The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • And prayers for Aketi

    And prayers for Aketi

    Call no person healthy until the day they have carried their robust health to the grave. The recent pictures of a frail-looking and obviously medically-challenged Rotimi Akeredolu give one concerns and anxiety.

      A normally robust and even bearish physique now appears to be at the mercy of a vicious and truly malignant ailment. Some weeks back, a mutual friend, a medical practitioner who had journeyed all the way from Hull in England to attend Akeredolu’s mother’s funeral in Owo, did not give the impression that the situation was this bad. Perhaps he was keeping to the oath of the profession.

     Oh humanity, frailty is thy name. But there is no medical condition that is insurmountable. Aketi must summon all his inner reserves of resilience and naturally combative disposition to fight this incubus to a standstill. While doing that, Akeredolu must avoid the lure of shadowy, Rasputin-like characters and their quack medication. There is no alternative to a scientifically validated regimen of treatment.

       The last time one had spoken to Aketi was about three years ago. He had called in the early hours of the morning to invite one to deliver a state commemorative lecture. As usual, his voice crackled through the phone with energy and cheerful lustiness. The invitation could not be honoured because it clashed with an urgent family engagement in England.

      Despite one’s policy of giving state houses a wide berth, particularly after the virtual homogenization of party formation in Nigeria and the unfolding contradictions of our post-Military condition, a playful and joyous Aketi would always break protocols whenever we meet in public, screaming the undergraduate nom de guerre of yours sincerely.

       Aketi entered the then University of Ife in 1974 when yours sincerely was in his final session. After one left, he had cut his political teeth in the heady radical ferment of students’ politics of that epoch, emerging as Vice President in the 1975/ 76 Session with John Mabayoje, aka Awe, as president of the union. Those were the days when boys were men indeed.

      Here is wishing Aketi a speedy recovery and many more years of service to the fatherland.

  • Snapsong 175

    Snapsong 175

    The House of Hunger

    When Hunger locks the door

         Anger will open it

    A howling stomach has no ear

         For the exhortations of belching sermons

    A season this dry and dreary

         Our country has never known

    Wailing children dog their mothers’ steps

         On futile wanderings on merciless streets

    Begging bowls are empty

         Alms-givers have run out

    Of pitiful pennies. Restless wheels of want

         Are crushing those whom the country forgot

    Rice has run out of the kitchen

         With its golden grains

    Yam yawns in a long, nostalgic distance

         The bullet called bread has shot out of reach

    Oh striding Senator

         Oh gallivanting Governor

    And the President, King of Kings

         What happened to the budget and its bilious billions?

    Hunger in their stomachs

         Anger in their hearts

    The people wake up daily

         With curses on their lips

  • Jan 15: Still searching for closure

    Jan 15: Still searching for closure

    Nigeria has had more than 50 years to bring closure to the Nigerian Civil War. But eight heads of state/presidents later, not only has a closure remained far-fetched, the crisis of nationhood faced by the country has become exacerbated, if not intractable. Nine constitutions have been deployed to the search for nation-building, stability and order – seven between 1914 and 1963, and essentially two since then (1979 and 1999) – to no avail. The first seven were undone by the January 1966 coup, whose anniversary, like the end of the war in January 1970, is marked today. And the last two constitutions have been inspired and shredded by borrowing from other climes as well as ignorance resulting from wrong diagnosis of the Nigerian condition and even wronger prognostications.

    Had a closure been brought to the Biafra War, both the remote and immediate causes of the war would have been dealt with in a way that would enable the country build on solid foundation. The 1966 seemingly one-sided Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu-led coup and the inexpertly drafted January 4-5, 1967 Aburi Accord constituted the immediate causes of the war. Both raised fundamental issues about the politics and administration of the country, but no leadership since the war has grasped their significance, not to talk of holistically addressing them. The consequence was the July 1967-January 1970 war that followed. Sadly, and more deeply reflecting the failure of leadership since 1060 till today, no Nigerian leader has managed to avoid the bitterness and vengefulness, not to say the triumphalism, that have made a lasting solution difficult to attain.

    If the immediate causes of the war were difficult to grapple with or understand, the remote causes have proved even more inaccessible to the unperceptive and emotive leadership the country has been saddled with for decades after the war. Some of the remote causes could be gleaned from the seven constitutions enacted since 1914, but many more of the causes were and still remain firmly located in the decisions of the 1884 Berlin Conference and policies and practices of colonial rule, two grave historical events improperly and imperially engrafted into the fabric of the new nation in 1914 and through the incrementally tinkered pre-independence constitutions. From Lugard Constitution to Clifford Constitution, and from Richards to Macpherson and to Lyttleton, and then from the Independence Constitution to the Republican Constitution, there was only a token admission of the disparateness of the Nigerian people, their different stages of civilisation, and their almost parallel worldview.

    Yet the little concessions to some of the finer principles of federalism that could make a disparate people coexist, such as were innovatively enacted with the Lyttleton Constitution and reinforced thereafter, were summarily and ignorantly wiped out by the 1966 coup and counter-coup, both of which enthroned and entrenched unitarism. Worse, both the contentious Aburi Accord and its dismal aftermaths simply compounded the problem by catastrophically ignoring and abandoning the federalist principles that loosely but somewhat effectively knitted Nigerian people and cultures together. Until the Aburi summit, civil war, while a likely possibility, was not inevitable. But once the then head of state Yakubu Gowon was convinced that Aburi was a bad deal for the principles and objectives he and his team advocated, and Emeka Ojukwu took an exultant and inflexible stand based on the Accord, war loomed next door. And when finally Col. Gowon jettisoned every pretext to federalism and peremptorily created 12 states out of the four regions in May 1967, war became inevitable.

    Nigeria is now precisely at a point where its people and leaders hope that civil rule and elections can midwife competent leaders and help guarantee national stability and development. In fact, last week, President Muhammadu Buhari suggested that multi-party democracy, which he rightly claimed trumped military rule, was the chief requirement for progress and order. Since 1999, many Nigerian leaders and politicians have embraced and promoted the idea that once elections are free and fair, good government and competent leaders are more likely. It is not certain where this phantasm comes from, given its obvious lack of rigorousness and applicability. The country may not be at war in the general sense of the civil war years, but it has continued to fight many small wars and skirmishes, faced unrests of all kinds, triggered banditry, and inspired violent self-determination groups. These are reactions to the imbalances in the system, and a reflection of the dissonance and disequilibria introduced into the polity at foundation, as a matter of fact from the Berlin Conference. Until the country produces leaders competent and visionary enough to coax the people into contending with and resolving the country’s structural imbalances, no amount of good government can guarantee the kind of stability and development conjured in the minds of many Nigerians. The alternative is to wait until the crisis comes to a head and situations (read revolution) seize the initiative and compel a rethinking and rejigging of the superstructure. No one can say conclusively which is better or what the outcome would be.

    The perception is that with the failure of both ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and President Buhari, who had enough goodwill at their inaugurations to remake the country’s foundations and to seize the moment and get the constitution rewritten in consonance with the principles of federalism, politicians will continue to run the country in fits and starts, with the dangerous eclecticism that has led to state failures elsewhere. Even if the next elections do not miscarry, the election of a new and competent president will still not obviate the need for a structural realignment. The Aburi Accord, which by the way made mincemeat of the so-called accomplishments and endowments of youths, shows quite clearly why it is urgent to reexamine the country’s foundations. More relevantly, the immediate causes of the civil war, themselves a reflection, manifestation and calcification of the remote causes, indicate why a closure simply must be brought to the 1967-1970 war and the colonial attenuation of local cultures and civilisations if stability and lasting progress are to be guaranteed.

    Without a shred of doubt, and regardless of the frequent assertion that the problem of Nigeria is not the constitution but the people, both the 1999 Constitution and its progenitor, the 1979 Constitution, are misshapen and largely inoperable. Constitutional expert Professor Ben Nwabueze last week acknowledged that their presumptions during the drafting of the 1979 Constitution were faulty and flowed from a misreading of the politics and structural discrepancies that undermined the Republican Constitution of 1963. He is right, and the country must be grateful to him for acknowledging their error during the drafting of the 1979 document. A history of the post-war constitutions of Germany and Japan shows why sound and visionary leadership are integral and indeed indispensable to the drafting of a great and enduring constitution. Chief Obasanjo was no such leader in 1978, nor was Sani Abacha, another military head of state, nor obviously President Buhari who has offered no original or even borrowed thought on democracy and the constitution.

    At the end of the war in 1970, the victorious General Gowon government naively declared that there was no victor, and no vanquished. Of course there was a victor, and the vanquished knew itself. Instead of sentimental pronouncements, it was expected that a year or two after the war he would undertake the extensive revision of the country’s constitution, assembling great minds and political leaders to rethink the country’s founding document, and taking cognisance of those contentious issues that imperiled the country. He and his team ought to have demonstrated that they learnt something from the mishap of the Aburi Accord, the coup and counter-coup, and the civil war itself. More appropriately, they ought to have rethought the 1914 Amalgamation and found an ironclad way to get the various nationalities coexisting seamlessly with one another. Sadly, the regnant opinion among his team and even the country after the war was that more centralisation was the anodyne for the sanguinary events of the pre-war years.

    As everyone now knows, the reigning opinion is that centralisation is the bane of the country. After and if the constitution is redrawn, untrammeled federalism will be the needed antidote to misrule and increasingly violent self-determination campaigns. As the country hurries into the next polls – and there is really no alternative for now – there will be little time spared for finding a closure to the civil war or the colonial fabric imperiously sewn by the British and forced on Nigeria. Until a closure comes, peace and development may continue to prove elusive.  

    Prof Akintoye on a whirligig

    Reports indicate that Prof. Banji Akintoye, leader of Ilana Omo Odua Worldwide, a Yoruba self-determination advocacy group, has withdrawn his resignation as leader and chairman. He never fully disengaged from the group after he first resigned a few weeks ago, officials have now reiterated. His successor, Prof Wale Adeniran, has also resigned as the former new leader, and is now also being prevailed upon to continue his advocacy within the group. A crisis of confidence had unnerved the group and led to resignations and appointments, thus creating a whirligig for Ilana upon which the emotions of the leaders were spun, and with many of the group’s functionaries remaining tightlipped about just what they were fighting over. Some reports, however, indicate that the crisis involved the usual Nigerian ogre of transparency and accountability, as discussed in this place two weeks ago.

    Ilana may not always prosecute the objectives of the group expertly and exquisitely, but there is no doubt that their objectives are laudable, and would be even more so had they managed to summon to the fore the political virtues and administrative principles they claimed their perennially laggard country lacked. But if they see their advocacy only as the first tentative steps in the ultimate goal of delivering a just, democratic and modern Yoruba nation, their internecine combat would be worth the sacrifice. However, can they resist the sneaky thought of wishing that the ongoing effort by the Southwest to clinch the leadership of Nigeria would end in fiasco? If it does not, as many indeed expect, Ilana would founder even quicker than they dared hope.   

    Buhari and mixed signals

    When he met with Catholic bishops in Abuja last Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari swore beneath his breath he would leave a stronger, repositioned economy and a stable polity significantly improved by the successful fight against insurgency and banditry. It is not obvious how he hoped to reposition the economy in the about four months left for his administration, three of which he will become lame duck. Nor did he explicate his epiphany about Boko Haram which he described as a ploy to destroy Nigeria after first indulging and then placating the sect. The bishops needed to be told something, it was clear. But that something should have been plausible rather than romantic. His administration has undoubtedly affected the country’s infrastructural outlook; but if in seven years or more he had not articulated nor implemented policies designed to reposition the economy, it is doubtful he could begin in the closing weeks of his administration to inspire a structural reengineering of an economy he had burdened with debts and run along suffocating unitarist lines.

    A day before he met the bishops, President Buhari had boasted at a banquet held in his honour in Damaturu, Yobe State, that he could not be blackmailed with stories of unexplained wealth stashed here or abroad, whether investment, supposedly in tax havens, or property owned through proxies. To him, having a clean nose is an invaluable contribution to the anti-corruption war, perhaps far more than a structured, systemic and enduring approach to preventing and curbing graft. He did not of course make such direct correlations, but it was implied, given the enthusiasm with which he set store by his personal probity. He is, however, mistaken. Personal probity will receive nothing more than a footnote in the pages of history.

    What finally addled everyone’s wits was his expression of concern at the plenitude of coups or coup attempts in Africa. He parroted the regnant idea of the sanctity and beauty of multi-party democracy, a system he lauded as being far more preferable to military rule. Apart from his inability to understand democracy, which he confuses with elections, or equates with multi-party system, he at least gave a little semblance in his last year or so in office of respecting some of the pillars of democracy. It would, however, have been far better had he really in his two terms made significant contributions to redefining and entrenching democracy, despite his limited understanding of the concept. Democracy was not strengthened under him; that job, like the economy he romanticised about repositioning and the corruption he feigned to fight, must now be left to his successor.

    Nigeria’s puzzling response to China’s COVID-19

    In their response to the upsurge in COVID-19 cases in some parts of the world, particularly China, United States and United Kingdom, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) initially suggested it was more interested in maintaining its surveillance position than in erecting barricades. In a statement the organisation issued more than one week ago, it said: “…We continue to monitor global COVID-19 epidemiology including genomics data as part of the ongoing pandemic response…The NCDC-led COVID-19 Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) is monitoring COVID-19 trends in China, the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), South Africa, India, and other countries with a high volume of traffic to and from Nigeria.”

    But given the spike in daily cases in China, especially consequent upon discontinuing its zero-Covid policy after massive street protests, many countries have targeted their responses at China with regulations that subject those with Chinese passports or travelling history through China to some forms of scrutiny. It made sense. But instead of going beyond monitoring and proceeding to compel travel ers from China to tests, Nigeria has typically widened the nest to include every traveler. According to the Director, Port Health Services, Dr Geoffrey Okatubo, every traveler will be screened for Covid-19 using Rapid Diagnostic Test kits. Positive cases, he said, would be quarantined, and negative cases monitored. It was not up to a month ago that Nigeria lifted all restrictions, including its cumbersome and ineffective online requirements and extortionist payments.

    Now, instead of a surgical approach to isolating travelers from a few countries, particularly China, everyone will again be subjected to screening. The spike in Covid-19 cases in China began last December after massive street demonstrations to protest the deaths of some quarantined people in a housing fire. Since last month, the daily cases and deaths have thus soared. Worse, the virus has once again begun to spread to other countries as Chinese travelers get on the move. The cases, fuelled by a new variant said to spread faster than previous variants, are in their thousands, and deaths in their hundreds. The NCDC has said that the culpable Chinese variant has not yet manifested on Nigeria’s genomic map. Apart from the epidemiological crisis it is capable of triggering in Nigeria, despite black Africa’s inexplicable resistance to the disease, there is also the economic crisis the country must contend with should the new variant berth in Nigeria.

    The holistic approach adopted by Nigeria may very well mitigate the recrudescent virus, but it will help more significantly if official policy takes cognisance of Chinese passport holders and any other person with a travelling history through China and its other associated territories. Many Nigerians were at first bewildered as officials downplayed the significance of targeting and isolating countries where Covid-19 had spiked. They now seem to have softened a little; but care must be taken to ensure that a higher than normal burden is not placed on Nigerians, as this country needlessly did through 2021 and 2022, than countries like China battling new upsurges.

  • Tinubu: Treatise’s teaser (Part 2)

    Tinubu: Treatise’s teaser (Part 2)

    “We all die. The goal is not to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” – Chuck Palahniuk

    “Nigeria’s President Must Die First!” is the rider to the epilogue of the treatise on Tinubu recently published and available on Amazon. It is authored by this columnist. Nigeria has been bedeviled by many obstacles to development despite humongous human and natural resources she is endowed with. It is a truism that greater part of the obstacles is man-made rather than spiritual despite our acclaimed spiritual fervour. This columnist having resided in a nation like Singapore where that country’s spiritual zeal is nothing compared to that of Nigerians, has come to the conclusion that for Nigeria to take giant strides forward, Nigeria’s 16th President, come 29th May 2023, should be prepared for any eventuality as he mounts the saddle in line with the positing of American novelist, Chuck Palahniuk, who once opined: “We all die. The goal is not to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” Interestingly, the epilogue to the 293 paged treatise: “TINUBU: TRAJECTORY TO THE THRONE”, served as teaser for the readers of this column. Enjoy the reading:

    Epilogue

    “Nigeria’s President Must Die First!”

    In the comity of nations, Nigeria is losing out as the once highly referred and regarded “Giant of Africa”. Recently, in the news, Nigeria has been sliding down the scales from sporting events, to oil production and refinery; social indices such as out of school children; physicians per patient ratio; infant mortality, maternal mortality; environmental degradation due to climate change; and economic indices such as Human Capital Development Index, Gross Domestic Product (GDP); poverty rate, debt per capital ratio, etc. Is it the best time to be Nigeria’s President? Definitely, not! Pointedly and poignantly posited, for the uninitiated and neophyte, it would be a horrendous or herculean task.

    It was in the news in the year 2022 the humongous amount of refined oil needed for Nigeria’s domestic consumption that was being imported. According to the Tribune newspaper: ‘Nigeria is the only OPEC member that imports 95% of refined petroleum for domestic use’ (sic). In terms of production, Nigeria’s position has shifted down from the highest producer of crude oil. Presently, Nigeria is struggling to contend from sliding from the 3rd position in Africa while the duo of Angola and Libya are calling the shots! How are the might fallen! It is disheartening and discouraging that Nigeria is expending about $28 billion per annum on importation of petroleum products. Nigeria, sadly, is the 3rd largest importer of refined products in Africa as at May 2022. However, there is cheering news as Dangote Oil Refinery is likely coming to aid local production in 2023.

    While painting and posting these gory statistics in this treatise? One, is to know the enormity of the arduous task the man to be elected to sit in the saddle as Nigeria’s President come 29th May 2023 will be confronting. Not done with the immensity of issues the man would face. The exacerbating matter of the craziness in wealthy Nigerians for hunger for imported products should be dealt with forthwith. The incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari made a leap in diversifying the economy away from being oil and gas dependent. One formidable step was the banning of imported rice, though highly resisted by unscrupulous Nigerians. It is inconceivable that Nigerians want the national currency to be highly priced and desire enhanced quality of life whilst depending on finished goods produced in other countries. Economically, this is insanity! All developed countries and nations rise through massive production, growing their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) thereby offering jobs to their citizens; increasing their earned income and bettering the quality cum well-being of their citizens. That is the way, not desiring and demanding for imported finished products from other climes and countries. Nigeria needs a strong and sagaciously courageous leader, who, riding on the good will of the people, will dare step on toes in order to do good for the greatest number of the people. This is the governance the average Nigerian desires irrespective of region, religion or tribe.

    The incumbent Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, recently turned 80 years old. Buhari is Nigeria’s oldest president in history as he will be leaving office on 29th May 2023 as an octogenarian! There have been a lot of agitations and clamouring for the youthful population to arise and take power from the old politicians. The latter are denigratingly tagged as “old brigade.” However, like one of the old politicians saliently and succinctly stated one time: ‘power is not served a la carte.’ The young and vibrant ones must rise with the resolve to take power, and not wait to be beckoned to to take power. It does not happen like that in any clime, county, community, or country! (sic)

    The following are probing and soul-searching questions for the youths of today to ruminate and reflect upon:

    How far have the young ones shown courage and candour to take power?

    What do our youths know about community organizing?

    How many willingly offer themselves for community service that is thankless?

    What do they know and understand about the followership aspect in the leadership process?

    How many of them can pay the price which may mean incarceration, loss of means of livelihood, loss of business or properties or even life?

    The last #EndSars saga was a golden opportunity lost by the massive youths to make a rare political impact. Alas, it was wasted on puerile and pedestrian instincts! How? The behind the scenes or seemingly faceless organizers could not articulate their position unanimously before the morbid mob hijacked the mass movement and exploited it for their own destructive agenda! If the seemingly faceless youth leaders had understood community organizing and the art of followership, there would have been great gain from the remonstrative #EndSars saga that rather resorted to loss of lives and limbs. The prime goal was defeated. It is a route the youth should not go again! Our youths need to learn and imbibe more of community organizing and followership. These are needed ingredients in understanding the leadership process. It must be borne in mind that largely scholars and researchers have come to the conclusion that there is no more that “great person” leadership theory; it is now a process as defined and depicted in this book in the chapter dealing with understanding leadership. Leadership involves participants who are involved in moving from one point to another with the aim of achieving a mutually desirable goal. These participants are referred to as followers and leader(s). In addition, for leadership to occur, there must be a context. In other words, leaders do change with context. For instance, in a place of work, the chief security officer may be one of the local chiefs in the town. He has a CEO and many senior managers that he is subordinate to. In the town’s traditional council meeting with the people of the town, the CEO, as an indigene of the town, comes under the chief as a follower. The context has changed. This needs to be understood in the leadership process.

    Who will bell the cat in order to project Nigeria to that glorious height again?

    Imagine, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, through thick and thin, riding on a joint ticket with Senator Kashim Shettima, emerges as the Nigeria’s 16th President, would there be a change in Nigeria’s status in the comity of nations three years from now? It is doable for a serious-minded helmsman who knows his onions; armed with a robust and rugged blue print; and possessed with eagerness coupled with strong and sagacious political will to make a difference. It is not a child’s play to be Nigeria’s president that is keen on making an impact. There are lots of human, physical, socio-economic, and environmental impediments that would welcome such a president to office. In fact, the spiritual forces are already waiting at Aso Rock if stories told surrounding principal characters of an erstwhile president were to be taken with a pinch of salt. However, as it is said and understood universally: where there is a will, there is a way! There must be the will to change the narrative: we cannot be doing the same thing, same way whilst expecting to make progress. This is nothing but insanity! Nigeria’s case, especially referring and dissecting the government at the centre over the years, and without mincing words, is tantamount to the barber’s chair producing much of motion, albeit no movement!! It is highly ironic and sadistic, both in content and context.

    Where do we go from here in order to make progress that followers can feel, see and embrace?

    Having lived as a Nigerian for up to six decades now by the grace of God; studied and worked in Nigeria and outside Nigeria; and traversed some other nations of the world in different continents, I have come to a certain conclusion that to fix Nigeria replete with so humongous human and natural resources, will simply and squarely demand one core and crucial thing from the man who sits in the saddle as the President and Commander-in-chief. He must die first on assumption of office. As the man is taking the oath of office, he must write his will. Not done, he should sign his death warrant! These steps should not just be done privately but be publicised as well to let the populace know the man in the saddle means business and that it would not be business as usual for the corrupt and unscrupulous minded citizens. In this wise, this author does not subscribe to anyone in the youthful stage of life aspiring to lead this country as it is now. The ‘waters’ of Nigeria are invested with sharks and are ready to devour any leader that would not defer to their disdainful desires and demands and yet intend swimming to the other glorious side in order to make the country great.

  • Wole Olujobi, in his withering

    Wole Olujobi, in his withering

    ‘2023: Obasanjo And The Legend Of Tenea‘, article approximates former president Olusegun Obasanjo to “Oedipus orientation in consummate complexity”.

    “Raised and reared to preserve a kingdom, Oedipus, a grand patron of hubris, fell into a complex interplay of fate and pride to become an albatross to the kingdom he sought to preserve”.

    Let us quote him at some length.

    “Sophocles in his play ‘Oedipus Rex’ presents a gripping narrative of a man at the mercy of fate, but who pride would not allow to rediscover himself until he suffers irredeemable consequences.

    The ancient legend of Oedipus, the mythical king of Thebes who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, in several of his sojourns, lived in Tenea, a mythical lost city in Greece, according to the Greek mythology”.

    As recently as 1984, one of Greece’s top archaeologists, Eleni Korka, a Greek-American,  made the biggest discovery of her 40-year career: the mythical city of Tenea, which was built by Trojan prisoners of war sometime around 1100BC.

    After a laborious excavation by Korka and her team, the abandoned Tenea City in ruins was discovered to harbour golden carvings and other precious, high levels of art that could turn the fortunes of the delerict city of Tenea for good.

    As it is with both Oedipus and Tenea, so it is for Nigeria and General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd), former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as Nigerians again prepare for the February 2023 ballot to elect their President. After long years of misrule that left Nigerians at the mercy of poverty and Nigeria herself in the throe of ruins, conscious efforts were made to find a befitting leader to turn the nation’s fortunes for good after the conspiracy among the Nigerian ruling elite claimed MKO Abiola’s life in 1998, the unfortunate incident that sank Nigeria in the abyss like was the case with the lost city of Tenea.

    And so like archaeologist Korka, Nigerian ‘archaeologists’ in military fatigue led by Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdusalami Abubakar, dug through the length and breadth of the thoroughly degraded Nigeria to find a leader to turn the nation’s fortunes for good. Their search through ‘diligent excavation’, just like that of Korka, yielded Obasanjo, who had already decayed in General Sani Abacha’s gulag like the ruins of Tenea. Pronto, most parts of Nigeria hooted, prospecting that the nation had found fortune and so had hit the road to prosperity.

    But unlike Korka, what Nigeria’s excavators found was never gold, but a crippling albatross in the class of Oedipus: a fortune turned awry that opened the floodgate to compound-complex problems that stalk Nigerians even in their sleep”.

    Obasanjo, who I suspect usually momentarily forgets about himself when writing about the presumed failings of others, became something of a teacher of morals in the letter, which he described as an appeal to Nigerians, especially the youth. Therein he easily painted a picture of Nigeria the country was certainly not under him as president. He also attempted to give the impression that he left power of his own volition, forgetting that the National Assembly had to rescue Nigeria from his longed for life presidency through an ingenious Third Term project, for which reason he coyly convoked a National Political Reform Conference, NPRC i00n 2005 but which was angrily voted down by a diligent National Assembly.

    It is apposite to state at the very beginning that Obasanjo has all the rights, human as well as legal, to endorse any presidential candidate of his choosing, but it is equally important that the Nigerian youths, to whom he specifically directed his appeal, should be adequately informed that this is a man of incomparable hubris; a very brilliant man who can easily sell a poke for a pig, and who, having cancelled the teaching of History in Nigerian schools, has , a priori, denied the same youths, the knowledge of the past which they sorely need in determining the truth, or falsity of his preachment.

    A past master in decoy, he had cleverly harangued the youths as follows:”My dear young men and women, you must come together and bring about a truly meaningful change in your lives. If you fail, you have no one else to blame. Your present and future are in your hands to make or to mar. The future of Nigeria is in the same manner in your hands and literally so. If for any reason you fail to redeem yourself and your country, you will have lost the opportunity for good and you will have no one to blame but yourselves and posterity will not forgive you. Get up, get together, get going and get us to where we should be. And you, the youth, it is your time and your turn. ‘Eyin Lokan’ (Your turn”.

    I earlier levelled a charge of momentary amnesia against the ex-president. Were this not true, he would have realised that he should be the last person to attempt to lecture any group of Nigerians, especially its youth, given the agony Nigerian Universities went through under his watch.

    Both at the governmental and domestic levels, Nigerian youths need all the information they can get in deciding whether, for them, Obasanjo can pass for a good mentor, or as an elderstatesman who, judging by his own life trajectory, should be listened to, emulated or not.

    As very highly educated Nigerians, these youths must, on their own, decide which way to go and in doing this, I only need to remind them of the popular saying that Google never forgets.

    And rather than leave them to go searching the entire Wide Web, I have gone out of my way to search for, and recommend to them, a single article which will provide far more than they would ever need to decide on former President Obasanjo’s suitability, or not, to play his self- appointed role in their lives.

    I have in mind here, FAMILY SCANDALS – THE NEWS, published by Sahara Reporters on January 22, 2008 and it is in keeping with the popular Yoruba saying that if somebody promises you clothes, first look at what he is wearing.  There is, however, this proviso: please take everything you read therein, court depositions inclusive, as allegations only, (even though the former president did not sue Sahara Reporters in respect of the publication. You must, however, read the story to the end, as this piece barely contains half, to enable you make a valid judgement.

    The story reads as follows:

    “The Obasanjo family produces a blockbuster sequel to the contract scandal involving Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, as Gbenga, second son of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, accuses his father of gross sexual misconduct.

    Having spent a greater part of his life in important public positions, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s former president, is familiar with scandals.

    In many of these, he starred or co-starred, injuring his reputation in a series of political and personal misdemeanours. .  Several reports accused him of abusing his office to favour cronies and himself and of selling privatised government assets cheap and in questionable circumstances.  But none of the scandals had the toxicity of the latest one: the allegation by Gbenga, Obasanjo’s second son, that his father had sexual relations with his wife, Mojisola. The lethal allegation is the highlight of an affidavit filed at the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja Division, in which Gbenga is requesting to dissolve his marriage to Mojisola. Gbenga’s affidavit was a response to a cross-petition filed by Mojisola, who was responding to her husband’s petition (ID/289/HD/05) for dissolution of the marriage on account of her alleged desertion from home. … the greater number of Gbenga’s poisoned darts were shot at his father, whom Gbenga alleged slept with Mojisola and compensated her with oil contracts with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, via her company, Bowen & Brown. “The petitioner (Gbenga) avers that the respondent (Mojisola) also got rewarded for her adulterous acts with several oil contracts with the NNPC from his father, General Olusegun Obasanjo, amongst which was the NNPC Consultancy training in supply chain management and project management awarded to her company, Bowen and Brown,” the affidavit read in part” – a gross misuse of the important office of President, more examples of which litter Obasanjo’s entire time in office, including the 16Billions he allegedly spent procuring darkness in place of light.

    “The alleged dalliances, he said, have traumatised him, and on account of that, he wants the court to order a DNA test to ascertain the true father of the two children produced during the marriage”. “Gbenga, a medical doctor and one of Obasanjo’s sons from Oluremi, his first wife, married Mojisola in Lagos on 29 April 2000 at a lavish ceremony. By 2004, the union was devoid of bliss, forcing them to separate”. Things further degenerated, prompting Gbenga to seek a divorce. But 15 days later, a notice of discontinuance was filed on Gbenga’s orders, a development attributed to pressure by the former president”.

    “Sources close to the estranged couple, however, list wife battering and infidelity on Gbenga’s part as major causes of friction in the marriage. Though Mojisola’s response was not as racy as Gbenga’s, it brimmed with delicious details of its own, which are hissing like animal fat in fire”.

    In her cross-petition, she alleged that Gbenga got contracts from the NNPC and Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, while his father was in office”.

  • Pursuit of excellence in 2023

    Pursuit of excellence in 2023

    You don’t have to like the idea of making new year resolutions to know that the beginning of a new year is a good time to review whatever you do and set new goals aimed at getting better at it.

    The end of one year and the beginning of another is a significant timeline to evaluate the success or otherwise of any endeavour and decide the necessary steps to take for the new year to be an improvement on the past ones.

    Even if you don’t announce to anyone whatever you have resolved to achieve in a new year, being intentional about making necessary progress in whatever you are known for is the only guarantee to make every year count for you positively.

    This was what informed the topic I spoke on at a Masterclass training for staff of Marketing Edge last Wednesday in Lagos which was In Pursuit of Excellence in Media Practice.

    Even if you are doing fairly well in your work or business, you must keep on aiming to be the best among your peers or competitors. You must not be complacent and must be ready to raise the standards far beyond where others can catch up with you.

    In my presentation at the training, I noted among others, the following reasons why pursuing excellence is necessary:

    *The new year offers an opportunity to review past performances and set new goals.

    * Standards don’t remain static. What was good last year may not be in the new year. Customers may have more options and would prefer the best irrespective of the past reputation of a popular brand.

    * Good is not the best. It’s supposed to be Good, better, best. Only the best at every point in time will be good enough for the customers.

    * You don’t have a monopoly on ideas and markets. Competitors are working hard to displace you from being No 1 and unless you have what it takes to show you are truly the leader in your field of endeavours, customers would move on  to those who have displaced you

    * Innovation is key to remaining at the top. You have to keep improving on what you are offering and be proactive about how to serve your customers better even if they are not asking for it.

    * To earn maximum revenue you must explore every possible option and not be satisfied with just the income you are making, but be able to make maximum income and benefits.

     To pursue and achieve excellence the following are my recommendations for the new year for every individual and organization.

    Determination is key and it’s a choice that must be made. You must have a strong desire to want to be excellent no matter the limitations you may have to contend with. Where there is a will according to the popular saying, there will be a way. You may never know what you are able to accomplish until you make an attempt to. Your hunger for excellence must be such that you will not be easily satisfied with average performance.

     Part of being determined is to set excellent targets that may appear hard to accomplish, but are doable when you give it your best shot based on adopting necessary strategies and realistic timelines. As Norman Vincent Peale puts it, shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you will land among the stars.

    Setting excellent targets will make it possible to create new records or standards which others will be struggling to meet up with you.

     If you are not the leader in your field, benchmark against the best and stop comparing yourself with those you are better than. Learn from what those who are ahead of you are doing and work really hard to be reckoned with.

    Success is about how long you have been doing anything, it’s how well you do it.

    Today, I have four Passports filled with Visas and already have an all-expenses paid one-week media training invitation in the United States next June.

    Notwithstanding the challenges I have had as a journalist like other colleagues, I’m grateful for the many blessings God has given me.

  • Where are the new notes?

    Where are the new notes?

    Unless the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) reviews its deadline for Nigerians to bid bye to the extant currency notes in circulation, it is fast becoming obvious that its January 31 deadline is unrealistic. The apex bank had shocked Nigerians when, on October 26, 2022, it announced its intention to redesign the currency. CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, had said then that the action became necessary to enable the bank take control of the currency in circulation. He was apparently not comfortable with the fact that the bulk of the currency notes in circulation was outside banks’ vaults.

    The redesign, according to him, would affect the highest denominations of N200, N500 and N1,000 notes and the new notes would be in circulation by December 15, 2022, alongside the present notes, while the old ones would cease to be legal tenders from January 31, this year.

     “As you all may be aware, currency management is a key function of the Central Bank of Nigeria, as enshrined in Section 2 (b) of the CBN Act 2007. Indeed, the integrity of a local legal tender, the efficiency of its supply, as well as its efficacy in the conduct of monetary policy are some of the hallmarks of a great Central Bank”, Emefiele said. He added that “In recent times, however, currency management has faced several daunting challenges that have continued to grow in scale and sophistication with attendant and unintended consequences for the integrity of both the CBN and the country.”

    In the face of these daunting challenges, no one expects an apex bank properly so called to just fold its arms and allow such a situation to continue.

    Indeed, a situation where the country’s currency was easily counterfeited is bad for the economy. Yet, this was the experience with the current Naira notes; a thing that is being facilitated by the advancement in technology. Second, only Nigerians who want to deceive themselves would say they are not aware that a lot of the country’s currency notes was being hoarded in some mansions, farms, water tanks, etc. Or, have we forgotten the case of the $50 million cash stashed in fire-resistant cabinets behind a false wall in an apartment in Ikoyi, whose alleged owner denied ownership of the building? So, as it were, the money germinated in the place! There are many such fertile buildings, water and septic tanks producing such billions in the country whose owners would deny their ownership if discovered because they cannot explain how they came about the huge funds. We have seen videos of Naira notes that have decayed as a result of the fact that they had been warehoused for so long. All of these in a country where millions are living from hand to mouth!

    For these reasons and probably more made redesigning of the currency imperative. Perhaps a reason that has been omitted so far in all of these is the aim to cripple the activities of politicians who had hitherto warehoused a lot of money, with a view to opening their private vaults when the elections begin to use the ill-gotten money to buy votes and or permanent voter cards (PVCs) from gullible members of the public.

    When a policy like this is implemented in our kind of country where so much money is out of the banking system in spite of the cashless economy that is being developed continually, it is bound to be resisted. I doubt if there is any other country where cash is being displayed and spent with reckless abandon like Nigeria. The most common way to own properties in many other countries is by mortgage. But Nigeria is one of the very few places where people buy multimillion Naira properties and pay in cash. This is one way outsiders recognise Nigerians because they are the only people who make such payments in cash, even outside the country. Obviously the reason is to obliterate such expenses to make tracing of the source of the funds difficult.

    Moreover, politicians who have been banking on using some of the money to influence votes would not keep quiet in the face of their political castration that the policy portends.

    Yet, there is nothing wrong in redesigning a country’s currency. This, indeed, should be a routine, every five to eight years. We have not redesigned our currency in the last 20 years or so. So, what is the noise about redesigning all about?

    What I am saying in essence is that I am for the redesigning. The problem is that the apex bank did not appear to have robust input before rolling out the policy that was launched by President Muhammadu Bubari on November 23, 2022.

    At the outset, the CBN set maximum weekly withdrawal via the Automated Teller Machines and Point of Sales (PoS) at N20,000 per day for individuals subject to N100,000 per week. Over-the -counter (OTC) cash withdrawals by individuals and corporate entities were pegged at N100,000 and N500,000, respectively. “The maximum cash withdrawal per week via Automated Teller Machine shall be N100,000 subject to a maximum of N20,000 cash withdrawal per day, the bank said adding that “Only denominations of N200 and below shall be loaded into the ATMs.” The bank said it arrived at the amounts after studying the withdrawal trends over a period.

    Many Nigerians, including PoS operators kicked, saying that the policy would strangulate them. Some politicians even saw the policy as a thing aimed at the opposition parties. For once, the National Assembly members would seem to rise in the interest of their constituencies. The noise against the withdrawal limits became too strident to be ignored and the apex bank was forced to adjust the limits to N500,000 for individuals and N5million for corporate entities. Banks were also directed to halt over-the-counter payment of the new notes. Rather, they were to load their ATMs with the N200 notes and below to boost circulation of the new notes.

    The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of Nigerians do not have N500,000 in their bank accounts; so, they could not have had any need to withdraw N500,000 weekly. So, we can properly situate where the noise against the limits was coming from.

    Be that as it may, where I am going is that the new notes have refused to circulate. It is either the CBN has not released enough to the banks (even though it claims they have more than enough) or the banks have continued to hoard them for their high net-worth customers, or sell them as usual to their clients who resell same to Nigerians for the purpose of ‘spraying’ them at social parties. These are honey pots for some bank workers and they cannot be expected to jettison something that they had reaped bountifully from over the decades just like that. Even before the redesigning, hardly could ordinary Nigerians get new notes from the banks, particularly the N100 and N200 notes.

    As at the time of putting this piece together on Thursday, last week, I had not touched a single new note.  At our Editorial Board meeting in the week, I discovered I was not alone. Yet, we are in Lagos. Yet, we still fall somewhere among the fast-disappearing middle class. I can imagine the number of Nigerians in our shoes. Yet, we are being told that the notes we have been using for the past two or so decades would cease to be legal tenders two weeks from now!

    Somebody somewhere must be joking.

    I have told myself that I won’t stress myself in order to have the new notes. That is not my responsibility. At any rate, why should  I behave like the groom whose wife was being taken to him but was too impatient such that he broke his neck in the process of trying to catch a glimpse of his bride?

    My point is that only another Miracle of Dammam can make the new notes available in the desired quantity between now and January 31. The failure or inability of the CBN to rein in erring banks that openly flout its directives over the years is now coming to haunt the apex bank. The bank had issued what could pass for progressive directives several times but it hardly had the will to enforce those directives. It had, for instance, warned several times against selling new notes to people by bankers but the practice still goes on unabated. In those days, anybody, just anybody could walk into banking halls and emerge with new notes; anybody, whether rich or poor. It was a matter of luck. It is no longer so. The luck that would work in your favour these days is for you to be connected with some senior bankers and you get all the new notes you can resell in the open.

    Again, the CBN has asked banks to load their ATMs with the new notes and they have largely not complied. Even here in cosmopolitan Lagos, how many banks have the new notes in their ATMs?

    So, Mr Emefiele must come to terms with reality. He has to appreciate what he is up against. When preparing the kind of dish he has prepared with this kind of policy, he must not forget to reckon with the devil. It seems so far, he has not. And he is therefore going to run into problems if he insists on January 31 deadline on this matter.  

    If indeed a major objective of redesigning the currency was to prevent politicians from using the money that some of them have stashed for election, I am afraid that is late in the day. The elections are barely one month away from the January 31 deadline. At the rate the new notes is circulating, it is doubtful if they would go round before or by that date. So, let the government leave the judgement for those who kept money at home (such that some of it is even decaying)  for the purpose of bribing voters, to God. If God was part of the new agenda, He would have laid this new policy in the heart of the government for implementation earlier than now. And may be He did; but the government foot-dragged. In which case, the government has itself to blame for reserving such sweet wine to this late hour. It should have served it much earlier. Even many Nigerians, as a result of grinding poverty, are looking forward to getting what they see as their fair share of their stolen wealth, a thing that only happens at election periods. Many of the people have this wrong notion that it is only at election times that they see many of their political leaders and so, they should take full advantage of it to collect whatever the politicians offer now that another general election is approaching.

    Perhaps it would also interest Mr Emefiele to remember that it took a long time for even the outgoing currency notes to be accepted in some parts of the country when they were introduced. Long after their launching, the then old currencies were still in circulation in those places. So, in other words, legal tender is what people see and accept as such; it is not something that can be decreed, especially in our kind of peculiar circumstances where so much money is out of the banking system. That is already happening, even with the new notes.

  • Polytechnic Education: A recipe for visionary leadership and governance in Nigeria (II)

    Polytechnic Education: A recipe for visionary leadership and governance in Nigeria (II)

    • Continued from last week

    First, (there) is the false notion that because polytechnic education is mainly vocational, it is merely functional and work-driven. This notion ignores the fact that in certain disciplines, a polytechnic education is more rigorous and quality driven than their university-based counterparts.

    This explains the preference of employers in fields such as banking, Finance, Engineering, Accounting and Technology for polytechnic graduates over their universities counterparts. In these fields of human endeavour, the polytechnic graduates often arrive “perfectly tuned” and programmed for easy and immediate absorption.

        The second is the binary divide traditionally erected between university education and polytechnic education which makes one inaccessible to the other. Although a carryover from our colonial heritage, this divide ignores the reality  of cross-breeding, cross-carpeting, cross-fertilisation and the transfer of talents and human resources between the two types of education that have existed across age and human societies.

      The third factor arises from the fact that entry-level qualifications for polytechnics tend to be lower than those for universities and the staff generally less qualified. While this is true, this stigma ignores the human capacity for self-improvement and continuous exertion. There are sandwich degree programmes and other avenues for self-realisation for those who start the relay race of education at a disadvantage.

     In certain circumstances, teachers with lesser qualifications, because they have more to prove, are generally more focused and more ferociously determined to impart quality education than their better qualified colleagues. Although there is usually no short cut to pedagogic distinction, it is so that under the right atmosphere, these disadvantaged students and teachers often come into their own, and it is where you end up that matters rather than where you begin from.

      The example of Albert Einstein again readily comes to mind. The German-Jewish genius was a famously lazy, sloppy and inattentive student. But this was not because he was mentally challenged but because the precocious boy had greater issues on his mind. Einstein was bored to death by the banality of his teachers and as he himself was later to put it: “Since I hated authority so much, God made me an authority”. How many potential Einstein would have been destroyed in the grinding gridlock of the Nigerian educational system?

      In Nigeria, the stigmatization and discrimination against polytechnic education began right after independence when the first Cookie Commission of Enquiry set up a salary differential between university graduates and their polytechnic counterparts. Even worse is the fact that in universities, you cannot join the council in congregation unless you are a degree holder.

        In 2006, the Nigerian federal authorities took what at first appeared as a bold and courageous step to harmonise  and consolidate tertiary education in the country by virtually abolishing polytechnic education. Inaugurating the technical committee, Ufot Ekaette, the then Secretary to the Federal Government, noted that no country could achieve scientific and technological breakthrough when less than fifteen per cent of the populace have access to university education. According to him, the existing facilities were so oversubscribed that the entire educational system faced an apocalyptic meltdown.

      With less than three per cent of the Nigerian populace having access to university education, the situation was very dire indeed. Consequently, all polytechnics were to be abolished with the minor ones becoming campuses of proximate and contiguous universities while the Yaba College of Technology and the Kaduna Polytechnic were to become City Universities of Lagos and Kaduna respectively.

     Crowing jubilantly about the development, the then Minister of Education, Obiageli Ezekwesili, noted that the development would lead to the creation of half a million additional university placements and immediately ease the bottlenecks that have come to be associated with JAMB.

       On the face of it, this seems to be a revolutionary and radically innovative development; an admirable example of visionary and proactive governance. But on closer examination, there seemed to be something sinister and radically obtuse going on. There is no evidence that the momentous conclusions were arrived at after a holistic, exhaustive and comprehensive study of the country-specific needs of tertiary education in Nigeria. Had there been a more crucial interrogation of the dynamics of technological and societal under-development in the nation, the conclusions might have been different.

     Far more disturbing however is the suspicion that as usual, Nigeria might have been aping developments and trends elsewhere particularly in the colonial metropole without any conceptual linkage to the country-specific crisis of education. Even the names given to the new polytechnic-turned university come with a colonial imprimatur.

      It will be recalled that when polytechnics were transformed into universities in Britain, many of them were given the prefix of “metropolitan” simply to distinguish them from existing universities based in the same cities. Thus was born Leeds Metropolitan University, Sheffield Metropolitan Universities etc.

        Yet Britain was actually responding to country-specific needs based on the unique trajectory of education in the country.  Polytechnics in England came with a class-slur. As dumb-down vocational centres for middle-level manpower, they were regarded as the natural habitat and havens for the educationally challenged and the socially disadvantaged flotsam and jetsam of the society. Naturally, this binary divide bred a lot of resentment and fuelled social tension.

        Eventually, the contradictions matured into an impossible systemic lock down. As better educational facilities at the secondary level led to greater successes, pressures on scarce university placements naturally led to a millennial bottleneck.  As more people gained higher educational qualifications, surplus quality staff meant for the universities had to be deflected to the polytechnic.

      The lack of vacancy at the professorial level due to strict establishment ratio and the fact that quality staff now marooned at the polytechnic could not be expected to reach the pinnacle of their profession led to widespread intellectual disillusionment with the system and an internal brain drain.

         Every shrewd societal engineer realizes that the presence of a radically disaffected intellectual class is a recipe for anarchy and rebellion.  In 1992, the British authorities finally caved in to the pressures. Under the Further and Higher Education Act, the old polytechnics were abolished and transformed into degree-awarding universities. Britain had attempted to solve its unique educational crisis in its own unique manner.

        If this was the trend and development in other lands that the Nigerian authorities were aping, it is clear that we have missed the boat again. Every country is unique in its educational specificity. You cannot slam on a country developments from elsewhere without first analyzing the country-specific dynamics. In this regard, ASUP’s critique of the committee decision is spot on.  Ruing over why such a momentous decision should be coming at the very tail end of the Obasanjo administration, the union of polytechnic staff dismissed the whole exercise as a superficial and retrogressive charade.

       Had the committee  more than a glancing acquaintance with the phenomenon of genuine branding and not the superficial shibboleths of Nigerian officialdom, it ought to have occurred to them that Yaba College of Technology and Kaduna Polytechnic were already successful brands in their own rights. Turning them into “city universities” actually devalues their brand. It is like asking Massachusset Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech, Imperial College, the London School of Economics etc to drop their gloriously unique brands and become universities.

        In a remarkable stricture, ASUP noted that the committee was filled with establishment bureaucrats, equal opportunity consultants and other racketeers out to preserve and promote vested interests. In any case, we may wonder, what is the point of adding hordes of glorified graduate illiterates to an already saturated labour market?  This can only compound an already dire situation, fuelling social discontent and ultimately inviting anarchy.

       It is noteworthy that while Nigeria was trying to abolish its polytechnics, the Singaporean authorities were strengthening theirs based on a rigorous evaluation of country-specific needs.  In a remarkable speech at the closing ceremony of the annual Polytechnic Forum on 8th October 2009, the Minister of Education and Second Minister of Defence, Dr En eng Hen, outlined with engrossing perspicuity the vision behind the retention of polytechnic education in his country.  Among the reasons proffered, four are particularly compelling.

    1.            The law of supply and demand. With over 40 percent of the primary cohort demanding for quality polytechnic education, the authorities had no choice but to grant the demand of the populace.

    2.            The fact that the polytechnic work-force arrive “industry ready” and is readily available to fill opening vacancies in industries through what is a close symbiotic relationship between the forces of labour and the forces of production.

    3.            The rate and vigour of what he chooses to call “disruptive technology”. In a rapidly modernizing and increasingly globalised world new technologies intrude into our life on a daily basis which demand the constant upgrading of obsolete curricular and the constant introduction of new courses based on emergent technologies. For example, a polytechnic in Singapore has begun to offer Bachelors’ degree course in Computer Games Software. There is also a degree programme in Culinary Arts.

    4.            Finally, there is the need for existing workforce to be retrained, retooled and even re-certificated. Rapidly evolving technology renders a degree obsolete and antiquated during the life time of the degree holder. The cure-all and once-for –all time paper qualification is no longer tenable. A person that holds a 1979 degree in Computer Science would no longer understand what is going on the profession by 2009.

      According to the minister, polytechnics are there for “jobs yet to be invented and challenges not yet foreseen”. Finally, “being autonomous, these universities can chart their own destiny, differentiate themselves and pursue revolutionary innovations”. By creating themselves anew, they re-create and reinvent the society on the basis of ceaseless self-surpassing.

      This is a radically innovative educational policy based on visionary governance and pro-people policy. The dynamic is powered by country specific needs and a close study of the Singaporean society and culture. When there is a perfect congruence between the educational policy of a nation and the societal needs, there is a positive equilibrium between the parts and the whole. Little wonder then that within only one generation, Singapore has moved from the Third World to the First World.

        Without innovative thinking, there can be no innovative and cutting edge industry for that matter. Even transferred technology requires considerable innovative thinking to be “tropicalised” and domesticated. And without revolutionary technological innovations, there can be no expanding economy. Any society caught up in a technological rut will always play host to mass unemployment and a glut of unproductive work force.

        This is the basis of Nigeria’s contemporary plight. Let me now begun to tie up the loose ends as we arrive at the conclusion. As we have seen from the above-going, it should now be clear that the virus of unoriginal thinking is more dangerous and potentially more lethal than the virus of unemployment. This is because unoriginal thinking is the original form of unemployment; a critical disengagement of the thinking faculty.

      Yes, as we have read from above, Nigeria needs polytechnic education as a recipe for visionary leadership and governance. The can do spirit, the rugged determination, the energetic networking, the constant struggle to improve self-capacity, the urge to pull oneself up by the bootstraps such as we find in the polytechnic community are all heroic ingredients of visionary leadership.

      But before these fertile resources can be milked and harnessed for national greatness, Nigeria itself will need a generous dash of visionary leadership to rescue it from the present morass and millennial rut of educational under-development. I thank you all and wish the graduands the very best in the current circumstances.

  • Okon succumbs to the Orò cult

    Okon succumbs to the Orò cult

    As the war of attrition with Okon raged on in the snooper household, snooper was also thinking of a final solution to contain the mad Calabar boy’s menace. Last Friday, Okon recorded a significant success in the civil war when the dining room section of the house fell to his rag tag secessionist army, apologies to the late Ojo Maduekwe a.k.a Ojo Onikeke.

    Since Okon has refused to cook for some time now giving as an excuse the fact that he was on some important national assignment, snooper had wanted to settle down to some fast food brought in  from the local eatery when we noticed a massive python comfortably ensconced in our favourite chair. In fright, snooper fled towards the bedroom with the mangy dog barking furiously in hot pursuit even as Okon began laughing like a deranged jackal.

    “Haba, Lamidi, you no go greet Oga, abi which kind yeye man you be?” Okon snorted amidst convulsive laughter obviously addressing the python. Inside the bedroom, snooper knew that the end had finally arrived. The next thing the mad boy would target would be the bedroom itself and by then it would all be over. There would be no hiding place. The handshake had definitely gone beyond the elbow. In frightful premonition of an impending disaster, snooper called out to the mad boy behind closed door.

    “Okon!!!” snooper yelled  at the mad boy.

    “Oga, Okon dey Kampe. But make you open dem door now as short man devil, Hundeyin, wan say hello”, Okon snorted. A chilling tremor coursed through the spine as we remembered the nasty pigmy camel.

    “Take the creep away, take away, now!!!”, snooper screamed.

    “Oga camel meat no good for take away, na abami meat be dat one”, Okon sneered.

    “Okon, I want to know who owns this house”, snooper moaned in acute frustration.

     “Oga, make you comot now, abi man dey fear for im own house?” Okon retorted as he retreated with his animal troops.

     That evening, snooper brought forward PLAN B and contacted Orowusi Jabiti-jabiti and members of the dreaded orò cult. PLAN A had been to send the mad boy on an errand to the most dangerous part of Majidun where hopefully some human spare parts dealer could pounce on him. But not to worry, the orò cult would equally do.

    In the dead of the night, they laid a siege to the house, droning endlessly and fearsomely like a thousand demons. Snooper could hear Okon screaming and yelling like a demented sheep as a vicious bee released from a black pouch fastened itself on his flared nostrils. By the time it was over, the entire house had been liberated and Okon and his animals had vanished hopefully forever. Thus ended a reign of terror that lasted six weeks.

  • INEC’s troubling vacillations

    INEC’s troubling vacillations

    Last Monday, Board of the Electoral Institute (BEI) chairman Abdullahi Zuru, reported by the news media to be representing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman Mahmood Yakubu, warned that the February general election could miscarry because of rising insecurity. The warning predictably unleashed a firestorm among politicians and officials of the federal government. “We all appreciate the fact that election security is vital to democratic consolidation through provision of an enabling environment for the conduct of free, fair, credible and inclusive elections and thus strengthening the electoral process”, the BEI chairman had said. Then he added more ominously: “…If insecurity is not monitored and dealt with decisively, it could ultimately culminate in the cancellation and/or postponement of elections in sufficient constituencies to hinder declaration of election results and precipitate constitutional crisis. This must not be allowed to happen and shall not be allowed to happen.”

    Prof. Zuru of course left enough elbow room for himself when he stated categorically that postponed or cancelled election ‘shall not be allowed to happen’. However, social and conventional media were clear about the import of his statement, and as expected took their stories from the threatened cancellation/postponement angle. On Tuesday, a clearly alarmed federal government, through the Information minister, Lai Mohammed, declared definitively that the elections would not be postponed, for nothing unusual had happened to warrant any cancellation or even postponement. INEC’s timetable was still being honoured, he asserted, and nothing out of the ordinary had occurred to trigger revisiting the timetable.

    Whether the INEC chairman was himself independently alarmed by the reactions to Prof. Zuru’s warning to wade into the matter or the presidency reached out to him is unclear. It is sufficient to note that immediately INEC top guns saw the reaction to their warning, they also hastily called a press conference. Nothing, they chorused, would cause them to cancel the polls. They were only worried about the attacks on INEC facilities. According to INEC, “In short, at no time in the recent history of the commission has so much of the forward planning and implementation been accomplished 44 days ahead of a general election…Therefore, the commission is not contemplating any adjustment to the election timetable, let alone the postponement of the general election. The repeated assurance by the security agencies for the adequate protection of our personnel, materials and processes also reinforces our determination to proceed. The 2023 general election will hold as scheduled. Any report to the contrary is not the official position of the commission.”

    INEC’s position doesn’t seem ambiguous at all. They were not contemplating postponement or cancellation of the February polls, they asserted. Nigerians will take them at their word. President Muhammadu Buhari is tired and can’t wait to retire to his farm in Daura. The only thing he contemplates, and for which he has received nuanced criticisms, is his fixation with free and fair polls to the detriment of advocating the victory of his party and the sustenance of his legacy after the polls. Obviously he cannot even imagine any postponement, let alone cancellation. INEC too is anxious to deliver on its mandate and get it over with. Postponement will make their misery drawn-out. Nigerians also hanker after a new government, an administration that will try out new developmental tricks to get the country moving, especially at a time when the world is poised on the precipice of another crippling recession, perhaps midwifed by a fresh outbreak of Covid-19 or the stalemated Russo-Ukrainian war.

    However, more troubling is the dispute over the attribution of the warning about insecurity and its implication for election postponement. The media believed that Prof. Zuru spoke for the INEC chairman. He has declined to rebut the publication. But on Tuesday, in rebutting stories about postponed elections, Prof. Yakubu insisted the elections would go on as planned because nothing extraordinary had occurred to alter the plan. Then he added that any information to the contrary was not official and not from INEC. Yet, even he, like Prof. Zuru, has not forthrightly suggested that the BEI chairman did not represent him at the Abuja function. Nor have, so far, both Prof. Zuru and Prof. Yakubu indicated that the address read by the former at the validation of election security training in Abuja was not cleared. Well, perhaps, those are just inconvenient details, one of those mix-ups in bureaucracy and government. It is now official that the elections will go on, and in respect of the warnings about insecurity, the government and security agencies are expected do their best to ensure nothing should interfere with the polls. 

    INEC, its chairman, and other officials must learn lessons from the tremors they had needlessly activated in the electoral system and in an election year. Every word counts, and every statement will be scrutinised by the tensed public. Officials must exercise caution in their communications, for whatever they say will be construed as a negative or positive signal. They could still warn about the potential of insecurity to stymie elections without seeming to draw a connection between insecurity and postponed or cancelled elections. Words matter; so, too, does style.

    Chaotic CBN monetary policy

    There is clearly much to be said for the Central Bank of Nigeria’s redesigned naira. The new notes may impact the fight against ransom payment to kidnappers, help mop up liquidity, and put some tentative lid on inflation and naira depreciation. But the policy also leaves much to be desired. Some experts insist that the so-called excess liquidity is a dangerous and false hype promoted by the CBN, and that the entire policy had not been well thought out nor was substantial consultation embarked upon before the apex bank plunged into the policy miasma.

    To demonstrate the hastiness of the CBN policy, experts point at the almost immediate shift in the cash withdrawal limit policy, the fact that the new notes are allegedly colour fast, and the incontestable point that all kidnappers need do is wait longer in the bush with their captives until victims’ families raise sufficient ransom obviously from multiple sources. What is even more damning is that experts suggest that what helps the value of a currency is less its colour or redesign features as domestic production of goods and services.

    There are undoubtedly many pros and cons. But no one can tell authoritatively whether the CBN appreciated the latitude of its powers and impact on the economy to have engaged in enough debate on the measures it planned. As everyone knows, despite informing the presidency, no one in Aso Villa can quite show whether the administration itself did its homework. Now the country is caught in a bind. The notes are not only, some say, colour fast and undermining public confidence in them, there are not even enough dispensed to the public to spend in place of the old notes, despite CBN protestations and threats against the banks. Meanwhile, the deadline to phase out the old notes is barely two weeks away.

    On top of all this, the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, is reportedly running from the law, with the Department of State Service (DSS) insistent on hauling him in for questioning. Then there is also the inquiry on the Stamp Duty collection farce, with no one able to say conclusively just how culpable the CBN is. It is not at this time of general policy paralysis that the head of the CBN should be away, but of course he claims to be attending to his health.

    Whoever can arrest the drift should step in and do so if the entire benefits hoped to be gained from the naira redesign is not to be frittered away. If Mr Emefiele has a case to answer with the DSS, let him return and face his ordeal like a man. After all, they can’t keep him forever. And if the CBN policy designers need to give themselves time to punish those they claimed had hoarded naira for politics, then let them buy time, or else seize the moment if they are sure of themselves. This dithering and confusion must stop.