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Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • Professor Michael Akpan and man as homo economicus (2)

    Professor Michael Akpan and man as homo economicus (2)

    A wide ranging discourse in his area of expertise, Professor Michael Akpan ‘s inaugural lecture titled ‘Being an Economist: The Homo Economicus’, delivered at the Bingham University, Keffi, Nasarawa State, On Tuesday, October 21, 2025, examines the philosophical make up of man and his attitude to life; his psychological disposition to maximize his pleasure and minimize his gain; his pursuit of what he perceives as his rational self-interest and his commitment to his survival which necessities the prioritization of his economic well-being including his capacity to care for his needs as well as that of his family.

    From a lay man’s perspective, it could be argued that although man is a multidimensional being in his motivations, inclinations and actions, Professor Akpan ‘s perception of man as essentially ‘Homo Economicus’ is justified because of the indisputable reality that man must first and foremost earn a living, eat, shelter and clothe himself among other vital material needs before engaging in politics, worship, entertainment, philosophical reflection, writing among other activities.

    The professor’s methodology for the lecture, which he describes as the technique of exploratory studies, seems akin to the deductive scientific method which proceeds from broad generalizations and, through systematic exercises in validation and/or elimination, narrows down to proven particular specifics of knowledge. According to him, “This means that the focus is initially broad. It later becomes progressively narrower as the research progresses, and the researcher is willing to change their direction as a result of new data which appear and new insights which occur to them”.

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    Utilizing this analytical tool, he thus strives to demonstrate among other postulations that “the homo Economicus’ is not just one of the models in economics, constructed to suit observed economic realities in his activities at the time he was created; But that he is also in existence, his exemplars exist, his assumptions and knowledge are real and his economics are not all nonsense dogmas”.

    Professor Akpan’s dogged defence of economics as a discipline, the economist as a professional and man as fundamentally a rational economic being is spurred by an academic critic like Professor Abdul-Ganiyu Garba who in his inaugural lecture at the Ahmadu Bello University contended that Economics was ‘A Discipline in Need of A New Foundation’. He is also reacting to another critic, Dr Tope Fasua, who not only disputes the concept of the economic man but also questions the content and methodology adopted in teaching economics in Nigerian universities.

    Even though the lecturer fiercely defends the content of its subject matter as well as the method of its teaching, he is himself no less scathing in his criticism of aspects of quantitative analysis and sophisticated model- building in economics epistemology. In his words, “One other factor that shaped the title of this lecture is the intellectual falsehood that some economists and econonetricians have built around econometrics to make it look larger than just one of the quantitative tools of analysis in economics which I believe is even lower in efficiency than economic statistics and applied statistics. For a long time they have dismissed descriptive statistics as irrelevant in economic analysis, but lately in about 2024, they suddenly realized that their econometric analyses have gotten them on to some dubious grounds (as Keynes described Marshall’s analysis of the multiplier), and descriptive statistics now takes precedence in results presentation over the results of their econometric analysis”.

    Professor Akpan enrolled at the University of Benin for his B.Sc degree in Economics in 1981/82, graduated in 1984 and undertook his mandatory national youth service in 1984/85. He obtained a master’s degree in Economics and Statistics also from the University of Benin in 1995. This period spanned not just Nigeria’s disruptive switch from civilian representative government to a succession of military regimes but also the descent into economic austerity, later the full blown Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and the protracted depression the country has never fully come out of. All these experiences no doubt went into the shaping of his consciousness as an Economist later in life.

    Prior to his switching to academics, his job experiences included an ad hoc employment with the defunct Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) as a Polling Units Presiding Officer in the series of elections that ushered in the Second Republic in 1979; employment as a Library Assistant with the Institute of Administration, ABU in 1980; a public works team leader with the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) in and a Career Project Officer and later Investment Officer in the Agricultural Development Bank in 1987.

    Professor Akpan discusses in detail a series of developments that informed his decision to leave the bank in 1999 and commence the transition to what has blossomed into a full scale, life long academic career. As he narrates it, “With a master’s degree in economics and statistics I obtained from the University of Benin in 1995, my plan A as a homo Economicus’ was to settle into private consultancy. A career in academics at the nearest university was the plan B in case plan A failed. Yet, exiting the bank was a very tough but a rational decision which I did not discuss with members of my family. Rationality of the economic man demands that tough decisions are not discussed with family members; Abraham did not discuss with Sarah, his decision to sacrifice Isaac even unto God”.

    In the course of his career as an academic economist, Professor Akpan has published books, papers and reports relevant to burning and pertinent issues in the management of the Nigerian economy. These include ‘An Essay on Deregulation of the Downstream Sector of the Nigerian Petroleum Industry (2003); ‘The IMF/World Bank and Nigeria’s Economic Reforms: Readings on 25 years of economic and political Reforms in Nigeria (1986-2012); ‘Keynes, 63 Years in Memory 1946-2009: His policy relevance in the 21st Century and ‘ Ceteris Paribus in Economic Theory and Econometrics: What is its Real Meaning and what happens when Ceteris is not Paribus?”.

    In his various writings as well as television discussions, Professor Akpan had vigorously defended such policies as devaluation of the Naira, Deregulation of the Petroleum Industry and removal of fuel subsidy even when it was not popular to do so. His inaugural lecture is, not unexpectedly, a periscope of the evolution of economics as a discipline, dissections of the various controversies within the discipline while also providing some interesting insight into the politics of academia at Bingham University. Large portions of the lecture are riddled with complex statistical and mathematical theorems which are of little interest to the non economist.

  • Economic reforms, ASUU and national development (1)

    Economic reforms, ASUU and national development (1)

    On the surface, it may appear that there is a negligible discernible link between the ongoing far-reaching economic reforms of the President Bola Tinubu administration, the newly signed agreement between the administration and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the fundamental challenge of achieving enduring, autochthonous national development in Nigeria. Not surprisingly, dominant sections of the traditional and social media have treated the newfound amity between the Federal Government and ASUU as being of only tangential and ephemeral significance. With the distorting influence of unbridled partisanship on the part of key sections of the media, it is so easy to forget or downplay the deleterious impact of frequent and protracted strikes by federal and state public universities over the last one and a half decades on education, the economy and the country’s development in general.

    It is no surprise that the academics have commended the determination, sincerity of purpose and tenacity of the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, in spearheading the breakthrough recorded by the Tinubu administration in resolving the deadlock between ASUU and successive preceding administrations on the implementation of the stillborn 2009 agreement. Highlights of the new agreement reached on December 24, 2025, and which took effect on January 1, 2026, include a 40% upward review of salaries for academics; a new Consolidated Academic Tools Allowance (CATA) of N1.74 million and N840,000 million annually for full Professors and Readers respectively; enhanced pension benefits that allow professors to earn a pension equivalent to their annual salary on retirement at the age of 70 and the enhancement of research funding through the provision of at least 1% of Nigeria’s GDP for the National Research Council (NRC).

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    Of course, the most critical challenge is for the government to commence and sustain the implementation of all aspects of this agreement to boost the morale of the country’s academics and unleash their hitherto trapped potentials to contribute exponentially to the attainment of national transformation goals. But there is cause for optimism. As the BusinessDay newspaper put it in a report, “The agreement marks the first time a sitting Nigerian President directly took ownership of the prolonged dispute and prioritised its resolution. Tunji Alausa, Minister of Education, said the agreement is intended to restore trust, guarantee uninterrupted academic calendars, and end the cycle of strikes in public universities. ASUU said the agreement is the outcome of a renegotiation process that began in 2017 and passed through multiple failed committees before the current administration inaugurated the Yayale Ahmed-led renegotiation committee in December 2024.

    Structural reforms undertaken by successive governments, civilian and military, in post-colonial Nigeria have addressed the country’s economic crisis, often at a superficial level, without confronting the more daunting problem of transcending the conundrum of underdevelopment. It is impossible to achieve the latter without taking maximal advantage of the knowledge, skills, creativity and cerebral energy of the country’s intellectuals. And the latter will remain a mirage with a depressed, demotivated, largely neglected and demoralised intellectual class. This is why the new agreement between the Federal Government and ASUU must be built upon to usher in a new era of mobilising Nigeria’s intellectual resources to achieve national developmental goals.

    Over the last two and a half years, the Tinubu administration’s reforms, external and internal assessors agree, have gone a long way to address the severe, multidimensional economic crises it inherited as a result of years of structural distortions, misplaced priorities and indulgent policies that purportedly subsidised the disadvantaged but facilitated the criminal enrichment of a parasitic minority. Examples were the fuel subsidy and parallel exchange rate markets meant to boost the value of the Naira but provided avenues for humongous self-enrichment through arbitrage for the well-connected. The abolition of these policies by the Tinubu administration, measures acknowledged as imperative by its predecessors but incessantly pushed forward, led to immediate hardships through inflationary spirals and attendant spike in living costs.

    But the bitter pills are evidently having the desired recuperative effects on the ailing economy. It is apposite to quote the latest edition of The Economist magazine at some length here. Stating that the administration’s painful reforms are beginning to show results, the magazine notes that “It is difficult to overstate the mess Mr Tinubu inherited. When he took office in 2023, the country’s Central Bank had $7 billion (equivalent to 1.4% of GDP at the time) in obligations it could not meet, prompting international investors to flee en masse. The bank’s credibility had been dented by a recklessly loose monetary policy, its mismanagement of dwindling foreign -exchange reserves and efforts to maintain an unsustainable tiered exchange -rate system. In 2022 alone, the cash-strapped government spent some $10 billion, equivalent to 2.2% of GDP, on a ruinous fuel subsidy”.

    After reiterating the painful remedial measures undertaken by the Tinubu administration to reform and restructure the economy, The Economist observes that “Nearly three years on, Nigeria’s 230 million people, especially the poor and the middle class, are still reeling from increases in fuel and food prices. Poverty has risen. But it looks as though Mr Tinubu’s bitter medicine is helping. The annual inflation rate, which hit a nearly 30-year high of of 35.8% in December 2025, fell to 15.2% in December 2025. Growth is returning. The IMF expects the economy to expand by 4.4% in 2026. Following two steep devaluations in 2023, the Naira has stabilised. The Central Bank’s foreign -exchange reserves have risen to $46 billion, their highest level in seven years. Improvements in macroeconomic stability are restoring investor confidence”.

    The challenge before the Tinubu administration is to push through these reforms till they become sustainable and irreversible, but, more importantly, to ensure that impressive statistical indices are translated into concrete improved welfare and living standards for the vast majority of Nigerians. Even if these goals are achieved, however, the administration would have addressed the problem of the economic crisis and must still lay the foundation for transcending the protracted crisis of underdevelopment. And this is where the intellectuals and the unique labour union that ASUU has become are indispensable.

    In the final analysis, no country or people can develop another political entity. All meaningful development is ultimately self-development. In its Nigeria First policy, which emphasises local raw materials, expertise and technology in production processes, Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda realises this. And so it is with its efforts to break the country’s food dependency and boost local agricultural productivity, even though continuing unacceptable levels of insecurity remain a major obstacle in critical food production zones. However,  the administration must fundamentally redefine, refocus and restructure the country’s theory and practice of development.

    Relying on external expertise, inputs and technology for the installation of major artefacts of development and modernity, such as railway tracks and trains, express roads and coastal highways, ultramodern structures, model stadia, and petroleum refineries are inevitable in the short run but do not constitute development on a long-term, sustainable basis. As one of the country’s eminent political economists, Professor Okwudiba Nnoli, puts it, “What is needed is a concept of development which is neither viewed as catching up with the advanced countries nor fixated on the procurement of artefacts. Under certain conditions, artefacts emanate from the development process and reflect it. This is so only when they are the end products of the efforts of the population to apply their creative energy to the transformation of the local, physical, biological and socio-cultural environments. This is the case in the advanced countries. They cease to mirror development when they are provided by foreigners; the local population merely acquires the products of other people’s development.”

    Over four decades ago, ASUU, in its landmark publication, ‘The Nigerian Economic Crisis: Causes and Solutions,’ made the same point with regard to the country’s industrialisation process. In its words, “By industrialization of the country, we mean the process of developing the capacity of that country to master and locate within its borders, the whole industrial production process: production of raw materials; production of intermediate products for other industries; fabrication of machines and tools required for the manufacture of desired products and of other machines; skills to operate, maintain and reconstruct machines and tools; skills to manage factories and to organize the production process”.

    • To be continued

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

    Professor Michael Akpan and man as homo economicus (1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Tunji Olaopa, critical reforms and the Trump challenge (1)

    Tunji Olaopa, critical reforms and the Trump challenge (1)

    Ever since President Donald Trump sounded his alarm on the possibility of sending United States troops into Nigeria ‘guns-ablazing’ in response to alleged ‘Christian genocide’ in the country, this column has focused severally on what I have described as the mercurial American leader’s wake up call or challenge to Nigeria and Africa.

    In his seemingly unhidden disdain for weak, mostly poorly governed, inexcusably poverty-stricken and abysmally wretched African countries, Trump may not be the unbridled racist many perceive him to be after all. His may just be a normal reaction of the strong, mighty and wealthy of the world to an otherwise abundantly endowed continent that has no business with the kind of dehumanising poverty with which she is identified.

    It is another testament to the tragedy that is Africa that Uganda’s ruling strongman for over four decades, Yoweri Museveni, despite his advanced age, has just won another landslide electoral victory to lead his country for another seven years. In the emergent post-Trump global order, strength is might. Established rule-based behaviour based on decency, honour and civility has lost resonance. In the new world being born before our very eyes, democratic deficits in Africa and kleptocratic heists of governance leading to massive citizen impoverishment and disenchantment become existential threats to national sovereignty.

    The restoration of democratic credibility, ethical governance and economic progress that impacts millions positively among the Wretched of the earth, thus becomes the immediate imperative response in Africa to an essentially amoral ‘Trumpian’ philosophical outlook on global governance.

    Such a revolutionary transformation in the management ethos of the public sphere in Africa is indeed a necessary condition for black countries with the requisite wherewithal to acquire the deterrent lethal armoury that will make great powers with a Machiavellian eye on the continent’s rich trove of rare minerals and other resources to think twice before leaping on her like lethal carnivores even as they mouth pious declarations of ‘civilizing’ intent.

    Indeed, renowned political scientist and international relations scholar, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, alongside another scholarly African legend, Professor Ali Mazrui, had made persuasive cases, long before Trump, for what has been widely called the ‘black bomb’ to better facilitate the emergence of a global deterrent racial balance of terror. This may not necessarily be as outlandish as some perceive it. Neither will it require superhuman feats of cerebral heroism. Indeed, the human resource base already exists for such a feat in Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and many African countries.

    What is urgently needed is for a sufficient number of African societies to summon the organisational efficiency, leadership discipline, elite cohesion, and solidifying democratic culture and political stability needed to shoulder such a grave responsibility. Interestingly, while we tend to focus excessively on our flaws and negative traits, there is much, unfortunately imperceptible, good occurring in different spheres of our society in Nigeria, such as an appreciation and cultivation of merit that is a necessary condition for the nurturing of the technocratic culture that must be the basis for a nuclear-powered society.

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    For instance, in his 2016 Convocation Lecture at the University of Ibadan, in which he made a vigorous case for ‘Nigerian Exceptionalism’ in the country’s desired ‘Quest for World Leadership’, Professor Akinyemi referred to a commentary by the CNN on the launching by the National Space Research Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) of five satellites into space since 2003. The professor quotes CNN as reporting that “The NASRDA has launched five satellites since 2003, with three still in orbit delivering vital services. The most recent NigeriaSat-X was the first to be designed and constructed by NASRDA engineers, and more advanced models are in development”.

    And in the words of Professor Akinyemi, “NASRDA has close to 500 skilled and trained staff, some up to PhD level. The programme has ambitious goals. By 2018, it hopes to build Indigenous satellites, by 2025-2028, it hopes to build a national spaceport and develop an indigenous space launcher, and by 2030, it intends to put a Nigerian astronaut into space. These are lofty goals that have received international acclaim”.

    No less critical than charismatic and visionary political leadership at the commanding heights of societal governance are merit-recruited and driven technocrats at the driving seats of bureaucratic structures that propel scientific, technological, artistic, industrial, educational and other attainments to the level of genius that move polities forward at a geometric rate. In choosing Professor Tunji Olaopa as his pick to serve as Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), President Bola Tinubu demonstrated a commitment to merit as the underlying imperative for the fundamental reforms that are the defining essence of his administration.

    This meritocratic disposition of his leadership style is evident in the outstanding productivity of various agencies from General Buba Marwa’s NDLEA to Mr Tunji BELLO’s FCCPC to Professor Eghosa Osagie’s NIIA to Hafsat Bakarat’s NFIU to Yemi Cardoso’s CBN, Professor Oloyede’s JAMB or Dr Kayode Opeifa’s NRC, to name a few.

    An accomplished political scientist, Professor Olaopa obtained his MSc and PhD degrees in public administration and has gone on to establish his reputation as the leading scholar on public sector reforms in Nigeria and Africa. Rising to the apex position of Federal Permanent Secretary in the Federal Public Service, he has no less than two-score highly regarded scholarly books on different aspects of public service reforms in Africa.

    In a write-up to commemorate two years of Professor Olaopa in this demanding seat, another noted scholar who works with and observes him at close quarters, Dr Paul Onomuakpokpo, noted that “Under Olaopa, there is the overarching quest to bring the best and brightest to the civil service, without undermining the federal character principle. His credibility has invested his leadership with an imprimatur of believability. Through credible promotion examinations, the career progression of the most qualified civil servants is guaranteed. Civil servants are no longer apprehensive that they need to look for millions to bribe their way to rise to the top. Olaopa has demonstrated the courage to stop the promotion of those who do not merit it, no matter the pressure from different quarters. The avenues for questionable promotion examinations, such as leakage and sub-standard examination questions, have been blocked. This has saved the commission from wasting time, money and other resources on court cases”.

    Continuing, he states that “Those who fail no longer bother to contest the grades they have been awarded as they rest assured that the system is now credible. Olaopa’s streak of firsts at the FCSC has received a boon with the introduction of the computer-based test ( CBT) mould for the conduct of recruitment and promotion examinations in the civil service. This novelty imposes on civil servants the salubrious necessity of computer-savviness that is reflective of technological developments in a world where those who have demurred at bracing for artificial intelligence and others are faced with the present danger of consignment to corporate and professional backwaters. It has also shrunk the space for the manipulation of examination results that impugn the credibility of the commission”.

    Remarkably, Olaopa has been able to put into practice his profuse theoretical adumbrations on the imperative of civil society reforms while maintaining harmonious relationships with the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), Mrs Didi Esther Walson Jack (OON) and other leadership cadres of the Public Service, many of whom are change agents in their own right.

    A significant development under Olaopa’s leadership of the FCSC has been the resuscitation for two years running of the annual meetings of the National Council of Civil Service Commissions of the Federation; an exercise that had been in abeyance for over a decade. In the concluding part of this piece, we will look in detail at the deliberations of the last Council which held in Umuahia, in Abia State, its exhaustive communique and why its conclusions are germane to the emergence of Nigerian and African public services that can be the backbone of emergent flourishing, vibrant and virile African countries no more vulnerable to the bullying and hectoring of self-interested external self-proclaimed saviour -giants with feet of clay.

  • What path to elite consensus?

    What path to elite consensus?

    So alarming and concerning did this column perceive President Donald Trump’s recent threat to invade Nigeria militarily to check what he described as ‘Christian genocide’ that, over the last three weeks, we have examined diverse dimensions of this warning and its implications. Our central contention has been that this undisguised threatened violation of Nigeria’s sovereignty constitutes not just a danger to the incumbent administration of President Bola Tinubu but an indictment of Nigeria’s ruling class as a whole. Those members of the political elite, who thus gloat over Trump’s categorisation of Nigeria as a ‘now failed’ State and feel surreptitious vindication by the American leader’s contemptuous disdain for Nigeria, are as much an object of his scorn and ridicule as those in power at the centre today on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    It is instructive that over the last week in the United States, there have been incidents of fatal attacks on innocent citizens by trigger-happy gunmen, resulting in several deaths. One of such killings took place in the vicinity of the White House, leading to the death of at least one National Guard officer and another being injured. In another instance in California, four school children were said to have died in a mass shooting at a child’s birthday party, with several others suffering from various degrees of injuries. Such tragedies have become routine in America where deaths from senseless mass shootings have become endemic. But such failings do not justify the overgeneralized categorisation of that country as a ‘now failed’ State.

    In the same vein, Nigeria’s challenges with insecurity do not necessitate its being depicted in derogatory and pejorative terms. This is particularly so as the accusation of ‘Christian genocide’ in Nigeria completely misses the mark and successive Nigerian governments have not been indifferent or insensitive to the need to tackle the assorted acts of insurgency threatening the country’s territorial integrity and cohesion. It is instructive that various Nigerian groups and individuals in the diaspora actively peddled the propaganda of ‘Christian genocide’ in the country, which President Trump and other far-right Republican ideologues enthusiastically bought into. The harm which disaffected members of the political elite can inflict, directly or indirectly, on their own country reinforces the imperative of forging a viable and enduring elite consensus as a necessary condition for national stability, peace and progress.

    Incidentally, America today also suffers from the plague of a lack of elite consensus. The greatest military and economic power on earth today, despite evident signs of a gradual weakening, is described in the media, academia and other platforms of public discourse in that country as a badly divided society torn right through the middle between the liberals and the more conservative Republicans. Indeed, the degree of polarisation in America may be far deeper than the variant of elite fractiousness in Nigeria as is evident in the bitterness of recent electoral contestations in that country with President Trump instigating an insurrection at the Capitol, a symbol of American democracy, protesting his loss in the 2020 presidential election, which he described as a fraud.

    However, America has the advantage of strong and resilient institutions capable of safeguarding democratic tenets, principles and values, particularly through Judicial intervention, as is the case during Trump’s ongoing second term, when he has stretched the constitutional limits of Presidential powers to their utmost bounds. So far, various courts at the lower levels have blocked the Trump administration’s policy idiosyncrasies and acts of executive over-reach even though he has generally had his way on appeal at the Supreme Court, where he succeeded in getting a majority of conservative judges appointed during his first term. Yet, this has not prompted anyone to label America as a ‘now failed’ State, nor have aspersions been hurled at judges who understandably base their Judicial decisions on facts before them, interpreted within the context of their worldviews and value-orientation.

    But the central point of this piece is the urgent imperative for the political elite in Nigeria to forge the necessary class consensus across political party, ethnic, regional and religious divides without which there cannot be any basis for stability, peace, progress and development. This does not mean that the various factions, factions and tendencies of the Nigerian elite should forget their differences and create an artificial and unnatural commonality. That would be the perfect recipe for a one-party State, which would be detrimental to the continuous nurturing and consolidation of a genuine democratic order, which is a necessary condition for economic development and national cohesion. Rather, forging an elite consensus involves members of the elite recognising their differences and identifying those areas where they must work in unison and accommodate each other, even while vigorously maintaining their differences as regards ideological orientation, policy articulation and philosophical disposition or worldview.

    One area of critical importance for cultivating viable elite consensus among the various factions and tendencies that constitute Nigeria’s ruling class is reaching a common agreement on the indispensability of a transparent, credible and efficient electoral process as a cardinal element of an inclusive democratic system. This implies that both elected officials and their ruling parties, as well as those in opposition, develop a common commitment to the sustenance of democracy. Those who lose elections will not clamour for military intervention or external invasion because of their disenchantment with electoral outcomes while those in power will not undermine or render the opposition ineffective. The elite in power and those in opposition are two sides of a coin that are both critical to the sustenance and continuous development of democracy.

    But then, those in opposition cannot expect the party in government to enforce cohesion within their ranks or help them to devise political strategies to strengthen their parties. That is a responsibility they must undertake on their own. Thus, the continued lamentations of leading opposition politicians on the plight of their parties such as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), which they blame on deliberate destabilization by the ruling APC, is unnecessary and unproductive. There is absolutely no basis for former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, to have deserted the PDP with his supporters for the emergent All Democratic Congress (ADC), all in a quest for a platform on which to contest the next presidential election. In further bifurcating the PDP, which already has roots in all 774 Local Government Areas across the country as well as the 8,809 Registration Areas/Wards, Atiku has weakened the possibility of a stronger, more viable opposition arising to effectively challenge the APC at the 2027 polls.

    The ADC is still largely inchoate and is unlikely to become a political machine capable of effectively challenging for power at the centre come 2027. It will also be recalled that it was Atiku ‘s intransigent refusal to allow the PDP national championship to revert to the South after his emergence as presidential candidate of the party in 2023, in violation of its zoning principle, that provided for rotation of power between the North and the South, created the grounds for the fragmentation of the PDP, its loss in the 2024 election and it’s unfolding catastrophic implosion. Indeed, the concession of the presidential tickets of the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) in alliance with the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the PDP to the Southwest in 1999, to compensate the Yoruba for the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Chief MKO Abiola is the kind of elite consensus necessary to stabilize democratic governance to promote economic progress and political stability in Nigeria.

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    In the case of Mr Peter Obi, he has proven to be utterly clueless in resolving the protracted crisis in which the LP has been immersed. Surprisingly, even his running mate in the 2023 presidential election, Mr Datti-Ahmed, appears to have deserted his erstwhile boss and aligned with a different faction of the LP. Part of the problem is that Obi, just like Atiku, is more interested in finding a platform to actualize his presidential ambition rather than helping to build a solid opposition front irrespective of whether or not he emerges as the presidential candidate. With this kind of individualistic approach by these key opposition leaders, it is unlikely that they can build a formidable front to meaningfully challenge the ruling party for power at the centre in 2027.

    Another area where there must be a consensus on the part of Nigeria’s political elite is the need to join hands across partisan divides to fight the deep-seated and long-standing endemic poverty and grossly unjust inequality that are at the root of Nigeria’s current chronic insecurity challenge. This will entail elite unanimity on fighting the industrial -scale corruption that pervades our national life such that humongous funds criminally diverted into private pockets can be made available to boost food production, provide affordable but qualitative healthcare, generate jobs for millions of our youth, improve access to qualitative education and properly as well a  equip and motivate our security agencies in the ongoing do-or-die struggle against diverse forms of terror against the Nigerian State.

    •This page was first published December 6, 2025

  • Remarkable strides in solid minerals sector

    Remarkable strides in solid minerals sector

    The continuing easing of the biting inflationary spirals in the prices of essential needs caused by the removal of fuel subsidy by the President Bola Tinubu administration. The noticeable increase in food productivity despite persisting insecurity constraints. The sustained positive outlook in the country’s surplus trade balances across successive quarters. The maintenance of a stable exchange rate with the Naira even gradually strengthening through the deft monetary policy. The renewed investor interest and confidence in the country’s economic potentials as reflected in the resurgence of the Nigerian stock market. The considerable amplification of the country’s foreign reserves compared to its parlous state as at May 2003. All these are responsible for the emergent consensus among experts that the far-reaching economic reforms of the administration are gradually yielding the desired results.

    Of course, there is still a considerable path to tread before positive statistical aggregates begin to reflect in the quality of life of the vast majority of citizens. The central goals of the economic reforms are to restructure and diversify the economy, significantly enhance domestic productivity, reduce food, technology and other forms of dependency, boost raw materials self-reliance and enhance accelerated industrialization, actualize revenue generating capacities to fund the radical expansion and modernization of infrastructure as well as provision of qualitative but affordable social services including education, healthcare, potable water, efficient transportation as well as sufficient power supply among others.

    In the final analysis, the ultimate verdict on the fundamental reforms of the Tinubu administration will depend on the level of performance of Ministries, Departments and Agencies that touch on the lives of millions of ordinary Nigerians, such as agriculture, rural development, education, healthcare, livestock production, poverty alleviation, trade and industry, transportation, as well as roads and infrastructure. But no less critical in this regard is the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, whose revenue- generating potentials remained largely dormant until the advent of the current administration.

    Experts have, over the years, noted that the excessive reliance on revenues from crude oil sales and the lack of investment in developing the myriad of solid minerals that dot vast swathes of the Nigerian geographical space have been factors in the persistent deepening of underdevelopment and poverty in post-colonial Nigeria. In the current dispensation, this narrative of neglect and marginalisation of such a critical sector is slowly but steadily changing. Even then, it is still ‘morning yet on creation day’ even though the portents are quite promising.

    The foremost expert on the political economy of solid minerals and underdevelopment in Nigeria, Professor Chibuzo Nwoke, has exhaustively documented the country’s treasure trove of assorted solid minerals spread in diverse locations. He classified them into seven broad categories, namely building and construction industry minerals; fuel minerals; steel industry minerals; non-ferrous minerals; industrial and manufacturing minerals; strategic minerals and precious metals and gemstones. The significance and spread of these minerals underscore the indispensable role of solid minerals in the quest for accelerated industrialisation and modernisation of Nigeria.

    As an online medium puts it to illustrate how vital solid minerals are to national development, “Tin, Lead, and Zinc are essential base metals used in various industries, from manufacturing to construction. These are the building blocks of modern infrastructure. Iron ore is a key ingredient in steel production, vital for infrastructure development and industrial growth. This is the backbone of industrialisation. And in the words of Professor Nwoke, “Before the so-called oil boom era in the Nigerian economy, tin mining was the major source of revenue and foreign exchange for the country, which, for a long time, was among the top six producers of both tin and columbite in the world. But more recently, mostly because of the concentration on oil, the importance of tin and other minerals has declined in the Nigerian economy.”

    He continued, “A poor mono-cultural Third World country like Nigeria cannot, however, afford to ignore the solid minerals sector of its economy because the long term well-being of the country may very well depend upon the nationalist management of its mineral potentials. Investigations from the Ministry of Mines reveal that there are potentials in Nigeria’s minerals sector that, if judiciously worked, could provide the needed precondition for a future of industrialisation.”

    More than at any other time since the commencement of the Fourth Republic in 1999, a concerted effort had been sustained over the last two and a half years to lay the foundation for the transformation of the solid minerals sector into the backbone for the realisation of the goals of rapid industrialisation and accelerated development.

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    As I wrote in this space on Saturday, June 8, 2024, titled ‘Alake, solid minerals and national development,’ “Dr Oladele Alake is serving as Minister of Solid Minerals Development at a critical transitional phase in the evolution of the Nigerian economy. Not only has the price of crude oil plummeted calamitously in the international market, but many countries are moving away from dependence on fossil fuels for cheaper and safer sources of energy. Many experts assert that the golden age of oil is over and that current reserves of the commodity have a limited lifespan. Alake thus has his work cut out for him. His challenge is to lay the foundation for solid minerals, with which the country is munificently blessed, to become the future major revenue earner for Nigeria.”

    On assumption of office, the Minister identified eight priority minerals for immediate action and attention. This was obviously for the specificity of purpose as well as to ensure judicious utilisation of scarce resources to achieve concrete and measurable goals as regards minerals of the highest potential. The targeted eight priority minerals are gold, baryte, iron-ore, lead/zinc, coal, limestone, bitumen and lithium. As I wrote in the earlier piece, “His energies are thus centred on undertaking regulatory reforms to restore investor confidence and renewed global interest in these priority solid mineral resources without necessarily eschewing interest and investment in scores of other minerals with which the country is blessed.”

    It is significant that over the years, experts have identified a lack of adequate information on the variety and depth of the country’s solid minerals endowment as a key factor in the continued underdevelopment of the sector to the detriment of national progress and transformation. The entering into an agreement by the Ministry of Solid Minerals with a German firm, Geo Scan Gmbn through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to generate critical data on the eight priority minerals and their deposits thus marks a notable milestone in the evolution of the sector. Towards this end, sophisticated technology has been deployed with the capacity of exploring mineral resources up to 10,000 meters underground.

    In a related vein, the Ministry has worked in concert with the World Bank to conduct aeromagnetic surveys across the country for more accurate and reliable data on mineral spread and deposits to enable investors make more informed investment decisions. As the Minister noted at the 2024 Mines and Mining Conference in London, “The country’s geographical bounty encompasses over 44 distinct mineral types, found in exploitable quantities across more than 500 locations.” This expansive solid minerals endowment has also spurred Dr Alake to take defining and decisive steps to tackle the widespread incidence of criminality and violence associated with illegal mining in the largely ungoverned spaces where substantial quantities of solid minerals deposits are located.

    The unveiling on March 22, 2024, of the 2,200-strong Mines Marshall Corp drawn from officers and men of the National Security and Civil Defense Corp (NSCDC) marked the most elaborate effort in the history of the ministry to restore sanity and legality to the mining of solid minerals in Nigeria. With the Corps’ command and control centre located in the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, the Mines Marshal Corps is functional in all mining sites across diverse states, where it executes its mandate to smoke out, thwart and apprehend illegal miners and other violators of the country’s mining laws in the interest of Justice.

    Nothing illustrates better the efficacy of the reforms vigorously undertaken over the last two years by Alake in the solid minerals sector than the quantum leap in the ministry’s financial contributions to the national coffers under his leadership. For 2023, the Ministry of Solid Minerals generated approximately N16 billion in revenue, and this amount rose to N38 billion in 2024. Between January and November 2025, the revenue generated by the ministry had hit N63.92 billion within 11 months, and the Ministry is optimistic that the total revenue figure for 2025 will exceed the N70 billion mark. This represents a growth rate of over 337% from the 2023 figure of N16 billion.

    This astronomical increase in the Ministry’s revenue performance has been attributed to such reform initiatives as the revocation of dormant mining licences by the Minister, the drastic tackling of illegal mining through the Mining Marshalls Corp and initiatives aimed at enhancing local value addition before export of solid minerals, as well as attracting foreign investment. Shortly after resumption of office, the Minister announced the revocation of 1,633 mining licences due to default in the payment of their stipulated annual service fees. The affected entities had exceeded their deadlines to offset their debts as demanded by the Mining Cadastral Office, and they retrieved their licenses only after defraying their debts.

    The digitisation of mining license applications has enabled online mining license processing, thereby increasing transparency and accountability with positive revenue generation implications. While a substantial amount of about N1 trillion was allocated for mineral exploration to bridge data gaps, over 300 artisanal mining cooperatives were formalized and these in turn stimulated better effectiveness, efficiency and organisational dynamism in the ministry. In the same vein, the launch of the Nigeria Minerals Decision Support System (NMRDSS) has improved access to geological data and the attraction of investors. Also noteworthy are the MOUs entered into with reputable firms in the United Kingdom and Australia for the training of Nigerian mining professionals on modern mining technology and practices.

    In an address to a mining conference organized by the Nigerian Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies ( NIPSS), Alake had unequivocally declared that “My objective as the Minister is to work to ensure that Nigeria becomes a global mining destination for the first time in history and we are working to make this happen by alleviating bottlenecks and addressing salient challenges that have plagued the sector for decades”. The election of Alake as Chairman of the African Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG) in 2024 reflects the Ministry’s active participation on the global terrain, the amplification of its influence and the positive ramifications for the attraction of foreign investment and consequently enhanced financial viability.

    From all indications, the Ministry is not resting on its oars as its leadership believes that the strides taken so far, though by all means remarkable, represent a minuscule portion of the potentials of the sector and the far greater heights it is still possible to attain.

  • For BKO, another diadem of excellence

    For BKO, another diadem of excellence

    For millions of viewers of Television Continental (TVC), what is immediately striking about the medium’s undoubtedly pre-eminent professional, Babajide Kolade Otitoju, popularly known as ‘BKO’, is his unparalleled capacity for hard work. He regularly and constantly produces and airs qualitative documentaries on developmental strides and challenges across the diverse states of Nigeria.

    Not content with academic, ‘armchair’ analyses of contemporary issues and events, BKO routinely leaves the comfort of the studio to track actual reality on the ground for the benefit of viewers. The lead anchor of TVC’s flagship programme, ‘Journalists’ Hangout’, BKO’s grasp of issues, scrupulous adherence to facts, forthright explication of issues, bold and unpretentious articulation of his convictions, fair analysis of news, decent use of language as well as uncompromising commitment to the public good have attracted large numbers of admirers to both the journalist and the medium.

    An expert who has won awards on security reporting, BKO has severally staked his life by going to the front lines of the insurgency in such states as Borno, Niger, Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, among others, to report on the ongoing war against terror. His fluency in Hausa and intimate knowledge of the territory and culture of the North, where he was born in Zaria, have greatly aided the depth, credibility and authenticity of his war reports.

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    He is as adept in discussing all facets of music or sports as he is in interrogating serious political or security issues.

    Watching his exploits on television, it is difficult to believe that BKO made a transition from the print media, where he served as trail-blazing Editor of PM News and later The News magazine, in a career that spanned over three decades. It is a testimony to his professional versatility and intellectual dexterity. When he was recently elevated to the position of Director of News of TVC, there was jubilation across the various departments of the organisation and widespread acknowledgement in the industry that it is indeed an eminently deserved recognition.

    ILLUMINATIONS wishes this indigene of Ekirin Adde in Ijumu LGA of Kogi State, as well as an outstanding alumnus of the ‘best by far’ University of Ilorin, success in his new assignment and greater distinctions ahead.

  • Professor Bolaji Akinyemi and Trump’s wake-up call

    Professor Bolaji Akinyemi and Trump’s wake-up call

    Whatever may be President Donald Trump‘s motives for his strongly expressed desire to intervene militarily in Nigeria’s protracted insecurity conundrum or his distorted reading of the pattern and character of insurgent bloodshed in the country, the United States’ precision drone strikes against terrorist bases in Sokoto, Northwest Nigeria, on Christmas Eve, cannot be described as unjustified.

    The insurgency has become an existential threat to the Nigerian state. It has grown ever increasingly more protracted over nearly two decades, with the glaring incapacitation of the Nigerian state to effectively check the menace. Unacceptably large numbers of citizens across ethno-regional, religious, gender and age categories have continued to be murdered on an industrial scale, even though allegations of targeted killing campaigns to eliminate Christians because of their faith are entirely misbegotten.

    Emboldened by the obvious fragility and inefficacy of state response to their treasonous challenge since 2009, the terrorist groups have continued to mushroom as the criminal non-state actors gnaw at the sinews of Nigeria’s sovereignty with blood-curdling relish. To invoke sovereign pride in rejecting external military aid to curb terrorism running rampant would be to court national suicide. Nigeria, analysts point out, has in the past offered military assistance to sovereignty-challenged polities within and beyond Africa, and there is no shame in accepting such support in our own hour of vulnerability.

    The problem has been the gung-ho, paternalistic and starkly contemptuous terms in which President Trump has framed his country’s interventionist intent, not to talk of its divisive religious characterisation of the crisis, which has considerable potential to complicate and worsen an already parlous situation. Trump’s initial response was to threaten that his military would intervene ‘guns blazing’ in a ‘now disgraced country’ in defence of ‘our cherished Christians’.

    Luckily, the American leader’s dramatics was aimed at his domestic evangelical base. In reality, America’s Christmas Eve military strike in Sokoto was undertaken in coordination with the Nigerian military and with the cooperation and support of the Nigerian State. However, Trump did not indicate this collaboration in his social media post on the strike, leaving it to his Secretary of Defence, Pete Hesgeth and the US Africa Command to inform the world that the strike was coordinated with Nigeria.

    It is exactly the undisguised disdain, contempt and disgust exhibited by Trump and some other far right ideologues across the West towards Africa; an attitude partly rooted in unabashed racism, that raises troubling questions about the safety and security of vulnerable countries like Nigeria or South Africa, both atrociously and unfairly traduced by Trump, in a world that, more than ever before, approximates a feral jungle.

    Right before our eyes, underdog Ukraine is about to lose prime territory and resources to a rampantly aggressive Russia, even though the West, in my view, shares responsibility for provoking Putin’s military adventurism in what he arguably considers his country’s ‘sphere of influence’. With her profusion of raw materials, natural resources and rare earth minerals endowment, how safe or secure will Nigeria be in a world in which might is increasingly equivalent to right and hideous predators are free to feast on the meek sheep and lambs even as the rest of the world mind their business unconcerned?

    Concerns like this make even more relevant eminent political scientist and statesman, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi’s impassioned advocacy for the acquisition of nuclear capability as an unavoidable policy imperative for Nigeria in his 2016 Convocation Lecture at the University of Ibadan. Let me repeat here a quote from that lecture, which I cited last week: “As shown in table 14 (The World Factbook), as of 2015, the GDP per capita of Nigeria was $6,100.00, India was $6,200.00, and Pakistan was $5,000.00. The three countries were within the same range. Yet, Pakistan and India are nuclear powers with an incredible underbelly of poverty…

    “Nigeria will not secure respect from the world, the kind of respect extended to Pakistan or India or even North Korea, which has a per capita income of only $1,800 but has a nuclear programme. At the moment, no country will speak to India or Pakistan or even North Korea the way Nigeria is spoken to or spoken about.” This is surely not a question of misguided patriotism or nationalism on the part of Professor Akinyemi. Those who perceive the proposition as another exhibition of the ‘leisure of the theory class’ (apologies to Billy Dudley), will refer to the level of corruption, poor governance records or high poverty rates as obstacles to any credible nuclear aspiration by Nigeria.

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    But those countries which possess nuclear capability today did not wait to overcome the eternal challenges of corruption, good governance deficits or poverty and inequality before acquiring what amounts to military insurance to minimise external threats to their sovereign integrity. Even the most advanced among them still grapple with problems of considerable corruption in their private and public sectors; institutional autonomy and governance quality in the US in recent times, for instance, has hardly risen above third-world standards, and the level of poverty remains indefensible relative to the capacity of their productive forces to generate a volume of wealth unprecedented in human history.

    In any case, a country must first of all continue to exist as a viable entity before it can meaningfully fight corruption, alleviate poverty or improve its quality of governance. This column had described Trump’s contemptuous attitude toward Nigeria as a wake-up call on the political class across party lines to remove the sources of the country’s weakness and impotence in the global community. These include internal partisan fractiousness often actuated by gross material acquisition rather than ennobling philosophical differences; endemic corruption; wasteful and unethical governance across partisan lines, and mass discontent arising from embedded poverty and inequality.

    Apart from utilising the opportunities of the democratic space to address these challenges within the context of competitive party politics, Professor Akinyemi also stresses the imperative of pursuing nuclear capability at least as a medium- to- long term strategic objective. In his words, “Nuclear weapons create an aura of their own which no wealth can create. I was a student of international relations in the United States in the 1960s when China was spoken of with such contempt and derision. The day China performed its nuclear test, the tone changed overnight to one of awe and respect and yet China, at that time, had a per capita income of only $103.00.”

    •Concluded

  • Professor Bolaji Akinyemi and Trump’s wake-up call

    Professor Bolaji Akinyemi and Trump’s wake-up call

    His ideological orientation, philosophical disposition, temperamental short fuse, intrinsic racial arrogance, and instinctual transactional style of political engagement may prove disruptive and destabilising to America’s internal class and power relations, as well as the international political, military, and economic order.

    However, it is not unlikely that by the time he is done with his country and the world, the contemporary international political order will be bifurcated into the “before” and “after” Donald Trump eras. The 45th and 47th President of the world’s sole, if steadily but imperceptibly declining global superpower, Donald J. Trump, is unabashedly refashioning American politics and global international relations in his own image. Unfortunately, it is not a particularly predictable, rational, coherent or readily explicable image.

    But at least the Islamic terrorists and bandits, allegedly dispatched to hell’s gate after America’s Christmas day’s drone strikes in the Northwest of Nigeria, specifically Sokoto, know that Trump wants them nowhere near this terrestrial sphere of existence. The drone strikes were undertaken in pursuit of Trump’s purported agenda of saving Nigeria’s Christians from the genocidal attacks of ‘Islamic terrorists’. Ironically, though, American expertise, technology and intelligence enthusiastically aided Netanyahu’s Israel in the genocidal extirpation of Palestinians, including thousands of Christians, in Gaza.

    Neither does it seem to matter that the admittedly inexcusable terroristic killings in the North of Nigeria, particularly,  hardly discriminated between Christian or Muslim, woman or man, child or adult. Long before sending an investigative team of US legislators to Nigeria to ascertain the truth or otherwise of allegations of Christian genocide in the country, President Trump had declared Nigeria guilty and pronounced her, with solemn finality, ‘a now disgraced country’ to the eternal delight of the Peter Obis of this world.

    Of course, America, in Trump-speak, has regained respect and reverence across the world. Ignore the daily killings of scores of innocent citizens, including school children, in insane gun killings across America’s urban and rural communities. Discount the ceaseless assaults on America’s most cherished institutions and traditions of respect for human rights and liberties ever since the ‘Make America Great Again (MAGA)’ mantra has gained ascendancy.

    Close your eyes to the daily intimidation of judicial officers and consequent ever- increasing expansion of executive powers to the detriment of democracy and the rule of law in ‘America, their America’. Erase from memory the disgracefully (?) unforgettable spectacle of a murderous, instigated mob invading and desecrating The Capitol, inner sanctum of American democracy, in a bid to pull down the levers of civil governance in protest against patently false claims of rigged elections in 2020. But Nigeria is now a disgraced country. But St America’s vestments of innocence and chastity remain unstained.

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    But then, does the Nigerian State have any excuse for the persistence and ever-steadily worsening of an Islamic insurgency whose seeds were sown in the extra-judicial murder of the founder of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf, in police custody in 2009? Why the tardiness of the Nigerian governance elite across successive administrations in surgically addressing the structural impediments to the effective protection of lives and property in a sprawling, ethnic-regional, cultural and religious social mosaic like ours?

    Now, Trump has spoken ‘guns a-blazing’. You may question his motives. You may interrogate his sincerity. You may mock the affected ‘Christianity’ of perhaps the most irreligious occupant of the White House in recent times. But Trump is not to blame. Neither are the gods. The fault lies fairly and squarely with our ruling class. And here lies the grave danger. Trump does not hide his racism. In his first term, he described African countries as ‘shithole’. He dismisses Nigeria as ‘now disgraced’ based on allegations of baseless Christian genocide that he accepts before ordering an investigation!!

    Trump contemptuously accuses South Africa of genocide against whites without a shred of credible evidence, refused to attend the last G20 meeting in that country and has barred her from attending the next meeting of the group in the US!!! In Venezuela, he is conducting air strikes against vessels allegedly conveying drugs without providing any evidence or adherence to due process, leading to the extra-judicial murder of nearly 100 persons.

    One thing is clear. In the emergent post-Trump world order, weakness is a crime. Might is right. Ukraine’s Zelenskyy is learning the hard way. There is a new spring in Vladimir Putin’s step. Continued weakness is not an option for Nigeria. But the eminent political scientist, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, former Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) and active member of the pro-democracy group, NADECO, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, foresaw this long ago. His 2016 Convocation Lecture delivered at the University of Ibadan was titled ‘Nigerian Exceptionalism: Nigerian Quest for World Leadership’ – an admirable venture in intellectual audacity if you ask me.

    In concluding the first part of this piece, I will quote Professor Akinyemi at some length. In his words, “In 1987, as the Minister of External Affairs, I called for Nigeria to develop a nuclear weapon, infelicitously called the Black Bomb. I believe I was right then, and I believe I am still right. In 1987, when I made the call, the only high-ranking public official who called to say he agreed with me was General Abacha, not known for making calls. The media, the intellectuals and practically everyone thought I was mad…When General Abacha became Head of State in 1993, he raised the issue of the feasibility of such a programme with me, but I said the United States would not permit it. I remember his reply: “I don’t intend to get along with the United States. Maybe I should have taken him for his word.”

    Professor Akinyemi continued, “…as of 2015, the GDP per capita of Nigeria was $6,100.00, India was $6,200.00, and Pakistan was $5,000.00. The three countries were within the same range. Yet, Pakistan and India are nuclear powers with an incredible underbelly of poverty. Of course, Pakistan and India did not spend N7.2 billion importing toothpicks or N62.8 billion importing French fries.

    “Let me be as categorical as I can be. Even if all roads in Nigeria were to be paved with gold, and every Nigerian were to own a Rolls-Royce in his or her garage, Nigeria would not secure respect from the world, the kind of respect extended to Pakistan or India or even North Korea, which has a per capita income of only $1,800.00 but has a nuclear programme. At the moment, no country will speak to India or Pakistan or even North Korea the way Nigeria is spoken to or spoken about.”

    • To be concluded