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Category: Thursday

Buhari hijacks APC

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Speaking at the APC Caretakers Committee Executive meeting last Friday at the State House which has since its first inauguration on June 25, 2020 become APC new secretariat, President Buhari reminded Nigerians of “the crisis that engulfed the APC, leading to litigations and presented a picture of selfishness and division,’’ adding “We want to leave behind a legacy of transparency and fairness, which the party needs to survive.’’

Predictably, the president whose style is “delegation by abdication” refused to take responsibility for what to most perceptive minds, was more of the “hand of Esau Voice of David” to reposition his cronies in APC. He also expressed no remorse for sacrificing Oshiomhole who was booed and stoned in Abeokuta, hated and despised in other places where he had stepped on toes in pursuit of Buhari’s 2019 victory, just the same way he pretended those on whose back he rode to power in 2015 did not exist after his victory.

The caretaker committee, inaugurated in Aso Rock after the illegal dissolution of the Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC), had had its tenure extended twice for six months each and now indefinitely. Ironically, Buhari as a ‘hard sell” presidential candidate took little interest in APC in the run up to 2015 election or even after his victory. He had to reach out to the rejected corner stone for the 2019 election with giant-killer Oshiomhoile helping him to chase Saraki out of APC, tamed empire and fiefdom builders in Abeokuta and Imo State and put an end to PDP’s 60 years illusion of uninterrupted reign.

However, in a smart move to reposition his cronies in APC, the president who has always distanced himself from politicians, took over the party whose secretariat he relocated to Aso Rock Villa where he had presided over two extensions and now with an indefinite extension, his cronies have time to consolidate their hold on APC. And if anyone doubts APC is now Buhari’s APC, it is perhaps such a person missed Mai Mala Buni’s opening speech where he said he hopes the committee report would meet the expectation of President Buhari.

The following article titled “APC as threat to Nigeria’s democracy” published on December 10, 2020 is as relevant today as it was then. Happy reading.

Political parties as modernisisng agencies are expected to perform miracles by turning dreams to realities. The miracles of Japan’s industrial power, China’s poverty to prosperity and USA’s landing of man on the moon started with big dreams. Here at home, the Northern People’s Congress, later Nigerian People’s Congress (NPC) was responsible for the biggest business conglomerate in Africa between 1957 and 1962 while in the Western Region, the Action Group (AG) successfully implemented the most ambitious free education programme in Africa and went on to build and commission in three months, the first television station in Africa ahead of some European nations.

PDP, a party described by John Campbell, former US envoy as ‘a political party that came together … as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’, did not pretend in 2013 that it had any dream beyond uninterrupted ruling for 60 years. Audu Ogbeh, one-time PDP chairman was to later validate Campbell’s thesis by submitting: “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil”. Ahmadu Alli as chairman of PDP and Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, according to a House probe, presided over the theft of about N2 trillion by some of the over 140 independent oil marketers they appointed. We can add the allegation by former World Bank vice president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili, that the PDP administration of Jonathan squandered $67billion reserves left by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

For miracle-seeking Nigerians therefore, the inauguration of APC on February 6, 2013 was something of a relief. Its eight-point cardinal programme: electricity generation, war against corruption, food security, integrated transport network; free education; devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health are routine responsibilities of government that did not require the intervention of angels or men with special talents. But PDP’s baleful legacy forced Nigerian miracle-seekers to see APC and Buhari as messiahs. They gave APC a clear mandate with a popular vote of 15.4m to PDP’s 12.8million, a clear majority of 65 to 43 in the senate, 190 to 151 in the lower house and 21 of the 36 state governors.

Betrayed Nigerians came to the sad conclusion after six years that the difference between PDP and APC, neither of which has any philosophical foundation nor ideological orientation, is that of six and half and a dozen. And speaking of the two parties, Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC boss, spoke about the futility of trying to look for saints among current Nigerian politicians.

Six years of APC government of change, very little has changed. Our lawmakers remain the highest paid lawmakers in the world. Just as it was during PDP years of the locust, ministers, heads of parastatals including Customs, Immigration, Army, Police, EFCC, vice chancellors of universities cruise around in in imported bullet-proof land cruisers at taxpayers’ expense. None of our four refineries is working. We continue to import fuel for domestic consumption.

Most part of the nation is still in darkness. PDP after 14 years in government generated 3324 MW by 2015. APC’s minister of science and technology, Ogbonaya Onu said APC generated additional 1,950 MW in six years. Add that to the 3,324 MW PDP generated in 14 years, what we get is 5,274MW. Like Obasanjo and Jonathan did before him, Buhari’s APC has just signed an agreement with Siemens to implement the Nigerian Electricity Roadmap.

On road construction, APC’s Raji Fashola, the very resourceful Lagos State governor who once asked PDP to identify 100 kilometres of road it completed in 10 years has been demystified. Six years of APC government, Apapa Tin can Island Port Road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway like many other federal roads across the country, remain motorists’ and commuters’ nightmare.

APC promised to tackle insecurity. But seems to have no answer to rising insecurity across the country. In November 2020 alone, at least 216 Nigerians were killed and 144 others kidnapped according to data gathered by the Civic Media Lab. APC has no answer to periodic mindless killings of subsistence farmers in their farms. Now helpless Nigerians are said to be killed daily in Borno, Katsina, Zamfara, Adamawa, Niger, Benue, Jigawa, Kaduna, Taraba and other areas in the north. Last week, Professor Usman Yusuf in a widely circulated letter titled ‘Silence in the face of evil, is its self-evil” noted the APC federal government has let Nigerians down by allowing “bandits to unleash terror on the people, operates their own government by imposing heavy taxes on the people”, adding “there is no law enforcement agencies to protect the people, while the police often showed up after the carnage have been done”.

Death of a Nigerian doesn’t seem to have meanings to APC and its government. In other societies, the 43 rice farmers cruelly hacked to death by Boko Haram in their farms last week would have led to a declaration of a week of national mourning. The Sultan of Sokoto was reported to have lamented the mindless killing of 80 people in his domain. The Northern Elders Forum asked the president to resign and the APC controlled legislature only passed resolutions often ignired By Buhari.

APC with restructuring in its manifesto forgot what restructuring or power devolution meant and had to set up the El-Rufai committee on restructuring. Governor Fayemi asked Nigerians not to blame Buhari for not implementing restructuring agenda as promised in its manifesto but direct their anger at the National Assembly controlled by his party for not implementing the El Rufai report.

APC remains not just the scourge of the nation but a threat to democracy. With PDP, there might have been no honour among thieves, but their family war over sharing of our commonwealth is healthier for democracy than APC’s criminal conspiracy of silence over absence of governance and creeping dictatorship.

July 1, 2021
If your vote flowers with trauma…

By Olatunji Ololade

Some have likened the incumbent dispensation to a dud joke – or a political jest gone awry if you like.

It is an anthem, both in social and political circuits, that, Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo weren’t reelected to redispense blame and give excuses. Rather, they were tasked to actualise their party, the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s gospel of ‘change.’ By enjoying the gift of a second term, they were expected to see to a fruitful end, the rite of riddance of our immeasurable miseries.

Yet some have argued that the presumed moral bent of both men hasn’t enough juice, to fuel their ‘change’ caravan – their most visible achievement being the neutering of the National Assembly and domestication of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). It’s a sight to see presumed PDP stalwarts renounce their membership and hop in bed with the ruling party.

Whatever the slant of disillusionment, however widespread, the fact remains that the incumbent administration was the best we could produce.

Of course, their job isn’t half done. Despite the dark pall cast on the administration by its selective justice, clannishness, nepotism, substandard healthcare plan, and inability to convincingly end insecurity among others, the administration has recorded a few glowing achievements and initiatives including the implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) and infrastructure development.

Nonetheless, these sparse attainments hardly institute dependable progressive indices, and they do not absolve their leadership of inadequacies. But then, is there ever a perfect government?

Many, however, still whine and insist that Nigeria should have cut her nose to spite her face, by choosing Atiku Abubakar and company. I would reiterate that Atiku was as much a frantic sentiment as Buhari.

Now that I have incited your wrath, what colour is your indignation? Is it “onion brown, hell-red, or currency-green? What’s the price tag? For you won’t be fulfilling that sublime quality of Nigerianness, if your choler isn’t paid for.

Apology to the elusive ‘patriot,’ whose outrage is unsullied by money and random bigotries but we are at that point when new expediences and indignation are manufactured in our volatile mills. Last general elections, religion, hard currencies, and tribalism were fed to our infernal factory thus turning many voters into insentient robots.

You see, indignation too could be paid for. It is often paid for. Hence as it was at previous polls, many a vote cast at the 2023 polls shall reassert our ethical bankruptcy and reduction of self.

As you read, career critics, political thugs, and trolls-for-hire are in bed with each other, in service of often shady aspirants. Arundhati Roy would call this a revolving bed in a cheap motel. Journalists, youth leaders, traditional rulers, women leaders, and civil societies are snuggled up under the sheets too.

It’s hard to keep track of the partners; they change so fast. Each new baby they produce strengthens the capacity to subjugate and further impoverish the hapless electorate, in flagrant Roy-speak.

Yet we must seek and choose candidates capable of guaranteeing us progressive change. Nigeria is in a dilemma, we are at the threshold of 2023 and we really must identify and empower with votes of confidence and decisive balloting, candidates endowed with ingenuity and promise of a truly humane leadership. So far, the few noisy aspirants in the arena have established their candidacy on a bedrock of sophistry, lip service, and blame-casting.

Indeed, the best role anyone could assume is that of a critic; the Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT) fiasco, did reveal the moral and ideological inadequacies of Nigeria’s league of self-acclaimed messiahs.

It’s about time we identified individuals invested with the decisiveness and courage required to implement a radical, progressive overhaul of the country’s sociopolitics and economy.

But we can’t achieve this without a politically conscious youth and the literate electorate. The incumbent administration, like its predecessors, has failed to constructively engage with the youths. What they have done so far, is to selectively distribute shady contracts and appointments to their children and stooges.

They have failed to initiate policies that would guarantee the reemergence and continuity of a spirited middle class. This is perhaps, deliberate. Marx and Engels correctly asserted, that, revolutions are unachievable by the poor because they provide the primary fodder for the goons, militias, and thugs employed by politicians to grab and retain power at all costs.

The breadlines thereby constitute a dangerous divide, whom impoverishment has reduced “to bribed tools of reactionary intrigue.” Thus the questions about the true nature of the Nigerian electorate: How politically literate are we? How amenable are voters to incitement, bribe, and wanton emotionality?

Poverty and illiteracy, no doubt, constitute social, psychological handicaps hobbling the electorate’s capacity to make informed choices at ballot time. Hence the preponderance of voters susceptible to dark propaganda, ethnoreligious bigotries, and violence – all crafted to actualise political aspirants’ inordinate ambitions.

The situation requires urgent intervention, lest the prevalent sense of entrapment and despair, drives the impoverished to stage more bloody revolts as we currently experience via armed banditry, terrorism, kidnap for ransom and the ongoing separatist crises.

Common causal factors of insurgencies include widening income gaps, and a leadership insensate to rising socioeconomic inequalities. Victims become generally tense and frustrated. Eventually, they become vulnerable to tensions created by their failure to gratify their economic needs, amid unstable social relationships.

Even so, deprived citizenry are unlikely to achieve a successful rebellion or revolution, by themselves. It is rather a disenfranchised middle class and alienated members of the ruling class who orchestrate and lead such a revolt, argues James Davies.

The middle class and youths, who should personify the Nigerian spring are, however, bristling with uninspiring badges, notably weaponised dissent, guns, cudgels, bribes, mindless bigotries, and shady political parties’ membership cards.

They are like bond slaves turned weapons of mass destruction: thugs, propagandists, urchins et al. For the assassinations, misinformation, arson, mugging, and other heinous tasks they perform, they aren’t interchangeable with the politicians’ wards; the latter are meant for nobler tasks and offices, like the governorship, senatorial, managerial, presidential seats.

Where children of the electorate serve as cannon fodder for political violence, the possibility of a peaceful revolt by balloting is forever muted. The citizenry is consequently eunuchised.

It is saddening to see Nigeria’s youth misappropriate dissent by demanding to succeed the incumbent ruling class, hoping power would be “shared” or served to them a la carte, or like benefits on a sweepstake.

Some, having realised their wrongness of approach, coalesced into movements, like the #NotTooYoungtoRunGroup (NTYTRG) and the Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT), to choose a younger, consensus candidate within their ranks, and counter the influence and spending power of the big parties and oligarchs.

But alas! Their passion for power resonated in gibberish; since they could only muster sweetened banality against the predatory oligarchs’ washed-out bromides, they dissembled under an interpretative cloud.

Loss is what you experience after you trade the possibility of freedom for sound bites and a token.

The supposedly harmless vote flowers trauma, where citizenry angst suffers the leash of a price tag.

July 1, 2021
Ayo Ajibade at 80

By Lawal Ogienagbon

Slight in frame, you can hardly miss him in a crowd. Moreover, he is the quiet type who minds his own business. Even then, that was some 34 years ago, his looks belied his age. You will take him for a young man still in his early thirties; but he was in his forties – 46 – to be precise, going by what I have just learnt. Those who passed through the Times Newspaper Training Centre (TNTC), which later became Times Journalism Institute (TJI), the school set up by the Daily Times under the leadership of its unforgettable and highly-revered one-time chairman/managing director, the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose, to hone the skills of journalists, will know him very well. He was the go to man at the school for many years.

He ran the school as registrar and whether you liked it or not, as a student, your path must cross that of Mr Ayo Ajibade. Until the school was thrown open to outsiders in 1987, it was an in-house training ground for journalists working with the Daily Times. It was under the Manpower and Planning Division. At inception, Pa Ajibade was seconded from the conglomerate’s corporate head office at Kakawa, Lagos, to the school in Iganmu as secretary and typist. By the time my set entered the school, he was already the registrar, a job which he combined with lecturing. He took us in typing. But many of us looked down on typing and never really appreciated what he was doing. Looking back now, I know better.

Today, I rise to toast a great man, administrator and teacher, who turned 80 on June 25. 80? Yes, 80. Unassuming, unpretentious and a paragon of diligence, Pa Ajibade’s strong sense of character stood him out. Even at 80, that is what has kept him going. Happy birthday, sir. I thank most especially, my respected senior and a former TJI Director, Pastor Ndubuisi Ugbede, for bringing Pa Ajibade’s birthday to the notice of former Daily Times workers and for representing us at the ceremony.

July 1, 2021
The ‘crate’ diplomacy

By Lawal Ogienagbon

Is it not funny? When Nnamdi Kanu fled the country over two years ago, he did so in style. Not so much by the manner he escaped, which caught the security agencies hands down, but the way he slipped through the eyes of the camel, so to say. The security agents were seeing Kanu and not seeing him at the same time. An abracadabra of sorts.

But, it was no magic at work. Kanu, like many of his ilk, does not do magic, but can be magical when occasion warrants. They can disappear at will. Something close to that happened that fateful day of his escape in 2019 in his Afaraukwu hometown in Abia State. He beat the security agents in their own game.

It was a lucky escape. The security people never forgave themselves for what happened. Known for his immodesty, Kanu played his escape up. He told all kinds of stories surrounding it. They were tantalising tales that sought to portray him as having mystical powers.

The tales were not different from those such people always like to tell when they gain the upper hand in their confrontations with the law. On Sunday, the bubble burst. He disappeared with a blaze and reappeared without comets. He came back shackled and in a ‘cage’. The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was brought down to earth from his Olympian height from which he had been ‘troubling’ the country, as the Federal Government and the security agents put it. Is Kanu he that troubles Nigeria?

He says he is not. Rather, he blames the government for the travails of his people. He perceives his agitation for Biafra as akin to the biblical quest of the Israelites to leave Egypt. His campaign of ‘let my people go’ does not however resonate with all easterners. Yet, he remains unfazed. When he fled Nigeria in 2019, he escaped with the bare skin of his teeth.

When he got to Britain, where he is a citizen, he stepped up the fight for Biafra, calling on his people not to give up come rain come shine. From his Radio Biafra, Kanu fired up the young and old who believe in his cause. His May 30 sit-at-home directive was largely complied with as the Southeast was locked down. There was no movement anywhere. From Enugu to Anambra to Ebonyi, Abia and Imo, everything was at a standstill. Kanu was riding high and he thought he was on the way to midwifing the second coming of the Biafra nation, which he so much desires.

Unknown to him, the clock was ticking for him. The security agents had never let their eyes off him since his escape in 2019. On Sunday, they got him, at last. Reports of how he was nabbed remain hazy. Some say he was arrested in South America. The name of the South American country was not given. Others say Ethiopia. Wherever it is, that is not the issue. The fact remains that he is not returning on his own terms. He is coming back against his will and as ‘diplomatic luggage’. What a way to return!

It is reminiscent of the way the Buhari military regime tried to bring back Umaru Dikko in an unmarked ‘diplomatic crate’ in 1984 which led to a row between Nigeria and Britain. The success of the Kanu mission may be tempting for the government to adopt the ‘crate’ diplomacy as foreign policy. It is not advisable to do so.

Our diplomatic structure should be built around issues which will make Nigeria stand in the comity of nations; a country which voice cannot be shunned in international matters. Nigeria, nay Africa, came of age in the Murtala Mohammed era over 45 years ago. It cannot afford to be a pariah now.

As for Kanu, the chickens have come home to roost.

July 1, 2021
On Ekiti rice revolution

By Jide Osuntokun

We are overwhelmed by bad news about Nigeria all the time so occasional good news which are not eye-catching should be given vent to and celebrated. This is why I was so delighted about the “rice pyramid” that Governor Kayode Fayemi and some of his colleagues showed to the people of Nigeria some days ago. It just shows what determination and fiscal support from the Central Bank of Nigeria can do to hasten agricultural production in Nigeria.

It is heartening to note that the federal government has decided to aid all states of the country to produce rice for home consumption and for export. This initiative, we are told, is not going to be limited to rice only but to other agricultural produce like cocoa, maize and cassava in the case of Ekiti. We hope the CBN will extend loans to yam and potatoes farmers as well and to those growing onions, peppers and tomatoes. There is nothing unique about rice production, it is just that our people prefer the easier way of satisfying their taste by depending on polished rice from Asia and Latin America especially when we were awash with petrodollars. Now that there are clear signs that the inflow of dollars with which we indulged ourselves with imports of all sorts of consumables is not going to last forever, we are gradually going back to our senses of sustainable economic development.

It is not Ekiti alone that is witnessing this rice revolution. Several states in the north, some of which in the past grew rice are going back to the past to determine their present and future. This is because states in the nearest future would have to depend on what they can produce to survive because in the case of Ekiti, for example, we are not going to allow anybody to take the money generated from our sweat to support another state under the rubric of federalism. It is going to be who ever does not work shall not eat! This crude way of putting it is what economists have been calling “fiscal federalism” which apostles of “non-negotiable unity” have been saying is not going to happen. This unity may be “not negotiable” now because of the easy money we are getting from oil commissions and because of our dependence on oil which God put under our soil.

The people in the Niger Delta are right to agitate for “resource control” even though it is by geographical accident that the oil is under their soil. In the same way and by the same logic of “resource control”, the people of Sokoto, Zamfara and Osun can claim their gold and the people of Ogun, Bauchi, Benue and Enugu should be able to claim their limestone used for cement. No state is totally lacking in economic resources whether mineral or agricultural resources, it is the oil dependency of these past 60 years that has dulled our brains and initiative. The time has finally arrived to go back to the past to arrive at a sustainable present and future.

I grew up in colonial Nigeria where we were totally self-sufficient in food. We did not import food for all I know. Rice was not our favorite food in this country. In my part of the world, we ate rice sparingly at Christmas, Sallah, New year and Easter. We did not crave for rice with our mouth watering in expectation of eating rice on days of celebrations. Whenever we ate rice, it was the local ones from Nupeland, Abakaliki, and Igbemo in Ekiti. Preparing it was so laborious because of the presence of stones in the rice that housewives would rather cook something less time-consuming. To us in Ekiti and Ijeshaland, nothing went down our throats better than pounded yams and okra or efo riro. In the East and Benue area, pounded yam was also king. In the North where people ate tuwo, it was not tuwo shinkafa that people ate but tuwo made from corn and if they wanted to eat tuwo shinkafa, they bought the Nupe rice or rice from the southern states.

I remember that those of us who grew up in Ekiti in the 1950s were forced to eat eba apparently because there was famine or shortage of yams. I remember one of my brothers whose mother had to flog him to eat because he said he could not swallow eba because it was not smooth like pounded yams! Of course, we later got used to eating eba with much grumbling and grumpiness. I am writing all these to let the younger generation who want to bankrupt our country with imports of food stuffs and especially rice to know that this rice eating is a recent fad. People are killing themselves smuggling rice through all our porous borders making indigenous efforts at growing rice futile and unprofitable. Let us hope the new efforts by states like Ekiti to increase local harvests to 1.5 million metric tons a year are realizable. To get to this utopia of food security all over the country, the old extension services unit of our ministries of agriculture would have to be revamped where they exist or brought back where they have fizzled out in our days of oil folly and squandermania. This is important if loans are to be given to local peasant farmers as stakeholders.

I remember some years ago during Obasanjo days as military head of state when he launched the Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), a component of the scheme was granting loans to farmers to increase their acreage and farm yield. An uncle of mine in Okemesi asked me if it was true government was going to give him and other farmers money to increase production. I answered in the affirmative. He stunned me by saying as soon as he got his loan, he would buy a truck and go into trucking business and leave the back-breaking farming to Obasanjo and his government. My uncle completely misunderstood government’s intentions and plans. All my explanations fell on deaf ear. I was very happy to hear Governor Fayemi explain that his government would buy ploughs and tractors to help farmers till the ground. The back-breaking hoe and cutlass kind of farming is what has driven young boys from the farms to riding okada and to the kidnapping businesses of today.

When I was a professor in London Ontario in Canada, some of my students on graduation went back to join their fathers on the farms because farming was profitable and more rewarding than white collar jobs in the cities. I pray there will come a time in this country when agriculture will be more attractive to young people than banking and civil service. But the security situation has implications on the agricultural sector.

I want to illustrate this point by two personal experiences that are close to me. A classmate of mine after reaching the grade of director in the Federal Ministry of Trade took a premature retirement sometimes in the 1980s and went into farming somewhere in Akure apparently on a grand scale using borrowed money and his gratuity. He was very pleased with himself and the labour of his hands and those of his husbandmen. Some days before harvest, huge trucks followed by armed men drove in from the then Bendel State and harvested all his crops and drove away his security men. He was shattered! He did not know what hit him but he was encouraged not to give up. He repeated his plantation and tightened his security but the same invasion and looting of his crop happened. In order to keep his sanity, he took his family and left for New York where he has remained ever since and I sincerely hope he has had a happier life there.

The second example was my brother. After retirement from Leventis Motors as a sales executive sometimes in 2000 or so, he acquired a large land area along the Osun River near Ikire and went into agricultural production. He planted yams, plantains, cassava, palm trees et cetera. He usually had huge yields because his farm was well watered by the river. The local people watched him for about a year or two before they started harvesting his crops which they did not sow at night and soon bankrupted him. He subsequently died of depression and heartbreak.

Need I say that no agribusiness can survive without security. This is where the issue of cow herders come in. Will any rice field or cassava plantation be allowed to yield profits when federally protected herders invade the farms to eat up crops before they are harvested by their owners? All reasonable people have suggested that the primitive open grazing has to end but our president says there were grazing routes in gazettes of the 1960s and his attorney-general should find them for him so that the grazing routes can be reopened to facilitate the private enterprise of cattle owners. While the UAE, where cattle was kept in the past is sending rockets to Mars, we spend all our time on debates about cows and where they should forage.

Fayemi without much ado and fanfare is setting up example about ranching in Ikun Ekiti by resuscitating a previously existing ranch which provided milk and meat in the old Western Region. There were also such ranches in Fashola/Oyo and Iwo and other areas. We used to drink fresh milk in the GRA in Ibadan in the 1950s and 1960s. We can repeat that phenomenon in Ekiti. Afe Babalola University should be interested in its students drinking fresh milk so also should the authorities of EKSU and other secondary and tertiary institutions in the state and elsewhere. The Germans have a saying “Alles ist moglisch” meaning all things are possible. With Ekiti being the centre of knowledge and with a knowledgeable governor like Fayemi, it’s about time we started applying our knowledge to production.

July 1, 2021
Lai’s legacy

By Lawal Ogienagbon

Some 30 years ago, the National Assembly of the shortlived Third Republic, which was a diarchical arrangement between the military and civilians, enacted the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) Act 1992. The law was passed with a gun virtually held to the lawmakers’ heads by the Babangida regime.

The people’s representatives, many of whom were beholden to ‘President’ Ibrahim Babangida, as he chose to call himself, had little or no choice but to pass the law. At the time, Babangida was under fire from the media for his elongated transition programme. He had been shifting the goal post of his exit date from office year after year.

It was obvious to the media and Nigerians, generally, that he was not ready to go. The media turned the heat on him. Tomes were written on him and his unending transition plan. That was how the ‘Go, IBB, go’ campaign was born. Irked by the development, he devised a plan to fight back. And the NPC law came into being. From inception, the intention of the law was never hidden – it was to muzzle the media. This is why the law did not work and may never work, no matter the guise under which it is being brought back now.

The NPC Act was born in deceit and ever since, it has been a child of deceit. It was conceived in the cloak of darkness; that is why till today, it has been in the bushel. It was not a candle lit to show the media the way, it came to serve the interest of Babangida and his cohorts. Having served that purpose, it was never referred to it again. Now, it has been exhumed by those who feel that the media is too harsh on President Muhammadu Buhari.

The media is looked upon kindly when it is not critical of government, but gets tarred when it starts asking critical questions. The media is not the problem of government. instead, the nation’s successive governments have always been the people’s problems. The media becomes the problem when it starts pointing out the government’s flaws.

That is when they go for laws like the NPC Act in order to silence the media as the people’s voice. Not too long ago, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was in the opposition. In fact, it led the opposition against the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It fought PDP with all its might.

APC enjoyed the support of the media which backed it to the hilt. The media did not do that because it loved APC more than PDP, it acted that way in its desire for good government. Since APC said then that it was fighting on behalf of the people for good government, it found an ally in the media. APC is in power today. But can it in good conscience say that it is providing good governance? Things it claimed that PDP got wrong, has the APC been able to put them right?

It is lucky because the PDP has not been that critical of it as it was of PDP in that party’s days in power. That PDP is not as vociferous as it should be does not mean that the media should not talk. The media is an agenda setter. It provokes discourse and through that, it helps the government too to gauge the people’s feeliIngs. It would be criminal for the media to be silent over happenings in the country. As part of society, its role is to hold the government accountable.

The government may not like it; no government does anyway, but the media’s duty is to the people. As long as it serves the people, the media is on track. The media is not there to serve the government. It is there to report the government and its activities. Where the government does right, it says so, where the government falls below par, it equally records that. Any government that expects the media to sing its praise must do something to earn it.

It is easy to earn the media’s and the people’s trust. All that needs to be done is quality governance. The present govermnent had everything going on well for it from the outset. It came to power with the support of the media. The Jonathan administration was virtually hounded out of office by the media. The media did not do to spite PDP, it was only reflecting the wish of the people, who were crying that things were tough. It was this cry of the people that earned APC power in 2015.

Having seen what happened to PDP, the APC should have known what to expect if it does not do well. Its score card in the past six years is not impressive. The people whose cry yesterday helped it to power, are today wailing. They are not ‘wailing wailers’; they are genuinely lamenting the mistake they made in 2015 and 2019. Although, the government scores itself high, the reality on ground does not reflect that

Instead of doing something about this, it is talking about amending the NPC Act to reflect ‘current realities’ in the media! Do not laugh; this is a serious matter. When a sick person does not know that he needs a doctor, those around him are expected to come to his aid before his case gets worse. In order to help this government see itself in the mirror, the media got into trouble. It wants the media to see black and call it white or better still, see no evil, report no evil. The media does not work that way. The media, in the discharge of its job, does not pander to anybody’s whim.

It reports what it observes and what it is told after confirmation. The government’s spokesman, who played the same role for APC in its days in opposition, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, worked closely with the media those days. In fact, he was a darling of the media because of the way he did his job. He was always at the media’s beck and call. No hour was too late to meet with him as long as it concerns the policies of the then ruling party.

If PDP were still in power, it is certain that it would never have known rest from the arsenal of Lai Mohammed. When the shoe was on the other leg, it was game to take PDP to the cleaners, now that the shoe is on the leg of the APC government in which he holds a key position, it is no longer fair to criticise the government. What should the media do in a situation like this? Keep quiet in order not to offend the Lai Mohammeds, Femi Adesinas and Garba Shehus of this administration? If it was good to criticise the PDP government, why is it now an offence to do same to the Buhari administration?

Their biggest mistake is dusting up the NPC Act to stifle the media. A law that was meant for a specific purpose. Laws are not made to serve specific needs. This was the mistake that the IBB regime made. The NPC Act was and is still a vindictive law. Such laws do not work. That is why the NPC Act did not work.

Whether as NPC Act 1992 or NPC Act (as amended) of whatever year, if it ever comes to that, the law will return into oblivion after the life of this administration. Is that a law? Why waste time, energy and money on its amendment? As for Mohammed, he still has a chance to ponder over his role in the law’s resurrection. Is this the legacy he wants to leave behind? The choice is his.

June 24, 2021
For the love of country

By Olatunji Ololade

“For the love of country” becomes our sexiest lie. The curvaceous plague of Nigerian politics. Everybody cops a feel.

Government and the governed; oppressor and the oppressed; oligarchs and long-suffering proletariat; the old and young: the gbenudake and soro soke generations, all partake in the morbid ritual.

However, politics fades to melodrama where the patriot in his youth, misappropriates the role of a revolutionary and considers himself greater than the state. In his struggle to usurp privileges and power, he inflicts misery on ordinary citizens, those whose predicament supposedly triggered his defiant ‘wokeness.’

“For the love of country” becomes his arrant lie, the falsity that becomes his slogan. Thus this minute, random youth pulses to duplicitous love.

Belligerent, cocksure, digitally-woke, social media is his brothel; the virtual bordello of his dreams, where pimps of strife and courtesans of the witless, caress his manifest and furtive lusts. Ultimately, they slake his unarticulated sinful thirsts.

If Facebook is his weakness, Twitter is his vice; a new breed of youth is prowling social media. They are less inhibited, less courteous, and inhumane. They do not understand what humaneness means thus toxic rant is fair game and as their rant spills from their soapboxes into the social space, it passes the stink that smelly suds make in an ocean of mental squalor.

It gets scarier where their ignorance, intemperance, and rage, enjoy the caress of a dubious demagogue. They launch like loose canons at the slightest provocation. Left to their devices, they are feckless and sterile. Armed with their digital devices, they pose anything to their homeland: motley blessings and applause in one minute and despicable threats in the next.

Nigeria won’t forget in a hurry, the #EndSARS protest; through the mayhem, nationhood careened at the crossroads where patriotic spunk jostles with ignorance, fake news, and mischief.

Chaos, prancing on the protesters’ digital phones, recited epitaphs across passion-planes and boundaries, spilling death on to the streets. Some have blamed the resultant carnage on infernal youth and conceit; many have flayed the police for insensitivity, and the protesters for lack of a clear plan and strategy for dealing with venomous leadership. They said they dared to duel with shayateen without a tough shield. Did they?

Nigeria had it coming perhaps; a protest that started as a supposedly peaceful movement got hijacked by mischief makers and death merchants. Shady clerics, political and business actors, failed aspirants, and criminal coalitions abroad, all having a score to settle and united in spite, couched venom in patriotic lingo and threw their weight behind the protest.

The police, lawmakers, and older Nigerians (gbenudake generation), became the butt of rancid jokes and attacks. Lest we forget President Muhammadu Buhari, the protesters’ ultimate whipping dog.

Of course, Buhari presents with shortcomings. He is not a perfect president. And his anti-corruption fight unfurls ethically-knocked. Yet he is everything we are and all that we aren’t: Baby Boomers, Millennials, Generations Y and Z, the gbenudake, sorosoke, netizens, digital natives et al.

Post #EndSARS, politicians still call the shots, career activists and secessionists feed fat using the youths as disposable pawns. The youths guzzle on spite and sound bites without recourse to reason. It would seem that the average youth simply adopts any movement that’s anti-government and anti-state.

Too much of duplicity is discernible in the exploits of many, whose ‘hardcore’ agitation had been seen to extinguish soon after they attained power, or got ‘settled’ by the ruling class or power brokers aligned to the former.

Ferocity manifests as crucial aspects of their passion; the clique culture, cancel culture, authoritarianism, and sense of entitlement characteristic of the ruling class actually manifest among the youth across class divides. It’s a precursor to rite of Nigeria’s rape cycle.

If the #EndSARS protest and the ongoing secessionist agenda have taught us anything, it is that the random patriot in his youth, is morally ambivalent. He pays lip-service to patriotism even as his provocative ‘purity’ incites filth in its wake. Stripped of his slogan, his passion betrays neither breadth nor depth. It is barely individuated from the insensitivity and grotesqueness resonant of the primeval gladiator arena.

His passion connotes moral emptiness. What Paglia would liken to the still heart of a geode, rimmed with crystalline teeth. His platitudinous chant is disguised as a series of soothing gestures, like rubbing a lantern to make a genie appear.

In truth, he weaponises a dark sentiment, luring the masses into a dark cycle of sadism. His exaggerated gestures and confessions of love are an assertion of savage lust. He moots no selflessness or sacrifice, only refinements of domination.

Beneath the glitter and ire of his platitudinous chants subsist a frantic hankering for privileges and spoils of power. For instance, some of the celebrities that led the #EndSARS protests: musicians, religious leaders, motivational speakers, social influencers hardly represent the country’s finest moral compass despite their declarations otherwise. It was ironic though that they became faces of the protests.

Some have been described as “monsters” by their aides, who alleged that they have to endure unprecedented savagery to earn their keep. Yet these ‘superstars’ barged on to the political stage through the trapdoor, flaunting a poker face and chanting for the underdog.

Some made videos; that was their in into the fast-galvanising protests. They saw a window of opportunity as the protests dragged on. Of course, they latched on to the flailing bandwagon, chanting creeds and popular slogans as a necessary performance of will.

Their intent was to align with the movement just before it overwhelmed the incumbent ruling class. Afterwards, they hoped to get invited and “wooed” to seek public office by an army of concerned youth-patriots who would identify them as the real leadership material that Nigeria deserves. Of course, the ill-fated end of the protests put paid to their fantasies.

The movement failed because the agitation was mostly of a visceral type reminiscent of Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin’s idealised revolt. Most defiant youths share kindred spirits with the incumbent oligarchs from whose oppressive leadership they seek freedom.

It’s commendable, however, that they summoned courage to march on the streets to demand better leadership and a higher quality of governance until constraints of savage origins hatched into their midst courtesy of the demons outside and within.

They seized in a revolutionary moment, an ideal that was often more emotional than beneficial because it allowed them to defy established power. This misappropriated sentiment is currently being weaponised by separatists from Nigeria’s southeast and southwest, inciting carnage and shrill whispers of another civil war.

Through the mayhem, the privileged are perfecting their ‘Plan B’ cum relocation abroad. This message is for the millions without the luxury of an overseas refuge: it is about time we cautioned our youth to desist from inflaming the polity be it as internet warmongers or cannon fodder for physical carnage.

We need a peaceful country to successfully fight and defeat corruption, governance failure, power outage, infrastructure collapse, substandard health and education among others.

If the youths truly seek change, they must achieve a unity of minds and common purpose by constructive participation in the political process. The ballot box is definitely sexier than bullets.

June 24, 2021
Osinbajo, youths and politics

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, three days ago, at the maiden APC Youth Conference, advised youths to “be involved in politics if (they) are keen on how the future will turn out because social media do not transform the lives of millions for good or ill”.

Unfortunately, this appeal may not resonate well with many of our youths because of their frustration over President Buhari’s mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building these past six years. But the message couldn’t have come at a better time because our youths, social media wizards, hardly read anything beyond the garbage churned out by many uniformed Nigerians hiding under the anonymity of social media to cover up their ill-preparedness for leadership – a responsibility which requires a lot of sacrifice and preparedness.

I recently asked some Mass Communication majors aged 21-26 cutting across both public and private universities to name some newspaper columnists of pre-independence, post-independence and contemporary newspaper columnists. The sad answer from the majority of them working on their final projects was “we don’t read newspapers”. I didn’t ask them questions on Cyprian Ekwensi, Chinua Achebe, or the Nobel laureate Soyinka. I didn’t bother them about Hausa states before Fulani conquest, the Oyo Empire, the Benin Empire or how the Igbo republican society managed their societies for centuries before imperial powers’ disruption. Neither did I ask about the Holy Bible, Holy Quran or Ifa without whose knowledge those we often regard as salt of life after graduation can manage society.

A great many of the EndSARS generation did not know that Tony Enahoro, who remains the greatest parliamentarian Nigeria has ever produced, was editor at 22, that Zik returned from Ghana in 1934 to elekzikify the Nigerian press or that Awo, a self-made man who never had money to finish primary or secondary school, wrote the best book on Nigeria federalism The Path to Nigerian Freedom as a student at 36.

Osinbajo’s call in my view is for the youths to understand the nature of our problem, compounded by colonial and post-colonial contradictions. In fact, many of them see those calling for restructuring as the problem. I once listened to lectures by Sam Adeyemi and Awosika, two great Nigerians the youth look up to as model claiming there was no difference between Nigerians.

They forget if Germany, regarded as “German machine” is forced to cohabit with leisure-loving French elite that celebrate liberty, freedom and licentiousness over work by going to club with their spouses who they exchange with another woman and return home the following morning holding hands, and Great Britain where you have to wear maternity dress to hide your pregnancy, there will be more social dislocations than we today have in Nigeria

But more importantly, our youths must avoid falling into the same trap set by the imperial powers for the Arab and the Maghreb youths in North Africa with whom we share similar colonial and post-colonial experiences.

Faced with economic crisis from 2008, compounded by Muhammar Gadhafi’s decision to fund African Development Bank to free African countries from IMF, World Bank and Paris Club borrowings that only further impoverish African nations, the West led by America with Bush doctrine, finally settled by Obama’s flowery lecture in Egypt, the youths were set against their dictatorial leaders. From Tunisia, to Libya and Egypt, one dictator fell after another.

Today the Arab and Maghreb region are under a new wave of colonialism. Gadhafi was killed like a chicken against international law by the west and a country he turned from a desert to a paradise where students didn’t pay fees, got subsidy for unemployment, got support to build their own homes if they get married; where citizens were not paying electricity bill has today descended to a war-torn nation where life has become nasty, brutish and short as it used to be in Europe before their exploitation of the resources of Africa and other colonized nations of the world including India. Syria is engulfed in a civil war fueled by world power rivalry with more than half of the population in exile or killed. Saudi Arabia is armed by America to obliterate Yemen.

Today, the Arab world with 300million-strong population speaking the same language sharing the same culture and worshipping the same Allah are at war with themselves.

The consensus among our founding fathers as it was with other multinational and multi-cultural societies was that the only social system that guarantees unity in diversity in deeply divided society like ours is federal arrangement. It guarantees ‘individual and group rights defined in form of language, culture, and religion or socio-economic status’. It was not difficult for the Yoruba to embrace this because by nature, history and temperament they are federalists. However, the Hausa/Fulani, who, according to Richard Sklar, settled for confederacy in 1953, ostensibly because their region was 70 years behind the South in educational development and because of the South’s disrespect for their culture. The Igbo and NCNC opted for unitary system in 1959 (because of their mobility and educational advancement since they stand to gain more from a unitary system.

A workable federal arrangement, that will guarantee freedom, liberty and equality for every linguistic group described by the departing colonial masters as “the unfriendly inhabitants of the Mama Hills, the anti-social Mumuye of Muri Province and the “naked warriors and the mangrove forest”, became a lifelong pursuit for Awo who once accused his political opponents of carousing around while he burnt the midnight oil proffering solution to Nigeria’s problems. He started his crusade with the publication of his book, Nigeria: Path to Freedom, as a student at the age of 36 in 1945.

As a 39-year-old Yoruba representative at the 1948 Ibadan General Conference on the Review of the 1946 Richard’s Constitution, he canvassed vigorously for a federal structure based on ethnic nationalities as against the northern delegates’ insistence on a loose federation, with the centre controlling only defence, external affairs and customs. We went into independence with a colonial master-umpired federal arrangement.

With temporary power in the hands of the East after the January 1966 coup, Dr. Ben Nwabueze was widely believed to have drafted Decree 34 of 1966 that turned the country to a unitary system. However, after the war, the victorious North, drew up a federal constitution that guarantees the north can rule in perpetuity if we agree democracy is a game of numbers. Abdulsalami Abubakar consolidated the northern hegemony by imposing the current constitution, the sources of current social dislocations without reference to Nigerians in 1999. This therefore is the short history of Nigerian constitutional crisis

Then as if there is no coordination or consultation among the youths, Sowore, their 2019 presidential candidate chose June 12, institutionalised as a democracy day in recognition of Abiola’s victory after Babangida, the evil genius who annulled the most credible election in our nation’s history; Sonekan, the usurper, Obasanjo the accomplice, Yar ‘Adua and Jonathan had danced on Abiola’s grave for 25 years as a day to call for the resignation of a popularly elected President Buhari. If only for its symbolism, Sowore could have chosen another day to ventilate his disenchantment with Buhari’s handling of national affairs.

Our youths who must necessarily inherit tomorrow must first try to understand the nature of our problem. That was what their forebears did. The West African Student Union (WASU) founded on August 7, 1925 by 21 law students led by Ladipo Solanke and Herbert Bankole-Bright to seek independence for West Africa countries were the first to recommend Nigeria must run a federal arrangement patterned after Swiss federation.

Buhari is a mere symptom of our unworkable structure.

June 24, 2021
Chief Alade 1933-2021: Man of integrity departs

By Jide Osuntokun

Erin wo Ajanaku sun bi Oke (the elephant has fallen and is lying down like a hill) is the way we herald the death of a great man in Yorubaland. At the age of 87, Chief Fola Alade lived a long and professionally satisfying life, achieving incredible feats, designing hundreds of houses, institutions and monuments on local, state, national and international levels. In the process, he left legacies and memorials for which he will be eternally remembered. These monuments say a lot about him but what would be most remembered by those who knew him are his joie de vivre and his persona which manifested whenever he arrived anywhere where one or two people were assembled. His attitude and happy go lucky carefree character were always on display effortlessly wherever he was. The man simply had presence. Whether one loved him or not, one could never ignore him. He seemed to dominate his environment positively.

He started his earthly journey in his native Aramoko in Ekiti. Aramoko may be a small town but it is regarded as a very important town in Yoruba History and cosmology. To be regarded as “Omo Alara” (child of king of Aramoko) connotes royalty of the highest order in Yorubaland. From Aramoko, he went to the famous Christ’s School Ado Ekiti, a school which in colonial Nigeria was built on the ethics of hard work, and integrity which were native practically to Ekiti people with their peasant culture of sharing the little they had and totally untouched by the greed of commercial communities of coastal towns. On top of this, was built Christian fortitude, forbearance, love of God and fellow human beings. These were not abstract concepts to Fola Alade and his cohorts. They could see them in the lives of their teachers both local and foreign who were totally devoted to their duties and the transformation of the lives of the wards put in their care. In those days, the students were incredibly young and they seemed to have been rushed through primary schools in their villages and then billeted on the salubrious Agidimo hills under the watchful and kind eyes of white missionaries from the United Kingdom one of whom was Cannon Leslie Donald Mason who was principal most of the time Fola Alade was in Christ’s School. It was in this school that the ebullient, artistic and extroverted character of Fola Alade developed. He was a sportsman playing soccer which was one of the few sports the school could afford. His lifelong friendship with some of his mates was forged in the classroom and on the soccer field. He had a flair for outdoor activities which the narrow academic and restricted curriculum in the school did not encourage. He left school in 1951 as a tall almost skinny teenager and he and his school colleagues drifted to Ibadan where they picked up jobs that were available in government and in the few commercial institutions available in the city. Some of his friends drifted to Lagos but Ibadan with the presence of the University College and the Nigerian College of Arts and Science, some kind of a preparatory Advanced level college before university admission, offered more attraction for ambitious young men in the early 1950s. It was from Ibadan that he entered the Nigerian College of Arts and Science from where he decided to study architecture, a field for which he had no prior knowledge. Apart from the study of ordinary level and not the additional Mathematics which by his self-confession he was not too fond of, he was very far removed from the study of architecture. After his stay in Ibadan, he had to proceed to the Zaria branch of the Nigerian College of Arts and Science where professional courses in architecture and engineering were offered. He graduated as one of the four pioneer architecture graduates in West Africa in 1961. He joined the services of the Western Region and practiced architecture in Ibadan and was sometimes moved around to provincial headquarters in Western Region of Nigeria. He completed his postgraduate training at the Architectural Association School in London in 1965 as a Commonwealth scholar. He returned home and for the next 40 years worked as an architect in the Western Region before joining the federal service as a Resident Architect in the Ministry of Works and Housing after a brief stint as a Resident Architect at the Lagos city Council in 1967. He was the first registrar of the Architects Registration Council (ARCON) in 1969. He became the Chief Project Architect in 1972 and Director of Public Buildings in 1975. In 1976 he became the first architect in Nigeria to be appointed a permanent secretary (projects). The story of this appointment is worth telling as contained in his memoirs – Remember Whose Son Thou Art (2005).

General Olusegun Obasanjo, the then head of state who had just taken over the headship of state after the brutal assassination of General Murtala Muhammad was confronted with the problems of housing the much ballooned Nigerian military after the civil war. He therefore sought out Alade for help. In his characteristic sometimes funny way of approaching a deadly serious issue, Obasanjo asked Fola Alade if he knew “… a mad man who could help him build barracks rapidly to house poorly accommodated soldiers”. “This mad man must operate out of civil service rules not shackled by memos, bureaucratic rules and carrying files around for approval thus delaying matters of national urgency”. Fola Alade told the head of state: “I know no such mad man” to which Obasanjo then responded “you are the mad man!”

This was how his appointment as permanent secretary projects was announced. As expected, Fola Alade delivered his assignment with panache, grace, efficiency, flair and integrity, building army barracks all over the country before Obasanjo handed over government to the civilian government of Shehu Shagari who did not have to worry of disquiet about accommodations from the army. Fola Alade retired from the Civil Service in 1979 and went into private practice establishing the firm of ALADE ASSOCIATES in 1980. Throughput his public career, he designed several educational institutions, the federal secretariats in Lagos and Abuja, the National Arcade in Onikan, some Nigerian embassies abroad, the Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies in Kuru among several monumental and legacy projects. He had also served as chairman of the West African Portland Cement Company. He later served as chairman of the Governing Council and Pro chancellor of the University of Port Harcourt in 1991 and chairman of Governing Council and pro chancellor of University of Ado Ekiti ( 1999- 2000).

A grateful country honored him with an OFR (Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic) in 1979. He was a prophet honored at home when he was conferred with the title of Asiwaju of Aramoko, Sobaloju of Ido -Ekiti while his in-laws at Awo Ekiti where his wife Yemi hailed from honored him with the title of Bobagunwa.

As a sportsman he enjoyed swimming, playing golf, lawn tennis, badminton, squash racket. He was a member of Ikoyi Golf Club and whenever he was at home in Ekiti which was often, he played golf at Ekiti Golf Club which he supported financially.

He was very active in the affairs of his Alma mater, Christ’s School Ado Ekiti and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He was an artist in truth and indeed and loved dancing and music and sometimes designed his own clothes. Unfortunately, he lost his darling wife Yemi, a princess from Awo who bore him highly successful children, Yinka, Dipo, Kola, Bisi, and Shola two of whom are fellow architects like their father and one a lawyer and another has taken to business while the baby of the family is a cleric who was called to Gods service after studying medicine in the University of Ibadan.

Chief Alade was my brother Kayode’s classmate in Christ’s School and soul mate until my brother passed on rather prematurely in 1995 .The two were like twins buying the same kind of cars and numbering them in sequence with their Ekiti famous plate numbers. They were each other’s best men and by coincidence having the same number of children two each following their parents’ professions and the others spread out into business and law. I am not sure they planned this but they must have felt short-changed by their government service and hoping their children would do better than them materially. Chief Alade’s generation of Ekiti men by dint of hard work and dedication blazed the trail of western education in which by the 1980s saw them at the commanding height of western educational advancement in Nigeria as told to me by no less a person than Professor Chike Obi in a discussion I had with him. I knew Chief Alade as anyone would know his older sibling and I was a beneficiary of his kindness and generosity whenever I visited him at home in Lagos, Aramoko and when he was studying in London in 1965. He was always gracious to me and treated me like an old brother would treat one, advising and admonishing and chastising when necessary. He was a typical Yoruba man who loved his local food, attire, dance and he was also a Renaissance man at home anywhere in the global metropolis of London, Paris , Washington or New York. Even though he had not been well for some time, his death has left a void in the lives of everyone who knew him. Professor Ayo Banjo, former vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan who was his classmate at the Nigerian College of Arts and Science in Ibadan six or so decades ago in private communication with me said of Chief Alade “… He was so highly gifted and endowed with a lot of energy…He and I were pioneer students of the Nigerian College, Ibadan, from where he transferred to the Zaria branch. It was at Ibadan that we struck up a close friendship which was to last for about 70 years.

His passing has been a great blow, and I wish his restless soul well -earned eternal peaceful rest”. I shared this restless bit with Bisi his daughter and she said “What a perfect description of my father I couldn’t have put it better “

Sunre brother Fola . You ran a good race and I believe a crown of glory awaits you in the great beyond.

June 24, 2021
Who’s afraid of the media?

By Lawal Ogienagbon, Managing Editor

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost- Thomas Jefferson, US President, 1801-1809

When Jefferson, who was America’s third president, made that statement over 200 years ago, he spoke as a statesman that appreciated the values of free speech and democracy. These values were held dear in his time. Indeed, they are values which should be held dear throughout the ages. Unfortunately, they are being eroded today by leaders who fear the power of the written word. No wonder, people say the pen is mightier than the sword. The fear of the media has driven the Federal Government to go for the jugular of the Fourth Estate of the Realm. It has covertly resurrected the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) Act of 1992 to enable it have total control over the media. It is seeking to determine what is fake, who owns a media house, who works there, what they write, how they write it and the channel of distribution.

Since its motive is not pure, the government is working clandestinely with the legislature to achieve its aim through: A Bill for an Act to amend the Nigerian Press Council Act. CAP N128, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 1992, to remove bottlenecks affecting its performance and make the Council in tune with the current realities in regulating press and for related matters. How the anti-media bill got to the National Assembly remains a mystery till today, seven days after the House of Representatives Committee on Information, National Orientation, Values and Ethics began sitting on it. Interestingly, the plan was to shave the head of the media behind it. No known media organ was invited to the sitting, contrary to all known laws that an interested party must not only be present at the hearing of a matter concerning him, but that he must also be given adequate notice to prepare for the hearing.

The law is clear on how a party should be notified – he must be served the hearing notice or written to, personally. The same rule applies in parliamentary sittings. Why this rule was jettisoned for the sitting on the NPC bill, according to media watchers, is because the amendment is not being done with the best of intentions.

‘’The media has been too vocal for the liking of the government and the only way they think they can shackle it is to use the law via the National Assembly to revive the dead NPC Act. With less than two years for this administration to go, they are going to do everything they can to torment the media so that they can have their way’’, an observer said. The Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) were not present at the hearing of the bill on Thursday because they were not aware of the sitting. Asked why they were not invited, Chairman of the committee, Olusegun Odebunmi, said the newspaper advert placed by the panel was sufficient notice for anybody to appear. From his response, it was obvious that efforts were not made to contact these bodies before the sitting. So, if those behind the bill, sponsored by Odebunmi, have nothing to hide why did they not invite these interested parties?

There can be no group more interested in the bill than NPAN, NGE and NUJ members because it directly impinges on their profession. So, if they were not sent invitation letters, who then were those invited? Can an advert calling for the submission of memoranda be sufficient notice for them to appear before the committee?

Odebunmi may have put his name on the bill as the ‘’sponsor’’, but, it is crystal clear that this is the hand of Jacob and the voice of Esau. He said at the sitting that the bill was the ‘’baby of the government’’. If this is so, what then is his name doing on it? The legislature should not allow itself to be used by the government against the media. ‘’If you are sent on an errand as a slave, you deliver it as a freeborn’’, so says a Yoruba adage. The bill has the imprimatur of the executive all over it. Aware that it is doing something wrong, it cannot come out in the open to own up to its action. Eventually, the wind will blow and the backside of the fowl shall be exposed.

Ironically, it is the same media that the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, used as National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) when the party was in opposition, that is being trampled now under his watch. He cannot say that he is not aware of this bill. In fact, some people have already dubbed it the Lai Bill to kill the media. They say his co-travellers are in the Villa and the Federal Ministry of Justice. In the coming days, the public will know where two former presidents of NGE, who are now presidential media aides, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, stand on this issue. Will they side with the NGE and the other media groups to fight the bill?

What does the bill plan to achieve? Under it, 14 clauses, according to its preamble, are to be amended. They are Sections 2, 3, 4, 9, 12, 16, 17, 20, 21, 28, 33, 36, 37 and the First Schedule of the principal Act. Sections 3,17 and 33 dwell on functions of the Council; the power of the Executive Secretary (of the Council) to punish an erring journalist or his organisation and an increase in the fine payable on conviction.

Section 3 is to be amended to, among others, (1) (a): regulate the print media and related media houses; (b): ensure truthful, genuine and quality services by print media houses and media practitioners; (c): with the approval of the Minister in charge of Information, establish and disseminate a national press code and standards to guide conduct of print media, related media houses and media practitioners; (d): approve penalties and fines against violation of the press code by print media houses and media practitioners including revocation of licence; (e): receive, process and consider applications for the establishment, ownership and operation of print media and other related media houses; (f): with the approval of the Minister, grant print media and other related houses licences to any application worthy of such; (g): monitor activities of the press, media and other related houses to ensure compliance with the national press code for professional and ethical conduct, including the Nigeria Union of Journalists…; (m): enquiry into complaints about conducts of the press… and exercising in respect of the complaints the powers conferred upon it under this Act…

(2) No person shall engage any person for, operate or use any apparatus or premises for print or related media anywhere in Nigeria except under and in accordance with the provisions of this Act

(3) Where an offence under this section has been committed by an individual or a body corporate, such person(s) or body corporate shall be deemed to be guilty (emphasis mine) of an offence and liable to be prosecuted against and be punished accordingly. Where any person or body corporate has been convicted of this offence:

(i) such person or body corporate shall be liable to a fine of five million naira only or three years imprisonment to the person or the promoter (in case of a body corporate or both); and (ii) to an additional fine of twenty thousand naira for each day during which the offence continues.

Under the nation’s law, an offender is presumed innocent until otherwise proven in court. But the bill’s sponsor wants to stand that law on its head by proposing that an offender be deemed guilty until he proves his innocence. This is a clear indication of the intention of those behind this bill.

In the proposed amendment to Section 17, the executive is empowered to ‘’direct’’ a media house or its journalist to publish, in such manner as the Council may direct a suitable apology or correction, and may in addition reprimand the journalist or the person concerned. If the order is not complied with, the medium or the journalist ‘’is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction’’. Again, without trial! For that, the medium will cough out one million naira fine, and in the case of its journalist, N250,000… Under Section 33, a journalist, who practices without documentation with the Council, owns, publishes or prints a newspaper, magazine or journal commits an offence and is liable on conviction to five million naira fine or three years imprisonment or both. News agents who circulate for sale publications not documented with the Council also commit an offence and are liable on conviction to N250,000 fine or one year imprisonment or both.

Purveyors of fake news are not spared. They are to pay N5million fine or a two-year jail term or both. They will also pay a compensation of N2million to the aggrieved party. The medium that publishes the fake news is liable to N10million fine or closure for one year or both. In addition, it will pay N20million to the aggrieved party. Is this history about repeating itself under President Muhammadu Buhari, who as military head of state in 1984 enacted the obnoxious Decree 4 under which two journalists, Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson, were jailed. Nigeria cannot afford to travel that road again, 38 years after.

June 23, 2021