The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Opposition politics: Atiku, Obi out do each other

    Opposition politics: Atiku, Obi out do each other

     Months ago, after they finally but grudgingly conceded defeat in the last presidential election, former vice president Atiku Abubakar and former Anambra State governor Peter Obi announced to the world that each of them would be the main opposition to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his All Progressives Congress (APC). True to their forecast, not to say their individualistic approach to politics, they have begun a dogfight to supplant each other as the leading opposition to the ruling party. Alhaji Atiku, former presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was the first to unsheathe his sword last November barely weeks after his presidential bid was anticlimactically buried by the courts. In April, days after an opposition coalition defeated the ruling coalition in Senegal, and still presuming himself to be the chief galvaniser and anchor of the opposition in Nigeria, the former vice president advocated the formation of a coalition to unseat President Tinubu and the APC.

    Mr Obi, 62, former presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the last poll, would have none of that bragging or presumption. Believing himself to be younger and more vibrant than the 77 years old PDP leader, and convinced he had a captive force of belligerent and impudent social media warriors inelegantly labelled as Obidients, the former Anambra governor issued a fanciful war whoop early January pronouncing his readiness to assume the vacant leadership of the opposition. Having come third in the February 2023 presidential election, and having taken advantage of his ethnicity and the biases of many Christian enclaves, it was not immediately clear how he hoped to transcend his self-limiting politics or the geographical and demographic encumbrances he animated. Regardless of any reservations anyone might have and unbothered by the scornfulness of those who see him as a usurper, Mr Obi has shown incredible temerity in playing the lead character in his sophomoric playlet.

    Read Also: Atiku, El-Rufai, Kwankwaso won’t agree to contest with Peter Obi in 2027 – Omokri

    Now, the two leading politicians, with Alhaji Atiku easily the more recognisable before the fateful poll and Mr Obi the more scarified after the poll, have tried to outdo each other in unleashing verbal fusillade against the ruling party, particularly the president. The former vice president began the salvoes last November, and has ensured that neither the volume of his denunciations of the president nor the vitriol is diminished by time or space. Barely two weeks after the Supreme Court upheld President Tinubu’s election, Alhaji Atiku was at the barricades sounding the alarm about Nigeria sliding precipitously into dictatorship and one-party state. This was just five months after the president assumed office. Since then, the former vice president has guaranteed that there is no let-up in his attacks. His attacks do not always have to make sense; all he cares about is that they resonate with the people and flow spontaneously. And in light of the fuel subsidy removal crisis and the terrible divisions that have rent the polity since the elections, he knew that Nigerians were looking for scapegoats upon which to vent their spleens.

    In March, after bandits attacked Rafi LGA in Niger State, Alhaji Atiku exclaimed that Nigeria under President Tinubu had become a killing field. Before then, in January, he had also accused the president of ‘playing the fiddle while the country was drowning in an ocean of insecurity’. The attacks have been relentless for as long as the president has been in office. Relinquish office if the ‘shoe is too big for you,’ he had said in January, and in February he described the president as a ‘hypocrite’ for throwing former president Muhammadu Buhari ‘under the bus’ over the exchange rate volatility unnerving the country. In April, Alhaji Atiku also savaged the president over the Lagos-Calabar coastal road and questioned the integrity of his relationship with businessman Gilbert Chagoury, insisting that in the award of the contract, the president prioritised ‘personal business’ over government business. And about two weeks ago, he also denounced President Tinubu for allegedly lying about fuel subsidy, which he calculated might rise to N5.4trn from N3.6trn. Then he excoriated the president for recklessly taking loans without regard for transparency.

    Alhaji Atiku has found his rhythm in launching broadsides against the Tinubu administration. He will not relent. He will sustain the attacks until the PDP repudiates him as leader or candidate in the next poll, or he is spurned by any other coalition party he might conjure. But for as long as his chances of becoming a party’s standard-bearer remain bright, he will retain his bullishness and savour every word he flings at the enemy, every syllable, every shade of meaning. As far-reaching as he thinks his statements have been, and as effective as they seem in a country bifurcated with hunger and anguish, Mr Obi on the other hand appears confident he could do more damage than the former vice president in ladling boiling oil out of LP’s social media jar. Undoubtedly, he has connected with a few uppercuts. The only problem, however, is that his blows have no bigger impact than feather dusters, effeminate verbal blows that rely on homilies, wisecracks, and tenuous philosophies. Since he issued tentative statements about being the main face of the opposition in Nigeria, he has grown more confident in seeing himself as a potential candidate in the next poll. The only problem is that the next election is still some three years away, enough time to weaken imaginations, wreck reputations, undermine courage, and dissipate confidence.

    Indeed, both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi have one major political weakness: their insurmountable lack of capacity and depth in administering a political party. Mr Obi is of course the worse in this field, but the former vice president is also irredeemable. Founding a new party to practice what they preach is impossible for them. They do not have the time, and will not commit the money. Both gentlemen must, therefore, hope to sustain the PDP or LP, as the case may be, until 2027. Sustaining the LP till that time is almost impossible, assuming Mr Obi and his fractious and irascible group of followers can even muster the intellect and stamina. In the PDP, Alhaji Atiku is a philosophical outlier and a detached administrator and financier. The party’s top hats cast furtive glances at him, deprecate his opportunism, are galled by his constant electoral fiascos, and are superstitious about the jinxes that have dogged him for decades. But if against the run of play, he can coax the party to favour him, any contemplation of a coalition, as he has implied and even rhapsodised, will unleash a fierce undertow in the party. To then proceed, notwithstanding these apprehensions, into a coalition with Mr Obi will lead to an ineluctable diminution of their chances, with the North secretly anxious about a Southeast running mate to the ageing Alhaji Atiku, and the Igbo unable to rouse themselves into the kind of ecstasy that stoked their quest for the presidency under Mr Obi’s candidacy.

    Having tested their mettles separately in the last presidential poll and found themselves to be made of Teflon, Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi have now probably recognised their limitations. In the past few months, they have found their niches in excoriating President Tinubu and the APC. To hope to go beyond those niches may be a futile attempt at reaching for the stars. They lack the spaceship, lack the engineering, and lack the skills. There is indeed a deep foreboding of what the next few years hold for the two gentlemen who seem better suited to running businesses in formless and unregulated environments than in playing politics or running a government.    

  • In search of avatars of development

    In search of avatars of development

    • The crying children of Lot

    How does one describe a vast and richly endowed nation with access to humongous revenues accruing from petroleum resources which cannot feed itself? Anytime the word famine is mentioned in the same breath as Nigeria, one cannot but marvel at the huge paradox of human evolution and development.  All things considered, this is turning out as a defining conjuncture for Nigeria. All the sins and cumulative failures of our ruling class seem to be converging in what looks increasingly like a perfect storm.

     When the crisis of feeble production enters into a potentially fatal contradiction with the crisis of profligate consumption, there is always the possibility of a tragic unraveling of the society itself. Please come with the columnist as we encounter a graphic and stunning illustration of this crisis of development. On a typical weekend, the entire Lagos-Ife corridor with its rich and alluvial soil littered and dotted with vast and sprawling places of worship is transformed into an interminable Bible Belt teeming with joyous and enraptured worshippers.

       But as soon as they troop out having been robbed blind and extorted to the limits of human endurance by spiritual quacks and mountebanks what looks like a historic epiphany begins to reveal the real material circumstances of its provenance: misery and hunger of biblical proportions. As they fan out, the hordes of stricken humanity soon begin to groan and argue about why a single cob of corn should cost a whopping two hundred and fifty naira.

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      Was it not the same thing that cost fifty naira a few years back? The sense of irony is lost on the denizens of dystopia. At this point in time, the distinguished and incredibly principled retired General Alani Ipoola Akinrinade would have spent several hours of back-breaking labour on his remote farm somewhere off the Akinlalu loop on the same corridor. When India was confronted by the same problem shortly after independence, Pandit Nehru declared to his compatriots that if they could not feed themselves, then they should go hungry.

      The bible says that humanity must not live by bread alone. But the same bible affirms that those who cannot work, let them go hungry. We must however note that this was the same condition of abject poverty and harsh material deprivation which threw up Grigori Rasputin, the mystic charlatan and spiritual crank, who held the royal family hostage at the tail end of Tsarist Russia until some outraged and affronted princes of the Romanov dynasty saw him off. It was too little and too late.

  • The heroes of our current eclipse

    The heroes of our current eclipse

    What exactly does it mean when it is said that a nation is developed? And what is the difference between mere growth and actual development? If there is any emerging consensus among most watchers and scholars of Africa in recent times, it is that its postcolonial stasis is so deep and demeaning that it requires a fundamental reset and a rethinking of foundational categories such as development, the spiritual deracination of Africa, cultural anomie arising from the subversion and decimation of its organic institutions , the nation-state paradigm in Africa and the much rhapsodized notion of a universal liberal democracy.

    In one of the most startling paradoxes of our time, General Olusegun Obasanjo, an authoritarian and autocratic ruler of Nigeria both as a soldier and as a civilian, has opened a campaign against the whole tenet of liberal democracy dismissing it as totally unsuitable for Africa in its current phase. Obasanjo is merely returning to base or stalking a much bigger horse which may well be the upending of the current arrangement.

     It will be recalled that in 1989, the Owu-born former military commander penned a scathing indictment of democratic rule and argued for an authoritarian regimen to fast track development. But when the wind of democracy began blowing in Africa a few months after and those close to him dropped the hint that his antediluvian attitude to democracy might imperil his chances of becoming the next UN helmsman, Obasanjo quietly changed track and became an implacable crusader for democracy to his country’s good fortunes.

     Emeritus Professor Otonti Nduka is in a different league and a league all of his own. For over six decades and in an outstanding academic career spanning across several disciplines, the Eligbam community-born scholar and crusader has with remarkable consistency and extraordinary clarity of mind proffered practical and theoretical solutions aimed at lifting the continent out of its developmental quagmire.

      According to the iconic intellectual in a preface to his recently reissued collection of essays titled: The Roots of African Underdevelopment: The Postscript, the emeritus professor avers thus: The basic theme of my academic endeavours over several decades is the making of reason through scientific knowledge preeminent in the ordering and running of human affairs at both personal/individual and collective levels. Whether the endeavours have yielded any result or not; only time will tell”.

       According to Segun Gbadegesin, the notable Nigerian scholar, philosopher and traditional savant,: “For many decades, Emeritus Professor Otonti Nduka has been one of the leading voices, not just in philosophy and education, but also, importantly, in ethical development. His book is a testament to his fertile mind on these and other issues which matter to national development. We are grateful to him for putting his intellectual endowment to the service of the nation, indeed, the continent.”

       Which country will not be grateful to have such a son who has put his talents and self at the behest of his country and race? But we live in strange times and even stranger climes where meanness and mediocrity rule the roost and where the price of intellectual excellence and mental distinction is vendetta and vindictiveness. The person whose fresh energies, originality and mental endowments lead him on a different path away from the ploughed aridity of conventionality will always pay a heavy price.

       This is not a uniquely African thing. It is an integral part of human nature. According to Louis Althusser, the great French Marxist philosopher and political theorist,: “Western intellectual tradition makes the intellectual orphan to pay a heavy price. It is a price ranging from exclusion, alienation, madness and even death.” All the great avatars of human development pay this heavy price. Althusser himself in a moment of paranoid befuddlement after an argument murdered his wife and was promptly committed to a mental asylum.

      Emeritus professor Otiono Nduka is lucky to be alive and in fine fettle too. He writes with such elan and panache that reading him provokes raptures of intellectual ecstasy. Such is the polemical ardour of his expostulations and the interminable string of witty repartees that one could be forgiven for thinking that he was a young academic on the make. He takes no hostages and writes about the global doyens of developmental studies with aplomb.

      After his personally embossed copy landed on our desk, one had flipped through a few pages trying to locate the author on the spectrum of academic seniority. According to his short note, he decided to get in touch after reading the piece on the trauma of Haiti. Like all ancient gurus, what he left unsaid was more eloquent than what he said. Nigeria must avoid the horror and modern hell of Haiti.

      After a few pages, one was stunned to discover that the author was writing on the eve of his ninety sixth birth day. Early last month, on May 9th , the great man celebrated his ninety eighth birthday.  To make sure that this was not a grand hoax, yours sincerely put a call to the old man, and there he truly was. The brief encounter subsisted until nature succumbed to necessity.

       Professor Otiono Nduka smartly sidesteps the problem of offering a definitive definition of what development is because it is a complex amalgam in its sheer multidimensionality. According to him, it is like the proverbial tale of blind people clutching at different parts of an elephant and each one proclaiming Eureka.

       Truth be told, this is a vexed issue that has exercised the mind of some of the greatest and most illustrious children of Africa, including the late Professor Adebayo Adedeji who as the helmsman of the Economic Commission of Africa produced an alternative blueprint to SAP, Professor Onigu Otite, Professor Bade Onimode, Professor Omafume Friday Onoge and a slew of others including the remarkable Guyanese-born Walter Rodney who was eventually dispatched for his pains. Rodney memorably avers that majority of Africans went into colonialism with a hoe and came out with a hoe.

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     Simply put, development is the capacity to expand capacity, either by maximizing opportunities that naturally come your way or by optimizing advantages deliberately created. It is not a univocal affair but a multi-pronged and multi-dimensional struggle in which innovations sometimes cancel out innovations, either by incorporation, sublation or outright cancellation, and in which new insights open the door to fresh contradictions and new problems.

      Professor Nduka’s notions of development can be gleaned in major insights scattered throughout his notable monograph. But before going on to enumerate these, it is noteworthy that he takes a constant and consistent swipe at what development is not about and he can be quite caustic about the prevalence of these debilitating ailments among Africa’s postcolonial elite which can be a drag on true development.

     Chief among these are mental, spiritual and psychological lethargy leading to indolence and the glorification of frivolities, massive corruption, waste and mismanagement of public resources, outlandish profligacy such as seen in the FESTAC extravaganza, unpatriotic collusion with foreign interests to defraud the nation and the resort to superstitious idiocies in the management of human affairs.

    The emeritus professor fingers the prevalence of pre-scientific epistemology and the resort to magical rationalization of pressing political, economic and spiritual difficulties on the continent and among African people as a whole as being principally responsible for the debilitation and comprehensive devastation of the continent’s developmental capacities. He concludes that it is a story of “how Nigerians underdeveloped Nigeria”. (p74)

      Through Segun Gbadegesin, Nduka filters his asseverations further: “Science is knowledge which has been obtained largely through observation and experimentation and has been subjected to sustained critical scrutiny and passed through a many-layered epistemological filter. Mathematics is crucial in this respect. (p114)

      In a terse critique of pre-scientific epistemology which has stood the test of time, Karl Marx notes: All mythology seeks to dominate nature in and around the imagination and must disappear once scientific knowledge gains foothold”. Marx goes on to lampoon rural folks and the mystical ignorance which makes them to hold nature in such unwarranted awe and which often compels them to worship animate and inanimate objects.

     It should be clear from the preceding that Africa carries a crushing burden of poverty, superstition and mass illiteracy. To compound this crisis in Nigeria is a crisis of demography in which the population grows exponentially with the economy contracting and development lagging far behind. In the absence of a visionary elite with core values, it is impossible to evolve not to talk of imposing a coherent and commensurate population policy. 

      Professor Nduka Otiono is unsparing in his criticism of the indigenous African elite spawned by colonialism for their failure to rethink and reset the colonial paradigm imposed by the imperialist masters as it has been done elsewhere. But could it have been otherwise? Formal colonization met Africa at its weakest point, institutionally, culturally and spiritually speaking.

    Arab depredations and their wanton, premeditated violence on the east coast of the continent and early incursions from the Saharan fringes had already left native Africans dazed and disoriented. The introduction of international slavery had robbed them of some of their best brains and heroic fighters in an unequal contest with vastly superior forces armed with the newly acquired munitions.

      It was not the first time the continent was being left behind. Otiono, like many other developmental scholars and anthropological researchers, is equally puzzled by the fact that from all available evidence, the plough, which was a considerable advance on manual labour, eluded tropical Africa. But in addition to the deployment of slave and serf labour, traditional African big-time farmers married as many wives as possible turning them into human mules to work the farm even as they helped to expand the domestic capacity on the home front unlike the genetically incapacitated mule.

      Consequently, and as far as objective reality was concerned, Africa did not lag far behind Europe at the point of colonial irruption. It is important to note that when the Portuguese adventurers arrived at the old Kongo kingdom around present day Angola at the tail end of the fifteenth century, they met a society better organised politically and with a superior social structure than the one they left at home.

     The Portuguese loitered around hoping to encounter the mighty army which underwrote the wonderful conurbation.  Alas, there was none beyond the rudimentary royal guards armed with arrows and machete. The invaders decimated the kingdom and in the next hundred years transported virtually all its inhabitants to the new colony of Brazil through the slave port of Luanda.                                            

         It was precisely at this point that the Industrial Revolution, pioneered in and spearheaded by England with its startling innovations and relentless radicalization of the modes and means of production, put Europe and the western world beyond the reach of Africa. Already, it feels like a bridge too far. The Industrial Revolution is a classic illustration of how to dramatically expand human capacity for rapid development and how to alter the texture of history by changing the structure of society itself.

      In conclusion, four overriding determinants can be isolated. (1) The superannuation of feudal authoritarian rule in Europe and its subordination to variants of liberal democracy (2) The rise of a scientific society. (3) The advent of historic whistleblowers from Copernicus, Galileo to Isaac Newton who continued to insist that the ancient world as we knew it was historically passé. (4) The ascendancy of a visionary political elite with the capacity to mobilize the entire nation behind it in the pursuit of worthy national objectives.

       From the foregoing, it can be seen why fractious multi-ethnic nations roiling in corruption, mismanagement of diversity and abject poverty without a visionary elite to mobilize the entire nation behind a worthy cause have their work cut out for them. Without certain things being in place in most of Africa, the quest for development will continue to be an exercise in futility. Here is wishing the emeritus professor many happy returns.

  • Land (V)

    Land (V)

    In 1807, the British parliament passed a bill to put an end to the trans-Atlantic slave trade to stop the trafficking of Africans to the Americas. To enforce this law on all slaving nations, the British sent squadrons of ships of the Royal Navy on patrol off the coast of West Africa with the authority to arrest ships of all nations contravening the law. Although many ships still managed to smuggle slaves out of Africa, more and more slavers became wary of continuing with the trade and the  number of slaves landing in America was reduced by a considerable extent especially because the Americans followed the lead provided by the British by banning the slave trade out of Africa only a year after the British announced their own ban. This was at a time when cotton had become prominent and the demand for slaves needed to cultivate it was at its peak. Since the unfettered supply of fresh slaves from Africa could no longer be guaranteed, slave owners began to breed slaves on their respective plantations in the same way that they bred dogs and horses. In order to achieve  this objective, some slaves who looked likely to act the part were designated studs whose duty was to impregnate as many females as possible within a short period of time. Failure to be prolific within the framework of their assignment meant an instant demotion to backbreaking field work. Given this background, they turned to their work with a will, even if the woman they were servicing was their own mother hence the epithet ‘motherfucker’, still bandied around as an insult, was hurled at those studs. The turmoil raised in their breast as a result of the opprobrium that was their lot is better left to the imagination. Since all the children produced by female slaves were also slaves no matter who fathered them, plantation owners did their best to boost the number of slaves on their plantations by doing the job themselves, following the example of Thomas Jefferson who fathered no less than six children with one particular slave, even if the slave was three quarters white. Those children were therefore, in a manner of speaking, whiter than their mother. Again, the anguish which had to be borne by the so called lawfully wedded wives on those plantations must register very high on the emotional Richter scale. But spare a thought for the female slaves who worked from sunup to sundown on the outfield and were then raped in the infield at any time of day or night. They gave birth to babies that were not really theirs and who they dared not to love, given the source of the seeds planted in them and their milk was sucked out of their overworked breasts to nurse babies born by their white mistresses who were considered too high and mighty to suckle their own children. Theirs was an impossible row to hoe.

     Many of the fair skinned African Americans you see today are descendants of the slave owners who resorted to self help in the matter of boosting the number of slaves on their plantations. No matter how fair they are however, they are classified as black as long as they are recognised as having one drop of African blood in their veins, no matter how long that drop has been in circulation within them.

    As time went on, the conflict between the North and South over slavery deepened to such an extent that a civil war was with the potential capacity to settle the matter one way or the other was threatening to become inevitable. The inevitable shifted to grim reality as soon as Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President in January 1861. The gathering clouds showed clearly that the point of no return had been passed when even before the inauguration of  President Lincoln several slave owning states had seceded from the Union to form what they called the Confederate States with the capital in Richmond, Virginia and Jefferson Davies as President. Lincoln who was determined to maintain the integrity of the Union at all cost if need be,  began to prepare for a civil war which broke out when Confederate troops fired on Union positions in Fort Sumter which they claimed was on their territory four months later to announce the commencement of four years of war. That conflict has been described as the first modern war, a precursor to the slaughter which was so distressingly characteristic of the First World War in Europe fifty years later. With the availability of a wide variety of lethal weapons made available in prodigious quantities by newly invented technology, the massive slaughter which was a feature of this war was inevitable and this became obvious as soon as the war started.

    It seemed apparent at the beginning of the war that the South was better prepared for the fight as they outmanoeuvred the North in the opening battles. They were even able to carry the fight up North; so for example, the battle of Bull run was fought so close to Washington DC that Senators could watch the battle from their seats in the capital. Two years later however, the last battle of the war on northern territory, arguably the bloodiest battle of the war was fought at Gettysburg. It was at the dedication of the Arlington Cemetery where the dead from this battle were interred that Lincoln gave his brief but eternally memorable speech in which he described democracy as ‘government of the people by the people and for the people’. It was such soul stirring stuff. Still, the war was not concluded until two bloody years after Gettysburg.

    What mattered most to Abe Lincoln was to keep the USA as one federated country but it was soon clear that there was no chance that the institution of slavery was going to survive that war. For a start, so many black men, as many as 200,000 of them rallied to the Federal side and fought in the Union army, not to talk of the many thousands who were active behind enemy lines in the South. All of them were fighting for their freedom and it was most unlikely that they could be forced back into their status as slaves after the war. In any case, what would have been the point of fighting the war if slavery survived it? No human mind, no matter how diabolical could have found a way out of sustaining the institution of slavery after a war in which military casualties on both sides exceeded six hundred and fifty thousand lives.

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    The South lost the war but can be said to have won the uneasy peace that followed it. During the war, the Federal government promised forty acres of land and a mule to every freed slave but this promise was never kept and the former slaves were left to their own limited devices and open to become prey to their erstwhile owners who were smarting from losing the war. Had the promise of land made to the former slaves been kept, the trajectory of the lives of the freedmen would have been completely different. As land owners they would have had a stake in the future of their country, taking pride to develop that small patch of land which they could call their own. In addition, the value of the land available to them would have gone up year after year, increasing their personal prosperity. Unfortunately, the opportunity to integrate the former slaves into a new multiracial society in which everyone had their own recognisable space failed miserably. Nearly two hundred years after the end of slavery, the descendants of those former slaves are still outside looking in at the American dream of freedom, wealth and the pursuit of happiness. It is apparent that even now, Mark Twain’s advice to buy land is hardly applicable to black people. Yes, they certainly are not making any more land but that is of hardly any consequence to deprived black folk living in the USA.

    When the Europeans began arriving in the New World, they were astonished at the sheer size of what they thought was their inheritance. This is because there was land everywhere they looked and as far as they could judge,  nobody owned a square inch of all that land! Unlike what obtained in Europe where land was the most private of available property, the indigenous people jointly owned all the land which their community held in trust for themselves as well as their descendants in the same way that their ancestors had done for countless generations. The thought that anyone could own land must have shocked them to their bone marrow and would have dismissed the very thought of it happening with a negligent wave of the hand. To them land was imbued with holiness, to be treated with respect bordering on awe. The Europeans in their own mind were convinced that land was a commodity, just like any other, to be exploited for immediate profit and given the European intention towards land, it was clear that the two sides could not find accommodation within the same space. And they did not. In the one-sided armed conflicts which followed, the indigenous people were soon driven off their land at the earliest opportunity so that the Europeans could do whatever they wanted with the land which they subjected to brutal exploitation in the same way that they had raped their own continent in their search for immediate gratification. Today, there are no expansive forests or pristine bodies of water anywhere in Europe and as for animals, their children are now taken to petting zoos, there to catch sight of chickens, goats and pigs which they would have never seen live. Europeans now come to Africa to hunt all the big animals that they have hunted to extinction on their own continent.

    Whilst the Americas were being mercilessly exploited by the Europeans, many parts of Africa were protected from a similar fate by the humble mosquito whose bite  added to that of the deadly tsetse fly meant death to unwary visitors to the continent. But then, individual Europeans did not need to set foot in Africa for them to eat Africa to their satiation. The prime example of this being Leopold, king of the Belgians.

    When the so called scramble for Africa began in Europe around 1875, many European countries mainly Britain, France, Portugal and later on, the newly minted kingdom of Germany began to create what they called areas of interest all over the continent. They went around signing dubious if not out rightly fraudulent treaties which they later on turned to colonial enclaves on which, backed by machine guns, cannon and advanced military knowledge, they seized from indigenous rulers who thereafter, were turned into toothless puppets.

    In the now infamous conference held in Berlin under the auspices of Otto von Bismarck, the Europeans met to put some order into the scramble for Africa which before then had threatened to deteriorate into a dangerous melee. It was at this conference that the greatest atrocity to Africans in Africa was allowed to happen.

    The delegates to this conference were from fourteen countries with one of the participants, King Leopold II of Belgium representing the International Congo Society, a body which he formed ostensibly to end slavery in that part of the world and bring Christian civilization to the people. To sweeten the pot, he promised not to tax trade within the territory he was cobbling together in the heart of Africa. This territory covered over two thousand square metres of prime African land containing more than seven million Africans. It was called the Congo Free State  and was the personal estate of Leopold, king of the Belgians to do with it whatever he wanted.

    To be continued.

  • SNAPSONG 221

    SNAPSONG 221

    A Warm Welcome

    Here it comes again

         The long-missed month of June

    As it did last year

         And the year before

    Holding the year

         By its tender waist

    A full fateful half

         That is sometimes fuller than the whole

    The cornfields are green

         With their tasseled triumphs

    Pumpkins roll and rock

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         In the theatre of the furrows

    February’s famished rivers

         Are back with billowing bounty

    The mountain’s millennial wrinkles

         Have vanished with the gleeful showers

    The rains are back

         But alas, not our fortune

    In this grim land and its drought of dreams

         And the long, long distance between

    The morsel and the mouth

         The Have-alls laugh with their banker friends

    The Have—nots drown in the flood of want

         Yeah, we jazz June* in different ways

    •From the poem ‘We Real Cool, by Gwendolyn  Brooks

  • It is good that states have countersued on local government autonomy

    It is good that states have countersued on local government autonomy

    Funny enough,  some people, including some APC members, are clamouring for local government autonomy which will take Nigeria back many decades from what a true federation is. There is no federal system in the world where you have three federal units. In the U.S where we copied democracy from, their counties don’t go to  Washington  to collect money directly.

    Each state must have the power to design the kind of local government system it wants. That is what is called true federalism”. –Governor Charles Soludo at Platform Nigeria 24, a programme by a Lagos-based church, Covenant Nation, to mark the 2024 Democracy Day.

    I haven’t the slightest shame confessing that Democracy Day 24 was the first time I completely sat through any of Platform Nigeria’s events.  And was it worth it?

    Absolutely.Of the many weighty issues discussed at the event, this article  will touch only on  Local Government Autonomy over which a fresh debate recently ensued when very surprisingly, the Federal Government   headed to the Supreme Court, asking that the apex court give the totally anti – federalist conjecture its legal backing.

    Uncle Bola Ige, of blessed memory, would, as a lawyer and politician,  be most distraught, and disappointed, by the action of the otherwise cerebral Attorney – General and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, on account of this professional misstep. 

    This is not a guess because I  know that I am standing on solid ground when I make that claim. In confirmation, please permit me to press the inimitable  Cicero into service, albeit posthumously.

    Welcome then to my article of  28 July, 2017 titled: Constitutional Amendment:An Absolutely Self-Serving National Assembly.

    It reads as follows: “Any action, whether legislative or executive in this country today that is not programmed to respond to the yearnings of the populace will amount to an excise in futility”. – Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo

    Should the National Assembly ever have its way with these convoluted constitutional amendments, Nigeria will be guaranteed to make no headway, whatever, this entire century.  Nor would the members be bothered whatever happens to the country. They showed this total disdain for the country’s well-being when they shut out devolution of powers to states which a rational National Assembly should have realised is the most assured way to stem the fissiparous tendencies mushrooming all over the country, and tearing at the very heart of the nation.  Equally, were they perspicacious enough, they should have known that it was disingenuous of them to situate  their approval of Local Government autonomy on the laughable excuse of fighting  state executive- induced corruption  because, were that to be true, then there would have been  no justification for having a national assembly which has turned oversight functions to an avenue for corruption, harassing and intimidating heads of federal agencies in order to have their way.

    Rather than appreciate that only a truly Peoples’ constitution can turn Nigeria back from its present perilous road to Golgotha, they are more interested in having immunity, becoming members of the Council of State and subordinating even the  president to themselves in constitutional matters. Are they so remiss they don’t know that federating units are only limited  to federal and state?  From where, therefore, did they manufacture autonomy for local governments? If INEC continually bungles     national elections, how reasonable is it to now have inflicted on it the additional burden of conducting Local Government elections? Or in which part of the civilised  world is this the norm?

    If the intention is to stop state governors from tampering with local government funds, who will, in turn,  protect Nigerians from these  legislators whose humongous allowances owe nothing to the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission? Nigerians have not forgotten how Speaker Dimeji Bankole and the House leadership, rather than the RMAFC,   self- awarded to themselves the outrageous allowances to which their senate counterparts not only acquiesced, but went on to borrow to pay even when it was not appropriated in that year’s  budget.

    It is apposite here to invite Uncle Bola Ige, unarguably one of Nigeria’s most knowledgeable politicians of any era,  to put these legislators through a learning curve.

    Writing in his column in the Tribune of 27 April, 1996 he asserted as follows, just as Charles Soludo would incisively postulate at Platform Nigeria 24 on Wednesday, 12 June, 2024 that:”In a federal set-up, the federal government must have nothing to do with the creation or running of local government. Nigeria is the only federation in the entire world where the federal government decides how, where, and when a local government council must run. In all civilized countries, and in all democratic countries, it is the state or provincial or regional government that legislates on local government”.

    He wrote further: “Unfortunately, the Murtala-Obasanjo federal military government began the nonsense that has remained with us ever since when it set  up the  Ibrahim Dasuki  commission whose recommendation is the worst disaster to happen to local government system in Nigeria because it was there that the idea of uniformity in size, scope and administration was introduced”.

    Of course, the ever perspicacious legal guru naturally suspected a hidden agenda, which he said, was to “strengthen the administrative stranglehold of the North over  the whole of Nigeria”.

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    Without a doubt, that same Northern agenda is in play in this Local Government autonomy affair. It is, in fact, as I will show below, now more urgent than ever  before, in this era of  grazing land seeking, murderous Fulani herdsmen.

    I shall now proceed to a write up, which I did not author, but shared on my Face book wall during the past week.

    Titled: Local Government Autonomy, Abrogation of  State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) and Why the  Federal Government Must Reliquish Responsibility for Creation of Local Government Councils, the author wrote:

    “We are all aware of the efforts to make Local Governments autonomous. We are told it is to curb ‘corruption and ensure development at the grassroots” because state governors do not allow their funds to reach them thereby stagnating growth at that level. There is equally a strong move to abrogate State Independent Electoral Commissions [SIEC].

    Let us now analyse the hidden objectives of this sweet smelling idea, to see if  it is the way to go in a federation.

    Firstly the Federal Government creates Local Governments a preponderance of which has gone to the North. Secondly to be deemed an indigene of a state, one’s Local Government must formally confirm your status.  Thirdly the State Independent Electoral Commission is responsible for Local Government elections. To contest an election, your status as an indigene must be confirmed by your Local Government.

    Impact of  Local Government Autonomy:

    Immediately it becomes law, Federalism, as we know it, ceases to exist and Nigeria, in effect,  becomes a unitary state with 774 Local Governments and 36 State Governments. We will  then have 36

    governors and 774 Local Government Chairmen, all running to Abuja to collect  money, thus rendering state governors irrelevant in  states which they were elected to govern.

    Since the Federal Government   creates  Local Governments, let us assume it decides to create Local Governments in Lagos state.

    If Hausas in Obalende or Agege are inspired, by federal forces, to begin an agitation for whatever reason, or Agege is broken into two Local Governments, and the Federal INEC now conducts LG elections, Hausas  are guaranteed to get a distinct local government in Agege where they are an obvious minority.

    1.That will be a first step for Hausas in Agege, or Igbos in Festac, to become ‘Indigenes’ of Lagos state, and so can, effortlessly,  contest the state’s governorship election.

    Meanwhile, that will never happen in Kano or Enugu.

    2. Before we know it, a bye-law can be passed whereby the new Local Government becomes sharia compliant in an LG area where Muslims are in the minority.

    3. They can then legislate to have an Emir or Eze as the LG’s number one traditional authority; all in another man’s land.

    4. They will now be able to receive funds directly to fund their activities, qua activities, in other peoples’ states.

    5. The Local Governments could then become Abuja’s staging post for their next moves, whatever these are, in states belonging to other people.

    6. This cannot  happen in the north where they will be chased away, at best, or in the East where, as a stranger, you cannot now buy a plot of land. Some Igbos are even refusing a Pope – appointed Igbo bishop, for not coming from their own state.

    The most dangerous scenario, however, will be where the Federal Government desires to pursue an objective which the State government objects to, either for religious or cultural reasons, or on  principles of federalism, but which the Federal Government, relying on such Local Government chairmen in the state will get done, regardless, since he who pays the piper dictates the tune.

    Some citizens would thus have lost the ability to protect their traditional institutions,  especially land, even religious affinity in their own state.

    The consequences are better imagined, especially in Southern Nigeria, as dipping the Koran in the Atlantic ocean, as long prophesied by Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sadauna of Sokoto, may no longer be a mirage, only delayed.

    Concluding, if the urge for autonomy for Local Governments  was the mindset of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, I cannot, in my wildest imagination, fathom its attraction for the Tinubu government unless we are being told that they know, in advance, the mindset of all future Nigerian presidents.

  • Nigeria’s secularism bogey

    Nigeria’s secularism bogey

    On page 132 of Stephen Ullmann’s 1977 book titled Semantics: An introduction to the science of meaning, there is the following quite profound quotation credited to a French critic: “At certain moments in the life of a nation or [humankind] at large, there are words in which is concentrated a force of feeling and of will power which makes them singularly beneficial or particularly formidable. A mere mention of them will unleash the anger or enthusiasm of crowds, of parties, of immense groups of people.” These words have value more for the emotions they evoke than for the neutral or concrete meanings they bear. One such word is ‘secularism’.

    It gained particular currency in the mid-1980s, arising from the reported membership of Nigeria in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), now called Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) opposed the membership, arguing that it violated the secular status of the country. However, the Baraden Sokoto and Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), at the time, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, contended that Nigeria was a multi-religious state and not a secular one. He espoused this position at the fund raising and foundation laying ceremony of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) Central Mosque in Ile-Ife on 1 November, 1986, in his Guest Speech titled, “Religion and the Nigerian State”.

    Dasuki supported his argument by citing section 17(3)(b) of the 1979 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which declares as follows: “The State shall direct its policy towards ensuring that conditions of work are just and humane, and that there are adequate facilities for leisure and for social, religious and cultural life.” He then argued further that, on the strength of this constitutional provision, government had the duty to provide resources for building mosques, among other religious facilities. Furthermore, he cited the following definition of ‘Secularism’ in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English: “a system of social teaching or organisation which allows no part for religion or the Church”.

     In response to the position that Nigeria was a multi-religious state, the Nigerian newspaper, The Guardian, wrote a furious editorial which was captioned “What is a secular state?” in its Friday, 7 November, 1986 edition.  Although The Guardian did not specify or quote exactly what Dasuki’s justification for his claims were, the editorial described his views as “ill-reflected and uncritical.” The editorial also declared acerbically that “the rest of the speech … is a bundle of conceptual cramps.” It further contended as follows: “There is no doubt that Nigeria is a multi-religious society, meaning that we have several religious faiths. But that is different from what Dasuki describes as a ‘multi-religious state.’ His problem is one of failure to distinguish between Society and State.” The editorial then strenuously tried to distinguish between these two concepts.

    Earlier, it had said: “The substance of Dasuki’s speech both on the television and as reported in the print media is not significantly coherent enough to attract comment. It is, however, an open blunder on the issue of theocracy and state secularism.” Advancing its argument further, the editorial said: “Where the laws of a state are derived from some divine scriptures, say the Bible or the Holy Quoran, and they are carried out according to divine injunctions, such a state is theocratic… But where the laws of a state are man-made, where they are enacted through conventional legislative processes with provisions for change, that state is secular.”

    Considering this claim, The Guardian did not seem to be sufficiently cognizant of the Judeo-Christian foundations of common law, which the editorial called “man-made” law. In a 20 March, 2019 article titled “A review of Christian foundations of the common law, 3 volumes, by Augusto Zimmermann”, Bill Muehlenberg states about the 2018 set of books: “In nearly 600 pages the Perth-based academic provides us with a tremendously important overview of how the Judeo-Christian worldview became the major foundational building block of Western law and legal theory.” Quoting the author directly, Muehlenberg notes: “Says Zimmermann: ‘Christian philosophy provided the basic foundation of the common law tradition. … It is impossible to grasp the full development of the common law without first exploring its profound religious dimensions, and its motivating faith.’”

    Fourteen years after the 1986 attack on Dasuki by The Guardian on the issue of ‘secularism’, fresh controversy was generated when, in 2000, some states in Northern Nigeria expanded the application of Sharia (or Islamic law) to cover criminal cases. Those who believed that this expansion of the application of Sharia did not violate the nation’s constitution refer to the following provisions: (1) Section 275: “(1) There shall be for any State that requires it a Sharia Court of Appeal for the State”, and (2) Section 277: “(1) The Sharia Court of Appeal of a State shall, in addition to such other jurisdiction as may be conferred upon it by the law of the State, exercise such appellate and supervisory jurisdiction in civil proceedings involving questions of Islamic personal law which the court is competent to decide in accordance with the provisions of subsection (2) of this section.”

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    The late eminent jurists Justice Akinola Aguda, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and Justice Kayode Eso, Retired Supreme Court Judge, were reported to have said that in the light of especially section 10 of the 1999 constitution, the adoption of Sharia was unconstitutional and illegal. Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka also held the same view, as well as Dr. Anthony Olubunmi Okogie (when he was the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos), and, of course, CAN. However, Chief Bola Ige (SAN), as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, was reported to have said as follows in the 4 March, 2001 issue of the online version of ThisDay: “To tell you the truth, none of the states which have passed what they call Sharia law has violated any part of the Nigerian constitution.”

    Moreover, on the BBC’s interactive phone-in programme, “Talking Point”, then-incumbent President Olusegun Obasanjo, on 18 February, 2002, said as follows, about Nigeria: “We are not a secular state – we are a multi-religious state. That is what we call ourselves in our constitution.” This contradicts the editorial of The Guardian. Similarly, in a 2014 academic paper titled “Is Nigeria a secular state? Law, human rights and religion in context”, by Osita Nnamani Ogbu, the opening sentence is: “Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state.”

    The policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria to expand and diversify the banking system in the country and provide more options, such as Islamic banking, for the banking public also renewed the ‘secularism’ controversy coupled with an attempted ‘Islamisation’ of Nigeria allegation. In a 2021 paper by K. Kewuyemi, titled “Islamic banking and the question of secularism in Nigeria”, the author noted: “Many official practices such as work-free days (Saturdays and Sundays), holidays (on Christmas, Idul fiṭr), churches and mosques in the state government houses and presidential villa clearly show that there is an engagement with religion. Islamic banking is one of the ways by which the economic aspect of Islam is practiced; it does not violate section 10 of the Nigerian Constitution.”

    Thirty-eight years after The Guardian’s furious editorial reaction to Dasuki’s claim that Nigeria is a multi-religious state and not a secular one, Reuben Abati, who happens to have been the Chairman of the Editorial Board of The Guardian, from 2001 to 2011, said, in an Arise News analysis, on 17 May, 2024: “The constitution of Nigeria at section 10 thereof is very clear. It says the Federation or a State in any part of the Federation shall not adopt any religion as state religion. The operative word here is ‘shall’; it’s a command; it’s not an advice … But in spite of this, you’ll find government at Federal level and State levels … sponsoring pilgrimages either to Jerusalem or Mecca. … [G]overnment tells you Nigeria is a secular State and yet they are devoting 90 billion to send people to Mecca.”

    Abati then continued: “Maybe the time has come when we should begin to advocate for … the repeal of the sections of the laws creating the National Hajj Commission … creating the National Christian Commission act. Maybe if there’s no legal backing, maybe then nobody will be able to say we want to support pilgrims. Politicians do it for political reasons as a way of settling people who support them, and that is the hypocrisy. The state should have no business with religion.”

    These impassioned views of Reuben Abati seem to discountenance section 17(3)(b) of the 1999 constitution which expressly makes it the duty of the State to provide facilities for religious life. Would stopping the subsidy for or sponsorship of Hajj therefore not be unconstitutional? He also seemingly unwittingly admitted that the establishment of Pilgrims Welfare Boards has legal backing. Would the advocacy for the repeal of the laws not, as such, be in bad faith, considering the fact that the Pilgrims Welfare Boards are instruments for performing the State’s duty of facilitating religious life? 

    The current debate on whether it is right or wrong to sponsor pilgrims to Hajj or subsidise the pilgrimage or scrap Pilgrims Welfare Boards altogether raises the question of how much some of the analysts know about the history of government intervention in Hajj funding. Iheanyi M. Enwerem, for example, notes as follows in his 1995 book titled A Dangerous Awakening. The Politicization of Religion in Nigeria: “confronted by the possibility of religious strife in the old Western Region, where Muslims accounted for about half of the population, and as a measure of precaution, Awolowo statutorily established in May 1958, a Pilgrims Welfare Board for Muslims.” A more precise account is that Awolowo established the Muslim Pilgrims Welfare Board, the first in the country, as a political card, to assuage the feelings of the Muslims of Western Region who felt they were being marginalised in governance and denied government educational benefits such as foreign scholarships, and were therefore making moves to establish a Muslim political party of their own in Yorubaland.

    Those who claim that Nigeria is a secular state are often quick to cite section 10 of the constitution, but avert their eyes from section 17(3)(b), among other provisions. ‘Secularism’ in Nigeria is therefore becoming increasingly semantically vacuous or extremely multi-interpretational. It seems to be, essentially, a space-filler for people who don’t have much to say or a cover for those who wish to make claims without having to bear the burden of logicality or proof. Calling the country a secular State is a means of frightening, distracting or hamstringing governments which don’t know their onions. It seems to play to the gallery, and amounts to a strategy for attracting attention. 

  • As Tinubu’s South African outing gives them content for ‘Elon’s cheque’

    As Tinubu’s South African outing gives them content for ‘Elon’s cheque’

    Being the Eid-el-Kabir week, last week happened for President Bola Tinubu entirely outside the seat of power. Recall he already left for Lagos to celebrate the festival. The week kicked off on Sunday with the Sallah (Eid-el-Kabir) celebration. The festival, known as Ileya by the Yoruba people, is always marked with big celebrations in the different parts of the Southwest, bringing people of various faiths back home.

    The week had its striking moments, events with particularly noticeable activities, and their resulting effects. One of such events was the President’s outing in South Africa. Actually, it was not about what he did or did not, rather the sort of content that some others decided to create out of that rather innocent outing. During the week, Wednesday to be exact, President Bola Tinubu joined other African leaders to grace the second term swearing-in ceremony of President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria.

    Speaking about the occasion the next day when his hosted visited him at his hotel in Johannesburg, President Tinubu noted that Ramaphosa’s speech at the occasion captured the current African challenges, which leaders, particularly those of Nigeria and South Africa, must work collaboratively to tackle. “I really enjoyed your speech at the ceremony. I was delighted listening to you. We have lots of issues in common, and we need to work more closely together. It was a good celebration” were his words captured in a statement by his Spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale.

    On his verified X handle, @officialABAT, President Tinubu, on Thursday summed up his outing in South Africa, saying “I had the honor of attending President Cyril Ramaphosa’s inauguration in Pretoria yesterday, and today I met with him for a bilateral meeting. Our discussions focused on strengthening cooperation and enhancing the economic ties between Nigeria and South Africa.

    “President Ramaphosa’s warm welcome and dedication to mutual respect and cooperation reflect the depth of our relationship. We intend working together to address our countries’ challenges through robust trade and economic strategies, and I am hopeful that we can lead our nations towards increased prosperity and unity. Looking forward to collaborating at this crucial juncture for the progress of our continent”, he said.

    Corroborating our President’s narration, the South African Presidency, on its verified X handle, @PresidencyZA, published President Ramaphosa’s submission after the meeting, quoting him as saying “we want to engender good economic and trade relations between Nigeria and South Africa to address the challenges that our two countries face. So it’s been a great pleasure and an honour to have you here, Your Excellency, and that’s why I felt I should come and pay my respects”. That was Ramaphosa’s message to his brother President, Tinubu.

    These were the highlights of the two occasions featuring Tinubu in South Africa, however, one of the two occasions seemed to catch the attention of some of our compatriots with spasm. Before that bilateral meeting in Johannesburg on Thursday, the main event had held in Pretoria on Wednesday, a grand occasion by all standards. The swearing-in ceremony was attended by a number of heads of state and government as well as official representatives of some other countries. Our President attended as one of the invited heads of government to the event. However, proceedings at the event somehow became a content source for some of our compatriots, something to pour out on by a certain category of Nigerians.

    Almost immediately after the ceremony, an opposition figure and an associate of Mr Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Aisha Yesufu, took to her YouTube channel, recorded a video, which she posted on her verified X handle, @AishaYesufu, claiming that President Tinubu was snubbed by his host and also pushed back from the from row. She seemed her post would garner comments and likes from people who share same feeling and political view with her.

    Before long re-tweets, likes/dislikes and other forms responses started trailing Yesufu’s post, it became a huge content in the media, especially on the social media platforms, even beyond that day. It formed topics for discussions, as a matter of fact, it became a topic for some groups, especially Obidient groups, to discuss on various social media platforms.

    What she must have also expected were some of the reactions and comments that would not agree with her claims. A particularly revealing and bubble-bursting reaction was from O’tega Ogra, Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Digital/New Media. Ogra, who is acquainted with presidential protocols as well as what actually went down in Pretoria, responded almost immediately to the 8:31 minutes-long video by Yesufu, putting a lie to her claims and revealing she had pushed out untruths and manifest ignorance, doing so with video and pictorial evidences.

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    “Aisha has the constitutionally guaranteed right to express yourself, but your consistent display of crass ignorance and shameful behaviour, seemingly aimed at garnering likes and retweets, in the name of your disdain and hatred (which you profess at any given opportunity) for Nigeria is shameful to say the least.

    “For the record: (1.) That first row at today’s inauguration was reserved for South African kings/royalty. (2.) The South African President wasn’t expected to start greeting dignitaries at the time of the video you shared and he was respectfully recalled to the podium by the inauguration compere (see video below). (3.) Immediately after President Ramaphosa finished the anthem, he went ahead to greet the visiting presidents who were all seated in the second row (similar to the way visiting presidents were seated in the third row during Nigeria’s own inauguration on May 29, 2023 – see pictures below)”, Ogra said in the response posted on his verified X handle, @otegaogra.

    After all the hullabaloo about Tinubu being snubbed by Ramaphosa at the inauguration ceremony, the South African President made it better for those wondering what really happened, (who should be believed between Yesufu, those who swallowed narrative hook, line and sinker, and those who felt she was only playing with people’s intelligence with outright falsehood and ignorant claims), by travelling 58.2 kilometres from Pretoria to Johannesburg to meet with his Nigerian counterpart, hold a bilateral meeting, during which they both agreed on issues of mutual interest, requiring their collaboration and cooperation. How do you visit someone you allegedly snubbed on your big day?

    He definitely put a lie on the claim that did not just slight Tinubu and Nigeria, but depicted his administration and country in bad light. Matter sorted, but not without giving those who live on social media content something to glean from Elon Musk. To borrow Ogra’s summation of Yesufu’s intent: “with or without your personal enmity, Nigeria will succeed. I truly hope you receive your ‘Elon Cheque’ in full this month”.

    Besides the Wednesday /Thursday’s development in South African, the President had a full week of real activities. On Sunday, which was the Sallah day, he observed the Eid prayers with other senior officials of the administration, as well as Lagos’ political class, after which he sent his Sallah message to Nigerians, urging citizens to embrace the spirit of sacrifice, love, and charity, especially towards the vulnerable. He also emphasized that citizenship comes with responsibilities, including loving one’s country and neighbours, and sharing resources with others.

    It was also Father’s Day and in his message to all Nigerian fathers, himself being one, he saluted all those who fill that role for their sacrifices and resilience in shaping the country’s future, noting that society is in better stead because of fathers’ sacrificial responsibility. He acknowledged the significance of the day, which honours all fathers, living and deceased, for their role in guiding children and instilling values like discipline, integrity, and service. He praised fathers as “true heroes” who work tirelessly to provide for their families, describing their commitment as a “bounden duty” to positively shape the destinies of the next generation.

    Then on Tuesday, still as part of the Eid-el-Kabir celebration, he received representatives of the National Assembly, led by the President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio. It was another opportunity to pass a strong national restructuring message to citizens: If we must achieve a working nation, we as citizens have our own role that must not be shirked. Though much is expected from leadership, the citizens must also ensure their part is not left unattended. 

    “The need (for some citizens) to change the rent-seeking mindset and become more productive to the economy is a challenge. The need to stop smuggling and all economic sabotage”, he urged, adding “why should we have people removing rail tracks and all that, stealing electric cables and sabotaging the economy? We must embrace the campaign to change our value system. We must tell our people that the challenge we face is for all of us to change our mindset about our country.

    “Yes, there is poverty; there is suffering in the land. We are not the only people facing such, but we must face our challenges. We must find a way to eliminate banditry and terrorism so that farmers can bring out food from the farmland. If you do not have good roads to bring the food to the population, even if you grow the food and you are losing 60-70 percent to damages, you will pay the price”, President Tinubu said.

    There were other occasions that saw his celebrating with some Nigerians for reasons of celebration, and there were also occasions to mourn those who lost loved ones. For instance, on Wednesday and Thursday, he celebrated the Delta State Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori, and his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, for their birthdays respectively. In like manner, on Monday, Wednesday he mourned one-time Chairman of the Old Oyo State Civil Service Commission, Chief Oluremi Ademola Atanda; a long-reigning traditional ruler in Southern Kaduna, Dr Tagwai Sambo; and the mother of former President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, Chief Florence Morenike Saraki, respectively.

    He also attended the Jumat Mosque in Area 1 on Friday, where a special anniversary prayer session was held in honor of his mother, Alhaja Abibatu Mogaji, and inauguration of construction of 330 boreholes across the country in her honor. During the session, there was also recitation of the Holy Qur’an.

    Although he returned to Abuja from South African on Thursday, the new week is actually going to be the first active working week since after the Sallah holiday, which ended last Wednesday. Many activities are expected, including a possible Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting. Let us watch if content creators will have something new and juicy to feast on.

  • A SONG FOR CHILDREN’S DAY (3)

    A SONG FOR CHILDREN’S DAY (3)

    If you don’t see me in the parade today

              Do not think I love my country less

    Dizzy with hunger

    deaf from want

    if I stumble through the anthem

    I may black out before the pledge

    object of ceaseless ridicule

    from children of moneyed fathers

    whose stolen wealth has depleted the land

    whose moral plague

    has sickened our senses

         If you don’t see me in the parade today

         Do not think I love my country less

    But I know many of my mates will come

    from those GRA mansions

    where every gate tells the world to

     BEWAREOF THE DOG

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    where fathers are cruelly rich

    and entire broods squirm in unearned wealth

    where cats eat from silver bowls

    and cockroaches are fat like feathered chicks

    Oh what a wonder

    seeing those mates scampering

    out of gleaming SUV’s

    their uniforms dutifully ironed

    their silver shoes and golden feet,

    filing up, marching, singing, saluting

    blissfully unaware of the rot and ruin

    their thieving parents have wrought

    First published in Songs of the Season; updated and re-used here with significant amendments.the future that is ours

    they have so blindly undone

    Oh what a wonder

    shaking our nation’s hands

    with such unequal fingers!

         If you don’t see me in the parade today

         Never think I love my country

                         Concluded

  • Presidential swagger and the ‘dobale’ for democracy

    Presidential swagger and the ‘dobale’ for democracy

    The last week was another exciting one that came with ramifications. It was the week that commemorated a very significant spot in Nigeria’s history, the Democracy Day, marking the 25th year of unbroken stretch of democratic rule. It was another week for President Bola Tinubu to interact publicly with Nigerians, give them an idea of what he has been doing, what he is doing with his mandate and what should be expected going forward, especially as it concerns the prevailing economic and political situations in the country.

    Without seeming to detract from the importance of the previous days and days after June 12, the Nigerian Democracy Day, it was that day that saw the most momentous events of the week. Things still being discussed and debated; from the morning of that to late into the night, the series of unusual conversations and activities stood out through the week, leaving virtually no time for other issues to be considered.

    Right from 7AM of Wednesday, June 12, President Tinubu started giving Nigerians contents when he addressed them through a live broadcast, in commemoration of the democracy, which he was a key player of the struggle that restored the popular mode of governance to the country, describing it as “this democracy for which so much has already been given”. Of course he had so much to say about democracy, especially the fact that he was not just a major part of the process that eventually brought democracy back, but that he, a player in the struggle, is now a direct beneficiary of the process, having emerged Nigeria’s President at this point in time.

    “Fellow Nigerians, our Democracy is more than a historic fact. It is a living, breathing reality. The true meaning of this day is not to focus solely on the great deeds of the past that have brought us to this point. Yes, we pay eternal honour to those who laid down their lives, sacrificing everything to pave the way for the nation. I stand uniquely placed in this regard. I was among those who took the risk to midwife the birth of our democracy. I am now a direct and obvious beneficiary of the fruits of those historic efforts”, he said.

    It was later in the evening, at the Democracy Day dinner held at the State House Conference Centre that much more became clear as to the roles the then Senator Bola Tinubu played in the democracy struggle. The dinner also revealed clearer the identity of the President before he became the preeminent Nigerian politician. There was an assembly of his comrades in the struggle, many of whom you might not have thought were once in same boat with Tinubu. It is not strange to see him with people like Aremo Olusegun Osoba and perhaps that they both braced the dangerous military onslaught side by side, it would take anyone who followed the pro-democracy struggle to place him with the likes of Senator Shehu Sani, the Senior Advocate Olisa Agbakoba and the current Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani.

    As a matter of fact, people like Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the dictatorship of General Ibrahim Babangida, before he also became a target for being too vocal about return to democracy, revealed some of the roles played by Tinubu. According to Professor Akinyemi, most of the funding and the intelligence connections that got most of those who escaped either incarceration or death were supplied by the man who is now President. He said Tinubu sold his house in London to fund the struggle, ameliorating the effects of the squeeze unleashed by the General Sani Abacha junta on those daring his authority.

    Senator Sani, while making a plea for the release of #EndSARS protesters still being held by security agencies, revealed something about the President; he described him as the father of protests in Nigeria, referring to the dark era of citizens’ face-off with the military. “Any young protester in Nigeria today, learned from you because you were the father of protest in Nigeria. Do something about it, give them the freedom. You taught us, you funded us to stand up and fight. So, they are your children and your grandchildren, give them the pardon”, he said 

    But before that revealing evening, when a lot that used to be more of personal or interpersonal information became universal, the President spoke to Nigerians on topics concerning their collective and individual survival. The raging issues are the state of the economy and the organized Labour’s demand for a new national minimum wage, the President did not fail to give updates on these as well. Already there was anxiety in the public with many wandering if he was treating the issues that touch them most.

    “Our economy has been in desperate need of reform for decades. It has been unbalanced because it was built on the flawed foundation of over-reliance on revenues from the exploitation of oil. The reforms we have initiated are intended to create a stronger, better foundation for future growth. There is no doubt the reforms have occasioned hardship. Yet, they are necessary repairs required to fix the economy over the long run so that everyone has access to economic opportunity, fair pay and compensation for his endeavour and labour. As we continue to reform the economy, I shall always listen to the people and will never turn my back on you.

    “In this spirit, we have negotiated in good faith and with open arms with organized labour on a new national minimum wage. We shall soon send an executive bill to the National Assembly to enshrine what has been agreed upon as part of our law for the next five years or less”, he said, addressing the issues affecting Nigerians most.

    Then during the Democracy Day Parade held at the Eagles Square, much later in the morning, there was that incident which caused a stare and some stir, not just at the square, but virtually everywhere the event was being watched live. While ascending into the open-roof parade inspection vehicle, the President tripped forward in the car. Those closer to where it happened disclosed he stepped on his agbada and while trying to stand upright, the cloth pulled him back, causing a fall. Almost immediately this became the sensation for many, especially on the social media. In his words later in the day at the dinner, that incident sent social media confused with all sorts of conjectures sparking here and there.

    In their usual manner, social media horde started the caricature, even those who borrowed MTN and Airtel data seemed to have something to cruise over, giving it all sorts of meanings. However, the man had immediately picked himself up, stood straight and continued with his scheduled task of parading the square, waving at the people and receiving cheers along the way. Later in the day, while speaking at the dinner, he started with that incident, providing a much deeper meaning and perspective than most people could have imagined of something they thought was a misfortune.

    Although those who are always quick to cast their country and leaders down had their laugh, dry and empty, Tinubu, when it was time for his right of reply, once again showed the stuff he is made of; always applying the higher faculty, coming from where most minds could not fathom. He corrected the impression that what happened in the morning was not a misfortune, rather another obeisance to democracy, which he noted came at a very expensive cost.

    “Early this morning, I had a swagger and it is on the social media, they are confused whether I was doing Buga or doing Babariga. But it is a day to celebrate democracy, why doing dobale (prostrating) for the day. I am a traditional Yoruba boy, I did my dobale (prostrating). Democracy is a day that is worthy of falling for”, he explained.

    This his explanation of what some thought would have taken heads has been applauded widely, hailed for introducing a perspective never expected and lighting up everybody’s mood, including those who had feared the worst.

    Like indicated earlier, Wednesday was not the only exciting day of the week, although it had much more than most days. For instance, at the beginning of the week, Sunday to be precise, he took further critical steps at establishing a globally competitive climate action framework. Besides appointing more people into that sector to expand its governance structure, he also approved a list of clear-cut terms of reference for the man running the show, the Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action (SPEC), Ajuri Ngelale.

    Read Also: From Kudi Abiola Corner to Dobale for Democracy

    On Monday, besides felicitating with elder statesman, Chief Arthur Mbanefo, who turned 94 years, he appointed a new Chairman for the Police Service Commission (PSC), in the person of retired Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Hashimu Argungu. He also appointed Mohammed Sheidu as the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Police Trust Fund (NPTF). On Tuesday, he ordered a manhunt for the bandits killing defenseless citizens in Katsina. He also praised the faith of an Indonesian investor company in Nigeria, Tolaram Group, which took over Diagio’s investment in Guinness Nigeria.

    Then on Wednesday, he celebrated ace journalist and media proprietor, Chairman of Vanguard Newspapers, Uncle Sam Amuka-Pemu, who clocked a new age. Same way he celebrated the President of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who clocked 70 years on Thursday. He also celebrated Otunba Adekunle Ojora who clocked the ripe age of 92 years, also on Thursday. Later same Thursday he appointed Taminu Yakubu, a one-time Chief Economic Adviser to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as Director-General of the Budget Office.

    On Friday, before he left Abuja for Lagos, where he is now celebrating his Eid-el-Kabir, he met with the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), America’s principal law enforcement agency, Christopher Wray, to discuss critical security collaborations, including fight against fight against cybercrime and terrorism. He also approved the release of a reviewed list of appointees into governing boards of universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.

    The last week came with its own sort of excitement. This week will definitely come with its own type, especially in this season of sallah celebration, tomorrow and Tuesday’s holiday notwithstanding. Let us watch how it pans out.