The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • In defence of Ahmed Farouk and Malami

    In defence of Ahmed Farouk and Malami

    Nigerians are angry. For close to two weeks, they have agonized over Ahmed Farouk, ex MD of NNPCL and Abubakar Malami, the immediate past Attorney General and Minister of Justice’s alleged betrayal of sacred trust entrusted on them as public servants by the nation. The former was challenged over indiscriminate issuance of licences for PMS importation – an act, they said, could derail the government current drive towards energy self-sufficiency. He was also alleged to have spent about $5m school fees on his four primary school children in Switzerland. Such money, many have argued must be a product of corruption.

    The latter was accused of hiding under Buhari’s presidency to serve other tendencies. As a ‘charge and bail’ lawyer before joining Buhari’s crew of ‘loyal gatekeepers’, many are asking for the sources of his alleged stupendous wealth.

    For their ‘treachery’, the battle cry at home, on the street, in the social media and even in the hallow chambers of our National Assembly is “hang them”.

    But the problem is that we know that “hang them” is a language of those shut out of the system or those driven by greed. And since everyone seems to be angry with the Nigerian state, it can be said that there is a bit of Farouk and Malami in all of us.

     We rail at PENGASAN, IPMAN and DAPPMAN only because we don’t have the opportunity of becoming part of them. From ethnic nationalities, the owners of our society, whose arrogant spokespersons insist no one gets what they cannot get, to our political leaders who see Abuja as place for securing their own fair share of the national cake, and the governed, who swear at the politicians for not stealing enough monies from Abuja which they claim belong to no one, we have all betrayed the nation.

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    If you are in doubt, let us again take a short journey through memory. At the 1957 London Independence Constitutional Conference, two of the dominant ethnic groups, the Igbo and the Fulani, betrayed the minorities over creation of states. In 1962, they again removed one of the legs of a tripod holding Nigeria together. Between the census crisis of 1962/63 and massively rigged 1964 election, the remaining two wobbling legs of the tripod finally collapsed. With each group insisting no one gets what the other could not get, our politically naïve military was dragged into politicians’ battle for supremacy. The result was a civil war driven by greed but fraudulent fought in our name.

    In 1993, a jolly good fellow and a generous giver, MKO Abiola, a man without any ideological orientation made billions through Nigerian state and ITT. (We all remember Fela Anikulapo’s famous lyric “ITT: International thief thief”). But as a generous giver, he shared the fortune so cheaply acquired among Nigerians, building mosques, churches, hospitals, schools, sport centres across towns and villages in Nigeria.  Many analysts believe it was the secret of his landslide victory in 1993, defeating Bashir Tofa round and square even in his Kano stronghold.

    But the ruling Fulani hegemonic class in the north according to Babangida’s rain doctors did not want a Yoruba presidency. Arthur Nzeribe placed a paid newspaper advertisement declaring “Igbo will not accept a Yoruba presidency”, Evans Enwerem, who later became a senate president during OBJ presidency, issued a press statement declaring “Igbo will go to war if Abiola’s election is de-annulled”. Odumegwu Ojukwu’s opposition to Yoruba presidency was reported by the PM News of October 17, 1994 with a howling headline “Hang MKO Abiola, Ojukwu tells Abacha”.  Ojukwu later became Abacha’s ambassador to Europe to de-market MKO Abiola.

    If the federating ethnic nationalities have no faith in their country, it should not surprise anyone why their political representatives only think of what they can get out of Nigeria and not what they could do for Nigeria.

    For instance, all through the military era and up to 1999, there was a general consensus among Nigerians that NNPC had become a cesspool of corruption. Sanitising NNPC required our leaders political will, a virtue in deficit among our successive leaders.

    When the former CBN governor, Lamido Sanusi Lamido reported a possible disappearance of $20b not paid by NNPC into the federation account, during the leadership of Diezani Alison-Madueke as Minister of Petroleum Resources, who has since been indicted by both Britain and the US for money laundering, it was Sanusi that got fired by President Jonathan and replaced by an unqualified and incompetent Godwin Emefiele, a choice many argued was informed by ethnic consideration.

    As for the new breed politicians and new inheritors of power in Abuja, they made it clear it was time to recoup their expenses on the 1999 electoral battle. The PPPRA, with a staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy board of 49, earning a whopping salaries and allowances of N57 billion per annum became an instrument through which N1.7 trillion was stolen according to a House of Representatives probe report.

    As for the governed, the policy was ‘if we cannot beat them, we join them”. As fortune seekers in a world of the survival of the fittest, we try to bribe our way into getting our children employed by NNPC which pays salaries that will make our doctors and university lecturers green with envy. And once we get our children into NNPC or the CBN, we keep quiet in order not to get choked.

    When it comes to treachery against Nigeria, we are all tarred with the same brush. That a part of a whole cannot be holier than the whole was clearly demonstrated during President Tinubu’s inaugural speech. The address brought out the Farouk in all of us in bold relief. He had hardly finished saying “subsidy is gone” when PMS disappeared from filling stations across the nation. And where they were available, PMS procured at less than N200 per litre was going for N700. Retail prices for pepper, tomatoes, beans, corn went up as much as 500% within two days. In agrarian Ekiti State where farmers had abandoned farming and waited for pepper and tomato to come from the north, chiefs had to go to the open market to chide market women for their greed.

    The difference between Farouk’s case and Abubakar Malami is that having seduced Buhari by adding his divorced daughter, a mother of four to his harem, Malami was beyond reproach. And this was despite his efforts to confer constitutional rights meant for Nigerians on cows and mischievous attempt to equate criminal Fulani herdsmen who forcefully took over reserve forests in the south with documented legitimate Igbo traders and urban immigrants in the north.

    Malami’s current travail stemmed from the Cable’s December 22, 2017 publication of his attempt to appoint two Nigerian lawyers, Oladipo Okpeseyi, a senior advocate, and Temitope Isaac Adebayo, lawyers to the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) at a cost of $16m to work on a job already completed by another lawyer. It was for this reason, it was claimed, Kemi Adeosun, in April 2018 as minister of finance, refused to approve the payment of $16.9 million in fees to the two lawyers for the “recovery”.

    Besides recovery of assets, the current investigation is said to also cover probe of several bank accounts allegedly linked to the former minister, as well as his multi-billion-naira investments in Kebbi State.

    I think this is important because Junaid Mohammed once described Malami as “Kano charge and bail lawyer” who opted to handle Buhari’s judicial cases, pro bono, at a time Buhari had no money to pay lawyers.

    But today  there is a trending video of Rayhaan Group of companies described as the biggest private conglomerate in Nigeria, consisting of a string of luxury hotels, largest rice milling factory in Africa, Rayhaan Academy and newly approved Rayhaan University  and Security Companies, all managed by 29 years old Malami’s son.

    While we all agree Nigeria has become an orphan repeatedly pillaged by leaders of ethnic nationalities, politicians, pastors, Imams etc., I think the ongoing search for sponsors of terrorism should not spare the likes of Abubakar Malami. He might have one or two things to say about sympathisers and sponsors of terrorism in view of his defence of their activities not just in the north but also in the ‘reserved forest’ of the south. In retrospect, when one looks back at Malami’s endless war with Rotimi Akeredolu, the late governor of Ondo State over the illegal take-over of his state’s reserved forest by criminal herdsmen. It will appear Malami was determined to export northern tragedy to the south.

  • Sani and United States’ visa restrictions

    Sani and United States’ visa restrictions

    Fiery lawmaker, Shehu Sani wants Nigerians to stay at home and develop their country as a way out of the sweeping visa restrictions imposed by the United States of America (USA). But is that really possible given extant realities?

    The White House had in a proclamation published in its website barred 24 countries including Nigeria from entering the US as immigrant or on several non-immigrant visa categories, including-B-1(business), B-2 tourism, B-1/B2 (business and tourism), F (academic studies), M (vocational studies) and J (exchange programmes). 

    Before the latest far-reaching restrictions, there was an earlier partial one by the same government which was interpreted to apply to those engaged in religious persecution. But the latest one affects all categories of Nigerian visa seekers as can be seen from the listing.

    The US government cited security concerns, difficulties in vetting applicants and high rate of visa overstay by Nigerians as reasons. That was not all. They also referenced the activities of radical Islamist groups such as Boko Haram and ISWAP.

    Details listed in the overstay report showed that Nigeria recorded 5.56 per cent in B1/B2 visa and 11.9 per cent on F, M and J visa.

    A further breakdown of the countries involved in the suspension indicated that of the 24, Africa accounted for 17, Asia had three countries, the Caribbean/Oceania had three while the Middle East had one.

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    The disproportionate number of African countries affected by the restrictions must have led Sani to the conclusion that the way out is for citizens of these countries to stay at home, solve their problems and develop their countries. Its corollary is that the humiliating treatment they get is on account of the inability of their leaders to develop their economies. That goes without saying.

     It is doubtful whether Sani’s prescriptions can happen in the short run given that the world has become a global village with a greater level of interdependence among nations. Ironically, that global village is marked by glaring inequalities that are often to the disadvantage of the developing countries. That is why the US can wake up one day and bar countries from entry into its shores. But third world countries can ill-afford to initiate the same measures due to the fragility of their economies.

    When Sani said the message of the restrictions is that third world countries are not welcomed with an advice for them to develop their countries, he had proper reading of the restrictions.

    His position strikes at the heart of the glaring disparities between the developed countries and the less developed ones that compel citizens of the latter to seek better life in the former. But it is more of an indictment on third world leaders whose citizens flock advanced nations for the good things of life despite their huge natural potentials to transform their economies for the better.

    The rate at which citizens of third world countries flee to the advanced ones in search of better living standards has become a huge embarrassment. The media space is replete with Nigerians of all hue, seeking both legal and illegal means to leave the country because of the suffocating economic conditions.

    In Nigeria today, a family with people overseas irrespective of whether they left with any skill at all is considered a success. Not surprisingly, they return after some years to begin projects they could not have imagined before they left. This tends to spur others to seek avenues both lawful and the illegal to emigrate the country.

    But these unguarded migrations raise questions as to what has become of our natural endowments and why they cannot be properly harnessed for the greatest good of the greatest number of our citizens?

    When the US or any other country records a high rate of overstayed visas from national of third world countries, they cannot be blamed for taking steps to reverse the trend and protect their economies.

    Unfortunately, this thinking has led to the weaponisation of visas to deal with the less developed countries. Why not when their leaders are more engrossed with primitive accumulation of capital? The message from the US restrictions is clear: if you don’t like what we have done, stay in your country and develop it.

    But the restrictions have wider repercussions for the Nigerian economy and its people. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous Black Country with visible presence in all spheres of the US economy. Given the level of cooperation that has been existing between both countries, our citizens in all fields of the US economy; those seeking new visas and renewals will face stricter vetting, delays and even more denials. Their ripple effects are better imagined

    They will not only constrict opportunities for studies and exchange programmes, but go with the additional burden of criminal suspicion. It is not just good for the image of the country. The US or any other country is within its right to determine the kind of people it admits into its shores. But it must not be done as humiliation.

    Africa is hugely endowed by Mother Nature. But it has been constrained from utilising these natural and human capitals for the transformation of its people from hewers of wood and fetchers of water to modern living conditions. Virtually all social infrastructures have remained decrepit as leaders revel in sending their children overseas for studies even as medical tourism has become the fad for those controlling the affairs of the government.

    The US cited the activities of Boko Haram and ISWAP and visa overstays for their restrictions on Nigeria. That should not be surprising. Of recent, the country has been on the US radar for religious extremism. It’s designation as Country of Particular concern (CPC) with threat of military action, and, the recent visit of a fact-finding team are evidence of increasing US focus on the country.

    It should not be surprising that the restrictions mark the first steps in the chain of actions lined up for this country. But the US said the restrictions can be reversed if the reasons given for them are visibly addressed by the affected countries. That is a window for the Nigerian leadership. Even if it is possible to tame Islamist extremism, the factors that incubate visa overstays will continue to persist for quite some time.

    They are largely developmental; the inability of the government to create living jobs for the unemployed, non-functional infrastructure and politics of self, one’s family and the ethnic group. Nigeria must rise beyond these predilections to save its citizens the disgrace and humiliation they suffer in foreign lands.

    For now, our citizens will have to contend with the fallouts of the sweeping restrictions. Maybe, the situation will sufficiently challenge our leaders to address the debilitating cycle of underdevelopment that compels our citizens to flee to advanced nations and overstay their welcome. Then, the US or any other country will have little cause to tell Nigerians they are no longer wanted in their country. How soon that will happen?

  • Who poisoned Buhari?

    Who poisoned Buhari?

    The enigma that was Muhammadu Buhari sprung up again for reckoning. In his new book:  From Soldier to Statesman, Dr. Charles Omole intrudes on our understanding of the man. He thereby has nudged the tall, angular figure with an ascetic carriage and rare, beguiling smiles from the solemnity of his grave.

    From the grave? Great men do not rest in peace when they leave. They are summoned now and again for eulogies and more elegies. They return for a moment, a seminar, or a political event, a comparison, an inspiration, to rebury them, or to historicize them into heroes or villains. We distort their words, reappraise their deeds, send them to Golgotha and back. We cast them in our image by reimagining the past itself as though it is now.

    Men like Caesar, Solon, Napoleon, Mandela, Churchill, De Gaulle, Lincoln, Awo, Sankara, Lumumba rise out of their epitaphs to be redressed or perfumed. Also, Hitler, Pol Pot, Franco, Mobutu, Idi Amin, and the sawdust Caesar also known as Mussolini help illuminate us even when they pollute. So, Shakespeare may have overplayed the ritual of death when he wrote in Hamlet, “Goodnight, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

    No rest for Buhari this season. We have Buhari today back to the forge or forgery of a censorious nation. Omole’s book reminds us as Ralph Waldo Emerson does in his line that “there is properly no history but the biographies of great men.”

    Maybe Buhari was great. Maybe not. But two principal things strike one in that book, even as excerpts steal out to the public eye. First is the lament of his wife and former First Lady Aisha Buhari. And it relates to the man’s illness on the throne.

    Aisha said it all began when the former president abandoned his medical regimen because some of his folks insinuated that she wanted to poison him. A great charge that none of them have denied or even have tried to undermine. She said the regimen kept him in good health. But once he leaned to the so-called cabal, he abandoned the regimen, and his health began to fail him.

    Because of that he was out of the country for over 150 days. We recall that time as precarious for governance. Osinbajo took over and made a ‘royal’ misstep and fell into the doghouse of the power game. There were those who stoked underground intrigues and eyed a new berth as president for themselves. A certain small man from a power state up north and a certain mouthy man from the south-south were dreaming a tie-up as possible president and vice president. They are together again in a coalition in the same furtive game of futility.

    Meanwhile, stories of death or near so were exaggerating Buhari’s health. Not many of the intriguers were happy he returned to the éclat and applause of his adoring followers. But what bothers one is how a few advisers could destroy a throne because of their greed for influence and filthy lucre.

    They turned husband against wife because they wanted to turn a profit. They did. They twisted democracy in their own favour. They were political families and blood families against the greatest bond between two people: man and wife. They stabbed the first unit of the first unit of society in the country. Sociologists say the family is the first unit, and the president’s family is the first of the first units. One of cohorts, a fuddy-duddy, took over and felt entitled to hold court in Aso Rock as though elected. Another one, Abba Kyari even made himself NNPC board member and said with familiar impunity that it was Buhari who put him there to represent him. The chief of staff told the lie to Buhari, even when the president did not say so. He was the man trying to play double. He was a metaphorical Jibrin. The fuddy-duddy a family man; Kyari a political associate. Both led him to near death because they broke a family.

    Aisha was no goddess in Aso Rock. Neither did anyone expect her to be. But she was his wife. Before her, Yar-Adua had Turai as first lady who served as the garrison of the president’s heart. No cabal could push her down. She was the cabal, if there was one. In fact, a prominent woman today once asked in those days what Yar-Adua did to his wife that Turai would not forgive him but allow him to undergo public ridicule and trial? In other words, the man was dying, so why not let him go in peace rather than egg on the tempest of stories about his good health and return to power?

    Aisha irked the Cabal for trying to be the husband’s garrison. They took her down. She complained about Buhari’s lack of gratitude to those who helped him to the office after three tries. She was referring to now  President Bola Tinubu and many a foot soldier. But the man who mocked the other room would not listen. She also said her husband was listening to the wrong voices. She was challenging wickedness in high places and principalities in the vault of power.

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    She lacked Turai’s or Maryam Babangida’s influence with the man. She also did not have the wiles of the wives of ancient Greece and Rome, who turned themselves into matadors. It was because the man did not love his wife enough. He almost died because he abandoned his great asset. He had to return to her in a way because she resumed, in her confession, by slipping new medicines into his porridges. The man revived but time had been killed. “You can’t kill time without injuring eternity,” noted Thoreau.

    Losing over six months, of course, injured his legacy. How did that time affect his ability to operate with physical and mental confidence? How did that affect how he handled power, or ethics, or education or the other high imperatives of office?  We shall never know.

    So, if someone tried to poison Buhari, it was not the woman who revived her. In fact, we might say, the cabal poisoned him. They took him off work, derailed his focus and undermined his legacy. In the end, you will not blame the cabal but the man who made them his trust.

    The other point in the book was Dr. Yemi Osinbajo’s ambition. It is clear that he might have betrayed his naiveté. His team said he met Buhari about his ambition. To say he supported him showed the novice the former vice president was. If the man encouraged him to run, it did not mean he supported him. If he approved, it was not the same thing as endorse. Godfathers don’t ask anyone not to run. In fact, the father often is the initiator of the project. He clasps to his chest his favorite, and it was not President Tinubu. Tinubu was not naïve to rely on Buhari. Hence his Abeokuta rhetorical uppercut. If Osinbajo was wise, he was not street smart, nor politically savvy. He went to battle with a hole in his armour. The don was undone.

    He should have known that Buhari was propping up Lawal. If he did not know, he was not a politician. His associates, especially a professor, was gung-ho about Buhari’s support. The Katsina patriarch was cracking the nuts for the former senate president and Osinbajo thought himself the darling of the gods.

     He was entitled to his own failure as other hopefuls in the APC top perch who were hoodwinked and suborned into delusions of grandeur. The cabal filled its pouch. In that regard, though, Omole reveals nothing new.

    Omole’s book also shows that Buhari, for all the hero worship, was made of flesh and blood. And as Sophocles notes in his play Ajax, “He was just a man before this, wasn’t he?”

  • Fashola goes to court

    Fashola goes to court

    It was a brief moment on social media. Former Lagos State governor and minister as Trojan under Buhari, Babatunde Raji Fashola, appears in court. We do not know the case or the status of the client. It was just a sentence as the tall attorney rises to introduce himself. Here we have it. Fashola goes to court.

    It is interesting because the man has shown that real men can have a life outside politics. Political career is a good thing, and everyone with a social conscience should aspire to it. But it ought not be the be-all and end-all of a career. He has been in politics since he became chief of staff to the now president but the then governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. He became governor for eight years and minister for another eight approximately. He spent a huge chunk of his life in the arena.

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    He is a lawyer and good one at that, hence he is a SAN. Others should learn from him. One, having served in office, they can bring their acumen back to enrich the civil society. Two, many of them have acquired resources and ideas about a better society, and they mobilise them for good in charities for education, healthcare, environment, etc. such engagements can occupy them for a lifetime. Jimmy Carter is known for his work after he was president than his White House exploits. It is a pity that many of them think a reward for political office is another political office. Three, they should allow others a chance to try their talent as well. There is a certain selfishness that makes some of them angry when they are not called back for the meaty prize. They ignore their past privileges, the constipation of opportunities they have had, and they should bow for others.

    Aristotle noted that to enter politics one must have first done well in a profession. These days, persons leave school to become politicians.

  • A hydra-headed crisis requires a hybrid solution

    A hydra-headed crisis requires a hybrid solution

    “It feels as if I am in a film”– Hero of Russian Revolution on being arrested and charged with treason at the onset of the infamous Moscow Trials

    A week, it is said, is a long time in politics. For a nation in perpetual commotion, two months can feel like its eternity compressed into a self-detonating match box. But nothing lasts forever, not even relentless pains and inconvenience. In many societies, people have learnt to cope with stress by simply moving on despite the relentless rockets of adversity.

    Hence, the restless ambulations, the perpetual shuffling and shunting; the hustle and bustle of quiet desperation and the rush to go to nowhere in particular that one often encounters among the harried and harassed habitants of these places. It is a strategy of containment. Indecisions are often final and resolute irresolution helps to delay confrontation with angry demons that prey on the soul with malicious insistence. Ignorance is bliss and reflection is the enemy of contentment. What you don’t see or think about does not kill you and even if it does, it doesn’t really matter since you have already taken the antidote against remembering.

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      This is why in many societies, the seer and seeker after the bitter truth is designated as a troublemaker, an implacable irritant to be ignored or consigned away before the poison spreads. Unfortunately, no human society has ever progressed without confronting its demons. Human communities no matter how mismanaged and maltreated by their own have a way of communicating their sufferings and anxieties to some of their own. It is like a beating a person and asking them not to cry or complain. Tragically enough, only a few can recognize when a society reaches the limits of the elasticity of pains and trauma, or when the stress level becomes structurally unbearable and politically unmanageable.

      Writing is no longer pleasure. For this writer, it has never been. It is a painful burden; a harrowing existential struggle with the uncomfortable actuality of real existence where every word, clause and sentence has to be judiciously weighed and appropriated. There are times when words are more powerful and potentially more devastating than heat-seeking missiles. Unlike the pen-wielding mercenary who writes only for his pocket and for patronage and preferment, the true writer is often filled with caution and circumspection about the possibility of writing as a time-bomb except when the actual social condition has deteriorated into an active violent conflict.

    This is why sometimes the most active pacifists are often people who have seen actual wars or participated in widespread carnage. The gory smell of human blood haunts forever. This human propensity for unproductive warfare and senseless slaughter is what should be prevented at all costs. A famous Nigerian general and civil war protagonist once asked this writer how many of the notable self-determination activists can actually read the map of their immediate vicinity beyond their senseless haranguing.  But you don’t need to know how to read a map to dominate Sambisa Forest forever, or do you?

  • Still dancing on a volcano

    Still dancing on a volcano

    While signing off to go on leave in early October, this column dropped an audit of stress and a census of political apparitions haunting the nation despite the apparent tranquility. It is important to quote this piece at some length in the light of subsequent developments. Titled Still In Search of A National Consensus, it reads:

    The actuality has turned out to be more dire than the auguries. The sixty fifth anniversary of Nigeria has now come and gone. As it has been predicted, the national mood was sombre and subdued. As the day approached, the discerning could feel a thick pall of despondency in the air and an atmosphere of generalized desperation. It was as if the dispensing machines had run out of vending hope and optimism after a run on them. This is the staple fare of pain-killing morphine on which an embattled and embittered populace had depended on in sixty five years of trial and tribulation. But addiction to pain-killers, like the pain-killers themselves, often have their expiry date and time.

    One can always sense when something is about to go wrong in the polity. It is more of political training than intuitive or prophetic wizardry. A week after publication all hell broke loose  with the rumoured uncovering of a plot by some disaffected military officers to terminate the longest run of democratic rule in the history of the nation. The spate of official denial and confirmation of the coup bid by a significant section of the traditional and emergent social media ultimately led to a believability problem for the government. Until it was outgunned by unmanageable reality, it was obvious that the government was trying to minimize the political damage of the development before the international community and the severe consequences for the economy.

    After that, it is one crisis per day, with controversial ambassadorial preferment, the attempt to let off convicted criminals and the massive damage to the reputation of government, Dangote’s startling revelation and documentation of the rot in the oil sector, the rancorous disputation about genocide, America’s threat to give the country the shock and awe treatment, the aborted APC gubernatorial primary in Oshun State and the whimsical but mercifully botched attempt to promote the president’s ADC above his peers in obvious disdain for service regulations.

        It is a reflection of the enormity of the crisis that up till the moment of writing this, which is almost three months after the looming mutiny was averted, no attempt has been made whatsoever to bring the plotters before a board or to arraign them before a military court. It would appear as if the contradiction between the need to respect international scrutiny and the necessity of preventing a further deterioration of internal security through further disclosures has put the authorities in a tight corner. The government has been reeling from one problem of credibility to the other. It is as if the state is being put through the purgatory on a daily basis. Rumours of sharp policy divisions particularly between proponents of a drastic militarization of the campaign against insurgents and genocidal land-grabbers and advocates of a stick and carrot approach bordering on appeasement, waft through the airwaves on a daily basis.

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      At a point, the crisis and rumours of confrontation between ideologues of militarism and defenders of appeasement seem to have cost the last Chief of Defence Staff his job. But before the ink of dismissal had dried, the plucky general had been recalled to superintend the Ministry of Defence after the holder of the office succumbed to the presidential guillotine. If anybody was thinking that this was a policy rethink in which gung-ho militarism has triumphed over supine pacifism, the retention of an old conciliator and fingered facilitator of terrorism like Malam Matawalle as the subordinate minister in the Ministry of Defence and the survival of and expanding brief of General Musa’s old tormentors in the National Security Office reveal a presidency still playing the card of hegemonic ascendancy  in a way that leaves no faction in doubt as to who the master of the game and supreme law-giver is.

        Supporters and defenders of the president see in all this his astounding mastery of realpolitik and brilliant deployment of Henry Kissinger’s doctrine of balanced dissatisfaction which leaves all the contending factions going home with something while also feeling shortchanged and dissatisfied. As proof, they point at the great strides recorded in the economic sector, particularly the cooling of inflationary pressures, and recent successes recorded by gallant troops in confrontation with bandits and ISWAP insurgents. Speaking softly while carrying a heavy stick has its great merits and the country may be turning the corner in the long war of attrition against religious insurrectionists which began in earnest in 2009 with the summary execution of the leader of the Boko Haram sect.

      But many others see in all this the ultimate manifestation of policy flimflam and the triumph of a cynical transactional politics which bodes ill for the country because of its gutless amorality and total disregard for the organic ethos and principles of authentic nation-building. As proof, they point at the sharp erosion of social capital, the rising tide of insecurity country-wide, the dwindling legitimacy, the increasing resort to authoritarian tactics and the decline in popularity and mass appeal of the Tinubu administration.

       All this tells part of the story. But it doesn’t tell the whole story in its cussed complexity and contradictory amalgamation of the good, the bad and the ugly. Otherwise, how does one explain the strange ascendance of the ruling party and the emphatic dominance of the Nigerian political space and environment in a way and manner that has not been witnessed in the political history of the nation? It reads like political fiction or the fictionalization of politics.

    Something new always comes out of Nigeria. At the last count, only a few states remain outside the domain of the APC and they offer nothing but token twitches of resistance with the monstrous and unrepentant PDP dramatically unspooling even as ADC appears to have lost its verve, vigour and virility before the commencement of actual hostilities. That is despite the sharp deterioration in the living standards of many Nigerians, the acceleration of social, regional and religious divisions, the nation-wide advent of banditry and murderous insurgency that threaten the very foundation of the nation and the spectacular up-scaling of state larceny and theft of national patrimony.

     It is a strange and surreal development that a political party at the heart of this postcolonial heist can also be so widely favoured by the post-military political elite in a way and manner that it can now alter at will or whim the subsisting constitution on which the Federal Republic stands. Given the scale and scope of the fiscal misappropriation that went on under General Buhari’s lethargic and lackadaisical watch, it is now clear that the fundamental raison d’etre behind the linkage of South Western progressive forces and the conservative elements of the core north, which is the modernization of politics and the gradual abolition of the feudal economy of plunder and primitive rapacity, has fizzled out. In fact the mismanagement seems to have intensified with the perpetrators looking for the federal umbrella to protect their loot as intrepid attack traders from the South East sector of the emporium join the hymnal procession.

      The political process appears to be completely disembodied from the electoral procedure. National assembly seems to live in a world of its own, a somnolent political reverie that has created its own alternative reality. We have to look for another word for this strange disarticulation.  The sociological explanation for this can only be that rather than hanging separately the dominant categories of the Nigerian political class have decided to hang together. The possibility of multiple stress and strain leading to a catastrophic implosion cannot be ruled out of the equation since this is not a coalition based on authentic national consensus but a coagulation of vested interests and paddy-paddy politics with only the faintest possibility of rerouting the nation in the direction of accelerated political and economic development. Nigeria may then join Cameroons, Cote D’ivoire, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Rwanda in a continental trend showcasing sterilized gerontocracy and one-party-statism in which regime stability is more important than national cohesion.

      The elimination of the old and storied Nigerian middle class as a political force in active contention through deliberate pauperization and strategic disempowerment is fraught with consequences. Throughout modern history, the articulate and enlightened middle classes have always acted as a modulating and moderating influence on national politics often serving as a buffer zone between the heaving turbulent masses and the complacent and often acquiescent upper classes. Once the buffer is removed, it is a straightforward fight between the state and the street with no room left for parliamentary procedures. Twice in Nigeria’s history, during the Wetie crisis of the old western region and the epic struggle to de-annul the June 12, 1993 election, the middle-class intelligentsia found common cause with the lower masses at great cost to the Nigerian state whether civilian or military.

    The high octane volatility of the current postmilitary conjuncture, with its unabating crisis of political orientation, its highly polarized elite groups and the countervailing economic and spiritual cultures show just how difficult if not impossible for a one-party state structure and authoritarian tyranny to thrive or subsist for long in a nation that is an unwieldy amalgam of old empires, expired kingdoms and lapsed suzerainties.  The long process of acculturation and socialization in these old African formations has produced a variety of autonomous and highly individuated personality-types feeding on and off institutionalized memory to mount resistance and rebellion against the most vicious manifestation of personalized autocracy.

      After almost three years on the saddle and given his reputation as games master and wily strategist, it should be obvious to the president that the problems confronting the nation, particularly the intractable national question and associative traumas, require more visionary integrative and holistic solutions than mere political gaming. An organic crisis of the state requires an organic solution based on deep introspection and uncommon wisdom. The plethora of problems in the past two months and the unforced errors suggest the need for wiser counsel and quality consultation rather than self-isolation and hubristic one-upmanship.

      As he sets about extending his dominion over the Nigerian political landscape in his own idiosyncratic manner, one error the president must avoid is courting the ire or inviting the collective wrath of the already subordinated intellectual class particular the ones from his backyard. They fight like eunuchs who have nothing to lose, and rightly so. Having been forcibly divested of their stake in the wellbeing of the state, experience has shown that they remain past masters of protracted intellectual sieges which can be very unnerving indeed. A word should be enough for the wise. Happy Christmas to our readers.

  • Resignation isn’t enough

    Resignation isn’t enough

    Allegations against former NMDPRA boss, Ahmed, are too weighty to be forgotten simply because he has resigned

    Weeks before, there had been protests in mainly some northern states, clamouring for the sack of the immediate past Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, over sundry allegations of corruption. At the time, the question in the mouths of many was who were the sponsors of these protests, especially as it seemed many of the protesters probably knew next-to-nothing about the oil sector, upstream or downstream.

    We have seen many such protests in the country, whereby many of the protesters carrying placards would turn them upside down, suggesting they were stark illiterates who could never have understood the reason for their joining the protests beyond the stipend they would be given for participation.

    Despite the loudness of the protests, neither the Federal Government nor Ahmed was moved to action. Both went about their different duties.

    But all that was to change when Africa’s richest person and founder of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, joined the fray by making some grievous allegations against Ahmed. Dangote’s voice alone dwarfed the voices of the entire motley crowd that had been crying like John the Baptist in the wilderness. If the government did not hear, or pretended not to hear: not Ahmed. The former NMDPRA boss heard Dangote loud and clear, and immediately did what occurred to him to be the needful. He resigned. Thereafter, he tried to defend the allegations raised against him by Dangote.

    Indeed, his action reminded me of the expensive joke that one of my bosses at the then Kingsway Stores, one Mrs Dina, an Ijebu woman who was hardworking to the core, used to crack whenever any of us fumbled at work. ‘’Kingsway a koko le e lo, ki won to fi ‘we da e duro’ (Kingsway would first send you away before following it up with your sack letter!) 

    But why did Ahmed not resign all this while? Could it be that Dangote’s voice was likely to attract the attention of the government, in which case he could have been fired, instead of the opportunity he had to honourably resign?

    Just as we may never know whether we saw his exit at the time it came or not; we may also not know why he did not put forward his defence and stay put, if he knew he was indeed without blemish. Could he have reigned so that the government would simply close the case as usual and we move on? 

    Again, we may never have answers to these questions. What is clear at least as in the public domain is that he tendered his resignation on December 17, barely days after Dangote made public the damning allegations against him. A newspaper report gave what could be a possible clue as to why the NMDPRA boss eventually threw in the towel as it reported that the embattled Ahmed had earlier that evening met with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the State House, Abuja, for about 30 minutes.

    Read Also: ICPC invites Dangote over $7m school fees claim against ex-NMDPRA boss

    Indeed, the newspaper described the resignation as ‘’unexpected turn of events’’. Perhaps unexpected because people had all the while thought Ahmed enjoyed the support of the government.

    If Ahmed’s resignation was unexpected, then, how do we describe that of his counterpart at the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Gbenga Komolafe, who also turned in his resignation same day? Both Ahmed and Komolafe were appointed by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in 2021 to lead the two regulatory agencies created by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). Their tenure should have expired next year.

    However, if anyone had thought the government had been treating Ahmed’s matter with kid gloves, its swift replacement of the duo confirmed the contrary. Perhaps the government had only been shopping for their replacements all through the time it did nothing (at least in the eyes of the public) despite the cries for Ahmed’s probe and ultimate sack. This swiftness led to the president sending the names of two new chief executives for the NMDPRA and the NUPRC, namely: Saidu Aliyu Mohammed and Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, respectively. This is commendable, given their strategic importance in the oil sector. No vacuum should be allowed in such strategic agencies.

    If I had been ‘Ahmedcentric’ so far in this write-up, it is because, as I mentioned earlier, tongues had been wagging about Ahmed’s activities at the NMDPRA long before now. We have not heard that Komolafe did anything to warrant his sudden resignation alongside Ahmed’s. Moreover, as we would discover shortly, Ahmed’s matter appears hydra-headed or multidimensional.

    Komolafe’s case is particularly pathetic because he was said to have raised the bar at NUPRC. He was said to have embarked on a series of reforms that border on regulatory transparency, community engagement, investment confidence, industry performance and international engagement. From the time he was appointed in 2021, he succeeded in increasing the country’s active drilling rig counts from barely eight to almost 70 by October, 2025. His efforts were said to have paid off with approvals in investments and capital inflow. He also did well with community engagement and took measures that reduced crude theft.

    So, what could have led to his resignation?

    The only thing I heard was that it was done for ethnic balancing? I do not believe this. This is why the government itself has to shed some light on Komolafe’s dark deeds at NUPRC (if any), to erase any doubt of ethnic balancing. After all, a Yoruba adage says it is the finger that sinned that is cut off (ika to ba se l’Oba nge). I do not think it is possible for anyone to carry vicarious liability in this matter.

    Back to Dangote vs. Ahmed.

    Dangote in recent times has been at daggers-drawn with the NMDPRA and particularly Ahmed, its head, that he accused of sleaze and economic sabotage by undermining local refining capacity in Nigeria, especially through the unbridled issuance of import licences for petroleum products, despite the capacity of local refiners to meet the country’s needs.

    Africa’s richest person also raised what some people refer to as personal allegation against the NMDPRA boss. He alleged that Ahmed was living beyond his legitimate means, claiming that four of his children attend secondary schools in Switzerland at a cost of about $7 million.

    Dangote concluded that this kind of expenditure raised questions about potential conflicts of interest and the integrity of regulatory oversight in the downstream petroleum sector. He subsequently submitted a petition to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), calling for Ahmed’s arrest, investigation and prosecution.

    Ahmed, on his part, has tried to answer some of the questions raised by Dangote, particularly as they affect the education of his children. He said, “Three of my four children received substantial merit-based scholarships ranging from 40% to 65% of tuition costs.”

    Beyond these scholarships, he explained that his father, a businessman, established a trust fund for the education of his grandchildren before his death in 2018. Apparently, he is taking advantage of this as well as what he called support from extended family, consistent with traditional Nigerian values of collective investment in education.

    He added that when his three decades of accumulated savings (of about N48 million annually) and official compensation are considered, he cannot be said to be living beyond his means and that he has consistently declared his assets to the Code of Conduct Bureau since joining the public sector in 1991.

    For me, I do not see any reason why Nigeria should continue to import petrol at the rate it did even up till last month. In November, last year, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL) said it had stopped importation of fuel. Melee Kyari, its then chief executive officer, said “Today, NNPC does not import any product; we are taking only from domestic refineries.” 

    However, figures from the NMDPRA showed that NNPC Limited and other marketers imported 52.1 million litres of petrol daily in November, 2025, despite the fact that consumption fell to 52.9 million litres per day in the month, down from 56.74 million litres per day recorded in October. This amounted to 1.563 billion litres for the month. NMDPRA said this was done because local supply could not meet up with demand, and especially with the festive season around the corner.

    I know some people had invested in tank facilities during the period of fuel importation, but then, we can only try to strike a balance between their interest and the larger interest of the country. We cannot kill local refineries (just because of that), a thing we had been craving for, for decades.

    Of course, I am also not oblivious of the potential threat that a single dominant player in the sector could pose to the economy. Even at that, we have to see it in the larger interest of the economy while the government tries to do some balancing act to avoid this.

    To those who felt Dangote should not have mentioned the fabulous amount Ahmed allegedly spent on his children’s secondary education outside the country, because it is a personal affair, I think they missed the point. Dangote is a major tax payer; his Dangote Group paid N402 billion tax to the Federal Government’s coffers last year, at least as confirmed by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). Some other reports quoted N450 billion. Whichever, this is huge. He is therefore more than qualified to know how this is spent and should therefore not keep quiet when he feels a public official is spending above his means. Many public officials in Nigeria do. I do not think Dangote would have cited this if he had issues with a private citizen.

    And, to those who have always felt Dangote is allergic to competition. While I am not in a position to deny or admit this, suffice it to say that it is impossible for a man who has established a $20 billion world-class refinery of Dangote Refinery status to be a gentleman. This is much more so in our kind of clime where the oil sector stinks to high heaven, with people that had been creaming off billions of money meant for fuel subsidy after they had ensured that all the public refineries became either dead or comatose. That business is not one for gentlemen because the stench in the sector is almost pervasive; with, perhaps, none exempts. 

    My conclusion: Ahmed’s resignation cannot be the end of the matter; the allegations against him must be investigated in the interest of natural justice, the economy and transparency and accountability in public office. Nothing short of this would do.

  • Language Activism IV

    Language Activism IV

    English is the most dominant language in the world today but, it has to be said that it does not owe that dominance to any innate superiority over other languages. On the contrary, it owes that dominance both to an accident of history and the rise to prominence of the United States of America where English is the official language. Another factor in this saga is the extreme adaptability of the language as it can bend and sway in the wind with the best of them. It is also of course the current language of science even if Arabic, Greek, Latin and even German were more prominent in this regard in previous epochs. Right until the end of WWI, virtually all the best scientists spoke to each other in German for the simple reason that a great many of them were of German origin and the most authoritative scientific journals were published in that language. The equilibrium in this matter swung to English because, first, Germany lost that war and became impoverished. And then, the rise of Nazism in that country caused the best scientists, many of them of Jewish extraction, to flee the country, to the USA where they supplied both brawn and brain to the flowering of science, first in that country and then, the rest of the world. It has to be said however that the adaptability of the language lent itself to its global spread and was prepared to lend itself to this phenomenon even if it did not lend itself to providing scientific words. Given this background, I insist that any language, given the right push,  Yoruba,or any other local language for that matter may be adopted as a language of science. I have made this remark because, the collective loss of confidence which has afflicted us and all other African languages will not or never allow us to lay any claim to this accolade. But, it exists even if the will is absent.

    Going back a few centuries, it is clear that greatness was thrust on the English language. After all, it was a language not spoken in the power centers even in England. Their foreign overlords, the Norman, imposed their borrowed French on all aspects of the realm even as English remained the language of the common man in the streets whilst the rich and powerful in their castles and other points of authority conversed and governed in French. For example, it was not until the years towards the end of the fourteenth century that English was allowed into the legal system that governed the country. After all, the vast majority of those being tried in the courts were English and had no knowledge of French. To expedite matters brought before the courts, the English language was admitted into those courts, to stand side by side with French. By the early seventeenth century, English had advanced so long on the road to sophistication that it had become dominant in the land of its birth. It is also instructive to note that the constant wars against the French over a long period during which the English won some famous battles and controlled swaths of territory in France enhanced the growth of English. But, that is a long story and is not really relevant to this discussion.

    With the crystal clear quality of hindsight, it is easy to conclude that without Shakespeare and King John VI, of Scotland and II of England, the place of English at the high table of languages could not have been secured. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The man of the hour in the case of English language is William Shakespeare, often referred to as the immortal bard. His prodigious output of plays and sonnets speak for him in this regard. More than four hundred years after his demise, it can be said that there is no day that goes by without the performance of a Shakespearian play going on somewhere around the globe. That speaks for the sheer volume of his output but even more than that, it shows the freshness of the subjects of his plays which have been classified as historical, comical and historical, all of them based as they are on the universal human condition. More than this however are the words and phrases which were coined by Shakespeare and incorporated into the English language which in the time of Shakespeare was being transformed into Modern English which is more or less what is spoken all round the world today. Shakespeare was writing at a time when Modern English was emerging from Middle English but more than that, he personally coined and injected, some say, up to three thousand words and phrases into the English language. So many that not a day goes by without a regular English speaker anywhere in the world not using at least one of them. He, more than any Englishman, living or dead, has dragged the English language into the public square.

    Read Also: ICPC invites Dangote over $7m school fees claim against ex-NMDPRA boss

    The other man who has been associated with the rise of the English language is King James VI of Scotland and I of England. He did not add a single word to the language but it was he that ordered what has now been described as the authoritative translation of the Bible into Modern English thus enhancing the spread of the language not only within England but later within English colonies abroad. There was hardly any family in the realm which did not have a King James version of the Bible and for most people the Bible provided their first contact with the written word. It was therefore the means through which literacy gained some traction within the common people. The translation appeared at a time when the Church of England was being established and laid the ground for the traditions on which the Church has come to be associated with but the influence of this version of the Bible went far beyond the confines of the Church. It was immeasurably helpful in establishing the dominance of the English language. When we think of the activities of the missionaries who introduced Christianity to many parts of the world, it was the King James version (KJV) of the Bible that they took with them on their journeys.

    The Bible eventually reached the shores of Nigeria in the shape of the KJV but it was not placed in the hands of the locals. In any case since they were illiterate, doing so would have been a monumental waste of time. By 1884 however the KJV had been translated into Yoruba, primarily through the effort of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a returned Saro who had started the piecemeal translation of the Bible some thirty years before. The language of this translation can be described as Oyo-Egba, the dialect of Yoruba spoken by Ajayi Crowther, the first black Anglican Bishop. Prior to this period and even since then, the Yoruba language has existed in an impressive number of dialects. As soon as Crowther’s translation became available however, it became the arbiter of the Yoruba language throughout the length and breadth of Yorubaland, first among the educated and then throughout the rest of the population. This language as well as the various dialects of Yoruba are now under attack by the English language even though the English have nothing to do with what is going on. It is the native speakers who are refusing to pass on the patrimony of language to their children, forgetting that when children are not introduced to a deity, that deity soon withers and dies. However, it has to be said in the midst of this neglect, a sizable number of young people are searching assiduously for the deity of their language and finding it in all sorts of unexpected places including social media. They carry the heavy burden of expectations and are the ones that are primarily responsible for making sure that the lights will not go down on a proud language tradition, one which has been painstakingly put together by countless generations over thousands of years.

  • Revered (Sir) Remi Omotoso speaks on Ekiti Agro-Allied International Airport

    Revered (Sir) Remi Omotoso speaks on Ekiti Agro-Allied International Airport

    “To God be the glory, great things He hath done, so loved He the world that He gave us His Son, who yielded His life an atonement for sin, and opened the life-gate that all may go in” – Fanny Crosby(1875)

    It was a joyful moment for Ekitikete as the Ekiti Agro- Allied International Cargo Airport commenced commercial flights in grand style(ABUJA – ADO – EKITI) with all the four former governors of the State- Otunba Niyi Adebayo, Dr Ayodele Fayose, Engr Segun Oni and Dr Kayode Fayemi – on board. 

    It was indeed a moment of pride for all Ekiti sons and daughters as the United Nigeria Airline touched down at the airport and took off with passengers heading to another destination.  It was a beautiful experience,  historic and quite exciting . 

    With the airport in place Ekiti has taken a major leap in the quest for economic development.

    Thanks to God and  BAO’s transformative leadership” – a euphoric Funmi Bold on the Ekiti New Dawn WhatsApp platform.

    The Eagle has landed.

    And finally the much storied Ekiti Agro- Allied International Airport, Ado – Ekiti, received its maiden commercial flight to a euphoric welcome on Tuesday, 10 December, 2025.

    Nobody can legitimately begrudge any Ekiti man or woman today if he/she heartily bursts into the above song of gratitude in appreciation to God or  if we Ekitis choose to sing the most sonorous  of our songs to the various leaders who made this a reality.

    This is a project that has many shades and colours, and passed through various stages of acrimony before finally birthing in ultimate glory. God be praised.

    Commenced during the administration of Governor Kayode Fayemi as a dual purpose infrastructure, it has a 3.2 km runway facility and obtained the NCAA approval in October, 2025.

    Read Also: ICPC invites Dangote over $7m school fees claim against ex-NMDPRA boss

    One of the many phases the project passed through, though behind the scenes, was the mostly combative, absolutely politically motivated discussions that predominated our Ekitipanupo@yahoogroups.com web portal, comprising over 2000 Ekitis home, and Diasporan. Our

    debates were so acrimonious they remind me, uncannily, of promotion exercises at the Pre – Clinical departments of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ibadan in the 70’s, when two distinguished Nigerian professors of international repute – who will remain nameless here – headed the departments of Anatomy and Physiology, respectively, and

    no matter the brilliance of candidates from the other department you knew, apriori, what type of recommendation to expect from the opposing Head of Department.

    In our discussions, therefore,  your views merely reflected where you belonged in the state’s politics.

    However, one contributor differed, completely, from the ensemble as, even in all the ongoing cacophony, he took the professional path which is why his contributions are very vital, and relevant today, for both the Ekiti state government and, in particular, for those who will be responsible for the day to day management of the facility.

    That exactly is why Sir Remi Omotoso will be speaking to us today about the Airport. Yes speak, via his intervention to my article captioned: Still on The Ekiti Airport Project. His contribution was dated 7 November, 2019.

    Sir Remi Omotoso MFR, (1945 – 2020) was a true servant leader who poured out himself in service to God and humanity through institutions such as the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Unilever Plc, Odu’a Group of Companies, Standard Chartered Bank, Greenwich Trust Group, DN Meyer Plc, University of Ibadan, the Institute of Directors, Nigerian Institute of Marketing, Chartered Institute of Personnel Management, the Ekiti State  and his home community of Ayedun-Ekiti.

    He served without expecting anything in return, his  satisfaction coming from seeing people and processes improve, and knowing that the Almighty God would be glorified.

    He joined the Saints Triumphant on 5 June, 2020. Eternal rest grant him O Lord.

    Happy reading.

    My dear compatriots,

    In o kun o.

    I have followed with keen interest the various views expressed by many of our people. Some are for and some are against the establishment of an airport in Ekiti, everyone advancing reasons for position taken.

    In a democracy, this is what it should be: you talk and I talk and Democracy no go vex. However, a responsible Government under a worthy leader would take a decision on any matter, hopefully, in the best interest of the people.

    Let me state upfront that I was a member of the Committee set up by Dr Kayode Fayemi during his first coming to consider the pros and cons of having an airport in Ekiti. There was hardly any view expressed today that didn’t come up during our Committee meetings. Tope Porta’s views on this forum on the airport almost covered the views of those on the Committee who were opposed to the establishment of the airport. The views of Femi Orebe and Femi Ebenezer more than covered the views of the proponents of the establishment of the Airport. From outside of the Committee were also strong views. Late Prof. Mike Filani, a highly respected Transport Geographer didn’t  see the need for the Airport, at least for now. He didn’t see its viability from the passenger size and also didn’t seem to see the prospect of agribusiness so soon to keep the Airport alive and running. His views in my personal discussion with him was that the airport would only serve elitist interest and would be grossly underutilized. So, the Committee had a wide array of views to base its decision on.

    I must disabuse the minds of some of us who felt that Chief Afe Babalola who was Chairman of our Committee wanted the Airport ” tipa ti kuku”( by all means) for the relative comfort of the parents of the young students of the Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti ( ABUAD). Yes, this could be part of his interest in the airport but beyond that, Chief Afe Babalola has the largest private commercial agribusiness in the Southwest of Nigeria today. His mango farms which runs into hundreds of hectares will benefit from the Ado-Ekiti airport by way of export.

    As a member of the Committee,  I was the most vociferous canvasser for the airport to be established to be run largely as a specialised agric. produce cargo airport. I submitted that apart from Ekiti State, the west of Kogi, the south-east of Osun, and a good part of Akoko north-west will serve as good catchment areas for the airport, almost entirely for agro Cargo export.

    There has been the pessimistic question asked by those not in support of the airport: what and where are the cargoes? Here are the agro products:

          1)  YAMS.

    Today, Ghana is reported to be among the largest exporters of yams, largely  to the US. In 2016, Ghana exported $N27.5m and was reported to be the 6th largest exporter and holds 10..3% of world yam export. Ghana total annual production is put at about 6.6m/tonnes compared with Nigeria production of 32.3m/ tonnes but with no notice in the world market for export. 

    Yagbas in Kogi west and the Igbiras are great yam producers along with us in Ekiti North, Akoko Northwest and Northeast. A good proportion of  the 32.3m/tonnes must be between Benue and Ekiti and those locations mentioned in Kogi.

    Now, please, reacall that Gov. Sgun Oni established a Yam Conditioning Plant at  ILASA EKITI which was not completed  and commissioned before he left office. If the current Fayemi-led government gets this plant completed and put it to use through sale or lease to a private company, Ekiti would be ready to take over Ghana’s position in the world in the export of YAMS. The yams are airfreighted.

          2)FRESH PINEAPPLE FRUITS

    The market for fresh pineapple fruit export from West Africa is dominated by Ghana and Cote D’ivoire. I visited  Ghana some years back to find out more about the success of the country just to see how Ekiti can enter this lucrative business. All around Greater Accra, young families own, courtesy Govt empowerment program, each hundreds of hectares of pineapple farms cultivated under strict pytosanitary certification for specific offtakers. The offtakers also in collaboration with Govt ensure extension services are provided which assures consumers confidence in direct consumption without any further quality control. As at the time of my visit about 2011, at least a Boeing 737 cargo plane load of pineapple was exported daily from Kotoka airport.

    The demand for organic fruits is exploding in the  world and Ekiti stands to benefit from this development. Ekiti share same geographical and ecological conditions with the Pineapple producing region in Ghana. Add pineapple export to that of Yam and you will begin to see the viability of Ijan-Ado Ekiti Airport. There are more promising fruits from Ekiti  you can add to these because of their commercial potential.

           3) BANANA/PLANTAIN.

    The Ikere-Ilawe- Igbara Odo Axis has best clime and ecology for Banana and also plantain similar to what prevails in Ghana where export to Europe is thriving. If Govt helps to establish strains and off-taķers the business potential is huge. Obviously,  bananas are plantains are usually airfreighted.

         4) MANGOES and AVOCADOS.

    Oga Aare Afe Babalola has a large mango farm as part of ABUAD. I understand the mangoes ere of Israeli strain. When they are in full blossom, the Ijan-Ado road airport will be a huge advantage.

          5) CHILLI PEPPER.

    This is also in huge demand in the world market. This is a crop women deal in a lot. Some cooperative movement of a sort can engage in growing and processing for export.

    All these crops and more are more than enough to justify the establishment of a medium size cargo airport in Ado-Ekiti designed to be scalable with adequate cargo-handling systems and facilities.

    Ekiti is an agrarian, landlocked State. This should not disadvantage us if we embrace agribusiness seriously on an industrial scale. It should not be long before we start to add value.I saw an astonishingly beautiful factory in the outskirts of Accra where fruit COCKTAILS were being prepared and shipped out of Kotoka airport to various locations in Europe from where they are distributed to various food chains in those locations.

     Some have argued that AKURE AIRPORT can still serve the purpose of handling the business. I have my reservations on this. Akurr isn’t designed for Cargo handling.  Secondly, it has its drawback on cost of getting these products to Akure. In the cost configuration for them, freight is a key factor and can negatively affect competitiveness. The nearer point of production is to point of airfreight the better. It’s no brainer that yams will leave Ilasa Yam conditioning Plant and get delivered to Ado airport than to Akure airport located on Akure-Owo road. If I were involved in the business, I would prefer Ado. Apart from the cheaper transportation costs, Ado airport will  have holding facilities for my export haven been designed to handle agro cargoes.

    MY APPEAL TO EKITI  STATE GOVERNMENT.

    Please,  as the airport is being constructed, let adequate preparation be commenced to prepare the farmers that will produce the agro cargoes. The gestation periods of these crops must have worked into them land preparation, the selection and preparation of the farmers, their training and psychosocial conditioning. It should be possible for rhis new crop of farmers  to operate like any other businessmen and women without being isolated in farm settlements. Contiguous farms will promote experiential learning and information sharing among the farmers.  Selection of Extension Service providers should start at the right time, that is at.the time of seeking offtakers and strains of crops to focus on. Govenment should be responsible for procuring phyto sanitary certification from the offtakers.

    Let me dare to recommend that the selected farmers.should be exposed to practices in Ghana, Cote D’ivoire or Kenya and a few of them to the offtakers as well as the food chain stores and direct consumers. The success of Unilever in its various markets is the attention paid to training of the employees, knowledge of the market and consumer behavior and preferences. Nothing happens unless people make them happen.

    So, as work goes on in the construction of the Airport, work goes on regarding growing of the crops and their packaging. When the airport is ready, there should be cargo to push through it.

    I am passionate about the Ado-Ekiti Airport, just as I am of the emerging opportunities in the exponential growth in agribusiness in Ekiti. I look forward to the day I will shop for organic fruits and yams in Eirope and America and find the label;.PRODUCE OF EKITI, NIGERIA or PROUDLY EKITI NIGERIA. 

    Nothing would befit the memory of our late compatriot more than for  governor Oyebanji to carefully distil Sir Omotoso’s seminal article, and allow the suggestions therein, guide him, first and foremost, in the formulation of the policy guidelines which will propel its operations as well as in his choice of the individuals who would be in charge of the Airport’s management.

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAO

    Here’s wishing our Omoluabi Governor Abiodun Oyebanji of Ekiti state happy birthday and many happy returns as he turns 58 today, 21 December, 2025.

    Yours has been a journey in humility, grace and service to humanity.

    May the good Lord continue to keep you and all yours under His canopy of all – round peace. Amen.

  • The Omole Exposé: Nigeria’s reckoning with institutional failure

    The Omole Exposé: Nigeria’s reckoning with institutional failure

    Charles Omole’s newly launched book on the Muhammadu Buhari presidency titled  “Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari,”has detonated like a carefully placed charge beneath Nigeria’s political establishment. Though my ordered copy remains in transit, the reverberations from its revelations—and more tellingly, the reactions it has provoked—tell us everything we need to know about the fragility of our governance structures and the dangerous personalization of power that continues to plague this nation.

    The allegations and disclosures reportedly contained in Omole’s work have sent shockwaves through political circles, not merely because they are sensational, but because they apparently lay bare the fundamental dysfunction at the heart of recent Nigerian governance. The book’s reception, characterized by defensive outrage from some quarters and knowing nods from others, reveals a nation that has become dangerously accustomed to leadership opacity. What the reviews and public discourse since it’s launch demonstrate is that Nigeria remains trapped in a vicious cycle: we elevate individuals, even those not elected to positions of immense power, grant them near-imperial latitude, then express theatrical shock when we discover that unchecked authority has been exercised in ways contrary to the national interest.

    This pattern must end. The Omole book, whatever its ultimate historical verdict, serves as yet another clarion call for the structural transformation of Nigerian governance. We must transition from a system that allows individuals to set themselves up against the nation’s interest—whether through incompetence, malice, or the simple reality that power without institutional constraints inevitably corrupts—to one where robust institutions provide the guardrails in preventing such a concentration of power on individuals.

    The case for institutional deepening in Nigeria is not abstract theory; it is existential necessity. Consider what apparently transpired during the Buhari years: decisions made or deferred, appointments that privileged loyalty over competence, policy paralysis masked as integrity, and the concentration of power in informal networks rather than constitutional structures. These are not failings unique to one man or one administration—they are the predictable consequences of a system designed around personalities rather than processes.

    Strong institutions would have prevented many of the alleged missteps documented by Omole. An empowered civil service, insulated from political interference, does not wait for presidential whim to implement policy. An independent judiciary, properly resourced and respected, does not allow executive overreach to go unchallenged. A legislature conscious of its co-equal status does not rubber-stamp executive proposals or remain silent in the face of governance failures. A free press, protected by law and practice, does not wait for post-tenure exposés to reveal what should have been reported in real-time.

    Yet Nigeria’s institutions remain weak by design. We have created a hyper-presidency where success or failure hinges almost entirely on the character, capacity, and circle of whoever occupies Aso Rock. This is not governance; it is a lottery, in local parlance it is kalokalo and governance has become similar to a set of odds. And the Nigerian people, regardless of ethnicity, region, or religion, deserve better than to have their futures determined by chance.

    Which brings me to Nasir El-Rufai’s response to the Omole book—a response that, despite coming from a man I admire greatly for his intellect and administrative competence, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of democratic accountability.

    El-Rufai’s criticism of the book appears to rest on several premises, all of which deserve interrogation. The first seems to be that there is something inherently unseemly or disloyal about former insiders publishing accounts of their time in government. This is untenable. When Muhammadu Buhari—or any Nigerian—chooses to seek and accept the presidency, they voluntarily enter the public sphere in its most intense form. The office belongs to the people, not its temporary occupant. Everything done in that capacity, every decision made, every word spoken in official capacity, becomes part of the public record and subject to public scrutiny. This is not cruelty; it is democracy.

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    To suggest otherwise is to argue for a cult of silence that protects power from accountability. It is to claim that those who serve in government owe greater loyalty to their principal than to the Nigerian people who are the ultimate employers of every public servant. This is precisely the mentality that has enabled decades of unaccountable governance.

    El-Rufai’s second apparent premise—that such accounts are not balanced and that the book was meant to serve the interests of one faction against the other faction—is equally flawed. Nigeria cannot afford to wait for a village/ umunna / kindred  meeting of sorts between these factions before one can give his verdict, particularly when the consequences of governance failures are being lived in real-time by millions struggling with insecurity, economic hardship, and diminished opportunities. The urgent work of learning from our mistakes, of understanding what went wrong and why, cannot be postponed for the sake of seeking balance which may not occur on its own, it takes the efforts of persons like Professor Omole to do such and perhaps provoke the other side to air its own story.

    El-Rufai ought to have suggested that those with alternative accounts should write their own books.  The marketplace of ideas works best when multiple perspectives compete, when different participants in the same events offer their interpretations, and when the public can weigh competing narratives against available evidence. Omole has contributed to this marketplace; others, including El-Rufai, should do likewise rather than attempting to delegitimize the very act of bearing witness.

    But come to think of it, can Nigerians ask El Rufai if he sought this balanced point of view when he published his book the “ Accidental Public Servant” that is with barbs and the exposures the book exhibited? Haba Sir!!!

    Moreover, the Omole book, from all accounts, is not a simplistic character assassination of Buhari as a person or leader. It is, rather, an attempt to document what occurred during a consequential period in Nigerian history. That the buck stopped at Buhari’s desk is not Omole’s invention—it is the constitutional reality of presidential systems. If uncomfortable truths emerge from that documentation, the appropriate response is not to shoot the messenger but to grapple with the message.

    The fundamental issue revealed by this entire episode transcends Buhari, Omole, or El-Rufai. It is this: Nigeria will not progress significantly until we stop organizing our political life around the mythology of the strong man who will save us, and instead build institutions strong enough to constrain bad leaders and enable good ones. We need systems where competence is rewarded over connection, where merit trumps loyalty, where processes matter more than personalities.

    This means constitutional reforms that genuinely distribute power. It means judicial independence backed by budgetary autonomy. It means a professional civil service with security of tenure. It means a legislature that understands itself as a check on executive power, not an adjunct to it. It means transparent processes for appointments, procurement, and policy-making. It means protecting whistleblowers rather than persecuting them.

    Until we undertake this institutional reconstruction, we will remain trapped in an endless cycle: messianic expectations, inevitable disappointment, recriminatory revelations, then the search for the next savior. The Omole book is merely the latest chapter in this tragedy. Let it be a catalyst for the fundamental change we desperately need—the building of a republic that works regardless of who temporarily leads it.

    Merry Christmas my dear readers, may the joys and hopes cradled in the Christmas Story be ours as a nation and a people.