During my undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan, I came across a copy of Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography — My Experiments with Truth. In one enrapturing page after the other, the autobiography affirmed Gandhi’s deity in my mind. Gandhi vaunted his notorious self-discipline and wrote about how he came to develop his philosophy of non-violence.  For me, he embodied all my noble aspirations.  His ideas of non-violence resistance were central to India’s independence movement, they were also deployed in the US civil rights marches led by Martin Luther King Jnr, and have since been co-opted by hundreds of peace brigades around the world in conflict situations. Without doubt, Mahatma Gandhi was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

But Gandhi was a much more complicated figure than I had initially been aware of. Gandhi’s canonisation as a saint in the court of public opinion has since been undermined by revelations that he was a racist who believed in the brotherhood of the Aryan race, and was willing to concede the inferiority of Indians to the white race as long as it established the superiority of Indians over blacks. Gandhi, the saint, was a man who often used racial slurs against Black South Africans, and on one occasion was more incensed by the fact that he was jailed with blacks than that he was arrested in the first place.  So, how then should Gandhi be seen or be remembered? Was he even deserving of the veneration he received?

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II has generated questions about how she should be remembered, and whether she is truly worthy of the unrelenting adorations that have attended her death. Since her passing, there has been a great global outpouring of grief so much so that it has sparked renewed conversations about her legacy, the legacy of colonialism, the complicity of the British Monarchy in some of the colonial abuses, and her role in all of these. A Nigerian professor, in the United States, Uju Anya, led the chorus of criticisms. Her tweets excoriated the monarch for her complicity in the genocide of the Ibos and wished her an excruciating death. In Ireland, in countries across the Caribbean Islands, Africa, and the Middle East, people have insisted that they would not mourn her death.

At the heart of all these debates, for me, is how societies judge. How we determine who is worthy of canonisation and who must be crucified. There are only few individuals in history without any redeeming qualities and fewer without blemish. Hitler belongs to the former, and Jesus, the latter. The rest are neither fully deserving of their canonisation or judged too harshly by history. The Irish poet, Oscar Wilde puts it rather appropriately—every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Read Also: The Queen and our troubles

Queen Elizabeth was neither a saint nor a sinner. She should be rightly criticised for never acknowledging and apologising for the horrors of slavery. Yet, Uju Anya’s criticism went too far. The Queen was not directly responsible for the genocide of the Ibos, Nigerians were. We killed ourselves in a senseless and, frankly, mindless war. The British government’s decision to support the Nigerian army was a legitimate decision that considered its own national interest, and the politics of the Cold War. In the same way it would be naïve to argue that France’s decision to support Biafra was out of altruistic concerns or for the humanitarian situation in Biafra controlled territories.

What is closer to the truth is that France wanted to undermine British influence in a region where both former colonial powers dominated. If Nigeria fractured, it would be to France’s benefit. Access to oil reserves was also a compelling factor. It would be a fundamental misunderstanding of history to begrudge Britain or adulate France. But more importantly, Uju Anya failed to acknowledge that Queen rarely interfered in the affairs of the state. The United Kingdom now operates a constitutional monarchy, and indeed, it is this adaptation to modern sensibilities about the role of the monarchy in a democratic society that has ensured the survival of the institution until now. Even though the government is constituted in her name, it is grossly inaccurate to insist that that she oversaw the genocide of the Ibos.

If I can go back to my earlier arguments, how should public figures be remembered? I am convinced that there is a need to adopt a more circumspect approach to how we judge individuals. In an increasingly virulent cancel culture, we must learn to temper criticisms, and in an age where we actively construct superheroes we must be clear eyed about the failings of public figures.

Following the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, there has been a global movement to highlight the failings of public figures who were previously venerated. Edward Colston’s statue was defaced and pulled down in Bristol for his involvement in the slave trade, but the statue of Efusetan Aniwura, the second Iyalode of Ibadan who notoriously captured and sold people of her kind into slavery adorns the city of Ibadan till this day. The statue of Robert Lee, the confederate general, was removed in Richmond Virginia in 2021, but there are at least fourteen American presidents, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who held slaves and whose monuments still adorn public spaces. George Orwell’s ancestor benefited from the slave trade as well as former prime minister, David Cameron. Winston Churchill, perhaps Britain’s greatest prime minister, was a racist white supremacist who said Indians “breed like rabbits” and blamed them for the Bengal famine that killed three million of them.  Jimmy Savile was knighted by the Queen in 1990 but a year after his death, the extent of his paedophilic abuse became known. He had sexually abused more than 72 people and raped an eight-year-old boy.

What lessons can we draw from these examples? It is that human beings are fundamentally flawed and this should make us more circumspect in venerating public figures. Afterall, every saint has a past.

• Dr Adediran is an Assistant professor in International Relations at Liverpool Hope University. He can be contacted on: bolaadediran2020@yahoo.com

There is no doubt on the minds of discerning Nigerians, including the political class, that what is needed to empower the protracted Nigerian national project is the urgent need to reset Nigeria’s federalism through a crucial restructuring. This is exactly why the outcry concerning restructuring and the issue of Nigeria’s anomalous federal system has been on the agenda of public discourse for so long, from Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the numerous national constitutional conferences, to the #EndSARS protests. There is no way we all would not agree that every legitimate attempt, since 1960, to get Nigeria functioning for the well-being of Nigerians has been frustrated thoroughly by the dysfunctional constitution that foist a unitary logic on federal realities. And so, we have been struggling with the possibility of unity in diversity since we attained independence. And what is more, it is within the vicious cycle of opportunistic politicking that keeps constraining transition from election to governance and to performance, that elite nationalism has broken down from achieving transformational leadership to a mere satisfaction of selfish interests through primitive accumulation. And so, as is to be expected, in the pre-2023 electoral moment we all are in now, the process of leadership recruitment has become one of endemic bitterness and anxiety for Nigerians.

In most of my previous public commentaries, I have warned about the three possible options or scenarios available to the Nigerian political class. Within the first scenario, we can continue with our do-nothing, ostrich attitude with its non-value-added logic until the entire world leaves Nigeria behind in the blighted space of underdevelopment. In the second possible scenario, we might equally allow the downward degeneration of the polity in ways that might eventually combust into a similar situation that characterize the former USSR, Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia. The last scenario calls on the political elite to proactively act to restructure Nigeria’s profligate political space into, say, manageable regional economic corridors that generate a competitive but mutually reinforcing fiscal federalism.

In this piece, I will be exploring preliminary constitutional issues that could serve as think pieces for reflections on what is involved in really restructuring the Nigerian state. The 2014 National Conference, inaugurated by President Goodluck Jonathan, remains one of the most recent attempts at understanding and engaging with Nigeria’s convoluted national trajectories. And the relevance of that Confab is reiterated most recently by the publication of a new book, The National Conversation: Interests and Intrigues that Shaped the 2014 National Conference, written by Akpandem James and Sam Akpe. The authors were both media advisers to the Conference. Their reprise of the events and issues that agitated the Conference will enable me highlight some of those complex and contradictory elements of Nigeria’s national question that should constitute the essence of our collective interrogation and discursive attention as we approach 2023 and beyond.

Read Also: Agenda for 2023 and beyond

These issues, it would seem, ought to be at the core of the present discussion around possible leaders that will mount the pedestals of responsibility across the country. Currently, there is a level of listlessness and confusion within the polity that is not helping to focus the fundaments of what we need to be discussing. This is even more critical once we note that these critical constitutional issues are not as straightforward as we would want them to be. This is one of the sobering takeaways from the book I am headlining in this piece. The authors are convinced that achieving national consensus through the critical issues at stakes will be a daunting matter. And this is why so many past leaders have kept shying away from these core matters. Any potential leader of the Nigerian state, I think, must have thoughts and strategies on these issues so as not to be confounded nor overwhelmed.

The first fundamental point of constitutional worry is: How is the new Nigerian federation to be envisioned? Should the boundary be redrawn to reflect the 1967 twelve-state structure created by Gen. Gowon, or the recent six geo-political zones? Or should we even revert further back to the original regional arrangement Nigeria adopted at independence? Indeed, that regionalism has been at the core of the agitation by the southwest for rethinking Nigeria’s federalism. But then the matter becomes complicated once we relate it to the thorny issue of resource control and revenue sharing that have made the relationship between the center and the federating states very acrimonious. How should resources generated in a specific part of the federation be perceived and shared? Is the resource owned by the federating unit or the center? Does land belong to the Nigerian state or to its parts? This is what led to the establishment of the Executive, Concurrent and Residual lists in the Constitutions. But then we are all aware of the inherent dis-enablement created by these lists.

Take a most fundamental issues, item 39 on the Executive list—mineral and natural resources: oil fields, minerals, natural gas and mining. Can policy decisions be made that will restructure the constitution in ways that transfer items on the executive list to either the concurrent or the residual list so that ownership and exploitation of the resources can be placed in the hands of the sub-nationals in whose spaces they are found; like oil being owned by the south-south? This would imply reflecting on and rethinking the constitutional arrangement, like section 143(2) of the 1960 Constitution and section 140(1) of the 1963 Constitution which provided for regional control of minerals, and insist that 50% royalty be paid to regions from where any minerals is extracted. Such reflection will demand that we conceptually differentiate between derivation, resource control and the onshore-off-shore dichotomy in revenue sharing.

We are thus faced, still following the logic of the federal argument, with the point of whether local governments should be stripped off their status as the third tier of government. Even within the current constitutional arrangement that places almost all significant items that conduces to development on the exclusive list, the developmental and democratic imperatives inherent in the local governments have already been undermined. The residual list has become a mere constitutional ornament. One of the possible implications of this idea is that the states will then be left to become creative with their need for local governments, within the available models of grassroots development they might want to operate with. This already implies that the joint state-local government account should be scrapped, to be replaced by the state’s version of the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, with representations from the various local governments. This assessment leads to the constitutional assessment of state independent electoral commissions, in relation to their capacity to credibly conduct elections into local government. What models should determine the constitutional structure that should be in place for the conduct of elections?

Another derivative of the constitutional anomaly that troubles Nigeria’s federal dynamics is the idea of state police. The significance of this issue is corroborated by the current state of (in)security in the Nigerian political space. Kidnapping, banditry, armed robbery and all sundry security matters have transformed the Nigerian state into a state of nature. What makes the situation even more dire is the fact that, on the one hand, the federal government has no will to firmly and strategically deal decisively with the incidence. And on the other hand, the constitution effectively disempowered the state governors within whose space the insecurity manifests. It is then a surprise that we still draw back from a constitutional review of this anomaly. Should the law enforcement apparatus be centralized when the reality on ground dictates a different approach? Should the possibility of the governors abusing the power conferred by their position as the chief security officers of their state be sufficient to detract from the inherent urgency of enabling the governors to protect the Nigerians within their state boundaries?

The same federal impulse demands that we reflect on the constitutional need to create a multiple locus for the efficient functioning of the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. In other words, one dimension of that office will be set in charge of managing the account of the federal government, while other dimensions of the office will be put in charge of disbursement from the federation accounts, as well as the efficient administration of funds prescribed by the Constitution. In terms of fiscal consciousness, how should we begin to reconstitute the Sovereign Wealth Fund in ways that will make it a reservoir for managing Nigeria’s development needs during raining days? The same constitutional logic demands that we also look at the nature of the National Planning Commission, and how its function could be made more efficient if decentralized.

We also must not fail, at this moment when 2023 is becoming a moment of make-or-mar, to start serious reflection on the nature of Nigeria’s presidentialism and its propensity to generate waste and redundancies. Considered as one of the most wasteful in the world, this presidential system and its cost of governance requires consistent effort to rehabilitate through institutional redesign and innovative restructuration informed by local political culture.

2023, the way I see it, should not only be seen in terms of political succession. It is a year that should determine Nigeria’s readiness to jumpstart its greatness through the election of credible leaders willing to take the bull of development and restructuring by the horn. 2023 should be Nigeria’s year of redemption, and a trajectory into the future.

• Olaopa is a Retired Federal Permanent Secretary& Professor, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos tolaopa2003@gmail.com

An Airport is a honeypot. It is the port of entry for people, products and can also serve as a pot of finance through the profits it generates for the country. The Air Cargo is another arm of the aviation industry that contributes to global economic development and creates millions of jobs. The global economy depends on the ability to deliver high-quality products at competitive prices to consumers worldwide.  A report in August 2020 said, “Air cargo transports over US $6 trillion worth of goods, accounting for approximately 35% of world trade by value,” that is huge!

Visibly, Air cargo contributes to the economy by transporting essential shipments all over the world and facilitates the supply chain of agricultural produce, automotive parts, electronics, vaccines, medical supplies, high-value shipments like jewelry, and many other important shipments that support businesses and keep jobs around the globe. Probably it is against this important backdrop that the administration of Otunba Gbenga Daniel (OGD) as the Governor of Ogun State moved to establish an agro-cargo airport in 2007. The site was sited but the project could not be sighted till the expiration of the Administration in 2011.

OGD conceptualized the agro-cargo airport project on the belief that it had lots of potential in the overall development of the state on the spine of the state’s rich soil for agriculture, the presence of industries in the state and its proximity to Lagos State and so on. The next administration led by Senator Ibikunle Amosun would neglect the project and allow it to rot in the book of forgetfulness.

And the aforementioned formed the reason I would always caution political commentators and the political boys of the senator and former governor that: If you want to celebrate Senator Ibikunle Amosun as the “best” person who “ruled” Ogun State, you should not forget that Ogun groaned under the man with an inordinately long and roomy cap, a big iniquity of history. From the backlog of debt he bequeathed to the state, the mushroom roads— that are fast going decayed because they lack the last layer, wearing course— constructed and built bridges that should be state-of-the- art but turned out to be heartbreaking.

Like the agro-cargo airport, he would later play puerile and putrid politics by abandoning numerous other projects his predecessor had started. He spited him too. He forgot that governance is a continuum, no one finishes it in a single swipe and that is where Abiodun— who may have his shortcomings too— towers above him. Abiodun has not only completed some of the roads he left such as the Kuto—Oke Mosan road, Panseke—Adigbe roads and so on, the icing on the cake is that Prince Dapo Abiodun saw the gold Amosun abandon in the bush— the agro-cargo airport— he has picked it up, he is shining it at the moment and it would soon, by December as promised by the governor, glitter and magnetize people, institution and funds to Ogun State.

Read Also; Ogun agro-cargo airport: Abiodun’s signature of sterling performance

The cargo airport is located within the agricultural belt in the state and strategically located at the intersection between the East and West highway (Benin-Sagamu) and the North-South highway (Lagos-Ibadan) which makes it a potential honeypot. It is the economic deal with the African Development Bank to site an agro testing firm at Sagamu as most of the agricultural products in Nigeria lack certification, which has made their exportation to other countries difficult, this will ease it and put more funds into the state government purse.

Any state’s problems cannot be solved by a single administration. And that validates the saying that “governance is a continuum”. The utmost concern should be that progress is recorded by each administration. No administration is flawless and that is more reason I would not support the stance of those (and even himself) who paint Amosun as a saint and achiever even when his administration has numerous potholes that have gifted Ogun with woes. In the Ibara-Panseke axis stands a building that is as inordinately tall as his cap— a white elephant project that is an attestation to most of our politicians’ lack of vision, their avarice and wastefulness.

Yet, some of his supporters are quick to attack Prince Dapo Abiodun. They have forgotten that the world will always be a battleground and you cannot win thereby turning everyone into your enemy and condemning each of their excellent and giant strides. Amosun has both covertly and openly fought Abiodun and condemned him as though he turned Ogun to Eldorado during his autocratic reign that gifted some parts of Ogun state with the roads of difficulty and discomfort, ask the people of Ifo and Ado-Odo Ota! If the axe forgot, would the tree forget too?

Our forebears’ counsel that whatever faces us is turning its back on someone somewhere is of essence here. Two things are common with those in politics and their infantry: When they do not like a leader either on a personal or political level, they are quick to rubbish their achievement and refer to them as a failure. This affirms the saying of Yoruba that “Esin Ota eni kii’ga loju eni.” Also, there is the dispiriting dimension of labeling a leader a failure when they cannot  meet our unrealistic or selfish expectations.

Importantly, aside from the fact that the airport will be serve the twin function of transporting goods, it will also provide passenger service too which will certainly court the attention of the Lekki dwellers who has access to the Lekki-Ijebu expressway that is devoid of traffic they may encounter trying to go to MMA, it will also interest the people of Ibadan, Osun and so on who are close to Ogun State. Lest I forget, while it provides formal employment, it will also create informal job opportunities as the people of Remo, Ijebu and Abeokuta who are close to the site can profitably trade.

Prince Dapo Abiodun has proved to be a good Governor and businessman. He knew that, if there was an airport, there would be products and  passengers and, if there were products and passengers, there would be aircraft to ply the route and profits would move into the government’s purse. Thus, credit goes to Daniel for the vision and Abiodun for bringing that vision to fruition as his Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Ade Akinsanya, said the airport is almost 80 per cent completed.

Overall, Prince Dapo Abiodun must be given a standing ovation for the courage he has displayed for embarking on the monumental airport project. He is working and walking on the path that no one had dared before him by elongating the vision of his predecessor with the improvement on his predecessor’s blueprint for the project and the establishment of a potential source of income for the state.

• Oladipo Oseni writes in via osenioladipupo90@gmail.com

Aid has had several negative consequences in Africa. It has groomed a rapacious group of political elites, encouraged irresponsible governance, and institutionalised corruption. In one of the notable tales of how corruption, irresponsible governance, and aid are tied, former president of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, was said to have successfully negotiated an aid package and immediately hired a Concorde to fly his daughter for her wedding in Ivory Coast. Mobutu stole more than $5 billion dollars, an amount equivalent to the entire external debt of his country even as his countrymen remained some of the poorest people on earth.

Even with humanitarian aid, which is often less controversial than development aid, there are several examples where the mismanagement of humanitarian aid has contributed to greater insecurity on the continent. For instance, the role that humanitarian aid played in sustaining the activities of Biafran soldiers during the Civil War cannot be overlooked. Neither can we gloss over the fact that thousands of people died after the Ethiopian government used internationally donated food aid as a weapon of war to expand its territorial control following one of the most successful humanitarian campaigns in history in response to the famine in 1985. In Somalia, food aid did little of what it was intended except to prop up rebel groups who stole donated food aid and resold same items at prohibitive prices in UN camps. Outside of Africa, we have also seen how aid can undermine local production. In Haiti, the massive influx of food aid after the 2010 earthquake resulted in the collapse of the local price of rice and further plunged Haitian rice farmers into poverty.

If aid is not the answer, then what is? Trade is. Currently, Africa’s share of global trade with its 1.2 billion people stands at about 3% while the United Kingdom, a country of only 65 million people accounts for 3.6% of global exports. However, if Africa is to increase its share of global trade and consequently trade itself out of poverty, it would require among other things the willingness of developed countries to reduce tariffs on exports from the continent and to end the protectionism that gives unfair advantage to their local farmers. Why is this important? Wealthy nations currently subsidise their local farmers by more than $300 billion annually. This is more than two times the total amount of aid that Africa receives annually. Indeed, some of that aid comes to the continent in the form of food items bought from heavily subsidised western farmers. To further compound the problem, in some instances, the influx of food items drives down local prices and deepens the poverty of local producers. It appears self-evident then that the continent would benefit more from policy decisions that improve access for Africa’s agricultural products than a continuation of an aid regime that has the capacity to undermine local stability.

Read Also; Africa beyond aid (part 1)

Of course, there are other complexities that limit Africa’s capacity to export its products and to break into western markets beyond the protectionist policies of wealthy nations. One of such is the stringency of food standards. Evidently, no one will suggest that developed countries limit their standards in order to increase import from the continent, however, one can propose closer partnership that allows for the improvement of technical competence in meeting desired food standards. That said, I would insist that it is also the responsibility of African states to invest in the infrastructure that improves local production to meet global standards.

Efforts to see a continent less reliant on international aid would be helped by policies such as America’s Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA). The trade legislation which was enacted in 2000 by president George Bush is a trade preference program that allows thousands of products to enter the United States duty free. The act was extended to 2025 during the Obama regime. African states must take greater opportunity of AGOA. At the same time, it would be of great benefit, if similar policies that provide duty free access to markets are enacted by other leading global economies at bilateral or multilateral levels.

Additionally, African states must remove barriers to the movement of goods and services on the continent. Intraregional trade is unacceptably low. Compared to Europe, for instance, where 67% of its total trade is among states within the region, Africa’s intraregional trade stands at 15%.  Clearly, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) would improve this statistics in the future, but there needs to be an urgent acceleration of policies that target barriers to trade within the continent. One of such is the ability of Africans to move with less hindrances on the continent. It should not be more difficult to fly from Nairobi to Maputo than to fly from Nairobi to Paris.

The consequences of inflexible visa regimes, poor flight connections, and exorbitant travel costs means that the continent is missing out on vast amounts of intraregional tourism that can boost local economies. As with many Africans, I have visited more countries in Europe, Asia and America than I have in Africa. One of the quick gains we can make is to liberalise visa regimes. Ghana has introduced policies to ensure that African citizens can travel to the country and obtain visas on arrival for tourism and business purposes. The rest of Africa must follow suit.

If Africa is to develop, we must focus our attention on the actions and policies we have control over rather than the handouts we have come to depend on from our foreign partners. We must advocate at the international level for a renegotiation, where necessary, on the agreements that hold us back and leaves us at a disadvantage. In instances where the pace of negotiations and reforms to global trade rules, like the Doha Development Round, are not yielding about the results we need, we must collectively shine a light on those issues. The world cannot say it is serious about Africa’s development agenda while it turns a blind eye to rules and practices that undermine the continent’s competitiveness. It is time to focus on what matters—trade and not aid.

• Adediran is an Assistant professor in International Relations at Liverpool Hope University. He can be contacted on: bolaadediran2020@yahoo.com

Let me start this rather short Tribute by stating that the story of my contact with Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah and my eventual employment at the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN) are already well-documented in the manuscripts of my future book. Let me also confess that this event-filled connection was the culmination of the timely interventions of men like the retired Archbishop Olukayode Akinyemi of the Anglican Archdiocese of Kwara; and Oba Oladele Olashore, the late Ajagbusi Ekun of Iloko-Ijesa in Osun State, in the affairs of my life. When, even with the possession of entry requirements, all hopes of furthering my studies in the university were almost lost, it was Akinyemi and Olashore who assured me that the One who made me would never leave me helpless.

Hear Kukah in a letter, dated January 12, 1998, and addressed to yours sincerely: “You write well … As I have told you, do not relent in your effort and do not look at your background as an impediment. As you know … our backgrounds are far from being obstacles to success.” Between October 2, 1998 and April 30, 2003, I worked at the CSN as a lay staff. I remember the likes of Rev. Frs. George Ehusani, Emmanuel Badejo (now Bishop of Oyo Diocese, who was then my line boss), Uba John Ofei (of blessed memory), Stan Chu Illo, and, of course, Rev. Srs. Regina Oke and Josephine Titiloye who accepted me as one of their own. Till date, these wonderful people still see and take me as their spiritual son. Lest I forget, it was through the then Fr. Kukah-led Catholic Secretariat Forum that I met upstanding men in the society like Pat Utomi, Emmanuel Ijewere and the late Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu. So, I remain eternally grateful!

For those who want to know, Kukah knows his onions, because he has devoted himself to his calling. This Catholic prelate did not just wake up to become who he is today. No! It has taken time, determination and discipline. Unfortunately though, the opportunity that he had during his time is no longer available, thank God he used that opportunity to the best of his ability. Without being immodest, there are also men of God who are equally lettered; but because they failed to faithfully apply themselves to their callings, they have sadly ended up as god of men. Also, not only does this priest understand theology, he also understands the depth of the principle and the fundamentals of the State. He is also one leader who doesn’t talk recklessly. So, he can navigate in the rough waters of the State and Religion.

A man of humour and colour, Kukah is not just a scholar but also one energetic and conscious crusader who has a deeper understanding of how an egalitarian society should look like. He is conscious of his social status in society. Is it any wonder then that he has survived many odds? Indeed, it is this lack of consciousness among other priests in his class that has continued to contribute negatively to the development and sustenance of the country. The more reason the wrong class of people has continued to show up like an endless circle at its leadership recruitment centre.

Read Also: For Matthew Kukah, 70 is a treat

The shrewd churchman is also a consistent advocate for social justice who has become a thorn in the flesh of power. Kukah speaks truth to power and the establishment begins to look for ways to discredit him. Yes, the cleric may sound controversial as some people are wont to make Nigerians believe, the fact remains that, once his traducers abandon the object for shadow-chasing, deflection sets in. Why? The more you allow any issue raised to have a life of its own, the more it becomes difficult to resolve. Give it to Kukah, his timely interventions have always helped to deflate that kind of concentration on areas of conflict. Whenever he talks, even those who had preferred the ‘sidon look’ philosophy as an option would soon find ways of opening up while those who, hitherto, had been interested in raising unnecessary dust would simmer and calm. These are parts of his special attributes which no one can fault!

Another prominent feature of the balanced scholar is his allusion to rich references. Since the Bishop is well-read, it has become easier for him to interrogate even men of the 13th and 14th centuries – those who are long gone to the great beyond. On a number of occasions, he has disagreed with them and has pointed out positions that have remained difficult to ignore.

‘Ai f’agba f’enikan ko je k’aye o gun!’ (To look down on the king, leaders and elders is tantamount to contempt for the gods). Without doubt, there are one million and one people who equally clocked 70 years on the same day with Kukah. But then, it is not all the 70-year-olds who can match Kukah, both in intellect and the application of that God-given gift, because he has applied himself. This has become obvious in the way he has been handling topical issues.

Kukah has roused the powers-that-be to a series of issues. Talk of RUGA or the unending-but-avoidable senseless killings across Nigeria! Mention the contentious same faith presidential ticket recently adopted by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); even Deborah Samuel who was senselessly stoned to death in Sokoto by some yet-to-be-identified religious bigots: this priest of many parts has raised thought-provoking issues that have gone a long way in injecting sanity into this terribly fractured microcosm. Obviously, those are the stuffs those in the elite class, whose interest is primarily to sustain their interest, must know; that, for that interest to be sustained, it is in the objective interest of the society to keep existing, because, should the society cease to exist, there won’t be the interest of any class.

Bishop Kukah has done his bit! He has sufficiently paid his dues and the Nigerian society remains grateful! But then, this fated clime needs to do more! Instead of discouraging the man of God, this society owes it a duty to rally round him. Essentially, those in his social status should join him because, should he decide to keep quiet, then, welcome paralysis of the society! Should his brand get extinguished, then, the country is doomed because nobody will be able to stand on behalf of the masses and the general society again. There and then, the society will simply collapse and there may be no remedy! The reason is simple: the spoilers have seized power at the very top echelon of Nigeria’s geopolitical, even socioeconomic space at strategic positions.

Talk of the French renaissance and one would find out that the cultural and artistic movement between 15th and early 17th centuries was largely successful because it allowed the seeking of knowledge as status symbol. Sad that, in today’s Nigeria, people don’t read again! The students who are supposed to be reading with a view to proffering solutions to the country’s hydra-headed problems in the future are already fed up. To them, reading has become a burden. Their focus is on its reward, as such have put the cart before the horse. Unfortunately, the custodians of values in the society have also abandoned their roles because they, too, are not being rewarded for their efforts.

May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant Bishop Kukah more years in his service to God and humanity!

• KOMOLAFE writes in from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State, Nigeria (ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk)

About ten years ago, maybe a little longer than that, I was travelling and arrived in a rather large provincial town at a time when schools were closing. I had arrived on a street which was home to two all-girls schools and immediately the students were let out, the street was inundated by a moving carpet of girls aged from eleven to about seventeen years old. They were all in a good mood, enjoying their nearly won freedom as they headed home or at least to somewhere else that was more convivial than their respectful staid school premises. There were an awful lot of girls on display and watching them, it suddenly occurred to me that most of those young ladies were of adolescent age and at that age were mostly potential mothers should they be inquisitive enough to engage in sexual activity that day or any day soon after. That I thought was bad enough but what was worse was that in ten years from that day, virtually all of them were almost certainly going to be mothers, a good portion of them with more than one child and those of them who were prolific or just careless, with as many as three children. Thinking of the unfolding fate of this particular group of young ladies was, to my mind frankly appalling but thinking that what I was seeing in real time in front of me was being replicated on thousands of streets all over Nigeria was too disturbing to contemplate.

What was clear was that those young ladies were, within the extant Nigerian environment those young ladies were going to be making a fair share of their contribution to the expansion of Nigeria’s bloated population and doing so fairly soon. Unfortunately, nothing more than this could be guaranteed to happen to them. A reasonable percentage of them would be expected to end up in some tertiary institution preparing for a professional career but given the situation in our tertiary institutions and the uncertainty of passing the relevant examinations standing between them and a place in their institution of their choice, the possibility of having many of those girls looking for a tertiary certificate did not look bright. More realistically many of those young ladies could look forward to an apprenticeship position to hair dressers, tailors, make-up artists and such basic level entrepreneurs, not likely to make giant waves in the Nigerian market place. Even those who struggle through to land in universities still have a mountain to climb in order to be useful to society in some state of relevant employment.  We should certainly be worried, very worried about the ability of those young ladies to do more than boost our already boosted population figures.

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When I was in the primary school albeit a very long time ago, so long it could be described as antediluvian, the population of Nigeria was given as forty million about at par with the figure given at the same time for Great Britain. Then, I moved on to the secondary school and was told that there were then 56million Nigerians after the census figure which suggested that there were more people in the South than in the North was definitively rejected by the North. Another census which was conducted a year later in 1963 and this time some 8million Northerners were conjured seemingly out of thin air and the Northern superiority was restored much to the annoyance of the Southern peoples. Since then, Nigeria has not been able to conduct an honest census, one which could reflect the reality of the number of people who had the right to claim citizenship of the lands lying within the official boundaries of the country called Nigeria. Since 1963 we have had successions of official body counts and they have all failed miserably and bred a load of acrimony too heavy to be borne. To this day, nobody in any official capacity can tell us how many Nigerians thre are. There are far too many political points standing in the kway of the truth even though there is no real reason why this should be so. For the purpose of this essay we have to rely on figures provided by the World Health Organisation, which it has to be said are an estimation. In the absence of honest and reliable figures provided by a genuine count, this is the best that we can do. According to the WHO, there are as of the date of writing this piece, just over 217million Nigerians, a little over half of this figure being 18 years old and younger. Since a high proportion of these are potential parents, it is not unlikely that the population of Nigeria will be quite close to 450 million by 2050 a hefty number of these having been produced by that cohort of the ladies that were encountered at the beginning of this piece. When you add others of the same age to the mix the explanation for the population we are now experiencing is obvious and with the average Nigerian woman being blessed with at least 5.1 children each it is not difficult to calculate that Nigeria will soon have too many people to provide for if we have not yet crossed that line already.

Nigerian authorities have never been able to do an accurate count of her citizen after several tries and there is really no hope that the next attempt due next year will be better than any that has gone on before. It will be fortunate for Nigeria if her present population is grossly overvalued. But any hopes of this being the case is slim and we have to face the reality of our over-population. We were at par with Great Britain all those seventy years ago but today the disparity in our population figures is astronomical. As of today there are 68.6million Britons. This means that in seventy years Britain has added a total of twenty-eight million people whilst the figure for Nigeria is a whopping one hundred and eighty million give or take a couple of millions. And this is inspite of the fact that over that period many million Nigerian babies have died before the age of five and that roughly one hundred and forty Nigerian women die in childbirth every single day. It suggests to me that we devote too much time and energy producing babies without knowing how to provide a decent standard of living for those children we are so desirous of producing in the manner of magicians pulling rabbits out of a hat.

For years we have been squabbling over the number of people in this country which means that we have not factored the needs of individual Nigerians who need to be clothed, fed, housed and educated into our governing equation. Successive generations of our politicians have been pretending to provide the good things of life for successive generations of Nigerians without having any sensible idea of just how many people they were pretending to provide for. In other words they have been stumbling around blinded by their desire to lay hands on undeserved shares of the so called national cake which by now has been reduced to unsightly crumbs, not worth fighting over. But they are still fighting ferociously over those crumbs even as the number of Nigerians in dire need of those things that make their living remotely worthwhile grows in leaps and bounds. In proportion to their actual number which remains unknown, their needs are compelling for all that and, their discomfiture increases until it occupies all the room in their minds, forcing a sizeable minority of them to seek satisfaction elsewhere where the available pastures appear to be greener

Even if the number of Nigerians needing to be served is known to the last decimal point, how can those needs be met given the scarcity of the resources needed to provide their needed satisfactions. The greater our population the greater should be the number of serviceable houses, schools, roads, hospitals and those other items that should be classified as municipal necessities. People of an optimist bent can point out that our large population constitutes a vast internal market within which a great number of consumable items can be bought and sold for the benefit of our benighted economy. That is just classic economics which unfortunately is not applicable to the Nigerian situation. We cannot even produce or attempt to produce the food we eat and a large proportion of the items of food which still somehow manage to produce are exported to other countries in exchange for so called hard currency. On the other hand, the cost of the mountain of food we have to import from abroad is well in excess of the value of food we have exported.

In terms  terms of articles of modern manufacture we cannot import enough of them to cater for our huge appetite. Given this situation, there is an acute shortage of jobs for more than half of our population so that a large proportion of those young ladies we met at the beginning of this article are trying very hard without success to contribute anything tangible to the nation’s economy. On the other hand you can bet that in confirmation of my fears a substantial majority of them would have gone ahead from that day to add a few thousand children to our rapidly expanding population. Those children in their turn have even less chance of contributing anything remarkable to the Nigerian market place than their embattled mothers are striving to do now.

Within the tense atmosphere that defines the security and political circumstances in Nigeria, almost everyone is looking for means of making sense of life and the possible paths to the future. I am very glad that I could find someone who has lived meaningfully in spite of the terrible existential circumstances that Nigeria presents. This is someone whose life still consists of innumerable lessons for his generation and beyond. I am glad to be celebrating Engr. Abiodun Kehinde Ahmadu, husband, father, friend, astute professional, omolúwàbí, a great Olivetian, and a proud cultural septuagenarian. For my egbon, I have that famous line from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses” on my mind: “Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.” For someone who has spent seven decades making sense of life and its twists and turns, he deserves not only a poem and a wreath, but also a monument dedicated to his continuing struggle through life. Elizabeth KublerRoss, the Swiss-American psychologist, certainly hits the nail on the head about Engr. Ahmadu when she remarked: “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.”

In signposting this celebration, I could take the easy way out by outlining a biographical template—the circumstances of his birth, his educational trajectories, as well as the twists and turns of his professional search for livelihood. On the contrary, behind the septuagenarian framework of existence of Engr. Ahmadu lies personal, cultural and professional narratives worthy of the legacy thinking that should frame this life for others to consider. While the drums beat out the staccato of praises to the accomplishments of this titan, we must not fail to be informed about the herculean existential struggles that brought him to this point. “Herculean” of course references Hercules, the famous Roman adaptation of the Greek mythological hero, Heracles.

The story of Hercules is the story of an existential agony in surmounting several challenges in life before achieving fulfilment and purpose. The story of Hercules is the story of Engr. Ahmadu, from cradle to a solid seven decades on earth, and counting! When a man is described as a “self-made man,” there is a lot that is left unsaid in the biographical narration. Being self-made speaks about someone left without all the frills and pomp attached to being born in the palace or in wealth. Seven decades are no mean years. Engr. Ahmadu carries on his septuagenarian shoulders a deep symbolism that resonates through scriptural and cultural contexts. For instance, for the Israelites and in the Holy Book, the number 70 indicates so many remarkable significations. From a combination of seven for perfection and ten for completeness, the number 70 packs sufficient sacredness that represents a perfect spiritual framework for an individual. And this number is scattered as signification in Israel’s and biblical theological and political acts. In Exodus chapter one and verse five, the scripture declares that the Jewish nation began with seventy souls, with God as the seventieth member. Moses appointed seventy elders. The Sanhedrin, Israel’s formidable tribunal, is made up of seventy elders. Israel spent seventy years in captivity, and Jerusalem also kept seventy sabbaths while Judah was in captivity. Jesus sent seventy disciples to preach the gospel. The translation of the Torah into Greek is marked by the symbol LXX, seventy—the Septuagint. In fact, seventy years are the span of political activities from the first Zionist Congress in 1897 to the unification of Jerusalem and the expansion of the Jewish state in 1967. And then, to cap it, the Book of Psalms pegs the nominal span of human life at precisely 70, the age of wholeness when, as the psalmist suggests, we are to number our days, give thoughts to our life and be guided by wisdom from there on.

Once you insert Engr. Ahmadu’s septuagenarian celebration of life into this sacred frame of the scripture, you are all the more awed by how far he has come in life and how the word and symbolism of the spirit sums his trajectory of existence so far. He has providentially been given a lease of wholeness and completeness. That is something to celebrate. We now begin to understand the reason why our brother, colleague, and friend has remained an amiable and unique personality for all those who know him well. And why he was something of an enigma for someone like me who kept wondering about what made him tick. Now I have an idea of what providence can do when it takes hold of a person’s determination to succeed despite and in spite of all odds arraigned against such a person.

At seventy, my egbon has arrived safely at that temporal trough where the agba (adult), agbalagba (elderly) and the arugbo (person in old age) draw wisdom and deeper perspectives. For Alfred Lord Tennyson, old age has honor and toil. For the Yoruba, old age has honor and renown. The old are venerated for their sunken eyes that have seen far and wide, and that brings depth to conversation and existential decisions. With the strings of professional achievements and accomplishments that Engr. Ahmadu has chalked up, he qualifies eminently to be regarded as a “borokini” rather than a “gbajumo”. A gbajumo, for the Yoruba is a prominent person who wields social influence. A gbajumo could or might not also be a wealthy person (an oloro). And the wealthy need not necessarily be a socially influential person. On the other hand, a borokini achieves an even higher level of renown and status by reason of a stature elevated by influence, wealth and fame. He combines the social influence of the gbajumo with the capacitating reach of the oloro. The significance of a borokini is felt beyond the social influence; indeed, such a person wields social influence because of a professional acumen, propertied status and philanthropic lifestyle that continues to affect the direction of the society. The status of a borokini is the ultimate in prestige; the person crowned with it is sought after as a confluence of grace, ideas and ideals, as well as the willingness to bestow the outflow on others within and without the sphere of their reach.

The borokini appellation captures my egbon of many parts and influence. You know a worthy professional not by the mere search for livelihood, but by the public-spiritedness that brings the fruits of competences and skills to bear on the structures that affect lives positively. From engineering to business management and then on to entrepreneurship, Engr. Ahmadu professional trajectory projects someone in search of meaning for all. The Ahmak Group, a conglomerate that comprises engineering, properties, agro-allied businesses and procurements, speaks to an entrepreneurial spirit. And that spirit attests to a foresight that benefits the society, as his idea of the public-private partnership model of the abattoir innovation in Ibadan confirms. In terms of his stature, intellectual appetite—with a mind that ranges from philosophy and theology, music and the arts, physics and politics—and the continuing search for excellence in all spheres, Engr. Abiodun Kehinde Ahmadu embodies the perfect quality of an English gentleman. That term is not a mere appellation. It represents a distinguished value orientation for the English, someone in good standing with the family and within the society, an honorable fellow who has fellow-feeling, the epitome of the ranti omo eni ti iwo nse corps. The gentleman is the borokini of the English society. And for the Yoruba, the borokini instantiates the moral quality of an omolúwàbí. The omolúwàbí paradigm is a framework for virtues and virtuous living that places the individual within a space of other people in a web of relational reciprocity. The person’s life becomes meaningful if not defined in terms of the moral acceptance derived from how others perceive his or her moral status and social influence. How else should we perceive someone who is proudly an Oyo man to the core?

Egbon is at once frank and charitable. He is careful when making any statements, and when he does, they come out with forthrightness. His critical judgments are unsparing and clinical. This implies that you should expect to get the best and unflattering opinions from him. What virtues could be more commendable among friends? Loyalty stands him out, like his late friend, Otunba Alao-Akala, Engr. Ahmadu retains his friends without any dissimulation. Here is a man of virtue whose moral compass encompasses the lowly and the high; a man whose breath of knowledge and compassion seeks others out for attention; someone who truly loves himself, loves his family, is concerned about the space he shares with others within the society, and ultimately loves Nigeria. When you think of Engr. A. K. Ahmadu, you think of a gentleman who is distinguished by professional excellence, moral maturity and philanthropic spirit. That is someone you want to call your husband, your father, your friend. That is someone I want to follow as my egbon indeed, whose entirely septuagenarian life is a template of goodness and foresight.

• Olaopa is a Retired Federal Permanent Secretary & Professor, National Institute For Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos, tolaopa2003@gmail.com

One of the truly inspiring foreign policy decisions on the continent is Ghana’s national agenda to deemphasise the contribution of international aid to its development plans. Launched in 2019, Ghana Beyond Aid aims to harness the country’s bountiful natural and human resources to transform the country. It is also crucially a policy of dignity and self-respect, requiring Ghanaians, particularly successive governments, to adopt a behavioural change. It is a strategic vision that focuses on their own efforts and industry instead of the charity of western states or other development partners. Ghana’s policy ought to be adopted continent-wide. It should symbolise our desire to see an Africa that strenuously strives to move beyond international aid.

In 1899, Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden, detailed the sense of responsibility Americans should feel towards the Philippine Islands. Decried as racist, the poem was seen as yet another evidence of not only the expansionist philosophy that was at the centre of western civilisation, but its ever ready willingness to also infantilise subaltern peoples. One of the earliest critiques to the poem was from African American clergy man H. T. Johnson who published a response, titled: The Black Man’s Burden in April of the same year.  Johnson’s poem was a critique of the American condition, and the attempt to export the unequal power relations between the whites and black under the disguise of a duty to civilise. For me, however, the real black man’s burden is that Africans have been and continue to be the object of someone else’s responsibility. It was the dynamic during colonialism and remains so now.

The state of being that the colonial enterprise launched has received duly deserved criticisms and need not be rehashed. Now, only a minority would even dare defend the sentiments expressed by Kipling or others of his ilk. Yet, international aid somewhat perpetuates the underlying sentiments expressed in Kipling’s poem. In previous columns, I have railed against colonialism and its neo-imperialism variant. For instance, on July 17 2022, I provided a rounded critique of the colonial encounter and insisted on the importance of remembering crimes of the past. Clearly, part of my effort was an attempt to relitigate the issue, but over the course of this two-part series to the column, I will diagnose the problem and extend my thoughts on how we can exercise agency and exit this existential condition.

As a continent, we bear the shame of being the world’s charity project. More than $1 trillion dollars in development aid has flowed into the continent since the 1960s, but this has not had significant effect on poverty reduction on the continent. In 2019, one in three Africans lived below the global poverty line, but that statistic is worse now (unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic has ‘conspired’ to push a further 55 million Africans into extreme poverty). Indeed, Africa’s contribution to global poverty has increased since the 1960s in comparison to other regions. One of the regions with similar development and security challenge at independence was East Asia. In the 60s, half of those living in abject poverty were in East Asia, and only 15 percent were in Africa. By 2016, the reverse was the case. Africa now has almost 50 percent of the world’s poorest, and East Asia with significantly less people in poverty.

There are several reasons for this remarkable turnaround of fortunes. Among them is the fact that East Asia has been comparatively peaceful. Between 1946 and 1979, East Asia suffered 80 percent of all global battle deaths. Although countries like Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines still confront internal security challenges, yet, since 1979, East Asia has not experienced a major war. This is in stark contrast to Africa’s experience where major wars remain rife. But more importantly for me, the change in fortunes for the African continent also coincides with the take-off of the international aid project on the continent.

Let me be clear, aid has had net positive effects elsewhere. The US Marshall plan after the Second World War relaunched European economies and helped transform a continent devastated by the war. In Africa, however, aid has undermined local industries, created dependency, encouraged corruption, and weakened Africa’s agency. Indeed, if one takes a rather critical outlook to our experience with foreign aid, the conclusions suggest that Africa has lost more than it has gained. Indeed, a 2017 report by a coalition of UK and African equality and development campaigners, suggests that outflows from the continent subvents western economies.  In 2015, for instance, the continent received $162 billion in aid but lost more than $203 billion through illegal profit repatriation by multinational companies, illicit financial flows, and debt servicing on loans. In the same year, the continent secured $32 billion in loans, but paid $18 in debt interest.

I was alarmed when Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Dr Zainab Ahmed noted recently that the country spent 60% of its revenue on debt servicing, and there were months where that ratio went up to 90%. If such a significant percentage of the country’s revenue is spent on repaying interests on loans, how can the critical investment in health services, education, and infrastructure be made? These investments have greater capacity to lift people out of poverty more than donations of grains and wheat.

The truth is that aid has been a faustian bargain for the continent. We have received what often appears to be easy cash, but we have lost more. Beyond the capital flight, what we have lost is a sense of self-dignity and inventiveness We have created a dependency on aid that has encouraged rent-seeking behaviour, stoked and sustained local conflicts, pressured us to adopt policies inimical to our interests, and undermined local industries.  Evidently, we must seek a future independent of aid. That is why Ghana provides a blue print for us as continent.

The second part to this article concludes next week.

• Dr Adediran is an Assistant professor in International Relations at Liverpool Hope University. He can be contacted on: bolaadediran2020@yahoo.com