The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Jonathan unfazed by constitutional ambiguity

    Jonathan unfazed by constitutional ambiguity

    With each passing week, former president Goodluck Jonathan seems doubly sure no constitutional obstacle stands in his way of running for the presidency a second time. His opponents may regret his firm stance, but they stand on very flimsy ground to think that anything bars him from contesting in 2027 should he choose to run. Dr Jonathan is not new to the impediments strewn across his path, some of them purporting to be constitutional. In 2012, the effort to bar him from running began in earnest. First sworn in on May 6, 2010 to complete the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s tenure, he had gone on to win the 2011 election, and soon began making sheep’s eye at the 2015 presidential election. It was the attempt to stop him that triggered a cavalcade of legal cases begun in 2012. All the three cases brought against him to date have, however, been decided in his favour.

    All the suits aimed to abort Dr Jonathan’s re-election plans. The first case, filed in 2012 at the High court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) before Justice Mudashiru Oniyangi, was decided in his favour. The judge had no hesitation whatsoever in ruling that nothing barred the then president from contesting in 2015. Dissatisfied, the appellant, Cyriacus Njoku, appealed. In March 2015, shortly before the election of that year, the Court of Appeal held that nothing barred Dr Jonathan from contesting. They gave their reason, and it seemed so incontrovertible that it settled the case once and for all. But the furore that accompanied the case, not to say the constitutional lacuna many legal experts said they noticed, led to a constitutional amendment that took effect in 2018. Embodied in Section 137(3), the alteration indicates that “A person who was sworn in to complete the term for which another person was elected as President, shall not be elected to such office for more than a single term.”

    The alteration was expressed in very simple and accessible language, admitting of no ambiguity. But against a litigious Nigerian, even the simplest expression acquires new and convoluted meaning. In 2022, when it seemed a clearly nostalgic Dr Jonathan would not take no for an answer and seemed determined to run again, the litigious duo of Andy Solomon and Idibiye Abraham headed to the courts to see whether they could bar him from the 2023 poll. Filed at the Federal High Court in Yenagoa, the judge, Isa Hamma Dashen, in May 2022, held that the constitution did not disqualify Dr Jonathan, and that if he had won in 2015, he would have been sworn into office anyway, with no one the wiser. Anchoring his decision on the inability of the amendment to take retroactive effect, the judge concluded that Sec 137(3) “cannot apply retrospectively, except the Legislature, in clear terms, expressly stated their intention for it to be so.”

    Read Also: BMONI set to launch in Nigeria to Redefine How Africa Saves, Spends, and Grows Wealth

    Here is the crux of the matter. When the legislature made the alteration to the constitution to take care of peculiar circumstances and puzzles, the kind that hamstrung Dr Jonathan’s ascension in 2010, they never imagined that he would try to return on a later day, say in 2023 or 2027. They were unable to anticipate that Dr Jonathan is one of those unique politicians who never let bad enough alone. More accurately, power mongers and political schemers have continued to badger the former president with tantalising prospects of returning to office. Every time they seduce him, he falls. The United States constitution, on the other hand, made term limits beguilingly easy to comprehend and adhere to when the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951. Just one sentence, and the job was done. It says in Section 1: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.” Had the Nigerian constitutional alteration indicated a time period for the ‘acting’ president, say one year or two, there would have been no court case.

    But court case or not, the fact is that Dr Jonathan is not constitutionally barred from contesting in 2027. The All Progressives Congress (APC) should discountenance that supposition and reconcile with reality. It should not waste time and money on any litigation, for any court case might instead canonise a man who has no sense for liturgy of any kind. What will stop the former president from contesting in 2027 are history and his personality. History, because other than massive adoption by a sitting government, such as happened to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, no former Nigerian ruler has made it back to the State House; not Gen. Ibrahim Babangida in 2011, and not Gen. Yakubu Gowon in 1993. Secondly, his personality is one of his chief liabilities. Dr Jonathan was neither extraordinary during his five years in office nor decisive and assertive as great leaders should be. He has remained averse to risk-taking and uncomfortable with visioning. He has seemed to hone these last behavioural defects since he left office in 2015, given the way he has run from pillar to post seeking a party to unanimously adopt him. He has egregiously flirted with the African Democratic Congress (ADC) being built with former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s money. And he has dallianced with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which he abandoned shortly after he left office, citing betrayal and other reasons.

    The constitution will not stop Dr Jonathan, and indeed cannot, no matter how liberally the relevant sections of the constitution are interpreted. The Nigerian judiciary may not exactly be the darling of the masses, but three judgements in a row in favour of Dr Jonathan should not be discounted. The constitution is on his side. On the contrary, he is his greatest liability: his personality, his records, his stark inability to read the signs of the times, his constant overrating of self, and his even more baffling underestimation of his opponents and all other forces poised to doom his candidacy should he find a platform to indulge his lackluster politics. As mired in controversy and lethargy as the PDP is, one of its weaknesses is not stupidity and wastefulness. Notwithstanding its desperation to find a formula to beat the ruling party, the leading opposition party will think twice before giving their ticket to Dr Jonathan, assuming he is capable of the genuine absolution his years of political truancy demand of him.

  • Israel-Gaza ceasefire and aftermath

    Israel-Gaza ceasefire and aftermath

    In the end, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, which United States president Donald Trump desperately coveted, eluded him. It instead went to a Venezuelan opposition politician, Maria Corina Machado, despite last ditch efforts by the US president to achieve a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and orchestrate a realistic path to lasting peace. Mr Trump’s 20-point peace plan incorporated significant elements of the France-Saudi peace plan, and bore Turkish, Qatari, and Egyptian imprints. Altogether, stripped of all diplomatese, the ceasefire deal clearly indicates a number of consequences regarding the Middle East, and especially Palestine. Put simply, the plan implies that Hamas lost the war it triggered in October 2023, Iran is demystified, Hezbollah is significantly degraded, Yemen is virtually isolated and rendered impotent, Syria has been inoculated against terror, and Arab States can breathe a little easier because the Iranian Axis of Resistance will be of less concern to them in the short term.

    The ceasefire deal will be consummated over three phases. It starts with the release of all Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian detainees, which is expected to take place in the next 72 hours starting from yesterday; withdrawal of Israeli troops in phases from Gaza and the demilitarisation of Hamas; and the rebuilding of Gaza over the next three to five years. In the medium term, which may be more challenging, other key points of the Trump plan will be revealed. There are as yet no clear indications those other terms will be met, including the more vaguely stated two-state solution. But next week, Mr Trump will take a victory lap in Israel where he will address the Israeli parliament, though the deal owes so much to Gulf States leaders, especially Qatar and Egypt, and also Turkey as well as Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

    There are three angles to the ceasefire deal, which is already being celebrated almost like a peace deal because of its impact in ameliorating suffering in Gaza and removing Israel as the cynosure of global attention. President Trump, despite his theatrics and narcissistic politics, placed himself at the centre of the resolution of the Gaza war, and must feel immensely disappointed to have been passed over in the award of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. His idiosyncrasies facilitated the deal. He begins a deal by blustering, progresses to taking hostile actions, and then offers a deal which at that point becomes almost irresistible. He talked tough on Gaza by proposing to turn the territory into a resort, asked some Arab states to encourage Gaza emigration, and then joined Israel to bomb Iran, Hamas’ main backers. Secondly, he kept up an unusual and in the long run beneficial relationship, political and business, with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States as a whole. He asked no moral questions and made no ethical demand of them, and entered into both private and public business deals with those countries, precisely the kind of powerful leader they wish to have on their side.

    Thirdly, he sustained incredibly close and powerful diplomatic and personal relations with Israel both in his first term, and in the opening months of his second term, including breaking the anathema of relocating American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He also went more than one step better in backing Israel unconditionally in its war in Gaza, at least publicly, while privately bringing enormous pressure to bear on the Israeli prime minister. It made it possible for him to compel Mr Netanyahu to apologise to Qatar for the attempt on Hamas leaders’ lives in Doha early September. And it also made it possible to leverage on his enormous popularity in Israel to compel Mr Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire deal over and above the objections and reservations of Israeli political coalition leaders.

    The second angle, entirely constituted by Mr Netanyahu himself, is even more profound than the Trump angle. He may be a corrupt and controversial politician, and may be mercurial to boot, but he has the right instincts of a leader. At a time when most of Israel believed it was brinkmanship to engage in some of the wider and ramifying actions he took in the past two years on the international stage, the prime minister doubled down on his decisions, stuck to his guns, gingerly held on to his Knesset coalition, and broke so many diplomatic tables that no one thought possible. It took nerves to launch a blitzkrieg on Iran, decimate Hezbollah, while at the same time fighting a vicious campaign next door, in Gaza and Syria, and long range strikes against Yemen. The extraordinary and unprecedented military successes that greeted his efforts earned Israel global respect, even if the world, minus America, deplored and loathed Mr Netanyahu’s gung-ho policies. He showed what it is to be a leader, that it cares less about public relations, that it is about courage, intuition, and tactical brilliance. Yes, Israel fought a similar war in 1967 during the Six-Day War, but in its recent campaigns it made the world glimpse technology’s lethal effect on modern warfare. Indeed, it took a Trump and Netanyahu leadership nexus to unfurl the frightening and apocalyptic possibilities which determined leaders are capable of conjuring.

    The third angle, constituted by Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt, is no less crucial for the resolution of the Gaza conflict, and they will continue to play a huge role in pacifying the region in the years ahead. Without their efforts, it is doubtful whether the ceasefire could have been reached at the time it happened. Hamas, it has become clear, miscalculated in instigating the war in Octobers 2023. They knew they stood no chance of defeating Israel militarily, but they counted on Hezbollah to pressure Israel from the North, Iran to give back-up should it be needed, and the rest of the world to give it public relations advantage because of the untold humanitarian catastrophe expected to be unleashed. They didn’t count on Mr Trump’s return to the White House, probably misjudged the resolve of Mr Netanyahu and his vulnerable Knesset coalition, and had romantic ideas of what influence the outraged world could muster. Worse, they never believed Israel could dismantle the Axis of Resistance so rapidly and so effortlessly, nor budge over the humanitarian disaster the invasion would trigger. Having embedded their command posts, armouries and tactical units beneath and within public buildings such as schools and hospitals and international organisations buildings, Hamas hoped to achieve some form of stalemate. All the calculations, however, unravelled quickly.

    Read Also: “Nigeria’s leadership and commitment to peace and security on the continent”. At the briefing were Mr Wale Edun

    Now, as a result of that attack on October 7, 2023, the power dynamics of the Middle East has been reconfigured. Lebanon stands the chance of reclaiming its sovereignty from Hezbollah’s stranglehold; Iran is weakened and a shadow of itself, particularly of its boastful self; Syrian militias toppled the Assad dynasty because Iranian support was no longer available; nearly the entire Hamas leadership has been wiped out making it possible for the Palestinian Authority operating form the West Bank to lay claims to Gaza; Gaza lies in absolute ruins and will be administered by external forces in the foreseeable future; and Israel has emerged much stronger than before the war, with Mr Netanyahu’s political and leadership reputation considerably bolstered.

    However, the world must watch out for the unseen consequences of the war. Mr Trump may be widely acknowledged for his diplomatic skills today, but the essential core of those skills, if world history and end times prophecy are anything to go by, are much brittler than imagined. Fascists, of whom Mr Trump is arguably numbered, often achieve great successes and triumphs in the short run; but in the long run, they collapse under the weight of their eccentricities and contradictions. The US president is today acclaimed in the US, Israel, and Middle East, but his achievements have been secured mostly by bullying tactics, domestic and international, and by taking advantage of the follies and foibles of incompetent or timid regional leaders. He will come to grief sooner or later, possibly damaging America’s reputation irreparably. For Israel, the ceasefire and the hostages release may buoy the reputation of Mr Netanyahu, but as a student of history, he will recall that the spectacular success of the 1970 Yom Kippur War was insufficient to save the leadership of Gold Meir who was blamed for the country’s lack of preparedness and initial military setbacks that caused massive casualties. She accepted blame and resigned in 1974.

    For Hamas, having retarded the Palestinian cause by its terrible miscalculations, not to say damage Gaza’s infrastructure and caused nearly 70,000 dead, it may be the end of the road. Neither they nor the less influential Islamic Jihad, will play any significant role in Gaza for a long time. Even if they try to play some political role in the future, they are unlikely to meet with as much success as they had after they took control of the strip in June 2007. Nor will they have the kind of financial assistance from the Gulf States as they had previously received. A ceasefire may have taken effect, but the long-term goal of a two-state solution may remain far-fetched. They toyed with it after Camp David Accords of 1978 and the Oslo I & II Accords of 1993 and 1995, but a final peace treaty was torpedoed by Palestinian leaders. It is not certain that such a zero-sum game is not still the regnant philosophy in the disputed region. Indeed, the last has not been heard of the war, the last one being the fifth in the series of Israel-Hamas wars.

  • Shopping for points

    Shopping for points

    I love watching the beautiful game. It isn’t a respecter of people with bloated egos. It is a game that rewards hard work, not a prayer ground where unserious people run to for succour. Soccer is a leveller, one in which things well planned for manifest themselves effortlessly. It is good to know that those entrusted by the government to administer our soccer have woken up late in the day asking if Zimbabwe can beat Bafana Bafana in South Africa? Only dreamers would ask this question. Not after South Africa hosted the senior World Cup in 2010 for the first time in the African continent. Would it also come as a surprise that Zimbabwe’s assistant won’t be sitting on the bench for Friday’s deadpan game between Zimbabwe and Bafana Bafana in South Africa?

    According to an agency report: ”Reports say Takesure Chiragwi has stepped aside from his Warriors duties after slapping one of his own players (in Ngezi vs Dynamos) live on ZBC Jive TV. Meaning Zimbabwe will be without head coach Michael Nees’ trusted assistant, Chiragwi, on Friday. However, Nees says they will head into the game full of confidence and give their all despite the setback and the fact that they are no longer in position to qualify for the World Cup.” A case of a house divided against itself, isn’t it?

    Why our football chieftains had another episode of visa entry acts remains a puzzle yet to be fixed. It becomes more disturbing considering the fact that the federation’s international department staff went through this path to secure entry visas for players, coaches and backroom staff who prosecuted the September 9 World Cup qualifier between Bafana Bafana and the Super Eagles in South Africa which ended 1-1. What was it that these people didn’t do right to avert another round of controversy resulting in Olusegun’s absence from the October 10 clash against Lesotho?

    Expectedly, beating Lesotho wasn’t going to be a piece of cake, except our players didn’t give their best during the game. But in football every option is possible for the team desirous for the designated three points at stake.

    What is revealing itself like a sore thumb is that Nigeria football at the male level, going by the elimination of the Flying Eagles from the ongoing FIFA U-20 World Cup by four unreplied goals scored by the Argentines on Wednesday evening, is on a downward trajectory.

    Outclassed, outpaced, and outscored, the defeat marked one of Nigeria’s heaviest in recent U-20 World Cup history. The Flying Eagles — two-time runners-up — exit the tournament with a bitter taste, undone by Argentina’s ruthless precision and their own defensive frailties. For the Albiceleste, it was not just victory — it was vengeance delivered in emphatic style.

    One post match comment on the Argentines thumbing of Flying Eagles read thus: ”Just like Brazil did to the Nigerian Flying Eagles 38 years in Concepcion, Chile, so has done rampant Argentina as they humiliated Nigeria 4-0 in the Round of 16 of the ongoing Under 20 World Cup.

    ”The six-time champions Argentina did not waste much time as they began scoring just two minutes into the match in Santiago. By the time the dust settled, the Flying Eagles had conceded two goals in each half.” Simple and short. No ceremonies. Pity!

    The heart-wrenching report read further thus: ‘”From the very first whistle, it was a nightmare unfolding for Nigeria. Barely two minutes in, Alejo Sarco silenced the West Africans with a crisp opener that shattered their early rhythm. Things went from bad to worse in the 23rd minute, when Maher Carrizo curled in a brilliant free-kick after Nasiru Salihu’s mistimed challenge at the edge of the box — a goal that left Nigeria’s defensive wall and goalkeeper rooted in disbelief.”

    Clearly, the Nigerians were no match to the Argentines – a factor which could be traced to the absence of unified football academies of soccer nurseries regulated by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) with qualified coaches whose speciality would be in teaching the young lad the rudiment of the game. The cradle of our football has been corrupted such that anybody who can afford a tracksuit no matter how outdated and scruffy can confidently pick boys from the streets to play the game daily. At no time during the rigorous training on empty stomachs is the game stopped by the untrained coach to show the kids how the game is properly played.

    It is the reason for the dearth of talented kids in the 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the country. Rather than create workable templates geared towards developing and equipping the carefully selected academies, our soccer buffs prefer to junket the globe in search of Nigeria-born kids groomed and exposed by better equipped football nations around the world to change their nationalities to play for Nigeria – shameful.

    Nigeria’s pride in global soccer competitions, Golden Eaglets is literally dead, so much so the team couldn’t qualify from the group stage in West Africa, having also failed the previous year at the group stage.

    We can’t be talking about growing talents at the nurseries without standardising the academies that abound in the country. The fraud committed by some disgruntled folks in the name of soccer academies can only be curtailed if the NFF through its state affiliates compel all such bodies to register with it. That way, the authorities can identify who the fraudster is, if such allegations arise. This collegiate arrangement will eliminate age cheats because a kid discovered in Edo State, for instance, Ikponwonsa Ikponwonsa in 1988 as a 12-year old, cannot be Etim Etim in 2008 claiming to be 16. The details of his data from his first registration in Edo State will give him out even as Etim Etim.

    Read Also: Customer service week: How FIRS boss put Nigerians first

    We have lost budding talents to mismanagement, even after the Federal Government had directed that past soccer federations nurture their future. Our administrators bask in the euphoria of being recognised in the world, leaving the game’s development on the lurch for shylock European scouts to exploit to the disadvantage of our young ones.

    Civilised countries develop their sports through the neighbourhood system where facilities are built to engage the youth and push them away from social vices. Nurseries serve as the bases for storing the data of those discovered. Such information helps to nurture and monitor the good ones to stardom. Besides, nurseries lay the foundation where the athletes are taught the rudiments of the game. It is at such factories that playing styles and patterns unique to such countries are evolving.

    If we must achieve excellence and meet the objective requirement for the rapid development of our sports industry, then we must broaden the finance base of the industry and create the right conditions for private sector funding and investment in sports.

    We must accept that there is the need for us to have the political will to make sports a big business, which inevitably will create the platforms to employment. We need to cultivate business concerns to embrace sports, but with a caveat -transparency and accountability.

    There was the need to create an enabling environment for business concerns to key into sports patronage, first to change the way it is run in Nigeria and then to get Nigerians to know that sports help increase the country’s G.D.P as seen in other climes.

    Is sports all about funding and administration? Not exactly. Without the athletes and the coaches, no sports events can be held. Athletes and coaches form the fulcrum on which sports thrive.

  • Yakubu Mahmood, Pat Utomi and electoral integrity

    Yakubu Mahmood, Pat Utomi and electoral integrity

    Given the intense and unprecedented bitterness engendered in some quarters by the outcome of the 2023 presidential elections, the absurd extremes to which vested interests, many posing as altruistic activists, pro-democracy advocates and patriotic citizens, went to discredit and delegitimize the polls and the sustained efforts by these elements to reinforce the myth that the election was the worst in Nigeria’s history and unreflective of the will of the electorate, shouldn’t the immediate past Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, have left office in a deafening din of universal condemnation and unedifying opprobrium?

    No, the circumstances and atmosphere in which Yakubu formally vacated office this week at the expiration of his two-term tenure of ten years were markedly different from that in which Professor Maurice Iwu, Chairman of INEC from June 2005 to 28 April 2010, unceremoniously exited the position with little fanfare. The stridency with which Iwu proclaimed from the hilltops that the 2007 elections, which he superintendent, were the best in the universal history of elections, a claim that sharply contradicted the widely condemned appalling atrocities that marred the elections, contrasts with the calm dignity and quiet composure with which Yakubu quit the electoral arena leaving others and posterity as the final assessors of his record.

    Incidentally, the winner of the 2007 elections, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, admitted that the polls through which he emerged were flawed, while the courts upturned the governorship elections conducted by Iwu that year in at least five states. It was partly because of the undeniable significant improvements in the conduct of elections in Nigeria particularly as from 2015 as compared to what can be described as the ‘primitive era’ of electoral contestation in 2003 and 2007 that the majority of fair-minded analysts were generous in their assessment of Professor Yakubu Mahmood’s performance as INEC Chairman even while admitting that elections conducted under his watch were not perfect as indeed such contests for power can hardly be expected to be in most emergent democracies.

    Read Also: Why Nigeria is facing infrastructure challenges – Adebayo

    Although reforms to enhance the technical capacity, technological resourcefulness and institutional autonomy as well as integrity of INEC began under Professor Attahiru Jega as the Commission’s Chairman from 2010 to 2015, it was under Professor Yakubu that these innovations were consolidated, reinforced and substantially widened in scope. This was partly because he was the first head of the electoral umpire to complete a two-term tenure of ten years, ensuring leadership continuity and stability that enabled him to set and actualise long-term objectives.

    Comprehensively capturing the innovations that characterised the Professor Yakubu years, this newspaper’s columnist, Festus Eriye, writes that “You cannot discuss Yakubu’s legacy without talking about the Commission’s embrace of technology. Two key items have become household names in political discourse. The Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) with fingerprint and facial recognition was introduced in place of the flawed manual processes. Equally, the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) came into being, allowing Nigerians to view polling unit results in real time. Technology has also revolutionised voter registration through IVED and ABIS, eliminating 2.7 million fraudulent registrations. Digital portals for candidate nomination, party agent registration, observer accreditation, and media access are now available. In a first on the African continent, INEC has introduced the Artificial Intelligence Division, with an eye on the future of election management “.

    Festus Eriye continues: “Other achievements of the Yakubu tenure include expanding the Voter Roll by institutionalising Continuous Voter Registration (CVR). This has created year-round opportunities for people to register…He would be remembered for making inclusion a core part of his agenda with the establishment of the Department of Gender and Inclusivity to give structure and voice to representation. Quota slots were reserved for women in senior management, breaking long-standing barriers. Also introduced were assistive voting devices like Braille ballots and magnifying lenses. He created and implemented legal frameworks for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to vote, safeguarding rights even in times of crisis. To actually walk his talk, persons with disabilities were hired within INEC”.

    The consensus of informed opinion is that Professor Yakubu finished his tenure creditably and left office in what is difficult to distinguish from a blaze of glory. It is unfortunate that some of those who seek to discredit INEC as an institution, Professor Yakubu as a public official and the 2023 presidential election in its entirety simply because a candidate of their choice did not emerge as the winner in the exercise are supposed intellectuals for whom a commitment to truth and moral integrity ought to be uncompromising guideposts. Integral to the definition of the intellectual is an abiding respect for truth and fidelity to empirical facts. For the journalist, in this regard, the guiding dictum is that facts are sacred while opinions are free.

    At the forefront of efforts to demonise the 2023 elections and strip the President Bola Tinubu administration of all vestiges of legitimacy and credibility for patently partisan, possibly ethnic and obviously non-altruistic reasons is none other than the self-styled political economist, Professor Pat Utomi. I am unaware of any original contributions that Professor Utomi has made as a scholar to either the radical or liberal variants of political economy that compare even remotely with those of such first-class Nigerian economists as Claude Ake, Eskor Toyo, Bade Onimode, Ojetunji Aboyade, Sam Aluko, Pius Okigbo or Mike Kwanashie. Indeed, in February last year, the good professor predicted that the value of the Naira would soon plunge to N10,000 to the dollar, given what he saw as the ineptness and inappropriateness of the Tinubu administration’s economic policies.

    As one Ufuoma Bernard posted sarcastically on his Facebook page last week, “Professor Pat Utomi predicted a few months ago that the dollar would hit N10,000, but today it is N1,486. Man no be God”. Also commenting on Utomi ‘s prediction, Bode Opeseitan wrote, “In February 2024, during a political event, Professor Pat Utomi declared: ‘Nigeria is dying’. He went further to predict that the Naira could collapse to as low as N10,000 to the dollar, tying this grim prophecy to insecurity, lack of production, and distrust in leadership”. Continuing, Opeiseitan submitted that “Speaking in a politically charged environment as a Labour Party chieftain also may have sharpened his rhetoric. Yet, what he (Utomi) failed to anticipate was the multipronged approach of the Tinubu administration – bold subsidy removals, forex unification, Central Bank reforms, and investment courting – that kept Nigeria from plunging into Venezuela-type hyperinflation. Though the Naira briefly neared N2000/$ in forecasts, it stabilised below N1,500/$ – never reaching Utomi ‘s catastrophic scenario”.

    True, Utomi’s concerns about security and the country’s productive base are legitimate. But careless, rash and extremist assertions may be tolerated in journalism, but never from serious scholars, supposed to be authoritative and sober voices in their areas of specialisation. Only recently, Professor Utomi was clearly the brain behind the formation and outing of a new group, the Alliance for the Defence of Democracy (ADD) with the stated objective of championing the actualisation of electoral reforms in the country. Some notable senior lawyers, prominent academics, civil society activists and pro-democracy advocates were named as members of the group.

    Among the stated aims of the ADD are to “launch a mass movement to drive critical reforms in the electoral laws of Nigeria, especially those that dimmed the credibility of the 2023 elections namely; compulsory electronic transmission of election results, effective criminalization of votes buying, enactment of early and diaspora voting as initiated by the House of Representatives, proportional representation in government, especially seats for women and other vulnerable groups among others”. But as one of this newspaper’s columnists, Idowu Akinlotan, noted, Utomi and his group are grossly mistaken to assume that the 2023 presidential elections could be credibly and plausibly delegitimised on the basis of factors they have targeted for electoral reforms, such as electronic transmission of results.

    In the pertinent words of Akinlotan, “The facts of the 2023 presidential poll are clear. Each of the three leading presidential candidates won in 12 states, with Mr Obi, however, winning in 11 and the Federal Capital Territory. Where exactly did the purported rigging take place – in the 12 states out of 36 states won by the eventual winner, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC)? Or in the 23 states plus FCT won by the candidates of the PDP and LP, especially the latter, who won his Southeast region through a voter turnout troublingly out of sync with the national turnout? How more credible could an election be where there was neither a landslide nor outright and overwhelming dominance? President Tinubu lost Lagos, his base, Osun in the Southwest, Katsina, where the then sitting President Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling party came from, and in no state did he win by a huge margin on the scale Mr Obi did in the Southeast. But analysts have distorted the presidential election outcome, raised dishonest posers and comparisons with past elections, and illogically and unconstitutionally concluded that perhaps a runoff would have lent the results credibility “.

    At the head of this band of intellectual distortionists is none other than Professor Pat Utomi. Yet, nowhere has he come out to utilise his skills and cerebral prowess as a scholar and forensic political economist to demonstrate logically and empirically that his candidate, Mr Peter Obi, won that election as repeatedly claimed. In the same vein, during the 2020 #EndSARs protests in Lagos, Professor Utomi was one of the first prominent faces I saw on national television affirming authoritatively that the deployment of troops to contain the virtual descent of Lagos to anarchy at the Lekki Toll Gate was accompanied by a massacre of large numbers of protesters. To date, the slightest shred of evidence to prove this, including the hundreds of corpses so gruesomely murdered in cold blood, has not been provided. Yet, this patent untruth continues to be propagated and believed by significant numbers of people.

    Undoubtedly, one of the worst elections ever in the history of Nigeria was the 1983 presidential election, so brazenly rigged by the then-ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN). The election resulted in widespread violence in states like Oyo, Ondo, Niger and Anambra, among others. In the process of collation of the results, a super Minister in the Shehu Shagari administration,  Alhaji Umaru Dikko, Minister of Transportation, unaccountably forced his way into the headquarters of the then Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) to rancorous public outcry.

    It was only a matter of months before the military got rid of the administration on December 31 1983. Yet, a then much younger Pat Utomi was on the network of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) night after night, alongside the likes of Professor Walter Ofonagoro and Emeka Maduagbuena, proffering fraudulent intellectual justification for a criminally rigged election. Today, he is at the forefront of lending analytical artillery to delegitimise a 2023 presidential election infinitely more credible and demonstrative of integrity than the one he vigorously defended in his youth over four decades ago.

  • The intellectual complex…

    The intellectual complex…

    The former Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Chief Geoffrey Uche Nnaji recently resigned his appointment amidst the alleged certificates’ forgeries. He is alleged to have forged both a degree and National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) discharge certificate. While he claims to be stepping aside to give room for judicial processes, it is apposite to dig into reasons why the few cases of certificate forgeries in public service persists. With the return of democracy in 1999, the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari  was discovered to have claimed to have graduated from the University of Toronto and altered his age to qualify for the constitutional age to be a house member.

    He was subsequently prosecuted and convicted. He was later pardoned by the late Buhari administration and even honoured with being a Chancellor of a University. Many are still scratching their heads for the reasons behind such actions. A former minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun was equally discovered to have submitted a fake NYSC exemption later and she subsequently resigned.

    There have been outrage across the country about this recent alleged scandal involving Chief Nnaji. On his part, he struggled after the media exposure to communicate with the public. His so called PR consultants seem to have made matters worse by declaring that their principal was a victim of political blackmail. Whether their arguments helped their principal in any way remains to be seen as events unfold.

    Nigeria is a developing country. There would always be pitfalls and challenges but efforts must be made by the citizens and the institutions to reduce to the barest minimum instances that derail development.  There must be a decision by the people to change certain socio-cultural fixations. The lust for titles, certificates and all forms of tags must be addressed. It is good to achieve certain academic or traditional goals but they must be earned as in the days of yore. There must be a return to the era where integrity, meticulousness and hard work matter.

    Why do humans, including Nigerians try to access certain positions and qualifications they have done little or nothing to achieve? Why do people pursue titles even when they have not earned them legitimately? Why do people take short cuts to academic qualifications, why do people pay money to be given traditional or religious titles in some instances? How do these all impact development?

    The Roundtable Conversation sought the views of one of Nigeria’s most accomplished actors who is as cerebral as she is a woman of many accomplishments in many fields; journalism, cosmetology, TV  and photography. She is popularly referred to as the matriarch of the Nigerian very vibrant film industry. According to her, at 84, she has seen a bit of the Nigerian socio-cultural and political metamorphosis to understand why.

    She says that Nigeria is a beautiful and highly gifted country but the humans have to decide how the country develops or sinks. Addressing the issues of certificate forgeries generally and other forms of examination malpractices, she feels the people must have a deep introspection. She points out that intellectual bankruptcy is reason some people belief they need certain tags or titles to be recognized. Logically, when you do well, when integrity matters to you, your output both on a personal and professional level gives you the requisite recognition, influence and power.

    “I am simply Taiwo Ajai-Lycett”. This she says means that no tag precedes or follows her name but that does not diminish her status or achievements in the fields she had ventured into all her life. “My simple name is my passport to anywhere in the world.  What this means is that when you want a certain status of power and influence, you work hard for it. I have worked hard and I have earned my flowers without having to forge any certificates”.

    She believes that people must decide what parts to choose on their way to achieving fame and fortune. The idea that some parents and other adults get involved in exam malpractices on behalf of their children or even for themselves is very telling of the lack of intellectual depth and altruistic aspirations. There is a growing incident of anti-intellectualism and this is affecting both the political and socio-economic lives of the nation. There is an increasing pursuit of status and power in different forms, political, social and even religious. These powers when acquired even if falsely elevates the humans involved and when the society refuses to hold the guilty accountable, it often spirals out of control. The logical sequence of events used to be that people struggle to be of impeccable moral character as that attracted respect and reverence in some cases. Today, the values seems to have changed and there seems to be a certain ‘fast-foodlike’ attitude to getting ahead in life in ways that points to, ‘the end justifies the means’ social mantra.

    She recalls that in the past, intellectualism was admired and that does not mean it comes only through academic achievements. Intellectualism in its purest sense is devotion to the exercise of intellect which comes from well-thought out processes of ideas, knowledge and information. So the fact that some people feel that they can have short-cuts to real success is what feeds the hunger to try to skip due process either academically or socially in the case of those who use money to influence titles or positions of authority and influence in the society.

    The society must begin to purge itself of honouring misfits. This is why people love to acquire titles and cheat their ways to positions they won’t ordinarily be given. There is a local saying that ‘a good name is better than silver and gold’. No one ever said that a good title or position is anything to be proud of. So according to Ajai-Lycett, the craving to be addressed as; Excellency, Honourable, Distinguished, Professor, Dr. and other appellations seems to be at the root of people seeking validation and power.

    Read Also: EU promises deployment of Finland, Estonia software for Nigeria’s digital infrastructure

    She says that each society through the values they espouse often impacts on the kind of development that becomes achievable.  The idea of exaggerated self-importance with little cerebral content might work against development. The fact that certain values have been eroded would continue to fuel deviations from the right parts. A Chief Nnaji, if the allegations are true must have gone that route because he wanted the power the position he was nominated for brings. He must have believed that he is in a system where due diligence is lacking and might have gotten away with his alleged forgeries.

    The system must have a re-orientation and the society must get back to the values that empowers societies. There is no perfection anywhere but positions of influence must not be for people without the intellectual pride to engage in the rigorous but rewarding route of knowledge acquisition, sharing and productivity.

    Dame Ajai-Lycett advised that though the media is trying in the development of the country being the 4th estate of the realm, care must be taken not to allow certain PR communicators to continue to present themselves as media professionals. She insists that they are at best commercial communicators who work with the media to project either the products or services of their clients. The media is responsible to the people and help in deepening the works of the executive, legislature and the judiciary.

    Public Relations practitioners must not be allowed to bastardize the value and work of the core media. The fact that they project their clients through the media does not make them media practitioners in the sense they often project themselves. She feels that it’s curious that when some of these scandals break, some PR consultants in defending their clients often posture as media practitioners which is misleading. The hallmark of journalism is objectivity, PR consultants are often very subjective.

    This alleged scandal is an indictment on the system generally. How did a whole Senate of Nigeria not scrutinize documents submitted by a ministerial nominee? The alleged discrepancies on the certificates were too obvious that the senators ought to have identified and pointed them out. The litany of screenings and confirmations by the senate since 1999 ought to have produced better developmental results if patriotism were on the cards. This alleged scandal is an indictment on the senate and other government agencies that had a hand in clearing the ex-minister. There must be more diligence in the ways things are done because everyone becomes the casualty when incompetence comes from public servants.

    In this case, if a nominee cannot be truthful with his qualifications and NYSC requirements, how sincerely can he serve the people of Nigeria? Again, there are suggestions that the constitution must be amended to upgrade the requirements for accessing public service. In many developed nations, the public service is the exclusive of many of the best qualified in character and learning. The value comes with the productivity of people who have lived lives o diligence and integrity. We must make a choice.

    •The dialogue continues…

  • What did Jonathan forget in Aso Villa?

    What did Jonathan forget in Aso Villa?

    Ten years after he was rejected at the poll, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, like the wife of Lot, is trying to look back.

    He left, more or less in a blaze of glory, despite the general perception of his government as inept and clueless by many political actors, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who vigorously campaigned against his stay in power beyond 2015.

    Generally perceived as a gentleman who could not frontally ruffle feathers, GEJ, as he is fondly called by some admirers, behaved responsibly and adjusted to life outside power. He became more popular outside Nigeria, particularly in the West African sub-region and the continent as an envoy and important observer during presidential elections.

    But since 2019, certain people who pose as his admirers have not allowed him to be himself. They have been urging him to terminate his blissful retirement. He now seems to pander to deceit, with the insatiable nature of man dominating his thought process.

    Jonathan has the right to contest for president, like other past leaders with unquenchable appetite for political control. Politicians are incurable optimists, even if they are contending with a fading influence. In the game of politics, retirement is never contemplated.

    Power is so alluring and highly captivating that former leaders always prefer to come back. What has saved Nigeria from the sit-tight syndrome is the primacy and potency of the constitution that sets the limit. It is not the desire for credible service that is the motivation. Their intention may be to return to power for personal gains, for ego, for a show-off, and for private accumulation.

    Kleptocracy is the political ideology of many African leaders. Those who eventually succeeded in regaining power have often left their countries worse than they found them in their second coming.

    None of them is insulated from the temptation, despite the realisation that power obsession could also lead to personal and national doom, as the power baron tends, with the passage of time, to equate himself with the nation he mischievously governs.

    The addiction to power is an all-consuming passion fueled by poor judgment and neglect of reality. Warning signals are ignored, and self-assessment becomes defective. Liars and manipulators mill around the kleptomaniac who ultimately falls into deception, only to be deserted after the collapse of the inordinate ambition. This is peculiar to Generals who had set themselves upon the country, brandishing the barrels of guns.

    Some examples offer instructive lessons. As politicians competed for available spaces in the ill-fated Third Republic, some elements, for reasons best known to them, suddenly remembered that former Military Head of State Gen. Yakubu Gowon was around. They, therefore, resolved to draft ‘Gentleman Jack’ to the presidential race. The former leader, a political scientist, was excited. The Ebora Owu, General Olusegun Obasanjo, frowned at the antics of those trying to draft his former boss to the murky waters of politics. He retorted: “What did Jack forget in the State House?”

    Mercifully, the plot crumbled at the initial stage of the laborious Option A4 experimentation.

    Obasanjo himself was lucky. But at the end of eight years, many Nigerians thought that it was better if he had not returned to power. Up to now, he has been haunted by the ghost of his infamous third-term agenda. OBJ handed power voluntarily, as often said, to democratically elected leaders in 1979. He elicited a round of applause. But by the time he left power again in 2007, the praises had evaporated. The then Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu apologised to the bewildered nation over Obasanjo’s tenure elongation plot. Although Nigeria is also entitled to an apology over the flawed election that took Umaru Yar’Adua to power, none has been forthcoming from the man at the centre of the controversies.

    Read Also: Immigration Service introduces post amnesty documentation programme for foreigners on expired visa

    It could not be ascertained if the Evil Genius, former military President Ibrahim Babangida, had a pact with OBJ that he would succeed him. However, IBB, as fondly called by admirers and foes, threw his hat into the ring. A wealthy man who had stepped aside ingloriously after eight years of tossing around Nigerians and annulling the most credible election, Babangida embarked on a nationwide consultation until he was stopped by northern leaders who opted for Atiku Abubakar, who, in the end, failed at the poll.

    Although General Muhammadu Buhari returned, like OBJ, the soldierly steam he was famous for in his military heydays had deserted him. Active, energetic, and vibrant between 1984 and ‘85, the latter-day Buhari contrasted sharply with the Buhari the nation had known and the corrupt ones had feared, accompanied by a no-nonsense Ilorin-born Fulani soldier, Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon. While Buhari was hailed in 2015 as the symbol of change, he forfeited the adulation in 2023, with his ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), battling with internal contradictions. Under his watch, the nation was grounded by self-imposed fuel scarcity, forex burden and punishment, and a curious currency change that made life unsavoury for the citizens for weeks.

    Since Jonathan was voted out of power, his intention to bounce back has been a subject of speculation. Naive and poor at self-assessment, the former president has often listened to Ahithophelean advisers who have continued to urge him on.

    Jonathan is not a strong politician, neither is he a giant of history. He was nevertheless catapulted to stardom by sheer luck. In every political position he held, he was about garnering experience when he was suddenly promoted to a higher pedestal.

    As a young lecturer, he was tipped for running mate to a boisterous boss with larger than life attitude, the self-style Governor-General of Ijaw Nation, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. When the pompous governor of eight-local-government State of Bayelsa was run out of power, Jonathan, a spare tyre deputy governor, filled the void and finished his boss’ second term.

    No sooner had he secured the governorship nomination for 2007 than fate smiled on him again. At the presidential convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he was surprisingly paired with Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua as the running mate. His first boss was consumed by corruption. His second boss was down with a protracted illness. In the two instances, he became the chief beneficiary of unplanned power shift.

    The latter was not without hassles. As vice president, his ebullient and more strategic wife,  Dr. Dame Patience, complained about the position’s obscurity, alleging that having been sidelined in the high official quarters, he was reduced to a powerless deputy who consoled himself with reading newspapers.

    But the voice of reason made a solid case for him in the absence of President Yar’Adua. The doctrine of necessity was invoked and he moved up as Acting President. After Yar’Adua’s death, Jonathan became the number one citizen.

    It is important to note that Jonathan never struggled to get power at any level. Others struggled on his behalf or paved the way for him. Power always landed on his palm on a platter of gold. He, therefore, lacks the critical experience required for political competition, consultation, negotiation, mobilisation, strategic thinking, and evaluation.

    While in power, his poor experience often led to poor decisions. Jonathan received commendation for setting up a constitutional conference. Eminent Nigerians converged on Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), to chart a new course for Nigeria. It later paled into a jamboree, as Asiwaju Bola Tinubu had earlier warned. The confab produced a good report. But the former president developed cold feet overnight. He said the approaching general election deserved more priority than the implementation of the far-reaching recommendations. The non-implementation of the report amounted to a waste of time, resources and opportunity.

    The steps he had taken in his elusive search for power confirmed his gullibility. Ahead of 2015, when it was obvious that he could not penetrate the Southwest, unlike in 2011, he sealed a pact with some elements in the region who lacked grassroots appeal. His major Southwest allies then were an aggrieved Afenifere factional leader, a capitalist lawyer who masqueraded as a revolutionary and leader of a fierce self-determination group. At the close of the poll, reality dawned on him that he struck a deal with fake allies without political clout.

    Gazing at 2027, Jonathan’s approach is laughable, although it casts him in the mould of innocence and meekness. He is banking on hope, the elixir of life, without a formidable structure and networks.

    Since 2015, Jonathan has been more or less “partyless”. After his defeat, he could not offer leadership for the party he used as a vehicle to ride to power. The former president has never played any leadership and stabilising role in the PDP but was aloof as the crisis-ridden platform decayed. The party’s governors who are battling to save its soul at the intensive care unit do not draw inspiration from GEJ who abandoned the platform a decade ago.

    He also deluded himself into thinking that the African Democratic Congress (ADC) of Atiku Abubakar, his long-standing political foe, could offer him a temporary refuge. So ingenious was the Otuoke politician that he even applied for the ADC flag on the condition that no other aspirant, not even Atiku, should slug it out with him at the primary. Of course, he got the answer he deserved on the spot: “ADC is Atiku’s property and fortress.”

    Should Jonathan join the 2027 presidential race, he will most likely erase whatever is left of his political significance and sink into the abyss of irrelevance if he loses the poll. Nothing about the current state of the nation suggests otherwise.

  • Before social media turn us all into lunatics

    Before social media turn us all into lunatics

    Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, was the first to make a distinction between two worlds. According to him, there is an ideal world of which the world we live in is a copy. Therefore, our world, which he called the world of form, is nothing but an imitation of the ideal world, as everything that exists in the former is only a duplicate copy of the perfect, unchanging version in the latter. Thus every person, bird, animal and even lifeless object you see in our ephemeral world has its perfect, original form in the world of ideal.

    To be sure, I had high admiration for Plato’s postulation as a university student with elective courses in Philosophy. But it was not until the advent of the social media that I was really hit by the plausibility of the point made by Plato. Today, we are all witnesses to two worlds, namely the one we live in and the noisy and boisterous one that thrives on lies, deceit and make-believe—the social media.

    For Nigeria and Nigerians, things have not been the same since the advent of the global system for mobile communications (GSM) which ushered in the social media at the tail end of the 20th Century. Gone is the privacy that once characterised the closely knit family life of the people, many of whom now spend virtually their entire life on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), TikTok and other social media handles, posting false messages intended to deceive or misinform the unsuspecting reader with a view to achieving some ulterior ends.

    When Mark Elliot Zuckerberg founded the Facebook, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger founded Instagram and Zhang Yiming founded TikTok, it was with a view to sharing positive ideas among users. But the platforms have since been hijacked by fraudsters, bandits, prostitutes, kidnappers and other anti-social elements for nefarious activities that put the lives of other users in danger. The result is that sane and decorous people who cannot stomach the madness of social media have abandoned the space to people of questionable character.

    Now the few that are left on the platforms are deluding themselves thinking that their wishes must prevail over those of the silent majority. So, when the vocal minority chooses a particular direction like they did during the 2023 elections, they assume that everyone else has followed their chosen path. This was the context in which they voted in one direction in the last presidential election and cried blue murder when their preferred candidate lost.

    Read Also: Immigration Service introduces post amnesty documentation programme for foreigners on expired visa

    I laughed in Hebrew when after the result of the last governorship election in Edo State the candidate of a particular party rejected it on the basis that the result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not tally with social media opinions, including that of an on-air personality reputed for championing the cause of the headless mob. Anyone who takes them seriously has himself to blame. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu admitted knowing this much before and after the election that ushered him in as president in 2023 but chose to ignore them because he knew he had the support of the rational but silent majority.

    The other day, I shook my head in pity for Super Falcons midfielder, Deborah Abiodun, as she wept in a trending video over the verbal attacks he suffered from a social media mob two days after she helped the national female football team to clinch the African Cup of Nations for a record 10th time. A day after the team was received by President Tinubu at the Presidential Villa with lavish gifts of money, houses and national honours, she was out on her Facebook page weeping and wailing over the taunts directed at her by some social media lunatics.

    In their usual insensitive manner, they said on account of her pint-sized physique, she would be wasting her time to expect a marriage proposal from any man. My pity for her stemmed from the realization that unlike President Tinubu, she was one of the people who still could not make a distinction between the real world we live in and the fake world of social media.

    Only recently, a Facebook user made a post on his wall, boasting about his ability to generate fuel from palm trees. As newshounds, we were curious, and launched an effort to ascertain the veracity of his claims. Besides it could be a breakthrough that would change lives, draw massive investments and generally help the society.

    Pronto, a call was made to the self-acclaimed researcher for an interview to further shed light on his ‘breakthrough’. Our curiousity was further heightened with some videos he sent to demonstrate how fuel is extracted from palm trees. But it became a different story we finally met the inventor and he began to stammer. In the end, it was a claim he made with the hope of extorting money from unsuspecting members of the public who might want to subscribe to the project.

    These and other antics are reasons why some Nigerians have asked for regulation of the social media.

  • Critical notes on Dangote versus PENGASSAN, others

    Critical notes on Dangote versus PENGASSAN, others

    “Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.” … Sun Tzu – A Chinese Military General, Strategist, Philosopher, and Writer

    Like every other Nigerian, I have been keenly watching the friction between NUPENG and PENGASSAN against Dangote Petroleum Refinery, which is threatening Nigeria’s economy.  I am glad that the National Security Adviser (NSA) to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and his team have intervened, which has resulted in a resolution in the interim. I commend the NSA for his strategic thinking and emotional intelligence in averting a strike action that would have crippled the economy at such a very sensitive time in our Country.

     I am also contributing as a friend of Nigeria’s organized labor unions (to which NUPENG and PENGASSAN belong), based on my experience and antecedents of fostering industrial harmony between institutions and Unions. For instance, about eight (8) years ago, as the Group Chief Strategy Officer of a publicly quoted company in Nigeria, I was instrumental in ensuring the protection of the welfare and well-being of workers in one of the most sensitive and highly unionized sectors in Nigeria – the Aviation sector. I was instrumental in influencing and facilitating, amongst other things, the biggest single staff promotion exercise across all cadres in the history of aviation in Nigeria, where almost 900 staff were promoted at the same time in one Company in the sector – the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company Plc; with no rancor, outcry, or dissent. This averted a major strike action that could have crippled Nigeria’s aviation sector, with a domino effect on the nation’s economy. I was able to achieve this feat by working with the two main Staff Unions of the Sector. I also had to convince the Board of Directors while brokering the peace deal between the Board and the Unions. A feat that earned me documented commendations from the Board of Directors of the Company, the staff of the company, and also from the Workers’ Unions leadership.

    Balancing Agitation of Workers’ Rights and Circumspection for Economic Stability

    I believe that the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) and its umbrella bodies, or organized labor, are critical stakeholders and veritable levers that should keep the government and private sector organizations in check, hold governments to account, and provide constructive engagements and counter-balance in ensuring the delivery of good governance in Nigeria. Therefore, I regard Unions as positive contributors and not antagonists. 

    However, I believe that organized Labor should be the voice of Nigerian workers in line with the principles of collective bargaining and the overall welfare of the entire Nigerian workforce while supporting the government to deliver its mandate. Therefore, I am of the view that the Unions should not be opposed to the government or private sector growth and development, but they are critical stakeholders in socio-economic development in Nigeria.  

    Accordingly, in my opinion, leaders of some of the organized labor Unions have been perhaps overplaying their hands. And the drawback of overplaying an advantage is that it is highly likely that you could lose focus, advantage, supporters, and ultimately, miss your key strategic objectives and fail to make the desired impacts. If the leadership of the organized labor loses focus and becomes highly political or distracted, they could personalize the struggle. If so, some of the workers (in public and private sectors), the generality of Nigerians, and other critical stakeholders will start questioning the rationale and actual objectives of the leadership of the Unions. Consequently, the Unions could most likely lose their strategic positioning. It may seem far-fetched, but the highly operational, antagonistic and sometimes allegedly transactional method of activism currently used by the Unions will ultimately make the them to lose their footing, their guard, relevance, and respect – slowly initially, and if not contained, this could lead to conflict of principles and objectives with negative consequences on the Union leadership structures and Unionism sustainability. 

    Importantly, with the call-off of the planned strike by NUPENG and PENGASSAN, it is time to review the situation that led to the imbroglio with the intent to fashion a proactive “win-win” way forward rather than being reactive. The focus should not be only on the short-term impacts but also on the mid-to-long-term impacts.

    Read Also: Amupitan’s nomination as INEC chairman gets support

    The only way for the Unions to win this battle is to review their strategies, face realities, and craft a “strategy of adaptation, value-addition, and sustainability” rather than a “strategy of pushbacks.” Because indeed, change has come, and they must adapt to that change or life will go on without them. 

    Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has changed the game of the mid and downstream oil and gas sector in Nigeria with the Dangote Refinery, and he is riding on the momentum. Hence, Nigerians will not allow a few vested interests, whether as Union members or as players in the industry, to draw us back into the relic of the past. The days of cheap blackmail and antics of self-service. The reality is that the laws of demand and supply are at play, and the law of reality is at play with regard to the oil sector and other sectors of Nigeria’s economy. 

    Meanwhile, the infighting within some Unions also highly suggests that the agitations of some Union leaders are not about the workers or people of Nigeria, but about their parochial interests. 

    Based on the foregoing, I urge the Union leaders to be more circumspect and strategic, going forward. There is no doubt that the organized labor unions are critical stakeholders in Nigeria. Therefore, strategic thinking, planning, and execution are key to the successful delivery of their mandates in the interest of the workers of Nigeria and indeed for the general good of all Nigerians. I do not envy the current position of the leaders of organized labor in Nigeria and the circumstances they have found themselves in. That is why it is important that they remain focused on the big picture objectives and not be distracted by mundane issues that may come up, or those that they deliberately or inadvertently create. 

    That is why there is a need for organized labor in Nigeria to re-strategize and re-position, otherwise they may push their luck too far, which may derail the train of the struggle and leave Nigerian workers at the losing end. I honestly hope that this will not happen. Because, in Nigeria, we really need a vibrant, strategic, and forward-thinking organized labor Union at this critical time in our Country. The NLC is a veritable counterbalance that we need, which should ensure good governance in Nigeria.  

    The Need To Have More Industrialists Like Alhaji Aliko Dangote In Nigeria

    Like other well-meaning Nigerians, I have been promoting the Dangote Refinery project over time, recognizing the input he has made to Nigeria’s economy, and recognizing the reality of supporting Dangote Refinery to succeed as a critical component of our economic recovery. Indeed, it is worthy of note that Aliko Dangote has become an institution and has built a behemoth of a conglomerate of institutions in various sectors, not just in Nigeria but across Africa. 

    However, in my opinion, as a food for thought for all Nigerians, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has become a “key one-man risk” for Nigeria’s economy. If this strength/ risk scenario is not properly managed, the situation may backfire on Nigeria in the mid to long term. This is because, from a strategic perspective, an individual who has become so rich and powerful, across various sectors, with no veritable competitors/ competition, or fallback options for a Country like Nigeria, is a paradox of being a “Strength” as well as a potential “Weakness/ Risk”, for the Country. 

    Therefore, there is need for leadership at the highest level of this country, to as a matter of national priority, support the emergence of more industrialists the like Alhaji Aliko Dangote to emerge across the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria i.e; Southwest, Southeast, Northwest, Northeast, North Central, South-South; for the development and sustainability of Nigeria’s economy, because sustainability is key. Otherwise, some potential implications in the mid to long term are that the Dangote Refinery will most likely become what we are running away from, which is monopoly and exploitation, because absolute power is what we are giving Aliko Dangote, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In addition, if God Forbid”, anything goes wrong with Dangote, Nigeria does not have fallback options. This is a high risk that should be mitigated. Of course, with the likes of BUA Refinery, etc., coming up, there will be options and competition in the midterm. But there should be a national institutional strategic framework to build more capacity for the long term across all sectors.

    Therefore, it is also important that we don’t support to the silencing or stifling of NUPENG, PENGASSAN, or NLC, but that we should insist that organized labor Unions should step up, and do the needful in line with tenets of their mandate in the actual overall interest of workers and Nigerians and Nigeria’s political, social, and economic development and sustainability. 

    Meanwhile, constructive engagements should continue for a better Nigeria – nothing more, nothing less.

  • Nnaji and his accusers

    Nnaji and his accusers

    On Tuesday, Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology Uche Nnaji resigned amid his spirited defence of the allegations of forgery against him by Premium Times, an online newspaper. The resignation came as a surprise, considering how he, his aides and friends were returning fire for fire. Really, it is good that he resigned so that he can have enough time to face his accusers.

    Read Also: Breaking News: Nigerians Now Approved to Earn in Dollars from 2025

    His resignation should not be the end of the matter. It should be the beginning of it. What the publication accused him of is criminal in nature. The paper has published its findings following its investigation. Nnaji is disputing the publication’s claims. Who is telling the truth? Who is lying? We will soon know as the matter is in court. Does that not amount to putting the cart before the horse?

    Why were the police not called in before the matter was taken to court? It would have been the appropriate thing to do because of the alleged crime. For now, all fingers are crossed as the public waits for Nnaji’s next move.

  • INEC chair: Who ‘ll he be?

    INEC chair: Who ‘ll he be?

    It is the moment of truth. A new Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) may be announced anytime from now, following the handover of Prof Mahmood Yakubu to the most senior National Commissioner, Mrs May Agbamuche-Mbu, on Tuesday. Yakubu’s tenure formally ends next month after serving a two-term of 10 years.

    There have been speculations in the social and traditional media for long on who the next chairman will be. Nigerians are interested in who gets the job because it comes with enormous responsibility. It  is the most delicate of jobs – thankless, nerve-wracking and time consuming. The occupier of the office, no matter how capable he is or how good his intentions are, cannot satisfy everybody.

    In most cases, it is those who hail him at some point, shouting “hossana” – we have found the umpire in whom we are well pleased – that will boo and call him names later, crying “crucify him, crucify him”. This is the price of being the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of the nation. So, the Electoral Officer General of the Federation (EOGF) must have a thick skin. He must be ready to absorb all kinds of insults; be prepared to be called names and be told the history of his ancestry.

    It is a burden to be the INEC Chair. Yet, it is a job that must be done; a duty to be performed to country and in satisfaction of one’s conscience, with utmost good faith, because of what is at stake. There can be nothing more greater than the affairs of a nation which are in the hands of the INEC Chair during the periodic four-year elections. How he manages the elections goes a long way in keeping the country together. A well managed election guarantees peace and stability, even if some of the contestants are aggrieved with the outcome.

    Their grievances will be assuaged by the fact that the exercise was free, fair, open and transparent. A lot depends on the INEC Chair if we are to have a free and fair election in a society like ours where persons holding that office are viewed from the outset as having come to do their master’s bidding. The master in this case is the President, who is the appointing authority. Even if the President appoints an angel as INEC Chair, the appointee would still be viewed suspiciously. “Nothing good can come out of him”, the opposition and their supporters  would sneer.

    But given the same opportunity, they would do something worse. This is, however, not to say that the INEC Chair should lack honour. In fact, his honour should not be in doubt and his word should be his bond. He must be seen to stake that honour before the over 200 million Nigerians from among who he was chosen to head INEC and assure them that the commission would do good by him. He does not have to be a saint to do the job. All he has to do is to allow his commitment, capacity, competence and capability to speak for him.

    Politicians will not believe him, no matter what he does. But the people, the millions that would stand in the rain and under the sun, to vote during the elections will stand by him – if he is really diligent. Politicians can make all tbe noise in the world, but they know that they cannot push their luck too far with the people. The man (or woman) that will lead INEC is out there somewhere, waiting to be called upon to take up this onerous task. The responsibility of choosing the person rests with President Bola Tinubu.

      Has he found the man? Will he unveil him before the Council of State (CoS) which meets in Abuja today? The President does not have to listen to the noise of the market in making his choice. He should go for the man that best suits the job. A man of honour, character, intelligence, and integrity. A man that can stand his ground when push becomes shove. A man that cannot be intimidated by those whose stock-in-trade is to besmear and tar every INEC Chair with the same brush just because they had no say in the appointment. 

    Read Also: Nigeria has exited phase of economic instability — Shettima

    The President’s duty is to the people. He is not beholden to the opposition who, if they had their way, would prefer someone that they can dictate to as the INEC Chair. The President should be guided by the provisions of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) in his choice of the INEC Chair. He should not listen to those seeking to come in through the back alley to influence the process. Some of them had the opportunity in the past in one capacity or the other, and did not come up with all these their ‘beautiful ideas’ on how to appoint the INEC Chair.

    Their suggestions are however noted, as they are good on paper. Come to think of it, is it not too late in the day to be calling for a change in the rule of appointing the INEC Chair when Yakubu’s time is up? The man is formally leaving office on November 9, a few days from now. So, what time is there to implement these ‘grand ideas’ on how to appoint his successor? Many of these suggestions border on mischief and they are a way of preparing the grounds for condemning and challenging the outcome of the 2027 elections, which are still about 16 months away.

    According to the Constitution under which the President derives the power to appoint the INEC Chair and members, he “shall” do so in consultation with the Council of State. This august body meets in Abuja today. The nation waits with bated breath for the outcome of the meeting, and most likely the name of the new INEC Chair. Your road is going to be rough sir, and this is not a curse.