The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Governors’ wrong priorities 

    Governors’ wrong priorities 

    The recent scathing remarks by the United States Mission in Nigeria about the preferences of some state governors should help refocus the governors. The Mission referred to the report showing how some state governors were spending billions of naira renovating or building new government houses, while the socio-economic conditions of their people are deprecatingly disgraceful. The social media post read: “while Nigerians are urged to endure economic hardship ‘like labour pains’, some governors are splurging billions on new government houses.”

    While the criticism may be undiplomatic, that jab should help refocus the state governors on things that should be more beneficial for those they govern. The mission referenced the complaints from the civil society organizations. One of them, BudgIT, had warned that “instead of funding schools, clinics, or agriculture, leaders prioritize buildings they barely use.” The effect of these bad choices is that the living conditions of majority of Nigerians get worse, despite the increased revenue accruable to the state governments.

    The World Bank estimates that more than half of Nigerian population are living below poverty level, and this is worse in the rural areas, where 75 percent of the population are living below poverty line. The World Bank report, read “multiple shocks in the context of high economic insecurity have deepened and broaden poverty. Since 2018/19, an additional 42 million people fell into poverty, so that more than half of all Nigerians (54 per cent) are estimated to live in poverty in 2024”.

    The report acknowledged the impact of the macroeconomic policies of the present administration. It said “although recent macroeconomic reforms have begun to stabilize the economy, inflation remains high, dampening consumer demand and continuing to undermine the purchasing power of Nigerians.” The report however acknowledged the effort by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration to ameliorate the poverty levels, including the rollout of temporary cash transfers targeting 15 million households. This column urges similar measures at the subnational levels, if the monster of poverty is to be dealt a blow. 

    Statistics indicate that the poverty level is worse in the northern part of the country compared to the southern part. It is estimated that 87 per cent of the poor in the country live in the northern part. The situation is even worse in the north western states of Sokoto and Jigawa states. So, the challenge facing the country deserves the urgent attention of the national and subnational governments. Nigerians expect that improvement in the resources available to the states and even the local governments should translate to better life for the people.

    Perhaps, because the people are easily misled that their economic challenges lies squarely in the hand of the federal government, the national debate have been to blame the Tinubu administration, and to look up to the federal government for solutions. Clearly, most state governments enjoy that revelry of lies. But, this column agrees with the member of the North East Development Commission (NEDC), Sam Onuigbo, who said “The governors are getting money, more than three times of what they got when I was Commissioner for Finance. The local governments are also getting money after the removal of subsidy. They should be transparent and make sure that they support Mr President in trying to move the economy in the direction that Mr President is driving it.”

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    At the resent two-day interactive session with the theme “Assessing Electoral Promises: Fostering Government – Citizen Engagement for National Unity” organized by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation (SABMF), the Minister for Budget and Planning Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, lent credence to the fact that states have received more money following the removal of fuel subsidy. He said that total net statutory revenue and Value Added Tax (VAT) allocation to states and local governments increased to N991.81 billion in June 2025, from N458.81 billion in May 2023.    

    The minister said: “By ending the fuel subsidy, President Tinubu made a hard but necessary call – liberating trillions of naira to expand federal allocations by over 340 per cent. States now have the means to invest in their future.” In the past, most states had resorted to short term loans to even pay salaries and many of them had to go to the stock exchange and multilateral institutions to borrow money for capital projects. But all that had ceased since President Tinubu took the bold initiative to end the fuel subsidy. 

    To save the majority of the Nigerian poor, the states and local governments must develop their own poverty alleviation schemes instead of concentrating resources on projects that add little value to the socio-economic well-being of those that elected them to govern. To keep doing otherwise is to be endangering our fledgling democracy. While it may be politically expedient for them to let the president take the flak for the socio-economic challenges facing the country, it is foolhardy to think that the president alone will bear the brunt of the reaction of hungry Nigeria should the situation not improve.

    While the opposition northern politicians are busy politicking about the alleged neglect of the north by the Tinubu administration, the sincere ones have told the northern elite that what is eating the kola nut lives inside it. President Muhammadu Buhari, the celebrated friend of the northern talakawa, despite his best intentions could not alleviate the poverty ravaging the north. The best he could do was to dash them money while he was in power. Even while that was on, the poverty index did not change. What will change the north and indeed every part of Nigeria is the difficult but necessary structural changes President Tinubu is pushing through.

    While taking steps to temporary assuage the hunger in the land, the nation’s economy must enjoy diversification. The northern Nigeria is potentially rich, but without an educated and skilled workforce, not much can be achieved. The vast expanse of agricultural land and mineral resources, instead of turning to an advantage would remain a curse. As evident, the vast forests that should be an advantage, have become homes to vagabonds and miscreants, who feed from the resources, extracted from the illegal mining across the region.

    While the other regions are a shade better, they are not immune from the crisis of poor leadership across the land. Many of them indulge in the misapplication of public funds, including building useless edifices which some use to siphon public funds. The governors like their northern counterparts must invest in policies to improve the deplorable economic challenges facing their people. The level of poverty in some states in the south is enough to cause upheaval in those states. The end SARS riots few years ago support that view.

    The federal and state governments must therefore set their priorities right, to ameliorate the gruelling poverty ravaging the Nigerian people. A significant portion of the resources should be channelled to make life more abundant for the poor.

  • NNPCL: Distractions all the way

    NNPCL: Distractions all the way

    Anyone who has dared to pay more than a scant attention to the latest rumblings – within and without – in the national oil corporation in the past few weeks must have come to the same verdict that nothing good can ever come out of the behemoth. Exactly three weeks ago, this columnist had written about the not-exactly-shocking announcement by the NNPCL-GMD Bayo Ojulari, in faraway Austria on the company’s plan to sell the Port Harcourt refinery.

    That was coming two months after the refinery was shut down for ‘maintenance’ and this also coming six months after its well-publicised re-start which at the time was celebrated far and wide. Never mind that the country had expended a whopping $1.5 billion of Nigeria’s hard-to-get forex to get it to that point,  just like the typical Nigerian puzzle, what informed the piece and the barely suppressed outrage, wasn’t so much about the huge amount spent on the turnaround, but the grave potential scams insinuated.

    First was the reported arrest of a former Chief Financial Officer of the NNPC, Umar Isa and the former Managing Director of the Warri Refinery, Jimoh Olasunkanmi. The duo was reported to be under EFCC investigation over an alleged $7.2bn fraud linked to the rehabilitation of the three refineries in Kaduna, Warri, and Port Harcourt. The second which followed, and which this columnist actually considered graver, is the suggestion that the entire country may have been scammed!

    To use Ojulari’s words: “So refineries, we made quite a lot of investment over the last several years and brought in a lot of technologies. We’ve been challenged. Some of those technologies have not worked as we expected so far. But also, as you know, when you’re refining a very old refinery that has been abandoned for some time, what we’re finding is that it’s becoming a little bit more complicated”.

    Talk of a project on which the whole nation had pinned its hopes of full rehabilitation and which the country had committed a whopping $7.2 billion being declared as not only unproven, untested, but also offering no guarantees.

    Now, the same Ojulari, who only a short while ago stated that “sale is not out of the question. All the options are on the table, to be frank, but that decision will be based on the outcome of the reviews we’re doing now” has since walked back on that. He says the sale of the Port Harcourt Refining Company is no longer on the table, and that the company is rather committed to ‘completing high-grade rehabilitation and retention of the plant’!

    And then the caveats: “the earlier decision to operate the Port Harcourt refinery, before full completion of its rehabilitation, was ill-informed and sub commercial.

    “Although progress is being made on all three, the emerging outlook calls for more advanced technical partnerships to complete and high-grade the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery. Thus, selling is highly unlikely as it would lead to further value erosion.” (My emphasis).

    His simple verdict: Those that conceived, planned, and executed the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) did a terrifically poor job. Meaning that the ‘process’ was so flawed that it would amount to grave injury to describe it as such; since the technologies (which the NNPCL-GMD has openly declared to be suspect), would require another layer of procurements and technologies to ‘upgrade’.

    I suppose no one vetted the contract papers (if there were any) to fully understand what value the country is supposed to be getting in the end or are expected to be delivered by the main contractor, Tecnimont.  Between March 2021 when the federal government awarded the contract for the refurbishment and modernisation of the refinery complex and its May shutdown for ‘maintenance’, we are again at a point where the refinery would require “more advanced technical partnerships” to see things through!

    There have been other side-attractions going on. There is the ding-dong between Senator Aliyu Wadada-led Senate Committee on Public Accounts and the NNPCL-GMD over unresolved financial infractions said to amount to N210tn! In the wake of the serial invitations by the senate to the GMD to help clear the fog on the infractions which the latter only honoured at the pain of a sanction, the latter finally showed up at the senate chambers with a plea for more time to address the queries. A minor part of that side show is the clarification by the senate committee chair that contrary to reports suggesting “theft”, the sum flagged in audit reports was only “unaccounted for”, and not “stolen”!

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    Which is why the latest twist in the tale – the rumour of the so-called ‘forced resignation’ of Ojulari by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Department of State Security – has merely added a new layer of distrust to the image of an entity where the only permanent item on the menu is bad news and more of bad news!

    As it is, the company’s initials may have changed, pretty little else has changed. A little more than three years since its supposed transition into a commercial, independent entity, similar to other national oil companies worldwide, more and more Nigerians are questioning the wisdom in the mere name-plate change (from NNPC to NNPCL) as against creating an entirely brand new national oil company with its own distinct corporate culture. 

    Of course, the joke out there is that Nigeria is so fixated on the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries that little else matters; nothing on the sprawling depots and network of pipelines that requires urgent attention to relieve the pressure on the road infrastructure and to grow its long term competitiveness; and, no indication, as yet, of its readiness to play in the big league as one would expect of it given its immense assets.

    And while the irony is lost that a terminally ill NNPCL, an entity itself in dire of TAM, is actually the one leading the charge to redirect the course of the nation’s energy transition, it manages to serve Nigerians with sufficient distractions to prevent them from asking deep, profound questions about its continuing relevance while ensuring that things remain the same! 

    I believe the time has come for the federal government to tear down the edifice brick by brick.

  • Awujale: A question of integrity

    Awujale: A question of integrity

    The metaphor — of the tragedy of privilege without responsibility — always loomed, in Death and the King’s Horseman, a Wole Soyinka play, written at the Churchill College, Cambridge University, England, but which premiered in 1975, at the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife.

    The late Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, Ogbagba II, seems to have flipped that creepy Greek saying.  Though he died “happy” here, and got his death wish for a Muslim funeral, he would appear “sad” there, at the other world!   

    That has been clear from the ugly controversy that has enveloped his opting to shut out the Ijebu traditional priesthood and conclave from his burial rites. 

    But a fiery traditional elite have scoffed back, in blazing ire and fire: their former king, though highly revered in life, just “died”, as any common mortal. He did not romp into ethereal blaze, as Yoruba monarchs gloriously do!

    “Awujale ku ni,” the most radical and iconoclastic among them huff, “Ogbagba o waja!”

    That open heresy, in the traditional Ijebu cosmos, is a big deal!  With that institution’s memory of the elephant that seldom forgets, that might yet come back to haunt the king’s direct descendants; and even the fortunes of his ruling house — at least the Ogbagba segment of it — whose slot he filled with rare glory for 65 memorable years!

    That Awujale-after-death scorn is spectacular upbraiding of that Greek classic: only the dead stay happy!

    By its grim logic, the human is at the mercy of malevolent gods.  Even with a second left to breathe his last, the gods could swoop, swish, conk and crush: undoing all the glory the mortal had done, all his life — a classic case of the divine envying the mortal!

    But that’s all just cultural dramatics, bordering on the farce!  Malevolent — or benevolent — “gods” are no more than human foibles.  Conceit rapidly builds; and in Chinua Achebe’s Igbo-speak, the man starts challenging his chi (personal god) in a fit of hubris! 

    So, that Greek saying is dire warning for man to stay simple, humble and happy!  But man won’t be man without pushing his luck!

    In truth, the late Awujale pushed his luck a lot, at the crest of his glorious reign. But the more he bucked the norm, the more prestige he corralled.

    Hubris?  “Hell, no!” The modernists, among the avant-garde traditionalists, particularly the younger breed of Ijebu monarch-professionals, would roar back! Rather, it’s healthy evolution, which craves reformation of the extant tradition.

    That would appear to have driven their ambivalence — enlightened self-interest? — towards the Ogun State Obas, Chiefs, Council of Obas and Traditional Council Law, 2021.  This law offered the legal anchor for the late Awujale’s outrageous funeral rites — at least, to the dyed-in-wool traditionalists.

    For pushing this law, Oba Adetona may well end up the historical scapegoat! How do the Yoruba put it: he who does what none had done before, sees what none had never seen? 

    But if it forces lasting reformation, by a syncretic marriage of foreign faiths to native rituals in royal burials, posterity may well thank him.

    That would be in the long, long run, though.  Right now, the sharks are out, in the short, short run!  And boy, are they angry!

    In truth, that law offered the late monarch instant legalistic cover.  But unsparing sociology still left him stark naked.  What’s a law without its sociological spine?

    That harsh sociology also passed him off — fairly so — as some glorified opportunist who, in life, had the best of the Ijebu Obaship, played the Unquestionable — Kabiyesi o! — to the hilt, earned all the power and all the glory, only to duck paying his ultimate debt in death!

    That brings the discourse right back to the dark Elesin Oba metaphor, in Death and the King’s Horseman.

    The Elesin knew the deal: he would live the life: food, wine, women and prestige, in sheer epicurean paradise, right here on earth. But he must also die the death!

    The moment the Kabiyesi ascends — “w’aja” — he too must die, with the royal horse and the royal dog: the Elesin Oba, as royal guide in the grim sojourn to the other world; the horse, the royal carrier on the grim journey of no return; the dog, the royal protector, to bark off malevolent ghommids and keep sundry hostile spirits at bay!

    But this particular Elesin had it all but balked at that fateful hour — in any case, by his body language.  In fairness to him, he was aided and abetted by colonial Brits — led by Simon Pilkings — who decreed that tradition was barbaric, which indeed it was.

    But it turned a reverse irony for the tragedy to sink in.  Olunde, Elesin’s son, lured abroad by the same British personages to study Medicine, but be thoroughly brain-washed in the so-called “civilized” Western ways, turned the tale: a new champion of the grim tradition his father tried to dodge; which the intruding Brits helped to stall.

    Enter: one suicide call, two fatal prizes!  Elesin’s son committed the ritual suicide expected of his dodging father!  The shame-faced Elesin had little choice but to follow suit. Two tragedies for the prize of one!

    Still, a let-off of a sort — which may well open some long-term cold comfort, after this Awujale burial tragedy had blown over.  After the Oyo dramatics that fed our own WS the raw materials for Death and the King’s Horseman, that grim tradition itself became history in Oyo Alaafin, after the 1940s, which provided the play’s real-life setting.

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    Would that also prove true, for the Ijebu, after — in Shakespeare’s Macbeth-speak — the hurly-burly is done; and the roaring battle, over “Isese” rights in Oba burials, is lost and won?

    If it does, then the dead Awujale would have had the final laugh! 

    But right now, that looks so far-fetched that Oba Adetona — and descendants — would have to lug that ignominy of cheap pretenders as life-long defenders of tradition, but life-end deserters.  After all, what’s life without a good ending?

    Still, that troubling question must be asked: why did the dead King, and his loved ones, shirk whatever awaited his body after passage, so much so that they “blocked” such horror(?) with Muslim burial rites? 

    Are the dire suggestions true: that as the Kabiyesi was unquestionable in life, after death, the community too became unquestionable with whatever they did with his remains?

    Even with the awe — if not naked fear — that drives Yoruba spirituality, there would appear a fair call for reformation to assure troubled royal families of respect for their dead.

    But until such are sorted out with sane give-and-takes, to the mutual benefits of all involved, the dead Awujale risks lugging in death the diametric opposite of what he beamed all through his glorious reign and illustrious life: a crass lack of integrity.

    That’s hardly fair to the memory of a monarch that, in the secular, if not Ijebu spiritual eye, lifted the Ijebu throne to heights hitherto unimagined, earning a GCON to boot!

  • Renewal of local councils

    Renewal of local councils

    The Supreme Court judgment that granted autonomy to local government councils in Nigeria has seen a bumpy ride to its full implementation. For this writer, who participated actively in the recent local governments’ election in Lagos State, the feedback on the election was a mixed grill. While a number of persons claimed that elections did not hold in their polling booths, it went smoothly were this writer voted. What is not in doubt is that the election was very peaceful, even though the turnout of voters was very poor.  

    Yet, we must commend Lagos State for consistently conducting local government elections when many states were afraid to conduct same in their states. Governors are afraid that council chairmen can undermine their grip on party politics and the resources that pass through the local governments in their states. Indeed, some governors in the past merely hand over monies for the recurrent expenditure to the local government chairmen, and go ahead to appropriate the rest as they please.

    But on July 11, 2024, the Supreme Court in the case of A.G. Federation vs A.G. Abia and 35 Ors, SC/CV343/2024 effectively stanched that unlawful enterprise by the states. The landmark decision declared as unconstitutional, the practice of state governors, who withhold federal allocations due to local councils, dissolve elected local government officials or appoint caretaker committees to manage the affairs of local governments. The judgement declared that governors cannot withhold or tamper with allocations for local government from the federal government.

    Many have argued that portion of the judgment is ultra vires the provision of section 162 (5) & particularly sub-section (6) of the 1999 CFRN (as amended) which provides that “Each state shall maintain a special account to be called “State Joint Local Government Account” into which shall be paid all allocations to the Local Government Councils of the state from the federation account and from the government of the state.” While clearly the apex court lacks the power to amend an existing law, it has the power to interpret laws, and such interpretation can have far reaching consequences on the application of such laws.

    In the interpretation of section 162(5) & (6) of the constitution, the Supreme Court held that reading the constitution together, the intention of the legislature has been defeated by the erstwhile practice of federal government paying the allocation into State Joint Local Government Account, and ordered that such monies should be paid directly to the local government authorities. Of course, there is lesser ambiguity with respect to section 7 of the 1999 constitution which provides: “The system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is under this constitution guaranteed: and accordingly, the government of every state shall, subject to section 8 of this constitution, ensure their existence under a law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils”.

    Since the provision on democracy at local councils is not controverted by anyone; every state in the country has chosen to obey. The Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, has indicated federal government’s determination to enforce the judgment of the court. Osun State, which is presently at logger heads with the federal government, is defending an application to refund money earned, allegedly unconstitutionally. While it is prejudicial to comment on the matter before the court, the determination shown by the office of the AGF in that matter indicates what awaits any state that ignores the provision of section 7 of the constitution, on democracy, at local councils.

    While Lagos has been consistent in conducting elections every four-year cycle in the state; with the recent autonomy, one wonders what will happen to the state created 37 councils, should any of the chairmen of the constitutionally named 20 Local Government Areas, seek to stretch the independence of the local council to its limit? This is because, the monies may in future, as held the apex court, be paid directly to the account of the constitutionally named local governments.

    I have used the word constitutionally named advisedly, because in A.G. Lagos vs A.G. Federation, (2004) CLR 12(A) (SC), the Supreme Court did not declare as invalidated, the creation of 37 local council development areas by the Lagos State government, under then governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It however stated that there must be legislative action by the federal legislature as provided in section 8(5) and (6) of the 1999 CFRN (as amended). Interestingly, while the constitution in section 8(3) places the responsibility for the creation of local governments within the purview of the state legislature, the required federal legislative action, if stretched, may require the amendment of the constitution to list the state created local government councils, which is a very difficult endeavour.

    Read Also: Open Letter to His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria

    The 1999 constitution makes it extremely difficult, to alter the provisions of the requisite section 8 and portions of section 9. Section 9(3) provides: “An Act of the National Assembly for the purpose of altering the provisions of this section, section 8 or Chapter IV of this Constitution shall not be passed by either House of the National Assembly unless the proposal is approved by the votes of not less than four-fifths majority of all members of each House, and also approved by resolution of the House of Assembly of not less than two-third of all states.” 

    While watching the swearing in of the local government chairmen by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, as obtainable in other states, I wondered at the propriety of state governors swearing in local government chairmen, if truly they are autonomous. The governor also went ahead to read out what the chairmen cannot do. As the leading state in the country, this writer and I believe many Nigerians, would be watching how Lagos will navigate the autonomy granted the local governments, by last year’s judgment of the Supreme Court. 

    Despite the judgment of the apex court, the information in the public space is that most governors are seeking ways to circumvent the judgment. Anambra State government passed a legislation which many have argued, seeks to circumvent the judgment of the apex court. Edo State, whose governor, from All Progressive Congress (APC), defeated the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was welcome by hostile local government administrators elected few weeks earlier on the platform of PDP. He has been battling to realign the reality with his wishes, as a member of a different party.

    No doubt, the expectations from the newly elected local government chairmen and councillors, in Lagos are high. Governor Sanwo-Olu mentioned that they have autonomy at the swearing in ceremony and most Nigerians know that they will have more money in their coffers, courtesy of the economic reengineering of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. So, the expectations are much higher than in the past. As the saying goes, to whom much is given, much will be expected.

  • Kemi and the Iroko ‘curse’

    Kemi and the Iroko ‘curse’

    How do you pronounce that Scottish name, Badenoch?  Baid-nok as the Brits would? Or Ba-de-nok as Africans, particularly the Yoruba?

    That’s Kemi Badenoch’s first “curse of the Iroko”!  The Iroko tree, in Yoruba tradition, doesn’t rush to crush deviants. Running down her homeland will earn her sure ruin!

    Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke (Nigerian) became the proud — haughty, even — Mrs Kemi Badenock (British). 

    But as she stamps Nigeria under her British conceit, Ba-de-nock, the Scottish insurance that gifts her such insufferable hauteur, rings true of her Nigerian roots! 

    Still, she ought to have taken a cue from her beloved, immensely British husband, Hamish Alexander Badenoch.  Badenoch!  A living proof of Britain’s ancestral horrors!

    Hamish was born in Wimbledon, England — like Oyinbokemi (as Sam Omatseye dubbed her).  But were Britain a settler country like the United States, he would be English — and perhaps he regards himself as one.  But her mum was Irish.  Badenoch, his father’s name, is ancestrally Scottish — from the Gaelic original: “baideanach”.

    Now, you don’t need to be an expert in British history to know the Scots and the Irish bore the brunt of English ancient savagery, just to subdue the British Isles. 

    The Scot, fiercest rivals of the English, gave as much as they got.  Yet, got yoked into some — uneasy(?) — cohabitation.  The Irish were much more clobbered.  Yet, remain the fiercest in proclaiming their Irish-ness. 

    If the United Kingdom — of Great Britain and Northern Ireland — ever hangs on a thread, it might well be because Northern Ireland is split between unionists/loyalists (pro-UK) and nationalists/republicans (pro-United Ireland). 

    But either as Ulster unionists or Irish nationalists, Irish nationalism bubbles, perhaps with a tad more fizz, than Gaelic nationalism, which is not exactly a baby’s moan. Still, the Scot-Irish common peeve is clear disdain for English domination.

    Mr. Badenock, who in his psyche packs that latent volcano of ugly British history, has worked all over Africa — Malawi, Lagos-Nigeria, Kenya.  But not once did he betray any vile distemper against his homeland, even with his joint ancestors so cruelly mangled by the English.

    His Nigerian wife is the diametric opposite, though it’s not quite clear what’s biting her. In her serial misadventure, she has trashed her native Yoruba tact, with her adopted British diplomacy — all to thrash herself, in her arch-delusion of thrashing Nigeria.

    Indeed, for Mrs. Badenoch, it has been a grotesque double whammy: scorned in her native Nigeria; shunned by the introspective class among the Brits: the very people she labours hard to ingratiate herself.  Enter, a loathe-worthy dud of both cultures!

    If you doubt, recall British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s brutal put down, bang in the House of Commons, of poor Mrs. Badenoch, more-Brit-than-the-British, the supposed Tory Leader: 

    “She has appointed herself, I think, saviour of the western civilization, in a desperate search for relevance”!  Sardonic humour: biting, classic, British!

    Didn’t even know which bit more: the guffaw of contempt that swallowed the chamber or the Brit Oyinbokemi, her smile frozen into a grimace, looking like trapped game!

    Yet, it was all so logical: if Kemi so passionately scorns her skin (Nigerian nativity), how can she possibly adore the mere sheen over it (her plastic Britishness)?  Indeed, how?

    Since Mrs. Badenoch started her anti-Nigeria misadventure, all she has reaped is a relay of what her Yoruba folks back at home call “a-si-so” (doomed to mis-jiving); and “a-si-se” (fated to misbehaving).

    Yet, the goodly Kashim Shettima, Vice President of the Federal Republic, had tried to steer Mrs. Badenoch off her self-destruct ways: stop denigrating Nigeria or risk being soon a self-chiselled nobody, even in the British political sphere.

    But Shettima, a man of style, tact and wit, didn’t sound so stark, in his two-way advice. One: why doesn’t  Kemi be like Rishi Sunak, the Hindu-Indian ex-UK PM and Tory Leader — a “brilliant young man” who “never denigrated his nation of ancestry”, even if he hugged his Britishness no less?

    But if that was beyond the vainglorious British-Nigerian, why not a clean break: remove Kemi from her name, and fully live the cultural jetsam she had made of herself!

    Cultural jetsam?  Yes, because Nigeria, as the proverbial Oyingbo market, is so packed it misses the absence of no one!  Nigeria would move on to her manifest destiny, with or without the self-loathing Oyinbokemi!

    But that rebuke only stung her into further recklessness.  It’s true as the Yoruba say: the doomed dog is deaf to the hunter’s whistle!

    First, an alter ego declared she’s no PR spinner for Nigeria — true.  Then, “with her chest” — as they say in that pidgin lingo — she growled that Nigeria was a bastion of crooked politicians and criminal police, that robbed her brother of valuables.

    But that verbal diarrhoea would gift us what drove her Nigeria hate — Fulani hate! Her Yoruba people, she claimed, had little in common with the stony savages of the North!

    Now, what was that? The “British” hyper-educated version of the stark “Yoruba Nesan” campaign? 

    But as the “Yoruba Nesan” campaign sadly showed, cultural condescension is no sole bastion of the plebs!  Plebeians, patricians and in-between were well captured!

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    That Freudian slip was clear, from Kemi Badenoch’s riposte to VP Shettima.

    Still, the good thing is that the Yoruba dodged the IPOB Igbo bullet — that wild tail wagging the dog, and pushing the collective into avoidable catastrophe — just because Nigeria had a “Fulani” president, and you must choke his tenure with blind hate: the same toxin you accuse the Fulani of!

    But even for Britisher Mrs. Badenoch, that wasn’t even bad enough — every vocal pun intended!  On CNN, she must run her mouth about Nigerian citizenship, in a fit of combative ignorance!

    That CNN show of shame had own irony — and it wasn’t pretty.  Fareed Zakaria has earned global fame and awe for his well-researched, razor-sharp Global Public Square (GPS) series on CNN. 

    So, if our Oyinbokemi chose to display her arrogant ignorance, couldn’t Zakaria himself — a proud ethnic Indian but America’s ever-shining intellectual diamond — have fact-checked her, even with a prompting question?   The Nigerian Constitution of 1999 isn’t exactly a closet document!

    Still, it’s stiff  — and sweet — Karma: her perverse tantrums on Nigeria have dragged her to CNN to spew rubbish and further de-market herself! Didn’t the Bible say what you spewed ruined you, not what you gulped?

    But among the Yoruba, it’s even more foreboding: the concept of “eedi”!  Her ailment would seem verbal “eedi”. She won’t stop until she talks herself from promise to nothing.

    The Tories will soon realize — if they have not already — that their Nigeria chatterbox is a diplomatic liability — about time!  Who wants to lug such liability as PM — or which country, in the Black world, is more critical to UK than Nigeria?

    Conceit, hubris, blot out common sense — and our Mrs. Badenoch is living proof!

    Still, a sweet takeaway!  “Bade” is a Nigerian name, even if the “Scottish” version “noch”s!  Too bad for Oyibokemi. There’s no Nigeria escape.  Talk of the Iroko “curse”!

  • Pilgrims to Daura

    Pilgrims to Daura

    This writer believes there is a good time to die especially if one is to judge worldly. After all, Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, said “when beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” No doubt, the political firmament blazed forth at the passage of former President Muhammadu Buhari. And like the biblical wise men who saw the stars and went in search of the new king, politicians have been journeying to Daura, Katsina State, to pay homage at the grave of Buhari.

    Of course, while Buhari had his genuine followers, many of the pilgrims detested him while he lived. The former president would be full of mirth as erstwhile political foes and friends turn to Daura for political gains. Even known former foes pretend as if they have lost someone so dearest to them. For Buhari’s genuine friends, “this passion, and the death of a friend, would go near to make a man look sad,” as Shakespeare said in his Midsummer Night’s Dream.

    If Buhari had lived two more years beyond the 2027 general elections, it is doubtful if he would have gotten the kind of eulogy that followed his death, whether from the state or private individuals. But with the 2027 general elections starring politicians in the eyes, potential candidates are trying to outdo each other in positioning themselves to reap from the famed 12 million voters Buhari left to mourn him. No doubt, those who rode on the back of Buhari to state power in the past would wish he live a little longer.  

    The governor of Katsina State, Dikko Umar Radda, wept openly, at the state funeral. We will never know whether he was so sad over the death of the man who influenced his electoral success in 2023, or his anguish is magnified by the fears of the 2027 re-election battles. Of course, the tribe of former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, looked the most pitiable of the pilgrims. Apart from the presidential election in 2015, when circumstances forced Atiku to fight together with Buhari, after failing at the All Progressive Congress (APC), party primary, he has always been in the opposing camp against the man.

    Yet, since the death of Buhari, the former vice president has been acting as a pretender to the political throne left behind by him. Despite all the pretences, Atiku and Buhari are not hewed from the same type of wood. In that same corner, is the former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el Rufai, who after riding on the back of Buhari at two successful governorship elections, fell out with the man in the run up to the 2023 general elections. El Rufai, who spectacularly betrayed all his former masters, including Atiku, whom he followes about, is another pretender to the throne of Buhari. Ever querulous, El Rufai, called Buhari’s presidency a failure, but since the man’s sudden death, he has given the impression that he has always been Buhari’s best man.  

    The pilgrimage to Daura since the burial of Buhari became even more urgent since President Bola Tinubu was able to outflank Atiku and his men during the burial. With the former president, a beneficiary of a state burial personally overseen by President Tinubu, Atiku and his men were practically denied the opportunity to grandstand at the burial of a man they never agreed with politically, but were hoping to gain from his death. Like many others, they watched as outsiders.

    That development may have informed the three-day pilgrimage offensive Atiku and his men performed to gain some mileage in the media. But how the Atiku tag team would convince the northern talakawas that they are from the same chink as Buhari, who they regarded as the honest one, Mai Gaskiya, remains to be seen. For until Buhari’s death made Atiku his follower, they never shared similar world view. While Atiku retired from the Nigerian customs in stupendous wealth, Buhari retired poor from the army, despite being a former governor of North-eastern State, from 1975 to 1976, and Federal Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural Resources, from 1976 to 1978.

    While Atiku has ran unsuccessfully for the president of Nigeria in 2007, 2011, 2019 and 2023, each as a candidate of a major political party from his private financial war chest, Buhari was propelled with resources, which can be regarded as other peoples’ money. While Buhari was originally hated by the northern power elite, because he was opposed to their ways and means, Atiku, a top wheeler-dealer amongst that elite is despised by the talakawas. While Buhari was at home in company of the ordinary northerner, Atiku one of their masters, is a contributor to their state of affairs.

    Read Also: FATF invites Nigeria to join consultative process on global financial integrity standards

    Again, while Atiku is reputed to have enriched himself while in government, and stands accused of corruption by his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Buhari is acclaimed by those he has worked with as being honest and incorruptible. While after serving in several public capacities, as head of state, and president for eight years, Buhari lived austere and frugal, Atiku, after serving in customs and as vice president, is reputedly so wealthy with uncountable private assets. So, it would be a herculean task, for Atiku to inherit the Buhari political persona.

    But the pilgrimage to Daura would continue for some time to come. We will see many followers of Buhari lie that before he travelled to London for the last time, he had prayed and laid hand on them, as the potential successor to his throne. Some would even swear, that he had told them to continue his work, in one form or another. Others would claim that they were told to protect the interest of the north which Buhari loved so much. Some would lie that they provided resources for the political advancement of the late leader.

    Those who have sinned and come short while in government would easily claim that they are being prosecuted because of their love for Buhari, whenever they are called to answer for their sins. Some when asked to render account, would claim that their unlawful conducts were sanctioned by the leader. A few may even claim that the monies they stole were given to the man to keep. In the days ahead, his followers, many of them fake, would want to hide under his babaringa, to save themselves from answering for their delinquencies while in office.

    The days ahead indeed would be interesting as the scramble to fill the void created by Buhari begins in earnest. Would Atiku and his political ensemble be able to take the prize and run away with it, or would the several potentates carve up the political kingdom left by Buhari into small fiefdoms and rule happily thereafter? President Tinubu and his followers should be on the watch out.

  • Nigeria’s Abiku refineries

    Nigeria’s Abiku refineries

    The news, far away in the Austrian capital of Vienna couldn’t have surprised any Nigerian that has paid more than fleeting attention to the woes routinely visited on the hapless country by Nigeria’s perennially delinquent entity – the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). Whether in its old drab colours of opacity and sleaze, or its mutation into everything that a supposedly retooled business entity should never aspire, you are guaranteed that nothing good or exciting ever comes out of its quarters.

    A little while back, precisely two months ago, Nigerians woke up to the news that the refinery, just refurbished six months prior, and one which had gulped $1.5 billion in hard-to-get forex, has been shut down for ‘maintenance’. The public notice, by Olufemi Soneye, the then chief corporate communications officer of the company had read: “The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) wishes to inform the general public that the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) will undergo a planned maintenance shutdown. This scheduled maintenance and sustainability assessment will commence on May 24, 2025.

    “We are working closely with all relevant stakeholders, including the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), to ensure the maintenance and assessment activities are carried out efficiently and transparently,” so went the notice to a bewildered nation.

    Although nothing in the statement suggested any timeline for the maintenance, this week, Thursday July 24 makes it exactly two months since the refinery was shut down. If Nigerians had assumed that the abrupt maintenance, which some newspapers actually reported would take 30 days, was ‘routine’, the rather interminable silence ever since, and subsequent developments may have hinted at the manifestation of the old plague in the behemoth, in its full malignancy.

    Between May 24 and Ojulari’s Vienna outing of last week, the pieces, may finally be coming together. A month after the shutdown, operatives of the EFCC reportedly arrested a former Chief Financial Officer of the NNPC, Umar Isa. This was said to be in connection with an alleged $7.2bn fraud linked to the rehabilitation of the three refineries in Kaduna, Warri, and Port Harcourt. At stake was the $1,559,239,084.36 allocated to the Port Harcourt refinery, $740,669,600 released for the Kaduna refinery, and $656,963,938 approved for the Warri refinery.

    As reported by Punch: “All key officials involved in the maintenance and other major NNPCL projects are also under investigation for alleged abuse of office, corruption, diversion of public funds, and kickbacks from contractors”. Former Managing Director of the Warri Refinery, Jimoh Olasunkanmi, was also among those arrested.

    And just like the old African fable about the witch said to have cried all night only for the dawn to herald the death of the baby of the house, Bayo Ojulari, the NNPCL helmsman would appear to be at his wits end to find matching words to what is going on!

    Here is what he told Bloomberg at the 9th OPEC International Seminar in Vienna, Austria on the state of the refineries: “So refineries, we made quite a lot of investment over the last several years and brought in a lot of technologies. We’ve been challenged. Some of those technologies have not worked as we expected so far. But also, as you know, when you’re refining a very old refinery that has been abandoned for some time, what we’re finding is that it’s becoming a little bit more complicated,” he was quoted to have said.

    “But what we’re saying is that sale is not out of the question. All the options are on the table, to be frank, but that decision will be based on the outcome of the reviews we’re doing now”.

    I believe I know what NNPCL-GMD Ojulari stopped short of saying. While he may not have declared the process, from design to execution, as being incurably bad – particularly the idea of retrofitting the old, antiquated 60,000 barrels per day refinery for what would at best deliver 90 percent performance at the optimum level – he nonetheless left no doubts about his conviction that the entire idea could only have made political, certainly not, business sense!

    And while he was also not categorical on the way to go, he also somewhat implied that the entire $1.5 billion may have gone down the drain considering the nigh impossibility of realising anything near that figure in sales value. 

    Note his allusion to an implied bad investment decision; his retort about the flawed technologies in place and by extension the fatal admission to what is already deemed, an ill-thought out process. Never mind the implied joke that the country should not only write them off as scraps and so move on with whatever terms of sale the auctioneers might deem to be comfortable with, (after it is merely another line item in the criminal schemes that the country has been serially afflicted with) – which was what those behind them intended, anyway; it was, for him, sufficient to put all the cards on the table for all Nigerians to see!

    Uncomfortable as it is, the issue seems unlikely to go away. By this I mean the question of the future of the four refineries. At this time, the signs, even to the most incurable optimist, must be deeply unsettling, more so, with the latest revelations by Ojulari. While the focus at this time is on the old refinery in Port Harcourt, the auguries would appear to be the same for the other Port Harcourt refinery as they are of the other two in Warri and Kaduna.

    Read Also: Top 10 fintech companies with good interest on savings in Nigeria 

    Yet again, we are being reminded of the folly of 2007. Then, Nigerians, supposedly for the love of country, rejected the sale of the refineries in Port Harcourt and Kaduna to Bluestar Consortium put up by businessmen Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola. Whereas the argument was that the process was flawed, in reality, it turned out that Nigerians would rather hold on to their beloved but utterly useless ‘patrimony’ even when such had long lost its rationale as a going concern. Now, we are back to learning the hard way, the fine lines between hard business decisions and hollow nationalist effusions! 

    Only last week, a colleague wanted my view on what I believe should be the way forward. I thought the answer was simple enough: Selling the contraptions remains the way to go! As it was in 2007, so it is even today. It is even more pressing now that Nigerians – unlike what they were led to believe years back – no longer harbour any worries about whether the fuel being discharged at the pumps is Dangote’s or NNPCL’s petrol!

    Here’s hoping that the usual quarters would spare Nigerians their hollow, noxious and uneducated computations of what the value of the refineries should be! As yours truly is wont to say, only the investors, as against our hordes of arm-chair valuation experts, understand the meaning of values in any real sense!  After all, you can’t, for the pain of refurbishing your old Toyota Camry insist on selling it as new only because the engine, tyres, suspension and other critical components are supposed to be brand new!

    But that should not come without proper accounting for the money spent and the value delivered. At this time, Nigerians and relevant agencies should be asking Maire Tecnimont SpA and the NNPCL, hard questions about the terms of the contracts and what has been delivered. Are there protection clauses or implied warrantees on which the NNPCL could draw upon? Old or not, it is unimaginable that a thoroughly refurbished refinery will break down after barely six months of use. The same question obviously applies to Daewoo Engineering & Construction Nigeria Limited, the contractor in charge of Warri and Kaduna refineries. Or are we dealing with another Process & Industrial Developments Ltd (P&ID) here?

  • Between two Peters

    Between two Peters

    Two Peters. Two parallel exploits. But both woven into a tapestry, securing each a seat in the Nigerian football Hall of Fame: Peter Fregene (17 May 1947 – 13 October 2024) and Peter Rufai (24 August – 3 July 2025).

    One parallel is their Niger Delta and Lagos connects. 

    The one — Fregene — was born in Sapele (now in Delta State) but made his soccer hay in Lagos, ironically in two rival Lagos clubs, at the height of their swaggering, bragging and strutting rights: Stationery Stores FC (1967-1968) and ECN (later NEPA) FC (1978-1982).  Though 10 years apart, he won the Nigerian Challenge Cup with both.

    The other — Rufai — hailed from Lagos, though bred in Kaduna.  But the crisis that preceded the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) saw Peter and doting mum bolting for the relative safety of Port Harcourt, his mother’s ancestral home.

    There, at Port Harcourt, Rufai cut his first difficult tooth in football. 

    The finished work — more like work-in-progress — would make the paths of the two Peters to cross: the one a beloved mentor; the other the humble, dutiful mentee. 

    The Nigerian national team, across two generations, of Green and Super Eagles, would prove the net-gainer.

    Peter (Fregene) the Cat.  Peter (Rufai) the Rock.  Both stuffs legends were made!

    Another parallel: Stationery Stores and Eagles.

    In 1968, Fregene was “cat” in the Stationery Stores FC of Lagos: a galaxy of stars that blazed the budding sky of Nigerian football, with their rich, arresting twinkle.

    The list — 10 of the starting 11 — speaks for itself, particularly with Nigerian football history aficionados: Peter Fregene, Anthony Igwe, Augustine Ofuokwu, Olusegun Olumodeji, Samuel Opone, Willy Andrews, Peter Anieke, Fred Aryee, Olumuyiwa Oshode and Mohammed Lawal.

    One of them, Anthony Igwe, would win gold with Nigeria at the 1973 2nd All Africa Games in Lagos — Nigeria’s first-ever continental silverware.  Haruna Ilerika, aka “master dribbler”, joined Igwe in that golden team. 

    In 1970, Ilerika won the Lagos Principals’ Cup with the Zumratul-Islamiya Grammar School, Surulere, joined Stores in 1971 and broke into the national team from 1972.  In 1976, when Nigeria won its first bronze at the African Cup of Nations (AFCON), in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, Ilerika excelled in that team.

    But this dazzling ensemble were only forerunners to the real deal, which climaxed in 1994.  That year, Nigeria became a powerhouse in African football, clinching AFCON for the second time, posting a stellar showing at the USA ‘94 World Cup, and dazzling to Africa’s first Olympic gold medal in men’s football, in Atlanta ‘96, also in USA.

    Back to the Fregene-Rufai parallel.  When Fregene bossed the goal for Stores, it was at the club’s golden age of near-total hegemony, wrapped in sheer poetics of football. 

    Stores not only drew 2-2 with Brazil’s Santos FC of the great Pele — with the genius himself live at the Onikan Stadium, Lagos — the Green Eagles, then dominated by Stores players — nine of the starting 11 — also forced a draw against the Brazil Olympic team, at the Mexico Olympics of 1968.

    But when Rufai met Fregene at the national camp in 1982, and humbly offered to clean Fregene’s boots, as other senior goalkeepers, there had been a cross-reversal.

    Stores, which Rufai joined, were hardly the elite Israel Adebajo Babes of yore, beloved scions of a colourful millionaire owner.  They had slid into “Pooku lowo e” — Yoruba for dirt cheap football plebs, but gritty for glory, adored and fired by fanatical fans!

    In this relative “desert”, Rufai would start building own legacy as Peter the Rock.

    Fregene himself was nowhere in sight in 1980, when the Green Eagles clinched their first AFCON title in style at home, with the late Best Ogedegbe and aging Emmanuel Okala aka Man Mountain, cradling the shots.  It was a glorious win, destroying Algeria 3:0 in the final: a Segun Odegbami brace and a Muda Lawal icing on the cake.

    But it was at the camp build-up to the Libya 1982 AFCON defence that the younger Peter met the older.  Rufai fondly recalled how Fregene taught him the art and science — or even the metaphysics! — of reflexes: the spring, the dive, the jump to save shots.

    That AFCON defence was doomed.  Ghana won.  But back was Fregene: the flying cat, with reflexes like springs, as sharp as ever, even after a 10-year hiatus.

    Rufai in 1998 was the opposite, just four years after his imperious Mondial debut.

    Year 1994: Nigeria were swaggering kings of Africa.  The Eagles not only won AFCON away in Tunisia, they debuted at the World Cup, playing champagne football, next only to Samba-land, Brazil, the eventual winners.  Rufai was central to that, as impregnable rock in goal.  His apogee, it was!

    But 1998 in France?  Yes, Nigeria still pulled some strings, pipping heavy favourites, Spain, 3:2 in a five-goal thriller — Nigeria’s winner, a thunderbolt from Sunday Oliseh, tearing the net behind the legendary Andoni Zubizareta, and retiring him.

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    But retirement — at least from the national team — was also Rufai’s lot.  In 1998, Rufai’s reflexes were all but gone.  The Round of 16 4:0 drubbing from Denmark was no thanks to those flat reflexes, despite the showboating heroics of another imperious talent, Austine “JayJay” Okocha — so good they named him twice!

    So, enter the last of the Peter-Peter parallels, though in contrasting terms: Fregene retired from the national team after the 1982 disastrous AFCON defence, though still with impressive reflexes. Rufai quit after France ‘98 with suspect craft, though the Eagles gave a fair performance.

    But both legends were made: Fregene the Durable. Rufai the Charismatic.  Legend!

    Still, both cemented their place in history, basically on account of their exploits in local football.

    Fregene never played abroad. Yes, Rufai moved abroad, earned more pay, garnered more fame and staked a claim to global renown.  Still, nowhere abroad was anywhere near the “centre of the universe” in fan adoration and worship as he was in Stores.

    He left Stores for Femo Scorpions — Femo who? — of Eruwa, Oyo State.  Then, to Dragons de I’Oueme of Benin Republic — Dragon what? — as fanatical Stores fans would have scowled.

    Well, in Belgium, Holland, Portugal and Spain, he never hugged such centrality that he enjoyed at home, though he earned far more coins, and did well for himself.

    So, how might Nigerian football have turned out, had it bloomed to its full capacity, with these iconic Peters, among others?

    Would Fregene have bowed to charity, to face old age infirmity, if the industry he had shaped with sheer excellence had grossed him enough cash to afford quality care?

    Rufai too, ever private and dignified. Would he have died at 61 with lingering doubt that, even with his comparative better fortune, not enough was done to save him?

    Two iconic players with contrasting fortunes but the same answer: far better than making hay abroad, develop your country for the great overall harvest.

    But the government must birth the enabling environment for that to be.

  • Buhari’s many colours

    Buhari’s many colours

    Former president, Muhammadu Buhari, who died on Sunday, at 82 years, would make an interesting piece of painting if Nigerians, were asked to represent him, in technicolour. Taciturn and stern faced, the older generation of Nigerians would remember Buhari, the military general, for his mantra on war against indiscipline (WAI). As a military dictator, Buhari was considered ruthless in the prosecution of the war after he became a military head of state, following a military coup that overthrew the corrupt civilian regime of President Shehu Shagari.

    That coup and its aftermath were interpreted in different ways by different interest groups. While majority viewed his actions against politicians as deserving, politically conscious minority interpreted his follow-up actions as discriminatory. One of such was the treatment meted to the deposed President Shehu Shagari who was placed on house arrest, while his vice, Alex Ekwueme, was thrown into the prison, with other politicians. His critics believed the preferential treatment, was because Shagari was of similar tribe and religion.   

    But in fairness to Buhari, the war against indiscipline resonated well with majority of Nigerians, who had suffered immeasurably, under the wasteful years of Shagari’s corrupt civilian government. At bus stops, banks, airports and other places where people struggle for spaces, decorum returned as people willingly queued up. To deal a blow to the politicians who many believed had stashed away millions in false pits, Buhari changed the national currency with such a frenzy that many were caught unawares.

    While his action resonated with the majority who believed that the politicians deserved their comeuppance, there was the issue of the smuggled 53 suitcases which allegedly contained the same looted funds, belonging to a northern oligarchy. Under his watch, the national economy suffered recession, and experts attribute that the chaotic economic policies he championed. But he remained populist because he cleared the national landscape of the much hated politicians, who were swimming in splendour, while the majority were afflicted by scarcity of basic commodities and untrammelled inflationary pressure on goods and services.

    Buhari’s immediate constituency were apparently unimpressed with his frugality, and less than two years after he took over, he was removed in a palace coup organized by Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB). While Buhari’s highhandedness was the reason given by his colleagues for his overthrow, there are tails of other underlying reasons. One was his war against hard drugs, which allegedly affected a prominent member of the cabal that ousted him. But the more plausible reason for some was that he was merely a placeholder, after the overthrow of President Shagari, a fellow Fulani.

    There is also the belief that the coup was timed to ensure that a southern president do not emerge after Shagari’s second four years in power. That theory gained traction on the premise that vice president, Ekwueme, whose ethnic tribe fought a civil war barely a decade to his emergence, would be in a pole position to succeed Shagari. After the coup that ousted Buhari, and the house arrest which ironically the political elites celebrated, the Daura-born general literally went into oblivion until Sani Abacha happened to Nigeria.   

    Read Also: How Buhari and I were admitted in same UK hospital before his death, by Abdulsalami

    Under the regime of Abacha, Buhari surfaced again, as the chairman of Petroleum Task Force (PTF), which was a de facto alternate federal government. Obviously, with IBB and Abacha seen as buccaneers and spendthrifts, Abacha needed a person of integrity, to prove to sceptics that the monies coming from the increase in fuel price will not be wasted. So, he poached forcefully, the retired Buhari. In military style, and devoid of bureaucracy, the PTF became a ministry and parastatals joined together. The agency engaged in massive infrastructure programme across the country, but again, Buhari was accused of concentrating the projects in the north.

    Emotionally, and perhaps financially rehabilitated, after his work as chairman of PTF, Buhari joined politics, and amassed a cult following. Through his speech and action, he was able to connect to the downtrodden, especially across northern Nigeria, like Aminu Kano, in old Kano State. He was seen as different from his fellow elites, regarded as leeches afflicting the resources of the country. They referred to him as mai gaskiya, the one who speaks the truth.

    But in the south, he was hampered by the adverse image of a sectional leader and religious extremist. Some of his past actions while in office, his statement inferring that the early stunt of Boko Haram was his people, and his stern religious piety, were considered evidence of his religious extremism. But luck smiled on him, when his political part crossed with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the current president. Tinubu’s men were able to cast Buhari in a new persona, as pictures of him wearing bow-tie surfaced, and his positive exploits as a general who could defeat Boko Haram were successfully promoted.

    Buhari, went ahead to win the 2015 general election and the next election in 2019 as a civilian president. While he made significant effort to tackle the Boko Haram menace, the insecurity in his northern region remained intractable. A new security challenge, posed by those regarded as bandits, metamorphosed across north west and north central, sending shivers down the spine of hereto safe states, of Zamfara, and Sokoto, the seat of the Caliphate.  Also, armed herdsmen gained heft, in attacks on farmers, especially in the middle and southern part of the country, under his watch.

    As civilian president, Buhari did a lot on infrastructure development, and amongst the most iconic, was the 2nd Niger Bridge, considering his infamous slip on 97/5 percent. Buhari, untinctured and unapologetically frank, had said those who gave him more votes would get more infrastructure than those who gave very insignificant votes. For this writer, the claim that he hated Igbos does not hold water, for on two unsuccessful presidential elections, he had Chuba Okadigbo and Edwin Umezoke, as vice presidential candidates.

    Sadly, the national economy again suffered recession under his watch. Perhaps he thought that because he had good intentions, the economy would obey his poor economic policies. Notably, he allowed his ministers to borrow unwieldly, to pursue his infrastructure programmes. The Central Bank, instead of remaining the government lender, became a direct lender to all manner of enterprises. With a dubious intent, Godwin Emefiele, his CBN governor, combined his duties with that of the ministry of finance, agriculture and whatever he fancied.

    Buhari’s sudden death has made many politicians, who were hoping to ride his back in the 2027 elections orphans. There are already questions, about who will inherit the famous 12 million votes in Buhari’s babariga. Undoubtedly, none of the pretenders to Buhari’s throne has shown his uncanny connection to the masses in the north. As we bid former President Buhari eternal rest, the political landscape of northern Nigeria, will never be the same again.

  • So long, PMB

    So long, PMB

    Muhammadu Buhari (17 December 1942 – 13 July 2025), one-time military junta head and twice elected president, often reminds me of a favourite saying of my late father.

    “Look,” he would say, “if the entire Lagos goes that way, but you feel the right way is the contrary direction, stick to your path.  Sooner or later,” he would insist, “they’d turn round and follow you.”

    That’s the long-and-short of the Buhari odyssey in a Nigeria of his power generation, brimming with fashionable rot — no thanks to long military rule and gangling graft.

    But PMB was as clean — squeaky clean; as his generation was rotten — irredeemably rotten. 

    So, when Nigeria ran into a storm, from the dirty high priests, who not only devoured the votary offerings but had also gobbled up the shrine in gargantuan greed, it was to PMB the nation beckoned.  Twice!

    But that first time, Ripples was hostile, though only an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan. As folks around Independence Hall bawled and frolicked: “Happy new year!” and responded with “Happy new government!”, the rippling response was a scowl. 

    It was 1 January 1984.  President Shehu Shagari, his ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and the 2nd Republic (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983) had set with the old year.

    “Do you even know,” came the query, “how these khaki boys would pan out?”

    Too soon, the junta started unravelling.  Its War Against Indiscipline (WAI) was to break at all cost, though in fairness many Nigerians almost, always act as sheer beasts in human flesh. 

    Still, the regime soon manifested its overweening military hubris: for which thinking government would cancel a Lateef Jakande-era Lagos Metroline, which envisioned a comfortable mass transit for a hustling and bustling metropolis?  For my young mind, such gruff, rude and rude tactics were a no-no.

    Yet, the scale of post-NPN government rot was benumbing — enough to let the then Major-Gen. Buhari to act as some Draco, the harsh lawgiver of ancient Greece, whipping into line the rotten Athenians of his day!

    Trouble was: beyond the gruff and strong arm tactics, those pretenders — except Gen. Buhari himself, and maybe the late Tunde Idiagbon, his deputy — were no better.

    Read Also: How Buhari and I were admitted in same UK hospital before his death, by Abdulsalami

    That was conclusively proven with his successors. The one, well-loved among his venal tribe, made free-wheeling sleaze the cornerstone of his junta policy.  The other died a certified thief. 

    Both disgraced the political military and exhausted their historic possibilities.  Good riddance!

    But among those terrible hustlers — patricians by uniforms and stripes; hungry plebs by base conduct, all propelled by an extreme poverty of the spirit — only GMB (turned PMB with his two-term presidency) was not only clean but manifestly so.

    That earned him a power encore in 2015.  Again, the PDP order, led by President Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999, had turned out hardly any different from the Shagari order of the 2nd Republic. 

    At that terrible juncture, however, poor President Goodluck Jonathan was the fall guy after years of progressive rot, when even booming oil wealth could not secure booming infrastructure, to shore up the economy. 

    It was SOS to GMB again: the presumed miracle worker.  When no miracle came, it was free-fall blame game.  The president must work the miracle.  Change can’t start with me and my permissive ways — Nigeria!

    Yet, some sort of “miracles” did happen.  Wale Adedayo @Mario9jaa X address, did reel off some of them: “Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Lagos-Ibadan Railway, Second Niger Bridge, Itakpe-Warri Railway, Lagos Deep Seaport, Zungeru/Kashimbila Power Plants, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina Dry Ports, Petroleum Industry Act, among others.”

    Miracles?  Yes, and mainly on the infrastructure front, the long-term propeller of the economy. 

    Compare and contrast: the Obasanjo-led PDP era — guzzling cash, dead infrastructure, in any case, in terms of roads and rail, the most visible.  PMB-led APC era: no cash, yet an infrastructure renaissance!

    Which leads to a related controversy: how can you bequeath a thumping infrastructure record, yet be accused of leaving a “dead economy”?  How?

    Well, maybe a failed — or even “disastrous” — monetary policy regime, for instance?  Fair call!  Still, can monetary policy alone decide the “life” or “death” of an economy, when not matched with fiscal policy — that in very simple terms warehouses public funding (tax mainly, plus sundry revenues), not excluding debt capital; and spends such on projects?

    That leads to another scarecrow: ballooning debt!  Well, in 2015, where was the economy: with the barn pawned along with the entire harvest, in a romp of free-wheeling graft? 

    Debt balancing is fair call.  But with no cash and the imperative to propel the economy, what are the hard choices outside debt capital?  It’s good that the Tinubu order has kept faith with that infrastructure renaissance.  Hardly any other way.

    Incidentally, one of these critical infrastructure — the 2nd Niger Bridge — sits in the back yard of Anambra Governor Chukwuma Soludo, the author and finisher of the “dead economy” theory.  That bridge is fitting answer to that amplified fib!

    PMB, in his challenging presidency, had to make hard choices.  But most rewarding, for his place in history, is his relay of redemptions. 

    The one that stopped the Lagos Metroline, in a fit of military hubris, was also the one that federalized rail, did the Lagos-Ibadan medium-gauge rail, aside supporting, to the hilt, the Lagos Blue and Red urban rail lines!

    But the redemption relay is even more glaring on the political front.  The junta head that pondered over 10 years of military power couldn’t wait to retire to his farm after eight years as elected president!

    And again, compare him to his former commander-in-chief and predecessor as two-term elected president.  The one plotted a third term that fell flat on his face.  The other vowed to stick — and did stick — to his two constitutional terms.

    The one barked and growled do-or-die to get a successor.  The other insisted on the sanctity of the ballot.

    The one harangued and harassed his PDP until it stumbled out of power.  The other, out of office, stayed off the fray, save occasional voicing of support for his successor.

    The one tried to impose May 29 as fake Democracy Day.  The other canonized June 12 as the real deal, rehabilitated  MKO’s memory and buried all annulment pretences.

    Ripples is proud to have faithfully captured PMB’s strides, as they rolled out, in the worst of economic seasons — as readers of this page would affirm.

    Mai Gaskiya, the Honest One!  You’ve earned your rest.  You had your faults too but have nothing else to prove. 

    Those who still cannot see are entitled to their democratic right to eternal blindness!