The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Osun and the limit of democracy

    Osun and the limit of democracy

    AFTER many decades of votes not counting, the Osun and Ekiti governorship polls have begun to change perceptions about the concept, durability and promise of democracy in Nigeria. This explains the fanatical rush for Permanent Voters Card (PVC), almost as if the mere possession of the card is enough guarantee for a desired outcome of state and federal elections next year. After the Ekiti governorship poll in June, considering that the three leading candidates in that election were more than qualified to run the state should any of them win, few questioned the ability of the July Osun poll to produce anyone but the most capable to win the poll and effectively run the state. The Osun poll outcome won by Ademola Adeleke, a serving senator, when incumbent Governor Gboyega Oyetola was widely believed to be capable of winning easily and at first ballot and by a wide margin has, however, raised issues about the value of democracy in producing the right leaders. The bohemian Adeleke is dismissed as unserious and incapable of offering leadership to the state, a supposition this column entertained at the conclusion of the poll when it suggested that while Sen. Adeleke would govern de jure, a shadowy regent would in fact be the de facto ruler of Osun.

    The jury is still out on what political system produces effective leaders: monarchy, autocracy, diarchy, or democracy. And if democracy, what type: western-style presidential or parliamentary democracy, or various hybrids of one-party democracy flourishing in China and some Asian countries? Indeed, given the experiences of many Asian countries which have produced visionary leaders who midwifed great economies for their people and transformed their countries from Third World to virtually First World, more probing questions have been asked as to the purpose of a political system: to give the psychological satisfaction that a country is practicing democracy, or to transform for the better and possibly the best the socio-economic conditions of the people as exampled by Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea under the military, etc.

    Some countries have also raised posers concerning just how effectively democracy, even in the Western sense, had produced great leaders, transformed the social conditions of the people, and forestalled the lurch to totalitarianism at some point. History is replete with many examples. Germany in the 1930s produced Adolf Hitler through democratic elections fairly and genuinely won, United States elections have produced a slew of ineffective, sometimes populist, leaders who would have fared badly even in Third World countries. The disruptive and ethically unmoored Donald Trump is an example. And many African countries feigning the practice of Western-style democracy have produced sometimes inept and sometimes effective leaders who have gone on to undermine their constitutions. Nigeria and Rwanda exemplify two polar opposites. After North Vietnamese forces helped Pol Pot of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge to take power in 1975, he proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, won election as a delegate to the assembly under the auspices of the Labour Party; but in two or three insane years inspired the Cambodian genocide that wiped out almost a third of Cambodia’s population in the guise of creating a communist society.

    In the last governorship elections, it was clear that Osun had its grouse with Mr Oyetola’s dour APC government. That grouse will not go away even if the APC, taking advantage of judicial technicality, retakes the administration. As far as balloting went, Sen. Adeleke took the most votes in the poll; however, it remains to be seen, should he be sworn in, whether democracy had helped the state to produce a competent leader. There are doubts about his suitability for leadership, doubts reinforced by the obvious weakness of democracy as a concept and political system in producing leaders. Some Southeast Asian countries and China have had a difficult relationship with the abundant life their unique, but in the eyes of Western countries, flawed, democracy has given them. Yet, who could argue with what Singapore and China have achieved, despite not operating Western-style democracy; and on the other hand who could fail to notice that individual rights have been abridged in an apparent trade-off for material advancement? In both China and Singapore, Sen. Adeleke could never become a governor, not even a senator; and Muhammadu Buhari could never become a president.

    It is perhaps time to begin interrogating Nigeria’s Western-style democracy, not necessarily to replicate the Asian models, but to develop an eclectic homegrown hybrid that will borrow from the best of Eastern and Western democratic forms. Reconciling the goal of creating a society where rights are not abused with the goal of nurturing a society where competent political and administrative leaders are elected does not have to be mutually exclusive. Obsessing over PVCs, as if that guarantees the election of competent leaders, especially going by the Osun example, is a faulty proposition in the face of unstructured political arrangement and chaotic national economic model. In 2015, President Buhari had the best opportunity and goodwill any Nigerian leader has had since the advent of the Fourth Republic to reposition Nigeria. His lack of depth defeated that national ambition; and the hijack of his administration by insular cabals, not to talk of his own unprogressive primordial attachments, ensured that Nigeria would once again defer its ambition and opportunity, and risk implosion sometime in the near future.

    Nigeria faces two main options for elections in 2023. The APC will battle the PDP for the diadem. The noisy and uproarious jostle for Peter Obi is perhaps a third option, but it is an ineffective attempt to oversimplify governance into a contest of frugality rather than vision, structures and networks. Because Nigeria teeters on the brink, either the APC or PDP will have to find the consensus, assuming the elections hold successfully, to rebuild and rethink the polity. Either of the two will then have to muster the vision and courage to explain and resolve the conundrum of protecting individual rights that sometimes countervail substantial improvement in the material conditions of the people. Because there will be resistance, the winning party must also summon the courage to overcome the argument of enduring the conservatism and gradualism that have boded ill for the nation since independence. Mr Obi’s Labour Party is out of the picture, no matter how hard Christian religious leaders try or his fanatical supporters bay for blood.

    It is not clear whether Nigerian voters have learnt anything from the ‘democratic’ tragedy that has befallen Osun. If they had, then they must scrutinise the APC and PDP tickets to determine which is best placed in secularism, courage, intellect, political consensus, and vision to remake Nigeria. To yield the space to the anarchic and plebeian noise on social media, or to indulge the pet social, ethnic and religious animosities that have polluted a sensible examination of which presidential ticket is better placed to affect Nigeria’s existential problems, is counterproductive. Democracy and elections were not enough to deter Hungary’s parliamentary republic under the ultranationalist Viktor Orban from castrating the judiciary and media, nor Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan from embracing religious extremism and despotism, nor Vladimir Putin from lionising and unleashing the democratic pirouette that has seen him gallivanting to and fro power, nor Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte from cajoling his country with autocratic crackdowns. It is not just that democracy is imperfect, often producing incompetent and blinkered autocrats, the problem is that each country must find the right ‘democratic’ formula to guarantee stability and development. So far, as Osun currently exemplifies, Nigeria has made a huge mess of governing itself after decades of retrogressive and catastrophic military rule.

    It is tragic that Nigerian leaders and the political class are responding amateurishly to the horrifying dysfunction confronting their nation: insecurity, costly and untenable form of government, declining economy, collapsed education and health sectors, and a crazy infusion of religion into the judiciary and polity. That voters in pursuit of various chimeras also think these problems can be resolved simply with PVCs and ‘votes that count’ is both deplorable and diabolical. It was in compliance with democracy that Osun voted their choice; but it must now be acknowledged that Western-style democracy, particularly as seen through the prism of Nigeria, does not always deliver the right choice.

     

    Osun, APC and unobtrusive Aregbesola

    THERE are still some diehard All Progressives Congress (APC) apparatchiks who hold out hope that Interior minister Rauf Aregbesola could reconcile with the leadership of the party, particularly his mentor and now presidential candidate of the party, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The chances get remoter by the day even as the minister embroils himself in more flagrant disregard for the rules and regulations of the party. Shortly after the electoral debacle suffered by his party in last month’s Osun governorship election, his men claimed a part of the responsibility by attributing the defeat to the official alienation of the Aregbesola faction. His men even mocked Governor Gboyega Oyetola and the main faction of the party which thought they could go it alone. Senator Ademola Adeleke, the impolitic governor-elect, corroborated the hostile posture of the Aregbesola group by insinuating that the minister’s men had a hand in his victory.

    Mr Aregbeosla is of course free to play his politics the way he deems fit. He is at liberty to oppose the party’s main faction in Osun as fiercely as he can, though he had often mustered that effort in strange, uncoordinated and unobtrusive fashion. It was no secret he and his men wished the failure of his party at the Osun poll, and exulted after their wish was granted. Then barely two weeks after, his men began staging street protests demanding the restructuring of the leadership of the APC in Osun, and even giving dark hints that greater debacle could befall the party if a change in leadership was not carried out. Mr Aregbesola is not mortified by the defeat in Osun. Since he attributes the defeat to the non-cooperation of his faction, it is not illogical to him that he ties future electoral successes to his cooperation. What he is in effect saying is that he wishes to retake the commanding heights of the party in Osun in order to maintain his national relevance. He would stop at nothing, not even the most execrable tactics, to regain that height.

    Mr Aregbesola may be an ideologue of some sort, but he is a poor politician, a very poor one at that. He hankered after and probably plotted his party’s defeat, or at least contributed to it one way or the other, but a better tactician and smarter ideologue would have at least feigned distress at his party’s loss, while carefully plotting his way back into relevance and prominence. Emotive, candid and often simplistic, he displayed his wishes flagrantly and angrily. How he wants the party to be handed over to him as prize for wishing and plotting his party’s fall is hard to rationalise. It says a lot about discipline in the party he belongs to that in an election season, so fateful as to define the future of the country, the faltering national APC itself, and the fate of the Southwest in the scheme of things, the insouciant Mr Aregbesola is allowed to do so much damage and still summons the effrontery to ask for the maiden he raped to be handed over to him as a trophy wife.

    The national APC itself sometimes acts as if it is effeminate, who in its dotage endorses the worst kind of political permissiveness. Before the 2019 general election, it ignored the fractiousness within its ranks and shrugged at leading members who actively plotted the party’s downfall in some states. It was a miracle that its lack of standards, poor discipline, and broken and faltering economic and social records did not conspire to bring the party to grief in the poll. Mr Aregbesola understands that there would be no consequence to any mutinous party leader, hence his flagrant rebellion in Osun, not to say his vexatious audacity in asking to be rewarded with the party structure as trophy. The party may be hesitant and ethically challenged, but it is unlikely to give heed to the minister’s wishes. Not only are the stakes very high in this election season, party leaders are sensible enough to know that having plotted so egregious a revolt as he did in the last Osun poll, Mr Aregbesola can no longer be trusted. He wants everyone to know how indispensable he is; yes, perhaps he really is. But, contrary to his expectation, he cannot be trusted anymore, not at close quarters, and not even when they are dining with him with the longest and sturdiest of spoons.

    It’s a character issue, not a matter of intraparty differences or misunderstanding. Mr Aregbesola has spoken daggers and used them, as a sage once noted of his adversary; and he has shown a strange and almost ghoulish predilection for insincerity and fecklessness. He cannot be trusted with anything. His men suggest that Osun could be lost to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) column in the next presidential poll; but the APC will likely take its chances than lie in bed with him a second time after he had bitten and poisoned them. It is possible, perhaps remotely, that he was the wronged party in the Osun APC intraparty dispute, but he misses the point by deploying a method of seeking redress that negates his own interests and hardens the opposition against him. As great statesmen and politicians know, after character, the next virtue is judgement. Mr Argbesola has not only shown poor judgement, he has also misjudged issues and the times. It is indeed remarkable that his modest talents had helped him rise from near obscurity to state commissioner, and then to national minister; but those same talents have proved incapable of taking him any further, just when he so desperately needs to go higher.

     

    Lawal, Dogara and extremism

    All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftains Babachir David Lawal and Yakubu Dogara may be unaware that in denouncing same faith presidential ticket, they are paradoxically entrenching religion in politics. It is unlikely that was their intended aim. Mr Lawal, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), and Hon. Dogara, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, reject their party’s strategic decision to present a Muslim-Muslim ticket. They reserve the right to oppose the idea of same faith ticket. But it is not clear what point they hope to achieve by persisting in opposing the ticket after their party had insisted there would be no alternative.

    They risk being ostracised not only now and in the medium term, but if their party goes ahead to win the presidential poll in 2023, they face the even bigger risk of being diminished and damaged irreparably. That surely can’t be their goal. There are ways to underscore opposition to an idea or policy without endangering one’s political future or becoming an object of derision. Messrs Lawal and Dogara have instead and unwisely become hysterical, intransigent and even scurrilous. They won’t be sacked from the party; but they may choose to defect. Like Interior minister Rauf Aregbesola whose political excesses are consigning him to the periphery of Osun and national politics, the two APC chieftains may find themselves courting irrelevance, not simply because of their opposition to the Muslim-Muslim ticket, but because of the hysterical and discourteous method they have chosen to ventilate their views and allowed their opposition to segue into rebellion.

  • Tinubu-Shettima ticket will be beyond blackmail in the 2023 presidential election

    Tinubu-Shettima ticket will be beyond blackmail in the 2023 presidential election

    “I appreciate your write-ups. But your ‘Bird`s eye view of the Tinubu roadmap to Nigerian greatness’is a misadventure. Do you know Sir, that Tinubu imposed Buhari on Nigerians?” Ibe, Enugu (+2348064- 65 – 63)

    When I wrote in my last week article that I will leave analysis of the Tinubu Road Map to experts in the various sectors of the polity mentioned in the document, little did I know I would return to the subject this soon. However, two things prompted my early return to it, namely: one of the reactions I got to the referenced article,  captured laconically above in the epigram  to this piece, and, the second, a promise by a decampee, former APC stalwart, now turned Atiku campaign spokesman, Daniel Bwala, to make the 2023 presidential election a referendum on President Buhari’s administration, forgetting that though its leader, Buhari is neither the owner, nor does he equate to APC,  a political party.

    Any keen watcher of the Nigerian political scene would have noticed that for a number of reasons into which I shall delve in some future date – God helping us – President Buhari has been particularly lucky as a Nigerian President.  I actually  doubt very much if that Nigerian president would ever come again, no matter where from, South or North, who would be as driven by  considerations  for his ethnic exceptionalism for his actions, as President Buhari has been.

    That, Bwala should know, as well as realise that Nigerians perfectly understand. The opposition, Labour  or the Northern Peoples Party ( NPP – National chairman, Presidential candidate, Chairman, BOT,  Chairman, Governors Forum – all Northerners),  in particular,   will therefore, be hard put to ascribe everything President Buhari did, or did not do in office to APC, even though the party on which platform he became president and proceed, therefrom, to use it to blackmail the Tinubu – Shettima ticket.

    It will also be extremely difficult for a brilliant but foxy Bwala, who must have deployed his alleged Tinubu promise to make him his presidential campaign spokesperson, to wangle his new position from a desperate Atiku Abubakar going for his 5th(?) and, presumably, last attempt at the presidency,  whilst he (Bwala)publicly hangs on to ‘his alleged angst’, against a Muslim – Muslim ticket as pretext for his hurried, almost impromptu, exit from the APC.

    I doubt if he knew that he further gave himself away during his interview with Seun Okinbaloye of Channels TV’s Politics Today,  when he vigorously lamented his having never gained anything from the APC in his many years,  despite his rabid pro APC advocacy during which he described PDP in the most lurid of terms, calling its members all manner of names.

    These young men!

    Babachir and Dogara had better make hay while the sun still shines yonder or it may be too late – quite a while off the public kitchen too.

    Bwala will soon come to know what Nigerians already know of the duo of Tinubu and Shettima, from their distinct and very measurable achievements as governor of their respective states  – development- driven leaders, with an incomparable management of the Nigerian diversity; having people from other geo – political zones, not only among their Advisory cadre, but right in their state executive councils. Indeed, Tinubu’s successive cabinets could have  justifiably been described as Pan – Nigerian.

    Granted that elections are an examination of current governments as  we see in even much more advanced countries like both the U.S and the U. K, there can be no denying that there are instances where extenuating circumstances  suffice to  explain some governmental shortcomings.

    I have in mind here, for the Buhari administration, as I wrote only last week, things like two consecutive recessions, the low price of crude oil for a substantial length of time, the global pandemic – Covid -19, which shattered the economy of many countries  and, of course,  the no less consequential Russia – Ukraine War.

    While the negative effects of all these have been exacerbated in Nigeria by President Buhari’s peculiar management of the Nigerian diversity, nothing – repeat nothing at all – says that any other APC president, or his Vice, would, in future, be that ethnically driven. You can therefore, not successfully run down the APC ticket with whatever you might consider the failings of the Buhari government, no matter how hard they try.

    This, therefore, is the juncture at which we must deal with, at least, one of the things which  APC had intended to do for the people of Nigeria and which, had it  successfully pulled through, would have served as a silver bullet for many of our current challenges of nation building.

    Here I am referring to Restructuring.

    Incidentally, this is one subject which features prominently in the Tinubu Road Map. Even though he refrained from using the term,  the document contains all the ingredients of restructuring.

    So concerned with restructuring was APC, even at  inception, that it included Power Devolution in its manifesto. In August 2017, it set up a 9 – man committee on True Federalism, headed by the Kaduna state  governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai. The  committee was given the  responsibility of distilling, and defining true federalism as promised in its manifesto in 2015, and on which basis  it campaigned to Nigerians ahead of that year’s  election. As part of its work,  it was further mandated  to study the reports of the various National Conferences, especially  that of 2014,  and to come up with appropriate recommendations on restructuring the country for more  effective  governance, and peaceful cohabitation amongst its various ethnic groups.

    It was a very exhaustive, and painstaking work, at the end of which it came up with very helpful, country- cohering recommendations on things like the creation of state police, introduction of fiscal federalism which would have given the states more financial teeth, rather than their monthly pilgrimages to Abuja for the ever dwindling handouts.

    Others included rejigging the constitution to have some powers devolved to states, enshrine, once again, the Derivation  principle, change the unitary legal system to one that is more applicable to a democracy and, among others, grant sole authority to states on Local Government administration.

    So excited with the recommendations was then Governor  Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State and some Niger – Delta groups  that the  governor publicly commended the APC for what he called “its far reaching recommendations”,  adding that “the recommendations had further strengthened the agitations for true federalism  and resource control in the Niger Delta”; all this while expressing the hope that APC would be sincere in the report’s implementation.

    Unfortunately, President Buhari’s position on restructuring which he explained, as quoted below, killed off all the hopes. I refer to  an interaction between  President Buhari and Abraham Ogbodo, a Guardian reporter, as reported in the newspaper on 29 May, 2016.

    Asked if he would go back to the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference, President Buhari answered: “No, I don’t want to tell different stories. I advised against the issue of National Conference. You would recall that ASUU was on strike then for almost nine months”. “The teachers in the tertiary institutions were on strike for more than a year, yet that government had about N9billion to organise that meeting (National Conference) and some (members) were complaining that they hadn’t even been paid. I never liked the priority of that government on that particular issue, because it meant that what the National Assembly could have handled was handed to the Conference while the more important job of keeping our children in schools was abandoned”. “That is why I haven’t even bothered to read it or ask for a briefing on it and I want it to go into the so-called archives”.

    Again, I hold firmly to the belief that President Buhari neither owns, nor equates to APC.  His opinions should, therefore, be regarded strictly as his.

    Finally, this ever reverberating charge of Tinubu ‘inflicting Buhari on Nigeria’, a charge that literally drives opposition to him mostly in the Southwest. You would  hardly believe that it was Nigerian voters, not Tinubu, who gave Buhari 15,424921 votes in the 2015 presidential election. By a long stretch, and without a scintilla of doubt, APC’s Tinubu – Shettima ticket is, demonstrably, the most qualified team going into the 2023 election when practical, demonstrated management of human affairs is the focus as Nigerians saw when both were the governors of their respective states as mentioned already.

    As their campaign will  copiously demonstrate, a country on its belly, as Nigeria presently is, needs nothing more, or less, than the warrior pair of Tinubu and Shettima to see it through the tough days ahead. Tinubu completely re-engineered  Lagos at a time when former president Obasanjo said no human being, in his right senses, would live there, just as Shettima performed wonders in a Borno state at war,  at a time when a coterie of PDP presidents were at sixies and sevens, as Boko Haram descended on the Northeast.

    Without the slightest of doubts, Tinubu and Shetimma are divinely made for post Buhari Nigeria.

     

  • 2023: Tinubu’s twelve transgressions (Part 1)

    2023: Tinubu’s twelve transgressions (Part 1)

    “The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it” – George Bernard Shaw.

    In last week’s edition of the “Followership Challenge”, Malaysia was the focus with the accompanying leadership lessons Nigeria can adapt or adopt. The columnist is commencing this week’s edition with another episode relevant to the title of this article that took place in Malaysia. With the exception of my first son who was not in Malaysia when my family was sojourning in that Asian nation, all my family members were with me in that country. All my three daughters having started education in Nigeria, continued in Singapore where the official language is English, but in Malaysia where the language of instruction in both primary and secondary schools remains Malay, there was no way to be in public school except the high paying private schools which this columnist could not afford coupled with his postgraduate fees as a PhD student. Lest I forget, it is good to mention for enlightenment purposes, that Malaysia being a commonwealth country still retains English in tertiary institutions with Malay option for citizens who so desire. In essence, all my three daughters were doing home schooling from an online school in the USA. This was as far back as 2010. Why this story? One day, I checked the Facebook page of my eldest daughter, and in there, she described her education status as “complicated”. I was both upset and unsettled. This situation was so until there was a divine intervention that made a way for her to return to Nigeria, attended a private secondary school in Lagos and ultimately passed her West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE). This was before I concluded my postgraduate study in Malaysia. She was admitted to do pre-degree at Babcock University, Ilisan, Ogun State. I concluded my PhD study and returned to Nigeria and God’s providence again came through for her, and she headed for the United Kingdom (UK) to study law. She ended with a 1st class degree in a reputable UK university! This is the actual journey of my eldest daughter. Today, if you ask her about her secondary school days, definitely, she would not be as elated or enthusiastic as someone that passed out from the famous Government College, Ibadan; King’s College, Lagos; Barewa College, Zaria; Christ School, Ado Ekiti; Christ the King College, Onitsha; Oyemekun Grammar School, Akure, etc.

    The Transgressions of Tinubu

    The war against Tinubu’s emergence as presidential candidate of his party, the All-Progressives Congress (APC), did not just start today. It is like the Yoruba proverbial parlance: “a juwon o se wi lejo, ija ilara ko tan boro” (meaning: one is superior to another person is not usually expressed in complaint or court case, even as a strife due to envy is not easily settled). In the light of this, there are some that have been keenly following his trajectory, and have been edged out or shuffled aside whilst beholding the towering height of the titanic and enigmatic Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. They are poised and positioned poignantly to take their pound of flesh back in desperately distracting, denigrating, disparaging and derailing his ascension to the throne. Of course, there was a vehement and vociferous voice against his emergence, with display of diverse rigmarole in the ruling party, until the Jagaban Borgu surmounted all the hurdles and finally emerged as the APC flagbearer. It was like a proverbial cat with nine lives! In the perspective of this columnist, having perused the political permutations and projections of some pundits, the following are twelve itemized transgressions of Tinubu that his strident opponents have against his candidacy for the prestigious office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria:

    1. Certificate sage: Much has been written and said about his education. Typical of the introductory story of this piece, it could indeed be complicated but candidly he emerged as one of the best in both Richard J. Daley College and Chicago State University, both in the United States of America (USA), even though the route was rocky and rough. However, it could not be controverted that he graduated from these two institutions. These two institutions have attested to his completion of education and meritorious graduation.
    2. Birth and Upbringing: The circumstances of some people’s birth in the days of yore could lead to inaccuracy in age determination especially people that were of unlettered parenthood. I remembered the case of a close relative that was involved in age competition with somebody in her hometown. This person’s father was unlettered but there was a maternal uncle in another town who, of his own volition, chose to record dates of birth of all in the nucleus and extended family. Getting to her uncle, she was able to retrieve her accurate day and year of birth. Alternatively, in the days of yore, some people, especially ladies, have a practice of reducing from their real age to prove they are young, virile and versatile. The opponents of Tinubu believe that he was of this latter category. However, it is difficult to prove empirically or with documented evidence of cheating on age basis by this set of people; however, it is a matter of “to thine own self be true!” (Polonius, Shakespeare’s Hamlet).
    3. Tinubu is too old to aspire to be the president: To many, Tinubu is too old and should leave the stage for younger minds. Do these people consider that there is a connection of age with wisdom and some notable world leaders older than BAT have ruled and are still ruling? The list includes but is not limited to former President Donald Trump of USA, the incumbent President Joe Biden of USA and two-time Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mohamad Mahathir. The latter had to be recalled out of retirement to salvage the country from epileptic leadership. Dr. Mahathir became the 7thPrime Minister of Malaysia from May 2018 till March 2020 at the age of 92 years! Mahathir has proved that good wine needs no bush!! To this columnist, it is God Almighty that determines who rules and what time or age. Biblically, David was on the throne at 40; Joseph was there at 30; Abraham, the father of faith was called by God at 75 whilst Moses, the great leader who led Israel out of captivity was called to leadership at a ‘ripe’ age of 80!!!
    4. BAT stellar performance as Governor of Lagos from 1999 to 2007: How was Lagos pre-1999 before the emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) as Governor? This columnist, in reminiscence, could not forget some core and crucial matters spanning 1999 to 2007 within the context of Lagos State while Asiwaju Tinubu was in the saddle as the Governor. The worrisome weight of wastes wantonly pervading Lagos landscape had disappeared; the enfant terrible operations of armed robbers that were later caged and checkmated through sweep and swift security sagacity; the atavistic civil service that was injected with new blood referred to as “Millennium” civil servants who were ICT compliant (some of them pioneered the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST)). Tinubu’s era produced and procured the blueprint for all the succeeding governors to build on. Each did, and has been doing, wonderfully well even to the incumbent, Mr. Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu. Specifically, each of the men in the saddle has substantially enhanced one critical index of governance: the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). Tinubu met the IGR of Lagos as N600 million monthly, raised it to N6.9 billion monthly before handing over to his successor, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN. There is no precedence of this unique inculcation of financial engineering in any state of Nigeria as we speak!
    5. LGA creation and court case to retrieve funds: There was this titanic battle between the erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo and Tinubu over the issue of creation of Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) in Lagos. There were 37 in number and this was in addition to the existing 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs). This resulted in Obasanjo, undemocratically wielding presidential powers in seizing the funds meant for the LGAs of Lagos State. The Tinubu administration went to court and won the case against the Federal Government. Despite the court adjudication, Obasanjo did not yield until the coming of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who ordered, with presidential fiat, the release of withheld Lagos funds.
    6. Many court cases against OBJ’s administration: In an attempt to develop and deepen Nigeria’s nascent democracy, and further interrogate the adoption of federalism, the Tinubu’s administration took the federal government to court and won virtually all the cases. It was seemingly confrontational between Obasanjo and Tinubu that at the occasion of the former’s 78thbirthday celebration, Tinubu was caught unawares when Obasanjo beckoned on him to speak extempore. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu succinctly stated, inter alia: “Each time we disagree on things of principle, I took him to court. One time, as the President, he saw me and said, “You took me to court. We can’t be friends after the court.” And I told him, “I didn’t take you to court, I took the Nigerian President to court.” And he said, “Get out of my way” and I told him, I wouldn’t get out of the way until I get what I want (sic)” (Premium Times, 5th March 2015). Such was the audacity and adroitness of the sagaciously strategic Tinubu, as a democrat, who desires to deepen and develop our nascent democracy that many pillorying and plotting his downfall today are savouring. He was one of the fighters dating back to the military era.

     

    1. Building bridges over the years: It is on record that more than any politician within Nigeria’s context, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has built bridges across the Niger: to the east and north. In the course of this process of nation building, he has offered platforms to others to realize their ambitions while he himself has not stepped forward to contest for any elective post from 2007 till date. He has largely been involved in party building, mentoring and strategizing. It was on record that some within his Yoruba ethnic setting are still accusing Tinubu of fraternizing with the Fulanis especially in selling the candidacy of President Muhammad Buhari to the Yorubas both in 2015 and 2019. The Afenifere was up in arms against Buhari. The Yoruba socio-cultural group was vociferous and vehement, even though historically speaking, of little electoral value as empirically exemplified taking into cognizance both the 2015 and 2019 presidential elections. It is now crystal clear to the politically discerning that Tinubu’s sagacious and savvy strategic steps in building bridges all over Nigeria greatly influenced and impacted his securing the All Progressives Congress’ (APC) presidential ticket in the 2023 election.

    In concluding this piece, it is relevant and rational to saliently and succinctly state that it is like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a strategist is seeing what many could not perceive in the words of an anonymous wise man, who once pontificated: “Everyone has two eyes, but no one has the same view.” It is like the man with a queer eye glasses and branded cap is of the same school of thought with George Bernard Shaw who apparently opinionated: “the moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.” In the second part of this piece, this columnist will touch on the sensitive issue of religiosity and regionalizing the race to Aso Rock and what Tinubu has up his sleeves that his antagonists, mostly on social media, are not visualizing but is vividly visible to him as a savvy, sagacious and strategic statesman. Looking forward to valuable feedback from readers as you keep up your interests in the column.

    John Ekundayo, Ph.D. – Harvard-Certified Leadership Strategist, and also a Development Consultant, can be reached via 08155262360 (SMS only) and drjmoekundayo@hotmail.com

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • At bay in Aso Rock

    At bay in Aso Rock

    These are strange and confounding times in Nigeria. The country is in dire straits. The cloud has darkened over Mr Lugard’s catatonic contraption. A thick pall of depression and despondency hangs about. Enemy nationals lay a mortal siege on the nation on all fronts: military, political, economic and spiritual. Talk of what is known in nautical language as a perfect storm. For the average citizen already trapped in the abyss of hopelessness, it feels like being in a horror movie.

    It is surely a strange horror movie, this one. Brisk and brutal in pace; cruel and creepy in its grisly and bloodcurdling particulars, it could only have been scripted by the wondrously fertile imagination of contemporary Nigerians. Occasionally, the filmic actuality throws a brilliant sop of respite laced with expectations in the direction of the famished populace and they snap it up as an alternative to dying in distress at the consuming cinema or Theatre of termination.

    Otherwise amidst the unremitting tragedy, how do we explain the spectacular triumphs of Nigerians and Nigeria-born citizens in international sports and politics?  Nigeria is a sensational success abroad but a sorry scandal at home. It is as if Nigeria is saying that it is not over until it is over and that the movie has merely reached an interlude and not the dead end. What then is one to make of a horror movie that comes with this strange and unique sense of humour?

    The lead actor and current Taoiseach is himself a character out of the surreal Theatre of Alienation: imperiously detached from tragic realities, gaunt, strange and estranged, with a faraway look of otherworldly fatalism, he is peppered and assailed by a thousand arrows from outraged nationals like a bear at bay. Haunted and hunted, sometimes, the insults get too personal.

    But he is strangely impassive and stoical amidst the raging disorder. He himself has said that he could not wait to get out of the scarifying cross. It is like moaning for political euthanasia. But while all this is going on and in a move that would have made the founding father and Patron Saint of Absurdist Theatre, Eugene Ionesco, cringe with envy, the lead actor took off to another country to give a lecture on security.

    It is a terrifying pit of hellish suffering and abjection out of which everybody is expected to lift himself by the bootstraps. One sometimes pictures the suffering president in the lonely splendour of Aso Rock with all the lights put out in the dead of the night as result of the prevailing insecurity stumbling about until he collides with a snow white apparition. It may well be the lady in the other room looking for a box of matches.

    A ragtag militia made up of assorted ruffians and ragamuffins has apparently put out of business one of the greatest conventional armies thrown up by postcolonial Africa. This is an army whose top commanders had won international plaudits for peacekeeping and heroic derring-do beginning with the old Congo, through the then Tangayika and on to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

    In his military heydays, the great man himself had been known to pursue Idris Deby and his renegade bandits all the way from the shores of Lake Chad to the wretched precincts of their Fort Lamy prefecture. Not even an official remonstration from his then civilian Commander in chief could restrain him.

    But all that has gone up in smokes. It was another country and another army. Nowadays, the insurgents cock a snook at the most sacred sanctuary of the postcolonial state, disrobing it of authority and legitimacy in the process. Against all secular expectations and conventional logic, they even threaten to abduct the head of state and an outspoken governor from their state fortresses. It doesn’t get more sacrilegious.

    If anybody thought that this was a macabre comedy of horrors taken too far, the marauders made good their threats on three fronts.  First, they sacked the Kuje Maximum Security Correctional Facility in a textbook military assault that must have taken months to plan and liberated their impounded confederates.

    Second, they ambushed a forward presidential convoy in a daredevil daylight operation that must have been painstaking in conception and execution. Finally, they mounted a daring frontal attack on the elite presidential guard killing some of its officers and men in the process.

    The Brigade of Guards is the praetorian corps of the state. To subject its officers and men to this kind of cruel demystification by an irregular outfit exposes the nation’s vulnerabilities in a shocking and dramatic manner. It is bound to be consequential with far-reaching multiplier effects.

    Not unexpectedly, the coordinated intimidation of state actors has brought a climate of fear and trembling to the capital, threatening to turn Abuja into a ghost city. Schools are closed. Places of worship are deserted. Market people abandon their stalls completely when they are not forced to close early. Office workers stay back at home.

    According to observers, even the posh and glitzy hotels that litter the picturesque Abuja landscape now wear a forlorn and furtive look of apprehension. This is as close to an apocalypse unfolding as it will ever get. The entire apparatus of the state wears a helpless and paralysed look, like a rabbit demobilized by terror and fear at the mere sight of a predator snake.

    Arguably the greatest casualty in all this is the national assembly which has been forced to close shop due to the fear of being overrun and captured by insurgents.  For the first time in the history of the post-military Fourth Republic, the nation’s highest legislative body has succumbed to palpable fear with members scampering to the safety of their ethnic redoubts.

    In a rather melodramatic manner, a fear stricken member was heard urging colleagues to flee the federal capital post haste and not to leave anything to chance. And then abandon their famous oversight duties? Abi nkankan nse  man yi ni? Is there something wrong with the young man? Who will then act as the overseer of the unsightly?  Having discovered the true weight of weightlessness, they are not about to leave anything to chance or to murderous chancers for that matter.

    But you cannot plant cassava and expect to harvest yam tubers. The return of the native is neither assured nor paved with a heroic passage. The IPOB which has become the non-state law-giver in the eastern corridor has let it be known that they are not welcome anywhere in the east unless they return with their idol, the combustible and tempestuous Nnamdi Kanu.

    It is an order much taller than the diminutive hell raiser himself. If the horror movie does not lurch into real tragedy at this point, it doesn’t get more horrifically comic than this, with state functions taken over by anti-state actors. The state looks on bitter bemusement and complete befuddlement. Even the mightiest army can only fight on restricted fronts and not an open-ended theatre.

    Should the legislators be tempted to wander farther into the South South corridor, let them be informed that Mujaheed Asari Dokubo is already rumbling with intent. Anybody who has seen the viral video of the old Riverine war-lord, dressed like a pre-colonial plutocrat of the creeks and surrounded by men armed to the teeth with military grade weapon, will surmise that he has resumed hostilities in full force.

    It is a perilous moment for the post-colonial state in Nigeria. Before now, the word out there was that, feeling the heat, Asari has fled and relocated abroad to a neighbouring country where he started a university. But for him to return at this point to resume hostilities shows that he is sensing that the balance of forces might have slipped away from federal agency.

    On a lighter note, yours sincerely spent several nights together with Asari on the campaign trail in the old Ondo Province about a decade ago. Amiable, easy-going and reticent to a point of shyness, Asari does not give much away about his past in the creeks. It is only when you took another glance at his formidable rippling biceps that you knew that they were meant for other exertions beyond his daily consumption of huge wraps of eba and other nocturnal victuals of the amatorial variety.

    The Nigerian postcolonial state is buffeted and assailed on all fronts to the point of a possibility of multiple organ failure. General Buhari has repeated ad nauseam his heartfelt desire to go back to his cows in Daura.

    Whatever the current universal disappointment with his performance in office, the fiery denunciations and angry call out by affronted nationals, it is in the enlightened self-interest of the fractious political elite to help him achieve his desire. The alternative is a catastrophic state collapse which will imperil the nation, the West African corridor and the Black race in general.

    Nigeria has arrived at a perilous conjuncture and we must avoid cutting our nose to spite our face. This was how it began in the Congo, in Somalia and in Biafra. Even if we agree to part ways eventually, it cannot be done under the current atmosphere of anomic state duress. It can only lead to the epoch of bandit warlords. This is what is already playing out in Zamfara State. It is the return of Mlungu, as the dying Chaka warned his regicidal half-brothers.

    It is said that when you find yourself in a hole, you must stop digging. The government has been digging furiously. It is an open ditch which will consume everybody. Here are three urgent things the general from Daura must do to avoid a cataclysmic upending of the nation and his dream of going back to his cattle in peace.

    First, we urge him once again to take a harder second look at his cabinet and do the needful. As it is, the Federal Executive Council is a dead-end and a den of deadbeats. Many of his appointees no longer inspire hope or confidence. They are tired and stressed and have nothing more to contribute beyond marking time and waiting for the appointed hour to go home.

    Second, the president must urgently consider the desirability of appointing one of his most competent and trusted aides to serve as coordinator and driving spirit of the Transition Programme as well as his own political disengagement .This will serve not only to energise the dynamics of power transmission but it will also dispel the dark rumours and insinuations of a hidden agenda to scuttle the entire transition at some point. As we have noted on this page before, a lack of a sense of an ending is the veritable Achilles’ heel of Africa’s postcolonial rulers.

    Finally, General Buhari must look into the possibility of convening a conference of former and current military commanders as well as top echelons of the intelligence community to brainstorm about the terrorist scourge that is threatening to overwhelm the nation and the way forward. In the age of asymmetrical warfare, the military needs to boost its capacity for thinking out of the box beyond the received opinion in regular military academies and institutions.

    From George Patton, through Ludendorff and Charles de Gaulle, all great military rebel thinkers and paradigmatic philosophers of change often suffer grievously for their temerity and contumely. But with time, the old heresies often become the new orthodoxies. Nigeria may be lucky to find one or two of such geniuses lurking in the ranks of its military.

  • Okon and Malam Yisa call in the big whip

    Okon and Malam Yisa call in the big whip

    As stranger events tumble over strange developments and as bizarre enactments of Yahoo governance takes firm precedence over the principles of rigour and rationality on which the modern nation-state is founded, one begins to wonder whether the people of this nation-space will not be entitled to some historic compensation for the cruel joke visited upon them.

    Just as one was digesting the outlandish largesse by the government to General Buhari’s ancestral cousins in a foreign land, reports came that the federal authorities have characterised the ambush of the convoy of a serving Assistant Inspector General in which the orderly lost his life as a calculated act of intimidation by non-state actors.

    A few days earlier following on the threat by bandits to abduct the president and one outspoken governor, Malam Belo Yabo,  a fearless Muslim cleric from Sokoto, had urged the terrorists to make good their threat without any further delay. Yabo had in addition urged them to make sure they gave the president, a former two-star general, a good roasting on his lean and impertinent buttocks.

    Oh boy! Oh boy!!!!! The very thought of the stiff and ramrod-straight good old general from Daura crying for mercy as the crazed terrorists lay it deep in his back.  Something new always comes out of Africa indeed. Africans have taken the nation-state paradigm to new dimensions.

    This is probably the first time in the history of the post-Westphalia nation-state, a paradigm of benevolent terror rooted in refined violence and calculated intimidation of the citizenry, that state actors appear to be at the complete mercy of non-state actors. At this rate, the European masters may be forced to recall their defective franchise due to its epic malfunctioning in Nigeria.

    It was at this point of deep rumination that actual reality sought to upstage fiction once again in their never-ending duel in Nigeria. Okon suddenly barged in wearing a sheepish smile and carrying a huge bundle of fresh atori whip like a devotee of some ancient masquerade. He was immediately joined by a huge, Dervish-looking man straight out of Nubian Sudan. He was carrying a bigger bundle of heavy-duty whips of all shapes and sizes.

    Snooper jumped up in fright as the man set down the bundle and began screaming: “Ina dogo….Ina dogo….Ina dogo??”

    “Okon, who is this?” yours sincerely screamed at the mad boy.

    “Ha oga dis one na Malam Metumbi  Pandogari from Niger State”, the crazy boy retorted.

    “And what is he saying?” snooper shouted.

    “Him dey ask for dem tall one, dem very tall man”, Okon sneered.

    “In my house?  Meaning what?” one raved in fear and apprehension.

    “Ha oga dem mala get kontrat make him supply bread, bullet and better bilala to dem Zamfara bandits. Naim I come dey help am”.  At this point, the other man opened with a sinister hiccup.

    “Megida, I kukuma get am for all size. Won’na na for dem Yaro Gomina for Kaduna, dis one na for dem big senate fresident, dis one na for dem speaker, dis one na for thief whip and dis na for Babangida. Walahi, I go frog am well well”, the man rumbled as he pointed to the various sizes.

    “But Babangida is no longer there,” one protested.

    “Ha oga, babangida dey mean master for house”, the mad boy sniggered.

    “This thing is no longer a joke”, snooper moaned as one back-heeled to the room.

     

  • Ensuring happy August

    Ensuring happy August

    By the time you’re reading this piece, if you have not extended Happy New Month greetings to anyone for August, someone must have done so to you personally, on the phone or online.

    The new month greeting is an extension of the old Happy New Year we were used to years ago that is usually accompanied by new year resolutions.

    Someone once told me that a Happy new month greeting is peculiar to Nigeria. I’m not sure how true the claim is, but I won’t be surprised if it is and I don’t really have any problem with it.

    We live in times when we need lots of best wishes and prayers to be optimistic, not only about the future, the next day, week and month. So much gloom and doom all over and the best anyone can do is to hope for the best, trusting that all will be well.

    However, beyond being wished a happy new month with accompanying prayers and best wishes, the month can only be a happy one if necessary steps are taken to make it so.

    To have a Happy August and other months this year, you must do the following amongst others:

    *You have to regard it as a new month where all the mistakes of the past must not be repeated. There is a saying that doing the same thing again and again and expecting a change is insanity.

    Even when every other day or month may not seem different from the previous, resolving to regard it as a new opportunity to start all over will make it new.

    *You must be determined to achieve the goals you have set for yourself this year, which you have not done enough to accomplish. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is the extra without which you can’t be outstanding in whatever you do. You must have a can-do spirit and see obstacles as stepping stones to put overdue goals behind you as accomplished.

    *You must stop procrastinating on what you need to do to enhance your life and career. I remember the nursery rhyme; Tick Tick says the clock. What you have to do quick. Every moment counts. The earlier you take charge of your life instead of leaving it to chance, the better.

    *You must reassess your priorities and know what to keep doing and what you should not. To be efficient requires doing the right thing at the right time with a goal in mind. Except you prioritise your priorities you may end up being a jack of all trades, a master of none.

    *You must set a target of what you want to achieve this month with timelines on what you should do to achieve them.

    If you don’t have any target in mind for any goal, with specific details on what to do per time, per day, per week, this month will end before knowing and you will be wondering how time flies. Time waits for no one.

    *You must remember that what you do this month will contribute to whatever you can achieve this year.

    When 2022 is over, your achievements will be a culmination of how much you achieved each month. Make every month count regarding your desires for the year.

    *You must mind the company you keep and be sure they are the ones that can help you achieve your goals and aspirations. The company you keep matters. If they are not those who are going where you have in mind, they may well be extra baggage you need to leave behind in your journey to Dreamland.

    * You must stop wishing and do what you have to do as promptly as possible.

    Planning without taking the necessary steps is a wish. Until you do what you need to do even when you are not sure if you will succeed, you have not started.

    Unless you do the above and other things you need to do during the month, August may not augur well for you and it will make no difference if you wish someone a happy new month or if someone wished you back.

  • Abuja attacks and worst-case scenario

    Abuja attacks and worst-case scenario

    The collapse of security in Nigeria, particularly in the northern part of the country, began unsuspectingly, even incrementally. Few saw it coming on the scale it has manifested. Before he assumed office, President Muhammadu Buhari was thought to have difficulties with managing a modern economy, and perhaps too, a modern and complex society. So, most analysts feared a collapse of the economy years into his presidency, not a collapse of security. The two, sadly, have conflated and are proceeding pari passu, with insecurity having the clear and unassailable upper hand. Indeed, events of the past few weeks have shown how quickly and calamitously a mismanaged economy can precipitate a far greater catastrophe, how quickly things can go from bad to worse, and how in fact the country seems to be peering down the cracked tunnel of an existential end game.

    Last Sunday’s attack on soldiers in Abuja and the follow-up attack at a checkpoint in Zuma, Niger State, close to the Federal Capital City (FCT), have, therefore, stoked fears of a siege residents of the capital city are unused to. The attacks were of course not the first ever on Abuja, but unlike in the past when insurgents and terrorists sneaked upon the city, last week’s attacks were worrisomely audacious, carefully planned, and seemingly presaged a doomsday scenario both for the city and Nigeria. Weeks before these latest attacks, terrorists in other parts of the North, particularly Niger, Katsina and Kaduna States, had given dark hints they were even minded to capture President Muhammadu Buhari himself and Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai. It is unlikely they meant their threat or have the capacity to execute it, but their rampage in the past few weeks till date shows just how much they have grown in confidence and perhaps how subtly they have begun to nurse grandiose political ambitions far in excess of the infantile theocracy they rhapsodised in the early years of Boko Haram.

    Given the cavalier manner the federal government formulated and implemented national policies on immigration with respect to the northern borders and the fatalism with which the administration has resigned itself to the pressures occasioned by the collapse of Libya and other socio-economic dislocations in the Sahel, it was a matter of time before Abuja began to feel the heat. Patriots had warned of the insensitivity of the administration’s immigration policies, its ham-fisted manner of battling militancy and insurgency, its hasty and desultory appeasement of repentant insurgents, and its dangerous flirtations with religion and zealotry, but little was done to arrest the drift. The terrible consequence is that bandits and terrorists have proliferated all over the North, and despite the immense suffering inflicted on the region, conspiracy theories of official collusion with the vicious armed gangs have begun to gain traction. In fact, some southern analysts fear that a vicious but faceless group probably exists in the administration dedicated to fomenting crisis and unrest in order to promote unstated religious and political agenda, including averting power shift.

    Administration spokesmen have repeatedly put the lie to these scary speculations. They insist the government is as worried as any other person or group about the looming chaos, and is doing its ‘best’ to rein it in. They have, however, found new excuses to explain the crisis, including dragging in the Russo-Ukrainian War and the delicate fuel subsidy removal decision the president seems determined not to undertake. But whether internal or external, every factor is fraught with danger. Decades of failure to refine petroleum domestically or curb crude oil theft are examples of internal failures. Undisciplined and quirky approach to macroeconomic policies, not to talk of untrammeled borrowings and untenable debt servicing ratios, has virtually brought the economy to heel. Libya’s collapse and the war in Ukraine merely complicate, not even engender or exacerbate, Nigeria’s economic crisis. Embracing a conservative approach to the country’s urgent political and security crises, instead of administering a radical and farsighted approach, has also meant the postponement, not extirpation, of the factors predisposing Nigeria to anarchy.

    Abuja now seems to be surrounded and vulnerable. The government will do everything possible to lift the ‘siege’, and may even take some radical steps to ameliorate the terrorism wasting the countryside around the capital city and other forests in the north-western part of the country, but it is doubtful whether the plans would be coherent and long-term. Just as witnessed in the Boko Haram war, the government and its military seem strangely unwilling to take the war to the insurgents. Despite spending hundreds of billions of naira in retooling the armed forces, the government has preferred a reactive, largely defensive approach to the wars in the Northeast and Northwest. The terrorists who planned the train attack of March 28 and plotted the July 5 Kuje jailbreak to free their comrades, and are now extorting hundreds of millions of naira from their hostages, are sequestered not too far from Abuja-Niger-Kaduna ‘axis of evil’. They can be accessed by air, by drones, and by road, including bush paths. The terrorists have a wide and impressive but definitely not foolproof communication networks involving humans and technology; yet, the government has incomprehensibly failed to cordon them off to undertake surgical, Special Forces operations. This is why speculations about official collusions are rife, and many Nigerians are beginning to wonder whether the elections would hold; or whether there is no ethnic or religious agenda already unfolding. If the administration does not quickly dispel these speculations, the hysteria might get louder and uncontrollable. But if these fears and speculations are unfounded, then, could the country be confronted with a very bad case of administrative incompetence? Unable to manage the economy or envision a great, stable and progressive society, paralysed in the face of a costly and fractious political system, incoherent in applying the right military doctrines against insurgency and banditry, and unprincipled in promoting a secular constitution, the administration has given the country no reason to hope for a reprieve.

    For the first time in more than a year, doubts are beginning to surface that the country would hold together beyond the year or even conduct a general election early next year. But these doubts should be deplored by everyone. Anarchy does not easily lend itself to neat compartmentalisation. Ask the homogenous Somalia, or the puritanical Afghanistan, or other countries which have had chequered histories through the ages. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senate is angling for impeachment of a president they have written off as incompetent and lethargic in the face of mounting crises. And many others are suggesting a collapse of the old order in order to emplace a new order. If only these outcomes can be neatly midwifed. But the better option is to encourage and help a clearly reluctant and bewildered president overcome the present challenges, ensure a credible election and a new administration next year, and through constitutional reviews and sometimes too, litigations, see whether Nigeria could not be transformed into a federalism closer to national aspiration.

    Abuja is today on a knife-edge, and the rest of the country is consternated. Alarmingly, it seems that the administration is losing control. There are three scenarios many political leaders and commentators are juggling. Firstly, they suggest that the only way to reestablish control is for the administration to declare war on the terrorists and bandits laying the Northwest waste. Specifically, they suggest carpet or saturation bombing to obliterate the enemy and pacify the restive regions and forests, regardless of the collateral damage to hostages, even if the dead hostages number in scores. Here, two outcomes are possible: either the bombings really obliterate the militants and force them to sue for peace, or scatter them and compel them to regroup and rejig their tactics and begin operations from other more impregnable fortresses. Mali’s militants are an example. Either way, the administration and the sometimes flatfooted military and intelligence services will discover that they have to really put boots on the ground, pursue the insurgents to their redoubts, and exterminate them. There is no room for stalemate or a war of attrition.

    Secondly, there are fears that, overwhelmed as it appears to be, the administration might declare a state of emergency or outright emergency rule. Should it take this option, officials will soon discover that the first option is inescapable. They will still use the same troops already available to them, and be forced to determine how best to use force. The administration may get the added ‘benefit’ of suspending or tinkering with the constitution and civil rights, obviously in line with their original desire when they argued years ago that civil rights should be subordinated to national security, but they may then discover that they will be opening the gates of hell from which retreat may be impossible. They could in fact find themselves contending with the possibility of another ‘hijack’ of the administration by a more sinister cabal even while the president is still in office and the indefinite prolongation or abandonment of the ongoing transition – quite like working from a nefarious answer to a malevolent question.

    Thirdly, there are suggestions that the current crises could inspire a military takeover. There may be sections of the political, military and business elite who have lost out and who may not be averse to such a cataclysmic alternative. Not only will this option damage and corrupt the ongoing, albeit imperfect, democratic experience, there is nothing to suggest that the military elite is any different from the existing political elite. They are the same: interwoven, prehensile, visionless and, as a few countries in West Africa are showing, unreliable and even more inept. This option is so thoughtless that it would be surprising if any sensible democrat and patriot contemplates it at all, even as a ploy to continue hegemonic rule. That the Buhari administration has been unable to grapple with the country’s problems is no longer in doubt. That it allowed sinister cabals seize control of the administration and exploit it for ethnic and religious reasons is also not in doubt. The only option left that makes sense is what this column recommended two Sundays ago, when it called for the ruling party and APC leaders to rally round the president to help him over the finishing line. (See box). If the president is not to welcome doomsday scenario, he should invite that help now before it is too late.

    Buhari needs all the help he can get

    First published here on July 17 under the headline “Buhari’s unsettling eagerness to go”, this piece is repeated today for its relevance

    For most presidents anywhere in the world, constitutional term limit is a hindrance to their work and vision. Either the term limit is too short for their ‘world-changing’ visions or the powers and privileges of office are too tempting. But in the case of President Muhammadu Buhari, he can’t wait to go. He had achieved two terms as elected president, and that achievement is deeply satisfying. Barely a year or so after winning a second term, he had seemed already contented as a leader, and could hardly wait for the next three years to come and go quickly. When a few people suggested there was a conspiracy to get him tenure elongation, this column had sworn that any conspiracy, if it really existed on the scale some observers had insinuated, would amount to nothing in the face of the president’s determination to go. He may not always be a man of his word, susceptible as many people now know him to be to egregious modifications of promises, colourful prejudicies and even alternative truths, but on the issue of third term or the kind of tenure elongation ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo gave vent to in 2006/2007, President Buhari was unalterably opposed.

    He was and still remains pristine and genuine on the subject of respecting term limits. He is unlikely to quibble over it. His basic instinct, though sometimes overwrought, rejects anything politically complicated and devious; and as everybody knows, the issue of third term or elongated tenure is truly complicated. It addles wits and tasks the strongest and bravest of men to their limit. It is a credit to the president that right from the outset, third term never crossed his mind, not even when, as presidential spokesman Garba Shehu recently insinuated, tenure elongation conspirators shuffled their pampered feet around him. Analysts may suspect why he seems dead set against third term, including reasons connected with his health and the overweening dependence on other people’s brains to navigate complex policies and ideas, but in the end the country may have to accept his reasons for respecting term limit. As he put it last Monday when he received APC governors, legislators and political leaders who visited him on Sallah Day, “I am eager to go. I can tell you it has been tough. I am grateful to God that people appreciate the personal sacrifices we have been making. By this time next year, I would have made the most out of the two terms, and the remaining months I will do my best.”

    The president really never contemplated third term. He is more anxious to complete his second term than seek for an extension of dubious benefit, as he confessed last month in Rwanda when he sneered at his predecessor whose unconstitutional machinations ensured he ‘didn’t end well’. But in those Sallah remarks are indicants of worrisome and hardly altruistic reasons for his eagerness to end his tenure and return to Daura, his hometown. When he suggests that the job of president is tough, it implies that many factors, including his age, health and education probably circumscribe his capacity to handle the job with the aplomb that should make it either easy or at least exciting and challenging to accomplish. Even his plaintive declaration that he would do his best in his remaining 11 months was suffused with hesitation. There was no conviction in his promise to ‘make the most out of his two terms’ or ‘to do his best’. In sum, his Sallah remarks indicate someone who has virtually given up. This is where the danger lies.

    The next 10 to 11 months are fraught with a lot of dangers and difficulties. Apart from the elections and the bad-tempered campaigns preceding them, the economy is in a tailspin, while hunger, anger and violence are rife and festering. Banditry is laying much of the country waste, and ISWAP/Boko Haram terrorism has caused massive dislocations in the North. No part of the country is safe from kidnappers, cultists and highway robbers. The Ukraine-Russia war has worsened everything, depleted national savings, pummeled exchange rate, and caused inflation rate to soar through the roof. Yes, these issues are tough for the most consummate of presidents to tackle, let alone one just marking time, but the times call for the president to go beyond doing his best to positively believing in himself and confessing his capacity to tackle the crises. The next few months, even to the most optimistic, can quickly turn nasty and revolutionary, as Sri Lanka has shown, and developed economies have exhibited as they fray at the edges. With no enduring structures or constitutional and institutional ramparts, not to say workable policies to address the crises, situations can quickly deteriorate.

    The president’s Sallah comments to the visiting governors are certainly not good enough. They do not inspire confidence that Nigeria would survive the testy times ahead. This is where the ruling party and party leaders must step in. The APC must rally round the president to help him, for mercifully, the situation has not spiralled out of control. Perhaps the president still misses the late Abba Kyari, his former chief of staff, while the cabals around him, which had for long retained a menacing vice-grip on his presidency, have overreached themselves and have become less potent than in earlier years. APC stakeholders must gently coax the president to take far-reaching decisions on the economy, ASUU strike, epileptic power supply and irrational billing, anti-terrorism war which can be ended swiftly if the political will exists, and other crises which are still amenable to control and amelioration. The past few months have witnessed a lot of governmental lethargy and desultory policies. If the country is to transcend these perilous times and hold elections as scheduled, the presidency and the ruling party must reestablish control and give a sense of direction and purpose. The president’s comments do not give confidence that his administration plans to do that. But it can be done if in his final stretch he yields to better, deeper and more inclusive instinct to stabilise and propel the country into the right orbit.

  • Nasarawa’s Gov Sule revisits APC presidential primary

    Nasarawa’s Gov Sule revisits APC presidential primary

    No remark has been as poignant in recent years as the one made by Nasarawa State governor Abdullahi Sule when he held a meeting with all his political appointees in Lafia, the state capital, last week. Mr Sule, like his predecessor Umar Tanko Al-Makura (2011-2019), is widely acknowledged as brilliant and eloquent. It was, therefore, not surprising that his remarks at the said meeting exuded a touch of finesse and irony, a clear indication that he is much deeper than many think, and that he pays a lot of attention to forming his thoughts, and pays even greater attention to accompanying his public statements with all the literary flourish he can muster. He may be underreported because of the geopolitical positioning of his state, but he does not seem deterred by any geographic or political inconvenience in continuously upping his game, and when the opportunity sometimes present itself, to put up a class act.

    Observe his remarks very closely when he made reference to the presidential primary of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). It was clear that there were questions as to the excessive drama that accompanied the primary, particularly the dissonance among northern governors, and the allegations that consciences were bought and sold before and during the event. Addressing the subject boldly and frontally, Mr Sule had said in respect of the conflict between the northern governors in determining which aspirant to support: “As governors, they were not carried along that the Northern part of the country is trying to present a candidate who is going to be the presidential candidate.” He did not try to put a gloss on the disagreement between the northern governors; he acknowledged that there were two factions backing two distinct positions: one for power shift, and the other for power retention. He of course belongs to the former, a testament to the character, courage and public resolve of his faction, and ultimately of the North.

    He added, in his speech, that power shift was needed to protect the image of the North, so that it would not be seen as unreliable and greedy. Again, as he put it: “And we said we were not carried along. A few of the governors got together and said it’s time for us to speak up, so that we would not be taken for granted. We said let’s go and speak to our leader, because Mr. President is the leader of the party. He is somebody we respect. Sometimes, he will say certain things, even if we don’t like it, because he is the leader, and that’s what he wants, we follow…We don’t want the northern part of the country to be seen as people who don’t keep promises. We want the North to be seen as a region that can make sacrifices for other parts. We believe in fairness. We believe this position should rotate to the South, irrespective of who emerges.”

    So, apart from plotting the defeat of the power retention faction, Mr Sule’s statement is suggestive of how delicately nuanced he can be. He acknowledged that his faction met the president, but declined to tell his Nasarawa audience all they discussed with their leader. He was being diplomatic. It is now known that the president was unhelpful in the matter, as he left the convoluted matter entirely to the governors’ discretion, though they had come to him for a solution. To the credit of the faction that embraced power shift, they took the bull by the horns and, virtually the night before the primary, aggressively pushed for change. And as Mr Sule disclosed, the faction took no kobo. Indeed, as he put it, he was not aware anyone, members of both factions, took anything. It is not clear whether Mr Sule emphasised the nobility of purpose of the northern group for a reason, but judging from how the presidential ticket was traded across regions in the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it must make special meaning to him and to his audience that the North neither asked for nor got a kobo from any of the APC candidates. Without saying so, he left it to the media to find out if the South asked for and received any kobo.

    The North may have been initially factionalised in the APC presidential primary struggle, but in the end, despite the twist and turns that began nearly a year earlier, the region behaved nobly. One good turn, Mr Sule had hinted, deserved another. His perspective does not paint him as a regional aberration. The APC presidential running mate, Kashim Shettima, is also widely acknowledged in the North and parts of the South as secular, liberal and a deft manager of men. He proved himself in Borno State at the apogee of the Boko Haram insurgency, a foundation his successor, Babagana Zulum is building upon to wide acclaim. Besides the three governors, Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai is also acknowledged as brilliant and visionary, despite his penchant for impatience, acerbity and sometimes promotion of Fulani exceptionalism. On the whole, the decisiveness with which the APC North rose to the defence of fairness and equity should be envied by their southern counterparts. When the time comes, years down the line, their deed will be remembered.

    Shettima unveiling and CAN controversies

    Instigated by Nigeria’s feral and self-righteous social media, the country went into overdrive in ridiculing the APC and the ‘bishops’ the ruling party invited to grace the unveiling of their presidential running mate, Kashim Shettima, more than a week ago. The party had been enveloped in controversy over its decision to contest the 2023 presidential poll with a Muslim-Muslim ticket. It was suggested that the APC’s attempt to mitigate the negative impact of the ticket led to its ‘hiring’ the ‘bishops’. It was, however, conveniently ignored that none of the attendee clerics declared himself a bishop nor claimed to represent the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). But once the social media labeled the pastors inappropriately, including unilaterally assigning them artisanal titles, the pejorative labels stuck. The public simply concluded that the clerics were impostors, against whom a livid CAN was decidedly profane.

    The clerics at the unveiling, none of whom was a well-known televangelist, had of course come out to defend themselves and set the records straight. But the public had made up its mind. Armed with skits, clerihew, and playlets, the APC has been skewered on social media and radio and television programmes. The controversy showed the inimical power of the social media. Once they latch on to a narrative, often negative, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to redress. The embattled clerics had collectively told the press: “Our decision to attend the event was neither procured nor compelled; rather, we chose, freely, to attend due to our sincere and genuine desire to express our goodwill and lend our support to a man whose tenure as the governor of Borno State heralded unprecedented government support for the Christian faith in the region. We have a strong belief in his nomination. A leader’s faith is not, and should never be, the only marker of their ability to lead an inclusive government that respects and protects the interests of all, while also preserving their rights.”

    The controversy and the gross misrepresentation will soon blow over, but the scars will remain for a while. More importantly, the role played by social media in the matter should alert the public to the dangers of generalisation and stigmatisation.

  • Leadership lessons: my Malaysia mission

    Leadership lessons: my Malaysia mission

    Do you believe in dreams? This columnist wants to state succinctly that there is power in dreams! He was once residing in a town called Keffi, now Nasarawa State, that used to be part of old Plateau State, Nigeria. There was this night. He had a dream. In it, he saw the world map spread before him. In a jiffy, it was like applying a magnifying glass as the Asia continent came into focus, and finally fixated on a location with the name: MALAYSIA. Waking up from the dream early in the morning made this columnist look for the world map to know what was the exact location of the country called Malaysia. He discovered the country on the map and at the first attempt of sending a letter to Singapore, a neighbouring country, this columnist was told by the postal official that the location is within a region referred to as the Far East as contrasted to United Arab Emirate (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Qatar being in the Middle East. As the dream was coming to pass, his first trip to Singapore, on board Ethiopia’s Airline, took this columnist from Lagos through Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), through Bangkok (Thailand), and finally disembarked at Changi Airport, Singapore. He arrived in the island city-state-nation of Singapore on the 7th of June 2005. It took about four years later to move to Malaysia to commence his PhD research study in Kuala Lumpur, the ancient capital of Malaysia.

    Social and religious life

    Malaysia is an Islamic country with a difference of freedom to practice your own religion with strict guidelines that no religious sect, not even extreme or radical Islamic clerics or scholars dare go against. The social life in the country is attractive with tourists pouring in daily to both West and East Malaysia exploring the business, entertainment, academic, media, leisure, food and beverage of the south east Asia country. The Internal Security Act (ISA) of 1960, potent as if it was just promulgated, is strictly enforced by the government while activities of all religious sects are closely monitored. Errant scholars or preachers are liable to summary arrest and detention without trial; the detention period is open ended and expiration can only be determined by the government. The ISA is stridently criticized by most public and political affairs analysts, however, over the years, successful governments refused to bulge in amending or throwing away the act. However, during the era of erstwhile the 6th Prime Minister, Najib Razak, in responding to public appeal, replaced and repealed the ISA with Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012. The Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012, (abbreviated SOSMA), is still seen by many as controversial as the atavistic ISA even though the government intention is “to provide for special measures relating to security offences for the purpose of maintaining public order and security and for connected matters.” SOSMA was approved in Parliament on 17th April 2012, given the Royal Assent on 18th June 2012 and Gazetted on 22nd June 2012. This is the distinguishing difference in Malaysia enjoying religious freedom and peace when compared with neighbouring countries in Asia such as Indonesia and Thailand. This columnist while residing in neighbouring Singapore usually visits Malaysia to savour the diversity in culture and social life as Malaysia is largely made up of the Malays (dominant and mostly Muslims), Chinese and Indians. Interestingly, Malaysians are gracious to Africans especially Nigeria with a sense of history that Nigeria was a brother country that helped them out during her economic crisis dating back to the 70s. This columnist was told by an elderly person that during the Gowon era, as the military Head of State, Nigeria helped Malaysia financially. Those were the days of yore when Nigeria’s problem was not money but what to do with the money! What a lagging, lackadaisical and laidback leadership ethos!! Has anything changed with accidental leaders, at state and national levels, being foisted or hoisted upon the psyche of the country, Nigeria?

    Agribusiness: Discovering economic livewire of a country

    Malaysia connected with Nigeria early after the latter’s independence with a friendly fraternity that made some Malaysians, years after, to undertake an ethnographic study tour of Nigeria. It was at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), situated in the ancient city of Ibadan, that the oil palm was introduced to the Malaysians. According to the story line, knowing that Malaysia and Nigeria are situated within the same tropical region, off they went with the oil palm seed to their country. The rest is history as people say! It is instructive to pinpoint that palm oil is the most produced, consumed and traded edible oil globally accounting for virtually 40% of the supply of the top four popular edible oils, namely: palm oil, rapeseed oil (canola), soybean oil, and sunflower seed oil. Having seen and savoured the economic benefits, it is significant to state that almost 70% of arable land of Malaysia is devoted to oil palm plantation. By the year 2020, palm oil derivatives – value chain – constituted almost 38% of the agricultural output of Malaysia, contributing 3% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)!

    There was an eye-opening encounter that this columnist and his wife had while sojourning in that south east Asia nation. He, together with his wife, was taken to the country side of Malaysia to oil palm plantations. It was a memorable experience as this columnist saw from the seedlings to the nursery beds to the plantations the process of growing, nursing, nurturing to maturity the oil palm fruits. The duo was briefed by our tour guide, how an Indonesian professor developed a species of oil palm seed that grows and matures within 24 months! Yes. The duo was taken to the plantations having this species. The species does not grow tall with age but rather grows with a wider trunk producing up to 5 to 6 fruits per head at maturity! It is simply and squarely amazing!! This columnist was keen and zealous to sell this idea to a state government in Nigeria then, but the process could not reach fruition possibly due to bureaucratic bottleneck or lack of passion for agribusiness. That was way back in 2010. It was unfortunate that Nigeria could not replicate simple but salient practices that could benefit the country but believe in short term processes, especially the ones involving procurement and contracting. Leaders at the subnational and national levels in Nigeria need to know that countries that are consistently rated high grow through robust and rigorous preparation, planning, production, processing and packaging. In addition, such nations explore and exploit research and development initiatives inculcating innovation and creativity taking cognizant of strategic uncertainties with the underlying notion that the only thing that is permanent is change.

    Lessons Learnt

    In the emerging field of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL), “Lessons Learnt” is a key component that bespeaks of the learning leg. In it, development scholars and professionals review or revisit the whole gamut of the monitoring and evaluation process to decipher: What works? What does not work? Why does it not work? In concluding this piece fixating on social and religious life vis-à-vis the agribusiness in Malaysia with particular attention to oil palm value chain, one wonders why leaders in Nigeria fail to replicate easy concepts and ideas from other climes? If our leaders could not wholly replicate, could not they adapt by gleaning and learning from others who are doing well in certain areas? In management studies, if you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, it is referred to as insanity! Nigeria has lots of natural and human resources to turn our fortunes around. Is it not true that many research studies that would have turned Nigeria around are mere paper tigers gathering dust on shelves of research institutes and universities nationally? Who will deliver us from ourselves in Nigeria? Here we are in this digital age of the 21st century still haggling and arguing about herdsmen-farmers clash, open grazing, mixing politics with ethno-religious connotations, religious extremism, etc. It is even saddening and sickening that religious extremism, allowed to fester so much having been treated with kid gloves by the government, not just the Buhari’s, has now snowballed into hydra-headed banditry cum terrorism. Can we glean and learn from Malaysia which exploited one stroke of the act of parliament with the executive endorsement thus erasing and eradicating any trace of religious violence within the nooks and crannies of the country despite constitutionally being an Islamic country? Nigeria, constitutionally, is a secular state and yet enmeshed and entwined with lots of ramshackle religious regurgitation. When are we going to get a leader at the centre who will consign religion to the privacy of our hearts and homes like in such countries such as Singapore and Malaysia? It is only through this way we can thrive as a country. Imagine Malaysia coming to Nigeria to be indoctrinated about producing oil palm and then rising overtime to becoming one of the leading nations globally in oil palm production. In fact, Indonesia is leading in oil palm production globally while being trailed by Malaysia. However, the real truth is that Malaysia is still leading! How? Indonesia has cheaper labour and land. Malaysia exploited or took advantage of these “richness” of Indonesia and oil palm investors from Malaysia invaded Indonesia with huge investments. This singular act is responsible for Indonesia leading the world oil palm production. One other comparable advantage is that Indonesia, the 4th most populous country globally, has one of the largest land mass in Asia. In essence, production of oil palm is likely to keep growing competitively between these countries without another close contender within the next decade! As we look towards 2023, can Nigeria leaders glean and learn from nations like Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia?

    • Ekundayo, Ph.D. can be reached via 08155262360 (SMS only) and drjmoekundayo@hotmail.com

  • Bird’s eye view of Tinubu roadmap to Nigerian greatness

    Bird’s eye view of Tinubu roadmap to Nigerian greatness

    The starting point for every presidential aspirant should be the appreciation that disaster looms in Nigeria. It is a nation on crutches. It worsened the other day when bandits, or was it Boko Haram elements looked President Muhammadu Buhari in the eye, figuratively speaking, and  said they will kidnap, not just him, but together with a serving state governor and bring them straight into the bush where they had then  just finished giving the remaining 43 victims of the Abuja – Kaduna train kidnap they have held for over 100 days,  the beating of their lives.

    What made it worse was that many days after,  according to the equally threatened governor El Rufai of Kaduna State, the president was still unaware of the gratuitous insult. Nigerians  are going through a lot of trauma. Unfortunately, insecurity is only one of the many demons tormenting the soul of the country. The economy lies prostrate as epitomised by the fact that we spend about 118 percent of our revenue on debt servicing; the Naira is now hardly worth its name just as education, at least at the tertiary  level has been literally  dead for the past 5 months with nearly all the universities shut down.

    All these may not have been for lack of trying on the part of the  Buhari government. Indeed, presidential spokespersons are never tired of saying that the President is doing his best. I think it is time we agree with them but we must let them know that the President’s best has certainly not been enough. While we may concede all the unexpected headwinds – the low oil prices for a considerable length of time, two successive recessions, Covid – 19 and the ongoing Russia- Ukraine war, much more could still have been done and it is safe to say that the government is clearly overwhelmed.

    This past week, however, Ladi Williams, a guest on Channels TV Morning Show, introduced a very brilliant insight into the whole discourse. According to him, the time has come for Nigerians to realise that at about 80, President Buhari is no longer the young Buhari we knew as the fire-eating, non-smiling Nigerian military Head of state of the ‘80s. Therefore, rather than all the criticisms, we should appreciate, and commend the bit he has been able to do. I agree with him. It was also his suggestion that Nigerians must now begin to look more seriously at those individuals angling to succeed President

    Buhari in less than a year. This is what his spokesperson has always told Nigerians, adding for emphasis, that no one government can do it all. So whatever rough edges the president might leave behind, we must now begin to critically look at, not political parties, but rather that individual, who would be most fit for purpose, sorting things out and rebuilding Nigeria.

    That, I must say, drove me to today’s piece. It will bring to the public space again, what one of the three leading presidential candidates, namely, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC has presented to Nigerians as his roadmap to Nigerian greatness.

    Being multi-sectoral, the document’s critical analysis shall be left to those who are competent to do it. All I would do, therefore, is list the key things he promised, while also making some brief comments on the candidate and the two other leading candidates beginning with the redoubtable former Nigerian Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

    Thanks to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigerians now know that almost as soon as Atiku got into office, he, unfortunately, became distracted, plotting to replace him as President. This he said Atiku did because the marabouts who told him that he would be elected governor of his Adamawa State, but would not rule as such, because he would be nominated into a higher office, also told him he would become president, almost without trying. President Obasanjo further said that the dislocation caused by this in government was why Atiku couldn’t achieve much in office, even though Nigerians would, forever, remember that under his direct supervision, national investments worth about $100billion were sold off for less than 20 per cent of the cost.

    President Obasanjo described Alhaji Atiku in his book, in words that are far beyond me to repeat on these pages. The former President also wrote that Atiku “achieved federal character in the manner in which he acquired wives – Yoruba,  Hausa, Fulani and Igbo – Christians among who he, willy nilly, converted to Islam; an aspect in which he differs from Tinubu who is married to a Christian, Oluremi, an Assistant Pastor of the Redeemed Church, to boot.. Concluding on Atiku, President Obasanjo wrote:”And knowing all that I discovered about him, what would have been an unpardonable mistake (that is, after calling making Atiku his Vice a mistake), and sin against God would have been to foist him on Nigeria. My mistake wascontainable and it was contained, “.(quotes excerpted from Olusegun Obasanjo’s Memoirs: My Watch(Part 2) If Atiku was not good enough to lead Nigeria in 2007, Nigerians must now look critically to know if he is the man Nigeria, literally on its knees, needs in 2023. Former Governor Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, would best be remembered for investing Anambra State’s funds in his family business.

    In addition, there is unconfirmed talk of his actions leading to Hausa traders leaving the state for Delta State during his time as Anambra State governor. As the tenure, in public office, of the three leading candidates were contemporaneous, let us then say that this was the same time APC’s Tinubu was laying the foundations of a then absolutely  rustic, refuse – laden Lagos State, to turn it  to the fifth largest economy in Africa. That was the Lagos President Obasanjo described as follows in early 2001, while launching the Global Campaign for Good Urban Governance in Nigeria, as part of a key programme  of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (HABITAT):”Lagos, with its notoriety, qualifies as an urban jungle which should not be inhabited by any sane person.”

    The same Obasanjo would later seize Lagos State Local Government funds in 2005, an action which Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, speaking at the

    Ekiti state’s “Fountain Summit 2021,” said  provided ample opportunity

    for the Tinubu – led Lagos State government “to think like a sovereign state, able to overcome its financial challenges” adding that. “the capacity of the state to rethink its predicament at the time resulted in a huge increase in its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), which is today in the region of N45 billion”

    With a promise that TEAM TINUBU will lead Nigeria “to a new era of economic prosperity, peace, security and political stability,” below is a bird’s eye view of his promise to the nation: To decentralise the police and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs simultaneously.

    To transform Nigeria into an enviable country, where there will be justice, peace, and prosperity for all; a great country, the pride of Africa, is a role model for black people worldwide. To make Nigeria a thriving democracy, with a fast-growing industrial base, capable of producing the basic needs of the people as well as exporting to other countries. To turn Nigeria into a robust economy where prosperity will be shared by all; irrespective of class, region, or religion as well as a safe and secure country with abundant food, affordable shelter, and quality health care for all. A nation founded on justice, peace, and prosperity for all.” He promised to launch a new National Industrial Policy which will focus on special interventions to reinvigorate specific strategic industries.

    He undertook that stimulating jobs will be his top priority as President and that he will launch a major public works program with heavy investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, and agriculture.  His administration, he promised, will build an efficient, fast-growing, and well-diversified emerging economy with a real GDP growth averaging 12% annually for the next four years, translating into millions of new jobs, especially for millions of  Nigerian youths.

    He promised to create six new Regional Economic Development Agencies (REDA) which will establish sub-regional industrial hubs to exploit each zone’s a competitive advantage and optimise their potential for industrial growth. The presidential aspirant also promised to formulate a new National Policy on Agriculture to boost food production. He promised to formulate a new National Policy on Agriculture to boost food production. He promised to promote the establishment of a new commodity exchange boards, while also strengthening the one in Lagos in order to guarantee minimum pricing for agricultural products such as cotton, cocoa, rice, soya beans, corn, palm kernel, and groundnuts.

    On infrastructure, he promised to “Build A New Nigeria (BANN)” by developing a National Infrastructure plan, which will cover strategic roads, bridges, rail, water, power, seaports, and airports, spanning the length and breadth of the country.

    His administration, he promised, will combine government funding, borrowing, public-private partnership, private sector financing and concession to initiate a medium and long-term financial model for the BANN initiative.

    “On Electricity, he promises an action-oriented, and immediate, focus on resolving existing challenges of power generation plants, gas purchasing, pricing, transmission, and distribution.  The administration’s critical goal will have 15,000 megawatts, distributable to all categories of consumers, nationwide to ensure 24/7 sustainable supply within the next four years,” he added.

    On the oil and gas sector, Tinubu said there would be no need for asubsidy because the market will be open and transparent. “Supply will come from local refineries, and the forces of demand and supply will determine the price of petroleum products will establish a National Strategic Reserve for Petroleum Products to stabilize supply during unexpected shortages or surplus periods. This will eliminate any form of product shortages and prevent wild swings in prices. 25 percent of the nation’s budget will go to Education.

    He will continue the free school feeding programme of the APC, feeding “millions of primary school children across the country.” In tertiary education, his administration will eradicate strikes by encouraging the institutions to source funds through grants and corporate sponsorships, with all the institutions granted financial autonomy.

    Like Education, he will increase funding for health care to 10 percent. The National Health Insurance Scheme will be relaunched to grant health insurance cover to most Nigerians.

    Let us all now put the fire to his feet for details and further elucidation as we must do for all the contestants.