Category: Femi Orebe

By Femi Orebe

Opposition governors are being lured, or intimidated – according to Taraba state governor, Darius Ishaku – to decamp, APC chieftains are making a hash of  trying to ‘turn’  a once despised former President; the legislature is looking, more and more, like the Executive’s Siamese twins, eagerly working towards achieving a national Press for which the Minister of Information  – read government – will “approve, establish and disseminate a national Press Code and set standards to guide the conduct of the  print media, related media and media practitioners;

“(d) approve penalties and fines against violation of the Press Code by print media houses and media practitioners, including revocation of license.

“(e) receive, process and consider applications for the establishment, ownership and operation of print media and other related media houses;

“(f) with the approval of the minister, grant print media and other related licenses to any application considered worthy of such;

“(g) monitor activities of the press, media and other related media houses to ensure compliance with the National Press Code for professional and ethical conduct”.

“Section 3 (d) said that with the approval of the minister, the council can penalize media houses including revocation of licenses”.

All now reasonably suspended.

The cumulative effect of the amendments being proposed to the Press Bill by a member of the APC-  with no training or work experience in the media, and therefore, presumably inspired – would, like China in Hong Kong, “give the government an undiluted control of media houses and media practitioners in a democracy,  thereby jeopardizing free press.

A P C is obviously pursuing, or being pursued, by something and It  should not be farfetched to suggest that these flurry of mostly serpentine activities are coming on the heels of an internal self – examination  by the party, and ipso facto, the Buhari government, which examination most probably turned out unflattering, a mere  two years to the next election in which President Muhammadu Buhari, its once upon a time talisman, would not be a candidate or, alternatively, an effort  in aid of some political abracadabra, come 2023. Presently, the governor Buni- led Emergency Executive Committee of the party has been seemingly confused, dilly dallying, over fixing the programmes that will eventuate in its congress which may again be postponed..

Neither the party, nor the Buhari administration , needs get as panicky as to start working towards a one- party state, or attempting a throwback to the likes of Decrees 2 & 4 of the 1980’s when, coincidentally, President Buhari was Military Head of state. All these should, however,  tell  perspicacious Nigerians that we are probably  back in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, with its emphasis on “Propaganda, Totalitarianism and, more ominously, Subversion of reality”. But the Buhari government should rather grow democracy and with its plurality daily increasing in the National Assembly, become emboldened to facilitate a free society, not constrict it, and  improve the electoral system by adopting electronic transmission of election results in the  hope that, unlike 2019, the President would, this time around, append his signature.

I say all these believing  that if the government means well for  Nigeria, it still has more than enough time to right the wrongs of the Buhari administration headed, especially, by  a leader I  once so trusted that right from when he was only  a contestant at the APC Presidential primaries, I had staked my all and wrote on these pages that: “Nigeria, in its current dire straits needs Buhari more than he needs Nigeria”.

The starting point  for rejigging the    APC would be  for its minders not  to  get carried  away by whatever  sweet nothings those decamping governors are saying; things  like APC is the best thing to have ever happened  on the Nigerian political firmament. That, for me, will be  nothing but a ‘subversion of reality’ as Nigerians are deeply hurting, especially on the economic front with  a horrendous inflation, and the daily devaluation of the Naira ravaging them, not to mention the  insecurity that has taken over Nigeria. Not even during the Nigerian civil war were things this bad. The decamping governors will, as sure as day follows the night, rue the day. They will one day talk when they are treated like the Southwest chieftains of the party they are  now being clandestinely recruited to supplant, and replace or, at the least, reduce their influence within the party,  by those strategising  how the presidency will remain in the North after President Buhari. It is presently beyond the decamping governors to know that if this could happen to those who helped to end President Buhari’s serial failure  at the presidency, far worse would be their lot after they would have been used. If APC defeated PDP when it was the ruling party, why is it now suddenly afraid to fight PDP without first destroying it? Nigerians should ponder this. But the decampees should hear, and iinternalse this pithy Yoruba saying: opa ti a fi na iyale wa loke aja meaning that the cane used in beating the first wife is being kept, somewhere….  But that isn’t the real pity of what is currently playing out in the APC which some Northern governors appear to have literally captured. The real tragedy is that, until it is too late, those in the South, angling for the top post, would not see through this until it is too late.

Or what led those Northern APC leaders  into perambulating around former President Goodluck Jonathan, even visiting him at home in numbers, if not to find a fall guy they would dump at the last minute? I believe his education saw him past that incubating treachery.

I digress.

The outcome of the Nigerian condition today – go to any Nigerian market, or listen to radio or TV programmes on the  price of  commodities in the country to affirm or dispute my claims –  is  that President Buhari who, as a result of his incandescent personal integrity and ascetic lifestyle was  APC’s greatest attraction in 2015, and the reason the party humbled PDP out of office,  has become the party’s weakest link . The raison detre of government is the happiness of the greater majority of the population, said the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. But happiness has deserted  this country. Add to that, the president’s poor handing of the Nigerian diversity and it becomes obvious why APC is where it is. Should this level of  poverty, and  increasing youth unemployment,  persist, then banditry, rather than be tamed, would escalate beyond a resolution before something gives.

For APC to retain power in 2024, therefore, President Buhari must, deliberately, begin  to do many things differently. Without a scintilla of doubt, he is doing a lot in the area of infrastructure procurement, even though, too much borrowing has become its underside. With crude oil, Nigeria’s main  source of revenue, becoming increasingly unattractive as a result of developments in renewable energy, repayment could become a problem, and a burden on succeeding  generations.

The President must also now realise that a tree does not make a forest, and that there’s no way he can say of APC,  like the French  King Louis X1V said of France: “L’etat c’est moi”. He should, therefore,  embrace  plurality, inclusion, respect for, as well as accommodate, the party’s founding  leaders  especially from other parts of the country. That way, he will  rescue the party from those few Northern governors who believe it is theirs to deal with as they please. It is obvious, even to the blind that only the governors of Kano, Katsina, Borno and, surprisingly Kaduna, feel honour- bound to see the presidency rotate, come 2023 whilst the others are hell bent on retaining it – the very reason they are ready to decapitate every other political party. Even without micro zoning it, the presidency should, for the sake of equity and decency, move Southwards in 2023.

That settled, the President’s next move, as Dr Hakeem Baba- Ahmed never ceases to say, should be for him to see the entire country as his constituency. He should remember that it was not until he campaigned pan – Nigeria, in 2015, that  he won a presidential election after three futile attempts. Unfortunately, Senator Shehu Sani has just told Nigerians that Northern governors, who should tell him the truth, and  who weep over insecurity in their states, all come to the Villa only to eulogise the President to high heavens.  Were that not the situation, he should have been told that he has not managed the Nigerian diversity anywhere near how he should. I saw a very good example of this  just as I was rounding up this article. Reading through a news item regarding a petition to the International  Criminal Court (ICC) by some Southwest leaders, I noticed that all the respondents –  named here by their office, and all appointed by President Buhari  with him as number one are: the Attorney – General, the Chief of Army staff, the Inspector – General of Police, the Comptroller – General of Customs, the Chief of Air Force,  the Commandant – General of Nigerian Security and Civil Defence, the Commandant – General of Immigration, and the commandant – General of NSCDC – all of them are from the North and most probably, all Muslims.

Haba!

In which other multi- ethnic, multi- religious Federation in the world would you  find this  and  why would Nigeria not be the butt of jokes in the international community? Yet thanks mostly to his being the president, Fulani herdsmen are everywhere in the country clutching AK 47,  maiming, killing or kidnapping with nary  any legal consequences. On top of this, President Buhari is doing everything to overrule state governors who banned open grazing in their states even while he  continues, paradoxically, to hold them responsible for security in their respective  states. He is equally rumoured to be toying with the idea of representing the Water Bill.  Add  all these to his failure to encourage the establishment of ranches in the North, and most Nigerians have come to the conclusion that they are intended to facilitate land grab by a rampaging, heavily  armed, army of Fulani  militia, not just herders. There is absolutely no way this will work in contemporary Nigeria as people would rather fight to the death defending their ancestral lands.

If, therefore, APC is keen on retaining power come 2023, its strategists must go back to the drawing board, and also get the President’s ears. Nigerians can no longer be taken for a ride.

By Femi Orebe

 

When we went to China, we could not get google, Facebook, and Instagram. You could not even use your email in China because they made sure it is censored and well regulated,” – Information Minister.

Mr Igboho is a “militant”. He has been disturbing the peace of the country under the guise of protecting his kinsmen from Fulani herdsmen attack” – President.

Is President Buhari recorded, anywhere at all,  as having once condemned the murderous activities of   Fulani herdsmen? Not that I know of. The nearest I can remember was when he went to commiserate with the people of Benue state after they have mass – buried about 70  people killed by Fulani herdsmen and all he told them  was that  they should learn to live with their neighbours, whereupon the Benue government said: “We appreciate the visit, but we didn’t get any hope”. “In Benue State, the President did not condole with us”.

Where is equity in this, given that the president is Fulani?

Something tells me the president expects victims to roll out the red carpet for these killers. Otherwise, he should at least  know that, as  Professor Niyi Akinnaso put it in his column last Wednesday in The Nation, all that Southern Nigerians want are: One, their farms to grow food for local consumption and for sale, rather than to feed cows whose herders carry AK-47 all over the place killing, and raping their wives, as well as waste their children or kidnap them

for ransom or for murder, if ransom is delayed. If for reasons of ethnic consainguity the Buhari government would not ensure these, then non state actors are bound to  wade in, not only because nature does not only abhor a vacuum, but  for the singular  reason  that this, indeed,  is a  massive existential problem, especially in Yoruba land, where life is treasured.

Lest  I forget, let me very quickly apologise to The People’s Republic of China which  our Information minister  mischievously wants Nigeria to emulate its strict societal control. I apologise for making it the caption of this piece not because Nigeria could hold the candle to it in any respect but because, rather than be impressed by its technological wonder, Mohammed saw only its monstrous internal control when we do not have a hundredth of the  discipline which underpins that society.

The Communist two weeks ago marked its Centennial anniversary during which President Xi Jinping, so sure  of his country’s viability and power,  declared that “China’s rise is unstoppable and the country will not be lectured, concluding that those who try to block its ascent will hit a “Great Wall of steel.”

Now that is the county Nigeria is being asked to emulate in controlling the Press, but not its technological development. Where, in Nigeria,  is anything comparable  to China’s ideological purity and seriousness?

Who can, indeed, be sure that all these shenanigans are not aimed at furthering, or cementing some ethnic exceptionalism?

It is just as well that Lai Mohammed is currently in the eye of the storm trying to redeem his integrity and have had to run to the press to plead his innocence in the damning allegations of misuse of campaign funds in the elections in his home state of Kwara.

The Yoruba have a saying which, translated literally, means that nobody could ever have imagined that water, it is, which would be used to fully cook the fish.

This aphorism is very apt in the case of Lai Mohammed and his current single- mindedness to eclipse free speech in Nigeria, demonstrating , very unmistakably, his chronic obsequiousness to power.

How many people knew Lai Mohammed beyond his law circle, and those who frequented the Lagos state governor’s office when he served as Chief of staff to Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu?

Obviously leveraging on that juggernaut, Lai became APC spokesperson, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Today, he could, like any other  any APC leader claim to have assisted in  making the party’s 2015 victory a foregone conclusion. Thanks to his deft use of the media which he now wants to asphyxiate – to sell to Nigerians, promises which  now  look more like  deliberate lies – to hoodwink Nigerians, and see off the ruling PDP. Indeed, President Buhari has since  disowned many of the rosy promises, Power Devolution being a very good example.

It is, therefore, ironic  that he is  now the cheer leader of  the  armoured gang   intending, with the connivance  of a very complicit National Assembly, to make Nigeria a pariah in the international arena. Besides the allegation that the same National Assembly  is also considering a bill to jail demonstrators 5 years, you need to see how giddy they become, whenever a PDP  member defects to the ruling party.

What manner of Democrats will so hsppily assist in erecting the building blocks of a likely one – party, fascist state?

Did they ever read history?

Granted that Lai’s may, after all, be no more than Esau’s voice but, he is doing it so enthusiastically, he even shared the story of his grand son asking  him questions about what names people call him probably  not realising that the joke is on him.

If PDP promised to rule Nigeria for 60 years and came a cropper only after 16 years, these people taunting Nigerians should know that APC will not be in power for ever.

Apart from his Twitter ban which has assumed a life of its own, President Buhari quite easily reminds Nigerians of his draconian Decree 2 of yore. No thanks too,  to a National Assembly whose leader, Senate President Ahmed Lawan,  had promised, long ago, that whatever the President throws at the 9th Assembly would be approved, poste haste.

So enamoured of the President, and so complete the  executive capture, is the legislature, that the same top parliamentarian could declare, quite unashamedly but with an eye on the President’s request for a loan approval which was then before them, that “Nigeria is poor; (but) we must borrow”.

Is that how countries are governed, or they cut their coat according to their cloth?

President Biden, many months after, is still sweating over his one trillion plus dollar Infrastructure proposal even when it is certain that, if approved, it would be spent judiciously, and precisely on what it was meant for, things you cannot take for granted in Nigeria.

Now that APC is aggressively showing its hands, not only intending to muzzle and control the Press, but  actually eagerly  working towards  a one party state – the way it is gulping PDP governors, albeit without their people – as well as almost completely forgetting all about the peoples dire needs, there could be no better way of capturing  our  current circumstances  than for me to go back to  my article: ‘SOCIAL MEDIA/HATE BILL: PRODUCTS OF LEGISLATIVE IDLENESS’ of 1 December, 2019 from which I shall have to quote at some length.

It reads as follows: “As I asked two weeks ago, I ask again: what is going on in this country? Why is the APC so groggy with victory it must snatch odium from the jaws of victory? Must the same arrogance, if not folly, that completely eliminated it from the legislative houses in Zamfara and Rivers states be allowed to consume the party? Must the National Assembly, where it boasts a majority, turn its pugilism on the entire citizenry? Has it not occurred to its leadership that had President Buhari not already stridently disavowed of tenure elongation, most Nigerians would have accused him of a Third Term plot?

How long ago were PDP people, celebrating, arrogantly claiming they would rule Nigeria for 60 years?

Pray, where are they today?

So what is it with a hate speech law or a social media law? How many Nigerians will the laws rescue from the pangs of hunger or from poverty? How will the laws significantly reduce Nigeria’s medical tourism? How will they provide power, good roads, affordable  healthcare, a good educational system,   security,  as well as a virile economy?

I was so pissed off with the member who sponsored the Hate Bill who was remiss enough not to know that thousands of Nigerians die  daily from hunger, from  vehicular accidents on our notorious roads and  from attacks by Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram and others that he should  never have dared propose, so cavalierly, a death sentenve in his ill-advised bill.

When last did Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi visit his constituency?

Of all the things bedeviling Niger state, like many other states in the country, should this be his priority?

In case he is unaware, may I refer him to The Nation of Sunday, November 17, 2019, page 11, and This Day, 30 September, 2019 to read the articles captioned: “Niger Roads Now Highways of Death” and “Niger’s Highways of Sorrow And Death”, respectively?

He should equally get a copy of The Punch of Monday, November 18, to see how Niger state features conspicuously in what the paper called ‘The Unbelievable Tales Of States Where Learning Takes Place Under Trees”

What has he done to help these and other schools in the state?

Unfortunately, this senator is archetypical of  his Abuja colleagues who, until they begin to nurse gubernatorial ambition, leave their respective governors severely alone to singlehandedly face the troubles in their respective states.

Titled National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speech, his Bill  proposes that any person who uses, publishes, presents, produces, plays, provides, distributes and/or directs the performance of any material, written and or visual which is threatening, abusive or insulting or involves the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour commits an offence if such person intends thereby to stir up ethnic hatred, or having regard to all the circumstances, ethnic hatred is likely to be stirred up against any person or person from such an ethnic group in Nigeria.

According to the bill, any person who commits this offence shall be liable to life imprisonment and where the act causes any loss of life, the person shall be punished with death by hanging etc etc.

If the sponsor, who knows those he might be fronting for in presenting this bill, can be pardoned for not sufficiently reflecting on the needless bill, one can justifiably ask what befell the entire senate that it rushed it through the different stages like Jamaican Hussain Bolt. You would be right to think it is even part of the President’s social investment programme.

What exactly do these people know that Nigerians don’t? COULDN’T it be why no effort is being spared to make Lauretta Onochie, a passionate member of the ruling party and Special Assistant to the President, a member of the the electoral body, INEC?

“What is the end  in view in all these?

All the questions pertaining to the Hate Bill could rightly be asked today as I am reliably informed that the Press Bill currently under consideration, cannot even hold the candle to Decree 2 or the Hate Bill in its crudity.

By Femi Orebe

Winston Churchill made one of his most famous pronouncements in November 1942 when he declared as follows to the House of Commons: “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire”. Indeed, Churchill managed to avoid personal responsibility for the loss of any significant imperial possessions by losing the 1945 election to Clement Atlee” – Quote from ‘Liquidation of Empire’: The Decline of the British Empire. By Roy Douglas.

“It is now patiently clear that the political history of the Nigerian state since 1914 has been a continuing story of the struggle between the forces of the hegemony, inspired by the historical imbalance caused by the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates on the one hand, and the persistent contest to redress the imbalance and promote integration through decentralisation and competitive federalism on the other” – Professor  Richard Olaniyan, in the  Preface to: The Amalgamation And Its Enemies( An interpretive history of Modern Nigeria) with contributions by 10 University professors.

“We have said it over and over, that Nigeria is the only inhertrance we have in Africa and anywhere in the world. This land belongs to us, from Sokoto to the banks of the Atlantic Ocean. This was the destiny bestowed on Uthman Dan Fodio which would have been fulfilled since 1816 if not for the obstruction of this great assignment by the British. It is no longer time to play the ostrish. Our men are waiting. We are eager to fight. We are boiling with the zeal to actualize our dream; enough of double dealing and ambivalence by Fulani political leaders who, unfortunately, think the Fulani can only take back what belongs to us through appeasement and elections destined to reflect cultural values antithetical to the preachings of Uthman Dan Fodio.”- a persistent claim of the Fulani Nationality Movement.

First and foremost, let me make something clear. I am not out in this piece to criticise or stigmatise President Buhari about his now ambivalent position.on restructuring – ambivalent  because after roundly condemning those canvassing restructuring, calling  them dangerous and naive – he has since walked that back, somewhat, by saying he would append his signature to whatever decisions come to his table from the National Assembly from the ongoing constitition amendment exercise.

That, of course, was not the first time he would admonish those preaching restructuring to approach the National Assembly. My understanding of that, based not just on his well known  position on the subject – he would not even read the report of the 2014 national confab even though contesting to be president – but also on the views of  most Northern leaders who always  emphasised the saying that ‘politics is a game of numbers’, is that between the National Assembly, where  Northern legislators predominate, and the state Houses of Assembly  which are more in the North, and whose concurrence some of the decisions require, nothing substantial would come out of that exercise especially on power devolution,  despite Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila’s optimism.

That said, I urge the reader  to see this article as an exercise in logical reasoning. I shall state well known  positions from which I shall proceed to make inferences. You may, or may not, agree .with my conclusion but please be assured that these are my honest views.

The answer to the title of the article which I claim to know, inheres within the three epigraphs to the article.

The first, a quote by Sir Winston Churchill, unarguably, the greatest British politician todate, is self explanatory.

The second epigraph, a quote from my former University teacher who I greatly  admire, encapsulates what, in essense, has  been the Nigerian conundrum; a problem that hegemonists – who incidentally are not all Fulani politicians and  elite – but also others, especially those military top ranks from the Northern fringes, who were too timid,  or browbeaten, to rule the country with any modicum of justice. Largely because their own rise to power and authority had been facilitated by Fulanis, they went on a literal binge creating states, but especially Local Government Areas, to satisfy the whims and caprice of those who oiled their  way to high public office.

That is why today, you would hardly believe that Kano and Lagos states once had about the same number of Local Government Areas.

With a territorial land area of 351,861 hectares, Lagos State was made up of five administrative divisions, namely: Ikeja, Badagry, Ikorodu, Lagos [Eko] and Epe. The divisions were created in May 1968 by virtue of Administrative Divisions [Establishment] Edict No. 3 of April 1968. The Divisions were further divided into 20 Local Governments and 37 Local Council Development Areas which the senate has since refused to enlist.

Kano state, on the other hand,  now has 44 Local Government Areas  even after Jigawa state , with 27 , was carved out of it.

You only have to imagine what amount of  resources now accrue monthly to Kano and Jigawa states from the federation account, vis a vis Lagos State with 20 LGA’s.

Of our three epigraphs, the one that most interrogates our question is the last one.

It is a quote that has suffused every harangue of the Fulani Nationality Movement whenever it wants to show Nigerians how very powerful, and above the law it is  even when the subject matter is to arrogantly  tell us that they instigated some horrendous killings as we saw in Benue and Plateau states.

Given how often they have said this, you would think that, like Dr Obadiah Mailafia, they would be in, and out, of the office of either the Inspector – General of Police, or that of the Director – General of the DSS but not once, can I remember,  that any official of FUNAM has been invited  for questioning  by any Nigerian law enforcement agency .

Indeed, they did far worse and, absolutely,   in your face.. For instance, below was how they crafted their battle order during the Covid-19 lockdown when interstate travels were specifically banned by the Federal Government  but law enforcement agencies simply closed their eyes as all manner of Northerners, in waves after waves, were being ferried in  trucks into Southern forests: “We have asked all Fulani across West Africa to raise money and arms to prosecute the oncoming war. We call on all Fulanis to prepare for this Holy War. There is no going back. All over the world, Nigeria is the only country given to Fulani by Allah” ”We urge the Northern youths to resist, by all means necessary, any attempt to send them back by Southern Governors. We see the actions of these Governors and their agents as provocative and a devious assault on free movement of persons contained in the Nigerian Constitution and the ECOWAS Protocol on movement of goods and persons. We declare any State that refuses to allow Northern youths to Southern States as an enemy that we promise will be fought vigorously. We urge you, faithful men, not to cringe, not to fear, not to look back. The battle is better fought on their homeland. We inform you that we your leaders held meetings across the key Northern States of Sokoto, Bornu, Katsina, Kano, Yobe, Kebbi, Bauchi and Kaduna. Our resolve is that Northern youths should move enmasse to Southern States. Relaunch the mass movement in ways they have never seen. Go in long convoys. If you are stopped, use all means, the bush path, the railways and all. If the towns and cities are hostile, hang out on the street corners, in uncompleted buildings, occupy the forests, pitch tents, make any where available as your abode, your rest places, your home. WE URGE YOU TO BE ARMED. The infidels may want to attack you. It will be disastrous to ever assume there will be no battle at all, before we regain the lost caliphae”.

Now I ask, if you are President Muhammadu Buhari, a highly regarded Fulani leader, wont you like to play a ‘Moses’ for your people? Wont you like them to luxuriate more in such freedom  or  would you do anything to negatively impact that unrestrained freedom to say or do whatever it is they like?

Knowing what  effect restructuring  would have on these freedoms, seemingly guaranteed in today’s status quo in Nigeria, inclusive of Fulani herdsmen’s  presumed freedom  to carry  AK 47  anywhere in the country, one should see very clearly why the president is not enamoured with  restructuring.

What then is restructuring?

According to Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, Director of Publicity, Northern Elders Forum (NEF) who has been quoted severally on the subject, restructuring means nothing more than  “a  concerted effort at fixing what is not working in Nigeria”. Said Baba – Ahmed: “We believe it has to be fixed by all Nigerians on the basis of respect, and understanding of what (would) work for all. We are willing to engage anybody, anywhere and at anytime, to discuss the issue, stressing that the situation should be well analysed and approached with the best interest of all Nigerians. “Let us put Nigeria on the table and find out what is not working for all Nigerians, I think that is the way to go,” he concluded.

One of those things not working in Nigeria today is the existential problem Fulani herdsmen , both native and foreign, have become in all parts of Nigeria but to stop that is also to put a final full stop to all attempts at land grabbing which  we all know is intended  to achieve the long promised “deeping of  the Quran in the Atlantic ocean”.

Obviously not many Fulani leaders, least of them President Muhammadu Buhari, the highly respected, much storied, even deified, Fulani leader, would like to go down in history as the man who did that.

I appreciate president Buhari taking his Fulani roots so much to heart. After all, I think I read, or heard of  the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, saying  somewhere that he was first, and  foremost,  a Yoruba before becoming a Nigerian but even Nigerians not born when he was on this side of the divide, but only read about him, know only too well that he could only have ruled Nigeria with justice and equity to all.

I therefore conclude this piece with the immortal words of one of Nigerians most elegant and interesting politicians, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, when  in May, 2015 he  led a delegation of the Northern Leaders Forum to congratulate President Buhari on his election.

Said he:” It can never be too late to start to rule with fairness and justice”: ”It is the same Buhari that gave this country a sense of direction when he was a military leader. This time, I’m sure, Allah has brought him to correct the ills of the past, to reform. But sir, it is easy – and you know it was easy while you were there as a military leader – and with justice, you can rule Nigeria well. Justice, is the key. If you do justice to all and sundry –  and I say all and sundry – because Allah says if you are going to judge between people, do justice, irrespective of their tribe, religion or even political inclination; justice must be done to whosoever deserves it. Power can remain in the hands of an infidel if he is just and fair. But power will not remain in the hands of a believer if he is unfair and unjust. Behind EVERY CRISIS anywhere in the world is INJUSTICE and the solution to that crisis is JUSTICE.’

By Femi Orebe

”Never before have I had such impassioned full voices, singing with the organs blowing in deep tones. I was transported and I have ever since visited that house of God, now a cathedral, to listen to the music the organ and the enlightened choir and Christian congregation.

The feeling has always been edifying. On that night, the hymn that won me over was “Oh God our help in ages past”, written by Rev Isaac Watts, in Yoruba to the tune of St Agnes. Such was the majestic cadence of the singing, the expertise of the organist and the fulfilling bellowing of the organ that I was transfixed and as Milton said in Lycidas: “it dissolved me in ecstasies and brought heaven before my eyes”. – 91year-old Papa, Chief Alex Olu Ajayi, recalling in soaring, mellifluous and totally unmatchable prose, events of January 4, 1943 at the centenary of Christianity in Abeokuta, Egba land and Anglican in Nigeria, which held at the St. Peters Church, Ake when he was just 12.

Papa had called me, as he often does immediately after reading the column every Sunday but this time it was not strictly about the article as he gave me the rare privilege of knowing that:”A Legacy On The Move”, his long awaited Memoir, was about to be publicly presented.

I knew, instinctively, that the least I could do for what I know would be a masterpiece – as it is sure to be encyclopedic – was give it a decent mention in your soar away newspaper, The Nation. I have since read the book and what a ramifying canvas on the cultural, historical, educational, religious, even economic history of Nigeria, in the past onecentury it covers? A LEGACY … encapsulates, as the author  describes his life, a “panorama of life, across the world, spanning a greater part of a century and told with some nostalgia”. Put in his own words: “In Education, I have had my full involvement in the Teaching, Administration, Primary, Secondary, Teachers’ Training, University, Post – Graduate, Examining and Distant Learning. In Industry, I set up with A. G. Leventis, a multi- national organisation, a carpet manufacturing industry that lasted for a quarter century, sponsored a football team, Leventis United, which became the National Champion within two years of its existence. In civil administration, I served the longest term as Chairman of Ado – Ekiti Local Government under both Military and civilian regimes, and both by invitation. The council was rated a model. For nearly 60 years, I have been given public appointments from 1964 to date.

I cherish our culture and this secured for me both Traditional and Honorary recognition from my home, Ado- Ekiti and the ancestral Central Spring of Yoruba culture – Ile – Ife; also from my matrilineal lineage in Owo”.

This son of the Hon. Canon Joseph Adesuyi Ajayi and Princess (Mrs) Marian Ademubiola Oyegoriade Ajayi, surely has seen something of the world.

He has actually visited over 100 countries.

If, like me, you love good and edifying language, you are sure to be suffused with that in this book, rendered in elegant and stimulating English language.

Sample: “Near us by the shore where we were standing, some fishermen had come out of their canoes into the water and seemed to be walking in the water. I then surmised that the fishermen were walking on solid ground and so decided to follow their example. I then backed the lagoon, put my two elbows on the embankment and tried to let myself down into the water. To my shattering disbelief, my feet did not touch any ground, and already, the strong flood was striking me as if I was about to drown!

I shouted at my brother to pull me up who was himself a novice to swimming as he too would have somersaulted into the pitiless waves. Pull he did, and by some hidden hand of the Almighty, I got buoyed up by the waves and I rolled back on the embankment, saved from an assured tragedy which the Ajayi tribe would have agonised over down the ages as both of us would have gone down the bottomless lagoon, with those fishermen not taking the slightest glance at our direction.

Silas Adedapo saved my life, and I will owe him this through eternity”.

To do justice to ‘A LEGACY ON THE MOVE’, within the limited space available on the column, I now yield to Dr Yinka Oyegbile, the multi- award winning journalist who, until recently was one of my editors at this newspaper.

 

Chief  ALEX OLU AJAYI’S ENCHANTING LEGACY

“Nobody is going to give you anything. You’ve got to go out and fight for it. Nobody knows what you want except you, and nobody will be as sorry as you if you don’t get it. So don’t give up your dreams” – Barry Manilow

Autobiographies, memoirs and personal stories written by men and women of honour are treasure troves which any reader, at any time, would find very useful and rich in nuggets of wisdom. It is based on this that I usually love to read such books because we are in a world where one needs to learn from those who have passed through thickets of life, and have done the world the benefit of putting their experiences down for posterity to learn from their mistakes and to apply their nuggets of wisdom to chart their own path in life. There is, however, a distinction in the kind of biographies or memoirs over which one needs to labour, especially in a country like ours where men and women who had held even high offices now turn to vain glory; writing memoirs or autobiographies just to launder an already tarnished image. Therefore, in picking what books to read, many readers know what to expect, which is why today readers do not take such an endeavour too seriously. Otherwise, you waste your time reading a book which you know is miles away from what it presents.

That is called hagiography!

This is not the case with Chief Alex Olu Ajayi’s ‘A Legacy On The Move’, which is a documentation of the little oak that grew, years later to become an icon, not only in his home State of Ekiti or country, Nigeria, but in the world.

In this book, the author gives details of his background and leaves the reader in no doubt as to his  very rich ancestry which cuts across many parts of Nigeria.

The son of a school teacher and pastor, he writes candidly about his upbringing and how the lessons he was taught by his parents have endured to enrich his entire life which he, in turn, discusses refreshingly from his birthplace in Owo, Ondo State, to his own lineage in Ado-Ekiti, and how he went to school near, and far away from home, going from one part of the old Western Region to another, following the family to wherever it is his father, an ordained pastor, was transferred.

His student days at Igbobi College –  not at its present site in Yaba but in Ibadan – where it was moved because of the ongoing World war, is well documented. Chief Ajayi made a point which many today pay only lip service to – the importance of teaching, and speaking, our languages which are today becoming increasingly endangered. According to him, our languages used to occupy a pride of place and those grounded in their mother tongues turned out to be better off in understanding other languages very much unlike today when many think  that versatility in foreign languages is a plus: far superior to ours. He writes: “Meanwhile, we had been grounded well in Yoruba language, our own native tongue. This is the great advantage of our generation, which the modern ones have lost forever. Skill in one’s language fortifies one for grasping the essence of any concept. It gives a linguistic skill that would enable the speaker more ability to comprehend and enhance his skill in the knowledge of other language.”

This is a truism that has been scientifically proved but which we have, unfortunately, consigned to the dust bin in our educational system because we are all eager to speak the so-called international languages.

These and other gems of wisdom and vignettes of life are what is contained in this book which a reader would find very enriching. The writer’s experience both at home and at the international level are well documented. Unfortunately, Nigeria is today dominated by the irrelevancies that predominate the social media which has made illiterates of many whose interventions, online, are without any iota of wisdom.

The author’s experiences at the West African Examination Council, University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo) and in other organizations which he graced with his aura, brilliance and wisdom, all demonstrate what it means to be a quintessential administrator.

In ‘A Legacy on The Move’, the author has done a great service to record keeping, quoting dates that go back over a half  century with effortless ease, going back to ages when you would not expect him to have paid that much attention to events around him. Even if these dates were written down, with the intent to use them much later, that must still attract a gargantuan commendation for prescience.

Papa is no doubt a solid archivist.

He showed, from page to page, what it means to be called an Omoluabi and how upbringing goes a long way to shape the lives of young ones. From being a pastor’s boy, he projected himself to the world stage by sheer dint of hard work and a studious commitment to whatever he laid his hands on: never for once looking for the short cut, either to wealth or fame, both of which the Almighty God blessed him with.

His tenure at the West African Examination Council where, as Registrar, he seamlessly took over the conduct of examinations hitherto being conducted by Cambridge, is a case in point as it set a template for how to run international organizations without compromising standards.

This is a book that will almost bring tears to the eyes as you ask yourself how, where and when, we missed it in this country that things are now so different in literally every aspect of life; the worst being the behaviour of our young ones which now leaves so much to be desired.

A Legacy … is a book the reader would find interesting and easy to read. The printing and pictures are solid and good; a distinct credit to the publishers, EKSU Printing Press, Ado-Ekiti.

It is a book one would not regret investing time to read.

 

Title: A Legacy on The Move

Author: Alex Olu Ajayi

Publishers: EKSU Printing Press

Year: 2021

Pages: 342

Reviewer: Olayinka Oyegbile

 

By Femi Orebe

In spite of my recent criticisms of the government of President Muhammadu Buhari – recent because I used to be one of his well-known supporters (remember I wrote in 2015 that Nigeria needs him more than he needs Nigeria), I have concluded at least five of my last eight articles with prayers, wishing him God’s guidance in his arduous state duties.

I keep praying for him because I have, personally, not lost faith in Nigeria. Indeed, I believe that this country can survive its present challenges and emerge a much more united and prosperous country. What we presently lack is leadership; one that will know neither Jew nor Gentile, but would rule with the mindset that East, West, or North, Nigeria is one; a united country, under God. I also believe that we can still see president Buhari experience a Pauline conversion.

After all, this is the same man Nigerians ensured his election both in 2015 and ‘19 after three unsuccessful attempts. We obviously did not forget how vigorously he had always championed Northern causes as in when he equated attack on Boko Haram with an attack on the North or how the same philistines named him one of their representatives in an anticipated dialogue with the President Goodluck Jonathan government. Rather, for those of us who aggressively canvassed his candidacy during those two election cycles, as well as the Nigerians who massively voted him, especially those from the South, the following reasons adduced recently by Dele Momodu, the Ovation publisher for supporting him would hold good for  all of us:

“One. We were tired of PDP after 16 years of profligacy and all kinds of bad behaviour that seemed to make General Abacha begin to look like a Saint. Two. In the days of tribulations, you sometimes run to the elders of the family in order to tap into their uncommon experience and wisdom notwithstanding their shortcomings. We perceived Buhari to be such an elder. Three. We reasoned that whatever is lacking in the President would be covered by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo who is recognised not only as a cerebral and knowledgeable man, but also an outstanding and accomplished administrator, given his stint at the helm of affairs of the Ministry of Justice in Lagos State. Four. We expected the President to cooperate beautifully with some of the bright people in his Party, who know their onions and can guide him in the right direction. Five. We never thought in our wildest imagination that any leadership, no matter its background, would ever have the temerity and audacity to lead us back to the dark days of the military. Six. We expected the President to have accepted the reality that the world has changed so drastically since he was forced out of power in 1985 and it is virtually impossible to continue to run government in analogue fashion”.

More than these, however, Buhari’s incandescent personal integrity was enough for me. Here was a man, a general of the Nigerian army, many of whose colleagues were corrupt to their teeth, who has held very high public offices, including that of  military Head of state but had not been accused of  corruption and who, in addition, lives a completely ascetic life, and I needed no further persuasion that this was the person to lift Nigeria  out of  the moral depravity, the deep dungeon, into which 16 years of a thieving PDP had thrown it. I could not, in my life, have imagined what we came to see of President Buhari as elected president of the most populous Black nation on earth. I  never could  have imagined President Buhari as an ethnic champion, with  his government’s key  policies, sans its  infrastructural development policy,  being solely targeted at benefitting his ethnic group, the Fulani –  RUGA, WATER BILL, and now, his intending to exhume from the dead,  an antediluvian GRAZING ROUTES, even when he should know that the federal government  cannot legally exercise  authority over an inch of state land, without the state governor’s permission, or without being hauled before the courts by the original land owners.

As a commentator on one of my recent articles  recently put it, President Buhari did much more to disappoint Nigerians.

Commented Joshua Oyewande on my article: “President Buhari As I Have Never Seen Him …” of 13 June, 2021: “Buhari has disappointed himself. Buhari has disappointed Nigerians. Buhari has disappointed humanity. For Buhari to tell Nigerians and the world that the Fulanis carrying AK47 and other sophisticated weapons used in killing, maiming and raping of farmers, innocent women, children working on their farmlands in Yorubaland, Iboland, in the South South, even in some parts of the North, are Fulanis from Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Senegal, is not only an indictment of himself but also that of his government. Human rights lawyers should get ready to prepare charges for war crimes against him at the ICJ in The Hague”. “ … Buhari should not shift any blame on any governor. State governors are not in charge of Customs and Immigration”.

Many Nigerians, not just Oyewande feel that aggrieved.

But what do we need a Nigerian President being hauled before the world court for? Won’t that tarnish, rather than enhance Nigeria or should a whole country be going, heedlessly, after one man? Even though as late as during his recent interviews, President Buhari was still avuncular, defending all these, and feeling sorry about nothing, I believe we would be better served salvaging our country, rather than pursuing a chimera.

And here exactly is where Truth, Dialogue and Reconciliation come in.

Contrary to the views of many, Nigeria is not a mistake. What it has lacked, like forever, is sincere leadership, the type that reminds one of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, even though out of religious bigotry, Turkey’s current rabid President, Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, has completely obliterated Ataturk’s historic contributions to that country.

The bitterness in South Africa was probably nowhere near what currently obtains in Nigeria when they set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the end of the Apartheid regime. The present, federally instigated iniquities in Nigeria are such that nobody with his/her head in the right place can suggest such for Nigeria at this moment. Rather,  we must consciously, and honestly, begin the process of  righting the many wrongs tearing our country apart. And that can only start with President Buhari who many Nigerians hold responsible for the calamitous state of  our country today.

Whoever has been reading this column will remember that I have always emphasised the necessity for telling ourselves the truth. This was mostly in relation to those around the President who,  probably out of fear or intimidation, or the Fulani culture of respect, and never controverting the elder – (Fulanis predominate the presidency), have not been telling the president the truth either of the daily butchery of human beings in all parts of the country, or the unbelievable incidences of  kidnapping of students, even mere pupils, especially in the North and perpetrated mostly by Fulanis, native and foreign, as His Eminence, the Sultan recently honestly confirmed; the ballooning prices of foodstuff which is turning millions of Nigerians into destitudes – reminds one of  the late Dikko who said Nigerians would eat from the dustbin – or the embarrassing, daily devaluation of the naira which  is now, surprisingly hovering  well over 500 to the dollar, even as the borrowings from China to build railways into the president’s “ cousin’s” – his own words – Niger Republic continues, unabated.

As if to bail me out of my inability to brilliantly craft the situation in the presidency, this is how Dr Tunde Oluwajuyitan of The Nation reflected it  in his article: ‘A President Trapped In Age Of Feudal Lords’ – Thursday, 17 June, 2021:”President Buhari remains stranded in the age of feudalism where the lords value honour and loyalty of their serfs who must be bound by oath of allegiance. It is not an accident (therefore), that most of his loyal gatekeepers are unable to tell him the truth”.

Still talking truth, President Buhari must also show that  he knows the truth about the bestiality of marauding Fulani herdsmen just as I indicated above that His Eminence, the Sultan did, affirming that 8 out of 10 kidnappers in Nigeria are Fulanis. There is nothing shameful about  saying the truth if the president is keen about healing the country.

The same appeal goes to Governor Umahi and his other colleagues in the Southeast who, together with the Igbo elite, rather than honestly name IPOB and the ESN as the terrorists killing security personnel and burning government properties in that part of the country , are mouthing inanities like ‘unknown gun men’ and ‘it is not in the Igbo culture to burn things’. If that is true why are they now shouting about government’s determination to run these ‘unknowns’ aground. How long ago was it that the same Kanu, the IPOB leader, got Lagos literally burnt down, without a single word of remonstration from the East – the reason it is said that what goes round, comes round.

Unfortunately, their timidity, taciturnity and fear of IPOB, have all led the president into equating all Igbos with IPOB as in when, during one of his recent interviews, he alluded to IPOB, saying they are all over the country, and have properties scattered all over. That, of course, was very unbecoming of the President as it illustrates nothing but bitterness against a major ethnic group in the country while he more than romances his own. It will be wishful thinking for Igbos, or anybody for that matter, however, to think that government can look askance while all that mayhem is happening in the Southeast and the Southsouth.

While at this too, and still in the process of righting wrongs, President Buhari must now admit that it is unstatesmanlike, putting the headship of nearly all major agencies of government, in his administration, in the hands of Northerners.

Judging from his appointments, I often  wonder if, out of 20  appointments to be made, he would not really wish he could allot 22 to the North. And, without specific constitutional provisions, I doubt if any Igbo would be in President Buhari’s Executive council. This is absolutely iniquitous, and it is time the President changes his attitude to Igbos. If it came from the war years, a half century plus should be more than enough to cure the president of that beef; all in the name of healing our country.

As the Nigerian Army, speaking through its spokesperson, Brig- General Onyema Nwachukwu, said only  this past week, “gun alone cannot stop the prevailing security threat across the land”.

Only equity and fair mindedness, can.

This is why the President should now nurture that spirit that led him to, a few weeks ago, send the Magashi – led delegation to jaw jaw with leaders of the Southeast during which they discussed issues of marginalisation, herders/ farmers problems etc which sa the Southeast leaders rejecting secession. This is the way to go and president Buhari should now intensify this healthy interaction rather than hold on to agelong prejudices simply because the youth of that region are, albeit in a wrong manner, reacting to their people being treated like orphans in their own country.

After all these have been done, only one thing would remain, and it is this: that the President disavows of the Miyetti Allah  nauseating claim that Nigeria is the captured territory of the Fulani. They should be told, in unmistakable terms,  that this is a historical fallacy as Fulanis never captured the Kanuris, the Yorubas or any ethnic group in Southern Nigeria. Should they require any  education in that respect, the Yorubas beat Fulanis back, with their tail behind their legs, at the Oshogbo battle of 1840 when the following Ilorin war chiefs were captured:  Jimba, head slave of the Emir and one of the sons of Ali, the Fulani commander-in-chief. Also  captured were Chief Lateju,  and Ajikobo, the Yoruba Balogun of Ilorin, both of who, being Yoruba by birth, were executed as traitors.

If President Buhari chooses Nigeria, by disavowing of that annoying claim, in addition to the  earlier steps suggested, the stage would have been  set for true dialogue between, and  reconciliation, of all ethnic groups in Nigeria.

May the good Lord guide the President as he sets about healing the land.

 

By Femi Orebe

“Two Southwest governors came to me to say cattle readers are destroying farms in their states. I asked them what happened to the grassroots security panels from traditional rulers to Local Governments who meet regularly to identify the root of their problems and identify crooks within their environment and apprehend the criminals. Who destroyed this system? Go back and fix it and give your people a sense of belonging. I don’t like it when people campaign to become governors and people trusted them with their votes and after winning, they can’t perform. Rather, they’re trying to push responsibility to others. We have three tiers of government: Federal, State and Local. We have killed the Local Government totally. We will send N300m as allocation to a Local Government, one governor will ask the LG Chairman to sign that he collected N300m but he will give him only N100m and the Chairman will keep quiet. Is that how we will continue?” – President Muhammadu Buhari.

President Buhari would have completely missed it if he thought that by so cavalierly throwing those two Southwest governors under the bus, he succeeded in washing his hands off responsibility for our incomparable insecurity. The import of his statement quoted above is that Nigerians have been very poorly served by those they voted into office at both the Federal, and state levels. What this means, in essence, is that the president’s words can be described as a double – edged sword which cuts both sides, and brought into bold relief, how Nigerians have been ill- served by politicians.

I shall now proceed to explain my take, beginning with the culpability of not just the two visiting governors, but state governors in general and will conclude with how the president, by being dead set against much needed actions that should have, at the very least reduced, if not  completely remove,  the country’s insecurity problems.

Whoever those two Southwest governors are, they demonstrated a grave misreading of President Buhari. If they had expected him to read the riot act to Fulani herdsmen, a group for which he had never hidden his enduring admiration, being himself culturally a herder and herd owner to boot.

They grievously misfired and, by showing such unnecessarily effusive respect, if not docility, they provided Nigerians the rare opportunity to see the President at his very best, ever. It must be assumed, however, that the primary reason for their visit was to complain to the number one citizen about their total helplessness in handling hundreds of gun- wielding herdsmen  militia when they do not even control their state commissioner of police. But the President cleverly outwitted them by bringing up issues of Local Governments, Obas etc who are even far more impotent than state governors in dealing with security issues.

That said, the belief all over the country has been that President Buhari  is the reason, and the pillar, behind all Fulani herdsmen’s – inspired criminalities – either because he has given specific  directives  to all the  security chiefs, almost all of who are, probably deliberately, Northerners, or because the chiefs, had themselves chosen to read his body language, and concluded that nothing must touch any Fulani herdsman, lest they see the president’s red eye. They must not be arrested, and if mistakenly arrested, must be promptly released, and if in court, that  the case must be aborted by orders from higher quarters, no matter the offence.

With his statement here, President Buhari seems eager to blow off all that, and thereby, threw state governors, probably with the sole exception of  governor Ortom of Benue state, smack in the market place, right before Nigerians, to answer to charges of outright incompetence in the discharge of their primary responsibility of protecting the lives and property of their citizens.

Nor did it stop there as the President was most unsparing, following up as follows: “We will send N300m as allocation to a Local Government, one governor will ask the LG Chairman to sign that he collected N300m but he will give him N100m and the Chairman will keep quiet”. He  went on, quite logically: “I asked them what happened to the grassroots security panels; from traditional rulers to Local Governments, who meet regularly to identify the root of their problems and identify crooks within their environment and apprehend the criminals?

Who destroyed this system?

Go back (home) and fix it, give your people a sense of belonging. I don’t like it when people campaign to become governors and people trusted them with their votes and, after winning, they cannot perform. Rather, they try to push responsibility to others”.

What the President means here, simply, is that state governors have killed the Local Government system and that what remains of it is only an effigy.

This is an indictment like no other, and state governors, not just Southwest governors, have copious explanations to make to the people

since herdsmen have become a complete nuisance all over the country. But since the president was specific on two Southwest governors, it becomes inescapable that they must own up to this visit and explain to their people.

I can, however, hazard two reasons for the visit.

As far as security matters are concerned, Northern governors are far luckier than their colleagues in the South. For the life of me, I cannot imagine how a governor in Yoruba land would survive if he were faced, on a daily basis, with the kind of killings and kidnappings in states like Kaduna or Zamfara. While I think this is a function of the relative values attached to life in the two zones, I equally have a feeling that Northern governors are not a little disdainful of their people. Take, for instance, how the Kaduna governor completely watched off his hands from the series of kidnappings in the state. No Southwest governor could ever have done that.

The governors visit to the president may, therefore, have been prompted by a fear of killings by herdsmen and the fact that famine was looming as farmers in their states could no longer go to their farms for fear of being kidnapped or even killed by marauders who are seemingly above law.

This columnist has never shied away from criticising President Buhari for the many sins I believe he has committed against the South especially in his ensuring that  nearly all consequential appointments in his government are held by Northerners, almost to the total exclusion of Southerners. Unfortunately, the President was still justifying this in his ARISE TV interview, in a country with over 250 ethnic groups.

Given the level of the menace arising from the activities of Fulani herdsmen, President Buhari only tangentially exculpated himself from bearing sole responsibility for Nigeria’s security conundrum since he was saying here that state governors are also not forbidden from dealing with Fulani herdsmen.

This exculpation, however little, assumes a greater significance when one realises that the Fulani militia is rated  the fourth most dangerous terrorist group worldwide, in the Global Terrorism Index, 2015 report. It can safely be said, therefore, as the revered Sultan recently said, that they contribute the most to Nigeria’s insecurity. Apart from raping and kidnaping, they must have killed not less than one thousand people in the first 5 months of 2021.

If state governors are the ones who self-sensor themselves into inaction, probably out of fear, or respect, for the President, then state  governors too, without a scintilla of doubt, can be held responsible, at least, for the audacity of the murderous Fulani herdsmen because by not arresting and trying them to get the guilty ones jailed or killed for murder, the governors have encouraged their impunity.

If, by any chance, the governors believe that the President held some things back in his statement, it will be their bounden duty to call the President out and let Nigerians know the whole truth  because these are truly perilous times in our country.

But then, that is only one side of the problem.

How does President Buhari, for instance, expect the governors to arrest, and bring to justice AK47 hugging aliens from  places like Mali, Niger, Chad etc when his government would not allow even Amotekun operatives carry guns? Despite the support given for the establishment of state police by all Northern governors, the president is yet to indicate his support or do anything in that respect even when it is obvious that our security forces, having been spread too thin, are clearly overwhelmed and could make do with this additional support.

It is fair enough that the President nailed his visitors this publicly, but the larger responsibility for their inability to handle Fulani herdsmen criminalities and others must, at the end of the day, lie with the President.

Or does he also tell the governors of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe to use LGS and Obas to deal with Boko Haram or those of Zamfara,  Kaduna and Katsina the same thing regarding bandits?

And in terms of governance, why is the President so dead set against restructuring the country in a manner that would positively impact security management? Must we lose everything for the mere protection of hegemonic interests, while the country totters? What also about  putting in place the process of getting a peoples’ constitution; one that will be approved by Nigerians voting at a referendum, instead of the 1999 constitution which has proved totally unhelpful?

Concluding, the president said that whatever legacy Nigerians ascribe to him would be okay by him. History will be much more dispassionate. While two different legacies will be awarded the president, as things currently stand, one by the North, where he is mostly deified, it is obvious that the South would not be so inclined, for reasons already stated in this piece.

I believe, however, that President Buhari still has enough time left in office to emerge on the positive side of history.

While sufficiently keen about the place of our Obas and Local Governments, the president must do everything to concentrate his mind, and all, and lay more emphasis on those things within his remit.

Nigerians saw a statesman in electing him President twice.

He must do his utmost not to disappoint them.

By Femi Orebe

If you have not been able to put your hands on the problem with Nigeria, it must be because you have never really put your mind to it because it is so easy to know.

It is simply that a blessed country, home to some of the  best and brightest on the surface of the earth, has always been ruled by its 3rd Eleven. Period.

Please come with me as I navigate this truism.

Prof Olaniyan, Richard Adeboye is one of my university teachers I respect the most. He taught me History at the University of Ife, Ile – Ife. As I write this, I  can see the cherubic looking, absolutely self – effacing young Lecturer who arrived from the United States of America my graduating year, having earned a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, Washington D.C, USA.

A President’s Scholar, and now Fellow, Nigerian Academy of Letters, Professor Olaniyan, author of several books, among them:’IFE: Holy City Of The Yorubas’, was a recipient of numerous distinctions, awards and grants at undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral levels.

This piece is, however, not about my teacher but he comes in here only because he it was who sent me, the WhatsApp message which is the kernel of the piece you are reading. For him to share a post, it must carry its weight in gold, and I need not be told that it must have gone from his desk to very few people.

Let’s now see what he sent me and then go ahead to relate it to this ‘giant of Africa”, with clay legs, aka Nigeria.

 

Happy reading.

 

Smartest People, Mediocre Nation – The Irony Of Nigeria.

Copied.

 

“BRITISH Nobel laureate, Dorothy Hodgkin, once noted that the University of Lagos was one of the world’s centres of expertise in her field of chemical crystallography.

Ahmadu Bello University Zaria had the first world class computer centre in Africa.

The University of Ife had a notable pool of expertise in nuclear physics.

Our premier University of Ibadan had an international reputation as a leading centre of excellence in tropical medicine, development economics and the historical sciences.

The Saudi Royal family used to frequent UCH for medical treatment in the sixties.

The engineering scientist Ayodele Awojobi, a graduate of ABU Zaria, was a rather troubled genius. He tragically died of frustration because our environment could not contain, let alone utilise, his talents.

Ishaya Shuaibu Audu, pioneer Nigerian Vice-Chancellor of ABU Zaria, collected all the prizes at St. Mary’s University Medical School London. His successor in Zaria, Iya Abubakar, was a highly talented Cambridge mathematician who became a professor at 28 and was a noted consultant to NASA.

Alexander Animalu was a gifted MIT physicist who did work of original importance in superconductivity. His book, Intermediate Quantum Theory of Crystalline Solids, has been translated into several languages, including Russian.

Renowned mathematician Chike Obi solved Fermat’s 200-year old conjecture with pencil and paper while the Cambridge mathematician John Wiles achieved same with the help of a computer working over a decade. After the harsh environment of the 1980s IMF/WB structural adjustment programmes, the Babangida military dictatorship undertook massive budgetary cutbacks in higher education.

Our brightest and best fled abroad.

Today, Nigerian doctors, scientists and engineers are making massive contributions in Europe and North America. Philip Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Award for his work in super-computing. Jelani Aliyu designed the first electric car for American automobile giant General Motors. Olufunmilayo Olopede, Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, won a McArthur Genius Award for her work on cancer.

Winston Soboyejo, who earned a Cambridge doctorate at 23, is a Princeton engineering professor laurelled for his contributions to materials research. He is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Washington University biomedical engineering professor Samuel Achilefu received the St. Louis Award for his invention of cancer-seeing glasses that is a major advance in radiology.

Kunle Olukotun of Stanford did work of original importance on multi-processors. National Merit laureate Omowunmi Sadik of State University of Binghamton owns patents for biosensors technology. Young Nigerians are also recording stellar performances at home and abroad. A Nigerian family, the Imafidons, were voted “the smartest family in Britain” in 2015.

Anne marie Imafidon earned her Oxford Masters’ in Mathematics and Computer Science when she was only 19. Today, she sits on several corporate boards and was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to science. Recently, Benue State University mathematician Atovigba Michael Vershima is believed to have solved the two centuries old Riemann Conjecture that has defied giants such as Gauss, Minkowski and Polya.

Another young man, Hallowed Olaoluwa, was one of a dozen “future Einstein”, awarded postdoctoral fellowships by Harvard University. He completed a remarkable doctorate in mathematical physics at the University of Lagos age 21. While at Harvard he aims to focus on solving problems relating to “quantum ergodicity and quantum chaos”, with applications to medical imaging and robotics.

Another Unilag alumnus, Ayodele Dada, graduated with a perfect 5.0 GPA, an unprecedented feat in a Nigerian university. Victor Olalusi recently graduated with such stellar performance at the Russian Medical Research University, Moscow, and was feted the best graduate throughout the Russian Federation. Habiba Daggash, daughter of my friend Senator Sanusi Daggash, recently graduated with a starred first in Engineering at Oxford University.

Emmanuel Ohuabunwa earned a GPA of 3.98 out of a possible 4.0 as the best overall graduate of the Ivy-League Johns Hopkins University. Stewart Hendry, Johns Hopkins Professor of Neuroscience, described the young man as having “an intellect so rare that it touches on the unique…a personality that is once-in-a-life-time”. There is also young Yemi Adesokan, postdoctoral fellow of Harvard Medical School who patented procedures for tracking the spread of viral epidemics in developing countries.

Ufot Ekong recently solved a 50-year mathematical riddle at Tokai University in Japan and was voted the most outstanding graduate of the institution. He currently works as an engineer for Nissan, having pocketed two patents in his discipline. This is only the tip of the iceberg. If our system were not so inclement to talent we would be celebrating a bountiful harvest of geniuses in all the fields of human endeavour. This is why the correlates between our gene-pool and national development are so diametrically opposed.

We are becoming a failed state. We punch miserably below our weight in the hierarchy of world economics and politics. None of our institutions come near the top 500 in the World Universities League Table. An estimated 50% of our people live in extreme poverty. Youth unemployment hovers around 45 percent (70% for the far-North). The poverty is heartbreaking. Our per capita GDP is less than $3,000 as compared to Singapore’s $55,252.  We have the worst road carnage record in the world, with more than 20,000 lost to road accidents annually.*

We wasted over $18 billion on the power sector and our people still live in darkness. The state governments are virtually bankrupt. It is only by investing in science and in our young people that we can forge a better future.

Without science and innovation the African people will never overcome their millennial servitude.

We must incentivize talent while building a merit-based society.

In Brazil, a Nobel laureate is entitled by statute to the same pension rights as a former President. Society must adequately recognise and reward all men and women of excellence. Our government should keep a roster of all super-achievers of Nigerian origin and we should tap their brains for the building of our country”.

The first thing to note in the above is that no part of Nigeria  is left out of this sheer embarrassment of riches. Yet without the likes of Professors Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate, and Professor Kayode Osuntokun, the coda of whose encyclopedic neuroscientific research was neuro-epidemiology, and so many others, the list is not complete.

So why do we remain this pathetic?

As I indicated earlier, the problem lies in our political leadership recruitment process.  Some may say this, governance, that is, has nothing to do with education but that will be ignorance about the fact that leadership is not only key, it is the most essential ingredient in a nation’s development. There is this apocryphal story of the Heads of state of the UK, U.S and some other developed countries going to God to remonstrate against His many blessings on Nigeria in human and material resources, whereupon God told them, after laughing heartily,  to go and look at Nigeria’s leadership and the visitors left, happier than when they arrived.

Is it then by chance that not a single Nigerian Head of state was prepared for office? All that the much revered Sir Tafawa Balewa wanted to be was a teacher, perhaps a school headmaster and, even Obasanjo, to whom some development could be credited, was  only an accidental military Head of state..

Is there a single Head of the Nigerian state, who will  compare with Obafemi Awolowo the way he equipped himself towards political leadership: his education, authoring of books in literally every area of  governance, or in his incredible diligence at whatever he  put his hands on? Wasn’t that why on his death, a British Prime Minister could say that Awo could effortlessly have been the British Prime Minister?

What manner of men and women sit on literal sinecures, today,  in the National Assembly, particularly the senate, where former governors who literally ruined their  respective states, have now turned to  an old people’s home? Or aren’t many of our state houses of assembly populated by half- educated illiterates who should, at best be no more than councilors in their local government areas?

How can Nigeria ever develop with this political architecture even if, like the Jews, Nigerians dominate the list of Nobel Laureates?

Yes, many will ask the legitimate question as to how well political appointees from within our universities have performed, or how those who get appointed Vice Chancellors or Provosts are doing?

My answer to the latter part of that question would be that higher education administration in Nigeria has worsened in direct proportion to how our political leadership has regressed, with some heads of institutions now being accused of outright corruption, with some even being jailed.

The saying: “a fish rots from the head down” fully encapsulates the Nigerian condition, thus confirming that leadership is the root cause of an organisation’s, success, failure or demise, and this is true whether that organization be a country, a company, or even a mere sales force.

The consequences of our political leadership failure are legion.

The word. “Andrew” assumed a new terminology in Nigeria when Obasanjo, as military Head of state, descended on university lecturers, ordering them to vacate their accommodation on campus, and many like Professor Isaac Adewole, the former Minister of Health, knew that they had to rapidly vote with their feet. Today, it is worse; as OPTION B has taken over. Today, not just the family head, but their entire household, are fleeing town.

A trending video of the Ikeja International airport presents the picture of a beleaguered country with its people, top earners like bank managers inclusive, together with their entire families, thronging the airport in an effort to check out before the apocalypse. This is happening particularly in areas of the country where people value their children and would neither throw them to the elements, nor leave them at the mercy of a marauding army of Boko Haram and bandits with the government looking completely helpless.

This, and much more, is where puerile political leadership, which neither “incentivises talent”, nor concerns itself with “building a merit-based society”, has landed the homeland, while her multitude of stars continue to illuminate the world outside.

May God help us.

 

 

By Femi Orebe

None of those who sit down to plot the Northern – read as the Fulani approach – to Nigerian politics and governance, could ever have believed  that  the day would come, or an issue so important would arise,  that would see Southern governors, across party lines, sit down  together to discuss as happened at Asaba, Delta state, on Tuesday 11 May, 2021.

And they have more than enough reasons to think so. Since the inauspicious speech of 12 October, 1960,  by Sir Ahmadu Bello to the effect that: “The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our grandfather, Othman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us or have control over their future”, every subterfuge, as well as raw power, as in during the various military administrations all of which were headed by Northerners,  except Obasanjo who replaced Muritala Mohammed, and who they did everything to completely hem in, have been deployed to ensure that the peoples of Southern Nigeria, especially the Yoruba and the Igbo, never saw eye to eye.

The duplicitous Brits have done everything to make the North see itself as superior to the South – amongst these: a sexed – up census which saw the arid North being presented as being more populated than the coastal part with commerce, and favorable climatic conditions that are much more conducive to human habitation than the arid North. The result of that skewed census would later be used by the British to allocate seats at the National Assembly with a preponderance going to the North; the reason many Nigerians suspect, is why the President routinely asks Nigerians who raise issues about restructuring to go to the National Assembly.

In the few years that a Southerner  was President, they were literally garrisoned, as in the case of Obasanjo who had to always look over his shoulders at both Generals Shehu Musa Yar Adua and T. Y Danjuma, and President Goodluck Jonathan did not help matters  because of  his re- election concerns for which reason he continually propitiated  the North. So bad was it  he couldn’t do a thing about the recommendations of the 2014 National conference which he personally convoked.

The above notwithstanding, however, it still remains a puzzle to watchers of the unexplainable taciturnity of all APC Southern leaders, in the face of President Buhari’s extremely partial policies in favour of the North, that its governors could now join hands with their PDP counterparts to make the Asaba meeting a reality.

The meeting, attended, in person, by 15 of the 17 Southern governors while the remaining two sent representatives, resolved as follows:

“That open grazing of cattle be banned across Southern Nigeria; noting that development and population growth have put pressure on available land resources, and increased the prospects of conflict between migrating herders and local populations, especially farmers, in the South.

That the progress of the nation requires that urgent and bold steps be taken to restructure the country towards having state police, a review of the revenue allocation formula in favour of the sub-national governments and the  creation of other institutions which will advance the practice of true federalism.

They  recommended that in view of widespread agitations for greater inclusiveness in federal establishments, the President should, as a matter of urgency, convoke a national dialogue, and  that in deference to the sensitivities of our various peoples, there should  be  a  review of appointments into Federal Government Agencies (including Security Agencies) so as to reflect federal character.

They resolved to foster cooperation among the Southern States, and the nation at large. They expressed concern at the continued gridlock on the Oshodi – Apapa Expressway and the chokehold it has exerted on the nation’s economy, being the sole outlet from Apapa Wharf. The meeting, therefore, recommended the activation and establishment of ports in other states of the federation to create jobs and promote socio-economic activities.

They expressed  grave concern on the security challenges currently plaguing the nation and  urged the  President to address Nigerians on these challenges with a view to  restoring the confidence of  Nigerians in the government.

They affirmed the commitment of the peoples of Southern Nigeria to the unity of the country,  but  on the basis of justice, fairness and equity.

They observed that the incursion of armed herders, bandits  and all manner of criminals into the Southern part of the country has caused  a severe security challenge with the result that citizens are no longer able to live normal lives like pursuing their  various productive activities; a problem which will  certainly result in a threat to food  security”.

Reactions to the meeting, and its recommendations, especially from the North, have been fast and furious, but it did not surprise Nigerians to see senate President Ahmad Lawan –  who had long ago promised to make the senate, which he leads, subservient to the executive by  having it approve everything the President throws at it – trashed the meeting’s recommendations on restructuring which he stigmatised as regionalism. He also criticised the governors for wanting the country restructured when they are opposed to the independence of both the Judiciary and Legislature.

While independence of the Judiciary is perfectly expected and necessary, it did not occur to a statesman of senate President Lawan’s standing, unlike the inimitable Uncle Bola Ige, that Local Government independence is a misnomer in a federation like Nigeria.

Wrote Uncle Bola Ige as I captured him in my article of 30, July 2017 captioned ‘Constitutional Amendment: An Absolutely Self-serving National Assembly’: “In a federal set-up, the federal government must have nothing to do with the creation or running of local government. Nigeria is the only federation in the whole world where the federal government decides how, where, and when a local government council must run. In all civilized countries, and in all democratic countries, it is the state or provincial or regional government that legislates on local government”. “Unfortunately, he continued, the Murtala-Obasanjo federal military government began the nonsense that has remained with us. Under the pretext that better administration should be found for local government throughout the country, they set up the Ibrahim Dasuki commission whose recommendation is the worst disaster to have happened  to the local government system in Nigeria. Because it was from  there that the idea of uniformity in size, scope and administration was introduced. I confess that I suspected a hidden agenda in the recommendations: in order to strengthen the administrative stranglehold of the Emirates, all of Nigeria was advised to base its local government system on defined populations and elaborate administrative system…”

I am absolutely persuaded by that argument and, therefore, agree with the state governors on their opposition to Local Government autonomy. In an ideal situation, the Local Government should be a governor’s greatest tool in reaching the people and should, ipso facto, not be run by political parties opposed to the ruling party’s policies.

Also, House speaker Femi Gbajabiamila committed a grievous error when, in his critique of the meeting, he claimed that: “If truth be told, we all have equal share in the blame for what’s happening today”, as if all Nigerians were elected President, or that a President’s primary responsibility is no longer the protection of the life and property of the citizenry.

Senator Ali Ndume, Chairman senate committee on Army, an otherwise, non-supercilious legislator, faulted the decision of the governors on open grazing, asking the governors to stop engaging in blame games.

What blame game can this be when the easy going herders we once knew in the south have since transmogrified into murderous, bands who now prefer to make millions kidnapping, rather than  waiting for the pittance their employers, who live far away in unspeakable opulence, pay them?

If criticisms of the meeting by the likes of Miyetti Allah are understandable, not that of one funny professor who said that elected governors should first  come to seek permission from Fulanis, or the one, surprisingly by Adamu Abdullahi, former governor of Nasarawa state, whose past office, and current one as a sitting senator, both failed to teach him that a governor does not take an oath of loyalty to the President, but to the nation.

Hear him: “The recent meeting of the Southern Governors Forum is an act of betrayal of the trust Nigerians reposed in them. Each governor pledged and swore to an oath, and they emphasised loyalty to the sovereignty of this country. They also pledged their loyalty to the President of the country. That’s their oath of office.”

Now any surprises at the things that now pass muster as received wisdom from that chamber?  There have, however, been stirring approvals from across the country for the recommendations even from totally unexpected quarters  like the ACF.

Unfortunately, ever afraid of restructuring which would definitely put an end to our baby feeding system of government, the ACF, while supporting ban on open grazing, roared against restructuring which they claimed, without a shred of evidence, would divide the country.

It is heartwarming to know that minority  lawmakers from the North-Central geopolitical zone and those from Southern Kaduna who, like the south, are also victims of a hegemonic North, have lent their enthusiastic  support to the recommendations.

Two things now remain outstanding, namely, that the governors would stand ramrod behind their decisions and proceed to put in place, appropriate legislation in their  respective states and that God will give the President the wherewithal to approach these issues in a statesmanlike manner.

This article had been rested,  and was only waiting to be sent to the editor when  I saw Governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s response to the  reaction of  the Attorney- General,  Shehu  Malami, in which he made the rather asinine comparison of  murderous herdsmen to spare parts sellers doing business in the North being the reason for his arrogantly describing the ban as illegal.

Let us precis Governor Akeredolu’s reaction captioned “Our Decision Is Irreversible. And Will Be Enforced”:

“ I have just read the press statement credited to the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Shehu Malami SAN on the resolution of the Southern Governors Forum to ban open grazing in their respective States. The AGF is quoted to have said that this reasoned decision, among others, is akin to banning all spare parts dealers in the Northern parts of the country and is unconstitutional.

It is most unfortunate that the AGF is unable to distill issues as expected of a Senior Advocate. Nothing can be more disconcerting. This outburst should, ordinarily, not elicit response from reasonable people who know the distinction between a legitimate business that is not in anyway injurious and a certain predilection for anarchy. Clinging to an anachronistic model of animal husbandry, which is evidently injurious to harmonious relationship between the herders and the farmers as well as the local populace, is wicked and arrogant.

Mr Malami is advised to approach the court to challenge the legality of the Laws of the respective States banning open grazing in the interest of their people and we shall be most willing to meet him in Court.

The decision to ban open grazing stays. It will be enforced with vigour”.

This, exactly, is how Malami presents himself as the Attorney – General of the North, if not of Miyetti Allah, on whose behalf he was acting when he opposed the establishment of AMOTEKUN, the Security network of an entire region, in a supposed federation. And that wasn’t his first time either, as he was the face of the North when Abuja insisted they would not allow a Yoruba man be governor of  Kogi state.

This is how these people around the President continue to  complicate matters for him, who, being away  abroad , may not even  have heard a word of this entire matter.

It is still my hope that, as he did in the Amotekun case, despite the  Attorney – General’s usual oneupsmanship, the President will act the statesman.