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  • The he-goat and the ram: Reality of ASUU strikes

    The he-goat and the ram: Reality of ASUU strikes

    • By Jeff Godwin Doki

    Africa is a continent where animal stories are sometimes told just for the sheer entertainment afforded by the description of the amusing antics of various animals. Such stories are usually told to audiences and children. But behind such entertainment lurks some wit and valuable didactic lessons. Let me share one of such stories to convince of my veracity. One day, in the animal kingdom, the he-goat had diarrhoea and discharged its excrement all over the barn. The entire barn became very untidy as a result of the he-goat’s dirty business. When all the animals sat in judgement, they unanimously agreed that, for its crime, the he-goat should be given a severe blow at which all the sheep roared with joy and jubilation. Some three months later, the ram also wrecked great havoc in the barn. With its powerful horns, the ram tore the roof of the barn apart leaving all the sheep and goats without shelter. At judgement, the animals decided that the ram should be kicked at which all the goats in the animal kingdom had a good laugh.

    Lesson: at one animal’s misfortune there is joy at another there is laughter but misfortune is common to all animals.  Now, let me go away from the animal kingdom and pluck the fruit of my story.

     The federal government has over the years treated ASUU so monstrously. From the regime of Babangida to Obasanjo, to that of Yar’Adua, to Jonathan to Buhari and Tinubu, it has been the same drama of sham, indifference and disdain. Promises were made but not fulfilled, negotiations began and were stopped only to begin again and stop.  For the past three decades, no Nigerian leader has dealt with the ASUU- FGN agreement seriously, sincerely, honestly and honourably. From 1992 to date, the rot in the university system has continued unabated; from 1992 to date the university teachers have embarked on several warning strikes and sometimes indefinite strikes all in an attempt to press the government to tread the path of honour by respecting its promises.

    Lamentably, the major stakeholders in public universities namely parents and students do not understand the reasons why public universities have been the target of government animosity. The reasons are many and varied. One, the university is a place of intellectual workers whose primary duties are to research, teach, engage in community work, seek, find and tell the truth at all times, even at great hazard. Two, it is only the intellectual that has the capacity to put Nigeria first, to love Nigeria, to insist that education is a right and not a privilege. Three, it is only the intellectual that has faith in the capacity of the people to change their lives, to demonstrate that people are subjects and not just passive objects of development, to insist on certain minimum professional ethics and democratic principles, to reject a society based on corruption, to reject the rule of fear, to reveal that the children of ordinary peasants and workers have a right to free education, to insist that it is the primary responsibility of any responsible government to provide education for all its citizens.

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    One can go on and on and on.

    Again, it is important for citizens to realize that in Nigeria, as in other parts of the world, our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous battle between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those forces determined to dismantle it.  It is these two forces that are in conflict every day and everywhere. They are with us in schools, in offices, at the market, in the churches/ mosques and even in our homes. In simple terms, there are two classes in society: the rich and the poor, the ruler and the ruled, those who pull and those who are meant to do the pulling.  On the other side of the divide is ASUU, a union made up of a breed of university scholars who are bright, confident, original, honest and whose simple lifestyle is a stunning contrast to the dominant imported culture associated with leaders who are the oppressors. But unfortunately, Nigerian students and their parents do not seem to understand ASUU and its struggle. For them, ASUU is an intransigent, strike-prone and insensitive union. It is for this reason that many stakeholders in the education sector (especially students and parents) have consistently refused to show sympathy and solidarity with ASUU.

    When we look back, we discover that in the 1970s and 1980s Nigerian students fully identified with ASUU’s struggle because they knew that such a struggle was for the general good of the education sector. But today we don’t seem to have a vibrant union of Nigerian students. What we have is a group of young men and women balkanized along all the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. What we have is an association of young men and women who are acolytes of the political class. But more painful is the fact that what we have today is a generation of young men and women without focus or vision, a group of young people given to modern vices like drug addiction, sexual abuse, cultism, examination malpractice, debauchery, hedonism and shenanigans.

     Who takes the take blame? As a country, Nigeria has continued to persevere under the burden of bad governance, political charlatanism and, most painfully, the deleterious role of the political class. And the reason for this is simple: for the past three or four decades, those who are charged with the duty of guarding public patrimony have deliberately abdicated their responsibilities. The Nigerian nation has continued to travel on reverse gear because its journey is bedevilled by untruths, deceit and thwarted dreams and desires. Honesty, honour, truth and humanistic sympathy have all but taken leave of the ruling class and the citizens have been reduced to mere playthings in the hands of the rulers.

    One thing is clear: there is a deliberate plan by the Nigerian ruling elite to destroy public universities and this fact is evident in the number of private universities owned by members of the ruling class or their cronies. There are more than 120 private universities competing with only about 62 public ones. How many Nigerian parents can afford tuition fees in private universities?

    And here is the big irony. A time there was when tuition fees in public universities was less than N50,000 and many indigent students could not afford it. Some dropped out of school. Many missed their examinations and other academic activities on campus. Today, in some federal universities the new tuition fees is about N250 thousand or more. Turn everywhere; some aggrieved students have carried placards in protest on many campuses. Many universities have re-opened for academic activities but the students are yet to resume studies because they cannot afford the new charges. The huge irony is that many parents are supporting the protests led by their children.  But the action of the student-protesters has raised a number of questions. Where were the students and their parents when ASUU embarked on series of strikes to compel the government to behave more honourably? Was it not the same students who poured invectives on ASUU members during the last but one strike saying that ASUU was an insensitive and callous union?

    Was it not the same students who were urged by former minister, Adamu Adamu to take ASUU to court for keeping them at home for far too long? Was it not Nigerian parents who accused ASUU of unnecessarily keeping their wards at home? Many questions could be asked. But again, let me conclude with the proverbial wisdom from the animal kingdom: ASUU is the he -goat, students and their parents are the ram. May we always remember that life is a wheel and misfortune is unstable. In the words of Sophocles, the Greek tragedian, ‘no one should count himself happy until he is dead free from sorrow’.

    • Jeff is a writer and professor of Comparative Literature.

  • Reforming government revenue collection process

    Reforming government revenue collection process

    • By Bicci Alli

    Faced with fluctuating revenue from statutory allocations, governments across the three tier are developing and implementing strategies to increase their Internally Generated Revenues, (IGR) in order to meet recurrent and capital expenditure, rely less on borrowings at prohibit cost.  Most of the reform efforts are rightly targeted at the institutions responsible for collecting revenue. The principal reason for failure of most reform initiatives is usually over concentration on the quantum of revenue that could be raked in within the shortest period possible, instead of holistic evaluation of the revenue authority’s (RA) external environment and administrative structure.

    The performance, complexity, resource requirements and strategy of the RA depends, to a considerable extent, on the economic environment in which it operates.  In other words, most of the reform efforts take care of the cart (institutional framework) and ignore the horse pulling the cart (the external environment). Domestic revenue that could be mobilised depends on the economy i.e.  IGR is derivate.  Therefore, in order to understand the reasons for poor performance of the RA, we might first look ‘outside the box’, beyond the organizational boundaries of the RA, and analyse the impact of important environmental influences on its performance. 

    The amount of domestic revenue that could be mobilised in an economy varies according to changes in GDP, interest rates, exchange rates, consumer confidence and business cycles. A high degree of openness of the economy raises knotty issues of international taxation, such as transfer pricing, tax arbitrage and origin or completion of taxable transactions in foreign jurisdictions.  High levels of inflation increase the propensity of taxpayers to delay payment of taxes. Lack of formality in economic transactions, unreliability of business records and low levels of literacy make enforcement of tax laws difficult.  Assuming all other factors are constant, an economy with a GDP of $500 million will generate higher revenue than same economy with GDP of $400 million.  Also, in situation of drop in GDP, the amount of revenue that could be mobilised will also drop. Furthermore, the degree of informality in an economy will determine the amount of domestic revenue that can be mobilized efficiently and effectively within the economy. 

    A case in point is VAT. One may ask: to what extent will FIRS be able to raise appropriate revenue from VAT on electronics products giving the high level of informality within the electronics market in Nigeria?  How does FIRS trace the transactions of operators in Alaba International Market and Computer Village in Lagos for imposition of appropriate taxes? Considering the degree of informality, can the chairmen of Lagos State and Oyo State Internal Revenue Service collect appropriate Personal Income Tax from market women in Apongbon and New Gbagi Markets respectively? 

    Despite having higher GDP than South Africa, our tax to GDP ratio is lower than that of South Africa; one of the principal reasons is the size of informal sector in our economy. One way to enthrone sustainable IGR is to formalise the informal sector, which certainly is outside the purview of revenue authorities.  

    Fiscal policy defines the agenda for the RA. The level of budgeted government spending, debt financing and fiscal deficit determine the amount of taxes the RA is expected to raise. Expansionary fiscal policies, high levels of national debt and debt servicing requirements, or fiscal crises create strong pressures on the RA to collect more taxes. They also create opportunities for mobilizing political support for efforts to modernize the RA. 

    A properly articulated revenue forecast, which mirrors the key external factors, provides needed platform for reform and evaluation of the institution responsible for revenue collection.  In Nigeria, revenue forecasting is perhaps the weakest link in the chain between tax structure and revenue collected. In some states, the forecasting exercise is done by a few individuals in the Ministry of Finance or Budget and Economic planning, who simply increase last year’s forecast or actual tax collections by next year’s assumed growth rate. In other instances, next year’s budget expenditures are estimated through call circulars to all the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies. Expected borrowing and deficit financing are subtracted from total estimated budgetary expenditures, and the remaining amount is assigned to the revenue agency as next year’s revenue targets. 

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    A revenue target without any basis or link to the state of the economy destroys the integrity of the tax system. Revenue forecasts based on sound verifiable factors and data is a useful benchmark for monitoring collection, stimulating effort, and measuring the performance of RAs.

    The RA is usually dependent on a number of public agencies, such as the Police, Customs, Immigrations, the Attorney General and other MDAs for executing its functions. The quality and timeliness of assistance provided by these agencies has a major impact on the RA’s performance. Further, access to information about taxable transactions available with other government agencies is crucial for monitoring taxpayer behaviour and investigating tax evasion.

    Most of the MDAs render services that have bearable influence on IGR. Unfortunately, rather than cooperate with RA to raise the state’s IGR profile, they see the RA as irritant and meddlesome resulting in monumental loss of revenue to the state. Relevant data that could assist in profiling taxpayers exist in different silos, not connected. 

    Tax laws make tax policy enforceable. Wrong translation of policy into law might result in complicated tax laws which become difficult to implement and create fertile ground for inventing interpretation that favours tax avoidance. This might also lead to unending legal issue at huge cost to the Revenue Agency.  Most of our revenue laws are simply archaic and out dated.

    Tax laws define the powers that revenue authority can exercise to enforce the laws. Weaknesses in the power to collect information about taxpayer transactions, take coercive action to gather evidence of tax evasion or collect tax arrears, and impose penalties for noncompliance have a telling effect on the overall effectiveness of Revenue Agencies. For instance, no state can initiate and execute criminal process against individuals that failed to pay Personal Income Tax unless the Attorney General of the Federation grant/ transfer such power to the state.

    Currently, certain technologies are all having a huge impact on tax administrations. Taken individually or together, these trends have the power to increase taxpayer satisfaction, empower tax agency employees, optimize operations and modernize services. These trends include Big Data, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, The Internet of Things (IoT), Mobility and Cloud Computing

    There is an increasing recognition that digitalization and the exploitation of digital data have the potential to revolutionize the operation of economies well beyond the minor disruption seen so far. Digitalization is affecting not just how good and services are produced and consumed but also the very goods and services that are required. With the development of virtual and cryptocurrency technologies, new business models are blurring the distinctions between traditional forms, and challenging the fundamentals of taxation while they are at it. The digital economy is leading to a brave new future in which it is increasingly difficult to assess the point in the supply chain at which value creation actually happens. 

    Given that, over the years’ revenue administration in Nigeria has witnessed commendable reforms, however, tax to GDP ratio is low compared with similar economy. This is due majorly to incoherent approach to revenue generation by different agencies of government, restrictive legal framework for revenue generation, lack of robust and reliable taxpayer database, high level of tax evasion by a good number of taxpayers, low compliance by the informal sector, lack of effective revenue collection mechanism and enforcement.

    It is incumbent therefore that, while the reform efforts focus on Revenue Generating Agencies and processes through deployment of appropriate technology, harmonization of revenue, collaboration amongst various government agencies,  data integration, right legal framework; the external environment must be given serious consideration and effects  built into the reform programme, failing which the reform will not archive desired results.

    •Alli, former chairman, Oyo State Internal Revenue Service wrote in from Lagos.

  • Home and abroad, Tinubu’s Nigeria is taking its rightful place

    Home and abroad, Tinubu’s Nigeria is taking its rightful place

    • By Mohammed Idris

    Having hit the ground running at home, with a series of very bold and unprecedented reform decisions, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has gone ahead to seize the opportunity offered by the month of September 2023, to make a grand entry onto the global stage.

    In what has been his busiest month on the global stage since he assumed office, President Tinubu traveled to India for the G20 Summit on the special invitation of Prime Minister Modi, made a stopover on his way back home for a crucial meeting with the leadership of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on lingering issues of concern between UAE and Nigeria, and then traveled to New York to make his debut at the most important annual gathering of Heads of State, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

    At the UN—in a delivery reminiscent of the powerful and iconic ‘Africa Has Come Of Age’ speech by the late Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed, almost five decades ago—President Tinubu caught the attention of a listening world with his emphasis on an equal and mutually beneficial relationship between Africa and the world, instead of one defined by condescension, pity and greed.

    The President spoke boldly for the entire African continent, tracing the history of the post-World War 2 global system, starting with a Marshall Plan that helped redeem Europe. Asking for a 21st century equivalent for that Plan, President Tinubu added, “We realize that underlying conditions and causes of the economic challenges facing today’s Africa are significantly different from those of post war Europe. We are not asking for identical programs and actions. What we seek is an equally firm commitment to partnership. We seek enhanced international cooperation with African nations to achieve the 2030 agenda and Sustainable Development Goals.”

    At every engagement, he has taken the time to remind the world of just how significant his first four months in office have been, in terms of laying the foundation for unlocking levels of economic growth and prosperity that we have always been capable of, but have sadly remained a pipe dream..

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    He ended a costly and wasteful fuel subsidy regime that has, over the decades, deprived the country of tens of billions of dollars in potential infrastructure and human capital investments. He also commenced an overhaul of the Central Bank of Nigeria, shaking up the leadership of the bank and supporting it to abolish an inefficient system of multiple exchange rates, which, like the petrol subsidy, has seen a lot of abuse, and stifled domestic and economic confidence in the economy.

    President Tinubu has also assembled a cabinet with an impressive representation of young people and women, while also creating new Ministries and ministerial portfolios to reflect the pressing realities of the 21st century, as well as the priorities of our administration.

    For example, we now have a Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, recognizing the unlimited potential of that sector to produce national prosperity. We also now have a dedicated Ministry for the Creative Economy. In addition, the Ministry of Agriculture has been revised to include Food Security, underpinning the President’s declaration of a national emergency on Food Security early on in his administration.

    On the regional level, President Tinubu has, in his role as recently-elected Chairman of ECOWAS, shown great commitment to stemming the condemnable wave of military takeovers that have rocked the sub-region, and I expect his diplomatic efforts to yield enduring fruit in the months ahead.

    The President is being supported in his many onerous assignments by a very energetic and committed Cabinet. In the last few days, I joined some of my colleagues for events at the UN General Assembly, and can testify to the remarkable levels of determination within the cabinet, to solve Nigeria’s problems with the support and cooperation of the global community.

    I can boldly assert that we stand on the threshold of a Nigeria that is a true global giant, a country that is able to fully exploit its immense potential energy of demographics, culture, and entrepreneurial dynamism. I have no doubt that my colleagues and I, under the leadership of the President, will step boldly forward, not backwards, from this historic threshold.

    We have a very busy last quarter of the year ahead of us. The administration will finalize and unveil its inaugural budget, which will set the tone for investors and other potential partners, about our priorities. Nigeria will take part in the annual global gathering for Climate Change, COP 28, in Dubai. We will push forward with work on the various reforms that the President has kickstarted, from tax policy reform to a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) transition for petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles, to the full implementation of a comprehensive relief package to cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy.

    As the President has repeatedly said, most recently last week in New York, “I am mindful of the transient hardship that reform can cause. However, it is necessary to go through this phase in order to establish a foundation for durable growth and investment to build the economy our people deserve.”

    He understands how important it is to engage with the world to achieve this. During this month of diplomatic shuttling, he has met with Presidents and Head of States from the United States, India, Germany, South Korea, South Africa, Angola, Jordan, among others.

    From the global business executives he has held meetings with this month—Exxon Mobil, Bharti Enterprises, Oracle, Hinduja Group, Indorama, Skipper Seil, and others—he has received pledges amounting to several billions of dollars in new investments. This cannot be overemphasized: at the end of the day, one of our administration’s overriding goals is to attract new investment that will create jobs and wealth for the people of Nigeria.

    We will continue to finetune and amplify our narrative in this regard—a message that the President reiterated at every opportunity in New Delhi and New York—that Nigeria is open and ready for business, with partners who are equally open and ready for business with us, and who are not looking to exploit us or treat us like junior partners. And we will follow up the talk with action.

    My Ministry, the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation will be very critical to the success of our national messaging, and we will give it everything required for our narratives to succeed. We have a vision that includes redesigning how the Federal Government of Nigeria engages with the Nigerian people at home and abroad, and with the world.

    As part of this, we will scale up our engagements with stakeholders, modernize our tools and platforms of information and communication, and work to craft credible and believable narratives that Nigerians will be proud of and delighted to share with the world. 

    In a few days, our dear country will celebrate its 63rd Independence Anniversary. It will offer an opportunity to further reflect on our nationhood journey, and the expectations of our citizens, and for us as leaders to rededicate ourselves to delivering on the bold and dynamic leadership that will enable Nigeria to fully assume its rightful place on the global stage. I have absolute confidence that success in this regard will be a defining legacy of this momentous era of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

  • Renewed Hope initiative: Breaking gender barriers with bytes

    Renewed Hope initiative: Breaking gender barriers with bytes

    • By Mubarak Umar

    A symphony of hope and empowerment reverberated through the heart of Nigeria as two visionary forces, First Lady of Federal Republic of Nigeria, Her Excellency, Senator Remi Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope Initiative” and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), united their efforts to orchestrate the awe-inspiring “Women ICT Training and Empowerment Programme” in Abuja.

    The closing ceremony of the maiden edition programme which took place three weeks ago at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, was to empower women through the strategic use of technology has garnered attention and praise for its innovative approach to addressing gender disparities and fostering women’s economic and social advancement.

    This convergence of the Renewed Hope Initiative and NITDA marks an epochal juncture where visionary leadership and pioneering technology intersect to mold a brighter future for Nigerian women.

    Senator Remi Tinubu has consistently championed women’s rights and empowerment. Her Renewed Hope Initiative, an embodiment of her tenacious spirit, has emerged as a lighthouse guiding countless women through the labyrinth of gender disparities.

    On the other hand, NITDA, a trailblazing government institution at the forefront of Nigeria’s technological evolution, has showcased its prowess in spearheading digital transformation. Recognizing the formidable impact of technological prowess in women’s empowerment, the agency’s alignment with the Renewed Hope Initiative radiates a resplendent promise of a tech-empowered tomorrow.

    Through meticulously designed training modules, participants are nurtured with technical acumen, digital dexterity, and digital marketing proficiencies, enabling them to traverse the dynamic terrain of the tech industry with finesse. The programme’s design resonates with a holistic approach that not only imparts technical skills but also fosters resilience and confidence, incubating a new breed of tech-savvy trailblazers.

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    The synergy between the Renewed Hope Initiative and NITDA cascades into a tapestry of strategic partnerships that exude excellence. This collaboration beckons prominent tech conglomerates and pioneering entrepreneurs to converge under a single banner, painting a vivid tableau of solidarity in the face of gender inequality.

    The First Lady’s appearance at the closing ceremony of Women ICT Training Empowerment Programme which took place at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, does not merely illuminate the path; it reshapes destinies. The empowering melodies of this initiative underscore Senator Remi Tinubu’s and NITDA’s commitment to pioneering change at the grassroots, enriching lives, and unlocking unparalleled opportunities.

    One of the cornerstones of the initiative is an ingenious effort that aims to provide digital literacy training to thousands of women across the country in the near future. With technology being the driving force behind global progress, the initiative’s focus on digital skills, empowering women to shatter glass ceilings and access opportunities that were once beyond their reach.

    The initiative provided women with access to digital literacy training, enabling them to harness the power of the internet and technology. From basic computer skills to more advanced courses, these women are empowered to navigate the digital landscape confidently, not only to enhance employability but also equip them to make informed decisions in an increasingly digital world.

    Speaking at the closing ceremony of the Training Empowerment Programme, organised by NITDA in collaboration with Renewed Hope Initiative, Senator Tinubu emphasised the need for multi-sectoral partnerships to create a more inclusive and thriving digital future for Nigerian women.

    She recognised the immense and transformative power that technology wields, underscoring its profound impact in bridging disparities across diverse sectors, with a particular emphasis on the realm of technology itself.

    In an insightful reflection, she highlighted the significance of Nigeria’s ongoing digital transformation, underscoring that within this trajectory, it becomes an imperative of utmost importance to guarantee the active and meaningful inclusion of women.

    As the nation propels forward on its journey of digitalisation, the First Lady made it clear that women, who have historically been underrepresented in technology-related fields, must not be relegated or sidelined in this technological evolution.

    She believes that in a world where technology influence is ever-expanding, it is imperative that women are not only partakers but also key drivers of innovation, progress, and change. This empowerment initiative stands as a testament to the commitment of NITDA and Renewed Hope Initiative in nurturing a more equitable and dynamic tech landscape, where diversity thrives and opportunities are bound.

    Amidst the sea of nodding heads and affirmative gestures, it was clear that the attendees recognised the depth of commitment embedded within the First Lady’s words. Her call to harness the power of technology as a catalyst for change in dismantling traditional gender barriers was met with not just approval, but a shared determination to actively contribute to the cause. This collective sentiment of resonance underscored the profound impact that her speech had on all present.

    The First Lady’s dedication to women’s welfare has long been evident, but the Renewed Hope Initiative’s partnership with NITDA takes her advocacy to soaring heights, especially now that technology is the key to unlocking limitless potentials, which wants use multifaceted plan that combines innovation and empowerment to ensure that Nigerian women are not left behind.

    The training programme has brought together a coalition of like-minded individuals and organisations committed to the advancement of women’s inclusion in digital space. Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, and Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, have lauded First Lady’s visionary approach of tailoring the needs of Nigerian women, ensuring that women from all walks of life can access digital skills, upskill and pursue new horizons at their own pace.

    Furthermore, the distribution of laptops and financial support to the beneficiaries is more than just a symbolic gesture; it symbolises a tangible investment in the potential, capabilities, and aspirations of women in the realm of technology. Equipping them with the tools and resources they need, will amplify their voices, enhance their skills, and empower them to become active contributors to the digital revolution that is reshaping the world as we know it.

    As the partnership unfurls its wings, it is a clarion call for the nation to unite and applaud the remarkable collaboration between the visionary First Lady and the technological vanguards at NITDA. This remarkable partnership echoes a resounding message that women’s empowerment is not just a notion—it’s an imperative, an emancipation, and an unceasing symphony of hope.

    In an era where transformative leadership is the need of the hour, the First Lady’s Renewed Hope Initiative shines as a beacon of hope, illuminating the path to a more prosperous and inclusive Nigeria. As the initiative gathers momentum, it is not merely a programme; it is a movement that has the potential to redefine gender empowerment for generations to come.

  • U.S., sanctions and pushbacks

    U.S., sanctions and pushbacks

    • By Alade Fawole

    A critical deficiency of US foreign policy and external relations since end of WWII, and much more so since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, is what is commonly known as diplomacy. In the place of diplomacy, which Adam Watson defines as “the process of dialogue and negotiation by which states in a system conduct their relations and pursue their purposes by means short of war” is the reckless and inconsiderate use of punitive sanctions against any nation the US has issues with.

    Simply put, diplomacy no longer exists in their lexicon. In general, diplomacy entails states navigating and resolving their often complex relationships with other nation-states which have their differing, sometimes divergent and conflicting national interests too without recourse to war. This necessarily requires “dialogue” (i.e., talking to each other and exchanging ideas), and “negotiation” (which implies or involves making concessions or compromises). Successful diplomacy invariably carries some irreducible minimum elements…mutual respect, trust and confidence; patience to understand the other side’s feelings, viewpoints and positions. Even though a little threat and actual sanctions are occasionally sprinkled to break logjams or let the other side realize the consequences of intransigence or refusal to compromise, they are never the main substance. Deficient in the art of diplomacy, the US has instead promoted bully tactics, force and sanctions to a virtual art form. And the hubris of exceptionalism is probably implicated in this preference for threats and sanctions rather than honest dialogue and negotiation.

    Evidence: the US is solely responsible for two-thirds of all international sanctions imposed since 1990. These sanctions…in the form of embargoes, trade boycotts, seizure of national assets, military intimidation, naval blockade of sea ports, visa and travel restrictions, etc. are imposed on countries at the lightest pretext; carefully calibrated to inflict maximum punishment, pain, economic damage, socio-political disruptions and domestic political upheavals, to compel obedience from the targeted governments or sometimes force regime change. According to famous scholar, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the US effected no fewer than 64 regime changes worldwide to install compliant rulers during the Cold War years alone. Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Belarus, North Korea, and numerous others are regular if not permanent targets of multiple killer sanctions. Even individuals, such as high-level state officials, top businessmen and women, foreign companies and corporations in those countries are also targeted. For example, after confiscating over $300 billion of Russia’s external reserves, the US also went about seizing the private assets of wealthy Russians outside Russia.

    Poser: why does the US reflexively resort to sanctions every time? Why does it so casually renounce civility and decorum, and treat diplomacy as an inconvenient tool for conducting inter-state relations? Answer: its foreign policy elite believe that with its fearsome military power and economic might, engaging in often lengthy, laborious, painstaking and ‘boring’ negotiations is rather inconvenient when merely wielding the sanctions sledgehammer would do the trick, regardless of the feelings and sensibilities of the other parties. That explains the arrogance and swagger of US officials and so-called diplomats who traverse the globe like certifiable bullies, condescendingly and rudely dictating America’s will to foreign governments without the most rudimentary diplomatic courtesies or even the slightest consideration for others’ national feelings and situations. America’s positions, however illegitimate, inconvenient or injurious to others’ national interests, are arrogantly presented as non-negotiable fait accompli, backed by threats of repercussions should any government ever dare to refuse.

    It poses a puzzle that this is the same America whose President, Woodrow Wilson, was arguably the sanest voice at the Paris Peace negotiations in 1919 who wisely cautioned against excessive punitive sanctions against the defeated Germany and whose rigorous intellectual exertions birthed the League of Nations. Turning a deaf ear to his entreaties and incapable of seeing beyond their narrow national prejudices, both Britain and France went against the grain of wisdom and imposed unbearably harsh punishments on defeated Germany, which would later instigate a severe pushback once Adolf Hitler became chancellor, triggering a resurgence of toxic German nationalism and fanatical militarism that led to the much more catastrophic second global war. The puzzle is why contemporary American decision-makers are unable to learn from this rich history but are instead always gung-ho about the use of sanctions and force instead of diplomacy?

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    Nothing better exemplifies this than the recent US-Saudi spat over President Biden’s rebuffed request for Saudi Arabia to prevent OPEC+ from cutting oil production that would raise crude oil prices ahead of the US mid-term elections. Not even his prompt visit to the kingdom bore the expected fruits. And what did Biden do? He threatened Saudi Arabia, its biggest and most faithful ally in the Middle East, with “consequences” (read economic and other sanctions) for having the guts to say no. Unfortunately for Biden, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, isn’t known to respond supinely to threats (recall his diplomatic spat with Canada?) and he swiftly pushed back against America’s insufferable hubris in a manner hitherto unheard of in Saudi-US relations with massive shifts in Saudi regional policy as well as embarking on wide-ranging geopolitical, economic and security realignments in the Middle East.

    Emerging global reality is that of growing pushbacks against America’s sanctions, even from its famed friends and allies. Growing resentment against the dollar’s hegemony in international trade and the geopolitical realignments taking place in different regions of the world are targeted at weakening America’s hegemony. It appears America has overused this sledgehammer and now has to contend with the consequences of its waning imperial hubris. Its famed blunt weapon is frankly obsolescent and ineffectual. No empire lasts forever, and the glory of the American empire is inexorably fading; hitherto servile nations are beginning to overcome their timidity and servility, seeking to overturn the US-led global order. America no longer dictates change; change now happens sometimes without and in spite of America!

    What does wisdom recommend? Drop the characteristic recourse to sanctions and replace it with time honoured diplomacy, as defined in the opening paragraph above. And the sooner diplomacy is embraced and bully tactics done away with, the fewer the number of enemies America will have to contend with, and the better for the cause of global peace. Sanctions, as Russia has proven to the world can be counterproductive when the targets decide to push back, for they have a tendency to provoke extreme nationalist feelings, as Germany demonstrated in the inter-war years.

    In reality, the world would be a much better and peaceful place, and inter-state relations would be much better conducted, nations may no longer be pushed into seeking safety in nuclear weapons as North Korea and Iran are doing, if only America would eschew needless arrogance and embrace diplomacy. The sooner the foreign policy neo-cons in Washington D.C. realized that the rest of the world is breaking loose from America’s economic and financial stranglehold, from its reckless sanctions, its unilateral confiscation of sovereign assets, and its other iniquitous actions, the easier it will be for America to make real good friends and escape the looming comeuppance. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.

    • Prof Fawole is of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
  • LUTH: Beyond Michael’s controversy

    LUTH: Beyond Michael’s controversy

    Even without the clarification from the management of Lagos University Teaching Hospital LUTH, claims that a resident doctor with the facility, Umoh Michael died after working 72 hours non-stop, would appear demonstrably inconceivable.

    Not only is it humanly impossible for anybody to work for that number of hours without stop, such a practice in a teaching hospital strikes as a very remote possibility. Yet, that such a narrative made the rounds last week courtesy of a letter addressed to the Chief Medical Director of LUTH by its branch of resident doctors suggests all is not well with the working conditions of those doctors.

    In the letter triggered off by the death of Michael after slumping at a church service, the resident doctors stated: “We the house officers are in deep grief over the loss of our colleague, a co-house officer (Dr. Umoh Michael), who died on September 17, 2023 after having a 72-hour call in the Neurosurgery unit”

    The letter further claimed that his roommate attested to the fact that Umoh barely slept in their apartment over the past one week as he was always on call or the day he came home, he returned around 3am. The resident doctors then chronicled other challenges they face such as bullying from senior colleagues, stressful call hours without break in-between, no call food and poor accommodation. 

    Read Also: LUTH denies late doctor worked 72-hour call duty

    The unfortunate incident has expectedly drawn the ire of the public. The thought of a promising young medical officer dying in the circumstance painted has evoked emotions. This is especially so, given a recent related incident a young female medical doctor lost her life due to elevator failure in a general hospital in the state.

    But the management of LUTH did not allow this narrative to gain undeserved ground. Even as it would not want to be drawn into unnecessary controversy in deference to the deceased family, it said the story of a 72-hour non-stop shift is false.

    According to the management, “the record from the neurosurgical unit shows that the last time he was on call was 13th and Septemeber14, 2023. He was not on call on the 15th, 16th and 17th (the day he died), contrary to the insinuation on social media. He was at home with his parents on September 16 and 17”.

    Before this time; the management went on, he was also on call on September 7 and 8. This shows that Michael was on call for four days in September 2023, LUTH said emphatically. With the explanation, it would appear pretty difficult to sustain the picture painted by the resident doctors on the circumstances of his death.

    It is also possible the account of the number of times he slept at the resident doctors’ quarters as allegedly furnished by his roommate did not factor in the fact that he has a family house in Lagos.  With this disclosure, it is possible the account of the days he did not sleep at the quarters did not capture the number of days he opted to stay with his family.

    But that is beside the issue. As unfortunate as the death of the young and promising doctor is, the issues it threw up should not be completely waved aside. Those that crafted the story of a 72-hour non-stop shift may have exaggerated the situation. But they may be indirectly drawing attention to the difficult conditions house officers do their work.

    And this should not be surprising to anyone. Not with the recurring decimal of strike actions by resident doctors. One of such strikes was just suspended last month. Central to their grievances were the release of the circular for ‘one-for-one replacement of clinical staff’ and the payment of the 2023 Medical Residency Training Fund.

    National President of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors NARD, Dr. Emeka Orji had justified the demands during the strike on the ground of acute shortage of doctors in the hospitals leading to the overworking of the few remaining ones. This should be instructive. Definitely LUTH is not exempted from the picture painted by the NARD president. It is probable the death of Michael just provoked the sad feelings nursed by the doctors on their difficult working conditions.

    This angle is quite potent. It is evident from the other grievances in the letter the resident doctors sent to the management of LUTH. It is clear from the general exodus of doctors and allied medical staff to foreign lands leading to acute shortages. The fact is that some of these grievances are not peculiar to LUTH even as it has a fair share of it. They are an integral part of the agitations for which the NARD has been engaging the federal government, sometimes resulting to strike actions.

    Ironically however, the past regime in this country lived in denial of the shortage of doctors in our hospitals. Two former ministers-health and labour, Prof. Osagie Enahire and Dr. Chris Ngige had on two different occasions respectively denied there was shortage of doctors in our hospitals.

    Enahire had while admitting they have heard of doctors leaving the system claimed there are actually enough doctors in the country. According to him, Nigeria produces between 2000 to 3000 doctors yearly while the number leaving is less than 1000. Then also, the National President of the Nigerian Medical Association NMA, Dr. Uche Ojinmah had faulted the claim of enough doctors for running contrary to available statistics.

    At other times the shortage had been rationalized by government officials on tardiness in the recruitment process. Ironically, as they bandy these excuses, our hospitals suffer acute shortage of medical doctors and allied personnel. The World Health Organization WHO puts the doctors’-patient ratio at one doctor to 600 patients.

    The same WHO had also pronounced that Nigeria and 54 other countries face the most pressing health workforce challenges related to universal health coverage. How the arguments canvassed by Enahire and Ngige conform to this ratio, is anybody’s guess. But one thing that is not in doubt is that Nigeria is confronted by dire manpower shortages in the health sector.

    Our doctors especially the experienced ones are leaving in droves to foreign lands where they are offered better salaries and congenial working conditions. Not only are we losing our experienced doctors and allied personnel to the advanced countries of the world, African countries have miserably joined in the poaching spree.

    That was the sad story told by the chairman of the committee of Chief Medical Directors of Federal Tertiary Hospitals, Prof Emem Bassey when he appeared before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating employment racketeering in federal agencies. He lamented that countries like Sierra Leone and Gambia are offering them up to $3,000 and $4,000 which is about four times the amount paid locally.

    Additionally, recent data obtained from the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. MDCN showed that 53 Nigerian doctors are practicing in Sudan, 41 in South Africa, 17 in Egypt and Ghana respectively. Uganda employs 13 Nigerian doctors while there are seven others working in the Gambia among other African countries.

    The register of the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom puts the number of Nigeria-trained doctors practicing in that country at 11,872. Ordinarily, there would have been nothing untoward about this if the leadership of this country had admitted the reality and taken steps to ensure there are enough medical personnel to attend to the needs of the citizenry.

     But they rather chose to live in its denial resulting to shortages that stretch the capacities of the few remaining ones. That was the sad irony presented by the LUTH situation which found immediate ventilation after the unfortunate death of Michael.  

     The excruciating economic conditions worsened by the depreciation of the local currency have even made matters worse. The controversy LUTH was embroiled in, though unfortunate, may not be unconnected with the general difficult conditions of work in our hospitals. It may not be the fault of the management of that institution. The federal government that has been slow on replacing departing staff shares much of the blame.

    Michael may not have died as a result of work overload. But the lesson served by his death should not be lost. The working conditions of doctors and allied staff should be improved upon else we will have self-fulfilling prophesy to contend with. Addressing the issues that prompted the controversy should serve as a befitting tribute to Michael. May his soul rest in peace!

  • Salvaging the E-Customs Project

    Salvaging the E-Customs Project

    • By Segun Williams

    With a deficit of almost N12.1 trillion in the 2023 budget, there is no gain saying the fact that the administration of President Bola Tinubu needs all the revenue it could muster. This realization, no doubt has been the driving force behind the government’s efforts to streamline and reform the nation’s revenue generation agencies.

    The Tinubu government clearly understood the need to do away with the knotty practices of the past that had hindered the collection of all accruable revenue hence the need to appoint trusted and tested chief executives to man critical agencies.

    Indeed, the new leadership of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, has made moves to revamp the organization for better service delivery and to plug loopholes where leakages hinder effective revenue generation. Laudable as these steps are however, one is constrained to state that not much progress would be made unless President Tinubu takes a second look at the E-Customs Modernisation Project.

    Without any doubt, one of the core developmental initiatives of the Buhari administration is the E-Customs Project, which represents global best practices in the systematic and automation exchange of customs information and processes between logistic businesses and customs authorities. 

    The project is a digital platform that offers all-encompassing automation system that has to do with administration, payment, border management, import, export and transit processing designed to migrate the customs service from paper to paperless systems of operation. 

    The journey started 2015, when the NCS conceived the “NCS Modernization Project” and developed a qualification evaluation based on pass-fail criteria to bidding companies. The evaluation summary covered financial capability, eligibility, content of presentation and experience.

    Read Also: Tinubu steering Nigeria through turbulent waters, says Akpabio

    The service hosted presentations from 94 companies, which culminated in NCS’ offer to Bionica Technologies (WA) Limited “to partner with the NCS by direct capital investment to modernize the scanners and ICT infrastructure of the NCS”.

    Impressed by its potentials, President Buhari endorsed the project and, with his blessing, the project was named the Presidential Initiatives on Custom Modernization: E-Customs Project” (Establishment of Digital/Paperless Customs Administration.

     Bionica, which was chosen as the NCS partner on the project promptly swung into action. The company marshalled additional expertise of technical, financial and legal consultants and practitioners towards accomplishing the goal. The company identified and invited Original Equipment Manufacturers to join the consortium to cover the Marine, Surveillance, Enforcement and other Border Security Infrastructures in order to attain the status of service that obtains in ultramodern ports like Singapore, Shanghai, California and Iraq.  These partners are Huawei Technologies, Nuctec of China and Smith Detection of France. This resulted in renaming the consortium ‘Huawei Consortium,’ since digitalization is common to all the other services and is central to the operation.

     The Presidency thereafter directed the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, ICRC, to engage with the NCS. The mandate is to undertake full diligence of the Huawei Consortium’s Public Private Partnership proposal and also conduct full negotiation with Huawei Consortium including the preparation of a Draft Concession Agreement and a Full Business Case for the E-Customs Project for the approval of the Federal Executive Council.

     For the above purposes, the NCS Board appointed three sets of transaction advisers. After more than eight months, the transaction advisers issued a due diligence certificate to the consortium. With representatives of NCS and ICRC they also paid the mandatory due diligence visits to the Original Equipment Manufacturers in India, China and South Africa. 

    Additionally, IT Project Clearance Team of the National Information Technology Development Agency reviewed the E-Customs Project and issued its Non-Objection Certificate. All regulatory hurdles were cleared with distinction and ICRC issued its Compliance Certificate which cleared the way for the Minister of Finance to make her presentation to FEC.

    The Federal Executive Council on September 2, 2020, approved the PPP model for the modernization of customs operations, thus ratifying the earlier September 17, 2019 anticipatory approval by former President Buhari.

    Satisfied by the approval of the FEC, the consortium assembled in Abuja within five days all its foreign and local consultants to work on a document titled “Transiting from FEC Approval to Operationalization”.

     It was then that the trajectory of what had been a smooth process hit roadblocks deliberately erected by the former Comptroller General of Customs, Hameed Ali who brought in another company which he sought to foist on the consortium already approved for the project by the FEC.

     The management of Bionica Technologies would not budge to allow a take over the project through the back door. Ali then, in collaboration with another company, Bergmans sought to edge out Bionica completely from the project. They went ahead to repudiate FEC approval by incorporating a new SPV named Trade Modernization Project Limited on the 7th day of April 2022, one year seven months after FEC’s extant approval. They then went to the press with the false information that Bionica had opted out of the project. They also proceeded to file a Notice in court to wind up the SPV approved by the Federal Executive Council in September 2020 with the aim of replacing same with the one created in April 2022.

    Sources say that the promoters of TMPL have been lobbying and pressurizing senior aides of President Tinubu to get support for the strawman project, boasting that it had raised the $300m for Phase One of the project.

    President Tinubu has taken several bold and impressive steps within the 100 days of his administration to assure investors that Nigeria is worthy of their investment and that things would be done differently than in the past. We have confidence in his words, as he had demonstrated in the past that he is a progressive in deed and in words.

     There is a need to show that Nigeria is a country that respects contracts and would no longer incentivize criminal activities of usurpers. Stopping those bent on hijacking the E-Customs Project is in the best interest of Nigeria. 

    The Tinubu administration must act quickly by insisting on the sanctity of the Draft Concession Agreement that formed the basis of FEC approval of e-Customs project on September 2, 2020.

    • Williams is a management consultant in Abuja.
  • Storm rider

    Storm rider

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is no stranger to controversy. He exudes the vibes: sometimes frontally like an army of occupation exudes aggression, at other times latently like a decaying organism exudes putrid smell. Either way, you can’t miss the vibes or keep out of its stormy orbit. You get pulled in willy-nilly by the sheer bravado of the old man’s postulations. And he seems to relish all the fuss. With his characteristic imperial temerity, you can’t help recalling that his daughter and ex-Senator of the Federal Republic, Iyabo Obasanjo, once accused him openly of behaving like he is God and owner of Nigeria.

    ‘Baba Obasanjo,’ as he should be rightly addressed at 86 years of age, rides controversy like a storm. Sixteen years on after he left office as two-term president of the current political republic, besides a three-year stint in the late 70s as military head of state, Obasanjo carries himself as Lord of the Manor. He dictates rules of conduct for everybody based on his personal value standards, with any deviation incurring his harsh censure. It was such self-assigned pontifical oversighting that estranged him from his successors – former Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari – who he badgered with acerbic public letters criticising their performance in office. Mind you, this was against the familiar convention of a predecessor having unfettered access to his incumbent successor to offer counsel in privacy. Those successors, of course, didn’t welcome his irritable pretention to superior wisdom and responded much of the time with equally acerbic ripostes.  As for the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration presently in office, it is ‘morning yet on creation day’ (apologies to the late Chinua Achebe) for the ex-president. Still, he has been darkly expounding doomsday projections that only betrayed his prejudice since he is not exactly dispassionate. He openly canvassed a preferred candidate who lost the last presidential election and is, thus, a loser who cannot now disguise bitterness of electoral loss  as patriotic commentary on the state of the nation.

    Read Also: Obasanjo, others for NICA 30th anniversary dinner

    But the octogenarian is by no means deterred. He obviously enjoys the ruckus he creates and craves being prominent in national consciousness. Some people argued it might be because he hadn’t written a contentious public letter in a long while that he seized the moment penultimate weekend to foist another controversy on the national psyche. At Iseyin, Oyo State, the ex-president ordered traditional rulers gathered at a state function to get up on their feet, and then to sit down like school children. This was at the commissioning of the 34.85km Oyo-Iseyin Road and the completed Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Iseyin Campus housing the College of Agricultural Sciences and Renewable Natural Resources, at which Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde made Obasanjo special guest.

    Visuals of the occasion showed the former president lecturing the assemblage of traditional rulers on the need to respect Yoruba culture and give honour to whom honour is due. Speaking in Yoruba, Obasanjo chided the royals that notwithstanding their office – which in tradition entails cultural and spiritual primacy – they ought to accord respect and honour to age and secular position of authority in line with ethos of ‘Omoluabi’ (Yoruba terminology for cultural decency and propriety). He said in a gruffy voice typical of an angry parade commander: “I greet kings and chiefs here seated. I am grateful you are here. But let me say this: wherever the president or governor is, kings present must stand up to honour him.” At this juncture, he barked at the traditional rulers to “stand up!” which they did in all their royal accoutrement, and then to “sit down!” which they also did. Obasanjo continued: “In Yoruba land, there are two things that are most respected among others: age and position. When a governor is still in power, he’s more powerful than any king. Even when I was President, I prostrated for kings outside, and when we went inside, kings would prostrate for me. So, let’s always celebrate our culture!”

    There’s a short visual clip of that function from which many have drawn the conclusion that the ex-president was demanding respect from the traditional rulers primarily for himself and secondarily for Governor Makinde. But that was only partly the case if you saw a longer clip of proceedings at the event. Protocol rules typically provide that lesser officials in secular ranking get to an event venue and take their seat before the arrival of higher placed officials. And so, the royals were already seated at the project commissioning venue in Iseyin before the arrival of Mr. Governor. Upon Makinde’s entry to the venue, however, the traditional rulers, apparently in assumption of their royal primacy, failed to rise to their feet in his honour That was the occasion Obasanjo seized upon to berate them. Note: protocol rules required that ‘lesser mortals’ already seated before the arrival of a ‘higher mortal’ rise in honour of the latter upon his/her entry. Only that at the Iseyin event, there was a latent conflict between secular primacy and cultural primacy resulting in the seeming act of disrespect to the governor by the traditional rulers.

    Truth, though, is that this latent conflict might have gone unhighlighted nor indeed taken cognizance of by parties concerned had Obasanjo not constituted himself into a lightning rod on the royals. If you asked me, both the governor and traditional rulers harboured an indifference – uneasy though, it might be – to the protocol rule. It is a valid question, therefore, whether the ex-president secured Makinde’s buy-in before unleashing his spleen on the traditional rulers; and even if he did, whether the delivery was to the governor’s preferred specifications. In other words, there is a big chance Makinde was left blue-faced with embarrassment by Obasanjo’s rain on his parade – after all, it was his projects being commissioned and his due to have all the attention. In typical Obasanjo fashion of attention-jack, however, the governor and his Iseyin projects were thrust in the shadows and all that got noticed was the ex-president’s willful denigration of the Yoruba traditional stool. And not that he left the incident as happenstance. He has returned in national discourse after the Iseyin event to double down in the face of public outrage over his conduct that was widely viewed as sacrilegious; even when a self-acclaimed wife came up to offer public apology on behalf of the Obasanjo family, he disclaimed that apology and dismissed the woman as challenged in mental health.

    Obasanjo’s act in Iseyin reinforced the lore about the uncertainty of his Yoruba ancestry. In Yoruba cultural consciousness, traditional rulers are semi-deities, which is to say they are spiritual essences in material packaging, and with inherent primacy over all mortals of whatever secular status. It was in that consciousness apparently that late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, with all his secular preeminence and historical cult following, rose to his feet at a public function in honour of the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, as can be seen in an old clip that was dug up and made viral by netizens in the wake of the Iseyin debacle.

    To be clear, no true Yoruba-born of whatever secular status would contest primacy in the open with traditional rulers, even if those same royals would in privacy submit to their preeminence on account of either age, lineage or office. Funny that Obasanjo himself made this very point verbally at the Iseyin event, but self-contradicted by his action. He said when he was president, he prostrated to kings outside but when he went inside – that is to say, in privacy – kings prostrated to him.  But then, what he ordered traditional rulers to do in Iseyin was to ‘prostrate’ outside to him and Governor Makinde, not the other way round. Another self-contradiction was on account of age, which the ex-president said had primacy in Yoruba culture. Obasanjo being in his 80s was on point in demanding obeisance to himself from the traditional rulers, many of whom he surpasses in age. It is indeed likely the royals obliged his culturally impunitous order out of respect for age. But not so for the Oyo governor for whom he as well demanded public obeisance. Governor Makinde is one gifted and favoured young man to whom many of the traditional rulers gathered at Iseyin are of sheer fatherly age. The ex-president’s statement about primacy of age was thus non-sequitur in light of what he demanded of the traditional rulers for Mr. Governor. Actually, Makinde must have cringed inwardly at Obasanjo’s demand from the royals on his account if he himself sets any store by his cultural heritage.

    Still, Yoruba culture has abiding respect for age and accommodation of geriatric whimsies. And so, we must allow Baba Obasanjo to ride out this storm and others he may yet kindle in his days at ‘the departure lounge.’

    • Please join me on kayodeidowu.blogspot.be for conversation.
  • Mohbad: Victim of failing society

    Mohbad: Victim of failing society

    • By Prince Orisalade Adetunji Taiwo

    Nigeria, of late is rife with the News that one ILERIOLUWA OLADIMEJI ALOBA, born on the late of June, 1996 in Lagos and  known professionally as MOHBAD is dead. This is no news again! That he was a known cum adored Rapper and Singer on the Nigerian Musical Landscape is also no news again. That he was formerly signed to Naira Marley’s Marlian Records and left the Label in 2022 is equally no news again. That he died on the 12th day of September, 202 at a Hospital in Lagos and was hurriedly buried is no longer news as well.

    What is news now is that even after being laid to rest, MOHBAD had refused to sleep, not to talk of sleeping or resting well in the Grave. The Corpse had, of course, been exhumed for Police Investigations.

    And equally of news is that:

    MOHBAD had a troubled upbringing

    MOHBAD had to struggle with life and didn’t live his real dream out.

    MOHBAD was left off alone and not supported y the Parents, Friends and the Society at Large.

    MOHBAD, in the journey to Greatness was left to walk alone and uncared for

    MOHBAD, after exhibiting signs of Stardom, was not properly managed.

    The summary of it all was that MOHBAD was wasted by an uncaring and unorganized Society.

    It however constitutes a very great irony that the Crowd now milling all over and pretending to love the Master Rapper and Singer, after his unfortunate death, all clearly abandoned him when he needed them most. And now that he is gone, crocodile Tears swell all over.

    Read Also: 33 killed in petrol warehouse fire at Seme border

    Though, I am not particularly happy and am greatly saddened by the circumstances surrounding his death and hurried burial, I shall however leave the Police and the Government to unravel all issues still shrouded in mystery concerning same. However, by some dint of experience, I shall advice that the searchlights should be propped up and beamed to include interviews with his immediate family, Asssociates alongside pointed opposition figures and more especially those with him during the last moments of his life. His invitation and visit, if any, at any time, to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) ought to be investigated alongside the circumstances surrounding the Announcement of his death. The question is who took him to the Hospital on his last day? Who attended to him and later pronounced him dead? Before whom?  And upon what diagnosis? 

    And another great question is concerning the bleeding found in his Coffin after the exhumation. I do fervently hope that the samples have been taken by the Police and Health Officials who accompanied them for further investigation as well. We seriously await a very conclusive result from this inquiry.

    Quite apart from the issues raised above, the most important aspect of the MOHBAD Saga is the State of our Society and the role it had played in the loss of this Maestro. He wouldn’t have been lost so soon and in the manner of loss if our Society had played the role naturally and constitutionally assigned to it.

    Nigeria, as a Society, is expected to be a caring one, treating its Citizens with equal dignity and respect. She ought to be looking after them in a manner that no one is discriminated against alongside granting them unhindered access to basic goods and services to ensure a healthy co-existence.

    Traditionally, the old Nigerian Society was in the habit of providing all the above, until civilization and modernization sets in. The average Nigerian had now stopped been his Brother’s keeper. The family set-up is now terribly disunited and there comes in an unhealthy rivalry amongst folks for prominence in the Society, not caring what happens to the closest brother or sister in the journey of life. The Parents have been so emasculated economically to the extent that they are unable to provide the basic needs at home and the children are left to fend for themselves. The family Set-up is not placed in a better setting as it no longer stands in the gap to shield its members from the excruciating pains arising from an uncaring Society. It, too, lacks any power to provide succour. The Almighty Government too is in no better position. It is perpetually hindered from providing the needs of her people on account of bad Leadership.

    •Rt. Hon Prince Orisalade Adetunji Taiwo (ODOROYE) is a legal practitioner.

  • Sports for life

    Sports for life

    I was settling down to writing this week’s column when the thought flashed through my mind that I had not written anything sports related for far too long. Indeed, it seemed that my flying visit to Qatar for a taste of World cup experience had toned down my enthusiasm for sports. But I have to discountenance that thinking and own up to the fact that my appetite for sports remains undiminished which is why I have given up this column entirely to sporting matters, my only difficulty being taking a decision where to start from.

    As always, many sporting events are going on all around the world, enough to keep even the most ardent sports palate fully titillated if not entirely satisfied. The sports enthusiast in Nigeria is almost invariably is starved of participatory sports activities but given the global availability of satellite television there has been no shortage of live coverage of sports to keep one abreast of what people in other parts of the world are enjoying. It has to be said however that in the present climate of monetary deprivation, keeping up with what is current in the world of sports cannot be taken for granted for much longer. I get calls virtually on a daily basis from my satellite television provider anxious for me to continue to keep up with my subscription, the continued payment of which can no longer be taken for granted. After all in any contest between food and some form of entertainment, food is likely to win hands down. But it has to be said that, that supposition has not been satisfactorily tested, as human beings respond to external stimuli in a highly unpredictable fashion.

    The summer months in the northern hemisphere have always been reserved for all kinds of sporting activities, so much so that even the most ardent sports fan is usually spoilt for choice although in Nigeria the word sports is usually substituted with football, the so called beautiful game which because of it’s tribal nature speaks directly to the soul of most Nigerians. It is also the closest substitute for warfare and satisfies that primitive urge to be part of a winning horde in a way that most other sports cannot do but then, what do you know or even begin to imagine about the world of spots if your enjoyment is limited to football?

    There was a time when Nigerians were treated to an enticing bouquet of sporting activity all year long. It has to be said however that those days are so long in the past that the vast majority of Nigerians alive today have no knowledge of what I am talking about in this respect. Most Nigerians are well aware of the Women’s World Cup which was admirably hosted in the Antipodes, in the early days of summer. For a whole month our attention was fixed as much as possible given time differences in Australia and New Zealand where the women of the world were playing out their own version of the Football World Cup. Only a few years ago, nobody would have entertained the thought of staging a Women’s World Cup in what we would ordinarily have described as an inaccessible part of the world. I mean, getting to Australia from Lagos takes the best part of three days even in these days of advanced air travel. Women’s football has however reached such an advanced state that thousands of people from all over the world took the trouble to turn up in the Antipodes to watch teams of women manoeuvring a football with mind bending skill, determination and finnese which only a few years ago was truly unthinkable but is now an integral part of global sports. Without paying any lip service to feminism, it gladdens my heart to note that women are doing it for themselves as all the Dramatis personae involved in that superlative show were women. The only male involvement turned out to be that of Rubiales, president of the Spanish Football Association. He allowed himself to be so carried away by his atavistic emotions that he seized a member of the winning Spanish team and gave her an unsolicited kiss on the lips in full view of world television. It is clear that there are at least a few cavemen associated with world football. Can you imagine a female football official ambushing a male footballer in similar fashion? The clear success of the Women’s world cup suggests that without a shadow of doubt any disadvantages associated with being a girl child are being whittled down so swiftly and effectively that even in the most conservative and backward parts of the world, whatever pedestal that exists will soon be occupied by males and females in equal proportions, just as nature intends it to be.

    Most people, both men and women who were gorging on the football feast being served in Australia and New Zealand were no doubt blissfully unaware that almost at the same time, this time in South Africa, another Women’s World Cup was going on. This time it was the turn of netball players to turn up to put on their own show. I will not be in the least surprised if a large number of people reading this have no idea what netball is all about. Indeed, I doubt that there are many Nigerian ladies under the age of sixty who have ever had the joy of having been put through their paces on a netball court. And yet every school girl of my generation played netball as all girls’ schools at every level  were equipped with the simple facilities for playing netball and the girls enjoyed the simple pleasures of putting a ball through the hoops at either ends of the netball court. Whilst our women were thrillingly present at the football world cup, they were glaringly absent in Cape Town where the netball competition was going on. Quite inexplicably as with most things in Nigeria these days, netball has simply died out in this country. All the equipment needed for a game of netball are two poles with a hoop on top of them and you were good to go. Simple as this set up is however, netball has disappeared completely from the Nigerian landscape, perhaps to be replaced by football. But then how many schools can boast of space, any space devoted to sports? No less than three of those Falcons who did us proud in Australia were Nigerians born and bred in other parts of the world, warning us of the impending possibility of Nigerian teams of the future being dominated by Diaspora Nigerians. Whilst on the one hand the presence of foreign born Nigerians in our teams is a welcome development, their domination says clearly that we have stopped paying required attention to sports in Nigeria and any òrìsà which is starved of young adherents will sooner rather than later die a natural death. Sports is clearly dying in Nigeria, the only flicker of light coming from televised European football competitions. Most of the spaces that were devoted to sports at one time or the other have now been taken over by other activities and are no longer available.   Teachers, who themselves, were not exposed to sports in their formative years are not likely to promote a structure of sports related activities in their various schools and our children are missing out on this vital activity. The countries that took part in the netball tournament were essentially Commonwealth countries of the British isles, East and Southern Africa, the Caribbean islands as well as Australia and New Zealand. All West African countries in which netball had died were conspicuously absent in Cape Town but none of them was missed.

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    One of the more powerful netball teams which dominated the netball tournament in Cape Town was Jamaica, a small Caribbean country which has been punching way beyond her weight in the field of sports, especially athletics for quite some time in spite of having a population of less than  three million people the vast majority of whom are descended from people who as described by the late, great Bob Marley himself a Jamaican, as having been stolen from Africa, specifically from West Africa and taken to the Caribbean by slavers. In genetic terms, they are our first cousins separated from us by the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. Given this genetic closeness one expects that we should be producing sprinters and Indeed other sportsmen and women at roughly the same rate as the Jamaicans but this is clearly far from being the case. In the last thirty years or so Jamaica has produced a plethora of crack sprinters rivalled only by the Americans who have a much larger pool of talents to choose from. Usain Bolt of Jamaica dominated the world of sprinting for a decade as no man has done in the history of the sport since records began. The question is, how have the Jamaicans come to rule the world of sports as they have come to do.

    I have just discovered that organised athletics started in Jamaica as early as 1910 and each primary school on the island today is connected to the island’s sporting traditions. On leaving primary school, the best athletes are competitively recruited by secondary schools where their progress is closely monitored and their exploits brought to the attention of an interested public so that by the age of fifteen all the outstanding talents are household names and school sports attract crowds of more than twenty thousand on an island with less than three million people. In Nigeria today, there are no school sports competition to speak of and there are no world class sprinters wearing Nigerian colours at international competitions. An interesting aside at this point is that the last Nigerian world class sprinter and until recently the holder of the African record holder for the one hundred metres dash, Soji Fasuba has a Jamaican mother!

    The current success of Jamaican sprinters is therefore laid on a solid foundation, the kind of foundation which is sadly lacking in Nigeria. In times gone by secondary school sports in this country was taken very seriously and it made a tremendous impact. The 1966 Commonwealth games was held in Kingston Jamaica and records show that the star sprinter at the games was Stan Allortey of Ghana with Jamaicans nowhere to be seen. Within a few years however, the Jamaicans had responded to this challenge and Don Quarry had become the dominant sprinter in the Commonwealth and one of the best sprinters in the world. As a sports fan I thoroughly enjoyed watching the World championship from Budapest and could only watch with a tinge of jealousy as the Jamaicans who looked every bit like us, scorched the competition in the sprints and the Kenyans demonstrated their now customary dominance in the long distance races. The toast of the previous World championships in Eugene, the world record holder in the spring hurdles, our very own Tobi Amusan was unfortunately, only a pale shadow of the supreme athlete that she was only a few months ago and was not mentioned in despatches. Sadly, there are no successors to Amusan on the horizon.

    As earlier mentioned, the northern hemisphere summer months come round with a wonderful baggage of outdoor sports, enough to satisfy the most demanding sports fan. For example, the grand slam events in lawn tennis take you to the clay courts of Paris, the grass courts of Wimbledon and the hard courts of  New York within a few weeks. Although Djokovic has maintained his metronomic hold on the world of tennis, the emergence of young talents like Carlos Alcaraz who defeated Djokovic at Wimbledon and Coco Gauf who won the women’s title in New York suggests that an exciting change of the guard is in the offing. As with other sports however, we are not likely to see a Nigerian tearing up the courts as was the case with Nduka fondly called the Duke did when he reached the semi-finals in Wimbledon all those many years ago. He started his career as a ball boy around the courts of Ikoyi Club. This was at a time when the Nigerian open was an annual event and when the names of the greats; Awopegba, Njoku, Onibokun and Allan were on the lips of the Nigerian sporting public.

    There are many exciting sports events going on in the world right now, the biggest current event being the Rugby World Cup going on in France. In truth all genuine sports fans with a subscription to satellite television can take occasional flights of fancy away from this sporting desert and join the rest of the world for a well deserved treat.