The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

Pre-colonial culture in Nigeria

Culture is the total way of life of a people as it manifests in their cuisine, dress, belief, world view, language, leisure, work and play. There is a universal human culture because all men and women are descended from a common ancestry/ But in course of time, there develops noticeable differences determined by our different history and environment.

Nigeria is of course a plural state made up of some nations and nationalities. It follows therefore that there are as many cultures in Nigeria as there are different nationalities. Nevertheless there has been a gradual synthesis of cultures in the Nigerian area even before the area became known as Nigeria. The peoples of the large area watered by the Benue and the Niger rivers had historically been in contact with one another before the advent of colonialism. So we can identify a commonality of culture at least in the material sense.

Most of the languages in this wide area with the exception of Hausa and Kanuri belong to the Kwa family of the Niger-Congo group of languages. The material remains of the Nok, Ife, Benin, Bida and Ugbo-Ukwu form a cultural continuity artistically. Furthermore the system of government in the wide area falls within two broad typologies namely chiefly institutions and acephalous or segmentary system of political organization. The Hausa Kanuri, Nupe, Igalla, Jukun/Chamba, Yoruba, Efik, Edo, Itshekiri and a few other share very well established monarchical forms of government while other ethnic groups like Igbo, Idoma, Urhobo, Tiv, Ibibio, Anang, Kamberi, Kilba, Ebira and the majority of the smaller nationalities operated along segmentary or stateless societies. Even the Fulani who later became identified with the rulership of the emirates are largely segmentary people.

It is safe to say acephalous village societies were the commonest political culture in pre-colonial Nigeria. In some of the monarchies the kings were regarded as divine and they or dead ones were sometimes elevated to the status of gods as was the case with Sango of Oyo. But kings were largely seen as being second to the gods. Most people in the Nigerian area in pre-colonial times worshipped a pantheon of gods in ascending hierarchy before the Almighty himself. The people believed in the Supreme Being whom they variously called Olorun (the owner of heaven) Abasi, Chukwu, Chineke, Ubangiji, Osanobua, Oghene and so on and so forth. The Almighty was usually not approached directly but through lesser gods to whom they offered animal and food offerings as propitiation for their sins. Sometimes religion was exploited by the rulers to ensure loyalty of the subjects. In this regard, priests were sometimes part of the royal retinue and in some cases the roles of the kings were so highly ritualized that they and the priests were sometimes indistinguishable as in Ife, Benin and in Wukari.

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The kings wherever they were to be found were not absolute rulers. Their seemingly absolute powers as vice-regal to God were constrained by councils of notables who were most times independent of the king’s power as ‘kingmakers’ and tribunes of the people. There is evidence to suggest cultural borrowing and emulation by groups in the Nigerian area in pre-colonial times. The Tiv and Chamba for example were influenced by the Jukun to the extent that Tivs for example began to adopt Jukun institutional symbols such as drums and to organize themselves in small principalities. What is true of the Tivs was also true of several Ekiti and Akoko principalities who borrowed insignia and titles from the Bini monarchy. It seems that the stateless or acephalous peoples felt disadvantaged in competition with organized monarchies that they began to adopt the chiefly political organizations. This is responsible for the presence of kingdoms in the western periphery of Igboland heavily influenced by the Igalla and the Bini.

At the family level, what was common of the people of the Nigeria area in pre-colonial times was patriarchy and fathers ruled the homes as kings and wives and children obeyed them without question. A man had the privilege of having as many wives as his pocket will bear and the senior wives ran the domestic affairs of the families. Children were communally brought up. All children were regarded as belonging to the community and every truant of a child could be chastised by any older member of the community.

There was absolute respect for age and everybody in society knew his place according to one’s age. In some places, there were age-grades association serving as instruments of socialization and mobilization for community effort and for war of defence in times of crisis. Most of our ethnic groups followed patrilineal descent. There were matrilineal societies like the Itshekiri and others but this was the exception rather than the rule.

Social organization in the centralized polities like Oyo and other Yoruba kingdoms, Benin, old Calabar, Hausaland, Kwararafa (Jukuns), Kanem-Borno, Nupe and Igalla kingdoms as well as the kingdoms in the western periphery of Igboland was more complex than in the village democracies of the Igbo, Ibibio and a host of other segmentary peoples. It should be obvious that it takes some effort to live in cities where there were contending interests which had to be harmonized than to live in villages. Many of the centralised polities witnessed various modes of stratifications and specialization. Some employed the stratagem of secret societies like Ogboni and masquerade cults like Ekpe as instruments of execution of judicial decisions.

Virtually every community in the Nigerian area in pre-colonial times practiced ancestral worship. The dead was sometimes buried in homes or near homes and people would go to the graves of their ancestors to pray and to ask their departed souls “not to sleep” and not to forget their descendants who may be going through some problems. Africans generally believe in a continuity of existence and the afterlife was part of the African cosmology. Masquerade cults sometimes pretended that the masquerades were earthly representations of departed ancestors. People of course knew this was untrue but it was part of the culture to know the truth in this particular case and pretend that things were otherwise.

The masquerades which came out periodically and most times annually provided some form of entertainment and diversions from the drab existence of life. Medical facilities were rudimentary but herbal medicine was usually efficacious. There were also medicine men or shamans who claimed superior knowledge of life and to whom people took their problems. In most cases the simple life of the people ensured that their medical ailments were such that available medical knowledge took care of.

People ate organic food without additives and since there was no refrigeration food was fresh and this must have had some positive result on the health of the people. The result of this was that many of the present ailments were unheard of in those days of yore. The cuisine was also unsophisticated involving liberal consumption of yams in various forms among the vast majority of Nigerians in the forest and central areas of Nigeria. The food culture in the Savannah and Sahel areas involves the liberal use of grains such as wheat, millet, corn and sorghum. Protein came in form of fish and game meat and beef, lamb and goats in the Northern parts of the country. Palm oil which came from palm trees growing widely in the South was an important part of cooking while peanuts oil was common in the North. All kinds of leafy vegetables were consumed and spices, particularly peppers were preferred condiments. Some of the dishes such as the one in Yorubaland and Hausaland were peppery while the Igbo and others in the South-eastern part of what became Nigeria used peppers sparingly.

Not all Nigerian people in pre-colonial Nigeria wore woven cloth. Many of our people went about oblivious of their bareness or nakedness in what a humourist called their birthday suits. The Yoruba, Hausa and Kanuri had always had thriving native textile industries. The Yoruba were so successful in this regard that the Portuguese used to buy “blue cloth” from them for use in Upper Guinea Coast in the 15 and 16th centuries at the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The Nigerian area before the coming of colonial rule was of course not sealed off from the outside world. The Sahara desert had not always been a barrier between the Mediterranean and the Nigerian area. The trans-Saharan trade had provided a medium of contact between our people in the Savanna and the Mediterranean Coast.

Trade in goatskins (Moroccan leather) had always thrived between Kano which was a commercial emporium in the Savannah and North Africa since the 14th century. The contact was so strong especially with the advent of Islam in the 9th century that Kano became not only a centre of commerce, but of intellectual erudition. Islam came early to Borno by the 8th century through the Fezzan and the Sudan with Islam also came horses and donkeys from Egypt as beasts of burden. Their presence revolutionized travelling especially among the elite and also transformed most of the wars fought among the states from wars of attrition to wars of movement.

Islam changed almost completely the culture of people in far North of what became Nigeria. It affected the way they dressed, ate, worshipped, married, and buried their dead, their languages and world view generally. The Jihad associated with the name of Usman dan Fadiyo, (Uthman bin Fudi) and his brother Abdullahi transformed the lives of people in what later became the caliphate stretching from the desert in the North to Nupeland and part of Yorubaland and Borgu. Even Borno which has the primacy of place in the history of Islam in Nigeria was not untouched by the revolutionary changes in Hausaland. Attempt by the Fulanis to take over Borno from the Saifawa dynasty that had ruled the place for hundreds of years did not succeed but it led to a regime change spearheaded by a Muslim cleric Muhammad-el-Kanemi, a Kanembu resident in Ngazargamu the then capital of Kanem-Borno. Islam provided unifying culture for the several different cultures in Nigeria and Arabic provided a written language which the rulers used not only for the spread of Islam but also for records necessary in the emerging sophisticated polities from the 19th century onwards. Even area as far as Lagos was not untouched by Islamic culture before the advent of colonialism. Islam came to Yorubaland including Lagos through the coming of itinerant Turkish traders and through Nupe malams who served sometimes as barbers and apothecaries. By the 19th century preachers came from as far afield as Borno to Lagos.

There had always been contact between Yorubaland and Hausaland and particularly between Yorubaland and Borno. The Kanuris maintained “jokingly relationship” with the Yorubas whom they considered as “lost brothers” and the Oyo Empire relied on Borno for the supply of horses which they used to build the cavalry forces with which they overran most of Yorubaland and neighbouring Aja speaking people and the Fon of Abomey.

January 23, 2025
A tax tale full of fury

The change in their position was unexpected. It came with a bang! The media celebrated the development out of shock. There was nothing they could do anyway. They were looking forward to a long drawn battle between the governors and the President over the issue. It seemed there would be no headway over the Tax Reform Bills until the governors switched gears. The bills were introduced by the President to reform what he described as the nation’s archaic tax laws.

The bills are four in all, but a part of it did not sit well with the governors, especially those from the north. But they made it to look as if everything was wrong with the bills, with their initial objection. They threatened fire and brimstone, as they declared that the north would not back the bills. At a meeting in Kaduna, the governors, some elders, religious and traditional leaders from the region unanimously rejected the bills.

Buiyed by the support of these elders and leaders, the governors sent words to National Assembly members from their states to shoot down the bills during debate. Take down four bills, just like that because of their grievance over the value added tax (VAT) component in which they claimed the north was shortchanged by the sharing formula proposed by the Federal Government. They claimed that the sharing formula would pauperise the north. Pauperise? How? You only pauperise an individual, corporate entity or state that is viable. As the saying goes, he that is down, needs fear no fall.

There was no cause for the governors’ anxiety, and some of their region’s leading lights put sentiments aside to speak in favour of the bills. Renowned Islamic and Christian clerics and politicians saw the bigger picture of what the bills are meant to achieve and said so without mincing words. Without looking at the faces of their complaining governors, people like Reverend Matthew Kukah and former Speaker Yakubu Dogara spoke glowingly about the bills, pointing out their benefits for the north. They argued that the bills would aid the growth of the north where people have suffered under the yoke of poverty and deprivations for years.

Dogara bemoaned where the north is today in spite of having held leadership position more than any other region in the country. ‘’What did they do for the north?’’ He asked rhetorically. “Now that there is a leader who has thought of how to better the lot of northerners, we are complaining of not being consulted on the tax bills. How many of these governors consult people in their states before they do anything?” These were some of the voices of reason that saw the good in the bills and spoke out. But the governors were still not swayed.

They held on to their position which they carried to the National Economic Council (NEC) which is chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima. At NEC’s meeting last October 31, the governors urged President Bola Tinubu to withdraw the bills. He responded that there was no better place than the National Assembly for them to air their grievances and make their own inputs into the bills. At his maiden Presidential Media Chat on December 23, the President said the bills had come to stay, but left the window opened for negotiation. The bills, he noted, are “pro-poor”.

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The bills exempt those earning around N800,000 and companies making N50 million yearly from paying tax. There are other people-centric provisions in the bills, which the governors and their co-travellers did not look at. All they wanted was to throw away the baby and the bathwater. The noise over VAT too was needless. The government’s proposed sharing formula which got the governors’ dander up were: Equality, 20%; Derivation, 60%, and Population, 20%. The Taiwo Oyedele-led Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms said the formula was arrived at after a series of meetings with all the affected parties.

It seemed that at that stage, the governors did not show much interest in what was happening. They feel that under the derivation principle they would be cheated because tax would be calculated on the basis of what is generated from a state. In their own estimation, states where corporate bodies are situated would benefit more at the expense of others, with little or no presence of such entities. As a way out, they proposed a sharing formula of: Equality, 50%; Derivation, 30%, and Population, 20%. Was it because of this simple matter that they wanted the four bills withdrawn?

It pays to play things cool always and not to resort to acrimony over governance matters. Leaders should think more of the led and not themselves in any given situation. They are in office to better the people’s lot and not to do otherwise. It is good to see the governors fall in line over the bills. It is not an ego thing. They should see their change in position as more of a sacrifice to make for the greater good of the people. As the President said, “it is a commendable example of cooperation between the Federal and state governments”. This should be the guiding principle of the relationship between the government and its sub nationals.

January 23, 2025
Police: Law keeper or insurer?

The Nigeria Police Act 2020 as amended states explicitly the functions of the police. Without the benefit of this law, we were taught those days in our civics class the role of the police in the society. It is to maintain law and order. Pure and simple. When the police arrest a person for whatever reason, it is in pursuit of this age-long duty of ensuring that society works seamlessly. The police are there to enforce the law. The laws are there to protect everybody, no matter their stations in life.

The police power of enforcing public safety, law and order is wide. It encompasses road safety and traffic control. The police are a must-have in any society. Without the police, public order and safety cannot be guaranteed. Safety on the road and in the home is essential. Without the police on the road, we are all at risk. Nine days hence, it will be February 1, the date set aside by the police to begin Operation Show Your Third Party Insurance Certificate by motorists. Is there a need to set aside a date for this operation? NO.

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It has always been the practice of the police to ask for ‘motorists’ insurance’. There is no way a policeman will stop a motorist on the road and not demand to see ‘your insurance papers’, whether comprehensive or third party, the two most popular classes of motor insurance. So, there is no big deal about it.

The real deal is in the police going into insurance business, which take-off is expected to commemorate the operation show your insurance papers. The police in business? I have never heard of any police anywhere in the world mixing law keeping with busiess. What kind of police will go into insurance trade and also be the one enforcing compliance with motor insurance? The law does not back the police action. If the law frowns at officers managing or running any private business, or trade, except farming, can it back the institution to break the same law?

It is not too late to have a rethink on this issue for the sake of the integrity of the police, and motorists who will be at the mercy of overbearing officers, acting under the guise of enforcing a law, a job they have been doing uhindered for many decades now, anyway. On what basis then did the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) grant the police an operating licence in the first place?

January 23, 2025
Trump’s return and beauty of American democracy

As President Joe Biden, the 46th American president bowed out yesterday after 52 years of service to the nation he passionately served as a parliamentarian and president and Trump took over as the most powerful leader in the world in a seamless transition, devoid of the uneasiness and anxiety that heralded his first coming, it was the beauty of the American system that was in display.

Trump’s landslide victory over both Biden and Harris is but once again a confirmation that all politics is local. No matter how much Trump is derided by the rest of the world over what was considered his infantile behaviour, character deficit and right-wing world view, it is the Americans who wear the shoe that know where it pinches.

And lastly, the unexpected outcome of the American presidential election also once again confirmed the major weaknesses of the democratization process -free and fair election the hallmark of participatory democracy which is capable of throwing up anyone.

Biden had exploited what has turned out to be unfounded fears about Trump’s threat to democracy and the battle against Trumpism a “fight for the soul of the nation” to cruise into power in 2020. First, in order to rescind some of the Trump policies, Biden on his first day in office, issued executive orders that took back the US into the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, cancelled the US withdrawal from the World Health Organisation and a number of other executive orders in the areas of immigration, health care and environment.

In spite of the control of the presidency and both houses of Congress by the president’s party, after the 2020 mid-term election, three significant pieces of voting rights and electoral-reform legislations, including the For the People Act, passed by the House in March 2021; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, passed by the House in August; and the Freedom to Vote Act, introduced in the Senate in September. (The first two bills were later versions of legislation passed by the House in 2019) were all blocked in the Senate by Republican filibusters, which could be overcome only with the support of at least 60 senators.

Finally, believing he, and his party knew what the people wanted without asking them, Biden became a victim of his own hubris. On December 13, 2022, Biden signed into law the “Respect for Marriage Act which formally repealed the federal Defence of Marriage Act (1996) which had defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman and had permitted states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage performed in other states.

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Biden had earlier alienated the power American Pentecostals who supported Trump by appointing Pete Buttigieg, a gay as U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Biden also went on to sign an LGBTQ executive order which advanced equality on June 15, 2022.

Of course, the unexpected outstanding performance of Biden and his Democratic Party in American last mid-term election was American women’s show of gratitude to the president and his party’s crusade over women’s right to control their bodies But their dismal performance in the last November election was American women’s rejection of the notion that institutions of state manned by individuals who have no children can decide for parents how best to groom their children. If there are American adults who today exhibit evidence of maladjustment as a result of challenges of growing up, parents don’t want confused state officials to tell their five year old boys and girls about their right to change their sex.

Biden, a veteran of foreign relations having served as Foreign Relations Committee chair twice (2001–03; 2007–09), was no less haunted by his mishandling of foreign issues with domestic issues content by failing to rise to the occasion as the leader of the world. His unconditional support for Jonathan Netanyahu was to set him up against moderate democrats, students, first time voters and American Arab voters and the rest of other world leaders that had expected him to use his moral voice to provide leadership for the world in disarray.

But then Biden could not give what he did not have. He instead on October 2023 secured Congress aid package $15 billion in additional military assistance for Israel in its war against Hamas. It was true Hamas started the war with the unprovoked killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers. But informed members of the international community understood the act was out of frustration by Palestinians after over 50 years of Israel’s occupation, scores of rejected UN resolutions with tacit support of the US.

Israeli response in form of massive invasion and destruction of a ‘caged’ Gaza resulted in the death of over 45,000 Palestinians mainly innocent children and women.

Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals and mosques, blockade preventing water, food, medicine, electricity, and fuel from entering the territory, was declared disproportionate response by the Pope, genocide by the United Nations and the rest of the world leading to issuing of warrant of arrest of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defence minister ‘for crime against humanity and war crimes committed from at least October 8 2023 until at least May 20 2024”.

Biden, a Catholic who takes Holy Communion every day and the only man with leverage on Netanyahu kept insisting Israel has the right to defend herself.

And finally, Trump’s triumph was one more evidence of the major weaknesses of democracy-free and fair election the hallmark of participatory democracy which often involve group bargaining. Democracy is capable of throwing up anyone including, outright idiots who do not know their right from their left or even those who have no faith in democracy at the expense of those who have faithfully served their nation in the military, bureaucracy and parliament such as John McCain in 2008, Hillary Clinton 2016 and Biden and Harris 2024.

In fact, the apprehension of most enlightened Americans during Trump’s first coming was the parallel between Trump, his rhetoric and Adolf Hitler. Like Hitler and most far right politicians, Trump had blamed economic and social crises in America on outsiders. And sounding like Hitler before the Jewish final solution, he had said ‘we have problem in this country. It is called Muslims; we know our current president is one, he is not an American”…”They have training camps where they want to kill us; we want to take our country back”. He blamed China for America’s economic woes and the menace of drug and unemployment on Brazil.

Like Hitler, Trump does not believe in political parties. Just as Hitler used Nazism as springboard to take over power, only to later destroy the leadership of the party as well as the party’s values before taking upon the world as a dictatorship responsible for the death of over 11 million people, six million of them from Israel, Trump hijacked the Republican Party to secure the party’s presidential ticket. Like Hitler, he went on to assault the core values and the soul of the Republican Party. And just like what Hitler did to his party leading members, Trump had humiliated leading light of the GOP before the far-right Republicans, particularly members of the Trump-led MAGA movement, who generally supported Russian President Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, the authoritarian leader of Hungary took over.

Trump was against the Fourteenth Amendment which confers citizenship on all children born in America and threatened to deport all such children. Worried Americans back then could not but see the parallel between this and Hitler’s ‘bastardisation’ policy which considered children born in Germany but of non-German parents inferior and could not be given citizenship because citizenship was by blood of the Aryan race.

Trump neither believes in free press or shares the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson, the American founding father and the principal author of American declaration of independence (1776) that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”. Today Trump has undermined confidence in the free press, creating his own alternative reality through lies propagated by Fox news and other platforms that supported him.

Trump’s ‘I am the only one who can fix America’ is not markedly different from Hitler’s delusion that he was ordained to protect the Aryan race.

But Trump’s 2020 defeat despite his failed insurrection and his return to the White House yesterday after four years in the political wilderness speaks to the resilience of the American system. It shows the American system has an in-built mechanism to prevent any America from taking a precipitate action which poses danger to American democracy.

January 21, 2025
2025: Reforms must transcend rhetoric

As the clock ticks into 2025, Nigeria teeters on a precipice where adversity and hope interlock. The stage is set for a decisive year as the country’s major sectors hum with latent energy: the economy struggles to shed its old skin, politics braces for reform, and the creative industries moot a new narrative. The new year pulses with the promise of rebirth and the threat of regression. Some would call it the epoch of Nigeria’s reckoning—a litmus test of spirit and ambition.

Against this backdrop of intrigues, a groundswell of apprehension sweeps across the country, beckoning a collective resolve to either seize the moment or risk further decline. In this pivotal year, every facet of national life becomes a battleground of will and transformation as the country’s most significant sectors hurtle between progress and paralysis. The stakes have never been higher, and the journey more profound.

This is Nigeria in 2025: The economic outlook for 2025 stands at a crossroads of hope and hard truths. President Bola Tinubu’s ambitious tax reform proposals hold the potential to unlock $7.5 billion (about N7.5 trillion) annually, a treasure chest capable of rejuvenating the nation’s fiscal landscape. Yet, this ambition is shadowed by a burgeoning debt-to-GDP ratio, climbing from N97.3 trillion in 2023 to a staggering N138 trillion by late 2024.

The challenge is clear: reforms must transcend rhetoric. If implemented effectively, these measures could stabilize the naira, curtail inflation, and rebuild investor confidence. However, failure would deepen fiscal woes and push millions further into hardship. To traverse this precarious path, Nigeria must prioritize efficient tax collection, diversify revenue sources, and foster an enabling environment for small businesses. Debt management will demand fiscal discipline and transparency.

Perhaps the most heartening narrative in this economic tale is the resurgence of local refining capacity. With the Dangote, Port Harcourt, and Warri refineries ramping up operations, Nigeria’s energy sector has shifted from dependency to competition and export potential. This renaissance promises to temper fuel prices and reinforce foreign reserves, heralding a future unchained from imported petroleum.

Despite global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels, Nigeria’s oil and gas sector remains pivotal. The proposed national credit guarantee company could inject much-needed liquidity, while anti-theft measures aim to boost production. However, over-reliance on this sector is a perilous gamble. Diversification into renewable energy and investment in local refining capacities will be essential for long-term stability.

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Through it all, Nigeria’s creative economy may experience further reawakening. Buoyed by global recognition of Afrobeats, Nollywood, and literary icons, the sector’s revenue is projected to leap from $5 billion in 2022 to $25 billion by 2025, according to the National Council of Arts and Culture (NCAC).

The heartbeat of Nigeria’s cultural identity subsists in its storytellers, musicians, and filmmakers. Nollywood’s record-breaking haul in 2024 sets the stage for another stellar year. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s fiction writers continue to elevate her literary reputation globally. Support for this sector through grants and international collaborations will amplify voices that inspire and challenge societal norms. As a soft power tool, Nigeria’s cultural exports hold the potential to reshape perceptions and nurture diplomatic ties.

The government’s $100 billion growth plan outlines ambitious initiatives: improved infrastructure, digital accessibility, and intellectual property reforms. Yet, creatives must also leverage technology and explore untapped markets. By harnessing strategic partnerships, expanding training programs, and nurturing grassroots talent, the industry could become a cornerstone of Nigeria’s GDP, offering employment and a unifying narrative.

The agriculture sector remains a stronghold of prospects and optimism. With the government’s tariff waivers and investment incentives, farmers are poised to scale production, tapping into growing regional demand. Yet, challenges such as climate change, outdated practices, and inadequate financing threaten to erode gains. Empowering farmers with access to modern technology and reliable financing will catalyze growth, anchoring food security and economic stability.

In 2025, the government has committed N826.5 billion to revitalize the sector, underscoring its resolve to enhance food security, generate employment, and reduce food import dependence. Key initiatives include investments in irrigation systems, mechanization, and value-chain development. Efforts to attract foreign direct investment through tariff waivers and agribusiness programs are also expected to transform the sector.

Despite these plans, food insecurity looms large, exacerbated by climate change and limited modernization. Scaling up food production to meet the growing population’s demands—exceeding 220 million—is paramount. While the sector contributed 28.65% to GDP in 2024, modest growth highlights the need for sustained efforts to strengthen the industry.

Telecoms, a lifeline for millions, face a tough year. Exchange rate fluctuations threaten profitability, but tariff adjustments and renegotiated leases offer a lifeline. Expanding internet access, especially in underserved areas will unlock new economic and educational opportunities, driving digital inclusion.

As political tides shift, 2025 will demand accountability and humane leadership. With a national budget expanded by 74.18% to N47.9 trillion, expectations are high. Yet, the real test lies in execution: will this budget translate into meaningful infrastructure, security improvements, and job creation? The political climate, increasingly volatile, may witness a redefinition of Nigeria’s democracy. State actors must address electoral reform, corruption, and regional discontent to maintain stability.

By May 29, President Bola Tinubu will reach the halfway point of his tenure, a milestone that could shape perceptions of his administration. His decision to implement controversial reforms early in his term was strategic, ensuring hardships fade from voters’ memories if positive outcomes materialize by 2027. Every success strengthens his political standing. In contrast, opposition parties—including efforts to create a “mega party”—face internal fissures and power struggles. Despite these challenges, they will remain significant players in upcoming elections.

Insecurity casts a long shadow over the country, with insurgencies in the North, communal clashes, and rampant banditry exacting a heavy toll. Despite the defense sector consuming a significant portion of the national budget, many Nigerians remain disillusioned, yearning for safer roads and thriving communities.

Achieving stability will require collaborative efforts between federal and state governments, strengthened by international partnerships. A combination of technology, intelligence-led operations, and grassroots peacebuilding initiatives is essential. Experts emphasize that a stronger economy, improved welfare for security personnel, and better intelligence gathering will be pivotal.

Grim statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics reveal that Nigerians paid N2.23 trillion in ransom to kidnappers within a year, while over 614,000 lives were lost.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking subplot of Nigeria is the erosion of its middle class into 2025. Inflation, unemployment, and taxation have bludgeoned this demographic, leaving many in dire straits. Historically, the middle class serves as the backbone of any nation, driving consumption, innovation, and economic stability.

In Nigeria, this group has become increasingly vulnerable, caught between rising costs of living and stagnant incomes. Limited access to affordable social services has deepened their plight, making it difficult for families to afford basic necessities or plan for the future. Reviving this social stratum will require intentional policies: affordable housing, access to quality healthcare, and educational reforms that prioritize skills for a modern economy. Without this revival, the dream of shared prosperity will remain elusive.

No doubt, the narrative of Nigeria in 2025 remains indistinct, its contours shaped by state actors. From policymakers to creatives, farmers to technocrats, this year demands purposeful engagement from all. Whether Nigeria advances or regresses will depend on the collective determination to confront its challenges with clarity and resolve.

As the year progresses, the measure of success will not be in lofty rhetoric but in tangible progress.

January 16, 2025
Government needs to appoint ambassadors now

The Tinubu administration has been in power for about one and a half years and almost for half of its term and has not deemed it necessary to appoint principal representatives of the president outside Nigeria. The ostensible reason for not appointing envoys is the bad economy. After a year and a half of economic reforms, the time is ripe to use all the tools available to government to tackle whatever ails the country and diplomacy is one of those tools government can use to bring life into the economy.

First of all, let me say the problem of adequate funding of our diplomatic missions is not new. It is a perennial problem and other administrations since the 1970s have tried unsuccessfully to confront this problem. There has been effort to rationalize diplomatic representation abroad by pruning down the number of missions. I have had personal experience in this regard under the Babangida military regime and Obasanjo civilian administration. We closed a few missions and consulates down and the problems became manageable but it did not totally disappear. It was a very difficult problem because missions were opened over the years because of specific reasons and to close any mission down would send wrong signals to the host country or countries even outside the host countries. We took a look at regional representation and tried to look at representation from regional prism but the question of in what country to locate missions to look after the affairs of our country without sending negative feelings to other countries in the region. For example, if we take the example of the Caribbean basin and which of the missions in Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Jamaica and Venezuela to close down without sending wrong signals. For serious political, cultural and strategic reasons, we can’t touch Cuba. Jamaica and Trinidad are necessary for cultural and racial reasons and Venezuela and our country are members of OPEC and we may need their support in crude oil allocation among member countries. In South America, we have missions in Brazil and Argentina and if we treat Venezuela as part of the group of our missions on that continent and perhaps add Mexico that would not be regarded as too many, so we cannot rationalize any of the missions out of existence.

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Now to North America. The United States is the elephant in the room that we cannot touch. I believe we have closed down our consulate in San Francisco which used to serve Nigeria’s interest in the western part of the United States. We have a consulate in Atlanta to serve our interests in the South and Midwest of the USA which cannot be closed down because of the close to one million Nigerians in that region and their contribution to the economy of Nigeria through their home remittances. We have a full mission in Washington DC and a consulate in New York. We also have a permanent mission to the UN in New York. To an uninitiated person, this may appear over representation but each mission and consulate does different things. In a dire economic situation, we may be forced to close down the consulate in New York. We have a full mission in OTTAWA Canada which we cannot touch because Canada and Nigeria are senior and important members of the Commonwealth. Besides, the rising population of Nigerians in Canada compels us to begin to think of having a consulate in either Edmonton or Calgary or Vancouver cities in Alberta and British Columbia provinces in Canada. We share cultural and educational ties with Canada and we can exchange experiences with the country on the proper constitutional development of a cultural and pluralistic federal country.

Moving to Europe which is our long time trading partners where almost every mission’s existence can be justified. All countries that are able and can afford it have missions in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Russia. For economic reasons, we cannot trifle with our missions in these countries. These days, it is necessary to have missions in Ukraine which is a large country from which we buy grains particularly wheat since bread has become a basic staple in Nigeria and our people seem to have refused to have bread made from other substitute. Since the emergence of the European Union, we have also had to have a mission to the political and economic entity but our mission there is happily covered from our mission to Belgium. The Netherlands (Holland) has been a long-time trading and investment partner with Nigeria. It is the home of Shell Oil Company that was involved in the development of the Nigerian oil sector. The Netherlands is also hosting the World Court which is an important organ of the UN and to which we have been dragged before a couple of times in recent times. We can close down our missions in Hungary and Belgrade without much to lose. Our small mission in Dublin can stay for educational and cultural reasons. We have closed down our consulate in Liverpool which was a waste of resources. We can cover Portugal from Spain just as we cover the Vatican from there.

Now to the Middle East and the vast Asian continent. It is absolutely necessary to maintain our missions in Japan, India, Pakistan, and South Korea but not in North Korea. We can continue to have missions in Malaysia and Thailand but not in the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. In Australasia, our mission in Canberra Australia is important for Commonwealth ties and we can cover New Zealand and other Commonwealth pacific islands from our mission in Canberra Australia.

We have to have missions in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. But do we really need missions in Syria, Lebanon and Kuwait or any other area of the Middle East that cannot be covered from expanded missions in the most important countries in the region?

Now we have to severely prune down our missions in Africa. With a mission in Pretoria and Consulate in Johannesburg we don’t need separate missions in Botswana and Mozambique which can be covered from either Zambia or Zimbabwe. We need our missions in the DRC and Angola but not in the Central African Republic (CAR) or Congo Brazzaville and Gabon which can be covered by our mission in either the Cameroon or Malabo. Our East African missions in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda should remain so also should Ethiopia and Sudan remain. When the chaos in the region is over, we may have to rethink our presence in South Sudan and Eritrea. In North Africa, we cannot close our mission in historic Egypt, Morocco Algeria and Libya but Tunisia should be closed down. All our missions in our sub region constituting ECOWAS should remain open while we should shut our mission in Mauritania unless that country returns to ECOWAS.

From this panorama of our diplomatic representation and the rationalization of a few of the missions, I am suggesting the government should seriously consider sending heads of missions or ambassadors for obvious reasons. The present situation of heads of missions ad interim is not good enough or sustainable in the interests of our country .The Ike Nwachukwu time in the Foreign Office came up with the idea that our diplomatic relationship should be subjected to full cannons of ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY. Missions should be judged on the economic dividends accruing to our country by the returns of attracting investment, economic aid and or political and military support for Nigeria. Any mission where the diplomats remain in their offices drinking tea or wine would be deemed not to have earned their posting. Missions also should be involved in joint Nigerian and host chambers of commerce where they exist and sponsor them where they do not exist. Missions in African countries we have helped to liberate must find areas Nigerians can be involved in joint ventures with nationals of those countries and by this I don’t mean nefarious trade in human trafficking and prostitution and drugs which unfortunately our people have been accused of in Southern Africa. Angolan shores for example are swarming with fish. I remember we encouraged the Ibru group to go there in the 1980s and 1990s but their staying capacity was not what we can write home about. I am happy that Dangote Cement and some Nigerian banks are active in many African countries to reap from our diplomatic labour in the past because it is the friendship Nigeria has established there that permits Nigerian companies to have access to those countries . Embassies can perform all kinds of activities, they can negotiate and sign treaties in their plenipotentiary capacity they can even perform civil marriages between Nigerians and nationals of host countries. Fees are chargeable in this regard. They of course perform immigration duties of issuing passports and visas which bring in considerable revenue to the national exchequer. If you don’t know this, ask the embassies of the UK and the USA about the enormous revenue accruing to them from these consular services! They can encourage cultural exchanges such as in athletics and soccer in which Nigeria’s image can be strengthened. Our football teams can earn forex from such engagements. A well and thoroughly organized series of cultural exchanges can bring much dividends and publicity to Nigeria.

The minister of Foreign Affairs and all ambassadors are advisers to the president in whose province belongs the foreign policy of any country. As they say the buck stops at his desk but no president or head of state can or is capable of carrying out unaided his own foreign policy and this is why he must have not only a foreign minister but also foreign missions.

I understand the limitations imposed on poor countries weighed down by the burden of poverty and economic downturn but happily Nigeria does not belong in this group and we must not give the impression that we are down and out. Nigeria can fund a pruned diplomatic representation all over the world with I believe half a billion dollars and hope to generate a return commensurate with our investment in terms of foreign direct investment, technical assistance, educational assistance and trade. Having said all this, Mr President, send ambassadors to head your foreign missions as soon as possible.

January 16, 2025
Too big for his breeches

It was a bolt from the blue. Many were shocked on Monday when what transpired within the hallowed chamber of the Lagos State House of Assembly hit the airwaves shortly after midday. Mudashiru Ajayi Obasa, who for the better part of his tenure, saw himself as Lord of the Manor, had been impeached as speaker after a record-breaking term of over nine years.

Obasa had everything going for him as the primus interpares (first among equals). All the members were loyal to him. They did his bidding as his word was law. He virtually turned the assembly into his fiefdom, determining who gets what, when and how. He has power, raw and naked power, which he wielded brutally.

Obasa grew up in the streets of Agege, a part of Lagos, where class and status never counted, until now. Then, you kept your bigmanism in your pocket. Relationship, as in the omo adugbo mi philosophy, was key. Without it, you were nowhere with all your millions or even billions. Once you could touch base with the boys on the street, you were good to go.

I know because I am an Agege boy (I schooled there, by the way, when it was still a bush). Agege boys know their way in every situation because they never forget where they come from. Those who forget their ‘roots’ always pay dearly for it. No one should know this better than Obasa. Thus, he was guided by his Agege mind when he took his first tentative steps as speaker in 2010, seven years after he became a member of the house.

He knew the card to play, and he played it well, as he took popularism to a new height. He threw his office open to old friends from Agege and any other person from the area who required his assistance. Undoubtedly, he put Agege first, but sooner than later, he became larger than life under his self righteous claim of ensuring that Agege is not marginalised. It was a ploy to expand his political territory and the discerning saw through him.

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Obasa was no longer speaking for Agege, but for himself. There is nothing wrong in trying to raise your political profile, but you do not do so by fighting battles that will alienate you and your followers. Obasa who had consistently acknowledged how he was picked from nowhere, dusted up and given power a’la carte, allowed success to get into his head. He was consumed by hubris, that age-long enemy of successful people, who never remembered that “by strength, shall no man prevail”.

As speaker, he had many things going for him. He was the third citizen in a state of almost 35 million people, with a lot of resources at his disposal. His fellow memebers of the assembly trembled before him. He knew how to whip them into line, forgetting that they were his backbone who may decide to break him, if things got to a head. No leader no matter how powerful is invincible and invisible. When a person’s time is up, they will get him, no matter how cunning or good at scheming he may think he is.

Obasa’s cup became full when he started to openly fight Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who rather than fight back, tolerated him, warts and all. To political pundits, Sanwo-Olu was too politically timid to have kept quiet in the face of such provocations. They believed that Obasa had constituted himself into a nuisance and should be so treated. It has now turned out that there was wisdom in the Sanwo-Olu approach. Those who could not stomach such nonsense, if they were in his position, picked up the gauntlet on his behalf.

From then onwards, Obasa’s days as speaker were numbered. Obasa’s treatment of the governor and his entourage during the presentation of the 2025 budget last November 21 was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The governor was kept waiting for four hours and when the assembly eventually convened, Obasa added insult to the injury. He neither apologised nor explained why he and his fellow memebers turned out in dark goggles, similar to those worn by Gen Sani Abacha in his days as military head of state.

His remarks on the occasion were confrontational, uncouth and disrespectful of the state’s first citizen. As usual, Sanwo-Olu took all in his strides. Even when his men were urging him to fight back, he kept his head. “He did not even report the speaker to the President”, a source confided in this reporter. But when the matter was brought to the President’s notice by others, he was said to have expressed shock. Obasa’s address at the budget presentation ceremony became his Achilles heel. He took not only on Sanwo-Olu, but also on others who once held the exalted office of governor.

He never recanted the statement, which was also a direct attack on his benefactors who gave him the wing to fly. He now knows where power lies. Obasa lost out in the power game because he lost his Agegeness. He did not remain true to the unwritten Agege code of “remembering who you are and where you are coming from”. Just a little taste of power as speaker and he allowed it to get into his head. It is because of his likes that many benefactors think twice before picking up people from nowhere and turning them into political powerhouses. The fear is they may turn round and bite the finger that fed them.

Obasa is not a good poster boy of a political leader who came from nowhere and hit the limelight. As he makes his way back home from the United States (US), where he was when he fell from office, he has enough time for sober reflection on his 21-year odyssey in the assembly. Will he return in 2027 or is this his last hurrah?

January 16, 2025
For our tomorrow…

Yesterday, activities marking the 2025 Armed Forces Remembrance Day were rounded off nationwide. Vice President Kashim Shettima represented President Bola Tinubu at the Abuja event, while the governors took charge in theira respective states. The yearly event is in memory of soldiers who defended the territorial integrity of our country against external aggressions and also fought in other wars at home and abroad. If not for their sacrifices, we may not be here today.

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Yesterday, they fought to keep our country one. They left father, mother, wife and children to go to war. There can be no sacrifice too great today to make to honour and keep their spirits alive. We remain eternally grateful to them. As we remember them yearly, the greatest honour we can give them is to ensure that their families do not lack. It is disheartening to see those still living among them, sleeping on the road or going about with bowls in hands begging for alms. No soldier after serving his country nor his offspring should ever beg for bread.

They were not soldiers of fortune, but men and women who laid down their lives for our tomorrow to be bright. May their sacrifices not be in vain.

January 16, 2025
Obi’s New Year message and ‘Obidients’ threat

Peter Obi in his New Year message reminded Nigerians of the obvious: the worsening political, economic and security situation of our country. Food insecurity that has become our new national norm; our nation and its fortunes are in clear reverse, while Nigeria remains one of the poverty capitals of the world, with over 100 million people living in extreme poverty and more than 150 million in multidimensional poverty.

To change the narrative, Obi wants President Tinubu to cut down what he considers as his “wasteful foreign trips; travel around Nigeria by road to observe the condition of most of our collapsed highways; visit our national hospital, make both impromptu and planned visits to our tertiary institutions, visit various IDP camps and assure these Nigerians that they will soon return to their communities.

Finally, he wants the president to ensure “future elections are credible and truly reflect the will of the people”.

The president has already acknowledged some of these problems and the harsh effect of his economic policies. What he said was that to avoid mortgaging the future of our children the way PDP did by selling or sharing properties kept in their care for our children, we needed to make some sacrifices today.

In fact, the expectation of most Nigerians was that the president’s first act in office was going to be resettlement of those driven from their land to IDP camps back to their land. That is distributive justice.

Nigerians did not only expect the president to visit the hospitals, they had expected him to sponsor a bill stopping all political appointees and lawmakers from embarking on medical tourism. This is the only way to equip our teaching hospitals.

Obi is also allowed to make few exaggerations including his claim that Tinubu’s less than two years administration should be held responsible for the current figure of 100,000 Nigerians living in extreme poverty despite ARISE Television’s admission during the interview that the figure as at the time Buhari took over power 10 years ago (2015) stood at 70%. After all, government is a continuum.

Obi who claimed victory despite coming a distant third in the 2023 election and who is yet to congratulate the winner of the contest despite INEC’s verdict and the Supreme Court’s celebrated judgment also has the right to call on the president to guarantee the sanctity of the 2027 contest.

I think what Felix Morka decries is Obi “crossing the line of truth and peddling false narratives, arrogant unwillingness to acknowledge obvious markers of progress, mobilizing outrage and stoking tension against the government’ which he thinks are not exactly the most admirable hallmarks of leadership.”

He also frowns at the fact that Obi led a restless band of online mobs, who continue to attack, intimidate, bully and issue death threats to other citizens who dare disagree or criticize Obi or his opinions or position on any subject or matter of national conversation.

Even here Obi has not crossed any red line. The beauty of democracy is that no one has the last say especially in a world where the media is a captive of the dominant ruling class and where no newspaper or news platform can be said to be truly free. We have seen selective coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza by CNN and presentation of alternative reality by the Fox News which aided Trump’s triumph in his re-election bid despite his election denials and sponsoring of an insurrection against his own government.

This is why I also think ARISE television cannot be accused of crossing any red line for its decision to play the devil’s advocate following attempt by APC and its spokesman, to discredit Obi and his message. It was obvious whose battle was being waged when Felix Morka, the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was confronted during an interview on its THIS WEEK program on Saturday, January 4, with a question such as – “You have actually hit back with a volley of attacks, calling Peter Obi a prophet of doom. Some of you have said he is always embarking on voodoo economics that are not in line with current realities. Don’t you think that is a slingshot that has gone beyond normal politicking?

Morka’s: “No, he is the one throwing darts. Mr. Obi is shooting from the hip… Obi has crossed the line so many times. And, I think that, at this point, he has coming to him whatever he gets. He should manage it” would have been sufficient answer for those not engaged in politics of mischief and subterfuge. But for ARISE reporters “it is a threat to free speech”; for Obi it is an indication of impending crackdown by an intolerant federal government while for former VP Atiku Abubakar, “an alarming disdain for democratic principles.”

I sympathize with Morka who, as a result of “Peter Obi’s allegations has received about 400 documented threats, about 200 of which are explicit death threats messages, individuals have detailed how they plan to harm me—threatening to shoot me, behead me, and carry out other gruesome acts”. But even in spite of the above, I still don’t think anyone has crossed the red line. Free speech is another name for democracy.

The beauty of democracy is that it is not without its democratic ethos which for instance celebrates character. In this regard, the messenger is often the message. Probing the character of purveyors of messages is as important as free speech.

Unfortunately, the common denominator between Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar is opportunism. Atiku Abubakar has moved from PDP, through ACN to PDP, back to APC from where he went back to PDP where he first served as vice president in 1999. Upon his return, he waged war against those who kept the party together while he was shopping for presidential tickets from other parties. And tragically his breach of PDP’s constitution was to put the party in disarray in the run up to the 2023 election.

Peter Obi is tarred with the same brush. He first rode on the back of Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s APGA party to power. After publicly declaring he would never abandon APGA, he jumped boat after his second term to join PDP. He rose rapidly and became Atiku’s running mate in the 2015 but following Atiku Abubakar’s breach of PDP constitution which would have allowed Obi to emerge as PDP candidate in the 2023 election, Obi decided to pull down the edifice on the heads of everyone.

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Obi decided to play identity and religion politics by exploiting the sentiments of his Igbo people that had since 1999 supported PDP to victory. Close to 70% of his six million votes in the 2023 election came from Southeast and South-south populated by his Igbo brethren,

For Atiku and Obi’s infidelity and opportunism, Tinubu’s eight million votes would have been no match for PDP and Labour’s close to 14m votes. Their loss was Tinubu’s gain. Sadly despite being deficit in character, both men still pretend to be part of solution to Nigerian crisis of nation building.

Peter Obi, the Obidients’ best candidate to govern Nigeria, displayed no special skill as governor of Anambra, a state he left as a jungle. As a business man once described as ‘a container economist’ by President Tinubu, all he has told us publicly is that he was a wine importer. And for Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo’s testimonial on him was damning.

I think we must start to interrogate how we got to this sorry path while remembering with nostalgia, the role of Nigerian youths in the evolution of the Nigerian state. While the nation is today being haunted by a mob ready to fight and kill for a man who believes in nothing, we easily recollect how it was that 20 Nigerian law students who in 1920 first proposed the idea of a Nigerian federation patterned after Switzerland to the colonial masters.

While we today have in Lagos some youths who do not behave much differently from the Almajiris of the north, visiting violence and destruction on government and private properties, what we had in the forties in Lagos were youths who organized debates and strategized on how to get rid of the colonial masters.

It is on record that Chief Anthony Enahoro who went on to become one of the best parliamentarians Nigeria has ever produced was an editor of a national newspaper at 22, and that Bode Thomas, the deputy chairman of Action Group who died at 33, was the author of ‘regionalism’ despite his principals’ preference for federalism. Even military boys who did not have advantage of education but joined the military to be able to climb the social lather ended up ruling our country in their twenties and thirties.

January 14, 2025
Manmohan Singh (Sept. 26, 1932 – Dec. 26, 2024)

Manmohan Singh was educated at Hindu College and Punjab University in Chandigarh India. He later went on to St. John’s College Cambridge in 1957. In 1960, he started a doctoral program in Nuffield College, Oxford that explored India’s export performance in the 1950s. After a stint with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Manmohan Singh taught briefly International trade at the University of New Delhi. He joined the civil service in 1972 as Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance and in 1982, he became governor of the Reserve Bank of India, that is, the Indian Central Bank.

According to him, he was surprised in 1991 when the then Indian prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who had succeeded Rajiv Gandhi who was assassinated while trying to make peace in neighbouring Sri Lanka between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority and had been engaged in a brutal civil war that had lasted for years . From these preambular statements, we can see that Manmohan Singh was an accomplished academic, economist and bureaucrat who was drafted into politics by the Indian National Congress at a time the country was going through severe economic crisis and a non-politician was needed to straighten things out. The Indian National Congress Party was headed by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian wife of Rajiv Gandhi and traditionally whoever was head of the Congress Party after electoral victory headed the government as prime minister but Sonia Gandhi felt her Italian origin would be exploited by Indian nationalists and that was how Manmohan Singh became prime minister on the instigation of Sonia Gandhi, the Italian widow of Rajiv Gandhi in place of her murdered husband who had been prime minister of India. .Manmohan Singh was the first Sikh prime minister of India a symbol of the liberal disposition of the Indian Congress Party that was even prepared to make Sonia Gandhi, an Italian lady, executive head of the government of India but perhaps on second thought, demurred and made a member of a religious minority, the Sikhs, prime minister.

He embarked on swift economic reforms that turned India into an economic global powerhouse although critics say there were still hundreds of millions of Indians left behind in a country of 1.1 billion people. One of the mainstays of his regime was internal development of India and reconciliation with Pakistan with which India related with mutual hostility if not hatred leading to constant wars three of which were fought between 1947 and 2004. This was because of border conflicts especially over the ownership of Kashmir. Kashmir and Jammu formed a province inhabited by mainly Muslims but whose pre-colonial ruler was a Hindu maharaja. The agreement partitioning India and Pakistan was based on the principle of “religion of the prince being the religion of the people” and since Kashmiri ruler was Hindu, it did not matter if all Kashmiris were Muslims. This has been the basis of the permanent and recurrent enmity between India and Pakistan. Although Manmohan Singh recognized the insolubility of the problem, he still felt a modus vivendi between India and Pakistan was necessary in the interest of their people who shared ethnic and cultural similarities except in two different religions.

Singh himself was born in Northern Punjab which later became part of Pakistan after the murderous migrations which followed partition of the British Indian RAJ into India and Pakistan in 1947 after independence. Although he did not succeed in the reconciliation of the two most important countries in the Indian sub-continent, but he gave it his best shot especially knowing the two countries were nuclear weapons states and were probably able to use nuclear weapons against each other in the face of defeat and slaughter by the victorious nation.

Singh came into prominence in 1991 as minister of finance after having served as governor of the Central Bank of India. He was responsible for reforming the foreign exchange system, deregulating the Indian economy and systemizing it and opening the vast Indian market to foreign and local investment. As finance minister, he pursued the policy of liberalization which facilitated the introduction of cell phones even though their allocations and those of coal mining licences were marred with accusations of corruption. But there is no doubt that the opening of the over bureaucratized Indian economy created millions of white collar jobs and the emergence of a much bigger middle class in the country of about 1.1 billion people.

As prime minister of India from 2004 to 2014, he presided over a coalition government but with strong backing of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which had ruled India for about 38 years since independence beginning from the first Indian Prime Minister, Jawarlal Pandit Nehru, who was prime minister for 16 years. The fact of a coalition government did not prevent him from bringing in economic reforms that were eventually to leapfrog India to a country whose economy was to be reckoned with that of her giant neighbour and competitor, the People’s Republic of China. This has led to Manmohan Singh being justifiably compared with Deng Xiaoping of China. His reconciliatory efforts with Pakistan came to an abrupt end in 2008 when a jihadist terrorist group, the LASKAR -el TAIBA, based in Pakistan launched a three day assault on targets in Mumbai which killed 171 people. Nationalists in India called for retaliation and bombing the location where the terrorists had their base. The government of Pakistan denied involvement claiming that the terrorists were Indian Muslims who had chaffed under Hindu majority humiliation over the years. Singh remained withdrawn for most of the time when the Indian nationalists headed by Narendra Modi, his successor called for his head. He later argued that a great leader cannot afford to surrender to emotions. Despite the crisis, the Indian National Congress Party which put him in his position was returned to power in 2009. The introverted and quiet prime minister in 2014 said he was no longer interested in heading the government. His exit probably facilitated the rise of Narendra Modi, the unabashed Hindu who was ready to dismantle the liberal religious secular tradition of India championed by the Nehru-Ghandi dynasty and their party, the Indian National Congress for decades with an open claim that India was a Hindu country.

Singh was not a regular Indian politician. He was not even an elected member of the LOK SABHA, the lower House but a nominated member since 1991 of the UPPER HOUSE the RAYJA SABHA. His government achieved what no Indian government had achieved before him, a phenomenal annual economic growth of 9 percent. During his premiership he had good relations with Washington and even Beijing and was supportive of Afghanistan to which he extended economic grants.

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He will be remembered in his country as the man who laid the foundation for modern Indian economy that has catapulted the Indian economy to number three ahead of Russia, Germany and Japan and coming after those of the United States and China. Singh was prime minister in 2009 when BRICS was established linking economic cooperation and coordination of Brazil, Russia, India and China and later joined in 2010 by South Africa to challenge the hegemony of the American dollar in global exchange and trade relations which even though not totally eclipsing the American dollar, is however giving people in Washington DC some headaches..

Manmohan Singh was an important leader of the Commonwealth of Nations and a strong advocate for democracy. When he left government in 2014, he went back to the University of Panjab as professor of economics where he constantly warned Indians not to put populism above democracy for the long term interests of India was in democracy not in what the Indian nationalists called strong government.

I first met him in the summer of 2003 when he was still finance minister. He headed a Commonwealth Secretariat’s committee on pro-poor government in which I had the honour to serve. This was shortly before the December 2003 CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Governments’ Meeting) in Abuja. He supervised a short book we prepared for the Abuja adoption and declaration on pro-poor government challenging the Commonwealth to focus on the poor in their development plans as strategies. I witnessed his simplicity, quiet demeanour and self-abnegation while heading the committee and speaking with the confidence of a man who had managed the economic destiny of over a billion Indians.

When I visited India when he was prime minister in 2004, he invited me to his home for breakfast but which I couldn’t attend because of flight schedule. He left a great impression on me especially while talking about peace in Africa and suggesting coldly that Africa must learn to be on its own and that to expect help from others was unrealistic.

In all we do on this continent and in this country, we must take into account of the realistic advice of this man who knew his onions so to say. African countries should desist from shamefully filing up in Beijing, London, Paris, Washington, Berlin and Tokyo to be cajoled and patronized by the chief executives of those countries.

January 9, 2025