The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Osun dramatics

    Osun dramatics

    Abuse of forum?  Fulsome apologies!  But be sure it’s both a logical and legitimate grist to tell the Osun tale: of development — or lack of it.

    But first a blast into the past.

    “Ogbe ‘A’ s’aya, Ogbe ‘B’ s’aya, Ogbe ‘D’ s’aya, Ogbe ‘E’ s’aya!…”

    That was how we, kids in the Lafiaji area of Lagos Island, hollered and learned, by rote, the Yoruba alphabets — shouting at vivid pictures of humans bearing these alphabets on their chest, and bawling louder than the child next to you, to impress the teacher!

    The school, St. David’s School, Okesuna, Lafiaji, Lagos, still stands till this day.

    The school, in concert with the many neighbourhood lessons, with teachers and their scary canes, drilled the first bit of formal learning, into the minds of the bawling kids.

    You needed the Yoruba alphabet drills to start the all-Yoruba preparatory classes 1 and 2.  The English alphabets waited till you made Standard 1, in those days when Lagos, as Federal Capital Territory, did eight years of primary school, before it was later pared down to six; and the class nomenclature changed from Standard to Primary.

    That screaming kid of yore — among many others — is now the Ripples of today who, many confess, has a rather good grasp of English style, lexis and structure.  Yet, the beginning was so humble!

    Of course, the first eight — later six — years of formal schooling was free, thanks to the iconic Chief Obafemi Awolowo.  Education couldn’t have been free in the West, while kids in its Yoruba outpost of Lagos (though then federal capital) would pay?

    Much later, the federal authorities — under Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Lagos State Military Governor, Col. (later Brigadier) Mobolaji Johnson — would add a boon: heavily subsidized high-quality mid-day meals, that saved the kids, mainly from poor homes, from the vendor shylocks, that dished low-quality food at outrageous prices!

    Boy!  Didn’t many of us taste those exotic meals, complete with fruits and chilled milk, for the first time in school — even taking home little rations for our younger siblings?

    Why this flashback, though?  Simple: The motivation to write Ogbeni: The Osun Renaisance Years, stemmed from sharing childhood kin with thousands of Osun kids, from humble homes, basking in warmth of their government’s policy sun. 

    Safari Books, Ltd, Ibadan, released the work in May.

    Ogbeni is ode to a government that placed the poor as the central plank of its policies — and politics. 

    But in Rauf Aregbesola’s Osun, it wasn’t school feeding alone, in the first four years of schooling.  It was the total transformation of the school and study environment. 

    Why, a visit to the sedate classrooms, at Osogbo’s Anthony Udofia Elementary School, felt like becoming a child again, and being taught in such comely classes, with their sweet libraries; and for mid-day sports, romping into the enchanting play grounds!

    Whither those glittering facilities today, less than eight years later, though the school still stands?  The answer is up in the wind!  That appears the retrogressive streak of Osun politics and dramatics!  The poor, more than anyone, are the ultimate victims.

    But the enchanting windows of Udofia — and the contiguous Government High School, Oke-Fia (now Osogbo Grammar School): the Osun model mega high school that in 2020 produced Abdullahi Akintade as Nigeria’s best student scientist, barely four years after the new school opened in 2016 — were a loud metaphor for youth education, training and empowerment.

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    The youngest were fed — and the feeding itself was structured to put money in the pockets of these children’s farmer and caterer-parents.  The kids were also put in transformed schools, from the hitherto shambolic, nay collapsed, public school system, in the most radical transformative intervention in Osun history.

    The most senior — the senior secondary (SS) 3 classes — were equipped with “Opon Imo”, units of computer tablets that warehoused, quoting from Ogbeni,  “54 e-textbooks covering 17 subjects,  54 (video) tutorials covering 17 subjects, over 40, 000 practice questions-and-answers, and seven extra-curricular books”, which included the Bible, the Qur’an and the Ifa Corpus, covering the varying faiths.

    Even the common uniform project — as controversial as that was — was wrought to standardize tailoring and design skills, to feed orders to thousands of Osun artisan tailors, via the intervention of the Omoluabi Garment Company, now defunct.

    Again, where is Opon Imo today?  Indeed, where’s that Garment company, which the Aregbesola order then promoted as the biggest garment business in West Africa? 

    Gone with the wind!  For context, Kwara, under Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq, has appropriated a similar idea; and is running with own factory, with promise of jobs for its youth and tax for its purse.

    For youth jobs: the same government framed OYES: the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme.  OYES volunteers not only out-numbered the Osun Civil Service, OYES also triggered N-Power, the graduate scheme, after its image, on the national front, under President Muhammadu Buhari — just as Osun’s school feeding did inspire a national home-grown school-feeding programme, as safety net for the poor.

    More critically, OYES triggered the World Bank version of YESSO: the Youth Employment and Social Support Operation.  YESSO gathered data to compile a National Social Register (NSR) for conditional cash transfer to the very poor, complete with opportunities to train in skills to make ends meet.  The NSR came handy during the terrible months of COVID-19.

    Yet, where is OYES today?

    Osun 2010-2018 was total human development: from youth to the seniors’ welfare and empowerment dubbed “Agba Osun”,  and public health, using aggressive road and sundry infrastructure as spur, but making the common man the crux of policy. 

    Indeed, since the Awolowo Western Region government (1952-1959) — which by the way had bouncing cocoa wealth — no sub-national government in Nigeria has essayed audacious development as Osun did, under Aregbesola, though with puny resources.

    Ogbeni: The Osun Renaissance Years, soon to be publicly presented, captures these momentous strides, with its many crises and controversies.

    All through that epoch, the media slept and snored, though a good section of it would jerk awake to dish out explosive ignorance from arch-bias — wanton abuse that gave the Fourth Estate a bad name. 

    Ogbeni pushes a more balanced account for posterity, say, some 100 years from now.  But before then, what if it gets to 100, 000 young African leaders as primer for how to put the poor as the core of government policies?  Exciting?

  • Two governors, two elders

    Two governors, two elders

    Two governors, two elders.  As the two governors gut own houses, the two elders haul back-up buckets of petrol into the blaze.  Some governors!  Some elders! 

    In Fela-speak, “wahala sleep, yanga go wake am, na palaver e de find.”

    That street pidgin best captures Kano Governor, Abba Yusuf, and his Kano double-trouble: the inchoate sack of Emir Aminu Ado Bayero as 15th Emir; and the inchoate return of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II, as 16th Emir, after his earlier sack as 14th Emir. 

    That has set Kano on tenterhooks, and left a muscle-flexing Abba red-faced!  Under his nose, two Emirs contest the throne; and there’s little the governor can do about it!

    “Wahala sleep, yanga go wake am!”

    But even as the first set of court verdicts worsted Governor Yusuf — that Kano should pay Emir Ado Bayero N10 million for breaching his human rights; and that the second coming of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II was null and void, because the Kano Emirate Council (Repeal) Law, 2024, was badly applied — Yusuf has thrust own comic verdict interpretation: clear delusion that executive baulking would turn a court loss into a win.

    As first, he barked at the police to arrest Ado Bayero, for landing in Kano to press his rights.  Now, after the verdict, he growls that the police evict the 15th Emir from the Gidan Nasarawa mini-palace, and after, demolition. Neither has happened.

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    When will Governor Yusuf and aides get it that you cannot under democracy, even with awesome gubernatorial powers, criminalize a citizen with mere whims? Imagine state Police under such an intemperate governor!  Wouldn’t Kano have been in flames by now? 

    Still, few follies and foibles can’t cancel an idea — state Police — whose time has come!  We just must make the enabling law rigorous enough to withstand abuse.

    In Rivers, in his brash Nyesom Wike face-off, Governor Siminilayi — Sim — Fubara has made belligerence the fundamental principle of his day-to-day governance.

    With his much-touted Ijaw “youth” street army, and uncritical Ijaw “elders”, it’s one-day, one-threat; one-day, one-roar, from the boisterous Sim camp, while the governor probably gyrates — and merrily too! — to his political doom. 

    If the governor is not showing off as some scary Leviathan, taking one last sinister look before demolishing a newly inaugurated legislative quarters complex, he’s publicly wailing over how some local potentates disrespected him by leaving out his picture — and his deputy’s — out of their official almanacs: an uncouth, reckless act, to be sure.

    If he doesn’t wail directly, not a few proxies moan for him — as battle-tested Ijaw rights activist, Ann-Kio Briggs, decrying the blatant rudeness of a local council boss who, in public, seized Sim’s phone and stamped on it — gubernatorial mystique be damned! Ah!

    Of course, Madam Briggs’ Ijaw radicalism is well storied.  She, in 2012, pushed that the Ijaw pull out their oil from Nigeria, if Goodluck Jonathan was no longer good enough as president — and that bang on the virtual anniversary of the abortive Isaac Adaka Boro 12-Day Revolution (from 23 February 1966, when Boro’s Niger Delta Volunteer Force declared a Niger Delta Republic) — just because then President Jonathan couldn’t have his way in removing fuel subsidy.

    But as Sim and Bellicose Orchestra drone on and on, they have failed to notice that the no-less belligerent Wike has suddenly ceased space! 

    For a five or six-day cluster around May 29, Wike, Abuja minister, had grabbed national attention, cementing his reputation of “Mr. Do It” in penetrating infrastructure.

    If Wike is, 24-7, in Fubara’s head, how would Fubara maintain, talk less of improve, upon Wike’s Rivers rich infrastructural legacy, which by the way, romped Sim in as governor, before his rabid, newfound Ijaw kith-and-kin? 

    Was Briggs even there, though a Rivers Ijaw native, when Wike was shutting down everyone and slamming down everything to, willy-nilly, make Fubara governor?

    Still, as Ripples always maintains, no tears for Wike.  Whatever Fubara does to or with him, he himself did to Rotimi Amaechi, both his predecessor and benefactor. 

    So, let him bake in the crucible of ingratitude!  The snag though, is that Fubara is nurturing his own future kiln of Karma, with his present devil-may-care bellicosity! 

    But Madam Briggs is not among the “elders” this piece announced in its headline.  Old man Edwin Clark is.

    Since the Rivers crisis broke, Chief Clark, though from Delta, has jumped into the fray with uncritical support for Fubara, his Ijaw kin.

    Then, he wrote a long and ringing treatise to condemn the presidential compromise wrought early to contain the crisis.  Unlike Dr. Peter Odili that Wike’s lack of tact has unfortunately boxed into the Fubara corner, Clark from day one always saw a treaty stacked against Fubara.

    And now that Fubara acts as one possessed, Clark is tracking Rivers succession history, from his sweet, one-track prism!  Does he even have the facts?

    Meanwhile, Fubara blunders from one desperate error to another: passing the 2024 budget, vetting his Attorney-General and commissioner for Justice, and passing his nominees for caretaker council chairs — all through a three-man state legislature! 

    By the way, that last action — caretaker council chairs — is a double-whammy in open and transparent constitutional crimes: while unelected caretaker council chairs are unknown to law, it’s doubtful if a three-man legislature (from 32 members) can pass the muster of both law and common sense. 

    These are low-hanging fruits of Fubara impeachment which neither his Ijaw “youth” street army; nor his thunderous “elders” can prevail against, when the chips are down.

    Yet, these were exactly the basic stumbles the Abuja accord tried to avert by asking Fubara to re-present his 2024 budget to the Rivers parliament though, in fairness, it’s unclear how fairly the Wike-backed majority would have dealt with that.

    This parting shot on Rivers: let Fubara, galloping from crisis to crisis, know that this same Clark, as famed presidential godfather with unbridled Ijaw nationalism, pushed Jonathan to losing a second term.  But when he did, Clark left Jonathan to rue his loss.

    But the saving grace: though Jonathan is far younger, he has, in his post-president days, proved far more seasoned in state matters, than his self-named presidential godfather!  If you doubt, compare and contrast the duo’s Rivers interventions!

    Back to Kano; Governor Yusuf and aides often behave more like gangs to pounce and crack down on anyone, democratic rights be damned.

    When Yusuf lit the small fires — railroading the new Emirate law, shunning a clear court order — his godfather, Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso, played dumb: he had no idea. Yes, their campaign promised to revisit the Kano Emirate matter, but it’s specific form was Abba’s sole decision.

    Now, with the Kano government’s judicial hara-kiri cropping adverse court rulings, Dr. Kwakwanso now blames the federal authorities for “importing” crisis into Kano!  Yet, that comes from a former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives (December 1992 – November 1993), two-term Kano governor, a former senator and minister of the Federal Republic, and a former presidential candidate!

    Two governors!  Two elders!  Where did Nigeria miss the road on the leadership map?

  • Autonomy — from who?

    Autonomy — from who?

    There’s a buzz over local government autonomy — but autonomy from who?  States, of which councils are integral parts? How can you seek autonomy from yourself?

    And before making a false parallel that states are integral to the Federal Government, as local governments are integral to states, know that is a ringing fallacy.

    The federal principle knows no more than two partners: states or regions; and the central government.  Whatever the sub-nationals do with their native or local administration is exclusively their business.

    The crisis, of course, dawned when the military tried to subjugate the federal ethos to their unitary instincts.  The most perilous, of the live tragedies, was the seven-month Head of State, Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi (15 January 1966 – 28 July 1966).

    With a stroke of the pen, Gen. Aguiyi-Irosi, in his Unification Decree No. 34 of 24 May 1966, cancelled the then four federal regions: Eastern, Midwestern, Northern, and Western; and pronto decreed them a group of provinces!

    The swift chaos that ensued showed social organizations don’t answer to gruff military diktats!  Yet, the so-called intellectuals of the day, relying more on ethnic sentiments than logical rigour, egged Aguiyi-Ironsi on, along that path of avoidable doom.

    That terrible backlash somewhat made the succeeding Gen. Yakubu Gowon to junk the  “group of provinces”, for Nigeria’s first 12 states, which he created on 27 May 1967, on the virtual eve of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).

    Yes, the immediate goal was to isolate the core Biafra homeland, from the old Eastern Region, into a sole East Central State (now split roughly into the present five Igbo states), thus cutting off the secessionist enclave from the sea. 

    By that single pre-war gaming, Biafra lost its contiguous continental shelf, aside from its legal link to Port Harcourt, the former region’s economic hub, with its big sea port.

    Legal plank — because it would take the 3 Marine Commando of the Nigerian Army to prise the oil-rich minority areas, starting with Port Harcourt, Bonny Island and allied areas, from the secessionists.

    Still, beyond the immediate war stratagem, the 12 states made a gamely attempt at states founded on tongue and cultural contiguity — as core federalist Chief Obafemi Awolowo had always argued — away from the old regions of ethnic majorities, virtually “swallowing” their minorities.

    It was not until 3 February 1976, when the Murtala-Obasanjo government started carving out more states — they increased the original 12 states to 19, aside from changing the names of most — that the federal ethos receded further. 

    To that regime and beyond, states were no more than atomized administrative units, to press a martial command-and-control realm, masquerading as a federal territory. 

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    Little surprise, then: 1976 also saw the dawn of the Ibrahim Dasuki reforms, that created uniform local governments nationwide, as if councils were civilian barrack formations answering to a central czar — the states, in which these local governments were located, be damned!

    The sweet sop of this new Army wonder was direct funding from the federal purse — money that nevertheless belonged to the federal and state governments, now arbitrarily carved out for a so-called “third tier”.

    But that tier has only succeeded in tearing apart the accounts: with the states taking own pound of flesh — the so-called “third-tier” money is partly theirs by right; and the out-foxed Federal Government bawling “autonomy!” 

    But again, autonomy from who — and for who?  What’s that Achebe-speak again: “Eneke the bird says since men have learned to shoot without missing, he [too] has learned to fly without perching”?

    Shovelling money at the local governments was easy and sweet.  Accounting for the cash, from far-away Abuja, is the crux!  The states have only appropriated what they feel is theirs, leaving the central Leviathan screeching, despite its awesome powers! 

    The rich also cry!

    Again, sociology hardly answers to military orders!  It’s a journey to nowhere, and the Federal Government, now civil and democratic, had better stopped chasing the wind!

    Uniform local governments are one of the many illogics of the military era.  Local governments should be the exclusive business of the states — no one else’s.

    It was a messianic complex to fix what was not broken. The result is the eternal holler for “autonomy” — reverse autonomy that would shove aside the states, while the central nanny plugs the feeding bottle into the mouths of its local government babies? Easier said than done!

    Still, nothing should suggest this piece endorses the rascality of state governments pilfering local governments’ money.  But again, “pilfering” is rather a sweeping word.  How can states pilfer money that partly belongs to them?

    Nevertheless, the bad faith that leaves law-abiding people in a developmental lurch is condemnable.  Nothing can justify that.

    Still, the only organic solution would be to remove the bad faith on both sides, with the basic starting point: the Federal Government has no business in council matters.  

    So, let the Federation accountants calculate the federal share of the third tier funding, pay it into the central purse, but pay the balance to the states: to nurture their local governments, as they damn well please; subject, of course, to the core principle that local governments, as federal and state governments, must be elected.

    For that, the Federal Government should spare nothing to throw states under the bus of public opinion.  It should goad, in every legitimate way, the citizens to call their state governors to account, over local government matters.  That should be a popular move.

    The people, as arch-sentinels over their own welfare, should be the ultimate watch — and control — over local government affairs.  If done very well, good governance at the council level; and democratization at local and municipal levels, could well become core electoral issues, with fatal consequences for erring incumbent governors.

    The military hit their limit in hubris by codifying 774 local governments in the 1999 Constitution — an accident of history, as at when they scurried from power in 1999, but turned into arresting the future.  Now, that was junta arrogance taken too far. 

    It was the same contraption that stopped Lagos from consummating its 52 local governments, because even the Supreme Court, while decrying President Olusegun Obasanjo’s illegal seizure of Lagos council funds, said the creation was “inchoate” because of a support legislation from the National Assembly that never came.

    Lagos, by now, has no business monkeying around with 32 so-called local government development areas (LCDAs), frozen with the 20 “recognized” councils. 

    Instead, the Lagos State House of Assembly could even have created more local governments beyond the 52, so long as the state has the funds to power them.  That should not be Abuja’s headache.

    That’s federalism applied to local government administration — not hankering after military-era “autonomy” that’s well-neigh impossible because it’s plastic and artificial.

  • Of wage and rage

    Of wage and rage

    Now that a consensus seems forming around N62, 000 as national minimum wage (even if comical Labour remains marooned at N250, 000), what now happens?

    Will organized Labour drop its visceral rage: throwing tantrums with senseless figures; and hugging serious economic sabotage by switching off the national electricity grid?

    Or will it, for once, replace that visceral rage with clinical thinking; trash all Aluta delusions, and grab the best deal for its members, under very dire circumstances?

    Dire circumstances!  Yes.  But they don’t refer to the Federal Government’s policy bind alone.  Withdrawing oil subsidy and floating the Naira — with their bumper inflation — are very testy stages indeed, of the government’s painful economic reforms.

    If it eventually gets it right — as regime friends hope — everyone will forget the current bind.  Everyone loves a winner! — more so in a polity that lacks institutional memory.

    If it doesn’t, foes — more of cynical, partisan opportunists with no superior ideas — would feast on it, in their bid to corral power.

    That sobering scenario alone condemns President Bola Tinubu to getting it right!

    But Organized Labour too is condemned to making things right with its constituency.  For starters, Joe Ajaero’s Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has blissfully de-marketed itself with too many false strikes, for partisan matters, sans any worker interests. 

    The most hair-brained of it all would appear switching off the national grid — Labour’s rash muscle-flexing to browbeat everyone.  So, what other jokers is it left with, if it were to reject N62, 000 — still a far-cry from its fanciful N250, 000 “last card”?

    For Festus Osifo’s Trade Union Congress (TUC), it is unfortunate that the Labour Aristocracy allowed itself to be infected by the NLC factory boys’ economic illiteracy. 

    Pray, which serious economic thinkers — and Labour centers, especially of policy makers to which TUC belongs — would first bandy N615, 000 as minimum wage; then, N494, 000, then N250, 000, in today’s Nigeria? 

    Where will the cash come from?  Or is TUC too, as NLC, guilty of “kalo-kalo” (gaming machine) thinking? 

    Even if you adopt N250, 000 for the least-paid worker, where will the confetti of cash, for the consequential adjustments up the salary scale, come from?  How can the economy survive the hyper-inflation to follow — virulent inflation of cash sans value?

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    It’s not the best of times for our Labour centres.  It’s a horrible epoch, in which history will jeer at them as core and comical economic illiterates.

    Still, Organized Labour won’t be the only letdown.  The state governors too!

    Imagine that breed that was AWOL — absent without official leave — at the tripartite negotiations, only to be the first to bawl they couldn’t pay N60, 000, while the Federal Government and the Organized Private Sector (OPS) just cobbled together N62, 000?

    That must be democratic irresponsibility raised to power 36!  The governors — particularly the six chosen to represent the six geo-political zones — can certainly do better!  They can be more sensitive to the plight of people that elected them.

    The governors should please spare the polity the old cant about using all their states’ resources to pay workers, most times no more than 15 per cent of the populace. 

    If by subsidy removal they are harvesting cash — and indeed they are, by the sheer quantum from the Federation Account they now share  — that cant is getting jaded, annoying and absolutely despicable.

    The idea is not to bankrupt the states with workers’ pay.  The imperative is to push a good share of the cash in their till, from subsidy removal, to the welfare of the people that elected them — workers and non-workers alike. 

    That is not too much to ask, is it?

    Still, the buck stops with the Federal Government– even if the states (that holler “federalism!” when it pleases them) must also assume some level of response and responsibility in their local spaces.

    At the end of the day, however, the Federal Government must manage the fallouts of its own policy, as the surgeon manages his patient, away from death to life. 

    That’s the promise of the economic reforms: initial pains, eventual bliss. But at the current pain zone, the Federal Government must take full charge.

    Oil subsidy might have been a fraud that a few smart Alecs badly exploited.  Even at that, citizens still bought petrol at either a high N100 or a low N200-a-litre belt. 

    If that has vanished for a N600-N700-a-litre fuel-purchase belt, it shows the quantum of money the federal authorities have vacuum-cleaned from the public space, into government coffers.

    The imperative right now is to fashion out — and fast — how to push back some of these mopped-up cash into the people’s lives.  The simplest, though by no means easy, is a fair minimum wage.  The government must not make a hash of that.

    But the more complex is investing in transportation infrastructure — rail especially — to drive down shuttling costs, as a total structural war against inflation.  That would take some time to fix but the government should clearly show its aggressiveness and intent.

    Already, there are compressed natural gas (CNG) buses and tricycles being injected into the urban centres.  Though that’s a long shot, it could eventually drive down transport costs since it’s far cheaper than petrol or diesel.

    On the petrol front itself, the pump price should eventually drop, with Dangote Refinery set to start pumping petrol this month.  If the NNPC Ltd’s Port Harcourt Refinery follows by July, then local petrol refining would be taking its place to help deliver the reforms.  That should save forex and boost the Naira’s parity.

    Then, part of the subsidy “savings” should go into conditional cash transfers and other social safety-net schemes, which have suffered since the suspension of Beta Edu as Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation minister. 

    The same should go for the N-Power graduate volunteer scheme that the Tinubu order inherited from the Buhari years.  It should get the suspended scheme back on track. 

    N-Power’s 500, 000 volunteers dwarfed the federal civil service, put back then at around 80, 000.  Giving 500, 000 graduates temporary jobs, with retraining deals — as N-Power did — could renew hope and stanch youth restiveness.

    Of course, the ultimate public transport investment must be in rail, for its economy-of-scale mass capacity that drives down shuttle costs. 

    Transport Minister, Sa’idu Alkali’s assurance that work is apace on rail projects is rather reassuring.  Yet, the polity could do with the rail passion of the Rotimi Amaechi years!

    To doomsday howlers, things are not that hopeless.  Dire challenges are throwing up exciting opportunities.  So, the Tinubu order should seize the times and make hay! 

    Even then, hare-brained Labour is welcome to further burn itself out for, on this score, history favours the president. 

    A certain Ayodele Akele (God bless his soul!) huffed and puffed, while Governor Tinubu carried out his Lagos reforms.  Today, about everyone hails the Lagos success.  But who remembers Akele and his Labour gang? 

    Yet, compared to Ajaero and own gang, Akele and co  were a paragon of calm and reason!  That shows how low Labour has sunk!

  • Anthem blues

    Anthem blues

    Frankly, “Nigeria We Hail Thee” (the renewed National Anthem), is no more glorious than “Arise O Compatriots” (the junked one) is rotten.

    Each has its own strong points — which makes the point: if nothing was wrong with “Nigeria We Hail Thee”, why its change, under Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, in 1978?

    If 1978 was military hubris — that decreed a change-for-change-sake — that same logic (or illogic) just thundered too in 2024, though under preening democratic rule.

    If one indeed cancelled out the other, why the hoopla in some quarters, particularly those you expect to react to issues more logically than emotively?

    The reason seems clear: they react to other matters but use the renewed National Anthem as hysteric fob.  Still, it’s a democracy, and hysterics are no crime!

    Nevertheless, you would worry — or wouldn’t you? — about an Oby Ezekwesili (the Obasanjo presidential-era Madam Due Process) blowing her tops.

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    “Let it be known to all and sundry,” she howled, “that I, Obiageli ‘Oby’ Ezekwesili, will, whenever asked to sing the National Anthem, sing: ‘Arise, O Compatriots, Nigeria’s call obey’ …” Again, wilful delusion is no crime in a democracy!

    But shouldn’t our Oby have reserved her clinical dissent for the IPOB sit-at-home (May 30) that could have robbed some Igbo kids of writing a critical public examination, than for a National Anthem change (May 29) that really changed nothing, in real terms?

    In the one, she was mute.  In the other, she was shrill.  Yet, both events happened a day apart!  Hypocrisy?  Again, no democratic crime! 

    Still, you’ll wonder what had befallen Oby’s Due Process credo.  1978 was pure military fiat.  2024 is parliamentary law.  Yet, by Oby’s skewed logic, a parliamentary act was “obnoxious” while a military diktat was divine!

    Madam Due Process, indeed!  More of Madam Skewed Process!

    But to another impassioned opposer, Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, who signed off his piece as “Broadcaster, Journalist and a Political Scientist.”

    Indeed, Kawu tried to marshal his points, though the entire piece almost sank into name-calling, with Kawu progressively seeming to have a personal grudge with Opeyemi Bamidele, the Senate Leader.

    Kawu scoffed at “tribe and tongue may differ”: an evocative part of the renewed anthem. Yes: “tribe” as connotation could assume some racial slur — a valid stand. But that hardly cancels its basic denotation: a social category of distinct peoples.

    Besides, his take on demographics is really and truly rich. 

    He posits that since — by his own statistical calculations — those born in 1960 (now over 60 years) are just 2.56% of the present population, and the median age today is 17.2 years, so the wordings of the renewed anthem have no relevance to Nigeria’s young population, of 30 years and under — 70% of living Nigerians today!

    That is mere stacking of statistical cards, which cannot be true.  At best, it’s alarmist.  At worst, it’s a clever ploy, hoping to game the naive.

    By comparison: Britain’s “God Save the King” was composed in 1745.  The US “Star-Spangled Banner” was written in 1814 but adopted as national anthem, by the US Congress, in 1931. 

    Using the Kawu quaint logic, both anthems would not only be alien to young Brits and Americans, they would also be irrelevant to the dreams and aspirations of Brits and Americans unborn.

    That’s clear baloney! 

    But even that again points to the more fundamental question: would all this quibbling have arisen had the military not changed the 1960 original in 1978?

    This piece won’t even touch the callow, shallow social media children of anger, bred on Bring-Back-Our-Girls (BBOG) campaigns and EndSARS protests.  Those ones know neither history nor introspection.  Hare-brained reflex is their eternal god.

    But away from all the bedlam: should any unelected band, no matter how conceited, have tinkered with a sacred national heirloom, as the National Anthem? 

    That’s the historical significance of this reversion.  The democratic order — for the first time lasting all 25 years, and still counting — is weaning us off the last vestiges of junta imposition.

    That cannot be bad — can it? — even if you love “Arise O Compatriot” or scorn “Nigeria We Hail Thee”?

    Obasanjo, the nettling symbol of military arrogance, still lives. But before his very eyes, his grand pretence of 1978 just crashed! His 46-year grand delusion just sank!

    Now, a brief foray into Nigeria’s unfortunate military rule history.

    Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi’s tenure (15 January 1966-28 July 1966) was too volatile to bear a fair assessment, though his naive Unification Decree of 1966, which abolished the regions for unitary provinces, would unleash Nigeria’s crisis of federalism. That has endured till today.

    Gen. Yakubu Gowon (1966-1975) had his faults.  But that quintessential officer and gentleman defined his dealings with the state with utmost decorum — at least in settled issues, as the Nigerian National Anthem.

    Not so, the breed that came after him: Murtala Muhammed/Olusegun Obasanjo (1976-1979), Muhammadu Buhari (1984-1985), Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993) and Sani Abacha (1993-1998). This coarser power clan became cockier and recklessly more iconoclastic.

    That was the “too-know” complex that brewed a new National Anthem in 1978, when the old one suffered no especial defectiveness.

    By the way, the trajectory of the post-Gowon junta quad is rather interesting: Murtala died a glorious death that wiped off his alleged past sins in the public mind.  Abacha expired in office but still oozes a deep stench of sleaze.

    IBB is living out his last years in tame surrender that power rascality does not pay. 

    Muhammadu Buhari regained democratic power (2015-2023) during which he made June 12 Democracy Day, buried Obasanjo’s earlier imposition of May 29, and retired into dignified quiet.

    Only Obasanjo still snorts at everyone in bad grace.  Yet, after three years as junta head, and eight years as elected president, his cumulative 11 years in power made no difference in the lives of Nigerians.  It rather boosted his personal fortunes. 

    If you doubt, link how the Land Use Decree, the law Obasanjo made as junta head, drove his twin post-power fortunes — Obasanjo Farms Nigeria (OFN) and Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL)!

    But maybe the most telling of the historic symbolisms: “Arise O Compatriots” was junked, without much ado, on May 29 — the personal glory day of Obasanjo’s second coming that the former president tried to impose as Democracy Day!

    Nigeria We Hail Thee!  For burying military hubris and neo-military grand folly, the renewed National Anthem has my support!

  • One year today

    One year today

    By this time last year, the polity was in a whirl!

    Catholic high priests swore, by Jehovah, why the Bola Tinubu inauguration must be stalled, till post-poll adjudications were over, despite the clear stand of the law.

    Some clowns, suspected to be Peter Obi partisans, were marching on the Defence Headquarters, Abuja; goading the military to oust the same democracy that gifted them that march, simply because their man had lost.  Clowns!

    A frenetic Atiku Abubakar was romping through US courts, looking for a certificate that was neither lost nor forged.  It was his own way of managing crushing defeat.

    Labour President, Joe Ajaero — of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) or Labour Party (LP): which one? — was, for Obi, lancing and thrusting, slashing and stabbing: using organized Labour as battering ram.

    Why?  Ajaero even invited Obi to the May Day rally — as his own “Mr. President”? — among many post-poll derring-do of irrational strikes and sundry rackets!

    But the equation has since scattered: the NLC no longer equals LP, mere anarchy is loosed upon the LP-Obi-Ajaero bubble. Things have fallen apart!

    Still, all that dramatics rather pushed the new administration to shoot off the blocks. It knew, with all the rackets and emotional racketeering, it had absolutely no honeymoon.

    Still, the first twin-policies were not exactly “pro-people” — which sent NLC’s Ajaero hopping mad, howling about the new government’s “anti-people” policies!

    But the cold doctors in the policy suites balked.  The policies, they insisted, though harsh, were meant to heal, not to kill.

    It was the twin-combo of removing fuel subsidy; and floating the Naira to find own parity, in a rather harsh foreign exchange mart.

    That was shock therapy that sent the economy into a tailspin.  It was a cold reset that pushed inflation tearing through the roof.

    After, public discourse spoke of rumbling bellies; and condemned the new order — federal or states — to rushing through palliatives, to calm the grumbling hoi polloi.

    It was pain foretold before paradise regained.

    Still, the past one year has seen a policy rush, never seen on the federal front, since democracy returned in 1999.  Road infrastructure has been especially vibrant.

    Enter, three rather ambitious arteries: the Lagos-Abuja superhighway (to reduce travel time to six hours), the Lagos-Calabar coastal road (with an added rail corridor) and the Badagry-Sokoto expressway.

    Neither the Lagos-Calabar road nor Badagry-Sokoto expressway was new.  Indeed, both had cluttered the policy space for quite a while — as mere papers.  That the administration is pushing paper into reality tells of its infrastructure promise. 

    That only reinforces the road activism of the APC era (from 2015); against the lethargy of the PDP epoch (1999-2015).  Infrastructure, as front burner, is excellent news, though the huge challenge of funding, in harsh times, remains.

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    Still, not much has since been heard of the Lagos-Abuja superhighway.  Works Minister, Dave Umahi, should use the first anniversary blitz to shed more light on the project.  But so far, road has done rather well in this first year.

    Not so rail — though both the Port Harcourt-Aba narrow gauge line and the Abuja standard-gauge Metro rail are bursting into life again. 

    Still, the polity awaits much more from the Transportation ministry on critical rail works in the works: as the Ibadan-Abuja and Abuja-Kano segments of the Lagos-Kano standard-gauge rail, for instance.  In this first year, rail has been rather muted.

    Very early, the Tinubu government declared a state of emergency on food security.  That appeared a code-name for cracking down, well before the farming season, on bandits and terrorists. They often extort farmers and scare them off their farms.

    So, that “emergency” is as much about agriculture as it is about security.  Feedback from the security front appears encouraging.  The security agencies are making slow, if steady, headway against the security threats. 

    The government also took the first steps on state Police.  That’s admirable.

    Still, farm yields this year — and how they tamp down high food inflation — will gauge how effective the “emergency” has been.

    Power, of all the critical infrastructures — rail, roads and electricity — has been the umpteenth laggard.  True, power has somewhat rallied from April, from the high lows it sunk from November 2023. 

    But even at its present resurgent level, it’s doubtful if it has reached the heights attained during the Buhari years.  So, this past year, power has been a net deficit. 

    Still, Power Minister, Adebayo Adelabu, always speaks of the ingrained complexities of the electricity market.  In truth, the power sector is very complex. It’s an area the Tinubu order should work harder on, in the next one year.

    Aside power, stars appear realigning on the petroleum products arm of the energy front.  By June, the Dangote Refinery, by own projection, should finally pump out petrol.  The NNPC Ltd’s Port Harcourt Refinery should join in July — again by own timetable.

    But more exciting: petrol fuels are assured of stiff competition from compressed natural gas (CNG) — and maybe electric batteries — to power autos; and drive down transport costs.  That should be cheery news on the inflation front.

    This first year has also witnessed the dawn of Students Loan for tertiary education, Consumer Credit, as well as support grants (for nano ventures); and support capital for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and large-scale players, like big factories, both at 9% interest — well below the market rate of sub-30% minimum.

    How they all impact on cooling off the economy will be clear in the next one year.

    Still, this first year has been the year of capital — hardly of the people, that bear the brunt of the harsh market.

    Three critical pillars of the administration are unabashed market hawks: the Finance and Economy coordinating ministry, the Central Bank and the Power ministry. 

    From the triad, it’s always investors, investors, investors — as if investors are willy-nilly gods to serve or perish!  Pray, who balances the scale for the people, at the other end of the harsh market?

    That’s why the government must close the never-ending “investigation” into the Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation ministry; and restore — or replace — the minister to balance the scale.

    From available facts, Betty Edu, the suspended minister, stole no money.  The issue was a suspect instruction, borne from a suspect in-house practice, that nevertheless was stalled by the Accountant-General.

    It shouldn’t take an eternity to establish the facts and give the ministry back its life.  President Tinubu should make that top priority as he starts his second year.

    As the government sets out on its second year, it must be especially wary of booby traps: the Rivers power tussle and the Kano emirship crisis are two of such. 

    It must defuse both with tact and wisdom.

  • Wild breed of Rivers

    Wild breed of Rivers

    Dey your dey, make I dey my dey, dey your dey o, nobody worry nobody … — Fubara camp.

    Obey, obey o, obey, Fubara must obey Wike, obey … — Wike camp.

    Tizzy tragedy teases Rivers: sweet songs and counter-songs waxed in pidgin — all joyful intrigue that could spiral out of control, and bury the mutual antagonists.

    Fubara and co want Wike to “dey your dey” (stay in your lane) — and no problems.  Wike’s supporters want much more: “Fubara must obey Wike, obey” — or else!

    It’s the making of the wild, wild breed of Rivers, when responsible (wo)men dig it, hot and sharp, to irresponsible music, which could clearly undo them all! 

    Yet, it couldn’t have been otherwise — with Wike yoked to Karma and Fubara hugging perfidy and ingratitude, twin spiritual combos that knock the wind out of their captives.

    There’s pretty little Ezenwo Nyesom Wike could do with own trials in Karma’s dock.  Whatever Siminilayi Fubara, sitting Rivers governor, threatens to do with him, Wike himself did — much more? — to his predecessors.

    Talking down?  Fubara appears unhinged with his latest rabid anti-Wike blusters.  Yet, he is still a far cry from how Wike gored Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, Wike’s immediate predecessor and benefactor.

    Weaponizing judicial probes?  Fubara just announced, with glee, he would probe the Wike government, waving the red flag of tantalizing sleaze.  But it was the same order same Fubara served as accountant-general, wasn’t it?

    Why?  This very same Wike blocked EFCC from this same Fubara, over some alleged regime graft!  How such a probe — if there’s anything to it — won’t amount to a spectacular own goal by Fubara beggars belief.

    Still, Wike himself had thundered and dragged Amaechi in the mud over a certain Rivers aircraft: bought by Peter Odili; allegedly vanished under Amaechi. 

    Why, for daring to ogle a counter-Wike lobby, Governor Wike decreed that dummy Governor, Celestine Omehia, refund all his post-office perks!

    It was probably the right thing to do under the law.  Omehia, rogue beneficiary of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperial impunity — remember: Amaechi’s candidacy “don get k-leg”? — was never governor in the eye of the law.  But when has the law ever stopped members of Nigerian elite politics from protecting their own?

    By the way, Wike just committed virtual sacrilege by gutting Peter Odili — grand Rivers political godfather — and his jurist wife, because Odili switched his support to Fubara. 

    That was crass ingratitude. Wike had publicly, at a church thanksgiving, lauded the role that couple reportedly played to rescue his first term as governor in 2015.

    Both the tribunal and the Court of Appeal had left his win for dead.  But the apex court — in which Justice Odili sat — gifted him miraculous life.  Without the Odilis, therefore, would there have been a Governor Wike?

    Well, Wike’s hard tussle with Karma is well and truly settled.  That cup won’t pass over him, with an incensed Fubara huffing and puffing, roaring and growling, flaming and searing!  If Wike can rubbish Odili, why can’t Fubara too rubbish Wike?  Karma!

    But does that mark Fubara’s triumph?  Hardly!

    True, if indeed Wike is the bully that Fubara is making him out to be, then Fubara is flush with victory!  Why?  Because, say control theorists, you triumph over the bully (over power) by defying him (it) — even if you died doing it.

    But Fubara craves to defy and live, not defy to die.  He wants to slay the godfather, and live to preen about it.  That is the snag, though. The more Fubara gallops in victory, the more he seems cantering very close to own political grave. 

    Whereas his allegations against Wike are at best partisan vilifications awaiting proof, Governor Fubara’s high political crimes are very stark: demolishing the Rivers Parliament building to shut out law-making; and spending public money without due appropriation — with the sinister motive of one easily flowing into the other.

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    Then, Fubara’s penchant for “simple minority” — the inglorious parliamentary invention of Obasanjo’s imperial presidency. 

    First, he put his commissioners through a four-man legislative assembly — an illegal act voided (and corrected) by the Abuja Rivers presidential accord.  After trashing that accord, he put his new attorney-general through an even smaller three-man assembly! 

    Pray, even if the governor is playing desperate politics, which SAN worth his silk would embrace screening by that glaring “simple minority”; and kid himself, a veritable man of law, that he had scaled a key constitutional requirement to arrive office, as — wait for the irony — commissioner for Justice! 

    Then, Fubara’s dire body language, nosing for “structural defects” to pull down the new legislative quarters, opened just an odd year ago! The lawmakers now operate from there, even if they too have turned that building into a lair of rabid opposition, from the even and balanced legislation that the Rivers voters expect of them.

    Still, make no mistake: the moment the lawmakers decide to cage Governor Fubara, that very day he would be history — and no din of politics will save him.  The No. 1 crime in a democracy is cancelling the legislature, its most visible soul and essence.

    In swallowing the many Wike baits, Fubara is blundering into avoidable traps, by his own reckless actions.  Indeed, the governor, from his most recent howls and growls, seems approaching a nervous breakdown.  He probably needs an urgent shrink.

    If Governor Fubara escapes impeachment, he would still have to account for wilful destruction of vital public assets on the emotional spur of the moment — if not now, then in the future when his own Karma would be waiting and ready.

    Still, that’s not to say the Wike camp, savagely baiting the governor, are sitting pretty. Their own self-trap is clearly taking their PDP mandate to APC, where they claim to have defected.  They would spend quite a time trying to spin that self-destruct move.

    On the balance, the dire truth is that both sides are heading into a dire bind. 

    The “structure” that Wike has thrown in everything to preserve appears smashed for now — if not forever.

    The more Wike tries to play the hard ball, unfazed by the present crisis, the clearer it is that he’s far more weakened than he was on 29 May 2023, when he handed over power.

    The governorship that Fubara is pulling all stops to protect is badly battered. The governor’s cabinet is hit, for the umpteenth time, by a gale of resignations — the obvious exit of Wike loyalists.

    Okay, the governor is desperate to save his gubernatorial hut. Yet, he’ll think little of lobbing tinder at its thatch, though it’s harmattan — if only to make a point!

    By blundering into a reckless path of no return, both sides bait a state of emergency. 

    That’s a recipe for mutual ruin.  But both sides can still do compromise politics: cut their losses, lick their wounds and await the next battle — perhaps at the next election?

    But will they?  The omens are bad.  The wild, wild breed of Rivers are on the prowl!

  • Home boy, home oil, home guts

    Home boy, home oil, home guts

    Alex Neyin, the author of this autobiography, titled it I Dared to Explore.

    Evidence of his daring, twice at the point of death, facing off vicious armed robbers at two different occasions, abound in these many vignettes of a living profile in courage.

    Here is vintage Alex wrestle with Titans of his work, cultural and political environments, as some gutsy Lilliputian wrestling with mighty Gulliver — but prevailed!

    With all-mighty George Kirkland, MD of Chevron Nigeria Ltd (CNL), who craved his managers to chorus “Yes, George” to whatever policy diktats he barked out:

    “Why are you not responding?  Hey Alex!  I’m talking to you.”

    “George, I thought we’re on a war front and the General is issuing an order …”

    “Okay.  If that is the case, what do you have against what I have just said so far?”

    “Do you really want to hear?”

    The boss wanted his managers to flog CNL wells to produce 500, 000 barrels a day. But Alex disagreed.  He wagered that should the wells make 420, 000 barrels a day, he would resign.  At the end, the wells made 410, 000 barrels — but with a lot of water!

    And this one, with Chief Edwin Clark, at his Kiagbudu lair, when Alex somewhat made nomination to succeed Funso Kupolokun, as NNPC MD:

    Clark: “Do you know me?”

    Neyin: “I know you.  When you came back from the United Kingdom as a lawyer, you stayed in an apartment on Robert Road in Warri.  When I was in Urhobo College, you were a lawyer.  You used to come to Urhobo College in a Volkswagen car to chase a particular HSC girl.

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    And more!: “When you were Commissioner for Education, you brought your brother-in-law to be the Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin amid highly qualified Bendelites and that led to confusion.  The student body decided to invite you. The plan was to get you embarrassed.  I was the one that arranged and passed the information for you not to attend that meeting.”

    Clark, whose instinct was to oppose his nomination, switched to his support.  But no matter!  He lost that bid — just as an alleged Igbo-Yoruba intra-CNL plot blocked his appointment as Escravos Operations Manager — the third highest in CNL. 

    In both cases, however, the losses were Nigeria’s and Chevron’s — not Alex’s.  He would have added unheard-of value.

    Then, this big one of youth idealism, that almost scuttled his scholarship to Texas A & M University (TAMU), USA, after his meritorious picking, with eight others, to read Petroleum Engineering, from their freshman engineering student years, at the University of Benin (UNIBEN).

    As secretary of the Revolutionary Radicals (RevRads) at UNIBEN, Alex Neyin had, in 1974, signed a document stating “25 reasons” why General Yakubu Gowon could not continue as Head of State beyond 1975. 

    That proved prophetic, for Gowon was overthrown in 1975.

    Gen. Gowon — to whom a copy was posted — probably ignored the document. But the Secret Service did not.  They used it to can his passport, while the other scholars flew to America to start their studies. 

    How Magnus Eweka, then a Commissioner of Police at Moloney Street, Lagos, Police Headquarters, helped him out of that jam is another gripping story.  Eweka was an old boy of Urhobo College!

    Of course, this mother-and-son dialogue, when Alex received his first salary as a teacher at Urhobo College, after completing his Higher School Certificate, pending admission into university:

    Alex: Mama, this is my first salary.  Take what you want.

    His mother: No. Na your money.

    Alex: It’s yours, mum,  I would never have gotten to this point if not for your effort.

    Alex had seen his father block his elder sister, Ogbe’s bid to enter School of Nursing, after Modern School — a two-year post-primary school back then.  His mother wanted Ogbe to train as a nurse, so both — mother and big daughter — could pool resources to train the two younger boys, Alex and Atete.

    But their father wanted Ogbe to marry. He promised to pay the boys’ school fees but failed to keep his promise. This failure irked both mother and son.  The mother left the husband to live with own mum, at Ikpisan, an island village, off Warri.

    “From this point onwards,” an angry Alex wrote, “I never drank or ate from him till he died in 2017.”  That was from 1966 to 2017 — 51 years or thereabouts!

    Ikpisan! That was, even before Madam Newe Odumu-Neyin — Alex’s mother — and his boys relocated, where grand uncle, Ugbukukon Mero, a master carpenter, would shape the life of his grand nephew. 

    He first called the boy “Engineer” because of his curiosity in carpentry.  He would later groom Alex, nurture him in the ways of Itsekiri elders, tradition and culture, and turn him into a fit and proper home boy.

    This autobiography of Alexander Akumeme Neyin, born in Ikpisan in 1949, is a practical handbook to those who dare to differ, particularly in a corrupt setting.

    To the compliant and quiescent, he left this quote: “If you keep listening to what people say, to appease them, you’ll do wrong things.  With time, the wrong things become the right thing for you.  Then, you’ll lose yourself.”

    No review can do justice to this book.  You just need to read it and luxuriate in its unceasing well of courage and wisdom.

    Yet, it suffers grave technical glitches.  First, the full title page carries names that seem like co-authors. The project collaborators ought to have limited their credit to just the copyright section.

    Then, the printing is rather poor, with many words erroneously linked. That will create problems for young readers, who could get easily confused.  Even poorer is the quality of the pictures, with poor colour separation, and the black-and-white pictures seldom sharp .

    But even with all that, it is a gold mine in character building; and practical tutorials in model citizenship and patriotism.

    Great kudos to Elder Frank Ede for this book landing here.  I was even out of town when his call came: he was en route to The Nation, to drop three copies of his friend’s autobiography: one for Ripples, one for Tatalo Alamu, and one for Sam Omatseye. 

    Thank you sir, Elder Ede, for spreading the word on this beautiful work.

  • Peculiar mess

    Peculiar mess

    His grandfather, Adegoke Adelabu (1915-1958) — aka “Penkelemesi” — dashing hero of Ibadan yokels of pre-1st Republic politics, first coined the term “peculiar mess”, to describe the Nigerian politics of his era.

    His grandson, Adebayo Adelabu, sitting Power minister sits and sweats, breathless and harried, in the peculiar mess of contemporary Nigerian electricity. 

    Indeed, the vanishing dramatics of this critical spark, since he arrived as minister, has made his irate compatriots to, without much ado, dismiss him as the rather unloved “minister of darkness”!

    Yet, let no one get ahead of themselves.  For one, Nigerians are notoriously short-fused; often spewing rude name-calling, just to push their right to democratic anger.

    For another, the power conundrum — as mentioned in a previous column here — is very complex.   So, scapegoating the minister and calling for his scalp may be far from grabbing the elixir to crack that conundrum.

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    Still, even if Minister Adelabu is not on trial, the entire electricity value chain is.  Indeed, since the turn of 2024, following the sudden electricity dip in the last two months of 2023, the power sector has been a constant alarming beep: as the most likely legacy-killer for the Bola Tinubu administration.

    This bears repeating: without fixing electricity, whatever President Tinubu achieves would not chalk up its full value. 

    Worse: whereas other segments of critical infrastructure — basically roads and rail — are building on the gains of the Muhammadu Buhari era, power has been regressing, from the modest heights of that era.

    Both former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and ace political shaman, Peter Obi, have gone ga-ga over the Lagos-Calabar coastal road, with a rail line in-between.

    Atiku wailed and neighed on why the project should start from Lagos, and not from Calabar.  Obi has been gnashing his teeth over a project that he claims wipes out jobs — another classical cant, because it is a tribal whoop powered by sweeping over-generalization, masquerading as a national voice that really cares. 

    Holy Peter should crow that to the nearby marines!

    Still, both Atiku and Obi know the game they play only too well. Should that critical coastal highway become reality, birthing an exciting corridor along which Nigerians of all ethnics gleefully drive their personal economies, the margin for election-time deceit becomes painfully tight.  That’s Bad News 2027!

    Which is why it’s all so refreshing that Dave Umahi, minister of Works, dazzles all the Atiku-Obi jeremiads of doom and desperation with enchanting road spurs, linked to the Lagos-Calabar expressway — the Badagry-Sokoto highway, for instance. 

    Add the proposed Lagos-Abuja expressway, with shuttle time at six hours maximum — little has been heard on that of late though, prompting the legitimate question of what is happening? — and the prospects of good network of roads nation-wide becomes brighter.

    Now, that is Umahi brilliantly building on work done during the Babatunde Fashola ministerial years.

    On rail, Uche Diala just lobbed a bomb at South East naysayers, whose dark and wild yammering derided work on the Port Harcourt-Aba narrow-gauge rail; and how Rotimi Amaechi, then Transport minister, shut out the hubbub.

    Now, that commercial line just opened.  As the exultant denizens out there look forward to daily shuttle on that 62-Km route, Dr. Diala could not resist his “I told you so!” rebuke to doomsday agents, who always put bitter politics over development.

    But again, in rail: Said Alkali, current Transport minister, appears busy consolidating on the Amaechi-era works, with a firm promise to firm up the Ibadan-Kano and the Kano-Abuja legs of the Lagos-Kano standard-gauge rail, funds-permitting.

    On the power front, however, the picture appears the diametrical opposite.  What happens along the value chain — generation, to transmission and finally, distribution — remains nebulous, as the three critical anchors pass the buck at one another.

    Still, from the distribution end — the final contact with the market — electricity has badly regressed, compared to the Buhari years. 

    If you have the fortune to work from home — turned misfortune by DisCos — the day you project to do serious work is same day Ikeja Electric (I.E.) will sap you with blackout all day — with no rime or reason. 

    That is in the heart of Lagos — and only Eko DisCo customers can tell what happens in that trade zone.  Yet, I.E. and Eko DisCo are clearly the best of the DisCos.  But their performance is still abysmal.

    Two years ago, the present dip in performance was near-distant memory — again, umpteenth warning that progressively failing power could hurt the Tinubu era legacy.

    No wonder, this present crunch has thrown up new-fangled “solutions”: bury the distribution companies (DisCos) and move on!  But the question is: move on to where?

    On DisCos, no tears from here.  From their inglorious forebears: NEPA (cynically: Never Expect Power Again) and PHCN (Problem Has Changed Hands), the DisCos had gone ahead to mount own trade notoriety, ranging from that brazen corporate robbery they call estimated billing; and soulless meter racketeering.

    Indeed, the greatest failure of the Power sector reforms, since its enabling act of 2005, is that none of the DisCos could boast meters to secure their revenues.  How can such outfits then secure the cash from consumers, to routinely pay the generating companies (GenCos), for the not-so-cheap gas that powers their thermal turbines?

    Still with all that, DisCos can’t be the most critical problem, though they are closest to the consumer — the ugly shop windows of the skewed electricity mart.

    For one, they have absolutely no control over the wares they sell. Thermal GenCos grumble they lack the cash to pay their gas vendors, no thanks to huge debts from electricity market traders. Gas-powered GenCos control 80% of the market, with hydro plants making up the remaining 20%. 

    So, erratic gas to GenCos, erratic power to DisCos, erratic electricity for consumers.

    For another, the core transmission challenge.  Though the total installed capacity of power plants — hydro and thermal — is some 16, 384 MW, no more than 4, 000 MW gets wheeled.  Even then, the transmission lines of the national grid often collapse.

    True, there is ongoing the Siemens work to bolster these high-power lines, run by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). But until that is strengthened, and GenCos earn ready cash to pay for gas, this twin, ever-recurring operational glitch, will continue to strip naked the DisCos.

    In all the current melee has crept in “federalization”, the supposed new open sesame to breathe instant life into the comatose power market!  But on which reinforced technologies are we “federalizing”, with states as new champions?

    These then are the stark power issues facing the Tinubu administration, approaching the end of the first quarter, of its four-year tenure.  Tough action it must take, even if that means a complete blow-out of the present power sector.

    Otherwise, it should brace itself for power — poor power — as its ultimate nemesis.

  • Yoruba nation and sundry delusions

    Yoruba nation and sundry delusions

    Democratic Republic of Yoruba (DRY) – isn’t that the very epitome of a dry joke?
    Which was why before you could say “Gbogungboro!”, Prof. Banji Akintoye, eminent professor of history, grand doctrinaire of Oodua Republic and theorist-in-chief of Yoruba Nation, had disowned the Ibadan tragic romantics of April 13, with the same fervour as he had serenaded Sunday Igboho’s earlier rascality on the same cause.
    And Igboho himself! Wasn’t he too, on the double, doing a fervent relay of refutations! — first, a disavowal, posthaste? Then, his lawyer’s forceful formal denial?
    Where, in God’s name, is that pre-Benin Republic gung-ho guy, with imperious dash to protect Yoruba “nesan” and defend Yoruba “territory”?
    And Gani Adams! He too bawled and hollered, as he scurried from the Ibadan sorry comics. True, at the height of Igboho’s impetuous dash, the Aare Ona Kakanfo mascot of a dead empire cautioned Igboho not to subvert the “struggle”.
    Yet, Adams too was among the South West non-state actors punching above their weight, at the feverish froth of anti-Fulani hysteria.
    Then, Muhammadu Buhari was President; and President Bola Tinubu was himself tarred as some “Afonja”, read: Yoruba traitor-in-chief.
    Still, his “crime” was no more than yoking a legitimate political alliance that birthed a North West-South West entente, which delivered federal power to his hitherto opposition fragments in 2015.
    These folks lost out; but powered back with fearsome anti-Fulani bogey, hidden behind heady ethnic jingoism, powered by preening Yoruba ultra-nationalism.
    “Gbogungboro”, you will recall, was Professor Akintoye’s now rested column in The Nation. It did for the Yoruba what Camara Laye’s Radiance of the King and the French Negritude Movement did for the Black race: over-praised the past of both almost to a stupor.

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    Gbogungboro soon burnt itself out. But its intellectual ferment would later find a new and vicious home in Yoruba arrogance and gangling hubris during PMB’s Presidency.
    In that high noon of ceaseless plots, the ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen” committed every crime in the Yoruba country. That formidable band had retired every Yoruba criminal from home turf!
    That hysteria of froth and bile joyfully re-made a nation-wide security meltdown into a high Fulani plot to subjugate Yorubaland, simply because a Fulani man was president.
    Why, from Olusegun Obasanjo, arch-nationalist and former President of the Federal Republic, came own theory of “Fulanization” — the same “Fulanization” that, in 1999, had romped him into the Presidency, with the Yoruba screeching blue murder!
    That was the explosive ogre that brought Sunday Igboho storming into the picture as “saviour” of the Yoruba interior from the imperial Fulani — Igboho, hitherto known as a partisan fixer and enforcer.
    But Professor Akintoye’s Yoruba Nation theorizing white-washed all of that — and pronto, a swashbuckling Yoruba redeemer had galloped into town!
    Yes, the good professor was right: the April 13 comedy was indeed “insanity in Ibadan”. But the root of that insanity was the Yoruba Nation whim, sans any Yoruba mandate, beyond the tragic presumption of excitable activists, projecting own caprices.
    It’s rather rich, therefore, for these principal actors to pass the buck and scurry away from the monster they created — more so when Prof. Akintoye, Igboho and one Ola Ademola just fired a letter to President Tinubu, demanding “Yoruba exit” from Nigeria. That letter — no surprise — crawled with wild Fulani distemper.
    Between the “peaceful” bragging of the Akintoye/Igboho letter of April 17 and the DRY damp squib of April 13, it isn’t clear which was more reckless.
    On whose authority are Akintoye/Igboho demanding a negotiation team, within two months, to cook a deal on Yoruba exit from Nigeria? What arrant presumption! But it’s good the Federal Government has met that letter with the icy snub it deserves.
    Indeed, the entire gambit could be traced to an Ibadan parley of 22 August 2019, that “elected” Akintoye as “Asiwaju Yoruba”, itself a classic in the Yoruba nest of intrigues.
    Despite wild Fulani-baiting, PMB just won re-election. Tinubu had been “eternal” Asiwaju of Lagos. Nothing suggested an “Asiwaju Yoruba” fitted into his strategic plan.
    Yet, Tinubu (who wasn’t even there or represented at that assembly) got “nominated”; and was promptly “defeated” by Akintoye as the Asiwaju Yoruba! Talk of a “me-too” syndrome! It was the classic Yoruba “egbinrin ote”!
    The ensuing uproar did little to douse the zeal of the Yoruba Nation lobby, with Baba Akintoye’s ceaseless theorizing; and Igboho’s hare-brained street forays — until the Igboho battering ram ran itself into a ditch (while those egging him on fled); and cooled his heels in a Benin Republic jail, despite the empty braggadocio from the Akintoye lobby.
    The Ibadan DRY revolution of April 13 — as comic as it was tragic — was the zenith of that insanity.
    It’s funny though: the shrill grandstanders and rabid hell raisers, on Oodua Republic and allied fancies, deserted the sorry ragtag that tried to “capture” the Oyo State Secretariat, and the historic Parliament Building of the old Western Region!
    At last, the bemused majority just denounced that costly gambit, with the Ooni of Ife — the No. 1 moral force of Yoruba traditional feudalism — disowning the DRY sponsors, with their rag-tag army, as mere impostors that represent no Yoruba cause.
    About time!
    Yet, the Yoruba ought to have, long ago, nipped in the bud this lunatic relay of costly presumptions and comic delusions, given the Igbo experience next door.
    The Akintoye lobby waxed poetic on a “Yoruba Nation” with a mandate from no one. When the chips were down, they blamed a “lunatic fringe”, led by Dupe Onitiri. Some defence!
    Yet, Prof. Akintoye’s Yoruba radicalism at old age hardly differs from Prof. Chinua Achebe’s exit drama. That iconic writer left his people that bilious book, There Was A Country, with its skewed history of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).
    That woke up the buried ghosts of Biafra. Now, the good professor sleeps in peace. But his Ndigbo live in pieces — no thanks to the IPOB anarchy loosed upon the East.
    Nigeria must re-federalize to give everyone a fair deal. But that must not be through vacuous ethnic pride, and vicious ethnic-baiting — like IPOB’s, the Yoruba Nation lobby’s choice strategy.
    For the elite that crave ethnic tension and combat to stay relevant, this “lowly” traders’ guild, from Mandate Market in Ilorin, Kwara State, is rather telling: “United Association of All Tribes Perishable Traders of Pepper, Tomatoes and Onions”! These folks buy and sell, totally blind to the ethnic shade of the next shop or stall.
    Even the market hoi polloi know that hunger – not tribe – is their enemy. Let the manipulating elite realize this truth and know peace!