The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • APC faces 2023 ordeal

    APC faces 2023 ordeal

    ASSAILED on every side by punishing economic and political crises, the All Progressives Congress (APC) may view 2023 as an ordeal it has no choice but to endure while its leaders move laboriously towards appointment with destiny. Will the party win the presidency a third time and keep the throne, thereby feeling invincible and even immortal? Or will it be shoved out of office, humiliated and despised, and because its core is as brittle as lead, face the ultimate fate of death? The party faces two agonising dilemmas as it trundles along to 2023: firstly, their president, Muhammadu Buhari, is doubtless anxious to complete his second term and leave office, mission accomplished, but overwhelmed by the national crises confronting his presidency; and secondly, the party itself will be wondering just how much of the president’s legacy will be a liability to its standard-bearers as they campaign to keep offices they cannot convince themselves they’ve done justice to.

    Getting to 2023 at all, not to say in one piece, is, to the APC, a traumatising ordeal they must confront. They have fought one another bitterly, schemed to outdo internal competitors, outpaced and outmanoeuvred their friends and enemies in equal measure, and nervously and ineffectively managed the economy, the polity and the society. For a party so preoccupied with nonessentials, its leaders so narcissistic, and its members a motley assembly of uncommitted foot soldiers chronically unable and unwilling to take a bullet for their party, the next few tumultuous months will test their feeble resolve to the limit. APC leaders and followers have watched with dismay over the years as the economy tanked and became more and more unresponsive to all the esoteric pills they noisily conjured. Crude oil continues to be stolen with vengeance, by some estimates, as high as more than a trillion and half naira annually; inflation spirals out of control; the refineries gobble billions without so much as budging a little, not to talk of even twitching for almost eight years; and while some roads, bridges and railways have been constructed, a plus for the ruling party, the society has become less secure, with Nigerians unsafe in their homes as they are on the highways.

    The APC truly faces an unending and monumental ordeal. The party will need to begin campaigning in the months ahead; but each day, they get worse news on the performance of the economy, miscarriage of social policies, and party leaders are too paralysed to reengineer the country’s ossified political structure. They will desire a respite, any temporary relief or even reprieve that could buoy their expectations as leaders and give hope to the angry voters they know are mocking them behind their backs, voters they would face the ordeal of persuading a third time to give the party a chance at delivering their hypothetical change.

    But if the party is gobsmacked, the president is probably much more bewildered. If his private reflections can be assumed, the President Buhari probably feels and appears even more nervous. He knows that the buck, all the bucks without exception, stops at his desk. He may be accustomed to deflecting criticism and blaming his detractors or predecessors for the rot he met and every other policy mishaps that has laid the country waste, but it is unlikely he has convinced himself or anyone else that he is not to blame for the disaster. The country is unnervingly complex, and it requires a complex but methodical and deep mind to decipher and rearrange. His countrymen have their opinion of him, but it is unclear what he thinks of his capacity, whether he believes he has what the country requires for a lasting fix.

    The ordeal the party faces is exemplified by the sombre fact that it has not quite made a success of governance, contrary to its giddy expectation when it took office in 2015. Indeed, its long seven years story is characterised at best by ad hocism, and at worst by outright failure. It was in the midst of this chaos that it planned its convention, subordinated it to all kinds of machinations induced by its caretaker chairman, Mai Mala Buni, and had had to retrieve the party from him after many counterplots, including a coup that ended disastrously. Rather than allow healthy competition in electing its officers, the party again plotted a contentious consensus list. Party leaders were afraid, like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before them, that an open contest for the various national offices would damage the party, if not fracture it. By yesterday, few things were certain in and about the party. One of the few things certain was that no one knew how the consensus list would fare. If the list carried the day, the party, like the PDP did last October, would have passed up the chance to inspire Nigeria into a new democratic era. If the list comes to grief either wholly or partially, the party would have successfully reiterated how inexpertly and controversially the ruling party is led. Here the president cannot be absolved of responsibility.

    If the APC made heavy weather of organising its convention, not to say badly running the economy and emasculating it in a debt trap, what would they make of its presidential and governorship primaries? Charismatic former party chairman Adams Oshiomhole came to grief on the governorship Golgotha before the 2019 polls, where he made countless and implacable enemies during party primaries. But partly because a new presidential standard-bearer did not have to emerge in 2019, despite the uninspiring governance offered by the incumbent, the demons that excoriated his chairmanship were few. The scheming Mr Buni, on the other hand, will not superintend the presidential primary; but whoever does, whether a consensus or duly elected chairman, will have nightmares. The APC mismanaged the country, but in selecting their next standard-bearer, getting a hard working and knowledgeable man to fly their flag is the least of their concerns. They want a weakling who can be manipulated; or if strong, a candidate who, like the current occupant of the highest office, finds governance beyond his ken.

    The ruling party will probably have a passable convention. Disaffection will be managed and smothered, and the radicals in the party put in their place or officially given a wide berth. Like the caretaker officers and past elected officers, all the new officers, perhaps bar a few, will be thoroughly beholden to President Buhari. After all, even the radicals who plotted the daring and unprecedented coup against the Buni-led caretakers but failed were inspired by the president’s frustrations with Mr Buni’s pussyfooting. What is more, once the president denounced the coup, you could hear a pin drop in the party. It is characteristic of the party’s top leaders, governors and lawmakers to defer to the president. After the convention, and regardless of the outcome, the president will keep on dictating to the party, as he dictates to the country. Everyone, party members and outsiders alike, has become enthralled by the president’s body language and lip signals. It will not matter whether he is sometimes right or often wrong; what is important is that they will listen to him with rapt attention, and take his dictations with gravity and sobriety.

    But 2023 can’t come soon enough for the party. Every month, they live in dread of what other policy mishap would come from Aso Villa, and what security outrage the country would be forced to groan under. Their candidates in the next elections, whether at state or national level, will have to campaign as APC standard-bearers and identify with their mothballed party platform. To distance themselves from the programmes and so-called achievements of their president and governors would be an admission of failure. And yet, with cabalistic officials like Abubakar Malami dedicated to subverting the rule of law and the principles of natural justice, identifying with the party could be counterproductive. Caught between and betwixt, the party’s candidates will look for extraordinarily ingenious ways of walking a tightrope. The problem is that the tightrope is strung way too high up a precipitous mountain. This is of course a figure of speech. However, missing a step would not just be dangerous, it could in fact be cataclysmic. It is always a tough act performing after a virtuoso had brought the house down. Well, it is even far tougher to take the stage after a leader who has pitched brothers against brothers.

     

    The many tragedies of Electoral Act 2022

    TOO many controversies continue to swirl around the Electoral Act 2022. Passed by the National Assembly on January 25 and transmitted to the president a few days later, it was finally signed into law in late February after earlier rejections, the most recent of which was in November. The last hiccup it witnessed concerned the provision relating to modes of primaries for political parties. The legislature had ordered political parties to restrict themselves to the use of direct primary in producing candidates for elective offices. That provision was eventually rescinded in favour of all three modes, to wit, direct, indirect, and consensus. The rescission made sense, but not before the controversy the initial order generated turned ugly and nasty, and not before the now intransigent legislature introduced another controversial provision barring political appointees from voting or being voted for in party conventions and congresses for the election or nomination of candidates except they first resign 30 days before the events– the so-called Section 84 (12).

    Responding to the NASS decision not to amend the disputed provision contrary to the impression they gave the president before he assented the bill, the seething Justice minister Abubakar Malami, who is widely thought to be behind the president’s initial refusal to assent the bill, of course for private and political reasons, promised to litigate the matter. He did not indicate how he would do it, or whether he would opt for other means of redressing the problem. Eventually, of all the options Mr Malami promised to exploit to get the rescission of Sec. 84 (12), he settled for something quite extraordinary and magical. He tried to put some distance between himself and the litigation of the Electoral Act provision, but the disguise was flimsy and surreal. An unknown member of the Action Alliance party in Abia State, Nduka Edede, took the matter to court, joined the Justice minister as defendant, and in a matter of days got the Federal High Court Umuahia to not only throw out the contentious provision, but to also order the thrilled defendant, Mr Malami, to expunge the provision. Gloating and unable to appreciate the contradiction of being asked to expunge the beleaguered provision, Mr Malami announced that the judgement would immediately be gazetted to reflect the relevant expunction.

    But after much hue and cry, the hasty plan to gazette the judgement slowed down considerably. The judge in the case, Evelyn Anyadike, had also become an enchantress, with many Nigerians flummoxed by her understanding and handling of the law. Both the judge and the litigant are, however, unlikely to be fazed. Mr Malami is too steeped in the serial subversion of the law since 2015 to care what anybody thinks about his motives or competence. Without Sec. 84 (12) of the Electoral Act 2022, Mr Malami would always find an excuse to desecrate both the law and democracy. He has acquired the leeway to enact all sorts of legal, judicial and political monstrosities, a compulsion triggered in him when the presidency began ‘tampering’ with the judiciary. Today, after the usurpation of the judiciary was complete, few, except practitioners, remember there was ever a golden age of the judiciary when philosophers, mathematicians/logicians, wordsmiths and principled men and women trod the judicial hearth. Today, puzzling court decisions have come from Imo, Rivers, Cross River, and Bayelsa among others, dethroning and enthroning governors with scant regard for the electorate.

    The NASS may have stood up to President Buhari this time, perhaps attempting to redeem their image of constantly groveling before the executive branch, but it is doubtful whether they can hold the candle to the Second Republic national parliament which displayed more sense and independence than NASS has done since 1999. Though it seems NASS is engaged in a personal feud with Mr Malami and some other scheming political appointees, at least, for once, they have dared to stand firm and must be applauded, assuming this is not a one-off. As for the judiciary, given how some judges have held the law in contempt without any recourse to the illustrious history of the judiciary, the problem seems to rest squarely with the abused process of appointing judges. Until they get it right in that area, and stop appointing judges based on family pedigree as well as on political, religious and ethnic considerations, not to say the abominable quota that sidelines brilliant judges, more judicial travesties should be expected, ultimately endangering democracy and the society.

     

    Subsidies: governing by stealth

    IT is not obvious that the federal government realises the political and economic implication of the subsidy removal Finance minister Zainab Ahmed said was quietly done not too long ago. But having achieved that measure by stealth, nay ambush, the minister exults that a follow-up subsidy removal in the fuel supply sector was in the offing. The government would also accomplish that in phases, she said gleefully, of course with little said about the cost and implications. “We are cleaning up our subsidies,” she began enthusiastically. “We had a setback; we were to remove fuel subsidy by July this year, but there was a lot of pushback from the polity. We have elections coming and because of the hardship that companies and citizens went through during the COVID-19 pandemic, we just felt that the time was not right, so we pulled back on that.”

    The country will never know how convinced the government was about the subsidy removal policy entirely. Was the abandonment of the policy in respect of fuel due to coming elections or hardship, for which unfortunately they had no palliatives? In any case, she continues, “…we have been able to quietly implement subsidy removal in the electricity sector, and as we speak, we don’t have subsidies in the electricity sector. We did that incrementally over time by carefully adjusting the prices at some levels while holding the lower levels down…Hopefully, the parliament will agree with us and we are able to continue with our plan for subsidy (removal) otherwise the way things are going we will not be able to predict where the deficit will be as a result of the fluctuation in the global market.”

    Whether the parliament agrees with the government or not – and it is hard to see them doing that anytime this year – it is significant that the government has embraced stealth as public policy, not minding how detrimental it is to a highly pauperised populace. Wages have stagnated, violence has multiplied, corruption has become endemic and intractable, and most people have lost faith in government. There is nothing the Finance minister has said about the government’s subsidy removal measures that elicits public trust in a government which rhapsodises stealth and ambush as public policy anchors. Had elections truly reflected public mood, and the electorate able to discern and appreciate public policies, no ruling party would be as daring and surreptitious as the minister had glamourised.

  • The OAU vice chancellorship saga

    The OAU vice chancellorship saga

    Unrestrained, ill-advised, some Ile-Ife indigenes last week stormed the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) to protest the appointment of Prof Adebayo Bamire as vice-chancellor instead of an indigene of the ancient town. The protest was ugly, unedifying and atavistic. It was a new low in Osun State, a ghastly denunciation of the civilisation of the Southwest Yoruba, and a horrible slap on the face of every cultured and educated Nigerian. The famous university cannot yet establish whether there was any collaboration from inside, but they too will be shocked to know that the protest, especially in the manner it was shamelessly exhibited before the whole world, ever took place. That top Ile-Ife sons and daughters did not feel scandalised by the protest, enough to promptly denounce it and lampoon its organisers, must have also come to many Nigerians as final proof that a gloomy and oppressive atmosphere has settled upon the country.

    Defenders of Prof Bamire, who insist that the process that produced him as vice-chancellor was fair and transparent, have leaked the grading of the interview that culminated in the appointment. The Ile-Ife indigene who was a candidate in the interview was not even among the top three contestants. It may be wrong to second-guess how he feels about the protest, especially seeing that he was adopted by the indigenes as their candidate and made the lightning rod of their protests, but he will be expected to denounce the protest and repudiate its logic as harmful to everything a university stands for and perhaps which he personally represents. Maybe he has already done that. If he has not, he can be trusted to do so in the days ahead. His colleagues in the university, not to say the Southwest as a whole, will feel for him and be vicariously traumatised.

    The campaign to restrict the appointment of vice-chancellors and other public similar appointees to indigenes, religions or ethnicities is of course not a new thing. In one form or the other, it had been practiced by the federal government itself as it became religion and regionally sensitive to the appointment of vice-chancellors, heads of ministries and parastatals, judiciaries, and even security and law enforcement agencies. States were consequently inspired to follow suit in enunciating and executing abominable restrictions and unfair practices that discriminated and polluted the social, economic and political environments of the country. They have remained unapologetic. To the officials saddled with the onerous responsibility of governing Nigeria, these practices are nothing but politics. The chickens were naturally bound to come home to roost, sooner or later.

    After decades of creeping and sometimes surreptitious discriminatory practices, the entire country is now enveloped in the kind of disgraceful show orchestrated by some obviously sponsored Ile-Ife indigenes to protest against meritocracy, embrace mediocrity and weaponise, in a humiliating way, some of the country’s traditional and religious practices. The same monster reared its head in 2020 in the heat of the appointment of a new University of Ibadan vice chancellor. The region was horrified, and given what Ibadan stands for in the history of the Yoruba, no one thought it was anything more than an aberration that the exemplary culture and civilisation of the Yoruba could not defeat. They were wrong. The monster has now berthed at the cradle. The enlightened must now ask themselves whether it can’t get worse.

    It probably will. As the University of Ilorin is demonstrating, it is not enough to restrict their vice- chancellors to a particular religion and state, even their alumni association must be inflicted with the cankerworm of prejudice and intolerance. Just how low must Nigeria descend before the people admit they have had enough? No one can guess. Since there is no indication at any level and arm of government that they recognise the reprehensibleness of such atrocious practices, let alone muster the sense and will to do something about it, more shocking display of grossness should be expected. The quality of leadership has declined precipitously everywhere in Nigeria, much worse behavior should therefore be expected.

    But if the Ile-Ife indigenes who stormed OAU last week in favour of their son, who was not discriminated against, lack common sense, what of the law enforcement agencies themselves? Why would they stand hands akimbo as violence and trespass were enacted upon a peaceful university community? If Ile-Ife indigenes and elites do not appreciate the shame and humiliation the protest brought upon the cradle, and how it has sullied the town’s image, should the police be indifferent to the invasion and trespass? In Awka, Anambra State, two Thursdays ago, they stood aloof when two vixens disgraced the inauguration of Charles Soludo as governor. Paralysed by decades of submission and servility to the high and mighty, the law enforcement agencies are accustomed to waiting to be mandated to carry out their constitutional duties. They have probably let sleeping dogs lie in the case of the Anambra slapfest; it would be distressing and indefensible to let the OAU invasion go unanswered. The police may not be able to arrest the decline of the country’s values, a task to which the ruling elite have become inured, but they can at least arrest the gangster culture displayed in Ile-Ife and threatening to overwhelm the society.

     

    Power outage, fuel scarcity and slothful govt

     

    What became clear between February and March is that both the Petroleum and Power ministries have neither a sense of urgency nor clear direction as to how to resolve the lingering fuel supply crisis and rising prices of fuel products. For both, the Russian-Ukraine war, which is beyond Nigeria’s control, and myriad of other domestic factors, are responsible for the hardship Nigerians are experiencing. The fuel supply crisis is being gradually resolved, but the power supply shortage remains dire and unresponsive to government’s puny efforts. The problems were urgent, suggesting that the federal government should treat it as such and demonstrate to the public that it has the capacity to resolve the problems with dispatch and that its panaceas are sensible, relevant and adequate. Instead of that urgency manifesting through the federal government, it was the National Assembly, through the House of Representatives Committee on Power, that waded in with a barrage of questions at a hearing in Abuja.

    Answering a few of those questions posed to the Power minister, Abubakar Aliyu, who was represented by the ministry’s permanent secretary, Nebolisa Anoka, gave the indication that the problems were longstanding, fundamental and irresoluble in the short run, at least not this year. Alarmed, the Reps had been unsparing and disconsolate. To suggest that Nigeria would battle this crisis for another year and possibly more, they chorused, was intolerable. But, alas, they will have to tolerate the problem. Decades of promises, resolutions and stupendous budgetary outlays have produced nothing more than what the House of Representatives described as theories and increasing darkness. From the Olsuegun Obasanjo presidency to the Umaru Yar’Adua/Goodluck Jonathan presidency, and now almost eight years of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, nothing significant and concrete has been done to ameliorate a problem that has been almost as old as Nigeria itself. It is shameful.

    With no refineries working, perhaps deliberately, and slothful and incompetent officials saddled with the responsibility of designing and executing solutions to perennial power generation and distribution problems, it is hard for Nigerians not to imagine that they would be called upon to endure another decade of the same punishing crises. Electricity generation and distribution should have been decentralised decades ago, just like the police and other key agencies. But the anti-federalist Nigerian governments hold on perniciously to these agencies, unable to fund them or produce the initiative to administer them effectively. Sadly, no administration has mustered the initiative to make a difference to these problems, nor even understood the security implications of letting these crises stay unresolved.

  • Two economies: Knowledge -v- Religion

    Two economies: Knowledge -v- Religion

    I decided to adopt this style today for two reasons: first to allow others do the talking, and two, to give ourselves some comic relief. Nigeria’s largely leadership -induced problems can give one hypertension. But even as we smile or laugh away our sorrow, we still have some lessons to draw from the short articles. Thanks for your understanding.

    There are basically two economies in the world and every nation on the face of the earth fall under either of them.

    These are:

    (1). The Knowledge Economy and

    (2). The Religion Economy

    The rich and prosperous nations of the world belong to the Knowledge Economy while the the poorest and poverty stricken nations of the world belong to the Religion Economy.

    The Knowledge Economy is one that engages the brain, asks relevant questions, and proffer solutions to problems.

    The Religion Economy is one that blackmails God and dumps every responsibility on Him.

    The Knowledge Economy tasks the brain, the Religion Economy numbs the brain.

    Japan, for example, is a Knowledge Economy. It has no natural resources but it is a prosperous nation, one of the richest on the planet.

    At least six of every 10 cars on Nigeria’s roads today are Japanese cars.

    Japan is not a religious country, but it is one of the most corruption-free nations.

    China is not a religious country, but nations that ignore China today do so to their own peril.

    Nigeria falls under Religion Economy, everything depends on God.

    Nigeria is one of the most endowed nations with natural resources on the face of the earth, yet also among the poorest.

    Nigeria wears proudly the badge of the “poverty capital of the world” and is one of the most corrupt nations on the face of the earth.

    It is also one of the most religious countries on the planet.

    It is a nation where everything depends on God, and God watches in disgust as we mortgage our brains.

    Even security agencies that are constitutionally funded from budgets look up to God to carry out their duties.

    But here is the irony:

    The two major religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, emanated from Israel and Saudi Arabia, respectively.

    But none of those two nations fall under Religion Economy.

    None!

    One evidence of their subscription to Knowledge Economy is the yearly pilgrimages that generate for them revenues in billions of dollars.

    But hypocritically stupid nations like Nigeria are comfortable disseminating nuisance to humanity with their glamorisation of the Religion Economy.

    People elected and empowered to do a job will turn around and ask those who elected them to pray.

    God is disgusted with Religion Economy.

    There’s a reason He gave man brain and instructed him to subdue the earth.

    If you’re a Christian (or Muslim) who does not commit yourself to the pursuit of knowledge your life will become a perfect reflection of Nigeria.

    That’s a fact!

    It is an illusion to anticipate wisdom where people do not pay attention to Knowledge.

    _Source:_ Research.

     

    Our dream Nigeria

    Everybody wants Nigeria to be like countries overseas including:

    The civil servant who steals public fund.

    The security personnel who collect bribe at the detriment of national security.

    The teacher who organises special examination centres.

    The parents who pay for exam malpractice for their children.

    The students who practice exam malpractice to pass exams.

    The lecturer who gives out grades for money or sex.

    The citizens who shunt queues and disobey traffic rules.

    The politicians who embezzle public funds.

    The boss who gives unmerited favours to his subordinates on basis of religion, tribe, political and other social affiliations.

    The good’s seller who hoard goods to create deliberate scarcity.

    The judges and lawyers who make ways for criminals to escape the wrath of law.

    The doctors who refer their patients to private facilities for personal gains.

    The engineer who constructs facilities below agreed standard for personal gains.

    The youths who believe shady and fraudulent acts are ways of hustling.

    The common man who is waiting to be in any of the above-mentioned situations to do the same, if not worse.

    Our individual actions make a summation of our society. Think deeply about it.

     

    Who is at fault?

    *Please who is really at fault ?*

    *Husband arrived home late after a stressful day.*

    *Wife (rudely ask him): oma yaayin, ekun irin, lati ibo leti nbo ?* (You’re welcome. How come you are this early? Where are you coming from?)

    *Husband: lati orun ni* (I am coming from heaven).

    *Wife: se e bami ri awon obi mi? (Did you see my parents?)

    *Husband: mi o gba orun apadi koja    * (I did not pass through Hell).

    Since yesterday night,

    Neighbours are still struggling to separate them for fighting          *

     

    Second wife

    Don’t be a boring husband. Wake your wife at midnight, tell her you want to marry a second wife and go back to sleep!

     

    What is medicine?

    My good people please kindly understand that Medicine Is Not Always Found In Pharmacies

    1. Exercise is Medicine.
    2. Fasting is Medicine.

    iii. Natural food is Medicine.

    1. Laughter is Medicine.
    2. Vegetables Are Medicine.
    3. Sleep is Medicine.

    vii. Sunlight is Medicine.

    viii. Loving someone is Medicine.

    1. Being loved is Medicine.
    2. Gratitude is Medicine.
    3. Letting go of offence is Medicine.

    xii. Meditation is Medicine.

    xiii. Reading and Studying God’s Word is Medicine.

    xiv. Singing and Praising God   is Medicine.

    1. Eating right and right on time is Medicine.

    xvi. Thinking right and Right thinking with the right type of Mindset is Medicine.

    xvii. Trusting and Believing God is Medicine

    xviii. Good Friends are Medicine.

    xix. Forgiveness and forgiving others is Medicine

    *Take enough of these medicines and you’ll rarely need the ones in Pharmacies*

  • The crisis of party formation revisited

    The crisis of party formation revisited

    As the APC held its much postponed party convention yesterday, many patriotic Nigerians waited with bated breath and muted expectations hoping that the party will cobble together a patchwork of compromise which will stay the executioner’s axe dangling over it and the Fourth Republic. The crisis of party formation is at the root of Nigeria’s inability to progress democratically or advance economically since independence.

    There is a compelling nexus between shambolic parties and equally shambolic nations. Nations have the political parties they deserve and ultimately the fate that overtakes them. National character is national destiny. Twice in post-independence Nigeria, ambitious military rulers saw a chance to terminate wobbling civilian regimes. In the case of the aborted Third Republic, it was terminated in vitro by its own initiators. It was autogolpe or self-coup at its most bizarre.

    If the Fourth Republic has so far survived the military’s asphyxiating bear hug, it is not because of the innate generosity of the institution.  Military rule has two major factors working against it in contemporary Nigeria. First is the fact that except in circumstances of widespread anarchy and general state collapse, military rule is historically passé. Second is the dismal and appalling record the military themselves left behind in Nigeria.

    But there is a limit to which people can press their luck. As the Yoruba people will put it, just because a person is named Folorunso (May God protect this child) doesn’t mean he should go about climbing a palm tree with banana fronds.

    Given the dire circumstances in which the nation has found itself, all hands must be on deck to save the Fourth Republic from going under in an apocalyptic meltdown. This is the time for efforts of a bipartisan nature to prevent the operators and managers of the polity from pressing the self-destruct button.

    Politics is often defined as the authoritative allocation of values and resources, that is determining who gets what and at what time. The crisis of party formation in post-independence Nigeria is mainly precipitated by the iniquitous and inequitable allocation of resources either through forcible hijacking of the process by devious antidemocratic means or through the feudalization of the means of allocation by people without any concept of the nation-state.

    In a multi-ethnic conglomeration of mutually hostile nationalities aspiring to organic nationhood and a democratic normalization of competing visions of the nation, the idea of an authoritarian rather than authoritative figure presiding over the allocation of values and resources is bound to come into violent collision with egalitarian forces ostensibly fighting for justice and equity.

    This crisis is everywhere in the Fourth Republic. If it is muted and neutered at the sub-national levels of governance, it is because sub-ethnic contradictions are often less frontal and often more subsumable under the generalised framework of class conflict rather than homicidal tribal vengeance. In some extreme cases such as we witnessed in the old west in the Second Republic, sub-ethnic tensions arising from political disputations and feelings of alienation may boil over into full blown intra-ethnic warfare and violence.

    Towards the end of 1983, in an atmosphere of deep gloom and despondency, Awolowo’s party, the Unity Party of Nigeria, (UPN) converged on Abeokuta for the last gathering of the clan.

    The despair was all pervading. The UPN had just been taken to the cleaners in an egregiously rigged election masterminded by the hard men of NPN in collusion with the police and security forces. James Ajibola Idowu Ige, one of the most brilliant and colourful leaders of progressive forces ever thrown up in Nigeria, was nowhere to be found on the high table.

    Ige had earlier been steamrolled in an electoral coup spearheaded by Ibadan supremacists, security forces and those who simply hated his guts. In the case of Pa Michael Ajasin, he had barely survived by the skin of his teeth, having been thoroughly roughed up by an electoral blitzkrieg ably assisted by men of the notorious and infamous “Verdict ‘83″. The old man sat on the high table ruffled but still sedate and forbearing.

    The case of Bola Ige deserves particular emphasis. He had earlier been stripped of his title of Aare Alaasa by the reigning Ibadan monarch over what was regarded as his contumely to his Ibadan constituency. The title was given to a local poet and Ewi exponent who gladly accepted.

    Barely a year earlier in what has come to be known as the Yola Night of Long Knives, Ige was granted a reprieve by Chief Awolowo after his opponents led by LKJ tabled a motion that he should be expelled from the party for inviting a known political adversary, General Olusegun Obasanjo, to adjudicate in a political rift involving him and his estranged former deputy, S M Afolabi.

    Awolowo, ever the calm rational philosopher and master dialectician of opposing historical forces, refused to entertain the gloom and despondency that seemed to have consumed his loyal colleagues and hero-worshipping lieutenants. He had famously posited his theory of synthesis adopted from Hegelian dialectics of history. By this theory, the best parts of the contending forces would eventually fuse into one and the struggle must resume in earnest.

    It was a parting shot from the great man to a nation undeserving of his visionary gifts. Earlier, and having been subject to a daylight electoral robbery, Awolowo had vowed never to take part in any electoral contest again in his lifetime. If the nation still needed his services, it knew where to find him, the old man added.

    His jubilant foes never realised that this was a complete disavowal of the democratic trajectory of the nation and of the Second Republic by extension. His vision acutely angled,  Awolowo could have been reading from a horoscope of impending disaster. At the rational level, he had the weight of historical analysis on his side.

    Awolowo knew that each time the progressive forces are forcibly side-lined and alienated by the security/ feudal complex, disaster always followed. This was what happed in the first and second republics and the aborted Third Republic which was eventually consumed by the annulment of Abiola’s presidential mandate. Needless to add that on the very last day of the year and having lost all legitimacy and authority, the civilian administration was sent packing by the soldiers. Nigeria had joined the league of abandoned toddlers in the orphanage of democracy once again.

    Next year would be the fortieth anniversary of the UPN’s historic last gathering and Awo’s landmark intervention. Four years later Awo himself joined his ancestors. His initial comment on the new Buhari administration was as gnomic as it was brimming with oracular wisdom. “The omens are still not clear”, declared the Ikenne titan.

    It was not clear whether the old sage was having a rethink about his theory of synthesis of the Nigerian political class. But with the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious that the fusion had not happened the way the old man would have thought or anybody could have imagined. It was not entirely his fault. Reality is always more complex and disarming than elegant theoretical formulations.

    Things have become more conceptually sophisticated. Advances in the study of dialectics suggest that contending realities do not fuse cleanly and clearly. Neither do they obey the Hegelian formula of cause and effect. Rather, it is a complexly interlocking procedure in which contending contradictions jostle for ascendancy in what is known as an overdetermined reality. What is right about what is left is what is left about what is right.

    For example, it would have been entirely inconceivable for a right-wing recalcitrant like an Abiola to have emerged as a paradoxical hero of progressive forces and a martyr of democratic rule. Yet Abiola could only have emerged from the right and right-wing politics. Only conservative “business friendly” politics could have thrown up a man of his stupendous means, wealth of pan-Nigerian connections and sheer chutzpah.

    But if anybody had thought that Abiola’s martyrdom was a divinely ordained sacrifice to lay the foundation of a progressive, genuinely democratic and egalitarian nation, such a person had better perish the thought.  What is playing out in the Fourth Republic, first through General Obasanjo and now through Major General Buhari, is the consolidation of right-wing conservative dominion in alliance with the new monied class in a project of perpetual domination of the nation.

    If anything, the way and manner the old owners and founders of the PDP were muscled out of contention in textbook military fashion ought to have indicated in what direction the wind was blowing. Famously, Umaru Shinkafi was known to have asked the former military hierarchs absconding from his APP whether their new posting was out.

    The overwhelming presence of retired military barons, their siblings and their paramilitary subalterns in the affairs of the post-military republic attests to this new class formation. It is a fusion of contrary forces quite right but in a way even a man of Awolowo’s famed political wizardry could not have envisaged.

    Sometimes, it feels like a diarchy, but not in the way good old Zik also envisaged. In its classical formulation, diarchy is direct military rule bolstered and boosted by civilian accessories. In 1972, in a celebrated intervention, the great Owelle of Onitsha, worried by the virtual and seemingly irreversible domination of the military in Nigeria’s post-war political arrangement, had advocated diarchy as a solution to the political instability confronting the nation.

    But as we can see, what has happened is not diarchy in its classical sense but a militarized polity dominated by retired military personnel and the new civilian subclass they have created in their own image. Yet brutal ironies and paradoxes subsist. One of the core military annulers of Abiola’s mandate who objected to his presidential ascendancy based on a business deal gone awry made a successful transition to right-wing politics and greater national prominence.

    It was not a bridge too far. On the other hand, you have the tragic case of a Bola Ige who, having felt betrayed by his colleagues, had tried to cross from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum before realising the perils involved. It proved a bridge too far. He was summarily executed for his contretemps.

    After twenty three years of this right-wing conservative political engineering, the true profile of the Fourth Republic now appears before us in all its ungainly severity. The nation has stalled both politically and economically.

    There is a spiritual and ethical darkness everywhere which makes the polity very vulnerable to hitherto unimaginable crimes and the manifestation of horrendous depravities. As a result of hunger, poverty and deep-seated feelings of political exclusion and alienation, escalating insecurity has become the new normal.

    As a result of the crisis of party formation, the country is confronted by the phenomenon of politics without principles, parties without ideology or discernible position. Serial decamping and party crisscrossing has become the norm. Things have become so hilarious that many decampees are reported to be hurrying back to their original parties for fear of being asked to vacate their seats by hostile judgement. It doesn’t get more politically promiscuous.

    After twenty three years of civilian rule and with the idea of military rule receding into remote antiquity, it is a great irony that the abysmal conduct of the political class now constitutes the greatest threat to democracy and the survival of the Fourth Republic. Once major parties cease to lack deep convictions and foundational beliefs, they can no longer function as vehicles of popular aspirations. It is the death knell of democratic rule.

    Awo himself would have marvelled at the paradox of politics without strong convictions and political parties without organizing principles which is the hallmark of political prostitution as a national ideology. Throughout his life, the man from Ikenne strove to prevent the homogenization of the Nigerian ruling class by a rigorous differentiation of political platform. That homogenization is now upon us. It is not the kind of fusion Awolowo was expecting. But history moves in a strange way.

  • Baba Lekki set to immolate himself

    Baba Lekki set to immolate himself

    To Papa Elelubo on the borders of Agbonrin village where Baba Lekki was threatening to set himself ablaze in a manner reminiscent of the Mongolian official who, having failed to meet his own target of delivery of housing units to his beloved compatriots, promptly detonated himself.  In the old contrarian’s case, he was paying the supreme sacrifice for his perennial failure to ignite a revolutionary apocalypse that would have made the Kymer Rouge of Cambodia a child’s play.

    It was a hot and sweltering mid-March morning. The rains have refused to come as if divine retribution has been added to the secular punishment of outraged humanity. The caked and parched soil tells its own story. So does the foul fetid odour of stale sweat oozing from the armpits of rural hoi-polloi. But the agrarian folks remain as sweet and sunny tempered as ever. They have come to see off an impossible troublemaker, or so they think.

    Clad in snow-white apparel like the devotee of a local deity, the old man cut the figure of otherworldly soberness as he fixed the crowd with an unnerving gaze. The fools have come to watch him die, but if he asked them to come out for the aluta to end all alutas , they will laugh him to scorn.

    “The common man is an asshole”, the old crook mumbled to himself, as he beheld the pulsating crowd many of who were already impatiently asking him to do the needful and spare them the long rigmarole. A menacing-looking thug with missing incisors suddenly hauled out of his pocket a huge wrap of prohibited weeds and began chewing on it in neurotic boredom.

    But it was the crazy boy Okon who bearded the old lion in his den. He had been sitting quietly in apparent remorse at the imminent departure of his old mentor when the mad boy jumped up as if stung by an insect.

    “Baba, now dat you don dey go, dat Ikorodu woman I been dey see with you before before, make I begin dey knack am?” the boy demanded with a lewd stare.

    “Okon, you are a counterrevolutionary petit-bourgeois scoundrel. May God punish your grandmother”, the old man screamed at his delinquent ward.  At this point as if on cue, a frail man with an unsteady gait stepped forward and in ancient Egba accent, accused Baba Lekki of having swindled him fifty years earlier by giving him a counterfeit coin.

    “Alagba, owo ijosi, owo Ijebu renwa”, the frail man mooed, pursuing pre-colonial intra-ethnic hostilities.

    “Ah Muda, but they say you died a long time ago!!” Baba Lekki retorted with a contorted grin. At this point, an impatient spare parts trader shouted. “When is this Baba going to die now? I no dey dis dem Yoruba Iberiberi show!!” Baba Lekki lost his cool at this point.

    “Ah stupid man, you are waiting for your grandfather to die for Nigeria? Na other people’s child dem dey name Abegunde, abi no be so? Yeye people!!” the old man thundered as he detonated some foul-smelling, eye-stinging gas from an old cylinder which sent everybody scampering for safety.

    “Chineke!!! I for don reach Alaba market but for dis yeye Yoruba crook”, the Ibo man said as he took to his heels.

     

  • Matters arising

    Matters arising

    Who cares about ASUU strike?

    The first month’s strike was supposed to be a warning to the government that the union was serious about having its outstanding demands dating back to 2009 met, but as usual, there was a breakdown in negotiations.

    The strike has been extended for two months with no guarantee that ASUU’s demands will be met despite claims by government officials that the necessary steps would be taken to resolve the lingering matter.

    According to the National Executive Council of ASUU, it was disappointing that the government did not treat the matters involved with utmost urgency they deserved during the four-week period as expected of a reasonable, responsive, and well-meaning administration.

    If only successive governments and the present administration have honoured past agreements with the lecturers, there would have been no justification for the present strike.

    What has happened over the years is that to get striking lecturers back to work, the government usually sign agreements and decide which of the demands to attend to.

    The union seems to have had enough of broken promises and is determined to once and for all wake up the government to its responsibilities of giving education the priority it deserves.

    It’s sad that we are back to yet another ASUU strike with academic activities paralysed in public universities nationwide while the government carries on as if nothing is amiss.

    Ahead of the 2023 elections, high stake politicking is on with the President, Governors, legislators, Ministers and other elected and appointed officers more concerned about who gets what position.

     

    As far as they are concerned, the ASUU strike can go on forever.

     

    Ife indigene VC for OAU

    The demand for the appointment of a native of Ife as the Vice-Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife by some indigenes is the height of parochialism that has become the order of the day regarding appointments into various positions in the country.

    There is nothing wrong in an indigene of Ife becoming the Vice-Chancellor of the institution if he or she is qualified and scales through the well-known selection process and confirmation, but to demand the appointment on the basis of being an indigene is ridiculous and crazy as Noble laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka described it.

     

    It’s unfortunate that some state governments edge out non-indigenes of their states from becoming Vice-Chancellors of their state universities, but to make such demands for an institution of global repute is to demean its status.

    The position of the Vice-Chancellor is not a traditional title of Ife and the indigenes of the town who instigated the protest should be ashamed of themselves.

    They should have known better that no sensible person would support them for such a cause that is capable of projecting Ife in a bad light and should apologise for the show of shame.

     

    If there is any qualified indigene of the town who has been denied the opportunity of vying for the position, the person concerned should protest through normal channels and not seek to get the position through some faceless indigenes and so-called traditional worshippers.

     

    Toxic workplaces

    In the first of its series on Toxic Work Places, Tech Cabal published an expose on the Chief Executive Officer of Bento Africa, Ebunoluwa Okubanjo who was accused of among others verbal abuse and indiscriminate termination of appointments by former staff.

    Expectedly, the report went viral and trended for days with many writing about the kind of harrowing experiences they have had working in various organisations.

    One lesson from the crossfire “gbas gbos” discourse is the need for employers not to demean by their staff. They should abide by the best Human Resource Management practices.

    Staff are the best ambassadors of any organisation and how they are treated matters. It can make or mar the image of any company on a day of reckoning like it is the case with Okubanjo of Bento Africa.

  • Subject: President Buhari should not hand over the Nigerian oil sector to his successor in its present condition

    Subject: President Buhari should not hand over the Nigerian oil sector to his successor in its present condition

    The Nigerian lack of values is sinking the nation’s only bread basket: oil. The oil majors are leaving because we no longer run businesses in the sector but installing rackets like a gangster paradise. Even those responsible for bad fuel and long queues at fuel stations are walking the high places of power like lords. As for the NNPC, perhaps what is needed now is a comprehensive overhaul of its personnel and systems. Needless to state that the economy would sooner than later be brought to its knees if nothing is done to arrest the situation” – The Nation Editorial comment, Monday March 21, 2022.

    “The speed with which international oil companies and other investors are withdrawing investments in hydrocarbon exploitation from Nigeria has contributed significantly to Nigeria’s inability to meet OPEC quota. We are not able to get the needed investments to develop the sector and that affected us” – Horatius Egua, Media aide to Nigeria’s Minister of state for oil, Timipre Sylva,

    Expectations were that the Petroleum Act would sanitise the Nigerian oil sector, make the NNPC a Nigerian, not a sectional organisation, and enable it properly perform its purpose as Nigeria’s food basket accounting, as it does, for about 10 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and petroleum exports revenue representing around 86 per cent of the country’s total exports revenue.

    President Muhammadu Buhari has about 15 months to exit office after a two- term tenure during which the world, not just Nigeria, witnessed some truly earthshaking events, among them,  Covid-19, the global pandemic which accounted for millions in deaths, still counting, and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine with all its likely consequences for food security in Africa and which, if care is not taken, could snowball into World War 111. Besides the human debacle, world economies have suffered terribly especially in the third world countries. like ours, where economies have been set back decades, if not, irreparably. Unfortunately for Nigeria, it is in these terrible times we are beginning to reap the consequences of the inefficiency, the cronyism and corruption, that have long bedeviled the Nigerian oil sector. Nigeria’s Brent sells at around $120 per barrel today but rather than benefit Nigerians, the current high oil prices will surely leave us much worse since the cost of imported fuel has hit the roofs. The fuel subsidy for which nearly N4T had to be budgeted, unprepared, rather than remove it, now has a strong possibility of reaching N5T, if not more.

    A good reading of goings on in the oil industry in Nigeria today suggests that for the good works President Buhari has been able to do for Nigeria not to be tainted by the inefficiency and gargantuan corruption in the industry, and also with an eye on his legacy, I think the time has come for him to recuse himself from the post of oil minister. He has done so much in very difficult circumstances, that he must not permit himself be held vicariously accountable for the sins of others. Even though as leader he would like to take responsibility for everything done during his administration, he must give those of us who believe in his personal integrity and incorruptibility that window of opportunity to still be able to hold on to them even after he had left office, much as they will not wash him clean of charges of nepotism. He should appoint another substantive Oil minister immediately, or risk being tainted by the acts of others, especially in a very corrupt sector of the Nigerian economy as was recently exposed in an Auditor- General’s report; now before a committee of the National Assembly.

    It will be strange if the President is not amazed at the rapidity with which divestment is happening in the Nigerian Oil industry today. Unlike our Chinese lenders who are alleged to be having a rethink about lending to Nigeria because of insecurity, those divesting from the oil sector are not citing insecurity, but corruption accentuated by oil stealing. Only this past week, it was reported that oil stealing, which Richard Laing, Chairman/Managing Director of ExxonMobil, described as not just oil theft but ‘organised criminality with sophisticated operation’, dealt with Nigeria to the tune of $3.27b in 14 months. Even local investors in the sector, like Tony Elumelu, who you would not accuse of being a flippant speaker, has raised issues over the amount of stealing going on in the industry. He has asked, for instance, about “how the country can be losing over 95% of its oil production to thieves”, citing the case of “the Bonny Terminal that should be receiving over 200k barrels of crude oil daily, but instead, receives less than 3,000 barrels, leading the operator, Shell, to declare a force majeure?”

    Also, in a report titled “Reining in the Collapse of the Nigerian Oil industry”, published by the Africa Oil + Gas report, another stakeholder, Austin Avuru, founding MD/CEO of Seplat Energy, and Executive Chairman of AA Holdings, wrote that Nigeria’s oil production has reached a critical state as “some oil production wells don’t get to see 80% of their production making it to the terminals due to oil theft”. He recommended that the regulators should immediately set up a “war room” strategy to deal with the emergency.

    What then is NNPC doing?

    I think the right question to ask should be whether Nigeria has round pegs in round holes, manning this very critical sector of its economy. The other day it was the case of importing adulterated oil for which the Buhari government is yet to hold anybody accountable. While many have belly ached about how a section of the country has a disproportionate control of  the NNPC,  I have taken the far less worrying position that Nigerians cannot do anything about President Buhari’s appointments. All we should ask of him, therefore, is to put “round pegs in round holes”. Happily, the North is not lacking in capable hands in any discipline, whatever. Only that one is reminded of the First Lady saying in a BBC interview that some people were in their houses when they were being called upon to come and take up appointments in the Buhari government (Aisha Buhari in a BBC interview on 14 October, 2016, or thereabouts).

    Things might still have been tolerable, if the above were the only problems with the NNPC as the President could merely have directed our obviously overstretched security forces to re double their efforts. Unfortunately, the humongous corruption bedeviling the sector is indescribable, and by  no means, amenable to quick fix . For a good capture of that, I shall have to quote, at some length from The Nation’s Editorial opinion of Monday, 21 March, 2022, titled: A minister’s strange alibi”. It refers to the scathing findings by the Auditor-General of the Federation (AuGF) as contained in the Federal Government’s Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended December 31, 2019 which was submitted to the Clerk of the National Assembly on August 18, 2021.

    It reads as follows:

    “Not only is the report a summary of how things came to be, the massive pilfering is more accurately, the story of the benumbing paradox of an oil corporation that is everything that an accountable business entity should not even pretend to be. Among the key findings of the AuGF report are that the defunct Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) now NNPC Limited, could not account for about 107,239,436 barrels of crude oil lifted for domestic consumption in 2019; that about 22,929.84 litres of PMS worth N7.06 billion claimed to have been pumped to the two depots (Ibadan-Ilorin and Aba-Enugu) between June and July 2019 were not received by them; and that while the NNPC records showed that N1,272,606,864,000 was transferred by the corporation to the federation account, the amount recorded by the Accountant-General of the Federation was N608,710,292,773.44 – a whopping discrepancy of N663,896,567,227.58”.”The Group Managing Director of the NNPC, the report averred, should be asked to explain the discrepancy between the two figures and remit the balance of N663,896,567,227.58 to the Federation Account or face sanction. There was also the case of a certain N519,922,433,918.46 said to have been transferred to the Federation Account by the NNPC based on transfer mandates. Summary: NNPC should provide “reconciliation statement for the difference of N88,787,862,853.96 between AGF’s figure of N608,710,296,772.42 and NNPC’s figure per transfer mandate of N519,922,433,918.463 .

    Those were the findings for 2019.

    “Meanwhile, there are no indications that anything has changed in any real sense. If anything, the facts so presented, far beyond the typical book-keepers’ nightmare, represent the jumbled paper trail of an organisation not only steeped in crime, but one in which criminal behaviour is enabled by powerful figures at the highest levels of government. It explains why not a few Nigerians sometimes wonder if anything could be salvaged by the mere name-change being presented as transition from the old NNPC to NNPC Limited. It is at the heart of why the current high oil prices, rather than benefit the country, will in fact leave her much worse – in the environment of low output and at a time the cost of imported fuel has hit the roofs…”.

    In conclusion, I do not think that President Buhari would, personally, like to bequeath this Augean stable to his successor.

  • Tinubu @ 70: Thinking tomorrow today

    Tinubu @ 70: Thinking tomorrow today

    The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.

    This columnist was watching with admiration on the television, as the event was streamed live, the commissioning of the gigantic $2.5 billion worth Dangote Fertilizer Plant, Ibeju – Lekki, Lagos State. It was a state of the art industrial master piece with the capacity to convert waste to wealth and in the trajectory of boosting agribusiness now and in the future. There are many advantages of this gargantuan project which are not the subject of this article. Pertinent to mention was the array of men and women of stature and substance in sartorial splendour to witness and share in the joy of the occasion. Even President Muhammadu Buhari had to cut short observation of official protocols before making his speech as this could consume precious time. However, Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo – Olu was in one of his finest moments as he mounted the podium. Following the footsteps of the Central Bank Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, in observing protocols, Sanwo – Olu could not but concede honour to whom honour is due. The duo specifically mentioned Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu; Sanwo – Olu succinctly stated that it was Tinubu’s administration idea to initiate the Lekki Free Trade Zone when he (Asiwaju Tinubu) was in the saddle in Lagos State. The man of the moment, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the richest man in the African continent, resplendent with inner elation and euphoria mounted the podium and inter alia in a phrase that nearly broke the internet referred to Tinubu (seated among array of dignitaries) as “Asiwaju of Nigeria.” It is pertinent without prevarication to mention that a 10 – second video clip crafted within half an hour of the statement coming out from the lips of the highly esteemed Aliko Dangote, the internet was agog with it as if conferring a national title on the seeming stormy petrel of Nigeria’s politics, in the person of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who will be celebrating his 70th birthday on the 29th March 2022.

    Tinubu – The Power of Ideas

    It was the popular and globally acclaimed author of the best seller, “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill who once pontificated: “all achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.” It would not be out of place to succinctly and saliently state the expanse of mixed sandy and marshy land between Eti – Osa and Ibeju Lekki, situated on both sides of the Lekki – Epe Expressway years ago was nothing to write home about. Putting it simply and squarely, the administration of Tinubu came up with the idea of establishing the New Town Development Authority (NTDA) and subsequently, the Lekki Free Trade Zone came into existent. Subsequent government of Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, built on it immensely, followed by that of Akinwunmi Ambode and the incumbent Babajide Olusola Sanwo – Olu.

    At this juncture, not jettisoning the celebrating mood of the 70th birthday events of the man of ideas, Tinubu, it is imperative to emphasize that it is high time, as a country so immensely wealthy in human resources and natural resources, returned to harnessing and harvesting ideas to move our country beyond puerile, pedestrian, pecuniary and primordial preferences to one that is robust in patriotism and purposeful pursuits. What do you hear or read from the outcomes of Federal Executive Council Meetings of this administration other than mostly of award of contract? When last was trending issues of monumental national importance debated and discourse in such meetings? Are the participants and players involved in politics really deepening and developing this nascent democracy? It is against this backdrop that this columnist would want to bring to the fore the Lagos State Executive in the two – term, from 1999 to 2007, that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was the helmsman in Lagos. Those years, as synopsized and summarized in the treatise: “Asiwaju – Leadership In Troubled Times”, edited by the trio of Tunji Bello, Sam Omatseye and Segun Ayobolu, were years men and women in the executive council of Lagos State brainstormed with ideas and whoever stood on the side of superior argument won! This is the vivid cum veritable strategic step that Tinubu took which invariably laid firm foundation for some policies, programmes and projects most of which are visible today. It is not stressing it too far to squarely state that the outcomes of such rigorous and robust discourse and dialogue, some lasting till wee hours, birthed some institutions in the Centre of Excellence. Today, the economy of Lagos towers head and shoulder above any state in the federation. Lagos, the city of aquatic splendour, presently is the 5th largest economy in Africa, (if Lagos were to be a country) apparently bigger than that of Kenya. Is it not sagacious to situate the Lagos evolvement with the statement of Byron Pulsifer, criminologist and strategic planner, “for those wishing to develop new ideas for a host of activities . . . brainstorming can be a very useful technique and a technique that can save numerous hours of research?” There is no gainsaying the fact that Tinubu leveraged on this in the development of Lagos such that it is on record other states, in droves, have had courses to come and learn certain aspects of governance from the Centre of Excellence. In the trajectory of Asiwaju Tinubu to the prime post come 2023, much of which would be decided with a few months from now, will he be able to replicate such robust engagement at the centre if eventually Tinubu gets the party’s ticket and eventually win the 2023 election?

    Tinubu – A Man of Dream

    Eleanor Roosevelt, apparently the longest serving first lady (wife of the president) in the history of the United States of America (USA), a cerebral woman of great dynasty once opinionated: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” As Asiwaju reaches the septuagenarian, can one attest to the fact that “wine improves with age”, as acclaimed by some? Even as some political opponents and others that are seemingly intimidated by the charismatic and capable competence, capability and credentials of Jagaban are touting his age as the main reason he should rather throw in the towel even before entering the ring. Howbeit, the train has left the station as Asiwaju has been on the move traversing the north and south in consulting with constituents on his life – long dream (if you like it, call it ambition). This columnist has asked once, and want to ask again: is it a sin to dream? Definitely, no!

    Even as the enigmatic Tinubu joins the septuagenarian, age should seemingly bring out the best in the stormy petrel of Nigeria’s politics. It is good to ponder and tinker with this finding: it is on record that, from 1975 till date, on the average, there are more Nobel prize winners within the age – bracket of 60 to 75. Could it then be pontificated that wisdom situates more with age and therefore could be measure of a person’s acumen and sagacity? If Asiwaju between 2006 and 2007 ensured the singing and siting the Lekki Free Trade Zone and today, the iconic Dangote Refinery and Fertilizer Plant amongst others are emplaced in that axis, definitely he is man who could visualize tomorrow in today.

    Conclusion

    As the enigmatic and enthusiastic Tinubu celebrates his 70th birthday, this columnist not only join millions of his admirers and adherents to felicitate with him but want to encourage him to come up with more sagacious and strategic ideas our country needs now to save and salvage her soul enmeshed in the miasma of socio – economic and political mess. Nigeria needs someone using his brain and brawn whilst harnessing other cerebral minds in a concerted effort to resolve the riddle we are entangled in as a country blessed with abundance, yet incapacitated and impoverished due to poor followership cum leadership. It is good to conclude that the erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo, though ideologically and diametrically opposite to Asiwaju Tinubu on many fronts, commended him describing Tinubu as “a brilliant governor with ideas” (as contained and captioned in the Daily Champion of 12th May 2006). Nothing less was expected at the time as only a fool argues with results; and Chief Obasanjo is noted for not suffering fools gladly! As this columnist celebrates with Asiwaju, it would be good to goad him on towards achieving lifelong dream employing the witty words of H. Jackson Brown, Jr., American author and inspiration writer: “Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.”

     

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

     

  • Reasons married women seek s3xual pleasure outside marriage

    Reasons married women seek s3xual pleasure outside marriage

    This week, I would like to itemize some reasons married women find s3xual solace in the arms of other men. These articles and my counseling sessions are not  meant to castigate any spouse, but to provide an educative medium and serve as an eye-opener to things affecting marriages.

    Besides, through it, I have been able to restore incalculable broken homes and bring back relationships that have been written off as hopeless, for over two decades.

    Let me quickly share the tales of two married women who gave permission to alert our husbands on reasons married women fall into the next available arms.

    Case One. Mrs. Loveth is married to a Nigeria-based contractor; they have been married for 15 years with two children, but her husband stays more at his office than home. Some of her friends who saw the level of negligence advised her to try out other men in order to have chances of getting s3xual satisfaction.

    She went ahead and got a younger man, housed him, fed him, clothed him. He, for his part, gave her unimaginable s3xual treats and service day and night. She still treasures those memories till date.

    Why did you have to go to such a demeaning extent I asked? She said: “I was dying for a man’s touch, for a man’s voice whispering s3xy things to keep me alive. I once pleaded with my husband. His only response was ‘you are jobless, that’s why you only think of s3x’. Do you know that I could decide to be a lesbian without the knowledge of my husband? However, I wanted s3x with real men, and since he denies me, I went out.’

    Case Two. A high cultured university lecturer was in my office at about the closing hour who felt really embarrassed with respect to the circumstance for which she was seeking consultation.

    Her husband has been away in the U.S. for the past five years, and she had fought loneliness with all sorts of s3x toys to the extent that she cannot feel sensation on her clitoris again due to numbness.  She even enrolled for a degree course just to beat loneliness – all to no avail. Instead, she craves for a man’s touch, for erotic escapades.

    Against her wish, she succumbed to the advances of another man who not only satisfied her all the s3xual cravings, but also awakened the tigress in her. Now her husband is not only back but he’s not as s3xually vibrant as her new partner. Her purpose for visiting my office was to discuss how to handle the situation.

    So why does a married woman seek s3xual pleasure in the arm of another man? When a married woman is s3xually neglected, deserted, abandoned, ignored, and forsaken, she falls into the arms of the next available sympathiser.

    Husbands should be aware that men and women have s3xual needs, desires, attractions, tastes, and fantasies. It is a mirage to assume that the wife is only at the receiving end; she must submissively obey, and carry out the demands of her husband, ignoring the fact that she also needs to exhibit her s3xual expression!

    God made both man and woman beings with similar s3xual chemistry called hormones.  The s3xual instinct of a man is God-made, but ‘He’ wants the preservation of s3x to be within the four walls of marriage. However, when endless business trips, long-distance relationships, prolonged office hours, marathon fasting, and prayer sessions are the order of the day in your marriage, there’s a need for balancing.

    From my personal experience and interactions with many couples, I have discovered that s3x and money are the two most important ingredients in a marriage. When the two are present, a marriage enjoys unqualified bliss but when any of the two are missing, just one outcome is possible: unending crises.

    Reason two. A woman’s heart is her first bedroom for s3x, space is provided for any one who gives attention to her heart.  Ladies, in general, have an insatiable appetite for attention, approval, affirmation, and devotion. The never-ending search for attention and affection makes a married woman find adventure in the arms of other men. Nothing wears down the immune system of the s3x bed like a husband being too busy to spend time alone with his wife. Love and s3x for a wife are spelt A-T-T-E-N-T-I-O-N and A-F-F-E-C-T-I-O-N.

    No matter what you do for her, she still requires your time. To deny her attention is to jeopardize your s3x bed and create room for another man to step into the bedroom.  Love to a married woman is more than a game, it is life. A woman would give everything she has to have a marriage that works and a home that is the envy of everyone! A woman is ready to invest all her life to possess her dream home.

    No matter how much a husband cares if he doesn’t communicate in action, the wife still feels unloved. There is a desire within every wife to share her greatest dreams, deepest desires, innermost thoughts, and heartfelt needs with the man she married. When a wife says to her husband, “please talk to me now,” she’s pleading for heartfelt intimacy. Unfortunately, it is an effort many husbands do not make.

    A recent survey showed that 86 percent of women that seek s3xual pleasure outside their marriage did so because the other man gave them attention and affection. To have a healthy s3x bed, the husband must make time to give a few minutes’ attention to his wife. Talk, listen and respond in love to her, try as much as possible to be as good, as caring, as supportive, and as understanding as possible. Continue the courtesies of courtship in marriage; do things that will secure her faithfulness at all times.

    Let your main objective be to continually study her, learn to know her, grow with her and protect her. Sometimes you both need to sit together and make reappraisals to see how you are doing in the relationship. Genuinely ask her about the things that both of you need to do in order to have a trustworthy s3x bed.

    Obviously, during the time of courtship, men, like hunters, relentlessly pursue their prey and after marriage, they take the same prey for granted. You should not take your woman for granted because the monotony may send her into someone else’s arms. Keep love and affection growing by expressing love for your wife or it will die and both of you will not only drift apart, the next available confidant would have the best of s3x with her.

    Spend as much time as possible doing things together with her, learn to greet her with enthusiasm. Such acts of courtesy were some of the reasons she chose to spend the rest of her life with you.

    She imagined that if during courtship you could be this nice, understanding, caring, loving, friendly, encouraging and tender, then spending the rest of her life with you would be the best decision she would ever make. Treat your wife, as you would love to be treated. Please do not overlook little courtesies, especially the encouraging gestures and affection.

    Brag about her when she’s within earshot. Most times, she may pretend not to be listening, but deep inside she’s happy and smiling. If you treat your wife with extra courtesies, she will blossom and service you s3xually until you protest.

     

    FEEDBACK

    This is feedback from a woman who helped her husband overcome premature ejaculation (PE) after attending our couples coaching session.

    ‘As a couple, we had struggled with and overcome PE. When my husband was battling the problem, we felt terrible; less satisfaction and more anxiety about our s3xual relationship. It wrecked my husband’s confidence and caused him to avoid s3x with me altogether. We took the bull by the horn and followed a three-step method we picked up from counseling. You too can benefit from them.

    Step One: Help him

    If your husband suffers from PE, you don’t have to make him feel bad. You can work on his problem without him ever knowing you know it’s a problem. Tell your husband you want to experience with him the ecstatic pleasures of male multiple orgasms.

    You are going to bring him, as close to the edge as possible, but he needs to help you by letting you know when he is about to climax. By bringing him close to the point of ejaculatory inevitability, but not past it, he will experience one or two pleasurable orgasmic contractions, which will expel some of the s3xual tension that has built up in his pelvic region.

    Make a game out of bringing him in and out of his “peak zone” and you’re killing two birds with one stone: giving him the pleasure of male multiple orgasms and helping him last longer.

    Moreover, if he does come too quickly (which is bound to happen as you both sense it), do not make a big deal out of it is all part of the help.

    Some ideal ways of pleasing him include manual and oral stimulation, as well as getting on top during intercourse. Not only does the female superior position help you to enjoy s3x by letting you press your clitoris directly against his pelvis, but also with you on top, and in control, he stays longer.

    Step Two: Squeeze

    Now, it is time for some squeezing. Apply firm pressure with your thumb and forefinger and focus the pressure on the urethra, the tube running along the underside of the penis. Squeeze right below the head of his penis. This method pushes blood out of the penis and suppresses the ejaculatory response.

    Step Three

    After you have given him a good squeeze, back off his penis and go back to hugging and kissing, and focus on stimulating other body parts. Give it a good 30 to 60 seconds before you return to any form of direct genital stimulation.

    Not only does this let him relax and cool down, it is also a chance for him to practice some nice trip on you. Husbands with PE are typically very anxious about wanting their wives to experience orgasms and are generally all too happy to give their wives the best s3x treat or introduce the use of drugs such as the great Cialis or 36 hours of freedom, to develop confidence and control while simultaneously arousing you.

    The trick is taking the emphasis off one orgasm and focusing on serial orgasms. Finally, apply the assistance of condoms designed for men with PE. Wife, here is your marching order, go turn your one-minute-man into a s3xual superman.

     

    QUESTION

    I recently got married but the s3x is so disappointing. I had waited for this moment; my husband is a nice man but s3x with him is such a let-down. Is all the ‘mind-blowing s3x’ talking just hype?

    ANSWER

    So, your long-awaited expectations were dashed due to inexperience and you feel s3x isn’t worth it? No, you got it wrong, and blaming your man is unfair. Mind-blowing s3x is not just hype. The responsibility for good s3x is 50/50 between couples and the skill takes time and patience to master. Do you know what turns him on? Have you told him what feels good for you? Do not give up! Go back and make it work.

  • APC’s existential battles continue

    APC’s existential battles continue

    YOBE State governor and All Progressives Congress (APC) caretaker committee chairman, Mai Mala Buni, does not give the impression he can read the signs of the times; but even a man so suspicious of and hostile to party rules and conventions must feel a sense of unease and trepidation in losing the confidence of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC rank and file. In last week’s widely circulated front page photograph of the president posing for a group photograph with Mr Buni and Education minister Adamu Adamu after their London meeting, the APC chairman and Mr Adamu grinned more broadly and persuasively than the president. Whether out of his health concerns or a reflection of just how disturbed he was about his quarrelsome party the president’s smothered grin seemed painful and disobliging.

    No one has given a comprehensive account of the discussions between the president and the APC chairman, and Mr Buni’s conciliating remarks to the leaders and members of the APC seem to gloss over the fundamental problems of the party and the depth of despair that has dismayed and shaken the ruling party. In a bid to show that nothing untoward was happening in the APC, the caretaker chairman had uncharacteristically backed the firm and swift measures taken by the Niger State governor Abubakar Sani-Bello, who, it is now generally accepted, acted for the chairman when the latter was in Dubai for medical attention. But a lot has happened, and nothing done or said by the president mitigates the life-threatening catastrophe awaiting the party in the months ahead.

    The APC chairman may be shocked by the scale of the uprising against his leadership, but he is smart enough to know that rather than stand his ground and pretend that all is well, he needs to pursue reconciliation. The caretaker secretary, James Akpanuduoedehe, is not similarly gifted. Angered by the uprising against the party leadership, but gloating over the failure of the uprising, he has unwisely sought vengeance against the rebels. The problem, however, is that the rebels not only stand on a higher moral pedestal than Messrs Buni and Akpanudoedehe, they are also highly placed and influential leaders of the party without whom little can be achieved. Mr Buni saw all this and has tried to mollify the rebels. His efforts may, however, be too little too late.

    Mr Buni must now try to accomplish in one dizzying week the responsibility he had spent more than a year trying to deflect – holding the party’s national elective convention. His scheme for APC constitutional amendment has all but collapsed, and his membership revalidation and registration efforts may eventually count for nothing ameliorative to the party’s well-being. Even his dream of appearing on the party’s presidential ticket may also have gone up in smoke. He is aware that most of the rebels who rose against his leadership in the short-lived coup of about two weeks ago also harbour similar presidential ambition to his, but because some of his opponents genuinely want an elective convention, and have mixed with the crowd of anti-Buni forces, he is hard put to sweep the revolt under the carpet or mass all his enemies in one putrid cauldron.

    That Mr Buni can pull off the convention without a hitch is stressful to a man undertaking medical treatment abroad. He will, however, try, having been given the matching order in London by the president to whom all the party panjandrums have obligingly ceded control of the party. Secretary Akpanudoedehe had tried to turn the hands of the clock back; but Mr Buni hushed him, and 10 out of the 12-member APC caretaker committee passed a vote of no confidence in him. So the resistance against the convention may not have collapsed altogether. There are also court injunctions to be vacated, some of them allegedly inspired by Mr Buni’s cohorts in the party. The main injunction against the convention was reportedly vacated last Friday, but success is by no means completely guaranteed. Then there are a plethora of administrative bottlenecks that Mr Buni’s long-standing dithering and self-inspired conspiracies had given fillip. Should he overcome those inhibiting factors in one week, it would mean his talents had been underestimated.

    For now, however, Mr Buni perches precariously on the horns of a dilemma. He knows the expectations of the rebels in the party, though he is sure he can discountenanced their hope and even take the battle to their doorsteps. But that would prolong the crisis in the party and jeopardise the convention. So, he will continue conciliating the rebels, as galling as the idea might seem to him, and risk an inglorious end to his leadership of the party. Far worse for him, he also knows the expectations of the president, particularly concerning the convention. To allow the convention miscarry, no matter the justification, is unthinkable, nay an anathema. So he will grovel before his enemies and friends in equal measure to enable the convention hold. Even then there are no guarantees; for running the gauntlet of rebels on one side and a plaintive and distraught president who has given him a reprieve, on the other side, is not an easy task at all, even for an accomplished schemer like him.

    The wily but ineffective Mr Buni appears smarter than the impetuous Sen Akpanudoedehe. It is not for nothing that he is caretaker chairman of the party, a position he rose to on the backs of scheming fellow governors united in their common and implacable resolve to forbid the presidential aspiration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the party’s national leader and former Lagos State governor. Having risen to that caretaker position, and sadly abused it, Mr Buni is not ignorant of the shenanigans inside and outside the party. He knows by instinct that the president is saddened by his dithering, even though that sadness had not been expertly and effectively communicated. He also knows that the failed coup against him, though not inspired by the president, was sanctioned both by a majority of party leaders and President Buhari himself. That the coup failed was due more to the rebels’ tactical incompetence than any dispute as to the widespreadness of the hostility against the caretaker chairman’s leadership style.

    Indeed, it is suggested that Justice minister Abubakar Malami, regarded as Mr Buni’s backbone, was responsible for foiling the coup than the tactical incompetence of the plotters contributed to the debacle. Working in league with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mr Malami is credited with cleverly pulling the carpet from under the feet of the plotters, just as he is thought to be behind the puzzling and indefensible judgement of the Federal High Court Umuahia to nullify Sec 84 (12) of the Electoral Act on the wrong legal premises. INEC resorted to its enabling law to ambush the plotters; and the president, in a letter to the Chairman of the Progressives Governors’ Forum, Atiku Bagudu, pointed out both the legal and administrative fallacies of the coup. And while Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai gloated on television about the irreversibility of the coup, and Niger State governor Abubakar Sani-Bello inferred the president’s endorsement of the coup, and Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu was profusely lyrical about Mr Buni’s yahoo-yahoo supporting cast, Mr Malami portentously admonished caution. The Justice minister not only knew something the plotters didn’t know, he also knew, as an ambitious politician himself, which side his bread was buttered.

    But in the end it was President Buhari who sounded the death knell of the coup. Though he had no constitutional basis to drive the party hither and thither, he did it anyway. In the aforesaid letter to Mr Bagudu, excerpted in all newspapers last week, the president peremptorily directed party leaders to cease bickering and ensure the return the party to status quo ante. Mr Buni, he further directed, should be allowed to organise the convention for March 26. But far beyond the intent of the letter is the hidden fact, probably not lost on Mr Buni, that the president supported the coup, and more damning to the caretaker chairman, clearly regretted the failure of the coup. Said the president: “In addition, it has come to my attention that because of recent events the APC is faced with a multiplicity of court cases pending against it in various courts across the country. As a result of this, the party faces the possibility and prospect of the invalidation of all its activities and actions by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Furthermore, the party has demonstrated its inability to proceed with the issue of effecting change in the leadership of its Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Committee (CECC) in a way that is inclusive, legal and respectful of the time limit set and required for giving the INEC sufficient notice of the time and venue for holding its convention. No doubt, these controversies and uncertainties, as enumerated above, pose a real threat to the party, and may lead to a possible non-recognition of its activities, elections and the probable invalidation of all its other actions by INEC. This may ultimately even lead to its implosion…”

    Mr Buni may have received the president’s grudging support against the coupists, but he is smart enough to know when he is being damned with faint praise. Had the coupists carried out their operations timeously and inclusively, not to say also acknowledging and managing the legal strictures in their way, the president would have not minded the change in leadership. Instructing the party to return to status quo was the president’s last-ditch effort to save a very bad situation from becoming a cataclysm. Mallam el-Rufai and company may have egg on their faces, but they must console themselves with the fact that they did nothing horrendous or reprehensible. They had the backing of the president, as he indirectly indicated in his letter, but their inability to manage their rebellion expertly prompted the president to distance himself from the fallout. The coupists will still kick against the Buni stone, but it is not clear how effective they can be until the harried Mr Buni proves spectacularly incompetent in meeting the March 26 date.

    The main beneficiary of the impasse in the party, not to say the churning coup and countercoup unsettling the APC and party leaders, is Asiwaju Tinubu. He steered clear of the pro- and anti-Buni plots, sensible enough to know that he was, and perhaps still remains, the principal target of the pro- and anti-Buni forces. But whether the desperate urgency to hold a successful convention by the Buni forces and the humiliation felt by those who attempted to dislodge Mr Buni will be sufficient in attenuating the plots against the presidential aspiration of the former Lagos governor remains to be seen. March 26 is just a few days away. Leaders and members of the APC unencumbered by the seething plots in the party will hope that the convention will be successful. They do not have the luxury of time to fool around, for their opponents in the PDP wish the impasse in the ruling party to become even more intractable.

     

    Atiku’s aspiration and foretelling PDP’s demise

    FORMER vice president Atiku Abubakar continues to display an unyielding resolve to win the presidency. As they say, it is his lifelong ambition. He is entitled to his dream, just like any other Nigerian. Though his restlessness is the political equivalence of judicial forum shopping in search of his dream, unfazed by what looked like his enchantment with political harlotry, he has a right to keep hope alive. He is currently berthed in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Indeed last Tuesday in Abuja he reportedly held a seven-hour meeting with his party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) to infuse them with the urgency and logic of his aspiration, with the intent to make his ambition their own. It is after all politics.

    But it is not clear what kind of politics he is playing which prompts him to alarm party elders enough to whip them into line. By leashing his ambition to the party’s survival, indeed qualifying his candidacy as a winning and indispensable ticket, the former vice president seems to be leaving the party with no alternative. In his words: “I am worried, and you should be worried too, that if we do not win, it means we will be in opposition again for the next eight years. By the next eight years, I don’t know how many would be left in politics and it may even ultimately lead to the death of the party because people gravitate, particularly in developing countries, towards governments. Ordinary people naturally gravitate towards the government. So, this is a very, very crucial and historical moment in history, for our survival.”

    He characterises Nigerian politics as irrational, unprincipled and unpredictable. By suggesting that he was the party’s best bet for winning the diadem, and foretelling the party’s death should it loose the presidency over the next two terms appears unduly apocalyptic, if not megalomaniacal. His intellectual and administrative mettle as vice president was untested. His proclivity for defecting from one party to the other at the drop of a hat does not portray him as principled, ideological and gritty. He has also not availed the nation of his experience and thoughts in books or journals; so how do Nigerians, let alone his skeptical and querulous party, measure his worth? As vice president under Olusegun Obasanjo he evinced his stubbornness and readiness to fight for what he believes, but there was little in his fights to show that what he always believed were exemplary, farsighted and incontestable. In sum, he will need more than alarming the grey hairs of his party to throw in their lot with him. More, even if they embrace him, he will still need to convince the country that his talents and manners are suited to the grave needs of the country. Then, finally, he must demonstrate beyond doubt that repudiating him and his party for the next eight or more years would spell doom for the PDP.

    The general suspicion is that the PDP has done little or nothing in about eight years out of office to rejig itself administratively, philosophically and ideologically to turn the hearts of the electorate towards the party. The lessons of its losses in 2015 and 2019 are entirely lost on the party. They think they have read the mood of the country expertly, and that their political fortune rests on the misfortune or misdeeds of the APC. What if the country judges the misdeeds of the ruling party as more tolerable than the hesitations and incompetence of the PDP in their 16 years in office? They are yet to finalise their zoning formula, particularly on the presidency project. And Alhaji Abubakar himself has prevaricated over that issue to the point of promoting a quaint mathematical justification for retaining the presidency in the North. But the former vice president will have to say, do and think much more than he has ever done to merit both the ticket and office he says he has prepared himself all his life to take. So far, he has been unconvincing to a skeptical country and cantankerous PDP leaders and members.