The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Death and the Mai Gaskiya

    Death and the Mai Gaskiya

    Mai Gaskiya ne; Mai Gaskiya ne, the crowd roared and roared as the convoy of vehicles screeched to a halt on one of his campaign trails in the north. Of course, you guessed right. The roaring crowd, made up of the masses, was hailing none other than General Muhammadu Buhari. Mai Gaskiya, the honest one, was an appellation that stuck to him like a second skin until his death five days ago. Buhari died in London on Sunday and was buried in his Daura hometown in Katsina State on Tuesday. Buhari was a crowd puller in the north, especially among the talakawa, the hoi poloi, that never got a second look from many other politicians, except at election time.

    Buhari had time for them all the time. He was at home with the poor, the vulnerable and the downtrodden. Buhari did not just happen on the political scene.  Long before his foray into politics, he was a military general known for his ruthlessness. His tough reputation preceded his coming into office in 1983 as military head of state, following the ouster of the Shagari government. His first coming as the nation’s leader is remembered till today because of his relentless war against indiscipline, corruption, and drug abuse.

     He ruled with fiat like all military dictators, sending people to jail and death, even before prosecution! He jokingly referred to this era in one of his rare interviews as civilian President. Buhari rued that he could not rule with such iron fists in a democratic setting no matter how strongly he felt about certain issues. Things must follow due process and cannot be done with ‘automatic alacrity’ a’la the military. He ruled with decrees, churning them out at a frightening rate that made the public shiver. The more famous ones were Decrees 2, 3 and 4.

    Decree 2 was for the detention of persons for eternity until the junta decides otherwise ; Decree 3 established the military tribunals under which many Second Republic politicians were tried and jailed for donkey years for corruption; and Decree 4 was the anti-media law that punished practitioners even for publishing the truth. Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor had a bitter taste of  Decree 4. Many Nigerians, save for the talakawa, who saw themselves in him because of his asceticism, never forgave him for his deeds between 1984 and August 1985 when he held office as military ruler.

    His deputy, Tunde Idiagbon, was not different. They were two of a kind. And the duo struck fear into Nigerians. Buhari took a big gamble when he decided to go into politics, some years ago. Does he think we have forgotten what he did as military ruler? Is that what he wants to come and replicate as President? President ko, President ni. The questions and remarks came in torrents. Amid the umbrage, he took the plunge, pitching his tent with the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). To the political class, Buhari was an outsider to be kept at arm’s length. They could not give him the cold shoulder for long, though, because he was ‘a man of the people’.

    There is nothing more that politicians crave than to have such a man in their corner. With Buhari on their side, his party members were sure that they would get block votes from the north. The question was: will his much-touted 12 million votes be enough to get him the Presidency? It was a poser that they could not answer during three election cycles spanning 2003 to 2011. Buhari was always sweeping the polls in the north, making mincemeats of his opponents, leaving them with little or no votes in the presidential elections of 2003, 2007 and 2011. His talakawa again and again delivered the votes in those polls, as he emerged as the north’s top politician since the days of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Mallam Aminu Kano, and Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. A new northern leader has risen, but the handshake across the Southwest that would give him the Presidency was elusive. He needed that handshake badly in order to cross the presidential finish line.  

    In 2014, the handshake that will shake the foundation of the nation finally took place when Buhari joined forces with President Bola Tinubu. Tinubu was then the leader of the Action Congress of Nigera (ACN), while Buhari was the stalwart of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). With the rumps of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and ANPP from which Buhari had carved out CPC, the two political titans built the All Progressives Congress (APC). APC created a major political upset, the first in the country’s annals when it defeated the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of PDP.

    Read Also: Buhari’s death a major loss to Nigeria, Africa, says Shettima 

    From then on, Buhari’s political fortunes changed. After three attempts, he finally made it to the Presidency. All eyes were now on him as he succeeded Jonathan at a time of great anxiety. The challenges were legion. Insecurity and the economic doldrums were the major issues. With his military background, Buhari was expected to tame the monster of banditry, terrorism and kidnapping. With some states and local government areas in the hands of Boko Haram, he was expected to move with haste to liberate those territories. After all, he did so before as a military officer.

    When shortly after assuming office, he said he was relocating to Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, which remains the epicentre of Boko Haram insurgency, a troubled nation hoped that at last, the troublers of Nigeria had met their match. Buhari was a veteran of such battles. As general officer commanding (GOC) in the Second Republic, he pursued members of the Maitatsine sect who wreaked havoc on Kaduna out of the country. Even when asked to stop by his commander-in-chief, he reportedly did not relent until he achieved his goal. Since then, the Maitatsinists seem to have learnt a lesson. Why did he not do the same to Boko Haram? Some analysts have asked, claiming that there is no difference between both sects

    They also question his economic credentials. There is a reason or reasons for every season and epoch in every country. Some leaders attain geat heights in certain seasons, while others do not. Buhari might have had his shortcomings, but he had a good heart. Good heart may not be enough to run a nation, but it is enough to chart the path for others to follow. Buhari led to the best of his ability. He remained true to himself to the end. People around him may have capitalised on his simplicity and his health challenge to commit all kinds of atrocities in the name of governance. He might have found out too late also that politicians ose nu enu fun (politicians cannot be trusted) as the Yoruba will say.

    Governance is no tea party. Buhari knew that well having been a military ruler earlier. But as he later learnt, democracy is a different ball game. He might have been overwhelmed by the art of nation building, but his concerns for a united and indivisible Nigeria where the people, especially his beloved talakawa live a good life, were true and genuine. Little wonder that the heavens themselves blazed forth his exit. Adieu, Mai Gaskiya.

  • Trump’s humiliation of some African presidents

    Trump’s humiliation of some African presidents

    Some opponents of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria had been jubilating that President Donald John Trump of the United States of America snubbed Nigeria by not inviting him along with the presidents of Gabon, Guinea – Bissau, Senegal, Mauritania and Liberia  even before they knew the subject of the discussion.

    Thank God Nigeria was not invited because if we had been invited and talked down the insulting way these presidents were treated, our president would not have been able to return home either with honour or dishonour. Nigerians would have been so upset by such a humiliation meted to these presidents that our claim to sovereign nationhood would have meant nothing and the honour of an independent sovereignty that our fathers fought for would have been seen to have been dragged in the mud and stepped upon by somebody who feels black people were nothing but hewers of wood and drawers of water.

    When I saw those black leaders standing before Trump in the White House as specimens of inferiority, I remember what Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana used to say to Africans in my youth that it was better to be kings in our African independent countries which critics of African countries said were being poorly run, than being slaves in the paradise of colonial tutelage of white-ruled African countries which were presented as heaven on earth. It has now transpired that the American administration is looking for land for dumping immigrants rejected from America. In the case of Nigeria, we had apparently been approached to take Venezuelans described by Trump as murderers, rapists, robbers and rogues. The man must love us and wish us so well that these are the types of exports America thinks we deserve. As respectfully and diplomatically as it was possible, Nigeria had told the Americans that we have our own problems at home and would not like to add to them. The five countries of Gabon, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Mauritania must have told the Americans that they were prepared to help America solve its domestic problems of getting rid of its unwanted immigrant population which had become a population bomb in the USA.

    Perhaps if we had been represented at the highest level of having an ambassador in the USA, the Americans would have been told that Nigeria would not accept any of the immigrants Trump was looking for a place to dump and that Nigeria was not that type of a country that would accept rejects from another country and that Nigeria was poor but not poorly insane.

    I don’t know why after two years, President Tinubu has found it inconvenient to send ambassadors to all countries that Nigeria has accreditation. This kind of subject would have been discussed at official ambassadorial levels and sorted out and would not have been elevated to presidential level. I plead with our president to fill all ambassadorial positions not only for the purpose of adequate representation and raising the flag, but for the traditional role of ambassadors in the promotion of trade and political relations. The real fact is that Nigeria is not a strategic country to the United States. We had chance to be strategic to the United States but the old-fashioned diplomats who surrounded Aso Rock between 1999 and 2015 blew the chance when the USA approached us with locating the African command in Nigeria and we said a flat “No” when we could have answered in the affirmative but attached conditions to it such as helping us to develop Nigeria‘s navy and air force comparable with that of Egypt and promoting considerable American investment in our military and industrial complex.  If we had been in a strategic position as we were when in the 1970s and 1980s when we supplied the USA with considerable amount of petroleum and gas, they would not have insulted us with asking us to take immigrants from Latin America.

    Trump is used to humiliating African countries. Recently he brought the presidents of Rwanda and the Congo DR and virtually locked them in the White House and gleefully announced to the journalists assembled in the White House lawn that he has two African presidents who had been fighting for about two decades and who had listened to nobody about peace but to him to settle their problems and had listened to him, a global peace maker and were making peace at his instance. Then later, he produced the grinning African leaders who claimed they were ready to sign a peace agreement. The following day, the Congo president said he was ready to alienate vast amount of land to American companies to prospect for all kinds of strategic minerals. It is this kind of freehand in Africa that led him to decide which African countries he would invite to be shown to the world grovelling before him and ending by nominating him for the Nobel peace prize which any reasonable person knows would be a kiss of death for the Nobel organization at least in the peace category.

    Read Also: Buhari’s death a major loss to Nigeria, Africa, says Shettima 

    Looking at the weak African countries invited, one can identify commonalities among them. They are all small countries population-wise. Gabon is just about one million and Guinea-Bissau is even less. Senegal, Liberia and Mauritania are in the region of between 15 and 20 million and these figures are by world and African standards, relatively small and they are all by economic standards, poor countries. Some people have suggested that they constitute countries from where immigrants flood the United States. That is not true. Gabon and Guinea-Bissau do not fit that picture. Senegal and Liberia have large diaspora communities in the USA and there are historical ties between Liberia and United States because the founding of Liberia in 1847 was by liberated African slaves. As for Mauritania, there are very few people from Mauritania in the USA. The only reason why Mauritania was included was to elevate Mauritania to the level of the Arab states that have established diplomatic ties with Israel. Bringing the dirt-poor Mauritania into the American orbit serves as a link with those Arab countries establishing ties with Israel.

    The other foreign dimension for us in Nigeria is that four of the five countries are members of ECOWAS – namely Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Mauritania. The most surprising one of these countries is Senegal which has just elected a left wing government and had just closed down French military base in the country or perhaps they are looking for replacement for France because of the economic implications of the closure of the French military base. Gabon on the other hand has natural resources and is rich in oil, timber and other minerals and has a small population which if well run, should be a viable and stable country.

    Nigeria needs to interrogate why countries in ECOWAS would take humiliating steps that could embarrass them and the region and Africa without first discussing it at the regional level and intimating Nigeria that had invested human and material resources in their stability. These are difficult questions to ask ourselves about non-diplomatic representation even at regional level if not at the global level. If we have had full functioning embassies with relevant intelligence officers, information would have reached our government about what the United States was going to be asking African states to do; we would have been in a position to influence the reaction of other African states at least those in our region because when an African state is embarrassed, we are all humiliated a little even if not directly but at least vicariously.

  • Poetics of enlightened self interest

    Poetics of enlightened self interest

    Patriotism thrives by cultural standards. Progress too. Thus the songs that every Nigerian knows by heart, the lore of nationhood, and the politics of suburban, boondocks poetry should, normally, manifest the kernel of indigenous culture and political sovereignty.

    But all these flounder and fade where Nigeria subsists as a cultural whore. Beyond the powder and blush of its republican label, should Nigeria subsist as a neocolonial brothel? Or recaptured colony, if you like.

    Should Nigeria remain a settlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) whose nativities are embowered and restrained in a mental jail cell? To assert independence is to be labeled as too radical, too conformist, too rebellious, too conservative – and confined in a cultural straitjacket by imperialist design.

    Caught in a maelstrom of economic, political and cultural interests, Nigerians frantically seek escape via a specious remake of persona – political theater’s wooden mask – into a survivalist totem that is at  once functional yet sculpted to preserve shady alien interests.

    The resultant decadence, inventive in pleasures yet originative in malice, is amplified as leftist satire in mainstream literature and revolutionist chant across multimedia platforms. Ultimately, it is spruced up as a “liberal” revolt against the perceived austerity and tyranny of Nigerian personae, a desecration of ancestral origins.

    Society thus sidles from a multiplicity of morals to unity in depravity. Our veneration of Euro-American interests has assumed the ruckus of a ghastly orgy, far removed from fertile nature. This validates the Euro-American propagation of vulturine psychology as a specialty cum arbiter of diplomacy and the human experience.

    Hussein Bulhan’s treatise on metacolonialism brilliantly addresses this phenomenon and its deceptive psychology. During classical colonialism, psychologists and psychiatrists embarked on racial comparisons on the size of the brain, concluding from biased measurements that Africans belonged to a lower evolutionary phase.

    With the rise and growth of globalisation, the calculus and dynamics of colonial domination have assumed more subtle and treacherous forms as superpowers of the so-called “First World” redesigned their conquest expeditions to suit the poetics and arithmetic of their “enlightened self-interests.”

    Apollos Nwauwa posits that Western education produced a contradictory elite in West Africa; one that served as both an agent of colonisation and nationalism. But nationalism, in our case, rather than mature into sovereignty of thought, hardened into mimicry. We changed flags, not philosophies. What we call modernisation has often been little more than domesticated colonisation—metacolonialism.

    Also, a conditioned mass passion for consumer goods imported from abroad and effective dissemination of the belief that this stage of colonialism aka globalisation represents a great advance in human history continues to be the bane of industrial and economic growth in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

    By sustained assault on the world of meaning, metacolonialism also penetrates the psyche and social relations. Nigerians are, of course, vulnerable to this scourge of culture, politics, and personae – they are fawning and defenseless before its oppressive hierarchies.

    And there is a structure to the indoctrination. For instance, the journalist plays the proverbial role of the primitive town crier cum interpreter, who ditches good sense for witlessness. He stifles intellect as he inhales the carnations of mindlessness. Should the press slip into trance like the Delphic Oracle?

    Being part of the orgy requires corruption of intent and mystic loss of self. To keep the stream of indoctrination flowing, journalists and activists contort into a purulent faucet. But if Nigeria’s best minds must season decadence for profit, who would guide the country through the trials of dystopic revel?

    As globalisation flourishes, the dynamics of Euro-American imperialism become more pronounced yet camouflaged in our lives with devastating consequences. As long as Nigeria and Africa worship the dollar and the euro as the primary means of international exchange and measures of human worth; as long as we venerate Euro-American norms as indispensable edicts of civilisation, Nigeria will remain poorly heeled in the global commune of recaptured colonies.

    The current system, nourished by subtle and aggressive programming through the media and academia, projects nations of Europe and America as unimpeachable models of humanity and freedom, not minding their buccaneer exploits and abrasive presence in  the middle-east and “recolonised” territories of the developing world.

    To counter this metacolonial complex, Nigerians must partner as progressive social actors to reinvent our national narrative in the language of patriots and deeds of an exalted ethic. In covering the next general elections, for instance, the civil society and the press must desist from inflaming the polity through sponsored disinformation and psyops comprising dubious analyses and pronouncements by questionable “foreign observers.”

    This isn’t a call for self-censorship but over time, several activists, journalists and political actors have been conscripted by foreign interests. Their intent is to destabilise the country, by predicting and influencing a groundswell of conflict tailored to fulfill the “enlightened self-interest” of their sponsors. Nigerians must shun their factious quotes and counter their doomsday portrayal with tact and patriotic intent.

    The next general elections won’t be perfect. No election is ever perfect all over the world. At least the United States’ scandalous elections of 2016, mired in claims and counterclaims of tampered ballots and sexed-up results, shows clearly that there is no perfect system or nation in the world.

    Read Also: Ignorance biggest threat to Nigeria’s democracy — PAACA boss

    Nigerians must resist the impulse to sensationalise perceived shortcomings of the ongoing dispensation to suit the purpose of enemies of the State, at home and abroad. Heaven didn’t fall and Nigeria didn’t collapse simply because the outcome of the March 2023 elections contradicted the run of doomsday predictions by frantic foreign consulates and political interests.

    It’s about time we committed with a clearer conscience and altruistic intent to the analyses of the conditions that victimise Nigerians as pawns and minions of the political class and shady colonisers.

    Civil society, the press and other social actors must quit talking down at Nigerians and instead identify with the citizenry as discerning, self-determining political actors. The press must alert the citizenry to self-defeating electoral quirks and enlighten them about the benefits of progressive partisanship in the electoral process.

    Decolonised psychology advocates change using a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach. The top-down approach is imperialistic and arrogant. Many political interventions or programmes of social change fail because they are imposed top-down by local and international actors with ulterior motives – thus they are often supported by the threat or instigation of mayhem as a tool of revolt.

    En route to the 2027 elections, the Nigerians must resist every token and leash from foreign interests, rights groups and non-profits inclusive. But for a very few, they are all part of the metacoloniser’s poisoned chalice. The change they promise is oft insincere, self-serving, and borderline.

    Beneath their claims that they alone know what’s best for Nigeria, they only seek to hinder our progress march and infantilise the Nigerian mind, using psyops that foster hostilities and aggravate conflict. It’s all frantic, soulless posturing. In the end, they will claim victory for negligible successes and blame Nigerians for perceptible failures.

    True, fancy repute and ghostly online clout may earn venal activists, journalists and NGOs patronage in the short run, but they will lose it all in the long run to the same elements that taught them to be soulless mercenaries and hobbyists.

    We have used the soapbox and our presumed intellect as a mirror to reflect society’s hypocrisy, moral corruption, and injustice. It’s about time we walked our talk in the interest of Nigeria.

  • Zard, Makinde; CSR awards, CSR pre-contracts?

    Zard, Makinde; CSR awards, CSR pre-contracts?

    There was a function organised by the Zard family for late Chief Dr Raymond Asaad Zard, the departed public face of the Zard Dynasty. Organised by Camille Zard, his son, along with other family members, it also remembered Zard’s brother, Maurice. The occasion was graced by Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and the Archbishop of Ibadan Archdiocese Gabriel  ’Leke Abegunrin. The Archbishop highlighted the huge contribution of Dr Zard through massive employment and especially philanthropy.

    Makinde, who was pleasantly surprised when a six-year-old girl, sweetly echoed his name to applause, praised the late ‘Uncle Ray’ Zard as an astute businessman who contributed massively to the infrastructural road network and to the social and economic empowerment and the entrepreneurial development of millions of youths and families earning him many laurels, including OFR. He commended the Zard’s road construction and chicken industry as having impacted transport reliability and food security.

    As founder and chairman of Educare Trust, I commended Makinde for unhesitatingly  clearing the huge debt of unpaid pensions left by predecessors and for his political sagacity by naming the University of Technology, Ibadan after late Governor Abiola Ajimobi as the initiator of the project, though he was from a different political party.

    It is to be noted that NOT PAYING SALARIES & PENSIONS is an abomination as it disempowers and disembowels the historic solid Nigerian Family and Extended Family structure. When the elders have no money, and petty things like sweets, treats and even birthday presents dry up, the grandchildren and children often manifest their impatience, disappointment, disgust and disrespect resulting eventually in a breakdown of the domestic social order.

    Remember that the EXTENDED FAMILY WAS THE REAL HISTORIC ‘FIRST BANK IN AFRICA’ with internal loans and never-to-be-paid-back borrowing and Fox’s glacier mints and Cabin biscuits in Grandma’s hand or left strategically in one of the thousand Captain cigarette tins under her bed. Grandpa would always have a halfpenny for good grandchildren. Governors who undertake to deliberately not pay salaries and pensions, sap the hierarchal authority of every worker or pensioner family structure. This creates sometimes irreversible financial and mental instability now, and in the future; creates the environment for an army of disgruntled youth who look down on their parents. Being broke can destroy the family through the destruction of the family leading to divorce, domestic violence, unruly youth, suicides and youth who look outwards into the dark streets for peer and moral mentorship leading to drug, sexual and physical abuse and crime.

    Importantly also, the youth affected do not respect the ethics around work. The youth see no value in waking up early in future for work as they have a ringside seat or are participants in the drama around zero income of seeing their parents go and come from work with excuses, empty handed and nothing to show for it.

    So, the disturbed and destabilised youth ask: ‘Why the hype about “get a job” when your job yields no wages or pension? You have to borrow money to go to work, and grandma has to line up in an endless queue for three days and still does not get her pension which is devalued as well?” .

    Note that every government salary and pension feeds multiple families, inside and outside the pension-less home, including domestic staff, drivers, market women, barber, extra lesson teacher, schools, Okada or tricycle etc. So, one salary and pension impacts many lives.

    No doubt, the importance and danger of pension debt and urgency of stabilising the family financial state were known to Makinde when he stepped up with a high sense to political and moral responsibility to pay trillions in pensions owed by his predecessors.

    Read Also: Dangote urges wealthy Nigerians to invest in Nigeria

    Any governor who refuses to pay salaries and pensions is actually shooting himself in the foot, morally and politically and making enemies of the citizens. We thank Makinde for paying past pensions, with our money of course.

    We must remind all governors that paying current salaries and pensions as-at-and-when- due, is routine, normal and not reportable as an achievement or dividend of democracy. We do not hear when salaries and pensions are paid abroad. It is the sacred routine responsibility, not an option, on taking political office,  

    Other guests including myself, highlighted Uncle Ray’s contribution through large financial support for various university projects and NGOs like Educare Trust of which he was life patron. Prof Tim Tayo highlighted his contribution to Rotary International while Zonta International appreciated him also. Dr Zard also supported Nigerwives and in providing braille books for the blind. I pointed out that ‘A FORTUNE NOT SHARED IS A MISFORTUNE UN-FORTUN-ATE!’

    I also suggested to the governor the importance of encouraging CO-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES to uplift the physical and mental health of students and teachers and that a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) portfolio of past CSR activities by contractors be made part of contract award submission processes. That would bring an avalanche of CSR into schools, hospitals and youth activities. This would fit into government activities through Public Private Partnerships. All governments can easily increase CSR inflows to aid their schools and communities from the private sector by offering annual state based PPP-CSR rewards, recognitions and awards to private sector initiatives to encourage more ‘giving’ so that the CSR heights reached by Dr Raymond Zard may be achieved by a collective effort of widening the net of CSR.    

  • Time for the government to retail information

    Time for the government to retail information

    Retailing products and services is central to the production-consumption chain. For example, most Nigerians today do not have to go to the bank to cash money. Instead, they go to a roadside POS kiosk near them. Similarly, they don’t have to go to a bakery to buy bread for breakfast. Instead, they buy it from a roadside kiosk or a street hawker. Indeed, in many parts of the country, where there are intermediariesneither banks nor bakeries, these retailers are the only points of purchase. Often, there are intermediaries, such as bank tellers, who make cash available to the POS retailers, or bread wholesalers, who sell bread to kiosk owners and hawkers. As Nigeria’s cashless transactions policy took root, bank Apps became available for money transfers and payments.

    Similarly, if information about government policies and programmes were to reach the yam farmer in Benue state, the cocoa farmer in Ondo state, or the cattle herder in Ekiti forest, it has to be retailed. Unfortunately, with the exception of political campaigns during the four-year election cycles, there has been no consistent effort to do so on the part of the federal and state governments. Yet, retailing information to reach the masses and rural dwellers, especially illiterates, is critical to the government’s inclusivity agenda. The masses need to know about what the government is doing to improve their lives, and in a language and style they can understand.

    There are several reasons why retailing information is necessary. First, effective communication of government policies and programmes to the masses allows them to distinguish between such policies and their distorted varieties. It is also not enough to tell them that better days are coming. They want to hear from the horse’s mouth or delegated spokespersons why not today? It is important to explain to farmers, artisans, and market women why fuel subsidy removal and flotation of the Naira were necessary to stabilize the economy, given the economic distabilisation into which they were thrown in 2023. True, such policies often result in unintended consequences, including a hike in prices, the steepness of the hike needed explanation.

    Second, such knowledge allows voters to rigorously evaluate government performance for reelection. Without such knowledge, voters become victims of distortion and misinformation. If that is all they hear, then they could easily believe that the government has failed.

    This is not to say that nobody knows what the government is doing. However, those who do constitute a negligible proportion of the population. It is a small fraction of the country’s 65 percent literate population, who consume information via print and electronic media. However, in a country where the poverty rate is about 70 percent, few can afford the cost of a newspaper or television to read or watch the news.

    Some of the educated and half-educated folks also consume government information on social media, especially X, to which the government’s media team posts information from time to time. Unfortunately, however, much of the information is distorted, especially by Obidients and opposition readers, before it reaches the majority of social media subscribers. In 2023, I followed a message posted by the Tinubu campaign organisation on Twitter (now X). By the time the seventh response to the message was posted, it had been distorted. Obidients picked on the distorted version and distorted it even more. More of this should be expected as preparations get underway for the 2027 election cycle.

    Read Also: Buhari worked to ensure unity of Nigeria – Ex-IGP Okiro

    Yet, it is among the educated folks that government information circulates. On various occasions, it is the distorted version that reaches the masses. True, Tinubu’s major policies were intended to stabilise the economy, it is unlikely that the Lagos market women who sang Ebi  n pa wa (We are hungry) knew about those policies and their implications. Similarly, many retailers interviewed in 2024 had no idea why prices went up and were distrustful of price decline with some items (When will prices begin to come down?, The Nation, April 17, 2024). The question is: How does government information reach the masses?

    In an excellent comparative essay, the Director of New Media and Corporate Services for the All Progressives Congress, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, outlined several ways in which the government could reach the masses, especially at times of economic distress like ours (Communication at a time of renewed hope, The Nation, June 25, 2025). She suggested weekly press briefings and monthly town-hall meetings. The only caveat about the comparative cases is the high literacy rate in those societies, where the vast majority of the population reads newspapers or watch the news.

    In our situation, where ethnic and religious rivalries are rife, where at least 45 percent lives in rural areas, where the illiteracy rate is near 40 percent, where the poverty rate is near 70 percent, where insecurity is high, and where the political opposition is desperate, government communication strategies must be adapted to existing social, political, and economic realities.

    Accordingly, there must be a four- or five-tiered communication pattern that targets different populations, some in English, the official language, and others in relevant local languages. The different strands in the pattern will be explored next week.

  • The Muhammadu Buhari legacy

    The Muhammadu Buhari legacy

    It is fashionable for Nigerian political official holders to invest time and resources on edifices and infrastructure they grandiosely dub ‘legacy projects.’ Their hope is that future generations would remember them positively for the brick and mortar monstrosities they left behind.

    Ancient Greece and Rome also had grand edifices which are just ruins today. What has endured from those civilisations are the idea of democracy and the concept of republican rule.

    We see in the Muhammadu Buhari transition, that the greatest legacy may be the noble character of an individual that a nation can look to as a compass.

    Amid the deluge of tributes to the late president, a recurring reference has been to his integrity and aversion to corruption. This is rare in a nation when public office is a tried and tested route to unbelievable wealth; where occupants of powerful positions quickly acquire outsize egos in addition to wealth of questionable origin.

    Despite spending the better part of his working life in public service – occupying some of the most ‘juicy’ positions in government – he managed to remain ‘poor’ in comparison with his peers.

    This was a man who once superintended the Petroleum Ministry and never managed to soil his hands in the tricky business of dispensing oil wells. No scandal arising from mismanagement of public funds successfully attached itself to him. Little wonder he could, with much credibility, offer on multiple occasions to be an agent for cleansing the rot in the land. His consistency caused him to become known as Mai Gaskiya, Hausa for the honest or truthful one.

    Aside his rejection of corruption, he was known as a stickler for discipline. An older generation of Nigerians would be familiar with how in the early 80s he and his side kick, Brigadier General Tunde Idiagbon, tried to remake the nation in their image. Their ‘War Against Indiscipline’ (WAI) crusade sought to whip into line a boisterous and unruly populace who had turned their country into some African version of the Wild, Wild West. That project was akin to forcing unwilling horses to the stream: they just refused to drink.

    No surprise, therefore, that Buhari’s military colleagues, uncomfortable with his spartan rigidity, conspired and toppled him. His downfall was a breath of fresh air for an elite and general population that longed for a return to corruption and lawlessness. The stern general would spend the next couple of years cooling his heels under house arrest while his compatriots rushed back to business as usual.

    Read Also: Buhari worked to ensure unity of Nigeria – Ex-IGP Okiro

    While the nation returned to its accustomed debauchery, he retreated into his shell – hardly ever interfering in the scheming successor regime of President Ibrahim Babangida. He would briefly reappear in the public eye when the General Sani Abacha administration wanted a respected figure to oversee the management of the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF). This was an aggregation of revenue from removal of subsidies and an increase in fuel price. The proceeds were to be invested in infrastructure projects across the country. The jury is still out on how equitably the projects were distributed, but there was no question that people could see where the money had gone.

    One curious thing about Buhari is how he transformed from this stern, unsmiling military ruler into a man beloved of his people once he exchanged his fatigues for civvies. I presume it’s because they could compare this unassuming individual with a spartan lifestyle – despite the opportunities he had for self enrichment – to the demi-gods in power gorging themselves from our commonwealth.

    As public outcry rose with the unveiling of some new, mind boggling financial scandal, the Buhari mystique grew. His cleanliness became a stark alternative to the rank smell of graft in high places. More and more, people began playing with the idea of, once again, entrusting power to a man they once feared.

    This sentiment wasn’t universally shared among the elite. It is well reported that many within the powerful Northern ruling class admonished leading promoters of the nascent All Progressives Congress (APC) to drop the idea of enthroning Buhari as president. Their lobbying came to nothing in the face of unstoppable historical forces.

    If people keep talking about the man’s unique attributes, it’s not because he lacks achievements in the indices by which success in political office is more commonly measured. The late president accomplished much in eight years. He built the landmark Second Niger Bridge connecting the rest of the country to the Southeast. This was after several false starts by preceding administrations. He got trains running across the country, modernised the military and rolled back the takeover of large swathes of territory by Boko Haram and other terrorists. His investment in growing local staples like rice are notable.

    Like every leader, he disappointed in many areas. For while his personal integrity was never in doubt, the same couldn’t be said about leading figures in his government.

    The late president was an uncommon political phenomenon; a man who always managed to attract around 12 million votes in every electoral cycle in his region.

    He was truly the Nigerian equivalent of the ‘Teflon president.’ These types of individuals only appear once in a generation.

    In life, he changed Nigerian politics – becoming the only opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent president. Even out of office, without aspiring to become some sort of Olusegun Obasanjo type of godfather or power broker, he continued to influence things. Politicians from APC and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) beat the bush path to his Kaduna redoubt seeking blessings for the looming 2027 battles. The likes of former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, made a song and dance about consulting him before defecting.

    But at core Buhari was an honourable man. He quickly distanced himself from any suggestion that he would work against a house he had built, or undermine Tinubu whose support had made it possible for him to become president.

    Now, he’s gone. Pretenders may think they can inherit the locked-in loyalty of his 12 million voters. They deceive themselves. There would only be one Muhammadu Buhari. His political family – the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) – would quietly dissolve with local strongmen asserting themselves over their fiefdoms.

    It was already happening with the departure of the likes of El-Rufai and former Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to the evolving African Democratic Congress (ADC). Reiterating their loyalty to APC and Tinubu are the wing led by former Katsina State Governor, Aminu Bello Masari and his erstwhile Nasarawa colleague, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura.

    His exit makes Northern Nigeria open territory in the run up to the next elections. It becomes a field of opportunity for all players, with unique advantages for the incumbent president and his party. It would also expose the true strength of many who have been prancing about claiming to be heavyweights, when in reality they only rode on the back of the Buhari wave at each election.

    The late president was loved to bits by his admirers, despised in equal measure by haters. He was a polarising figure not just for his political and religious views, but for his role as a senior officer during the civil war. That made him an object of suspicion in the Southeast despite his best efforts to court the region through picking the likes of the late Senate President, Chuba Okadigbo, as running mate at some point. Judging from reactions in the zone to his passing, he never became flavour of the month.

    Think what you may of the man, Buhari was a giant whose life and actions have impacted Nigeria and would continue to do so. His critics would do well to remember that the work of nation building is never truly done. Now, the nitpickers have their opportunity to show they can do better.

  • Buhari’s many colours

    Buhari’s many colours

    Former president, Muhammadu Buhari, who died on Sunday, at 82 years, would make an interesting piece of painting if Nigerians, were asked to represent him, in technicolour. Taciturn and stern faced, the older generation of Nigerians would remember Buhari, the military general, for his mantra on war against indiscipline (WAI). As a military dictator, Buhari was considered ruthless in the prosecution of the war after he became a military head of state, following a military coup that overthrew the corrupt civilian regime of President Shehu Shagari.

    That coup and its aftermath were interpreted in different ways by different interest groups. While majority viewed his actions against politicians as deserving, politically conscious minority interpreted his follow-up actions as discriminatory. One of such was the treatment meted to the deposed President Shehu Shagari who was placed on house arrest, while his vice, Alex Ekwueme, was thrown into the prison, with other politicians. His critics believed the preferential treatment, was because Shagari was of similar tribe and religion.   

    But in fairness to Buhari, the war against indiscipline resonated well with majority of Nigerians, who had suffered immeasurably, under the wasteful years of Shagari’s corrupt civilian government. At bus stops, banks, airports and other places where people struggle for spaces, decorum returned as people willingly queued up. To deal a blow to the politicians who many believed had stashed away millions in false pits, Buhari changed the national currency with such a frenzy that many were caught unawares.

    While his action resonated with the majority who believed that the politicians deserved their comeuppance, there was the issue of the smuggled 53 suitcases which allegedly contained the same looted funds, belonging to a northern oligarchy. Under his watch, the national economy suffered recession, and experts attribute that the chaotic economic policies he championed. But he remained populist because he cleared the national landscape of the much hated politicians, who were swimming in splendour, while the majority were afflicted by scarcity of basic commodities and untrammelled inflationary pressure on goods and services.

    Buhari’s immediate constituency were apparently unimpressed with his frugality, and less than two years after he took over, he was removed in a palace coup organized by Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB). While Buhari’s highhandedness was the reason given by his colleagues for his overthrow, there are tails of other underlying reasons. One was his war against hard drugs, which allegedly affected a prominent member of the cabal that ousted him. But the more plausible reason for some was that he was merely a placeholder, after the overthrow of President Shagari, a fellow Fulani.

    There is also the belief that the coup was timed to ensure that a southern president do not emerge after Shagari’s second four years in power. That theory gained traction on the premise that vice president, Ekwueme, whose ethnic tribe fought a civil war barely a decade to his emergence, would be in a pole position to succeed Shagari. After the coup that ousted Buhari, and the house arrest which ironically the political elites celebrated, the Daura-born general literally went into oblivion until Sani Abacha happened to Nigeria.   

    Read Also: How Buhari and I were admitted in same UK hospital before his death, by Abdulsalami

    Under the regime of Abacha, Buhari surfaced again, as the chairman of Petroleum Task Force (PTF), which was a de facto alternate federal government. Obviously, with IBB and Abacha seen as buccaneers and spendthrifts, Abacha needed a person of integrity, to prove to sceptics that the monies coming from the increase in fuel price will not be wasted. So, he poached forcefully, the retired Buhari. In military style, and devoid of bureaucracy, the PTF became a ministry and parastatals joined together. The agency engaged in massive infrastructure programme across the country, but again, Buhari was accused of concentrating the projects in the north.

    Emotionally, and perhaps financially rehabilitated, after his work as chairman of PTF, Buhari joined politics, and amassed a cult following. Through his speech and action, he was able to connect to the downtrodden, especially across northern Nigeria, like Aminu Kano, in old Kano State. He was seen as different from his fellow elites, regarded as leeches afflicting the resources of the country. They referred to him as mai gaskiya, the one who speaks the truth.

    But in the south, he was hampered by the adverse image of a sectional leader and religious extremist. Some of his past actions while in office, his statement inferring that the early stunt of Boko Haram was his people, and his stern religious piety, were considered evidence of his religious extremism. But luck smiled on him, when his political part crossed with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the current president. Tinubu’s men were able to cast Buhari in a new persona, as pictures of him wearing bow-tie surfaced, and his positive exploits as a general who could defeat Boko Haram were successfully promoted.

    Buhari, went ahead to win the 2015 general election and the next election in 2019 as a civilian president. While he made significant effort to tackle the Boko Haram menace, the insecurity in his northern region remained intractable. A new security challenge, posed by those regarded as bandits, metamorphosed across north west and north central, sending shivers down the spine of hereto safe states, of Zamfara, and Sokoto, the seat of the Caliphate.  Also, armed herdsmen gained heft, in attacks on farmers, especially in the middle and southern part of the country, under his watch.

    As civilian president, Buhari did a lot on infrastructure development, and amongst the most iconic, was the 2nd Niger Bridge, considering his infamous slip on 97/5 percent. Buhari, untinctured and unapologetically frank, had said those who gave him more votes would get more infrastructure than those who gave very insignificant votes. For this writer, the claim that he hated Igbos does not hold water, for on two unsuccessful presidential elections, he had Chuba Okadigbo and Edwin Umezoke, as vice presidential candidates.

    Sadly, the national economy again suffered recession under his watch. Perhaps he thought that because he had good intentions, the economy would obey his poor economic policies. Notably, he allowed his ministers to borrow unwieldly, to pursue his infrastructure programmes. The Central Bank, instead of remaining the government lender, became a direct lender to all manner of enterprises. With a dubious intent, Godwin Emefiele, his CBN governor, combined his duties with that of the ministry of finance, agriculture and whatever he fancied.

    Buhari’s sudden death has made many politicians, who were hoping to ride his back in the 2027 elections orphans. There are already questions, about who will inherit the famous 12 million votes in Buhari’s babariga. Undoubtedly, none of the pretenders to Buhari’s throne has shown his uncanny connection to the masses in the north. As we bid former President Buhari eternal rest, the political landscape of northern Nigeria, will never be the same again.

  • So long, PMB

    So long, PMB

    Muhammadu Buhari (17 December 1942 – 13 July 2025), one-time military junta head and twice elected president, often reminds me of a favourite saying of my late father.

    “Look,” he would say, “if the entire Lagos goes that way, but you feel the right way is the contrary direction, stick to your path.  Sooner or later,” he would insist, “they’d turn round and follow you.”

    That’s the long-and-short of the Buhari odyssey in a Nigeria of his power generation, brimming with fashionable rot — no thanks to long military rule and gangling graft.

    But PMB was as clean — squeaky clean; as his generation was rotten — irredeemably rotten. 

    So, when Nigeria ran into a storm, from the dirty high priests, who not only devoured the votary offerings but had also gobbled up the shrine in gargantuan greed, it was to PMB the nation beckoned.  Twice!

    But that first time, Ripples was hostile, though only an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan. As folks around Independence Hall bawled and frolicked: “Happy new year!” and responded with “Happy new government!”, the rippling response was a scowl. 

    It was 1 January 1984.  President Shehu Shagari, his ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and the 2nd Republic (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983) had set with the old year.

    “Do you even know,” came the query, “how these khaki boys would pan out?”

    Too soon, the junta started unravelling.  Its War Against Indiscipline (WAI) was to break at all cost, though in fairness many Nigerians almost, always act as sheer beasts in human flesh. 

    Still, the regime soon manifested its overweening military hubris: for which thinking government would cancel a Lateef Jakande-era Lagos Metroline, which envisioned a comfortable mass transit for a hustling and bustling metropolis?  For my young mind, such gruff, rude and rude tactics were a no-no.

    Yet, the scale of post-NPN government rot was benumbing — enough to let the then Major-Gen. Buhari to act as some Draco, the harsh lawgiver of ancient Greece, whipping into line the rotten Athenians of his day!

    Trouble was: beyond the gruff and strong arm tactics, those pretenders — except Gen. Buhari himself, and maybe the late Tunde Idiagbon, his deputy — were no better.

    Read Also: How Buhari and I were admitted in same UK hospital before his death, by Abdulsalami

    That was conclusively proven with his successors. The one, well-loved among his venal tribe, made free-wheeling sleaze the cornerstone of his junta policy.  The other died a certified thief. 

    Both disgraced the political military and exhausted their historic possibilities.  Good riddance!

    But among those terrible hustlers — patricians by uniforms and stripes; hungry plebs by base conduct, all propelled by an extreme poverty of the spirit — only GMB (turned PMB with his two-term presidency) was not only clean but manifestly so.

    That earned him a power encore in 2015.  Again, the PDP order, led by President Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999, had turned out hardly any different from the Shagari order of the 2nd Republic. 

    At that terrible juncture, however, poor President Goodluck Jonathan was the fall guy after years of progressive rot, when even booming oil wealth could not secure booming infrastructure, to shore up the economy. 

    It was SOS to GMB again: the presumed miracle worker.  When no miracle came, it was free-fall blame game.  The president must work the miracle.  Change can’t start with me and my permissive ways — Nigeria!

    Yet, some sort of “miracles” did happen.  Wale Adedayo @Mario9jaa X address, did reel off some of them: “Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Lagos-Ibadan Railway, Second Niger Bridge, Itakpe-Warri Railway, Lagos Deep Seaport, Zungeru/Kashimbila Power Plants, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina Dry Ports, Petroleum Industry Act, among others.”

    Miracles?  Yes, and mainly on the infrastructure front, the long-term propeller of the economy. 

    Compare and contrast: the Obasanjo-led PDP era — guzzling cash, dead infrastructure, in any case, in terms of roads and rail, the most visible.  PMB-led APC era: no cash, yet an infrastructure renaissance!

    Which leads to a related controversy: how can you bequeath a thumping infrastructure record, yet be accused of leaving a “dead economy”?  How?

    Well, maybe a failed — or even “disastrous” — monetary policy regime, for instance?  Fair call!  Still, can monetary policy alone decide the “life” or “death” of an economy, when not matched with fiscal policy — that in very simple terms warehouses public funding (tax mainly, plus sundry revenues), not excluding debt capital; and spends such on projects?

    That leads to another scarecrow: ballooning debt!  Well, in 2015, where was the economy: with the barn pawned along with the entire harvest, in a romp of free-wheeling graft? 

    Debt balancing is fair call.  But with no cash and the imperative to propel the economy, what are the hard choices outside debt capital?  It’s good that the Tinubu order has kept faith with that infrastructure renaissance.  Hardly any other way.

    Incidentally, one of these critical infrastructure — the 2nd Niger Bridge — sits in the back yard of Anambra Governor Chukwuma Soludo, the author and finisher of the “dead economy” theory.  That bridge is fitting answer to that amplified fib!

    PMB, in his challenging presidency, had to make hard choices.  But most rewarding, for his place in history, is his relay of redemptions. 

    The one that stopped the Lagos Metroline, in a fit of military hubris, was also the one that federalized rail, did the Lagos-Ibadan medium-gauge rail, aside supporting, to the hilt, the Lagos Blue and Red urban rail lines!

    But the redemption relay is even more glaring on the political front.  The junta head that pondered over 10 years of military power couldn’t wait to retire to his farm after eight years as elected president!

    And again, compare him to his former commander-in-chief and predecessor as two-term elected president.  The one plotted a third term that fell flat on his face.  The other vowed to stick — and did stick — to his two constitutional terms.

    The one barked and growled do-or-die to get a successor.  The other insisted on the sanctity of the ballot.

    The one harangued and harassed his PDP until it stumbled out of power.  The other, out of office, stayed off the fray, save occasional voicing of support for his successor.

    The one tried to impose May 29 as fake Democracy Day.  The other canonized June 12 as the real deal, rehabilitated  MKO’s memory and buried all annulment pretences.

    Ripples is proud to have faithfully captured PMB’s strides, as they rolled out, in the worst of economic seasons — as readers of this page would affirm.

    Mai Gaskiya, the Honest One!  You’ve earned your rest.  You had your faults too but have nothing else to prove. 

    Those who still cannot see are entitled to their democratic right to eternal blindness!

  • Old wines, ruptured wineskins

    Old wines, ruptured wineskins

    Only a clime given to celebrating form over substance can explain the perceptible overdose of excitement in some quarters over the transmutation of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) from being a political party worthy of its name into the vehicle of convenience for internally displaced politicians, especially those for whom the lure of power particularly the nation’s number one office has become a morbid obsession.

    Now that the migratory band have all but sealed their hostile takeover of the party against its governing rules and the established norms that governed its operations, Nigerians ought to be spared any further pretences about the niceties of rules and basic decency, let alone the grave charges ceaselessly thrown at the APC by the desperate band. 

    Thanks to this newspaper’s Monday July 7 edition, Nigerians are better informed of a major misstep that is very much in the character – call it the DNA – of the roving band, but which in the end is fated to doom the assembly. I refer to the July 3 purported crowning of Messrs David Mark, Rauf Aregbesola and Bolaji Abdullahi as the interim chairman, interim national secretary and interim publicity secretary respectively.

    Going by article 23, Clause 4 of the party’s constitution, that act alone would appear a grievous error. The section reads: “If a vacancy arises in any party office, the appropriate executive committee shall appoint a replacement from the same zone or constituency as the outgoing office holder.

    It says further: “This appointment is to remain in effect until a new election is conducted at the next congress or convention.”

    David Mark, the paper would note is from Northcentral while Nwosu is from the Southeast; and whereas Aregbesola is from the South, Sa’id Baba Abdullahi National Secretary is from the North.

    Read Also: We cannot defeat Tinubu in 2027 divided, says Edo PDP

    Talk of impunity writ large!

    In any case, there was no known national executive committee meeting where the interim national officers were elected. In fact, Nwosu, according to this newspaper only announced his resignation at the event in grave violation of the provision of Clause 3 of the same article mandating him to resign from office by submitting a 30-day written notice to the appropriate executive body.

    Ditto Mark – a two-time numero uno lawmaker of the republic: it was sufficient that he announced his exit from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – a party that gave him all he ever attained as an elected official – at the floor of the event.

    And we have not even touched upon the question of eligibility for their offices. Here again, this newspaper, citing a part of the same Article 23 says: “To be eligible to hold any party position, a member must be in the party for at least two years for national and zonal offices, and at least one year for state, local government and ward positions”.

    To all of these weighty issues, Nwosu, playing the emergency placeholder had a ready answer: “Why are people so scared of change? Why should the restructuring of a political party cause such panic?”

     Believing that by stepping down, he has done his party, nay the country, a world of good, he says: – “If a leader steps aside for the greater good, that is not a weakness but a show of maturity”.

    In other words: All are invited to the great feast; no rules are in place and none is there to be broken!

    Better still: Nigerians shouldn’t be seen to bother about the ethical fibre of the coalition; at least not this particular assembly birthed in iniquity and impunity as to put any pretence to legitimacy as anything between a farce and a fraud. Nigerians should just tolerate them because their good, in view, will more than atone for everything in the end! 

    Well, the Yoruba saying, which loosely translated means –from the black pot comes forth the creamy-white pap – may provide some consolation in the event of anyone ever daring to question their good intentions. How about the scriptural wisdom about “the little leaven that puts the whole lump to waste” and the evergreen saying that a tree is known by its fruits?

    So much for the coalition of the hungry and the angry, the promoters of Nigeria’s Hungry Incorporated; Nigerians surely know the individuals by name and by their antecedents. What else is left unknown about that serial political philanderer in perennial quest for a special purpose vehicle to realise his political dream? Or the individual who has been on government payroll since he stepped his infant feet in the soil of a military school as boy-soldier, spending decades in the army thereafter, capping his public service with the nation’s number three position for eight unbroken years, and only now in the evening of his life claiming to be seized of a new vision?

    Is it the one who spent eight years as speaker, another eight years as governor and still another eight years as minister of the republic claiming to have gone hungry barely two years after leaving government job? And still the other that served as commissioner for eight years under a benevolent leader from where he was thrust into the governor’s mansion and much later as a minister in the republic? Is it the most insufferable one, the arrogant, divisive and the supremely entitled former governor whose wounds from a botched ministerial outing seem unlikely to heal anytime soon?

    Now, all of them, without exception are asking Nigerians to judge them by their past – which, far from being unreasonable is the right thing to do. Of course, the records are all out there in the open: In the bungled privatisation exercise under which the nation still reels and which no one is yet to be called to account; in the botched mono-rail project and the crude alienation of power projects to friends and cronies that have gone into a faded memory, the learning tablets that would not avail the pupils for whom they were intended because the entire thing was badly thought out; the humongous loans allegedly diverted by those whose sense of unchallengeable power is unequalled. All of them linked one way or another to actors who have practically nothing new to offer beyond their obsession for office, those who sowed division among their people and whose sense of exceptionalism borders on lunacy; those whose costly experimentation and activist mind-set borders on the bizarre, and those who feel entitled apparently because they have nothing else to do.

    They have charged the Tinubu administration with sundry crimes ranging from the removal of fuel subsidy to collapsing the infrastructure of forex manipulation that has served the powerful elite for so long; of spiralling inflation and the cost of living crisis and, that over all, the government has done pretty little after two years in office – conveniently forgetting the quantum of mess the administration inherited. One thing remains though. Nigerians are still waiting to know what their ADC mutation would have done differently in practical terms! Only thereafter will Nigerians begin to take them seriously.

  • Boss Mustapha and the colour of Tinubu loyalists

    Boss Mustapha and the colour of Tinubu loyalists

    Boss Mustapha was appointed the Secretary to the Government of the Federation in Oct 2017; he was a card carrying member of Tinubu’s ACN. Unarguably, he utilized the ACN slot in the APC coalition. But Mustapha appears to be the first notable Tinubu supporter to question his principals Abeokuta 2022 declaration that he was the one responsible for bringing Buhari out of retirement after his three heroic failures of 2003, 2007 and 2011.

    Speaking during the public presentation of a book titled: According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesman’s Experience by Shehu Garba, Buhari’s former senior media assistant, he had argued that Tinubu did not make Buhari president. According to him, Buhari already had an established support base of 12 million votes, and the merger of legacy parties that formed the All Progressives Congress (APC) only added around three million more votes. For him President Buhari’s integrity, national stature and disciplined messaging were central to the breakthrough, not the insignificant three million votes from other merging parties.

    As expected, there have been various reactions to what many consider his attempt to rewrite recent history. First was the close associate and long-time ally of former President Muhammadu Buhari, Farouk Aliyu.  He disagreed with the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha’s claim regarding the role of President Bola Tinubu in Buhari’s 2015 election victory. Aliyu, as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today, last Thursday, dismissed Mustapha’s position as inaccurate, insisting that while Buhari’s 12 million votes were consistent, they had never been enough to secure a presidential victory until the 2015 alliance with Tinubu.

    Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Media and Public Affairs described Boss Mustapha’s comment as a “disservice to our recent history”. “General Buhari would not have won the APC primary election at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos, in 2014 without President Tinubu, who mobilised the APC governors of the Southwest and the delegates to move Buhari’s way.” This was a primary in which some of Buhari’s northwest candidates did not vote for him.

    For  Osita Okechukwu, the immediate past Director-General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), and a founding member of Buhari’s CPC: …” Tinubu’s contributions were pivotal, describing them as the “premium golden victory votes”( Truly, without Asiwaju’s premium supplementary votes, there would have been no two-thirds spread and no victory,” adding  “.….My friend, Boss Mustapha, should be excused because he wasn’t with us in 2003 when Buhari began his presidential journey. He was in the ACN and wasn’t privy to the realpolitik that defined the alliance

    For Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, “Tinubu ensured that Buhari clinched the APC presidential ticket by overcoming strong challengers like Atiku Abubakar and Rabiu Kwankwaso.” Onanuga stated: “But more critically, he gave Buhari what he had always lacked — geographical spread and additional votes from the Southwest.”

    Read Also: How Buhari and I were admitted in same UK hospital before his death, by Abdulsalami

    The above testimonies by insiders with deep knowledge of what transpired behind the scene should have ordinarily lain to rest Mustapha’s attempt at revisionism.

    But beyond this, I think we should try to interrogate Tinubu’s choice of Mustapha, a man with drifting loyalty as his eyes and ear in the presidency instead of any of other so-called trusted allies he had invested heavily on.

    The choice of Mustapha was also curious because we know Tinubu is not a one dimensional thinker like most of us who often based our decisions on logic without taking into consideration the character of man, who God himself claim was the worst of his creation? And in any case, it is not as if Mustapha had not demonstrated he is a man of drifting loyalty.

    A few years to the 2023 election, Lagos took the federal government to court over control of waterways. Mustapha, an ACN card-carrying member working for federal government was on hand to defend his paymaster. They advanced all forms of arguments  but, without finding a theory  to support continued federal usurpation of powers of constituent units which had gone close to 70% when the likes of misguided Obasanjo started their misadventure that has brought our nation to its kneel.

    Then Boss Mustapha reached for the killer argument: he told Nigerians on a national television that “Lagos cannot take control of her waterways because most of the rivers flowing to the Atlantic Ocean did not take their source from Lagos”. This was in line with some bizarre argument of northern ethnic irredentist that claim all the oil deposit in the Niger Delta belong to the north because it was from there they flowed to the coast.

    For Tinubu, such sycophancy did little to tilt the choice towards his so-called trusted allies.

    That Tinubu spent billions to wage Kayode Fayemi and Rauf Aregbesola’s electoral and judicial battles; that he helped Ibikunle Amosun, an ANPP man to take over APC structure in Ogun; that Yemi Osinbajo confirmed he was the one mandated by Asiwaju to recruit 50,000 fingerprint experts from Britain who worked for six months in Nigeria to ensure Fayemi’s stolen mandate in Ekiti was retrieved; same with Aregbesola’s stolen victory in Osun, Oshiomhole stolen mandate in Edo and Mimiko’s stolen mandate in Ondo. That all of them were retrieved remains part of the nation’s documented history

    As it turned out, it was not long after Tinubu had carried Buhari on his back across the country to secure his second term victory that forces, who also thought they could be president in 2023, led by Tinubu’s ‘faithful’ boys –  Fayemi, Amosun, Aregbesola, joined  Tinubu sworn political foes including  Owelle  Rochas Okorocha,  Rotimi Ameachi, Nasir El Rufai and others to illegally remove Oshiomhole as APC chairman. They then handed the APC structure to their friend, Mai Mala Buni. Between 2020 and 2022, they tried to cast the APC in their own image in order to serve their interest in 2023.

    With their principal effectively shut out and their control of APC, Fayemi and Amosun set up their individual presidential committees in the various state governors’ offices from where they frittered away billions of state funds mobilizing support for their ambition across the nation.

    The Buhari mafia,  they cheaply sold their principal, started to speak of ‘a consensus candidate’ on the eve of a primary election and while some hawkish members insisted that Tinubu, regarded as front runner should be punished for saying Buhari lost elections three times after which he wept.

    If Tinubu had found favour in anyone in the two years he was pushed out of the structure he jointly built with others, by his own people, it was from Boss Mustapha, the politician with drifting loyalty. It was only from SGF office activities of those scheming to run a joint ticket with Nasir El Rufai, those shopping for delegates with their state funds and those who believed they have sealed the fate of their principal could be monitored and probably relayed back to the game master himself.

    Tinubu’s choice of Boss Mustapha as his eyes at the presidency therefore appeared strategic. The game master who boasted he is always ahead of his political foes was waiting for them in Abuja on the APC convention night-a night of many knives. It was here they discovered too late that they had all been swindled or to use Dino Melaye words “owo ti wo mi”. Monies paid in respect of promised delegate went into the water!

    When those consumed by blind ambition discovered there was no way to match Tinubu’s projected lead of over 2000, they started to step down one after the other with their tails behind their back. But everyone saw through their chicanery.

    Perhaps Tinubu’s secret to success is that he never holds political hostages. Everyone is his friend. While he understands all men are fortune seekers and all politicians are men of many words, he also knows that “there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face”, as Shakespeare puts it in Macbeth.