The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Falcons fallout; Reward template

    Falcons fallout; Reward template

    The largess showered on the Super Falcons including $100,000 and an Abuja house, probably in the 1506 ‘Crime Estate’ proven by the courts to be recaptured from Emefiele’s reign of terror’ over Nigeria’s assets in CBN, has generated mixed feelings. Of course, we do not know what other past Czars at CBN did. How clean were they really?

    Nobody questions the need to reward the Super Falcons and their supporting entourage. But how much is too much in a country with a minimum wage of N70,000/month and a maximum wage of several million/month? Even that N70,000 is often ignored in both government and private sectors and ignored also by the employees of these sectors who in their turn have employees of their own in the domestic setting -armies of underpaid house-helps, servants, drivers, nannies, carers, cooks and guards many of whom earn less than minimum wage and work longer hours.

    Contrast this with the unrealistic excessive multi-million ‘maximum government wage’ of Sinators [no apologies for the typo] and UNRepresentatives [no apology for the second typo]  commandeered, cornered from the budget, not earned, by members of the ‘greed over need driven’ political class.  Nigerians have protested themselves hoarse against this exaggerated self-assessment of worth without success. Paradoxically, National Assembly, NASS added insult to the injury by nastily awarding its members jeeps worth around N164m each interestingly about $100,000.

    Read Also: First Lady donates ₦1bn, relief items to Niger flood, fire, banditry victims

    Politicians seeking public office should be on a government scale Level 18, 19, 20, 21. Period! Nigeria will only progress when politicians serve the country and not service themselves and family generations unborn with misappropriated funds.  The president, the VP, senators, representatives, are government jobs not ‘Luxury King Solomon or Midas Treasure Hunts’. Minister means ‘servant’. Our governors demand houses and pensions and gratuities for just four years of hyper-well-paid governance with poor service delivery.  There is a disconnect here.

    The euphoria of the Super Falcons win and the value added to Nigeria’s sporting reputation are unquantifiable in money or in the value of the free positive promotional worldwide publicity.  The win is a huge a morale booster, a yardstick and motivator for others coming behind to measure themselves and surpass. It is a[nother] giant further step to establish more positive sporting role models nationwide. This latter is in spite of the fact that most of the sports girls and women either ‘japa-ed’ abroad to take advantage of better training facilities and better structured sports support scholarships and contracts or were actually born, schooled, scouted and groomed abroad and are actually routinely playing internationally, not in Nigeria.

    Good positive news created by Nigerians anywhere is good positive Nigerian news no matter the intermediate country circumstances. This is especially important as our newspapers and world opinion of Nigeria and Nigerians are dependent on recurrent undated negative social media and violence of terrorism, kidnapping, ritual killings, baby factories, drugs and diseases. It is a time when so many other Nigerians seem to be specialising in ‘PHD’ aka ‘Pull Him Down’ or ‘PND’ aka ‘Pull Nigeria Down’ activities.

    However, there is need for government at LGA, state and federal to have ‘Yardsticks of Reward’ a STANDARDISED ACADEMIC AND SPORTS REWARD TEMPLATE. Recently, Nigeria has been blessed by a tsunami of First Class or First in Class graduates at home across the world, at home in Nigeria and across the academic world. Yes, some were rewarded with job offers and cash gifts but how does that compare to the most recent Falcons awards? How does academic brilliance compare to a football or athletic prowess in the receipt of government financial rewards?

    Already there is a loud complaint on behalf of our star athletes who carry Nigeria’s name sometimes under another flag, winning hard earned laurels on the world and continental stage. Nigerians who change their flags are not traitors. If they were they would change their names and pretend to be rooted elsewhere, but they do not. Their change of flag is like a change of baton in a relay -essential for the necessary progress to finish the athletic career race. In this case it is due to economic, strategic reasons and usually to escape the poor track record of Nigerian sports administration in which the athlete is often neglected. But they are still recognised by their names even when draped in other flags. It is not shame on them for surviving. It is shame on us, Nigeria, for forcing them, by our infrastructural and administrative inadequacies, to make the japa decision made by them or their parents during the five japas created by past authoritarian or economically oppressive regimes.

    Some argue that our largely international team actually stopped home grown players succeeding. Some complain that $100,000 per Super Falcons is arbitrary and extravagant compared to the poor sports budgets and poor service delivery and needs of the sports sector generally in Nigeria. THIS IS TRUE. Certainly, we need a REWARD TEMPLATE.

    But Nigeria’s participants in sports and academics for the thousandth time demand an answer to the morality in why a 160m+[not 200m+]  country would rather allow its private sector reward past presidents with private contributions amounting to around N20billlion for a ONE Presidential Library, than government and private sectors spending a similar amount upgrading sports facilities, administrative quality and quantity, talent hunts, progress ladders and competitive events and reward structures FOR 50 MILLION YOUNG NIGERIANS? 

  • The gifts

    The gifts

    It is well known that giving gifts to others allows us to set up or reconfirm our connection with them. It is also true that gifts are used to communicate our feelings and appreciation for the recipients. It was French anthropologist and sociologist, Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), who first developed a theory of exchange in which the gift occupied centre stage. He proposed that early exchange systems center around the obligations to give gifts, to receive them, and, most importantly, to reciprocate. In ancient societies, he further argued, gift exchange was central to the maintenance of reciprocal obligations between individuals or whole communities.

    In ancient societies, gifts took the form of material goods or labour. Women were also exchanged as wives to establish or cement relationships between families or communities. For example, my lineage history had it that there were two great male friends in Idale Quarters at Oke-Idanre. During one rainy season, Friend A’s roof was leaking profusely. The son of Friend B was returning from the farm with palm fronds. When he noticed a detached palm frond from Friend A’s roof, he stopped, climbed the roof, and replaced the detached frond with two of his own. The leak stopped. Friend A was so delighted that he went to Friend B the following morning to praise him for raising a good son, who, out of his own freewill, repaired his leaking roof. In the exuberance over the occasion, Friend A promised Friend B that he would give his daughter to Friend B’s son so that the relationship between their families would survive for generations. I am a product of the union of the ensuing young couple.

    In modern society, however, money has become the primary item of exchange, although material goods and labour are still part of the modern exchange system. Besides, rather than express feelings or appreciation alone, the modern economic exchange system focuses on the use of money in exchange for goods and services.

    Within the past week or so, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu invoked the age-old gift exchange system, but used a trifecta of exchange tools, both old and new—a bungalow or flat, money, and the award of the National Honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger. The gifts were an expression of a nation’s appreciation for two different teams of young women, who excelled in their sports. They were also meant to inspire the teams to do more, by making the nation proud in future tournaments.

    One, the Super Falcons, won the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations football trophy for the 10th time and automatically qualified for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup. The other, D’Tigress, won the basketball trophy for the seventh time, five of them in a row, and qualified for the 2026 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup.

    So much has been said about the President’s gesture, especially about what many commentators, especially online, view as excessive cash gift in a struggling economy. Here’s how one of my Abuja friends, Samuel Eka, puts it: “This administration told us that now is the moment of sacrifice, with the fuel subsidy removal. So, in such moments of national sacrifice, I think our expenditures and government spendings should be in line with the reality on ground. The whole nation should not be starved and few people who, by luck and privilege, went to play in a single tournament … get this kind of rewards without considering the economic situation in the country.” Eka, about the age of one of my children, is a bright young man, a graduate of Economics, who is self-employed. The sentiment he expressed is widely replicated by other commentators.

    Read Also: First Lady donates ₦1bn, relief items to Niger flood, fire, banditry victims

    What is often forgotten, however, is that the President’s gifts to the teams were symbolic gifts from a nation to its ambassadors in sports. As such, they carry deep meanings, sentimental values, emotions, and wishes that transcend their cash value or material form. Presenting the gifts to the Super Falcons, the President put it this way: “You have inspired millions, especially young girls who now see proof that their dreams are valid and achievable. You have inspired me, too. And it’s great for a nation to have assets that are the hope of today, tomorrow, and the day after. You represent that hope. You ignited that hope. And we will continue to encourage you, the next generation, and other generations after you.” Noting how the team worked hard to come back with a victory from a 2-0 deficit at halftime, the President added: “Your victory represents more than a sporting accomplishment. It is a triumph of courage, determination, discipline, and consistency.”

    The conclusion is incomplete that the players were rewarded for only playing in a tournament and getting such huge gifts. These are professional players, who have devoted their lives to their sport. The gifts were not limited to that single tournament, but they also recognised the team’s achievement in winning the tournament for the tenth time.

    Two quick points here: One, the gifts might have been handed to individual players, buy they were in recognition of the team’s efforts in winning the tournament for the tenth time. True, some of this year’s players also participated in some of the earlier tournaments, but what about those players who had retired or were otherwise not playing for the team anymore, but played when they won some of the earlier tournaments?

    Two, the President seemed to have answered this question indirectly, by saying specifically that his attention was on “you, the next generation, and the generation after you.” Here, the President set up a precedent: Past players might not have been fully rewarded, but from now on, we will pay due attention to our sporting heroes, who provide entertainment to feed our eyes and emotions, while lifting up the spirit of a nation and giving hope to those interested in sports today, tomorrow, and the day after.

    It should be noted as well that President Tinubu did not suddenly come to this conclusion. Unlike the past, when our representatives in sports cried out for fees to cover their hotel bills, President Tinubu gave orders before the tournaments that all the entitlements of the players, their coaches, and the technical teams should be paid up.

    One other factor often overlooked in physical sports, such as football and basketball, is the early retirement of players, often in their thirties. In the absence of a retirement package and lack of sustainable income from commercial endorsements, players are left with whatever they can make during their careers. Given the relatively poor remuneration for home-based players, no gift is too much for those who made it to the continental championships and won.

    In Nigeria today, no sports provide as much ecstatic entertainment as football and basketball. This, however, does not mean that national attention should be limited to these sports. From now on, commensurate attention should be paid to all sports. More importantly, a sustainable reward system for all sports and athletics should be developed that would guide public expectations, while being implementable by future administrations.

  • NNPCL: Distractions all the way

    NNPCL: Distractions all the way

    Anyone who has dared to pay more than a scant attention to the latest rumblings – within and without – in the national oil corporation in the past few weeks must have come to the same verdict that nothing good can ever come out of the behemoth. Exactly three weeks ago, this columnist had written about the not-exactly-shocking announcement by the NNPCL-GMD Bayo Ojulari, in faraway Austria on the company’s plan to sell the Port Harcourt refinery.

    That was coming two months after the refinery was shut down for ‘maintenance’ and this also coming six months after its well-publicised re-start which at the time was celebrated far and wide. Never mind that the country had expended a whopping $1.5 billion of Nigeria’s hard-to-get forex to get it to that point,  just like the typical Nigerian puzzle, what informed the piece and the barely suppressed outrage, wasn’t so much about the huge amount spent on the turnaround, but the grave potential scams insinuated.

    First was the reported arrest of a former Chief Financial Officer of the NNPC, Umar Isa and the former Managing Director of the Warri Refinery, Jimoh Olasunkanmi. The duo was reported to be under EFCC investigation over an alleged $7.2bn fraud linked to the rehabilitation of the three refineries in Kaduna, Warri, and Port Harcourt. The second which followed, and which this columnist actually considered graver, is the suggestion that the entire country may have been scammed!

    To use Ojulari’s words: “So refineries, we made quite a lot of investment over the last several years and brought in a lot of technologies. We’ve been challenged. Some of those technologies have not worked as we expected so far. But also, as you know, when you’re refining a very old refinery that has been abandoned for some time, what we’re finding is that it’s becoming a little bit more complicated”.

    Talk of a project on which the whole nation had pinned its hopes of full rehabilitation and which the country had committed a whopping $7.2 billion being declared as not only unproven, untested, but also offering no guarantees.

    Now, the same Ojulari, who only a short while ago stated that “sale is not out of the question. All the options are on the table, to be frank, but that decision will be based on the outcome of the reviews we’re doing now” has since walked back on that. He says the sale of the Port Harcourt Refining Company is no longer on the table, and that the company is rather committed to ‘completing high-grade rehabilitation and retention of the plant’!

    And then the caveats: “the earlier decision to operate the Port Harcourt refinery, before full completion of its rehabilitation, was ill-informed and sub commercial.

    “Although progress is being made on all three, the emerging outlook calls for more advanced technical partnerships to complete and high-grade the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery. Thus, selling is highly unlikely as it would lead to further value erosion.” (My emphasis).

    His simple verdict: Those that conceived, planned, and executed the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) did a terrifically poor job. Meaning that the ‘process’ was so flawed that it would amount to grave injury to describe it as such; since the technologies (which the NNPCL-GMD has openly declared to be suspect), would require another layer of procurements and technologies to ‘upgrade’.

    I suppose no one vetted the contract papers (if there were any) to fully understand what value the country is supposed to be getting in the end or are expected to be delivered by the main contractor, Tecnimont.  Between March 2021 when the federal government awarded the contract for the refurbishment and modernisation of the refinery complex and its May shutdown for ‘maintenance’, we are again at a point where the refinery would require “more advanced technical partnerships” to see things through!

    There have been other side-attractions going on. There is the ding-dong between Senator Aliyu Wadada-led Senate Committee on Public Accounts and the NNPCL-GMD over unresolved financial infractions said to amount to N210tn! In the wake of the serial invitations by the senate to the GMD to help clear the fog on the infractions which the latter only honoured at the pain of a sanction, the latter finally showed up at the senate chambers with a plea for more time to address the queries. A minor part of that side show is the clarification by the senate committee chair that contrary to reports suggesting “theft”, the sum flagged in audit reports was only “unaccounted for”, and not “stolen”!

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    Which is why the latest twist in the tale – the rumour of the so-called ‘forced resignation’ of Ojulari by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Department of State Security – has merely added a new layer of distrust to the image of an entity where the only permanent item on the menu is bad news and more of bad news!

    As it is, the company’s initials may have changed, pretty little else has changed. A little more than three years since its supposed transition into a commercial, independent entity, similar to other national oil companies worldwide, more and more Nigerians are questioning the wisdom in the mere name-plate change (from NNPC to NNPCL) as against creating an entirely brand new national oil company with its own distinct corporate culture. 

    Of course, the joke out there is that Nigeria is so fixated on the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries that little else matters; nothing on the sprawling depots and network of pipelines that requires urgent attention to relieve the pressure on the road infrastructure and to grow its long term competitiveness; and, no indication, as yet, of its readiness to play in the big league as one would expect of it given its immense assets.

    And while the irony is lost that a terminally ill NNPCL, an entity itself in dire of TAM, is actually the one leading the charge to redirect the course of the nation’s energy transition, it manages to serve Nigerians with sufficient distractions to prevent them from asking deep, profound questions about its continuing relevance while ensuring that things remain the same! 

    I believe the time has come for the federal government to tear down the edifice brick by brick.

  • Awujale: A question of integrity

    Awujale: A question of integrity

    The metaphor — of the tragedy of privilege without responsibility — always loomed, in Death and the King’s Horseman, a Wole Soyinka play, written at the Churchill College, Cambridge University, England, but which premiered in 1975, at the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife.

    The late Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, Ogbagba II, seems to have flipped that creepy Greek saying.  Though he died “happy” here, and got his death wish for a Muslim funeral, he would appear “sad” there, at the other world!   

    That has been clear from the ugly controversy that has enveloped his opting to shut out the Ijebu traditional priesthood and conclave from his burial rites. 

    But a fiery traditional elite have scoffed back, in blazing ire and fire: their former king, though highly revered in life, just “died”, as any common mortal. He did not romp into ethereal blaze, as Yoruba monarchs gloriously do!

    “Awujale ku ni,” the most radical and iconoclastic among them huff, “Ogbagba o waja!”

    That open heresy, in the traditional Ijebu cosmos, is a big deal!  With that institution’s memory of the elephant that seldom forgets, that might yet come back to haunt the king’s direct descendants; and even the fortunes of his ruling house — at least the Ogbagba segment of it — whose slot he filled with rare glory for 65 memorable years!

    That Awujale-after-death scorn is spectacular upbraiding of that Greek classic: only the dead stay happy!

    By its grim logic, the human is at the mercy of malevolent gods.  Even with a second left to breathe his last, the gods could swoop, swish, conk and crush: undoing all the glory the mortal had done, all his life — a classic case of the divine envying the mortal!

    But that’s all just cultural dramatics, bordering on the farce!  Malevolent — or benevolent — “gods” are no more than human foibles.  Conceit rapidly builds; and in Chinua Achebe’s Igbo-speak, the man starts challenging his chi (personal god) in a fit of hubris! 

    So, that Greek saying is dire warning for man to stay simple, humble and happy!  But man won’t be man without pushing his luck!

    In truth, the late Awujale pushed his luck a lot, at the crest of his glorious reign. But the more he bucked the norm, the more prestige he corralled.

    Hubris?  “Hell, no!” The modernists, among the avant-garde traditionalists, particularly the younger breed of Ijebu monarch-professionals, would roar back! Rather, it’s healthy evolution, which craves reformation of the extant tradition.

    That would appear to have driven their ambivalence — enlightened self-interest? — towards the Ogun State Obas, Chiefs, Council of Obas and Traditional Council Law, 2021.  This law offered the legal anchor for the late Awujale’s outrageous funeral rites — at least, to the dyed-in-wool traditionalists.

    For pushing this law, Oba Adetona may well end up the historical scapegoat! How do the Yoruba put it: he who does what none had done before, sees what none had never seen? 

    But if it forces lasting reformation, by a syncretic marriage of foreign faiths to native rituals in royal burials, posterity may well thank him.

    That would be in the long, long run, though.  Right now, the sharks are out, in the short, short run!  And boy, are they angry!

    In truth, that law offered the late monarch instant legalistic cover.  But unsparing sociology still left him stark naked.  What’s a law without its sociological spine?

    That harsh sociology also passed him off — fairly so — as some glorified opportunist who, in life, had the best of the Ijebu Obaship, played the Unquestionable — Kabiyesi o! — to the hilt, earned all the power and all the glory, only to duck paying his ultimate debt in death!

    That brings the discourse right back to the dark Elesin Oba metaphor, in Death and the King’s Horseman.

    The Elesin knew the deal: he would live the life: food, wine, women and prestige, in sheer epicurean paradise, right here on earth. But he must also die the death!

    The moment the Kabiyesi ascends — “w’aja” — he too must die, with the royal horse and the royal dog: the Elesin Oba, as royal guide in the grim sojourn to the other world; the horse, the royal carrier on the grim journey of no return; the dog, the royal protector, to bark off malevolent ghommids and keep sundry hostile spirits at bay!

    But this particular Elesin had it all but balked at that fateful hour — in any case, by his body language.  In fairness to him, he was aided and abetted by colonial Brits — led by Simon Pilkings — who decreed that tradition was barbaric, which indeed it was.

    But it turned a reverse irony for the tragedy to sink in.  Olunde, Elesin’s son, lured abroad by the same British personages to study Medicine, but be thoroughly brain-washed in the so-called “civilized” Western ways, turned the tale: a new champion of the grim tradition his father tried to dodge; which the intruding Brits helped to stall.

    Enter: one suicide call, two fatal prizes!  Elesin’s son committed the ritual suicide expected of his dodging father!  The shame-faced Elesin had little choice but to follow suit. Two tragedies for the prize of one!

    Still, a let-off of a sort — which may well open some long-term cold comfort, after this Awujale burial tragedy had blown over.  After the Oyo dramatics that fed our own WS the raw materials for Death and the King’s Horseman, that grim tradition itself became history in Oyo Alaafin, after the 1940s, which provided the play’s real-life setting.

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    Would that also prove true, for the Ijebu, after — in Shakespeare’s Macbeth-speak — the hurly-burly is done; and the roaring battle, over “Isese” rights in Oba burials, is lost and won?

    If it does, then the dead Awujale would have had the final laugh! 

    But right now, that looks so far-fetched that Oba Adetona — and descendants — would have to lug that ignominy of cheap pretenders as life-long defenders of tradition, but life-end deserters.  After all, what’s life without a good ending?

    Still, that troubling question must be asked: why did the dead King, and his loved ones, shirk whatever awaited his body after passage, so much so that they “blocked” such horror(?) with Muslim burial rites? 

    Are the dire suggestions true: that as the Kabiyesi was unquestionable in life, after death, the community too became unquestionable with whatever they did with his remains?

    Even with the awe — if not naked fear — that drives Yoruba spirituality, there would appear a fair call for reformation to assure troubled royal families of respect for their dead.

    But until such are sorted out with sane give-and-takes, to the mutual benefits of all involved, the dead Awujale risks lugging in death the diametric opposite of what he beamed all through his glorious reign and illustrious life: a crass lack of integrity.

    That’s hardly fair to the memory of a monarch that, in the secular, if not Ijebu spiritual eye, lifted the Ijebu throne to heights hitherto unimagined, earning a GCON to boot!

  • Between IPMAN and Dangote

    Between IPMAN and Dangote

    The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) is the umbrella organization for all registered Independent Petroleum Products marketers licensed to lift and operate petrol filling stations in Nigeria. It was a product of Obasanjo‘s 1978 decree to aid local participation in an area then dominated by foreign interest. But sadly many informed Nigerians believe from being asked to come and engage in legitimate profitable business, Nigerians have since 1983 become victims of IPMAN’s greed.

    Its first casualty was Obasanjo’s 4,900 kilometres pipeline commissioned in 1979, to ferry oil products from Lagos to all parts of Nigeria. By the Babangida’s era of commercialisation in 1986, not one kilometre of the pipeline remained functional. Of course the next victim was NNPC tank farms across the nation. They were all vandalized by unknown persons.

    But the general perception of Nigerians was that it was only those who stood to gain from such assault on Nigeria’s economic interest that could have embarked on such dastardly act. That IPMAN and their truck drivers who secured NNPC contract to store NNPC imported products and distribute same across the nation came under serious scrutiny should therefore not surprise anyone.

     It was not long Nigerians started to identify IPMAN as an accomplice in the mismanagement of the oil sector by NNPC, regarded as the cesspool of corruption. IPMAN did not help matters by the fact that just a little over half of trucks loaded with fuel from Lagos got to their destination. The rest found their way to neighbouring countries especially the Sahel region of the north where drivers make over 100% profits at the expense of Nigerian consumers who spend hours at filling stations. From 1999 to 2023, Nigerians were taken hostage as those responsible for their nightmare remained untouchable.

     In 2001, IPMAN was used by PDP stalwarts to create artificial scarcity to enable them blackmail Obasanjo into signing the PPPRA bill into an Act within three months. PPPRA was to become instrument with which PDP stalwarts defrauded Nigerian of billions of naira through the fuel subsidy scam.

    But with a new sheriff in town, something changed dramatically in 2024. Following customs arrest of some of their tankers for illegal diversion of petroleum products, IPMAN shut down all filling stations in Adamawa, claiming that “customs officers are conducting unlawful operations, harassing their members and causing significant financial losses.” In fact IPMAN threatened government by telling the DSS official that intervened in their case that they will shut down the 30,000 stations operated by its members if the federal government fails to pay the N200bn owed to marketers.

    IPMAN’s demands may be legitimate because bridging claims are payments made by the government to oil marketers for transporting petroleum products loaded from Lagos depot to various states across the country. This allows them to sell fuel at the same rate, no matter the logistics cost. The problem however was that IPMAN, like other Nigerians who travel to other parts of Nigeria including the oil producing Niger Delta know you can never get petroleum products at the same rate you get it in Lagos.

    However, IPMAN overreached itself in May 2025, when its national chairman, Abubakar Shettima, burying his head like an ostrich and believing no one sees him, went to the FCT Director of the Department of State Services, Usman Dauda, to threaten the shutdown of the 30,000 stations operated by its members because the Nigerian National Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) paid only N50bn out of the N200bn debt. It was with this type of blackmail Nigerians were swindled for over 50 years.

    Of course IPMAN remains the greatest critic of Aliko Dangote’s business model which they say is antithetical to Nigerian industrialization. They say he is profit driven, that he is government created monopolist and a man who engages in an unfair competition, and a man who does not keep promises.  In a recently celebrated case, Yahaya Bello the former governor of Kogi State claimed that Kogi State government owned the Obajana Cement Company before Dangote Investment Limited showed interest and was welcomed by the then unsuspecting state government. They didn’t however tell us how Dangote eventually secured 100% ownership of the company. Nigerians have to decide who to believe between Yaya Bello and Aliko Dangote.

    David Hundeyin writing for BusisnessDay of March 21, 2021 said “It is no coincidence that many products on Nigeria’s import ban lists are items in which Dangote has major interests. He describes Dangote’s Cement as an example of “a price maker monopoly” a status he secured via President Obasanjo’s executive fiat. This banned cement imports and granted 90-year exclusive limestone mining licenses to Dangote at Nigeria’s richest limestone sites.

    And still quoting from  the U.S. diplomatic cable, he  says  “Nigeria’s wealthiest man is not actually a productive capitalist creating value for the Nigerian economy but at best an economic parasite and at worst a direct brake on Nigeria’s economic growth.”

    Unfortunately, Hundeyin also suffers from credibility deficit from recent newspapers reports. Besides, with President Trump’s multiple indictments for financial malpractices including tax evasion, American capitalism model is at its most brutish form.

    And come to think of it, it is not only Dangote alone that enjoyed support of government. In fact Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, former foreign affairs minister not too long ago declared that there is no Nigerian multi-billionaire that did not make their fortune through the state.

    The current administration recently sanctioned some of our mega banks for exploiting some of the loopholes in the CBN laws to make profit that will make capitalists in the home of capitalism green with envy. In fact they were made to refund some of their un-earned profit back to CBN.

    We also know billionaires who did not inherit industrial complexes from their great grandparents as was often the case in western societies. Their fortune could only have come from government contracts.

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    Dangote also came under vicious IPMAN attack recently when he suggested that “the Nigeria First Policy” announced by President Tinubu should apply to petroleum sector and all other sectors”. He anchored his argument on the fact that America, Canada and European countries are doing it to protect local investors.

    That they are going to source their own dollars only begs the question. Much of our foreign exchange earnings stolen from the Abacha period are in private hands.

    Sanusi Lamido Sanusi before he was booted out as CBN governor by President Jonathan called our attention to missing $20b in NNPC. We could not have suddenly forgotten the case of Andrew Yakubu, former NNPC Group MD in whose farm house in Sabon Tasha in Kaduna State, EFCC on tip off, made a haul of $9.7m (N2.9b) He was later acquitted by the court who agreed with him that EFCC could not prove the money was not a gift from his friends. Just in January, Nigeria and the US signed an agreement to repatriate about $52.88m in assets forfeited by Diezani Alison Madubuike former oil minister.

    In recent weeks, Dangote has also been in the eye of the storm for announcing the delivery of   4,000 brand-new compressed natural gas (CNG) trucks, as part of strategy including establishment of CNG stations across the nation. The move, backed by a N720 billion investment, would see the company absorb an estimated N1.07 trillion yearly in fuel distribution costs, eliminating transportation charges for fuel marketers and large-scale consumers. The presidency has described the initiative as “a major boost to the federal government’s push for gas-powered transportation.”

    If Dangote is a monopolist, he is one with human face. Not too long ago he told some reporters that while many of his employees have personal houses in London, he has no house abroad. Dangote because of his faith in Nigeria ploughed back his fortune in Nigeria. Dangote has been able to cover our shame of having to import what God gave us in abundance.

    If I have to choose between beneficiaries of those who vandalized 4,900 kilometres of pipelines; who destroyed  NNPC tank farms; the enablers of fuel subsidy scam, parasites  and their truck drivers who periodically hold us hostage, and a man who because of his faith in his country invested his fortunes at home  while his fellow billionaires kept theirs abroad, a man who  liberated us from price equalization abusers with N1trn of his money and ensures Nigerians from all the corners of the country benefit from oil God gave them in abundance, I will go for the latter.

  • The Idea to killings

    The Idea to killings

    What could be the motive behind the indiscriminate killing of about 20 innocent people by gunmen in three communities in the Ideato North Local Government Area (LGA) of Imo State? That is the searing puzzle security agencies especially, the state police command must have to untangle.

    Unmasking those behind the dastardly and senseless killings is made more urgent given the early suspicion raised by the state police command on those responsible for the killings. The police had in a statement by its spokesman, Henry Okoye, fingered the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra IPOB and the Eastern Security Network ESN for alleged culpability.

    According to them, seven people died from the attacks with several others injured even as they assured the deployment of adequate intelligence and operational assets to identify, apprehend and bring the perpetrators to justice. That is the public expectation from the organisation.

    But the penchant by our security agencies to look at just one direction each time such killings occur may be part of the reasons such malfeasance festers. The danger in one-lead approach is that it forecloses other possible angles including the culpability of fifth columnists.

     And when that angle fails to yield positive results, it would have been too late for the security agencies to access other set of vital evidence to aid thorough and meaningful investigations. Their inability to resolve many of the puzzles thrown up by the cascading criminality across the country, may in part, be pinned down to the indecent haste with which conclusions are reached on possible crime suspects even before any arrest is made.

    The seeming culture of holding IPOB culpable for all manner of crimes even before any arrest is made has also curiously found favour in the slant of some newspaper headlines. A recent report by a national daily had the above headline: “Police burst IPOB/ESN syndicates in Imo, rescue over 100 victims”. In the body of the main story, the evidence the spokesman of the state police command provided was that of the arrest of 2,785 suspects implicated in serious offences such as kidnapping, terrorism, murder, armed robbery, cultism and child trafficking.

    Though the police said they also arrested some high-profile members of the IPOB/ESN and recovered high grade weapons in their camp in Njaba, they were just part of the 2,785 criminals nabbed. There is no attempt to absolve the IPOB/ESN from any culpability. Not at all! But the tendency to narrow down all criminalities in the zone to the IPOB/ESN no doubt, obfuscates the real nature, dimensions and character of the unceasing insecurity in that region.

     In the Ideato incident, three gunmen riding on a motorbike had penultimate week, spontaneously attacked three communities-Umualaoma, Ndiejezie and Ndiakunwata Uno. The marauders on approaching the communities’ commercial centres, opened fire on shop owners, their customers and others relaxing around the vicinity.

    Accounts of the exact time of the incident vary. While some reports had it that the attackers struck between 10 and 11 pm, the President General of Umualaoma community, Chikezie Oguejiofor, said in a statement that it happened around 8.21 pm with nine of their people killed for no reason. Differences in the time of the attacks may not be entirely strange given the time it took the killers to access the three communities.

     Oguejiofor captured the mood of the Umualaoma people when he described the killings as a dark moment in the history of the community. The same gunmen after attacking Umualaoma, rode through Ndiejezie and Ndiakunwata on the same stretch of the road that same night and left in their trail deaths, sorrow and awe. Eyewitnesses said the gunmen shot sporadically as they rode through the road linking the three communities without alighting from their motorbike.

    They shot all through the road targeting anybody on sight. Some of the lucky victims were heard lamenting the relative ease with which the gunmen shot indiscriminately at innocent people without any provocation wondering what could be the motive.

    Not unexpectedly, the incident has left the communities and their environs perplexed and in great trepidation. It has begun to take a toll on economic and social activities as people fear to venture outside their homes or gather in the open.

    The incident has exposed the vulnerability of the affected communities and others in the state. It should be a thing of immense worry that three gun-trotting criminals in a motorbike could attack and inflict mortal harm on three communities in a sequence without any resistance or trace. It spoke volumes on the porosity of the security situation in the state. The police have promised to unravel the masterminds of the criminality. Good!

    But as important as the unmasking of the culprits is, the overall target should be on credible intelligence gathering and crime prevention. When crimes are nipped at the bud, the police may have no cause to point accusing fingers in one direction to save face even when they are yet to make any arrests.

    That brings to question the role of the quasi security outfits floated by the state government and the various vigilante groups in the various communities in situations like this. Why were they not activated as the attacks spread through the three communities? This underscores the imperative to rejig and align the roles of such quasi security outfits and the community vigilante to work with the security agencies to secure rural communities. If gunmen could attack three communities in such a sequence without intervention from any quarters, that could embolden other criminal elements into extreme lawlessness.

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    The Ideato incident is not alone in the cycle of violence afflicting the state in particular and the southeast region. Just last June, the Agwa community in the Oguta LGA of Imo State was thrown into confusion after it was attacked thrice in two weeks by suspected herdsmen. The last attack which attracted serious outrage left five people killed, three kidnapped with others sustaining varying degrees of injury.

    Eye witnesses gave chilling accounts of how the heavily armed attackers stormed the community in broad daylight, shooting at sight anybody they saw on their way. In the two earlier attacks on the community, the suspects also shot sporadically resulting to the death of a pregnant woman.

    Tempers rose so high that the state police command had to issue a statement pledging their commitment to get the culprits tracked down through coordinated search operation across targeted locations, including forests areas and suspected hideouts.

    The anger and despair generated by the attacks on the Agwa people in the homes was so palpable. A subsequent meeting of stakeholders of the area convened by the state Commissioner of Police to find solutions to the attacks was quite revealing. Agwa community, in a letter they submitted at the occasion bared their mind, “we are afraid that if there are no urgent actions taken by the government to prevent future reoccurrence of this evil from herdsmen, Agwa youths may resort to self-defence”.

    That is a measure of the extent issues had degenerated and the vulnerability of the communities to attacks from sundry marauders. Their demand for the setting up of a joint security taskforce along the Ejemekwuru-Agwa road to guard against further bloodshed and contain the movement and operations of criminal elements in their clan further amplifies the dire insecure environment the communities live in.

    The list of such attacks, killings and kidnapping of innocent people for ransom and other criminal intentions around the south east landscape is endless even as many of them do not attract public attention anymore.

    Curiously, in the face of this multi-faceted criminality in the southeast, what gets often highlighted is the IPOB/ESN angle as if the technology for crimes’ committal is their exclusive preserve. Those who toe this path may have their reasons. But such fixation goes with the risk of masking other enablers and purveyors of the multi-dimensional insecurity assailing the country.

     The Ideato killings present a new but dangerous dimension to the cascading insecurity in the country. Its motive is one the security agencies must work to unravel.

  • Tinubu’s North ambassadors

    Tinubu’s North ambassadors

    When they met last week, Tinubu a appointees and APC bigwigs showcased the north for the president. It was an impressive outing as counterweight against cries from hegemonists like Kwankwaso and Boss Mustapha.

    What the north needs is accountability and facts. That is what the Kaduna meeting set in motion. But the sort of engagement I had advocated was for Tinubu’s appointees to do individual interactions with the northern poor, and showcase what they are doing.

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    President Tinubu gave the north portfolios not for chop chop but for work work. The north’s main problems include education, healthcare, food and security. All those in charge of these areas in the cabinet are northerners, except education but the minister of state is from the north. There are other portfolios where northerners run important positions.

    That is the next step for Tinubu’s northern ambassadors. They should go each to the grassroots and evangelise their doing. Let the agriculture minister go from Sokoto to Dutse to southern Kaduna and engage with the people, and let them know that they are working to stamp out hunger. To do is not enough, even if the recipient is enjoying it. He will have to be told or someone else can do two things. One, the masses can be told that what they get is not from the government, or that it is not what they should be getting. Facts are not enough. They can be twisted. Facts can become lies in a clever tongue. Evangelists are important because they can redress the facts. What is before them is what they tell you it is. Reality is not as obvious as we think. Someone can tell me today that my work is not mine, and with arguments, they may be right.

    The ministers and advisers should stop placing their lamps under their gorgeous desks in Abuja. Of all of them, NSA Nuhu Ribadu is up and doing. More, though, can be done.

  • In defence of Falcons splash

    In defence of Falcons splash

    ‘For upon all the glory shall be a defence,’ Prophet Isaiah.

    When they played, we cheered. When they were paid, we jeered. They received a pot of joy but we are throwing potshots.

    There was a lot of hoopla over the largesse showered on the Super Falcons who brought glory to the nation. The sum, N153 million, is no doubt a hefty bite.

    But so was their performance. Some commentators have said the money undermines the services of other patriots, and they ought not enjoy that sort of magnificence, too.  A writer spewed statistics to show how doctors, teachers, et al, earn too little compared with what the ladies of soccer took home.

    I had exchanges with a few wise men, and how wrong they were. One person, while comparing our girls’ bounty with what England paid Burna Boy to serenade the English team’s captain, noted it was done not by government but by their Football Association. Good argument.

    Another said their English counterpart visited their Prime Minister Keir Starmer without an outpouring of pounds sterling. Great point, too. Except that they fail to understand that the system of western societies has imprimaturs of gratitude. They are built to reward athletes for the rest of their lives. Gratitude flows in the system until they grow old. They get jobs, endorsement, contracts as a reward system built over the years.

    Their careers on the stage are fleeting. But what they enjoy is systemic compensation. Unlike in Nigeria where their sun goes down when the spotlight shifts, they move from spotlight to sunshine, though mostly under the radar. This is not for the British alone, but the west, including the United States and Canada.

    What has happened to Michael Phelps, the all-time Olympic star? He does not play again, but he cannot starve because his talent is a treasure. They will have to keep him as a role model, and today he is doing many things as mental health advocate, philanthropist and business man. The system yields itself to pay back. An affluent society makes room for its own heroes. Things cannot be too tight for its titans.

    But it is not the case with us. Part of the reason is that this is a poor country. Secondly, we may applaud our heroes in public, but do we help them as a society? It is not the case of sports heroes alone. It is all over. It is not a government flaw. It is cultural drawback. Government can only start the dialogue but society must embrace it.

    Look at some of our best. Let us begin with Best Ogedegbe, the great goal keeper. Sebestian Broderick, the ace defender and coach. Sunday Eboigbe, Charles Bassey, Joe Erico, Kadiri Ikhana. Not long ago, we wept over the fate of Peter Fregene, who struggled to pay his health bills until the Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori came calling.

    But he had been too neglected for long decades for any help to change a riptide. What of Rashidi Yekini, and his woes that mangled our faces to tears before he passed on? The society looked with impotence as newspaper article over article played out his mental and financial struggles.

    We cannot forget so easily what ace defender Christian Chukwu suffered even in spite of the intervention of Femi Otedola. The man Ernest Okonkwo praised as chairman, a charismatic presence in defence, could not move his limbs. Time mocks nature, and belittles the memory of our agile years. It watches as we slow and fade.

    My boyhood hero Haruna Ilerika died a poor man. Then Governor of example Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), like the good Sheriff with Fregene, stepped in for him, but the star of the 1970’s Second All Africa Games gold medal and Stationary Stores Maestro had struggled for too many years trying to make a living before the good governor came calling. Ilerika, who made mincemeat of defenders with dribbles as poetry might have been a Messi in his time.

    But he did not play in Europe because soccer stars were homebound in those days.

    I know of an Olympic-class boxer who was a street neighbour as a young man who struggled in a one-bedroom apartment in Surulere after his golden years had punched vitality out of him.

    These girls, most of them, may never get this treasure for the rest of their lives. It might be the only pension their passion will grant them, except of course those of them who play in Europe, to whom even $100,000 may not be that much for them compared to what they earn.

    A doctor may not earn this, nor a journalist, nor a teacher, nor a cleaner, all of whom deserve accolades. But most of them can earn, no matter how little, incomes up to their hoary ages. The athlete has a meteor of a career, and a few years of glory.

     They, like Peter Rufai, cannot live on their paltry income to their old age. It is not what you earn as a young person that matters as much as whether they can sustain you when their powers fail for fertility and gain. In his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams says you can live without money when you are young but you cannot live without money when you grow old.

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    I read a poem authored by an unknown person lamenting the toils and sacrifice of a soldier. They do not get as much, yet they give their lives as sacrifices for country. It is a moving poem. I think it reinforces the value of sacrifice, and President Tinubu did it to families of fallen heroes of the army last year with life scholarship to their children and forever homes for their families.

     That should have triggered conversations for the country’s heroes of all types but some are using the wrong accolade for argument. Soldiers did not do it for their own while in power for a generation.

     A democratic president has done for them what no military leader did for them. In his novel The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad wrote that the first impulse of “luxury and opulence is security.”

    In advanced countries, athletes, especially in soccer and other group sports, enjoy abundance, and it is society that gives it to them.

    Sports has replaced worship there, and they cherish their sports heroes like mystic figures. In the United States, their version of football is described as a religion because the game takes the hallow of faith, like a ritual for a shrine, and the citizens attend their shrines on Sundays. They describe baseball as American pastime. I would not make the case for a person like Michel Obi or Osimen. Not all who play professional earn a lot. We should always make the distinctions.

    We have faith without works.  We have faith in our players but give little offerings. They are deities without pots of life. Love that does not give. Faith without fetish.

    Some of the rage stems from partisan resentment but we should rise above it for our Falcon heroines. The Falcons were rewarded by the falconer, so let us allow the things to fall in their pleasant places. May things not fall apart for them in their old age when their only thank you is that they would be hailed as once famous when they cannot pay their rent or pay their masseurs.

  • Extreme politics and its consequences

    Extreme politics and its consequences

    We want a great Russia, but they want a great bang, Pyotr Stolypin— the last democratically elected premier of Russia just before he was assassinated

    Extreme politics always has its consequences.  Perhaps it should be added as a caveat right away that instances of extreme politics also occur in homogenous nations with entrenched liberal democracy. This happens whenever there is a breakdown of the grand unified vision that holds the nation together as a result of the collapse of elite consensus.  It is however in fractious, multi-ethnic and religiously fissured societies of colonial Africa, Middle East, Asia and Latin America that extreme politics is the norm rather than the aberration. Rather than being an arbiter and astute arbitrator of competing elite demands, the state itself is a theatre of war and violent contentions as the conflicting and often mutually exclusive claims of constituent nationalities while they jostle for scarce resources lead to a collision of altars. 

       In postcolonial Africa, extreme politics has led to civil wars, revolutions, catastrophic break-ups of nations, genocides, periodic pogroms, civil uprisings, religious upheavals, military coups, violent annulments of popular elections and ethnic nationalities programmed by their devious elites to be on permanent collision course. In the light of the above, it should be obvious that any nation afflicted by any or a combination of these social albatrosses is permanently in the emergency department or a regular patient in the Trauma ward. Depending on which part of the ideological spectrum one can be located, Nigeria should count itself lucky that due to the global de-marketing of revolution and what has been called the ongoing process of de-marxification of the entire world there are no strong, vibrant and viable leftwing movements or organizations left in the country ready to capitalize on and exploit the massive social contradictions.

       If this development is particularly true of Nigeria, it is also very true of the rest of Africa. For almost five decades, leading up to the first decade of the twenty first century, Latin America was the hotbed of these revolutionary but sectarian upheavals with countries such Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Mexico and Uruguay coming under the terroristic  thrall of charismatic insurgents.  The continent even birthed the phenomenon of Liberation Theology, a band of Jesuit priests who believed that paradise was possible on earth as a heroic human construct. If all is quiet on that front now, it is because the idea of a supreme, all-conquering Caudillo has also suffered irreversible attenuation.

       Looking back now in sober retrospect the whole idea of The Second International, with its flawed but humanitarian heroism, feels like a fictional reprise of a world about to disappear forever. The world, in the main, appears to be moving relentlessly in the direction of a rightwing authoritarian populism peppered by xenophobic nationalism. In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn, the leftwing hell-raiser, had to be dismissed as Labour Party leader before his party became electable again. As Prime minister, Keith Starmer is learning to master the ropes of deep-seated national ambiguities and political fudging. In France, only a desperate last minute alliance between the old left and the new Macronite centre prevented the rampart from disappearing in a far right tsunami. America has just executed a swing to the far right with potentially perilous consequences. Russia has transited to a hyper-Slavic redoubt ready to defend the interest of the larger Slavic sub-race despite the nuclear harrumphing of Donald Trump. The world seems to be tired of revolutions while revolutions are themselves tired of the world.

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      But what is extreme politics?  Extreme politics is the politicization of the process of allocation of resources and the procedure of who gets what and at what time in a way and manner that imperils national progress and renders economic development practically impossible. It is marked by a subordination of the political process to the crude partisanship of ethnic, religious and regional muscle flexing in a way which makes the conciliation, compromise and consensus-building critical to elite harmony and national cohesion impossible. It is unfortunate, even tragic, that beyond what one can dismiss as occasional instances of individual eccentricities and opportunistic haymaking, extreme politics is on the rampage once again in Nigeria.

     The democratic and national fabric weakens whenever the wisdom, judgment and capacity to take fair decisions on behalf of the entire nation by those saddled with the responsibility is subjected to a daily barrage of criticism by disaffected elite groups driven by fear, anxiety and sheer phobia. Anybody who has been reading some national dailies and watching prime time television in the past week would have noticed a sustained barrage of attacks on the Tinubu administration as if the bugle of war had sounded somewhere. It is not only the tone and tenor of these attacks that are regrettable but their nature and content. One of them with lordly disapproval insisted that Tinubu must leave immediately. Another noted without any recourse to any data or statistics whatsoever that his rule has been a categorical disaster for the north of the nation while a third only marginally more sanguine than the first two insisted that an electoral catastrophe awaits the president should he dare to put himself forward for reelection in 2027.

       What is worrisome about all these threats and maledictions is that they are coming barely two years into the Tinubu administration when it has barely passed the halfway benchmark in what is supposed to be a two-term tenure for a president of southern extraction in accordance to an unwritten clause of power-sharing arrangement on which the stability and cohesion of the Fourth Republic rests. The potentially catastrophic disruptions which are bound to follow the premature termination of this delicate rotation of power do not seem to disturb the peace and cheery equanimity of the proponents. Far more worrisome is the fact that this caterwauling is coming almost entirely from people who were until recently active collaborators and fully fledged members and appointees of the ruling party, unlike the peace and quietude that obtained during the eight years of General Buhari’s rule. They have not even spent two years out of the power loop before they have begun to gasp for breath and to threaten the peace and foundation of the nation. How are they going to survive eight years in a strange land?

    The conclusion is inescapable that these are, in the main, spoilt children of unearned and unmerited privileges; prodigal brats of the feudal oligarchy without a second address and without any means of livelihood beyond feeding off politics. With their state diapers and feeding bottles removed they cannot contemplate a life of hard work and thrift outside the feeding frenzy of the postcolonial pabulum. But there is a big problem here. You cannot step into the same river twice. After the June 12 fiasco, Abacha’s inquisition and the mismanagement of the ethnic diversities of the nation, the National Question has been exacerbated and the mood has darkened. The framing temperament of the country can no longer tolerate the toxic effluence of extreme politics such as annulments, assassinations of key political figures of a particular region and electoral shenanigans ending in messy stalemates. No section of the country can any longer impose its narrow, circumscribed and antediluvian vision of human order on the entire nation. It is either we embrace political and economic modernity or we damn the consequences.

        The auguries are dire. This is not a question of scaremongering. After the June 12 imbroglio, the Yoruba people seem to have had it to the hilt with the Nigerian nation. There are many of them who are not Tinubu’s supporters but who will take umbrage at any attempt to prematurely or unfairly terminate his tenure either by electoral skullduggery or by more devious and invidious means of state incapacitation. This will bring them circling the wagons all over again, this time around in a more decisive manner. With the core east up in arms against the hegemonic coalition, it may well signal the unleashing of some irreversible forces of implosion. Those who are testing the water and probing for the soft underbelly of the current administration ought to put their talent for regime destabilization into more productive use.

       The immediate tragic consequence of extreme politics is that it often forces a vulnerable government to concentrate more on unproductive politicking and deal-making rather than focusing its talents on productive governance which conduces to accelerated development and increasing national prosperity. More dangerous is the fact that feeling the pressure and the heat of the unrelenting attempts to wrong foot and destabilize it, a weak government without a full mandate or overarching national legitimacy might be forced by exigencies to ignore or look away from the quest for social justice and egalitarian distribution of resources so as to placate or mollify already over-pampered elite groups who undermine national cohesion and the equilibrium of the polity by their greed and avarice. The irony is that it leads to that which the authorities fear most: the widespread collapse of order and authority that open the backdoor to unimaginable social and political catastrophe.

    We have witnessed the horrific consequences of extreme politics at critical phases in the chequered history of this country. In the First Republic, the unjust take-over of opposition stronghold, the imprisonment of opposition leaders, the pacification of weaker nationalities and widespread rigging of elections led to a breakdown of law and order, the termination of democratic rule and civil war. The same scenario repeated itself in The Second Republic with very much the same outcome. In the aborted Third Republic the recourse to politics in extremity following the mismanagement of the nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity by a military junta opened the backdoor to another military dictatorship of unparalleled brutality and venality. After twenty six years of uninterrupted civil rule, we should be able to resist the temptations of ancestral infirmities that will return us to the limbo of liminal existence.

  • Two female soccer epics (The Mundials of Wundia)

    Two female soccer epics (The Mundials of Wundia)

    In Yoruba parlance, a wundia is a woman in her prime, full of zest, guts and gutsiness. Like many other things, the term is probably borrowed from Arabic and Islamic culture. It is said that in some traditional societies the male folks were known to have fled governance after they had fouled things up leaving the women to clear the mess. Yours sincerely has always been an unapologetic advocate of women taking over the reins of leadership in postcolonial Africa. Of course, there have been a few female backsliders who seem to outdo their male counterparts as predatory piranhas preying on their own societies. But overall, the numbers are negligible and few and far between.                                                                    

       Last weekend, and only a day apart, two epic soccer matches took place which reminded us of the self-surpassing capacity of our female soccer divas and their ability to show focus, discipline and vision when and where it mattered most. In faraway Switzerland, an impressive, solidly deployed and well-organized English team of defending champions survived a first half scare when they fell behind to trump a vastly more talented and enterprising Spanish team of World Champions. A day earlier on Saturday, it was the final of the Women Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) tournament. The Nigerian female football team, the Super Falcons, came back from the dead, two goals down after twenty seven minutes, to defeat a Moroccan team that was an absolute marvel to watch as they ran the Nigerian team ragged.

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    But the Nigerian heroines rallied and showed grit and determination where and when it mattered most. So certain and so convinced was the Voice of Nigeria reporter on the scene that he went away to file his report that Nigeria had suffered a colossal and irreparable loss to the Atlas Lionesses. He would have woken up to the nightmare of irreversible victory. It is unfortunate that the Moroccan authorities have resorted to mean-spirited complaints about the age and true nationality of one of the Nigerian stars. But let us leave the sourness alone and enjoy the wonderful soccer. It has been a magical outing for female soccer.