Category: Jide Osuntokun

Come May 29, Asiwaju of Lagos, Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be sworn in as president of Nigeria. This will be a remarkable achievement for the man but also a challenge for all of us to ensure that he succeeds in resetting Nigeria for the great task ahead. Elections have come and gone and the challenge of governance begins. He may not be everyone’s choice but as our people are wont to say, he is the man of the moment and short of an undemocratic revolution, he will remain president of this much abused country for the next four years God willing.

Only God knows the end from the beginning but if Tinubu acts as expected, he will assemble one of the best cabinets in recent times to govern this country that is too big and important to fail. We are in a political situation but he must rise above politics and provide exemplary leadership that will be very difficult to fault. His choice of ministers and assistants and his Secretary to the Government of the Federation must not only manifest meritocracy but also reflect a total commitment to national unity and healing of the bruises of a hard won and bitter election. A bold effort must be made to bring in the Southeast to the centre of government without alienating his core supporters in other parts of the country. If we want to build a virile country with a bright future, every part of the country must be on board whether members of the ruling party or the opposition. This has to be done to show to the whole nation and the world that this is the beginning of a new dawn.

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The president must have well-reasoned priorities such as in security, education, infrastructure and electricity generation and distribution. All aspects of our national life should be a priority. But the truth is that the task of government is never finished in one term or even in our own lives. We just have to begin from somewhere. It is better to have an area of concentration rather than diffused energy and activities all over the place. I am a supporter of restructured Nigeria and fiscal federalism but we must be realistic that this can only be a distant goal in the context of the present political reality of Nigeria where there is no consensus. This is why I think we should use the present administrative instruments available to government to press in its policies in the area of priority identified above.

The new government should set up small working committees on education, infrastructure, electricity and security. Without security, the country will not move forward. If we have to enlist the support of friendly countries to achieve this we must not be shy about it. This is not a case of ideology; we must take help from where it is offered. We are in emergency.

On education, we need a total overhaul of our educational system from the collapsed primary and secondary levels to tertiary levels. It is a shame that government primary schools have been abandoned even by the poor in urban areas who now patronise private schools because of the abject malfunction and failure of government primary schools. What exists at the primary level is also found at the secondary level. The university and other tertiary levels are going the same way. We must resuscitate these levels of education without abandoning quality.

If the private sector must participate in education, it must not be the only body offering quality education. The present situation of homogenised university education where all universities offer the same syllabus must be discontinued and universities must reflect regional, environmental and cultural peculiarities without sacrificing uniform standards of intellectual offerings.

This point needs elucidation but here is not the place to go into the nitty-gritty. As for electricity there is need to decentralise generation and distribution of electricity and to be replaced by regional and zonal bodies reflecting available local natural resources of gas, hydro and coal. Without abandoning our commitment to clean energy, we cannot at the present level of urgency neglect any available source of energy including coal. The South-south of our country including some states in the Southeast and Ondo and Ogun states in the southwest should emphasise power from gas and coal while the central part of Nigeria and the northeast should lay emphasis on hydroelectricity while the northwest will be a combination of water and gas.

The point is that it must not be a centralized generating body. Each company or power board will be independent but able to sell power to areas that may not have enough. This is what is done in developed countries where there are no generalised black out as we have in this country. On infrastructure, we must continue with our new railway age which most countries experienced in the 19th century. Thank God zonal railways are now permitted in the constitution. Our roads which currently are the dilapidated mode of moving of goods and people around must be thrown open to public and private participation.  We need to have roads running laterally from Sokoto to Badagry, Kano to Lagos, Maiduguri to Port Harcourt and laterally from Lagos to Port Harcourt, Ibadan to Calabar, Kaduna to Enugu and Kano to Maiduguri. We as users must be ready to pay.

The zonal group of states must be encouraged to pull resources together to build highways connecting them together while the federal government intensify the building of roads that are permanent in nature not subjected to the vagaries of weather. In all this, the people must be made to appreciate government efforts by paying for services rendered whether in the provision of infrastructure, education and electricity.

For the government to be successful, the calibre of people in government must be such as will naturally draw support to government because they will be seen for their selflessness and national commitment. Emphasis must be on competence and meritocracy without abandonment of the principle of geographical and ethnic justice. There is no state in the country that does not have exceptional and excellent people. In any case, one of the best ways of reining in corruption is to ensure that there is no ethnic domination of any ministry or department of government. The plural make-up of departments and ministries would be a break on rampant corruption and the erstwhile looting of national resources.

Where in recent times there has been preponderance of certain ethnic group in a ministry or parastatal, corruption has been the order of the day because people steal because they know their ethnic cohorts will not leak out their looting secrets. The coming government must tighten up the internal security and police system to make sure that governments get value for monetary allocation. The situation where 50 percent or more of the amount allocated for projects are stolen is what is responsible for the sordid level of our underdevelopment. Nigeria is the most underdeveloped of all the countries in OPEC. This is not a good place to be and we must change this narrative if we are to avoid bloody revolution. If we do not succeed and the poor masses revolt, there will be no distinction between people of different parties, ethnic groups and people of different religious affiliations in the face of blind fury of the anger of the hungry and the have-nots. So we are all together in trying to salvage the situation of our country. This is why all hands must be on deck and we cannot say we were not in government. We will all be answerable to the poor when trouble breaks out.

Our situation has gotten to a point when we must all show interest in how our country is governed. We must develop this national consciousness that will not permit state capture by a few that would ruin the future of all of us. If our country is well governed, the sky is wide enough for all the birds to fly without collision. It is poor governance that has generated ethnic tensions in recent times. There are countries with as many ethnic dimensions and disparities as our own that because of their strong economy are not as challenged as we are. India with many languages and civilizations and religions has in recent times embarked on rapid development which has reduced ethnic tensions.

The point I am making is that money and development do not necessarily have ethnic colours and boundaries. If we deal with the problem of underdevelopment, our ethnic problem will become manageable and not a threat to the unity and survival of our country as it is presently.

Jide Osuntokun

It is less than two weeks before new administrations take over the running of the country, all things being equal, at state and federal levels, yet appointments are being made or renewed for terms of four years which are the normal  gubernatorial and presidential terms. Those making the appointments would say that the work of government is continuous and cannot wait. Why this may be true, there is however nothing wrong with acting appointments. Contracts running into billions of Naira are being awarded and contractors are given, in some instances, two or four years to complete the job. Huge loans are being syndicated at home and abroad running into trillions of Naira.

But for the general uproar, there was a plan to conduct national census and contracts running into billions had been awarded and principal staff appointed. What for goodness’ sake is the reason for all this rush at the last minute after being in power for eight years?  Critical decisions such as turning the former prison services to the states without corresponding financial transfer from the federal government are being made almost casually. This looks as if the present government wants to extend itself into the next government. Are we now running rolling governments irrespective of changes in administrations? Even if the incoming governments are taken into confidence, this is still wrong. The hands of the incoming governments are being tied by the current incumbent governments unnecessarily. Even if the incoming governments are from the same party, it is still wrong. A father’s ideas are not necessarily the same as those of his child in the normal run of things not to talk of running the governments of states and the federation. This kind of behaviour makes a mockery of democracy. Why vote if a curious form of continuity is what to expect?

Taking the case of the federal government of Nigeria for instance, the press is constantly inundated with complaints that appointments in the last eight years have not been equitable, fair and reflecting the ethnic and geographical spread of the country. Although apologists of government have disputed this, but a cursory look at many of the appointments to the commanding heights of the economy of the country and critical areas of the current administration have not always reflected the plural nature of the country. Perhaps the federal government had been trying to balance perceived previous lop-sidedness in the administration but rushing this through in the last eight years has not gone down well with certain sections of the country. A situation in which contrived disadvantage becomes an advantage in appointments is just simply illogical.

The situation in the oil industry is a case that people generally point to when complaining about inequity in appointments in the critical areas of the economy like power, oil and gas. What will then happen if a new administration were to hearken to public complaints and begin to remove people from their positions? The whole thing would then take ethnic or religious coloration. What is happening at the federal is also happening at the state levels. It will of course be much easier to deal with it at the state levels where ethnic and religious plurality is not as complicated as the federal level.

We just have to be more sensitive if we are to have a strong, progressive and productive country. This kind of insensitivity is beginning to spread to discussion around principal officers of the coming Senate and House of Representatives. From what is in the press, there does not seem to be genuine desire to satisfy the urgent need to bring the Southeast of the country into prominent political recognition by zoning the presidency of the senate or the speakership to that part of our country. People are saying there is no acceptable ranking senator from there. Then why don’t we bend over backwards and accept the former governor of Ebonyi,  a newly elected senator if  Senator Orji Kalu has some baggage which makes him not fit for purpose? Politics should not be a zero-sum game in which the winner takes all. Politics is about what is possible and practicable and realistic and not necessarily ideal.

We must first have a country before we have politics. This should be the credo of those who find themselves in positions of authority in this country. This has not always been the case but if we are not sensitive we would lose the country because a million soldiers will not be able to keep us together if sufficient numbers of our citizens are unhappy disgruntled and ready to become fifth columnists in times of national emergencies and crisis.

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I do not have empirical data for suggesting, but it is worth investigating, that the rampant corruption we are witnessing in recent times is due to a feeling of ethnic entitlement following key appointees surrounded by their ethnic cohorts while other ethnicities are kept at arm’s length in the same country which should ordinarily be jointly run in such a way that there is no hidden or apparent ethnic or religious domination. We have the opportunity to reset our country and to run new administrations that will be based on merit and openness.

Politicians all over the world are one of a kind and they are not necessarily the best the country can produce. But we must not allow the bureaucracy to be infected by political shenanigans. If the bureaucracy is corrupt, then the country is finished. We are beginning to see instances where accountants-general and auditors-general are either corrupt or compromised,  one wonders who then is going to call the politicians  to order.  There is a recent case of the accountant-general of the federation and his staff embezzling hundreds of billions of Naira in a country where states find it difficult to pay minimum wages of N30,000 per month. 

May I ask: Why are people just being exposed at the dusk a new dawn? Why have we waited this long to  expose that a former minister of power  and his staff have embezzled N23 billion meant for the critical power works at Mambilla Plateau and yet we know that no country can develop without adequate electricity supply? This is at a time when we had the support of Germany prodding Siemens AG to help leapfrog Nigeria from darkness to light as it did in Egypt where within five years it reputedly helped that country to increase its power generation by 50,000 megawatts. The same sordidness has recently been witnessed at a public presentation of a book by the attorney-general of the federation when a senator-to-be and former governor of Zamfara State bought some copies of the book for N250 million. I expected the attorney general to reject the offer. I also expected the EFCC to ask questions and the inland revenue department to find out how much taxes the generous former governor pays annually either in Abuja where he lives having run away from Zamfara, his home state.  Zamfara is one of the poorest states in the federation run over by insurgents. If the security services are looking for reasons for rural revolt by the down and outs of our people, they should not look too far.

To go back to my original observations, the government should stay actions on appointments and renewal of appointments and negotiations about loans whether local or foreign. New contracts should not be awarded and all contracts since the elections should be put in abeyance until the next administrations. This is simple courtesy which the present administration should extend to the incoming one. I also sincerely hope in the interest of national unity peace and concord, that the newly elected senators and members of the House of Representatives should be guided by the desire to ensure that every major ethnic group is satisfied in the distribution of offices bearing in mind that this country stands on an ethnic tripod supported by the various equally important ethnicities.

watched the coronation of King Charles III of England with avid interest, perhaps because I am an historian and also an old person who grew up in colonial Nigeria. I remember going to the community centre in Ado Ekiti in the 1950s as a primary school child to “March past” parades during Empire Day celebrations. We were asked at some point to watch out for the British flag hoisted on a long pole when we reached where it was hoisted. We did not know what we were supposed to watch out for but like all children fearing being flogged if we got out of line or missed our steps, we did what we were asked to do.
We sang in Yoruba “Kolorun d’ oba si, K’Oba ko pe loye,” which is the British national anthem “God save the Queen.” We were not told why we were doing this, and if we were told we would not have understood. But I remember we were feted in school and we all looked forward to celebrating the Queen’s birthday, if possible, every day!
When I entered secondary school, all that stopped, except perhaps in the regional headquarters at Ibadan. By the time I finished secondary school in 1960, I was then quite clear about Nigeria’s place in the British empire. I remember in 1959 writing about the coming of independence as an assignment in my English class, and saying that by 1960 “Nigeria would be free from under the jackboots of British colonialism. “
 Our English teacher, a young man called Allan Reed, whose wife was the first principal of Ekiti Anglican Girls Secondary School, crossed out the whole sentence apparently in annoyance. I later realised that I should have chosen a less offensive expression. I was also trying to show off my command of the English language – thanks to my English teachers who came all the way from England to teach us.
 I was not an ideologue ranting against British imperialism, although my brother, Chief Oduola Osuntokun, who was then a minister in Obafemi Awolowo’s cabinet, was an anti-colonial politician eager to get rid of the British so that we could govern ourselves. I may have grown into a nationalist later, but it was always as a friend of my British benefactors.
This preamble is necessary so that my readers can appreciate my impression of the coronation. I watched the events with interest, recalling the previous coronations in British history I had read about.  I was an exchange student with the School of Oriental and African Studies and Queen Mary’s College, two affiliated colleges of the University of London, during my second year at the University of Ibadan in the 1964-5 session.  I had the privilege of learning English History from the celebrated Professor S.T. Bindoff, the author of “Tudor England,” who taught us as if he had lived the historical experience. I was carried away by British scholarship and university traditions which the University of Ibadan tried very much to copy. I did not see the British as enemies, rather I appreciated their efforts to leave a permanent impression on us on how to run things like our universities, the parliament, political parties, the Anglican Church, yes, the Anglican Church, and the government.
Anyone who grew up in my generation will say we have managed to run all these things down! I was impressed by the clockwork orderliness of the coronation without obtrusive police and military presence. Of course, the intelligence services were there, but they did not make their presence felt. None of the eminent heads of state and crowned heads from all over the world were announced as they took their places, except by the news media.
There is much to admire in the way the British run their affairs, far better and superior to any other country, except perhaps the Japanese. This is not to say that the British have no fault; of course, they do. They benefited tremendously from the triangular slave trade in which our ancestors supplied the market by capturing one another and selling them on a journey of no return.  They abolished the slave trade when it was no longer beneficial to them, and when sugar could be got from India, then under their control, thus rendering the West Indian sugar expendable. The aftermath of the trade in such a sweet commodity, but bringing with it the unkind brutality of plantation slavery, is the enduring racism of white racism against the blacks and browns of which the British are the guiltiest. 
Of course, they are not the only racists.  I can postulate that we are all racists, preferring our own kind to others; but what is odious about the racism of non-blacks is that they all now associate it with black inferiority in relation to all other races.  
The British were the biggest imperialists in human history. They exploited every part of the world for their country’s development. For a long time after flag independence was granted to their colonies, they replaced it with neo-colonial economic relations. They also managed to put in power, on their departure from their colonies, puppet leaders who for long protected British interests.
 In all these the monarchy was a central institution. But we should not blame King Charles III personally, even though he shares part of the historical guilt of association. While I am aware of all these, I still see things to admire in Britain, and in other countries apart from mine.
When I asked if my children enjoyed watching the coronation, my four children were unanimous in saying they had other more important things to do. This is of course in tune with the reaction of young people in Britain itself. My kids said any status based on privilege of birth was unacceptable to them. Even when I said the monarchy provides a seamless headship of state irrespective of politics or when one sovereign passes on and another successor comes to the throne, they were not persuaded. My historical explanation of how the monarchy had provided a rallying point in two World Wars and other times of crisis were unconvincing. 
The economic role of the British crown in bringing tourists to Britain was also downplayed. In short, I couldn’t convince my children, but I held my position that the monarchy has been good to Britain. I am not oblivious of the fact that the accident of birth should not confer undue privileges.
But I will argue that what is ideal is not necessarily real. In our country of perhaps more than two thousand kings, can one really argue against monarchies if it makes the people happy?
 Of course, India removed the powers of the Maharajahs, but left them with their tremendous wealth and palaces. Our own kings are harmless. In fact, politicians find them useful in social and political mobilisation, and they can be helpful in times of crisis. Some of them may be a bit reckless in their amorous escapades, but they provide us with the entertainment and excitement necessary in times of serious local and national problems.
I may not be a royalist, but I see nothing wrong in being one. I am myself descended from royalty, but that is not why I see them as part of our culture. Of course, they exist everywhere under the law, except in some Middle Eastern countries. The British monarchy is a constitutional monarchy, and I would, if I were British, prefer it to a million Donald Trumps, which those in favour of elected presidency may yet get.

My birthday is the 26th of April. I always dread the coming of my birthday, not because of the fear of adding another year to my life, but because it always reminds me of the date my wife passed on.

 I always remember her calling on my daughter, Tosin, from her sick bed to buy a card for her for my birthday.

I also remember telling her that it was the least of my worries and letting her know how unimportant my birthday was to me seeing how sick she was. The last card she gave me was followed by her death a week later on the 3rd of May 2003.What a dark and terrible day!

What happened to my wife changed my life forever. She was just 55. Our children were going through university and were scheduled to graduate one after another. She and I had planned that when our children would have gone through college, we would take out time to go on honeymoon on a cruise ship because when we got married, we were students without much spare money to think of the traditional honeymoon.

I was finishing my PhD in Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, while my wife was in her second year of a B.Sc. degree in the Sciences. She had had to change from Pharmacy, which was reserved for students coming from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

She had moved from the then University of Ife to join me in Canada at a very tender age. She sacrificed her career of becoming a pharmacist to join me in Canada because of the love we shared. I loved her intensely, almost insanely, if I am to be honest.  Some people said I was too possessive! I plead guilty to that charge. She too loved me very much, and she always made me know this in her inimitable way.

I met the girl who became my wife for the first time in a multitude of more than a hundred thousand people. We both came to Apapa wharf in 1964 to welcome relatives returning by boat to Nigeria after the completion of their studies in the United Kingdom. I was welcoming a brother while she was in a party welcoming a cousin.

Unlike today, Nigerians returned home by boat after the end of their studies abroad. Somehow, the Almighty made me meet this adorable girl by divine arrangement or accidental occurrence. As soon as I met her, I covenanted with God that if she agreed to marry me, she definitely was the person I would marry. Imagine me saying this about somebody I had never met and did not know and was not sure she wanted to have anything to do with me. 

This is why I have always felt all marriages were ordained by God. I was very shy then, and did not usually talk to girls because our educational system ensured girls went to girls’ schools and boys did the opposite and the two must never meet. Our relationship with the opposite sex was rather adversarial.

 I was in my second year at the University of Ibadan, and my “dream girl” was in high school at Saint Anne’s School, Ibadan. To cut a long story short, we courted for almost five years before we got married.

We got married in Canada in 1969 and when I finished my PhD in 1970, I moved to the University of Western Ontario, where I was appointed Assistant Professor to teach commonwealth studies. I had to move my wife to my new university to finish her studies. By this time, we had had a daughter, Fola. Since my job was to fill the gap created by somebody who went on Sabbatical leave for a year, the university was not able to keep me, so I went to the University of the West Indies in Barbados, leaving my wife behind but carrying Fola, my one-year-old bundle of joy with me to Barbados. Later, my wife joined us there.

We could have either permanently settled in Canada, or in the West Indies, where I had bank credit to buy a house, but we did not because we were eager to come back home to our parents, me to my mother, and my wife to her mother and father, as it was in those days, because parents never wanted their children to be out of reach and touch for too long.

We returned home in 1972, and I was part of the young academics who founded the University of Ibadan, Jos campus. From that time until 2003, we had a blissful marriage, with one year spent apart when my wife was trying to take a postgraduate diploma in Library Science at the University of Ibadan while I was in Jos.

We had our own share of inadequate medical services which led to two premature deliveries. God, however, blessed our marriage with four children, now adults, namely, Folasade, Oluwatosin, Oluwaseyi and Yewande. We spent about nine years in Maiduguri and Lagos working at universities, and close to nine years abroad in Canada, the USA and Germany doing what I will call “national service.”

 When we returned to Nigeria, she decided not to work for government, but for God, as she put it, as a non-stipendiary pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God where she was the founding pastor at Jesus chancery No 1 Awolowo Road Bodija Ibadan in 1998. She was consumed with the work and she had no time for any other thing.

In order to avoid trouble, I tagged along with her in the work of God that my wife was doing. As the Yoruba people say, the shell of a snail follows the snail wherever it goes! It was while there that she began to struggle with bad health until we went to Dublin, first in 2002, and again in 2003, where her second daughter was a medical doctor. I did not know the nature of her illness. She was being treated for malaria locally here in Nigeria. It was in Dublin that I found out how serious her ailment was. She had surgeries, but in the end I lost her. I could not believe it.

Her last weeks and days made me reassess the meaninglessness of human struggle. I watched the beautiful angel I had married go down the slippery slope to death, and I could not do anything about it, and all the doctors and their equipment and their goodwill in the teaching hospital in Dublin could not save my wife. She and I waited for her death to come, and it came like a thief in the night. When she breathed her last breath, the beauty of the past returned with freshness to her dead body. I had never experienced the agony of death so closely and so intimately before.

I got all kinds of advice about how to move on. But getting married again was not easy, and those who genuinely loved me and advised me to do this could not understand.

Some even said, rather darkly, that if I did not have a woman as a help mate, my life would be cut short. It is now 20 years and I am still alive! Love is irreplaceable, and only those involved can understand the pain in the heart of a widow or widower.

I see my wife in the physical appearances of my children and in their mannerisms, and I am consoled by that fact. I also believe in the Bible that because my wife was a believer in the sonship of Jesus she will live forever despite her physical death. I know I will see her again when God calls me. For now, life goes on even though life has not been easy in these 20 years of me flying with one wing instead of two.

The battle for the control of the Sudan between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)is a tragedy in which thousands of lives are being lost and ruined. What is happening goes to the bifurcation of the security apparatus in the Sudan between the military headed by General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, General Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo.

  In the old days of Sudanese politics, the struggle would have been between two factions or more of the Islamic tariqas, one that was headed by the Muhammad Ahmad al Mahdi family, and others led by secularists and the military. Such was Omar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir, a military officer who served as the seventh head of the state of Sudan under various titles from 1989 until 2019 when he was deposed in a coup d’état.

 Although the influence of the family of Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abdallah al Mahdi who set up the Mahdist state between 1885 and 1896 is waning or has waned, his descendants still wield considerable influence in the Sudan. The Oxford educated great grandson of Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdallah al Mahdi, Sadiq al Mahdi, who, as leader of the Umma party has been in and out of office a couple of times, is a friend of Nigeria and had visited Nigeria many times in the past.

 There are long established links between Nigeria and the Sudan. We used to train Arabic teachers in the Sudan. When the Anglo Sudanese government set up the Jazirah (Gezira ) scheme in the 1920s to distribute waters of the Blue Nile over a distance of 4300 kilometres, in one  of the greatest irrigation schemes in the world, quite a couple of thousands of Nigerians found agricultural jobs in the Sudan and their descendants have remained there to swell the number of Nigerian descendants who over the years number about 5 million today found in the army, security forces, universities, commerce and industry.

 The Sudan used to be a staging point for our pilgrims and other West Africans going to Makkah for the hajj. Some never made it and stayed in the Sudan, some on their way back stopped and stayed on in the Sudan. Over the years, they were all referred to as Fellatta (Fulani), by which Arab and other Sudanese refer to this now formidable Sudanese group.

 So, when some people talk about the evacuation of Nigerians in the Sudan, I ask which Nigerians? The students or which other group because the fellatta are no longer Nigerians but Sudanese. I need to establish this relationship so that we can understand that we have interests in the Sudan and we cannot afford to be just onlookers in the tragedy and disaster in the Sudan.

  Americans, the British, Europeans, Chinese and even the Saudis may be evacuating the nationals by air or through port Sudan on the Red Sea but we cannot do the same because of technical and logistical reasons, besides we can choose who to relate with but we cannot choose our neighbours and members of our African family. It’s not politically wise to rush in to evacuate our nationals when they are indistinguishable from the Sudanese and they are as a group not targeted. We need not attract hostile attention to them.

  The security architecture in the Sudan is not dissimilar from what happens in Nigeria where we have the military, the paramilitary forces of the Mobile Police and National Security guards. What has happened in the Sudan is that power is shared between the military and the Rapid Support Forces with the military in the command position and their GOC, General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, as head of state, if not by name but indeed, while the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, General Muhammad al Dagalo, as second in command. The military is made up of the army, navy and the air force while the Rapid Support Forces is about 70,000 strong, made up of enforcers like the Janjaweed that operated in Dafur killing thousands of their people in previous years. This force was useful to the Saudis in their war against the Houthis in Yemen. They were said to be involved in illegal gold and precious metals mining. Their forces were said to be in regular liaison with the Russian Wagner Mercenaries group operating in Libya.

 The situation was bound to come to a head with increasing international meddling. The Russians were said to have their eyes on establishing a naval base on the Sudanese Red Sea coast. The Chinese are not likely to be left far behind in the politics of Africa. The Sudan and Ethiopia since time immemorial have been meddling in each other’s affairs.  It’s significant that the military helicopters that took out the Americans took off from Ethiopia.

 For many years the legacy of British colonial rule was strong. The officer corps of the Sudanese army was trained in the Royal Sandhurst military Academy. Their intellectual leaders went for advanced courses in British and American universities. American influence is considerable in the Sudan, and the USA may have stepped up its strategic interest proportionate to increasing Russian and Chinese interest in the country and the rest of the Middle East.

 The situation of the Sudan is captured by the African proverb: when two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. The fighting in the capital, Khartoum, has spread to the Islamic city of Omdurman across the Nile and to other parts of the Sudan, including the much-abused Dar Fur, leading to death and famine in the much-contested province.

 What is to be done apart from appeal to the combatants to cease fire? This has been done over the last two weeks without success. If this could not be arranged over the holy month of Ramadan, I doubt if there is much hope for an end to serious fighting until one party completely routs the other. The bet is on the military winning and imposing la paix militaire on the whole huge country with her boundary with Libya still exposed to resupply of the Rapid Support Forces. It also depends on whether the Saudis will continue to support the RSF and what the United States decides to do. Egypt to the North of the Sudan that shared a condominium administration with Great Britain of the Sudan will probably support the military against the Rapid Support Forces because an unstable Sudan is not in the interest of Egypt itself.

  This is perhaps the time Nigeria should offer its good offices to the two generals fighting over who should have absolute power in the Sudan. Nigeria was involved in bringing some peace to Southern Sudan and history compels us to try to do the same with the Sudan. The OIC should also be trying to settle what is essentially a family affair. So should also the African Commission be trying to do the same.

The Sudan is uniquely an African country straddling the African and the Arab worlds. Even what is left of the old Sudan is still essentially an African country made up of Arabs, Arabised Africans and some Nubian tribes. It is sad that this country that used to provide refuge for suffering Ethiopians is now beset with problems of its own which the military and militarised security forces have not been able to resolve.

 The Horn of Africa, made up of the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti, has been a strategic area for big power contestation in the past and it will for many years to come continue to attract big powers if not to police the Red Sea coast infested with Somali pirates but to establish naval outposts in places like Djibouti, port Sudan and Port of Massawa in Eritrea.

 The story of Russia and the United States’ involvement in this area is captured by their relations with Ethiopia and Somalia. The USA was once ensconced in imperial Ethiopia of Haile Sellassie while the Russians were in Somalia, then they changed sides with the Russians in Haile Mariam’s socialist Ethiopia while the Americans went to Somalia. This proves that the African states are just being used and they are expendable; and when they are no longer needed, they would be thrown away like discarded rags. One hopes the situation in the Sudan will not degenerate to the situation of permanent instability and insecurity as in Somalia.

In apparently private member’s bill has been going through the House of Representatives in Abuja to stop nurses, doctors and other health workers from legally going abroad to seek better training, pay and job satisfaction. I do not know what led to this bill, but all things taken together, the bill is not in anybody’s best interest.

One of the arguments is that these people are trained at great expense by the Nigerian institutions and indirectly by the Nigerian people. I don’t accept this argument. Nigeria owes it to its people to educate them to as high as their capacity would take them.

In any case, these young people pay school fees and in the private universities; they pay the economic cost of their education, so the argument that they were educated at the state’s expense does not hold water.

What purpose is this bill supposed to serve? If those behind the bill were intelligent, they would know there are many reasons why well-trained young people leave their countries in search of the Golden Fleece. This is not a Nigerian phenomenon; it is global and, as far as I know, no country except Nigeria is foolish enough to stop what is actually intellectual export.

It is generally known that in the last two hundred years close to 20 million Irish people left in search of work to the United States. Equal number of English, Germans and Italians did the same thing, and right now medical doctors are leaving Ireland and Great Britain for Australia and New Zealand and the United States, and their parliaments are not tabling motions to hold them down to the poor pay and conditions prevailing in their home countries.

 Do these so-called Honourable members know that Nigeria earns more money from money sent home by Nigeria Diaspora than what this country earns from hydrocarbons that we make so much noise about?

At the last count, Nigeria makes well over 25 billion dollars from money sent home by considerable members of the Nigeria diaspora heavily populated by doctors and nurses. How did the Nigerian Diaspora evolve if not as a result of students who studied abroad deciding to stay there after their education, and other Nigerians who on their own free will migrated abroad for better life – the so-called economic migrants?

At the foundation of the country, some of our people went to train abroad in many areas of higher education. Some remained there, others came back, but nobody stopped anybody from going abroad for whatever reasons.

Where would Nigeria be if the likes of Azikiwe, Awolowo, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Akintola, Okpara, Osadebay and others had remained in Nigeria without going abroad to better themselves when they were young?

The young people trained in Nigeria have the fundamental right to go outside the country for further studies and for work, if necessary, especially at a time when there are no jobs at home for them. It is a policy of the federal government to even send abroad some fresh graduates in a technical Aid Corps to assist less fortunate countries and honestly to reduce graduate unemployment. Of course, we couched the policy as generosity and philanthropy but it was a policy of enlightened self-interest projecting a positive image abroad while solving some of our unemployment problems.

These doctors and nurses our legislators want to ban from going abroad would also serve the same purpose of positive image abroad instead of being known for the negative things like forgeries, advance fees fraud and human smuggling.

Dr Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, said Nigeria would encourage our medical doctors to go abroad to improve their skills and bring home money and equipment when they return home rather than being satisfied with poor wages paid by local employers, including the federal government. He said this when doctors went on national strike because of poor remuneration.

Some of us who are university teachers and who are close to the young people and who have experience should have been consulted before such an important motion was tabled in parliament. Do these so-called Honourable men and women know the number of doctors, nurses and other allied medical workers streaming out of our universities and medical institutions every year? Do they know that many of the mushrooming private universities and poorly funded state universities are starting medical and nursing schools in addition to the existing ones?

Perhaps a few examples would drive home my point. Doctors coming out of formerly prestigious University of Ibadan are finding it difficult to find hospitals to complete their housemanship or internship. Sometimes those of us who are not even medical scholars have had to write letters on behalf of these young people pleading with poorly funded teaching hospitals to find places for young medical graduates to do their internship without which they cannot practise as doctors. Things are that bad!

 Do we expect such young people to be roaming about the streets for nonexistent jobs or to be doing locum on starvation wages when they can go abroad for advanced training and for work? This is the reality which our overpaid and overindulged and uninformed legislators seem not to be aware of, and bringing a grossly defective bill to stop young people going abroad.

One thing these people do not know is that universities educate people for the global market. A well-trained nurse and doctor should be able to practise their profession anywhere in the world if the facilities are available. Secondly, these people wanting to prevent medical people from going abroad are also helping racists who are doing everything to prevent black emigration from our continent. They want to keep blacks marooned on the African continent and prevent them from coming out of their “shit hole” continent to infect the rest of the world with their diseases while their minerals are mined and shipped out to the countries in the global north and their environment polluted and made uninhabitable.

If we are not careful, pressure would be mounted on Africa to stop their engineers and university teachers from leaving their continent on the grounds that they are needed at home. Of course, they are needed at home but it is the fundamental right of all people to enjoy freedom of movement.

This is the only world that we empirically know and everyone should be allowed to make the best use of it. As part of the mass of humanity, Africans who are qualified should be allowed to contribute to the pool of knowledge and technical know-how either from their continent or from wherever they find themselves or relocate to.

 I appeal to those sponsoring this bill on banning medical and allied professionals from going abroad to immediately withdraw it. They don’t know what they are doing and they don’t know the level of  unemployment in this country.

I will never forget a young man with a PhD in physics from Ibadan asking me to help him find a job. I could not believe it. Anybody who has been to school would know how difficult physics is. I told him he should go to any of the western embassies to ask for a visa to their countries, and I said he would not be denied a visa.

Can anybody believe that a PhD in physics cannot find a job in Nigeria when we are crying that we need engineers and one cannot study engineering without being immersed in physics? How many engineers are roaming about the streets or working in the banks? This is how bad our unemployment problem is.

The elections of 2023 have been largely concluded. Winners have been declared and some of the losers have gone to either the Elections tribunal or the courts. This has become the usual scenario in our country where losers always say they have been rigged out and their mandates have been stolen.

A bevy of lawyers encourages them to feel this way and that the courts would eventually declare them winners.  The lawyers do this out of enlightened self-interest and for the huge Naira harvest they expect to reap. Most times the courts uphold the decision of the electorate. Sometimes the courts’ decisions favour those who lost at the polls.

This year, the acrimony surrounding the elections has been at the greatest decibel that I have ever heard since I have witnessed electoral contests in Nigeria. The anger has been laced with ethnic jingoism bordering sometimes on call to arms by the losing candidates and their ethnic cohorts.

 One would have thought that anybody contesting an election should have known that the probability of losing is a possibility. But it seems that Nigerian politicians are the worst kind of people in the world because they go into elections with wrong motives and bank on the certainty of winning to the extent that some borrow money or sell properties just to contest elections and when they lose, they will want to bring the entire state structure down on everybody’s heads including those of the electorate.

Any casual reading of this election cannot but come to the conclusion that this must be judged the most competitive election we have had in this country in recent years.  There are 36 states and Abuja where the presidential polls took place. The result was a dead heat with the president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC winning in 12 states, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP also won in 12 states while Peter Obi won in 11 states and Abuja. What separates them is that Tinubu ran a strong second wherever Atiku Abubakar won and in Lagos State his political redoubt where Obi won. Wherever he won he won solidly particularly in the Southwestern and Northcentral part of the country. He also won in the Northwestern part of the country, and in Borno State from where Shetima Kashim, his running mate, comes.

The PDP which had splintered into Labour, NNPP and what was left of the old PDP could have won the presidential election if it had remained united and ran under a single flag! How is winning the election against this disunited rabble the fault of Tinubu?

I personally think this election has been fair to all. How can the same election that senators and members of House of Representatives from all the parties have been celebrating in Abuja and feverishly struggling for legislative positions turn round to have been defective on account of the presidential poll using the same single sheet of ballot paper?

The whole brouhaha is just too ridiculous. What worries me is the attitude of Obi and his supporters openly calling for cancellation of the entire election or is it just the presidential election? Some are even calling for a military putsch or what they call “interim government.”  Some are openly calling for the end of the country if Bola Ahmed Tinubu is sworn in on May 29th of 2023. I would have dismissed these vituperations but for the fact they are coming from very senior ethnic jingoists who have served at the higher echelons of the federal government just because their ethnic cohorts lost elections which on all grounds of probability they could not have won.

Issuing threats of planned disruptions of the constitutional process is not the way forward. What this election and its aftermath has taught many of us is that we are probably not ready to abide with democratic practices and principles guiding electoral competition. The second lesson I think we should all learn is that, we as a people, are still the same as Chief Obafemi Awolowo described us in his 1947 book with the title of “PATH TO NIGERIAN FREEDOM “that there are no Nigerians as there are French or Germans and that Nigeria is “a geographical expression. “

As I write, the IPOB,” Indigenous people of Biafra,” is militarily challenging the government of Nigeria for its own place in the sun. There are similar voices for some kind of secession or loosening of ties and if we ignore these demands we ignore them at our political peril. The fissiparous tendencies in this country have always been here. What we need to do is to find practical constitutional grundnorm to accommodate each other.

The Tinubu government early in its term must call for a constitutional conference to discuss the issues of federalism and particularly fiscal arrangements to guarantee resources ownership while ensuring that each state or group of states contribute to the running of a loose federation. Let us design a system where political activities and competition will be state located and domiciled and collective and cooperative governance will be at the centre while states enjoy large measures of economy and consequent development.

In the first republic, each region had its own constitution, independent judiciary and control over the affairs of the lives of its people. We must bring that kind of system in which people will have confidence that their government will have their backs, protect their culture including their language, religion and their future group rights. This is not theory because if we do not embrace some loosening of ties we will go the way of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Pakistan, the Sudan, Ethiopia (which had Eritrea as part of it).  Even an established unitary state like Great Britain has now   accepted devolution of power to the peoples of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

We should look at thriving federations like Canada, Switzerland, the United States and Belgium which even though have not completely solved the issue of  political division, diversity and occasional threats of separation have at least successfully  stayed together.

To start with, our government must do whatever it can to control the social media to prevent them from plunging the country into ethnic war on the scale of what happened in Burundi and Rwanda.

Unfortunately, the mainstream media are beginning to source their information from social media. Unfortunately, this feeds foreign media which is then given back to us as revealed wisdom! Control of social media is therefore imperative.

Presidents and other important persons have in the past been removed from social media if their use of it has been detrimental to the maintenance of national or international peace and concord. If the use of social media by presidents and other socially and politically important persons can be controlled, there is no reason why the entire social media cannot be controlled.

I suggest this should be extended to all individuals and groups and ethnic organizations whose statements can bring untold hardship and conflicts to other peoples and themselves. We should not wait until genocidal conflicts ensue before taking actions to prevent them. There are just too many irresponsible people around who cannot control their emotions whose use of social media without control cannot be justified on the grounds of their fundamental human rights and democratic rights to express themselves. There can be no absolute rights in an explosive situation where lives and society itself are threatened. There must be a state of people living in peace before they can enjoy democracy!

In some western countries like Canada, USA and Britain and the European Union, old people go on the trams, underground trains, urban buses and other mass movement machines free of charge. It is believed after working in their youth for the state, they deserve freedom on urban transportation grid and because of their puny material resources, the only thing the state can do for them is to grant them freedom of movement while still alive.

Unfortunately they do not extend these rights to old people from other countries. This is understandable because the foreign visitors did not contribute to the material basis covering the free rides on public transportation packages. It is generally believed that nothing is free under the sun.

We cannot be comparing what happens in social welfare  countries to our country which operates on crude capitalistic scheme where  one works until he can no longer work and he is expected to go home and die or be taken care of by one’s children if they happen to work. This is at the root of primitive economy practised in our land before and after the western capitalist scheme landed on us in our country. This is the basis of the corrupt system we run in our country.  While one is still at work, the tendency is to prepare feverishly for the future. All systems go, including corruptly manipulating the system for personal aggrandisement! Those who are honest unfortunately face a bleak future. To stop old people being  thrown at the  mercy of their children, we have to put in place, a social welfare scheme that will obviate the personal tragedy of old people when they retire not just from universities and the  bureaucracies but also the farms and the trades from which they have maintained and sustained the country all these years.

When as a result of hunger leading to delirium these people begin to say things about the number of people they have killed and in some of our villages, they are sometimes beaten or stoned to death as wizards and witches! There is a long way to go to solve the problem of not just the youth but the elderly people in this country. The holy books recognise that we will always have the poor among us.  This is why we must put in place pro-poor policies in our development plans. No country has been able to eliminate poverty in their countries. The Soviet Union failed in this regard and China is failing despite the long strides in its economic development.

It is these observations that lead me to comment on the practice in GTB, a banking group that gives preference to elderly people in their banking service. If you queue up in front of their banks, their officers would come round and create a fast lane for elders. A female friend of mine told me how she usually went to the bank with her grey hair combed out so that she would not be mistaken for a young person and that this technique usually worked to her satisfaction! When she told me about this, I told her that she was not the only one benefitting from this exposure of her grey hair. I told her about my experience. Usually I wear traditional outfits on Friday and now whenever I go to the bank, I leave my hair solidly flying in the air with all its grey majesty.

I have always noted that our professor emeritus and the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka leaves his hair in all its majestic luxuriance so that he can attract the attention due to him as a wise old man. I feel sorry for old people who paint their hair black apparently to shield themselves from being regarded as old people. My children actually advised me to let down my old grey hair to attract sympathy from officialdom particularly the police and other such uniformed personnel of government who when they are in uniform they lose all human feelings. The only problem is that if I want to dress correctly, I have to dress with a full cap on my head which may hide my grey old hair. It is left for my readers to dress properly and be humiliated while struggling with our grandchildren on queues in front of banks. Sometimes when one is being given priority attention I sometimes hear snide remarks like “these are the old people who got us to where we are today” or statements like “these old people are even stronger than us the younger people”. One must close one’s ears to all these remarks which if we look at it critically, the young people are correct. Because of these snide remarks, I hesitate going to the banks in order to escape from these wicked remarks which are actually true. Come to think about it: the military that dominated the politics of Nigeria from 1966 to 1999 and I belong to the same generation. Even though I was not personally responsible for ruining the country, I was vicariously responsible because of the generational responsibility. The military held a gun to our heads and only an intrepid daredevil person like Ganiyu Fawehinmi dared challenge them.

Some of us survived the crude cashless economy imposed on us and we made do with handouts like mendicants of medieval Europe. Some copied those in Western Europe and America where poor people go to what is called soup kitchen to eat. The Pentecostal churches were very adept at doing this every Sunday by collectively providing food for poor people who couldn’t access their money in the banks. In my own case, I found solace in our Pentecostal churches which allowed older people to issue cheques in lieu of cash collected as offerings. Nigerians are survivalists and we all tried to survive one way or the other. Of course some people died unfortunately but many others survived. Towards the end of our national agony, I began to get used to the fact that we really don’t need to carry wards of Naira around. Some have even said the cashless economy has led to reduction of crime particularly kidnapping and demanding for millions in ransoms. I don’t have any verifiable data to say whether this is true or not. But I remember telling some beggars that I don’t have money to give them and to my pleasant surprise they understood the situation and some even cursed Emefiele for denying them their living allowances coming from softies like me. 

Now that we seem to have gone back to spending the old stinking Naira, I am told that every time you touch the old Naira, one has to sanitise his or her hands. We just must thank God that the trauma of suddenly becoming poor because of government policy is gone and I hope we will never go through this ordeal again. It was difficult explaining what was happening to us to our folks abroad who just could not imagine what befell us in Nigeria. Even if one is not rich we should not have been reduced to beggary. Some of our children not knowing what to do asked if they could send money to us at home and the answer was No because there was nothing to do with such largess and the dollar was not a legal tender in Nigeria!

Recently the Chinese government brokered a diplomatic rapprochement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran after two years of secret negotiations. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which used to be seen as the United States satellite in the Middle East has changed since the rise of 37-year old Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS) as effective leader even though his 87-year old father Salman Bin Abudulaziz Al Saud is king. The king is the 7th of the princes born to the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz Al Saud.

The kingdom is an absolute monarchy where the king exercises power supported by brothers and princes numbering over 2000 of them. In effect, it will not be too wrong to say the princes constitute the “royal party “ruling the country according to the Holy Koran embracing the  Qadriyyah tariqa  manifesting the Wahabi Islamic  conservative rule on strict adherence to the Koran and the Hadith. The kingdom would not have been as significant as it is but for the fact that it is sitting on what can be called an ocean of crude petroleum which the world needs. The kingdom has also been fortunate that it has had Western-trained and knowledgeable technocrats who have been able to develop the country using its huge resources despite the fact that some of its innumerable princes have wasted huge chunks of its wealth in lavish living. But it has at the same time bought into productive companies in the West so that even if the oil wells were to dry up, its future is reasonably settled. On top of this oil wealth, the country is home and origin of Islam. The religion enjoins any adherent of Islam to go on the hajj at least once in a life time if he or she can afford it. Muslims have been going to Mecca and  Medina since the advent of the religion in the seventh century (AD 610) our people in Nigeria have been going on the hajj on foot, donkeys and horses as far back as the ninth century particularly from Kenem- Borno.  This accounts for the so-called large number of Fellata in the Sudan.

The hajj, one of the pillars of Islam has brought considerable wealth to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia because millions of Muslims have visited on holy pilgrimage and spent billions of dollars over the years. Saudi Arabia may not have power but has considerable influence because of its position as the origin and the practice of Islam. It is however several years behind Iran in technological development.

Iran on the other hand is large Muslim country of over 80 million people with a rich history of wielding power in medieval Islam in the region even having Saudi Arabia which did not exist then under the Persian (Iran) suzerainty. Iran also possesses vast amount of oil and highly educated people.  It is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power. It practices a rather militant kind of Islam with a hierarchical clergy.  Its brand of Islam is known as SHI’ISM as distinct from the orthodox SUNNI tradition practiced in Saudi Arabia and in most part of the Islamic world like Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Bangladesh, Egypt,  Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Sudan etc. Having said this, it is also important to note that Shi’ism is followed by millions of people in countries that are officially Sunni. I have it on solid authority that the number of Shiites is grossly underestimated worldwide.  Shia Islam originated as a response to questions of Islamic religious leadership which became manifest as early as the death of Prophet Muhammad (PBH) in 632AD. The issues involved not only whom to appoint as successor to the prophet, but also what attributes a true successor should have.

The place known today as Iran was serially ruled by Persian emperors and kings the last of them was Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was overthrown by the dreamy, ascetic Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 and since then the Iranian republic has been under the iron grip of the Muslim Mullahs of Iran headed by the grand Ayatollah.

The two countries of Iran and Saudi Arabia have largely freed themselves from the western hold of their oil resources. In the case of Iran, the tie has been severely cut while Saudi Arabia has remained within the economic and military sphere of the United States perhaps until now. The US maintains a military base in Saudi Arabia and still looks after the military security of the kingdom and supplies and trains thousands of young Saudi citizens in maintaining its military industrial complex. It seems the young Crown Prince Muhammad Salman wants to rule the kingdom with no deference to the United States.

President Donald J. Trump had during his presidency under the rubric of bringing together all the children of Abraham (Ibrahim) got Israel recognised and accepted by the UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar, and was hoping that he could persuade Saudi Arabia to exchange diplomatic relations with Israel thus isolating Iran in the Middle East since Morocco in North Africa and the Sudan were already amenable to restoring ties with Israel. Saudi Arabia already permits Israeli planes overflight rights in Saudi Arabian space and many had thought it was just a matter of time before Saudi Arabia and Israel would have diplomatic ties thus opening up world-wide Islamic recognition of Israel without solving the question of occupation of Palestine. Since Iran was an enemy of Israel because of the threat of a nuclear armed Iran, and Iran was also perceived as an enemy of Saudi Arabia, the calculation then was that the Saudis would gravitate towards Israel but alas, what happened took everybody by surprise.

This is the background of the sudden Iran-Saudi diplomatic tie. The Americans claim they knew about the negotiations because Saudi Arabia kept them in the know of it. However the fact that it was the Chinese that brokered it shows the leverage of China in the Middle East.  Many commentators have glibly said the Chinese presence and influence is a loss for the United States. I do not see it that way because of the problem of the Muslim people in Xinjiang is likely to bedevil the relations between China and the principal Muslim countries in the Middle East. Iran and the Saudis have for now said nothing about what the Chinese should do for the millions of the Muslim Uyghurs in Chinese north-western province of Xinjiang. I also doubt whether the Saudis have the stomach for the atheistic tendencies in communist China and Iran’s alliance with Russia to which it supplies drones in its war against Ukraine. I am not sure Saudi Arabia is internally strong to withstand subversion from within aided by hostile western powers if it moves too much into the Chinese and Russian orbit.

One positive thing that may come out of the Iran-Saudi rapprochement is the possible winding down of the war in Yemen in which the Saudis are supporting the government while Iran is arming and supporting the Houthis. Iran may also allow peaceful political settlement in Iraq between the majority Shiites and the previously dominant and ruling Sunni left over of the Sadam Hussein.  In Lebanon, Iran would continue to support the so-called party of God -Hizballah, a Shia party, led by Hassan Nasrallah while Saudi Arabia will not abandon the Sunni faction in that unfortunate country.

The fate of Syria where Shite factions are dominating the Sunni majority may not easily be settled without Israeli acquiescence. For a considerable time to come, Israel will remain a formidable factor in the Middle East of course supported by the long arm of American military might despite whatever alignment is inspired by China in the Middle East. Nothing has really changed in the position of the Middle East because just like before, it remains a tinder box.