Unlike many other nations of the world, ours is a nation without a national interest, daily despoiled, repeatedly abused and plundered by her economic and political elite that have held her hostage since the end of the civil war in 1970. The former owns the country while the later reigns at its behest. Although we owe our survival as an organized society to the resourcefulness and brinkmanship of the latter, but because they are often regarded as unscrupulous and unprincipled men of many words driven naked ambition, all the ills of society are heaped on their head. As for the former, the real owners of the country, their laws are our laws. And government is therefore a pencil in their hands. It is they that draft government policies that government must implement faithfully to justify their position.

It was Olu Falae, a former Managing Director of Nigerian Merchant Bank, and Kalu Idika Kalu, who as representatives of the owners of the country, imposed on Babangida the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which killed all our budding manufacturing industries and paved the way for bounty harvests by our parasitic economic elite who didn’t have to bother about manufacturing with its labour problems, infrastructural deficit and long gestation period before smiling to the banks. It was the economic elite that first created artificial fuel scarcity in 1999 before coming up with PPPRA which Obasanjo was forced to sign into law within three months and became an instrument with which N1.7tn was stolen according to a House of Representatives report. The ill-implemented IMF recommended privatization policy was the brainchild of the owners of the country who often draft policies for government implementation. Through the policy, the economic elite and their allies cornered the nation’s total investment of $100b for a paltry $1.5b.

The owners of Nigeria who for on-shore profit formed a cabal with multinationals to promote importation as against manufacturing have continued to encourage foreign divestment and relocation of industries to foreign countries notably Ghana and South Africa.

There is currently a trending advertisement of a doubtful source on the social media titled: “Guinness Brewery Ikeja Land and Property for sale”. Details include asking price of N8billion for the landed area of 9.922 hectares (24.52 acres). Other details include Administrative block: 498.68sqm2. Warehouse1: 23,369.68sqm; Warehouse 2: 9,029.99sqm,. Amenities block: 1,490.49sqm Silo block: 1,078.83sqm. Empty beer store: 462.66sqm etc. The advert further claims that “all machineries have been moved to Guinness’s new site in Ghana”. The relocation was said to be due to to macroeconomic instability, rule of law, insecurity, lack of ease of doing business, FX challenges, corruption, power, infrastructure deficit etc. which they say are  impacting unfavorably on cost of doing business.

Although I am not aware of any official reaction from Guinness, but many believe because Guinness is a global brand which declared N4.03 billion as profit in 2018 and a modest N1.01 billion as dividends for financial year ending June 30 2021, the issue of relocation or divestment cannot be executed under the table. But some other believes nothing is impossible in a nation where what binds the parasitic elite together is corruption and opportunism. They cited GSK that recently exited Nigeria, moving the production of its key brands to South Africa and transferring the production of two of its brands to a local company and paid off its last set of staff in January this year.

They also cited the relocation of Dunlop Nigerian PLC established in Nigeria in 1961 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dunlop Group to Ghana. Its exit was also attributed to inconsistent government tariff policies which gave advantage to imported tyres over locally manufacture ones. In 2005, DN Tyre spent $50 million on a truck tyre project. The federal government in 2006 reduced the tariff on imported tyres from 40 per cent to 10 per cent. This coupled with poor power supply led to the company shutting down operations in 2008. In a bid to pay off N8 billion in loans, the firm in 2012, decided to sell several assets which was eventually completed in 2014. There was also the exit of Michelin Tyre Services Company Ltd established in Nigeria in 1961 for similar self-serving government policies.

There is therefore nothing beyond Nigeria’s unpatriotic parasitic economic elite, 350 of whom owe 83% of Non-Performing Loan portfolio of N4.4tn. It was also not a surprise that despite controlling about 45% of those companies that relocated from Nigeria to Ghana and South Africa, they did nothing to protect Nigeria’s national interest when  machinery and equipment for which loans were sought from Nigerian banks  and which enjoyed tax waivers when first imported to Nigeria  were ferried out of the country.

Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, one-time Nigerian External Affairs Minister once observed that there is hardly any Nigerian multi-billionaire who did not make his money through the state. Minus Dangote who by the way also enjoys generous tax waivers and monopoly on many product lines, we know of no manufacturing industries owned and managed by any of current Nigerian multi-billionaires. Apart from government, we know no other source of monies by those who today control mega banks that declare such humongous profits that will force workers in the homes of capitalism to embark on industrial showdown. We also cannot associate those who set up private universities including President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar with any industry.

What is not in doubt is that many directors of some of the companies divesting or relocating collude with multinationals to trade manufacturing for importation. The result is the total collapse of our once thriving manufacturing industries whose factory building and ware houses have become religious houses. Why don’t you trade and have a turn-around in 29 days than get involved in manufacturing and wait for 29 months for turn-around?

Thus our unpatriotic economic elite create demand without supply, borrow to import what outsiders produce and not to produce what we need even when we have the raw materials to produce them, a violation of basic economic law of comparative advantage.  And this explains why countries like the US declare periodically the number of jobs created by their economy. What we create here are hungry and angry youths.

Unlike Nigeria where our economic and political elite treat our nation as a land to be exploited, nations where economic elite have stakes in their country protect their nation’s national interest. If China was given an approval to export 5000 jean pants to the US, any additional unit cannot enter US territory through any of the ports in the US. In Switzerland, all those from surrounding European nations that have working visas to the country cannot stay a minute after midnight.  But here, our economic and political parasitic elite after killing our budding industries and  nurturing angry and hungry jobless youths, tell us killer immigrant herdsmen can lay claim to Nigerian citizenship or while some of them take a trip to China and India to import killer pharmaceutical products and substandard  electronic and car spare-parts.

In 2015, Nigerians had thought President Buhari as an elected sovereign was the messiah to liberate Nigerians from the conspiracy of political and economic parasites holding the nation hostage. It is however a paradox that seven years down the line, he is using democracy as an excuse for failing a nation that massively voted for him not because of his democratic credentials but because of their nostalgic craving for his past outing as a dictator who they had hoped could treat those holding the nation hostage “in the language they understand”.

It has been said by those who should know that the unrestrained public outburst during which recently tamed Rauf Aregbesola accused his mentor of deceit and pride, and solicited God’s intervention ‘to punish and dethrone him from his ‘peacock throne’ was borne out of frustration following his failed attempt to hijack the APC party structure, first in Lagos State and last week in Osun State.

Of course, if a political party is a refuge of all manners of ‘selfish interest groups, owned by powerful investors made up of past, present and aspiring office holders, Aregbesola’s aspiration as a former governor cannot be said to be illegitimate. He also has the right to pursue his own political ambition like other Tinubu’s mentees are currently doing quietly.

Aregbesola’s first folly however was that having reaped bountiful dividends as a two term governor and minister in the last seven years, riding on the back of someone who has always fought his battles, he no longer cares to know who controls the largest shares of APC in the Southwest.

His second folly was his failure as “omoluabi” to assimilate the Yoruba ethos that frowns at attempt at pulling down a benefactor in order to achieve one’s political ambition.   He forgets the Yoruba adage that says “the pigeon does not eat and dine with the owner of the house only to deny deny the owner of the house in the days of adversity”. A true ‘omoluabi’ must be creative enough to navigate the narrow path between treachery and loyalty.

Aregbesola , I am sure is current with our recent history. SLA Akintola, unlike Obafemi Awolowo, his principal who was a federalist, was a regionalist and an unrepentant Yoruba irredentist. But not even his argument about abuse of distributive politics and efforts at securing for the Yoruba their fair share of spoil of office then monopolised by Igbo and Hausa/Fulani could save him when Yoruba people who believed he sold his party leader to the north for a pot of porridge rose against him. It was the same story with the late Bola Ige who Pa Adesanya had accused of betrayal for joining Obasanjo and his PDP. But for that labelling, Yoruba would have been on fire following Ige’s assassination because Yoruba loved him without reservation.

His third folly: Up to 2007, Aregbesola was an unknown Osun politician in diaspora. Unfortunately, he mistook the wild jubilations on the streets of Osun towns following his judicial victory after three and half years, the same way Mimiko and Fayemi’s judicial victories were celebrated in Ondo and Ekiti,  as a sign of personal approval  when in reality it was a rejection of reactionary politics and denunciation of any form of cheating by the Yoruba people.

And finally, Aregbesola forgot that the Yoruba variant of democracy which frowned at imposition of leaders predates West’s introduction of their new value system to Africa. Leadership in Yoruba land which often comes from the back and not from the aristocratic class is earned. In the days of our fathers, even Obas were never imposed since the Ifa oracle hardly picked someone who did not enjoy the support of his people.

Therefore trading an unpopular Moshood Adeoti, his secretary to government while in office with Gboyega Oyetola, the candidate of  a mentor who aided his ascension to  office could only have meant Aregbesola forgot where he was coming from. He also forgot he was once labelled enemy of Osun people by Oyinlola, its tyrannical ruler who once barred him from Osun State. He forgot that he only managed to escape with his life by the whiskers as bullets were rained on his car when he tried to defy Oyinlola’s ‘fatwa’. He forgot he was locked up like a common criminal for alleged forgery by an Inspector General of Police because of a police report tendered as exhibit by police officer in an open court.  Aregbesola forgot how from being a haunted man, he became a two-term governor.

Let us remind him how the battle was fought and won. In what Emmanuel Oladosu, of The Nation described as ‘electoral terrorism’, Maurice Iwu’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Olagunsoye Oyinlola winner of the April 14, 2007 gubernatorial election ‘despite evidence of rigging, multiple-voting, violence, flagrant violation of the electoral regulations and connivance between security agents and government functionaries.’

Retrieving stolen mandate from PDP was a tough battle. Speaking recently of their mentor’s courage and commitment to his mentees, Vice President Osinbajo regaled how Adrian Forty, a former fingerprint expert from Metropolitan Police Detective Training School, New Scotland, Yard, London with 37years experience almost fell off his chair laughing when told of the impossible number of ballot papers involved in the Aregbesola case. But undeterred by challenges, their mentor according to him, ferried Adrian Forty along with a team of 50 qualified fingerprint experts who had been trained in England, 48 of whom were serving in the United Kingdom Police as civilian fingerprint experts to Nigeria to join a team of software engineers led by Tunde Yadeka for the arduous task.

Adrian Forty’s team examined a total of 224,695 ballot papers, out of which 93,088 had multiple votes, representing 41.43 per cent of the ballot papers used for the conduct of the election. ”This enabled the experts to draw an inference to the effect that 83,463 ballot papers used during the April 14, 2007 governorship election in Osun State in the 10 local governments were balloting papers that were not supplied by INEC officially”.

But Justice Thomas Naron’s tribunal rejected exhibits brought to court and Aregbesola lost. His team of lawyers led by former Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Chief Akinlolu Olujimi (SAN) thereafter appealed insisting Aregbesola wanted the result of elections in 10 local government areas of the state cancelled, while Oyinlola wants the appeal of Aregbesola dismissed allegedly for lack of merit.

But the appeal court which found no justification  for Justice Naron’s rejection of exhibits ordered a retrial which again went back to the appeal court that finally sacked Oyinlola after three and half years of illegal occupation of Osun’s Governor’s Lodge.

When Aregbesola was sworn into office on Saturday, November 27, 2010, he spoke of “reawakening of Obafemi Awolowo’s philosophy of service promising to “promote functional education and enhance communal peace and progress, banish poverty, hunger, and unemployment”.  Those promises were met in default. His years in office were characterized by divisive issues of religion, merger of schools and several months of unpaid salaries of teachers, health workers and the judiciary. I am not sure Aregbesola has the moral right to railroad Gboyega Oyetola to follow what he considers a legacy of failure.

As Minister for Interior, Aregbesola has spent the greater part of six years playing Osun politics while the nation is under siege of Boko Haram insurgents, immigrant Fulani herdsmen and bandits that today operate unchallenged in most parts of the northwest of the country.

Let me however state that this is not an inquisition but a journey through memory to remind Aregbesola of his humble beginning. In any case, it is Tinubu and Tinubu alone who knows how to fight his own political battles. Anyone who tries to come between him and his mentees or even his political foes may at the end get his finger burnt. Those who abuse him during the day crawl to his bedroom in the night. Those the press labelled treacherous yesterday are today with him in the trenches for the battle of 2023.

Nullifying President Buhari’s Executive Order 10 initiated to grant financial autonomy to the states judiciary and legislature, the Supreme Court last week reminded us all that “this country is still a federation and the 1999 Constitution it operates is a federal one”. The constitution, it added, “provides a clear delineation of powers between the state and the federal government.”   Signed on May 22, 2020 by the president, Executive Order 10 was to enforce the provisions of the 1999 Constitution as altered by the 4th Alteration Act, No.4 of 2017, which guarantees financial autonomy for the judiciary and the legislature at the state level.

The judiciary, it is said, exists to sustain a society governed by reason with ‘descent men far removed from the quarrelsome, competitive, selfish creatures’ of a perfect state of nature’. Federalism, which protects individuals and groups in deeply divided societies, is one social system through which model builders since the end of the Second World War agreed unity in diversity could be achieved.

Unfortunately the judiciary became not just the scourge of the nation but the greatest threat to our federal arrangement since 1962 when it decided to undermine our federal principles by playing the role of an accessory to crime against our nation by an unenlightened political class’ application of the rule of the jungle to manage our affairs.

First, the ruling coalition driven by political vendetta instituted a Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the activities of the National Bank which was a regional issue over which the federal government had no power. In 1962, following the victory of the Western regional opposition party at the London Privy Council, the judiciary, against the spirit of our federal constitution aided the Balewa administration to take over the Western Region. It followed the take-over with a tragic-comedy, called a judicial trial which convicted and jailed the leader of opposition, Chief Obafemi Awolowo ‘for treasonable felony’ and a more comical offence, ‘conspiracy to commit an unlawful act’.

After demonstrating its bankruptcy through its ignoble role in the federal government contrived Coker Commission of Inquiry into Statutory Corporations in the Western Region and the prosecution and conviction of the opposition leader, Obafemi Awolowo for treasonable felony, the judiciary, casting itself in an image of anarchist, went on to give a perverse verdict over the 1963 census crisis between the north and east which it dismissed as a ‘political issue’.

In 1966, the judiciary was behind General Ironsi’s Decree 34 that temporarily turned a multi-ethnic Nigeria to a unitary state.  In 1979, President Shehu Shagari secured his presidency courtesy of Richard Akinjide and the Supreme Court’s twelve two third pronouncement. Buhari’s retrogressive and draconian laws were crafted by the judiciary.

The Third Republic was also aborted by the judiciary as it became a willing tool in the hands of Babangida whose N40 billion eight years ‘transition without end’ finally collapsed partly on account of immoral and irresponsible midnight judgment of late Justice Ikpeme.  Abacha secured legitimacy and ravaged our land through Onagoruwa and Nwabueze, two leading lights of the judiciary following the collapse of Babangida’s fraudulent interim contraption.

Abdul Salami Abubakar who came to stop the drift in 1988 was aided by the judiciary to foist on the nation the 1999 constitution which was more unitary than federal with its consolidation of an exclusive list with 68 items as against 45 of our independence federal constitution. The result is the current “duplication and multiplication of government departments in an effort to find job for the boys”.

Although last week’s annulled President Buhari’s Executive Order 10 was meant to allow the Supreme Court justices and other judicial officers to directly manage annual budget appropriations for the judiciary the same way the legislature has been doing in the last few years with dire consequences, the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Greek gift seems to have saved for the judiciary whatever credibility it has left. The novel idea of Supreme Court judges and other judicial officers awarding contracts for capital projects, fixing their own salaries and presiding over daily disbursement of funds will amount to unnecessary distraction for the judiciary.

The madness currently going in the legislature where unrestrained lawmakers cornered about 25% of our annual budget ought to have been sufficient disincentive for those pushing the idea. Unfortunately those running Ministry of Justice don’t seem to believe the judiciary exists to sustain a society governed by reason.

The Supreme Court ruling has also exposed both the federal and state governments as enemies of federalism. It is not difficult to see their hypocrisy. First the federal government has no objection to Section 81 of the 1999 constitution that places the responsibility of the payment of the salaries and emoluments of the judges of the three courts viz State High Courts, Sharia Court of Appeal and Customary Court of Appeal precisely because that allows it to exert influence on the judicial officers of those federal institutions since it is generally agreed that he who pays the piper dictates the tunes. There is therefore less incentive acceding to the states demand for funding of capital projects and refunding of N66 billion being an amount the states claimed they had so far spent on capital projects for the three courts in their respective states.

On the other hand the 36 state governors that sought for an order of the apex court to compel the federal government to take up funding of capital projects for state High Courts, Sharia Court of Appeal and Customary Court of Appeal want to eat their cake and have it. They exert their own influence on the judiciary through funding of capital projects and procurement of cars.  But now they would rather have the federal government pay for them.

It is a known fact that it is rare for federal high courts to rule against the governors of the states where they operate. We could not have suddenly forgotten how a particular South-south governor built a structure and provided an accommodation for a federal judicial officer transferred to his state within two weeks.  Justice Marcel Awokulehin did not waste time before dismissing the 170-count charge  of corruption involving the laundering of millions of dollars brought against that governor by EFCC at Asaba  Federal High court on December 17, 2009. The scandalous judgment confirmed once again the preference for the rule of the jungle to manage our affairs.

But in 2012, it took justice Nickolas Pitts London Southwark Crown court less than one hour to sentence the same governor to 13 years imprisonment in United Kingdom prison for eight of the 23 charges he had pleaded guilty to.

The presidential Executive Order 10 was ostensibly meant to facilitate the implementation of the constitutional provisions to aid the states legislature and judiciary in curing the constitutional wrong of their financial autonomy which the state have always denied.  It was however commendable that “despite the pitiable eyesore that judicial officers and staff go through financially at the hands of state executives, who often flout constitutional and court orders to their whims and caprices”, the judiciary realized Buhari’s Executive Order 10 was nothing but a Greek gift, from a former military dictator who has for six years as a democratically elected leader tried without much success to prove he has faith in the rule of the law.

The reading culture seems to be disappearing among Nigerians especially our youths. No thanks to our different institutions of socialization, the family, schools, the church and the media that have not helped matters. Our students hide under social media to avoid reading even newspapers. Our prosperity prophets knowing that our youths hardly read any portion of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation exploit their ignorance by promising prosperity without hard work. With the media, our youths suffer double jeopardy.

First, the media, owned by those who wish to impose their world view on the rest of society or those who wish to protect their disproportionate share of the nation’s resources they cornered,  is not  a free market place of ideas. But the success of the media lies in giving a false narrative that its ultimate goal is the pursuit of public interest as against private profit. I suspect that is what Alhaji Jose, the doyen of Nigeria journalism describes as ‘walking the tight rope’.

On the other hand, since it takes a discerning mind to make sense out of information and misinformation the media dish out daily even in societies with a reading culture, many of our contemporary media managers who realize that an un-reading public will swallow their prejudices and those of the tendencies they represent, understand taking pains to ‘walk the tight rope” is an unprofitable enterprise.

This perhaps explains why a significant portion of the electronic media decided to swindle their audience with their coverage of the presentation of Bisi Akande’s 559-page book – My Participation a few weeks back.

It was obvious from the coverage that the objective was to exploit the intra-party squabbles among leading Yoruba politicians in order to further destabilise the Yoruba nation instead of highlighting serious self-inflicted problems threatening the survival of the nation as identified by Chief Akande in the book.

To some of the electronic outfits, a sentence in Akande’s 559 page book – ‘Tinubu told me later that after he presented Adebanjo’s C of O to him, Adebanjo was always pestering Tinubu until he helped build a house on the plot’ – defines the book. To further exploit the schism between the warring father and son who have for years engaged in public duel, they assembled experts to talk about the implications of Pa Akande’s claim about helping his father to build a house.  Pa Ayo Adebanjo was granted an elaborate interview to deny and denounce his son while he was challenged not only to defend his claim with evidence but also explain to Nigerians the source of his money. Their decision to weep louder than the bereaved betrayed their real intention.

Because they knew Nigerians, especially the youth, have not read Akanke’s latest contribution to the literature on crisis of leadership in Nigeria, or plan to read any  other books that could help in proper articulation of Nigerian problems, they focused on that one sentence ignoring far more important issues such as the ‘national question’, sovereign national conference  long advocated by the Yoruba, exploitation of the desperation of Yoruba for a workable structure by Obasanjo, their own son  and President Jonathan’s decision  to do the same on the eve of an election in which he was facing an imminent defeat because of the emergence of APC, and Obasanjo’s letter that had accused him of ‘corruption and comprehensive incompetence’ . They bungled an opportunity to interrogate Akanke’s claim that Jonathan summoned a national conference of his own image on the eve of an election as a survival strategy. They similarly did not bother to interrogate why Jonathan failed to implement some of the conference recommendations that could be handled administratively.

The book also read hypocrisy into Obasanjo’s transition after a lifelong preaching the values of dictatorship and one party state to sudden advocate of restructuring. According to him, he, Obasanjo was ‘an important member of Gowon’s military junta who divided Nigeria by decree into 12 states without rhythm or reason, second in command when Murtala Muhammed split Nigeria by decree without principles into 19 states, had influence with Babangida who spilt the country to 30 states by decree’ before he and his PDP ruled Nigeria for 16 years.

Akande on page 472 of the book accused Obasanjo of being behind the nation’s current misfortune since it was his regime (1975-1979) that amended Decrees 13 of 1970 and 9 of 1971 which began the unfortunate transfer of states’ residual functions to the central government. This was a precursor to Decree 21 of 1998 which transferred to the federal government, the power to collect all taxes and subsequent increase in the exclusive legislative list from 45 in the 1960 constitution to 68 in the 1999  Abdulsalami Abubakar’s ‘military’ constitution.

If we are looking for the source of political irresponsibility and official corruption at the federal government level,  duplication and multiplication of government departments and bureau to find jobs for the boys’ in the same manner  unviable states  and LGAs were created, Akande says we don’t need to look any further.

And quoting Obafemi Awolowo, Akande says  “Obasanjo and his military adventurers are the reason that have made the work of government to become unduly complex, inextricably tangled, extremely unwieldy and wasteful and productive of disharmony and discontent among our people”. Akanke’s conclusion is that “Nigeria is now in chaos created by leaders with military orientation to promote corruption with appropriate cover-ups.”

Akande in the book reserves the last words for our current military new breed politicians who continue to promote and sustain the current military fraud, called Nigeria instead of working towards returning to ‘our political and economic viability of our founding fathers’.

The media especially the electronics media continue to play the ostrich like those who are currently benefitting from the nation’s tragedy by giving the wrong impression that   Akande’s My Participations is about Adebanjo and Tinubu’s family squabbles.

On the contrary, it is a good book on the crisis of Nigerian leadership that should be recommended because of its heuristic value to all Nigerians who want to know where the rain started to beat us and the real actors behind the nation’s current travails.

Where did Nigeria take the wrong turn and what is the root of its problems? These were questions Justice Chukwudifu Oputa in chapter one of his report threw open to Nigerians of good conscience.  This I believe was the challenge  Chief Olanihun Ajayi wanted to address with his This House of Oduduwa Must not Fall which traced the root cause of our problem  to the conspiracy of Britain who in an effort to protect her neo-colonial interest in Nigeria, encouraged and actively aided our northern ruling elite to commit treachery in terms of election rigging, census figure manipulation, subjugation of the people of southern Nigeria especially the Yoruba  and cornering of  disproportionate share of the nation’s revenue. He presented facts to support his central thesis.

Lord Lugard didn’t need to pretend he was in Nigeria to protect British interest. As he explained: “my African friends often say to me when we are discussing the past acts of Britain, I always tell them ‘yes’, but it was all done in the interest of Britain not of Africa”. Ahmadu Bello rather than deny Britain aided the north to hold the nation hostage, explained on page 33 of his book, My Life: The Sadauna of Sokoto that “The British were the instrument of destiny and were fulfilling the will of God in the way they did it all”.

Driven only by her selfish interest, Britain acceded to the north’s 1951 three-point demand: 50% of membership of the Legislative Council as against 25 for each of the regions,  revenue allocation based on per capita and retaining the boundaries especially between the north and west, thus making  those who took backstage in the decolonization battle and did not participate in the administration of Nigeria until 1947  ‘winners takes all’.

Although most of census figures up till 1951 were based on assumptions, but the battle was drawn with both north and south attempting to influence the outcome of the 1962 census exercise. With the rejection of the 1962 figures by northern leaders, a new census held in 1963 discovered additional 8.5 million people in the north bringing the northern population to 31m.

What we therefore had at independence was “a federation of three regions where initiative, according to Robin Luckman, author of The Nigerian Military, ‘lies with one of the regions’ because the British government believed it would protect its own future interest in Nigeria”.

To support the claim that the 1959 election was rigged in favour of the north, Ajayi refers us to the testimony of Harold Smith, one of the young Oxford graduates recruited from England in 1955 who attributed his dismissal to his confrontation with the Governor-General over the role of senior British bureaucrats mandated to support some parties during the election.

To Ajayi, Robertson’s decision to call on Balewa to form the government on December 15, 1959 with voting returns showing that NPC was trailing the two other parties by 116 to 150, a decision that rendered the final result of NPC 150 seats to the other two parties’ 162 seats and independent 8, that came later on December 19, just ‘a force majeure’.

To support his claim of conspiracy against the West, Ajayi cited the April 1961 meeting attended by Akintola, where Sardauna, Balewa and Okpara mooted the idea of a preventive detention system in the country. This became handy on May 29, 1962 when Balewa declared state of emergency in the West, went on to illegally inaugurate  the Coker Commission of Inquiry to look into the operations of Western Region corporations. In case that failed, Balewa also inaugurated treasonable felony probe which later jailed Awo and his supporters. If Ajayi needed further evidence to support his hypothesis, Trevor Clark’s claims that “Ahmadu Bello saw an opportunity to do in Awolowo, while  the NCNC saw an opportunity to destroy AG and Western Region” provided that. (seeTrevor Clark: Balewa the Right Honourable Man, pages (550-554).

Ajayi argued that the June 12, 1993 debacle during which Babangida annulled the election won by MKO Abiola by 8,342,309  to Tofa’s 5,952,087, was part of the grand design by the north to hold on to power or impose their minions in power as they had done from Balewa to Babangida.

In this regard, Shehu Shagari’s arrogant response when MKO Abiola who had worked against the interest of the West to please the north went to ask for his blessing over his presidential ambition was instructive.

“Well, chief you know it is all in the natural order of things. A country is just like a farm where everyone has his functions. Allah has willed that someone must hold the cow by the horns while another does the milking”.

Ajayi also called our attention to Babangida’s claim that he annulled the election because of northern emirs’ opposition to Abiola; Omo Omoruyi’s claim that northern leaders  brought in Britain, the US and the UN to persuade Abiola to forgo his mandate to no avail and finally Omoruyi’s encounter with British Sir Christopher Macrae who spoke of his efforts to persuade northern emirs to accept results of the election even though the preference of Britain would have been a northerner and not MKO Abiola in whom less was known.

Unable to confront facts as presented by Ajayi, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the immediate past emir of Kano, queried the type of love, Britain whose official policy was to deny education to northerners to prevent incubating ‘progressive  Muslim intellectuals of the type we have in Egypt’ had for the north.

Haunted by the truth, Lamido Sanusi accused Ajayi of speaking the language of 1959 in 2009, adding that his grandfather was a northerner while he is a Nigerian. But Sanusi knows that Nigeria was built on fraud in 1951, as Ajayi has pointed out, and watered by injustice through military decrees foisted on the nation as the constitution is obviously not working for federating nationalities currently campaigning for self-actualization in absence of restructuring or a return to the 1963 constitution.

Still playing the ostrich, Sanusi said we should stop talking of rigged 1959 election because Obasanjo also rigged election of 2003. He conveniently ignored Obasanjo was an  imposition of ‘the owners of Nigeria’ who by his actions demonstrated he was  on a mission to destroy the remaining legacies put in place by Yoruba visionaries of the First  Republic which survived his centralization policies of 1975-79.

He undermined the credibility of our leaders whose quest for restructuring he exploited, marginalized Yoruba for eight years by abandoning Lagos-Ibadan, Apapa-Oshodi , Lagos- Abeokuta  and Lagos-Badagry expressways as well as the international road to the airport. On the political front, he replaced progressive AD governors with touts who traded college of medicine for poultry farms, physically assaulted judges and lawmakers whose legislative chambers were put under lock and key in Ekiti and Ogun states. Lagos that resisted his take-over attempt had its LGA federal allocations withheld.

I think ostrich-playing Sanusi is haunted by fear of the truth. To return to the “path to Nigerian freedom” never taken, we must be ready to confront a past that begets Sanusi’s  contemporary Nigeria that works only for her designers and their offspring,  those integrated into the hegemonic ruling class, through politics and therefore served other tendencies while in power; through business connections such as the oil-well allocation beneficiaries and through  marriages especially among the conquered Hausas.

If tomorrow is but a summation of today and yesterday, Ajayi’s book is but a call to redesign ours just as other tribes in Europe did after the Second World War and India after the exit of Britain.

Let us start by acknowledging the resourcefulness of Dele Momodu, one of our 2023 aspiring presidential candidates. Dele Momodu publishes the Ovation newsmagazine that operates at the level of society and therefore mirrors society by celebrating human vanity in its true colour. Publishing this genre of popular newsmagazine has brought him great fortunes. It is not impossible that Mark  Zuckerberg, the promoter of Facebook and photo-sharing Instagram he acquired for $1b in 2012 but today contributes about $20b to Facebook annual revenue, copied one or two things from our own resourceful Dele Momodu.

Having made friends with ‘the owners of society’ and other men of ‘timber and calibre’  whose vanity he  has over the years exploited to build up  great fortunes,  the pursuit of political power  becomes a natural urge. In 2011 he had offered himself for service as president on the platform of National Conscience Party of Nigeria (NCP). According to him, he has spent the last 12 years since his last disastrous outing perfecting a new strategy before throwing his hat in the ring two Mondays ago.

To launch himself to the consciousness of other Nigerians not covered by his social media network, he chose Arise Television Morning Ride, a less hostile territory owned by a ThisDay Group and whose anchor, Reuben Abati he admitted has always been his friend.  But it will appear such long nurtured relationship did not stop Reuben Abati who ‘jolificates’ even while addressing serious issues and ever combative Rufai Oseni, who carries cynicism on his face like an armour whenever people cannot see what he thinks he sees, and Tundun Abiola who keeps the balance, from throwing some tepid punches that surprisingly knocked out Dele Momodu.

What was he going to do differently from his failed 2011 outing and how did he hope to outwit PDP juggernauts eyeing the same position? He would demonstrate to the party that he could win the election. His proof:  millions of his foot soldiers that his intra-party opponents can cross-check on his phone. These youths who according to him, ‘earnestly want Momodu’ want old politicians to go and rest having done their best like Buhari.

What is the most important problem facing Nigeria today – he was asked? For him, it is absence of unity. And the cure: bringing joy and hope to the people. As someone with an Edo father and Osun mother, a former Private Secretary at 23 to Akin Omoboriowo, (who escaped in a booth of a car from Ondo State over alleged election rigging), as a former  Private Secretary to the late Ooni of Ife at 26, and as the chief promoter  of Olu Falae (of no alternative to SAP fame) at 30,  thinks he is now ready to face the challenges of managing  a nation as complex as Nigeria.

Beyond rhetoric, what specific policies will he deploy to engender national unity bearing in mind the current experience of President Biden of US who despite spending 35 years in the US Senate and eight years as vice president has been unable to change the minds of far right-wing elements in the US?  For him, that is very simple because he has studied Abiola’s 1993 successful outing.  It is going to be a wholesale adoption of his 1993 ‘hope’ mantra. ‘When people have hope, they will make sacrifices’.

Asked for his specific policies on the economy since hope will not reverse 18% inflation rate, more than 40% unemployment rate and high debt service rate; he insisted the first thing is hope. The atmosphere in Nigeria, he says, is fouled up with investors trying to take their money away. Beside hope, he will have a star-studded cabinet composed of our brightest brains.

Read Also: Dele Momodu joins 2023 presidential race

Rufai didn’t bother to remind him that Babangida’s star-studded cabinet with IMF egg-heads from World Bank school ended up with the ‘sapping’ of our strong naira under Chu Okongwu and Olu Falae. Obasanjo also carried out the same experiment with World Bank and IMF star-studded experts of Breton-Wood institution. Alas their leading light, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, today remembered more for his crusade for mega banks that concentrated wealth in the hand of a few parasitic bankers and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, an apostle of ‘tax waivers’ for imported goods, have spent considerable time after leaving office trying to convince Nigerians how each of them, by their wrong-headed policies set the stage for the nation’s current economic travails.

On his shifting loyalty between Buhari’s APC and Atiku’s PDP, he said, in a democracy, we cannot predict the colour of a new government taking over from the old. Nigerians, according to him, thought they had seen the worst in Jonathan and PDP until Buhari and his APC came.

Momodu was given an opportunity to articulate the problem of Nigeria and proffer solutions. From the apparent vacant expressions on the faces of Momodu’s unfriendly family members at the end of the interview, it was difficult to know their verdict on the level of Momodu’s preparedness for the task ahead.

However, as if to reassure us of their neutrality, they provided some relief with their choice of ex- governor of Akwa- Ibom State Obong Victor Atta, speaking immediately after Momodu’s self-promotion on the issue of resource control following exchange of letters between ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and elder statesman Chief Edwin Clark.

Victor Atta started his clinical dissection of Nigerian problem by pointing out the reasons why the so-called owners of Nigeria especially Obasanjo should get off our back. For him, Obasanjo is a dictator with total disdain for democracy and federalism. He accused him of sitting on Lagos State LGA funds in spite of judicial pronouncements;  assembling few state legislators in Abuja to impeach properly elected state governors, changing senate presidents at will  and taking the oil wells that rightly belonged to Akwa- Ibom State and distributing them to Rivers and Cross Rivers states.

The way forward: After messing up Nigerian for 66 years, Nigeria can undo the evil the self-serving owners of Nigeria including Gowon, Obasanjo, Babangida, Theophilus Danjuma,  Aliyu Gusau and Abdul Salami Abubakar did by reverting back to Nigerian republican constitution of 1963 and modify it to suit the present circumstances.

The lesson from Victor Atta’s intervention is that our angry youths who have become captives of smart social media manipulators and war lords must take time to read and understand the nature of our problem instead of using today’s hostile environment as an excuse. Awolowo, who wrote his masterpiece ‘The Path to Nigeria Freedom’ never had money to finish primary school or acquire formal secondary school education. Tony Enahoro who had a secondary school education as a son of a secondary school teacher went on to become an editor of a national newspaper at 22 and ended up as one of the best parliamentarians Nigeria has ever produced. The environment during the imperial reign when these pathfinders and their colleagues worked hard to lay solid foundation for a more egalitarian society was not any less toxic or unfriendly then than today.

Obong Victor Atta has just demonstrated the limit of social media. It is therefore worth reminding our youths who read neither newspaper nor books that they cannot give what they don’t have.

If I were therefore to make a choice between Dele Momodu who speaks only the language of his millions of social media foot soldiers and EndSARS Lekki warriors and Obong Victor Atta, who insisted sovereignty is by subscription, I will settle for the latter.