The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Hausa Day celebration and president’s challenge

    Hausa Day celebration and president’s challenge

    The Hausa language day was celebrated by about 24 countries including Nigeria Tuesday, August 26. Back in Daura Zaria, “the event showcased Hausa heritage through music, dance, traditional attire, and a rich culinary experience that reflects the hospitality for which Katsina people are known.” In spite of this new re-awakening here in Nigeria where the term ‘Hausa/Fulani” was coined by Fulani occupying powers to give a misleading impression of shared cultural and social history, it is a sad reminder of our failure to faithfully address this major cause of social dislocation in the north.

    Hausa as we have seen is beyond language. It has a rich culture and glorious origin. Initially known as the Hausa Bakwai or the true seven Hausa states, it was made up of Biram, Daura, Gobir, Katsina Rano and Zaria (also called Zazzau) who, without centralizing power, formed a thriving trade network in the north from the 11th century.

    It was an attempt to resist the control of the conquering power that jihad imposed after their subjugation between 1804 and 1808 that is responsible for what is today becoming a civil war in the north. Unfortunately leaders who should bring these irreconcilable warring groups into conciliation through sincere recognition of the problem have decided to play the ostrich having become the main beneficiaries of their peoples’ tragedy.

    The Rao Fulani (the town Fulani) control political and economic power in the north. It is widely believed they encouraged and exploited the innermost fears of the Bororo (bush Fulani), who are behind current terrorism against indigenous Hausa farmers they accused of converting the traditional grazing route to farm lands and of rustling their cattle. Here we recall late President Buhari’s minister of defence who, following mindless massacre of scores in Benue told reporters, “When you block the grazing route, what do you expect?”

    The allegation against the town Fulani is not helped by the outburst of Bello Turji Kachalla (now eliminated by our security forces), a notorious Nigerian terrorist and bandit leader who was born in Shinkafi Local Government where he grew up as Fulani cattle herder without education. He was personally held responsible for the death of nearly 200 innocent people, including women and children. He admitted taking to war because he could not get justice over the rustling of his family cows and the murder of his six siblings by “Yan Sakia” government supported group.

    Another Fulani warlord also came out during BBC African Eye documentary not too long ago to attribute their mindless killings of subsistence farmers to closing down of traditional grazing routes and systematic exclusion of Fulani from government jobs and other economic opportunities.

    While those who had the power to change the fortune of these poor and marginalized Fulani continue to exploit their fears to remain politically relevant, there was also the  Hausa farming community vigilantes of Kurfa Dunya who swore during the same interview  that because  200 men, women, and children were killed  by their Fulani ethnic rivals, “If allowed, we will kill every Fulani man, even in the town, because they killed our mothers, our fathers, our children, and dumped their bodies here”.

    And if you are still wondering those behind the Hausa farming community group threatening to kill every Fulani in sight, all you need to do is a critical analysis of Ibrahim Dosara’s (former Zamfara Commissioner for information during  Matawalle’s administration and now his special adviser on information) during his last week appearance on Olajumoke Olatunji’s “TVC Politics Today show”.

    He had nothing good to say about Governor Dauda Lawal despite acknowledgments by some journalists and ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo that the governor has within two years changed the fortune of (“a state of three million population, 23 hospitals with 23 doctors, 300 public primary schools manned by a single teacher each while many others in remote rural have no teachers”.

    The only take away from the politics of Ibrahim Dosara who had as Matawalle’s commissioner of information, traced the origin of banditry in the state’s to the conflict between the Fulani and Hausa communities resulting in 2, 619 deaths, 1,190 abducted and 14,378 livestock rustled with 100,000 people displaced from their ancestral homes between 2011 and 2015, was his insistence that the way forward is for President Tinubu “to read the riot act to the Council of Ulama, the Council of traditional rulers and the warring politicians”.

    We cannot disagree with Dosara who is an insider since even as outsiders we have watched in dismay as governors of besieged northern states openly traded off the hopes of those who look up to them for direction for self-preservation.

    Ahmed Sani Yerima chose to exploit the religion and ethnic differences of the people for a temporary political gain. On October 27, 1999, he introduced Sharia law in breach of the constitution. Some of the northern youths he sent for indoctrination under Osama Ben Laden who was then taking refuge in Sudan were believed to have formed the nucleus of today’s bandits and insurgents in the north.

    Abdulaziz Yari, his godson was dragged to court by Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) where he lost N700m when the court “held he could not prove how he got the funds while or before serving as governor of Zamfara State between May 29, 2011, and May 29, 2019.”

    If Matawalle according to Dosara has been cleared of corruption by the high powered panel headed by the Ribadu, the National Security Adviser, he is still in court to defend his honour over his indictment by a panel of inquiry for allegedly taking about 40 vehicles from office at the end of his tenure.

    Every successive governor of Benue in the last 20 years have after each mindless massacre come out to speak of genocide, persecution of Christians by Muslims, attempt  by invaders to take over rich luxuriant Benue land etc. While saying the obvious, they pretend not to know that the insect that feeds on the vegetable lives inside the vegetable.

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    As for Plateau, there was the May 19, 2013 dialogue facilitated by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue attended   by 93, members of the Fulani communities in Plateau. The gathering rejected the labels of ‘strangers and settlers’ insisting that ownership of land has for long been taken away by the Land Use Act and the same vested on states government. Their final submission: “there is no law in Nigeria that allows any person or groups of persons to identify some persons as strangers or settlers and no law equally allows any persons or group of persons to identify themselves as indigenes of a place”.

    There is no record of any Plateau leader challenging these claims .Yet with periodic harvest of deaths, more displaced people joining IDP camps and even after escaping death by the whiskers following attack on their persons, successive Plateau governors would still pretend not to know those behind the nightmare of their people.

    The story of Benue, Plateau and even Bauchi, where the non-Fulani governors in order to be in good book of Fulani hegemonic ruling class says ‘all Fulani from West Africa can claim citizenship of Nigeria, is the story of all the states in the north. Besides frittering away of billions by Katsina’s Aminu Masari and Kaduna’s Nasir El Rufai to appease they identified  as Fulani terrorists, none of them had the political will to confront the terrorist sponsors, exploiting ethnic and religion for political survival.

    I think Dosara is right to have challenged the president. And I think from his daring moves, bold and tough decisions, in the last two years, President Tinubu who claimed to have spent 20 years preparing for his job, is sufficiently equipped to understand that banditry, kidnapping for ransom and terrorism are symptoms of crisis of nation building, best resolved through elite consensus if the nation is too stop drifting.

    Everyone was shocked when the president on the eve of his visit to condole with the people of Benue following mindless killings by Fulani terrorists directed the governor to go back home and reconcile with his people. With all the rage and condemnation of the terrorists and their sponsors, they, like the terrorized, remain citizens of the besieged northern states. They both don’t have anywhere to go. But with the support of the president, they can reach a compromise which is “the highest badge of honour in a federation”.

  • Enugu 2025: Before NBA leaves coal city

    Enugu 2025: Before NBA leaves coal city

    It was supposed to take place in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital. But the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) changed its mind at the die-minute and relocated the hosting of its annual general conference which ends tomorrow to Enugu. It changed the venue when it was discovered that it collected N300 million for the conference from the Rivers State Government, which it never disclosed. The bubble burst when NBA became too big for its breech.

    Things would have remained hush-hush if it did not open its mouth too wide. NBA is a professional group. It comprises many eminent lawyers who can write off the bill for its annual general conference. But the body, like many other related associations, rather than look inwards for the funding of their conferences and other activities, prefer to go cap in hand begging. Under arranged courtesy visits to some personalities, especially governors, they solicit for funds for many things. Some even beg for money for the wedding of their children! It is that bad.

    These visits become intensified when the event is close at hand. It was a few months to the conference then slated for Port Harcourt that NBA visited the now suspended Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara. After ‘people had talked to people, and people understood’, as we used to say in some political gatherings in the short-lived third republic, NBA left Government House N300 million richer. It kept the ‘donation’, so it calls today, to itself, until Administrator Ibok-Ette Ibas blew the lid open. Ibas did because NBA pushed him to the wall. With his back to the wall, he fought back with what he had.

    The matter would have remained in the dark, if NBA had not tried to play smart. It wanted to have its cake and eat it. But you cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hound. You must maintain a position. It is either you are a critic or a collaborator. You cannot play both sides. This was what NBA attempted to do, and it got its hands burnt. Unknown to NBA, Ibas had looked at the books after he was appointed Rivers administrator in the wake of the emergency rule in the state. Under the emergency, President Bola Tinubu also suspended Fubara and the House of Assembly. The President’s action got NBA’s dander up.

    In a swift reaction, it described the President’s action as illegal. According to NBA, Fubara’s “suspension or otherwise summary removal” was unconstitutional. To political watchers, NBA’s position is its opinion which does not carry any weight, until decided by the court. But NBA wanted its opinion to be taken as the law, notwithstanding that some of its members hold contrary views on the issue. Without a second thought, it decided not to hold the bar conference in Port Harcourt, any more, and moved it to Enugu. But it conveniently forgot to do the needful, that is return the N300 million ‘gift’. The association did not know that Ibas was aware that it took money from Fubara for the conference.

    It thought its relocation of the conference to Enugu was the end of the matter. It was not. NBA was shocked to its marrows when Ibas asked for the refund of the N300 million which he described as “hosting fee”paid by Fubara, but which the group called “gift”. What was NBA celebrating that Fubara gave it N300 million? Did he give the association the money because he liked the members’ faces? Was it not the group that solicited for the money or gift or donation, or by whatever name some NBA jokers want to call it? As an association which more or less also acts as a pressure group and societal watchdog, NBA is supposed to know that there are certain things it must not be involved in. It costs a lot to host a bar conference, no doubt. And there is no offence in seeking help to host such a conference. But then are the consequences of such begging not more than the benefits when the chickens come home to roost?

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    This is the dilemma NBA put itself. If in the past, it got funds from governors to host its conferences and got away with it, that does not make its action right. It is because of a day like this – that a provoked governor or administrator may spill the beans – that NBA and other related associations must always think twice before going to beg for funds for any of their activities. Unabashedly, NBA has refused to refund the money, daring Ibas to go to court. There is no need for Ibas to do that because he has shown NBA for what it truly is. If NBA were to be a firm believer of what it preaches, it would have refunded the money even before Ibas asked it to do so.

    Holding on to the money and probably collecting another sum from the Enugu State Government, which is today hosting the conference, does not portray NBA in good light. What would it cost NBA to have returned the money after shifting the conference? By not returning the money, NBA has diminished its status in the eyes of right-thinking members of the society, and it no longer has the moral right to be societal watchdog. What societal rebirth is NBA preaching if it cannot set good examples so that”nature”, as Shakespeare said, “may stand up and say to all the world: this is an association”.

    It is curious that the issue is not even an item on the agenda as curtain falls on the conference tomorrow. Rather than take a look at itself in the mirror, NBA, in its usual style, will look elsewhere and point fingers. It should stop living a lie, if it really wants to stand out, and stand tall. It can start by refunding the N300 million which belongs to the Rivers people. The money is neither Fubara’s nor Ibas’. Though collected from Fubara, refunding the money through Ibas is the same thing as returning it to Rivers people whose collective patrimony he holds in trust as their administrator, irrespective of the circumstances of his appointment.

  • Netanyahu’s pre-emptive steps before UNGA

    Netanyahu’s pre-emptive steps before UNGA

    In about two weeks when the 2025 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) convenes in full session, many important decisions would have to be made by member states of the UN on full membership of the state of Palestine rather than its present observer status. All permanent members of the UN with the exception of the United States will formally recognise the state of Palestine possibly with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is to say France, China, Great Britain and the Russian Federation would formally declare their formal recognition of the state of Palestine.

    They will be followed by most members of the UN that had in recent times made public declaration of this intent. This will include members of the G7, namely Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada and other countries in the European Union, Australia and New Zealand, the African Union, the Arab League, the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, the Baltic states, Brazil and some members of the Organisation of American states. 

    It needs to be pointed out that many countries in the African Union including Nigeria had previously recognized Palestine. The United States is in an awkward position with most of its allies in NATO and the G7 supporting Israel because of the hawkish position of the current Israeli government. As at the time of writing, the UN has officially declared that Gaza and the Palestinian population are suffering from man-made suffering and starvation the like that has not been seen since 1945 which could have been prevented by allowing UN agencies to deliver the food in the thousands of trucks carrying food but which have been prevented from entering Gaza by the Israeli military for several months. The implication is that Israel is using starvation of children, women and the elderly as a weapon of war. The Palestinians go further to accuse Israel of genocide because of its alleged intention of reducing the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip and in the western bank of the River Jordan where Israeli settlers are illegally driving away from their lands native Palestinian Bedouin and other natives and these actions are supported by the Israeli army and gangs of armed Jewish settlers. These actions have apparently driven the rest of the world in supporting the Palestinians who are facing genocide through starvation.

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    Whichever countries remain out of the global loop will be inconsequential. Despite the pendulum swinging in the direction of Palestine, there will arise the question about what then follows after declaring the Palestinian state so recognised. The question then will arise whether the declared recognition is full of sound and fury signifying nothing unless backed by on the ground recognition physically of a state and a people.

    As I write this, the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has taken two decisions to make the position of Palestine more precarious. The Israeli government is building some thousands of apartment buildings to block the link between East Jerusalem and the Western bank of the River Jordan inhabited by thousands of Palestinians deliberately to make nonsense of a future Palestine territory in contiguously linked territory to East Jerusalem currently occupied by the Israelis. Secondly Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli Defence Force to occupy the capital of the Gaza strip and to obliterate it the same way as other Gaza settlements and to herd all wandering Palestinians roaming the Gaza Strip into a tight corner in the south pending the time they will be forced to deport themselves because of hunger and starvation. He claimed to be talking to the governments of war-torn Libya, ravaged South Sudan,  war-ravaged Somalia, Ethiopia and Indonesia to accept Palestinian Immigrants. Most of the countries he claimed to be talking to have appropriately denied they know something about his fanciful castles in the air. This means that the Palestinians state being recognised do not presently exist and its future existence would depend on robust physical actions of the countries recognising it.

    One action countries conceding the right of existence to Palestine is providing sufficient funds for it to form a government. This could be in form of government in exile ready to move and govern the territory when there is a territory to govern. This can work if the rest of the world can lean on the American government to persuade Israel to allow the Palestinians state to exist in Gaza, the West Bank and possibly the Negev currently occupied by Egypt. Arrangements to ensure that this emergent government does not have an army must be made. A mobile police force can be arranged that would never constitute a threat to Israel since the fear of physical threat is a mortal fear which Israel never wants to live with. This is understandable because of the past history of the genocide and pogroms against the Jews historically in Europe. There are examples of countries like Switzerland, Costa Rica, Andorra and Iceland to name a few of about 20 member states of the UN that have no military.

    If this two state suggestion as above is impracticable, a one state solution could be put in place. This will be the solution in an ideal state but since the Middle East area cannot be considered ideal, the best suggestion would be a non-officially sanctioned religious state. A secular state of Jews and Arab – Palestinians ideally would be suitable. The problem here would be mutual suspicion and lack of trust between formerly belligerent people who now have to live together. The mutual hatred may be obviated by time which is a healer. After some time and arising out of necessity, enemies may live together. There are examples in some other places like South Africa. Some people erroneously cite the example of South Africa which is not the same. The blacks in South Africa are an overwhelming presence unlike the near parity of the Jews and the Palestinians in Palestine. This is also why the idea of a government in exile may not be very relevant.

    The last option which the Palestinians would find objectionable is to assist those willing to emigrate to other lands where they may find happiness unlike their present sad and inhuman situation in their ancestral land which a more advanced civilization is determined to deny them.

    Some have suggested that since more than 50% of Palestinians live outside Palestine as immigrants, the culture of immigration is not foreign to the Palestinians. The world has become a global village and people seem to move these days from one country to another, but this will have to be voluntary. The only problem is that among Arabs, the Palestinians are not usually welcomed because as immigrants, they seem to outperform the natives in whatever vocation they are engaged in. Their experience in the Kingdom of Jordan is not a good example of what the Palestinians can expect in even neighbouring countries to Palestine. The experience of Palestinians in most countries they have emigrated to because wherever they go they carry the sense of longing  for a lost home with them, a sense of nostalgia which makes their assimilation difficult and they ironically share this tendency with their Jewish fellow human beings. These are some of the problems the Palestinians will face in the future unless President Donald J. Trump changes the trajectory of American policy or Netanyahu is removed from power after the next election in Israel and a more liberal and future-looking government emerges in Israel. Of course all things are possible in human affairs.

  • On fair-weather patriots

    On fair-weather patriots

    It is a cruel jest that a nation in dire need of repair often turns to those who abandoned her at her most fragile hour, entrusting them with the mandate to redeem.

    It is hardly wise to appoint Nigerians who have ‘Japa’ to man public offices in the country. This is akin to luring the proverbial skunk from the wilderness into our royal chamber; if it doesn’t defile the quilted sheet with its faeces, it will ruin the palace with its stench.

    Those who had ‘Japa’ to escape the ‘hell’ Nigeria became should never be allowed to superintend our healing; ultimately because they lack the character and competence, native intelligence and maturity, selflessness and integrity, patience and sense of responsibility required to manage our healing process.

    It was disheartening to see a Governor’s recent appointee scoff at his fortune, stressing that he never needed the appointment, even though he barely survived as a canned fruit hawker cum cab driver who squatted with friends in the United Kingdom.

    He dismissed his new role as an “unsolicited appointment,” and something he accepted as “an act of charity,” flaunting his “lucrative businesses” overseas. Such disdain undermines the very dignity of public service. Governance is no playground for fair-weather patriots, who, when the tides turn, abandon ship, leaving chaos in their wake.

    Diasporan appointments often ignore a fundamental rule: the right person for a position must have prior experience or demonstrated expertise in that role. If we must invite a Diasporian Nigerian to serve as the country’s Petroleum Minister, one primary requirement should be his previous employment in a similar capacity. The same logic requires that only a seasoned General can become Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS).

    That said, it is often ill-advised to appoint an overseas cab driver, who is contemptuous of Nigeria, as a federal minister or director of a public agency. When Nigeria needs cab drivers with international experience, we may recruit such individuals. Our public offices are best reserved for patriots who keep faith in the Nigerian enterprise. It’s about time we stopped appointing leeches to public office. When the going gets tough, they simply pack up and leave. Nigeria’s public office is not a rehabilitation camp for fair-weather patriots.

    Yet, the allure of foreign-trained technocrats often blinds decision-makers. We have seen governors appoint internet fraudsters and human traffickers as cabinet commissioners. We have also seen supposedly first-rate technocrats flaunting Ivy-League certificates, sully our public offices with corruption, arrogance and greed. Our public offices demand more than empty credentials; they require stewards who embody resilience, moral integrity, and an unyielding belief in the Nigerian dream.

    We have Nigerians doing well back home, despite the odds. They are the type that stay the course when the going gets tough. They do not bend and sway to every favourable draft nor pack up and leave at the onset of a storm. They stay back and withstand its flurry, surviving with tact, perseverance, faith, goodwill and native intelligence. They understand that only by salvaging what we have and who we are can we achieve our Nigerian dream. These are the ones deserving of public office.

    Still, it’s everyone’s prerogative to either stay or flee from perceived hostility in our homeland. But hostile politics and economies aren’t caused by phantoms or poltergeists. They are the result of our lack of humaneness and frantic avarice. The looters prowling our streets and corridors of power did not fall from outer space. They are the fruits of our mother’s wombs, sired with seeds from our fathers’ loins. They are the monsters we raised in our families.

    Modern Nigeria is a product of the joint efforts and inactions of our families, schools, worship houses, the streets and the media.

    Japa nomads taking the education or scholarship route eventually find that their admission into elite schools overseas was purely a business decision by the schools and their host countries. The benefits are ploughed back into their host society.

    By the time they graduate, they are superbly conditioned for the drudgery of second or third-rate employment overseas. Some occasionally secure first-rate employment. But the very smart ones among them relocate back home to seek employment with Nigerian or multinational firms that prefer their foreign certificates.

    Many return to Nigeria as agents of metacolonialism. Hence, the preponderance of journalists, writers, teachers, economists, social workers, engineers, and health workers, to mention a few, who function as glorified stooges of the so-called developed nations of the world.

    At the heart of the Japa phenomenon lies a moral corruption not unlike that which fueled the transatlantic slave trade. It is a degeneracy rooted in faithlessness; lack of faith in Nigeria, her people, and the possibility of collective growth. To combat this, we must dismantle the social mechanisms that enable such disloyalty. And this can only be achieved through education. The Nigerian school must begin to impart more than money-making soundbites and status-conferring skills.

    Our schools must equally teach values and history with a didactic bent. If they do not, another transatlantic slave trade is possible; we have seen it happen in Libya, where Europe-bound Nigerian youths were bound and gagged, raped and murdered by African slave drivers cum human traffickers. It happens every day to thousands of Nigerians crossing to Europe through irregular migration routes from Agadez through Tripoli to the Mediterranean bight.

    President Bola Tinubu must understand that it is not enough to seek foreign investment and cooperation from abroad; such an initiative, while appreciable, could be doomed by a lack of quality personnel and citizenship required to nourish whatever benefits accrue from his nation-building enterprise.

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    If Nigeria truly seeks sustainable socioeconomic growth in the long run, we must groom generations of men and women capable of nourishing and preserving the Greater Nigeria enterprise.

    The true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers, and as Deresiewicz writes, only a small minority have seen their education as part of a larger intellectual journey or have approached the work of the mind with a pilgrim soul.

    Nigeria must furnish an educational system driven by the sweat and exploits of such pilgrim souls. The country’s education curricula must be overhauled to impart a Nigeria-centred educational experience that could resonate with the progressive social re-engineering of the country.

    It doesn’t matter what quality of degrees are acquired if the recipients are furnished to operate like mindless robots, praise junkies, fortune hunters and crowd pleasers. William Hazlitt notes how European society violently wrenches and amputates its citizenry, thus making them unfit for intercourse with the world, something in the manner that beggars maim and mutilate their children, to prepare them for their future pigeonholes.

     This imagery of beggars maiming and mutilating children is discernible in the fate of the Nigerian kids born abroad; some are shipped overseas as regular or illegitimate migrants, purportedly to grant them access to a better life.

    The lure of Japa validates Bulhan’s theory of metacolonism. The syndrome has taken so much from us, including our loyalty, language, history, and the cultural values that bound our community together. All that is left is our sense of attachment and moral responsibility borne of nostalgia. Yet Japa has corrupted even that.

    The time has come to redefine patriotism, particularly in public service. It’s about time we prioritised those who believe in Project Nigeria and are ready to make the sacrifices required to achieve it. Anything less is a disservice to the nation and its people.

  • George and impenitent PDP governors

    George and impenitent PDP governors

    But for its assault in sensibilities of Nigerians, the assemblage of impenitent PDP governors with the likes of Osun’s Ademola Adeleke, the dancing governor and  Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed of  ‘Every West African Fulani is a Nigerian’ in Gusau, Zamfara, last week Saturday where the forum attributed PDP’s unimpressive outing during the August 9 by-election to “intimidation and excessive deployment of security forces”, is a gathering of humour merchants. The forum even added a bit of sardonic humour as one is not sure of what to make of the forum’s expression of “profound gratitude to members and supporters of the PDP nationwide” who did not bother to vote for PDP which secured one seat as against 12 for APC of the 16 contested seats. It is sad that even as leading lights of PDP scramble to escape a sinking ship, which PDP has become, some others have chosen to keep on playing the ostrich perhaps believing that Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia.

    To close observers of Nigerian politics, the tragedy of PDP cannot be separated from the 2013 revolt of ‘Group of Seven’ led by Atiku Abubakar and Senator Bukola Saraki, the 2022 revolt of ‘Group of Five’ otherwise known as the ‘integrity group’ led by Chief Bode George and Nyesom Wike, his estranged godson and of course the current self-serving PDP coalition-seeking migrants led by former senate president, David Mark and irritated Nasir el Rufai.

    Bode George along with other past PDP leaders including Obasanjo and Ahmadu Ali have always treated PDP gang wars as ‘family affair’. But with George’s threat to quit the PDP after, issuing  what many saw as empty threat to PDP southern leaders and Wike following their categorical rejection and dismissal of the Ibadan consultative meeting as  “divisive and unrepresentative”,  the end of such illusion seems near.

    The mistake George has always made was to dress up PDP in a borrowed robe of a political party, a modernization agent ingenious mid-19th century creation of European elites.  The result was that PDP gang wars viciously fought over sharing of our national patrimony remains largely unchecked all through PDP 16 years of the locust.

    The truth is that PDP, birthed by the G13 group headed by the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme in 1998 but quickly hijacked by retired generals and  their military contractors and ran by gangs headed by garrison commanders has never been a political party. 

    This was why former US ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, during his March 19, 2010 lecture titled : Nigeria in Turmoil dismissed PDP as “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”. 

    Except for those playing the ostrich or those below 40 years of age, we can all remember how Nigeria became victim of PDP gang wars. The creation of artificial fuel scarcity by PDP politicians in the early days of Obasanjo’s presidency was used to justify government fuel subsidy policy which was nothing but a scam to loot the nation’s resources. But for their gang war inside the hallowed senate chambers of the National Assembly, Nigerian would not have known how PDP leading lights increased the number of fuel importers from four to over a hundred which did not only help them to defraud Nigeria of billions of naira but also allowed their siblings to steal $1.7b without importing a pint of fuel.

    It is often said that there is honour among thieves. But those who wage war against Nigeria are ready to engage in open fight on the floor of the National Assembly. It was through one of such vicious gang confrontations on the floor of the National Assembly that the nation got to know that the privatization exercise was a scam through which Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b acquired between 1960 and 1998 was sold to PDP stalwarts for a paltry $1.5b.

    They unbundled PHCN. But depending on whose figure you take, that was after expending $10b according to President Yar’Adua, Speaker Dimeji Bankole ($16b), Ndidi Elumelu, chairman house committee on power probe ($13b), Gabriel Suswan of NEC Presidential Review Panel on NIPP ($10.231b). They then sold the unbundled PHCN to PDP stalwarts led by Jerry Gana, supervised by Liyel Imoke, the Power Minister. Unfortunately what the nation got for her pains was darkness.

    It is not therefore difficult to conclude that from even taking a cue from Bode George who served jail term for helping friends with contracts as chairman of Nigerian Ports Authority (he was later acquitted on technical ground after fully serving  his term), the warring gang of seven that sank PDP in 2013, the gang of five also known as  “the Integrity Group” that wrecked PDP in 2023 and the current governors and PDP leading lights who today freely criss-cross  between PDP/APC  and ADC , it has always been about themselves and not about Nigeria.

    The focus remains greed of leading PDP stalwarts fighting over the sharing of resources and office positions. Bode George himself agreed with Wike that Atiku Abubakar in 2023, out of greed  breached the PDP constitutional provision on periodic rotation of offices between the north and south. He admitted that, in the contest for PDP VP slot in 2023, Wike who secured 13 out of 17 votes was short-changed. That Wike fought back with fury against Atiku’s 2023 ambition, was not unexpected.

    Unfortunately, those who refused to anticipate the consequences of sowing the wind are those today exhibiting intense dislike for Wike. Some treat him with revulsion. Others loathe him while some of their media platforms will not accept having a successful outing without an opportunity to pour odium on Wike. He is treated as a clown because of his diction, dancing steps and his throaty songs, “as he dey pain them, he dey sweet us”.

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    Unfortunately for his intra party rivals, he always has the last say. As a heavy investor in PDP, he had asked Iyorchia Ayu, PDP chairman to account for an alleged missing N1b party convention proceeds. And for his south south governors who could not stand his guts, he did nothing wrong by challenging them to account for proceeds of 13% derivation funds they took from Buhari, after showing to Nigeria what he did with his. After all, all is fair in war if politics is war by another name.

    Of course he did not spare those who tried to deny he was generous with River State money. They include those who sought his financial help during their failed PDP youth leadership contest before moving on to set up their own a civil society group, editors of below the line publication trying to join PDP, those whose battle he fought while they sought refuge in Ghana and got to power only to allegedly receive Rolls Royce as gift from contractors and spend billions on a non-existing metroline. Others who got bruised include those who knelt down groveling before him for support for their gubernatorial ambition etc.

    To show his was not just tales, we have had people like Yakubu Dogara, former Speaker of the House of representative coming out to corroborate his position by publicly scolding Bala Mohammed, his state governor, for his lack of grace after climbing to power on Wike’s back.

    The 16 years of PDP gang war over the looting of our resources and confiscation of asset kept in their temporary care for the future of our children is well documented. The garrison commanders who saw resources put in their care for building a better future for our people as spoils of war cannot escape the judgment of history.

    The above serious contradictions which threaten the survival of PDP as “an elite cartel for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”. Atonement by PDP past office holders for their baleful past which is partly responsible for the current nation’s nightmare and of course offering policy alternatives are the serious challenges before PDP governors if they are serious about retaking power from ruling APC in 2027 or any time in future. And this is not helped by empty and shallow promises by those who did nothing to turn the fortune of Nigerians around after spending about 20 years in PDP and APC past administrations but now two years out of government, promise to solve Nigerian problem in one year if given another chance.

  • There was a country!

    There was a country!

    The revelations about rampant corruption in our country in recent times by intelligence officers reminds one of those days before and immediately after independence when sanity prevailed and those in government took their assignments as sacred trusts and not opportunity for graft. I still remember growing up  in my own part of Nigeria when we did not have crude petroleum but had cocoa, palm oil, rubber and lots of hardwood timber which our regional government exported and the proceeds were spent on running the administration while a big part of it was saved against a rainy day. Some of the savings was used to support producer prices whenever the prices fell in the so-called world market as a result of over production.  Stability of producer price was necessary to encourage the farmers who produced the export products. The marketing board that managed these savings was insulated as much as possible from political interference.

    It was the British colonial government that set this marketing board up and by the time we had party and responsible government in 1951, millions of pounds sterling had accumulated as savings which the Awolowo government in the Western Region had access to from 1951 to 1959. Marketing boards were also set up for the eastern and northern regions of Nigeria but because those regions produced palm oil and palm kernel in the case of the East and groundnuts, cotton and hides and skins in the case of the North, they did not have the kind of money which cocoa brought into the coffers of the western Nigerian treasury.

    The year 1955 begins the period I am talking about when I was in my final year in primary school during the first year of the Action Group’s government’s free and compulsory primary school education scheme. My set moved from standard four to join with those in standard five to transit to primary six and the number of years spent in primary school was shortened from eight years to six years. There was fear that standards will be lowered but nothing of such happened and my set took entrance examinations to various secondary schools in the Western Region preparatory to starting in Form One in January 1956. Most of us only took entrance examinations to schools in the Western Region. Certainly not to Lagos! None of our teachers encouraged us to do so because of what was said to be the corrupting influence of the coastal city. And our parents would not hear of us going to Benin and Warri provinces for fear of the distance and differences in languages. There were a few intrepid ones who braved going there.

    It was the best of times.  We were all enjoying heavenly paradise here in Ekiti and the Western Region and in the country as a whole. One could travel to anywhere without molestation by the police or armed robbers and Fulani herders minded their business as we did ours .Everything was good. We were not rich neither were we poor. During our holidays, we joined our parents on the farms and those whose parents were traders hawked their wares on the street. Running family economies was a joint program of parents, children, cousins and all kinds of relations with everybody making a contribution.

    In spite of the limitations of our rural environment we did well. Our peasant upbringing endowed us with all that was honest and honourable. We never stole; we never embezzled or envied any one. We were satisfied with whatever it pleased the Almighty God to put in our hands in terms of shelter and ability to send our children to school like our parents did. We did not know anyone who became rich by being a civil servant. Politics when it entered our part of Nigeria was a call to serve not to eat. The only rich people we knew were contractors and cocoa merchants. We thought our country or shall I say, our region will regenerate itself and our children will have the opportunity we had to live in a peaceful environment. But we were wrong.

    Read Also: Olubadan: Oyo govt fixes Sept 26 for Ladoja’s coronation

    Our self-sustaining region was in 1957 made a self-governing part of Nigeria. We still retained control over our lives and contributed financially to the central treasury which relied largely on import and excise duties as well as charges on currency, posts and telegraphs, railways and shipping, and aviation. The regions continued to run their affairs as autonomous entities within the federation of Nigeria and enjoying common services of police and defence. The regions ran their own affairs competitively and cooperatively. Crude petroleum was discovered in Oloibiri (Bayelsa State) in the East but this did not make huge impact on the East which remained the Cinderella of the Nigerian family relations.

    As we progressed towards independence, the fierce competition for control of the centre began. The northern hegemony epitomized by the NPC in the centre was then aided by the eastern subservience of the NCNC.  Then began the race to fill the posts being vacated by the British and to pack the ministries and parastatals with the ethnic cohorts of largely easterners. Obafemi Awolowo who in all his political life had favoured strong regions appeared to have abandoned his position when he decided to challenge the NPC / NCNC chokehold on the centre by resigning as premier of the Western Region to go to the centre. With historical hindsight, he should have stayed in the West like his political enemy Ahmadu Bello stayed on in the North and sent his lieutenant, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to the centre as lame duck prime minister which he would have remained if Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello had maintained their principled federal posture as they did in the Lancaster  pre-Independence  conference of 1959.This wrong tactical move sealed the fate of the carefully negotiated agreement for the disparate regions  to remain together. These were territories big enough to be separate countries. They entered into what has turned out into an unhappy marriage which the military forced unitary system of 1966 has worsened.

    Nevertheless, the free-for-all looting and the crazy feeding frenzy on national treasury which began after the civil war ended in 1970 and have gotten worse and worse in a country where anything goes! Now we hear government wants to sell the airports obviously to politicians from favoured part of the country just like the power sector was sold to people who knew nothing about how to generate and distribute electricity.

    How does one explain the fact that the main source of the country’s wealth goes unaudited for years? The various parastatals in the oil industry are run, not with the aim to earn income and augment national income, but to consume whatever comes in from sales of crude oil and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Yet we complain that the country has no roads, no railways, no modern ports and airports. We have no hydro or any sort of efficient electric power. We have written and written that the dollar guzzling petroleum refineries and petrochemical industries should be sold. We said it to Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan and we said it again to Muhammadu Buhari and are now saying it to Bola Ahmed Tinubu to sell the damned refineries to entrepreneurs who know how to manage them.

    The money we are queuing up in various capitals of the world to borrow would have been unnecessary if we ran our oil industry profitably. Unfortunately, this will continue until the crude oil in our hands becomes unprofitable and unsellable. Those running our oil industry should just compare us with the following countries in OPEC namely UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela. Even with the American sabotage of Iran and Venezuela and the war in Iraq, they still have superior infrastructure than Nigeria. The roads we used to travel on have all been washed away because of poor construction arising from corruption and kickbacks from those who constructed them. Nemesis has now caught up with us. The poor have left the villages to waylay us on the highways and rob and attack us in the cities. The poor are now demanding their own share of our common patrimony which a few have appropriated. The rich can no longer sleep because the poor are hungry and angry. Before it is too late we must go back to the negotiated constitutional agreement that led us to Independence to avoid current and future head-butts. We need to spend more time on how to bake a bigger national cake than on how to share the dwindling little cake we are now scrambling over. A million reviews and revisions of our constitution will not get us to a desired destination unless our pilots and ourselves change course and character and attitude to work. There is honour in hard work Wealth without accountability is the ruin of many nations. That is the lesson of history.

  • Royal roulette

    Royal roulette

    • Alaafin reignites supremacy war with Ooni

    What WILL Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Owoade, do now that his 48-hour ultimatum to Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, has expired? The ultimatum expired yesterday. Up till now, the Alaafin has yet to make good his threat that “there will be consequences” if the Ooni did not comply with his demand after the ultimatum’s expiration.

    What is the demand? The Alaafin wants the Ooni to withdraw the title of Okanlomo of Yorubaland that the Ife monarch conferred on a business magnate, Chief Dotun Sanusi, last Saturday. The ultimatum expired yesterday, but there have been no visible signs of any “consequences”, 24 hours after. According to the Oyo monarch, the Ooni has no power to confer such titles on anybody. From time immemorial, there has been no love lost between occupiers of the two leading Yoruba stools.

    In the past, they hardly saw eye to eye. Where one was, the other was never there. They avoided each other’s company, as if they were rival wives married to the same man. The rivalry affected whatever group or council they belonged to. Everything done by the authorities to accommodate both monarchs so as to avoid being perceived as taking sides with either of them never worked out. One saw himself as above the other.

    Until Osun State was created out of Oyo in 1991, this cat and mouse game defined the relationship between the revered monarchs. The rotational chairmanship of the Oyo State Council of Traditional Rulers and Chiefs between them never solved the supremacy battle. The ice was only broken when Osun became a state and Ife was listed there. Yet, the rivalry continued on other fronts. When Ogunwusi became Ooni in 2015, he embarked on a peace mission to the then Alaafin in Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, against the advice of some hardline culture activists who wanted him to maintain his distance.

    From the outset, he showed that he believed in jaw-jaw rather than war-war. He and Owoade are in the same age bracket. They are in their 50s. Owoade celebrated his 50th birthday last month, Ogunwusi was 50 last year. As young kings, it is expected that they should be more tolerant of each other as they work for the progress of their people and the larger Yoruba race. Certain things should not come between them. Even, nothing should come between them to the extent that it would blow open. They can disagree in private and resolve whatever their differences are without a third party knowing about it.

    When the spat of royalties like them becomes public, it affects not only their status, but the royal institution they represent. What is it about conferring a title on an individual that it should split the Alaafin and the Ooni? Did the Ooni confer the title on Sanusi in secret? Monarchs like to protect their domains in their own interests, but the conferment of titles on persons is not the exclusive preserve of any king. They can give titles to whoever they liked, as long as it is within their purview. The Alaafin is saying the Ooni does not have the power to confer the Okanlomo of Yorubaland title on Sanusi.

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    He urges the Ooni to restrict himself to awarding such titles in Ile Ife, which is historically known as the cradle of the Yoruba. Owoade refers to a Supreme Court judgment which he says recognises the Alaafin as the sole authority to confer titles on individuals in Yorubaland generally. Other monarchs of the race, he claims, can only perform such functions in their respective domains. Is the Alaafin saying that his predecessor, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, was not aware of the Supreme Court judgment?

    If Adeyemi was aware, why did the late monarch not raise an objection when the Ooni was said to have publicly announced in 2020 that he would confer the Okanlomo of Yorubaland title on Sanusi? Or had the Supreme Court not given the judgment then? For a matter to have reached the Supreme Court, it must have gone through the high and appeal courts. With the kind of justice system we operate, that would have taken some years. Owoade became Alaafin five months ago, and they are not long enough for this matter to travel all the way from the high court to the court of appeal, and finally the Supreme Court.

    Ironically, the Ooni and Alaafin are the sons of Oduduwa, the Yoruba progenitor, who founded Ile Ife. That is why till today, the Ooni is referred to as Arole Oodua (the heir of Oduduwa). The two of them are major monarchs who should set examples for other Yoruba obas. There will be squabbles at times, but they should not be over what could be considered mundane issues. If Oduduwa’s two leading sons fight, what will their brothers do?  Who will settle the big brothers?

    Except there are other underlying factors, I see no reason why the Alaafin reacted the way he did. If he really wants to follow the rule of law as he claimed by citing that Supreme Court verdict, he should have returned to court for remedy. But he resorted to self help by issuing the Ooni a 48-hour ultimatum to uninstal Sanusi or “face the consequences”. As the nation waits with bated breath for those “consequences”, the Alaafin can, in the meantime, give answers to these pertinent questions:

       Which year was the case filed? Who are the parties? What is the subject-matter of the suit, as well as the suit and appeal numbers? And when did the Supreme Court give its judgment on the basis of which he is claiming to be the overlord of rulers in Yorubaland. Softly, softly, your royal majesty.

  • Roses don’t grow in sewers

    Roses don’t grow in sewers

    Every Nigerian loves to howl at power, until it resides in the family.

    It hits differently when a corrupt administration is led by your father or mother, granny, uncle or aunt. Suddenly, theft becomes a forgivable misdemeanour. Dishonesty is rationalised as survivor’s instinct, and a prosecuted felon morphs into a misunderstood patriot.

    It’s easier to mount the soapbox just to spout off and be seen when power resides in a stranger’s lineage. What is excused in the familiar is despised in the other.

    This is the mentality of a sick person. It is what drives a university professor and supposed sanctuary of knowledge to wrestle in the cesspit of ignorance, in defence of a demagogue. It is what quickens the journalist’s mutation from society’s watchdog into Castiliogne’s proverbial courtier with a forked tongue.

    Yet, while it is easier to pillory them for serving as propaganda mercenaries for corrupt leadership, at home and abroad, it must be understood that they cannot be any different in psyche and sentiment from the society that raised them.

    This is equally true of the corrupt doctor, nurse, engineer, accountant, policeman, soldier, politician and public officer. This is true of the armed bandit, terrorist, serial killer, rapist, misandrist and misogynist, among others. It’s garbage in, garbage out. Nobody sows poison parsley and reaps pomegranates.

    Roses don’t grow in sewers; thus, no roach crawls out of a sewage scented roseate. Society births its own likeness. The corrupted citizen is in no way different from the cockroach birthed in sewage. His stench clings to his gait, and his actions assert the filth that bred him. We cannot command fragrance from a generation nursed on putrescence.

    The average Nigerian mirrors his roots or sewer bed. Thus, the brothel prostitute and her pimp, the rapist, political assassin, ballot robber, kidnapper, and bestial public officer, are as much the results of society’s savagery as its absence.

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    Degenerate Nigeria can only be cured by farming our loins for the hidden cowries of a nobler race. The family is the building block of society and civilisation. But circumstances of its breakdown and reduction to a dysfunctional nature often foist the responsibilities of raising a child on a single, ill-prepared parent.

    Yet, despite its significance, the family is simply one among social agencies essential to a child’s upbringing. Also crucial is the role of the school, government, and religious institutions; together, they determine the quality of education an individual is exposed to and the quality of human he becomes.

    Modern Nigeria is a consequence of the moral torpedoing of our families, schools, worship houses, the streets, and the media. No thanks to metacolonialism. The morally ambivalent youth has become today’s amoral nomad, superbly conditioned by Western education and the media to scorn native intelligence and wisdom of the ancient.

    Many morph into unthinking herds in real time; thus, the preponderance of skitmakers,  journalists, writers, teachers, economists, social workers, engineers, and health workers, to mention a few, who function as glorified stooges of the debauched world.

    The faithlessness and moral corruption that they personify are similar to those that drove African enablers of the transatlantic slave trade. This degeneracy remains largely unchallenged.

    To prevent its recurrence, we must hinder the social mechanisms that render our youths capable of such. And this can only be achieved through education. Right now, the educational system produces clever parrots and rarely critical minds. It equips students with training essential to their deployment as systems managers, not creators of present and future breakthroughs. Students are schooled to pass exams, not to imagine alternatives. They are conditioned to perpetuate the very structures that impoverish them.

    Of President Bola Tinubu’s N54.99 trillion budget for 2025, N3.52 trillion was allocated to the education sector. While this is considered insufficient by local stakeholders and international standards (UNESCO recommends  15–20% benchmark) it marks a significant leap compared to recent years, and signals government recognition of education as a tool of socioeconomic transformation.

    If Nigeria truly seeks sustainable growth, we must commit greater resources to grooming generations of men and women capable of preserving the Greater Nigeria enterprise.

    It’s about time we cultivated education as Nigeria’s fertile field of rebirth. So far, we have done a bang-up job exploiting school as a factory for producing certificates and training graduates as process clerks and systems managers. We must bend the arc of learning away from rote recitation, towards character formation, patriotism, and humane citizenship.

    Nigeria’s curriculum must be stripped of barren obsession with cramming and reconstituted with value. And, sublime, isn’t it? That Nigeria flaunts so many PhDs but never an indigenised scholarly theory of things.

    We must quit teaching honesty, empathy, and civic responsibility as abstract ideals, but as living habits. The Yoruba notions of Omoluabi, the man of virtue, good character, and integrity, whose word is bond, must complement the Hausa-Fulani reverence for mutumin kirki, the upright man, and the Igbo ideal of nwanne di na mba, brotherhood across boundaries.

    These indigenous codes of honour, too long neglected and weaponised into manipulative soundbites, must be restored as the essence of national pedagogy. Nigeria must also reintroduce history into the classroom, stripped of bigotry, misrepresentation of context, dates and battles. The past must be recalled only to inspire pride without prejudice, and as a mirror of infractions and consequences.

    A child who grows up with fables of the tortoise’s greed and communal folklore learns integrity through melody and myth astride the theoretical grain. Arts and literature must be reimagined as moral laboratories where Nigeria perpetuates its better self. Alongside this, we must equip students with media literacy, teaching them to interrogate propaganda, resist manipulation, and discern truth from the lies that flood media channels.

    Ethics must be taught through living case studies of avoidable tragedies: bridges collapsed by corruption, lives imperilled by personnel greed cum inflated medical care, and court judgments bought by bribes. To raise humane generations, we must also school emotion alongside intellect. Children must be taught to manage anger, respect differences and listen with compassion. We must temper fixation with Mathematics, Sciences and English, with purposive and better structured Civic Education, comprising skills in dialogue, negotiation, and conflict resolution.

    What good are engineers who can build roads if they cannot build peace? Or medical personnel who can save lives but cannot heal themselves from tribal venom?

    Nigeria must re-imagine education beyond mere literacy and re-institute it as the foundation of model citizenship. Educational policies must shift from a culture of producing certificate-holders to furnishing nation-builders. Leadership must embody propagated ethics, as no classroom will believe that bribery is wrong while public officers flaunt mansions built with stolen funds. Nothing betrays pedagogy faster than a sullied example.

    The task may seem immense, but it is not impossible. This country can yet raise generations who sing the national anthem as a lived creed; who would never excuse larceny even in their own bloodline; and who’d always break kinship out of the jailhouse of tribe.

    This will not happen by accident, but by reinventing education as a forge of character, and for its overarching purpose to make minds, not careers or social cannibals.

    We must quit taking dormant theories and management techniques for unimpeachable wisdom and understand that the true measure of a civilisation is rooted in its empathy, and not its skill at acquisition or consumption. 

  • Protecting EFCC from ADC buccaneers

    Protecting EFCC from ADC buccaneers

    The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was established in 2003 as a law enforcement and anti-graft agency that investigates financial crimes and unknown transactions such as advanced fee fraud (419) and money laundering in response to pressure from the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF). The EFCC was also set up to fight against corruption and protect the country from economic saboteurs.

    The body which appeared to be saddled with fighting antibiotic resistance disease nurtured and sustained by state policies, has faced as much threat from government as from economic saboteurs.  If you are in doubt, take a short trip back to the period Delta’s James Ibori seized the body as a pay-off for bankrolling  Umaru Yar’Adua’s  presidential election and chased Nuhu Ribadu out of office and town as a way of getting his pound of flesh  because Ribadu rejected his $14 m bribe.

    It is also on record that on July 7, 2020, Ibrahim Magu was suspended as EFCC’s chairman following Abubakar Malami panel’s report that found him guilty “for failing to properly account for N431,000,000 security votes/information fund released to his office. Two weeks later, Buhari’s Justice Ayo Salami’s investigative panel cleared Magu of all charges, accusing Attorney General Malami of involvement in a plot to discredit Magu.

    The body’s current helmsman like Ribadu and Magu before him has been described as one of our best. But he has in the last one week gone through great stress and strain. If an organization managed by our best has continued to experience technical glitches, isn’t it time to look at ourselves in the mirror?

    Those who want to keep us where we are often attribute our problem to weak institutions forgetting that long before the emergence of military adventurers, Western Region had what was regarded as the best bureaucracy in Africa and a disciplined political party that compared with any in Europe.

    The truth of the matter is that we have failed to protect our budding institutions from the caprices of the powerful military-baked new breed politicians that bred nothing but corruption since the end of the civil war.  It is of little relief that each of the leading lights of this wealth-chasing new breed politicians have a reckless medium that seems specifically set up to fight institutions of state  that need protection and nurturing.

    Efforts at  discrediting the EFCC and its current leadership in spite of his ongoing heroic exploits as they did to his trail-blazing predecessors started with the routine invitation of Senator Aminu Tambuwal, former two-term governor of Sokoto State.

    Suddenly, as if we have forgotten that Tambuwal is not different from other  “water has no enemy” politicians, who defied his party to get support of opposition to become speaker of the House of Representatives, sought refuge under the opposition when confronted with unapproved bank loan advance he took to pay lawmakers and now as a way of criticising the ruling party while posing as an angel says “once you join the APC, whatever your sins, they are forgiven.”

    While he was conveniently silent on the fact that he was questioned over alleged fraudulent cash withdrawals to the tune of N189billion which emanated from a probe of his administration by the current Sokoto government, he wants Nigerians to believe his travails stemmed from his decision “to stand by the people against Tinubu’s government”.

    Of course the handling of Tambuwal’s case by EFCC could have been done better. There are those who have argued that since the case probably started long before Tambuwal left office as governor, it ought not to have taken two years for EFCC to bring his case up. Tambuwal has also told us of his encounter with EFCC: “I told them to go back and tell the chairman of the EFCC that I am a former Speaker of the House of Representatives with an unblemished record, a two-term governor of Sokoto State, a serving senator, and a Commander of the Order of the Niger. I should be allowed to go on self-recognition”. I agree with him. He in my view is not likely going to jump bail.

    EFCC’s Ola Olukoyede may be right that “fraud is fraud. Corruption is corruption. There is no sacred cow, protected interest or partisan consideration in the investigation and prosecution of corruption” and that “available records in our courts show several political figures from all divides that are answering charges.”

    Olukoyede must realise that not many Nigerian are familiar with the details of his cases before the court. And with a smart politician like Tambuwal ignoring the log in his own eyes, which is the alleged “fraudulent cash withdrawals to the tune of N189billion” while diverting attention to “a certain former governor who defected to the APC with his state’s entire political machinery, the EFCC’s investigations into his administration have vanished from public view. Not a question has been asked. Not a document leaked. Not a single update. Yet the same EFCC still somehow find means to reopen old cases against opposition leaders …” can easily turn perception to reality.

    But do all this translate to witch hunting? I don’t think so. And to think Nigerians will swallow that type of mischief, Bolaji Abdulahi and Atiku Abubakar must have assumed Nigerians don’t see beyond their noses.

    I think the question that should agitate the minds of Nigerians is whether PDP stalwarts now in ADC robes have outstanding cases with EFCC. Tough talking Bolaji Abdullahi, the ADC spokesman, a serial cross-carpeter, has not denied they do. His grouse was that EFCC was “excavating all their files from David Mark’s tenure as Senate President” and questioning, “The pattern of ignoring APC stalwarts with fresher and well-documented cases”.  Unfortunately, such diversionary tactics, I am sure, has left many informed Nigerians wondering if in spite of their new ADC protective armour, migrating PDP stalwarts are not being haunted by their past.

    For instance, the Punch of October 2, 2020 reported Imo governor, Hope Uzodimma of claiming he inherited systematic corruption from his predecessor, the sacked governor, Emeka Ihedioha. According to him, “Coming into office barely nine months ago, we encountered a microcosm of systemic corruption and disruption in the public sector. We met monumental payroll fraud in the system; we met a disoriented and disarticulated civil service and a very sorry state of infrastructural provisions.”

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    It is also from the Punch report of June 26, 2024 we now know that Nasir el Rufai, ex PDP, ex APC stalwart, who is currently taking refuge in ADC after he was thrown out by SDP, has dragged the Kaduna State House of Assembly to court over claims that his administration embezzled N432 billion and left the state with significant debt obligations. He was reacting to the Report of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Investigation of Loans, Financial Transactions, Contractual Liabilities and Other Related Matters of the Government of Kaduna State from 29 May 2015 to 29 May 2023, as ratified by the Kaduna State House of Assembly, which he said “was unconstitutional and violated his right to fair hearing as guaranteed under the constitution.”

    We  also now know that David Mark who has been in government  all his life, first  as chairman of  ‘Abandoned  properties Panel’, River State, Military Administrator of Niger State , senator from 1999 -2025 and senate president 2007 -2015 has been waging a silent battle with EFCC over his alleged  illegal purchase of his senate presidential mansion.

    Mark in April, 2011, purchased the property at a “reserved price” of N673,200,000 as against N748,000,000, the open market value according to the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Bala Mohammed.  The government, through Chief Okoi Obono-Obla’s Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property, gave the former senate president a 21-day notice to quit the mansion. He had accused him of illegally acquiring the property with the approval of former president, Goodluck Jonathan, despite that such property was excluded from the monetisation policy of the federal government.

    Mark, determined to hold on to the property, filed a suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1037/2017 through his lawyer, Ken Ikonne, before the Federal High Court in Abuja, insisting that he legally acquired the property.

    And finally, unknown to many, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who accused President Bola Tinubu of “objectifying the fight against corruption as a political tool to coerce opposition leaders into the ruling party” has had a brush with EFCC. On December 21, 2020 Ikoyi High Court was told of how his lawyer, Uyiekpen Giwa Osagie laundered $2m through Atiku’s security guards

    It is apparent from the above that Bolaji Abdullahi and his fellow seasonal migrants who without abiding faith in anything, jump from one party to the other at every election season, understand the need for enduring institutions for a nation. And this is why we cannot afford to give them the pleasure of undermining the EFCC just as James Ibori and Abubakar Malami did before them.

  • Air rage: Not a season film

    Air rage: Not a season film

    It is something that happens infrequently, at least, at the scale witnessed twice in recent days. Most times, it ends after tempers might have cooled down. Air rage is not different from road rage – in the sense that senses take temporary flight as the disputants throw caution to the wind. When tempers flare, people lose their sanity, and resort to violence.

    It first happened on a ValueJet flight with renowned Fuji musician Wasiu Ayinde Marshall alias Kwam 1, and then on an Ibom Air flight, with a woman, Comfort Emmanson. In Kwam 1’s case, he attempted to stop the plane from taking off by standing in its front. You said haa! I did too, until I saw the video. Barely a week later, it was Comfort and the cabin attendants slugging it out after the plane landed. The optics of both incidents were not good, at all.

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    Air rage is dangerous because of the inherent fatal consequences. It could lead to a crash in which people including the innocent who are on the ground can die. This is why it is a serious offence. Air rage should not be allowed to become a series movie to be shot in the aircraft, as it happened in Comfort’s case, or outside it, as in the Kwam 1 show.

    I have strong views on the handling of both incidents, but I will keep my gun powder dry since Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo (SAN) has decided to be merciful to all the feuding parties. To quote Shakespeare: “The quality of mercy is not strained; it drops as the gentle rain from heaven upon thè place beneath. It is twice blest; it blesses him that gives and him/her that takes….”

    What remains is to ensure that measures are put in place to avert a recurrence. Complying with instructions that you cannot board with a flask containing an unknown substance; or that you should switch off your phone before take off are minor issues that should never ever snowball into an air rage again.