Category: Opinion

By Collins Ugwu

Amidst Nigeria’s well known dysfunctional fault lines, the fallouts of the 2023 general elections, and the deep religious and ethnic disharmony it generated across the country, Nigerians have been given a unity prescription that does not need arms or weapons, nor put our national treasury in the red to implement.

A global Igbo-centric Think Tank of professionals, Nzuko Umunna
is one group that believes in the continued unity of the country through peaceful coexistence and mutual respects for all, based on equality before the law. The group continues to build trust, sustain the oneness between Ndigbo and other ethnic nationalities in the country, as its core objective.

Thus, last month, it organised the second edition of its Handshakes Across Nigeria in Enugu and came up with a compelling communique, noting that continuing its bridge- building project is a national imperative.

The communique signed by the new President of the Group, Prof. Chinedu Nebo and the Executive Secretary, Dr Uju Agomoh, said:

“Aware of the tremendous impact the previous handshakes and this present conference had on the leaders and people of all ethnic nationalities, mindful of the need to deepen the conversation of building a new Nigeria among Nigerians, the Handshake Conference resolves that more Handshake Conferences shall be organised, and equally resolved that the Handshake Conference be moved to other parts of the nation since conference 1 and 2 were done in Lagos, and Enugu respectively.

“The conference notes with dismay the glaring presence of inequality, lack of equal participation, and grave imbalances in citizens’ right to aspire and achieve their lofty dreams. The Handshake conference demands for a Nigeria where every citizen must be granted equal rights and justice.

“The Handshake Conference observed the lopsidedness in the dispensation of justice, equity and fairness. Therefore, the conference insists that for Nigeria to practice the real sense of democracy, the country must operate the true tenets of democracy and abhor tribalism, nepotism, disobedience to court orders, the rule law and the like.”

The conference also resolved that a replica of Nzuko Umunna in all ethnic nationalities is vital way to expand the good news, foster quicker traction and synergy of the Nzuko Umunna principle among people.

It noted that the critical spirit of the peer review mechanism, will encourage all ethnic nationalities that replicate Nzuko Umunna in other zones of the country for greater national unity, cohesion and inter-ethnic engagement.”

The group used the occasion of the conference to ask President Muhammadu Buhari to release Nnamdi Kanu unconditionally.
It said: “Aware of the powers bestowed on the President by virtue of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), the conference calls on the President to direct the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation to enter a nolle prosequi and unconditionally release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from unlawful incarceration at the DSS cell.”

The group also inaugurated her new leadership led by Nebo.

“Propelled to continue the mandate of bridge building and providing leadership in difficult times, Nzuko Umunna is excited about her new leadership being piloted by Prof. Nebo, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) and ex Honourable Minister of Power. Nzuko Umunna wishes him and his team a successful tenure.

“Regarding the urgency and importance of the Southeast Integration and national partnership, the new President of Nzuko Umunna declares that moving forward, Southeast integration and sustaining of national partnership through handshakes, will be the major focus of his tenure.

“The conference conveys its deepest sense of gratitude and appreciation to His Excellency Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for exceptional hospitality in hosting the Handshake Conference.

“We also acknowledged the pivotal support the Southeast Governors extended to the Conference, especial

By Chris Onyekachi

In a few weeks, the President-Elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will be sworn in as Nigeria’s 16th President. With the country reeling from a gloomy economy, epileptic power, abysmal infrastructure, and unemployment rate projected to hit 37 per cent this year, according to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), and a near disillusioned citizenry, there’s almost no time for revelry.  He has to seize the cudgels to immediately deliver on some low-hanging fruits in order to present what may look like a sop to Cerberus. 

In terms of his mechanics of work, Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has shared some hints that the Tinubu Presidency will see a closet monitoring of the work of Ministers and other aides as opposed to the outgoing administration. “Unlike President Buhari who puts up a tram and allows them to work and hardly interferes in what we do as ministers, Tinubu is a micro-manager. He will give you a job and stays with you as you execute your tasks,” Fashola, also a former chief of staff to Tinubu, quips.

Given his pedigree as Governor of Lagos State between 1999-2007, where his imprints as a deft manager of men and resources are legendary, Tinubu, who’s expected to rekindle his sagacity and ability to hunt the best talents from across the country into his cabinet, is aware of the challenges and burden of history as he becomes the new tenant in Aso Rock Villa, Abuja. He says his administration will not only lift our dear country Nigeria to a higher pedestal but fight and eliminate corruption.

“My mission is to better Nigeria’s position as a prosperous country for the coming generation since this is crucial to achieving sustainable security.”

At an engagement with the members of the Federation of Construction in Nigeria (FOCIN) in Abuja, he says, “We don’t want to scare away investors of today and tomorrow, but we promise you, we will eliminate corruption. Part of it is that we look at ourselves too. Not just enforcement but to reduce the propensity for corruption.

“What we must look at are our numerous challenges but our destination is a prosperous, better Nigeria, not for me as an individual but for our children and their children. If we fail to invest in the future of those children and we take ours away to a foreign country for better education, neglecting the children of the poor, the result is what we are seeing today in the form of insecurity. They become a threat to your own investment,”

No doubt, Tinubu who clinched victory in the February 25th, 2023 Presidential Election on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), will need to do some drastic cuts in the bloated running cost of governance in order to free more funds to take care of education, healthcare, infrastructure, and other critical social welfare areas. In particular, he needs to embark on projects that will not only generate massive jobs for our teeming youths who are leaving the country in droves but also reflate the economy to enhance the people’s purchasing power. Tinubu must resolve to improve on the achievements and successes of the outgoing administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

In spite of mounting flakes against the policies of the Buhari administration, blamed for making Nigeria the poverty capital of the world, his government more than any other in the last 20 years, has committed more money to education, healthcare, and infrastructure. It has built the second Niger Bridge, which has been on the drawing board for more than 40 years, the Loko-Oweto bridge to shorten commuting from the Southeast to Abuja by four hours, and is on the verge of completing the rehabilitation work of the Lagos-Ibadan and the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano expressways. The government has also shown more determination to rebuild the railways which long became decrepit. These are laudable projects that will not only facilitate the commuting of passengers but also movements of cargo around the country.

Tinubu should ensure that the rehabilitation of highways like Okeke-Benin, Enugu-Port Harcourt, Lagos-Abeokuta, Enugu-Onitsha, Benin-Warri, Ota-Idiroko, Agbor-Uromi, and many other vital link roads across the country are also prioritized and completed. Although the $2.5 billion 4th Mainland Bridge is being built by the Lagos State Government under a PPP arrangement, the Tinubu administration should also support it given its magnitude via the Sovereign Wealth Fund to reduce the burden of the huge financial outlay involved in the project.

The Tinubu government as a deliberate policy must put more money in the pockets of the average Nigerian who are presently famished and improve their spending capacity that has been undermined by inflation, the low exchange rate of the naira, high cost of fuel, and the geometric increase in the cost of foodstuffs and other social services.

The indices confronting the new government are a bit scary and could instill fright in the not too strong-hearted but not Tinubu who is reputed to surmount this with his Midas touch. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), says Nigeria’s headline inflation rate increased to 22.04 per cent on a year-on-year basis in March 2023. This is according to the NBS Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Inflation Report for March 2023 released in Abuja on Monday.

The report indicates that the figure is 0.13 per cent points higher compared to the 21.91 per cent recorded in February 2023. It said on a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate in March 2023 was 6.13 per cent higher than the rate recorded in March 2022 at 15.92 per cent.

“This shows that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) increased in March 2023 when compared to the same period in March 2022.”

The report said the contributions of items on the divisional level to the increase in the headline index are food and non-alcoholic beverages at 11.42 per cent and housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuel at 3.69 per cent.

One sure way to tackle the despondency arising from the acute cost of living is to create jobs via support for agricultural production and agro-processing industries both for export and local production in many virgin areas. Taking a cue from many Asians who are setting up big farms in different parts of the country, Nigerians must be equally equipped to set up farms focusing on different agricultural products. But we must first create a safe and congenial environment for farming by dealing with the security issues that have driven many away from their farms.

•Onyekachi is a Political Analyst based in Abuja

It seems that events which led to the nation’s civil war are yet to receive any forms of closure 53 years after General Yakubu Gowon announced with the chagrin of a sly conqueror that there was No Victor, No Vanquished.

The 33 months war which was fought between the people of the Eastern Region(Biafra)  and the rest of the Nigerian Federation has continued to reverberate through the years resurrecting alongside the yearnings for the Biafran Republic and exposing further the numerous fault lines of this nation called the Giant of Africa.

Thus 56 years after Colonel Emeka  Ojukwu declared that the “territory ( Now comprising of four states of the SouthSouth Region and five states of SouthEast region) known as and called Eastern Nigeria together with her continental shelf and territorial waters shall henceforth be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of “The Republic of Biafra”, the curtains are yet to come to a close on the series of events that led to the declaration and the war itself.

Today, it is reverberating in Abia State as the newly elected Governor, Dr. Alex Otti has come under repeated fire for inviting General Yakubu Gowon to chair a prayer event to kickstart his inauguration as governor.

Nigerians must recall that Umuahia, the capital of Abia is the birthplace of Major General John Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi Ironsi. Nigeria’s first military head of state or Supreme Commander as he was then referred to, who was toppled in a bloody coup that propped up Yakubu Gowon as his successor.

To those protesting, the invitation of Gowon to Umuahia is like inviting Gowon to dance on the second grave of Ironsi ( Recall that Ironsi was initially buried in a shallow grave in Ibadan before his body was exhumed and flown to Umuahia for a befitting funeral) Gowon was also Ironsi’s Chief of Staff who obviously looked the other way while his Supreme Commander was been beaten black and blue and fellow brother officers were senselessly slaughtered only to assume power because according to Ojukwu, he was the head of troops with their fingers poised at the triggers. Gowon was military head of state while the September pogroms raged on, resulting in the senseless massacre of Igbos and other members of the Eastern Region who were all mistaken as “yamirin”, a derogatory term for Igbo. The same Gowon single handedly reneged on the Aburi accord, forcing Ojukwu to secede from Nigeria thus provoking the civil war. The same Gowon presided over a war in which Egyptian flown MIGs were strafing hospitals and markets killing unarmed civilians amidst other forms of atrocities.

Furthermore, many of those irked by Gowon’s invitation have claimed that he may be forgiven for his actions that led to the coup and during the civil war, that given the circumstances in which he found himself in then, he could not have done otherwise, but then has he sought to reconcile with those he did wrong, particularly the family of his Supreme Commander?

Has Gowon told Nigerians what actually was Ironsi’s offense? Or the offense of brother officers who were merely slaughtered because they were of a particular ethnic group? Even the abrogation of Decree 34 which was a ruse for the July 29 coup had the imprints of the same Gowon who as Chief of Staff was a member of the Supreme Military Council that deliberated on the same Decree 34 and approved of it.

Gowon also justified the July Counter coup by blaming Ironsi for the slow efforts to put on  January 15 plotters on trial, the same Gowon was however quick to give Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu the popular face behind the coup a military funeral with full honors when his body was discovered during the war. If Ironsi was gruesomely murdered because he somewhat dilly dallied on what to do with the January 15 boys, what then justified Nzeogwu’s military funeral, in the heat of a conflict in which he was on the other side?

What will Gowon be praying about in the hometown of an innocent man he himself personally betrayed and succeeded amidst such display of treachery? Are there no more better Christians from the North or within Nigeria that Otti seeking to commend Abia State to God before he resumes office could have reached out to ? The Kukahs, Adeboye’s , Onaiyekan’s or  Selman’s?

The war, I agree is over, and while I do not begrudge Gowon for a number of his other actions while he served as Supreme Conmander, or share the present day separatist tendencies and inclinations,  I like many other Nigerians cannot pretend to be sangfroid in such circumstances. Make no mistakes, Gowon as a Nigerian citizen is free to move anywhere  within the nation, it is within his constitutional rights to do so but as for the Umuahia visitation, there is then the question of morality and asking Gowon to come and pray in Umuahia cannot effectively answer the moral questions of justice,  a very essence upon which all moral judgements defined by Immanuel Kant  as binding on all human beings no matter what kind of society we live in.

Mutatis mutandis, politics is not the same as repudiating the ethics of public administration. To say that the executive governor of a state has the right or power to stop the payment of workers’ salary – what they earn legitimately – is, to say the least, an evolution throwback! That the society could not be bothered, due to political reasons or factors, is also a tragedy!

The Governor of Osun, Ademola Adeleke, has done the unprecedented by withholding the November 2022 salary and allowances of public servants in the state. Not only that, he has also refused to pay the half-salary arrears of the same category of people! If those people were not entitled to the salaries and allowances in the first place, that would have been a different matter entirely!

Section 15 of the Labour Act states that “wages shall become due and payable at the end of each period for which the contract is expressed to subsist (daily, weekly or at such other period as may be agreed upon) provided that where the period is more than one month, the wages become due and payable at intervals not exceeding one month.” Without doubt, this and other relevant statutes are equally ingrained in various international human rights instruments to which Nigeria is a signatory.

Well, it’s not only Adeleke who’s guilty of this wrong act. The technocrats and the administrative staff working with and/or for him are also to be blamed! Give it to him! The public may be asking for too much if it assumed that the governor should be versed in public administration. But what about the paid professionals, who’re working for him? In sane climes, at least, one of them should have told him that doing such was against the norms of public service; and that, if the abnormality was allowed to stay, it’d become the norm. If, per adventure, Adeleke is booted out today, another governor that comes in will also do whatever pleases him, not necessarily according to the dictates of the ethics of public administration. So, somebody needs to tell the governor that withholding the people’s salary, illegitimately, is not a civilised way of flaunting power in the 21st century.

With the helpful service of hindsight, that members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the Osun State House of Assembly (OSHA), even with a clear majority in the House, failed woefully to stand for the people, is no longer news! Come to think of it, salaries of functional public servants – some of them apolitical – whose only crime was that they worked for former governors of the state from another political bent were withheld! Still, our Honourable Members kept mute! People who were previously employed by the state were also sacked but, instead of siding with the dispossessed and the distressed, OSHA members were busy fighting over Christmas gifts, with rumours of impeachment proceedings flying hither and thither like loose papers. Is it any wonder they were ramblingly using former Governor Rauf Aregbesola as a cover-up for their inadequacies? Well, the good news about Nigeria’s emerging democracy is that elected representatives who fail to fulfill their election promises can now be booted out during elections. Thankfully too, the barometer of politics is now easier measured when one understands how to measure the street credibility profile of a candidate.

To say the least, Adeleke’s action casts a spell on the credibility of the administration of the state. How? Vehicles were allocated; and there were records to show who got what! Therefore, the onus lies on the relevant arms of government to deal with whosoever must have taken a car away illegitimately without making any noise about it. By the way, did those, whose half-salary arrears were also withheld by the governor, go away with official vehicles? Again, if there’s a working condition between Aregbesola and Adeleke, as some political gladiators are wont to make Nigerians believe, why didn’t the ‘Dancing Governor’ pay the arrears of those public servants who also served under ‘Ogbeni’?

Apart from the fact that Adeleke lacks constitutional powers to withhold workers’ legitimate earnings, his action canvasses negative implications for the polity. Notable among them is a credible motivation for public servants to defraud the system, especially, since it (the system) is seen as having no empathy or well-being considerations for them. Unknown to ‘Mr. Governor’, a month’s salary for anybody who’s not a thief means a lot! For example, there were people who depended on that money for survival, many of whom would have died. In some cases, families, children, even older relatives also depended on that salary. Therefore, was it right for somebody to have seized that money, thereby stifling a long list of Nigerians of such livelihood and causing them pain for political reasons? Have we forgotten that it can also lead to unornamented deprivation, psychological torture and allied corporeal challenges? If this human rights abuse also has the capacity to take away self-esteem, then those who live in glass houses must remember: ‘quid sit circuit est circa’ (what goes around comes around). In any case, Osun would have been saved from this messy pass, had former Governor Gboyega Oyetola been able to pay the state workforce before leaving office.

Without doubt, Adeleke’s action has again necessitated the call for a re-examination of the dynamics of the civil service in a political setting. For instance, at the announcement of a new incoming government, the key functionaries of the current administration will start falling over one another to present a favourable position so as to secure their positions in the new government. The Accountant General of the State will run away! The Head of Service will become more catholic than the pope in selling the incoming government’s programmes! And the Permanent Secretaries will start singing like a canary, to the extent that one begins to wonder if it’s not the same set of people working “diligently” with the outgoing government. The more reason the laws governing the civil service in the country need to be reviewed in line with current realities. For instance, if the Permanent Secretary understands that his job is tenured, he will understand the essence of the office. If he wants to steal the public till dry, let him do so while his tenure lasts. But he knows that he has to go with his boss; then face the music!

The state bureaucracy is also suspect in this mess! According to the Weberian ideal type, bureaucracy is supposed to be impersonal. It is also supposed to be a system based on rules! So, where did Adeleke get the arbitrary idea of withholding public servants’ salaries in a democracy? Of equal concern is the raging issue of boreholes, out of which 85% were reported to have been sunk across the state and were awaiting commissioning. Ditto for the University of Ilesa, where the governor was alleged to have usurped the functions of the Governing Council; and the Cargo Airport at Iddo Osun! Well, I hope to dwell more on them in subsequent interventions!

In the final analysis, it behoves Adeleke to rectify this ugly situation to prevent the society from relapsing into the Dark Ages. That’s not all! The ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (Osun PDP) and its appendages shouldn’t rejoice too early because ‘the whip used in flogging the senior wife is in the wardrobe, awaiting the junior wife.’ Interestingly, something is currently working for Osun; and that’s the ability to vote out bad people and bad government. It is indeed a plus for democracy!

May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace in Osun State!

•Komolafe wrote in from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State, Nigeria (ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk

By Temitope Ajayi

A lot has been said and written about the conduct of the 2023 Presidential Election and the March 1 final declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President-elect by Professor Mahmud Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Rather sadly, some of the arguments against the conduct of the election have been outrightly ridiculous, while others tilt heavily toward pure treason and felony.

A dissection of these jaundiced arguments would suffice. First, the points advanced by the antagonists of the election over the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and non-transmission of the results from polling units immediately after the close of the poll on INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) as promised by the electoral umpire border mostly on willful ignorance.

While it can be argued that INEC, in its desire to improve on the transparency of the elections promised real-time uploading of results from the over 176,000 polling units in the country, it must also be stated clearly that the provisions of the new Electoral Act and the Constitution, which provide the governing laws under which the elections were conducted did not impose on INEC the burden of real-time upload of election results on the portal.

In a fact, the electoral law and the Constitution both stipulate that INEC can make its own rules as it sees fit in the conduct, processes, and organisation of elections in Nigeria.

For those pseudo-analysts, who have taken up permanent residence inside the studios of radio and television stations to spew uninformed narratives with the sole intent to pollute the political landscape on the role of IReV in the election, they must now put a halt to their demagoguery and allow the country to heal after a long and bruising electioneering campaign that stretched the connecting threads of our social fabric to the limit. This is not too much to ask.

To continue to manipulate the emotions and play poker with the minds of supporters of the candidates that lost the election with falsehoods and twisted interpretations of the laws in a desperate bid to sustain their political support base amounts to a huge disservice to the country. No politician should be allowed to put, in jeopardy, the peace and stability of Nigeria to achieve any political end.

On point of law, a Federal High Court in Abuja on March 10, 2023, in a suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1454/2022, brought before it by the Labour Party (LP) where INEC was a sole defendant, ruled that only the electoral body is empowered by law to determine the mode of collating and transmitting election results.

The LP, whose presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, has been making a hue and cry over the non-transmission of results real-time on IReV, had prayed the court to declare that INEC has no power to opt for a manual method of counting and collating results of the election other than the electronic method as provided for by the relevant provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022.

In a well-reasoned and profound ruling, Justice Emeka Nwite held that only the INEC has the prerogative to direct how a polling unit presiding officer should transfer election results, including the total number of accredited voters and results of the ballot.

Justice Nwite further held that collating and transmitting election results manually in the 2023 general elections could not be said to be contrary to the relevant provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022.

Furthermore, the judge averred that Plaintiff misconstrued the provisions of the law and proceeded to dismiss the suit. As of today, that is what the law says, which in simple terms, absolves INEC of any wrongdoing by its mode of transmission of election results, which is contrary to the campaign of calumny by opposition elements and their paid agents against the Commission.

It is important to state that uploading results on IReV was only an add-on feature designed by INEC to further enhance openness and give the general public the opportunity to see the results in real-time. IReV was not designed to validate the authenticity of the results. The real and authentic election results are the ones from each polling unit that were signed by INEC officials, party agents, and security operatives.

By the close of the election on Saturday, February 25, 2023, all the political parties that participated in the election, especially the major frontrunners, knew where they stood from the results sent to their Situation Rooms by field agents.

Without any shred of doubt, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won a pan-Nigeria mandate to be the next President of Nigeria.

Of all the major candidates, Asiwaju Tinubu worked the most, planned the most, and campaigned the most to deservedly earn the victory as declared by INEC.

For emphasis, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its acolyte, LP, had no path to victory in the presidential election.

The PDP went into the election terribly fractured with a fratricidal war, while the LP only relied on ethnic and religious sentiments to win a national election. They failed woefully!

The opposition parties did not lose the election as a result of the technical glitch of IReV that made immediate uploading of results impossible. The claim by the opposition that BVAS didn’t work well is complete baloney. BVAS operation was smooth and this explains why the results from the election were very competitive across the six geo-political zones except in the South East where the LP had an unexplainable 90 percent of total votes cast.

Field reports from accredited local and international observers attest to BVAS’ efficiency in voter accreditation in over 95 percent of polling units nationwide. In the few places where the machines malfunctioned, there was immediate remediation. If anything, BVAS ensured that the recurring experiences of ghost voters were eliminated. This is unprecedented in the history of elections in Nigeria.

Lest we forget, it’s been days, if not weeks, that INEC uploaded all the presidential election results from the entire 176,974 polling units across the country. While it can be argued that INEC promised instantaneous uploading of results on IReV, that is not entirely cast in stone, as the law allows the Commission to upload results on the viewing portal seven days after the poll. Question is, how many of those casting aspersions at the electoral body have come out to tell Nigerians that the results, as declared at the polling units, are different from the ones uploaded on the result viewing portal?

On points of law and judicial pronouncement, INEC didn’t breach its own rule. The lousy impression created by the PDP, LP, and their hordes of supporters remains what it is: baseless.

The conduct of the 2023 election is a watershed with many takeaways, the most profound being the game-changing BVAS, which ensured the credibility and transparency of the entire process.

That Asiwaju Bola Tinubu won the election clearly and unambiguously is indisputable, regardless of the huge upsets recorded, which will be a subject of research and inquisition by political scientists and public intellectuals for a long time to come.

•Ajayi, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja

LAGOS, in the immediate post-independence period was still a good place to live in. Migrants were flowing in from all over the place and were being absorbed as had always been the case for more than a hundred years. No sooner did they arrive than they took the trouble to become Lagosians who were soon, for all practical purposes indistinguishable from others in the city on any account. It was soon apparent that Eko/Lagos was a metropolis that could be put side by side with other cities in other parts of the world and the Town Council was soon upgraded to the status of a City Council with considerably more municipal responsibility than ever before. Lagos took her new enhanced status in her stride and went along on its accustomed merry ways. It was at this time however that the city began to expand furiously into the suburbs of Somolu, Bariga, Ajegunle and other such places which had up till then been growing practically unnoticed in the arm pit of the city which had been visible to all. Rent was relatively cheap in those areas and therefore attracted those who did not have the wherewithal to pay the increased and indeed, increasing sums of money demanded by landlords in those areas where the Town/City Council held sway.  As expected, the level of municipal responsibility in those areas dropped by more than a fraction. To live in the nether regions of Somolu, Bariga and those other such areas was to be on your own in terms of municipal services which were taken for granted in the more prosperous areas of the city.

Perhaps the most visible effect of the lack of municipal reach in those places was in the field of transport. The narrow streets in those suburbs were not designed to accommodate those big, beautiful buses that served the more established areas of Lagos. There was a large number of people who still required transport to other parts of Lagos and since nature could not abide a vacuum, mini-buses, most of them made by Volkswagen began to operate between those suburbs and the rest of the city as indeed they had been doing for some time in Mushin, Idi-Oro, Agege and those parts which were solidly in the Western Region and were therefore beyond the reach of the cherished authority of the Federal Capital Territory. Then, the operative Federal authority did not go beyond Fadeyi as was claimed by the situation of a large notice board which announced in bold red letters that you were entering Federal territory as soon as you crossed that boundary in Fadeyi. Most bona fide Lagosians of the time did not live beyond the shadow of that intrusive notice board and although municipal bus services were terminated well down the road at the gates of Palm-groove Estate, this was because there was space for a bus station at that point down the road. All other roads were served by the mini buses, danfos as they were colloquially named to signify their independent status from the all powerful Town Council. In strict terms they operated under their own rough and ready code and were soon joined by the real kings of the road, the almighty molue. These were large contraptions which were bus like wooden structures which had been built on the chassis of Bedford lorries which before then had carried the weight of the ubiquitous bolekajas of that period. These contraptions ruled the roads with the proverbial iron fist and other vehicles as well as the municipal authorities gave them a wide berth as they appeared to be answerable only to the authority of their own self appointed union leaders as is still the case. The fear of the molue was certainly a considerable part of street wisdom. The slummification of Lagos had begun and has become intensified over the years until now that many parts of what people insist on calling Lagos extends far into Ogun State and people who live in the other lagoon town of Badagry, many kilometres down the swampy road are, to all intents and purposes, new vintage Lagosians!

All throughout the sixties, Lagos was growing furiously but the growth was not under the control of any recognisable authority. Villages which for a century or more had managed their own little affairs quite harmoniously were suddenly invaded by space hungry strangers in need of a small plot of land on which to put up a modest building which turned them overnight into landlords with all the arbitrariness of that status in a space where roads, drainages and those other signs of municipal authority were only conspicuous by their absence. It is to the credit of the new Lagosians that after a few years, something like a livable urban space is established and the rents begin to climb up to the roof forcing newer Lagosians to strike out into new territories to repeat the process of building other so called urban centres attracting migrants to Lagos. I have very scant knowledge of these newly contrived urban centres and have no choice but to leave them to their own devices.

I left Lagos in 1969 to become a pharmacy student the Ibadan campus of the University of Ife. I left with all the accoutrements of a certified Lagos city boy of that period stuffed into a large blue suitcase of Japanese manufacture. Today, the country of origin of my suitcase would have been China but that story is for another time. When I made that journey out of Lagos, it was with the intention of returning to Lagos at the end of a three year exile but fate had other plans for me which is why more than fifty years later, I have not returned. The furthest point of Lagos of my memory is therefore Ilupeju Estate from where I left for Ibadan all those many years ago. Lagos State was created only a couple of years before I checked out of Lagos and that has changed the complexion of the city on the lagoon. I really have not been able to wrap my head around this contraption that is Lagos State but it has not allowed Lagos to claim its place as a distinct entity, different from those other towns which have taken on the mantle of Lagos without being part of Lagos. And of course there is the added complication of vast areas which have been reclaimed from the sea and which have attracted tons of those new immigrants who have no knowledge of the history or even the geography of a space to which they now have ownership claims. Unlike the waves of migrants who settled in Lagos immediately before and after the Civil war, these migrants owe no allegiance to Lagos regardless of where they came from. They are responsible for the provision of their own municipal facilities and have not developed any serious attachment to any authority but the remote State government to which they pay their taxes and from whom they expect little more than periodic harassment from agents of that remote government apparatus. This is contrary to what obtained in the old Lagos of the sixties and seventies.

The sixties were kind to Lagos because at least for those who were sheltering under the umbrella of the Lagos City Council there were facilities galore which the Lagosian tapped into. I spent seven years in a Lagos secondary school and throughout that period, there was uninterrupted supply of electricity outside the few days period of the general strike led by Michael Imodu, the powerful labour leader of those days. This was no miracle as the ECN power station at Ijora was fully operational at the time and Lagos could boast of a steady supply of electricity as it had done for close to one hundred years at the time. This was one of the features which impressed new Lagosians who were coming into the city from the darkness of their places of origin. Returning to the humble places of their birth was simply unimaginable and they sank their roots into the welcoming, if swampy soil of Lagos. Life was good and Lagos enjoyed it to the full.

Then came a rather strange period in the sweet life of Eko which by now, was more Lagos than Eko. Following all the turmoil of the first and second coups in Nigeria there was an exodus of Ibos of Lagos from their adopted city. One minute they were there, large as life and then in a few short weeks, they had packed bag and baggage and crossed the Niger into the apparent safety of the Eastern Region where they were overtaken by the disaster of the Nigerian civil war. They came back to Lagos as swiftly as they left after the war but they returned, not to Lagos as they knew it but to Lagos State to which they had to seek accommodation afresh as the old Lagos had all but disappeared in their absence. Migrants were pouring into Lagos from all directions of the compass and the gentle but rapid assimilation of the pre-war years had gone, to be replaced by a space within which had become occupied by rats racing down avenues of their own individual designs. Lagos began to expand like a rash into all those unplanned and insanitary suburbs. There was an almighty population explosion which was aided and abetted by the so called oil boom which made mindless money available to Lagosians who suddenly lived by the price rather than the value of the commodities which they sold, bought and consumed in ever increasing quantities. Informal commerce had become the business of Lagos as all manner of items became available for sale on the traffic congested streets of Lagos and her new suburbs.

By the time Lagos ceased to be the capital of Nigeria, it was thought that the congestion which had seized the city by the throat was going to be eased considerably but by that time, Lagos like a malignancy had acquired a life of its own and was no longer dependent on her status as the designated Federal territory. Lagos no longer needed that status which now appears to have become an impediment to the expansion of Lagos. To those of us who can only stand by and see Lagos through a telescope, the changes that have occurred in Lagos in the last fifty years are as inexplicable as they are humongous creating a raunchy environment in which just about anything is possible. To this explosive mix, we must now add a dose of political grand standing which has neatly divided Lagos between the indigenes who are daily becoming more difficult to identify with any degree of certainty and those who identify with Lagos only in terms of the vast business opportunities which characterises Lagos and separates her from all other parts of Nigeria. Lagos throbs with a vitality which is impossible to deny. That conurbation on the lagoon has amply demonstrated the capacity to reinvent itself with the passage of time. It reserves a niche for everyone including the thief and the incurably slothful who have the will to insert themselves into the mix which the new Lagos has created for anyone bold enough to come and win a portion of it for themselves.