The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Sweetness in bitter times

    Sweetness in bitter times

    With Atiku Abubakar raking muck, and Peter Obi splattering mud, in their post-poll season of gall and bile, the mind craved a rare sweetness in horrid bitter times! 

    So on Saturday October 14, Ripples and others — family, friends and protégés, among whom Ripples counted — headed to the Ikeja GRA, Lagos, home of the late Dr. Adewale Adesoji Adeeyo, a “Triple A” indeed in soul sweetness and beauty — if ever any such ever lived! — for the second anniversary of his passage at 73. 

    Sir ‘Eyo passed away on 14 October 2021.

    It was at the invitation of his loving widow, Hauwa Nana Adeeyo, with her two teenage boys, Aminu and Bashir.  The patriarch may have departed — painfully so!  But not a breath of the Adeeyo sweetness was missing — happily so!

    That was clear as the two strapping boys flanked their mum, with the patriarch, benign and large, on the huge anniversary prop, for the sad-happy anniversary photo: Aminu, swarthy as his dad at old age, Bashir, rosy as his mum now and his dad in his younger years, both boys looking different, yet looking the same!

    As the Yoruba often say: the patriarch is gone, yet the patriarch is very much alive — except that the sole original is now split in a refreshing double: “Baba ku, Baba ku!”

    Juxtaposed against the political bitterness that has gripped the country, the irony was stark and profound: the dead that still lived in pure and core grace; the living that since died in a crude dance of shame, over an election won and lost, with the media playing happy-go-merry captive to breathtaking inanity!

    In all good conscience, would you blame the media though — even with its current tragic distraction of historic proportion?

    Would the media have mirrored gentility, when all it had on its radar were preening cads, who for selfish cravings would gladly bury the collective, and blithely toast that depravity as the very acme of patriotism?

    Still, how would the late Adeeyo have reacted to it all, given his stellar bona fides?

    He was a media investor — the proud publisher of The Anchor, the defunct newspaper that took the market by storm but died at dawn, while its publisher battled to save his life, after a horrific robbery raid on his Ikeja GRA home.

    Indeed, it was at The Anchor that he cultivated the friendship of many of his far younger staff, who he treated more as treasured friends, never as mere paid hands.

    That mutually reinforcing friendship was fired by acute intellect, a frothy exchange of healthy ideas, human respect and mutual decency — all honed by Dr.  Adeeyo’s uncompromising faith in the supremacy of good over evil.

    Among the protégés were Kunle Fagbemi (now Adekunle Ade-Adeleye), Tunji Adegboyega aka Cyclone, and, of course, Ripples.  Dr. Adeeyo would often sit in on the The Anchor Editorial Board meeting, chaired by Prof. Ralph Akinfeleye.  

    Former Senator Bunmi Adetunmbi, a visiting member, would weigh in with his vast developmental ideas from the prism of the private sector investment.  So would Prof. Diji Aina, ex-Daily Times but latter-day communications academic in the Nigerian private universities circuit, cresting as vice-chancellor in one of them.  

    Pastor Segun Babatope, The Anchor managing director and editor-in-chief, and passionate leader writer of the best crust, also sat in and chipped in own ideas.  

    Those weekly meetings were always sessions to remember!

    Still, how would Adeeyo have reacted to the current crassness on the political front, since he would have had his own partisan preferences, despite a progressive and squeaky clean liberal outlook?

    Read Also: Tinubu: why S’Court can’t admit Atiku’s CSU evidence

    Whatever his preferences, he would have winced at the crudity of it all — outright lies, titillating half-truths and a penchant to dive and swim in the sewers, in the blind delusion that tomorrow won’t soon come to mock the current happy-go-merry muck!

    Why, in the total moral collapse for partisan expediency, a nameless few even dared to tar Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, our own WS!

    Didn’t their forebears tell them — even if they were not born then — how WS stoutly stood against the electoral heist of Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA) and his “Demo” riggers in 1st Republic Western Region?

    Didn’t their fathers tell them how WS tried to rally a third force to neuter both Nigeria and Biafra, to prevent the Civil War bloodbath, earning long detention for his pains?  

    To secure this current democracy, didn’t their parents tell them how WS faced down Gen. Sani Abacha and his formidable and murderous state gang, even as Atiku, Obi and co did business-as-usual with that rogue regime?

    So, if WS talks of the “Gbajue” mentality from the Obi camp, isn’t it clear all that came from the pristine activist who has seen it all, and not from social media “cash-tivists”, on the lookout for the hire, no matter how lost or ignoble the cause? 

    Indeed!  In those days — and that season included the fierce civic war to revalidate MKO Abiola’s June 12, 1993 presidential mandate — WS and co poured sustained moral fire on vote robbers (and military annullers), forcing the rogue political military to cut and run.  

    The result is this democracy.

    But now, Gen. Z “cash-tivists” push supreme democratic lies to turn clear losers into magical winners — Gbajue!  The terrible genie is out of the cursed bottle!

    In the noxious fume of the moment, even Ripples blundered into a rare headline mix-up: Atiku agonistes!  

    That was the column headline for last week (October 10).  But it was also the headline for 5 November 2019 — almost four years ago to this day — and Ripples didn’t even know until a passionate reader called to point it out!

    But you know what? — and that’s the grand irony: Atiku agonistes (now 1 and 2), refer to the same dramatic personae — then, Atiku and Obi, as losing PDP presidential ticket in 2019; now, Atiku and Obi, as discrete and separate presidential losers in 2023!

    The Gbajue children of bitter politics have certainly come of age!   Their bitterness too has deepened with geometrical proportion — not unlike the dire population projection of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who predicted a population doom for pre-Industrial Revolution England!

    But pray, what happens to their political offspring after all this madness is over?  How would they explain their forebears’ zealous dance of filth, to wrongly corral the electoral diadem never theirs, depending on brazen lies?  What a heavy burden to lug!

    But again the biological Adeeyo children, Aminu and Bashir, posing with their mother, oozed a refreshingly different aura, even if their solemn looks clearly rued the passage of their father.

    True, all might not be the same again, for their debonair paterfamilias is gone!  Still, they bear no heavy burden of his earthly misdeeds — none!

    On the contrary, they crest on the sweet breeze of his earthly charity — and malice to none — set to open doors of tremendous goodwill, as they go on own lives’ journey, under the watchful eyes of their young materfamilias, still very much around.

    May Sir Eyo’s memory continue to be sweet!  Such welcome sweetness in bitter times!

  • Atiku agonistes

    Atiku agonistes

    The agony of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar runs deep.  His APC f(r)iends claim it’s some virulent post-poll defeat virus.  

    But don’t take that on face value.  Partisan foes love to poke costly jokes — or even outright muck — at one another.  It is what it is!             

    Still, the depressing bile with which Atiku is taking his latest — and final? — loss echoes a refreshing opposite from his North East nativity: with the 2nd Republic Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim (1926-1992), that republic’s chief apostle of politics without bitterness.

    Now, Alhaji Ibrahim had every reason to be sore.  As awaiting presidential candidate for the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP), he smacked at a rather strong pan-Nigeria platform. 

    But Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s re-entry into politics turned that pleasure into pain — the famed Zik of Africa, who the iconic cartoon of Jossy Ajiboye (then of the defunct Daily Times group) had dubbed “Bride of the Century”!

    Zik, politically coquettish as ever, wouldn’t say yes or no, to calls by his followers to join the 1979 presidential race.  

    But when eventually Zik hearkened that call, his party of choice was NPP, teeming with mainstream old East politicians, the Christian Middle Belt that often sided with the South against the North in crunchy national matters, and Zik’s 1st Republic Lagos/West confederates, led by Chief Adeniran Ogunsanya.

    With Zik’s entry, the smart Alhaji Ibrahim knew his presidential ticket dream was toast.  He simply moved on and formed a new party, Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP).  

    Enter, Politics Without Bitterness: the credo the late Ibrahim lived for the rest of his life.

    Now, compare and contrast his conduct with Atiku’s, who lost an election and is seized with so much gall — a Samson’s complex that suggests the Wazirin Adamawa wouldn’t care a hoot if he crashed everyone (including himself) with his crashed ambition!

    As a historical aside, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, self-named military “president”, would be wondering whatever happened to his new breed political brood, among whom counted former Vice President Atiku and sitting President Bola Tinubu.

    The “new breed” — costly pawns in IBB’s failed self-perpetuation ploy — were to be free of partisan bitterness that crashed the 1st Republic (1960-1966) and the 2nd Republic (1979-1983).

    Yet, here was Ibrahim, a top player back in the 2nd Republic, trumping Atiku — the aging “new breed” of the IBB era — in the ABC of civil and cultured politics! 

    But back to the tumultuous present: Atiku’s conduct (pre-poll, electioneering cum election proper and post-poll) has been as bitter as gall, fired by a rabid desperation.

    Unlike Alhaji Ibrahim that really was unfairly done by — and had a genuine case of being cheated — Alhaji Abubakar’s wild desperation fired his electoral misfortune.

    For personal glory, he bucked a near-national consensus for the presidency to move down South, after the Muhammadu Buhari years (2015-2023).  

    That stubborn streak earned him the PDP ticket all right.  But it also split PDP into three camps: if you discount the internal rebellion of the G-5 (the irked five PDP governors led by Nyesom Wike, then Rivers governor, now FCT minister).  

    So, the G-5 effectively splintered PDP into four: Peter Obi, another demagogue, was leering punter at the Labour Party (LP) — always a shameless harlot at vote seasons, always getting under the sheets with the highest bidder.

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    Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, with his red-capped Kwankwassiyya movement, also whored with the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), though the latter-day explosion in that party has shown the futility of mutual opportunism.  

     Besides, Atiku lost no time to further degrade himself from a national figure to a cheap “northern” hustler for president.  He took the PDP down that abyss, as some northern vassal party, captive to Atiku’s low ethnic agenda.  

    Blinded by acute power lust though, that grim twin-irony was totally lost on him!

    But even within the PDP rump, Atiku had the G-5 to contend with.  While the Arewa Atiku pulled north, the G-5 pulled south — until PDP, a pan-Nigeria party in 1999 (though a cynical Army Arrangement), was well-nigh wiped out in Nigeria’s South!

    So, how can the opposition PDP, split into four bitter camps, delude itself it “won” the presidency on February 25 — with two parts of that headless snake, Atiku and Obi, both claiming “victory”?  How — against the ruling APC that held on to its ranks?

    What hearty pantomime!

    But not even the thunder from the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) could snap Atiku out of his concentrated delusion.  To the United States he headed, manifesting the same Samson’s syndrome that lost him the election.

    The insensitive ex-Vice President that would crash political sensibilities for stark power, is self-same insensate loser, whose US search for a certificate that was never lost, would earn his cherished homeland undeserved jeer and ridicule.  

    Hardly any redemption for he blinded by partisan bile!

    Indeed, after kicking up much dust and burning tonnes of US dollars, all Atiku got from his American voyage was a damp squib.  

    That squib hissed all right.  But if it burnt anyone, it was Atiku himself — in ice cold commonsense rebuke, which really made the point that common sense isn’t common!

    Otherwise, how could the Chicago State University swear on oath — with released academic transcripts to boot — that Bola Tinubu was its graduand, yet you dub a certificate that graduate parades as a “forgery”?

    To complete the Atiku drama of the absurd at his “world press conference”, he summoned one of his lawyers to mouth the inanity: Tinubu’s certificate was a “forgery” because it belonged to a “Black American” — titillating stuff that can only excite starry-eyed Atikulates and their Obidient cousins!

    Still, after all the hurly burly is done, and the battle is lost and won at the apex court, this lawyer had better be prepared to prove his claim, should the Tinubu camp decide to sue!

    Besides, stripped naked by own gambit, Atiku invoked emergency saints for his emergency cause: the late Gani Fawehinmi, SAM, SAN, that started the wild goose chase in 2001.  

    Why, he even played to the gallery over “Muslim-Muslim” ticket. But in his selective recall, he blissfully forgot he was Shehu Yar’Adua’s preference in 1993, over Baba Gana Kingibe, to run with “Christian” Moshood Abiola, after which failure the Yar’Adua faction of the winning camp traded off MKO’s mandate!

    But the cruellest cut of all: Atiku invited Obi and Kwankwaso, the duo that destroyed PDP from without because of own roaring ambitions, to reunite with him on his quaint voyage!

    Kwankwaso didn’t even flatter the call with any response.  But Obi, always the trader, hustling and haggling for the best bargain, instantly balked. Holy Obi was gunning for “justice” — whatever that means — at the Supreme Court!

    Atiku and Obi are two of a kind.  The one stands for everything, via cheap grandstanding.  The other stands for nothing, save empty demagoguery.  

    The polity can do without their shrill distractions.

  • Labour’s Independence bouquet

    Labour’s Independence bouquet

    For Nigeria at 63, organized Labour had a bouquet of spikes — an “indefinite” strike that nevertheless resonates with its long-suffering members.

    Poor folks!  They are riled up to mauling an instant Judas (the sitting government), for a long-standing economic angst! The question though is after the strike, what? 

    Now, compare the Labour spikes with the nest of feathers, thrust onto the citizens, in President Bola Tinubu’s balmy Independence speech.  Different strokes? 

    The way Joe Ajaero, president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), marshalled his troops to at least get the one crippling strike he had craved since May 29, reminds you of Karl Marx — that bit about history repeating itself as farce.

    To boot, he finally got to his side the Trade Union Congress (TUC) — TUC nobles with the NLC rabble! — more perhaps for the TUC tiff with the Lagos government over the state’s Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) ban, than any ardour to go on a strike.  Indeed, my enemy’s enemy is my friend!

    Now, put Ajaero side by side with Adams Oshiomhole, now a senator of the Federal Republic, but then NLC boss.  Throw in their common anatomy — little guys that boss giants around!

    Then add, as spice, fuel subsidy — clearly the prime issue of Nigeria’s 4th Republic — with its co-irritant: importation of petroleum products, when Nigeria could more rationally — and cheaply — refine its crude oil, and all you have is the perfect storm.

    Oshiomhole fought President Olusegun Obasanjo to a standstill on petrol pricing yo-yo, with the government reversing price hikes after strikes, but not to pre-strike levels.

    In this Labour-government show down, Ajaero would hope to go one farther: force President Tinubu to junk oil subsidy removal, shove down pump prices to pre-May 29 levels — or otherwise face an indefinite strike that would cripple the economy!

    Still, how many days does NLC think it could get its members off work before fatigue — euphemism for search for daily bread — sets in?  Even in Oshiomhole’s triumphant days, strikes hardly lasted for three days before troubling signs of sudden abortion.

    Besides, NLC has asked its members — and the general public — to stock up.  But really how many have the capacity to do that with the present economic throes?  

    Even those that could, how much could they possibly “stock up” to sustain an “indefinite” strike?

    And after “stock up” and triumphant crippling, how can a stark economy, further drained, support workers’ demands for better deals?

    Ajaero craving an Oshiomhole-era triumph is no more than a craven dream — bold cowardice in rushing at new challenges with old methods.  In such circumstances, history can only repeat itself as farce!

    That’s the thing, though: times have changed but Labour is fixated with set past practices, instead of thinking anew, to get more for its members.  

    Still, none of all these suggests organized Labour is the sole sinner, while the government it contends with is a saint — far from it.

    Read Also: Nigeria@63: Oyo NLC, TUC shun parade

    If you remove subsidy without local refining; and float the Naira such that every kobo buys far less than hitherto, then brace yourself for a stiff social cost!

    The first manifestation of that is anger from the hoi polloi — the first (and worst) to be hit by spiralling prices, no matter how much that jolt could push a strategy that may eventually improve their lives.

    Then, you risk Labour leaders, stuck in old ways but deathly scared to think anew, milking the raw emotions, and basking in popular roar, as they tear at the government for “anti-people” policies.

    Between earnest unionism and artful dissembling, there is but a thin line!

    But pray: how can a government that just earned its legitimacy, from a tough election, from the same people, suddenly turn rogue and unfeeling on them?  

    That’s hardly logical.  Still, emotion is mushy rush to hurting answers, especially when the pocket burns!

    Aside from eager “critics” and sundry anarchists, feasting on yet another “pro-people” crusading, add baleful foes diving into the fray for cheap and nasty politics.

    Ram in too the hybrid agitators, in this season of virulent partisanship.  

    Pray, who does Ajaero represent — NLC, as he postures?  Peter Obi’s Labour Party, which Joe and co blindly backed but who lost at the polls, but continues to deny the obvious?  Or both in different degrees, as cynically convenient!

    But after all the high drama, after all the thunder, after all the tempest, the economy is no magic the government must quickly conjure, or be roasted at the stakes.  

    That is the fundamental folly of rushing into strikes, as Ajaero’s NLC has been bristling to do.  That again reinforces that earlier question: after the strike, then what?

    The poor economy, integral and systemic, demands a productive Labour-government partnership, anchored on mutual trust.  It’s a critical juncture at which old thinking must yield to new: patient collaboration, against hasty confrontation.

    Still, it’s hard times.  So, the government should — indeed, must — concede to the people as much quick reliefs as possible.  

    Incidentally, from the president’s Independence broadcast, the government already offered some reliefs: workers to get additional N25, 000 for six months; the expanded National Social Register (NSR) to now accommodate 15 million Nigerian households, and compressed natural gas (CNG)-powered buses deployed to down transport costs.  

    Salary awards and CNG buses are two prominent demands on the Labour strike menu. Later, Femi Gbajabiamila, the presidential chief of staff, announced the raise of the wage award, from N25, 000 to lowest earners to N35, 000 to every worker, low or high.

    Still, the people too must accept that initial pains come with tough measures to crack hard times. 

    Why the six months duration for the wage awards, though?  Could it be that in six months, some local refining would have been in place, leading to lower pump prices of petrol, thus tamping down the present high inflation?

    Inasmuch as the the government may not fully expose its strategy, a clear timeline, detailing when the many refineries in the works will come on stream, should help to shore up public confidence, sympathy and eventual support.

    Besides, that alone will help defang Labour’s eternal refinery agitations, public or private — no crime, though — and force fresher thinking on union leaders, so as to  extract the best deals, in challenging times, for their members.

    So, while this government has the bounden duty to fix the economy — President Tinubu is the first to tell folks not to pity him, since he campaigned hard for the job — changed attitudes, on both sides, are imperative.

    Enter then, a new cold pragmatism that thinks through the harsh reality.  

    Exit, fond dreams that purport strikes could prise open resources simply not there.

    Both the government and Labour should tread this new collaborative path all of the way.

  • Verbal suicide at Iseyin?

    Verbal suicide at Iseyin?

    With Typhoon Taiwo ripping his roof and the Yoruba Council Worldwide (YCW) aiming a blitzkrieg from outside, it’s testy times for former President Olusegun Obasanjo.   

    Quite the merciless storm: Ms Taiwo Martins (ex-Mrs. Obasanjo) virtually setting her former husband ablaze in justifiable public anger; and YCW going for broke!

    Why, Prof. Wole Soyinka, supreme master of the cultured repartee, on September 24, added his own spice!  

    “My royal highnesses, I wish to assure you that I’m not about to bark at you to ‘stand up’ and ‘sit down’,” he told a select company. “This is a cultured gathering.” Ouch!  

    That elicited a hilarious guffaw.  But the Ebora Owu wouldn’t find it a tad funny!

    At last, the man that has lived a long and grumpy life of talking down to others — no matter whose ox is gored, as he often brags — just talked himself into a ditch at Iseyin!

    When a self-famed Ebora spews gutsy insults at royal fathers, revered peers of the gods in the Yoruba cosmos, self-caused catastrophe is never far away!

    Indeed, Obasanjo’s impish relish at insulting others has been a life-long hobby — most of them documented to boot, thus making himself a preening pariah to not a few.  

    Still, Iseyin was a new, new low!

    The foundation of that talk-into-a-storm though, was firmly laid in 1990. That year, Obasanjo had released the second of his ego-tripping autobiographies: Not My will.  

    In that book, he cast great slurs on two personages: the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who the Yoruba revere as the second Oduduwa; and Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Obasanjo’s old commander-in-chief, suave and genteel as Obasanjo is raw and coarse.

    First, he bragged that all Awolowo craved in his entire life, he — Obasanjo, a mere rustic boy from Ibogun-Olaogun, near Abeokuta! — got on the proverbial gold platter.  

    Were he a futurologist, the triumphalist in him would have pranced over his future eight years as elected president (1999-2007), added that tally to his three years as junta head (1976-1979) and screeched he not only triumphed over Awo, he was indeed the best that ever happened to Nigeria!

    In truth, that grand delusion — the best that ever happened to Nigeria — feeds the Owu chief’s constant megalomania.  

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    Still, everyone knows Awo, in rigorous thinking, clear vision and developmental ideas, theory and praxis, was head and shoulders above Obasanjo and his band of military ruffians — political soldier-usurpers that misruled this country for much too long.

    Which explains why Awo (1909-1987) would in death command deep reverence, which a living Obasanjo craves, but will never get.  Indeed, that craving for willy-nilly honour, unworthy of his trademark petulance, must have led him to his Iseyin cultural Waterloo.

    Obasanjo also savaged Gen. Gowon, arbitrarily stripped him of his military rank, churlishly demoted him to “Mr. Gowon” and passed on him a military fatwa, should he ever set foot in Nigeria — all for unproved allegations over the 1976 Buka Suka Dimka coup attempt that took Gen. Murtala Muhammed’s life!

    Still in 1995, karma would pay Obasanjo back in grim coins.  Gen. Sani Abacha nearly tied Obasanjo to the stakes  — Obasanjo, Abacha’s old commander-in-chief — for coup plotting, just as Obasanjo himself had tied Gowon to the stakes in Not My Will!

    Only divine grace sprang the old soldier from that hook, though not before a hefty jail term.  But grace hardly oozes from the public conduct of the man, old or young!  

    Still, the Awo/Gowon symbolism is telling: if you rubbish the prime icon of the modern Yoruba (Awo) — to which you claim nativity — and scorn your own army commander-in-chief (Gowon), which other shrine will you not profane?

    Earlier in My Command, his Civil War memoirs (released in 1980), he had traduced Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle, his predecessor at the Third Marine Commando Division. The dreaded “Black Scorpion” had won the most bruising battles before Obasanjo harvested the Biafra surrender. 

    Still, after Awo and Gowon, he felt emboldened to gore about anyone — and did he do so with satanic relish!

    Second Republic (1979-1983) President Shehu Shagari was a let-down — which he was, in truth — for wasting the 1979 military-to-civilian power transfer.

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (self-named military “president” for eight years) was the worst to ever blight Nigeria — which he was.  

    Still, that frothy public sanctimony didn’t prevent Obasanjo from allegedly striking a one-term deal, with the same Babangida as successor, as part of the Army Arrangement that propelled Obasanjo to the 4th Republic presidency in 1999 — if a video clip, making the rounds is true, in which Senator Orji Uzor Kalu bared it all!

    The stark Abacha wouldn’t stomach the cheap Pharisee that was his old commander-in-chief. That probably was why he roped Obasanjo into the so-called phantom coup, before he started running his mouth, as always, against the Abacha regime!

    Earlier, as Ernest Shonekan’s iniquitous Interim National Government (ING) was being cooked at home, Obasanjo bobbed up abroad, claiming MKO Abiola, winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, was not the “messiah”.

    After leaving power in 2007, Obasanjo would descend on his successors — the tragic Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, on his dying hours; the sorry Goodluck Jonathan, mere fall guy for a corrupt PDP-era structure Obasanjo nurtured; and the Spartan Muhammadu Buhari, the opposition candidate that kicked PDP from the Abuja power gravy.

    Most flailed under Obasanjo’s vicious verbal strafing but only PMB gave a quiet but devastating riposte. 

    Behind Obasanjo’s second coming power trophy — the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta — PMB erected the Wole Soyinka train station, to serve millions of long-suffering Nigerians, as OOPL eternally sates Obasanjo’s sole gravy.

    Posterity will judge: who, between the two, was the leader or the dealer!

    It was this terrible complex, of annoying arrogance firing verbal diarrhoea, that spurred him to his Iseyin sacrilege, risking becoming a formal Yoruba pariah at old age.

    Now, YCW demands Obasanjo must beg on 10 TV stations and 20 national dailies.  It also told the Olowu of Owu-Egba to strip his Balogun of that title.

    Karma! He that stripped Gowon of his military rank risks losing own traditional military title!  Karma!

    The Ebora — ever rough and gruff — will probably ride out the storm.  Still, his march into wilful ostracism echoes the great Pericles’s of ancient Athens.

    Gen. Pericles was voted into political exile for being too “popular”.  Gen. Obasanjo risks cultural exile for ringing notoriety: unabashed insolence to revered natural rulers!

    Even if he rides this harsh scrutiny, who survives the undiluted scorn his former wife, Ms Taiwo Martins, publicly poured on him, in that long, no-holds-barred put down?  

    And to think the crux of her message was that her children, and children’s children, be shielded from the dire comeuppance of her former husband’s grand misconduct!

    On this one, the Ebora Owu is well and truly on his own! 

  • Comic juntas, coup jesters

    Comic juntas, coup jesters

    Just as well: the Omar Bongo rogue dynasty of Gabon just got dissipated — and with ignominy too! 

    “Papa Doc” Omar Bongo Odimba corralled the Gabon state on 2 December 1967. “Baby Doc” Ali Bongo Odimba got booted out on 30 August 2023.  Fifty-four years of state capture!  Good riddance to bad rubbish!

    Remember the infamous Papa Doc (Dr. Francois Duvalier: ruled 1957-1971) and Baby Doc (Jean-Claude Duvalier: ruled 1971-1986): the notorious Haitian father and son that captured Haiti, until Baby Doc was chased out by popular revolt in 1986?  

    Baby Doc even succeeded Papa Doc at 19!  Both left Haiti in virtual ashes. 

    But unlike Haiti, Gabon prised off the father-and-son dynasty for Brice Nguema, an Odimba cousin, as junta chief — the best the Gabon army could conjure from their bag of tricks!  

    So, Gabon, look out for a long night under your military, if experience elsewhere is any pointer.

    But Gabon is no sole example of a sole family capture of the state.  Togo is another. 

    In 1967 — same year as Gabon’s Bongo — Gnassingbe Eyadema seized Togo.  Though Vice President Bongo succeeded his dead President Leon M’ba, Soldier Eyadema seized power by a coup. After his death in 2005, his son Faure Gnassingbe took power — another “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” story.

    So, for 56 years now, tiny Togo has been in even the tinier pocket of the Eyademas! When that pseudo-dynasty too blows up, let no one express surprise.

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    Pray, how long will Rwanda be in the clamp of Paul Kagame, despite its Hutu-Tutsi genocide trauma of 1994?  Since then — 29 years — Kagame has been sole ruler.

    Or Uganda under Yoweri Museveni, the guerrilla that seized Uganda after the comi-tragic Idi Amin Dada, another soldier-savage (ruled 1971-1979)?  Since 1986 — 37 years — Museveni too has had Uganda in his pocket.

    Both are other time bombs waiting to explode.

    Kenya could have gone the Gabon — or Togo — way, though a threatened Air Force coup reset the brains of the dynasts there.  Mau-Mau guerrilla war of independence hero, Jomo Kenyatta (ruled 1963-1978) died in 1978, passing power to Daniel arap Moi, his Vice President, in a one-party state Kenya.

    Moi too would go on a power frolic (he ruled from 1978 to 2022).  But an Air Force coup scare forced multi-party elections from 1992.  

    Though he would win two more terms, a Kenyan dynastic mindset was broken.  Mwai Kibaki, the opposition alliance candidate, beat Uhuru Kenyatta, Moi’s preferred heir.

    But that didn’t prevent Uhuru, son of Jomo Kenyatta, from wining a later term, thus attaining some democratic Kenyatta “dynasty” — no crime, so long as it’s backed by legitimate votes: the Nehru-Ghandis of India, the Bushes of the United States — with the “almost there” Clintons — are examples of such voter-backed “dynasties”.

    Lesson?  Kenya achieved a double: it not only dodged the military junta bullet, it also fixed its democracy.  No, it’s not perfect.  But it’s growing.

    Still, no matter how skewed a polity is, the military is never an option.  The best you get is Togo — being sold a pig in a poke: by soldiers capturing the state for families’ own exclusive rape.

    Which is why it’s shocking many would crow about the military as some salvation. How tragically deluded!

    Indeed, how deluded are the West African quad of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea Conakry, incidentally all linked by land mass.  The juntas out there have over-flogged anti-French hysteria to gain emotive traction in rogue nationalism.

    But to what end?  Like in Gabon, it’s a long, long night for them all.  The real surprise though is any sane Nigerian giving junta rule a thought, no matter how fleeting!

    Between 1966 and 2007, Nigeria had seen everything: benign military rule, gruff and rough junta rule, near-state capture under junta rule, attempted term extension under civil rule and, well, post-2007 constitutional romantics — if not outright anarchists —under the interim government banner.

    That about constitutes the crux of Prof. Wole Soyinka’s latest intervention: “The Cape Town Re-entry”, in which he stated the obvious: PDP and LP cancelled out each other, yet after, claimed they “won”!  Which house divided against itself ever stands?

    Under Gen. Yakubu Gowon, quintessential officer and gentleman, Nigeria witnessed the closest to benign military rule — at least in comparison to his successor ruffians.

    The Murtala-Obasanjo regime was a mish-mash.  The mercurial Gen. Murtala Muhammed started out to crush corruption “with immediate effect”.  Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo lived most of that regime (after Murtala’s February 1976 assassination), and so achieved its prime political goal of returning Nigeria to civil rule in 1979.

    Murtala’s impulse and rashness, epitomized by his “immediate effect” media sackings, destroyed the civil service as safe haven for career bureaucrats.  That scare created the civil servant as “evil” servant — rank colluder in the mega-corruption of today to safeguard his future.

    Under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Nigeria was perilously close to state capture.  IBB almost imposed personal anniversaries as national epochs, although his waywardness — witness the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election — also tolled the death knell for political soldiers and greedy junta rule in Nigeria.

    Under Gen. Sani Abacha, military rule plumbed the lowest.  While the regime was grim and unfazed harvester of opposers’ lives and limbs, Abacha himself became the blind symbol of soulless looting, the future be damned!  That effectively buried the political military.

    Had ex-President Obasanjo attained his illicit “third term” push of 2005/2006, Nigeria would probably today have been a Gabon, under a sick PDP dynasty, with catastrophic consequences.  But the Senate punctured that ploy.

    Post-June 12 annulment politics and till today, Obasanjo has been deep in the interim government intrigue, a subject on which WS just beamed fresh light.  

    He was neck-deep in the conspiracy with IBB to trade off MKO’s Abiola’s mandate for Ernest Shonekan’s doomed Interim National Government (IMG) that only paved the way for Abacha.  

    When Obasanjo realized Peter Obi had lost, he started goading President Muhammadu Buhari for a mid-way election freeze, ala June 12.  Of course, PMB ignored him.

    But the current losers’ gambit is no accident.  It’s all a ploy by PDP elements (read PDP and Peter Obi’s LP) that actively worked against democracy, nevertheless gained its plum from 1999 but spectacularly ran Nigeria aground till 2015.

    Lusting after ruinous junta rule — which is treason by the way — is latest stratagem by these sore but loud losers.  But whoever crosses the red line must pay the price.  The security agencies must make sure of that.

  • Of tortoise and PEPC verdict

    Watching the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) give Atiku, Obi and lawyers a harsh tutorial on the basics of evidence and proof, three sayings coursed through you.

    One: a bad artisan blames his tools.  

    Two: He that planted five seedlings, with five fat lies, soon harvests five yam tubers and five big lies.  

    Three: The tortoise declared he was travelling.  When will you come back, his folks asked.  When I’m thoroughly disgraced, he bragged.

    Indeed.  A bad (p)artisan blames his tools!   Any clinical mind knew the Atiku, Obi cases were all fizz, no pitch.  The PEPC verdict all but confirmed that.  

    But why didn’t the tools (lawyers) — ultra-costly ones at that! — tell their clients — dreamy, delusional fellows! — they had an extremely bad case, if any?

    The court was so riled, by the tri-litigants wasting its time, that it handed out hefty fines: Labour Party, LP (N47, 910, 431. 78); People’s Democratic Party, PDP (N23, 391, 001. 45) and Allied People’s Movement, APM (N13, 675, 890).

    Citing the Judicial Act 87, subsection 390 of 1968 (as amended), the PEPC sapped the litigants for frivolous petitions, which the court dubbed “incongruous, incompetent, nebulous, unmeritorious, fallacious, defective, mischievous, beyond repairs” — and ordered that the fines be paid within 48 hours after the verdict!

    Aside from the hefty fines, should SANs, flowers of the Bar, endure such blasters from the Bench, for brilliant failures on the core professional front — the Bench here being the Court of Appeal — Nigeria’s second highest — which members make up the PEPC?  Not pretty!

    Besides, planting lies and harvesting fibs; and the tortoise swearing never to return until after cropping utter disgrace, would appear fair grand metaphor for the Abubakar Atiku and Peter Obi runs.

    Obi especially was a shaman, who had no demonstrable legacy or clear vision as governor — at least compared to his prime opponents: the APC pair of Bola Tinubu (Lagos) and Kashim Shettima (in Boko Haram-plagued Borno).

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    Yet, he was magician to his Obidient zombies; pious son to his “yes Daddy” holy hustlers, hoofing and neighing at the APC “Muslim-Muslim” ticket; and messiah to his boisterous clan, whose din ensured he lacked the national spread to the Presidency.

    Atiku, all preen and strut, does have a decent pan-Nigeria network, to be fair.  But his problem is he always postures what he’s not — or will ever be.  Besides, his blind ambition made him blind, deaf and dumb to political realities around him.

    Against old soldier, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who would rather crush his Vice President with an imperial jackboot, Atiku feigned the liberal democrat.   That was 2007.  But the 2007 pan-Nigerian democrat became the 2023 “northern” choice!

    Against President Tinubu as APC candidate, he attempted a rank harvesting of the over-demonization of another old soldier, former President Muhammadu Buhari, pushing himself as some lost pearl from a golden PDP era: both as consummate democrat and acute genius of the market economy.

    But if the Obasanjo-PDP era was golden age of Nigerian democracy, why did Obasanjo hanker after an illicit third term, so much so that the Senate had to shoo him off in virtual disgrace?  

    And didn’t PMB teach Obasanjo and PDP the inviolability of term limits; and the piety of sane elections: witness the gulf between Obasanjo’s 2007 charade and Buhari’s 2023 poll?  Yet, sore losers strive to bad-mouth 2023, even if they continue to fail.

    Trust Atiku!  Even post-PEPC drubbing, he has launched into some yarn, dubbing himself some Shehu Musa Yar’Adua reincarnation in activism to deepen democracy!

    But even on that, he talked himself into a deep hole of history.  Yar’Adua, it was, whose faction of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) subverted MKO Abiola’s rousing victory.

    SDP national chairman, the late Tony Anenih, who signed and parcelled off MKO’s win for Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (ING), would emerge “The Fixer” of the PDP era: a euphemism for the most ruthless of election-rigging machines, on which PDP thrived.  That blind heist climaxed in 2007, marking the beginning of PDP’s end.

    Still, all those behind the June 12 treachery have eaten crow: Obasanjo is self-diminished.  Yar’Adua — unfortunately — died in the Abacha gulag.  ”The Fixer” was the contemporary Tortoise: he didn’t quit until he cropped disgrace with the PDP!

    By contrast, the heroes of June 12 have thrived since 2015: the grand symbol of that is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, now President of the Federal Republic, whose election the PEPC just comprehensively endorsed!  

    It was on June 12 Tinubu parted ways with the late Shehu Yar’Adua. Viva June 12!

    But Atiku, at least, has some history of struggle to his name — history that might eventually testify against him, but history nevertheless.  

    Not so Obi — the supreme child of the moment: no yesterday, no tomorrow, not even the next second, just this moment!  

    That shapes the full emptiness that drives Obi and his Obidients.  No wonder their prime tenet is Obidiocy — that gangling penchant to act before you think, yet swear it was infallible and thoroughly traduce whoever demurs!

    Track the electoral graph since 1999: 2003 was worse than 1999; 2007 — Obasanjo’s exit bare-faced robbery — was not only worse than 2003, it hit the very nadir.

    But Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (God bless his soul!) would be eternally remembered for flinching from the blind heist that fetched him controversial power; and therefore introduced reforms — not the Judiciary that somewhat okayed that robbery; not Obasanjo that keeps defending that open sore of Nigeria’s democracy.

    Still, from 2011, it has been an upward thrust, no matter how gradual — and the problem has not been INEC per se, but partisans whose exclusive idea of “fairness” is only when they win: 2015 — when the card reader debuted — was better than 2011; 2019, better than 2015, with 2023 trumping them all.  

    The clear difference has been technology, and 2023 came with the twin Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) — though INEC didn’t fully deliver on IReV, no thanks to network glitches.  

    It’s the same election these sore losers have been trying to discredit; this same INEC these desperadoes have been trying to tar.  A new evil is descending on the land: clear losers swearing to raze the house unless they were declared winners!

    Just as well PEPC gave them all a savage short shrift!  But like the disgrace-huggng tortoise, the ultimate odium awaits them all at the Supreme Court.

    By the way, after the comprehensive trashing of Obi’s petition, who will Chimamanda write now, sequel to her letter to US President Joe Biden?  US Chief Justice John Roberts?  Or even the iconic Lord Denning in his grave?

  • Not our Lagos

    Not our Lagos

    Mudashiru Obasa, Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, hit the nail right on the head.  

     “Technocrats”, that hover after public offices as vulture after carrion, after “politicians” had faced raking fire to win elections, have zero character.

    Indeed, all through its first term, one used his statistics to pepper the Buhari order claiming, by his raw numbers, that order was useless.  The other, as a thunderous “critic”, bad-mouthed the same Buhari and co with the worst of fury and vitriol.

    Yet, after PMB landed a second term, both were ready — no, itchy — to land plum jobs, under that same “useless” order.  Irate APC partisans bombed them off that rank opportunism with admirable thunder!

    Still, an impassioned Obasa went the other extreme: politicians may conquer fire to win elections.  But that doesn’t earn them the sole capture of the public space.  

    The exclusive owner of that space is the citizen: from the President to the lowest resident with absolutely no name: the quintessential hoi polloi. 

    The highest office in a democracy is that of the Citizen.  Citizens make up “politicians” and “technocrats”.  Both can fill the public space, so long as the mix is fair and right.  

    That’s why the Speaker’s (and the Lagos legislature’s) impassioned exclusivity theory — “politicians” sans “technocrats” — cannot stand. That’s not just our Lagos, since 1999.

    Back in 1999, Lagos birthed with a rare technocratic DNA, that has made a splendid difference.  For starters, Governor Bola Tinubu was no traditional politician.  

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    As ex-Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited Treasurer, his closest to politics was as the professional-in-politics (against the professional politician): the triumphant crow of the ”new breed” politicians of the Babangida era. 

    Dr. Lanre Towry-Coker, famed architect and the young governor’s area “egbon”, made Tinubu’s first cabinet in 1999, not as a politician but as a technocrat to add value.

    Tinubu’s most impactful commissioners — Yemi Osinbajo, Wale Edun, Dele Alake, Rauf Aregbesola, Yemi Cardoso, Leke Pitan, et al — were more of professionals in politics than conventional politicians, though a few (like Aregbesola) would later morph from mass mobilizers to supreme masters of the political street.

    Neither was the successor Tinubu himself named the “Actualizer”: Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, the surprise choice that though well-neigh “scattered” the Tinubu inner-circle technocrats, immensely justified that choice with golden governance.

    Akin Ambode, Fashola’s successor, was no traditional politician anymore than sitting Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.  At best, both are the technocrat-politician hybrid, of the Lagos political bureaucracy, that has served Lagos rather well.

    Obasa’s anti-”technocrat” campaign is set against this vibrant tradition — and horrors of horrors: the face of the “failed technocrats” is the iconic Prof. Akin Abayomi, the hero of COVID-19 Lagos!  Says who?

    Indeed, success or failure in the public space is too grave to be left to the whims of the Lagos legislature!  That appraisal belongs to the Lagos people, supreme masters of the democratic turf, civic bosses from whose votes everyone draws their legitimacy.

    Prof. Abayomi, as the COVID-19 Lagos Incident Commander, Governor Sanwo-Olu himself, cropped COVID-19, as both stood firm against that pandemic to save Lagos.

    Abayomi could easily have died, as Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh, another heroine of Ebola Lagos, did on 19 August 2014; though her quick thinking saved Lagos: medically canning the travelling Liberian diplomat, the late Patrick Sawyer — and Nigeria’s first Ebola case. 

    Unlike Abayomi, Dr. Adadevoh was a brave private medic in public health-challenged times.  But under Fashola, it was Lagos standing stoutly to save Nigeria from Ebola, a feat replicated, with the even more serious COVID-19, under Sanwo-Olu.

    Indeed Abayomi’s rejection, for alleged “failure”, was sick epitome for Sanwo-Olu’s  impactful first-term commissioners — Gbenga Omotoso (Information and Strategy), Folasade Adefisayo (Education) and the others.  

    Omotoso provided admirable information and communication cover in troubled times.  Adefisayo embarked on perhaps the most audacious IT-backed curriculum and teaching reforms in Lagos public primary schools — the very fundament of it all.

    If they, with other returning commissioners, had performed so woefully, why would the governor yearn for an encore with them?  That makes no logical sense.  

    But it’s good the Lagos Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC) has stepped up dialogue to clear misconceptions and boost mutual legislature-executive trust.  It’s a critical juncture where delivery of value, for the general good, should tramp all else.

    Still, all the noise over opportunistic “technocrats” — indeed, a slew of them are — is only the symptom.  The real disease is the skewed reward system of the Lagos APC.

    That is one area Governor Sanwo-Olu — and the APC top hierarchs — must seriously address.  You don’t, every election cycle, treat like scum committed party foot soldiers, when it’s time to share hard won electoral spoils.  That can only bring bitter resent.

    Equally severe is the lack of fair representation of some local government areas, on the governor’s list, as the House alleged.  Both Speaker and Governor must partner, under the guiding wisdom of the Lagos GAC, to right those wrongs, without roasting quality.

    But even at that, no religious lobby must be allowed to hold any sweeping audit over any list.  Adherents of the two foreign faiths, Christianity and Islam, often push the zero-sum game, while howling for public plums for their members.  

    Lagos is no exclusive preserve of any bullying faith.  The Isese folks, African traditional believers, also have rights to these offices but are most often soullessly elbowed out.  

    Besides, the Yoruba culture of deep faith tolerance, a shining model for the rest of Nigeria, frowns at base faith activism in the public space.  

    That such is rearing itself in 21st century Lagos should worry everyone.  This is not just our Lagos!  Still, penetrating fairness is the supreme antidote.

    Structurally though, the Tinubu Lagos alliance, which has worked wonders since 1999, appears fraying at the edge.  The dynamics are clearly changing, thus needing urgent re-invigoration all-round.

    The governor-as-clear-leader (which Tinubu was) is morphing into the-governor-as-mere-peer.  That isn’t especially bad for democracy but the transition could be bumpy.

    Though Sanwo-Olu seems to boast the mild temper best suited for that transition — much more than Ambode before him — mutual horizontal adjustment of attitudes, to build mutually reinforcing and check-mating democratic structures, is imperative.

    Had that been the case, Speaker Obasa wouldn’t have blabbed his ego-tripping self-comparison with the governor.  That was absolutely unnecessary.  Ego is always a costly distraction.

    That is why President Tinubu should especially track this pall of dark smokes.

    True, running Nigeria is not unlike lugging the elephant.  With that burden, your feet can’t be foraging for mere ants! That could be a fatal distraction!

    Still, the president can’t afford to totally tear himself off alarming developments from his Lagos base.  Cold self-preservation decrees the exact opposite.

  • All alone, Mr. President

    All alone, Mr. President

    It’s all so reminiscent of the poet, Gabriel Okara’s ‘The Fisherman’s Invocation’.

    “The celebration is now ended,” he wrote, “but the echoes are all around/whirling like a harmattan whirl-wind throwing dust around/and hands cover faces and feet grope …”

    The government of President Bola Tinubu, with a near-full compliment of ministers, is all but made up.  Of 48 ministers, 45 are already in; three, expected.

    The sheer number — the highest since 1999 — has evoked the cliché of “bloated” (which it could well have been); against its supremely preferred opposite: “lean-and-mean”, among the many armchair critics, making eternal clatter in the media.

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    Still, beyond the easy groupthink of thundered doom, simply because of the lean economic times, “bloated” is no vice any more than “lean-and-mean” is a virtue.  It all depends on how a government deploys its talents, to achieve its goals.

    A government can adopt the accountant’s ethos: severely counting the beans; brutally  cutting costs; or be the audacious marketer: splashing the cash, in the supreme gusto  of landing the big trove, so long as it suffers no financial recklessness.

    Still, each would pay (or earn plaudits) for its adopted philosophy — and so, would the Tinubu Presidency.  That about sums up the sanctity of starting right.

    So, after all the zip-and-zoom, and the go-go talk by new ministers, dazzling with a can-do spirit of a new order, even the reception shrieks are becoming a distant echo.

    Now, the president and his (wo)men are all but alone, faced with the clinical cold of it all; by the starkness — if not outright heaviness — of their daunting historic tasks.  

    Alone.  All alone.  At the top — and just as well!

    Still, earliest nay-voices boom.  Some lobbies appear somewhat determined, fair or foul, to run out of town Hannatu Musawa, the new minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, even before her ministerial tour begins.  

    They claim she’s a serving National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member; and growl no “corper shun!” can legally and legitimately be minister of the Federal Republic!

    Others already wax lyrical over the alleged duplication of roles and non-specificity of assigned ministerial mandates: making a huff over “innovation” domiciled in both the Communications & Digital Economy; and Science & Technology ministries.

    Without splitting hairs, “innovation” is neither here nor there.  Indeed, it could be the hallmark of any ministry, depending on its creative zip.  

    Still, for all it is worth, the administration should take early notes of these faint echoes before they assume rumbling thunders, particularly with an eternally distracted media, ever chasing explosive shadows over quiet substance.

    Still, for once, what the media must do, if it must be part of the solution in these troubled times, is clamber off its noise-making zone; and play in the more exerting pedestal of clinical x-ray of policies, generating vigorous debates and helping to birth possible solutions to long-running national challenges — from its long-cherished bangs of sterile howling and barren finger-pointing. 

    But that might be asking for too much; and the administration should take note. 

    Again — and this bears re-stating: it will soar or sink by the sheer rigour of own reason; the grit to push through its agenda; or even the cunning of its wiles: to game its eternal fiends posturing as pro-people crusaders, in a mutual showdown in brutal realpolitik!

    It’s not always pretty.  But the one that blinks last scales the brink — and laughs last!

    Still, if folks would just levitate over the easy and the noisy, they would perhaps see, instead of 48 “bloated” ministers and hangers-on, just ministerial clusters not more than 12!

    These clusters, though grafted from differing ministries, form the building blocs to pivot exciting new opportunities; built upon very challenging fundaments, erected by the Muhammadu Buhari order from 2015, after the wanton crash of the PDP years.

    Now, is the President, though commander-in-chief, policy musical-in-chief enough to weld and whip these concentric clusters into winsome harmonics that not only capture his vision but also brings it to life with rare élan, class and dash? 

    Again, the start isn’t always pretty — just as the mess in making sausages — but the end graft might well be worth the trouble.

    Take Wale Edun and his Finance and Economy Coordination ministry.  Junking subsidy without local refining and floating the Naira may well sate instant elite (read market) greed.  But it’s a double-whammy that further roasts mass pockets.

    But all these market reforms, complete with tax administration and revenue-collection tinkering, are to fix the state’s financial infrastructure.  Capture more cash and shovel them towards financing core goals.  So, you’ll begin to talk less debts but more revenue.  But it’s no open sesame.  It’s exerting fresh thinking and back-breaking work.

    Then, the cluster of two that virtually runs through everything: Justice, which produces a legal cover for everything — isn’t democracy the celebration of the rule of law?  And Power: which energizes everything — didn’t God say let there be light: and day and night — and life as we know it — were birthed?

    While Justice goes ahead to fortify Defence, Police, the courts and internal security (which by the way, by the administration’s pretexts encapsulates food security), Power provides the spark for everything: from agricultural processing, to manufacturing and all types of businesses.  If this twin-cluster thrives, the prospects would be very bright.

    Then, the other “coordination”: Health and Social Welfare.  Add Education to that cluster and you’re thinking, pin-point, of human infrastructure: health, education and general social wellness.  That’s the bastion of real development: human development.

    No less exciting: the core physical infrastructure ministries: Transport (auto and rail), Aviation (air, safety regulations and infrastructure) and Marine and Blue Economy (Shipping and Maritime).

    This core, calibrated into three, holds the ace for economic rejuvenation and eventual redemption.  The tri-ministers here are condemned to succeeding — or it would be bad news for the polity and the president, were they to falter.  Add enhanced agricultural output and processing, and you can build on the agriculture-infrastructure hub of the Buhari years.

    But on that plain, it’s dawn yet.  For all its borrowing, the Buhari order only raised infrastructure-to-GDP ratio from 1:5 to 2:5.  In 2015, the economy was near-dead!  So, these ministers must push that ratio to at least 3.5 to 5.  That would be brutal work!

    Still, it’s rather exciting that a David Umahi is taking over from a Babatunde Fashola, as Works and Housing minister.

    Fashola, the golden boy of Lagos governance, and Rotimi Amaechi were Buhari’s most sparkling infrastructure ministers.  Umahi worked wonders in Ebonyi, and is raring to go as Works czar. Other things being equal, that corridor looks rather promising.

    Draw Communication and Digital Economy and Science & Technology as a symbiotic cluster, and you could be looking at a putative bastion for youth-powered jobs, particularly in the digital and technical fronts.

    Can President Tinubu weave these clusters into a winning symphony of turn-around governance?  Time will tell!

    Still, let there be less clatter!  Let the lonely souls at the top think!  Fond hope!

    •Reader apology: A bad malaria kept Ripples off this page last week — fulsome apologies! 

  • Omooba Sosanya at 80

    Omooba Sosanya at 80

    Nipples’ earliest recollection of Omooba Samuel Olumuyiwa Sosanya was a twain: one tall and dark, the other slight and fair; but both, as a tag team, always making regular sorties to the Bourdillon, Ikoyi, Lagos, home of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, now president of the Federal Republic.

    The Omooba was the slight and fair one, with a rather formidable moustache, which somehow reminded you of the Wizard of Kristen Hall himself, Herbert Macaulay.  The tall and dark one was Engr. Adedayo Adeyemi.

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    Folks there always said they were partisans of the late Funsho Williams.  Ripples would accord them courtesies befitting elders and move on — until Otunba Sosanya turned 70 and, from the blues, called me to do the review at the public presentation of his book on ANAN: Revolution of Accountancy Profession in Nigeria, as part of his 70th birthday!

    Ten years later, the invite to his 80th birthday (on August 6) also came no less from the blues — with a free Aso Oke cap material to boot!  The Omooba must have treasured that review, with a play on the English nursery rhyme, Solomon Grundy: for he caused it to be read again at the 80th birthday bash!  Baba is a grateful and graceful soul!

    Omooba Sosanya battled tooth and nail to ensure the Association of Nigerian Accountants (ANAN) got chartered (1993) to train accountants in Nigeria, despite the dark whispering campaigns of the Institute of Chartered of Nigeria (ICAN), that fought no less grimly to mainly its monopoly since 1965.

    Baba is also a study in deep loyalty, anchored on principled politics.  The Omooba recalled how the PDP order deprived Mrs. Hilda Williams, widow of Funsho Williams, the 2007 Lagos gubernatorial ticket that she won at the party’s primary election.  

    That sent the Williams Campaign Organization (WILLICO), which rooted for the cheated widow, scuttling out of the PDP, to team up with the Action Congress (AC) candidate, Babatunde Fashola, after groundbreaking talks with then outgoing Lagos Governor, Tinubu.

    Today, Omooba Sosanya is a pillar among the Lagos APC elders, as a member of the Lagos Governance Advisory Council — the highest elders think tank in the Lagos governmental cosmos.

    All came in numbers to shower Baba their love: Lagos Deputy Governor, Dr. Kadiri Femi Hamzat; presidential adviser and ministerial nominee, Mr. Wale Edun and former Ogun State Governor and journalism icon, Chief Segun Osoba, among numberless others.

    A thrilled Omooba Sosanya, who lost his own father at age 45, announced he was opening a new chapter in his book of life at 80!  What a grand opening, with the West Indies community in Nigeria enriching the fun and flourish.  The Sosanya matriarch is a native Jamaican.

  • Return of the natives

    Return of the natives

    It was Gala Night, on August 11, at the Ilese-Ijebu reunion 2023.

    Ayanfola, an equal-opportunity troupe of male-female artistes, brought down happy thunder, as the hall exploded with their heavy percussion and frenetic dancing. 

    As this male and female ensemble nimbly interchanged roles: now on the drums, then sassy with dance steps, and even after, audacious on the vocals, eternal MC, ace broadcaster Balogun, aka “Aji se bi Oyo”, joked that the troupe was so good, and in such high demand they had been booked for Ukraine; and thereafter, Niger!

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    That evoked a clatter of guffaw — Ukraine!  Under Vladimir Putin’s cruising bullets?

    But before Ayanfola had come, well, a musical Poke Toholo.  Toholo was fictional character in one of James Hadley Chase’s crime thrillers, Want to Stay Alive?  He boasted he had found a formula to open all wallets — wielding his ruthless gun.

    But Babatunde — Stage name: Steel Pounds — wasn’t like that.  He was blind — so blind that an aide had to steady him on stage, while performing.  He so reminded you of the American, Stevie Wonder.

    Without Toholo’s evil tactics, Steel Pounds proved he too had developed his craft to prise open pockets.  For his sweet sweat, he got showered with a confetti of cash.

    But the dead too were not left out, at the 18th edition of what the natives dub the Annual Convocation of Ilese-Ijebu People, to which they yearly returned in numbers.

    At the final rally on Saturday August 12, the community’s 2023 posthumous award was conferred on Alhaji Adesanya Ayoola (born: 1962; died: 2016), a proud Ilese son, trained nurse and pharmacology/physiology graduate of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), according to his posthumous citation.

    Ayoola did his best and left — not exactly at dusk but at mid-age.  Yet, Ilese never forgets its own.  He must have beamed down at that gathering, as his grateful family soaked in all the good things said about him.

    Return of the natives!  A distinguished “native” that ever hardly misses this yearly show is Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola.  Yes, the former Osun governor is a prince of Okuku, Osun State.  But here in Ilese, he’s an adopted son in whom Ilese is well proud.  He was there to honour the folks that honour him.

    Otunba Kunle Kalejaye, SAN, aka KK, clear magnet of this yearly convocation, regaled the gathering with how Otunba Olufemi Okenla, another distinguished Ilese son, chief launcher for 2023, never turned his back on any Ilese son or daughter on the job front.  Okenla is CEO, Ibis Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.

    It was all about community value — and Okenla did not disappoint.  Apart from a generous donation into the community purse for ever ongoing projects, he also offered to sink five boreholes to meet the water requirements of the people.

    For a second year running too, Oyo Governor Seyi Makinde sent a representative and also made a generous donation to the Ilese cause.

    Home governor, Ogun’s Dapo Abiodun, was also represented.  His government just upgraded the Ogun State College of Health Technology, Ilese, into a full polytechnic status.  

    Otunba Gbenga Daniel, ex-governor but now senator for Ogun East, the Ilese senatorial district, also sent aides to offer some informal feedback on his legislative tenure, thus far — particularly his bill on the South West Development Commission, now going through legislative grills in the Senate.  

    But beyond VIP speeches and benevolence, the Ilese Day final rally was youth-powered: in-situ Ilese youths and children, in colourful carnival floats and dashing choreography, having practiced all year long for the big day!

    Then, there was the formal crowning of Miss Ilese 2023/2024, earlier picked at the Gala Night pageant the previous night.  It had the winning cheque of N500, 000.

    As all went down under the royal grace of the Elese of Ilese, Oba Owolabi Obayomi, the town’s traditional ruler, all thanks go to Otunba Segun Demuren, a barrister-at-law and chairman, Ilese Development Council (IDC); and Otunba Sola Mogaji, FCA, a chartered accountant of first crust and chairman, Planning Committee, Ilese Day 2023 and his team of hardworking planners.

    Of course, there is the ubiquitous KK: soul of the yearly show, a rich study in community value, with unfazed love for his Ilese-Ijebu kingdom.

    The youths would dance away all-night at the post-rally party, bidding Ilese Day 2023 goodbye.  But a goodbye echoes a welcome: when comes Ilese Day 2024?