The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

2022: ‘Not my child’; Pensioners fund fraud’

‘“‘Not my child in 2022 political thuggery’

Recently this column emphasised efforts preventing ‘harmattan fires’ through governors and local government officials institutionalising ‘Normal Market Fire Protection Strategies’.

Sadly Mokwa Central Market had a recent fire. Was it preventable, better controllable? Was there poor application of ‘Fire Prevention Strategies’ by ‘Market Mangers or Elders’? Even as we sympathise, we must warn against more fires as all markets lack adequate ‘Fire Safety Practices or Precautions’. Harmattan is the season of fires. Governors and LGA chairmen should ensure zero fires in 2022.

Why does the court imposed jail-time almost never fit the crime? Why don’t all judges fall into some kind of equal justice/equal crime timeline? Where is the justice logic for fining someone N750,000 and two years for a N22b+ multibillion naira theft and seven years for a goat theft? Why are massive white collar and also political crimes so under-assessed in impact, under-punished, while non-political stealing of objects is so over-punished by the courts?

Stealing billions adversely affects millions in income and the ability to conquer life’s expensive amenities, and probably actually kills thousands from lack of those funds for medicines for example. Deprived of their earned rights, they suffer as much trauma and social deprivation as if they had been in thousands of violent robberies with murder victims. Sadly, that suffering is unseen, unfelt, unrecorded and under-researched by social science departments and judges because it is hidden by families ashamed and stigmatised as harbouring ‘penniless pensioners’, who refused to make money in office, a social crime, while next door, the pension thieves are living big, well into old age! What a peculiar pension paradox. Also sadly the auditors and bankers who failed in their duty of monitoring and reporting excessive outflow and incomes through private and public bank accounts, and those who sold houses without due process all go free to keep their bank charges and promotions and house sale proceeds and to ‘sin again and again’. There are many ‘billion naira fraud cases’ against those running ‘funds’ by any name -Police, Pension, NSITF, NNDC, etc, etc, etc!

Nigerians ask why these multi-billion fraud and corruption cases last so many years with so little to show for the consequent suffering of the citizenry? Nigerians ask: ‘why should businesses in their millions still pay billions into the NSITF when such horrendous fraud was perpetrated by staff’? Are the billions paid in monthly suddenly safe from fraud now? Will the fund ever be put to good use or just stolen again and again by chosen conduits? What is the recovery plan of the stolen funds? Should Nigeria’s companies not be given an NSITF tax break while the company is brought to auditor order?

But above all the messages are mixed from the various tiers of the courts.

Of course courts themselves are confused by huge number and subsequent changes in the charges and counts, ‘SANish’ legalese interpretation of the same words by ‘SANstars’ defending the deities or devil in unequal measure, absent witnesses, regular director of theatre supervised caustic comedy theatrics of collapsing or slumping accused, plaster cast covered accused wheeled in on stretchers, and months of dubiously acquired ‘Sudden Post Accused of Stealing Sickness’ of the accused who receive ‘Sick Leave’ and a demand to be ‘Treated Abroad’ -all recommended by accomplished amiable members of the medical profession, who are often accused in turn of being accomplices.

The courts appear even further confused by the number of fraud-accused who require immediate five-star hospitalisation for months during trial and for years on conviction.

What is the evidence of court calamity or confusion? Steal N58,000 in a yahoo scam, jailed six months. Steal a goat get seven years jail. Steal N32.8billion pensioners funds, ‘forced’ to pay back N22b in a plea bargain and get two years in prison and ‘an option of a N750,000’ fine. He paid the fine and walked. After outrage and a new trial, sentence was upgraded to two years +N20b fine, yes billion, two years + N1.4b fine, two years+ N1.5b for the counts 17,18,19 to run consecutively amounting to six years jail with a cumulative fine of N22.9b. The convict is now appealing the six years as being ‘too harsh’ and ‘double jeopardy’ again.

What happened to the nearly N10billion difference between the N32.9b and the ‘hopefully to be refunded N22.9b?? That difference amounts to 1,000 pensioners’ losing nearly N1m/pensioner leaving them dependents in abject poverty, monetary misery, hopelessly inadequate health support for illness of operations and cancer care, drowning in debt and becoming an unnecessary burden on their children, and depriving the aged of their honoured role in family life since they have no money to buy even sweets and gifts for grandchildren- an essential ‘Grandparent function’.

Sadly, Nigeria is out of the Africa Cup of Nations 2022 – a distraction from our suffering. Let the youth not turn to political thuggery.

Finally, grandparents and parents must organise a nationwide campaign to dissuade their children and grandchildren from 2022 thuggery. Nigeria does not need a 2022 generation of political thugs. If a politician wants protection, let him approach a registered private security outfit for such protection activities. The politicians must be stopped from buying lives cheaply. No one’s child or grandchild should die in the coming 2022 election cycle.

‘“‘Not My Child In 2022 Political Thuggery’!

February 2, 2022
2023 presidency and Nigerian superstitions

Nigerians are very religious. Religion can be a force for good but through the years we’ve also seen how it can be deployed for division and destruction. Following from our attraction to all things mystical we are naturally very superstitious – even to the point of hilarity.

We look for deeper meanings and explanations where cause and effect would suffice. With an overweening sense of entitlement, we blame the gods whenever unpreparedness costs us.

The Super Eagles just got dumped out of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), triggering an almighty outcry from grieving football fans across the land. There were all kinds of online polls asking who should be held responsible. The players, the coach, referee, VAR? None of the above.

By overwhelming majority respondents blamed President Muhammadu Buhari for placing a call to the players prior to the match against Tunisia. I’m still scratching my head establishing a rational link between the man in Aso Rock and the sporting disaster in Cameroon. He was not the trainer, neither was he on the field of play. We even had a helping hand with COVID-19 incapacitating 12 members of the opposing team. Still, people blame a supposedly jinxed call!

It wasn’t only the rabble that were pushing this nonsense. Even those you would consider enlightened were indulging – thinking it was a lark. Shehu Sani, former senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District, blaming Buhari, tweeted this in response to the Eagles’ defeat: “He toucheth the pigeon, it refused to fly. He talketh to the Eagle, it refused to fly. Oh yea brethren, thy King in Egypt hath no miracles but pyramids.”

One witty Twitter user @Oserume1 replied with a photo of the president raising Sani’s hand, posting: “He raised your hand and you failed to return to the Senate!”

Not surprisingly the superstitious are already weighing in on the burgeoning 2023 presidential contest, airing all manner of intriguing postulations.

Following the declaration of interest by former Lagos State Governor and All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, one internet user posted a meme with the mocking legend: “The masquerade that comes out first ends up as a spectator.” The inference, without any logical or scientific justification, is that just for coming out first the aspirant would end up not getting the prize.

In the last few weeks a similar line of reasoning has been peddled by different writers. They suggest that in recent Nigerian history those who actively sought to be president never realised their goal. Instead, politicians who never targeted the office ended up there.

They point to the likes of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan – even Ernest Shonekan – to back their position that fortune favours the unprepared and uninterested.

On the other side we reminded of how Chief Obafemi Awolowo fought in vain to be elected president. He prepared for high office and was widely acknowledged as a man who was ready to govern. At his death, former Biafran leader, Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, wrote in the condolence register: “He was the best president Nigeria never had.”

Was it just ambition that failed Awolowo? Aren’t there legitimate questions as to whether he got his messaging and coalition-building right? Did his platform have the requisite spread to win the presidency?

We are regaled with how it ended badly for Chief M.K.O. Abiola – a man who deployed his immense wealth, contacts and goodwill in pursuit of the presidency. He defied those who argued that because he was already a man of tremendous means he should have disavowed any interest in power.

Read Also: 2023 presidential election: The race begins

The peddlers of superstition are quick to emphasise that he never got to govern Nigeria. They underplay play the fact that this man who was prepared actually won the election. That undemocratic and reactionary forces frustrated his mandate doesn’t remove the fact that he won.

It is important that Nigerians don’t succumb to the illogic that being ambitious or aspiring to great positions is something odious. Some mocked Tinubu because he told Buhari that becoming president was his “lifelong ambition.” Some people dream of becoming doctors, lawyers, governors, pastors, business moguls. What’s wrong with aspiring to be president? To everyone his dream.

To some extent there’s always the hand of providence in the emergence of leaders, but we should stop making a virtue out of unpreparedness. We should stop waiting for something to happen or someone to hand us things. Such superstitious mind-set and woolly thinking is the reason Nigeria is the way it is.

In the United States from where we lifted the presidential system, serious contenders begin working towards their goal two or three years before election season. They set up exploratory and political action committees years before the primaries’ season. No one condemns them for thorough planning or for aspiring.

Rather than celebrating the unprepared we should interrogate the circumstances surrounding the emergence of several of Nigeria’s accidental leaders. Part of reason they were thrown up is we’ve never had a settled democratic culture.

Our various attempts at building sustained constitutional rule by civilians were repeatedly interrupted by power-hungry soldiers who governed illegally for 36 out of our 61 years as an independent nation.

Rather than trying to draw baseless conclusions we should remember how the likes of Obasanjo became president. The nation was still reeling from the upheavals surrounding the death of Abiola and annulment of the June 12, 1993 election results. The military wanted to make amends for its historical error. There was consensus among the political class to appease the Southwest. But in doing so the ruling junta wanted a figure they could trust and that was how the former Head of State, fresh from prison, wound up as president.

The immediate run-up to the 1999 transition was a period of national turmoil. Imagine if the previous 10 years had been calm, with seamless transition between civilian administrations. Is it possible that somebody prepared for office could have emerged? Possibly.

Jonathan became president because Yar’Adua died in office. If that unfortunate incident hadn’t occurred he could have gone on to serve two terms. Is it possible that somebody better prepared than the one who inherited his mandate could have emerged? Possibly.

Before we can conclude that being unprepared and uninterested is an advantage in running for elective office, Nigeria must sustain the current run of uninterrupted democratic rule – letting the “ambitious” and “unambitious” go toe to toe from time to time. After a while, clear and verifiable patterns would emerge.

Until then let’s stop damning people because of their dreams or reviling them for aiming high.

January 26, 2022
2022: Anti-thug, anti-kidnapping, anti-ritual, anti-terrorist

What hope Nigeria? First the politicians increasingly tolerated bad eggs going mad for power at any cost by scheming and implementing criminal, undemocratic political strategies embracing and using ‘Any Means Necessary’ including blackmail, thugs, violence, mayhem, intimidation, bribery and billion-dollar budget, contract padding and theft. Politics has minimised such crimes as unpunishable and even amusing and laughable mere ‘political antics’.

What hope for Nigeria when the neglected youth, unsupported dropouts or misdirected unemployed youth, instead of being supported to become something in business, are abandoned for three years and picked up by politicians and political parties with questionable morals enticing youth into anti-democracy violent activities.

What hope for Nigeria when in-between elections the youth, already violence-prone and with party backing, are starved of a living and funds? They take to bank robbery and intimidation of traffic and local populations protected by their political and police godfathers in and out of power, feeding off the citizenry. This would have been avoided if there was a better safety net system to nurture school dropouts to pick themselves up and try again, increase school attendance and better small business opportunities. Today we have 6-12 months to correct this before the youth again fall victim to the temptation of the coming 2022 cycle of political money from the 2022 election war chests of politicians and political parties.

What hope for Nigeria after the economic catastrophe characterised by the continued fall of the naira in the midst of plenty of income and plenty of mismanagement and plenty of theft at a time when plenty of banks made plenty of money while plenty of poverty exploded across the violence-scared land? Fifty to 100 Nigerian $ billionaires can save $1b each in CBN, $50-100b, show faith, and shore up our Naira. But will they??

What hope for Nigeria as the political landscape was bereft of morality, failing to pay salary and pensions ruining the banks and the ‘Extended Family’s moral and monetary authority and truncating prosperity and potential for the nuclear and extended family thus morally and monetarily pauperising entire generations? Our amoral commercial traditional get-rich-quick mechanisms including a sadly misdirected corporate driven ‘instant millionaire madness’ were held up by social media to the youth who misread it as inspiration to shun normal jobs.

What hope for Nigeria when the traditional but often unpunished heinous crime of ‘ritual killings’ for money rituals or political advantage has escalated with little government pushback to fight the scourge by campaigns against perpetrating traditional ‘healers’ and even pastors.

What hope for Nigeria against the ever-growing, increasingly violent and huge demands for unrealistic sums of money, under the name of kidnapping? So many innocents from grandparents to babies have even been murdered even when the ransom has been paid out of vindictiveness, hatred or because the victim knew the kidnappers of the contact person.

What hope for Nigeria with a new violence in town. A mother gets thugs to beat up a teacher who caned her child. Thankfully she is facing a court case. A child slit the throat of a junior. The terrors inflicted on the more than five million registered and unregistered IDPs, including rape by carers, who are also essentially kidnap victims as they are taken a place not of their choice. The murder of a five-year-old much-loved kidnapped child by a known face is a terrible crime and a terrible lesson for all families. Sadly, we must do what we were not taught by our grandparents. We have already but must reinforce, for family survival, a marked reduction in the level of responsibility, faith in and trust that we have in others. This is because there are too many examples in the media of brothers against brothers, friends selling out friends, workers exposing employers, boyfriends mutilating girlfriends and teachers kidnapping infants, many strangers waylaying passers-by, just because they were passing by.

Today, sadly from hunger, neglect, greed or natural hatred or just ‘I heard’ or ‘I saw’ opportunistically, anyone can turn against you and your loved ones when you are just passing by or when you leave your loved ones in their care or near where the evil can hear of you and your loved ones.

In my many trips since 1967, it was a responsibility and patriotic duty to assist the police by stopping to pick a needy policeman going to Lagos to get his salary or to help stranded travellers. Now any of them could be a killer. I have also been victim of expressway stoning and murderous terrifying terrorists. Hopefully, the stories are real that the increasingly dangerous Ibadan-Lagos Road is being secured by Oyo and Ogun and Lagos Police Commands.

Every governor must fulfil his Oath of Office and work to their last day in office, a complete four-year contract with the citizens.

Governors’ good works will provide an ‘Election Chest of Good Deeds’. Nigeria must not stop working during election year. Citizenry will be swayed by Good Governance works.

Mr. Governor, work till election day. Invite parents and all concerned citizens to pre-emptively call out potential thugs and traditionalists with political-favour and money-making ritualists among their ranks to redirect them and retrain them away from crime. Upgrade the youth through programmes to truncate 2022 violence.

Good Governors and honest political parties can change Nigeria and bring civilised elections. The USA, land of millions of guns lost no life during election day. Why should we?

January 26, 2022
Bisi Akande: Wading honourably through political intrigues

“Despite my involvements in politics, I was still a novice of the peculiar ways of politicians – their love of intrigues and conspiracies, and their capacity for blackmail”.

-Chief Bisi Akande, in his book, My Participations, An Autobiography, page 141.

If politics are the strategies, intrigues, and maneuvers employed in obtaining a position of power or control, then perhaps no better political theatre is provided than Nigeria. In Nigeria, it is politics to leave one party on the eve of an election, hoping to maximize political gains in another. It is politics to deceive other politicians in order to get them out of office so you can consolidate your own power. It is politics to snatch ballot boxes or otherwise destroy votes or relevant records of an election, if it is not going your way. It is politics to get an Attorney General of the Federation killed in cold blood, without ever finding the killers, let alone bringing them to book. Yes, it is also politics to sidetrack the constitution of your party and the rule of law.

True, these intrigues are not peculiar to Nigeria. What is peculiar is the conjunctive employment of the various intrigues during every election cycle. Equally peculiar is the crudity of the forms they take, including conspiracies; blackmail; deception; falsehoods; cheating; thuggery; and all kinds of malpractices, even including assassinations.

No book since the advent of the present democratic dispensation since 1999 provides an inside look into these intrigues as much as Akande’s My Participations. In the present contribution, I focus on major political intrigues Akande experienced in his political participations.

The Constituent Assembly on which Akande served in 1977 provided the first major insight into political intrigues as various groups and coalitions began to form in preparation for the 1979 general elections (Chapter 8). From then on, intrigues and maneuvers came to overshadow desirable political processes. Akande had a firsthand taste of such intrigues in his hometown after his appointment as the Secretary to the State Government in 1979, following Chief Bola Ige’s victory as Governor of old Oyo State.

Chief J K Fadeyi had led a petition to the Governor against Akande over the location of the College of Education, without letting him (Akande) know about it (Chapter 10), accusing Akande of subversive activities. Since it was the same Fadeyi who had suggested to Akande to stay away after the election, an advice the latter took in good faith (page 129), it is unclear whether the advice was motivated by Fadeyi’s plan to nominate another candidate for the position of SSG (page 133), which the Governor offered to Akande without seeking it.

After responding to the Governor’s query on the petition, Akande quickly tendered his resignation and left. But the governor sent his Deputy after him. He stood his ground that he did not want to meet with “that Fadeyi crowd” (page 141). At the end of the day, Governor Ige cajoled Akande back to office and referred the petition to a larger group of Ila stakeholders, which finally affirmed the original decision.

Such intrigues blossomed, leading to the rigging of the Ige administration out of office in 1983. Before the election, some members of Ige’s cabinet had conspired against him in pursuit of their own political ambition, with many of them eventually defecting to the opposition party. Akande named the leading characters in this intrigue and described their activities in captivating detail (Chapters 11-13).

The military took over again in December 1983 with their own intrigues. A kangaroo Tribunal was set up, which accused the Alliance for Democracy Governors and their Deputies of corruption. Their specific charge was that they enriched their political party. They were imprisoned for 21 years, only to be released by General Ibrahim Babangida after yet another military coup in 1985.

It was painfully surprising to read some reviewers of the book accusing Akande of corruption simply because he was so accused by the military government, without reading the details of the story and without acknowledging that top politicians of the period were detained or imprisoned, all on trumped up charges of corruption, a tactic employed by the military at the time to justify their intervention and perpetuate themselves in power. Also overlooked was Akande’s refusal, despite combined police and military threats, to sign a paper implicating his Governor so he could be set free (Chapters 14-16).

Akande was unhappy with the intrigues following the death of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1987 by the sage’s close associates as they jostled for power and leadership (Chapter 17). Those intrigues would later affect the running of Afenifere, the Yoruba sociocultural group, and the Alliance for Democracy, the political party it birthed. The intrigues would lead to the rejection of Chief Lateef Jakande and Chief Bola Ige in favour of Chief Olu Falae as the presidential candidate of the AD for the 1999 presidential election, which was lost to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.

However, the mother of all intrigues in the book was perpetuated by former President Obasanjo as part of his scheme for reelection in 2003. Working through the leadership of Afenifere, with the connivance of some of the leaders, Obasanjo successfully derailed Southwest Governors from their planned local government elections for fear that they could erode local support for him. Once the governors agreed, Obasanjo put up PDP candidates against them and rigged them out of office, except Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos State. Obasanjo’s maneuvres were supplemented with huge sums of money, at least N1.4 billion for the Southwest contests alone (Chapters 26 and 27).

These manouvres should be distinguished from the coalitions of whole political parties and factions, which gave rise to the formation of the All Progressives Congress in 2013. However, even as the mega party was being formed, intrigues took over as different interests began to manifest, some along the lines of the legacy parties and others along ethnic and religious lines. Nevertheless, superior planning and strategies led to the registration of the party in 2013 and its success in the next two presidential elections (Chapters 32-33).

What is significant about Akande is the way he carried himself with integrity through these intrigues as the Chairman of four different progressive political parties, namely, AD, AC, ACN, and APC, without any complaint or bid to remove him. How he did it and the lessons to be learned from his experiences are the subject of another contribution.

January 19, 2022
Fire; No 2022 ‘Year 4 last lap political paralysis’

The fire in South Africa’s parliament has revealed that it was not insured. This is a common thread for government property especially in developing  countries where insurance is ‘nobody’s business’ though it is the routine responsibility of elected officials and civil servants to maintain infrastructure and hand it over intact to the succeeding political regime.

Perhaps because there are thousands of government buildings and the risk of fire is low, it is a risk worth taking…until a fire occurs. Of course, Nigeria lost many buildings to fires started in fraud-related suspicious or obvious riotous conditions- where insurers can wriggle out of liability.

‘To insure or not to insure public property?’ is a question for political assemblies. No one is immune from fire. Nigeria faces frequent fire incidents in buildings housing documents in corruption or election related matters.

Public markets are common victims around January-March’s harmattan. But we never learn and probably have no market insurance and inadequate market fire-fighting methodology.

State governors, during these current 2022 seasonal fires, should raise a ‘Fire Prevention Alarm!’ for market management committees on better ‘Emergency Harmattan Fire Prevention Measures’ for easier access for fire engines, more water points, more training. Governors should discuss insurance policy for markets. These measures will reduce the incidence, cost and severity of ‘Harmattan Market Fires’.

Many governors, like the presidency face coming elections. They will be judged on their performance to date and they will especially be judged by their performance in this ‘last lap’ year 2022. This year, the fourth year in the four-year political cycle and sometimes the 8th year in a two term governance cycle, is historically the ‘Year of Nothing Happen’ or ‘Year of Progress Paralysis’ because everything  ‘not considered  for political advantage’ is pushed forward and put on the back burner, ignored and abandoned till after the all-consuming elections. This has resulted in a crippling ‘three years work, one year election’ cycle with a one year, 25% of performance time ‘full stop’ to development, and paralysis of even normal servicing of needs in the state. Only a few exemplary governors have worked diligently to their last day in office, keeping their four-year contract with the citizens.

Governors are believed to acquire ‘Election War Chests’ in their last year in the billions abandoning their sworn oath to work to the last day for the citizens irrespective of their party affiliations.

If the governor is also a good person, he will realise that the last lap, the last year, is even more important than the previous three or seven years in office in the judgement of the citizens whether they are voters or not.

Governor you cannot bribe all the citizens with an ‘Election War Chest’ stolen from the same people. But you can bribe all with your Good Governance development till your handover date.

Every single governor has won or lost elections, through normal or rigging methods. But the wise governor has always paid attention to winning the minds and hearts of the citizens through good activities so that even if the election is lost by foul means or fair, his Good Governance reputation will be intact.

This 2022 is the time for the ‘Good Person Governor’ side to shine through with insistence on the continuation of Good Governance, the filling of every pothole, provision of and replenishment of medicines and medical machines for professionals and patients, the provision of text and non-text reading books for teachers and schoolchildren. Nigeria has been too slow at meeting SDGs and cannot afford to stop progress for one election year.

When such good governors eventually leave office and walk the streets and even when they die, as we all must, the citizens will sigh, some will cry, many will smile and say, ‘He was a GGG-Good Governance Governor, God Rest His Soul’. Let the citizens not think back to ‘your bad old days’ and then sneer, hiss, dismiss, spit, curse or even worse proclaim good riddance, arrogant, did nothing for the citizens, only serviced his party people, created more problems than solutions, roads he built lasted less than his tenure, had nothing to show, a negative tenure drawing the state backwards. All have been the voice of the people and said before but, pray, never again.

Those who witnessed the passing of past Nigerian presidents have heard all shades of opinions from the citizenry. From president to pauper, we will all leave the world at an accelerated rate due to the ravages of mostly politically precipitated crime, terrorism, covid and kidnapping. Surely all serving governors face their 2022 ‘Legacy Year’. Yes, fine buildings are popular exit strategies for governors. However, the hearts of soon-to-vote citizenry can be swayed easier by Good Governance works than by bribes-for-votes or even beautiful buildings amidst dirty hospitals and rubbish schools and potholed roads.

Mr Governor, work till election day as if to live in the hearts of citizens during 2022. It will be a better election strategy than amassing an ‘Election War Chest’ to employ constantly abandoned and drop-out youth  as thugs, who should have been trained and redirected during your four years in office and not incubated for the ‘2022 Election War’. Train and upgrade the youth to keep them away from 2022 violence and in peaceful voting queues at election time.

Good governors can change Nigeria by changing their ways. Let ‘Last Lap Good Governance’ win elections.

January 19, 2022
2023: The president Nigeria needs

Back in 2014, as the resurgent opposition pummelled Goodluck Jonathan’s reeling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration, it saw opportunities in the challenges confronting it, to shape its campaign template.

Where the government was being embarrassed daily by a slew scandals, the opposition presented itself as the alternative that would clean up the Augean stable, contrasting its candidate’s Spartan lifestyle with the obscene display of plundered wealth by the then powers-that-be.

Where Jonathan appeared clueless to stop the insurgency that was setting off bombs in the federal capital city and elsewhere, the opposition offered up a retired general with a tough reputation as what the doctor ordered.

The struggling economy was not in the sorry shape it is today. Still, it was troubled and people were horrified at the prospect of the dollar to naira exchange rate cresting N200. Not many would have envisaged it would be verging on N600 to one.

As terrible as these issues were, the perception that the country was in the hands of a weak leader who was being manipulated by his appointees was another killer blow. I recall how back then former President Olusegun Obasanjo dismissively suggested that five women were the ones actually running the country.

Nearly eight years after, a fairly competent opposition could have dusted up the All Progressives Congress (APC) campaign template with minor adjustments and run with it in 2023.

Which isn’t to say that the Buhari administration hasn’t accomplished certain things in its time in office. The problem is Nigeria’s challenges today are so overwhelming they dwarf whatever modest achievements the president has. He may have gotten trains running and managed to deliver a Second Niger Bridge in the Southeast, constructed roads and bridges, but those are just trickles of good news in a larger sea of bad ones.

Take the economy for instance. There were few statistical bright spots last year. In Q2, the country recorded its biggest GDP growth under Buhari. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced that the economy grew by 5.01 percent, following the upward growth trajectory of 0.51 percent in Q1 2021. That same pattern was sustained in Q3 with 4.03 percent.

But what does that statistical positivity translate to considering that unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2020 which was at a 33.3 percent high, was projected by no other than Doyin Salami, chairman, Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) and now Economic Adviser, to hit 40 percent by the end of 2021?

If more than one-third of the populace are not working, the country isn’t working. There’s not much hope that the jobless rate is about to come crashing down.

A link definitely exists between the sky-high unemployment rates and the insecurity menace. The devil has been finding jobs for idle hands and paying generously too. According to a report by SB Morgen (SBM) Intelligence, an estimated N10 billion was demanded by kidnappers ($19.96m) in the first six months of last year. I would suggest those estimates are quite conservative.

But the insecurity problem is fast veering off the tangent of mere criminality to crimes against humanity. Last week newspapers reported how bandits killed over 200 innocent citizens in a mindless orgy of bloodletting in Zamfara State.

The Buhari government is now placing all its bets on a bombing campaign using its newly-acquired Tucano jets. But even if as Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, suggests carpet bombing does the trick and defangs the bandits, what about the underlying conditions that threw them up? Will they also be bombed out of existence?

Insurgency in the Northeast and banditry in the Northwest have devastated the northern economy – with far-reaching consequences for the entire country. Farming has taken a hit along with its supporting value chain and dire consequences for food security. Productive hands have fled, preferring to eke out a living riding commercial motorcycles down South.

Against this backdrop, I am not sure why anyone would want to be president given the scary challenges awaiting whoever takes over from Buhari. Interestingly, rumours suggest that even Jonathan, once condemned as incompetent in handling lesser troubles, is keen on returning to confront problems that have become behemoths.

So what sort of president does the country need at this point? For starters, we’ve seen with the incumbent that the hood doesn’t make the monk. The belief that a retired general would do a better job of securing the country has not held up.

At this point we don’t necessarily need a former security operative but a visionary with a plan; someone who understands that the country – especially the North – isn’t going to be stabilised just by bombing forests.

What solutions do they have that are superior to Buhari’s famous order to security agents to shoot on sight anyone found in the bush with an AK-47?

Jonathan recruited mercenaries to tackle Boko Haram in the period leading to the 2015 polls and there was a brief respite. What solutions can our would-be presidents bring to the table that are different from the blunt axes currently being deployed?

The next president must be someone who understands business. He should be someone the local and international business community can trust. Nigeria’s current crises will not abate until there’s significant positive movement on the economic front.

He must be a unifier who can begin healing to the country not just from the polarisations of recent years, but also from the additional damage that would be done as aspirants go into full blooded battle for tickets of the two leading parties.

Already, we are seeing a troubling willingness on the part of politicians to tear up agreements that have evolved through the years for peaceful power sharing. Flawed as it may be, zoning has been a template that stabilised the polity from the Second Republic till date. The suggestion that it was just a device conjured to deal with a momentary problem is fraudulent.

Even those who make a song and dance as why merit should be the yardstick for picking the next president, don’t have a measure by which an individual’s suitability for that high office can be judged? Are you qualified because of elocution or erudition? Remember we once had a PhD as president and Nigerians threw him out.

In the end we are left with the aspirants’ track record and our gut feeling. Sit back, pass the popcorn, you’re about to witness one of the most thrilling reality shows on earth as Nigeria picks a new president.

January 12, 2022
‘2022- Stop violent and corruption terrorism’

For Nigeria not to fail, we, friend and foe, thief and victim must think and act ‘Nigeria above self’ and commit to the Nigerian Pledge to be FLH – Faithful, Loyal and Honest. Are you FLH? Start today! Do a simple ‘Fellow Nigerian Test’ in 2022. ‘Can what you do be shown on NTA without embarrassing you?’ FLH are chief ingredients of ‘The National Cake’ which all are entitled to, by birth, but which is stolen by the few, leaving millions disillusioned with nationalism.

While a nation of mostly good people will survive any storm, a nation of mostly thieves and foes, when they have destroyed the good, will destroy each other creating negative growth. No country can survive more than 10% CINS- Corruption, Incompetence (in performance and supervision), Negligence (of duty), Selfishness (ethnicity). Of course, one mega-thief or mass murderer can wipe out a good country or particular target or group. Nigerians deserve better.

But leadership can mislead. Followership can be misled, mislead or force wrong agendas. How well taught are our leaders on the details of Good Governance? Good governance means a more attractive, economically cheaper society with National Cake going around. Corruption has financial, moral and policy corruption components. Are you guilty? Stop NOW!

We suffer from abandoning established good governance steps: Since colonialism stopped, our political elite has coerced the professionals in works departments nationwide to dilute and jettison ‘Maintenance Culture’, a positive colonial British legacy and key to Good Government’s Sustainable Development even before Sustainable Development became a byword. Our leadership fails and works professional class are forced to fail.

The leadership failed to realise that the colonial 4-7year cycle of maintenance, more frequent for infection-prone hospitals, and weekly pothole filling actually were highly rewarding to contractor/civil servant cartels and citizens alike. Instead, these servants of the people only managed to do no work and instead stole ‘Maintenance Budgets’ with consequent degeneration of infrastructure. Do politicians and civil servants realise the incalculable damage they have done over many years? Is it ignorance or are they ill-prepared about the details of Good Governance or do they have knowledge but lack empathy, people-love?

Nigerians, not Nigeria, have failed our citizens born with ‘Great Expectations’ of a well-endowed developing country. Certainly, the majority of Nigerians, given the infrastructure, will be entrepreneurial and survive happily. Nigeria is alive, if not well, today because of millions doing honest work, dodging entrapment by ‘CINS’ of incompetently supervised uncontrolled ‘uniforms’. The good still far outweigh the bad. But in difficulty, many good become targets and question goodness when compared to the status of the bad. Millions of suffering Nigerian children question the family loyalty of honest parents and grandparents suffering and dying without worked-for salaries or pensions, SAP-a human right. They compare their parents’ pitiable situation to SAP-drenched fortunes of National Assembly members, governors, officials and hangers-on who are accused of obstructing parental SAP and pauperised their families. Politics and theft have stunted Nigeria’s ability to meet infrastructure and superstructure development standards accounting for where Nigeria falls in Sustainable Development Goals and yardsticks like Literacy, Housing, Open Defecation, Maternal and Infant Morbidity and Mortality. We are sadly ‘Out of Stock’ in most schools and for Life-Saving and Life-Maintenance Equipment and medicaments. I deliberately use capitals because these are ‘Key Measurements of Citizen Suffering’, supposedly addressed as stolen ‘Budgetary Items’.

Good governance demands knowledge of several areas. Monetarily, the key ‘Nigerian Progress/Regression Chart‘ features measured financially are unrealistic and underperforming states + FCT and Federal Budgets, the Foreign Reserves Policy – Ideally $75-100b but now $40.5b and a Foreign Exchange Rate catastrophically fallen from N1= $1.5 in the 70s, when I started work, now a shameful N414-575=$1. The monetary issues predict the social factors like The Poverty Level – now estimated at 70-80%, and Unemployment Levels – estimated at 40-60%. Please add The Happiness Index linked to the Security Index – Zero%. From village to villa, who is safe?

This nationwide failure to flourish is not Nigeria’s fault. Nigeria is a truly a beautiful multi-climate ‘mere geographical expression’ which has provided all Nigerians need – ‘SOIL,’ -Soil, Sun, Oil and much more underground. We refuse to harness the SUN, sufficiently!

In disciplined societies, these are developed into blessings. Even the UK uses its anaemic sun. However, they are not a necessity for development as many countries with no ‘Soil, Sun or Oil’ have huge foreign reserves, strong currencies and high SDG levels from Good Governance. They ‘MAINTAINED’ and ‘UPGRADED’ their citizens’ Education, Health, Science, Tech, transport and communication opportunities regularly They did not only ‘UPGRADE’ politicians and their jeeps every 4 years.

Even a thief maintains his home and car. Genuine, non-corrupt, non-politicised ‘ROUTINE MAINTENANCE’ employs many, keeping the wheels of income and progress grinding. The current profit-sharing contractor-politician/party policies have failed. ‘Contract-splitting’, if corruption is eliminated, allows more contractors access to a living wage, more jobs, quicker contract execution and distributes wealth.

Yes, ‘Stop terrorism -2022’ causing IDPs and emptying Nigeria’s farmlands and villages. Also stop the political, civil servant and contractor terrorists whose cumulative theft from salaries, pensions and contracts have stolen the food from our tables and progress from a generation!’ No country can move forward without a ‘maintenance culture’.

‘Stop Violence Terrorism’ and ‘Corruption Terrorism in 2022!’ and get a younger 2022 generation of top political leaders for 2023-2027! Political recycling has never helped Nigeria develop!!

January 12, 2022
Bisi Akande: Looking corruption in the face

“I never never gave or demanded bribe from anyone all my life.” —Bisi Akande, in My Participations: An Autobiography, page 400.

In several occasions in his celebrated autobiography, Chief Bisi Akande asserted with confidence that he never gave or demanded a bribe. The above quote is the most assertive of them all. Preceding the quote on the same page, he also made bold to declare: “No one ever wrote any petition against me to the EFCC, ICPC or the police for any fraud or wrongdoing during my term of office”. He even vouchsafed for his Cabinet members: “All of us who served in my government, all my commissioners and others, came out the way we went in. No one was richer and not a single one of my political appointees was indicted after we left office”.

Many reviewers of the book either ignored the statement as well as the supporting evidence or found it impossible within the corrupt ecosystem of Nigerian political engagements. I have known Bisi Akande for nearly 70 years and have always known him as Master or Mr Integrity. As the evidence below will show, he did not suddenly adopt an incorruptible posture.

As a pupil teacher at barely sixteen years of age, Akande first encountered and detested corruption in the form of mischief by local supervisors of schools in 1955, who inflated the statistics on primary school enrollment in order to deceive the authorities in the bid to take undue advantage of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s free primary education scheme. At that time, as he intimated the reader, “I was too young to understand the mischief and too inexperienced for it” (page 62).

By the following year, when he was appointed as the Health Officer as a teacher in training at the Divisional Teachers Training College in Ile-Ife, Akande had begun to firm up on his anti-corruption stance. One of his duties as Health Officer was to examine and taste the students’ food and pronounce it good for consumption or whether the students should be compensated with nine pence each, if he condemned the food. He resisted the pressure mounted on him by fellow students, who preferred the money. He stood his ground, even when the students ganged up to lie against him before the Principal.

Once he ventured into politics and got elected as a Councillor, corruption and various fraudulent activities began to surface frequently. In 1977, some of his fellow Councillors, who constituted the electorate for delegates to the Constituent Assemby, which worked on the draft Constitution, demanded N3000 to checkmate Chief Kola Balogun, who was alleged to have offered a bribe of N200 each for their vote. Akande’s angry response was instant: “I refused bluntly and walked out on them in anger.” (page 115). Even after an elder promised to contribute half of the bribe, Akande refused and did not turn up for the meeting in the palace, where the matter could be raised. He even left town only to return on the eve of the election. He got elected anyway.

When he was eventually elected Governor of Osun state in 1999, he took every measure possible to avoid corruption in government. Having been warned against possible mischief by Iyiola Omisore, who he has chosen to be his Deputy. He told him what he had heard about him and warned him never to use any forged certificate (page 263). Unfortunately, however, it was the same Omisore that nearly soiled his governorship.

In Chapter 19 of the book, Akande detailed several encounters with Omisore over fraudulent activities, for example, over supposed car rentals and water chemicals contract. He also had disagreements with civil servants over illegal payments, such as what they termed “critical allowances” and inflated purchases. For example, he refused to endorse the purchase of tires for N40,000 each, which should have cost only N6000 each! He also had serious encounters with the House of Assembly, which sought to impeach him with the backing of his Deputy, who knew that his antics were not working with the Governor. He refused to bribe the legislators and prepared for impeachment, by packing his belongings from the government house. It turned out, however, that truth and reason prevailed.

The corrupt activities of civil servants were carried to his doorstep: On the occasion of his daughter’s wedding, the government protocol department procured food and drinks without his knowledge, which he rejected as unnecessary as he had personally provided everything for his daughter’s wedding. Nevertheless, he would be confronted weeks later with a memorandum for his approval for N300,240 to defray the costs of the procurements for his daughter’s wedding. Sensing the “immorality” of such expenditure, he quickly wrote his own personal check for the amount and obtained a Government Treasury Receipt No 252399, dated July 5, 2000 (page 273).

Akande even refused to bribe Obasanjo’s officials against the advise of his Health Commissioner, when officials of the Budget Office told them that the huge and unnecessary deduction was been taken from Osun state’s allocation by the Obasanjo administration, deductions which were later paid when a PDP governor succeeded him (page 389)! Akande also refused to be bribed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was wooing him for political reasons, by rejecting offers that typical Nigerian politicians would readily jump at. For example, he rejected the plot Obasanjo allotted to him in Abuja. He also declined to follow Obasanjo to China (page 387). Obasanjo himself would later describe Akande as “a prudent and honest governor” (page 388).

For Akande, corruption is not limited to the appropriation of government funds or bribery alone. He also sees the dirty intrigues and falsification of truth as corruption. This can be deduced from his carefully worded letter to Tom Ikimi, who went behind the party, which made him a Committee Chairman, to act behind, and on behalf of, the political party, which delegated a specific function to him, without reporting to the party (see pages 433-434).

To date, only former Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, who succeeded Akande, has come out to accuse Akande of corruption, but only as a measure of self-defence against Akande’s own accusations. However, anyone who has carefully read Akande’s account (pages 392-396) would realise that Oyinlola’s accusation is spurious at best.

Akande nation-wide recognition as Mr Integrity deserves in part from the above evidence. More will be provided in other areas of governance in subsequent reviews of his book.

January 5, 2022
Speaking back – 2002; Speaking out – 2022

Happy New Year 2022.

I thank everyone who thanked me for my role in the fantastic big stage production by Doyenne Circle and the performance of ‘Speaking Out’, the musical, performed from January 1 – 3 at the MUSON. I personally thank Doyenne Circle for producing it and an irrepressible 25-30 strong all-female cast with superstars led by Mama Onyeka Onwenu, Kate Henshaw, Patience Ozokwor, Lota Chukwu and a host of newer talent establishing a similarly enviable reputation- true mentoring -all under the Director Kenneth Uphopho. Wow! The material was ‘written and composed’ by Dr Chukwuma Okoye ‘based on original poetry by Tony Marinho’ That is me, he-he! Thank you. I bow.

Permit me to add some relevant historical perspective to this latest performance of my poetry. This is wonderful déjà vu for myself and Dr Okoye as my female-empowerment poetry in Engraved was first performed in the play/musical ‘Speaking Back’ UI, 2002/4. A dream coming true twice. Wow!

So ‘Speaking Out’ is the result of a historical journey to this amazing 2022 performance begun in 1990-2001 with the original poetry collection eventually published as ‘Engraved’ by Mr Bankole Olayebi of Bookcraft, and discussed with Dr Chukwuma Okoye. As with any writer, I have always wanted my work on stage. With no financial assistance, we worked closely on creating a production which I funded/produced and I also was deeply involved in the rehearsal/ artistic flow and diction and emphasis on words aspects. I claim no credit for the music and singing, talents which completely passed me by, but I insisted that not a single word should be lost or drowned by the music. Music must never become noise. It was called by us ‘Speaking Back’ to be different and successfully staged at the University of Ibadan Arts Theatre in 2002/4. Many actresses cut their teeth in that production in 2002, including some witnessing the production of ‘Speaking Out’ today. Chukwuma and I discussed a Lagos/MUSON appearance but funding collapsed. In fact, the 2022 MUSON performance happened only because of the participation and inspiration of one individual when she was a student in ‘Speaking Back’ in 2002 who chooses to remain anonymous. We must all thank her anonymously until she ‘Speaks Out’ about ‘Speaking Back’ and steps forward to take her own bow. She has delivered a giant iroko from the seed sown and grown into a ‘funtastic’ successful stage play tree in 2002.

The road started probably in the 1960s when I was in St Gregory’s, becoming Head Boy in 1967. A lifetime of often-traumatic but wide exposure to all human conditions from humour to horror, from tenderness to tragedy, from birth to burial all drove me to use prose, poetry, plays to document our present for the future. My poetry and other writings document the rollercoaster experience of the female through my role as a human being, doctor and also as an obstetrician and gynaecologist. I have had the fearful privilege, and often terror, of working on the underfunded frontline of maternal care contributing to trying to positively impact girls-to-women, directly and indirectly through medical and social advice and actions – often surgical.

I remain in fear that ‘Delivery Day Is The Most Dangerous Day In The Life Of A Woman And Her Baby’. Pregnancy and delivery claim too many lives in countries made poor by bad politics and poor health financing in spite of professional and international organisations. Only many amazing doctors, nurses, mortuary staff and the families are aware of wasted mothers’ lives in the ‘War of the Womb’.

I did not always succeed in saving life, but always tried. Things were often beyond our control especially poor government policies and necessities being ‘Out of stock’. During my 3000+ Caesarean Sections and tens of thousands of deliveries, I always wondered of the baby ‘What will you be?’– doctor or devil, saint or sinner, butcher or burglar, radiologist or robber , rapper or rapist, mechanic or murderer. A doctor who is robbed or murdered could have delivered his assailant 30 years previously. I meet many adults whose mothers said that ‘He was the Dr who delivered you’. I am humbled to have helped.

Still in 2022, we see what girls and women go through from poor life-skill education systems delivering ignorance, being misled by peers and guardians, or because facilities are unavailable due to devaluation of the female. We set up Educare Trust to help.

This double victory with Dr/Prof Chukwuma Okoye through his contacts in Doyenne Circle in 2022 is ‘Wow!’ Is Netflix next like Dr Wale Okediran’s Tenants of the House? I must give respect to the journey and memory of my uncle, Dr Sunbo Marinho, Technical Director at the UI Arts Theatre where we cut our own teeth on stage with Dexter Lindersey and others making me and Dr Cyril Etomi, no strangers to serious theatre, as we performed in The Medea, The Importance of Being Ernest, and After One Time (1960s-70). My play, Why UI? was performed in 1999, and Speaking Back with Dr Okoye in 2002/4.

Even now at 72+, I am privileged to still work in using ultrasound as a weapon in the war against diseases affecting girls-to-women and also boys-to-men. My personal take is ‘Aluta continua, vitoria un-acerta’ –‘The struggle continues, victory uncertain’.

But let us offer ‘Speaking Back 2002’ and ‘Speaking Out 2022’ to the joyful survival of all the female gender.

January 5, 2022
Bisi Akande: Man and Book of the Year

No book launched in Nigeria in 2021 excited the public and the media as much as My Participations: An Autobiography (xxviii + 557 pages), authored by Chief Bisi Akande and published by Gaskia Media Limited, Lagos, in November 2020, with a Forward by Professor Wole Soyinka.

It takes a thorough and complete reading of the book (not the market noise generated by armchair reviews) to realize that only a bold, honest, and forthright participant in high stakes politics would say or do certain things recorded in the book, such as telling a sitting President, “You must be out of his mind”; resigning as Secretary to a State Government on principle, only to be cajoled back into the job by a surprised Governor; or refusing to bribe councillors for their vote or legislators not to impeach him. He declared and demonstrated several times in the book that he neither offered nor received a bribe. Nobody or group has come out with credible evidence to the contrary.

Moreover, no one has controverted the evidence in the book that the author was favourably courted by many outstanding national and local political leaders, from Chief Obafemi Awolowo to Chief Bola Ige. Besides, he was and remains a beloved citizen of his native Ila Orangun, where he is the Asiwaju (frontline leader) and his home state of Osun, where he is revered as Baba Akande. All these attributes attracted the attention of four different political parties, which made him Chairman, namely, Alliance for Democracy; Action Congress; Action Congress of Nigeria; and All Progressives Congress. A common thread across these parties is the welfarist ideology of progressivism from which, till today, Akande never winked.

It is not surprising, therefore, that book attracted praise in some quarters, while generating controversy in others, controversies which gave us insights into certain events, while seeing their participants in a new light. The author is praised for giving pulsating accounts of his own participations in Nigeria’s political development, partisan politics, and governance, by providing eyewitness accounts of certain defining moments in Nigerian political history, especially since 1977. In the process, he unveiled the intrigues that shaped key events from the work of the Constituent Assembly in 1977/78 to the formation of the All Progressives Congress in 2014 and the ousting of the Peoples Democratic Party from power in 2015.

He is also praised for the thoroughness of his accounts in citing the locations and dates of certain key events, while also naming key participants, quoting conversations and quoting figures, where necessary. He never shied away from expressing his opinion on key events and the actors behind them. One such event is the assassination of Chief Bola Ige, then Attorney General and Minister of Justice. The author left no one in doubt about the possible culpability of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his government as well as the alleged involvement of Iyiola Omisore.

Similarly, Obasanjo’s trickery of the Afenifere leaders and AD governors in 2003 in service of his reelection led the author to describe the trickster as “wily”, “cunning”, and “ruthless”, leading to the verdict on the trickster’s “relentless dalliance” as that of “a faithless suitor and an unblinking philanderer on the political field”.

At the same time, however, the book provides interesting historical details about Ila Oragun, the author’s birthplace and hometown, its place in Yoruba history, and its political development about which most reviewers appear uninterested. Yet, the author’s own growth and development as a person, professional, and politician parallel the growth and development of his home town, one shaping, as much as being shaped by, the other.

Besides, the author delved deep into his own family history. Few would narrate in detail the abject poverty of his parents as the author did, portraying his father as a palmwine tapper whose income could not sustain basic necessities, let alone afford the children’s school fees. He had no qualms in letting us know that his father died a pauper, because that is the truth.

Yet, Akande struggled through school, once trying to become a Mechanic, until he completed the Teachers Grade III certificate. He later veered into accounting, learning via correspondence colleges, while remaining a classroom teacher. Only those who took correspondence courses in those days would appreciate the discipline required to complete them successfully while working full time. Yet, Akande did and became a qualified Accountant at the age of 22.

Faced with choice between a funeral party for his mother and paying his brother’s school fees, he chose the latter and left town peremptorily to avoid the family’s prescribed traditional rituals for his mother’s funeral as involvement would deplete his resources.

Unfortunately however, the press has been busy orchestrating the views of those exposed in the book, who began to spit fire as as soon as snippets appeared in the press. And the press blew up their condemnation of the book. Even those who cared to read the book were lured into finding faults, by overlooking the book’s merit and that of its author. This is not surprising, because, as Professor Soyinka foretold in his Forward, “This is one historic reckoning that will make many uncomfortable”.

No one seemed to care to even investigate some of the allegations, if they are to be so characterized, that the author levied against some of the participants in the events he described. Take, for example, Chief Ayo Adebanjo’s response to the allegations against him. He focused on the Lekki house, alleged to have been built for him by Bola Tinubu. That was just one of several allegations against him in the book, to which he had no answer. What is more, soon after Chief Adebanjo released his rebuttal on the Lekki house, an interview granted by Chief Segun Osoba surfaced in which Chief Adebanjo’s recalcitrance and duplicitous role was also revealed.

Other detractors of the book focused on what they alleged as a plan to promote Bola Tinubu’s presidential ambition. But I know that the book would have been launched years ago but for delay in publication. A further delay was caused by the second wave of COVID-19 when the book was finally published in November, 2020.

The book should be read from cover to cover in order to appreciate its value and the import of Professor Soyinka’s forward. A serialised review of the book is forthcoming. In the meantime, I have no hesitation in promoting it as my Book of the Year here in Nigeria, and its author as Man of the Year for his courage, resilience, forthrightness, and faithfulness to courses, principles, and ethical standards.

December 29, 2021