Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

President Buhari on Monday said he was approving a phased and gradual easing of lockdown in FCT, Lagos and Ogun states effective May 4 in line with the recommendations of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, the various government committees that have reviewed socio-economic matters and the Nigeria Governors Forum.

The president however did not forget to add that the move will be followed by strict enforcement of testing and contact tracing measures.

The president was no doubt trying to find a balance between locked-up, starving Nigerians who made a living through daily struggle on the streets, the increasing security risk they pose to their more affluent compatriots, and, the concern for the economy especially now the oil sells for as low as $12 a barrel.

The president’s other worry probably has to do with our total absence of preparedness for emergencies. The government palliative measures were mired in controversies with customs seized rice sent to some states found to be unfit for human consumption.

It was only on Sunday, just a day before the president’s latest move that Chikwe Ihekweazu, the Director of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control admitted the country is in desperate need of testing materials.

Less than 1,500 daily tests as against a target 4000 were achieved throughout the lockdown. This is not likely going to change very soon. It is of little relief that of every 10 Nigerians tested so far, one was positive.

With New York with a population of 20million and a budget of $175b overwhelmed by testing crisis, and Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump’s White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator at the White House admitting they were only able to test 40,000 of estimated 200,000 that needed to be tested, and Spain with the best medical facilities in Europe recording unprecedented number of deaths largely due to lack of testing kits, it is not that anyone could have adequately prepared for the outbreak of COVID-19.

But our own problem is that our leaders who are only interested in acquisition of power have paid lip service to our health sector in the last 20 years.

Abuja was dysfunctional. What was needed was devolution of power. Local dispensaries spread across the old Western Nigeria performed creditably and served the needs of the people before the federal government with too much money decided to replace them with federal medical centres, a source of corruption for federal officials.

UCH Ibadan used to be one of the best teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth of Nations.  The military regime under Obasanjo took control of all the teaching hospitals and local council health centres.

As an elected president, the contracts for refurbishing the teaching hospitals the misguided soldiers turned to consulting clinics, was awarded to PDP party stalwarts who supplied what they wanted to supply and not what were needed by the teaching hospitals.

President Jonathan had an opportunity to implement the report of Confab he set up, but he was more interested in second term. President Buhari promised restructuring and devolution while seeking power but in office he forgot what devolution of power meant.

The president’s wife and his daughter at different times publicly complained the State House clinic which had no x-ray machine in spite of billions allocated to it every year was not more than a consulting clinic.

The president and his officials who had alternative paid little attention. President Buhari allowed Abba Kyari, the man he described as a loyal gatekeeper, to take over control of ministry of health.

Following his political differences with Professor Adewole, the former health minister, he was alleged to have authorized ministry of agriculture to handle all procurements for ministry of health.

The situation according to insiders, has not changed even with the current minister who not too long ago was too scared to mention Abba Kyari’s by name while giving an update on coronavirus pandemic.

Read Also: Firms’ N11b life cover for health workers

 

Unfortunately, with the outbreak of COVID-19 which forced developed nations to temporarily put an end to medical tourism, President Buhari’s loyal gatekeeper who supervised the health sector until his death two weeks ago died in small private clinic in Ikoyi, Lagos.

The problem with our health sector is therefore not just money. It is absence of governance because our elected leaders since the beginning of the fourth republic were in the habit of delegating real governance to loyal gatekeepers.

As indicated above, under Obasanjo, PDP stalwarts awarded medical procurement to loyal party members who had no knowledge of the medical sector. The result was the claim by medical experts that all the refurbishment of the teaching hospitals that Obasanjo boasted of carrying out was a fraud.

Under Jonathan, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPPRA) set up under Obasanjo as minister of petroleum became a vehicle for stealing N1.7 trillion according to House of Reps probe of fuel subsidy regime.

As further evidence of absence of governance, fire brigade approach is often adopted in circumstances where sense of orderliness and through planning is needed.

Many of the governors under the APC-controlled government did nothing when the first index case of coronavirus was first identified in Lagos despite a general alarm raised by the NCDC director who in fact said ‘every state will get its share’.

Kano State which lost close to two dozen of its prominent indigenes to unknown causes in the last few days carried on as usual. Its governor, Abdullahi Ganduje who in an interview with BBC Hausa Service on Monday complained about shortage of sample collection equipment that “We are in a serious problem.

I can tell you the situation is really bad and scary.” is now blaming the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 for the tragedy that the state could have averted.

And perhaps there is no greater evidence of absence of governance than the fact that what is allocated to the health sector by the APC government is nothing to write home about, despite controlling the two houses of the parliament, more state houses of assembly and of course the majority of the current elected governors. They have no excuse not to change the narrative.

Tragically, what we see instead are the party’s elected lawmakers in the two houses and in the majority of the state house of assemblies, shamelessly cruising around N50m state-of-the art SUV Landcruisers with some APC governors terrorizing those who elected them in convoys of over half a dozen of the same N50m toys.

 

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Abba Kyari, a man who lived a life of service, died last week, literarily on his feet serving Nigeria, a country we now know from outpouring of emotions, he loved with passion. He had contracted the dreaded corona virus in faraway Germany where he had gone to negotiate power generation contract with Siemens. Without knowing he was infected, his last outing was presiding over a board constituted to prevent the spread of the deadly virus in Nigeria.

Oh death the leveller, before whom “sceptres and crowns must tumble down; on the dust be equal made”, if only your fresh harvests could know what friends and foes alike think of them after death especially in our country where mourning often takes the form of elaborate celebration of both legacies of great deeds and repellent misdeeds, perhaps departing would have been less agonizing.

While alive, Kyari, according to the media which possess awesome power to create and reduce celebrities to nonentities, saints to fiends, symbolized everything that was wrong with Nigeria: dysfunctional federal centre, resistance to fiscal federalism, the stumbling block against restructuring, Fulanisation and Islamisation conspiracy theories etc. He was the punching bag for disgruntled and marginalized Nigerian ethnic nationalities.

With the president’s directive that public officials, ministers, elected governors, ambassadors, top career civil servants and National Assembly members must pass through his Chief of Staff, those who regarded Abba Kyari as the de facto president held him responsible for injustice, lopsidedness of appointment, instability and social imbalance in the country.

He was a victim of many unproven allegations including alleged N500m MTN bribe and the commercialization of the Boko Haram insurgency war following his alleged stoppage of military arms procurement already approved by the president. Kyari never defended himself.  Neither did anyone defend him. The media did not even try to investigate.

It only became obvious after his death last week that neither Nigerians nor the media that could not agree on the date of his birth knew anything about an enigma called Abba Kyari. Channels TV claimed he was born in 1952, TVC 1949, and Leadership 1948 while Punch said he was 81 years old! Despite being very conspicuous as a former managing director of UBA and an editor of defunct Kaduna based The Democrat and chief of staff to the president in the last five years, he remained anonymous until his death in the service of the nation.

But one man who knew Kyari intimately is President Buhari, his principal and buddy of 40 years. Unveiling his friend last week, Buhari, in a tribute titled “TO MY FRIEND, MALLAM ABBA KYARI, told Nigerians that Kyari who he said “was made of the stuff that makes Nigeria great was the very best of us”. He said unlike his detractors, Kyari “never sought elective office for himself. Rather, he set himself against the view and conduct of two generations of Nigeria’s political establishment – who saw corruption as an entitlement and its practice a by-product of possessing political office.”

And admitting by inference for the first time that the buck stops at his table, President Buhari had said of his “loyal friend and compatriot for the last 42 years, working, without fail, seven days each and every week”, Kyari acted forcefully as a crucial gatekeeper to his presidency. With dependable and loyal gatekeepers like Kyari, those who describe the president as ‘Baba go slow’ can now understand why a President whose style of administration is “delegation by abdication”, was sometimes missing in action or went asleep at some critical periods such as during the herdsmen’s mindless killing across the middle belt region or an attempt to illegally establish RUGA colony in Benue State without the consent of the governor.

It must also be observed that Kyari was un-obstructive. Operating in complete anonymity, he did everything his own way. He even chose where to die, by opting for First Cardiology Consultants, a biosecurity-compliant facility, Ikoyi, an approved COVID-19 centre instead of making himself centre of attention in Lagos State or the federal ministry of health battling with increasing number of COVID-19 patients.

Abba Kyari was also a process man. If there was non- compliance with President Buhari’s directive of “strict observance of the social distancing rules as prescribed by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), safe hygiene practice as advised by relevant local authorities, that was not his own making as that happened after his death.

And if he was not buried according to the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control guidelines, a big concern for Abuja residents, Kyari was not responsible for what happened after his death. In any case Dr. Mohammed Kawu, acting Secretary, Health and Human Services of FCTA has taken responsibility by assuring Nigerians that mourners who were not well kitted would be rounded up for isolation so that necessary test could be conducted on all of them to ensure they do not contaminate others.

With Kyari’s death, his detractors including leaders of ethnic nationalities such as Afenifere, Ohanaeze, the Middle Belt Forum, party members, ministers and social media terrorists, our insensitive, self-serving National Assembly members will now have to look for a new scapegoat. He had waged his last battle against the National Assembly when he wrote them a letter over their 17 days paid leave ostensibly to prevent the spread of COVID-19 only to refuse to be screened at the airport on their return from Corona virus-invested Europe and USA.

With Kyari’s death, the war is over. Many have now seen the light. The president’s wife, Aisha who led the crusade to free her husband from a cabal allegedly led by Kyari has offered her sympathies to the Kyari family and prayed God to forgive his sins. For Lawan, the Senate President, Kyari “was a man of deep convictions and courage, who understood his role and performed it with uncommon dedication” and for Femi Gbajabiamila, his counter-part in the Lower House, “Nigeria had lost a patriot in the person of Kyari”.

For Obasanjo “Abba Kyari’s death must be painful to  Buhari” while Tinubu, Obasanjo’s sparring partner, wants Buhari “to take solace in the fact that he died in harness, in the service of his country,”; Atiku was “saddened by the death of Buhari’s Chief of Staff,” while Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, described Abba Kyari as “a forthright, seasoned and remarkable administrator”. For Malami, the “death of Kyari, a paragon of virtue, patriotic citizen, flung him into deep pain and agony”. Even the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) believes “Kyari sacrificed his life in service to motherland” while the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) spoke of “passion and integrity of a patriot who wished nothing but progress for his country”. Wike who described Kyari “as a patriot, trustworthy, humble and caring leader”, believes “he contributed immensely to the development of the country”.

Others who are celebrating Kyari in death include Atedo Peterside, the ANAP Foundation COVID-19, Soludo Chukwuma, James Ibori, Adamawa’s Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, the leadership of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the president of African Development Bank, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, OPEC Secretary General among many others.

With his celebration by erstwhile political detractors and the Nigeria media that once demonised him, just one week after death, Abba Kyari was probably a man greatly misunderstood man by Nigerians.

 Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

A lockdown was on March 10 imposed on Lagos by President Buhari as a result of the ongoing ravaging Corona virus pandemic. Last Tuesday, it was extended the by 14 days claiming the “repercussions of any premature end to the lockdown action are unimaginable”.

The shutdown has no doubt left many who depend on daily wages stranded. But to mitigate the effect on the most vulnerable, the Lagos State government has been distributing food packages to about 200,000 most vulnerable households with plans to double the aid.

However, some privileged elites in exclusive residential estates who did not see any reason to make sacrifices have employed services of lawyers to enforce their fundamental human rights.

Others including bandits and hoodlums who similarly do not see the relationship between the health of state and their continued well-being have taken to robbing residents of some Lagos residential areas.

This development only confirms the fears of the owners of Lagos that many fortune seekers see only a city to be freely pillaged without giving anything back.

It is perhaps for this reason, that a journey back through history will show very clearly that successive fortune seekers driven to Nigeria by Britain’s 1873 depression and the Fulani and Igbo that have held Nigeria hostage over control of Lagos since independence, have only one thing in common –reaping without investment.

Britain, for instance, in a typical act of banditry, obtained a treaty of the cession of Lagos with King Dosunmu in 1861 only to depose Kosoko in order to take control of prime Lagos Victoria Island.

Of course, the Fulani, after conquering Gobir, the star city of the Hausa states in 1804, Ilorin in 1823 was set for Lagos until their caravan was stopped in Osogbo by the Ibadan army in 1838.

But it was a temporary set-back. Revealing Lagos was their ultimate goal, Ahmadu Bello in 1953 after an encounter with street ruffians who at Iddo train station referred to him and his northern delegates as British stooges for rejecting Enahoro’s “motion for independence in 1956”, swore when next he would be coming to Lagos, he would come with his sword to complete his grandfather’s interrupted journey to the sea.

It was instructive that when Lagos became a federal territory, successive ministers for Lagos affairs from Alhaji Ribadu, Yar’Adua, Kontagora, Barnabas Gemade and Adisa were all from the north.

Following her seizure by Igbo after January 1966 night of many knives, it was retrieved July 1966 by Murtala Mohammed, Danjuma and Gowon after paying Igbo back blood for blood in Ibadan, Abeokuta and Lagos.

Murtala Muhammed, their leader, after ferrying their wives and children to Kaduna in a hijacked British Airways aircraft threatened to sink Lagos with dynamite and pull the north out of the federation until he was talked out of his momentary madness by British and American diplomats who jointly convinced him that secession by the north from Nigeria at that period would be suicidal.

What else could have led a man who had enjoyed all the good things Lagos could offer including a wife and mother of his children to threaten sinking Lagos with dynamite but the fear of losing Lagos to arch enemy-the Igbo?

Between 1979-83, with plan to relocate the federal capital from Lagos to Abuja, President Shehu Shagari abandoned the construction of the Third Mainland Bridge just as he according to Jakande, second republic governor of Lagos State, derailed the take-off the Lagos Metro Line project by refusing to sign even after the counterpart funding had been deposited in the bank by Lagos.

Even with federal capital in Abuja, General Babangida, with the help of his minister of justice, Clement Apamgbo could not help coming up with Decree 53 of 1993 backdated to January 1, 1975 to confiscate choice Osborne land for himself and his cronies

There are historical facts to support the thesis that Igbo’s deadly struggle with Fulani since independence was over the soul of Lagos.

The Igbo’s desperate battle to take control of Lagos started with Dr. Olorunnibe’s refusal to step down for Zik to represent Lagos in the Federal House in 1952.

Ozumba Mbadiwe was to later move the motion to take Lagos out of the West, a motion ignored by Balewa. The 1952 false claim that Zik was cheated from forming the Western Region government was all about Lagos.

At the London 1957 Constitutional Conference, Awo was the only man standing against Igbo demand that Lagos be ceded out of the West.

Writing on History of Ethnic Tension and Resentment in his Trouble With Nigeria, Chinua Achebe on why Nigerians hate the Igbos had said “Although the Yoruba had a huge historical and geographical head start, the Igbo wiped out their handicap in one fantastic burst of energy in the twenty years between 1930 and 1950.”

He was right.  Awo and his AG manifesto for the 1951 election followed a survey carried out in the East which showed that the area had more secondary schools, more primary school enrolment, more hospital bed spaces and more tarred roads than the West. By 1959 however, the tide had changed as a result of resourcefulness of Awo and his Action Group and their free education programme.

Read Also: COVID-19: Lagos ready for cash transfer to poor, vulnerable

 

In 1962, Igbo and Fulani came together to fight a common enemy by illegally declaring the state of emergency in the West. They imposed S.L. Akintola, rejected in the polls by the people on the region. The Yoruba concluded that “bi iku ile ko ba pani, tode o le pani”.

(It is better to first deal with the enemy within). Without posing any threat to the lives and properties of Igbo and Fulani across Yoruba land, they made the Yoruba nation ungovernable for Akintola with the whole region looking like a war-ravaged area with smoldering, burnt houses littering the streets of major Yoruba cities.

This was why many believe the January 1966 coup could not have been about saving Nigeria or serving the course of justice but designed to help to ease the takeover of Lagos by Igbo especially after the constitutional crises that forced both Zik and Balewa to approach the military for support.

Events during and after the coup support the thesis that the control of Lagos was the cause of all the killings. General Ironsi, according to Richard Akinjide, only needed to have sworn in the next most senior surviving minister as acting Prime Minister.

But he instead took over power and promulgated Decree 34 of 1966, turning the country from federal to a unitary state in order to consolidate his hold on Lagos.

Odumegwu Ojukwu even after securing his Biafra nation would not allow Lagos to go without a fight. His first action was to hijack British Airways aircraft with which he carried out the bombing of Casino Cinema, Yaba.

Instead of defending his Biafra, he was on his way to Lagos after overrunning Benin where he appointed Okonkwo as administrator before he was stopped at Ore by Yoruba hurriedly formed battalion.

To show Lagos was the ultimate prize, he did not forget to reassure Col Banjo that he would be appointed administrator of West while he, Ojukwu, would take the decision as to who to appoint administrator of Lagos.

The current resistance to lockdown by a few privileged elites and bandits is but a confirmation that fortune seekers in Lagos do not often behave differently.

 

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

What Adams Oshiomhole, the APC chairman lacks in physical attribute, he has in abundance in courage.  He has since his foray into partisan politics waged wars against powers and principalities, the invincible and the untouchable, wrestling all to the ground with little or no bruises. He started his exploits from his native Edo, where the late Chief Anthony Akhakon Anenih, the Iyasele of Esan was regarded as PDP’s “Mr. Fixer”, rigging elections across the country between 1999 and 2009. But that was until he met his nemesis in Oshiomhole who after retrieving from him, his stolen mandate, retired him from politics.

He then took on Chief Gabriel Igbinedion and his son, Lucky who had left Edo State like a war-ravaged city at the end of his tenure. When all Lucky got after EFCC took him to court over financial malfeasance was a slap on the arm, Oshiomhole dragged him and his father to the court of public opinion. He alleged that “Igbinedion the son entered into agreement with Igbinedion the father, that the Central Hospital shall be reserved for medical students of Igbinedion University, Okada”, to the detriment of medical students of Edo State government-owned university. “So I revoked it and directed the commissioner to write to terminate the MoU and to demand that Igbinedion pay about N30 million per year for those periods and I directed he should be charged to court”, he had told a crowd of shouting students and marginalised Benin youths.

“You are here looking for a small parcel of land and Lucky Igbinedion, former governor here gave out to his own father, Gabriel Igbinedion over 200,000 acres of government land.   They took that land on the ground that they will use it for mechanized farming but leased to cocoa farmers”, he had also alleged. And claiming “his motives are not personal but that he fights with clean conscience to secure the collective future of our people,” he reassured the crowd the allocation had been revoked.

Then Oshiomhole, rolled the battle tanks to Ilorin, capital of Kwara, controlled as a personal fiefdom by Saraki the father for over 50 years before it was ceded to Saraki the son following his father’s death.  Saraki who had secured about 100,000 votes to win the Kwara Central senatorial seat by his own confession admitted trading his APC party’s victory to the opposition PDP in order to secure the senate presidency seat.  In that position, he held the nation to ransom for close to four years.

Saraki who had had all his battles fought for him got the first shock when Oshiomhole as APC chairman, issued him a query and threatened him with impeachment. Speaking later of the Tsunami tides that finally swept Saraki away, Oshiomhole said “We went to Kwara, we did ‘otoge’ (Enough is enough). “As a senate president, we uprooted him as a senator, we uprooted his nominee for governor and senators, while we were saying that we will impeach them, their people said they would rather bury them”.

Then he crossed over to Imo State where he ended Governor Okorocha’s dream of establishing a dynasty in Imo Government House.  “What is painful”, Okorocha later lamented, “is that Adam Oshiomhole that I literarily put into this position…has become part and parcel of this high level of conspiracy to bring down Rochas politically”.

In Ogun State, Amosun was the lord of the manor. He disallowed candidate Abiodun from campaigning in Abeokuta where his supporters also disrupted President Buhari’s campaign rally. He, according to Oshiomhole, prevented his preferred aspirant from “participating in the primaries organised by the working committee; picked himself as a senate candidate to replace the incumbent, picked the governorship candidate and his deputy, the next speaker and deputy speaker, and declared that of the eight House of Representatives members, seven will not return. Oshiomhole taught him a lesson in humility.

But of all his wars and victories, last week’s victory over those Bola Tinubu the national leader of APC claimed launched an attack “solely because they perceive the chairman as an obstacle to their 2023 ambitions” was in my opinion the sweetest.  The battle was tough and viciously fought by those whose toes Oshiomohole had stepped on in the process of doing the right thing.  And Chris Ogiemwonyi, former Minister of Works and a supporter of Oshiomhole believes “the comrade is a victim of doing the right thing.”

I consider the victory the sweetest because the triumph of forces of evil against truth, fairness and justice constitute the twin evils fueling our crisis of nation-building since electoral contest took root in our country in the 1920s except for the brief period of Macaulay’s NNDP control of elective positions between 1923 and 1939. Even then, experts including James Coleman reminded us those elections were not contested on the basis of ethnic representation and that Macaulay and his contemporaries, like John Payne Jackson, Egerton Shyngle, C C Adeniyi Joes J C Zizer although accepted Lagos and Yoruba as their homes, saw themselves as Africans fighting white racism and were in fact opposed to territorial nationalism.

Our nightmare started in 1941 when the contest was between Ernest Ikoli, an Ijaw and Akinsanya an Ijebu. Awo and his group had supported the former on principle because of NYM constitutional provisions.  Zik along with his Igbo supporters pulled out of NYM accusing Awo of tribalism.

In 1952 Awo and his colleagues mobilized their people to prevent Zik who had a few years earlier publicly said something to the effect that the “god of Africa had ordained the Igbo people as natural ruler of Africa” from becoming premier of the West in the circumstances where a northerner was presiding over the affairs of the North and an easterner, the East. For the forces against truth, fairness and justice, Zik was cheated out of power in the West by Awo who they claim instituionalised tribal politics in Nigeria.

In 1962, Premier S. L. Akintola was constitutionally removed from office for anti-party activities, a decision upheld by the Privy Council, the highest judicial body in the country back then. But NPC and NCNC coalition partners imposed an illegal state of emergency on the West, put Awo in detention, and returned Akintola to power without election at the end of the emergency.

Up to the 1958 independence conference in London, Awo stood by ethnic nationalities fighting for self-actualization. But while in prison in 1963, forces against truth, fairness and justice joined hands to carve Mid-West (23.6%) out of the West leaving the North with its 45% minority and East with its 35%minority intact.

Of course, APC like PDP has not met the aspirations of Nigerians, but the treatment for eye pain is not eye removal as President Buhari once said. Political parties are needed as tools for political socialization and as modernization agents. This is why I think  Oshiomhole’s victory over  those Tinubu claimed  “went to court knowing full well the party constitution prohibits such action” and those “individuals”, who are according to Ogiemwonyi “are for their selfish reasons ready to pull down an organisation the moment a leader does not do their bidding,” is a victory for the country.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

The Alafin of Oyo who prides himself as the custodian of Yoruba tradition was last week on behalf of other revered Yoruba monarchs including the Ooni of Ife, the Awujale of Ijebuland, and the Alake of Egbaland, compelled to write a letter to His excellency Governor Kayode Fayemi because of ‘the treatment being meted to the Ekiti traditional institution and its overall effects on the Yoruba culture’.

The Obas expressed sadness over the governor’s query to‘the 17 Ekiti traditional rulers of high esteem in Yorubaland”, for no other offence than their refusal “to bow their heads under their subordinate”.

It was in their view ironic that while his (fayemi) predecessors in office and ancestors of thesecrowned Obas and their subjects displayed uncommon patriotism,courage and commitment to confront the intimidating military prowess of Ibadan army for 16 years (1870-1886), Fayemi as a beneficiary of the legacy bequeathed by these kings of Yoruba history is now embarking on an exercise that will rubbish the contributions of his ancestors”

Although governor Fayemi, like the rest of us is not without some of his own character flaws, but that undoubtedly couldn’t have been his intention when he set out on his ego trip that led to last week’s unnecessary and avoidable confrontation with his fathers.

This perhaps explains why his picture in full prostration before the Alafin like a Yoruba true born during his damage control visit adorned the front pages of some Nigerian newspapers last Sunday.

The visit was made more urgent because the embattled Alawe who Fayemi was trying to please by all means including proving he is greater than his fathers,had sent an ill-advised letter in his capacity as governmentrecognised chairmanto Governor Makinde of Oyo state asking him to”stop the Alafin from his meddlesomeness in the internal affairs of Ekiti Obas”.

Butthe position of both Fayemi and Alawe remains unassailable.  We are a Republic. The age of divine rights of kings or monarchical absolutism died  with King James of England (1603-25)and buried with the Glorious Revolution (1688—89)..

By the virtue of our constitution, the Obas’ traditional oath is to the subordination to modern political authority. Obas’ fear of governors is therefore the beginning of wisdom as Lamido Sanusi, the recently deposed 24thEmir of Kano discovered too late.

But just as our elder statesman, and the Nobel Laureate, prof. Wole Soyinka, a man of culture himself said of Dr Ganduje of Kano after his deposition of Emir of Kano two weeks back, Fayemi’scurrent war with his fathers seems to indicate “he has no friends that could have saved him from himself.”

You don’t prove you are greater than your father because it is settled in Yoruba philosophy ‘that a child brought to the world who does not strive to be greater than his father is brought to the world in vain’.And by our tradition, it doesn’t matter whether you are right or wrong, we don’t disrobe our fathers in the public.

Or as the Holy Bible put it “Whoever honours his father will be gladdened by his own children. O son, help your father in his old age and do not grief him even if he is lacking in understanding, show forbearance and not despise him. For a kindness to a father will not be forgotten” Book of Sirach 3: 12-14.

Read Also: Ooni reconciles Fayemi, aggrieved monarchs

 

And what are the facts? 17 of the 22 Obas in Ekiti had rejected Fayemi’s appointment of Alawe of Ilawe-Ekiti, Oba Adebanji Alabi, as the new chairman of Ekiti Traditional Council claiming he was politically promoted.

They  on August 9 instituted litigation asking the court to reverse Fayemi’s action on the premise that Alawe was not recognised by statute to chair the council adding that, they,as members of (pelupelu) had the exclusive rights to head the council, among the 22 members, in line with the extant tradition and the State Chieftaincy Laws.

However, five out of the 17- Onisan of Isan Ekiti ; Attah of Ayede-Ekiti,; Onitaji of Itaji-; Owa of Oke-Imesi, and Arinjale of Ise-Ekiti,  back-pedaled. The remaining 11 including Ewi of Ado Ekiti, Oloye of Oye  Elekole of Ikole Elemure of Emure Ajero of Ijero; Alara of Aramoko,. Ogoga of Ikere-Ekiti,; Olomuo of Omuo, Alaaye of Efon; Ologotun of Ogotun and Olujudo of Ido-Faboro, however sticked to their resolution to shun the council meetings and government functions chaired by Alawe.

But Governor Fayemi, a beneficiary of judicial due process was unwilling to let due process run its course. Accusing the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti of  “holding illegal meeting of dissident Obas in his place and plotting against the government”, on his directive , his state attorney General , Fapounda  directed a query dated March 11, be issued to the 11 aggrieved monarchs “demanding explanation for their prolonged absence from monthly meeting and state official function for the past six months”. From the above, it is apparent Fayemiwill pay a political price even he wins the argument.

Besides lack of friends to safe him from himself, it is also possible Fayemi assigns too much weight to his prodigious intellect and supreme confidence in his ability to make friends in high places while taking the loyalty of close friends and those who fought in the trenches with him for granted.

If this as his political opponents say was his greatest undoing during his first coming, his current ill-advised muscle flexing with his fathers seem to confirm little lesson was learnt from  his  2014 election debacle.

People in and out of Ekiti attested to his outstanding performance. Wole Soyinka who doesn’t suffer fools gladly was in Ado to identify with his people-oriented policies.

Week after week informed Ekitiindigenes sensitiseEkiti voters on why Ayo Fayose must not be allowed to prolong our nightmare. This column even went further to argue Fayemi did not need to campaign because of his self-evident achievements.

That other variables outside performance determine outcome of elections was brought home vividly when, a well-informed former editor of a national  newspaper  called from Ekiti on the eve of the election declaring with troubling finality that “Fayemi would lose tomorrow’s election”, adding for effect that “neither you nor Dr Olatunji Dareresides in Ekiti”.

Shocked and confused I had asked “if not Fayemi, must it be Fayose?” His disconcerting answer delivered with an unforgiving tone was “anyone but Fayemi, if only to teach him a lesson in humility”.

Nigerians now know Fayemi did not lose the 2014 election fairly. But that there was not a whimper from Ekiti people who had in 1983 joined others in the old Ondo state to chase their own son, the late Omoboriowo, the major beneficiary of what was then described by Walter Ofonagoro, as NPN ‘landslide and seaslide’in opposition strongholds was evidence enough that the people he served selflessly for four years were dissatisfied with him.I think Fayemi’s air of ‘I am in charge” simply puts people off.

More than a prodigious intellect and ability to cultivate friendship of the powerful,a politician needs to earn the trust and confidence of the lowly in societyand more especially among the Yoruba people where ordinary greetings have meanings and the led know their true leaders.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Ex-President Obasanjo last week warned members of our suicidal ruling political elite that continue to live in denial after turning our country from a federal to a unitary state, of a possible violent disintegration of the country if the demand for a return to a true federal arrangement is allowed to degenerate to quest for self-actualization by increasingly frustrated federating ethnic nationalities.  The agitation, which according to him was for a true federalism when he was first elected in 1999, has today moved to demand for restructuring warning that, “If we don’t address it they may go from restructuring to self-determination and this will be a serious problem”.

It is to the credit of Obasanjo that he has always made timely intervention at every critical period when our nation faces crisis of nationality. He was on hand to end the three years civil war in 1970. In 1979, he became the first African military leader to voluntarily cede power to a civilian administration. In 1999 after Babangida’s ‘army of anything is possible’ had brought the nation to her knees, Obasanjo came with a promise of a new dawn.

But that is only one side of the coin for a nation where the people are said to suffer from collective amnesia. A journey through memory will also show not only where the rain started to beat us as a people, but also how Obasanjo through malice and mischief has in spite of those historic interventions, prolonged our nightmare since his first coming as military head of state in 1976.

Much as we blame the colonial masters for our woes, they, unlike our successive political and military leaders, exhibited greater sincerity in addressing our crisis of nationality. They were the first to remind our aspiring new inheritors of power who had argued our differences was exaggerated by accident of colonial rule that we are a multi-cultural society with divergent groups at different  levels of cultural development.   In this regard, Hugh Clifford, the then Nigerian Governor-General made a distinction between those he described as ‘cannibals inhabiting some hilltops, the anti-social tribes and some naked warriors of the jungle”. Consequently, he in his address to Nigerian Council in 1920 went on to advocate “a regional government that secures for each nationality, each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have evolved for it  by the wisdom and the accumulated experiences of  generation of its forbears”.

But unlike the Yoruba who by nature are federalists and have been consistent in their demand for “a restructured Nigeria with constituents powers over law and order, education and public information and protection of rights of indigenes as provided for under the UN charter”, all through the various constitutional conferences in the country including the 1946 Richards constitution and the 1948 Ibadan conference set up to review it, other dominant ethnic groups have continued to live in denial. The north initially wanted a loose federation or a federal arrangement it can control, and the east and NCNC up till 1959 preferred a unitary system.

But of all the forces against a restructured Nigeria especially after the collapse of the independence constitution in 1966, none has succeeded in frustrating Yoruba’s quest for true federal arrangement as Obasanjo. In 1979, he derided the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, whose ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’ to date remains the best answer to our crisis of nation-building by claiming the best man didn’t need to win that year’s election and by his own admission supported Alhaji Shehu Shagari who was to be later declared winner through a Supreme Court twelve-two-third judgment that Justice Ayo Irikefe said could not be cited. In 1993, he betrayed MKO Abiola, a Yoruba and his Egba kinsman who had won a pan-Nigeria mandate annulled by General Babangida, claiming he was not the messiah Nigerians were expecting. For wanting for the others the good things of life they want for themselves, Obasanjo waged a war of attrition against his Yoruba people, their leadership and the tendencies they represent.

But in Yoruba nation where leadership is earned, the people know their leaders. Obasanjo who had up to 1999 never identified with the aspirations of his Yoruba people was as expected roundly rejected in the Yoruba nation where he lost his ward election in 1999. After literarily climbing the palm tree from the top by winning the presidential election without a political base, he intensified his war of attrition against the Yoruba. He infiltrated Afenifere, the Youruba apex social cultural group and brought the elders forum to grief with the death of Bola Ige, its deputy leader who was killed like a chicken in his bedroom as Obasanjo’s minister of justice by yet to be identified criminals.

In 2003, Obasanjo reneged on the promise he made to Yoruba leaders while seeking their support for his second term re-election bid. In his book titled “‘Battle lines: Adventures in Journalism and Politics’, Chief Olusegun Osoba, former governor of Ogun State revealed how  Olusegun Obasanjo  sought and secured the backing of Yoruba for his re-election after promising  to restructure Nigeria. The condition presented to Obasanjo according to Chief Segun Osoba among others were “the restructuring of the Nigerian federation, devolution of power, including moving some items from the exclusive to the concurrent list and ensuring fiscal federalism”. According to him “When all these conditions were tabled before Obasanjo, he assured us that he was satisfied with them and that he clearly identified with them”. He later outmaneuvered the Afenifere leadership rigging out all the AD governors with the exception of Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu.

Obasanjo today wants his Yoruba people to believe he has now seen the light and like the Biblical Saul turned St. Paul decided to defend the ideals he once denounced and did everything to undermine. I think it is in is in this regard many have been saying, the Yoruba although long victims of Obasanjo’s vindictiveness, must separate his important message which today resonates with theirs from the messenger.

But as Obasanjo puts on his armour as leader of Yoruba crusade for true federalism, it is important to place on record how his blind fury and policies designed to emasculate his own people paradoxically resulted in a prolonged nightmare for the nation.

The sacrifice of meritocracy through promotion of quota system of admission to universities, application of federal character principle in recruitment into the civil service and over centralization through federal seizure of states’ educational and economic institutions, all targeted at his Yoruba nation have led Yoruba youths to abandon the country for Obasanjo and the tendencies he serves and moved in droves to other parts of the world. The loss of our universities, our hospitals and our bureaucracy is the gain of Canada, USA and South Africa among other advanced nations where highly skilled Yoruba youths find satisfaction and relevance.

Activities of Boko Haram in the northeast, herdsmen’s mindless killings in the middle belt region and banditry in Katsina and Zamfara and southern Kaduna would have been greatly curtailed in a restructured Nigeria where states are empowered to protect life and properties of their people.

Infrastructural decay across the country, collapse of the health and educational sectors and massive corruption are the result of a dysfunctional centre that instead of promoting fiscal federalism dispenses seized federating states’ resources to promote indolence among states.

By  Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

If Nigerians and groups, including Catholic Bishops of Nigeria which recently warned that government’s “inability to prevent attacks and killing of innocent Nigerians by Boko Haram is fast breeding distrust and lack of confidence in the Buhari-led administration” are increasingly becoming apprehensive over renewed Boko Haram hostility  and bestiality,  it is not because Nigerians have suddenly forgotten the sacrifice of our soldiers whose heroic exploits led to the 2016 ‘technical defeat’ of an insurgency that had before then claimed lives of 50,000  and condemned two million Nigerians to IDP camps.

And in the unlikely event Nigerians far away from the centre of Boko Haram savagery forget, people of Borno State who daily carry the scars of its brutality will not for a long time.

As Governor Zulum admitted last week, “the people of the state still remember the days before Buhari’s emergence, when 20 out of the 27 local government areas were in the hands of Boko Haram while all the five routes into Borno State were largely inaccessible with exception of Maiduguri-Kano road”.

But it is of little relief to Nigerians, that almost four years after President Buhari led Nigerians to celebrate the liberation of Sambisa forest with fanfare, the spate of killings have continued, culminating in recent Auno town killings of about 30 travellers, stranded outside the Maiduguri military entrance city gate which military authorities claimed is usually locked at 5p.m.

Like his predecessor during the abduction of over 200 Chibok school girls by the insurgents during Jonathan period, Governor Zulum who revealed that “Auno town has been attacked for about six times since his inauguration on 29 May 2019”, believes the attack “was forewarned as a security report from DSS that Jakana can be attacked, was circulated” long before the attack with the military putting no measures in place to prevent it.

That the attack took place at a gate only eight kilometres to the University of Maiduguri, which the military authorities said needed to be closed at 5pm to enable them carry out counter-insurgency activities confirmed Nigerian’s worst fears: Maiduguri is under threat.

The military has not denied this looming threat. If anything, this was confirmed by the military authorities whose theatre commander, Major General Olusegun Adeniyi gave the impression the victims brought the tragedy upon themselves with his  crooked syllogism that “the incident would not have happened if the travellers respected military directive, which bans plying of the road from Benishek, a local government headquarters to Maiduguri, after 5p.m”.

That Nigerians cannot move freely any time of the day within eight kilometres of Maiduguri with its heavy military presence questions government legitimacy.

If indeed there is any governance going on in the country, heads should have started rolling in a military formation that admitted abandoning over 200 vehicles and passengers who probably due to no fault of theirs, found themselves stranded at Maiduguri city gate at 5pm.

Of course that the legitimacy of President Buhari’s government is being hotly contested by Boko-Haram from the outskirts of Maiduguri to Sambisa forest was clear from the statement issued by the Air force Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola.

He admitted “the Air Task Force (ATF), Operation Lafiya Dole has neutralized some Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) and destroyed some of their facilities in air strikes conducted on 27 February 2020”, adding as if to confirm Boko Haram’s is firm control of “liberated’ Sambisa forest, that the “air strikes targeted at the “S” region in the heart of the Sambisa forest, destroyed the terrorists’ facilities including vehicles and motorcycles hidden under dense vegetation.”

Unfortunately the president’s confidants continue to give the impression that those who call for a change of strategy in our war against Boko Haram are the president’s political enemies.

Only last Sunday, even with reality striking us all on the face, Shehu Garba, the president’s spokesman was busy jarring our ears with same worn-out phrases about “the commitment of President Buhari’s administration to protect the lives of Nigerians”; “that the remnants of Boko Haram will ultimately be crushed”; that “this administration is ever determined to frustrate their goal to hold Nigeria to ransom’’ and “that terrorists are clearly on a back foot and their days are numbered’’.

I am not sure those who had faith in Buhari and voted for him in 2015 and 2019 have ever doubted his commitment to Nigeria.

Their anguish is over how he can free himself from hostage takers preventing him from listening to voices of other patriotic Nigerians. One of such voices is that of Governor Zulum who in spite of saying “We need prayers more than ever before, to handle our problem from different approaches”, and has gone ahead to engage 30 Makkah, Saudia Arabia based Nigerian prayer warriors also submitted that “we need to keep taking the war to enclaves of the insurgents in the fringes of the Lake Chad Basin, Sambisa Forest and some notable areas”.

Read Also: We’re winning war against corruption, says Buhari

 

There are so many questions begging for answers from President Buhari who until his last week’s belated order that security personnel sabotaging the closure of the borders be sacked, was not known for holding his political appointees and warring security men in charge of coercive power of state to account.

Where was General Tukur Yusuf Burutai, the Chief of Army Staff who President Buhari ordered to relocate to Borno State in 2015 when Sambisa forest whose liberation he supervised in 2016 was retaken by Boko Haram that today threatens Maiduguri?

His new passion along with his counterparts in the Air Force and Navy seem to be setting up universities, sometimes in their villages!

How did Boko Haram retake Sambisa forest which upon its liberation in 2016, the army declared it was turning to a training ground and in fact became the venue for its 2017 Annual Sports Competition?

Sambisa forest, according to a study titled “Once Upon a Game Reserve: Sambisa and the Tragedy of a Forested Landscape,” by Azeez Olaniyan of University of Ado Ekiti was gazzeted, as game reserve by British colonial administration in 1958.

It is the duty of this government to identify and prosecute those behind the corruption that led to the decay and degeneration of a tourist attraction whose “lush greenery could rightfully be called a pearl in the semi-desert environment” into headquarters of Boko-Haram where abducted underage girls and married women are used as sex slaves and indoctrinated to become suicide bombers?

Another study by Professor Umar Maryah of University of Maiduguri, shows that the “Gwoza and the Fulani  use part of the Sambisa forest which stretches across the northeast from Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi states along the Darazo corridor, Jigawa and right up to some parts of Kano State in the far north as a grazing forest”.

How come no one in government saw through the forces of instability using cows as cover to inflict violence on Nigerians and who traded the N170b National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) introduced in June 2018, to encourage ranching which would have thrived more in Sambisa forest for Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) settlements for Fulani herdsmen with potential for conflict among federating states especially those of the middle Belt region of Benue, Plateau, Taraba and Kaduna states?

And finally it is also a challenge to President Buhari’s government of change to identify those driven by greed to wreck Sambisa forest game reserve after it was handed over to the federal government through the National Park.

 

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Buhari, on account of what many have come to regard as his mindset on many national issues, is an image maker’s nightmare.  He speaks without inhibition even in circumstances where restraint or introspection is required. As candidate Buhari, he made an odious comparison between Boko Haram- insurgents hiding under the cover of religion to perpetuate evil against Nigerians, and Niger Delta militants- a self-actualisation group protesting despoliation of their resources by the state.

At his inauguration following a victory after three earlier failed attempts, he had thundered “I belong to no one, I belong to everyone”, an unnecessary display of audacity by a political novice which prompted a perceptive lawyer, Ebun Olu-Adegboruwa to point out on a Channels TV programme that ‘but some people provided the resources and the aircraft he used to junket around the country while on campaign trail’. He forgot the expectations of miracle seekers who wanted all the nation’s problems solved overnight and others that expected him to restructure the country by working out an acceptable compromise relationship for peaceful coexistence of diverse nationalities with divergent cultures.

One cannot but imagine the nightmare of image makers of a president who after tongue-in-cheek asked David Cameron who had described Nigeria as ‘fantastically corrupt country’ to prevail on his fellow European custodians of Nigerian looted funds to return same, still standing by his canonization of Abacha as saint even after a clear proof the repatriated funds was what Abacha stashed away in banks across Europe and the Bahamas.

They must have felt the same way last week following the president’s decision to ‘blame Nigerians for perceiving National Assembly members as being overpaid’ during last Wednesday’s launching of the Green House chamber magazine. According to him: “Hitherto, the public perception of the National Assembly is that of a bicameral legislature where overly comfortable and highly-overpaid members merely stuff wads of currency notes into their pockets for little work done.” He blamed the wrong perception “on lack of understanding of the enormous work of lawmakers”.

The President talks of perception ignoring the overwhelming evidence that support the parasitic nature of our National Assembly. It is on record that no sooner they were sworn in at the onset of the fourth republic that they publicly declared their intention to recoup their expenses claiming they sold their properties to contest the election that brought them to power.

They immediately created artificial fuel scarcity and passed a bill setting up a PPPRA, an instrumentality through which N1.7trillion was stolen in the name of dubious fuel subsidy.  They mismanaged the handling of the World Bank privatization policy. They awarded the bungled rural electrification projects’ contracts to themselves. They cornered choice properties they inherited including the senate president and the House speaker’s mansions through monetization policies. They then awarded themselves salaries that would make lawmakers in Europe or America green with envy.

It is perhaps only President Buhari who, after calling on the National Assembly to hasten work on the Special Crimes Court Bill during a recent presentation of ICPC report on constituency projects that confirmed that ‘in the past 10 years, N1 trillion has been appropriated for constituency projects,” without the impact of such huge spending on the lives and welfare of ordinary Nigerians, who would insist the lawmakers deserve their outrageous salaries.

But it is just as well that not many Nigerians share the president’s sentiments. For instance, not too long ago,  former governor, Gabriel Suswan of Benue, and a two-term member of the Lower House during a lecture at the University of Abuja, admitted a good number of the members are “uneducated” and “immature” and that less than 20 of the members make useful contributions at plenary session, sponsor motions or bills”.

Before him was Sanusi Lamido who as Governor of Central Bank had as far back as December 1, 2010 during a lecture at the University of Benin lamented that the federal legislators gulp about 25% of federal government overheads.  According to him, it works out simply thus: “If the overhead of the federal government of Nigeria stands at N536.2 billion and the National Assembly, NASS, gets N136, 259, 768, 102 (N136.2 billion), what does it constitute?  Is it 25.41% or 3.5%?

Ex-President Obasanjo had similarly during the public presentation of the autobiography of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, in Abuja, in November 2014 ridiculed the National Assembly, as “largely an assemblage of looters and thieves”. As if to validate Obasanjo’s thesis, instead of denial, the assembly members insisted no one can demonise them for taking after their father who allegedly tried to bribe the National Assembly members with “Ghana must go bags” stuffed with raw cash in pursuit of his doomed third-term agenda.

And if Nigerians were to choose between Obasanjo who celebrated  sacking of not a few erring National Assembly leaders including Salisu Buhari and Adolphus Wabara and President Buhari who many Nigerians rightly or wrongly feel is too weak to discipline his political appointees and has in fact been accused by Shehu Sani, one-time member of his own party, of ‘fighting corruption among his friends with ‘deodorant and among political foes with insecticide’,  they will in all probability pitched their tent with the former.

And precisely because nothing has changed, for many, the president’s assessment must have been a product of his mindset. PDP and APC have shown they are the same with no ideological differences. The leaders of both parties often speak and act not like leaders of political parties but like commanders of Niger Delta militant groups. Oshiomhole who probably forgets political party is a serious affair told us the difference between him and Secondus is that “he is Adam, the first man and his PDP counterpart, Secondus, doomed to always take a second position”.

More than this, our lawmakers remain the highest paid in the world. The senate like its predecessor was reported to be considering the purchase of Toyota Land Cruiser SUVs toys for its 109 members at an estimated cost of N50m each or about N5.5B.

Devoid of a mindset of ‘my friends can do no wrong’, canonization of a National Assembly which like its predecessors is made up of military baked ‘new breed’ politicians, who suffer same military affliction of looting conquered territories cannot but be sacrilegious.

Little has changed under Buhari government of change. As late as December 2, 2018, Sanusi Lamido, former CBN governor and now Emir of Kano had asked: “Where is the change?’ adding that “change should start with the National Assembly. A senator receives N36 million monthly. If this is divided into two, it comes to N18 million. The second half of N18 million can be used to create jobs for 200 Nigerians, each earning N90, 000 monthly”;

The President recently confirmed during presentation of ICPC report on constituency projects that “The first phase report of tracking these projects by the ICPC confirms our worst fears that people at the grassroots have not benefited in terms commensurate with the huge sums appropriated for constituency projects since inception”.