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  • Yahaya Bello’s comic show at EFCC

    Yahaya Bello’s comic show at EFCC

    By Ibidapo Balogun

    That the former governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Adoza Bello, alias White Lion, is a crafty character is an understatement. His character traits are easily discernible in an encounter with him. As governor of the Confluence State of Kogi for eight years, Yahaya Bello’s carriage, conduct, actions and inactions exemplified a despicable character trait. He ruled over the hapless people of Kogi State with an iron hand. He trampled upon them and their rights. He oppressed them and did as he pleased with the people. He silenced the opposition and the people only to turn round to present himself as the oppressed, the innocent one. When he was done with them, he imposed his lackey on the state as governor the same crooked and oppressive manner he had emerged their governor- the ta-ta-ta-ta-way- through violence and via the charade described as an election.

    Yahaya Bello lived to this billing recently with his infamous show at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s headquarters in Abuja. In a Gestapo style, the former governor emerged at the EFCC office, saying he was there to finally honour the commission’s invitation. He claimed he surrendered himself to EFCC because he has respect for the law and constituted authority, and that he has nothing to hide. This was months after the anti-graft body had declared him wanted over allegations of money laundering and financial impropriety while in office as governor.

    However, what he came to do at EFCC office actually was to taunt the commission’s officials and create a drama of sort, while pretending that he is repentant and now law-abiding.

    The former governor appeared at EFCC Car Park last Wednesday September 18 in a convoy of vehicles and security escort with Kogi State governor, Usman Ododo in tow. Although Yahaya Bello claimed he presented himself at a holding facility of the EFCC, officials of the commission said he was actually in the car park and left after a short while with the same convoy he came in. Yahaya Bello deployed the governor and the immunity he enjoys to shield himself from the law yet again. Governor Ododo and his security convoy did not leave him throughout his brief stay.

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    Not a few analysts and commentators have asked: Why didn’t EFCC arrest the most-wanted fugitive on whose trail it had been and who now presented himself before it? Truth, however, is Yahaya Bello did not surrender himself to EFCC. Eyewitnesses at EFCC office said the commission’s operatives even attempted to block the gates, forcibly arrest him and prevent him from leaving the car park where he was sighted. But Kogi State government security men forcefully removed the EFCC barricade and drove away with the former governor.

    Arresting him by force and taking him into custody would have resulted in a dangerous exchange of gunfire between the EFCC operatives and Kogi State security men, which is precisely what Yahaya Bello wanted. This would have been unhelpful and counter-productive. It is useful that a more prudent EFCC chairman Ola Olukoyede had reportedly warned his officials to exercise restraint and to not fall into the trap being set for them by the former governor by engaging in a gun duel with Kogi State security men in a bid to arrest him. This would have complicated the matter and diverted attention from the corruption case against him.

    Importantly, Olukoyede, a lawyer, is mindful of the rule of law and does not want to flout the provisions of the law, particularly the one around immunity, which Ododo, who was glued to Yahaya Bello during the encounter, enjoys. It was the same strategy Yahaya Bello had employed to evade arrest either at the Kogi State Governor’s Lodge in Asokoro, Abuja or at the Government House in Lokoja, the state capital, where he has been hiding. The strategy is- hide under the cloak of Governor Ododo’s immunity.

    The EFCC had instituted a case against the former governor alongside Ali Bello, Dauda Suleiman and Abdulsalam Hudu on 19-count charges bordering on money laundering to the tune of N80.2 billion. On April 23, Bello was served the charges through his counsel, Abdulwahab Muhammad (SAN). This was after Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court sitting in Maitama, Abuja ruled that Yahaya Bello should be served through his counsel, especially as he failed to appear before the court, yet again. And after he failed to appear in court, shunned series of invitations extended to him by EFCC and resisted arrest, the anti-graft commission declared him wanted in April. EFCC officials stormed his residence in Abuja to arrest him but all efforts to apprehend him have been met with a brick wall. Since then, the commission has been on his trail to arrest him even with a subsisting court warrant.

    Now, a few words for the EFCC, Yahaya Bello and Governor Ododo who has been shielding his predecessor from prosecution: The EFCC must show clearly that it can bite and not a toothless bulldog. It must now do everything possible under the law to bring Yahaya Bello to book.

    On his part, what Governor Ododo is doing is wrong and his conduct is disgraceful. It is unacceptable. Helping a wanted fugitive to evade arrest and prosecution for alleged corrupt practices is akin to aiding and abetting corruption. It also constitutes an affront on the rule of law and social justice. This governor must desist from such a dishonourable act and demonstrate he is worthy of the high office he occupies.

    As for the imprudent Yahaya Bello, it is high time he showed maturity and turned himself in for the trial. He must show he is now truly repentant and ready to respond to the allegations against him. He must now face prosecution. Indeed, no matter how fast or far he can run or how adept he is at hiding from the law, the law will surely catch up with him sooner than later!

    •Balogun is a public affairs analyst.

  • On the call for a state of emergency in Zamfara

    On the call for a state of emergency in Zamfara

    By Mustapha Saleh

     In their usual manner, the Zamfara State chapter of the All Progressive Congress (APC) recently shocked the entire world when in a press release, it laughably and unconscionably called for the declaration of a state of emergency in Zamfara purportedly on the grounds of insecurity. To say this unpatriotic call is dumbfounding and time wasting would be an understatement.

    Though the APC’s barking at the record-breaking performance of Governor Dauda Lawal shouldn’t have been glorified with a response, the fear is that this hastily written, unprovoked call to declare martial law in Zamfara State is clearly a reflection of the panic that stems from the Dauda administration’s steady gains in all areas of governance. It is a measure of how the envious opposition would go extra mile in adopting all sorts of shenanigans to distract the governor and his rescue team.

    The APC’s call, therefore, may not be anything more than a desperate attempt to obscure the real reasons behind their panic, which basically comes down to Governor Dauda resolve to remove the lid on the looting of Zamfara’s treasury during the past administration of Dr. Bello Mohammed Matawalle. His recent television appearances where he made huge allegations of financial misappropriation may well be the trigger for the tactical manoeuvre to avoid the consequences for their long overdue comeuppance.

    So, rather than deflecting attention with baseless accusations, the APC should have adopted a more patriotic approach by advocating for a probe into the alarming revelations of ₦70 billion allegedly siphoned under Matawalle’s watch and stop beating around the bush by looking for how to scuttle a probe that has gotten the people of Zamfara very excited and very hopeful that their stolen patrimony is in the process of being recovered.

    Ironically, the individual who once accused the APC, his new abode, as a bandits’ party only to later join the same party claiming that his decision was to have federal government support to fight insecurity, but who, in the end, left the state worse off, is now using the APC to drag Dauda Lawal in the mud as form of distraction and also to apparently dodge being questioned by the anti-graft on the alleged misappropriation. After all, it is on record that the present administration has on several occasions accused the Matawalle administration of funds mismanagement.

    By the way, there is hardly anyone in Nigeria who doesn’t know that contrary to the APC’s desperate claim, insecurity was actually allowed to fester under Matawalle’s watch. This is what makes the desperate attempt to portray Matawalle as a champion of security dead on arrival. It is common knowledge that Zamfara was under siege during Matawalle’s tenure. In fact, the level of banditry and kidnappings escalated under Matawalle’s administration, making insecurity the hallmark of his governance.

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    If the Zamfara APC people were truly concerned about the state’s safety, the call for a state of emergency should have begun during Matawalle’s reign, when bandits operated with impunity, and communities were left at the mercy of criminals, some of which were even alleged to be harbouring in the government house in pretentious but subsequently botched peace talks and which ended as a conduit to further syphon the state’s treasury. For Dauda Lawal that inherited a state in disarray, his ongoing efforts to combat insecurity are steps in the right direction; it is aimed at restoring the peace that was lost during the Matawalle era.

    It’s, therefore, important to urge the APC to come clean on the real reasons for their call for emergency declaration. It is disgusting that rather than addressing the serious accusations of financial mismanagement that continues to trail Matawalle’s tenure, the APC has, instead, chosen to mislead the public with conspiracy theories. If the party truly had the interest of Zamfara people at heart, it would support Governor Lawal’s quest for accountability by calling for a thorough investigation into the financial rot that the state suffered under its former leader.

    It would certainly make more sense to the people of Zamfara than the APC’s ridiculous claim that Governor Dauda Lawal is sabotaging military operations in Zamfara – a claim that is nothing more than a figment of their imagination. The truth is, Governor Lawal has achieved more in the fight against insecurity and in driving development in a little over one year than any of his predecessors, including Matawalle. His collaboration with federal authorities has led to tangible progress in curbing banditry, and the positive developmental strides under his administration are evident to the people of Zamfara. These efforts stand in stark contrast to Matawalle’s tenure, where insecurity was politicised for personal gain and where the state treasury was allegedly looted with reckless abandon.

    In any case, the most damning revelation of Matawalle’s pungent security failure comes not from Governor Lawal, but from the bandits themselves, who have exposed the former administration’s hierarchs of complicity in the rise of insecurity. The APC conveniently ignores the statements from bandit kingpin Bello Turji, who openly accused the former administration of harbouring criminals within the state government. This revelation, which has gone unchallenged by the APC, should be a wake-up call on the party to stop throwing shades at Governor Dauda. They should instead support efforts to hold Matawalle accountable for both his financial and security failures.

    In a nutshell, the APC in Zamfara should bury itself in shame for attempting to mislead the public with its diversionary tactics. Instead of calling for a state of emergency, the party should have done the patriotic thing by demanding and insisting on an unbiased investigation into the looting spree that headlined Matawalle’s reign as well as his role in the state’s security collapse. Governor Dauda Lawal’s achievements in both curbing insecurity and driving development speak for themselves and no amount of political propaganda can erase the truth. In any case, we are very sure, no one would take the APC serious considering the rookie and watery opposition it has offered since Governor Lawal was sworn in.

    Although, the 2027 election is bit far, but the desperation demonstrated by the APC as if elections will hold now, indicate that the party and its leadership have forgotten so quickly that the same people of Zamfara State who have rejected Matawalle in 2023 for his seeming and apparent failures, are same people to decide the fate of whoever will fly the party’s ticket. The voting pattern where the APC won some national assembly seats and the presidential election speaks volume to the degree of disaffection they’ve for the APC.

    While it’s pertinent to remind the APC that it’s not yet time for another political and election cycle, it’s important to note that Governor Dauda Lawal is concentrating on delivering the dividend of democracy which APC has failed to deliver, and when it’s time to go back to the trenches in 2027, the same person that conveniently delivered the crunching blow to the party is waiting for whoever they deem it fit to join him in the ring. Politics is local and practical; it isn’t done on the pages of newspapers. Let the senseless press releases cease; they aren’t going to change anything.

    •Saleh writes from Abuja.

  • Edo election and the problem of voter apathy

    Edo election and the problem of voter apathy

    By Tayo Ogunbiyi

    “There’s no such thing as a vote that doesn’t matter. It all matters” – Barack Obama, former United States of America president.

    Voters’ apathy was evident in the recently concluded gubernatorial election in Edo State. According a data from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), 2,249,780 voters in Edo State collected their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) for the election out of the 2,590,603 registered voters.

    However, from the result of the election in which Monday Okpebholo (APC) secured 291,667 votes to defeat Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who got 247,274 votes, it is evident that about 60% of the registered voters did not turn up on election day.

    Democracy is about the choices that the people make. Of all the various definitions of democracy, the most universally famous is the one that refers to it as the government of the people by the people. The definition implies that it is the people that give impetus to democracy. In essence, you cannot have democracy without the people. It is the people that set democracy in motion. But then, in Nigeria, the people don’t seem to understand the democratic power they wield.

    The word ‘apathy’, which has its source in Greek, plainly means ‘without feelings’. According to Victor Marie Hugo, French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic Movement, ‘the apathetic are alive but without feelings, so they are not living. They are the living dead. Therefore, in line with Hugo’s line of thought, voters’ apathy simply refers to the insensitivity of the people towards the electoral process, particularly voting.

    According to statistics from the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), only about 35% of the over 70 million who registered to vote in the 2011 general elections participated in the voting process. This implies that over 65% of registered voters did not vote. Similarly, ahead of the 2015 general elections, it was revealed by INEC that about 1.4 million Lagosians did not collect their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

    This simply connotes that over 1.4 million registered voters in the state did not vote in the election. This is a dangerous trend that must essentially be a source of serious concern to all genuine stakeholders in the polity.

    This growing trend has grievous implications for the prospect of democracy in the country. For one, it ensures that leaders who attain political power is via the votes of the minority rule over the majority. Second, because they don’t get to power through the votes of the majority, they tend to espouse a self-seeking agenda. Third, it casts serious aspersions on the kind of democracy we practice.

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    Furthermore, it makes elected political leaders unaccountable to the people since they did not, in the real sense, derive their coming to power from the majority of registered voters. Also, it makes it a bit hypocritical for those who did not turn out to vote to criticize those who were elected through the same process that they shunned. As it is often said, ‘You cannot eat your cake and have it’.

    Lots of factors are responsible for voters’ apathy in the country. For one, some of those who shun the polls could be of the notion that their votes do not count since they believe either rightly or wrongly that the outcome of most elections in the country is predetermined.

    Also, some believe that the electoral process is replete with violence, while some consider the political class undeserving of their votes because of their perceived insincerity to electoral promises. Equally, especially, in the case of local council elections, many are of the view that that tier of government doesn’t do much to deserve anyone’s vote.

    However, irrespective of the validity of the reasons, it is counterproductive for the people to shun polls in a democracy. It should be recalled that some people gave their lives for us to enjoy the democracy that we have today. It is, therefore, a great injustice to their memories, if this culture of voters’ apathy continues.

    We need to respect the supreme sacrifices paid by the patriots who laid down their lives for us to enjoy this participatory democracy. This can only be demonstrated through our unconditional dedication to the political process.

    In any case, when the majority refuses to participate in voting, that does not in any way invalidate the outcome of elections. Sadly, we all suffer the consequences of staying aloof when the wrong people get into elected political offices.

    Citizen participation in elections is a cornerstone of democratic governance, with profound implications for society and the political landscape. Voting allows individuals to influence policies, hold leaders accountable, and ensure that their government reflects the people’s will. When citizens participate in elections, they help shape decisions on crucial issues like education, healthcare, and the economy, ensuring their voices are heard in policy-making processes.

     One key aspect of participation is its role in ensuring electoral accountability. Through voting, citizens can remove leaders who do not represent their values or fulfil their promises, fostering a government that is more responsive to the public. Additionally, greater voter participation leads to more inclusive representation, reflecting the diverse needs and aspirations of the population.

    However, to get the people back to the polls, elected political leaders should not take the electorate for granted by not fulfilling electoral promises. It is sheer treachery to do this. Those who ignore all difficulties to participate in voting ought to be given a better deal.

    Also, the practice of turning elections into a ‘do or die’ affair should be discouraged by politicians to avert undermining the electoral process through violence. Additionally, INEC, political parties, civil society, the media, and other stakeholders should give greater attention to voters’ education as well as other enlightenment campaigns that could re-enact the confidence of the people in the electoral process.

    Democracy is best defended by those it is meant for; the people. But for democracy to serve the interest of the people, they must respect all democratic norms and principles. Today, we all look at some of the advanced democracies of the world with envy.

    The truth, however, is that they have achieved greatness through the strengthening of grassroots democracy. Of course, there is no other way through which democracy could be strengthened other than the involvement of the majority of the people in the democratic process.

    If democracy is to truly be the government of the people and for the people, the people must own the process from the beginning to the end. Active involvement in the political process signifies that everyone is a critical stakeholder, with the country’s best interest at heart. It is a practical demonstration of being a responsible citizen.

    •Ogunbiyi is Director, Features, Ministry of Information & Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos.

  • Subsidy cartel, fuel price hike and mass poverty

    Subsidy cartel, fuel price hike and mass poverty

    • By Mike Kebonkwu

    Nigeria has huge deposit of hydrocarbon and ranks number 10 in the world amongst oil producing countries, second in Africa only after Angola.  We have four refineries built in the seventies and eighties now decrepit and comatose with zero production. The Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) is the government subsidiary that manages the oil industry and the refineries.  The NNPC has a huge workforce, earning hefty salaries more than any other department in the civil service; probably aside the Central Bank of Nigeria. 

    There is budgetary allocation for the NNPC, with humungous amount for regular turn-around maintenance of the refineries.  Yet the refineries are not producing and nobody bothers to interrogate what they are doing with the budgetary allocations and payment for the turn-around maintenance. What are you maintaining, are you maintaining something that is dead, something that is not functioning?

    The NNPC is merely operating like a supermarket, or Alaba Market traders, existing only for the sole purpose of dispensing imported fuel to other marketers or retailing outlets; leaving the four refineries dead and unattended to. The NNPC has become a huge sleaze that needs to be overhauled or dismantled.  Now, Aliko Dangote’s has established a world class refinery which has come on stream in just about eight years.  For the NNPC for several decades, it cannot fix even one of its refineries.  Today, the NNPC is scrambling to be the sole distributor and establish monopoly over the Dangote refinery. 

    Nobody is thinking of auditing the sleaze in NNPC and its subsidiaries because we operate inherently a corrupt bureaucracy with official imprimatur. We have perennial fuel scarcity and long queue at the petrol stations with arbitrary pricing of the product in the name of free market and the regulatory agency is bemused and mute.

    Some analysts and scholars argue that we enjoy the cheapest petrol in the world using comparative analysis of what people pay in other countries.  However, these linear scholars fail to juxtapose the earning powers (basic minimum wage) in those countries with Nigeria.

    The masses are buffeted with every conceivable manner of taxes on goods and services which petroleum product is one of them.  We have never had any record of NNPC satisfying our domestic consumption of gasoline at any time not to talk of exporting to neighbouring countries; I am not talking about unofficial smuggling of fuel through black market channels, by equally blacklegs facilitated by security agents and border guards.   

    Everything about the oil industry in Nigeria is opaque and shrouded in official secrecy.  The NNPC is a heist run by a power cartel that is so influential within the corridors of power.  Our problem in the oil industry is corruption, not subsidy on petrol. We cannot get anything right with deep seated corruption in high and low places protected by institutions of government; the security and the judiciary. This is the reason why a former governor is able to evade arrest and remains a fugitive and has not been apprehended.  This is the reason people accused of corruption after tenure as state chief executives are sitting in the National Assembly making laws for us.  This is the reason why the former government also granted state pardon to former governors and felons convicted and jailed for corruption.   

    The subsidy on petroleum products is to make Nigerians enjoy affordable petrol because of the central place it occupies in our economy.  Let us not forget the fact also that we are an oil producing country.  In any case, there is no earthly reason why Nigeria should import petroleum product if we have competent people running our state bureaucracy. Countries all over the world subsidize one commodity or the other depending on the importance placed on the commodity in the lives of the people; agriculture, food, health just name it. It is beyond dispute that government is paying subsidy but nobody knows what the government is paying as subsidy and who the beneficiaries of the subsidy are.  The government has left the subsidy management to a phoney cartel that manipulates the system without proper documentation or record. The cartel in the oil industry operates like the Sicilian Mafia enjoying official imprimatur at the same time. 

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    Petrol is a major source of power that touches on the lives of virtually every Nigerian without exception; from the schoolchildren that commute to school daily, the farmer that has to carry his produce to the urban centres, the hairdresser and household consumption, to power generator etc.  The government rather than identify and deal with the cartel has decided to impose collective punishment on the ordinary citizens by removing the subsidy.  With the recent hike in price of petrol, life has become unbearable and people can no longer afford basic necessities of life because of the multiplier effect of the fuel hike on other goods and services.  This has brought untold hardship, hunger and mass poverty on the people.

    Successive governments had flirted with the idea of the removal of petrol subsidy which had been met with protests and resistance.  But at the inauguration of the current government, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, firm but with casual mien, announced that the ‘fuel subsidy is gone’!  Expectedly, petrol price was hiked from N165 per litre to about N620 per litre as the official price which only operates at the NNPC outlets.  Now the price of petrol per litre has been jacked up again to almost N1,000.  With this, everything that the worker earns goes into paying for petrol in one form or the other. This is because the hike has led to incremental prices on goods and services, engendering immiseration and mass poverty.   

    The mass poverty in the land, hunger and insecurity cannot be solved through handouts and palliatives.  Government cannot solve it forcefully by imposing price control, after all there is no production and farmers are not going to the farms because of kidnappers, bandits and insurgents.  Protesters, whether peaceful or not, may be tried for treasonable felony but it will not stop the welling anger that may soon burst.  There is an unusual calm in the land which portends grave augury; it is peace of the grave yard; something may give. 

    Going forward, the brave thing to do is for Mr President to do something novel that has never been done before by any regime or government in Nigeria; restore the subsidy regime and take on the cartel and the masses will join the fight, and he will succeed.  This will reduce the hunger, anger and mass poverty. 

    Guess what, he would have put smiles on the faces of Nigerians that he may not need to campaign for re-election in 2027; it will come on a platter.  The cartel in the oil industry should be exposed and prosecuted for corruption.  The people behind the insecurity in the country are the cartel in the oil industry and the subsidy scam; they are the corrupt politicians that have looted the country to a state of coma, the bandits, insurgents, unknown gunmen and other criminal elements.  These are the enemies of this country.

    Furthermore, there should be comprehensive audit of the NNPC and those behind the sleaze in the oil industry should be brought to book rather than impose collective punishment on the people.  Mr President, one thing is certain, if you make up your mind to go after the enemies of this country, you will have the back of the people and you will succeed.  It is a fight for all of us, and the heavens will not fall.  The government has to cut down on cost of governance, reduce the duplications of ministries and departments; cut down on the legion of aides and special assistants and stop lavish, obscene official lifestyle.  To get the country going again, government has to reconsider reinstating the subsidy regime for whatever it is worth to reduce the hunger, anger and mass poverty.  It is better to kill corruption than impose collective punishment on the masses.

    •Kebonkwu Esq writes from Abuja.

  • A drought-resilient green economy for rural communities

    A drought-resilient green economy for rural communities

    By Saleh Abubakar

    Climate change has had a profound and far-reaching impact on Northern Nigeria, significantly altering the region’s environment, economy, and livelihoods. Increasing temperatures, erratic rainfall patterns, and the intensification of desertification have led to the degradation of arable land, reduced water availability, and the loss of biodiversity. These changes have placed immense pressure on agricultural productivity and the livelihoods of rural communities, who depend heavily on farming and pastoralism.

    Additionally, the environmental stress has exacerbated social tensions and migration, creating new challenges for the region’s development and security. As the effects of climate change intensify, there is an urgent need for comprehensive and sustainable solutions to build resilience and mitigate its long-term impacts in Northern Nigeria.

    Agriculture forms the backbone of Nigeria’s economy, employing about 70% of the population, particularly in rural areas. However, climate change is disrupting traditional farming practices. Erratic rainfall and prolonged droughts are reducing crop yields, endangering food security. According to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), rainfall variability increased by 15% between 2010 and 2022, severely impacting crop production. For example, maize production in Northern Nigeria dropped by over 25% in 2021 due to unpredictable weather patterns.

    These threats to food security extend beyond rural areas, as rising food prices in urban centres create inflationary pressures, affect household budgets, and worsen poverty levels.

    In June 2024, Nigeria’s inflation rate surged to 34.19%, a 29-year high, with food inflation as the main driver. Livestock farming is also under strain as desertification continues to encroach on grazing lands in northern regions. Nigeria loses around 351,000 hectares of arable land annually to desertification, according to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). This loss has intensified conflicts between herders and farmers, resulting in over 2,500 deaths and mass displacement between 2016 and 2022, as reported by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

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    The increased frequency and severity of floods are among the most devastating effects of climate change in Nigeria. In 2022, the country experienced its worst flooding in a decade, affecting over 4.4 million people and displacing more than 1.4 million, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). This disaster, caused by a combination of torrential rains and the release of water from Cameroon’s Lagdo Dam, destroyed over 569,000 hectares of farmland, leading to food shortages and pushing millions into poverty.

    In Maiduguri, recent floods caused by the overflow of Alau Dam following heavy rains worsened the existing humanitarian crisis thus the need for floodplain zoning, storm-water management, floodgates and barrages, levees/flood walls and rain gardens. Over 300,000 people were displaced, and thousands of buildings were damaged. This displacement is expected to exacerbate severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in children due to the destruction of food supplies, disruption of agricultural activities, and displacement of families.

    The destruction of infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and electricity grids, is a significant economic burden. The World Bank estimates that Nigeria will need to invest $100 billion over the next decade to rebuild and climate-proof its infrastructure. Coastal areas, such as Lagos—the financial hub of Nigeria—have already suffered billions of naira in damages from frequent flooding, disrupting business activities and slowing economic growth.

    Beyond economic damage, climate change is causing severe social consequences in Nigeria. Environmental degradation is forcing thousands of Nigerians to leave their homes. Desertification in the north, along with flooding in the south and middle belt, is pushing people into already overcrowded urban areas. Since 2015, over 2.5 million Nigerians have been displaced by climate-related disasters, according to NEMA, with many ending up in slums or makeshift settlements without access to clean water, sanitation, or healthcare.

    Additionally, resource scarcity is fuelling conflicts in regions like the north-eastern states. Clashes between herders and farmers over dwindling water and grazing resources have caused over 4,000 fatalities between 2015 and 2021, as reported by the International Crisis Group (ICG). These conflicts are destabilizing communities, disrupting agriculture, and creating poverty cycles that are difficult to break.

    Despite these challenges, Nigeria has opportunities to mitigate climate change impacts and adapt effectively. The Great Green Wall project, designed to combat desertification in the Sahel region, plays a critical role in restoring degraded land and promoting sustainable agricultural practices. This initiative helps safeguard livelihoods in the northern region against climate-related threats.

    Nigeria’s agricultural sector needs modernization to adapt to climate change, using climate-smart techniques like drought-resistant crops and economic trees, improved irrigation, and better land management. These efforts, along with the Great Green Wall, will enhance resilience in the country’s semi-arid regions. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that adopting climate-smart agriculture can boost crop yields by 20%, ensuring food supply amid changing weather patterns.

    Similarly, investment in renewable energy, especially in solar and wind power, is also essential. Nigeria’s Renewable Energy Master Plan (REMP) targets 30% of energy generation from renewable sources by 2030. While progress has been slow, accelerating this transition will not only reduce the country’s carbon footprint but also provide sustainable energy access to rural areas.

    The New Deal

    Tackling climate change is no longer a choice but an imperative action/new deal for the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Collaborative efforts from the government, private sector, civil society, and international partners are essential to address its impacts. Awareness campaigns, public-private partnerships, and policy reforms will be critical in driving the transition to a more sustainable resilient economy and creation of employment. Ultimately, climate change is both a challenge and an opportunity for Nigeria. Thus with proactive measures, the country can reduce its vulnerabilities, protect its citizens, and lead the global movement toward sustainability.

    The clock is ticking, and the time for action is now. The National Agency for Great Green Wall (NAGGW) in-view of the “Renewed Hope Agenda” is committed to restoring the economic and social development of millions of Nigerians whose lives are already being shaped by the effects of climate change, the country’s future depends on the choices made today hence we either make or mar it.

    •Abubakar, MFR is DG/CEO NAGGW

  • Government and traumatised retirees

    Government and traumatised retirees

    By Oluwole Ogundele

    Political leadership is basically about robust service to humanity. This is one reason why fat salaries, allowances and other array of opportunities are attached to the office of a leader.  But painfully, the Nigerian leadership culture is enshrined almost completely in self-centredness arising from a gross lack of deep spiritual knowledge including limited senses. These leaders fail to understand that material poverty, political instability, insecurity, and national economic inertia are birds of a feather. In other words, they are intertwined.

    Proactive measures are still alien to the Nigerian leaders who see political offices as an exercise in self-aggrandisement. Permit me to zero in on the issue of retirement. This is in the context of the agonies most pensioners are facing over the years. It is an existential reality that every private or public worker will retire one day. This is a natural law that cannot be altered by anyone no matter how powerful. In this connection, there are three categories of retirement at least in Nigeria.  They are as follows: voluntary/self-retirement, forced retirement, and statutory/mandatory retirement. The second form of retirement is tied to apron strings of punishment for a wide range of unethical behaviours while in service. Naturally, everybody should look forward to his retirement period with deep joy. But shockingly, this scenario is now changing rapidly in our country, due to material poverty among other challenges. This border on leadership failure both at the national and sub-national levels. That is to say, a leadership bereft of empathy and compassion.

    Saving for the rainy day in the face of chronically low wages and hyper-inflation is unrealistic.  The insensitive behaviour of our leaders generally, is a subtle invitation to bribery and corruption, especially at the tail end of the working life of a civil servant. A desperately poor person is a threat to robust humanity. Having trained their children and wards up to the tertiary level (in most cases), retirees are supposed to begin to enjoy the dividends of their hard labour. But painfully most of these children are unemployed or under employed.  Consequently, they remain a liability to the parents who have retired without getting their legitimate gratuities. Even the gratuities (when finally paid) are thoroughly ravaged by inflation. This is happening in a country where the salaries including allowances of top political office holders (particularly the federal legislators) are too humongous to be declared.  No respect for the led, including those retirees!  Nigeria is gradually becoming an early stone age geo-polity. 

    What happened to our humanity?  I’m not aware of any country apart from Nigeria, where retirees are so badly treated. This is a big minus for the Nigerian political leadership at the national and sub-national levels.  Holy spirit-filled leaders would work for justice-a pre-condition for peace and progress on a sustainable scale. Is it a crime to be a senior citizen in Nigeria? I feel disgusted with our governors who run up and down, under the guise of administrative commitment while the retirees (some of them as old as their fathers or even grandfathers) are languishing in penury. A good leader is a servant of the masses. He is not only for bogus projects that do not ameliorate the suffering of the ordinary citizens.

    Our leaders must pay some considerable attention to the issues of welfare and security in order not to become a nuisance to humanity and by the same token, Providence.

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    It is pertinent to note here, that this poor leadership attitude has a long history. However, things continue to go from bad to worse with the passage of time.  Thus, for example, my father retired in 1984/85 session from government service, but never got his entitlements until early 1989.  Are the gods angry with Nigeria?  Retirement in saner climes and cultures is neither a suicide mission nor a steep descent to misery. Such countries as Switzerland, Norway, and Australia treat their senior citizens with utmost respect.  Our political office holders need to emulate the above geo-polities among others. After all, they (political leaders) are not descendants of gorilla!

    We do not need a new policy reform in the Nigerian pensions industry. The rules and regulations to guide the stakeholders are already available. But the political will to implement them is generally lacking. Consequently, Nigeria stinks to high heavens. This is largely due to the fact that corrupt people are never brought to book. Not unexpectedly, pensions boards continue to mismanage retirement funds as if they have lost their souls to Lucifer. For instance, in 2014, the National Assembly alleged that six civil servants stole N24 billion from the Police Pensions Funds. However, huge sums of stolen retirees’ funds were said to have been recovered as a result of Biometric Data Capture exercise since 2010. Transparency is a hate concept in the Nigerian leadership culture.  Things are falling apart at an alarming rate. 

    Suffice it to say, that it is not enough to recover some of the stolen public monies. Those culprits, who have been inflicting pains on the retirees and the entire society, should be punished according to the laws of our land. Our judicial system has to be much more cautious in handling corruption cases. The lawyers should begin to emulate Gani Fawehinmi (of blessed memory) in this regard. Corrupt government officials and their ugly business associates are polluting the youth by recklessly questioning our age-old African values, embedded in fine-grained social engineering as if robust humanity matters.

    Although pre-retirement planning is a good concept, Nigerian workers (with a few exceptions) have been too impoverished to retire and be comfortable. Chronically low wages and hyper-inflation are a devil to wrestle with. Contrary to what obtained in the past, a lot of Cooperative Societies (even in the universities) are now allowing interested members to withdraw from their savings accounts after taking the regular loans. This is an attempt to assist members. However, it means the affected members are no longer saving for the rainy day.

    Even NUPEMCO (Nigerian University Pensions Management Company Ltd) established in 2013, exclusively for varsity employees are not spared. Retirees wait for two years or more to get their gratuities because almighty Abuja is sitting on their entitlements. In our modern world defined and ruled by computers and other sophisticated communication gadgets, processing retirees’ documents should not last longer than one month. This is doable if corrupt officials are speedily brought to book. This will serve as a deterrent to others.

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has to kindly intervene before the country goes into extinction. Those who were supposed to receive their gratuities earlier have been terribly short-changed because of the shrinking value of our local currency. Ideally, such retirees should be paid according to the value of the naira against the US dollar as of the time they retired. Once again, Nigeria is not going to experience sustainable peace and socio-economic development in the face of unfettered injustice and monumental corruption. This existential reality makes it compulsory for our dear President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to take the bull by the horns as the clock ticks.

    •Prof Ogundele is of Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan.

  • Balancing energy demands and environmental responsibility

    Balancing energy demands and environmental responsibility

    By Eben Joels

    There is need to strike a balance between meeting energy needs and upholding responsible business practices and environmental responsibility in a rapidly changing regulatory landscape. This aligns with the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) concept in the oil and gas sector.

    In balancing energy demands and environmental responsibility, it has been obvious that Nigeria’s energy demands have surged, driven by a rapidly growing population and expanding industrial base.

    With over 200 million people and a burgeoning economy, Nigeria is not only Africa’s largest economy but also one of its most energy-dependent nations. The oil and gas sector, responsible for nearly 90 per cent of export earnings and over 60 per cent of government revenues, plays a pivotal role in meeting these energy demands. However, alongside this, the pressure to adhere to ESG criteria has intensified globally and locally.

    For oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria, the challenge lies in striking a balance between meeting energy needs and upholding environmental responsibility in a rapidly changing regulatory and societal landscape.

    Nigeria’s electricity consumption is projected to grow from 40 Terawatt hours (TWh) in 2023 to over 300 TWh by 2040, driven by urbanisation, industrialisation, and population growth. With power shortages a frequent occurrence, businesses and industries remain heavily reliant on diesel and gas-powered generators to keep operations running.

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    For oil and gas companies, the pressure to ramp up exploration, production, and supply is relentless, as they are essential players in the country’s energy security. However, rising environmental concerns mean that meeting this demand cannot come at the expense of sustainability. The energy sector, contributing over 70 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Nigeria, is under increasing scrutiny.

    Globally, ESG has become the benchmark for responsible business practices, and Nigeria is no exception. Regulatory bodies, from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) to the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) , are increasingly aligning national energy policy with global ESG standards. In 2021, the federal government launched the Nigerian Climate Change Act, targeting net-zero carbon emissions by 2060. For oil and gas companies, navigating these expectations, while still meeting Nigeria’s significant energy needs, it is a tightrope walk that requires innovative approaches and a commitment to long-term environmental goals.

     Top-level executives within Nigeria’s oil and gas sector are aware that balancing energy production with environmental responsibility is not a choice but a necessity. Several strategies can help the industry meet this dual mandate:

    Investment in carbon reduction technologies is no longer optional. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), already implemented by global players like Shell and Chevron, is becoming a vital tool in Nigeria. CCS technologies can potentially reduce up to 65 per cent of CO2 emissions from gas flaring—one of Nigeria’s most significant environmental challenges. The NUPRC’s mandate for companies to reduce flaring by 2025 means companies must invest in CCS or face heavy fines and reputational risks.

    Similarly, methane emissions—another potent greenhouse gas—are a critical focus. Recent data suggests that over 100,000 metric tons of methane is released annually from oil and gas operations in Nigeria. Detecting and repairing methane leaks through advanced AI-driven solutions could save the industry billions while ensuring ESG compliance.

    Oil and gas companies must diversify energy portfolios by incorporating renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and biofuels. TotalEnergies, for example, has already committed to installing 1 GW of renewable energy capacity across its African operations by 2025. Nigeria, blessed with abundant solar resources, could become a leader in renewable integration, thereby reducing reliance on traditional fossil fuels.

    Hybrid energy systems, where renewable energy complements oil and gas operations, can lower carbon footprints while maintaining production efficiency. This shift is not only environmentally responsible but economically viable as global investors are increasingly leaning towards funding companies with strong ESG portfolios.

    Oil and gas production is water-intensive, a critical concern in a country like Nigeria, where water resources are already under pressure. The industry uses over five billion barrels of water annually for extraction, refining, and transportation. Companies must implement sustainable water management practices, including recycling wastewater and reducing freshwater usage.

    Additionally, protecting biodiversity in areas of operation—especially in Nigeria’s sensitive Niger Delta—will be a key factor in maintaining community relationships and meeting environmental obligations. Partnerships with environmental agencies for land restoration and wildlife preservation will further solidify a company’s ESG credentials.

    Transparency in ESG practices is crucial for gaining the trust of stakeholders, including regulators, investors, and communities. Globally, 81% of oil and gas companies now publish sustainability reports, yet in Nigeria, this number is far lower. Only 25% of Nigerian oil and gas firms have comprehensive ESG reports in place. This gap presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

    Detailed and credible ESG reporting that undergoes third-party verification will not only build trust but also differentiate companies in a competitive market. Investors, particularly from Europe and the US, now prioritise ESG performance, with some placing it as a pre-requisite for capital allocation. Meeting these expectations is critical for Nigerian firms looking to expand their global footprints.

    No company can succeed without the support of its host communities. For Nigerian oil and gas firms, contributing to local communities through job creation, infrastructure development, and social investments is essential. The Niger Delta, home to the majority of Nigeria’s oil reserves, remains a region plagued by underdevelopment, despite decades of oil extraction.

    Companies like Seplat and Oando have made great strides by investing in education, healthcare, and local enterprise initiatives. However, more needs to be done. Companies must implement proactive community engagement strategies that go beyond philanthropy and focus on long-term social investments, ensuring communities benefit from the wealth generated by the industry.

    Compliance with national and international environmental standards is essential for maintaining operational licences and avoiding legal penalties. Beyond compliance, Nigerian oil and gas companies should take an active role in advocating for policies that promote sustainability. Collaborative efforts with government agencies, NGOs, and industry associations can help shape a regulatory environment that balances growth with environmental protection.

     As Nigeria’s oil and gas industry navigates the complex terrain of rising energy demand and increasing ESG pressures, the stakes have never been higher. Stakeholders, from investors to regulators, expect nothing less than oil and gas firms’ commitment to sustainable practices. Companies that adopt innovative solutions, embrace transparency, and invest in renewable energy will lead the charge into a new era of energy production—one where meeting energy needs and protecting the environment go hand in hand.

     As Nigerian firms meander the murky waters of ESG in Oil and Gas and balance energy demands and environmental responsibility, Stransact Chartered Accountants and Audit, an RSM correspondent firm in Nigeria, is geared to help businesses in the oil and gas industry navigate these complexities. Through our ESG advisory, reporting, technology and audit services, we guide our clients in balancing growth with environmental and social responsibility. As the global and local focus on ESG intensifies, Stransact is here to help our clients build trust and achieve sustainable success.

    •Joels is managing partner of an international accounting and audit firm

  • Archbishop Ladigbolu: unique Yorùbá intellectual, cultural icon, elder statesman

    Archbishop Ladigbolu: unique Yorùbá intellectual, cultural icon, elder statesman

    The Yorùbá culture has always been blessed with the attention of intellectuals, scholars and academics who considered it a worthwhile subject of discourse. Without any doubt, the Yorùbá culture is one of the most studied cultural forms of life in the world. This is apart from the many scholars, cultural enthusiasts and intellectuals that the culture itself has produced, from Samuel Ajayi Crowder to Samuel Johnson, from Akinwunmi Isola to J. A. Atanda to Saburi Biobaku, and from Wole Soyinka to Wande Abimbola, Oyekan Owomoyela to Toyin Falola. But we must also not forget the cultural and indigenous intellectuals, like D. O. Fagunwa, Archibishop Ayo Ladigbolu and Adebayo Faleti, to name just a few, who’s very being and profession are invested in the culture itself. All these intellectuals are those who have laid the foundation for entrenching the influence and the national and global reach of the culture, as well as its hold on our collective imagination.

    In this piece, I am glad to dedicate this critical analysis to Baba Archbishop Ayo Ladigbolu who has been a cultural icon for me since way back. I have written so much about my wondering and wandering sensibility as a young boy growing up and reflecting about my context and surrounding. Yoruba culture and history have always held a deep source of curiosity for me, and Pa Ladigbolu is a phenomenal figure who constitutes a triadic embodiment of the theological, the cultural and the political, and one at that who influenced my scholarship indescribably. That places Baba within the crosshair of my search for cultural and theological enlightenment, especially about the Yorùbá culture’s engagement with non-Yorùbá influences. Indeed, in many of my intense political conversations with HE Chief Olusegun Obasanjo around Nigerian politics and the place of the southwest within it, he had always been insistent that I must not miss the opportunity to sit at the feet of the Master, Archbishop Ladigbolu, since I have chosen to follow in the footstep of my grandfather and the celebrated historian of culture, Rev. David Aibinu Olaopa, of blessed memory. This was an added impetus since I had already taken him as a father and a mentor.

    Baba Ladigbolu is phenomenal. He occupies the same circle of cultural preservationists that include Tunde Kelani the filmmaker and the Afenifere, the pan-Yorùbá cultural and political forum. However, Baba’s historical trajectory is one with a significant difference. And this is because he is a minister of God who is deeply ingrained in both his cultural environment as well as in Christianity. His career therefore enables a deep insight into the understanding of the conflicted relationship between culture and modernity, and how one could begin to unravel the significance of modernity within a culture’s own development. Indeed, the cultural and professional trajectories of Baba Ladigbolu provides us with a fundamental framework for how an ecumenical framework could be generated between an indigenous culture and a foreign religion. Pa Ladigbolu achieved that almost seamless coherence that allowed him to become a priest of the Methodist Church of Nigeria (and to rise up to the zenith of its hierarchy as an archbishop) while retaining a very deep cultural mooring in the Yorùbá heritage.

    We immediately see the significance of this fusion in an age when Pentecostal Christianity built its own incursion into a different culture on the basis of the demonization of those cultures as heathenism. Archbishop Ladigbolu deployed his contact with western education as the fulcrum for developing an open-minded cultural sensibility that allows for the mutual reinforcement between Christianity and the Yorùbá culture in terms of the emergence of a modern sensibility that enables a conversation between the two. When I think of Pa Ladigbolu, I see an older and more perfect reflection of how Ali Mazrui’s Africa’s triple heritage thesis could become an embodied lifestyle and philosophy. I have written so much about how my upbringing enabled me to see how the three dynamics—Christianity, traditional Yoruba religion and Islam—could relate in a non-violent manner. Baba Ladigbolu was raised as a Muslim within a deeply culturally conscious Yoruba context and he converted to Christianity while still advocating the preservation of the Yorùbá culture.

    Being born within a household that traces its lineage to Alaafin Siyanbola Ladigbolu I, and growing up within an authentic palace comes with its own unique educational value in the paraphernalia of the Yoruba culture. One of the deepest implications was that even before encountering western education through his many travels and the experience they yielded, he had already assimilated an enlarged mind that accepted the theological ramifications of Islam, Yoruba theology and Christianity. His worldview was already wide enough and empathetic to accommodate his myriad experiences traveling from one place to another. We can speculate that his enlarged sensibility owes a lot to the openminded accommodationist framework that the Yorùbá culture itself makes possible. The Yorùbá culture was able to accommodate the incursion of Islam and Christianity because it lacks the exclusionary ontology of both.

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    I prefer to see Archbishop Ladigbolu as an exemplar of Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of who an intellectual is. Gramsci bifurcated between the “traditional” and the “organic” intellectuals. The traditional intellectuals—teachers, scientists, priests, artists—contrary to their claims to be the bearers of universal values, are actually those that emerged from within a privileged or even a dominant social class, and who are compelled by the dynamics of that class to reinforce its values and philosophies. The organic intellectuals, on the other hand, are more organically connected to the masses because they grew and emerged from within non-privileged strata, transformed their status through education especially, and imposed on themselves the obligation to raise the fortune of that strata. Intellectuals, Gramsci argues, are recognized by their need for the critical elaboration of a new understanding of the world. This is what determines the functions of the intellectuals in any society.  

    Indeed, I want to make a radical assertion that Pa Ladigbolu possesses the status of both a traditional and an organic intellectual. When he became a Christian and the entire household became convulsed with fear and tears, they had no way of understanding the contradiction in their worries. They were Yorùbá who embraced Islam. And so there should not have been any worries about one of them embracing Christianity. And if their worry had been about his possible loss of cultural knowledge, little did they know that he would become a cultural champion that he is today.

    A much more fundamental challenge embedded in Pa Ladigbolu’s stature is the tension between absolutist theological ontology of Christianity and the accommodationist and liberal worldview of the Yorùbá. How was the archbishop of the Methodist Church in Nigeria able to balance the claim that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life with Christianity’s paganization of non-Christian cultures? How is Christianity’s proselytizing dynamics squared with the non-proselytizing nature of Yorùbá traditional religion? One way to respond to this is to argue that Pa Ladigbolu’s cultural enthusiasm had to take a back seat while he was the Archbishop of the Methodist Church. And this cultural advocacy had picked up immediately he retired as the archbishop. Even if this explanation is far-fetched given his fearless determination to be Yorùbá at all cost, no one—not even the Church—could deny that Archbishop Ayo Ladigbolu was a staunch Yorùbá who deeply loves God. 

    Combining two near incompatible theological views, in my assessment, becomes a courageous plus for Pa Ladigbolu, an insight into the capacity of the Yorùbá culture to keep inventing itself in the face of challenges. The Yorùbá understanding of àṣà demonstrates a flexible adaptability that has allowed the Yorùbá to not only domesticate non-Yorùbá influences, but to also fit into any cultural and theological contexts wherever they found themselves. This is what had made possible, for instance, the Candomblé and Santeria religious experiences from Brazil to Cuba and beyond. These religious forms emerged from the syncretic fusion of the Yorùbá òrìṣà tradition with Roman Catholicism. What is even more significant is that Candomblé, for example, lacks the same institutionalized framework determined by an orthodoxy and a sacred text. Its heterogeneous form allows for significant incorporation in the same way that Ifá incorporates non-Yorùbá events.

    This is the same way that Baba Ladigbolu could be understood as a modernizer of the Yorùbá culture and tradition. Being the leader of the Yorùbá Unity Forum (YUF) as well as the chairman of the Oyo Metropolitan Development provide the opportunity to do two major things. First, it allows him to pursue a program of creative urbanism, what the Yorùbá themselves are historically famous for—transforming Yorùbá cities in line with modern exigencies. And second, Baba’s advocacy also brings to the fore the roles of traditional structures and institutions in the development of modern existence.

    For Baba, even as the best of modern scholars have realized, culture matters. It must be the platform around which our being-in-the-world is measured and extended to others. The full extent of his multicultural experiences has allowed him to both serve the Almighty while pushing the bounds of theological and cultural similarities and differences. And so, in straddling Gramsci’s distinction between the traditional and the organic intellectual, Archbishop Ayo Ladigbolu becomes an exemplar for other intellectuals—a sum of cultural knowledge that broadens our cultural worldviews.  

    •Prof. Olaopa is Professor of Public Administration & Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja.

  • Africa finds steadfast friend in China

    Africa finds steadfast friend in China

    • By By Yi Xin

    Some international development partners talk about Africa as if it were a problem to be fixed. So they write prescriptions – “change this and that and you will be better.”

    But Africa is not a problem.

    Africa is a promise. To deliver on this promise, Africans must act together. A deep appreciation of this is what makes China’s Africa policy fundamentally different from that of many others.

    It started early.

    In the 1960s, shortly after leading their nations to independence, the great African statesmen Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda saw an urgent need to connect their countries with a railway. But funding was hard to come by. Western donors said no on the grounds that the proposal was neither economically nor politically attractive. But Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader, was resolute, and said: “You have difficulties. We do too. But our difficulties are different. China will help you build it, and if need be, we will put our own railway projects on hold.”

    China extended zero-interest, zero-condition loans, took out huge sums from its limited foreign exchange reserve to buy the best machines from the West, and sent Chinese engineers to the wilderness in Africa and unreservedly shared technical know-how.

    It was one of the earliest endeavors to connect and unite Africans to encourage development. Africans call it the “Freedom Railway,” an indication of how much hope was attached to it.

    As Africa continued to build synergy, China actively aligned its policy toward the same goal. In 2002, African nations’ aspirations for brotherhood and solidarity gave birth to the African Union. Two years earlier, China had launched the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the world’s first format to bring African countries under one roof to map out development strategies and cooperation plans.

    Under this framework, the Chinese zoomed in on connecting Africa. The roads they built in Africa, a staggering 100,000 km, are more than twice that of Earth’s waistline. The railways, over 10,000 km in combined length, can take one from Ras ben Sakka in Tunisia, Africa’s most northerly point, to its southernmost Cape Agulhas in South Africa.

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    Besides asphalt and tracks, the Chinese have worked hard to nurture local industries. For a long time, African countries have been kept at the lower end of the value chain. Their economic structures are highly similar. Seeing the untapped manufacturing potential, China set out to build factories and industrial parks. “Industrial capacity cooperation” is a dominant topic in Chinese engagement with Africa. As China-Africa partnerships mushroom in this sector, African countries are now selling glass fibers to their neighbors and buying TV sets made in the region.

    On a deeper level, China constantly encourages the strengthening of an African awareness. Ask any Chinese leader how Africa may apply China’s approach, and the answer invariably is: Think in terms of your own reality.

    A few days ago, African leaders gathered with their Chinese friends for the fourth Forum on FOCAC summit. There, China’s approach of promoting African synergy to unlock its potential is again on full display.

    According to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s newly proposed “ten partnership actions,” China will implement another 30 infrastructure connectivity projects in Africa, foster industry cooperation growth clusters, develop a China-Africa network featuring land-sea links and coordinated development, assist the development of the African Continental Free Trade Area, and provide more support in logistics and finance for the benefit of “trans-regional development in Africa.”

    Once these plans are actualized, as the Chinese always do with meticulous follow-up actions and progress checks, Africa is sure to be more interconnected and integrated. Hence, the new-found meaning of the FOCAC acronym — Friendship, Opportunity, Cooperation, Action, and Community.

    Strength comes from unity, not alienation. This is an underlying belief that informs China’s diplomacy around the world. In China-U.S. relations, you see China push for mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation. Globally, China’s central message has been: Humanity is one community with a shared future.

    Africa is on an irreversible course toward modernization. To empower this process, partners who see potential, not problems in it would go a long way.

  • Tinubu slaying the dragon

    Tinubu slaying the dragon

    On the Quora site on the internet, the question was asked: “What does the expression ‘slaying dragons’ mean?” A 12 July, 2024 answer is: “‘Slaying dragons’ is an idiomatic expression that refers to overcoming difficult or daunting challenges. The metaphor of ‘slaying a dragon’ evokes the heroic act of defeating a powerful, formidable foe – usually a mythical dragon creature. This imagery suggests that the challenge being faced is substantial, requiring bravery, skill, and determination to overcome.” To accomplish such formidable and dangerous tasks, Ayinla Omowura, the late famous Yoruba Àpàlà music exponent, counsels that, metaphorically-speaking, the hunter who would set out to kill an elephant should be well-prepared; and must not forget to take along with them charms that could miraculously lift them out of imminent danger (“Ode tí ó p’erin kó múra o, kó má se gbàgbé egbé sílé.”)

    The Nigerian situation is a dragon of sort, and in trying to slay it, as in attempting to kill an elephant, the hunter must be well-equipped and nimble enough to survive the fury of the threatened dragon and the provoked elephant. The heroic hunter whose fate it is to slay the dragon or kill the elephant is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This hunter’s historic challenge is to confront the nation’s socio-political and economic dragon along with its Frankenstein offspring.

    Well-respected economists have predicted hard times for the country. A former Governor of the Central Bank, the opposition All Progressives Grand Alliance’s Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State, declared, on Channels Television, as follows on 1 September, 2023: “This [Tinubu] government inherited, from a macroeconomic standpoint … an economy … like a dead horse but standing. … Muddling through this over the coming months would be bumpy; no question about it. But I am glad that at least, the first salvos have been shot by the president, by his courageous step to remove the obnoxious scam that has festered over the years called petrol subsidy and then dealing with the exchange rate. … I am willing to give the government a benefit of the doubt. They’ve just set up a team. I believe that the economic team would get cracking.”

    Sometimes, in politics, it’s great, it’s re-energising, to step back, to calm down, and gauge how your opponents rate you. In one of such ratings, as President Tinubu continues his efforts to slay the dragon tormenting Nigeria and as he continues to record chequered outcomes, a former Governor of Jigawa State Alhaji Sule Lamido, who is also a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and a key figure in the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), was generous in his assessment. In a 31 August, 2024 Nigerian Tribune interview by Taiwo Amodu titled “Tinubu is an emperor, will be difficult to dislodge in 2027 – Sule Lamido”, Alhaji Lamido said in relation to the possibility of the PDP winning the presidential elections in 2027: “It is a huge challenge. … We are working hard, but it is a huge task. It is going to be difficult with Tinubu, with his hold on the country, on the economy, and his audacity … It is something else.”

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    Alhaji Lamido continued: “Tinubu is very daring; he is his own creation, he is a self-made man, right from Chicago, what he went through on the streets. Look at how he was able to fight the Alliance for Democracy and Afenifere and then Obasanjo. At the APC [All Progressives Congress] convention, Buhari was against him but he defeated Buhari. What are you talking about? Don’t underestimate a man like that. Look at how he made it in life. He confronted all obstacles to get to where he is today, at the apex. There is no Nigerian like Tinubu who has been there on his own. Every established political arrangement, every institution, he demolished them. Now that he is in charge, he is not going to be easy to deal with. With Tinubu, Nigeria is a fiefdom, Tinubu is the emperor.”

    Another opposition politician, the Vice Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2023 election, Ahmed Buhari, also had his views about what political benefits Tinubu could gain from the 11 July, 2024 Supreme Court judgement granting financial and other forms of autonomy to local governments. According to a report in the 24 July, 2024 issue of Premium Times, in a story by Saviour Imukudo titled “Local govt autonomy is Tinubu’s political move for 2027 election – Buhari,” the ADC chieftain said: “It is a political move. So, if I want to come back to office in 2027, I might not necessarily win the loyalty of the governors because most of them might also want to contest against me.”

    ADC’s Buhari continued: “But if I can win the loyalty of the people at the grassroots where the real votes are, they know that the money comes directly from me to them. They have access to me. We are leaving the governors hanging and we can even remove the governors if we want. From the political perspective, I am seeing President Tinubu trying to take the powers away from the governors and win the grassroots directly by making sure that the funds from the federal (government) move directly to the (local government) councils so that if that is done they (local government councils) listen to him.”

    Unsurprisingly, a formidable propaganda machine has been set up against President Tinubu and is run by active recruits and passionate volunteers. One of the issues on the basis of which propaganda is being spun about him is that he promised to reduce the pump price of petrol, but broke the promise; and rather increased the price. Well, politicians are believed to have the tendency to break promises. The major basis for this stereotype is that people lose sight of the fact that every promise is a conditional statement, and the unstated condition is, “all things being equal”. In other words, a politician would gladly keep a promise and earn plaudits, if situations do not arise which make keeping the promise difficult, impossible or unreasonable. In the United States, former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s candidate for the 5 November, 2024 presidential elections, found himself in one of such situations, as he narrated in the presidential debate between him and the Democratic Party candidate, Vice-President Kamala Harris, on 10 September, 2024.

    In the debate, a moderator, Linsey Davis, charged Donald Trump as follows: “You have long vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. You have failed to accomplish that [in your years as President from 2017 to 2021].” Trump responded: “Obamacare was lousy health care. … And what I said, that if we come up with something, we’re going to replace it. But remember this. I inherited Obamacare because Democrats wouldn’t change it. … They were unanimous. They wouldn’t vote to change it.” Probably inadvertently, Kamala Harris supported Trump’s excuse that his hands were tied, when she remarked: “When Donald Trump was president, 60 times he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. 60 times. I was a senator at the time. …  The late great John McCain, I will never forget that night. Walked onto the Senate floor and said … No, you don’t get rid of the Affordable Care Act.”

    Senator John McCain was a senior member of Trump’s party, yet he “joined two moderate Republicans, two independents and every Democrat in voting against the so-called ‘skinny repeal’ of the Affordable Care Act.”  This further confirmation of Trump’s claim was done in the 27 July, 2017 NPR.ORG report, by Susan Davis and Domenico Montanaro, titled “McCain Votes No, Dealing Potential Death Blow To Republican Health Care Efforts.” In other words, it was impossible for Trump to keep his promise to repeal Obamacare. The former President therefore had no choice but to “run it as good as it can be run,” as he put it, in his own words, in the presidential debate. Trump’s action is consistent with the pragmatic counsel, by the ace Yoruba musician, Ayinla Omowura, that once a song changes, the accompanying beat must change (“B’órin bá ti yí ni k’ílù yí padà.”)

    Ranged against President Tinubu is a minority of vocal rabid revisionists with distorted interpretations of events, using hugely dysphemistic, hyperbolic, grotesque and fallacious means. Prominent among these vicious critics are media ogres seeking to gore him with their pens and their tongues. They can’t tell you exactly what they stand to gain if he fails. But they’re obsessed with seeing him fall, all the same. Maybe, all they hope for is to be able to self-justify by saying, “We told you he was the wrong candidate” – a delusional self-association with clairvoyance. A German word, borrowed into English, which aptly captures this condition, is ‘schadenfreude’, and its remarkable Wikipedia definition is “the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another.”  The detractors hawk negativity and pessimism about Nigeria, and ignore this admonition: “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

    Incidentally, very many Nigerians don’t share the fury of the pessimistic elite, as the mammoth crowd at the Edo State APC governorship campaign rally in Benin City, on 14 September, 2024, indicates. A Nigerian Catholic priest working in Gambia, Rev. Fr. Kelvin Ugwu, an ardent supporter of opposition Labour Party’s Peter Obi, was reported to have remarked, in a 16 September, 2024 article by Timothy Agbor, titled “Cleric expresses shock over huge crowds at APC campaign rallies despite hardship” in The Point newspaper: “One would have thought that with the high cost of things, the hunger and pains in the land, the death of innocent Nigerians due to inability to afford medical help and the overall failure of APC government, anywhere APC is mentioned, the people would rise up and ensure those elected are made to do what they were elected for…but NO. The grand finale rally of APC governor election on Saturday the 14th made me realize that I should stop crying more than the bereaved. The crowd at the rally was unbelievable. Believe me, nothing will change in Nigeria. It is so sad. You see, Tinubu … in the next election, he will still win if he contests.”

    From the cleric’s exasperation, one thing is clear. As President Tinubu strives to slay the dragon, the mass of the people are giving him the benefit of the doubt, in the hope that tomorrow holds sustainable ease. They seem to live by the Yoruba belief that one day of rainfall eases thousands of droughts (“Ojó kansoso òjò borí egbegbèrún òdá.”) The President must not let them wait in vain.