The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • N-Power jobs

    N-Power jobs

    By Emeka Omeihe

    The N-Power scheme of the federal government entered another phase last week with the commencement of enrolment of third batch beneficiaries.

    The new initiative is targeted at absorbing 400, 000 graduates and non-graduates into the employment program designed to create jobs for the army of unemployed youths.

    The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, said the third batch of the scheme followed wide consultations and far-reaching reforms in the program to achieve greater efficiency.

    Apparently to give further fillip to these reforms, the ministry has set exit dates for batches A and B that were hitherto enrolled in the program.

    The N-Power program is a federal government scheme to provide jobs for Nigerian youths. Primarily designed to expose youths to appropriate work experience and develop life-long skills in order to become solution providers in their communities, the program is targeted at reducing youth unemployment in the country.

    The strategy is to provide the youths with a structure for large scale and relevant work skills acquisition and development.

    At the conclusion of the program, beneficiaries are expected to have acquired necessary skills and competences in selected areas to make them gainful and useful members of the society.

    By the new timeline, Batch A will now exit on June 30, while Batch B will be passing out by July 31. The exit dates for the two batches are symbolic given that one of the challenges that had stood against the efficiency of the program was the tardiness in disengaging those previously admitted to give room for new intakes.

    It is instructive that the N-Power graduate scheme is billed to last for two years while the non-graduate program is for one year.

    But this rule has been observed in the breach as beneficiaries overstay meant no new enrolments have been enlisted for nearly two years now.

    This has been a serious challenge for a program designed to constantly respond to the dynamics of youth labour force.

    This point is further illustrated when it is recognized that Batch A which commenced in 2016 with 200,000 youths and was supposed to wind up by December 2018 is still on.

    We are now at the end of June. If this batch exits at the end of this month going by the timeline set by the minister, they would have overstayed their welcome by one year and a half.

    That is one of the nagging issues the minister, Hajiya Sadiya Farouq intends to address by the new exit date for Batch A and having Batch B comply with the extant regulations for winding up.

    Batch B which started in August 2018, with 300, 000 youths is still on course as the exit date set by the ministry is in tandem with the original terminal date for that arm of the program.

    Had the minister not taken the decision to exit the two batches, it would have been nigh impossible to talk of the current enrolment.

    By the measure, the ministry has underscored the point that non observance of the rules of disengagement had been a hindrance to the scheme.

    Given the terms for engagement of prospective beneficiaries, it is good a thing that strict compliance with the exit dates of the batches is now being enforced.

    This will translate to an increase in the number of beneficiaries of the program in the face of burgeoning youth unemployment. But the disengagement comes with its own challenges.

    There are issues with what becomes of their fate after being disengaged? This poser is further reinforced by the reality that some of them may have gotten used to the stipends they are paid and may suffer subsequent dislocation and hardship if they do not have immediate alternative.

    This is more so, in view of the serious unemployment problems that have emerged since the advent of the corona virus pandemic.

    The prospects of the pandemic compounding the unemployment situation cannot be underestimated.

    About a fortnight ago, the World Food Program of the United Nations warned that COVID-19 may lead to the loss of 13 million jobs in Nigeria.

    That was before the Vice President Osinbajo-led Economic Sustainability Plan Committee came out with the chilling figure that the pandemic has caused a 33.6 percent astronomic rise in unemployment indicating that 39.4 Nigerians will be out of employment by the end of 2020 if proactive steps are not taken to arrest the situation.

    There are therefore fears that the disengagement of the two previous batches will blow up the unemployment pool despite the fact that it is in keeping with the rules of their engagement.

    The minister seems not unmindful of this reality. She seemed to have anticipated this challenge when she said “We have commenced the transitioning of beneficiaries from batches A and B into government entrepreneurship schemes and engaging private sector bodies to absorb some of the beneficiaries after the completion of psychometric assessment to determine competency and placement into various opportunities”.

    That is the way to go and it should be pursued with greater vigour. Admittedly, it may not be easy to get immediate employment for all the beneficiaries.

    But if they really acquired the necessary skills for entrepreneurship and job creation, any gaps created by way of direct employment can be compensated by their ability to create jobs for themselves.

    And the success of the program will be measured more by the ability of participants to create jobs for themselves given emerging realities in the labour market.

    But that is not the only challenge facing the program. There have been reports of ghost workers fleecing the scheme, abscondment of beneficiaries and outright connivance with official in their places of primary assignment.

    Though some government functionaries had made spirited attempts to deny some of these infractions, the current minister is said not to be taking things for granted as steps are being taken to block all ghost enrollees in the ongoing program.

    The objective is to save for the government all the monies that would have been lost in fictitious claims. This should be pursued with greater momentum.

    There are also issues with regular payment of the allowances of participants as some of them have not been paid for some months.

    The ministry admits this but said the federal government’s payment platform is responsible for the delays. It claims the issue is not peculiar to N-Power enrollees but equally affects all federal government employees.

    Whatever the case, concerted efforts must be geared up to eliminate all obstacles to the regular payment of these allowances.

    No doubt, the N-Power scheme has a lot of vision given its target to create jobs for youths through entrepreneurial and job skills acquisition.

    We live in country with a plethora of institutions of higher learning churning out graduates in large numbers without commensurate job opportunities.

    Ironically, as the number of the unemployed expands in geometric progression, available jobs trickle in an arithmetic order.

    That portends serious repercussions for youths’ restiveness which no right thinking government can afford to ignore.

    Its consequences could be very dire for any government. The N-Power scheme must therefore be seen to be addressing this challenge.

    It must be seen to be staving off the larger repercussions of burgeoning youth unemployment in the country.

    What we require now are proactive measures to redress extant challenges while at the same time re-jigging the program for greater efficiency.

    The raging pandemic has thrown up new challenges within the employment matrix. It has also come with new ways of doing old things.

    That is where the entrepreneurial skills and job creation ideals come in handy. The minister must therefore forge ahead to extricate the scheme from all suffocating hiccups.

    That way, the program will be better positioned to serve the goals behind its establishment.

     

  • Painful exit

    Painful exit

    By Sam Omatseye

    “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince/ And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” – Shakespeare

    After I researched and wrote his biography, anytime I saw Abiola Ajimobi it was not the politician, or governor or senator that leapt into my eye. It was the altar boy, crisp, smart, the sparkle of childhood. In his primary school, he was selected to that status, though a Muslim, by the school because he was spick and span. Face upended faith.

    He was always the model student in hygiene and fashion. His shirts, his trousers, his shoes, body cream, haircut were examples for others. His daughter Abisola told me how he paid attention to his appearance. From his skin, his bath to his clothes for the day. He would spread a variety of apparels on the bed and meticulously make a judgment, sometimes consulting wife or any member of his family, on what to wear.

    Even his colleagues at National Oil and Later Conoil described him as “dapper,” reminding one of the politician in Achebe’s A Man of the People who was described as “the best dressed gentleman.” In his corporate life, his suits blazed in cuts and colours. Even his wife Florence testified to her surprise about how he, as a politician, swiveled into the traditional Yoruba wear of agbada and sokoto with a tailor’s ease

    If what the experts say is correct that we should follow the laws of hygiene in this era of COVID-19, the last person I expected to fall victim is Ajimobi. Yet, that virus that respects neither class nor faith nor courage struck, and fatally. In his play, Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s Sir Toby noted, “Care is an enemy to life.” Care did not save one of the most careful men on earth. It is a nightmare of a paradox, a dark foreboding for all alive.

    It is a lesson in human impotence. It is not a time to say with the superstitious folks that he died because he wished to say his farewell at 70. Now many will say his 70th birthday was his big, final valediction to the world. It was a fanfare of a party, the big and mighty in the nation came, so did the small in Ibadan. He, too, was in an ebullient spirit. He had a good dance with his wife, and spoke with great hope and rapture about his age and aging, and even his virility, when he quipped that the Ooni of Ife had  assured him, kabiyesi so pe ara mi maa ma le. “His majesty said my body will be virile.”

    And he was. He was agile, full of the gift of life and possibilities, and he earned his place again atop the political world. He died as acting chairman of his party. He had told me in his last days as governor that he was contemplating going back to school. During the lockdown before the flu struck, returned my phone call and assured me he would keep in touch over his new post as deputy chairman. But as Joseph Conrad says in his Heart of Darkness, life is as “inscrutable as destiny.”

    In that destiny was a managing director of the top oil marketing firm in the sub-continent, senator, governor, party leader, and statesman. When he was a child, according to the story, he visited the Governor’s House in Ibadan with his father who was also a prominent politician. When he sat leisurely, his father told Abiola to sit properly. “Sit like a governor,” he instructed. “One day, you too will become a governor.”

    He never forgot that moment in prophetic attitude. But he did not seem the man for politics when he travelled to the United States, excelled in his studies and even worked menial jobs including in a mortuary. He combined studies with work and joys of America, even dating a Miss Buffalo as part of his thrills of youth.

    He did not return with any connections or plum jobs waiting in Nigeria. He got his jobs and worked his way up the ladder. As a corporate man, he looked at politics from the distance. He wanted to reach the acme of career before he ventured into the vocations of father and uncle. He stunned his wife when he eventually did. She did not envisage an Abiola, who could sit with artisans, workers and the lower rung of the society. He had been prim at the top for so long. They met at Marina in Lagos when she first shunned him and a proud Ajimobi waited in ambush. So, an Ajimobi, who chummed with market men and women, mechanics, road transport workers, etc, was new to him. “It’s in my blood,” he assured her. He became senator, and after a battle he became a governor, not once, but a jinx breaker by taking it twice.

    He understood himself, and applied his energies and vision as governor in Oyo State. He is the most consequential figure in modern Oyo State. He was focused, if sometimes too blunt for his people. But he was authentic and refreshed with his candour. He did not play double standards or suffer fools gladly. He had a portrait of a lion in his sitting room in which the lion says he will not eat grass no matter how hungry he is, not because of pride, but that is who he is. Hence an Ajimobi would berate some errant students who would not listen to a governor. He asked them to obey constituted authority because that was how he was raised, not as a generation of petulant boys who look their elders in the eye with impunity. Or in the Obaship struggle in which he confided to me that the people agreed to his reforms in private only to turncoat in public.  He did not chafe under pressure but insisted on the point he had made. That is the measure of courage in leadership.

    He had his flaws. But he was more tender than many knew. A childhood friend of his in the United States was walking through Marina with his wife and stopped at National Oil, and said he knew the boss of that company and walked in. He was allowed up to its top floor. The secretary would not let him see the boss. He was impatient and left with a note. Once Ajimobi learned of it, he shut down every door or lift until they found the fellow who had almost left the building. He spent that night in Ajimobi’s home after asking his wife to prepare a meal for an august visitor.

    When he was a teen, he accompanied his mother to a village in the southwest where she sold gold. They had an accident in which the vehicle somersaulted. He survived with his mother. But a certain fellow who was walking by, looked at the lad, still bleeding from a wound that become a lifelong scar. “Take care of that boy,” he charged his mother, “he will become somebody big in this land.”

    Whatever the status of the man, whether prophet, or whether human or spirit, no one could discount that his tongue lit with fire. The boy, who fell into a ditch in an accident and bore a scar on his head and escaped death with his mother beside him in a rustic retreat in Yoruba land, grew over the years to travel all over the world, to school in some of the world’s tony universities, to grow in fame and fortune, to become a headline grabber in the nation’s television, newspapers and magazines, became a mobiliser of men and resources, became a helmsman in corporate Nigeria, soared to victory as a man of power, held positions of envy as he leapt from rung to rung, was sworn in as a senator of Oyo State and the Federal Republic of Nigeria and, after a grueling epic of a fight both in the courts and on the ballot box, distinguished himself not only as a governor but has set a record as the first personage to mount the seat as governor twice in a historic state of kings and kin, of quicksand loyalties and royalties in the capital, Ibadan, signposted as one of Africa’s largest cities. He bowed out as governor with the garland and sobriquet: Ko sele ri – It has never happened before.

  • Babalakin at 60

    Babalakin at 60

    Femi Macaulay

    Doers are defined by their doings.  Two important development projects demonstrate the importance of Resort Group Chairman Dr Wale Babalakin (SAN), who turns 60 on July 1.

    A development-minded doer, he was on familiar turf at the 2019 annual lecture of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) in Lagos, where he spoke on “Infrastructure Development and Growth in Nigeria: Prospects and Challenges.” Babalakin shared some of his group’s experiences concerning the Murtala Mohammed Airport Domestic Terminal 2 (MMA2) and the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

    He said MMA2 “was built against the run of play, those who gave us the project did not want the project completed… How do you cope with that?” He continued: “It’s been 12 years since we completed MMA2 and no government… has done anything comparable.

    This is because infrastructural development is… about serious commitment and a lot of intellectual rigour.” ”The Lagos-Ibadan expressway project is unthinkable,” he said. ”We signed the contract in 2009 to design, build, operate and transfer… they terminated the concession for lack of performance without disclosing to the public that they had held us down for 22 months.” Babalakin added: “It is sad that seven years after the project was cancelled, the road is only 40% ready.

    They are building 40% of what we wanted to build and the project has no design. It is just a repeat resurfacing of the 1977 road. The architecture of that place has changed phenomenally since 1977 and our design accommodated all the changes… Our total cost was N112b. Now, over N350b has been spent on 40% of what we planned to build and they are still at 40%.” In 2017, when the Federal Government announced plans to concession 22 airports, Babalakin observed that “our eye-opening effort had led to the upgrading of some airports in Nigeria and the decision of the Federal Government to concession airports.” Minister of Aviation Hadi Sirika recently received the Outline Business Case Certificate of Compliance for the concession of Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano International Airports from the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC). ”With these certificates of compliance we will go ahead to the Federal Executive Council for approval for the full business of concession to proceed and that will turn the airport terminals to their full potential in private hands…” Sirika said.

    It remains to be seen whether the process and the outcome of the agreements would advance public-private partnership. It will take much more than words to achieve public-private partnerships that work; and it is only when such collaborations work that the country can enjoy the benefits.

    Babalakin is a consistent and convincing advocate of the public-private partnership approach to development. Guided by personal experience, he listed the enemies of public-private partnership in Nigeria  at the 2016 Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, including the attitude of the government, lack of respect for sanctity of contracts and the rule of law, lack of investor security, corruption and malice.

    His thoughts on the country’s underdevelopment are thought-provoking. “When we break down the issues, we’ll see that what we are suffering from in this country is a very deep level of ignorance,” he stressed at the CIBN event. He argued: “In the course of the evolution of the country, we got our educational system wrong.

    So you have a system of education that doesn’t teach people what they should be asking for. They don’t even know what their rights are. You can go through primary, secondary school and university today without knowing that it is important to have a clean environment. “You could go through these whole processes and not realise that the government owes you anything.

    You could go through these without knowing that it is fundamental to building a society that we all learn to tell the truth and you say you want to develop infrastructure. Where do you start from?” He illustrated the problem with an anecdote: “Last week, I had a meeting somewhere in Surulere on Ajao Street. I got there at about 1:30pm.

    The water level was about one and a half feet and I saw students returning from school rolling up their trousers and wading through the water. I saw mothers doing the same thing and they were smiling all the way because really, they don’t believe it’s anybody’s responsibility to ensure that the place is drained. “They believe it is their lot that they found themselves there and God can by miracle take them out and they would not look back. They would expect the other people too to go and pray to God to take them out of the situation.

    When you have that level of lack of demand or any form of entitlement, how do you begin to drive the system? How do you start?” This lesson is about development consciousness.  When the people are development-conscious, they will understand that it is their responsibility to ensure that the government lives up to its responsibility.

    In November 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari lamented that N1 trillion had been earmarked for constituency projects in the last 10 years without visible grassroots benefits. National Assembly members in the period were to blame, according to an investigation.

    Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Chairman Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye said: “Constituency projects are intended to be developmental, such as provision of water, rural electrification, rural clinics, schools, community centres and bursary for indigent students. ”In the light of annual budgetary allocations to constituency projects and based on actual releases by the government, it is firmly believed that the impact of constituency projects on the lives of ordinary Nigerians ought to be more visible…

    The concern is that in Nigeria, rather than address the needs of constituents, many constituency projects have become avenues of corruption.” Development is human-driven, just as underdevelopment is human-driven.

    The point is that constituents affected by undelivered constituency projects should demand explanations from their representatives. When the people ask questions about underdevelopment, the government will need to provide answers to underdevelopment. “The Nigerian system today is still very pedestrian.

    We haven’t started the race,” Babalakin lamented at the CIBN event. This is food for thought as the country struggles with underdevelopment. It is noteworthy that Babalakin was born three months before Nigeria’s independence from British rule on October 1, 1960.

    He champions development by constantly highlighting the difference between development and underdevelopment.

  • Buhari’s moment

    Buhari’s moment

    By Sam Omatseye

    The understated man of the hour is not George Floyd, who could not breathe. But M.K.O. Abiola, who stopped breathing over two decades ago. It is not because of June 12. The conferment of the public holiday is a local validation. For this hour, Abiola is a world hero. But few remember this, just as racial amnesia make white men and women of prejudice balk at the crumbling of statues dedicated to personages of tyranny.

    Few know that Abiola was the moving spirit of reparations for Africa as far back as 1991. He did not yell here alone. He took the fight to the United States and the United Nations. He set up an office coordinated by Frank Igwebueze, and his newspaper The Concord megaphoned the agitation. The Congressional Black Caucus hosted him a few times. A man of money, Abiola mobilised men and resources for this cause.

    Abiola was an unlikely man to be a hero of democracy. He profited from the state. He was a military fellow traveller, and he was derided early as a bemused icon of western imperialism. He ran for president hoping it would be easy. Those who appended his ambition thought he loved life too much to give a fight. Heroes, as history has often shown, do not come in neat packages. The military elite and his mockers in the civil society hardly expected that not a Gani Fawehinmi or Alao Aka-Bashorun would lead the country’s rumble for liberty. He did not only fight. If freedom mat-tered here, Abiola became a martyr. But he was an accidental hero. But he embraced both accident and heroism.

    In the case of June 12, Abiola turned an accident into a cause. But with reparation, he turned out to be the champion with a self-conscious zeal. Two news stories put this in perspective last week. One, the Bank of England confessed to its role in funding the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Two, Lloyd’s also owned up to providing insurance to ship human beings from Africa via England to the Americas.

    These are institutions that fattened on racial misery. Abiola knew this as a business man. He said the west should pay. He wanted to visit the iniquities of their fathers upon the children. Whites and the west heard but did not listen. They looked the other way. Abiola saw it before others. He did not abandon it, and he expected to use the scaffolding of the Nigerian presidency to evangelise the idea. Just like many things African, we can be our own worst enemies. We obstructed him to obstruct us.

    This is an opportunity for the Buhari administration. It can take advantage of the fever of black rights in the world to push Abiola’s idea on the world stage. Happily, he has an asset beside him. His chief of staff, Ibrahim Gambari, can serve as the point man of this move. He is as qualified as any man, any black man in the world to raise the attention of the world to the notion of Africa reparations. He has been foreign minister and has been in the United Nations and has been in the epicenter of some of the tumults of world events.

    Ibrahim Gambari

    But it will not be about the reparations alone. It will be a ballast to address the question of racism and pull down the infrastructure of prejudice. With Gambari, the president can mobilise world bodies, tap into the race momentum in the United States, rekindle the subject with the Congressional Black Caucus, liaise with the European Union, seek the endorsement of the black mayors and governors in the United States, the African Union, the United Nations, et al.

    President Buhari gave Abiola June 12 holiday. It is his asset and project. He can ride this to a lofty one, and make a leader on the world’s stage. As an elderly man, he will earn the attention of leaders like Macron. As the leader of the world’s largest black country, his words will compel the world.

    The world has not addressed black violence, especially slavery, other than abolish. They did not want to abolish it out of charity. To quote my teacher Professor B.O. Oloruntimehin, “the abolition of slave trade was an act of enlightened self-interest by the Europeans to give the Africans a new role in the international economic system.” They did not love blacks. They loved money. They set the black free to make money. It’s in that age that Poet Lord Byron wrote of a Russian autocrat that he had “no objection to true liberty, except that it would make them free.”

    Nigeria ought to play a greater role in today’s world than it does. The distraction of local politics could be one factor. We can recall the days of Murtala Muhammed when he gave an enduring speech on Angola and Africa. Murtala soared, “Africa has come of age.” It was a resonant moment. We cannot forget, too, when Margret Thatcher, the right-wing firebrand, invited Botha to Britain. It was Buhari’s first advent as Nigerian leader. He fired a virile letter to the British leader warning her of the consequences of inviting the leader of an oppressive regime to England. It was a proud moment in Nigerian diplomacy.

    He can do same today. This time the stage is grander, the struggle heroic, the honour high. I can see no other country more worthy of this fight and leader with the buoy to do it. Such a fight will keep the world leaders talking, questioning themselves, and challenging themselves.  Buhari will become the world’s statesman, a stage that a Mandela would have sought.

    The issue of race has never been addressed in a world conference. There has never been a truth and reconciliation moment on race. We need a world protocol of race such as the Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. We can set all this in motion. With Gambari beside him, President Buhari can take the chance.

    “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world,” declared Archimedes. Buhari has a chance to be the world’s first citizen.

     

  • Of men and statues

    Of men and statues

    By Sam Omatseye

    I saw with pleasure the fall of a Belgian leader’s statue. King Leopold instituted what has been known by some historians, as well as political philosophers like Hannah Arendt, as the African Holocaust. They used African labour to enrich their decadence. It was a precursor to the Jewish tragedy. The West denied this by erecting the statue for a man that a historian described as “a big minded man in an insignificant kingdom.” He shipped Africans to Belgium and paraded them like museum pieces for fellow nationals to view. Joseph Conrad wrote The Heart of Darkness to document white savagery in the Congo in what he described as the “merry dance of death and trade.”

    Yet, that novella painted Africans as savages, cannibals and belonging to the “night of first ages.” It is another little pesky western monument that should go down and deleted from what is called “the western canon” of literature.

    As Achebe noted, it is a racist work. Western critics continue reading it as though blind. They hail it as a work that skewers the malignancy of commerce and hypocrisy, and they read it so selectively. It is the kind of mind that accuses us of oversimplification for attacking Leopold and Cecil Rhodes, who also fomented the holocaust in southern Africa. But how do we address men like Jefferson, who turned a black slave into a mother?  Washington kept slaves even if he set them free after his death. Do we bring their monuments down?

    I think of Winston Churchill, too, who helped save the world from Hitler but did not want to end colonialism, called Ghandi “a half-naked kaffir,” and told Roosevelt, “I did not become the Queen’s first minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire.” Some did well, their statues should remain with notes of what they did wrong. “No man’s virtue is complete,” wrote Playwright Bertolt Brecht.

    In the same fashion, as we fight for such justice, we cannot forget our role in slavery. Or else, we shall be waging a hypocritical war. Some historians said Africa had a tradition of slavery but our slaves had rights. Nonsense. We played a role in selling Africans to the Europeans.

    Who were the Ijebus who sold weapons so fellow Yoruba could kill themselves? Historian I. A. Akinjogbin warned against romanticising our past by denying our role. Men like Kosoko did it.

    Niger Delta was a hot bed of it, a thing I explored in my novel, Crocodile Girl, now being read in schools. If we own up, then we can hold them responsible. Things fell apart because of the white intruder, and the correction lies in the hand that committed wrong: the West.

  • Obaseki’s obsession

    Obaseki’s obsession

    By Femi Macaulay

    It was an egoistic move, fuelled by an obsession. It is obvious that Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki left the All Progressives Congress (APC) and joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) because he desperately wants a second term in office. If political realities in APC had not brought him to his knees, he would not have left the party that brought him to power.

    Suddenly, Obaseki is in love with a party that was in opposition to him and his administration.  ”The PDP in my view has demonstrated and shown that it is a party that is rooted in democratic practices. The party that believes in justice and fairness, a party that respects its people,” he said when he visited the party’s secretariat for his formal registration.

    He added: “I am very happy to be here, the reception I have received since I drove in here has been ecstatic, the energy I see in this party is the kind of energy I require to take Edo to the level we should go to next. So, if indeed we have done anything in the last four years, you haven’t seen anything yet because with the quality of people I see here, the energy of the youths I see, by the grace of God victory will be possible.”

    His move suggests that he is an adventurer seeking political power wherever it may be found.  His defection exposes his desperation for power.  His words to the contrary ring hollow:  ”For me, this fight is not about grabbing political power, it’s not about me; it’s not about trying to prove a sense of importance…”

    Instead of wailing about his disqualification from APC’s governorship primary election, which inspired his defection, Obaseki needs to look in the mirror.  He will see that the things he said about the party’s screening process, after his dramatic disqualification, ironically describe his own governance style.

    The governor, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Communication Strategy, Crusoe Osagie, described his screening as a “mockery of democratic process” and “an unfortunate, disheartening and dreadful spectacle.”  He also said it was an “open display and enthronement of illegality,” and called it an “open show of shame, illegality and travesty of justice.”  He described his disqualification as “unjust,” and accused the APC’s National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, of “maladministration of the party.”

    Talking of democracy and democratic process, Obaseki conveniently forgot his spectacularly undemocratic role in the sidelining of members-elect of the Edo State House of Assembly, who were members of his party but not in his camp, and were loyal to Oshiomhole, also a former governor of the state and his political benefactor with whom he had parted ways.

    After a deliberate delay, he eventually transmitted a letter of proclamation to the clerk of the house, which was necessary for the inauguration of the legislature.  However, only 9 of the 24 members-elect, loyal to Obaseki, were first inaugurated, then 2 others, all in June last year, in questionable circumstances.

    With the deliberate exclusion of the others, who were not inaugurated, Obaseki’s loyalists took control of the legislature.  What could be more undemocratic than such weakening of a critical arm of government in a democracy?  It is noteworthy that the political crisis in the state worsened in December 2019 when the House of Assembly declared vacant the seats of 12 lawmakers-elect yet to be inaugurated.

    Suddenly, Obaseki remembered democracy when the governorship primary election drew near. He was ready to do anything in order to get re-elected for a second term. He showed his desperation by choosing Governors Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Lagos), Simon Lalong (Plateau) and Senator Ehigie Uzamere to work out a peace deal with the sidelined legislators-elect.   ”The exclusion of the… members-elect is one of the issues behind the virtually intractable crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC),” a report said.

    Why did Obaseki wait till the approach of the governorship primary election, scheduled for June 22, and the party’s decision to conduct a direct primary election, which he was opposed to, before trying to normalise the anomalous situation he had helped to bring about in the state legislature? His wailing after his disqualification shows that he has not been looking in the mirror. It may well be that he reaped what he sowed.

    He has a right to seek re-election. But should he do so at any cost? He plans to contest the state’s governorship election in September as a PDP candidate, to prove that he can win without the APC support that initially brought him to power.  Could he have become governor without APC backing in 2016? Why is he confident that he can be re-elected without APC support?

    Obaseki’s defection means he will work against the party that brought him to power, with the power of incumbency which he owes to the party that brought him to power.  Surely, this is politics without principles.  ”A principle is a principle,” says Mahatma Gandhi, “and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice.”

    If Obaseki wasn’t so desperate for power, he should have resigned himself to his failure to get the APC’s support for his second-term ambition.  When he won the governorship election as an APC candidate in 2016, he should have known that winning is not a permanent condition. Now that he cannot be the APC’s governorship candidate this year, he should learn from his failure.

    Does he think it is shameful to be a one-term governor? The question is: What is Obaseki’s legacy?  Speaking holistically, his performance as governor hampered his second-term aspiration. He may believe that he did well as governor. But did he do well as a party man?

    He will face more image problems because of his unprincipled fixation on a second term. He is too obsessed with power to learn the lessons of power.  He should be licking his wounds after his political humiliation in APC, instead of jumping to PDP where he may be further humiliated.

    He should be told that illumination is often accompanied by blindness. The perceived plus of his defection prevents him from seeing the minus.

  • Persisting COVID-19 pessimism

    Persisting COVID-19 pessimism

    By Emeka Omeihe

    Keen observers since the outbreak in this country, of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will admit high level of publicity and public sensitization on the dangers of the scourge. The media are suffused with materials on the reality of the pandemic, its dangers to human co-habitation, the high death toll in various parts of the world and the fact that no known cure has yet been found for the viral disease. Varying media strategies are on ground to drum into the ears of the public, the lethality of the pandemic and the protocols to navigate out of danger.

    The country was put on total lockdown for months with movements restricted. This virtually paralyzed all human activities with heavy toll on business and commercial engagements. The lockdown is gradually being eased to enable life resume. The cost of all these measures, threatening to throw the nation into recession, is quite huge.

    Yet, the government had to do what it did to save human race from extermination given the mode of transmission of the viral disease. It would have been inconceivable for the government to have opted for these far-reaching and costly measures if it did not believe in the mortal danger the spread of the viral disease represents. The wide publicity the pandemic has attracted is part of the commitment of government to give a rounded attack to the viral disease.

    It was in part, on account of this that speculations arose recently on the huge sums of money spent on publicity by the Presidential Task Force PTF on the pandemic which they have denied. Ironically, despite all the efforts to sensitize the public with all the protocols to stay safe, there still exists a wide gamut of doubt within the larger society on the reality and overall management of the pandemic. Why this has remained so is as curious as it is troubling.

    This trend can even be discerned from publicity messages by relevant organs and agencies of the government in both conventional and unconventional media platforms. It is also evident from the ambivalence of a great percentage of the population to the protocols to keep the disease at bay. The same tendency is no less perceptible from raging doubts on the reality of the pandemic despite escalating infections across the country. As at Thursday last week, the figure had reached 18, 480 with 745 cases recorded that singular day, the highest ever since the outbreak. This raises questions as to whether all the sensitization programs are really making the desired impact.

    A perusal of the print and electronic media quickly throws up such messages as “Corona virus is real”. You will also be confronted with an array of protocols to stay out of danger including social distancing, staying at home, wearing of face masks, regular washing of hands etc.

    You will also see messages drawing similarities between the symptoms of malaria and Covid-19 but with marked dissimilarities in the different agents that cause them and the fact that while the former cannot spread from person to person, the latter does. These are also being reinforced by testimonies from survivors, all to draw closer the reality of the pandemic.

    A classic case came from Delta Government House, Asaba last week when two prominent sons of the state came public to testify on their experiences with the disease while in isolation centre. The two survivors: Austin Eruotor and Jerry Azinge were unanimous that Covid-19 is real even as they urged the public to strictly adhere to the relevant protocols for protection and to curb the disease.

    But they had their different experiences and manifestations of the disease symptoms. Eruotor who was the index case in the state faulted those who think COVID-19 is malaria because of the symptoms. He said while in the isolation centre for 36 days, the virus was moving all over his stomach to the chest and that he was in oxygen for five days before he stabilized. Eruotor touched on the crux of this essay when he said “my coming out to share my experience is because many people still don’t believe that COVID-19 is real. I am a testimony”.

    In his own case, Azinge narrated how he got infected and was quarantined at the FMC isolation centre, Asaba for 18 days. He said he did not have difficulty in breathing or eating but was always tired and had difficulty in standing even as sleeping was difficult all through the night. He had fever also. “So because of the differences in the manifestation of the virus on victims, some people doubted its existence. It is real” Azinge said. It is obvious the two cases were selected to capture some of the issues at the centre of the raging doubts on the reality of the viral disease.

    All these underscore a groundswell of public doubt on the reality of the pandemic. So many people including well educated people still live in self denial of the reality of the pandemic even in the face of daily escalation of infection rate and the attendant death roll. Why this has remained so despite facts on the ground and events around the world remains largely puzzling.

    The growing disregard to protocols since the ease of the lockdown is an indication that many are not taking the matter as seriously as they should in a life-threatening situation. You will even hear people openly passing all manner of negative remarks against the reality of the pandemic, the advertised infection rate and it overall management.

    This writer decided to probe further the source of the prevailing doubts by interviewing some citizens. The following is the outcome of the conversation:

    Question: Is corona virus real. If it is real what is the source of the doubts by some people?

    Answer: the respondent who spoke on condition of anonymity said “I believe the viral disease is real”. The world all over is battling with the disease. If advanced nations such as the United States of America US, Britain, France and Germany etc can be so overpowered by the pandemic with huge death tolls, it smacks of ignorance for someone here to still nurse doubt on its reality.

    Many of us know there is Covid-19. But many people do not trust the government and its officials. It is this distrust that is rubbing off negatively on the campaign. One major source of this doubt is the figures being rolled out by the PTF on the number of those that have tested positive.

    Asked how figures on COVID-19 positives, those discharged and the death toll constituted a problem, he said the way they emerge seems like figures are being allocated. “You find a state that previously had no incident of the virus, all of a sudden coming up with 30 or more cases. We did not hear of three of five cases before the sudden escalation. Were all the 30 cases tested in one day or what?

    Another respondent who simply identified himself as John said governments are responsible for the regime of doubts. We hear a lot of stories about the use of donations to COVID-19 Relief Fund. People have been demanding accountability on the disbursement of the funds as well as the disbursement of the N20, 000 stimulus packages for the poorest in the society by the ministry of humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development. The inability of the minister to publish beneficiaries in their website, creates doubts on some of the things we are being made to believe, he said.

    For David Mong, the government should go beyond the figures and publish the list of those that have tested positive. Many of us cannot point at someone we know suffering from the viral disease despite the high number of those that are said to have tested positive. When reminded that our laws do not permit of such disclosures on health matters of citizens, he quipped “but they can narrow the areas of high infection to make it believable”.

    Yet, there are others who believe the high figures are invented by government officials to ‘chop’ money. The later rely on claims by some of those who had been to isolation centres that their results were manipulated, the altercation between the Kogi State government and the PTF and the non discovery of a single positive case in Cross River State to sustain doubts on the reality and management of the pandemic.

  • COVID-19 and job loss

    COVID-19 and job loss

    By Emeka Omeihe

    Things will not be the same even when the corona virus COVID-19 pandemic has been substantially tamed.

    Social relations, ways of conducting businesses and life generally will still be heavily influenced by the lingering impact of that viral disease.

    We have seen its devastating effects on the lives of the citizenry, exposing the vulnerability of a health care delivery system that has over time, been neglected and starved of the needed investments.

    The world economy was shutdown to restrict movements and general interaction given that the virus is largely transmitted through human contact.

    Though a nexus exists in the protocols for the containment of the pandemic by countries, their effects differ between and among countries.

    So it is with us here in Nigeria. The shutdown has brought with it serious challenges for the nation’s economy.

    Our productive sector was put on hold for a couple of months. But the contradiction between continued shutdown and the imperative of survival led the government to a gradual and phased reopening of the economy so that life can return.

    We are approaching the third phase of the ease of the lockdown even with infection levels still escalating. The situation is still very fluid.

    It will thus, appear hasty to start estimating the overall impact of the pandemic on the Nigerian economy. Nobody knows for certain when the scourge will be over, its overall toll on human lives and the larger economy.

    But estimates by the International Monetary Fund, IMF, which put global recession above three per cent as a result of the pandemic, give a grim picture of the emerging scenario.

    The figure could be much higher for Nigeria with weak structures and weak institutions.

    No doubt, COVID-19 has triggered serious crisis within the public health sector with debilitating effects on the Nigerian economy especially with the sharp drop in the price of oil in the world market.

    Given the centrality of oil in the revenue profile of the country, reduced revenue earning is bound to take a negative toll on all sectors of our national economy.

    This is already evident in the sharp rise in inflation with the concomitant fall in the value of the naira. It is also manifest in the wave of retrenchments and salary cuts going on within the private sector.

    The private sector has been badly assailed by the fallouts of the shutdown occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Perhaps, the banking industry is among the very few currently (albeit temporarily) spared of the gale of retrenchments and salary cuts pervading the private sector.

    The Central Bank of Nigerian CBN and the Bankers’ Committee had to wade in to suspend retrenchment or layoff of any staff of banks whether full or part time.

    This followed feelers that banks were about to retrench. The CBN said it took the measure to minimize and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on families and livelihoods. The apex bank requires its express approval to be sought if such layoffs become absolutely necessary.

    Before the CBN action, Group Managing Director of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe was reported to have mulled the bank’s planned mass retrenchment of its workforce on account of the COVID-19 lockdown.

    He had said via a video conferencing in a town hall meeting with staff that most of those to be affected by the retrenchment are outsourced staff and those offering non essential services.

    But its permanent staff is not completely left out as the bank also intended to effect pay cuts across the board. Wigwe rationalized the proposed action on some of the measures occasioned by COVID-19 including the fact that some of the bank’s branches’ will remain closed till December. So, “everybody may have to make some adjustments of some sort”, he reportedly said.

    Access Bank may not be alone in this predicament. Perhaps, the only difference is that it was the first to voice out the dire straits in which the banking industry has been mired on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Perhaps also, the timely intervention of the CBN has not allowed the true picture of extant challenges of the banking industry consequent upon the corona virus pandemic to emerge.

    But they can be discerned from the frustrations of customers desiring banking services.

    Social distancing and some of the protocols to stem the pandemic have led banks and other business concerns to evolve new ways of doing business.

    These are bound to activate some form of business and organizational restructuring with fewer people at work stations. There appears to have emerged a new normal within the banking industry.

    While some bank branches are yet to fully open for business even with the ease of the lockdown, others have had to make do with skeletal services as staff are rotated every other day. Yet, some other staff members operate from their homes.

    These measures are beginning to define the way banking business is conducted both within the period of the pandemic and thereafter.

    One thing that remains certain is that things are not going to be the same for the banking industry. Before now, technology had taken much of the job of human capital in the banking industry.

    Increasing reliance on digital technology and e-banking had already pruned down labor force within the industry very substantially. This trend is bound to be given added fillip by emerging events as banks battle to remain in business.

    The CBN order may have given temporary succour to workers in the banking industry. This is understandable given the spiral effect of unrestrained retrenchments on the national economy at these perilous times.

    But for how long will the CBN sustain this directive without putting the operations of the banks in jeopardy? To what extent can we obstruct the dynamics of demand and supply as major forces in determining efficiency in commercial organizations? These are the issues to contend with.

    It would seem the CBN is not oblivious of this interplay. That is why it left a window requiring banks that find it absolutely necessary to retrench to get its express approval.

    That may as well be. The reality however, is that banks are not faring well in the face of the pandemic. This is not peculiar to Nigeria as global trends bear it out.

    Unemployment and job losses have shot up globally in the wake of the pandemic. Latest figures from the US Labour Department (as of May, 14) showed that 36.5 million American citizens filed unemployment claims since the pandemic forced the shutdown of the US economy.

    Additionally, the overall unemployment rate shot up to 14.7 per cent in April, the worst figure on record since monthly jobless statistics began to be compiled in 1948. That is the story of the US.

    The reaction of the US government to such emergencies saw to the deployment of public funds to bail out ailing industries.

    It called this into action to save the automobile industry, the banking sector and others from insolvency during the financial crisis of 2008.

    That government has reportedly injected $2 trillion bailout funds for companies to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

    Just last week, the World Food Program of the United Nations warned that COVID-19 may lead to loss of 13 million jobs in Nigeria.

    This figure paled into insignificance when Vice President Osinbajo led Economic Sustainability Plan Committee told the nation that COVID-19 pandemic has caused 33.6 per cent astronomic rise in unemployment indicating that 39.4 million people will be unemployed by the end of 2020 if proactive steps are not taken to arrest the situation.

    That says it all. Job losses in all sectors of the national economy are palpable. It requires the direct action of the federal government through bailouts, injection of huge funds and investments in the productive sectors to stem the looming gale of unemployment.

     

  • Don’t cry, Mr. Godwin

    Don’t cry, Mr. Godwin

    By Sam Omatseye

    The Yoruba folk tale reminds one of Godwin Obaseki and his court jesters. It is about a swaggering elephant and the choir behind him. They tickle him with their songs of praise, the drum rolls and the dances. His head dizzy, he feels like deity in the confetti of flattery. The elephant swings right and left forward in slow, majestic strides.

    “We are behind you, keep dancing ahead,” they reassure him. As he advances, he is not looking forward but at himself, impressed by the finery of his apparel and the bouquet of applause.

    Suddenly, he reaches a precipice and falls over. Before he knows it, there is no more choir, no more drum rolls or applause. All silence. He alone, crestfallen, wounded, comically belly up.

    Edo State Governor Obaseki is in such grand deception. He still struts in denial. He thinks he is just. His flatterers and court jesters inflate his pride. The screening committee belongs to Beelzebub. He will meet them, like Caesar, in the Battle of Philippi.

    His story is not new in our politics. When Timipre Sylva was governor of Bayelsa State and eyed the second term, he was at odds with President Goodluck Jonathan and his cabal. They did not want Sylva to have a second term. They also deployed the National Working Committee against him, but in a different manner. He could run, but he could not win. They invoked the police, air force, army and navy. It was a farce of force, an onslaught to win a nomination. This column wailed and chided. The journalism world, dead from the neck up, even kept mute in complicity. The PDP did not care about law. They had force and they used it. It is the tyranny of democracy. The system lied against itself. The elephant fell over the precipice. It was a republican carapace covering a stench of dead men’s bones.

    In the case of Obaseki, he inflicted his own woes. Why is he blaming the screening committee for lack of fairness? Did the committee ask him to get his name wrong on the NYSC certificate and made no effort to correct it? Did they ask him to make only three credits in his school certificate exam? Or did they ask for the inconsistencies in his university of Ibadan degree? By the way, I thought he attended Edo College, because I saw a picture a few years ago with Nduka Obaigbena – also an old boy of Government College Ughelli – and  Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa. He presented a certificate from Eghosa Anglican Grammar School. Is it also his fault, or that of Adams Oshiomhole, that he lost his certificates and the court registrar could not vouch for any sworn affidavit?

    The issues at stake are grave for Obaseki. It is not about APC. It is about the Nigerian constitution. He is expected to present genuine certificates or evidence to INEC and later, if challenged, to the court of law. Happily, the law does not expect him to have a university degree. He is supposed to scale secondary school. He might do that. That will mean he will have to contend with the issue of his NYSC certificate, and pray that the courts will accept that Obasek is the same as Obaseki. The avenging angels of technicality are fluttering above.

    It is not a matter of whether he served but whether he served right. The law has its way of defining justice. It may be justice on the streets. It may not be in the vault of law. If Obaseki indeed did well in high school, the law did not see it. If he did well to enter the university and the law did not see it, who will see it? It is not a matter of who is on Obaseki’s side or Adam’s side. It is who the law sees. The constitution prevails. That is the definition of the rule of law. That is why Douri is governor today and not Lyon in Bayelsa State.

    If he decides to apply this time through another political party, and does not present his certificates for university and higher school certificate, et al, Obaseki will unwittingly confirm the conclusions of Adams and the screening committee and make them heroes. That will make Obaseki disingenuous and make mockery of his own mockery of the process that disqualified him. If he presents the same papers and affidavit in another party, he will go through the same questioning that gave him the red card in APC. The worst is if he wins in a guber poll and has to go through the courts and meets a Napoleonic waterloo.

    Whether he goes to PDP, or SDP or any party, he will have to contend with the same issues that have led his flatterers to cry foul. The matter will not only become a technical goblin for Obaseki but also a moral one. Is he sincere or is he dodgy? The public will face a candidate who will not only answer the lingering question of an ungrateful beneficiary, but whether he told the law the truth or told the public a lie.

    So I ask, if he knew he had all these chinks in his armour, why did he go to battle? If you knew you had certificate booby-traps and a big mole in the eye, why dangle the dagger? He had seen this in the same party, in Bayelsa, yet he did not settle in silence. Maybe he thought he had a charmed life. He was following the lines in scripture that says, “Blessed are those whose sins are covered.” His sins were covered once, and he became governor. He ripped it open of his own accord and exposed a leaky sore. He did it when he ordered Adams to seek permission to enter his state, when even a farmer does not need it. He banned gatherings, hectored the opposition, sacked party members, banded with the opposition and supped with Oyegun. He began with a kangaroo legislature. He wanted to be a constitutional emperor. He speaks good English but lacks the polish of his sentences.

    He did not learn from Ambode. “To stumble twice against a stone is a proverbial disgrace,” crooned Cicero. He thought he could be king in a democracy. Napoleon’s mother told her son that kings will always remain with us in different guises. Obaseki probably thought he would be Oba Ewuare the Great in the 21st century.

    This essayist painstakingly reported how efforts towards reconciliation took place between stakeholders and Obaseki. This included fellow governors, men of means and lawyers. Obaseki would not listen. At a certain time, when all the parties gathered for him in Abuja, he had flown out of town. I made this revelation in this column, but rather than being solemn, Obaseki sent his errand boy after me on this page without addressing the reconciliation efforts I reported. When the fire came, he started seeking the help of those he pooh-poohed, including fellow governors.

    If he has a way out, this essayist will wait and see. But the man has shot himself in the foot. He is limping, but he thinks he is dancing.

    Uncle Sam’s birthday

    Sam Amuka turns 85, and we should all raise our glasses. Let the teetotaler fill theirs with brandy, and let the alcoholic fill theirs with soft drink. He is an iroko of news and the written word. Small of size but a walking monument, Amuka’s name rang in my ears when I was a little boy from the lips of my late father Moses. He called him Sad Sam, and he enthused about his capacity to writhe and write. He kept date with his column.

    Amuka-Pemu

    Today, I still look at him with veneration and even more now that I know what he has done for the media, the written word, publishing and democracy. He has a sharp tongue, wry wit and an amiable spirit. His sense of humour is boyish, his smile is supernova and his scolding penetrating. Today he is patron of the profession. We all appreciate him that he continues to look younger than his age. He is also an old boy of Government College Ughelli, and I was told that he was a superb ball juggler and played centre forward as a lethal striker. He carried that arsenal – no gunner intended – to the topsy-turvy world of journalism. Congratulations, Uncle Sam.

     

  • A non-existent state

    A non-existent state

    Femi Macaulay

     

    It is thought-provoking that two law courts, in three years, rubbished the construction. “State of Osun” does not mean Osun State, according to the courts, and the constructions should not be used interchangeably.

    The latest rejection of the construction happened on June 3 when Justice Mathias Agboola of the Osun State High Court, Osogbo, declared that, legally and constitutionally, “State of Osun” did not exist. He also declared that, under the Nigerian constitution, only Osun State could be said to exist.

    According to a report, Justice Agboola, “while delivering a judgement in a case brought before the court by a lawyer, Mr Kanmi Ajibola, against the state government over a personal tax of N5.3m that the state Internal Revenue Service asked him to pay, said it amounted to ‘artistic colouration’ when ‘Osun State’ is referred to as ‘State of Osun’.”

    The report said: “Ajibola had approached the court to seek redress over tax demanded from him which he said was punitive because he usually held opposing views to those of the immediate past governor, Rauf Aregbesola.

    “The lawyer also urged the court to declare the law upon which the tax was based as illegal since it was a law made by ‘The House of Assembly of State of Osun,’ a body unknown to the constitution.”

    According to the judge, “The issue of Osun State and the ‘State of Osun’ is a loud one,” adding that lawyers working for the state should enlighten the authorities about the legal implications of referring to Osun State as the “State of Osun.”

    He, however, advised Ajibola to seek redress on the tax matters through other procedures laid down by the tax law, then if all failed, he could return to court.

    On the issue of the continued use of the invalid construction, the problem may well be unenlightened power. It may well be that the unenlightened are in power, and prefer the fog of unenlightenment.

    More importantly, in December 2017, Justice Yinka Afolabi of the Osun State High Court, Ilesha, “declared that the change of name to ‘State of Osun’ by Gov. Rauf Aregbesola is illegal, null and void.” Justice Afolabi “ruled that the law and its makers were unknown to the 1999 Constitution.”

    According to a report, “Delivering judgment which lasted more than one hour, the judge chided Aregbesola for deliberately and singlehandedly renaming the state, contrary to the known norms and the nation’s constitution.

    “He also declared that the makers of the law, who are currently serving as members of the State House of Assembly, were not sworn in as members of the ‘State of Osun House of Assembly’ but as members of Osun State House of Assembly going by the seventh schedule of the constitution.

    “The judge said that since the creation of the state in 1991, previous governments used the constitutionally envisaged name of Osun State. All the other 35 states of the federation, he added, had not deviated from the constitutional names given to them.”

    Justice Afolabi’s words: “The executive governor of the state changed the name in 2011. The renaming of a state goes further and deeper for anyone to singlehandedly do.

    ”To re-order the name of Osun State as ‘State of Osun’ is hereby declared as illegal, null and void.

    ”On the oath of allegiance, I want to state that the Seventh Schedule is part of the law.

    “It is not a mere draft or mere oath. It does not give room for any alteration. After deposing to an oath of office, you cannot turn around to do otherwise.”

    It is noteworthy that this case was also instituted by Ajibola, who had challenged the legality of the “State of Osun Land Use Charge Law.’’

    “Ajibola had gone to court in 2016, asking for certain reliefs after being served a notice by a private company known as ‘Interspatial Limited,’ “ said a report.

    “The notice was christened ‘State of Osun Land Use Charge Annual Demand Notice’ and signed by one Mrs A. Ogunlumade, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance.

    ”According to him, the notice was addressed to him as the property owner of No. 42, Onigbogi Street off Ibala, Ilesa West, and served on Aug. 15, 2016.

    “Some of the reliefs he sought for included a declaration that the ‘State of Osun Land Use Charge Law 2016,’ having been enacted by a legislative body that is not known to the constitution and the state not known to the 1999 constitution, be declared illegal and unconstitutional.

    “Ajibola also asked the court to set aside the ‘State of Osun Land Use Charge Law 2016’ having been enacted by a legislative body that is not known to the constitution and the state not known to the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).”

    The judge granted all the seven prayers of the plaintiff. After the verdict, Ajibola had said:  ”The judgement has pronounced ‘State of Osun’ dead and so be it.

    For now, the judgement subsists except there is any other contrary opinion by the higher court. The effectiveness of the judgement is still standing.

    As it is, all laws promulgated and businesses done by the ‘State of Osun’ have been nullified and it will be an act of illegality to use the name ‘State of Osun’ for any transaction.”

    But in an 11-page notice of appeal filed on January 4, 2018, at the Court of Appeal in Akure, the then State Attorney General, Dr Ajibola Basiru, raised eight grounds of appeal against the judgement, asking the appellate court to set it aside.

    The matter is still at the Appeal Court, which means that Justice Afolabi’s judgement invalidating the construction has not been overturned by a higher court.

    But “officials of the state are still using ‘State of Osun’ in their official engagements and communications,” according to a report. This amounts to disregarding the law.

    When then Governor Rauf Aregbesola introduced the construction, it generated controversy; and the court cases reflect the controversy.

    Only the former governor can say why he introduced the construction in the first place. It was a pointless introduction of a pointless construction.