The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Danjuma and the ‘Too Little, Too Late’ radical essay

    Danjuma and the ‘Too Little, Too Late’ radical essay

     In late April, the social media was abuzz with a long, driveling piece titled ‘Too Little, Too Late’, attributed to T.Y. Danjuma, a former Nigerian Chief of Army Staff. It was a trenchant and rambling commentary on Nigeria’s social and political malaise, suffused with warnings of looming apocalypse. The piece was gleefully and widely circulated, believing that General Danjuma’s name lent it credibility and stamped finality and inevitability on its doomsday predictions. How anybody could attribute authorship of the write-up to Gen. Danjuma is hard to explain. The retired army general has over the years been frank, urgent and even prescient on Nigerian affairs, but the irascibility the piece presumed to him, not to say the egregious grammatical and factual errors scarring nearly every paragraph, is uncharacteristic of him.

    There is not one paragraph or even a sentence in the piece that has redemptive value. And despite its strident tone, there is not a single conclusion that does not proceed from utterly false premises. It begins with a very poor understanding of the forces that shaped Europe in the 1930s and 40s, carelessly drawing a parallel with Nigeria’s current affairs. It mischaracterises Axis powers for Axial powers, and fails to understand the purport of the pacts and agreements that culminated in the Rome-Berlin Axis of 1936 and the Tripartite Pact of 1940, not to talk of how the treaties influenced the outbreak of World War II. Worse, it also characterises Japan as the Red Dragon, instead of China. Gen. Danjuma is supposed to have authored a piece that, in its opening paragraphs, contains such shocking blunders that no military officer appears capable of.

    Every paragraph contains a mistake or a mischaracterisation. It is unlikely that a Nigerian army general would not be familiar with the battle tactics of both the Napoleonic wars and World War II. He would know enough to spell a few notable battle zones right, such as the Bataan Peninsula and island fortress of Corregidor in Luzon, Philippines (which Gen. Danjuma supposedly spelt wrong as Beaten and Conequidor) defended by the United States Army under the command of General Douglas MacArthur-led United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). Gen. Danjuma may not have doubts as to the seriousness of the existential crisis facing Nigeria, and may have commented openly and persuasively on what could be done to mitigate the danger of all-out war, but even he would be reluctant to engage in the hyperbole the writer of the ‘Too Little, Too Late’ commits by comparing Nigeria’s internal fractures with the face-off between the Allied and Axis powers in World War II.

    The putative author of the piece devotes whole paragraphs to obsessing over the Yoruba reluctance to confront the evil machinations coming from the North, insisting that in 2018, 2019 and 2020, he had had cause to warn the Southwest as well as the entire South of the coming apocalypse. He blames the Yoruba – yes, the Yoruba alone – for treating the warning with levity because of 2023. The author is clear in his mind that the Yoruba alone are to blame for misreading the handwriting on the wall. Hear him: “Where is the leadership today in Yorubaland? Where is courage and proactive thinking in the nation? Indecision, self-seeking, personal glory, love of pleasure… indifference. The Oyo House of Representatives member, Mrs Sadipe, declared the other day that in her constituency farmers could no longer go to farms because herdsmen had wrecked (sic) havoc everywhere. Didn’t Yorubas hear her? Has there been any plan of action both then and now? That is the modern Yoruba: no balls, no action, empty and loud-mouthed, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.”

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    Gen. Danjuma can sometimes be vexatiously forthright, but to equate the intensity of his concerns for peace and progress with the unrestrained uncouthness the writer summons in carpeting the Yoruba for the Nigerian crisis and engaging in ethnic bigotry is rather hysterical. The writer betrays his Christian and southern background by proceeding to vilify the judiciary in a replication of the Obidient language coarsely deployed during the multiple litigations of the 2023 presidential election. At a point he becomes an apologists for former Rivers governor Peter Odili and former Central Bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and recklessly indulges in imprecates, including railing against “the forces of fascism and Islamofascism in all their disguises, mutations and progression.” He also adds that “They have taken over the Judas-iary. They control the Legislature – a body full of nihilists, moral anarchists, scavengers, drug addicts, sex- slaves, fraudsters with a sprinkling of few principled men too few to make any change. Need I talk of the Executhieves…” It is harmful, of course, to spew these hateful and inaccurate words, but to try to lend it legitimacy by seeking out a known name to associate it with is unpardonable. Former British prime minister Tony Blair once suggested that the social media had become a feral beast ripping and destroying reputations. And Prof. Wole Soyinka also wondered whether the social media would not one day provoke World War III with brazen mendacities, ethnic and religious bigotry, and orchestrated slander.

    The ‘Too Little, Too Late’ piece was posted in late April. But it was not until some nine days ago that Gen. Danjuma, who was alleged to have authored the piece, became aware of it. He declined to refute it, he told a friend, because it would amount to engaging in social media piffle and giving it traction. Surely, he drawled, no one would think him capable of such incalculable coarseness. For a man so self-assured as not to retain the services of a publicist either personally or even for his TY Danjuma Foundation, it is understandable why he would sneer at the idea of dignifying a thoroughly disreputable piece of forgery with any refutation. But what of the government, particularly the security services? Not only was the piece inciting, it was also incendiary, a deliberate and lethal concoction to inflame the country. The piece and its author should have been investigated, and the forger called to account. To wave it off as one of those cranky outrages on social media implies a shirking of responsibility, especially when the forgery has implication for ethnic and religious amity as well as national security. The forger mischievously rails against any attempt to regulate social media, but by his unconscionable act, which has become standard menu on many platforms using Artificial Intelligence and other tools, he makes the case for regulation more urgent and necessary.

  • Two years of Tinubu presidency

    Two years of Tinubu presidency

    Three days ago, President Bola Tinubu‘s administration marked two years in office. Before then, even before it marked one year, two years had seemed a bridge too far, as if the day would never come. He had surmounted impossible obstacles to win an election everyone seemed to hope or expect he would lose. His hostile party men and elders had a head start in upstaging him; too many of his Yoruba kinsmen resented him; former presidents and top political leaders scorned him; many Christian leaders forswore the tenets of their faith to conspire against him; and the former president and his ministers, including the managers of the economy, all craved his fall. That he won was less because of his talent at devising political strategies and cobbling together a rainbow coalition than the unmistakable celestial intervention that pitted candidates and parties against one another and helped pave the way for him to the throne.

    Even after he assumed office, his opponents, many of whom remorselessly postured as enemies, wanted him to have a short reign, perhaps just months, or failing that, at worst, absolutely nothing more than one term. Some advocated a coup d’état, and others called for popular uprising. They were more than willing to cut off their nose to spite their face. If getting him out of office led to the collapse of democracy, they were willing to endure the trauma. If it led to anarchy, as indeed some of the end-hunger protests that broke out after his one year in office planned to accomplish, they believed they could manage the ensuing chaos. That the conspirators failed was again less because President Tinubu managed the protests well than the intervention of unseen forces. Now, if the president is smart enough to understand the forces arrayed against him, he will know that the opposition to his administration is unconcerned with the phenomenal reset he has achieved for the economy and contemptuous of the favourable ratings his reforms are beginning to attract globally.

    In the next 18 months or so, President Tinubu must know that his opponents will fight him to the bitter end, using all the lethal and unscrupulous weapons at their disposal. They will ignore his economic reforms and the recovery well underway, and they will use religion, yes, religion, ethnic arguments, particularly as it concerns appointments, and they will twist facts, figures, and logic to achieve their predetermined goal. They will give no quarter, and they will brook no challenge to their persons or their fallacies. They will incite, ridicule, open old and fresh wounds, and engage in the most abusive and egregious campaigns ever. Nevertheless, in one form or the other, they will get a coalition off the ground, but it would lack coherence and ideology, seeing that it is meant only for the purpose of unseating the president, and it would be a dismal and fragile arrangement. All that is clear is that the 2027 elections will be the bitterest ever. The reason is simple: all of the leading lights of the opposition think this is their last chance to win the presidency. The administration must, therefore, fortify itself against formal and informal coalitions prepared to go for broke. Nothing matters anymore, not for former vice president Atiku Abubakar, nor former Anambra governor Peter Obi, both of whom were candidates in the last presidential poll.

    Read Also: Tinubu inaugurates ships, helicopters into Nigerian Navy fleet

    This writer pored through the editorials of many newspapers as well as the opinions of the ordinary Nigerian unscientifically polled on the social media, and was struck by how incredibly uninformed they were. There has been no effort at any objectivity at all. They glossed over the situation before 2023 and concentrated largely on their observations and conclusions that the people are worse off today than they were before the election. Last year, leading global newspapers had been scathing about President Tinubu’s reforms and had warned of impending catastrophe. The Nigerian media eagerly and lavishly culled the editorials and opinions. But while the same and even more respectful media outfits have begun to warm up to the reforms and are applauding the progress so far, the Nigerian media have been less celebratory. The conclusion is that too many Nigerians actually loathe reforms and change, preferring instead their society to collapse in order to justify their baleful predictions. Policies that looked like opening the doors of hell in 2023, like the floating of forex rates and removal of fuel subsidy, have today revived an economy that had tanked. This is why hardly any governor is opposed to the administration, and those of them who knew the dire conditions of the economy pre-2023 are more sanguine, if not ecstatic, about the reforms.

    If hypothetically the opposition wins the 2027 poll, none of their potential candidates will undo the reforms being doggedly implemented by the current administration, regardless of any oath they might have sworn before the electorate. The economy is being rebuilt, with new foundations, but it will take time before the goal of cheaper food trickles down to the poor, most of whom have remained uninformed about the damage done to the economy years ago and how close to the precipice the previously mismanaged economy was. Some of those who know the facts and acknowledge the effectiveness of the reforms have taken refuge behind ethnic arguments about unfair appointments in order to avoid being ridiculed for deliberately and mischievously ignoring or misinterpreting economic principles. Some political and faith leaders simply abjure knowledge, and have persisted in scaremongering. Just last week, the critical former Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, John Onaiyekan, concluded, as he did before the 2023 poll, that President Tinubu would not win the 2027 poll except it was rigged. That his implausible analysis is as defective as the Christian doctrinal principles he has anchored his unremitting criticism does not seem to matter to him. Here, he is of one accord with the bilious opposition who dismiss as servile and sycophantic any essay favourable to the administration.

    Notwithstanding the intensity of the opposition against his administration, President Tinubu is unlikely to abandon his reforms, most of which are already revivifying the economy. From the merging of forex rates to removal of subsidy, and on to tax reform bills, legacy infrastructural projects, loan repayments, payment of forex obligations to foreign airlines, establishment of federal universities and zonal development commissions, and restructuring of the healthcare, mining and petroleum sectors, the president will remain steadfast. He will not relent. He is the first economically literate president Nigeria would have, an adept at number crunching, and the first to assume the presidency unencumbered by special interests or power mafias. It is astonishing that those who should value the quality and relevance of the president’s reforms as well as appreciate the independence his presidency has won from ethnic and religious oligarchies are still too befuddled by the old dynamics of Nigerian politics to support and nurture the new freedoms and restrict themselves to objectively criticising the reform policies.

    Elections 2027 may have started earlier than is desirable. However, indications so far point to the fact that the vaunted opposition coalition will eventually emerge, but it will not be the deus ex machina their leaders hope, and it will in all likelihood be countervailed by the ongoing defections to the ruling party. The deplorable resort to ethnic and religious baiting will in the months ahead make a dent on the popularity of the president, especially in the face of mounting and probably targeted violent conspiracies and attacks in the North and Middle Belt, but it will in the end be insufficient to dismantle the administration’s efforts and successes in the past two years. 

  • The 2027 jostling begins in earnest

    The 2027 jostling begins in earnest

    While former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai was excitedly reeling out the names of political chieftains huddled together in the grand coalition to unseat President Bola Tinubu in the next elections, including imperiously determining who among the president’s current cabinet would be retained in the ‘next’ dispensation, the Labour Party’s former presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, was still adamant he would contest the next presidential poll on the LP platform. Don’t believe them. Mallam el-Rufai is glib and full of exaggerations, Mr Obi is evasive and full of cant, and their pied piper, the caustic former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, remains a hybrid of all their failings and personifies all their delusions.

    Last week, while the former vice president dithered, Mallam el-Rufai simply cut the Gordian knot and announced that the coalition was all but fully formed, with appointments already made by the League of Northern Democrats as to who would head panels tasked with determining whether to go it alone in a fresh party or fuse into an existing one. It was nothing but an inconvenient detail that the former Kaduna governor spoke glowingly of their coalition fusing into the African Democratic Congress (formed in 2005) just weeks after he lionised the sedate Social Democratic Party (SDP) to which he had tried to lure every political malcontent in Nigeria, including the pussyfooting Alhaji Atiku. Though the former vice president has insisted he will remain in the PDP, he knows he is being untruthful, for there is no way he can secure or even procure the presidential ticket for 2027. If he is determined to stay in the party, it is probably to get his pound of flesh for their irreverence and iconoclasm.

    It is reassuring that even while the coalition was still inchoate, and while they were still undecided whether to fuse into and take over an existing political party or form a brand new one, Mallam el-Rufai gazed into his crystal ball, saw victory in the poll, and began to toy with composing a future cabinet. Prominent on the cabinet list, he said without any hint of shame or irony, would be Bosun Tijani, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy. It is not clear what impressions the youthful minister made on him, but the grand and still amorphous coalition would retain Mr Tijani in 2027. What is indeed clear is that the jostling for 2027 did not begin weeks ago, when in frustration Mallam el-Rufai, with Alhaji Atiku in hesitant tow, began speaking assertively of a new coalition. Even though it was at first done in whispers, the jostling actually began moments after the electoral commission announced the 2023 election results. The rhetoric about a coalition rose to a strident level after President Tinubu assumed office, becoming deafening when the self-important Mallam el-Rufai was officially scorned.

    After unsuccessfully conspiring to undermine the new government, especially with ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo giving them helpful and subversive hints in an eerie replay of the legitimisation he gave the 1993 presidential poll annulment, the opposition finally and reluctantly accepted that they erred greatly in the run-up to the 2023 poll. They should have gone to the poll united, they drawled in muffled epiphany, but went on with questionable logic to blame former Rivers State governor and now Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister for being a wet blanket in the PDP. So, the coalition leaders are precisely at a point where they have silently acknowledged their mistakes, and are supposed to be remedying them. They are instead still making many more mistakes, most of them perpetrated by the unrestrained Mallam el-Rufai who is scheming to be both the leading spokesman of the group and the indispensable fulcrum upon which the coalition is balanced. At the right time, despite his noise and rage, they will cut him to size. The coalition will of course not form a new party, for they neither have the intellectual girth to run one nor the financial heft to fund it. As a band of opportunists united by diverse grudges, their main interest is winning votes.

    Read Also: Owa Obokun: Tinubu approves rehabilitation of Ilesa/Ife/Ibadan expressway

    Two things will, however, shape the politics of the next 12 months before the primaries are conducted. One is whether the coalition can really get their act together and give the ruling party a run for its money. And two is the response of the ruling party itself, whether it can effectively and continuously turn the table on the coalition. For the coalition to get its act together, they will have to go beyond hijacking a party to also running it well and imbuing it with purpose, drive and vision. Should the ADC be their final destination, they will need to display humility and become team players. But Alhaji Atiku has a short attention span in which he has compressed his ambition, an ambition that sadly excludes nearly everyone else. He is also domineering. Of course he will let you have your say, but in the end it will have to be his way, and if the resistance seems plucky, he will wear it down with financial muscle. On his own, Mallam el-Rufai is prickly, arrogant, and talkative. He will not let anyone get in a word when he is in full rhetorical flight. In addition, he has a fondness for second-guessing everyone and jumping the gun. If there is no one able to browbeat or outwit him, the party will become captive to his caprices. Should the mercurial Kayode Fayemi, former Ekiti State governor, finally abandon his tentativeness and throw in his lot with the coalition and the ADC, he might offer some intellectual perspective deeper and better than the flighty Mallam el-Rufai’s, but his casual approach to principles will leave the party unprotected.

    Wherever Alhaji Atiku goes, the weakened former Osun State governor, Rauf Aregbesola, will also go. He has a long-running grudge he is nursing against President Tinubu. Saddened by his former mentor’s 2023 electoral victory, and armed with his half-baked religious and ideological philosophies, he has dedicated himself to joining anyone willing to and capable of unhorsing the president. No mean troubadour himself, he is keenly aware of the saying that there is strength in numbers and he has thus surrounded himself with praise singers and rhapsodists who inflate his ego. Former Rivers governor Rotimi Amaechi will of course also be numbered among the coalition leaders. Diminished by his long absence from office, and having derived meaning and sustenance from being in public office all his adult life, he will yearn for the new beginning a coalition offers, which enables him to speak sarcastically , sometimes bordering on treason, and to display the self-deprecating humour that partly signposted his governorship.

    If they can somehow magically discover a leader who will drive and inspire their coalition and perhaps the party they might fuse with, they will make hay out of the ruling party’s weaknesses. They were too impatient to wait for a little longer before shooting their feeble arrows at imaginary targets thereby forcing the growling All Progressives Congress (APC) out of its lair. Now that the jostling has really begun, the battle may be over before it commences. For while coalition and opposition leaders are still shuffling their feet and unable to determine exactly how to proceed, the ruling party has moved stealthily to depopulate, deplete and degrade their ranks. The coalition bared their fangs prematurely and unwisely, thus enabling the APC to reshuffle its cards and anticipate and checkmate their every move. Even if they overcome the initial and deadly hurdles the ruling party will strew all over their path, it remains to be seen how in light of the country’s delicate ethnic balancing, which far outweighs religious balancing, the coalition would overcome the informal but all-important rotation principle that disadvantages a northerner from receiving a significant hearing from the electorate at the next presidential poll.

    The APC partly banks on this rotational necessity as well as the radical and fruitful measures it has taken to reposition the economy. Every coalition movement and statement will in the months ahead likely be interpreted as being tantamount to political intolerance and promotion of either regional or ethnic exceptionalism. Given the tenor of the defections so far, it does appear like the next electoral contest will be judged significantly against the coalition’s opportunism. Mr Obi knows this, and, as a southerner whom Alhaji Atiku has assured of succession on a joint ticket and is thus being used to spook the APC, he is positioning himself to take advantage of this scenario should all else fail. In addition, key movers and shakers of the core North know this and recognise and reflect on the danger to national unity of aborting the South’s eight-year reign. The meddlesome Chief Obasanjo, despite his tactical impotence in political strategy also senses this, thus his promotion of political neophytes. But much more, the APC knows this even more abundantly and has been content to let the coalition forces welter in the coming storm.

  • Trump’s nasty, ambush politics and diplomacy

    Trump’s nasty, ambush politics and diplomacy

    If this generation had not witnessed the election of Donald Trump a second time as United States president late last year and experienced his ignoble approach to politics and diplomacy, they would have died with a smile on their faces convinced that America was infallible, invincible, thoroughbred, and an exemplar of all that is noble. In his first term, which was truncated by the mitigating election of Joe Biden, President Trump did his best to abridge his worst instincts and habits. He was of course no less nasty and insufferable, but he tried his best not to extend his brutishness beyond American borders. Even when he did, it was half-hearted and unconvincing, with many analysts still giving him the benefit of the doubt. Barely a hundred days into his second term, he has shown without a shred of doubt that no one, no matter how gifted, can plumb the depths of his nastiness.

    In one area, he has demonstrated he cannot be bettered: he is condescending to heads of states, except the autocrats among them. And he has fiendishly displayed the art of diplomatic ambush of the meanest kind. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was the first to taste of President Trump’s galling style during a visit to the White House two months ago to solicit for help in the war against Russia. Instead, he was ambushed, ridiculed, taunted and even haunted out of the Oval Office. He held his own quite alright, but because he was the one who needed help, he left the US in unquenchable grief. It began inauspiciously as President Trump baited his visitor; then when it seemed Mr Zelensky would ride the storm with surprising eloquence and logic that far outweighed and bettered the performance of the incoherent US president, a planted and groveling newsman asked a dismaying question about the visitor’s ‘inappropriate dressing’. Even this, too, the Ukrainian president tackled with aplomb. Sensing their quarry was getting away with a stellar performance, Vice President J.D. Vance weighed in on cue with a nasty comment to a visiting head of state no vice president was ever thought capable of. The ambush of February 2025 was complete.

    Barely three months later, as if thirsty for more blood, another ambush has been sprung against visiting South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa who asked for and received an invitation to visit the US to try and convince President Trump that no White genocide ever took place in South Africa nor was any contemplated. In visiting the White House after the Zelensky debacle, Mr Ramaphosa obviously reposed too much confidence in his composure, eloquence and the logical unassailability of his position regarding allegations of state-sponsored crime. It was a big mistake. The problem Mr Zelensky encountered with President Trump was not that he did not have a similarly unassailable position nor was he devoid of eloquence and poise, particularly under fire. The Ukrainian president’s problem, Mr Ramaphosa should have known, was that Mr Trump resorts to despicable tactics when he encounters his betters, or when he is losing an argument. More, Mr Trump has a closed mind and tunnel vision of diplomacy: once he makes up his mind, often without any spadework, he is both unmovable and implacable.

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    But Mr Ramaphosa, perhaps grieving over the fallacies Mr Trump had peddled regarding an inexistent White genocide, thought that if he went to the White House armed with facts and truths, his host would relent. Alas, his host does not work with facts and has contempt for truths; he is fascinated by lies and fabrications. The more the South African president displayed profundity, the surlier the US president became, until finally he sprung the said ambush using wholly tendentious videos and photographs depicting a so-called genocidal grave. Mr Ramaphosa was stupefied in a way Mr Zelensky, with his perfect and combative ripostes, was not. The South African was so badgered with falsehoods concocted in the US that he even began to doubt himself, asking tremulously at a brief point whether Mr Trump had verified the so-called genocidal graves. The American president simply waved off Mr Ramaphosa’s queries, for he had made up his mind, and would not and indeed could not be flustered by any doubts or facts to the contrary. It was not until later when he addressed the press unencumbered by the antics of his host that the dazed South African president found his voice. Of course, on the whole, he conducted himself excellently well, and gave a great, not just a good, account of himself. But with Mr Trump, it is futile to argue armed with facts.

    More, with the American president, it is futile to visit him except you are an unremitting autocrat he had taken a fancy to, or a gift-bearing and sinister head of state. After the Zelensky and Ramaphosa debacles, Mr Trump’s appalling tactics have been made very clear and unmistakable to the world. Not too many stouthearted presidents would be willing to visit the White House henceforth. Here, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu should learn a lesson. He should give the American president a wide berth, not out of fear, but because of common sense. It will be pointless dealing with such a man at close quarters. There will be nothing President Tinubu can say or show to convince Mr Trump that Nigeria is not carrying out genocide against Christians, not even if the Nigerian president were to show proof that his cabinet and military commanders are, to the last man, Christians. Mr Trump will simply goad a nasty reporter to ask the Nigerian president a tricky and provocative question, and then all hell would break loose. Not only should President Tinubu give President Trump a wide berth, he should also proactively put machinery in motion to ensure that for the four years the American president would hold sway in Washington, the Nigerian president should never be invited. Better safe than sorry. As the English say, discretion is the better part of valour.

  • Atiku not a nationalist

    Atiku not a nationalist

    The topic above is another sanitised way of saying that former vice president Atiku Abubakar is the most self-centred politician in Nigeria today. But he is not fazed by whatever label anyone slaps on him, nor discomfited by rules, regulations, agreements, or conventions. In 2003, he ignored the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rotation principle and tried to vie for the presidency against his boss, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo. The principle was and remains an informal mechanism to infuse inclusion into Nigerian politics. Since 2003, and down to the 2019 presidential election when a northerner stood to spend eight successive years in office, Alhaji Atiku has studiously disregarded any principle that has the capacity to regulate and stabilise Nigerian politics.

    Read Also: Owa Obokun: Tinubu approves rehabilitation of Ilesa/Ife/Ibadan expressway

    A week or so ago, pretending to ignore former Kaduna State governor’s giddy revelation about the former vice president ditching the PDP, Alhaji Atiku told the media that he had no intention of defecting anywhere. Of course no one believed him. But whether he would go to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as Mallam el-Rufai revealed months ago, no one could tell. Finally, it seems all but clear that he will be jumping ship and landing in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in his obsessive bid to run for the presidency one last time. It is all about him, after all, never about the country. By now, everyone is conversant with his messianic complex and his passion for ethnic exceptionalism. Yet, far more remarkable is his absolute lack of concern for the mechanisms by which the country’s ethnic, religious and social diversity must be balanced if the country is not to tilt over. He really doesn’t care, and has never cared. If he doesn’t get what he wants, balancing be damned. But just balancing? No; for a man so patently truculent and whose hatred for those who upstage him has remained malignant and incandescent, the entire country itself be damned.

  • Trump consistently exceeds himself

    Trump consistently exceeds himself

    United States president Donald Trump is an ominous example of how empires and kingdoms begin their precipitous fall. His general and contemptuous disregard for the US constitution, rationalisation of $400m Boeing 747-8 aircraft gift from the government of Qatar, ongoing development of his $5.5bn luxury resort in the same Qatar, flip-flop over Iran, Gaza, Syria, and the three-year-old Russo-Ukrainian War, not to talk of the dizzying somersault over tariff wars with friends and enemies alike, all show both the unpredictability of his administration and the greed that has become the fulcrum of his policies.

    President Trump and his advisers have tried to defend the Qatari gift, but the US constitution stipulates congressional approval to receive such gifts. He has waffled considerably over Iran, annulling agreements and whimsically restarting negotiations, has welcomed the Sunni-led Syria perhaps on the prompting of Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States from which he is receiving gifts, and has left Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu apoplectic over the Gaza War as he mildly berates him for the continuation of the war, just stopping short of blaming Israel for undue exuberance. And after months of pampering Russia and falsely blaming Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky for igniting the war, he has seemed to lose interest in the instant peace deal he initially fantasised.

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    Other than some Americans, few global affairs analysts expected anything stable and progressive from the Trump administration. But the US president has exceeded even his own inconsistencies, upending and endangering the global security and power balances, and redefining the ethical structures upon which relations between countries as well as global politics are built. The Gulf States have become Mr Trump’s Kryptonite, after recognising how easily they can deploy hundreds of billions of arms deals and investments to get him to do their bidding. And he has wiped the self-satisfied smirk from the faces of many of his admirers and early supporters, like Mr Netanyahu, while the rest of the world waits with bated breath, if not disgust, to see what unprincipled moves he would make next. It was said of the Army of Frederick the Great that it could not be bought or sold. It is sad that Mr Trump has turned America into a mercenary nation available for hire.

  • And JAMB’s Oloyede wept

    And JAMB’s Oloyede wept

    Last week, following the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) debacle, JAMB registrar’s Ishaq Oloyede’s high-profile and well-oiled media and public relations machinery went into overdrive. While countless commentators brought out the scalpel asking for the registrar’s head over the technical and human errors that undermined the examination and invalidated the results in the Lagos and Owerri zones, savvy media relations experts worked round the clock to reduce the stridency of the negative narrative against Prof. Oloyede. By last weekend the two sides were gently stalemated. The glitches affected nearly 380,000 candidates who sat for the examination, leading to outpouring of anger and grief among parents and students alike. One disconsolate candidate reportedly took her life, adding to the urgency of the crisis. But by last weekend also, the rescheduled examinations were already being written.

    After the results were first released two Fridays ago, JAMB officials defended the integrity of the examinations and adduced logic for the abysmal scores of about 75 percent of the candidates. Infuriated, some experts, affected parents and students insisted that something was definitely wrong with the exams and markings. Startled by the unusually loud and persistent outcry, JAMB ordered a review, and discovered, grief-stricken, that in fact, part of the blame for the unflattering scores was attributable to the exam body. In the process of reading his prepared speech in which he accepted full responsibility for the errors, Prof. Oloyede choked and wept. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) would make amends, he promised. But by that time, the image and reputation of the institution had been dented. This probably explained why some commentators asked for his head, indicating that they were unmoved by any emotions. Conversely, because he owned up to the errors and accepted full responsibility, other commentators, including highly placed government and legislative officials, saluted his courage and asked that he should be allowed to continue in office. In short, whether he resigns or stays put is entirely up to him, at least for now.

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    Since he assumed office in 2016 as JAMB registrar, Prof. Oloyede has made sterling contributions to the growth and performance of the exam body. He has inspired groundbreaking and transparent innovations to modernise the institution and make it accountable. But even as sterling as his contributions have been, neither JAMB nor any other institution saddled with such humongous and centralised responsibility is immune to the kind of glitches that undermined the 2025 UTME. Some commentators who damned him with faint praise have also been quick to counsel him to ensure avoidance of a repeat of the glitches. Perhaps the debate should not be about Prof. Oloyede, regardless of his exemplary contributions, but about the huge remit of JAMB, particularly whether the exam body should be saddled with such overarching responsibilities in a vast and heterogeneous society of over 230 million people.

    In the UK, to complete secondary school, students have to write the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam. Afterwards, they could either pursue subject-based qualifications such as A-levels or take vocational qualifications for two years. Different universities and colleges have variable requirements for each undergraduate course. Most require qualifications, subjects and exam grades and assess students suitability based on skills, experience, personal statements, interview performances and national tests (only) for medicine and law programmes. Applications are usually made through a Universities and College Admissions Service (UCAS), which also limits the number of universities that each student can apply to. Undergraduate requirements in the United States are quite different. There is no national entrance examination administered by the state or federal government or general admission service. Each university has its own admission requirements. Many undergraduate programs require one or more U.S. standardised test (SAT or ACT) scores as part of the application process. Institutions then evaluate these test scores as well as students academic record, before offers of admission are issued based on those assessments.

    If the 2025 UTME could be undermined by technical glitches and human errors, despite the best efforts of officials, the problem could repeat itself in the future with dire consequences. While stringent measures are usually employed to ensure the integrity of examinations and academic tests in many parts of the world, no system is completely immune to errors, for a chain is as strong as its weakest link. For example, far more technologically advanced societies like the United Kingdom witnessed an embarrassing failure in the conduct of a centralised professional examination involving the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK some two years ago. The federation admitted that about 283 doctors who sat the Part 2 examination in September 2023 received incorrect results. This suggests that the doctors who believed they had passed or failed the exam, in reality had different outcomes. As reported by the British Medical Association (BMA), an estimated 1,451 medical doctors took the exam, which is a key component of the three-part assessment required for doctors in the Internal Medicine Training pathway to graduate to higher specialty training. Prior to the release of this statement, some of the affected candidates had gone on to sit for the third part of the exam and a few had secured higher specialty training positions based on their perhaps flawed results.

    Prof. Oloyede’s tears exaggerated the flaws that undid the 2025 UTME. He has done very well in elevating the standard of the institution he assumed responsibility for in 2016. Whether he throws in the towel or not, it will not diminish his contributions. He may have got entangled in the whirligig of innovating the institution into the future, but even then the conversations Nigerians should be having now should transcend his innovations or the complacency of some of his officials. After all, if he steps down, nothing guarantees a better or more innovative registrar would be found for the exam body. The UTME debacle should instead lead Nigeria into reassessing its counterproductive centralisation of its affairs. Whether it relates to politics, economy, or social programmes, it is time to alter course and find more workable and less cataclysmic methods of running the affairs of the country. It is not about Prof Oloyede; it is about the implausible and dangerous unitary system upon which the country pivots. When a crash occurs, the consequences are always unnerving and disastrous.

  • There’s no mollifying Fubara, Wike

    There’s no mollifying Fubara, Wike

    They seem to have a different temperament down there in Rivers State, a difference probably unrelated to the March 18 proclamation of a state of emergency. It must be something far deeper, far bigger, and perhaps much more intense to frame in inoffensive words. Between suspended governor Siminalayi Fubara’s tactlessness and Federal Capital Territory minister’s intransigence, no one has been able to settle the question of whose deportment is worse or who is more voluble. Unfortunately, Rivers State has had the undistinguished honour of abiding both vices since Mr Fubara became governor, or, more correctly, since he was foisted on the state by the unappeasable Mr Wike who hides his fractiousness under his charisma.

    These typifications are not a deliberate attempt to slander Rivers State. Having been known through decades of election cycles as probably the most remarkable churner of dizzying electoral figures, much of these statistics coming from the fishing creeks, the state is now acquiring a different label of irresoluble political conflicts confined to its leadership elite. Tonnes of essays have been written to pacify or placate the state, to make it amenable to finer discourses and get it in tune with the rest of the country, but few in that state seem to pay heed. They have raved and ranted, and insulted and cursed. And the two men at the centre of the disagreeable mood suffocating the state have ridden blissfully on the disputative waves in the state, thundering against each other, and making snide remarks about each other’s followers.

    Last week, just one day apart, while posturing as earnestly questing for peace, Messrs Fubara and Wike once again lanced each other, one by the agency of a church service in honour of the late Niger Delta icon, Edwin Clark, and the other by the beaten path of a media chat. They were adamant, sarcastic and corrosive. The two had met in April in Abuja to see whether they could paper over the cracks between them. They seemed to have reached a tentative understanding which, however, quickly unravelled when their combative supporters, who have been conditioned to fight to the finish, recklessly began throwing barbs again. During last Sunday’s service of songs in Port Harcourt, Mr Fubara sounded surprisingly more conciliatory, even though he ended his remarks with a hint of sarcasm.

    Hear him: “I have peace. If you have known me, you’ve been seeing me; you can see I look better now…Some of you, have you asked yourself, do you think I’m even interested in going back there? I want to ask you, don’t you see how better I look…Do you think I’m interested in it? If I have my way, I would say this is it. This is an altar of God. I don’t wish to go back there. My spirit left that place long ago…So, all these, I want everybody to focus, please. There are fights you don’t fight, there are some things you don’t do because you need to ask the person, Does he want it?…If I had my way, I wouldn’t want to return. But many people, including the late Chief Clark, have made sacrifices for me. That’s why I must stand by them.”

    If Mr Wike had appreciated his predecessor’s verbal awkwardness, he would perhaps be less scathing. In the suspended governor’s quoted remarks, he inadvertently displayed two eccentricities: one, that he is often truly naïve about the import of his many weighty but sometimes circuitous remarks; and two, that he is feckless and eternally prone to wilting before the most tenuous of oppositions. Instead of appreciating the semantic limitations of Mr Fubara, and taking his generally innocent statements gamely, the primed and judgemental FCT minister took umbrage, drew his verbal sword, unfastened his scabbard and flung it away, and went for his predecessor’s jugular.

    Here is how he thrust his triumphalist sword into his predecessor’s heart during the media chat: “I told him (Fubara) I don’t think you have the capacity to really make this peace. It’s not easy; if you’re making peace, your people are demonstrating every day. If you are making peace, your people are busy on television insulting people…Yes, he came with two governors and another person, but unfortunately, the two of them are APC governors. I wouldn’t pursue him. He said he wants peace, and I said I want peace too. But there are steps. You people think this is about just saying, ‘I want peace’ and then you go. What that means is that there’s an open window for you, take the necessary steps to show you want peace. Indeed, this is a self-inflicted injury. He doesn’t need it. When this crisis started, I called him. Seyi Makinde, Ortom, Ikpeazu, and Umahi were there. We sat him down and said, ‘This is not good for you. God has given it to you; don’t allow people to push you. You’re a governor, we know. Don’t forget people laboured day and night. What I have said is: don’t forget people who toiled day and night.”

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    Clearly, for every inch Mr Fubara’s nursery rhyme went, Mr Wike’s tirade went a yard, for he is a far more consummate politician than his dour predecessor. Indeed, during the media chat, the FCT minister went beyond triumphalism; he also displayed a frustrating sense of entitlement and came close to playing God. He said: “I told him, ‘Go this way, and you will not have a problem’. People came and said, ‘Don’t mind him; assert yourself as governor’. Now trouble has come. They declared a state of emergency. He who wears the shoe knows where it pinches him. Who suffers? Assuming you don’t settle this problem and the state of emergency is called off, has the problem ended? I told him, ‘I don’t think you have the capacity to make peace. Your people are demonstrating every day, going on television to insult people’. Have you met the Assembly people? There are leaders you should meet. It’s not just to say, ‘I want peace.’ You must show, by conduct and action, that you want it.”

    Mr Wike was angry that some people close to the governor advised him to assert himself. Given the FCT minister’s imperious remarks, not to talk of the tone of finality with which he couches his decrees, it is not hard to imagine how heavily he obtruded upon the governance of the state. On the few occasions in the past when the governor had mellowed down and sounded conciliatory, Mr Wike had remained unyielding and supercilious. Mr Fubara of course has his faults, obviously amplified by his unpolished and indecipherable approach to politics, but nothing suggests that Mr Wike has all the solutions. Until they find a common intersection in their approach to politics and governance, the disagreement between the two men will be exacerbated by their dissonant backgrounds. Hopefully, someone somewhere will arrive on the scene and help them beat their swords into ploughshares, especially as the state of emergency begins to run its course. If no meeting ground is found, it could spell disaster for the state. Mr Fubara cannot regain the six months lost to emergency; he should, therefore, find a way to be all things to all men, guileful, proactive, and witty. If nothing else, let him at least have a great one term.

  • Utomi’s shadow cabinet

    Utomi’s shadow cabinet

    There is no length some Nigerians will not go in their absurd interpretation of democracy, including by those who ought to know better. Pat Utomi, a professor of political economy and Labour Party (LP) chieftain, last week announced the formation of a shadow cabinet that mimics the British parliamentary system of government. According to Prof. Utomi, the shadow cabinet would be called ‘The Big Coalition Shadow Government’. Here is the professor’s rationalisation : “The recent spate of defections to the All Progressives Congress provides further evidence that all is not well with democracy in Nigeria. The imperative is that if a genuine opposition does not courageously identify the performance failures of incumbents, offer options, and influence culture in a counter direction, it will be complicit in subverting the will of the people.”

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    The Bola Tinubu administration has predictably responded to the anomalous shadow cabinet declaration. They denounced and dismissed it as sharply antithetical to the presidential system of government, insisting that “Our bicameral legislature amply features members of the opposition, and it should be the right place to contest meaningful ideas for nation-building.” It is doubtless necessary for the administration to ridicule the LP’s and Prof. Utomi’s attempt to transpose systems, but given the eminent professor’s track record, not to talk of the LP’s mediocre methods, the shadow cabinet idea will flounder as usual and ultimately expire without any effort. It is risible and unworkable.

  • Meaningless, misguided and procured rallies

    Meaningless, misguided and procured rallies

    Last Monday, two rallies by civil society groups and youths caught the attention of the Nigerian media. A coalition of activists organised one of the rallies in Benin City, Edo State, to protest the arrest and detention of some activists, one of whom was Kola Edokpayi, Marxist activist and leader of the Talakawa Parliament.  Mr Edokpayi and his comrades had planned to hold a solidarity rally in support of Burkina Faso junta leader, Captain Ibrahim Traore, who took power in a coup d’etat in 2022. It is astonishing that the activists were unperturbed by the irony of using their democratic rights to serve the interest of a military leader who overthrew democracy in Burkina Faso. Perhaps the security services were more adept at recognising ironies.

    To show their adeptness, the Department of State Service (DSS) and the police, which had initially pressured Mr Edokpayi to drop the protest idea, stormed his office and took him and five other activists into detention. Four were later released, leaving, at least as at Monday when the activists staged their protest, the Marxist and one other comrade in detention. To many African leaders dismayed by coups and rampant antidemocratic movements, Capt Traore has clearly become an undesirable element. But to activists, some of them Nigerians looking for a cause célèbre, the Burkinabe leader exemplifies their detestation of neocolonialism. But there is a catch in all this. France, the so-called neocolonial object of the protests, had been kicked out of Burkina Faso since 2023. Vestiges of its influence may still remain, but they are nothing the agitated Burkinabe leader cannot exterminate, if he is savvy enough.

    Instead of putting measures in place and displaying the wisdom and administrative acumen needed to disentangle Burkina Faso from French influence, something that can obviously not be done overnight, Capt. Traore, with Russian help, has unleashed one of the most effective propaganda efforts the continent has ever seen. In late April, protesters, mostly diaspora Africans, bamboozled the world by staging global protests in support of what they described as the anti-colonial Burkinabe revolution to free the continent from the grip of neocolonial and imperialistic influences. It is not clear how they came to that conclusion, or why they could not see through the Burkinabe propaganda.

    Looking for a cause, and eager to stir things up a bit, Nigerian civil society organisations, starting from Benin City, attempted to replicate that global show of idiocy to shore up support for a Burkinabe leader who had begun to fish out those he alleged were counterrevolutionaries in his country, jailing protesters, and detaining journalists who question his clearly exaggerated claims of economic progress or denounce his brutal anti-democratic methods. Comrade Edokpayi’s rally did not take off. Instead, unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt, the Nigerian security services moved in and picked up the organisers. It is remarkable that the detained comrade as well as the coalition of activists who rallied in his support last Monday denounced their arrests as unlawful and repressive. Do they really know what oppression looks like? Perhaps they should visit Burkina Faso.

    In Nigeria, indeed, rallies have become a whimsical pastime of sundry agitators. Last Monday, in Abuja, youths also reportedly staged a protest demanding the release of 31-year-old Martins Vincent Ose, alias VeryDarkMan, from the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). He had been arrested over money laundering allegations, but claimed to be broke. A social media influencer and activist, he had been embroiled in a number of controversies, sometimes uploading videos of hastily investigated but controversial stories and issues. The law was already taking its course, and the EFCC had so far acted lawfully, including admitting him to bail terms that he could not immediately meet. So, why the rallies? It has become a cultural thing for those who sense that the federal and state governments are allergic to rallies and protests to organise protests over issues that do not defy legal interventions and mediations. The rally crowds are often available for hire. But they also indicate how tentative and fragile Nigerian democracy is, and why few are really committed to making the sacrifices needed to uphold or defend the freedoms the country currently enjoys.

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    Everyone has, as a matter of fact, become an activist in order to pressure the law enforcement agencies from making arrests or embarking on investigations deemed hostile to the interests of politically or socially exposed persons, particularly opposition politicians and celebrities. And they are honing their skills. Two Tuesdays ago, immediately the EFCC took her into custody over money laundering and criminal conspiracy allegations, socialite and business executive Aisha Achimugu also embarked on hunger strike to pressure the anti-graft agency to release her. Her lawyers implausibly declared she was a prisoner of conscience because her arrest, according to them, ran contrary to the rule of law. Of course, it all seemed choreographed, for hardly had she been arraigned the following day than she was enthusiastically ordered to be released ‘within 24 hours’. She had earlier been arrested in February and given administrative bail, but the EFCC claimed she jumped bail.

    So, apart from misguided rallies and meaningless protests, the next best thing seems to be to deploy the instrument of hunger strike to pressure the government against enforcing the law. For a government that is allergic, and in fact has a natural aversion, to rallies and protests, perhaps because of the fragility of Nigeria’s democratic experience, those untoward rallies appear effective but dangerous and counterproductive.