The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • From Blue Line to Red Line

    From Blue Line to Red Line

    It was yet another momentous occasion for the Lagos State government when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu commissioned the Lagos Mass Rail Transit (LMRT) Red Line train project on February 29. Momentous because it marked yet another occasion for the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration to deliver on another project that is dear not only to Lagosians, but would have transformational effect on public transportation in the country.

    The project commissioned by President Tinubu was the first phase, and it runs from Agbado in Ogun State to the Oyingbo axis of Lagos State. The 37 km rail line has eight stations, namely Agbado, Iju, Agege, Ikeja, Oshodi, Mushin, Yaba and Oyingbo. The red line is only one of six such projects that are in the offing to change the way Lagosians commute. Coming are the Green Line, Purple Line, Yellow and Orange Lines, as well as a monorail. Indeed, preliminary works have started on the Green Line and the Purple Line. The Green Line is a 71.4 km rail from Marina to Lekki free trade zone, while the Purple Line is a 54.3 km rail from Ojo, close to LASU into Mowe, Ogun State.

    According to Sanwo-Olu, ”The LMRT project is a beacon of progress, illuminating the path to a future where our city moves smoother, faster, and more efficiently.

    “Embarking on the Lagos Mass Rail Transit (LMRT) project is more than just enhancing transit; it’s about weaving the fabric of our city into a tighter, more connected community”, Sanwo-Olu said.  He added that “every track laid, every station built, brings us closer to a Lagos where distance no longer dictates destiny.”

    Governor Sanwo-Olu also made it known that “For the first time in the history of Lagos, we have an integrated transportation system, comprising the road, which is the BRT that we are using, the rail, which is the rail mass transit programme, and the waterways, through the state ferries.”

     BusinessDay puts it in perspective: ”The Red Line isn’t just another train track; it’s envisioned as a crucial link in Lagos’ larger rail network, connecting the city to the Lagos-Ibadan corridor…”

    I can only imagine how President Tinubu would have felt when commissioning the project. The revolutionary idea to transform public transportation in the state began in his era as governor at the beginning of the present political dispensation in 1999. The president in his address shared insights into the transformative vision for Lagos: “My team and I toiled day and night to craft and implement a developmental vision that will transform Lagos into the economic powerhouse of Africa and a respected mega city on the global stage. We are realising that dream,” he said. “It is not a crime to dream big. Just stay focused and stay on course, particularly, make development the central fulcrum,” he added.

    Mass transportation was chaotic as at 1999 when Tinubu took over as governor in Lagos. Although the ‘Bolekaja’ (buses built with planks) had started to diminish in number unlike in the 1970s when they still represented a significant means of transportation in the state, the ‘Molue’ buses were still in vogue, alongside the ‘Danfo’ and other contraptions that then passed for public buses. The way and manner passengers were packed in the ‘Bolekaja’ buses, sometimes with male and female passengers criss-crossing their laps while seated sometimes made clashes inevitable. Perhaps that was how the ‘Bolekaja’ derived their name. ‘Bolekaja’ in Yoruba language simply means ‘come down, let’s fight’. But it was clear that it was only a matter of time for those types of buses to be inadequate to take the teeming number of people in the state to and fro their respective destinations. Even the ‘Molue’ is fast becoming antediluvian; they had indeed started to show traces of stress as at 1999. The roads were usually jam-packed, with many passengers stranded at bus stops.

    It was in the midst of this chaos that the Tinubu government went to the drawing board to change the public transportation narrative in the state. His administration set up the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) while its bill was signed into law on January 13, 2002. LAMATA oversees a wide range of transport planning and implementation of transport strategies and plans in Lagos, as well as the Lagos Rail Mass Transit and the Lagos Bus Rapid Transit System. The result is the transformation that has been noticed in this sector in the state in the last two decades.

    The Blue and Red lines projects are indeed a hefty price tag for urban mobility, a substantial investment in Lagos’ urban transportation infrastructure. Governor Sanwo-Olu said both lines combined would exceed ₦100 billion. Delays in the Blue Line project, initially expected to be completed by 2011, highlighted the funding challenges faced by the project.

    The Red Line project is expected to facilitate 37 trips daily, accommodating approximately 500,000 passengers, once fully operational. That means both the Blue and Red lines rail projects would be taking one million passengers per day. This is a lot, and it is expected to have significant improvement on transportation generally in the state.

    As with the Blue Line, the primary objectives of the Red Line include reducing travel time, mitigating health issues related to stress, and enhancing economic productivity. The project also aims to alleviate traffic congestion, minimise road accidents, and improve commuter safety within Lagos.

    However, unlike the Blue Line that is electric-powered, the Red Line would utilise a diesel-powered system known as Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU). DMU employs on-board diesel engines to propel multiple-unit trains. In order to ensure smooth operation of the rail line and safety for commuters, 10 vehicular overpasses and pedestrian bridges, separating train traffic from vehicular and pedestrian flows, have been constructed at strategic places on the corridor.

    Read Also: Sanwo-Olu opens Yaba Overpass Bridge, awards contract for Blue Line second phase

    As is usual with me, I cannot write on rail transportation in Lagos without remembering how Gen. Muhammadu Buhari truncated the noble, visionary and commendable efforts of the Lateef Jakande administration in Lagos to introduce metroline in the state as far back as the 1980s. Buhari, as then military head of state, in one of the evils of unitary system that military rule imposed on Nigeria, terminated the project, with a hefty fine that Buhari would rather pay than have the metroline in Lagos. Only the then General Buhari and probably his co-travellers who annulled the metroline project knew why they did because it just did not make sense. Could it be a problem of lack of vision or limited exposure? I guess it was more of the latter.

    Indeed, anybody who has a fair idea about who the former president is would have known that he would run into problems as president, especially when he decided to double as Minister of Petroleum Resources. Apparently, the man was still looking at the oil industry with the same eyes that he ran it, first as head of state and later as Chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund. He didn’t know that stealing in the industry had moved from the arithmetic progression of the 1980s to the geometric progression of the 21st century. Evidence? Well, by the time the account books are scrutinised, even the former president would know that right under his nose, and with his two eyes wide open, some of his people were busy making money for themselves at the expense of the average Nigerian. Unfortunately, the more he looked, the less he saw because he was busy looking for today’s thieves that are using artificial intelligence (AI), with binoculars.

    Be that as it may, I wondered aloud what would have been going on in the then president’s mind when Sanwo-Olu invited him to commission the blue line on January 24, last year, against the backdrop of his frustrating a similar project in the state as military head of state. I had thought he was going to at least make allusion to that during the commissioning, but mum was the word from him. Anyway, we should continue to free the country from the shackles of unitarism that envisages development at the same pace for all parts of the country. That is utopia. Even in a family, nothing says the children would do well in any particular order — educational attainments or whatever, not to talk of a country of over 200 million people.

    With both the blue and red lines rail ferrying about one million passengers per day, we can only imagine what transportation would have looked like in Lagos if they had not been done. And we can only imagine how far transportation would have gone in the state if metroline had been running since the 1980s. There is no doubt that some other forward-looking states would have emulated the Lagos example. We cannot wait to have the Yellow, Purple, Green and Orange lines as well as the monorail, which will all carry millions of commuters across different parts of the state daily. By the time all of these are completed, it would be goodbye to ‘okada’ riders and some other transporters who have constituted themselves into a menace on Lagos roads.

    It is saying the obvious to say that the idea of the mass modal system of transportation in Lagos was a product of good thinking and visionary leadership. It is the beauty of continuity in government because if another political party had taken over the state, it might not have continued with the rail projects despite the numerous benefits that the state stands to gain from them.

    I congratulate both President Tinubu who, as governor conceived the idea of the multimodal transportation system in Lagos, particularly the rail component of it, as well as his successors who are beginning to see the projects to fruition.

  • Opportunistic protests

    Opportunistic protests

    • Fed Govt must address high cost of food in particular to make champions of such ‘opportunistic infections’ irrelevant

    Whether Tuesday’s street protests called by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) was appropriate or not would continue to remain a source of debate for so long. Just as it is going to be difficult to say whether it was the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) that called workers out on protest that was right, or its counterpart, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) which did not join the protest. There can never be unanimity of opinion on these ‘whethers’ because of the several interests involved. As the TUC leader, Festus Osifo, said while announcing that its members would not participate in the protest, there are several tools in the box to deploy when faced with the kind of circumstances that Nigerian workers and their leaders are confronted with. Strike is only one of them. While the government may feel the protests were unnecessary, Labour and its co-travellers would insist they were in order. What can never be denied, however, is that protests, particularly peaceful protests, are part of the inalienable rights of citizens in a democracy.

    That was one reason I was happy that the protests were allowed to hold after all. To have done otherwise would have been tantamount to infringing on that fundamental right. I must confess though that, despite not being in government, I also had my apprehensions when the NLC announced its intention to stage the protests. And I was being guided by that teacher of all times: experience. I had seen too many protests: the June 12 protests, bread protests in some other countries and so on. Even if I had seen no other protests other than the 2020 EndSARS protests that later turned riotous, that was enough to send shivers down my spine when I heard another round of protests was in the offing.

    The truth of the matter is that one can only predict the beginning of such protests; no one can tell their end. Not even those who conceived the idea. They might later lose control, especially in a volatile environment that we are in, occasioned by mass hunger and other deprivations.

    If the 2020 EndSARS riots, mainly about police brutality could wreak the kind of havoc it did wreak, then, things could have been worse if the NLC protests had snowballed into something else. This is because hunger is worse than police brutality. Almost everybody, including the government, admits that things are hard and the vast majority of Nigerians are hungry. And, as they say, a hungry man is an angry man. You cannot tell the extent to which someone who is angry can ventilate the catharsis on other citizens who, sadly, may even be suffering more than the people unleashing violence on them.

    As I said, it is gratifying that God took control during the protests. I doff my hat for the police and other security agencies who also demonstrated enough maturity and professionalism during the protests, such that there were no untoward incidents. The story would not have been the same if lives were lost during the protests. Indeed, that would have been bad for the government’s image.  

    One other thing that gladdens my heart was the fact that those who wanted to participate in the protests did so voluntarily. Those who were not interested, even if they were NLC members, were not coerced or conscripted to join the protests. This is the way it should be. Labour leaders do not have to be moving from office to office to flog out people who decide not to participate in a strike for whatever reason. Membership and participation in groups activities, no matter how noble, should be by choice and not by force in a democracy.

    But the government would be making a big mistake to assume that those who failed or refused to participate in the protests did so because they believed in the government. People may have stayed away for various reasons. Fear of being killed could have been a reason. Yes, this might not speak well of the government ultimately, the fact is; life has no duplicate. Anyone who is dead is dead, he or she can no longer be brought back to life. Second, there were those who believe that following Labour leaders in such moments has always led to last minute frustration when Labour leaders go into last-minute meetings with government to avert a strike that people had been massively mobilised to participate in. The belief is that such meetings make the Labour leaders smile to the bank the next day. Why then should they risk their lives and all by joining such protest? Whereas this may not be completely true, the fact also is that we had seen such before.

    Now, the point has been well made. It is now left for the government to move swiftly into action. If we are all agreed that Nigerians are hungry, then this is not the time to look at the messenger purveying that fact of life. The government should keep its eyes on the message – insecurity, unemployment, depreciating Naira, etc. The Yoruba people say ‘ebi ki iwonu ki oro mi wo’ (a man who is hungry has no room for anything else other than how to get food). This is true of all human races. Hunger has no ethnic, religious, political or other colouration. An ‘Oyinbo’ man that is hungry is not different from the African man (that the ‘Oyinbo’ see as monkeys) who is suffering the same fate. As a matter of fact, a hungry ‘Oyinbo’ man could even be more ‘monkeyish’ in his reaction than even the African in such situation.

    We saw that demonstrated during the French Revolution of 1789 when the wife of the king told the people, rather care freely, that French citizens should eat cake if they could not find bread! As if bread and cake are the same thing. That was all the people needed to make the revolution happen. The rest is history. But before resting my case on this, I wonder how many other revolutions the European historians who described the French Revolution as “one of the greatest events in human history” had seen to come to that conclusion?

    Whenever I remember the kind of crowd I saw during the EndSARS protests, I keep asking myself if that was not something to dread in terms of the numbers that participated. That was the first time I knew that Nigeria truly could be boasting the 200 million plus population that it is credited to have. When I saw the sea of human heads that were as tiny as birds in the air in their angry mode, I thought the world was coming to an end.

    That is why, I repeat; government at this point does not have to see the messenger. That would be playing into the hands of its enemies. I have always said it whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself that the government would be making a big mistake if it thought the election had been won and lost after the Supreme Court’s pronouncement. The government may have its own shortcomings in terms of the way it has handled particularly its economic reform, but there are also those who had been feeding fat on the spoils of the ancient regime that won’t want to go down without a fight. May be this was why President Muhammadu Buhari did not bother to confront the corruption monster. The man merely told us that corruption would kill the country if we didn’t kill it and went into deep slumber afterward. His government may end up taking the corruption trophy from some of the military generals that we thought had won the cup for keeps by the time the account books are scrutinised. Buhari’s abandonment of the fight against corruption is one of the reasons we are in the deep mess that we are in today. Yet, some of those who led us here are still roaming the streets and flaunting their ill-gotten wealth in the most offensive manner.

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    Indeed, if anything, this is one of the main grudges many Nigerians hold against the Tinubu government. They are not interested in whether the government is barely nine months old or whatever. They want action against those people that they see as the cause of their suffering as early as yesterday.

    The government may not be in a position to do that because things must be done in accordance with the law in a democracy.

    But, if the government is not in a position to immediately bring those responsible for our woes to book for reason of due process, I mean, if it cannot jail those thieves before prosecuting them (to paraphrase one of our former number two generals in the military era), it is within its powers to at least listen to the voices making suggestions on how the hardship in the land can be ameliorated.

    This is irrespective of whether the suggestions are coming from friends or foes, real or perceived. Both the TUC and the NLC have submitted proposals to the government on what they consider the way forward. Others have done same. The government would do well to look dispassionately at these suggestions, especially where staple food items are concerned. The price of rice has reached the most unimaginable level. Gari too. It must come down fast. At this point, nothing should be cast in stone. Even if importation is not in the government’s agenda, it must come in now, if only as a stop-gap measure, pending when the government would have got a better handle on solutions to the problem of high food prices.

    For as long as Nigerians remain hungry, no sermon on patience would have meaning to them. They are used to hearing that. Indeed, it is such opportunistic ‘infections’ like the pangs of hunger that politicians in Labour robes, as well as professional politicians need to remain relevant. That is why their actions resonate more with the people.

    As I said earlier, ‘ebi ki iwonu, ki oro mi wo’.

  • Rend your heart

    Rend your heart

    Our problem is neither presidential nor parliamentary democracy; our politicians are the problem

    It is almost certain that the 60 members of the House of Representatives who are pushing for the country’s return to parliamentary system of government are not likely to go far, for very obvious reasons.  The present law makers in the National Assembly are not likely to let the matter scale through because, according to some people, they would not like to commit class suicide. I don’t know what that means, though, because anyone who expects things to continue like this, with a situation where the congregation is getting lean and the pastors are getting fat is only deceiving himself or herself.  But, what are the reasons adduced by the House of Representatives’ members who are calling for our return to parliamentary rule?

    The law makers, under the auspices of Parliamentary Group, introduced a constitution alteration bill on the floor of the House of Representatives on February 14, setting in motion what could be a transition to a parliamentary system by 2031. Led by the Minority Leader, Kingsley Chinda (PDP, Rivers), the law makers appear frustrated with the presidential system that they see as expensive, and the overbearing powers of the president. “No wonder the Nigerian President appears to be one of the most powerful Presidents in the world,” the group’s spokesperson, Mr Abdulsamad Dasuki said. They are also not happy that despite several alterations to the present constitution, the shortcomings in the system persist, thus robbing the country of its opportunity of attaining its full potential.

     “Among these imperfections are the high cost of governance, leaving fewer resources for crucial areas like infrastructure, education, and healthcare, and consequently hindering the nation’s development progress, and the excessive powers vested in the members of the executive, who are appointees and not directly accountable to the people,” he said.

    “The bills presented today seek a return to the system of government adopted by our founders, which made governance accountable, responsible, and responsive, and ultimately less expensive,” he said.

    Even from Dasuki’s presentation, it is clear that parliamentary system of government is not a particularly novel idea to Nigeria. It was what we had in place before it was dismantled by the military that foisted an unworkable unitary system of government on us, in place of the federalism that we hitherto practiced.

    True, we have long been complaining that the present presidential system is a drain on the nation’s treasury. But we have merely been complaining in the last 24 years plus without taking any concrete steps to actualise an alternative. Without doubt, our presidential system is expensive and therefore unsustainable. Even from the point of electoral contest, a lot of money is involved. Unlike in the past when political parties relied on their members’ contributions for sustenance, it is money-bags that hijack most of the parties and, after spending so much to win elections, they want to recoup their money. Whether due to slip of tongue or whatever, a few of them had confessed this much. 

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    The sad part of it is that the usually expensive elections hardly end with the conduct of polls in the country. Virtually every election outcome is contested in court. This also entails a lot of money spent on litigations, some of which are from the public till in cases where incumbents are involved.

    Of course this is because, as I have always argued, Nigeria is one of the few countries where someone enters public office today in bathroom slippers and emerges the next day in golden Italian shoes without anybody asking questions. It is the tax-payers that bear the brunt. The reward for public office is alluring.

    After elections, the spending continues. Not only at the centre but even in some states where some governors have had cause to appoint over a thousand political aides.

    Imagine the colossal amounts we have spent maintaining law makers in the National Assembly alone, even since 1999. I am afraid of mentioning figures because they are too staggering not to incite, especially at a time like this when millions of Nigerians are not able to afford two meals a day.

    The humongous cost we are spending on our over-pampered law makers notwithstanding, we would be making a big mistake to think that returning to unicameral legislature alone can lead to reduction in expenses at that level or at any level of governance for that matter. It is true we may not have as many legislators as we now have at the national or state level if we return to parliamentary system of government, that would not automatically lead to a reduction in what we spend maintaining them if the people who are going to represent us then have the same mindset of primitive accumulation as the bulk of those we have been having since 1999. All they need do is raise their greed mode. Like doubling or tripling what both senators and House of Representatives members take home under various incomprehensible headings.

    Lest we forget, the present NASS members did not get to this greed juncture overnight. It started, I think, with furniture allowance in the Olusegun Obasanjo era in the early years of the return to civil rule in 1999. Then, we condemned the legislators but even the then President Obasanjo could not reject the demand in spite of his tough posture on several other things.

    After furniture allowance, the NASS legislators continued to dig deeper until we got to the situation where we find ourselves that they no longer see made-in-Nigeria vehicles as good enough or befitting of their status. Yet, they say they are promoting made-in-Nigeria goods. Yet, they had the temerity to summon the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to come explain why the naira keeps plummeting. Pray, whether in the green or red chamber, which of the items that they are using is locally produced, from their furniture to their flowing gowns? May be they would soon ask us to be paying palliative allowance to them to enable them make better laws for the country. You know, Nigeria is the only place where law makers do their job.

    What I am saying in effect is that the problem is not about the system of government that we adopt, it is more about how ready we are as a people to call to order our so-called elected representatives. Our docility is what these lawmakers continue to exploit until they have now become dry fish that we now find impossible to bend. We have lost the sense of outrage with which we fought the military to a standstill before they returned to their barracks in 1999. We must find it.

    Where are all those non-governmental organisations that went into the trenches during the soldiers-must-go-struggle? I mean Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Campaign for Democracy (CD), etc? We drove the soldiers away only to let those who didn’t lift a finger against the soldiers hijack the harvest from us. Because many of them contributed nothing to the struggle (in fact, some of them worked directly or indirectly to entrench military rule), the only language they understand is how to corner national resources to their advantage now that they have succeeded in getting access to the only factory that is producing nothing in the country — the National Assembly. And if they say they are producing something, what is it? Bad governance! If the state of this country today is the parameter to assess their performance from 1999 to date, then they should know that Nigerians had spent so much to sustain people whose only product is the hardship that is the country’s lot today.

    To further buttress my point that the reason why we have greedy people dominate the NASS is because  most of the lawmakers we have been having since 1999 are just the greedy lot. We had law makers in the Second Republic. They were not this covetous.

    Perhaps what is more perfidious is that there is no difference between the conservatives and the progressives when these spoils from the Nigerian people are concerned. There is unanimity of purpose where sharing money under various headings is the issue.

    The presidential system, no doubt, is naturally expensive, but it becomes even more so when practiced by the kind of politicians who have dominated the National Assembly since the return to civil rule in 1999. The ‘bamu bamu la yo, awa o mo pe’bi np’omo enikankan’ (we are feeding well; we don’t know that some people are hungry) politicians who care little about the millions of miserable Nigerians that they claim to be representing.

    This, for me, is the problem. Not the presidential system, per se.

    I know the greed of many NASS members would not allow them to see clearly in a matter like this. It would quite naturally blur their vision. Like the typical greedy fly, many of them would end up following dead body to the grave because that is where this country is headed unless we retrace our steps. And one veritable way to do that is to jettison these wasteful aspects of the presidential system that our NASS members coined and has produced many rich men (and women) who have become stupendously rich without having any factory or identifiable vocation.

    What the 60 representatives have kick-started is a process of reforming from above, which is far better than leaving the initiative to come from below. The representatives may have come up with an idea that is not necessarily the solution to our financial woes. But what they have started should be a wake-up call to others in the NASS now and those who would be there tomorrow, that to continue to practice this kind of presidential system that makes elected representatives rotund while the so-called electorate continue to go lean in their untiring efforts to settle their representatives’ bill is not the kind of honeymoon that would last forever. As a matter of fact, may be not for too long.

  • Portable’s tango with ‘elder’s meat’

    Portable’s tango with ‘elder’s meat’

    • Unto Cupid I commend this young man’s spirit over his decision to continue with Queen Damilola where the former Alaafin of Oyo stopped

    Although I have been hearing about ‘elder’s meat’ since I was a child, I got to know a different perspective of it after the owner of a prominent broadcast organisation in the country used it when reprimanding one of his employees who was running after a lady broadcaster in the organisation that the media owner himself was interested in. The chairman was then married; but wanted to add to his harem. The young toaster thought he and the lady had a bright future ahead of them; they were both young and single. So, he continued to do ‘kuru kere’ with the lady, pretending not to know that their employer was also interested in her.

    It was not long before he was summoned before the chairman’s one-man panel. At that point, the man thought the world was going to come down on him. But the chairman chose to be human. He made it clear to the man that the lady he was doing ‘kuru kere’ with was his proposed youngest wife and wondered where the young man got the teeth to sink into what he (chairman) called ‘elder’s meat’.

    The young man could not believe that the matter was going to be that simple. He had imagined the worst, to be crowned with a sack letter, for not knowing the difference between ‘bush meat’ and ‘elder’s’ meat’. The young man apologised profusely in appreciation of the chairman’s magnanimity. I guessed he must have told the chairman, to boot, that he should cut off his head if he ever saw him again within a reasonable radius with the lady. He disappeared from his ‘oga’s’ sight, apparently with a vow to ‘sin no more’.

    That was probably about two and a half decades ago.

    I had thought that was the height of audacity. But I was wrong.

    I have seen a more audacious young man, Habeeb Okikiola, better known as Portable. It is the same story about romance and love. There’s this saying in Yorubaland Southwest Nigeria that ‘enu kiniun lowo wa’ (money is in the mouth of a lion). Even if literally, we must have got the import of that saying. But from the story of the young broadcaster that I told earlier, and now that of Portable; it is not only money that is in the mouth of a lion: Love too. Or should I say beautiful women, and handsome men inclusive!

    Or, how do you explain an employee scrambling for, with a view to partitioning, a lady in whom his employer was well pleased? Someone who not only hired him but could fire him as well, with or without notice and or benefit?

    Talking about hiring and firing reminds me of one of my former bosses in those days at The Kingsway Stores on the Marina, Lagos. The woman, one Mrs Dina, would always joke with us whenever we fumbled on the job that Kingsway would first drive you away before following it up with your sack letter (Kingsway a koko le e lo ki won to fi ‘we da e duro)! God bless this Ijebu woman.

    By the way, Kingsway was like today’s Shoprite. There was nothing you wanted under the sun that you would not find at Kingsway. The only difference between Kingsway and what we may call its contemporaries these days is that what we were buying there were far cheap compared with the hefty price tags we see today on many items at today’s big stores. That was, of course, a function of the strength of our currency. I remember we were buying chunky meat pie, (I mean meat pie, not potato pie) that you cannot finish two of it went for 25 kobo. It’s like two times the ones we are now buying for N350 and above apiece in some of today’s stores. But, cheap as things were even then, not everybody had the privilege of going there to buy things. That is a story for another day.

    Back to Portable.

    The young Nigerian singer, rapper and songwriter has done what in those days would have passed for the unthinkable: To be in love with a former queen? Not just any ‘kue kue’ queen in Yorubaland but one of the former queens of the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, iku baba yeye! This was a man that many revered not only for his greatness, opulence, native intelligence and what have you. He was also thought to possess a lot of mystical powers. As a matter of fact, this is where precisely I am going. This is where Portable’s decision to fall in love with a woman that once found comfort in Oba Adeyemi’s arms and laps, is audacious.

    I know Dami’s beauty is captivating. But when you consider the kind of aura surrounding the late Alaafin, you not only run, but flee, even if it is his queen (present or former) that is winking at you. King Sunny Ade it was who once sang that ‘to ba je odun meje ti kolokolo ti ku sile, won o bi iyalaya adiye ko lo sibe lo woran’ (even if a fox had died seven years ago, no fowl would have the temerity to go to where its carcass is for sight-seeing).

    Not only has Portable decided to go on sight-seeing, he has decided to even dig deep, perhaps deeper than that, less than two years after Alaafin Adeyemi died.

    I hear, rightly or wrongly, that, in Yorubaland, no one dared to marry a queen and that once the king died, his wives went into celibacy. Although I don’t know why this should be so, especially considering the fact that most kings then literally hijacked some of these women (oba gbese le), even in their prime. Whilst not suggesting that Alaafin Adeyemi commandeered Dami, the fact of the matter is that it is inhuman to expect a young lady at her age to go into celibacy so early in life. Although she once fled the Alafin’s palace in 2020, when she was about 26 years old. She later apologised publicly. This was obviously a sign that something was wrong somewhere because she was about the third queen to flee the palace then. Alaafin died on April 22, 2022. He was aged 83. ‘Ceteris paribus’, it is difficult for a lady about 50 years younger than him to find fulfillment in the union. This was even more so that she didn’t have a sole proprietary right over the Oba, he also had to satisfy the other queens. At that age? Obviously, some departments would have suffered severe damage that only a youthful and energetic man can fix.

    Until Friday, I had thought it was Dami that first posted about their love life online but discovered that Portable did his earlier in August, last year, more than one year after Alaafin Adeyemi’s demise. Hear him: “I am a real human being; she is my fan from day one. But I later hear you say King don die, after king na king. If to say king never die, you no see me with her. I no dey follow(ing) person wife, that’s why dem no dey follow my wives.”

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    From this statement, we know Portable is not single and searching. He already controls a harem of six wives. So, what could have made him Damilola’s favourite? That is a question one may not be able to answer. Onyeka Onwenu said it all when she sang, alongside King Sunny Ade: “this thing dey call love, e get as e be o…”

    I carefully studied Dami’s post on Portable, and, from my little experience on this kind of matter, there must be something extraordinary for a woman to shower the kind of praise Dami showered on him. She says she is proud of him; that he is the most principled person she ever met, bla, bla, bla. Indeed, the former queen of Oyo town says she has no problem entrusting her all in his hands.

    Indeed, what Dami said of Portable, I cannot tell it all. The journey of the heart must have got to a high gear for a lady to proclaim: “My man, my whole heart, the love of my life, I love you for everything that you are, you are the strongest and most principled person I know. I want you to know that I’m so proud of you and proud to be yours. I also want you to know that I trust you with all my heart, and I believe my heart is safe with you.” This sort of encomium, especially coming from a beautiful queen, is enough to make any man’s head swell.

    Still, the question: even if Dami must remarry, why Portable? This made me to go in search of Portable’s net worth. I learnt it is about N139.5 million (equivalent to $300,000) as at 2023. I don’t think this is enough to ‘shack’ a pretty lady like Dami. I guess there are many men out there in the country who may be willing to ‘spray’ her with a substantial amount several times over to make the N140 million pale into insignificance. So, it doesn’t seem to me money played a significant role in the decision. Could those who could afford it have been so scared of treading where Portable dared to tread, for obvious reasons?

    All said, I think the credit should go to Portable for his daring exploit to go get what he wanted, even if from a lion’s jugular. Not many men would be ready to go that far just to dig for love, pleasure or whatever, with a woman that ‘iku baba yeye’ once held in his mystical, royal arms.

    Is this romance ‘peck and stay’ or is it ‘peck and go’? We may not know yet. But now that Portable ‘fe je n’be’! (or is he already?), I hope he has a mother with the requisite spiritual long leg to see him through this adventure?

    Unto Cupid I commend Portable’s spirit.

  • Again, state police

    Again, state police

    Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State has characteristically dismissed the calls for state police as a needless agitation. The governor who spoke on a Channels Television live programme, ”Sunday Politics”, on January 28, said what the security situation in the country demanded was effective collaboration between governors and the Federal Government-controlled security agencies. Uzodinma, who doubles as Chairman of the South East Governors Forum and the forum of governors on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Progressives Governors Forum, said state police was an expensive venture that many state governments cannot afford.

    “Security is very expensive, and I can’t see any subnational government in Nigeria today that can fund, completely, the cost of providing adequate security in the various subnational governments. So, working together as a federation in synergy with the federal security system… when people say governors are handicapped, I don’t know what they are talking about. Yes, we need the support of the Federal Government; we need to articulate properly, working in synergy with federal security agencies as a subnational government, how we can create a working relationship that will allow us to be on the same page to be able to fight crime in the country.”

    The governor is not done: ” Even when the Federal Government has allowed the vigilante approach, how many states have been able to fund an effective and efficient vigilante organisation? State police will only work if the states are in a position to fund it! So, when we talk about true federalism, we aren’t joking. As I speak, many of our states can’t even fund their existence without an allocation from the Federal Government, and the meaning of government isn’t coming to consume. The meaning of government is that you fend for yourself; you make the money before you can spend it.”

    Two things seem to stand out from the governor’s perspective on state police, given what he was quoted to have said. One is that state police is expensive and many state governments lack the resources to establish it. The other would only seem to suggest that the governor does not see any merit in the idea of state police. At the risk of sounding like the devil’s advocate, I want to believe Governor Uzodinma is not against state police per se; that all he is saying is that many state governments cannot afford to maintain one. This is buffeted by the statement he added that the country needs to restructure such that each state would be able to fend for itself. In other words, our present federal structure does not allow states to be creative to fend for themselves without looking up to the Federal Government every month end for the oxygen to sustain them.

    To this extent, he is probably right.

    But many of his colleagues do not seem to believe that they cannot fund their own police. As a matter of fact, Uzodinma’s colleague in the same south east region, Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State,  believes state police is doable. The two governors bared their minds on the subject at the session on Traditional and Non-Traditional Security Intervention, Early Conflict Identification, Prevention, Management and Resolution on day two of the 2023 induction for re-elected and elected governors with the theme: Governing for Impact (Building Sub-national Governance), organised by the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) at the presidential Villa, Abuja, in May, last year. As far as Soludo is concerned, every security is local, and security issues are therefore better handled by the locals. “Every locality has its own peculiarities and the most fundamental issue, I think for those of us who are governors, and the governors-elect, a major concern that we need to get onto is the national security architecture and the moderator aptly pointed that out, places much of the kinetic architecture almost exclusively on the shoulders of the Federal  Government, and whereas the states are called upon as chief security officers, but you aptly call us generals without troops, and therefore, state governors have to…I mean, what we’ll be discussing from the point of view of these places are coping mechanisms.”

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    Like Soludo,  Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State also supports the idea of state police. Indeed, Makinde said what I thought should happen when state police comes to fruition. And that is the fact that the Federal Government must necessarily shed some weight in terms of what accrues to it from the Federation Account and transfer same to the states in view of the added responsibility that they would bear in funding their own police. Makinde spoke as recently as last week Tuesday when the South West Conference of Speakers of State Legislatures, led by its chairman and Speaker of Ekiti State House of Assembly, Adeoye Aribasoye, paid him a visit at the Oyo State Governor’s Office, Ibadan, over the recent explosion in the ancient city.

    Even many of the governors in the north which is perceived as opposed to restructuring (and by extension state police) have spoken in support of state police. As far back as September 2022, the 19 governors under the aegis of the Northern Governors Forum (NGF) unanimously expressed support for the establishment of state police in a bid to tackle the activities of insurgents, kidnappers and other criminal activities across the country. Their stance was contained in a communique issued at the end of the meeting with the Northern Traditional Rulers Council, NGF chairman and Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, said the meeting reviewed the security situation in the North and other matters relating to its development and resolved to support further amendments of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) in the bid to accommodate the establishment of state police.

    Only last year, then Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, appealed to the 9th Assembly to pass the state and community police bill before leaving office; unfortunately, the bill didn’t see the light of the day.

    With this preponderance of opinion on the matter, there is no doubt that state police has the backing of virtually all parts of the country. Indeed, this is one thing that cannot be denied: there is a consensus on the part of many stakeholders that state police is an idea whose time has come because of the dysfunctional nature of the present national security architecture. 

     It is audible to the deaf, and visible to the blind that the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), even though it is trying, at least within the limits of what is made available to it, it cannot effectively police the country.

    The tell-tale signs are all too evident. Kidnapping is on the rise, terrorism seems to be spreading. Just last week, three traditional rulers were killed in the hitherto ‘safe’ south west. Bloodbath is witnessed almost on a daily basis in all parts of the country. In the midst of all of these, governors seem powerless as they are chief security officers of their states only in words; they do not even have power over the commissioner of police in their state who reports to the Inspector-General of Police who in turn reports to the president.

    Yet, as we all know, and, as Governor Makinde rightly observed, “…I have never seen where the Federal Government went to a particular state and gave the police everything they needed. So, the states are already maintaining the police.

    “So, the issue of being unable to maintain state police will not arise again. Give us the responsibility first and see if certain states will be able to maintain it or not.”

    Of course, this is true. Hardly is there any state government that is not spending on the federal police.  In 2021, Lagos State spent N3bn to equip the police. And, just last month, billionaire business man Femi Otedola donated N1bn to the state’s security trust fund, that has assisted a lot in ensuring the relative peace that the state enjoys despite its cosmopolitanism and huge population. Many other state governments have similar initiatives through which they inject billions of naira into the NPF to assist them buy sophisticated gadgets that they need to combat crime and ensure better welfare for the officers and men. So, what are we talking about?

    Security is central to whatever we do, whether as individuals, group or even as a nation. That is why it is regarded as the cardinal responsibility of governments. Whatever the shade of insecurity a country is facing, the ability to reduce it to the barest minimum is the raison d’être of the government because there is no country that is completely crime-free, not even in countries with the stiffest of penalties for crime.   

     There is no doubt that we once had our fingers burnt when we had regional police. But that is not to say we can afford to shy away from state police perpetually, even when it is glaring that what we have on ground as security is not serving our purpose satisfactorily. What we need to do is look at why the experiment failed in the past and do the necessary corrections so that it won’t fail again.

    Those who want to police the society must be people who have a good grasp of the terrain; they must have some affinity to the place, know many of the people in the locality, etc.

    Although state police is a constitutional issue, I don’t have any doubt that if the governors want it, they can pull through constitutional amendment to allow for it, especially with a Federal Government that seems sympathetic to the cause.  It seems the only solution to our rising wave of insecurity. The NPF may not like the idea; this is natural. But that should not be a reason we should keep shying away from it. It does not in any way mean death knell for the present federal police, it only helps to reduce its burden for effectiveness as every branch of the police would have its areas of jurisdiction. States without resources to fund their own police can then depend exclusively on the federal police. But we would know that is strictly by choice. 

  • Carry go, Cardoso

    Carry go, Cardoso

    • Sanusi takes the heat off my zone over relocation of some CBN’s departments from Abuja to Lagos

    Hell has literally been let loose since the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced its intention to move some of its departments down to Lagos from Abuja about two weeks ago, so as to facilitate operations in those departments as well as save cost.

    The departments pencilled down for relocation are Banking Supervision, Other Financial Institutions Supervision, Consumer Protection Department, Payment System Management Department and Financial Policy Regulations Department.

    As usual, all manner of experts have suddenly sprung up denouncing the move and indeed asking that the apex bank rescind the decision. A senator of the Federal Republic even threatened that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should be ready to face the political backlash for daring such a move. The Northern Elders Forum (NEF), one of the earliest groups to reject the move, said the decision would “widen economic disparity between Northern and Southern Nigeria”. How? It didn’t say. In a statement by NEF’s director of publicity and advocacy, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, the body said “It would require significant financial investment as the CBN would need to allocate funds for setting up new offices, purchasing or leasing properties, relocating employees, and other infrastructural requirements. This would strain the CBN’s budget and divert resources away from other essential functions and initiatives.” Like the moribund and catastrophic Anchor Borrowers’ Scheme?

     It also said that the decision could lead to loss of expert members of the staff of the bank who may not be willing to relocate; that the relocation would entail the newly-posted people getting used to their environment and that valuable time would be lost to such adjustments. It added that the movement of the sections would hinder cooperation among the bank and other government agencies with which it must work together in Abuja, etc.  Is this a way of saying the policy was not well thought-out or just wanting to weep louder than the bereaved?

    The Northern Senators Forum (NSF) also joined the group of critics, including also the Arewa Consultative Forum. As a matter of fact, the senators forum said it may consider legal action on the matter even as it appealed to their constituents to remain calm while they explored all opportunities to make the government rethink the decisions.

    I must say I was not surprised that the reactions have come the way they did. I know the government too must have factored that into consideration while preparing the grounds for making the decisions public.

    It is instructive that Sanusi essentially chose to comment only on the CBN’s relocation; he was silent on the relocation of the FAAN to Lagos. I can understand why; apparently the CBN is his familiar turf, having been governor of the bank before. I would toe a similar path, even if I must mention that I also saw reason with the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, for moving the FAAN headquarters to Lagos.

    Sanusi may be a northern aristocrat, he is no doubt more cosmopolitan than most of the other people who are not comfortable with the decisions. Not only that, he has the experience, having once served as governor of the apex bank. As a matter of fact, he not only supported the relocations of some of those departments to Lagos, he said he would have done the same thing if he had stayed longer at the CBN governor. Hear him:  “In my mind what I would have done was to move FSS and most of Operations to Lagos such that the two Deputy Governors would be largely operating out of Lagos or, even if they were more in Abuja, the bulk of their operational staff would be in Lagos. He crowned it all by saying that “It makes eminent strategic sense. And I would have done this if I had stayed.” So, what are the critics talking about?

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    It gladdens my heart that a man who is eminently qualified to speak on such a matter, a former governor of the CBN, a northerner of repute and an aristocrat of northern extraction could get that blunt in approving an issue that the prominent  Northern Elders Forum (NEF), the Northern Senators Forum (NSF), among others, have vehemently rejected.

    I am impressed with Sanusi’s candour and clarity on the matter. There was nothing like ‘on the one hand, and on the other’.  Indeed, his position is in tandem with the one-time American president, Harry Truman’s who insisted on having a one-handed economist. ”Give me a one-handed economist. All my economists say ‘on the one hand…, then ‘but on the other…” This is not the time for such ambiguity.

    As Sanusi rightly observed, ”ethnic and religious bigots will always shout” over such decision but it should not deter the CBN from forging ahead. Sanusi described the move ”as an eminently sensible move” adding ”my advice to the governor is to go ahead with his policy.

    Indeed, Sanusi said something of note that some of us knew as reason why some people are opposed to the CBN move but which we could only mention in hushed tones because of the high wire ethnic dimension that would be read into it if such sentiment had come from this part of the country. Thank God Sanusi took the heat off our zone by bursting the speaker, as it were: ” The problem we have now is that many employees (of the apex bank) are children of politically exposed persons and their Abuja life and businesses are more important than the CBN work.

    “The CBN is just an address for them and if they have to choose between their spoilt Abuja life and the job, they would gladly leave the CBN.” Would we say that Sanusi does not know what he is saying?

    This, indeed, is the main reason behind the noise. If you ask me, such people should go in peace. Neither the country nor the bank requires the services of such spoilt brats. What the CBN needs now are dedicated members of the staff who are ready to earn their pay. The country cannot be spending so much on their welfare only for them to be part-time workers in a business that requires more than 24 hours in a day!

    But, Sanusi also made some valid points that the CBN would do well to consider. The apex bank’s governor, Olayemi Cardoso, should not only take the sweet part of the pieces of advice given by the ‘expectant’ former Emir of Kano. He should ponder the not-too-sweet aspects as well. There is no doubt that Sanusi is right in his assertion that many of those who have joined critics of the decisions did so because the apex bank has not been able to find its feet, especially concerning the high exchange rate that has made nonsense of business projections, especially in recent times. This is the ‘koko’. I agree with the former CBN governor that once the CBN gets its bearing right on its core mandate, some of the noise now making the rounds will simply fizzle out.

    Although I disagree with Sanusi’s position on the capacity of the CBN office in Abuja when he said ”I don’t like the idea of arguing that the office structure cannot handle the staff numbers. I am sure Julius Berger would refute that if they wanted to engage”. The only reason I would agree with the former CBN governor on this is if he disagreed with the capacity quoted by the apex bank as the maximum the building could carry; in other words, the over 1,000 extra personnel the building is carrying does not matter? Be that as it may, we are not supposed to agree on all aspects of everything.

    Perhaps the only thing Sanusi did not say that I love to add is that we need to take it easy with people who feel aggrieved with the policy decisions rather than start calling them names or wondering why they cannot see reason despite the unassailable reasons given for the relocations in the two instances. Matters such as this are usually emotional matters in our kind of country. If anything, what Sanusi’s experience with his licensing of Jaiz Bank and the issue at hand reminds us is the mutual suspicion we still harbour about ourselves despite professing to be one Nigeria. It is only sad that the political elites are exploiting such suspicion for their personal interests while they paint the picture as if their position was informed by some national interest. 

    All said, Cardoso does not have to pander to political pressure. “My advice to the Governor is to go ahead with his policy. Once the CBN starts bending to political pressure on one thing, it will continue doing so”. I am fascinated by this latter part of the argument of Sanusi because it would seem to me that the immediate past governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele, began with some ‘just little sins’ when he started pandering to political pressures, until he landed in the ocean of trouble that he put the entire country eventually.

    But then, the CBN governor has to think deeply before making sensitive decisions. The job, as Sanusi said, is a thankless job. And, having taken this path, both the Federal Government and the CBN must watch out for the backlash because the affected beneficiaries of the decadent system that is being dismantled would always fight back. They had been eating corruption and it is very sweet in their mouths. To wean them off it or vice versa would take extra-vigilance on the part of both the government and the apex bank.

  • Forgotten widows

    Forgotten widows

    Is it true that the wives of military officers who perished in the Ejigbo crash in 1992 are yet to be paid their benefits?

    This year’s Nigerian Armed Forces Remembrance Day may have come and gone, there are at least two issues that arose from its activities, at least as far as I am concerned. One was the report that wives of victims of the September 26, 1992 plane crash in Ejigbo, Lagos, were yet to get their dues, 31 years after. And, two, another report that children of military officers who died in the line of duty forfeit their chance of getting scholarship if they can’t secure admission once they are above 18 years of age.

    Let me start with the former.

    But before I proceed, it would be better to recap the Ejigbo disaster in which Nigeria lost a generation of young military officers, not in the war front, but in a period of relative peace at home. It happened on September 26, 1992, when a military plane, Hercules C-130, conveying 163 people, who were middle-ranking army, navy and air force officers, crashed about five minutes after take-off from Lagos. Some reports claimed there were 174 on board, or even 200, including some unidentified civilians, and possible military personnel who hitched a ride. However, a total 151 Nigerians, five Ghanaians, one Tanzanian, one Zimbabwean, and one Ugandan military officers were confirmed to have died, according to Wikipedia.

    The military officers were on their way to attend a staff college course in the north. Nigerians would remember the kinds of insinuations that trailed the crash, chief of which was the allegation that it was designed to happen, to check the restlessness among the middle ranking officers who were dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country then.

     It sounds like it just happened yesterday but that was some 31 years before. To now be hearing that their widows had yet to be paid their entitlements is incredible. I know we can’t put anything beyond our system as a country, the fact is; if this is true, then it is the height of callousness.

    But because one should try not to be judgemental in an issue like this, it would be necessary to hear from the military authorities whether this claim is correct or not. Put differently, what kind of entitlement is being referred to here, because it is incredible that the military would not have paid the dependants of the dead officers a dime since their husbands died 31 years ago?

    The widows bared their mind in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, during the visit of the President of Defence and Police Officers’ Wives Association (DEPOWA), who is also wife of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Mrs. Oghogho Musa, to distribute palliatives to wives of the fallen heroes. The gesture is an initiative of Department of Civil/Military Relationship, in conjunction with Office of the Wife of the CDS, in commemoration of the 2024 Armed Forces Remembrance Day.

    Oghogho, who was received by the General Officer Commanding, 6 Division, Nigerian Army, Major-Gen, Jamal Abdussalam, distributed cartons of noddles, bags of rice, beans and other foodstuff to the widows at the occasion.

    It was in the course of her giving the vote of thanks that one of the beneficiaries, Mrs. Folake Lasisi, the wife of late Lt.-Commander Lasisi of the Nigerian Navy, lamented that the entitlements meant for widows of the soldiers who died in the plane crash have not been released to them.

    According to her, some of the widows have died, which is natural because 31 years is too long a period to expect that all the beneficiaries would still be alive. As a matter of fact, some of the children left behind by the officers have also died.

    Lasisi said: “I am standing here as a representative of the widows of the Hercules C-130, plane crash on 26 September 1992. We the women, have not been given our entitlements after 31 years.

    “We want you to help us to take our message home to the mother of the nation, the First Lady and the Armed Forces too. We want to feel a sense of belonging, even though our husbands are no longer there. We want to feel that we are still in your midst. We want to feel a sense of belonging.’

    She added that “There are some things that are necessary for us to do and that is, our children. Some of them are not getting educational sponsorship. We want them to look at it and do something about it.”

    It is already more than a week since Mrs Lasisi made the allegation that the widows were yet to be paid their husbands’ benefits and we are yet to hear from the military authorities. Some people say the military cannot respond to such issues just like that. I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. If it is true that these women have been left to their own devices in the last 31 years, then the military should have responded as early as yesterday, beginning with a public apology and an assurance to do the rightful with immediate effect. And all of these within three to four months because a lot of time had been lost already, not due to the fault of these widows but because of systemic collapse or inefficiency. So, they should not be punished for this.

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    Even in normal times, we know what it is for the load of two people to now be carried by one, and the minor partner in the equation for that matter, in this instance. Even where both parties are working to keep the home going, we know it is not easy these days, given the rate of inflation and the general economic meltdown in the country.

    As a matter of fact, the military authorities must work towards paying the entitlements with interest because whatever the money could have bought if paid promptly is not the same that it would buy today. This is the only way to ensure fairness in this matter.

    But closure cannot be brought to this matter until we also know why this had happened at all or why it has indeed lingered. Are we sure these entitlements had not been released and cornered by some people? This is Nigeria where just everything is possible. Corruption is a thriving industry in the country and not

    even the military is exempt. We have seen how defence money had been stolen by some military chiefs in the past.

    This takes us to the issue of scholarship for the dead officers’ children. I don’t know whether the policy of such children forfeiting their scholarship once they don’t secure admission after 18 years is general with the military or peculiar to the Ejigbo victims’ children. Whatever it is, it is not the best that these children should get. The truth of the matter is that many children do not secure admission into higher institutions of their choice at that age. Even for those having both parents around and with the capacity to pay their school fees, it is not in all cases that the children make it to the university before they clock 18. Not to talk of a situation where only one parent, in most instances the mother, who now singlehandedly takes responsibility for the training of the children after their fathers’ demise. For the widows of the Ejigbo crash victims, it is even double jeopardy. They are not paid entitlements and they have responsibility to, say, three or four children. The tendency is for them to take one step at a time like, asking one child to wait for the other to finish secondary school because they can’t afford to send the two of them together. We know what it is like in a country where there are no scholarships, no structured help anywhere! How is it possible for children in such situation to make it to university before or by the time they are 18 years?

    What I am saying is that the military authorities have their job cut out for them. The country’s armed forces can only make little progress with treatment such as the one suffered by the wives of these young military officers who died in the Ejigbo crash. The military hierarchs must look out for the extant rules and regulations or directives and policies responsible for these kinds of treatment to the dependants of people who paid the supreme sacrifice for the country to be at peace. It is true that soldiers had signed to die for the country. This is huge a price on its own. To now realise that their children and wives or other dependants have no guaranteed future after they die in active service is more than enough disincentive to upcoming officers.

    The widows have pleaded with the president’s wife to intervene on their behalf. Although Mrs Oluremi Tinubu does not have any axe to wield directly in the circumstance; as a former governor’s wife and now the country’s first lady, she knows how to use her influence to get these women out of the predicament that Nigeria has put them. The widows too know she can be of help, that was why they specifically pleaded with her to come to their rescue.

    The Nigerian Armed Forces Remembrance Day should not be an occasion to review parades and do gun salute alone. It should be an occasion for sober reflections and tackling serious issues affecting the dependants of our fallen heroes if we do not want their clan to go into extinction. Just as we cannot afford to forget the heroes, we cannot also forget their widows. It is by doing both well that we can win the kinds of internal wars that the country is facing today.

  • Lean convoys

    Lean convoys

    President Tinubu’s directive on delegation size is commendable. But let’s see it work first.

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu‘s directive, Tuesday, slashing the size of official delegations for foreign and domestic trips by Federal Government officials by as much as 60 per cent, beginning with himself, should naturally be well received by the generality of Nigerians. I don’t know what informed the president’s decision. But there were strong criticisms in recent times, first of the number of people that attended the COP28 Climate Change Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), last month. Although the Federal Government only sponsored 422 of the 1,411 delegates to the conference, people thought the government sponsored the entire 1,411 that attended from Nigeria. But the message was nonetheless clear.

    Then, the president’s trip, last month, to Lagos, to celebrate the festive season, that many people were worried by what some of them referred to as the huge number of cars that came with him. But, whatever the motivation for the directive, it is something to cheer.

    Presidential spokesman Ajuri Ngelale told State House correspondents on Tuesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, that “President Tinubu has, by his most recent directive, approved a massive cost-cutting exercise that will touch across the entire Federal Government of Nigeria and the offices of the President himself, the Vice President and the office of the First Lady. It will be conducted in the following fashion.

    “One, the official trips that will be undertaken within the country, that is when Mr. President or the Vice President travels to any state within the country, the massive bills that accrued due to allowances and estacode for security details coming from Abuja going and travelling into those states, will be massively cut due to the directive of the President, that the security outfits within states, whether it be Police, DSS, or branches of the military, will frontline his protective detail when he travels to those states, a major cost-cutting initiative that will affect the Office of the Vice President as well as the office of the First Lady.

    Invariably, not more than 25 persons would accompany the president from Abuja to any part of the country he is travelling to; the vice president 15, while the First Lady and the vice president’s wife would have 10 persons each. 

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    For foreign trips, Tinubu’s delegation will now be capped at 20 people, down from the previous 50-man delegation. The vice president, the First Lady and the vice president’s wife are entitled to just five members each. Every minister is limited to having just four members of staff on any foreign trip while chief executive officers of government agencies are limited to two. Ngelale said the secretary to the government of the federation, George Akume, would monitor the implementation of the directive for compliance, warning that dire consequences await whoever violates it.

    This should be sweet music in the ears of the average Nigerian who are the beasts of burden for these needless expenses, except the public officials who have been used to such freebies.

    Without doubt, this is a thing many Nigerians had looked forward to.

    For so many years, many Nigerian leaders have been going about in convoys that are figuratively as long as Okoti-Eboh’s wrapper. By the way, Okoti-Eboh was Nigeria’s Minister of Finance from 1957 to 1966 during the administration of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. He was an affluent chief from the Itsekiri and Urhobo tribes of the Niger Delta who left no one in doubt about his pride in showing the rich traditions of his roots, through his elegant and flamboyant dressing. His usual cap and feather, as well as his long cloth that flowed behind him and was usually attached to a boy some distance away, making the wrapper to continue to drag behind him long after he had passed. That is what some convoys look like. Long after the president or governor has alighted from the vehicles conveying them, their convoys would still be queuing behind each other hundreds of meters away!

    But Okoti-Eboh was able to maintain that flamboyant dressing because he could afford it ever before he became a minister.

    The problem with Nigerian leaders is that they don’t know when to stop their flamboyant lifestyles. They seem to have perfected it more than the military rulers who reigned when the economy was by far buoyant and so could possibly carry the weight of the heavily-laden convoys. In spite of the country’s precarious economic situation, many Nigerian leaders still see nothing wrong in needlessly burning fuel and incurring other costs on behalf of hapless Nigerians, by sticking to long convoys, even as they continue to tell the people in the world’s poverty capital to continue to make sacrifices.

    Nigerians may not know the amount spent on those long convoys, but they can at least guess that it must have cost a fortune to put those glittering jeeps on the roads, especially at today’s price of both the imported vehicles and petrol.  

    May be that is why these days, rather than merely waving the national flags jubilantly when our leaders come to town, an increasing number of Nigerians are questioning the wastefulness in their long convoys. That is aside the fact that they most unnecessarily waste our time, as roads have to be closed in several instances for the convoys to pass through before other road users can now start or continue their journeys.  

    But, aside these critical few who are worried about the financial burden and the insensitivity of the country’s leaders to the plight of the mass of the people, many other Nigerians are just going about their businesses as if the president’s directive has nothing to do with them. In fairness to them, it is not their fault. As the saying goes, ‘once bitten, twice shy’. Most of these Nigerians had been bitten not once, not twice (I cannot even count the number of times myself), by several governments — local, state or federal. We have had all manner of governments that equally promised all manner of things that they ended up not delivering on. As a matter of fact, Nigerians can count on their fingertips the number of governments that have promised and fulfilled their promises. Yet, none of them ever came to tell us that they would leave us worse than they met us. Yet, that has been the situation: they have almost always left us worse than they met us. If not, we would not be where we are today; our lot would have been far better.

    We should therefore understand where the skepticism is coming from if the people refuse to see anything good in Tinubu’s announcement of drastic cut in travel expenses. Several of his predecessors had done such things when they started only to become something else by the time they were through with us. We remember his immediate predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, who before becoming president threatened to sell off some jets in the presidential fleet but never did until he left office eight years after.

    But, no matter our misgivings on the cost-saving measures, we should accept one thing; and that is that the country would make some savings from these cuts and this should count for something. I agree with many people that this is just one of the areas where the government can stop the hemorrhaging of our common wealth. But even if you see the present measures as tokenism; take the tokenism first, put it inside your pocket and continue to ask for more. After all, Yoruba people say ‘ako sapo la nko  owo’. I think what we should look forward to is whether this directive would be strictly adhered to or not. Perhaps more important, we should try our best to ensure that the money is not saved with the left hand only to be stolen with the right hand. No thanks to corruption! 

     For me, however, the problem is not just about the long and expensive convoys. We also have issues with reckless driving on the part of most drivers in the convoys. Often, we hear of people being knocked down or knocked out by these reckless drivers in convoys who drive as if they are not bound by any traffic rules and regulations. That happens every now and then and, more painfully, we do not see anyone punished for such reckless driving. This is why we continue to have such avoidable casualties.

    I have a friend who as commissioner in a strategic ministry would never travel with his governor’s convoy. He would usually arrive early at the venue of whatever event they were attending and leave either earlier than the convoy at the end of the event or be the one to leave the venue last. He told me he was doing that because he could not cope with the speed of the governor’s convoy and that life has no duplicate. The moment something happens and the ‘honourable commissioner’ is no more or incapacitated, people, including those close to him, would start jostling for his position.

    This seems what is lost on many people in such killer convoys. They behave as if all that can happen when there is an accident is for them to be wheeled to the theatre, have life transplant and walk back to resume their daily activities. Interestingly, no governor has ever died in these convoy crashes. Rather, it is their aides or other innocent people just going about their duties that had often been victims.

    The question now is: where are the convoys rushing to? Who are they running away from? Apparently from the consequences of their bad governance and corruption! Otherwise, why would politicians, after winning elections, be running away from the same people that they walked with side-by-side when they were seeking votes?

    Anyway, as I said earlier, President Tinubu has given the directive on official convoys and Federal Government’s delegations, let us wait to see how long it would last or whether it would even be obeyed at all by civil servants who know how to exploit any loophole in such policies. The problem with Nigeria is not necessarily about lack of laws or rules; but enforcement. The responsibility for monitoring and enforcement has been placed on Akume. Let’s see how far the secretary to the government of the federation can go in this direction. 

  • Zenith’s remarkable listing A well deserved honour

    Zenith’s remarkable listing A well deserved honour

    One subject-matter that I usually run away from is writing in praise of Nigerian banks whenever they are said to have won awards. As a matter of fact, I doubt if I ever wrote on such topic all my decades in journalism. And I have my reasons.  One, most of those awards, especially the local variants, were purchased. They were like any item that one could pick up at the popular Owode-Onirin market. That is a place where fake items are produced more fancifully than the original. As a matter of fact, the producers of the original item would be green with envy when they see the Owode-Onirin version of their product; that is when they would know how little they are in terms of creativity and aesthetics.

    Trust Nigerians, particularly the bank executives of some few years back: they were ready to buy any award on which they were equally ready to splash hefty sums of their customers’ funds to buy media space to celebrate the mostly phony awards. I don’t want to name the names of some of the banks that their chief executives were fond of this self-aggrandisement. But, where are they today? They have all become history. So were those beautiful and handsome faces that usually dominated the media space back then. Apparently, some things did not add up.

    The question now is: how come such banks that dominated the various award categories in the banking sector some years back are no longer in existence? The answer is simple: most of the awards were bought off the shelves. They went to the highest bidder.

    It was for this same reason that I felt reluctant to comment on such matters until the recent listing of Zenith Bank in the World Finance 100 2023, released by World Finance Magazine. Although a few other Nigerian companies had made the list in the past, no major Nigerian bank had ever featured in the listing except an investment bank, Investment One, that featured once in 2014. It is instructive though that this is the second time that Zenith Bank would feature on the list; the first time being 2019. This is something that doesn’t come cheap. That is why indeed, it is the bank and one of just three African companies that got listed on this esteemed list for 2023, alongside industry giants like Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet.

    Zenith Bank’s inclusion in this elite list this time around, as in 2019 when it got its first listing in the World Finance 100, underscores the bank’s outstanding achievements and resilience in a dynamic and competitive global market.

    It is a feat. Hence, the bank’s group managing director/chief executive officer, Dr. Ebenezer Onyeagwu, said of the listing: “It is with great pride that we acknowledge this feat as the exclusive Nigerian company in the World Finance 100 2023. This accolade is a testament to our unwavering dedication to our valued stakeholders, our innovative spirit, and sustained growth, all achieved amidst the complexities of a challenging economic climate. This honour further attests to our status as a leading financial institution that continues to set the industry standard in financial performance, good corporate governance and financial stability.”

    The World Finance listing was not the first such international award or recognition for the bank this year. It was probably the icing on the cake. The bank was rated Number One Bank in Nigeria by Tier-1 Capital 2023 (The Banker); Best Commercial Bank, Nigeria 2023 (World Finance); Best Corporate Governance, Nigeria 2023 (World Finance) and Best Corporate Governance ‘Financial Services’ Africa 2023 (Ethical Boardroom). Others were Most Sustainable Bank, Nigeria 2023 (International Banker) and Best Bank for Digital Solutions, Nigeria 2023 (Euromoney). 

    In a country where good news has perennially become a rare commodity, one should celebrate achievements such as this. Otherwise, I would have wrapped up my column this year with the bad and the ugly in the country. Come to think of it; if I am not writing on this Zenith recognition what else would I have been writing on, the killing of about 150 innocent citizens in Plateau State by spineless terrorists? These were people who had like millions of other Nigerians looked forward hopefully to a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, gruesomely murdered by some killers sans borders, and for no reason whatsoever. I had said it at some other levels that, given the modus operandi of these characters, they would do something spectacular not just to spoil the fun of the season for the generality of Nigerians, but also to present the government as incapable of securing the nation. Just that where I had expected they would strike was not where they struck. Anyway, let me leave that matter till another day so I don’t also spoil the fun of Zenith Bank on this auspicious occasion.  

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    Another reason one should not gloss over the Zenith listing is because several other sectors in the country are lacking such recognitions. Take our universities for example. In the 2023 ranking, the University of Ibadan (UI), University of Lagos (UNILAG) and Covenant University made the top 1,000 list. The UI and UNILAG were placed at 401 to 500 place, while Covenant University was between 601 and 800th place.

    Considering the country’s status, and also the fact that some of our universities even up till the late 80s had some foreign students that came to the country in search of the proverbial golden fleece. That the story is different today is bad enough. But it is worse still that none of our universities is in the list of the first 100. Well, sometimes we celebrate the positions they occupy because we also know the problems.

    Our health institutions are not fairing better either. What with dilapidated  infrastructure and ill-motivated personnel, many of whom have since travelled abroad in search of greener pastures.

    Or is it in sports. We are lagging behind also, no thanks to mismanagement and other vices. So, if one of our banks has made it to the point of being listed globally, we should be able to celebrate such a bank because it is a feat. It is not something that is served a la carte. It is earned.

    I congratulate Zenith Bank on this listing. It is one of the good ways to end the year. One can only hope that the bank would continue to work to retain such honour as well as make banking more pleasurable experience for its customers.

  • Nothing in a name? Ask Aiyedatiwa

    Nothing in a name? Ask Aiyedatiwa

    Whether or not there is something or nothing in a name has continued to generate debate over the years. Depending on which side of the fence one chooses to sit, there is no sign the debate would stop anytime soon. While for some Christians the name Jabez remains a ‘no-go’ area because of the circumstance of the birth of the biblical Jabez which was believed to have influenced his naming and which made him an unfortunate being until he changed the name, some people have not shied from naming their children Jabez. Even a name as reprehensible as Judas is still being given by some parents to their children, suggesting that they really could not care what the name connotes.

    One man that has stirred the controversy this time around is the new governor of Ondo State, Mr Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa. The man is indeed lucky; lucky on two fronts. Other things being equal, he would not have been the deputy governor if things had not fallen apart between Akeredolu’s former deputy, Agboola Ajayi, and his principal, Akeredolu.

    Having succeeded Ajayi as deputy governor, he was to act as governor from June to September, this year, when Akeredolu was on medical leave. That was with the understanding of his boss who did the needful by empowering him to act in that capacity.

    But he didn’t have that privilege when he became acting governor the second time, that was on December 12, 2023. Because of the frosty relations between him and Akeredolu, the latter did not transfer power to him the second time around. But public opinion changed all that as Akeredolu could not resume as governor but chose to remain in Ibadan, Oyo State, months after returning from medical treatment abroad.

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    Because the head that would wear the crown would always wear the crown, no matter what, he was promptly sworn in as governor on December 27, the very day that Akeredolu died. What an irony!

    But, beyond confirmation that whatever would be would be is the fact that Aiyedatiwa’s three names have worked for him. He is not just lucky, his head is also good (Orimisan). And the world has now literally become his own (Aiyedatiwa). Governor Akeredolu himself confirmed that much at a public function when the going was good. But then, he also appropriated the surname Aiyedatiwa. Little did he know that he was being prophetic then. Little did he know that the name was not supposed to work for the two of them. The name has finally answered for the rightful bearer.

    Now that His Excellency has finally been sworn in as the seventh civilian governor of Ondo State, I suggest he needs to have an Abioye (one born on the throne). His Excellency is still relatively young and so should still be active in the other room. I can assist him with the formula so that the product would be a boy. He needs Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa (Jnr) to consolidate those magical names. They could build a family tradition from there.

    Congratulations, your Excellency!