The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Nigeria yet to get it right

    Nigeria yet to get it right

    Last week, Nasiru Aliyu Dan Tsoho, Sokoto State commissioner in charge of lands, housing, survey and town planning, passed a curious and evocative judgement on the administration of former governor Aminu Tambuwal. In summary the commissioner considered the former governor unfit for leadership even at the lowest level. “Aminu Waziri Tambuwal shouldn’t have been a Local Government Chairman let alone a governor, talk less of being the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a futile ambition that consumed his time and attention,” he snorted angrily. “He was unfair to the people of Sokoto State. He ought to have left hand-over records which would guide the new government but did not…Those who want to see the true picture of Aminu Waziri Tambuwal should come to Sokoto state, we will take him or her round and also show them facts and figures, site and even sounds from the public of his disastrous eight years as governor. Whoever wants to see the footprint of the real Aminu Waziri Tambuwal should come to Sokoto State. We will take him round, even to his own hometown of Tambuwal, that he failed to keep his promise to dualize the roads within the town…So, if I say that Aminu Tambuwal took the state backwards by 20 years it’s not an overstatement.”

    This column passed the same judgement on the Tambuwal governorship barely a few years into his eight years rule. It is reassuring that little by little, many analysts are beginning to turn their minds in the direction of the variables that qualify a person or politician for leadership. Mr Dan Tsoho’s summation may be scathing and coloured by the long-standing animosity between the current governor Ahmad Aliyu and his predecessor, Mr Tambuwal, to whom he was deputy for about three years before resigning in 2018, but the stridency of the commissioner’s conclusions are not diminished by the temperaments of Government House intrigues. Too little attention has been paid to the subject of succession in Nigeria, whether at the federal, state or local government level. But the matter deserves a lot of attention, and gradually, especially after the depredations of the Olusegun Obasanjo years, Nigerians may start to recognise that their fortunes are tied to their leaders. At his exit in 2007, a two-term limit he regretted bitterly, Chief Obasanjo gave the country the Umaru Yar’Adua/Goodluck Jonathan condominium. Apart from health and confidence challenges respectively, neither had demonstrated the qualities of great leadership. But they were foisted on Nigeria with disastrous consequences. Years later, in 2015, the country again bought a pig in a poke in the form of former military leader Muhammadu Buhari. The consequences were even more devastating, and would have been catastrophic had he got his wish of enthroning Ahmad Lawan, former senate president.

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    Neither the federal governor nor Sokoto State is alone on the matter of botched succession politics. The crisis of development in many states, not to talk of in local governments, is connected with the quality of their leadership. Without a conscious effort to structure and systematise leadership recruitment, especially with the unhealthy reliance on the guesswork institutionalised by the constitution, national development will not only be stymied, the likelihood of total collapse may become frighteningly real. The Nigerian constitution has its limitations. It is unable, by its provisions concerning qualifications for office, to properly sift competent and incompetent candidates and leaders. Rivers State is a perfect example of the facile presumption that undergirds leadership recruitment. Apart from constitutional inadequacy, outgoing leaders must also be imbued with the sublime skill, the altruism and metaphysical depth, of determining which aspiring successor possesses great leadership skills. One of the many reasons Western countries are experiencing leadership crisis is their jaded leadership recruitment process, especially in countries where the process is not qualified by leadership training facilities and sturdy constitutional provisions and amendments.

    Nigerians have heedlessly come to deplore the godfather concept as a sifting tool for mediating great leadership succession. That deploration is anchored on the fact that in many instances, both the outgoing leader and the incoming leader are incompetent in equal measure. Nevertheless, the Gordian knot must be cut. If a country or state manages to get it right by producing a sound leader with the right instincts for reproducing his kind, the crisis of development may be largely avoided. China has been able to get it right, despite running a unique one-party state that somewhat mimics democracy or replicates collegiate leadership. After Deng Xiaoping took the reins of office in 1978, China has deliberately nurtured succeeding generations of leaders, preferring not to leave the matter to chance, and ensuring that succeeding leaders were capable of producing their kind. Nigeria had the chance before 2007 to birth a great and enduring leadership recruitment process, but Chief Obasanjo, despite his unceasing rhetorical overkill, lacked the discipline and the depth to produce the next generation of great leaders. Instead, he nurtured dwarfs expected to fit into and execute his defective worldview. What ailed Chief Obasanjo in 2007 also ailed Nyesom Wike in 2023 in Rivers State. Unable to conjure the altruism he desperately needed, and not understanding the rubric of great leadership, Mr Wike reproduced a successor that has kept Nigerians truly numbed. For the foreseeable future, Rivers will remain knackered.

    In short, two factors will enable Nigeria to overcome its leadership failings and developmental crisis: a scientific leadership recruitment process, and outgoing leaders with the depth and metaphysical grasp of identifying a great successor. As the United States experience is showing in its presidential campaign, a system that had for centuries managed to produce some great leaders, or at least incompetent leaders incapable of destroying constitutional and societal guardrails, even the most advanced of countries can be horrifyingly susceptible to a candidate like Donald Trump who would threaten the stability of his own country as well as trifle with the world order. So, even when a scientific or constitutional recruitment process does exist, it must be enabled by outgoing leaders with enough chutzpah to fish out a great successor and help him get elected. Great leaders also often possess the right instincts. German war hero and Chancellor Paul von Hindenburg doubted the bona fides of Adolf Hitler and was for a brief moment chary of the risks of asking him to form the government after the 1933 elections, but he overruled his doubts and endorsed him, with catastrophic consequences.

    Catherine the Great of Russia (1762-1796) also doubted the competence of her son, Emperor Paul I (1796-1801) who was described as ‘idealistic, mercurial and vindictive’, and wanted him disinherited in favour of her grandson Alexander I (1801-1825), but she died of stroke before she could get her wish entrenched. As proof that Catherine’s instincts were sound, one of Emperor Paul’s teachers thought his student ‘was always in a hurry, acting and speaking without reflection’. Indeed, shortly after Emperor Paul I took the throne, he confirmed what many observers thought of him, and was soon assassinated. The doubts that assailed Catherine were akin to the suspicions that wracked the mind of the Ottoman Emperor Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-1566) regarding the leadership qualities of his potential successors. Together with his wife, they plotted to get rid of their children who were thought unfit for the throne, apart from small pox killing another potential successor. Even then, the presumptive heir, Selim II, believed to be far better than the other candidates, fared only partially better in the end. The empire only lasted for more than 300 years because of Emperor Suleyman’s stupendous work of empire building.

    Last month, Defence minister, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, asked Nigerians to take their regnant political culture as an infallible given. There was no room for secession, he said curtly. But this is a political system without a definitive worldview or paradigm, a system superficially inspired by the letter of the deeply philosophical constitution of the United States without being affected by the spirit of that great constitution. The National Assembly is engaged in reviewing the constitution, but there are no indications they can burrow deep into its philosophical core to get gold, nor if they get there, appreciate its pertinent provisions and nuances. What is indisputable is that neither the Nigerian constitution nor the Nigerian political culture guarantees the right political recruitment culture. Without a philosophy to guide both national life and leadership or even a great recruitment process, where will the right successors be found, and if found, what constitution and idea would they implement?

    Nigeria’s leadership crisis goes beyond looking warily in the direction of the opposition, for even here, only two aspirants come to mind in recent months: ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. Unfortunately, both display contempt for the judiciary, have little understanding of what opposition politics entails, are destitute of any form of nobility, are obsessed with office, and have shown no inclination for visionary undertakings of any kind. Resolving the country’s leadership conundrum will, therefore, be a herculean task, let alone tackling the country’s myriad economic crises. And if, along the way, a great leader happens to Nigeria, there is no structure in place, in the midst of bitter ethnic and religious recriminations, to guide future leadership selections, either by way of constitutional changes or by dint of political culture.

  • LGs in more trouble than Nigerians think

    LGs in more trouble than Nigerians think

    Of all the local government elections held so far, none has recorded a close contest between leading political parties, whether the poll was a two-horse race, as is common in the country, or a three-horse race where a fringe party has managed to barge itself into the ‘dinner’ party.  In most cases, the victorious parties, usually the ruling parties, have made a clean sweep of the polls, regardless of how ‘progressive’ the governors are thought to be or whether the 2023 National Assembly polls were keenly contested with very narrow margins and outcomes. All that is needed for a clean sweep is for a party to produce the governor of the state.

    Yet, the philosophy behind the federal government’s laborious effort to secure financial autonomy – not administrative autonomy – for the LGs was to introduce accountability, efficiency, development and innovation at the grassroots level. State governments had consistently stifled the LGs, the so-called third tier, and reduced them to beggars. Arguing that the LGs were often irresponsible or incompetent, the states had defied the constitution and taken over everything about the councils, leaving them no elbow room to prove themselves in governance. In fact, in most states until the Supreme Court waded in last July, local government elections had not been held for years. And when the Supreme Court gave judgement in favour of freeing the finances of the LGs, the states ungraciously began to look for ways of sabotaging the freedom. Their reaction was predictable.

    This column warned immediately after the judgement that given the disposition of the states, particularly governors unconvinced about the societal and economic value of fairly independent LGs, it was a matter of time before they caught their breath and began to look for ways to circumvent the ruling. Shockingly, the governors were even more spontaneous than this column feared. They simply enacted the cleanest sweep of LG polls ever, without scruples, without remorse. States like Rivers and Kano where the Federal High Court had issued orders barring the elections from holding, and where the electorate were split almost 50-50, simply brushed aside the judgements and conjured a clean sweep. No courts and no constitution were big enough to hold them down.

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    Since 1999, the governors have always been very influential. President Olusegun Obasanjo tried to curb their mafia-like politics, but failed. And with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, nothing they imagined was impossible to them. No other president since has succeeded in taming them. One after another, the presidents simply relented and let the governors run riot over national affairs. President Bola Tinubu tried to reach for the stars by going through the courts to clip the governors’ wings, but from all indications, he has also come to grief. The governors won’t fight him openly, but they will make nonsense of his judicial overreach. Anambra has even tested the waters by railroading through the state legislature an insolent piece of legislation to rubbish the Supreme Court ruling on the matter. Whichever way the judgement is read, and whoever gets the LGs money first, the inventive Anambra law provides that a certain undetermined percentage would be shaved off the councils’ allocations.

    The Supreme Court judgement may not be dead yet, but it is in intensive care already. The judges had claimed to deploy purposive and teleological arguments to underpin and give assent to the financial autonomy the constitution meant for the LGs. It was a beautiful piece of judicial innovation and imaginativeness, a judgement highly welcomed by the populace, and a shot in the arm to revivify somnolent or dying LGs. Seething governors waited only a moment to catch their breath before launching a fierce counterattack. Knocked insensate, the federal government, Supreme Court, and tremulous LGs have been put on the back foot by the counterattacks; and so far, they have been unable to inspire a riposte. Indeed, while the Tinubu administration and allied forces were left reeling, the governors, through the National Economic Council (NEC), attempted to deal a vicious uppercut to the Tax Bill before the National Assembly. The bill has about four of five parts, almost flawless and an ingenious piece of legislation, but the governors, seizing upon the Value Added Tax (VAT) component of an otherwise great and carefully worked bill, will have none of it.

    If the Fourth Republic is failing to meet expectations, the practitioners, particularly the governors, are to blame. As defective as the 1999 Constitution is, it is not so irredeemable that it cannot produce the great leap forward its overly optimistic framers dreamt. It may not rise to the philosophical height of the American original from which it was plagiarised, nor take into cognisance the cultural and political milieux on which it has been clumsily grafted, but it provides a rudimentary enough structure to help Nigeria forge ahead, not briskly, but at least gingerly.

    LGs are the first and primary victims of the constitutional and administrative anomalies of the Fourth Republic. If the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which promises to monitor council expenditures and take action against infractions, will approach the conflict with the tentativeness it has handled ex-governor Yahaya Bello’s intransigence, then nothing will come out of the political and constitutional subterfuge being masterminded by the governors. Lagos State legislature is finding a controversial way to get round the state’s inchoate local council development areas; but it has mercifully tamed its latent potential for radicalism by not trying to subvert the rule of law, nor egregiously bypass the Supreme Court judgement like a few other states. But few states can really do without the local government allocations; it is a juicy extra they are loth to wean themselves off.

    For now, the LGs are hanging by their toes. They are in far more trouble than anyone thought. The governors resent any whiff of independence coming from that obstreperous tier. They will fight the court’s effrontery to the bitter end. Whether they will get away with it or not is unclear, and whether the federal government will rally to take the battle to the governors is also not certain.  But instead of the judicial and political rigmarole being deployed to solve a rather simple problem made complex by a unitary constitution pretending to be federalist, economic federalism in which states and LGs independently generate their own revenue would be the smartest and lasting solution to obliterate any clamour for monthly allocations.

  • Democracy on trial

    Democracy on trial

    By the time you are reading this, the close of this election cycle in the USA would be about forty-eight hours away. In other words, the die would have been cast and the battle won and lost. The advertised date of the election is the fifth of November but since the nineteenth of October voters in no less than forty-seven of the fifty states of the Union have been sending in their ballots in order to register their votes early. It is calculated that as many as fifty million voters would have voted before the advertised voting date to take care of those who would be unavoidably absent on election day or people who do not wish to be bothered with the hassle of queuing up to vote on election day.

    The voting and subsequent announcement of the results will bring to an end an election cycle which started as it always does, in January when registered Democrats and Republicans in New Hampshire met to decide who the state’s delegates were going to vote for at the party conventions later on in the year. Since that date, ambitious US politicians have been crisscrossing the country going from one state to another trying to win the fight to be their candidate in this year’s presidential elections.

    This year, the Republican primaries have turned out to be a triumphant procession for former President Trump who just steam rolled his way through the process. You can even say that like an unstoppable force of nature he simply blew away all opposition within Republican ranks. True, Nikki Hailey who once served as the United States ambassador under Trump showed some fight early on in the primaries, she was in the end swatted aside with contemptuous ease by the relentless Trump who gathered delegate votes with the ease of honey bees gathering nectar in the middle of the flowering season. No other Republican could gain any traction and the party lined up meekly behind Donald Trump as he blithely led them like lambs to the slaughter. It was a coronation of sort.

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    In the Democratic camp, the situation was similar as there was no viable opposition to the incumbent Biden – Harris ticket. For a long time, it seemed that the  next election was going to be a straight fight between President  Biden and former President Trump as was the case the last time around in 2020. And we all remember clearly what the result of that matchup was. Biden, after due process was declared the winner. In a clear departure from the norm however, Trump refused to acknowledge defeat and began to whip up his supporters into a frenzy of denial of an election result which in the face of overwhelming evidence was truly incontestable. He claimed the election was rigged. That, as must be pointed out is the default reaction of defeated presidential candidates in Nigeria. That is the case and perhaps will always be the case in Nigeria given the chaos that has come to characterise our elections but the Trump reaction went against the grain of two hundred and forty years of practice in the United States. Not one to be deterred by the truly intimidating weight of history, Trump truculently rejected the result and in the time honoured tradition of any respectable state governorship candidate in Nigeria,  began the fight ,’to retrieve his stolen mandate’. But he did not make his appeal to any judicial body as there does not seem to be any such body to which such an appeal could be directed. Given extant realities, perhaps the United States may wish to look across the pond to see how we manage these things here but I digress. Given the situation, Trump appealed directly to the American people or at least to those of them who were his loyal supporters and they responded magnificently.

    On January 6 2021, there was a scheduled meeting of Senate and Congress in the Capitol and it was at this meeting that the votes of the electoral college were to be counted and the election result ratified under the chairmanship of the incumbent Vice-president, Mike Pence. However the sitting president, Donald Trump was not having any of this. He wanted Pence to use phantom powers to declare him the duly elected president and when it became apparent that Pence knew the limits of his constitutional authority, Trump challenged, no, even more than that, goaded the mob under his control to take over the Capitol and using a non-existent formula overturn the election results in order to save their country from what he described as the clutches of deranged left wing conspirators. From then on, it was the loudly declared intension of the mob which numbered close to two thousand people to hang Mike Pence on the gallows which had been erected within the premises of the Capitol. A full blown insurrection was underway in the seat of American democracy. When the Japanese carried out pre-emptive bombings of Pearl harbour on December 7 1941, Delano Roosevelt, the then president of the USA declared that day as a day which would live on in infamy and as far as a day on which the very idea of American democracy had come under a pre-emptive and hugely damaging attack. That day has to go down in history as a day of everlasting infamy too. In the end, National guard contingents drawn from Virginia and surrounding states had to be called out to suppress the insurrection and prevent the hanging of Mike Pence. All things considered, Pence is lucky to be alive but the same thing cannot be said of the spirit of American democracy which has been bruised, battered and trampled upon. The biggest blow is that nearly four years later, the Donald, far from admitting any wrong doing has continued to insist that his followers were well within their rights to right the wrongs which he suffered at the hands of fraudulent election officials. But there is worse on the ground this time around because he stubbornly insists just as he did the last time out that the only result acceptable to him is victory at the polls. That the Capitol debacle which ended with him being impeached (for the second time) has not acted as a deterrent this time around. The stage is definitely set for something which is bound to change the trajectory of American history in a way that is yet to be determined.

    Already, this election cycle has stood out for several reasons and it seems that we are only at the beginning. In 2016, the highly experienced and accomplished Hilary Clinton became the first woman to be nominated by either the Republicans or the Democrats to contest the post of the POTUS head to head. This was in a country in which women were not even allowed to vote until 1920 after an amendment of the constitution finally and grudgingly conferred the right to vote on them. In spite of winning the popular vote by a whopping margin of three million votes, she lost the election at the electoral college. This result, although disappointing shows a massive shift in the mind-set of the electorate and encouraged Joe Biden to offer the position of Vice president to Kamala Harris in the next cycle. This has paved the way for the Democrats to field Harris as their candidate in this cycle.

    In 2020, Americans had the choice of voting for either of two nonagenarian white men, neither of them at the peak of their physical or mental power. This time around, the competition was initially the eighty-three year old Biden and the seventy-eight year old Trump, both of them creaking alarmingly in every joint, Biden looking definitely the worse for wear. Still the old man plodded wearily on, determined to save American democracy from the clutches of the increasingly rampant Trump who appeared determined to return to the Oval office with the sole purpose of confounding an army of opponents real and imagined, but mostly imagined.

    Just before the Democratic convention however, there was a seismic shift in the conditions governing the elections at a time when Trump was leading comfortably in all polls. After a disastrous showing at a presidential debate between the two candidates it became clear that Biden was at the end of his tether. The old man had finally run out of steam and amid the clamour to step down, he duly did so. He then did what amounted to throwing a spanner in the works for Trump by throwing his weight behind the candidacy of his Vice president up till then derisively called laughing Kamala by the misogynist Trump. In the words of the immortal bard, nothing in his life became him as in leaving it as he reported the execution of the thane of Cawdor to Macbeth, his would be assassin. This description suited Biden to the ground as nothing became him in office as his vacating his candidacy to Kamala Harris thus giving his party the opportunity to give Trump a real fight. No other candidate from the Democratic party would have had access to the  Biden-Harris campaign fund and would have had to start putting their own campaign fund together thereby giving Trump a tremendous, if not uncatchable advantage. As it was, Harris not only had funds at her immediate advantage but began to build a massive war chest from small donors all over the country. Just as important, the polls began to announce the arrival of a rather scary new kid on the block. Suddenly, the polls could no longer separate the two candidates and the election became too close to call.

    With only a few days of campaigning left nobody is brave enough to put money on either candidate. Although Trump cannot be associated with any tangible political platform, he remains hugely popular with roughly half of the electorate with the other half looking up to Harris. They cannot be split at this point in time.

    Everything considered, it must be said that Trump is a new and perhaps deadly phenomenon in American politics. His political platform is bereft of any identifiable planks. He has not bothered to make any promises to the electorate. The first time he was president, he promised to build a big, beautiful wall on the southern border for which Mexico was going to pay. However eight years later, no such wall has been constructed. He promised to bring back to America all the jobs which had been lost to China. He did no such thing. This time around he has promised to surround the American economy with a high tariff wall but nobody including Trump himself quite understands what benefits this will bring. He has broken every moral rule in the book and yet, no observable consequences have been triggered. Instead, the only thing getting higher is the fanaticism of his loyal supporters. His support from  the great unwashed white supremacists as well as white Christian evangelicals is rock solid even though he is  incapable of quoting a single Bible verse correctly, not even ‘Jesus wept’. And yet, the election is still too close to call. The only thing echoing in my head right now is that the only result which is going to be acceptable to Trump is a Trump victory. This makes me wonder what will happen in the event of Harris being declared the next POTUS following a victory at the polls.

    What comes to mind at this time is the story of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. The conclusion of that tragic story of the struggle between man and beast may be a pointer to what is waiting for the spirit of American democracy after the fifth of November. Something has to give.

  • America’s momentous election

    America’s momentous election

    Americans go to the polls on 5 November, 2024 to elect their 47th President, and the election is attracting international attention. This is understandable, because, among other reasons, America is perceived as the bastion of democracy and a standard against which many other democracies are measured. The quality of its presidential candidates, the tenor of their campaigns and the conduct of the election are therefore generating keen interest. The American system allows absentee voting (for those who are unable or unwilling to go to the polling stations on Election Day) and voting-by-mail. Voters who prefer any of these early voting options have already started casting their votes.

    This year’s US election comes up about two months after the 23rd anniversary of the world-changing 11 September, 2001 Al-Qaeda bombing of critical symbols of American power. President George W. Bush’s 20 September, 2001 speech to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People put the catastrophe in perspective as follows: “On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country.  Americans have known wars – but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941.  Americans have known the casualties of war – but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning.  Americans have known surprise attacks – but never before on thousands of civilians.  All of this was brought upon us in a single day – and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack. … Americans are asking, why do they hate us?”

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    Among other answers, President Bush provided the following: “They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.  They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East.  They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.  With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends.  They stand against us, because we stand in their way.” Conversely, in a video address, on 20 September, 2001, Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader, said: “As to America, I say to it and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him.”

    Incidentally, the Israeli-Hamas war is currently raging with many around the world accusing the United States of strengthening the hands of Israel as it commits what is perceived as genocide and war crimes. In fact, Israel is a campaign issue in the US election, with the Republican Party’s former President Donald Trump saying as follows, in the presidential debate he had with incumbent Vice-President Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party on 10 September, 2024: “She hates Israel. … If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now.”

    The US election is also coming up at a time when the Russia-Ukraine war is raging, with America and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation supporting Ukraine; and with China, Iran and North Korea, among others, backing Russia. The election is holding at a time when Africa, especially Francophone Africa, is becoming increasingly hostile to America, and when the BRICS group of countries is waxing stronger as a fascinating alternative intergovernmental development platform.

    Further denigrating Harris, Trump said: “She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well. … Well, bad immigration is the worst thing that can happen to our economy. They have and she has destroyed our country with policy that’s insane. Almost policy that you’d say they have to hate our country.” Here, Trump attempts to exploit the American predilection to be discomfited by association with Marxism. The reference to her father as a “Marxist professor in economics” who “taught her well” is thus an attempt to portray her as a dyed-in-the-wool or ‘congenital’ Marxist who is bad for America’s Capitalist economy.

    In addition, demonising immigrants, Trump said in the debate: “…we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. And they’re coming in and they’re taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics and also unions. … You see what’s happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio. You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality. And we have to get them out. We have to get them out fast.”

    To this, Kamala Harris responded: “[If] you want to really know the inside track on who the former president is, if he didn’t make it clear already, just ask people who have worked with him. His former chief of staff, a four-star general, has said he has contempt for the constitution of the United States. His former national security adviser has said he is dangerous and unfit. His former secretary of defense has said the nation, the republic, would never survive another Trump term. And when we listen to this kind of rhetoric, when the issues that affect the American people are not being addressed, I think the choice is clear in this election.”

    In her 29 October, 2024 Ellipse Park, Washington, D.C., campaign remarks regarding Trump’s description of Democrats and others as “the enemy from within,” Harris said: “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is. But America, I am here tonight to say: that’s not who we are. … And the fact that someone disagrees with us, does not make them ‘the enemy within.’ … America, for too long, we have been consumed with too much division, chaos, and mutual distrust. … It is time to turn the page on the drama and conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America. And I am ready to offer that leadership as the next President of the United States.”

    Harris had also said in the presidential debate of 10 September, 2024: “I think you’ve heard tonight two very different visions for our country. One that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past. … And I do believe that the American people know we all have so much more in common than what separates us and we can chart a new way forward. I believe in what we can do together that is about sustaining America’s standing in the world and ensuring we have the respect that we so rightly deserve … I’ll tell you, I started my career as a prosecutor. I was a D.A. [district attorney]. I was an attorney general. A United States senator. And now vice president. I’ve only had one client. The people.”

    America has never had a female President, contrary to what has become a global trend. For example, Indira Ghandi was Prime Minister of India, from 1966 – 1977 and from 1980 – 1984; Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 – 1990; Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 – 1990 and from 1993 – 1996; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was President of Liberia from 2006 – 2018; Jacinda Ardern was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 – 2023; Salome Zurabishvili has been President of Georgia from 2018 till date; and Samia Suluhu Hasan has been  President of Tanzania from 2021 till date. Given these endearing examples, will America vote in its first female president in this week’s election?

    On 26 October, 2024, at a Michigan campaign for Harris, Michelle Obama remarked: “We are once again holding Kamala to a higher standard than her opponent. We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs. But for Trump, we expect nothing at all, no understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals. … [We] are indifferent to his erratic behavior, his obvious mental decline, his history as a convicted felon, a known slum lord, a predator found liable for sexual abuse, all of this while we pick apart Kamala’s answers from interviews that he doesn’t even have the courage to do.”

    Earlier in the speech, Michelle Obama said that she had had to ask herself, “Why on earth is this race even close?” She then passionately appealed to Americans: “I am praying that we consider the decades of sacrifice and struggle by all of our ancestors, the folks who marched and sacrificed and shed their blood for us. We have to ask ourselves: is a vote for Trump or no vote at all the way we honor their lives? And if that’s the case, well, that surely doesn’t sound like freedom to me. Because let me tell you, in any other profession or arena Trump’s criminal track record and amoral character would be embarrassing, shameful, and disqualifying.”

    In these volatile times, the choice of who becomes the 47th President of the United States is that of Americans to make, and the process will be completed on 5 November, 2024, all things being equal. All things being equal? Isn’t that a strange proviso for an American election? From the electoral evolution which the Trump factor has set off, especially considering the 6 January, 2021 violent mob attack on Capitol Hill in rejection of the 2020 election results, and allegations already being made by the Trump camp that the 2024 early voting is being rigged, wouldn’t it be impolitic to take anything for granted? In fact, in the presidential debate, VP Harris said: “Donald Trump … has said … there will be a bloodbath, if … the outcome of this election is not to his liking.”

    Consequently, the following adaptation of the YouTube-accessible admonition, in Pidgin English, to Nigerians by the US Consul-General, Lagos, Mr. Will Stevens, a day before the 25 February, 2023 presidential election, is a fitting one to Americans today: “My people, una well done o. My name na Will Stevens. … Election dis year na for [November 5th]. … I take God beg una, election no be war oo. No follow anybody fight because of vote. … God go bless [America]. God go bless [Nigeria] sef join.”

  • Let Ikwechegh breathe

    Let Ikwechegh breathe

    Nigerians must accord people like him their due respect

    Something must be wrong with us as a nation. I don’t know why we cannot give honour to whom honour is due. What is it that Honourable Alex Ikwechegh, a member of the House of Representatives representing Aba North and South, did that no one has not done before? He assaulted an Uber driver who came to deliver a parcel in his house, and did not know the kind of respect such a place deserved. So what? Is that why we have been having storm in a teacup? And some people are making a fuss of that just because the social media has given them a near-free platform.

    Apparently there is so much joblessness in the country, honestly. Otherwise, how could such a minor incident have become an issue to trend on the social media for days?

    I wonder if those who are hammering on the issue ever read Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things fall Apart’. If they did, they would have known what a man that goes to a place and ‘defecates’ on the floor deserves.

    If a driver comes to the mansion of a whole honourable member of the House of Representatives with a parcel for delivery, should he ask the honourable to come get the parcel from him, or he takes it right to as far as the honourable wants him to in the mansion?

    What is getting me angry the more is that, even as the honourable took the pains to explain his status to the driver, the latter remained unperturbed or did not seem to appreciate what it takes to occupy such an exalted position in the country.

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    Yoruba people would say ‘biko to iberu, se ko to isaju’! Somebody help me, I can’t  interpret it. The frog says when it gets to the matter of tail, forget it (opolo ni to ba de ibi iru, ka fo)! What I am trying to say is that when you get to this part of the proverb that I can’t explain, invite someone well grounded in Yoruba language to interpret for you or just read on.

    But I think the driver overstepped his bounds.

    Hear Ikwechegh, “I can make you disappear. Do you know who I am? I can make this man (driver) disappear from the whole of Nigeria, and nothing will happen. Can you imagine this rat? I am not going to give this boy one naira of my money”. Even if a rat hears someone threatening that he would make it disappear, that rat would run first, and complain later. Not to talk of a grown-up man like Stephen Abuwatseya, the Uber driver.

    Even when our honourable made it abundantly clear that he would personally beat up the driver, Abuwatseya still did not get the message; that the person he was dealing with was not only a law maker, he was also something else.

    Hear Ikwechegh again: “I am not going to call my policemen to beat you up. I will do that myself. I will show you that I am a big brother. I will tie you up, lie you down and put you in my generator house. Do you know where you are? Because you saw me sitting outside here? Look at this monkey,” he added.

    At this point, should the driver not have realised that it was not a mere mortal that was talking to him? I am not a law maker; yet, I am already getting angry with the driver’s audacity. I can only imagine the embarrassment that our honourable went through seeing this driver exhibit such ‘I don’t care’ attitude in his home.

     Every statement of threat that Ikwechegh uttered was fear-inducing. But not to this audacious driver. Tell me, should any reasonable man not have taken off from the premises without remembering to collect his money hearing such threats?

     Since Abuwatseya had the temerity to overstay his welcome in the honourable’s premises, it was like daring his honourable to do his worst. But a

    magnanimous Ikwechegh didn’t even go that far. A people’s representative could not have done that, despite the provocation. He merely gave him three slaps. Is that not kind of our honourable? If he were to act in line with section 1 subsection 1(a) of the Law of Impunity (as amended) that big people in Nigeria derive their powers from, he would have thrown him into the generator house or simply make some incantations to turn the driver to cat or fowl, preparatory to his eternal disappearance from the surface of the earth without trace. And without question, to boot!

    To even think that it was snails that he brought to the honourable’s place; not loads of Ghana Must Go with fresh naira or dollar notes, consecutive numbers! So, he expected a whole honourable to come and collect snails by himself. Imagine, just imagine!

    By the way, I hope you people now know why snails are expensive. Gone were those days when you would get to pick them anywhere on the ground. When people earning millions per month are now ordering for snails, why won’t the price shoot beyond the reach of the poor? That has already become a ‘no-go’ area for the poor now. But, the poor too are not just resigning to fate; they have switched on to maize which they now eat with relish. If our law makers have used the power of the millions we pay them monthly to take snails away from the common menu, “we”, the other Nigerians too have used our own little power to snatch maize from fowls.

    I don’t know how many people saw the picture of a malnourished fowl that I saw sometime ago, watching with palpable anger as some humans were

    eating roasted corn voraciously. ‘With people like these, there is no way we fowls would not have kwashiokor’, that fowl must have said to itself. If only the fowl could talk.

    The way some people are making a mole out of a mountain on this driver’s matter was the way they raised hell unnecessarily when another member of our esteemed National Assembly, Elisha Abbo, senator of the Federal Republic, representing Adamawa North Senatorial District, gave a nursing mother some dirty slaps in a sex toy shop in the Wuse 2 area of Abuja on May 11, 2019. According to reports, Senator Abbo had gone into the shop with three ladies to buy adult toys. One of them started vomiting in the shop. Trouble started as the owner of the shop told her she should have vomited before coming in. This infuriated the senator and one thing led to the other and he slapped the woman several times. You may be wondering what an Elisha would be doing in a sex toys shop? Elisha?

    But I guess many of those who would have asked such a question then, or asked for Abbo’s head after the slapping-spree did so out of envy. The man was the youngest senator in the country at the time. Indeed, another reason we should be able to swear that he went to the place for first-hand experience to aid his patriotic duty of making laws for the good governance of the country, especially as they pertain to matters as the shop was set up to address. In other words, it was in line with his oversight functions as a law maker. As the youngest senator, he was expectedly inexperienced.

    But Abbo knew his limitations. Unlike Ikwechegh, he realised he had a  diminutive frame and therefore did not threaten to deal with the people he was quarrelling with by himself; he unleashed a policeman who promptly arrested the nursing mother. Ikwechegh, on the other hand, wanted to take advantage of his massive frame to personally deal with the errant driver. That was why he told the driver that he would beat him up himself. What is the point wasting such a natural endowment?

    The point I am making is that, rather than people seeing Abbo’s matter as one of youthful exuberance, they made unnecessary issues out of it.

    I digress.

    What I am saying is that Abuwatseya deserved what he got. As a matter of fact, he deserved more than three slaps considering the condescending manner he treated our honourable. He even had the effrontery to tell him the number of times the honourable slapped him. Ha! Na wa o! This was a man who should be glad that a honourable (looking so fresh in the midst of economic downturn) slapped him with that soft palm, and refuse to bath in the next three days so the freshness of the palm would not disappear too soon from his cheeks.

    Here was a man who should simply have turned the other cheek to the honourable for another dirty slap, counting the number of times the honourable slapped him!

    And, as if the police had anticipated the drama, they swiftly arrested our honourable just because he had boasted that nothing would happen to him, even if the driver reported the matter to the Inspector-General of Police (IGP). Apparently he was not arrested for alleged dehumanisation of the Uber driver but because he disrespected the office of the IGP. But IGP Kayode Egbetokun could have been more tolerant.

    After all, there was an IGP at the time many years ago when popular comedian, Baba Sala, threatened to give a masquerade a slap on the face, give the police a dirty slap on their cheeks and crown it all by stoning the judge (mo le gba egun loju, ma fo olopa leti, ma tun wa so oko lu adajo). Neither the Chief Justice of Nigeria then nor the IGP ordered Baba Sala’s arrest. That is why I said Egbetokun can do with a little more tolerance.

    What is more? The representative has even come down from his high horse to apologise. What else do we want? We think it is easy for people of timber and caliber like Ikwechegh to apologise to the hoi polloi?

    The only mistake he made was that he did not put on the usual well-starched ‘babariga’ that only our law makers can afford these days. May be if he did, Abuwatseya would have recognised him as one of the movers and shakers of the country, and therefore prostrate before handing over his parcel to him.

    That is why he is the main culprit now. He suffered due to his inability to decipher that only a law maker of the Federal Republic could have been talking the way Ikwechegh was talking to him; and that should have made him to comport himself.

    But the police and our people on the social media have decided to miscarry justice by nailing our honourable whose hands are soft; whose eyes seem mean.

  • Ninety bouquets for Jack Gowon

    Ninety bouquets for Jack Gowon

    A few weeks past, General Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s most respected and arguably most admired former military ruler, turned ninety. The entire nation rose as one to pay homage to one of its most illustrious sons ever. The cascades of tributes and encomiums were truly overwhelming. In a nation in which the political elite rarely agree on anything and in which elite consensus on most things remains a mirage, Gowon has emerged over the years and more so after he was eased out of office by junior colleagues as an exemplary Nigerian patriot, a soldier-statesman and shinning moral exemplar for many of his compatriots.

      For a man who has risen from humble and lowly origins to the acme of fame and professional fortune, this is as giddy as it can get. It is a fairy tale of outlandish accomplishment. But it is also an allegorical fable of how far faith, determination and unassuming humility combined with good luck and providential fortune could carry a person of unfabled and unfancied origins even in the postcolonial quicksand. It is a tribute to Gowon’s humble nature and decency that he has remained unspoilt and unsullied by success unlike others whose palm kernels have been equally cracked for them by benevolent gods but who have become a national byword for abominable conduct and aggravating impertinence. The late Brigadier General Benjamin Maja Adekunle, gifted war commander and combustible military gadfly, noted that General Gowon, his former supreme commander, ought to have been a pastor rather than an officer.

       Yet despite all the accolades and unstinting acclamations, the clapping and ululations for General Gowon have not been universal. There have been some faint murmurs of disapproval and even the odd tremor of disapprobation.  In explosive putdown, Chuks Iloegbunam, author and notable journalist, tore into General Gowon accusing him of exaggerating his role in the suppression of the majors’ mutiny that led to the termination of the First Republic and of perfidy and complicity in the opaque intrigues surrounding the revenge coup of July, 1966 and the pogrom that was to follow. As a young boy, yours sincerely actually listened to the maiden broadcast of the then Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon in which he asserted that the basis for Nigeria’s unity was no longer there.

     That was two full days after the nation was without a valid national government. This was because the initial push of the victorious coupists was the breakup of the country until they were cautioned by western concerns. Perusing the literature of the murky and murderous interlude, one cannot but come to the same conclusion with Brigadier Hilary Njoku that it was a tragedy without heroes. The revelations of double-dealing and ambush within ambuscade contained in Chief Theophilus Akindele’s memoirs which chronicled the events of that terrible eclipse are even more explosive and bone-chilling. It was from his house that the embattled Brigadier Olufemi Ogundipe left in tracksuits to board a British frigate mysteriously moored off the Marina.

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       It will, however, be stretching it too far to insinuate that Gowon did not contribute anything significant to quelling the majors’ uprising on that night of murder and mayhem. Although he had no troops under his direct command having only arrived in the country the night before, he was a figure of calm authority behind the scene as he rallied the troops and made sure that the idea of military disruption of the political process was a professional abomination. It is obvious that the youthful and untested colonel was caught in a double bind or more appropriately a double jeopardy. He had been appointed to the position of Chief of Army Staff by Ironsi over the head of a few of his seniors. It was the right thing to do based on the exigencies of the moment. The northern military aristocracy had been liquidated by the mutinous majors. But there was no political rapport or professional synergy between the two men. Gowon was not and could not have been part of the ethnic cabal Ironsi surrounded himself with and who led him into a tragic misapprehension of the true state of the nation, particularly a northern region convulsing and seething with rage over the decapitation of its political and military leaders.

       But on the other side of the divide, the northern coupists did not trust Gowon and they viewed him with sullen suspicion based on the fact that he was a Christian and a member of a minority ethnic group. The putative leader of the military uprising, the tempestuous and irascible Major Mohammed, treated Gowon with such open rudeness and shrill discourtesy that it took Gowon’s calm and stoic forbearance to save the day. Even then, according to documented sources, it took a parade ground show of strength in Ikeja to convince the Kano-born Fulani aristocrat that Gowon was far more acceptable to the military rank and file. Thereafter, Mohammed embarked on a campaign of serial insubordination and disregard of stated military instructions which culminated in the Asaba pogrom and the military disasters of Onitsha and Abagana.

      It can be seen from the foregoing that although far from being a saint, Jack Gowon is also far from the satanic, bloodthirsty Dracula that secessionist propaganda has made him out to be till this day. What all this means is that almost fifty five years after the official termination of the civil war, Nigeria is yet to achieve a proper closure. As it is, and if he puts his mind to it, President Tinubu is properly and providentially emplaced to effect this closure. This morning, we republish a tribute to General Gowon first published on this same page exactly seventeen years ago in 2007. Nothing has been removed or added.

    By way of a postscript, a fortnight earlier yours sincerely settled down to dinner with two ancient friends, a lady who was a top official of the defunct Nigerian Airways and her brother in law visiting from Long Island, New York. Both are indigenes of Asaba town and had witnessed the horrors of the civil war “live” as they say. The lady whose mother was the immediate past Omu of Asaba was a fellow youth corper in the defunct East Central State in 1975. Yours sincerely had witnessed the funeral of the late Omu about a decade earlier and it was a grand carnival which shut down the storied city for three days.

      Inevitably, the conversation drifted to the pogrom. While the lady regaled us with eerie graphicness about the indignities visited on young women, the man’s attention was focused on the actual pogrom which he survived as a boy by lying still amidst the huge pile of the dead and dying. Later, he had helped sympathizers carry the body of Chief Okongwu to his adjoining homestead for proper dressing before interment. That incidentally was the father of a former First Lady of Nigeria.

    The rotund vultures are still hovering in the air. When are we going to get proper closure in this land?

  • Jack is not The Ripper…..

    Jack is not The Ripper…..

    General Yakubu Gowon, a.k.a Jack Gowon, is an immensely likeable fellow, an officer in the finest tradition of the old colonial army when martial nobility carried its sacred obligation.

        Although neither the best nor the brightest in his generation, neither imbued with the radical pan Arabic nationalism of a Gamal Abdel Nasser, nor the Ottoman revolutionary zeal of a Kemal Mustapha, fate, and perhaps his own utter decorum and modesty, have always conspired to thrust him into the highest echelon of power and responsibility.

          Gowon remains the classic example of the old principle of feudal preferment: those who actively seek the throne will never get it, except by murder and perfidy. So it is then that an interview with the old soldier should come at a period of subdued militarism, of a tense and fraught succession, and of intense and acute interrogation of the fate of the territorial space known as Nigeria.

          The interview itself is vintage Jack Gowon: honest, guileless and utterly bewitching in its political virginity. Gowon seems to be crying out to his traumatised compatriots that in the political and economic disembowelling of modern Nigeria that we have witnessed, he is not the famed ripper.

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        Yet in many ways unknown to him, Gowon touches on the problems that have made Nigeria’s history such a consuming nightmare. It is a mad and maddening history in which heroes quickly become villains but only to have their honour and respectability redeemed in the long historical run, and in which villains become heroes only for their villainy to catch up with them at the final post.

         Thirty one years after he was declared a wanted criminal for the murder of a turbulent subordinate he had treated with levity and guarded affection, three decades after he was stripped of his exalted rank by the government of General Obasanjo, Gowon has not only had his rank and privileges restored, he has also regained respect and respectability as a revered avatar in the gallery of pan-Nigerian heroes.

        In the event, it was Obasanjo himself that did time in prison, in addition to his rank being briefly withdrawn after having been found guilty of allegedly plotting to overthrow the government of a subordinate he once rescued from General Danjuma’s keen professional clipper. More interestingly, a controversial return to power appears to have ended in severe self-demystification with the Owu-born general much reviled and despised as a corrupt and cruel despot who botched the genuine democratic transformation of the country. It is a steep descent for the war hero and political liberator.

         Thus the whirligig of time has brought its sweet revenge, as Shakespeare once famously asserted. There is no question of who the villain is at the moment between Gowon and Obasanjo. Longevity and staying power have their historical advantages. All Gowon had to do was to simply refuse to die. Long after those who dismissed him as a national nuisance anti-democratic potentate have descended into infamy, Yakubu Gowon is still there, smiling his sweet cherubic smile. According to a Chinese proverb, if you stay long enough by the riverbed, the bodies of your enemies will wash by.

           But history is still an open script, and anybody who believes that this is the end of the story is a historical neophyte. It was famously said of Stalin that he drove barbarism out of Russia by sheer barbarity. If by some strange luck the current democratic blunderbuss prevails, if by some quirk of history Umar Yar’Adua turns out moderately well despite the appalling and unpropitious circumstances of his ascendance, if official corruption henceforth is reduced in Nigeria, Obasanjo, despite his glaring personal failings, may yet be seen as the man who drove out corruption from Nigeria by corrupt means and who established some semblance of democracy by despotic fiat.

           It is perhaps with an unconscious eye to such history in all its grand whims and caprices that Gowon has opened his heart to his compatriots once again. For the umpteenth time, Gowon reminds us that he did not join the army as a short cut to fabulous wealth. Neither did he join to become Head of State. Even if he does not explicitly inform us, this was the twin-malaise that eventually undid the Nigerian military as a potent force for national restitution and redemption.

        But this is not the same as the biblical tale of their fathers having eaten sour grape. The Nigerian military old-guard were an apolitical, frugal and ascetic lot, until oil flowed and blood followed, that is. The bald and bland facts tend to support Gowon’s earnest asseverations. The story is touchingly told by those who know of how Gowon, after ruling Nigeria for nine years, was about to become a homeless pauper in London until help and rescue came his way. It is a redemptive tale of self-abnegating heroism and immaculate patriotism.

          The raw facts also attest to Gowon’s utter lack of political appetite. When the then Colonel Yakubu Gowon returned to Nigeria on the eve of the first coup, his burning ambition was to transform his battalion into a showcase of discipline and professionalism. Within the next seventy-two hours, he himself had been transformed into the army chief of staff, the ultimate military posting. In another eight months, he was to become the youthful leader of his country. From putative battalion commander to de facto Head of state all in eight months: no ascension could have been more dizzying.

        Yet if this space shuttle transformation is symbolic of the confusion and uncertainties of the post-colonial state, it also speaks to the fundamental paradox of the Nigeria nation: the utter and frightful lack of preparation for office of virtually its entire post-independence leaders. It is the problem that currently bedevils the Yar’Adua administration. No Nigerian leader has been deliberately groomed for office. They all seem to stumble into preferment with the self-assurance of a sleepwalker.

      Obasanjo himself is the classic example. If the old General Obasanjo was carried into office screaming and kicking in protest with the ferocious Danjuma directing, the later President Obasanjo wandered into office like a traumatised amnesiac fresh from solitary confinement. For a complex and complicated country aspiring to rapid modernity, this haphazard and feudal lottery mode of succession may well be the unkindest cut.

       In retrospect, anybody thinking that General Obasanjo was historically positioned to buck this trend does not appreciate the fact that the deep psychological wounds inflicted on him notwithstanding; Obasanjo has always been in paradoxical collusion and complicity with his tormentors.

        With this, we now come to the grandest paradox of the Nigerian postcolonial state. Despite their inability to further the lot of the nation, despite their inability to project the interest of their class formation in and as the national interest Nigeria has been ruled by the same set of people, the occasional violent internal collisions notwithstanding. The result has been a pool of leadership hobbled by incest and a vastly diminished possibility of genetic replenishment.

         It is the same set of officers who put Gowon there that eventually removed him in a patriotic vote for the subordination of the military to the democratic ethos. Despite the fact that they were historically constrained from casting their net wide, nobody can deny the patriotic and nationalist motivation behind the act. Yet it is the same group of people that would terminate civilian rule and inaugurate a new round of military tyranny. More intriguingly, three of them went ahead to commit the same crime they have accused Gowon of: Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo.

        Perhaps there is more to this feat of self-perjury that we know little about. Or may be we should have stuck with good old Jack. May be what a fledgling country wracked by internal contradictions needs is a temperate and even-handed leader who will stay long enough to oversee genuine national transformation. The jury is still out, and Jack is still smiling and smelling of rose.

                                  First published in May, 2007

  • Tinubu, Statecraft and the Troubles of Today’s World

    Tinubu, Statecraft and the Troubles of Today’s World

    There is this Yoruba saying: “Melee waa’ku ko’le j’oye ile baba e”, which literarily translates to “one who says he’s not ready to die cannot inherit his father’s chieftaincy”. That saying, which can also translate to the popular “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” could have easily represented or summarised what leading Nigeria feels like. With that depiction in mind, you should be able to summarise what President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s week must have looked like, considering all that we have going on in our individual lives and in the nation.

    Being a nation going through its wilderness or reorganisation phase, the world knows that Nigeria is currently beset by all manners of challenges, a situation which President Tinubu has acknowledged times without number. Being what it is at the moment, the head wearing the Nigerian crown or sitting the Nigerian throne should have at lot to deal with. Like he has been doing all along, since he took office last year, the last week was devoted to fixing things, solving problems and getting interests to align in the overall interest of the nation.

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    Tuesday turned out to be the highlight of his week because it was packed with a number of very significant events and activities, all of which were devoted to setting things straight. That, however, did not mean that the other days of the week were empty, definitely not. He was busy with state matters everyday of the week, the difference is, not all of his activities, meetings and interventions were out there for the view of the media. He received visitors, many of whom are stakeholders in various areas of the Nigerian project and the events and discussions that went on in those meetings are not there for the media to report.

    For instance, on Monday, he held a couple of meetings, like the one with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator George Akume and other senior officials of the administration. He does this regularly and they usually will not have to find their way into news reports because, in the real sense of it, things like these are the reasons why he is President. But again, can they really be taken for granted? If they do not happen the way they ought to, would things have gone the way they ought to? The idea is he engages his officials regularly and the reason is because he cannot afford being ignorant of things happening all around him, all around the country and all around the world.

    On same Monday, he stepped into a rather serious development, which was already throwing up another avenue for those who will always politicise everything; the electricity crisis affecting almost all the states of the north. Political opportunists had started making a big issue out of it, claiming that Tinubu is responsible for the blackout, which was affected both households and industries. What those selling that narrative did not tell the public was what they reckoned the President’s intended gain was and how he managed to put everyone in the region in darkness. One thing clear about the narrative is it was meant to be a propaganda move against 2027, in favour of whoever and against Tinubu’s chances.

    However, being a hands-on leader himself, he would not just leave the peddlers of falsehood to run free, misleading the impressionable, he did what he believed was the right thing to do, in the interest of Nigerians in that part of the country. According to a statement issued on Monday by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, President Tinubu led the process of restoring electricity to the region. He promptly summoned the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, and the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, to map out a plan for restoring power to the region.

    By the way, from the information available on how the electricity situation in the north came about, it was as a result of the activities of vandals who vandalised the Shiroro-Kaduna power line, a critical electricity asset feeding the northern part of the country, and which value has further been proven by the act of vandals. However, since it happened the way it did, government, through its various organs, already started working at finding a solution to the situation. According to the Minister of Power, Adelabu, besides the ongoing effort at fully restoring Shiroro- Kaduna line, an alternative had been sourced from the Ikot-Ekpene substation.

    “We discussed the root cause of this, which was basically due to vandalization of the transmission lines of Shiroro-Kaduna line, which is the major line that supply electricity to the north, and the transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), they already set out to fix this line. What they have asked for, which has been provided to them now is the security cover of the National Security Advisor through the chief of public staff and Chief of Air Staff to enable them restore the damaged land. And we are optimistic that very soon this will be fully restored.

    “We have also explored the alternative line of providing light to the north through the Ikot Ekepene substation supplied from the Calabar plant, but the line got cut along the line, and we are also trying to fix that. If you remember that at the last FEC one of the approvals for the ministry of power was actually the upgrade of the Shiroro-Kaduna transmission line, which is the major line that supply electricity to the northern part of the country”, Adelabu said after meeting President Tinubu over the matter.

    However, like I said earlier, Tuesday was something of a very busy day for Mr. President. From the launch of the 2025 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Emblem and Appeal Fund in the morning, to receiving briefing from/ intervening in the disagreement among some members of the Implementation Committee on Naira-based sales of crude oil and refined products, to the 30-minute telephone conversation he had with the President of the United States (US), Joe Biden, who called him to express appreciation and discuss other diplomatic issues.

    At the launch of the 2025 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Emblem and Appeal Fund, it was a platform for him to spotlight the very critical role of the men, women and officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces. In case we have been seeing too much of them in the communities, the highways and on other critical national assignments and we are starting to take their calling for granted, so much that some citizens have started abusing, attacking and mustering the mind to murder our service men, President Tinubu reminded us that these men and women are our first and last lines of defense.

    To emphasize the indispensability of the armed forces, in his speech at the event, he noted “no matter what economic theory we propagate or postulate, if there is no security, we cannot promote peace and development”. He wrapped up his description of their value to us all as citizens and how we ought to relate with our armed forces, he painted a picture of what they are daily dealing with for the rest of us to have a country and be able to sleep with our two eyes closed.

    “I am grateful to all of you on behalf of the country. The challenges are severe, but you are this country’s first line of defense. Thank you for your patriotic commitment to Nigeria’s unity, stability, and progress. We came today to remember our fallen heroes, men and women who have sacrificed their lives for this country’s unity, stability and progress. We are committed to their values, principles, beliefs, and the unity and strength of this country as we pass on a banner without stain to the next generation,” President Tinubu said.

    You will remember that the nation’s petroleum sector has thrown up a couple of drama in the last few months; from frequent pump price increases, to Dangote Refinery and its owner, Alhaji Aliko Dangote and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limite (NNPCL), sparring from time to time on some confusing issues, which still mostly remain puzzling. The President intervened to achieve stability in the sector. But more important to the President was ensuring that the needless bickering does not interfere with the reforms he is working into the sector. So he met with the Implementation Committee on Naira-based sales of crude oil and refined products.

    During the meeting, which was a briefing meeting, the committee was there to bring him up to speed on how far the policy has achieved its objectives. He emphasized the need for a modern approach to Nigeria’s oil sector, cautioning against methods that mirror the past 40 years of practices. He underscored the importance of restructuring cost and revenue dynamics in a way that moves away from outdated government-led methods, stressing that any reforms in the sector must pave the way for efficiency and innovation, rather than a reversion to old systems.

    The President advocated for a market-driven framework that would allow natural determination of profit and loss, thereby fostering collaboration between independent marketers and the government. He explained that allowing market forces to take the lead would not only facilitate transparency, but would also create a balanced environment for public and private stakeholders to align on objectives and avoid potential future delays.

    Tinubu also highlighted the significance of ensuring Nigeria’s energy security and maintaining investor enthusiasm, particularly referencing Aliko Dangote’s ventures in the sector. By setting up a more predictable and stable oil market, the President envisions a long-term strategy that builds confidence for investors and sustains motivation, laying a foundation for a robust and self-reliant energy economy. This forward-looking approach, he noted, is critical to achieving sustainable growth and reducing Nigeria’s dependency on imported petroleum products.

    Then there was that 30-minute call from the President of the US, Biden, as reported to journalists at the State House by the Minister of Foreign Affair, Yusuf Tuggar. It was a call to express appreciation to President Tinubu and the federal government for dropping money laundering charges filed against an American citizen, Head of Financial Crimes Compliance at Binance, Tigran Gambaryan. He also used the opportunity to assure Tinubu of his support Nigeria’s pursuit of a permanent seat on the United Nations’ Security Council. It was actually avery significant occurrence for the administration and Nigeria.

    Other things happened throughout the week, like the appointment on Wednesday of Major General Olufemi Olatunbosun Oluyede as acting Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) in the absence of Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja, who is currently receiving medical attention abroad. Then on Friday he reaffirmed his commitment to seeing that his administration’s tax reforms sail, especially in the face of a well-packaged conspiracy to frustrate a work of more than one year.

    On Thursday, the National Economic Council (NEC) called for the withdrawal of the bills from the National Assembly, but understanding that yielding to this persuasion would kill a beautiful initiative designed to save the economy, he reminded the NEC, which is headed by his deputy, Vice President Kashim Shettima, that reviews and contributions they suggested could be achieved at the National Assembly. No need throwing the baby away with the bath water.

    That was how the week ended, a new one starts today. Let’s watch how it pans out.

  • The call for military takeover – an indictment of the Nigerian political class

    The call for military takeover – an indictment of the Nigerian political class

    I am today yielding the column to Professor Steve Egbo, a Lecturer cum Resource Person at the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies(NILDS), Abuja.

    A very profilic younger friend of mine who regular readers of the column must by now be quite familiar with as I have severally quoted him, contributing seminal interventions on many issues interrogated on these pages.

    He will be discussing the various ramifications of the recent, very unfortunate call for the return of the military by some people who were, no doubt, inspired to do so by politicians who failed  dismally at the 2023 Presidential election, alongside their idle hangers-on. They also recruited, in some parts of the country, some urchins who were instructed to be shouting  the name of President Putin, the same autocratic Russian  president, who was to come and help facilitate their intended illegality.

    Happy reading.

    Last week, the Guardian newspaper published an editorial comment in which it marvelled at seeing some Nigerians publicly calling for a military take over of power in the country. Before the publication, the social media had been awash with such calls, together with  rallies in some cities at which the military was being nudged on to so act.

    Also, during the #EndBadGovernance# protest of August, 2024, people were seen on streets, begging the military to intervene in the political process.

    Read Also: Concerns as silent rage of hazardous pollution threatens air quality

    In her book, ‘Times to Remember,’ Rose Kennedy, President JFK’s mother, stated that the most significant thing about living long is that things you never expected to happen, begin to happen. She wrote that book at age 83.

    Before now it would have been  unbelievable that any Nigerian, especially those above  age 40

    could, so openly and brazenly, be expressing a preference for military intervention in the governance of the country. Unfortunately, we have now all seen that happen, landing Nigeria at a torridly dangerous crossroad.

    It was Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a man of great intellect and wisdom, who famously stated that the worst civil government was infinitely better than the best military  government. Were Chief Awolowo  to stop by  in Nigeria today, and see the mess politicians have made of it, his reaction could only be left to the  imagination.

    So, how did we get here?

    After the blood and toil that Nigerians expended, ridding the country of the likes of Sani Abacha, Ibrahim Babangida, and their fellow conquistadors, it is benumbing, seeing Nigerians calling for their return.

    Not unexpectedly, government spokespersons have, grandiloquently come out to condemn the calls. The military high command has equally condemned, and rejected the cowardly invitation, while assuring Nigerians of the military’s commitment and loyalty to both the Nigerian constitution and the incumbent government.

    Comforting as this assurance is, it failed to answer the big question which is why despite the crudity, the human rights violations, abuses and sundry atrocities associated with military rule, anybody could wish to see soldiers back in power?

    This is the big question confronting us.

    Nigerians born in 1999, the very year Nigerians saw the back of the military,  are now in their mid- 20s, while those born under Babangida and Abacha would be in their late 20s and early, to mid 30s.

    They know little of what military rule truly was, and they had probably been too preoccupied, or plain uninterested, in reading any of the several books that chronicled what chaos that period represents in the  history of our country.

    But is this unconscionable call  just about the ignorance of our youth population, or the consuming hatred of those who are still smarting, and unable, to come to terms with the outcome of the last presidential election? Or are we, indeed, dealing with something much more fundamental and encompassing?

    Nigeria’s first republic lasted a mere five years followed by thirteen years of military rule. The second republic lasted another four years and the military was again in power for the next 16 years.

    With blood and tears, Nigerians fought relentlessly, clawing and biting, to send the soldiers back where they belong. Far too many Nigerians lost their lives in those better forgotten years of impunity and indescribable corruption, during which citizens were incarcerated and tortured, at will, in military dungeons. Nigerians who had the means simply fled into exile.

    In 1999, the military made its final retreat and handed over power to  politicians.

    And Nigerians thought that a new era was here at last.  Unfortunately, from that date till now, the country has steadily declined in spite of all the promises of life more  abundant.

    Winston Churchill it was who once said that “democracy may not be the best form of government, but insisted that “none is better”.

    Democracy has  characteristics that confer on it greater appeal than any other form of government. These include mass participation through the representative process, periodic elections, rule of law and adherence to the due process among others. Countries  that respect these principles have seen democracy work, and the citizens have reaped the dividends.

    But not Nigeria which has, unfortunately, moved in the opposite direction.

    Our elected representatives, when not beating up their fellow citizens, represent only themselves.  You would think they are drunk on something when you see them roughening up less privileged Nigerians.

    What we call elections are mere periodic selections, just as our constitution regulates nothing. Instead of the rule of law, what we have is the law of the rulers. It is what trumps everything.

    In government, due process is what the man at the top calls it – service rules be damned.

    What an unfortunate, thoroughly beleaguered country? The military was no good, nor are the politicians any better.

    The first republic was fashioned after the British parliamentary system. It failed.  We, thereafter, opted for the American presidential system and they have all but bastardised it. Indeed, its failure  has been more catastrophic as we merely changed the vehicle, but not the drivers.

    As Shakespeare once lamented, “the fault lies, not in our stars, but in ourselves…”. So, the fault is not in the system but squarely in the managers of the system – that is, the political class.

    They have deliberately and blatantly refused to adhere to the rules of the game.

    Nigerian politicians have heaped, and continue to heap, so much abuse on the process that the country has literally grounded to a halt. Impunity, recklessness, lawlessness, insensitivity, systemic abuse, gross manipulations, deliberate sabotage and several other forms of negativities are now arrayed against the country by those very persons, and institutions expected to make it liveable.

    It is all so sad.

    Every socio-political system has a responsibility to the citizenry. Nigerian political leaders, and office holders, have flatly neglected this responsibility to the Nigerian people. Public office has become  personalised and commercialised. They are bought and sold. And only those who can afford it can attain it. And in this commercial spirit and environment, no organ of government is spared the rot.

    People no longer aspire to any office in order to serve the public good. They buy office in order to serve personal interests and the interests of their families and friends.

    And while the buying and selling continue,  Nigerians are completely forgotten, left  only with the short end of the stick.

    Nigerian youths are the greatest victim. With poor, or no education, lack of employment opportunities and the absence of avenues to express their youthful energies, they find outlets in negative pastimes – drugs, alcohol, prostitution, yahoo yahoo etc.

    Poverty has become so socialised only those in the corridors of power do not experience it. Government policies, programs, preferences, values and priorities, even the words of their mouths, show serious disconnect from the realities on ground, as in when a senator bemoaned his ‘miniscule’ N14M monthly takehome. For them, it matters nothing if millions go to bed hungry every night.

    Nigerian leaders bastardised democracy so much so, that citizens, neglected, frustrated, left angry and hungry, now look up to the military as a refuge from democracy.

    Left at the mercy of bandits, kidnappers, murderers, extortionists and ritualists, life in Nigeria has relapsed into the dreadful state of nature which Thomas Hobbes denounced as   “solitary, poor, nasty, brutal and short”.

    Nigerians now sell everything they have to buy a one way ticket, for the entire family, to escape to foreign lands. Many migrate to menial jobs overseas, and endure whatever humiliation  they are subjected to, rather than stay in a country that offers them nothing.

    1999 was Nigeria’s second independence – a glorious dawn and a new beginning after  the military had been fought to a standstill, in much the same way as the nationalists fought the colonialists. Nigerians welcomed democracy with high hopes and great expectations.

    But all hope has now come to nothing, completely evaporated, the reason some people were, unreflectingly,  calling for the military to come back.

    But returning to one’s vomit is not an act of courage. Neither is it a prospect anyone contemplates with pride. It is an act of surrender to a condition that burdens the soul  and breaks the human spirit. Nigerians are broken. That Nigerians are asking for the return of the military is the greatest atrocity Nigerian politicians, and militricians, have perpetrated against the Nigerian people  and they must be held squarely responsible.

    Will the military heed their call? Absolutely not. They dare not because neither Nigeria, nor Nigerians fared better under them too.The military’s place is in the barracks. Period.

    But I have no doubt that when the story of this era in the annals of Nigerian history is told, historians will record that in the hands of predatory Nigerian rulers, democracy died.

  • Ministers and the figurative Roman gladiator games’ audience

    Ministers and the figurative Roman gladiator games’ audience

    When he return to the country on Saturday evening, he resumed work immediately. That does mean he has not been working all the while he was out of the country on vacation, at least those who announced his plans before he left for the United Kingdom (UK) were careful to qualify the nature of his holiday. Mr Bayo Onanuga, in his statement announcing the President’s departure, said he was going for “a two-week working vacation”. Wherever he was, he was still on duty, only not at his desk inside the State House in Abuja. He definitely went with files and other things he would need to ‘keep the table cleared’ and most importantly, he was with his mobile phone.

    While abroad and many people back home, especially those that are not really positive about him and his administration, President Tinubu was busy working on building another durable legacy for the people he has sworn to serve, repeating the Lagos feat and institutionalising his philosophy of sustainable development, cementing and firming up institutions, deploying all available resources, whether home-grown or foreign-sourced. How did I come to the conclusion that he was working to achieve these goals, even while abroad? I will break it down for you.

    At least, it is established that it was planned as a working vacation and he was not just out there, lounging on the porch of one Riviera holiday home, sipping pina colada. He was busy, working with those he believes have answers to some of our questions as a nation. If you need further confirmation, just recall a revelation by his Senior Special Assistant on Political and Other Matters, Kabir Masari. The aide had visited the President in the UK on October 11, had discussions with him and they both, after discussions, “departed for Paris, France, for another important engagement”.

    Now that he has gotten back to his desk, the first day in the office was as eventful as it could be expected. Right from when he entered the office, it was from one meeting to the other. The movements gave all the clues to what was going on at that time; most of those he met were either those who have roles to play in shoring up the economy or those with political and output evaluation tasks. 

    From the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake; the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Zacch Adedeji, who doubles as Special Adviser to the President on Revenue; the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, who came with the Chief of Defense Staff, General Christopher Musa; the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike; and the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi.

    Sighting the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination and head of Central Delivery Coordination Unit, Hadiza Bala Usman, gave the most vivid clue to what might be happening soon, either during the week or the coming one.

    Long before the President went on his brief break, there had been that premonition that he might be shaking his team up soon. Bala Usman is the one tasked with grading and measuring the performances of members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and now that the President is back and she happened to be one of the first callers at the Villa, then there started those hush-hush whispers about a possible cabinet reshuffle, most likely during the week.

    Tuesday came and passed like some others before it. Then on Wednesday, it was the FEC meeting, which had almost all members of cabinet in attendance, save for a few who were said to either be out of the country on national assignment or had other reasons not to attend.

    For instance, Vice President Kashim Shettima left the country for a diplomatic/investment drive engagement to Sweden, from where he headed to the United States, enroute Samoa, for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Also not at the meeting were the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun; Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar; Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo; Power, Adebayo Adelabu; Environment, Balarabe Abbas Lawal; and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike.

    Read Also: FULL LIST: Ministers who survived sack, redeployment

    Usually, the FEC holds its meetings for hours, two, three hours, some other times for extended periods, but this last Wednesday’s meeting was a very short one, like a few minutes less than an hour. Before Ministers started leaving the Council Chambers where the meeting held, the news already filtered out; President Tinubu has reshuffled his cabinet, resulting in relieving five ministers of their offices, reassigning ten to new offices and seven new persons nominated to be appointed as ministers.

    He also restructured two ministries; Federal Ministry of Niger Delta Development is now Federal Ministry of Regional Development, the Federal Ministry of Tourism is now merged with the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy to become Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy. He wound the Ministry of Sports Development up and transferred its functions to the National Sports Commission (NSC) in order to develop a vibrant sports economy.

    So he eventually gave the “Roman Gladiator games’ audience” the blood they have longed to see spilled. Many have demanded for sack of ministers. Right from the start of the administration, without considering what the circumstances around some of those offices are or giving credit for whatever the individual ministers might have put into serving the nation. Even when technology has shrunken time and space and it has laid how the world runs bare, because if you want to sincerely compare your experience with those in some other climes, it is just a matter of internet connectivity.

    The internet has made it possible for us to know that today’s world is going through one of the most trying seasons, resulting from a number of global happenings, the devastating COVID-19 pandemic being a chief reason. But again, a friend once said hunger kills reason and that is one of the reasons why a hungry man is said to be an angry man.

    Long story short, five members of FEC, until last Wednesday; Barr Uju-Ken Ohanenye, former Minister of Women Affairs; Lola Ade-John, former Minister of Tourism; Prof Tahir Mamman, former Minister of Education; Abdullahi Muhammad Gwarzo, former Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development; and Dr. Jamila Bio Ibrahim, former Minister of Youth Development, all became the Gladiator games audience’s booty.

    Meanwhile, the figurative description of the reality that played out on Wednesday does not in any way mean that the sack or removal from office of the ministers was not justified, as a matter of fact, without the call or chorus of those who always believe they know better than public office holders and are perpetually criticizing and fanning dissent, President Tinubu would have still done what he had set to do from the onset. He informed the ministers during the administration’s first Cabinet Retreat on November 1, 2023, that he would spare nothing in his efforts to achieve success at straighten Nigeria out and set it on the path of growth and development, nothing including removing any official who will fail to meet set targets.

    “But you are there to help me succeed. Success, I must achieve, by all means necessary. At the end of this retreat, you’re going to sign a bond of understanding between you, the ministers, the permanent secretaries, and myself. If you are performing, nothing to fear; if you miss the objective, we’ll review; if there is no performance, you leave us. No one is an island, and the buck stops on my desk. I assure you, you have a free hand. You must be intellectually inquisitive to ask how, why, when, and why it must be immediate. You have the responsibility to serve the people. I’ve taken a young lady, very dynamic, Hadiza Balla Usman, to head that delivery unit. If you have any complaints about her, see me. If you’re ready to work with her, stay there. Delivery, yes! We must achieve it for the sake of millions of our people”, he told them back then, so sack was not beyond any of the minister’s expectation.

    Then on Thursday the President put his money where his mouth is; he declared a Stakeholders Consultative Workshop on Livestock Reforms in Nigeria open. This is one of the untapped resources that Nigeria has left dormant for ages, which he promised he will activate for Nigeria’s prosperity. This is an ambitious initiative to transform Nigeria’s livestock sector into a thriving commercial industry. Speaking at the event, Tinubu emphasized the sector’s critical role in the country’s development.

    Nigeria’s livestock sector, a potential N33 trillion industry, has long been hampered by subsistence-level production, resulting in significant imports of dairy products, between $1.2 to $1.5 billion annually. However, with its vast land resources and large population, the country has immense potential for growth. Tinubu’s vision is to create a vibrant industry that contributes significantly to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provides decent jobs. To achieve this, his administration will focus on infrastructure development, policy reforms, and attracting foreign investment.

    The Presidential Livestock Reforms Implementation Committee, co-chaired by Attahiru Jega, has been praised for its dedication and commitment to the project. State governments, farmers, herders, and investors are expected to collaborate closely to drive growth. Key objectives of the initiative include increasing domestic dairy production, reducing imports, and stimulating economic growth. Tinubu’s commitment to livestock development is part of his broader agenda to diversify Nigeria’s economy and ensure food security.

    Industry experts have hail the move as a significant step towards unlocking Nigeria’s agricultural potential. With the right policies and investments, Nigeria can become a major player in the global livestock industry, providing prosperity for its people and contributing to the country’s economic growth.

    Then Friday presented the most dramatic of the optics of the week; President Tinubu and the presidential candidate of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 general election, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who has seized every opportunity to attack Tinubu and his administration. These men were caught on camera, in handshake. Ononuga made it simpler further by writing “President Tinubu met an old friend”, though now a political opponent. They met at the National Mosque at the Jumat Service, which hosted the wedding of the daughter of a common associate of both men, Senator Danjuma Goje.

    If I did not pick any message from that encounter, I picked the fact that politicians, whatever side they find themselves, remain friends and kin of a class; the political class and if I do not belong there, no need to pick sides. Their fight is never ‘skin deep’, why should I cry more than the bereaved? There is something called political maturity, which both men exhibited at the mosque. As we learn from our political idols, we should learn that part from them too.