The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Again, state police

    Again, state police

    Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State has characteristically dismissed the calls for state police as a needless agitation. The governor who spoke on a Channels Television live programme, ”Sunday Politics”, on January 28, said what the security situation in the country demanded was effective collaboration between governors and the Federal Government-controlled security agencies. Uzodinma, who doubles as Chairman of the South East Governors Forum and the forum of governors on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Progressives Governors Forum, said state police was an expensive venture that many state governments cannot afford.

    “Security is very expensive, and I can’t see any subnational government in Nigeria today that can fund, completely, the cost of providing adequate security in the various subnational governments. So, working together as a federation in synergy with the federal security system… when people say governors are handicapped, I don’t know what they are talking about. Yes, we need the support of the Federal Government; we need to articulate properly, working in synergy with federal security agencies as a subnational government, how we can create a working relationship that will allow us to be on the same page to be able to fight crime in the country.”

    The governor is not done: ” Even when the Federal Government has allowed the vigilante approach, how many states have been able to fund an effective and efficient vigilante organisation? State police will only work if the states are in a position to fund it! So, when we talk about true federalism, we aren’t joking. As I speak, many of our states can’t even fund their existence without an allocation from the Federal Government, and the meaning of government isn’t coming to consume. The meaning of government is that you fend for yourself; you make the money before you can spend it.”

    Two things seem to stand out from the governor’s perspective on state police, given what he was quoted to have said. One is that state police is expensive and many state governments lack the resources to establish it. The other would only seem to suggest that the governor does not see any merit in the idea of state police. At the risk of sounding like the devil’s advocate, I want to believe Governor Uzodinma is not against state police per se; that all he is saying is that many state governments cannot afford to maintain one. This is buffeted by the statement he added that the country needs to restructure such that each state would be able to fend for itself. In other words, our present federal structure does not allow states to be creative to fend for themselves without looking up to the Federal Government every month end for the oxygen to sustain them.

    To this extent, he is probably right.

    But many of his colleagues do not seem to believe that they cannot fund their own police. As a matter of fact, Uzodinma’s colleague in the same south east region, Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State,  believes state police is doable. The two governors bared their minds on the subject at the session on Traditional and Non-Traditional Security Intervention, Early Conflict Identification, Prevention, Management and Resolution on day two of the 2023 induction for re-elected and elected governors with the theme: Governing for Impact (Building Sub-national Governance), organised by the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) at the presidential Villa, Abuja, in May, last year. As far as Soludo is concerned, every security is local, and security issues are therefore better handled by the locals. “Every locality has its own peculiarities and the most fundamental issue, I think for those of us who are governors, and the governors-elect, a major concern that we need to get onto is the national security architecture and the moderator aptly pointed that out, places much of the kinetic architecture almost exclusively on the shoulders of the Federal  Government, and whereas the states are called upon as chief security officers, but you aptly call us generals without troops, and therefore, state governors have to…I mean, what we’ll be discussing from the point of view of these places are coping mechanisms.”

    Read Also; FG pledges to stabilise Forex

    Like Soludo,  Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State also supports the idea of state police. Indeed, Makinde said what I thought should happen when state police comes to fruition. And that is the fact that the Federal Government must necessarily shed some weight in terms of what accrues to it from the Federation Account and transfer same to the states in view of the added responsibility that they would bear in funding their own police. Makinde spoke as recently as last week Tuesday when the South West Conference of Speakers of State Legislatures, led by its chairman and Speaker of Ekiti State House of Assembly, Adeoye Aribasoye, paid him a visit at the Oyo State Governor’s Office, Ibadan, over the recent explosion in the ancient city.

    Even many of the governors in the north which is perceived as opposed to restructuring (and by extension state police) have spoken in support of state police. As far back as September 2022, the 19 governors under the aegis of the Northern Governors Forum (NGF) unanimously expressed support for the establishment of state police in a bid to tackle the activities of insurgents, kidnappers and other criminal activities across the country. Their stance was contained in a communique issued at the end of the meeting with the Northern Traditional Rulers Council, NGF chairman and Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, said the meeting reviewed the security situation in the North and other matters relating to its development and resolved to support further amendments of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) in the bid to accommodate the establishment of state police.

    Only last year, then Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, appealed to the 9th Assembly to pass the state and community police bill before leaving office; unfortunately, the bill didn’t see the light of the day.

    With this preponderance of opinion on the matter, there is no doubt that state police has the backing of virtually all parts of the country. Indeed, this is one thing that cannot be denied: there is a consensus on the part of many stakeholders that state police is an idea whose time has come because of the dysfunctional nature of the present national security architecture. 

     It is audible to the deaf, and visible to the blind that the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), even though it is trying, at least within the limits of what is made available to it, it cannot effectively police the country.

    The tell-tale signs are all too evident. Kidnapping is on the rise, terrorism seems to be spreading. Just last week, three traditional rulers were killed in the hitherto ‘safe’ south west. Bloodbath is witnessed almost on a daily basis in all parts of the country. In the midst of all of these, governors seem powerless as they are chief security officers of their states only in words; they do not even have power over the commissioner of police in their state who reports to the Inspector-General of Police who in turn reports to the president.

    Yet, as we all know, and, as Governor Makinde rightly observed, “…I have never seen where the Federal Government went to a particular state and gave the police everything they needed. So, the states are already maintaining the police.

    “So, the issue of being unable to maintain state police will not arise again. Give us the responsibility first and see if certain states will be able to maintain it or not.”

    Of course, this is true. Hardly is there any state government that is not spending on the federal police.  In 2021, Lagos State spent N3bn to equip the police. And, just last month, billionaire business man Femi Otedola donated N1bn to the state’s security trust fund, that has assisted a lot in ensuring the relative peace that the state enjoys despite its cosmopolitanism and huge population. Many other state governments have similar initiatives through which they inject billions of naira into the NPF to assist them buy sophisticated gadgets that they need to combat crime and ensure better welfare for the officers and men. So, what are we talking about?

    Security is central to whatever we do, whether as individuals, group or even as a nation. That is why it is regarded as the cardinal responsibility of governments. Whatever the shade of insecurity a country is facing, the ability to reduce it to the barest minimum is the raison d’être of the government because there is no country that is completely crime-free, not even in countries with the stiffest of penalties for crime.   

     There is no doubt that we once had our fingers burnt when we had regional police. But that is not to say we can afford to shy away from state police perpetually, even when it is glaring that what we have on ground as security is not serving our purpose satisfactorily. What we need to do is look at why the experiment failed in the past and do the necessary corrections so that it won’t fail again.

    Those who want to police the society must be people who have a good grasp of the terrain; they must have some affinity to the place, know many of the people in the locality, etc.

    Although state police is a constitutional issue, I don’t have any doubt that if the governors want it, they can pull through constitutional amendment to allow for it, especially with a Federal Government that seems sympathetic to the cause.  It seems the only solution to our rising wave of insecurity. The NPF may not like the idea; this is natural. But that should not be a reason we should keep shying away from it. It does not in any way mean death knell for the present federal police, it only helps to reduce its burden for effectiveness as every branch of the police would have its areas of jurisdiction. States without resources to fund their own police can then depend exclusively on the federal police. But we would know that is strictly by choice. 

  • Elite consensus

    Elite consensus

    Clarifications, modifications and amplifications

    Perhaps the most important lifeline a serious columnist relies on is the feedback procedure . Without a commensurate feedback, the column is a self-sustaining monologue; a dialogue between the deaf and the dumb. Feedbacks ensure that columnists avail themselves of different or countervailing perspectives sometimes forcing a moderation or modification of views without surrendering to entrenched dogmas and jaded worldviews.

    In the course of writing a column for different platforms continuously for forty years, including the underground Tempo magazine, and this particular incarnation in The Nation since January 2007, the columnist has interacted with various stakeholders either directly in face to face encounters or via e-mail and lately What’sAPP. Among them are blue-eyed royalists from the ancient north, Yoruba supremacists, Igbo nationalists, hegemonists of the minorities, middle belt flamethrowers and anti-establishment crusaders.

      It has been a collision of altars on a colossal scale. A political, economic, intellectual and spiritual ferment is ongoing in Nigeria on a scale not witnessed since the run up to independence. The obverse of the coin is that there is often much heat without much light; much friction without much traction. It is only in Nigeria that a well-educated person can hold on to rigid and entrenched views more suitable to the age of medieval tyranny without batting an eyelid.

    It is only in Nigeria that a well-travelled and cosmopolitan person can glorify and glamorize the travails of a normally forward-looking people trapped between the abyss of their compromised feudal antecedents and the throes of aborted modernity. It is only in this country that you find supremely endowed and accomplished individuals convulsed by hate-filled hysteria arising from ethnic overreach and unrelenting propaganda against other nationals as if they themselves are immaculate angels.

    It must now be admitted that these crippling national contradictions, these idols of the tribe, make the notion of a critical mass or the possibility of elite consensus in Nigeria a forlorn romantic dream. In Nordic countries where the idea of consociational politics or elite consensus took root, the elites by virtue of racial and religious homogeneity are imbued with enough patriotic spirit which allows them to look beyond “pillarized” differences to arrive at a consensus about core values and the destiny of their various nations.

    But in fractious, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural nations with different modes of production boxed together by the economic imperatives of colonialism, it is proving well-nigh impossible to achieve elite consensus on anything, particularly about the collective fate of a distressed country.

    In the light of unfolding events in the country, the resurgence of abduction and kidnapping  culminating in the gruesome assassination of three Yoruba obas and the shrill cries of marginalization and deliberate underdevelopment coming from significant northern stakeholders over the relocation of certain sections of the CBN, it is now important to modify what has become the hallowed mantra of this column about elite consensus.

    This is what is known as reconciliation under duress. It is now obvious that in volatile and combustible multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural colonial nations, complete elite consensus is a virtual impossibility. What we should aim for is substantial elite compliance, a situation in which there is a substantial compliance among the majority of the elite factions about the destiny of the nation.

     It is either this elite unification and moderation of countervailing notions of the nation is imposed from above by a reforming and modernizing elite group or we begin to think about the unthinkable. Given the dire emergency in which the nation has found itself with rampaging herdsmen on the match again, with insecurity plaguing everywhere and with the naira sabotaged to near extinction by the political class as well as enemy nationals bent on bringing the nation to heel, the unthinkable is the possibility of Nigeria becoming another Somali/Somaliland which has just ceded part of its territory to landlocked Ethiopia.

      It doesn’t get messier and more nation-dissolving than that. This is not the time for ethnic sabre-rattling or the whipping up of tribal rage which may eventuate in a genocidal maelstrom. There has been too much bloodletting in this country over nothing except elite avarice and gluttonous greed. It will be recalled that in its earlier incarnation, the Boko Haram/herders’ marauders also killed off some emirs in the Gwoza corridor and defiled their thrones.

      What is driving their rebellion is principally economic and not ethnic triumphalism or religious chauvinism. It is sheer economic destitution and class rage that led Boko Haram to active rebellion. The cankerworm has now spread to the rest of the country. The blame must be laid squarely at the door step of the northern feudal master-class which spawned them and which has failed to modernize unlike most other feudal formations on the continent and the world at large.

       It could have been far worse had the mournful weariness and lifeless insipidity  which seemed to have become the hallmark of the Buhari administration lasted for another six months, or if the Kangaroo presidential ticket its somnolent boss was trying to impose on the nation had prevailed. Nothing, however, in the Book of Auguries or in the annals of national propitiation of malignant gods could have prepared the nation for what is currently unfolding as the post-Buhari bouquet.

    It is the peculiar burden of those who refuse to abide by the damning verdict that nothing beneficial can ever come out of a product of colonial malignancy. This is why this column will refrain from excoriating the distinguished Senator Ali Ndume. Ordinarily and despite his stern visage and fiery demeanor, Ali is a reasonable and well-comported gentleman of progressive antecedents who exudes the dictum that nobility must have its obligation.

     The idols of the tribe and what is known as cultural habitat leavened by a sense of feudal entitlement must be very strong and overpowering indeed, otherwise why has Ali remained unfazed despite the revelation that his strident advocacy is motivated by the anticipated plight of his own children who work for the CBN rather than a concern for the welfare of workers from the region?

      And this is coming from a highly placed principal officer of the ruling party and the president’s party?  Nothing speaks more to the brittle nature of party politics in our contemporary polity and the ideological meltdown of party formation in the nation.  As he manoeuvres his way through the banana peels and the dangerous landmines of the Nigerian polity, President Tinubu must be wary and worldly-wise. He must pitch for a bipartisan solution to our multifarious problems when and where it is imperative.

    The current circumstances, fluid and flux as political allegiances are becoming, call for caution and considerable political cunning. During a heated debate in the Commons, the British Prime minister, Winston Spencer Churchill, was reprimanded by a young Conservative MP for revealing party secrets before the “enemy”, by which he meant members of the opposition parties who were lapping up everything the great man was saying and having the fun of their life.

    Wearing a jocose frown, the great man retorted. “Oh no, my boy! That is not the enemy. That is Her Majesty’s loyal opposition”. Now redirecting the young MP’s gaze to the rear of the house where dyspeptic old Tory backbencher grumblers sat, Churchill growled. “Just look at your back and you will see the enemy. The enemy is behind you!”

    The old Tory grandees never forgave Churchill for his dramatic ascendancy to the premiership in a time of dire emergency. The great wizard of Letters and political brinkmanship never forgot them, too. Given the apparent collapse of elite consensus, Nigeria is in a similar emergency. It will take a person of Churchillian courage and wisdom to navigate.

  • Capital before compassion? Some exemplary paradigms

    Capital before compassion? Some exemplary paradigms

    This is the golden era of primitive accumulation in Nigerian politics. The Tinubu administration is caught in a difficult conundrum. Which comes first? Is it the accumulation of capital to ameliorate suffering or hoary compassion that does not feed empty stomach? As the economic tempest mounts and a frightening distemper takes firm hold in the land, even a well-known Tinubu acolyte like KWAM has mounted a stirring appeal to the president to take a second look at the plight of the poor and destitute of the land.

    This is just as it should be. Wasiu Ayinde Marshal is not your run of the mill musician who is merely interested in where the next morsel of amala will come from or the next ijagudu free for all meal. A committed, indefatigable and unflappable partisan of the Tinubu brand, he has traversed many hotbeds and hostile terrains as the Tinubu franchise gathered strength and irreversible momentum. He cannot be dismissed as a fair-weather friend of the administration.

    Despite the mounting economic travails of the nation, there are still quite a number of foul-weather well-wishers of the present administration. Despite the need for fine-tuning here and there, they believe that the government’s economic instincts are in the right place and should come together in the long run, despite the scourge of spellbinding corruption and malfeasance.

    Last Monday as yours sincerely sat down for over four hours to dissect the state of the nation  in a quiet remote corner of the famed Metropolitan Club with an older friend, industrial guru and scion of old monied class from the West’s old capital, the same issue cropped up. The chief, an unapologetic defender of the global capitalist enterprise, reaffirmed his unwavering thesis that Nigeria, like any other nation, is a permanent work in progress. When he was asked about the plight of the poor and destitute in all this paddy-paddy capitalism, he simply shrugged.

    Read Also; Tinubu’s quest for living wage for Nigerian workers: 37 to the rescue

    The chief takes an immense delight in having a dig at snooper’s leftwing antics. He once ruefully noted how much he pitied the folks at the university shouting aluta because they are merely entrenching their family in poverty when they should be lifting their next generation out of biblical immiseration. If you are a professor and you have no car, I wonder how Aluta will come to your aid.  If you are driving and you have a breakdown, Aluta certainly cannot be the name of your incorrigible mechanic.

     It is a very brutal and brutish world out there where, as Eugene Ionesco famously noted, everybody has to lift himself up by the bootstraps or sink further in the morass of hopelessness and destitution. Two days later as the car taking one to Lagos Island for an evening function suddenly let forth a volcanic belch like an exhausted camel, the chief’s words came back to haunt in all their chilling premonition.

    As the old Marina came into wondrous view this cool beautiful evening, one cannot but marvel and wonder at the dazzling and amazing transformation of the Lagos landscape. Before our very eyes, Lagos is witnessing an amazing transformation with its glittering and bewitching skyline which makes one feel as if you are in one of those emerging megalopolis of the new First World.

     Ruthless and remorseless Capital has seized the old city of Portuguese pirates by the scruff of the neck and had driven it through the crash barriers of modernity. This is no longer the ancient city bombarded to ruins by the British frigate moored of the Marina in 1861.  Captain Labulo Davies, a young Nigerian-British naval officer who took part in the bombardment wrote that after the rubble cleared, the whole city stank from the foul and fetid odor of fetishes and human sacrifices.

    This evening as one sank into a comfortable chair on the seventh floor of the former IBM office complex, the leftwing demon returned plaguing and preying on one. One remembered the former denizens of the Maroko slum hurriedly chased away to make room for those who had the need and money for real estate. Louis Althusser had cautioned that we should not glorify and glamorize the glittering monuments to western capitalism but the thousands who perished in the name of putting up the glistening emporia.

      As if monitoring the subversive train of thought, two of the Lagos big boys suddenly materialized out of the shadows to whisk one away to an adjoining bar oozing glamour and glitz. The more forceful of them, a successful entrepreneur and master of billboard advertising who has been at it since his Youth Service in 1988, wasted no time in opening proceedings.

    “Sir, your column is a must read for the powers that be. You should be setting agenda. Please start a series on the need for a total educational revamping of this country. Our higher institutions are not up to scratch and they are caught in a time-warp with modern developments outflanking them. Without their total transformation everything will be in vain. You are the only one who can do this. Let them put a broadband in every community and our youths will transform the economy in no time”, he said and suddenly broke up as if waiting for one’s reaction.

      “Don’t worry, his brain is recording everything you are saying”, the other chap noted as if reassuring the billboard entrepreneur who became even more forceful and emphatic.

     “Egbon, you see, Babangida and Tinubu are the only truly transformational leaders we have had in this country in the last forty years. Babangida for transforming the banking industry and setting capital free and Tinubu for transforming Lagos through innovative thinking. Just open the window and look at the skyline. In about ten years, you will think you are in Manhattan.”

    Then he added the clincher: “This is restructuring on the hoof. Those who think they can destroy us have only made us stronger and more resilient. They will never be able to hold a candle to our feet. In a few years, Lagos will be one of the three strongest economies in Africa and can cleanly decouple itself. Then those who have been stranded by choice will begin to agitate to leave”.

    Not a word about the staggering human cost and the prohibitive toll on the people. This is the bane of neoliberal social engineering. Snooper quickly took his leave.

  • When the sons of Satan brought us pain, tears and death in Ekiti

    When I wrote here last week that Nigeria will not see an end to her insecurity until influential Fulani leaders rein in their herdsmen, listed in the Global Terrorism Index as the fourth most dangerous terrorist group in the world, and  their equally murderous foreign counterparts, both of them in search of grazing fields, something  they cannot do,  because Fulanis in the words of the Fulani Nationality Movement, (FUNAM) believe that “all over the world, Nigeria is the only country given to them by Allah”, I least expected that a few days later, some of these elements would bring home to us in Ekiti  pain, tears and death, as they gunned down two of our reverred monarchs – the Onimojo of Imojo – Ekiti, Oba Olatunde Samuel Olusola and the Elesun of Esun – Ekiti, Oba David Babatunde Ogunsakin while a third, HRH, the Alara of Ara-Ikole Ekiti, Oba Adebayo Fatoba barely escaped.

    In another attack, they seized some of our little school children over who they have already  started to haggle, as if they were cartels.

    No, it is not the first time they are trying to make a ‘Zamfara, Kaduna or Plateau’ of our dear state, but it had never been anything close to this gruesome blood-letting.

    Severally, we have seen fully armed Fulanis turn the Oke – Ako neck of wood to their hunting ground.

    Their identity is not in doubt, either,  as 5  Fulanis have already been arrested in the forest nearby.

    But how did we get here?

    Put another way, when did the rain start to beat us?

    This rain of iniquity, embedded in the double standard policy of treating a part of the country as untouchables while Fulani boys, even as little as between ages 16 and 17, are left, freely roaming the bush or the  highways, armed to the teeth with AK47 rifles at a time  officially licenced guns are being retrieved from their  owners on “orders from above”.

    Read Also; Tinubu’s quest for living wage for Nigerian workers: 37 to the rescue

    I saw this danger coming as far back as 2020 when, in two consecutive articles on these pages, namely:

    “Waves and Waves of Northerners Rushing South – What is A Presidential Order Now Worth” (17th May, 2020) and “Still on The Massive Exodus Southwards of Northerners – Where Are The Nigerian Security Agencies” dated 24th May, 2020, I drew  attention  to the devilish ethnic agenda handed over to the mob by the Fulani Nationality Movement (FUNAM) which read as follows:

    “We urge the Northern youths to resist, by all means necessary, any attempt to send them back by Southern Governors. We see the actions of these Governors and their agents as provocative and a devious assault on free movement of persons contained in the Nigerian Constitution and the ECOWAS Protocol on movement of goods and persons”, as if free movement meant going to kill and devastate the land.

    “We declare any State that refuses to allow Northern youths to Southern States as an enemy that we promise will be fought vigorously. We urge you, faithful men, not to cringe, not to fear, not to look back.

    The battle is better fought on their homeland. We inform you that we your leaders hold meetings across the key Northern States of Sokoto, Bornu, Katsina,  Kano, Yobe, Kebi, Bauchi and Kaduna. Our resolve is that Northern youths should move enmasse to Southern States.(to kill?). Relaunch the mass movement in ways they have never seen. Go in long convoys. If you are stopped,  use all means, the bush path, the railways and all. If the towns and cities are hostile, hang out on the street corners, in uncompleted buildings, occupy the forests, pitch tents, make any where available as your abode, your rest places, your home. We urge you to be armed. The infidels may want to attack you. It will be disastrous to ever assume there will be no battle at all, before we regain the lost caliphate”.

    Reading through that impeccable order, you would notice that like their old Kaduna Mafia forebears, these seeming ragtags always have their intelligentsia having their back.

    You would also have ordinarily thought that the above was  enough to have moved the then Buhari government to action to, at least, pull  their leaders in for questioning.

    But for where?

    That was at a time when the entire Nigerian security architecture was deliberately put under a Northern choke hold by President Buhari himself.

    Even today, they remain ever so arrogant that some two weeks ago, they announced the establishment of  a “Nomad Vigilante Group” which they claim will assist security agencies in combatting criminal activities”.

    Can anything be more daring, ludicrous and outrightly contemptuous of the Federal Government?

    This leads me to what I believe is  afoot,  which is, that Nigeria is deliberately being made ungovernable by those who consider it infradig to be treated as the equal of Nigerians from other parts of the country.

    This looks to me about the only rational way to explain the massive insecurity deluge, this insecurity pandemic that, has very suddenly descended on the country, starting from the North, and  has now, comprehensively turned Abuja, the federal capital, to a no – go area for anybody who values his life or freedom.

    That done , they have now turned their gaze to the Southwest, President Bola Tinubu’s geo – political zone, with Lagos and Ogun states – the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway way in particular, before zero-ing in  on Ekiti.

    They have, in the past two weeks, attacked Ekiti thrice, climaxing in the horrendous killing of the  aforementioned Royal Fathers. 

    But these jokers lie, if they think Ekiti will ever lie low for killers. They, or their minders,  should go and  educate themselves on the history of the Ekiti people, with particular reference to the Yoruba wars of the 19th century. They will find the book: ‘Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century,’ by J. F. Ade Ajayi and Robert Smith, Cambridge University Press, quite useful.  

    With regards to the killing of our Obas, the time has come for Yoruba elders to begin to think back to what happened in the early 1800’s in Hausa land which culminated in Hausa people being where they are today.

    From there, the elders should also begin to interrogate the reasonableness, or no, of our continuing  to pay ransom which is used in buying more guns.

    A npe gbon nile Yoruba ni o.

    Truth be told, I believe that their target, for now, is President Bola Tinubu since they cannot stand a president who is his own man, and not a quisling, or a plaything of the North.

    One of their groups has already indicated that in a WhatsApp post in which they threatened fire and brimstone. 

    The paradigm shift, on the Plateau, which eventuated a week ago must have confirmed to them  that not only is a new sheriff in town, the era of ethnic cleansing by some gun men, anywhere in Nigeria, is  fast coming to an end.

    Newspaper reports this past week, have it that on the relaxation of the state of emergency in Plateau state, gunmen in the dozens had, as early as 7 am, Friday morning, launched an attack on communities along Gindiri Road, prompting an  immediate response from the security forces.

    In the entire 8 years of President Buhari, even as villagers were being killed in their hundreds – “as of  July 7, 2023, the death toll from gun men attacks stood at 204 but, a week later, it had surged to 346, with over 20,000 displaced persons seeking refuge in camps” – not  once, do I remember Nigerian security forces engaging the rampaging Fulani gunmen since there were no such orders from higher authorities.

    At the end of the confrontation last week, 30 of the attackers were reported neutralised with another 50 arrested, while 4 soldiers were injured.

    For once in many decades, indeed since 1994, the killers got a dose of their own medicine.   

    What Nigerians had become inured to all these years are cases of armed gun men, in their hundreds,   using the cover of night to attack and kill in numbers,

    forcefully, taking over other people’s lands to which owners can no longer return even after the cessation of hostilities, without a single one of them being arrested.

    The Federal Government must follow this up by appropriately equipping  the security forces with geo- mapping and eavesdropping equipments to enable them catch attackers at their planning stages.

    I conclude with the following  contribution to a WhatsApp  discussion on the subject of insecurity in Nigeria: 

    “The permanent solution to insecurity in Nigeria is restructuring which will take some time to be fully achieved.

    In the immediate, therefore, State Police should be created to combat insecurity”.

    “In the Southwest, Amotekun should immediately be converted to a Forest Guards’ agency, whose members should be armed with firearms like the Katsina Vigilante group, with its mandate being to comb all our forests and eliminate all those who have no legitimate business   being there in the first place”.

    This should be replicated nationwide, as nothing short of a massive deployment along these lines can end insecurity  in Nigeria”.

  • Tinubu’s quest for living wage for Nigerian workers: 37 to the rescue

    President Bola Tinubu spent the last week off-shore as he had on Wednesday of the previous week departed the country for a private visit to the French capital, Paris. His absence in the country did not, in anyway, hamper his running of the state because while he was out, he left state affairs in the hands of his able and capable deputy, Vice President Kashim Shettima, who has not failed in keeping the system steady.

    For the avoidance of doubts and to let Nigerians know that their President did not abandon them to fate, Vice President Shettima ensured to let everybody know whose message they were receiving at every event. For example, during the week, there were at least two critical events where the Jagaban ought to have officiated, but was represented by Shettima and at each of the events, it was both the President’s voice and message that participants heard and received.

    During the last week, precisely on Tuesday, President Tinubu took a significant step in the process of sustaining harmony with the organised Labour movement, by way of inaugurating a 37-member Tripartite National Minimum Wage Committee. The committee, chaired by a former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Alhaji Bukar Goni Aji, has representation from the federal government, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprise (NASME), and the organized Labour.

    Read Also; FG pledges to stabilise Forex

    We were all in this country when the organized Labour, led by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), wasted no time in announcing their presence by calling out the federal government over the decision of the new Bola Tinubu administration to announce the end of petrol subsidy. The first engagement between the newly sworn in administration and the organized Labour was just two day after the President assumed office. There had been various engagements and negotiations after then and the capping of them all was last week Tuesday, with the inauguration of the Tripartite National Minimum Wage Committee.

    That very significant ceremony became the ace event of the week, not just because it touched many Nigerians or because it not being performed could have triggered another round of undesired mass action by the Labour, but because of the very cogent tasks requested the 37-member team by the President.

    He had to particularly task members of the committee to ensure that they pay attention to the ability of all tiers of government and other employers of labour to pay the new wage. This is particularly aimed at guaranteeing sustainability of the resulting scheme. He also tasked them to ensure timely completion of their assignment, explaining that the timely conclusion and submission of their report and recommendations is very important to the take off of a new national minimum wage regime.

    Besides the demand for fairness and pragmatism, as well as dispatch from the committee, Asiwaju displayed seriousness by point blankly ordering the three ministers and the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, who are federal government’s representatives on the committee, to take their participation as a priority, except for when other state responsibilities make attendance impracticable. He said something similar to the six state governors on the committee. That, by inference, can be adduced to how much the sorting of the minimum wage issue out means to him.

    “Recognizing the significance of this initiative and to ensure a substantial engagement, I hereby direct that Ministers and the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation should personally attend the meeting. In their unavoidable absence, their Permanent Secretaries should represent them.

    “Similarly, Governors are expected to attend in person or be represented by their deputies or commissioners where necessary. I urge you to consider the issue of a National Minimum Wage and all related matters with thoroughness and concern, keeping in mind not only the welfare of our workforce but also the impact on the country’s economy”, he told the governors. 

    On Monday, some very unpleasant incidents happened in Ekiti State. In one incident, criminal elements, suspected to be bandits, attacked three traditional rulers of Ekiti communities in the state. At the end of the bloody encounter, two of the monarchs, Onimojo of Imojo-Ekiti, Oba Olatunde Samuel Olusola, and the Elesun of Esun-Ekiti, Oba David Babatunde Ogunsola, had been killed by the criminals. The third traditional ruler, the Alara of Ara Ekiti, Oba Adebayo Fatoba, managed to escape death.

    Meanwhile, still on same Monday, in the same Ekiti State, ten persons, including six primary school pupils, three of their teachers and the driver of their school bus, were kidnapped. Of course it led to an outrage and the most outraged of all Nigerians, besides the families of the victims, was the President. Besides expressing anger over the situation, Mr President issued immediate orders to security and law enforcements agencies to get out of their offices and go after the criminals.

    According to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Chief Ajuri Ngelale, the grief-stricken President Tinubu condemned the unfortunate situation, which saw unscrupulous elements running free, unleashing mayhem on law-abiding citizens, including innocent children and semi-deified entities like traditional rulers. He went on to vow vengeance against the killers.

    “President Tinubu condemns this mindless and brutal bloodletting, and pledges that the perpetrators will not escape justice. The President condoles with the families and subjects of the traditional rulers, Governor Biodun Oyebanji, and the people of Ekiti State on this deeply agonizing development. In the same vein, the President directs the immediate rescue of pupils and teachers kidnapped around Eporo-Ekiti area of the State. As security of life and property is the primary responsibility of government, President Tinubu assures Nigerians that the nation’s security architecture is being robustly fortified for better and expected outcomes”, a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ngelale, said.

    Following his reaction and marching order to security agencies, the Nigeria Police has announced some arrests in connection to both the sacrilegious murder of the monarchs and the rather nauseating abduction of the pupils, their teachers and the driver. As at Thursday, the Police have announced the arrest of 21 suspects from both cases: 13 from the murder of the kings and eight from the kidnap.

    Then on Wednesday, at a public engagement on Youth, Religion, and the Fight Against Corruption, as well as the launch of Inter-Faith Manual and Fraud Risk Assessment Project for ministries, departments and agencies of the federal government, at the Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, President Tinubu’s voice was heard through Vice President Shettima, in defense of the image of our common identity as Nigerians, especially to those of other nationalities who have consistently misrepresented the Nigerian identity with everything negative.

    Of course, it is the same message he has taken to other parts of the world, correcting wrong notions about us. Nigeria is not about ‘Yahoo Yahoo’, as a matter of fact, virtually in all countries of the world, most of those leading professional fields are Nigerians. Besides, there is no country of angels in any part of the world; as there are good citizens, there are also the negative elements. It was same message to Nigerians youths who were objectq of the event he was attending by representation.

    “Over the decades, Nigerians have been victims of mislabeling. Such gross misrepresentation fails to reflect the true essence of our diverse and resilient nation. The association of internet crimes with the entire Nigerian populace lacks statistical evidence and does not align with the sociology of everyday Nigerians. Our nation comprises hardworking, honest citizens who contribute significantly to various fields globally, from Artificial Intelligence to Medicine.

    “While we reject blanket stereotyping that undermines the majority upholding principles of integrity and diligence, we must face the fact that we function in an interconnected world where cybercrimes have evolved into a global phenomenon. This poses a threat not only to our nation, but to the entire world”, he asserted.

    Thursday was of a day of grief as the Vice President lost his step mother, so not much happened at the Villa from then on. But Friday, President Tinubu reached out to the Nigerian national football team, Super Eagles, through video call, in far away Cote d’Ivoire, ahead of their Quarter final match against Angola in the ongoing CAF African Cup of Nations. Mr President gave the boys some pep talk ahead of the match.

    As the new week begins, a lot is expected to unfold. I will not forecast, but I can say that Jagaban will return this week and a lot of right turns will come along with him. Let us just wait and see.

  • Adamant Kwankwaso versus Kano Emirate

    Adamant Kwankwaso versus Kano Emirate

    In an interview two Thursdays ago, former governor of Kano State and leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, disclosed that the splitting of the Kano Emirate into five emirates in 2019 as well as the dethronement of Muhammadu Sanusi II in 2020 would be revisited. In May 2019, former governor Abdullahi Ganduje had assented to the Kano House of Assembly bill splitting the emirate. With the assent, the emirate was split into five: Kano, the surviving rump, and Rano, Bichi, Karaye, and Gaya. Barely a year later, Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II was deposed, for, among other things, disrespecting the office of the governor, and land racketeering. Dr Kwankwaso insisted that the former emir was deposed because of Dr Ganduje’s inferiority complex. The former governor, however, countered by flaunting his own PhD and his wife’s professorship, mocking his traducers for not having professorial wives.

    The Kano quagmire has become a huge entanglement, punctuated by bitter quarrels, deployment of trenchant language, and now almost irreconcilable differences triggered by a spectacular falling out due to unmet expectations of loyalty. Dr Ganduje was twice deputy governor to Dr Kwankwaso (1999-2003; 2011-2015), though punctuated by a two-term interregnum filled by ex-governor Ibrahim Shekarau. They have rich CVs in Kano: highly educated, urbane, articulate, but cantankerous and unforgiving. Days after the Supreme Court gave judgement in the last governorship election dispute, Dr Ganduje invited Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, a civil engineer who also brandishes a master’s degree in Business Administration, and Dr Kwankwaso to abandon their party, the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), and defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC), but added that he would automatically become their Jagora (leader). The invitation has incensed the duo, Dr Ganduje’s sense of humour being lost on them. Though Kano’s leading politicians have so much in common, particularly the more than a decade of camaraderie between Dr Kwankwaso and Dr Ganduje, they are likely to remain irreconcilable and will continue to bait one another.

    It is mainly in this context that the promised review of the Kano Emirate split should be understood. Dr Kwankwaso will remain adamant until it proves politically costly. It is obvious why he is at the forefront of campaigning for the review of the emirate balkanisation, but it is not altogether clear that it makes political sense to champion the cause instead of the governor. Gov Yusuf hails from Gaya, one of the beneficiary emirates consequent upon the Kano Emirate split. Whole new infrastructures and economies have followed the split; reversing history now will be more contentious than before the split. But this has not deterred DR Kwankwaso. According to him: “Honestly it (the Kano emirates issue) is one of the things that nobody has sat with me to discuss so far, but I am sure we are going to sit and see how to go about it. Is it going to be allowed, demolished, corrected, or whatever? It will be revisited, and what’s supposed to be done will be done. There were a lot of things and this was a trap. All these things were not done in good faith or intention. It was brought with some bad intentions which every one of you here and our listeners are aware of. Sometimes you come with things that are good and they turn out to be bad while sometimes you bring bad things and they turn out to be good…”

    For now, two things seem uppermost in the mind of the NNPP leader. One, he wants the Kano Emirate reunified. The previously monolithic emirate has a nostalgic hold on him and perhaps on many other Kanawa. It was a symbol of bigness, power and influence. But has the rump Kano Emirate become less influential in the cultural and political scheme of things in the state, and indeed in Nigeria where everyone is still besotted to Kano as a thriving and powerful emirate and entity? It is doubtful, for water is finding its level and course, especially after five years. To begin rebuilding the emirate through reunification will probably throw up fresh uncertainties. Will it not be better to let sleeping dogs lie, regardless of the politics that underscored the balkanisation? As the Hausa idiomatically put it, “A bar kaza a cikin gashin ta’. It is, sadly, very tempting not to let bad enough alone. The itch to tamper with things based on sometimes indefensible or untenable sentiments is always high. That the split was also ‘bad intentioned’, as Dr Kwankwaso said, and coming from, of all people, the hated Dr Ganduje, seems especially galling to the leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement and protector of the emirate council.

    Read Also: We will welcome Kwankwaso to APC – Bashir Ahmad

    Two, somehow, either because of the goodness of his heart or for reasons not even he can properly decode, Dr Kwankwaso wants the ‘historic wrong’ done to Emir Sanusi II redressed. The deposed emir was not even Dr Kwankwaso’s first choice when he was appointed in 2014, a year before the former governor’s second term ended. Obviously he has grown to like him immensely. But since the NNPP controls the legislature, the lawmakers can of course be made to do the NNPP bidding. However, the emir wasn’t just deposed for thumbing his nose at Gov Ganduje, he was also probed for unregulated and liberal spending habits and then queried for land racketeering. The NNPP will have to get all those inconvenient details expunged to legitimately return him to office. Reinstating Emir Sanusi II may not be the chief goal of Dr Kwankwaso, but he will do anything to rub Dr Ganduje’s nose in it.

    Targeting and trashing his former deputy and now chairman of the APC may, however, be far easier than managing his new mentee and governor, Mr Yusuf. On both the emirate matter and possible reinstatement of Sanusi II, the more candid and less bashful Dr Kwankwaso has thrust himself forward and spoken more authoritatively than the governor. He forgets that a new sheriff is in town, and his obtrusions will be resisted more and more as state affairs get more volatile. It is inevitable. All it takes is a little more consolidation by the governor, and the new helmsman will begin to assert himself, differ from his mentor in policy perspectives, and eventually strike out from under the shadows of his leader in whose government he was once a Commissioner for Works, Housing and Transport between 2011 and 2015. Sooner or later, Mr Yusuf’s mollifying and conciliating rule will contend with Dr Kwankwaso’s fierce and adamant disposition until something gives. No state has yet balked this trend. It won’t begin with Kano.

  • Hysterical Sen Ndume on CBN, FAAN relocations

    Hysterical Sen Ndume on CBN, FAAN relocations

    Senator Ali Ndume (Borno South) has seemed to master the art of propaganda for political self-preservation. He has embraced the art wholeheartedly, profited from it, and may have no reason now or in the future to abandon what has served him well. Last week, Sen Ndume, who is the Senate Chief Whip, was on television berating the planned relocation of some Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) departments as well as the headquarters of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos. The senator has inspired a campaign that views the relocations from the regional and ethnic prisms. Political consequences would follow the relocations, he roared. Working in tandem with the Northern Senators Forum (NSF) and the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), both of which incomprehensibly view the relocations as a ploy to stymie the development of the old political North, the sometimes controversial senator swore that the measures would be reversed for peace to reign.

    Both the CBN and the Aviation ministry have tried to justify the movements on the grounds of administrative expediency. The former Aviation minister, Hadi Sirika, relocated FAAN to Abuja in 2020 against advice and sound judgement, despite Lagos remaining the country’s Aviation business hub. Relocating some five departments of the CBN to Lagos and other places, particularly Banking Supervision Department, in a country where most banks are headquartered in Lagos, makes a whole lot of administrative and financial sense. The northern political elite, who erroneously see Abuja as a regional preserve and conflates its role and location with northern goals and aspirations, argue that the relocation plans were inspired by a Lagos cartel misadvising President Bola Tinubu in favour of an ethnic agenda. The campaign has caught fire and massaged the sensibility of many northerners inured to the economic arguments for the relocations.

    Sen Ndume may not have triggered the hysteria, but his habitual lack of reflectiveness, have led him to become the public face of the regional campaign for the revocation of the relocation plans. In fact, last week on television, he seemed assured that the relocations would be reversed if political consequences were not to follow, obviously in reference to the 2027 elections. There is nothing anyone can say to mitigate Sen Ndume’s hysteria. Hysteria is woven into his DNA, and he is never embarrassed even when his arguments are proved to be fatuous. Last October, he was proved wrong after walking out of Senate plenary following a minor altercation with Senate President Godswill Akpabio over what was termed a ‘procedural infringement’. It followed a motion he attempted to raise on the closure of Nigerian borders with Niger Republic. It became clear later that he acted in a huff; but he waved off his walkout as a coincidence. He refused to concede he was wrong, and the Senate which was unwilling to be distracted by a needless controversy did not push the matter.

    In 2014, the senator was also embroiled in a controversy over Boko Haram, with the government prosecuting him for failing to inform law enforcement agencies on the activities of the terrorist group. Between 2003 and 2011, he represented Borno State in the House of Representatives. And since 2011 till date, he has represented the state in the senate. He is incontrovertibly well on the way to becoming a lawmaking legend from Borno State. But his rise and fame have not been matched by a corresponding assimilation of the calmness and maturity that come with age as a political leader, nor by the peerless experience that flows from longevity as a national lawmaker, nor indeed by any lawmaking sublimity. Armed with a master’s degree in Business and Computer Education from the University of Toledo in Ohio, United States, he is regarded as a brilliant educationist and a bold but probably impetuous politician and lawmaker. Yet, his judgement in regards to some weighty national issues had often fallen short of expectations. He had problems with the Bukola Saraki-led 8th Senate over his support for the Ibrahim Magu-led EFCC, and in 2022 was Rotimi Amaechi’s director of campaign for the presidency.

    Read Also: Court orders remand of Sen Ndume over failure to produce Maina

    How much of his dissonate politics is coloured by a lack of enthusiasm for the Bola Tinubu administration is hard to determine, especially seeing how his political predilections has been suffused by an absence of ideology. It is, however, significant that he is not inconvenienced by ideology, despite his long-term membership of both the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Like most Nigerian politicians, he is eclectic, dilatory, and prone to easy disaffection and defection. He has represented Borno State in both chambers of the National Assembly for a cumulative 20 years. Those years should have forged in him a transcendental grasp of lawmaking, and imbued him with ideas and methods that supersede but do not obliterate his ethnic, religious and regional affiliations.

    Yes, Sen Ndume is at liberty to be conservative or progressive, indeed even unideological if he so wishes, but he does not have the freedom to be insular or reactionary, vices that war against the politics he claims to project. Indeed, in reality, and in the past few years, his politics has been marked by opportunism and desultoriness, vices and limitations that have disabled him from rising to the stature of a legend his immense talents and boldness should naturally confer on him. Indeed, if he was assisted by brilliant and remunerated aides seconded to senators of his rank by the state, and if he had taken time and caution to study the CBN and FAAN relocation issues beyond the private interests of the northern elite, he would have been less stentorian in assuming that the measures would be reversed. No, they won’t be; and this is mainly because they make a whole lot of sense economically and administratively. What is more, he must know by now that the administration under whose purview these changes are contemplated have never shied away from taking difficult and unpopular measures. They won’t start now, for vacillation is not their forte.

  • Afenifere edges out Adebanjo

    Afenifere edges out Adebanjo

    Last Wednesday, after years of pussyfooting, Afenifere finally united to edge out its inflexible and controversial Acting Leader Ayo Adebanjo. They had made the attempt before, just before the last presidential election, but somehow the attempt fell flat. Now, they have managed to perfect the modality of regicide, and have done it flawlessly and sumptuously. There is no resurrecting the 95-year-old former acting leader. According to the exasperated Afenifere leaders who met at the home of their leader, Reuben Fasoranti: “Flowing from this, the Leader (Pa Fasoranti) then declared as follows that ‘In the light of recent events and the pressing need to reposition and rejuvenate Afenifere, it has been decided as follows: the position of Acting Leader and Deputy Leader has now been abrogated, the responsibilities and authority of advising the Leader of Afenifere and Asiwaju Yoruba are now vested in the Afenifere Elders Caucus which is hereby constituted.”

    Read Also: Afenifere abrogates office of acting leader

    The communiqué was terse, but it boomed with a note of finality, for the attendees who signed off on the new order were the who-is-who in Afenifere and Yoruba land. Pa Fasoranti is infirm but still rational and in full possession of his progressive ideology. He had much earlier relinquished his powers to the increasingly conservative Pa Adebanjo, only for the latter to railroad the Yoruba into the amorphous Labour Party (LP) in the last election cycle, and before then had covertly leaned towards Atiku Abubakar’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Under him, Afenifere had rebuffed the All Progressives Congress (APC) on which platform their son, Senator Bola Tinubu, was contesting the presidency. It took a tug of war to get the Yoruba redirected to the progressive cause.

    Now the struggle is over. Afenifere is united, back to its regal self, and still managing to reignite both its vibrancy and independence. Pa Adebanbjo may attempt to reassert himself and continue to issue statements, but he must be keenly aware what awaits any Yoruba man who distances himself from the pack. Radicalism in the twilight of his years does not befit him.

  • So that no Nigerian youth’ll miss out on life’s opportunities, Jagaban brings NELFUND

    So that no Nigerian youth’ll miss out on life’s opportunities, Jagaban brings NELFUND

    It was indeed a very hectic week for President Bola Tinubu (that was before he decided to take some time off to make a private visit to France on Wednesday). Before jetting out, he had engaged in very tasking state matters, results of which are to start manifesting in a matter of days. Of all the events he officiated, the very expository briefing on the Nigerian Education Loan Fund’s (NELFUND) administration trumped all. The reason does not seem to need being spelt out; it affects the most number and the most vibrant section of the citizenry, the youths.

    The NELFUND is another age-long vision of the Jagaban, which he already gave a hint of even before winning the election in February 2023. Speaking at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in London in December 2022, the then presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had unveiled a plan to totally overhaul the education sector, introducing some strategies he believed would save the failing system.

    One of the modalities planned to be unleashed was a loan scheme for students at the tertiary level. Explaining how he hoped to save the education system in Nigeria, at the Chatham House, Jagaban said “the education system is to change. We would overhaul it and tinker with some areas with the philosophy that no one would be left behind. There will be student loans for all. We are going to reform the Almajiri system. We are equally going to build more schools, recruit more teachers and train them”.

    At that time, almost everyone following his campaign knew a tsunami was about to hit the education sector, at least in some basic areas that will significantly change how education is run in the country, eliminating some of the ways and practices that have made it seem like acquiring education in Nigeria was jinxed. What many, except those who could boast of being part of Asiwaju’s think-tank group, did not know was the ideology driving his vision.

    The President gave a clearer direction on his idea of his student loan scheme and the spirit driving it during the last week. That briefing, which had key executive actors in the Federal Ministry of Education, particularly the NELFUND and one of the funders, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in attendance, made us know now that it is all about providing an opportunity vehicle for all citizens, irrespective of social, economic, ethnic or religious backgrounds, at least he said that much while meeting with the stakeholders who briefed him during the week.

    “No matter how economically challenged you are, accredited and qualified students will and must have access to this loan to advance their education in higher institutions. There is no compromise in our commitment to the disadvantaged citizens of this nation”, he explained.

    He even went on to instruct the expansion of the programme to go beyond just the academics, an indication that he targets every Nigerian for a successful life, to the extent that everyone will be equipped with the wherewithal to pursue life, be useful to himself and society at large.

    “This is not an exclusive programme. It is catering to all of our young people. Young Nigerians are gifted in different areas. This is not only for those who want to be doctors, lawyers, and accountants. It is also for those who aspire to use their skilled and trained hands to build our nation. In accordance with this, I have instructed NELFUND to explore all opportunities to inculcate skill-development programmes because not everybody wants to go through a full university education”, he said.

    One more thing, this is a system intended to be sustained through all times, at least for as long as there is Nigeria. No terminal date, according to the Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of the Fund, Dr Akintunde Sawyerr. Besides being a perpetual programme, it will be secured against the usual human interference because it will be strictly automated and payments will be made directly to institutions training applicants.

    Then, on same Monday, President Tinubu received an august visit from the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the first time since he became President. You will recall he met with two Islamic organizations the week before last week; a delegation of Jam’iyyatu Ansaridden, a highly respected Islamic movement, visited on Tuesday, while the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN) visited on Thursday. But then he has consistently said he is for equality, no side should feel neglected or not welcomed, hence the visit by the very influential Christian body last week, also lending voice to the call for calm among citizens, in the face of the prevail economic struggles.

    That visit was another opportunity for Jagaban to touch on issues that affect us all. Since we are still in that process of reengineering the system, those best suited to help are the clergy; everybody comes to them for one reason or the other. Even if people do not come for individual calls, people go to worship places, at least once in a week and the sermon, either Christian or Islamic, will definitely be on the programme. So he used the opportunity to enlist the ‘Men of God’ in the very rigorous task of getting the right message out to the people, to aid the work of building patriotism and public peace.

    “We have no other country but Nigeria. If you do not preach the sermon of understanding, tolerance, perseverance, and hope for Nigerians, you are doing damage to the country, and nobody will help us repair it. Let us dialogue because public condemnation of a nation is not what makes any citizen a good one. We must admonish Nigerians to have a change of mindset and not to make money our god or master. I believe we will get to the Promised Land, and Nigeria will flourish.

    “We are here to listen, and if you observe any inadequacies in my government, let us know. I am here today because of your prayers and the will of God Almighty. What I have challenged myself to do each day is to be fair to all Nigerians. I have had a number of criticisms, including the rationale behind the size of my cabinet. If you want efficient, mobile, and resourceful people, we have to give people a load they can carry. If you combine too many ministries because you want to save money, you will have a future of non-performance and no results. Nigeria needs to turn the corner to grow, and we must give people challenges they can manage, and that is what we are doing”, he told his guests.

    Read Also: Uzodinma’s swearing-in and Jagaban’s coded message to IPOB/ESN

    On Tuesday, he continued with the busy schedule, probably busier than what it was on Monday. He received the United States of America’s (USA) Secretary of State, Mr Anthony Blinken, at the State House in Abuja, discussing all sorts of issues pertaining to ours and their national interests. It however became interesting, not just to the President or his administration, but to all Nigerians interested in seeing the current foreign exchange blues, which are actually affecting every Nigerian, go away, as it affects the health of our economy generally.

    Among the things highlighted by Blinken was the readiness of American investors to put more into the Nigerian economy, especially in the technology sector. With that “American entrepreneurs, American companies are eager to partner with and invest in Nigeria’s economy, particularly in the tech sector”, Jagaban seemed to have gotten what he was looking for from the visit of the American foreign policy custodian, since one of his administration’s primary goals in governance is bringing in as much foreign direct investments and foreign exchange as possible.

    Besides extracting the assurance of American investments, he also received one of the most valued recommendations globally; Blinken delivered the American government’s statement of guarantee and branding when he lauded some of the Tinubu administration’s novel policy redirections and initiatives, saying “we welcome President’s bold reforms to unify the currency and end fuel subsidy. Nigeria offers real opportunities for investors”.

    Still on Tuesday, President Tinubu met with South-south region’s traditional rulers, led by the Chairman of Delta State Traditional Rulers Council and the Orodje of Okpe Kingdom, Major-General Felix Mujakperuo (Rtd), at the Villa. Among other things, he reassured the oil-rich region, through its traditional rulers, of his administration’s commitment to the development of the region, as well as give due attention to the environmental issues facing it, saying he will take their concerns one-by-one

    He also received a delegation from the Chevron Corporation, led by President of Chevron International Exploration and Production, Clay Neff, on Tuesday. He used the opportunity to assure all foreign investors, who have plans or existing stakes in the Nigerian oil and gas sector that he is committed to making sure that their investments are protected and productive, citing his administration’s step-ins from time to time, and the structure of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), to achieve stability and guaranteed gains. Of course, he managed to secure news about new investments by the company.

    Then on Wednesday, just before he jetted out of the country to France for a private visit, he met with the President and Chief Executive Officer of Mastercard Foundation, Ms. Reeta Roy, telling her of the gains her Foundation could make from Nigeria, especially with the nation’s young population. Since Ms Roy’s business resonates better with the younger generation, he marketed the extensive Nigerian youth demography to her. It is a global fact that Nigerian youths are innovative, hard working and adventurous, so his task was repeating this fact to her and he sure seized the moment.

    Meanwhile, in distant shores, Joagaban’s voice was still heard during the week. We are not talking about the audience with the American Secretary of State, which was dealt with on Tuesday back at home, but on Sunday 21, he had a message for the world at the Third South Summit of the Group of 77 and China, which opened same day in Kampala, Uganda. The President was represented by the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, and he called for a review of the global taxation system, which has been a weight on the economies of developing nations.

    Though Jagaban is offshore for the time being, some of us believe there is actually no vacuum because his deputy is also a very hands-on administrator, it has seemed like the President is still much at the Villa. That said, let me still tell you to look forward to what this week will bring Nigeria, with the Vice President Kashim Shettima holding the fort in the next few days.

  • The time for talking is over

    The time for talking is over

    On the first Sunday morning in February 1990, I got a big surprise when as was usual for me I turned to the Sunday Guardian. On one side of the centre page was an article which I had submitted to the Guardian a few days before through Jide Oluwanuyitan for consideration for publication in the newspaper which at the time was the acclaimed flagship of the Nigerian press. The title of that piece was ‘Transit or perish’, at a time when the cost of petrol had just been increased to sixty kobo per litre and I was sure that there was a conspiracy to keep us home bound. Now that we have to cough up an unimaginable sum in excess of six hundred Naira per litre, a sum which is a thousand times more, I am struck dumb with amazement, disbelief and more than a dash of justifiable anger. At this point in time, we have no wriggle room left and we have been propelled into the anteroom of a raging monster hell bent on destroying us all, our insensitive ruling elite included. I am appalled that this simple consequence of where we are is still eluding the best majority of Nigerians who are hurling rocks all over the place, obstinately oblivious of the fact that we all live in fragile glass houses.

    Since that day in 1990, at the height of rascally military rule, I have written a thousand articles and more in several newspapers, enough to fool a large number of people into thinking that I was a trained journalist and columnist. It was not until last year, a couple of years after retiring from my day job as a university lecturer that I finally became a columnist in The nation, albeit still an outsider in the field of journalism. For the avoidance of doubt, I confess that I am a pharmacist and have papers to prove it even if there are far too many people in this country who are claiming to be one thing or the other on the strength of fake credentials craftily produced by talented but bent printers. These days it is even not out of place to doubt the authenticity of the currency notes in our pockets given the official as well as unofficial strength of the battered and unloved Naira.

    Since 1999, I have engaged Nigerians in a wide variety of topics and published two volumes of my earliest journalistic adventures. I skirted very close to the wind of military (governmental) displeasure that no less an erudite scholar and lawyer than the late Professor M.I. Jegede jocularly advised me to let him know what I was writing about, just in case he had to use his legal expertise to extricate me from the clutches of a government which by nature was devoid of any sense of humour. Fortunately, the government was apparently too busy with existential matters to bother with the musings of an obscure lecturer of Pharmacy masquerading as an opinion moulder in a highbrow publication dishing out fares that were presumably too rich for the consumption of that mythical man in the street.

    A few days after that first article was published, I was in Jide Oluwanuyitan’s office when Tunji Dare, one of my favourite columnists of all time and Editor of the Guardian’s Op-Ed page at the time, walked in larger than life. I was thrilled to see him and thanked him for publishing my piece. If I was thrilled by simply meeting him, I was launched into the lunar orbit when he told me that it was he who needed to thank me for submitting that article to the Guardian. According to him he loved the article so much that he published it in violation of house rules simply by publishing it as there was a rule which insisted that all authors had to be acknowledged by their full names and not by their initials. I had submitted the article as A. Lamikanra and he wanted to know what the A stood for. Adebayo, I replied, with perhaps a little more gusto than the occasion demanded and by doing so, Adebayo Lamikanra joined the Guardian family through thick and thin as I came to find out when the newspaper was locked down for a long period by a petulant and particularly rascally military government.

    After the opening salvo of that first article, there was no stopping me as article after article was published and this gave me so much name recognition that a lot of people greeted me with uncommon familiarity as soon as they knew that they were in the presence of Adebayo Lamikanra. Some of them it has to be said, were at least a little disappointed to see me in the flesh. That feeling can be summed up in the comment of one such person who had through my writings imagined that I was some oversized human being with an uncommonly large head. Seeing that I was of pretty average size with only a slightly bigger head than most people was a shock to his system and he could not resist letting me know this.

    When I started this journey of bothering Nigerians with my thoughts, I really did think that I could make a difference, just a little difference to the way the country was being run or rather being driven into the ground. Now that I am much older and presumably wiser, I have come to the realisation that I was just dreaming. The so called leaders of Nigeria are uniformly hard headed men and increasingly frequently, women, who have no time for dreamers or their infantile dreams. They live in a sordid world of the all too real world of certainty, a place where dreams are annoying distractions not to be entertained or even acknowledged. People like me are like pestilential mosquitoes with a loud whine but certainly no bite. We could even be amusing from time to time but who under no circumstances were to be taken seriously. In any case, they hardly have any time for distraction from their primary business of studiously pulling Nigeria apart piece by piece. Taking time out to sample the opinion of the minions under their heel is certainly a bridge too far. It cannot be accommodated within their busy schedule, official political and social.

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    We are confronted with formidable problems which we need to confront in return. Our population is ballooning in front of our eyes and our discomfort is growing in the same proportion. There are many otherwise sensible people who talk about a large market within which all manner of goods can be traded by our huge population. That can only be true when there are goods to be traded. Here, we are all voracious consumers who produce next to nothing. We are all dependent on a resource which was fortuitously laid down deep under our feet over billions of years and have no clue as to how it can be profitably extracted. We depend on avaricious strangers to do that. The crude oil we have been abusing over the last sixty years will be exhausted within the life time of most Nigerians living today. And there will be nothing but a few rusting structures to show for a century of wantonness. Every additional mouth adds to our discomfiture as each mouth must consume and gorge on a wide range of articles none of which we have the capacity to produce. This cannot end well as the time will come for the chickens to come home to roost to find nothing to sustain them.

    Now is the time to knuckle down seriously to begin to produce at least some of the articles of consumption beginning with the food we eat. There is this wide spread belief that it is easy to coax the soil into producing abundant harvests of a broad range of crops. Nothing could be further from the truth. For a start, we have abused our soils over many years, to the point of tiredness and we have now arrived at a point of diminishing returns. Our towns are spreading out with astonishing ferocity and land available for cultivation is disappearing under concrete foundations.

    In addition, farming is a combination of art and science and authentic practitioners are disappearing and not replaced. How long can this situation last when fathers are not handing over farms to their children who are sunning themselves under bright city lights? Your guess is as good as mine.

    Most of our young people are functional illiterates as our educational system is in tatters. Teachers are suffering from a severe case of invisibility as we have turned our schools into markets of sorts where teachers are fetchers and carriers, their authority having been usurped by wily entrepreneurs with an eagle eye on the bottom line. Under prevailing circumstances, teachers are just victims with very little to offer. After all said and done, we still have an identifiable educational system but for how much longer?

    Some notorious coup plotter, in justifying the coup in which he was involved claimed that our doctors were practising in clinics which had no drugs for patients. Today, forty years later, doctors are fleeing in droves and those clinics are bereft of both drugs and doctors. In the modern world, with all its distractions, a functional healthcare system must be a prominent fixture and so, our clinics must be fixed now if we are to be regarded as being part of the world.

    Above all, corruption sits like a vulture on top of a tall tree, waiting for us to expire so that it can devour our giant carcass. It is only a question of time before the inevitable happens. Among all the chaos, there are too many Nigerians gloating over our collective predicaments. They love nothing better than to dance to the sound of any failure and these days they have plenty to crow over. Like lepers who cannot milk a cow, they love nothing better than to dip leprous fingers into the little milk that has been squeezed out of our much emaciated national cow forgetting that in the end, they cannot escape from the terminal calamity waiting round the corner. The time for talking is now over as there is a lot of work to be done, the time for procrastination having long been passed.