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  • Lagos and 2027 battle (2)

    Lagos and 2027 battle (2)

    Ahead of the electioneering, other names being speculated are Jimi Benson,  member of the House of Representatives from Ikorodu, who succeeded Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairman of the Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM).

    Benson is the toast of Ikorodu Division. If Ikorodu Division is a state, he may automatically become governor. He has attracted many Federal Government projects to the constituency, which has accorded him fame and increased the popularity of the party.

    Also, many Lagosians take  the technocrat and experienced politician, Senator Adetokunbo Abiru, very serious. They want him to run because they perceived him as a performer.

    Abiru, who hails from an illustrious Ikorodu family, is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN). A loyal chieftain, patriot, astute public administrator, his competence and giant strides in the banking sector have been celebrated. Never afraid of challening situations, anything he touches turns to gold. Abiru enjoys the trust of the party, its leadership and the state.

    But sources insist that the financial expert may not personally seek the governorship ticket unless he is called upon to take up the role in furtherance of his dedicated and consistent service to the state, the nation and humanity.

    Currently, Abiru is representing Lagos East District in the Senate. He served meritoriously as Finance Commissioner in the Fashola administration before returning to the unfinished business of banking.

    He was appointed in July 2016 by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as the Group Managing Director to lead the turnaround of the regulator-induced takeover of the then-troubled Skye Bank, in a bid to preserve the stability of the overall Nigerian Financial System. The successful completion of the assignment gave birth to today’s Polaris Bank Limited.

    READ ALSO: Tunji Olaopa, critical reforms and the Trump challenge (2)

    Abiru has also served on various boards, including Airtel Mobile Networks Limited; FBN Capital Limited (now FBN Quest Merchant Bank Limited); FBN Bank Sierra –Leone Limited; and Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS).

    More names would be speculated as the Lagosians gaze at 2027.

    Lagos APC is regenerating itself. It can boast of a unique academy of successors, who are being groomed and nurtured on the code of trust and service, and their consistency and reliability are not in doubt. It is however, a mixed grill of exceptiional children of party gerontocrats and legends, and other hardworking, dynamic, competent and promising youths. Many of them were thrown up by their personal exposure to activism and mobilisation from campus days. They exhibit traits that underscore giftedness, talentednes, giftedness and creativity. Others have risen to the pinnacle of their professions in the thriving private sector.

    Many of them did not enter politics at the top. They were privileged to rise through the ranks, climbing the hierachial ladder of leadership, service and learning.

    After the collapse of proposed  60:40 formula for offiice sharing in AD in 2023, Asiwaju Tinubu concentrated on party building, nurturing and strengthening the structure, which has now stood the test of time. He attracted a cult followership in his base and region before becoming a bridge builder with vast networks across the federation.

    A party offiicial said: “I can mention, at least, 50 names that are worthy of being saddled with the leadership of Lagos State; men and women who have learned at the feet of Asiwaju.

    “They are exactly like the leader, but they have acquired his traits and styles of politics and administration that made him successful.”

    According to the official, “Asiwaju has been identifying and targetting some promising youths, who are men of the future. They are talented and they look promising. Many of them do not realise that they are being prepared for the fuuture.”

    However, there is a subsisting debate over the preference of the party for technocrats as against core politicians. The argument may be weak. A feature of one tends to run into the other. Technocrats have done the state proud as governors, and they ultimately end becoming politicians. The politicians who loathe technocrats forget to realise that once upon a time, they were also technocrats before venturing into politics.

    How is the PDP faring? The Lagos chapter is down completely, weakened by the multiple crises ravaging the divided platform. The Lagos PDP is torn apart across the local governments. But the state executive committee is made up of officers loyal to the Board of Trustees (BoT) member, Chief Olabode George, who is recognised as the state’s party leader by the national leadership.

    PDP broke down long time ago. It was erected on a shaky foundation in Lagos. After its first chairman, Olorunfunmi Basorun, was asked to step aside, the party started to wobble from one crisis to another. In 27 years, the chapter has produced over 10 chairmen – Basorun, Muritala Ashorobi, Alaba Williams, Mr. Williams, Setonji Koshoedo,Captain Tunji Shelle, Adegoke Salvador, Adedeji Doherty, and Philip Aivoji. It smacked of leadership instability.

    Those who ran from AD/AC/ACN to PDP -Adeseye Ogunlewe, the late Rafiu Jafojo, Olufemi Pedro, Musiliu Obanikoro, Remi Adikwu-Bakare, Wahab Owokoniran etc – later ran back. They compared the two platforms and saw the futility of political wandering.

    Unlike in the past, the chapter is in want of a suitable candidate, following the defections that hit the party.

    Chinedu Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour has left the party for the African Democratic Congress (ADC), while Jide Adediran has retraced his steps back to APC.

    The only aspirant on the platform, for now, is Funso Doherty, who ran for governor four years ago on the platform of a smaller party. He managed to be visible at the factional convention in Adamasingba Stadium, Ibadan.

    Since 1999, PDP has been kept under check by the AD, AC, ACN and now APC. Its 1999 candidate, Chief Dapo Sarunmi,  lost to Asiwaju Tinubu; Funso Williams also lost in 2003.

    Four years later, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, a defector from AD, lost to Fashola. In 2011, Ade Dosunmi could not make any impact.

    In the 2015 contest, Jimi Agbade, who was persuaded to try his luck in PDP after his failed attempt in Democratic Peoples Alliance (DPA), could not defeat Akin Ambode.

    In 2019, Agbaje, after feelers from the electoral commission on the poll outcome, conceded defeat to Sanwo-Olu.

    Adediran strayed from APC to PDP, lost his deposit and returned to base.

    The three people from AD/AC/ACN/APC – Obanikori, Agbaje and Adediran – could not delivery victory to the main opposition party.

    Many politicians are deserting PDP, which is currently at crossroads over the protracted leadership crisis. Since there is no end in sight to the logjam, it is risky for anybody with governorship ambition to adopt it as a platform.

    Labour Pary (LP) appears to be in a similar mess, no thanks to the rift between the National Caretaker Committee headed by Senator Esther Nenadi-Usman and the faction led by Julius Abure. Both factions are still in court.

    If Peter Obi returns to LP as presidential candidate, it may enliven the members of the structureless party, particularly the Obedients, in Lagos. If he becone the ADC candidate, Lagos LP will automatically shift allegiance to ADC.

    The arrowheads of ADC in Lagos are Owokoniran and Funmi Onita-Coker. The national secretary,  Raud Aregbesola, understands the Lagos terrain. But he may not be able to penetrare as he contends with a fading influence in the state.

    Also, Lagos Labour Party (LP) is not in a good shape, having been deserted by many chieftains, following protracted crises.

    The appeal of the LP in the state seems to have evaporated after Rhodes-Vivour lost in the 2023 election. The erstwhile LP candidate has hinted that he might fly the ADC flag in the 2027 general election. But the party has neither confirmed nor denied the hint. It remains to be seen if Rhodes-Vivour still wields the same clout the LP gave him through the social media warrior in his former party.

    With the influx of desperate gold diggers who want to reap where they did not sow in Lagos, 2027 will turn out to be interesting in many aspects. But the ruling party and its leading lights need to watch out for a likely repeat of the 2023 experience when non-indigenes plotted to take over the state by hook or crook. Nothing should be left to chances. No discerning party goes to sleep with an agitated opposition brandishing fire near its roof to take over the property.

  • Professor Michael Akpan and man as homo economicus (1)

    Professor Michael Akpan and man as homo economicus (1)

    On the few occasions that I have encountered Professor Michael S. Akpan personally, I have always been struck by his evident sense of humility, meek mien and unassuming disposition. Yet, when it comes to economic discourse, the gentle lamb can quickly transform into a ferocious Lion with an intimidating roar. Like the confident scholar, Professor Akpan does not shy away from controversy; indeed he revels in scholarly argumentation and rigorous academic disputation. This much is evident in his inaugural lecture delivered at Bingham University, where he is Professor of Economics and a former Dean of Social Sciences, on Tuesday, October 21, 2025.

    Titled ‘Being an Economist: The Homo Economicus’, the inaugural lecture ranges widely across diverse issues, ideas, concepts and characterizations as regards economics as a discipline and man as the veritable economic species. Professor Akpan commences his lecture with an interesting juxtaposition of two perceptions on economics as a subject by two renowned economists. First, was Professor Sam Aluko who famously described Economics as “a very simple subject deliberately made difficult”. Second was the assertion by Ben S. Bernanke in 2004 that “Economics is a very difficult subject. I’ve compared it to trying to learn how to repair a car when the engine is running”.

    It would appear that the lecturer casts his lot with Bernanke as he recalls that in response to a student’s question, he had stated that “economics is truly difficult. But that it requires critical thinking and a measure of discipline to study it successfully”. But he does not interrogate why Sam Aluko depicted economics the way he did and even some of Professor Akpan ‘s analyses in the lecture insinuate that a number of the models and abstractions utilized in economic analysis tend to complicate and obscure reality thus making the subject less easy for many students to comprehend?

    Can it be that the aspiration not just of economics but also most of the social sciences to approximate as much as possible the approaches, methods, categories and classifications of the natural sciences this creating the illusion of greater scientific rigor has diminished much of the value of the social sciences as analytic modes of studying and explicating different parcels of social reality?

    Professor Akpan ‘s inaugural lecture is not a dry piece of abstract theorizing that lulls the audience or the reader to somnolence. Rather, we have the offering of an academic deeply steeped in theory but also has recourse to a wide range of lived experiences across time and space that enliven his sometimes abstract discourse. ‘Get out of your cloistered ivory towers and live’!!! the great novelist and short story writer, Cyprian Ekwensi once admonished some academic critics who had lampooned his literary works. Professor Akpan, as this inaugural lecture amply shows is as much at home in the abstract world of economic model building as he is in the practical economic terrain of running economic institutions, organizations, and structures to achieve goals both of productivity and development.

    In his meticulous manner, he states the four purposes of an inaugural lecture and strives to ensure that his lecture conforms to his format. The purposes he adumbrates are “To showcase one’s research and expertise; to show one’s contribution to public discourse; to share one’s insight in a subject and to introduce one’s future research interests”. The lecture indicates that, as a trained economist, Professor Akpan sees himself as homo Economicus’ par excellence. He explains to his audience that “the homo Economicus’ is also known as the economic man, and for the purpose of this lecture, he is an Economist because he is started his economics with managing the pots in his kitchen”.

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    Continuing, Professor Akpan describes the economic man as “a theoretical model of human behavior in economics” and points out that “an economic model is a simplified theoretical and sometimes economic statistics or economic mathematics construct designed to represent a complex system or a complex process, e.g. a model house, a model aeroplane, a model ship or a model factory etc. This means a model is stripped to the barest but has important features of the object it is representing”.

    From this premise, he identified five attributes of homo Economicus’ which are major characteristics or features of the person he is representing. Thus, he deduces that the homo Economicus’”is always acting to maximize his profits and utility by minimizing his cost; he is a rational being who always makes decisions and acts rationally at all times; he is self-interested and self-centered, motivated always by egoism and acquisitiveness; he has a short-term outlook –  everything of his is now or never and he has a perfect knowledge of what he wants to do in his kitchen and in the markets as a producer, supplier, buyer, seller and consumer”.

    Of course, Professor Akpan is not unaware that the concept of homo Economicus’ or economic man, which he traced to Adam Smith, father of modern economics, has “come under damaging attacks by the behaviourist economists and their followers who are now questioning the truism and validity of his attributes, his existence and even the real life examples of him. In other words, they are asking whether the real man has the economic man’s attributes. There are also feminist economists who have taken a swipe at Adam Smith and are asking why he did not create the economic woman”.

    The lecturer also refers to the 2014 inaugural lecture in economics delivered by Professor Abdul-Ganiyu Garba at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and titled “Economics: A Discipline in Need of A New Foundation” in which the lecturer questions the very notion of the existence of the economic man. According to Professor Akpan, “From the results of his metaphysical analysis, the homo Economicus’ obviously failed the existence question and on the basis of the man’s existential failure, Professor Garba asked the question: “Does the homo Economicus’ exist? He listed four evidences of the man’s failed existence as follows: (1) Real humans have a diversity of motives and intentions; (2) They act irrationally; (3):They are inefficient and (4) They select adversely and sometimes are helped to choose because they are unable to rank alternatives or choose a satisfactory option”.

    Nevertheless, Professor Akpan, if I am right, defends the notion of the economic man as a creation of the classical economists with its central economic thrust predicated on Adam Smith’s observation of man’s economic attributes which suggest that the economy is self-regulating making sustained unemployment impossible because”If it occurred by Chance, it would last for a short while because, in the long run, the system will self-regulate it back to full employment due to the self-interest of the economic man as a producer and as a consumer in the markets ( Goods and Services; Factors of Production: Land, Labour and Capital”.

    Thus the lecturer unabashedly declared that the lecture was designed to “defend the Homo Economicus’, defend his economics and his creator, Adam Smith (1723-1790) and to present some selected publications of the lecturer, some of which have adopted the economic man’s economic concepts, assumptions and markets in their analyses”.

  • Kick in the teeth

    Kick in the teeth

    I thought they were friends. Did I hear you ask who? Of course, Eric Chelle and Austin Eguavoen. They sat through training sessions as captured on television and the few pictures dropped in the media. Perhaps, there was an understanding to allow Chelle take the decisions.

    This writer, like most followers of the Super Eagles, wanted to know the relationship between the Nigerian technical crew and their foreign counterparts with Chelle. What one saw wasn’t impressive, raising the poser of why the NFF chieftains posted Nigerians to work with the coach. You could notice the cold shoulders given to Daniel Ogunmodede each time he ran towards the boss whilst celebrating a goal scored. I also noticed with pain that discussions with the substitutes on the sidelines shortly before they come onto the pitch were done by Chelle’s European colleagues. The second question, therefore, to the NFF would be why they chose these local coaches into the team if they were not going to be gainfully involved in all aspects of preparing and executing tactics before, during and after games have been won, drawn or lost.

    All through the matches played at the AFCON, my focus was the oddities of the games – those things the live coverage hid from us back home. And the sight of watching the brief spells anytime the cameramen zoomed on the Nigerian bench sank my heart. They couldn’t be bothered if they sat on the bench as bystanders and not active participants worth their while provided their wages, entitlements and bonuses were paid.

    Pity. What hurts is that the Nigerian coaches on the bench in Morocco learned nothing new which they could use to train their teams beyond the physical exercises they watched while their boss brazenly gave the assistants he came along with enough instructions with the aid of the computers and note pads. I was, therefore, excited reading the story conducted with the incumbent Technical Director and former Super Eagles coach and captain Austin ‘Cerezo’ Eguaveon in the print media.

    This time Eguaveon literarily kicked Chelle in his teeth when he said in the interview that: “I felt disappointed that we did not include some NPFL players in the AFCON squad. Some players in the team did not even get a minute of action, so why couldn’t we include a few players from the local league? At least three or four would have been better.”

    “The players are not bad, and just because we didn’t do well at CHAN doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

    “This is something we need to look into because it speaks volumes when players come directly from the local league into a major tournament like AFCON.”

    At least five of them in the 2025 AFCON squad didn’t play anytime. Why then did Chelle not pick players from the domestic league? Was it not Chelle who chose all the home-based players he selected for the CHAN tournament?  An admittance of failure on Chelle’s part of his poor selection of the domestic league players. In fact, I thought Chelle would have replaced injured Cyriel Dessers with one of the enterprising home-based players to serve as his learning curve. It didn’t occur to NFF chiefs also to replace Dessers who left the camp injured with a home-based player.

    “We can only advise him; we cannot force players on him. I must also say that he has a lot of respect for the players and wants to see how he can gradually bring them through. We have discussed this a few times, but the timing has to be right,” Eguavoen explained.

    “If he stays in the country more often, he will have better opportunities to visit venues and watch players. If he doesn’t, it becomes more difficult,” he added.

    Pray Eguavoen, this has always been the crux of the matter for those foreign coaches employed with our money whenever they throw the home-based players under the bus. Instead of the NSC and NFF chieftains to sit down and bridge the gap between the home-based and foreign-based players getting into the World Cup squad in 2030, they were busy planting one-sided stories which portray the falsehood of Nigeria qualifying for the last stage of the qualification matches in March.

    These two bodies’ tardy handling of matters concerning the qualification game of the 2026 Mundial want to force Nigeria back into the race at the expense of D.R Congo. Do they want to drag us to the World Cup with fresh stories of unfulfilled promises and failure to pay the players and coaches their match bonuses in the United States (US), Canada and Mexican cities? Shouldn’t Nigerians be told how they fared in all facets of the country’s participation at the AFCON tournament in Morocco, especially the team’s finances with particular attention to those things which poured odium on the country?

    ”I can’t tell what is going on and it’s the same for all of us in the board of the NFF at the moment. FIFA hasn’t officially charged DR Congo with any infraction. So it’s a whole lot of confusion down here”, he said.

    He however said a ruling is expected next month before the playoff in March, confirming that the NFF will no doubt lodge an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) if they don’t get justice from FIFA.

    ”If we don’t get the justice that we expect, then CAS will be the next stop. That I can assure you”, he concluded.

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    Can somebody in government not stop these half-truths in the media by our visionless sport administrators whose primary concern is to travel with the teams to competitions outside the country, instead of ensuring that the game is given the fillip of growth that it needs? Who issued the passports and passed them as legitimate documents to the D.R Congo players? How come no eyebrows were raised against the Congolese until our desperate officials latched on it? Since when did FIFA become immigration officials on passport documentation?

    Rather than our NFF and NSC chieftains dissipate energy on this D.R Congo misadventure with FIFA and later CAS, they should find a suitable accommodation space for Chelle to reside in fitted with state-of-art gadgets and recreational facilities within his house for exercises in Abuja, if indeed we expect him to truly monitor our home-based players himself. It won’t shock anyone if we are told that Chelle doesn’t have an official vehicle(s) with all the vehicles the big men have parked in their residences untouched. Money to be paid to the international attorney to handle the cases with FIFA and CAS will buy the SUVs for Chelle. Not so here?

    I’m glad that Portugal wants an international friendly against Nigeria in Lisbon on June 6. This is heartwarming and the best way to strategically rebuild the team by dropping the ageing and injury-prone ones for new and truly younger ones who can only be found in the Diaspora, according to daily reports in Chelle’s media.

    It is obvious the NFF and NSC are satisfied with these quick fixes than making deliberate efforts to revamp the soccer nurseries and academies across the country. I’ve repeatedly written here that countries which excel in sports don’t operate on fiscal budgets. They have sports funding done on biannual of four-yearly circles depending on the sport. Indeed, you don’t run sports by not hosting big competitions; if for anything else, to upgrade the country’s facilities and raise the awareness of such sport(s) among the people.

    France, a renowned soccer nation recognised her World Cup-winning team in 2018, not because teachers or civil servants were unimportant, but because exceptional contributions demand exceptional recognition.

  • Tunji Olaopa, critical reforms and the Trump challenge (2)

    Tunji Olaopa, critical reforms and the Trump challenge (2)

    It is ironic that, even as he exerts all energy in actualising his agenda to ‘Make America Great Again’, President Donald Trump is also, perhaps inadvertently, unravelling the building blocks responsible for his country’s superlative attainments in the first place. For instance, some of his country’s most iconic institutions of higher learning are under siege from the Trump administration as MAGA doctrine seemingly has little patience both for theory and theoreticians. Scientific certainties and proven verities on climate change, reproductive health, vaccines and public health among others are held hostage to rigid ideological stances of dubious intellectual and utilitarian value.

    No less damaging are the massive ongoing purges in the public sector under Trump thus eroding the certainty and security of tenure that enabled public officers to be true to their oath of office and stand fearlessly in defence of the public good in the discharge of their duties. It would appear that personal loyalty to Trump has become the most critical factor in being appointed to public office and the key to remaining in such offices. The consequence is the degeneration to the most comical forms of sycophancy and obsequiousness in American political life.

    Obviously lost on President Trump is the irony of his offering assistance to protesters against the Islamic Republic in Iran even as officers of the ICE operate like some Hitlerite gestapo gang in Wisconsin and other American cities – an anomaly in the expiring America we used to know. And in his rabid, no-holds-barred clampdown on ‘illegal immigrants’, which, of course, can be defensible in some respects, Trump is undermining the rich diversity of a specialist, skilled immigrant base partly responsible for America’s greatness. And there is the Trump administration’s total withdrawal from or undisguised undermining of several humanitarian organisations that underlay the ‘soft power’ that inspired Ronald Reagan’s description of America as the city on a hill beaming inspirational rays of light to the world. Unfortunately, clouds of darkness have begun to eclipse any such radiance.

    As this column has often reiterated, Trump’s unhidden disdain for the weak, poor, vulnerable and feeble of the earth or his contemptuous dismissal of the ‘shit-hole’ countries of Africa should not evoke responses of anger or fury. In any case, such negative emotions would be at best exercises in impotence in the face of a global power behemoth like America. In a way, we should even be grateful that Trump, through his undisguised forthrightness and penchant for telling the truth as he sees it, shorn of all hypocritical posturing, has issued a wake-up call to Africa and the continent’s leaders. You either shape up or face the existential evaporation of your countries as sovereign entities in a world increasingly impatient with failing states that sit atop buoyant resource bases that can be put to better use by better organised and managed polities.

    In the first part of this piece, we contended that resetting Nigeria and indeed Africa on the path of socio-economic and political resurgence, a task that has become imperative and inescapable, is no rocket science. It is a feat that can be achieved by doing a number of simple things that elevate merit in the functioning of the public sphere, ensure persistence on the path of this ethical rectitude and being focused not just in effecting seemingly small but impactful changes as well as being diligent in implementing the diverse aspects of the grand visions we conjure of the future flourishing society of our dreams.

    We noted that the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) under the leadership of Professor Tunji OLAOPA is already showing the light for us to find the way in this regard. In the first place, it is significant that President Bola Tinubu appointed unarguably the country’s leading authority on public sector reforms as Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC). Apart from the plethora of books he has written on public service reforms in Nigeria and Africa, Professor Olaopa rose to the Pinnacle of his career in the Civil Service where he was a federal Permanent Secretary. He has brought both his theoretical grounding and practical experience to bear on the execution of his mission at the FCSC.

    For instance, in September 2025, Professor Olaopa revealed, at an FCSC Strategic Plan Stakeholder Validation Workshop in Abuja, a new Strategic Plan to guide the operations of the FCSC between 2026 and 2030. Speaking on the occasion, he stressed that “This plan is our response to the President’s charge for us to reposition the Federal bureaucracy, making the Commission a catalyst for deepening and consolidating ongoing transformation efforts”. The unpretentious intellectual that he is, Olaopa admitted that the reform trajectory over the last one year had revealed certain limitations and shortcomings which had to be decisively addressed.

    In his words, “It became clear that our roadmap needed more evidence -based concrete strategies, change management programs, and carefully crafted projects to truly assure a transformative journey”. Towards this end, the remodeled strategic plan focuses on six key areas which include strengthening the FCSC ‘s constitutionally mandated independence, oversight of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), and public accountability mechanisms; according appropriate priority to reinforcing meritocracy through competitive promotion exercises, structured interviews, and transparent digital recruitment platforms that facilitate nationwide examinations; and, in conjunction with the Office of the Head of the Civil Service, institutionalizing performance -based career management systems that “link promotion and career progression to key performance indicators, citizen feedback, and revised annual appraisal reports fundamental for enhancing accountability”.

    Other aspects of the strategic master plan include improving on ethical frameworks, internal audit systems and whistleblower protections, as well as deepening the meritocratic and transparent implementation of the federal character principle, as well as ensuring fair representation for women and persons with disabilities in line with the constitution. According to Olaopa, “These six strategic emphases are lessons drawn from global best practices, especially from Commonwealth Civil Service Commissions in countries such as the UK and Canada…We must recover lost legal and operational independence to shield career management from political interference. Opaque manual processes will be replaced by digital recruitment platforms and performance -based promotions to deepen meritocracy and transparency”.

    The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Didi Walson – Jack expressed optimism that the FCSC Strategic Plan transcends beyond guiding the Commission alone but will also serve as an enabler for the wider Federal Civil Reform Agenda. Emphasising the shared vision by all stakeholders in developing a world-class public service characterised by professionalism, accountability, meritocracy, and performance orientation to fast-track national development, she stressed that the FCSC Strategic Plan, alongside the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP), would go a long way to help achieve these objectives.

    A significant development under Olaopa ‘s leadership at the FCSC has been the resuscitation of the annual National Council of Civil Service Commissions of the Federation. The highest consultative and advisory platform for strengthening institutional capacy, operational efficiency and governance culture among Federal and Civil Service Commissions in the country, this all important council had not convened for over ten years before the present dispensation. The theme of the 2025 edition of the Council was ‘Repositioning Civil Service Commissions in Nigeria as a Hub of Professionalism in Public Service Human Resource Management’.

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    A perusal of the communique issued at the end of the 44th annual Council of the Federal and State civil service commissions, which was held in Umuahia, Abia State, revealed a number of heartwarming trends. First, there is the evolution of a more robust relationship and interaction between the federal and state civil service commissions. Second, is a joint deliberation on as well as inclusive input into the emergence and subsequent implementation of the Strategic Master plan of the FCSC (2026-2030). Third, there is the increased tempo of the participation of state civil service commissions in the deliberations of the council, with positive implications for the overall performance of the body at the federal and state levels.

    It is not surprising that the emphasis in much of the points articulated in the communique stresses more qualitative and rigorous recruitment and promotion processes; higher levels of organizational accountability, transparency and efficiency especially through enhanced use of technological innovations and digital platforms; enhancing the organizational autonomy of the Federal and State civil service commissions from partisan meddling to enhance Professionalism and meritocracy in the pursuit of their respective mandates in the public interest.

    Attaining higher and more qualitative standards of governance in the public sphere is a necessary condition for Nigeria and other African countries to escape the demeaning characterisation of such countries as ‘shit-hole’ entities. The standards of performance set in the public sphere have positive or negative implications for public education, healthcare, urban planning, environmental control and waste management, housing, public infrastructure, as well as national security, to name a few. Indeed, the quality of service delivery in different areas of the private sector depends substantially on the quality of governance in public sector regulatory agencies.

    Perhaps one of the most significant highlights of the deliberations at Umuahia as captured in the communique was the declaration of support by the State Civil Service Commissions for steps being taken by the FCSC to bring other Human Resources Management institutions in the public service such as the Police Service Commission, National Assembly Service Commission, Federal Judicial Service Commission, the Civil Defence, Correctional and Immigration Services Board among others within a networking arrangement to share knowledge, engage in peer review and deepen the common pool for the generation and implementation of ideas, plans and strategies. If accomplished, this will be a major turning point in the qualitative deepening of the various federal and state civil service commissions across the country.

    No less critical was the call for the encouragement of State Civil Service Commissions to join the forum of the Association of African Public Service Commissions (AAPSCOMs) as an avenue for enlarging their learning network, broadening their professional outlook and expanding their sphere for peer collaboration. Incidentally, Professor Olaopa is the Vice President of the Association for the West Africa Region.

  • MSSN: IVC’s permanent site

    MSSN: IVC’s permanent site

    Islamic Vacation Course (IVC) is one of the most vital organs of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN). It was initiated at the inception of that Society in 1954 to furnish Muslim students with the required basic Islamic education that could serve as their foundation in life. IVC is so-named because of its design to take place during long school vacations. For more than 54 years after its establishment, IVC had been moved from State to State where public or private school premises were used for the educative programme. But with the increasing population of its members it became difficult to use one single school premise for the vital regular training given to members. Thus, as a token of progress, the thought of stabilizing the Association by establishing permanent sites got a consensus. And each of the two major zones of the Association (A and B zones) was given a go ahead to provide a permanent site for the programme while the Head Office is sited in Abuja.

    It was for the purpose of laying the foundation stone of B Zone’s permanent site that many Muslim organizations and individual personalities assembled in Ibadan on a Sunday. And who could have been more fitting for laying such a foundation than His Eminence, the Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubar III. As usual, he was personally present to perform the historic duty.

    Also present were the Otaru of Auchi, Oba Aliru Momoh, the Onitaji of Itaji Ekiti, Oba Adamo Babalola, the late Aare Musulumi of Yorubaland Alhaji Abdul Aziz Arisekola Alao, the former Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, late Dr. Abdul-Lateef Adegbite, late Justice Bola Babalakin (retired), the former and pieoneer Secretary General of Muslim Ummah of South West of Nigeria, Professor DOS Noibi and a host of other highly respected Muslim personalities too many to mention here, who came from all parts of the country. Most of these personalities were members of the MSSN at one time or another.

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    Also present at the occasion were many Muslim Organizations across the country including MSSN itself, the National Council of Muslim Youth Organizations (NACOMYO) Jam’atu Nasrul Islam, Nasru Llah Al-Fatih (NASFAT), Fathu Quareeb, Federation of Muslim Women Association of Nigeria (FOMWAN), The Companion, The Criterion and a host of other Organizations.

    At the occasion, the Sultan was so impressed by a four year old boy’s recitation of the Qur’an that he instantly awarded him full scholarship from the primary school to the University. It was his second time of doing that in 2008 alone. When he came to Ibadan for the inauguration of MUSWEN earlier this year, he announced three personal and automatic scholarships for three female Muslim students who could gain admission into the University to read medicine. And at the foundation laying ceremony he made a personal donation of three million naira which he called first installment.

    There is no part of this country that this Sultan has not personally visited formally as Amirul Mu’minin thereby confirming that Sultanate is rather for the entire country than just Sokoto as erroneously believed by many and echoed by the Nigerian Press.       

    Perhaps it was in consideration of this new reality that the conglomerate of the above named Muslim Organizations declared in Ibadan that the office of the Sultan for Nigeria as a whole and not for Sokoto alone. And the proposal was made by the Southern Muslims who might have realized an error in restricting the title to a single city (Sokoto) for many years.

    SULTAN is an Islamic title which means AUTHORITY. Whoever is legally crowned in that venerable office is legitimately vested with the authority to give Fatwa or delegate such power to any other competent Muslim Cleric. The office should therefore be for the entire Muslim society in Nigeria and not just a city, state or tribe. Sultanate came to replace Caliphate at a time when Caliphate was becoming irrelevant because of the gross abuse to which it was subjected through power struggle. To try to restrict it to a locality here in Nigeria, therefore, is like limiting the scope of Islam by sheer whim and caprice. No sensible oceanographer will want to confine the movements and operations of a whale to a brook. This new reality is long overdue.

    The emphasis on Sokoto whenever the title of SULTAN is addressed in Nigeria was a design by the colonialist not only to impress the restriction of Islam to a locality in Nigeria but also to stress their imaginary superiority of the British monarchy over Sultanate. Such a design which came to be inherited by Nigerian political elite is suggestive of the possibility of having a Sultan in any locality where Muslims are found. That was one of their many ways of degrading Islam. And this grossly contradicts the Islamic norm by which the Sultanate office was established.

    There are four Sultanates in the world today. They are the Sultanate of Oman, the Sultanate of Bahrain, the Sultanate of Brunei and of course our own Sultanate of Nigeria. It will be noticed that each of the first three Sultanates was mentioned in relation to its country of domain and not of localities. Why should that of Nigeria be different?  Afterall, the other three Sultanates put together are by far smaller in area size and in population than that of Nigeria. Why then should we as Muslims accept an imposition on us by those who didn’t know how Sultanate came about?

    Since the title belongs to Islam and the Muslims alone, it should be the exclusive right of only the Muslims to redefine that title appropriately and call it its befitting name without consulting any non-Muslim. And that was what the Nigerian Muslims did in Ibadan that Sunday, during the foundation laying of the MSSN permanent site in Ibadan.

    Afterall, this is not the first time that the Muslims in Southern Nigeria would initiate Islamic action that would become a national affair. Such initiatives have rather always come to strengthen the Unity of the Nigerian Muslim Ummah. Examples of these are many. Muslim Students Society of Nigeria is one. NACOMYO is another. FOMWAN is another. CRITERION is another. And yet, there are also NASFAT and FAT’HU QUARIB. All of these and many more are National Muslim Organizations initiated from the South-West but to which millions of Nigerian Muslims belong today by choice without any tribal or sectional bias.

    Incidentally, all these organizations were present or ably represented at the foundation-laying ceremony of the Islamic Vacation Course (IVC) permanent site where the declaration of the SULTAN OF NIGERIA was made last Sunday and there was no single dissenting voice. If the proposal or that declaration had been made by any Northern Muslim Organization it would have been perceived as Northern gimmick to laud it over the South. But here is a declaration made in the South by the Southern Muslims on their own volition. What else can anybody say to controvert it?

    Going by that declaration therefore, it becomes a reality that this only African Sultanate is of Nigeria and not of Sokoto as hitherto assumed. And Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar III has confirmed this by his utterances and actions. He has shown Nigerians the difference between leadership and rulership. And by his example we have come to realize that what Nigeria has always lacked is not rulership but leadership. As Muslims, we prayed for good leadership and Allah in His mercy granted us one. It is now left to us to appreciate it by not abusing it. We pray the Almighty Allah to further guide and protect this Sultanate that the Nigerian Muslim Ummah may fall asunder.

  • Food for thought for African Democratic Congress (ADC)

    Food for thought for African Democratic Congress (ADC)

    ‘A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people and the quality of their leaders which ensure it an honorable place in history.”- Mr. Lee Kuan Yew – the First Prime Minister of Singapore’

    Effectively, as we approach the 2027 general elections in Nigeria, except some critical steps  are taken by the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the ADC will not stand a chance to even compete talkless of to win the 2027 presidential elections against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    The clock is already ticking, build up to the 2027 elections. And here we are, the opposition political figures and the opposition political parties in Nigeria are In disarray. There is currently, no unanimity of focus, there is no alignment of key objectives, there seem to be no potential to build up to  a consensus with regard to zoning of the President slot, or where the ADC stands, in terms of its strategy.

    How will ADC  deal with the big egos currently in the ADC? That is another food for thought.

    Good enough just two days ago, the ADC leadership  finally setup a 50-member, Manifesto drafting Committee, to come with a draft of what the ADC has to offer to Nigerians  or what the other political parties have to offer Nigerians show us what they have to offer that could be better what President Bola Tinubu, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have been doing in the past two and a half to three years. Indeed, in my view, in comparison with previous dispensations, so far this is the most lame and reactive opposition time in the political history of Nigeria

    The current opposition political parties in Nigeria, are yet to have a unity of purpose, talk less of strategy of putting their houses in order, to be able to effectively fight a very entrenched, highly experienced, war-scarred, dominant and incumbent President Bola Tinubu and his political party. And it worries me as a Nigerian because we need an effective opposition to put President Tinubu and APC on their toes as they deliver their mandates at federal and state levels,  so that they can do more. That consciousness will also make the ruling party to know that they have an opposition that can actually compete with them.

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    By the way, many people do not know that I have political experience. As a bit of background about my political antecedents; I was a founding member of the All Peoples Party (APP) in 1998, and I was appointed as the first Information Analyst at the APP National Secretariat, working directly with the National Chairman and the National Secretary (within the National Working Committee). I worked with different Committees including Planning and Organizing Committees, Mobilization Committees, National Convention Committee, the APP Governorship elections Campaign team for late Engineer Magaji Abdullahi, the APP Governorship Candidate for Kano State in the 1999 Gubernatorial elections, etc. I was given level-1 confidentiality clearance and ran political assignments at the highest level. After the Presidential elections, In the second half of 1999, I followed some of my Principals, to switch affiliation to the PDP along with other party chieftains. In the PDP, I was also privileged to work at top levels with the likes of the late Ibrahim Aminu Saleh, and other Party chieftains. One such instance was playing a key role in the emergence of Chief Audu Ogbe as the PDP National Chairman in 2001. Following that development, I became actively involved in partisan politics and undertaking national assignments. In 2005, midway into the second term of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, I decided to revert back fully to my professional career and stepped away from partisan politics.

     Having been a member of an opposition political party, as well as the ruling party, I understand the mechanics and dynamics of politics and party administration. Since the time I left politics in 2005, interestingly, today, all our political mentors, leaders, and colleagues from 1998 to date are in all the political parties, APC, PDP, Labour Party or NNPP because the politicians have all spread out. And that tells you the kind of politics we have in Nigeria.

    Meanwhile, there is a tension that is building up in the APC and  I have said severally, that the biggest opposition of APC, is the  APC itself , i.e, Complacency, and the sense of entitlement. What to watch out for are the APC ward and state congresses which commence soon. The ADC or any serious political party will put their house in order, tidy up their platforms. Because some people will be looking for where to run to. There is no how the APC go into the presidential election as it is. As a vehicle that is solid without some people having to look for alternatives.

    Many political juggernauts in the APC, will not agree to be given the back seat for the next five years they are going to be there. So the ADC will have to  put it’s house in order, and do the right thing, whatever it is. Because certainly politicians will look for alternative platforms.

    Love him or hate him, President Bola Tinubu and the APC were able to manage various power blocs, egos and interests efficiently and effectively when they were in opposition. President Tinubu played the long game for 15 years building political structures, network and consolidating to get to where he is.

    Furthermore, timing is a critical success factor and I would like to share some strategic perspective in ghat regard,  for the ADC. Let’s go back and look at the timelines:

    Now we are in January, 2026, we are counting down to 2027. If we may recall 2023-2024, when APC was formed during the merger. By March 2013, two clear years agreed of the 2015 general elections, when the legacy parties have agreed to merge, the APC had taken a clear position on zoning, by zoning the presidency was zoned to northern Nigeria. That is very critical. Secondly, by November 2013, they had in their kitty a total of 16 incumbent governors, including the PDP governors that joined the legacy party governors, like the governors Adams Oshiomole (ACN), Tanko Almakura(CPC), Kashim Shettima (ANPP), Ibrahim Gaidam (ANPP), Rochas Okorocha (APGA), all Governor of South West Nigeria (ACN), and 5 Governors that defected PDP to APC. In the January, APC and had over 170 incumbent legislators in the Senate end house of representatives at the National Assembly and majority of the members of the state house of assembly in those 16 states.

    By 2014, the narration, messaging, and strategy of the APC were clear. And they had already started getting the attention of Nigerians.

    Currently, we are in January, 2026 about 1 year to the 2027 general elections, but the ADC yet to be clear about the zoning of the Presidency. And the dramatis Personae in the ADC are busy with the “me, me, me” mentality. What will happen to ADC is in its hands. How the ADC leaders  work in the next three to four weeks to come out with a position to show clearly to Nigerians, first of all, that they have the clarity and unanimity of purpose. Secondly, they have alignment of visions and objectives for Nigerians, and then to the messaging. By June 2026, , if in the next two months, the ADC remains indecisive, it may not be a competitive party in the 2027 general elections, and because of that, the crises ‘ of trust and  confidence will ensue with the domino effect that may scatter the political party before it’s foundation and pillars are even firmly in place.

    Sun Tzu, the great military strategist, stated that, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”. Therefore, any political party that wants win elections and exist for long, must be prepared to be united, proactive, consistent, consolidated, financially capable, and effective. For instance, in the United States of America, power shifts between the Republican Party ,  Democratic Party, etc . In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party and the Labor Party, etc.

     My parting words for the opposition political figures; United you stand, divided you fragment your votes and make it easy for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to coast into his second term.  The rhetorical question is, “Will the politicians in the ADC rise above their selfish and/ or parochial interested to actually  do the needful?” Your answers are as good as mine.

  • The wages of a coup plot

    The wages of a coup plot

    The 1999 CONSTITUTI0N (as amended) makes it abundantly clear how a government can come into being or can be effectively changed. It can only be born or changed in an election that takes place every four years. Any other means of doing that, it says, is illegal, null and void ab initio (from the beginning).In effect, the framers of the Constitution had envisaged a situation where human nature may at times be at play.

    In such a situation, some risk-takers would seek to forcefully take over the government and impose themselves on the people. To check this folly, Section 1 (2) of the Constitution warns: The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any person or group of persons take control of the Government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution. Perhaps, the legal draughtsmen were guided in their action by the experience of the trend then emerging in the world.

    By the time of the drafting of the 1999 Constitution and its 1979 precursor, the country had run through several military rules. This series of military interregnum began with the coup of January 15, 1966, which 60th tragic anniversary was celebrated some two weeks ago. The coup later plunged Nigeria into a bitter civil war in 1967.

    Nigeria has not only seen but lived the evil that the forceful takeover of government is, and has quite rightly settled for the democratic system of government. As the great Awo said: ‘the worst democracy is better than the most benevolent military regime’. Nothing can be truer than that statement. So, anybody can imagine the shock when reports of a coup plot were run by an online publication last October. Though known for its brash practice, the publication caught on like wildfire. It became a subject of discussions everywhere.

    The military which normally is taciturn when it comes to such things was drawn out. But it gave nothing away. Rather, it kept things close to its chest. Though, the discerning knew that something was amiss from what it said, they bought the official line while waiting for what would happen next. This did not take long. The country home and Abuja residence of a former state executive were searched, and some documents carted away. The man who is outside the country has remained abroad since then, despite all the chest-beating to return home in no time!

    The veil over the coup plot was removed on Monday when the military, without mincing word, confirmed that indeed there was a plot to  overthrow the government. The Defence Headquarters (DHQ) said investigations into the plot for which some officers were arrested for what it initially described as ‘indiscipline’ had been concluded and the report forwarded to the appropriate superior authority, in line with extant military regulations.

    “The findings have identified a number of officers with allegations of plotting to overthrow the government, which is inconsistent with the ethics, values and professional standards required of members of the Atmed Forces of Nigeria (AFN), DHQ said in a statement by its spokesman, Major-Gen Sumaila Uba. “Accordingly, those with cases to answer will be formally arraigned before an appropriate military judicial panel to face trial in accordance with the Armed Forces Act and other applicable service regulations”.

    The confirmation marks the beginning of another phase in the saga. Coups or rumours of coups are not usually stories that the media rush to town with. The advent of the social media, with its culture of Citizen Journalism, has changed all that. At the click of a phone button, reports whether confirmed or not, now travel at the speed of light. If there is a speed faster than that, they would have travelled at that velocity, together with its concomitant damage. The power and reach of the social media are enormous. Within the twinkling of an eye, whatever report it releases goes viral, causing panic everywhere.

    Not a few said “not again” when the online medium ran the coup plot story. Unfortunately, some influential people tried to politicise it. They wanted confirmation immediately about the plot to or else it is not true. To them, the only way they would believe that there was such a plot is for the  government to release facts and figures concerning it. It was either their way or no other way.

    Wait a minute. How does any government do such a thing when the matter was still being investigated? In order not to jeopardise investigations and in the process, destroy the career of those who may be innocent, such probes are handled discreetly until the exercise is concluded. This is an age-long military practice which has no place for politics.

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    Things have changed and we should be glad that they have. Reason: coups or reports of coups are stories that were hitherto not touched even with a 10-foot pole until the military say-so. Then, the media reported a coup plot at its own risk because there was nothing usually to back up the story. How will you say you got the story? Sources? That even makes matters worse because you have just unwittingly told them you have an ‘insider’ feeding you with information.

    The military that I know will not rest until you name that person. The only alternative is to go in for it as part of the plot since a journalist must protect his source come what may. How many Citizen Journalists will not wither under military gaze and sing like a bird, if push becomes shove? How many? The thinking is if you are not among the plotters, you will not know so much about what is purely a military affair. Coups are purely military matters. Any civilian caught in the web is also tried under military law, irrespective of his status.

    This is why in the military, coups are no tea party. They are matters of life and death. You live to tell the story, if you succeed and pay the supreme price, if you fail. Plotters know what they are going into beforehand, so they too are prepared for the worse. This is why coups are hush-hush business. Also, plotters do not discuss such matters even with their wives for the fear of a leak. They know the price of such a leak. If the plot leaks, the wife is as culpable as her husband, for not reporting to the authorities after being aware of it.

    Nonetheless, it is the trial that will determine the guilt or otherwise of the suspects in this instant case. No more, no less. May we remind those weeping more than the bereaved that the suspects’ investigation does not amount to conviction. They may yet be freed by the court martial, if they have no case to answer. Those asking for evidence of the plot should show interest in the trial so as to ensure that justice is not only done, but also seen to be done. As Nigerians, let us come together and say no more coups.

  • SL Akintola: Time is a healer

    SL Akintola: Time is a healer

    It is 60 years ago on the morning of January 15 when Chief SL Akintola was murdered on the grounds of the premier’s residence in Iyaganku Reservation, Ibadan by Captain Okoro and soldiers apparently from the military cantonment in Abeokuta who having kidnapped the deputy premier, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode, led him to accompany the murderers to the premier’s lodge. Chief Akintola refused to surrender after the initial fuselage of the soldiers.

    It is said the premier decided to come into the open space where the troops killed him. While this was going on in Ibadan, the premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello had also been killed by troops led by Major Chukuma Nzeogwu Kaduna. His wife was not spared. The commander of the 1st division of the army, Brigadier Samuel Adesujo Ademulegun with his eight months old, pregnant wife were killed in their bedroom by troops led by Major Timothy Onwuategwu while their little children watched what was happening. The second most important military man in Kaduna, Colonel Ralph Shodeinde was also killed in his house.

     Action was extended to Lagos where the military commander, Brigadier Muhammad Maimalari was killed by troops led by his Brigade Major, Emmanuel Ifeajuna. Some detachment of troops kidnapped the Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and his Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh and took them to some distance on the Abeokuta-Lagos road where both were murdered and their bodies were found a few days after January 15.

    The military action was first welcomed in Nigeria, particularly in the southern part of the country where bitter politics seemed to have been the order of the day. When later the coup d’état was subject to critical analysis, the ethnic and regional dimensions became obvious, that it was a political struggle for power rather than using the vote that resorted to the use of bullets.  

    In the Western part of Nigeria where Chief Akintola was premier, the coup was celebrated as a relief from the political chaos. The genesis of the problem was the collapse of the ruling Action Group due to ideological cleavage and external manipulation by rival parties from other regions. This presented an opportunity to destroy the West and the Action Group. The NCNC that was predominantly led by the Igbo had coalesced in the centre with the predominantly Hausa party to form the federal government to monopolise power and used it to corner appointments which Chief Akintola loudly condemned.

    Getting rid of Akintola became a matter of urgent necessity because he, and first the Action Group before its breakup in 1963, had become a troublesome presence to the federal authorities. The vitriolic demonisation of Akintola by the combined NCNC and the federal government which eventually went its different ethnic ways after the federal election of 1964 during which Akintola’s political tentacles held sway in Western Nigeria when his message of inclusiveness of the constituent ethnic groups needed to be represented in the federal government began to resonate with the people.

    When the Western Nigerian elections came up in 1965, it became a “do or die” election for the two rival political formations in Nigeria namely the UPGA, formed by the remnants of the NCNC in the West, and their big Eastern faction and the Awolowo strong faction in the West and Lagos. Confronting them was the NPC juggernaut from the North and the Akintola faction of the Yoruba political machine.

     The various Nigerian minorities were split between the two groups. In this situation the election could hardly be free and the Akintola government in the West did not play the electoral politics by the books. After the election that returned Akintola to power, rioting and rebellion broke out throughout the Western Region and Lagos. It seemed to critical observers that unless serious use of power was employed, the government would have to open negotiations for power sharing in the West.

    There were rumours of troops movement and when the coup d’état of January 15, 1966 happened, it did not come to critical observers as a surprise; nevertheless it was welcomed globally with sadness because our country had a lot of promise.

    When Akintola was killed 60 years ago, he died for his belief in inclusive government and that in spite of whatever ideology we embrace, the government of the people for the people shall prevail. His remains that had been deposited in Adeoyo Hospital following his death were taken mainly by Ogbomoso people under the leadership of Prince Laoye, for burial.

    What remains of Akintola’s legacy?

    Though time is a healer, the evergreen memory of Akintola remains forever for his family and political associates and for Nigerians who now appreciate him for some of his ideas.

    He was one of the founders of the Action Group which was one of the political parties that fought for the independence of Nigeria. When the country became independent in October 1, 1960, he was premier of the Western Region, the most financially prosperous and infra-structurally advanced part of the Federal Republic. Right from the formation of the Action Group, he stood out as a federalist as against the NCNC of Nnamdi Azikiwe who stood out for a unitary government. Awolowo had captured the feeling of the Yoruba in 1947 when he wrote his book Path to Nigerian Freedom and argued that there were no Nigerians as there were Frenchmen, Germans or Japanese and that Nigeria was simply a geographical expression. Akintola had said this much earlier when he was editor of the Lagos-based Daily Service. Akintola had used his position as an editor in the 1940s well before the formation of the Action Group to oppose Azikiwe’s dream of united Nigeria and had agreed with what Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was to say later that united Nigeria was “British intention” for the country.

    Akintola was a realist. He had lived in the North as a young man and he spoke Hausa fluently and understood the traditions and mores of the Hausa and held the view that they were totally different from those of the Yoruba despite the fact that the religion of Islam was embraced equally by about 50 percent of the people just like the Hausa.  He also saw the Igbo culture of village democracies with little respect for a hierarchy of chiefs and elders and kings being totally alien to the Yoruba but he felt whatever differences existed in the country could be harmonised under a federal structure of government. He found a common ground in the belief in a federal structure with the Hausa Fulani leadership.

    He regarded the federal constitution that took us to independence as not protective of regional autonomy enough. Indeed it was he who moved the successful motion of independence in 1957 after the defeat of the earlier one moved by Chief Anthony Enahoro in 1953.

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    Akintola’s struggle between 1962 and 1966 can be explained in his struggle for inclusivity in government at the federal level as well as respect for state autonomy. Unfortunately the struggle also included peaceful survival of his government at home which he did everything to protect despite war declared on his state by people from outside until it became a case of all things were fair in war. After all, he was the Are Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land.

    Both Awolowo and Akintola families had been friends for a long time and are still friends even today even though supporters are still crying more than the bereaved!  His embrace of northern power structure was based on political realism rather than just surrendering to forces arraigned against him and what he considered against Yoruba interest.

    For anybody interested in the development of Nigerian language, Akintola comes before everybody. His mastery of English, Hausa and Yoruba makes him a natural nationalist in the struggle against British imperialism and for the soul of Nigeria. He was a liberal in the full meaning of the word. As Sir John Rankine, the last British governor of colonial western Nigeria said of him, Akintola was a master of ambiguity arguing issues from two opposing sides convincingly. The governor apparently forgot Akintola was a successful lawyer in Lagos before going into politics after years of teaching at Baptist Academy in Lagos, following these by years as editor of a successful newspaper. He was so much in control of the Yoruba language that many people in the university community felt his service as an exponent of the Yoruba language would have been more rewarding than the thankless engagement in politics.

    He was also a practicing Christian who avoided violence as much as much as possible. Some hot heads in his party used to openly tell him that Fani-Kayode would have done a better job in putting down the rioting and rebellion in Yoruba land in 1965 following an election which the people felt was rigged in favour of the premier’s party.

    Perhaps the most enduring legacy is his idea of inclusivity because he believed you must have a country first and a people who felt they have a stake in the country before practising whatever ideology that was fashionable at the time.

    The above is part of a brief talk delivered at the University of Ibadan Conference Centre.

  • To mend, not tear apart

    To mend, not tear apart

    Nothing about 2026 feels incidental. Nigeria does not step into it so much as it drifts here, bearing the weight of a previous year that refused to end quietly.

    The country arrives with receipts folded into its pocket—grievances, catastrophes, breakthroughs and aspirations—each rustling to fate’s torrid leash.

    This is not a threshold crossed cleanly. It is a season entered with the gait of a people who have learned to listen for danger and opportunity at the same time.

    Politics hums beneath ordinary speech, turning casual conversations into coded rehearsals. Every movement of Nigerians and the state seems angled toward a reckoning that lies a year ahead.

    The 2027 elections have leaked into the present, colouring legislation and inspiring alliances. Some of these have been accentuated as “betrayal” by supporters of Rabiu Kwankwanso, who label his longtime ally and Kano Governor Abba Yusuf’s switch from the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). But Camp Yusuf claims political self-preservation.

    Lest we forget Rivers Governor Sim Fubara’s frantic lunge for survival by dumping the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to hoist the APC flag in the State House. Fubara joined APC, not out of love or ideological sympathy, but with the hope of quashing threats from his estranged political godfather and FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and a State Assembly bent on impeaching him.

    Forget politicians seeking self-preservation; our survival as a nation is critically tied to this year, 2026. But do Nigerians sense this instinctively? A republic can feel when it is being tested, after all.

    This is the year when institutions reveal their efficiency depths, perhaps. Habits, hardened over decades, will surface under pressure. The reflex to litigate politics, manage dissent instead of listening to it, and celebrate reforms faster than outcomes can mature, will meet a citizenry whose patience has thinned into hostile scrutiny.

    On hostile scrutiny, the jury perpetually decides against the run of political and social realities. Thus, the inclination of large segments of the populace to imagine the worst about Nigeria despite undeniable flashes of progress across crucial sectors.

    Amid palpable tension, the ruling party, APC, enters the year psyched with ambition yet plagued by unease. Size, in Nigerian politics, has never guaranteed coherence. It breeds factions, competing centres of gravity, and rival interpretations of loyalty. Party congresses loom, and with them the familiar permutations: parallel meetings, disputed delegates, and consensus discovered after dissent has been buried. Courts, once again, will be invited to settle quarrels that party execs and ideology fail to resolve.

    Opposition politics moves differently, less encumbered by incumbency yet equally haunted by fragmentation. Economic pressure has given opposition language an edge it lacked in easier years. Inflation, transport costs, and food prices no longer sound like abstract failures. The impact is felt in kitchens and registers at bus stops and fuel stations.

    Whether opposition figures cohere into a credible alternative matters less, for now, than the fact that competition itself has grown volatile. The certainty of outcomes has thinned as opposition politics, once strategised and choreographed, now improvises with guerrilla tactics.

    Inside the National Assembly, re-election anxiety influences behaviour as legislators listen more closely to party structures than to public mood. Oversight softens, and controversial bills travel faster than persuasion ever could. The logic is simple: survival first, principle later.

    This atmosphere makes law itself feel provisional. Nowhere is this clearer than in the arguments surrounding taxation. The tax reform laws have exposed a deeper crisis than statutory interpretation. Civil society question process as lawmakers dispute texts. The Presidency distances itself even as the chair of the tax reform committee offers clarification. Each political actor attempts to project authority, yet the real issue lies elsewhere.

    Trust becomes scarce in the Nigerian clime, especially when citizens suspect that laws can shape-shift between passage and publication. Taxation ultimately thrives on belief; thus, compliance may congeal to resentment and even sabotage, if distrust persists. This is the terrain 2026 inherits.

    Through it all, the economy splays into the year bearing bruises. Subsidy removal, currency volatility, and inflation have morphed from economic shocks to social conditions. Small businesses have collapsed and those that haven’t remain locked in an intense struggle against doomsday contingence. As households learn resilience, the government’s mantra of hope remains disciplined and insistent. Nigerians would rather “hope” translates to relief.

    The proposed 2026 federal budget stands at roughly N58.18 trillion, ambitious in scale yet constricted by obligation. Debt servicing alone consumes N15.52 trillion, and the deficit is projected at about 4.28 per cent of GDP. Nigeria’s public debt, reported at N152.4 trillion by mid-2025, shadows every promise made at the podium.

    A vast federal budget, heavy debt service obligations, and a persistent deficit sketch a portrait of ambition under constraint. Public debt figures require governments at all levels to demonstrate that borrowing translates into tangible improvement. As the pressures of reform travel downward, impacting citizens already stretched thin, anger will not stem solely from hardship.

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    Nigerians have endured difficulty before; what stings is asymmetry. Sacrifice preached downward the economic totem pole, while insulation persists above. Calls for citizenry endurance must be matched by ruling class restraint. Evidence of transparent accounting and governance will matter more than rhetoric.

    Yet, cynicism persists through an unrelenting stream of discontent in the civic sphere. Social commentary is rife with the narratives of doomsayers: politicians, activists, and frustrated elites lustful for power or its fruits. These voices rage with venom, amid insecurity, spewing defeatism and prophesying Nigeria’s inevitable collapse. Behind their calls for change, subsists self-interest; the bitter taste of being left out of the corridors of influence. They are neither patriots nor prophets, but casualties of their unfulfilled desires. And the youth, in their vulnerability, have become their prey.

    Any youth that emulates them will simply burden himself with disillusionment and perpetual cynicism until he can ill afford the luxury of dreaming. It’s about time Nigerians dumped cynicism and embraced enduring optimism. The love of country, though seemingly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, resonates louder than the critic’s flamethrower words.

    The Good Nigerian does not look for scapegoats. He does not sneer from the sidelines, unwilling to engage unless conditions are perfect. He understands that patriotism is not in the cynical condemnation of everything but in the conscious, deliberate acts of sacrifice that improve the polity one gesture at a time.

    Imagine the speed with which fuel stations increased the pump price of petrol from N735 – N750 per litre to N839 – N850 per litre; how nice it would be if they could rapidly effect price cuts when fuel price plummets.

    Nigeria’s problem is not entirely shortcoming in governance but the absence of goodwill among the citizenry. The political elite did not fall from outer space or descend from the heavens; they are products of Nigerian homes, schools, worship houses and neighbourhoods. If we demand better leadership, we must, first, become better citizens.

    More Nigerians could learn to emulate perhaps the Hausa tricycle driver who, in March 2025, scrawled on his tricycle: Ramadan Discount: From N200 to N100 per Drop. He did this while prices of fuel and food staples skyrocketed.

    This year, and onward, Nigeria needs more men and women who’d rather give than take; who would rather mend than tear apart; who would rather chart the path to a brighter tomorrow than wail in the darkness and curse the times from a soapbox.

  • Godfathers, godsons and Kano politics

    Godfathers, godsons and Kano politics

    With all the drama he could muster, an embittered Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso recently declared January 23, 2026, the day his erstwhile protégé, Kano State Governor, Abba Yusuf, did the unthinkable by resigning from the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) to join the All Progressives Congress (APC), ‘World Day of Betrayal!’

    Not many could have predicted that such a day would come given the close ties between the two men. Yusuf started out as the one-time Kano governor’s Personal Assistant. Kwankwaso would go on to appoint him Commissioner of the important Ministry of Works.

    Such was the bond of loyalty between them that back in 2014, Yusuf who was then an APC member gladly relinquished his senatorial ticket for his mentor to go to the National Assembly and remain politically relevant. A man who was capable of such selflessness now suddenly finds himself being profiled as treacherous.

    But the connections weren’t just official or political, they were also familial. Like many, I had in the past recycled the incorrect information about Yusuf being married to Kwankwaso’s daughter. This isn’t true. The incumbent governor has two wives and one of them is from his erstwhile godfather’s extended family – but is not his biological daughter.

    Perhaps what makes the parting so galling for some is Yusuf’s choice of new friends – many of them his former boss’ associates now turned bitter foes. He spent much of the last two years in a vicious war of words with his predecessor, Abdullahi Ganduje. In fact, one of his first acts in office as governor was the demolition of structures and monuments worth billions of naira built by the former administration.

    On Monday, the fellow he so bitterly reviled was the one raising his hands in endorsement before a cheering throng at the Kano Government House when Yusuf formally registered as APC member. Such is politics; no permanent friend or foe, only permanent interests.

    Over the last two years, close associates of the governor had been nudging him to break free from the suffocating control of his long time boss and ‘be his own man.’ He definitely reached the point where he found such calls irresistible.

    Despite the best efforts to portray the fracture in the Kwankwasiyya family as the ultimate betrayal, such splits are not unheard of in Kano politics. This is a state where power is rarely transferred without a fight. From the First Republic till date, politics here has been shaped by recurring battles between godfathers and godsons they helped to office.

    Time and again, powerful patrons have anointed successors, only to turn into their bitterest enemies once those successors acquired power, autonomy, and their own following.

    Yusuf broke with Kwankwaso but before him Ganduje also went down the same path as he tried to prise himself from the controlling grip of his former boss. Kwankwaso having handed power to Ganduje in 2015, was confident that loyalty would endure. Instead, his successor asserted independence with ruthless efficiency. What followed was an all-out political war that polarised Kano and split families, communities, and institutions.

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    By the time the dust settled, Ganduje had not only defeated his godfather politically but had also redefined the state’s power structure. Yet the irony is unmistakable: he soon began to play the godfather role, exerting influence over party structures and political appointments, only to face resistance from emerging forces and shifting alliances.

    This pattern is neither accidental nor new. It is rooted in Kano’s long tradition of mass politics, its highly mobilised electorate, and influence of its larger-than-life personalities who see power not merely as public trust but as personal property.

    The story started in the First Republic with the rivalry between Mallam Aminu Kano and his former allies. He was not a godfather in the crude, transactional sense common today, but an ideological mobiliser who built a mass movement around the talakawa. Yet even then, Kano politics showed early signs of what would later become a defining feature: intense internal schisms that sooner than later ripped apart any pretence to loyalty.

    By the Second Republic, the godfather–godson template had become clearer. Then Governor Abubakar Rimi split from Aminu Kano in 1981 due to ideological, generational, and strategy disagreements within the People’s Redemption Party (PRP). The younger, more eloquent and charismatic man, leading the radical “Santsi” faction, clashed with Kano’s “Tabo” wing over his technocratic cabinet.

    Rimi’s attempt to diminish the influence of Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero, by creating four new emirates in 1981, caused a severe rift with Kano, who felt the actions were disrespectful to tradition.

    That radical step mirrored what Ganduje did in the twilight of his governorship when he tried to cut Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi to size by creating four new emirates.

    Kwankwaso, himself, emerged as governor under the banner of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), helped by an alliance of heavyweights in the state. Once in office, he moved swiftly to dismantle the influence of those who helped him rise. What followed was a bruising intra-elite war that reshaped Kano politics for years.

    He would later become the textbook godfather he once rebelled against under his Kwankwasiyya movement. But like most godfather projects, it eventually ran into the same familiar problem: succession.

    What makes Kano different from many other states is not the existence of godfathers – they exist everywhere in Nigeria – but the consistency and intensity of godson rebellion. In this state, godsons rarely remain subordinate for long. Once they taste power and build grassroots legitimacy, they push back.

    Kano’s voters, unlike those in many other states, have repeatedly shown a willingness to punish perceived political arrogance – whether from godfathers or godsons. When Rimi’s differences with Aminu Kano became irreconcilable, he resigned as governor and defected to the then Nigerian People’s Party (NPP) to contest the 1983 election. He was handily beaten by the PRP candidate, Alhaji Sabo Barkin Zuwo.

    With the politics of the state in such a flux at the moment, it’s hard to say who the voters will back following the intriguing realignment of forces that has taken place. What is evident is that Yusuf has gutted his erstwhile NNPP home, taking with him a huge chunk of the structure from top to bottom.

    What is being created is potentially quite formidable given that he’s joining forces with a largely united APC machine that had strengthen itself over the last one year with defectors from across the political spectrum in the state.

    For his part, Kwankwaso faces a painful rebuilding process with many of his most influential and resourceful foot soldiers now in the rival camp. His options are painfully limited given that he would be going to any table of negotiations with a very weak hand.

    He cannot really turn to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) which is looking more and more by the day like the Atiku Democratic Congress. Even the much speculated link up with Peter Obi in an as-yet-to-be identified platform looks more like a fairy tale that may never become reality.

    In 2023, with his machine intact and motivated, Kwankwaso and his NNPP pulled a massive 953,179 votes at the presidential election. Then candidate Bola Tinubu and APC came second with 513,846; Atiku Abubakar and PDP managed 118,445 votes, while Obi’s Labour Party only garnered a measly 30,089 votes.

    It’s hard to see how with barely 12 months to the next general elections, the wounded former governor is able muster anywhere near one million votes in Kano either for himself or for any other ticket he may decide to support. What is clear is that the 2027 election in the state, driven by either voter anger or indifference, may well produce a lopsided outcome in favour of one side as fallout of recent developments.