, Ahmed Jaha exposed some of these fears while contributing to the debate on a motion when he said the suicide bombers were imported.
    Findings he said, showed that the bombers were “recruited, brainwashed and imported from outside the state” to carry out the suicide act. What is not clear is whether the recruitment took place within the shores of the country or outside of it given that Gwoza shares border with Cameroon.
    The security agencies may find the information at the disposal of Jaha handy in investigating the Gwoza reign of terror. But Jaha’s claims bear the imprimatur of similar ones bandied at the early stages of the Book Haram insurgency by some of the northern elite.
    The attempt to politicise and assign culpability to imaginary enemies outside the northern enclave has since been proven futile by a chain of events. We now have better knowledge of the motives, the weird doctrinaire promptings that serve as the oxygen to Boko Haram insurgency. Ditto for the bandits that are increasingly getting difficult to differentiate from the Boko Haram insurgents.
    Jaha also talked about the recruitment and brainwashing of the female suicide bombers to carry out the devious acts. This should be troubling. That innocent women could be easily recruited in their numbers, brainwashed and sent to kill other innocent people and get consumed in the process should worry the leadership of this country at all levels.
    It does not only speak of the abject material circumstances of the recruits; their senses of right and wrong but the low value they place on human life. A society with a surfeit of potential women recruits for such lethal acts is in grave danger. What of those who recruited them for these senseless killings, their motives?
    Here, the perspective of the Defence Headquarters comes handy. They had in a statement claimed the terrorists embarked on the attacks to project an image of strength and cover up their weaknesses and decline.
    “The military is aware that in this phase of their ending life-cycle, the terrorists are desperate to attract attention, bolster relevancy, mobilize new recruits, reduce support for the armed forces and reduce support for the government”, the Defence Headquarters further explained.
    That may well be. Unfortunately, this has become the stereotypical reaction of the military each time sundry terrorists and bandits succeed in levying war either on our security forces or the rest of the citizenry.
    Those may well be the reasons for the coordinated suicide bomb attacks that jolted the country raising fear of possible degeneration. But the motivations adduced by the military are not substantially different from William Hutchinson’s general categorisation of suicide attacks as a psychological warfare aimed at instilling fear in the target population and undermining areas where the public feels secure.
    This perspective was reinforced by Bruce Hoffman when he said suicide bombing, “tears at the fabric of the trust that holds the society together”. Conceived this way, it is a weapon to demonstrate the lengths to which perpetrators can go to achieve their goals.
    If the attacks offer the insurgents the prospects of bolstering their relevance resulting in the mobilisation of new recruits, that leaves the country in grave danger unless the security forces rise to the challenge of diminishing such potential threats.
    But the country has been on this path before. The claims of huge progress in the war against terrorism by security agencies will be measured by the level of tact, expertise and dexterity they deploy to put the signal served by the renewed suicide bombings at check.
    President Tinubu has vowed that Nigeria under his watch will not slither into an era of blood, sorrow, fear and tears. Enough of these senseless killings!
    It is hoped there is no attempt by vested interests to promote circumstances akin to the experiences of the budding stages of the Boko Haram insurgency.