The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • Preventing gridlock on Lagos-Ibadan expressway

    Preventing gridlock on Lagos-Ibadan expressway

    Anyone who frequently travels on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway which also leads to the northern states and which branches eastward to Benin and the eastern parts of the country to  Delta, Rivers and important cities like Port Harcourt,  Aba, Calabar, Enugu  etc. would know this is the arterial road that links the rest of Nigeria with Lagos.  This easy access is very important in the overall economy of Nigeria. This means that the road should not be seen in its importance to the southwest alone but to the geo-strategic significance of the road to Nigeria.

    Comparing the development of the road in the manner of Apapa gridlock should give palpitation to the planners of the development economics of Nigeria. Apapa is the major entrepôt of Nigeria in the sense that 90 percent of the goods coming to Nigeria come in through the port. This in itself is due to bad planning and lack of bold imagination of Nigeria’s leaders since independence.

    I am not going to blame the British, our colonial masters who left this place 66 years ago. This is long in time for us as inheritors of bad colonial planning to help ourselves and not blame those who came for their own reasons and after having finished with us, left us alone when our leaders pushed them out perhaps because the nature of imperialism in this part of the world did not require physical presence before their economic rewards could still be realized.

    I think I have made my point that power in the hands of innovative and imaginative leadership would have seen us make hop step and jump to what is required in these days of knowledge economy.

    Read Also: Tinubu, Obasanjo, Mimiko, Fasoranti, others bag Ondo golden jubilee awards

    From Lagos up to Sagamu and onward to Iperu in Ogun State on both sides of the so-called express road are to be found industries haphazardly located on both sides of the road. This development definitely makes the government of Ogun State happy and other Nigerians in other states of the federation probably envy Ogun State for attracting this bevy of industries which must be good for the internal revenue of Ogun State and the federation as a whole. But at what expense?

    Now this express road where millions pass through daily is being turned into parking place like Apapa port. In this place, long articulated trucks turn anyhow against the run of traffic and many escape head-on collision through the grace and mercy of God.  Admittedly, we have not reached the situation of Apapa where for lack of movement drivers spread mats under their vehicles and sleep their time away! This need not happen if we plan very well before action.

    We should always factor into whatever action we take the sociology of the Nigerian people. Our people do not think about others when they drive on the roads. This is why slow moving trucks drive on the inner side of the road for fast driving leaving the outside part of the road for wrongful overtaking. Could it be our drivers get driving licences without test? In any case, many of the trailer drivers are absolute illiterates. 

    I honestly believe that the whole country needs to be taught the ordinary ideas of civics. Perhaps thieves in government need to be taught that stealing is not only bad but it is also a corrosion of the society. Why should a single person in society build a house for a single family at the cost of billions of naira and declare it open for poor people to gawk and look at while religious leaders are invited to pray for further prosperity of the owner knowing as we all do, that the mansion is a manifestation of the stealing going on in the oil industry while the people in the oil producing areas languishing in want and poverty?

    I congratulate the president of this difficult country, Nigeria for having the vision to embark on the Lagos – Calabar road; he should also at the same time focus on the Badagry – Sokoto road which is equally important. Whenever these two roads are finished, whether in our times or not, history will celebrate those who execute a vision that many of us egg heads have had for a long time.

    The Lagos – Ibadan express road linking the port city with the rest of the country remains in my own estimate, a scandal to forward planning and imagination. I shudder to think about what happens to our economy if the bridges over Ogun River were to collapse thereby cutting the road off from Lagos. If we plan for the above scenario, we should have put the road to Abeokuta and Ibadan to excellent and ready state and perhaps the Epe-Lagos alternative road in a state of readiness through federal government take-over of any of the sections of these roads not presently under federal jurisdiction.

    I remember when I was in Germany as ambassador of our potentially great country, the German Chancellor Herr  Helmut Kohl created what he called “the ministry of the future “and put it under a young lawyer to dream about the future and what would be needed to cope with it. I will like this innovative approach be made to the future development of Nigeria. For defence purposes we need easily motorable roads for the defence of Lagos in case of enemy seizure of the city and its ports. The Lagos – Abeokuta to Ibadan express easily recommends itself and so does the Lagos – Epe – Ibadan branching off in Ijebu-Ode to link the Benin and the eastern provinces of Nigeria. This is the way to plan for a future scenario that goes beyond our expectations that what we have now will always be up to the mark of securing the country against possible enemies. The way we do things now take life too leisurely. We must begin to think out of the box as they say.

    To come back to where we began, efforts must be made to prevent the gridlock of Apapa being repeated on the Lagos – Ibadan road because of our search for local and external investment. We must prevent this by all means why we begin serious planning to having alternative link roads to the hinterland of Nigeria from Lagos and not put all our eggs in the fragile Lagos – Ibadan  express way.

  • SL Akintola: Time is a healer

    SL Akintola: Time is a healer

    It is 60 years ago on the morning of January 15 when Chief SL Akintola was murdered on the grounds of the premier’s residence in Iyaganku Reservation, Ibadan by Captain Okoro and soldiers apparently from the military cantonment in Abeokuta who having kidnapped the deputy premier, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode, led him to accompany the murderers to the premier’s lodge. Chief Akintola refused to surrender after the initial fuselage of the soldiers.

    It is said the premier decided to come into the open space where the troops killed him. While this was going on in Ibadan, the premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello had also been killed by troops led by Major Chukuma Nzeogwu Kaduna. His wife was not spared. The commander of the 1st division of the army, Brigadier Samuel Adesujo Ademulegun with his eight months old, pregnant wife were killed in their bedroom by troops led by Major Timothy Onwuategwu while their little children watched what was happening. The second most important military man in Kaduna, Colonel Ralph Shodeinde was also killed in his house.

     Action was extended to Lagos where the military commander, Brigadier Muhammad Maimalari was killed by troops led by his Brigade Major, Emmanuel Ifeajuna. Some detachment of troops kidnapped the Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and his Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh and took them to some distance on the Abeokuta-Lagos road where both were murdered and their bodies were found a few days after January 15.

    The military action was first welcomed in Nigeria, particularly in the southern part of the country where bitter politics seemed to have been the order of the day. When later the coup d’état was subject to critical analysis, the ethnic and regional dimensions became obvious, that it was a political struggle for power rather than using the vote that resorted to the use of bullets.  

    In the Western part of Nigeria where Chief Akintola was premier, the coup was celebrated as a relief from the political chaos. The genesis of the problem was the collapse of the ruling Action Group due to ideological cleavage and external manipulation by rival parties from other regions. This presented an opportunity to destroy the West and the Action Group. The NCNC that was predominantly led by the Igbo had coalesced in the centre with the predominantly Hausa party to form the federal government to monopolise power and used it to corner appointments which Chief Akintola loudly condemned.

    Getting rid of Akintola became a matter of urgent necessity because he, and first the Action Group before its breakup in 1963, had become a troublesome presence to the federal authorities. The vitriolic demonisation of Akintola by the combined NCNC and the federal government which eventually went its different ethnic ways after the federal election of 1964 during which Akintola’s political tentacles held sway in Western Nigeria when his message of inclusiveness of the constituent ethnic groups needed to be represented in the federal government began to resonate with the people.

    When the Western Nigerian elections came up in 1965, it became a “do or die” election for the two rival political formations in Nigeria namely the UPGA, formed by the remnants of the NCNC in the West, and their big Eastern faction and the Awolowo strong faction in the West and Lagos. Confronting them was the NPC juggernaut from the North and the Akintola faction of the Yoruba political machine.

     The various Nigerian minorities were split between the two groups. In this situation the election could hardly be free and the Akintola government in the West did not play the electoral politics by the books. After the election that returned Akintola to power, rioting and rebellion broke out throughout the Western Region and Lagos. It seemed to critical observers that unless serious use of power was employed, the government would have to open negotiations for power sharing in the West.

    There were rumours of troops movement and when the coup d’état of January 15, 1966 happened, it did not come to critical observers as a surprise; nevertheless it was welcomed globally with sadness because our country had a lot of promise.

    When Akintola was killed 60 years ago, he died for his belief in inclusive government and that in spite of whatever ideology we embrace, the government of the people for the people shall prevail. His remains that had been deposited in Adeoyo Hospital following his death were taken mainly by Ogbomoso people under the leadership of Prince Laoye, for burial.

    What remains of Akintola’s legacy?

    Though time is a healer, the evergreen memory of Akintola remains forever for his family and political associates and for Nigerians who now appreciate him for some of his ideas.

    He was one of the founders of the Action Group which was one of the political parties that fought for the independence of Nigeria. When the country became independent in October 1, 1960, he was premier of the Western Region, the most financially prosperous and infra-structurally advanced part of the Federal Republic. Right from the formation of the Action Group, he stood out as a federalist as against the NCNC of Nnamdi Azikiwe who stood out for a unitary government. Awolowo had captured the feeling of the Yoruba in 1947 when he wrote his book Path to Nigerian Freedom and argued that there were no Nigerians as there were Frenchmen, Germans or Japanese and that Nigeria was simply a geographical expression. Akintola had said this much earlier when he was editor of the Lagos-based Daily Service. Akintola had used his position as an editor in the 1940s well before the formation of the Action Group to oppose Azikiwe’s dream of united Nigeria and had agreed with what Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was to say later that united Nigeria was “British intention” for the country.

    Akintola was a realist. He had lived in the North as a young man and he spoke Hausa fluently and understood the traditions and mores of the Hausa and held the view that they were totally different from those of the Yoruba despite the fact that the religion of Islam was embraced equally by about 50 percent of the people just like the Hausa.  He also saw the Igbo culture of village democracies with little respect for a hierarchy of chiefs and elders and kings being totally alien to the Yoruba but he felt whatever differences existed in the country could be harmonised under a federal structure of government. He found a common ground in the belief in a federal structure with the Hausa Fulani leadership.

    He regarded the federal constitution that took us to independence as not protective of regional autonomy enough. Indeed it was he who moved the successful motion of independence in 1957 after the defeat of the earlier one moved by Chief Anthony Enahoro in 1953.

    Read Also: Nigeria’s Back-to-Farm initiative

    Akintola’s struggle between 1962 and 1966 can be explained in his struggle for inclusivity in government at the federal level as well as respect for state autonomy. Unfortunately the struggle also included peaceful survival of his government at home which he did everything to protect despite war declared on his state by people from outside until it became a case of all things were fair in war. After all, he was the Are Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land.

    Both Awolowo and Akintola families had been friends for a long time and are still friends even today even though supporters are still crying more than the bereaved!  His embrace of northern power structure was based on political realism rather than just surrendering to forces arraigned against him and what he considered against Yoruba interest.

    For anybody interested in the development of Nigerian language, Akintola comes before everybody. His mastery of English, Hausa and Yoruba makes him a natural nationalist in the struggle against British imperialism and for the soul of Nigeria. He was a liberal in the full meaning of the word. As Sir John Rankine, the last British governor of colonial western Nigeria said of him, Akintola was a master of ambiguity arguing issues from two opposing sides convincingly. The governor apparently forgot Akintola was a successful lawyer in Lagos before going into politics after years of teaching at Baptist Academy in Lagos, following these by years as editor of a successful newspaper. He was so much in control of the Yoruba language that many people in the university community felt his service as an exponent of the Yoruba language would have been more rewarding than the thankless engagement in politics.

    He was also a practicing Christian who avoided violence as much as much as possible. Some hot heads in his party used to openly tell him that Fani-Kayode would have done a better job in putting down the rioting and rebellion in Yoruba land in 1965 following an election which the people felt was rigged in favour of the premier’s party.

    Perhaps the most enduring legacy is his idea of inclusivity because he believed you must have a country first and a people who felt they have a stake in the country before practising whatever ideology that was fashionable at the time.

    The above is part of a brief talk delivered at the University of Ibadan Conference Centre.

  • Trump and the politics of brinkmanship

    Trump and the politics of brinkmanship

    It seems the American president, Donald John Trump, is determined to change the world if the rest of us permit him to without United Nations notice of a reason for belligerency or the interest of global peace or threat to the security of the USA. Therefore, having to embark on retaliatory action in the interest of self-defence and without declaration of formal war on Venezuela approved by the US Congress, he nevertheless sent an armada of a carrier group of ships, frigates, air armaments and the Delta Strike group and assorted coastal ships and previous deployments of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) to the coast of Venezuela. It did not come as a surprise when on the morning of January 3, the USA government announced the capture of the president of the Republic of Venezuela, his wife and one of his children while asleep and brought them to New York where they were detained in a New York prison for drugs and gun running thereby putting, at risk the security of the United States. 

    Legally, the US was violating international law and the norms of international diplomacy. The situation was made more surprising when Donald Trump announced that he was going to run the country and invite big American oil companies to return to Venezuela and redevelop the oil wells which they owned before the oil business was nationalised by previous governments of Venezuela. Then while the public was wondering how he would single-handedly run a whole country three times the size of California, it was announced that the US government was leaving virtually intact, the government of President Nicholas Maduro in power without Maduro because his vice president, of Delcy Eloina Rodriguez Gomez was sworn in as president. This was rather bewildering because people expected Madame Carina Machado, the new Nobel laureate for peace would play some important role in post-Maduro government but Trump dismissed her as not popular despite the fact that the democratic coalition she organised won democratic elections last year in Venezuela which Maduro rigged against her.  

    It seems the American government had learnt a bitter lesson from its experience in Iraq where it dismissed the entire Saddam Hussein government only to face in later years, rebellion under ISIS and the Al Baghdadi Caliphate. This may be understandable but is it wise and justiciable? The case is still in court and postponed to start litigation in March.  The case remains unresolved while the whole world is watching and waiting. Trump directed his attention to other areas of the world as if he is driven to action by unseen forces. He picked on annexation of Danish Greenland and war on the Islamic Republic of Iran following street demonstration against the government of Ayatollah Khamenei. Any intelligent observer would ask on how many fronts of war can the US fight on? It was known at the time that a big fraction of the naval strength of the USA was committed and tied down in the Caribbean front in Venezuela. Trump unfortunately encouraged the Iranians to continue their demonstration against their government and promised that help was on the way from the USA. Some days later he backed down saying the Iranian government had not carried through execution of about 800 people arrested for demonstration against the Iranian regime. Then to palliate the anger and discontent of Iranian rebels, he began to say the time for looking for a new Iranian leader was ripe to which the Iranian government in a withering  attack told him if he killed their Ayatollah Khamenei, he would pay dearly for it.

    Read Also: Bello Turji in panic, disarray amidst intensified onslaught -Military

    Now apart from sending ICE paratroopers to Minneapolis and threatening war against  states run by the Democratic Party and threatening to issuing a declaration of insurrection and sending troops to put down demonstrators against forceful deportation of illegal immigrants, as I am writing this piece on the birthday of Dr Martin Luther King (January 19) who in the 1960s led protests by black people and their supporters against more than a century of denial of rights and economic opportunity and equality which culminated in the Civil Rights laws of 1965 which Donald Trump has been eroding gradually, his government has one by one undermined rights of black peoples to equal education by getting rid of rights reserved for minorities in education and employment describing them as racist attack on whites. He has been getting rid of black peoples through so-called reduction of the federal government and blocking opportunities for blacks even in sports.  While doing this, he is imposing psychological damage on blacks because he is banning African people from coming to the US because Trump is characterising them as people from “shit-hole countries” while appealing to countries in the Scandinavian region to come to the USA since they will be welcome. He is also asking whites from South Africa to leave the republic and emigrate to the US because he said they were being killed or victimised in the Union of South Africa without evidence. He invited the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphoza and humiliated him before the whole world.

    He is totally unaware that he is building a black bomb for future explosion of discontentment. He has started threatening Greenland which he said the USA needs to protect itself from threats from Russia and China in an increasingly strategically important sea route because of the melting ice in the Arctic. We are also aware of Trump’s secret plan to build on Greenland an anti-nuclear shield to protect the USA against possible nuclear attack either by Russia or China. We now have a situation in which European countries, formerly solid allies like Denmark, Norway and other Scandinavian countries and also France and Germany and other allies of the USA which are members of NATO are opposed to Trump’s policy on Greenland and are ready to resist Trump’s braggadocio.

    Although nobody expects American troops to start shooting Europeans but anything is possible in a situation when Trump’s cabinet ministers and even the American vice president, JD Vance openly say America represents strength and power while Europe is a symbol of weakness. If Trump goes ahead with his so-called military option against the Kingdom of Denmark in order to seize Greenland, that will signal the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

    Sometimes one wonders if one should take President Trump seriously. How does one interpret the seriousness of a man who accepts the Nobel Prize from Machado and hangs it prominently in the White House even though everyone knows it is not transferable? How serious can one take him when he publicly writes an open letter to the Norwegian prime minister for not ensuring that an independent body like the Nobel Committee did not give him the Nobel Prize for peace which he claimed he has earned for stopping eight wars which everyone disagrees and disputes? It seems as if he feels this justifies his bellicose relationship with Denmark a sister Scandinavian country!

    With US piling pressure on European countries in order to force them to support the possible seizure of Greenland, Europe is beginning to ask whether America is a worthy ally or a bully using them in its struggle and competition for world power. It is becoming clear that European support for America is no longer guaranteed. Yet America would need European support if America decides to stop justified Chinese future unification with the island of Taiwan. The same America is alienating India by putting up tariff against it and China for buying oil from Russia and thus helping Russia to have money in prosecuting the war against Ukraine.

    I personally think it will get to a point when the Chinese that holds substantial portion of American debt in form of Treasury Bills, the Norwegians and others begin to unleash on the market their holdings of American treasury bills and treasury bonds and this will simply expose the fact that for years, America has enjoyed living on the backs of the rest of the world by using the dollar as a reserve currency without controlling the printing and issuance of the currency. The whole world since 1945 has been working to support the American economy and to allow Americans to live well to the disadvantage of the rest of the world.

    President Trump’s rambling policy may usher in the end of the American global military but most importantly financial domination. What is Africa or Nigeria’s response to what the Canadian Prime Minister Mike Carney says?  He said there is a rupture in the world order and not a transition and countries have to determine to forge economic ties with groups with similarities of ideas goals and needs instead of fixed and rigid permanent organisations dominated by global or single hegemon doing whatever pleases it at any given time without considerations of the interests of other members of the global community. Nigeria must organise, albeit clandestinely, without too much noise. I hope we are not just going to continue with our old politics without ideas, plans or goals as long as we get elected into office.

  • Maduro’s capture and the breakdown of international order

    Maduro’s capture and the breakdown of international order

    On January 3, at about 1300hours, the president of Venezuela, his wife Cilla Flores, and his only biological son, Nicolas Ernesto Madura Guerra, were captured in one of the presidential safe houses in Caracas and spirited to New York on an American gunboat and are now facing trial in New York for drug running involving millions of tons of cocaine into the USA and narco-conspiracy.  He was additionally charged with gun running.

    He was born on November 23, 1962 in the capital city of Caracas to a trade unionist father. He was a previous bus driver and transport unionist before becoming a member of parliament in 2000 and five years later, he became president of the National Assembly and foreign minister from 2006 to 2012 and vice president from 2012 to 2013. He became interim president after his mentor, Hugo Chavez, died in 2013. He became president after a snap election in 2013. In 2018 and 2024, he was re-elected in what his opponents called sham elections and repression of democratic forces, following which most Western countries refused to recognize his government.

    His regime moved closer to Cuba, China which buys 70% of its production of crude oil, and Russia and Cuba buys the remainder at premium prices. The country is sitting on about 40% of global known oil reserves. The exploitation of crude petroleum was largely developed by giant American oil firms before all of them, with the exception of Chevron were nationalised and expropriated by the Hugo Chavez socialist government in the 1970s. Those American oil companies nationalized included Standard Oil Company, now Exxon Mobil, Gulf Oil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips. From the 1970s nationalisation and expropriation of major American companies, the production of crude oil, either by design or incompetence, declined to just about one million barrels daily. The capture of Maduro came after months of an American armada of ships, air force, aircraft carriers air force aircraft of different types from stealth bombers, to helicopters naval assets of all kinds from submarines to attack naval crafts and deployments of FBI and CIA operatives. The apparent easy way the operation was conducted belied the fact of the cost and efficiency and effectiveness of American coordinated armed and security forces.

    The Americans say none of their troops was wounded or killed but Cuba claimed that 32 of the intelligence officers in Venezuela were killed during the operation. After the success of Maduro and his wife’s capture, then what follows is the big question. From what President Donald Trump, the president of the USA and his foreign minister, Marco Rubio have been saying since the invasion of Venezuela, it does not seem there is a well thought-out plan for post invasion than his saying simply that he was planning to bring back the American oil companies that were driven out in 1970s out of Venezuela to come back after the success of the invasion. President Trump indicated the oil companies will come back to rehabilitate the degraded facilities to make America and Venezuela people rich. This will be under American administration. He also went further that Marco Rubio was already talking to Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez who had been appointed by Maduro as his vice president since June 14, 2018 and apparently retaining the other key elements of the Maduro government in office which will negate the whole purpose of the invasion of Venezuela in the first place by retaining the Maduro’s criminal infrastructure. It seems the Americans would be happy with remnants of the Maduro administration if it can run the country to the benefit of American oil interest.

    Read Also: 2027: Reps Deputy Speaker drums support for Tinubu, says Igbo must extend handshake to southwest

    Perhaps America has learnt from its previous mistakes of totally disbanding of the Iraqi troops after capturing Saddam Hussein, thus creating a security vacuum which criminals filled.

    I personally felt very sorry for President Trump to have been left to commit so much blunder while addressing the world press after the glorious military exercise. He ought to have been given a cryptic statement to read instead of his rambling about producing crude oil to pay off American oil companies following nationalising of the oil companies. There was no need to spell out what his victory would entail and anger not only the Venezuelan citizens, but also large measure of radical American and global population and people in neighbouring countries like Canada and Mexico.

    As somebody with some experience in government, we would not have allowed our president to commit this kind of blunders while addressing the global community. One of these blunders committed by Trump was his dismissal of the democratic opposition in Venezuela and particularly his comment on the Nobel Laureate, Maria Corina Machado as not being popular and effective. By this statement, the potential American supporters are being alienated.

    He is opening his country to much opposition from the global community to his rather abrasive policies and pronouncements. The Mexican and Colombian presidents are already shouting at the roof tops that Trump should perish the thoughts of similar actions against their countries. The president of Iran whose people are demonstrating against his regime and Trump’s statement that its guns are ready and loaded against the Islamic Republic should it attack the demonstrators against its regime. The Danish government owners of Greenland being publicly demanded by Trump for American security say over and over again that the large Arctic island is not for sale. Some enemies of our country and its current government are urging Trump to direct its action to Nigeria.

    Whoever thinks this kind of pleas will be considered because one is against the current administration in Nigeria should ask himself under what justification that would be legitimately considered. In the meantime, opposition against American intervention is gathering support from US Democrats in Congress, the UN Secretary General and generally the governments of global South which Trump’s policies and action had angered, irritated and generally put at arm’s length. The Security Council of the UN has been meeting to discuss the American government’s action but it is known by most people that the structure of the UN would militate against the UN because the USA, like the remaining four permanent members of the UN has the veto power against all possible action of the Security Council which requires UNANIMOUS action of the five permanent members. This is because structurally, the UN is handicapped and will be unable to do anything to the US, and not even a condemnation because decisions in UNSC are taken by unanimous decision and even if Great Britain and France are unhappy about the US action, they will not join China and Russia to unanimously condemn the USA and if they do the USA will veto it.

    The consequences of the actions of the USA would empower Russia to intensify its actions against Ukraine and China would use the same USA forceful action to take over Taiwan and India may be emboldened in her policies towards Sri Lanka and Jammu and Kashmir thus opening a Pandora Box of desire by bigger and more powerful countries to forcefully run over and annex neighbouring states they had hitherto claimed leading to a breakdown of international order and war will become acceptable for settling international relations.

    The world is entering a phase where national power would be the most important lever of the engine of international relations.

  • Happy New Year 2026

    Happy New Year 2026

    We had a merry Christmas or shall I say we had a merry Christmas until we were woken up on Boxing Day with the news that the American government of garrulous President Donald J Trump had bombed somewhere in Sokoto as part of their war against terrorism wherever it rears its ugly head! We settled down when our own government made it clear that the raid was coordinated with our armed forces and that our government was in the knowledge of it and had our approval.

    What first came to my mind is that it is the responsibility of government everywhere to protect the interest of its citizens and that for 15 years our government had been struggling to do this without success and that if they had to do it now with the cooperation of a friendly government, it is proper for it to do it as long as Nigeria’s interest is protected. There is no reason why the Nigerian government would not want to protect our interests right now especially when the country that it cooperates with it, has no ostensible or clandestine interest in destabilising Nigeria.

    Our country is the only country in our region that has the strength and muscle to operate regionally in our area independently of foreign power. Our recent move to establish stability in our region when there was an attempted coup d’état in Benin points to the credibility of Nigeria. We need to make it known either publicly of by other means that Nigeria would not stand by idle when friendly regimes in our region are overthrown. Our recent move in Benin points to the solid direction of the regime in our country.

    There is also no doubt that the Nigerian government was in touch with the American government over the situation in Nigeria that has caused some anxiety in the USA over alleged religious persecution and killing of certain religious groups in Nigeria particularly in the northern parts of our country in the 15-year old terrorist insurgency in Nigeria. The fears of the religious dimension of the problem may have been allayed. But whatever the outcome of the Nigerian discussion  with the American government, the decision of the American government to intervene in the terrorist campaign did not  surprise the Nigerian government and was coordinated with our government whose armed forces apparently had problems with targeted military especially aerial campaigns.

    So, when the Tomahawk missiles were unleashed on the gathering storm of terrorists in a local government area in Sokoto, it was received with welcome relief. This appears to be the reaction of most Nigerians who felt they have had enough with terrorism in the last 15 years and enough was enough. If the American intervention in the campaign of terrorism will extirpate the problem, then we must all welcome it. But we must be careful with involvement of any country in our internal affairs.

    Read Also: 2026: Be hopeful and confident, Nigeria’s future assured — ICRC DG urges Nigerians

    But the point is that terrorism cannot be called internal affairs of our country when we are told that Libya and the same countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have been fingered in the destabilization of our sister country of the Sudan are also involved in the situation in Nigeria; and that they have a hand in the destabilization of Nigeria. We cannot just fold our arms and allow the only credible Black Country with the possibility of becoming a great power be destroyed by other countries without reasons to wish us ill. We must therefore wake up and look for friendly countries that can help us to sustain our sovereign independence and if we can find such a secular country with the muscle to do this, we would be foolish not to accept their hands of friendship. This is what politics among nations is all about. We can do this to secure a peaceful end to our internal conflict but this does not have to tie us to the apron strings of that country and we should have the freedom and intelligence to negotiate our way in the complex territory of international relations.

    Any observer of international politics would know that sovereignty is not absolute these days. Countries like South Korea, Japan, Germany and good old Britain have since 1945 had large numbers of American troops domiciled in their countries to secure the sovereign independence of those countries in a coordinated defence of global democracy.  There are American military bases in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Kuwait. While I am not advocating this kind of relationship, I would like to add that the above mentioned countries are not the worse for it and they are not complaining because apart from guaranteeing their security, the presence of large American forces have become economic assets there. Whatever comes out of the military cooperation we are forced to have to secure our internal political stability and peace for all our citizens irrespective of their religion, we must ensure correct and respectful management of the situation so that while riding on the tiger we don’t end in it.

    I take this opportunity to wish my readers a happy new year in 2026 and hope the hazardous conflictual situations in the world and particularly in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Venezuela will be resolved peacefully so that mankind can witness development in peace.

  • Ethnic nationalism and national development

    Ethnic nationalism and national development

    The First World War had ramifying effects on the world including the people of Africa and Nigeria was not an exception. In the case of Nigeria, the colonial administration feared that Islam could be exploited to rally the defeated Muslims in Northern Nigeria against the British because of Turkish propaganda calling for jihad against infidels all over the world. This was the only major threat to British hold on Nigeria but by this time the Fulani rulers who were united in sharing with the British the booty of the Native Treasuries (Beit-el-mal) which were taxes on cattle (jangali) and crops had something in common. This commonality of interest between the colonial powers and the native rulers was to, by and large, draw a wedge between the Northern Effendiyyah and the educated elite in the south before and after independence and possibly till today.

    The idea of native treasuries were extended to the South where it largely met resistance and even uprising in the East which had no hierarchy of chiefs because it was sociologically a chiefless or headless society or what anthropologists call an acephalous society and attempts to create chiefs among the Igbo by colonial administrators by giving warrants to some identified supporters to act as chiefs led to uprising in many parts of Igboland. In Yorubaland where there were chiefs, some of them were elevated beyond their traditional status. This also led to armed resistance in upper Ogun area of former Oyo Empire.

    The effects of the First World War were accompanied by several political and economic ramifications in Nigeria. The Nigerian soldiers and carriers came back with natural exaggerations of themselves in the face of enemy fire while their white colonial officers ran away. Their stories spread to their home cities and friends who demanded rights and better salaries and more respect from their rulers. Political parties initially confined to Lagos and other coastal cities like Calabar began to spread into the hinterland that by the outbreak of the Second World war, the demands and influence of the educated Nigerians in Lagos and the urban centres began to be echoed by illiterate Nigerians saying that service must deserve its rewards. Their leaders began to be known and cultivated by the colonial rulers and their bosses In London.

    Newspapers that had been in reasonable numbers but whose interest and influence were confined to Lagos colony alone began to have wider readership and credibility in regional hubs and places like Ibadan, Abeokuta, Benin, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Kano, Bauchi, and Jos.  The Second World War which began in 1939 and ended in 1945 began with a muffle but ended with a bang in terms of its influence in Nigeria. Tens of thousands of Nigerian troops fought under the Union Jack in the jungles of Burma against tough and intrepid Japanese troops sworn to fight for victory or death in defence of Japan and its emperor Hirohito and its people s ‘interest in Asia particularly in the pacific islands of the Philippines and Taiwan as well as mainland China, Korea and Burma. Nigerian troops saw action mostly in Burma.

    On   returning home, many of the ex-servicemen were courted by the main political parties in existence. Particularly, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) which was formed in 1944 mainly by former students of Kings College who then surrendered leadership to Herbert Macaulay as president and the America-educated Nnamdi Azikiwe as Secretary General. The NCNC was like the various Rassemblement Africain in several French African countries. It was hoped it will be an umbrella political organisation for the various existing African parties some of them existing since the Lugardian years. Unfortunately, this hope was not realised because Herbert Macaulay, the president of the NCNC died in 1948 and Azikiwe, the fiery journalist and nationalist took over and gave the leadership more élan and vigour but in the process, he was accused of leaning too much on Igbo tribal support. This led to the emergence of the Action Group which had its roots in the Egbe Omo Oduduwa formed in1950 and eventually the Action Group (AG) by Obafemi Awolowo, a journalist and trade unionist in 1951 and the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC ( jamiyyar Mutanen Arewa or JMA. These two parties representing the West and the Northern peoples tried unsuccessfully to make the NCNC look as a tribal Igbo party without effect until independence in Nigeria.

    Read Also: Tinubu vows deeper faith-leader engagements to curb conflict, promote peaceful coexistence

    The issue of tribalism or ethnic differences have largely ruined the success of the country. It has infected our politics to the extent that people either vote along ethnic lines and where they tried to look at issues rationally and nationally, they are immediately slapped back into supposedly tribal redoubts or ostracized as traitors or saboteurs. There is widespread rigging of votes to enhance ethnic figures in the census which are usually rigged because revenue sharing is tied to census. This is a problem that affects states creation, education, financial allocation and inability to have genuine democracy and stability which have been the bane of our society.

    The constitution which was a negotiated federal constitution before independence has been undermined by the military dictatorship egged on by civilian politicians who have less than noble or patriotic motives. Most of the political problems Nigeria has had since independence are traceable to tribalism or ethnic parochialism. Example of this can be seen in the Action Group crisis of 1961 to 1963 which split the party into two rival groups which indirectly led to the incarceration in 1963, of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the then leader of opposition in the federal parliament. The ruling NCNC/ NPC coalition government combined the forces of the tribally rooted Northern politicians and their collaborators from the Eastern Region to remove Awolowo from the political scene. 

    .Awolowo may have been ambitious, but it is doubtful that he would have  tried to violently overthrow the federal government of Nigeria with a few party toughies trained in Kwame Nkrumah’s WINNEBA ideological school where the likes of Samuel Grace Ikoku, a former Secretary General of the Action Group was a lecturer. The evidence presented at the famous trial for reasonable felony were not overwhelming enough to condemn a major political leader without upsetting the equilibrium of the country and its stability. The reaction of the people of the West got to a crescendo in 1965 when the Chief S.L. Akintola’s government which was obviously unpopular, decided to manipulate the voting process when the Deputy Premier Chief Remi Fani-Kayode boasted that whether the people voted for their party or not “… angels would vote for them” took laws into their hands, burning and looting while the cabinet prepared for the worst.

    When some elements in the army struck at dawn of January 15, 1966 ,some of the ministers felt that their opponents were behind the “attempted coup d’état while the BBC radio network was telling the whole world that there had been an attempted coup and the prime minister  Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa seemed  to have been kidnapped and two regional premiers namely Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Chief S.L.Akintola, the Are ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land had been killed and many senior army officers seemed to have been killed. When the news were confirmed, and regional and ethnic dimensions of the killings were analysed, the original cheering for the army putsch petered out in fear of what may happen because Nigeria had never seen anything like this before. The counter coup of July 1966 about half a year later appeared as if the equation was balanced by the number of army officers who were killed. But sadly the situation got out of hands when the pogroms against the Igbo in the North began and the whole country became destabilised setting the stage for the three year civil war after the mediation by Ghanaian military leaders failed and General Gowon on return from the Aburi reconciliation meeting in Ghana, appeared to have been outflanked by those who wanted to militarily sort out the issue.  

    Going to war was a terrible denouement for which Nigeria is yet to recover. Previous opportunities for Nigeria to be more united had been missed in 1954 and 1959 to form a forward looking governments and the July coup of 1966 tragically followed the same trajectory.

  • Negative vibes and what upsets us as a people

    Negative vibes and what upsets us as a people

    Racism, bigotry, prejudice antisemitism, Islamophobia, Tribalism (ethnicism), sexism and homophobia and anti-communism etc. are what put us off because we just don’t like them or the people with whom we associate them with.

    There are so many people in the current world whose lives are ruined by hatred for one thing or the other. There is of course nothing wrong in wanting to be with one’s type whether what unites one with others is language, race, or religion. But this does not extend to not wanting others of different hues, language or religion to be around.

    One’s religion, race skin colour or ideology should not determine who one relates to. I have always believed that everyone has the right to meet or associate with anyone who has same ideas or with one who can add some virtue to one. Of course, the Almighty who made all of us made us differently as men and women, black, white,  brown, yellow, Jews and gentiles, divided into five races namely Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Australoid and Amerindian.

    Caucasoid includes people from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of central Asia and south Asia, characterized by light to olive skin and various hair and eye colours.

    Mongoloid incudes people from Asia, the Arctic and Americas with yellow to brown skin tones.

    Negroid includes people of African descent, with dark skins coiled hair and wide noses. Australoid includes indigenous populations from Australia, New Guinea and parts of South Asia characterized with dark brown to black skin tones and wavy to curly hair textures

    Amerindian includes Native American with a mix of Mongoloid and other characteristics.

    There have been debates over racial characterization because these five divisions do not cover mixtures of racial types. However there is broad agreement on three types of races namely Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid into which human beings fall into.

    Racial categorization is really not the object of my article. I have dwelled on it to show how wrong even educated Nigerians are when they talk glibly about “Ibo race” “Yoruba race”, “Hausa” race. There is no such thing! However some Fulani types were regarded as Caucasians by some racist colonial administrators who favoured them in Nigeria. Physical features of some Fulani can have similarities with those of other Caucasians but not all of them have Caucasian features.

    Read Also: EFCC uncovers $3.43m, €280,000 fake currency, arrests five-man syndicate in Ibadan Zone

    Discrimination or even hatred based on whatever separates one man from another is just wrong and absurd and absolutely wrong. The situation in which the German Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party decided that Jews posed existential problems to the German nation was absolutely crazy. He then went ahead to industrially murder about six million of them who committed no crimes and just because they were of different religion than those of the ordinary Germans. The hatred of the Jews had always been a madness of all Europeans from the Atlantic to the Urals. Russian pogroms against the Jews were as odious as those of the Nazi but only different in scale.

    Racism in France and the UK were a hindrance to human progress and Benjamin Disraeli had to become a baptized Jew before his talent as a politician was allowed to flourish. The story of the sentencing of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer in the French army who was accused of leaking military secrets to the Germans in 1894 epitomizes rampant anti-Semitism in France. Dreyfus was eventually pardoned after a spirited campaign by Emile Zola, a prominent French writer published his article “j’accuse”. Effort to silence Zola failed and attracted international attention. Dreyfus was eventfully freed in 1906. Even in the UK, anti-Semitism got close to the House of Windsor when Edward viii embraced national socialism before he abdicated and was accused of antisemitism. What happened in Germany was therefore not strange to followers of political trends in Europe.

    The killing, a few days ago in Sydney, Australia, of 15 innocent people in a Jewish fun-fair of Hanukkah is related to the Benjamin Netanyahu war against Palestinians in which he slaughtered thousands in response to Palestinian killing of innocent Israelis. The Israeli prime minister is blaming the Australian prime minister of recognition of the non-existent Palestine for breeding anti-Semitism. It is clear to me that one act of hatred triggers another hateful action.

    Coming home to Nigeria. There is so much mutual dislike if not hatred among the various ethnicities in Nigeria. It is so bad that if one does not share the same sentiments with the ethnic haters, one is almost considered a traitor against the group. In some places, homophobia is so rampant that a lesbian or homosexual is seen as a leper. What is tolerated in America is seen as a journey too far in Nigeria. This is why our government says Nigerians would rather starve to death than accept AID tied to toleration of same sex relationships.

    As long as people of this orientation keep to themselves, one should, in my view not bother.

    It is very dangerous when it gets to a situation of intolerance of other people based on even ideology. Communists are regularly persecuted in some western countries while a capitalist democrat would not be tolerated because such a person would be considered a danger to the state security.

    There was a time in the USA when a senator, McCarthy led a national movement against communists as if they were some kind of vermin. Jimmy Lea at 78 faces a life sentence in People s Republic of China for holding on to his liberal political philosophy as against the communist ideology of the state. These days in Donald John Trump America, to be labelled a “liberal” is like a sentence of political death.

    President Trump openly discriminates against black Africans and Haitians in preference to Norwegians or Scandinavian immigrants.

    In America where there is a right to own weapons, dislike of the other person for whatever reason is dangerous and can lead to one life’s termination. Of course these differences have different implications. The racial discrimination is the most obvious and could be most significant in the life of anyone. It could, in most western countries, determine where you live, which institutions you go to, what hospitals you are allowed to go to when ill, it could determine your economic opportunities and who you associate with generally.  

    It sometimes controls what country’s visa is readily available to you .In other words your race is your destiny. As a black person, I have to be twice as good as my colleague to attract the same attention or recognition. It will probably not matter so much if hatred for others different from one were not tied to possession of nuclear weapons as threatened by the North Koreans and Americans when confronting each other or Americans and Chinese in their struggle for world domination if not now but in the future.

  • The challenge of political stability in West Africa

    The challenge of political stability in West Africa

    In the last week, there was a failed coup d’état in the Republic of Benin after the success of a coup in Guinea Bissau. The military governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are sitting tight at different levels of instability while the military regime in Guinea (Conakry) appears to be on its way out. The regime in Mali, despite its blind walking into a marriage with Russia, is daily challenged by various ethnic fissiparous tendencies in the wretched Sahelian dessert country that appears doomed to instability for the foreseeable future. Our neighbour Niger will eventually come to its senses and come back crawling to Nigeria if we stand on our democratic course. Burkina Faso, as far as I am concerned, is a basket case despite the exaggerated claims of the propagandists hired by its government of manufacturing air planes, going to space and other absurd performances by its president and government.

    I know this desert country and when I see how the world is being fooled, I laugh. The success of this propaganda can be seen in the recent inaugural speech of Madame Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, president of Namibia who claimed that her country would follow the glorious example of the president of Burkina Faso!

    Eventually, Africa will wake up from the dream world of the paradise of the confederation of Sahelian States. This Burkina Faso is keeping a Hercules’ C130 plane belonging to Nigeria which landed in its territory because of bad weather and issuing inflammatory statement about guarding its air space. The Federal Government of Nigeria should issue a stiff statement saying what happened and demanding the release of its plane using countries like Senegal, Guinea and even Niger as conduits for our diplomatic intervention.

    What seems to be happening in the region is a challenge to Nigeria’s security and we must rise quickly to the occasion by cranking up our diplomatic feelers to deal with all these irritants. Our government must use as agents, Nigerians knowledgeable about the affairs of these countries.

    I am surprised that we have not worked on bringing back to our embrace the Republique of Niger. This should have been a priority of this government. We must never allow any hostile governments surrounding us. We have ties of consanguinity with our neighbours; we must always exploit this for our benefit. We should always post as heads of missions to these countries, people who can talk to those in power in African languages rather than inherited colonial languages with key players in power politics of these countries. For example, a Yoruba speaker should be sent to Benin, Hausa speaker to Niger, Kanuri speaker to Chad, Fulfulde or Hausa speaker to the Cameroon and an Igbo or Ibibio- Efik speaker to Equatorial Guinea.

    I remember General Ike Nwachukwu as foreign minister discussing with the foreign minister of Benin when the two of them found out they could do without English/French interpreters in 1988 when dealing with the issue of toxic wastes dumping in our waters by Italian shippers.

    Read Also: FG launches Nigeria’s first dual active-insect LLIN plant

    The situation which deteriorates to military coups and putsches in most cases in these West African countries is economic. In the particular cases of Chad and Benin, the two countries from their exit from dependence on France had serious problems of unviability. Chad throughout its history was ruled by the French military. Benin on the other hand provided junior civil servants for the French administration of West Africa (L’Afrique Occidentale Francaise — L’AOF). Of course when the French granted independence to the separate countries, Benin inherited too many civil servants which the economy of the country could not support. The unemployment consequently caused instability in the country. After independence, Benin cities regularly witnessed placards emblazoned on roads saying “Larmee au pouvoir  (army takes power). In the past, Nigeria tried to help by joint development of cement production in Onigbolo and sugar production in Save. Unfortunately the ventures failed while the attempt to privatise them did not succeed. The economy of the country depends on trans-shipping of imports bound for Nigeria through the port of Cotonou. This was also unviable because of changing policies in Nigeria on smuggling. Smuggling is such a big deal in the country which exports cocoa grown in Nigeria as its main produce.

    The solution to all these economic problems is integration of the West African economy with Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria bearing the economic burdens as Germany seems to do in the European Union albeit with complaints and grumbling.

    The recent abortive coup d’état failed because Nigeria answered the call of “safe our souls” by the remnants of the democratic government that was about to be kicked out. But for how long can Nigeria sustain the government of Benin while its own economy is not the best it can be and the current state of ECOWAS makes it difficult for it to do anything for the serious economic problems of Guinea Bissau and Benin?

    West Africa will remain in a prostrate and pathetic position until Nigeria takes the challenge of co-prosperity of itself and its immediate neighbours more seriously. In the meantime, Nigeria has to provide a grant or loan secured by Benin-Nigerian production of the oil found in the Benin waters. Nigeria also must press Benin to privatize the sugar production in Save (Sabe) and Cement industry in Onigbolo. If possible, the Dangote group should be encouraged to make a distress bid for the two factories. The political future of Benin should be negotiated because as it stands today, the economy of Benin will continue to be in dire strait and a drag on the economy of Nigeria which currently provides a safety net for Benin’s galloping population and its hopelessly resourced economy.

  • The future of Nigeria

    The future of Nigeria

    I was in a group discussing and debating our statement at the General Assembly plenary session in 1991 in New York and we got to the point of discussing the prospects of Nigeria in the future and somebody came up with the linguistic flourish that Nigeria train was entering a long dark tunnel the end of which was light and somebody jokingly said “I hope it is not the light of an approaching train?”

    The picture was so graphic that every time Nigerian runs into the innumerable difficulties, I remembered asking myself whether the joke of 1991 wasn’t a prophetic prediction. There have been many explanations for lack of progress in our national life. Some have put their hands on the ethnic plurality of our country leading to appointment to key areas of the economy not based on the revolutionary basis of careers open to talent but on tribalism, who you know, and bribery and corruption.

    There are other reasons adduced to our problems. There is problem of over population, poor nourishment of our children leading to mental retardation, dead weight of religion, lack of planning or total absence of rationality, politics taking precedence over the economy and above all the constitution which is most of the time lifted from the books of other countries and planted on the environment in Nigeria which most of the time is inappropriate if not hostile and unrelated to our political history and experience.

    The question really is whether ourselves or the constitution that have problems.

    It is true that this republic is overpopulated. The ascribed population load of Nigeria is 220 million and still growing. In all honesty, I don’t think we are up to that number. It is based on UN estimate derived from blown up Nigerian number. I say this with a sense of responsibility.

    I witnessed the last population count in Nigeria and I was surprised at the organised and deliberate inflation of numbers. I witnessed enumerators being bribed to deliver figures claimed to be expected by budget officials at state and local levels before certain allocation for social amenities can be made. Villagers and their children in urban centres were compelled to contribute for the purpose of attracting development to indigenous villages.

    If you drive  from Ibadan through  Ogbomosho – Ilorin – Jebba – Kontagora- or Mokwa – Teginna – Minna  – Kaduna -Zaria – Pabengua- Jos – Toro- Bauchi- Maiduguri, a route I am familiar with and sparsely populated between Ilorin and Kaduna and between Abuja / Kaduna and Jos before reaching Maiduguri, one is bound to doubt the authenticity to the huge numbers ascribed to these places.

    Read Also: 38 rescued Kwara abducted worshippers return home

    Apart from Kano, Kaduna, Jos and Maiduguri and not even Sokoto, there are no huge conurbations that come to mind. Ibadan, Ogbomosho and Lagos have huge populations but hardly the millions of souls ascribed to them and the rest of the urban centres in the Southwest have medium populations.

    Apart from Aba, Onitsha and Port Harcourt, there are no centres of huge population in the south-eastern part of Nigeria east of the River Niger. 

    I agree that huge numbers of Nigerians are scattered in hundreds of villages but my intelligent estimate of our total populations is not more than 150 million or less than the official figures if we use 36 million estimated population at independence and growing at a normal rate of 3% per annum.

    Whatever the population may be, we must develop a viable population policy to stop population growth outstripping food production and undermining our food security. The extant population policy in our books advices women to limit child birth to four which allows men to move from one woman to another. Secondly is excess population in Niger, Chad, Benin republic and all the way to Burkina Faso and other ECOWAS countries pouring into Nigeria their poor people. When men in Niger republic were advised by French demographers some years ago to reduce the number of wives and children they have, their response was that as their children grew up, they will emigrate to Kano or Lagos. This means our population control must take account of the growth of population in our neighbours. 

    We must develop a population policy focusing on men not women because of the plurality of wives in this part of the world. Whatever our population may be, the international community especially in Europe is worried about our population growing to 500 million by year 2050. With a huge population and with reduced educational facilities goes the quality of our people. This fact influences the development of our country because of lack of appropriate technology for development.

    In a world increasingly concerned with environmental sustainability, unplanned population growth and unmaintained cities leave too much to be desired.

    I remember attending a conference of cities of the world in the beautiful German city of Karlsruhe in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany in 1992  representing Nigeria and I was given a platform to say something and I said I was from Lagos, a city of over 10 million souls and the chairman and host blurted out that no African  country can handle such a city especially with our low technological know-how. Today we are told Lagos has an excess of over 20 million souls. It is actually surprising that crime in Lagos is relatively low.

    The journey for sustainable development in Nigeria is very long and it will take huge resources, appropriate and applied technology, political stability, hard work and political leadership shorn of corruption to overcome the various challenges of development in a third world country burdened by poverty and apparent overpopulation.

    It is doubtful if things have changed or might have changed for the worse.

    As for our problem of ethnic antagonism, the situation seems to be getting worse because of economic competition for scarce resources especially land in the crowded urban centres most especially Lagos where ownership of land by the indigenous people is clashing with modern idea of ownership by purchase. This has led to vitriolic campaigns by people against each other which if not arrested may in future, lead to unforeseen and unfortunate physical conflicts which the country cannot afford.

    On top of competition in the urban centres dictated by economic competition, we have competition for political power tied to demographic weight. This may be solved if the holders of levers of power can tie the number of people to taxable responsibility as in many countries of the world. It is true that the multiplicity of different ethnicities in Nigeria is a hindrance to cohesion and collective development. But this should not be the case if we can learn from India with its 1.4 billion people with different peoples with their own writing and civilizations and religions still keeping together after the separation of the same people into India and Pakistan in 1947. Perhaps those who will want the splitting of Nigeria into smaller independent states should learn from the regular outbreak of war between India and Pakistan. If Nigeria were to be split where will the boundaries be? We will waste the relatively little resources that we have on armaments in readiness for war of all against all. We are one and the same black race separated by more than 250 languages, but divided into three or four main languages with some of the languages being mutually understandable.

  • On language of instruction at early years of schooling

    On language of instruction at early years of schooling

    There is no argument about which language of instruction should be used in early education in any serious country other than the mother tongue. The recent announcement by the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa that as from now English will be the medium of instruction for education reminded me about his predecessor in the same ministry, Tahir Mamman who suddenly decreed that only children 17 or older will be permitted to write the JAMB admission examination for entrance to Nigerian universities  as if there were unchallengeable reasons to bar younger people of admission into university especially in a global environment where Nigerians and others were graduating in British  and American universities abroad at ages lower than 17.

    It seems the ministers were getting out of step with their positions. They seem to arrogate know-all powers to themselves until they are brought down to the reality of being removed from office.

    I wonder whether the  current minister was properly advised to take this decision because the research council in the ministry could not have done this  because the council’s position and those of most departments of education in our universities are clear on this: they have said and written that one of the reasons  for the low quality of our graduates in all departments of learning is that whatever we studied in other peoples’  language cannot be properly absorbed and  internalized  and if the foundation is  not solid, whatever floors constructed on a weak base will be ab initio unreliable.

    This fact may be stretching the argument too far but there is no doubt that if the foundation is not strong, the superstructure cannot be reliable. Besides researches by the late Babs Fafunso  a professor of education and others suggest that we should study English as a subject in our local languages just as we use English to study many subjects now .This is what great countries like China, India and Japan as well as most of the Arab countries have done and it has not stopped them from making advances in science and technology.

    The biggest argument one may have for the minister’s policy of teaching in English to infants is that this is what essentially but unofficially exists in practice among the educated middle class in Nigeria and among most Nigerians in urban centres where people speak a multiplicity of languages. But this does not make it rational to the point of becoming the law. We can also argue about how difficult it would be to translate all existing books in the sciences, medicine, technology and all subjects into our native languages.

    Which of our about 300 languages would we choose without alienating the other speakers of languages not selected? This is apparently why the choice of Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba as official languages is not strictly enforced in official communication but English which is neutral has remained the lingua franca. The current policy is that early education should be in our local languages presumably in English, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba which have remained the official languages of the country. But what has become the constitutional provision of primary education remaining in the province of states? Then what happens to over 200 plus languages spoken by millions of other Nigerians?

    If we can learn from our colonial experience in the North where Hausa was taught to all school children even though  people in Northern Nigeria spoke other languages like Kanuri, Shuwa, Bura,  Jukun, Chamba, Tiv, Angas, Birom, Fulfude, Nupe, Yoruba, Maguzawa, Igala, Idoma , Ebira  and others if taken together may have outnumbered the Hausa native speakers. This policy has successfully knitted together perhaps more than 50% of Nigerians who now speak Hausa. There was no such language policy in the South though over the years Creole or Pidgin English is spoken all over Nigeria by people with a few years of exposure to the English language. This Creole/Pidgin of course cannot be seen as a native language. Some years ago, the late Professor Armstrong of the University of Ibadan in the 1960s suggested Igala as a strong candidate if Nigeria wanted a language to adopt as a national language because according to him, Igala has elements of Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. This was based on his academic study of Nigerian linguistics but I am not sure how far his suggestion got in the corridors of power in Nigeria where it was simply laughed out of court.

    Read Also: Nigerian-born researcher Abutu leads groundbreaking health equity studies

    This new policy cannot be rejected on the basis that English was imposed on us by an outside authority. It has the support of presumably most people in Nigeria who may have taken up arms against government if a local language or group of languages were imposed on the country. The government probably learnt from the experience of the government of India which met stiff opposition while trying to impose Hindi on the vast country and population which had accepted English a neutral language. It also put us within the global medium of English with its abundant development of instructional material at all levels of the educational ladder.  The argument of supporters of English is that if we don’t belong to the wide medium of the English language world, we would have to learn English to understand the language of computing and AI. 

    If we will gain something from early learning of English, and that the better we started early and this does not mean we will naturally not speak our mother tongue at home and in the market, worship places and perhaps as secret language when negotiating with foreigners or when sending what will amount to ‘coded language’ in the wider global world. This is my personal experience in diplomacy when we want to arrive at a quick decision without our opposite party knowing our position, this will depend on if some of our people speak the same language. This experience made decisions maker to insist that any young recruit into our foreign service must have passed at ordinary level a Nigerian language.

    One cannot overemphasize the importance of the ability to speak a mother tongue. Inability to do so undermines one’s indigenous personality and character in a world where confidence in one’s skin is an imperative for one to be able to assert one’s personality in a world of competition of cultural sensitivity. In conclusion, studies in mother tongues, many of which we have in Nigeria will continue to be an advantage for those who study for use in politics, business and the market place economics.