The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Like tortoise, like Fubara

    Like tortoise, like Fubara

    Siminilayi Fubara, the shrill-whining governor of Rivers, particularly when baying under pressure, reminds one so much of the tortoise in the Yoruba folktale.

    Tortoise announced he was going on a trip. When would you return?  He deadpanned: when I’m disgraced!

    Ola Rotimi, in Kurunmi, that Yoruba historical tragedy, used the tortoise parallel to paint the excesses of Kurunmi, lord of Ijaye and Aare Ona Kakanfo of the Oyo Empire. 

    Kurunmi perished, ousted by the invading Ibadan forces, losing his seven sons in battle — and his Ijaye fiefdom to boot.

    No matter his grouse with his emperor, Alaafin Adelu, Kurunmi should have been less inflexible.  True, by extant tradition, Adelu, the Aremo (firstborn of the Alaafin) should have died with his father, not succeed him.  But Atiba had changed that tradition, thus clearing Adelu’s path from forced death, to royal succession.

    But Kurunmi balked at that new order.  He defied his new emperor, just because he felt he had the lethal force to prevail.  When the formidable Ibadan army stormed Ijaye, after all entente had failed, the playwright, Ola Rotimi, deemed Kurunmi’s intransigence a wrong tactic to press a right cause — hence the tortoise’s parallel.

    Alaafin Adelu needed to consolidate his hold on power.  Ibadan scoffed at any rival power, which Ijaye was.  In that high-power convergence of interests, Kurunmi was toast, though too deluded to know! The rest, as they say, is history.

    So, are Fubara’s causes, against Nyesom Wike, the abrasive guy that loves to war and brawl to wear down his foes, wrong or right?  Besides, which of the two camps kisses naked danger, though is too far gone to realize it?

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    That would depend on where you stand on the Wike-Fubara divide — just too much sentiments in the air to correctly track anything!

    But Governor Fubara isn’t exactly an Ijaw equivalent of Kurunmi — heady, intrepid and rumbling.  Wike, his arch (tor)mentor, and now FCT minister, fits more into that profile. 

    Still, Fubara could whine, kick, bite and swear!  As Kurunmi, he shares a penchant for reckless excesses, which bait avoidable ruin.  That explains his latest judicial jam — a thundering double defeat that was hardly a surprise.

    Fubara, as executive basket mouth, is perhaps the only governor in today’s Nigeria that would insult a high court judge for doing his job, trash-talk the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), laying grievous allegations at his feet, and call his mentor-turned-arch tormentor names, just to press his democratic right to white rage!

    But no tears for Wike — the Sim insults are majestic Karma at work!  Wike too, no less,  had scalded, bruised and verbally bombed Rotimi Amaechi, his ex-boss and benefactor. 

    Still, while Fubara blows hot, he easily forgets that common sense — and survival instinct — impose on him the imperative to make friends (and not talk up powerful foes), just in case you need some right voices, in right quarters, when the chips are down.  Not Fubara!  He brawls as if there would be no tomorrow!

    Now, that dreary “tomorrow” is here.  The governor, buried by own rashness, is sapped by cold law — the twin-nullity of his budget (for two years’ running!) and the council poll he forced, abusing and traducing about everyone in view! 

    He would cut his loss and make a dash for some negotiated peace?  No way!  From his post-verdict antics, Fubara seems digging deeper and deeper!  Poor Rivers!

    Still, how long, for instance, did he figure he would continue dealing with his glorious “simple minority” of four, in the Rivers House of Assembly of 32, and he wouldn’t get roasted, with him even providing the fuel?  How long?

    Should push come to shove, Fubara could be toast! 

    Should the Rivers House go full blast for impeachment, only a miracle would save Fubara.  How could anyone be elected governor, and yet not know spending public money, without parliamentary appropriation, is democracy’s most grievous crime, only next to treason? 

    In the Rivers’ tragic burlesque, even the state’s Attorney-General, who bears the suffix of SAN — the learned silk, Nigeria’s highest professional ranking of lawyers — passed through a four-man screening, in a 32-member Rivers Assembly!  If gold rusts, what would iron do?

    Pray, how could such a crippled appointee advise the governor against governance outlawry, which the Supreme Court utterly flayed in its February 28 verdict that brought Fubara down to earth?  It’s certainly not the best of times for the embattled governor!

    But it’s neither for the Wike camp, with its post-verdict unbridled triumphalism; and a confetti of rash orders to further bludgeon the dust-biting Fubara and co.

    Again, for Fubara, no tears from here!  He should have known what’s coming for him, with such executive brigandage he had allowed himself to be goaded into. 

    Again here, the Supreme Court referenced his gung-ho demolition of the House of Assembly, a rash act tantamount to, as the apex court put it, cancelling democracy in the state!

    Still, while the Wike camp have the infantile Fubara exactly where they want him, any rash move from their own end could earn them defeat from the jaw of victory! 

    That’s the thing, though. It need not be a zero sum game.  But Rivers politics would be nothing, if not zero-sum — either with Amaechi versus Wike;  or this Wike/Fubara row.

    So, though the Supreme Court verdict has been humbling — if not crushing for Fubara: and just as well — it could offer a new re-set that gifts the Rivers folks a relief.

    Law is cold.  It already leaves Fubara for dead.  But emotive politics is as hot as clinical law is frigid and cold.  Fubara could have earned his impeachment — if it came — by own reckless executive follies and foibles.

    Still, everyone knows the beginning of invoking an impeachment.  But hardly anyone knows how it would pan out.  Which is why both sides must take the judgment as welcome shock therapy.  The Rivers APC, calling for Fubara’s resignation in 48 hours or be impeached, should perish that reckless thought!

    Also, the so-called Ijaw “youths”, threatening Armageddon on Fubara’s account, should chill.  That’s as infantile as Fubara’s approach to governance. 

    It doesn’t paint the Ijaw in good light.  It’s only the dumb that resort to violence — of which no one has a monopoly — because they can’t think through a challenge.  The Ijaw are far too illustrious and far smarter than that.

    Besides, they should have learnt from the Goodluck Jonathan debacle.  Threat and thunder didn’t fetch President Jonathan a second term any more than it would save Fubara from the political guillotine, via an impeachment well-earned.

    But with mutual caution, it need not go to that dire extreme.

    Which is why the Wike side too must work toward peace with dignity.  Even if they loathe Fubara as a “traitor”, they should honour the office of the governor.

    Incidentally, all these would have been averted, had Fubara heeded the presidential peace framework of re-submitting his budget to the legit Assembly, but no!

    Let both parties return to that framework.  Rivers deserves peace and development, not conflict without end, among its political warlords.   Enough is enough!

  • Rail from pork

    Rail from pork

    Got your share of the latest round of elite pork?  The North Central is the last to get its — with the advent of the North Central Development Commission (NCDC).

    Let it rain the deluge.  Let the sun, with venom, fry the earth.  The Nigerian power elite would share and gobble sweet pork!  To rear the swine?  Who cares?

    That explains the elite hankering after new states — new cost centres.  Or this gifting of every part of the country with own so-called development commission — flabby bureaucracy! 

    Which nation ever sates its elite greed, but cares less about even parsing the real need of the voiceless majority?  The one that happily hugs winking apocalypse?  Ha!

    Ogun East Senator, Otunba Gbenga Daniel (OGD), also a former governor of Ogun State (2003-2011), probably pats himself on the back for midwifing the South West Development Commission (SWDC) Bill in the Senate — fair enough.

    But beyond the South West accessing own elite pork, whoever told OGD the South West needed a development commission? 

    What serious catastrophe had plagued the region to warrant that, despite already having the Development Agenda of Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission (DC)?

    Isn’t DC tighter and much cost-effective than replicating a flabby central bureaucracy, as SWDC?

    Holy Moses!  Both DC and SWDC will cohabit in the same iconic Cocoa House, Ibadan!  Two for the price of one?  No. Two costs instead of one. But tell that to the waste-crunching elite!

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    Still on that: the South East doesn’t need a development commission either, though those steeped in the politics of “marginalization” would scoff, bite, kick and bawl!

    Beyond the Civil War (1967-1970) — which ended 55 years ago — what catastrophe has struck the South East, beyond Nnamdi Kanu’s neo-Biafra self-imposed mayhem, which its political elite somewhat tolerate, to the ruin and chagrin of its masses?

    With their huge human endowments, the South West and South East should use trimmer think-tanks to drive home developments, not some fatty central contraptions.

    But if the South East elite think otherwise, it’s their democratic right, so long as they act in good faith.  Still, with all due respect, they underrate own inherent capacity.

    The South-South is markedly different.  Even years after the defunct Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) and the present Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the environmental plague of mining crude oil — which fattens Nigeria — is still there, and remains a sore thumb.

    Yes: the South-South elite are no less rapacious than cousins in the other five geo-political zones.  Under President Goodluck Jonathan, many — if not most — among them forgot all about “resource control”.  Whoever makes a row when eating!

    Their “son” — to pilfer a fond word by the late Chief Edwin Clark — was state chef-in-chief.  They could help themselves to as much gravy as they could! 

    And yes too: neither OMPADEC nor NDDC had proved, over the years, any saintliness in accountability or transparency.  But either body could also claim it only follows the hoot of many of the locals to just “share the money”.

    Yet, the albatross of cruel oil mining has earned the Niger Delta a special intervention agency to atone for past deeds.  But whatever that agency is called, it must shed past opacity, and hug rigorous transparency, to hit its goal.   Otherwise, it would remain a supposed solution-turned-problem. That would be double jeopardy.

    To the North!  No doubt: the North East — from Boko Haram and plague — sorely needs a development commission to rebuild its infrastructure, re-tool its people and re-awaken economy.  No doubt!

    Bandit terrorism in the North West is self-inflicted.  That region had held the reins of power, more than any, since Nigerian independence in 1960.  Yet, its masses are as dependent as the South West — the bastion of opposition till 2015 — is sure-footed and self-striving.  For that, the North West power elite stand legitimately docked.  

    Still, for bearing the brunt of fleeing terrorists  from the hot North East Boko Haram theatre, maybe it needs some state special intervention agency to straighten it out. 

    Nevertheless, its elite should crave less central pork; and be wary of acting as if without political power — least reflected in their people’s welfare — they are a fish out of water.

    The North Central is the least poverty-prone, yet the least politically pampered, among the three northern geo-political zones.  Their respective poverty rates: North Central (42.7%), North West (64.84%), North East (71.86%).

    So, the North Central could well argue, as arguably the least politically favoured among the three northern zones, to deserve an interventionist agency. It just got the NCDC.

    Still on strict merit, only two zones: South-South and North East, deserve a central interventionist agency.  Only the two have been sapped with recent truly national catastrophes, to merit one.   Such agencies should target specific disasters, and have a fixed time to wind up.

    The Civil War could have earned the South East one.  But that ended 55 years ago.

    But all of these — merits and demerits — are academic exercises now.  All regions have got their pork.  But how can each region turn this potential “waste” into value?

    Rail!  Intra-regional rail!

    The last time the PDP seized power, near-wholesale in the South West in 2003, words were rife that they planned a South West rail network that would have further powered the regional economy, by far the strongest in the country.

    But it was all talk, no walk. President Olusegun Obasanjo was too distracted, wrestling over the rail right-of-way, over which it claimed exclusive right, with Lagos.  Lagos, under Governor Bola Tinubu, was planning own urban rail network.

    If the head was rotten, in any case, fatally distracted, the five PDP Governors couldn’t have been any more focused.  So, they passed up an epochal legacy.

    Still, SWDC presents a fresh opportunity for integrated South West rail, now that the South West is a politically a mixed zone: four APC governments against PDP’s two.

    The region could have leveraged the tighter DC, though.  By that, it could have spent far less on overheads and sundry bureaucracy, than this duplication with SWDC.  Nevertheless, the new SWDC offers a rare chance to birth a South West rail network.

    The South West should follow the cue from coastal Lagos, and introduce a regional rail hub.  That would be a game-changer for its economy, aside giving tourism and safer, and more comfy travel, a jab in the arm.

    Rail could also prove excellent investment for other geo-political zones, though each should be free to locate its felt critical needs.  But even with that, rail should prove a top pull, in this season when petrol is gold.  Kaduna, under Nasir El-Rufai broached urban rail.

    Still, rail or no, the regional development agencies must add value to the real sector — not just tools for elite dispensation of patronage.

    Otherwise, they would end as scarce money blown on needless pork.

  • IBB’s gobbled vomit

    IBB’s gobbled vomit

    On Thursday, February 20, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (IBB) buried Gen. Sani Abacha.  He was the arch-villain that annulled the June 12, 1993 election!  The dead stay dumb!

    Abacha is long dead and buried. But from his grave, a thick stench oozes: of unbridled cruelty, dark cunning, a vicious power brute and a gargantuan appetite for executive-sleaze-at-gun-point, such that “Abacha loot” fairly defines his living essence. 

    Sadiq and sis, Gumsu — brave souls! — stoutly defend the honour(?) of their father. But even they, beyond filial bluff and bluster, know that carrying the Abacha name is a terrible burden. 

    Abacha, as stark maximum ruler and iron thief, epitomizes near-bestiality.

    But beyond burying the dead Abacha, IBB also spectacularly buried himself — alive — with co-bearers of false tales over the June 12 question. 

    In that Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja “Open Grave” — ironically the title of the second of Hon. Wale Osun’s trilogy on the June 12 saga: the direst political crime in Nigerian history — all the conspirators were there, if not in body, then in spirit.

    The fitting requiem — to blast the soul of this evil ensemble — was IBB’s admission (hardly news!) that Chief MKO Abiola indeed won the June 12 election; and that he regretted annulling it!  But as everything IBB, that “regret” has fired fresh controversy.

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    MKO’s crime was winning a fair election, which result a band of over-fed Army traitors felt was infra dig.  For that, the Nigerian rogue state killed his wife, Kudirat, wrecked his thriving business and finally killed the man — and made Kudi’s six children complete orphans — after MKO had spent his entire presidential term in the evil Abacha gulag!

    It’s an epochal crime that would continue to haunt, blight and plague the coming generations of everyone involved!

    Fittingly too, also buried in that open grave, was former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the fake rectitude that brazenly fronted for the IBB-Abacha turpitude, to bury, without trace, June 12.  But see who is buried alive now!

    The pretentious Obasanjo was there to rally the odious Interim National Government (ING) nonsense that threw up the feckless Chief Ernest Shonekan.

    He was there when, as elected President, he tried to supplant June 12 — the hallowed date MKO won; and which would turn the nemesis of the political military — with May 29: the hollow day Obasanjo took power in 1999, albeit from MKO’s supreme sacrifice.

    Obasanjo forced down that fraud, until President Muhammadu Buhari threw it out; and named June 12 as authentic Democracy Day in 2018, to take effect from 2019.

    Finally, on February 20, he was there — as chairman of proceedings — when IBB ate crow, declared that on MKO they had all lived a shrill lie, and exalted PMB for exulting the truth of June 12, over Obasanjo’s lie of May 29!

    But as the Abuja Hilton drama played out, one towering irony ruled the roost: a “June Twelver”, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that faced down the plot, when it was hot and fatal for too many, had become President!  Indeed, the inevitability of right over wrong!

    Yes, PBAT wasn’t supposed to go there and gloat. That would have been bad breeding. 

    Yet, not a few fume that his high praise of IBB was a tad too fulsome!  Might it be that PBAT is president of everyone — the good, the bad and the ugly? 

    Or that, even with his famed sharp street antenna, that always feels out the true mass temper, even he is trapped in that notorious elite bubble, which jars with the harsh reality outside?

    In truth, the superlative praise that gathering poured on IBB was nauseating.  Yes, IBB could have made of Nigeria restless sites of policy scaffolding, all through his eight power years.

    But he, more than anyone alive or dead, gifted contemporary Nigeria with “settlement” — that subversive generosity that captured the supreme ethos of the IBB years: a gangling venality that toasted sleaze; and conked honest, hard work. That razed our moral fabric.  It explains why, today, the civil service is a nest of graft.

    Yet, there is some nobility in IBB’s recant and apology on June 12.  It’s a doughty act of courage that should stand him in good stead, whatever his final place in history.

    In that, he towers over Gen. Obasanjo, his old commander-in-chief, whose cardinal rule is doubling down on past rots: June 12, ING, May 29, and the horrible, horrible 2007 elections, among his many power blunders!

    Would IBB show Obasanjo new redemptive ways in simple but noble apology?  Time will tell.

    Still, IBB’s new memoir, A Journey in Service, conclusively proves military rule is arrant disservice, despite the many fibs IBB allowed himself. Proof? How the principal players turned out, over coups d’etat.

    Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the most angelic of them all, faced the indignity of his juniors stripping him of his high rank, over unproved coup allegations — a wrong IBB righted.  From Gowon’s age of innocence, the military progressively self-destroyed, in deep rot.

    The mercurial Murtala Muhammed practically got bumped off, even before he started ruling.  Even IBB, if ever so coyly, admitted that Murtala’s impatient reforms, marked by giddy purges “with immediate effect”, effectively killed the federal civil service.

    Gen. Buhari, the most puritanical of them all, with naked jackboot dictatorship, sucked with the endangered masses that he had tried to save from IBB-era debauchery. 

    IBB’s sweet slime, power and policy waywardness et al, peaked with the tragic annulment — which challenge, by civil society, birthed Abacha: as stark, paranoid, kleptomaniac, megalomaniac and brutal as they come! 

    Under Abacha, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua died in jail for coup.  Obasanjo himself tasted jail, and was sprung by the virtual bell of Abacha’s sudden death — a privilege Abdulsalami Abubakar never extended to MKO before his rogue state murder.

    Abacha was the worst-ever portraiture of military rule.  Just as well, he and his terrible breed destroyed the political military, for Nigeria to claw back its soul!  Still, without IBB’s “evil genius”, monster Abacha couldn’t have thrived.

    Strange, though: IBB still, in a section of the book, permitted himself the delusion to rationalize military rule — audacious? Why, he even hallucinated, with all the havoc he had caused, about a so-called “Babangida School of Political Mentorship!” Horror!

    Such IBB conceits, powered by self-eulogy, drive the book, as it had driven the fatal annulment that made him a pariah, if not in his elite bubble, then among the masses; and now hankers after a so-called presidential library!

    Pray, who elected IBB “president”, beyond booming guns, his personal whims, and the caprice of his conclave of palace coup rats that ousted Buhari? And what’s the worth of a presidential library, if only to remind folks of the havoc you left behind?  Conceit!

    But then, that’s the thing!  From fond sentiments that wafted through the book — by the way, beautiful and fetching prose that delivered a mine of contemporary history — IBB still thinks he left Nigeria better than he met it. He’s entitled to his grand delusions!

    Still, on his presidential library project, IBB again trumps Obasanjo.  He has raised some N17 billion, to make that project a reality, 32 years after he left power. 

    Obasanjo’s fundraiser, back in 2005, was a holy suborn, though he branded it “donation”.  A sitting president doesn’t pen in contractors to “donate”, yet kid anyone it’s no brazen extortion!

  • Less government, more governance

    Less government, more governance

     This headline – “Less government, more governance” — is not original to this column. 

    It’s the legal matrix under which Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Indian minister of Railways, Information & Broadcasting, Electronics and IT, portrayed India’s booming progress, over the last 10 years.

    He spoke at the 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, via a 4:39-minute video clip, courtesy a regular reader, Igwe Pius Ojonile Omachonu.

    Shri Vaishnaw reeled out India’s strides, in public investments, under Prime Minister Narenda Modi Ji.  He started a third term on 9 June 2024, after two successful five-year terms, dating back to 2014.

    The stats simply put, in physical, social and digital infrastructure, were bewildering!

    Public investment rose from about €36 billion in 2014 to about €127 billion in 2024. He didn’t say though, the proportion of debt capital in that investment overlay.

    Rail: In 10 years, India laid 31, 000 km of new rail tracks — “practically the size of the entire German railway network.”  It also electrified 44, 000 km in railway networks — again, as the minister crowed — “more than Germany plus Switzerland plus Belgium put together.”

    What does this tell you?  Germany is western Europe’s largest economy.  But if Indian rail modernization could dwarf the entire German, Swiss and Belgian networks — and it’s yet morning on its investment day — then the global future belongs to big countries that can maximize the advantages of their bigness.

    So ethnic champions and separatist zealots, bent on cannibalizing Nigeria, miss the point.  They simply take the easy — and emotive — way out.  They seem out of their depth with how to lend spark to a vast, thumping, multi-culture country.

    Besides, they are shackled to the past.  India — and China — point to the future, even as America, under Donald Trump, gambles away Uncle Sam’s future, with all-muscle-no-brain bumbling isolationism.

    But back to the strides of India. 

    Social infrastructure: India has opened 446 universities in 10 years — tantamount to, the minister quipped, opening one university weekly, in the last 10 years!  Magical?

    That’s tertiary education. 

    But the health segment of social infrastructure?  Between 2014 and 2024, healthcare hugely expanded.  Now, it covers 350 million citizens. Besides, it just declared free healthcare for Indian seniors, 70 and above, despite its thumping population.

    Inclusive growth, a euphemism for pro-poor policies: India, in 10 years, has built 40 million houses for poor Indians, aside connecting 100 million families, in this critical demographic, with free cooking gas pipe networks.

    Also for the poor: the Indian government opened 540 million bank accounts for the poorest of the poor.  And again, the minister’s winsome comparison: “more than the population of the entire Europe”!

    Imagine dragging such proportion of the huge informal market here, into the formal sector?  Imagine its salutary effect on the Nigerian government’s expanded tax net?

    Result of these pro-poor policies: India has sprung 250 million people from poverty in 10 years!

    But the driver of all these strides is digital infrastructure: the minister dubbed it the Prime Minister’s mandate to democratize IT, to make its use accessible to everyone.

    That mandate birthed the Digital India Programme (DIP) which, rather than cause a dip in transactions, crested in India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI).  By the minister’s stats, the UPI caters for some 400 million users, with 17 billion transactions a month, and a yearly transaction value of €2.8 trillion.  The settlement time?  “Consistently, less than two seconds”!

    For context: contrast that with sundry glitches here, which often traps handsome sums in bank vaults, even after legitimate transfers to destination accounts, private or corporate!

    What’s more?  An enhanced payment system came with a renewed explosion in manufacturing and innovation.  Made-in-India and Start-Up India — both manufacturing hubs — rose from 400 in 2014 to 150, 000 in 2024. 

    So did value of mobile manufacturing — mostly of semiconductors and hand phones — from €2 billion to €50 billion in 10 years.  Manufacturing is driver for mass jobs.

    As for Unicorns — personal or family wealth ploughed back into productive use, without recourse to debt capital — grew to hit 100.

    But the arch-driver of this remarkable development is the legal modernization framework dubbed: “Less government, more governance”, which on the surface sounds more like an oxymoron.

    But in real terms, it means simplifying India’s ancient laws to meet its modern needs.  That means junking no less than 1, 500 archaic laws, with some 40, 000 colonial-era compliances, to fire India’s modern and contemporary economy.

    The video clip went viral and a version of it came with a comment, typically Nigerian: “You’re here in Nigeria sharing palliatives and showcasing construction of 2 km road and 1 Km flyover.  Useless and rogue leaders.”

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    Typical — self-loathing, finger-pointing, empty, conceited, condescending, arrogant –the classical portraiture of the irresponsible citizen, without holding fort for those in government.  As Babatunde Fashola, former governor of Lagos famously quips, anger is no strategy.

    But lo! A segment of the media hugs hare-brained anger as sacred article of faith.  Which is why the media seldom tracks developments in the polity, thus oozing eternal hopelessness.  That’s wilful mirage, even if the government can always do better.

    Take this Nigeria-India comparison.  The Modi Ji India government drives modernized rail, education and health as social infrastructure, inclusive growth, expansive IT, manufacturing/innovation, and modernization of laws as vital triggers of growth.

    The Nigerian government, since 2015, has powered along a similar trajectory, sans re-industrialization, after the crazy imports of the SAP years. That is because comatose DisCos, and decade-investment lags in transmission lines, can’t ensure regular electricity.

    The Buhari Presidency posted good results in rail modernization.  For social inclusion (pro-poor policies), with the World Bank, it compiled Nigeria’s first-ever social register to help the poorest of the poor.  It also pushed the return of local crude oil refineries.

    The Tinubu government has continued on the same path, though choosing neo-liberal tactics to drive its reforms has robbed it of gargantuan social capital, which makes not a few ideologues to question its “progressive” ancestry.

    Still, the same government boasts the biggest student loan policy in Nigerian history, an ambitious consumer credit system that could well lay the ground for booming re-industrialization, if it can solve the acute power problem. 

    Then, ala India: a sweeping bid to modernize Nigerian laws — to boost business –aside an ambitious IT expansion policy and programmes.

    Let the media start tracking the essential.  We may yet gauge where exactly we are, shun fashionable doom and re-find our path to sustainable progress.

    Then, maybe we’ll find that even the Indian “miracle” can be surpassed here.

  • Adebanjo taku?

    Adebanjo taku?

    “Akintola taku” marked the beginning of the end for Nigeria’s 1st Republic (1 October 1960 – 15 January 1966), though the heady players back then little realized it. 

    Adebanjo “taku” comes with far less catastrophe, though — except for Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-political Titan that, post-1999 to 2003, has progressively shrunk; and now totters in near-total irrelevance.

    But Afenifere’s irrelevance may yet hold serious shock for Yoruba politics. The old lions may be grey and frail.  Still, what they lack in hare-brained vigour, they more than compensate for in rich institutional memory and ideological rigour.

    So, will rank disloyalty that buried Akintola, as he balked at the Action Group (AG) in 1962, long before his actual death in 1966, exalt Adebanjo, as he now holds out against the Afenifere hierarchy, that earlier named him Acting Leader?

    Now at his “departure lounge”, what will Baba Adebanjo tell the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, when he lands at the other side, on Afenifere’s rise and fall — and Adebanjo’s role in all of it?

    Afenifere is a jewel legacy of the Awolowo era.  Which was why that franchise came in handy for Yoruba progressives to battle Nigeria’s tinpot dictators — the last being Sani Abacha — to a glorious standstill, which procured this current democracy.

    Indeed, these parallel “taku” tales — one by Akintola in 1962, the other by Adebanjo in 2025 — feeds into the rigorous morality of the Awolowo progressive school: unbridled loyalty to hierarchy and the common cause; and total submission to group discipline.

    Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA) failed to abide by that high ethos.  So, he got banished as reviled sinner-in-chief, in the rigid saint-versus-sinner cosmos of the Yoruba progressives, despite his stellar contributions to that cause pre-1962.

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    Ironically, back then, the youthful Chief Adebanjo and other Awolowo arch-loyalists gained fresh “life” from SLA’s “death”, aside Awoist bragging rights, over the generations that came after them: with Awo, they bawl, fealty is life; perfidy is death! 

    So, where will an SLA-like move leave Baba Adebanjo in the lore of Afenifere, even with the Ijebu chief’s earlier contributions to the body?  The Yoruba institutional memory, with its elephantine capacity, never forgets!

    Still, Baba Adebanjo, with the current Afenifere theatrics, seems to have learnt little from SLA’s tragic thud, even if the old man was himself a player in that grim drama.

    That drama — need anyone be reminded? — birthed the South West “progressives” (the beloved Awoists) versus  “Demo” (the hated SLA and fallen angels)! 

    Yet before, both rolled and joyed as solid, indissoluble columns of Awo’s rock-solid progressive phalanx, against conservative and reactionary elements.  So, why did SLA become the arch-reactionary of Yoruba politics?

    Again, to risk an umpteenth repetition: he failed the test of untrammelled loyalty to the Leader; and total fealty to the collective cause! 

    So, how has Chief Adebanjo fared, in this two-point test, in the brewing Afenifere debacle?  Maybe it’s best to reserve judgment until we revisit the story.

    On 16 March 2021, Afenifere Leader, Baba Reuben Fasoranti, 98 (but then 94), named Baba Adebanjo, 96 (but then 92), then his deputy, as Acting Leader.  He also named, as Adebanjo’s new deputy, Oba Oladipo Olaitan, the Alaago of Kajola Ago, near Ilesa.  Till then, Oba Olaitan was Afenifere’s financial secretary.

    Baba Fasoranti’s reason was old age slowing him down.  So, he needed a spritely lieutenant to delegate powers, while he withdrew into the background.  If there was any other reason, it wasn’t well publicized in the media.

    Though Baba Adebanjo was only two years younger than the Leader, his ebullience, an exuberance not even old age could repel or repress, his lifetime devotion to the Awo cause, and that penchant to joust, cut and thrust in the media, when the issue is Yoruba and Afenifere affairs, marked the Ijebu chief as cut out for the job.

    So, enter Chief Adebanjo, Acting Leader of Afenifere!  But no sooner was he appointed than his old failings took over — that penchant to equate his take as the thinking of the collective.

    In those halcyon days of the southern media, when the hated “Fulani herdsmen” committed all the crimes in the land, after forcefully retiring their criminal cousins from other tribes, whatever Chief Adebanjo thought of it all must equate the “Yoruba” or the “Afenifere” cause!

    That pretty much held true, during his tenure as Acting Afenifere Leader (2021-2024), which dovetailed into the last months of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure.

    Frankly, whatever views Chief Adebanjo holds, whoever he backs in the political sweepstakes, is his alienable right no one can question. The constant crunch, though, is his attitude that his solo run (or at best, what his coterie of close peers feel) must equate an “Afenifere” or even a “Yoruba” stand. 

    That is not and cannot be true.

    Things got to a head when, in July 2022, he committed “Afenifere” — and the chief’s fictive “Yoruba” — to supporting Peter Obi.  That was a gambit pushed too far, and Afenifere felt compelled to clip his wings.  That came with a 24 January 2024 announcement.

    Even then, Baba Fasoranti would appear too much a champion of the collective — and wise master of Yoruba political history — to publicly humiliate his former deputy.

    For context, the so-called “Ijebu Mafia”, a collective of hawks within Afenifere, had pressured the late Chief Abraham Aderibigbe Adesanya (AAA) to expel — and thus humiliate — his deputy, the late Chief Bola Ige, when accused of nurturing the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE), as rival to Afenifere. Ige himself had accused some Afenifere colleagues of peer envy — and treachery.  AAA wisely declined that rashness.

    So, what Baba Fasoranti did was some soft landing: creating a new Afenifere Elders Caucus.  Though both Acting Leader and Deputy Leader had been abolished, both would find new hallowed space, as “right hand” advisers to the Leader, in that new caucus.  Soft landing, yes.  But the intention was very clear.

    Still, Chief Adebanjo and confederates have dug in.  Their latest act of dissent was announcing Dele Farotimi as national organizing secretary of own Afenifere faction, when they knew Kole Omololu — of the Afenifere that made Adebanjo Acting Leader — already held that position. 

    So, what will Baba Adebanjo, already at his “departure lounge” tell Baba Awolowo: that as SLA broke up the AG by his 1962 intransigence, he too, a professed Awoist all his life, just broke up Afenifere, by refusing to quit as acting Afenifere leader, after  Afenifere had abolished that position — and due to Adebanjo’s own excesses?

    Indeed, if Baba Adebanjo cherishes his place in history, he will do well to retrace his steps. 

    Intransigence in 1962 brought SLA avoidable disgrace, despite his tons of good to the AG cause.  It won’t bring Adebanjo honour in 2025 if, on his account, Afenifere is smashed and destroyed. 

    “Adebanjo taku” is no wreath to crown an otherwise glorious Awoist career.  A word is enough for the wise! 

  • I.E and $1 trn economy

    I.E and $1 trn economy

    The Tinubu order is pushing for a US$ 1 trillion economy by 2033.  Also, President Bola Tinubu just returned from the January 27-28 Africa Energy Summit in Tanzania. 

    The goal of that summit is to partner with the African Development Bank (AfBD) and the World Bank to give 300 million Africans electricity by 2030 — five years from now.

    Even if that plan works, what structures does Nigeria have to push electricity to homes and industries — these corporate invalids called distribution companies (DisCos)?

    Ikeja Electric (I.E.) — the biggest DisCo — epitomizes such paralysis. Part of its market sits bang in the heart of Lagos.  Yet, the way I.E. blows hot and cold, it may well be in a remote village!

    For seven days, January 18 to 24, large swathes of Okota, Ire-Akari Estate, near Isolo, and environs were thrown into pit darkness.  The reason was a faulty feeder, which I.E.

    took seven days to fix!

    If its technical capacity was suspect, its customer service was warped. It took I.E. four days to alert its customers: total darkness stole in on Saturday, January 18.  The first customer alert was Tuesday, January 21!

    The fault was not cleared till another three days — but that, of course, reinforces the firm’s technical paralysis: hardly news!

    Such tardiness echoes the dead but unmourned National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).  How can NEPA, dead as dodo, still live in I.E. — and other DisCos — and anyone expects them to be part of a power future? 

    Isn’t that delusion, rich and grand?

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    To be sure, not a few are already bolting from the DisCos — fast becoming corporate lepers customers won’t touch with a long pole, if they had a choice.

    The Punch, of January 13, flashed a putative requiem: “Serial outages: Dangote, NNPCL, Total, 247 firms dump DisCos, generate 6, 500 MW”.

    To be sure, that’s captive power generation for solely own — and maybe captive customer — use. In that case firms, unimpressed by DisCo notorious yo-yos, could join.

    Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) approvals for captive power generation — which cuts out the DisCos — is dawning more and more. That means the big private-sector players are removing selves from the shambolic service of the DisCos.  As that popular Yoruba street lingo would put it: “it’s bye-bye to jati-jati”!

    But the real fun will start when the real market dam breaks!  Will we ever devise a truly liberalized power market, in which households too —  neighbourhood small businesses included — have a choice to shun non-performing DisCos?  That would be the day!

    It might not mean total and complete perdition, to be sure. Nimble DisCos may quickly shape up to new market dynamics.  But how many DisCos today are nimble?

    Clumsy is the word — as I.E. that took an entire week to fix a faulty feeder, and four long days to appraise its long-suffering customers!   They probably would all vanish, never to be mourned or missed as the old NEPA!

    Still, even if I.E. — so ruinously representative of other DisCos — doesn’t care about its customers, does it not care too about own survival?

    Pray how, for seven long days, would a firm firmly lock itself off legitimate income — no thanks to its technical incompetence?

    For those seven days, per pre-paid meters, that meant I.E. didn’t earn a dime, even if those meters had trapped in them tokens of electricity units, worth millions in Naira!   How does a serious firm, in 21st century Lagos, Nigeria, do business that way?

    If that recurs, how does it even pay its staff?  How does it meet its overheads?  How does it service its loans from banks?  How does it bolster its capital and sundry machinery, such that faulty feeders don’t take eons to fix?

    Perhaps the firm still has huge customer captives in fraudulent estimated billing: by which it could slap whatever bills on them, for consuming no more than total darkness? 

    Surely, to sanitize these DisCos, the first thing is to ensure they meter everybody, as fast as that can be done, even if that means declaring a national meter emergency?

    The Aba Power Limited Electric (APLE) — a generating firm which has cut out the DisCos — just announced it would meter 100, 000 customers.  Juxtapose that with I.E. and Eko DisCos that tried to pressure customers into buying new pre-paid meters for outdated ones!  The difference is clear?

    Even then, see how DisCos have weaponized meters for customer injustice.  In a more litigious jurisdiction, where folks have the cash and staying power to call the bluff of cheating firms, many DisCos would either be under by now, or are grappling with huge punitive costs, awarded customers by the courts.

    Electricity customers have been so brow-beaten — no thanks to estimated billing — that pre-paid meters at least ensure you’re billed for electricity consumed.

    But at best, that is cold comfort!  Implied in buying electricity tokens is that the DisCo would make the current, paid for in advance, readily available. 

    But lo!  DisCos — near-private trading firms — collect your money, deploy that sum to deepening whatever business transactions they could, yet spin you a thousand and one tales why what you already paid for may never be readily available!

    Now, what sort of trading model is that?  No wonder DisCos like old NEPA think they do you a favour: even if they collect money upfront, while NEPA collected in arrears!

    How sustainable is that in 21st century business?  That’s why I.E. would shut down an entire business district for an entire week, and still deludes itself it’s in business!

    Do they even realize, during that week of complete blackout, how many household economies they’d further set back, in these days of high inflation, in terms of ruined foodstuffs, with fridges becoming near-ovens?

    Do they know how much productive time vanished — never to be regained — during this period, particularly for those who think to live, and must engage their laptops, now that petrol and diesel had become virtual 24-carat gold?

    If delivering value isn’t driving the thinking of I.E. and other DisCos, how can they be the so-called “last mile” wheelers of electricity, to power President Tinubu’s dream of a US$ 1 trillion economy, which current pains are said to be forging?

    But maybe the crunch is near: if I.E. — and others DisCos — don’t leave the market, the market should be designed to leave them.  That logic is simple — and it should shape further market liberalization, if the government is really bent on a trillion-dollar Nigerian economy.  APLE, in Abia, appears already showing the way.

    If PDP-era crony capitalism imposed this monster model, the APC era should think little of junking it. 

    Enough of this old NEPA apparition shackled to the past, yet feigns it’s prime part of the future.  Otherwise, any talk of DisCos as the “last mile” to actualize a US$ 1 trillion economy by 2033 would turn not only a rich illusion but also a stark delusion.

  • Mr. President, the felon!

    Mr. President, the felon!

    Not many noticed the grand symbolism of the last days of President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024), the greatest after-office US leader ever.

    First, the dead Carter voted Kamala Harris as his preferred future of America.  The  living majority of Americans hugged their racist past in Donald Trump.

    Then, Carter yanked self off Trumpian America — sheer beast sold as macho beauty.  Donald’s might-is-right?  Too crass for Jimmy’s humane soul! It’s a neo-grim world Carter would rather shun, after cohabiting, for so long — too long? — in the old one. 

    So, a few months after a century, he fled!

    But this-twin symbolism the globe near-missed; because like Trump, the man of the hour, they are too fixated with the gross to notice the sublime! 

    Indeed, fleeing the sublime for the gross is the new buzz of America.  But trust Uncle Sam!  He would sell it as some global high culture! America’s decline beckons, though.

    In 1976, a nationwide outrage, over a mere burglary, powered Jimmy Carter to the US Presidency. 

    To finagle a second term — which he did by a landslide in 1972 — Republican associates of President Richard Nixon had burgled and bugged the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters, at its Watergate office, in Washington DC. 

    Enter, the Watergate scandal!

    But a dam of nationwide fury broke — and swept Nixon out of office in 1974. It was desperate resignation to fend off US House of Representatives impeachment and a possible conviction in the Senate. Yet, it was a mere burglary!

    Flip to 2020, and another second term high drama: Donald Trump levied war on the Capitol, to stop Senate confirmation of his defeat by Joe Biden. 

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    He just pardoned his Capitol mob, as he had bragged.  It’s executive outlawry, stupid!

    But one of them, Pamela Hemphill, aka MAGA granny, spurned that pardon: “We were wrong that day,” she insists.

    Between 2020 and 2024, the former president and future hopeful grossed another infamous record: a convicted felon for 34 counts! A smudge of shame?  No!  A badge of honour, to power him back to power as 47th US president!  American wonder!

    In 1974, Nixon fell from a mere bug-and-burglary.  In 2024, Trump soared: as grand conqueror of the Capitol — virtual treason; and as convicted felon. Hurrah! US 21st century Hercules just grafted political and personal crimes to roar back as president! 

    Enter, Mr. President, the unfazed Felon!  It’s the growth and growth of American democracy, in half-a-century (1974-2024)! Should the world now laugh or cry?

    Between election triumph in November 2024 and inauguration in January 2025, there were enough echoes and echoes of inspired outlawry!

    If Trump, the president-elect, was not talking of annexing the Panama Canal, he was dreaming of seizing Greenland (Denmark’s autonomous dominion) — both by sheer force of arms. 

    See why Carter “baled”?  He ceded the canal to Panama in 1977, though the actual handover was in 1999!

    If Trump wasn’t baiting Canada to, by force by fire, become the 51st state of the United States, he was riling Mexico to rename Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America — a sick joke, taken too far, which neither Canada nor Mexico found funny!

    It would be America’s burden — and the world’s splitting migraine — should President Trump walk President-elect Trump’s rather deranged talk! 

    But wait a minute!  He just decreed Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America!  Will he move with equal despatch to annex Canada and Greenland, and also seize Panama Canal? 

    On the home front, the ace felon even pressed his democratic right as convict not to be duly sentenced!  That, to be sure, was blocked, but not before it got all the way to the Supreme Court.

    That the US apex court dismissed that move, 5-4, showed how frail America’s doughty institution had become against ruinous strong men.  In Watergate America, it probably would have been slammed 9-0 — with nationwide outrage to boot!

    Even then, sentencing or no sentencing, the United States just fell on own sword, when the talk is equality before the law.  Trump got New York jury conviction.  Yet, the stiffest sentence he got was “unconditional discharge”!

    So Trump, though duly convicted and sentenced, has been voter-canonized above the law!  Talk of Aristotle that dismissed democracy as a vote by the mob!

    It’s a noxious rub against due process — over which America always crows — that Uncle Sam may yet rue.

    By the way, warts and all, Nigeria’s law permits no felon to be voted as president!  Why, the old geezer already ogles a third term! Republican Andy Ogles, on January 23, in the House of Representatives, pushed a bill to scrap the US 22nd constitutional amendment — limiting presidential terms to two — to gift Trump a third term.

    Again, that failed under Olusegun Obasanjo in Nigeria.  Will it fly in Trump’s America? Are we then seeing Trump’s own dream “shit hole”?  Ha!

    Still, as every victory often puffs out crumbs of its defeat, every catastrophe too may reveal the seeds of its redemption.  That starts with a Biden-Trump comparison.

    Democrats may well deem Joe Biden a “failure”, in the raw immediacy of crushing defeat.  But long-term reason suggests otherwise.

    Frail Joe is just a decent old man in an America that bawls with proud decay.  But that doesn’t make debauchery a sane choice over decency.

    As President, Biden did his duty till the very last day — for better, for worse.  In his shoes in 2020, Trump fled in a huff, after failing to bluff a loss into a win..

    If in doubt, contrast Vice President Harris certifying own loss, to Trump sending his thugs to “hang Mike Pence!”.  All VP Pence did was choose sacred duty over treachery.

    At the stomps, Harris stayed above Trump’s vulgar abuse and cheap lies.  In the immediate brain-brawn match-up, at the sole presidential debate, Harris soared over Trump — even if the US electorate would vote brawn over brain.

    Back to Transition 2020, against 2024: Trump (2020) goaded even career civil servants to subvert a peaceful power transfer. Biden (2024) was the direct opposite.

    Finally, Biden was there to hand over to Trump — his last, sacred duty.  Trump bolted in 2020!  Indeed, history would be kind to Biden and co, if America is saved from itself. 

    But if it drowns? The deeds of Biden and co would provide enough vignettes to damn contemporary America!

    No wonder: Morning Star, a U.K. tabloid, dismissed Trump 2.0 as the “Return of the village idiot”!  Uncle Sam may wince, but a good part of the globe is smacking at that vicious but apt put down! 

    What, but village idiocy, is grabbing territories in the 21st century?

    The Carter-Biden-Harris coalition — a multi-racial rainbow in which everyone thrives — is the sane future of America, not some racist, fascist, fear-belching MAGA (Make America Great Again), a euphemism for MAWA (Make America White Again).

  • Friends of Ripples

    Friends of Ripples

    December 2024 was exciting, very exciting — for both news and column writing.

    Kemi Badenoch, the British Tory Opposition Leader, who Sam Omatseye promptly re-named “Oyinbokemi”, was running her mouth to her heart’s content.

    Her native Nigeria was a dystopia beyond redemption.  Her new-found heaven, Britain, even with clear centuries of empire crimes, was a utopia without reproach. 

    Badenoch!  Ever saw an over-zealous neophyte, with a knocked silly psyche — so mixed-up she pissed on her heritage but felt hip, so long as her beloved, right-wing Brits cheered?  Oyinbokemi indeed!

    Teasy Vice President Kashim Shettima nettled Badnoch to junk her Nigerian — not Yoruba — name, but the hyper-educated Mrs. Badnoch unravelled in full emptiness: she was Yoruba, she wailed; and the Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, et al, of the “North” (where Shettima belonged) were her ancestral foes! 

    Who told her so?  The Yoruba Omoluabi ethos, of live and let live?  Or parental poison, buried deep in her child’s soul, now nurtured into a cross-racial gargoyle of self-hate?

    Did you ever see a hyper-educated woman manifest the basest of Plato’s allegory of the cave: that pit-black ignorance, before the naked lamp, then electricity, and finally glorious and dizzying sunlight, tore you from sweet dimness?

    Well, nature abhors a vacuum.  As Badenoch was throwing Nigeria under the bus, two other Brits — and both ethnic Yoruba — gave it a prime sheen, which politics could not.

    Ademola Lookman, 2024 African Footballer of the Year, heralded his win, in Morocco, with a greeting in Yoruba, to the distinguished gathering: “E kaale Nigeria, mo nki gbogbo yin, e se, mo dupe …”

    Mola’s accent was rather quaint. But it was quaint Yoruba that hugged all, repulsed none; which global TV beamed: “Good evening, Nigeria.  I greet you all. Thank you …”

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    It was Shettima’s cheeky challenge come again to haunt — and taunt — Kemi. She self-devalued as no more than a garnished Sunday Igboho — who must hate the Fulani to prove his Yoruba love. Lookman is the quintessential opposite: no need to hate to prove love!

    Every patriot latched onto that loving crow for motherland, in that moment of pan-Nigerian glory! 

    And before “Detty December” exited — that growing global tourism foray into Lagos, Nigeria — guess who fervently knocked, with high praise and love? Anthony Joshua!

    Crest or dale in his world heavyweight boxing odyssey, AJ aka “Sagamu boy”, had always identified with his roots, warts and all. 

    So, when he visited Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) boss, Abike Dabiri-Erewa and hubby, in their Lagos home, it was the Badenoch rebuke, all over again.  The original battle was drawn over Badenoch’s chill towards NIDCOM’s warmth.

    Still, don’t be too hard on Mrs. Badenoch. She has chosen her path — and she’ll float or sink by it. It galls because her cross-racial opportunism courts cheap political gains.

    Yet, Peter Obi manifests no less rank opportunism here — and his own forte is playing (and preying) on faith and ethnic — nay, clannish — divides, as emotive magnet.

    He’s not about to depart that pious cynicism. He knows no other way to sate his zombie Obidient base!

    But that high cynicism, without or within, which Badenoch and Obi epitomize, set the vacationing Ripples thinking of his column friends — across Nigeria’s geo-political zones, tongues and faiths.

    Indeed, all the Badenoch fireworks caught me in the Ilorin home of one of such elderly friends, Uncle Ray Yusuf, a retired NTA broadcaster of the purest crust. 

    But he’s only few of these friends that Ripples ever met — with Uncle Saliu Ojibara, an Ilorin native and chartered accountant of high repute. He is ex-NTA too.

    In his teenage years, he was a celebrated master-dribbler in the Lagos of mid-1960s and mid-1970s.  He was nicknamed “Stanley Matthews”, for his audacious ball skills.

    He rubbed shoulders with the great Haruna Ilerika (of blessed memory), as they set Lagos communal pitches on fire, with exciting  “felele” challenge football!  Uncle Ojii would buy The Nation, every Tuesday, only when Ripples is at work, not when on leave!

    Most other friends, Ripples has not met — and perhaps will never meet.  Yet, no week passes without each getting in touch, to share ideas on how to better Nigeria.

    Madam Pet Mmonu saw the Civil War (1967-1970), in Enugu, as a sub-teenage girl. So, she cringes from the neo-Biafra hot heads that crave blood and gore. Every Tuesday, after reading Republican Ripples, her abiding passion: how do we fix Nigeria?

    Col. Azubike Nass (retd) knows no clannish thinking. He applies his forensic mind to fixing Nigeria.  We met on this page — but have never seen.

    Prof. Ikenna Onyido, quintessential scientist, scholar and former vice-chancellor, calls me son. I call him dad. The one is Igbo. The other is Yoruba.  But that bond is so pure, so strong, it won’t ever end as Okonkwo, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, killing Ikemefuna that called him father!  Such trust!  We met here!

    Elder Frank Ede left Delta, for Lagos, to present me three copies of his friend, Engr. Alex Neyin’s autobiography: one for Tatalo Alamu; one for Sam Omatseye; one for Ripples.  The magnet was again this column.

    Years earlier, Igwe Pius Ojonile Omachonu had despatched two of his books, for my reading pleasure; and from time to time, we cut and thrust, on WhatsApp, over the Nigerian question!  We’ve never met!

    Can I ever forget Boluwaji Faseyi, the Akure-based youth who dots upon Ripples’ weekly offerings that he’s more or less virtual family, though we’d never met?  Or Habibu Aminu Lawan, the teacher-broadcaster from Kano, who relates as if he’s kith-and-kin?

    These networks beggar Badenoch’s the-North-is-Yoruba-enemy cave mindset!

    But back to Uncle Ray.  In his Ilorin home, a pan-Nigerian family is solving a pan-Nigerian challenge: playing foster-parents to Henry, a Christian teen from Biridaji village, Kebbi State.

    The Yusufs — the patriarch, a Muslim; the matriarch, a Catholic, living happily ever-after! — are a loving rebuke to those who would war over faith and creed.

    Now, a Catholic network, looking out for vulnerable youth — from faith fundamentalism and sundry violence — plants them in safe Catholic homes, away from harm.  He, to help with house chores.  They, to send him to school; or make him learn a trade.

    That was how Henry — I call him King Henry for his winsome smiles and comely ways — ended up with the Yusufs. 

    Again, a pleasant irony: even if Henry was fleeing from faith tension, he has found peace, joy and comfort, with his future assured, in a faith-tolerant home!

    Here, these folks aren’t pointing fingers.  Or like Badenoch and Obi, scavenging for carcasses to foul the air. 

    They, instead, hanker down to dismantle as many challenges as they can, in their quiet homes — and they don’t even squeak about these breakthroughs.

    Committed Nigerians will solve the problems of Nigeria.  Political charlatans — home and abroad — will get what’s coming their way. 

    So, let Oyinbokemi, leaky mouth, et al, stick with her morbid fixation with Nigeria. Those are ripening seeds of her political self-destruction. But she’s too doomed to know.

    Happy new year!

    All too soon, rest is over and it’s time for work.  Happy new year, folks!

  • Gowon, Obasanjo, Buhari

    Gowon, Obasanjo, Buhari

    A former Nigerian leader just blundered onto the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum, at Yale University, USA, squealing state capture and screaming insane governance!

    He wasn’t Gen. Yakubu Gowon, “the nation’s poster face of probity in public life”, by Catholic Bishop Matthew Kukah’s estimation.

    Neither was he former President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), who the northern street had long canonized “Mai Gaskiya” — the Honest One — even while still alive.

    It’s rather the ever-noisome Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, ex-head of state and two-term elected president, who loves to row, thinking his eternal screeching would bury his rot!

    General Yakubu Gowon (90), General Olusegun Obasanjo, GOO, (87) and Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, GMB, (81) were all former military heads of state.

    GOO postures as the holy Pope of this best forgotten military era of sheer venality.  Yet, he stands out, like a sore and rotten thumb, for gaming the state for self-benefits. 

    His regime’s Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) morphed into his post-military power honeypot: Obasanjo Farms Nigeria (OFN) — with a fulsome harvest of choice lands, all over the country! 

    Ay, the same Land Use Decree, forged to drive his regime’s OFN, also came in handy to drive his personal OFN!

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    Gowon and Buhari sit on a moral crest, though military rule was rotten — rare drivers on Army rule’s straight and narrow way.  Still, they grate at no one.

    Yet,  Obasanjo galloped into the Chinua Achebe USA show, wearing his OFN medal, screaming “state capture!” A global self-trial was never more severe!  But the irony was totally lost on him!

    Clearly, Obasanjo has learnt nothing, in decorum or modesty or humility or probity — either from Gowon, his senior, or from Buhari, his junior.

    But he wants to teach everyone the ABC of honest leadership.  Did Fela, the immortal Abami Eda himself, just growl from the grave: Tisa, no teach me nonsense?

    Gowon’s bid to be elected president sank with General Ibrahim Babangida’s transition to nowhere, with the ever-flippant Obasanjo even mocking the doomed run of his old commander-in-chief.

    But the hypocrisy in GOO bobbed up with the panicky Army Arrangement that thrust him forward for President in 1999.  He didn’t ask his sponsors what he had asked Gowon: what did Gowon forget in Dodan Barracks to go pick up?  But dived into a self- serving cant: how many presidents would you make out of me?  Sheer humbug!

    In contrast, GMB’s unassailable probity, even among wild military-era thieves, paved his way to becoming PMB, like Obasanjo, for two terms.  In 2015, Nigerians craved an upright superman to help clean up the Obasanjo-led PDP-era mess.

    Again, to boot: while Obasanjo exited power in 2007, clutching another illicit medal — the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library and Resort — PMB bequeathed the Lagos-Ibadan medium-gauge rail, with its Wole Soyinka Abeokuta Station virtually facing off, in stern rebuke, Obasanjo’s private gold mine of OOPL! 

    Between quiet but honest public service and loud but rotten self-service, nothing could be starker!  After PMB and Obasanjo are long gone, the WS station and OOPL, would scream, for posterity, the real state captor — and a ruthless one at that!

    But beyond OOPL and WS Train Station, Obasanjo comes up short, against PMB, on many fronts.  Yet, PMB is as taciturn as Obasanjo is garrulous — the one over golden traits, the other over vice packaged as virtue.

    After two terms as president, Obasanjo craved an illicit third. At a similar juncture, PMB declared he couldn’t wait to get as far away from Abuja as possible!

    After the great third term crash — which he denies till this day — the Ebora Owu’s response was an election he bragged would be “do or die”; and indeed, it was do or die: very gory, in every material particular: in hewn limbs, bashed skulls, lost lives!

    Contrast that to PMB’s declared loyalty to his party, but telling people to freely vote their choice; and to the security agencies to guarantee the vote.

    As president, PMB delivered far much more in infrastructure (even with a parched pocket), and gave agriculture a rebirth, away from the reckless food imports of the Obasanjo years — an APC-era legacy President Tinubu has followed and reinforced. 

    Contrast that with Obasanjo paying US$ 12 billion, in crude windfall, to buy “debt forgiveness”, while critical road arteries — Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Second Niger Bridge, etc; not to mention modernized rail — wailed for attention. 

    As outgoing President, Obasanjo told the INEC chair, the best forgotten Prof. Maurice Iwu, to help deliver his “do or die” polls — a chilling nightmare for the opposition.

    PMB’s call, at a similar juncture, was on INEC chair, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, to push technology — the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS), which asserts genuine voters, by reading the permanent voter card (PVC) with its in-built computer chip; and the INEC Result-viewing (IReV) portal — to achieve better elections.

    That delivered the closest election in Nigerian political history.  But it also triggered wild but empty bad-mouthing from the loser camps, well represented by Peter Obi and co, at the Achebe Yale University show. 

    That explained Obasanjo’s open traducement of Prof. Yakubu; and his reckless call for the sack of the INEC chair.  If Yakubu is fired for delivering 2023, what then would have befallen Obasanjo’s Iwu, for his eternal disgrace of 2007? Banished for life?

    It’s clear: despite his constant huffing and puffing; and empty pontifications, Obasanjo has little sense of fairness; talk less of justice.  But God is great!  As he opens his mouth to judge others, he condemns himself even more!

    And, yes: post-power, Obasanjo pulls down everyone.  PMB supports his successors.

    So, if the Ebora Owu came so venomously after “Baba-go-slow” (PMB) and “Emilokan” (President Bola Tinubu), it’s again his patented opportunism to milk people’s pains to hawk counterfeit empathy. 

    There’s nothing to it — except for President Tinubu to know the pains of his policy reforms: removing petrol subsidy and floating the Naira, bite hard. He should move fast to tweak them.

    Many a charlatan would milk extant pains for instant political gains — and so would the present order too, were they in opposition! 

    But therein lies Obasanjo’s big fall — from a supposed statesman to a cheap, hustling politician.  But has he ever scaled such noble heights, with his eternal penchant to pull others down?

    It’s instructive, though: Obasanjo’s umpteenth pastime pushed the Tinubu order to benchmark themselves from 2015, rather than from 2023.  Had they been doing that, the difference between the PDP and APC eras would have been crystal clear, leaving little space for well-known Obasanjo cynical howls, and sundry opposition opportunism.

    Not a few marvel at Obasanjo’s many unforced, self-slaying outbursts.  It’s a purgatory: for early life rots, spinned as strengths, to which he is fated.  Pity!

    Ripples goes on leave

    It’s that season again to go rest and re-tool.  It’s been a fast-paced year and thanks for being part of that journey.  See you, by God’s grace, in 2025.

  • Katsina cabal, Lagos cowboys and sundry jives

    Katsina cabal, Lagos cowboys and sundry jives

    Whither the “Fulani herdsmen”, choice villains of southern media hysteria during the Muhammadu Buhari years, when their kin was president?  Vanished into Mars!

    Are they still as ubiquitous, as all-conquering, as absolutely notorious as when PMB was there; allegedly goading them on from mischief to mischief?  Who knows? 

    The massive media watch towers have simply moved on to other mischiefs their own; their hot gaze shifted from the herdsmen’s no-less-hated cousins, in the PMB power court: the rather formidable Katsina Cabal!

    So, where’s that cabal today, on which many a blogger foamed in the mouth with hot hate?  Maybe in Jupiter!  Again, the Observatory has moved!

    The focus now — no less fierce — is the Lagos Cowboys in the court of President Bola Tinubu.  Enter, the latest reigning royals — more of Judas! — of the grudge media!

    If there is grudge media, there must be grudge politicians, to make the grudge media rumble, vibrate and titillate, to send quaking grudge readers — viewers and listeners — into a fresh delirium, without which grudge living is absolutely unbearable!

    That has been the fate — a badge of honour? — of Chief Ayo Adebanjo, the no-retreat-no-surrender gadfly of the Afenifere clan. For the old man, it’s his way or no other way!

    “We Yorubas are not that insecure or imperialistic to covet such a monopoly of power,” the old lion roared.  “Afenifere can’t use several decades to fight against Fulani hegemony, only to support Yoruba hegemony.” 

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    But which power?  Which monopoly?  Which hegemony?  And by the way, which Afenifere?

    He was referring to Ugoji Egbujo imputing Yoruba domination of the Tinubu Presidency (Vanguard, October 26), as put by The Guardian (November 2), “of all arms of the criminal justice system (EFCC, DSS, Attorney-General and Chief Justice); the economy (Coordinating minister of the Economy, CBN, Finance, Blue Economy, Digital Economy, Trade, Industries and Investment, Bank of Industries and Investment, Solid Minerals); as well as the Forces (Army, Police, Customs, Immigration).”

    “Buhari was accused of bias for (the) North, with three regions” Chief Adebanjo caviled, “not to talk of Tinubu’s bias not for the South, but (for) a single ethnicity and single region.” 

    So, “City Boy” PBAT has proved, by his Yoruba-centrism, even a worse South West caveman than PMB was ever a pan-northern hegemon! Some hyperbole!  This old man can sure talk the talk!

    Still, some preliminary x-ray of this patriotic grumping.  PMB was accused of North-centrism, indeed!  Wasn’t that the blare of the southern media, during his eight years?

    But did that hinder his delivery of the 2nd Niger Bridge; or the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway: two critical artery-assets that his predecessors — including “arch-nationalist”, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo — laboured in vain to do, even with the gushing cash they had?  Did it also arrest the Lagos-Ibadan modernized rail?

    Did PMB’s northern dominance blot out the unmatchable passion of ChIbuike Rotimi Amaechi, as he went about his rail-modernization mission with aplomb?  Or whittle down Babatunde Fashola’s doggedness and brilliance, even as he wrestled with three “juicy” portfolios in 2015: Power, Works and Housing?

    Pray, did it cripple the plethora of funding options for roads and bridges, outside the budgetary cycle, that Fashola brought to the table, in his second term as Works and Housing minister — options now entrenched in the federal funding basket? 

    Indeed, did it stall the frenetic support to deliver the Dangote Refinery, incidentally another Lagos-private sector collaboration, by the same Lagos post-1999 order that Chief Adebanjo and co-traducers now condemn, out of blind envy?

    For that matter, is PBAT’s “Yoruba domination” killing the can-do spirit of David Umahi as Works minister; or Nuhu Ribadu, as National Security Adviser (NSA), routing the North West bandits?  

    Does it stall Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo’s enchanting passport reforms as Interior minister — or that counts for zero because the minister is Yoruba?  Or because Chief Adebanjo, pushing his democratic right to grouch, disapproves?

    But the Tunji-Ojos — or even, Attorney-General Lateef Fagbemi, an ethnic Yoruba from Kwara, in the North Central geo-political zone — are not even the old man’s headache.

    His migraine would appear the “Lagos cowboy” trio of Wale Edun (Finance: and economy coordinating minister), Dele Alake (Solid Minerals) and Yemi Cardoso, CBN Governor and czar of Tinubu monetary policies.

    Though Edun (Ogun) and Alake (Ekiti) are no Lagos indigenes — only Cardoso is — they were among the pan-Yoruba policy “storm-troopers” that helped to shape Tinubu’s Lagos — and its aftermath, 25 years on.

    They also — horrors of horrors! — helped to checkmate Afenifere’s excesses — back then, just as now, driven by Chief Adebanjo’s needless pugnacity. His lobby’s gung-ho Yoruba nativism crippled the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) outside Yorubaland.  It also drove AD to premature grave — after Tinubu and co had left for AC.

    By the chief’s carping, hiding behind “Afenifere” and some fictive “Yoruba” mandate, it’s clear he hasn’t forgotten — or even forgiven — Tinubu and his Lagos cowboys!

    God knows — and readers of this column would attest — that Ripples disagrees with Edun’s and Cardoso’s double-whammy of removing petroleum subsidy and floating the Naira: twin-policy that has made the Naira a mere rag; and sent ga-ga virulent inflation, further spreading mass poverty.

    Still, the two gentlemen are honest drivers of Tinubu’s economic policies.  Yes, those reforms could be harsh.  But that doesn’t turn the drivers into quacks or villains.

    If those policies work, the people will quickly forget the pains and savour the gains.  If they don’t, the government pays the price by 2027.  That’s how democracy works, not by wilful traducement, feigning pseudo-patriotism, as Chief Adebanjo just essayed.

    Besides — and this parallel is apposite — if the “Lagos boys” stuck with Governor Tinubu, through his first two years of free Lagosian abuse and insults, only to, with him, earn glory after eight years, what stops them from repeating that feat at the federal level, even if the president’s reforms aren’t the most popular right now?

    Ripples’ riposte back then, on the so-called Katsina Cabal, was that PMB picked who he thought could deliver for him.  It’s the same response to PBAT’s Lagos Cowboys!  That (wart and all) is Nigeria’s political sociology.  It is what it is! 

    Sadly, those who hee-hawed over PMB, or even joined the emotive bandwagon of fashionable perjury, can’t now defend PBAT.  Glad to say Ripples is not of that band!

    But as Chief Adebanjo grandstands for willy-nilly relevance, he’s an impostor if he claims to be Afenifere Leader.  He’s not.  Baba Reuben Fasoranti is.

    As he lays false claim as Afenifere “Leader”, and since the old man loves to tout Awo for effect, let him remember the “Akintola Taku” — “Akintola balks” — tragedy of 1962.

    That turned Chief Akintola into an eternal pariah among the Awo clan. Chief Adebanjo risks no less, in Afenifere folklore, long after he and his doting grudge media have left the scene.