The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • This is your daughter’s body count (2)

    This is your daughter’s body count (2)

    A female celebrity recently celebrated her love for being a “slut” on a broadcast programme. Thus the male interviewer, intoning a slur, called her a slut at every turn until she became uncomfortable and voiced her discomfiture. Having bragged earlier that her family supports her decision to self-identify as a slut and live as such, she suddenly developed a moral sense of things and asked the interviewer why he is unforgiving of a woman with a high body count vis-a-vis a man. Their dialogue ensues thus:

    “Why do you only condemn a female with a high body count?”

    “Because that makes her a slut.”

    “And what does it make you if you are a man with a high body count?”

    “A slut maker,” he said.

    As we condemn the slur intoned by the male interviewer, shall we invalidate the toxic femininity of the “slutty” interviewee? More is the pity that they both enjoy a cult following among modern, “emancipated” youngsters.

    While being male permits no one bragging rights to a reckless sex life, the consequences for a female are often more devastating. Dissenters may argue with their keypads.

    There is a lot to teach our daughters. That chastity is nonnegotiable; it simply makes perfect sense. That promiscuity renders the female toxic, like a garden filled with poisoned fruit.

    Sleeping around projects a lack of morals. And the lack of morals makes no one “emancipated.” It’s neither ennobling nor liberating for a female to stack up multiple body counts, let alone, a girl. It simply makes her a slave in a factory of fluid sharers. Intercourse with her, even in matrimony, is akin to coupling with an emotional cripple.

    This refers to the millions of ‘daughters’ with a choice, the unmarried horde who embrace promiscuity as a sport. Not the percentage left broken by sexual abuse, rape, commercial sex work, to mention a few. Thus the flaming misandrist may stifle her gall.

    A female with no morals may consider herself free today; she may argue that she doesn’t need any man, quoting the married fraudulent feminist, who teaches women never to see marriage as an achievement, in time, she will find herself a broken debauchee.

    If your daughter tells you abstinence and marriage are restrictive, teach her to navigate their humane shoals; help her to appreciate why they have been grounded on human experience through centuries.

    Teach her that the “modern” female with a high body count, will forever subsist as a gymnasium of bodies soullessly masturbating her psyche, until they rupture the membrane of passion she shares with any new partner.

    Teach her that promiscuity isn’t liberating. It isn’t freedom. Teach her never to see men as tools by which she could achieve all her acceptable and inordinate yearnings. A woman who approaches men as tools gets used up, like a tool, till she becomes broken.

    And if she’s smitten with feminism, teach her to project instead African femininity, immune to sullied and biased academia – one that seeks the inclusion of both men and women in nurturing the family against social, economic, and political constraints.

    Teach her to embrace that brand of femininity that complements and humanises the patriarchy. Not the one that antagonises it. Help her understand that beneath the feminist-misandrist’s bedazzling, theorised nirvana, life is a purgatory.

    This minute, misandry cloaked as feminism, eats deep into the contemporary female psyche, like a virus. It infects 13 and 14-year-olds. ‘Modern’ teens at 15 through 20, swim in its slurry. By age 21 through 30, they hasten through various stages of awareness, embracing furry anti-male slogans, weaponising felt and ‘unfelt’ grief into savage animosity towards men.

    Yet they need men to fulfil random impulses thus social media becomes their performance theatre, where they share everything mostly of a sexual nature.

    Once upon a time, a Facebook celebrity articulated the adventures of her soul as she “masturbated” every day. She bragged about her capacity to attain mind-blowing orgasms and denounced the existence of God in the same breadth. She recounted with relish, how she screamed to taunt her very religious siblings and extended family, in the heat of a squirt.

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    She condemned adultery but boasted about flirting with married men. Eventually, she got pregnant by a supposedly perfect hunk, who identified with her misandrist ideology. The latter, she bragged, begged to be with her knowing she could only offer him an “open marriage.”

    Unknown to her, her perfect beau belted out the notes she loved to hear. He was the “liberal, feminist male,” who joined her in scoffing at “chauvinistic men,” online and offline, while raiding her secret places.

    Her gravest mistake was getting pregnant for him. He deserted her in a heartbeat. Now a single mother, she “coaches young girls to achieve their dreams.”

    Like this curious character, many misguided females shop for non-committal sex with random males on social media. This minute, one such character brags about how many ‘oafs’ and ‘scums’ she has bedded in random, passionless sex in the backseat of her ‘personal car,’ on her ‘personal sofa’ and ‘six-foot bed’ inside her ‘personal apartment.’

    If she gets pregnant, she either terminates it or keeps the baby. Either way, she becomes the ‘sapiosexual’ man-hating feminist, who lives by her “terms” and “does not give a hoot what anyone thinks.”

    Innately she craves for someone to love and trust. Outwardly, she seeks solace in bitter, misandrist literature. Someday, she might write a daring, ‘feminist’ novel that gets her celebrated among the herd.

    Beneath the glitter of acclaim, however, she is a weak, needy female craving a man’s love and attention. Occasionally, she might “experiment” in the arms of a fellow woman or girl, a bored housewife or married woman who flirts with her on social media en route to a tryst or two.

    Eventually, the latter find her boring, her touches, gross, and her rant too repetitive. Then they run back to their husbands whom they never deserted for her in the first place.

    Now hovering in her late 30s, she realises that it is only on the pages of feminist literature and misandrist fairy tales that married women ditch their husbands to marry or move in with feminist lovers, no matter how earth-shattering their joint climaxes are.

    Forty creeps on her while she is busy posting anti-male messages on Facebook and Twitter; and penning yet another feminist-lit blockbuster. But where she attains no literary or artistic renown, she simply fades frustrated, into her life’s eternal midnight.

    Eventually, she finds religion and rediscovers sudden wisdom in the scriptures she hitherto pilloried as patriarchal nonsense. She has no more use for tired slogans and banal anger. Most of her peers are now quietly married away and severing connection with her kind. She begins to covet the marital securities and stability she scorned in her youth.

    She tries to live again but it’s too late. She discovers that she had been enjoying for years, her 15 minutes of fame. The truth dawns on her in a moment of eternal damnation. Her orchestra is done playing and it’s time to exit the stage.

    It’s about time we raised our daughters to be so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free. Apology to Kavita Ramdas.

  • This is your daughter’s body count (1)

    This is your daughter’s body count (1)

    There’s a TikTok trend that has haunted us lately. It steals from your mobile phone browser into your subconscious via catchy thumbnails and skits. In the short videos, scores of fresh-faced girls blurt out their “personal truths.”

    Blurring the lines between confession and performance, they casually speak of their “body count”—a term that once would have invoked shame, now brazenly embraced as a badge of honour. The numbers tumble out with eerie nonchalance from the lips of uninhibited, daring Gen Z, in particular: five, seven, ten, sixteen—each count another testament to the erosion of virtue.

    One girl said her body count was “22” and “still counting.” About two or three others listed their boyfriends’ siblings and fathers as some of their random sex partners. In response to their disclosure, the interviewer, equally a bumbling teen or young adult bellows an overexcited “Mad o!”

    In these sordid spectacles, young women calculate their sexual exploits like victories. There is no internal struggle, no hesitation. Just a cold recital of their indulgences, underscored by the approving cheers of their peers.

    The skits get more interesting as the so-called “content creators” become more daring with the “Hit or Miss” videos showing young adult males interviewing females of their age group or younger teenage girls, about the possibility of having random sex with another male respondent. The female checks out the former and instantly decides if he is a “Hit” or “Miss.” Hit means she would hop in bed with him. If she calls him a “Miss,” it means he isn’t her type. If the latter is the case, the interviewer asks if she would settle for him instead. Often, she makes a show of checking him out and says, “Yes.” In about five such sessions, the male interviewer asks if he could pat or grab her buttocks and she responds in the affirmative – and he frantically gropes her.

    The spectacle is a chilling reflection of a society adrift, where the boundaries of shame have been all but erased, and where parental oversight, once the cornerstone of moral upbringing, has disintegrated.

    But times are hard. So, it’s okay to treat morality as a dispensable relic. Ask the apologetic Nigerian. The voice of counsel is stifled by the ceaseless hum of the social media. The prevailing mantra is: “No one has the right to judge,” “Leave them alone; they are only trying to survive. They are not the cause of inflation in Nigeria.” Thus, the rationalisation begins, shielding misdeeds from scrutiny.

    Yet, this descent into moral ambiguity isn’t just confined to a few viral videos. The larger issue lies in how such permissiveness has been woven into the fabric of our daily lives. The rise of the internet has birthed a generation of content creators addicted to shock value. Too many exploit scandal and vulgarity. From the “Hit or Miss” videos to scenes of unbridled debauchery, it’s clear that we have become a society that rewards the profane.

    The situation elicits crucial questions about the homes from which the girls emerged: Where are their parents? Are they privy to their daughters’ activities online? How did they become so permissive of such degeneracy?

    The uninhibited Tiktok vixen and her male enablers are in no way different from the brothel prostitute and her foul-mouthed roughneck pimp. Just as the TikTok vixen flaunts her flesh for virtual applause, so too do our leaders flaunt their corruption without fear of reprisal. Both are driven by the same toxic impulse: the desire for immediate gratification at any cost.

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    Like the rapist, political assassin, ballot robber, kidnapper, and treasury looter, they are the results, not of society’s savagery or sexism, but of society’s absence. They are products of a culture imperiled by the family’s moral collapse.

    Studies by the United States Department of Census and Health, among others, have long found that children that from single-mother households are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 20 times more likely to end up in prison and 32 times more likely to run away from home – than children from unbroken households and single-father households. Single-mother households also account for 70% of all teen pregnancies and 70 per cent of all child murders and filicides.

    The debate has seen both sides of the divide advance aggressive empirical studies and research findings to substantiate their arguments and validate entrenched truths or prejudices. Against the maelstrom of sociological “truths and interests,” Nigeria must urgently commit to a moral recourse – particularly amid a clime in which several  Nigerian fathers have been found to sexually abuse their underage daughters.

    Yet Nigeria grapples with a moral turpitude that has quickened its ruin and complete subjugation to a new wave of what Bulhan aptly describes as metacolonialism – championed by supposedly developed but corrupted civilisations of Europe and America.

    The moral degradation we witness daily is not an isolated phenomenon but rather the predictable result of a society where the family has been supplanted by the allure of instant fame and fortune.

    The morally ambivalent youth is today’s amoral nomad, superbly conditioned by Western education and the media to scorn the native intelligence and wisdom of his immediate society.

    Many morph in real-time into unthinking herds cum agents of colonialism. Hence the preponderance of “liberal” skitmakers,  journalists, writers, teachers, economists, social workers, engineers, and health workers, to mention a few, who function as glorified stooges of degenerate global imperialists.

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

    To prevent its recurrence, we must hinder the social mechanisms that render our youths capable of such. And this can only be achieved through education. The Nigerian school must begin to impart more than money-making soundbites and status-conferring skills. They must nurture the virtues of honesty, discipline, and empathy. Parents, too, must reassert their role as the primary moral guides for their children.

    President Bola Tinubu, while presenting the 2024 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly, outlined human capital development among his administration’s priorities for the upcoming fiscal year. So, the budget placed significant focus on children, recognising them as the most critical resource for national development.

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

    Nigeria needs patriots amply groomed to understand that the most important achievements aren’t measurable by the number of likes or emojis attracted by a viral video of sexual misdemeanour on TikTok.

    The true purpose of socialisation dims in the camera lights and the applause of debauched Tiktokers. It’s about time parents began to monitor their children’s activities on social media – the girls in particular.

    And the reasons are hardly far-fetched. The lust for applause and cheap renown finds more fertile tracts in the psyches of females flaunting their “fleshly assets” in social media’s carnal theatre.

    But while sex and nudity are deemed profitable by millions of girls setting up shop in cyberspace,  time and over again, teenage girls and young adult females have become victims of cyber-bullying and scandalous videos of revenge porn.

  • Afe’s love for Fagbemi

    Afe’s love for Fagbemi

    To Say that the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), is a son in whom the renowned Are Afe Babalola (SAN) is well pleased will be an understatement. Babalola believes in Fagbemi and their father-son relationship did not start today. It began many years ago when Fagbemi used to represent his principal in court. One of such court cases was the Transmission (where is the firm and its owner now?) matter which Fagbemi successfully handled at the Ikeja High Court, sometimes in the early 1990s.

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     After the court judgment, Fagbemi sought reporters assistance to do justice to the story so as to help his then embattled client. Fagbemi has always been a sound and persuasive advocate. Many of us covering the court then knew that it was just a matter of time before he made the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). When the title came in 1998, we were not surprised. He has now added an academic laurel to it, courtesy of his principal’s institution.

    The Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD) conferred him with the honorary Doctor of Law on Monday. Congrats, Dr Lateef Fagbemi (SAN). Indeed, if a man is diligent in his work, he will stand before kings, and not mean men.

  • Who’s afraid of EFCC?

    Who’s afraid of EFCC?

    Former Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) chief and rights activist Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) has an uncanny way of stirring up constitutional battles. Remember what he said about getting 25 percent of the votes cast in Abuja before a candidate can win the presidential election. The Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) and the Supreme Court gave a shortshrift to his contention which the petitioners/appellants borrowed heavily from to prove their cases.The Constitution, the courts held, never envisaged such a situation where the winner must score 25 percent in Abuja in order to become president.

    The 25 percent issue has been laid to rest forever. But Agbakoba is at it again! Curiously, a few days after 16 states went to the Supreme Court over the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), as presently constituted, he thundered over the propriety of its edtablishment law. We are not here to discuss the merit or otherwise of a case that is sub judice. The apex court, which on Tuesday reserved judgment in the matter, is more than capable to do justice to the dispute. Is it really a dispute?

    There is nothing disputatious about it beyond the politics that is at play. The EFCC Act and other related legislations on the war against corrupt came at different points in our life as a nation. The EFCC, in particular, was a child of necessity. It was created to check the excesses of public officers, civil servants and others in every sphere of life. The EFCC is not restrictive in its operation. It is not about going after those in public and civil services alone. Its operation cuts across every gamut of society. This is why operatives of the agency have been seen going after those in oil and gas, banking, agriculture and other fields.

    Some oil marketers have been charged with petrol subsidy fraud running into billions of naira. Also, some bank chiefs, with a few of them losing all the way to the Supreme Court, have been tried and convicted for fraud. They were convicted on the strength of the prosecution’s case. They were not persecuted. Persecution has no place in the laws of our land. This is why an accused person is presumed innocent until proved guilty. The trial of businessmen and other non-politically exposed persons does not generate interest like that of the politically exposed. The reason for this is obvious: they hold office at the pleasure of the people.

    As such, they must be accountable to the people. Whether in the public or private sector, accountability matters. A man that is not transparent cannot be trusted. You cannot hold a position of trust and not expect to be scrutinised. It is in the enlightened interest of any leader to always explain and clarify things in the true sense of transparency. Being accountable as a leader engenders trust and confidence, leaving followers, with no choice than to follow suit. Accountability is not a liability. It becomes one when the leader refuses to embrace it. It is about explaining always to the led the reasons for every action.

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    Giving account should not be seen as a burden. It should be taken as part of the governance process. If a leader can go to the people to campaign, he should also be prepared to render account to them. A true leader, that is a servant-leader, will never ignore the people. He will at every turn, carry them along, by opening up to them. Like the other anti-graft laws, the EFCC Act is aimed at sanitising society to make it a better place to live for the leader and the led. There is nothing to fear about the EFCC law if a person is clean. The person will not go into hiding when he is asked to appear in court to answer the charge against him.

    The law protects everyone.  As Justice C hukwudifu Oputa once said, justice is a three-way traffic. It is justice for the society, the accused and the victims of his action. There can never be one-sided justice, if society must move forward. Our leaders should be mindful of the fact that one day, they will be called upon to give account. That day is around the corner. What they do today will determine how they meet that inevitable day of reckoning. Did the Bible not say that we will die and after death, judgement? So, also it is with the offices we occupy today. We will leave them one day and shall be called thereafter to give account.

    We cannot preempt that future event by seeking to quash the law under which we may be called upon to give account of our stewardship when the time comes. There is nothing personal about any law. The law is for all and it is applied justly and equitably on every person, no matter their status. The 16 states’ challenge of the EFCC Act  is good because there can never be anything wrong in going to court. The court is there to settle disputes between parties, be they individuals, organisations or states.

    Testing a law in court as the states have done is the civilised way to go. People should, therefore, not impute motives to the states’ action. Though, the suit is coming 22 years after the enactment of the EFCC Act 2002, which was amended in 2004, it should be noted that there is no statute limitation against filing the case. If the states have just woken up to the reality of filing the case, they cannot be denied their right to bring the suit simply because the law has been in existence for 22 years. Likewise, people like Agbakoba and Femi Falana cannot be stopped from dissecting  the law.

    Agbakoba shares the states’ view that EFCC is an “illegal agency”. Falana disagrees, saying EFCC was “legally created to fight the miasma of corruption in the country”. Will EFCC live or not after this case? Only the Supreme Court can say. But the point has been made that the fear of EFCC is the beginning of toeing the straight and narrow path for elected officers.

  • U.S. Presidency: American ladies are coming

    U.S. Presidency: American ladies are coming

    In 1966 the Americans released a comedy film that parodies the fear of Russian communist invasion of the United States. It was a huge success that lessened the fear of communist subversion and eventual takeover of America.  Most  well informed people knew there was just no way Russia would have invaded a nuclear-armed United States or vice versa because of the then nuclear deterrence which has guaranteed the peace of the world since 1945 till now and prevented major conflicts between Russia and the United States. Although there has been several proxy wars between them in Korea, Vietnam, Southern Africa and Latin America.

    For the long history of American democracy which only granted the franchise to the women of America after the First World War on the basis that service deserves its rewards, America did not think ladies were fit for election into any office, not even that of a dog catcher!  The possibility of an American woman being voted president was inconceivable. But gradually the ladies of America began gradually breaking the glass ceiling of full American female participation in democracy. The first time this happened was when Elizabeth Woodhull ran for the US presidency in 1872 on the platform of the EQUAL RIGHTS PARTY, this was laughed out of court so to say and even when the black congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm, made her quixotic attempt in 1972, no one took her too seriously.

    But the first serious female entry into possibility of being in line of succession to the presidency was when Walter Mondale in 1984 chose Geraldine Ferraro as his vice presidential nominee. They lost the election probably because the American public was still very conservative to vote for Mondale who was considered too liberal on his own and not to talk of his running with a woman. The Republican Party tested the waters in 2008 when Senator John McCain, a war hero and a known conservative, decided to run with Governor Sarah Palin, a rabid racist ignoramus who had governed the sparsely snow-covered state of Alaska as his running mate. They were roundly defeated by Barack Obama and his running mate, Joseph Biden, the current incumbent president.

    The first breakthrough for the women of America was in 2016 when Hilary Clinton, a Democratic Party senator from New York and the wife of a former president, Bill Clinton with vast experience of government garnered in eight years of almost co-presidency with her husband, became the nominee of the Democratic Party in the United States. She lost a very bitter election which brought Donald J. Trump into the White House and has roundly divided the country since then. Hilary Clinton lost the Electoral College votes in the archaic fashion of choosing the president of the United States, not based on popular vote but votes cast in the Electoral College.

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    We are now faced with the second rerun of a woman heading the Democratic Party and being challenged by an irascible and uncouth billionaire, the same man who defeated Hilary Clinton, Donald J. Trump. The former president is heading a divided Republican Party and firing up the racial and ideological divisions in the United States and threatening fire and brimstone if he loses the election again because he wrongly believes that the election of 2020 which brought Joe Biden and Kamala Harris into the presidency was stolen from him. Substantial proportion of die-hard Republican voters believes him and some have joined him in saying there will be a civil war if Trump loses again. This is a credible threat which lovers of America cannot dismiss as mere bluff and braggadocio. What happened in January 2021 when an irate mob of Trump’s supporters tried to destroy the Congress and kill Vice President Mike Pence and the Speaker Nancy Pelosi is perhaps a foretaste of what an organised mob can do in a country usually thought to be the home of democracy where individuals collectively have more guns than the American military. The country is so hopelessly divided that a few weeks before the election holding on November 5, there is no indication where the political pendulum will swing.

    The election campaign has witnessed a lot of strange occurrences. Trump was shot at while campaigning in Pennsylvania by a young man apparently not happy with his rhetoric and uncouth behaviour while campaigning and talking about the race and sex of opponents of his ambition. Another man followed him to his home in Florida hiding in the bush near his golf course but he was happily, apprehended by sharp eyed security provided by the Secret Service of the United States. One can just imagine what would have happened if these assassins had succeeded. It could have become a signal for racial and political upheaval in the most powerful country in the world with consequent reverberations all over the world.

    American politics is not just a local or domestic issue; they concern the whole world because the United States for considerable time to come will remain a global hegemon. Whatever happens, in the next few weeks, pundits have said that the outcome of the election would be determined by what happens in the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. These are states that in recent times have alternated voting Democratic or Republican in presidential elections and they may do the same this time around. What usually determines which party they vote for may be such issues as right to abortion which seems to matter very much to American sub-urban women who rightly feel they should have control over their bodies and the government has no business in what they do in their private sexual lives.

    Another issue is the question of the economy, particularly inflation which is really a global problem but the average uninformed American thinks he is the only one suffering from inflation. The issue of jobs in the so-called rust belt of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which have suffered from the loss of American jobs to Canada and Mexico and China where automobile manufacturing have moved to because of cheaper labour cost, is a serious issue that may tilt support to one particular party or the other depending on party programmes and promises. This issue is also linked with flood of immigrants coming into the United States and depressing wages and taking jobs from the working class.

    Furthermore, the issue of the place of women in a patriarchal society is an issue in this election. Many Americans still believe that the place of the women is in the kitchen and the bedroom and not as political bosses ordering men around. Even when they are told about Prime minister of India, Mrs Indira Ghandi (1966-1977 and again from 1980 to 1984 when she was assassinated), the German Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005 – 2021), prime ministers of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher (1979 – 1990, Theresa May (2016-2019) and Liz Truss (2022), prime minister Mrs Srimavo Bandaranaike  in Sri Lanka  (1960 – 1994),  prime ministers Edith Cresson in France ( 1991-1992) and Elizabeth Borne (2022 – 2024 ) in France also )and nearby in Mexico where Mrs  Claudia Sheinbaum  has just been elected president in a predominantly conservative Catholic country,  they will simply dismiss it as other countries but not in God’s own country, the United States of America. Sometimes this feeling is reinforced by Pentecostal Christian beliefs about the subservient role of women as a helpmate for the man. Foreign policy takes the last place in decision making for the vast majority of the common man and women in America unless when Trump links foreign policy with the inflation in America and calls for an isolationist policy of “America first”,  forgetting the interdependence of nations in this complex world. 

    There is the issue of the Israeli war on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank of the River Jordan which has now spread to Lebanon and which may eventually spread to the Islamic Republic of Iran which will please the Israeli war-like Prime Minister Bilyaamin Netanyahu who has always wanted America to join him destroying Iran. If his policy matures before the election, it will have ramifying effect on the election one way or the other. If America does not join Israel in fighting Iran, the Democrats will lose the Jewish vote to Trump; if it joins Israel, it will antagonise the global Islamic community including the large one in Michigan which may lead to Kamala Harris losing Michigan and possibly the election. This will be welcome news to Netanyahu who can play Trump on his fingers.

    The election in the United States remains a toss-up between the Democratic and the Republican parties until the American people makes their sovereign decision but if the world were to have a say on who they want to win, it will be Kamala Harris, a well-informed daughter of two American professors, a micro-biologist mother and an economics professor father. Destiny seems to have beckoned to Kamala Harris who is on the cusp of an historical win for the White House.

  • Weep not for PDP

    Weep not for PDP

    But for the injurious effect of unipartysm on our democratization process, I am not sure many would weep for the impending death of PDP, aided in the main by its ignoble media enablers. We all remember its dubious beginning, its real and undeclared goal and  how for 16 years the country was swindled as Obasanjo’s eight years roadmap failed to ‘provide stable electricity, attain agricultural revolution, end massive importation of foreign goods and end  corruption”, just as both Umaru Yar’Adua’s  “seven-point agenda” and Jonathan’s ‘Transformation Agenda’ failed.

    And but for fear of putting our faith in the hand of APC whose difference between it and PDP is that of six and half a dozen, I am not sure many Nigerians would also lose sleep over the death of any of the 18 officially registered  Nigerian political parties susceptible to use for state capture by gangsters.

    For instance, not in any of them can we find a consensus of members on identified values and principles, under a party label (Jinadu).  None of them seems to understand modern political parties as modernizing agents and tried to take a cue from our 100 years history of party formation dating back to 1923, the year Herbert Macaulay’s Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP) took off with defined objectives of seeking a “municipal status for Lagos, local self-government, compulsory primary education, non-discriminatory private economic enterprise and Africanisation of the civil service”.

    Both the NPC and AG that followed had defined objectives.  For the former, it was about  ‘fighting ignorance, idleness and injustice’ in the Northern Region’ and for the latter,  besides its unstated purpose of reducing the influence of Zik in the West,  had a well-articulated manifesto which promised free education, free health, and full employment among many others.

    Sadly, what we today have in the name of parties are  factions of military-groomed new breed politicians with military mind-set of sharing spoils of war or spoils of office, supervised by an oligarchy of garrison commanders who routinely take elected governors hostages. 

    But PDP itself is anything but a political party. For John Campbell, former US envoy to Nigeria, it is “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’’. And empirically, the party validated Campbell’s thesis.

    Let us start with documented facts about the fraud called the unbundling of PHCN, on which PDP’s leading lights including President Yar’Adua, who upon being rigged into office claimed “$10b was spent on the power sector by President Obasanjo, with little to show for it”, agreed on how much it cost them to foist darkness on the nation.

    For former House Speaker Dimeji Bankole, it ‘was over $16 billion’; for the House power probe committee chairman, Ndudi Elumelu, it ‘was  $13b’, while for Gabriel Suswan’s Presidential Review Panel on the NIPP, “the total project allocations/ estimates to NIPP was $10.231 billion inclusive of the $2 billion federal government counterpart funding for Mambilla Hydro Power project”.

    On the fraud called privatization through which Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b was sold for about $1.5b, PDP’s aggrieved members provided all the facts. NITEL, a successful outfit that posted a profit of N53bn in 2002, recorded a loss of N19bn in 2003 shortly before BPE sold it to unqualified Pentascope, an alleged proxy company hurriedly registered only three months earlier with staff strength of six.

    Folio Communications, buyer of the Daily Times had to sell Daily Times assets on Customs Street and in London before it could pay BPE N1.2bn,   the entire Trade Fair Complex was sold to a company for as low as N10bn. ALSCON, built with $3.2b was sold to a Russian firm for $250m out of which it paid only $130m, and that NICON and Nigerian Reinsurance were allegedly bought through questionable deals by Global Fleet Oils and Gas Limited.

    Officers of Bureau for Public Enterprises, BPE, provided level of culpability with revelation that sales proceeds were first kept in commercial banks before transfer to the CBN. Charles Osuji alleging ‘OBJ and Atiku killed the privatization dream’ and Ms Bola Onagoruwa, former DG of BPE alleging ‘Obasanjo concessioned the Ajaokuta Steel Company to Global Infrastructure without recourse to BPE’.

    And to show fraud was a PDP family affair, government that claimed Professor Barth Nnaji was pushed out as a minister because of divided interest said little when Geography professor, Jerry Gana, a PDP stalwart, led a delegation of registered Independent Power Producers (IPPs), to plead with government for import waivers and government participation in their newly acquired private companies.

    And there was no sense of shame among PDP big masquerades:  Senator Bukola Saraki was both fuel subsidy scam whistle-blower and alleged beneficiary, VP Atiku Abubakar was accused by President Obasanjo, himself during the privatization policy; Obasanjo himself corralled  governors and contractors to donating N7b towards building his private library and President Jonathan, following in his  footstep , also collected N7b from the same set of people to build church and recreation centre in his rural Bayelsa.

    Nigerians finally decided to vote PDP out in 2015 when ex-President Jonathan turned himself into an ATM without password word to share money to Obas, religious houses, ethnic militias, and even media houses.

    Except those living in collective amnesia, Nigerians know PDP is responsible for today’s nightmares. Ten years after Nigerians stopped their planned 60 years of brigandage, they have not shown any form of remorse. Out of power, they have continued the war of attrition over sharing of our national assets.

    Unfortunately as it has turned out, APC, another  shade of PDP has failed to make a success of its own eight-point cardinal programme- viz devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care, electricity generation, war against corruption, food security,  integrated transport network and free education.”

     And when APC controlled 65 seats in the 109 seat Senate, 190 of the 360 lower house seats and about 21 of the 36 state governors, it lacked the political will to address the nation’s crisis of nationality.

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    President Tinubu, from the lesson he learnt from his fathers is probably trying to use APC as a tool for elite mobilisation and consensus-building. But today he has three demons to conquer. The response to those who confiscated and mismanaged our national assets throwing millions of our youth out of work, many of his compatriots have argued, is Russia’s Putin’s approach.

    Why are poor Nigerians being collectively punished for the sins of few AMCON debtors including those the body’s lawyers claim ‘live like princes while refusing to repay AMCON debts’? There is also the non-resolution of ‘the national question’. Nigerians want a return to fiscal federalism, the instrument exploited by current gangsters to engage achieve state capture.

    As for the Labour Party, it is an all-purpose vehicle for fickle- minded pretenders to democracy without democratic ethos, shopping for political platform at every electoral season. Its current promoters are the unquestioning angry ‘obidients’, borne out of a hatred which by its nature destructive and unable to make positive contribution to society. 

    But back to PDP’s impending death. If PDP finally implodes, a section of the Nigeria media owned or controlled by PDP stalwarts who set up their platforms for less noble agenda should be held responsible.

     Besides its constitutional duty of keeping the parties under surveillance to prevent their seizure of public policies, the media as agent of socialization has a duty to promote constitutional justice by drumming up support for institutions like INEC and the Supreme Court.

    Besides setting political parties against constitutional justice, these self-serving segment of the media started back in 1999 by giving award after award to PDP and ANPP governors, 17 of whom EFCC found to be men with feet of clay by 2007; most of the bankers they celebrated have been indicted for deploying depositor’s funds to procure properties in and outside the country.

    And their approach is often through ‘News commercialisation’, a strategy that allows information often determined by ability to pay’ is presented to the audience as a social public service news.

    In the 2023 election, they tried to cover up PDP’s depraved past by diverting attention of the public to ‘Muslim-Muslim ticket. After the election had been won and lost, they tried to undermine the integrity of the Supreme Court. And when there was no more common foe to fight, PDP descended on PDP through PDP intraparty feud with an Ikenga Ugochinyere, a minor PDP shareholder, taking on Nyeson Wike, a major PDP investor, both calling for anarchy.

    Of course the media is not an independent arbiter in the struggle for control over our minds. But as Ray Ekpu, veteran journalist once argued, “there must be a way to regulate the practice of journalism to earn the respect of the public”, while PDP and its media undertakers become history through their war of attrition.

  • Fixing admission to higher institutions wrong

    Fixing admission to higher institutions wrong

    Some months ago, without an act of parliament, the minister of education decreed that henceforth admission to higher institutions and to universities in particular henceforth will be for children 18 years and above. There was no reason given for this peremptory decision and it was not subject to debate or respect to the existing situation where each university decided the age limit of students to be admitted.

    In civilised democratic countries, this decision would have been debated and based on experience and logic, but in our case where those in authority usually arrogate all powers to themselves as if they were omniscient and all-knowing in every respect. Yet this ministry had in its files policy on exceptional and gifted children put in place when Professor Jibril Muhammad Aminu, an erudite and brilliant cardiologist and administrator held fort at the ministry of education. There was even an embryonic policy to create special schools for gifted children to facilitate their cerebral development and consequent contribution to the pool of knowledge which the country can tap into.

    As usual in Nigeria, we always try to reinvent the spinning wheel as if we were just beginning in our journey of development. We always have huge budget on construction of things like roads, railways, harbours, buildings, universities, hospitals just anything has to be started from the beginning. There is usually no stock-taking of what exists and how it can be fixed if it is not working. Politicians and apparently their civil servant advisers are not interested in repairs and reforms or refurbishment. This is because of the humongous amounts that would be allocated for new construction and what percentage would be available for sharing and this is what has gotten us to our parlous predicament.

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    I have good news for our minister of education and his advisers. As I write, a 16-year old Nigerian girl, Esther Okade born in 2006 to a mother who is a mathematician, Omanefe  Okade and Paul Okade has  just gotten a PhD in mathematics at the age of 16 in an English university. This prodigy of a child at three years old was solving quadratic equations at six. Esther passed ordinary level examination at age seven and Cambridge University offered her admission to their undergraduate program in mathematics. The parents demurred but enrolled her in distant learning college or the Open University. At that age of 10, she was the youngest university student in England and by 13, she graduated first class in financial mathematics and now at 16, the young girl has gotten a doctorate in mathematics.

    She is also an author, writing books in algebra for children with titles like “yummy yummy algebra” and with the support of her parents, she founded a school in Nigeria’s Delta State called the “Shakespeare Academy” where traditional subjects in the sciences, mathematics, English and liberal arts, ethics, etiquette and public speaking are taught to young children. Her story as an English commentator said has demonstrated that “genius is not age-specific; from solving quadratic mathematics as a toddler at age of three and bagging a PhD in financial mathematics at the age of 16, Esther has told the world that all things are possible if talents are encouraged and nurtured”.

    This is the story of a 16-year old girl in a liberal environment and not subjected to administrative and unreasonable diktat because of hidden political reasons designed to level everybody down rather than pulling everybody up.

    Is it not therefore strange to my readers that in a country where policies are made to cater for slow learning people rather than to extraordinary people, what you get is what we are getting in governance today where we don’t seem to know how to make use of God-given endowment to attain the level of development expected of us as species of Homo sapiens?

    There are brilliant and gifted children and adults everywhere in this country. Academic brilliance is not restricted to any region or ethnic or religious group as some people tend to feel. From my more than 55 years of being in university education I know this. I also know from personal history of my family and those whose paths crossed mine in the past. At the age of 16+ my late brother, Oluwakayode Osuntokun had passed out of Christ’s School Ado Ekiti with distinctions in all subjects but English where he got a credit score. For years to come, this remained the enviable record until George Fola Esan equalled the feat and their performances was shown to us younger people what was possible. The two gentlemen later in life became globally known physicians in Neurology and Haematology at very young g age.  Kayode got all the degrees available in medicine and the prizes in his field climaxing it with invitation to Royal Hammersmith College Hospital as first black visiting professor and subsequently examining in the Royal College of Medicine membership examination. The sterling performance of Osuntokun and Esan was replicated by Jibril Aminu’s performance in Barewa College, Zaria and later in life as a cardiologist. Omololu Olunloyo has done the same thing in Mathematics at a very young age and  graduated in his class as the best student in the entire Commonwealth. Animalu has performed the same feat in Engineering Mathematics in an American university. The country did not wait for slow runners to run at the same speed with these academic heroes.  Life is an individual race and we run at different paces because we are individual subjects in the hands of the grand author of life, the Almighty God. The Imafidon children in England are no less distinguished in their precocious performance as brilliant children. The Imafidon family is said to “be the brainiest family in the world”. It is a family of seven. The first children were twins, Peter and Paula achieving ordinary level qualifications at the age of nine and entering University of Cambridge, while their sister, Christine by the age of 14 had a Master’s degree in mathematics at Oxford University where she was retained as a lecturer. The other children have continued to distinguish themselves in sports and academics usually before expected age of maturity.  If these examples were in Nigeria, they would have been caught in the administrative web of government regulations.

    I am not disputing the fact that maturity and education go together but not necessarily in every case. This is why I am advocating that administrative regulations in the case under consideration have to be broad and flexible. I have no problems with having general policies for admission but it must be advisory in nature and not like a sword of Damocles hanging on everyone.

    If I were a legal professional, I would go to court but I don’t have money to hire a brilliant lawyer to argue the case of those of us who believe government should be an enabler in our lives not a hindrance or hurdles we need to scale over. I asked publicly that Femi Falana the peripatetic public defender should take my case up. I wonder that with all the enveloping problems besetting this government, restraining young people from going to universities at whatever age if they pass the entrance examination, should be the least worry of this government.

  • AGs as governors’ boys

    AGs as governors’ boys

    It Was during the military junta’s era that some senior officers gleefully described themselves as “boys” of the head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, who styled himself as ‘president’. The nation never knew then that he was in love with that title because of his hidden agenda to transmute into a civilian leader under his so-called transition programme.

    It is understandable when soldiers refer to themselves as “boys” of their superiors. It comes with the territory because of the command structure of the military. It is, however, anathema for such to happen in a democracy, where the rule of law and not of might, as the Court of Appeal said in the Amaewhule versus Fubara case, prevails. Democracy promotes equity, justice and fairness.

     No other professional should know this more than a lawyer, who should be the promoter of these virtues. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Many lawyers, particularly those holding political offices, have become the defenders of inequities and all other wrong values. It is worrisome to see these lawyers act this way. The law may be an ass, but a lawyer should not turn to that animal because he wants to please his principal.

    Incredibly, before our eyes, many attorneys-general (AGs) are becoming the “boys” of their governors, thereby jettisoning the demands of their calling to always stand for what is just, right and true. There are AGs at the federal and state levels as stipulated under Sections 150 (1) and 195 (1) of the Constitution.

    Like his counterpart at the national level, an AG is the chief law officer, and not the chief might officer, as many of them are turning into, of a state. As chief law officer, the AG’s duty is to promote law and order, justice, equity, fairness and good governance, as well as ensure that the rights of the citizenry are upheld.

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    Most importantly, he must stand for the rule of law, and compliance with court orders, rulings and judgments. The AG is not his master’s boy, he is his principal’s adviser, confidant, guide and guard. He is expected to play an effective role in governance by acting as a restraint so that things do not tip over. Sadly, the reverse is the case these days. Many AGs act contrary to the dictates of their office. They run down judges and judgments, which do not favour their principals, without any qualms. What is more, they unilaterally declare such judgments not binding, as if they are appellate courts.

    Where they should advise the governor to obey a court judgment, they encourage him to disobey it, with an assurance that nothing will happen. What manner of AGs are these? The people are wondering. Is it in this same country where we had AGs under military rule that stood up to their principals that we are now seeing senior lawyers desecrating the same office? From Edo to Kano to Rivers, their AGs have made caricatures of this revered position.

    These AGs have one or two things to learn from the late Bola Ajibola and the late Olu Onagoruwa, who were federal AGs under military juntas. Ajibola and Onagoruwa were not afraid to correct their principals – Generals Babangida and Sani Abacha, whenever they did something wrong. They upheld the positions of the Bar in everything they did. Onagoruwa, especially, publicly disowned eight decrees enacted by Abacha because they would stifle the people’s liberties. Before then, he had directed the release from detention in May 1994 of Turner Ogboru, in line with a court order. How many of today’s AGs can act likewise?

    Those were AGs in the true sense of the word. They looked military rulers in the face and did what was right. It is unfortunate that under democracy today what we have are lily-livered AGs. AGs who rather than boldly advice their governors to obey court judgments would encourage them to do otherwise because the verdicts did not favour them. The job of the AG is not to do his master’s bidding, it is to ensure that the right things are done all the time. Whether a court verdict favours a governor or not, the AG must have the courage to tell his principal to obey it and then appeal.

    It is unbecoming of any AG to unwittingly tell a governor not to obey a court order. The AG who does this is attacking the Constitution which calls him the keeper and defender of the law. The post of AG is delicate. It requires a person of integrity, gumption, high moral and ethical values, transparency and accountability to run the office. Where any of these attributes is lacking, there will be problems.

    More than any other person, AGs should know that they cannot sit on appeal over any judgment. The right thing to do is to, as lawyers would say, “go upstairs” (higher court). AGs cannot in the process of exercising their right of appeal constitute themselves into authority, and be making wild claims about the judge and the verdict. It must be said here that the AG who cannot look his principal in the face and tell him the truth, the bitter truth about a judgment, is unfit to hold office. AGs are not boys, they are expected to be men of timber and calibre, apologies to Chief K.O. Mbadiwe, of blessed memory.

  • Gowon, the General’s General, at 90

    Gowon, the General’s General, at 90

    On Saturday, which is 48 hours from now, General Yakubu Gowon will be 90. Gowon’s life is one to learn from. At the young age of 32 in 1966, he became head of state. At 41, nine years later, he was toppled and thereafter began a life in exile.

     Gowon has known what it is to be at the top of the mountain and down in the valley. In whatever position he found himself at any point in time, his spirit never wavered. He took everything stoically. At 90, an age that those lucky to attain join the elite and exclusive Club of Nonagenarians, his life and conduct remain exemplary. A life of service and dedication to the cause of One Nigeria.

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     Go-On-With-One-Nigeria, an acronym derived from the first letters of his five-letter name Gowon, was a slogan that resonated around the country during the civil war (1967-70). Some credit certainly goes to Gowon that we are still one today. His three Rs of Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation, which were adopted after the war ended with the declaration of “no victor, no vanished”, in some ways helped in keeping us together.

     Since his return from exile, he has embarked on a mission of peace under the aegis of Nigeria Prays. Gowon’s and Nigeria’s fate seems intertwined. We cannot talk about Nigeria without mentioning him. Gowon has run a good race, with yet many more years to come. He remains a household name not only at home, but across the world. Happy birthday in advance, sir.

  • Faultfinders’ symphony

    Faultfinders’ symphony

    The faultfinder is a curious breed. At the first whiff of roses, he starts looking for a coffin. He is the silent epidemic that gnaws at the soul of the country – more insidious than the crisis of governance and the spectre of economic hardship. He is the proverbial future, now walking with a slouched spirit. Burdened by disillusionment and creeping cynicism, he can ill afford the luxury of dreaming. And therein lies the death of a nation—when its young ceases to believe.

    Cynicism, now pervasive, is cultivated by an unrelenting stream of discontent. Every day, social media becomes a battlefield, rife with the narratives of doomsayers—politicians, activists, and frustrated elites who have been denied the fruits of power. Once silenced by ambition, these voices now rage with venom, spewing defeatism and prophesying Nigeria’s inevitable collapse. Yet, behind their calls for change is a lurking self-interest, the bitter taste of being left out of the corridors of influence. They are neither patriots nor prophets; they are casualties of their own desires. The youth, in their vulnerability, have become their prey.

    Young Nigerians must exercise caution in choosing their role models. It is easy to be swayed by voices that loudly condemn the state of the nation, but not all who decry Nigeria’s failures seek her restoration. Many are simply opportunists in waiting, men and women who will seize power not to heal, but to gorge themselves on the spoils of a broken system.

    Yet, cynicism does not come from the outside alone. It grows within the heart of Nigeria herself. I confess, my love for Nigeria has always been complex. It is not the loud, flag-waving patriotism that ignores our flaws, nor the blind loyalty that sees Nigeria as infallible. Patriotism, notes, Patrick O’Brian, can often descend into the folly of “my country, right or wrong,” or the delusion of “my country is always right.” Neither stance serves Nigeria well. Our love for this country must be rooted in truth—Nigeria is not always right, but she is still ours. To abandon her because life is hard, or governance is poor, is a betrayal of the deepest kind.

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    For too long, we have laid the blame for Nigeria’s struggles solely at the feet of the ruling class. But this is too easy. The political elite did not fall from outer space; they emerged from the Nigerian family – products of our social and moral fabric. To demand that they be better without first addressing the rot in our homes is to expect fruit from a poisoned tree. The Nigerian family, once a bastion of discipline and values, has faltered. The same household that once produced statesmen now nurtures conmen, and the quiet complicity of parents encourages it. We must understand why Nigeria’s redemption must begin at the home-front.

    Yet even amid this national unravelling, I feel a swelling of love for my homeland. It is a love that defies logic, a contrarian affection that grows stronger in adversity. Every new policy that further tightens the economic noose around our necks, every misstep of governance that seems designed to sink us deeper into despair, only fans the flames of my devotion. It is a love born of resilience that clings to hope even when hope seems foolish.

    But not all share this stubborn love. Many have succumbed to cynicism, like the Nigerian father of five who sold all he owned to chase a better life in the United Kingdom. His dream, like so many others, dissolved in the cold reality of a foreign land. He lost his family, his wealth, his dignity. In the end, he died alone, a victim of the cynicism that alienated him from his homeland.

    Cynicism has also driven the exodus of the Nigerian elite, many of whom have relocated their families abroad only to find that the grass was no greener on the other side. Even the very leaders entrusted with the future of our nation have abandoned it. Their actions speak louder than their words: they do not believe in the Nigeria they govern. That is why they relocated their families abroad. And so, the rot spreads. Cynicism pervades every social circuit, from the political arena to the marketplace, until it becomes the air we breathe.

    This culture of despair has even strained personal relationships. I recall the story of Olumide Adio, a 64-year-old man who once lived like a king in his suburban Lagos domain. He had built an empire from the ground up, with a thriving school and a fish farm that sprawled over several plots. His life was one of fulfillment, until the lure of the West tugged at his family. He sold everything—his school, his properties, his legacy—on the promise of a better life in Canada. But in Canada, his fortune evaporated, and with it, his family’s happiness. His wife, once a partner in his success, became his superior in the new world, out-earning and outmanoeuvring him in their new life. The balance of power shifted, and Adio found himself reduced to a bitter shadow of the man he once was. His story is a cautionary tale—one of many—about the dangers of placing faith in anything other than the land that birthed us.

    But why do we, as Nigerians, believe that our salvation lies anywhere but here? Cynicism has taught us to distrust not only our leaders but ourselves. It tells us that no matter how hard we work, how much we sacrifice, Nigeria will always fail us. But this is not true. The grass is greener where you water it, and if we are ever to see Nigeria flourish, we must begin by nurturing it ourselves.

    Cynicism is a disease of the spirit, a coward’s refuge from the pain of disappointment. It allows us to stand on the sidelines, jeering at the efforts of others, while we do nothing. It convinces us that the game is rigged, that our efforts are futile, and that change is impossible. But this is a lie. Change is hard, yes, and progress slow, but it is not impossible. Cynicism will not topple corrupt leaders or fix our broken systems; only action can do that.

    What Nigeria needs now is not more cynicism but progressive patriotism. We must hold our leaders accountable, yes, but we must also believe that they can be better, and that we, as citizens, can help them rise to the challenge. We must push back against the narrative of hopelessness, and instead, become part of the solution.

    To those who would rather flee than fight for the soul of Nigeria, I say this: cynicism may shield you from disappointment, but it will never bring you the fulfillment that comes from building something greater than yourself. Nigeria is worth fighting for, not because she is perfect, but because she is ours. And in the end, it is only through our collective belief, our unyielding faith, that we can turn the tide.

    We must trust that this is not the end. We must believe in Nigeria’s potential, not as a hollow dream, but as a future we can shape. Cynicism is easy, but faith requires discipline. Shall we now choose faith over despair? Shall we believe that, despite everything, Nigeria can rise again? And with that belief, lace passion to enduring purpose?

    Nigeria is our home after all. And she is worth saving.