The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Dangote on my mind (IV)

Long before refined petroleum products began pouring out of the Dangote refinery, I was sure that whenever that happened, the Nigerian economy was going to receive a massive shot in the arm. I was sure that the refinery was going to change Nigeria, permanently and profoundly. After all, the planned scale of the enterprise was so large that it could take care of local demands. Not only that, it was large enough to have a great deal left over for export. If that was not a game changer, nothing else was going to clinch it. The reality of what has happened in the last two years has however clipped the wings of my soaring expectations, bringing me back to reality with a massive bump.

What I failed to add to my calculation of reality was that whilst opening the refinery was a positive, life changing event for the vast majority of Nigerians, it was bound to be seen in a negative and altogether unwelcome light. After all, a small but all powerful minority were profiting from the chaos which had governed our fuel supply mechanisms for half a century and counting. It is now clear that not taking their reaction into consideration was going to fatally screw up the equation of fuel supply in the country, even as high grade fuel was being produced right here on our shores.

The first indication of reality was that long after the refinery was commissioned, its promised products were not available on the fuel thirsty streets of Nigeria. This was not a spontaneous reaction but a contrived response to the potential availability of enough fuel to drive the nation’s economy. The actors in that area of our economy had decided to deprive our nubile waist of decorative beads in favour of total strangers.

The largest single train refinery in the world stood ready for business but crude oil, its basic raw material, was conspicuously missing. And this was, at least on paper, in a country which was still one of the largest producers of crude oil in the world. One would have thought that all that was required was to allot the required amount of fuel to Dangote in a move that was going to replace the subsidy that we had been told was being paid on every litre of petrol that was consumed in the land. It was soon clear that the NNPC had mortgaged our oil reserves and was in no position to sell oil to Dangote. The refinery was open for business but there was no local crude available, tantamount to our farmers sending their yams to Lagos to earn hard cash whilst subsisting on part of their scraggy cocoyam harvest. Dangote had to go halfway round the world to bring in the crude, large quantities of which were available in his backyard. What economic sense did it make to source for crude in turgid dollars but sell the refined products in flaccid Naira? None at all is the right answer. The Dangote refinery got going at last but the cost of buying petrol in Nigeria was hardly dented as it competed with rotten dollar denominated fuel which was still being bought in strange lands and imported into Nigeria. The leeches which had been sucking us dry for several decades, ignoring the evidence of their eyes, were insistent in their desire to ensure that it was to be business as usual. They were able to do this because they had friends in high places. After Dangote was denied the benefit of access to local crude, some standards organisation, without the benefit of any analytical instrumentation declared with faux authority that the fuel produced by Dangote was laden with high concentrations. of sulphur. This was a clear attempt to play on the fears of Nigerians that locally produced materials of any kind were inferior to imported varieties. Dangote, who had the authority of a fully functional laboratory behind him proved them wrong. These difficulties notwithstanding, Dangote began to eat away at the cost of fuel purchased from our forecourts. Availability was also increased to such an extent that fuel queues were consigned to the past. For the first time in fifty years fuel was even available over the Christmas period. To be sure, petrol was still close to five times more expensive in Naira terms than before but the cost was coming down perceptibly in what was turning out to be a win – win situation or, could be if properly managed.

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But, the situation could not be properly managed. When it became apparent that Dangote was getting on top of the situation, news began to filter out that the government owned refineries which had been silently rotting away for a couple of decades, had in the miraculous manner of the deceased Lazarus been brought back to life after the injection of massive amounts of dollars. We were informed that the refineries had undergone various tests which confirmed that they were so close to resuming their functions as to make no difference. It was to be only a matter of a few months or even weeks before Dangote was presented with a worthy competitor thereby preempting the creation of an unwanted Dangote monopoly in the oil sector. A year after these cheering news were received, the refineries are as silent as the sepulchres from which they were said to have been delivered and Dangote is still the only refinery left standing.

I was sure that a decisive corner had been turned when a year ago, it was announced that Dangote could pay for his crude supplies in Naira. True, the volume of crude supplied under this arrangement was substantially short of capacity, it was however a giant step in the right direction but the mode of this transaction was not transparent as as some dollars were smuggled into the prevailing equation but still it was better than nothing and in any case, the cost of fuel at the pump continued to inch downwards. Hope in the bright future of fuel availability broke out like a rash, to the evident satisfaction of a lot of us. That outbreak has however been shown to be premature as other challenges were raised against Mr. Dangote and his massive and ambitious project.

In the dark winter of our fuel discontent, a group of people had risen to insert themselves into the fuel supply chain. They had built massive storage facilities which received imported fuel for subsequent distribution throughout the country. They did not add a jot of value to the supply chain but were nevertheless indispensable. They were like the slave traders of old who took advantage of being situated on the coast to buy slaves from the interior to sell them on to the Europeans at great profit to themselves. Their descendants still exist among us for all they are now worth. The direction of trade has now been reversed with fuel being moved from the ports to the hinterland. Unfortunately, the reasoning remains the same, the only difference is the nature of the merchandise. Then, it was live human beings. Now, it is refined petroleum.

To pursue the slave trade analogy to its logical conclusion. Slaves were assembled at depots all along the coasts from where the slaves were loaded into ships reeking of human misery and taken across the Atlantic Ocean, to slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean region. Now, old and old ricketty petrol tankers drive up to be loaded with fuel for transport to all parts of the country. These rent seeking middlemen, llike their forefathers who resisted the abolition of the slave trade with all their might are also determined to protect their privileges to the detriment of the rest of us.

October 12, 2025
A gratuitous insult from an ill – mannered Ife Arowosoge

At first, I was going to pay no attention, whatever, to his scurrilous write-up, seeing how uncannily his hectoring resembled that of his late stable-mate, the equally rude, Ilawe – born, one time minister of the Federal Republic, Dr Bode Olowoporoku.

I and Bode, who thought nothing of politically up – ending his Uncle, the Honourable Pa Akomolafe, who gave him ‘life’ when as a child, his mother allegedly became incapacitated to be a commissioner in the Pa Adekunle Ajasin government from which he was later sacked, were friends at the Great Ife (University of Ife, Ile – Ife) but I just couldn’t stand his ways, and whiles, as a chapter in my new book clearly shows.

He was simply too rough and he knew I detested his ways.

I am, therefore, not writing like this because he is not around to defend himself.

No human being will escape death. Mbanu, as Igbos would say.

I had read, and mentally threw into the dustbin, Dr Arowosege’s absolutely unmerited put down of Chief Oladeji Fasuan who, without a scintilla of doubt, is one of the few remaining titans of our Land of honour – Ekiti.

That though, was until I kept running into the Arowosoge verbiage severally, and then, my U- S based friend, Jide Oguntuase forwarded the same trash to me asking, since he knows my intimate closeness to Papa, whether I would let the idiotic diatribe go unreplied.

Each of Arowosoge’s line crawled with insult, his thoroughly abrasive language failing to show he went to school at all or have any respect for elders.

This last bit was, however, the part that did not surprise me at all because, if one is not careful, he could summarily conclude that such behaviour is Ilawe-sque. Fortunately not me, as I have terrific Ilawe sons and daughters who I have related with for ages and who are paragons of what Yorubas call Omoluabi.

Among these, please permit me to mention His Lordship, Bishop Femi Ajakaiye, the Catholic Bishop of Ekiti, who called, all the way from the UK, to greet and pray for me on my 80th birthday, the eminent duo, my ever worthy Aburos, and

Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), Elder Dele Adesina and Femi Falana, each of who already, deservedly, have a signed hard copy of my forthcoming book well ahead of its official presentation. Also count among these worthy Ilawe’s,

eminence greese, my long- time friends, Professors Idowu Odeyemi and Bode Asubiojo, the respected Prince Adefolalu, the no less regarded Sina Awelewa, as well as my younger friends – Senator Yemi Adaramodu, Gbenga Araoye, Tokunbo Omolase, the gifted commentator on national affairs,

and my incredible Great Ife mates and friends, Kayode & Funke(Mr & Mrs) . The list is simply inexhaustive.

But juxtapose these decent human beings with the inflammable minority of Ilawe political rabble rousers, among them the late Olowoporoku and the instant irritant, Arowosoge.

I will be loathe to count Idowu Odeyemi(Senior) among them despite what you will soon be reading below). If one is not careful, you could quite easily, but wrongly, conclude that Ilawe – an otherwise large, and respectable town – breeds many of these moral outcasts – the types who would look a whole Chief Fasuan in the face and vomit the kind of inanities the ill- educated Arowosoge hauled on him.

As I used to say: ki la gbe, ki le ju? What are these Ilawe outcasts fighting over, that they won’t accord Papa Fasuan the slightest regard?

Before I welcome the reader to a precursor of the instant case, that is,. when Idowu Odeyemi(Senior) also of Ilawe, flaggelated, and poured no less venom on Chief Fasuan, I urge every true born citizen of Ilawe – Ekiti to please find, retrieve and read Arowosoge’s idiotic nonsense on Pa Fasuan. If the reader has more time at his disposal, he could go back 17 years to also read the Senior Odeyemi on the same subject as contained in my article of 23 September , 2007 in reply to him. You will not but wonder what these Ilawe self appointed emissaries are fighting over, noting in particular, that both are an absolute political minority in Ilawe.

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Or could it be the rumoured neglect of Ilawe by consecutive Ekiti governments? If so, Ilawe should simply wake up, buckle up and emulate Ikere-Ekiti which, by dint of hard work, and the citizens’ untramelled love for their town, have turned Ikere- Ekiti to the fastest developing town in the whole of Ekiti state. Arowosoge and his ilk certainly do not represent the redoubtable Ilawe we know and respect. Welcome then to my article:’Standing History on The Head’, of 23 September, 2007, now captured on pages 59 – 61 of my 619 – page book:’SIMPLY A CITIZEN JOURNALIST (Amazon Link-https://a.co/d/dXnfY77).

It reads as follows while, in the meantime, awaiting Arowosoge’s promised hagiography: Chief Idowu Odeyemi is my friend of over two decades though details of that friendship

need not delay us here. He knows that I hold him in high regards. I was, therefore, completely taken aback by the amount of vitriol, if not banality, displayed in his riposte

to Chief Deji Fasuan’s piece on the creation of Ekiti which appeared in your flagship, The Nation on Sunday, September 2, 2007.

I am not unaware that given the melodramatic, even rancorous Ekiti politics, the paths of these two gentlemen may have crossed variously. Unfortunately, in Ekiti today, it is politics or nothing, which explains our condition. But even when that is conceded, I still could not find, in Chief

Fasuan’s article, the pillars on which Idowu sought to erect that level of venom, most of it personal insults unbecoming of a journalist of many years. To make his point, which he subsequently did not, Chief Odeyemi need not have resorted to such scurrility. It was tantamount, in my view, to the occasion when the Yoruba would say, Ki la gbe, ki loju? It is analogous too, to hauling a bag of cement at a petty thief who stole a biro pen. It will be intolerable if he were fighting his own case but totally reprehensible when it turns out he was no more than a surrogate fighter; crying more than the bereaved.

I personally believe that with his contributions to the success of the PDP in the April elections, he no longer needs to be anybody’s good boy to land a juicy federal appointment.

And by the way, what is the casus belli? Fasuan had written that Chief Afe Babalola was not allowed to speak for more than six and a half minutes before he was (rather rudely, in his words) stopped from further presentation at the Mbanefo Panel on States and Local Government Creation. From my reading of that portion of the offending article, which I have since read all over again, I could not see any denigration of Chief Babalola by the writer who had, rather than wear any air of indispensability in the struggle, as is being conjured by Odeyemi, went to great lengths in naming names, even of Obas, and all those who contributed in one way or the other to the eventual success of the project. It was, therefore, in very bad taste, when Odeyemi sought to flagellate, or indeed, ridicule the elders who had to sleep on the road on their way back from Abuja when their vehicle ran out of fuel. He should be humble enough to apologise. In all, his diatribe was unnecessary; the language needlessly acerbic just as the personal insults, which decency forbids me to repeat on this page, were totally undeserving of a man who gave his all to a peoples’ collective struggle.

It becomes more irritating when you discover that Chief Odeyemi had, in fact, stood history on the head in his reading the events leading to the creation of Ekiti State as his views are at variance with the overall impression of the generality of Ekiti people, many of who wrote to thank Chief Fasuan.

Here was a man whose perspicacity and total devotion to a cause provided the sterling leadership to crown the long-standing struggle of Ekiti people to a glorious end at a time when the much more politically (and economically) connected Ijebus, whose son was in fact number two in government at the material time, could not realize their equally well- deserved state. I will like to crave Chief Fasuan’s permission to quote, at some length, from his well-written book, ‘Creation of Ekiti – The Epic Struggle of a People’, especially some of the about thirty letters addressed to him by appreciative Ekitis, either individually or as groups.

Given the current level of revisionism, I thank God who laid it on Chief Fasuan’s heart to commit his experiences during that era into a book.

Writing on the 1st of October, 1996, the Ajero of Ijero-Ekiti and paramount ruler of Ijero kingdom wrote as follows: “Myself, all Obas and chiefs in Ijero kingdom and our entire sons and daughters, home and abroad, join all Ekiti in thanking Almighty God for the creation of our dream state. We are also pleased to congratulate you as the chairman and all members of the committee for the creation of Ekiti-State. We commend you for your hard work, resourcefulness and perseverance. It is our hope that all Ekitis will maintain and even strengthen the age-long unique homogeneity and peaceful co-existence. To God be the glory for this great thing He has done for us all. Once again, please accept our congratulations.” Their Royal Highnesses, Oba J.O.

Awolola and Oba J.K Akinola representing the Ilejemeje Community wrote as follows on 9 October, 1996: “The entire Royal Highnesses and their people in the Ilejemeje community have considered it a deserved courtesy to send you this special congratulatory message on the occasion of the newly created Ekiti state. It needs be stressed that your un-weary efforts and enlivened spirit from the beginning of the agelong struggle up to the last moment of official declaration of Ekiti Ethnic groups as a state shall remain indelible in the ‘Blue Print’ books of Ekitiland, and not the least in the history of Nigeria. Your seriousness and great concern over divesting conditions

and total abandonment of any meaningful social, economic and cultural developments of our land were glaringly manifested in your total commitment to the issues in a most unlikely fashion which was a further proof of article of faith in the ability of Ekiti to metamorphose their own state into an egalitarian society. We pray God to further fortify you against future greater challenges of harnessing and developing Ekiti state’s natural endowments.

Finally, we join hundreds of thousands of Nigerians to rejoice with you on this epoch-making occasion of the birth of Ekiti state. Once again, please accept our joint congratulations.”

The Ekiti Parapo, Port Harcourt, on the 12th of October sent the following letter to Chief Fasuan: “The president and members of Ekiti Parapo, Port Harcourt, has directed me to send a congratulatory letter to you for the gallant fight you put up on the fight for the creation of Ekiti state. The Club is proud of your brilliant and effective efforts and pray that the Almighty God should compensate you…’ Chief Bade Gboyega wrote as follows: ‘Please kindly permit me to share my heartfelt joy and deep satisfaction with ‘your good self’, on the occasion of the creation of Ekiti state by 7.20 this morning. I also wish to sincerely congratulate you personally because God has thus crowned your great, tireless, commendable and historic efforts with huge success’.

Former Deputy Governor of Ondo state, Chief Akin Omoboriowo wrote: ‘I wish to congratulate you and your committee for working most selflessly, consistently and sincerely for the creation of Ekiti state in our life time…’

This writer did not allow the occasion pass without his miniscule appreciation for a job well done. On the 15th October, 1996, I wrote to Chief Fasuan as follows: I wish to put on record my sincere appreciation for your worthy contribution, in brains and sheer physical exertion, to seeing to a successful end, the long, arduous and sustained struggle for the creation of Ekiti state.

You have brought to bear on your Chairmanship of the steering committee, your now historical loyalty and devotion to cause, and your exemplary leadership qualities. While you cannot go to sleep yet, I feel positive that you can indeed, legitimately, count your blessings and thank God. Sir, now more than ever before, you will need to devote your time to nurturing, to a meaningful end i.e. the even-handed and overall development of the new state given the fact that successive governments made us a developmental backwater. I sincerely hope you will join hands with political likeminds to emerge in that pioneering team that will translate our yearnings and aspirations to fruition. In this you can count on my support and co-operation. Thank you and God bless.

Finally, I shall quote from the very long letter, call it an Epistle from my Lord Bishop, The Rt. Revd. Peter Awelewa Adebiyi, the Lord Bishop of the Diocese of Lagos West who was then of Owo Diocese, as he sought to get Ekiti leaders to seek the face of God in matters appertaining to the state.

In short, he admonished them to hand over the state to God Almighty. Amongst other things, the Bishop wrote:

“I am sure the Lord is happy about what you have done. I personally congratulate you for your good leadership and tenacity when many people were thinking that the creation would not be possible. I am sure that the creation is a credit to you in particular and the committee in general but it is a blessing. …finally, I hope you will organise an interdenominational thanksgiving service to place the new state in the hands of God, the builder of nations. If I know the time before hand, it may be possible for me and a host of us in the sacred ministry to be there.’

I doubt they ever did, given the rolling crisis that has engulfed the state, a state that should ordinarily be a beacon to others but for which total strangers continue to enthrone their cronies as rulers. I rest my casel

Where, I ask finally, is this outright interloper coming from?

October 12, 2025
Jonathan unfazed by constitutional ambiguity

With each passing week, former president Goodluck Jonathan seems doubly sure no constitutional obstacle stands in his way of running for the presidency a second time. His opponents may regret his firm stance, but they stand on very flimsy ground to think that anything bars him from contesting in 2027 should he choose to run. Dr Jonathan is not new to the impediments strewn across his path, some of them purporting to be constitutional. In 2012, the effort to bar him from running began in earnest. First sworn in on May 6, 2010 to complete the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s tenure, he had gone on to win the 2011 election, and soon began making sheep’s eye at the 2015 presidential election. It was the attempt to stop him that triggered a cavalcade of legal cases begun in 2012. All the three cases brought against him to date have, however, been decided in his favour.

All the suits aimed to abort Dr Jonathan’s re-election plans. The first case, filed in 2012 at the High court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) before Justice Mudashiru Oniyangi, was decided in his favour. The judge had no hesitation whatsoever in ruling that nothing barred the then president from contesting in 2015. Dissatisfied, the appellant, Cyriacus Njoku, appealed. In March 2015, shortly before the election of that year, the Court of Appeal held that nothing barred Dr Jonathan from contesting. They gave their reason, and it seemed so incontrovertible that it settled the case once and for all. But the furore that accompanied the case, not to say the constitutional lacuna many legal experts said they noticed, led to a constitutional amendment that took effect in 2018. Embodied in Section 137(3), the alteration indicates that “A person who was sworn in to complete the term for which another person was elected as President, shall not be elected to such office for more than a single term.”

The alteration was expressed in very simple and accessible language, admitting of no ambiguity. But against a litigious Nigerian, even the simplest expression acquires new and convoluted meaning. In 2022, when it seemed a clearly nostalgic Dr Jonathan would not take no for an answer and seemed determined to run again, the litigious duo of Andy Solomon and Idibiye Abraham headed to the courts to see whether they could bar him from the 2023 poll. Filed at the Federal High Court in Yenagoa, the judge, Isa Hamma Dashen, in May 2022, held that the constitution did not disqualify Dr Jonathan, and that if he had won in 2015, he would have been sworn into office anyway, with no one the wiser. Anchoring his decision on the inability of the amendment to take retroactive effect, the judge concluded that Sec 137(3) “cannot apply retrospectively, except the Legislature, in clear terms, expressly stated their intention for it to be so.”

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Here is the crux of the matter. When the legislature made the alteration to the constitution to take care of peculiar circumstances and puzzles, the kind that hamstrung Dr Jonathan’s ascension in 2010, they never imagined that he would try to return on a later day, say in 2023 or 2027. They were unable to anticipate that Dr Jonathan is one of those unique politicians who never let bad enough alone. More accurately, power mongers and political schemers have continued to badger the former president with tantalising prospects of returning to office. Every time they seduce him, he falls. The United States constitution, on the other hand, made term limits beguilingly easy to comprehend and adhere to when the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951. Just one sentence, and the job was done. It says in Section 1: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.” Had the Nigerian constitutional alteration indicated a time period for the ‘acting’ president, say one year or two, there would have been no court case.

But court case or not, the fact is that Dr Jonathan is not constitutionally barred from contesting in 2027. The All Progressives Congress (APC) should discountenance that supposition and reconcile with reality. It should not waste time and money on any litigation, for any court case might instead canonise a man who has no sense for liturgy of any kind. What will stop the former president from contesting in 2027 are history and his personality. History, because other than massive adoption by a sitting government, such as happened to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, no former Nigerian ruler has made it back to the State House; not Gen. Ibrahim Babangida in 2011, and not Gen. Yakubu Gowon in 1993. Secondly, his personality is one of his chief liabilities. Dr Jonathan was neither extraordinary during his five years in office nor decisive and assertive as great leaders should be. He has remained averse to risk-taking and uncomfortable with visioning. He has seemed to hone these last behavioural defects since he left office in 2015, given the way he has run from pillar to post seeking a party to unanimously adopt him. He has egregiously flirted with the African Democratic Congress (ADC) being built with former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s money. And he has dallianced with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which he abandoned shortly after he left office, citing betrayal and other reasons.

The constitution will not stop Dr Jonathan, and indeed cannot, no matter how liberally the relevant sections of the constitution are interpreted. The Nigerian judiciary may not exactly be the darling of the masses, but three judgements in a row in favour of Dr Jonathan should not be discounted. The constitution is on his side. On the contrary, he is his greatest liability: his personality, his records, his stark inability to read the signs of the times, his constant overrating of self, and his even more baffling underestimation of his opponents and all other forces poised to doom his candidacy should he find a platform to indulge his lackluster politics. As mired in controversy and lethargy as the PDP is, one of its weaknesses is not stupidity and wastefulness. Notwithstanding its desperation to find a formula to beat the ruling party, the leading opposition party will think twice before giving their ticket to Dr Jonathan, assuming he is capable of the genuine absolution his years of political truancy demand of him.

October 12, 2025
Israel-Gaza ceasefire and aftermath

In the end, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, which United States president Donald Trump desperately coveted, eluded him. It instead went to a Venezuelan opposition politician, Maria Corina Machado, despite last ditch efforts by the US president to achieve a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and orchestrate a realistic path to lasting peace. Mr Trump’s 20-point peace plan incorporated significant elements of the France-Saudi peace plan, and bore Turkish, Qatari, and Egyptian imprints. Altogether, stripped of all diplomatese, the ceasefire deal clearly indicates a number of consequences regarding the Middle East, and especially Palestine. Put simply, the plan implies that Hamas lost the war it triggered in October 2023, Iran is demystified, Hezbollah is significantly degraded, Yemen is virtually isolated and rendered impotent, Syria has been inoculated against terror, and Arab States can breathe a little easier because the Iranian Axis of Resistance will be of less concern to them in the short term.

The ceasefire deal will be consummated over three phases. It starts with the release of all Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian detainees, which is expected to take place in the next 72 hours starting from yesterday; withdrawal of Israeli troops in phases from Gaza and the demilitarisation of Hamas; and the rebuilding of Gaza over the next three to five years. In the medium term, which may be more challenging, other key points of the Trump plan will be revealed. There are as yet no clear indications those other terms will be met, including the more vaguely stated two-state solution. But next week, Mr Trump will take a victory lap in Israel where he will address the Israeli parliament, though the deal owes so much to Gulf States leaders, especially Qatar and Egypt, and also Turkey as well as Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

There are three angles to the ceasefire deal, which is already being celebrated almost like a peace deal because of its impact in ameliorating suffering in Gaza and removing Israel as the cynosure of global attention. President Trump, despite his theatrics and narcissistic politics, placed himself at the centre of the resolution of the Gaza war, and must feel immensely disappointed to have been passed over in the award of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. His idiosyncrasies facilitated the deal. He begins a deal by blustering, progresses to taking hostile actions, and then offers a deal which at that point becomes almost irresistible. He talked tough on Gaza by proposing to turn the territory into a resort, asked some Arab states to encourage Gaza emigration, and then joined Israel to bomb Iran, Hamas’ main backers. Secondly, he kept up an unusual and in the long run beneficial relationship, political and business, with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States as a whole. He asked no moral questions and made no ethical demand of them, and entered into both private and public business deals with those countries, precisely the kind of powerful leader they wish to have on their side.

Thirdly, he sustained incredibly close and powerful diplomatic and personal relations with Israel both in his first term, and in the opening months of his second term, including breaking the anathema of relocating American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He also went more than one step better in backing Israel unconditionally in its war in Gaza, at least publicly, while privately bringing enormous pressure to bear on the Israeli prime minister. It made it possible for him to compel Mr Netanyahu to apologise to Qatar for the attempt on Hamas leaders’ lives in Doha early September. And it also made it possible to leverage on his enormous popularity in Israel to compel Mr Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire deal over and above the objections and reservations of Israeli political coalition leaders.

The second angle, entirely constituted by Mr Netanyahu himself, is even more profound than the Trump angle. He may be a corrupt and controversial politician, and may be mercurial to boot, but he has the right instincts of a leader. At a time when most of Israel believed it was brinkmanship to engage in some of the wider and ramifying actions he took in the past two years on the international stage, the prime minister doubled down on his decisions, stuck to his guns, gingerly held on to his Knesset coalition, and broke so many diplomatic tables that no one thought possible. It took nerves to launch a blitzkrieg on Iran, decimate Hezbollah, while at the same time fighting a vicious campaign next door, in Gaza and Syria, and long range strikes against Yemen. The extraordinary and unprecedented military successes that greeted his efforts earned Israel global respect, even if the world, minus America, deplored and loathed Mr Netanyahu’s gung-ho policies. He showed what it is to be a leader, that it cares less about public relations, that it is about courage, intuition, and tactical brilliance. Yes, Israel fought a similar war in 1967 during the Six-Day War, but in its recent campaigns it made the world glimpse technology’s lethal effect on modern warfare. Indeed, it took a Trump and Netanyahu leadership nexus to unfurl the frightening and apocalyptic possibilities which determined leaders are capable of conjuring.

The third angle, constituted by Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt, is no less crucial for the resolution of the Gaza conflict, and they will continue to play a huge role in pacifying the region in the years ahead. Without their efforts, it is doubtful whether the ceasefire could have been reached at the time it happened. Hamas, it has become clear, miscalculated in instigating the war in Octobers 2023. They knew they stood no chance of defeating Israel militarily, but they counted on Hezbollah to pressure Israel from the North, Iran to give back-up should it be needed, and the rest of the world to give it public relations advantage because of the untold humanitarian catastrophe expected to be unleashed. They didn’t count on Mr Trump’s return to the White House, probably misjudged the resolve of Mr Netanyahu and his vulnerable Knesset coalition, and had romantic ideas of what influence the outraged world could muster. Worse, they never believed Israel could dismantle the Axis of Resistance so rapidly and so effortlessly, nor budge over the humanitarian disaster the invasion would trigger. Having embedded their command posts, armouries and tactical units beneath and within public buildings such as schools and hospitals and international organisations buildings, Hamas hoped to achieve some form of stalemate. All the calculations, however, unravelled quickly.

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Now, as a result of that attack on October 7, 2023, the power dynamics of the Middle East has been reconfigured. Lebanon stands the chance of reclaiming its sovereignty from Hezbollah’s stranglehold; Iran is weakened and a shadow of itself, particularly of its boastful self; Syrian militias toppled the Assad dynasty because Iranian support was no longer available; nearly the entire Hamas leadership has been wiped out making it possible for the Palestinian Authority operating form the West Bank to lay claims to Gaza; Gaza lies in absolute ruins and will be administered by external forces in the foreseeable future; and Israel has emerged much stronger than before the war, with Mr Netanyahu’s political and leadership reputation considerably bolstered.

However, the world must watch out for the unseen consequences of the war. Mr Trump may be widely acknowledged for his diplomatic skills today, but the essential core of those skills, if world history and end times prophecy are anything to go by, are much brittler than imagined. Fascists, of whom Mr Trump is arguably numbered, often achieve great successes and triumphs in the short run; but in the long run, they collapse under the weight of their eccentricities and contradictions. The US president is today acclaimed in the US, Israel, and Middle East, but his achievements have been secured mostly by bullying tactics, domestic and international, and by taking advantage of the follies and foibles of incompetent or timid regional leaders. He will come to grief sooner or later, possibly damaging America’s reputation irreparably. For Israel, the ceasefire and the hostages release may buoy the reputation of Mr Netanyahu, but as a student of history, he will recall that the spectacular success of the 1970 Yom Kippur War was insufficient to save the leadership of Gold Meir who was blamed for the country’s lack of preparedness and initial military setbacks that caused massive casualties. She accepted blame and resigned in 1974.

For Hamas, having retarded the Palestinian cause by its terrible miscalculations, not to say damage Gaza’s infrastructure and caused nearly 70,000 dead, it may be the end of the road. Neither they nor the less influential Islamic Jihad, will play any significant role in Gaza for a long time. Even if they try to play some political role in the future, they are unlikely to meet with as much success as they had after they took control of the strip in June 2007. Nor will they have the kind of financial assistance from the Gulf States as they had previously received. A ceasefire may have taken effect, but the long-term goal of a two-state solution may remain far-fetched. They toyed with it after Camp David Accords of 1978 and the Oslo I & II Accords of 1993 and 1995, but a final peace treaty was torpedoed by Palestinian leaders. It is not certain that such a zero-sum game is not still the regnant philosophy in the disputed region. Indeed, the last has not been heard of the war, the last one being the fifth in the series of Israel-Hamas wars.

October 12, 2025
Atiku’s Janus-faced politics

Apart from loving to sell dummies to his audiences everywhere, former vice president Atiku Abubakar also likes to dissemble. In the months ahead, he will be badgered by questions on the 2027 presidential elections. Speaking in an interview with BBC Hausa last week, he insisted he would not leave the newly adopted coalition party, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), for any other party should he be defeated in the coming presidential primary. He has jumped ship many times in the past, but at 79 next year, when the primary will be conducted, no one expects him to go anywhere again if he loses the primary. He will stay put. What they cannot confidently say is whether he would also remain committed should someone else be nominated for the 2027 presidential race.

When he gave the BBC Hausa the controversial interview, the media initially reported him as saying that his ultimate wish was to ensure that his new party had a solid footing to engage in the coming electoral battle rather than the primacy of his candidacy. But the traditional media accurately reported Alhaji Atiku’s words in the proper context. He was not ambiguous about his intention to contest the next election, said the press, only that he would remain loyal and committed to the party in the event of a younger fellow taking the nomination. He appeared to have carefully rehearsed his answers this time before engaging the BBC Hausa, a firm departure from the ambiguities of the past when his spokesmen engaged in brickbats over his words and their intended meanings.

However, it is still obvious that the former vice president is selling a dummy to the nation. When he spoke about the theoretical possibility of a younger politician defeating him in the nomination race next year, he knew it was practically impossible. No politician in the ADC with any interest in the presidency can muster his reach and resources, let alone square up to him or defeat him in the fight for the nomination. He is yet to announce his membership of the party, of course, but so, too, are the other likely contenders for the ticket: Peter Obi, a former Anambra State governor, and to a little extent Rotimi Amaechi, the overhyped former Rivers State governor. Those are the only younger elements in the party, and neither of them is capable of taking on Alhaji Atiku. While it appears guaranteed that the former vice president will soon announce his membership of the ADC, Mr Obi may still continue to pussyfoot for a little longer.

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Indeed, what agitates the public is not that Alhaji Atiku is besotted to selling dummies; they are upset by his frequent doublespeak and his general disdain for altruism. It is true he mentioned and even praised his role in joining hands with others to build the ADC to a solid and enviable level, but that seeming selflessness proceeded only from his confidence in having cornered, if not outrightly embody, the soul of the party. In the interview, he spoke fondly and glowingly of how the party had been finally structured at the national level, and of how it was being structured at the local levels. Without saying it, his financial muscle had begun to speak, take and occupy territories for him.

It is instructive that the same former vice president who denounced a certain Prof Ola Olateju for imbuing him with the altruism of being more concerned with building the party than advancing his presidential interest has suddenly begun to make a song and dance of his efforts to build the party or even step aside should he lose the nomination. More ‘inspiringly’ he even spoke about mentoring a younger candidate should such a person win the nomination. As this column reflected on Alhaji Atiku’s vacillations in the September 21 edition of this newspaper, there is nothing solemn or sacred about the former vice president’s words or positions.

Here is how Barometer put it on September 21: “In late August, speaking through his representative Ola Olateju, a professor, Alhaji Atiku declared that he was not as desperate to be president as he was in midwifing a new and prosperous Nigeria. The genial professor spoke on behalf of the former vice president at a ceremony in Lagos while welcoming defectors into the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the special purpose vehicle the coalition of opposition forces plan to use to unseat President Tinubu. The ink had not dried on that ascription of altruism before Alhaji Atiku denounced the ascription and self-immolated…Another of the former vice president’s spokesmen, Tunde Olusunle, issued a swift rebuttal on facebook a day or two later, insisting that his principal would vie for the presidency in 2027. Quoting Alhaji Atiku, Dr Olusunle posted: ‘I did not issue that statement. When people stand in for me at events, we preview my thoughts on the instant subject and what my contribution or intervention will be, so that we are on the same page. In this particular instance, there was no engagement with me to distill my thoughts. Prof. Olateju was not speaking for me. I will run in 2027.’”

Make no mistake about it, Alhaji Atiku is determined to vie for the party’s nomination, and to win, and to contest the 2027 poll. But whether he acknowledges it or not, he ran his last real race in 2023. His fellow party men will bring unbearable pressure on him to abandon the race and to restrict himself to revelling only in the joy of unseating their archenemy, President Bola Tinubu. But the former vice president would be repudiating all he stands for and who he really is by succumbing to those illicit pressures. His world revolves around him; nothing else will satisfy.

October 5, 2025
NYSC just got more cumbersome

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme is overdue for rejigging to make it less cumbersome, safer, and more attractive to potential corps members. About 650,000 of them are projected to be mobilised next year. But a perusal of Nigeria’s political development casts doubt on whether some of the key objectives of the scheme are even realisable. It is unclear, therefore, whether the federal government’s proposal to qualify a corps member is really the appropriate measure to embark on at the moment, not to talk of stampeding the process to commence on October 6.

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To be mobilised for the scheme, a graduate is expected to attach comprehensive proof of his dissertation in compliance with the national policy for the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD). The government’s logic is that the NERD requirements could not be satisfied by other means, and that the measure would help raise educational standards. Again, the government presupposes that high standard is an abstraction uncorrelated with Nigeria’s abysmally poor educational infrastructure. However, the government includes some reward scheme for students and lecturers alike in the NERD policy. But is the government saying the reward schemes couldn’t be secured by other means, except by the NYSC route?

Potential corps members already apprehensive about being posted to danger zones will be reluctant to complain against this extra layer of bureaucracy; but it will certainly add to their frustrations about the country, not to say the frustrations of parents who have always subsidised a scheme that can no longer pay for corpers’ upkeep.

October 5, 2025
SNAPSONG 269

(For Nigeria at 65)

Another first day of another tenth month

Of yet another long year

The sun rose, wearily

From a sober corner of the sky

The rain this season

Is full and furiously free

The pampered lawns are glad

The battered roofs are sour

In other lands far, yet not-so-far

The sky rains red

From the cannibal carnival of ‘smart bombs’

By those who claim they own the world

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In this long-suffering country we call our own

Awash with pledges, submerged in prayers

For sixty years and five we have asked many questions

Waiting for their vital answers

The rich still too rich

The poor too poor

Our schools still un-schooled

Our hospitals are horse-spittles

Our country, nonetheless

With blessings so abundant

Waiting, still waiting, for

The Promise which succeeds the Pain

October 5, 2025
Discourses on Gen Irabor’s Boko Haram conundrum

This is not a review of former Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Lucky Irabor‘s book, ‘Scars: Nigeria’s journey and the Boko Haram Conundrum’. In the next one or two weeks, if not more, discussions on the book will in the meantime centre on the discourses of about four notable Nigerians who addressed issues in the book presented in Abuja last Friday. The review itself will come a little later, after Nigerians must have exhausted themselves examining the pontifications of the eminent quartet who declaimed on the Boko Haram menace. By inviting such high-profile personalities to the launching, the author probably suspected that he could be overshadowed, and some of the things the invitees said might be given more weight than the conundrums he tried to raise in his book. Authors are usually more finicky about facts and logic when writing books, probably because of their permanence, but flippant commentators often grandstand.

As he is accustomed at public functions which he has attended over the years since he left office, former president Olusegun Obasanjo is either the keynote speaker or chairman. He does not settle for less. Sometimes, he even combines the two roles by making ponderous assertions in both capacities, not because he plans it that way, but because the media end up attaching more significance to his statements. Fortunately for Gen. Irabor, though Chief Obasanjo chaired the public presentation, what he had to say, while significant and even weighty, did not overshadow the contributions of other notable speakers like former president Goodluck Jonathan, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, and the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar. Each of these eminent persons gave a good account of himself, dissecting Boko Haram and its leadership and objectives as well as taking potshots at succeeding administrations characterised as incapable of resolving the crisis which began in 2009 during the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency.

Chief Obasanjo’s opinion was predictably didactic. Though his view was not the most eloquent, paling by comparison with those of Dr Jonathan and the crossfire between Bishop Kukah and Sultan Abubakar, it merited significant attention for casting doubt on the competence and thoroughness of successive administrations, starting with the late President Yar-Adua. Recounting his trip to Maiduguri to interrogate the Boko Haram issue, he told his audience in Abuja on Friday that he established the existence of the group and all its attendant menaces, but wondered whether successive governments had taken pains to study and decode the phenomenon or whether they were active and proactive about tackling or smothering it. He concluded that he was uncertain Boko Haram was anything more than a socio-economic revolt instead of the long-held belief of its politico-religious beginnings. He also added that he was appalled by the fatalism of successive administrations, especially how they had resigned themselves to accommodating or coexisting with the terror group. The former president’s views are undoubtedly succinct, but it is doubtful whether his audience thought those views were also incontrovertible.

Despite not been the most convincing or salient, Dr Jonathan’s perspective seemed to have dominated the Saturday papers and even the social media. He insisted his administration did everything possible, both kinetic and non-kinetic, to defeat the rebellion, including setting up fact-finding teams and negotiating committees. All efforts, he said, went up in smoke. But it was when he made a passing remark about his successor’s lack of breakthrough in the counterinsurgency efforts that he stirred up a hornets’ nest. He whispered that he had thought ex-president Muhammadu Buhari, whom Boko Haram once nominated as their negotiator, would be more successful in tackling the rebellion because he presumably had their confidence. His successor’s lack of success, he concluded with some relief, if not self-justification, explained why he himself failed in resolving the crisis, adding that it all showed the intricacies and complexities of Boko Haram. Critics immediately lashed out at Dr Jonathan, accusing him of embracing and peddling falsehoods, when in fact, according to a former spokesman of the late president, Garba Shehu, Boko Haram leaders refuted their appointment of any negotiator.

The most interesting and probably spontaneous exchange took place between Bishop Kukah, the book reviewer, and Sultan Abubakar. The bishop had drawn a nexus between the Boko Haram rebellion and the opportunistic action of some northern elite who hid under the rebellion’s cover to advance political objectives. He insisted that regardless of whatever anyone says Boko Haram leaders knew their religious fundamentals and went warring under that flag. Without necessarily spelling it out clearly, the bishop subscribed to the well-known conclusion that a section of the northern elite did not seem to mind the ethnic and religious cleansing perpetrated by Boko Haram in its initial years. They in fact engaged in far-reaching conspiracy by embracing the rebellion and describing the insurgents as their sons who should not be massacred. But the sultan stoutly rose against both the nexus between the rebellion and political power as well as the insinuation that the North resented the Jonathan presidency. Islam or even jihad, the sultan argued, was not about killing others or violence, but about being better citizens, first and foremost. His view was almost coterminous with that of Chief Obasanjo who had downplayed the religious factor in the rebellion.

Both Bishop Kukah and Sultan Abubakar may ironically be right. What Boko Haram leaders did, particularly in its first five or so years, was to prosecute their cause under the banner of Islam. That exercise may be right or wrong, and the sultan has insisted it was wrong; but they did it anyway. So, when the sultan debunked the notion that Islam had a political side to it, especially in rousing the faithful to seize political power, he was theoretically right. And when the bishop also argued that Boko Haram used Islam as a pretext to make a bid for power, or caliphate as they called it, he was also right, regardless of the insurgents’ flawed interpretation of the Quran, and even regardless of the falsehoods they had promoted under the banner of Islam. It is indeed interesting that the mask is now off, as no Boko Haram leader continues to fight under the banner of Islam. After being massively degraded over the years, Boko Haram, together with its more violent, well-funded, and ideological cousin, ISWAP, is now all about caliphate.

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What is incontestable, as the book presentation reflected, is that the rebellion was difficult to categorise in its early years, just as a section of the northern elite also seemed to have misjudged the rebellion and reposed hope in its violent methods which they erroneously but privily thought would help birth the theocracy of their boyish fancies. The deception went on for years until the rebellion began to consume its own children, while the commentators also agreed that till today the country has not yet understood the dynamic of the rebellion. They are right. To assume that poverty alone could generate the uprising witnessed in Boko Haram, as Chief Obasanjo seemed to suggest, may be inaccurate. Yes, there is alienation in the country, and indeed Nigeria, by the actions of successive administrations, has proved alienating. But far more than poverty, the chief cause of alienation is arguably the misshapen structure of the federation which promotes inefficiency, disconnection, and ethnic and religious conflicts that keep morphing hideously. As a matter of fact, just as Boko Haram rebellion in the Northeast seemed to be weakening, banditry in the Northwest began gathering momentum; and worse, that second rebellion is slowly spreading southward.

In the coming weeks, it will be clear whether Gen. Irabor did a fine job of capturing the major issues surrounding the Boko Haram rebellion, and whether his prognosis stands any chance of convincing anyone. But judging from the four or so discourses the newspapers copiously reported yesterday, it is unclear that the four speakers or successive administrations have fully understood the hows and the whys of the rebellion. They are just beating around the bush. Dichotomising the approaches to dealing with the rebellion to kinetic and non-kinetic measures, in addition to the questionable prognoses of forgiving and rehabilitating so-called former militants at extraordinary costs to the public, show that no rigour has gone into formulating the responses to Boko Haram or banditry, or any of the urgent security challenges the country has faced in recent years.

October 5, 2025
ADC’s unending rigmarole

Former vice president Atiku Abubakar was at the African Democratic Congress (ADC) national caucus meeting where it was decided that those who publicly claimed to be members of the party must resign from their previous parties and officially join the ADC. Bolaji Abdullahi, the party’s spokesman, did not give any indication the decision was rancorous. It was, as far as the public knew, unanimous. But more than one week after that decision was taken, Alhaji Atiku was yet to take his own medicine. He is too versed in politics not to recognise an ambiguity when he sees one. He understands that since no deadline was given to take the medication, and since the virus the decision sought to cure remained attenuated, he and other fence sitters were at liberty to malleate the order.

The ADC has engaged in unending rigmarole since last July when the party burst on the national scene as the preferred, though overused, vehicle of the opposition coalition being cobbled together to challenge the All Progressives Congress (APC), and in particular President Bola Tinubu. It was not until last week or two that party chieftains, nearly all of them external forces who wormed their way into the party and overthrew or compromised its lethargic national leaders, began having confidence that they now had a party they could deploy into action in 2027. The fail-safe All Democratic Alliance (ADA) whose creation they halfheartedly tried to inspire months ago may have finally been abandoned. So, to all intents and purposes, the ADC is the Goliath they will hide behind to fight in 2027.

But of all those the order to officially register with the ADC was meant to cajole into action, Alhaji Atiku appeared to be the main target. Most of the party’s prominent leaders are already members, including the voluble former Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, who straddles the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the ADC. Repudiated by the SDP, and certain that no big name would follow him when he tempestuously defected to the fringe party, he speaks the language of the ADC more than any other person, including its putative owner, Alhaji Atiku. By remaining unflappable in the face of the order to openly register with the ADC, the former vice president seems to understand something the other leaders in the party don’t. He knows that no creature can be bigger than its creator.

By last week, no one was left in doubt who the real owners of the party were, or who stood any chance of winning a nomination battle. Alhaji Atiku has allowed and enabled an unending rigmarole in the ADC. He has teased party leaders into making nugatory orders, such as insisting on everybody registering with the party. He has, from the background or incognito, permitted all sorts of orders and regulations to be issued in order to give the impression that the party was not being run dictatorially, but democratically. And he has given everyone in the party a very long rope to hang themselves. He may lack the ultimate strategy to win elections, but he does not lack the strategy to hold a party in thrall and win nominations. He has done it over and over again, and will continue to do it regardless of the reservations many party leaders entertain concerning his suitability for the 2027 presidential poll.

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In their heart of hearts, and even though they are galled by how they have become a spectacle, most ADC leaders know that they are working for Alhaji Atiku. He has cast his net far and wide in the ADC, and no fish, no matter how smart or big, can escape being snared. The fish themselves know it, and are transfixed by the tactical and financial dexterity of the former vice president. It, therefore, beggared belief that former president Goodluck Jonathan sleepwalked into the ADC waters to explore the possibility of running on their platform. Just one decade of staying out of power since 2015 seems to have inoculated the former president against perceiving the brutal reality of Alhaji Atiku’s make-believe detachment from the ADC’s decision echelon. No one else in the party, not Mallam el-Rufai, not River’s Rotimi Amaechi, nor even the wary and overcautious Peter Obi of the Labour Party, nor still the defiant Rauf Aregbesola of Osun, nor the increasingly tame Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto has let themselves be lured into foolish traps. They know how politically deadly Alhaji Atiku is.One thing is clear, as Alhaji Atiku’s vigorous refutation of the inaccurate reporting of his BBC Hausa interview of last Wednesday indicated, he will vie for the ADC nomination, for he is desperate enough to ignore every tug of conscience and every political sign arrayed against him. If he has engaged in pointless and endless rigmarole, it is because he thinks it serves some short-term purpose, indeed any purpose primed to deliver the presidency to him, his life’s singular obsession. No matter how much the media buffet him with tendentious or sponsored reports, the former vice president will stick to his guns and run for president. And no matter how much his party chieftains cajole him, they are unlikely to ski off-piste without crashing over the cliff. He has charted the path ADC party leaders must follow; and they are caught in a straitjacket. They imperil one another to think they can be extricated from the logjam that undid them in 2023 when they found themselves in the peculiar circumstances of seeing in Alhaji Atiku their only plausible chance to win.

October 5, 2025
Jonathan and Jerry Gana’s categorical imperative

Two Saturdays ago, while exulting over the successful election of new officials for the Niger State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Jerry Gana, a party chieftain and former Information minister, issued the categorical imperative that Nigerians were disillusioned with the APC and wanted ex-president Goodluck Jonathan back. He didn’t make it a hypothetical imperative. He simply announced to the whole world and his party that the former president would be contesting the 2027 presidential poll on the PDP platform.

Prof. Gana put it elegantly but provocatively: “I can confirm that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will contest the presidential election in 2027 as PDP candidate and you will vote for him to return as President again…PDP has tremendous opportunity in 2027 because it is truly a grassroots party. The people of Nigeria love the PDP because it came with programmes that were people-oriented. That is why they remember PDP immensely, and they are urging us to come back.”

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Not only did his party issue a rebuttal the following day through its publicity secretary Debo Ologunagba, they also confirmed that Dr Jonathan was nothing more than one of the options they were contemplating. They may, however, be chasing a chimera, since the footloose Dr Jonathan may in fact be exploring other options. It is unclear that party chieftains who have spent so much to keep the party afloat would casually surrender the nomination to Dr Jonathan who had for years detached himself from the party. To reap where he did not sow would not only violate natural law, it would also fly in the face of Kant’s categorical imperative.

October 5, 2025