The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • El-Rufai’s disguised exceptionalism

    El-Rufai’s disguised exceptionalism

    No one should be fooled by Nasir el-Rufai‘s politics. Much of his politics as a former minister and one-time Kaduna State governor is contrived and convoluted. What is clear so far from his statements, actions, and endorsement of other people’s views in recent weeks is that, despite his strident denial, he has been unable to live down his exclusion from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s cabinet. He will be relentless in badgering the administration in the hope that he would get some concessions; but if no concession is forthcoming, he would be willing, even eager, to throw the baby out with the bathwater. No analyst has in fact been wrong about him in nearly two decades, for his politics and style are so deeply idiosyncratic that he has become quite predictable.

    In the last two or three weeks, he has launched into a rhetorical and declamatory rampage that it is safe to conclude he has begun to feel like a cornered prey. Whenever he feels assailed on all fronts, he conjures a persecution complex and goes on to extravagantly announce to the public his ‘predators’ exilic plots against him. His enemies in government want to arrest, detain and torture him, he said self-importantly, dragging in the National Security Adviser’s office into the bargain. He and the NSA were once inseparable. Now he gives the lofty impression they have become immiscible, for it is hypothetically in ‘some dungeon’ in the office of the latter he claimed he would be ‘tortured’.

    Read Also: Nigeria’s economic comeback: Tinubu’s reforms turn the tide

    Mallam el-Rufai is entitled to his brand of politics and his alliances, new, old or mixed. He can regionalise his views as much as he wishes, limit himself to close-knit friends, and speak untruths, half-truths, and outright mendacities. His audience and supporters are at liberty to doubt him or believe him. It is all politics. So far, there is nothing Mallam el-Rufai has said or done that is not permissible in politics. But there is also nothing sceptics have said or done against him that is not politics. He and his enemies or opponents are engaged in fierce psychological operations. Success will depend on how well each side has been convincing.

    After his February 11, 2025 post on X (Twitter), no one should have any illusions about Mallam el-Rufai’s kind of politics. The post is probably the most revelatory of his recent posts, forged out of bitterness, exclusion from government service, and desperation to remain in the limelight and in the consciousness of the people. The post shows him up as a convinced northern irredentist who has for long anchored his convictions and politics on utterly false premises. This is bewildering. If he does not dismiss this piece as attacking him on behalf of the APC administration, he might find usefulness in it to reorder his politics, purify his views on national issues, and come out a better, less hysterical, and more balanced national politician who overcame regional prejudices.

    Mallam el-Rufai has built his life and politics around the promotion of Northern (read Fulani) exceptionalism. He is so taken with what he claims to be the North’s herculean and central effort in national politics that he continues to denigrate facts and reality. Obsessed with what he termed the centrality of the North in the 2023 presidential poll, he claimed he cautioned the party ‘not to play with the North’, and concluded that ‘common sense prevailed, and we succeeded, unarguably and undeniably with the unquantifiable help of the North (the records of the election results prove so)’. Afflicted by tunnel vision, he didn’t say whether the same margin of ballot intervention from the South had not in fact helped enthrone Northern candidates in the presidency, whether in 1959, 1965, 1979, 1983, 2007 or 2015. It is often forgotten that no one from the South or North had ever won at the centre without the votes of the other region. But because Mallam el-Rufai built his analysis on an egregious fallacy, he surmised that ‘…Less than two years into the (APC) tenure, we are witnesses to how the relationship between the North and President Bola Tinubu or rather his administration is quickly deteriorating, driven by the words and conduct of, unfortunately, many from the President’s geopolitical zone and tribe.’ Of course, he assumes the North is monolithic.

    Still indulging his obsession with the North’s role in national politics, he claims without substantiation that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 election because of the disposition of the South-South people to the North. Nonsense. Dr Jonathan fawned over the North, but alienated the Southwest which went ahead to strike an alliance with a Northern candidate. More, he lost because of insecurity, not because he ‘underestimated or disrespected’ the North. Paragraph after paragraph, Mallam el-Rufai inundates his publics with soaring stories of the North’s exploits, and insinuates that the region remains monolithic, can do no wrong, must be revered, and without it the nation could not breathe. Hear Mallam el-Rufai’s thunder: “While PGEJ lacked equivalent political gravitas and sophistication (with all due respect to him) as PBAT, he had the then formidable PDP behemoth which could have actually seen him through but for the grievous ‘political mistake’ of messing with the North. Love or loathe that fact, the North remains the kingmaker in Nigerian politics, at least, as of today. Any politician or political party that plays with that reality might pay a steep political price for it…”

    But before that election, the ‘behemoth PDP’ had fractured, and was no longer the behemoth it had been many years before. But the former Kaduna governor had a leprous thesis to promote, and he must bring every argument and distortion into its service. All the historical rigmarole he launched into was designed to hint the Tinubu presidency that there are a few persons who personify the North and whose anger must be placated, and ‘condescending’ Yoruba officials whose sins must also be expiated. Since 2023, and in appointments and projects, President Tinubu has projected the interests of the far North (not el-Rufai’s monolithic North) probably more than the interests of any other part of Nigeria. What ails the former Kaduna governor is that he wants his enemies and prejudices to be inherited. It is right, in retrospect, that both the Tinubu administration and the current Kaduna government have rebuffed him, thus helping to expose the real and essential Mallam el-Rufai. The real el-Rufai has sadly not been inspiring; instead, he has been entitled, sectional, ideologically superficial, nasty when shunned, and vituperative when provoked. There is nothing anyone can say or do to mitigate his sense of entitlement. It is ingrained. The country has to live with that reality and continue to manage him at his inflammatory worst.

  • Atiku and Obasanjo as his political leitmotif

    Atiku and Obasanjo as his political leitmotif

    In 2019, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, perhaps ‘against his personal wish and desire’ endorsed the man he loved to hate, Atiku Abubakar, for the presidency. The bid ended futilely. In 2023, the former president also endorsed Labour Party’s Peter Obi for the presidency. The favoured and animated LP candidate came to grief. It is either the candidates are not what they are cracked up to be or the former president’s political antennae had been dulled by too much rancour and animosity. Two years before the 2027 presidential election, a number of former presidential aspirants, starting early and ingratiating themselves with the aristocratic Obasanjo, are again craving his approval. They know his electoral credibility and value are unproved, even by the standards of the 1999 and 2003 elections, but they would rather have him in their corner pissing out than risk his acerbic dismissal of their ambitions. They privately grieve that his political value cannot fetch them more than one vote, his vote, but they see his deep and abiding detestation of President Bola Tinubu as at least resonant.

    Alhaji Atiku imagines that the 2023 presidential race will be his last, and seventh if previous attempts are counted, and for this urgent task he has consequently embarked on a feverish attempt to assemble a coalition. He may not have addressed the reasons for his previous failures, nor attempt a rational understanding of what he needs to do to get his futuristic coalition transformed into an engaging and effective organisation, but he is fixated on the race and fascinated by the enduring allure of the presidential office. But here, he exaggerates his ambition considerably. The 2027 race will not be his last; his last was actually the 2023 race, the one in which he stood the highest chance of winning, yet foundered because of his appalling choices, hubris, and disgraceful opportunism. As vice president to the same man his visits and rhetoric now ennoble, he provoked Chief Obasanjo into deep exasperation by his political restiveness and undisguised and fanatical desire to supplant his boss. In response, the former president loathed him so generously that it is still unequalled anywhere. That they tried halfheartedly to collaborate in 2019 is an indication of their noteworthy unscrupulousness, their lack of principles, their obsession with presidential office, and, together with Mr Obi, their overweening incompetence to build a political party from the scratch and run it with any discernible expertise.

    Read Also: Cadbury Nigeria marks 60th anniversary

    Chief Obasanjo renews his youth by giving all his visitors a hearing, whether he means what he says to them or not. In the past few years, he has indeed become the former vice president’s political leitmotif. On Monday, Alhaji Atiku visited the former president in Abeokuta in company with a number of PDP stalwarts, including former Sokoto governor Aminu Tambuwal and former Cross River governor Liyel Imoke. No one has given an indication what they discussed, whether 2027 political permutations as some sources said, or nonpolitical matters, as the former vice president tendentiously averred. What is clear is that given the urgency of the task ahead of the former vice president, not to say the high-powered delegation he took along with him, it could not have been a courtesy visit as he swore. Months before, Alhaji Atiku had met or spoken with anyone of enough political heft willing to be met or consulted, particularly a few former presidential candidates and sulking and disaffected leaders of the ruling party. Had the devil himself shown some dexterity in political mobilisation or influence, the former vice president would be willing to court him.

    All Progressives Congress (APC) national secretary, Ajibola Bashiru, insists the ruling party is neither bothered by Alhaji Atiku’s consultations and merger talks nor worried that Chief Obasanjo could suddenly become an asset to merger proponents, especially given their political antecedents as repeated failures. Time will prove Sen. Bashiru right or wrong. At the moment, however, the PDP is destitute of a leading light capable of imbuing the party with resilience and character after years of discouraging and debilitating losses as well as championing the party’s reorganisation and renewal. These failings may explain the ruling party’s confidence that the opposition appears structurally and behaviourally incapable of transcending its weaknesses and ideological barrenness.

    So far, the PDP has shown no desire to carry out the brain surgery urgently needed, permanent healing for its stultifying divisions and inertia, or the capacity to procure the perspectives and futuristic ideals capable of mesmerising the electorate. There is in fact no proof that the many angry rejects they are magnetising from other parties would not in the medium run become a burden too heavy for the party to bear. If Alhaji Atiku would make any political headway – a very serious doubt given so many considerations – it will not be because he had conferred with Chief Obasanjo. There is no presidential aspirant or candidate the former president endorsed who made hay while the ‘Abeokuta’ sun shone, especially when the sun is still standing still at ‘Gibeon’.

  • Nnamdi Kanu’s fulminations

    Nnamdi Kanu’s fulminations

    Last Monday, leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, put up a spectacular show at the Federal High Court in Abuja as he fulminated against nearly everyone, judge and advocates alike. He spoke as one who knew the law more than anyone else, and insulted and dismissed experienced and elderly lawyers as legal ignoramuses. To make the simple point that he would not be tried by the recused Judge, Binta Nyako, he embarked on prolonged legal histrionics that kept the court enthralled for many minutes. During his eruptions, he hesitated between insulting the trial judge and respecting her. He, however, reserved the full length of his tongue for the prosecutors whom he chastised as morons.

    Unused to being interrupted when he was in full flight, as his own lawyers were chitchatting beside him, he poked a finger at the chest of one of his counsels, almost as if prodding some sense out of him, and slapped another in the back, reproving him for talking when the imperial Mr Kanu was gyrating in legalese. There is nothing to suggest that Mr Kanu is not deploying extensive melodrama to prolong his trial until everyone gets tired of the whole thing and in exasperation release him like they let go the equally dramatic Omoyele Sowore after they tired of his antics. It may work, but the credit and honour will not go to the government if they don’t release him before then.

    Read Also: Investors to explore Nigeria’s multibillion agrofood, packaging sector

    Mr Kanu is not as dangerous as the charges against him suggest. He is full of too much bombast. If allowed to give full rein to his displays, the booboisie he claims to lead will sooner or later get tired of his buffooneries. If the government is wise, they should prise tough pledges from the political and traditional leaders of the Southeast and release the IPOB leader into their care. Mr Kanu will find that ‘freedom’ more restricting and suffocating than the comical trial he is undergoing. If the public didn’t see through his court drama, if indeed he was serious about his cathartic eruptions, Nigerians would be worried about his tragic and dysfunctional personality. Alas, for the IPOB leader, the whole gay drama aligns with his pecuniary interest and farcical cause.

  • Adebanjo departs unobtrusively

    Adebanjo departs unobtrusively

    Factional leader of the Yoruba socio-political group Afenifere, Ayo Adebanjo has died aged 96. He lived exceedingly well and long by any global standard. Apart from his successful legal and political careers, he was also a principled and dogged fighter for popular and progressive causes. However, in his twilight years, he became more controversial than his age and ebbing strength should permit, while his summations, particularly on politics, also became more brittle than expected of so experienced and avid a politician.

    Read Also: inDrive unveils cashless bank transfer feature in Nigeria

    He was a stand-in Afenifere leader, but after running into needless controversies that rankled with the group, the substantive but tiring Afenifere leader, Reuben Fasoranti, 98, tried to retake the reins of leadership. Chief Adebanjo resisted, leaving Afenifere factionalised till he died. That should be one of his regrets. Though age did not temper his fighting spirit, it enfeebled his body, and sadly also rendered his judgement less perspicuous. He should have done everything to heal the divisions in the group, particularly by reaching accommodation with his compatriots, so that his departure, which he knew was imminent, could stimulate fond and lingering memories of him. He probably has his reasons.

    It has, however, become the lot of Afenifere that its successive leaders over the years have attracted some disquiet than exuded lustre, perhaps because of Nigeria’s worsening political complexities and the dominance of self-willed national leaders who exploit national cleavages for private goals. It would be tragic if Chief Adebanjo’s faction let the divisions ossify. 

  • SNAPSONG 244

    SNAPSONG 244

    A spelling test for Valentine

    Love is a four-letter word

         An Equal Opportunity engagement

    With two lean consonants

         And two voluptuous vowels

    Its smile is longer than a mile

         It tears deeper than the deepest ocean

    It strides into a midnight room

         And darkness bolts out of the nearest window

    Its shout is a soft serenade

         Its whisper a friendly waterfall

    Bees show them the way

         To their rarest honey

    Soft and hard

         Hard, then soft

    A thousand thrills and frills  

    Read Also: Six well-paying underrated jobs in Nigeria

         A million moans and magic murmurs

    Sweet, oh how sweet

         The summons of happy songs

    Then sour and rudely rich

         The tenor of the pensive interlude

    So shoot that arrow, Cupid

         Shoot it now, raw and rapid

    In your crowded quiver

         Resides our quenchless fever

  • PDP’s war without end

    PDP’s war without end

    Having lost three electoral wars in a row, and having had to contend with fierce internecine wars to seize control of the ‘commanding heights’ of the party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders may now also seem to have postponed the definitive ‘war to end all wars’ that should ready it for the fateful and defining 2027 electoral war. The party has not produced a philosopher of repute or a lodestar to help chart and define its future, but if it continues to lack such resources in the months ahead, it could lose the 2027 badly and fracture irreparably. It is not certain that they sense the foreboding stalking their future, but as sure as day follows night, unmitigated disaster awaits them if they do not close ranks and fight as one man.

    The problem with the PDP is that its leaders seem intrinsically incapable of fighting as one man. The party is populated by too many strongmen, politicians and adventurers pulling the party in different directions all at once. They have former vice president Atiku Abubakar and his petulant crowd; they have former Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike and his redoubtable political family of intransigents; and they have the viceregal layer of battle-hardened veterans who swarm the second ladder of the party, men like party chairman Iliya Damagum, Board of Trustees chairman Adolphus Wabara, repentant and Janus-faced defector Peter Obi, and a host of other eager dupes and wannabees. Most times, the battle lines are faintly drawn or altogether invisible. But at some epiphanic moments, the shape of the frontlines becomes visible, with Alhaji Atiku at daggers drawn with Mr Wike, the garlanded Federal Capital City (FCT) minister.

    Last week, the frontlines shifted back to the courts. There, Sunday Ude-Okoye, a former national youth leader, was affirmed as the PDP national secretary, a declaration spontaneously sanctioned by the party’s BoT to whom the development was a welcome relief from months of political tedium and anguish. In return, Mr Wike’s allies in the BoT chairman’s state of Abia simply gouged the eyes of the party by suspending Mr Wabara, ostensibly for endorsing the state’s governor, Alex Otti of the Labour Party (LP), for a second term barely five months into his first term, an act they summed up as anti-party. Underneath, however, suggested many observers and party apparatchiks, the suspension of the BoT chairman at the state level, which they hoped to escalate to the national level perhaps through the courts, was due to his concomitant affirmation of Mr Ude-Okoye of the Atiku camp as party secretary in place of Samuel Anyanwu of the Wike camp. Justifying Mr Wabara’s suspension, Abia State PDP chairman deadpanned: “If you are in this party, be ready to stand for it, work for it and defend it. We do not need passengers, we need partners in progress.” Almost immediately, however, the party’s National Working Committee (NWC), citing the constitution, voided the suspension, describing it as impertinent.

    Read Also: Tinubu will commission several FCT projects in May – Wike

    The Atiku camp hopes that with Mr Ude-Okoye in place, it presents them a toehold in the administrative organ of the party, which is at the moment controlled by the Wike camp’s Ambassador Damagum. A battle royale may soon break out. The war front will henceforth continue to oscillate between the courts and the secretariat, and the jousting will retain its fearsome intensity. The Atiku camp will also be relentless, and the Wike camp will be unflagging. Neither side will give up easily, with the courts providing nothing more than corrosive intermissions. On the sidelines, aggressive efforts will be made to see whether one merger or the other could be cobbled, as three electoral defeats in a row have demonstrated that no single party acting alone, not even the former PDP behemoth, can unseat the ruling APC. The merger talks are for now opaque and indeterminate, with no precise idea of what they hope to birth couched in clear terms or altruistic leaders stepping forward to show just how much they are prepared to sacrifice for the common cause. For now, sadly, they seem all propelled by the single-minded desire to recapture power at the centre and to board the gravy train. Worse, none of the proponents of the merger has an idea what the merger would look like, whether it would be an expanded PDP or a mélange of desperate parties masquerading as special purpose vehicles available for hire and all kinds of political harlotry.

    What is absolutely clear is that the PDP does not have time on its hands. Its leaders believe they are doing their uttermost to brew a vintage, but every political vintner of modest capacity in Nigeria suspects that PDP leaders are engaged in short-circuiting the process of building a great party or rebuilding a damaged party. The rebuilding will, however, not begin in earnest until the rage and disgust of angry party leaders and members are mollified, starting with Mr Wike who sustained the party when its renascent leaders played the harlot in previous years. Mollifying Mr Wike, however, is a bridge too far. Going by how bitterly some PDP leaders have tried to undercut him in Rivers, including the previously mendicant Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, not to say the unprincipled Alhaji Atiku, placating Mr Wike may be both theoretically and practically impossible. After all, the FCT minister has found rest in the cabinet of President Bola Tinubu, where he is untroubled by superficial and rancorous politicians.

    Except a number of seismic juridical shifts occur, the stalemate in the PDP may in fact become calcified, and along with it, the endless internal war. Should they lose again in 2027 by a significant margin at the state, presidential and legislative levels, the party may become extinct.

  • Gowon and misplaced ECOWAS optimism

    Gowon and misplaced ECOWAS optimism

    Former military head of state Yakubu Gowon has once again reiterated his belief in the survival of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) formed in May 1975 about two months before he was toppled. Considered one of the main inspirations behind the organisation, he is right to feel nostalgic about a sub-regional orgnaisation he could rightly claim to be his baby.

    Speaking in Abuja at a roundtable organised by the Gusau Institute, a think tank, Gen. Gowon insisted that ECOWAS would survive its present schisms, especially the disaffection caused by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger which have, on account of military usurpation of democracy in those countries, broken away from the sub-regional body to form the Alliance of Sahel States. The former head of state suggested that ECOWAS should keep its doors open, continue to relate with the three countries, and hope they would return to the organisation.

    Read Also: Nigeria’s first lady gets elected into OAFLAD’s steering committee

    That return is, however, unlikely to occur under the leadership of the three military dictators still inebriated by their breakaway from France and their defiance against ECOWAS imposition of sanctions and threat of force to reinstate democracy. All ECOWAS needs to do is to rethink and reposition the sub-regional body to fulfill the mandate of its founding. They should not be burdened or feel agitated by the breakaway countries. Nothing says ECOWAS should remain 15 members. They can be fewer and yet pack a bigger punch if West African leaders produce the imagination needed to vivify the organisation.

  • Extreme colonisation and its consequences

    Extreme colonisation and its consequences

    The life and times of Sam Nujoma

    Sam Nujoma, the founding president of Namibia, has died at the ripe age of ninety five at a time of widespread global anxieties and unease. Popularly regarded as the father of modern Namibia, the former freedom fighter is also credited with giving his country the relative peace and stability it badly needed to progress after decades of war with apartheid South Africa and the lingering trauma of German colonial atrocities in the old South West Africa. Without any doubt, he was the last of the Mohicans, a group of revered African titans who had physically fought for the liberation of their respective countries and whose words carried a lot of weight and clout on the continent and far beyond. The Namibian leader left at a point Africa needs these avatars to navigate the inclement weather and rough seas ahead.

    As President Donald Trump tightens the economic screws on the global jugular, it is obvious that the world is on the threshold of new developments. The American president and his billionaire bouncers do not have what it takes to bend the world to their will, but they can be a major disruptive force particularly for vulnerable Third World economies and their stalled political momentum. Every dark silhouette often leads to light just as many highways end in a cul de sac. It is then left to human grit and ingenuity to plot the way out of the maze. Apocalyptic suffering and improbable miseries sometimes bring out the best in a people. It is like a furnace which purifies and makes them stronger. The leadership is energized and ennobled by the tumult and tempest.

       Although it is often said that there is no point arguing the order of precedence between a flea and a louse, or between two types of colonial dominion, it must also be noted that there is colonization and there is colonization. In one species of colonization, reliance on overwhelming physical coercion and routine physical liquidation leads to genocide. Genocide is described as the deliberate and systematic killing or destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Genocide has always been part of history and the human condition, depending on the stage the human capacity for self-elimination has reached. From the biblical annihilation of the Jews by the ancient Egyptians, the extermination of the native Indian populace by the Spanish conquistadors after the destruction of the Inca Empire, the ethnic cleansing of the American populace to the systematic liquidation of the of the original inhabitants of the old Kongo Empire around present day Angola by the Portuguese invaders, the world has grown accustomed to human inhumanity to fellow human-beings.

       As the very last colonial power to emerge from the bowels of rapidly modernizing Europe, the Germans fed themselves with the delusion that their historic tardiness and lateness to dinner was as a result of their attention to details, Teutonic proficiency and superior abilities. They had famously carped that while the Brits and the French only managed to behead their kings, they (the Germans) had decapitated a whole European intellectual tradition through a succession of gifted and brilliant master-philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach and Karl Marx. Despite the bombast and balderdash, the fact remains that at that point in time, Germany, compared to their European rivals, was a backward nation-state relying on the fabled firepower of their military machine but lacking in any template for humane governance of their overseas dominions and for a more just and egalitarian society.

      In the event, they went after their colonial subjects in Africa with such gusto and brutality resulting in memorable bloodshed and genocide of the local populace in Namibia and old Tanganyika. Before the Germans were expelled after losing the First World War, the entire Namib corridor was foaming in blood.  Many natives perished. Repeatedly massacred for refusing forced labour and the confiscation of their land, the Herero and Nima populace fled northwards and eastwards to join their ancestral cousins in Botswana and Angola never to return to their original homesteads. Even then it took another major global conflagration before America and the European masters could resolve the German Question.

       Unfortunately for the Namibians, it was a case of double jeopardy. The Apartheid apparatus that had seized the territory from the Germans was not any better position to rule with compassion and political justice and the situation soon escalated into a full blown war with SWAPO linking up with other forces of liberation and self-determination in the region. This was the violent and combustible crucible that threw up Sam Nujoma. Barely formally educated like Patrice Lumumba who had only four years of regular education before being thrown into the melee and political maelstrom, Nujoma pursued private education and self-improvement with vigour and vengeance until it became impossible.

    Nujoma had to endure the private humiliation of working as a cleaner and sweeper in Windhoek. But with his unwavering commitment to the liberation and emancipation of his people, it did not take him long to establish his credentials as the natural leader of the new movement. And naturally too, it did not take the authorities much longer to come for him. He was arrested and sentenced to jail for three years. But he escaped to Tanzania where he was warmly welcomed by Nwalimu Julius Nyerere. Thus began for the future president, a long period of exile which was to last about three decades. His wife was only able to join him after spending two decades in the most humiliating and degrading of circumstances in Namibia. It did not bend or make Nujoma to waver. With his winning and winsome smile and the charismatic swank of a natural aristocrat, Nujoma was very prepossessing indeed. But his calm and friendly mien hid a ruthless streak which would not be lightly crossed. It helped very much that his mother was a princess of one of the most fabled clans in the land. His father was famous for his integrity and for saying it as it is. Shortly after his son’s incarceration, the elder Nujoma was also summarily impounded by the authorities who sent him to jail in Pretoria. He was later to die from tuberculosis contracted in prison.

    Read Also: Alleged bribery: House remains committed to protecting democratic institutions

    For this writer, the most iconic and enduring image of Sam Nujoma was of the hero of the Namibian struggle kissing the tarmac at Windhoek Airport in 1990 upon his return to his native land after a three decade exile. Moments later, he was to extend the same courtesy to his mother who had been part of a cheering crowd to welcome him. Mother and son had not seen each other in thirty years. Talk of the heroism and sacrifices at the behest of a beloved nation! It was not a surprise that Nujoma’s chronicle of his heroic exertions was titled, Where Others Wavered. Needless to add that in elections held later that year, Nujoma and his party, SWAPO, romped to victory. There was no need for rigging or vote-buying. He went on to rule his country for the next fifteen years, serving three consecutive terms against the constitutional stipulation of a maximum of two terms. But this did not alienate him from his compatriots who remained grateful for his selfless struggle for their emancipation and for the international prestige, political stability and relative prosperity he has brought the country.

     The passing of this great son of Africa is an opportunity for reflection, particularly as Trump’s unilateralism and isolationist globalism unleash their contradictions. We are entering another epoch of colonization this time marked by extreme economic aggression against weaker nations. Nationhood will count for nothing. African countries struggling with stability and unable to feed their populace will have a hard time convincing Trump that the real estate should not be put to better use. The current travails of the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has ceased to exist as an organic country with scant international attention is an indication how much the international community attaches to flag independence.

    Perhaps this is the time to rediscover the visionary magic and political idealism of Africa’s founding fathers, particularly those who fought for the independence of their countries. As we have seen in Africa and the rest of the world, nations that start off with a coherent set of ideals and political goals often retain a residual discipline and cohesion long after they might have gone into ideological abeyance or the recession of radical vision. Even where political careers ended in failure, the architecture remains as a beacon of hope amidst the ruins of aspiration. Such countries tend to handle the politics of succession and the threat to stability much better. Perhaps this is the whole point of politics with conviction and parties with ideological foundation. African countries without such a core foundation will continue to roil in political instability and economic miseries until something gives. Nujoma should be commended for bequeathing a country to his people.

  • As Ukraine is fed alive to the Russian Bear

    As Ukraine is fed alive to the Russian Bear

    The international order is never more interesting and perplexing. After months of waffling and warbling, and with casualties mounting on both sides , the hazy outlines of Pax Trumpiana now appear in bold relief. It is as simple as it is disconcerting. Before our very eyes, the brave and heroic people of Ukraine are to be fed to their Russian tormentors. Having thrown everything they have into battle, having fought the invaders with fierce determination and unusual bravery, taking horrendous casualties and the apocalyptic devastation of a beautiful and alluring landscape in the process, the Ukrainians are now faced with the humiliating prospects of being forced to surrender without a whimper.

    For this international miracle to materialize, all it took was a long transatlantic phone call between two powers leaving out the complainant in the cold. By the time the call was over, Zelensky’s goose had been cooked. All that remained was for the terms of disengagement or surrender to be worked out with some concomitant sweeteners thrown in to humour the Ukrainians. There will be no return of occupied territory or talk about reparation. In one short, sharp surgical move, Trump has removed the source and basis of Ukrainian self-defence, which is American munitions.  You cannot fight without weapons. He has also peremptorily precluded the possibility of Ukraine joining the NATO, an act which the Russians believe would jeopardize the strategic interest of their country. As for the UN and its other ancillaries and accessories, Donald Trump treats them with such contempt that they could well be mythical apparitions without any value worth talking about.

    Read Also: Defections from PDP driven by ‘stomach infrastructure’ – Tambuwal

       It is a brand new world. Nobody would have believed a day like this would come when a sitting American president would treat international organizations which are largely the creation of Americans and which rely substantially on American subventions with such hostility and sheer disdain. But here we are. The major irony in all this is that while withdrawing into the shell of isolationism, the American president is insisting on acting out America’s role as the world’s preeminent law giver and principal custodian of global custom. America’s combination of isolationism and rampaging globalism such as the proposed takeover of Gaza and annexation of Greenland will provoke countervailing actions from equally prosperous and well-heeled countries defending their own national interests.

       The defeat and liquidation of Ukraine will serve as a playbook for China’s occupation of Taiwan, North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, Israeli obliteration of the Middle East as we know it and possibly the annihilation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Rwanda.  As the conflict shapes up, the possibility of nuclear confrontation cannot be ruled out since biting is part of fighting. Unlike the earlier epoch of colonization when the invading colonizers shared the same faith and values, this one will be a clash of faith, of culture and values in all their countervailing hostilities. The human race has never been closer to self-determination of a most profoundly ironic hue.

  • Power Rangers to the rescue

    Power Rangers to the rescue

    Not a bad idea if govt can blend this with technology to fight power lines vandals

    Power lines vandals who have been throwing spanners in the works and causing intermittent blackouts would have to think twice now that they would have dedicated security men to contend with. Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, disclosed this on Friday.

    “We have decided now with the Minister of Power to have what we call the Power Rangers,” the minister said during an appearance on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme.

    According to the minister, the Power Rangers will be created within officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).

    This special security team to protect power installations and infrastructure would appear to be the Federal Government’s answer to the question of persistent vandalisation of power infrastructure.

    Power supply is pivotal to whatever we do. It is vital for our work, as in manufacturing and small-scale businesses; it is inevitable even for our leisure because, as they say, a hardworking person deserves his time of rest. Power is key even when we sleep; especially in our kind of tropical climate with its scorching heat. We need power for whatever we use to provide cool air for ourselves, be it air conditioners or electric fans. Name it, power supply is indispensable in virtually all aspects of our being.

    Unfortunately, as essential as this commodity is, Nigeria has not been able to produce enough for its over 200 million people.

    The country’s power generation as at 2023 was said to be in the region of 22,000 MW.  Even then, we do not have the capacity to transmit all. This is aside the problem of distribution, with all its bottlenecks.

    South Africa, with about 63.02 million people generates 58,095MW.

    As if all of these are not enough to contend with in the power sector, we have also had to deal with the nefarious activities of vandals who have made theft of power infrastructure their pastime. These criminals have continued to deal deadly blows to the power infrastructure, thus compounding the problem of inadequate power supply in different parts of the country.

    According to iProject Master (iPM) in 2013, “there were more than 12 incidences of vandalism recorded on the Alaoji-Owerri 132kV line, Jebba-Shirioro  330kV line, Osogbo-Ayede 330kV line, Oshogbo-Benin 330kV line, Oshogbo Ikeja 330kV line, Jebba-Shiroro 330kV line, Benin-Ikeja West 330kV line, Sapele-Benin 330kV line, Delta-Sapele-Benin 330kV line, Sapele-Benin 330kV line, Benin-Ajaokuta 330kV line and the Abuja-Keffi 132kV line. Some of these transmission lines were vandalised more than three times.”

    The incidence has not abated.

    Indeed, as at February 4, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), said there have been a surge in transmission infrastructure across the country, with over 18 transmission towers vandalised between January 9 and 14, 2025, across Rivers, Abia, and Kano states. There have been several others, including the one that plunged Abuja into weeks of darkness recently.

    Power lines vandalism comes with its consequences. It has forced many manufacturing concerns to shut down because they cannot power some of their machines on generator. This has consequences for their income, investments and in certain cases where products must not suffer any break in power supply, commodities worth billions of Naira will be lost. 

    It also comes with grave risks.

     If there is  electricity during the power line vandalism, lives and properties of the people within the area would be at risk due to electric shocks, power surge and fire outbreaks, etc.

    Of course, vandalism has continued to thrive because of its expanding market globally. Industrialisation has continued to make the values of copper and aluminium, (the key targets of the criminals) to appreciate, hence the desperation on the part of the vandals; a desperation that sometimes makes the possibility of losing their lives in the process of stealing the items not to matter to them. It is so bad now that vandalism of high-tension towers, usually avoided in the past as a high risk, is now a thriving business.

    The financial implications of constant repairs to vandalised transmission installations, and the attendant stress on the national grid, are also huge. ‘The Guardian’ estimate shows that over 117 132kv/330kv electricity towers were vandalised nationwide between January 2022 and February 2024. The country spent about N110 million to fix each of the vandalised assets, and a cumulative N12.8 billion to repair the 117 towers.

    Read Also: Alleged bribery: House remains committed to protecting democratic institutions

    Energy analyst, Lanre Elatuyi, has this to say on the issue: “For many years, Nigeria has not been able to find a lasting solution to the problem of poor electricity supply, and recently there have been calls for the declaration of state of emergency in the sector.

    “The activities of vandals have aggravated the issues in the already troubled sector battling with poor performances of the market participants and acute illiquidity. Most of the projects in transmission were funded with borrowed funds that the FG has not paid back.”

    Elatuyi added: “To make matters worse, we are now spending borrowed funds to repair infrastructure with no sight to cost recovery of the initial investments”.

    The situation is dire indeed.

    With the proposed idea of Power Rangers, it would seem the Federal

    Government is now ready  to put its money where its mouth is. That is to say the government now seems ready to go beyond lamentation whenever power infrastructure are damaged or stolen, to taking actions to check the trend. As the saying goes, “it is the person that digs the grave that is keeping the dead; the one crying is merely making noise” (eniyan to gbe’le lo pa oku mo; eni to nsunkun, ariwo lasan lo npa); a thing which does not solve the problem in any way.

    Not a few people would think setting up of the Power Rangers is enough to check the vandalisation of the power infrastructure. They would rather want the government to adopt the use of technology for more effective result.

    This stems from the realisation that most times, the vandals get away with their loot because there are no electronic gadgets secretly installed to monitor the power lines. Where these gadgets are available, they have devices that alert when there are unauthorised movements near the power lines and the system promptly communicates this to the power line operators and the law enforcement agencies using radio frequency (RF) signal network.

    May be those who think ‘manual’ solution like Power Rangers cannot go far have a point. But the interior minister said they took a cue from the establishment of Mining Marshals established by the Federal Government in March, last year, to tackle security challenges in the mining sector, before coming up with the  proposal. According to the minister, the Mining Marshals have recorded tremendous successes.

    Not only that, the minister further justified the need for the Power Rangers thus: “What we had before we (the Bola Tinubu administration) came was the generalisation of national assets. But we said no, you cannot have one specific medication that can treat all illnesses.

    “So you have to analyse every sector, the power sector, the water sector, the education sector, the health sector… and be able to create arms of civil defence under the same umbrella.”

    Although Tunji-Ojo did not mention any specific date for the take-off of the Power Rangers, he shed some light on some of the steps being taken to create the unit.

    “We’ve already agreed on the modus operandi and as I speak to you, the officers are being screened,” he said.

    “Don’t forget that we are going to have officers in all 36 states plus the FCT because there is no state without a power infrastructure; it is just like the solid mineral sector.

    “We are already in the process of onboarding those officers; we have to profile them, look at their capacity, look at their competence, look at their area of specialisation, look at a lot of considerations, even physical strength.”

    All of these would seem to suggest that those who came up with the proposal at least did some homework; they didn’t just wake up from the wrong side of the bed to propose it.

    Since it would represent the first major attempt to isolate the problem from similar activities perpetrated against the Nigerian economy by some criminal elements, the idea deserves the support of all Nigerians.

    But it must be borne in mind that it should not necessarily mean abandonment of other extant strategies that are being used to solve the problem.

    Here, cooperation of the locals in the areas traversed by the power infrastructure is key. There is also the need for mass enlightenment even though this may seem to mean little to people bent on committing crime for profit as we have always seen in many instances where people still go to scoop leaking fuel whenever they have the opportunity, and in spite of the dangers.

    The security squad, when it finally takes off, would require adequate funds to get the necessary weapons and other gadgets required to make the team proactive rather than reactive, since they need to be ahead of the criminals in terms of intelligence gathering and superior fire power.

    Needless to say that they would require training and retraining to enable them be on top of their game.

    It is important to stress that both the human and technological elements must be combined in our search for enduring solutions to the problem. These evils are not perpetrated by ghosts, and, as some people have suggested, only insiders can be

    proficient in committing such crimes. We will be able to get out of the quagmire if some of them could be caught, exposed and punished for their untiring efforts to sabotage the country’s economy.