Category: Segun Ayobolu

Had an aspirant like the All Progressives Party (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, not emerged as the party’s presidential flag bearer in the critical elections slated for February 25, in a landslide victory at the party primaries held in June last year in Abuja, the party would most probably have kissed triumph at the polls goodbye by now. So far, however, the strenuous efforts of the major political parties to pin the perceived flaws of the President Muhammadu Buhari APC administration on Tinubu and thereby fatally decapitate his campaign have abysmally failed to gain meaningful traction.

The APC candidate thus remains the clear front runner in the race hence the desperate but still futile attempts by the opposition, principally the Abubakar Atiku presidential campaign, to throw vicious dirt at him through recycled false allegations, mudslinging and character assassination.

For the candidate of a party which, despite the indisputable achievements of its government in the last eight years, has failed to match the great public expectations of fundamental change that greeted its assumption of office in 2015, what is responsible for the continued upsurge of the Tinubu campaign on the platform of a party that ought really to have its back on the ropes and literarily fighting for its political life?

There are at least three possible reasons for this scenario and the continuously upbeat tempo of the bulk of the APC leadership and rank and file membership in my view. First, President Buhari although traditionally regarded as the leader of the party, put a wide berth between his administration and the APC on which platform it came to power. The party had a negligible influence on or input into the government’s policies. The administration was at best perfunctory in its implementation of the party’s manifesto, a document which ought to have been its guiding light and veritable Bible.

On the critical restructuring component of the party platform, for example, the administration adopted a stance of complete indifference and nonchalance even as party leaders agonized in discomfited silence. When the administration over two years into its first term deigned to set up a committee headed by Kaduna State governor, Mr. Nasir el’Rufai, to advise on the party’s policy position on restructuring, for instance, the committee’s far-reaching recommendations such as the urgent need to radically decentralize the country’s security architecture was completely ignored after it was submitted to the President even though, in his characteristically thorough manner, el’Rufai had accompanied the proposals with draft bills on the various issues to be forwarded to the National Assembly for legislative follow up action.

It was obvious that the infamous alleged cabal in the inner precincts of the Aso Rock power house had edged out the party hierarchs from exerting any meaningful influence on government direction and policy with the result that many discerning members of the public lay the blames for the administration’s perceived failures on a few members of the President’s inner circle who abused his confidence and trust rather than on the party.

The second reason for the relative feebleness and bluntness of the PDP’s salvos against the APC in this campaign is that, even if the ruling party’s alleged failings are partly true, the PDP has not sufficiently demonstrated that it has fundamentally reformed itself and would do better if returned to power in 2023 than it did in its earlier largely squandered 16 years in office at the centre. Most of the seeds of the problems that bloomed and festered under the APC in the last eight years were laid during the preceding PDP years in control of Aso Rock.

A good example of the PDP’s all too obvious imperviousness to change was the crassness and brazenness with which it abandoned its own constitutional provision for rotation of power between the North and the South and the sleight of hand through which Alhaji Atiku Abubakar grabbed the party’s presidential ticket. The party continues to reel from the intra-organizational crisis arising from this development as illustrated by the rebellion of the governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State-led G5 governor’s and its crippling effect on the Atiku campaign.

To worsen matters, Atiku’s cynical, divisive attempt to pitch the North against the South by projecting himself with open and brazen contempt as the candidate of the North is not flying among key enlightened stakeholders of the latter region with considerable electoral clout such as the Northern APC governors who are obviously mindful of the critical importance of power rotation between the North and South for national unity, peace and stability and have been campaigning ardently for Tinubu.

Thirdly and perhaps most important is the factor of Tinubu himself. True, he is credited with having played a pivotal role in enabling Buhari to win the 2015 presidential election after three failed earlier attempts on the latter’s part. But many of those who want the electorate to blame Tinubu for the emergence of Buhari and the alleged failures of his administration were the very ones who cynically mocked the APC candidate shortly after the assumption of office of the President Buhari in 2015 because the latter’s government had so obviously sidelined a man who held the honorific title of National Leader of the APC.

Of course, many Nigerians who know him well swear that Buhari had nothing personal against Tinubu and would do nothing to impede his ambition even though as a stickler for rules and due process he would also not lift a finger to help him unduly, which is fair enough. But the unhidden fact is that the hawks around the President influenced him to distance the former Lagos State governor from his administration for the better part of his tenure but for the brief interlude when he got Tinubu to lead his re-election campaign for the 2019 election. If any of the other leading aspirants who had been key functionaries of the administration had emerged as candidate, they would face critical credible questions on what they did to enhance the quality of governance as members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the highest decision- making body of the executive arm.

It is a testimony to Tinubu’s astuteness, steadfastness, good faith and fidelity to party loyalty that he had never at any time disparaged the Buhari administration despite pressures in a number of quarters that he did so especially when he was widely perceived as deliberately marginalized from the government. Rather, he has consistently applauded the administration’s accomplishments and strengths especially in infrastructure provision across the country, its massive social intervention programmes to alleviate poverty and its monumental investment in agriculture to diversify the economy among others. While promising to improve on the administration’s creditable records in these areas, he has also pledged to seek more effective solutions in tackling the security situation, managing the debt burden, boosting power supply, dealing with the fuel subsidy conundrum and enhancing national unity through more inclusive governance among others.

This is at least far more intellectually honest than the candidates who claim they want to recover Nigeria without admitting the Buhari administration’s areas of success and that it initiated and completed scores of infrastructure projects nationwide to which most of the debts acquired are tied while investing heavily in social safety nets for the poor and vulnerable thus accomplishing much more in seven and a half years than the PDP did in 16 years even while earning far less revenue than the latter did as a result of sharp decline in oil revenues as from the end of 2014 shortly before assuming office. No matter what may be the perception about his failings and lapses, it is difficult to deny that Buhari is an essentially decent man with a good heart. That he does not own an oil bloc or scores of choice properties within and outside the country despite the critical and ‘lucrative’ positions he has held over the years is a mark of asceticism and frugality for which he is still regarded by the teeming masses of the North. It is remarkable that he is held in much higher esteem by this electorally critical constituency than most former retired military officers from the North that are far away wealthier than him.

His democratic credentials remain indelible as he has allowed free and fair elections in which even his party has lost elections in a number of states. Some of his military predecessors as President who proclaim their Messianic morality from the rooftops in obscenely nauseating self-adulatory public epistles have an odious legacy of reckless election rigging and compulsive material acquisition.

If he has a weakness, it is that Buhari trusts those he has appointed into public office, many times on the recommendation of those who were with him in his many years in the political wilderness after his overthrow in a palace coup in 1986, virtually absolutely. His style is to give them a free hand to carry out their duties without interference. Unfortunately, many of these do not hesitate to hide behind the toga of his perceived integrity to pursue policies that feather their personal, selfish and allegedly pecuniary ends.

One of such self-serving appointees is Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele. It is inexplicable, even unthinkable, that such a key player in regulating the country’s financial sector, a job that requires the highest degree of restraint, sobriety and integrity, would actually collect the APC presidential nomination form for N100 million and even attempt to contest the party’s primaries without vacating his office; that hundreds of personally branded vehicles estimated at billions of Naira would be bought for his campaign and paraded on national television.

It is this unprecedented, unwarranted, reckless and possibly criminal politicization of the sensitive office of CBN governor that has prompted widespread suspicion and outcry about Emefiele’s Naira redesign policy which, with an impossibly short deadline to dispose of old Naira notes and exchange them for acutely scarce new notes, a few weeks to a general election, has caused a severe Naira scarcity and foisted avoidable hardship on poor Nigerians throughout the country. This policy is unimpeachable buts its implementation horrendous and catastrophic. Yet, Emefiele is adamant. Is this Emefiele’s ultimate revenge against those who clinched the presidential ticket of a party whose presidential candidate he sought in futility to be?

If so, his present venture will surely end up the way his presidential did – a colossal failure. But does Emefiele have a heart for the groaning of millions of Nigerians in Banking halls and ATM queues across the country? Does he have the humaneness to realize that this misbegotten policy would compound the severe hardships already being experienced due to the protracted acute fuel scarcity? Does he care a hoot about the historical legacy of his boss and benefactor, President Buhari?  These are sad but pertinent questions to ask. Emefiele typically exemplifies the ironies of PMB’s paradoxical legacy.           

For the humanistic scholar and thinker, man is the be-all and end-all of existence. Only that which is material, that which can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled and felt is real. The spiritual is thus mere fantasy and thus no more than the creation of the fertility of the human imagination. This is perhaps what Marxists mean when they describe consciousness as a creation and reflection of matter and not vice-versa. Of course, not all radical academics are of the humanistic philosophical persuasion. Thus, the late Marxist political scientist, Professor Aaron Gana, for instance, started his Convocation lecture at the University of Jos with the famous declaration, “Let me start this lecture with two apologies. One is that because I am a “Jesus person” I am giving this lecture in Jesus name (Amen). My apology here is to those who might be offended by this declaration”. In giving this apology, Professor Gana obviously had in mind not only those who were not of a Christian religious persuasion but even more so those who are of a humanistic, materialistic, disposition particularly in an academic environment.

Many humanistic thinkers reject the notion that man is essentially and fundamentally flawed as a result of sin and thus hopelessly and helplessly in need of a savior and redeemer to reconcile him to God and salvage him from an innate disposition to evil leading to eternal damnation. ‘I am the captain of my soul and the master of my destiny’ is the enduring credo of the humanistic ideologue. For him, man is a perfect creation with no spiritual flaws. If so, however, how then do we explain the evil we can see all around us transcending social classes, levels of educational attainment, socio-economic status as well as across all categorizations of nations – developing, underdeveloped or developed? The humanist has no answer to the problem of prevalent and persistent evil in human nature and society. Is it any wonder then that such humanist ‘saviours’ of man as Lenin, Stalin or Mao Tse Tung, for example, did not flinch from slaughtering large numbers of people in striving to salvage society and promote what they perceive as the common good of mankind in their respective societies even though the means towards the achievement of their goals were manifestly evil?

Like Professor Gana, Professor Diji Aina comes across in his inaugural lecture under focus here as essentially a ‘Jesus person’. Thus, for him, factionalism has its roots in the inherent spiritually flawed nature of man that predisposes the individual to pervasive selfishness and self-centeredness thus fostering negative and dysfunctional factionalism across diverse sectors of society. As he put it, “The implication of the foregoing is that factionalism is the outward manifestation of a sinful (rebellious) heart, covetousness and of fallen humanity…In the biblical context, factions are outcomes of rebellious acts and are often created via subtle persuasion to upturn natural order and events. In Genesis 3:1-6, the serpent, portrayed as “more crafty than man” asked, “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” From this spiritual analytic paradigm, Professor Aina concludes that “The moral lesson here is that it is only by allowing the indwelling Holy Spirit that we can have eternal peace, one that propels cooperative rather than degenerative spirit that results in factions and its attendant consequences of conflict and violence”.

After a detailed and exhaustive excursion into the manifestations of factionalism in Nigeria right from the colonial era through to the first, second, aborted third and now fourth Republic, Professor Aina posits that “It was not until the advent of crude oil as a major, national, income-earning source that the personal lust over state resources became so evident. Hitherto, it had been shrouded in a regional, economic interest-driven struggle for the political soul of the nation”. It is instructive in this regard that in the first republic, the most progressive, rapidly modernizing and prosperous part of the country, the Western Region, was the most affected by a fierce destructive factionalism within the ruling party, the Action Group, that split the party down the middle, fostered the massive rigging of regional elections, degenerated into widespread anarchic violence that ultimately resulted in the January, 1966 coup and the collapse of democratic rule only six years after independence.

Although the military was initially welcomed by large sections of the populace as a redeeming political Messiah which intervened to save the country from the misrule and venality of the politicians, it took little time before the intervening military itself became the victims of divisive organizational factionalism that deepened ethno-regional mistrust, bred widespread instability and severely threatened the country’s cohesion and continued existence. As Professor Aina pungently and lucidly put it, “Resources accruable from crude oil are largely administered by those who are located outside the terrain of crude oil exploitation thereby creating factions and struggle for control. This resulted in separatist agitations, which eventually led to recurring military coups and transition governments in what Oyediran and others documented as “Transition Without End”.

Professor Aina continues by depicting the linkage among militarism, crude oil, economic parasitism of the elite and state fragility. In his words, “Military insurgency and counter-insurgency took the odious dimension, not only truncating the development of civilian rule but the destruction of the socio-political and economic fabric of the nation. Corruption became ubiquitous, evil and malignant. Even the clergy that once served as distant echo of “voice of reason” got engulfed in the greasing of palms and monetary inducement to gain public endorsement…Nigeria is evidently at crossroads. As I have documented in a number of publications, and as many other scholars have confirmed, the factions have multiplied, metamorphosed and transmogrified becoming malignant and inimical to national progress. They have left in their wake multifaceted fragmentations that have resulted in over one million people killed in just 30 months of a civil war and scores of other people most recently in the Niger-Delta insurgency and an international terror-induced hydra-headed insurgency known as Boko Haram”.

The lecturer documents the pervasive and persistent factionalization of political parties and groups in the current fourth republic since 1999, the deepening of corrupt elite enrichment through access to state power, rampant political vagrancy of the polite elite from one party to the other in desperate quest for platforms to contest for public office with scant regard for fidelity to party ideology, philosophy or principles. Just as intra-party factionalism was partly responsible for the loss of the PDP’s control of power at the centre to the emergent APC in 2015, no sooner had the new party assumed office than it became bogged down with fragmentation and factionalism leading not only to organizational immobility but also competing cabals in government resulting in state paralysis on diverse fronts.

According to the author, “Assessing the new ruling party, (APC), as more or less a replica of the former ruling party (PDP), Schineider (2015), dubbed the APC as “an opportunistic coalition of interests.” In  the scenario that ended the seventh assembly, “cross carpeting”, which was the buzzword of of the politics of the 1960s was replaced with “defection”. All it took to decamp or defect in Nigeria’s puerile political ecology was to feel shortchanged in the sharing of the national cake at any point time”. As the countdown to next year’s elections continues, the political elite in control of state power persist in behaving like economic vampires, sucking the resources that should be the lifeblood of providing for the wellbeing of the generality of the people, and rendering the state even more fragile as manifested by pervasive criminality, kidnapping, banditry, rape, incompetent economic management and the contestation of the very sovereignty of the state by criminal gangs and terroristic elements.

Even then, with the evidently increasing autonomy of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and the intensification of the utilization of technology to enhance the credibility and transparency of the electoral process, the electorate may increasingly begin to more effectively utilize the power of the ballot to effect positive change in the efficacy and quality of governance in the country.

Although Professor Aina proposes no less than ten recommendations to deal with and minimize the dysfunctional effects of degenerative factionalism in society, I will conclude by citing only one of these because it brings us right back to the spiritual underpinning of his lecture, with which we began the second part of this review. In his words, “The political society should be re-oriented towards cooperative and competitive rather than degenerative factionalism. This can be achieved if there is a deliberate effort/program towards minimizing crass materialism in the national psyche of the citizenry, using the East Asian “tiger” and Scandinavian countries’ experiences as benchmarks. I call for a return to primitive godliness, a lifestyle that aligns with the biblical aphorism “righteousness exalts a nation, sin is a reproach”. Factionalism is rooted in self and sin”.

• This article was first published September 17 2022

In the run up to what is shaping up to be the most consequential and momentous elections at national and state levels in February and March this year since 1999, organized labour in Lagos State, in an unprecedented move, recently declared its open support for the re-election of governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu for a second term in office. At a mega endorsement rally organized by labour unions in the state, teeming members of the Lagos State chapters of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC), the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the Nigerian Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), the Radio, Television, Theatre and Arts Workers Union of Nigeria (RATTAWU), the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria ((ASCSN),  the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the association of herbal medicine dealers, declared and demonstrated their support not just for the candidacy of Sanwo-Olu but also the presidential aspiration of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, flag bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Was this a needless politicization of organized labour and an adventure into baseless and unjustifiable partisanship? Nobody who rationally considers the reasons articulated by the labour unions can credibly reach such a conclusion. The labour leaders gave concrete and verifiable justifications for their action.

 Stressing that the labour movement could not sit on the fence in an election in which Sanwo-Olu, whom she described as the most ‘labour-friendly’ governor was contesting, the NLC Chairman in Lagos State, Comrade Agnes Funmilayo Sessi, said the decision to unanimously support his re-election was predicated on Sanwo-Olu’s fulfillment of his promises to the movement. In her words, “Before we embarked on this rally, we all agreed at our respective congresses to support Sanwo-Olu to continue as our Governor. We made the decision before today but we only came out to display our solidarity with him publicly. What we have done right in our house, we are showing to the world. This is the first time the Organized Labour in Lagos is taking an open position to endorse the candidate of a political party. We are doing this because Sanwo-Olu has introduced unprecedented reforms to improve the welfare and the well-being of workers. We are coming out with our full chest to support the Governor. We are deciding our fate by being part of the electorate that will return the most labour-friendly governor. This is the decision all workers agreed upon and there is no going back”.  

Among reasons for this decision by organized labour in Lagos, according to Comrade Sessi, are upward revision of salaries, prompt pension remittance as well as payment of benefits to deceased workers’ families, health insurance coverage for state employees, free transport scheme and training opportunities for workers provided by the Sanwo-Olu administration. Apart from appointing a representative of labour in the state Cabinet, Comrade Sessi noted that Sanwo-Olu was the first governor to donate free hectares of land towards a housing scheme for workers and land in the Central Business District to build a befitting secretariat for organized labour. Corroborating the position of the NLC Chairman, the Chairman of the Lagos State chapter of the TUC, Comrade Gbenga Ekundayo, said Sanwo-olu had brought workers closer to the decision-making process pointing out that “Democracy is about inclusion and giving listening ears to the plight of the people. We have tested Sanwo-Olu and we have found him to have a listening ear. He also has a large heart to accommodate. We have decided and agreed. We are coming out en mass in the next election to vote for APC candidates in the presidential election and the state election”.

The relationship between organized labour and the ruling party in Lagos State in its various mutations since 1999 – Alliance for Democracy (AD), Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and now All Progressives Congress (APC) has been an interesting and intriguing one. At the inception of the Tinubu administration in 1999, the government had a frosty relationship with organized labour which went on a protracted strike over the state’s initial difficulties in paying the new N7,500 minimum wage arbitrarily set by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration without involving states in the negotiations with labour. Although Tinubu’s predecessor, Major General Mohammed Buba Marwa, had improved the state’s Internally Generated Revenue from N300 million to N600 million monthly, the state’s public sector wage bill was in excess of N800 million monthly, which meant she was almost entirely dependent on federal allocations from the centre.

Led by the militant union activist, the late Comrade Ayodele Akele, the workers insisted that the state government must pay the new minimum wage. Pointing out that apart from paying workers’ salaries, the government had various challenges to confront in diverse sectors including the environment, health, education, transportation, security and housing sectors among others, Tinubu pleaded for time for his administration to rejig the finances of the state after which it would be able to even exceed the minimum wage. An uneasy tension subsisted between the two sides until the administration was gradually able to systematically improve on the wages and welfare of workers as its financial engineering efforts began to yield results. It is instructive that at the end of Tinubu’s eight-year tenure, organized labour organized a day-long reception in his honour at the Adeyemi Bero auditorium at the State Secretariat, Alausa, where the governor was showered with laudations and encomiums ending his term in a blaze of glory.

The close and harmonious relationship between Sanwo-Olu and organized labour is, of course, not surprising. Between 2007 and 2011, the governor served as the Lagos State Commissioner for Establishment, Training and Pensions during which period he had the responsibility of managing the relationship between the government and the labour unions. It is thus understandable that he has a thorough understanding of issues in the labour sector and the challenges confronting workers. For instance, during a working tour of the State Secretariat mid last year, the governor in an interactive session with the workers noted that “I have looked around and I know there is pressure and high level of inflation in the country. There is high cost of living everywhere. Last month at the Cabinet meeting I instructed the Office of the Head of Service and the Ministry of Establishment to start work on how we will increase the salaries of the entire workforce…We will also give our Directors 100 official vehicles before the end of this month so we will start doing this in phases”. The enthusiasm with which the workers have embraced his second term aspiration indicates that Sanwo-Olu has not let them down in this regard.

Another indication of the priority the Sanwo-Olu administration accords Labour is its fidelity in the payment of Pensions of retired staff as indicated by Comrade Sessi. The administration has reportedly paid over N47 billion into the Retirement Savings Account (RSA ) of its retirees since its inception in 2019. 12, 642 retirees from the mainstream public service, local government service, State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) , Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM) are enjoying their retirement benefits under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) in the state. The administration had paid not less than N2,522 billion into the Retirement Savings Accounts of another set of 755 retirees for the month of December, 2022.

However, it is not just members of organized labour that have thrown their weight behind the presidential aspiration of Tinubu as well as Sanwo-Olu’s second term bid. Thousands of waste managers and Private Sector Participants (PSP) operators in refuse collection recently gathered at the Mobolaji Johnson Arena, formerly known as Onikan Stadium to declare their support for the APC candidates. The National President of the Association of Waste Managers of Nigeria (AWMAN), Mr. David Oriyomi, recalled that his group was the first organization that endorsed Sanwo-Olu in 2018 and said that they were pleased that “he has proven us right by the great work that he has done in the state and for the environment”.

And explaining the association’s endorsement of Tinubu, Oriyomi said, “He nurtured and empowered us through the small-medium business model and successive governments have built on his solid foundation. Lagos was transformed and received numerous accolades as one of the cleanest states in Nigeria. When our livelihood came under attack and over 350 businesses were faced with the risk of bankruptcy, Asiwaju came to our rescue by speaking out for us and thereby securing our livelihood Today, the small business model established by Asiwaju, has been replicated in over nine states. It is for this reason we as an association are fully behind and wholly committed to campaigning and voting for BAT as the next President of Nigeria”.

Were he made of lesser leadership stuff, the unanticipated Coronavirus pandemic with Lagos State as its epicenter in Nigeria could well have destabilized and derailed the Sanwo-Olu administration. Even as the state sought to cope with that challenge, it was confronted with the #EndSars demonstrations of 2020 which degenerated into mindless violence with widespread killings and the wanton destruction of public and private property estimated at over N2 trillion in the state. Sanwo-Olu managed these grave crises adroitly steering the ship of the Centre of Excellence back to calm and safe waters. It is a testimony to the governor’s astuteness and focus that his administration has been able to deliver on the first phase of the path-breaking Blue Line Light Rail Mass Transit, which runs from Mile 2 to Marina while work has commenced on the Red Line which will run from Agbado to Marina. These projects which will transform the landscape of Lagos in a revolutionary manner have been works in progress in fits and starts over the last two decades.

In addition to delivering on key road projects such as the completion of the Pen Cinema Flyover, construction of Lagos-Ogun boundary roads, Lekki-Oniru traffic circulation projects, road networks in Somolu, Ikoyi and Victoria Island, the Lekki-Victoria Garden City Road, Lekki-Epe-Ibeju Road expansion project and the commissioning of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lane from Oshodi-Abuke Egba among others, the Sanwo-Olu administration has constructed over 308 inner roads across the 57 Local Government and Local Council Development Areas. The administration has completed and inaugurated 16 housing schemes in addition to constructing new classroom buildings across schools as well as health facilities at the grassroots just to mention a few sectors in which its impact has been felt. It is thus not surprising that Sanwo-Olu’s second term bid has also received the support of the over 4000 Community Development Associations (CDAs) in the state under the aegis of the Community Development Association Committee (CDAC). Presenting an endorsement flag to the governor at a rally at the Police College, Ikeja, the Chairman of the committee applauded the governor for projects executed by his administration across the state in fulfillment of his campaign promises for his first term.

With these mass-based endorsements, Sanwo-Olu’s re-election bid is a moving train.

THERE can be no disputing the fact that every successor to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu since the latter’s exit from the governorship of Lagos State after two terms in 2007 – Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), Mr. Akinwumi Ambode and now Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu – have been men of competence and accomplishment with proven and impressive records of performance. But none of these men had hidden the fact that at the core of their successes was the firm foundation laid for the state by the pioneering administration of Asiwaju Tinubu in this dispensation between 1999 and 2007. They were all largely guided at relative levels of fidelity by a 25-year Developmental Master Plan designed by the Tinubu administration to guide the trajectory of progress in the state from 1999 –2024. And it is instructive that, in one way or the other either as members of the State Executive Council or the State Bureaucracy, they were part of the envisioning and implementation of that Master Plan. In several ways, each of these successors of Tinubu improved on the level of performance inherited from his predecessor and Lagos continues to be the better for it as she is not only the country’s undisputed developmental pace setter, she has become the fourth largest economy in Africa.

Incidentally, a few weeks ago, Mr. Sanwo-Olu inaugurated the first phase of the 13km Blue Line Lagos Light Rail project designed to run from Mile 2 to Marina, a project that will transform and revolutionize the face of public transportation in the country’s commercial and economic nerve center. The governor, it is worthy of note, had been part of the conception of the project right from the days of the Tinubu administration when he was a member of the State Executive Council. Work on the Red Line Lagos Light Rail Project to run from Agbado through Agege to Oyingbo is steadily ongoing. At the last Ehingbeti Lagos State Economic Summit, another initiative that can be traced to the Tinubu administration and sustained by his successors, Sanwo-Olu inaugurated the new Lagos State Development Master Plan to run from 2022-2052, which will take off from where the last plan is closely reaching its terminus. The point is that development in Lagos State over the last 25 years has been planned, progressive, systematic, and continuous.

The big question is, as the first President of Nigeria in this dispensation between 1999 and 2007, did General Olusegun Obasanjo lay a solid and firm foundation for the continuous and sustained progress of Nigeria after him and did he lay a viable pathway for administrations succeeding him to follow and achieve success? The answer is a resounding no. Yet, in his infamous and characteristically verbose New Year open letter to Nigerians in which he endorsed the presidential candidacy of Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), the Ota farmer, gave the impression that he is the best thing that had ever happened to this country in terms of leadership. I remember that in his now largely forgotten book, ‘Not my Will’, Obasanjo had boasted that he had attained the office of leadership in Nigeria that the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo had sought in futility all his life at a relatively young age and with considerable ease. His unreflective mind so obviously lacking in depth could not ponder what quality of governance he offered the country as military Head of State, the credibility and integrity of the political transition programme organized by his military regime or the caliber of leadership that regime bequeathed to the country at the exit of the military in 1979.

What is most shocking is that when fate would entrust the leadership of the country in his hands again as elected President on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 1999, Obasanjo showed that he had learnt no useful lessons from the failures of his first coming in the pre-second republic military dispensation. In terms of policy conceptualization and implementation, his administration was disjointed and disarticulated. In his first term between 1999 and 2003, Obasanjo completely abandoned the management of the economy to his Deputy, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, while he junketed around the globe pretending to be an international statesman. Of course, a wily Atiku implemented a wide-ranging privatization programme that saw the sale of public assets to cronies and friends in a most opaque and brazen manner.

Incidentally, in a video that has just gone viral online, a former aide of Atiku, Michael Achimugu, captures the PDP presidential candidate elaborating on how he had set up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) on behalf of himself and Obasanjo through which humongous amounts of public funds, including N100 million from the former governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, was siphoned into party and private pockets. We can recollect the famous damaging accusations and counter-accusations between Obasanjo and Atiku over the mutual mismanagement of funds of the Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF). How about the widely condemned corralling of public and private entities to donate to the Obasanjo presidential library in Abeokuta, now a sprawling business outfit from which the former President benefits financially? We can go on and on citing one misdemeanor after another by St Mathew Obasanjo.

In his second term, after he had fallen out with Atiku for political reasons, Obasanjo suddenly discovered how corrupt Atiku allegedly was and took over the management of the economy. He inaugurated the National Economic Employment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) under the aegis of his Economic Adviser, Professor Charles Soludo. The programme neither halted the phenomenon of growth without development nor the continued de-industrialization that compounded the menace of mass unemployment. Unlike in Lagos, there was no policy continuity at the center as Obasanjo’s successors wasted no time in jettisoning the NEEDS programme. While the late President Umaru Yar’Adua implemented his own 7-point Agenda, President Goodluck Jonathan when he assumed office after Yar’Adua’s demise, introduced his own Transformation Agenda. The lack of policy continuity arising from Obasanjo’s defective leadership is one of the reasons for the protracted crisis that continues to plague the Nigerian economy even though a plethora of other factors are also implicated.

Obasanjo claims with characteristic pomposity in his letter endorsing Obi that “I have come to realize a number of factors in character, attributes and in attitude that are necessary in the job of directing the affairs of Nigeria successfully and at a time like this”. He goes on to mention these as track record, vision that is authentic, honest, and realistic, character and attributes of obedience to God as well as physical and mental capacity. Beyond his mere assertions that Obi has an edge over other major candidates in terms of his criteria, Obasanjo gives no concrete reasons as regards how he came to this conclusion. In any case, is Obasanjo qualified to lecture anybody on leadership attributes or succession? The answer is a sad no.

At the expiration of his two-term tenure in 2007 and the calamitous fate of his Third Term Agenda, Obasanjo virtually forced the then-former Katsina State governor, the late Mallam Umaru Yar’Adua, on the nation in his scandalous ‘do or die’ 2007 elections as President. Yar’Adua was an easy-going, nice and humble man. But just like Peter Obi now, all he had going for him as governor of Katsina State was his frugality and ascetic disposition. Not much is also known of the accomplishments of Dr. Jonathan outside Bayelsa State as governor of the state for two terms. Obasanjo obviously made his decision to back these two men to succeed him as President and Vice President, respectively, either most cavalierly or for the most cynical of reasons.  Nearly three decades earlier, Obasanjo’s regime as military Head of State had organized a political transition programme that had seen the emergence of another very nice, gentle, and humble but largely ineffectual Alhaji Shehu Shagari as elected President on the platform of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

Yet, there were several tested and accomplished politicians, statesmen and administrators such as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mallam Aminu Kano, Chief Anthony Enahoro, or Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim who could have offered the country more astute and competent leadership than the NPN did at the time. Perhaps if the Obasanjo regime’s transition programme had been handled differently with an eye on the quality of its successors, the Second Republic (1979-1983) would have taken a different, more positive turn and Nigeria’s political as well as socio-economic trajectory would have been brighter and more inspiring.

The brutally frank and honest Umaru Yar’Adua was quick to admit that the election that brought him to power, a poll organized by the Obasanjo administration, was largely fraudulent and lacking in credibility and went ahead to empower a panel to suggest far-reaching electoral reforms. He also wasted no time in reversing a number of his predecessor’s policies such as the hurried sale of the country’s refineries towards the tail end of the Obasanjo administration. When another of his ‘mentees’, Dr. Jonathan came to power, he also proved to be his own man and Obasanjo characteristically fell out with him publicly through his famous art of caustic letter writing.

It therefore is quite baffling when Obasanjo declares most ridiculously that “Most of us in good conscience can testify to competence when we see any anywhere. What is masqueraded as ‘competence’ is self-interest and nepotism”. Nothing in Obasanjo’s career suggests that he begins to understand anything about leadership competence or the acumen to groom, nurture or select leadership successors. Although he cannot be accused of being nepotistic, his actions in public office have often smacked of self-interest through and through. His advice in this regard can thus only be heeded at our collective peril.

In dismissing the Buhari administration as having failed woefully in his view, Obasanjo cites an instance of the grave security crises in many parts of the country. But he forgets that the inflexible and overly centralized security architecture in the country was a constant point of contention and disputation between him and Tinubu as Lagos State governor. Tinubu had always pointed out to him that the nomenclature of the governor of a state as Chief Security Officer of the state was meaningless in the absence of a decentralized policing system. Obasanjo was adamant in the preservation of the so obviously over-centralized and dysfunctional status quo. Is he not then also implicated in the security conundrum witnessed after him?

The Tinubu administration had initiated the revolutionary Enron/AES Independent Power Project (IPP) to generate electricity  for Lagos – 260MW from barges in Ikorodu in the first phase and 540MW from Morogbo in Badagry in the second phase. The Obasanjo administration ensured the project never got off. The Lagos Right Rail project could not proceed at the desired pace partly because the Obasanjo administration was hesitant to give the requisite approvals from the federal government.

It is therefore difficult to see how in any way Obasanjo could claim to have been Tinubu’s mentor at any time.  In temper, disposition to subordinates, ideological orientation, and commitment to federalist principles or democratic tenets, the two could not be more dissimilar. I think the key to Obasanjo’s endorsement of Obi can be found in the concluding phase of his letter when he writes that “One other important point to make about Peter is that he is a needle with thread attached to it from North and South and he may not get lost. In other words, he has people who can pull his ears if and when necessary.”

Yes, an elected leader at any level must be accountable. But that accountability on the part of the executive at any level must be to critical institutions such as the legislature as well as the political party on which platform such a person has been elected. The constitution also provides for a body like the National Council of State (NCS) made up of former Heads of State among other supposedly accomplished and wise statesman to give advice to the President as may be required. Obasanjo obviously thought Umaru Yar’Adua or Goodluck Jonathan were needles whose threads were in his hands and whom he could manipulate as he willed. He calculated that he could still pursue his Third Term agenda indirectly through them. He was disastrously wrong. Eminent leaders can of course always seek an audience with elected leaders to offer advice if they are so inclined.

It is not of course that Obasanjo did not have a number of academic and professional stars in his administration. But most of these were mainstream, orthodox intellectuals and administrators at best, brilliant but imprisoned to receive theories and ideas and thus incapable of thinking outside the box. It was also why Obi’s administration as governor in Anambra State was largely humdrum, mediocre, and demonstrated little dynamic or creative thinking. It was, therefore, inclined to save money because it probably could not devise what to do with the funds to address the infrastructure deficit or enhance the quality of lives of the citizenry. Not in terms of quality of leadership, policy quality and continuity, or appropriate leadership nurturing and succession has Obasanjo at any time demonstrated superior acumen to Tinubu.

(First published on Saturday, April 21, 2018, this piece has acquired renewed resonance in the face of the fresh controversy on the non-remittance of huge revenues running into trillions of Naira accruing from stamp duty deductions into the Federation Account allegedly for several years now. The protracted economic crisis and attendant crash crunch which the article cited as necessitating urgent action to retrieve the funds for the benefit of the Nigerian people has worsened accompanied by a bludgeoning of the country’s debt burden and the further immiseration of the Nigerian people. As noted in the piece, this newspaper was one of the earliest to publish not just an investigative report but also an editorial as well as at least two columns on the then-emergent stamp duty crisis. We reproduce the column to refresh the minds of our readers on the pertinent issues in contention).

Almost three years into the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, Nigeria continues to walk a fiscal tightrope. The punitive wages of economic recession from which the nation has only just fragilely emerged was partly the result of the horrific corruption of the preceding PDP years of the locusts, which was compounded by the initial political inertia and policy lethargy of the emergent All Progressives Congress (APC) administration at the centre. Despite the Buhari administration’s substantial stanching of the massive haemorrhaging of public resources through its anti-corruption strategies as well as its herculean efforts to diversify the economy and enhance self-reliance, millions of Nigerians still remain in the stranglehold of mass immiseration.

As the Federal Government has no choice but to intensify its quest for foreign loans in the face of its largely inherited fiscal crisis, the World Bank this week raised an alarm over the country’s rising external indebtedness along with other African countries. A majority of state governments owe several months of workers’ salaries, allowances and pensions and are unable to meet other obligations to the general public. The virtual paralysis of federal health institutions nationwide as a result of the ongoing strike action by aggrieved health workers over unmet demands illustrates the near state of emergency into which governance has been thrown in Nigeria due to severe financial denudation.

Against this background, is it not utterly scandalous that about N20 trillion, being revenues from Stamp Duties which ought to have been long paid into the Federation Account for onward disbursement to the federal and state governments, continue to be illegally withheld by the requisite financial institutions and authorities that ought to know better? It is significant that the creative professional and financial engineering ingenuity that led to the generation of this fund is that of Nigerians and not any foreign experts. Specifically, the credit goes to the School of Banking Honours (SBH), an Innovative Enterprise Institution (IEI) and monotechnic registered under Nigerian law to research banking operations and collaborate with banks and the government on banking matters.  On September 11, last year, this newspaper published an exhaustive investigative story by the Group Business Editor, Simeon Ebulu, detailing how the government and people of Nigeria had for several years been denied the opportunity of benefiting from the humongous funds reaped through stamp duties from the banking public but shrouded in suspicious bureaucratic secrecy. In the report, the SBH’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tola Adekoya, disclosed how, in pursuit of its mandate, the institution’s Job Creation and Research Department discovered that the country was losing gargantuan amounts of revenue, which ought to accrue to the Federation Account, as a result of the non-enforcement of relevant provisions of extant Stamp Duty laws as well as the Federal Government Financial Regulations (2009).

To plug this loophole and correct the anomaly, the SBH approached the Nigerian Postal Services (NIPOST) on 20th April, 2012, and intimated the latter of an unexploited opportunity in the Stamp Duties Act, 2004, to increase its internally generated revenue by affixing adhesive stamp on banking receipts as provided for in the law. On the basis of this initiative, the SBH entered into a Masters Services Agreement with NIPOST on September 14, 2012, to help facilitate the collection of Stamp Duties on banking receipts in compliance with the Stamp Duty Act, 2004. Armed with the Master’s Services Agreement with NIPOST, the SBH approached the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for authorization to engage Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and other qualified institutions as collecting agents in the stamping and remittance of legally stipulated stamp duties. The CBN gave the required approval on December 3, 2012. And on October 15, 2015, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) issued the SBH a Copyright Certificate (No. LW1023) affirming its copyright ownership of the initiative on stamp duty collection.

Before the initiative of the SBH, stamp duty on all Cheques with a value above N500,000 had been paid to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) since 1993 with the revenue allegedly not remitted to the Federation Account over the years as required by law. With the intervention of the SBH, however, the scope of the Stamp Duty was vastly expanded to encompass N50 per banking transaction covering manual and e-transfers from N1000 and above. The mandatory stamp duty payment was also extended to cover Local e-transfers, international transfers, internet-banking, ATMs, Point of Sale and e-mobile all covered under the CBN Act, 1991, but inexplicably overlooked until the lapse was pointed out by the SBH.

Apparently exhausting its patience after waiting for three years with no stamp duty revenue reportedly remitted to the Federation Account and its legal entitlement on the project not met, the SBH issued a Demand Notice to the NIBSS dated 10th March, 2015, entitled ‘Stamp Duty on Electronic Receipts (2013-2014)’ alleging that the sum of N7.719 trillion accruing from stamp duty on electronic cashless transfer between 2013 and 2014 had been illegally kept with the NIBSS rather being transferred to the Federation Account for the benefit of the federal and state governments. According to the SBH, the over N7 trillion in question represents an average of N160 billion realized daily from the specified banking transactions in only five states in 2013 and 2014.

The institution estimates that when account is taken of the amount that has inevitably accrued on stamp duty over an additional three-year period (2014-2017), the unremitted revenue to the Federation Account stands at about N20 trillion. This implies that the 36 states will be entitled to no less than N200 billion each from the first tranche of the inexplicably withheld revenue.

In an editorial on the issue published in its 18th September, 2017, edition, this newspaper wrote: “For a country just getting out of the throes of recession and needing every kobo it can get to accelerate the rate of economic recovery and further growth, the SBH’s allegations are too serious to ignore. The appropriate authorities must urgently look into the issue with a view to unearthing the truth and recovering any due amount into the Federation Account if the SBH’s claims are found to be credible”. And true to his anti-corruption credentials, President Buhari reportedly authorized that the issues in contention be investigated and the verified facts made available to him expeditiously.

It was certainly on this basis that the presidency on 12th October, 2017, approved the retention of the SBH in partnership with Messrs. International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC as the legal Stamp Duties recovery Agent/Consultant with a mandate to “recover over N20 trillion from Nigerian Inter Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to the Federation Account in line with your patent right now in force”. While the Presidency assured the SBH that “the Federal Government will provide you and your partner (International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC) with adequate security during the assignment”, it however stated that “your consultancy fee is 7.5% of the total amount recovered as against 20% earlier agreed in the Master Services Agreement with the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST)”.

And obviously to underscore its seriousness on the matter, the Presidency followed up with a written directive to the Central Bank Governor on 19th October, 2017, stating the official role of SBH and International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC in the recovery of “the sum of N20.0 trillion Stamp Duty through the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc. (NIBSS)” and stressing that “The Consultants will introduce a sustainable template to meet the CBN directive of 3rd December, 2012, for Messrs. School of Banking Honours to sweep Stamp Duty accruing from banks and other financial institutions into Government coffers, as patented under the Law”. The apex bank was further mandated to “direct the Management of NIBSS, Banks and other Financial Institutions to cooperate with the Consultants to access all records relevant to the success of the assignment”.

Despite the unequivocal presidential directive, the SBH claims it has met a brick wall in its efforts to commence work on its mandate particularly from the NIBSS. While the SBH met with legal representatives of the CBN on February 1st, 2018, its meeting with the NIBSS scheduled for 5th February, 2018, was reportedly aborted with the latter claiming to be still awaiting a directive from the CBN on the issue. As millions of Nigerians continue to wallow in ever deepening poverty, it is unconscionable to allow N20 trillion that ought to be paid into the Federation Account to ameliorate the plight of the people to continue to lie idle for no apparent just cause.

If the NIBSS has alternative facts to render the claims of the SBH nugatory, it should make them available for the consideration of the presidency. To continue to stonewall as the NIBSS seems to be doing in the face of the SBH’s legal claims and the clear position of the presidency is an act of intolerable impunity.

WHO exactly is Jesus Christ, the rock solid foundation on which Christianity rests? Some say he was a great man, a moral exemplar, an inimitable teacher or a gifted story teller among other perceptions. When Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say I am?”, they replied that some said he was John the Baptist, others that he was Elijah or one of the prophets. However, when Jesus asked who the disciples themselves thought he was, Peter responded by saying that Jesus was the son of God and the expected Messiah of mankind. Impressed, Jesus said this truth could only have been revealed to Peter by the Holy Spirit.

For those who perceive the Lord Jesus in mere human terms as morally good or as one of the great out of the many great personages of history, Professor Clive Staples Lewis, one of the brightest minds of the 20th century, a former atheist turned Christian, affirmed in his book, ‘Mere Christianity’, that “I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God’. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God or else a madman or something else…But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that door open to us. He did not intend to”.

It is astonishing that with a substantial number of Nigerians still unreached with the message of the gospel of Christ, and many more ranking among the billions in the world who remain completely at sea as regards who the man of galilee is, many Nigerian Christian leaders are so obviously preoccupied with and distracted by partisan politics especially in the run-up to next year’s elections. But the prime and most critical mission of the church is to preach good news of salvation through Christ and win souls into God’s kingdom. It is in this sense that the Lord Jesus described the church as the salt of the earth. But of what use is salt when it has lost its saltiness, Jesus asked?

Is the church losing its saltiness by descending into the arena of partisan politics? This appears to be the case sadly. But the church is not a political organization. It is first and foremost a spiritual body. A situation in which churches take partisan political positions and even some trying to corral their members to follow their choices by declaring on their altars that those who vote against a Christian candidate would go to hell, could have long run deleterious consequences especially because membership of churches comprise people of different partisan preferences.

Perhaps the first distraction for the Christian church in Nigeria was the astounding prosperity with which God has blessed her. This has led to an obsessive materialism on the part of many church leaders that has made it difficult to distinguish the church from the world. Prosperity is not a sin and poverty is not synonymous with virtue. But the prosperity gospel can easily become a snare to the church if the emphasis is on the acquisition of wealth, the competition among church leaders to ride the best posh vehicles, fly in their personal private jets or live in the most majestic houses as well as build the most magnificent, sprawling houses of worship. I can recall the man of God who famously declared that he wished the COVID-19 pandemic could continue to rage because it was during the lock-down that he bought another private jet. Statements like this, breed distrust and discontent against Christianity and the gospel by many who believe that the Christian Ministry has become nothing but a money-spinning enterprise by men of God who have become desensitized to the poverty of many of even their members many of who, ironically, pay their tithes and offerings faithfully. But I digress.

It is the pervasive and blatant political partisanship of many church leaders, particularly those of the Pentecostal persuasion that is the potential greatest danger to the credibility of Christ’s gospel and the integrity of the church today. The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, has strived more than any other candidate in the run-up to the 2023 election, to play on the Christian religious card just as former President Goodluck Jonathan did during the 2015 elections, which he nevertheless lost. Earlier this month, Obi was at the annual Convention of the Winners Chapel, Ota, popularly tagged ‘Shiloh’, where, just like in the many other churches whose events and gatherings he has attended in what can only be described as politically opportunistic church tourism, he was introduced by colluding clergy in a way as to elicit excitable applause for him.

Speaking on the occasion, the founder and spiritual leader of the church, Bishop David Oyedepo, claimed that what Nigeria needs now is not a leader but a deliverer. Unfortunately, he did not expatiate sufficiently on exactly what he meant by that distinction. Was he referring to Obi as his envisaged deliverer of Nigeria? If so, he did not state what the characteristics of a deliverer are and how Obi fits the bill. Was Obi’s performance as two-term governor of Anambra State so stellar that we can credibly rely on his record to conclude that he is Nigeria’s long-desired deliverer? It is not enough for a man of God, no matter how revered, to magisterially declare one candidate as the deliverer Nigeria needs without offering compelling logical and empirical reasons for his arriving at that conclusion.

Or, could it have been a revelation from God? If so, will church leaders who take blatantly partisan positions and speak ex-cathedra from their altars in the name of God not risk bringing God to disrepute if such political projections turn out to be wrong and misguided as has happened a number of times in the past? Bishop Oyedepo told his congregation that he warned the nation in 2015 that the nation was headed for a disastrous crisis if his voice was not heeded on the election. At that time he was one of those Christian leaders rooting for Jonathan and the PDP. He gave the impression in his sermon that the challenges the country faces today started with the APC assuming power in 2015. The truth is that the problems of today have their roots in the venality, incompetence and lack of vision of the PDP’s 16 years in power although the APC ought to have done much better in confronting these challenges including insecurity and the management of the economy. Unfortunately, the Christian leadership was implicated in the massive corruption of the Jonathan years. 

It is difficult to understand how some Pentecostal pastors in particular are doing everything to influence their congregations to vote for a supposedly Christian candidate in the person of Peter Obi. This divisive campaign and its undisguised Christian religious undertone may swing a good number of votes in certain quarters to Obi but it may at the same not sway an also not inconsiderable number of Christians from voting for other candidates. On the other hand, Obi’s openly divisive campaign will definitely hurt the (LP) candidate grievously in huge Muslim voting blocs across the country.

In any case, what has been Obi’s track record in terms of his relationship with Christian leaders and the Christian church before now that he is seeking to ride on the back of Christians to occupy the country’s apex position of authority as President? Did he attend these church gatherings before now that he religiously does now? Is it true that he marginalized Anglicans and favoured Catholics as governor of Anambra State? Obi’s supporters claim that he returned Christian schools taken over by government to their owners as governor. But there is nothing spectacular about that.  Asiwaju Bola Tinubu returned mission schools to their original owners as governor of Lagos State. In fact, though a Muslim, Tinubu returned more schools to their original Christian mission owners than to the Muslim missions. Again, Tinubu built a chapel at the Lagos State House at Marina to enable Christian members of staff have a convenient place to observe their religious obligations.

Before Tinubu, there was only a Mosque at the State House. His wife is not just a Christian; she is a senior pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. Throughout his eight-year tenure as governor of Lagos State, the annual New Year thanksgiving service always held with the revered General Overseer of the RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, ministering. There is no evidence of Tinubu compelling members of his family to convert to his religion, which makes nonsense of the argument that a Muslim-Muslim ticket will lead to the Islamization of the country. In any case, how is that even constitutionally possible?

True, the church cannot be indifferent to the social, political and economic milieu within which it operates. But on no account must she descend into the partisan arena as a participant. Nigerian Pentecostals in particular must learn the appropriate lessons from the experience of the Evangelicals in America who had passionately backed former President Donald Trump without restraint only for the latter to lose the election to Joe Biden this year. Some Christian leaders cite the Biblical aphorism in the book of Proverbs that when the righteous rule, a nation prospers to justify their political partisanship. But who constitute the righteous? Does bearing a Christian name, attending church or even having lofty Christian titles necessarily indicative of righteousness?  It is dangerous for man to seek to usurp God’s sovereignty in determining who the leader of a country or entity will be at any time even though Christians have a responsibility of using their votes and prayerfully.

It is necessary to repeat that the primary and most critical mission of the church is to help save the souls of men through the preaching of the good news. In doing so, the church does not need to have men in high positions of authority such as President or Vice President etc. to achieve its goals. In his scintillating book, ‘Jesus: The Man Who lives’, the British journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge (1903- 1990), writes, “When he was approached by someone important like Nicodemus, it never seems to have occurred to him, as it surely would to any ordinary evangelist or promoter of good causes, that, such a man, with valuable contacts and influence, would be of service to his ministry. What he had to say to Nicodemus was precisely the same as what he had to say to the meanest beggar or the most disreputable tax collector – the equivalent, then, of today’s property-developer – that he must be reborn, and become a new man”.

The Lord Jesus avoided the palaces and mansions of the rich and powerful while on earth. Anytime he accepted an invitation to the habitations of the rich and influential such as Mathew the tax collector, it was to speak words of truth to them thus leading to their salvation. He was completely aloof to the politics of the Roman Empire and the desire of the Jews for liberation from the bondage of Rome. Stressing that his kingdom was not of this world, He rejected any attempt to be crowned King of the Jews by those desirous of a secular Messiah. Yet, a small band of his disciples, empowered by the Holy Spirit, turned the Roman Empire upside down and caused the behemoth to succumb to the message of a gospel spread by the most humble and lowliest of men.

In his tome, ‘The Penguin History of the World’, Professor J.M. Roberts states that “Emphatically, Jesus rejected the role of political leader and a political quietism was one of the meanings later discerned in a dictum which was to prove to be of terrible ambiguity: ‘My kingdom is not of this world”. And Malcolm Muggeridge reiterates this point in his submission that “In his teachings, too, Jesus continually stressed the fallacy of looking to this world and its rulers for help and guidance in fulfilling God’s purposes…the profound distrust of power which Jesus inculcated has lived on in the hearts of those who have lost him most and served him best”.