The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • Recalibrating palliatives

    Recalibrating palliatives

    • Improving the means of reaching the vulnerable

    Stories like the ones that formed the plank of my write-up today usually get me depressed: (a) “DSS recovers 2,000 bags of diverted rice”, and (b) “FG begins sale of 50kg rice for N40,000”. Why do they get me depressed? They get me depressed because those engaging in the evil practices know the consequences of their actions. They know that what they are doing will harm fellow Nigerians but still go ahead to commit the crimes. And the motivation is money, nothing more. Even where, as it is being speculated in some quarters, politicians defeated at the polls and the courts are behind the evil deeds, it still boils down to the same thing: they want to control financial resources. It is not necessarily to better the lot of the people. People who would go to such satanic extent to get political power could never have had the people as the reason for their action.

    The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) last week reported that men of the Department of State Services (DSS) in Katsina State Command recovered 2,000 25kg bags of rice out of the 20 trucks donated to the state by the Federal Government, to cushion the effects of the economic hardship in the state. It however added that the recovered rice was allegedly diverted by some government officials.

    Chairman, Civil Society Organisations in the state, Mr Abdulrahman Abdullahi, expressed shock over the issue and lamented that palliatives provided by the Federal Government for the vulnerable were allegedly diverted by some unpatriotic people. He vowed that they would continue to follow the case up to its logical conclusion, and advised the government to investigate the matter, with a view to punishing those behind the diversion, if that was the case.

    However, the chairman of the Market Traders Association, Alhaji Shehu Usman, said that the rice was brought into the market by someone who was not a trader. He cautioned his members against receiving such items for safekeeping in the market.

    But the Principal Private Secretary (PPS) to Gov. Dikko Radda of the state, Mr Aliyu Abdullahi, said the rice was allocated to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, by the Federal Government.  “The minister directed the Special Adviser to the Governor on Infrastructure Development, Alhaji Nasiru Lawal, to keep it and he decided to take the rice to the market for safekeeping. About 1,200 bags of rice were allocated to the minister.

    The second move that interests me in all of the plans being implemented or are about to be implemented to bring down food prices is the creation of designated centres where food items, including rice, would be sold at N40,000 per 50kg bag, by the Federal Government. Lagos State did a similar thing sometime ago. I hear the state government is gearing up toward resuming the process. Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, revealed the Federal Government’s plan on Monday, last week, while briefing correspondents on the outcome of the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu at the State House, Abuja.

    About 740 trucks of grains had been sent to the states towards this end. According to the minister, this was one of several initiatives by the Tinubu administration to ease living conditions for citizens. The minister said that ”Rice is also being sold at about 50 per cent of its cost; a bag of rice is being sold as we speak. This rice has been taken to various centres across all the states of the federation and is being sold at N40,000”.

    He added: “In the first instance, about 10 trucks have been made available to each of these states; indeed, this is just the beginning. I know that some of the comments you hear is that it is never enough. The government has not pretended that these supplies are indeed enough. But these are necessary first steps that are being made and more of such interventions are being made in the interim.”

    And, talking about corruption, especially in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, it is over six months since the pioneer minister of the ministry in this administration, Betta Edu, has been suspended, for allegedly diverting ₦585 million in ministry funds to a personal bank account. By now, whatever the government wants to do with her should have been clear:  did she pass the integrity test or did she not? This is the simple answer needed in the circumstance. It shouldn’t take eternity to resolve. Let’s bring a closure to the matter by either appointing a replacement for her or recalling her so she can continue the good works she was doing before her detractors threw spanner in her works.

    BusinessDay reported an angle that really interests me as a possible way out of the situation. The paper said the Federal Government has concluded plans to sell a 50kg bag of rice at N40,000 to public servants, with a view to alleviating the food crisis in the nation and its effects on Nigerians. The newspaper said it got wind of this in a letter seen by it, from the Federal Ministry of Special Duties and Inter-governmental Affairs. According to the paper, all interested staff members are to complete a Google form on the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) website and submit it to the director of human resources for endorsement. For the purposes of transparency, payment for and distribution of the rice will be coordinated by designated offices while the  chairman, Joint Union Council of the ministry, would serve as an observer in the course of the exercise.

    I had always suggested a scheme like this; where several people would be taken off the market in search of an essential commodity like rice. May be this arrangement could be extended to some private companies too. One 50kg bag of rice should last a family of four for about four months or more. The idea is to reduce the number of people who would be going to the market to buy rice, thus forcing down the price somewhat.

    You will agree with me that these are good arrangements and attempts to reduce the pangs of hunger in the land. But that obviously is elsewhere. Not Nigeria, with its endemic corruption. Unfortunately, the corruption is fuelled by lack of a good record-keeping system.

    Of course, there is no country where we do not have people that would always want to shortchange the system. The difference is in the ability to catch them, often before they commit the act or after, through an effective and efficient identification system. Corruption is behind this inability to track down criminals in Nigeria because those in charge of national identity card or number know that the system would easily identify them if there is a good record of how many we are; who we are, where we are and stuff like that. If this is available, it would be easier to identify people who might want to buy more than he or she required of these items because the computer would let the cat out of the bag if anyone tries to outsmart the system. So, the officials in charge ensure there are hitches in the system that would make subversion possible.

    That we have not got this right, despite travelling over 40 years to obtain National Identity Card or National Identification Number ( (NIN) is at the root of most of the crisis of development that we are having. And we cannot blame the present government that has only been in power for a little over a year for that. The 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks (what a crook?), who tried to kill former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally was gunned down almost as soon as he committed the attempted assassination. If that had happened here, not only would he have escaped, we would still have been arguing about his identity, with the political party in power claiming that he was sent by the opposition party and vice versa. While people have to think twice in other climes before committing crimes, there is nothing of the sort here because chances of being caught are remote. Not only that, even if caught, all manner of extraneous factors would now come into play.

    Read Also: Communities get club’s empowerment, food palliatives

    It is evident that we have not perfected the identification process even from certain developments in recent times.  About two weeks ago, many telephone subscribers were yanked off the telephone networks over their alleged inability to get NIN or inability to link the NIN with their telephone lines. Interestingly, many of them insist they went through the process and got their NINs, a claim some of the telecoms firms denied, even as many subscribers too claimed that the telcos initially accepted their NIN only to claim later that they were not authentic and consequently blocked several lines. What this would seem to suggest is that the identification scheme too has suffered credibility problem. After 40 years, and with several billions of Naira pumped into it! So, what exactly can we do and get right? Yet, our public officials are said to be among the most travelled in the world.

    The long and short of what I am saying is that there is need to recalibrate the palliative machinery. The present system is not working and this should be clear to all by now. The things are not getting to those for whom they were meant. Rather, they are essentially being cornered and diverted by politicians and their cronies. How do you explain a situation where bags of rice that are clearly tagged in the name of the Federal Government are being re-bagged by unscrupulous Nigerians, whereas they should have been offered to the needy free or at rock-bottom prices? How many of those responsible have been identified and punished for the economic sabotage? I guess the cases would have been treated as ‘family affair’ because of the people perpetrating the illegality. I suspect we might have heard the last of the Katsina State incident, given the disclosure by the governor’s PPS to the effect that the bags of rice were not diverted but merely being kept in the store for the minister.

    Unless I am proved wrong, this is not the right signal about government’s seriousness to get palliatives to those who actually need them. And it is the government, particularly the Federal Government, which carries the can. Not many people remember the state governments in the equation despite their increased revenues, their closeness to the people and even despite the fact that the Federal Government had given them several palliatives to get across to the vulnerable. How the Federal Government does this is left to it.

  • The benevolent JAMB

    The benevolent JAMB

    Oloyede’s NATAP-M Awards, an unsung part of his achievements, is transforming our tertiary institutions

    Tertiary institutions in the country, particularly those that have won the National Tertiary Admissions Performance Merit Award (NATAP-M) Awards before, would forever be grateful to the Professor Ishaq Oloyede-led Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for its invaluable contribution to the provision of infrastructure on their campuses. The award was instituted by the board in 2018, barely two years after Oloyede assumed office as Registrar/Chief Executive of JAMB in August 2016.

    NATAP-M Award was initiated to recognise tertiary institutions that are complying with admission guidelines, thereby spurring heathy competition among the institutions.

    Many readers would have expected that this piece would follow the usual pattern of regurgitating whatever new developments that have taken place in JAMB in recent times, concerning its core function, the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). This is much more so as the 2024 Policy Meeting of the board that deliberated on matters pertaining to the exams was just held on July 18, at the Hairat Ade Balogun Auditorium, Body of Benchers, Abuja.

    You cannot blame commentators for following this pattern, though. The board has in the last eight years become an institution of one season, one innovation. So, there is always something new to say in that regard. Indeed, given where the board was before Oloyede took over, you cannot but continue to marvel at how he has turned around the fortunes of the place, such that it has become much more functional, rendering billions into the coffers of the Federal Government annually since then. ‘Ko sele ri’ (it never happened in the 38 years of JAMB’s existence before Oloyede came). The board is now 46 years old. Before him, JAMB had always been like the proverbial guinea fowl that laid six eggs and at best hatched only one. An institution that was to be a money spinner for the government became a drain pipe, drawing subvention from government annually to stay afloat.

    What has happened is that beyond, and in spite of these returns to government coffers, Oloyede has also gone some steps further that are praiseworthy. He has ventured into gigantic corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects of sort, instructively to develop institutions that the board feeds with students every year. That, indeed, is the nexus between JAMB and the NATAP-M Award.

    For instance, we have the Radio Console of the University of Ilorin FM bought with part of the N75 million that the university won in the previous award. There was also the case of Ogun State Polytechnic that built an ultra-modern Computer-Based Test centre with the prize money it won as the most compliant polytechnic in admission processes, among several other winners.

    To take JAMB to its present enviable position, Oloyede certainly took some painful decisions. These cut across all stakeholders, including the tertiary institutions, the computer-based test operators, members of the staff of the board itself, the candidates and parents as well as their various other publics.

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    When you wean somebody of something, you replace that thing taken away with something better. Life should not be all about stick; where carrot is required, you don’t hesitate to give it. If people or institutions are punished for breaking the law or subverting the process, then those that scrupulously adhere to them deserve encouragement. For me, this is the nexus between the board and the award.

    The maiden NATAP-M Awards for 2018, which was held in 2019, featured five categories, namely: the most subscribed institutions by candidates; the most-national institution in terms of admission spread and the institution with the highest number of admission of international students. Other categories were: the most-improved institution in intake of female students and the most compliant institution in keeping within the guidelines, rules and regulations of admissions.

    I am interested most in the last; that is the one having to do with compliance with guidelines and rules on admission because this had been a major issue before the advent of Oloyede in JAMB, and we can still see traces of it despite his zero tolerance for abuses related to admissions. Here, what immediately comes into mind is the issue of irregular admissions carried out by some of the institutions in the past. This used to be a sore point until the immediate past Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, gave a deadline for its eradication. Thousands of students who were involved in these would have had their fate hanging in the air but for the minister’s magnanimity. Any institution or candidate that engages in that now that the deadline is over is on its/his/her own.

    This is only one of the anomalies in several institutions. So, if you are punishing non-compliance, I see nothing wrong in rewarding compliance, to incentivise those that have chosen the narrow and straight path.

    These interventions, with the winner-institutions, sometimes alongside the board deciding what they actually need, in tune with their prize money, have been helping in closing the infrastructural gaps in the institutions.

    Of course it is common knowledge that many of our tertiary institutions, particularly the universities, lack vital infrastructural facilities, including lecture theatres, modern science laboratories, state-of-the-art computer centres, among others. We thus have situations where many students literally perch on windows or hang around in some universities to take lectures because lecture halls have not kept pace with the rate of students intake. We have situations where many computer undergraduates, for instance, do more of theory work when they should be more involved in practicals, because of lack of modern facilities.

    Coming from the university system, Oloyede knows where exactly the shoes pinch. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, his alma mater, for five years. Under him, the university became highly-ranked even in Africa, and the most sought-after university in Nigeria. Oloyede also served as Chairman of the Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities and Committee of Vice-Chancellors between 2011–2012, among several others, including international appointments. You see what I mean?

    However, one question that may agitate the minds of people on the awards is the wide gap between the institution that wins the first position and the others. For instance, with this year’s prize money increased from N710 million to N750 million, the university that came first would get a whopping N500 million. The others, including polytechnics, colleges of education and others, share the balance. The reason is simple: Oloyede explains that this is to enable the winner do something tangible with it. As they say, anything worth doing at all is worth doing well. The idea is to encourage all to strive to be the best, and not play a second fiddle. But then, the overall winner cannot win again until after five years. I think this is fair enough; at least to give others an opportunity to win. It is significant to note that the awards started with N125 million prize money.

    It is also heartwarming that in order to ensure transparency and fairness, the board brought in the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), among others, to assess the qualified institutions.

    However, my main concern is how JAMB monitors progress on the projects to ensure that the money is judiciously spent so that the projects won’t be victims of the characteristic ‘Nigerian factor’ that would lead to their abandonment or unending contract variations, which would ultimately defeat the purpose of setting up the award. Most of these facilities that JAMB is enabling the institutions to procure through the awards are sorely needed and indeed ought to have been provided as early as yesterday. Subjecting them to further undue delays would be counterproductive.

    But, beyond coming from the university system, one other thing that cannot be discountenanced in the giant strides the board has made under Oloyede is the fact that a round peg has been put in a round hole. It is also what happens when professionalism meets with character. Moreover, he has a cooperative team as well as supportive and understanding bosses.

    This is where I give credit to the Muhammadu Buhari government that appointed him, for taking its eyes to the market when scouting for a helmsman for the board. Dit to the renewal of his mandate when his first term expired, which was a big relief to stakeholders who wished the country’s educational sector well.

    It is significant that despite committing N750 million to the NATAP-M Awards this year, the board was still able to remit over N3.5 billion to the Federal Government coffers, in spite of the economic crisis that the country has been going through. And, despite the fact that it has not increased its fees for application forms! That is to say, where many others are experiencing a casting down, JAMB’s experience has been that of lifting up. This should count for something.

    One other thing that has been working for Oloyede is that he is lucky to have had ministers of education that have shown understanding and have been largely supportive. In the same vein, we have to commend the immediate past Buhari administration again in this regard. Like millions of other Nigerians, I have issues with his government’s performance. But his decision to allow Oloyede Iive his dream for JAMB is highly commendable. I want to believe that Buhari would have been inundated with calls to do something about Oloyede when he began the reform in JAMB, because he must have stepped on many powerful toes of people who have no regard for due process but would rather want to offer admission to their relations and cronies right on their complimentary cards.

    Today, it is not only Nigeria that is benefitting from Oloyede’s reforms in JAMB, his achievements have attracted recognition even from outside our shores.

    We must praise all those who have graciously permitted the JAMB boss an almost unfettered discretion in performing his functions because many people in public office who might have had big dreams when they were appointed had been denied the opportunity of realising them, due to lack of understanding or cooperation from those who appointed them.

    All said, it is important to stress that in all of these approvals to operate or spend, that Prof Oloyede has enjoyed, trust is key. It is possible for the government not to let him come this far if it doesn’t trust him or doesn’t wish him well. Everybody, from the former President Buhari to the incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, down the line, trust Prof Oloyede. That is why he has been able to come this far. He should not take this for granted.

  • Olatunji Dare at 80

    Olatunji Dare at 80

    • This living legend, mentor, columnist, teacher and highly principled man deserves national honour

    Professor Olatunji Dare did not know that he was writing a piece that would later shape somebody’s life when sometimes in 1984 he wrote his brilliant piece on the Decree 4 promulgated by the then Buhari/Idiagbon regime, in April, 1984. It was a damning verdict on the decree which sought to put the fear of man in journalists, with the impossible clause that whatever they published must be correct in every material particular, whatever that meant. Clearly, it was meant essentially to gag the private newspapers and Dare did not fail to so point out.

    This characteristically brilliant piece was what God used to get me my first job after graduation. Prof Dare was an essential vessel in my securing my first appointment at ‘The Punch’ in 1985. I had always dreamt of working with the newspaper ever since I made up my mind to read Mass Communication when I was in Form Three. I was heavily  inspired by the writings of some of the best in journalism that Nigeria paraded then and wanted to be part of the club of people that would be shaping opinions in the country.

    So, my joy knew no bounds when after my national service in 1985, I was invited for interview at ‘The Punch’. I guess about 40 something of us came for what eventually became an examination, as it lasted from morning till late in the evening. We were examined on two different aspects of journalism: a written test and newspaper production. Right from my university days, I had never liked newspaper production because, like many of us then, I felt it was too technical. Interestingly, that was what I was employed to do after successfully scaling the hurdle of the examination.

    I knew I was weak in production and so concentrated on the written aspect which was on Decree Four. Somehow, after preparing for the examination, something kept prodding me to read something on the decree. That was about 18 months after its promulgation. I usually take such leading seriously, especially when it becomes deafeningly persistent.

    It was about the last thing I read going for the interview. The then Dr. Dare’s piece in ‘The Guardian’ came handy. I read and read until I had mastered it and that was how I gave it ‘back to sender’ in the written test.

    Something continually told me I had already secured a place in the newspaper if what we wrote was going to be the real determinant of the selection process. You could not have nearly reproduced what an erudite scholar like that wrote without expecting a positive outcome.

    My only fear then was about some of our colleagues then who happened to know some of those that were to determine our fate. The rest of us who knew nobody literally had our hearts in our mouths when they started weeding out the candidates, beginning from the last 10.

    In the end, four of us emerged victorious: myself, Olu Awogbemila, Ganiyu Aminu and Ganiyu Akogun, all of us classmates at the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos.

    I am grateful to Prof Dare for this just as I also celebrated, last week, Chief Ajibola Ogunshola, former chairman of the board of directors of the company for the role he played in my career progression in the company.

    Interestingly Chief Ogunshola and Prof Dare are friends. Somehow too, they share the same birth month and birth year. As a matter of fact, Ogunshola turned 80 on Sunday, July 14. Dare turned 80 three days later, i. e. on July 17. If they had come from my kind of family, Prof Dare would never call Chief Ogunshola by his name. He would address him as ‘egbon’ (elder brother)!

    Be that as it may, I am not sure I met Prof Dare in person until I became editor of the paper or acting editor (or so), when he came on a training mission to ‘The Punch’.

    But Dare is not the kind of person you have to meet before knowing the kind of person that he is. Reading his column tells you all about him. Highly principled, courageous in that he is never afraid of telling truth to power. It is an understatement to say he is a man of integrity, or that he is exceptionally brilliant.

    If you say Prof Dare is a nonconformist where principle is the issue, you are correct. But this did not begin yesterday. Far back as when he was a child, he had dropped his baptismal name because he felt it was a colonial name, despite protestations from his mother. I tried to know what this name was. Indeed, it was one of the highpoints of our 43-minute discussion on Wednesday night, after the birthday programme held to mark his 80th birthday at Radisson Hotel on Isaac John Street in GRA, Ikeja, Lagos.

    But when someone like Prof Dare dives to the left and then to the right before revealing such a piece of information, you have no choice but respect that wish. So, as a journalist, I have unveiled the source, permit me to hold on to the  information!

    Of course his many write-ups in his column, whether at ‘The Guardian’, the defunct ‘The Comet’ or ‘The Nation’, bear eloquent testimonies to his principled stance. In a country where column space is seen as meal ticket by not a few, it is to Prof Dare’s credit that he has all through the decades maintained a principled stance on critical national issues. He is predictable even when he decides to convey his thoughts through  a style he knows how best to deploy — satire. Dare would say it in a way that even his enemies would confess they enjoyed it, despite the piece being highly critical of them.

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    I know satire is not an easy style because I have had to try my hands on it on several occasions. That is when, like a hunchback, I realise that  it is a Yeoman’s job that a man who is standing upright is doing. But my occasional attempts at satire also told me something about our educational system. I remember when I decided to reduce some serious national issues to satire, I would start getting calls from readers who wanted to know if I meant what I said right from church services on Sundays. I would ask them to go read the piece again. Some would get back to me that they had discovered I deployed satire to convey my message. Yet, others, no matter how many times they read it, would never know you were merely playing pranks with words. Sometimes I felt bad that many people could not decipher satire but sometimes also, I was happy that those ignoramuses also felt bitter as I was over the subject-matter, hence their uncontrolled anger with me. If someone like myself who deployed satire sparingly could be so thoroughly abused, I wonder how many of such criticisms and sometimes curses Prof Dare would have experienced in the course of his odyssey in satire.

    One would know where Prof Dare was coming from when he refused to go with ‘The Guardian’ team that went to beg the then Head of State, General Sani Abacha, the one who ruled as if he had death in his pocket. Abacha had proscribed ‘The Guardian’, ‘The Punch’ and ‘National Concord’, three vocal private newspapers that he considered highly critical of his government for months. Only ‘The Guardian’ went to beg. Prof Dare, however, did not join that train; by choice. Rather, he promptly turned in his resignation letter from the flagship.

    Even in normal times in the company, things were not particularly rosy. There was this occasion organised, (I think) by the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), I can’t recollect whether it was the national body or the Lagos State Council and at the end, Prof Dare was taken home in the car of one of my friends. It was that bad.

    I had undergone such an experience and therefore know how it feels when you leave a job you otherwise loved, unprepared.

     Sadly, when recounting such ordeals, we often forget the woman in the house. This same omission occured on Wednesday at the birthday event that Prof Dare and his wife joined online from their base in the United States. Not a single mention of the wife until one of the members of the family present (I think), drew our attention to this grave oversight.

    It is easy for a man to wade through such crisis only with a supportive wife. With school fees to pay, house rent to settle, and a sundry other bills to pick, and without any other source of income except ‘The Guardian’, Prof Dare must have been in a quandary. As he himself admitted, it would have been tougher if his wife was a lover of material attractions. However, it is to her credit that, unlike most other women, she did not allow herself to be led by toys in those trying moments. This is much more so, as Prof told me on Wednesday, that agents of the powers-that-be at the time got in touch with her and told her that the only stumbling block between her and better life was her uncompromising husband. How many women won’t backslide when they hear of better life from government? So, if Prof is ever proud of his wife, know why.

    But it must be pointed out that Nigeria is one of the few places in the world where brains, indeed a legend like Prof Dare would be compelled to perpetually see abroad, as home. It won’t be a bad idea for the Bola Tinubu administration to honour this legend.

    A much-travelled journalist, Prof Dare was born on July 17, 1944. He attended the University of Lagos, Nigeria, where he earned the first-ever First Class (summa cum laude) degree in Mass Communication and later became senior lecturer in journalism.  “He also holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University, in New York, where he won the prizeman in Editorial Writing, and a Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, with twin concentrations in International Communication and Public Policy.”

    On his 70th birthday in July 2014, he presented a  festschrift titled “Public Intellectuals, the Public Square & The Public Spirit:  Essays in Honour of Olatunji Dare”.

    Dare has reported from more than a dozen datelines on three continents and interviewed several statesmen of global stature.

    He left Nigeria for the United States in 1996 when the heat of his opposition to the then military regime became too intense for comfort, to take up a faculty position at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. He served in the university until his retirement in 2015, when he was named Professor of Journalism, Emeritus.

    I congratulate this genius who makes my head swell when, all the time, he calls me ‘namesake’.

    Many happy returns sir.

  • Ajibola Ogunshola clocks 80

    Ajibola Ogunshola clocks 80

    The actuary-turned publisher deserves accolades on joining the octogenarian club

    Although Chief Ajibola Ogunshola started out as an actuary, he has ended up being referred to more in terms of his achievements as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Punch Nigeria Ltd, a position he occupied for 24 solid years (February 1987 – April 2011), despite the significant successes he recorded in his chosen vocation.

    I doff my hat for Chief Ogunshola. I was secretary of ‘The Punch’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) when he became chairman.

    He was quick to realise that the company harboured a lot of deadwood and did not spare his long knife in cutting the workforce to size. True, no miracle could have brought ‘The Punch’ back to life without pruning the bloated workforce. What was significant was the fact that these included some of Ogunshola’s family members. This was one of the steps that saved the legacy of the founding chairman of the company, Chief James Olubunmi Aboderin.

    Chief Aboderin may not be a believer in the true sense of the word, but his works are still speaking today, more than 40 years after his death in February, 1984.

    His children and children’s children, some of who might not have known him in person, are enjoying the fruits of his labour today. That is part of the good inheritance that even some of those who profess to be believers have not been able to do for their children, not to talk of generations unborn.

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    But everyone enjoying ‘The Punch’s’ success today has first and foremost God Almighty to thank. Next is Chief Aboderin; then Chief Ogunshola, because there would not have been anything to revive if the newspaper had not been established in the first place.

    Chief Ogunshola, like his elder brother, may also not be a believer; but God still chose him as the vessel to bring back the newspaper’s glory.

    He made it abundantly clear when he became chairman of the company that part of his main ambitions was to make ‘The Punch’ one of the highest-salary paying newspapers in Nigeria, if not the highest-salary paying newspaper. This sounded like squeezing bread out of stone, considering the fact that the company was perpetually in salary arrears of between three or four months at any point in time then.

    I remember how this promise almost led to friction between myself and one of our senior members of the staff then who wanted the union to “make things tough” for Ogunshola. The (then) young man thought that his promise was the height of deceit. You could hardly blame him: How could a company that could not pay salary regularly for years suddenly transform to the highest-paying newspaper? He asked me who was interested in highest salary. As far as my colleague was concerned, Chief Ogunshola should tell us how he would pay the peanut the company was paying then, rather than mesmerise us with the impossible.

    I believed money was not the only challenge facing the company then; perhaps the bigger problem was the management of the resources. Too many leakages, a thing many of us knew even before Chief Ogunshola took over. That was why you would see those running the company then always running from pillar to post, looking for money. Meanwhile, they got some money a few days before.

    Therefore, if many of us so acknowledged, why not give somebody who had a different view of not just throwing money at problems to try his own method, to revive the company?

    The emeritus chairman eventually proved cynics wrong. It is to Chief Ogunshola’s credit that he was not only able to take the company out of the financial quagmire, he also bequeathed unto it an ultra-modern press and a befitting headquarters costing billions of Naira without borrowing a dime.

    Part of the reasons ‘The Punch’ is where it is today is because Chief Ogunshola kept faith with his promise to transform the newspaper’s pay. There is no argument that it is the highest-salary paying newspaper in the country today. This was not by accident. It was by design and determination. I remember there were occasions when the company did salary review twice in a year.

    I remember a particular occasion when at the management meeting we proposed a salary package that we were not sure the board would approve because it seemed outrageous. Only the then managing director, Mr Demola Osinubi, was optimistic it would be approved; of course he had a better idea of the inflows and outflows. Even then, that was not enough. That can only apply in a situation where the board chairman and members are not waiting in the wings to corner the revenue. Mercifully, ‘The Punch’ was not saddled with such board members.

    At the end of the board meeting, the proposal was approved.

    What I am saying is that the board under him seized every opportunity to review salaries. Sometimes significantly. Not many people would honour such promise. They would become something else when the money starts coming in. Ogunshola was not that kind of person.

    Another strategy the company employed was to poach people from other organisations, sometimes with some of them earning more than their bosses when they joined the company. The board gave approval for such but the situation was subsequently corrected.

    I remember too an occasion when Chief Ogunshola brought a relation for employment. He insisted on me ensuring that the person did the mandatory test for journalists. I did. Unfortunately, the person failed. I didn’t know how to tell the chairman. After waiting for the result for several days, Chief Ogunshola came to my office in the evening one day. He asked me why I had not gotten back to him on the matter and I was stammering. When I eventually summed up courage to tell him the person performed badly, he asked for the examination script. I gave him. He couldn’t believe his eyes as he adjusted his glasses intermittently when reading through the script. I then suggested that we take the person in and put him/her (I can’t remember which) in circulation department or something. Chief Ogunshola refused. He said the person could not work anywhere in ‘The Punch’ of “my dream” with such result.

    That was another good reason the paper is doing well in a market where others are struggling.

    That is Chief Ogunshola for you. A man of conviction.

    There was yet another important occasion when he demonstrated this conviction and courage. That was some years back when ‘The Punch’ engaged vendors in a fight of a lifetime. I had left the company then but was still worried because the vendors were tin gods that no one dared to step on their toes. I requested for a chat with Chief Ogunshola and we subsequently met at The Metropolitan Club on Lagos Island. We argued back and forth on the matter. He was confident of victory and eventually convinced me that, yes, it would be tough but not insurmountable. He thanked me after expressing appreciation for my worries and we parted. The company eventually succeeded in putting the vendors in their place. ‘The Punch’ is the better for it today as a substantial hole for waste was blocked by that courageous faceoff with them.

    Sometimes when I look back and think of my Odyssey at ‘The Punch’, I marvel at how I became editor of the daily title. I marvel because I never went to Chief Ogunshola even when I was in Punch, uninvited. And I never put any frivolous call to him. Not even when I was editor and people would expect that you play some politics along that line. It is not just my nature. My goal was the general good of the company. Yet, Chief Ogunshola was magnanimous to see me emerge as editor.

    Maybe that was what worked in my favour because I must acknowledge the roles played by him when I was promoted assistant editor, then acting editor and ultimately when I was made substantive editor of the daily title.

    I cannot also forget his physical presence at the burial of my paternal grandmother in 1995. Not only did he come, I was more than happy that he also ate and drank at the Evans Square in Ebute-Metta, Lagos, where we had the social party. I am not sure this was a common thing with him then.

    If he did this because I was the editor of his paper, what of 2015 when I lost my dad? Chief Ogunshola came to my father’s house in person on the day of the wake-keep. Unfortunately, I had gone out in connection with arrangements for the burial. He left a note and some money. He said he had to come because he would be travelling to Ado-Ekiti for a funeral the next day and so won’t be at my father’s burial. That was some 18 years after I had left ‘The Punch’. I know what he also gave me last year when I buried my mother. I am eternally grateful for all these kind deeds.

    I always celebrate him on occasions like this so that people would understand that uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Sometimes you take decisions that are tough, even if inevitable. Again, with several shutdowns by different military regimes, the paper has more than paid its dues. How many newspapers are ready and willing to make the huge sacrifices that ‘The Punch’ has made?

    Born on July 14, 1944, Chief Ogunshola attended Beiyerunka Native Authority School and Ibadan Native Authority School, Aperin, then on the outskirts of Ibadan, for his primary education. He proceeded to the prestigious Government College, Ibadan, in 1956. An exceptionally bright student in the secondary school, indeed, one of the best three then. He later did his Higher School Certificate and proceeded to The University of Ibadan where he bagged a BSc in Mathematics in 1967.

    He later proceeded to London in 1967, became a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of England in July 1973, after completing the institute’s examination. He is the first black African to achieve this.

    Chief Ogunshola had served in various capacities, including Managing Director, Niger Insurance Company from where he ventured into private business as a consulting actuary under the business name of Ajibola Ogunshola & Co. (Actuarial and Financial Consultants) in 1986. The company later merged with Chike Oyeka & Co. to become First Actuaries Nigeria Ltd. which was also later to merge with Alexander Forbes Consulting Actuaries Nigeria Ltd. where Ogunshola was chairman in non-executive capacity for years.

    He had been Chairman, Committee of Actuaries which gives actuarial advice to the United Nations Staff Pension Fund; President, Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), among many other distinguished services and awards.

    I wish the Baaroyin of Ibadan more glorious years on earth.

  • Bago’s windfall

    Bago’s windfall

    Corps members posted to Niger State are in for a rewarding experience with N200,00 bonus each offered them by the governor.

    Batch B, Stream 1 corps members posted to Niger State who reported for orientation on July 2 have every cause to be happy. This is because the state governor, Mohammed Bago, has showered each of them with a N200,000 bonus.

    He also promised to provide water and toilet facilities in the temporary NYSC Camp in the state adding that he would kick-start the building of a new NYSC Camp with N5 billion.

    “I have given orders to build more toilets, drill five boreholes in this temporary camp. I will donate 20 cows and one trailer load of rice for the welfare of the corps members in camp”, the governor announced.

    Despite the present state of the Naira, N200,000 bonus is a windfall in the hands of youths, some of whom may never have received the alert of such an amount in their personal accounts before.

    “I was told there are 1,600 corps members in this batch. I am crediting each of your accounts with N200,000. This will enable you get comfortable to stay in Niger State. This is to show you that there is prosperity in Niger State. I will do my best to ensure that corps members enjoy serving here”, the governor said.

    Expectedly, the announcement was greeted with loud cheers by the corps members. Two hundred thousand naira will cover the N33,000 that the Federal Government pays them monthly for a whole six months! So, who is paying the corps members?

    Bago said the money was to encourage any of the corps members willing to stay back in the state after the compulsory one year national service. Who knows?He might have succeeded in winning some converts. This is not only because of the money but also because of other goodies that came in his package.

    The governor said any corps member who ventures into agriculture in the state can earn as much as N500,000 monthly. He also announced automatic employment for corps members in the medical and health field.

    Of course, some other state governments might have done greater or similar things for individual corps members in the past. I commend such state governments even as I urge them not to rest on their oars. I also urge those that are yet to put smiles on the faces of corps members that are unlucky to be posted to their states to have a change of heart.

    The truth of the matter is that some state governments, just like some establishments, don’t have any regard for corps members. They see them at

    best as persona non grata who imposed themselves on the states or establishments, and treat them as such. Even if they must reject them, they should do so courteously.

    I have had cause to call for the cancellation of the scheme because of the terrible experiences that some corps members underwent in some states, especially as regards insecurity. The fact is; I easily get emotional when lives are lost. I become the more so when many of us tend to see the deaths as mere statistics. It becomes particularly touching for me when such casualties are corps members serving their fatherland in places that are far from their own, without adequate preparation for them by governments at all levels. Like asking them to go participate in elections in places where they do not know how to escape in times of trouble, knowing full well that elections are do-or-die battles in this part of the world.

    Granted that death can come wherever, whenever. But when it is avoidable, it becomes the more painful to me. It is parents who lose their children in the course of such experiences that can better describe their situation.

    Even the Federal Government that set up the scheme is not doing much by way of encouragement, to make the service year memorable. Take for instance the N33,000 that it is paying the corps members per month. How does anyone live on that in our economy? And to think that that is the only money that it owes them monthly apart from the bicycle allowance of N6,400 and another pittance at the end of the service that it pays one-off!

    If the Federal Government itself treats the corps members with such disdain, how does it get better deal for them from their places of primary assignment? When the owner of a dress tramples on it; it is telling other persons that they can tear such dress without compunction. Yoruba people say you don’t sell your people cheap and expect others to buy them at reasonable price.

    Without doubt, the Yakubu Gowon administration that founded the NYSC in 1973 had very good intentions. The main aim was to unite Nigerians who were just coming out from a two-and-a half-year bitter civil war (July 6, 1967- January 15, 1970). So, there was need to bring together the various ethnic groups again. Corps members are supposed to be posted to places other than their own to enable them live with other Nigerians and, in the process, get to understand them better. If, again, as the Yoruba people say, we don’t return from court and remain the best of friends, we can imagine how much efforts we need to put into making people just emerging from our kind of fatricidal war friends, once again.

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    But the Gowon administration put resources to work for the corps members, to enable them enjoy the national service. Of course we can say there was so much money then. So, corps members were also pampered.

    But attention on the youth corps members is now dwindling. Otherwise, how do some government officials feel comfortable that children of fellow Nigerians can survive on N33,000? We keep hearing that the money would be reviewed upwards. When will that be? Can our public officials say the N33,000 is all their own children get while going on national service? If this is not so, how do they expect other children to survive on this meagre allowance? I know how much I spent to transport my daughter posted to Cross River State last year. The so-called bicycle allowance could not have ‘bicycled’ her to anywhere. In other words, it is parents that are subsidising the corps members. And this after going through hell to see them through tertiary education. Yet, it is government that sends them on national service. How do we reconcile that?

    The load on the poor is too much. Someone needs to lighten it. Unfortunately, people hardly remember this aspect while listing the woes of the poor in Nigeria. If government pays someone who has finished tertiary education N33,000 monthly in this economy and posts that person to far-flung places, how does it expect them to cope, without the males joining bad gangs and the females turning to prostitution to survive, if there is no parental support?

    I know the argument would now be that there are some bureaucratic bottlenecks delaying the upward review. Or there is no money. With due respect; this is unfair. No bureaucracy should delay such reviews because our leaders don’t allow such delays in the path of their own comfort. Youth corps members who began the service year as relative saints shouldn’t be allowed to become something else in the course of the service due to government’s uncaring attitude to their welfare. When that happens, it is the parents that suffer the consequences because it is the same government that would hold the corps members responsible for crimes they never knew until they began youth service.

    There is no doubt that the allure of national service is gone. And I don’t know if it can ever be retrieved. I know the way we looked forward to the service year when we graduated in the mid-1980s. We met the remnant of the enjoyment in the country, and, by extension, that of the national service, we never experienced a quarter of the challenges that youth corps members go through today. I remember as a youth corps member I was among the elite class that the vendor would reserve a copy of ‘Newswatch’ magazine for in the entire Yola town then.

    I remember too that myself and another youth corps member who was among five of us sharing a five-bedroom flat provided by the state government would jointly buy a carton of Peak Milk, and share into two. How many corps members can buy a dozen tins of milk today?

    I served in the then Gongola State at a time Maitatsine was causing havoc in tbe state and some parts of the north, but my parents didn’t bother because it wasn’t as serious and pervasive as today’s Boko Haram and banditry ravaging several parts of the north.

    It is against this background that gestures like those of Governor Bago become commendable. They bring back fond memories of those things that made graduates look forward with excitement to the national service.

    Well, some people may wonder how well Governor Bago treats the state’s civil servants if he is ready to pamper youth corps members as he has promised. Some even say he is not a particularly nice man, citing as recent example his alleged order to his security details to assault an Islamic cleric at a public function.

    The governor has to compliment his gestures to the corps members with an equally robust relations with the civil servants for industrial harmony in the state. Otherwise, the regular workforce would see the corps members as rivals and this would not augur well for the state. It would also send a signal to the corps members who intend to stay behind that the present princely treatment is not likely to continue when they join the civil service.

    Several states in the north used to retain some specialists like doctors, nurses, even good teachers after youth service, in line with their needs. If this is the governor’s intention, fine. But he must be seen to be good to those in service now to make the carrot he is dangling before youth corps members who intend to stay behind after the national service truly alluring.

    He also needs to work on his human relations. He needs to be careful about the uses to which he deploys his powers because power is transient.

    Still, it is kudos to him for the ‘naira rain’ he is showering on the corps members in his state.

  • ‘Japa’ fraud ‘scheme’

    ‘Japa’ fraud ‘scheme’

    Culprits and their collaborators deserve to be prosecuted: you either eat your cake or have it

    I have no qualms about people who feel the country is not conducive for them and decide to leave for greener pastures abroad. I am not one of those who would like to say things are easy when they are not. As Sonala Olumhense wrote sometime in 1983, ‘Things is hard’. ‘Things is really hard’!  So, I won’t advice Nigerians who have the opportunity of ‘checking out’ not to ‘check out’, after all, how many of our leaders have their own children at home?

    As one of the contestants for the students union presidency in one of our federal universities said during the campaign sometime in the 1980s, ‘what is good for the goose is good for the others’! Do not ask me who the candidate was and which university he attended. He knows himself. We, the then stakeholders too know him.

    But that is not where I am going today.

    So, because ‘what is good for the goose is good for the others’, I can never grudge anyone going out,  particularly the youths, if they feel that is where their salvation is.

    For me, however, let those who want to stay, stay; and those who cannot endure what is at home be free to vote with their feet or their visa.

    But I have everything against such people when, even as they are leaving us, they would not take their eyes off our common patrimony. Instead of leaving that for the rest of us who have chosen to stay where our heads put us. ‘Ibi ori da ni si laagbe’, they want to eat their cake and at the same time, have it.

    Otherwise, how can we explain it; that some people in the Federal Civil Service would still remain on the Federal Government’s payroll even though they have since left our shores for other countries? I take serious exception to that.

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    It is normal for living things to follow the food; that is flood towards wherever their bread can be buttered. Thus, we find some birds gravitating towards some parts of the world at certain times.

    It is against this background that one should condemn the Nigerians who were hitherto civil servants and are still collecting salaries after relocating abroad in search of a better life.

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed that such former civil servants be made to refund the money and that their supervisors and department heads be punished for aiding and abetting the fraud.

    The president gave the directive on Saturday, last week, at the award night organised by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), to commemorate the 2024 Civil Service Week, and also to honour some outstanding civil servants in core ministries.

    President Tinubu, who was represented at the occasion by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, was visibly worried over the ghost workers’ attitude.

    “During my recent visit to South Africa, I kept abreast of the week’s activities.

    “I was particularly struck by the revelations shared by the Head of the Civil Service, regarding employees who had relocated abroad while drawing salaries without formally resigning”, he said.

    He added that “it is heartening to hear that measures have been taken to address this issue, but we must ensure those responsible are held accountable and restitution is made.

    “The culprits must be made to refund the money they have fraudulently collected”, he said, adding, to boot, that “their supervisors and department heads must also be punished for aiding and abetting the fraud under their watch.”

    This is the way it should be. As a matter of fact, the issue is beyond punishing both the culprits and those who made it possible for such fraud to occur, using only the civil service rules and regulations. They must be prosecuted for fraud.

    Ghost workers’ syndrome is an age long syndrome in Nigeria. And it manifests in several ways. People apparently continue to engage in such fraudulent acts either because those caught are not punished or because the punishment is too light. Indeed, where ghost workers is the issue, Nigeria ought to be among countries that should make ‘Guinness World Records’, given the decades that successive governments at all levels have been uncovering the phenomenon and its various dimensions in the country.

    At a time even in cosmopolitan Lagos, precisely after the return to civil rule in 1999, ghost schools, with whole compliments of workers, from head to toe, were uncovered. That is part of the ‘cognate experience’ the country has in the ghost workers’ fraud. It was not just a question of ghosts collecting salaries in existing government establishments, it got to the point where even ghost schools were established and funded by the state government. Mercifully, the state government would seem to have overcome this, using technology.

    But if the Lagos case can be regarded as too old and from which Nigeria ought to have learned sufficient lesson, having occurred over 20 years ago, what of the Nasarawa State incident of 2022, whereby it was discovered, in what a report described as another sad chapter in the history of Nigeria, that the Federal Government uncovered 349 ghost schools? The discovery was reportedly made by the Enumeration Committee of the Federal Government Homegrown Feeding Programme for Public Primary Schools. As usual, two key officials of the programme in the state were promptly suspended and replaced. It is doubtful if anything happened to them beyond the suspension.

    Also, in as recently as 2016, a significant number of ghost schools were discovered in Kogi State. Similar cases had been reported in many other states, including Delta.

    In all of these cases, it should be expected that there would be school inspectors and supervisors who should be going round to see how schools are faring. So, what happened to all the layers of inspection and supervision?

    What happened to the relevant accounts departments in the ministries, departments and agencies of the governments where these salary frauds are perpetuated? What happened to their audit units?

    Obviously some unscrupulous civil servants are behind these frauds.

    Civil servants! Civil servants! They had killed some very best dreams of government because they are the ones that handle the implementation of those dreams. And they do so without qualms. Their propensity to ‘chop and clean mouth’ can hardly be matched by any other group of persons or workers. And they can never steal enough. They steal as if stealing is going out of fashion. So primitively. Before the ink on their last fraud dries up, they are already salivating in anticipation of the next.

    Indeed, it is incidents like this that make not a few Nigerians see the civil service across the country as dens of robbers. Does that ring a bell? Ask many Nigerians of their general opinion on the civil service and they will tell you they don’t know what many of them are doing beyond gossipping, merchandising during official hours and plotting to see loopholes in government programmes and policies from where they could siphon funds.

    As a matter of fact, a friend of mine usually refers to civil servants as ‘evil servants’. And, can you really blame him? Yes, we know that there are some decent people of integrity in governments across board. But, when you mix only one spoilt egg with a dozen good ones, the taste of that spoilt one would still be felt, perhaps more than the others.

    But it is sad that an incident like the ‘Japa ‘ salary fraud had to be unveiled at what should be a solemn ceremony in honour of civil servants who have put in years of meritorious service to their fatherland.

    Successive governments at the centre had carried out various reforms in the civil service. Even then, from the general look of things, many of the workers would seem untrainable. They are too steeped in their iniquities. But, as I said earlier, that is not to say that we do not have dedicated ones among them. It should therefore not be surprising that some of them are trying their best in the noble tradition of their calling. Such people deserve to be appreciated and amply rewarded.

    It is also good that the Tinubu administration has singled out some of such people for recognition. It should not be about sticks and sticks all the time. The government needs to dangle the carrots where and when necessary too.

    I am therefore happy to join the government in celebrating such Nigerians of honour who have decided to hold their heads in establishments where several others have lost theirs. Indeed, it is just that things are tough in the country; that is why many Nigerians are supporting Labour in the minimum wage struggle. As far as many of them are concerned, the issue should not be about pleasing an insignificant percentage of the populace whose productivity is even suspect, leaving the majority in limbo. But then, if minimum wage is an avenue to get at the government over the insensitivity of many public officials, particularly those in the National Assembly who are producing nothing and yet creaming off the public till, so be it. Otherwise, Labour’s voice on the issue would have been like that of John the Baptist in the wilderness. Many people would just be aloof and watching developments on the matter from a reasonable distance.

    I can feel you itching to say that those involved in the ‘Japa’ fraud ‘scheme’ and other acts of corruption by civil servants and other Nigerians, just regard their actions as their own way of getting their share of the national cake. What of those stealing the cake legally? I only hope you don’t have the National Assembly members in mind here? Well, to some extent, you are right. Indeed, if former President Olusegun Obasanjo could call the National Assembly what he called it a few years back, I wonder what he would call it today. Still, that should not be an excuse for ‘ordinary’ Nigerians to steal illegally. For, while it is the law that catches up with the poor thieves in Africa, it is karma itself that arrests the big ones. And it will strike when it will strike unless there is a change of attitude. What is on ground is simply not sustainable.

    But this is yet another opportunity to call on the government to make the country conducive. Nigerians only travelled abroad for studies and leisure in the past. Not to go and stay there permanently. Although this trend predates this government, it now has the responsibility of reversing it. It is still possible. It is doable.

  • Omo Oodua, oko ya!

    Omo Oodua, oko ya!

    • It is good that southwest governors have now realised that they can only continue to neglect agric to our collective peril

    Some years back, I wrote on this page of the urgent imperative for governors in the southwest region of the country to return the region to its former place of pride in agriculture. Some of them were angry because I said they needed to be creative. They detested being told to stop calling their states civil servants states, because it has not always been so.

    Apparently the southwest governors who perpetually wring their hands in frustration and continued attributing the lack of money to do worthwhile projects in their states to being “civil servants’ states” have forgotten the region’s glorious past. That was the same space that the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo did wonders with agriculture and we never had any complaint about lack of money.

    Then, civil servants were doing their own and agriculture was also thriving. How come that same region is now complaining of lack of money? Something must be wrong somewhere.

    The problem with many of our political leaders, particularly governors nationwide is that they simply cannot live with the bitter truth, including of course, criticism, no matter how constructive. They always assume they are right and that they have the right after being elected or rigged into power to run or ruin the lives of the rest of us. They want us to be following and agreeing with them like a sheep that is being taken to the slaughter slab, deaf and speechless, even when it is clear they are leading us to nowhere in particular.

    I am a happy and proud Yoruba man today that the current governors in the region have at last vindicated my position and the position of people like me who know that if we must continue to be relevant in Nigeria, then, we must be able to feed ourselves. They have realised the need to return the region to the farm. Not only that, they realised that for optimal effect, this has to be collectively done, with every state focusing on areas where it has comparative advantage. This is one of the best decisions the Southwest Governors Forum has taken in recent times. Although the governors deliberated on a lot of other issues, the one that was most fascinating to me is the collective resolve to return to the farm.

    I am here talking of the governors’ meeting hosted by Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Monday, last week. It is heartwarming that all the six governors in the region –Sanwo-Olu (Lagos, APC), Seyi Makinde (Oyo, PDP), Dapo Abiodun (Ogun, APC), Lucky Aiyedatiwa (Ondo, APC), Ademola Adeleke (Osun, PDP) and Biodun Oyebanji (Ekiti, APC) – attended the meeting. Equally soul-lifting was the fact that the attendees cut across political party lines.

    At that meeting they gave what looked like a marching order to their commissioners for agriculture to begin the process that will lead to food security in the geo-political zone. “On food security, the forum acknowledges the efforts of the Federal Government and decides that the honourable Commissioners for Agriculture of all the states should begin to meet and set up a working template, which will ensure collaboration based on each state’s comparative advantage”, the governors said.

    One of the things that have been lacking in the Federal Government’s efforts to cushion the effects of the harsh economic situation in the country is the contribution on the part of some state governments. The increase in their monthly allocations is not reflecting on the well-being of their citizens. This kind of collective resolve on the part of the southwest governors is therefore akin to killing two birds with one stone. One, their efforts would complement the efforts of the Federal Government in the crucial area of food security. Second, it would also lead to agricultural revival in the region with the attendant multiplier effects.

    But to revive agriculture is not a thing that can be done by political rhetoric. It demands practical, determined and sustained efforts to see it through.

    This is where the new chair of the forum comes in.

    I congratulate Sanwo-Olu on his being picked as chairman of the forum to replace the late former Ondo State Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, who passed on in December, last year. But Sanwo-Olu’s selection is a call to service. It is the reward for what he is doing in Lagos; and, as they say, the reward for hard work is more work.

    Akeredolu is dead now, but not so his contributions, particularly in the establishment of the region’s security outfit, Amotekun. Anybody may have certain reservations about the former governor but nothing should becloud the sense of judgement that Akeredolu gave his all to see that Amotekun saw the light of day. Today, in spite of its imperfections, the security outfit is contributing to the relative peace in the region.

    Akeredolu’s main challenge at his time was insecurity and he confronted it headlong. The result is still speaking in the region even now that he is gone. Governor Sanwo-Olu has to understand that his chairmanship of the forum is coming at a time of acute food challenge or, if you like, food security problems. The Yoruba people want to see a marked difference between what obtains with regard to food production now and in a few months’ time.

    The truth of the matter is that many things can wait. Not food. There is no sermon that you can preach to a man who is hungry that he can understand unless his hunger is assuaged.

    Meaning he remains an angry man until he has eaten. And I don’t know of any leader who can successfully lead a hungry people.

    Now that the Yoruba governors have seen our food situation as the emergency that it is, what is left is for them to come up with practical solutions to the challenge.

    As I said earlier, many Yoruba people feel like ‘ what’s happening’ when some of our governors say their states are civil servants’ states. It is unimaginable that political leaders in a place like the southwest would give such an excuse in a region where Chief Awolowo transformed agriculturally and built several monuments through farm

    produce, including the first skyscraper in West Africa, Cocoa House, in Ibadan. Haba! What’s ‘gwan’! Why do we have to forget this glorious past just because everybody now has access to free funds from the Niger Delta? Sometimes, some of us would wish that this crude oil that has made political leaders forget there is something called thinking caps should just dry up. I am sure with it would mop up the incessant demands for more states. Only people who are ready to think creatively would be coming out for elections when that happens. Not people who want to depend perpetually on resources from other places to sustain their life of comfort.

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    Be that as it may, the southwest governors have to swing into action on this agricultural revolution immediately because this was a thing we should have done as early as yesterday. It is sad that things have to degenerate to this extent before we are jolted to action, but it would be sadder still if all we do afterward is to return to business as usual.

    It is shameful that the Yoruba race would have to catch cold if farmers from other parts of the country sneeze. We saw that happen sometime ago when food sellers from a certain part of the country threatened not to bring food down south over some issues. It should never happen again.

    When I was discussing this issue with the editor of our daily paper on Tuesday, he reminded me of the tomatoes that were produced in the southwest that we used to know as kids. They have given way to ‘imported’ ones from the north. The same apply to pepper like ‘ata rodo’ and so on. They have all been overtaken by the northern variants. Something must be wrong with us. Please don’t get me wrong; I am not saying it is bad to buy farm produce from the north. What I am saying is that nothing stops the southwest political leaders from doing their own bit with regard to agriculture. We can never have more than enough food and even if we do, that is a good problem. We can learn to package well for export. Some other West African countries are doing well in this regard.

    It is true that a state like Lagos had gone into partnership with some other states like Kebbi to produce Lake Rice, etc. Lagos even has a rice mill at Imota

    and so on. But Lagos has problem of land; it can therefore only continue to collaborate more with states that have the land to do some other things. We can imagine how much less the country would have been affected if states in the southwest had been seriously engaged in agriculture, especially when insecurity drove farmers away from their farms in the north. The southwest farmers would have filled at least a part of the vacuum. What we have done is akin to putting all our eggs in one basket. It is bad.

    And let me also say this, even if by way of advice; no governor should entertain any demand for money for seminar or workshop to revive agriculture in the southwest or even Nigeria. We have had more than enough of those. Let the commissioners go and dust up the reports of previous talk shops on the issue.

    Our country must be one of the rare places where people who studied Agriculture are roaming the streets, yet, we are hungry. These people as well as others interested in farming should be encouraged through agricultural extension and other programmes to return to the farm. If the package is right and people working in our farms can also wear shoes that would sound smart like their colleagues in other endeavours, we won’t have problems getting dedicated people to work in the farms. Even the farmers’ children that have all left for the cities would come back home.

    As children, there was this song that we used to sing:

    “Ise agbe, nise ile wa,

    Eni ko sise, a ma jale,

    Iwe kiko, laisi oko, ati ada,

    Ko ipe o, ko ipe o.” (Farming is our work, whoever does not work will steal, education without agriculture is incomplete).

    So, where did we miss it in the southwest? We must search for it and take it back. Even if it means bringing back songs and poems of old that gave us character in the region; let us include them in our educational curricular. Enough of westernisation that has made us abandon our cherished heritage, to our collective peril.

    Forward march to the past!

  • Dangote’s revelation

    Dangote’s revelation

    • It is sad that Africans would continue to encourage importation of things that can be produced in their countries, to the detriment of their economies.

    But for the fact that the story captioned:  ‘Those benefitting from massive fuel imports discouraging construction of refineries, says Dangote‘ was attributed to Africa’s richest person and Chairman of the 650,000 bpd Dangote Refinery, in the Lekki area of Lagos, I would not have regarded it as worthwhile to comment on. This is because, in Nigeria, all manner of people see themselves as specialists that are knowledgeable in anything under the sun and speak as such.

    Even Dangote’s name alone too would not have swayed me to write on the matter if he had been all about his sugar, salt and other items of value that he produces.

    But today, Dangote qualifies to talk authoritatively on all of these and more, and, as chairman of Dangote Refinery, he is eminently qualified to talk about refineries as well.

    As a matter of fact, I have a feeling a time is coming when the man would no longer be identified with the other things that he produces except petroleum products. Indeed, I already have the feeling he must be seeing the difference between crude-related business and his other businesses by now. I remember the experience of the Late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola who said after his foray into the oil sector that “publishing is sweet but oil is sweeter’! Until Abiola got a piece of the oil action, he had thought his publishing business was it, but his story and song changed when he had access to Nigeria’s oil sector. Soon, very, very soon, verily, verily I say unto you, Aliko Dangote too would be singing the same song: Dangote Salt, Dangote Sugar, Dangote Flour, etc. are all sweet, but Dangote Refinery is sweeter! There is a difference between apple and oranges. Just the same way one cannot compare sleep with death. Truth be told, oil and those other things are not the same. Your life can never be the same again once you are admitted into the exclusive crude league.

    If a man of Dangote’s stature is talking about refinery, we had better listen to him. He has come a long way. Even before his entry into the oil business, he had carved a name for himself worldwide as a successful entrepreneur. I guess this would be my third or fourth piece on him in my decades of journalism practice. As far as I am concerned, he has seized opportunities provided by certain missing links in the country and I don’t know how that is a crime. Even if it is, show me a Nigerian, including our politicians who have access to cheap public funds, who has established industries that are feeding the number of mouths that Dangote is feeding. I remember Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey who once sang in praise of the Late Chief Henry Oloyede Fajemirokun, another  industrialist of note, with specific reference to the number of people he employed (Ile ise e, aimoye eniyan ni won nje, ni won nmu). The same is true of Dangote today.

    Whether we like it or not, he has become an authority of sort in the oil business and anyone who wants to remain relevant in the oil sector must have one or two things to learn from Dangote.

    What the man said was only partially novel, though. He told us what we largely knew, at least about our own country. But sometimes what we already know gets some fillip when an authority talks about it. Dangote extended the narration beyond our borders. I had all the while thought it was only in Nigeria that we have people who are feeding fat from importation of fuel. Now I know better; that they are all over the African continent. Dangote added that they are the same reason no refinery has been built on the continent in the last 35 years. Hear him: “I’ve learned that there are other countries in Africa, all the African countries that have been trying to build refineries, they have not been able to. There has not been a refinery in the last 35 years.

    “There are so many issues. I can’t count them, but there are so many. It’s not only money, political will, and also people who are benefitting from this whole stuff of importing petroleum products into Africa are actually discouraging those governments from building a refinery.”

    Dangote said he would not have gone into the refinery business if he knew it was as problematic as it turned out to be. Not only that, he said some people tried to discourage him because they thought it would be still-born. “Actually, yes. If I’m going to do it now, I will do it better. Because I’ve learned from experience. But if I knew what I was going to go through, I wouldn’t have tried.”

    That is Dangote talking. Nigeria should be thankful to God that the man did not allow the counsel of those who tried to discourage him to prevail. Otherwise, it is the country as a whole that would suffer. Today, many Nigerians are looking up to Dangote Refinery to bail the country out of its dependency on imported fuel. We are now reaping the fruits of the refinery with regard to diesel; the pump price has dropped significantly since Dangote Refinery began to produce it. Hopefully within the next month or so, the refinery would start producing the much-awaited petrol. When that happens, the pump price of petrol too is expected to be significantly impacted for good.

    Dangote’s statement clearly returns to the front burner of national discourse why refineries in Nigeria have failed to function for several years despite the huge investments in their so-called Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM). Nigeria has four refineries yet, none of them has produced fuel in years, at least not to any significant volume. If our government officials knew the refineries were not programmed to work, why did they keep wasting the tax-payers’ money on their TAM which neither turns around nor maintain them. Corruption, pure and simple!

    Even though Dangote Refinery is a personal enterprise, still, the man sure deserves commendation for his doggedness and tenacity of purpose. As had been pointed out severally, Nigeria stands to benefit a lot from the refinery. And, if again Nigeria does not know how to maximise the benefit of such a refinery in the country, let no one blame Dangote. It is left for the Nigerian government to know how to tap into the project, not in a way as to stifle private enterprise but in a way it would be a win-win situation for both Dangote and Nigeria. After all, he is also a Nigerian.

    Furthermore, we must commend Dangote because we cannot tell the number of people who would have had such projects in mind but easily got discouraged and died with their dreams. We must salute his audacity, authority and his ‘influency’ (to paraphrase one of my seniors in the secondary school. Any time he said those words that had his patent alone in the assembly hall, we, the junior ones would hum after he had pronounced each of the words and shout ‘hey ey ey’ when he crowned it all with ‘influency’. It took my leaving the secondary school to know that the White man has not yet invented any such word as ‘influency’. But, as they say, ‘ki lomode mo’ (what do kids know)? 

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    Anyway, it is for the same reason of audacity (please spare me the remaining two – authority and ‘influency’) that we must praise President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for treading where others feared to tread. The man appeared determined to make our hitherto moribund refineries work. Barely two months after his government came on board on May 29, last year, the government told the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress  and Trade Union Congress that met with the president at the State House after a general strike called by Labour to protest subsidy withdrawal, that at least the Port Harcourt Refinery would start working by December of last year. The ones in Warri and Kaduna, according to him, would follow suit.

    Although there had been about three shifts in the date of commencement of operations of the Port Harcourt Refinery, the expectation is that it would go into operation soon. The government must work relentlessly on this because a promise is a debt that must be paid. More than that, it is in the government’s interest too that the refineries work.

    Be that as it may, Dangote’s revelation is instructive because it is not only in the oil sector that we have saboteurs in the country, nay the continent. We have also heard time and again that the country has not been able to crack its power crisis because of unscrupulous Nigerians who are into importation of generators. Dangote’s revelation has lent another perspective to the perpetual underdevelopment of the African continent. It is sad that some unscrupulous Africans would collude with foreigners to sabotage essential services like power, oil, etc. so their countries would continue to import those products over which they have comparative advantage in some cases, thereby helping to grow other economies to the detriment of their own.

    The sad thing is that we only hear of these allegations, the people are never unmasked not to talk of being arrested or prosecuted. They are like the fabled ‘they’ that children mention when they steal or spoil their property. ”They have stolen my biro”.” They have stolen my book”. So, as one of our tutors asked in those days: ”who are these ‘they’? I want to similarly ask the same question: who are these ‘they’ that have been sabotaging local production of petroleum products, electricity, etc. in the country? President Tinubu should be able to name and shame them in order to break the jinx of moribund refineries in the country. That would go a long way in boosting the value of our currency because it would complement Dangote and other refineries that are springing up all over the country. We can never have too many refineries, to ensure fair competition and get value for Nigerians who would be buying the products.

  • Food infrastructure

    Food infrastructure

    Govt must focus on this if the veil over its other achievements is to be lifted

    I was clear-headed as to where I am going today long before I put pen to paper: food security. This is an issue that is bothering millions of Nigerians. Food prices are just astronomical. Unfortunately, food has no alternative. Human beings must eat. If any other thing can wait; not food. Even if one is on marathon fasting; like litigation, there must be an end to it.

    But, much as I knew what to write on, not so the headline. The first headline that came into my mind was ‘Stomach infrastructure’. But, it occurred to me that the recent proponent of that concept, the former Governor of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose, is like an irritant and pollutant to many people.

    So, his personae may be offensive to such people who ordinarily could have loved to read the piece but would therefore throw away the baby with the bath water because of the Fayose connection.

    For the record, Fayose is not the originator of ‘stomach infrastructure’. He just happened to be the one who reminded us about its existence and gave it currency in our political lexicon.

    That was in 2014 when he was seeking the votes of Ekiti people and he had to think through what the people needed. Stories had it that he enticed Ekiti people with mundane things like water that he brought to their doorsteps in water tanks; stoves, kerosene, etc. so they could vote for him.

    Many people, including myself,  condemned both Fayose and the Ekiti people then. But, while doing that, we never bothered to ask the most appropriate question: How come Ekiti people became so cheap to sell their votes for such sundry items? This is a state with so many erudite scholars. I remember we used to joke with the erudite stature of the Ekiti people in my school days by alluding to the professors ‘Odideres’, ‘Oderes’, Alukos and :Iguns’ of this world (all of them being names of some birds, apparently taking a cue from the Prof. Samuel Aluko, the great economist of blessed memory).

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    So, how come such people that even the Late Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, former premier of Western Nigeria joked, in the days of politics of entertainment that Ekiti people would read Chief Kingsley Mbadiwe, a former minister in tne First Republic (in an apparent pun on Mbadiwe’s name) if he became a book. ‘Mba di we’, literally translated in Yoruba language means ‘I can become book’ or something! That was another eloquent testimony to the erudite stature of the Ekiti people.

    If the Ekiti people were this cerebral, celebrated and revered, how did they get to the point of being wooed with things that we cannot even regard as material attractions, but basic things of life? ‘Water, light(ie), food(oo)’, apologies to the Late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Something must be wrong somewhere. Unfortunately many of us who were commenting on the matter, including yours sincerely, ignored that missing link; we focused more on the Fayose personae. If Ekiti people had been provided water, Fayose would not have come with that idea of giving them water, and if he was so dumb to, they would have seen through the rabble-rouser that he probably was. The same apply to other things of cheap value that he deployed to sway the Ekiti people to his side in the run-up to the polls.

    Anyway, enough of the Fayose personae and the Ekiti people.

    I felt a big relief when I eventually settled for ‘food infrastructure’ as headline of this piece. If only that would make people with the anti-Fayose sentiment happy.

    But even on the academic note, I wonder why food is not classified as infrastructure whereas most definitions of the concept, ‘infrastructure’, capture water as part of it.

    Be that as it may, in fairness to the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu government, it has done a lot in one year. Unfortunately, like a Yoruba saying, ‘adiye nlaagun, iye ara e ni o je ka mo’ (it is the fowl’s feathers that are preventing us from seeing that the fowl is sweating).

    Where do we start from? Bayo Onanuga, the president’s special adviser on information and strategy; Tunde Rahman, a senior presidential aide, amongst others, dwelt extensively on some of the president’s achievements in just one year.

    If I seem to focus more on Rahman’s, please pardon me. One, I picked it up from the online medium of a friend that I love so much, ‘TheLiberationNews’. Second, it seemed to have flowed largely from ministerial presentations that were done to mark the government’s one year, a thing that the president had ordered must be low-keyed. Left to our civil servants, they would have rolled out the red carpet for celebration. They love spending money on such occasions. I won’t say more than that.

    Flowing from the ministerial presentations, I found it difficult to believe how far the government has come since May 29, last year.

    In the oil sector, daily production has jumped from barely one million to 1.7million barrels per day. Indeed, we have overshot OPEC’s quota, as announced by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri.

    Then, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) where the minister, Nyesom Wike, the immediate past governor of Rivers State and the ‘as e dey sweet us, e dey pain dem’ exponent, appears to be turning things around at an incredible alacrity. Wike is really taking full advantage of the full autonomy granted him by the President to recalibrate the governance structure of the FCT. In so short a time, he “has completed the construction of many bridges, refurbished the moribund metro line in Abuja and created access roads to the train stations, which had earlier rendered the stations inaccessible even when it was briefly operational. Around $15 million was expended on building the access roads to the various stations”, Rahman wrote.

    The power sector too would seem to be making some progress, no matter how little. This is a sector that many Nigerians seem to see the minister as ‘wobbling and fumbling’, but the man too seems to be pulling some weight.

    “Precisely on May 3, 2024, we generated, transmitted, and distributed 5,003.45MW of power. This is expected to further rise to 6,000MW by the end of this year,” the minister, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, said in his presentation. This is the first time in three years that such a record was achieved, according to him. About 3.5 million meters are also soon to be deployed to ensure accurate billing in the sector.

    A lot is happening in the aviation, marine and blue economy as well as other ministries. Kudos must go to the works minister too, the indefatigable Dave Umahi.

    It is also on record that the Tinubu administration has come up with some of the social safety nets that had disappeared in the country over the decades. Here, the student loan scheme and credit scheme readily present themselves for reference.

    But all of these and many more seem to have paled into insignificance simply because food is still expensive. Pure and simple. This is the singular veil that is blurring other achievements of the government and understandably so.

    So, as the Tinubu government steps on the second ladder in its four-year journey, it is my humble submission that his topmost priority should be food, food and food. How do we bring the food prices down? This must be the government’s focus.

    For as long as things are not smiling in the markets (mind you the markets, not the malls or marts because there is a difference between them), every other smile, even on the faces of political hangers-on, is cosmetic. It cannot endure.

    Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs makes us understand how to move from the basic things of life like food, clothes and shelter to the more sophisticated. It is after meeting these basic things that we can now say, yes, let’s proceed to higher ideals.

    Even in local Yoruba parlance, they say ‘ebi ki wonu, ki oro mi wo’, or t’ebi ba ti kuro ninu ise, ise buse’, both literally translated to mean if hunger is out of the poverty question, then the rest is easy to address.

    Emmanuel Olusegun Stover in the abstract to his book, ‘Stomach Infrastructure: Lessons for Democracy and Good Governance’ compares physical infrastructure with stomach infrastructure and his conclusion is instructive: “But, to sum it up, stomach infrastructure is first and foremost about the people’s survival. It is a living, stress-free man that can enjoy the benefit of a modern city or world-class physical infrastructures. Thus, … building stomach infrastructure is about understanding the bottom-top gradual approaches in developmental strides.” President Goodluck Jonathan said a similar thing: “you cannot lead a hungry people”. It is immaterial whether he did as he said; the matter is now about what he said and not what he did. Any lesson from his statement?

    Again, as the Tinubu administration begins its second year, it is pertinent for it to always have at the back of its mind that food affordability must be in the front of the government’s priorities. I deliberately did not make reference to the presentation by the Minister of Agriculture not because I do not like his face but because, impressive as the figures he presented were, Nigerians will not live by figures. Those figures must translate to significant reduction in food prices, going forward. That is the only way the figures would have meaning to Nigerians. As a matter of fact, this is the minister that the president must keep in touch with per second 24×7 because his ministry is the most important at this point in our national life.

    If insecurity is the problem, the government should do more to take it out. Whatever the impediment to cheap food items must go.

    Pastor Eunuch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God I reliably gathered usually says “if love is blind, marriage would open it”. It may sound like a phrase, yet its meaning should be clear enough, even to the dumbest of all. If politics or tribe or religion is blind, hunger would open it. That is what is playing out in the country.

    All these unending agitations for wage increase have to do with fear of the unknown, especially with basic food items.

    While one can only appeal to Labour to show understanding at this point, the political class too must act in consonance with the economy and be sensitive to the feeling of the average Nigerian.

    Only God can make me happy should this high cost of food continue till this time next year.

  • Oloyede, truly divine

    Oloyede, truly divine

    • His unending transformation of JAMB as seen in 2024 UTME transcends human comprehension

    This year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) organised by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has come and gone. But, unlike many years ago when we would still have been reviewing the exercise several weeks after, because of the too-numerous-to-be-ignored lapses and irregularities, many Nigerians have put the 2024 examination behind them, so soon. This is because of the meticulous way JAMB has been conducting the examination, especially since Prof. Ishaq Oloyede took over as Registrar/Chief Executive Officer in August 2016.

     Oloyede, a former vice-chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara State, described his appointment by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration as “divine”, when he assumed duty. And, as if that was a prophecy of sort, his roles at the board have proved to be truly divine, having started to rewrite the JAMB narrative, particularly as regards its core responsibility of organising the annual UTME. The transformation that the examination and the entire JAMB as an institution has witnessed in the last seven years and still counting is, simply put, phenomenal.

    Oloyede stunned Nigerians when in his first year, he turned in into the Federal Government’s coffers a whopping N7.8 billion, a thing that the then finance minister found difficult to believe and indeed felt there must have been a mistake somewhere because JAMB never attained anything near that before. It not only failed in its core mandate, it was always a source of loss to government (‘ko se dee de, o tun short ijoba’).

    But, there was no mistake anywhere. Oloyede actually remitted that much in barely one year in office. Since then he has continued to remit billions into the government’s coffers. As at 2022, the board had remitted N50 billion, apart from about six billion Naira it spent to acquire some property.

    This huge remittance that he recorded in his first year was one of the things that shot him into limelight. Then, his zero tolerance for corruption.

    Interestingly, huge remittances would now seem to be taking a backstage in the JAMB or Oloyede narrative not because the remittances have stopped but because the Oloyede phenomenon is not just about making the government smile to the bank; continual improvement in the conduct of its core assignment, the UTME, is also of paramount importance to this scholar who has carved a name for himself as not just an administrative maestro, but also as a financial wizard.

    Oloyede’s stellar performance in his first term made his reappointment to ”continue the good works” he started in JAMB a mere formality. This writer recalls in one session he had with journalists, I think somewhere in Abuja, I asked him shortly before his reappointment what he would do if he was ‘promoted upstairs’ as a result of the very many big toes some of his policies might have stepped on. His answer was that from the classroom he came; and to the classroom he would return.

    Ordinarily, this would have been a rhetorical question if performance was the sole determinant of such renewal of mandate. But, in Nigeria, some other considerations could have led to his being taken away from JAMB elsewhere, so that some of the people who could not stomach his earth-shaking reforms in JAMB, could breathe. Thank God, common sense lived up to its name as his reappointment was confirmed by the Buhari government effective August 1, 2021.

    One thing that has continued to work in favour of the JAMB boss is his ability to weather storms. It is not easy to fight corruption which is endemic in virtually all spheres of our national life, not excluding JAMB. We remember the story of the JAMB woman who told us how a snake swallowed JAMB’s N36 million! We also remember the numerous stories of people that had been profiteering from illegal conducts in the UTME until Oloyede came and put a stop to their nefarious activities.

    But if people are celebrating Oloyede today, Oloyede too would be given the credit to both Allah and IT. Indeed, if ever some people used information technology (IT) for the benefit of mankind, Oloyede is definitely one of such people. For me, even the question of whether an IT expert could have better deployed IT in the service of JAMB, with the same degree of integrity than Oloyede, is debatable. As a matter of fact, if his background as

    professor of Islamic Studies had been the sole consideration at the point of his appointment, he probably would not have got the job in the first place. And, sorry to say, Nigeria would have been the loser.

    Oloyede’s untiring effort in the application of IT has tremendously facilitated the discharge of his duties in JAMB. IT has helped tremendously in the rendering of weekly accounts in JAMB, thus making the board one of the truly transparent public institutions in Nigeria.

    Thanks to IT, many aspects of the examination have witnessed several metamorphoses since the advent of Oloyede. From the assessment and placement landscape, the procedure for the new channels for acceptance of admissions by candidates, etc. Technology continues to play a major role in eliminating the loopholes exploited by professional exam writers with the deployment of the latest innovations that are always steps ahead of the cheats.

    At present, JAMB conducts examination in nine foreign centres: Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Buea, Cameroon; Cotonou, Republic of Benin; London, United Kingdom; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; and Johannesburg, South Africa. This aims at marketing our institutions to the outside world as well as ensuring that our universities reflect the universality of academic traditions, among others.

    But this piece is not essentially about celebrating Oloyede. There is also the need to provide answers to some Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs) about UTME and JAMB , especially given the misconceptions about certain aspects of their operations. One is this idea of classifying some candidates as  having failed the examination simply because they scored what we consider low marks in the UTME and would therefore not gain admission. For instance, the result of the UTME as released by JAMB this year showed that 8,401 candidates or 0.5 per cent of the total scored 300 and above; 77,070 (4.2 per cent) scored 250 and above and 439,974 (24 per cent) got 200 and above. The remaining 1,402,490 candidates (76 per cent) scored below 200. Some see this as a steady decline in the standard of education in the country while others even see it as a result of the inadequate preparations by JAMB, especially with a few hiccups during the examination.

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    The fact of the matter is that UTME score is only one leg of the admission criteria into tertiary institutions in the country. There are also the mandatory five credits, including Mathematics and English Language. It should be noted that not all the 1.9million candidates who sat for the UTME this year already have their five credits, including the mandatory two subjects.

    Then often, ‘passing’ or ‘failing’ UTME is also a function of several other factors.

    Even as we speak, some of the first grade federal universities in the country, including the University of Ilorin, have fixed 180 as their cut-off mark, this year. This only means that this is the irreducible minimum that they would accept from prospective undergraduates into their institution. But then, scoring 180 does not automatically guarantee admission into those universities. It depends also on the course of study. A candidate who scored even 250 may not be offered admission into a particular tertiary institution if the course he or she happens to be interested in is very competitive, like Medicine, Pharmacy, Law, Engineering, Mass Communication, etc. Unfortunately, these are courses that many candidates run after and many of them end up not being admitted, not necessarily because they ‘failed’ UTME but because the spaces in their desired courses are limited and therefore would go only to those with the highest scores. Meanwhile, there are several vacant spaces waiting to be filled in a course like Agriculture and some other programmes that are less competitive.

    This is where the question of unscrupulous parents come in. Many parents want their children to be lawyers, doctors, engineers and so on, even when the children lack the capacity to pursue such programmes. Rather than accept their fate, or take reasonable measures to improve their children’s performance, some of these parents, particularly those with means, are ready to do everything, in order to get them into the tertiary institutions, often buying their way through. They had succeeded severally in the past; but no more under the Oloyede management. As a matter of fact, JAMB had to ban parents from escorting their children to examination centres this year because of the activities of such unscrupulous parents.

    Of no less importance is the subject combination that many candidates do not get right. There is also the post-UTME to consider.

    What all of these FAQs and misconceptions tell us is that JAMB must continue to enlighten stakeholders on all these aspects of its operations so as to dispel unnecessary rumours and avoid putting on its head loads that are not its own.

    The beauty of the UTME, at least since Oloyede took over, is that gradually, there has been some correlation between what many candidates scored in UTME and their post-UTME examination. Indeed,  some of the candidates who did not do well in UTME had also been found to have been unable to conclude even their first semester in the universities, whereas those who scored high grades in UTME have also been found to have been doing well in their secondary schools and the universities, when subsequently offered admission. This has been made possible by the strict processes put in place by JAMB; a thing that is making some universities even now contemplating whether there is any further basis for post-UTME, given the high integrity of the examination.

    Of course, as with all human endeavours, perfection is usually a tall order. In an examination that about two million candidates sat for, there would always be a few hitches, even in the best of climes. It would be unfair to say JAMB was not well prepared in an examination where only one of the 777 CBT centres failed. What more? Generally, in genuine cases where candidates did not get value for their money in the conduct of the examination, they were allowed a second chance. If only about 78 cases of examination misconduct were recorded in the same exam, involving largely impersonation, then there is something positive to say of the UTME. It tells something about the steps that the board has been taking over the years to curb these malpractices. 

    It is the continual innovations by JAMB that made this year’s UTME rank as ”one of the most innovative versions in the annals of Computer-Based Testing by the board”, to quote Prof Oloyede.

    In all, saying that the Oloyede-led JAMB has done very well so far is an understatement. But, as it is always agreed, room for improvement there always will be.