The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • A tale of two elders

    A tale of two elders

    Go-On-With-One-Nigeria. This slogan was popular during the civil war. It became a thematic and not a battle cry, of sorts, as the man from whose name the slogan was coined did all he could to ensure that the country remained united, war or not. Unity in war? What an incongruity! It is hard to believe that Gowon, he needs no introduction, was still talking of unity when soldiers were shooting and killing themselves in the war front.

    GOWON is not an acronym. It is a name that we all know so well. Yakubu Gowon was head of state between 1966 and 1975 and it was his lot to see Nigeria through a war after the collapse of the Aburi talks in Ghana. Gowon did not want war, but he was left with no option after all his efforts to prevent one failed. Little wonder that at the end of the bitter enterprise, he declared that there was “no victor, no vanguished” and the process of reconstruction, reconciliation and rehabilitation (the 3Rs) began.

    The process is painfully, still on, 53 years after the war and long after the nation should have put the episode behind it and moved on to greater things. Rather than move forward, we keep pulling ourselves backwards with our religious, tribal and political differences. Nothing shows these differences more than the outcome of the February 25 presidential election. With 18 days left to the inauguration of the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), many of our leaders who should be seen calming frayed nerves are the ones stoking the fire. 

    Agreed that in politics we cannot share the same beliefs and philisophy, but a line is expected ro be drawn where elections are concerned. In elections, whether we like it or not, there must be a winner and there will be many losers, depending on the number of contestants. The bigger the field, the larger the number of losers. There can never be two winners at any time, there will only be one. Although, losing is difficult to swallow, it is still part of the game. So, if a contestant can celebrate victory, if he wins, he should be ready to accept defeat too, if he loses.

    The bile spewed over the February 25 poll is too much. Even, if the political class, particularly the contestants are ready to let go, the way many in the society, who should be peacemakers are taking things is not helping matters at all. These people abound in every segment of the society. Sadly, those in the clergy whose main job is to preach the gospel and the love of Christ in a situation like this have become the cheerleaders for one of the candidates and are openly rooting for him.

    I have nothing against that as the clerics have the right to support any candidate of their choice. But what is irksome is when they delve into areas they know little or nothing about. With the election dispute now before the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC), it goes without saying that we should all be mindful of what we say. But, hey! This is not the case. It is now that many are oiling their guns to shoot. They have suddenly become an authority in law, wondering why the president-elect should be sworn in when his victory is being challenged at the tribunal.

    These ‘experts’ are talking as if this is the first time in the nation’s history that we are confronted with this kind of situation. It is not. We had similar cases in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2019 and in none of these situations did those commenting now ever come out to say “do not swear in the president-elect until the cases at the tribunal are done with”. What then can be made of their positions today? Are they genuinely motivated by love for their country or are just being partisan?

    If there was nothing wrong in swearing in the presidents-elect in 1999 (Obasanjo), 2003 (Obasanjo), 2007 (Yar’Adua), 2011 (Jonathan) and 2019 (Buhari), while cases were pending against them at the tribunal, what then is the rationale for demanding that the president-elect in 2023 (Tinubu) should not also be so treated? There is no precedent for the position that people like Catholic Archbishop Emeritus John Cardinal Onaiyekan are pushing that there is no sense in swearing in the president-elect while petitions are pending against him at the tribunal.

    If it made sense for those elected into the same position before him to be sworn in, in their own time, why should President-elect Tinubu not enjoy the same privilege now? After all, as the saying goes, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The justice and logic of the matter are not in not swearing in the president-elect on May 29, they are in allowing him to take the oath of office like others before him did, pending the outcome of the cases at the tribunal. Anything short of this is a breach of the Constitution which allows the president-elect  to enjoy the fruits of his victory until the final determination of any case against him.

    The election may not have been perfect. There is no perfect election anywhere in the world, anyway. But you do not cure the so-called imperfection of the February 25 poll by denying the president-elect, by hook or by crook, the right to take the oath of office on the due date. That historic date is May 29, which is just 18 days away. Onaiyekan and others may feel otherwise, their feelings will change nothing. Only the tribunal now has the last say on the February 25 election and until it gives its decision one way or the other, it will do well for us all to allow the Justices to do their work without distractions.

    As General Gowon advised in Abuja recently: “we need to allow the Justices to engage in their deliberations and come up with their decisions, and as the public, to be humble enough to accept their decisions as final… I think this is very important at this stage in view of the post-election litigation now going on. Let us give the judiciary the opportunity to do their work and let us accept their decision as it is”. This is the way to go and the soldier-statesman could not have put it better.

    I doff my hat to the uncommon General for his statesmanship. His intervention is coming at the right time. Having seen our country evolve over the years, Gowon has spoken as someone who played and is still playing a leading role in its evolution. It will do well to listen to him. All those shooting from the hip and calling for the suspension of the May 29 inauguration should, therefore, sheathe their swords to watch and wait for what happens at the tribunal.

  • Beyond fantasy

    Beyond fantasy

    Fantasy is escapist and that is its grandeur. The fantasist sees reality as his captor thus his desire to escape. But the paths to freedom unspool, like a hypnotic daydream, in the end.
    Yet Nigerians live their fantasies. Wrapped in their carnal shell, some wield their imagination like a shield; some swing it like a sword – all fencing off a universe of realities.
    Fantasy has uses beyond viewing life through the wrong end of a telescope; it enables you to laugh at reality, argues Seuss.
    In Nigeria, fantasy is the hovel many run into, to escape reality’s tedious pangs. We covet distractions. Life is hard thus many would retreat to a world of magic and lies, the type celebrated on breakfast TV, political and pornographic reality shows.
    We live for illusions and covet the spectacle of shadows cast on the walls of our minds, like the cave dwellers of Plato’s Republic. In The Republic, Socrates explains that the cave represents the world revealed to us only through the sense of sight. The ascent out of the cave is the journey of the soul into the region of the intelligible, and it requires that the enlightened mind endures four stages of transformation.
    The first involves his imprisonment in the cave; that is our fascination with materialism and our world of illusions. The second involves his release from chains; that is, our contact with the real, sensual world. Third, he makes his ascent out of the cave; that is, our flirtation with knowledge and the world of ideas. Fourth, he finds his way back into the cave to help his fellows while wrapped in a beam of light.
    But what if the supposedly enlightened mind could only deign his fellow cave dwellers shiny, grey beams resonant of darkness? What if, like the sullied press, the shady revolutionary and corrupt oligarch, he comes shining in brilliant spokes of ambiguity?
    The process of progressing out of the cave is about getting educated and it is a difficult process requiring assistance and sometimes, force. This encapsulates the struggle involved in acquiring beneficial education or ridding a country of dark tyranny. The allegory of the cave intones our struggle to see the truth, to be critical thinkers.
    Millions of Nigerians would resist tyranny if they weren’t enslaved to tokens. The struggle for freedom is often a painful experience. Dreams die and lives get lost, for instance, as Nigeria flounders to insecurity and misgovernance.
    Against this backdrop, the person leaving the cave may question his beliefs whereas the people in the cave simply accept what they are shown. They rarely question the reality doctored to them.
    The allegory of the cave shows us the relationship between education and truth, bondage and freedom. The battle for freedom and its sustenance is, however, best prosecuted by men and women of catholicity of will, higher learning, and culture. I speak of true patriots and statesmen, ambassadors of Nigerianness and native intelligence. Have we such patriots? Have we such men and women of deep culture?
    The most pernicious aspect of our plight is the disintegration of our cultural and moral complex. A land without both is dead to feeling; it becomes prone to rape and colonisation by cultural sovereigns.
    The history of the world pulses with subtle and bodacious seizures of sovereignty by global superpowers, who dominate the ‘third world’ through cultural, political imperialism. The latter often succeeds the former, where they aren’t launched from twin barrels of an imperialist shotgun.
    While it is fool-hardy to categorise the world into first, second, and third worlds, such specious and flawed taxonomy of nations – perpetuated by the media, INGOs, and the academia – facilitates easier recolonisation of poorly governed, impoverished nations of Africa and the Middle East.
    Yet nations of the so-called ‘First World’ are nothing but varnished tombs of the imperial greatness they hitherto symbolised; scared by their imminent collapse, they craftily recolonise Africa, in particular – plundering her bowels to sustain their fading economies and social systems.
    Having reclassified Africa as the ‘third world,’ they lay siege to the continent, plundering her resources; it’s a familiar plot in which Africans’ greed and ignorance lay the continent open to pillage and trans-generational slavery.
    Nigeria’s lack of a humane, visionary leadership, for so long, rendered her an unbidden offering on an altar of imperialist vultures.
    New President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu must take purposive steps to liberate the country from predatory superpowers and their conspirators among INGOs and international lenders.
    Nigeria must rejig her cultural foundations and moral complex. She must rise from her knees, and quit sucking the rusted end of the wrong spigot. The result of such endeavour would excite a social re-engineering built on character mending and economic restoration in consonance with our peculiar strengths and weaknesses.
    Restoring our cultural dominance would facilitate easier salvage of our society, particularly the engine wheels of our industrial complex. China, Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Sweden, among others, attained progress by founding their governance on a cultural experience indigenous to them.
    Nigeria, however, encounters her nemesis in materialism – the wild pursuit of status. A large percentage of the business and political elite live on ill-gotten wealth. Their lives are funded by stolen money and beastly monopolies facilitated by heinous social and political contracts.
    The middle and the working classes contract as they struggle to maintain membership in the informal social castes imposed upon them by a raptorial ruling class.
    The general run of the masses supposedly dissent but many do so without real awareness of the actuality of forms that define their existence. Plato’s allegory of the cave was meant to explain this. In the allegory, he likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. Plato’s allegory speaks to our individual and collective fate as a nation.
    For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge thus to train someone to manage a business account for PWC, for instance, is to educate him or her in skill. To train them to debate the ethics of a business venture is to educate them on values and morals. A culture that disregards the vital interplay between morality and power writes Hedges, condemns itself to death.
    Such existential truths are scorned by the modern fortune hunter. This disconnect subsists across professions, government, and academia. Nigerian economists, for instance, chant elaborate theoretical models yet know little of how their fancy, soulless economics impacts rural poetry and suburban lives.
    Our education and social systems must quit churning out such products of a cultural void, casualties of a system that produces graduates to serve the corrupted system; individuals who have been taught to cheat the system and applaud theft as a shrewd corporate strategy.
    The true purpose of education must be to make minds, not social cannibals. It must be divorced from a system that bullies the populace to pacify and please authority.
    En route to the 2023 elections, we hoped the process would furnish us with patriots capable of leading Nigeria’s charge back to rebirth. We hoped to elect the aspirants who had proved their mettle in private and public service.
    In four years, we would know if we chose the ones whose antecedent excite the fervent tribute of a cheer, or those whose past and present incite the passing tribute of a sigh.

  • Abiodun Olayinka Osuntokun: 20 years after

    Abiodun Olayinka Osuntokun: 20 years after

    My birthday is the 26th of April. I always dread the coming of my birthday, not because of the fear of adding another year to my life, but because it always reminds me of the date my wife passed on.

     I always remember her calling on my daughter, Tosin, from her sick bed to buy a card for her for my birthday.

    I also remember telling her that it was the least of my worries and letting her know how unimportant my birthday was to me seeing how sick she was. The last card she gave me was followed by her death a week later on the 3rd of May 2003.What a dark and terrible day!

    What happened to my wife changed my life forever. She was just 55. Our children were going through university and were scheduled to graduate one after another. She and I had planned that when our children would have gone through college, we would take out time to go on honeymoon on a cruise ship because when we got married, we were students without much spare money to think of the traditional honeymoon.

    I was finishing my PhD in Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, while my wife was in her second year of a B.Sc. degree in the Sciences. She had had to change from Pharmacy, which was reserved for students coming from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

    She had moved from the then University of Ife to join me in Canada at a very tender age. She sacrificed her career of becoming a pharmacist to join me in Canada because of the love we shared. I loved her intensely, almost insanely, if I am to be honest.  Some people said I was too possessive! I plead guilty to that charge. She too loved me very much, and she always made me know this in her inimitable way.

    I met the girl who became my wife for the first time in a multitude of more than a hundred thousand people. We both came to Apapa wharf in 1964 to welcome relatives returning by boat to Nigeria after the completion of their studies in the United Kingdom. I was welcoming a brother while she was in a party welcoming a cousin.

    Unlike today, Nigerians returned home by boat after the end of their studies abroad. Somehow, the Almighty made me meet this adorable girl by divine arrangement or accidental occurrence. As soon as I met her, I covenanted with God that if she agreed to marry me, she definitely was the person I would marry. Imagine me saying this about somebody I had never met and did not know and was not sure she wanted to have anything to do with me. 

    This is why I have always felt all marriages were ordained by God. I was very shy then, and did not usually talk to girls because our educational system ensured girls went to girls’ schools and boys did the opposite and the two must never meet. Our relationship with the opposite sex was rather adversarial.

     I was in my second year at the University of Ibadan, and my “dream girl” was in high school at Saint Anne’s School, Ibadan. To cut a long story short, we courted for almost five years before we got married.

    We got married in Canada in 1969 and when I finished my PhD in 1970, I moved to the University of Western Ontario, where I was appointed Assistant Professor to teach commonwealth studies. I had to move my wife to my new university to finish her studies. By this time, we had had a daughter, Fola. Since my job was to fill the gap created by somebody who went on Sabbatical leave for a year, the university was not able to keep me, so I went to the University of the West Indies in Barbados, leaving my wife behind but carrying Fola, my one-year-old bundle of joy with me to Barbados. Later, my wife joined us there.

    We could have either permanently settled in Canada, or in the West Indies, where I had bank credit to buy a house, but we did not because we were eager to come back home to our parents, me to my mother, and my wife to her mother and father, as it was in those days, because parents never wanted their children to be out of reach and touch for too long.

    We returned home in 1972, and I was part of the young academics who founded the University of Ibadan, Jos campus. From that time until 2003, we had a blissful marriage, with one year spent apart when my wife was trying to take a postgraduate diploma in Library Science at the University of Ibadan while I was in Jos.

    We had our own share of inadequate medical services which led to two premature deliveries. God, however, blessed our marriage with four children, now adults, namely, Folasade, Oluwatosin, Oluwaseyi and Yewande. We spent about nine years in Maiduguri and Lagos working at universities, and close to nine years abroad in Canada, the USA and Germany doing what I will call “national service.”

     When we returned to Nigeria, she decided not to work for government, but for God, as she put it, as a non-stipendiary pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God where she was the founding pastor at Jesus chancery No 1 Awolowo Road Bodija Ibadan in 1998. She was consumed with the work and she had no time for any other thing.

    In order to avoid trouble, I tagged along with her in the work of God that my wife was doing. As the Yoruba people say, the shell of a snail follows the snail wherever it goes! It was while there that she began to struggle with bad health until we went to Dublin, first in 2002, and again in 2003, where her second daughter was a medical doctor. I did not know the nature of her illness. She was being treated for malaria locally here in Nigeria. It was in Dublin that I found out how serious her ailment was. She had surgeries, but in the end I lost her. I could not believe it.

    Her last weeks and days made me reassess the meaninglessness of human struggle. I watched the beautiful angel I had married go down the slippery slope to death, and I could not do anything about it, and all the doctors and their equipment and their goodwill in the teaching hospital in Dublin could not save my wife. She and I waited for her death to come, and it came like a thief in the night. When she breathed her last breath, the beauty of the past returned with freshness to her dead body. I had never experienced the agony of death so closely and so intimately before.

    I got all kinds of advice about how to move on. But getting married again was not easy, and those who genuinely loved me and advised me to do this could not understand.

    Some even said, rather darkly, that if I did not have a woman as a help mate, my life would be cut short. It is now 20 years and I am still alive! Love is irreplaceable, and only those involved can understand the pain in the heart of a widow or widower.

    I see my wife in the physical appearances of my children and in their mannerisms, and I am consoled by that fact. I also believe in the Bible that because my wife was a believer in the sonship of Jesus she will live forever despite her physical death. I know I will see her again when God calls me. For now, life goes on even though life has not been easy in these 20 years of me flying with one wing instead of two.

  • Beyond triumph

    Beyond triumph

    There was a furtive, disciplined cadence to his accent, which seemed a tad too serious for the event. But his folksiness pretty much reappeared as he began his inaugural address. President Muhammadu Buhari’s actual tenor was unmistakably formal, low in rhetoric but partial to political grandstanding; there was no harrumph to it.

    Miles away, passersby at a local electronics shop in Agege, Lagos, stayed glued to multiple TV screens showing the event. They seemed too eager to catch a glimpse of history as Buhari delivered his inaugural speech at the Eagle Square, in Abuja.

    About halfway through his speech, a middle-aged man intoned quietly, what seemed to be on everyone’s mind: “This is the change we voted for. Buhari should heal our pains” – not in those exact words in any case.

    President Buhari is hardly tone-deaf. His inaugural speech as President, Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces addressed Nigeria’s major afflictions: “With depleted foreign reserves, falling oil prices, leakages and debts the Nigerian economy is in deep trouble and will require careful management to bring it round and to tackle the immediate challenges confronting us, namely; Boko Haram, the Niger Delta situation, the power shortages and unemployment especially among young people,” he said.

    It was reminiscent of United States (US) President, Barack Obama’s “We are the change that we seek,” bromide. “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody… There will be no paying off old scores. The past is prologue,” said Buhari in shinier poesy.

    Buhari’s speech, no doubt, resonated the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s ‘Change’ ideology. Eight years after, several Nigerians dismiss his inaugural gospel of ‘Change’ as a corny sound bite. Several others accuse Buhari’s critics of desperate cynicism; certain positives can be deduced from his outgoing government, they argue.

    And to assert these positives, the outgoing presidency has released a 90-page ‘Fact Sheet’ highlighting the achievements of President Buhari’s administration in the last eight years. In a statement issued by the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Femi Adesina, the presidency listed the 37 bills signed into law, the 12 executive orders, numerous infrastructure projects, fiscal reforms, and the bilateral agreements, among the current administration’s achievements since 2015.

    The bills include the 16 Constitution Amendment Bills – Business Facilitation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2022; The Defence Research and Development Authority Act, 2022; Nigerian Copyright Act, 2022; National Health Insurance Authority Act, 2022; Nigerian Startup Act, 2022; Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, 2022; Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Bill, 2022, which repeals the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 and the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, which repeals the Terrorism (Prevention) Act, 2011 as amended in 2013.

    One glaring failure of the Buhari administration, however, is its inability to resolve Nigeria’s electricity problem despite its significance to socio-economic development. There was anticipation that he would neuter the cabal controlling and profiting from the importation of fuel, generators, and other alternative power sources to the detriment of millions of Nigerians.

    Buhari was expected to decentralise, deregulate and privatise the power sector, opening it up to healthy competition. Recall that his party promised to triple power generation to 12,000 MW by 2020. He was expected to resolve the problems of the oil and gas sector and the controversial subsidies paid to fuel importers who bring in petroleum products because of a lack of functional refineries.

    The Buhari administration promised to transform the infrastructure in Nigeria’s power sector. The promises conveyed through its campaign manifesto tagged “the next level road map” were in four broad categories—generation, distribution, off-grid and rural electrification.

    The administration failed to fulfill its promise to generate 1,000 MW of electricity yearly, and generated capacity reduced by 263 MW in 2020 and 925MW in 2021.

    However, it scored admirably in off-grid and rural electrification. For instance, five out of the nine promised universities have seen the commissioning of solar-powered energy and recorded over 11,000 electricity connections through mini-grids.

    Against the backdrop of these realities, new President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) faces an onerous task leading the country. He has the next four years to actualise his gospel of “Renewed Hope.” Immediately after he is sworn in as President, Tinubu must contend with intense pressure and anticipation of progress from the citizenry.

    Yet, there is something just a wee bit creepy about the citizenry’s messianic expectations of Tinubu’s leadership and its repudiation by his bitter critics – all in one breadth. It resonates an unrealistic hankering for quick-fix solutions by the former and a relentless doomsday cynicism from the latter.

    Nigerians anticipate a miraculous recovery from hardships foisted on the country through maladministration, lethargic policy governance cum outright failure, and institutionalised corruption. These anomalies have been entrenched in the system by successive military and civilian leadership since Nigeria’s independence.

    With severe socioeconomic, security and political issues plaguing the states, President-elect Tinubu and his cabinet face an uphill task of rebuilding and healing the nation.

     This is a cross that he must bear. Patronising segments of the citizenry believe he must have decided on a road map for resolving the country’s major afflictions and thus would hit the ground running.

    President Buhari said last October that he would end the controversial fuel subsidy in 2023. Thus in this year’s budget, the federal government set aside N3.36trn ($7.5bn) for petrol subsidy until June. According to the NNPC, the government spent N2.91trn ($7bn) on petrol subsidies between January and September 2022.

    Tinubu is expected to implement the subsidy removal, something he described as “anti-poor” to Kaduna-based Freedom Radio in early January and promised to “re-channel the money to the people who truly need it.”

    But can Tinubu ever fully deliver the prosperity he promised? Or would he simply gift Nigeria yet another semblance of growth from the margins?

    Pre-election, a recurring theme in his manifesto was his intention to build a new, prosperous country anchored on an enduring economic rejuvenation drive. Titled ‘My Vision for Nigeria,’ Tinubu promises in the document, “A vibrant and thriving democracy and a prosperous nation with a fast-growing industrial base, capable of producing the most basic needs of the people and exporting to other countries of the world.”

    He promised the citizenry access to all their “basic needs, including a safe and secure environment, abundant food, affordable shelter, health care, and quality primary education for all. A nation founded on justice, peace, and prosperity for all.”

    From his inauguration, on May 29, over 200 million Nigerians would expect a magical turnaround of the country’s fortunes as well as their individual and collective fates.

    There is certainly much to be done as the masses have outgrown the pageantry of his hard-fought victory. President-elect Tinubu staged an upset none of his rivals envisaged. Because of him, the 2023 elections unfurled like the greatest show on earth.

    In Tinubu, many who despaired have found a new champion, others a new foe. Frustration has given way to excitement and excitement to manifest trepidation as the ongoing transition winds down to the May 29 handover of power.

    Going forward, Tinubu must get it right with public appointments, policies and his relations with the opposition. And having wooed the electorate with a melody of prosperity, Nigerians are eager to see the dividends he promised manifest in their lives.

    Right now, they fasten their fates to his gospel of “Renewed Hope.” Some with infectious enthusiasm, some with curious resignation.

  • As more commuters die on Lagos-Abeokuta Corridor…

    As more commuters die on Lagos-Abeokuta Corridor…

    The tragedy of the Lagos-Abeokuta corridor transcends language. Its lurid narrative of bad roads and commuter deaths, ghostly law enforcers and traffic abuse, resonate a tragedy so overpowering it incites a torrent of feelings.

    The calamity finds expression in the fate of the unidentified motorist who was killed at 9:30 am, on Thursday, March 9, 2023, by a commercial bus driver speeding against the traffic (plying wrong-way) around Meiran, Lagos.

    The victim, who drove a Honda Civic car, sustained a serious neck injury and died instantly in a pool of blood. Confirming the incident, the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), stated that a Volkswagen commercial bus driver with registration no EPE 964XX while driving against the traffic at high speed, collided with a private car, Honda Civic EPE 666 BC around 9:30 am.

    The LASTMA spokesman, Adebayo Taofiq, said the agency’s officials who were first emergency responders, handed over the corpse to his relatives who came out from the estate.

    It is noteworthy that the driver of the commercial bus took to his heels immediately after he killed the motorist. Although his vehicle and that of his victim were handed over to the police, he was never found.

    Such tragic incidents are familiar episodes along the dangerous corridor and bypass connecting Lagos to Ogun State.

    Just last week, a caterer and mother of three was crushed to death by a reckless driver at a U-turn bus stop, while she tried to fulfil lunch orders at a bank across the road. Her mangled corpse was delivered to her shop on Adeaga Street a few minutes afterwards. Her widower and three children are yet to recover from the shock of her grisly death.

    Residents and commuters along Abule Egba, Agbado Kollington, Dalemo, Akera, Ijaye-Ojokoro, Meiran, Agbado Kollington, Amje, Ajegunle, and Tollgate, to mention a few, have to deal with such grisly occurrences every day. They continually lament the deplorable state of the Lagos-Abeokuta highway linking their inner dirt roads.

    More worrisome is the complete breakdown of traffic law and order along dangerous routes. Commuters flagrantly flout traffic rules on both sides of the dual carriageway; they ply the wrong way, and face oncoming traffic at full throttle while LASTMA officials turn a blind eye.

    It is disheartening to see LASTMA officials ignore motorists, commercial bus and truck drivers in particular, as they ply the wrong way and speed against the traffic in reckless abandon. This has oftentimes resulted in ghastly accidents and avoidable deaths. Motorists, however, blame the anomaly on bad roads. They accuse the federal government and affected state governments of abandoning them to a gruesome fate.

    The situation is more dire than it reads on this page.

    There is a cavernous crater at Obadeyi, and from the Ijaiye bus stop to Meiran through CAASO, Agbado Kollington, Alakuko, the road winds into extensive craters and gullies.

    While the  Adetola bypass has been repaired, other bypasses spanning Abule-Egba, Ahmadiyya, Meiran are still pockmarked by potholes and gorges.

    At the point where the Lagos dirt corridor meshes with Ogun State, a different kind of ugliness subsists at Amje, Ajegunle, and the Tollgate bordering Ogun State.

    Buses, trucks, cars, three-wheelers and motorcycles have to halt after every three minutes just to adjust to the road breaks and pot-holes all over.

    Against the backdrop of outrage over the deplorable state of Lagos roads, Governor Sanwo-Olu declared a state of emergency on dilapidated highways and carriage roads within the state. He approved massive rehabilitation work on critical roads across the state following his series of meetings with eight multi-national engineering firms in respect of the road rehabilitation initiative. He said: “The contractors have been given the mandate to start mobilising to their respective sites without further delay. Their activities must first give our people immediate relief on the affected roads so that there can be free flow of traffic even during the rehabilitation work.”

    To complement the major construction work on the highways, Sanwo-Olu said Lagos State Public Works Corporation (LSPWC) would be carrying out repairs of 116 inner roads across the State, in addition to over 200 roads already rehabilitated by the Corporation.

    Despite these efforts, residents and commuters along the Lagos-Abeokuta corridor seem to have been completely forgotten even as they risk their lives plying the dangerous route every day.

    The daily accumulated estimate for man-hour loss in the area is given as eight hours per day along the road, according to a study conducted by Bako and Agunloye of the Departments of Urban and Regional Planning of the Universities of Ilorin and Lagos respectively. This gives the average daily man-hour loss as 1.6 man-hours for all drivers along this road, subject to peak periods of 7 a.m.– 10 a.m., and 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. daily.

    State authorities must fix bad portions of the road to ensure the free flow of traffic and prevent road rage and avoidable deaths at accident-prone spots along the road corridor. This measure is needed in areas such as Abule-egba and Toll-gate.

    Strict enforcement of road rules and regulations, which can be done by dispatching traffic managers at hotspots to correct defaulting drivers is also needed.

    The introduction of traffic monitoring personnel from LASTMA has been ineffectual at regulating bus stop usage and proper parking of passenger buses; commercial transporters stop indiscriminately and park in the middle of the road from Oja Oba, Abule Egba through U-turn, Ahmadiyya, Ijaiye, Meiran, to Tollgate.

    The traffic officers from LASTMA simply turn a blind eye and receive bribes from motorists – this is particularly pronounced at every bus stop from Abule Egba to Agbado Kollington and beyond.

    It’s about time Governor Sanwoolu intervened as the state departments tasked with the responsibility of maintaining order on the affected highway are unable to do so. I urge Governor Sanwoolu to use his good office to correct the anomaly before Lagos records more devastating accidents and multiple deaths along the problematic highway.

    The 81-kilometre highway connecting Lagos and Ogun States is a very important trunk ‘A’ road servicing the Lagos-Abeokuta and Sango Ota-Agbara industrial corridor. The road serves a very crucial role in the conveyance of raw materials and finished products to and fro the two states’ capital cities and industrial hubs. 

    An estimated 300,000 vehicles and over one million people transporting goods running into millions of tons ply the route daily.

    Save an empty promise made by the  Ogun state governor, Dapo Abiodun, in the early days of his administration, when he claimed that he, and his Lagos State counterpart, Governor Sanwoolu, had gotten approval from the federal government to repair the highway and earn a toll from it, nothing has been done to rehabilitate the hazardous corridor.

    The road leading from Ajegunle to the Bible College junction, beside the moribund Gateway Hotel, Sango-Ota, and which ends at the new Railway terminus on Ijoko road, along the Ota-Ijoko- Alagbole Akute highway linking Berger on the Lagos-Ibadan highway, forces motorists to affect caution in the dry season and is practically impassable when it rains.

    The roads are equally bad at Owode- Ota, Owode-Ijako, Agoro, Iyana-Ilogbo, Ijoko, Oju Ore, and Ilo-Awela. Mucky pools still stagnate in large craters even as chuckholes devastate Alagbole and Ajuwon roads thus making travel and habitation very difficult in these areas. Because the roads in these areas are broken in many places, there is no smooth ride for motorists.

    More worrisome is commuters’ exposure to road rage and avoidable deaths caused by traffic abusers and government neglect of bad roads.

  • Buhari’s long-delayed apology

    Buhari’s long-delayed apology

    Miracle-seeking Nigerians, who had endured 16 years of PDP corruption, saw in Buhari a messiah and gave him a pan- Nigerian mandate. But Buhari, ignoring Kwame Nkrumah’s admonition: “seek first the kingdom of politics and the rest shall be added,” was outwitted by politicians.

    And politics, often defined as “who gets what, when and how,” is all about interest. The Yoruba that aided his ascendancy to power after three heroic failures did so because they wanted a restructured Nigeria where groups and individuals will be liberated from the tyranny of the state. The people of the middle belt region of Nigeria, regarded by Ahmadu Bello as his grand-father’s slaves, after decades of attack by his descendants who lust for their luxuriant fields and valleys, saw in Buhari a leader who would bring justice.

     The north east saw in Buhari a tested war hero who would put to flight Boko Haram insurgency. Of course, the north west, especially members of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN), whose demands include the right of Fulani to engage unhindered in open grazing across the country, saw in Buhari another Ahmadu Bello who deftly achieved his grandfather’s dream of planting the Quran in the sea and dividing Nigeria between his two trusted lieutenants.

     Even the south-south and south east that did not vote for Buhari did so out of self-interest. The former, protesting the conspiracy of the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba dominant ethnic groups’ rejection of derivation as the basis for revenue allocation, as obtained before oil was found in commercial quantity, and the latter over their humiliation by Fulani during and after the civil war.

     But blinded by victory, Buhari’s “I belong to no one, I belong to everyone,” was to isolate those on whose back he rode to power. And since there is no vacuum in nature, those serving other tendencies in his government and war lords are left to set the agenda for Buhari’s government. Thus, the Niger Delta militants, through violence, oil theft and outright sabotage, brought oil production from all high 2,300 barrels to about 850 barrels per day while IPOB seized the initiative from the elected south east governors and implemented their sit-at –home order every Monday.

     And while Buhari was busy in the north east, bandits, kidnappers and Fulani killer herdsmen took control of north central and north western states. In 2016, “Plateau, Nasarawa, Kaduna and Benue recorded 2,500 deaths, with 62,000 people displaced; and the loss of N13.7 billion in addition to 47 per cent of the internally-generated revenue.” Then the battle shifted to the north western states of Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto where bandits described by Sheikh Gumi as “aggrieved Nigerian Fulani” visited violence on the Hausa farming communities.

    Despite Niger State being the home state of two former heads of state – Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar – bandits operated unchallenged in 18 out of the 25 local government areas of the state. In 2016, 36 bloody attacks were carried out in about 70 communities across three local government areas of the state with over 50 people reportedly killed after payment of huge ransoms.

     Justifying the call for Buhari’s resignation over insecurity in the north, The Northern Elders Forum said they could not “continue to live and die under the dictates of killers, kidnappers, rapists and sundry criminal groups that have deprived us of our rights to live in peace and security.” This was followed by a whirlwind of protests all over the north dovetailing into #Northisbleeding Abuja protests calling for a declaration of a state of emergency in the frontline states of Niger, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna.

     Of course, Buhari who insists he has done his best indeed made some giant strides in the area of infrastructural development with massive investments on roads, bridges and rail lines. But those who will determine Buhari’s legacies are Nigerians whose appeals for a peaceful resolution of ‘the national question’ was rejected by a leader who arrogates to himself the power to know what the people want without asking them.

     Perhaps now conscious of the judgement of history, Buhari while hosting guests at the final Sallah homage in Abuja last week asked for the forgiveness of Nigerians. “Those that think that I have hurt them so much, please pardon me.” “I think this is a very good coincidence for me to say goodbye to you and thank you for tolerating me for more than seven and a half years,” he added.

    But how sincere is this belated apology? Let us start with Godwin Emefiele, Buhari’s last scourge and whipping cane for Nigerians. Regarded as the worst Nigerian CBN governor, the House of Representatives had wanted him sacked over his FOREX policy while Pastor Tunde Bakare who saw the CBN under Emefiele as “a conduit pipe for politicians to drain the nation” called for his prosecution wondering how “as CBN governor a two paragraph letter to Emefiele, by Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), become the authority to incur expenditure leading to cash flow of $37m and several million euros.”

    Then, wanting to contest for Nigeria’s presidency as CBN sitting governor, Emefiele bought the N100m APC nomination form, allegedly brought in some three aircraft and about 500 branded campaign vehicles, had some confused youths clad in white T-shirts with the inscription MEFFY 2023 moving around Lagos. and then went on to hire Chief Mike Ozekhome to defend his constitutional right to contest the presidency as a sitting CBN Governor.

     Then Nigerians forced to deposit their savings in the banks in the name of currency swap could not access their savings. With people dying on queues and banks’ staff coming under physical attack of frustrated depositors, the Supreme Court gave an order which Emefiele disobeyed. Buhari watched Nigerians experience unprecedented hardship for three weeks before denouncing Emefiele’s disobedience of court order.

     Abubakar Malami, the Justice Minister, did not only wage war against Nigeria, he undermined the legitimacy of Buhari’s presidency by his frequent disobedience of court orders. This is a Justice Minister who tried to smuggle a wanted fugitive offender through the back door to the bureaucracy, who failed to prosecute Fulani mindless killers of Benue farmers as well as terrorist sponsors identified by Saudi Arabia.

     With orgy of killings in the north, this was a Justice Minister who was more interested in sting operations to capture and fly Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya for “inciting violence through television, radio and online broadcasts against Nigeria” and midnight invasion of the residence of the Yoruba activist, Sunday Adeyemo, because “he and his group, in the guise of campaign for self-determination, are determined to undermine public order.”

    Not many Nigerians would forget their ordeal during COVID-19 as millions of Nigerians struggled to meet Minister Pantami’s deadline for registration of SIM cards. The nation also became a victim. As a former Al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathizer, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami was thought to be a wrong person to handle the NIN project. Even when it turned out that instead of disrupting terrorists’ communication activities, what the nation experienced was more coordinated terrorists’ attacks on rail lines, airports and military formations, President Buhari, who behaves like a feudal lord, did not think he owed Nigerians any apology.

     As a deeply religious nation, Nigerians will no doubt accept Buhari’s apology. But they will also remember the buck stops at the table of Buhari, who after seducing them for votes, left them at the mercy of unprincipled politicians among whom truthfulness, honesty and probity are scarce commodities.  

  • In memory of a brave AG

    In memory of a brave AG

    The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) was almost torn by internal strife in 1984. The crisis was not over who presides over the pressure group’s affairs, it had to do with the appearance of its members before the tribunals set up by the military regime of Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was.

    The bar then led by Prince Bola Ajibola, who died on April 9, resolved that lawyers should not appear before the tribunals because they were headed by military officers. But one lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, openly kicked against the NBA resolution. Fawehinmi as a staunch fighter against corruption felt that it was wrong of NBA to take that stand when the issue at stake was graft.

      He said he would appear before the tribunals to help them in their work to recover public funds from corrupt politicians. Since no one could be bigger than his group, Fawehinmi was suspended from NBA. Concerned lawyers and judges waded in to resolve the dispute, all to no avail. It went to court and Fawehinmi won that case which  is today cited as Fawehinmi versus NBA.

    The legal dispute was just the beginning of the matter. A bigger fight was yet to come. The court case set the tone for it. The NBA, it seemed, never forgot the role of Ajibola, its former president in the military tribunals’ saga.

      It put him on ‘trial’ over the matter years after his uncompleted tenure, which ended abruptly in 1985 after his appointment as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation by military leader, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. It all happened at the NBA Annual General Conference held on the then one and only Nigerian Law School (NLS) campus in Lagos in 1989.

      By then, the irrepressible Alao Aka-Bashorun had become NBA president. It was during his valedictory bar conference that Ajibola’s ‘trial’ took place. The auditorium of the NLS was filled the day he appeared at the conference to, as he put it, ‘defend himself’. Not many lawyers had expected him to come. That Ajibola was there says a lot about his courage and character. He shocked many of his “learned friends” by turning up at the well-attended conference. All the radicals of the bar were there. After all, it was the occasion for one of them, Aka-Bashorun, to showcase his stewardship.

      Aka-Bashorun, some lawyers are wont to say even up till today, was the last NBA president! They may be right. After his tenure, NBA became a shadow of itself. It became closer to the government and less concerned about happenings in the society, contrary to the credo of the first Nigerian lawyer, Christopher Alexander Sapara Williams that: “a lawyer lives for the direction of his people and the advancement of the cause of his country”.

      The bar’s disagreement over the military tribunals exposed it to the larger society and the dispute threatened its existence for long, even after Ajibola’s appearance at the 1989 NBA conference. Will Ajibola come or not? The argument went back and forth among lawyers. Traditionally, the attendance of the  attorney-general (AG) at the bar conference is a given. As the nation’s chief law officer, it will not bode well if the occupant of the office, at any point in time, does not show solidarity with his constituency during its most important event.

      Ajibola’s appearance threw the NLS into bedlam. The din was earshattering. Some heckled him, some cheered him and some just watched bemused. Ajibola himself was a spectacle to behold as he took his seat in the hall. Every other thing ceased as he became the focus of attention. The underlying issue, which was mentioned in whispers, was that he sold out as NBA president in order to become AG.

      Then, it was time for him to speak. Ajibola cleared his throat and thanked the NBA leadership for inviting him. He said he was aware of all the talks about his position on the military tribunals. He wondered why he was being blamed for the NBA resolution on the issue. “How can the NBA resolution be Bola Ajibola’s resolution? I was only a servant carrying out the directives of my masters. If I didn’t implement it, the same people now accusing me would be the first to say I am afraid of confronting the government”, Ajibola said to a standing ovation.

      In the twinkling of an eye, he had won many of his traducers to his side. The ovation was deafening. When members of the audience saw that he was not done yet, they kept silent. It was obvious that  Ajibola came prepared, to appeal to the sense of reasoning of his colleagues, as he called them.

      “Dear colleagues, I have been called names and crucified, without being given an opportunity to defend myself. I don’t think that is fair. As lawyers, we must always uphold the principle of ‘audi alteram partem’ (hear from the other side). How can I be condemned without being heard? The NBA cannot be the accuser, the prosecutor and the judge in its own case”. That was the clincher and the whole hall rose on their feet, clapping. Needless to say that he was discharged and acquitted.

      A few years later, NBA became enmeshed in a leadership crisis, which it is just recovering from. For the bar, its glorious past may yet return, if it continues in its rediscovery path and takes to heart the Sapara Williams’ credo of service to humanity. Ajibola lived the credo. May he find rest in Allah’s bosom.

  • The ongoing war in Sudan

    The ongoing war in Sudan

    The battle for the control of the Sudan between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)is a tragedy in which thousands of lives are being lost and ruined. What is happening goes to the bifurcation of the security apparatus in the Sudan between the military headed by General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, General Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo.

      In the old days of Sudanese politics, the struggle would have been between two factions or more of the Islamic tariqas, one that was headed by the Muhammad Ahmad al Mahdi family, and others led by secularists and the military. Such was Omar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir, a military officer who served as the seventh head of the state of Sudan under various titles from 1989 until 2019 when he was deposed in a coup d’état.

     Although the influence of the family of Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abdallah al Mahdi who set up the Mahdist state between 1885 and 1896 is waning or has waned, his descendants still wield considerable influence in the Sudan. The Oxford educated great grandson of Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdallah al Mahdi, Sadiq al Mahdi, who, as leader of the Umma party has been in and out of office a couple of times, is a friend of Nigeria and had visited Nigeria many times in the past.

     There are long established links between Nigeria and the Sudan. We used to train Arabic teachers in the Sudan. When the Anglo Sudanese government set up the Jazirah (Gezira ) scheme in the 1920s to distribute waters of the Blue Nile over a distance of 4300 kilometres, in one  of the greatest irrigation schemes in the world, quite a couple of thousands of Nigerians found agricultural jobs in the Sudan and their descendants have remained there to swell the number of Nigerian descendants who over the years number about 5 million today found in the army, security forces, universities, commerce and industry.

     The Sudan used to be a staging point for our pilgrims and other West Africans going to Makkah for the hajj. Some never made it and stayed in the Sudan, some on their way back stopped and stayed on in the Sudan. Over the years, they were all referred to as Fellatta (Fulani), by which Arab and other Sudanese refer to this now formidable Sudanese group.

     So, when some people talk about the evacuation of Nigerians in the Sudan, I ask which Nigerians? The students or which other group because the fellatta are no longer Nigerians but Sudanese. I need to establish this relationship so that we can understand that we have interests in the Sudan and we cannot afford to be just onlookers in the tragedy and disaster in the Sudan.

      Americans, the British, Europeans, Chinese and even the Saudis may be evacuating the nationals by air or through port Sudan on the Red Sea but we cannot do the same because of technical and logistical reasons, besides we can choose who to relate with but we cannot choose our neighbours and members of our African family. It’s not politically wise to rush in to evacuate our nationals when they are indistinguishable from the Sudanese and they are as a group not targeted. We need not attract hostile attention to them.

      The security architecture in the Sudan is not dissimilar from what happens in Nigeria where we have the military, the paramilitary forces of the Mobile Police and National Security guards. What has happened in the Sudan is that power is shared between the military and the Rapid Support Forces with the military in the command position and their GOC, General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, as head of state, if not by name but indeed, while the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, General Muhammad al Dagalo, as second in command. The military is made up of the army, navy and the air force while the Rapid Support Forces is about 70,000 strong, made up of enforcers like the Janjaweed that operated in Dafur killing thousands of their people in previous years. This force was useful to the Saudis in their war against the Houthis in Yemen. They were said to be involved in illegal gold and precious metals mining. Their forces were said to be in regular liaison with the Russian Wagner Mercenaries group operating in Libya.

     The situation was bound to come to a head with increasing international meddling. The Russians were said to have their eyes on establishing a naval base on the Sudanese Red Sea coast. The Chinese are not likely to be left far behind in the politics of Africa. The Sudan and Ethiopia since time immemorial have been meddling in each other’s affairs.  It’s significant that the military helicopters that took out the Americans took off from Ethiopia.

     For many years the legacy of British colonial rule was strong. The officer corps of the Sudanese army was trained in the Royal Sandhurst military Academy. Their intellectual leaders went for advanced courses in British and American universities. American influence is considerable in the Sudan, and the USA may have stepped up its strategic interest proportionate to increasing Russian and Chinese interest in the country and the rest of the Middle East.

     The situation of the Sudan is captured by the African proverb: when two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. The fighting in the capital, Khartoum, has spread to the Islamic city of Omdurman across the Nile and to other parts of the Sudan, including the much-abused Dar Fur, leading to death and famine in the much-contested province.

     What is to be done apart from appeal to the combatants to cease fire? This has been done over the last two weeks without success. If this could not be arranged over the holy month of Ramadan, I doubt if there is much hope for an end to serious fighting until one party completely routs the other. The bet is on the military winning and imposing la paix militaire on the whole huge country with her boundary with Libya still exposed to resupply of the Rapid Support Forces. It also depends on whether the Saudis will continue to support the RSF and what the United States decides to do. Egypt to the North of the Sudan that shared a condominium administration with Great Britain of the Sudan will probably support the military against the Rapid Support Forces because an unstable Sudan is not in the interest of Egypt itself.

      This is perhaps the time Nigeria should offer its good offices to the two generals fighting over who should have absolute power in the Sudan. Nigeria was involved in bringing some peace to Southern Sudan and history compels us to try to do the same with the Sudan. The OIC should also be trying to settle what is essentially a family affair. So should also the African Commission be trying to do the same.

    The Sudan is uniquely an African country straddling the African and the Arab worlds. Even what is left of the old Sudan is still essentially an African country made up of Arabs, Arabised Africans and some Nubian tribes. It is sad that this country that used to provide refuge for suffering Ethiopians is now beset with problems of its own which the military and militarised security forces have not been able to resolve.

     The Horn of Africa, made up of the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti, has been a strategic area for big power contestation in the past and it will for many years to come continue to attract big powers if not to police the Red Sea coast infested with Somali pirates but to establish naval outposts in places like Djibouti, port Sudan and Port of Massawa in Eritrea.

     The story of Russia and the United States’ involvement in this area is captured by their relations with Ethiopia and Somalia. The USA was once ensconced in imperial Ethiopia of Haile Sellassie while the Russians were in Somalia, then they changed sides with the Russians in Haile Mariam’s socialist Ethiopia while the Americans went to Somalia. This proves that the African states are just being used and they are expendable; and when they are no longer needed, they would be thrown away like discarded rags. One hopes the situation in the Sudan will not degenerate to the situation of permanent instability and insecurity as in Somalia.

  • Stop bill to stop emigration of health workers

    Stop bill to stop emigration of health workers

    In apparently private member’s bill has been going through the House of Representatives in Abuja to stop nurses, doctors and other health workers from legally going abroad to seek better training, pay and job satisfaction. I do not know what led to this bill, but all things taken together, the bill is not in anybody’s best interest.

    One of the arguments is that these people are trained at great expense by the Nigerian institutions and indirectly by the Nigerian people. I don’t accept this argument. Nigeria owes it to its people to educate them to as high as their capacity would take them.

    In any case, these young people pay school fees and in the private universities; they pay the economic cost of their education, so the argument that they were educated at the state’s expense does not hold water.

    What purpose is this bill supposed to serve? If those behind the bill were intelligent, they would know there are many reasons why well-trained young people leave their countries in search of the Golden Fleece. This is not a Nigerian phenomenon; it is global and, as far as I know, no country except Nigeria is foolish enough to stop what is actually intellectual export.

    It is generally known that in the last two hundred years close to 20 million Irish people left in search of work to the United States. Equal number of English, Germans and Italians did the same thing, and right now medical doctors are leaving Ireland and Great Britain for Australia and New Zealand and the United States, and their parliaments are not tabling motions to hold them down to the poor pay and conditions prevailing in their home countries.

     Do these so-called Honourable members know that Nigeria earns more money from money sent home by Nigeria Diaspora than what this country earns from hydrocarbons that we make so much noise about?

    At the last count, Nigeria makes well over 25 billion dollars from money sent home by considerable members of the Nigeria diaspora heavily populated by doctors and nurses. How did the Nigerian Diaspora evolve if not as a result of students who studied abroad deciding to stay there after their education, and other Nigerians who on their own free will migrated abroad for better life – the so-called economic migrants?

    At the foundation of the country, some of our people went to train abroad in many areas of higher education. Some remained there, others came back, but nobody stopped anybody from going abroad for whatever reasons.

    Where would Nigeria be if the likes of Azikiwe, Awolowo, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Akintola, Okpara, Osadebay and others had remained in Nigeria without going abroad to better themselves when they were young?

    The young people trained in Nigeria have the fundamental right to go outside the country for further studies and for work, if necessary, especially at a time when there are no jobs at home for them. It is a policy of the federal government to even send abroad some fresh graduates in a technical Aid Corps to assist less fortunate countries and honestly to reduce graduate unemployment. Of course, we couched the policy as generosity and philanthropy but it was a policy of enlightened self-interest projecting a positive image abroad while solving some of our unemployment problems.

    These doctors and nurses our legislators want to ban from going abroad would also serve the same purpose of positive image abroad instead of being known for the negative things like forgeries, advance fees fraud and human smuggling.

    Dr Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, said Nigeria would encourage our medical doctors to go abroad to improve their skills and bring home money and equipment when they return home rather than being satisfied with poor wages paid by local employers, including the federal government. He said this when doctors went on national strike because of poor remuneration.

    Some of us who are university teachers and who are close to the young people and who have experience should have been consulted before such an important motion was tabled in parliament. Do these so-called Honourable men and women know the number of doctors, nurses and other allied medical workers streaming out of our universities and medical institutions every year? Do they know that many of the mushrooming private universities and poorly funded state universities are starting medical and nursing schools in addition to the existing ones?

    Perhaps a few examples would drive home my point. Doctors coming out of formerly prestigious University of Ibadan are finding it difficult to find hospitals to complete their housemanship or internship. Sometimes those of us who are not even medical scholars have had to write letters on behalf of these young people pleading with poorly funded teaching hospitals to find places for young medical graduates to do their internship without which they cannot practise as doctors. Things are that bad!

     Do we expect such young people to be roaming about the streets for nonexistent jobs or to be doing locum on starvation wages when they can go abroad for advanced training and for work? This is the reality which our overpaid and overindulged and uninformed legislators seem not to be aware of, and bringing a grossly defective bill to stop young people going abroad.

    One thing these people do not know is that universities educate people for the global market. A well-trained nurse and doctor should be able to practise their profession anywhere in the world if the facilities are available. Secondly, these people wanting to prevent medical people from going abroad are also helping racists who are doing everything to prevent black emigration from our continent. They want to keep blacks marooned on the African continent and prevent them from coming out of their “shit hole” continent to infect the rest of the world with their diseases while their minerals are mined and shipped out to the countries in the global north and their environment polluted and made uninhabitable.

    If we are not careful, pressure would be mounted on Africa to stop their engineers and university teachers from leaving their continent on the grounds that they are needed at home. Of course, they are needed at home but it is the fundamental right of all people to enjoy freedom of movement.

    This is the only world that we empirically know and everyone should be allowed to make the best use of it. As part of the mass of humanity, Africans who are qualified should be allowed to contribute to the pool of knowledge and technical know-how either from their continent or from wherever they find themselves or relocate to.

     I appeal to those sponsoring this bill on banning medical and allied professionals from going abroad to immediately withdraw it. They don’t know what they are doing and they don’t know the level of  unemployment in this country.

    I will never forget a young man with a PhD in physics from Ibadan asking me to help him find a job. I could not believe it. Anybody who has been to school would know how difficult physics is. I told him he should go to any of the western embassies to ask for a visa to their countries, and I said he would not be denied a visa.

    Can anybody believe that a PhD in physics cannot find a job in Nigeria when we are crying that we need engineers and one cannot study engineering without being immersed in physics? How many engineers are roaming about the streets or working in the banks? This is how bad our unemployment problem is.

  • REC-kless

    REC-kless

    It is now all over. But before the Adamawa State governorship election was called on Tuesday, it was full of drama and intrigues. At the centre of it was no less a person than the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Hudu Yunusa-Ari. The REC’s duty is to oversee the day-to-day running of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the state.

    As the head of that office, his brief includes ensuring the smooth conduct of all elections organised by INEC. His job is to ensure that materials and men for the elections are intact and distributed ahead of time to all parts of the state, under the strict guidance of the national headquarters in Abuja.

    As REC, Yunusa-Ari is expected to know all these and more. He ought to know the extent and limit of his power as REC so that he does not overreach himself. I do not know how long he has been REC or in what other capacity he had served the nation before landing the INEC job, I believe that he did the unthinkable during the just-concluded supplementary election in the state. To me, it was an intentional act and not one borne out of ignorance.

    The Adamawa election was one of the two declared inconclusive after the March 18 governorship poll held in 28 states. The other was Kebbi. The supplementary election was held on April 15 and like the earlier March 18 poll, the theatrics started all over again amid allegations and counter-allegations by the camps of Governor Adamu Fintiri of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and his arch-opponent Hajia Aishat Dahiru popularly known as Binani of the All Progressives Congress (APC). On March 18, they ran a neck-and-neck race, which led to the election being declared inconclusive.

    Its conclusion was almost thrown into jeopardy on April 16 by Yunusa-Ari, who should know better. As REC, he was aware of the circumstances that led to the non-conclusion of the poll last month. Though, he was fingered as a major cause of the problem,  the national headquarters of INEC did not pay much attention to the allegations against him. It seemed that he was given benefit of doubts in the circumstances since politicians are known for making all sorts of allegations during elections.

    Politicians can do anything in their desperation to win. They will not hesitate to paint anybody, especially electoral officers black, if that is what it will take for them to win. In the first poll last month, allegations flew about against Yunusa-Ari. PDP and Fintiri blamed him for the non-conclusion of the poll. They believed that they won on the first ballot since the margin of lead between Yunusa-Ari and Binani was 31,000, while only 37,000 votes were outstanding in areas where the supplementary election would hold.

    The Binani camp countered that she won the election having scored more votes than Fintiri. At a point, she was declared the winner in social media (based on results from God knows where). It took INEC’s intervention to restore order in the process, albeit temporarily. Interestingly, all these shenanigans found their way back into the process during the supplementary poll, with the least expected person, Yunusa-Ari in the thick of it. He chose to usurp the job of the Returning Officer (RO), Prof Mohammed Mele, by declaring Binani the winner,

    If Yunusa-Ari did not perform the job of RO during the first election last month, what has changed to make him believe that he could do so during the supplementary poll? It is public officers like him that give the government a bad name. Earlier reactions to his misdeeds in social media were directed at the government which many lampooned for trying to manipulate the election to favour the candidate of the ruling party. Yunusa-Ari is a disgrace to the office of REC. People like him are the ones behind the mess Nigeria is in today as a nation.

    Why would a REC suddenly wake up and decide to wreck the same election that he was supposed to superintend? Was he working for someone? Who is that person or party? How much was he paid for the dirty job? There is more to what he did in full public glare than the people saw? I mean is there any deliberate ploy to cause anarchy through the disruption of the Adamawa election so that champions of interim government can have their way? Yunusa-Ari and his ilk should hear this and hear it well, their plan to foist on the nation an illegal government through the backdoor will never work.

    Yunusa-Ari must answer for his folly! Why for God sake did he descend from his Olympian height into the arena to show partisanship in a contest that he was the umpire? As a man under authority who exercises delegated authority, his power is not all-embracing. He does only what he is asked to do. Did he declare Binani winner because he was asked to do the job of RO? I doubt it; otherwise INEC would not have disowned him immediately.

    I still believe that he did not act alone. Yunusa-Ari was acting a script written for him by those who do not have the nation’s interest at heart. Whether he names them or not, he should face the music for his REC-kless action. Having done what nobody had ever done, he must reap the consequence that nobody had never faced.