IT WAS  a command and like all commands, it was direct and sharp. Within 48 hours, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) was to do all it could to end the protracted petrol shortage. The ultimatum was issued by the Department of State Services (DSS)  on December 8  after a meeting with stakeholders in the petrol distribution network.

More than 48 hours after the expiration of the ultimatum, nothing has changed. Petrol is still hard to come by. The few outlets that have the product are selling at cutthroat prices, with queues stretching from the stations into the streets, disrupting traffic. What was the essence of the DSS’ ultimatum? To show that it was concerned with the plight of motorists who keep vigil at petrol stations? To prove that it could force marketers’ hand over the matter?

Whatever its reasons for issuing the ultimatum, they did not work and they were not expected to work. DSS acted as if the product was there for the asking and all that it needed to do was to apply some force and pronto, the country will be wet with petrol. Things do not work that way. DSS was only trying to be clever by half by resorting to that strong arm tactic in full public glare. What its counterparts elsewhere do is to do its homework  behind the scene to achieve desired results.

The solution to the shortage is not to come on air and tell the world that you have directed NNPCL and others involved in the petrol business to make the product available within 48 hours. Did DSS investigate the cause(s) of the scarcity before issuing the ultimatum? What were its findings? Was anyone implicated? Was the ultimatum based on marketers’ assurance that the scarcity was artificial and would be addressed in no time?

DSS overreached itself by issuing the ultimatum. Certainly, there are security implications whenever a nation is faced with this kind of problem. Petrol is combustible and it can lead to conflagration in any society whenever it is hard to get. The product has been scarce for some three months now. Why did DSS wait for this long before intervening? Our security agencies are better at reacting to problems, instead of preventing them. There is little or nothing to do when you are always reacting to a problem.

By then, it may be too late to tackle the challenge. Those who know believe that it is better to nip a crisis in the bud, rather than issue an ultimatum in vain after it has festered, as we have witnessed in this instance. DSS might have meant well. After all, like its sister agencies, it was set up to ensure peace, law and order in the society, not to wait until things get out of hand before coming up with a panicky solution.

Its 48-hour ultimatum to NNPCL and others to ensure the availability of petrol was not and is still not the solution to this perennial shortage of petrol. The problem is deeper than that. DSS, it seems, is looking at it from the superficial level. It has to dig deeper to get to the root of the problem in order to solve it once-and-for-all. Even, if NNPCL and others had met the 48-hour ultimatum, it would not have guaranteed a sustained availability of petrol going forward.

They would have met it to fulfil all righteousness, that is avoid DSS’s wrath, only for petrol scarcity to resurface a day or two later. DSS and its sister agencies need to put on their thinking cap and devise means of beating these petrol merchants in this game of creating artificial scarcity time and again, thereby making life miserable for the people.

In its grandstanding way, DSS had vowed: “after the expiration of the ultimatum, we will commence a nationwide operation to ensure that the product is made available”. The ultimatum expired over 96 hours ago and petrol is still scarce. Is DSS aware of this?

 

Making PVC collection easy

THE  collection of the permanent voter’s card (PVC) began on Monday. Many voters have been trooping to the 774 local government headquarters to collect the card which will make them eligible to vote in next year’s elections. On the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lies the responsibility of ensuring that all those who registered get their PVC within the scheduled time for collection (December 12 – January 22).

Some are already complaining that it is stressful getting the PVC. It should not be. The PVC is not for governors, their aides and other public officers alone. So, INEC officials at the local government headquarters should not see it as an opportunity for photo sessions with their excellencies. They should be business-like in their approach and ensure that they attend to all that come for the card with decorum. No voter should be treated as a second class citizen. In this business, the voter is king and not the governor, who needs their vote to return to office.

The way the Prof Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC handles the collection will determine the success or otherwise of the first leg of the exercise before it moves to the registration areas/wards between January 6 and 15 and back to the local government offices from January 16 to 22 for the final round.

HIS action was a perfect response to claims that he was running away from public engagements. No presidential hopeful will ever do that. Especially not one like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The public is the engine that a candidate requires to propel himself to office. Without the support and most importantly, the vote of the public, a candidate is as good as nothing.

Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress(APC) presidential candidate, is certainly not in the race for the fun of it. He is running becauae he has something to offer. His manifesto: Renewed Hope 2023 is a well thought-out document touching all aspects of life. The working document tells his plans for the country. It contains his thoughts on the economy, security, power, poverty alleviation and education, women and youth development, among others.

Tinubu knows what the country is passing through and has a template for tackling these challenges. Those who believe in Tinubu know what he can do. They know his capacity and capability; they know him as a reformer and a realist and not an idealist, without anything to offer.

The Tinubu they know is the kind of president Nigeria needs. A president with ideas on where Nigeria should be in the comity of nations. A Nigeria that should be at the table when other serious nations are conferring. A Nigeria that cannot be pushed aside for whatever reasons.

Must Tinubu be a debater to do this? The answer is capital NO. It is good to be an orator but that is not all that is required to be a good leader. How many leaders in history are orators? They can be counted off the fingertips. Leadership is not about ‘blowing grammar’, that is eloquence; it is about having the ability to  manage men and materials and the will to see things through.

A leader who knows how to deploy his assets is already on the way to success. Tinubu displayed this attribute on December 5 when he spoke at the Chatham House in London. His appearance on a world stage at the renowned Royal Institute of International Affairs was a fitting reply to those that have tried all tricks in the book back home to get him to appear at a so-called town hall meeting of presidential candidates.

Without doubt, newspapers, radio and television stations can organise presidential debates, but they cannot use blackmail or subterfuge to get any candidate to attend. Every news medium must be seen to be objective and fair in whatever it does. It should not employ unethical means to have its way in order to get an individual to appear on its programme. In one word, it should play by the rules.

Can Arise News, a private television station, be said to have done so in its indecent pursuit of Tinubu to appear at its town hall meeting on December 4 at all costs? Even the station itself knew that it played dirty by dubiously citing a section of the Constitution, which has no relevance to Tinubu or any of the presidential candidate for that matter to falsely give legal backing to its action. Discerning members of the public know better.

Its claim that it derived the power to invite the standard-bearers for the debate on the strength of that provision which talks about the media holding public office holders accountable is simply laughable. Is Tinubu a public office holder? What public office is he occupying? Can his presidential aspiration be equated to holding a public office?

Despite Tinubu’s statement that he would not be attending the debate, the medium continued to link him with it in an advert on its station. It claimed that he had been “respectfully invited”. It said the three other candidates, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Peter Obi, Labour Party (LP) and Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso, New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) had been “graciously confirmed”. It signed off the advert like this: “There will be no representations”. It was an apparent dig at Tinubu, who had already said he would not be available.

Tinubu answered them and others loud and clear in his Chatham House presentation. In his treatise: “Nigeria’s 2023 election: Security, economy and foreign policy imperatives”, he outlined the ills plaguing the nation and set out his solutions to them. He did not spare those who have been querying his identity, birth date and academic qualifications. He said he was a Tinubu through and through who was born 70 years ago. Will his response satisfy them? I doubt it; they may yet come up with other cooked stories.

Tinubu should not be surprised when they do so. He should just continue to ensure that, as he said, they do not use him to enrich themselves. “I see myself as a marketable individual. They want to use me to make money and I say no”.

To solve the power problem, he said: “we have privatised power distribution in Nigeria and generation to a certain degree. What we need to do going forward is to improve the enabling environment and further reform the legal and regulatory framework to attract more private investments to the sector as we have experienced in the telecommunications industry”.

Why is the economy still in the doldrums and how can it be salvaged? According to him, “the fundamental flaws with the basic design of our national economy imperil the private sector from playing the role it ought to and adding the value it is capable of. In this instance, the government must act as catalyst. We shall do this on all fronts. We will address the conflict between monetary and fiscal policies”.

Tinubu pledged to promote democracy in Africa, with Nigeria taking the lead in free and fair elections to set example for other countries on the continent. You may hate Tinubu’s guts, but his ideas, if not wished away may bring about the much-desired prosperity to Nigeria and remove millions from the pangs of multidimensional poverty. If only the muckrakers could see this quality in him, it would be better for the country and its people.

Since the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s metamorphosis into a limited liability company (LLC) in July, nothing has really changed in the oil sector than the firm’s name. The company became NNPCL from its hitherto known acronym, NNPC, in a time of petrol scarcity six months ago, and is still in the throes of these birth pangs.

The problem may not go away anytime soon. What is more, NNPCL seems not to have an answer to the challenge. If it has, the crisis would not linger. For over three weeks, the nation has been reeling under a scarcity which ordinarily should not have arisen. NNPC’s commercialisation was expected to be an harbinger of good things for the industry.

Its chief executive officer, Mele Kyari, said as much at its inauguration on July 19 by President Muhammadu Buhari. NNPCL is not a child of circumstance, its birth was well planned for. For years, the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), which gives the firm legal teeth to operate was in the works. The making of the law took years because stakeholders wanted a legislation that would protect NNPCL and give it powers to operate without let or hindrance. So far, NNPCL has been a huge disappointment.

In the few months of its operation so far, it has shown that the issue is not about commercialisation or state-ownership. To some, seven months may be too short to assess the firm and conclude that it is not working, but the reality on the ground leaves one with no other conclusion. The firm knew what it was getting into after the PIA was passed. Kyari and some other key officers of NNPC, as it then was, even made it look like after the coming of the law, the public will see a new oil firm where everything it touches will turn gold.

An NNPCL where petrol is refined locally and where it is done outside, as is presently the case, the product will be made available at little or no hiccup to people. The people have not seen this Midas touch. Instead, it is now more stressful gettig petrol than it was before the change in NNPC’s name. The people did not bargain for just a name change, what they were looking out for was a commercialised enterprise with the will to run its own show, without minding whose ox is gored. We are still in Square One; it is not a matter of returning there. The status quo has not changed.

Read Also; Fuel crisis: Open letter to PMB

It may not change with the way things are going. The current scarcity is informed by the same reasons as those of the past. Since the four refineries are not working at optimal capacities, the country has been taken crude abroad to refine at an exhorbitant cost. Ironically, it also imports petrol to meet domestic shortfall when it should be exporting to earn more revenue and enhance gross national product (GNP).

The refined product is shipped back, also at an expensive rate. On getting to the shores of the country, it is also delivered at a high cost. The discharge of the product from the mother to the daughter vessel is so costly that before it gets to private depots or tank farms, the price is already hitting the roof, without even reaching the retail outlets yet.

The process is cumbersome. With such an awkward way of producing, refining, storing and delivering petrol, the price cannot but be high since retailers must add their own mark-up, the margin at which to make profit, so as to remain in business. Why then are we talking of subsidy where there is no cushion whatsoever for end-users? Who is collecting the subsidy? Those importing petrol on behalf of NNPCL? Is the payment open and transparent? So many things are wrong with subsidy payment and there is no way that they can be corrected by simply making NNPC a commercial venture.

There are many state oil firms doing well in the world. There is Aramco of Saudi Arabia, Petrobas of Brazil and Rosneft of Russia. These are models that Nigeria can copy from to get things right in the oil industry. If these countries can run their oil firms and make profit, Nigeria can do the same, if corruption is eliminated from the system. Systemic corruption is the bane of not only the oil industry, but also other sectors of the economy. Until corruption is curbed, things will continue to go wrong in the oil sector.

What will happen if subsidy is removed and petrol is regularly available and sells, at say, N300 per litre? Will motorists buy? To answer these questions, it must be noted that owning a car is not a luxury, but a necessity to serve certain needs. That being the case, motorists will buy because they have need for the petrol. They are buying it now at that rate and more in the midst of scarcity.

Despite all the hue and cry over the high cost of diesel and kerosine, which has been dubbed as ‘poor man specific’, people still buy the products. Kerosine has been selling for about N400 to N500 per litre for years, while the price of diesel has been hovering between N700 and N800 in the last few months.

Something must give for the country to arrive at an appropriate pricing of petrol to end its incessant scarcity. We cannot live behind a river and be washing our hands with spittle. For now, NNPCL has no solution to the problem. This is why it has not come out with its usual statement that there is enough stock to last till  Christmas and the new year. The people will be happy if the country is ‘wet with petrol’, to borrow NNPCL’s technical lingo. So, ‘all we are saying: give us petrol’.

The public should not celebrate Christmas and the new year, which are just a few days away, with long queues of vehicles at filling stations across the country. This will be a sad way to end 2022.

THE agenda setting theory allows the media to collate socio-economic and political issues, determine the most important and run them as news items. The principle treats the media as agenda setter because it has the wherewithal to undertake the grand exercise of identifying issues of the day and playing them up for the general good.

The theory empowers the media to determine what the issues are without taking into consideration that the media could be biased. This cannot be treated as a flaw though, but as a failure on the part of the media (or better still, a section of it) to discharge this onerous responsibility without descending into the arena.

This was not the basis on which McCombs and Shaw propounded the theory. They saw the media more as an institution and not as a group of individuals that could be easily influenced in their judgements and/or reasonings. Between 1972, when the duo came up with the theory and now, the media has really evolved, with the coming of the social media. The social media is mainly driven by Citizen Journalists (an euphemism for untrained journalists), who set agenda based on their personal convictions.

The social media cannot be blamed for its shallow way of thinking as the mainstream or traditional media is not different. The latter which should know better do worse things than the former under the guise of agenda setting. The ongoing campaigns for the 2023 elections have shown how the media through a section of it can destroy rather than set the agenda to guide the people in their electoral choices. They leave the issues to attack the person, just like social media, without hearing from their subject.

The campaigns have shown how low the media has sunk. The media’s job is to hold people, especially those in power accountable for their actions. To do this well, the media must first be accountable to itself. In other words, to see the speck in others’ eyes, the media must first remove the log in its own eyes. Unfortunately, the media has not been able to do that and this is a big shame.

At the rate it is going now, the media can get away with murder! It has taken liberty for licence as it goes out of its way to run people down without giving them a chance to state their own case. This practice is against all known journalism rules, but mediums such as Arise News, a television station, and This Day, its precursor in the print industry, do not give a hoot. All they are after is the man, that is All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and not any truth whatsoever concerning him. To them, the juicier the lie, the better.

In the eyes of Arise and This Day, Tinubu will always be wrong. This is why, in negation of the agenda setting principle, they will go for him and not his views. This is why they will always slant the news to paint him as a villain before the public. According to McCombs and Shaw, when the media reflects on the views of a candidate during a campaign, it is also shaping and determining the issues of importance. Arise and This Day are not interested in Tinubu’s views, they are only interested in bringing him down.

For sometime now, the station has resorted to armtwisting tactics in order to get Tinubu to appear in its studio. It went on air on several occasions to tell the world that it has been inviting him for interview and was literally begging viewers to prevail on him to honour the invitation. Haba! A man has the right to choose whose invitation to honour and vice versa and that right cannot be taking away from him because he is a presidential candidate. Until the station comes with clean hands, Tinubu will continue to keep it at arms length.

Look at the forged letter they claimed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) issued about investigating some so-called allegations against Tinubu! Look at their fake news on the death of Mueez Akande, who they have been trying to link with Tinubu over an alleged forfeiture case!! They were fined N2 million by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) for the forged INEC letter, but they were not remorseful. They still came up with the hoax report on Mueez Akande’s death.

This Day goofed big time! Instead of admitting its gaffe, it tried to justify it in the caption of its front page picture on Monday, featuring Tinubu and Mrs Lola Akande whose husband Dr Kolapo Akande actually died. It is how not to write a photo caption. It shows the desperation of This Day to truncate  Tinubu’s presidential ambition at all costs. It is left for media experts to judge whether it was appropriate to caption the picture thus:

Tinubu’s condolence visit to the Akandes… APC Presidential Candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, during a condolence visit to Lola Akande, wife of late Dr Kolapo Akande (not Mueez as erroneously reported in some parts of our story last week. Other parts correctly reflected Kolapo’s death. Dr Kolapo Akande is brother to Mueez who was mentioned in the forfeiture of $460,000 in the Chicago Court documents), at Kolapo’s residence in Magodo, Lagos…yesterday. Was that a correction or what?

Sadly, there is no regulator to call This Day to order as NBC did to its television wing, Arise. My concerns are that ultimately, journalism is the loser! Honestly,  the Nigeria Press Organisation (NPO) cannot be talking of self- or co-regulation when some of those leading the campaign are not practicing what they are preaching. However, this is not to say that government regulation is the way to go.

As professionals, we need to get our acts right. I will not be surprised if they come after me, asking: what do you expect him to write? Do you not know his medium? These questions are beside the point. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong, as  Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike will say.

 

David v Goliath

IT was a match that fans all over the world expected Argentina to win by a huge margin. But that was not the case. Against all (betting) odds, Saudi Arabia demolished Lionel Messi’s Argentina 2-1, to record the first major upset in the ongoing World Cup in Qatar. ‘Messi messed’, an editor said on Tuesday on learning of the outcome of the match. More upsets will surely come as the competition progresses.

Today, Messi’s greatest rival, Cristiano Ronaldo, will lead Portugal out against Ghana in their own group game. Will it be another David defeats Goliath story? In football, anything can happen as we saw in the Argentina, Saudi Arabia match. Ronaldo has not been in the best of forms this season, but he is a player that cannot be written off, just like that. He may yet spring a surprise and return to his goal-scoring ways at this fiesta.

With him now without a club, following his exit from Manchester United over his explosive interview with Piers Morgan of the Good Morning Britain fame in which he tore the club to shreds, Ronaldo knows that this is his only chance to tell the world that he is not finished and get clubs come running for his signature again. It will be interesting to see how he performs and how the match goes.

ON paper, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has 13 governors. The figure shows how bad the party has fallen from the height it hitherto occupied on the governorship ladder. In its glorious days, all you needed to do was to reverse the figure 13 and you will get the number of governors in PDP’s kitty.

We are talking of 15 years ago when the party held sway in the country, with 31 of the 36 state governors, leaving the remaining five for the other parties to share. Faced with a shrinking number of governors, an affliction brought upon itself by its internal wranglings, the party is heading to the 2023 elections sharply divided.

Its Chairman, Dr Iyorchia Ayu, and presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, are fighting a battle of their lives for the support of the party’s governors – five of whom have since parted ways with them. It can be safely said that it now has only eight governors left and of this figure, one may be on his way to team up with the Group of Five, otherwise known as G5 led by Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike.

Wike is the party’s nemesis and by extension that of its presidential candidate. He has made up his mind to work against Atiku against whom he contested for the ticket in May. Wike fought a good fight and if things had gone as he planned, he would have upset the apple cart. But the owners of PDP had other plans which they did not reveal to him as a leader of the party.

Until then, he did not know that the owners of the party are different from the leaders. Wike thought that because he had often bailed the party out of financial mess in the past, he was in the inner caucus of PDP where the elders rule the roost.

The scale fell off his eyes at the convention, where at the 11th hour, his friend, associate and ally, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto, dumped him for Atiku in line with a northern agenda, which is against the party’s principle on zoning. The party had always ensured balancing in its leadership positions.

Since its inception 24 years ago, its chairman and candidate had never come from the same geopolitical zone. If the chairman comes from the north, the candidate is picked from the south and vice versa. But at its May convention, it broke with this tradition. What is more, Ayu, who had promised to resign if a northerner emerged candidate, reneged on his promise. This marked the beginning of the rift between him, Atiku and Wike.

Ironically, Wike had worked for the emergence of Ayu as chairman, with Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom standing as his guarantor in the governors’ calculation to smoothen the path for a southern candidate. Their plan misfired. With Wike’s presidential ambition aborted at the convention, he, Ortom, Governors Seyi Makinde (Oyo), Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia) and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu) took to the trenches to fight what they perceived as injustice.

Before the primary, the PDP governors from the south had made a case for a Southern president. But they did not get the buy-in of all their northern counterparts, who feel that power should remain in their region. With other southern governors like Ifeanyi Okowa (Delta), Emmanuel Udom (Akwa Ibom), backing out of the deal, the north’s hand was strengthened in its quest to hold on to power. 

Okowa was compensated with the running mate slot and Udom, director-general of the presidential campaign council (PCC). In all of this, the G5 was a mere onlooker. It watched as events unfolded. Even in their states, the governors claimed that they were not consulted before people were conscripted into the PCC. According to them, the message being sent across was that they were irrelevant in their own states.

To show that they are relevant, they have vowed not to work for Atiku. Their main condition is that Ayu must go. But it has got to a stage that even if Ayu quits today, the G5 may still not support Atiku. Its tribe may increase soon, with Bauchi State Governor Bala Muhammed being wooed by the group. The G5 did not go out of its way to get Muhammed. He may be brought in through fortuitous circumstance.

Muhammed, who also contested for the presidential ticket, is embittered that Atiku is sidelining him. Atiku, he claimed, did not visit him after the primary to seek his support for the main election. Besides, the governor alleged that Atiku is against his second term bid. It is a dicey situation for Atiku and PDP. The party knows the implication of Muhammed’s statement. The governor is not happy with Atiku and may be forced to go the G5 way. Although, he has visited Atiku, that is no guarantee that he is happy with the candidate.

Politicians have a way of wining, dining and dancing together, as if all is well, only to stage a coup against themselves the next hour. Ask the late Chuba Okadigbo or Audu Ogbeh and they will tell you what became of them shortly after their feast with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. 

Between now and February 25, 2023, when the presidential election holds, anything can happen. Muhammed is now a beautiful bride being wooed by G5 and Atiku. Will he join his brother-governors or accept Atiku’s plea not to jump ship?

When the lion, the king of the forest is not around, all kinds of animals will be seen parading themselves in that position. But, once the king returns, they all go into hidden. A leader will always remain a leader. His place cannot be taken whether he is around or not.

When the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT), left the country for a well-deserved rest in London, the mainstream and social media was abuzz with all sorts of stories. They said he went abroad on medical tourism. Even, if that was true, what is wrong in going out to take care of one’s health, if one has the means?

Many go abroad to take care of themselves. But when it is Asiwaju, it becomes a sin. Why? At the risk of being tagged a Tinubu boy, I will say it is because he is a man destined for great things; a man chosen to affect his generation. Whatever such people do, always causes a buzz.

He was the subject of discussions for the two weeks that he was away and since his return on October 6, they have not ceased talking about him. To borrow a popular street lingo: E shock them, with his return. While he was away, they said he was ill and too old to stand for next year’s presidential election because of his failing health. There was nothing they did not say or write about him.

Those that do not know him would think they were talking about a man so feeble that he could no longer move. But, lo and behold! Here was Tinubu emerging from inside the aircraft looking radiant and regal in a wine turtle-neck, striped brown jacket and trousers, with a Kangol cap to match. He was looking hale and hearty. He came down the stairway unaided.

At the foot of the stairway were his running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima, director-general of his campaign council, Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau, the deputy director-general, Adams Oshiomhole, and many others. Tinubu embraced and shook hands with everyone of them, bouncing, turning on his heels and smiling as he did so. He looked refreshed, rejuvenated, and well rested.

Tinubu did not look 70, at all. He looked more like a 55-year-old, swinging from one end to the other, exchanging banters here and there, backslapping and laughing heartily. Tinubu looked extremely fine, composed and cool. The outing was impressive and it would go down as one of his best ever. He did everything right. I was amazed ed watching him on television.

Is this the man they say is ill? I wondered and started looking forward to how the papers would capture Tinubu’s triumphal return graphically the next day. I was more than disappointed by what I saw. There were no graphic reports about it at all. It was as if the man had not returned. The same media that made a show of his trip could not bring themselves to report his return when they saw how energetic and bubbling Tinubu was on arrival.

Read Also: 2023: North’s groups to quiz Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, others on visions

Since his arrival, he has been busy, working on his campaign plan. First, was the inauguration of the women’s wing chaired by the First Lady, Hajia Aisha Buhari. Tinubu was in his element at the event. You could see the benefit of going on vacation on him. He looked relaxed as he spoke on the occasion, with the women hailing him: ‘Jagaban’! ‘Jagaban’!!… Then suddenly, they switched to: ‘City Boy’! ‘City Boy’!! ‘City Boy’!!! With all in the hall rising for Tinubu, who was on stage, delivering his message.

He described the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a party of ‘termites’, which destroy a structure slowly and steadily, as the Yoruba will say, warning against returning the party to power in 2023. Tinubu has shamed his detractors by returning home stronger, bigger, better and much more ready for the 2023 election. He has always been ready. His readiness manifested during the battle for his party’s presidential ticket last June. He visited no fewer than 20 states then.

He will visit more states than that as candidate. Asiwaju, a reformer and tested leader, is battle ready. The women have already lined up behind him. They have assured the Lion of Bourdillon, the Jagaban Borgu, the Asiwaju of Lagos and ‘City Boy’ of their support through rallies in Lagos, Owerri (Imo) and Abuja. There is more to come, they told him, asking him to keep going that they are behind him.

Asiwaju’s state of health is not and will never be an issue except for those who cannot see beyond their nose. They think that they can make him unelectable by saying that he is unhealthy. He has silenced them with his refreshing looks following his return. His eyes are on the ball, no matter what people say in social media. He is looking at the larger picture of making Nigeria the great nation it was created to be.

His detractors have nothing to say again now that he has proved them wrong over his health. They will do well to listen to what he said at the women’s event on Monday: “Never again shall they come back. Who are they? They are looters. Who are they? They are squanderers. Go out there and tell them, a new hope is here. Tell them, you are following the man who knows the way; tell them you are following the builder”.

Indeed, who will follow a destroyer or a man who does not know the way?