The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • As 2018 ends in a whimper

    Merry Christmas to all my readers and  wishing you all happy 2019 .

    Many comments have been made and written about the disgraced Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, professor who is now facing the possibility of spending time in jail unless he appeals successfully against his sentence. This is the time of Christmas and goodwill towards all men. Instead of laughing at the fallen professor, I want to plead that we remember him and his family in our prayers. In advanced countries of the world, the man would have been taken for psychiatric assessment. It just does not make rational sense for such a highly educated man and an ordained priest of the Anglican Communion to demand sex from his female student and to insist he must have sex with her five times before fair assessment of her examination papers. Sexual harassment is not unique to Obafemi Awolowo  University or Nigeria. It is a global problem and phenomenon. This is why universities all over the world have in their acts or statutes, processes and punishment to deal with what is usually described as “moral turpitude”. University teachers and administrators found guilty are usually sent down and fired without financial entitlements no matter how many years they would have served the institutions. No one so dismissed would find employment in the academic sector anywhere unless such a person emigrates. So it is a major life-threatening stricture and punishment and any rational and sane person would try to avoid it .

    In spite of this, people still engage in such shenanigans. This is human because dangers sometimes attract foolish people to do what does not make sense and what is to most of us outrageous behavior.

    Now to the Ife professor whose offense really is that he marked down a lady’s papers with the hope he could lure her to bed for change of marks. So he was guilty of intent to commit “moral turpitude”. He was dealt with according to the laws of the university as approved by parliament in 1961.

    My worry is that he was then taken to court and subjected to what amounts to double jeopardy. In sentencing him, the woman judge became emotional and said she was using the professor as “scape goat” in a situation of rampant harassment of “our daughters”. Is using a person as scapegoat permissible in law? Is there any jurisprudence to back such an emotional outburst?

    My  Christian religion says I should love even those who are unlovable. The plight of this man  makes me so sad that I find his action so irrational not only as a professor but as an ordained preacher of the Anglican Communion that rather than sending  him to prison, he should be made to seek medical attention. From my discreet research, I am told his department knew about his problem of overexcited libido even before the case under discussion. People reading this piece will ask about the wound inflicted on the student. All I can say is that this calls for restitution. I spent virtually all my adult life in the university system. Students have recourse to asking for their papers to be remarked if they are not satisfied. Students do make use of this opportunity when they have reasons to feel they have not been properly assessed. A student can be victimized not only on sexual grounds but even for religious, political or ethnic reasons.

    In some universities in Nigeria today, there is the practice of two examiners per course. This needs to be made the standard norm. We would not extirpate sexual harassment in our life and not just in universities but everywhere including in the judiciary, in government, the legislature and in private and public sectors of our country. The solution is not cruel and unusual punishment. Prevention is also better than cure. We can devise a system that makes it impossible or at least difficult for students to be victimized for any reason.

    Now to the serious problem of acceptable manners of behavior by our politicians. In the particular case of heckling our president at the recent budget presentation, I found the situation most unbecoming. The president is not just a person, he is the embodiment of our country. Whenever he goes he is “Nigeria” and his principal representatives abroad are also so designated. If we do not respect the person and office of the president, we belittle ourselves in the eyes of the world.

    When people give examples of heckling the presidents in other countries as a justification for their bad manners, they need to know that institutions in those countries are so well-established that they can take some buffeting without serious damage to them. But in our  inchoate fragile institutions, we play with the devil if we do not carefully treat them with the consideration and respect they deserve. We know about the immunity parliamentarians enjoy for any action in parliament. But has it occurred to these unruly people in parliament that the mob could invade the parliament if parliamentarians turn their chamber into a house of riot? We need to give example of good manners and decorum to the not-too-highly educated members of the society who look to their leaders  as the standard of  behavior and comportment.

    In this regard, we must deprecate the regular incendiary diatribes coming from political opponents in this pre-election season. The wild exaggerations of government misdeeds coming particularly from the PDP’s spokesman, Kola Ologbodiyan should be stopped. It is obvious to intelligent people that his claims of looting of trillions by people in the present government is mere juvenile vituperation lacking in merit. Targeting the vice president and tarring him with the brush of corruption is mere politics without fact. Those of us who know the vice president just laugh when we read or hear about Ologbodiyan’s accusation of corruption of members of this government in a case of the pot calling the kettle black. If politics of  throwing mud at opponents is what we can indulge in, then we should spare the public the ugly fighting that seems to characterize our present political discourse. In this regard, we will all lose if we don’t stop the religious campaign and denigration of people who belong to different faith. Our country has enough problems and what we need are prayers not religious war.

    We are now in the dry season and one hopes that the various contractors handling government projects on the roads, railways, hydro-electricity and other areas of much needed infrastructure will hasten the rate of their work so that this country can go back to where we were in the 1970s in terms of infrastructure. The case of the ports in Lagos, both Apapa and Tin Can, calls for mention. The approach roads  to these ports constitute a cog in our economic development. For how long will suffering humanity wait in Oshodi and Apapa before something breaks?

    There may have been some noticeable improvement in power supply but it is too fitful and far between. The practice of load-shedding is just too primitive to be acceptable. Within 27 months, Siemens AG of Germany delivered to Egypt 14000 megawatts of electricity. The same Siemens has been in Nigeria for donkey years but because of corruption and lack of focus, we are still celebrating 4000 megawatts of electricity yet our country is vastly richer than Egypt but we have nothing to show for our so-called status as the biggest economy in Africa.

    Finally, we are shedding too much blood in this country. The number of people killed on our bad roads or by kidnappers, cattle herders and armed robbers have inured us to the enormity of the breakdown of law and order in our country. The killing of General Muhammed Alkali on the Jos Plateau and assassination of Air Vice Marshall Alex Badeh has brought home to us the gravity of our situation. If high profile military people are not safe who is safe? The annual migration of people home to their towns and villages at this time of the year has for years stopped because of fear of being killed on our bad roads or by marauding robbers, assassins and cattle herders and highway brigands. When will peace like a river flow in our country again? Without peace, there can be no development, employment and the civilized arts. Our governments have full plates before them. They have jobs to do. They need our prayers and our vigilance which are the price of liberty.

  • 2019 elections in Nigeria

    The two major parties, the APC and the PDP, have chosen their presidential flag bearers in the persons of the incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari and former vice president, Abubakar Atiku. Some foreign commentators demonstrating more enthusiasm than wisdom have characterized the contest as between tweedledee and tweedledum. This is far from the truth. The difference between the two is clear to all Nigerians no matter how their propagandists may try to portray them.  Buhari is introverted, withdrawn, quiet – some will say cold, but at the same time determined and set in his ways. He is certainly not a man given to frivolity and worldly interest and materialism. He does not relate with people well and does not go out of his way to make friends. This is why as a former military head of state and for the past three and a half years as president, he does not seem to have friends or close contacts outside the coterie of a few northerners who served with him either in government or in the military.   He is so distant from people outside his immediate ethnic or religious cohort that he attracts negative feelings from other Nigerians. He is a product of the Nigerian military and even though retired, still represents the proud tradition of that institution at its finest hour. All this would have been fatal to his candidacy in normal times but these are not normal times in Nigeria. This is why Buhari remains the candidate to beat.

    Atiku on the other hand is gregarious, outgoing, lively, a man of the world and a wealthy man and a man of capitalist inclination. Atiku served as a customs officer in Lagos for several years before retiring into business exploiting either his contacts or knowledge garnered when he was in the Customs. Atiku has family connections with the three major ethnic groups of the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba, and the Igbo through marrying wives from them. I first  knew  about him in 1983 or so when in an outlandish fashion, he married the young daughter of the then Lamido of Adamawa and shut down Yola for a whole day with who was who in Nigeria, flying in private jet to attend the wedding. That was the year Shagari was overthrown because of rampant corruption and Buhari played a major role in that change of government.

    Atiku since the return to democratic governance was a protege of General Shehu Yar’Adua who had himself wanted very much to be president in the Babangida “transition without end “quoting the recently departed professor, Oyelaran Oyediran. General Yar’Adua was murdered by General Abacha while in detention. Atiku in 1999 had been elected governor of Adamawa State before Obasanjo brought him to the centre as his running mate. He was virtually the president between 1999 and 2003 while Obasanjo was busy travelling around the whole world showing the flag of Nigeria’s new democracy and begging for reduction or cancellation of our foreign debt to reduce our then debt overhang that had crippled our economy. Atiku was in charge of the privatization of the various federal companies and parastatals, houses and lands acquired over the years from colonial times to the most recent time. Selling off of government-owned companies under the ideological slogan that “government has no business in business” may have made sense in the capitals of the capitalist western world but to us in Nigeria, only few people had capital or access to it through their friends in the banks. Thus most of our heritage was sold to companies fronting for people in government and their foreign collaborators. The process of sale was so opaque that it was bound to be corrupt like in Russia; Nigeria witnessed the rise of our own oligarchs controlling enormous wealth in property and oil blocks.  Rightly or wrongly, Atiku’s stupendous wealth is traced to his years in the customs and in government.

    Both Buhari and Atiku are employers of labour. Buhari employs farm hands on his cattle farm in Daura, the ancient city of Bayijidda to take care of his cattle. His embrace of pastoral agriculture has made him a target of the victims and potential victims of the rampaging cattle herders who in recent times have constituted themselves into a scourge of the peasantry in many parts of Nigeria but particularly in North-central Nigeria. On the other hand, Atiku’s companies particularly at the ports and at the so-called American University in Yola employ hundreds of Nigerians.

    Atiku is a natural politician while Buhari is a reluctant politician in the mould of General Charles de Gaulle, who as a patriot feels it is his bounden duty to save his much beloved country. These two gentlemen have great experiences in government. Buhari as head of government is used to delegating power and responsibilities to his lieutenants while Atiku in government enjoyed a lot of delegated power and responsibilities until his principal felt his deputy was developing wings and arrogating too much power to himself and building rival loyalty rivalling that of his principal. The picture I am painting therefore is of two totally different human beings interested in leading the most populous African country with the biggest economy on the African continent.

    As Chief MKO Abiola used to say “The bigger the head the bigger the head ache”; Nigeria has legion of problems ranging from infrastructural inadequacy to health, financial and educational deficits. Above all, Nigeria needs moral rearmament and ethical revolution. It is not that we do not have resources; what is lacking is resource management and ability to plan well and execute plans that will lift our people from our present economic dependency and the curse of easy money derived from hydrocarbons as well as unstable economy swinging dangerously from boom to doom following the ups and downs of oil prices.

    The leader that Nigeria therefore needs in a hurry is a man who can force the country to embrace changes while he himself and the coterie of advisers around him remain transparently untainted.  We do not have too much time on our hands. The window opened to us will shut within the next decade when the world will shift from the industries and transportation system being currently powered by hydrocarbons to electricity derivable from renewed energy and liquid oxygen, thus undercutting our economy that is now dangerously dependent on oil and gas. We need a president who can totally embrace the knowledge economy prevalent in most developed countries and in rising powers like China and India. Africa’s 4% contribution to the quantum of global trade must increase exponentially and Nigeria must be at the vanguard of this revolution. To achieve this, Nigeria must build modern infrastructure of railways, autobahnen (expressways) aviation and shipping networks unlike the present antediluvian system crippling our cities ports and highways.

    To get to our Eldorado, emphasis must move from politics to development and governance. The world respects China today not because it is a huge exponent of democracy but because it is a rising economic and technological power. Even the high priests of democracy in the west are kowtowing to China. Until we have the technological know-how, Nigeria will never be respected. This is why in spite of our being the biggest economy in Africa; nobody bothers to invite us to the G-20 annual conferences in which only South Africa is the only country invited apparently because of its manufacturing and financial capability and capacity. The president we need is somebody who will be able to assemble a good team and impose a discipline based on his own sense of discipline and integrity and lead from the front by example. We need a man of tremendous focus who by his asceticism and charisma would attract the respect of the people. We need a president who will commit himself to finding solution to our multifarious problems.

    Unfortunately we have to make a choice between two people who do not provide us with an exciting choice. No country that I know has the best president that it can have. Looking around the whole world, with the exception of Monsieur Macron, there is no exceptional leader and Nigeria will just have to make do with the president that it can have at the present. A president who can keep the country together. We need to have a country first before we can reconfigure or restructure it and if it cannot be kept together without restructuring the weight of opinion and the force of events will force Buhari to lead the way to peacefully restructure Nigeria. No matter who wins in 2019, he will be faced with a situation that makes it impossible for him to conduct affairs in a leisurely business as usual fashion. The country will not stand for it.

  • Alaafin of Oyo in contemporary Nigerian politics – 4

    The Alaafin must have paid a fortune to lawyers over the various cases he had had to take to court if not on political supremacy with the Ooni but also on who owns the land of Oyo with Asipa of Oyo who claimed his family owns the entire new Oyo settled by Atiba in 1830. He also went to legal battle with the Soun of Ogbomosho over their territorial boundary as well as who had consenting authority over such towns as Ifon, Iresaadu and Ikoyi in the territorial jurisdiction of the Soun even though history links them with the Alaafin throne.  In most of the legal battles he waged against his opponents, he sometimes went to the national archives in Ibadan to search for documents to validate his position. The Alaafin may not have a string of degrees but he possesses deep knowledge to make appear as a “philosopher king “. The Alaafin has been known to quote in certain public speeches from the holy Bible, the Koran and Ifa odu demonstrating intellectual eclecticism.

    When Osun State was carved out of Oyo and the Ooni then became permanent chairman of the Osun State Council of Obas, the Alaafin was then faced with competition with the Soun of Ogbomosho and the Olubadan of Ibadan. In Yoruba tradition, the Olubadan and the Soun of Ogbomosho were not the equal of the Alaafin. But today both Ogbomosho and Ibadan are much bigger than Oyo and by the size of their population they deserve recognition, but by culture and tradition of the Yoruba, they must follow the Alaafin and not lead him. An analogous situation to this is the prickly relations between highly populous and wealthy Kano and small Sokoto, the seat of the Caliphate, yet Kano defers to Sokoto. When a regime of rotational chairmanship was put in place to accommodate the Soun and the Olubadan, the Alaafin refused to participate in what he considered infra digitatem and hence the shut down of Oyo State Council of chiefs and Obas for years. It will remain shut down until there is a policy based on historical facts and legacy to guide whoever wields political power of the moment. There was even an attempt by a civilian governor to raise the status of Asipa to that of a king. This muddling of history did not fly. Many of the questions the Alaafin has had to contend with have not been settled and laid down to rest and perhaps will not be settled soon until we go back to find acceptable solutions based on our history and culture. The Abacha dictatorship tried unsuccessfully to humiliate the Alaafin to force him to support his regime against the interest of the Yoruba people by impugning the integrity of the Alaafin. This was a testy period especially when the same Abacha had no qualms in engineering the removal of Ibrahim Dasuki as Sultan of Sokoto.

    The last 48 years in Oyo has seen tremendous progress and achievements. The education front has witnessed remarkable progress. Many secondary schools have been built. There is a federal girls’ school and college of special education as well as the Oladipo Alayande College of Education. There is a private Atiba University at an embryonic state and there is Bishop Ajayi Crowther University in full bloom. Oyo is linked to Ibadan by an expressway which will soon reach Ilorin. There are other roads linking Oyo with the upper Ogun area thus making Oyo the centre of a thriving agricultural area. There is need to invest in the hospitality business and to build excellent hotels which are still few and far between.

    The present Alaafin has been well recognized by the federal government which at one time made him the Amir-ul – hajj of the annual pilgrimage by Nigerian Muslims to Mecca. This is the first time a Yoruba leader or Oba has been so recognized. The Alaafin was also at one time chancellor of the University of Sokoto. The status of the Alaafin remains formidable and the present young Ooni of Ife Oba Ogunwusi in visiting the revered ruler and breaking whatever historical taboo against such an act of camaraderie has ensured that a new beginning has begun in the Alaafin of Oyo’s relation with Ife and thereby laying the basis of unity in Yorubaland. One fact that remains is the dichotomy in the politics of Yorubaland namely the divergent Awolowo and Akintola traditions. For good or ill, the Alaafin has found himself pulled to the side of the Akintola tendency perhaps willy-nilly because the Awolowo tradition has pigeonholed him into that tendency.  He has had to tread softly in order to avoid falling into the trap of enemies made by him and those inherited by the son of whom he is and the position he holds. His political allies have always been those on the conservative tradition of Yoruba politics. Among these were Chief M. K. O Abiola whom he made the Are ona Kakanfo and the likes of the late Arisekola Alao and Adedibu. His recent elevation of the relatively young Ganiyu Adams as Are ona Kakanfo has not gone down well with the Yoruba elite who feel the title is demeaned by the fact that Ganiyu Adams has not proved himself even though he is able to mobilize the youth for action if needs be. The Alaafin will argue that it is because of that ability to mobilize the youth that makes his appointment right for these times. Surprisingly, the Alaafin has remained aloof to the demand for the creation of either a new Oyo State or Oke Ogun State perhaps not being sure such a state will have Oyo town as its capital. It is usually said that traditional rulers should stay away from politics but it is however difficult for a person holding the position of the Alaafin to avoid politics completely when by the nature of the history of Yorubaland, politics remains an essential part of any Alaafin’s DNA.

     

    • Concluded.

  • Alaafin of Oyo in contemporary Nigerian politics–3

    The Western Region was the leading region in the federation of Nigeria. It was the cocoa growing region and because of the accumulated reserves garnered over the years by the cocoa marketing board and then made available to the Western Nigerian government in the years before independence, the region had money to splash on its development schemes.  The idea of commodity board was to guarantee stable price in price of cocoa to the farmers. Surpluses were retained in good years and kept against years when prices fell. The farmers were guaranteed fair prices and were therefore encouraged to grow more. This financial health was reflected in the development scheme in western Nigeria. This involved construction of roads, radio and television station, stadium in Ibadan industrial estates in Ikeja and Ilupeju, potable water in many cities, building of farm settlements to absorb students from compulsory and free primary schools who could not go to high schools.

    Small scale industries and large agricultural estates to produce palm oil and rubber were established. There was expansion of secondary schools to absorb students from the free education scheme and the building of what was to become a first class university in Ile Ife. In the competitive federalism of the time, the West did very well. The Action Group felt it could replicate this at the federal level. But when this failed, disillusionment set in leading to internal combustion in the party sometimes due to policy or personality or programme and ideology. The upshot of this was the Action Group crisis of 1961 to 1963. This led to instability in Western Nigeria and without stability there could hardly be development. The crisis that enveloped Yorubaland was to have some repercussions on Alaafin Gbadegesin Ladigbolu who in 1965 conferred the title of Are Ona Kakanfo (Field Marshall of Yoruba Army) on Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola more or less taking side in the epochal struggle for the soul of Yorubaland between Chief Akintola and Chief Awolowo. By this time, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was in prison for treasonable felony from 1963 to when he was released in 1966 after the second coup d’état. Chief Akintola along with Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, premier of Northern Nigeria, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the prime minister of Nigeria and Chief Festus Samuel Okotie-Eboh, federal finance minister along with senior army officers mostly from western and northern Nigeria were killed by army mutineers led by junior officers of the Nigerian Army. Alaafin Ladigbolu himself died during the crisis that engulfed the country even though he was not personally involved or affected by the crisis.  Western Nigeria during the crisis witnessed some strange development in which a peasant revolt called “Agbe Koya” swept through the Oyo Yoruba speaking areas particularly Ogbomosho and Ibadan between 1967 and 1970. One needs to make the point that for reasons not very clear to this writer, Oyo was not touched by the incendiary movement. This was a protest movement by the peasantry who were called upon to pay taxes during the Nigerian civil war. The peasantry did not feel it benefited from government programmes and did not see any reason why it should be made to pay any tax whatsoever. The rebellion was an embarrassment for Major General Adeyinka Adebayo who had to call on Chief Obafemi Awolowo to help douse the fire of the rebellion.

    It was during this time that it became necessary to fill the vacancy created by the demise of Alaafin Ladigbolu. In the alternation of dynastic succession in Oyo, the house to provide a ruler was that of Adeyemi. There were of course several eligible princes. Even princes from the Ladigbolu ruling House showed interest. So also did people with marginal clams and connection to the Alaafin throne. At the end of the contest only one prince could become the Alaafin.

    Alaafin Lamidi (Ahmed) Olayiwola Adeyemi111 was chosen. But it was not really an easy route to the throne. The enemies of his father were very powerful in the military government of Yakubu Gowon. The government in the Western Region deferred to those who were in the Action Group. Chief Obafemi Awolowo served between 1967 and 1970 as vice chairman of the Federal Executive Council. His influence was written large on the power structure of Western Nigeria even though the military was in power. There were people who did not want the Adeyemi family to come back to the throne. But the politics of Yorubaland has never been monolithic. There were forces within the region which were still then hostile to the ambition of Chief Obafemi Awolowo or who felt more inclined to championing of Oyo cause. This group put pressure on General Adeyinka Adebayo to appoint Lamidi Adeyemi who was the choice of the Adeyemi ruling house.

    There is also evidence that when the old Ooni of Ife and former governor of Western Nigeria was consulted, he supported the choice of Alaafin Lamidi Adeyemi. It seems Lamidi himself had been well prepared for the throne. His father seemed to have made his choice of Lamidi well known to his innumerable number of children. His father, perhaps with some exaggeration was said to have had more than 200 wives. The practice then was that the wives of the previous Alaafin who were too old and were not taken care of   by their children remained in the palace and their burden was borne without complaint by the new Alaafin. This must have accounted for the story of the 200 wives of Alaafin Adeniran Adeyemi.

    Lamidi Adeyemi was born October 15, 1938. After his elementary school in Oyo, his father sent him to Saint Gregory’s College in Lagos. The fact of attending a catholic school made him broadminded as a Muslim. His father later sent him to be mentored by Chief H.O. Davies, a distinguished Nigerian lawyer and nationalist who at various times claimed that his ancestors came from Oyo and later from Efon – Alaye. Chief Davies was then a staunch member of the NCNC for which the Alaafin had sympathy. The young Lamidi after high school went into the insurance business instead of spending years to qualify as a lawyer like his mentor, Chief H.O Davies. It was from the life of business that Lamidi Adeyemi on November 18, 1970 ascended the revered throne of the Alaafin, 48 years ago.

    His reign has been marked by many highs and a few lows many ups and downs. He has had to contend with the perennial struggle with primacy among Yoruba kings with the Ooni. Most of the dice was loaded against him because the “Deep State” was usually on the side of the Ooni.  The then reigning Ooni Okunade Sijuade Olubuse 11 was a man of the world who as a business man had amassed a lot of wealth. He was quite close to the Awolowo family and on coming to the throne had made Mrs. H .I .D Awolowo the Yeyeoba of Ife. He therefore was more comfortable to wage a supremacy war against the Alaafin.

  • Alaafin of Oyo in contemporary Nigerian politics – 2

    The rulership in Oyo alternated between the Ladigbolu house and that of Adeyemi . In actual fact one refers to the ruling houses as two when they both descended from the same person. Alaafin AdeniranAdeyemi had come to the throne of his ancestors just when the Second World War was coming to an end in 1945 with pomp and pageantry hoping to enjoy the wealth and power of his position. Then came the constitutional reforms of 1951 which led to regional governments being set up in Ibadan, Kaduna and Enugu leading to the transfer of power in domestic administration to Nigerian elected officials. The Alaafins under the British had enjoyed enormous influence and power. They were allowed to adjudicate in criminal and civil cases and to fix and collect taxes and to maintain law and order. The new reforms after 1951 led to reforms in local government administration and the setting up of customary courts and other courts manned by legally trained personnel. Oyo Division was divided into north and south and people of Oyo ancestry like AbiodunAkerele and Bode Thomas both of who were lawyers resident in Lagos moved to Oyo to take control of local administration. Bode Thomas before this time found favour wth the Alaafin who in 1950 made him the Balogun of Oyo. But by 1951, relations between Bode Thomas and the Alaafin had broken down irretrievably. What was at the root of the altercation was the way the Alaafin was treated as if he was a minor oba in Yorubaland. Seeing that modern politics had become the only avenue to power, the Alaafin decided to exploit the division between the nationalist parties struggling for the control of Yorubaland. He pitched his tent with the Nnamdi Azikiwe-led NCNC (National Council of Nigeria and The Cameroons) against the forces of the Obafemi Awolowo-led Action Group. When the Action Group won in 1951, it formed the government in the Western Region and appointed Bode Thomas who was the deputy leader of the Action Group and central minister representing the Action Group in all Nigerian government in Lagos. At 31, Bode Thomas had too much power that he could not have been expected to use it wisely because of his lack of earthly experience. He was born with silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a rich Lagos merchant rich enough to send his son to England for higher education. He was born and grew up in the mercantile city of Lagos which though had a monarchy was heavily exposed to the republicanism associated with commerce. He had graduated in his early 20s and was a successful lawyer who once successfully defended Ahmadu Bello against the Sultan of Sokoto, Sir Abubakar who was determined to jail him for embezzlement. When the campaign for the election into the Western House began in 1951, the Alaafin to checkmate Bode Thomas and publicly supported the NCNC of Azikiwe against the AG of Awolowo. It should however be borne in mind that the NCNC had as its first leader, Herbert Macaulay, a Lagos engineer-turned politician and the grandson of the first African Bishop of the Anglican Communion,  Bishop Ajayi  Crowther . In 1951, it was disputable if the Action Group was more acceptable to the Yoruba educated elite than the NCNC. This is made clear by the sweeping victory of all the NCNC candidates to the Western House from Lagos. However, the Action Group was in power in the West and it was determined not to brook any opposition. Efforts to reconcile the Alaafin to the political leaders  of the West failed because of the arrogance of power which led them to reduce salaries and perquisites of  office of not only the Alaafin but even of members of the Oyomesi (the Alaafin’s privy counsellors). Bode Thomas was the arrow head of the struggle with the Alaafin. Pitched battles were fought in Oyo and environs between supporters of each side and the government in Ibadan capitalized on this. While the struggle was going on, Chief Bode Thomas suddenly died in 1954 at the age of 34. In the Nigeria of those days, it was easy to say Bode Thomas was somehow bewitched by the Alaafin  and as a retribution, the Alaafin was removed and banished first to Lagos and finally to Ilesha.

    This was a sad situation of conflict between the old and new purveyors of power in Nigeria. Interestingly, the same struggle for power led in northern Nigeria in 1961 to the removal of the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Ardo Sanusi. The coincidence of the two most powerful dynasties one in the north and another in the South coming to this denouement is very interesting and this history was to repeat itself in other places in modern Nigerian history.

    After a short interregnum, Alaafin GbadegesinLadigbolu came to the throne. By the time of his reign, the position of the Alaafin had been diminished in relation to that of the Ooni of Ife. The Action Group government Of Obafemi Awolowo was determined to permanently elevate the Ooni over the Alaafin. It is of course widely accepted by Yoruba people that Ile Ife is the ancestral home of all Yorubas including the Alaafin. Alaafin Oranmiyan, who founded old Oyo around 1200 A.D after an unsuccessful attempt to reign in Benin but subsequently, sired a child Eweka who later founded an Oranmiyan / Oduduwa dynasty in Benin. The two sisterly states, Benin and Oyo, developed into empires between the 16th and the 18th centuries while  Ile Ife remained a puny kingdom protected by the almighty power of Oyo. The power relationship between Ife and Oyo was like that of the pope and the emperor in the medieval Holy Roman Empire in Europe. The story is told about the pope criticizing the Nazi ruler of Germany, Adolph Hitler during the Second World War. Hitler was alleged to have asked how many army divisions did the pope have? This was the situation and none of the Alaafins accepted any diminution in their status vis-à-vis the Ooni of Ife. When a new Alaafin in the person of GbadegesinLadigbolu was installed, the nostalgia of the power surrounding the Alaafin of the past was ever in  his heart. This was partly assuaged when from 1955 to the collapse of the first republic, the position of the presidency of the House of Chiefs remained the preserve of the Alaafin. When  Chief Obafemi Awolowo left the premiership of the West in the hands of  Chief S.L Akintola and went to Lagos with the hope of becoming federal prime minister in 1959, the relationship of the Alaafin to the premier became more cordial. Chief Akintola came from neighbouring  Ogbomosho and was  a thoroughly adroit politician who made everybody comfortable in his presence. In spite of his high position, he was a strong believer in Yoruba culture and was not averse to paying homage in the traditional way to the Alaafin. This was in spite of the struggle over land that tended to cause disaffection between the Ogbomosho throne and the various Alaafin of Oyo.This mutual love and affection between Akintola and the Alaafin was to prove useful in the turbulent years after the independence of Nigeria from Great Britain in 1960.

  • Alaafin of Oyo in contemporary Nigerian politics – 1

    The title Alaafin, meaning “owner of the palace” indicates the importance of the Alaafin in Yoruba history. It signifies the fact that there may be existence of other palaces but the real and the supreme palace is the one in Oyo. The British have a saying at the demise of their monarchs – “The king is dead, long live the king”; in other words they try to separate the personality of the ruler from the institution. This eternity of the monarchical institution is captured by the saying in Yoruba “Baba ku baba ku”, meaning “father is dead but father lives “. Nevertheless, the Alaafin as an institution is no doubt affected by the personality and persona of whoever occupies the position. He remains “Iku baba yeye” a man with supreme power of life and death over his subjects. But this awesome power can rise or fall on the strength of character of the man on the throne.

    The history of the Alaafin over time has shown the changing vagaries of Yoruba politics. The institution has remained relevant even though in diminished but not degraded in importance. The supremacy of the Alaafin  Of Oyo was further enhanced from the 1600s when a dynastic religion, the deification and worship of a once powerful Alaafin Shango became the official religion of the people following the well-established tradition in other climes that the religion of the ruler is the religion of the people. One of the factors, among others, that facilitated the collapse of Old Oyo was the coming of Islam from the north and Christianity from the south. In fact, there is incontrovertible evidence that the coming of Islam not only to Ilorin but to Oyo itself facilitated the rebellion of Are Ona Kakanfo aided by Alimi and his son Abdulsalaami. Most of the leaders of the Afonja rebellion were not Fulani but Yoruba Muslims. This interpretation is supported by Abdullahi Smith, the English historian of the Sokoto Caliphate. There is evidence that Alaafin Awole on whose head the empire collapsed in the late 1820s was himself a Muslim convert. The point being made is the role of religion in building loyalty to the throne and surrounding the person of the ruler with some transcendence and mystery which only religion can provide. When this religious glue and mystery are removed, the ruler becomes an ordinary person. This is the dilemma the Alaafin and other Muslim and Christian rulers in Yoruba land face today.

    Modern Nigerian politicians whether civilian or military have always found traditional rulers useful in the political mobilization of the people. It is doubtful if any politician in Nigeria will seriously advocate the abolition of the traditional kingly institutions as was done in India after independence. In fact, what we have seen in Nigerian history is that politicians want to become honorific chiefs and the only people who can confer on commoners the titles are traditional rulers. These days, distinguished and highly educated people including retired army generals are finding their ways to the thrones. These institutions have therefore come to stay because the people identify with them simply because modern governmental institutions and officials appear remote and sometimes irrelevant to the people. A position like that of the Alaafin has become part of the embodiment of the people’s culture and whether the Alaafin still continues to wield untrammelled power is irrelevant; it is the symbolism that attracts people to the institution. But there is no doubt that in the time and tide of history, the Alaafin has seen better times than today. But the strength of an institution is the ability to adapt to changing times. The Alaafin is not unique in this. Most monarchies including even powerful ones like those of Japan, Great Britain and Spain have become constitutional monarchies in one form or shape. What is important to stress is that the Alaafin institution has survived almost a thousand years and rulership has remained within one extended family in-spite of the fact that Oyo has over time moved its capital to three different places because of external and internal pressures before finally settling in its present location. The vitality of the institution has however remained. The constitutional contribution of the Alaafin institution to African politics is in  the checks and balances it embodies which in distant past, guarded against tyranny and dictatorship characteristic of most monarchies in Africa and elsewhere.

    Modern Nigerian politics can be said to have begun at the creation of the Lugardian state of Nigeria following the amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorates and the colony of Lagos and the removal of the awkward independence of Egbaland at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Right from that time, the pre-eminent position of the Alaafin in Nigeria was recognized when Alaafin Ladigbolu and Sarkin Abbas, emir of Kano were made members of the Nigerian Council – the highest organ for the administration of the newly created Nigeria. This council was of course a rubber stamp for the decisions of Sir Fredrick Lugard, the Governor General, yet the fact that the Poobah then ruling Nigeria felt it necessary to seek and enlist the support of the two most important rulers in Nigeria in his scheme of administration is significant. It was an attestation to the level of political development and sophistication of Oyo and Kano. It was also meant to signify that as much as possible, native rulers would play significant roles in the administration of their domains and finally the two rulers fitted tightly the indirect rule programme of the Governor General. This was because the two rulers were supported and recognized by their people and they controlled significant expanse of territory and were prepared to rule with the British colonial government providing military and police backing to ensure continued loyalty to the native rulers and their British overlords.

    Read also: Calls for Yoruba unity resonate at Alaafin’s 80th birthday

    Right from the time when Alaafin Adeyemi 1 signed the protocol with the British to end the Yoruba civil war in 1886, the position of the descendants of Alaafin Atiba who founded the New Oyo in 1830 after the withdrawal of the Alaafin from Old Oyo following the collapse of central authority, had become useful to the British and was accountable for Alaafin Ladigbolu’s membership of the Nigerian Council. When Lugard decided to replicate the indirect rule system in Yoruba land, he decided to use the Alaafin as the pyramid of political hierarchy in Yoruba land. He was so successful in this regard that the late Professor AderemiAtanda insinuated that the British created a new Oyo empire. What he meant was that the Alaafin under the British enjoyed too much and sometimes illegitimate power. The Alaafin’s position was supreme in most of what later became the Yoruba part of western Nigeria under the British. With the exception of Ijebu land and some adjoining coastal areas, every part of Yoruba land felt the influence if not the power of the Alaafin.  The relationship of the Alaafin and the Ooni of Ife was guided by an unwritten but understood norm of behaviour of Oyo’s protection and guardianship of Ile Ife. Even the British understood the spirit behind Oyo’s relations with Ife and sometimes consulted the Ooni whenever there was dispute on succession to the throne in other parts of Yoruba land outside the influence or power of the Alaafin. This power stretched into present day Benin Republic and the Republic of Togo. The weight and burden of this imperium sometimes led to revolts which were brutally suppressed with the suppression fuelling future anger and rebellion. Ruling conquered territories were to prove to be Oyo’s Achilles heels. Be that as it may, the position of the Alaafin as consenting authority in the choice of obas in the Oyo-speaking areas of Yoruba land remained until the dusk of British rule in Nigeria. This was to change finally in 1955 following the deposition and banishment of Alaafin AdeniranAdeyemi, son of Alaafin AdeyemiAlowolodu who signed the treaty putting an end to the civil war in Yoruba land that began at the beginning of the 19th century following the glorious reign of Alaafin Abiodun which ended in 1789. The civil war in Yoruba land continued till 1896 when the British finally imposed a pax Britannia on the whole of Yoruba land after the conquest of Ilorin.

  • From grounds of JF K’s assassination in Dallas

    I was a freshman at the University of Ibadan on November 22, 1963 when the news of the assassination of President J.F .Kennedy (JFK) was broken to us in the campus. Some heard it first on BBC radio but others heard about it from our lecturers.  Our political science lecturers, Father James O ‘Connell,   Essien-Udom and Richard Sklar had solid insight into American politics and government and were particularly shocked by the terrible news. Father James O’ Connell was an Irish friar and like most Irish all over the world, celebrated the presidency of Kennedy and enjoyed the glow and glory surrounding the charismatic young politician who at 43 was the youngest man to be president of the USA. Kennedy was the first and last Catholic to be president. Essien Udom was an American-trained political scientist who did ground breaking research on the black Muslims. His wife was an American lady.  Richard Sklar was a perceptive liberal Jewish American. So we were well placed to get critical information on American politics. The youths all over the world including Nigeria were swept off by the Kennedy wave of global love and affection. We had Kennedy haircuts and dreamt of being young leaders like Kennedy in our country. His famous speech to Americans at his inauguration about patriotism saying “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” resonated with people all over the world. His Peace Corps volunteers were teaching in Nigerian schools. Later somebody like James Meredith a black student who Kennedy used National Guards to force the University of Mississippi to admit later came to the University of Ibadan to study. In short, we were all caught up in the idealism that Kennedy represented.

    At the official government level, our prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa had in 1961 at the invitation of Kennedy made a state visit to the USA and addressed the Congress, the first and last time an African leader had done so. Our president, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was educated in the USA and in all his life he loved America. When the news became official, President Azikiwe made an emotional broadcast to the nation and a week of national mourning was declared and our flag was flown at half-mast .There was genuine sadness all over the country and people were touched when the photos of the weeping widow, Jacqueline Kennedy and her two little children, Caroline and John Kennedy jnr., with the latter saluting the casket of his father in Washington D.C, were splashed over all Nigerian newspapers.

    On my recent visit to Dallas, visiting the sites of the assassination was irresistible. The person who took my party round expressed his sorrow that what was a bitter experience has now become a tourist industry in Dallas. We were shown the route of the motorcade until it got to the Texas School Book Depository (now the Dallas County Annex) where the alleged killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, a twenty something year old young man was working. I saw the point where the president’s car made a left turn to go under the bridge before the shots rang out.  The points of impact of the gunshots are clearly marked with big white X on the road. These spots have become some kind of pilgrimage to tourists. The number of shots is disputed. Some said up to four shots were fired, two from Lee Harvey Oswald and one or two shots from the so called grassy knoll on the right of the presidential motorcade while turning left. In the melee that followed, Lee Harvey Oswald left the place and took a taxi to the outskirts of the town.  We were shown his roomy residence where he had a room rented from a lady. We were also taken to the point where he shot a policeman, J.D Tippit known to him in the area. Lee Harvey Oswald then took a cab to Texas Theatre. It was in the theatre that Oswald was surrounded by a company of policemen where he engaged them in a shoot-out.  In the meantime the president and governor, John Connolly of Texas were rushed to hospitals for treatment. The president was there pronounced dead. The body was subsequently flown to Washington during which time the Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas was sworn in while the wife of the slain president still splattered with the blood of her husband looked on. In the meantime, Lee Harvey Oswald was taken to the County Criminal Courts Building which housed the Sheriff’s Office and county jail. Some days later, Lee Harvey Oswald who denied killing Kennedy and described himself as a “patsy”, some kind of small fry in the whole sordid tragedy of killing the president of the United States. On life television with his hand handcuffed to one of the Sheriffs while being taken before a judge to make his plea, suddenly a certain Jack Ruby well-known in the underworld pulled out a gun and fired several shots at Lee Harvey Oswald. This changed the whole global perception of the assassination. The new president set up a commission under the Chief Justice of the USA, Earl Warren to investigate the events surrounding the killing of the president. The Commission’s report did not satisfy many in America and the rest of the world. Other steps to reopen the enquiry have not yielded much definitive answer. One after another, all those accused in the assassination either were killed or died under suspicious circumstances. Recently, President Donald J. Trump ordered the release of certain documents related to the assassination. What was released raised more questions than answers and because the intelligence people (Deep State) advised against release of all the documents, even the iconoclastic President Trump has had to withdraw its decision to open all the documents.

    From my professional experience as an historian, I think Lee Harvey Oswald was certainly not alone. The young man had lived in the Soviet Union, married a Russian wife, visited the Russian embassy in Mexico City shortly before the assassination of the president and had tried to go to Fidel Castro’s Cuba. This was after the abortive Bay of Pigs failed US invasion of Cuba led by Cuban exiles under the CIA prodding and after the USSR blinked in the confrontation with the USA in 1962 over the removal of Russian missiles from Cuba. Some people in the military establishment wanted a full scale military invasion which Kennedy refused and thereby angered the military industrial complex to use the worlds of President Dwight David Eisenhower. The Russians who were humiliated in the Cuban missile crisis may also have been involved. There is allegation of the mob being involved and that the FBI was not averse in the days of his director Edgar Hoover of using the mob to do some of its dirty jobs. A poster placed on the route of the president’s motorcade before the shooting illustrates the paranoia in the US at the time. Enemies of Kennedy accused him of “violating states’ rights “by forcing the state of Mississippi to admit a black student into its university. A large poster pasted along the route of the president’s route in Dallas spoke volumes. President Kennedy was accused as a traitor for among other reasons, subjecting the sovereignty of the USA to the “Communist-controlled UN”. He was accused of “giving support and encouragement to the communist inspired racial riots”. He “has consistently appointed anti-Christians to Federal office and upholds the Supreme Court in its Anti-Christian rulings”. The increased pressure mounted on the mob by the tough attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of the president angered the men of the underworld to the extent of wanting to kill the Kennedys.

    The memory of the terrible situation in Dallas was very painful for me and many people all over the world. These were dark moments in American history. The country was engaged in the destructive Vietnam War on which the country was divided. More assassinations followed. Malcom X on February 21, 1965; Martin Luther King jnr., in April 1968 and Robert F. Kennedy on June 6, 1968 were separately slaughtered. Their killers were found out but in most cases their killers represented the dark secrets of American life. During my visit to Dallas, which for many years was avoided by Americans and the global community, I found out that guns there were as American as apple pie. The city has since recovered from its sordid character and the fact that I came visiting is a manifestation of the recovery but not amnesia about the violence rooted in the history and politics of this frontier oil.

  • Professor George Fola Esan @ 80

    How time flies! But to God be the glory as Professor Fola Esan, first Nigerian professor of Haematology turns 80 today. The academic trajectory of Professor Esan demonstrates the saying that morning shows the day as childhood shows manhood. Professor Esan’s formative years began in the famous Christ School Ado Ekiti under the tutelage of the English man Reverend Leslie Donald Mason who could recognize a genius whenever he met one. When the slightly and fragile young lad showed up in Christ’s School, the principal showed immediate interest and curiosity.

    Fola Esan came to Christ School as a young boy of only 12 years in age. This was remarkable at the time when many of his classmates were much older than him. He even beat by one year, his immediate elder brother, Benjamin, who later became the school’s senior prefect and head boy in 1956. His much older brother, Olanipekun who later became a professor of classics at the University of Ibadan did not attend Christ’s School but his younger sister,Abike in later years attended the same school. In other words, Christ’s School became a permanent fixture in the life and times of the Esans.He finished secondary school at the age of 17 which was a record in those days. This was at a time that it was not unheard of that some of the senior students already had children at home. What was more remarkable was the fact that he scored A grade in all his subjects. This was a manifestation of his unique cerebral endowment and not because the school had good teachers.

    Apart from Reverend Mason, the principal of the school, there were two or three graduates on the staff of the school including Chief Joseph Oduola Osuntokun who was to later go into full time politics. Science subjects were taught by non-graduates until about a year or so before Fola Esan took his final examinations in Christ School but this did not stop him performing excellently in the key science subjects that would be required for his medical education.The secret of any Christ School student’s success was hard work and belief in God. Prayers and fasting are important but God himself promised to bless the work of our hands .This was the case with Professor Esan.

    The home background was also important. The Esans took education seriously like most Ekiti people of his generation. Fola Esan’s father’s extended family of brothers, sisters and cousins gave encouragement to the children early in life. All the children went to church and school and they combined this with helping their parents on the farm during holidays. Ikoro their home town in the western part of Ekiti State was and is still favoured by good soil and flat land unlike the stony and hilly landscape of neighbouring towns and villages. The people combined the growing of cash crops like kolanuts and cocoa with food crops grown in all parts of Ekiti. The point to make is that the people were sufficiently prosperous to the point that they were able to send their children to school. Unlike most people of his generation, his parents were able to put all their children in school without much hassle. Going to Christ’s School then in 1951 was not too difficult.

    After his stellar performance in the Cambridge University Secondary School Overseas Examination, he had several options open to him like most young people of the time. He could have sought a scholarship to go abroad or join any of the commercial concerns in Nigeria and work his way to the top but he chose private study to prepare him for the concessional entrance examination to the only university inNigeria, the University of Ibadan. It was a fierce competition and almost a gamble to get in. He wanted to study medicine and had the examples of Adelola Adeloye and Kayode Osuntokun two old boys of Christ School to follow.

    The medical school was severely restricted to exceptionally brilliant people not only in Nigeria but to students from The Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast (later Ghana) and Nigeria. This meant the Nigerian quota was highly competitive. But the likes of Fola Esan had no problem in getting in. His example was followed by a host of Christ’s School old boys and by the time he graduated M.B, B.S in 1962, the path set by him and others became the trodden path for most students from Christ’s School into the University of Ibadan.

    Fola Esan followed his sterling performance in the college of medicine by heading for England to specialize in haematology, an important area in laboratory medicine. He has had further exposure and training in American universities.

    I ran into him in 1980 when he was on sabbatical at the University of San Francisco where he worked as a solitary researcher working away without airs but with absolute determination to make a mark wherever he went to in the western world. In 1964 while he was in England, he came to my rescue when, driven by more enthusiasm than wisdom, I lost my bearing in London.

    Since the 1960s, he has taught at the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan. He helped establish the sub speciality in haematology in the college where he rose to the full chair in haematology. As part of his public service to the nation, he was given field commission as a lieutenant-colonel in the Nigerian Army during the civil war in Nigeria and risked his life caring for the wounded on the war front .When he retired from the University of Ibadan, he helped develop the medical school at Ekiti State University. He was hampered by lack of resources and unnecessary pettiness in the university where people were envious of the special deference people paid to him. He has since joined the team helping AfeBabalola develop a modern medical school not humbled by severe lack of financialresources.

    He can look back and thank God for His great mercies and for the excellent health he has endowed him with. He has had the fortune of a slim physique without any excess fat. As a young man, he kept fit playing tennis but he has never been a health freak and with minimal self-effort,God has preserved him this long.

    As a slender child in Christ’s School, he was not known for athletics or football; he however did enough to keep fit. He ate very sparingly. I saw him do this in San Francisco to my absolute horror but as a physician he knows what is good for him. I have always admired Professor Esan as an old boy of my famous alma mater. When I entered Christ’s School in 1956, our teachers used to regale us of the incredible academic exceptionalism of Kayode Osuntokun and Fola Esan and challenged us to go and do likewise. We all tried but we were not good enough even though we too were not brain dead but the records of the two Christ School heroes remain. Professor Fola Esan is one of the brightest men that has ever lived in this our benighted country that pays little regard to academic excellence.

    This is wishing you sir, happy birthday day and I pray you remain on eagles wings.

  • Akinkugbe: Hanging stethoscope after 60 years of medical practice

    I first met the then young Dr Ladipo Akinkugbe in 1962, 56 years ago when he came to give a lecture on water borne diseases to students of Ibadan Grammar School during my Higher School Certificate course. My alma mater Christ’s school Ado Ekiti did not have HSC in Arts subjects then. Even some of my very brilliant colleagues in the sciences preferred to have different experience than the one we had in Christ’s School by going to such schools as Ibadan Grammar School, Oyo Baptist College and Government College Ibadan Abeokuta Grammar School etc. But quite a number swotted for the concessional entrance examination to the University of Ibadan rather than going through the circuitous route of the Advanced Level examination.
    Akinkugbe comes from a patrician family of the Akinkugbe/Ladapo lineage in Ode-Ondo. By the way the only other place prefaced with “Ode” in Nigeria is Ode-Itshekiri or “big Warri” without going too much into history the people of the two places are linguistically related. Akinkugbe after his primary school in Ondo went to Government College Ibadan which distinguished itself by offering British type “public school” kind of education. Unlike Barewa College in the northern part of the country, its students intakes were usually the best selected after rigorous examination process. My brother, Edward Abiodun was a senior to Akinkugbe in Government College. One of Akinkugbe’s classmates was the Nobel laureate for literature Wole Soyinka (W.S). I must say if Akinkugbe had not studied medicine, he too would have made a mark in English literature judging from his mastery of the English language. One just has to listen or read his public lectures and auto biography “Footprints and Footnotes” to see the erudition that is native to the man.
    Akinkugbe belonged to the class of medical students at the University of Ibadan who had to leave Nigeria to go to London University College to finish their clinical studies before graduating M.B. B.S. (London). Those who came after him to Ibadan which by then had one of the best teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth, the UCH, finished their medical education in Ibadan but continued to get degrees of London University until 1964 when the University of Ibadan regrettably severed its ties with the University of London. I was at the University of Ibadan at that time and many of the students who started earning degrees of Ibadan after 1964 were not very happy with being denied London degrees. Would we have lost anything if we had maintained academic ties with the University of London? The modern trend in higher education nowadays is that the great universities of the world viz Harvard, Yale, Oxford , Cambridge, London, University of California at Berkeley etc. are establishing overseas campuses in the Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore and China to offer opportunity for students overseas for their brand of quality education.
    After graduating, Akinkugbe went to Oxford for advanced clinical studies earning a Ph.D. (Oxon) in the process. Fortified with this and membership of the Royal College of Physicians, Akinkugbe joined the teaching staff of the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan. He rapidly rose through the ranks becoming a professor and dean of the faculty in his thirties. His rise to the top has been simply meteoric. During the expansion of tertiary institutions in Nigeria during the 1970s, he was asked to build initially a university college in Ilorin like the University of Ibadan, Jos campus established in 1971. He had hardly settled down there and laid out his plans when he was asked by the federal government to become the vice chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, the bastion of northern Nigerian nationalism rooted in resentment of southern Nigeria’s advancement in western education. The Obasanjo/Muhammed military government at that time in the late 1970s was driven by some kind of nationalist fervor and thought it could unify the country by making the nation’s elite work in areas far away from their ethnic homeland. For example, Professor Agodi Onwumechili was appointed vice chancellor of the University of Ife, J. C. Ezeilo was appointed vice chancellor of Bayero University, Kano and Umaru Shehu was appointed vice chancellor, University of Nigeria Nsukka. The experiment in nation-building nearly ended in tragedy for Akinkugbe and Ezeilo who had to be spirited out of Zaria and Kano following students and staff rebellion against them on the grounds of their ethnic and religious differences. If left alone in Ibadan, Akinkugbe would have adorned the vice chancellorship of the University of Ibadan with erudition, scholarship and refinement. He has however since his adventure in Zaria been called upon to chair as pro-chancellor, the governing councils of one or two universities in the country. He is currently the pro-chancellor of Ondo State University of Medical Sciences, a controversial university established by Governor Segun Mimiko on the eve of the end of his eight year term as governor. This university is obviously a sop to the people of Ondo town who were complaining that their native son did nothing for their town in eight years. It will be a miracle if the university survives despite the awesome presence of Akinkugbe on its board. Ondo State before the establishment of the University of Medical Sciences still housed in Adeyemi College of Education, had two universities in Akungba and Okitipupa which were inadequately funded. It is a moot question whether what Ondo town needed was a university as a symbol of development. A functioning potable water scheme, regular electricity supply, good primary and secondary technical college and establishment of small scale industries and assistance to farmers and traders would have been money better utilized.
    Akinkugbe of course could not have stopped the governor from establishing his pet project of a university.
    The Ibadan Hypertension Centre which Akinkugbe established and ran with his own funds is unfortunately closing down as the medical titan reaches 85. It is a pity that the government of Oyo or the federation cannot take over the centre and run it as a referral centre or as an adjunct to the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital. Probably 50 percent of us Nigerians are hypertensive. This disease is a secret killer the management of which our governments have paid little attention. Akinkugbe on his own has pointed the way that we should go. It is a pity that our over politicized country pays little regard to things that are worthy and deserving of attention and emphasis.
    Akinkugbe has paid his dues to Nigeria and to humanity. He has definitely earned his epaulettes as a distinguished professor of medicine. A grateful nation has accorded him the highest honour of the NNMA. He has been involved with credit the development of higher education in Nigeria. His advice may not have been listened to all the time by those in power but his contributions are on record and history will be kind to him. Sixty years of medical practice is worth celebrating. Kudos to you sir.

  • Buhari at the United Nations plenary

    I have been travelling through Europe and North America for the past few weeks so it was with pleasure that I watched our president deliver his speech at this year’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). I have some sentimental memories of my being a member of Nigeria’s delegation to UNGA beginning from 1988 to 1993 and again in 2005 before finally bowing out.

    I remember those years we spent under our foreign minister, General Ike Nwachukwu (retired) crafting our statements at the United Nations. When the late General Joseph Garba was our our ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations, we used to debate every word in the president’s speech before a final text was given to the president, vice president or foreign minister for delivery at the podium of the UN. It was usually a lively scene of arguments sometimes deteriorating into rude retorts before we settled down to a clean text. Even after that, someone close to the leader of the delegation may sneak in a sentence or two even after the advance copy had gone to the UN secretariat. This was why every UN speech had at the back – “check against delivery”.

    By the time I stopped going to the UN, it was no longer customary for speeches to be printed since this was made available on UN website. It was also customary for the president to host a reception for other delegates on the day of the national statement at the UN. The Nigerian delegation was always bloated. No amount of effort made by the ministry of foreign affairs to control the size of the delegation worked.  People came from every ministry tangentially related to UN affairs wanting to be delegates. The people in the ministry of finance who had to provide the money for the operations and their colleagues in the Central Bank would insist on attending. The various line ministries, cabinet office or the presidency as it is now called would have its own list. The ministry of foreign affairs always had a long list. The media also had to be invited so that one would have adequate coverage.

    During civilian administrations of Shehu Shagari and since 1999 post-military civilian regime, members of parliament and even state governors showed up as delegates in what had by then become a charade. The effect of this was that Nigeria’s delegation was usually embarrassingly large. But the work was done by only a few who were the best brains available or shall I say, who were invited. I hope Nigeria under Buhari will ensure that the size of its delegation is not too large and that people will not continue to show up until Christmas carrying letters from home to the permanent mission wanting to be registered as delegates.

    One also hopes that the Nigeria House in New York will continue to be maintained so that several of its floors can be rented out to service our diplomatic operations in North America and elsewhere. That was the purpose of building the imposing edifice in the first place. I say so because I was involved.

    President Muhammadu Buhari acquitted himself well in his performance at the UN. He was confident and had poise in his carriage and delivered a well crafted speech clearly. He covered all areas of the world where there are problems such as the Middle East particularly Palestine and Israel. He called for a just settlement of the Palestinian problem on the basis of a two states solution and according to the innumerable UN resolutions going back decades. Any one waiting for condemnation of the USA’s movement of its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv would be disappointed. Nigeria cannot be expected to face an approaching train of Trump’s America. The president spoke sympathetically on Syria calling for peaceful solution to the civil war while praising Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Germany for taking in Syrian refugees. He also called for peace in Yemen without getting involved in the struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East. He then spent an unnecessarily long time on the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar praising Bangladesh for its humanitarian assistance to the refugees.  One wonders whether the time spent on the perennial problems of the Middle East could not have been better spent on African and Nigerian problems while just mentioning the Middle East in one or two sentences.

    The president paid adequate and encouraging tribute to Eritrea and Ethiopia for signing a peace treaty between the two countries and ending the state of belligerency which had unhappily existed between the two countries for decades. He said South Sudan and Djibouti had also resolved their internal problems that have led to the loss of lives and displacement of their people. He said no problem was too deep-rooted that it cannot be solved. He mentioned the situation in the Sahel and the threat posed by terrorists to West Africa following the collapse of Libya. He linked the proliferation of weapons and light arms in our sub region with the collapse of Libya but said nothing about those who killed Ghadafi to contribute to the solution.

    His call on the international community to help us restore the waters of Lake Chad and thereby the livelihood to 45 million people is likely to fall on deaf ears. His acknowledgement of the help of France, Germany, the USA and Norway in this regard is spot on. Boko Haram and the rehabilitation of our people in the northeast of Nigeria can only be resolved within bilateral relations with friendly nations. I will like discrete moves made to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the states in the Gulf where our rich people carry our money to for assistance in our situation of desperation. The president also linked the desiccation of Lake Chad to climate change and its deleterious effect in the bitter and deadly struggle for land between farmers and herders in Nigeria indirectly calling for all countries including the United States to take the issue of climate change seriously. He did not say this but it is implied. He finally called for international effort to stamp out corruption and illegal transfer of billions of dollars by nationals of under developed countries to the developed countries. He added that without repatriation of such funds, resources available to government will be considerably reduced. He said we will not have the resources to provide employment for our youths at home instead of their dying miserably in the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea.

    The president should have mentioned what his government was doing to tackle all these problems.

    On the whole it was a good speech which also was well delivered. Unfortunately it was delivered to a virtually empty chamber. Nigeria has no control who listens to its president’s speech at the UN. Thank God, we were not laughed at. But the lack of audience is a manifestation of how far down Africa and Nigeria has sunk in international reckoning. Our continent has become a synonym for disease, poverty underdevelopment and civil strife and there is no glimmer of hope that our continent will soon join the rest of humanity in the march for development. This is the challenge before all of us and particularly before Nigeria’s leaders ruling over a country that the UN says by 2050 will harbour 40% of the poorest people in the world.