The Nation Newspaper

Category: Saturday

  • Arrested development

    Arrested development

    Ade Ojeikere

     

    NIGERIAN players in Europe are bad students of history, especially those home-grown lads who grew into international prominence playing for the country’s youth teams. Having hit it big, they forget how they got to the top, making their growth in Europe appear to be stunted. In other climes, rookies’ growth are monitored such that they play through such countries’ age-grade teams until they hit stardom in the country’s flagship squad – the senior team. Not so here because our young boys think they are wiser to be led. They only remember home when they run into trouble.

    When other countries’ youth soccer teams win the ultimate prize, the world awaits the products of such teams to hit the top because their country’s football federations have their details which are jealously kept in the event of disputes. That is what FIFA’s laws provide for since they are tagged minors. But age-grade lads whose first international passports were bought by the soccer federation suddenly don’t think it is wise to route their exit to the European game through the federation’s path.

    Unfortunately, those expecting such players to rock Europe with their sublime skills watch in awe as they melt away like ice-cream left under the scorching sun. Why would young boys exported to Europe playing for Nigeria suddenly sneak out using the same documents to European countries on the ticket of shylock agents and scouts? In many instances, the agents or scouts exploit their naivety to unknowingly sign off their future. It underscores the extinction of most of the lads who won the FIFA U-17 World Cup diadem for Nigeria.

    Happily, NFF General Secretary, Dr. Mohammed Sanusi, has reacted to the tales of some sleazy practices by some persons who demand monies from parents of young players to put their wards in the camp of the U-17 Boys National Team, Golden Eaglets. Is anyone surprised? When you do things without setting standards, this is what you get. NFF needs to standardise all the youth soccer academies if we truly want to get players whose ages we can vouch for. The archaic method of throwing the camp open to pick young boys and girls to play for Nigeria is not only laughable but also encourages such sharp practices.

    According to Sanusi: “We have given strict instructions to the coaches of the U-17 National Team, to the effect that no parent or agent or player-manager, or anyone under any guise or pretext should pay any money to have their ward in the camp. Everything must be based on merit, from the invitation of players to camp to those who eventually make the team for any match or competition.

    “The NFF is monitoring the situation and will not hesitate to go as far as prosecuting any individual who engages in the exchange of money or other gratification to have players in camp, even a parent. This is a very serious warning and we are not joking.”

    “I have decided to centre this warning around the U-17 team because this is where the practice appears to be most rampant. However, it applies to all the National Teams. The U-20 National Team is also in the camp, and the coaches have been handed similar instructions.

    “Anyone found to be offering or collecting gratification to have a player in camp or make a team would face the full wrath of the law.”

    Good talk Sanusi. We need to increase the pool of good players at that level in Nigeria if we truly want to develop the game here. It is a shame that in the 21st Century, players could still saunter into the national camp with various excuses they can’t confront their clubs with. NFF needs to truly discover, nurture, and expose our young boys and girls. and it starts with monitoring them after being exposed to the world. This includes getting to participate in their contract signing arrangement by seeing what they are finally given to sign. This writer isn’t asking NFF chieftains to sell these boys. No. Just vet what they are about to sign to avoid slavish contracts. Of course, the NFF could urge the players to insert the clause which guarantees them easy exit from their clubs to play for their fatherland where there are fixture clashes. Other African nationals do so. Why not Nigeria?

    We have been through this disgusting path before. Did I hear you ask which path and when? Here is it – players being held back by their European clubs from honouring the country’s international matches. I dislike using the phrase – club versus country because such things hardly happen to players from organised football nations. Nigeria’s case is peculiar since our players find it difficult to toe the path of other established stars. For instance, I always marvel reading about the calibre of players under the fold of Jose Mourinho’s agent. With such an agent, players would always find clubs all through their careers going by the agent’s pedigree in the business.

    It smacks of failure of leadership when stories which suggest that European clubs are proposing to stop Nigerian internationals from playing specific matches because there is a fixture clash with their club’s games. One is puzzled over our players’ silence when it comes to signing contracts since such documents go a long way in deciding how they relate with the clubs thereafter. My pain rests with the fact that our players have failed to involve the NFF in their contract agreements before they are signed. They remember later in their contracts’ lifespan that they have a federation, only in their troubled times.

    Senegal’s Sadio Mane and Mohammed Salah of Liverpool easily leave the cub for their national team’s assignment because they have in their contracts clauses that make playing for their countries, one which the club cannot object to. In fact, Liverpool is already sulking over the proposal by Egypt to take Salah to the Olympics, knowing the effects of his absence on the team’s fortunes. It baffles this writer why our players don’t remember to insert this vital clause in their contracts before they are signed.

    Twenty four hours after other countries release their squad lists for matches, their high profile players are seen training with others. Such sessions with all the invitees help the countries to play very well and win games with goals, not nail-biting performances like we see with the Super Eagles. There is little a coach can do when his key players report late to the training camp, citing such mundane issues as travelling difficulties. It also raises the poser why only our players suffer such hitches. We have instances where our players, having been released by their clubs, choose to visit their families in Nigeria before heading to camp. This act of indiscipline affects the team’s quality of play which most fans ascribe to the manager’s poor technical savvy. How do you teach students who are always late to attend lectures?

    These latecomers for the country’s assignments are the first to report back to Europe knowing what awaits them if they offer such flimsy excuses as missed flights or delays in finding connecting flights to their bases. An invitee whose last club game was the preceding Saturday or Sunday should be in camp in the next 48 hours if he truly wants to behave as a professional. This idea of players sauntering into the camp when they like says a lot about the kind of manager we have. If the manager can’t stem the tide, then the federation must address the players on the need to be in camp early.

    It is bad enough the there isn’t enough time between their club matches and ours. But they should know that the national team platform is key to their careers since most European clubs have them on their payrolls because they are internationals.

    Some set of players can’t religiously report to the camp early, especially those who are regulars in their European clubs, yet latecomers report a day to matches and get selected for games. It portends an Animal Farm setting which isn’t good for team bonding just as it encourages indiscipline from the group.

    The only reason the manager can give for this kind of unwholesome setting is that he knows his first-team players. Such teams don’t win titles because in no time players’ spirit to compete for shirts would be dampened. Only competitive teams win titles or trophies.

    Beating Sierra Leone with our armada of foreign players doesn’t suggest growth. Rather, it translates to some form of arrested development, especially as we have won the FIFA U-17 World Cup several times. Countries measure the growth of their football by the number of home-grown stars who play for their senior sides. The only thing to cheer in the Super Eagles today is that Gernot Rohr has successfully spotted young and strong players whose ages we can vouch for unlike in the past the is crowded with players who submit sworn affidavits to authenticate their ages.

     

  • Disillusionment and realism in Southwest

    Disillusionment and realism in Southwest

    UnderTow 

    If the Yoruba thought self-determination would be a walk in the park, they had better think again. The controversy and struggle for Yoruba leadership surrounding the person of Professor Banji Akintoye in the Yoruba World Congress (YWC) has suddenly made the various national quests of the Yoruba very problematic. Though they are generally cautious about voicing their desire to be independent, sometimes waffling about regional autonomy within Nigeria, they have left the radical side of their independence story to fringe groups in the Southwest. They do not give the impression they would be averse to independence if it came to that, but they have been careful not to be too forward about their desire. But given the acerbic exchange between some of their leaders and groups in recent days over the control of some of their umbrella groups such as the YWC, they will be even more careful now about the subject of self-determination. The issue of unity of purpose, they have started to understand, is not as easy to practicalise as it is easy to theorise.

    The YWC was conceived between late 2018 and early 2019 but launched in August 2019 as an umbrella group of the Yoruba people all over the world. Prof Akintoye became interim leader. However, some 60 or 70 Yoruba groups came together last year in Ibadan, Oyo State, to elect the eminent professor as Yoruba leader in the mould of the late Abraham Adesanya. Since then, disagreements as to the YWC’s modus operandi and ideology have led to unease within the group. These disagreements culminated in an open falling out between the leaders, prompting Prof Akintoye to claim he had dissolved the group’s executive committee, and in turn causing the leaders of the YWC to also claim they had removed the eminent historian. At the bottom of the disagreements was probably the issue of style, with Prof Akintoye favouring an eclectic but radical and informal leadership instead of the more global, formal and restrained style embraced by the other leaders of the umbrella group. It had been thought that the continuing weakening of the other more well-known Yoruba group, the Afenifere, would lead the YWC to fill the gap, not replace its precursor, and help the Southwest to forge ahead in one form or the other in its quest for autonomy or even self-determination. This quest is now turning into a chimera.

    While the Sani Abacha military government gave the Yoruba reason to unite and fight, using the annulled 1993 presidential election won by MKO Abiola as a launchpad, and the Afenifere pan-Yoruba socio-cultural and political group helped to anchor and channel those campaigns through political participation in the early years of the Fourth Republic, it has since then been a difficult and exasperating task uniting them behind any common cause beyond the idealistic. But with the deterioration of the Nigerian ethos and the divisiveness promoted by the Buhari presidency, Yoruba self-determination suddenly became attractive once again. That attraction had simmered for years, perceptibly under the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, and rising to a crescendo under the Buhari presidency. Now, considering the difficulty in uniting the Southwest behind a common and existential goal, the attraction for self-determination will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

    Even when Afenifere held sway in the Southwest, the campaign for regional autonomy or self-determination was at best ambivalent. Split among Nigeria’s competing political parties, all of them propagating different ideologies and worldviews, the Yoruba were unable to transcend their partisan differences for a common cause. As a political and cultural force, Afenifere has ebbed, largely reduced in number and influence, and struggling to find a rallying cause and influence. It will take celestial intervention to return them to the politics and primacy of the past, probably when their race or ideology comes under relentless attack. Even then, it is increasingly doubtful whether they can find persons and leaders within the socio-cultural and political group who possess the temperament, selflessness and experience to rally the region. Though there is no discernible and urgent cause yet, the region still feels betrayed and shackled by a debilitating and limiting national consensus, and a culture of mediocrity.

    Prof Akintoye was thought to be that man who, despite the absence of an urgent regional cause, possessed the political morality and personal virtues to rally the region. But in the words of his fellow leaders in the YWC, the eminent professor, while possessing the integrity and requisite intellect needed by the Yoruba to advance their common interest, lacks the temperament and methodicalness to rally the region and promote its ennobling ideas and cause. As one of the YWC leaders put it, when Prof Akintoye was removed as protem leader of the group, “We removed him because we found out he will not lead us anywhere with his leadership style.” While the respected historian remains Yoruba leader in the eyes of the more than 60 groups who elected him into that position, it is unlikely that the entire region will rally behind him or the ideas he might advocate from time to time. Indeed, as one of the YWC leaders argued, the Yoruba are still the only group who insist on rallying behind the antiquated notion of a single leader for the region, rather than rallying behind a powerful existential cause.

    For a region so destructively regicidal, the current face-off in the YWC, the sometimes irrational interventions of many fiery Yoruba self-determination groups, and the difficulties experienced by Prof Akintoye in rallying the region around a cause and at a consensual speed, the idea of a patrician leader in the mould of Obafemi Awolowo, Adekunle Ajasin and Abraham Adesanya, may be a relic of the past. They may now find it increasingly tempting to crystallise, espouse and promote a common cause and ideology for the region. That unity of purpose seems, however, far off, for a people who gloat about possessing the most advanced civilisation in Nigeria. More realistically, not only are they limited in drawing the right lessons from the frenzied manoeuvres of other ethnic groups in the country, particularly the heterogeneous North, they are also more likely to promote internecine wars among themselves and, worse, place obstacles in the path of their best chances for national leadership. Their internal dissension, as their history shows copiously, often blinds them to the existential threats that confront them. Despite the challenges confronting a changing world, and in particular a country morphing dangerously into deathly competition for land, resources and even supremacy, the fairly homogenous Southwest is inured to the ethnic apocalypse looming over their region and ideology.

    A sense of disillusionment may be settling over the region, for the reality of a different and complex Nigeria may be vitiating their formulaic approach to leadership. As the struggle within the YWC is also showing, opinion moulders of the Southwest are unlikely to adapt as quickly as the threats facing their region require. They are paralysed by history and culture from responding to the more nimble challenges and sinister manoeuvres of the other regions, challenges exemplified by last month’s burning of Lagos which they colluded in or at best connived at. They derive more satisfaction in humiliating internal regional opposition, despite its general harmlessness, than confronting and neutralising external opposition, which in full flight can be relentless, brutal, unsparing and even genocidal. There is a sense in which the YWC understands this considerably nuanced threat, but they are unable to effectively communicate this problem Southwest-wide, while their private animosities stand in the way of the consensus building and placation needed to promote regional peace and stability as well as advance their common interests. And if they cannot even manage their differences at the micro level of YWC leadership, how can they hope to pursue self-determination in the absence of an irresistible and unbearable national provocation?

  • Legalities, Democracy and Anarchy

    Legalities, Democracy and Anarchy

    By Dayo Sobowale

    I delve today into the  history of the ancient Roman Empire  to illustrate the prevailing attitude in many democracies in the world today. Especially in the last few days on the issue of elections , political succession , protests  and the institutions in operation to facilitate that political actions and decisions conform to  rules and laws made  to control them . Attila the Hun   who   once invaded    a trembling Rome , the capital  of the Ancient Roman   Empire  ,  was     also  called ‘the Scourge of God ‘ by historians . Attila reportedly  boasted that  ‘ there , where  I have  passed , the grass will  not grow again. ‘ Attila’s war strategy  was total  destruction of enemy  territory in   a manner of no return  in terms  of future human habitation or  existence . The  equivalent of that is  another war terminology    called  ‘ the scotched earth policy ‘. The French  who later invented the guillotine to   behead  their rich and mighty   defined such  total   annihilation of the opponent or  enemy  as  – ‘après moi la  deluge ‘which  in English  means –‘  after me , destruction ‘

    Obviously  these are examples of war  situations and  should  be avoided in times  of peace . But  then surprisingly politics  nowadays is becoming a do or die situation  with a no holds     barred , might is right disposition that  seems to say  that  everybody  should  fight for himself to grab  what is available on the table to eat or squander and , may  the devil take the hindmost .To  illustrate  what some may  perceive as my exaggeration  is the  purpose of today’s discourse .

    Just  look at the state of American politics after the November 3 presidential  elections and the daggers or  guns drawn between the Republicans and Democrats gladiators on who  has won and who has lost and who should concede or take  power .  It  is a clear grim simulation of the definition of politics as – Who  gets what , when  and how . Again  look at the situation in Nigeria where  the CBN,  on a court order   has frozen  the accounts of promoters of the last Anti SARS protests while  the government has branded such  activists as  terrorists ,a   charge  the activists and protesters loudly  deny ,  although   the destruction of police stations nationwide   , the killing of policemen and   the  burning of public buildings and properties seem,   so eloquently and  vividly  like acts of arson  , vandalism  and of course terrorism . Indeed a   lawyer charged some  activists to court  for destruction of his  property  during the anti SARS demonstration and arson but another group of lawyers promised to take the name of the lawyer  to  the disciplinary committee of the  Nigerian  Bar  Association for disbarring  .These  then are  the knotty issues we shall  look at in today’s  narrative .

    We shall  look at the legalities of the American presidential politics in the light of the broken tradition of concession which President Trump  has so  personally  and powerfully demonstrated .We  shall  look at the responsibility of the Nigerian government  to maintain the rule of law and the legalities  of such actions  to prevent the nation from sliding to anarchy when the anti SARS  demonstration was violently   highjacked  by  hoodlums and  miscreants   who looted and destroyed police stations and public properties . We  shall also  see  or look for the legality of a lawyer suing the protesters for  destruction by protesters who were mostly  led or galvanised into action by  a body or collection of people who were  mostly  lawyers .

    On  the impasse in the US presidential election it is difficult  to  sit on the fence so I  will try  to present the position of  those for Joe Biden , the perceived or  projected winner , since the electoral  college has not met ,  and that of the incumbent  president who insists  he has been cheated and has since  gone to court . In  terms  of votes cast the Democrats insist that  every  vote  must  be counted . The Republicans  insist  that  only  legal votes  must  be counted and illegal  ones cannot  be  counted pointing out that votes are  meaningless  until examined and found to be valid . The  Republicans insist ominously  that the polling center has shifted in  this election  to the post  offices  where votes are being counted and their polling agents are being denied access and votes are  being counted for deceased and dead voters . So  in a way  the Democrats  have prevailed in the post  offices where posted votes favor them over personal and election day voting that favoured  Republicans . But  the courts are the arbiter in election litigations  and voting  audit  and the Supreme Court which is the highest court in the US,  is tilted towards the Republicans as Trump  indeed recommended three of the present judges for appointment  and  the Republicans have 6 such pro Republican judges on the bench to the Democrats three . So  the die is cast and the arena is the US Supreme Court and it is there that we shall  see which will  prevail between the endless counting  of the post  offices or  the fine points of   law    on   participant    observation and   legal  or illegal  ballots . Surely ,  as    the    tumultuous       crowd   historically   hailed  in the arena  , as    the gladiators of ancient Rome   fought  to the death ,  – ‘ let the games  begin ‘

    We    now  focus  on the anti SARS  protests and  the characterization of the promoters as terrorists . Really  I think  this is a serious  mischaracterization  as the government approved of the demonstrations very quickly and banned SARS but  the demonstrations  persisted which  can  be attributed to youthful exuberance . Surely  it is within governments right to ban terrorists accounts as is done in the EU or US  with ISIS, Al Quada , Boko  Haram   but  these promoters are not of such caliber and government should temper  justice with mercy . Indeed the anti SARS organisers should issue a statement condemning the arson and looting by those hooligans who brazenly hijacked the protests to  give it a bad name . But  definitely  anti SARS demonstrators   were  public spirited and  just  wanted a more equitable  and just  society and government  should  indeed    let   bygones   be bygones ,  unless  there is an obvious   illegality  in the  use  of funds   against  the  public  interest  and security .

    Now  we  look  at the threat  to take   to  the   Bar  Disciplinary   Committee a lawyer suing  the anti SARS protesters for  damage  to  his property arising from the carnage of the anti SARS protests . I  think  the lawyer is within his rights and should not be threatened with  disbarment  as a practicing   lawyer . This  lawyer’s  motive  is similar to that of government in the mischaracterization of anti SARS protests  promoters as terrorists but  his own grouse is personal and he should  not be silenced . Indeed  those who  live in glass houses should not throw stones on this matter and the lawyer should be allowed to have his day in court without any threat  of disbarment  from practicing his profession . What  is good for the goose is good for the gander . Once  again From the fury  of this raging pandemic  Good Lord Deliver Nigeria .

  • Is Messi a brat?

    Is Messi a brat?

    By Ade Ojeikere

    SO much has been revealed about Lionel Messi’s prowess on-and-off the ball since his romance with the beautiful game began years ago. Indeed, his mercurial displays during matches have left the world gaping how such a lad defies his physical deficiencies to light up venues where he has been a beauty to watch. Messi has been a talking point in most records in the game. He is either breaking existing records or setting new ones, depending on the opposition. But it is his rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo that has taken the statistics of the game to its zenith.

    Messi is the current highest earner at the club, with the Argentine superstar pocketing around £500,000 per week (£26m per year). Next is Antoine Griezmann on £294,000 per week (£15.3m per year). Indeed, the world stood still following the trends of what would have been the biggest transfer in the summer, had Messi succeeded in changing clubs to Manchester City. Messi’s exit would have commenced the gradual movement of big stars to other leagues.

    This star trek would have moulded the minds of players choosing any of the big clubs in Spain. Real Madrid and Barca have in the last decades produced some of the most exciting football players to watch. Both clubs go the extra mile to beef up their squads, most times anticipatory of the clashes between both sides each season. The world stands still whenever the teams are pitched against the other, irrespective of where the matches are played in Spain. But former FC Barcelona boss Quique Setien introduced a new twist in the tail of Messi’s enviable career by suggesting that the immensely talented player is a brat. Messi a brat, not an unapologetic match winner?

    According to Mundo Deportivo, Messi questioned the tactics of Setien following  disappointing results, urging the coach to have respect for the players who have won more than him. ‘’If you don’t like what I said, you know where the door is,’’ Setien responded, to which Messi reportedly laughed. Setien was sacked after their humiliating 8-2 Champions League defeat against Bayern Munich last season.

    In an interview with El Pais, Setien also said that managing the enormous talent of Messi was tricky – comparing his star power to that of Michael Jordan in the Netflix documentary, The Last Dance.

    “I think Messi is the best of all time,” Setien said. “There have been other players who have been great but the continuity that this boy has had throughout the years has not been had by anyone. “Leo is difficult to manage. Who am I to change him? If they have accepted him as he is for years and has not changed him.’’

    Really? Is this not another aspect of Messi’s career that has been hidden for so long? In the past, big players recruited into FC Barcelona have had tough times dealing with Messi’s stranglehold on the team’s tactics, which eventually affects their integration into the team. In no time, such celebrated recruits in other clubs end up being sold and tagged failures. The talk of Messi participating in FC Barcelona’s recruitment is cheap. It is global practice for clubs with stars of Messi’s stature. Such big players’ views are required since they serve as coaches for the teams on the field and know good players when they see one. It is no use splashing cash on players who would end up sitting on the bench. Messi’s pivotal role in

    Barca’s matches makes him the biggest stakeholder in the squad. Take out Messi’s goals and see why his words should be the rule. Whenever Messi isn’t fit, Barca cannot play. Messi playing for Barca comes with a fear factor to the oppositions they face. Messi is the team’s poster boy. He deserves respect from the team’s coaches.

    Messi simply continued the dynasty of exceptionally talented ex-Barcelona stars who created the platform which he enjoys today. FC Barcelona is a factory for producing great players from their nursery. FC Barcelona is an institution. Messi has an ally in the team’s new helmsman Koeman, a Barca legend who doesn’t have any problems with his captain, pointing out that: ‘’I respect all opinions. For me Leo is the best player in the world, I am seeing his ambition and winning character.

    ‘’I have no difficulties to lead [him]. He is the captain and I talk to him every week. I see things differently from Setien and I do not agree [with his opinion],’’ Koeman said ahead of Wednesday night’s Champions League clash with Dynamo Kiev.

    “His discontent with the club was clear, but in the end, it worked out, and from the moment he said [he will stay] he’s done everything expected of him,” Koeman told Dutch channel NOS recently.

    Messi has done so much for Barca and vice versa. He needs to be encouraged to give his best always irrespective of the fact that his game has slowed down due to age. Anyone expecting a repeat of Messi’s brilliance in his heydays is asking for too much. If Messi feels strongly that he needs to exit from Barca at the expiration of his contract, it is wise for the team’s management to accord the legend the best ceremonial exit that would be envied by all teams.

    Messi was a commercial success for Barcelona. His presence in the squad in the last decade has attracted several big stars, who ordinarily would have looked elsewhere had Messi not being in FC Barcelona. Is Messi truly the problem with FC Barcelona? Put differently, can FC Barcelona’s problems be entirely Messi’s fault?

    ‘’The club is the way it is right now,’’ Pique said in his post-match interview. ‘’There’s a process of change that was necessary. We have needed to turn things around.

    ‘’There was an obvious trend of things getting worse every year. We don’t have a lot of time, but we need things to improve. You can’t have a transitional year at Barcelona. There will be a new board and with that, there will be a lot of changes in the coming months.’’

    Looking at the LaLiga table underscores the fact that part of the problems at FC Barcelona has been addressed with the club’s improved second position in the domestic league. the team is back on track in its group games for the UEFA Champions League.

    Messi can function anywhere on the pitch. All that he desires playing for Barca is a squad of immensely talented players whose performance could take the pressure off him since he is  the marked man during matches. Messi is a serial and has been left in what looks like a trance

    whenever Barca loses a game, especially the scandalous score-lines.

    “We have to be united and assume the best is yet to come,” Messi said hopefully. Well said

    Messi, although many have argued that he has one year, one shot at the crown. Hmmm!

    Interestingly, a few others have asked the question; could this be Messi’s Last Dance?

  • Bayelsa APC, twice bitten, still not shy

    Bayelsa APC, twice bitten, still not shy

    Sentry

    It is no longer news that the Federal High Court sitting in Yenagoa has disqualified the candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC) in Bayelsa West Senatorial District, Peremobowei Ebebi, from contesting the forthcoming by-election in the state.

    What is intriguing is rather than unite and find how the party will not end up without a candidate in the all-important election, chieftains of the troubled state chapter are busy trading blame.

    Sentry gathered that following the judgement, which threatens to bar APC from participating in the poll, the camp of Ebebi has been at war with other prominent groups within the party over what they called unending attempts to stop the former deputy governor from clinching the vacant senate seat.

    According to reliable party sources, supporters of Ebebi have been accusing a former governorship aspirant of sponsoring the court case that led to the judgement. Consequently, the two camps have resumed their brickbats while the chances of the party featuring in the election, hang in the balance.

    The court had ruled that the academic credentials and voter’s card which Ebebi submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the by-election were forged documents.

    The governorship candidate of APC during November 16, 2019 governorship election in Bayelsa suffered the same fate when Supreme Court voided his election due to the discrepancies in his running mate’s academic credentials barely a day to his swearing-in February. Ebebi won the direct primary election conducted in September by the party. Unless the APC finds a way of turning the current situation in Bayelsa West around, it will be twice bitten, not shy for the party in the state.

  • Ekiti: Fayemi’s battle with ghosts gets fiercer

    Ekiti: Fayemi’s battle with ghosts gets fiercer

    Sentry

    If you run into Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, don’t be surprised if he is not smiling. This is because currently, he is in a fierce battle to save the state’s purse from pilfering ghosts.

    Yes, ghosts. Only that they are actually human beings working in various local government secretariats across the state. Last Wednesday the state government announced it lost N230m annually to ghost workers.

    It also said not less than 362 absentees (workers) were discovered on the payroll of the local government service after thorough screening and verification.

    Consequently, the governor wasted no time in moving against the ghosts and their collaborators. According to him, the money recovered would be used to attend to other government obligations to workers.

    But findings by Sentry revealed that the governor and the Commissioner for Local Government Affairs, Prof. Adio Folayan, are now under immense pressure to leave the ghosts and their promoters alone in the name of party politics.

    Reliable sources hinted that some prominent chieftains of the governor’s party may have some knowledge of how the ghost workers came to be, given their interest in seeing that Fayemi allows the harmful practice to continue.

    Sentry learnt the governor is determined to end the practice in spite of efforts to make him do otherwise.

  • Democracy, politics and pandemic

    Democracy, politics and pandemic

    Dayo Sobowale

     

    The  American presidential elections of November 3 2020 has magnetized  the attention of the world in the last
    few days  and the suspense  of the close and  unexpected results in  a pandemic that ironically saw one of the greatest voter turn out in US election history makes, the entire political episode look like a thriller film  or an unbelievable fairy tale. The specter of a loss for Donald Trump was always there given,  the advent of the pandemic  which squandered or evaporated his achievements on the economy on the eve of the election. It  was the belief of the Democrats that  they only needed patience till  the election to shoo out a president weakened by the pandemic and their strategy of building political capital and support from his  perceived and much  vilified,  reckless handling of it. But  the result was close, so close that a top CNN anti Trump  commentator  lamented that it hurts that it was that close, because they were expecting a repudiation of the American  president and a moral  victory  which he said was different  from a political  one quite at hand as at the end of the   tightly competitive  and  close  election results. The results showed  clearly  that the US president,  win or lose, had enormous support nation wide and his opponents vastly underrated his popularity and political  prowess even though both in the US  and the world at large, the world  must now willy nilly contemplate a world without Donald Trump as the US president. It is that world, post November 3 2020  and before the swearing in of the winner of the US presidential election of January 2021  that  is  our  task at hand today.

    We  shall  look at a world without Donald Trump in regional  geopolitical terms and  with the spectacles of comparative politics.  We  shall examine  some  global institutions and agreements that Donald Trump  has rocked to their foundation since he took office in 2016. We  shall  also  look at Nigeria  in this era of the pandemic  to see whether we should celebrate or breathe a sigh of relief at  the exit  of America’s 45th president.

    If  we start with the most  powerful nations of the world, it is not difficult to know  how  they will feel in a Trump-less world. Russia will be unhappy  because its President Vladmir Putin had rapport with Trump who  thought Russia  should not be an American enemy  forever and should be brought in from the cold. Indeed Trump’s predecessor Barak Obama  never got on well with Putin and  the election  of his Vice President, Joe  Biden will  be viewed with suspicion at the Kremlin. China will breathe a sigh of relief over trade tariffs, copy   right  violations  challenges, and the US aggressive politics and diplomacy  to keep China at  bay both in the Pacific and in military  terms and checks globally. The  EU will  easily  celebrate because under Trump the US  was  uncharacteristically  critical  of EU nations not paying their national  financial   dues to the common purse and Trump  made a meal of that to the embarrassment of rich nations like Germany and France. Indeed Trump is in  a different posture on the handling of the pandemic from the EU nations who are entering a second phase of lock down whereas Trump insisted   all   along  that life must  go on in spite of the pandemic and   the huge voter turn out  seem to bear out the fact that  people bought his argument  even though  not all of them voted for   him.

    In   the Middle  East there will  be celebration galore  in the Palestinian territories and in the PLO  while  Israel’s  PM Benjamin Netanyahu  will  mourn  the loss of a friend in Donald  Trump,  while he is preparing to face corruption  charges even as a sitting PM in Israel, which  is quite unusual. Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan  will  be unhappy because he too got  on well with the American president just   as Turkey  took issues with the EU and  was buying planes and missiles  from Russia  that the EU  regarded as an implacable enemy while  Turkey  was also seeking EU membership. In  Iran  I  am  sure that the Ayatollahs  will hold a  special prayer of thanksgiving on Trump’s  electoral  loss  mostly  because of sanctions and the scuttled agreement of the Obama era that Trump called a most stupid  agreement on nuclear development in Iran.

    Champions  of Climate Change and care of the environment  will  certainly breathe  a sigh of relief on the contempt with which Trump  treated science and scientists on the topic  and  will be praying  that the US  returns quickly  to the global agreement on climate   change that Trump  scuttled  and which took  effect while the US presidential  ballots were being counted. The World Trade Organisation too will  be relieved and Nigeria’s candidate for the Director General position, Okonjo Iweala will  be more hopeful under a Biden Administration than the Trump  one that threw spanner  in the works on her nomination by majority  members of the WTO.

    Whether Trump gets elected  or  not  after his legal battles and the endless vote  counting favoring his opponents, it  is necessary  to appraise his tenure  so far. He  certainly  improved  the American economy until the pandemic struck and he panicked and refused to lock  down the economy on account of this and when he did, he did not favor a long lock down. He was certainly trying not to create too  much fear on the pandemic which almost  took his life but for his bravery  in taking all or any medicine thrown  to him by his doctors   and he survived to mount a blitzkrieg of a late hour presidential campaign  that yielded  massive political  dividend that even his critics  admired, albeit  belatedly and very grudgingly. Undoubtedly  the anti Trump  media showed such hostility and hatred never seen before to this American  president but  the fact that he almost  won in spite of this should make such media bow their head in shame. If  Trump  has lost because of such hatred the result has shown that his supporters are as many as those against  him. That   then  is the post election security danger that America faces in terms of high  prospects of post election violence which seems inevitable  given the grim situation that for the first  time in US Politics,  no candidate in this election has a clear mandate to claim the presidency on account of this last November 3 presidential election.

    For  us in Nigeria we really  do  not know whether to laugh or cry over a Donald Trump defeat. For one he has much respect  for  our president and has received  him at the White House once or twice. But  in terms of  feminism, gay rights and homophobia Trump is more pro Nigeria than Joe Biden who is a Catholic but supports gay rights. A Joe Biden Administration like an Obama one before him and in which he was VP,  would  put pressure on Nigeria to relinquish its  14 year punishment on homosexuality and that will provoke a backlash from Nigerians who whether Christian or Muslim  accept  culturally   and  religiously agree  and acknowledge that  marriage is between a man and a woman. It was the  Obama Administration that legalized gay rights and Biden will follow  suit, inevitably in spite of his claimed Catholicism.  A  Biden Administration will  put pressure on Nigeria in respecting  human  rights and right of protests but will not  bother about the aftermath in terms of loss and destruction of  public property and the violence of hijacked protests as  many US  Democratic Party leaders,  both past and present,  did during the last Anti SARS  protests  that rocked Nigeria recently  with the burning and killing of protesters and policemen alike. Once again, From  the fury of this pandemic, Good Lord Deliver Nigeria.

  • Facts and fantasies of the ‘Lekki massacre’

    Facts and fantasies of the ‘Lekki massacre’

    Segun Ayobolu

     

    Massacre. This is a weighty word that surely ought not to be used lightly or frivolously. When I checked, synonyms for the word, massacre, include bloodbath, butchery, carnage, death, holocaust, or slaughter. It refers to a large scale, coldblooded murder of human beings. One dictionary defines massacre as ‘an act of complete destruction’. Did such an event involving deaths on an industrial scale occur at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos on the night of Tuesday, October 20? Repeated reports in the local and international media indicate that this was the case. What are the facts of the matter? The Lekki Toll Gate was one of the two major sites in Lagos of the massive #endSARS youth protests which had gripped the national and global imagination for two weeks till the night of October 20.

    Exceedingly well organized, focused and disciplined, the protesters had conducted themselves with remarkable decorum, decency and dignity in pursuit of their demand that the dreaded police Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) should be disbanded and fundamental police reforms instituted. Within days, an ordinarily obdurate Federal Government had acceded to their requests. SARS was disbanded and the other demands of the protesters accepted in principle.

    But then, the protesters introduced new demands. They were defiant and remained on the streets even though as peaceful and restrained as ever. The longer the protests lasted however, the more extraneous forces intervened and systematically hijacked the protests on a steadily expanding scale across the country. By October 20th, law and order had broken down in large swathes of Lagos. So bad did things get that Police stations were torched, policemen killed and police armories looted with criminals carting away arms and ammunition. Obviously alarmed, the state government declared a curfew. With the police under attack, it apparently had no choice but to request the help of the military in enforcing the curfew.

    The curfew was imposed to stem the descent to anarchy, which certainly was not the aim of the protests. Why, then, didn’t the protesters, in line with their law abiding stance, disperse in obedience to the curfew? Had they not at that point crossed the dividing line between legality and illegality? I think so. Even then, was the frenetic shooting by the soldiers to forcibly dislodge the protesters justifiable? The answer is an emphatic no. Were water cannons, tear gas canisters or, at worst, rubber bullets not available even if the protesters were to be forcibly dislodged?

    Condemnable as the shooting incident was, did it result in the mass murder of a large number of the Lekki protesters as the dominant narrative claims? A national newspaper claimed in its lead story that 49 persons were killed. Amnesty International reports, magisterially, that 12 persons died in the Lekki incident. The visuals that went viral, which I watched, showed men in the uniform of the Nigerian Army shooting into the air to disperse the protesters. Purported eyewitnesses offer dramatic accounts of soldiers shooting directly at the protesters reportedly with heavy casualties. I asked someone if undeniable large number of corpses would not be seen at the scene if a band of soldiers trained AK 47 machine guns directly on a large number of protesters and shooting them point blank at close range? He claimed that the soldiers evacuated the dead bodies away from the scene. In this social media age, would the same sophisticated mobile equipment that vividly captured the soldiers shooting, despite the lights being allegedly switched off, not also have recorded them evacuating dead bodies?

    The Lagos State governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who visited the injured in various hospitals as well as visited mortuaries in Lagos that night, stated in his broadcast the number of persons who were injured and treated at various hospitals which he named, saying that two were successfully operated on while two died subsequently. Many continue to dispute his account preferring alternative narratives utterly lacking in credibility. Happily, even as social media technology has grown in leaps and bounds enabling the medium to more effectively check impunity on the part of public and private authorities, there has also been tremendous advancement in the techniques and facilities for validating the authenticity of material emanating from the social media. PRNigeria, one outfit that has been doing a great job in this regard in Nigeria, has been exhaustively and clinically interrogating diverse claims on the purported Lekki Massacre. Its findings have been revealing.

    PRNigeria’s Editorial Team, according to the media outfit’s Assistant Editor, Mahmood Abdulsalam, found that “So far, most of the footages we have collected, over 100 in all, showing dead protesters and several others wounded, when we subject them to our reverse imagery testing tools, indicated they were not recent while others are manipulated images and doctored videos. We also observe circulation of old pictures of victims injured and killed during violent skirmishes, unrelated to the #endSARS demonstrations across the country”.

    For instance, PRNigeria found out that a Nollywood movie star, Eniola Badmus, who was allegedly shot in the stomach and died at the Lekki Toll Gate, had denied the social media reports. She wrote on her Instagram page that “Against all speculations about me being shot dead at the unspeakable event that happened at the toll gate a few hours ago, I would like to inform you guys that I Eniola Badmus is hale and hearty. I couldn’t make it there today to lend my voice on the #endSARS movement”. In another case, a young man, Iraoye Godwin, a native of Otu-Auchi in Edo state who was reported to have been killed also at the Lekki Toll Gate posted a video on twitter denying the report. Again, a photo of a man carrying a dead lady wrapped in Nigerian flag as posted by Yemi Alade was an image from a movie acted with the theme, “Heal our land, OH LORD”.

    According to the PRNigeria report, “There was also a video of one Lucia Adu who was celebrated as a martyr at Lekki Massacre after dancing in the clip. Some of the social media posts celebrating her ‘Martyrdom’ read: “She was dancing an hour before she was murdered by the Nigerian armed forces…a bullet hit her in the face and ripped half her face off”. Latest investigation shows that Lucia Adu died from an accident with a stationary truck on 20th October, 2020. This is also confirmed by a new fact checking twitter handle on #endSARS – http:/twitter.com/end SARSFctcheck”.

    The Executive Director of PRNigeria, Mr. Yushua A. Shuaib, a humanitarian worker and crisis management communicator who has worked extensively with the media, the security and response agencies over the last decade, reached out to media executives in various traditional and online mediums, whom he specifically named, to help in facilitating the gathering of evidence on the alleged massacre. In his words, “In fairness to the media and civil society groups, they all spoke about relying on eyewitness accounts mostly from celebrities and social media influencers without subjecting the information received to rigorous verification. There was also the admission that there was no authenticated footage of the said “massacre” at Lekki Toll Gate so far”.

    Continuing, Shuaib writes, “In the aftermath of this confusion, the largest social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, have continued to flag several contents containing the alleged images of the Lekki Massacre as false information, after these were subjected to scrutiny by independent fact checkers”.

    It was interesting watching Osai Ojigho, Country Director of Amnesty International in Nigeria, when she appeared on The Arise Interview television programme to speak about the organization’s claim that at least 12 people were killed at the Lekki Toll Plaza. As she rambled on extensively, the anchor of the programme, Charles Aniagolu, interjected saying “I think the point here Osai is that you’ve made some very good points there about the expectations of the people from the army and the government but people also want to be absolutely 100% sure about the evidence Amnesty International is putting forward with regard to these killings. Have you actually seen evidence of dead bodies? Can we understand how Amnesty International came to the conclusion that 12 people were shot?”

    Again, Osai Ojigho spoke at length on authenticated accounts of eyewitnesses, the claim that the soldiers reportedly prevented ambulances from accessing the site and also the fact that the Nigerian army had a record of such killings previously such as the shooting of hundreds of Shiite Muslims in Kaduna in 2015. Again, Charles Aniagolu was probing and insistent. He said. “Osai, I am sorry that I have to interrupt you but you are a lawyer and a lot of what you’ve said in the last few minutes sounds like circumstantial evidence but there’s got to be prima facie evidence when allegations are made against the Nigerian army and police. A lot of people will agree anecdotally with what you’re saying but they’ll still want to see concrete evidence either of dead bodies or families of dead ones coming out to claim their loved ones have been killed or the names of people who have been killed”.

    Osai responded that Amnesty International indeed has some names but will need the consent of their families to release such names! Can you imagine such utter nonsense, mischief and lack of seriousness?  In the words of PRNigeria’s Yushau Shuab, “Equally disturbing was the fact that despite the increasingly widespread usage of the word massacre to describe the Lekki incident, no single family had stepped forward (even till date) to report the loss of a relative during the Lekki shooting”. So much for facts, fantasies and the Lekki Massacre.

     

     

     

     

  • Guardiola, Arteta et al

    Guardiola, Arteta et al

    Ade Ojeikere

     

    The Barclays English Premier League has been characterised with shocking results, drama, and massive complaints about the effectiveness of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) equipment, which many thought would resolve all the contentious decisions which the human eyes couldn’t capture due to the speed of the ball. But VAR’s recent decisions could quicken the exit of some prominent coaches, if not properly addressed. This writer has been head wondering if the Manchester City in 13th has as its manager Pep Guardiola. No wonder Pochettino’s name is being bandied as likely replacement for the 2021 season. Many would argue that five weeks is too early to raise the alarm. But, this is how such movements start.

    No doubt, this is Guardiola’s team’s worst placing at the beginning of any league competition after five matches. Guardiola’s teams are top performers placing between the second and fourth, making Citizens’ current 13th placing unacceptable. Guardiola’s coaching career has been marked with successes, winning the league diadems in Spain, Germany, and England. In fact, Guardiola’s movement to Manchester City was informed by the team’s management’s decision to get a manager who could guide the Citizens to win its first UEFA Champions League trophy. Guardiola wasn’t recruited to lift the Barclays English Premier League trophy nor was he paid so handsomely to cart home the Carabao Cup or English FA Cup because some other coaches had done so.

    Guardiola  came to the blue side of Manchester with an intimidating coaching profile which gave him the edge over other coaches, having won the Champions League with FC Barcelona.  Manchester City has won its first two matches in the UEFA Champions League, first against Porto at home beating the Portuguese side 2-0 and then on Tuesday drubbing Marseille FC in France 3-0. Victories against Porto and Marseille by Manchester City should be a piece of cake, given the quality of stars in both teams.

    Truth be told that Manchester City isn’t as formidable as it used to be . since skipper Vincent  Kompany left the Citizens, he hasn’t been replaced with a defender with his towering qualities. and it showed in the way the club conceded goals last season. Guardiola has also missed Kompany’s leadership qualities on and off the pitch. Many won’t forget Kompany’s long-range belter against Leicester which ensured that Citizens clinched the English Premier League diadem in the 2018/2019 season. Indeed, teams have found a way around Manchester City’s style of playing from the back with the goalkeeper throwing the ball to the nearest man who is free. What these teams have done is to sit back to collect the ball and launch a counter attack which Guardiola’s side have found difficult to handle.

    Manchester City used to be a delight to watch especially their midfield anchored on Leroy Sane’s and David Silva’s sublime skills and visionary passes to release strikers Gabriel Jesus and Kun Aguero to score goals with aplomb. With the quartet missing, Citizens have lost its fear factor among teams they have faced since the season began.  many are pinching to find out why Guardiola didn’t invade the summer transfer market for capable replacements.

    Guardiola knows good players. Manchester City’s owners know how to spend big money on players who they think can improve on the team’s current position. Are the criticisms being waved aside by Guardiola and the team’s owners? Certainly not.

    “We have to accept the criticism. We play every three days, when you win it’s good. But, if you don’t, people want to destroy everything. But it’s about the chairman and everyone else understanding (the situation),” said Guardiola.

    “Part of the criticism was right, but you’ve got to accept it. It’s part of our job. It’s about where we’ve come from in the last month, with lack of preparation, injuries, and COVID-19. But the Champions League is in a good place now. I’m sure we’re going to find that consistency.”

    Indeed, Guardiola sees light at the end of the tunnel given the way his team played against Marseille in France on Wednesday stressing that: “We played really well, we didn’t concede much and we were in control, patient and aggressive without the ball. I’m so satisfied with the performance and result, it’s always difficult to win away.”

    “We can play on both sides, we tried to play high and wide to stretch the pitch. Raheem Sterling was exceptional, Phil (Foden) as well. We didn’t expect them to play five at the back until we saw the team. FC Porto was the same. As much as we play against five at the back we started to take control and rhythm. We were so stable defensively. I’m so satisfied with the way we played, “ Guardiola said.

    Well said, Guardiola. Coaches are as good as their last games, dear Guardiola. Winning the Champions League with Manchester City improves on your Curriculum Vitae (CV). It also improves your bargaining power if you decide to leave. Of course, any European club gunning for Guardiola after lifting the Champions League must break the bank, knowing that the Citizens won’t sit and watch the exit of a cup winning manager, except he insists he must leave for greener pastures as they always say.

    Guardiola’s former assistant at Manchester City Arteta improved on Arsenal’s profile after he replaced Emery, winning the 2019/2020 English FA Cup, beating Chelsea 2-1. Arteta led the Gunners to beat former European champions on penalties to lift the Community Shield.

    Arteta showed he learned enough from his former boss, winning the support of Gunners’ fans worldwide. But Arteta wants to burn his candles on both ends with his unsparing decisions which could haunt him. He should please listen to the voices of competent coaches and managers on the need to forgive Ozil and return him to the fold, possibly in January.

    Arteta’s highhandedness towards established stars could ruin the Gunners, whose fans may opt to fly the white flag for his exit. They did it to Arsenal Wenger. The call for Arteta’s sack looks imminent, especially after Arsenal’s home loss to Leicester on Sunday night. it was the first time the Foxes would beat Arsenal at home in 47 years. The cry among most Gunners fans is the need for Arteta to explain the exclusion of Ozil from the squad, considering how the team has played this season. They reckon that Ozil would have given this squad the width and drive in the midfield with his defence-splitting passes to free the strikers to score goals with aplomb, as they did in the Wenger era.

    Already, Arteta has admitted his mistake in not registering William Saliba for the Europa League competition. Arteta registered 25 players leaving out Saliba, a grave error now that Arsenal are short of personnel due to injuries to key players such as David Luiz, Rob Holding, Calum Chambers and Pablo Mari.

    ‘’I feel really bad for William Saliba,’ Arteta said. ‘’Because we had so many central defenders, we decided to leave him out of the squad which was really hurtful for me to do.

    ‘’I was hoping that Pablo would be back in two weeks but he had a setback and then we don’t have Pablo and we don’t have William when he’s fit and available to play. But when you make those decisions, you can’t always think about every possible outcome.’’

    Lesson learned Arteta. You may also listen to Willian’s complaints about some of your tactics and changes during matches which have left him frustrated, using the player’s exact words. Willian distinguished himself at Chelsea, with the Brazilian replicating his club form with the Samba Boyz.

    Willian’s move to Arsenal was heralded with pundits looking forward to Brazilian’s contributions to the team. Willian’s complaint about Arteta’s rigid style explains the team’s win today, lose tomorrow’s graph.

    ‘’It’s been a cool, new experience. I hadn’t worked with a coach with that mindset,’’ Willian told Globo Esporte.

    ‘’The positional game doesn’t mean that you have no freedom on the pitch, you have the freedom to move, but many times you have to respect the position, what the coach asks, the instructions, understanding that it’ll be better for the team.

    ‘’It may happen that you don’t touch the ball and get frustrated, but Mikel always says that wait a minute, the ball will arrive. I’ve been learning a lot.’’

    Dear Arteta, managers recruit players and play to their strengths. Willian is a tested and trusted player at least in the EPL. He should be the pivot of Arsenal’s games, especially with Ozil’s absence. All Arteta needs do is to watch Chelsea’s matches and he would understand why Arsenal is tottering in the EPL. A stitch in time saves nine.

     

     

  • Femi Kayode (1939-2020): Economist beyond the ivory tower (2)

    Femi Kayode (1939-2020): Economist beyond the ivory tower (2)

    Segun ayObolu

     

    In what is a business and organizational politics equivalent to a novelistic thriller, Professor Femi Kayode’s book, ‘Managing Change in a Nigerian University Setting: The Ibadan Experiment’, is difficult to put down when you begin reading it. As renowned Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Professor O.O Akinkugbe, writes in the blurb to the book, “Professor Kayode’s forensic skills in moving from the general to the specific, and from the traditional rhetoric of academia into the real world of practical economics fill us with admiration. He recounts with characteristic candour his experiences as Coordinating Director of the University of Ibadan Centre for Resource Management and Consultancy (CEREMAC) in the 1980s and demonstrates with clarity the landmine situations that served as veritable impediments to sustained internal revenue generation”. The author paints vivid pictures of the pitched battles between entrenched status quo forces and those spearheading much needed innovative managerial and attitudinal changes at a critical period in the evolution of the university institution in Nigeria.

    Given the intensity of the bitter opposition to his attempt to introduce viable business and financial management strategies within the rigid, bureaucratic administrative university structure all in a bid to fulfill his mandate of rejuvenating the revenue base of the university of Ibadan, professor Kayode’s dedication of his book “To all those who are hurt in the course of their commitment to positive change, but are still able to forgive and face the future with renewed vigour” speaks volumes of his character and humanness. Here was a man who was firm and unbending in the pursuit of whatever principles he strongly believed in yet with an admirable generosity of spirit to be charitable towards his adversaries as well as bounteous determination and optimism to confront new challenges despite past setbacks.

    In his foreword to this book, the late eminent economist, Professor Pius Okigbo, notes that the tale of Nigeria’s university system was one of growth from infancy through adolescence to near maturity and finally to the onset of decadence all within a period of four short decades. He attributes the decline of the universities not just to the financial crisis that began in the late 1970s and worsened in the 1980s and 1990s but more importantly to the “loss by their leadership of the sense of mission of the institutions under their charge”. He continued, “Professor Kayode’s book is therefore strictly an essay on the Management of Universities in Nigeria in a period of rapid change using the University of Ibadan as a case study. Following the explosion of student numbers and the drastic fall in funding arising from the exponential growth in the number of universities, federal and state, the universities as a whole lost their focus, lost touch with the needs of the surrounding society and proved themselves incompetent to cope with the changing environment”.

    The Centre for Resource Management and Consultancy (CEREMAC), which evolved from the Consultancy Services Unit of the university, was initiated during the tenure of Professor Tekena Tamuno as Vice Chancellor and was further consolidated under Professor S.O. Olayide who succeeded him. It was conceived to tap the rich human resource base of the institution to generate creative and bankable ideas that would reward individual skills and talents as well as diversify and strengthen the revenue base of the university. This was at a time when, as result of the creeping economic crisis that crippled the nation’s finances, the universities including Ibadan began to be characterized by irregular payment of salaries, suspension of capital projects and sharp decline in the capacity to maintain existing infrastructure or undertake research.

    In order to enable it meet stipulated objectives, CEREMAC had a board of its own separate from the university and was also independent of the University Council in sourcing assignments, recruiting key personnel and fixing their remuneration. It was empowered to provide service to third parties and to identify profit centers in the university that could be professionally managed to relieve the institution’s burden of inadequate funding. It was, of course, only natural that this considerable autonomy granted CEREMAC would naturally evoke some envy and opposition by those who felt its modus operandi negated the traditional administrative norms of a university setting. Evident in this book throughout is professor Kayode’s belief that a university is endowed with sufficient human resource endowment to function as a self-sufficient financial entity akin to a business enterprise without compromising its institutional academic integrity and intellectual orientation.

    He saw no necessarily inevitable nexus between the academic vocation and poverty insisting that a well structured and dynamically managed university consultancy outfit could enable creative academics profit from their skills while also strengthening the revenue base of the institutions. Thus, the book is with replete by strategies to revitalize and improve the revenue generating potentials of identified profit centers within the universities. These included the Consultancy Services Unit, University Bookshop Ltd, Ibadan University Press, Petrol Station, University Publishing House, Zoological Garden, UNIBADAN Performing Company, Internal Transport Service and UNIBADAN Agricultural enterprises.

    The sheer number of innovations initiated by the Project Development Unit of CEREMAC indicates the rich potentials of a vibrant consultancy structure to benefit from the ample resource endowment of the university system. Some of  these projects which were different stages of gestation and emergent commercial viability include the Anaerobic Digester Project, Borehole Division, CEREMAC Construction Company, Dog Project, Fish Farm Project, Furniture Project, Iyan (Pounded Yam) Project, Jam Project, Landscape Division, Publishing Consultants Division and waste Glass Project. As Professor Kayode put it, “Development Projects were designed to mobilize unused human and physical resources in pursuit of our philosophy of ‘shifting of frontiers’ by turning ideas into projects and thereby generating funds for the university while at the same time increasing the relevance of the institution to the larger society”.

    Unfortunately, with the intense opposition to the CEREMAC experiment within the university and the internal institutional intrigues and power play, the consultancy initiative was scrapped when another Vice Chancellor, Professor Ayo Banjo, succeeded Professor Olayide and that brought an end to a unique experiment in tapping university resources for financial autonomy at Ibadan. As Professor Okigbo writes in his foreword, “With the change of leadership in the University in 1984, the new Vice-Chancellor and the pro-Chancellor both probably saw in CEREMAC a challenge to, and a detraction from, their powers to appoint, promote and dismiss staff. They replaced it with the University of Ibadan Ventures Ltd, more within their control and, therefore, essentially an extension of the patronage system in the University. In his own book on his stewardship in the University of Ibadan, ‘In the Saddle’, Professor Ayo Banjo derided the relevance of CEREMAC as inconsistent with the standard organization of a university”.

    CEREMAC was an bold initiative to think outside the box and find alternative avenues to funding viable universities at a time when dependence on government funding had become increasingly unfeasible and unrealistic. There is no doubt that Professor Kayode courageously gave his best in a difficult assignment and many of his experiences recounted in this book still remain relevant in Nigeria’s quest for a well funded, viable, productive and affordable public university system.