“Good governance cannot remain merely a philosophy. Concrete steps have to be taken for realizing it.” – Narenda Mordi

By Abiodun Komolafe

Adegboyega Oyetola and Olugbenga Babatunji are two leaders in their own right. While Oyetola is the Governor of Osun State, Babatunji is the Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Osun. Through their talents and efforts, they are also two of a kind. While the former, representing the State, superintends the public administration of the State as well as political needs of the good people of Osun, the latter, a Religious Authority of the Christian Clergy, ministers to the spiritual needs of the adherents of the Anglican faith, in particular; and the Christian religion, in general. Recently, the paths of the Church and the State crossed, this time, at All-Saints Cathedral, Osogbo, the State Capital. It was on the occasion of the State’s 30th Creation Anniversary Thanksgiving Service.

Hear Babatunji, in his sermon at the Church Service: “When I came into office as the Bishop of Osun, I discovered that priests were owed up to 14 months’ salaries. And I said: ‘Not on my watch! …” ‘The Diocesan, who confessed that he sacrificed what could be termed as personal comfort to make sure that his priests were paid promptly, commended the Oyetola-led administration for not only for prioritising workers welfare, but also for sustaining the peace and religious tolerance in ‘the Land of Virtue.’ The prelate also pleaded with the governor not to waiver in his determination to deliver good governance.

Yes! A word in season from the Church to the State, one might say! Without doubt, Babatunji’s revelations are a good template worthy of emulation, because, if leadership is about caring for the led, then, that template exemplifies a caring leadership. If a Bishop got to an office and discovered that 14 months’ salaries were owed the priests entrusted to his care, and he endeavoured to offset all, that in itself, is telling us something about God.

As things stand, we can no longer pretend to not know why our country is fast becoming a cesspool of hunger and poverty. Aside the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the status and stature of the domestic economy is non-enabling. Before our very eyes, banditry, terrorism, killer-herders, and a combination of other unsavoury issues have become a veritable source of our collective national confusion. And it is as if the gods are angry!

It is apposite to note that the Church burdens itself with the responsibility of ameliorating the spiritual and the physical challenges of humanity. At a point in Jesus Christ’s earthly ministrations, He fed a hungry congregation (of over-5000 people) with physical food. Again, call it ‘politics of the stomach’ and you may not be too far from the truth. But then, what “the God of all flesh” demonstrated on that day was that the Church is not only about the enrichment and satisfaction of the spiritual needs of the people, it is also about the physical. Manna from heaven to the Israelites was yet another in the series of epochal demonstrations of God’s promise to meet the physical needs of those who worship Him.

The Christian Holy Book taught us that whatever we “did for one of the least of” God’s people, we “did it for” Him (Matthew 25: 40-45). Through Babatunji, the ‘Vineyard of God’ has again acted out one of its historically-ascribed responsibilities. In like manner, Governor Oyetola has shown that he is for the mass of the people who voted him into office, not the permutations of elections. His achievements along this line have indeed shown him as a caring governor. A governor, who understood the impossibility of knowing the future when the past is still present, rose to the challenge of a zigzag payment of salaries and pensions hitherto experienced in the State; vowed that such unfortunate development would not reoccur on his watch; and has devotedly kept to his promise without adding a dime to the State’s debt burden, almost 3 years into his first tenure, deserves our pats.

The most vulnerable residents of the state, who are the recipients of the monthly Osun Food Support Scheme, one of Oyetola’s humanitarian gestures, will no doubt appreciate what it means when there is a quick intervention that banishes hunger pandemic. But for that timely intervention, Osun would most certainly have been saturated with the excruciating pain of hunger. The most interesting part of it is that this gesture is devoid of political flamboyance and exaggerated opportunism. Yet, its effect has been great. Impliedly, it’s not about rolling out the drums or making political gimmicks. Yet, the point is that certain people within the society, who, otherwise, would not have had food on their tables, are being fed!

In this sinful world that lacks the fear of God and has little interests in taking the world of God seriously, the tragic truth is that Nigerians are fond of taking certain things for granted. For instance, under Oyetola, promotion of teachers is being handled, quietly. They are not being owed salaries; and academic sessions are running, uninterrupted. As a matter of fact, that teachers in Osun could do the job for which they were being paid, peacefully – in the last three years – without embarking on a single industrial action, and not causing trouble for anybody, especially, at a time children and wards have become the favourite bargaining chips in the bizarre business of kidnapping and banditry operations, is no mean feat.

Oyetola cares for the widows and the vulnerable people in Osun. The state’s Health Insurance Scheme, aka O’HIS, was created “to aid the aged and less-privileged to access healthcare.” His focussed attention on the growth of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) as the ultimate driver of the local economy; and the fast-tracking of strategies to make money from taxation and tourist reforms are equally noteworthy. Let’s not forget the governor’s timely intervention in the flood situation currently ravaging the global space, from which Osun State is not immune; and his input to the Agriculture and Food Security sector.

Governance is not a Tea Party! There’s always a period for big planning and all that. It’s a fact that Oyetola did all these before coming into office as governor. Having been in a position as enviable as the Chief of Staff to former Governor Rauf Aregbesola, Oyetola is not just learning the rope. Of course, that has been to his advantage. Therefore, as July 16, 2022 draws nearer, will the good people of Osun forget this man of great affection, who has made success his watchword in every facet of his endeavours? Will the residents of, say, Ejigbo forget this fine gentleman with self-effacing humility in years to come? How could Olaiya Flyover Bridge have become a reality without the governor’s interventions on the Alekunwodo axis of Osogbo? Evidently, the stories are many and all the Ministries, Agencies and Departments (MDAs), on Oyetola’s watch, have theirs!

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 (ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk)

By Nnedinso Ogaziechi

About two years ago, two profound stories came out from both Jigawa and Kwara states. Some women in rural Jigawa had become fed up with maternal and child mortality due to the lack of hospitals in their community. They taxed themselves and bought a second hand vehicle and kept  balance of the money aside as the salary for the driver they planned to employ.

In Kwara State too, some group of rural women decided to remove their children from the ramshackle corrugated iron shack they used as a school. They contributed N2,500 each  from the federal government Trader Money of N5,000 over some years  and built a two-room block of classrooms and employed two teachers  for  their children. Inadequate as the structure and car were, it is very instructive and revealing about the kind of collaborative efforts that exist between women at the rural level. These are stories of solidarity for economic empowerments amongst several of our rural women.

Inadequate as most of these efforts might appear, there are lessons from such activities from the women at that level as opposed to the educated urban women. There is evidently more collaborative efforts amongst the less educated rural women than the women in cities. Ironically, the women in the cities often get the government appointments because they have access to the men who wield power and the men also see them as better allies.

In a way, the individualistic attitude of the elite women in urban areas ironically empowers the men to continue their hold on power. While the advocacies for gender equity have are relevant, no progress would be made without a deliberate effort by the educated women  to truly collaborate and forge a united front, Democracy is about numbers and so, women of all classes must unite to liberate and save themselves.

The Roundtable Conversation sat with Nigeria’s acting matriarch, the multi-talented, journalist, entrepreneur and  cosmetologist ,Taiwo, Ajai-Lycett who insists that women who have been empowered through education has a duty to their nation. They must reject tokenism and demand change in the system. The educated women have a duty to use their education to liberate womenfolk. They must realize that electing educated and enlightened men will be to the advantage of the women because only the truly educated men would understand the value of partnership between men and women.

According to Ajai-Lycett, there must be a cultural reorientation that would begin to put ethics and morals back to the society. Integrity must begin to matter, our cultural ethos must be brought back in ways that we show concerns on the values of the society which often act  as a guide to society to continually re-invent itself in positive ways. We must begin to handle impunity in ways that decency and respect  are given pride of place.

Women must initiate the change we want in the homes. The women communicators in the media  must champion the issues for women. We must champion our own causes just like the men. We have more women and children in poverty so we must act now. The so called educated women should be ashamed of themselves if they do not bring productive changes. The illiterate ones depend on them for guidance. The few token women in power cannot do much because the men outnumber them. This must change.

The legislative tools must be created by women which means more women ought to get into the legislative houses to make just laws for the progress of the country. Women must learn to stop enforcing patriarchy at different levels. According to Ajai-Lycett, women must use their divinity productively. To her, a woman is like God in some ways, women create, they nurture, multitask and equally do a  whole lot of complex tasks as such, they should always acknowledge their worth. Basically all humans are equal even if with physiological differences.

Education must be a tool that should liberate and as such, more educated women must stand up to be counted. Development can only happen when educated women realize that they are endowed enough to use their brains to work for themselves instead of depending on men whose egos won’t allow them to do the right things. The subjugation of women tells on the development of any country and the men will always do that to gain selfishly. The women with education in any field must wake up and stop being sitting ducks. The essence of education should be for mental and physical liberation. Unless educated women get up and take their rightful position, no development can take place.

The men on the other hand must realize that there is the spiritual side to women and unless they threat them well, there might be no peace. The appeasement of women through equity and justice is the only liberating factor. All women must equally come together to work towards their own liberation with determination and a team spirit that realizes that teamwork is key. Individual excellence in different fields by the women can never translate into development. Political power is important and women must be active participants with their education and other resources.

The Roundtable Conversation sought the views of Yahaya Balogun  an Ekiti-born US based political analyst, writer and public servant  who is passionate about  the development  of his home country Nigeria. He believes that the Nigerian educated woman seems not ready to roll up her sleeves to walk the talk. There are many women and men championing the course of women and development but you hardly see most women appreciating them or listening even. It is sad that that most women are more interested in ephemeral things like fashion and the fast life.

There are many men that would be willing to assist women access power if really they are serious and strategize as a team. Nigerian women seem not to realize the power they wield. Most men would be willing to try women but it seems they are just sitting back without seizing the moment. They might talk about finance but money should not be the main issue when they have no strategy of engagement. The world is marveling at the courage of the Afghan women who surprisingly are standing up to the Talibans. That is the power women wield! Despite the treatment the Afghan women receive from their men, they are doing what strong and determined women do across the world.

The women are taking the bull by the horn and refusing to be intimidated in one of the worst countries to be a woman – Afghanistan. The question then remains, if they can take action, what of the well-educated and exposed women of Nigeria? What Nigerian women need right now is what I call political mutation. If this happens, most reasonable men in Nigeria and across the world will support  them because the time seems right.

If the capable women in Nigeria are ready, they must work out a strategy that can work for them. Democracy needs money but money is not the ultimate. Good strategy helps in elections and I is not always about money. We need competent and eloquent women who can persuasively communicate to the youths. Barak Obama did not start off as a political heavy weight but his handlers had a brilliant campaign strategy that won over America.

Come to think of it, women are bearing the brunt of poverty especially at the rural areas. The lives of Nigerian women must transcend the usual support they give men.  They must see the possibility of leading as other countries have more women leaders who are doing well. If the women are serious, they must form a formidable force. Women must restrategize. They should have solid programmes. Women must seize this moment in our history..

Nigerian men have already disappointed many people. Credible women must beat the odds and throw their hats into the ring. Most times, some women just come out to seek cheap fame without planning very well. This is the time to plan and integrate. There are many Nigerians in the diaspora who are ready to put in their best. Nigerian women should realize that without making an attempt, there cannot be victory.

Determination is what is needed to challenge the status quo. The issue of money should not discourage women. They need the will and determination. If we remember the #EndSARS incident, they got huge donations to hold out their protest for many weeks.. Yahaya equally believes with good planning, money cannot be an issue. This period is a great opportunity for women.

The Roundtable Conversation agrees with both Madam Taiwo Ajai-Lycett and Yahaya Balogun that women especially the educated must  step in in unison to participate in politics. It might appear an impossible task   but nothing in life comes easy. Team work is key and the women can start the political revolution that sees women moving from ‘women party  leaders  who work for  men to politicians who struggle to take power  too.

The example of the Liberian Madam Ellen Sirleaf Johnson should inspire more Nigerian women. The women of that country had suffered under the various male Presidents and they worked so hard, mobilized and struggled to go to elect her even for a second term.  Arm-chair analysis and grumbling  do not fix issues. Any country that needs development must optimize the human capital in a complimentary leadership style that gives leadership to the most capable through the votes of the people.

To sit back and complain cannot solve the problem. The women must be aware of all that is needed for a productive political participation. They must be willing  to work with the men as no one gender can do it alone. There should be complimentary leadership style and not a competition. Women of course are the worse victims of bad leadership and should work hard to be part of the solution. However, knowledge must meet preparedness as tools of the trade. Most men are less qualified but still access leadership and cling unto power, women must come to the table twice more qualified to right the wrongs.

The dialogue continues…

A very touching historical video by one Dumebi Kachikwu for ROOTS traced the history of women’s political participation and advocacy way beyond the popular Aba women Riot of 1929 that many erroneously credit as the first major intervention in political issues by women in a colonial Nigeria.
In what appears like a passionate plea to Nigeria and African women to do what they know how to do best, he traced history to 1910 in Agbaja in present day Kogi state when women collectively stayed away from their homes for a month based on the suspicion that some men had been secretly killing pregnant women. This action, according to history pushed the elders in the communities to address their concerns.
Again in1924, three thousand women in present day Calabar took to the streets to protest the tolls imposed on markets by the colonial authorities. In the South West, women organizations like the Lagos Market Women Association, Nigeria’s Women’s Party and the Abeokuta Women’s Union were pressure groups that actively took action to stop the colonial administration in their tracks. He recalled too that the Aba Women Riot of 1929 was a collective action that defied tribes and religion. The women pushed for justice and equity and even though some of them were killed in the process, they still won as they achieved some of the aims of their protest.
In tracing the history of women’s standing up to the colonial administration in Nigeria, Ukachukwu is beckoning on women to remember that the they have always been active participants in the political sphere. He therefore wants women to stand up and own their positions in both the country and continent.
At the Roundtable Conversation however, we realize that the fact that Rwanda presently has the global highest number of women in parliament at 61.1% does not erase the fact that women seem to have taken a back seat in African political issues. Understandably, the 1994 genocide is a contributory factor there is a clarion call on women to intervene in the development of the country and continent. The female power is still unmistakably valid at all times and now is no different.
The Roundtable Conversation for long has identified the effects of the lack of gender parity in Nigerian political space seeing that Nigeria with a population of more than two hundred million has one of the lowest gender representations in parliament with a paltry 6.9%. What this portends is that the Nigerian political space still excludes women as a carryover of the colonial mono governance structure that reordered the traditional African complimentary leadership that existed before the white men came to, in Achebe’s words, put a knife to that which held us together as a people and things have fallen apart.
The Roundtable Conversation sat down with the Senate Minority leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe who had penultimate week delivered a Keynote speech at the inaugural annual conference of Nkata Ndi Inyom Igbo with the theme, “Enhancing Women’s Participation and Partnership in governance and Development”. The Socio-Cultural Group of professional women believes that we all must join in the conversation to find a solution to the leadership question in ways that gender should not be a barrier for competent and willing women to win elections in a democracy.
The Senator startled everyone when he pointedly declared that, ‘If nothing is done and urgently too, there will soon be no woman in the Senate”. He should know, he is in a Senate of 109 members with a paltry seven female senators! A House of Representatives with 360 members has only 22 women. Most state houses of assembly have no woman at all and those that have do not make up to 5% of the total number. No woman in Nigeria has won a governorship seat since 1999.
According to the Senator, the reality is that the number of women has been on the decrease since 1999. He said Nigeria must take decisive actions to make the political space more inclusive of women. However, modern politics according to him requires education and the literacy rate especially for women across some regions is still very low. So first things first, education of all our children, males and females must be a priority if we must get ahead in a world ruled by ideas and technology. The leaders in parts of the country where the literacy rate for women is very low according to the statistics of UNICEF, UNESCO and WHO must make education of the people a priority just like they make that of their children.
Asked what he has done as a legislator to bring his fears to the fore and get his colleagues to act, he said that he had always advocated that we have to increase the number in the federal system to bring in more women. If certain appointments are based on Federal character, can Nigerians not realize that there is no gender parity in the Nigerian political space? Is the sense of justice limited to appointments in a country in dire straits that desperately needs the input of women in a complimentary leadership style?
He also has been pushing for a renewed legislative agenda in changing the laws to reflect the current realities in global politics. However, it is often a herculean task to get the majority to see the real danger in playing the ostrich. Some would often quote the constitution as it concerns federal character but see advocacy for political inclusiveness in another light. So if we can balance appointments, why not revisit our laws for gender balance? While we acknowledge the nuances of culture and religion we continue to push and persuade them to see the current dynamics as not very intrusive in that regard. We continue to knock on the doors hoping it works someday. We must continue to push for implementation.
Asked whether women in politics are doing enough to help their gender, he said the same acculturation men are exposed to are the same for women too because you often see women not supporting fellow women seeking elective positions. So women in politics often have to work twice as hard as the men before they get results. Women must learn to sustain the unity they have at the rural community levels in party politics. They can work better with the sense of team unity that guides their interactions at the community levels nationally. Unfortunately it does seem they do not seize those moments.
Fundamentally, Nigerians must take stock. We can look around and see that the chicken has come home to roost. When women are uneducated, there is likelihood of early marriage and with marriage as a child bride, many things might follow. There are chances of the child-bride dying in pregnancy or labour due to reproductive issues which increases the maternal mortality, some might get the almost disabling condition of Vestico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) which subsequently makes them unproductive. An illiterate mother has less chances of raising well balanced kids nutritionally and mentally.
The numbers of uneducated and unskilled youths that cause most of the social ills that affect all of us are all products of a system that relegate women to the background. Ironically, most of the political elites understand the implication because their own kids neither miss education nor do they become child brides.
Nigerians must begin to think beyond today. The idea of focusing on the short term is a huge problem in any nation that desires development. Our short term plans are very destructive to any nation. Nations have fifty, hundred and fifty years strategic development plans. It seems we are a country of here and now. The earlier we begin to address gender parity in the country the better for everyone. We have to be more discerning and make better choices.

The senator believes that political parties must begin to do intra party re-strategizing to chat a better political culture that can bring a change. The essence is for political parties to begin to create the template that can engender more inclusiveness and with it the development we all seek.
We must as a nation agree that democracy that must be viable must stop seeing women in leadership as ‘kind gesture or mere tokenism’ to the female gender. There must be a reorientation for us all to realize that development in the twenty first century works better with complimentary leadership with women who have shown capacity and readiness to serve.
The serious issue of the decreasing number elected women across the country since the return of democracy in 1999 is an ill-wind that blows no one or region any good. It is a global truth that most countries including Nigeria with fewer women in leadership are not doing too well developmentally.
The recent pandemic across the globe has also shown the capacity of women leaders in other climes as most of the countries with female leaders statistically have done better at containing the spread of the virus and subsequently its effect on their economies. It is wrong to assume that gender parity is a favour to women. No, it is not, it is a way of life that dates back to pre-colonial and colonial periods.
The Amazons of Dahomey – present day Benin Republic got their title from their leadership gallantry against the French colonialists. Queen Amina, Idia, Moremi and a number of other historical women leaders are legends today that have earned prime historical positions even better than most men of their era. The myopia of the political leaderships in all regions must give way to better long term vision and plans. The divine that made us men and women thought of partnerships in more things than reproduction and home keeping.
The dialogue continues…

Editor’s note:

Following the publication of this article, Africa Check, an independent and non-partisan fact-checking organisation fact-checking a number of claims in the piece.

They shared their findings with us. Of the seven claims they looked into, three were correct while the others were inaccurate.

Rwanda did have the highest number of women in parliament at 61% as of January 2021. And only seven of Nigeria’s 109 senators are female, while no woman has won a governorship in the country since 1999.

However, there are less than women – 3.6% – in the House of Representatives than the 6.9% carried in the article. There are also 22 state assemblies that have women, as opposed to the claim there are none. And in a majority of these 22 Assemblies, 13 have women making up more than 5% of the total, contrary to the article’s statement that no State Assembly has reached this level.

Imagine how the scene at the Kabul airport looked to the suicide bomber in the last seconds before he committed his act of murder yesterday: thousands of men, women, and children queuing and jostling in desperate escape from the coming Taliban regime. These were not randomly selected men, women, and children either. These were people with technical skills: medicine, computers, electrical engineering. These were people who spoke foreign languages. These were people who could navigate the modern world and its complex demands. These were people who could do work that could fetch dollars and euros and yen and rupees from the world outside Afghanistan.

The people at the Kabul airport wanted no part of the Taliban’s future. They were risking their lives to flee that future. In the end, that flight cost them their lives, as well as those of U.S. Marines guarding and guiding them on their way out to new and freer lives.

This latest terrorist atrocity casts further gloom upon America’s already grim exit from its longest war. It will further embitter the already polarized American recriminations over that war’s end. It may also portend the next phase of violence inside Afghanistan, as different factions of Islamic militancy turn against one another.

But it also illuminates some other truths less likely to get American attention: The airlift out of Kabul feels humiliating to Americans. Yet at the same time, the airlift is dealing two powerful parting blows against the seemingly victorious Taliban.

Offering refuge in the West to tens of thousands of Afghan allies is a dramatic humanitarian act. It’s a display of power, too—not only the organizational and economic power involved in moving so many people so fast and so far, but also the cultural and social power of the superior attractiveness of the modern world that so appalls the Taliban. Afghanistan needed the people now leaving. The systems that the Western alliance left behind in Afghanistan—computer networks, roads and railways, even the helicopters and munitions the Taliban has inherited from the Afghan armed forces—will rapidly break down without the people whom the Western alliance is removing.

Read Also: UN reports ‘grave’ human rights violation by Taliban

The second blow may hurt the Taliban even more: the propaganda blow. When the Taliban first took power in Afghanistan, in the 1990s, Islamic militancy looked like a wave of the future. Islamic militants could reasonably believe that their war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan had wrecked one of the world’s two superpowers. Hezbollah terrorism had driven the United States out of Lebanon in 1983. New communication technologies were carrying radical preachings to Muslims all around the world, and many seemed to be absorbing and adopting those preachings. Al-Qaeda already existed, and would soon launch an even bloodier jihad against the United States.

Thirty years later, things look rather different. Perhaps in repulsion from the atrocities of ISIS, perhaps in reaction against local Islamists, people in the Arab world are becoming measurably less religious. The concept that Islamic peoples could form some kind of unified global political community looks ever more hollow as China represses its Muslim minority with the acquiescence of the leaders of Pakistan, Turkey, and even the ISIS terror group. The global center of Islamic militancy has shifted from the Middle East to West Africa—powered in great part by the lengthening gaps of African Muslims behind their Christian neighbors in education and wealth—just as the Taliban’s sponsors in Pakistan fall progressively further behind the Indian state they regard as a civilizational enemy. Millions of young Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa and beyond yearn to emigrate to Europe or North America or other liberal democracies.

Almost two decades ago, President George W. Bush prophesied that someday the ideologies of Islamic terror would join Nazism and communism in “the unmarked grave of discarded lies.” That prophecy has not yet fully come to pass. But the people trying to board the planes in Kabul have rejected the lie, and the urgency in their faces tells their story. That was the story a suicide bomber tried to silence. The story reverberates more powerfully than ever in the bloody aftermath of this latest crime committed in the name of faith.

• This article was first published in www.theatlantic.com with the title ‘The Two Blows America Is Dealing to the Taliban’

Ahmed Joda—husband, father, friend, journalist, super permanent secretary, patriot and statesman—has just transited to the great beyond. At 91, we can consider him to be old enough to go the ways of the elders. But Ahmed Joda was not just another Nigerian. And not just another civil servant of the glorious era of public service in Nigeria. And this is the more reason why his sudden transition generates a deep grief that goes beyond losing a father and a mentor. Ahmed Joda was an embodiment of all that being a public servant entail. And this lesson is all the more needed at this time when those who are the exemplars of the best in Nigerian public service system are unrelentingly transiting: Mr. Allison Ayida, Alhaji Sule Katagum, Mrs. Francesca Emanuel, Chief Theophilus Akinyele, Alhaji Abdulahi Ma’aji, Alhaji M. Lele Muhtar, Chief A. O. Okafor, Mr. S. B. Ajulo, Alhaji Moibi Shitu, and the much younger, Mr. Tunde Lawal, and so on. All these were old bosses, friends and colleagues, and the leading lights of the public service profession in Nigeria. I am honored to have delivered a lecture at Mrs. Francesca Emanuel 80th birthday, and her last public event. And significantly, I was also the guest lecturer at the colloquium organized by the Oyo State government in honor of Pa Akinyele.

Joda lived a life of patriotic service to Nigeria. This in itself speaks volume about the kind of public servant he was. This was a distinguished personality of whom we can say, like all the others in that even more distinguished cadre, that he was a dedicated public servant all his life. Again, like Adebo, Udoji, Asiodu, Mrs. Ighodalo, Aziz Attah, Erediauwa, and others, he came to the civil service from journalism. I like to recall one insight from one of our many seminal engagements on the unfinished business of civil service reform. He went back memory lane to recount his formative years in Qur’anic school. He then described how Islamic instructions, the rigor and associated discipline, prepared and helped him to excel when he transited to formal western education and, much later, in his career as a bureaucrat. The lesson there for me was one of how wrong people could be when they will equate speaking English with literacy when, indeed, English language is not the only medium of education.    And when he eventually got into the civil service vocation, he embraced it while rising from the rank and file, and learning all that he could about what the “public” and the “service” in public service entailed. It was as if he was getting prepared for the most critical assignment that will later involve the administrative destiny of the Nigerian state. And then, when the Nigerian civil war happened, Ahmed Joda and others like him, patriots all, were ready. And they did not fail. Though he retired from active service in 1978, a true public servant never retires since the love of the public and its wellbeing is a lifelong calling. In 1999, he was the head of the committee to advise the Presidency on poverty alleviation. In 2015, he became the head of Muhammadu Buhari presidential transition committee. In-between, he will provide leadership in crystallizing the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) that is standing hugely tall today as a foremost nation’s think tank. And he never stopped attempting to intervene critically and functionally on behalf of the Nigerian state and its reform trajectory.

One of his final attempts included a partnership with the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library that commenced a technical process involving a team of technical experts and reform specialists that worked to unravel the missing pieces in Nigeria’s administrative reform efforts. This is to the end that the conclusion of the technical process could serve as the basis by which he will add value to the Buhari administration’s “Next Level” change agenda so it could be taken truly to the next level. I was humbled when he invited me to be technical lead to the team.

With the unfortunate demise of Ahmed Joda, and in the spirit of the reform technical process that he initiated, I consider it appropriate to, as tribute to the great administrative icon, ventilate about the fundamental essence of his life and service, for the sake of the institutional reform mission that his time as a public servant encapsulate. What are the significant issues about reforming the public service that Joda’s exemplary service point at? In this piece, my tribute to this great public servant and patriot is to see how we can go from thoughts about his term as a super permanent secretary to insights about the role of the permanent secretary about the institutional reform of the public service system in Nigeria.

The generation of Ahmed Joda was a very lucky one. And the luck derives from the fact that the set of public servants that laid the foundation of the Nigerian civil service system—from Adebo through to Joda—got the best in the professional grounding facilitated by the legacy of Victorian values-based administrative tradition left by the British after colonialism. The British civil service had gone through series of reform that was meant to transform the British bureaucracy from a great rock in the tideline into an efficient administrative system. From the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854 to the Fulton Report of 1968, the British system nailed the significance of the public service as a vocation. This was a lesson well learnt by the pioneering corps of Nigerian public servants. And this is a lesson that stands at the core of the institutional reform of the civil service system in Nigeria. It is one insight that the demise of Joda brings to mind with absolute cogency. Being a public servant is being public spirited. The virtue of being pubic spirited brings home the values of the “public” and of “service” in ways that goes beyond being a careerist. It makes of public servants modern-day priests of the Levitical order who owe a patriotic loyalty to the state.

The collective body of the super permanent secretaries, of which Ahmed Joda was a prominent and functional member, was called upon to administratively rehabilitate the Nigerian state in the throes of a civil war. And within the context of anarchy and a framework of scarce resources made scarcer by war, these patriotic administrators were tasked to keep the Nigerian state within a boundary made sane for developmental progress. However, fifty-one years after the end of the civil war, the Nigerian state is not just struggling to achieve just the basics in the status of a developmental state, but has regressed to become a failing and seemingly failed state. And all its pioneer and public-spirited public servants are all almost demised. How then, out of the legion of systemic and structural changes that are urgent, do we recreate the office of the permanent secretary in their image?

The post of the permanent secretary came into effect with independence and the implementation of the Nigerianisation Policy that was meant to fill the supernumerary posts with Nigerians. The office of the permanent secretary, historically speaking, since it was inaugurated by PM Lord Grey in 1830 to replace the post of Under Secretary in Britain with Sir John Burrow as the first to bear the title of perm sec, is meant to assist the ministers of a government in ways that obey the restriction imposed by the politics-administration dichotomy. This is why the permanent secretary has been characterized as “the permanent custodian of permanent problems”—in her capacity as chief policy adviser, chief administrative or operations officer and the accounting officer.  It is the permanence of the office that facilitate the continuity of succeeding governments. Indeed, it is the functional optimality of the permanent secretary that ensures that the public service serves as the backbone of a developmental state. This is why the office of the permanent secretary becomes the number one candidate for an institutional reform.

Reforming the office of the permanent secretary, following the imperatives of managerialism, is transforming it into a CEO, a technology-savvy, efficient, accountable, effective, and entrepreneurial manager and change agent with the capacities and competences to superintend a public service in a knowledge age and postcolonial administrative context. The reform agenda is to make the performing PS answer the objectives of optimal productivity for country like Nigeria that has been bedeviled by low productivity. In reforming the permanent secretary into a transformational manager responsible for a ministry’s performance profile, the reform is also meant to set up the office of the PS into a hub around which a new breed of public-spirited public servants will be recruited, trained and deployed. To therefore become an efficient change agent, the permanent secretary must not only be an institutional memory, but a product of a professionalized recruitment, retention, talent pipelining, and incentivization process, while she must also be circumscribed by an individual performance agreement or contract that is part of a larger performance management strategies meant to boost the productivity of a developmental state. The recruitment process, with a larger objective of constituting a senior executive service (SES), will be subordinated to human resource management dynamics that recruit based on the administrative philosophy undergirding the developmental state.

Given that the twenty-first century permanent secretary must operate within a VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous—administrative environment made more complex by COVID-19, there is the need for both technical, administrative and cultural reorientations that insinuate the training of the public servant within the new ambit of public values, action-molding administrative imperatives (ethical values, i.e. integrity, honesty, respect; democratic values, i.e. responsiveness, representativeness, rule of law; and professional values, i.e. excellence, innovation), and what has been called “twenty-first century literacies” (interpersonal skills: facilitation, empathy, political skills; synthesizing skills: sorting evidence, analysis, making judgements, offering critique and being creative; organizing skills: group work, collaboration and peer review; and communication skills: better use of new media and multi-media resources). And in straddling the generalist and professional roles, the new permanent secretary is required to function as an expert (to advise the government on policy design), regulator (providing oversight on the non-core responsibilities of government), an engager (mediating between government and the citizens on what constitutes the public good), and a reticulist (who identifies new competences required for performance).

In administrative and institutional terms, the new understanding of the permanent secretary as a change agent makes her a transformational leader that is more collaborative than heroic. With strategic intelligence and collaborative competences, she is saddled with the responsibilities of overseeing the transformation of an institution of which she must manage to generate policy intelligence that will stimulate performance and eventually enhance productivity. This is what Ahmed Joda and the band of super permanent secretaries exemplify. This is the legacy we should perpetuate in their honor.

Statistics indicate that youth unemployment is lower in Africa than Europe, the US and Asia. But statistics do lie … or at least don’t tell the whole story. With World Youth Day being commemorated on August 12, African industrialist and entrepreneur Adam Molai looks at what is required for Africa’s youth to rise

On paper at least, Africa’s youth don’t appear to be faring too badly when it comes to jobs.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) 2020 estimates, Africa has the lowest youth unemployment rate (11%) of all the Continents. Comparatively, youth unemployment in Europe and Central Asia is 16%, 15% in the Americas and 14% in Asia and the Pacific region.

With almost 60% of the Continent’s population aged 15 years and under the age of 25 years, this appears to be a good portent for Africa.

But as is ever the case with Africa, things are never quite what they seem.

The reality, studies show, is that youth unemployment is low across the Continent because African youths simply cannot afford not to work. And while they might be employed, it is not in the formal labour market or in well-paid jobs.

Moreover, as Africans know too well, Africa is not homogenous and the disparities in employment rates are as vast as the Continent itself.

While youth unemployment is only 3% in Ethiopia and Uganda, 4% in Tanzania and 7% in Kenya, this is not the same for those on the northern and southern tips of the Continent, according to the (ILO, 2019). Youth unemployment is a staggering 56% in South Africa and 51% in Egypt. It is 47% in eSwatini, 41% in Namibia and 38% in Botswana.

A skills mismatch between skills acquired in school and skills required in the labour market is the main problem, studies have repeatedly shown.

And Covid has exacerbated the problem.

A UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) survey of 142 countries found that the poorest countries experienced 115 days of school closures on average as a result of Covid, compared with only 53 days in some high-income countries.

The survey concluded that the enforced closures had rolled back years of progress for the most disadvantaged students.

As we commemorate World Youth Day 2021, it appears the already-bleak outlook for Africa’s youth has just got grimmer.

But like the statistics on youth unemployment, I do not believe this is the only possible outcome for Africa’s youth.

While Covid has, at first glance, dealt a death blow to Africa’s attempts to improve its trajectory and the future of its young, I believe the pandemic actually provides a great opportunity for African governments to elevate entrepreneurship and critical thinking over that of “traditional subjects”.

Covid has started eroding one of the main obstacles to transforming education: societal expectations.

African culture is often prefaced on a “wage-earner mentality”. African parents have long pursued and taken pride in their children finding “good jobs” in the criminal justice, financial, health, engineering or education sectors.

What Covid has brought home for even the most conservative African parent is that many 20th century jobs or a regular, guaranteed wage are a thing of the past for many people.

Prioritising entrepreneurship and preparing our children for a future where they will need to know how to identify opportunities and monetise ideas is now the name of the game.

Ironically, it may also stop the pursuit of public office for personal gain, jobs in the civil service and cronyism which has blighted Africa’s prospects up to now.

African governments have long striven to provide a world-class, traditional public school education for its children. Most have failed.

So instead of trying – and most likely – failing in their bids to  make up the lost school hours or on remediation (mitigating learning loss and helping those who did not learn during school closures to catch up), African governments can use this seminal moment to transform what and how African children are taught.

Instead of focussing solely on the ABC’s and ensuring children memorise facts so as to pass exams, priority should be placed on honing critical thinking and problem solving – commonly known as higher order thinking skills – and on practical application of knowledge.

Universities too should also be focussed on finding solutions to the challenges their society faces, rather than merely teaching theoretical constructs.

Entrepreneurship is the ability to come up with solutions to challenges and commercialising those solutions.

Africa has lots of challenges and requires lots of solutions.

Who better to provide solutions to Africa’s problems than Africa’s youth – with the help of their entrepreneurs and supported by their governments to institutionalise entrepreneurship among the continent’s youth.

Therefore, instead of seeing the pandemic as a glass half-empty for the future of Africa’s youth, we should flip the script and see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity … to cultivate and nurture entrepreneurship among Africa’s  young … and in so doing secure their future.

My growing up as a teenager was filled with privileged exposures to interesting scholars like Sheikh Muyideen Ajani Bello, a witty and fiery Muslim preacher then based in Kano. Quoting another scholar, I heard him categorise humans into four groups: those who know and know that they know; those who know but often forget that they know; those who do not know and they readily admit that they do not know; and those who do not know and do not admit that they do not know. He called the fourth category a bunch of perpetual fools who should be cautioned or lectured. Everyday interaction has revealed this to be true.

A certain Mr. Kayode Thomas, a rabid antagonist of the administration, has recently published an article in which he claimed that the ‘N35bn bond’ taken by the administration is an exercise in executive lawlessness. What I see in Thomas’s article are a combination of mischief, ignorance, and what I call the divine rights of the king syndrome. The latter in this context means that he sees himself as a kingmaker whose words are laws and who possesses all the knowledge to fix Kwara from its rock bottom position in basic ratings of human capital development in 2019 to the Disney Land in just two years. It is not our attitude to respond to every opinion, grandstanding, or postulations as that may mean any of three things on our part: lack of focus, joblessness, or a tendency to want to read just sweet things about us. None of these defines the Governor or his administration. We are not jobless. We remain focused as ever! And we are not ashamed to admit our imperfections nor are we deaf to Kwarans, our employers, pointing out to us what we should do better next time. For this reason, I will restrict myself to responding only to a few of his claims that needed clarifications.

He gratuitously claimed that the ‘norm is for bonds to be issued by Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Nigeria Stock Exchange but neither was part of this arrangement’. Ignorance. Bond issuance may take two broad forms. Apart from the one issued by SEC and NSE, there is also the private bond. No fewer than 10 states — governed by either PDP or APC — have accessed private bonds over the past three years. Kwara’s N35bn private bond is one of the lowest. Private bond issuance is ethical, legal, and faster as it bypasses certain bureaucratic niceties. The Kwara bond followed every legal step there is, such as cabinet and legislative approvals. For emphasis, ‘public hearing’ is not a legal requirement in bond issuance. The Debt Management Office (DMO) has not only certified the state as financially healthy to take N35bn or more, it has also green-lighted the procedures so far taken by the government. The man again displayed ignorance when he said that some of the projects listed in the budget are also to be funded with the bond. I failed to see any contradiction in it, particularly when he admitted that provisions made for the said projects in the budget are way below the cost of the projects. For instance, only N100m was earmarked for the innovation hub in the budget, whereas the total project cost is N1.1bn. What is the fuss if the bond will complete the huge facility with a balance of N1bn as would be accommodated in the supplementary budget?

Indeed, Kwara got parliamentary approval to raise N35bn. However, it has only raised N27bn at the extant 15% market rate.

A few concerns have been raised on the bond. That included the viability to pay back. Kwara is solvent and can easily pay back. That is the expert conclusion of the DMO, the national statutory body that regulates lending by the national and subnational governments in Nigeria. The administration has cut waste and cannot in good conscience be accused of profligacy. It has earned itself various cognomen for ending the corrupt, unproductive patronage system of the past. Bond redemption will take seven long years, charged to the state’s monthly allocation from the federal government. Bolstered by internal revenue, the plan is such that no basic commitment of the government will be affected.

Some persons have also said the N35bn is a tad much. Measured against infrastructural deficits in Kwara, it is not. As of 2016, the deficits were valued at N256bn. This valuation, ironically, was done by the government peopled by members of the current opposition who now write petitions to block the bond. Thomas is a friend of that lacklustre administration.

Everyone complains that Kwara remains hugely dependent on handouts from the centre. But are there alternatives to changing that status except enough resources go into infrastructural development and creating economic centres? No. We must spend our way to unlocking the Kwara potentials as the southernmost northern state. This is exactly what the administration seeks to do with the bond. The bond will fund some ongoing projects to completion, and do many more. These projects include the abandoned Kwara State University Campuses at Osi (Kwara South) and Ilesha Baruba (Kwara North); the Ilesha Gwanara Road; and a few others. These are projects inherited from the past administration. Had the administration chosen the self-serving post-2003 path of governance in the state, it will simply abandon those projects and conceive its own for politics. But it is not doing that because the funds already sunk into them came from the public purse. This administration has a reputation of attending to abandoned projects in the interest of the people who brought it to power. If that does not fit into the Otoge revolution, then nothing else should.

Kwara is essentially an agrarian state. Atop the blessing of rich arable lands is its rich tourism potentials. Kwara is home to the Owu Fall, the highest waterfall in West Africa. But it is inaccessible to date. Count the economic loss. The bond will part-fund the road leading to this treasure. Job-creating projects like garment factory, innovation hub, visual arts centre, film factory, and agroprocessing firms, spread across the state, will also be funded. The government will also construct a flyover to decongest the intractable traffic along the densely populated Tanke axis in Ilorin, along with other roads that would boost economic activities. The Gbugbu international market in Kwara North will receive a fair chunk of the bond to attain its potentials as a melting pot for continental trade.

Delving into other issues he raised, Mr. Thomas is out of touch with his own native Offa town. How do you argue with such a person? He said the administration has not done anything at the iconic Offa Grammar School, over a year after it reportedly concluded contractual agreements. Had he upheld the basic tenet of journalism of ‘clarify when in doubt’, he would have known that the people of Offa requested the government to rehabilitate other schools in the town because the OGS is a beneficiary of some communal and CBN interventions that are underway. They understandably did not want a duplication of efforts. Government yielded to that request and has instead invested the resources meant for comprehensive renovation of OGS in eight schools in the community. These are Iyeru Grammar School; Community Secondary School; Government Day Secondary School; Government Secondary School; Nawairudeen Grammar School; Anglican College of Commerce; Moremi High School; and Okin High School.

By every fair standard, the Otoge administration has changed the story of Kwara for good. “Too much had gone wrong with Britain (read Kwara) for it all to be put right in a matter of few years,” a former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once remarked. With various rehabilitation and remodelling works ongoing across 600 schools, 4,701 competent teachers recruited in the most transparent and apolitical process, first-of-its-kind innovation hub and visual arts centre under construction, and high-end facilities installed and historic accreditation secured for the state’s premier general hospital, Kwara is ticking the right boxes in basic education, healthcare, agric, fair, equitable and apolitical access to public-funded programmes, gender inclusion and youths empowerment, and improved access to agrarian communities. The administration has recorded great feats never seen in Kwara since its creation, a couple of which had been documented in previous communications on the achievements of the government. There is no local government without a clear presence of the new administration. In a matter of months, the new Ilorin master plan will be ready — the second since 1970s. A 10-year development blueprint will be launched soon. Today, Kwara has the largest automated safety net programme for the vulnerable. Under it, vulnerable senior citizens get stipends of N6,000 every two months. Similarly, no fewer than 40,000 indigents have been enrolled in the state’s health insurance.

Until the coming of the administration, workers were owed across MDAs. Teachers were last promoted in 2017. That has been fixed by the administration, apart from defraying backlogs of salary arrears and contractual obligations, some dated back to 2010. The administration has brought dignity back to the civil service with a large pool of new buses and Hilux vehicles for their movement. They no longer visit private business centres to print government memos.  This is not an article to break down what the Governor has done, but a subtle reminder of where we are coming from.

The administration makes no pretences about the porous system it inherited and the need to plug the leakages and give a new orientation to its workers in the most gradual, humane way. The figures Thomas bandied about public works and with which he tried so hard to sully the image of the government surfaced through the Governor’s social audit initiative which empowered civic groups to track public funded projects to cut waste. It has also put in place the Kwara State Public Procurement Agency to guide against sharp practices. Governments not committed to transparency and probity will not do that.

The administration is adjudged to have blazed the trail in addressing the basic needs of the people, even as it invests in their future. When completed, the innovation hub and the visual arts centre will be the best and biggest in West Africa. This is strategic positioning of Kwara for growth. With the new ICU facility, which is the largest in central Nigeria, the big investments in eye and dental care, the N2.5bn oncology centre, and new equipments here and there, the Ilorin General Hospital will soon be the go-to place in the country. These, ladies and gentlemen, are a few of the feats of an administration that Thomas said has not done anything. If anyone doubts that the administration has done things differently from the past, let them ask the 4,701 newly recruited teachers, the oldies and the vulnerable already enrolled into various safety nets, the market people who have benefited from Owo Isowo (trader moni), and the 170 young people who recently got the government’s interest-free loans to support their business initiatives. They were neither asked for their voters’ cards nor did they need to hold an allegiance to any demigod like in the past. Methinks that is the Otoge that the people voted for in 2019, irrespective of what any La Pasionaria conceive of it.

• Ajakaye is the CPS to the Governor of Kwara State