Category: Jide Osuntokun

Ambassador Blessing Akporode Clark, CON, of the Bekederemo-Fuludu-Clark family of Kiagbodo town in the Burutu LGA of Delta State joined the saints triumphant on the 26th of July, 2022. He was 92.

Ambassador Clark was educated like most members of his distinguished family at Government College, Ughelli, in the then Western Region. After his secondary education, the young Clark went to the University College, Ibadan, reading the general arts degree.

On graduation, he joined the Administrative service of western Nigeria where he honed his skill in civil service laws, etiquette, integrity, honesty and probity. It was from there that he transferred to the Foreign Service on the eve of independence as one of the pioneers of Nigeria’s diplomatic service. He worked briefly in the office of the Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who for some time was his own foreign minister before relinquishing the post to Jaja Wachukwu.

At several times in his diplomatic service, he served as a junior diplomat in India, the United Kingdom, and with Chief Simeon Adebo in the embassy of Nigeria to the United Nations. He was one of those who drafted the protocols of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

Years later, he was appointed Ambassador to Ethiopia and Permanent Representative to the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa. Thus began his trajectory in multilateral diplomacy. He served as Ambassador to Switzerland and Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations Office on Disarmament (UNODA) in Geneva.

He crowned his diplomatic service by being appointed as Nigeria’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. From there he joined the United Nations secretariat and served there for a decade. He headed the United Nations Institute for Namibia in Lusaka in the 1980s. He was in charge of the electoral process under the distinguished Finnish diplomat and later President of Finland (1994-2000) Martin Oiva kalevi Ahtisaari who brought Namibia to sovereign independence on February 9, 1990 after a century of subjugation, first under brutal German colonialism, and from 1919 under South Africa’s no less oppressive and racist administration under the League of Nations Mandate, which the United Nations inherited in 1945.

Without the administrative sagacity of Ambassador Clark, the process for democratic election paving the way for the independence of Namibia would have failed because of western powers’ subversion and racist South Africa’s hostility to the entire process. Ambassador Clark, from his service as Nigeria’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and as a member of the staff of the United Nations itself, was one of the several personalities that played significant roles in the struggle against racism in Southern Africa, and for the eventual victory over institutionalised racism and settler domination in South Africa and Southern Africa as a whole. He was also a leading expert in disarmament.

I got to know Ambassador Clark very well when I served with him from 1999 to 2015 in the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations headed by the distinguished Chief Emeka Anyaoku.  It should be mentioned that we all served pro bono against the advice of the then president of the Nigerian Senate .This was a small group of about six or seven men and a lady that met quarterly with the president to review Nigeria’s role in the world and also submitted a written memorandum every time it met with the president.

The body was set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo who is known for his thoroughness in the affairs of state of Nigeria. What usually struck me was the meticulous approach of Ambassador Clark in the preparation of our record, whether the minutes or the memorandum. I hope those records are kept for posterity so that the future generations can see the care some people took in steering the ship of state in the right direction.

Ambassador Clark was a patriot who was unbending in the defence of the national interests. I remember a case in which the Council was asked to respond to the USA‘s request to locate the USA Africa Command in any willing African state. Ambassador Clark and his friend Chief Emeka Anyaoku were vociferous in rejecting any consideration of Nigeria as a possible location on two grounds of defence of our sovereign independence, and secondly on the grounds that we should not put Nigeria in a situation where we become the enemy of America’s numerous enemies.

I personally saw it differently.  My position was that in an increasingly dangerous world Nigeria may need a patron defender and that there was no absolute independence in the modern world, citing the example of American forces all over Western Europe, in Germany, Belgium, Britain, and now in the former countries of Eastern Europe. My second point was that my experience as Ambassador to Germany showed me the tremendous economic benefits of American forces in Germany and also in South Korea and Japan in terms of technological transfer and transportation and physical architecture of those countries.

I, of course, deferred to my senior colleagues on these issues. Now with our countries overrun by terrorists, I wonder if we chose the best option. In the classical academic way of looking at these things it can also be argued that American forces may not have made any difference in our security situation if the local Nigeria’s military was not ready to save their country.

Ambassador Clark, in my estimation, remains an example of a patriot who served for the benefit of his country. Throughout our service at the Presidential Council on International Relations, we served pro bono without any pecuniary benefits whatsoever. Even when our chairman tried very hard to get us plots of land in the FCTA, the then minister Bala Muhammad dodged and dodged our chairman but secretly gave a plot of land to a member from the north who told me she already had a plot.

Such things never bothered Ambassador Clark who felt vanity upon vanity was all vanity. He was a jolly good person to work with, and despite our age differences he remained my friend sharing with me many stories of his life including his health problems and his Christian struggle of faith.

He spoke to me in March or so asking me to come round for a visit and to help him for placement of a child in a clerical institution to train as a pastor. I am happy to have acceded to his request.

For many years, he helped to run the Yakubu Gowon Centre in Abuja, rescuing it from previous thieving characteristics of Nigerian Non-Governmental Organisations. His knowledge of African diplomacy and experience in India, Egypt and Morocco would form a volume if one were to want to document this.

I got one of my post-graduate students at Redeemer‘s University Ede to write a master’s thesis on Ambassador Clark. Professor John Pepper Clark wondered why his brother did not deserve a doctoral dissertational assessment, and I replied that my department at the university then was only approved for master’s degrees. The young man did a fine job which requires elucidation and further research. I hope the Clark family will see this academic exercise published as a book for future young Nigerians to learn from.

Ambassador Clark has run a glorious race of life and he now awaits the crown of glory.

I woke up on July 25 to be bombarded with emails and WhatsApp messages telling me the good news of a young Nigerian lady, 25 year old Oluwatobi Amusan breaking the world record in 100 meters women hurdles. This was at the world athletics competition in Portland Oregon, United States. I was immediately infected with the virus of excitement to use a medical idiom. Most of the messages came from my friends in the universities, my old secondary school mates and my family. Surprisingly no messages came from my young friends and former students who always solicited my opinion on budding issues of national importance, perhaps they felt what’s the excitement about? We old people are hankering after when our nation was great but the young ones blame us for our present predicament. This Tobi Amusan’s good news came just about the same time when terrorists were threatening to kidnap our president, Muhammadu Buhari and Nasir el Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State. As a citizen, I was infuriated and angry about the verbal humiliation of our president. With the recent terrorists’ invasion and capture of the Kuje correctional centre in the Federal Capital Territory ( FCT) and the hurried closure of schools in Abuja and security alert in Abuja and Lagos  recently to forestall an imminent countrywide operation of terrorists, I felt really worried about the future of my country, Nigeria.

The questions that came to my mind is why the failure of security architecture in the country despite the huge amount annually budgeted for the military, police and the Department of State Security and other security organizations in Nigeria. Are these bodies subverted from within? Could it be a case of wrong or inadequate personnel? Is it a case of inadequate modern equipment? Or is it a case of lack of morale and mobilization? Whatever it is, it seems we are getting to a point where something has to give. If we can’t sort out our internal security problems, maybe we should, without shame, call on our friends in other parts of the continent or our trading partners outside the continent for assistance. Or if the situation is caused by internal political structure, perhaps it is time to look at this and do something about it. Some have been preaching secessionist options but I honestly don’t think this is the way to go. There is security in numbers!

The consequences of the breakup of the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and nearer home, Ethiopia are not too good to recommend the option. There is no guarantee that this can be done without violence as the relations among the successor states of the dissolved political associations and country cited above have shown. There is no doubt that there are tremendous advantages for Nigerians to remain together under the big umbrella of the most populous country and the biggest economy in Africa if only we can solve our security problems. This is why it is desirable for us to appreciate what we have and to work to preserve it. Our size also attracts hostility and envy to us from Africa and beyond and we must factor this into our politics, ethnic relations and the desire for moderation in our political and economic debates and management of complex issues instead of going for broke all the time we have problems.

Now back to Tobi Amusan putting smiles on our faces. I rejoice with this young lady and the attraction she has brought to Nigeria confirms the well-known fact about the   effectiveness of what is generally referred to as cultural diplomacy. Culture broadly defined will include sports, literature, movies and dramatic arts, cultural artifacts, fashion and all tangible and intangible things that can promote the interest of state by attracting  to it positive attention of the international community. Cultural diplomacy is relatively cheap. This is unlike the traditional diplomacy conducted by governments through the heads of state, their foreign ministries and diplomatic missions and other relevant ministries like defence and finance and in our own case in Nigeria, the ministry responsible for our hydrocarbons. Traditional diplomacy is conservative, routine in nature with developed languages and norms and sometimes not fit for urgency and requirements of the moment. Cultural diplomacy on the other hand is effusive and expressive and instant in operations and results. This is why many countries invest in sports as a way of building respect for one’s country. But for the ping pong tournament between China and the USA in 1972, there would have been no rapprochement between President Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong and restoration of ties between the USA and the Peoples Republic of China. The point of the effectiveness of cultural diplomacy needs to be made so that our sportsmen and women should be treated like cultural diplomats and be accorded better training and funding and respect and recognition necessary for the effective performance of their duties. We should not wait for the solitary performance and achievements of individual sports men and women before according them respect.

When Tobi Amusan brought joy to all of us, some of us cried with the girl when she started shedding tears of joy and perhaps of sorrows on the podium when our national anthem was played. The sorrow was about what has become the present and future of our country. Those of us old enough agree that our past as a country was much better than this even if not totally glorious. In1961, our prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was given the privilege and opportunity to address the United States Congress in Washington DC. No African president or prime minister has been given that privilege since that time. Rather we have gone down the slippery slope of irrelevance.

Our hope lies in our youth and we should give them the chance and opportunities to play positive roles in our political, economic and cultural lives. We should not tie their legs and hands by the ropes of religion, ethnicity and mediocrity. Tobi  Amusan has proved that without the humbug of national irrational restrictions, a Nigerian citizen can outperform their contemporaries in any part of the world. The people of Ijebu Ode have come forward to claim that Tobi Amusan belongs to them. Yes they are right. She was sired there but she ran for Nigeria and we are justifiably proud of her as J.F. Kennedy said “success has several fathers, failure is an orphan” so it is with the great Tobi and let us hope her achievements will unleash the energy of other young Nigerians to perform outstandingly in their various areas of human endeavors.

We can’t all be sportsmen and women; whatever talent God has deposited in you as young people should be exploited to the limit. We of course know that there are thousands of unsung heroes of young and old Nigerians in academia, business and technology. What is missing is our ability to apply our intellectual intensity in the areas of governance in our country.

On July 20, the flamboyant and controversial British Prime minister, Boris Johnson, bowed out of the House of Commons (parliament) after prime minister’s traditional question time. This followed personal and policy scandals over the past three years as prime minister and over the last decades of unconventional social life involving series of sexual alliances and fathering of a couple of children out of wedlock. Beginning from holding parties at his official residence at 10 Downing Street which also functions as office of the prime minister and ending at the appointment of a sex offender into parliamentary office and denying having knowledge of the man’s past even though he had been briefed.  This was after more than 40 allegations of sexual abuses and harassment of people including staffers of parliament by members of the Conservative Party, the prime minister’s party. He was also accused of regularly lying to parliament and even giving peerage to a Russian emigré, one Lebedev living in London whose family allegedly had ties with the Russian KGB, the spy organization of the old Soviet Union. This incident led to insinuations about being connected to the Russian secret service which is obviously an exaggeration.

Boris Johnson has an interesting pedigree. His great grandfather Ali Kemal was born a Turk and a Muslim in Constantinople (Istanbul). His grandfather was Wilfred Johnson, Kemal Ali’s son who was born in England in 1909 and died in 1992. Boris Johnson’s grandfather was a writer and had citizenship of both France and Great Britain. Johnson’s father, Stanley Johnson born in 1940 of an Anglo-French parentage is a writer. Apart from being a writer, Stanley Johnson was a politician and journalist who is very much alive and was working in New York when Boris Johnson was born 58 years ago. This makes Boris Johnson an American like his hero Winston Churchill, Britain’s war-time hero whose mother, Jennie Jerome was an American citizen. To use a phrase of Wole Soyinka in the 1960s, Boris Johnson is a “miserable mimic” of Winston Churchill. At birth he was named Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson apparently because of his father’s fascination for French culture. Boris Johnson was well prepared for life. He was sent to Eton for his secondary education by his parents and later went to Balliol College Oxford and graduated with a degree in classics.  In Oxford, he was known for riotous living but this did not prevent him being elected president of the Oxford union in 1986.  After graduation, he became the Brussels correspondent of and later political columnist for The Daily Telegraph and was editor of the Spectator magazine from 1999 to 2005.

Before becoming the leader of the Conservative Party in 2019, he previously served as  Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2016 to 2018 in the Theresa May’s administration and had previously served as mayor of London from 2008 to 2016.  He was a colorful and charismatic mayor of London and made a rather dour position attractive and noticeable by his jokes and grassroots and streets wise people oriented administrative style. He had been a member of parliament for Uxbridge South Ruislip  since 2015 and previously for Henley from 2001 to 2008 .  He became leader of the Conservative party when without apparent conviction but with opportunistic calculations led a rebellion against Theresa May, the second female prime minister of Great Britain after Margaret Thatcher. Theresa May was then negotiating with the European Union for control of Immigration among other things to give Britain more control of its laws and finances in a Europe  that was tending towards federalist union under the leadership of France and Germany. The rising popularity of English nationalism led by Nigel Paul  Farage  who formed  the UK Independent Party drove the Conservative Party to right wing nationalist positions which made Prime Minister May’s efforts at reaching a modus vivendi with Europe more and more arduous. It was this situation that Boris Johnson exploited to lead a revolt against Theresa May who called a snap parliamentary election but came out worse than she was before the election. Johnson deceived the British public that he would withdraw Britain from Europe and save the British exchequer billions of pounds which he would pump into the National Health Service (NHS). Johnson on edging out Theresa May out of 10 Downing Street called a snap election with the promise of Brexit and won a landslide majority with over 40 seats in parliament – something that has not happened since Margaret Thatcher’s time. Having won, he has found the problem of totally extricating Britain from Europe more difficult than he bargained for especially over the border problem of Northern Ireland with the European Union member state of the Republic of Ireland. After three years of his prime ministership, the northern Irish  border with the Republic of Ireland has remained problematic over how a province of Britain can maintain a seamless border with the EU in Ireland.

Boris Johnson has also been unlucky to have to deal with the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine. He was first dismissive of the Covid-19 virus which led to the death of thousands of mostly elderly people before

The election in Osun State has been lost by Governor Gboyega Oyetola and won by the candidate of the PDP Nurudeen ‘Jackson’  Ademola Adeleke .This is a replay of the contest of 2018 which Governor Oyetola won under controversial circumstances leading to legal challenges all the way to the Supreme Court which finally decided in favour of Oyetola. One hopes that Oyetola will accept his defeat like a gentleman that he is and congratulate Adeleke for his victory.

Adeleke polled 403,371 votes to Gboyega Oyetola’s 375027 votes. The two candidates are separated by about 28,000 votes which are not that many and which means the state is divided down the line and Adeleke must govern in such a way as to placate the losing side if he is to have peace in the state. The incoming governor won in 17 LGAS and surprisingly in Ila LGA, the home of the founding chairman of the APC Chief Bisi Akande while the defeated APC governor won in 13 LGAS. Adeleke defeated the incumbent governor not surprisingly in the state capital which is contiguous to Adeleke’s hometown of Ede.

Adeleke’s victory can be explained in many ways. Oyetola as governor by all indications performed excellently, paying salaries and pensions when due and also managing to provide physical infrastructure such as roads and bridges in the state and generally maintaining law and order. What he did not do was sharing money to fellow party men and women as demanded by some party leaders who claimed in the Nigerian fashion that they brought him to power. By training, Oyetola is an accountant and an insurance practitioner and he brought his professional background to bear on husbanding the resources of a state which in the best of times has never been rich and whose internally generated revenue has been dismal and poor. The agricultural basis of states like Ekiti and Ondo and the industrial and commercial revenues of states like Lagos and Ogun states are absent in Osun State. The state does not also have the tax revenue base of its sister state of Oyo. I say all this to moderate the expectations and to avoid disillusionment of the people of Osun State no matter who is governor.

I was in Osun State during the governorship of Abdulrauf Aregbesola. He was an ambitious governor who over-borrowed to develop the state’s infrastructure particularly the roads, airport and fantastic schools he built all over the state. By the time deductions were made from the states normal financial allocation coming from the federal government to amortise the loans he borrowed from banks, there was little left to pay teachers and bureaucrats in the state. This angered the workers to no end. The result of which was open rebellion including the judiciary which was ordinarily expected to be reticent. Aregbesola then espoused some crude socialism in which he paid lower class workers while doling out fractions of the salaries of higher level officers in the civil and teaching services. He also took over private missions schools and imposed the wearing of hijab on Muslim girls in all the schools in the state. He even changed the Gregorian calendar to Islamic calendar to please the Muslim population of the state while angering the Christian community which founded most of the schools the state took over. He was not done yet; even with all these changes until he embraced some poorly digested traditional beliefs on those who did not follow the Abrahamic traditions of Christianity and Islam. Aregbesola left a legacy of good school buildings but also bitterness in the unpaid salaries and pensions and the seizure of missions’ schools and what people felt was his covert Islamisation of the state.

Even though Oyetola was Aregbesola’s chief of staff, Oyetola responded to the yearnings of the people by totally abandoning Aregbesola’s policies and returned all the schools to their original owners. Naturally Aregbesola felt betrayed and he locked horns with Oyetola and was determined to deprive Oyetola a second term as governor of the state. This was where Aregbesola ran into conflict with the leader of his party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and threw caution to the wind in his invectives on Tinubu his benefactor. The division in the Osun APC opened the door for Adeleke. We must grant Adeleke the fact of the existence of his family’s tentacles in Ede and the state. Ademola Adeleke’s father was a UPN senator during the second republic.Their father married an Igbo woman turned Christian evangelist and allowed his children to practice the Christian religion of their mother or his own Islamic religion. This unique religious liberalism of their father set him apart from Muslim leaders of his time. Ademola Adeleke’s brother, Alhaji  Isiaka Adeleke was a governor of the state in the third republic. Another brother, Pastor Deji Adeleke the founder and president of Adeleke University has invested billions into building  in Ede, one of the best universities in Nigeria judging from its excellent buildings, laboratories and library. The second generation of the Adelekes like Davido and another rising singing sensation have made their contribution to the fortunes of the Adelekes. They were therefore not to be easily outspent. One had thought the emergence of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as APC flag bearer in the 2023 presidential election would bring some support to Oyetola as it did to the APC gubernatorial candidate in recent Ekiti election, but the brouhaha about Muslim-Muslim ticket has undermined the excitement about the Tinubu factor.

The election coming at a time of acute economic crunch, shortage of fuel, cooking gas, and hunger in the land presents a poisoned chalice to all APC candidates at state, federal and presidential levels. President Buhari’s less than sterling performance in the last seven years has become a stumbling block to members of his party. The apparent nonchalant attitude by the president to the electoral fortunes and future of the party does not bode well for members of the party running for electoral offices. The sectionalism, religious  and ethnic parochialism, and the collapse of the economy with the Naira reduced to a useless coloured paper and above all the rampant insecurity which are hallmarks of the federal administration under the APC are not good campaign slogans and whoever is an APC candidate must not run as a follower of Buhari but must distance himself from the non-performing regime at the federal level. All may not be lost if the president can take more interest in the future of the party that brought him to power and do what all incumbent governments do all over the world by ameliorating the conditions of the people in an election year. The APC may yet get lucky if the Russian war in Ukraine winds down, thus ending the high cost of wheat, vegetable oils stored in the ports of Ukraine and imported gas and oil to European refineries where we buy petrol and diesel in the absence of local production.

For three days from first to fourth of July, I was in Atlanta, Georgia, United States living through the wild jubilations marked with parades and fireworks to celebrate America’s national day especially on the 3rd and 4th of July. I had lived in the United States before precisely between 1979 and 1982 and I don’t remember witnessing these kinds of wild jubilation and celebrations. Perhaps those times were not propitious or auspicious because the country was facing challenges especially abroad. The three years of my stay coincided with the Jimmy Carter years (January 20, 1977 – January 20, 1981) when the entire 50 members of the diplomatic mission of the United States in Tehran were captured by Iranian revolutionaries after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. The young revolutionaries were inspired by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and they seized the American diplomatic mission and locked up its diplomats from November 4, 1979 finally releasing them  on January 20, 1981.

The celebration this time seems to be perhaps deliberately to emphasise that despite whatever problems America may have, it is still the most powerful country in the world. The prosperity of America is based on its power both soft and hard power and the fact that it was on the winning side after the Second World War in which its national currency became the reserve currency of the world. America’s power is further rooted in its technological expertise, innovation and productive energy of its people. In spite of all this, the American democratic system is broken. There is a disconnect between the democratic leadership of the country and the desires of the people.

Take for example the epidemic violence of mass shooting and the apparent lack of safety, freedom and expectation of long life of the people and the cry of the people to take away guns fit for warfare from its citizens and the opposition to meaningful gun control of the leadership of Congress dancing to the tune of the National Rifle Association (NRA). The Senate, the powerful upper house in the United States, is beholden to the NRA which has some of its leading members in its pockets. From polls taken recently, 85% of Americans want comprehensive gun control and a review of the so-called Second Amendment to the United States constitution that says citizens have rights to carry guns concealed or openly for self-protection and the protection of the republic. This was a privilege that people had at the initial stage of constitutional development when the security institutions were inchoate and any reasonable person would think this kind of rights should now be surrendered to the state in the overall security of the entire United States.

But the political leadership especially amongst the ranks of the Republican Party which through gerrymandering and denial of votes to the poor and the minorities dominate the Senate of the Congress without whose control, no legislation can become law. Because of this manipulation, sometimes the winner of the presidential elections especially when they are Republicans run away with victory with less votes than the loser because of the convoluted electoral college which determines the outcome of presidential elections rather than the  majority votes of the people. Over time this has allowed the Republicans to pack the judiciary especially the Supreme Court of the United States. This has led to the Supreme Court coming out with decisions on gun control, abortion, voting rights,  right to equal education  and affirmative action  that are favourable to the ways and thinking of the Republican Party.

There is therefore a situation in which laws and actions of the United States do not represent the wish of the majority and this makes people mad and very unhappy as witnessed by the general anger of the citizenry that cannot understand the powerlessness of the government with a broken security situation in which ordinary citizens can be shot for no reason by any deranged or angry individual. This is a failure of democracy because this kind of individual freedom to kill others will not be tolerated in the so-called authoritarian states. One doesn’t hear people going berserk and gunning down people celebrating national holidays or little children and their teachers in school being killed as happens all the time in the United States day in day out. While discussing this issue with people, there seems to be a unanimous consensus that perhaps America needs a second revolution to rewrite the constitution.

In the case of Nigeria where it seems people think periodic election is the same thing as democracy, but policies that have widespread support are left in abeyance by government. For example it seems there is support for restructuring of the country so as to encourage productivity and production instead of every state waiting and depending on distributable commission from oil sales. In my lifetime, I have seen states revenue move away from internally generated revenue (IGR) based on agricultural production to over dependence on the combustible commission on hydrocarbons sales. This of course is unsustainable more so with oil revenue over a long time being unreliable. Secondly, the most serious problem facing the country is insecurity. The governors’ forum representing the majority of the states in the country met and agreed that the present anomalous status of governors being the chief security officers of their state without control of the organised means of violence is untenable. A situation where the so-called chief state security officers have to beg federal commissioners of police controlled by the federal government for the security of their states does not make sense. The argument is that if states’ police controlled by the states are allowed, governors could use them against opposition. The same argument can also be made against the present system where the federal police is controlled by the president. What makes the president better controller of the federal police as against the governor controlling its own police for internal security? It is known all over the world that in federations whether one is talking about the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Australia, the Russian federation and India, police is organised on federal, regional, local, city and in Canada and the United States universities and other tertiary institutions even have rights to raise police forces.

The reason for this is based on the fact that local police are closer to the people and would have more access to local intelligence and in the case of Nigeria would speak the same language. The reasons for local policing are so self-evident and obvious that the federal government which has lost control of the security situation should have jumped at a suggestion that the whole country has been making. There is total disconnect between the federal government and the people of Nigeria.

The recent attack on an advance security team of the president in Duntsima on the way to Daura the president’s home town in readiness for Sallah (Eid el Adha) shows clearly the breakdown of law and order in the country. The blatant disregard for security of the country is epitomised by the invasion of Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja and release of hundreds of terrorists there shows total absence of security even in the federal capital territory. Democracy has obviously failed in Nigeria because it has failed to guarantee the security of the lives and property of the people and without security there is no chance for physical and economic development.

The kind of security collapse in Nigeria would not happen in places like Egypt, Rwanda, and neighbouring countries like the Cameroons and Benin that are not poster countries for democracy. If democracy is to be attractive, it must respond rapidly to the people’s reasonable request and expectations or else a dictatorship that guarantees law and order will be vastly preferable.

In the last NATO meeting of June 29-30 held in Madrid, Spain attended by all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand as observers, important decisions that seem to change the strategic posture of the alliance were taken. First of all, Turkey seemed to have been pressured to lift its blocking of Sweden and Finland from joining the alliance on the spurious grounds that the two countries harboured members of the militant Turkish Kurdistan Party. Turkey before the Madrid conference was being accused of being a sleeper cell for Russia in the alliance.

In the Madrid Summit Declaration issued on June 29, the following points were highlighted. The fact of a land war in Europe and its security implications were pointed out as calling into question the security of member states of the alliance. Since the coming of the nuclear age in 1945, the strategy of deterrence in the sense that a war between the two nuclear armed camps of NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries was inconceivable was the prevailing doctrine. Even with the collapse of the USSR in 1994 and the recent re-emergence of nationalist Russia, the doctrine of deterrence remained until now when it is now considered not strong enough in a situation where Russia is prepared to wage a land war against her neighbour. The new NATO doctrine is encapsulated in the Madrid Declaration issued after the recent summit in Madrid, Spain. The statement reiterated the defensive nature of the alliance and that the transatlantic membership of the alliance with Canada and the United States gives the alliance a global reach and indicated that members should take with concern the Russo- Chinese growing threat to global security.  This concern with China must have been at the directive of the United States because countries like Germany and France have strong economic interests and ties with China.

The way for Swedish and Finnish accession to the NATO protocols was open and that while the process was on, NATO stands ready to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Finland and Sweden and therefore reiterated the alliance’s commitment to the Washington Treaty including Article 5 which says an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. It declared that the Madrid summit “… marks a milestone in strengthening our alliance and accelerating its adaptation”.

The summit committed itself to upholding democratic practices and support for them and the basic principles of the rule of law, individual liberty and human rights and international law which were the principles that undergirded the setting up of the United Nations. It therefore condemned the unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine its neighbour and pledged NATO’s support for the poor country just struggling to be free. President Zelensky participated in the summit via zoom.

The declaration claimed that NATO faces direct threats from terrorists but also most significantly from Russia. The threat from cyberspace was highlighted so was what it called “hybrid and other asymmetric threats and by malicious use of emerging and disruptive technologies”. The summit in a radical statement of its raison d’etre stated that it faced “… systemic competition from those including  the Peoples Republic of China, who challenge our interests, security and values and seek to undermine the rules based international order. Instability beyond our borders is also contributing to irregular migration and human trafficking”.

In view of the stated threats to its interest, the alliance endorsed a new strategic concept. This consists of deterrence and defence through strength, “management and cooperative security”. The concept also includes strengthening of its political and practical support for Ukraine through a package of delivery of “non-lethal defence equipment”.  It committed the alliance to “equip Ukraine’s cyber defences and resilience and support modernising its defence sector in its transition to strengthen long term interoperability. In the longer term, we will assist Ukraine and support efforts on its path of post war reconstruction and reforms”. The document also stated NATO’s commitment to ”its 360 degree approach, across the land, air, maritime, cyber and space domains and against all threats and challenges”.

In its new posture NATO by next year will increase troops in its eastern border with Russia from current level of 40,000 to 300,000 with all members spending a minimum of two percent of their national budgets on bringing their military at a level of military preparedness to defend any member that may be threatened by foreign adversaries. Because of its perception of strategic change in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO has decided on new measures to step up practical support for the republics of Bosnia Herzegovina, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova. NATO also welcomes increased cooperation and coordination with what it called friendly countries such as Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

Surprisingly the foreign ministers of Jordan and Mauritania were at the summit. Jordan may have some strategic importance as a friendly country in the Middle East but the significance of Mauritania in western strategic consideration is not clear except in France’s military posture in francophone areas of the Sahel.

What I find puzzling in NATO’s new posturing is the fact that it seems to see possibility of land warfare in its relations with the Russian federation. Finland’s accession to the NATO protocol would increase NATO’s border with Russia by 1300 kilometres and with this comes the possibility of border conflicts between NATO and the Russian federation which is something to be dreaded because a minor hostility on this long border could plunge the world into a thermonuclear war which in the words of President J.F. Kennedy the “the living will envy the dead”. There are significant Russian irredentist claims in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania which could in future become casus belli in a world moved by irrational nationalism. The Balkan nations that are now part of NATO have not fully resolved their old hatred which plunged the world into the First World War and a conflict say between Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina could bring NATO and the Russian Federation into conflict. Instead of NATO expanding eastwards, is there no other way Russia can be brought into the European family of nations where it has historically belonged? Putin probably represents an aberration in spite of his seeing himself as the new Peter the great. Putin indeed  justifiably lays claims of great power status for Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and historically Russia has been more than sinned against than sinned against other European countries. The emphasis on building land, air, cyber and space defences and maritime forces against identified enemies in Russia and China will elicit the same reaction from those two countries, leading to a repeat of the Cold War and military competition which the world had thought we had seen the end of with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1994.

Out of almost one million registered voters and more than 700,000 people who collected their voter cards less than 400,000 actually voted in the gubernatorial election in Ekiti state last Saturday June 18. This is a couple of thousands less than those who voted in the last election in 2018. Is this the result of voters’ apathy or fatigue or feelings that not much would change?

There was an apocryphal story about the 1993 election which Moshood Abiola won. The story was that some peasant farmers in Ekiti on the morning of the election were accosted on their way to their farms. When asked why they were going to their farms and abandoning their civic duty, they retorted that they thought there would no longer be elections after Obafemi Awolowo had died and that elections died with their favourite politician! This is not likely to be the case this time because even the rapidly declining population of farmers in Ekiti knows that there had been post-Awolowo elections in Ekiti. The decline may be explained in that many fake electors registered. This is the pattern all over Nigeria. When there is a census either for population, school enrolment, city planning, electoral roll and even for vaccinations against diseases, there are always attempts to cheat through over registration because individuals and states always think there is money to be made.

I remember a case of a northern state which returned a figure of 2.5 million children under five years when the federal government was planning enrolment of children into its UBE program. The governor of the said state felt ashamed when he was told the entire population of his state was about 3.5 million and 2.5 million of them could not be under five years! Perhaps in the next population census, the federal government should link it with tax revenue and one will be surprised that our ballyhooed population of over 200 million would come crashing down to about 100 million which I believe is more like the real and actual figure of our population. I have travelled all over this country from  Owo, Akure, Ado Ekiti, Ilesha, Oshogbo,  Lagos, Ibadan, Oyo Ogbomosho, Ilorin, Jebba, Mokwa, Kontagora, Kaduna, Zaria,  Katsina, Kano, Bauchi, Maiduguri down to Yola, Jalingo, Makurdi, Lafia, Jos, Akwanga, Keffi, Abuja, Lokoja Benin, Asaba, Onitsha, Enugu, Aba, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Calabar, Uyo,  Badagry, Abeokuta, Sokoto and so on. The point I am making is seeing is believing. We deceive ourselves by all these fabricated and inflated census figures.

Now back to the Ekiti election. It is heartening to know that Ekiti now appears to be solidly back into the progressive camp of Nigerian politics. I know that people may say there is no difference between the PDP and the APC but for whatever it’s worth, some of us would like to think the APC represents the progressive wing of Nigerian politics. There is a linear connection between the pre-independence Action Group party ( AG ) of Obafemi Awolowo  to the UPN, the SDP, the AD, the ACN and now the APC. This is arguably true but whatever it is, this is the general belief in the Southwest of Nigeria. The brief domination of Ekiti by Ayo Fayose and his party, the PDP has now been exposed as an aberration backed by presidents Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan using federal might to impose their political party on our people.

I have nothing against Fayose; he is actually a jolly good fellow. But I detest his politics of hedonistic crudity of so-called “stomach infrastructure” in which he reduced himself as governor of a state to buying roasted plantain and roasted corn and wolfing them down with palm wine with the plebeians on the streets of Ado Ekiti as a system of government. Ekiti people are too educated to allow this humiliating parody of democracy to be their contribution to the evolving Nigerian special variant of democracy. Thank God, Kayode Fayemi has shown the world who we  really are and by the current election, he has buried forever, the odious and degrading governance system that elevated gruffness and aggression rather than reason and polished discussion as the best way of ruling a people, even if they are poor.

In the 16 local governments in the state, the APC won in 15 conceding to the PDP Effon Alaaye where Bisi Kolawle the PDP flag bearer comes from. Bisi Kolawole has graciously conceded the election to Abiodun Oyebamiji, the APC candidate. This is a civilised way of doing things. Segun Oni unfortunately wants to challenge the election in a law court. This is his right but to what end? He should just accept his defeat and go home to rest after mounting a glorious challenge to the status quo. In the interest of the state, I suggest Governor Fayemi, the leader of the APC should visit Oni and make up with him. There is no doubt that Oni has a reasonably sizeable following in the state who believes he represents honour and integrity close to the attributes  for which Ekiti  people of my generation were famous for. Even though Segun Oni has moved from PDP to APC and now to SDP, he should settle down and remain in a party to which his people are ideologically inclined to and certainly it will not be the PDP judging from their political antecedent.

It is now left for me to congratulate the newly elected governor who will be sworn in come October. One hopes he will concentrate on whatever his predecessor has not been able to finish in terms of infrastructure. I pray that in the last year of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, the Ado – Akure road will be dualised  jointly by both Ekiti and Ondo states  but  the cost of which will be reimbursed by the federal government to facilitate rapid linkage of the economies of the two agricultural states producing cocoa, the second foreign exchange earner for the country. The new Ekiti governor should also consolidate on areas of increment in internal revenue and foreign and local investments and adding value to our produce and whatever mineral resources that God has put under our soil including granite which can be used for flooring of houses when polished. The problem of Ekiti is not establishing tertiary institutions; we have enough and our sons and daughters can also find their ways to federal institutions all over the country by the dint of hard work and competitive ability. Our problem is job creation and providing the right infrastructure of roads, water supply, security and electricity that will facilitate rapid development through industrialisation, value addition to local produce and employment. We should also under the scheme of innovation that should be located in the governor’s office, find a way of converting our high cerebral intensity to material production.

When too much money is going after too few goods and services, we call it in layman’s language inflation. This is the current situation all over the world. The reasons vary from country to country. In the Western world, the reasons vary from too much money in circulation as a result of governments’ reaction to current problems of the coronavirus and scarcity caused by interruption in the global supply chain especially in a globalised world where several component producers are spatially located be it in the production of industrial components or food.

In Nigeria, we are victims of several reasons chief among which are the same disruptions in global supply chain as it relates to our imports, insecurity arising from poor governance and incompetence. We import substantial amount of food such as wheat from Russia and Ukraine and possibly from India which has now forbidden Indian wheat farmers from exporting their wheat. We also import rice despite the noise about home-grown rice. We import vegetable oils from several places particularly from Ukraine and some Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia which also stopped selling to outsiders in order to satisfy domestic demands and needs. Our vastly deprecated national currency cannot buy much because of the unpatriotic actions of our politicians who have driven the value of our currency down because of their mad rush to acquire for political use the little foreign exchange that should normally go to the productive sector of the economy.

Our most serious problem is our importation of refined petroleum while our four refineries remain idle while at the same time our government continues to pump financial resources into their so-called rehabilitation. The situation of making refined petroleum available is killing the economy because refined petroleum is costing much in the international market because of the rising cost of crude oil. Yet our government continues to be forced to sell to the driving public at prices vastly below the cost of its purchase and transportation. The situation is so bad that all our revenues from crude oil exports in addition to non-oil exports do not suffice to buy the refined petroleum we are consuming.  The result is that while all OPEC countries are being asked to increase production so as to lower the global price of our kind of crude oil which is selling over $100 per barrel, we are not even able to produce the 1.8 million barrels of our OPEC quota. We are exporting currently about one million barrels or less a day because vast amount of our production is stolen thus discouraging the oil majors from further investment in Nigerian oil sector. This sounds crazy but it is the truth and we are having to borrow money from abroad and raising federal bonds to finance oil imports. On top of this is the general insecurity in the country leading to farmers not being able to go to their farms because of Boko haram/ISWAP and Fulani terrorism creating local supply chain disruption even when the food is available because only intrepid businessmen and women dare travel.

The few imports substituted industries still existing have their levels of production reduced because of the cost of imports of raw or semi-finished materials which the exchange rate of the dollar to the Naira has forced on them. Unfortunately in our case, we don’t have the resources to splash on workers to cope with all these challenges and even if we have, the question of how many Nigerians are in salaried employment will arise.

Our economy is so undeveloped that we cannot begin to talk about universal credit to all adults to cope with daily exigencies. Yet we must begin to think out of the box to solve our economic and political problems which are intricately interwoven with our security problems. This is why I find some of the ideas of Pastor Tunde Bakare in his bid for the presidency very attractive. He was talking about turning the six geo-political zones of the country into production zones with each zone demonstrating its unique character and comparative production advantages in relation to the others, so that this can then be added to leapfrog the country beyond our current pedestrian possibilities. This is an idea worth pursuing instead of our burying our heads in the sand of North/South political rotation of presidential power and sharing of offices.

The “economy stupid” as President Bill Clinton said when he was running for the office of president of the United States. His approach to the economy based on building a larger market of the USA and its neighbours, Canada and Mexico and increased domestic production and larger share of the tax burden by the rich, led to the phenomenal growth of the economy and success of the Democratic Party in the USA. We can borrow from this by encouraging trade with our immediate neighbours and creating a co-prosperity neighbourhood.

I am not talking about ECOWAS which for now seems remote.

Inflation as I have said is a global problem. Its rate in the USA is currently 8.5 percent and is over nine percent in the United Kingdom. Europe is not doing much better. In Nigeria, it is over 15 percent. Perhaps the way out for us will be found in what happens in the rest of the world combined with what happens locally in Nigeria. Lending rates in the USA, Great Britain and Europe are going up incrementally. Governments there are trying to find a way out of the cost of energy by cutting down rates in other areas of the economy such as housing, health, insurance and so on. This may not be enough as long the war in Ukraine continues which has led to the high cost of energy particularly in Europe and tangentially in the United States. An hungry man is and angry man, the cost of food particularly in Europe would have to come down so also the cost of energy and the way these can come down is the end of the war in Ukraine. Germany the power house of the European economy is particularly hit because of its almost total dependence on Russian gas and oil which the EU sanctions have affected.

Although the Americans are the loudest in crying about inflation and the cost of fuel and food because they are the least ready to bear any burden, but any visitor to American groceries and shops cannot but be impressed about the variety and abundance of goods on their shelves. The solution to the disruption in the supply chain of goods caused by the closure or reduced production at the plants of many suppliers due to the coronavirus pandemic is patience.  The end of the war in Ukraine and gradual lifting of the trade sanctions on Russia will also help. This may not be immediately but there is no doubt that the world will witness bottled up economic growth once there is no longer a disruption to global trade, renewed growth in China whose economy has stalled because of the Chinese penchant for locking down huge areas of the country as a strategy of total elimination of coronavirus, in contrast to the rest of the world that seems to want to tolerate and live with the virus while economic development and life continue.

Once the Chinese economy starts growing again, it will lift the world economy and that of Africa up again. There lies the hope of Africa and Nigeria. Once the war in Ukraine ends, then we should be able to import wheat and vegetable oils. But we must tackle our domestic terrorism so that we can release the pent up force of economic and agricultural production which will be aided by peaceful mobility in the country.

There will hopefully, be growth in the hydrocarbon sector of the economy if the amount of stolen oil can be reduced so that we will not only meet our OPEC allocated quota  but also reap from the vastly increased price of our oil products. Perhaps there is a need for better management of oil receipts and the huge amount coming in from diaspora transfers by young hardworking Nigerians living and working abroad. If we have a totally independent Central Bank unlike the present one whose governor is a politician and if the governor is not from any commercial bank but an economist very vast in international finance, then we may have a respected national currency that is not reduced to mere coloured papers as our currency has been reduced to by the current regime. Unfortunately the time for hope may be forlorn because of the politics of electioneering and political transition. Whoever takes over from the Muhammadu Buhari government would have a lot of job to do to return the country to political and economic normalcy.