The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Ningi only trying to exploit north’s Multi – dimensional angst against PBAT

    Ningi only trying to exploit north’s Multi – dimensional angst against PBAT

    No school is safe until Government negotiates with bandits” – Sheik Gumi.

    With this coming from a leading Northern cleric, in a region with over 15M out of school children, and in a society riddled with grinding poverty, why would these killers not mushroom in their thousands?

    Distinguished Senator Abdul Ningi is not a foolish man. He only miscalculated. Badly too. His intention was to ride the Northern angst against the Bola Ahmed Tinubu government to effect  what he reckoned would be a seismic change in the country. And where else to start, if not the  National Assembly, crawling with a preponderance of Northern legislators whose  support he, and his co – conspirators had, a priori, believed they could take for granted.

    Afterall, not only have many Northern politicians tried to rubbish the  government just as its royalty has not lagged far behind in the same quest. Nor is the ‘Miyetti Allah- Free Bodejo Brigade’, now massing on Abuja without schemes of their own as Nigeria no longer looks like a country gifted Fulanis by Allah as the Fulani Nationality Movement  (FUNAM), never ceases to announce on rooftops, even without a wink from the Nigerian security forces.

    Recall too that a  President of Southern extraction once said that there were Boko Haram sympathisers right within his Executive council and you can begin to suspect what’s presently afoot. 

    Consider also, the fact that unlike during the ancien regime, Northerners are no longer the Chief executive officers of nearly all government agencies just as it will not be far fetched to believe that some must be rueing  their inability to, any longer, buy dollar from  the CBN at their own price.

    All these are now ancient history, and are more than enough to stir the mother of enemity towards the Tinubu government.

    So distinguished senator Ningi knew exactly where he was headed when he added the icing on the cake to his budget padding allegation, i e – his ridiculous claim that the 2024 Appropriation law was skewed against the North. It was all aimed at coalescing the Northern anti – Tinubu ensemble.

    Fortunately,  patriotism prevailed and saw his fellow senators, bar an errant one, abandon him, leaving him hard and dry, to face his comeuppance,  a 3 – month suspension.

    Meanwhile his state governor, Bala Mohammed, who sees him as a”beacon of  truth”, can root for him all he likes.

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    The pity in all these is that the North has nobody, but itself, to blame for the present state of affairs in that part of the country, especially the indescribable insecurity currently convulsing the entire region. It is the result of favouritism, double standard and impunity.

    On no occasion during President Muhammadu Buhari’s entire 8 years were bandits, aka  killers and kidnappers, ever brought to book. Even when they attacked in numbers and killed in hundreds, as happened in Benue and Plateau states, burning houses and banishing their victims from their ancestral lands, never to return, hardly was any of them  arrested.

    Things got so bad, Lt. General T. Y Danjuma, a respected elder statesman, wondered aloud, claiming that some security men were working in cahoots with these ethnic cleansers.

    In the meantime, insecurity in the North has ballooned exponentially. While over 200 of the 276 Chibok girls kidnapped in  2014 remain in bondage, Nigerians again woke up this past week, to hear that another  280 students  have again been  kidnapped in the Kuriga community of Chikum Government Area of Kaduna State.

    That is not all, either.

    In the past ten days alone, close to 400 people are believed to have been kidnapped,

    according to a report. The kidnappers are now asking for N1Billion, 11 Toyota Hilux pick-up vehicles and 150 motorcycles as ransom for their release, to which President Tinubu has said an emphatic no.

    Nobody in the North can claim they were not warned well ahead of these torrid happenings.

    They sowed the wind, now they are reaping the whirlwind.  For  too long, every attempt to nudge the North into educating its youth, and opening up its feudal society to the modernising effects  of western education was bad – mouthed and treated as excoriation by what they pejoratively  called 

    the Lagos-Ibadan press because the Press did not let off, especially during the Second Republic when the Nigerian problem, according to a Head of state of the era,  was not money, “but how to spend it”.

    Not a few warned the North that if it regarded education as expensive, ignorance was going to be far more expensive as we have all come to see. Unfortunately, it’s not only the North, but the entire country, which is now on the receiving end of that whimsical negligence with Nigeria presently spending billions fighting insecurity in the North, rather than pouring same into  education, healthcare, road infrastructure etc.

    That is aside the  deaths, the human dislocations and the general ruination of the country occasioned by insecurity.

    Although escalation in the activities of Boko Haram was attributed to the  gruesome murder of its leader, Mohammed Yusuf,  the causes  would better be traced to mass illiteracy,  pervasive poverty, rampant  corruption and the odious opulence  of Northern  politicians and their royalty who prefer to feed the people from their individual largesse – rankadede style – rather than see government positively impact their lives. 

    The  current state of affairs in the North was totally unexpected because, for a very long time, it cornered most of the country’s resources. The North has no reason, whatever, to be poor; not with its huge natural resources and the volume of the country’s resources going there.

    For instance, each successive North- dominated military government, in their whim and caprice, ensured that the North, solely on the basis of  land mass  – now mostly the habitation of kidnappers and terrorists as ungoverned spaces – was allocated a disproportionate number of Local Government Areas. Ordinarily the huge monthly allocations to these Local Government Areas,  which by far outstripped what goes to the South, should have been made to  impact positively on lives in the North but  corruption and an easy lifestyle completely vitiated all that.

    Rather than invest in the  education of their youth,  the state governors looked askance as the kids were herded into the Almajeri conundrum where they are made to carry begging bowls daily, in search of arms. 

    When, once in a while, the governors wake up to do something for their teeming youth population – mostly the children of the poor –  they buy thousands of  okadas and ship them – boys and bikes, enmasse, in trailer loads, to Lagos  where they  become more famous for the accidents they cause daily.

     Apart from federal allocations to its states, the North also, through a near monopoly of federal power, cornered a huge chunk of national resources which did not reflect in development in the region.

    If  a sizeable portion of these  stupendous amounts of money had been devoted to life impacting interventions, neither the North, nor Nigeria itself, would be sinking into fighting insecurity a quarter of what they presently do.

    It is a pity, as I recently wrote on these pages, that the North is always in search of quick fixes, especially in regard to matters that will profit it alone,  as against aiming for the well- being of the country. That was why an eminent Northern monarch, claiming to be sending the First Lady to the President, said they could no longer  restrain their angry youth. Those ones quickly got the message and were soon on the streets in some towns in the North.

    I conclude, therefore, that it was as an agent provocateur that Senator Abul Ningi spoke, not to his colleagues within the red chamber, but on the streets, so that those to whom he was primarily sending a message could mass up against the Tinubu government and make the country ungovernable.

    While my Senator, Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, CON (Ekiti Central Senatorial district) might be right in thinking that Senate President Godswil Akpabio was their target, I believe that Ningi and Co, indeed, aimed much higher.

    But whichever, his howler was neither the way of peace nor the mark of statesmanship.

    Enough of these coy invitations to anarchy from quarters least expected.

  • Gen Musa and power of spoken words

    Gen Musa and power of spoken words

    It will take more than Gen. Christopher Musa’s gentle admonition to wean Nigerians off their insatiable desire to curse their country and leaders. They are too ethnically and religiously polarised to care how much their harsh, dismissive words affect their country. In his remarks at a seminar organised by the Defence Correspondents Association of Nigeria late last month, probably the most appropriate forum and time to explicate the power of words, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) took a few minutes to draw the attention of Nigerians to their unguarded and self-destructive use of words. The gentle counsel should benefit the individual as much as profit the country as a whole. But perhaps it will take a structured and systemic education on the power of words to cause a change of orientation. Gen Musa’s counsel is incontestable; but few, it is certain, will pay heed. 

    The general did not say where he got the wisdom, or whether he routinely practices it, but it is a pearl nearly as powerful as that of thoughts which hark back to the ancients. Many individuals and countries, as the general implied, have ignored the salience of the spoken word to their peril. Taken together with what a person thinks and how he allows those thoughts to undergird his life and actions, the spoken word forms an indispensable part of the intangibles that have the untrammeled potency of determining success or failure, life or death. The reason is probably much simpler than anyone imagines. The world was created by the word; and the word proceeds from thoughts and imaginations. Gen Musa knew that if he was to get any mileage from his exegesis, he would need the forum of media professionals. He got that forum last month, and he used it to maximum effect.

    His explication requires extensive quotation. Said he: “There must be a nation before you can even discuss it. Sometimes I find it very hard to understand when I hear Nigerians speaking evil about their country. We must learn how to be positive about our country…We must wish our country well and our leaders well. When they err, let us call them to question and provide solutions. It’s not always just about negative criticism. When you’re calling for God to punish your leaders, you’re not helping the growth of your country. The budget of America for this year is over $800 billion for defence. If you look at our budget, convert it to dollars. I’m sure you know, do the math, you know how much we’re getting. Americans produce what they need. We don’t. We need to buy sometimes. Even when you have the money, sometimes you don’t get what you need. So you can understand the environment we’re operating in. Insulting or wishing evil on your country does not mean you’ll get better. Diminishing someone else’s life does not mean yours will prosper…”

    The lives of some of history’s greatest men testify to the vitality and indispensability of the spoken word. What made the difference for these great men was not just their self-confidence, a virtue undoubtedly integral in some ways to their successes, but more quintessentially what they said about themselves flowing from what they thought and believed about themselves. Napoleon Bonaparte never thought he would die in battle, proving it repeatedly, particularly at the Battle of Lutzen in 1813; Gen Douglas MacArthur said it loud and clear at the Island of Corregidor in the Philippines during World War II that the Japanese enemy hadn’t yet made a bomb with his name written on it, and then declaring when he was being evacuated that ‘I shall return”; Hitler was convinced about his ineluctable fate, believing he was a child of destiny, and suggesting his immortality after the umpteenth attempt on his life at Wolf’s Lair in July 1944; and Charles de Gaulle and Saint Joan of Arc also spoke about the divine force behind their persons and leadership. All these men believed in and spoke about their stars and their special assignments, over which mortal man, they were convinced, had no influence.

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    A few perceptive observers suspected that when the then presidential aspirant Tinubu spoke about his turn in Abeokuta in 2022, couching it as emi lokan in the Yoruba language, he was not referring to a Yoruba sectionalist agenda, but a personal divine agenda, one in which he had unshakeable faith. Yes, he also made reference to awa lokan, but he was merely locating his ambition, his divine purpose, within the purview of his ethnic background, much like de Gaulle who saw himself as an incarnation of both Saint Joan of Arc and Napoleon Bonaparte. Nearly everyone but himself thought Senator Tinubu would lose his party’s primary, or the presidential election, should he scale the formidable obstacles erected by his party. His closest confidants gave him no chance, and it is doubtful whether family members did not also write him off. Indeed, did he himself, outside of his words and assertions, privately believe he could win? But he spoke victory and saw himself occupying Aso Villa, and Nigeria as a part of the world created by the word of God responded to aspirant Tinubu’s words and produced from the invisible the dynamics that propelled him into the State House.

    Nigerians may not pay heed to Gen Musa’s admonition, but he is right. No nation, and no individual, can rise to greatness without speaking greatness over themselves. The army general is obviously conversant with the Bible’s Book of Proverbs, Chapter 18 verse 21, which says that death and life are in the power of the tongue. This profound quote, long familiar to the ancients, is the fulcrum upon which any nation’s or individual’s ambition and success is balanced. The Book of Job Chapter 3 verse 25 also recounts the fear that paralysed the life of Job, despite his wealth, when he said that the thing he greatly feared (disasters and tragedies) had come upon him, implying that negative thoughts and words left unchecked do have horrendous impact on lives and nations. Indeed, the New Testament Bible anchors any miracle or sign and wonder on what the individual says.

    Great statesmen and past leaders shame the current generation by their depths and sagacity, and by their deep spiritual insights and beliefs, sometimes unaffected by religion. I think therefore I am, said the French philosopher René Descartes; I believe, so I say the word, says the Bible. Each person and nation, concluded Gen Musa in his admonition to the Defence correspondents, must be guarded in the words they speak, for words are spirit and life. Thoughts and words are the hammer and the anvil between which greatness and success are forged. Will Nigerians take the general’s admonition and begin to speak greatness and stability into their country, or are they too polarised to care, prompting them to speak baleful, self-fulfilling prophecies over their country? Given the highly toxic campaigns of the last elections, not to talk of the bitter and recriminative aftermath, it is not clear they will.

    Even before the 2023 election results were fully collated and announced, some Nigerians, including incredibly former leaders who should know better, had begun to call for the truncation of democracy through a coup d’etat, exemplifying the loathing they nursed for their country. When that seemed far-fetched, they switched to calling for a bloody revolution, believing that only enemy blood would be shed. When that call also seemed unattainable, they opted to curse their country, unmindful of the fact that their peace and prosperity could not be extricated from their country’s. But since no man but the mentally unhinged hates himself, perhaps it is time the individual took Gen Musa’s admonition and ran with it. Who knows, if families prosper, the country could indirectly also prosper and develop. A family cannot be greater than its imagination, nor can a country soar above its vision. No one can have anything other than what he has spoken into his life. It is an irrefutable formula backed by centuries of tragic proofs involving countless leaders and families hung on the scaffold of their ill-spoken words.

  • When Jagaban sets hands on Nigeria’s ploughs, no looking back

    When Jagaban sets hands on Nigeria’s ploughs, no looking back

    Those who know President Tinubu will tell you that his level of commitment to courses he decides to commit to is always absolute. Those who want to be derisive will call him stubborn because once he has identified his path, nothing else can dissuade him. This attribute is what is already playing out in the way he has purposed to run Nigeria. For him, Nigeria he inherited is not a lost case, it is one requiring honest efforts at correcting wrongs of many years and countering those who have lived off our blights and are devoted to keeping us the way we are.

    Some of his decisions since he assumed office, are actually confronting, almost war-like, and he seems determined to continue running with this mindset because that is who he is. During the week, he manifested this same trait when reacting to recent security developments. On Wednesday, Jagaban was said to have directed the nation’s security and intelligence chiefs to go out into the various parts of the country, especially those parts where criminal elements seem to have been having free runs, without checks, and there assert the presence of government.

    In the last few weeks, cases of abduction have become prevalent in some states, especially Kaduna, Sokoto and Borno states, where large numbers of soft-targets have lost embarrassing number of Nigerian citizens to kidnappers. If an aggregate of about 450 Nigerians were herded away by gun-toting bandits, without any challenge and it is not as though they left the Nigerian borders, what better description would have suited better than embarrassing? Then in all these cases, the motive for kidnapping has been ransom, in ridiculous amounts.

    In one instance, in the Gonin-Gora area of Kaduna Metropolis, a band of bandits, which had kidnapped sixteen persons from the community, demanded N40 trillion, eleven Hilux vans and 150 motorcycles, as ransom. N40 trillion, almost N12 trillion above Nigeria’s 2024 Budget, and that was called ransom. Any leader of a country who hears such a joke and does not shake with rage is in need of a critical, all-round check. Funnily, that joke was just one of the various cases of ransom trades, especially in the north.

    So when on Wednesday, he was reported to have issued a fresh directive to security agencies to go out and do their job by ending the uncanny reign of terror and defiance in the north. A particular caveat was issued on how the business has to go: As you are freeing all those being illegally held against their wish, also ensure not a dime is paid in ransom.

    “We are seeing that the more the security agencies are hitting these targets or criminals, the more they are pushed to also getting some soft targets. But government is not taking any excuses. The President has directed that security agencies must, as a matter of urgency, ensure that these children and all those who have been kidnapped are brought back in safety and also in the process to ensure that not a dime is paid for ransom. So it’s important to underscore that no dime, government is not paying anybody any dime and the government is optimistic that these children and other people that have been abducted will be brought back to their families in safety”, Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, who gave the piece of information to journalists at the State House, after the week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, said.

    Idris said Tinubu particularly gave the instruction to security forces during the FEC. He did not say the security handlers presented a memo, just an instruction to them to end the madness immediately. Those who know the man well said he would have given the instruction with a straight face, probably very pissed because he does not usually leave room for lapses and when those working with him are not keeping up with his pace, he is never comfortable.

    Although the man with the message did not add if there was a threat of sack, but if he had his way, things like this could have naturally resulted in a change guards. His thought would have naturally been, how have a few criminals managed to beat a nation like Nigeria, with the capacities and resources available us, constantly and getting away with it? He would have instructed a new strategy to end the embarrassment, but the spirit talking through him is the one he has severally described as ‘can-do’, a determination that looks like stubbornness.

    He manifested similar spirit again on Friday when he met with the Forum of State Chairmen of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC), telling them about a bunch of saboteurs of the Nigerian dream. Their conversation was around achieving their party’s campaign promises to Nigerians, as the chairmen represent the foot soldiers of the ruling party in the smaller units of the federation. The talk took off from what Nigerians are looking out for from the government, which he, as President, has constantly assured will be realized, but then things seem sort of slow, not because the right steps are not being taken, but because there are elements in the country, whose focus and agenda are asymmetrical to those of the government and the people of Nigeria.

    In a matter-of-fact conversation, Jagaban drew the battle line with the saboteurs, calling them out: “as we are fighting corruption, smugglers, and old subsidy beneficiaries, they most certainly will fight back. All those who falsified records and became losers with the subsidy (on petroleum products) removal, they will fight back. But we will defend our people. The treasury belongs to the people, and that sacred trust must not be abused. We need to give hope, and we are giving it to the country and our citizens. We are working hard, day and night, even though some agents of destabilization are present in the polity. Nigerians, with our focused support, shall defeat them”.

    There is a focus of the Bola Tinubu administration and that is to rewrite the Nigerian narrative. Achieving that has seemed to drag, but the man will not give in, if not for any other reason, just to prove a point that the few should not defeat the many, that will be against the order of life. But much more, this is a man who has a name and reputation to protect: a strong-willed leader, who ensures to achieve his development goal at all cost, but primarily by sheer tenacity, never pulling back once he has set his mind on achieving something.

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    Then there was that very significant directive during the week, which once again showed the human, listening side of President Tinubu. Last Wednesday, Mr President ordered the reopening of our borders, land and air, with Niger Republic, and the lifting of other imposed sanctions, as resolved by the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government at its extraordinary summit on February 24, 2024, in Abuja. 

    The decision, though resolved at the ECOWAS level, was actually another manifestation of his feelings for the ordinary Nigerian and of course humanity at large. There have been concerns about how sanctions affect the ordinary people in the countries. In his opening speech at the extraordinary meeting, his primary concern was how all the actions and activities affect the ordinary people. “It is pertinent that we engage in constructive deliberations to examine the actions taken by these countries and ensure that the citizens are not denied the benefits derived from our regional integration initiatives. In our ensuing discussions, we must put the plight of people, the ordinary citizens, at the centre of our decisions”. He has championed this same course all through the period he has served as Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government.

    Meanwhile, it was a really busy week as there were many activities and events coming from his office. Like on Tuesday, besides receiving the Special Envoy of the President of Equatorial Guinea, he met with the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, his deputy and some other ranking leaders of the Senate. That meeting was coming at a very opportune time, considering the crisis brewing at the Senate. Then there was appointment of Dr Dayo Mobereola as Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and in the evening attended the Ramadan Tafsir.

    On Wednesday, just before the FEC started, he swore in 17 Commissioners for the National Population Commission (NPC), presided over the FEC that a couple of important memoranda. On Thursday, he made quite a number of appointments, including Director-General for the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Chief Medical Directors for the Federal Medical Centres (FMCs) in Yenagoa and Abuja, approved the conversion of the Federal College of Dental Technology and Therapy, Enugu, into a full-fledge University of Allied Health Sciences, appointed a new Presidential Amnesty Programme Administrator, and many more appointment into Friday.

    However, before Thursday closed, the President had the Iftar, which is the Ramadam fast breaking dinner with governor as members of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF). The meeting was another strategy session to plot a better Nigeria with the leaders of the bits and parts, aimed at getting them to join him to solve the Nigerian riddle. He appealed to them to cast politics apart to join him to pursue, for the sake of Nigerians.

    The week was so loaded, it could not be entirely unpacked. I look forward to a smarter week.

  • From Blue Line to Red Line

    From Blue Line to Red Line

    It was yet another momentous occasion for the Lagos State government when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu commissioned the Lagos Mass Rail Transit (LMRT) Red Line train project on February 29. Momentous because it marked yet another occasion for the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration to deliver on another project that is dear not only to Lagosians, but would have transformational effect on public transportation in the country.

    The project commissioned by President Tinubu was the first phase, and it runs from Agbado in Ogun State to the Oyingbo axis of Lagos State. The 37 km rail line has eight stations, namely Agbado, Iju, Agege, Ikeja, Oshodi, Mushin, Yaba and Oyingbo. The red line is only one of six such projects that are in the offing to change the way Lagosians commute. Coming are the Green Line, Purple Line, Yellow and Orange Lines, as well as a monorail. Indeed, preliminary works have started on the Green Line and the Purple Line. The Green Line is a 71.4 km rail from Marina to Lekki free trade zone, while the Purple Line is a 54.3 km rail from Ojo, close to LASU into Mowe, Ogun State.

    According to Sanwo-Olu, ”The LMRT project is a beacon of progress, illuminating the path to a future where our city moves smoother, faster, and more efficiently.

    “Embarking on the Lagos Mass Rail Transit (LMRT) project is more than just enhancing transit; it’s about weaving the fabric of our city into a tighter, more connected community”, Sanwo-Olu said.  He added that “every track laid, every station built, brings us closer to a Lagos where distance no longer dictates destiny.”

    Governor Sanwo-Olu also made it known that “For the first time in the history of Lagos, we have an integrated transportation system, comprising the road, which is the BRT that we are using, the rail, which is the rail mass transit programme, and the waterways, through the state ferries.”

     BusinessDay puts it in perspective: ”The Red Line isn’t just another train track; it’s envisioned as a crucial link in Lagos’ larger rail network, connecting the city to the Lagos-Ibadan corridor…”

    I can only imagine how President Tinubu would have felt when commissioning the project. The revolutionary idea to transform public transportation in the state began in his era as governor at the beginning of the present political dispensation in 1999. The president in his address shared insights into the transformative vision for Lagos: “My team and I toiled day and night to craft and implement a developmental vision that will transform Lagos into the economic powerhouse of Africa and a respected mega city on the global stage. We are realising that dream,” he said. “It is not a crime to dream big. Just stay focused and stay on course, particularly, make development the central fulcrum,” he added.

    Mass transportation was chaotic as at 1999 when Tinubu took over as governor in Lagos. Although the ‘Bolekaja’ (buses built with planks) had started to diminish in number unlike in the 1970s when they still represented a significant means of transportation in the state, the ‘Molue’ buses were still in vogue, alongside the ‘Danfo’ and other contraptions that then passed for public buses. The way and manner passengers were packed in the ‘Bolekaja’ buses, sometimes with male and female passengers criss-crossing their laps while seated sometimes made clashes inevitable. Perhaps that was how the ‘Bolekaja’ derived their name. ‘Bolekaja’ in Yoruba language simply means ‘come down, let’s fight’. But it was clear that it was only a matter of time for those types of buses to be inadequate to take the teeming number of people in the state to and fro their respective destinations. Even the ‘Molue’ is fast becoming antediluvian; they had indeed started to show traces of stress as at 1999. The roads were usually jam-packed, with many passengers stranded at bus stops.

    It was in the midst of this chaos that the Tinubu government went to the drawing board to change the public transportation narrative in the state. His administration set up the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) while its bill was signed into law on January 13, 2002. LAMATA oversees a wide range of transport planning and implementation of transport strategies and plans in Lagos, as well as the Lagos Rail Mass Transit and the Lagos Bus Rapid Transit System. The result is the transformation that has been noticed in this sector in the state in the last two decades.

    The Blue and Red lines projects are indeed a hefty price tag for urban mobility, a substantial investment in Lagos’ urban transportation infrastructure. Governor Sanwo-Olu said both lines combined would exceed ₦100 billion. Delays in the Blue Line project, initially expected to be completed by 2011, highlighted the funding challenges faced by the project.

    The Red Line project is expected to facilitate 37 trips daily, accommodating approximately 500,000 passengers, once fully operational. That means both the Blue and Red lines rail projects would be taking one million passengers per day. This is a lot, and it is expected to have significant improvement on transportation generally in the state.

    As with the Blue Line, the primary objectives of the Red Line include reducing travel time, mitigating health issues related to stress, and enhancing economic productivity. The project also aims to alleviate traffic congestion, minimise road accidents, and improve commuter safety within Lagos.

    However, unlike the Blue Line that is electric-powered, the Red Line would utilise a diesel-powered system known as Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU). DMU employs on-board diesel engines to propel multiple-unit trains. In order to ensure smooth operation of the rail line and safety for commuters, 10 vehicular overpasses and pedestrian bridges, separating train traffic from vehicular and pedestrian flows, have been constructed at strategic places on the corridor.

    Read Also: Sanwo-Olu opens Yaba Overpass Bridge, awards contract for Blue Line second phase

    As is usual with me, I cannot write on rail transportation in Lagos without remembering how Gen. Muhammadu Buhari truncated the noble, visionary and commendable efforts of the Lateef Jakande administration in Lagos to introduce metroline in the state as far back as the 1980s. Buhari, as then military head of state, in one of the evils of unitary system that military rule imposed on Nigeria, terminated the project, with a hefty fine that Buhari would rather pay than have the metroline in Lagos. Only the then General Buhari and probably his co-travellers who annulled the metroline project knew why they did because it just did not make sense. Could it be a problem of lack of vision or limited exposure? I guess it was more of the latter.

    Indeed, anybody who has a fair idea about who the former president is would have known that he would run into problems as president, especially when he decided to double as Minister of Petroleum Resources. Apparently, the man was still looking at the oil industry with the same eyes that he ran it, first as head of state and later as Chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund. He didn’t know that stealing in the industry had moved from the arithmetic progression of the 1980s to the geometric progression of the 21st century. Evidence? Well, by the time the account books are scrutinised, even the former president would know that right under his nose, and with his two eyes wide open, some of his people were busy making money for themselves at the expense of the average Nigerian. Unfortunately, the more he looked, the less he saw because he was busy looking for today’s thieves that are using artificial intelligence (AI), with binoculars.

    Be that as it may, I wondered aloud what would have been going on in the then president’s mind when Sanwo-Olu invited him to commission the blue line on January 24, last year, against the backdrop of his frustrating a similar project in the state as military head of state. I had thought he was going to at least make allusion to that during the commissioning, but mum was the word from him. Anyway, we should continue to free the country from the shackles of unitarism that envisages development at the same pace for all parts of the country. That is utopia. Even in a family, nothing says the children would do well in any particular order — educational attainments or whatever, not to talk of a country of over 200 million people.

    With both the blue and red lines rail ferrying about one million passengers per day, we can only imagine what transportation would have looked like in Lagos if they had not been done. And we can only imagine how far transportation would have gone in the state if metroline had been running since the 1980s. There is no doubt that some other forward-looking states would have emulated the Lagos example. We cannot wait to have the Yellow, Purple, Green and Orange lines as well as the monorail, which will all carry millions of commuters across different parts of the state daily. By the time all of these are completed, it would be goodbye to ‘okada’ riders and some other transporters who have constituted themselves into a menace on Lagos roads.

    It is saying the obvious to say that the idea of the mass modal system of transportation in Lagos was a product of good thinking and visionary leadership. It is the beauty of continuity in government because if another political party had taken over the state, it might not have continued with the rail projects despite the numerous benefits that the state stands to gain from them.

    I congratulate both President Tinubu who, as governor conceived the idea of the multimodal transportation system in Lagos, particularly the rail component of it, as well as his successors who are beginning to see the projects to fruition.

  • Until kidnappers get their just deserts

    Until kidnappers get their just deserts

    Whether the shocking cases of mass abductions convulsing Nigeria are economically or politically motivated should not immobilise the Bola Tinubu administration from angrily emplacing measures to stamp them out. The latest Kaduna abductions from LEA Primary School in Kuriga, Chikun local government area of Kaduna State, coming hard after a few other celebrated cases early this year, should serve as a reminder that the old, fitful system of fighting banditry/kidnapping has become jaded and ineffective. Bandits strike, abduct hapless Nigerians, riding motorcycles or marching victims hard and fast into their dens, and government throws verbal and flailing punches. Summing up the drama, some of the abductees are released after huge ransom payments; until the cycle repeats itself weeks later. It is time to cut the Gordian knot. To serve as a reminder, the Palladium piece for February 4 is repeated today to nudge the government to abandon old and unworkable methods of combating a security problem capable of upending the country, compounding the economic salvage mission of the administration, and rubbishing the image and credibility of the president himself.

    The recent Kaduna mass abduction of perhaps over 200 schoolchildren and the tale of woes accompanying it should tell the administration that pusillanimity is not an option. A community leader who spoke to The Punch last week gave an incredible insight into the Kuriga school abductions. If a community leader had such insight, including identifying the abode of the bandits, the routes they normally use for their operations, and the methods they deploy, how on earth would the security and law enforcement agents plead ignorance? And so while it is possible for the abductions and senseless killings to be politically motivated, there are enough indications in the methodologies of the bandits to help the administration respond adequately and effectively, regardless of any motives.

    Here is what the community leader told the newspaper: “Kuriga village, which is not more than 26 kilometers from Birnin-Gwari town in the Chukun Local Government Area, is situated along the Kaduna Birnin-Gwari highway. The village is not far from the terrorists’ enclave in Manini, which is the gateway to Niger State through River Kaduna; the terrorists from Zamfara pass through that place to Manini to Alawa and Shawara in Niger State. Three weeks before the abduction of the pupils, the terrorists had killed the principal of the Government Secondary School Kuriga around 4am, while his wife and two children were abducted. The wife and children are still in captivity. The secondary school was the first structure you would see on the road when you are coming from Kaduna before you enter Kuriga, but because of the proximity to Manini (six kilometres), the school was relocated to the main town of Kuriga where the primary school is also situated; that was why when the terrorists struck, they took away pupils of both the primary and the secondary schools.”

    By last Friday, there was still no confirmation that another set of about 200 people, supposedly from an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Gamboru-Ngala in Borno State, were abducted; but the Kuriga LEA school is without controversy. Merely releasing the victims, including paying ransoms, should never be the end of the matter. The government must not rest until the perpetrators of this hideous crime are apprehended. There is enough in the account of the Birnin Gwari community leader to help the security agencies do their job, if they are willing and determined. They should ask themselves why their response time is woefully slow, why their drones, choppers and fighter jets are not mobilised immediately the bandits strike in their hundreds and exit through well-known routes, and why the intelligence services do not seem to debrief community leaders and witnesses to these crimes in order to weave together the pattern of banditry laying whole communities desolate. Questions should be asked, and answers given, if Nigerians are not to start believing that the security and intelligence services are either inept or complicit. If kidnappers do not get their just deserts soon, the omens will truly turn apocalyptic.

    The Palladium piece of February 4 titled Insecurity, Forex: Tinubu’ll have to go for broke offers some helpful hints as to what can and should be done to stop the costly haemorrhaging.

    In one dizzying week, the Bola Tinubu administration has experienced probably its most challenging moment so far. Last Monday (January 29, 2024), gunmen believed to be kidnappers killed two travelling Ekiti State traditional rulers, while a third escaped the dragnet. On Thursday, the outlaws, but perhaps a different set, also killed another monarch in Kwara State, not too far from where the first set of killings took place. The killers acted like sleeper cells activated by remote control. They seemed to be saying that if other abductions and killings in different parts of the country would not ruffle the feathers of the president, these latest killings should. Hatred for the eight-month-old Tinubu administration is gradually ossifying in the North, while the Southeast has really never been placated, and the South-South continues to vacillate. With minor exceptions, the Southwest had remained a bastion of support for the administration; but now the killing of monarchs and abduction of schoolchildren may begin to stir passions.

    In the same horrendous week, foreign exchange dealers took their speculative lunacy to insane heights thus making Nigeria’s puzzled monetary authorities frantic about the plunging naira which fell to an abysmal low of N1,482 on Tuesday and N1,435 on Friday against the US dollar. Before the week ended, exchange rate for cargo clearance, which had been about N952/$ in December rose to N1,356/$. By last week, the news on the economic front was virtually apocalyptic, sending dangerous signals about an impending economic disaster. In addition, last Sunday, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger Republic announced their exit from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) without the mandatory notice. To complete his nightmare, President Tinubu is the current chairman of the regional body. But there is no need to placate the three military regimes. Just develop the remaining 12 contiguous member states, and make them a regional showpiece. Despite the security implications, the errant three which replaced French hegemony with Russian oligarchy simply lack the smartness and perspective to appreciate the implications of their actions.

    However, it is when things look dark that the true character of a man shows through. The economic/forex crisis had been simmering for decades unattended to, and the insecurity crisis has lasted for more than 15 years. The crises were expected to get much worse before the country turns the corner. However, because there are really no social safety nets, and the nets hastily cobbled together in the past few months had been poorly executed or even exploited by both elected and appointed public officials, the discontent among the poor may be threatening to boil over to the streets to the satisfaction of disaffected opposition forces. Worsening the crises are powerful elites and regional interests, many of them still hoping that somehow the whole democratic experience could be scuttled or truncated. Clearly, President Tinubu does not have the luxury of time. He needs to act now both to save his presidency as well as to deliver the country. He had tried to mollify the opposition, trodden gingerly over complex economic and social issues, and spoken cautiously to the powerful and highly connected, perhaps with an eye on future elections. Now, he will have to go for broke if insecurity and forex speculators are not to break him. Those angling for a collapse of the system foolishly think that once the process is triggered it can be controlled like specimens in laboratories. They are unrealistic.

    Firstly, the president must convince himself that the economic crisis, particularly the Forex logjam, has been handled with dexterity and the best expertise available in the country. Does he have a group of economic experts and advisers, other than appointed officials, with whom he meets minds and debates the dominant themes of the economy? He needs to rejig his staff. At first view, the panaceas applied by the administration, including palliatives, have been eclectic, reactive and often incoherent. The panaceas give the impression of a lack of surefootedness. Yet, the problems ought to be profoundly understood and clearly enunciated, and the solutions affirmed beyond a shadow of doubt, regardless of the maliciousness of economic exploiters and saboteurs implementing the scripts of opposition forces. The president must be keenly aware already that the economic condition of the people is indeed very dire, and he has a little time to remedy the problem. Yes, it must get worse before getting better, and it is also true that he is trying to grapple with issues and decisions evaded by his predecessors for decades, predecessors who opted for the low hanging fruits while jauntily passing on the rest of the nuisance to successors. But President Tinubu wants to be different. That should be lauded. He must, therefore, let wisdom direct him as he calibrates what pains the people can endure without threatening the safety of his administration and the stability of the country.

    Secondly, he has the more pressing and far more difficult job of stanching the flow of blood as a result of insecurity all over the country. Here he must really, really go for broke. He has to break tables and break eggs. In fact, he has little or no choice, for should the situation continue for a few more months, he will not only lose respect, even the myth of his invincibility will be shattered and the stability of the country threatened. One, a rash of informal state police imitations are springing up in many states in response to unremitting insecurity. President Tinubu should retake the initiative and kick-start the constitutional process of devolving state policing powers. This measure is urgent and cannot wait for comprehensive restructuring deals. Regional emotions are still too fragile and combustible, especially in the midst of economic storm and silly arguments about relocations of departments of federal agencies and ministries, to be added to the far more complex and sensitive restructuring process.

    Read Also: First Lady prescribes capital punishment for kidnappers

    Two, while the state police devolution measure is being worked out, the president needs to assemble a tactical mix of police and military squads in all the states and designate them as rapid deployment forces to fight kidnapping. Previous measures have become impotent. He should also put the legal machinery in motion to enable him and state governors activate a statewide lockdown when kidnappers strike in order to hem them in and fish them out. Had this system been in place, when kidnappers took the schoolchildren in Ekiti or killed monarchs, Ekiti would have been immediately put on lockdown, and armed squads in surrounding states put on red alert patrolling Ekiti boundaries until the abductors were fished out. This process must not be terminated even after the release of captives; it must continue until the kidnappers are apprehended. The president should also consider the legal imperative of setting up special courts to try kidnappers, a trial that should terminate at the Court of Appeal, while the cases must be disposed of in a few months, say three months. This process should be applied to Plateau, Nasarawa and Benue where gunmen continue to rampage and carry out ethnic cleansing. Lock the states down when killings occur, and the government must not rest until the perpetrators are fished out, even if it takes weeks. If former administrations were fond of sending condolences and promising to rebuild destroyed communities, the Tinubu administration should toe a completely different line.

    The president should also set up a panel to resolve why big-time kidnappers who keep captives for months and negotiate with victims’ families endlessly could mystify and wrong-foot the intelligence and security services. Are security agents complicit? There should be no excuses. The kidnappers are known to communities which replenish them, some out of fear, others out of financial inducements. The Tinubu administration should be interested in why the intelligence services have proved both inept and impotent in the face of such open challenges to the peace and stability of the country. The president should be tired of playing the rule book of his predecessors who summoned security chiefs to Aso Villa when preventable tragedies occur. He should sit with them, formulate ironclad plans, task new and old agencies with arresting the situation, local hunters included, and saddle communities with the responsibility of overseeing their forests. Failure is not an option. It is time to stop the madness. With devolved policing, states should take part of the blame for insecurity. Old measures have clearly proved nugatory; it is time for a bold and innovative administration to find and apply new weapons of lifting the siege to which the nation has been subjected by nomadic criminals and their local accomplices. It is time the president fiercely combated the menace and set a six-month or one-year target to impose peace.

    • First published February 4, 2024
  • Now we know there are those watching Tinubu with admiration

    Now we know there are those watching Tinubu with admiration

    I sometimes wonder how Asiwaju Bola Tinubu manages as President of Nigeria. I mean, this a nation of millions of people with one very interesting sense of entitlement, also self-hating, but as a leader, you just have to learn to keep your cool, wear the hurls of insults from all sorts of people like a comfortable garb and stay un-distracted. You will get a proper sense of what I mean, about who we are as a people, on some of the social media platforms, especially WhatsApp, where people who will never lift a finger to contribute to efforts concerning everybody, including themselves, but will be the first to see errors and then lead the charge for the attack on those responsible enough to sacrifice on everybody’s behalf.

    Imagine the intense pressure the President has been under since assuming office last year, especially as a result of the reforms being applied; the fuel subsidy removal and foreign exchange market regularisation. Most responses from the public, so far, have been rather negative, cutting him no slack, even if most reviews of his administration’s performance, especially with regards to projections and quality of policies, have been positive. Ironically, the efforts for which he is being constantly heckled with insults are designed and targeted at making life more humane for the same people.

    It was almost looking like nobody in the country was appreciating the President’s efforts at rescuing the country from the depth it had been buried over the years, seeming like the voices of blames and reprimand were drowning everything else, until Thursday last week, when some Nigerians came through to show they have been following events and observing Tinubu’s noteworthy efforts at giving Nigerians their country back.

    On Thursday, in two different locations; one, directly to him inside the State House and another one, by proxy, to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, in his office, also in Abuja, two respected organisations, inadvertently and simultaneously, handed Grand Patron investitures to the President, to show their appreciation of his efforts at redirecting Nigeria back to the path of growth and proper nationhood.

    First, it was the National Academy of Science, led by its President, Professor Ekanem Braide, that called on President Tinubu, with the intent to show appreciation for his administration’s focus on building a science, technology and innovation-driven economy. Braide applauded Tinubu for his administration’s recognition for the need for Nigeria to move towards knowledge-based economy, disclosing that the academy is currently working with the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning on the review of documents that would aid urgent interventions for national development.

    “We commend the administration of President Tinubu for truly recognizing the need for Nigeria to move towards knowledge-based economy, we are reviewing national planning document through the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning and we are advising necessary interventions required urgently for national development. We have been informed that the President had directed that steps be taken to set up National research fund”, she added.

    While the Academy of Science’s show of appreciation was happening, there was, in yet another part of the Three-armed Zone, a similar event holding, this time around in the office of the SGF. Senator George Akume, the SGF, also hosted a group of highly revered Nigerians, who were in his office to present another award of Grand Patron, conferred on President Tinubu. The Council of Former Permanent Secretaries (CORFEPS), led by its Chairman and former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Alhaji Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, deliberately packaged the conferment of the award as part of its week for 2024. The coincidence in the presentation of the awards of same nature, by two unrelated revered professional bodies, was the icing on the week’s cake for me.

    The week was more than just the affirmation by conferment of awards on the President, he did a lot and, just in the same pattern of his daily work routine, he lived the workaholic life all through it. Maybe I should add here that how Jagaban lives everyday is now public knowledge, especially after his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, revealed in an interview with Chude Jideonwo on Thursday that the President is a workaholic, whose sleep hours are reduced so he could meet up with work.

    “I’m working with a man who I can personally vouch for because he is going to bed at 2 am-3 am every single night, including Sundays. He wakes up at 7 am-8 am every morning, including Sundays, opening his files, working into the late nights when no one is there to say anything good or bad about him. He is doing the work. He is a workaholic, and he is doing it all to build a country that is reflective of a progressive and advanced country and prosperous society that he has envisioned, the same way he did in Lagos. I’m asking Nigerians to support the president, he means well”, Ngelale had told his host in the dialogue.

    So it was a very busy week for our President, starting it with an all-important State Visit to the State of Qatar, on the invitation of the Emir of the country, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. While in Doha, on Sunday, he held a bilateral meeting with the Government of Qatar, during which multi-sectoral agreements were signed between both countries on education, enterprise development, investment promotion, youth empowerment, mining, tourism, and sports.

    He also participated in the Nigeria-Qatar Business and Investment Forum, which was organized jointly by the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture (NACCIMA) and Qatar’s Chambers of Commerce and Industry. The forum opened a platform for businessmen and investors in both countries to explore opportunities in key sectors, including oil and gas, manufacturing, agro-business, construction, real estate, ICT, renewable energy, solid minerals, as well as the service sector.

    He returned to Nigeria on Monday, got back into that regime Ngelale described in his interview with Jideonwo. After his return, he sent some of his lieutenants, like Vice President Kashim Shettima and SGF Akume, to represent him at some public events, and personally handled those he thought he must personally handle. For instance, on Monday, Akume represented him at the African Regional Dialogue on the Summit of the Future in Abuja, while Shettima represented him in Lagos on Monday at the Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership in Lagos on Wednesday.

    On Wednesday, the President initiated new policy directives aimed at improving the investment climate and position Nigeria as the preferred investment destination for the oil and gas sector in Africa. Then on Thursday he made new appointments, suspended some, all in his effort to clean the system up and buoy up those in need of it. Most of the activities were in the Power sector. For instance, the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), he suspended Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad, the Managing Director and three others. In their stead, he appointed Abba Abubakar Aliyu as interim MD, along with four others.

    At the Nigeria Electricity Liability Management Company (NELMCO) and the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) Power Company, he reconstituted the boards and amended their structures, appointing the Minister of Power as Chairman. Then later in the evening, he threw in some words for the Nigerian woman, describing her as the pivot of the nation. On Friday, he issued an order for the immediate rescue of kidnap victims in Borno state, where more than 200 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and Kaduna where about 287 pupils and teachers were kidnapped in recent times.

    Read Also: Northern Senators to meet Tinubu over alleged N3trn ‘padding’ in 2024 budget 

    Showing off with one of his best

    I think I should highlight this occasion in Doha where our President, the City Boy, made a show off again. It was at the Nigeria-Qatar Business and Investment Forum, he was making a point about Nigeria being ready for the world to come take advantage of the unusual business and investment friendly environment available nowadays. There has been a perception, wrong albeit, that Nigeria slows business down with bureaucratic bottlenecks and the effect of corruption. To disabuse minds on that, the best from his arsenal is his National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, who once oversaw the nation’s anticorruption agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    According to him, his administration had significantly strengthened the war against corruption and insecurity with Ribadu’s appointment as NSA, saying “we have a man who has won many global awards for anti-corruption as an anti-corruption czar. My responsibility is to tell you that Nigeria is open for business, and to assure you that your investments are safe in our hands. We have men and women of great reputation here and we believe we can forge a good committee that will advance our discussions to fruitful conclusions. A nation is an artificial entity unless there are good people to drive it. People build great nations and we have great people. We are ready”. 

    Showing Ribadu off, in the forum he did, far away from home, says a lot about the value he places on him. If I were the NSA, this will push me to do more than I do currently, although I know most of us cannot match his speed. He is a certified high-flyer, reason his Boss reposes so much trust in him.

  • OAU women on the move (1)

    OAU women on the move (1)

    International Women’s Day (IWD) 2024 was on Friday, 8 March. According to the IWD website, the precursor to IWD was the 1908 campaign and protests in which “15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.” This march for equity and fairness resonated beyond America and in 1910 at an “International Conference of Working Women which was held in Copenhagen … a woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day – a Women’s Day – to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s clubs – and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament – greeted Zetkin’s suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women’s Day was the result.”

    The first IWD – “a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women” – was marked in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland in 1911 supported by over a million people. As noted by the website, “IWD is an official holiday in many countries … The tradition sees men honoring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc. with flowers and small gifts.” The general theme for IWD 2024 is “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”, and the campaign theme is “Inspire Inclusion”. According to the United Nations (UN), “One of the key pillars of Inspire Inclusion is the promotion of diversity in leadership and decision-making positions. … By providing support and resources, women can be empowered to overcome obstacles and achieve their full potential.”

    As part of celebrating IWD this year, this column today focuses on women in academia, specifically, in Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, with which the column is most familiar, and which is a university which has recorded remarkable achievements in gender issues. The celebration has been done through the following interview with a woman of note in the university, Professor Funmi Soetan. Please, come along.

    Nuances: Good morning, Ma. Please, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

    Soetan: Thank you. My name is Funmi Soetan, a Professor of Economics, specialising in Industrial Economics, Business Economics and Gender Economics. I’m very passionate about my faith in Christ, and I’m grateful to God for the opportunity to have spent almost 38 years at Obafemi Awolowo University in teaching, research and service. I’m happily married, with children and grandchildren.

    Nuances: March 8 is International Women’s Day. What’s the significance of this Day to Nigeria?

    Soetan: The UN adopted it as a day to highlight gender inequalities and celebrate progress and identify challenges. That started in 1974. Nigeria is a signatory to several UN conventions on gender equality, but when it comes to domestication we have a very poor track record. We have wide gaps in several areas of socio-economic development such as governance, access to resources, especially finance, and, worse still, maternal mortality. Nigeria has one of the highest burdens of maternal mortality in the world; I think the second or the third highest.

    IWD 2024 presents an opportunity for Nigeria to assess progress towards gender equality. As we know, the Sustainable Development Goals which are the successors of the Millennium Development Goals have the theme of inclusiveness that leaves no one behind. And if we are going to leave no one behind, certainly, it will not be women who make up at least fifty percent of our population. If we leave them behind, we are leaving development behind. So, this is another opportunity for Nigeria to spotlight, highlight and bring gender equality on the front burner and take a critical look at the challenges and how to address them, so that we can have development that is truly sustainable and inclusive.

    Nuances: As a very senior member of the OAU community, a very influential one for that matter, what institutional measures do you think OAU has put in place to enhance the prospects of women on this campus?

    Soetan: One of the most enduring institutional mechanisms put in place by Obafemi Awolowo University to protect the interests of women in the community is the Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy. It gives me such joy that finally Council adopted it and it was well-launched by the immediate past Vice-Chancellor Professor Eyitayo Ogunbodede. Interestingly, I got into ASH, as I call it, Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy, by default, being a woman. When I was hired in 1986, barely had I settled down that I was constantly being drafted into sexual harassment cases. And the last one that I served on was so messy; not only was it messy, it involved me personally, because the culprit sued me. He verbally assaulted me at the zoo car park.

    When I got home, I told my husband, and my husband said, “What have you done about it? Go and report to your Dean. Make a formal report, because next time, he may beat you up.” So, I reported to the Dean and the report was forwarded to Professor Ogunbodede, and another panel was set up on the same man, and he was found culpable. That was the eighth panel in nine years on this same person. So, I had personal experience. When he found out that he was found culpable by that committee, he put a notice on my door asking me to retract my statement or he would sue me. And he went ahead and sued me for five million naira. The case came up at the High Court here in Ile-Ife. I was shocked. I hadn’t done anything wrong; why was I being sued? Then I could feel for the students how they would feel oppressed and disempowered. So, my husband said, “We have a good case, but if we don’t get a good lawyer and rely just on the university lawyer, we will lose this case.” So, we hired a lawyer for two-fifty thousand naira then (around 2008/2009), out of pocket. And when he found that the case was getting hot, he stepped down. But see all it cost us.

    So, that gave me the burden to pursue the protection of the sexual rights of our students. And the opportunity came when I was appointed Director, Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies, in 2010. The first thing I did, you can guess, when I resumed, was to ask the staff on ground, “Do you have an Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy?” And they said, “No.” And I said, “You have to get one.” The rest is now history.

    We mobilised the whole community including religious leaders in the mosques, in the churches, union leaders, staff and students, to come on board. And the policy was drafted, but put in the drawer for so long. Then I got into the Governing Council in 2017 and I kept asking, “Where’s the Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy?” That was the opportunity to push for the Council to adopt and back it up. And it happened while I was still there. So, if that is all I have been able to do, I’m happy, because the university started to implement it. Thankfully, when the Akindele case came up, Professor Ogunbodede called me and said, “Madam, we’re in trouble. BBC, VOA, everybody is on our case.” I said, “We have a policy.” So, that policy rescued us.

    Nuances: So, is it your general view that these measures have been effective? For example, how much attempt has been made to make our curricula gender-sensitive? 

    Soetan: Yes. Remember that we worked together on this under Professor Simi Afonja. The good news is that the Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies runs postgraduate courses, but the bad news is that that is all. It has not sort of percolated through the whole university. And again, under the auspices of UNESCO, I was hired as Lead Consultant for the BMAS (Benchmark Minimum Academic Standard) in Gender Studies, and we got all University Directors of Gender Studies together in Abuja, and NUC, UNESCO, we prepared the BMAS, but they didn’t implement it. We even said that it could start from making sure that there was a gender component in the General Studies/Special Electives. We’re still waiting.

    Nuances: Thank you, Ma. Which additional measures do you think OAU needs to put in place, moving forward, regarding gender?  

    Soetan: I think we’ve mentioned the key areas – curriculum, we’ve mentioned harassment policy, and also mainstreaming gender. We must mainstream gender at all levels including administration, not only in terms of numbers, so that we would not be like a bird flying with one wing. We need to be more inclusive, and therefore have in place policies that are more sustainable.

     Nuances: What do you envision for International Women’s Day 2025 in OAU?

    Soetan: One, a reduction in sexual harassment through zero-tolerance such that both staff and students would know that this is a no-go area. Perpetrators, either males or females, would be brought to book and victims would be protected. That is my desire. Two, gender-mainstreaming of our curriculum would be undertaken, starting from General Studies courses, thus highlighting gender as a key area of scholarship at all levels.

    Read Also: Tears as OAU zookeeper killed by lioness is buried

    Nuances: Thank you very much.

    One quite interesting point that can be inferred from Professor Funmi Soetan’s views in this interview is that, in her gender scholarship and gender policy activism, she got solid support from her husband, Professor Olufemi Soetan, who is a very senior ophthalmologist. This amazing spousal support mirrors the one which the icon, doyen and Mother of Gender Studies at OAU, Professor Similolu Adunni Afonja, got from her husband, Professor Adeniyi Afonja, a Professor of Metalurgical Engineering and former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at OAU. He was there for her as she set out to nurse the acorn of the “Programme in Women’s Studies” of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in 1986 to grow into today’s oak – the Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies – a pivot of gender research, gender consciousness-raising and gender policy activism approved by the National Universities Commission (NUC) in 2002, during her time as Director.

    Through seminars and other programmes, staff, both female and male, from different academic disciplines across the university, were brought together by Professor Simi Afonja to examine different aspects of the lives of women and girls. She invited me into the Centre as a Fellow on account of my research interest in “Language and Gender” or “Women and Language”. It is a testimony to Professor Simi Afonja’s solid foundational work, her foresight, tenacity and organisational prowess that today her successors as Directors of the Centre have a template which continues to facilitate both intellectual and infrastructural development. This column today is dedicated to her in continuation of the celebrations of IWD 2024.

  • Pa (Odioma) G.O. Okoobo, FCA, at 90

    I have these past few weeks been reading through some of the articles that appeared on these pages since ’76 when I began the column and I cannot be happier, or more proud, seeing how very relevant many of them are to contemporary Nigeria. Indeed, in some cases, they are more relevant today, than they were when first published several years ago.

    Such articles are so many they confirm my thoughts when I  wrote here a few weeks ago that every attempt to resolve the Nigerian conundrum has mostly turned up worse.

    Before I decided to  celebrate PA (Odioma) Peter Okoobo today, this time on his incredible 95th birthday, by once again publishing his timeless letter which was first published here on 9 October, 2020( then his second appearance on the page), I had settled on a topic I titled ‘Contemporary Nigeria: Two Men Who Saw Tomorrow’ by which I was referring to the Edo state governor Godwin Obaseki, who first brought the Buhari/Emefiele N30 Trillion paper money, and its consequences, to the public space, and the much more surprising one by Engr Buba Galadima, who  ‘prophesied’, in answer to a question during an interview, that his very good friend, President Muhammadu Buhari, will ” leave Nigeria in pieces by 2023″.

    He could not have been more prescient given all that Nigerians are now getting to know.

    That will have to be another day.

    It is nothing but an amazing show of infinite love of one’s country that would make anybody, at 91years of age, not only to ruminate over all the demons tearing at the very heart of his country of birth, but would compel him to sit down, and very painstakingly, commit into writing, the seminal views you are about to read.

    That is the ‘Agape love’ that drove

    ODIOMA G.O OKOOBO, FCA, one of Nigeria’s  first set of  British – trained  professional accountants into volunteering his well thought out views on Nigeria.

    To the glory of God, Papa will be 95 come 16 March, 2024. He has lived a very active, indeed, checkered  life,  both in his career as a trained accountant  and as an incomparable and greatly appreciated  community leader, not only in his Idumebo-Irrua Town, Esan Central L.G.A of Edo State, but Pan Nigeria.

    In October 2020, at 91 and on these pages, he gave Nigerians the benefit of his thoughts on issues which he considers are extremely germane to Nigeria’s well being, growth and development.

    His letter to Nigeria, published below  should, therefore, be of great help to those minded on moving Nigeria forward.

    Again, happy reading.

    At 91 years, I still have much love for my country, Nigeria, to prompt me to write this message. In my opinion, the greatest malady that has  plagued Nigeria is selfishness, greed, avarice, power, hatred, bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, envy and the grand master, corruption, all rolled into one.

    It all began in 1960 when on gaining Independence from Britain, we took power but  left behind responsibilty.

    As long as we, our family, community and tribe are comfortable, what happens to the other people, family or clan does not matter or concern us.

    If one were to write on this from all its perspectives, I believe that, like the Bible says concerning Jesus’ deeds on earth: “the books that will be written will fill every space of the earth”.

     I am, therefore, treating it from three angles, namely:

    National, State and Local Government Assemblies.

    I have always held that politics should be an avenue to serve, and not for making money or acquiring wealth. That view is sltrengthened the more whenever I read about legislators in saner climes where they serve for decades meaning that they delivered on their election promises,  serving selflessly as true servants of the people.

    Unfortunately, that cannot be said of Nigerian legislators.

    I.The National Assembly.

    It was Professor Itse Sagay who blew the whistle many years ago when he told Nigerians that the salaries and allowances of members of the National Assembly are  about the highest anywhere in the world, with senators and Rep members earning about N14M and N12M respectively, per month.

    Give yourself a headache trying to compare that to the N30,000 monthly minimum wage.

    David Mark, as senate President, and Aminu Tambuwal, as Speaker, House of Representatives, who bequeathed this inheritance to them are Christian and Muslim respectively, as are the other members of the National Assembly but, for all I know, none of the criticisms by well-meaning Nigerians, these many years, has moved the needle, as they have all fallen on deaf ears.

    ii. The State Assembly:

    Not much is known about the salaries and allowances of state legislators but they are nowhere as minuscule as the minimum wage which is handed down to Nigerian workers. They also equally pay themselves humongous severance allowances after serving for even only  four years.

    iii. The Local Government.

    Again, hardly is anything known of the salaries and allowances of Local glovernment Chairmen and councilors in what is at best a shady arrangement between the state government and that arm of government.

    Therefore, no reasonable development takes place in Local Government Areas. Indeed, in some parts of the country, local government staff, Chairmen and councilors inclusive, are believed to go to their offices only when the monthly federal allocation comes in from Abuja. This is then distributed along themselves and their godfathers after which they vamoose, till the next month.

    2. National Challenges vis- a – vis Reconstructing Nigeria.

    Well-meaning Nigerians believe that one way of resolving most of  the country’s challenges – be it  insecurity,  the economy or  corruption, is through restructuring. But some sections of the country have been very opposed to restructuring because of the unfair advantages they enjoy.

    Some are also advocating more states and Local Government Areas even when many of the existing ones are not viable.

    At inception, the country  operated four regions which were  all economically viable with groundnut, cocoa, palm oil and palm kernel, as main revenue earners. However, problems came when the military took over and introduced a central command of everything, thereby messing up fiscal federalism.

    With everything now vested in the Federal Government, every state government rushes  to Abuja for monthly handouts.

    In view of the foregoing, I wish to submit as follows:

    i. A Federal Government with   few, specific responsibilities  like security and foreign affairs.

    ii. Six (6) Regional Governments along the lines of present Geo-Political Zones with the responsibilities of the old 4 regions.

    iii. 109 Municipal Local Governments (headed by a Mayor) along senatorial districts. (We had Lagos City Council in those days)

    iv. Federal, Regional and Municipal Local Government Police (it is a negation of the principle of federalism to concentrate policing under the federal authorities only).

    v. With the exception of Municipal Local Government councilors, federal and regional legislators should serve part-time and receive only sitting allowances.

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    This system will have the added advantage of attracting only persons who sincerely want to serve – e.g. professionals who have had successful practices and now wish to serve humanity.

    vi. Security votes should be outlawed at all levels.

    vii.Payment of  pension or severance allowance to legislators should be outlawed.

    viii. Not more than three (3) political parties should be registered.

    3. GALATIANS Chap. 6 vs. 7 says:”Do not deceive yourselves; no one makes a fool of God. A person reaps exactly what he plants”, which  some people call the “Law of Karma”.

    Therefore my message to my fellow country men is that we have had enough of self- deceit because the law of Karma is certain,k and immutable.

    For ages man has tried to fool God. We relegated His commands to love our neighour as ourselves. Why do we think God allowed the Covid -19 virus to come  and humble  mankind?

    Pope Francis said as much in his recent prayer for the world:

    “You humbled the proud and powerful. The economy is crashing, businesses are closing. We are moving in circles, looking for some cure to the disease when, in fact, all we need do is humble ourselves and ask for divine guidance.

    May be this virus is your way of purifying us … so as to bring us back to Yourself”.

    May God bless and save my country, Nigeria.

    Amen.

    Happy birthday, Sir.

    May your life continue to be a shining example to others.

    Many happy returns.

  • Let the doctors go

    Let the doctors go

    In the late eighties when the Nigerian economy began to show signs of terminal decline just as it is doing at this time, Nigerian doctors began leaving Nigeria in droves. At that time their sanctuaries were in Middle Eastern countries, principally in Saudi Arabia from where they acquired those American dollars which had suddenly become pure gold in Nigeria. Nigerian universities were hardest hit by the exodus of doctors as professors in all medical specialities cashed in on the strength of their stethoscopes and ran away for their economic lives. They took special leaves of absence and went off into an Arabian exile where some of them struck their tent and did not look back. They did not think it was in their interest or that of their university to come back home to fulfil the terms of their leave of absence. They simply paid off whatever financial  obligations they had to the university from their store of dollars and waltzed into the sunset, never to be seen anymore. They had in the meantime built a house in which to spend a comfortable retirement after their labours in the desert. They were therefore lost forever to the university system which was too poor to appreciate their expertise.

    The Saudi gold mine did not remain open indefinitely as the Saudis turned to training their own citizens to become doctors and other medical specialists to take over from Nigerians and other foreigners. The recruiting agencies which sprang up quite suddenly to facilitate the flight of our doctors from Nigeria just as suddenly went back underground and all became quiet on the Eastern front. Somehow, the home universities survived the Saudi blitz and moved on to train the next generation of doctors who this time have their eyes fixed on destinations in the West; notably those in the USA, Britain and Canada. The emigrants this time included a sizeable number of pharmacists and I remember writing a number of references especially for those of them who were going away for the expressed purpose of acquiring further degrees. I cheerfully gave those references thinking that the recipients were going to come back to strengthen our faculty but the last time I checked, not one of them has given their home university a backward glance. They are all ageing gracefully in comfortable exile. The only exception to the general rule has been a professor who went out there with a Ph.D from Ife to fortify herself with knowledge in Molecular biology and is now back in Ibadan complete with a state of the art laboratory in which her students are acquiring skills which would have been beyond their reach had the good professor decided to remain in her place of exile in the USA. It is rather sad that no one else to my knowledge has thought it fit to replicate her method and give back something substantial to her society.

    My generation of scholars received their postgraduate training in universities abroad but except for the odd deviant, we all returned home to build up our various academic departments which is why it was possible for those coming behind us to receive the level of education which made it possible for them to be accepted in their turn by universities abroad for their own postgraduate training. A few years ago, an ill-advised or perhaps,  just an incompetent government,  in a fit of political grandstanding awarded dozens of scholarships to, admittedly outstanding graduates in many disciplines. The recipients  of these scholarships happily went away to the best universities abroad, did very good work there and carved out a niche for themselves far away from the hostile shores of their homeland. Whoever thought they were going to come back home after their exposure to the facilities abroad  must have had a screw or even a raft of screws loose in their head. A poor country like Nigeria has,  in this case  done nothing more than subsidise the development of universities abroad. The money spent on this mad act of misplaced charity could have been spent in the development of a few centres in our first generation universities and perhaps a few others where the next generation of Nigerian academics could have been trained. In the meantime, my own generation of academics have retired from our universities, their expertise now irretrievably lost to the system. In any case, they are now exhausted from battling the uncaring Nigerian educational establishment which seems hell-bent on destroying the Nigerian university system which is growing uncontrollably like a cancer careering towards a terminal condition. Over the last fifty years, nearly three hundred so called universities have been created and the population of Nigerian undergraduates is now in the millions. Where are the competent lecturers to run these establishments which for want of an appropriate name we call universities? It is nowhere now enough to call a collection of buildings however elegant a university, if there is not a full compliment of adequately trained and well equipped staff to teach students that have the ability to appreciate whatever it is they are being taught. From this point of view, I wonder just how many universities worthy of the name are now operating in Nigeria.

    When doctors were rushing off to the Middle East in the eighties, it was thought that all they wanted was more money in their lean pockets. The government of the day, goaded by the Minister of Health decided to throw money at this problem. A new salary scale which upended what was available in the health sector was hastily put together and suddenly the doctors were earning a whole lot of money, much more than other cadres in the hospitals. But because of a sense of self imposed exceptionalism, they want even more money and when like Oliver Twist, they could not get it, they have jumped on their bikes and are riding off to new climes just as their fathers did in the eighties. But now, other members of the healthcare team have joined the match.

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    Like the educational system, our healthcare system appears to be in terminal decay and it may not be long before the little trust we have in our hospitals will be completely shredded. Indeed, with our pampered elite group opting for overseas treatment for all but the most trivial ailments and our health budget devoted to the payment of personal emoluments, do we really have any health system left? The jury must be left to deliberate on that but I have a feeling that the honest answer must be in the negative.

    Over the last few years, especially in the last two, we have been regaled with takes of the flight of our healthcare personnel. We are told that whole departments have disappeared en masse having secured visas to countries beyond the seas. Some of the emigrants have burnt all their boats and bridges giving the unmistakeable signs of their determination never to return. Homes, vehicles, landed properties and even home utensils have been disposed of as the money required for travel papers had to be gathered somehow. The first group of émigrés in the eighties was made up of doctors going out to bag a fistful of dollars at the top end of the Saudi Arabian health system. This time we have a motley collection of healthcare workers some of who will have to slot into something only a little better than minimum wage level, within a British National Health System battling with existential problems in a country battling both economic and political challenges. They are not likely to come back home to build mansions in low population density areas as their predecessors who went to the Middle East had done. This new cohort have no plans to come back because they are probably committed to slotting into the underclass in their new homes. They are gone and gone forever.

    Perhaps the most prominent members of the immigrant group are doctors and nurses who are deserting our healthcare system in droves. So many of them have left that we should be worried about what is likely to happen to those of us who have the misfortune of having to take shelter under the wings of our healthcare delivery system. So far, the rickety system seems to be holding up but in the absence of reliable figures we cannot come to any meaningful conclusion about the status of our healthcare delivery apparatus

    The last time that we had the problem of the exodus of doctors, we threw a lot of money at the problem making it possible for doctors to corner a considerable proportion of the healthcare budget into their cavernous pockets. So many years down the line, we find that doctors need even more money in order to give them some satisfaction.  Unlike university lecturers who are the designated orphans of the nation, the doctors have the Nigerian authorities on the hop and people are putting forward all kinds of strategies to deal with the situation of large scale desertion of Nigerian hospitals by doctors and to some extent, nurses. One authoritative suggestion from Lagos State is for the state government to train 1,500 doctors annually. An extension of this strategy is for the country to double the intake of medical students across all medical schools. These strategies will make it possible to produce even more doctors, to at least take the place of those who follow their professional fortunes abroad. Such ad hoc responses are unfortunately, nothing short of laughable except that the governor is quite capable of trying to carry out his own suggestion and of course, doubling the number of places available in our medical schools can be made possible by fiat and in doing so, create other problems.

    With doctors pouring out of our medical schools, we will soon have a great many more doctors moaning about how little they are paid and once grumbling starts, they will start skulking around foreign embassies as they plot their exit so that more doctors can be produced to take the place of doctors who have escaped from the toxic Nigerian environment.  At this time, what the doctors are saying is that there is not enough money in Nigeria to compensate them for whatever services they are capable of rendering. That is something that is worth thinking about.

    When doctors’ salaries went through the roof, it was also suggested that the most effective way to fight disease is to prevent them. Rather than produce more doctors and loading them down with money any available money should be spent on building the capacity to prevent the spread of infections. For example should most Nigerians have access to potable water, their dependency on doctors would be reduced. Should our standard of living improve to such an extent that we can eat at least two, but ideally, three nutritious meals a day and live in standard, well ventilated and mosquito proofed homes, our reliance on doctors will be reduced considerably, at least enough to reduce their self induced exceptionalism. In the meantime, all those doctors, nurses and others who do not feel appreciated should simply sell off and ship out. We will survive somehow, just as we have always done.

  • On the death of Alexei Navalny

    On the death of Alexei Navalny

    The struggle between the state and prominent dissidents valiantly trying to reset the code of humane conduct dates back to antiquity and beyond. Universal history is replete with this. More often than not, the struggle ends in disgrace, defeat and death for the protagonist. But in the process of this grisly ritual of noble self-sacrifice, a society manages to redefine and reimagine itself, if not immediately but eventually.

       When Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, consented to drinking the hemlock as demanded by the Greek state, he was attempting to solve a universal riddle for humankind. By taking his own life when he knew that the charge of corrupting youths was at best laughable and indefensible, Socrates heroically reaffirmed his right to individual liberty.

     But by acceding to the right of the state over the life of the individual, Socrates, the quintessential Greek patriot, was also reaffirming the supremacy and superiority of the state over personal rights. The state can only be humanized and made amenable to the yearnings of the people who have surrendered their rights in exchange for security and protection from ever present danger. To do otherwise is to open the floodgate to anarchy and chaos.

      The death of Alexei Navalny in an icy Siberian prison last week was a globally expected event whose precise timing no one could divine. He had escaped once, with only prompt international attention saving his life after being massively poisoned. But it was obvious that as long as the globally admired and incredibly brave Russian oppositionist stuck to his gun about a Russia rid of Vladimir Putin and his repressive police state, something was bound to give.

       The end came in a rather unstoried manner but laced with poignant ironies. Although subsequently denied by the Russian authorities, Alexei Navalny was part of an international deal for a high level prisoner swap which would have seen the prominent dissident released into exile, most probably a western country. The deal was virtually concluded when the Russian authorities developed jitters. They quickly operationalized the final solution. Navalny paid with his life.

      Putin and his closet advisors must have come to the sudden realization that to have a Navalny who remained unyielding and unbreakable in a Soviet era slaughterhouse in Siberia roaming freely in the west and with superpower acquiescence was going to be a bridge too far. With massive western support, his mere presence could galvanize internal and external opposition to Putin’s reign of terror and put paid to the dominion of the old Soviet spymaster.

      It would have occurred to Putin who has mastered his history very well that revolutions and revolutionists have always been imported to Russia from abroad and from exile. Lenin, Trotsky and co descended on the home country at the appointed hour, and in a sealed train too. Anybody who has read Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station would appreciate what is meant.

         The most interesting and arguably the most ironic thing about liberal democracy is that protests and demonstrations on the streets are often more potent and successful in nudging nations towards changes rather than parliamentary proceedings or brisk exchanges on the capitol.

     In most cases, such protests serve as coded messages to the ruling classes that the balance of forces has been altered or about to be altered. They are like huge boulders of human resolve which gathers strength and momentum as time elapses. The unassailable strength of old-type liberal democracy lies in the fact the more visionary and forward-looking members of the ruling classes keep their ears close to the ground and are often at the vanguard of urgent reforms before the rumblings reach the hallowed sanctuary of power and privileges.

      The long-drawn campaigns for universal suffragette in Great Britain and the heroic civil rights movements in America to enforce the rights of minorities and repeal discriminations based on gender are classic examples of the streets dictating the pace of humanization for the state.

      This is not to talk of the iconic French Revolution or the seismic disruptions unleashed by the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions which radically altered global power relations forever. All these momentous upheavals are instances of the ordinary people who bear the brunt of incompetence and cruel governance rising as one huge multitude to say enough is enough in an act of stunning defiance combining self-help with self-empowerment. 

       The tragedy of newer-type liberal democracy such as we find in postcolonial Africa is that rather than view independence as a new beginning away from the colonial mess they met on ground, the ascendant indigenous classes simply incorporated the old order into a new and more vicious form of autocratic and authoritarian misrule which makes tyranny and despotic rule very “natural”.

      When these countries are transiting from despotic military rule into a supposedly new order, the victorious groups simply transfer the infrastructure of receding tyranny into a civilian template of corrupt and unaccountable rule which sometimes as we find in contemporary Nigeria make the ignorant and disoriented masses yearn for a return of military rule in all its berserk obscenities.

      In twenty five years of post-military civil rule, Nigerians have not been able to recall a single lawmaker they thought they elected. The multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nature of this conglomeration of contraries combined with administrative malfeasance make it virtually impossible for the ruling elite to arrive at a consensus even on parliamentary errancy and misconduct.

      This is quite unlike what obtains in the older liberal democracies where retribution for parliamentary misconduct is swift and marked by a bipartisan urgency. A recent case in point is how Boris Johnson, the former British Premier, an amoral rogue if you ever saw one, was eased out of power and parliament despite his shambolic preening and prancing.

      Yet it should now be obvious even to the blind that an urgent consensus on political errancy and misdemeanor will have to be found by the Nigerian ruling class. Otherwise, the cataclysmic events rumbling all over suggest that a confederal arrangement will be imposed on the nation in order to save it from itself.

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      For the past twenty five years, Nigerians from all walks of life have been complaining, bitterly and loudly, about the 1999 Constitution which they dismissed as a sham and a fraud imposed on the nation by military fiat. It was a crassly unrepresentative document whose obtuse arrogance was revealed in the opening howler:” We the people”. Not even the succeeding civilian president knew anything about the eponymous “people”. The near unanimity of the protestations shows that all is not well.

      But for nations, it is always morning on creation day. A subsisting constitution is never a perfect document. It is always an accurate reflection of the forces at play. A constitution is as good as the constituents, particularly the hegemonic forces at play.

    The 1999 constitution is a reflection and product of an unspoken collaboration between an emergent pan-Nigerian coalition of old hegemonic forces and an opposition steamrolled into benign compliance by weariness and sheer struggle fatigue. There were no protests on the day Obasanjo took over power. All was quiet on the western front, as they say.

         Yet there were early warning signals. In a commissioned article for African Affairs, titled: Nigeria: A Restoration Drama, published in June 1999, this writer dismissed the new constitution among other things as “a patchwork of incoherent rambling; the raw material for future instability and national unease. The main concern of its authors–and doctors– seemed to have been how to indemnify the military against loss of face and ill-gotten gains and to prevent a constitutional backlash against several decades of repressive misrule. Obasanjo appears to have his work cut out for him.”

      In its storied existence, a nation must go through several phases. The constitution is the living proof of national existence. But it is not a once and for all time certification of good health. There are phases of national existence that are better quietly forgotten and forgiven. Nigerians will never forget military rule for its great infrastructural drive, its high minded struggle to keep the nation together and its failed attempt at a forcible homogenization of its elite as if a nation is a huge military cantonment.

       But the constitution they have bequeathed the nation is not fit for purpose, if it ever was. There is a horrid mismatch between their hoary authoritarian postulations and the roiling cauldron of ethnic and religious contraries on ground; between the yearnings of Nigerians for an organic and cohesive nation forged from manageable diversities and the rumbling volcano of countervailing forces that greet us everywhere nowadays. This is the time Nigeria needs its thinking First Eleven.

       In rounding up, let us see how things have fared in the Russia that Alexei Novalny has left behind. If Novalny had thought that his death and martyrdom would galvanize his country against Vladimir Putin’s repressive rule, it was a horrible mistake. But the capacity for visionary daydreaming is an integral part of the martyr’s mantra and messianic make-belief. In his grave, Novalny’s heart ought to have warmed at the sight of many brave women and young Russians daring the security forces to do their worst at his funeral. It was a heroic send forth for a noble hero.

       The fact remains however that despite their occasional chafing and baulking at his authoritarian cruelties, majority of Russians see the former KGB spymaster as a pan-Slavic hero who has rescued their nation from a western civilization they view with such visceral hatred and contempt.

      Strangely enough, and like Putin, many Russians hold the west responsible for the collapse of their two empires: the old Russian empire and the Soviet Union whose fall Putin has described as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe to have befallen his people in modern times. Some Russian hyper-nationalists have always held the belief that it is when the Russian leadership mimic and ape the west that they have courted the greatest disasters in their history.

      So much then for liberal democracy that has found a barren land in in Russia. Like all people, there is an antinomy in the heart of the modern Russian character. Like their ancient serfs and Oblomov forebears, they have a love-hate relation with authority. After the botched revolution of 1905, it was found that most of the people massacred by the secret police known as OGPU were carrying the emblematic totems of the same Tsar they were protesting against inside their pocket.

      It was a bizarre ritual of self-affirmation and surrender. In all likelihood, and given this background, Putin is likely to remain a hero of the Russian people after his despotic excesses have been dealt with. And so will Alexei Navalny whose heroic exertions and self-sacrifice will continue to resonate in the lore of all oppressed people. In this case, recognition abroad will come before rehabilitation at home.