The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

Defections: Why APC should be worried

At the last count, following a series of defections, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) now unassailably dominates the Nigerian polity with 25 state governments out of 36, 76 senators out of 109, and 231 House of Representatives members out of 360. Instead of that domination being weakened or overthrown before 2027, the party may even get more entrenched. The reason is not far-fetched. Firstly, the party has remained cohesive, disciplined and not averse to extraordinary and heroic policy risks that have benefited the states. Secondly, and in contrast, the opposition parties have lacked cohesion and charismatic leadership. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) convulses with internal dissension, almost completely destitute of discernible leadership. The Labour Party (LP) has lost the only defective compass its former presidential candidate, Peter Obi, lent it. And the African Democratic Congress (ADC) of former vice president Atiku Abubakar hangs precariously on the horns of a dilemma, its main financier unsure whether the mule he is riding is not in fact lame of feet.

It may be convenient for the opposition, singly or combined, to denigrate the APC and accuse it of cajoling defectors into the ruling party, but the truth is far simpler than that. The defectors are making rational choices for political survival. Events of the last few months in the LP and ADC, not to say the past two weeks in the PDP, suggest that the defections were rationally instigated even if not morally justified. The defections may, therefore, continue apace if the opposition parties continue their dithering. With or without further defections, the APC already commands and rules the roost. But often, unassailability breeds complacency. Yet, that is not the APC’s worst fears. The danger lurks within the darkened recesses of the souls of a beaten opposition that sees no hope for the future. They will go for broke. They fear that in 2027, even if the APC does not make a clean sweep of its 25 states, and its overwhelming lawmakers do not stamp their authority on their constituencies, the party would still win with a healthy margin, the election metaphorically completed months before the first ballot is cast.

He that is down needs fear no fall, John Bunyan says in The Pilgrim’s Progress. The opposition will, therefore, embrace any tactic, any plot, any underhand dealing to destroy the whole building, not caring whose ox is gored. Going by the animosity the defections have already stirred, and the abuse and the agitations, worse should be expected than just mere propaganda damage to the APC, its candidate, or the nation itself in the months ahead. There are too many powerful interests in the polity, among traditional institutions and security agencies, being systematically dismantled by the ongoing reforms. Those who find themselves holding the short end of the stick will lash out furiously using any means possible – street action, defamatory propaganda, economic sabotage, and even domestic and international religious agitations. The opposition will not be neatly delineated, and may defy regional and faith boundaries, but they will manifest with similar and remorseless intensity. Four years after 2027 would seem to the opposition like a century away, a time lag they are not prepared to tolerate.

The 2027 presidential election primary will be conducted in some six or seven months. The LP is unlikely to get its act together before then. Mr Obi has given up on the party and is fishing for a collegiate of parties upon whose scrawny necks he hopes to find political fulfillment. He will be lucky to cobble that collegiate, and even luckier to get the inspiration and the acumen to run a hydra-headed party looking in different directions at the same time. Carrying out that task is certainly beyond his ken. Last week, in defiance of the law and the courts, PDP leaders tried to force a consensus on their party in order to forge ahead. It was left stranded, apoplectic and defiant by a few court judgements that interrupted its efforts. The party must now race against time after having dug its heels in by conducting a convention barred by the courts and following it up by sacking more than a dozen key factional leaders. It’s a cul de sac, and worse, in a few months, it must conjure magic to organise a primary. But with no outstanding leader with the heft and money to walk his talk, it is beginning to look like the party will need a miracle to transcend its abysmal limitations and self-destructive predilections.

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Until Alhaji Atiku finalises his membership of the ADC and brings all speculations and insinuations to an end, the special purpose vehicle he and his cohorts have acquired for his presidential ambition will work in fits and starts. His men are tired of his vacillations, not to say his obduracy, and have begun to wonder whether it would not be wise of him to back a younger, more enterprising, and perhaps more charismatic southerner. But the former vice president has not exorcised his messianic bent nor acquired the visionary depth needed to plan his political future. For now, he will stick to his guns and tower above the party.

With no party capable of overthrowing the APC, and no aspirant in sight gifted enough to outmuscle the APC candidate and sitting president, the only choice left to the opposition will be to go incredibly nasty. In the months ahead, and shortly before the next polls, they will exude such nastiness that the country has never before experienced. And as the APC continues to win off-cycle elections to the consternation of the leading choristers of the opposition who had confidently predicted otherwise, the stage might be set for truly desperate measures, some of which may skirt dangerously on the margins of treason. That is what the APC must worry about, not about whether it can win or lose the next elections. The defections have all but assured a great outcome in 2027. But the defections have not guaranteed that the turmoil the opposition will engineer will not push Nigeria to the edge of disaster.

November 16, 2025
Genocide: NSCIA misses the point

The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) did not receive sound advice on how to respond to the Christian genocide charge raised by United States president Donald Trump against Nigeria. As many commentators have noted, and as condescending as the US president’s warnings and language were, in no part of his cryptic messages thundered a little over two weeks ago on social media and press conferences did he give the impression he would fight Muslims, let alone Nigerian Muslims. The Council, however, assumed that judging from Mr Trump’s bellicosity and his decidedly pro-Christian stance, the message could in fact signal a subterranean war against Muslims. The Council’s fear is exaggerated and sadly revelatory. Paragraphs after paragraph unintentionally peeled away layers of obfuscations and hidden affiliations in the NSCIA statement. In one breath, the Council debunked the Islamic identity of the jihadist groups laying Nigeria waste, and in another breath, the statement virtually but inadvertently owned the militants. Yet, as demeaning as Mr Trump’s message was, his warning was about coming to Nigeria to deal with Islamic terrorists, a group the Council correctly admitted had killed nearly as many Muslims as it had murdered Christians.

In their very first paragraph, the Council unfeelingly tries to controvert Nigerian Christians’ belief that they are victims of genocide. Couched disingenuously, the statement insists there is no religious war, insisting that Muslims have on their own been silent over the killings of their brothers. There are, however, better and non-combative ways of scripting their conviction without seeming to lack empathy for Christians in the North and Middle Belt who are being displaced from their ancestral lands by groups of insurgents deceptively or conveniently fighting under the banner of Islam. The statement appeals to the emotions of patriots in paragraph two and attempts a definition of genocide in paragraph three, both striving to debunk the claims of genocide. Paragraph four is even more justificatory of the NSCIA position, while paragraph five seals the tonal deafness of the Council’s argument. Both paragraphs unfortunately show that the Council’s premises undergirding its responses to Mr Trump’s provocation are irredeemably defective.

Paragraphs six and seven, which reference the background of the terrorists wreaking havoc on Nigeria, are nugatory. The NSCIA says the terrorists are deviants who do not represent Muslims, adding that they are also the ‘mortal enemies’ of Muslims. If someone promises to help get rid of the vermin, why be up in arms against the helper then? And in paragraphs eight and nine, the Council attempts a dispassionate analysis of what it terms the ‘drivers’ of terrorism in Nigeria, to wit, the economy, climate change, and alienation caused by poverty, mining corruption and all kinds of criminality. The Council is right; but why go the extra length of arguing over a threat Mr Trump has directed not at Muslims generally, but at terrorists?

The next 10 paragraphs or so are devoted to exploring the arguments regarding the domestic and international dimensions and beneficiaries of the Trumpian view of terrorism in Nigeria and the best approach to dealing with the crisis. Apart from being tedious in absolving mainstream Islam and putting all the blame on deviant Islam, the NSCIA also embarks on selective laudation of Christians who have taken the pains to debunk the regnant opinion in the US about Christian genocide in Nigeria. It is completely unnecessary. It is also not clear why the Council should delve into the geopolitics of Mr Trump’s campaign or his domestic political agenda, not to talk of trying to make sense of the international economic dimension, particularly what kind of economic alliances and arrangements Nigeria is deemed free to enter into.

But when in paragraph 23 the Council casually and carelessly declares that there is no religious intolerance in Nigeria, it takes dishonest analysis to its acme. The facts on the ground in many northern states is that there is palpable religious intolerance, and it is probably this intolerance, not to say the initial apathy to the depredations wrought by Boko Haram against Christians in the North, that formed the basis for the Christian genocide conclusion. Many Nigerians have observed that some states in the North, probably as a result of the myopia or populism of their political elite, have become a vast tapestry of religious intolerance. Why the NSCIA fails to at least acknowledge the fact of religious intolerance in parts of the North is hard to explain. Whether the Council likes it or not, years of intolerance and denying Christians their constitutional rights in some states in the North probably or partially encouraged terrorists and jihadists to pretend to fight under the banner of Islam, believing that the elite in the region would be less inclined to stand in their way.

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In addition, decades of the northern elite shirking their responsibility to ensure justice for Christians murdered for their faith, sometimes in the name of blasphemy, may also have contributed to strengthening the allegations of official genocide. In Kano, Sokoto, Abuja, and elsewhere, some Christians had been lynched for blasphemy, and their attackers were identified. In Kano, prosecution of the lynchers was dropped and the federal government declined to take the matter up; and in Sokoto, no prosecution was even attempted as leading legal minds and academicians stood up as one man to defend the lynchers. Why would Christians not think the state connived at the killings? In some northern states, as some public officials appear to embrace militant Islam, indigenes deserving of promotion into sensitive positions in the civil service and the judiciary were overlooked until a Muslim replacement could be found. Why would Christians not fear they were being persecuted, despite being indigenes of those states? The NSCIA statement tells itself a lie when it argues that religious intolerance does not exist in Nigeria. Yes, it does not exist in many states; but it exists in some northern states. The Council should at least have acknowledged this fact. What the Trump explosion indicates is that if a country promotes fissures in its polity, outsiders will be tempted to do something about it, and they will always find local collaborators.

In many paragraphs, the NSCIA merely regurgitates admittedly sensible arguments about the questionable US justification for intervening in Nigeria. Mr Trump is himself amoral, for by his own admission he is not even a Christian, and his arguments are also largely self-serving and designed to advance American interests over Nigerian interests. Getting bogged down in the definition of genocide is, therefore, meaningless, a point the NSCIA misses very badly. What cannot be disputed, however, is that mass killings of Christians have taken place in some parts of the Middle Belt and their lands seized without any attempt by the state to enforce restitution. Much more than the concomitant killings of Muslims in other parts of the North by insurgents and bandits, it is the killing of Christians and the land element involved that has triggered the cry of genocide. The NSCIA should not have pretended that these jarring anomalies and paradoxes do not exist. They should have patiently, carefully and empathetically worded their statement, and acknowledged the various nuances of the insecurity ravaging the North particularly. Instead, they went at the untrustworthy Mr Trump hammer and tongs and try to portray his justifications as selfish and fallacious. But the Council should also in the same breath have provided an explanation for the adoption of Sharia as part of the criminal laws of some 12 states in the North when the constitution disowns state religion.

Had the Council explored the Christian position and admitted that some states in Nigeria needed to review their governing paradigms, its apparently tendentious conclusions about genocide would have been less certain and provocative. It is incontrovertible that a significant percentage of northern leaders, mainly because of religion and to some extent regional exceptionalism, have refused to admit that to run a united, stable, progressive and peaceful country, they would have to live and let others live, and engage in so many give and takes. Unfortunately they do not seem prepared to sacrifice anything, a reason the Christian genocide claim has resonated with many Nigerians in the Christian Middle Belt and the South. If sooner rather than later nothing is done to coax the country to work together and for each dominant group to give up on some of their fanatical and unsustainable ideas and expectations, the country will itself soon become untenable.

November 16, 2025
Vote-buying: A threat to democracy

A democracy is as rugged or fragile as its election, the major pillar that props up the government of the people by the people and for the people. A compromised election is like a structure built with fake materials. It is only a matter of time before it crumbles. Thus, the credibility of an election lies with the people – all those who contribute the materials that are mixed to build the system. The politicians, the electoral umpire’s officials, the security agents, the voters, and the agents of the political parties involved in the conduct of the polls determine the extent of an election’s integrity or otherwise.

Nations can dismantle their democracy after disputed elections, often due to the menace of vote-buying.

But how does this menace creep into an election? How do politicians perceive this malpractice? What are the consequences of vote-buying on democracy? How could a nation systematically ease the menace out of its elections?

Vote-buying, which connotes the intent to alter political behaviour and swing the votes through financial inducement, is perhaps the greatest threat to democratic elections in the country and many other parts of the world. For Nigeria, it has been conjoined with the electoral system, like Siamese twins. It is an affront on the sanctity of the ballot box; a special case of influence that elicits instant compliance at polling booths on election day, with severe losses to the unsuspecting or helpless opponents who may not be able to match the deep purse of desperate rivals, particularly the highest bidder.

Many believe that this form of bribery is immoral, yet they find it irresistible. But sometimes, vote-buying is exaggerated. These days, it is also employed as a weapon of blackmail to discredit the integrity of a substantially free and fair election.

At a time the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is working hard to deliver credible elections, vote-buying creates a dent on the nation’s electoral scorecard. It is a peculiar style of electoral fraud that may continue to defy solution, unless all stakeholders make concerted efforts to weed it out of the system, with the honest intention that it is an ill will that does no one any good. It may affect Part A today; tomorrow, it might wreck Party B. Vote-buying is a tsunami that spares no party.

The umpire is helpless in the face of the monetisation of voting before, during, and even after the electorate has cast their ballot. It lacks the power to curb the menace, which is the last trick of politicians to secure victory through the back door.

Efforts by security agencies to also track the deviant behaviour have not succeeded to a large extent.

It is a complex matter. Not all forms of vote-buying can be easily interrogated, especially when the shoddy action may not happen in broad daylight or very close to the polling booths during elections.

Many have been arrested and prosecuted for electoral offences, such as ballot stuffing, hijacking of voting materials, thuggery, falsification of results, disruption of collation and violence. But vote-buyers often escape the eagle eyes of the law. While a few arrests were made in past electoral seasons, the trial of suspects never saw the light of day.

As Nigeria began to experience political stability, the competition for power became stiffer. The urge to occupy political seats became more attractive and voters started making demands from politicians, both popular and unpopular, beyond their constitutional responsibilities of defending public welfare. The perception is that the money is with the politicians to spend.

The gap between the political class and the voting public widened and interactions have paled into periodic engagements during electioneering. Those in power swim in opulence and the only way to warm themselves to the electorate is through clientelism, accompanied by the promise of cosmetic material empowerment in the post-election period.

A few years ago, “di’bo koo se’be” (vote to cook soup) became a popular slogan of mobilisation in a part of the country. Attention shifted from previous achievements of political actors and campaign promises to the expectation of crumbs falling from the tables of power mongers. Monetary exchanges, distribution of food, and goods, particularly clothing materials, became the vogue. No matter how popular a candidate is now, party members believe that it is risky to dismiss patronage politics with a wave of the hand. Stomach infrastructure is accorded priority.

Read Also: The missing opposition: Why Nigeria’s democracy is losing its pulse

Buying and selling of votes is not peculiar to Nigeria. But it is a serious political infection that undermines the predictive value of elections and the accuracy of electoral outcomes. It is a secret affair, often concealed from the public glare. Direct buyers may not be candidates, but their skilled and overzealous agents who have acquired informal training on how to target and persuade potential voters, without the security agents knowing the plot.

The agents are armed with a voter register, which enhances their spade work. They act as legitimate canvassers ahead of elections, and in the process of mobilisation, introduce the dimension of inducement.

An essential feature of vote-buying is bargaining. The buyer and seller are familiar with each other because they reside in the same community. Clever voters engage in double dealings by playing along with agents of multiple candidates, although each voter has only one vote to donate. Ultimately, the highest bidder is favoured.

In the rural areas, innocent elderly voters who are financially induced remain faithful to the deal. Although they are often aware that they mortage their conscience, they see it as a new way of life, especially when they see their neighbours also partaking in the sharing of money

Generally, certain populations are clearly susceptible to accepting gifts or other forms of compensation in exchange for votes. Poverty is a factor, as vote-buying is targeted at people from the lower socio-economic stratum of society.

The involvement of wealthy people raises concern about inordinate influence peddling. The high class and patrons of candidates and parties participate as middlemen by deploying their clout to organise, mobilise, and distribute money on behalf of the candidates to those in the neighbourhood who look up to them in the community as influencers.

As voters accept money from them, they tend to impose on the electorate the obligation of compliance. As they vote for the particular candidate after collecting money, the rival candidate is deprived of the legitimate right to a fair contest. But in some cases, vote buyers also target those who have made up their minds to vote for only those who are ready to pay them, without the agents knowing.

In the past, car booths of vote buyers were loaded with cash. These days, technology makes it easier. The money is transferred to the bank accounts of voters. This is evidence that the agents really target the voters. It also ensures accountability.

The monitoring of compliance is challenging. It is a game. The players are locked in the infamy. Some voters renege on their promise to vote for a particular politician, and criminals who induce them with money cannot report to the police. Some voters manage to enter the polling booth with their phones to snap the ballot paper, which serves as evidence of a duty fully discharged.

Usually, the efficacy of vote-buying is measured by the outcome. Losers become winners, and democratic decline is inadvertently celebrated in their camps. But integrity is at stake. This is the first consequence of the malpractice.

Also, popular votes cannot be ascertained and the genuineness of the authentic winner is suspect. To that extent, there is no popular choice. The autonomy or independence of voters is destroyed when voting behaviour is shaped by the crumbs falling off the tables of unpatriotic politicians.

The greatest danger is the post-election behaviour of the winner. He sees an election as an investment that should enable him to garner returns. It is the baseline for graft in high places and bad governance.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is usually on the prowl during the off-cycle elections. During the general elections, the commission’s officials cannot go round all the voting units. They lack the resources – money, men, and materials.

Obviously, an election is a joint responsibility involving all the stakeholders – candidates, parties, government, security agencies, traditional institutions, and the electorate. All hands must be on deck to sanitise the electoral system.

INEC has called for the setting up of a special electoral tribunal for the trial of electoral offenders. It is up to the National Assembly to bring it into fruition. But the most effective solution is to educate the voters on the danger of selling their franchise to the highest bidder. The more enlightened electorate we have, the fewer cases of vote-buying we will record. The fewer case of the malpractice we record, the stronger this pillar of democracy will become.

November 15, 2025
Day wife ordered powerful general to enter rain

Among men who are yet to be caught in the web of woman’s power, there is a tendency to underestimate the influence of the feminine gender on their spouses.

History is replete with cases of great rulers whose kingdoms were ruined by their inability to rein in their spouses when their influence becomes overbearing. In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, the story is told of how Mark Antony, the co-ruler of Roman Empire with Octavius Caesar and Lepidus, who was needed urgently in Rome as Pompey, another military leader, sought to take control of the empire, remained stuck with Cleopatra in Egypt

In the middle of the hot battle for the control of the empire, he abandoned his army and ran after Cleopatra.

In the bible, there are numerous examples of supposedly powerful men genuflecting before their wives or pandering to their promptings like Adam did with Eve, Samson with Delilah and Ahab with Jezebel, to mention a few.

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Within our clime, army generals and even heads of state are reputed for bowing to the whims and caprices of their female partners no matter how discomforting.

An aide to a former head of state once recalled how the head of state in question was lefty in torn uniform and injured face after a violent attack by his wife and First Lady, in his office! So much so that he had to be ferried back home by his aides to change his torn uniform.

In yet another case of woman power, another widely respected General from the north was said to have gone to a social function with his wife, who was young enough to be his daughter behind the wheel.

However, a heavy rain had started by the time the party was over and they needed to depart the venue but the car was parked at a distance. The woman, mindful of the prospects of her dress getting drenched or her facial powder messed up, turned to the elderly husband, handed him the key and commanded: “Go and bring the car”.

Like an obedient servant, the elderly general jumped into the rain and walked gingerly towards the car.

November 15, 2025
Sympathy for IDPs

One of the most cutting taunts in Nigerian politics right now is to be referred to as an Internally Displaced Politician (IDP). That is the tag that has been hung around the necks of some of the leading lights of the opposition African Democratic congress (ADC).

Among the most prominent of this new species is former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who left the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with so much hype, but is yet to formally join the over-inflated platform that we were all told was going to topple the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and send President Bola Tinubu back to Lagos in a hurry.

In this group belongs the fire-spitting former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, who regular bulletins on X have somehow lost their earlier menace. Now he mournfully bewails the calamity that awaits Nigerian democracy if the president is allowed to cruise to victory in two years’ time.

In the meantime, he’s floating around in political purgatory – somewhere between the Social Democratic Party (SDP) where he has received an icy welcome and his ADC promised land, trying to conjure some sort of magic potion that would banish Tinubu and deliever him from irrelevance.

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Part of this band is a certain Rotimi Amaechi, one-time Minister of Transportation who briefly flirted with something called the All Democratic Alliance (ADA). It was a brief and spectacular flop. The former governor of Rivers State who still fancies himself something of a political lion has been huffing and puffing – wondering why Nigerians haven’t revolted against the government of the day.

When that trick didn’t work he began moaning about hunger. Again, not too many were sympathetic given his ample midriff.

And then there’s Peter Obi who seems to be doing his level best not to jump into the ADC bed and whilst still pretending to be a member of the troubled Labour Party (LP).

You really have to feel for the politically homeless are they trun round and round in circles not having the courage of their convictions but always willing to believe that their accommodation problems are caused by the all-powerful occupant of Aso Rock – and not by their own dithering.

November 15, 2025
Wike, Yerima face-off: We owe Gambo nothing but gratitude

No one with a fair knowledge of Nigeria would dispute the fact that crisis is the pivot on which the wheel of our national life rotates. It is to us what water is to fish. Being a condition precedent for our national survival, we go out of our way to create one where there is none. And there is no limit to our creative ability in this regard. When we are not fighting a civil war, Boko Haram, ISWAP and IPOB are making life miserable for hapless citizens in the North and the Southeast while the Middle Belt battles the menace of soulless murderers that go by the appellation of herdsmen.

In 2020, the world was still smarting from the devastating blow of the COVID-19 pandemic when some inebriated youths unleashed the malady of EndSARS; a nationwide protest against alleged excesses of members of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit of the Nigeria Police Force, which shook the nation to its very foundation. Of course, there have also been other crises of less magnitude but whose impacts are no less pernicious, the most recent being the face-off between the military and the authorities of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

For the better part of the outgoing week, a dramatic altercation between the FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and a certain Navy Lieutenant A.M. Yerima was the focus of social and traditional media. At the heart of it was a parcel of land in the nation’s capital city, Abuja, allegedly being developed by a former Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Zubairu Gambo, without approval from the Federal Capital Development Authority.

As the story goes, a residential apartment was being built on the land located in an area mapped out for park and gardens. Wike, the FCT Minister and by implication the official landlord of the nation’s capital city, got wind of the development and decided to pay a visit with his retinue of aides. To their chagrin, they got to the construction site only to be confronted by Yerima, who pointedly told Wike that he would only access the construction site over his dead body, because he had an “order from above” not to let anyone in. An altercation thus ensued between the two parties with some coarse invectives from the exasperated minister.

Not surprisingly, the unusual confrontation has torn the country into two camps of Wike and Yerima supporters, each taking positions that suit their emotions and biases. While some have accused the young naval officer of being rude and disrespectful in his altercation with Wike, others say the FCT Minister should take the blame for acting infra dignitatem and disrespecting the military for dressing down a Navy Lieutenant in uniform.

Many Yerima supporters, who think nothing of the soldiers that are sleeping in trenches in Sambisa Forest prosecuting the war against Boko Haram and ISWAP, are lionizing Yerima as a hero and decorating him with garlands for guarding a private property owned by a retired officer and for confronting Wike over the matter. They would not stop to ask themselves what justification there is for deploying soldiers to guard an illegally acquired private property at a time the nation is at war with Boko Haram, ISWAP, Lakurawa, bandits, killer herdsmen, IPOB and other terrorist groups. How many soldiers would be left to prosecute these wars if every privileged officer toes Gambo’s path and deploy their underlings to guard their private properties?

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Still, we must count our luck as a nation and profusely thank Gambo or whoever had instructed Yerima to keep guard at the disputed land for limiting his brief to merely denying the minister access. What if the order he had was to shoot the minister and his entourage at sight? Of course, Yerima would have obeyed and we would by now be mourning the untimely exit of one of the most productive public officers in the nation’s history.

Fela, the late iconoclastic Afrobeats exponent had in various songs told us how robotic soldiers are when it comes to obeying the last order. The Wike-Yerima incident reminded me of the lyrics of his famous song, Zombie, wherein he sang that Zombie (referring to soldiers) would not go unless you ask him to go; he would not stop unless you ask him to stop; he would not turn unless you ask him to turn and he would not think unless you ask him to. Then he added the dreadful verse:

Tell am to go straight, na jooro jaara jooro

No break, no jam no sense, na jooro, jaara jooro

Tell am to go kill, na jooro jaara jooro

No break, no jam, no sense

Na jooro jaara jooro

Tell am to go die, na jooro jaara jooro

No break, no jam, no sense, jooro jaara jooro

Although Fela later paid dearly for this frank assessment of the military with soldiers’ violent attack on his house, the truth had been told about their mindset, which is why we must all be thankful, because the order on which Yerima acted could be worse.

November 15, 2025
Ijebu-Jesa Grammar School at 70! (2)
According to Michael Afolayan, a US-based Professor of Education and Linguistics, what is happening in IJGS “is a systemic problem – the aphorism of the crooked top. Today, we have a pseudo-leadership that has no value for education. Imagine such a great school you just appraised here having only 10 permanent teachers!

“Just imagine the IJGS in the days of Oba Joseph Ajayi Palmer, when every trained teacher wanted to come and serve there. I recall the late Mr. E. Adegbola, owner of Surulere Bookstore in Ile-Ife and Ijebu-Jesa, who was a headmaster where I taught at the time. He would contribute any amount and donate a stockpile of books to IJGS.”

This legacy of excellence and community support is a microcosm of the much larger educational landscape of Nigeria today. Nigerian education parades more than 270 universities, over 160 Colleges of Education, and roughly 145 Polytechnics. This tertiary system is supplied by an immense basic education sector, including approximately 129,600 primary schools and over 43,000 secondary schools.

At the best of times, those who hold the view that secondary institutions act as the foundational pipeline by preparing students academically and morally, and providing the required SSCE certification for university admission, are not far from the truth. After all, universities, in turn, influence the secondary system by setting minimum academic standards and by training the teaching manpower for the schools.

Beyond the cloak of deniability and euphemism, the voices and forces of the competition between public and private secondary schools have become so severe that, during SSCE periods, public school students often gravitate towards private schools, aka ‘miracle centers’, over their own institutions. The significant increase in the number of schools compared to the past, when secondary schools were scarce, has also contributed to the woes.

The truth we ignore is that Nigerian parents are no longer holding public education in high regard as they once did. As things stand, many Nigerian parents even prefer sending their children to schools with inadequate facilities, simply because they are labeled as private institutions. Added to these problems is the dearth of qualified teachers and essential teaching facilities.

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Evidently, the 1955 noble vision has become a trickle, proving that parents will always seek the best available educational life raft. To put it in succinct terms, IJGS’s stagnant enrollment is an indictment of the state’s negligence of the education sector. Unfortunately, there has been no focused opposition to expose these fatal flaws, thereby leading to a dangerous normalization of misplaced priorities. Or how do we situate the building of urban flyovers over the building of rural roads? This lack of scrutiny surrounding these decisions has been normalized as political sagacity across the states and only God can help us!

To rise out of this quagmire, governments across the board must stop using public schools as political dumping grounds for unqualified staff. For my alma mater, there’s an urgent need for an immediate cash injection to hire trained teaching, even non-teaching, staff to effectively compete with the glossy façade of the private sector. Otherwise, the school risks becoming a historic relic.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel; the current efforts of Nigeria’s oldest school, CMS Grammar School, Bariga, Lagos, serve as a powerful example. Founded in 1859, former students of the school have laid the foundation for a $2.5m ICT centre to prepare its students for the future of technology. Similarly, Ilesa Grammar School’s distinguished alumni, including Wole Olanipekun SAN, and Obi Daramola, provide funding for resources and facility upgrades.

The Government College, Ibadan, Old Boys Association (GCIOBA) now manages its alma mater, following its government handover. India, Malaysia and Brazil have also demonstrated that alumni associations play a critical role in achieving sustainable development. Efforts such as this must not just be acknowledged but actively emulated by IJGS. This emulation would be the greatest acknowledgment and appreciation of the great community who planted the seed for this enduring institution seventy years ago.

To achieve this, IJGSOSA should set up an endowment fund to attract funds from home and abroad, towards bringing the institution to the cutting edge of modern society and meeting the needs of the next 50 years. This focus on capacity building represents the biggest expression of the ultimate concept of acceptable empowerment. We can go on and on, but handing out perishables or things that have no lasting economic impact should be out of sync with true empowerment.

On a day like this, we remember Bayo Okunmuyide, one of the authors of Champions Mathematics, published by MacMillan, and an inaugural graduating student. His son, Tayo Okunmuyide (’89 set), currently works with TotalEnergies SE.

We also honour Mike Awoyinfa (HSC, ’71 set), the Pioneer Editor of Weekend Concord and the founding Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Sun Publishing Limited. Another prominent alumnus is Lanre Arogundade (1976/77 set), the man who famously described IJGS as a “university of high standards”.

Olukemi Babatunji, the Otun Iyalode of All Souls Anglican Church, Ijebu-Jesa, belonged to the ’84 set. The younger sister of Bishop Babatunji, she’s currently the Manager of Nursing Services in an Oil and Gas multinational concern.

We also remember the many dedicated academic staff members who guided us during those formative years at the school. These include: Pa Joshua Agunsoye, Mr. & Mrs. D.D.W. Chandratilleke, Mr. & Mrs. P.J.D. Thanasingh and Chief (Mrs.) Hannah Babatunji.

Further names include: S.K. Tsipotey, Y. Ofori, Kofi Agyeman-Duah, C.A. Fasina, S.F. Obisesan, and many others like I.D. Hayibor, Nana Osei, Soula Pani, C.A. Afouda and Mrs. P.O. Ayoade.

Our remembrance extends beyond the classroom staff to honour the valuable administrative and supporting personnel, including: J.O. Dagunduro (Librarian), Akin Adejuwon (Bursar), Miss Bintu Asimi (Typist), and Biodun Kato (Clerk). We also remember Asimi Sanni, Josiah Obileye, Samuel Fajemisin, and Sunday Loye (Gardeners); Mustapha Atanda, aka ‘Kosepo’ (Driver), and Gabriel Ikotun (Night Watchman).

Still in the spirit of commemoration, Isaac Aderogba, aka ‘Kammy-Cut’ and ‘Baba Olomi’, comes to mind. Pa Aderogba was the ever-ready, always-smiling, happy and ‘no-dull-moment’ tailor who made the School’s uniforms and house wears until the late 1970s.

As I have argued earlier, IJGS’s alumni commitment is demonstrated through various renovation projects. I stand by it! For instance, in 2016, Class ’76 renovated the school’s Assembly Hall to mark its 40th anniversary. Professor Oyewole Ajifolokun (’82 set) renovated a classroom block while Class ’80 renovated the Principal’s Lodge to serve as the ‘Corpers Lodge’.

The ’89 set has been sponsoring the Chemistry teacher since September 2022, and the results of this effort have been fantastic. This set counts two professors among its members. The first is Professor Oloyede Bolaji, who is currently the Head of Department, Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, at the College of Health Sciences, Osun State University, Osogbo.

Professor Bolaji is the President of the Class ’89 and also serves as the Global Assistant General Secretary 2 in the current IJGSOSA Executive Committee. The second is Professor Olumide Longe, currently the Vice Chancellor of West Midlands Open University, Lagos.

Although he didn’t attend the school, retired Army Colonel Wole Ogunseemi made a significant contribution to its infrastructure. During his time as a member of the Osun State House of Assembly (2003-2007) and as the Executive Chairman of Oriade Local Government (2008-2011), he constructed three blocks of nine classrooms in the school. Wole Oke, the Member Representing Obokun/Oriade Federal Constituency in the National Assembly, also renovated a block of classrooms as a constituency project.

Felix Septuaginta Annorum Celebratio ad IJGS!

May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace in Nigeria!
- KOMOLAFE wrote from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State, Nigeria (ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk; 08033614419 – SMS only)
●Concluded.
November 15, 2025
Issues in the Trump threat (2)

No less hypocritical and predicated on utter falsehood than the petition of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, to President Donald Trump, claiming to be the victim of Christian genocide in Nigeria and being illegally detained by the Nigerian authorities, was a protest letter submitted to the Embassy of the United States in Abuja, the European Union (EU) Mission and the Ministry of Justice by a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Acting under the aegis of the PDP Like-Mind Group, the protesting opposition party members appealed to the international community to help safeguard democracy in Nigeria and prevent the country from descending into a one-party state.

According to a news report in The Independent Newspaper, “Led by Mr Moses Aliu, the protesters carried placards urging global partners and the Ministry of Justice to act swiftly to protect Nigeria’s democracy and uphold the independence of the judiciary. They accused the ruling party of orchestrating a drift towards a one-party regime through intimidation of opposition figures. The protesters said their demonstration aimed to draw attention to rising corruption, political persecution and what they described as the capture of key state institutions. The protest also called on the judiciary and law enforcement agencies to stand firm in defending democratic rights and the rule of law.”

Coming shortly after the US President, Donald Trump, had threatened sanctions and possible military intervention in Nigeria to check what he described as ‘Christian genocide’, the factional PDP protest was a subtle support for external forcible intrusion in the country’s internal political structures and processes. The protracted factional crises that have hobbled the former self-proclaimed largest party in Africa, purportedly destined to rule for 60 years, are attributed to deliberate machinations of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the President Bola Tinubu administration to annihilate opposition parties and impose a one-party dictatorship in Nigeria.

Unfortunately, this kind of deliberately misleading rhetoric may give opportunity to foreign elements bent on destabilising Nigeria for ulterior motives and hidden agendas to intervene directly or indirectly in our internal affairs, citing support for such disruptive intrusions within the country. If the government of a country with perhaps the most extensive and sophisticated intelligence network on earth could be misled into perceiving Nigeria’s multi-dimensional crises encompassing political, ethnic, religious, economic, climatic and environmental factors as a unidirectional Islamic terrorism against Christians, it is not impossible that misrepresentations of the country’s challenges could lure outsiders into misguided adventurism in Nigeria.

Now, what are the roots of the current crisis plaguing the PDP and which unfortunately continues to fester by the day? Can the internal ruptures and ripples within the former ruling party, which was in power at the centre for 16 years, be credibly and plausibly blamed on the Tinubu administration? The remote cause of the PDP imbroglio was the attempt under the presidency of General Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) to destabilise and absorb opposition parties into the PDP and impose an essentially one-party-dominant system on the country. This was a period when elected office holders of the major opposition parties, the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), routinely defected to the PDP in a bid to partake of ‘mainstream’ resource sharing at the centre.

Read Also: Trump’s ineptitudes and panic in Nigeria

The Chairman of the second largest opposition party in the country at the commencement of the fourth Republic in 1999, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), the late Alhaji Mahmud Waziri, from Adamawa State, was subsequently appointed as Special Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo on inter-party relations. This was part of a process of systematic bleeding of the ANPP by the then-ruling PDP that rendered the former a shadow of itself before the 2003 elections. The defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) was in control of the six states of the Southwest between 1999 and 2003. In the 2003 elections, the rampaging PDP Tsunami swept five of the Southwest states into the ruling party’s orbit with then-governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos State as the only one reelected on the platform of the AD in the region.

Even as the leadership and members of the AD were in a virtual state of mourning after the party’s questionable routing by the PDP in 2003, its national chairman, Alhaji Ahmed Abdulkadir, congratulated the ruling party on its electoral victory and was later appointed as Special Adviser to the President on Manufacturing and Private Sector in the Obasanjo administration. In an article in this space on August 1, 2009, titled ‘PDP as Noah’s Ark’, this column commented on the intensifying gale of defections to the PDP at that time.

As I put it in that piece, “As the rampaging elements of vengeful nature assail Nigerians on all sides, devaluing the quality of their lives, it is not surprising that more and more political office holders are dumping the political party platforms on which they rose to power and migrating to the safety of the Noah’s Ark that they perceive the PDP to be. Just as the biblical Ark protected Noah and his family from the fury of the flood that devastated sinful creation, the PDP is seen by the growing army of executive defectors as their eternal refuge and stronghold against political calamity. At least with the irascible Professor of travesty, Maurice Iwu, still inexplicably calling the shots at INEC, they can be guaranteed life tenures in the Ark of power irrespective of the will of the people.”

The piece continued, “Following in the footsteps of Governors Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State and Mahmud Shinkafi of Sokoto State, who had earlier shamelessly dumped their original party platforms, the ANPP, for the PDP, Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State is the latest governor to jettison moral principles and dive headlong into the contemporary PDP Noah’s Ark built on deceit and fraud. Governor Ohakim demonstrated a stunning lack of grace and civility in so callously ditching the PPA that offered him a platform to contest the 2007 elections; an opportunity he was denied with arrogant impunity in the PDP. Today, Ohakim has opted to stab the PPA in the back by going back to his vomit”.

At the reception ceremony to welcome Ohakim to the PDP in Owerri, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua had declared exultantly, “Today is a great day for us in PDP. All the leadership of the party is here today to receive Governor Ohakim in our fold. You are welcome back to the PDP. Today is a day for prayers; today is a day to celebrate, and today is a day for songs”.

After the 2007 general elections, the PDP was in control of 31 of the 36 states in the country. Before the polls, President Obasanjo had described the elections as a ‘do or die’ affair for the then ruling party. Yet, no one accused the PDP of trying to foist a one-party system on the country despite President Yar’Adua’s admission after his controversial electoral triumph that the election which ushered him to power was deeply flawed.

After the 2003 elections, President Tinubu remained the only governor in the country on the platform of the AD. He was the butt of jokes by fellow governors and PDP leaders, especially that he would ultimately have no choice but to join the ruling party. Rather than being an attempt to convert Nigeria’s multi-party democracy into a one-party system, the pattern of opposition party leaders defecting to the ruling party, as currently happening, is an unfortunate, ingrained feature of Nigeria’s political culture, which has been prevalent ever before the emergence of the APC. To his credit, Tinubu did not join the bandwagon of defectors to the ruling party. Rather, he worked assiduously with other like-minded leaders to retrieve his party’s stolen electoral mandates through the judicial process and ultimately to form political parties that worked in coalition with other parties and forces to win political parties at the centre in 2015.

What is dispiriting about the letter of the IPOB leader to President Trump or the PDP’s petition to the US and the European Union seeking external intervention in our internal political and Judicial processes for reasons that lack logical or empirical validity is that it portrays our political class as being incapable of solving domestic challenges and in the process strengthening our socio-political institutions. Again, it legitimises the attempt by external powers to dictate how we run our affairs, thus engendering a feeling of psychological inadequacy and inferiority among Nigerians. This also obscures the fact that those we seek to be our redemptive political Messiahs also have their own structural, behavioural and institutional challenges despite having a headstart of hundreds of years over us in the practice of democracy.

Following the refusal of losers in the 2023 presidential elections to accept the outcome of the polls, for instance, the cerebral thinker and novelist, Chimamanda Adichie, wrote an open letter to former President Joe Biden not to recognise the outcome of the election. Actuated largely by ethnic considerations because of her support for Mr Peter Obi, an Igbo who came third in the polls, she conveniently forgot that Donald Trump had vehemently questioned the legitimacy of the election that produced Biden, claiming that it was brazenly rigged! It is the same mentality that informs calls by members of the political class who lose elections and their supporters for military intervention because they disagree with the outcome of polls and dislike the government in power. They forget that soldiers plan and execute coups essentially for their self-interest and will hardly stake their lives to hijack power unconstitutionally only to donate such power to a group of disgruntled opposition politicians. It is in the interest of mutinous soldiers to discredit the political class as a whole and democracy as a system of government.

When Alhaji Atiku Abubakar emerged as PDP presidential candidate for the 2023 elections, key stakeholders within the party, including the Group of five governors led by Barrister Nyesom Wike, urged him to allow the Chairmanship of the party to shift to the South for regional and zonal balance. He was adamant and arrogant in his refusal, thus laying the foundation for the defeat of the PDP in that election. Atiku did not win in any of the PDP states controlled by the PDP G5 governors. The opposition is going into the 2027 elections even more divided than they were in 2023. With the economic reforms of the Tinubu administration gradually beginning to yield fruit with bright prospects of impacting lives positively in the near future, it is tempting for many of them to long for foreign military intervention or a military coup to torpedo the entire political process out of loathing for the Tinubu administration.

If so, they will only shoot themselves in the foot. The only way to organise effectively to confront the APC in the next electoral cycle is for the opposition to get its act together, forge a more cohesive front and present the electorate with a credible alternative economic pathway, which they are yet to do up till now. As the notable journalist and lawyer, Seun Okinbaloye, of Channels Television (by no means a supporter of the Tinubu administration), so aptly put it, “This is the time for every Nigerian to come together and leave every kind of politics to stand together for Nigeria…An invasion of Nigeria is not in the favour of any Nigerian. If you look at Somalia, Egypt, Libya, and other nations invaded in the past by foreign forces, those countries are destabilised”.

November 15, 2025
Wake up Super Eagles!

Most of us think that participating at the four-yearly fiesta for the biggest and enthralling games is a tea party. Aside, many others feel strongly that playing at the Mundial was as simple as buying a lottery ticket from the shop. In fact, there is a dismissive tendency of thinking that all that we need to be part of the comity of nations at every Mundial is just walk up to FIFA headquarters in Zurich to say ”We are Nigerians,” and we would be handed the qualification ticket without stress. No plan.

The sports administrators’ approach to Nigeria’s participation at the Mundial is such that you would think the competition is our birthright. It doesn’t matter how well the real contenders prepare. Getting the cherished ticket should define the growth of the game at the domestic front for the next four years.

In plotting our illusory chart for the World Cup ticket, we rely on God’s divine favours, as if other nations don’t believe in ”Our Father who art in Heaven, Halloweth be thy name…”. We forget the biblical phrase of Heaven helping those who help themselves first. Truth be told, we allow our emotions to rule our thought processes, leaving us in the lurch groping over how we missed it. We leave it late and expect to qualify by the snap of our fingers. Pray, when will we learn? Other 211 countries don’t have the right to dream about playing at the senior World Cup? No, only Nigeria. Indeed.

Until the government starts disbursing funds to run the game here directly to the NFF, the show of shame where players demand for their entitlements in foreign lands will continue unabated. It amounts to good governance when each level does its job without overlaps. It is ethically wrong for the supervisory body to do the disbursement of funds which pass through them. The supervisor must learn how to discharge his functions and allow others to do theirs.

Otherwise, how do you explain the trip to Rabat by the hierarchy of the supervisory body taking foreign currencies to the team 24 hours to a crucial competition after telling the world they had given the soccer federation all that they asked for to prosecute the World Cup playoffs for the African continents.

Of course, the supervisory body’s penchant for holiness is laughable because till date we don’t know the correct medals’ table to capture what happened at the last National Sports Festival held in Abeokuta, Ogun State. No one holds the supervisors accountable publicly, but through laid down procedures. A situation where the supervisor becomes the servant says a lot even when both bodies have accounting experts deployed to handle such an exercise.

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Perhaps, the government should in the future get the finance ministry officials to handle the NFF’s financial transactions except those from FIFA which the international body knows how to detect excesses and abuses including misapplication of their cash.

Taking the cash to Rabat meant that the supervisory body didn’t do its job to ensure that things were done tidily instead of the disgraceful resort to self help by the players, coaches and team officials. The impression being created when there are strikes is that the soccer body is incompetent. It always turns out to be the failure of leadership by the supervisor.

One world has suggested that the Federal Government should constitute a World Cup Task Force to handle the country’s campaign. But previous ones had their members overreaching their briefs, leading to crises of shameful dimensions. The soccer federation should be given their funds directly, with the EFCC and the ICPC officials tasked to look into the federation’s books to identify misapplication of funds, and those found culpable made to face the full wrath of the laws.

Certainly, the obvious question would be how do the other countries handle their qualification plans without problems? Do these countries agree with the players, coaches and team officials on the mode of payment which could be handled directly by the finance ministry by transferring cash directly into their respective accounts after due diligence has been done? The bigger picture could be for the government to release cash to the NFF, with the finance ministry officials doing the disbursement after vetting the payment vouchers. This idea of bringing odium to the country must stop. The supervisory body must be told in strict terms not to disburse cash to the players, coaches and team officials as if they are labourers. After all, they play for clubs who remit their entitlements to them seamlessly through their bank details. A stitch in time saves nine.

Watching the game on Thursday night showed that the players must begin to take the reporting date to camp seriously. Practice sessions mustn’t be tampered with on the altar of flight difficulties. Most of the players ply their trades in European countries where airlines have schedules to different parts of the world. Bookings for such flight schedules can be done at individuals’ discretion.

Victor Osimhen needed the first half of woeful misses in front of goal to regain his goal-scoring sharpness in the second half, culminating in his brace which sank the Gabonese. Again, Osimhen is too exposed as a professional to know that it is awful to take off one’s shirt in celebration after scoring a goal. Besides, our players must be punished over needless yellow cards. Frank Onyeka ought to have known that retaliation is a punishable offence which in most cases translates to such players being shown a straight red card which could have affected the team’s performance. The Eagles must now play against D.R Congo without Wilfred Ndidi who was shown a yellow card in the sixth minute in Thursday’s match, making it his second yellow card in the competition.

Coach Eric Chelle goofed when he removed Nigeria’s goal scorer Akor Adams. One has been trying to process the reason for the change. Dear Chelle, Super Eagles have been conceding late goals. Please fix the problems. At senior World Cups, games are won from the bench through informed substitutions which rub off on the game almost immediately. In the likely event that Nigeria gets one of the two playoffs’ tickets, the NFF and their cantankerous supervisors should ensure that Chelle attends good coaching refresher courses to update his knowledge about the modern tricks of the game which is dynamic.

In a post-match statement by the president’s Special Adviser on Communication and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, on Thursday night via a tweet, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described the performance as a clear expression of the Nigerian character that rises, adapts, and prevails.

“This is the true Nigerian spirit of resilience against all odds. Do not stop until you secure a qualification. Super Eagles, keep soaring. The nation stands with you,” the president said.

Chelle’s post-match comments raise hope when he said: ”I am very proud of these guys, because every time they are focused on what I ask them to do and they do what I want. They always show what I want from them, and they can prove why I believe in them.”

“The difference in this game was the passion these guys had. They had focus, kept the ball together and held the same thinking. We are happy, but we can’t celebrate just yet. Maybe after the second game, we can smile.”

November 15, 2025
Agriculture as tool for economic recovery

State Governors need to as a matter of urgency, prioritize agriculture for economic recovery and diversification. I remember that as far back as 30 years ago, while I was working, I was also trading in agricultural commodities. At times, across Nigeria, we were not talking about food scarcity. Ironically 30 years ago, we were rather talking about wastages of agricultural products and how to store them and cut down the wastages. From Kano and other parts of northern Nigeria to all other parts of southern Nigeria; fruits, vegetables, grains, yam tubers, cassava, potatoes, etc. were wasting away. I recall with nostalgia the huge yam barns in Niger, Benue, the southeast of Nigeria.

Fast forward to today, we are struggling with food insecurity. It is sad how bad things have become. Farmers are not able to go to their farms due to insecurity, nor do they have enough tools and feeds like fertilizers, etc. The purchasing powers of the farmers are so low that they are majorly reduced to the lowest form of subsistence farming. Food insecurity is also due to the rising population, which has grown in geometric progression from the first republic to date. Therefore, the need to upscale our production capacity is long overdue.

Some agricultural initiatives by Federal and some State Governments are laudable. For example, the agriculture projects so far initiated by the Executive Governor of Niger State, His Excellency Mohammed Umar Bago, are commendable. However, I advise that State Governors should formulate more robust and strategic plans that will be all-encompassing across the Agri value chain, to include grading, cleaning, packaging, storage, value-addition, etc.

Depleted Strategic Grain Reserves:

It is worthy of note that, currently Nigeria has basically depleted its strategic grain reserves. I hope that there is a plan on how to replenish The reserves as a matter of priority. Because it will be a disaster if we do not replenish our strategic grain reserves this year. This is especially so because of the valid projections that there will be food scarcity this year due to climate change, and insecurity. So, Governors should wear their thinking caps and come up with robust strategies going forward.

In the case of the request by President Tinubu to the Governors to provide land so that Mr. President will ensure that he enables the provision of a dichotomy that will stop the clashes and unwarranted deaths between farmers/ herders which are seriously impacting socio-economic situations at States. But as the Chief Security Officers of their States, the State Governors need to deal with these issues in their States head-on. I believe that if Governors borrow and improve the templates of the Premiers of the regions of Nigeria during the first republic and State Governors States of Nigeria of the 1960s to 1980s, they will achieve some quick wins and also achieve major milestones in food security, job creation, and other socio-economic growth, especially increase in revenues. Almighty God Created Nigeria in such a way that every State has a special, and viable agri value chain that will add value to the people of the State and the nation in general. Around 1995, I was legally exporting grains to Niger, and Burkina Faso, because we had enough, indeed Nigeria still feeds the West African sub-region. Those glorious days could return.

Dams, Agriculture Clusters, and Farm Centers:

The State Government can fully revitalize and fully utilize the State-owned Dams and river basins for the production of agricultural products for all-year-round farming using irrigation, etc. These are quick-win platforms to arrest the looming food insecurity. Most of the Agriculture clusters and farm centers in Kano and some States in northern Nigeria which were established in the 1970s and 1908s have been cannibalized and are long dead. I strongly advise that State Governments should re-introduce the farm clusters and farm center projects for the production of grains, perishables, livestock, fisheries, etc. This is a critical success factor for the diversification of economies. From the 1950s to the 1980s, States were basically self-sufficient due to the utilization of such key water bodies and irrigation farming. Dairy products and food items were supplied all over the nation from Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Plateau, Benue, Niger, etc. all year round with millions jobs job created

The Case Studies of KNARDA and KASCO of 1970s and 1980s in Kano State:

The Governors should set up, re-recreate, or re-vitalize the likes of the Kano State Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (KNARDA) and the Kano State Agricultural Supply Company. These are critical enablers of a successful and sustainable Agriculture value chain. KNARDA, KASCO along with critical platforms like the Dams have demonstrably added value to the development of Agriculture in Kano from the 1970s to the 1990s.

KNARDA was established in 1999 along with KASCO as its commercial subsidiary to improve the supply of agricultural inputs for technology adoption in Kano. They were established following the success of World Bank Assisted Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) at Gombe (at that time in Bauchi State), Funtua (at that time part of Kaduna State), and Gusau (at that time part of Sokoto State) in 1975. Other States in the Federation also had similar strategies and models that worked successfully.

Lessons from failed Agric Interventions:

I hope and pray that President Tinubu will never allow the scenario of the Anchor Borrowers scheme which was a huge scam and failure to happen again. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the anchor borrower scheme that was anchored by the former CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele is a classic example of how not to run such Agriculture – that is the first lesson n which should also be imbibed at the state level. We should situate project functions and functionalities where they should be. We should therefore not give absolute power in any kind of situation. There should be accountability, a proper management framework, and a system especially considering the huge amount of money and other resources that are invested in such intervention, especially given the fact that we don’t have any excess Naira or Kobo to waste this time around.

Please let us note that the anchor borrowers’ scheme is not the problem, it was the institution that drove the scheme, the project framework, and how it was abused that led to the monumental corruption and waste, which was avoidable and unfortunate. Accordingly, I advocate that moving forward we should have a strategy whereby all agriculture interventions should go directly to the farmers and not through middlemen and “special purpose vehicles” models that are reeking of corruption, because in the end the farmers either do not get the interventions, or they get useless interventions at very high costs to not effect The real farmers and all operator across the agriculture value chain should directly access intervention and there should be a clear dashboard to ensure accountability and measure success.

Dealing with Insecurity

Dealing with insecurity remains a critical success factor, otherwise no amount of intervention will be successful and sustainable. Therefore, the solution approach should be wholesome in terms of security, and provide all operational requirements to support farmers and also upscale their capacities to produce across the entire value chain, not just production, but include, quality control, storage, value addition, packaging, logistics, enablement for marketing and sales, exports, etc.

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In addition, I also advise that the State Government should try as much as possible to remove their hands from taking over lands to produce but rather focus on ensuring the delivery of the Agricultural revolution strategy, ensuring compliance with regulations on production, quality control, research and development, strategy reserve, planning, cost of doing business, ease of doing business, measuring performance and effectiveness of the initiatives and the strategy. I commend the efforts of all the governors who are making efforts to restore security in all the States in Nigeria.

Expectations:

•Cutting/ containing the cost of governance

•Prudence in government spending at the top, across, and to be cascaded down the structure and system of governance

•Blockage of leakages in the entire government (Federal and State levels). Because the more you get money and throw it into a bottomless purse, you cannot retain anything. Therefore, if we do not take seriously the issues of leakages/ wastages and prudence and Government behavior with regard to governance.

Good Governance:

Citizens need to be feel the impacts that state governments are actually using the taxes collected and other revenue generated at federal and state levels to add value to the quality of life of citizens, add value to governance, and for the growth and development of Nigeria.

November 14, 2025