Category: Thursday

I have a feeling that what I am going to write about the South Western part of Nigeria would be true of the entire country. But for clarity, it is better to begin from the particular to the general. I live in Ibadan and in the Redemption Camp in Mowe, Ogun State and I commute between Lagos and Ibadan every week. I also travel regularly between Ibadan and Ado-Ekiti and between Akure and Ilesha. I have also had to travel for research purposes between Ibadan, Oyo, Ogbomosho and Ilorin. The only major axis of the South-west routes which I do not frequent is Lagos-Abeokuta road and Abeokuta-Ibadan road. I had written in the past about the need to connect Sokoto with Badagry which was in the masterplan in road development in this country. If done, this would have relieved the Lagos, Ibadan, Ilorin axis considerably. I am also of the opinion that the Maiduguri-Calabar road needs to be developed in order to ease the transportation of goods from the coast to the North-east. I am also an avid supporter of the coastal route from Lagos going through Warri, Port-Harcourt to Calabar. If done, this will have the effect of the opening up vast areas along the coast for exploitation and development. That belt would provide all the paddy field necessary for the production of rice for the entire country. In short, a comprehensive road development of the country remains a necessary condition for economic development. This is not rocket science; it is what anybody with some modicum of intelligence can understand. If done pari pasu with railway development, this country will be opened up for business. Until this is done, we are just wasting our time. It is a truism that a country that is not in permanent motion is stagnant. In advanced countries, there is usually an integration of all transportation grid involving air, sea, river, surface train, street train, underground train and road network. Anybody who has ever been to Western Europe and the United States would appreciate this point. This is why it is so sad that the only way we move around in Nigeria is by road transportation even though we have two major rivers, Benue and Niger, they are hardly used. Everybody is travelling by road and because of this, the rate of mortality and morbidity on our road is one of the highest in the world.

This preambular statement is an important background against which my discourse on the South-west will be placed. Whether for good or for bad, the major entry points into Nigeria is Lagos whether by air or by sea. Because of this and as a former capital of the country, Lagos remains the hub of transportation network in Nigeria. It does not matter where you live in the country, Lagos plays an important role in the lives of our people. Most of the goods coming into the country come through Lagos and most of the agricultural products exported out of the country goes through Lagos. At least 60% of the air traffic to and from Nigeria has Lagos has its departure or arrival point. It follows therefore that any serious government must keep the transportation lines to Lagos free all the time because every gridlock in terms of movement of goods and people undermines the economy. This is why it is the height if idiocy that there is only one major road linking Lagos to the North and the East and this is the so called expressway from Lagos-Ibadan and Benin. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway built about 30years ago has collapsed because ab-initio this road was not built to carry the kind of loads it is carrying. Since 1999, this road has not been touched by the federal government. As if to rub salt into our injury the road was given to Bi-Courtney on concessionary basis. After three years, the concession has now been cancelled. We are not interested in the reasons for the cancellation, what interests this writer is the fact that thousands of souls have perished in the course of the three years the road was held hostage by Bi-Courtney. It is surprising that the most important road in the country was used as an experiment and a guinea pig in somebody’s fanciful theory of privatization as the mode of economic development. As far as I know, there was no advertisement and no competition before the road was concessioned to the company that has proved unable to do the job. Nigerians, not only from the South-western part of the country but from everywhere are now victims of this arbitrariness. One of the things that amaze one in this country is the lack of scientific basis of policy formulation. Thus we have a situation where the Lagos-Ibadan road linking the South-west to the North is put on the same pedestal as any other road in the country just for the sake of federal character and geographical balance. We forget that this axis of Lagos-Ibadan-Oyo-Ogbomosho-Ilorin-Kaduna-Kano is where more than two-thirds of the Nigeria population lives. Development is about people, it is not about land. This is what our politicians and policy makers should understand. I am for equal and balanced development, for equitable share of development but it must be people based and people oriented. A situation where the money used in building 10 lane express road between Abuja Airport and Abuja city is freely allocated and disbursed while totally neglecting the centres of population calls into question whether planners in this country are sane or absolutely raving mad.

Some have suggested that there is a deliberate policy of neglect, isolation and marginalization of the South-west by this present Federal Government. There is a plausible case that can be made but I will refuse to make it. This is because since 1999 well before this government came into power, the South-west has suffered total abandonment and neglect. The Ibadan-Ilorin expressway was awarded for construction and we were told that funds had been sourced from ADB (African Development Bank). The road itself is less than 150km in fact Ibadan is almost equidistant from Lagos as it is from Ilorin. In these 14 years, it is only a stretch of about 25km that has been constructed on this highway. The state of the Lagos-Abeokuta highway awarded at the same time leaves much to be desired and the road stopped in Abeokuta instead of continuing to Ibadan. The Ibadan-Ife road that was scheduled to continue to Akure, the center of Cocoa production in Nigeria stopped abruptly after Ilesha and even this shortened form of the express road has virtually been abandoned. The Akure Ado-Ekiti road, Akure-Ilesha road, and the Osogbo, Iwo, Ibadan road suffered the same neglect as other roads in South-west part of Nigeria that are federal roads. The policy of neglect if not the policy of President Jonathan must be the policy of the PDP, a policy that started under Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999.

As I stated, I would not want to blame President Jonathan for the neglect of the South-west even though the signs of marginalization are everywhere in road construction and in appointments. Whatever the case maybe, the cumulative decay of infrastructure in the South-west is on the watch of President Jonathan and he has to do something about it. We have a saying in my place that when a baby’s head is wrongly positioned on the back of his mother in the market, it is the duty of any old person to put the situation right. This is what I am doing. My credo is that; if any part of Nigeria is hurting, the whole country suffers greatly. What is good for the South-west would also be good for the South-east and for the much neglected North-east, a neglect that has bred the rebellion camouflaging under the rubric of Boko haram. A lot of injustice has been committed in this country and we need to start making things right for everybody. Redressing obvious neglect in one area, while abandonment and marginalizing other areas is not in the interest of the country. We should embrace the Jeremy Benthamite’s doctrine of ensuring the happiness of the greatest number of our people.

The death of Justice Kayode Eso hit most of us who knew him like a thunderbolt. When a man of his stature dies in Yorubaland, the cry is ‘Erin wo, Ajanaku sun bi oke’ meaning something like an earthquake has struck. The name Eso carries some significance in Yorubaland. In the days of the old Oyo Empire, the guardian or military class was known as the Eso and anybody by such a name in Yorubaland comes from the military aristocracy.

Kayode Eso was of course not an Oyo man but an Ijesha man and it is generally known that Ijesha people are fighters who would not easily surrender to any overbearing force. This was why they and the Ekitis in the Ekiti Parapo Confederacy fought the Oyo Empire under its Ibadan military leaders to a stalemate between 1873 and 1886 and finally until Pax Britannica was imposed on the country in the 1890s.

Justice Kayode Eso trained as a lawyer and attended Trinity College Dublin where he imbibed deeply the Irish scholastic tradition particularly in the liberal arts before studying law. This was why Justice Eso was so well grounded in literature and in the use of the English language. He could have, if he had wanted, become an English teacher with specialization in Shakespeare. He was a product of Ilesha Grammar School and he was very proud of it. He was in Ilesha Grammar School with another great legal scholar, Dr Ajayi former Solicitor- General and Permanent Secretary in Ministry of Justice in western Nigeria. I remember interviewing him when Dr Ajayi gave me his huge and scholarly manuscript for editorial improvement one or two decades ago. There was a particular page in the manuscript that was very interesting to Justice Eso and he asked me in his characteristic way whether the author mentioned the fact that he could not wrestle him down during ijakadi (wrestling competition). The judge was referring to something young people did in their pre-teen and teenage years as a form of recreation and exercise in the villages and the small towns of Yorubaland. As sophisticated and highly educated as Justice Kayode Eso was, he still remembered his roots and against those whom he wrestled. He had his ears close to the ground throughout his life; he loved his native Ilesha and Ijesha land generally.

I know that he was heavily involved in plans of industrialization of Ijesha land. I remember visiting him with my late friend, Professor Biola Ojo during which time he was discussing in details with Prof Biola Ojo who also was a man of means and who had the progress of Ijesha land in his heart about resuscitation of the International Breweries – the only industrial plant in Ilesha.

Justice Kayode Eso, in spite of his devotion to his native land was a Nigerian patriot. In his life, there was no contradiction between a local patriot and a nationalist. He was a good Yoruba man as well as an excellent Nigerian. On returning from his legal studies in Ireland and the UK, he settled down in Jos where he commenced his legal practice before coming to Yorubaland. In other words, he cut his legal teeth in Jos. Jos in those days was a cosmopolitan town with a section called Anglo-Jos where the British Tin Mining Community resided. This may sound rather quaint to many readers but in actual fact, Jos was the only town in Nigeria that was close to English culture because of the presence of many English people who had settled there to make a living and it was among these people that Justice Kayode Eso felt at home. He practiced law in Jos with the likes of Mr Agbakoba, Olisa Agbakoba’s father. Jos in those days was also inhabited by large Ogbomosho community including the present Shoun of Ogbomosho, Oba Oyewunmi Ajagungbade the third. There were other Nigerian communities particularly Urhobo of present day Delta and many others in the business and legal community from Eastern Nigeria and present day Delta area. It was in Jos that Justice Kayode Eso developed his pan Nigerian outlook and orientation. His wife, Mrs. Aina Eso, a lady that has hugely complemented Justice Kayode Eso is from the Niger Delta. It is not difficult to understand why Justice Kayode Eso loved Nigeria so much and why he was hugely disappointed that Nigeria was punching both locally and internationally below its weight. I remember an incident which personally made the revered Justice wonder what was going on in this benighted country. He had a fish pond in his well appointed Villa in Ibadan and nursed the fishes for a long time checking them and feeding them every morning as a hobby. Against all pleading that the fishes were hefty enough for harvest, he kept saying his wife should tarry a little longer. But alas one morning he woke up and all the fishes were gone. Some miscreants had stolen into his compound in the night to harvest the work of his hand. The old man could not believe what had happened. He jokingly said, some people obviously needed the fish more than himself. The Judge felt this incident symbolizes and epitomize the collapse of the moral order in Nigeria.

On a personal note, I want to pay a special tribute to Justice Kayode Eso’s sense of fairness as a judge especially in the turbulent days of political squabbles and recrimination in the old western region. I remember a case which went before Justice Kayode in the early 1966 in which my brother, the late Chief Joseph Oduola Osuntokun erstwhile Minister of Education in Western Nigeria was involved along with virtually the entire cabinet of the late Chief S.L. Akintola the premier who had just been assassinated. The crisis in the Action Group between 1961 and 1962 had been so destructive in Yorubaland to the extent that both Sir Adesoji Aderemi the Governor, Chief S.L. Akintola, the premier and Chief Obafemi Awolowo leader of Action Group and leader of opposition in the Federal House of Representative had suffered huge personal losses. This tragedy eventually ended with Chief Awolowo being incarcerated for treasonable felony. The crisis in the West eventually led to a military intervention in Nigerian politics. It was therefore natural for the supporters of Chief Awolowo to feel triumphant after the January 1966 coup and to use their influence to deal with their political enemies. It was in such circumstance that the entire cabinet of Chief Akintola was hurled before Justice Kayode Eso and many expected them to be dealt with ruthlessly. To many people’s surprise, Justice Eso decided the case rather fairly and freed those who were innocent even to the surprise of those who had expected the worst. I was an undergraduate student of the University of Ibadan at that time and my late brother was in the dock and we were all so surprised about the judicial integrity of Justice Kayode Eso. So when people talk about him in abstract, I can provide life experience of the integrity and humanity of this great Judge. Justice Kayode Eso in later years was very fond of my brother Prof Kayode Osuntokun. As far as I know, apart from the late Justice Olajide Olatawura and Justice Tayo Onalaja, he was the only legal dignitary who sometimes attended the annual lecture in honour of Kayode Osuntokun at the Kayode Osuntokun Auditorium at the University College Hospital Ibadan.

In later years, I got to know Justice Kayode Eso very well and even to know his son Olumide and Olumide’s wife Ronke, Major General Henry Adefowope’s daughter who happens to be my in-law. The Yoruba say that life is like old man river, you never know when you will cross it. At 87, Justice Kayode Eso lived well and lived long. May God rest his soul, be with his wife, with his two children and grandchildren. He has lived an exemplary life and joined the saints in his old age. Even though the situation in Nigeria seems dire, but who knows what the future will bring. Whatever it brings, whether good or bad, Justice Kayode Eso’s contribution to the growth of this country will remain imperishable and his name will be written in gold. Adieu the Cesarus of the legal profession in Nigeria and an Icon of judicial erudition.

‘The new china leadership would have its hands full with domestic problems of how to meet the rising expectations of its people. To the outsider, China appears a homogenous country, but it is not. People in China’s Tibet, inner Mongolia, and the northeast that are heavily populated by Muslims would be as difficult to control in future as they have been in the past’

The Chinese Communist party has now elected a new politburo of seven with Xi Jin Ping as the General Secretary and First Commissar of the Armed Forces. In this position, Jin Ping would be Head of State or President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. His father was one of the leaders of China under Chairman Mao Zedong. In other words, he’s almost a prince of the Communist party. He is known to be a conservative who toes party line and he is far from being a doctrinaire communist. He is a practical politician who is committed to keeping China together and would not brook opposition from anywhere in the country or in the party. He is more relaxed than previous leaders, but beyond this relaxed exterior is an iron will.

In his public statement, he acknowledged that there is a disconnect between party and people and that members of the party are corrupt and that wealth of the country is not evenly distributed. He committed himself to a prosperous China in which everybody shares in the wealth of the nation. He said very little on foreign policy. He did not say whether he would tighten up the hold on Hong Kong or abandon the policy of one China and two-economic systems in which Hong Kong is allowed to embrace capitalism. In any case, one wonders if China today can really be called a communist state, it seems to us outsiders, that what the Chinese practice is a gerontocratic oligarchy masquerading as a Socialist party. Leadership within the party is arranged by the leaders and the people are just faced with a fait accompli to which they must acquiesce.

Jin Ping said little also about Taiwan where more than 60 million Chinese have their own democratic government and unlike before have abandoned the pretence of being a nationalist government waiting to cross over to the mainland to take over from the renegade communists. In the past, new leadership in China would routinely make sabre rattling noise about unification of the Chinese people and referred to Taiwan’s leadership as capitalist running dog. It seems the Chinese on the mainland and the island of Taiwan are now too comfortable making money to allow the little matter of politics to interfere in their economic interest. Millions of tourists are going each way between Taiwan and China and there is massive investment of overseas Chinese money including that of Taiwan in the phenomenal economic development of People’s Republic of China. Obviously, Xi Jin Ping would want this to continue.

The man who does the day-to-day running of China and who would be replacing Premier Wen Jiabao is Li Keqiang. Apart from these two men, there are five other men on the standing committee of the politburo. Not much is known of the seven of them except that they are all mainstream members of the Chinese Communist party.

What happens in China is of global importance. In another 10 years, it is surmised; China would be the largest economy in the world and would have eclipsed that of the United States. China would still be relatively poor in terms of per capita Income because of its huge population of over 1.3 billion, a fifth of the global population. Whatever happens therefore in China would reverberate all over the world. If the Chinese economy dips it would drag the whole world economy down with it. Already many countries in Africa and Latin America that produce a lot of raw materials are now dependent on the Chinese market and for us in Nigeria, that is dependent on the American market for the sale of crude oil and gas, the Chinese market would increasingly become an alternative because of America’s desire to free itself from the stranglehold of oil exporters, particularly those in the Middle East and I believe including also Nigeria.

It should now be public knowledge that America is doing everything to free itself from dependence on foreign energy source. Soon, America would be producing as much oil as Saudi Arabia because licenses have been given out for drilling not only in the Gulf of Mexico, but in Alaska and on the Atlantic Coast and America is also producing a lot of oil and gas from shale and tar sands and parallel development is also going on in Mexico and, Canada, the result of which would lead to continental North America being self sufficient in energy. On top of this, America is also unlike Europe, building nuclear power plants which in spite of its recent problems are a clean source of energy. The upshot of all these for us in Africa and Nigeria is that we would increasingly need the Asian market dominated by China and India until such a time when they too become energy self sufficient.

The new china leadership would have its hands full with domestic problems of how to meet the rising expectations of its people. To the outsider, China appears a homogenous country, but it is not. People in China’s Tibet, inner Mongolia, and the northeast that are heavily populated by Muslims would be as difficult to control in future as they have been in the past; but what would challenge the ability of this new leadership will be in its relations with the United States and Japan; as well as Russia which shares thousands of miles of frontier with China with conflicting claims along the Usuri River area over which they fought a land war in the 70s. It seems China and Russia have agreed to bury the hatchet and to live in peace with one another, but claims over territories are not easily forgotten and this may be causes of conflict and disagreement in the future.

Resource hungry China is locked in claims over uninhabited islands in the South China sea involving sometimes the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and even Malaysia; but the most serious conflict of claims is in the North China sea where the Japanese and Chinese are laying claims to the same islands with different names to the Japanese and Chinese. The Americans are also strengthening their pacific fleet and loudly asserting that they are a pacific nation with interest in the pacific. China is building its first aircraft carrier as an indication of its desire for sea power. It is not likely the United States would allow China to humiliate Japan in the ensuing conflicts over these uninhabited Islands and its resource rich territorial waters. Whatever happens, the future of China would not be secure without positive relationship with the United States which today is the largest market for Chinese goods and it is on this market that Chinese prosperity depends for now. The Chinese are also the largest holders of American bonds and because of this, America is beholden to the Chinese. In other words, there is a symbiotic relationship between America and China. Which means the future of the world would depend on a bipolar relationship between China and the United States, but for years to come, the United States would have an edge over China in terms of power and ability to deploy and project it.