The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

Toast to Uncle Sam at 90

Tomorrow, the father of modern Nigeria journalism, Prince Samuel OruruAmuka Pemu, will be 90. These are nine decades on earth, during which period he has touched and continues to touch lives, not only through journalism, but through other various ways. It is an understatement to describe him as the father of journalism. He is the grandfather, considering the generations of journalists that have passed through him.

Many top journalists today and several others before them came under his tutelage. He mentored, trained, and nurtured them. A teacher of teachers, a reporter of reporters, the editor of editors, a columnist of columnists and the publisher of publishers, Pa Amuka, (sounds strange, uhm?), is a great asset to the noble profession of journalism. Uncle Sam is the oldest practising newspaperman in Nigeria today. He is papa, a grandpa, and great grandpa, to boot, but we rarely refer to him as such in media circles. To us, his acolytes, he is simply Uncle Sam, an appellation which came off his pseudonym, Sad Sam, under which he wrote his “This Nigeria” column those days in the Sunday Times.

He is known more by his pseudonym than his real name. The pseudonym which he used in his days at the Daily Times, sold him to the world. At its apogee, the Daily Times was the paper to behold; it was second to none, and it was found in every nook and cranny of the country. Every other paper then was referred to as Daily Times. Give me Daily Times”, readers used to tell vendors, even where they wanted a different paper. That is how popular the paper was.

It speaks to the then stature of Daily Times, which turned 100 years as a corporate entity on June 6 unsung, that many, including even practitioners, do not often remember that Uncle Sam began his career at the Daily Express under the guidance of renowned poet, the late John Pepper-Clark, years before he joined Daily Times in the 1960s. As a publication, Daily Times will be 100 next June 1. In the Daily Times of yore, the fear of Babatunde Jose, its then chairman/managing director, was the beginning of wisdom. Jose was Daily Times and Daily Times was Jose. He made and unmade editors. You were made an editor instantly, if you performed, and removed on the spot, if you underperformed.

This was the Daily Times in which Uncle Sam grew and blossomed. So, he was one in whom Jose was well pleased. It was not easy earning Jose’s accolade. Being a journalist himself and an all hands on boss, he demanded the best from his editors and he promoted those who excelled above their superiors to the discomfort of the latter. Jose was not bothered. He identified talents, groomed and rewarded them. In the hierarchy of titles in the Daily Times stable, Spear, a family magazine, was the third to be founded. It was established in 1963, with Uncle Sam as its first indigenous editor.

Read Also: Nigeria’s $5b oil-backed loan from Aramco delayed by oil price drop

“In fact to launch Spear we brought in an editor from London and it was between the editor and Sam Amuka that the journal was launched after which Sam became the substantive editor”, Jose said in his 1987 memoirs: “Walking a tight rope – Power play in Daily Times”. Uncle Sam was among Jose’s beloved because he knew his onions. He spoke of this atttibute of Uncle Sam and two others during his search for an editor for the Sunday Times of his dreams. “It took me some time, involving changes of editorship to find an editor who would produce the Sunday Times as I conceived it. That is, like the London Sunday Times… Only three editors achieved that standard – Alade Odunewu, Sam Amuka, and Gbolabo Ogunsanwo”.

Uncle Sam edited the Sunday Times between 1967 and 1971 before going on to co-found Punch newspaper with the late Chief Olu Aboderin.

He left a few years later to start Vanguard, a paper which he has been running since 1984. It says a lot about his professionalism to have founded two newspapers and managed them successfully. Since 1984 that Vanguard hit the newsstands, the paper has been on the streets without fail, except in 1990 when then Lagos State military governor Raji Rasaki shut it down. Uncle Sam has come a long way from a reporter to editor cum columnist writing either as Sad Sam or Offbeat Sam, to the publisher he is today.

It has been a life packed full of activities for Uncle Sam. With a history of longevity running in his family, we may have him around for a long time to come. Happy birthday sir and may you celebrate many more years on earth in good health and sound mind.

June 12, 2025
An elegy for Jibril Muhammad Aminu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 12, 2025
Bode George: The last PDP man standing

Bode George has an abiding faith in PDP. And using the humongous amount of Rivers State funds frittered away on some ungrateful “chop and clean mouth” PDP politicians as index of measurement, the only other person close to Bode George in this regard is Nyesom Wike, his estranged godson, with whom he is currently engaged in brickbats over the soul of their beloved PDP.

Not many of those who once swore by PDP’s name want to identify with it today. Many are in a mad rush to abandon a sinking PDP ship. The South-south geo-political zone once regarded as the bedrock of PDP, we now know, was because the now tattered PDP umbrella provided cover for massive mismanagement of state funds in a zone where leaders claim stealing state funds is not corruption but ‘misapplication of funds’. (Augustus Aikhomu and Goodluck Jonathan).

While PDP stalwarts who once ate with their 10 fingers in the 16 years of the locust are today falling over each other to escape PDP sinking ship, what we hear from the likes of Olusegun Obasanjo, Atiku Abubakar, David Mark, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, etc., the oligarchy that changed PDP from its founding fathers’ dream to a garrison-commanded by self-serving leaders, is a foreboding silence.

Bode George however remains not only passionate about PDP, but its very embodiment as conceived by its founding fathers. When Obasanjo asked him to choose a role he would like to play after being foisted on the Yoruba nation and Nigeria as PDP candidate in 1998 by the military and the interest they serve, Bode George’s choice without hesitation was a PDP apparatchik. And even when offered the position of Sole Administrator of NPA by Abiye Sekibo, after the government had been inaugurated, his response was “My Honourable, thank you for the honour. I have more important job to do in the party than go and be any sole administrator.”

Even now as the oligarchy and other PDP stakeholders pretend not to hear the tolling of the death knell of their party, Bode George’s vociferous voice is the only one ‘jarring our earlobes’. Nigerians can still hear the ringing echo of his voice as he squared up with Arise TV’s Charles Aniagolu last week, insisting:

“PDP is like Iroko tree. Or the Oak tree found in Saudi Arabia”; “PDP is the only party in Nigeria”; “Our party is not like APC owned by individual”; PDP party as packaged by our founding fathers has the capacity to solve Nigeria problems”, etc.

More intriguing is that George is not exhibiting any evidence he is ready to give up on PDP despite his political son’s last week call on him to go and ‘read newspapers’ if he had nothing doing. And that was after challenging him to identify one politician PDP made from Lagos or one PDP elected politician he successfully supported despite his 25 years of misguided war against Tinubu. AD senators Wahab Dosumu, Adeseye Ogunlewe and Musiliu Obanikoro that he and Obasanjo lured into PDP in 2002 was regarded as ‘mandate theft’ while the 2003 governorship mandate theft in Edo, Ondo, Osun, George took credit for, were reversed by the courts.

Long before Wike’s advice, one of his other disrupting political son, Ayo Fayose had, back in 2020, asked him to retire to give room to younger ones. In his words “it’s high time Bode George retires. Let him be a support stand for the younger ones in the party …all those stories of how we formed this party in 1998, eight of us sat in my sitting room to form the party, is no longer important because the young too must be allowed to grow. (African Examiner September 30, 2020).

Read Also: Alleged N32b fraud: ‘Why I withdrew charge against Fidelity Bank’s MD/CEO Onyeali-Ikpe – AGF Fagbemi

Indeed, the joke was on George himself when in an attempt to admonish Wike who is insisting “he is Mr PDP’ resorted to his favourite Shakespeare quote “Life is like a walking shadow… It is like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and after that you are heard no more”.

Consumed by his love for PDP, Bode George is yet to come to terms that there is indeed ‘time for everything’.

But is Bode George’s passion enough to save PDP? I don’t think so. It will appear it is too late to change the tide. It is also of little relief that not many members of his embattled party share his optimism.

For the PDP governors who are not ready to take chances, because they are seeking re-election: “if the taste of the wine changes, drinking habit must change” or “if you must fly to Abuja and your private jet is grounded, it will be foolhardy not to join another plane that guarantees a safe flight”. And to PDP former governors like Gabriel Suswan and PDP stalwarts like Segun Sowunmi, Atiku’s former spokesman, PDP is ‘in intensive care’.

And neither can anyone fault APC, the irresistible bride that “we are in a democracy and democracy allows freedom of association”.

Unfortunately for Bode George, the pervading gloominess gives no assurance of light at the end of the tunnel. By the verdict of students of political party system including John Campbell, former US envoy to Nigeria, PDP, unlike parties that serve as recruitment centres for political office holders and as modernization agents, is in fact not a political party. It is an association of ‘wheelers and dealers he dismissed during a debate on Nigeria in British House of Commons as “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together essentially as a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”.

Much as PDP card-carrying members in borrowed toga of journalists may want to change the narrative, not all Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia. Nigerians remember it was PDP stalwarts that created artificial fuel scarcity at the onset of Obasanjo’s government to stampede him to set up the Petroleum Pricing Product Regulatory Authority (PPPRA) under which PDP leaders and their siblings defrauded Nigeria of about N1.6trillion through fuel subsidy scam. Only last week, the son of retired Brigadier Ahmadu Ali, former PDP chairman and PPPRA chairman, was jailed for 13 years for the same offence.

Nigerians remember Atiku Abubakar supervised the ill-implemented privatisation programme, through which Nigeria’s total investments of about $100billion acquired between 1957 and 1997 were sold to PDP stalwarts and their fronts for a paltry $1.5billion.

We remember the monetization policy was another scam through which PDP stalwarts including ex-Senate President David Mark, ex- House speaker Dimeji Bankole and ex CBN governor Chukwuma Soludo bought their mansions at giveaway prices while other government officials and civil servants converted to personal use properties kept in their temporary care for our children at prices determined by them.

Of course, there was the unbundling of PHCN during which government injected between $8billion and $16billion, taxpayers money only to have the electricity distribution companies sold to stalwarts of PDP some of whom shamelessly donated as much as N5b to President Jonathan’s 2015 re-election bid.

Bode George’s passion for PDP will most likely not erase the memory of how Sambo Dasuki, President Jonathan’s National Security Adviser (NSA) became an ATM without password with leading PDP men and women sharing US$2.1billion loan meant for our fighting soldiers’ hardware and welfare.

We remember very clearly the years of the locusts when for 16 years, PDP stalwarts without self-discipline, ate with their 10 fingers and boasted they would rule for an uninterrupted 60 years.

Without excusing Buhari’s eight years of gross incompetence and Emefiele’s mismanagement of foreign exchange market through forex ‘round tripping’ or even the toll of current President Tinubu’s two years economic policies on Nigerians, we remember Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Nigerians that Jonathan government was borrowing money to pay salaries. And more foreboding, both she and Chukwuma Soludo predicted that whoever or whatever party took over in 2015 would have an uphill task trying to reverse the damage of 16 years of economic recklessness.

Unfortunately for George, Atiku Abubakar who presided over the sales of our budding industries and Peter Obi, the ‘container economist,’ who as importer of foreign labour, are jointly responsible for our nation’s current nightmare. Driven by greed for power, both have serially betrayed PDP, their party as they did Nigeria.

The tragedy is that they are today jostling for power not on the basis of a new vision to redress the tragedy they brought on a nation where my total estacode as a young journalist going for holiday in London in 1982 was N500, an amount that cannot buy a loaf of bread today, but on the basis of current temporary hardship, the result of their repeated rape on Nigeria.

June 10, 2025
FT and its high horse

The Western media treats developing countries condescendingly. It perceives Africa, especially, as backward, and so must be told how to run its affairs. The May 27 editorial of the Financial Times (FT) of London on Nigeria, as fair and objective as it may be, is a case in point. The paper rode the high horse in its attempt to make its point that Nigeria still needs to be spoonfed in leadership matters.

Read Also: British Deputy High Commissioner visits Rugby School Nigeria

Nigeria does not need the FT to give it a tutorial on leadership and how to govern itself. The country may decide to spend on a Presidential Jet, if it wishes so that its leaders do not fly in a coffin. But then, who are we as a country to get a gift of Presidential Jet from Qatar as the American president? If it was the other way round, FT and its ilk would have torn Nigeria and its president apart for receiving such a gift. FT has not deemed it fit to do an editorial on that. You see, what is sauce for them, is taboo for us! “Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense”, as Fela would say.

June 5, 2025
El-Rufai: The evil men do…

As the governor of Kaduna State between 2015 and 2023, the petite Nasir El-Rufai was larger than life. He rode roughshod over those he governed. He drove some of his political opponents out of the state; others were arrested and detained arbitrarily, while the properties of those who dared to challenge him were demolished for allegedly violating town planning laws. But everything that has a beginning also has an end. His all-conquering power ended when his tenure ended in 2023.

Read Also: British Deputy High Commissioner visits Rugby School Nigeria

Now a privale citizen, El-Rufai is struggling to remain politically relevant after he was chalked off the ministerial list following security report. He is still livid about the matter. Now, a court has cut him down to size for acting as an overlord while in office. Justice Hauwa’u Buhari of the Federal High Court, Kaduna, on May 27 held that El-Rufai in 2019 violated the rights of nine Adara community elders led by Awemi Maisamari, and ordered him to pay them N900 million.

It is worthy of note that he was found culpable in his personal and not official capacity. The case was filed after he left office when he no longer enjoyed immunity. El-Rufai has the right of appeal. But before he files his appeal, the point has been made that he acted arbitrarily and should pay for his action. As Shakespeare said: “the evil that men do, lives after them…”

June 5, 2025
Our Mokwa moment

What makes the whole thing painful is that the tragedy should not have happened. It could have been prevented, but as usual, we looked the other way. The ‘we’ are those with authority to do what should have been done to avert the horror that we are seeing right now. Flood water sweeping away people and properties on its path to God knows where. Rain is a seasonal event and it comes at specific times of the year.

Despite climate change, the fact remains that rain starts around March, falling in bits and pieces to herald its full arrival. At times, it could even be heavy during this early period, with experts attributing the occurence to freaky weather. Freaky weather or climate change or by whatever name we want to call it, the thing is rain can come at anytime of the year because we do not have control over it.

It is a natural occurence and weather forecasters only try as much as they can to help us prepare for it by telling us ahead of time what to expect. They did their job as best as they could before the Mokwa disastrous flood from which the nation is still counting the cost. It is sad. It is painful, distressing and depressing that the tragedy occurred. A four-hour torrential rain may be much, but it is not something to lose sleep over if the environment is well planned. Mokwa happened because of our selfishness and ill preparedness.

I am not happy saying this because I am deeply pained by what happened. But the truth must be told in order to avoid a recurrrence somewhere else. It is more painful because the rain is not fully here yet; it is about starting and see what it has caused this early. It is a warning, that is if we will take it, for us to put our house in order and ensure that when we enter the months that the rain is usually heavy, we will not be caught hands down. Information is key to prevent disasters of this nature. This is why the meteorological and hydrological agencies work closely at the beginning of every year, looking at the variables, and advising on steps to take to prevent flood disasters.

It is a fact that rain cannot be stopped (please, spare me the tale about rain catchers!). So, the next best thing to do is to create a channel for the flood which in some cases follow the rain. Flooding in most instances is as a result of negligence. It is a rare natural occurence caused by dams or rivers breaking or overflowing their banks. In Mokwa, there were no busting dams or overflowing rivers, but there were buildings along the flood plains, which are the channels for the rainwater to flow. Where water is hindered from flowing, it will force its way through, no matter how strong the blockade may be.

Reason: Water will always find its course. The only way to prevent a flood disaster is to ensure that water channels are not blocked or built upon. Where they are, there must be alternative routes for channelling rain and waste water, otherwise a disaster looms. As it does every year, the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMET) warned days before the Mokwa incident that there would be flooding in 15 of the 36 states, including Niger, where Mowa is, between last Wednesday and Friday. The Mokwa disaster happened on Wednesday. NiMET advised the residents of those areas to relocate and move their assets out of the way.

Read Also: Buratai urges Nigerians to support FG, counter terrorists, bandits’ propaganda

People can easily relocate, though it may be painful. But when it is a matter of life and death, the best thing is to move in order to save your life first. The snag is how do you move a house that is at the mercy of a looming flood which may be disastrous? This is the dilemma faced by many property owners who might have spent all their life savings on putting up those buildings. How did they get approvals to build on the right of way, which whether we like or not, is what a flood plain is? A flood plain, like a pipeline, is expected to remain an untouched setback.

It cannot be encroached upon and those who do, do so at their own risk. The only way to avoid man-made flood tragedies is to be strict with the enforcement of the law. Obstructions on such plains must go to prevent these incessant flood disasters which result in high casualty figures and destruction of properties. Also, those who give the approvals for such buildings must face the wrath of the law, even after they might have left office, whenever such tragedies occur. But the best way remains to outlaw constructions on flood plains and to demolish buildings found there before tragedy occurs.

Otherwise, we will be going round in circles, and merely lamenting when tragedies like that of Mokwa happen because we did not do what we should have done to prevent them. My heart goes out to those who lost

loved ones in Mokwa. How do you compensate them for such heavy loss? And no matter what they get for their lost properties, it cannot be the same. I only hope that we have learnt a lesson from this disaster.

June 5, 2025
A new arms race

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 5, 2025
The fire next door

There are truths that are better said untempered: that nobody savours the bitter taste of the herbs we season for others. That hate looks like other people’s torment until it pulses at our doorsteps. This much is affirmed by the reactions to the sad fates of Apesuur Ukechia and Ward Halil.

On a Sunday morning, just after church, Apesuur Ukechia watched her world vanish. Not in a metaphorical sense. Her husband and three children, the centre of her 27-year marriage and dreamscape of her future, were gunned down by herdsmen on the native soil of Aondona, in Gwer West, Benue State. Months before, the same assailants killed her parents and all of her siblings. Now, widowed, childless, alone, and homeless, Ukechia breathes the air of the living but pines for the company of the dead.

Ukechia’s loss is unacceptable, yet, no more pitiable than Ward Khalil’s. The harrowing video of the young Palestinian girl trying to escape the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School shelter in Gaza City that had been incinerated by a deadly overnight Israeli airstrike, circulated widely on social media on Monday. Khalil ambled through the flames, her silhouette a ghost of a grisly genocide. Her five siblings, aged two to eighteen, along with their mother, died in the flames. Her father and one surviving brother remain in critical condition. “I was scared of the fire,”a teary Khalil told journalists. But what language does a five-year-old girl have for her family’s massacre?

Some Nigerians, in reaction to Ukechia’s loss, accused the government for allowing the culprits roam free. They made a radical call to arms, urging every community hosting northerners to “evict them before they kill us all and take over our lands.”

Reacting to Khalil’s loss, these same anarchists described her as “collateral damage.” The tenor of reactions ranged from “Her people started it on October 7, now they must live with the consequences” to “Serves them right! Next time, they won’t attack God’s chosen.”

In another forum, some academics dismissed a video of Zionist-Jews attacking Christian pilgrims in Israel, claiming it’s their divinely-ordained duty to kill every Christian because they are “idol worshipers.” They answered with silence and refused to condemn the attack and the genocidal campaign in Palestine. “It’s a hard decision that must be taken,” said an esteemed Professor.

These random reactions mirror a world increasingly defined by pitilessness. And no country has made that descent into moral atrophy as casually and as completely as Nigeria. A massacre occurs in Plateau, Benue, Zamfara, Gaza, Southern Kaduna, or the West Bank, and the nation erupts into a paroxysm of digital grief. Hashtags bloom. Performative laments flood social media, teary op-eds rise like smoke from newspaper editorial pages. But five days later, or seven at the most, dawns the silence. Not solemnity. Disconcerting quiet. A shriveling of collective attention. Then, almost as if rehearsed, begins the rite of forgetting.

This forgetting is an act of violence in itself; a quiet, cowardly complicity that has become the familiar touchstone of carnage in Nigeria. It erases the dead twice: once by the bullet or the bomb, and again by the indifference of the living. The citizens who once held vigils, marched for peace, or wept for neighbours, now scroll past the news of massacres with deadened eyes, muttering “God forbid” as if prayer were a prophylactic against complicity.

Read Also: The king of the long game: Why Nigeria’s future belongs to patient leadership

Lest we forget the heckling: It is painful to read acerbic posts by Nigerians, validating the genocide in Palestine while laying curses on Fulani militia accused of genocidal attacks in Nigeria, in same breadth.

Some truths are better said unfiltered: that the Nigerian public sphere pulses in prejudice to premeditated bigotries. Every bigot is complicit. Bigots in public and private places: bigots in medicine, bigots in engineering, bigots in law enforcement, bigots in education, and most disconcertingly, bigots in journalism. The latter rankles an ominous note. It casts those entrusted with the role of impartial watchdogs, as soulless, partisan perpetrators.

Nowhere is this heartlessness more evident than in the schizophrenic morality regarding Palestine. Even as over 61,709 Palestinians, including 17,492 children, have been killed in Gaza (as of February 3, 2025), and 14,222 are still buried under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, many Nigerians, armed with half-baked theology and deeply embedded bigotry, cheer Israel’s military campaign with messianic zeal. “God’s chosen people,” they cry, thumbing through the scriptures for confirmation bias. They quote Psalms and Revelation to justify napalm and cheer as Palestinian babies burn.

They are impervious to correction, even as former defenders of Israel’s genocidal spree, like Piers Morgan, have since reversed course, calling the bombardments genocidal and unjust. Still, Nigerian evangelicals froth with righteous fury at the suggestion that Palestinians too, might be human.

This grotesque moral disfigurement is worsened by the Nigerian media and intellectual class. Where is the fire that once lit pages in condemnation of Russia’s assault on Ukraine? Then, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was exalted as a David against the Goliath of Moscow. But when the same script unfolded in Gaza, they changed the language. It is not “genocide,” it is “retaliation.” Not “massacre,” but “military operation.” Not “ethnic cleansing,” but “self-defense.”

When Israeli bombs flatten a Gaza orphanage, the pens fall silent and conveniently ignore how Palestinians had been ethnically cleansed and kept in an open air prison for over seven decades. The hypocrisy is stupefying. The duplicity, damning.

What happened to Ukechia’s family in Benue is evil. But it is no more evil than what happened to Ward Khalil’s family in Gaza. Pain is not a respecter of geography. Neither is justice. And when a people weep for one massacre but dance around another with prophetic glee, what remains of their humanity?

If a conflict of Palestinian-Israeli proportions erupts in Nigeria, the country will unravel. With a media so compromised, a citizenry so fanatical, and primed for blood, Nigeria would not survive.

We have seen hints of this future in the Hurti massacre. We saw it in Bokkos LGA where families were wiped out and entire villages decimated. Some were burned alive. Others had their throats slit. We saw it in every other place where ethnicity or religion was weaponised against the poor. These victims were all from communities straddling the poverty line. That is why their deaths remain unpaid debts in the national memory.

The horror is cyclical because the roots remain: unemployment, dead industries, crumbling infrastructure, and leaders who treat governance as theatre. Yet it is not too late. The fire is near, yes, tonguing our borders and threading through our cities. Yet this fire can be quenched.

First, we must unlearn our inherited hatreds. Nigeria must teach tolerance and compassion in its schools as earnestly as it teaches arithmetic. Interfaith and inter-ethnic dialogues must be institutionalised at state and federal levels. Traditional rulers must enter the public square with the moral courage of old. Clerics must re-teach their congregations that God is not a tribal chieftain, nor a licensed executioner. The press must rediscover its calling as the conscience of the nation, not the mouthpiece of genocidal apologists.

It’s about time we humanised each other again. This is the great task of our time: to learn to live together not as tribes or sects, but as people — fallible, flawed, but whose lives are sacred all the same.

To do otherwise is to become like those who murdered Ukechia’s family. Or Khalil’s. And that, perhaps, is the greatest tragedy of all.

June 5, 2025
The unending local government crisis

The local government crisis, like our other self-inflicted problems, remains intractable because our leaders often prefer playing the ostrich instead of confronting our own demons.

Let us start with the issue of the national question. When Oliver Stanley, for instance, in 1920, declared, “Our vision for Nigeria was a national self-government that secures to each separate people the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality, its own chosen form of government, which had been evolved for it by the wisdom and accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers,” he spoke from experience.

The federal arrangement as a social system that guarantees unity in diversity was what ended centuries of tribal wars in Europe. Events after that speech confirmed that the golden age of our nation was between 1946 and 1966 when we practiced federalism.

But we cannot also pretend not to know the enemies of the federal arrangement that needed appeasement, especially after playing the leading role in the collapse of the First Republic and plunging the nation into an avoidable civil war.

Those who have continued to wage war against federalism are Fulani hegemonic rulers of the north who want to preserve Nigeria as home to stateless Fulani herders across West Africa, and their Igbo rival with identical worldview, who insist everywhere in Nigeria, except their Igbo nation, is home.

For those who have faith in our country, the cheapest way forward is returning to where the rain started to beat us. Unfortunately, for close to 60 years we have done everything, including the fruitless search for unity through social engineering efforts such as NYSC, quota system of admission into tertiary institutions and civil service and, of course, Obasanjo’s confiscation of regional financial, media and educational institutions, except digging ourselves out of the hole.

Now let us return to the crisis in the local councils. “Federalist practice is that local governments are creatures and subordinates of state governments and exist at their pleasure.” (Richard Sclar) And the United Nations concept of LGAs is “a political subdivision of a nation or a state in a federal system.”

Obasanjo and his military adventurers, aping the old imperial powers, institutionalised the local government as the third tier of government in 1976. He was to later declare with remorse, “When in 1976, we brought in Local Government Reforms, it was meant to be the third tier of the Government, and not meant to be subjected to the whims and caprices of any other government.”

They ignored the fact that the states are not supposed to be appendages of the central government but coordinates, operating on the basis of a constitution which allocates power to both tiers of government.

Not much thought went into Obasanjo’s decision. Out of self- deceit, we even refused to learn from the experience of India, one of the multicultural societies where the idea of local government as third tier of government flourished since 1992 when they started operating two very distinct forms: Urban localities, covered in the 74th amendment to the Constitution, established Municipalities that derive their powers from the individual state governments; and the other where the powers of rural localities have been formalised under the panchayati raj system, under the 73rd amendment to the Constitution.

While the 1950 and the 1966 Local Administration system inherited by our military adventurers stemmed from the 1947 policy thrust of the last colonial Secretary of State, Lord Creech-Jones, which stated that “the key to resolving the problems of African administration lay in the development of an efficient and democratic local government that is close to the people,” Obasanjo’s third tier of government was built on nothing.

This was why most people believe Obasanjo’s 1966 Local Government reform was designed not for grassroots development but to share the resources of more resourceful states among less resourceful states to support what many have described as Obasanjo’s ‘fake nationalism,’ which finds expression in forcing Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities at different levels of cultural development to operate at the same level, which in itself is an aberration in federalism.

Obasanjo’s political opponents believe he was not an independent arbiter in 1976 as evidence abounds to show he was anxious to please the north that allowed him to be in power following the assassination of Murtala Mohammed.

For instance, during the 1957 constitutional review, there were 12 provinces in the north and 12 in the south (or 15 if you add Oyo, divided into two in 1934, and the two southern Cameroon provinces which later joined Cameroon after a referendum.

Obasanjo was part of Gowon’s administration that created a 12-state structure ‘without ‘rhythm or rhyme,’ second-in-command to Murtala Mohammed that turned the country into a 19-state structure, just as he had influence on Babangida that took the states to thirty. Obasanjo is perhaps the only one who can explain why we today have 19 states for the north and 17 for the south.

Similarly, in 1979, there were 301 LGAs in the country; but in the never discussed 1999 constitution, which became operational under Obasanjo, there were 774 LGAs named, with 413 councils for the north and 355 for the south.

Obasanjo started the transfer of state residual functions to the central government by amending Decree 13 of 1970 and Decree 9 of 1971, and this was to lead to other decrees that finally increased the legislative list from 45 in 1960 to 68 in the 1999 constitution.

Those Obasanjo used to foist the American variant of federalism, with a strong centre just to promote his fake nationalism, Chief Rotimi Williams and Professor Nwabueze, regretted and apologised for shortchanging Nigerians before their death. And coming under the aegis of ‘the Patriots,’ they vigorously campaigned for the reduction of the unwieldy and unviable 36 states into six geopolitical zones.

President Tinubu, who understands our crisis of nation building, perhaps more than any of his predecessors, has started by making the six geopolitical zones economic development areas. But the ultimate goal will be to convert them to political administrative centres with the support of the National Assembly, if they are to meet the challenges of immigrant killer herdsmen, banditry, out-of-school children and ravaging poverty.

With increased revenue accruing to states and LGAs from the federation account following the fuel subsidy removal, President Tinubu is, no doubt, anxious to ensure his Renewed Hope Agenda reflects positively on the lives of the people in the rural areas. This perhaps explains why he went to secure the Supreme Court judgment to “compel the 36 states to grant full autonomy to local governments in their states, prohibits state governors from unilateral, arbitrary and unlawful dissolution of democratically elected local government leaders for local governments, and restrains the governors from spending and tampering with funds released from the federation accounts for the benefits of the LGAs when no democratically elected local government system is put in place in the states.”

Read Also: British varsity offers Nigerians scholarships

Nigerians have identified with the president’s judicial victory. But I am sure he understands it was a pyrrhic victory. That was why on Jan 2, 2025, while receiving members of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) at his Ikoyi residence, he admitted the Federal Government cannot take local government away from state governments and called for stronger collaboration between the federal and state governments to address pressing challenges, including local government autonomy, agricultural productivity, and currency stability

I am sure the president remembers he took the Obasanjo government to court where he secured judgment declaring that local governments could not have financial autonomy because they are not federating units of the federation.

But in the end, the president, no doubt, understands that the issue of local governments is political. He should work through the National Assembly to see how to cede the current unviable arbitrarily created LGAs to the states who will decide what to do with them. With 68 items on the exclusive list, the federal government has more than enough to chew.

Instead of replicating state Leviathans at the local level through financial autonomy, whatever is meant for the third tier of government, which in any case belongs to the states, should be channeled through the states that are better positioned to appreciate their immediate needs.

Events in the last one year have proved that the local government is an integral part of the state; and attempting to separate them from each other will be like trying to cut off the umbilical cord of a foetus from the mother.

Finally, much as we may demonise the governors, we have no reason to believe that dysfunctional Abuja that mismanaged the nation’s resources through massive stealing in the years of abundance (1999-2015), and brought the nation to its knees between 2015 and 2023 as a result of incompetence, is the messiah the LGAs need.

June 3, 2025
Ukraine: Warning to the West

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 29, 2025