The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Quiet revolution in the North, but vacillations on banditry

Whether the country pays attention or not, a quiet revolution in leadership is slowly but surely afoot in the North. Far more than the South, a few but noticeable crop of intelligent and bold leaders have taken political office and are hungry for change, development and legacy largely unencumbered by religious and ethnic bigotry, or any kind of prejudices that conflict with their cosmopolitan make-up and worldview. That quiet revolution is happening in Niger State with Mohammed Bago, is evident in Borno State with Babagana Zulum, and is also taking root in both Katsina with Dikko Radda and Kaduna State with Uba Sani. In a few more months, it will be clear whether the revolution should be lauded.

Today, however, it is time to remark Governor Radda’s surefooted and impressive ratiocination on the seemingly unending scourge of banditry in his state. Two weekends ago, he firmly dismissed the possibility of negotiating with bandits, saying that banditry had become a business venture for some people in and out of government, and among some members of the country’s security apparatus.

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It would be impractical and meaningless to negotiate, he argued. He gave reasons. “It is a business venture for the criminals and a business venture for some people who are in government and some people who are in the security outfits and some people who are responsible for the day-to-day activities of their people. These are some of the reasons why we are unable to bring an end to the issue of banditry. When you understand the terrain of the forest, and the different camps that we have within those forests, like in Katsina, we have more than 100 different camps that are being led by somebody. So, they have many leaders, many camps and if you’re negotiating with camps A and B and don’t negotiate with camps C and D, it will not bring any lasting peace. Even if you negotiate with the leaders, the other leaders may not necessarily comply with the directives of the leader. So that is what makes the negotiation very difficult. That is why I said I would never go into negotiations with any criminal at the point of weakness.”

His predecessor, the equally principled Aminu Masari started out like him but soon succumbed to advice to negotiate with some of the bandits. He did, and later regretted it, for as he found out, the bandits thought their lifestyle too lucrative to give up for amnesty or stipend. Mallam Masari discovered a little late that negotiating with bandits was meaningless. Former Zamfara State governor Bello Matawalle also made the same unsettling discovery of the futility of negotiating with bandits. On many occasions, after negotiations, he was left holding the short end of the stick. The Northeast states are also beginning to discover how counterproductive the federal government’s deradicalisation and reintegration programmes for ‘repentant’ Boko Haram insurgents have become. Some of the deradicalised militants have, according to some reports, returned to their vomit of violence, thus justifying the anger and resentments of many Boko Haram victims still pining away at Internally Displaced Persons’ camps. From all indications, it is a question of time before the deradicalisation programme is halted, after tons of money had been unwisely spent to pacify an intransigent group of fighters.

Thankfully, the federal government has been less forthcoming in negotiating with bandits of the Northwest. Individual states had fitfully negotiated with a few bandit leaders and posed for photographs with them, and a few clerics, particularly the cocksure Islamic cleric Ahmad Gumi, had made a strong case for negotiations. Uncharacteristically, however, the Muhammadu Buhari administration and its successors have been very loth to dialogue with the bandits. In light of happenings in the Northeast, it is now far less likely that both the federal government of states will negotiate with bandits. As a matter of fact, Kebbi State governor Nasir Idris has promised to sign the death warrant of anyone convicted as an informant to bandits. If informants could be shot, neither amnesty nor reprieve would be appropriate for bandits.

Northern governors met in Kaduna about two weeks ago to discuss the rising incidence of the North’s out-of-school children, which is said to be the highest in the world, and the festering question of insecurity. They took decisions. They will do well to start by being unequivocal about their views on banditry as well as determine exactly how to combat the menace without hesitation. They should stop their vacillations and repudiate the option of negotiation until the menace is defeated. The cost of banditry to their region is too high, and it may take generations to recover.

May 12, 2024
Fubara and the coup in Rivers

In what seems like a coup de main last Wednesday, Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara got his three loyal state legislators to elect a speaker, Victor Oko-Jumbo, conduct plenary in Government House where the governor had brusquely relocated the legislature, affirm the ‘illegality’ of the 25 or 27 pro-Nyesom Wike lawmakers through a Justice C.N. Wali ruling, and get the All Progressives Congress (APC) scurrying to rein in the feral cats set among their flailing pigeons. The crisis began few months after the inauguration of Mr Fubara who appeared disinclined to toe the line of his predecessor, Mr Wike. Reminiscent of the burning of the German Reichstag in 1933 before World War II, the parliament building in Port Harcourt was soon put to the torch and reasons conjured to castrate the 27 pro-Wike lawmakers. The ensuing stalemate has splintered the state and helped to bring out the true character and mettle of the state’s leading politicians and elders. The picture that has emerged has, however, been ugly and most dispiriting.

Rivers State and the rest of the country have been curiously fixated on the superficiality of who is right or wrong in the drama, with political partisanship and to some extent pecuniary interests mostly determining the sentiments of observers and analysts. The state is consequently entwined in a legal maze inspired by a judiciary that is clearly in need of salvation from both ineptitude and partisanship. Nigeria is not alone in this morass. The muck exists everywhere, but Nigeria’s political experience in the past few years, especially typified by conflicting judgements in Rivers and Kogi, has been most baffling. Rivers is not the first state to go down that chute; other states have, and for different reasons. Whoever emerges winner at the end of the maelstrom is unlikely to inspire the country or leave a great precedent, for both leaders and followers in the state are trapped in the shallow and pedantic politicking and reasoning that have blighted Nigeria for decades. It remains to be seen how a just and fair consideration of Section 109 (1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution will help the combatants in Rivers State cut the Gordian knot. Indeed the suits in respect of the legitimacy of the defecting lawmakers are still in court, but Mr Fubara has unconstitutionally cut to the chase and together with his loyal three passed a befuddling judgement on the recalcitrant 27. Riding on the wave of public sentiment, the governor is not ruffled by the anomaly of subordinating the parliament to his whim.

Anytime he steps out for a public function, the governor feels bound, among other official assignments, to mention his misunderstanding with his predecessor who is also the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister. The conflict between the two men has deepened and probably calcified, defying presidential intervention, and now sucking in all kinds of parasites and opportunistic friends and vengeful enemies. Mr Wike, in turn, feels obligated to respond, often hysterically, to his successor’s provocations, barely resisting for more than a week or two the temptation to say nothing. Left unchecked, the brickbat between the men may leave the state hurtling towards a tragic and fiery denouement. While the FCT minister has been sturdy in his responses, Mr Fubara has sometimes been compellingly poetic and colourful in his declination to govern the state on ‘bended knees’, or allowing anyone, meaning Mr Wike, to take the place of God.

There is nothing dignified about the leadership tussle in Rivers. Though many Riverians and public commentators have filed emotively behind the two men, and are in most cases being more Catholic than the Pope, it is uncertain that they really appreciate the substance and many dimensions of the quarrel or what the conflict portends in the state. The tussle is heavily nuanced, and it is even doubtful whether the two leading combatants quite appreciate what they are fighting over. To the Rivers State public, the conflict is either about Mr Wike attempting to muscle the governor into submitting to a godfather, or about Mr Fubara too hastily breaking ranks with his mentor and the school of thought bequeathed the state. Some other Riverians suggest that the fight may actually be political, involving the governor betraying his mentor, reconciling with political enemies, and subverting the state’s ruling party structure. Perhaps the fight consists of all these elements. How the war is fought and won may, therefore, probably influence the direction of Rivers politics in 2027, including determining which party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) or Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), gets the upper hand in the months and years to come.

Neither Mr Wike nor Mr Fubara has framed the conflict in the imposing and dispassionate sense capable of reflecting on the state’s politics and politicians. Perhaps it is not in the place of any external commentator to determine for the two politicians what to fight over and how, but the warriors will expectedly acknowledge and defend the factors that shape and influence their politics. They have framed the fight as prejudiciously as they can, in line with their limited perception of issues and simplistic worldview, and they will probably fight the war to the bitter end from those narrow perspectives. But of the two, and despite his hysteria and failings, not to say his hectoring of his predecessor, Mr Wike comes closer to crystallising and embodying the conflict in the elevated and abstract sense by which it should be understood. At various fora, he talks about honour, dignity and the onerous responsibility of leaders and statesmen, implying that the governor lacked them or has broken them; but it is also evident that he himself has an incomplete understanding of the concepts he glibly but rightly enunciates.

As for Mr Fubara, he has been largely ephemeral, preferring to focus on the simple but resonating ideas of being his own man, obviously without the help of a godfather, and letting it be known that he submits to God rather than man. The governor has laboured to honour the agreement he reached in the presence of the president. He has, therefore, dithered and hemmed and hawed over an agreement he now derides as unconstitutional. His men allegedly put the parliament to the torch, while he completed the erasure by demolishing a large part of it. And still breathing terror against 27 obdurate lawmakers siding with Mr Wike, as against the three in his camp whom he bewilderingly chose to recognise and honour, he stormed the legislative quarters to warn of impending demolition, claiming that as governor he owned the property as much as he reserved the right to recognise or not recognise any lawmaker. Earlier, he had impatiently declared that lawmakers existed at his pleasure. Their existence owed their lives to his caprice, he summed up.

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If only Mr Fubara would shut up. He believes he enjoys mass following and the backing of the who-is-who in the state, and that this support sanctifies his actions and ennobles his increasingly authoritarian streak. But whatever he has said in the past few weeks, after the restraint of the past few months which he now speaks about deprecatingly, has been embarrassing and lacking in democratic foundations. He is admittedly engaged in a serious battle with the equally intransigent Mr Wike, but putting on the apparel of a dictator and preparing to burn down his state do little to burnish his fragile image or weaken the FCT minister who has had the fortune of fighting from distant peaks. It is not clear why Mr Fubara thinks the country would stand idly by and watch him demolish and undermine the constitution or democracy. Does he not sense the suspicion and repugnance of his colleague governors? Has he not learnt any lesson from some former governors who deprecated the art of governance and are today mummifying in silence and isolation?

Mr Fubara bears the larger responsibility for whatever becomes of the state. He is after all the governor, but he has become frantic and desperate, and, like the biblical Samson, appears willing to bring the whole edifice down on everybody. The people who egg him on to open and uncircumscribed revolt against the parliament in the guise of fighting Mr Wike will give him cold shoulder when he overreaches himself and the country fights back. Even if he wins, the victory will be pyrrhic. Nor does Mr Wike, who has been both unyielding and immoderate, stand a chance of erasing the governor and his supporters many of whom have obfuscated the law and rested their arguments and support on the wrong premises. The latter has a fairly better appreciation of the values being fought for; but even he has been unable to comprehend the appalling leadership failing of his successor which finds its leitmotif and resonance in his own calamitous lack of understanding of the concept of leadership. The problem is not that Mr Fubara has genuine reasons to resist the FCT minister. He does and indeed, should. The problem is that the governor has been so uninspiring in his appreciation of issues, so tactless in his approach, and so ordinary in every ramification. But this does not absolve Mr Wike of responsibility. In fact he bears the larger part of the blame for all that is happening in Rivers State.

What is playing out in Rivers is, therefore, not just two men fighting over party structure, 2027 elections, APC versus PDP, godfather versus godson, or which side of the divide cheerleaders are arrayed , or who in the state still qualifies to be described as an elder or statesman, or who will and should win in the end. What is playing out before the whole country is the depressing lack of leadership and statesmanship, a deficiency that has enabled a small and manageable misunderstanding to be multiplied exponentially into a catastrophe. How anyone can pretend to leadership without being inspired by great leaders of the past is hard to explain. That is what ails Rivers. Nay, that is what ails many Nigerian states where religious bigots and ethnic chauvinists hold sway and are eager to burn their communities; incompetent leaders who have learnt nothing from history and are doomed to repeat it. Messrs Fubara and Wike will not sheathe their swords, for neither of them can be persuaded by reason or common sense. But if any true elder is left in the state, let him rein in the calamity unfolding in Port Harcourt between the imperial politics of Mr Wike and the budding dictatorship of Mr Fubara.

May 12, 2024
At bay at the Rafah Crossing

It is a deeply unoptimistic time for the human species. We live in very stressful and distressing times. The war in Gaza has shattered all known paradigms of hostile contention. As Israeli tanks and heavy armour tore through the last remaining ramparts on their way to Rafah, all the known manuals about war and peace-making have disappeared in a hellish bonfire. All the appeals by the defeated and the world at large for a ceasefire, a humanitarian truce that would allow humanity to regain its composure and recover its poise, have been spurned by the victors.

There is a hardening of heart and of feelings about the Israeli war cabinet that is grimly and ironically biblical, reminiscent of the sufferings and tribulations of the ancient Jews in the hands of their Egyptian captors eons earlier. This time around, the shoe is on the other foot. You begin to wonder why history tends to repeat itself and about what Albert Camus, the great Algerian-French author, has called the solidarity of all humans in aberration.

It no longer makes sense to talk about an apocalypse in Gaza. The apocalypse is already here with us, what with the unspeakable carnage and the scale of destruction and human wastage. The situation is post-apocalyptic. Never in the history of modern warfare have a people and a nation been subject to such systematic destruction, such mindless evisceration and high-tech obliteration in full public view.

This century is only two decades old and the auguries for humanity are very dire. It will be recalled that the decade opened with the most deadly viral assault on humanity ever seen in modern times. Globalization ensured that the lethal scourge travelled far and wide, and quickly too. All the stockpile of the deadly weapons that human imagination could conceive and the arsenal of far-ranging nukes were of no avail as humanity and the entire human race were almost upended by a single virus.

A firm lid has been placed on the origins of this mysterious incubus and any inquisitions into its unholy provenance whatsoever by the global power masters. They are united by the fear of their own shadows. Traced to a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the Covid-19 scourge is a telling tribute to the destructive rat race among leading nations in the world. The rest of the world is just mere collateral damage.

For about a decade now, this column has repeatedly canvassed the notion that the nation-state paradigm is fraying at the edge and has probably reached the end of its tether. It will require a global gathering of sapiens or an assembly of luminaries on the scale of Westphalia or Utrecht to rejig it or plot the way forward for humanity. Without it, all the talk about a two-state solution to the Palestine/Israeli quandary will remain nothing but hot air.

Before our very eyes, Israel has emerged as a new type of colonial nation with the power of life and death over the subdued and subjugated Palestinians. Like the Jews themselves for almost two millennia, the Arab-Palestinians will now be reduced to aimless wandering and perambulating like a band of footloose gypsies.

A western creation in controversial circumstances, Israel is now cocking a snook at its benefactor with the western powers unable to do anything about it. The western powers knew what they were doing when they set the Jewish cat among Arab pigeons. But with the current upheaval among its populace, America may yet discover that it has lost more than power and prestige to the Middle East conflagration.

Next on this panoramic inventory of the infirmities of the nation-state paradigm is the long-simmering Russia/Ukraine war with Vladimir Putin insisting on dismembering Ukraine. He has succeeded elsewhere else and may yet succeed in this one too as Ukraine begins to manifest early signs of war-fatigue. Putin, who has fingered western conspiracy and manipulation in the collapse of the old Soviet Union, is bent on doing something to restore his notion of geo-political equity and equilibrium.

The cost of insisting that the brave and patriotic Ukrainians have a right to self-determination, like every other people, is proving prohibitive. Putin will not go back home without something to show for it. That will be suicidal. And since it has now been proved beyond reasonable doubt that international politics is not about being right or about higher morality, the western backers of Ukraine should persuade its leadership to cede territory in order to live to fight another day.

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There are many other contemporary flashpoints of nation-state paralysis the world over, particularly in Asia and Africa. The toll has been prohibitive. Myanmar has been roiling in a bloodfest for almost twenty years. Burmese youths are seceding in droves to the insurrectionists in the jungles who have vowed not to relent until they have brought down the despicable tyrants in Rangoon. With their back to the wall, and in an irony of ironies, the junta has dredged up the image of the iconic founding father of the nation, the same man whose daughter they have treated with such contempt and brutal discourtesy.

Venezuela and Guyana are up in arms against each other over a disputed oil-rich enclave. Many countries in Latin America are economically unviable and their states effectively defunct as hordes of refugees make nonsense of the sanctity of national borders. Sudan, Somalia, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Spanish Sahara are in need of an urgent make-over.

The modern instances of Pakistan, Bangladesh, East Timor, Malaysia, Singapore, South Sudan, Slovakia and the dissolution of the Soviet Empire show that territorial mapping and reconfiguration cannot be a once and for all time affair. There are usually unanticipated developments, emergent contradictions and the resurgence of old ancestral feuds which can no longer be contained within the old format without something nasty and sinister giving. Unless global statesmen are inured to human suffering and bloodletting on an industrial scale, it may be time to put on their thinking cap.

In all this, perhaps the biggest elephant in the room is the Israeli/ Palestine conflict which began innocuously enough in the first week of October last year with a frenzied Hamas assault on the Israeli homeland and has now escalated to become the greatest global conflict of our time with the potential to degenerate into a nuclear confrontation. This column calls it the conundrum of cousins. It has held the world spellbound since the creation of Israeli nation by the victorious world powers in 1948.

In the murky and phantasmagoric world of super power intelligence, what we are witnessing in the Gaza Strip may well be an intelligence stunt gone awry, just like the Covid-19 gambit. In retrospect, it is highly unlikely that the punitively proactive Israeli spy network or the various western listening posts in the Middle East would have missed the furtive rumbling of Hamas prior to the eruption on October 7th.

It is possible that Israel and its western patrons actually encouraged Hamas to deliver the weaker punch in order to give the organisation a terminal sucker punch which would put its nose permanently out of joint. What happened next is the law of unintended consequences or the logic of unanticipated developments.

Hamas has proved much stronger, more determined and far more durable than conventionally expected while an embattled, humiliated and severely jolted Israel has decided to go for broke with no hostages taken. The biblical Masada complex, of fighting to the last man is at play once again.

The result has been the horrific carnage and wanton destruction that are now winging their way to a surreal finale on the storied border crossing with Egypt. The modern world is no longer safe when Israel decides to reenact the valour and feckless heroism of its ancient forebears.

It has been suggested that the Israeli Prime minister fears peace because he is eminently aware that a peace settlement will signal the end of his stranglehold on his nation. But other opinions suggest a far more ambivalent public with about half the populace secretly applauding Benjamin Netanyahu’s gung-ho and up and at “em” militarism.

It is a play of giants and the common mass of humanity has little or nothing to contribute except to watch in fretful silence as the grim denouement approaches. In the sanctuary of power, men and women are expendable just as flies are to wanton boys. Not even the UN and its humane and emotionally intelligent Secretary General have anything to say except to issue advisories brimming with apocalyptic forebodings. How many divisions does Antonio Guterres have?

However what may be, the only silver lining in the cloud in all this is the huge moral and ethical reawakening the Palestine/Israeli conflict has triggered the world over particularly among the youth which happen to be the most vital demographic. Dachau and Auschwitz happened a long time ago. It is no longer part of contemporary consciousness. All the young can see is the brutal battering and decimation of the hapless Palestinians as projected unto their screen.

The youthful Americans see their government as complicit in what they think is crime against humanity perpetrated by an American satellite with the military connivance of their own government. This is why all over American university campuses, from the east to the west coast and from the north to the deep south, irate and implacable students are up in arms.

It will not deter the belligerents. Only superior force can do that. But here again is where the law of unintended consequences and the logic of unanticipated developments may yet kick in again. If the current ferment and tempest drive America into the hands of an ultra-right government led by a berserk narcissist and megalomaniac conman come November, the wheel of fortunes would have turned full circle and America would have paid a dreadful price for its namby-pamby policy in the Middle East.

May 12, 2024
Okon feeds white lion

As the drama of former public officials hiding away from the same public they had served so diligently and meritoriously intensified, yours sincerely has been watching the tomfoolery and buffoonery of it all with increasing fascination.

Whatever will make a nation’s errant political class dishonour the sacred ethos of public service with such brazen indiscretion and alarming criminality remains a subject of great historical fascination. Snooper has consulted all the great books of history and the matter remains a great mystery. Not even the theory of primitive accumulation could be of great help in this outlandish bazaar of barracudas.

Just think of all the former governors, former senators, former ministers, former lawmakers, former party grandees and former helmsmen of blue chips company who are having a scrape or who have had scrapes with EFCC and you begin to wonder whether the nation has been overwhelmed by men and women of the underworld. There is no word in the dictionary for this kind of thieving culture, or the scope and scale of it all. With public distemper mounting, it is obvious that the situation requires harsh legislation or some urgent constitutional tinkering before it tips into anarchy.

You can trust Baba Lekki, the old contrarian, to cotton in on the show. He had recently returned from a trip to the Kogi State capital where he was seen pasting a wanted notice on all public buildings in Lokoja with an old picture of the former governor looking like an apprentice tradesman. When he was challenged by irate tribesmen who live on the Kukuruku Hills, he thought it was a joke until he was pounced upon and forced to stuff the remaining notices down his own gullet.

On Friday morning just before the airwaves filled with the latest turn in the hide and seek drama between a former governor and the EFCC, Okon barged in as yours sincerely lapped up the early morning drizzle while cozying up in bed. The midnight rains were quite a becalming blessing. With air conditioners prohibited by the prohibitive tariffs, yours sincerely has taken to sleeping swamped by cold bottles.

“Okon, where are you going so early in the morning?” snooper ventured to ask.

“Ha oga, I wan quickly reach Okene make I feed dem white lion. He don tey when him dey live under dem police woman him bed. Dem say, him dey cry for night as hunger dey wire am. He don dey chop him own white bally and him belle come dey swell”, the mad boy chanted breathlessly.

“Okon, but lions don’t eat eba or small chops”, yours sincerely noted, hiding his amusement.

“Oga, ha dis kind lion go chop anything, even insect sef. No be real lion. Na yeye lion. Him come dey run for common police. Wetin him dey do if dem send dem samanja soja?” the mad boy retorted.

“Okon, but the man has obtained an injunction”, snooper noted.

“Oga dat one na Otukpo market injunction. If him like make him obtain conjunction. Him must to comot. Even dem armed robber no dey thieve like dat”, Okon snarled.

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“I can see you even put plenty of milk and Congo meat”, yours sincerely noted with a straight face.

“Ha oga dat one na breast milk from Umuozara baby factory. You no say dem yeye man like plenty breast milk. Him get sixty pikin and him dey fire even dem police women”, Okon whispered and winked conspiratorially. It was at this point that yours sincerely drove out the mad boy.

An elder statesman cuts

Joe Ajaero some slack

Feedback

I have had another look at your column titled May Day for Labour. Even the Ajaero picture gave enough hint of what followed. The present NLC President is not different in stature from the popular former NLC President, Adams Oshiomhole, who was its president until 2007. He contested office for Edo State Governor in 2007 under APC. He was Governor, Edo State, 2008-2016. He was APC Chairman and now Senator.

There does not seem to be much wrong then in President Ajaero’s approach, except that Oshiomhole’s term has ended and he had time to nurture a political set up which saw him through. He started with Labour Party, on to ACN and finally to APC. On the other hand, our President Ajaero went into a fully established Labour Party, with an existing structure complete with a Party Chairman, and he got severely bruised because he did not appear to have done his homework before he set off.

Name withheld.

May 12, 2024
Insurection

When a couple of weeks ago I received the video recording of a man and another one of a woman announcing the birth of a new Pan-Yoruba nation, my one word answer to the video content was ‘clowns’ and that with apologies to clowns some of whom have made a mark for being reasonable and responsible both in speech and action. Of course, there is nothing reasonable or responsible about what happened in Ibadan when a rag tag group of people, armed with a motley collection of mouldy weapons stormed the seat of government of Oyo State in the name of an insurrection to liberate the Yoruba people from bondage. That is if the word storm could be used to describe that thoroughly bizarre event at Agodi. Those people, some of them wearing army camouflage fatigues, perhaps to convey their determination to kill or be killed, ran a random flag up a convenient flag pole and proclaimed the arrival of a brand new nation for and on behalf of people of Yoruba extraction who were described by their would be liberators as living under intolerable conditions within the confines of the Nigerian nation state. These wannabe liberators were under the grand illusion that they had a mandate from the United Nations to seize power on behalf of their kith and kin who now occupy the South west zone of Nigeria as well as other contiguous parts of neighbouring states. One can only wonder if their supposed mandate could be extended to cover other countries in the region; Benin, Togo, Ghana and onward into Sierra Leone, thereby creating a modern day Yoruba Empire along the West coast of Africa. In the light of togetherness those who lay very strong claims to Yoruba heritage and ancestry across the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, Trinidad and sundry other places may be reached out to so that they can stake their claims to the largess available to them from their father or, is it their motherland? In the new world of political correctness, it may be expedient to talk of a father-motherland complex in this case.

As expected, their insurrection, if what happened can be described as such was speedily put down by a small contingent of state sponsored managers of violence who fired a few shots, mostly into the air and arrested the merry band of nationalist agitators who could have been shot dead out of hand for daring to usurp the powers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. In cases of this nature corpses are usually what are seen on television in the aftermath of their action when announcements of such misadventures are announced on government media. This is certainly what would have been the case if this stunt had been contemplated to the knowledge of the over- muscular government of Sani Abacha but we now live in more enlightened times and any display of corpses on television would have outraged our sensibility. This incidence has all fizzled out as a bad joke even if the arrested freedom fighters have paid and are still paying a heavy price for their astonishing audacity. Everything considered, they are or, should be relieved to find themselves still alive.

The Agodi incident may have ended up as predictable farce but it gives us the opportunity to take another look at the state of our union, the Federal Republic of Nigeria if only because it is now a hundred and ten years since Lord Lugard conjured up its existence under the authority of the then rampant British Empire. One hundred and ten years is a pretty long time in the life of an individual. Indeed it is a very long time, so long that even in the face of increased human longevity only the odd man or woman (more likely to be woman) has survived to live so long. In the life of institutions however, the country has not advanced beyond very early infancy and should it die now, its demise could be regarded as an abortion even though she has survived a civil war which claimed more than two million lives as part of her labour pains.

Most Nigerians know for a fact that their country is a multi-ethnic state in which there is any number of languages spoken and Gods worshipped. Indeed it is a veritable Babel which in the opinion of many, obviously including the members of that band that inflicted itself on Agodi are convinced that the only way forward is for the country to be fractured along ethnic and even perhaps, religious lines. That there may be no end to the number of mini states that will succeed the demise of Nigeria does not seem to bother those people who are hell bent on forcibly pulling a large chunk of the country out of the Federation in the hope that having done so, they would have created a paradise fit for the Yoruba people who according to them, are copping hell in Nigeria at the moment. It sounds altogether rather crazy but that is the level of discourse in the country at the moment.

Before going much further, it has to be said that there are not many people who are taking the Agodi militants seriously, at least not in public. That is the extent of how their ham fisted attempt at secession has been received. However, it is not to be assumed that they are utterly alone in their delusion. Had they mounted a serious enough challenge, it is not unlikely that quite a number of people, some would even say, a large number of people would have at least cheered them to the echo but nobody likes to be associated with failure as that which was laid bare to the world on that Saturday morning in Agodi. This does not mean that the idea which they espoused has no currency. Actually, across Nigeria, there are perhaps millions of people who subscribe to this idea and have very serious guns to back their proposition. In some parts of the South East, they have real authority and in their natural habitat nobody in their right mind would question their agenda without fear of serious, if not mortal consequences. It is quite clear that everything considered, the agitation for secession is alive and well. This being the case, it has got to be a subject of serious discussion in Nigeria. More than this, It has probably become necessary to craft a credible response to the challenge posed by people who think that their allegiance to Nigeria cannot be guaranteed for any number of reasons. They cannot be wished away especially at a time when all that can be equitably shared in this country is poverty coupled with extreme physical and psychological discomfort.

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There are certain ethnic groups, namely Yoruba and Igbo who perhaps on the basis of the conviction of their respective exceptionalism are convinced that they are not getting a fair shake in Nigeria. Among these groups of people there is the feeling that other groups especially those from the far North are lording it over everyone else and are indeed the de facto rulers of Nigeria. The people referred to here are those indigenous to the states which were summarily excised from Nigeria by Orka and his henchmen in the process of their failed coup as long ago as 1990. Incidentally, those areas of the country are currently so troubled by violence and poverty, not to talk of religious bigotry and intolerance that political concerns cannot be a priority for the truly beleaguered people of that region. Actually , it is apparent that what ails Nigeria cannot be cured by any form of political intervention.

It is clear or at least it should be clear to anyone with a functional brain that the mountain barring the way to any form of happiness in this country is dressed in economic garments. There is extreme poverty in the land even as people perceive that there should be enough money to go round with more than a little to spare. Rather than develop our resources in order for us to overcome our wants, corruption that stinks to high heavens ensures that only an infinitesimal proportion of Nigerians have the wherewithal to confront hunger and other natural wants with any modicum of success. The fat cows in our midst are getting fatter even as most cows are fading away from lack of food. Those emaciated cows are in fair danger of being swallowed up by those fat cows which have appropriated all available resources for their own very private consumption. Those who have been appointed to stand guard over our monetary resources have not understood their brief and think that all monies in their care belong to them, to do with it whatever takes their fancy. The amount of money stolen from our treasury, at least by the calculation of EFCC is truly mind shattering and is enough make us a lot more comfortable than we are. But a lot of the money has been taken out of circulation; buried in false soakaway pits, sequestered behind concrete walls, sent overseas on one way journeys or craftily used to pay school fees which are not required to be paid until fifteen or more years into the future. The ingenuity of people dealing with an over supply of American dollars in Nigeria is nothing short of astonishing.

The golden eggs which the various groups active in secessionist mode are fighting over is crude oil, extracted in large quantities from the subsoil of the lands of the Niger delta. There was a time when the people who lived in that region were clamorous in their demand for compensation for what the rest of the country was harvesting from their backyard. They screamed very loudly for resource control but all they got was a derivation arrangement which diverted more money into their purse. Not satisfied with this, they have resorted to self-help and today a lot of the oil extracted is being diverted into artfully dug bunkers and on into huge cooking pots breaking down crude into useable petroleum products. The process is dirty and incredibly dangerous which is why it is the preserve of thin cows. The fat cows make off with oil tanker loads of crude oil and reap stupendous reward from the comfort of their palatial homes. The price of crude oil is the highest it has been in years and with drones and missiles of every description ruling the skies over the Middle East, prices are set to climb even higher. With Nigerian crude boiling in the creeks and sloshing around in the insatiable bellies of the fat cows, the nation does not stand to benefit from any increase in the price of crude oil for the simple reason that a large percentage of the oil taken out of the ground cannot be accounted for. Under our circumstances the only other thing growing within our beleaguered polity is our collective dissatisfaction with our lot.

Dishonesty has brought us here and dishonesty cannot be abandoned at this time. Now that we are marooned in shit creek without a paddle we see each other as different ethnic and even subethnic groups and have taken to blaming other groups apart from the one we belong to for the mess we are in. The bitter truth is that in the matter of destroying our dreams as a nation all the diverse groups that make up Nigeria have blood on their hands. People point their bloody fingers at people in other groups out of the dishonesty which rules our collective hearts and minds. This will not do!

The truth of our matter is that the many different groups that make up Nigeria are in their different ways suffering from extreme forms of collective psychosis. They are each determined to get hold of as much of the shareable assets available to every Nigerian without a complimentary thought of how they can contribute their respective quota towards creating the wealth available to be shared. Each of the disparate groups that make up this country is inevitably infected by the virus of superiority over every other group. This is the form of racism which will throttle our collective future. Those people, like the mentally challenged creatures who disturbed the peace of Agodi the other day are an ever present danger to the future of Nigeria. Their aims are bound in frank dishonesty and they and their ilk must not be allowed to dictate our collective agenda.

May 12, 2024
Must this government tax Nigerians beyond their limit

No nation ever grew move prosperous by taxing its citizens beyond their capacity to pay” – British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher in a Speech to the British Conservative Party Conference on 14 October, 1983.

I haven’t the slightest doubt that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has shown very conclusively, even in his first year in office, that he is here to propel Nigeria towards renewal. By the time he took office on 29 May, 2023, Nigeria was lying prostrate, surprisingly, under a President Muhammadu Buhari who, in the words of Professor Usman Yusuf, “came to power with so much hope, expectations and goodwill of citizens and the international community”.

All those lofty hopes had atrophied, no thanks to his inability to rein in the likes of Godwin Emefiele, his Central Bank governor, who had all contributed to making his administration the worst ever in the history of the country.

To restore immediate sanity to the crippling economy, even if not the rampaging insecurity which is sure to take a longer time, PBAT had immediately removed fuel subsidy just as he would soon stop the multi- exchange forex system which some CBN officials and their allies outside the banking system had used to pulverise the national currency and drown the national economy itself. Although both measures have had excruciating consequences, they are in no way comparable to what awaited Nigerians in the Golgotha to which President Buhari was fast railroading the country.

Unfortunately, all that now looks like ancient history as a new demon appears to be taking hold of the country, particularly its pauperised hoi polloi, who are now daily having inflicted on them, all manner of taxes and levies as well as horrendous increases in existing rates of critical needs like gas, electricity, fuel which has, in turn, encouraged private cable television to increase their subscription rates just as telecommunication companies are mulling increases to their rates.

It is now like government and non – government agencies, as well, are all in a race to outdo one another in what suffering to inflict on Nigerians, a good many of who now live on palliatives, where those in charge of distributing them allow them to get it.

Some three weeks ago, it was Power Minister, Bayo Adelabu, inflicting a mindless 300+ per centage increase on a category of electricity consumers and before you could say,Jack Robinson, the CBN governor came up with his much more paralysing cybesecurity levy on all Nigerians. In the meantime, rather than levying all Nigerians, the House of Representatives has observed that the cyber security levy, in the original 2018 Law, is limited to some named agencies. But these over pampered government officials just must punish poor Nigerians in the name of increasing government revenue rather than work hard enough to reduce, if not completely put a stop to the nauseating stealing of our crude.

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More infuriating about this cyber levy is the fact that it is intended to be a security fund, something which Nigerians know from past experience, is more of a matter of ‘the more you look, the less you see’ especially when one remembers the 2.1Billion dollar- security fund which was ‘eaten up’ by the high and mighty of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, thus rendering it a double jeopardy for poor Nigerians who will pat through their nose.

This corruption is one of the reasons, apart from the fact that it will further pauperise citizens by increasing the cost of doing business, there had been very strenous opposition to the levy. For instance, both Labour and SERAP has each given government an ultimatum to withdraw it, barring which there would be consequential actions.

And that is not all.

There is, for instance, the following reaction by somebody who perfectly understands all the ramifications of the levy especially how it will negatively impact the people – a senator of the Federal Republic who posited as follows: “If it turns out to be true, this Goverment might face a revolt. Or else our country has escalated its slide into ruins.

Is this not insane?

The NSA is answerable to no one except the President. Is there any other National Security Adviser in the world that has a responsibility for procurement or revenue collection? We must pray and hope that this policy will be quickly reversed.

But I suspect that things are worse than Goverment is admitting. Some of their actions seem so insensitive that I believe it is out of desperation. Even their most touted achievement which was the strengthening of the naira, fell apart faster than expected. The dollar sold for 1,430 naira as at this morning”.

Besides the above, poverty is not abating, as inflation is today around 33.2%, the highest since March 1996, while food inflation hovers at around 40 per cent.

Nor has the government really got a handle on insecurity with daily reports of kidnapping and killings in every part of the country.

President Tinubu should now direct that enough is enough in the manner government agencies inflict unnecessary suffering on a people merely surviving a punishing, astronomical rise in the cost of living. Government needs be told that Nigerians are not donkeys.

Or how can any rational, or thinking CBN governor, choose this horrible time, of all times, to start a levy which spares nobody, no matter how struggling to survive, especially at a time of crippling fuel scarcity as if the government under which he serves owes Nigerians no duty of care?

Is it only those of them in government, and being maintained by government, that must have comfort? Are other Nigerians not entitled to some, no matter how minuscle?

God dey o.

May 12, 2024
Private visits as another buffer time for serious business of State

It was another week with an unusual character. The week started without President Bola Tinubu’s activities away from the eye of the media. It would be recalled he had travelled about two and a half weeks ago, exactly April 23, for official events in the Netherlands first then headed to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. While in the Netherlands, he held high-level talks with Prime Minister Mark Rutte on a range of issues of mutual interests to Nigeria and the Netherlands, after which he held separate meetings with His Royal Majesty, King Willem-Alexander, and Queen Maxima of the Kingdom, after which he proceeded to Saudi Arabia where he attended a Special World Economic Forum meeting in Riyadh, from April 28 to 29.

After he left Saudi Arabia, the President proceeded on an unannounced private visit, which took him to the United Kingdom and France. While on this visit, what he was all about was unavailable for the media and the usual critics to feast on, hence the hues and cries all over the airwaves. The media made the loudest ‘noise’ of it, starting with Daily Trust, which last Sunday devoted its lead story of the day to the President’s inaccessibility: ‘6 Days After Forum in S/Arabia, Tinubu Yet to Return’. A few other media platforms joined the fray after Daily Trust’s banner headline.

To calm the ‘storm’, the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, had to offer some soothing assurances by informing the public, including the news hounding houses, that his boss would soon return home. On Tuesday afternoon, Onanuga left a message on his verified X handle saying “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, along with his aides, will return to Nigeria tomorrow from Europe”. That was about 3:46pm on Tuesday, by 2am on Wednesday, his assurance was validated by the arrival of the President in Abuja. He followed up his hint later on Wednesday morning with “welcome home Mr President”.

The apprehension that trailed the President’s absence could have been either a manifestation of fear or suspicion, both taking roots from the experiences of past years. Fears that the situation might be worse than had been let out, considering the circumstances around former President Muhammadu Buhari’s months of incapacitation due to a health challenge and the haze that initially beclouded the real nature of his infirmity, until he started speaking about it in subsequent media interviews. On the other hand, there was a sense of suspicion, largely fed by the media and past experiences.

As it is typical of the media, once we feel denied of the access we require to be informed and thereby be empowered with a scoop to cast, we resort to forcing the truth out by making insinuations, provocative in most cases, in order to elicit the truth for a reaction. In the period when the media was unable to establish the whereabouts of the President or what he might be doing wherever he was, some media platforms started spinning theories, including suggesting that his health needed attention and thus he had gone for medical treatment.

For instance, during her segment of the Arise Television’s Morning Show, Ojy Okpe on ‘What’s Trending with Ojy Okpe’ tracked reactions on social media about the President’s absence, saying “the Presidency however, has not released any statement on why the President has not returned to Nigeria. This has led to speculations in some quarters that the President may have proceeded to Paris, France, where he has travelled to several times, reportedly for his medicals”.

However, the facts about his whereabouts and why he needed the sort of quietness he sought and which necessarily kept him out of circulation, according to available reliable signals, were actually very noble. Though he was out of sight in the name of private visit, he was actually out there executing engagements, brokering deals and building up on subsisting deals in need of further negotiations or clarifications, all on behalf of Nigeria.

He visited both the United Kingdom (UK) and France, but contrary to the panic-inducing suggestions of the social media commentators, as well as some in the traditional media, he was out of sight to seek serenity and quietness that the official space does not allow. If he had been home immediately after the Riyadh engagement, as those using microscope to search for his whereabouts had wanted, many of the meetings he was said to have held in the UK and France might not happen soon because of the volume of activities he has to deal with daily in office.

A reliable source around the President, who had knowledge of his movements, told yours truly that the President actually went to Europe for more work, saying “there was actually no need for speculations. He was in UK and France within that period and it was very necessary for him to be there. If he had returned immediately after the Special World Economic Forum, he couldn’t have achieved the much he did for the nation on some very critical deals and agreements, at least not this soon, because other events and visits wouldn’t have allowed him the kind of time and focus he had during the visit.

“So it wasn’t like he went there for any special leisure or that he was sick, like some people suggested. Far from that, he was pushing our frontiers further, in the interest of all of us and those yet unborn. I may not be able to give you details of all his engagements, but I can assure you they were meetings focused on fulfilling his promise of achieving a functional and prosperous Nigeria through the Renewed Hope Agenda”, he said.

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His return to the country in the early hours of Wednesday calmed nerves and put paid to those theories that had no bases in truth. Since he returned he has been engaged with more state matters. For instance, on Friday he received representatives of Chinese investor companies, Avatar New Energy Materials Company Limited and Canmax Technologies, entities involved in lithium exploration and value addition.

Also on Friday, the President displayed, again, his respect for public oriented service, experience and the traditional institution. It was the commemoration of the 90th birthday anniversary of the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, and the President Tinubu, represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima, added colour to the occasion by conferring the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON), the second highest national honour, on the revered monarch. He had on Thursday penned a heartfelt tribute to him, saying “Oba Adetona is not just another traditional ruler in Yorubaland and indeed in Nigeria and Africa, he is a preeminent royal father who has brought rare honour, integrity, dignity, courage and impeccable strength of character to the throne over the last 60 years”.

In the course of the week, Mr President made a couple of appointments, including that of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Mr Ekperikpe Ekpo, as co-Chairman of the Governing Council of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), on Thursday. He also appointed Engr. Emeka Woke as new Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Ogun-Osun River Basin Development Authority on same Thursday, while on Friday he received letters of credence from the ambassadors of Egypt, Pakistan, and Greece.

Since his return, visitors have resumed their daily calls at the office of the President, mostly privately. For instance, among his Thursday visitors were three governors; Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau, Uba Sani of Kaduna and Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa. On Friday, the Governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, was sighted among visitors and so were the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Yemi Cardozo and the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), Mele Kyari. That is if we will not have to mention Governor Sule of Nasarawa’s day-two’s visit at the head of the Chinese investors’ call.

It is a new week and new presidential activities are expected to herald it. The reliable source on what the President’s private visit was all about tasked me to watch out for fruits from his meetings in coming days, weeks and months, he also said I should pay attention to coming developments. In turn, I appeal to you to also watch out and pay attention.

May 12, 2024
That workers may breathe Nigeria’s current wage structure is a lie and recipe for unending corruption

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu last month took a significant step towards increasing the salaries and allowances of judges by passing a bill titled ‘A Bill for an Act to prescribe the salaries, allowances and fringe benefits of judicial office holders in Nigeria and for related matters’, to the National Assembly. If approved, it would see to it that the monthly salary of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) moves up from about N3,363,972.50 annually (or N280,331 monthly) to about N5.3m monthly (yes, you heard me right, those are the figures), and that exclude several other allowances and a severance package of about N80,775,707 to be paid “after successful completion of tenure”. Of course, the salaries of other judges are to follow a similar pattern in the package.

For instance, other Supreme Court judges are to be earning N4.2million monthly from the extant annual earning of N3,363,972.50 and a motor vehicle loan of N13,455,890 annually. President, Court of Appeal is to earn N4.4million monthly, and so on and so forth.

That these proposed revolutionary packages are coming from Tinubu is not novel. The judiciary became a pace setter in his time as governor. So, we should commend him for aspiring to replicate such better life for our judges at the national level.

I would have said those who came up with the miserable pay that our judges are earning up till now are wicked but for the fact that at the time they did, the remuneration might have been reasonably okay. The problem might be with successive administrations that kept our judges in abject poverty. Yet, they are supposed to be the custodians of the courts that should be the last hope of the common man. No wonder many judgments are compromised where they were not purchased outright. And we have the mouths to be complaining that we are having too many conflicting injunctions from courts of coordinate jurisdiction.

Chief Gani Fawehinmi in one of his books, ‘The way the law should go’ told a very pathetic story of a judge who left his court after hearing a matter and had to wait by the roadside for taxi. He was

eventually given a lift by one of the litigants whose case he just heard, in an exotic car that the judge would never be able to own if all he relied on was his monthly stipend called salary. Tell me, it takes some courage for that judge to forget that simple help of saving him from either the scorching sun or threatening rain.

But this piece is not necessarily about judges’ pay. It is just about the example that the proposed pay package for the judges seems to set. The proposed new minimum wage should follow this same pattern. What is required now is a revolutionary salary structure that would truly reflect economic realities. It is not about saying we raised the minimum wage by 100 per cent or one seemingly laudable percentage. Hundred percent of what? What does that translate to in ‘mudu’ of gari or cups of rice? Let us even leave electronics and other comforts of life. May be those are no longer for the people earning minimum wage. But we should realise that it was not like that in the past. Many Nigerians were proud owners of electronics even as recently as the 1970s. I remember how we used to celebrate whenever we bought ‘sound systems’ in those days with our school certificate salaries. We would be comparing the capacity of the loud speakers because the sound must really be ‘gbam gbam dim dim’ and be shaking the entire building to qualify for proper ‘washing’. If that is no longer feasible, the minimum wage should at least be able to take the workers home and put the least balanced diet on their dining mats.

The truth is that whatever pay most Nigerians are getting today cannot take them home. It is not enough for many to even feed let alone send children to school. If a man gets even N70,000 per month today, what is that worth? The man is expected to feed his wife, send his children to school, pay his rent, give them money for transport, buy fuel for his ‘I better pass my neighbour’ generator, etc. Obviously, this cannot get anywhere. And we don’t expect them to steal? Only angels would not be tempted, with such peanuts called salaries.

My point is that Nigerian workers can be better paid. In fact, they should be better paid. Daily, we keep hearing stories of billions being stolen here and there. We are so awash with idle funds that sometimes we do not know these monies had been stolen until several years later.

Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)

President Joe Ajaero was at some media houses last week to campaign for support for the new minimum wage. Despite whatever reservations I had about him, (as a matter of fact, I did tell him that he was too calm for my comfort because of the way he comported himself during his visit to this newspaper on Thursday). I saw a different Ajaero, calm and carefully choosing his words during the question and answer session. I indeed asked if he was sure he didn’t rehearse that cool mien over and again before embarking on the media tour.

If truly Ajaero’s mission is to get the best for Nigerian workers, I support him. I believe in the cause to get reasonable pay for workers.

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He made some valid points that cannot be dismissed. One, he said while some governors suddenly remember that their states are poor when it comes to paying others or doing some programmes and projects that will benefit the generality of the people, we hardly see any such difference between the governors of the poor and rich states. They all live in affluence. We hardly see any difference in their glittering jeeps. And, lest we forget, just to demonstrate that where there is the will, there will always be a way, some of these governors got money to pay workers’ salary from the Muhammadu Buhari government but diverted the money into other things, where it was not stolen outright. Perhaps this was why Ajaero told ‘The Nation’s’ senior editors who received him on Thursday that the governors can pay if they want to. “But on the issue of whether the states can pay, yes, they can if they get their priorities right,” the NLC president said. He was here talking about the NLC’s N615,000 monthly minimum wage proposal to the Federal Government. Without doubt, when he broke it down into brass tacks, as in having a home of six comprising daddy and mummy and maximum of four children vis-a-vis their needs – feeding, school fees, accommodation,. transportation, and other basics, you can hardly fault the logic behind the proposal.

But we all know this is not feasible. It is what one of my friends would call a good idea but it is not implementable. So, some jaw-jaw still has to take place.

One other point that he made has to do with the National Assembly (NASS) members. Hear the NLC leader: “In fact, National Assembly’s wages have almost tripled. If you come to an economy and we are having this argument of affordability, everybody must be disciplined.”

True, Nigerians are yet to see the expected discipline from this privileged class to convince them that this hardship is affecting everybody, including the people in the NASS. People who are ploughing the best life can offer towards themselves while saying that things are hard and that other Nigerians must make sacrifice. Yet, it took a lot of efforts for Nigerian workers to extract the extant N30,000 minimum wage from them. There is God o!

The outcome of the coming minimum wage is going to be interesting. NLC has demanded N615,000. It has also said this may increase or reduce depending on other variables. Like if compressed natural gas (CNG) is popularised and transportation cost comes down, or something. But if things turn out edgy, then the political class is to blame. There is nothing to show on their own part that

things are hard. When Mahatma Gandhi asked Indians to buy India, he himself was going about in sandals made in India. Here we are with legislators who (rather than lead by example as people that are representing ordinary Nigerians and feel the economic crunch), would be pointing accusing fingers at those in the executive branch that they are also living big whereas they (lawmakers) have the powers to tame the executive branch by refusing to approve money for flamboyant lifestyle for the ministers and the others, provided of course that they are ready to live by example too. The problem is that the lawmakers are not ready to go low profile themselves.

Even in the days of the Obasanjo military government when the country’s currency was very strong, the government compelled public officials to use Peugeot brand of vehicles locally made and that was it! Now that our currency is going through its most difficult moments, those who said we elected them to serve us are rejecting made-in-Nigeria cars. What a bundle of contradiction! We may not be asking them to behave exactly like Gandhi, but we expect them to be more sober than they are and to be more prudent with public funds.

I don’t have problem with anyone who is calling for sacrifice where necessary, but I can’t understand people who are feeding fat while calling on ordinary folks to tighten their belts. I detest such double standards and absolute contempt for the people.

I support Labour’s agitation for better pay for workers. What I don’t know is whether all attention should be on them. What of the millions of other Nigerians? They are also feeling the effects of the economic challenges that the country is currently facing. They need to be provided for too.

Ultimately, however, as I always say, good governance would always yield better result than incessant increases in workers’ pay.

All said, the buck on the new minimum wage stops at President Tinubu’s desk. He has promised not to take the patience of Nigerians for granted. He has also promised that he would give workers a living wage. I cannot remember when last Nigerian workers got one. President Tinubu should offer beyond the tokenism that his predecessors offered as minimum wage.

Minimum wage must be reasonable for workers to be able to tap into some of his government’s credit schemes, whether for personal cars, homes or even health. It is where salaries are sufficient that one can talk of saving for the rainy day. Today, workers are already borrowing in anticipation of the next pay, as early as the middle of the current month.

May 12, 2024
Illegal arrest of journalists

Those responsible for the image of the present administration should be worried about the abuse of press freedom under its watch.

For a government headed by a President with pro-democracy antecedents, security agents should not be allowed to keep taking the laws into their own hands in a way that can portray the administration as anti-media.

If any journalist publishes or broadcasts anything which he or she should be questioned over, abduction should not be an option as we have seen in two recent cases involving Segun Olatunji, formerly of FirstNews, and Daniel Ojukwu of the Foundation for Investigative Journalists (FIJ).

The two journalists should simply have been invited for questioning in line with the law and charged appropriately if there is a need to.

Under a democratic government, why should the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Police remind us of the days of the military regime when journalists, activists, and other persons disappeared and were later found to be in the custody of security agents? Some were never found.

Not immediately owning up to arresting the two journalists until private investigators located them is worrisome considering the high rate of kidnapping across the country. Ojukwu was initially reported missing until he was traced to police custody.

The Gestapo approach adopted by those who arrested the two journalists has no place in a civilian government and should not happen again. Whoever should call the security agents to order should do it before they give the government a bad name.

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Those who ordered the illegal arrests of journalists should still have a case to answer despite their release to serve as a deterrent to others who may want to take similar action in the future.

Already, there are growing concerns about the worsening state of press freedom in the country by local and international organisations that are calling for a more conducive environment for media practice and respect for fundamental human rights.

If security agencies knew that they would have no choice but to succumb to public outcry to release the abducted journalists, they should not have resulted in illegal means of holding them.

The accusations against Olatunji and Ojukwu did not warrant the force that was applied in arresting them. What was the potential threat to national security that the military DIA was trying to forestall by arresting Olatunji as it claimed?

Despite not being aware of the existence of the National Media Complaints Commission (NMCC) – The National Media Ombudsman which could have reported Olatunji as it claimed, it was wrong to have stormed his house to arrest him and subject him to the inhuman treatment he suffered.

If what the police has against Ojukwu according to its spokesperson, Muyiwa Adejobi is a petition accusing him of violating the Cybercrimes Act over a story reportedly revealing how the senior special assistant to former president Muhammad Buhari on sustainable development goals (SSAP-SDGs), why should he spend nine days in detention before the truth of the petition is ascertained?

Whoever is aggrieved over a media publication should be free to petition, but it is wrong of the Police to treat the accused journalist like a criminal when they have not been found guilty of the accusation.

Government officials should be ready to answer for their deeds and misdeeds instead of using the Police and the military to harass journalists. Security agents should also be guided by the rule of law and avoid misusing their powers.

May 12, 2024
FOR AYO BANJO AT 90

Seasons come, seasons go

But your virtues remain steady

Untouched by passing fancies

Below is a slightly amended version

Of my ode to the Teacher

Two remarkable decades ago. . . .

Old teachers never die;

They simply wax wiser with passing moons. . .

Old teachers never die

The wine of age is winking in your glass,

Sip it in style;

Sip it with relish.

For when you sat in the saddle*,

You never rode roughshod upon our earth.

Your voice called up our depths

Your silence gingered us into song

Our growing scrawls mellowed into hieroglyphs

On the tender papyrus that was your palm:

(Allophones we all, of your happy phoneme)

Liberal star, compassionate moon. Scion of a stock in league with Light

Let your ebony laughter unknot our brows

As we journey all season from sky to sky

Powered by the wind of your word.

Morning by morning

We count your blessings

And regard our days

           Old teachers never die;

They simply wax wiser with passing moons. .

In the Saddle and Morning by Morning are two exceptionally crafted and evocative autobiographies of Ayo Banjo.

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May 5, 2024