The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • COLOUR OF BURNING BOOK (1)

    COLOUR OF BURNING BOOK (1)

    From Book-banners to Book-burners for Jack Mapanje

    II

    Tell me:

    What is the colour of burning books

    Is it the chalky anthem of the egret’s December glide

    Is it the indelible indigo of agbe’s plumes

    Is it the eloquent fire on ayekooto’s tail

    Is it the rainbow’s arc on the sky’s bewildered face?

    Who struck the match

    Who fanned the flame

    Into ill-literate adolescence?

    Tell me:

    What colour, the flame of a burning book?

              III

    There is a stubborn echo

    In the legend of the letter

    Whose butterfly turns eagle

    In the palms of crushing kings

    Whose earthworm is cobra

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    Beneath the tramping heel

    Beyond edicts, beyond statutes,

    Beyond the fiery imprimatur of uniformed nescience

    The letter lives

    Beyond the Emperor’s metallic behest

    On the cobblestone

    Of slippery nights,

    On both sides

    Of the Bridge of Fearless Wisdom

    Notes

    Published here with a slight amendment of the original version

    Reference to Ifa divination among the Yoruba: the diviner seeks the grains of truth by tracing hidden visions on a tray of sands

    Agbe is a bird with deep-blue plumage

     Ayekooto: the world-abhors-the-truth (a Yoruba name for the parrot).

    (Concluded)

  • In defence of Guerrilla Journalism

    In defence of Guerrilla Journalism

    The Bile of Ray Ekpu

    Ray Ekpu, Nigeria’s master journalist, accomplished craftsman and one of the exemplary columnists that the nation has produced, has drawn the ire of many of his younger colleagues with his caustic dismissal of the notable tradition of anti-state writing known as guerrilla journalism. In an otherwise finely wrought tribute and homage to his fallen colleague, comrade in arms and bosom friend, Dan Agbese, Ekpu threw caution to the winds  when he reached the subject matter, launching into a tempestuous tirade against  guerrilla journalism . As for its practitioners, he dismissed them all as frauds and psychologically impaired entities who are not worthy of the sacred mantle of journalism.

    Many who knew the master columnist in his prime are horrified by this wild confetti of lies, illogicalities, inaccuracies and outright falsities. It may well be that Ray Ekpu has been badly tripped by a series of recent personal bereavements which have affected his normally sunny and cheery disposition; his capacity for stoic equanimity in the face of pressing tribulations. Or it may well be that Ray is   smarting from the psychological trauma inflicted on him in some very public encounters by some juvenile disruptors of the journalistic status quo in the not too remote past.

       Dismissing a social phenomenon for its juvenile antics and its occasional resort to delinquent fabrications does not, and cannot, equate to denying its existence. Ray Ekpu does not even offer an argument. He offers a rant. Like guerrilla warfare, its more famous genetic cousin, guerrilla journalism is a response to particular developments in the society which demand urgent countervailing action. It is not born of moral precepts or ethical exhortations. It is a logical outflow and direct consequence of certain developments in the society and the contradictions spawned.

       You do not need to like the troika of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin to appreciate the extravagant saga of human heroism that the Russian Revolution is. Without ever stepping into any military school Leon Trotsky became a general of the Red Army repeatedly routing the rump of the Russian Imperial Army and its western imperialist cohorts in a stunning demonstration of superhuman bravery and audacity. How about the epic march of Mao’s ragtag largely peasant army which allowed them to overwhelm the Kuomintang forces, sending the leadership scampering across the Taiwanese Straits? This is not to discount the storied confrontation of the apartheid regime by the African National Congress which was founded in 1912 but did not come to power until 1994. In all these nations, we witness the dramatic collision of human agency and will with one side boldly staking its claim to hegemonic domination while another set of actors push forward to oppose it. This confrontation of altars is the motor and driving impetus of human history.

    In every department of human endeavor be it religion, royalty, politics, economics, law, academics, music, culture, industry and of course the important substratum of communication, we witness this unceasing struggle for hegemonic domination among opposing forces which often results in the overthrow and dethronement of extant reality or the tense accommodation of contrasting and countervailing visions of society until the material basis of one tendency is subverted from within by emergent realities. This is what is currently unfolding in the north of the nation as the Boko Haram insurrection, religious insurgency and various bandit groups stake a bold claim while the ruins of the old feudal order insist on supervising its own funeral with the help of foreign mercenaries.

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    The anticolonial struggle in Nigeria and the brutal pacification of the tribes of the lower and upper Niger by Lord Lugard and his honchos gave birth to an anticolonial press centred around the emergent Yoruba coastal aristocracy in Lagos.  They fought the colonial masters with their pen setting the stage for an intellectual demystification of the entire colonial project in Nigeria. They gave as much as they got from Lord Lugard and his brother. So outraged was Lugard by their presumed arrogance matched only by their supercilious airs and merciless condescension that he dismissed them as “uppity niggers”.

     MJC Echeruo, the notable Nigerian scholar, captured the sizzling and scintillating drama very memorably in his book, Victorian Lagos. Their relentless criticism and sharp rebuff of the colonial agenda in Nigeria forced Lugard and his imperialist cohorts from one unforced error to another until the military overreach of the Adubi war which suborned the burgeoning Egba city-state but which also led to the terminal recall of Lugard after suffering another nervous breakdown. It was the last time anybody ever heard of him.

      This anti- colonial animus of a section of the Nigerian press set the tone and stage for the emergence of a radical segment of the press after independence in 1960. But with the conservative Daily Times and a slew of regional newspapers ruling the roost, the influence waned dramatically. The political inheritors of the new nation also realized that they have a lot at stake and that there is a lot to gain in preserving the system. Radicalism became a smear word and a progressive party like the Action Group had a tough time explaining the beneficence of some its key programmes to the wider masses. Corruption and mismanagement didn’t need to be explained. They assume a trans-national efficacy. The radical press went into hibernation.

    The Rapture of Gani Fawehinmi  

    But as it so ever happens in nature and history, the moment of distress and destruction is also the moment regeneration kicks in. On the first day of November, 1983, that is about forty two years ago at the terrace of the ground floor of the middle block of the Humanities Complex of the then University of Ife, I met a group of  students clustered around the tall, gangling figure of Femi Ojudu himself a final year student of mine. They were poring over an article in the edition of the Guardian newspaper of that day. Femi looked up and saw me, probably alerted about my approach. “We are discussing your article which came out this morning”, the future guerrilla journalist and future senator of the federal republic informed yours sincerely in a polite and admiring manner.

    Talking about politics and ideology, students of the much storied university remain among the most politicized and radicalized in the country. It is wired into their DNA. As a student, yours sincerely remember being at the vanguard of a student uprising in which the Vice-Chancellor, H A Oluwasanmi himself,  was abducted and taken hostage. In his very last interview, the man in whose honour the university was named after and who remains the nation’s ultimate symbol of political integrity, administrative wizardry and economic genius had informed his interviewer that if he were to come back in thirty years and Nigeria were still to be a bastion of injustice, inequity and massive inequality, he would be found at the head of the stone-throwing mob.

    But back to the article in question. 1983 was the last year of grace for the old Nigerian political class. The scandalously rigged elections of that year were the icing on the cake of infamy. Despite the glitz and glamour, the intellectual sophistication and stylistic razzmatazz, the newly established Guardian newspaper proved to be part of the establishment and its cerebral foremen nothing but organic intellectuals of a decadent postcolonial state. Avant- Garde technique was in the service of Derriere- Garde retrogressive and reactionary politics. Titled, The Guardian and the state of the nation, the article accused The Guardian of cold complicity and collusion with the mess taking hold of the country.

    Submitted at the end of September of that year, The Guardian Nomenklatura sat on it for about five weeks wondering what to do with the parcel bomb until it decided to publish a well-reasoned and weighty rejoinder written by its helmsman, Stanley Macebuh, vigorously defending the values and virtues of liberal ideology and politics. It was titled, The Liberal Society and its Enemies. It provoked a rash of rejoinders from angry nationals particularly from the university communities. Yours sincerely kept his cool until an excellent opportunity presented itself which was the passing of Raymond Aron, the great French conservative intellectual. In the tribute, simply titled For Raymond Aron, yours sincerely heaped praises on the French titan as a true defender of liberty and equality. What was left strategically unsaid was more devastating of the liberal poseurs at the Guardian in a society of deep inequality and illiberal politics. Sixteen days after the article was published on December 14th, 1983, the military swept the Second Republic into the trashcan of history.

     Now fast forward to ten years after the encounter with Femi Ojudu and his fellow students. On a cold evening in early November 1993, yours sincerely, chaperoned by Seye Kehinde, slipped into the Ikeja GRA neighborhood of Gani Fawehinmi to commiserate with him on his recent ordeal in the hands of the government. It was another period of uncertainty for the nation, this time emanating from military misrule. The military, having exhausted their military and political possibility, had testily withdrawn to the barracks. But with the goggled general still on the prowl, everybody knew that this was a ruse to allow things to cool down. But civil society, now better organized and better educated than it was ten years before, had mounted ferocious and bloody challenges to military dictatorship.

    The newspaper industry suffered a severe setback as a result of summary proscriptions, seizures and illegal court summons. Many suffered ruination. A few that could not bear the military affront chose to go underground. Most notable were Tempo, a fiery, irrepressible tabloid which gave the military authorities sleepless nights, and The News magazine which heroically refused to be proscribed by the junta. They were now edited by politically conscious radicalized students of the eighties: Messrs Bayo Onanuga from the University of Lagos, Babafemi Ojudu, Dapo Olorunyomi, Idowu Obasa, Kunle Ajibade, Seye Kehinde and their foot-soldiers such as Ebenezer Obadare  all from the old University of Ife and later on Obafemi Awolowo University. This was the origin of the underground press Nigeria and what became known as Guerrilla Journalism.

       This is the tradition of heroic resistance to tyranny that our good friend, Ray Ekpu, pooh-poohed and assailed with merciless assiduity. It is worth recalling that on that night, Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi, patriot extraordinary, legal colossus and Ondo nobleman, received us with extravagant cordiality and conviviality. Turning to yours sincerely he gushed with child-like excitement: Ah, you see, all those things you are writing, we were reading them in Guje. There was even a time an inmate snatched my copy of Tempo only for him to drop it in the pit latrine. We cleaned it up to continue our reading”.

      But like a scene out of the Theatre of Chaos, we had hardly settled down to merriment when one of the political apparitions haunting the nation at that point in time suddenly materialized out of the shadows resplendent in overflowing lace agbada and lugging a hefty sack brimming with files of the membership of the infamous ABN. “This is Alhaji Abimbola Davies and he has brought a comprehensive list of the membership of his organization. The list will shock Nigerians. When I put all of them in the dock, they will collapse with terminal exhaustion”, Gani vowed. Reeling out otherwise sacred names, the files revealed the extent of the elite conspiracy against Abiola’s mandate.

    Luckily for the conspirators, it did not come to that. Abacha’s creeping coup swept away the hideous contrivance known as the Interim National Government about a fortnight after. Thereafter, the goggled despot bared his fangs against the press and went after the underground papers in particular. Kunle Ajibade was summarily impounded as he made his way out of a safe house. He spent the better part of two years cooling his heels in horrific incarceration. Femi Ojudu was also nabbed and was sent to Abacha’s Gulag where he survived by drinking his own urine. The duo of Bayo Onanuga and Dapo Olorunyomi outpaced and outwitted the security services until it became a bridge too far. They fled abroad. Bagaudo Kaltho was not so lucky. He was grilled to death by Abacha’s goons.

      The severity and enormity of Abacha’s repressive rule particularly his anti-press animus are better imagined. In March 1996, yours sincerely wrote an op-ed piece for Africa Today on the state of the nation . The edition was summarily confiscated on getting to Nigeria by security agents. In a chance encounter at Abuja Airport with Kayode Soyinka, the publisher of the London-based magazine, a minister of Yoruba origins serving in Abacha’s government gleefully told Soyinka that although he was a gentleman, he should blame himself for turning over the page of his magazine to rebels, rabid subversives and past masters of agitprop. Such was the dread with which the guerrilla journalists were held that at a meeting before the falcon fled the falconer, General Oladipo Diya asked Bayo Onanuga, his fellow Ijebuman, whether it was true that his papers were published inside the American Embassy. The truth was more mundane and pedestrian.

    When Gani Fawehinmi was cynically accused of always playing to the gallery in his crusade for justice in Nigeria, he retorted that his interlocutors should also submit themselves to arrest and brutal detention over a hundred times by succeeding military despots so that they can confirm how easy it was to play to the gallery. Let it also be with guerrilla the journalists. They were antithetical forces responding to a particular historical thesis of military brutality and misrule. They faced guns without being fazed and challenged the notion that brute force should supersede rational consensus in the affairs of humanity. With their brazen bravery, they wrote their names into the political folklore of their people.

    Post-Guerrila and the American Unibomber

    It is possible that a strict and straight laced professional like Ekpu might have been riled and irritated by the swiftness and ease of transition of some guerrilla journalists from underdogs to top dogs. This is the normal case when a society faces some transitional turbulence. Dismissing the Babangida transition as a charade, the late Professor Oyeleye Oyediran noted that the class project of cooptation opened up tremendously with many new recruits clambering on the bandwagon. But this is what has happened with every transition in Nigeria from colonial to postcolonial .Nobody remembers that SL Akintola, Antony Enahoro, H.O Davies, Ernest Ikoli and many others were fierce anti-colonial journalists who found their way  to the power podium.

     Brave identification with a power project makes them sterling recruits. What is important and provident is to hold the feet of the new entrants to power to fire.  As history has shown us, the Nigerian political public is so mercurial and inquisitorial that it does not allow heroic antecedents to get in the way of current infractions. Check our history. Those who are calling for a return of guerrilla journalism are completely misdirected. That development has served its cause. No two historical conjunctures can be alike. Since the departure of the military, the Nigerian society has opened up. God must forbid the return of a draconian military dictator who will have to be fought on new terms and not on the old paradigm of cockroach journalism. We live in totally uncharted times particularly in the epoch of the grim American global unibomber. What now faces the nation is far more dangerous with the American intervention. Unless the Nigerian political elites get far more serious and stitch something together and on time too, we may be facing a post-Yugoslavian apocalyptic meltdown. God bless the nation.

  • Shameless bandits and abduction of infants

    Shameless bandits and abduction of infants

    If anyone still sympathises with bandits after they carried out the Papiri (Niger State) St Mary’s School abduction of 230 pupils and students, then they must be cut from the same cloth. Aged between 10 and 17 years old, the victims were taken on November 21. One hundred of them were released on December 8, while the remaining regained their freedom last Sunday. Watching the video of the abductees paints not only a picture of state helplessness and impotence in securing what is clearly a very vulnerable country, it also paints a gory picture of the abductors’ abominable cruelty and callousness. They may still be more accurately described as bandits, but they are now also legally terrorists. They can, therefore, no longer plead socio-economic underpinnings for their crimes or take refuge in their so-called struggles; and they can no longer feel entitled to any sympathy from anyone who is not a terrorist or a terrorist sympathiser.

    The bandits also clearly specialise in artisanal mining and protection rackets, turning vast regions of the Northwest and North Central parts of Nigeria into a replica of the North and South Kivu provinces of the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In addition, they have discovered the equally lucrative secondary attraction of kidnapping hapless citizens for ransom. Their exploits in mining and running protection rings do not, however, receive as much attention as their kidnapping prowess, but the two crimes are undoubtedly intertwined. No matter what anyone says or feels, they are unenthusiastic about abandoning the crimes. Just as they abduct one set of victims and release them, a fresh abduction is concomitantly planned. Series of dialogues between the blighted states and bandits have done little to smother the crime as law enforcement agents idealistically hope. To enter into lasting peace deal with the terrorists would be, in the estimation of the bandits, a call to disarm and renounce their crimes. They are unsure any state is capable of satisfying their criminal urges.

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    The world was outraged by the 2014 abduction of Chibok schoolgirls in Borno State, the 2018 Dapchi abductions in Yobe, and since then many more abductions of lesser severity; but in recent years no kidnapping spree has arrested popular imagination as the November 21 Catholic school attack that saw 230 pupils, students and staff of the Papiri St Mary’s School seized by bandits. To tear away so many young learners from the embrace of their parents and comfort of their homes, some of them as young and impressionable as just 10 years old, is unforgivable. But the bandits enacted that crime, showed no sense of remorse, and swapped some of them for the release of their own fighters and possibly money. The federal government has refused to disclose the details of the negotiations, but there are indications that a swap might have been involved.

    Most of the bandits are family men. They have wives and children, and have been known to be so embittered by the state killing of their family members as to also respond with vicious attacks on the society. For men so touched by the killing or arrest of their relations to respond in kind by picking on infants, is an obvious and irreconcilable contradiction. Will they do it again? Yes, they will, if they can. With so much ungoverned space in Nigeria, can the state prevent future reoccurrence? It is not clear. But it is the state’s responsibility to tighten security around schools and monitor, through the installation of novel security architecture, forests and other ungoverned spaces around the country. It is not a small task, given the fact that for decades, the authorities had failed to invest in national security that includes border patrols and drone surveillance. That decades-long failure has brought Nigeria to this sorry and tragic point.

    It is pointless reposing hope in the kindheartedness of bandits. They do not see the children and the infirm they abduct as mere victims or collateral damage when they practice their crimes. They deliberately go after soft targets, hoping to elicit the highest form of cooperation from the government and security agents caught flatfooted. This means they will do it again if they get half the chance. Branding them terrorists may sound tough, practicable and even sensible, but what the authorities need to do more is to ensure that any future re-enactment of mass abduction of schoolchildren is forestalled. The state may not be able to recalibrate and monitor the entire country, but once abduction takes place, they must be able to lock down the affected areas with a view to ultimately thwarting the crime. And if abduction occurs, they must not rest until a fitting closure in favour of the state and the victims is achieved. More, the authorities should urgently acquire the capacity and expertise to monitor and foil the banking and spending of ransom money, no matter in what currency it is laundered.

    Bandits do not care whatever it costs to settle scores, nor do they have any scruples, as they showed in the Papiri abductions. Completely desensitised, they will plunge the country into war if they had the chance. Equally, Northeast terrorists do not care what harm they bring upon others or attract to themselves. The United States has controversially waded into the picture by conducting some airstrikes; it remains to be seen whether the bandits and terrorists will bow to the massive display of force of outsiders, having long disdained or compromised the efforts of Nigeria’s security agencies, or whether they will absorb the punishment and transmogrify into something more sinister. They don’t have shame going after infants; but they may, however, prove to be even more cowardly and vulnerable than the society they had preyed on for more than a decade.

  • Lamido on PDP alliances

    Lamido on PDP alliances

    Speaking to a gathering of his Jigawa State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) supporters at his Kano office on the factionalisation of his party, former governor Sule Lamido, a foundation member of the troubled Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), suggested that “If reconciliation fails, alliances, not coalitions, will become inevitable.” He added: “You know there is a difference between alliance and coalition; we are going to form alliances with any of the opposition parties.” A few commentators immediately began looking in the direction of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the fringe party already hijacked by former vice president Atiku Abubakar for his 2027 presidential campaign, and assumed that the former governor might be heading in that direction. He, however, seemed to spurn that idea. He loathes mergers, he clarified, preferring instead an alliance.

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    Whatever he does, especially after the PDP schemed him out of the chairmanship race before the Ibadan November party convention, Mr Lamido has admitted the sundering of his party, his readiness to contemplate other options together with his supporters, and the repudiation of any kind of merger with any other party. All he wants is the defeat of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), however that goal is achieved. But who can say whether in the end the ruling party would not throw a crunchy bone at him to tease his delicate palate and test his resolve in the face of complete political erasure in the run-up to 2027?

  • Language activism V

    Language activism V

    Now that this series on language is coming to an end, it is only appropriate for me to give some background information about the subject that I have been discussing.

    This series is an extended typecast of the keynote address I delivered at a colloquium in honour of Niyi Osundare (he needs no introduction) at the Ekiti State University in Ado Ekiti on the occasion of the poet’s seventy-eighth birthday. It was a grand occasion made even grander by the presence of the celebrant, his natural  exuberance not  diminished an iota by advancing age. As usual in the crowd that turned up on the day, there were a large number of those who had encountered Osundare in classrooms and on the pages of books and newspapers over a long period of time. They had all come to celebrate a life of achievement. This  was a celebration of a life in drama and literature and a great time was had by all. In the background however, the seriousness of the occasion was appreciated by all as it was also an interrogation of language; that score that is shared by all humankind even if there is a multiplicity of languages which in any case, is an indication of human diversity. And really, that is a cause for celebration as it is a sign of human adaptability to the various environments which have been colonised by human beings most of whom spread out of Africa about 50,000 years ago.

    There is no gain saying the fact that Osundare is an accomplished writer in the English language, a language which has, over the years, become wired to his very bones. And yet, I can confidently wager that he did not speak a word of English until he was eight, if not ten years old. He belongs to a generation which was made literate through the medium of local languages. I know because I belong to that generation myself. Looking back, I think we all derived great benefit from that system, a system which acknowledged our cultural and linguistic roots and hardly exposed us to the language of the oppressor in our infancy. Interestingly, this policy was designed by the oppressor, perhaps because we were considered not worthy of introduction to the master’s language until we had proved our mettle. But really, that is unlikely. Yoruba in our case was used as an introduction to learning and it worked admirably, not least in the case of Niyi Osundare whose command of the English language is in the class of legend. It comes to him without effort in the manner of Athena who sprang into the world fully grown from the head of Zeus, her divine father. He has been a writer in English for close to sixty years, so long and so well that his works have outgrown that language and have been translated into more than a dozen languages all around the world. This means that his genius has not been restricted to the more than one billion speakers of English but extended to other billions going through life without the benefit of the English language in their baggage.

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    There has been a great deal of debate about the desirability of African writers writing in English or French. Ngugi wa Thiongo stands out as a prominent African writer who turned his back on the use of English and took to writing in his mother tongue, the language spoken by the Kikuyu people of Kenya. They were one of the few African people who rose up in rebellion against British rule and paid for their independence with impressive amounts of blood, sweat and tears. It can be said that under their circumstances their language deserves to be admitted to the table of global languages. Ngugi was only making that claim on behalf of his people. Most of us are content to write in English in an attempt to reach the rest of the world but ironically, Ngugi was not denied that privilege because the world had been introduced to him through translation in the same way that Osundare has been able to speak to the world through through the medium of translation into many other languages.

    Osundare speaks to the world through the use of the English language. Under the dense foliage of that language, his message is rooted to the soil of his native Ekiti dialect from which it has extracted a peculiar richness which has complimented the richness of his English. Without those nutrients, the flavour of Osundare’s tremendous contribution to the English language could have been in some dispute. And, this cannot be restricted to Osundare because we see the same adaptation of other Nigerian languages in the writing of practically all Nigerian writers including Achebe and Soyinka. Gabriel Okara, perhaps the oldest of that lot, has left a body of work dripping with his native Ijaw. It should not be forgotten that the English language lends itself to such interpretation or, if you like, misinterpretation because of her natural flexibility. The English language must not be allowed to set any boundaries of our own use as this would only be a restriction of our freedom to contribute our own quota to that language, to its detriment. Amos Tutuola is an example of this. An extreme example but an example all the same. There is no limit to the number of people who, like Shakespeare can bend the English language to their will.

     It must be pointed out however that there are not many people with the facility to do this. Osundare and a few other Nigerians have amply demonstrated their ability to manipulate the English language as the fancy directs them and that is just a fact. With the availability of excellent translation facilities, does it really matter in which language literature is produced? I have been able to enjoy a large number of authors in translation without any feeling of being deprived and so have many other people. This is why I am intrigued that there is hardly any translated literature available in Yoruba or any other Nigerian language for that matter. Osundare writes in English but his work has been translated into practically all the major languages of the world. Very little of it has so far been rendered in Yoruba. I am certain that Osundare’s poems would be as resonant in Yoruba as they are in English and they could even be better mined for context, after all, most of them are set locally. We just don’t know and can’t know. This problem is put in proper perspective for me when the only major book in world literature that has been translated into Yoruba is the Bible. Food for the soul, not so much for the intellect. None of the many science books that our students read or pretend to read, has been found worthy of translation into Yoruba. None of them have of course been written in Yoruba. This can only be as a result of our collective lack of confidence in our post-colonial status as second class global citizens. It has nothing to do with the sophistication or the lack of it of the language.

    We are no longer colonial subjects but we are still waiting for our liberation. This can only be the reason the Federal Minister of Education can, at a forum organised by the British Council of all such bodies, announce the ban of all local languages from the Nigerian educational system. Henceforth, the only language worthy of being heard in any Nigerian school is English. Never mind the lame excuse he gave for this language policy. It is simply shameful that a system that produced the likes of Niyi Osundare is now receiving official and public condemnation for the almost systematic destruction of the entire Nigerian educational system. The Minister is advised to take an educated look at the system over which he is expected to preside.

  • Insecurity: President Tinubu recalibrates

    Insecurity: President Tinubu recalibrates

    The declaration forms part of the Tinubu administration’s broader effort to overhaul Nigeria’s security and criminal justice systems amid persistent challenges posed by banditry, insurgency, kidnapping and organised violent crime across several regions of the country”.

    Since he assumed power over two years ago, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s security strategy has involved a multi-pronged approach, including kinetic pressure through modernised military capability

    and intelligence-driven operations, as well as the much criticised

    non-kinetic measures like restoring governance in underserved communities, counter-radicalization programs, and economic stabilization initiatives.

    The administration has also emphasised inter-agency cooperation, technology-driven intelligence gathering, and community engagement.

    Unfortunately, these have not stemmed insecurity which some lazy Northern governors

    inflicted on Nigeria when, rather than provide education, good health care delivery and proper governance for their people a decade and half ago, hid under the Sharia, flee their state capitals and went to  live, mostly a lecherous life at Abuja, consuming both women and alcohol.

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    Insecurity was further worsened in the country during President Muhammadu Buhari’s laizerfaire eight years when his seeming love affair with all manner of Islamic terrorist groups was so fervent Boko Haram could proudly nominate him as their representative in an interface with the Goodluck Jonathan government.

    Now Tinubu says no more.

    The President has  vowed to classify violence by armed groups as terrorism, allocating $3.7 billion to defence and security. The 2026 budget prioritizes security, with a N5.41 trillion allocation for defence and security.

    Tinubu’s approach to security is centered around discipline, enforcement, and accountability.

    He has abandoned euphemism, declaring that any armed group operating outside state authority will be regarded as terrorists.

    This doctrinal reset removes political, ethnic, or semantic cover from violent non-state actors, signaling to security agencies that ambiguity will no longer be an operational excuse.

    Details of the new order also include the following.

     Recruitment:

    50,000 new personnel to be recruited by the Police, with a 20,000 additional to the Army;

    Forest Guards Deployment:

    Trained guards to be deployed to flush out terrorists and bandits from all forests;

    State Policing: National Assembly to review laws to enable states to establish their own police force;

    Military Modernization: Procurement of advanced weaponry, surveillance systems, and force multipliers

    Community Engagement: Initiatives  to resolve herder-farmer conflicts and promote social investment.

    Not surprisingly, all manner of Northern characters , probably including terror financiers, have risen in opposition to this brave determination by the President.

    This is why I continue to commend the President for removing fuel subsidy, quite unexpectedly, on day one because had he wasted time, some enemies of state could have made it impossible and thereby turn Nigeria to another Venezuela.

    Further details of the President’s NEW ORDER are as follows:

    According to the President, “the new framework will end the practice of treating banditry, militancy and related crimes as isolated criminal activities.

    Instead, such acts will now fall squarely within the scope of terrorism, with harsher responses from the state”.

    “Under the new security architecture,  bandits, violent cults, militias, armed gangs, forest-based criminal groups and foreign-linked mercenaries would no longer be viewed as standalone criminal elements but as terrorist threats to national stability”.

    “We will usher in a new era of criminal justice. We will show no mercy to those who commit or support acts of terrorism, banditry, kidnapping for ransom and other violent crimes”.

    The President further explained that his administration was restructuring the nation’s security system around a new counterterrorism doctrine designed to improve coordination and effectiveness across security agencies.

    “Our administration, he said, is resetting the national security architecture and establishing a new national counterterrorism doctrine — a holistic redesign anchored on unified command, intelligence gathering, community stability, and counter-insurgency.

    This new doctrine will fundamentally change how we confront terrorism and other violent crimes.”

    He also indicated, very clearly, that the designation would apply broadly to all armed groups operating without state approval.

    “Under this new architecture, any armed group or gun-wielding non-state actors operating outside state authority will be regarded as terrorists”.

    “Bandits, militias, armed gangs, armed robbers, violent cults, forest-based armed groups and foreign-linked mercenaries will all be targeted”.

    “We will go after all those who perpetrate violence for political or sectarian ends, along with those who finance and facilitate their evil schemes.”

    The President also stressed that increased security spending under the 2026 budget would be tied to measurable outcomes, insisting that funding must translate into improved safety for Nigerians”.

    “We will invest in security with clear accountability for outcomes — because security spending must deliver results”.

    Concluding, the President added:

    “To secure our country, our priority will remain on increasing the fighting capability of our armed forces and other security agencies and boosting the effectiveness of our fight”.

    Let me conclude by wishing my loyal and incredible readers happy New Year in a much safer Nigeria.

  • Channels Television and the mosque bombing

    Channels Television and the mosque bombing

    In Southwestern Nigeria, which is the heartland of the Yoruba ethnic group, it was commonplace for families to be religiously heterogeneous and harmonious. In the circumstance, the husband could be a practising Muslim and the wife a practising Christian; a mother could be a practising Muslim and the father a practising Christian; and a father could be the adherent of an indigenous religion while the child could be a Christian or Muslim. This heterogeneity created conditions in which various religious festivities were jointly observed.

    This harmonious living was at its peak before the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1986 by the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida military administration inspired by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a means of restructuring the Nigerian economy to create sustainable economic growth and reduce poverty. Features of SAP included the reduction of government spending on social services (including education), trade liberalisation (which meant commodities could be imported into Nigeria without measures to protect the national economy) and the devaluation of the nation’s currency.

    These measures came with a sharp rise in inflation, reduction in purchasing power and a lot of economic hardship. In other words, SAP created the direct opposite of the advertised benefits of its adoption. To cope, some citizens had to embark on different kinds of activities. Some of these activities led to aggravated corruption. Some others saw an economic headway in establishing commercially-oriented religious centres, complete with business models and business ethics. This developing entrepreneurial religious culture came with rabid competition for members and the employment of strategies which were not particularly morally edifying.

    This led to intra-or-inter-religious conflicts in Southwest Nigeria, and remarkably undermined the religious harmony for which the region was reputed. As the saying goes, “If gold rusts, what shall iron do?” So, inter-religious conflicts, especially between adherents of Christianity and Islam, festered in the other less religiously harmonious regions of Nigeria, and it is widely acknowledged that the media played critical roles in such conflict or potential conflict situations.

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    In the April 2006 pamphlet by Andrew Puddephatt titled Voices of war: Conflict and the role of the media – commissioned, edited and published by International Media Support – the phenomenon is described as follows: “Mass media often play a key role in today’s conflict. Basically, their role can take two different and opposed forms. Either the media take an active part in the conflict and have responsibility for increased violence, or stay independent and out of the conflict, thereby contributing to the resolution of conflict and alleviation of violence. Which role the media take in a given conflict, and in the phases before and after, depends on a complex set of factors, including the relationship the media have to actors in the conflict and the independence the media have to the power holders in society.”

    These views are relevant for Channels Television which is a privately-owned Nigerian media outfit with a Christian proprietor who is not known to be particularly close to the current leadership of the country. The views are also relevant for conflicts in, especially, Northern Nigeria, which some see as primarily motivated by contests for land, pure criminality and herders-farmers issues, but which some others see as primarily motivated by the desire to launch genocidal attacks against Christians in Nigeria. With time, probably aided by some sections of the media, the allegation of ‘Christian genocide’ gained resonance with some Christian politicians in the United States, and President Donald Trump declared Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern”. He also threatened to invade Nigeria in a war that would be “fast, vicious, and sweet”, to protect Nigerian Christians.

    The Nigerian government has countered the ‘Christian genocide’ narrative, and US and Nigerian officials have met with the Nigerian officials assuring their US counterparts that there is no genocide against Christians in the country. The meetings have also discussed strategies for combating the agents of insecurity who have been indiscriminate in their choice of targets and victims.

    In the same vein, in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Christmas Day broadcast to the nation on 25 December, 2025, he said: “As your President, I remain committed to doing everything within my power to enshrine religious freedom in Nigeria and to protect all people of different faiths from violence. … Throughout the year, I have had the privilege of engaging with prominent leaders from the two major faiths in the country, particularly amid concerns about religious intolerance and insecurity. We will build on these conversations to strengthen collaboration between government and religious institutions, prevent conflict and promote peaceful coexistence.”

    It was in the context of these efforts to promote religious harmony that a mosque in Maiduguri was bombed during Maghrib (early evening) prayers on 24 December, 2025. The BBC’s headline of the report on the attack was “Bomb blast in packed Nigerian mosque kills five”; Al-Jazeerah’s was “Explosion rocks crowded mosque in Nigeria, killing at least five; Deutsche Welle (DW)’s was “Nigeria: Explosion rocks Borno mosque during evening prayers.”; The Cable’s was “Five worshippers killed, 35 injured as suicide bomber attacks mosque in Maiduguri”; The Guardian (Nigeria)’s was “Deadly explosion rips through Maiduguri mosque, at least 7 killed”; and Daily Trust’s was “Many feared killed as suicide bomber attacks Borno mosque.”

    However, Channels Television’s headline of the same event was “BREAKING: Many feared dead as bomb blast rocks Maiduguri on Christmas eve.” In a swift response to this misleading headline, an impassioned commentator on X, Boss kitty kitty @Aashfinn, on 24 December, 2025 wrote: “How are we supposed to be fighting terrorism when we’re also forced to fight stupid, bigoted Nigerian media that thrive on twisting facts to inflame religious tension? Terror has no religion, but manufacturing a Christian genocide narrative is sickening, irresponsible and dangerous.”

    Moreover, in a 25 December, 2025 release, the Executive Chairman of MPAC, Disu Kamor, said in part: “The Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC), Nigeria, strongly condemns the misleading, insensitive, and deeply troubling editorial decision by Channels Television in its reportage of the bombing of a mosque at a market in Maiduguri, Borno State. … Channels Television, in its caption and framing of the story, deliberately omitted any reference to the mosque and the Muslim identity of the victims, while introducing an entirely unrelated and inflammatory reference to ‘Christmas Eve.’ … Evidence shows that the report was initially published without any reference to Christmas, only for the phrase to be inserted later – clearly to drive engagement, provoke emotion, and potentially inflame religious tensions in an already fragile national context.”

    MPAC further stated: “This action raises serious concerns about intentional manipulation, institutional bias, and the weaponization of language in media reporting. MPAC notes with deep concern that this is not an isolated incident. Channels Television has, on multiple occasions, demonstrated intense hostility against Islam and a tendency to downplay, distort, or obscure stories involving Muslim victims, often erasing their religious identity while amplifying narratives that invite suspicion, fear, or hostility toward Islam and Muslims. When Muslim lives are lost, their identities are muted. When Muslim spaces are attacked, the spaces are unnamed. When Muslim pain is reported, politics is inserted. This is unacceptable in a plural, multi-religious society such as Nigeria.”

    As a Christian-oriented media outfit, Channels Television threw itself into the religious fray through blatant media bias, which according to Mediatheory.net, in a 2024 account, “refers to the systematic favouritism or prejudice present in the dissemination of information by news outlets. It can manifest in various forms, affecting the way news stories are framed, sources are selected, and also how language is employed.” In other words, as Provalisresearch.com rightly noted in 2025, “Media framing often manifests itself by the choice of some key words, key phrases and images that reinforce a particular representation of the reality and a specific emotion toward it, and the omission of other elements that could suggest a different perspective or trigger a different sentiment.”

    In a 23 May, 2025 article in Dextermanley.com, titled Editorial framing choices: How headlines shape public perception and drive engagement, Jessica Hughes noted: “Framing choices often manifest in headlines, where brevity meets persuasion. Compelling headlines utilize keywords to attract clicks, steering readership toward particular narratives.” Hughes also noted: “News outlets often reflect specific ideological perspectives through their editorial choices. Language selection influences audience perception, as certain terms can evoke particular emotional responses aligned with political views.”

    In a 23 March, 2025 article titled, How headlines shape public opinion and hide bias, Media Moogle noted: “[H]eadlines serve as gatekeepers of information, filtering what we consider worthy of our attention. They tend to highlight conflict, controversy, or novelty – elements that attract clicks and shares. This focus can distort the overall context, emphasizing sensational aspects while downplaying nuance or complexity. The result is a simplified version of reality that fits neatly into a headline, but may mislead or misrepresent the full story.”

    In this regard, the Channels Television’s misleading headline aptly exemplifies ‘confirmation bias’ which the platform, Catalogue of bias, defines as follows: “Confirmation bias occurs when an individual looks for and uses the information [gathered] to support their own ideas or beliefs. It also means that information not supporting their ideas or beliefs is disregarded. Confirmation bias often happens when we want certain ideas to be true. This leads individuals to stop gathering information when the retrieved evidence confirms their own viewpoints, which can lead to preconceived opinions (prejudices) that are not based on reason or factual knowledge. Individuals then pick out the bits of information that confirm their prejudices.”

    In a 26 December, 2025 sobering counsel on the Channels Television’s grand error of judgement, a commentator on TikTok, @mrabdulreacts, asked: “How can we heal our fragile unity when our own media fuels division?” He also noted: “Narratives can be more dangerous than bullets … A bomb may destroy a building in seconds, but misleading headlines can destroy trust for generations.” This note is critical when it is considered that a widely held position in media studies is that most people only read headlines, but also go ahead to share, widely, the often misleading and sensational headlines like the Channels Television’s Maiduguri bombing one.

    As Andrew Puddephatt suggested, as quoted earlier in this piece, an independent medium may decide, perversely though, to work at cross-purposes with the leadership of the society with respect to conflict. As President Tinubu was trying to encourage peace through his, usually pre-announced or pre-released, Christmas Day message, Channels Television appeared to be trying to exacerbate mutual religious suspicion and hostility. Did Channels Television decide to be pulling in the opposite direction as a counterforce to the government’s efforts to guarantee social cohesion in the country?

    Meanwhile, is level of religious bigotry a consideration in the awards Channels Television has been obtaining?

  • When the quiet weeks speak loudest

    When the quiet weeks speak loudest

    There are weeks in the life of a presidency when the noise is deafening, rallies, foreign trips, emergency meetings, declarations issued in quick succession. And then there are quieter weeks, when public appearances thin out and the headlines seem dominated by greetings, goodwill messages and courtesy visits. Last week fell firmly into the latter category for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Yet beneath the surface calm, the machinery of government was grinding steadily forward, translating ideas long articulated into systems now taking physical and institutional form.

    For those watching closely, the week offered a revealing snapshot of Tinubu’s administrative philosophy at work: define priorities early, design the architecture patiently, and then allow the state to move, sometimes noiselessly, towards execution. Security and social cohesion framed the President’s few public engagements, but what truly stood out was the acceleration of an automation agenda that has been central to his thinking since he assumed office.

    Tinubu has never hidden his belief that Nigeria’s most stubborn governance problems, leakages, inefficiency, opaque processes, are sustained by manual systems that reward discretion and obscure accountability. Long before his inauguration, he had argued that data, technology and transparent workflows were the surest antidotes to corruption. That conviction, tested during his years in Lagos, is now being scaled nationally.

    Last week, the federal civil service crossed an important threshold. The Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation formally went live on the 1-Government Cloud Enterprise Content Management System, a move that signals more than just another ICT launch. Under the supervision of George Akume, the SGF’s office, Nigeria’s policy coordination nerve centre, has begun transitioning from paper-laden processes to a digital environment where records, approvals and inter-ministerial communications are traceable, time-bound and auditable.

    The symbolism is hard to miss. If the office that manages Federal Executive Council business and harmonises government actions can function digitally, excuses for analogue inertia elsewhere thin out rapidly. Backed by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Didi Esther Walson-Jack, the move aligns squarely with the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan, which targets a paperless bureaucracy by the end of 2025. This is Tinubu’s doctrine in motion: reform not as rhetoric, but as system design.

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    The same logic surfaced in the management of public finance. The circular issued by the Accountant-General of the Federation, Shamseldeen Ogunjimi, warning Ministries, Departments and Agencies that failure to render statements of accounts would result in suspended funding, fits neatly into the automation narrative. Financial discipline, in this context, is no longer a moral appeal but a technical enforcement mechanism. Upload your data, reconcile your numbers, or the system locks you out.

    By insisting that revenue reports and operating surpluses be captured on the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System, the administration is shrinking the space for creative accounting. Over time, the effect is cumulative: fewer ghost figures, clearer fiscal visibility, and a treasury that knows, in near real time, what it has and what it is owed. Tinubu’s preference is evident: rules embedded in platforms are harder to bend than circulars filed away in drawers.

    Even Nigeria’s most politically sensitive sector is not exempt. The Ministry of Petroleum Resources’ move towards full automation and paperless operations last week marked a significant departure from decades of opaque workflows. For a sector that has long symbolised discretion, delay and rent-seeking, the embrace of enterprise content management is a quiet but consequential shift. With digital approvals and secure electronic correspondence, the petroleum ministry is being nudged, firmly, into the same accountability framework as the rest of government.

    To be sure, automation alone does not solve governance. But Tinubu’s strategy is cumulative: technology to narrow discretion, enforcement to compel compliance, and leadership signalling to sustain momentum. It is telling that these steps are unfolding even as the President spends the season at home in Lagos. The centre, in this design, does not need to shout daily to remain in control.

    Security, however, remains the emotional core of Tinubu’s public messaging, and rightly so. His engagements during the week, though limited, were carefully chosen. At the Eyo Festival, he spoke less as a politician and more as a custodian of social order, linking cultural celebration to peace, discipline and restraint. In his Christmas message, he returned to a theme that has increasingly defined his presidency: religious coexistence as a security imperative.

    Nigeria’s experience has taught painful lessons. Where faith becomes a fault line, violence is never far behind. Tinubu’s insistence on sustained engagement with Christian and Muslim leaders is not cosmetic outreach; it is a preventive security strategy. By reaffirming constitutional protections for religious freedom and condemning intolerance, he is addressing one of terrorism’s silent accelerants, communal mistrust.

    That thread ran clearly through his meeting with the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria. Assuring them that community and state policing would materialise once the National Assembly completes legislative inputs, Tinubu framed security reform as both structural and participatory. The state can deploy hardware and doctrine, but vigilance and cooperation at community level remain indispensable.

    Critics may still point to timelines and outcomes, and those questions are legitimate. Yet what last week demonstrated is consistency. From digital governance to fiscal discipline, from interfaith dialogue to sub-national policing, the administration is working off a coherent blueprint. Terrorism, banditry and religious friction are being confronted not only with force, but with systems designed to outlast personalities.

    In politics, noise often masquerades as action. Tinubu’s quieter weeks suggest a different rhythm—one where the absence of spectacle does not mean the absence of progress. Sometimes, the most consequential work of governance happens when the cameras are few, the statements sparse, and the systems, finally, begin to run the way they were designed.

    Meanwhile, across the week, President Tinubu deployed a familiar but effective tool of leadership: recognition. From Ekiti to Kano, from Lagos to Abuja, the President used moments of celebration and condolence to reinforce values his administration consistently projects, service, integrity, professionalism and national cohesion.

    On Sunday, his tribute to Ekiti State Governor, Biodun Oyebanji, on his 58th birthday went beyond pleasantries. By recalling Oyebanji’s long climb through public service; from the struggle for Ekiti State’s creation to senior roles in government, Tinubu underscored continuity in governance and rewarded institutional memory. In the same vein, his commendation of the Director-General of the Department of State Services, Adeola Ajayi, for a press-freedom award subtly reinforced an important balance: that security and civil liberties need not be mutually exclusive.

    Monday’s celebration of retired Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Cecilia Ugowe, at 90 added another layer. In saluting a trailblazer who broke barriers in a male-dominated force, the President aligned himself with a narrative of inclusion and professionalism, an echo of his broader reform agenda within state institutions.

    By Tuesday, the focus shifted to culture, as Tinubu honoured Otunba Biodun Ajiboye of the National Institute for Cultural Orientation. The message was clear: national unity is not built by policy alone, but by a deliberate nurturing of culture, identity and shared values, especially in a diverse federation.

    Midweek carried a more solemn tone. The passing of elder statesman and former UN envoy, Chief Arthur Mbanefo, drew a tribute that celebrated integrity and patriotism, reminding Nigerians of an era where public service was worn as a badge of honour. Yet Wednesday also revealed Tinubu the party leader, inaugurating a high-powered APC committee to resolve internal disputes ahead of 2027. It was a quiet but strategic move, signalling that cohesion within the ruling party remains central to governance stability.

    Thursday’s roll call of birthday felicitations; to Abdullahi Ganduje, Segun Adesegun, Abubakar Bagudu and Bimbo Ashiru, read like a who’s who of Nigeria’s political and economic class. But beneath the surface was a consistent theme: loyalty, experience and service still matter in Tinubu’s political calculus.

    The week closed on a more assertive note. The $1.26 billion financing milestone for the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway provided concrete evidence of the administration’s infrastructure ambition, while his presence at Jumat prayers in Lekki reinforced the President’s engagement with faith leaders and moral voices. Even in mourning, over the deaths of Kano lawmakers and education icon Professor Adamu Baikie, the President stayed anchored to empathy and national solidarity.

    Taken together, the week complemented the earlier narrative of automation, security engagement and religious harmony. It showed that even when the spotlight dims, governance continues, through symbols, structures and steady hands at the helm.

  • Fubara, APC, Wike and 2027

    Fubara, APC, Wike and 2027

    The frenzied jockeying for political supremacy in Rivers State between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and FCT minister Nyesom Wike is bound to constitute one additional piece in the 2027 presidential election jigsaw puzzle for President Tinubu. Rivers has indeed become a simplified complexity. The state legislature is APC majority, but the lawmakers don’t see eye-to-eye with the governor who is now also in APC, having recently defected to the ruling party from the moribund PDP. The supposed political leader of the state remains Mr Wike who is still standing pat in the PDP but who receives the loyalty of the legislature almost in its entirety. Finally, in the puzzle, both the PDP and APC in the legislature are largely and firmly pro-Wike.

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    However, President Tinubu will need both Mr Fubara and Mr Wike joining hands together to ‘deliver’ Rivers to the APC; but these are two men engaged in shadow boxing, with one continuing to posture imperiously, and the other unable to decipher sublime politics, let alone practise it with the suavity and depth expected of a leader with the most basic qualification. What the president must find ways of dealing with is how to manage two Rivers politicians with very large egos. Mr Wike brooks no challenge, and Mr Fubara gives no quarter. One is ruthless and the other naïve; and both will, going forward, demand the president to clarify his allegiances. But it is a clarification the president will be loth to give. He will prefer to walk the tightrope than recklessly do pole vaulting and risk breaking a leg or an arm.

  • Makinde, Turaki on destruction of PDP

    Makinde, Turaki on destruction of PDP

    Oyo State’s governor Seyi Makinde said so many things during his media chat last Tuesday in Ibadan, the state capital. His statements have helped to open a window into the delicate workings of his mind, the quality of his reasoning, and the depth of his political perspectives. He has, unfortunately, not emerged with the lustre he hoped his frank and provocative discussions would acquire. Anyone who seeks a rational explanation for the collapse of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should look no further than Mr Makinde, an engineer, who now doubles as the leader of the party; Tanimu Turaki, the actual chairman of the party; and before them, their 2023 presidential candidate, the remorseless former vice president Atiku Abubakar.

    Mr Makinde’s expostulations are extraordinary and far-fetched, even bogus. Mr Turaki, a lawyer, is remembered for his mawkish interpretation of politics and his public invitation to the United States president Donald Trump to save Nigerian democracy because two factions of the PDP fought over the party’s headquarters in Abuja. And the flighty Alhaji Atiku encapsulates his politics in adventurism and opportunism, jumping from one party to another seeking relevance and office. Three straight electoral defeats starting from 2015 and ending in 2023 have conspired to strip the party of knowledgeable and experienced politicians and strategists, leaving third-rate party leaders incapable of plotting the most elementary electoral victory. One year of trying to coax the party into a fighting force has also depleted it of vigour.

    Back to the magisterial Mr Makinde. Like everyone else left in the PDP, the Oyo governor blamed outsiders for the party’s woes. The insiders were, in his estimation, loyal and blameless, in fact flawless, having observed all rules and regulations as well as electoral laws and the constitution perfectly. He dismissively characterised any other faction purporting to be a faction as either pretentious or inexistent. Then he sneered at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for disingenuously seeming to recognise the existence of factions. Hear him: “And by the way, the way the PDP is today, there is no faction. We held a convention here in Ibadan. We gave adequate notice to INEC, which is all that we are required to do under the law. So, it will take INEC some time if they choose to behave like the ostrich, bury their head and all of their bodies outside…Now, to hide all of these things that they are not supposed to hide, they basically called the two factions together, played our people, by saying they wanted to engage with the leadership of PDP…And then, they (Makinde faction) got there and found out that they called Samuel Anyanwu and co (Nyesom Wike faction). I said, that’s even silly to start with…”

    Mr Makinde is in denial over the status of the party. No Nigerian believes the PDP is not factionalised in fact and in law, except of course the governor and his coterie. And talking about the convention, which many party leaders counselled should be postponed until some healing could be attempted in the party, the governor insisted all the convention planners needed to do was invite INEC. He was silent on whether there was no right or wrong way to notify INEC of the meeting, or that INEC reserved the right to assess the legality of the invitation. The governor went on to argue that the Supreme Court had, by two judgements, seemed to virtually cede to parties the power to determine their own affairs one way or the other, irrespective of the provisions of the law. He likened the electoral commission to the ostrich and derided it for ‘tricking’ the Makinde faction into sitting at table with the Wike faction, an accusation echoed by party chairman Mr Turaki who has accused INEC of bias. The fault is always in others, never in the PDP or its shambolic self-appointed leaders.

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    But that was not the end of his fiery denunciations of his party’s detractors. Despondent, he accused the electoral body of conspiring with unnamed others to kill the party. Said he: “There’s a danger that if you do that, you may, you know, unknowingly… kill democracy in this country, God forbid.” In other words, on the issue of the PDP, and despite the misgivings of so many PDP leaders, including the Ibadan convention planning committee leaders who took exception to the governor’s style, Mr Makinde was peerless and unassailable. Any other person who refuses to identify with his position was a detractor and an apostate. Indeed, as far as he was concerned, the decisions taken at the convention, including the elections/affirmations and expulsions, were unquestionable. It is not clear what he thinks of his logic or whether he has had time to reflect on how he sounded to himself. But his adamantine resolve to press ahead on his chosen path while lashing out at dissenters unsettled by the intractability of the party’s position and Mr Makinde’s oversimplification gives the impression of somebody unable to wean himself off the predictable and mechanical certainties of engineering in favour of the slow and sometimes painstaking effort needed to forge a consensus.

    Mr Makinde’s destination in the media chat, however, was Mr Wike and President Bola Tinubu. He accused the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, leader of the other PDP faction, of duplicity in pledging to virtually destroy the party to smooth the way for the APC in 2027. He also described President Tinubu, whom he supported in 2023, as incapable of responding adequately to the country’s challenges because of his refusal to run “a government of national unity, government of national competence.” He said he regretted that support, and would not give it in 2027. Mr Wike will, of course, respond soon, for he is not known to suffer his enemies gladly, especially after being accused of perfidy. As for the president who declined to appoint Mr Makinde’s nominee for ministerial position, it was the end of the 2027 electoral road. Like everything else he said at the media chat, the Oyo governor displayed a penchant to oversimplify complex political matters. The months ahead and the suits filed at various courts by both factions of the party will determine whether the Oyo governor saw the future through his inelegant and imperious dismissals of his opponents and their arguments or he is trapped in the past by his mystifying projections of what he sees as the country’s retrograde electoral future.