The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Six for the PM

    Six for the PM

    The Yoruba have a quip: a child with no home training is fated to a harsh tutorial outside. 

    That’s the fitting fate of Simon Ekpa, the self-appointed “Prime Minister” of Biafra, set to cool his heels in a Finnish jail house for the next six years, for levying terrorism on his native South East, to hurt Nigeria.  Ekpa hails from Ebonyi State.

    But as we knock callow youths for rash choices, let’s not forget to cudgel elders too for wizened folly — masquerading as ancestral wisdom — pressed from ancestral feuding.

    That explains the South East anarchy that birthed both Nnamdi Kanu and new jail bird, Ekpa. 

    It was also behind the South West anomie — read Fulani disdain — that peaked under President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), as Yoruba “Nesan” agitation. 

    A Fulani was president; and Yoruba Fulani haters pushed the insecurity challenges to run PMB political associates out of town: explicitly current President Bola Tinubu.  His crime? The clear spirit behind the APC grand merger, that powered PMB’s presidential triumph!

    Well, thank God, the anti-Fulani hysteria is gradually ebbing; and pipers of that toxic tune, gradually fading out — by death or by political irrelevance; or even, in the case of Ekpa, bottled in a foreign slammer!

    Still, for Nigeria’s collective good and political sanity, folks should always keep in mind how it all started — particularly, the present northern ensemble, spewing ethnic bile; and thundering northern arrogance, just because PBAT is sitting president.

    A southern lobby once tried that nonsense — witness: the halcyon days of “Fulani herdsmen”, as the southern media boomed, committing all the heinous crimes Nigeria-wide, while local felons snoozed in blissful retirement! But see how it’s all petering out?

    Ripples opposed the South’s ethnic-baiting of Arewa under PMB.  It will, with equal rigour, resist the North’s ethnic-taunting of the South under PBAT. 

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    That mutual hate is the last Nigeria needs.  On the contrary, it must harness its very best, across the board, to face down its humongous challenges.

    But back to the South East IPOB crisis, and its philosopher kings, long gone; yet, leave their offspring biting the dust.

    Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian — nay global — literary hero.  His everlasting literary accomplishments would always be with us, for us to ever cherish.

    But sorry: same can’t be said of his political distemper, so glaring with — to Ripples at least — his rather forgettable swan song: There Was A Country (2012), with his rather one-sided account of the tragic Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).

    Yes, Achebe was entitled to his personal and intimate account of the war.  But the anarchy after shows the one-sided colouring could have been better handled.

    That account provided the philosophical spur for the current neo-Biafra agitations. It threw up Kanu, and later, Ekpa and allied fixers — the post-Civil War generation that neither saw war nor felt gore, except with the fake thrills of a combat film.

    These tragic romantics dreamed gung-ho agitations, until IPOB — under Kanu and Ekpa — unleashed naked terror, pain and misery, on own people; in a tragic living orgy of cutting your nose to spite your face, just to prove the Igbo can hurt Nigeria! 

    The nadir, even after Kanu’s caging, came with the so-called Monday sit-at-home protests, which not only harvested skulls and limbs of the ordinary Igbo seeking peaceful daily bread, but also inflicted a deep gash on the South East economy.

    Emma Powerful, the bombastic IPOB spokesperson, first spun sit-at-home, as some civil force to spring Kanu from “unjust” detention. But as Ekpa progressively unleashed own Frankenstein monster, even Emma, in all his garrulous majesty, became famously powerless to rein in Ekpa, who gloried from gory mischief to mischief!

    Of course, between Kanu and Ekpa, there is little to choose in extreme bad breeding.  Kanu cursed and mocked every non-Igbo to push his neo-Biafra cause.  During the EndSARS crisis of 2020, he levied war and arson on Lagos.  Ekpa, in his Finland cocoon, openly danced at his people’s misery.

    But at Ekpa’s judicial crunch, he claimed he was a content creator that meant no harm!  In a parallel plea in a Nigerian court, Kanu too proclaimed his democratic right to untrammelled agitation!

    The Finnish court pooh-poohed Ekpa’s claim, and threw him into the slammer.  Will Kanu fare better before a Nigerian court?  We’ll have to wait to find out.

    But however Kanu’s case is resolved, Ekpa’s jailing has reiterated a clear — but hardly novel — precedent: every action (good or bad) has consequences.  It’s a natural order codified by law, and enforced by the courts, after due process.

    With Ekpa’s jailing, South East politicians, who love to brag that Kanu be released “unconditionally”, just to impress folks back home, have to invent another bluster.  Both act in IPOB plots.

    But the Kanu-Ekpa ensemble did not act solo.  The South West too joined in the anti-Fulani rumble.  It was a rich, frothy season of Fulani bogey! 

    Why, even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a non-Fulani grand beneficiary of Fulani hegemony, if ever there was one, also chimed in with “Fulanization”, just to put PMB’s nose out of joint.  Typical!

    But for philosophical underpinnings, Prof. Banji Akintoye and his Yoruba Nation project took the cake.  No less, was the late Chief Ayo Adebanjo (God bless his soul!) with his “Afenifere” progressivism, and a swagger of Yoruba supremacism! Besides, the chief’s famous turf war, with PBAT and younger Yoruba progressives, was an open secret.

    Then, the battling rams: the likes of Sunday Igboho, the South West equivalents of Kanu and Ekpa, were at the ready, spewing Fulani hate, in defence of Yoruba “Nesan”!  But it was a missed Golgotha.  The South West dodged that bullet — but just!

    No doubt, from the anti-Lagos/PBAT sight and sound, issuing from the post-PMB “North”, there is a clear proof of northern hegemonists, blind to civil power balance, for Nigeria to nurture sustained nationhood, in peace and harmony.

    Still, why would PMB, whose bloc partnered PBAT to win federal power, goad the so-called “Fulani herdsmen” to raze the South West, the political space of his partner?  Does that even make any sense?  It’s out-and-out hysteria, stupid!

    What’s more?  All the ugly tags — nepotism, Fulanization, Katsina cabal, clueless, incompetent, etc — curated by the booming southern media to blight PMB, are being rebranded and hauled back at PBAT, by northern irredentists! 

    What goes around comes around, doesn’t it?

    As we speak, there is even a Yoruba vs Igbo lunatic army on X, arrayed against each other, dubbing either ethnic as ugly descendants of gorillas and chimpanzees!  How grown, reasonable adults would sign up on such brazen toxicity beats one hollow!

    Then, from the North comes anti-Lagos brickbats, clearly to demonize Nigeria’s No. 1 centre of opportunities, as no more than Tinubu’s glittering trophy of Yoruba nepotism! 

    That’s gas, of course!  But it’s what it is — too much toxicity in the political space!

    Ekpa has received his harsh tutorial in Finland.  But his jailing is a good juncture to apply the brakes!  No nation develops by mutual hating and ethnic-baiting.

  • NBA’s fatal regression

    NBA’s fatal regression

    It must be deeply troubling, that in none of the running commentaries on the recently concluded Nigerian Bar Association conference has there been any acknowledgment of anything profound or even serious coming from the annual conclave of the supposedly foremost professional body. More like a gathering of a people needing the time out to escape the humdrum of the times, what emerged could be described as a charade – like those ubiquitous parliaments of anything goes in street corners, where serious issues of governance, drenched in extravagant hilarious banters, are reduced to the puerile, partisan stuff as one might expect in typical street debates.

    Nothing of a serious dissection of the ailments plaguing the justice sector let alone the society as a whole; none of the searing questions about the depth that the profession has sunk let alone where it is headed, particularly the derogation of the meaning and the purpose of justice by the supposed ministers in its sacred temple, a tribe which insists on being dubbed as learned!

    Again, aside jarring partisan rants that has since become the trademark of the Obidients of which a good chunk of its attendees insist on being numbered, nothing in the entire deliberations suggested any appreciation of the dire situation which came upon the nation, let alone a robust interrogation of the policies of the Tinubu administration on the basis of which an actionable suggestion(s) could be availed the government, going forward.

    Even the appearance of the Minister of Interior, Tunji Ojo, meant to give informed perspectives to what the government has done to address those age-long structural issues that had plagued governance was reduced to a spectacle of sorts with incessant howling by those for whom the administration could never do anything right; and with the all-knowing, fit-for-every-purpose Obiageli Ezekwesili on hand to proclaim with her typical magistracy, all that is wrong with the Tinubu administration, the perfect setting for the inquisition that became of it was all but in place.

    For me however, the biggest joke of the farcical outing was when a poorly scripted act by Channel TV’s Seun Okinbaloye turned out to be a revelation, not so much about the inherent biases, but the pathetic lack of depth of the boisterous presenter! For an individual who proclaims a ‘commitment to delivering accurate and unbiased news’, it was shocking if not shameful to hear the questions framed the way he did.

    “Is Nigeria better today than two years ago?”

    That was supposed to be an ‘educated’ question to the lawyers in conference! For those still enamoured with their specious one-liners, how about flipping the question this way: Could Nigeria have continued on the ruinous trajectory of keeping fuel prices below their actual costs using the funds it does not even have to keep up the appearance of a caring, welfare state? 

    Or this: “Do you think the nation is on the right path with the policies of the Tinubu government?” Even granted that the issue of perception is valid to the individual, the very idea of framing things in the manner that he did would seem ordinarily ‘uneducated’, not only because he failed to narrow it to the specifics but that it was done in clear ignorance of the complex variables which underlie and shape them.

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    So which of the policies could he be referring to here? Is it the most contentious one – the removal of fuel subsidy on which the treasury gets to shell out trillions of naira for the joy of keeping the millions of rickety contraptions on the poorly maintained roads? Or the state-licenced bazaar under which only the high and mighty could access foreign exchange at official sources which are more often than not sold at the black market at premium with nary value addition to the national economy? Could it be a return to the ‘good old days’, when foreign airlines, hit by the non-remittance of sales proceeds were leaving Nigeria in droves? 

    Still, there is another question that came forth: “Is your hope renewed now?”

    Aside being the uncharitable, it is perhaps the most banal and uneducated. Of course, our ‘world acclaimed’ journalist got the answer that he wanted. Yet, I verily believe that he did himself a lot of injustice in the way he pandered to street narratives on the history and the trajectory of the economy. That question – ‘Is your hope renewed now’ – would at normal times, stand as an indictment to a profession that require depth and rigour as indeed a proper, contextual frame of analysis. Once let out, it is hard to imagine greater violence to the ancient craft by an individual, all in the service of narrow, partisan ends.  It is, like someone said the other day – like law; like journalism. Sad. 

    But I digress.

    At issue of course is the future of the justice sector itself. The other day, I saw a video of an elder of the profession openly lament the supplanting of the rules of seniority by the latter days actors; the new kids on the block – the television lawyers, emergency activists and the usual stragglers. Poor fellow, he couldn’t understand why the front row, ordinarily reserved for the elders were taken by baby lawyers leaving them to scramble for the back seats. And why would he, when only a few days prior, one of the freshly minted wigs, was on the social media to advertise his sprawling chambers which he claimed was worth more than the value of his innumerable exotic cars at N50 million! In other words, since when did a wig cease to be a wig?

    By the way, I choose to pass off, the moral question posed by the leadership of the elite body, a body with scores of millionaires in its rank, going cap in hand to state governments, for funds to host its conference. So also is its leadership’s insistence on keeping Rivers’ N300 million when the latter asked for a refund after it reneged on the hosting rights.

    To those who still care to remember, neither the rot nor the ingrained delinquency, start yesterday. Once upon a time, there was a well-reported story of a learned fellow, who brazenly accused a judge in the open court, of demanding a bribe from his client! The judge, far from rattled, merely insisted that the matter be promptly be investigated so the business of delivering justice could proceed, unimpeded! It turned out that the accusation was baseless as the innocence of the judge was firmly established beyond doubts.

    Here is the twist: the same counsel, whose mouth spewed the gibberish  would go on to request that the judge recuse himself, since his (the counsel’s) travesty, already deemed unpardonable, would not allow the hapless judge to dispense justice without bias! Talk of a sample of how to be a minister in the temple of justice, the Nigerian way!

    Let me close with the words of the ancient proverb – physician heal thyself! Seems to me that this particular physician, being far too gone, is unlikely to be of use to anyone let alone the society, anytime soon!

  • As Fubara returns

    As Fubara returns

    All appears set for the return of Sir Siminalayi Fubara to his exalted position as governor of Rivers State. The six month’s state of emergency imposed on the state by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT), on March 18, will expire on September 17. According to reports, the president had met with Fubara apparently to discuss his impending return before departing for his 10-days working leave outside the country. Neither the presidency nor Fubara’s camp issued statement with respect to what transpired at the meeting.

    Unlike in the past, the vile supporters of the governor have kept mum. They have not gone on to condemn the visit, excoriate the president, and analyse what they consider the constitutional impediments a president has, with respect to the rights of a sub-national government. For many of them, the president acted ultra vires in suspending Governor Fubara, and they are disappointed that the Supreme Court has not gone ahead to declare the state of emergency in Rivers State a nullity.

    It is not unlikely that many of them would be nursing the ambition and waiting for an opportunity to exert their pound of flesh on the governor’s opponents. Since they cannot do it by themselves, except perhaps at the polls, they may be waiting for the governor to return to his seat, before pilling pressure on him to return to the trenches. Many of them, from what transpired before the state of emergency was declared are averse to political reasoning. They prefer the “oshobe” approach, which the wiser Fubara, has now decried.

    Fubara, who when he was goaded on deceptively by inexperienced activists, had declared that the jungle has matured, eventually discovered that the political jungle is not for amateur pugilists. The governor, obviously a featherweight political combatant made the error of taking on his mentor and godfather, Nyesom Wike, a tested political warrior without first developing the muscle and capacity to fight in heavyweight category. Fubara, who was drafted from the urbane civil service into the combustible arena of political combat needed to develop the muscles first.

    To attempt to move straight from featherweight to heavyweight, showed the naivety of the suspended governor. In the boxing arena, there is no known person who moved from featherweight to heavyweight, because it requires a pugilist to gain a lot of weight for such a transition. If Fubara had good advisers, he would have first developed the muscle to move from amateur to professional, and as a professional, gently move from bantamweight to featherweight, to lightweight, before contemplating heavyweight categories.

    Perhaps, Fubara, was misled into thinking that the allegory of boxing in political duels, was on all fours, with political weight categories. For if Fubara was to be in real boxing fight with Wike, he would certainly match him grit for grit considering their near real weight categories. And should Wike make the grave error of punching above his weight, Fubara would have dueled him effectively. But, alas, fights in political duels are not measured by the real weight of combatants on a measurement scale.

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    Fubara, also made the grave mistake of opening another warfront by declaring the mediatory intervention of President Tinubu as meddlesomeness. This column recalls that in October, 2023, merely five months after Fubara was sworn in, Rivers was already in turmoil and President Tinubu had called a meeting of the two major gladiators, Fubara and Wike, and other leaders in the state to agree on a peace deal. Even after agreeing to implement the deal, Fubara was misled into badmouthing the agreement as merely political, and not constitutionally binding on him.

    As I argued in my piece: Fubara versus Wike on May 14, 2024: “while constitutionally he (Fubara) does not serve at the pleasure of the president, he needs the friendship of the president to serve pleasurably…. For his own success as governor, Simi must project respect, even when displaying strength, in dealing with Nigeria’s presidential behemoth.” Less than a year after the dire warning, the crisis in Rivers compelled the president to exercise his powers as provided for, in section 305 of the 1999 constitution (as amended).  

    But like a person whose spell had been cast off, after the state of emergency was declared, Fubara was all thanks to Tinubu, less than two weeks after the state of emergency was imposed. Admitting that he had come down from his high horses, he effusively thanked the president for his intervention, and said but for the intervention, the story in Rivers would have been different. Indeed, but for opening a war front with the president in his speech, after his Abuja trip, the story may have been different.

    The burlesque of unlimited power by an elected state governor was what led Fubara to the six-month suspension. Hopefully, he has lent his lessons, and he will spend the next 20 months trying to etch his name in the sands of time in Rivers State. He could do that by efficiently and effectively using the enormous resources of the state for the benefit of the people. No doubt, Rivers State is one of the richest states in Nigeria, both with respect to earning from the federation account and internally generated revenue.

    By several accounts, Rivers is the second richest state in Nigeria, after Lagos State. Fubara should concentrate on touching the lives of the people, not through the unsustainable populist programmes he was doing when he was fighting Wike, but through sustainable legacy projects. With his second term foreclosed, except a miracle happens, the temptation would be to ape his brother governors who engage in white elephant projects, to siphon money for their unborn generations. But Fubara, must realize that he will be under intense monitoring, for the remainder of his tenure.

    Unfortunately, he would have to work with a state legislature that is his sworn enemy. So, he has to plead for every approval and should he bare his teeth, they would knock it off, without warning. He will also not get the best cooperation from the newly (s)elected local government councilors and chairmen. Since they are products of a political compromise to save what is left of his governorship tenure, they would treat him, as a lame-duck governor. Even his appointees will work with caution.

    How he manages the remainder of his tenure, will be a study in political survival. While the trust between him and Wike has been damaged, he could with an obvious sense of humility, do a lot of damage control. More so, Wike, needs his cooperation to deliver on his political promises, to his benefactors. Because, even in his brokenness, it is still Fubara, that will give final approval for the release of state funds, for projects and other benefits. And while Wike, may have won now, the future is ever pregnant.

  • NBA’s haunted Enugu conference

    NBA’s haunted Enugu conference

    The haunted 2025 Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) annual conference during which a group of privileged elites tried to assault our sensibilities ended in Enugu last week. We have all come to terms that law by this privileged few is the law of society. And if as George Orwell said ‘we are equal but some are more equal than others”, it is our sad fate we can never be equal before the law.

    And I guess that was why Plato concluded that human law are like spiders’ web which catches the small flies but the great break through. And nearer home here, no one captures this better than the Sultan of Sokoto who in his keynote address, warned the gathering of our privileged lawyers against “the creeping commercialization of justice in Nigeria”, without forgetting to let those serving themselves while pretending to serve us that  “Today, justice is increasingly becoming a purchasable commodity, and the poor are becoming victims of this kind of justice, while the rich commit all manner of crime and walk the streets scot-free.”

    Lawyers in Nigeria as elsewhere in the world are fortune-seekers. And it is not their fault that they are often assigned the ignoble role of perpetuating injustice. But what often makes the difference as Itse Sagay once pointed out in all societies are the few noble men among those destined by virtue of their profession to perform ignoble role. Fortunately for us here, unlike the current leadership of NBA that behaves like the unthinking ‘obidients’, using the media to intimidate those who pointed out their shameful behaviour, it has not always been like this. Our judiciary which had performed creditably well at home and at the international level was once the envy of our African brothers.

    There was indeed a golden era of the Nigerian judiciary when the judiciary was truly the last hope of the common man. Itse Sagay in a recent lecture reminded us of the era of fearless judges like Kayode Eso,Chukwunweike Idigbe, Chukwudifu Oputa, Mohammed Bello and it is not too long ago we had Rotimi Williams (Timi the Law), Gani Fawehinmi and Bola Ige who would proudly describe himself as akoni ni iwaju adajo (the fearless one before a judge).

    This is why informed Nigerians felt offended when senior lawyers without character who are answerable to none and as representative of the judiciary which unlike the executive and legislature that periodically test their legitimacy, pretend they are working for the interest of Nigerians. Lawyers work for none but themselves. Chief Kehinde Sofola, a second republic attorney-general and one tine vice president of Body of Benchers  told Nigerians a long time ago that “the primary duty of the judiciary is to protect the judiciary”.

    Few Nigerians are therefore impressed when the Nigeria Bar Association, haunted by the huge baggage it carried, finally settled down for their annual conference in Enugu, Anambra State, from August 22 – 29, hiding its head in the sand like an ostrich, thinking no one sees it.

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    What set this year’s event apart from the 2023 conference during which President Tinubu gave an enthralling welcome speech in which he called on members of the legal profession and other Nigerians alike, to commit to “a change of mind, a change of attitude and a change of approach to governance” in order to exploit our great potentials for the benefit of the people, was open partisanship and anti-Tinubu sentiments by ‘Obidients sympathisers including Oby Ezekwesili who didn’t believe the 2023 election had been won and lost.  There was also one of the moderators at the conference, Seun Okinbaloye who inadvertently disclosed where his political sympathy lies when he unprofessionally asked his audience three leading questions as to whether their lives are better today than it was in 2023.

    NBA was haunted by the burden it carried to the Enugu conference. Sim Fubara who in attempt to fight off the malicious influence of his godfather decided to wage war against anyone close to his estranged godfather, Osigwe and his NBA, perhaps because of the un-receipted and unbudgeted N300m  that had changed hands, decided to side with Fubara.

    When Fubara in his blind fury sacked and replaced  Rivers Traditional Rulers Council chairman, Sergeant Awuse, embraced a three-man legislature that vetted his budget and screened his cabinet and local government caretaker chairmen, allegedly masterminded the torching of the state House of Assembly in an effort to avoid impeachment, and disobeyed court pronouncements, Osigwe and his NBA kept their peace. They however woke up following the Supreme Court declaration that there was no government in Rivers and the federal government claiming to avoid possible chaos that could follow Fubara’s impeachment by a vindictive House of Assembly whose salary had been withheld for two years, declared a state of emergency and suspended the warring parties.

    Osigwe without restraint and without telling us in what capacity since he was not a party to the dispute, issued a press statement, declaring that “The constitution does not empower the president to unilaterally remove or replace elected officials—such actions amount to an unconstitutional usurpation of power and a fundamental breach of Nigeria’s federal structure”.

    He similarly did not wait for the National Assembly whose stamp all stakeholders agreed was needed to legitimize the president’s action before holding a press conference.  The NBA president only increased his visit to different media houses to declare that “the purported removal of Governor Fubara, his deputy, and members of the Rivers State House of Assembly is unconstitutional, unlawful, and a dangerous affront to our nation’s democracy”, long after the National Assembly had upheld the position of the president

    In what many saw as lack of tact even while scandalously fighting their unfinished ‘obidient’s battle’ in the name of NBA, Osigwe and his  executive unilaterally moved the venue of the conference from Rivers to Enugu, thereby depriving Rivers the benefits of hosting the conference. Naturally, the administrator of Rivers asked Osigwe and his organizing committee to refund Rivers’ N300m but our men of ‘noble profession’ refused insisting the money was a gift.

    Instead of doing the most honourable thing, the NBA resorted to media war where untrained news anchors of some TV channels were asking ‘what is N300m compared to what it cost NBA to host their conference’?” For asking for Rivers State money, Osigwe and NBA media meddlers descended on the sole administrator, questioning the legality of his appointment, of his actions and labelling him a threat to democracy. Osigwe and his NBA media handlers told us they were driven by patriotism as if we don’t know “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrels”

    The intervention of the president, Public Interest Lawyers League, Abdul Mahmud who issued a press statement saying Osigwe’s decision was “not only disgraceful but speaks to the organisation’s rot” adding that “the NBA cannot claim to be a watchdog of public morality while engaging in conduct so thoroughly devoid of the very standards it seeks to impose on others”, did not bring back  Rivers N300m.

    Sadly, it was this baggage NBA and its leadership carried to their dispirited Enugu conference last week.

    It will appear our senior lawyers who are accountable to only themselves are the bane of Nigeria judiciary. There are no doubt senior lawyers who would deliberately receive N300m from a sub-national government we all criticize for not doing enough for the people and their media enablers whose news anchors unprofessionally intimidate guests are men without character. And men without character according to Aristotle are the greatest threat to democracy.

    I have not heard a word of condemnation from Osigwe’s crusading NBA against Abubakar Malami, a senior lawyer and attorney general who but for the Head of Service would have smuggled an indicted civil servant into the bureaucracy through the back door or but for Justice Salami’s insider probe, sacrificed the career of a very resourceful  former EFCC Chairman.

    Why are men of many words, a euphemism for lying, called upon by virtue of their profession to perform ignoble role including taking N300m, be humble enough to understand that those who accept the law of the rich as the law of the poor to avert anarchy in society are not half-wits?

  • Jonathan’s bad luck

    Jonathan’s bad luck

    Some political losses are like death. To those who win, especially when the loser is a man in the top office of the land like Goodluck Jonathan, it is like a big iroko that crashes through a forest. No tree or leaf or bough is stout enough to repulse the thuds, hisses and howls of its fatal fall.

    The victors, the likes of Buhari and his APC, could have looked at Jonathan’s fall as “a magnificent death,” the same way Joseph Conrad penned an obituary, in his metaphoric story titled: Youth about the bonfire of a ship at sea. Hear the prose master: “A magnificent death had come like a grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the end of her laborious days.”

    If it was a reward for the victor, it was a sackcloth for Jonathan and his PDP. So, the clamour for his return is an effort at resurrection. We were all witnesses to the death and burial, and there has been none like it since the birth of this nation. Jonathan set a record for presidential failure as the first to go belly up in office. We saw Pastor Orubebe and his hysteria at the funeral hour. Jonathan consecrated his annulment in a concession telephone call to Buhari that went viral.

    The call for another Jonathan presidency reflects the four attitudes to a death: denial, rage, negotiation and acceptance. His people, and Jonathan even, have not reached the acceptance stage. They see Jonathan as the Prophet Joel who didn’t go belly up but must survive the biblical whale’s belly, the revenant politician. The thing about mourning is that when mourners have not reached the acceptance phase, they show denial, rage and negotiations, sometimes have the psychosis of witnessing all of them at the same time.

    We saw it in Bala Mohammed in his many spasms. We saw it in Jerry Gana, and his many shadowy advocates. We see it also in Jonathan, who cannot come out in one word to say he will or will not. He does not feel it is the end of his hope, and perhaps, his ambition still flickers in denial and does not agree with Shakespeare that “he that dies pays all debts.” He probably believes Nigerians owe him.

    Mourning in politics means a lot. You mourn a loss of prestige, the privilege of access, the contracts and perks, the new palaces here and abroad, the fattening wallets in dollars and pounds and Euros, the family flamboyance at shopping malls in Europe and North America, the social standing, the free tickets, the photo ops at high-profile events and with the high and mighty, the top perch at social parties, the small impunities over the lives of “lesser” beings, the village honour, the syrupy flatteries.

    Jonathan and his acolytes mourn these. So does the PDP that has been in disarray for some time. Some of those in the interloper party, The ADC, are now bored because they cannot get those perks. It is not about the people. It is the flattery and magnificence of high office.

    The Jonathan who became president and tugged at the popular conscience with his “I had no shoes” rhetoric was a different one who sought re-election. He was known as clueless, and this column called him famously as “his excellency the snake.” But he somehow believed that he would win again. A top politician told me recently about how many henchmen assured him the north was solid for him. He was too naïve to doubt. They told him he had Jigawa, Kano, Zamfara, and they did that to “collect”. And they did in spades. Hence his recent outburst about politicians who betray.

     He had that in mind. And they were the same order of men who sweetened him into disaster.

     They in the words of Shakespeare in Macbeth, flatterers of “yesterdays (who) have lighted fools the way to dusty death.” But Jonathan must be thinking about his chances, and the most challenging is not about getting a ticket, it is whether if he gets a ticket, it will not be in vain. 

    As Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo cautioned, the constitution has said you cannot be sworn in more than twice as president. It is booby trap.

    So, while he and his men may be mourning a death that occurred in 2015, he may be wary of a second death, apologies to the Book of revelations. But a second death is a revelation that comes as a prophecy he is wary of fulfilling.

    Jonathan has made himself to believe he is an African statesman, simply because he accepted in public that he did not win the polls, and waxed poetic about his ambition not worth the blood of innocent lives. It is the sort of meekness that brought him to power in “I had no shoes,” that also inspired his presidential epitaph that he did not want his ambition to equate the shedding of innocent blood.

    But politics is not for meek people. Ambition, as Shakespeare wrote, is made of “sterner stuff.”  Jonathan had good luck and it made him a president. It did not redound to good governance, good welfare, well-calibrated policies. In fact, the policies under his watch contributed to the distortions in the economy now under repair.

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    But what some are seeing as his second birth of good luck are the one-term opportunity for the South, and what some see as an economic situation that strains the poor. Another factor is their reliance on collective amnesia and some non-Yoruba in the South’s belief that, somehow, they can snatch it for one term.

    It is in this context that Peter Obi, ever the hustler, is now a homeless man seeking a shelter of opportunity.

    So, what we have are a few impediments for Jonathan. The biggest of them is the law. It forbids his ambition. Two, he may have to struggle for a party that will damn the law. The PDP does not seem to have goose pimples at his prospects except for a few self-serving carpet baggers who want to climb on his back and have, at least, a job to do until that scheme goes belly up again.

    Again, for a Jonathan that did not heal an economy but broke it, many businesses will remember how broke they were in his days. If a collective amnesia holds forth today, an election campaign can rip up the scab of his time. The ethnic factor, ever an unspoken part of the Jonathan proposal, may turn out to be a bad market because he will return to the dog whistles of tribe and faith that may turn him into the Obi sort of divisive candidacy that may not work again this time.

    So, what we may have is not Goodluck Jonathan of 2011, but a man of hard luck. It all seemed picture perfect for him.

     He did one term and he is the perfect man to complete it but the law says no. He could play messiah for an economy but his past says he failed. He cannot conjure tribe and faith or he will compete with Obi who did it and we know the result.

    So, what we have is Jonathan of bad luck in a time of opportunity. This leaves him and his acolytes to decide whether to accept his political obituary or return to the doomed cycle of denial, rage and negotiation, like Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s award-winning novel, The Discomfort of Evening. The novel, written in a register of lugubrious innocence, tracks a family that finds it hard to live in acceptance of son’s death.

  • Remembering Gani again

    Remembering Gani again

    While many persons have penned tributes in memory of Chief Gani Fawehinmi, a few things still remain distinct for me. The first was his love for books, that many do not say much about. If he heard of any new book, of whatever subject, he would pick it up.

    For a man enamoured of politics, I was amazed to see books on poetry, drama and novels in his treasured cove. His library was massive. I recall when the chief conducted Femi Ojudu and I through shelf after shelf, a cornucopia of big minds aflare on his walls.

    So enthused were both of us that Ojudu promised to bury his next leave as a staff of Concord Press in between his book covers. I bought my copy of In a Free State by Nobel Prize-winning novelist V.S. Naipaul because it plopped into my eyes from the shelf.

    One day, I ambled into his office with a book I bought from “bend down bookstore,” previously owned by Olu Akaraogun. Immediately he saw it, he grinned in his boyish way and quipped, “That must be about the French Revolution.” He was right. It was a book about Reflections on the French Revolution by Edmund Burke.

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    The other thing was his fascination with dictators. He loved Kemal Ataturk, Joseph Stalin, et al. I challenged him once that Stalin lived for 20 million people to die. His riposte was an aplomb face, and then he said the Soviet leader needed such ruthlessness to build his massive mechanization project. Yet when the Soviet Union fell, he told me its parallel was coming for the IBB regime.

     He somehow managed to remain a closet authoritarian in public. He might not want an Ataturk for Nigeria, I think he might have favoured what political philosophers now call competitive authoritarianism that we now see in places like Turkey and Poland.

     He was IBB’s nemesis, and each January he would say, with sanguine mischief, “this government is going to fall this year. There is no doubt about that at all.”

    I recall his intimacy with Olu Onagoruwa, and how they met for banter and cackles in his house over fried goat meat called asun, and how they travelled together on weekends out of Lagos, Gani going farther to Ondo, while Onagoruwa held the brakes at Ijebu. Up till today, I muse over how the quest for a public good made a mincemeat to a storied friendship.

    But pray, how did a Gani go for a swim in a public place like the Sheraton Hotel? How can we say it was not where he ingested what eventually took his life with SSS always trailing him?

  • Ahiajoku Lecture festival 2025

    Ahiajoku Lecture festival 2025

    Igbo-speaking people from seven states of the country will converge in Owerri, Imo State capital, later this month for the annual Ahiajoku Lecture festival.

    Instituted in 1979 by the first civilian governor of Imo State, Sam Mbakwe, the Ahiajoku Lecture was designed to celebrate, advance and sustain Igbo cultural heritage, foster intellectual discourse and cultural renaissance and spur overall development of Igbo nation and beyond.

    It sought in the main, to preserve and promote indigenous language, cultural values, unity as well as the progress of the Igbo people and Nigeria. At inception barely eight years after the civil war, the Igbo nation was largely confined to Anambra and Imo states, parts of Rivers and then Bendel State.

    With the subsequent creation of additional states, the scope expanded to include Abia, Anambra, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and Rivers states. Over the years, the lecture grew both in scope, strength and participation. Chairman of the planning committee for the 2025 Lecture festival, Chief Garry Igariwey, said all the governments of the seven Igbo-speaking states are being carried along in this year’s lecture festival with their buy in already secured.

     According to the former president-general of Ohaneze Ndigbo, the collaboration of these states and their governments will ensure “wider participation, ownership of this sacred tradition and shared vision of cultural renewal”. He had some good words for Governor Hope Uzodimma for his fervour in reviving the pan-Igbo Ahiajoku festival.

    The Catholic Bishop of Nsukka Diocese, His Lordship, Godfrey Igwebuike Onah is the guest lecturer for this year with the theme: “The Future of Igbo Economy Amidst the Challenges of Insecurity in the Southeast: A call for paradigm shift”. A renowned professor of philosophy and African epistemology, the bishop will no doubt, enrich his lecture with intellectual and moral authority.

    The topic is apt and timely as it sits properly with contemporary challenges. It is coming at a time concerns have been raised on the debilitating effects of the unceasing multidimensional insecurity on the economy of the region.  It is envisaged that the lecture topic will interrogate the festering security challenges, provide therapeutic responses and chart the pathway to economic development and progress of the zone.

    Activities lined up for the lecture proper include a curated arts and crafts exhibition, a scholarly colloquium, and cultural displays primed to celebrate Igbo culture and thought.

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    Apparently responding to observations that Ahiajoka Lecture should dismount from its elitist high podium to embrace and speak to the ordinary people without whom a culture will not have relevance, this year’s event is arranged to attract not just scholars of repute. Cultural and religious personages as well as representatives of the town unions are also involved. Besides, several associations of Ndigbo in the diaspora have signalled strong interest to participate in the coming event.

    This followed several engagements by the Director-General of the Ahiajoku Centre, Ray Emena with many diaspora groups, individuals and associations. The event is also expected to attract tourists, researchers, cultural ambassadors and Igbo sons and daughters from all walks of life and across the globe.

    This year’s festival is symbolic in more ways than one. For one, it is unique not only from the scope of prospective attendance, but especially so because it is the first time a Catholic bishop will be delivering the lecture. He will bring his ecclesiastical authority to bear on the topic. For another, the timing shares similar existential traits with extant challenges of Ndigbo when the maiden edition was held in 1979.

    Then, the Igbo race had just emerged with the scars of the civil war and their debilitating encumbrances. That was the time the Igbo nation was still trying to find its voice and establish their relevance as a people. As preparations for the 2025 edition gear up, Ndigbo and indeed the country are reeling under the pains of debilitating insecurity with its toll on lives, properties, development and progress. The topic of this year’s lecture is at the heart of that trajectory.

    As MJC Echeruo pointed out at Ahiajoku’s 40th anniversary Lecture in 2019, “When I delivered the first lecture in 1979, some eight years after the Nigerian-Biafra war, in the dawning of a post-war civilian administration in Nigeria, at a time when Ndigbo appeared very confident that a renaissance of spirited energies exhibited in the war effort into new and productive directions, we believe that such a drive would transform Igboland.

    Although still lacking serious access to national political power, we nevertheless believe in the possibility of Igbo self-fulfilment as well as national growth in our traumatised Nigerian fatherland”, Echeruo had stated.

    The Igbo nation is still at the same crossroads as Onah is about to give his lecture.  Echeruo was the lecturer for the maiden edition of the Ahiajoku lecture in 1979 with the theme, “Ahamefule- A matter of identity” which reflected the situation of Ndigbo within that period. He came again to deliver the Ahiajoku’s 40th anniversary lecture in 2019 during the brief administration of Governor Emeka Ihedioha.

    This time around, he titled his lecture, “Ogu Eri Mba: We Shall Survive” There is a common thread running around Echeruo’s topics-the identity of a people and their survival. That is the kind of existential and developmental issues you find woven into Ahiajoku’s Lecture topics. And therein lies its essence.

    Over the years, the lecture has served as a rallying point for scholars, policy makers and traditional rulers to interrogate the Igbo question and propose pathways for the collective advancement of its people. It also provides the compass to Igbo heritage, culture and aspirations, reviving shared identity and the spirits that bind the people together.

    Prominent Igbo intellectuals have in the past taken turns to deliver the annual lectures. The 1980 edition was delivered by former Dean, Faculty of Agriculture (UNN) and former Deputy Director-General, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan Prof. Bede Nwoye Okigbo. Renowned historian, Prof. Adiele Afigbo took the centre stage in 1981 while Prof. Anya O. Anya delivered that of 1982.

    The 1984 edition featured Prof. Donatus Nwoga, Prof. Ben Nwabueze took the centre stage in 1985 while Dr Pius Okigbo delivered the 1986 edition. The lecture held successfully annually till 1995. During the military administration of Tanko Zubairu between 1996 and 1999, the lecture did not hold. It however came into full force again in 2000 with the return of civil rule in the country. Several scholars took turns to deliver the lectures.

     Literary giant, Prof. Chinua Achebe returned from exile after two decades to deliver the 2009 edition of the lecture. Strikingly, the event coincided with the 50th anniversary of his famous novel – Things Fall Apart.

    For the eight years (2011-2018) Governor Rochas Okorocha was at the helm of affairs in the state, Ahiajoku Lecture never saw the light of the day. The lecture series was reinstated in 2019, a year that marked its 40th anniversary with its maiden lecturer, Echeruo again taking the centre stage. One remarkable thing in the build up to the 2019 lecture was the elevation of Ahiajoku to an institute and the appointment of a director-general to ensure continuity.

    Uzodimma has kept to this tradition with the resuscitation of the 2025 Ahiajoku Lecture festival. He had also, appointed a director-general for the centre to ensure that Ahiajoku lives up to its mandate. As in any endeavour of this magnitude, the 2025 edition yet, offers another opportunity for re-assessment with a view to improving on its objectives.

    This is especially so with the expansion in its scope of activities and participation. Funding and the level of involvement of the seven Igbo-speaking states to enhance regularity and continuity are bound to throw up new challenges. So also, the level of progress made by the lecture festival in re-awakening Igbo cultural and linguistic renaissance.

    Prof. Ihechukwu Madubuike recommends an Igbo Academy for the resetting of both the Igbo language and the Igbo culture. Hear the former Minister of Education and Health: “Language is the spirit of culture and without which a culture is dead. We should be delivering Ahiajoku Lectures in Igbo language. Igbo identity is too much a valent resource to be trifled with by the cognoscenti”.

    Madubuike who was a commissioner in Mbakwe’s regime when the lecture series was instituted, wants the annual fiesta to rotate among the seven Igbo states that identify with the aspirations and values of the authentic Ohanaeze Ndigbo organisation. Culture he said, “matters because it seeds political relevance and a people’s worldview”.

  • RANDOM SNAPSONG 263

    RANDOM SNAPSONG 263

    Super Power

    Killer Power

    How can a civil world

    Survive this explosive madness?

    My bomb is bigger than yours

    My rocket is a ruthless arrow from hell

    I own the piece of sky above your house

    I can send death on countless errands

    From a thousand million miles

    Our missiles can spot your innermost hideaway

    We can strike you in your bedroom

    And pluck you clean from the bosom of your wife

    Our missiles never miss

    And when they ‘obliterate’ unintended targets

    We possess the Super Power Impunity

    To ‘obliterate’ our crime

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    Nothing is ever wrong

     Unless we say it is

    Never ever right

    If we decree it’s never so

    Super Power corrupts

    Super Power corrupts dangerously 

    Too many deadly toys in the hands

    Of those who act before they think

  • ‘Lie lie’ wage structure

    ‘Lie lie’ wage structure

    This must be dismantled and replaced with a realistic and equitable one

    With regard to wages or salaries, successive Nigerian governments have been behaving like the woman who has only one child, and when the child was fighting outside and the matter was reported to her, she asked: which of my children? Which one? How? How many children does she have to warrant that sort of question?

    That is exactly the same way Nigerian governments and indeed, almost all employers in the country have been deceiving themselves over salary matters for years.

    They pay wages that cannot take people home and call them take-home pay. Unfortunately, the politicians in the National Assembly who become so stingy when handling other people’s salary matters spoil themselves with some of the most stupendous wages and allowances that would qualify for one of the most obscene in the world.

    While some state governments and even private employers are trying to do more for their workers, others are lukewarm.

    Just last week, the Nigeria Labour Congress’s (NLC), president, Joe Ajaero, and the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), commended the Imo and Ebonyi state governments for raising minimum wage from the N70,000 approved by the Federal Government in July, 2024, to N104,000 and N90,000, respectively.

    Ideally, this should be the spirit: the Federal Government’s minimum wage is, as its name implies, the minimum anywhere in the country. Employers of labour are at liberty to go beyond that amount. But they cannot pay less. The two state governments said they are able to raise workers’ salaries because federal allocation to them has increased substantially.

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    This is a truth some state governments do not want to get out there. State governments, as well as other tiers of government have been receiving substantially more revenue from the centre since President Bola Tinubu took over in May, 2023, as a result of withdrawal of fuel subsidy. But, despite this increased monthly allocations, not much is happening in some states.

    This is why I join the NLC and NECA in commending the two state governments. Investment in human resource is a meaningful one and workers that are relatively comfortable should be able to put in more to justify their pay.  

    I have never believed, as labour does, that state governments must pay the same salary across the country. One, states are not equally endowed. Two, they operate in different economic milieus. While food and some other items are relatively cheap in some states, they are also relatively expensive in others.

    But, the question now is; do Nigerian workers need as much as N70,000 or N90,000 or even N104,000 minimum wage to be happy? I don’t think so. Just that things have gone haywire.

    In the 1970s, the N96 or so that school certificate holders in the country earned monthly then was always enough for people in that category. I remember I bought eggs at the then prestigious Kingsway Stores, even as a school certificate holder, not just because I worked there after my secondary education , but because then, meat pie at Kingsway (the equivalent of today’s Shoprite, etc), was sold in kobo (I think 25 kobo apiece) and its size doubled what now goes for the average meat pie in any reputable eatery of the same standard with Kingsway Stores then.

    Even though Kingsway was an elite departmental store, it is unlike the Shoprites of today because many people, including school certificate holders, could go in there and have snacks, cold or hot beverages and coffee, electronics and what have you. Today, many graduates see the Shoprites only from outside, or even when they manage to enter, all they do is window-shop, hoping that someday before their time at this end would expire, they too would one day be able to walk in and out of the place, clutching something of substance, or having some people carry whatever they purchased from the place for them.

    For many, the way things are structured, that may remain eternal pipe-dream unless and until some of the measures being taken by the government begin to yield results.

    This is why I have always argued that labour leaders should insist on good governance. Not incessant wage increases.

    But they would not listen. Today, workers have the wads of naira notes in their pockets but can only buy little with them. I was far better off with the N400 that I first earned as a graduate in 1985 than today’s graduates earning N150,000 per month.

    A colleague who just returned from abroad told me that the price of a car he ordered a few years ago remains virtually the same today, but when it gets here, that is where the problem lies because of the exchange rate.

    If Nigerian workers had been insisting on good governance, it is not unlikely that what is hitting us hard now would not have been this serious because there would have been incremental adjustments that would have made things easier for us to swallow now.

    The truth of the matter is that what we call salary today, starting from the president down to the least paid worker, is ‘lie lie’ salary. How can our president be earning N1.5 million monthly? To do what? We need no one to tell us this is unrealistic. That of the National Assembly is even worse. Ask 100 members how much they earn monthly and you will get 100 different answers. Nigeria is probably the only place in the civilised world where such a matter of public concern is shrouded in secrecy.

    I do not know in how many state capitals people earning N70,000 can live if they must enjoy electricity, pay school fees, spend on transport for a family of at least four, pay for medicals, and do other routine things.

    Let nobody tell me we were able to enjoy most of these things before because they were being subsidised. Was the government also subsidising the bumper meat pies that we were eating then at Kingsway Stores? Was it subsidising the Hing’s singlet (unarguably one of the best brands then) that we were buying on the streets of the popular Balogun Market in Lagos at the time, for almost peanuts? Were they also subsidising the Peak Milk that some of us would always insist on, as against the Carnation and other brands that we considered inferior?

    Come on, something is wrong somewhere. It is that thing we should find and fix. The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) should get down to serious business and stop this unrealistic pay fixes.

     It is because the National Assembly members are not comfortable with whatever the commission gave them that they found a solution to their wage problem through some other ingenious means. Recently, in spite of the economic challenges the poor are facing; they even mooted pay rise for themselves.

    Meanwhile, lesser Nigerians have to cope with the miserably low pay the same National Assembly approves for them.

    We need to do something about this lopsided, ‘lie lie’ wage structure before it does something to us because it is not just inequitable, it is ungodly. It is a recipe for tempting even people who do not know how to steal. It is only a matter of time before we start expanding our prisons because we would have cause to receive more prisoners; not prisoners by choice, but prisoners by societal injustice.

    Professors earning N500,000 to N600,000 a month in this economy is scandalous? To do what? Many people would have stomached it if this is the general trend but a situation where conscientious workers cannot get commensurate reward whereas a few others cream off the resources at the expense of millions of others is unsustainable.

    Many of us who disagree with Ajaero often do so not because we do not understand his point, but, first, because, we know some of his protests had beyond labour undertones. And, two, because contemporary labour matters should now be more of brain than brawn and ‘gra gra’. Ajaero does not seem to be ready to admit that labour leaders would be judged in the final analysis, not by the number of strikes they mobilised, but by the impact their tenure had on workers’ welfare.

    Ajaero needs tutorials on how his forbears in the labour struggle, like the inimitable Pa Michael Imoudu, and indefatigable Hassan Sunmonu, did it so successfully.

    One of the reasons some people get so much to steal from the public till is because we have too much idle funds all over the place. Otherwise, why would someone be able to steal the humongous amounts of money we used to hear (some would tell you public funds are still being stolen) running into multiples of millions and sometimes billions (as if these billions are Japanese Yen), without the country knowing until years after? Something must be wrong somewhere.

    We may argue that the loopholes are being blocked, but the most important deterrence would be to punish those who pilfer our funds, to the full extent of the law. Often they don’t get their full comeuppance. Rather, they are given slaps on the wrist by allowing them to do plea bargain which allows them to return only a fraction of what they stole and keep the rest to themselves.

    Unfortunately, while these people who stole more than their three generations require get this kind of soft treatment, the poor man that stole a goat or something because he is actually hungry gets years behind bars; sometimes with hard labour. No plea bargain. Well, as one of our former first ladies used to say, ”there’s God o.”

    Nigeria’s ‘lie lie’ salary reminds me of an advert that newspapers used to carry some years ago. The ad had to do with a company that paid peanuts as salaries. At the head of its management was the lion calling the shots, flanked by other dangerous animals. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that company would turn out to be.

    That is the Nigerian situation with regards to its wage structure. While I have no problem with some sectors earning extremely well because of the sensitive nature of their jobs, what is required, in my view, is a holistic review of wages for all such that every Nigerian will, like it used to be when we were growing up, be able to afford the basics, particularly food and shelter.

    If for one reason or the other that is not feasible now, it should be on government’s pending priority list.

    After all, as they say, “what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”.

  • A gathering Storm

    A gathering Storm

    ASUU, perhaps the most visible industrial trade union in the country is beginning to rumble ominously again. For more than two years now, the volcano has been quiescent, allowing the present government, an extended honeymoon period during which the government has been making all manner of announcements mainly without a robust response from the union. It seems that all that is about to change as the union has started making pointed references to the famous, or if you prefer, the infamous 2009 agreement between the government and the union. The union recently reminded the government of the existence of that agreement but the initial response from the government was most discouraging. The Honourable minister of education, betraying lamentable ignorance of the matter on ground, announced that no such agreement existed. It is noteworthy however that the minister has been brought up to date with correct information. That agreement certainly exists. It was signed, sealed but lamentably undelivered at a time when a one-time bona fide member of the union was the President of the Republic.

    The 2009 agreement was detailed and wide ranging. It was thrashed out between the union and a large government delegation which had the authority to act on behalf of a conscious and fully responsible government. At least that was the impression that was given at that time. It was designed to be an agreement to end all agreements and in the usual tradition of ASUU, it was enthusiastically endorsed by the rank and file of the union before it was signed. The most important clause in the agreement was the one which stipulated that the agreement was to be revised within two years and every two years after that, to keep everything fresh and up to date. Long story short, successive governments have repudiated the agreement. Sixteen years after it was signed, it has remained unclaimed and unfulfilled, as the university system tottered towards a terminal state of collapse.

    At the time that agreement was signed, there were twenty-seven Federal government owned universities, nineteen state owned universities and thirty-two private ones. At the heart of the agreement was the issue of funding. The consensus was that the publicly owned universities were severely under-funded, making it impossible for them to function as decent centres of learning, not to talk of excellence, as they should be. The government agreed with this assessment which is why it put pen to paper, committing itself to providing sufficient funds to rescue the universities from decay. In the meantime, the government, at the behest of the union, restated her commitment to the provision of free education at the service point. The union, exhausted from seventeen bruising years of continual struggle with successive governments, both military and civilian, heaved a heavy sigh of relief and waited for the government to keep her own side of the bargain. Sixteen years and several bitter and unproductive strikes later, the union is still waiting and wailing.

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    The union was still waiting on government confirmation when out of the blue in 2012, the Federal government which all the while had been pleading insolvency announced the immediate setting up of twelve brand new universities. How did the government, broke as it was, find the required funds to bring twelve twelve universities to life at one stroke? The insincerity of the government in this respect was hinted at by the fact that one of the new universities was to be sited at Otuoke, a tiny settlement on the Otuoke river, a tributary of a tributary of the River Niger. Everything about Otuoke screamed humility, if not backwardness except that it was the birthplace of the sitting President of the Republic. A government which suddenly realised that it did not have the funds to do the honourable thing by the university system was going to provide the money with which to launch what were described as universities in twelve places at the same time and with immediate effect. The problems hanging around the neck of the witch have been compounded by her inability to stop giving birth to daughters. Now, there are sixty-three Federal government universities in Nigeria following what can only be described as an explosion in university founding instead of funding. At that time, it just did not make any sense that the government which had studiously neglected to take responsibility for twenty-seven universities was now prepared to provide the funds which were required for the added responsibility for twelve new universities. The restoration of the glories which departed from our universities all of three decades ago is obviously a high mountain to climb. Under current circumstances, it is pertinent to ask if our leaders quite know what a university is supposed to be.

    With the proliferation of universities, both public and private, it is becoming clear that the principle of tertiary education has been exposed to the harsh winds of the reality of our everyday existence. There is an unruly scramble for the appearance of scholarship even as substance is being visibly eroded from our educational system.It is only a matter of time before we are found out by the truth of university degrees devoid of all practical value. For the most part what we now have are university graduates who can only be described as being barely literate and without any real or applicable knowledge from which our society can derive any tangible benefits. We have been deceived into thinking that the hood is more important than the monk. Indeed, the monk has become invisible or at least butt naked and shivering from the icy blasts of the winds of ignorance. It is now pertinent to question the proliferation of universities in a nation with such scant regard for those who have, for one reason or the other chosen to take up the challenge of an academic career. Lecturers in Nigeria, through their union, have consistently drawn attention to the sorry state of our universities for more than thirty years now. Clearing the accumulated dross of that struggle has become a truly Herculean task but one which needs urgent attention.

    In the last few months, I have come across a plethora of advertisements for all cadres of academic staff, from the humble but hopeful graduate assistant, to the decorated but weary professor in a broad spectrum of media in Nigeria. With the birth of so many new universities, this is only to be expected. The number of academic positions created in the last five years by all those new universities is simply staggering. According to NUC rules and regulations, for a department to be accredited, it must have a minimum of six academic members of staff divided between fledgling junior lecturers and experienced professors. It is worth stressing that six is a minimum number, accepted only in emergency situations. When I arrived at Ife with a PhD in 1976, I came to a department with eighteen active members of staff and with new ones joining those on ground all the time. The department hummed with activity until late in the night. Undergraduates were working on their various projects in well equipped laboratories. The postgraduate programme had just started at the time and the best graduating students in Pharmacy had been retained to get the programme off the ground preparatory to becoming lecturers in their own right. All the eager young members of staff of that time, at least those of them who went all the way in an academic career are hoary haired grandparents, now retired from the rigours of the classroom. Not many of them have been replaced or can even be replaced. Over the years, as new schools of Pharmacy were founded, many of the staff of the department, enticed by promotions which were necessarily slow in an established department were siphoned off and new recruits with desired qualifications became increasingly difficult to attract. Any objective assessment of that department will return lower and lower scores until now when qualified candidates are very few and those that have stepped into vacant positions are under the harsh environment of their work place are plainly unenthusiastic. In the meantime, there has been an explosion in the number of Pharmacy schools and the number of aspiring pharmacy students has climbed through the roof. Teaching them has become an unwelcome and unremunerated chore, not worthy of the attention of the brightest graduates. But for the recent embargo on the establishment of new universities, the situation, at least in terms of staff recruitment would have continued down a steep, perilous slope. And yet, the number of eager student applicants for a place in the Faculty is increasing all the time. The pressure on the dwindling resources at the disposal of all our universities is fast approaching breaking point and needs to be toned down as quickly as possible through a massive and eminently sensible cash injection from a clear eyed government.

    The 2009 agreement between ASUU and the government may have been adequate for that time but it is clearly no longer the case. So much slush has passed under the bridge that the situation needs very careful handling. That there is now a moratorium on the establishment of Federal universities suggests that the government may have been put into a frame of mind to live up to its long deferred responsibility. But, to be honest, I am not holding my breath any more than to prevent my being choked.