The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • A coalition story

    A coalition story

    THE THREE OF THEM ARE AN ITEM. Wherever one is, the other two will be. The trio, Rotimi Amaechi, Nasir El-Rufai, and Kayode Fayemi, all former governors and ministers, were expected to be together when the coalition took off in Abuja where it adopted the African Democratic Congress (ADC) last month.

    Some members of ADC led by its presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Dumebi Kachikwu, is resisting the adoption. Kachikwu has vowed to go to any length to ensure that the intruders do not have their way. To the public, Amaechi, El-Rufai and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who were at the unveiling ceremony, are the brains behind the coalition. The assumption may not be entirely correct going by recent developments.

    Amaechi has been prattling all over the place on how the coalition was born. He claims that he and Fayemi laid its foundation. Since President Bola Tinubu beat him to a distant second for the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2022, Amaechi has been unrelenting in his pursuit to get the President out of office, at all costs.

    This was why he started plotting to remove the President from power some 20 months ago when the administration was barely four months old. Amaechi loves to be in power, a privilege he enjoyed for 24 uninterrupted years between 1999 and 2023, as Rivers assembly speaker, governor and minister, at various times. It is strange to him that he and his family are no longer kept at public expense. Or how else, do you describe his desperation to get back into office for, wait for it, the simple reason that: “I am hungry”. Just two years after leaving office after 24 unbroken years?

    How can he be “hungry” when, according to him, he has an industrialist wife who feeds him and their family. Where did the money come from? Well, Nigerians have not forgotten the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister Nyesom Wike’s story about someone collecting N4 billion monthly from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) for training women and youths in soap making and skills acquisition! With that kind of money, you can feed the whole nation for the whole year!! I am not here for this today.

    I am more interested in what is becoming a row between Amaechi and Fayemi over the coming of the coalition. Over a week ago, Amaechi told the story of the coalition’s birth. He said he and Fayemi were its arrowheads. Fayemi replied last weekend in a tame statement in which he only rose in defence of Amaechi without saying anything about his own role in the coalition. Is he in the know of the coalition’s birth? It is a simple question that demands a yes or no answer. “Simple yes or no”, as Lagabaja, the masked musician, will say.

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    What is Fayemi hiding? Where does he stand on the coalition? A man like Fayemi, going by his recent activities is capable of anything, including forming a coalition with others, in order to achieve his goal. Check: he publicly said the 2012 petrol subsidy removal protest was a ploy by the opposition to undo the Jonathan administration. His party, the Tinubu-led Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), was the leading opposition party then.  He consequently apologised to the former president.

    Check: Just before the Amaechi bombshell, Fayemi had blamed the present government for what he calls the  hunger in the land. Amaechi has been singing the same hunger song for how long God knows when. I hate to say it, but I believe Amaechi, who has come out the second time to tell the coalition story.

    “The coalition started between I and Fayemi in the house of…. He wanted us to reconcile. After the reconciliation, we agreed to broaden it so that it would involve more than just the two of us talking about starting a new party….”, Amaechi restated on Tuesday. I do not know what Fayemi’s response will be this time. But his first was nothing to write home about. What will Fayemi’s defence be now that Amaechi has, so to say, stood by his initial story which the former Ekiti governor claimed there was no “credible evidence to support”.

    What other “credible evidence” does he need now that Amaechi is rubbing the statement in? Fayemi should stop talking from both sides of the mouth. In his statement, he also said he “is still in APC, Ekiti State”. What about the party at the national level? Can his membership be limited to APC, Ekiti State, as he seemed to portray in his statement? Can APC, Ekiti State stand alone without its national arm? Surely, Ekiti APC cannot exist in isolation of the national APC. In fact, it owes its existence to the national APC.

    Fayemi cannot pull the wool over people’s eyes on this matter. His job is not to question the veracity of Amaechi’s statement, but to respond to the specific part that concerns him about the formation of the coalition. To do otherwise is deceitful. Nigerians know better.

  • Ibadan taking a new shape

    Ibadan taking a new shape

    I live in Ibadan and the Redemption City and sometimes for weeks, I stay away from Ibadan because of unavailability of electricity in my area sometimes for weeks, and to God be the glory for the spiritual and physical light available to us in the Redemption City by the grace of God and the leadership of Pastor Adejare Adeboye. Yet my area is supposed to be in a low density area not far from Bodija, the first planned town in Nigeria after independence. The hellish heat these days makes life almost unbearable for people particularly elderly people. This is despite having a generator which does not really solve the problem because of the astronomical cost of fuel whether petrol or diesel. I have not yet tried the solar option which is what some of my colleagues have adopted. Perhaps I will try solar devices when I am able to afford the cost.

    I know my readers will probably say look at this old man talking about solar options when people are not able to afford the cost of food necessary for survival. I plead guilty and I agree I bear, alongside people of my generation, vicarious responsibility for the way the country has been run down all these years but in our old age, we deserve some comfort for some of our positive contributions in the past. I can mention a thousand things and many risks taken by some of us to advance the national interest.

    Some of our young people may say that writing about the new looks of Ibadan is not worth celebrating because they should be regarded as ordinary events because they take place in all countries including African countries. Road construction and channelization should be regarded as routine. But when they are not routine in our clime, it is worth celebrating.

    This preamble is necessary for me to be able to put in context the recent efforts of the Oyo State government because I have had reasons to be critical of the government before and it is just fair to applaud the government when it is doing well.

    A visit to Ibadan today will confirm the fact that Governor Seyi Makinde is in name and indeed, the executive governor of Oyo State. I sometimes laugh when a sitting governor is introduced as the executive governor of his state which I always dismiss as error of tautology but in the case in hand, the governor is really the executive governor just as any performing governor deserves the heavy duty description as “ executive governor “ 

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    Entering Ibadan from Lagos through Alhaji Arisekola road and driving towards Molete, one is confronted with digging of gutters at the intersection of Felele and Molete where for years there had been some kind of spring that floods the road perennially in wet and dry seasons. This is the section connecting the road to late Lamidi Adesina’s house at Felele which he refused or could not fix while he was governor of Oyo State. It seems the government is determined to fix it once and for all. From this point to Saint Anne’s school, heavy drainage equipment is at work digging deep gutters on both sides of the road. I pray this will be extended to all parts of the state capital and to all major towns like Ogbomosho and Oyo. Any government that can do this kind of work deserves to be commended.

    While on this road project, may I appeal to the Oyo State government to extend its revolutionary approach to road construction to the road linking Molete with Ibadan Grammar School and Saint Luke’s College going on to Saint David Cathedral in Kudeti. This road for historical reasons deserves to be fixed as a symbol of CMS contribution to the education and development of Ibadan. Government should look into the possibility of combined redevelopments of Saint Luke College and Ibadan Grammar School as a comprehensive technical college for training young people for the future industrial development of Oyo State.

    The importance of street lights in Ibadan should be highlighted. There is need for Ibadan to have a night economy. It’s wasteful for a huge city like Ibadan to go to bed at seven O clock because that’s when the sunlight goes out. Government can double the economy of the city by lighting up the city if government can provide electricity outside the present electricity generation mechanism.

    There is also need for strict enforcement of traffic lights in the city. Government should also consider tolling of some of the roads so that money will always be available for their maintenance. This is also the time to begin to plan the planting of trees and turning all our roads into avenues. This was the case with all major roads in Ibadan and in such places like Kano, and Maiduguri until some military governors decided to cut down the huge neem trees under the guise of beautification with streets lights! How could any sane person have done this in the Sahel towns of Kano and Maiduguri!

    Yes it was done while we all looked on in silent awe! We have to bring back the neem trees. Incidentally the leaves of the neem trees were potent cure for malaria when boiled and squeezed into juice. The government of Engineer Makinde should embark on proper and simple street numbering of Ibadan away from its present antediluvian confusing numbering.

    Let’s make Ibadan great again. I remember when we were young during the golden days of the old Western Region, Ibadan did not accept inferior status to Lagos the federal capital and those of us still in school basked in the glory of Ibadan. Ibadan has remained the capital city of Yoruba land with millions making the city their homes even if they had homes in their villages in Ekiti, Osun, Ondo, Ogun, Lagos and even Kwara and Kogi states because of their ethnic consanguinity with Oyo State people.

    There were of course people from all over Nigeria because of the presence of an institution like the University of Ibadan and the historical connection of the people from the present Edo, Delta and Bayelsa with the city of Ibadan from where they were administered. Those were the days and thinking of those days makes old people like us wonder if the creation of states was really worth the effort and the excitement that went into the splitting of Nigerian humanity into the present puny states only useful to the looters who have benefited from the division which, looking backward, amount to destruction of what could have been important blocks of national unity.

    I am one of those who hail the setting up of the various regional commissions by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that is bringing back the old regional zones for development. I hope this is the beginning of zonal divisions of the country away from the present puny state divisions which makes for broad planning as we used to have during the regionalisation of politics and economic planning in Nigeria. I personally feel that the present atomisation of political divisions and economic resources makes it possible for over concentration of power at the centre. This is what those advocating going back to pristine federalism or to put it mildly fiscal federalism.

  • Minds behind bars

    Minds behind bars

    My truth is more convenient than yours. It doesn’t matter what you think. Whatever your version of reality, it’s resonance fades in the cacophonous clatter of my truth.

    In the self-righteous spirit of Nigerianness, you must appreciate why “my truth” resonates as a catch-phrase. Post truth realism  repudiates the argument that while we may have the right to our own beliefs and not our own facts. Knowing the truth after all, as Goedken would say, is less valuable than the prize of a shared fiction.

    Here goes my shared fiction or convenient truth if you like: in post-truth Nigeria, you are either a truthsayer, a truth-heckler, or truth-killer as your circumstances dictate. Everybody is in on the charade.

    Nigeria will not be destroyed by a single blow, but by the brutish chipping away in the dark, piece by piece, of thought and belief, until every citizen’s mind becomes a ghetto.

    The rot begins in the inner chambers of the conscience, where reason is surrendered to prejudice, and persists in the public sphere, where the body politic trembles beneath the burden of inherited hatreds. Citizenship degenerates from the disciplined commitment to a commonwealth, into the flag-waving of ethnic armies and the drum-beating of sectarian camps, as evidenced by the cutthroat rivalry and tribal resentments triggered during the 2023 general elections.

    Even in its aftermath, bigotry shrinks the horizon of the Nigerian mind, goading every citizen to see his neighbour as a rival and the nation as a battleground for primordial loyalties. En route to the 2027 general elections, the sentimentality persists, buttressing the belief that votes will hardly be cast for competence or vision, but for kinship and creed.

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    As it was in 2023, so it could be in 2027. Political participation will manifest as a tribal oath-taking. And the higher the stakes, the deeper the descent into intolerance. When such a culture spreads through millions, the democratic process itself becomes a theatre of resentments rather than a vehicle of collective purpose.

    Worse still is when social institutions, the very organs designed to nourish enlightenment, are themselves infected. When the press, the Fourth Estate of the Realm, becomes a pulpit for ethnic incitement; when academia, supposedly the fertile soil of critical thought, degenerates into a bazaar of ideological partisanship, the decay exceeds the political, and becomes civilisational. It perverts the truth and weaponises it to sustain prejudice.

    A recourse to historical truths is the natural antidote to prejudice, but this would be wasted on the bigoted Nigerian, who is deaf to reason and selectively accommodating of facts. This is why appeals to our shared struggles, from the amalgamation to the civil war; from June 12 to the present, are often met with cynical dismissal. The bigot’s political memory is a curated archive, stripped of any evidence that indicts his camp. He consumes only the myths that reinforce his tribal righteousness, repeating them until they harden to dogma. Bigots would rather clutch the lies that flatter their insecurities than confront the truths that unsettle them.

    To counter this monstrosity requires a collaboration of the political left and right. I reiterate Ralph Nader’s vision of a left-right alliance, to push back against toxic partisanship and political inertia. Such a coalition cannot thrive in a media landscape overrun by zealots and saboteurs. It needs a patriotic press and academia that treat Nigeria as a sacred ground to be defended with honesty and empathy, not as a battleground for clickbait and theorised artifice.

    Nigeria can never be rescued by one ideological camp. This is why President Bola Tinubu’s administration must welcome more brilliant minds and patriots from across political, non-partisan  and ideological divides. Salvaging Nigeria requires a coalition of conscience that transcends party lines, tribal tents, and religious barricades. This alliance must include the journalist, the academic, the artist, the civic activist, and every segment of Nigeria’s intelligentsia.

    Its goal must be to push back against the capture of the state and its institutions, reclaiming the press and the academia as untarnished public trusts. More practical steps include building independent funding models for journalism to end the tyranny of the funder’s leash; reviving the teaching of history to anchor citizenship in shared memory; and creating cross-regional civic platforms where Nigerians can debate, disagree, and still unite on matters of national survival.

    The path must be peaceful, through social mobilisation, patient founding of coalitions, and free, fair, and peaceful elections. The battle is not for the annihilation of opponents but for the reclamation of the republic.

    Yet, while journalists and academics occupy a sacred trust, we must understand, why many in these vocations, particularly in this post-truth era, have abandoned the rigour of truth for the expedience of survival. The fate of many a staff of traditional press is precarious; salaries are irregular, meagre when paid, and barely meeting personal needs, let alone sustaining a family. And contrary to romanticised belief that online journalism offers a purer alternative, the digital press is often no freer. Many of its practitioners, unable to monetise their content, depend on grants from foreign non-profits or “angel funders” whose money comes with invisible strings. On such a leash, the editorial direction is dictated from afar, bending coverage towards the ideological appetites of the funders.

    Plugging words into a browser window, as Tom Nichols would say, isn’t research. Thus even while glamourising the much glorified fact-checking, you’d find that the responses you generate are as credible as the answers fed to the programmable apps and machines. Little wonder some fact-checking and AI platforms have been known to generate doctored or dubious  truths. This is not to tarnish every vehicle or model of traditional and digital journalism. Kudos to those doing great work.

    Yet, more people are in on the charade as reportage and academic research resonate as part of a campaign, sometimes for noble causes, but more frequently for undeclared interests.

    At the heart of certain “hard-hitting” journalism or “groundbreaking” research is the quiet pulse of advocacy for economic imperialism, perverse sexualities, ill-advised gender wars, or the deepening of ethnic fault lines.

    It’s about time Nigeria’s academic and media platforms quit amplifying the country’s missteps for financial gratification while ignoring or underplaying visible progress. It is not that the nation does not stumble. It does, and sometimes, grievously. But that narrative is worn out now. We must quit feeding the citizenry an unrelenting diet of despair lest hope itself becomes perpetually suspect.

    The press and academia must broker, more responsibly, a coalition of the political left and right. Failure to do this will quicken the country’s slide into the swamp of sectarianism. Citizenship will persist as a marketplace of ethnic bargains and political participation will be reduced to a ritual of hate. Bigotry, in all its forms, is a poverty of the mind masquerading as loyalty. When it corrupts the media and academia, it poisons public discourse and amputates the nation’s capacity to imagine a future beyond the tribal fence. Nigeria will not survive such a famine of the mind unless its sentinels remember who they are meant to serve.

    To save the seed, the soil must be healed. And to heal the soil, the hands that till it must first be cleansed. Only then can our orchard of citizenship bear fruit worth eating.

    Until then, the press will keep peddling its curated despair, the academia will keep minting degrees for the unemancipated mind. And when the mind becomes a ghetto, the citizen becomes a prisoner unaware of his fate behind bars.

  • Why Nigeria needs the North

    Why Nigeria needs the North

    To observers of Nigerian politics, there was nothing new in Bashir Dalhatu, chairman of the ACF Board of Trustees, accusing the President Bola Tinubu’s government of neglecting the north as he did during the recent two-day citizen engagement forum organised by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation. The only difference this time around was that Tinubu, who said he is always ahead of his political adversaries, was ready with over 60 prominent northern members of his cabinet to expose the hypocrisy of those who pretend to speak for the north when indeed, it was all about self-preservation. But perhaps more damaging to the case of the hegemonic ruling class is the emergence of young educated and well informed crop of northern professionals and politicians who have now seen the danger of being enslaved by old prejudices especially with yesterday’s abandoned children of the poor who are today challenging the status-quo.

    Leading the battle to save the old order was ACF’s Bashir Dalhatu who called attention to the completion of Lagos-Ibadan express way and the second Niger Bridge, all in the south while the north that gave 64% of its votes to ensure Tinubu’s victory in the 2023 election got nothing. Echoing him was Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). According to him: “No projects are going on—at least they are not visible to the eye, maybe in their imagination, maybe in the spirit—but we don’t see them.”

    For Hakeem Baba Ahmed, Tinubu needed to be blamed for “neglecting the suffering of their people” warning that it’s the “people Tinubu is treating as if they don’t matter who will judge all politicians against their exposure to violence, death, and poverty”.

    Leading Tinubu’s foot soldiers was the Governor of Gombe State and chairman of the Northern States Governors Forum, Inuwa Yahaya, who confidently declared: “Today, we gather not for empty rhetoric but to examine those promises and assess the level of progress so far. What we find is an administration that has delivered meaningful results. He went on to list several federal projects, including the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano expressway, Kano-Katsina-Maradi rail line, the rehabilitation of the Kaduna refinery, the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano gas pipeline, and the continuation of drilling in the Kolmani oilfields”.

    Kaduna State governor, Uba Sani’s task was to remind the current crusaders under whose leadership “insecurity grew, education declined, and poverty deepened “ that the time for playing the ostrich was over because educated young northerners today understand that “insecurity, poverty, and educational backwardness” was the result of these leaders’ “culture of negligence, silence, and inaction”.

    While Tinubu’s northern political appointees were cautious, refusing to frontally confront the hegemonic ruling power in the north, the young unrestrained non-political office holders including Farouq Aliyu, former minority leader of the House of Representatives and Alvan Hassan exhibited no inhibitions.

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    For Farouq Aliyu, Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) “is an opposition group and supporters of Atiku Abubakar who cannot speak for the north”. For him ACF members love neither Nigeria nor the north but themselves. They only live for themselves.

    For Alvan Hasan, “instead of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) serving as custodians of northern aspirations, they are openly partisan”. For him, what the north needed is not infrastructure but unity. He strongly believes ACF is using religion to divide the north

    Looking Seun Okinbaloye, his host on ‘Politics Today’ show, directly in the face, he asked “as a Christian from the north, can you aspire to become governor of Kwara?” Adding without waiting for an answer, that a Muslim from Plateau State cannot aspire to become secretary to government of Plateau state just as Christian from Borno State can never aspire to become governor of Borno State.

    Although he stopped short of directly accusing  the self-appointed custodians of values of the north of sponsoring Muslim attack on Christians, the innuendo was unmistakable in his assertion that for self-preservation, those who should unite the north end up sponsoring Muslim attack on Christians while Christians’ attempt at retaliation leaves everyone a loser with even farmers unable to go to their farms.

    Hasan was saying what most Nigerians including our leaders who often play the ostrich know the truth which everyone is afraid to admit. Sheik Gumi in February 2021 admitted on Seun Okinbaloye’s ‘Politics Today’ show, that the Fulani herdsmen were victims. He defined them “as herdsmen fighting ethnic war” and for him, the solution was dialogue and teaching them Islam. If you have seen them you will discover they have nothing like civilization other than the guns they carry”.

    Today everyone seems to have forgotten Lamido Sanusi Lamido’s directive to Fulani herdsmen hosted by Benue State to the effect that they must disobey Benue State anti-open- grazing law duly passed by the state House of Assembly and assented to by the governor. We all pretend not to be aware that, the directive ’found expression in periodic harvest of death of innocent subsistence farmers who are mostly Christians in the alluring Benue trough.

    We have no evidence Usman Bugaje was ever questioned for confessing not too long ago that APC then in opposition, imported some Fulani herdsmen from the Sahel region for the purpose of 2015 election.

    But Hasan was not done. Even if we were to accept infrastructure is the problem of the north, he threw a challenge at the custodians of the values of the north and the author of “the south cannot have whatever that cannot be replicated in the north” which started with the derailment of Dr. Majekodunmi’ attempt at introducing a form of insurance cover for Lagos workers by northern back benchers in the first republic.

    Asking if the south is not part of Nigeria, he wants them to identify the equivalent in the south “of -the ongoing 1000km Sokoto-Badagry High way or Sokoto-Kano-Maiduiguri dualised over 500km expressway.

    As an aside, let me help Hassan. Apart from Lagos-Ibadan 120km expressway that has been under construction since 1999, I know of no 30 kilometres of smooth federal road from the part of Ogun, Oyo and Osun that I take to my small town, Ogotun Ekiti. In 1986, it used to take me two hours 30 minutes from Lagos to Ipetu Ijesha (when I tried it four years ago, it took me five hours). But the story is that from that border town is Awolowo’s 1959 eight kilometre scientific marvel of a narrow, dangerous, undulating road that meanders through valleys and crevices of hill to Ogotun Ekiti. At the period, it was the only road that connected Ekiti with the rest of the Nigeria as both Ilesha Ado and Ado Akure roads were in a state of disrepair.

    Seven years ago, I heard Chief Afe Babalola, the founder of Afe Babalola University complaining of those two federal roads. Last week, I saw Kayode Fayemi, the immediate past governor of Ekiti State lamenting about the state of the two federal highways.

    But let us return to the serious issue at hand. Our northern compatriots need our help and support even if it involves conceding all infrastructural projects to the north.

    First, freedom starts from being conscious of your position on the social structure ladder. Our northern compatriots have today realized that those who did not see them beyond article of political bargaining have for long used tribe and religion to exploit their innermost fears. The rest of the country have also now realised that it is no more in our enlightened self-interest to continue ignoring their plight because of blackmail of those who falsely swear in their name for power bargaining.

    instead of the competitive north of Ahmadu Bello, we have seen the northern ruling hegemonic class inspired social engineering efforts such as JAMB, quota system of admission to tertiary institutions and to our bureaucracy, all designed to slow down the rest of the country, take their toll on our bureaucracy, universities and teaching hospitals that once ranked with the best in the world.

    For a perfect union, the south needs the north more than the north needs the south. Obafemi Awolowo, a foremost nationalist and an unrepentant federalist warned in the run up to independence, that except we first solve the contradiction within the northern society, we will continue to move in circles. For over 75 years, it has been motion without movement.

    This is why I think no sacrifice is too much in the interest of our nation if only to honour our founding fathers including Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahamdu Bello, Obafemi Awolowo and members of their tribe who made personal sacrifices to bequeath onto us a working federal arrangement, tragically truncated by ill-educated military adventurers.

  • Doyin Abiola (1943-2025)

    Doyin Abiola (1943-2025)

    Dr Doyinsola Hamidat Abiola (nee Aboaba), former editor, columnist, leader-writer, publisher and manager, who died on Tuesday night came into journalism at a time it was queer for women to do so. She was 82. Her gender was rare to find in the newsroom when she joined the Daily Sketch, a publication owned by the defunct Western Region in 1969. She did not come to journalism unprepared. She came well educated, having read English and Drama at the University of Ibadan. It is to her eternal credit that she held her own against the men who her crossed path on the job.

    As a woman of letters, it was only fitting that she be deployed on the Features Desk, a department that expands and expounds the news. She did her job well, doing riveting feature news. She wrote a column to boot, under the title: Tiro, a name which has English and Yoruba connotations. It did not take long for her to switch jobs from Daily Sketch to Daily Times,  which was the paper to be then.

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    She soared at the Times too and travelled abroad for her Ph.D. Her time at the Times was marked by many firsts – the first woman features editor, group features editor, and a member of the Editorial Board. To be a member of the Editorial Board at a time it was filled with other fine writers like Stanley Macebuh, Dele Giwa, and Amma Ogan, among others, showed her strength of character and intellect. Again, she moved. This time to National Concord, which was founded by her husband, Bashorun M.K.O Abiola, who she married in 1981. She was the pioneer editor of the Concord, the first Nigerian woman to hold such a newspaper title.

    Mrs Abiola did not stop there. She became the managing director/editor-in-chief, with her husband as chairman/publisher. She became the publisher when Abiola was incarcerated over the June 12, 1993 quagmire. In this capacity, she held fort, running the Concord until the paper was hounded out of circulation by the Abacha junta. Her passing stunned the media world. Mrs Abiola was a media juggernaut, to borrow the word of K.O. Mbadiwe. She was a journalist through and through, with attention to fine details. She was one of the profession’s finest, who paved the way for the few women editors that have come after her. May she find rest in the Lord’s bosom.

  • Their one-term kite

    Their one-term kite

    Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP)) in the 2023 elections, was not saying anything new when he spoke of doing only a single-term of four years, if elected in 2027. Before him, Atiku Abubakar and Rotimi Amaechi said the same thing. It is all aimed at winning votes, no more, no less. But Obi, being who he is, has been trending on social media since he made the statement. First, to run again, as he did two years ago, Obi must get the ticket of a party. Which party will that be? LP? The coalition African Democratic Congress (ADC)? or the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    The question is pertinent because Obi seems to be caught in between the three parties. He claims that he is still in LP, but is romancing ADC. He and his running mate in 2023, Datti Baba-Ahmed, were at the coalition’s Abuja unveiling of ADC as its special purpose vehicle for prosecuting the 2027 elections. Typical of Obi, he is hedging his bet. He is running with the hare, and hunting with the hound. He has one foot in ADC, and the other in LP, where he is sure to get the presidential ticket – that is if he mends his way and stops hobnobbing with ADC.

    His erstwhile runningmate Baba-Ahmed has seen the light and run back to LP. He may cut the feet from under his principal in the emerging political scenario. Baba-Ahmed said he went back to LP to help in putting the crisis-ridden party back on track. Obi is still weighing his options on which way to go. Sensing his dilemma, the embattled PDP threw him a lifeline to come over to Macedonia and help to rebuild the party on which platform he ran with Atiku in 2019. Will he hearken to the call?

    He is at a crossroads. As he ponders what to do, he pulled a rabbit out of his magic bag, as they say. He says he would do only one-term of four years, if elected. Some have described it as a vow, pledge, promise, undertaking and so on and so forth. It is none of these. I see it more as a kite being flown to test the waters. This was the same bait that Atiku, the serial contestant, who has made the rounds of almost all the parties in his desperation to become president, dangled before the electorate in 2019 and 2023. Amaechi followed suit after they ‘hijacked’ ADC. Now, Obi is singing the same tune.

    When Atiku first flew the kite in 2019, it was to truncate the second term bid of the late President Muhammadu Buhari, a fellow northerner. His thinking was that the electorate would swallow the bait hook, line and sinker, and vote him in to complete the eight-year tenure of the north under the perceived power rotation agreement between the north and the south. The unwritten pact was broken in 2010 when President Umoru Yar’Adua, who succeeded President Olusegun Obasanjo died in office. Death prevented him from completing his first term, not to talk of doing a second term.

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    Certain politicians from the north have not forgotten about these ‘outstanding four years’ and they have been looking for all means possible to regain those years. Time, they seem to have forgotten, waits for no one. Since there can be no vacuum in leadership, President Goodluck Jonathan completed his principal, Yar’Adua’s first term in 2011. Politicians like Atiku then rose in arm during the next election to make a case for a northerner to become president to complete eight years that Yar’Adua would have served.

    With that process aborted by Yar’Adua’s death, and Jonathan constitutionally stepping in to fill the gap, getting him not to run in 2011 so that the north can have its way failed and the unwritten rotational presidency accord at eight years interval snapped. Atiku’s ploy to use the one-term bait to unseat Buhari failed in 2019, just as that of Obi and others to wrest power from President Bola Tinubu in 2027 will collapse.

    It has nothing to do with the sincerity of Obi’s statement, but what he has to offer. Obi’s performance in the 2023 presidential election has given him the false confidence that he is an astute politician. Saying that he would do one term is one thing, but what is his blueprint for turning the country around in those four years of that term? One term of what? What are the deliverables and what is his timeframe for achieving them? He should share them with the electorate. This is no time to say these are details he would keep to his chest until he gets to office. Nor that he would lay the foundation for others to come and build on. He should turn the sod and start the building, if he can, within the time allotted for that by the Constitution.

    The public does not want him to turn around later to say that the foundation was destroyed by successive administrations because they did not understand his ideas. He should execute his own ideas; nobody is going to steal or execute them for him because they are original to him. The fear of someone stealing anybody’s idea is a sign that none exists in the first place. If there is one, the brain behind the idea must have perfected it to the point of how it will be executed within a stipulated time to achieve maximum benefit for all. This is the beauty of an original idea, and stealing it would do the thief more harm than good.

    Pledging to do one-term when the Constitution allows for two terms is a political gimmick that can no longer win votes. The electorate know what they want and they know how to go about getting it. They cannot be swayed by talks of one-term, no matter how it is framed, by those who cannot deliver when the chips are down.

  • The patriots’ agenda

    The patriots’ agenda

    A distinguished group of Nigerians self-proclaimed “The Patriots” held a summit in Abuja some weeks ago and apparently considering what is wrong with contemporary Nigeria, zeroed in on the constitution imposed on us by the AbdulSalami Abubakar regime in 1999. No sensible person would dispute the fact with The Patriots that the political structure as currently existing is problematic. The same is true of the large cabinet and presidential system itself and the process of law-making. They preferred a mixed presidential system and parliamentary system including the process of constituting the membership of the National Assembly and asked whether a bi-cameral legislature is not too expensive and therefore counterproductive.

    This is just to highlight a few of the multitude of problems identified by The Patriots. The Patriots drew from the global experience of its membership headed by Chief Emeka Anyaoku, a distinguished former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations and experience particularly of federations like India with its 1.5 billion of people and complex advanced written civilisations having about eight times or more people than Nigeria but manages to run its affairs much more on reasonable basis than Nigeria.

    On the question of the political structure of Nigeria, The Patriots suggest a zonal structure using the current informal zonal thinking in the country to arrive at idea that a six zonal structure for the country will be more equitable and fairer than the present 36 states federation in which small state structure promotes unitarian rather than federal systems of government. This is against the federal system which the different peoples of Nigeria embraced in 1957, 1959 and which allayed the fear of ethnic domination which was a genuine fear arising from politics and political sloganeering leading to independence. The Patriots argue that nothing has positively happened since that time to fundamentally change the views of Nigerians about the political ideas necessary to lead them to feel that what they need now is unitarianism in preference to federalism. The fissiparous tendencies that mar every discussion about the present and future political trajectory of our country always  leads to feel that our founding fathers chose the federal system advisedly . The Patriots therefore suggest that to overcome the fear of ethnic and political domination, the country should be restructured into six zones or at most eight zones of equal status in a cooperative federation and the question of creating states and local governments should lie in the zonal political province as long as revenue allocation will be done in such a way that this will not lead to disrupt access to the federal revenue based on differential contribution and access.

    The Patriots  suggests that the country should embrace the revenue philosophy of fiscal federalism meaning simply that states or the zones should retain most of what  they produce in the form of  taxes on manufactured goods, mineral exploitation, individual and corporate taxation and agriculture and send to the federal purse the appropriate federal taxes which along with import revenue and appropriate export tax and tariffs on inland transportation and communications and currency, should accrue to federal revenue purse.  This federal revenue should be enumerated and whatever is not listed should ordinarily belong to the zones. With this division of revenue, the zones and states should have enough revenue for their administration and development. The Patriots put much effort to define what political regime we need to adopt to run a fair federation. Tied with this is the electoral system and the organization and conduct of elections. It argues and correctly so, that if elections are not transparently conducted, what arrives at the end will be worthless. Nigerian elections have been supervised by members of the judiciary, civil service, the academia in recent times. We have not tried the police and the military yet and there is no hope that those two institutions of the Nigerian state will do better than their compatriots who have been given the assignment before and have failed because in the nature of politics in Nigeria, the rampant corruption and bribery have hitherto extended to the military and the uniformed services.

    The electoral commission could be headed by a senior member of church or mosque if such an acceptable man can be found. If we can put together an acceptable organ to conduct an election without the dead weight of government bureaucracy, then we have made progress. Secondly, The Patriots sees the operation of the bicameral legislature as too expensive and unaffordable for Nigeria bearing in mind our fragile economy depending on the oil economy that is up and down in prices. It is the suggestion of The Patriots that a bicameral legislature of the House and Senate may not always be ideal in all circumstances. Perhaps a lower House would be sufficient  and an expanded Council of States to include representatives of the religious bodies,  judiciary, academia and the intelligentsia  broadly  including the press, and the military and other security organisations  like the police, prisons, customs, immigration, interior and external intelligence services may give government a wider scope of needed representation.

    The Patriots feel the current size of the federal cabinet and state counterparts is too large. A cabinet of more than 30 members is too large in my view. If the federation is made up of eight zones, 30 members is enough to give each zone enough room for representation. The Patriots also made a suggestion about presidential system. Nigeria is in a position to say we have tried the parliamentary and the presidential systems and we should be in a position to judge. Most of us will want a mixture of the two systems to be adopted by Nigeria just like South Africa and it would help the party system to develop and would permit detailed discussions of government policy before bills become laws and will also raise the intellectual level of cabinet ministers and that of the president and state governors. The zones will be empowered to create the number of states and local governments they can fund and effectively supervise. If adopted, the new recommendations will assist party formation and party governance.

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    The thrust of the suggestions of The Patriots is not only political structure but it touches the place of the judiciary and its organisation to eliminate current clashes of jurisdictions and concurrent jurisdictions which even to a layman is totally unwieldy. There ought to be federal courts with limited jurisdiction to federal laws and interstate disputes, and zonal courts whose jurisdiction ends at zonal levels. The Patriots suggest that the secular nature of the state must be maintained and only religious cases should go before sharia or cannon courts.

    The role of the well organised bureaucracy of the past recruited on the basis of careers open to talents and merit must be brought back to the federal and the constituent zones or states constituting the state. Efficient and effective bureaucracies are keys to progress. The history of an efficient bureaucracy in Nigeria has been proven by the continuity of governance during the turbulence of military rule in Nigeria during which some government continuity has been maintained. In recent times, entry into the core areas of the bureaucracy has been marred by such contrivances as federal character and ethnic balancing with consequential weakness of the bureaucracy. There are good people in every part of Nigeria and the institutions of government, whether in the bureaucracy, military, foreign representation and other organs of government need not be so weakened as to make government largely irrelevant and impossible and unsustainable.

    The Patriots did not spend much time or make adequate place for the economy and education in their scheme and how to build a big economy that would move Nigeria beyond the current oil economy. We always spend too much time on politics not realising that if we have a big economy, it would not matter who is a president or minister because everybody will be so busy that they would not have time for the present political gossips that dominate discussions and ethnic disputes.

    Not much is said about transforming the present clerical education system inherited from the colonial regime that lays emphasis on white collar jobs and certificates to practice one trade or the other. We should move to a STEM education system with emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics from primary to tertiary levels and how to train artisans of bricklayers, carpenters, iron-benders, cobblers, electricians, mechanics and so on. Emphasis needs to be laid on what one can make with one’s hands and not rote memories. We need a fundamental change in education and the earlier we begin this the better. Time is really against us in a world of competitive and knowledge economy.

    In the submission of the recommendations of The Patriots, efforts have been clearly made to separate personal feeling in preference for scientific and objective feelings that an unserious consideration of the inputs of this highly considered group would be like the country shooting itself in the foot.

  • Bigots with bylines

    Bigots with bylines

    Some lies are native to the pen: that being cynical equals true patriotism; that a combative press has Nigeria’s best interest at heart.

    These lies pulse through the Fourth Estate of the Realm. Thus, the inclination of certain journalists, at home and abroad, towards dubious altruism and self-love.

    Every journalist now fancies himself a revolutionary, but most are simply mercenaries of narrative warfare. We decry injustice not because we abhor it, but because we are paid to amplify it, selectively.

    Every newsroom pretends to be the bastion of patriotism while amplifying tribal resentment and sectional bigotry. This is the heart of our posturing. The sanctification of self-interest disguised as national concern. And when hate becomes editorial policy, democracy dies, quietly.

    The participation of large segments of the press, like the civil society, is driven by funded partisanship, but like Arundhati Roy would say, “I’m not against people being funded—because we’re running out of options, but we have to understand, ‘Are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you? Who’s the dog and who are you?”

    The situation triggers existential questions about the quality of professionalism of the press as a social institution. How do we define professionalism? How do we determine real and funded patriotism? How do we educate and commit Nigerians to the precepts of political participation astride the politics of reality and memory? The jostling over both becomes more intense in an oppressive clime where they distort to preserve the status quo of exploitation or repudiate it.

    No doubt, we are living through an epistemic crisis: a post-truth era where feelings are elevated above facts, and opinions, regardless of their merit, trump evidence. In this clime, journalists, who should be society’s navigators through the fog of propaganda, have become the fog itself as the truth is doctored, relativised, and distorted to suit an ideological whim or political vendetta.

    There is blood on the byline. And the stench of carnage pervades the newsroom as the pen, once consecrated to truth, now pricks at Nigeria’s soul like a poison-tipped dagger. From the tip drips venomous gaslighting, manufactured consent, and post-truth propaganda.

    Everyone in this charade pretends. Thus, the preponderance of the self-styled truth-teller and hyperbolic patriot in the Nigerian newsroom. If the press is truly the last free social institution and moral high-ground, why does it dawdle on the leash of shady puppeteers?

    We talk a great shop on Nigeria’s need to re-create its public sphere. But to achieve this, our newsrooms must recommit to a narrative of redemption against the backdrop of ruin. The press must inspire national pride, not just despair, sponsored chaos and hedonism.

    Of course, tragedy is a given of human society, but it should no longer command our practice. We must sieve and winnow catastrophe to extract positive lessons amenable to the growth and survival of our people alongside our sociocultural institutions.

    And to those baiting foreign intervention, we must always remember that the Libyans, Afghans, and Ukrainians, to mention a few, wildly embraced a dandy dream of  ‘American-NATO-styled freedom, but instead, got trapped in a sinister nightmare. To date, they are paying dearly for it.

    I know war. Of my over two decades in journalism, I have walked through the minefields and aftermath of conflict in Liberia, Nigeria’s northeast, and Cameroon’s Far North. I have witnessed how innocent lives are dismembered by bombs and bureaucracies. I have seen villages turned to ash and humans to fodder, all in the name of peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and regime change.

    But most heartbreaking of all, I have seen how the language of the press has evolved, no longer as an instrument of outrage or healing, but of appeasement and misinformation. I have seen the language of identification and analysis segue from outright condemnation of terror to a patronising patois of political appeasement. Terrorists have become “non-state actors,” murderous anarchy is misinterpreted as “civil dissent,” and terrorism is whitewashed into “insurgency.”

    These dangerous reframings are the currency of gaslighters. They are the scripts handed to us by hegemonic hands seeking to recolonise Africa through trapdoors disguised as development, diplomacy, polite euphemism, and digital disruption.

    And the Nigerian newsroom, too lazy or complicit to resist, has lent itself as both stage and opera for this theatre of manipulation. And yet, the violence that takes the most lives in Nigeria today does not always resonate through artillery or drone strikes. It pulses into our homes via newscasts and headlines. It speaks the dialect of division and punctuates every “breaking news” ticker with innuendo. It wears the powdered face of punditry and masquerades as editorial independence.

    The newsroom is no longer a sacred space but a weaponised confessional, where sin is sanctified in partisan ink. We are bigots with bylines, paid mouthpieces masquerading as moralists. We scream “rule of law” but ignore the rule of decency.

    When journalists amplify lies, romanticise insurgents as misunderstood rebels, and twist economic facts to suit their political loyalties, they rob citizens of truth and autonomy. They reduce the electorate into cynical bystanders, unable to discern right from wrong, and too weary to fight back. Such arrant misinformation often triggers demoralisation. And in that vacuum of public trust, dubious demagogues emerge.

    To reclaim Nigeria from collapse requires a collaboration of the political left and right. Ralph Nader’s recent founding of The Capitol Hill Citizen is instructive. His vision for a left-right alliance, to push back against corporate greed and political inertia, is instructive.

    Such a coalition cannot thrive in a media landscape overrun by zealots and saboteurs. It needs a patriotic press that treats Nigeria as a sacred ground to be defended with honesty and empathy, not as a battleground for clickbait and artifice. If journalists continue to act as enablers of partisan warfare, they will thwart every attempt at a national consensus.

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    Nigeria needs us to embrace our duty as fair arbiters and truth-tellers to birth a truly progressive democratic renaissance. But right now, we don’t seem interested in building bridges. We are setting them aflame. Each camp is too obsessed with winning the argument to win the country. Obidients vilify BATists. BATists mock Obidients. Everyone screams. No one listens. And Nigeria bleeds.

    This is not a call for censorship. The Nigerian press must remain free; ferociously so. But freedom without responsibility is not liberty; it is licentiousness. Tact is not timidity. Responsibility is not repression. A patriotic press must espouse accuracy, fairness, and social responsibility alongside love for the country and the fragile lives teetering on the edge of chaos.

    Nigeria is in dire need of a detribalised newsroom. We need a press that does not mistake Western hegemony for enlightenment, or editorial loyalty for nation-building. We need newsrooms that defy foreign interests seeking to recolonise Nigeria through narrative warfare.

    In our march towards redemption, journalists must be less social mirrors and become compasses. We must stop amplifying society’s bigotries and start guiding it towards greater empathy and accountability.

    To the younger journalists reading this: you do not have to be heroes. But you must not be villains. You must not be tools in the hands of dubious demagogues and activists. You must not lend your bylines to the machinery of misrule.

    It’s about time we questioned our headlines, tempered our hot takes and acted better. For in a country teetering on the edge, the distance between peace and war may just be one journalist who chose the truth over the trending lie.

  • Between IPMAN and Dangote

    Between IPMAN and Dangote

    The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) is the umbrella organization for all registered Independent Petroleum Products marketers licensed to lift and operate petrol filling stations in Nigeria. It was a product of Obasanjo‘s 1978 decree to aid local participation in an area then dominated by foreign interest. But sadly many informed Nigerians believe from being asked to come and engage in legitimate profitable business, Nigerians have since 1983 become victims of IPMAN’s greed.

    Its first casualty was Obasanjo’s 4,900 kilometres pipeline commissioned in 1979, to ferry oil products from Lagos to all parts of Nigeria. By the Babangida’s era of commercialisation in 1986, not one kilometre of the pipeline remained functional. Of course the next victim was NNPC tank farms across the nation. They were all vandalized by unknown persons.

    But the general perception of Nigerians was that it was only those who stood to gain from such assault on Nigeria’s economic interest that could have embarked on such dastardly act. That IPMAN and their truck drivers who secured NNPC contract to store NNPC imported products and distribute same across the nation came under serious scrutiny should therefore not surprise anyone.

     It was not long Nigerians started to identify IPMAN as an accomplice in the mismanagement of the oil sector by NNPC, regarded as the cesspool of corruption. IPMAN did not help matters by the fact that just a little over half of trucks loaded with fuel from Lagos got to their destination. The rest found their way to neighbouring countries especially the Sahel region of the north where drivers make over 100% profits at the expense of Nigerian consumers who spend hours at filling stations. From 1999 to 2023, Nigerians were taken hostage as those responsible for their nightmare remained untouchable.

     In 2001, IPMAN was used by PDP stalwarts to create artificial scarcity to enable them blackmail Obasanjo into signing the PPPRA bill into an Act within three months. PPPRA was to become instrument with which PDP stalwarts defrauded Nigerian of billions of naira through the fuel subsidy scam.

    But with a new sheriff in town, something changed dramatically in 2024. Following customs arrest of some of their tankers for illegal diversion of petroleum products, IPMAN shut down all filling stations in Adamawa, claiming that “customs officers are conducting unlawful operations, harassing their members and causing significant financial losses.” In fact IPMAN threatened government by telling the DSS official that intervened in their case that they will shut down the 30,000 stations operated by its members if the federal government fails to pay the N200bn owed to marketers.

    IPMAN’s demands may be legitimate because bridging claims are payments made by the government to oil marketers for transporting petroleum products loaded from Lagos depot to various states across the country. This allows them to sell fuel at the same rate, no matter the logistics cost. The problem however was that IPMAN, like other Nigerians who travel to other parts of Nigeria including the oil producing Niger Delta know you can never get petroleum products at the same rate you get it in Lagos.

    However, IPMAN overreached itself in May 2025, when its national chairman, Abubakar Shettima, burying his head like an ostrich and believing no one sees him, went to the FCT Director of the Department of State Services, Usman Dauda, to threaten the shutdown of the 30,000 stations operated by its members because the Nigerian National Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) paid only N50bn out of the N200bn debt. It was with this type of blackmail Nigerians were swindled for over 50 years.

    Of course IPMAN remains the greatest critic of Aliko Dangote’s business model which they say is antithetical to Nigerian industrialization. They say he is profit driven, that he is government created monopolist and a man who engages in an unfair competition, and a man who does not keep promises.  In a recently celebrated case, Yahaya Bello the former governor of Kogi State claimed that Kogi State government owned the Obajana Cement Company before Dangote Investment Limited showed interest and was welcomed by the then unsuspecting state government. They didn’t however tell us how Dangote eventually secured 100% ownership of the company. Nigerians have to decide who to believe between Yaya Bello and Aliko Dangote.

    David Hundeyin writing for BusisnessDay of March 21, 2021 said “It is no coincidence that many products on Nigeria’s import ban lists are items in which Dangote has major interests. He describes Dangote’s Cement as an example of “a price maker monopoly” a status he secured via President Obasanjo’s executive fiat. This banned cement imports and granted 90-year exclusive limestone mining licenses to Dangote at Nigeria’s richest limestone sites.

    And still quoting from  the U.S. diplomatic cable, he  says  “Nigeria’s wealthiest man is not actually a productive capitalist creating value for the Nigerian economy but at best an economic parasite and at worst a direct brake on Nigeria’s economic growth.”

    Unfortunately, Hundeyin also suffers from credibility deficit from recent newspapers reports. Besides, with President Trump’s multiple indictments for financial malpractices including tax evasion, American capitalism model is at its most brutish form.

    And come to think of it, it is not only Dangote alone that enjoyed support of government. In fact Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, former foreign affairs minister not too long ago declared that there is no Nigerian multi-billionaire that did not make their fortune through the state.

    The current administration recently sanctioned some of our mega banks for exploiting some of the loopholes in the CBN laws to make profit that will make capitalists in the home of capitalism green with envy. In fact they were made to refund some of their un-earned profit back to CBN.

    We also know billionaires who did not inherit industrial complexes from their great grandparents as was often the case in western societies. Their fortune could only have come from government contracts.

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    Dangote also came under vicious IPMAN attack recently when he suggested that “the Nigeria First Policy” announced by President Tinubu should apply to petroleum sector and all other sectors”. He anchored his argument on the fact that America, Canada and European countries are doing it to protect local investors.

    That they are going to source their own dollars only begs the question. Much of our foreign exchange earnings stolen from the Abacha period are in private hands.

    Sanusi Lamido Sanusi before he was booted out as CBN governor by President Jonathan called our attention to missing $20b in NNPC. We could not have suddenly forgotten the case of Andrew Yakubu, former NNPC Group MD in whose farm house in Sabon Tasha in Kaduna State, EFCC on tip off, made a haul of $9.7m (N2.9b) He was later acquitted by the court who agreed with him that EFCC could not prove the money was not a gift from his friends. Just in January, Nigeria and the US signed an agreement to repatriate about $52.88m in assets forfeited by Diezani Alison Madubuike former oil minister.

    In recent weeks, Dangote has also been in the eye of the storm for announcing the delivery of   4,000 brand-new compressed natural gas (CNG) trucks, as part of strategy including establishment of CNG stations across the nation. The move, backed by a N720 billion investment, would see the company absorb an estimated N1.07 trillion yearly in fuel distribution costs, eliminating transportation charges for fuel marketers and large-scale consumers. The presidency has described the initiative as “a major boost to the federal government’s push for gas-powered transportation.”

    If Dangote is a monopolist, he is one with human face. Not too long ago he told some reporters that while many of his employees have personal houses in London, he has no house abroad. Dangote because of his faith in Nigeria ploughed back his fortune in Nigeria. Dangote has been able to cover our shame of having to import what God gave us in abundance.

    If I have to choose between beneficiaries of those who vandalized 4,900 kilometres of pipelines; who destroyed  NNPC tank farms; the enablers of fuel subsidy scam, parasites  and their truck drivers who periodically hold us hostage, and a man who because of his faith in his country invested his fortunes at home  while his fellow billionaires kept theirs abroad, a man who  liberated us from price equalization abusers with N1trn of his money and ensures Nigerians from all the corners of the country benefit from oil God gave them in abundance, I will go for the latter.

  • Queens of Africa soccer

    Queens of Africa soccer

    On Saturday, the Super Falcons came from behind to beat the Atlas Lionesses of Morocco to lift the Women Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) trophy for the 10th time. Our girls were already two goals down in the first 27 minutes of the game. Many watching would have lost hope and assumed that it is all over. The final of any competition is not easy to play. Be it soccer, as in this instant case, table tennis, volleyball, hockey or badminton, the players are cautious and calculating as they do all they can to avoid mistakes.

    They hate to concede early goals or lose cheap points. But when they do, they fall back on their  reserve energy to redeem themselves. Our girls did just that when they refused to give up. To equalise two goals and score a third to win is the stuff of which soccer legends are made. Nigeria is good at coming back to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Remember, Damman Miracle in Saudi Arabia when Nigeria’s Under 20 team came from four nil down to beat USSR in the FIFA World Youth Champioship? As the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The girls got going, and their resilience paid off. They were awarded a penalty in the run of play and Esther Okoronkwo converted her chance, with a superb spot kick.

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    The goal paved the way for the two goals that followed. Esther assisted the scorers of both goals. She deservedly got the Player of the Match award. Once again, it was Nigeria’s finest hour on the continental soccer stage. Ahead of the competition, the team had tagged its campaign: Mission X (to win the 10th trophy). They accomplished the mission in style, leaving the Moroccans and their home fans stunned at the end of the game in  regulation time.