The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Who has ADD?

    Who has ADD?

    The gang-up will not end. So will the frustration. Some men and women have come together to form a group called Alliance in Defence of Democracy (ADD) and their ostensible aim is to sanitise elections. The problem with the group is that they are reflecting  a reflex of rage from 2023.

     They have acted without subtlety or finesse. First is the cast. All of them, without exception, are those who were unhappy with their loss in 2023, including Oby Ezekwesili, Pat Utomi, Chidi Odinkalu, Usman Bugaje.

     They drip with fear and trembling over the prospect of another loss of four years in 2027. Their excuse is that they want to imbue the election with all the elements of integrity.

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    They failed to prove that the last poll lacked integrity, especially the Obidients among them who came a distant third, and claimed they won the polls. If these people had put together a list of disinterested fellows with no clear animus against the loss and humiliation of 2023, one would have accepted them as pursuing integrity. They do not know how to fight, but it is because it is the same people recycling themselves. They have fertility of names.

    Not long ago, Utomi put together a cast of about the same folks to organize a formal opposition outside the law and convention. He lost that argument, and he is up with another. It is a fertility of names but not of ideas.

    An affliction of fertility. Maybe they think we will not remember that they are the same people who clamoured and bellyached over the loss. Maybe they think we have ADD, not Alliance in Defence of Democracy but attention deficit disorder (ADD).

     The question though is who has the medical ADD? Is it Utomi’s political ADD or Nigerians who remember who they are?

  • A fruitless search

    A fruitless search

    The call for a proper Nigerian constitution reminds me of a recent essay.

    I read a short piece by Senator Babafemi Ojudu about Abuja, and he repined at the city’s lack of soul. It also reminds me of an American who met me at the Denver Press Club about two decades ago and was glad to tell me he had just visited Nigeria and Abuja especially, but wondered about the city.

     He did not find a “there, there,” my own words and apology to Gertrude Stein.

    He wanted to say that the Nigerian capital city was a “synthetic place,” I supplied the phrase, and he agreed with me. And I quickly interjected, “just like Washington.” Washington, like Abuja, is a manufactured city.

    It reminds me of a sprawling essay written by Time magazine’s essayist Roger Rosenblatt titled: Washington in which he lamented its lack of vitality. I cracked up at the assertion that if you ate in any of the American capital’s restaurant, you would think all the meals were cooked from the same kitchen.

    I disagree with Ojudu’s assertion about Abuja’s lack of soul. It has, but it is a manufactured soul. What he wanted the city to have, a museum, a theatre, et al, do not make a city a natural. It is akin to what a Russian novelist coined such phenomena. Nicolai Gogol called his famous novel and masterpiece “dead souls.” Ojudu was looking for the dead among the living.

    Abuja has a soul, like Washington, where people backstab, make deals, grab power. It is a city where politicians bicker, political parties scheme, protesters churn, technocrats undercut. Friendships are contractual. Foes are superficial. Deals light up faces. Losers recoil with revenge. If that is a soul, there you have it. President Truman said of Washington, “if you want a friend, buy a dog.”

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    Cities are born out of their own logic, out of history, little villains and heroes, out of a human effort to make it historic. They are natural and not the genius of human artifice.

    They can grow out of war like Ibadan, out of commerce like Lagos, like a melting pot, like New York or London. They develop their own attitudes, their own language, their own fears, their own pride. By language, I mean a distinct way of expression, phrases, accents, inflexions, etc. They have all these as their own quintessence.

    A fear in Lagos is not like a fear in Calabar. That is the nature of a city with a soul. It may be a cruel soul, a pervert soul, a joyful or even placid soul, but it is a soul built over generations and capable of evolution.

    No one can defend a city like Abuja, except soldiers. But a city like Warri can throw up volunteers because they are not defending the buildings or markets. They are defending themselves, their history, their heritage, something vital and intangible and irreducible.

    The same logic goes for the framing of a constitution. From those obsessed with a new law, I wonder whether they want to manufacture a Nigeria. Some are saying we need to have a parliamentary sort, as if we never had it. Some are calling for a regional style, as if the country never lived and never almost died in it. Some are saying let us have more states, some are saying let us blend the states.

    They are only clutching at straws. Just like a revolution, it does not go to a place. The place goes to it because it is immanent in the people. As Benjamen Franklin wrote about the American Revolution, “The revolution was in the hearts and minds of the American people.”

    It is not a constitution that goes to a people. A people go to a constitution. The problem is that there is no such thing as a Nigerian soul, and it is an amalgam of souls.

     We have no temple or bivouac. Not pot of life. And to make a law, we must know how to blend those souls into one. The truth is it cannot be naturally done. It has to evolve, and what we should do rather than belabour our minds to make the law, we should make a people.

    This is the frustration about law making in Nigeria. We want to make a law like the United States, but we are no nation like that. The U.S. may have a presidential system, but we are not the same people. We do not have the same history or culture. They run a system of consensus, we of heterogeneity.

     They don’t have to haggle over faith, when they say God Bless America.

    They agree on what God to invoke. They have one language, even though they have a multiplicity of accents. The south is different from the north, but they negotiate their kinship.

    The issues raised sometimes hint at amnesia. Take the call for a parliamentary system. What did we have at independence? The Westminster model from Britain.  We had a raucous house, and the sort in the Medieval Poland defined as “divinely ordained confusion.” What did we get in that republic? Civil unrest, state of emergency in the western region, riots and crippling strikes. In the end, a civil war with bloodlust over which we lost the republic.

    We have 36 states, and the outcry is the cost. Yet some want more states just because they want to be governor, senator or legislator.

    The present status of states suffocates them out of leverage. But others want to federate some states to cut cost. Will that not create old overlords? Will the Ekiti want to subject themselves to those who edged them into minority roles in the old western region? Or state?

    These are the complications we continue to grapple with in the search for a document. If we do not have faith in our neighbour, how do we give that faith to a piece of lyrical prose in a constitution? A document does not work without faith. In the garden of Eden, there was only one law, and it fell belly up between two people.

     The United Kingdom does not have a constitution written but they live on precedents and conventions, and they have survived as a model of a willing people for centuries, if through wars and social turmoil.

    It happens through heroes in history. Lincoln did it in the time of slavery. Garibaldi for Italy, Bismark for Germany. Lee Kwuan Yew blended the Chinese, Malays and Indians into a patriotic and cultural symmetry, so much so that when a Chinese leader visited Singapore, he was disappointed that the Chinese did not see anything special in him. Lee had made tribe irrelevant over a generation of fairness.

    The Bible often tells us that the difference between the Old and New Testaments is the letter of the law. The spirit of the law gives life. We are still obsessed with the written law, not the one in the heart. Like in the law on circumcision, where the New Testament says we should circumcise the foreskins of our hearts.

    Writing about his country Türkiye, Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk narrates, in his breathtaking novel The Museum of Innocence, the story of a young man who loses the love of a woman, and spends every evening in the family home where the girl lives with the husband. But he cannot marry her.

    Rather he steals little things from the home, like spoons, pens, pillows, and enough to furnish a full home. He has everything about the girl’s home but the bride herself.

     The girl is the soul of his quest, but he has everything that identifies with the girl but not the girl. That is why a constitution can say everything about us, but not say us, not encase our soul. We have to give soul to document. It cannot take it from us.

    Just as Awolowo said of IBB’s manoeuvres in his cynical quest for democracy, it is “a fruitless search.”

  • Jonathan’s bad luck

    Jonathan’s bad luck

    Some political losses are like death. To those who win, especially when the loser is a man in the top office of the land like Goodluck Jonathan, it is like a big iroko that crashes through a forest. No tree or leaf or bough is stout enough to repulse the thuds, hisses and howls of its fatal fall.

    The victors, the likes of Buhari and his APC, could have looked at Jonathan’s fall as “a magnificent death,” the same way Joseph Conrad penned an obituary, in his metaphoric story titled: Youth about the bonfire of a ship at sea. Hear the prose master: “A magnificent death had come like a grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the end of her laborious days.”

    If it was a reward for the victor, it was a sackcloth for Jonathan and his PDP. So, the clamour for his return is an effort at resurrection. We were all witnesses to the death and burial, and there has been none like it since the birth of this nation. Jonathan set a record for presidential failure as the first to go belly up in office. We saw Pastor Orubebe and his hysteria at the funeral hour. Jonathan consecrated his annulment in a concession telephone call to Buhari that went viral.

    The call for another Jonathan presidency reflects the four attitudes to a death: denial, rage, negotiation and acceptance. His people, and Jonathan even, have not reached the acceptance stage. They see Jonathan as the Prophet Joel who didn’t go belly up but must survive the biblical whale’s belly, the revenant politician. The thing about mourning is that when mourners have not reached the acceptance phase, they show denial, rage and negotiations, sometimes have the psychosis of witnessing all of them at the same time.

    We saw it in Bala Mohammed in his many spasms. We saw it in Jerry Gana, and his many shadowy advocates. We see it also in Jonathan, who cannot come out in one word to say he will or will not. He does not feel it is the end of his hope, and perhaps, his ambition still flickers in denial and does not agree with Shakespeare that “he that dies pays all debts.” He probably believes Nigerians owe him.

    Mourning in politics means a lot. You mourn a loss of prestige, the privilege of access, the contracts and perks, the new palaces here and abroad, the fattening wallets in dollars and pounds and Euros, the family flamboyance at shopping malls in Europe and North America, the social standing, the free tickets, the photo ops at high-profile events and with the high and mighty, the top perch at social parties, the small impunities over the lives of “lesser” beings, the village honour, the syrupy flatteries.

    Jonathan and his acolytes mourn these. So does the PDP that has been in disarray for some time. Some of those in the interloper party, The ADC, are now bored because they cannot get those perks. It is not about the people. It is the flattery and magnificence of high office.

    The Jonathan who became president and tugged at the popular conscience with his “I had no shoes” rhetoric was a different one who sought re-election. He was known as clueless, and this column called him famously as “his excellency the snake.” But he somehow believed that he would win again. A top politician told me recently about how many henchmen assured him the north was solid for him. He was too naïve to doubt. They told him he had Jigawa, Kano, Zamfara, and they did that to “collect”. And they did in spades. Hence his recent outburst about politicians who betray.

     He had that in mind. And they were the same order of men who sweetened him into disaster.

     They in the words of Shakespeare in Macbeth, flatterers of “yesterdays (who) have lighted fools the way to dusty death.” But Jonathan must be thinking about his chances, and the most challenging is not about getting a ticket, it is whether if he gets a ticket, it will not be in vain. 

    As Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo cautioned, the constitution has said you cannot be sworn in more than twice as president. It is booby trap.

    So, while he and his men may be mourning a death that occurred in 2015, he may be wary of a second death, apologies to the Book of revelations. But a second death is a revelation that comes as a prophecy he is wary of fulfilling.

    Jonathan has made himself to believe he is an African statesman, simply because he accepted in public that he did not win the polls, and waxed poetic about his ambition not worth the blood of innocent lives. It is the sort of meekness that brought him to power in “I had no shoes,” that also inspired his presidential epitaph that he did not want his ambition to equate the shedding of innocent blood.

    But politics is not for meek people. Ambition, as Shakespeare wrote, is made of “sterner stuff.”  Jonathan had good luck and it made him a president. It did not redound to good governance, good welfare, well-calibrated policies. In fact, the policies under his watch contributed to the distortions in the economy now under repair.

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    But what some are seeing as his second birth of good luck are the one-term opportunity for the South, and what some see as an economic situation that strains the poor. Another factor is their reliance on collective amnesia and some non-Yoruba in the South’s belief that, somehow, they can snatch it for one term.

    It is in this context that Peter Obi, ever the hustler, is now a homeless man seeking a shelter of opportunity.

    So, what we have are a few impediments for Jonathan. The biggest of them is the law. It forbids his ambition. Two, he may have to struggle for a party that will damn the law. The PDP does not seem to have goose pimples at his prospects except for a few self-serving carpet baggers who want to climb on his back and have, at least, a job to do until that scheme goes belly up again.

    Again, for a Jonathan that did not heal an economy but broke it, many businesses will remember how broke they were in his days. If a collective amnesia holds forth today, an election campaign can rip up the scab of his time. The ethnic factor, ever an unspoken part of the Jonathan proposal, may turn out to be a bad market because he will return to the dog whistles of tribe and faith that may turn him into the Obi sort of divisive candidacy that may not work again this time.

    So, what we may have is not Goodluck Jonathan of 2011, but a man of hard luck. It all seemed picture perfect for him.

     He did one term and he is the perfect man to complete it but the law says no. He could play messiah for an economy but his past says he failed. He cannot conjure tribe and faith or he will compete with Obi who did it and we know the result.

    So, what we have is Jonathan of bad luck in a time of opportunity. This leaves him and his acolytes to decide whether to accept his political obituary or return to the doomed cycle of denial, rage and negotiation, like Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s award-winning novel, The Discomfort of Evening. The novel, written in a register of lugubrious innocence, tracks a family that finds it hard to live in acceptance of son’s death.

  • Remembering Gani again

    Remembering Gani again

    While many persons have penned tributes in memory of Chief Gani Fawehinmi, a few things still remain distinct for me. The first was his love for books, that many do not say much about. If he heard of any new book, of whatever subject, he would pick it up.

    For a man enamoured of politics, I was amazed to see books on poetry, drama and novels in his treasured cove. His library was massive. I recall when the chief conducted Femi Ojudu and I through shelf after shelf, a cornucopia of big minds aflare on his walls.

    So enthused were both of us that Ojudu promised to bury his next leave as a staff of Concord Press in between his book covers. I bought my copy of In a Free State by Nobel Prize-winning novelist V.S. Naipaul because it plopped into my eyes from the shelf.

    One day, I ambled into his office with a book I bought from “bend down bookstore,” previously owned by Olu Akaraogun. Immediately he saw it, he grinned in his boyish way and quipped, “That must be about the French Revolution.” He was right. It was a book about Reflections on the French Revolution by Edmund Burke.

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    The other thing was his fascination with dictators. He loved Kemal Ataturk, Joseph Stalin, et al. I challenged him once that Stalin lived for 20 million people to die. His riposte was an aplomb face, and then he said the Soviet leader needed such ruthlessness to build his massive mechanization project. Yet when the Soviet Union fell, he told me its parallel was coming for the IBB regime.

     He somehow managed to remain a closet authoritarian in public. He might not want an Ataturk for Nigeria, I think he might have favoured what political philosophers now call competitive authoritarianism that we now see in places like Turkey and Poland.

     He was IBB’s nemesis, and each January he would say, with sanguine mischief, “this government is going to fall this year. There is no doubt about that at all.”

    I recall his intimacy with Olu Onagoruwa, and how they met for banter and cackles in his house over fried goat meat called asun, and how they travelled together on weekends out of Lagos, Gani going farther to Ondo, while Onagoruwa held the brakes at Ijebu. Up till today, I muse over how the quest for a public good made a mincemeat to a storied friendship.

    But pray, how did a Gani go for a swim in a public place like the Sheraton Hotel? How can we say it was not where he ingested what eventually took his life with SSS always trailing him?

  • Ahiajoku Lecture festival 2025

    Ahiajoku Lecture festival 2025

    Igbo-speaking people from seven states of the country will converge in Owerri, Imo State capital, later this month for the annual Ahiajoku Lecture festival.

    Instituted in 1979 by the first civilian governor of Imo State, Sam Mbakwe, the Ahiajoku Lecture was designed to celebrate, advance and sustain Igbo cultural heritage, foster intellectual discourse and cultural renaissance and spur overall development of Igbo nation and beyond.

    It sought in the main, to preserve and promote indigenous language, cultural values, unity as well as the progress of the Igbo people and Nigeria. At inception barely eight years after the civil war, the Igbo nation was largely confined to Anambra and Imo states, parts of Rivers and then Bendel State.

    With the subsequent creation of additional states, the scope expanded to include Abia, Anambra, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and Rivers states. Over the years, the lecture grew both in scope, strength and participation. Chairman of the planning committee for the 2025 Lecture festival, Chief Garry Igariwey, said all the governments of the seven Igbo-speaking states are being carried along in this year’s lecture festival with their buy in already secured.

     According to the former president-general of Ohaneze Ndigbo, the collaboration of these states and their governments will ensure “wider participation, ownership of this sacred tradition and shared vision of cultural renewal”. He had some good words for Governor Hope Uzodimma for his fervour in reviving the pan-Igbo Ahiajoku festival.

    The Catholic Bishop of Nsukka Diocese, His Lordship, Godfrey Igwebuike Onah is the guest lecturer for this year with the theme: “The Future of Igbo Economy Amidst the Challenges of Insecurity in the Southeast: A call for paradigm shift”. A renowned professor of philosophy and African epistemology, the bishop will no doubt, enrich his lecture with intellectual and moral authority.

    The topic is apt and timely as it sits properly with contemporary challenges. It is coming at a time concerns have been raised on the debilitating effects of the unceasing multidimensional insecurity on the economy of the region.  It is envisaged that the lecture topic will interrogate the festering security challenges, provide therapeutic responses and chart the pathway to economic development and progress of the zone.

    Activities lined up for the lecture proper include a curated arts and crafts exhibition, a scholarly colloquium, and cultural displays primed to celebrate Igbo culture and thought.

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    Apparently responding to observations that Ahiajoka Lecture should dismount from its elitist high podium to embrace and speak to the ordinary people without whom a culture will not have relevance, this year’s event is arranged to attract not just scholars of repute. Cultural and religious personages as well as representatives of the town unions are also involved. Besides, several associations of Ndigbo in the diaspora have signalled strong interest to participate in the coming event.

    This followed several engagements by the Director-General of the Ahiajoku Centre, Ray Emena with many diaspora groups, individuals and associations. The event is also expected to attract tourists, researchers, cultural ambassadors and Igbo sons and daughters from all walks of life and across the globe.

    This year’s festival is symbolic in more ways than one. For one, it is unique not only from the scope of prospective attendance, but especially so because it is the first time a Catholic bishop will be delivering the lecture. He will bring his ecclesiastical authority to bear on the topic. For another, the timing shares similar existential traits with extant challenges of Ndigbo when the maiden edition was held in 1979.

    Then, the Igbo race had just emerged with the scars of the civil war and their debilitating encumbrances. That was the time the Igbo nation was still trying to find its voice and establish their relevance as a people. As preparations for the 2025 edition gear up, Ndigbo and indeed the country are reeling under the pains of debilitating insecurity with its toll on lives, properties, development and progress. The topic of this year’s lecture is at the heart of that trajectory.

    As MJC Echeruo pointed out at Ahiajoku’s 40th anniversary Lecture in 2019, “When I delivered the first lecture in 1979, some eight years after the Nigerian-Biafra war, in the dawning of a post-war civilian administration in Nigeria, at a time when Ndigbo appeared very confident that a renaissance of spirited energies exhibited in the war effort into new and productive directions, we believe that such a drive would transform Igboland.

    Although still lacking serious access to national political power, we nevertheless believe in the possibility of Igbo self-fulfilment as well as national growth in our traumatised Nigerian fatherland”, Echeruo had stated.

    The Igbo nation is still at the same crossroads as Onah is about to give his lecture.  Echeruo was the lecturer for the maiden edition of the Ahiajoku lecture in 1979 with the theme, “Ahamefule- A matter of identity” which reflected the situation of Ndigbo within that period. He came again to deliver the Ahiajoku’s 40th anniversary lecture in 2019 during the brief administration of Governor Emeka Ihedioha.

    This time around, he titled his lecture, “Ogu Eri Mba: We Shall Survive” There is a common thread running around Echeruo’s topics-the identity of a people and their survival. That is the kind of existential and developmental issues you find woven into Ahiajoku’s Lecture topics. And therein lies its essence.

    Over the years, the lecture has served as a rallying point for scholars, policy makers and traditional rulers to interrogate the Igbo question and propose pathways for the collective advancement of its people. It also provides the compass to Igbo heritage, culture and aspirations, reviving shared identity and the spirits that bind the people together.

    Prominent Igbo intellectuals have in the past taken turns to deliver the annual lectures. The 1980 edition was delivered by former Dean, Faculty of Agriculture (UNN) and former Deputy Director-General, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan Prof. Bede Nwoye Okigbo. Renowned historian, Prof. Adiele Afigbo took the centre stage in 1981 while Prof. Anya O. Anya delivered that of 1982.

    The 1984 edition featured Prof. Donatus Nwoga, Prof. Ben Nwabueze took the centre stage in 1985 while Dr Pius Okigbo delivered the 1986 edition. The lecture held successfully annually till 1995. During the military administration of Tanko Zubairu between 1996 and 1999, the lecture did not hold. It however came into full force again in 2000 with the return of civil rule in the country. Several scholars took turns to deliver the lectures.

     Literary giant, Prof. Chinua Achebe returned from exile after two decades to deliver the 2009 edition of the lecture. Strikingly, the event coincided with the 50th anniversary of his famous novel – Things Fall Apart.

    For the eight years (2011-2018) Governor Rochas Okorocha was at the helm of affairs in the state, Ahiajoku Lecture never saw the light of the day. The lecture series was reinstated in 2019, a year that marked its 40th anniversary with its maiden lecturer, Echeruo again taking the centre stage. One remarkable thing in the build up to the 2019 lecture was the elevation of Ahiajoku to an institute and the appointment of a director-general to ensure continuity.

    Uzodimma has kept to this tradition with the resuscitation of the 2025 Ahiajoku Lecture festival. He had also, appointed a director-general for the centre to ensure that Ahiajoku lives up to its mandate. As in any endeavour of this magnitude, the 2025 edition yet, offers another opportunity for re-assessment with a view to improving on its objectives.

    This is especially so with the expansion in its scope of activities and participation. Funding and the level of involvement of the seven Igbo-speaking states to enhance regularity and continuity are bound to throw up new challenges. So also, the level of progress made by the lecture festival in re-awakening Igbo cultural and linguistic renaissance.

    Prof. Ihechukwu Madubuike recommends an Igbo Academy for the resetting of both the Igbo language and the Igbo culture. Hear the former Minister of Education and Health: “Language is the spirit of culture and without which a culture is dead. We should be delivering Ahiajoku Lectures in Igbo language. Igbo identity is too much a valent resource to be trifled with by the cognoscenti”.

    Madubuike who was a commissioner in Mbakwe’s regime when the lecture series was instituted, wants the annual fiesta to rotate among the seven Igbo states that identify with the aspirations and values of the authentic Ohanaeze Ndigbo organisation. Culture he said, “matters because it seeds political relevance and a people’s worldview”.

  • One derailment, too many

    One derailment, too many

    Last Tuesday’s derailment of an Abuja-Kaduna bound train shortly after take-off, has again raised concerns on regular maintenance of rail infrastructure and other critical national investments. The train left the Idu station, Abuja around 11am en route Kaduna but suddenly went off its track between Kubwa and Asham stations overturning some of its cabins.

    It was a scene of pandemonium as passengers struggled to escape some of the overturned cabins. Those lucky to escape unhurt were seen running in different directions, apparently for fear of the unknown in the bushy surroundings the accident happened.

    Emergency rescue services were quickly activated by the relevant agencies. This saw to the quick arrival of medical personnel, rescue services and the full compliment of security operatives. The Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau said at the venue of the incident that six passengers sustained injuries with no casualty recorded.

    But the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) put the casualty figure at seven. The agency said first aid was administered to the injured at the scene before they were transferred to the hospital. Details of the cause of the accident are still foggy. An investigative committee was quickly constituted by the Minister of Transport, Said Alkali.

    Curiously even before the committee began its probe, the Managing Director of Nigeria Railways Corporation (NRC), Kayode Opeifa has taken full responsibility for the incident. “Beyond apologies to Nigerians, I want to state clearly as the MD and Chief Executive, I take full responsibility. When it comes to safety, there is no room for indifference, the chief executive owns it and I do” he said in an interview.

    Yes, the buck stops at his table as the chief executive of the organisation. But in the instance case where an investigative panel has been set up for the purpose, it is premature for the MD to assume full responsibility for the incident when the cause is yet to be established.

    The issue in question is an accident case. In matters of this nature that could have a number of causative factors, some outside the control of the chief executive, it is only proper for the committee to complete its job before culpability could be established. Only then will it be appropriate for anyone to assume responsibility for his acts of omission or commission.

    Train derailment could result from technical failure, faulty or cracked tracks misaligned rails and worn out ties. It could equally be as a result of poor maintenance or outright sabotage. Some of these factors may be outside the control of a chief executive which should instruct a measure of caution in trading blames and assigning culpability.

    The matter really goes beyond blind assumption of responsibility unless the chief executive already nurses some idea regarding what could have led to the incident. Or is there a link between his admission and the allegation by a former senator from Kaduna State, Shehu Sani that the accident was a direct consequence of neglect?

    Sani had said passengers had for months been complaining about the wobbling rail tracks but nobody paid attention to such alerts until the incident happened. If this allegation holds any water, then one can understand the haste with which the NRC MD rushed into accepting responsibility for the incident.

    That is not all there is to the matter. The Kaduna-Abuja rail line, as one of Nigeria’s most active corridor patronised by the high and the low is not new to derailments. In March 2022, terrorists attacked an Abuja-Kaduna bound train with Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at Katari, Kaduna State causing it to derail and overturn.

    The bandits shot indiscriminately killing many of the passengers and abducting others. They held some of the captives for months releasing those able to pay the ransom they demanded. It even took negotiations between the federal government through Sheikh Ahmad Gumi for all the captives to be released. Before then, bandits had severally attacked the same train service without breaking through.

    In May last year, a passenger train from Rigasa station, Kaduna derailed at Jere station. It departed with 685 passengers and crew on board. A month later, another derailment occurred when an Abuja-Kaduna bound train suffered similar fate with three of its coaches overturned.

    The NRC later laid the blame for one of the accidents on vandals. It said in a statement that the train experienced minor technical hitch at Asham station in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State. It attributed the minor hitch to the removal of track fastening clips by vandals.

    The derailment is not limited to the Kaduna-Abuja bound train services. In January 2019, a Lagos-bound mass transit train derailed at Ashade killing one passenger. These represent just a few of such train accidents. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that between 2019 and 2025, there have been 188 trail derailments around the country’s train corridors.

    Even then, the NRC admitted that between 2022 and 2023 more then 50,000 rail clips were stolen from the Lagos-Ibadan, Warri-Itakpe and Abuja-Kaduna rail lines respectively. It is Little surprising the high incidence of train derailments across the country.

    These incidents raise questions about the nation’s huge investments in the rail transport system; regular maintenance of the rail lines and other strategic national infrastructure. The Federal Executive Council had in August 2022 approved over N718 million in contracts to secure the Abuja-Kaduna corridor.

    Two security outfits received the sum of N407 million and N310 million respectively. They were each to protect 27.4 kilometres of tracks and eight stations and 18 kilometres of track and four stations over two years. The volume clips’ removal and the regular derailments within this time frame and beyond raise questions as to the efficacy of these security contracts in manning the rail tracks.

     Nigeria’ hope for an efficient and modern transport system is largely predicated on a modernized rail transport system. This thinking is supported by the economy of scale that goes with a modernised rail transportation system.

    Apart from being the easiest and most efficient means of conveying bulk goods across the nation’s vast landmass, efficient train services will draw large passenger patronage as seen in the Abuja-Kaduna rail corridor. It is cheaper and will save our roads the regular damage they face due to the pressure from large trucks conveying bulk goods. The federal government stands to save the huge funds deployed to road maintenance after each rainy season and enhance their durability.

    Government’s modernisation of its rail transport system is largely anchored on loans from the China Exim Bank which is executed through one of that country’s construction giants. In the 2024 budget, the federal government allocated N33.1 billion for various rail projects.

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    This included the completion of Abuja-Kaduna and the Lagos-Ibadan rail lines as well as the rehabilitation of the Itakpe-Ajaokuta line. Additionally, lawmakers allocated N400 billion in the 2025 budget for light rail projects in four states- Kano, Kaduna, Ogun and Lagos.

    The government is also said to have been provided with the proof-of-fund for an ambitious $60 billion high-speed rail network with Chinese partners that promises on completion, to revolutionise rail transport system. The high-speed rail network is primed to connect all key economic corridors across the country.

    These underscore the high premium the government places on rail modernisation and development. But these high-minded goals may not produce the right results in the face of the constant train derailments due to technical failures arising from poor maintenance culture, vandalization and sabotage on account of the cascading insecurity and associated inefficiencies.

    The high number of track clips stolen between 2022 and 2023 from three rail lines point to the absence of effective security monitoring in those corridors. Something urgent should be done to reverse that trend and protect the huge investments made in that sector. It will also save the loss to lives and property which constant train derailments engender.

    Regular inspection of the rail lines, aided by technology driven devices such as drones and CCTVs, will produce better results. Additionally, advanced technologies like ultrasonic rail testing can identify hidden defects for immediate repairs. That should be the right path to protecting and justifying the huge investments in rail infrastructure.

  • Angel of analgesics

    Angel of analgesics

     The Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) must be the boldest association in the country. They committed a public wrong but everywhere they claim to be the holy nation.

     In their last meet in Enugu, they thrived on the people’s amnesia, or so they thought.

    They collected money from Rivers State but would not refund it, and would not even admit it was wrong. It is what Joseph Conrad calls the “the bravado of guilt.” What I want is not just the refund, but a public report of their auditor’s breakdown on how that money was spent.

    One of the charades came in the form of Obiageli Katryn Ezekwesili, the unabashed Obidient, who was a speaker at the event.

    She was also speaking economics that must be her forte.

    But she faltered when she was saying she accepted that President Tinubu should remove fuel subsidy and collapse the exchange rates, but that it was too radical – my words.

    Tunji Ojo, interior minister, said what she and others were calling for was applying analgesics to a deep problem. She is now our angel of analgesics.

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    It is the professional perfidy of such assertions that worry this essayist.

     It all shows that Oby and people like her are not following  what they have believed all their lives because they don’t like the person who is doing what they believe. They are frowning at their own mirrors.

    Oby was in OBJ’s government and wanted all Federal Government schools to be privatized. She was part of the government that hitched itself to the IMF and World Bank now hailing the Tinubu approach.

     She honed her career behind the portals of those organisations. Now she wants to apply Band-Aid to a sore, to deoderise a sty. She was weaned on the sanctity of the market, a doctrinaire laissez-faire expert now clad in a new theology.

    That was the spirit of the last NBA meeting. They invited the multiple hate speech convict, Julius Malema from South Africa, because the conference was to evangelise hate. And hate dripped from every pore of the conference.

     It was the Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar III, who chastened them and reminded them about their justice as a commodity.

     The NBA itself has become a commodity. It was not a conference of rumination. With all the reports of carousing and arousing, no one expected it to  empower ideas.

  • Suicide by accident

    Suicide by accident

    A festival is the voice of a culture. It is when a people play. It is an icon in time and space and, often, everyone wants to keep politics at bay.

    This day, in the flourish of his white agbada, purple cap and dark shades, Ekiti State Governor, Biodun Oyebanji, upends a festal mood. This is the Udiroko Festival, the day the Ado-Ekiti people celebrate centuries under their king, the Ewi. If the festival is their icon, the iconography is dance, songs, customs and costumes, drama, parades and, of course, food. The Ekiti will not live down their signature pabulum: the pounded yam.

    Udiroko festival is one of the big-time emblems of Nigeria, from the Durbars in the north, to the Ojude ObaFestival in Ijebu land, to the Calabar Festival, and promising Ghigho Aghofen in Warri under the Ogiame Atuwatse III. There are many, like the yam festivals in the east, many of them under-tapped tourist potential. It is the people’s scent.

    Governor Oyebanji, popularly known as BAO, is a public figure whose demeanour  calms a public. He spots a smile, gladhands,not prone to rhetorical spills  and projects a quiescent charisma.

     His style recalls, without irony, the opening lines of Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People, in his characterization of his protagonist. “No one can deny that Chief the Honourable Minister, M.A. Nanga, MP, was the most approachable politician in the country. Whether you asked in the city or in his home village… they will tell you he was a man of the people. I have to admit this from the outset unless the story I am going to tell will make no sense.”

    Achebe wrote this tongue in cheek, but that is because men with such attributes are rare in public life, especially in the terrain of politics. That is the image of BAO. But on the festival day, BAO unclads. He gives his dovish persona a makeover.

    He reminds me of a press briefing that President Shehu Shagari has with editors and the president, known for his unflappability, sparked at a question. “Jesus” I said to myself, “the president is angry”. That is the title of Dele Giwa’s column on the incident.

    BAO addresses the underhand moves and rumours to undermine his party, the APC, and the work of the President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

     His face loses its subdued bonhomie and takes on a grave, sometimes combative mien. The quiet man’s gloves are off.

    His attacks are not on the opposition. He launches at members of his own party who are undermining the president, and want to also dent his own doings as the chief executive of the state. Holding brief for the president, he refers to two major roads now under works under this administration.

     The first is the Ado-Ikere- Akure Road. I was at the Federal Executive Council meeting a few months ago when Works Minister David Umahi presented it and it was approved, but not without some theatrics from Solid Minerals  Development  Minister Dele Alake, an Ekiti indigene.

     Alake had said he supported it wholeheartedly and that the road had been neglected for too long and he had been to that road.

    The president, in a whiff of mischief, asked him, “Are you sure,” more than once, and Alake said, “Yes sir.”

    The other road BAO refers to is the Ado-Afe Babalola  Road, which would soon take off. He says the president could not do everything within two years and he is doing all that is humanly possible. He belts out the proverb that the cock is sweating but the feathers conceal it all.

    Some may think those he is referring to are lovers of Ekiti.

    Rather, they are lovers of themselves. They love Ekiti less. Their eyes are set on the APC primary in October.

     In a statement, his Chief Press Secretary, Yinka Oyebode, alleges that one of them has recruited an army of 250 souls for social media onslaughts.

    The fellow, though unnamed, is the Atiku of Ekiti State. The disrobed Adamawa man may want to call him “mini me. Or minimum me.” The Ekiti APC wannabe governor, like Atiku, does not live in Ekiti.

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     When he is there, he is a sojourner for ambition. Like Atiku, his pocket is deep and mischievous. Like Atiku, he is a perennial candidate. Like Atiku, a perennial loser. BAO’s recent anger recalls what Shakespea                                           re writes in Hamlet: “Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,Bear it that the opposèd may beware of thee.”

    That is his attitude. He is going to the battlefield, and he knows that war is not for gentlemen.

    Some have speculated that former governor and minister Kayode Fayemi may be one of the culprits. My investigations say he is not.

     But the former chief executive cannot take his coattail off some of the rumblings in the state.

     Perhaps some of those undermining the president may be taking a cue from Fayemi’s dig at the Federal Government when he said the people are not happy and they are hungry, and complained about the Omuo-Ilasha-Ayedun-Oye road, and was querulous over refunds to Ekiti.

    Fayemi has not refuted in clear language that he did not make a dig at the centre, and the defence of some of his acolytes that his words were taken out of contempt sometimes undermines the commonsense and literacy of those who heard and even applauded him.

     Just as he did not deny what Amaechi said about his presence on the creation day of the interloper ADC, the former Ekiti State governor must learn, at least, to resist the urge to ambivalence.

     He can learn from the treacherous audacity of his friend from Osun State.

    The fact that BAO has received endorsement from elders, a wide range of party chieftains as well as even those of other parties, including Fayemi himself, should be an indication that BAO has a foothold in the heart of his people.

    Yet a primary should hold, and when it holds, it is the party that will decide who is on the people’s side. But from all indications, those who are fighting should be aware that a BAO has boar inside. His speech at the Udiroko Festival is symbolic.

     The festival often bustles under the Iroko tree. BAO may be daring his challenger if they have the gumption to fell the tree.

    That may result in how historians describe the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire: it committed suicide by accident.

  • Citizen Jennifer’s ordeal

    Citizen Jennifer’s ordeal

    Even with the dismissal of eight members of the Anambra State Vigilante Services (Agunechemba) involved in the assault of a youth corps member, Jennifer Elohor and her colleagues, the larger issues thrown up by that incident should not be lost.

    Special Adviser to Governor Chukwuma Soludo on Community Security, Ken Emeakayi while announcing the punitive measures, said the operatives who claimed to be pursuing suspected cultists, acted outside their mandate and would be handed to the police for prosecution.

    “The Soludo administration will not tolerate any form of unprofessionalism, brutality or abuse of office by security operatives. Any officer found guilty of misconduct will face immediate dismissal and prosecution”. Emeakayi said.

    He appeared to have struck the crux of the matter when he stressed that the case would mark a turning point in reforming community security operations in the state and restoring public confidence in it. It is hoped so.

    A viral video which circulated in the social media space last week had shown the moment armed operatives of the state’s security outfit stormed the corps members’ lodge in Oba, Idemili South Local Government Area of the state and assaulted the female member. In that video, the victim was seen being beaten and stripped naked by gun-trotting men as she ran in pains begging to be spared by her tormentors.

    Reports had it that the corps member was badly brutalised and subjected to humiliating and sexually degrading threats in an attack that exposed the excesses of such quasi-security outfits. Expectedly, the incident attracted wide condemnations as there didn’t appear any justification for the jungle justice on the poor lady.

    The embarrassing scene must have compelled the state government to wade into the matter. Initial reaction from Emeakayi was that the incident occurred during a joint security operation when operatives of Agunechemba pursued suspected cultists into a residential compound.

     According to him, the operatives were trailing some suspected cultists riding on motorcycles when they pursued them into a compound. In the process of searching the houses in line with their mandate, the unfortunate incident involving the corps member occurred.

    He however, admitted that while the security operatives were on a legitimate assignment, the manner they acted was not acceptable. He did not indicate the manner of their operation that was not acceptable to the state government. Neither can it be interpreted as a reference to the assault on the corps member. There must have been certain actions taken by the operatives in the course of the search that led to the unfortunate incident.

    The turn of events that led to the assault on the corps member to the extent of beating her mercilessly; tearing her dress and leaving her virtually naked remains foggy. Equally cloudy was the business the vigilante operatives had prying into phones and laptops of the corps members in a hot pursuit that ostensibly trailed fleeing cultists.

    What is not in doubt is that the operatives searched the phones and laptops of the corps members. Not with the admission by the state government that it replaced Jennifer’s damaged phone and laptop. That corroborates the narrative that the operatives accused the corps members of being internet fraudsters and took advantage of that to invade their privacy.

    Even then, Jennifer had in an interview at the weekend revealed how the operatives stormed their lodge, accusing them of involvement in internet and wire fraud. She said all attempts to explain to them they were youth service corps members including showing them valid identity cards fell on deaf ears.

    Rather, they manhandled them, grabbed their phones and laptops apparently in search of internet fraud evidence. So, the claim they were in hot pursuit of cultists fleeing on motorcycle collapsed irretrievably in the face of the new evidence from the victim.

    That raises question on the business of the vigilante group with the fight against financial and internet fraud. What is the business of such ad hoc and untrained security unit with the sophistication posed by financial and wire fraud?

    The dismissal of the erring operatives and the account of the incident by Jennifer have put a lie to the claim that they were pursuing cultists. Ironically, nothing was again heard of their encounter with the touted cultists. And if one may ask, were the suspected cultists riding on motorcycles males or females? In the unlikely situation that they were females, why did the security outfit beam its searchlight on the female corps member?

    All this leads to the inescapable conclusion that the operatives ran into trouble because of their insistence in searching the phones and laptops of the corps member for alleged involvement in internet fraud. Extortion and the desire to invade the privacy of the female corps members may have been behind that show of shame. It is inconceivable how the search and subsequent damage of phones and laptops will aid the unmasking of cultists.

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    Nonetheless, it is good a thing the Anambra State government moved quickly to fish out the culprits and has dismissed them from the services of the organisation. This should serve as a serious lesson to all those in similar positions that brazenly violate the rights of citizens without regard to due process and the rule of law.

    Perhaps, Jennifer’s case attracted prompt attention of the authorities because she is a youth corps member. Who knows the number of innocent citizens that have been so serially assaulted and harmed without attracting public notice? This is not the first time that the security outfit and others floated by state governments would be embroiled in human rights’ abuse controversy.

    Last February, their operation in Owerre-Ezukala, Orumba South LGA in which they claimed to have killed a good number of unknown gunmen and arrested others was marred by controversy. Villagers and relatives of three construction workers killed during the process and tagged unknown gunmen had staged serious protests proclaiming their innocence.

    The three consisting of a welder and tiler were said to be working in a church building when they were attacked and killed. Ironically, one of them was from Soludo’s hometown, Isuofia. A brother to the welder gave a chilling account of a scene depicting the Agunechemba security operatives celebrating the feat with a display of his brother’s welding equipment as evidence of his involvement in criminality. Allegations of indiscriminate arrests and extortion as bail conditions have also been freely traded against the outfit. But all these changed nothing.

    When Emeakayi said this singular incident marked a turning point in reforming the security outfit and restoring public confidence in it, he knows exactly what he was talking about. If it took the assault on the corps member for the state government to come to terms with that reality, so be it. That is by no means a vote of no confidence on the reasons behind the proliferation of such quasi security outfits in recent times.

    Agunechemba is not alone in the rising allegations of rights abuses and extra-judicial killings by quasi security outfits floated by state governments in the wake of the cascading insecurity across the country. Amnesty International documented several cases of human rights abuses by the Ebubeagu security operatives in Ebonyi and other states in the southeast.

    These include the killing of four persons and injuring of others in October 2021 at Amasiri community in Afikpo North LGA of Ebonyi State as well as accusations of its deployment to supress opposition.

    Its research also showed that Orlu, Orsu, Okigwe and ideato all in Imo State, were at some points under attacks by Ebubeagu operatives. The group was fingered in the killing of 14 youths in Awomama in the Oru East LGA of the state on July 2022. It has also been accused of suppressing opposition in the state.

    Agunechemba like others of its kind is a child of circumstance. It is borne out of the multi-dimensional insecurity across the country in the face of the inability of the conventional law enforcement agencies to effectively tame the monster. But their operations have been dogged by accusations of rights violation and extra-judicial killings.

    They post a record of largely ill-trained, ill-equipped and overzealous lot unable to rise to the exigencies of their sensitive offices. These manifest quite often in their constant resort to high-handedness and human rights violations as seen in the corps member’s ordeal.  If the state governments must continue to retain their services, they must upgrade the quality of their personnel and properly train them on rules of engagement in civilized and democratic setting.

    Ironically, their conduct has continued to create doubts on the propriety of the current agitations for state police.

  • Tunji Bello: Giving back

    Tunji Bello: Giving back

    It was a striking story that justifiably grabbed the headlines: the donation of a new auditorium to Lagos State University (LASU), Epe Campus. The giver, Tunji Bello, a former journalist, lawyer and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), may well have pictured the public applause before the event because the gift was indeed applaudable.

     Officially named the Olatunji-Bello Auditorium, the multipurpose facility is reported to have a capacity of more than 500 seats. The story indirectly began in 2011 when Bello was serving as Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment in the Governor Babatunde Fashola administration. That was the year he turned 50, and “had committed to instituting an annual prize in five disciplines, namely Law, Mass Communications, Social Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,” he said in his speech during the official unveiling of the facility.

    Ten years later, he wanted to do more to mark his 60th birthday in July 2021. At the time, he was Lagos State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources in the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration. He said “the idea of throwing a big party to mark the occasion was completely off the table.” His wife, Prof. Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello, Vice Chancellor of LASU, had suggested “building something for LASU to mark my 60th birthday.” She had not become the VC then. She was appointed in September 2021.

    He eventually bought the idea, “after much reflection,” and imagined “an auditorium, truly befitting and fit for purpose.” However, the architect’s budget for the project “frightened” him and he was “filled with doubt as per the feasibility of going ahead.”

    Then he had a brainwave about how to actualise the project. He narrated: “After days of wrestling with the architect’s budget in my head, it suddenly occurred to me I could ask those going to buy me gifts for the 60th birthday to monetise such and hand me the cash to do something really dear to my heart.

    “It worked. A very wealthy friend and known businessman had wanted to surprise me with a brand- new Toyota Land-cruiser Jeep. I appealed to him to convert it to cash. With donations from other able friends and well-wishers, we got started in 2021.”

    Midway into the construction of the auditorium, unforeseen storms threatened to disrupt work. Bello said: “The toughest moment was late 2023 and early 2024 when the Naira went down, and inflation upset all previous calculations. It meant that the costs were almost tripled at the point of buying finishing materials.”

    The new challenges called for greater sacrifice. “To continue, I had to sell my property at Magodo estate to keep the workers on site in order that it may not become an abandoned project after three years of construction,” he revealed.  Selling his personal property, especially one in a high-value area like Magodo estate, elevated the donation to an investment in education

    This context about how an idea became a concrete reality reinforces the significance of Bello’s philanthropy. The journey from initial concept to a completed building, with all its challenges, highlights that Bello is not just a donor but a true project champion.

    The most remarkable detail is that he had to sell his personal property to ensure the project’s completion. This act transforms his philanthropy from an act of generosity to a profound personal sacrifice. It demonstrates a level of commitment that is rare and inspiring, and shows how far he was willing to go to prevent the project from becoming a failure.

    By seeing the project through all its phases, he ensured that the university received a fully functional, high-quality facility. This commitment guarantees that his contribution will serve students and the community for years to come, truly cementing his legacy. The completed auditorium will stand as a physical reminder of his dedication and serve as a venue for generations of learning and community events.

    In addition, he announced to the students that a communications company owned by one of his friends would provide “free Wi-Fi at the auditorium to enhance your learning experience”; and another’s management company would handle the maintenance of the auditorium and its facilities for a year before LASU authorities “assume full responsibilities.” 

    Interestingly, he mentioned three figures whom he regards as inspirational philanthropic models: his late father,  Alhaji Azeez Olatunji Bello, who, “in the early 1950s,”  donated a “vast tract of land” towards the building of Ansar Ud DeenCollege at Isolo in Lagos; his “late boss and mentor, Bashorun MKO Abiola, winner of June 12, Presidential Election, who, on a single day in the late 80s, announced an endowment for universities across Nigeria; and “our dear President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who, on assumption of duties as governor in 1999, declared that all his salaries and allowances be donated to charities including orphanages. He had also about four years ago announced an endowment fund of one billion naira to this great university.” 

    Bello hoped the auditorium will inspire the students “to double your zeal to excel in your academic pursuit.” He declared that the donation was to express appreciation “to God Almighty for his grace and to my dear native Lagos State for the great opportunities given to me.”

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    He was “one of the beneficiaries of the Lagos State Government’s scholarship award as an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan in the early 1980s,” he noted, adding that he later had the privilege “to serve in public office in various capacities.” He also served as a commissioner in the state under then governor Bola Tinubu, and was Secretary to the Lagos State Government in the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode administration.

    He argued that “Private individuals who really have the means should invest in public tertiary education to create more opportunities as prevalent in several developed countries.”

    What would Nigeria look like if its citizens, especially those who have financial power, appreciated the burden of blessing and the implications for social giving and social development? Socially purposeless wealth is a tragedy.

    It is popular to argue for speaking truth to power. What about speaking truth to the power of money? This should be built on the socially influenced and socially influential logic of giving back to society.  It suggests that demanding measurable social responsibility from the financially powerful is not necessarily inspired by a sense of entitlement; but there is a sense in which it is a social entitlement.  It does not need to be imposed because it is properly self-imposing. 

    The beauty of Tunji Bello’s giving is that it was driven more by a deep sense of social responsibility than the possible possession of surplus wealth. This is a compelling story of imagination, conviction, faith, determination and resilience.