With friends like Obasanjo and Adebanjo as the battle for 2023 rages, Igbo nation needs no enemies. Announcing his endorsement of Peter Obi for the 2023 presidential contest while rounding up a speech  at  the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Award Night  recently, Obasanjo  had while looking  and moving towards where Obi was sitting said “president of Nigeria”, before leading Obi to take over his (Obasanjo) seat  adding while walking away ‘my job is done’.

Obasanjo and Adebanjo, have since publicly endorsed Peter Obi for the 2023 presidential contest, “for equity justice and one Nigeria”, claiming our “problem right now is not ethnic, sectional or religious”. For them “Obi is the man” because he “has been running issues-based campaigns while Tinubu’s people have been abusing people”. With Obi, they are set ‘to amend all the evil things that the President Buhari government has done’.

First, their endorsement counts for very little especially among Yoruba’s discriminatory voters who ignored them in 2015 and 2019 because they are regarded as victims of common Yoruba predilection: “B’adiye dami loogun nu, ma de fo leyin”.  Malevolence appears to be part of their DNA. They just don’t have the generosity of heart to forgive anyone that crosses their way.

Secondly, since an Igbo adage says ‘it is only your true friend that tells you your mouth is smelling’, the duo who cannot criticize Igbo political elite’s brand of politics that uses Igbo poor and urban dwellers for political leverage, a strategy that started when Zik, the most influential Igbo figure of the 20th century, returned to Nigeria in 1934 to join politics, cannot be true Igbo friends.

History confirms Igbo political elite only recruit the support of their poor who look up to them for direction to shout marginalization whenever they fall out of favour as the beautiful bride. They were ready to pull down Balewa’s government after NPC ended what was in the first place a marriage of convenience by sacking NCNC ministers in 1963. Similarly, the 1979, NPN/ NPP alliance collapsed in 1982 when NPP minister were asked to resign. But there was no talk of marginalization when Igbo political elite controlled all the juicy positions in Obasanjo and Jonathan administrations.  Nigeria only became a zoo tormented by IPOB and Niger Delta Avengers when Igbo political elite lost out in 2015 and President Buhari proved he might “have no malice in his bones” (Adesina), but surely has  nepotism as his bone marrow.

In any case, if Obasanjo loves the Igbo, he had an opportunity to demonstrate that in 1979. The collapse of the first republic and the ensuing civil war was the result of struggle to control the soul of Nigeria by Igbo and Hausa/Fulani, their arch rival. Obasanjo had a choice between Dr Azikiwe as leader of those who lost out and Shehu Shagari as part of Balewa administration that had ruled for about six years before the first republic was terminated. But he chose the latter.

Now let us interrogate Obasanjo’s “I believe in equity, justice and one Nigeria”, and his false claim that we can erase the past as if tomorrow is not the sum total of yesterday and today.

It is not all Nigerians that suffer from collective amnesia. Some can still recall that in 1993, Obasanjo’s kinsman, MKO Abiola won a pan-Nigeria mandate. General Babangida, in a moment of madness annulled the most credible election in our nation’s history. Obasanjo, claiming MKO Abiola was not the Messiah Nigerians were waiting for, joined Babangida to foist an illegal contraption called Interim National Government which served as a prelude to five years of brutal war by General Abacha against Nigeria.

Obasanjo, imposed as Nigerian president by “Nigerian Army of anything is possible” and their backers, to assuage the raw feelings of the aggrieved Yoruba was to become the main beneficiary of Abiola’s supreme sacrifice. But for   eight years, Obasanjo danced on Abiola’s tomb. Ironically, it was Buhari, widely believed to have been a victim of MKO Abiola and America that deposed and replaced him with a pliant Babangida that at the end acknowledged Abiola’s heroism.

Obasanjo cannot be part of the solution.  As Einstein admonished ’Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the height of insanity”. Having realised their search for a new vision of a good society was a mirage, rather than Obasanjo and his other military adventurers returning to our independence federal constitution, they started addressing symptoms with their introduction of NYSC, Unity schools and quota system on admission into tertiary institutions and the bureaucracy.

Besides destroying PDP, AD and ANPP through his mainstreaming misadventure, at the onset of the fourth republic, Obasanjo singlehandedly imposed ailing Umaru Yar’Adua on Nigeria just as he did ill-prepared Jonathan. He was to later endorse Buhari to spite Jonathan. His current endorsement of Obi many believe is a continuation of his silent war against Bola Tinubu over his struggle for workable federal arrangement in line with aspirations of his Yoruba people who by nature are federalists.

On tribes, Obasanjo has continued to play the ostrich by  pretending not to be aware that efforts at side-lining  our ethnic nationalities, the building block of our country as elsewhere in African societies, is  the source of social dislocations in Africa. We are a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, a fact acknowledged by successive Nigerian rulers and leaders from Lugard, 1920,  Clifford 1921, Oliver Stanley 1945, Richards in 1946 and Macpherson in 1957 and of course Awolowo who admitted “Nigeria was a geographical expression” in 1947 and Balewa who “submitted Nigeria was a British intention” in 1948.

Although Obasanjo said he would feel diminished to be called a Yoruba leader, he nevertheless envies Awolowo, a Yoruba leader he had dismissed as being unable to achieve through a life-long struggle what he Obasanjo achieved on a platter of gold. Obafemi Awolowo, who took pains to study Nigerian problems and proffer solutions, reminded us that one cannot be a good Nigerian without first becoming a good representative of his people. That perhaps explains the secret of the success of our founding fathers who started by first serving their people as local council chairmen.

But we understand why Obasanjo, his fellow military adventurers and our ‘new breed politicians’ that breed nothing but corruption, insist they are Nigerians first. Such fraudulent claims guarantee a harvest of political and economic dividends.  Obasanjo who lost his ward election but became twice elected President of Nigeria after serving as a military Head of State would never have become a local council chairman if we were to be running a parliamentary democracy where his fate will be decided by his constituency.

Of course we also now know it is only the conclave of those who pretend to be Nigerians first that secured lucrative oil well licenses, cornered Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b for a paltry $1.5b and shared properties including the Senate President and Speaker of the House’s mansions kept in their temporary care, in the name of dubious monetization policy.

As against Obasanjo’s theatrics, infidelity and insincerity of fair-weather friends, what the Igbo nation needs is rapprochement with themselves in “order to escape imprisonment in Lugard’s Nigeria” (apologies to Chinweizu).

Babatude Fashola, an admired former Lagos State governor shares the same fate with former President Obasanjo and President Buhari who entered into government with overwhelming goodwill of Nigerians but frittered away everything towards the end of their tenure.  In recognition of Fashola’s resourcefulness after his sterling performance as Lagos governor, President Buhari saddled him with three important ministries in 2015. Even when one of the ministries were taken away, leaving Fashola with Ministry of Works and Housing during Buhari’s second term, his image still loomed larger than life.  If there was anything that finally demystified Raji Fashola’s invincibility, it was the jinxed Lagos-Ibadan expressway that had defied Obasanjo and his PDP for 16 years and now possibly Buhari’s eight years reign.

Last week after so many broken promises by Minister Fashola and the two contractors handling the road,  as well as the House of Representatives deadline to the contractors to complete the project which includes road and bridges by May, the handover date was again shifted to February 2023.

Sadly, Nigerians and their government manned by Nigerians are the scourge of the nation. Lagos Ibadan Expressway in spite of various budgetary allocations allegedly diverted to fighting elections during 16 years reign of Obasanjo and his PDP remained a decayed infrastructure. Jonathan on the eve of 2015 election embarked on what Dr Doyin Okupe, one-time Obasanjo attack dog, later Jonathan attack ‘lion’ and currently Peter Obi’s presidential campaign director, described as answer to Jonathan government’s marginalization of Yoruba but which this column back then dismissed as Jonathan “Sagamu road show”. As it turned out, it remained just that until Jonathan was voted out of office.

Other politicians who should be condemned for their role in prolonging the nightmare of Lagos-Ibadan expressway road users include ex- Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara, leaders without abiding faith in any political party. They were accused by Minister Fashola and Vice President Osinbajo of diverting funds for the road to the controversial legislators’ constituency projects in which some of them personally benefitted.  In place of contrition for their unpatriotic act, they intimidated Fashola and threatened to impeach the vice president.

Unfortunately, Fashola also makes the list of those who have contributed to the nightmare of Lagos-Ibadan expressway road users.  How about his celebration of  the over 8,352km of roads he claimed government has done since 2016,  the 500 rural roads he and Lai Mohammed claimed government completed in 2021, the rehabilitated 12 major roads totalling some 896.187 kilometres, the  N309.9bn  in tax credit for  274.9 kilometres  contract awarded to Dangote industries, the NNPC take-over of the reconstruction of 21 federal roads nationwide, totalling 1,804.6 kilometres.”

It is not just that people are asking –where are the roads; such claims, even if true, have no effect on users of Lagos-Ibadan expressway who hold Fashola responsible for their continued nightmare on the road.

His aggrieved Yoruba compatriots have a say to the effect that when you ask a eunuch resident in Lagos about his wife, he is most likely going to say she in Sokoto. Why can’t Fashola identify one federal road completed in the southwest? Ikorodu/Imota/Ijebu Ode road which wrecked my car between 2017 and 2020 is a federal road. Ikorodu-Sagamu road is a federal road. Abeokuta/Otta/Lagos is a federal road. So is Lagos/Badagry/Republic of Benin international road. Had some of these federal roads been mended, they would have taken the pressure off Lagos-Ibadan expressway, many have reasoned.

Fashola instead of a riot act has been finding excuses for the two contractors. Anyone who has been passing through the Ibadan end of the expressway since March this year will acknowledge that with the slow pace of work noticeable in that axis, it will take a miracle to complete that portion of the road in the next one year. For Fashola, the slow pace of work was attributed to Oyo State government attempt at building a drainage channel across the expressway. Fashola was too young to remember that in the Awo’s fifties, before the arrival of Israeli firm, Sonel Bonel, the likes of Oni and Sons, the major road contractor of the era whose tool was only a shade better than cutlass and hoes, did not take nine months to bore a hole through a road and fix rings to take away drains. Perhaps Fashola should be reminded that Sir James Robertson, the last British Colonial Governor General of Nigeria commended Chief Tony Enahoro for delivering in 1959, the first television in Africa in three months. We also remember the Cocoa House – the tallest building in Nigeria and West Africa completed in 1965 took less than five years.

Fashola also spoke of the three overhead bridges located at Makun, MFM and Lotto (Mowe) areas on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. These three overhead bridges unfortunately led to nowhere. They only spanned across the eight lane-express road. None of dancing Nyeson Wike’s many overhead bridges in Port Harcourt and across Rivers State took more than one and half years according to the governor. As someone who has regularly plied that road since 2020, I can confirm each of those three bridges took more than two years to complete. And it was not just the length of time but the frustration and helplessness of motorists who, with traffic gridlock sometimes stretching for three kilometres, are often forced to struggle with trailers and petroleum product-laden tankers sometimes for hours.

On the last six kilometres into Lagos on the Lagos axis which Fashola said was slated to be treated last because of high population density, there can be no excuse for the slow pace of work which has brought untold hardship for residents of Arepo and the Journalists’ Village whose only sin for having to wake up at 4am and spend sometimes over five hours in traffic was having to traverse that portion of the road to their offices.  In an age when China constructed a multi-storey building in less than three weeks, how does one explain that Julius Berger has had to spend the last five months on the Lagos bound portion of the road between OPIC gate and Kara ram market, a distance of less than two kilometres?

It is hard for anyone who has not experienced the nightmare of motorists between Punch office and Kara to understand the frustration of commuters on this road in the last five months. But I think some newspaper howling headlines such as “Travellers’ Nightmare Continues On Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”; Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) deployed 125 personnel to ease traffic on Lagos–Ibadan express way;  “Lagos/Ibadan Expressway: Julius Berger Killing People, Businesses, Stakeholders Cry Out” and  “The ongoing construction  on…the long bridge, Kara, Berger axis, has made life unbearable for commuters plying the ever-busy road,” captured more vividly the frustrations  of victims of Julius Berger’s total disrespect for Nigerians.

Funds cannot also be said to be responsible for Julius Berger Nigeria and Reynolds Construction Company’s slow pace of work.  Besides the fund coming from recovered Abacha loot, Abubakar Kabir the House Works Committee’s chairman told us the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was one of the projects funded through the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).

Fashola’s continued appeal to traumatized Nigerians to endure the shabby treatment of these two contractors, therefore could only have stemmed from the fact that Nigerians are never regarded as citizens or participatory member of our political community.

It is not difficult to see why concerned Ekitis will readily identify with the righteous indignation of respected Ekiti SANs led by our revered Pa Afe Babalola over the macabre dance in Ekiti House of Assembly where members crowned, uncrowned and re-crowned different speakers in a space of six days. The proud and peace-loving people of Ekiti have watched helplessly since Obasanjo unleashed his vindictive war on Yorubaland  and by extension his imposition of Ayo Fayose whose only qualification was being a graduate of Lamidi Adedibu School of “amala’ Politics, a euphemism for ‘stomach infrastructure’ on Ekiti in 2003.

Nothing has ever been the same. Those who, like their role model, pretended to be driven by a passion to serve Ekiti people, have continued to behave like prostitutes with five husbands.

Today it is difficult to know the ideological or philosophical underpinnings of Ekiti political actors. It is even more difficult to know who belong to which political party. The only thing that is apparent is that these political actors who are all friends and  belonging to the same social or professional groups, at every run-up to election, throw Ekiti into a turmoil of warring groups with hostilities only ceasing after the emergence of a victor, followed by a  renewed friendship of yesterday’s sworn enemies.

In spite of all the bloodletting, Fayose is not Fayemi’s enemy. He has at some critical period even short-changed his own party to pave way for Fayemi’s victory.  Engineer Segun Oni is no enemy of both, as he dances his way through AD, ACN, PDP and APC back to PDP, Labour, and lately SDP. Ayo Arise parted ways temporarily with Fayemi, and Opeyemi Bamidele when Obasanjo rigged a senate seat for him. After serving as one of the highest paid senators in the world, he is today reunited with his friends.  Fayemi and Bamidele have always been close friends, but when the later wanted the position of the former, they turned our land of honour to a land of horror. No power in Ekiti land or elsewhere in Yoruba land could stop Opeyemi from trading off his friend’s re-election bid for Fayose’s victory. No one ever told us the price of betrayal as the three quietly resumed their friendship after the battle. Femi Ojudu mobilized and even kept night vigils so that Fayemi could return to power. Today, they are not on speaking terms. As their senior professional colleague, when I sought the help of a respected Ekiti elder for the purpose of reconciling the two estranged friends, I was advised to save my saliva as both, according to him, knew “what they are doing”.

As for Fayemi, since he was humbled by Fayose and the federal might, it is difficult to know which god he worships. He is at home with conservatives, progressives and even reactionaries depending on his interest. Two of those who contributed to his downfall during his first outing and later served Fayose for four years worked directly with him in his office.

But if you want to understand the depth of chicanery and perfidy of Ekiti political actors, just evaluate Senator Biodun Olujimi’s 2015 argument to justify Saraki’s treachery against his party. For her, APC cannot make demand on their senate president because it was PDP that gave him 42 of the 53 votes with which he traded off the victory of his party while his other APC elected senators were having a meeting with the president.

Read Also; Intrigues, power tussle tear Ekiti Assembly apart

But while their macabre dance goes on, hunger strikes one on the face in any village as you enter in Ekiti. Today, the roads in Ekiti are, according to Pa Afe Babablola, worse than our unpaved and un-tarred roads of the fifties. Ikogosi Warm Spring Resort collapsed under Fayose.  And while the southwest consumes 10,000 of cows daily, all the cows imported into the ranch set up by late Pa Adekunle Ajasin died or were eaten by Oni and Fayemi’s foot soldiers during their four years battle for Ekiti government house. And but for Obasanjo vindictive war against Fayose, his godson, we would not have known that the N14b poultry farm Fayose traded for Ekiti State Teaching Hospital, was a sham.

Pa Afe Babalola and his group of SANs must be applauded because Ekiti people need protection from their self-serving political actors. The problem however is that, by picking on political parties, instead of their wayward children, the SANs started on a wrong footing. This is because a political party as ‘a free association of persons, who hope to participate in the management of public affairs and whose essential role according to  European Court of Human Rights is “in ensuring pluralism and the proper functioning of democracy” is often controlled by a democratic oligarchy of stakeholders.

It is like a cult.  There is no place for anti-party activities and your personal ambition takes the back stage. As the Ekiti embattled lawmakers rightly reminded the SANs, “This same Aribisogan was equally suspended by the fifth assembly during the tenure of Governor Fayose by PDP for alleged anti-party activities”. Heavens did not fall then. It will not fall now. The SANs may get him a judicial reprieve. But it will be nothing but a pyrrhic victory.

The respected SANs also suffer from crisis of credibility. Legislative rascality has been a feature of Ekiti State House of Assembly since 2003. This was why the House is asking that if impeachment of Aribisogun by 17 members of the house   ‘demonstrated a penchant for political rascality, impunity, brazenness and recklessness of no mean measure,” why was it that there was no convergence of legal luminaries to condemn series of infraction of the constitution including that which impeached the then speaker, Adewale Omirin by seven members during Fayose PDP administration? Other infractions ignored by the SANs at the period include Fayose’s assault of a judge who was presiding over the case of his eligibility along with some thugs in his court room. Fayose also chased out of town, majority of elected members of Ekiti State House of Assembly with the help of thugs and prevented them from returning to the state to campaign for re-election. There was no whimper from our respected SANs.

The embattled house members have also said they “feel a sense of injustice by the one-sided opinion and biased intervention of the legal luminaries, who are also elder statesmen”. Of course, it is an open secret that Pa Afe Babalola is a close friend and an ally of ex-President Obasanjo who has by his action demonstrated his contempt for the Ekitis. It is also difficult to dismiss insinuations that some of the Ekiti concerned SANs have been known to openly canvass or campaign for support for candidate of some political parties.

However, since we have established that the lines between political parties in Ekiti are not only blurred, indeed, what we have in place of political parties are pig-headed, irreverent politicians without principles. With the foisting of Fayose as alternative to gentleman Adeniyi Adebayo in 2003, most of the current politicians think they need to descend to Fayose’s level to be successful. This perhaps explains why nearly all Ekiti politicians since 2007 including those who wear Awo’s cap like St Christopher’s cross, have not behaved differently from Fayose .

But the challenge before the SANs is very clear. To change the narrative, the SANs who have done so much to save Nigeria should pay some attention to their home by periodic intervention as they have just done if only to give hope and assure our youths that there is alternative to the ongoing politics without principle.

Greed is thy name, Nigerian educated political elite. Obafemi Awolowo, a Nigerian patriot who lived ahead of his time arrived at this conclusion long before independence in 1960. He has been proven right as only a few members of our educated political elite  have demonstrated they are driven by noble objectives including celebrating the values of our interconnectedness, asking for what they can do to make Nigeria better for Nigerians or “becoming the change they want to see in others” as Mahatma Ghandi put it.

Sadly a great number of members of our political elite have turned out to be unprincipled   megalomaniacs, driven only by self- interest. For them, it has always been “what is on it for us”? His thesis has since been validated by various events in our chequered history.

First, Chief S.L Akintola, his trusted ally was removed from office as premier for maladministration and anti-party activities by executive organ of Action Group on May 19, 1962. But driven by greed for power, rather than vacate office despite London Privy Council’s ruling that sanctioned his removal as premier, he refused to resign. (Akintola taku). He chose to invite leaders of the ruling coalition partners, Ahmadu Bello and Nnamdi Azikiwe who with false testimonies of Chief E A Okunowo, Chief Ayo Rosiji, Chief Abiodun Akerele, also driven by greed for contract, succeeded in sending Awolowo to prison.

Akintola’s enablers who unconstitutionally interfered in the affairs of Western Region in 1962 couldn’t have been motivated by any noble objective beyond a desire to run Nigeria according to their worldview and without an opposition leader.  From hindsight, we now also know the civil war was driven by greed for power by northern and eastern political elite. The short-lived troubled marriage of NPP and NPN in the second republic, the annulment of 1993 MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigerian mandate, the imposition of Obasanjo, rejected by his people as president, his dancing on the tomb of MKO Abiola for eight years just as Ernest Shonekan did before him for three months and foisting of ailing Yar’Adua and later ill-prepared Goodluck Jonathan as presidents  by Obasanjo could never have been driven by noble objectives. It was all about Obasanjo, the celebrated “father of PDP.

As it was yesterday, so it is today.  The ongoing dance of death between PDP’s five governors ,(the Integrity Group) and the leadership of their party, patterned after  similar 2014  Atiku-led five PDP governors’ revolt that wrecked PDP in 2015,  has very little to do with protection of institutional democracy or the travails of  Nigerians. It is driven in the main by self-interest of the warlords.

Whether it is about Nyesom Wike’s lamentation over breach of PDP constitution which produced Atiku Ababakar as PDP 2023 presidential candidate while short-changing southern political office seekers,  or the alleged pocketing of N1billion party convention proceeds by Iyorchia Ayu the PDP chairman or Wike’s last week last challenge to his fellow South-south governors to account for proceeds of 13% derivation funds they took from Buhari, it is all about them and their  greed.

Of course PDP itself was a product of greed.  Described by John Campbell, former US ambassador to Nigeria, during his March 19, 2010 lecture titled: Nigeria In Turmoil as  “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”, what defined  PDP’s 16 years reign was greed.

Driven by greed, PDP’s first major policy thrust was the 2001 PPPRA Act which   allowed them to increase the number of fuel importers from 10 in 2007 to 140 by 2011.  But it was greed over sharing that led to PDP’s deadly family quarrel with Bukola Saraki emerging an unexpected whistle-blower in a fuel subsidy scam that was to consume everyone.  A National Assembly probe was to later confirm that while PPPRA put the figure of imports at 59 million litres of fuel per day, only 35 million litres were consumed in the country. The probe also revealed that PDP stalwarts and their siblings defrauded Nigeria to the tune of N1.7trillion by forging documents without importing a pint of fuel.

Their next major policy thrust was the privatization programme. In 2010, a National Assembly probe revealed that what Obasanjo and Atiku did in the name of privatization between 1999 and 2003 was to literarily share Nigeria among their PDP members who had access to state money. Nigerian total investment of over $100b between 1960 and 1999 was sold for a paltry $1.5b.

The party’s monetization policy was not different. It was equally driven by greed. The self-serving policy allowed PDP members and their fronts to confiscate physical assets dating back to the colonial era. It is on record that David Mark as Senate President, Dimeji Bankole as Speaker of the Lower House as well as Chukwuma Soludo as CBN Governor bought their official residences after government renovation at fractions of their real costs.

For PDP, implosion has always come from within. Those PDP leaders, including Ayu who referred to Nyesom Wike,  a witness to his party’s baleful legacies, as a small boy, now know they are doing so at their own peril.  Wike, a self-confessed committed PDP member with PDP DNA has been an ardent student of PDP leaders including Obasanjo, Saraki and Atiku who have in the pursuits of their different selfish interests at different times in the past brought PDP to grief. Beyond words, theatrics and dancing, Wike has proved that he has come of age in the game of mischief and party intrigue. Today “the child is the father of Man.”(William Wordsworth, 1802).

Greed is a perfected weapon of PDP and its leaders.  Just as Hitler used democracy to bring down democrats of his time, Wike is relying on greed to bring down PDP. Greed has therefore become the springboard for their fight of death with their party. He and his Integrity Group insisted Abubakar Atiku breached PDP constitution because of greed for power. They then went after Ayu, the party chairman accusing him of greed for allegedly cornering N1b accruing to the party from their party convention.  And for his South-south governors, Wike went for their underbelly. Having demonstrated to Nigerians what he is doing with 13% derivation funds paid by President Buhari, he wants his colleagues from a geopolitical zone notorious for serving as Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) to successive presidential candidates from Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Buhari to account for their own Buhari windfalls.

Wike seems to have been well prepared for this battle. For two years he has been showcasing the results of his huge investments in infrastructural development in Rivers including inter-state and intra state roads, Cancer centre and the N17 b Nigerian Law School and even stomach infrastructure in form of employment of 20,000 special assistants as election observers.

Finally, I think another casualty of Wike’s challenge is our hypocritical electronic and press media, a big chunk of which is owned by indigenes of that geo-political zone. For Wike, Nigerians would never have known about the payments PDP government never made even in the days of abundance.  While they dance to the banks with millions made from news commercialization, promoting unverifiable projects purportedly executed by governors who “cannot meet up with pensions or boast of schools in top shape” while piling up loans despite “raking in over N300 billion from the Buhari government”, Wike is treated as a clown because of his throaty songs, diction, and dancing steps.  Now the joke is on them.

Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher born in 1558 in his 1651 book titled Leviathan, painted a picture of a state of nature where life is “solitary poor, nasty, brutish and short”. A world where, man who is predatory, cruel and inhuman “is a wolf to another man” ((Homos Homini est). Today, not much has changed. Life is still about the survival of the fittest. Globalisation, today’s reigning god is in itself another form of slavery in a world where only about five percent controls the resources of the world.

 The world remains an organized anarchy where the privileged wants an unfettered freedom to preside over an empire of slaves. The laws are their laws and by extension also our laws. They install government of their choice to implement their laws (every government has the imprimatur of the business class). After cornering a disproportionate share of the resources, the owners of society establish the newspaper publications and TV broadcasting stations to protect their loot by legitimizing their worldview no matter how warped. They insist, the media is a market place of ideas. But it is their dominant ideas and not our own ideas. They then employ intellectuals who humour themselves as editors, news anchors and gate keepers to fight their intra elite wars. 

There is therefore no independent media. But rather than hearkening to the admonition of Babatunde Jose, the doyen of Nigerian press that journalists must learn how to walk the tight rope while fighting their masters’ wars, Nigerian journalists humour themselves with false sense of importance.  They latched on to freedom of the press which stemmed from John Milton 1664 ‘Areopaqitica’s argument that ‘rational beings are capable of using reason to distinguish right from wrong and good from bad’. But we momentarily forget we are dealing with an insane few who feed on the sweat and blood of others while telling us that journalism serves as a watchdog over private and government action. It is as if such freedom can change our relationship with greedy media owners and the government they install to implement their laws?

And precisely because journalists often miss the link between government and the owners of society, government is always seen as Leviathan- a huge fearful sea dog who must be brought down. Newspaper proprietors and TV station owners, driven only by profit motivation only pay slave wages to journalists. Gratuity is considered gratuitous. Many journalists retired into penury and die as a result of health challenges. Instead of fighting evil men in government, and they are plenty in Buhari’s government, both the newspaper and the electronic media are obsessed with bringing down government, their only ally.

Stranded with a colleague between Ogun State and Lagos during the EndSARS misdirected aggression of anger and frustration by youths in 2020, I had called about four of my former colleagues in the media houses to offer some advice. Their reaction was Buhari must be taught a lesson. Some of them later became victims.

The truth is that there is no independent media anywhere in the world. Media owners are not interested in changing society and contrary to the grandstanding of some current media stars, media are never set up for ethical revolution. Every publisher or proprietor has an agenda.

 Thus the demand of Lagos Times, Anglo Africa and Nigerian Pioneer, established between 1881 and 1914 from the colonial administration was ‘increased participation of blacks in politics and the economy’. Of those established between 1922-1947, the Nigerian Daily Times was pro-establishment for commercial gains, Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot and Obafemi Awolowo’s Tribune were critical of colonial masters but were tied to political fortunes of their founders.

Of those that came between 1979-1982, the National Concord established by MKO Abiola, a military contractor spoke of “harmony justice and progress for all Nigerians” but was on a personal vendetta against Awolowo and his papers while The Guardian set up by Alex Ibru, another military contractor spoke of a need to “uphold  justice and probity in public life and equal protection under the law” was in fact established to protect his family business empire.

Of course ThisDay, and by extension, ARISE Television were not set up to change society but as commercial enterprise driven by profit. That perhaps explain why it pioneered news commercialization by selling its ‘solu’s and ‘semi-solus’ positions in the name of ‘wrap around’, for cash, gave ‘governor of the year’ trophies to serving governors they were expected to hold accountable and bankers who were later indicted by the courts for misapplication of depositors’ funds to buy properties in Dubai and private jets in the name of their children.

Were AIT set up to promote the health of the nation, its  chairman would not have partaken in the ‘Dazukigate’ to the tune of N2b which his lawyers claimed were bills for media consultations he claimed to have carried out privately for ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. And indeed if Channels and TVC stations were set up to sanitise Nigerian society as some of the young journalists serving them would want us to believe, they will have to first reconcile ‘news-commercialisation’ through which prime times are sold allegedly for as much as N10 million to notably state governors who dish out propaganda materials that assault peoples sensibilities.

Journalists who give the impression their stations are engaged on a mission for a national rebirth should give Nigerians a break. It was not a surprise that Major General Haruna, a former Federal Commissioner of Information and Culture (1975-77) rudely interrupted and heckled endlessly by Rufai Oseni while condemning  some western countries over the manner the alarm about elevated risk of terror attack in Abuja was managed, had to remind him his proprietor has an agenda for setting up the ARISE platform while also advising him to be less judgmental as a journalist. I am not sure if Oseni ever came across a book written by  General Haruna’s  back in 1979/80 where he admonished Nigerian journalists to put Nigeria first because there would be nowhere to practice their  trade if the country implodes.

But that did not stop irrepressible Rufai Oseni from declaring last Monday that refusal to participate on debate organized by ARISE by any presidential candidate would amount to a disrespect for Nigerians. Apparently he forgets ‘the medium is the news” His principal Prince Nduka Obaigbena is a staunch member of PDP, under which he once contested for a senate seat. It is impossible even to the nonpartisan not to see the ceaseless assault, disrespect and disparagement of the person of Asiwaju Tinubu by Oseni and some ARISE crew as an hatchet job to please a principal who from his creative and commercial exploits referred to above has abundantly demonstrated he did not set up his platforms for ethical revolution.

Utter insensitivity to the feelings and rights of invited guests, insults and disregard for professional ethics can only lead to trust deficit while self-righteous indignation and daily lamentation about insecurity, corruption economic stagnation which are mere symptoms of our unresolved national question only betrays lack of understanding of how society works and the nature of our own crisis of nation building.

The siege on Lekki tollgate (LTG) in October 2020 by EndSARS protesters, the massive destruction of Lagos State economic interests that followed, the disobedience of lawful court order by Peter Obi’s obedient supporters that seized the LTG during their October 1 Lagos rally to mark the second EndSARS anniversary when the youths have to be dispersed  by the police with tear gas, are all indication of how those who have an axe to grind with Lagos believe attack of the LTG in view of its contribution to the prosperity of Lagos  is a legitimate weapon of war.

Yet, Lagos is the only state that gives succour and hope to millions of Nigeria youths whose future was mortgaged by the same set of politicians that sold to themselves and their cronies Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b for a paltry $1.5b just as they sold off through dubious monetization policies, properties kept in their care as national patrimony for our the youths.

 EndSARS October 2020 protest against  SARS which Amnesty International said was involved in over 82 cases of brutality  including ‘hanging, mock execution, beating, punching kicking, waterboarding and other violent tactics’ enjoyed massive support of Lagosians.

That perhaps explained why Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu was able to secure the president’s consent through The Presidential Panel on the Reform of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, which according to a Punch report promptly “approved the five-point demands put forward by EndSARS protesters”. However, when the governor on October 13 went to address the youths where there was an ongoing “sharing of weed, food and drink” according to Odumosu, the Lagos State Police Commissioner, they were pelted with pet bottle and pure water sachets. Lionized by politicians and their sympathetic media, the youths started to make other political demands.

The governor declared a curfew leading to a confrontation between the youths and the enforcers. Despite Governor Sanwo-Olu denial of a massacre after visiting hospitals and mortuaries after the confrontation, the media continued the false claim of a massacre, of military truck ferrying dead bodies away and of “Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) that cleaned up the Lekki toll gate scene immediately after the incident of October 20, 2020”. 

 The false narrative by the media only inflamed passion leading to further arson and looting of police stations and sacking of banks and malls in the Lekki and Surulere areas and public lynching of six policemen. To show the war was against Lagos, the hoodlums ignored old Lagos buses and went after new ones burning 23 big ones 57 medium size buses costing about N3.9b.

Those exploiting the EndSARS protest to wage political war soon revealed themselves with Bode George, former PDP Deputy National Chairman at a press conference attended by PDP party chieftains and members calling for the dismantling of the toll gate.

As if to confirm the target of those egging the youths on, the  TVC and The Nation owned by an APC stalwart were torched by  arsonists just as Lagos based media concerns of PDP stalwarts  such as Ben Bruce’s Silverbird TV, Dokpesi’s AIT, Nduka Obaigbena’s Arise TV, James Ibori’s Daily Independent newspaper and Kalu Uzor Kalu’s Daily Sun newspaper were all spared. One of the PDP sympathetic channels soon offered its platform to Oba Akiolu’s political opponents who was opposed to his ascension to the throne to literarily justify the burning, looting and desecration of the Oba’s place.

 The panel of investigation set up by the government was undermined by some members of the panel. Thus government white paper on the investigative revealed that “The inconsistencies and contradictions in the entire JPI report concerning the number of persons, who died at LTG on 20th October 2020, and their cause of death rendered the JPI’s findings and conclusions thereon as totally unreliable and therefore unacceptable.”

For instance even while the JPI attested to the fact that there was nothing contrary to that of Professor Obafunwa, that only one person died at LTG of gunshot wounds on 21st October, 2020, names of  nine protesters allegedly killed sprang up on pages 297-298 without the JPI offering  explanation regarding circumstances of their deaths.  And the JPI Report also went on to award compensation to only one (1) out of the alleged nine (9), listed as ‘deceased’. But precisely because the report did not uphold their false claims, it was a matter of “we told you so”

The LTG was also the target during last week’s second anniversary of EndSARS protest. For the media the enabler, it was the same game of subterfuge. First they failed to tell Nigerian that the group was dispersed with tear gas because the youths reneged on their undertaking not to cause traffic gridlock under the bridge. They claimed a journalist was brutalized only for us to discover it was not true. Viewers were misled to believe there was a gunshot with the reporter later claiming he only spoke of a shot.

More than this, for the benefit of their viewers, one of the demonstrators, a woman who was interviewed at the LTG ground zero claimed she came with her other children to pick the body of her son from the same LTG on the morning of October 21, 2021.  It is either they forgot the tale about “Three trucks with brushes underneath brought to the Lekki Toll Gate in the morning of October 21, 2020 to clean up the scene of bloodstains and other evidence” or they believe we are all suffering from collective amnesia.

For the youths, I don’t think much lesson has been learnt. Their focus seemed to be about re-occupying LTG while expecting a different result from their past effort which ended in ruins. Rather than repeating the same folly, I think, a better way of remembering youths who paid the supreme sacrifice for a better Nigeria, whether 1, 6 or 9, in numbers, would have been to present to the public, their pictures, that of their parents and siblings with a short stories . Unfortunately, this was where those TV stations that for two years insisted on their massacre narrative, have failed the youths and the nation.

 One also expects our youths, to have come to terms with the limit of street demonstrations and the social media, as weapons of social change with the experiences of the Arab world. Arab Spring started in Tunisia. Today Tunisia is ruled by a dictator. Libya, Gadhafi’s paradise has become a land where life is nasty brutish and short. Egypt is ruled by a modern day pharaoh. Syria is at war. So is Yemen. Demonstrations and protests have been going on in Sudan for over a decade.

Our problem, the youths must know, is political. With the help of the British and in spite of our own self-serving leaders, we were able to overcome this with the 1957 constitution.

At the London 1957 Conference, Zik who could not get his unitary system had insisted 17 state be created right in London insisting that “the smaller the states the better for the federal unity of Nigeria” with Awo, saying “it will be a backdoor reversion to a unitary system. The weak state will be subordinated to the federal government and nothing less than glorified local governments” (Awolowo’s Autobiography P.190)

The picture painted by Awo is what today haunts us. To return to 1957 or ‘Path to Nigerian freedom” we need an elite consensus. The route is not through LTG or the streets. For a guide, our youths to whom tomorrow belongs, can take a cue from our founding fathers. Ahmadu Bello disbanded his Mahaukata (madmen) violent group, Zik abandoned his violent Zikist Movement and Awolowo called to order his  Remi Fani-Kayode-led violent Mosquito Squad and embraced dialogue.