The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

Edo as verdict on Buhari’s administration

Jide Oluwajuyitan

Adams Oshiomhole, who in 2016 by-passed his own deputy, Pius Odubu, former governor, Osarhiemen Osunbor, Osarodion Ogie, his political son, former minister, Chris Ogiemwonyi, Kenneth Imasuagbon and Charles Airhiavbere and Ize-Iyamu, a founding member of APC and chairman for his re-election committee to pick Godwin Obaseki as APC candidate, might have been humbled by the outcome of last Sataurday Edo election, but the real losers are President Buhari and his APC.

What was witnessed in Bini ile Ibinu) land of anger, as their Yoruba kinsmen describe them, was a protest vote against President Buhari’s mismanagement of power, his APC intra-party crisis and our crisis of nation-building. The Binis like most other Nigerians are angry with President Buhari, who loathe politicians and political parties after using them as vehicles to attain power. Although he dressed Bola Tinubu in the robes of a party leader, President Buhai is the APC party leader and the buck stops at his table.

But because of President Buhari’s incompetence in the management of political parties, he would not even sit down to listen to Governor Godwin Obaseki’s grievances. The governor ended up being tutored by President Buhari’s unelected loyal gatekeeper. Oshiomhole, his estranged godfather suffered greater indignity. Buhari worked with his political enemies to unceremoniously remove him from office despite enjoying the support of 14 of 20 APC National Working Committee (NWC) members with three against and three neutral during a stormy meeting in June.

Yet apart from Tinubu sidelined after carrying the president on his back around the country to win the 2915 election, called upon at the last minute to mend fences among warring party members across the country, Oshiomhole was the architect of Buhari’s 2019 re-election. He inherited from Oyegun a party in disarray in most of its state chapters. Oshiomhoile had to apply the big stick against Senate President Saraki who had made the country ungovernable for three years, the empire building governors and those who wanted to create a fiefdom out of their states.

But first the politics of Edo and its political elite. It can at best be described as “politics of water has no enemy” or politics of shifting loyalty. Edo political elite are among the most educated, most resourceful and creative Nigerian politicians. They all share a common worldview of no permanent friends but permanent interests.

We remember Tony Enahoro who became an editor of a national newspaper at around 22 and remains the best parliamentarian Nigeria has ever produced. He had moved from NCNC to AG and later hobnobbed briefly with the conservatives before his death. There was General David Ejor who surfaced three days after rebel invasion of Benin claiming he rode a bicycle for three days to join the federal side. There was also an illustrious Samuel Ogbemudia who joined the group of Nigerian politicians massaging Babangida’s ego by serving as the face of his fraudulent ‘railway revolution’ which did not go beyond the repainting of old railway coaches in new colours.

Tony Anenih was the chairman Babangida’s decreed SDP. He sold off the victory of his party to please Babangida. In the 4th Republic, he became a leading member of PDP where as “Mr. Fixer”, presided over rigging of elections across the country until his retirement by Oshiomhole. His fellow Edo kinsman, Tom Ikimi who also headed Babangida’s other decreed party, the NRC rather than concede defeat in an election his party lost ‘round and square’, joined Abacha as external affairs cowboy foreign minister. He has in the current 4th Republic moved from PDP to APC and now back to PDP. Oyegun’s sympathy was for Yar’Adua during the short-lived 3rd Republic. He became part of June 12 and later became APC chairman. As Obaseki’s backer, he is technically back to PDP with Obaseki’s last Saturday’s victory.

Oshiomhole himself was never an ACN member. He was of the Labour Party that went into a marriage of convenience with Action Congress Party (ACN) to fight the April 2007 Edo governorship election against PDP governor Osunbor who has also since joined APC. Osagie Ize-Iyamu moved from APC to contest election on the platform of PDP and returned to contest same election on APC platform four years later.

What matters to the Edo political elite is their permanent interest. Their embrace of PDP politicians indicted by the judiciary for stealing the state blind in the past did not mean they forgot where they were coming from. The failure of President Buhari and his APC to deliver on their promises is sufficient impetus. As our people say, “If the deity cannot protect me, it should at least leave me the way he met me”. Fortunately for the ever-mobile Edo political elite, this is a sentiment today shared by most Nigerians.

President Buhari may be working hard to build a solid foundation for tomorrow but a house built on a shifting sound without a solid foundation will eventually be washed away. In any case, he cannot pretend to know what Nigerian want more than Nigerians who have insisted on devolution of power because centralisation and confiscation of state resources since the end of the civil war have produced only stagnation.

While the federating states are complaining of centralisation of everything through a federal constitution which made no provision for a residual list, Buhari’s government seems to be determined to take away some freedoms secured by the states through judicial pronouncement such as state right over their waterways.

Our situation today is worse than under Lugard in 1914 and during the run up to independence in the fifties. At least under Lugard’s constitution, the native administration was staffed by locals who controlled the native treasury saddled with the responsibility of collection of taxes, half of which went to the colonial government with the native treasury retaining the other half to take care of police, hospitals, public works and local courts. That was 46 years before our independence in 1960 and 106 years ago.

The 1954 Lyttleton Constitution ensured each region had powers over law and order, education, economic development social welfare and public information. But 66 years after, Shehu Garba wants to bring community police under the Inspector General of Police that has been unable to tackle insecurity across the states while the rest of us who live in denial treat the unfolding tragedy as comedy.

The loss of Edo by APC is a pointer to what will happen in 2023 except President Buhari and his APC rediscover themselves and acknowledge their incompetence in terms of management of power, party politics, and our crisis of nation-building. Rude insults and innuendoes on leading members of ethnic nationalities that insist the president cannot substitute what he thinks Nigerians want for what Nigerians demand cannot change the groundswell of discontent as demonstrated by Edo voters. But except as some have argued, losing power to PDP in 2023 may also be part of deliberate strategy of some of Buhari’s loyal gatekeepers who are in the interest of other tendencies they serve are encouraging him to shoot himself in the leg by destroying the APC so that retailing power by the north in 2023 becomes inevitable.

September 24, 2020
APC, heal thyself

Lawal Ogienagbon

Can two walk together, except they be agreed? – Amos 3:3

AS it is in the spiritual realm, so it is in politics. Spiritually, those who share the same faith and belief band together. They hold fellowship and meetings where they seek God’s face, with the belief that the fervent prayer of the righteous will be answered speedily. In the outside world, two can also only walk together if they have a common interest. This is moreso in politics where the interest must be the same for two or more to walk together.

The truism in this biblical declaration was brought home in last Saturday’s governorship contest in Edo State, where the internal crisis in the All Progressives Congress (APC) cost the party the election. APC went into the polls divided, and the rift was obvious despite all efforts to paper the crack. The party had everything to win the election, but it did not put its house in order. Its leaders were more interested in muscle flexing than to forget their differences and work for the common good of the party.

Despite the crisis, APC was still sure of winning the election. Its confidence was buoyed by its belief that the people were for APC and would forever be. This could be true to a certain extent. Former Governor Adams Oshiomhole who made Governor Godwin Obaseki his successor in 2016 is a veteran of many battles. He fought in the court to become governor in 2008 and after assuming office, he deposed the political godfathers in the state who held sway in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It is an irony that Obaseki, who was reelected governor on Saturday on PDP platform, claimed that he fell out with Oshiomhole because the former governor had turned to a godfather overnight.

Whether true or not, the appellation stuck and with that, Obaseki got many sympathisers. His fellow APC governors, many of who never wanted Oshiomhole as their national chairman ab initio, sided with Obaseki and thus the bitter battle which cost APC the Edo governorship seat was born. The reason for the crisis cannot be divorced from the 2023 presidential ambition of some of the governors who are serving a second term. These governors cannot stand Oshiomhole who they see as constituting a stumbling block to their ambition.

They and some former governors who failed in their bid to install their successors in their states know Oshiomhole to be strong willed. Since Oshiomhole cannot be dictated to, they believe that he must go for them to have their way in the party. So when the Oshiomhole and Obaseki feud started in Benin, the Edo State capital, they cashed in on it to carry out their well hatched plan. With the late Mallam Abba Kyari working for them at the Villa, they used President Muhammadu Buhari’s name at will to get their way within the party.

Governors Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna), Atiku Bagudu (Kebbi), Simon Lalong (Plateau) as well as Senators Ibikunle Amosun and Rochas Okorocha and Transport Minister Rotimi Amaechi, who are former governors of Ogun, Imo and Rivers states see nothing good in Oshiomhole because they perceive him as former Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu’s man. These governors and former governors believe that they should be in control of APC and where that is not possible, they want to dictate what happens. It was to avoid being accused of being overbearing that Oshiomhole kept his distance from the Government House in Benin as soon as Obaseki assumed office.

As a former labour leader and governor, he knew that two captains cannot be in a ship. Yet, his relocation to Abuja as APC national chairman did not help matters. He kept on getting reports of how Obaseki was treating party members who worked for the governor’s election four years ago. The governor shunned all entreaties to court the party members. When these people could became frustrated, many of them moved to join Oshiomhole in Abuja. The anti-Oshiomhole camp was happy. With an ally like Obaseki, members of the group had Oshiomhole where they wanted him. The last straw that broke the camel’s back was when Obaseki caused the House of Assembly to be inaugurated at night with only five of the 24 members-elect on June 18, last year. Four others later joined the five, bringing their number to nine.

Even with that figure, they are still in the minority. Obaseki’s cup was full and he was denied a second term ticket by APC. He and his group blamed Oshiomhole for the action, which was taken by organs set up by the party. Though, it can be said that as chairman, Oshiomhole could have influenced that action. The question is did Obaseki did leave him with any other choice? In his desperation then, Obaseki ran to the President at the Villa and Tinubu in Lagos for help to get the party’s ticket. He eventually defected to PDP on which platform he won on Saturday. The election was APC’s to lose as pundits never gave Obaseki and PDP a chance. But it turned out that the bookmakers were wrong.

Fate smiled on Obaseki. It was not only fate that was at work. APC too helped him to win against its candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, who did better in the 2016 election against the same Obaseki. There is no gainsaying the fact that APC’s topnotch did not support Ize-Iyamu wholeheartedly. The anti-Oshiomhole camp never accepted him as the party’s candidate despite being directed by the President to support him after his candidacy was affirmed at the extraordinary meeting of the party’s national executive committee at the Villa in June. It was at the meeting that Oshiomhole was removed as the party’s chairman and the Mai Mala Buni-led caretaker committee constituted. Oshiomhole took his removal in his strides and returned home to drum up support for Ize-Iyamu.

He was in the thick of the campaign, moving from one village to the other with the candidate. Unfortunately, the support of the party’s governors which matters most in such an election was not there. Perhaps, if the governors had stood by Ize-Iyamu as their PDP counterparts did for Obaseki, the outcome of the election would have been different. There is nothing new in internal party disagreement, but such differences take the backseat during election in members’ collective interest. But the anti-Oshiomhole camp jettisoned party interest for their own selfish interest in order to get back at Oshiomhole. Who are the losers in all this?

Certainly, the losers are not Oshiomhole and Ize-Iyamu or even Tinubu, who seeing how things were going, weighed in at a critical moment to salvage the situation. The losers are APC, its governors and former governors, who flouted the President’s directive to support the party and its candidate in last Saturday’s election. I pray that the President does not make the mistake of watching APC, the vehicle he rode to power, die before he leaves office in 2023.

September 24, 2020
Refineries rehabilitation, another waste of scarce resources

Jide Osuntokun

The recent announcement by the managing director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that contracts have again been awarded for rehabilitation and comprehensive repairs of the existing four refineries, two in Port Harcourt, one in Warri and the fourth in Kaduna surprised me and perhaps most observant Nigerians who have over the years followed the shenanigans going on the NNPC with regards to these moribund refineries.

Albert Einstein said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Since the Babangida era and up to the end of the second term of the Obasanjo presidency, it was an annual ritual for so-called Turn Around Maintenance (TAM ) of the refineries to be announced and given at huge amounts to shady contractors usually party hacks on the premises that their combined capacity of refined petroleum of 440,000 barrels were more than our total consumption and that making these refineries work would spare the country the odium of importing refined petroleum in a country that was the sixth largest producer of the so-called black gold. The argument was unimpeachable so we all fell for it. But some of us began to smell a rat when during the Abacha roguish regime, the Kaduna TAM was given to TOTAL oil company for $100 million! One wondered what the initial cost of the construction of the refinery was. This rigmarole continued until the eve of the end of the Obasanjo’s second term when the departing president decided to cut the Gordian knot by actually selling the refineries to Nigerian businessmen with capital and capacity to own and run oil refineries thus saving Nigeria the annual financial hemorrhage. But as soon as late President Umar Yar’Adua took over, one of the legacies of Obasanjo he cancelled was the privatization of the refineries along with stopping ongoing work on electricity generating plants. Up till today, what informed his decision has not been properly interrogated. Some uncharitable friends of mine said Yar’Adua’s socialist friends from his days in Ahmadu Bello University influenced him Whatever the reasons for his decision, the country has paid dearly for it by the corruption that has attended the regime of fuel importation and the continuation of the TAM dispensation through the Goodluck Jonathan years and the trillions of Naira that went down into the pockets of PDP party bigwigs and their children from oil subsidies and TAM.

Some of us who campaigned for a change of leadership in the country in 2015 wanted to put an end to the humongous amount of money looted from the treasury through the laissez faire oil importation and subsidies payment. This current regime came in with its anti-corruption mantra and planned stoppage of the oil subsidies by rapidly rehabilitating the oil refineries so as to provide domestically refined petroleum products for the home market. Alas this promise has been breached perhaps like every other promise by this government. For the past five years refined petroleum has continued to be imported while TAM contracts have continued to be awarded. The minister of state for petroleum and apparent supervisor of the NNPC, Timipre Sylva in an interview recently cried out loud about the deplorable state of the refineries and pointedly said the Kaduna Refineries and Petrochemical Company had a deficit of about N54 billion last year producing no single drop of refined petroleum. He added that there were also promotions of staff for doing nothing. When he was asked why the place was not shut down or sold, he said government could not even rationalize its staff for fear of industrial action and strike by NNPC staff all over the country. He said of course if the place had belonged to a private company, the owners would have known what to do. When told about privatization, he said that was high policy which could not be discussed on the air.

I agree with the minister, but if he was convinced that privatization was the way out for these refineries, he should have taken a memorandum to the president and pushed very hard for its adoption and if it was turned down he should have resigned unless superior reasons were given for government’s decision to continue with the wasteful TAM whatever name it may be called under the new rubric of comprehensive repairs and rehabilitation. He should also have reminded the president that his predecessor in office, the knowledgeable Professor Tam. David-West before he died joined the chorus of those of us asking for the sale of the refineries. We can of course not be branded as capitalists and their running dogs because we have no capital! These expensive leap in the dark will not be completed until 2023 conveniently on the eve of the departure of this incumbent regime when no one will be around to be held responsible for this waste of scarce resources in a country where the physical infrastructure is begging for attention, where the health and education sector leaves much to be desired, where all the appurtenances of civilized existence are abysmally lacking. These contracts for the refineries are bound to be like the railways, roads, electric power and bridges being undertaken by this government to be pushed forward for completion into the future under the pretext of either inadequate resources or inability of foreign companies and government itself to access foreign loans for the projects.

I don’t know how many times Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi has announced the completion of Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge railway! He said it would be ready by December 2019 now we are in September 2020! Perhaps it too will be commissioned before the magic year 2023! The same scenario is painted for the Lagos-Ibadan road by Babatunde Fashola, the works minister.

If there was anytime government should husband its resources, the time is now. This is a time of dwindling foreign reserves due partly to the impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic on the global economy and consequent reduced demand for hydrocarbons the export of which constitutes Nigeria’s economic lifeblood. The ongoing security challenges posed by Boko Haram and ISWAP and incendiary movements all over Nigeria but particularly in the Northwest and the North-central and the South-south with the security situations in the Southeast and Southwest also precarious and dicey. Most of the 36 unviable states and 774 LGAs inflicted on the country by unthinking military regimes cannot pay salaries. The few industries we have are underperforming because of inadequate energy and infrastructural challenges. All these problems have created negative social welfare problems for the government that it needs all the money it can get from internal and foreign sources that going on a wild goose chase should be avoided.

If it is not too late, the president should cancel these refineries contracts and call on foreign and local investors to bid for the sale of the refineries. In fact, government should call on the original builders of these refineries to come and take them for free on the condition they would make them work. This may sound as a loss but it is in actual fact a saving for the country from the free for all TAM millions which would have been wasted on these refineries. While on this issue of refineries, may one ask of what has happened to the Dangote Refinery which if I am right, is scheduled for commissioning this last quarter of the year all things being equal. If and when Malam Aliko Dangote completes and commissions his refinery, we will witness what would have been since 2007 when a decisive step was taken to rescue the country from wanton waste and reckless looting of the country’s treasury by privatizing the extant refineries which are now avenues for waste and corruption.

September 24, 2020
Obasanjo and Consultative Dialogue Group

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Buhari’s widely acknowledged mismanagement of our crisis of nation building last week brought the forces responsible for political polarization in the country: Northern Elders Forum, Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, Afenifere, Middle Belt Forum as well as Pan Niger Delta Forum, together as a consultative dialogue group. They jointly denounced the on-going Senate review of the constitution, dismissing it “as a money-gulping activity and veritable source of waste without end”.

Polarisation arising from absence of elite consensus has always been the bane of Nigerian politics. The dominant ethnic groups, the Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo and the Yoruba at different levels of cultural development do not share a common view of the world. Whilst the political elite in the West according to Awo realized the Yoruba would not vote for you because you are Yoruba except you have a programme that will impact positively on his life and therefore worked for a more egalitarian society for their people, the East and the North saw their peoples as tools for attaining political power. While the North or the East could be regarded as one-party region, elections are often fiercely fought in the West. And since democracy is a game of numbers, the two never wanted dismemberment of their regions in spite of quest for self-actualization of minority groups in their regions.

Their rivalry over the soul of the country after the constitutional crisis that followed the disputed 1964 elections led the two which share a common view of how Nigeria should be run to lure the military into politics in 1966 with dire consequences. They plunged the nation into a civil war but only to re-group as NPN/NPP coalition in 1979 with Ojukwu, the Igbo war hero returning from exile to join them. In 1999, they re-grouped as PDP imposing Obasanjo on Nigeria to spite the Yoruba that roundly rejected him.

Obasanjo, an active player since 1975 who was on hand to address the consultative group last week fitted the bill. He conceded the successful struggle for independence to the generations of the Awolowos, Nnamdi Azikiwes, the Sardaunas, Aminu Kanos, Tafawa Balewas and others and on behalf of his fellow military adventurers and their new breed politicians took responsibility for the collapse of the buoyant economy they inherited. “When I banned the importation of toothpicks, another president came and lifted the ban”, he lamented. “At that time our maximum from all the power plants in the country was 3, 900 mw…one of the two who came after me in four years did not add one megawatt”, he added. He was however silent on over $20b frittered away.

He expressed the fear of Nigeria drifting into “a failed state, a basket case and poverty capital of the world, and unwholesome and insecure country”.

Speaking for government, Lai Mohammed however insists “whatever situation the country has found itself in, things would have been much worse” adding “it is Buhari’s assumption of office in 2015 that prevented Nigeria from becoming a failed state. He went on to accuse Obasanjo and some of his group of frittering away a great opportunity to put Nigeria on a sound socio-economic footing, at a time of financial buoyancy, thus planting seeds of today’s insecurity in some parts of the country.

Lai Mohammed’s claim may be correct but that unfortunately will not wish away indicators of a failed state that stare Nigerians on the face. It has become apparent the state is finding it increasingly difficult to guarantee security in the face of warlords masquerading as Boko Haram, herdsmen, bandits, kidnappers and other criminals.

The Council of Foreign Relations 2020 global Conflict Tracker recently claimed that “Since 2011, attacks by Boko Haram, the Islamist jihadist militancy in northeast Nigeria, has led to about 37,500 deaths, 2.5 million displaced people and nearly 244,000 Nigerian refuges”. The BBC also put the figure of those kidnapped in Nigeria since 2015 at 372 while the 2019 Fragile State Index ranked Nigeria as the 14th most fragile state in the world and the ninth in Africa with three of the 10 failed African states –Chad Sudan and Southern Sudan as neighbours.

On the economic front, there is mass unemployment partly because of lack of political will of government to confront economic saboteurs who in the name of commerce have turned the country into a dumping ground for second hand and substandard goods.

Lai Mohammed also insists that the nation “is courageously tackling its challenges and building a solid infrastructure that will serve as the basis for socio-economic development”. While many will appreciate efforts of government, one is however not sure whether a government that appears to listen only to itself has reflected on why such efforts in the past brought little or no joy to ordinary Nigerians.

After all, Babangida and his economic wizards, Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu told us the regime was ‘sacrificing their present for our future’ while Obasanjo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala promised an economic El Dorado. The reality is that the objective situation of ordinary Nigerian is today worse than it was in 1985.

But contrary to Obasanjo’s claims, the current manifestations of a weak state cannot be said to be the products of recent mismanagement of diversity by President Buhari. The ‘old fault lines’, he referred to, have never disappeared. If there was any time ‘drums of hatred, disintegration and separation and accompanying choruses’ were muted, it was perhaps during those periods the elite who falsely swear by the names of their people were as coalition partners or party stalwarts eating with their 10 fingers.

The first challenge of those who gathered in Abuja last week is to admit we need help in form of an umpire. As a multi ethnic society with different value systems, no one group can impose its value on others as the military has tried to do since 1975. The threat of a big brother was the secret of the 1946 constitution which brought regionalism and provided support for unity in diversity; the 1951 constitution which created House of Representatives with 136 elected members, 68 members from the north, 31 elected members from the west plus three members of the House of chiefs and 34 elected members from the east. The 1953 London Constitutional conference allocated specific powers to the centre leaving residual powers to the regions and the 1957 Lancaster London Conference paved the way for self-government for the west and east while it allowed the north to wait as long as it desired.

Compare the above with Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo whose 1988, 1994/95 and 2005 confabs were designed to commit fraud. Jonathan on the eve of election embarked on his 2014 doomed conference for the purpose of seducing Yoruba voters, the advocate of restructuring.

President Buhari is a symptom rather than the cause of our current crisis of nation building which his predecessors including Obasanjo who today blames ‘inadequate dialogue, old prejudices and bias and lack of commitment to the love of the country’, had opportunity to redress.

As presently structured, Nigeria is a nation without stakeholders. This is why she is an easy target of rape by abusers such as migrating Fulani herdsmen, insurgents and callous importers of fake drugs and substandard goods. Return the country to its owners, the ethnic nationalities who have stakes in their communities and allow them to develop at their own pace within the greater Nigerian nation without interference from a dysfunctional centre, most of our crisis of nation building will disappear in three years.

September 17, 2020
Killing tertiary institutions with strikes

By Jide Osuntokun

I have many times in my quiet moments and when I meet junior colleagues still teaching in Nigerian universities wondered about the future of our youth and the existential challenge posed by current leaders of industrial unions in the universities to the future of universities and even of Nigeria itself. When I joined the University of Ibadan in 1972 as a young lecturer, I felt called to serve almost as people feel called to serve God as pastors these days. Before coming back to Nigeria, I had taught at the universities of Western Ontario, London, Canada (1970-1971) and the West Indies, Cavehill Barbados (1971-1972). If what I was looking for in life was money, I would have stayed on in Canada or the West Indies. As a Christian, I saw the divine hand of God directing my movement but I was a willing instrument in the hand of God. I could have refused to come home to contribute my own quota to the educational advancement of my country. In my labour of love, I taught not only in the universities of Ibadan and Lagos but also in the universities of Jos and Maiduguri. I had in spite of health challenges to my wife, the best of times in Jos and a very happy time, good memories and productive achievements in Maiduguri. I have always liked teaching and the freedom one had and still have in academia compensated for whatever dissatisfaction one may have had in terms of inadequate monetary compensation and rewards. The first time I felt jolted from my revelry of being called to teach rather than to earn a living was when in 1975 following a general strike by university staff ,the government of General Yakubu Gowon asked workers who were not prepared to work to vacate their houses on university campuses as well as houses rented for them outside the university campuses. Many of my senior colleagues began seriously to think about owning their own houses outside the campuses. Those of us following them also felt the need to interrogate our material conditions in the capitalist environment of Nigeria where even if one had taken a vow of poverty, one still had to think of the future of our innocent children. We thought we could do this without bringing down the academic edifice on our heads as seems to be the strategy of the current leaders of the several industrial unions in the universities. If my memory serves me right, there was only one union in the universities then which served the interests of all workers be they academic, administrative, technical or clerical or junior staff. Everybody fitted in at a salary level. If there were salary awards, the salary level of the academic staff had comparable levels at the technical and administrative cadres. It was a case of water finding its own level. We did not have a welter of unions working at cross purposes and sometimes against each other as it is today. Nowadays in the universities, we have academic unions, senior administrative staff union, technical and laboratory unions and junior staff unions. All these unions want government to negotiate with them separately while sometimes forgetting the purpose for which the institutions where they work were set up as the training and educating of young people for the future of the country. It seems nowadays normal to close down universities for half of the year and to cancel sessions because of disputes over so called “earned allowances”. When outsiders ask what the earned allowances are, they are surprised that they are for marking of students’ scripts after examinations or supervising of students in their laboratories or supervising students’ projects and theses and dissertations. Give me a break! I would have thought these are normal chores in the life of a university teacher. As soon as the academics raise these types of issues, the administrative and technical staff and their junior counterparts will find their own “earned allowances “ which must also be paid or they will down tools. There are times when academic staff wants to teach and junior staff would lock up the gates, classrooms, laboratories and libraries in order to drive home the point of their important role in the running of academic institutions.

What then should be the position of government in all these problems? I believe it will be useful to bring up a legislation in parliament declaring the work in tertiary institutions as “essential work” not subject to strikes as those in the military and paramilitary organizations like customs, immigration and civilian aviation control. Government must also be ready to offer matching salaries commensurate with the level of importance it considers the services of people in tertiary institutions. Government must also stress the fact that it considers all staff irrespective of their roles to be essential to the smooth running and functioning of the institutions. The whole idea would be to bring to an end, rivalry among industrial unions and to usher in a period of peace unity and innovation and intellectual academic breakthrough in the universities which are at moment lacking. This will also bring peace to parents, students and their sponsors and predictability to academic lives of students and staffs. Students will be able to graduate on time and academic staff will be able to plan their research trips around the long vacations which unfortunately have now been wiped out by incessant strikes and disruptions.

Universities too must begin to do away with overloading the system with non-essential staff. I remember a time when every professor insisted he must have a secretary like their counterparts in university administration and civil service. Thank God this luxury is gone and every professor is now armed with his I-Pad or laptop to do whatever writing that was done through secretaries in the past. Only heads of department and deans of faculty who need to file documents and keep students records need this kind of staff nowadays. I believe the same is happening in the other areas of university administration. On no account must we have situations where supporting staff outnumber core academic staff in the universities. The universities must remain communities of scholars in the true sense of it. They cease to be universities when they become communities weighed down by municipal services. In this respect, government must do its duty by ensuring that universities are not charged with the duties of generating and distributing power as well as supplying potable water for university campuses. Ordinarily the state should take care of campus security and other ancillary chores that swell the number of non-academic staff on the payroll of universities and other tertiary institutions.

A nation that cannot take care of its youth has no future. The present young people in our universities do not have reasons to be proud of their country. A course of four years through no fault of the students are made to last sometimes for eight years because of incessant strikes and disruptions thus leading to frustrations on the part of the students who cannot plan for their future. This is particularly onerous for female students who may want to graduate and settle down. Parents who do not want to be paying school fees after retirement are faced with the problem of what to do with their children whose education is going on without end. This creates bad blood and tension between parents and children. This is why university staff are perhaps very unpopular with the Nigerian parents if not the wider Nigerian society.

I sometimes wonder if university staff knows the damage they do to themselves and their profession and the country at large. They no longer hold the high moral ground they used to hold before this regime of samsonian tendencies of bringing the whole academic houses on themselves. It seems they cannot help themselves and we as a society, must help them by presenting options which may not go down well with their radical elements but will be palatable to those who want to impart knowledge to the young and not those of them interested in trade unionism. Already rich Nigerians are boycotting the public universities and sending their children and wards abroad, and to private universities springing up all over Nigeria and the mushrooming universities among our neighbours specifically targeting frustrated Nigerian youths. There is no doubt in my mind that some of the private universities are the future of education in Nigeria because of the predictability of their calendars and the quality of their staff. But unfortunately some of them are not up to the mark and are below standards of academic requirements. Those set up in our neighbourhood leave much to be desired but our young people are migrating there in droves thus compromising our future.

It therefore behoves our government and our academic community to find solution to their constant confrontation which leaves the students at the margin of societies. The recent announcement by the academic union of certain universities that they would not go back to work after the opening of the universities shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic is a manifestation of total insensitivity.

September 17, 2020
The return match

By Lawal Ogienagbon

In 48 hours, the people of Edo State will go to the polls to elect a new governor or retain the outgoing one. Outgoing Governor Godwin Obaseki is contesting on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In 2016, he flew the flag of the All Progressives Congress (APC). His arch opponent Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu of the APC was the standard-bearer of PDP then. Though, there are other candidates contesting under the banner of other parties in Saturday’s election, the duo of Obaseki and Ize-Iyamu stand out in the pack.

One does not need to be a seer to say either Obaseki or Ize-Iyamu will win. Their parties are the main political associations known to many across the country. Though there are scores of other parties, many of them are only so in name. They participate in one election only to go into oblivion before the next one. In the country today, the parties are APC, PDP and others. In the past, many who won election under the other platforms defected to either APC or PDP depending on which is in power in order to remain politically relevant.

PDP was in power in Edo State from 1999 up till 2008 when Adams Oshiomhole became governor after the Court of Appeal voided the election of Governor Osarhiemen Osunbor. Oshiomhole came to office in a hostile environment. APC was unknown in the state. PDP was the party to associate with as that was where the movers and shakers were. These powerful men determined who became what and who got what. They put puppets in power and pulled the strings from behind the curtain.

Even though, he did not come to power on their platform, Oshiomhole did the bidding of these influencers in order to get things done. Moreover, a governor can only be governor as long as he enjoys the confidence of the House of Assembly. With the ‘enemy’ party in control of the assembly, Oshiomhole learnt to walk the tightrope to survive. His labour union background came in handy in negotiating his way out of a tight corner. He dislodged PDP and the godfathers that ruled the state from the seat of power and set APC on the throne. His job done after his two terms of eight years, Oshiomhole made Obaseki, his economic czar in whom he was well pleased, his successor.

By that action, he sacrificed Ize-Iyamu for Obaseki. In politics, there are no permanent friends, but permanent interests. But today, he is regretting his action. The horse that he put money on is today his biggest political foe. Though, Obaseki is facing Ize-Iyamu in this election, the face he is seeing is that of Oshiomhole. He is enamoured of his predecessor who he has sworn to “bury politically”. According to him, he retired Oshiomhole from politics when the former governor was removed as APC national chairman. The final act, he said, was to bury Oshiomhole politically by defeating him and APC in Saturday’s election.

There is tension in Edo ahead of the election in which a lot is at stake. Pride, honour, ability, capability and relevance are at play. Obaseki believes he has come of age politically and can square up to Oshiomhole whose legacy he pledged to build on at his inauguration in 2016. As governor, he has enormous resources at his disposal. He can make and unmake people. This is where his fight with Oshiomhole is believed to have started from. Nobody gets to power solely by his strength. He is helped by stalwarts who are more experienced in the game than him. These people are the ones who make things happen through their foot soldiers. These henchmen do the running around for the anointed candidate with the understanding that they will be settled if he wins.

The Oshiomhole political machinery went into full throtle after Obaseki became the candidate. Nothing was spared to sell him, while everything was done to demarket Ize-Iyamu. Now the candidates have swapped positions. Ize-Iyamu is back in APC and Obaseki, who came from the business world is out of the party. The countdown to the election began long ago. Two years before the exercise, things started heating up in Edo APC. The crisis spilled to the party headquarters in Abuja. All efforts to resolve the rift even by the Presidency and the revered Oba Ewuare 11 of Benin Kingdom failed.

Obaseki insisted that only Oshiomhole’s exit from the party would appease him. It was another way of saying he wanted to be the undisputed APC leader in the state. That the electoral process is riven by violence today can be traced to this fight of estranged political bedfellows. What the people of Edo want is a peaceful and credible election in this return match of these two political gladiators. If the election is free and fair, it would have been a well fought contest. But if it is not, it will leave a long lasting bitter feud. The people do not want such a feud. They have suffered for too long to be saddled with a political problem which is not of their own making. The security agencies have a key role to play to ensure that the will of the people prevails on Saturday.

The public expects them to be neutral and to avoid lending support to any of the contestants so that nobody gets a upper hand in the election. The transparency of the exercise lies with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Eveything that INEC does will be scrutinised to ascertain if it meets global best practice. The conduct of an election is no child’s play. It is serious business. No matter what it does, the parties and their candidates will always suspect INEC. Some will accuse it of favouring a party or a candidate to others. When they lose, they will blame it on INEC, but when they win, they will praise the agency to high heaven.

INEC should not listen to any complaints as long as it does the right thing. Its only worry should be how to conduct a free, fair and credible election. The candidates have been campaigning all over the state and as expected Obaseki and Ize-Iyamu are the most visible on the campaign trail. On Sunday, they engaged on a television debate where they spoke of their vision for the Heartbeat of the Nation. Yesterday, they featured on another television debate. Edo, as the Heartbeat of the Nation, deserves the best. Did Obaseki give his best in the past four years? Will Ize-Iyamu do better if he is elected? The pastor, many believe, is the best man for the job.

The way he tackled Obaseki during the first television debate shows that Ize-Iyamu is well prepared for the job. He reeled out facts and figures to support his submissions. He bested Obaseki in that debate as the governor looked ordinary and drab in his presentation. The governor Edo deserves is the man that can take it to where it rightly belongs. The man that will deliver on his promises and not the one that will hound and hunt his backers when he gets into office. That man, the people believe, is Ize-Iyamu. The people have seen the four years of Obaseki and they are not impressed with what they saw. To them, he came, he saw, and he did not deliver. Another four years of him will be a disaster.

September 17, 2020
As ‘Gutter Youth’ bring revolt to your ornate sewers

By Ololade Olatunji

A multitude of youths, disgruntled and starved, may flirt with strife and call it ‘revolt,’ just as a swarm of mosquitoes can make a noise like thunder. But when they emerge, irate and drugged-out, Nigeria should flinch.

It gets scarier where their ignorance, intemperance, and rage enjoy the caress of a dubious demagogue. They launch like loose canons at the slightest provocation. Left to their devices, they are feckless and sterile.

My recent sojourn across Lagos’ drug dens manifested as a pilgrimage. I encountered several teenagers venting in the vice-grip of harsh psychotropic substances. At drug dens in Alimosho local government area, for instance, many of them claimed that seek escape from their daily travails in hard drugs.

Binging indiscriminately on local brews like Gutter Juice aka Omi Gota, and its variants like Colorado, Pamilerin, containing rohypnol, tramadol, Indian Hemp, codeine, and cocaine, they blamed the government for keeping them unemployed and out of school. They also blamed the government for bad roads, insecurity, and persistent looting of the public coffers.

My encounters revealed, among other things, that, many are the same social products as their elders and peers in the political class. They vented their bitter, desperate intent to chance on sudden and stupendous wealth, by hook or crook – as canonised by the political class.

They dream and speak of a revolution that would redistribute power to their hands. How could such vitally impaired characters be trusted to conduct their affairs appropriately and judiciously?

It is the tragedy of the moment that Nigeria’s youth obsess more about fulfilling debauched stereotypes than building and securing a progressive future. Burrowing through decadent enslavement to find bliss, they fulfill a theatrical pledge of acceptance to dominance by a predatory political class.

The latter know that beneath their cries of misery and clamour for change, subsists a tireless yearning to be demeaned, enslaved, browbeaten, and deployed as minstrels of carnage and death, across their impoverished neighbourhoods, for a token.

If thus preoccupied, there is no way they could pay good mind to more beneficial causes, like training their minds to participate in free and fair elections, where they vote for truly humane and patriotic candidates.

The incumbent administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, for instance, identifies the harsh criticism and protests trailing the increment of fuel price and electricity bill as the citizenry’s Initial Gra Gra (IGG) – a theatrical maneuver to the government’s ‘tactical plunder.’ They consider it a futile, necessary performance of dissent as the citizenry wail, and the economy declines, insecurity worsens, and Nigeria becomes uninhabitable for the poor.

It is about time the youth moved past their lofty expectations of the incumbent ruling class and opposition figures, knowing they are all borne of dubious intent. A continual belief that Nigeria might prosper and stabilize on their watch is tantamount to a malady, a conceptual persistence of mental and ethical disorders.

Corruption and duplicity are the ritual links between the oligarchs and the youth. The latter’s unquestioning belief in the former thus manifests as a triumph of fetishism; the consequences are all around us. We are on the receiving end of them.

But who could lead us out of this quagmire? Not the hordes of youth peopling our suburbs and metropolitan drug dens.

As you read, more youths, teens especially, are trapped in the rapture of hallucinogenic substances but they are ignored in plain sight by regulatory authorities. Between 2018 and 2019, nearly 15% of Nigeria’s adult population reported a “considerable level” of use of psychotropic drug substances, a rate much higher than the 2016 global average of 5.6% among adults, according to a study led by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Centre for Research and Information on Substance Abuse with technical support from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and funding from the European Union.

It showed the highest levels of drug use were recorded among people aged between 25 to 39 but excluded teenagers drowning in the stark grip of psychotropic substances like Gutter Juice perhaps because they fall outside the radar of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

Gutter Juice has attained prominence particularly among teenagers and the consequences of taking it is often devastating on the user and their families. Dr. Oluwayemisi Ogun, the Medical Director (MD) of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital (FNPH), Yaba, recently sounded an alarm over the prevalence of drug abuse induced mental disorders among children, adolescents, and adult Nigerians, stressing that over 150 new cases are admitted at the hospital and its Child and Adolescent Centre, Oshodi Annexe every week.

Just recently, Abiodun Toye, a 16-year-old developed acute psychosis soon after binging on the brew. He is currently chained to the floor at a traditional mental home in Ogun State even as Dr. Ogun insists that he is better off in the care of qualified FNPH personnel.

But the consequences serve no deterrence to hordes of teenagers trooping in thralldom in pursuit of irregular highs by the extremely dangerous potion, and other variants including Colorado, Pamilerin, recklessly sold and consumed across Lagos’ drug dens.

My findings revealed that a litre of Gutter Juice is easily available to teenagers at a fraction of the cost of hitherto elusive narcotics, like cocaine. On average, users spend N9,000 per day on cocaine. This amount is half of the national minimum wage per month. However, one litre of standard Gutter Juice costs N3,000 while a 50cl bottle costs N1, 500.

It’s hard not to panic over the prevalence of a drug that leaves devastating marks on its victims like paranoia, hallucinations and strung out physical collapse, not to mention the loss of inhibitions, brain damage, and predisposition to violence, according to mental health experts.

Yet the dealers and users passionately answer as willing muscles, and army for achieving the mother of all revolutions as romanticised by random segments of Nigeria’s citizenry, the elite, middle class in particular.

The truth rankles with a sore note. If you are elite, middle class, you won’t watch the revolution happen on TV because you will be in the thick of it. Since you have failed to emerge as the heart of a bloodless one, you will suffer the blows of a bloody one.

The teen armies of the revolt, severely agitated and drugged out, will storm your homes while you enjoy family time and movie hour with loved ones, in your serene, gated suburbs, and amid the manicured lawns of your high society. They will intrude your peace, wielding guns, machetes and clubs indiscriminately furnished them by the predatory ruling class, to assault, rape, and hack you and your loved ones to death.

At the dawn of the revolt, you will be identified as the enemy of the people, and tarred with the same brush as the mythical one percent supposedly feeding fat off Nigeria and the citizenry’s bare bones.

This is possible because we have lost our sense of ethics and nationhood, and embraced the erosion of cultured grooming. The consequences are distressingly visible in the teenagers and young adults trooping in a daze, to dip their heads in Gutter Juice, in order to escape the present and detach from a belief in the future.

September 17, 2020
Pastors and the Timothy Creed

Lawal Ogienagbon

Priesthood is a job with its own peculiarities. It requires the one going into it to be Christlike. He must be seen to carry himself with grace and to keep his head always no matter the situation. Priesthood is no tea party. Is it the denial of the things of the world or the expectations of others that you want to talk about? A priest is like a goldfish that has no hiding place. Whatever he does or does not do attracts attention. Where he is famous, it is double trouble.

Many priests covet this double trouble because it comes with influence and affluence. Unfortunately, the craze for wealth has become the attraction for going into priesthood these days. Yet, the Bible says in the Book of Timothy that a priest must be vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach…not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous.

These seem to be tall attributes, but some priests, who fall into the category of the chosen few, have them. They are meek, godly and compassionate. They tend their flock with love and empathy. They mind their business and do not pick quarrels with people. These are priests with the heart of gold and they are few and far between. The Scripture says it all: Many are called, few are chosen.

Even the unchosen ones will argue until thy kingdom come that they are among the chosen even when they behave contrary to their calling. To accept the Order of Priesthood comes with challenges. It is not a bed of roses. As the man of God that your sheep look up to, you must be above board. You cannot misbehave in public. You must lead by example and practice what you preach. You cannot tell your sheep to keep their heads while you lose yours. You cannot tell them to love their neighbours as themselves while you do otherwise. All eyes are on you as a priest because your followers are learning from you.

Once in a while, though, the flesh has its way in the affairs of ministers and they go gaga before their followers. Rather than rebuke the devil for their fathers in the Lord, they hail them, indirectly endorsing their misdemeanour. Yes, a priest is first and foremost a man with all the foibles and frailties, but having been ordained a minister, he is a step or two above other men. He looks unto God for direction and is in the Spirit always to avoid falling into temptation. He should more than his spiritual children, who follow him blindly, imbibe the biblical injunction: we walk by faith not by sight. When a minister allows the flesh to take control of him, that is walking by sight, he departs from the spiritual realm and becomes of the world.

Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. Since that is the case, why then will a priest, not just any priest, but a celebrity minister at that, take to the pulpit and exact revenge from a ‘mere broadcaster’, to borrow the pastor’s word? Pastor David Ibiyeomie of the Salvation Ministries flew off the cuff in his church on Sunday as he descended on Ifedayo Olarinde aka Daddy Freeze, calling the on air personality (OAP) names for taking on Bishop David Oyedepo. What did Daddy Freeze do to incur Ibiyeomie’s wrath? He claimed that the OAP attacked “my father Bishop Oyedepo”, asking: ”who is Daddy Freeze to attack Oyedepo? Oyedepo may not talk, but I will talk. I will skin him alive”.

He said he cursed the day Daddy Freeze was born, claiming that the OAP was born on the wayside by a Somali. He goofed. Daddy Freeze is said to have a Nigerian father and a Romanian mother. Ibiyeomie went on: “if he tries it again, I will sue him and use every other means to cut him to size”. Daddy Freeze seems to have taken Ibiyeomie’s curses in his strides. Rather than pay Ibiyeomie back in kind, the OAP just clarified that he never insulted Oyedepo. “I did not insult Oyedepo. I only corrected him. He quoted from Ephesians 5:22, and I drew his attention to Ephesians 5:21. To correct a person scripturally is not an insult”.

What then is eating Ibiyeomie up that he spoke like a worldly man? The Oyedepo that Nigerians know will not have waited for his son to fight for him if Daddy Freeze had actually attacked him. Oyedepo, just like his son, does not have such patience. He believes in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, just like Ibiyeomie. The very things that the Lord they claim they serve warned against are the things they cherish. What is bad is bad. And as an adage goes, it does not have any other name, but bad. When men of God throw caution to the wind and descend so low to curse rather than bless critics, no matter their perceived offence, then there is no hope for the lost, who Christ said He was sent to.

These pastors have turned themselves to God of men with the way their flock follow them sheepishly. I shook my head in disbelief as I watched the video clip where Ibiyeomie’s followers were clapping and shouting amen as their pastor cursed Daddy Freeze. A pastor cursing inside church. It beggars belief, but it happened. Ironically, Daddy Freeze, who many expected to go the Ibiyeomie way in his reponse, has shown that the cassock does not make the priest. Nor do a big church or a large congregation show how holy a pastor is. What confers this grace, for grace it is, is to live according to the will of God: be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

September 10, 2020
Buhari’s Waterways Bill and other distractions

Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Muhammadu Buhari, because of his sense of self-righteousness is an easy prey for political schemers. Although he loves Nigeria to a fault, he is easily distracted by those he regards as his ‘loyal gate-keepers’ who do not often share his pan-Nigerian vision. Egged on by fifth columnists who had their own agenda, he embarked on unnecessary wars against the press and critics during his first coming. He refused to listen to the voice of reason spearheaded by the likes of Wole Soyinka until he was removed in a palace coup by the same characters that had lionized him. Their justification: he “was too rigid and uncompromising in his attitudes to issues of national significance; efforts to make him understand that a diverse polity like Nigeria required recognition and appreciation of differences in both cultural and individual perception only served to aggravate those attitudes”.

But for his love of the country, Buhari has no business struggling to return to power after serving as a minister, governor and head of state and a prisoner for three and half years for staying on the side of the people.

Unfortunately, President Buhari who still does not appreciate that his critics are those who share his passion and want him to succeed has learnt very little from his first coming as a military leader. He has in the last five years treated critics who reminded him of his campaign promise on restructuring as mere distraction. Egged on by fifth columnists and those he described as his ‘loyal gate keepers’ who many believed hijacked his government without necessarily sharing his pan-Nigeria vision, he ignored the report of the committee set up by his party to address our crisis of nation building.

Then herdsmen, said to be non-Nigerians, laid a siege on the Middle Belt region of Nigeria killing farmers and confiscating farmland of their displaced victims. As against appeal by concerned Nigerians for a decisive action against the invaders, the president trusted the thesis of his then minister of defence that the killing was a necessary reaction to the blocking of colonial grazing routes created after amalgamation of 1914 and long before Nigeria graduated from a federation of three regions, four regions and todays 36 states and 774 LGAs. Miyyeti Allah and their sponsors while playing the victims insisted open-grazing is part of their culture and that grazing anywhere in Nigeria is their right under Nigerian constitution.

In the wake of kidnapping and other criminal activities by those alleged to be herdsmen and their local collaborators, some state governments demanded for community policing. While the federal government was dragging its feet, Amotekun security outfit was established by governors of southwest. The president’s media adviser, Garba Shehu has continued to insist that ‘Amotekun or whatever name it is called must come under the control of the IG”.

The latest unnecessary distraction is the bill, entitled “National Water Resources Bill 2020,” thrown out by the 8th Senate following widespread objection by the public. The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Water Resources, Dr. Musa Ibrahim says the National Water Bill was aimed at “centralising water administration under the Ministry of Water Resources”. The bill was believed to have been arbitrarily reintroduced in the Green chamber, in breach of its rules, legislative convention and provisions of the 1999 constitution.

The latest move has been widely criticized. The Nigerian Labour Congress says the National Assembly leadership is working surreptitiously with vested interests outside the assembly anxious to pass the bill without due legislative process”.

Soyinka on his path has warned that “passing a roundly condemned project, blasted out of sight by public outrage one or two years ago, exhumed and sneaked back into service by none other than a failed government, into law would hand the president “absolute control over the nation’s entire water resources, both over and underground”.

Leaders of ethnic nationalities, chiefs Edwin Clark of PANDEF, Ayo Adebanjo of Afenifere, John Nwodo of Ohaneze and Pogu Bitrus of Middle Belt, who in their separate reactions described the bill as “destabilising, obnoxious, draconian and anti-people”, stated that the bill was anti-federalism and negated the right of Nigerians to their God-given resources”.

Civil society groups believe the ‘bill will deny Nigerians the right to water’ while leading Nigerian newspapers welcomed it with powerful editorials with the Vanguard warning: ‘It will be a recipe for disaster. The conflicts and bloodshed that this provocative law will trigger will be endless’ adding ‘The purveyors of these predatory laws are enemies of our national stability and must be stopped’.

As for the source of this executive bill, described by some ‘as the repugnant and detestable land-grabbing Bill, in favour of Fulani herdsmen and Miyetti Allah cattle breeders, it is a matter of ‘the witch crying last night and the baby dying this morning’.

Boss Mustapha whose legal interest is said to include privatization commercialization and liberalization of public companies/corporate and government parastatals with a passion for how waterways assets are managed is today Secretary to the Government of the Federation. He was on Channels television before the controversial bill was thrown out in 2018 by the 8th Senate saying something to the effect that Lagos and Ogun cannot lay claim to their waterways because Ogun River took its source from Osun State.

Unfortunately, it is the nation that pays for these distractions. During Buhari’s first coming in 1984, the nation earned foreign exchange from sale of refined oil. Five years into Buhari’s second coming, none of our four refineries is working at optimum. Modular refinery, we were told, takes less than a year to put in place. We have no evidence any has come on stream in five years of this administration. The country, a net exporter of crude oil continues to be at the mercy of fuel importers.

Under Buhari in 1984, Nigerians rode cars assembled in Lagos and Kaduna with batteries, windshield, brake pads and seats and tyres locally produced in Ibadan and Lagos. Today, President Buhari’s ministers, vice chancellors of universities, comptrollers-general of Customs, Immigration and security service chiefs cruise in imported latest SUVs costing millions of naira.

Back then under Buhari, our clothes came from the UNTL, Aswani and Chellarams textiles mills in Lagos and Kaduna, our shoes from Bata and Lennards in Lagos. Our bread from our own wheat. Today, Buhari’s Nigeria has become the world biggest importer of used second hand clothes and shoes. Our TV sets were assembled by Adebowale Electricals in Lagos and Sanyo in Ibadan, our refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners were manufactured by Thermocool in Lagos, our WC and tiles from Kano and Abeokuta. Today, Buhari’s Nigeria has become a dumping ground for electronics from all parts of the world.

And with the death of WTO and ascendancy of protectionism arising from trade rivalry between Trump’s USA and China, the Buhari we all knew back in 1984 would have insisted that government officials ride Innoson Nigerian cars, that we all go naked or walk bare-footed until we are able to return to the pre-Babangida era when my total estacode during a three week holiday trip to London in September 1983 was N500.

Today, the exchange rate in Buhari’s Nigeria is N500 to $1.

But for his distractions and misguided wars, Buhari would have whipped us out of our indiscipline without forgetting to force those who mortgage the future of our children, sharing our national patrimony after selling to themselves Nigeria total investment of about $100b for a paltry $1b pay for their sins against the nation.

September 10, 2020
It takes a woman to make a world

Olatunji Ololade

IN “The Two April Mornings” and its accompanying poem, “The Fountain,” a 72-year-old schoolmaster recalls his youth as an energetic man, Wordsworth recalls. Virility is canonized only when lost.

It is documented as distant narrative removes, nostalgia within memory: the first poem ends with Wordsworth recalling the schoolmaster’s memories. Masculinity is contemplated through the bleared lens of age. Apology to Paglia.

In “The Last of the Flock,” we meet a full-grown, healthy man. But he is weeping in the road. Once rich, he has sold his fifty sheep to buy food for his children. Wordsworth turns the flock’s diminishing into a litany of dwindling manhood: fifty, ten, five, three, two, one, none. The poet’s arithmetic charts the shrinking of patriarchal domain and masculinity’s supple patch. As his property shrivels to the borders of his body, the protagonist, like Odysseus or Lear, diminishes to nobody.

Are we prepared for that dreaded epoch when we may become nobodies? Are we prepared for that period when our shiny glories in the time of youth may command only terse applause and a perfunctory nod or the crisp tribute of a grudging hand clap?

Is the young public officer prepared for that epoch? Are Olusegun Obasanjo, Muhammadu Buhari, Yakubu Gowon living that epoch? How does a man welcome that frightening reality outside the corridors of power, when the unforgiving measure of his deeds as a public officer and private citizen, determines the tenor of his twilight?

Forget public officers, are you, dear reader, prepared for that direful eventuality? The Wordsworthian male decline, like Sango’s domestication by Oya and Kleist’s male mastectomy in Penthesilea, is a surgical reduction of self that beggars reflection and urgent intervention among Nigeria’s male-folk.

Wordsworth empathizes with the virile male of “The Last of the Flock” because he is suffering and because his masculine identity is fast approaching the vanishing point. For Wordsworth, a man becomes greater as he becomes less. Self-sacrifice and public martyrdom canonize him in the cult of female nature.

As a man, do you attain greatness as you become less? Have you made any sacrifice worth canonization by the cult of female nature? Would your name enliven high society and suburban poetry long after you return to dust? What quality of manhood do you pose to your wife (wives) and the Nigerian female? Would you wish your kind upon your daughter as a husband?

Far from the personal, what calibre of men steer the ship of the Nigerian state? Beyond our elevated treatises, political, economic, and sociological theories, who is the Nigerian male? What’s his value to the Nigerian state?

Who are we stripped of the veneer of randomly professed spirituality, feminism, chauvinism, masculinity, masochism, intellectualism, and every other ism or schism that serves and afflicts us?

I maintain that the moral nihilism embraced by the Nigerian man would terrify shayateen. It terrified Adorno thus his contention that radical evil was possible only by the presence of sinister men and the collaboration of a timid, cowed, and confused population, a system of propaganda and mass media that offered little more than spectacle and entertainment, and an educational system that did not transmit transcendent values or nurture the capacity for individual conscience.

He feared a culture that banished the anxieties and complexities of moral choice and embraced a childish hyper-masculinity. Such hypermasculinity has its logical fruition in Boko Haram, armed banditry, herdsmen-farmers carnage, kidnap for ransom, and our lack of compassion for the homeless, the impoverished, the unemployed, and the sick. It manifests in our lack of respect for our sons, our wives, our daughters, and our persistent fear of being neutered by rebellious female spunk.

Resistance to such acts cannot take place without a degree of knowledge and self-reflection. We have to name these acts and transform moral outrage into concrete attempts to prevent such human violations from taking place in the first place, notes Giroux.

But the contemporary youth accepts the system they inherited and find a comfortable place within it, biding their time to subvert and cheat it. Thus we shut our eyes to the venomous superstructure foisted on us; fuelled by insentient politics, retained by toxic economy, all borne of savage manhood, and ‘victimized’ femaleness.

In the system that we have created, treasury looters feign sickness, a handicap, and faint outright in frantic bid to avoid public inquiry or any attempt to make them answer for their misdeeds.

Such comical jaunts have attained a pedestrian taste of the splattering kind. It’s gross buffoonery, and yet a rite of pagan worship in Nigeria’s sorely spiritualised and bigoted political space – some rogue pastor or alfa, religious and ethnic group eventually issues subtle or brazen threat to perceived detractors of their favoured son or daughter. Thus any blockhead or egghead may attain public office, loot the coffers, and collapse during a public inquiry or arrive on a stretcher. It never gets old. Its pure radical evil that eroticises the horror banished by norms.

Feminists blame the patriarchy but our problem isn’t the patriarchy but the trans-generational ideal of callousness. A matriarchy wouldn’t fare better in a society built on the belief that virility consists of the maximum capacity to circumvent and cheat the system, which has foisted upon us generations of savage men.

Savagery dominates our culture. It runs like an electric current, powering our politics, short-circuiting morals, and our comatose economy. It activates our reality television and trash-talk radio programmes while superintending a bigoted, pliant collective.

Like the feminist, I would blame it all on the man. The modern male displays an incapacity for moral choice thus retreating into an ostensibly ferocious collective that must be led and vilified. But I am no feminist yet I blame the male, in particular, for the tragic turn of the Nigerian enterprise.

Grammy award-winning artiste, James Brown, released the album in 1966, “It’s a man’s world, but not without adding “But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.”

A man must live wary of the woman and vice versa. That’s tact but to stew in such fear is to be inimical to self and society. The North American myth of the toothed genitalia gruesomely connotes such female power and male fear. Metaphorically, the female genitalia has secret teeth, for the male exits less than he entered. Yet it takes a woman to make a man.

The importance of women empowerment, their presence in leadership roles, and their representation in government would improve governance and reduce corruption perhaps because they implement policies differently from men.

I am a man with flaws but my daughters think I am the best man in the world. That’s understandable. It will stay that way until they attain full bloom as women and start meeting other men perhaps, an epoch I ardently dread.

I hope they end up with more honourable, manly, and God-fearing men. I hope my son becomes a poster icon of humane, quintessential manhood. I hope to be that man who inspires family, friends, and the random reader, and even my most virulent antagonists to the best of manhood.

I choose to aspire as Nigeria’s finest, holding a torch for deserving women. You should too.

September 10, 2020