The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • US airstrike triggers uproar in Nigeria

    US airstrike triggers uproar in Nigeria

    The long-awaited United States-led airstrike on Nigeria finally took place on Thursday night or, as local reports indicate, in the wee hours of Friday. President Donald Trump was characteristically immoderate in his tweet on the strikes which he described as deadly. As he put it, “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries! I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was…Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”

    Mr Trump was not only highfalutin, he mischaracterised the orders he gave as designed to salve the wounds of Nigerian Christians. Then he ended his triumphalism with morbid humour of wishing the dead terrorists merry Christmas. Worst of all, he gave no indication of the involvement, cooperation or approval of Nigeria in the airstrike. His Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, was less given to histrionics. His statement on the airstrike which involved the firing of about 16 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the Lakurawa terror group fighting under the aegis of the Islamic State (ISIS) was more accurate, more balanced. He said: “The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end. The Department of War is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight on Christmas. More to come, Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation. Merry Christmas.” The Secretary of course still played to the Christian gallery, perhaps as sop to his boss, but he at least admitted and applauded the cooperation of Nigeria.

    The Nigerian government has reassuringly been very circumspect about the whole affair, probably because it recognises its position as the underdog in the tragedy. Speaking on television, the Foreign Affairs minister, Yusuf Tuggar, said: “It was Nigeria that provided intelligence for the US strike in Nigeria. I spoke with the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, for 19 minutes before the strike, and we agreed to talk to President Tinubu for his go-ahead, and he gave it. After the approval, I spoke again with Marco Rubio five minutes before the strike was launched against the terrorists. Now that the US is cooperating, we would do it jointly, and we would ensure, just as the president emphasised yesterday before he gave the go-ahead, that it must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other. We are a multi-religious country, and we are working with partners like the US to fight terrorism and safeguard the lives and properties of Nigerians.” The official statement from the ministry itself was also balanced and cleverly worded.

    Though a post-strike assessment is yet to be finalised, initial indications are that the strike on the Lakurawa terrorist camp in Tangaza local government area of Sokoto State was highly impactful. The US has promised more strikes in the coming days or weeks. The bigger surprise, however, is that the first strike occurred in the Northwest rather than in the Northeast, against bandits instead of against Boko Haram/ISWAP. In time, it may become clear why the first targets were located in the Northwest. Significantly too, Nigeria and the US, minus Mr Trump who has doubled down on his pro-Christian and genocide narratives, have reached an understanding that Nigeria’s security situation is more nuanced than the Americans had at first been fed. The North of Nigeria is predominantly Muslim, and consequently most victims of the terrorist attacks in the region have been Muslims. The objective of the terrorists is the establishment of a caliphate, regardless of whether the goal was the largely Muslim Nigerian North or whether it was Mali, Burkina Faso or Niger Republic. Using the Fulani land grabbing and herdsmen-farmers clashes narratives of the Middle Belt of Nigeria to approximate the insecurity nightmare assailing Nigeria paints only a part of the picture. Mr Trump has, however, chosen a narrative that pleases him, energises his support base, and grabs the attention of a sizable number of Nigerians. He will continue to stick to that narrative, while his aides apprised of the bigger picture will do their best to moderate his overreach and find common ground with Nigerian authorities.

    Last Thursday’s US airstrike has surprisingly not been opposed or denounced as some people expect. Islamic cleric Ahmad Gumi, popularly regarded as bandit sympathiser, was among the first to open his mouth and put his foot in it. He decried the Sokoto missile strikes and demanded the cessation of the bombings. Then he followed up by imperiously asking Nigerians to live at peace with herdsmen. No one still regards his choices or statements with any respect. They see him as a loose cannon unworthy of his position as a faith leader or a retired military officer. Those who have been victims of the terrorist violence in the Northwest have in fact welcomed the strike and hoped that civilian casualties would be avoided, and the terrorists bombed flat. But consistent with its hasty and sometimes illogical approach to issues and the practice of opposition politics, a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) criticised the government for not alerting Nigerians to the strike. They did not say how that could be achieved without tipping off the terrorists.

    Read Also: Nigeria beat Tunisia 3-2 to qualify for AFCON Round of 16

    The Nigerian government had initially worried about being denounced for enabling the US airstrike, and for compromising and denuding the country’s sovereignty, especially in light of Mr Trump’s inconsiderate tweet about saving persecuted Nigerian Christians. Some Nigerians had also worried that US involvement, especially if mistakes occurred, might inflame passion, accentuate religious and possible ethnic divisions, and lead to dangerous escalations. This fear was not unrealistic on account of America’s poor record at foreign military interventions. But so far, the airstrike has achieved some measure of success, has given hope of significant degradation of terrorist forces, and may encourage Nigeria to put boots on the ground in those far-flung and ungovernable places to carry out mop-up operations and reassert state authority.

    While it is not out of place to seek foreign help to help reassert control against rampaging insurgents and caliphate dreamers, there are also arguments as to whether Nigeria, over the past decades, did not by its actions and inactions, some of them leading to the erosion of their own secular constitution by bigoted state laws, attract and encourage terrorism. If the US assistance is sustained and leads to significant degradation of terrorism and insecurity, Nigeria must thereafter do a lot of soul-searching to see whether the right lessons have been learnt. The US is intervening today because (1) Nigerians are not of one mind in opposing and fighting foreign terrorists and insurgents, sometimes because of ethnic or religious affinity with the attackers; (2) poor, incompetent and undisciplined governance and widespread corruption; (3) the country had been rendered vulnerable for far too long as a result of poor investment in security and law enforcement apparatuses; (4) the country is militarily weak to take on the insurgents, let alone stand up to the great powers; and (5) Nigerians have failed to make up their minds whether they want to stay together under a new and restructured mandate or retain the current untenable structure.

    Hopefully, the tempo of the current US intervention, as humiliating as it might seem to the image and sovereignty of Nigeria, will be sustained. It should give Nigeria breathing space and perhaps some elbow room to reexamine its approach to governance and security. Firm lessons must be learnt from an anomalous security situation in which two past administrations allowed a small ulcer to become gangrenous. Nigeria is of course not out of the woods yet, while the situation still calls for deft handling. But overall, the country must rebuild its national esteem, be proactive in handling security and systemic threats, and find ways of averting any future possibility of being picked on by great powers which ram strange elixirs down their reluctant throats.

  • A hydra-headed crisis requires a hybrid solution

    A hydra-headed crisis requires a hybrid solution

    “It feels as if I am in a film”– Hero of Russian Revolution on being arrested and charged with treason at the onset of the infamous Moscow Trials

    A week, it is said, is a long time in politics. For a nation in perpetual commotion, two months can feel like its eternity compressed into a self-detonating match box. But nothing lasts forever, not even relentless pains and inconvenience. In many societies, people have learnt to cope with stress by simply moving on despite the relentless rockets of adversity.

    Hence, the restless ambulations, the perpetual shuffling and shunting; the hustle and bustle of quiet desperation and the rush to go to nowhere in particular that one often encounters among the harried and harassed habitants of these places. It is a strategy of containment. Indecisions are often final and resolute irresolution helps to delay confrontation with angry demons that prey on the soul with malicious insistence. Ignorance is bliss and reflection is the enemy of contentment. What you don’t see or think about does not kill you and even if it does, it doesn’t really matter since you have already taken the antidote against remembering.

    Read Also: ICPC invites Dangote over $7m school fees claim against ex-NMDPRA boss

      This is why in many societies, the seer and seeker after the bitter truth is designated as a troublemaker, an implacable irritant to be ignored or consigned away before the poison spreads. Unfortunately, no human society has ever progressed without confronting its demons. Human communities no matter how mismanaged and maltreated by their own have a way of communicating their sufferings and anxieties to some of their own. It is like a beating a person and asking them not to cry or complain. Tragically enough, only a few can recognize when a society reaches the limits of the elasticity of pains and trauma, or when the stress level becomes structurally unbearable and politically unmanageable.

      Writing is no longer pleasure. For this writer, it has never been. It is a painful burden; a harrowing existential struggle with the uncomfortable actuality of real existence where every word, clause and sentence has to be judiciously weighed and appropriated. There are times when words are more powerful and potentially more devastating than heat-seeking missiles. Unlike the pen-wielding mercenary who writes only for his pocket and for patronage and preferment, the true writer is often filled with caution and circumspection about the possibility of writing as a time-bomb except when the actual social condition has deteriorated into an active violent conflict.

    This is why sometimes the most active pacifists are often people who have seen actual wars or participated in widespread carnage. The gory smell of human blood haunts forever. This human propensity for unproductive warfare and senseless slaughter is what should be prevented at all costs. A famous Nigerian general and civil war protagonist once asked this writer how many of the notable self-determination activists can actually read the map of their immediate vicinity beyond their senseless haranguing.  But you don’t need to know how to read a map to dominate Sambisa Forest forever, or do you?

  • Still dancing on a volcano

    Still dancing on a volcano

    While signing off to go on leave in early October, this column dropped an audit of stress and a census of political apparitions haunting the nation despite the apparent tranquility. It is important to quote this piece at some length in the light of subsequent developments. Titled Still In Search of A National Consensus, it reads:

    The actuality has turned out to be more dire than the auguries. The sixty fifth anniversary of Nigeria has now come and gone. As it has been predicted, the national mood was sombre and subdued. As the day approached, the discerning could feel a thick pall of despondency in the air and an atmosphere of generalized desperation. It was as if the dispensing machines had run out of vending hope and optimism after a run on them. This is the staple fare of pain-killing morphine on which an embattled and embittered populace had depended on in sixty five years of trial and tribulation. But addiction to pain-killers, like the pain-killers themselves, often have their expiry date and time.

    One can always sense when something is about to go wrong in the polity. It is more of political training than intuitive or prophetic wizardry. A week after publication all hell broke loose  with the rumoured uncovering of a plot by some disaffected military officers to terminate the longest run of democratic rule in the history of the nation. The spate of official denial and confirmation of the coup bid by a significant section of the traditional and emergent social media ultimately led to a believability problem for the government. Until it was outgunned by unmanageable reality, it was obvious that the government was trying to minimize the political damage of the development before the international community and the severe consequences for the economy.

    After that, it is one crisis per day, with controversial ambassadorial preferment, the attempt to let off convicted criminals and the massive damage to the reputation of government, Dangote’s startling revelation and documentation of the rot in the oil sector, the rancorous disputation about genocide, America’s threat to give the country the shock and awe treatment, the aborted APC gubernatorial primary in Oshun State and the whimsical but mercifully botched attempt to promote the president’s ADC above his peers in obvious disdain for service regulations.

        It is a reflection of the enormity of the crisis that up till the moment of writing this, which is almost three months after the looming mutiny was averted, no attempt has been made whatsoever to bring the plotters before a board or to arraign them before a military court. It would appear as if the contradiction between the need to respect international scrutiny and the necessity of preventing a further deterioration of internal security through further disclosures has put the authorities in a tight corner. The government has been reeling from one problem of credibility to the other. It is as if the state is being put through the purgatory on a daily basis. Rumours of sharp policy divisions particularly between proponents of a drastic militarization of the campaign against insurgents and genocidal land-grabbers and advocates of a stick and carrot approach bordering on appeasement, waft through the airwaves on a daily basis.

    Read Also: CBN asks banks to configure ATMs, POS terminals for foreign card transactions

      At a point, the crisis and rumours of confrontation between ideologues of militarism and defenders of appeasement seem to have cost the last Chief of Defence Staff his job. But before the ink of dismissal had dried, the plucky general had been recalled to superintend the Ministry of Defence after the holder of the office succumbed to the presidential guillotine. If anybody was thinking that this was a policy rethink in which gung-ho militarism has triumphed over supine pacifism, the retention of an old conciliator and fingered facilitator of terrorism like Malam Matawalle as the subordinate minister in the Ministry of Defence and the survival of and expanding brief of General Musa’s old tormentors in the National Security Office reveal a presidency still playing the card of hegemonic ascendancy  in a way that leaves no faction in doubt as to who the master of the game and supreme law-giver is.

        Supporters and defenders of the president see in all this his astounding mastery of realpolitik and brilliant deployment of Henry Kissinger’s doctrine of balanced dissatisfaction which leaves all the contending factions going home with something while also feeling shortchanged and dissatisfied. As proof, they point at the great strides recorded in the economic sector, particularly the cooling of inflationary pressures, and recent successes recorded by gallant troops in confrontation with bandits and ISWAP insurgents. Speaking softly while carrying a heavy stick has its great merits and the country may be turning the corner in the long war of attrition against religious insurrectionists which began in earnest in 2009 with the summary execution of the leader of the Boko Haram sect.

      But many others see in all this the ultimate manifestation of policy flimflam and the triumph of a cynical transactional politics which bodes ill for the country because of its gutless amorality and total disregard for the organic ethos and principles of authentic nation-building. As proof, they point at the sharp erosion of social capital, the rising tide of insecurity country-wide, the dwindling legitimacy, the increasing resort to authoritarian tactics and the decline in popularity and mass appeal of the Tinubu administration.

       All this tells part of the story. But it doesn’t tell the whole story in its cussed complexity and contradictory amalgamation of the good, the bad and the ugly. Otherwise, how does one explain the strange ascendance of the ruling party and the emphatic dominance of the Nigerian political space and environment in a way and manner that has not been witnessed in the political history of the nation? It reads like political fiction or the fictionalization of politics.

    Something new always comes out of Nigeria. At the last count, only a few states remain outside the domain of the APC and they offer nothing but token twitches of resistance with the monstrous and unrepentant PDP dramatically unspooling even as ADC appears to have lost its verve, vigour and virility before the commencement of actual hostilities. That is despite the sharp deterioration in the living standards of many Nigerians, the acceleration of social, regional and religious divisions, the nation-wide advent of banditry and murderous insurgency that threaten the very foundation of the nation and the spectacular up-scaling of state larceny and theft of national patrimony.

     It is a strange and surreal development that a political party at the heart of this postcolonial heist can also be so widely favoured by the post-military political elite in a way and manner that it can now alter at will or whim the subsisting constitution on which the Federal Republic stands. Given the scale and scope of the fiscal misappropriation that went on under General Buhari’s lethargic and lackadaisical watch, it is now clear that the fundamental raison d’etre behind the linkage of South Western progressive forces and the conservative elements of the core north, which is the modernization of politics and the gradual abolition of the feudal economy of plunder and primitive rapacity, has fizzled out. In fact the mismanagement seems to have intensified with the perpetrators looking for the federal umbrella to protect their loot as intrepid attack traders from the South East sector of the emporium join the hymnal procession.

      The political process appears to be completely disembodied from the electoral procedure. National assembly seems to live in a world of its own, a somnolent political reverie that has created its own alternative reality. We have to look for another word for this strange disarticulation.  The sociological explanation for this can only be that rather than hanging separately the dominant categories of the Nigerian political class have decided to hang together. The possibility of multiple stress and strain leading to a catastrophic implosion cannot be ruled out of the equation since this is not a coalition based on authentic national consensus but a coagulation of vested interests and paddy-paddy politics with only the faintest possibility of rerouting the nation in the direction of accelerated political and economic development. Nigeria may then join Cameroons, Cote D’ivoire, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Rwanda in a continental trend showcasing sterilized gerontocracy and one-party-statism in which regime stability is more important than national cohesion.

      The elimination of the old and storied Nigerian middle class as a political force in active contention through deliberate pauperization and strategic disempowerment is fraught with consequences. Throughout modern history, the articulate and enlightened middle classes have always acted as a modulating and moderating influence on national politics often serving as a buffer zone between the heaving turbulent masses and the complacent and often acquiescent upper classes. Once the buffer is removed, it is a straightforward fight between the state and the street with no room left for parliamentary procedures. Twice in Nigeria’s history, during the Wetie crisis of the old western region and the epic struggle to de-annul the June 12, 1993 election, the middle-class intelligentsia found common cause with the lower masses at great cost to the Nigerian state whether civilian or military.

    The high octane volatility of the current postmilitary conjuncture, with its unabating crisis of political orientation, its highly polarized elite groups and the countervailing economic and spiritual cultures show just how difficult if not impossible for a one-party state structure and authoritarian tyranny to thrive or subsist for long in a nation that is an unwieldy amalgam of old empires, expired kingdoms and lapsed suzerainties.  The long process of acculturation and socialization in these old African formations has produced a variety of autonomous and highly individuated personality-types feeding on and off institutionalized memory to mount resistance and rebellion against the most vicious manifestation of personalized autocracy.

      After almost three years on the saddle and given his reputation as games master and wily strategist, it should be obvious to the president that the problems confronting the nation, particularly the intractable national question and associative traumas, require more visionary integrative and holistic solutions than mere political gaming. An organic crisis of the state requires an organic solution based on deep introspection and uncommon wisdom. The plethora of problems in the past two months and the unforced errors suggest the need for wiser counsel and quality consultation rather than self-isolation and hubristic one-upmanship.

      As he sets about extending his dominion over the Nigerian political landscape in his own idiosyncratic manner, one error the president must avoid is courting the ire or inviting the collective wrath of the already subordinated intellectual class particular the ones from his backyard. They fight like eunuchs who have nothing to lose, and rightly so. Having been forcibly divested of their stake in the wellbeing of the state, experience has shown that they remain past masters of protracted intellectual sieges which can be very unnerving indeed. A word should be enough for the wise. Happy Christmas to our readers.

  • Resignation isn’t enough

    Resignation isn’t enough

    Allegations against former NMDPRA boss, Ahmed, are too weighty to be forgotten simply because he has resigned

    Weeks before, there had been protests in mainly some northern states, clamouring for the sack of the immediate past Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, over sundry allegations of corruption. At the time, the question in the mouths of many was who were the sponsors of these protests, especially as it seemed many of the protesters probably knew next-to-nothing about the oil sector, upstream or downstream.

    We have seen many such protests in the country, whereby many of the protesters carrying placards would turn them upside down, suggesting they were stark illiterates who could never have understood the reason for their joining the protests beyond the stipend they would be given for participation.

    Despite the loudness of the protests, neither the Federal Government nor Ahmed was moved to action. Both went about their different duties.

    But all that was to change when Africa’s richest person and founder of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, joined the fray by making some grievous allegations against Ahmed. Dangote’s voice alone dwarfed the voices of the entire motley crowd that had been crying like John the Baptist in the wilderness. If the government did not hear, or pretended not to hear: not Ahmed. The former NMDPRA boss heard Dangote loud and clear, and immediately did what occurred to him to be the needful. He resigned. Thereafter, he tried to defend the allegations raised against him by Dangote.

    Indeed, his action reminded me of the expensive joke that one of my bosses at the then Kingsway Stores, one Mrs Dina, an Ijebu woman who was hardworking to the core, used to crack whenever any of us fumbled at work. ‘’Kingsway a koko le e lo, ki won to fi ‘we da e duro’ (Kingsway would first send you away before following it up with your sack letter!) 

    But why did Ahmed not resign all this while? Could it be that Dangote’s voice was likely to attract the attention of the government, in which case he could have been fired, instead of the opportunity he had to honourably resign?

    Just as we may never know whether we saw his exit at the time it came or not; we may also not know why he did not put forward his defence and stay put, if he knew he was indeed without blemish. Could he have reigned so that the government would simply close the case as usual and we move on? 

    Again, we may never have answers to these questions. What is clear at least as in the public domain is that he tendered his resignation on December 17, barely days after Dangote made public the damning allegations against him. A newspaper report gave what could be a possible clue as to why the NMDPRA boss eventually threw in the towel as it reported that the embattled Ahmed had earlier that evening met with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the State House, Abuja, for about 30 minutes.

    Read Also: ICPC invites Dangote over $7m school fees claim against ex-NMDPRA boss

    Indeed, the newspaper described the resignation as ‘’unexpected turn of events’’. Perhaps unexpected because people had all the while thought Ahmed enjoyed the support of the government.

    If Ahmed’s resignation was unexpected, then, how do we describe that of his counterpart at the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Gbenga Komolafe, who also turned in his resignation same day? Both Ahmed and Komolafe were appointed by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in 2021 to lead the two regulatory agencies created by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). Their tenure should have expired next year.

    However, if anyone had thought the government had been treating Ahmed’s matter with kid gloves, its swift replacement of the duo confirmed the contrary. Perhaps the government had only been shopping for their replacements all through the time it did nothing (at least in the eyes of the public) despite the cries for Ahmed’s probe and ultimate sack. This swiftness led to the president sending the names of two new chief executives for the NMDPRA and the NUPRC, namely: Saidu Aliyu Mohammed and Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, respectively. This is commendable, given their strategic importance in the oil sector. No vacuum should be allowed in such strategic agencies.

    If I had been ‘Ahmedcentric’ so far in this write-up, it is because, as I mentioned earlier, tongues had been wagging about Ahmed’s activities at the NMDPRA long before now. We have not heard that Komolafe did anything to warrant his sudden resignation alongside Ahmed’s. Moreover, as we would discover shortly, Ahmed’s matter appears hydra-headed or multidimensional.

    Komolafe’s case is particularly pathetic because he was said to have raised the bar at NUPRC. He was said to have embarked on a series of reforms that border on regulatory transparency, community engagement, investment confidence, industry performance and international engagement. From the time he was appointed in 2021, he succeeded in increasing the country’s active drilling rig counts from barely eight to almost 70 by October, 2025. His efforts were said to have paid off with approvals in investments and capital inflow. He also did well with community engagement and took measures that reduced crude theft.

    So, what could have led to his resignation?

    The only thing I heard was that it was done for ethnic balancing? I do not believe this. This is why the government itself has to shed some light on Komolafe’s dark deeds at NUPRC (if any), to erase any doubt of ethnic balancing. After all, a Yoruba adage says it is the finger that sinned that is cut off (ika to ba se l’Oba nge). I do not think it is possible for anyone to carry vicarious liability in this matter.

    Back to Dangote vs. Ahmed.

    Dangote in recent times has been at daggers-drawn with the NMDPRA and particularly Ahmed, its head, that he accused of sleaze and economic sabotage by undermining local refining capacity in Nigeria, especially through the unbridled issuance of import licences for petroleum products, despite the capacity of local refiners to meet the country’s needs.

    Africa’s richest person also raised what some people refer to as personal allegation against the NMDPRA boss. He alleged that Ahmed was living beyond his legitimate means, claiming that four of his children attend secondary schools in Switzerland at a cost of about $7 million.

    Dangote concluded that this kind of expenditure raised questions about potential conflicts of interest and the integrity of regulatory oversight in the downstream petroleum sector. He subsequently submitted a petition to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), calling for Ahmed’s arrest, investigation and prosecution.

    Ahmed, on his part, has tried to answer some of the questions raised by Dangote, particularly as they affect the education of his children. He said, “Three of my four children received substantial merit-based scholarships ranging from 40% to 65% of tuition costs.”

    Beyond these scholarships, he explained that his father, a businessman, established a trust fund for the education of his grandchildren before his death in 2018. Apparently, he is taking advantage of this as well as what he called support from extended family, consistent with traditional Nigerian values of collective investment in education.

    He added that when his three decades of accumulated savings (of about N48 million annually) and official compensation are considered, he cannot be said to be living beyond his means and that he has consistently declared his assets to the Code of Conduct Bureau since joining the public sector in 1991.

    For me, I do not see any reason why Nigeria should continue to import petrol at the rate it did even up till last month. In November, last year, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL) said it had stopped importation of fuel. Melee Kyari, its then chief executive officer, said “Today, NNPC does not import any product; we are taking only from domestic refineries.” 

    However, figures from the NMDPRA showed that NNPC Limited and other marketers imported 52.1 million litres of petrol daily in November, 2025, despite the fact that consumption fell to 52.9 million litres per day in the month, down from 56.74 million litres per day recorded in October. This amounted to 1.563 billion litres for the month. NMDPRA said this was done because local supply could not meet up with demand, and especially with the festive season around the corner.

    I know some people had invested in tank facilities during the period of fuel importation, but then, we can only try to strike a balance between their interest and the larger interest of the country. We cannot kill local refineries (just because of that), a thing we had been craving for, for decades.

    Of course, I am also not oblivious of the potential threat that a single dominant player in the sector could pose to the economy. Even at that, we have to see it in the larger interest of the economy while the government tries to do some balancing act to avoid this.

    To those who felt Dangote should not have mentioned the fabulous amount Ahmed allegedly spent on his children’s secondary education outside the country, because it is a personal affair, I think they missed the point. Dangote is a major tax payer; his Dangote Group paid N402 billion tax to the Federal Government’s coffers last year, at least as confirmed by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). Some other reports quoted N450 billion. Whichever, this is huge. He is therefore more than qualified to know how this is spent and should therefore not keep quiet when he feels a public official is spending above his means. Many public officials in Nigeria do. I do not think Dangote would have cited this if he had issues with a private citizen.

    And, to those who have always felt Dangote is allergic to competition. While I am not in a position to deny or admit this, suffice it to say that it is impossible for a man who has established a $20 billion world-class refinery of Dangote Refinery status to be a gentleman. This is much more so in our kind of clime where the oil sector stinks to high heaven, with people that had been creaming off billions of money meant for fuel subsidy after they had ensured that all the public refineries became either dead or comatose. That business is not one for gentlemen because the stench in the sector is almost pervasive; with, perhaps, none exempts. 

    My conclusion: Ahmed’s resignation cannot be the end of the matter; the allegations against him must be investigated in the interest of natural justice, the economy and transparency and accountability in public office. Nothing short of this would do.

  • Language Activism IV

    Language Activism IV

    English is the most dominant language in the world today but, it has to be said that it does not owe that dominance to any innate superiority over other languages. On the contrary, it owes that dominance both to an accident of history and the rise to prominence of the United States of America where English is the official language. Another factor in this saga is the extreme adaptability of the language as it can bend and sway in the wind with the best of them. It is also of course the current language of science even if Arabic, Greek, Latin and even German were more prominent in this regard in previous epochs. Right until the end of WWI, virtually all the best scientists spoke to each other in German for the simple reason that a great many of them were of German origin and the most authoritative scientific journals were published in that language. The equilibrium in this matter swung to English because, first, Germany lost that war and became impoverished. And then, the rise of Nazism in that country caused the best scientists, many of them of Jewish extraction, to flee the country, to the USA where they supplied both brawn and brain to the flowering of science, first in that country and then, the rest of the world. It has to be said however that the adaptability of the language lent itself to its global spread and was prepared to lend itself to this phenomenon even if it did not lend itself to providing scientific words. Given this background, I insist that any language, given the right push,  Yoruba,or any other local language for that matter may be adopted as a language of science. I have made this remark because, the collective loss of confidence which has afflicted us and all other African languages will not or never allow us to lay any claim to this accolade. But, it exists even if the will is absent.

    Going back a few centuries, it is clear that greatness was thrust on the English language. After all, it was a language not spoken in the power centers even in England. Their foreign overlords, the Norman, imposed their borrowed French on all aspects of the realm even as English remained the language of the common man in the streets whilst the rich and powerful in their castles and other points of authority conversed and governed in French. For example, it was not until the years towards the end of the fourteenth century that English was allowed into the legal system that governed the country. After all, the vast majority of those being tried in the courts were English and had no knowledge of French. To expedite matters brought before the courts, the English language was admitted into those courts, to stand side by side with French. By the early seventeenth century, English had advanced so long on the road to sophistication that it had become dominant in the land of its birth. It is also instructive to note that the constant wars against the French over a long period during which the English won some famous battles and controlled swaths of territory in France enhanced the growth of English. But, that is a long story and is not really relevant to this discussion.

    With the crystal clear quality of hindsight, it is easy to conclude that without Shakespeare and King John VI, of Scotland and II of England, the place of English at the high table of languages could not have been secured. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The man of the hour in the case of English language is William Shakespeare, often referred to as the immortal bard. His prodigious output of plays and sonnets speak for him in this regard. More than four hundred years after his demise, it can be said that there is no day that goes by without the performance of a Shakespearian play going on somewhere around the globe. That speaks for the sheer volume of his output but even more than that, it shows the freshness of the subjects of his plays which have been classified as historical, comical and historical, all of them based as they are on the universal human condition. More than this however are the words and phrases which were coined by Shakespeare and incorporated into the English language which in the time of Shakespeare was being transformed into Modern English which is more or less what is spoken all round the world today. Shakespeare was writing at a time when Modern English was emerging from Middle English but more than that, he personally coined and injected, some say, up to three thousand words and phrases into the English language. So many that not a day goes by without a regular English speaker anywhere in the world not using at least one of them. He, more than any Englishman, living or dead, has dragged the English language into the public square.

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    The other man who has been associated with the rise of the English language is King James VI of Scotland and I of England. He did not add a single word to the language but it was he that ordered what has now been described as the authoritative translation of the Bible into Modern English thus enhancing the spread of the language not only within England but later within English colonies abroad. There was hardly any family in the realm which did not have a King James version of the Bible and for most people the Bible provided their first contact with the written word. It was therefore the means through which literacy gained some traction within the common people. The translation appeared at a time when the Church of England was being established and laid the ground for the traditions on which the Church has come to be associated with but the influence of this version of the Bible went far beyond the confines of the Church. It was immeasurably helpful in establishing the dominance of the English language. When we think of the activities of the missionaries who introduced Christianity to many parts of the world, it was the King James version (KJV) of the Bible that they took with them on their journeys.

    The Bible eventually reached the shores of Nigeria in the shape of the KJV but it was not placed in the hands of the locals. In any case since they were illiterate, doing so would have been a monumental waste of time. By 1884 however the KJV had been translated into Yoruba, primarily through the effort of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a returned Saro who had started the piecemeal translation of the Bible some thirty years before. The language of this translation can be described as Oyo-Egba, the dialect of Yoruba spoken by Ajayi Crowther, the first black Anglican Bishop. Prior to this period and even since then, the Yoruba language has existed in an impressive number of dialects. As soon as Crowther’s translation became available however, it became the arbiter of the Yoruba language throughout the length and breadth of Yorubaland, first among the educated and then throughout the rest of the population. This language as well as the various dialects of Yoruba are now under attack by the English language even though the English have nothing to do with what is going on. It is the native speakers who are refusing to pass on the patrimony of language to their children, forgetting that when children are not introduced to a deity, that deity soon withers and dies. However, it has to be said in the midst of this neglect, a sizable number of young people are searching assiduously for the deity of their language and finding it in all sorts of unexpected places including social media. They carry the heavy burden of expectations and are the ones that are primarily responsible for making sure that the lights will not go down on a proud language tradition, one which has been painstakingly put together by countless generations over thousands of years.

  • Revered (Sir) Remi Omotoso speaks on Ekiti Agro-Allied International Airport

    Revered (Sir) Remi Omotoso speaks on Ekiti Agro-Allied International Airport

    “To God be the glory, great things He hath done, so loved He the world that He gave us His Son, who yielded His life an atonement for sin, and opened the life-gate that all may go in” – Fanny Crosby(1875)

    It was a joyful moment for Ekitikete as the Ekiti Agro- Allied International Cargo Airport commenced commercial flights in grand style(ABUJA – ADO – EKITI) with all the four former governors of the State- Otunba Niyi Adebayo, Dr Ayodele Fayose, Engr Segun Oni and Dr Kayode Fayemi – on board. 

    It was indeed a moment of pride for all Ekiti sons and daughters as the United Nigeria Airline touched down at the airport and took off with passengers heading to another destination.  It was a beautiful experience,  historic and quite exciting . 

    With the airport in place Ekiti has taken a major leap in the quest for economic development.

    Thanks to God and  BAO’s transformative leadership” – a euphoric Funmi Bold on the Ekiti New Dawn WhatsApp platform.

    The Eagle has landed.

    And finally the much storied Ekiti Agro- Allied International Airport, Ado – Ekiti, received its maiden commercial flight to a euphoric welcome on Tuesday, 10 December, 2025.

    Nobody can legitimately begrudge any Ekiti man or woman today if he/she heartily bursts into the above song of gratitude in appreciation to God or  if we Ekitis choose to sing the most sonorous  of our songs to the various leaders who made this a reality.

    This is a project that has many shades and colours, and passed through various stages of acrimony before finally birthing in ultimate glory. God be praised.

    Commenced during the administration of Governor Kayode Fayemi as a dual purpose infrastructure, it has a 3.2 km runway facility and obtained the NCAA approval in October, 2025.

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    One of the many phases the project passed through, though behind the scenes, was the mostly combative, absolutely politically motivated discussions that predominated our Ekitipanupo@yahoogroups.com web portal, comprising over 2000 Ekitis home, and Diasporan. Our

    debates were so acrimonious they remind me, uncannily, of promotion exercises at the Pre – Clinical departments of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ibadan in the 70’s, when two distinguished Nigerian professors of international repute – who will remain nameless here – headed the departments of Anatomy and Physiology, respectively, and

    no matter the brilliance of candidates from the other department you knew, apriori, what type of recommendation to expect from the opposing Head of Department.

    In our discussions, therefore,  your views merely reflected where you belonged in the state’s politics.

    However, one contributor differed, completely, from the ensemble as, even in all the ongoing cacophony, he took the professional path which is why his contributions are very vital, and relevant today, for both the Ekiti state government and, in particular, for those who will be responsible for the day to day management of the facility.

    That exactly is why Sir Remi Omotoso will be speaking to us today about the Airport. Yes speak, via his intervention to my article captioned: Still on The Ekiti Airport Project. His contribution was dated 7 November, 2019.

    Sir Remi Omotoso MFR, (1945 – 2020) was a true servant leader who poured out himself in service to God and humanity through institutions such as the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Unilever Plc, Odu’a Group of Companies, Standard Chartered Bank, Greenwich Trust Group, DN Meyer Plc, University of Ibadan, the Institute of Directors, Nigerian Institute of Marketing, Chartered Institute of Personnel Management, the Ekiti State  and his home community of Ayedun-Ekiti.

    He served without expecting anything in return, his  satisfaction coming from seeing people and processes improve, and knowing that the Almighty God would be glorified.

    He joined the Saints Triumphant on 5 June, 2020. Eternal rest grant him O Lord.

    Happy reading.

    My dear compatriots,

    In o kun o.

    I have followed with keen interest the various views expressed by many of our people. Some are for and some are against the establishment of an airport in Ekiti, everyone advancing reasons for position taken.

    In a democracy, this is what it should be: you talk and I talk and Democracy no go vex. However, a responsible Government under a worthy leader would take a decision on any matter, hopefully, in the best interest of the people.

    Let me state upfront that I was a member of the Committee set up by Dr Kayode Fayemi during his first coming to consider the pros and cons of having an airport in Ekiti. There was hardly any view expressed today that didn’t come up during our Committee meetings. Tope Porta’s views on this forum on the airport almost covered the views of those on the Committee who were opposed to the establishment of the airport. The views of Femi Orebe and Femi Ebenezer more than covered the views of the proponents of the establishment of the Airport. From outside of the Committee were also strong views. Late Prof. Mike Filani, a highly respected Transport Geographer didn’t  see the need for the Airport, at least for now. He didn’t see its viability from the passenger size and also didn’t seem to see the prospect of agribusiness so soon to keep the Airport alive and running. His views in my personal discussion with him was that the airport would only serve elitist interest and would be grossly underutilized. So, the Committee had a wide array of views to base its decision on.

    I must disabuse the minds of some of us who felt that Chief Afe Babalola who was Chairman of our Committee wanted the Airport ” tipa ti kuku”( by all means) for the relative comfort of the parents of the young students of the Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti ( ABUAD). Yes, this could be part of his interest in the airport but beyond that, Chief Afe Babalola has the largest private commercial agribusiness in the Southwest of Nigeria today. His mango farms which runs into hundreds of hectares will benefit from the Ado-Ekiti airport by way of export.

    As a member of the Committee,  I was the most vociferous canvasser for the airport to be established to be run largely as a specialised agric. produce cargo airport. I submitted that apart from Ekiti State, the west of Kogi, the south-east of Osun, and a good part of Akoko north-west will serve as good catchment areas for the airport, almost entirely for agro Cargo export.

    There has been the pessimistic question asked by those not in support of the airport: what and where are the cargoes? Here are the agro products:

          1)  YAMS.

    Today, Ghana is reported to be among the largest exporters of yams, largely  to the US. In 2016, Ghana exported $N27.5m and was reported to be the 6th largest exporter and holds 10..3% of world yam export. Ghana total annual production is put at about 6.6m/tonnes compared with Nigeria production of 32.3m/ tonnes but with no notice in the world market for export. 

    Yagbas in Kogi west and the Igbiras are great yam producers along with us in Ekiti North, Akoko Northwest and Northeast. A good proportion of  the 32.3m/tonnes must be between Benue and Ekiti and those locations mentioned in Kogi.

    Now, please, reacall that Gov. Sgun Oni established a Yam Conditioning Plant at  ILASA EKITI which was not completed  and commissioned before he left office. If the current Fayemi-led government gets this plant completed and put it to use through sale or lease to a private company, Ekiti would be ready to take over Ghana’s position in the world in the export of YAMS. The yams are airfreighted.

          2)FRESH PINEAPPLE FRUITS

    The market for fresh pineapple fruit export from West Africa is dominated by Ghana and Cote D’ivoire. I visited  Ghana some years back to find out more about the success of the country just to see how Ekiti can enter this lucrative business. All around Greater Accra, young families own, courtesy Govt empowerment program, each hundreds of hectares of pineapple farms cultivated under strict pytosanitary certification for specific offtakers. The offtakers also in collaboration with Govt ensure extension services are provided which assures consumers confidence in direct consumption without any further quality control. As at the time of my visit about 2011, at least a Boeing 737 cargo plane load of pineapple was exported daily from Kotoka airport.

    The demand for organic fruits is exploding in the  world and Ekiti stands to benefit from this development. Ekiti share same geographical and ecological conditions with the Pineapple producing region in Ghana. Add pineapple export to that of Yam and you will begin to see the viability of Ijan-Ado Ekiti Airport. There are more promising fruits from Ekiti  you can add to these because of their commercial potential.

           3) BANANA/PLANTAIN.

    The Ikere-Ilawe- Igbara Odo Axis has best clime and ecology for Banana and also plantain similar to what prevails in Ghana where export to Europe is thriving. If Govt helps to establish strains and off-taķers the business potential is huge. Obviously,  bananas are plantains are usually airfreighted.

         4) MANGOES and AVOCADOS.

    Oga Aare Afe Babalola has a large mango farm as part of ABUAD. I understand the mangoes ere of Israeli strain. When they are in full blossom, the Ijan-Ado road airport will be a huge advantage.

          5) CHILLI PEPPER.

    This is also in huge demand in the world market. This is a crop women deal in a lot. Some cooperative movement of a sort can engage in growing and processing for export.

    All these crops and more are more than enough to justify the establishment of a medium size cargo airport in Ado-Ekiti designed to be scalable with adequate cargo-handling systems and facilities.

    Ekiti is an agrarian, landlocked State. This should not disadvantage us if we embrace agribusiness seriously on an industrial scale. It should not be long before we start to add value.I saw an astonishingly beautiful factory in the outskirts of Accra where fruit COCKTAILS were being prepared and shipped out of Kotoka airport to various locations in Europe from where they are distributed to various food chains in those locations.

     Some have argued that AKURE AIRPORT can still serve the purpose of handling the business. I have my reservations on this. Akurr isn’t designed for Cargo handling.  Secondly, it has its drawback on cost of getting these products to Akure. In the cost configuration for them, freight is a key factor and can negatively affect competitiveness. The nearer point of production is to point of airfreight the better. It’s no brainer that yams will leave Ilasa Yam conditioning Plant and get delivered to Ado airport than to Akure airport located on Akure-Owo road. If I were involved in the business, I would prefer Ado. Apart from the cheaper transportation costs, Ado airport will  have holding facilities for my export haven been designed to handle agro cargoes.

    MY APPEAL TO EKITI  STATE GOVERNMENT.

    Please,  as the airport is being constructed, let adequate preparation be commenced to prepare the farmers that will produce the agro cargoes. The gestation periods of these crops must have worked into them land preparation, the selection and preparation of the farmers, their training and psychosocial conditioning. It should be possible for rhis new crop of farmers  to operate like any other businessmen and women without being isolated in farm settlements. Contiguous farms will promote experiential learning and information sharing among the farmers.  Selection of Extension Service providers should start at the right time, that is at.the time of seeking offtakers and strains of crops to focus on. Govenment should be responsible for procuring phyto sanitary certification from the offtakers.

    Let me dare to recommend that the selected farmers.should be exposed to practices in Ghana, Cote D’ivoire or Kenya and a few of them to the offtakers as well as the food chain stores and direct consumers. The success of Unilever in its various markets is the attention paid to training of the employees, knowledge of the market and consumer behavior and preferences. Nothing happens unless people make them happen.

    So, as work goes on in the construction of the Airport, work goes on regarding growing of the crops and their packaging. When the airport is ready, there should be cargo to push through it.

    I am passionate about the Ado-Ekiti Airport, just as I am of the emerging opportunities in the exponential growth in agribusiness in Ekiti. I look forward to the day I will shop for organic fruits and yams in Eirope and America and find the label;.PRODUCE OF EKITI, NIGERIA or PROUDLY EKITI NIGERIA. 

    Nothing would befit the memory of our late compatriot more than for  governor Oyebanji to carefully distil Sir Omotoso’s seminal article, and allow the suggestions therein, guide him, first and foremost, in the formulation of the policy guidelines which will propel its operations as well as in his choice of the individuals who would be in charge of the Airport’s management.

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAO

    Here’s wishing our Omoluabi Governor Abiodun Oyebanji of Ekiti state happy birthday and many happy returns as he turns 58 today, 21 December, 2025.

    Yours has been a journey in humility, grace and service to humanity.

    May the good Lord continue to keep you and all yours under His canopy of all – round peace. Amen.

  • How Tinubu’s turning APC’s majority into Nigeria’s long-awaited restructuring moment

    How Tinubu’s turning APC’s majority into Nigeria’s long-awaited restructuring moment

    Last week quietly but firmly reinforced a pattern that has come to define the presidency of Bola Ahmed Tinubu: decisive action often happens away from the klieg lights, while public appearances are reserved for moments that signal direction, intent and resolve. As the President himself explained at the National Caucus of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), much of his time had been consumed by behind-the-scenes work, so intense that he initially yielded the speaking slot to his deputy, Kashim Shettima. That admission, far from suggesting absence, underscored a governing style that prioritises outcomes over optics.

    Yet, when Tinubu did step forward publicly during the week, the engagements were anything but routine. Thursday’s APC National Caucus meeting and Friday’s National Executive Committee (NEC) session became platforms for one of the clearest articulations yet of how the President intends to deploy the ruling party’s expanding political muscle to achieve long-delayed structural reforms. In essence, Tinubu is signalling that the numbers now available to him across Nigeria’s political architecture must translate into constitutional compliance, institutional restructuring and, ultimately, better lives for ordinary Nigerians.

    At the heart of this push is the long-stunted third tier of government: the local councils. Although Nigeria operates a federal system with three constitutionally recognised tiers, local governments have for decades been reduced to administrative appendages of state executives. That imbalance was formally addressed in July 2024, when the Supreme Court of Nigeria delivered a landmark judgment granting financial autonomy to local government councils. The ruling, historic in its clarity, promised to restore grassroots governance by ensuring councils receive allocations directly.

    However, as Tinubu bluntly noted, judgments do not implement themselves. Despite the federal government’s readiness to enforce the ruling, resistance from state governors has largely confined the verdict to what many describe as a “show glass”;admired but untouched. It was this impasse that the President confronted head-on at the APC Caucus.

    Speaking not just as Head of Government but as leader of a party that now dominates much of the federation, Tinubu appealed, and warned, in equal measure. Local government autonomy, he insisted, “must be effective,” stressing that autonomy without direct funding is meaningless. “There is no autonomy without funded mandate,” he declared, adding that direct allocation to councils is not a favour but a constitutional obligation flowing from the apex court’s decision.

    The subtext was unmistakable. With 28 of Nigeria’s 36 governors now members of the APC’s Progressive Governors Forum and the ruling party commanding about 65 per cent of the Senate and 57 per cent of the House of Representatives, Tinubu believes the political conditions are ripe to fix structural distortions that previous administrations either avoided or lacked the leverage to tackle. Numbers, in this context, are not for celebration; they are instruments for reform.

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    That confidence was further revealed when the President spoke of his discussions with international partners on security sector reform. Tinubu disclosed that he had assured counterparts in the United States and Europe that Nigeria would pass the long-debated state police framework. When asked if he was confident, his response was telling: he has a party to depend on. The implication is clear, constitutional amendments and sensitive reforms that once seemed politically impossible are now within reach because the ruling party controls the levers that matter.

    Friday’s NEC meeting sharpened the message. Tinubu moved from persuasion to unmistakable resolve, making it clear that compliance with the Supreme Court judgment on local government autonomy is non-negotiable. Any attempt to delay, dilute or sabotage direct funding to councils, he warned, would be treated as defiance of constitutional order. In one of his most pointed remarks, the President suggested that if governors wait for an executive order, “because I have the knife, I have the yam,” he would not hesitate to act. It was a metaphor laden with authority, and intent.

    Beyond fiscal federalism, the President framed party discipline and internal accommodation as essential to sustaining the reform agenda. A ruling party as large as the APC, he cautioned, cannot afford intolerance or exclusion at the grassroots. Ward and local government politics, often dismissed as routine, are in fact the engines that determine whether reforms reach the people or stall in capital cities.

    This emphasis on grassroots governance also resonated in Tinubu’s mid-week engagement with leaders of Ogbia Kingdom in Bayelsa State. Hosting the delegation at the State House, the President acknowledged the Niger Delta’s long history of neglect and its immeasurable contributions to Nigeria’s economic survival. Yet he was equally firm that progress cannot be achieved by dwelling endlessly on past injustices. What matters now, he argued, is collaboration with an administration prepared to act.

    Describing the Niger Delta as “the goose that lays the golden egg,” Tinubu struck a balance between empathy and pragmatism. Yes, the region had been shortchanged; yes, successive governments failed it. But the path forward lies in partnership, not perpetual grievance. His assurance that infrastructure development would continue, coupled with praise for Niger Delta indigenes serving in his administration, reinforced a message of inclusion within a broader national restructuring effort.

    Earlier in the week, the President’s appearance at the re-presentation of the biography of Muhammadu Buhari added a more personal dimension to his leadership narrative. Paying tribute to his late predecessor, Tinubu spoke not merely as a successor but as a friend and political ally who understands loyalty beyond the tenure of office. In celebrating Buhari’s belief that public office is a trust rather than a windfall, Tinubu subtly aligned that ethic with his own reform drive, one anchored in discipline, restraint and institutional respect.

    Beyond the party caucuses that provided the most explicit platforms for the President to lay down his restructuring markers, the rest of the week revealed a presidency operating on multiple tracks at once, security, economy, institutions and human relationships, each reinforcing the same central objective: making Nigeria work, not in fragments, but as a coherent state.

    On Friday, the President presented the 2026 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly after convening an emergency, one-item meeting of the Federal Executive Council. That sequencing was deliberate. Budgets, in Tinubu’s reform logic, are not ceremonial documents but instruments of restructuring. By tightening fiscal assumptions and insisting on coordination between the executive and legislature, he signalled that economic stabilisation, security spending and grassroots development must align with the broader federal reset he is pushing through politics and law.

    The same logic underpinned the decisive shake-up in the petroleum regulatory space. The resignation of Farouk Ahmed and Gbenga Komolafe, followed by the nomination of new chief executives for the NMDPRA and NUPRC, came after months of tension in the oil and gas sector, amplified by the bruising confrontation with the Dangote Refinery. Tinubu’s intervention was less about personalities than control and clarity. By asserting authority over regulators created under the Petroleum Industry Act, the President demonstrated that strategic sectors will not be left hostage to regulatory drift or institutional turf wars. Energy reform, like fiscal federalism, must serve national interest, not bureaucratic comfort.

    Security and regional diplomacy also featured prominently. On Sunday, addressing ECOWAS leaders, Tinubu warned that coups, terrorism and transnational crime demand a united West African response. Speaking through Vice President Kashim Shettima, he reminded the sub-region that porous borders make isolation impossible. The message was consistent with his domestic push for state policing and decentralised security: modern threats require shared responsibility, whether among Nigerian states or West African neighbours.

    Mid-week, the President’s late-night engagement with labour leaders and governors ahead of a planned protest over insecurity reflected another strand of his leadership, preventive dialogue. Rather than allow tensions to spill into the streets, Tinubu chose engagement, reinforcing his belief that stability is best preserved through consultation, not force.

    The remainder of the week was punctuated by gestures that humanise power without diluting authority: condolences to Bayelsa over the death of Deputy Governor Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo; tributes to the late former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad; and the mourning of industrialist Michael Ponnle. His congratulatory messages to Ifeanyi Ararume, Prof. Segun Gbadegesin, Bisi Olatilo and Dr Olusanya Awosan reflected continuity with Nigeria’s political, intellectual and media traditions, even as reforms press forward.

    Taken together, the events of the week reveal a President consciously leveraging the newfound strength of his party to address Nigeria’s most stubborn structural flaws. From local government autonomy and state policing to party discipline and regional reconciliation, Tinubu is making the case that political dominance must serve constitutional order and social progress, not complacency.

    For the ordinary Nigerian, the implications are profound. Functional local governments mean services closer to the people. Reformed security architecture promises safer communities. Cooperative federalism opens pathways for economic inclusion. And a ruling party aligned behind these goals reduces the friction that has historically stalled reform.

    In this sense, last week was not about spectacle. It was about positioning, quietly but firmly, Nigeria closer to the vision of a functional, stable and respected nation. For President Tinubu, the message is consistent: the time for excuses has passed; the numbers are there; the responsibility is unavoidable. The task now is to turn political strength into national renewal.

  • COLOUR OF BURNING BOOK (1)

    COLOUR OF BURNING BOOK (1)

    From Book-banners to Book- burners)

    for Jack Mapanje

    … a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life

     John Milton: Areopagitica, 1644

    These, still, are seasons of rapid edicts

    Let running tongues mind the bend

    On Memory’s road

    The censor’s voice drops,

    oath-laden,

    like a wrathful axe:

    silence rules the twilight

    of bleeding words;

    an orphaned lyric limps along,

    curse-coated,

    larynxed by muted whispers

    The glossy glide of new books,

    future-bound

    with orchards of vigilant leaves

    polyglot bridge of severed musings

    oracle of a million fables

    counting Wisdom’s kernels in

    white and luminous black**

    The despot’s scourge,

    magic scrawls on his iron wall,

    the bearded prophet of every vowel

    ringing bells which claim the calm

    of stolen dawns

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    The Queen’s goiter

    the Emperor’s swagger,

    alphabets which reek, every letter,

    with the stench of gilded chambers,

    the wind which bares the rumps

    of hen-pecked braggarts …..

    It hides what they seek

    it seeks what they hide;

    they who cover raging smokes

    with the basket of murderous lies

    The moon laughs in its sky

    knowing so well the journal

    of passing frenzies

    These, still, are seasons of rapid edicts

    Let running tongues mind the bend

    On Memory’s road

    To Continue next week

  • Nigerians and the Burkinabe affair

    Nigerians and the Burkinabe affair

    If social media is a fair barometer of the proclivities of Nigerians, then their exultation over the detention of a Nigerian Air Force Hercules C-130 aircraft in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, on December 8 after a technical issue forced it to land is a sad reminder of the deterioration crisis faced by Nigeria. Some 11 crewmen were detained in addition to the aircraft. They were Nigerian sons, brothers and fathers on active national duty. But some Nigerians, perhaps taken in by the Burkinabe military leader, Ibrahim Traore’s months of propaganda, praised the junta, derided Nigeria, and concluded that the West African giant had been tamed by a mouse. They added that Nigeria was being ‘rightly punished’ for aiding and abetting France’s national interest and ‘ill-advisedly’ terminating the Benin Republic coup which tried to overthrow President Patrice Talon’s government. Left to the surly Nigerians, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) of three military juntas in West Africa did right by delinking from France and jumping into bed with Russia. They see nothing wrong in substituting one Caucasian and exploitative master with a Slav antidemocratic and brutal master.

    The problem is not the substitution that has taken place in the sub-region; the real problem is Nigerians’ lack of national identity and pride. To disparage their country in its hour of trial, to ridicule their men in arms simply because they dislike the administration of the day indicates how ignorant and insensitive politics of division has made them. They have no idea how Col. Traore is charming the Brukinabe like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, how he is repressing his people, how economic development has not been as impressive as propaganda has made it, and how unwinnable the anti-jihadist war has become. All the scornful Nigerians know is that they resent the government of the day, and any reverses it suffers, even if it reflects very poorly on the country, is deserved. They rejoiced over the detention of the craft and military personnel, believing the propaganda of the Burkinabe that the soldiers were on a war mission to Benin Republic through the back door. But what war? And was the coup not crushed the first day?

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    Nigeria’s political division is hardening irredeemably, and its people have no idea what nationalism means. The traditional media and social media commentators seem to think that until a man of their choosing is in office, no leader deserves their support. Have they by any chance heard of the expression credited to a US naval officer Stephen Decatur in 1816? He said: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” At the signing of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US, was believed to have said: “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

    Given the highly visible marks of division tearing Nigeria apart, including the bloodletting triggered by banditry and insurgency, Nigerians seem already hanging separately. Worse, it does not even appear to them that they are well on the highway to Sudan or Somalia, an apocalyptic scenario they may lack the ingenuity to understand or confront, let alone escape.

  • Banditry, extremism and family culpability

    Banditry, extremism and family culpability

    Former Executive Secretary, National Health Insurance Scheme, Usman Yusuf, an oncologist, has as usual been talking up a storm over the Bola Tinubu administration’s plan to fight banditry and insecurity in general with every determination the government can summon. Tragically, some northerners, to whom he has directed his inciting rhetoric, appear convinced that he is the genuine article. On the one hand, the fight against insurgency in the Northeast has reached a crushing and intense level. It may be plagued by half measures, such as deradicalisation and rehabilitation of insurgents after capture or after surrender, especially ahead of their victims still marooned in refugee camps, but any indication that the counterinsurgency efforts were directed against the Kanuri has since subsided. On the other hand, however, the campaign against banditry in the Northwest appears bogged down in ethnic and religious rhetoric incomparable with any zealotry the country has seen since independence in 1960.

    The press, which today is largely against the Tinubu administration, loves to get the opinion of the eminent Prof. Yusuf. Last week he regaled the media again with his careless summation of the fight against banditry. His previous staple of deconstructing Boko Haram within the ambit of his zealous ratiocinations is no longer as marketable as it once was. He is not Kanuri. His new pastime is banditry, an affinity he shares with Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, a notable northern Islamic cleric famous for his sympathies for bandits. Reacting to a question on the Nigerian Defence minister’s logic about fighting banditry to its logical conclusion, the oncologist argued that such a fight would unfairly target the Fulani and indicate prejudice against that race. He was more worried about the atrocities he claimed security agencies and Hausa vigilantes were meting out to the Fulani than respond to the cruelty and economic sabotage occasioned by the bandits.

    Never known to mince words on the painful subject of insecurity, Prof. Yusuf had said: “We strongly reject any plan by Nigeria’s Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, to wage war against Fulani bandits. He must understand that he is now a political office holder, not a battlefield soldier, and therefore has a duty to listen to the people. We do not support a full-scale military campaign against Fulani bandits. What we demand is dialogue and non-violent solutions, not endless warfare. Any insistence on military confrontation will ultimately fail. We have firsthand experience. We have entered forests where bandit leaders are located, engaged directly, and witnessed the devastation caused by military operations and vigilante groups (Yan Banga). In reality, these bandits see themselves as freedom fighters.”

    It is true that sometimes dialogue resolves a number of sore issues in a society, but that would depend on what the causes of those sore issues are. There have been suggestions that socio-economic factors are to blame for banditry, amidst a number of other causes, including farmers-herdsmen clashes mostly instigated by shrinking grazing reserves. However, it is not clear what kind of dialogue Prof. Yusuf wants. Most Northwest states had at one time or the other entered into dialogue with the bandits, as a former Katsina State governor Aminu Masari once exasperatedly noted, but each time a truce was reached, and handsome money paid out, it was followed by only very brief spells of peace. After those spells, vicious campaigns of pillage and abductions often and constantly resumed, each campaign signposted by extreme cruelty disproportionate to the alleged cause of the disagreement between the bandits and locals.

    The governors who dialogued with the bandits and later resigned to fate are themselves Fulani. So what kind of dialogue do Prof. Yusuf and Sheikh Gumi want? While the beginnings of banditry so-called might be reasonably attributed to farmers-herdsmen clashes, they have in recent years, especially in light of the rampant and lawless artisanal mining ravaging the Northwest and parts of North Central, morphed into very lucrative kidnapping business. In turn, the kidnapping business is morphing into jihadist fantasies as the Mamuda, Lakurawa, and Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (Arabic for “Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims”), an expanding Salafi-jihadist organisation and al-Qaeda affiliate in the Sahel region of West Africa, take firm root in the Northwest. Some northern political leaders, particularly the progressive ones, are painfully aware of the dangers constituted by these groups, and the fact that banditry, not to talk of the short-sighted political rhetoric of some northern governors, opened the doors to the hyenas to ravage Nigeria.

    What is raging in the North, which Nigeria as a country has taken an unduly long time to adequately respond to, is more than a civil war between the Hausa and Fulani, or between farmers and pastoralists. A more formidable but less obvious war is also raging below the surface between the reactionary and conservative political elite in the region versus the progressive and fairly liberal political and business elite of the North. The former are cocooned in religious conservatism which they see as the be-all and end-all of life, and the second are insistent that whatever ideologies are introduced into the system must birth progress and advance the cause of mankind in a world constantly evolving through scientific and technological wonders. The fierceness of the war is indicated more poignantly in the fears of the first group as they desperately seek to prevent the inevitability of the progress advocated by the second group. The Northeast has taken an awful long time to recognise the madness they once seemed generally enamoured of. On the other hand, the Northwest is tragically the new epicenter of a deathly fight likely to determine the future of Nigeria in more ways than the erratic and infantile self-determination struggles of IPOB’s Nnamdi Kanu or the complacent and rose-coloured liberal lenses through which the Southwest has chosen to view Nigeria.

    Weeks after the United States president Donald Trump threatened to bomb terrorists and their sponsors in Nigeria and also warned against political and criminal justice part of sharia, a warning amplified by some Nigerians particularly from the Middle Belt, a group of Islamic clerics disseminated a video in which they scathingly condemned Nigerians who denounced sharia as both divisive and unconstitutional and also dared the US to do their worst. Watching the video, no one is left in doubt as to the fierceness of the conservatism Nigeria must contend with in order to make progress, or the depth of indoctrination and radicalisation that has infected the body politic. Mr Trump’s war of words, which is not limited to Nigeria or even Africa, but is directed indiscriminately, including at Europe, may grate on the nerves of Nigerians, but in no part of his declarations against Nigeria or his warmongering did he say he would bomb Muslims. But his threats have been appropriated by the clerics, and their ire directed at mostly Middle Belt Christians. The threats, expansively interpreted, have encouraged the divisive former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai and many others to amplify religiously and politically divisive posts on social media.

    Little introspection is going on over the Nigerian condition in many parts of the North as leaders and communities double down on their extreme positions. No lessons are learnt from the tragedy that took place on Australia’s Bondi beach where two radicalised persons, a father and his son, took up arms and enacted a slaughter directed against Jews. Indications are that they were influenced by the Israel-Gaza war, which in many circles has been equated with a war between Muslims and Jews instead of a war over land and living space. Even in Nigeria, and shockingly among the enlightened, any crisis or conflict between Palestinians and Israel is often seen as a war between Christians and Muslims. Such intensely binary view of conflict is also indicated in Nigeria where every disagreement balances on the fulcrum of ethnicity or religion, and seldom on issues, ideology, political platforms or even class division. This binary treatment of issues has permeated families, leading to the radicalisation of children and household members compelled to view life through the prism of religion or ethnicity. But it is not only political opportunists like Mallam el-Rufai, or former vice president Atiku Abubakar, or former governor Peter Obi all of whom recklessly appealed to ethnic and religious sentiments during the 2023 elections. Many other political leaders are guilty of the same sins. The radicalisation has now ended up producing millions of extremists, some of them operating from closets, and constituting existential danger to Nigeria’s fragile unity, stability and development.

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    Addressing the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) National Executive Committee meeting late last week in Abuja, President Tinubu underscored the fragility of Nigeria in his promise to go all-out against non-state actors and terrorists. The truth is that he has no choice, caught as he is between the US rock and Nigeria’s insecurity hard place. But almost immediately, revisionists like Prof. Yusuf decided to ethnicise the war against terror as if Fulani and Muslims were to be specially targeted, just as Mallam el-Rufai has painted a dismal but fallacious picture of Muslims being purged from office and power. Such incendiary and opaque views are believed to resonate in some parts of the North, especially among the gullible. However, Nigeria’s economic indicators show that if growth is not sustained at a high level, the country’s rising and unchecked population could trigger chaos or revolution. But how can growth be assured when insecurity gulps a significant proportion of national resources, not to talk of young men and women consumed by needless war in at least four regions of the country?

    As the northern elite take their eyes off the ball in a wild goose chase for ethnic and religious advantage, they have virtually forgone billions of dollars in tourism revenue. (Kenya makes about $3.5bn annually). The North has multiple tourist destinations either in game reserves or other destinations: Yankari and Borgu game reserves, Mambilla Plateau, Gurara Waterfalls, Wikki Warm Springs, Kajuru Castle, and dozens more. No one visits those exotic and beautiful destinations anymore. Tribe and religion, and years of indulging northern youths and neglecting to curb their bloody tendencies when they were still amenable to control, continue to rob the region of huge earnings. The region’s dominant political and business elite concentrate on Abuja and political power, gorge on oil earnings, and by their incompetence and exploitative orientation impoverish their population. No elite and no generation have been so irresponsible. Worse, no remedies are being conceived or applied save in a few states led by modern and progressive governors who see no future in the bestial return to atavism overtaking the region.

    The disintegration of Somalia, the ongoing civil war in Sudan, the irresolvable chaos of Libya, and the coup-ridden countries of West Africa offer no lessons. That was why Russian flags were hoisted in parts of the North during hardship protests in August 2024, and why some members of the elite sold the idea of a coup d’etat, a bait bought by some incurable optimists unable to appreciate that Nigeria had become too big, too exposed, and even too fractious to fall under the magic wand of military officers. The times have changed, ethnic and religious differences have ossified, and political divisions have become intractable. It is sheer fantasy to expect that a country of more than 230 million people can consequently be mesmerised by a few officers armed with guns, a coup speech, and promises of utopia which their military ancestors failed to midwife for the more than 28 years they seized power and wrecked the country. Reforms are being undertaken, even if imperfect, and democracy, though it continues to wobble, is taking roots. There is free speech, rule of law, freedom of conscience whether they are what they are cracked up to be or not. If the elite will not eschew the madness that is consuming them and find ways of minimising the differences that unsettle them, and if they continue to embrace and wink at the waspish rhetoric of yesterday’s men like Prof. Yusuf and Mallam el-Rufai, then they most brace for calamity, for it will come as surely as day follows night.