The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

Canon Sowunmi: A great Nigerian passes on

Professor Margaret Adebisi Sowunmi, professor of palynology and environmental archaeology in the Department of Archaeology, University of Ibadan passed on in May and was laid to rest on June 24. This has been a personal loss to me and a collective loss to the University of Ibadan, the Anglican Christian community and to the city of Ibadan and Nigeria as a whole. This elegant and generally quiet lady who spoke slowly and effectively had unmistakably noticeable presence wherever she was.

She was born in Kano in 1939 where her father, the late Anglican Bishop of Ibadan was a young cleric during the colonial days before coming back South and rising to head the Anglican Diocese in Ibadan where Adebisi grew up attending primary and secondary schools, including the iconic Saint Anne’s and Ibadan Grammar schools before entering the University of Ibadan where she read Botany and earned a B.Sc. and a Ph.D. in palynology and environmental archaeology generally applying the study of botany to archaeology. She blazed the trail in this particular area of application of the science of botany to the study of environmental changes from the past to the present which is quite important here in Africa where radio carbon dating is important in dating the African past where written documentation is not available or very scarce.

Those of us not involved in the arcane study of archaeology are most interested in the role of Professor Sowunmi in the church particularly in the Chapel of Resurrection, the main Christian church in the Ibadan university community.

The church will miss her very much. Even those of us who are not regular members of the church were attracted to her regular homilies during the Passion Week ending the Christian Lenten season climaxing in Easter marking the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For the past 20 years, I drove from Lagos to Ibadan to attend the one-week Passion Week simply to listen and see Professor Sowunmi’s elucidation of the word of God as contained in the Christian Bible. I exchanged texts and calls with her, raising one issue or two on issues of the Christian faith and its application to our country’s problems. She sometimes asked me what we Christians were doing about our faith especially when Christians were in government or excluded from government. She once invited me to give a talk to the Christian community at the university chapel on the role of Christians in the global governments and what we can learn from it.

I decided to focus my discussion on the Christian community in Germany since the end of the Second World War because I had just come back from Germany where I had been an ambassador from 1991 to1995 mentioning the significance of Christianity in the formation of the dominant political party in Germany, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of current German chancellor, Friedrich Merz and the first post-war chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

I mentioned that this party inherited the legacy of the largely Catholic Centre Party of the past as a foundation for the current CDU which has built their support on the large Catholic community in West Germany and now the Protestant Christian community in Eastern Germany both of which commands about 45% of the nation’s population.

Read Also: Tinubu signs historic Tax Reform Bills to law Thursday

I always mentioned the fact that although the sectarian nature of politics is hardly mentioned publicly but it is nevertheless important, I also said the fact of sectarian belonging in Germany is significant in that tithes were deducted by the state and forwarded to the sectarian bodies chosen by the citizens. I also told my audience then that major universities and their teaching hospitals were funded majorly by the churches obviously attracting state and federal grants as determined by government. I also alluded to the role of the Evangelical church in the USA, Republican Party and the Anglican Communion in the Conservative Party in the UK and the Catholic churches in Latin America especially, and splinter marginalised groups known as revolutionary Christianity of armed militants and I mentioned the role of the Muslim umma in the politics of Turkey, the Sudan and Northern Nigeria and the Catholic community in Eastern Nigeria.

After listening, she asked me why we Christians were so silent that we hardly had a say in government. She asked the audience what we could do about this. I know for sure she organised silently for the Christian candidate for governor in Oyo State irrespective of party affiliation in the last two elections.

Whatever radical opinions she held she kept to herself without being loud about it but occasionally expressing some of these views as a preacher on the pulpit. I don’t know how effective her effort was but it shows her commitment to social change. She also, I believe, took serious interest in national politics and held office of patron of a patriotic pressure movement basically in an advisory capacity. All I can say is that she was not happy with the way things have been with the political development in our country since independence.

I dare say not many of us in the academic community and the general intelligentsia have been happy with the way the country is run without thought of the future. If Professor Sowunmi were a man, she would have been in the forefront of confrontational politics in the country. She held very dim view of academics in government. She made me feel this when I had a role in government no matter how tangentially a role I felt I had.

I had a lot of respect for her restrained approach to religion and politics generally and was much impressed by her erudition in religious scholarship despite the fact that she did not quite train as a cleric unless one says she learnt all that needed to be learned under her revered father, the Very Reverend Jadesimi, one time Anglican Bishop of Ibadan. She also, like some us, had her religious baptism in Saint Anne’s and Ibadan Grammar School. I know this because those of us who went to schools like Christ’ School Ado – Ekiti, Lagos Anglican Grammar School, (CMS Grammar School), Igbobi College, Lagos, Dennis Memorial Grammar School Onitsha, Baptist Boys High School, Abeokuta, Saint Gregory College, Lagos, Old Holy Ghost College Owerri to mention the few that I know, had distinctive Christian approach to governance. Of course, these schools have been polluted by government take over at certain times or the other so the moral standards have not been maintained.

I regard the death of Professor Adebisi Sowunmi, beloved wife of the late Professor Segun Sowunmi, a distinguished mathematician as a great loss to the Christian community, the academic world and to her friends and relations and to her family to who she is simply irreplaceable.

Rest in peace, Sisi Bisi, as I called you. We all will miss you but I am sure heaven will rejoice at your coming. You have run a good race and won the crown of glory.

Praise the Lord.

June 26, 2025
Middle East: Israeli tail wagging American dog

The recent denial by the Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, that the United States did not know beforehand, Israel’s attack on Iran was an obvious lie which President Donald Trump cleared not completely the following day when he said he was briefed by Mr Bilyaminin Netanyahu the Israeli prime minister a day before but he did not say if he gave the go ahead.

Of course, the Europeans are not having a part in the Israeli war on Iran, the third Israeli war on its enemies in one year, if one adds this current war on Iran to the Israeli war on Gaza and on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Europe is more concerned with Russia’s war on Ukraine which poses existential threat to Europe.

It seems however that since Trump was elected president of the USA, the role of Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in global security has almost become irrelevant in world affairs. Trump has almost individually appropriated foreign policy operations whether in Europe but most particularly in the Middle East. All the remonstrations of the Europeans and Canada with Israel over its murderous campaign against a defenceless people in Gaza and Lebanon made largely of women, children and old men have been ignored.

America has been dragged in, to support Israel in Lebanon and in the constant bombing of Syria until there was a regime change in Syria and Hezbollah has been rendered useless as part of Iranian front against Israel and now Israel has decided to remove the troublesome presence of Iran in the Axis of evil as Israel is concerned.

Earlier on when Israel and Iran exchanged blows during the dying months of the Biden administration, the United States in October 2024, Europe, even Jordan and Egypt tried to intercept Iranian missiles and drones from hitting Israel but in the current situation, the European countries principally Britain, France , Germany and Canada and their allies in the Middle East kept their distance and called for de-escalation of the conflict because they felt Israeli attack on Iran was unjustified especially when America was involved in negotiations with Iran over the issue of the Iranian rapid uranium enrichment a precondition for making nuclear weapons.

Read Also: I want to be remembered as a patriotic leader who loved Nigeria — Gowon

Israel was more concerned with the issue because it poses existential threat to her. This reluctance on the part of Europe to jump on the bandwagon of military campaign against Iran restrained the combustible Donald Trump who first said America was not connected with the Israeli attack. This was also reinforced by Marco Rubio’s disclaimer that Israeli attack was a unilateral decision with no American input.

We now know the American president was involved from the beginning. But Trump wants to intervene on the side of Israel apparently reluctantly because the MAGA movement supporting him is against American military entanglement in the Middle East. Trump also sees himself as a “PEACE PRESIDENT” who would rather face the task of developing America and making Americans rich through his policy of high tariffs against the rest of the world whether, as his critics say, makes economic sense or not .

This is where we are. Trump departed before the end of the G-7 conference in Canada to go back to Washington where he has been making threats against Iran and asking people to vacate immediately, Tehran, the 10 million-peopled capital of Iran apparently as preparatory to America unleashing B52 bombers to drop huge bombs that can penetrate down the depth of where the uranium enrichment laboratories are buried. Trump while arriving in Washington threw caution to the winds and said “we control the air space of Iran and we know where the Ayatollah is hiding and we have not decided to take him out yet”,

This means that America and Israel may decide not only to get rid of the nuclear infrastructure but also effect a regime change. It seems they may go for both. It will not be easy if America intervenes by putting troops on the ground because one cannot win a war without ground troops to secure the victory of air campaign. Iran is not going to be an easy country to conquer. However the American administration has begun deploying its military assets into the Persian Gulf and had flown military planes to the centre of the conflict in the last few days.

Whatever the case may be, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the UN agency based in Vienna has however warned that busting nuclear facilities buried deep down the earth and releasing radioactive materials come with tremendous risk. This is a warning to gung-ho Republicans who want to bomb Iran to ashes to be careful of wilfully or unwillingly poisoning the environment in the Middle East and elsewhere because the global environment is one.

One thing that bothers me is the way Israel has been empowered by the current and even the Biden United States’ administration to shape the Middle East the way it wants irrespective of what the other countries want. Because of this, Israel arrogates to itself the moral right to decide about who is right or wrong in the politics of the Middle East. Gone are the days when the whole world stood with Israel on issues of morality on politics of the Middle East and when Israel was famous for taming the desert and turning the Israeli desert to green agricultural pastures and producing first class medical drugs and equipment. These days Israel is known for its military conquest and its policy of might being right. Israel, because of the history of the holocaust, has the right to defend itself but when does this right become the right to brutally conquer and kill Palestinians who like the Israelis are merely struggling to be free?

The slaughterhouse which Gaza and the West Bank of the River Jordan have turned into need to be closed down for ever. Someone needs to speak up about the need to stop the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli army and the two suffering peoples – the Israelis and Palestinians need to live in peace either together or separately.

If Donald Trump brings the weight of the United States behind Israel, the question then is what becomes of the recent apparent success of Trump’s policies in the Arab world? No matter the historical differences that exist between Arabs and Iranians (Persians), the tie of Islam despite the differences between the dominant Sunni and Shia Islam respectively in most of the Arab world and Iran, the ties of geography, history and Islam are stronger than the temporary binding of contemporary times.

June 19, 2025
An elegy for Jibril Muhammad Aminu

When I heard the unexpected news of Professor Jibril Aminu’s demise, I said to myself what William Shakespeare wrote in his play – As you like it about the seven ages of man: “All the world is a stage, and all the men and women are merely players…” Shakespeare meant that we are all actors and actresses and we have different routes to enter this stage and also have different exits to go out. We enter this stage when we are born and leave this stage when we die.

Of course, it is not Shakespeare who first had this idea. It is also in the holy texts of the Bible and the Quran. When we die we say that God “gives and takes away“. The Bible says death is a transition to a state of “sleep” until the resurrection. The Quran says “Inna lilahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un” meaning – “Verily we belong to Allah, and to Him we shall return”. This reminds us about the temporary nature of human existence and about the inevitability of death. This inevitability of death reminds us to work hard and be kind to one another while on earth pleasing man and God as much as we can, because no one knows when the last call shall sound.

I first met Dr Jibril Aminu in 1975 in Ibadan when he worked under my late and beloved brother, Professor Kayode Osuntokun who was then head of Department of Medicine and was earlier on instrumental to recruiting Aminu into the department at the university when he was then a consultant at the Maiduguri General Hospital on the grounds that such a brilliant man belonged to a teaching hospital rather than a general hospital. I didn’t know I would meet him again but I came close to him in 1978 when I was recruited by the National Universities Commission (NUC) of which he was the Executive Secretary.

Aminu on the cusp of becoming a senior lecturer in Medicine in 1975 was appointed Executive Secretary of the NUC which was a small toothless body modelled after the British Grants committee on higher education. It was supposed to distribute budgetary allocation to the federal universities of Ibadan and Lagos. At that time, senior academics like vice chancellors and other professors felt Aminu was too junior a fellow to take over from Dr Okoi Arikpo, a venerable gentleman who had held the position under the chairmanship of Chief FRA Williams, a distinguished lawyer. When however Yakubu Gowon was overthrown in 1975 and Murtala Muhammad became head of state, Jibril Aminu’s role in government became much more prominent because the new head of state and Aminu had been students together in Barewa College Zaria, a high school that incubated and prepared northern Nigerian boys from the colonial times to modern times for leadership positions in post-independent Nigeria.

Read Also: Expert gives insight into how to Navigate Nigeria’s Economic Maze, build wealth in 2023

Between 1971 and 1975, the regional universities of Ile Ife, Ahmadu Bello in Zaria and the University of Nigeria at Nsukka had for financial reasons depended on federal financial support which was finally consummated by the federal government’s takeover in 1975. With the federal government’s take over, the NUC under Jibril Aminu grew rapidly into an academic octopus until what it has become now. From then on, and even after Murtala Muhammad’s death and until the end of the Muhammad- Obasanjo’s regime in 1979, Aminu’s shadow loomed very large in government. He became vice chancellor in Maiduguri from 1981 to 84 and then became federal minister of education under the short military regime of Muhammadu Buhari before becoming minister of petroleum under Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, falling and rising with the various leaders of the military regimes of the time.

I worked under him when he was executive secretary of the NUC serving as director of the NUC offices first in Ottawa, Canada and then in Washington DC in the United States of America from 1978 to 82. I was then a senior lecturer, later associate professor in the Department of History and Security Studies, University of Lagos on leave of absence. I was interviewed for the job by a panel of the late professors T.N Tamuno and Ayandele and Alhaji Shehu Musa, federal permanent secretary of finance. The job was competed for by professors and senior lecturers but having taught in the University of the West Indies and the University of Western Ontario in Canada gave me an advantage over others for the job in Canada while the directorate positions in Washington, London and Cairo went to older and senior colleagues.

With Aminu-inspired expansion of the Nigerian universities system to several new towns like Kano, Maiduguri, Sokoto, Bauchi, Jos, Yola, Calabar, Makurdi, Port Harcourt, Benin, Akure and Abeokuta, it became necessary to open offices in strategic places in the western world for staff recruitment, training of staff, purchase of library books and machines and laboratory equipment. Instead of allowing each university to have overseas offices, it became necessary to centralise their operations under the growing NUC. As the NUC grew in importance, the position of vice chancellors diminished and this brought Aminu into more and more conflict with these gentlemen. But the new positions as vice chancellors of the new universities brought support for the young Aminu until he left the NUC in 1979 to become vice chancellor of the University of Maiduguri.

I joined him in Maiduguri from Washington DC in 1982. Jibril was a careful and strategic man. When I showed interest in coming to Maiduguri, he asked for my publications and sent them for assessment at the ICU (Inter University Council) presumably to avoid any criticism. I was quite happy when the assessment came back positive. I joined him in Maiduguri to have a wonderful experience of access to the Shehu of Borno‘s palace and the humble homes of Sir Kashim Ibrahim, former governor in the old North and Shetima Ali Monguno, former federal minister.

I made lasting friendships with these two great Nigerians and ended writing the biography of Sir Kashim Ibrahim with the title of Power Broker which drew the attention of Adamu Ciroma who said Sir Kashim was power himself and not just its broker!

I had a good time in Maiduguri both among the students and staff of the university. I was head of Department of History and Dean of Arts and when an ambitious colleague put pressure on the system after returning to the university after a failed political adventure, I gave up the deanship and was immediately saddled with acting deanship of postgraduate studies. After some fundamental disagreement on political issues, I decided to leave against the wishes of Jibril Aminu in 1985 when he himself invited by Ibrahim Babangida to become minister of education and later minister of petroleum resources. He later went as ambassador to Washington after the military finally exited power. He had a great run in this country. He had a brief mission as ambassador of Nigeria to Washington.

He was after his diplomatic journey elected a senator from Adamawa. He became chancellor of one of the state universities in the north. The only jobs he never had were vice president and president but he left legacies above those people who held those positions. He is associated with the introduction of the 3-3-4 educational system and the change of school calendar beginning from September and ending in June to allow children helping their parents on the farms as well as admissions into secondary and tertiary institutions on quota basis with different cut off marks for states on the basis that there were states that were more advantaged than others and finally job opportunities in federal establishments based on quotas. These policies were more favourable to the northern part of the country but Aminu insisted that we had to be prepared to make uncomfortable sacrifices if we are determined to build a nation. For these policies, he was very unpopular in the south but popular in the north. He was very thick skin about public criticism even by his friends but he remained determined in his public life.

He was a great man, an exceptionally brilliant medical scientist and fearless leader of men. If he had chosen to be a literary man, he would have been one of the greatest writers of this century. I admired him as a boss, colleague and a friend and even though I disagreed with him on some of his policies, I admired his courage. When asked what he would want to be remembered for, his answer was short “a good Muslim”. I am not surprised that he died on Arafat day just a day before Eid – el – Adha.

June 12, 2025
A new arms race

Recently, the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said we were living in dangerous times. This was echoed by the new American Secretary of State for Defence, Pete Hegseth. I would have said this was the usual exaggeration which the Donald Trump crowd is known for. But coming from the British prime minister, one cannot simply dismiss it because this was a preambular statement to the launching of a new British defence and strategic review document which is going to increase Britain’s defence spending to 3% of the country’s GDP.

This will be well above the current 2% and moving on to 2.5%, still way below the 5% president Donald Trump is demanding from all NATO member countries, even though the current amount the USA is spending is $895 billion, just about 3.4%of its GDP, which is way above the current expenditure on defence by the next three countries of China, $266.85 billion, Russia $126 billion, and India, which comes fourth with an expenditure of $75 billion.

From these figures it can be seen that the USA alone spends more than the next three countries combined. The British prime minister’s statement was further explained by the Secretary of State for Defence , Right Honourable John Healey, who claimed that his country aims to build about eleven attack submarines, expand the carrying capacity of the British navy and reinvigorate the airforce by buying additional American-built F35, and increase the number of British-built typhoon aircrafts, and start recruiting people into the fighting force of the army, while keeping the current men and women happy by improving their accommodation and stipends. All these coming from a socialist government, which traditionally preferred to spend money on social services, indicate that its analysis on threat to the realm is serious.

Read Also: Nigeria, UNICEF partner to train 20m youths in digital skills by 2030

This, of course, should be taken in the context of the NATO members’ feeling about the unreliability of the USA as a partner because of the statements of President Donald Trump who has, perhaps rightly, been saying that American defence partners must share the burden of defence, and not expect America to carry their burden as it used to do hitherto.

This sharing of burden on defence extends not only to NATO members alone, but to Japan and South Korea, and to the rich Arab oil kingdoms, but not to Israel where the Israeli tail wags the American dog! As at the moment, Trump is prepared to fight the Israeli war against Iran and to possibly level the Persian theocracy down unless it kowtows to Israeli diktat and abandons its nuclear programme.

The current doctrine of expanding defence spending has also been embraced by the new German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who has publicly committed his country to go beyond 3% of GDP from its current low of below 2%. Chancellor Merz has signed agreements with Ukraine to help it defend itself by building its own defence industry. The German posture on defence is influenced by President Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. For reasons of the big powers guarantee of Germany’s permanent disarmament, the Germans would probably have built their own nuclear arsenal, which they are capable of doing and have the know-how.

The current aggression of Russia in Ukraine has led to President Macron’s signing defence agreements with Poland in addition to the European Union’s opposition to the Russian threat. All these coming after Donald Trump’s bluff has not impressed President Putin, and it seems the Europeans are determined to defend themselves, with or without American support. Coordination of British, French and German preparedness to defend their interests on the continent of Europe, and their threat to seize accumulated Russian assets and investments in Europe, may eventually force President Putin to count the cost of his policy of rebuilding the lost Russian empire and the reconstruction of the collapsed USSR.

Recently, the security conference in Singapore, which the Chinese virtually ignored by sending a low-ranking delegation to, witnessed the campaign of rearmament carried to their door step, with President Macron delivering the keynote address and offering France’s support in the defence of democracy, defence and development for countries in South East Asia, and warning those countries of the need to be prepared to defend their country’s autonomy. He also called on China to prevail on North Korea’s continued intervention on the Russian side in the current war between Russia and Ukraine on the European continent.

The American Secretary of State, Pete Hegseth, was less diplomatic as characteristic of American “open diplomacy, “established since the time of President Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War, by openly accusing China of threatening Taiwan and the Philippines, and calling on countries in Asia to be ready to resist Chinese communist threats by increasing their arms spending. He gave the impression that America is prepared to defend Taiwan, which is against President Trump’s campaign statement that he would not commit American troops to the defence of Taiwan. The Japanese and the South Koreans were not openly attacking China. Japan, in recent times, seems to have abandoned its pacific policy to a policy of armed neutrality in Asia, but ready to protect the Japanese homeland.

In the first Trump administration, the Japanese were publicly goaded to develop their own nuclear umbrella. The Japanese did not publicly state their position, apart from saying the American – Japanese treaty of defence was sufficient. My guess is that the Chinese do not have expansionist ambitions on the Philippines except to contest fishing rights on disputed islands in the South China Sea, and Vietnam is capable of resisting Chinese ambitions. As for Taiwan, the eventual unification with the mainland is a foregone conclusion, with or without America acquiescence.

To make the new arms race palatable to the suffering electorate in Europe, particularly in Great Britain, politicians are now talking of a new concept of “DEFENCE DIVIDENDS,” meaning with expansion of defence industries in their neighbourhood, jobs will be created for working-class people who can either enlist in the armed forces or work in arms industries. The idea of defence dividends is not strange because when a country’s economy is put on war footing, there seems to be the appearance of full employment, which is a false prosperity against which the post Second World war American president and previous Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, David Dwight Eisenhower, warned against when he advised his country against being taken over by the “military industrial complex. “

There is, however, no doubt, that there is a growing hysteria about the possibility of an outbreak of war in Europe, and the rest of us cannot just ignore it because of our distance from the current theatre of the conflict in Eastern Europe. However, we can hope that, like all other regional wars of the past, since 1945, the Russian war in Ukraine will be contained because its spread and development into a nuclear confrontation is just too ghastly to be imagined.

June 5, 2025
Ukraine: Warning to the West

As an historian, I can’t fault the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in its effort to support Ukraine in its determination to defend itself against Russia, the bully neighbour who, in the last 14 years, has been gradually invading the country; first of all, by seizing Crimea on the basis that most of the people living there are Russian speaking. After getting away with this, Russia invaded the Eastern part of Ukraine some 14 years later, on the basis of protecting “Russia abroad “and stopping NATO expansion towards Russian western borders.

If Russia is allowed to get away with this, it will be dangerous for the world where there are “language diasporas,” such as French speakers inhabiting some parts of Belgium, Switzerland in Europe, German speakers inhabiting some parts of Italy, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria.

These facts of history do not have to constitute “linguistic determinism,” or territorial irredentism, the kind that Adolf Hitler championed leading to disastrous consequences of the Second World War. The world is right when it recalls that Neville Chamberlain kowtowed to Adolf Hitler by thinking a piece of paper signed by the German dictator would guarantee peace in Europe. This, of course, did not guarantee peace and that this kind of “Appeasement “is what the Western world should avoid in its policy towards Putin.

They argue that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The presence of Russian speakers in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia should not be a reason for Russia to invade those countries. This is a powerful argument. But in these days of nuclear weapons, can one pursue the same policy that made sense in the pre-nuclear weapons world that Russia must be resisted by all means ?

I don’t always agree with President Donald Trump, but his point is that if Putin is pushed to the wall and he feels that Russia would have to go down fighting, he may be tempted to use nuclear weapons and NATO would have to retaliate in an unwinnable war.

Recently, Herr Friedrich Merz, the new German Chancellor leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), issued a statement that the previous restriction placed on the use of weapons supplied to Ukraine by Germany for defence within Ukraine no longer applies, and that Ukraine is free to use the weapons within Russia. Putin quickly reminded the Germans that old and young Russians remember their country being levelled by German panzer tanks during the Second World War. The Germans are apparently following what the British told the Ukrainians about eight months ago, that they were free to use British drones and tanks within Russia. But the Russians are particularly historically sensitive about their losses at the hands of the Germans in the Second World War.

President Biden restricted the use of American weapons to within Ukraine. Apparently, the Europeans are changing tactics because of Russia’s irresponsible military attacks on Ukraine in recent times following missile and drones attack on the country, even during President Trump’s so-called mediation.

The Russian leader has warned that any NATO weapons attack on Russia would be welcomed with retaliation in kind. If this were to happen, the NATO doctrine is “attack on one would be regarded as attack on all.” In a case like this, a world war would break out and each of the nuclear armed camps would be eager to deliver the first blow, even though this would not matter because both the USA and Russia have Second Strike Capability. This is a terrible situation to contemplate; it is a terrible scenario to imagine.

Even those of us in the undeveloped countries in Africa would perish as a result of nuclear fallouts. This is what informed President J.F. Kennedy’s warning to the world in 1961 that “in the event of nuclear war, the living would envy the dead.”

Read Also: Senate passes N1.8trn 2025 FCT budget

I remember, years ago, discussing this possibility of Armageddon in my International Relations class, and a young lady followed me to my office crying. I was worried and asked her what was wrong, and she unabashedly told me I upset her. I asked her to sit down and drink a glass of cold water, and asked her what I said that upset her so much. I was amused when she said it was OK for an old man like myself to talk about the end of the world so casually. She said what would happen to them, young and unmarried ones, who hope to marry and have their own families. Then I told her the scenario I painted need not happen if intelligent people are at the command of global politics.

Recently, President Trump sacked the 100-manned USA Council of National Security on the basis of redundancy and economic considerations, and was satisfied with running US foreign policy alone. This scared me because, to be sincere, the man’s “one-man foreign policy” is dangerously heading towards the rocks!

I can agree with Trump sometimes that the Russian strong man Vladimir Putin is determined to create a Russia that is neither inferior to the USA nor China in a triumvirate of global powers, and is ready to bring the global edifice down on all our heads if he cannot achieve this! And that we need to be careful how we treat him, with understanding and some kind of dignity.

What is to be done.? I suggest that NATO, including the USA, should arm Ukraine, especially with air defensive weapons, including drones, missiles and aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons, to make the constant air attack by Russia of no account. NATO should ensure artillery and tanks superiority for Ukraine and encourage NATO nationals who want to fight the Russians to go to Ukraine as people volunteered to fight the Francisco Franco dictatorship in Spain in the 1930s, so as to wear the Russians down.

The sanctions against Russia should be so tightened as to include sanctions against those trading with Putin like China, India and Brazil. Russia has reduced itself to a third world country exporting raw materials alone, particularly gas, wheat, and oil; and these are available in many countries. If Russia cannot export these, it will run out of money to pay its soldiers and mercenaries, including North Koreans.

A policy of isolation will drive home the policy of global ostracism to the average Russian so that they would be restive in their opposition to their own government and the entrenched oligarchy supporting the policy of language determinism, irredentism and armed-fist imperialism in Europe.

May 29, 2025
Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV, 69, former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, formally began his pontificate by the inauguration service on Sunday the 18th of May 2025 at Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican, attended by dignitaries from all over the world, including our President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, J.D. Vance, the Vice President of the United States, and the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. The two of them are practising Catholics.

Ordinarily the United States, and especially Donald Trump and his Republican cavemen, do not pay much attention to Catholic affairs because that is not where the votes are. Besides that, apart from presidents JF Kennedy and Joe Biden, no other Catholic has been in the White House since 1776. But in this particular case they have no choice.

The Pope is an American priest serving in a Catholic district after a distinguished missionary service in Peru, one of the poorest countries in the world. It was there that the former Pope Francis appointed him a cardinal and sent him back to his native Chicago, where he was born to devout Catholic parents born in Saint Louis, Louisiana, in the southern part of the United States.

The Pope’s grandparents, particularly the grandmother, was born in Santo Domingo or in Haiti, and it was from there she migrated to Saint Louis in Louisiana. She then married a French man, the father of the pope’s mother who, like her own mother, married a French man in Saint Louis before they headed to Chicago where the pope was born.

The young Robert Prevost went to university in Chicago and got an honours degree in mathematics before entering the priesthood in the Augustinian order. What is the Augustinian order? This order, also known as the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA), is primarily known for its emphasis on friendship, charity and missionary work. They are inspired by the teachings of Saint Augustine of Hippo, a 4th century friar born in North Africa who had a great influence in the development of the early universal church.

Augustinians strive to live out a Christian vocation of love for God and neighbours. The Augustinians are a mendicant order that relies on the generosity of their hosts for their sustenance. They place much emphasis on community, education, pastoral care; and are involved in sending out missionaries all over the world, and are seriously involved in the work of evangelisation. They have pastoral presence all over the world and devote their time to the study of the works of Saint Augustine, the writer of the famous book “The city of God. “

Read Also: Nigeria among Africa’s top investment destinations – Speaker Abbas

Robert Prevost’s adherence to the Saint Augustinian order influenced him in becoming a missionary and leaving the easy world of Chicago and going to Peru as a missionary where he was for more than 10 years; not even in the city of Santiago de Chile, the capital, but in a rustic village in the southern part of the country where he was known for regularly cooking for poor peasants.

When Cardinal Robert Prevost chose the papal title of Leo XIV, it was an indication of the line he wanted for his pontificate to follow and this was the path of Leo XIII. Leo XIII was pope between 1878 and 1903. He was the Italian Cardinal Carpineto Romano, who on being made pope chose the title of Leo XIII. He belonged to the order of Saint Thomas Acquinas, a Catholic friar and philosopher who was born in the 14th century.

Thomas Acquinas was an Aristotelian philosopher who, in his writings, tried to bring cooperation between church and state.

Leo XIII was a kind of a revolutionary pope in his time, who moved away from the previous antagonistic relations of the papacy to the state. He supported the poor people, when necessary, but not in antagonism to the state. It seems the new Pope Leo XIV wants to follow the path of his namesake in being socially relevant in these times of wars in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and immigration all over the Americas and Africa. Time will surely tell how steadfastly the new pope will answer the call of the masses to help share their burdens.

This pope came in a dramatic way. No one guessed that the United States was going to produce the pope. But God works in mysterious ways. Who would have believed that the time of President Trump, when through the American president’s economic actions of raising tariffs and freezing global trade relations and devaluing the American brand, an American pope will emerge to palliate the wounds of the American political tzar!

When the white smoke signalled that the concave of cardinals on the second day of being locked up in the Sistine Chapel had chosen a new pope, we all held our breath waiting to know who had been chosen. This was the reaction of Christians, Muslims and others. When we were told it was Cardinal Robert Prevost, and not any of the Italian and Filipino front runners, I knew the new pope was chosen by God and not by man.

Who would have thought an American would follow an Argentinian to occupy the throne of Saint Peter. I join all Catholics and fellow Christians to pray for him that indeed “Habemus papam. “

In fact, when I saw he shares things in common with Pastor Adejare Adeboye of the RCCG mission, I said ‘Hallelujah,’ and can’t wait for what will be an ecumenical meeting of the two men of God with mathematics backgrounds.

May 22, 2025
Indo-Pakistan war over Kashmir and Jammu

Shortly after the division of the British empire (RAJ) over India, the territories were divided into two, the bigger and most populous part retained the name India while the remaining largely Muslim parts were constituted into west Pakistan, modern PAKISTAN, and East Pakistan today’s BANGLADESH, and the two sides were separated by more than a thousand miles of Indian territory.

To show the artificiality of the new Pakistan, the name was an acronym of the provinces constituting it, namely Balochistan, Khyber, Pakhtunkhwa (formerly NWFP) Punjab and Sindh. These provinces, along with Islamabad capital territory and the federally administered Tribal Areas, constituted the federation of Pakistan.

To show the instability of the Muslim state each of which differed from each other ethnically but united by religion broke into BANGLADESH and PAKISTAN in 1971 after a brutally fought war which ended in 1971 in which India supported the secessionist East Pakistan.

This was virtually an impossible country to run with the west Pakistani army ruling East Pakistan like a conquered territory. Mahatma Gandhi, the founder of modern India, had foreseen this and had tried to persuade his Muslim colleague and founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Governor General of Pakistan (1947-1948), but the Muslim – Hindu distrust was so fundamental that emotion prevailed over centuries of mutual hatred.

Despite the problems of the two embryonic nations, they were again faced with what to do with the knotty problem of Kashmir and Jammu that were left unsolved by the departing British. This territory was ruled over by a Hindu Maharaja over a vast Muslim population. The principle of the religion of the ruler should be the religion of the population became impossible to apply.

When the majority Muslim population tried to seize power in 1947, the Hindu Maharaja appealed to India for help and Pakistan went into the war to help the Muslims, thus a territorial war became a religious war on top of the approximately 2 million deaths and about 20 million displaced people.

The enormous human loss attendant on the partition had remained a bitter memory for the two countries and had damaged their relations leading to war over Kashmir in 1965, 1971, and 19991 and a seven-day shooting and bombing campaign in 2025, following the murder of 25 Indian tourists in Kashmir by presumably Kashmiris nationalists resisting suspicious Indian Settlers.

A nationalist resurgent India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, in recent years, changed the constitution of India, administered Kashmir and Jammu to union states removing the temporality of the province thus denying the promised UN referendum promised the territory to determine its eventual status in 1948 to the chagrin of Kashmiris who either want to join Pakistan or become independent.

India legitimately feels armed Muslim terrorists, both in India itself where there are more than 100 million Muslims who feel disgruntled or discriminated against by Hindu overlords using their majority dominant demographic position against them, and Muslims in disputed Kashmir, are being encouraged into armed terrorism.

Optimists have felt that with the increasing wealth of India there will be less tension between the two religious communities but it does not seem to be getting better as long as there are politicians available and ready to fan the embers of religious fanaticism.

To add to the complexity of the situation, India became a nuclear weapons state in May 1998; within two weeks later, Pakistan, after a series of nuclear tests, declared itself a nuclear weapons state. This means any war between the two antagonistic states may deteriorate to nuclear conflict in which the side effects of their nuclear exchange will spread beyond the two countries.

To add salt to injury, the Indian – Chinese border cuts across Kashmir and Jammu, which means final settlement of the Kashmir/ Jammu problem cannot ignore the interests of China which has recently become a strategic ally of Pakistan.

Read Also: NIMC enrolment hits 120 million as agency plans registration of all Nigerians

It is interesting that the United States allegedly has a military base in Pakistan, not too far away from the nuclear weapons sites of Pakistan, apparently keeping watch over the nuclear activities of the Pakistanis.

Pakistan politics is hugely dominated by the military, and when it is not directly in power controls the levers of power, installing and removing prime ministers as it wishes. A critic of this situation said Pakistan is the most dangerous country where the possibility of “a mad mullah armed with nuclear weapons may seize power and threaten the whole world “is a pressing concern.

An Islamic fundamentalist regime may decide to spread the joy of nuclear Armageddon to the tinderbox of the Middle East in a war to end all wars! As a student in London in the1960s and 1970s, I witnessed the mutual hatred of Indian and Pakistani students, even in a foreign country, and on visiting India in the 1990s, the mutual hatred was still palpable. Yet the two people must live side by side with each other, and even though separated by religion and culture but united by history and geography and race.

It’s easy for an outsider to suggest that India accepts a UN conducted referendum, but the possibility of India being surrounded by potential enemies in Kashmir and Jammu, Pakistan, China, and Bangladesh is too ghastly to consider. Perhaps a condominium of India and Pakistan over Kashmir and Jammu could be tried for half a century before the eventual status of the country is determined.

An economic community of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Sikkim, Nepal and possibly Myanmar could be encouraged in which case the power of Kashmir will be a case of subsidiarity. A case of no war, no peace, is just not reasonable and acceptable. There are just too many problems that the UN is simply too overwhelmed to handle.

May 15, 2025
Character is like smoke, no matter how one hides it, it will escape

I was reading an opinion column in a Western European newspaper last weekend in which the writer was saying the eventual fall of President Donald Trump and the political tendency and ideology which he represents were almost ordained because, according to the writer, any success built on hate cannot endure.

It now appears that the apparent electoral success of Trump over Kamala Harris was a mere pyrrhic victory which, though is having fundamental consequences on the USA and the whole world at large, may not amount to a sea change in American politics and global politics after all.

As an observer of global politics, it is clear to me that there are necessary changes which have to be made in American politics and global reactions to these changes but not the way Trump has gone about it. It is clear to me that America cannot continue to be the dumping grounds for Asian industrial goods from Japan, China, India, Vietnam and other putative capitalist countries whose economies are based on exports while America consumes all and their own industries go into decline without consequences on the global exchange capitalist mechanism.

This system, whereby consumption is in one country and production is in other countries, particularly in one dominant manufacturing country, is not likely to remain forever and it contradicts the capitalist system of exchange of goods.

This suited the commercial class in America, and also in Europe, which moved production to China and fed fat on design and manipulation of the market to favour themselves while the working class were made to pay exorbitantly for cheaply made Chinese goods deceptively styled “designer goods “and the rich class became richer and richer on their manipulation of the shares and stock markets.

Trump exploited the inherent racism of the white people against blacks and Asians to tell the Americans in coded language that the Chinese were responsible for their economic problems. His campaign of making America great again essentially meant “let’s make America white again,” where everyone knew their places, with the whites right at the top of the racial heap.

In this scheme, the likes of Obama and Harris have no place, and the vast majority of the white American electorate bought this. Somehow some Latinos bought into it feeling smug that they were not after all blacks! Even some black men felt they would not be bossed around by a black madam! The state capture of the electorate was complete.

Former President Joe Biden waited too long before he decided he would not seek the presidency. The sham and charade of the Democratic nomination of Kamala Harris came too late and she was merely presented a poisoned chalice at the end and there was no magic wand that she could cast to win against Trump. In the end, the contest was no contest at all.

However, the dirty character of Donald Trump is becoming clear not only to the whole world but to the American community which has shamefully supported him because what is clear to anybody who has ever visited America is that Americans are closet racists. Somebody once commented that racism is in open display every Sunday when the so- called “God’s own country“ is assembled in separate churches- black, white and the whites are separated into Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, Greek, Croatian, Ukrainian and others with red lines which one should not cross.

Read Also: Nigerian activist Hamzat Lawal joins jury for global Mandela–Machel awards

A young friend of mine who was brought up in a Baptist environment of primary school, secondary school and whose Baptist father sent him to a university in Oklahoma apparently owned by the Baptist mission was shocked when he went to attend church on his first visit to the United States. On entering the big church, he noticed that there were no other blacks in the church. He was accosted by the church warden who asked him “can I help you?” When he replied that he was new in town and a Baptist wanting to worship God . He was told he was in the wrong place.

What is happening in America today and what Trump’s world view represents is what his German forebears called – weltanschauungen. The whole world must understand and sympathise with the ordinary Americans whose leaders are fanning the embers of racism because of politics. Some of them like J.D. Vance, the Vice President, who one will think would understand the incipient racism of their society, having been married to an Indian, is trying to widen the net of racial superiority to include the people of the subcontinent of India in their dragnet of racial superiority in a struggle with the rest of the world.

The rest of the world must learn fast and try to blunt the spear of racism directed against them. The world does not need any racial divide. Adolf Hitler tried it and failed. Any pitiable imitator will surely fail. The problem unfortunately is that racism is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons yet we must try and extirpate and crush this dragon.

This is the challenge facing the whole world but it is our bounden duty to expose the smoke of racism wherever it lurks in our society and in the world. Let’s begin.

May 8, 2025
Starving in the presence of wide agricultural land

I have been listening to the broadcast of Dr Tunde Bakare, the nationally renowned and relevant man of God who like prophets of old spoke words to power pointing out to government what can be done to bring our country back to prosperity not just waiting to collect commissions on oil but to build an agriculturally sufficient country, adding value to what it produces on a vast industrial complex. His program can be described as the application of Biblical Joseph’s economic plan to the development of ancient Egypt to our situation in Nigeria. Good old agriculture is the way to economic development of Nigeria. Agriculture does not mean food production alone but the growing of tree crops.

When I was very young during the colonial days, we did not import food before we ate. As far as I can remember, agriculture and agricultural development belonged in the realm of local government particularly the towns and villages. The same thing was true of education and other things which have now been appropriated by either the state or federal (central) government. In the early 1950s when I was in primary school, every school had what we called “school farms”. I don’t know what people in Lagos had but I have a feeling they must have had school gardens because of the scarcity of arable land in the Lagos colony. But in my place in Ilawe Ekiti where I was born, we all had school farms. It did not matter how young or old one was, there was always a time devoted for farming. When it was time for harvest, it was a big celebration marked by drumming, dancing and eating. In my place, we only planted yams, corn, groundnuts, vegetables, peppers, onions, tomatoes and other edible vegetables. At harvest, there was public sale of our products and whatever was left was shared among teachers, students and the clergy since most of our schools were sectarian schools established by the various churches that were around in those days. When I entered Christ School, Ado Ekiti in 1956, we continued with the same tradition and added more things that we produced. Agriculture was then properly provided for in the school curriculum. Wednesday morning in alternate week was devoted to agriculture. Piggery and poultry were then introduced in addition to growing of root crops and vegetables. Most of the operations were done by students who belonged to agriculture society by choice. The whole thing was supervised by an “Agriculture Master” who had very light academic teaching.

Read Also: Wike hails Okowa, Delta Governor over defection to APC

At harvest time, the entire school feasted on the produce from the school farm during the day of harvest celebration and the agriculture society became popular because of the free pork shared with other students. The intention in students’ participation was to generate interest leading to many of them going to agricultural schools set up by all the regional governments of the country to train extension workers in agriculture to show our peasants the way forward in agricultural development in the country. Later, the Awolowo government of the 1950s established farm settlements to engage the overflow from free primary schools who could not find places in the very few secondary schools and “Modern” schools specifically established to absorb them. The Awolowo schools were copied by Michael Okpara and Ahmadu Bello, respectively premiers of Eastern and Northern Nigeria. The upshot of this was that agriculture, both peasant and modern, were made available in Nigeria. Unfortunately, we did not progress towards industrial agriculture of large commercial agriculture involving the use of modern tools on large estates.

Throughout the years of Nigeria’s development, our largely peasant agriculture has never failed us. Perhaps that is where we went wrong. We should have developed vast agricultural estates either as state venture or private enterprises to produce food for home consumption and export particularly in the years of huge oil earnings in the 1970s. Now the urban population is swarming with young people who have refused to go to the farms but have been attracted by the bright lights of the cities and are only interested in white collar jobs or at worst in riding motorcycles to ferry people around in unproductive and unprofitable ventures sometimes extending to criminal tendencies. To augment their incomes, the urban proletariat and poor peasantry have taken to crimes of kidnapping and countrywide brigandage to fend for themselves and to satisfy their tastes and unrealistic desires based on their exposures to global television and cheap films. All this has led to shortages all round and we must do something about it.

The greatest tragedy that a country can face is starvation. It is natural for people and even animals to do everything to feed themselves. Self-survival is the first law of nature. No matter how many soldiers or police we may have, man must first answer the law of nature. We have a reached the critical point where we have to find food for everyone. We once had “Operation Feed the Nation” during General Olusegun Obasanjo’s military administration and program of “Green Revolution” during the presidency of Shehu Shagari. We had great intentions then but they did not translate to reality. I remember everyone was called upon to grow something behind or in front of their homes to reduce the cost of food imports.

The program of the “Green Revolution” put enormous resources and emphasis on large dams and large estates of rice, corn, and wheat. We have to revamp the programs and go back to them and this time, make them work. The growing population of Nigeria which we have refused to curb will not permit failure this time. We must do something about our galloping population and our open borders which allow people from Niger, Chad, Benin, Togo and other West Africans to flood our borders. If we don’t tackle our population problem, we will not solve our food problems.

The solution to our population problem is both internal and external. We must all ask ourselves what we as individuals have contributed towards them. Ask how many children and grandchildren you as individuals have contributed to the rising population creating a future population bomb. Gone are those days when having many children are signs of affluence and power. Today they are signs of poverty and problems.

Now that we are beginning to seriously look at the structural configuration of the country, we should begin to realise that structures go beyond politics and the economy, pivotal as they appear. Structure should include production particularly who and where things are produced. We should look back to the future, so to say, in the ways we run our country. The closer we are to the grassroots in agriculture, the better and more profitable and productive we are likely to be. The same thought should inform security and policing. The more secure we are at the village level, the more we are likely to be at the national level. The more secure we are, the more food secure we would be as a nation. It is also generally hazarded that the more food secure a country is, the more politically stable and economically viable a country would be. If a country is stable and secure at home, the more it would be able to wield influence and power abroad. To be where we want to be internationally, we must first be able to feed and secure ourselves. A hungry man is an angry man and an angry man cannot think rationally. A mad man is entertaining but no one wants to be a parent to a mad child. This is the situation facing us where the subject of our conversation these days is the cost of tomatoes, peppers, onions, bread and rice. A serious country’s concern should go beyond food which has in most countries been assumed to be normally available whether locally produced or imported. Nigerians must not be allowed to starve.

Corrigendum:

My last article on Nigeria as a “A Republic of a thousand kingdoms “ omitted the fact of the significance of the Ooni of Ife as the fountain of both the Oba of Benin and the Alaafin of Oyo before the two kingdoms developed into empires .I have written in the past about the interconnectedness of Ife , Benin and Oyo. I am gratified that my article in The Nation is read globally .The omission is regretted.

April 24, 2025
A republic of a thousand kingdoms

The recent coronation of Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade as the Alaafin of Oyo in a tumultuous celebration attended by thousands of his subjects brought to mind the tremendous support for traditional institutions by our people and raised the interesting issue of the superficiality of the republic imposed on our traditional institutions by purveyors of modernity. The abolition of the powers of the maharajahs in the republican constitution of India while leaving them their stupendous wealth paved the way and trajectory other countries in the Commonwealth have followed. Example of Malaysia is interesting as the diversity of combining traditional institutions with the modern system of democratic governance. In Malaysia the various sultans of constituent states rotate the presidency of the country amongst themselves while of course the headship of the government remains in the hands of the elected government. In Nigeria, each state is allowed to harmonise the various ways in which traditional institutions are harmonised with the power of elected governments. Nigeria is a republic which recognises the usefulness of traditional governmental institutions.

A republic is by definition a country of democratic governance that is, where the people vote periodically to elect their governments and where the governments are subject to the will of the people. The constitution of Nigeria enshrines this principle in its basic law. But at the same time allows the constituent states to have local governments allowing the existence of kings and kinglets chosen by the local people as allowed by their traditions which predated the existence of Nigeria to function the way the ordinary people want subject to rules set out in the local government laws of the state under the local executive. In other words, there exists a symbiotic relationship at the local level of democracy and autocracy limited by the constitution. An outsider looking in may not understand this apparent confusion but it works in Nigeria. The system, where it exists, works for the state government to maintain peace and to communicate with the local people at their own level.

The problem however is that not all states have these kings and kinglets like we have in northern part of the country where the monarchs have sufficient power to impose themselves on the environment either on their own or as agents of the state government. The emirs in the north have political and spiritual authority as local Amir al muminin (leader of the faithful) but not all the people living in the north particularly in the Middle Belt and several communities in the far north are Muslims to whom the rule of the emirs are foreign and so foreign that they were ready to resist them and are still ready to resist the imposition of the emirs and chiefs representing them. Governments have found it necessary to accommodate their requests either by separating them as much as possible from under the rulership of the emirs and giving them their own institutions of local chiefs or allowing the rule of elected local government authorities to supervene.

Read Also: Rivers: Only police, EFCC, ICPC can probe Fubara, says Ahamba

In the southern part of the country in Yorubaland and Edoland or places influenced by Edo culture, we have centralised local authority institutions as represented in the various Oba, Obi and people bearing derivatives of these titles. The most powerful of the kings in these areas are the Alaafin of Oyo, the Oba of Benin, the Awujale of Ijebu land and the Owa of Ijesha land and the various other Obas in Ekiti and Osun, Owo and Egba land. Here power is diffused and several Obas wield considerable authority over their people as allowed by the local government laws.

The recent coronation of the Alaafin Akeem Owoade Abimbola of Oyo in which millions of people participated is a mark of the significance and importance of the title of the Alaafin in Yoruba land. Before the British came and as far back as the 16th century, the Alaafin and the Oba of Benin ruled over vast territories and in the case of the Alaafin, his empire stretched over territories covering the southwest of Nigeria, Benin Republic and Togo Republic with influence in the southern part of Ghana while the Oba of Benin’s political influence covered the north-eastern and south-eastern part of Yoruba land stretching to Lagos and the western extremity of Igbo speaking people. In these areas, it was possible to anchor local government institutions on the traditional institutions. But in the southeast in Igbo speaking areas generally, the absence of traditional chiefly institutional foundations made it tricky for local governments to prevail thus allowing direct local governments to be the option. Where there were no local chiefs, government created them and gave them warrants to rule over their own people resulting in many cases to abuse of power and consequent revolts during the colonial regime and which lead to their abolition.

The interesting thing nowadays is the growth of instant chiefs with big money trading in the day time but parading themselves as chiefs in the evening but lacking traditional structures and resorting to force. In the riverine areas of the Southeast and the Niger Delta, we have city statelets and traditional chiefs who ridiculously parade themselves as “kings”. They enjoy very little local government usage except to parade themselves in Shakespearean attires at state functions!

Where traditional institutions exist such as in the North and southwestern part of Nigeria, they play significant roles and they are adequately remunerated by force of the Nigerian constitution and where they do not exist, local government functioning is more done directly by elected or appointed functionaries of state governments.

Finally I write as the Baapitan of Oyo to prevail on the government of Oyo State to build a befitting palace for the Alaafin either on the existing grounds or somewhere else in Oyo because the existing old palace doesn’t reflect the status of the political primacy of the Alaafin. Towards this project, a funds mobilisation can be launched, into which individuals and governments, particularly the federal government can be called upon to donate as previous federal governments have done in the case of northern emirs. Even though there are still court cases against the process leading to the choice of the incumbent Alaafin and whatever the case may be, the post of the Alaafin institution remains sacrosanct.

April 17, 2025