The Nation Newspaper

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  • Housing: Time for social solution

    Housing: Time for social solution

    To say that shelter is a non-negotiable need of humans is to echo a truism audible to the deaf, visible to the blind and intelligible to the nit-wit. Even lower animals in the jungle do not trivialize the instinct of self-preservation by means of housing development and management. The pride of place allotted to housing issues by the Nigerian constitution is therefore, a necessity imposed by nature.
    However, to say that the reality of housing in Nigeria is a reflection of its prominence in nature and our constitution would amount to a fallacy that is notably dishonest. Since independence, Nigeria has been struggling to ensure that every of its citizenry has a roof over his or her head. If ever there is any other sector that bests the housing in terms of policies, schemes, projects and any other form of problem-solving innovativeness, I am convinced, such can’t exceed one. That is if there any at all.
    That the question of housing in Nigeria has engendered countless innovations is, to me, not a problem. At least, it signposts the desire of a community peopled by over 170 million heads to bridge the housing vacuum that has made tenement shelter even in a one-room apartment in most of our cities a luxury. The problem lies in the open and undeniable truth that in my beloved country, housing is still the issue. A seemingly intractable problem that was in the 60s a behemoth which a large number of its few conquerors only succeeded with the aid of government’s helping hand and which, in the present days, has metamorphosed into a seeming spirit that my compatriots now compete to capture live, in a survival-of-the-fittest battle.
    In my own understanding, the knotty nature of housing problem in the most populous black nation has been openly acknowledged by the current Buhari administration. Drastic problems is indeed a necessity for drastic solutions, the acclaimed government of change seemed to have demonstrated through its record-breaking three-in-one merger of the works, power and housing sectors under a single mega ministry which has been placed in a hand that is widely perceived as tested and trusted. The mega contraption known as the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing is, thus, a public confirmation of not only the perennial but also of the gargantuan nature of devaluation that the lives of Nigerians have been subjected to, with respect to these three necessities of life.
    Moving forward, of these three giants, homelessness is, in my view, the most intricate. The other two are relatively easier to surmount. Or, do I sound absurd?
    To get my drift, my reader only needs to realize that while power and physical infrastructure are communal products to be provided as a large pool from which individuals are expected to draw for personal benefits, housing is necessarily a personal service to individuals or, at most, to families. This is where the knotty issues lie. This is just why the highly expansive habitable land space of Nigeria has, so far, provided shelter for far less than 50 percent of the population. This is the secret beneath the unavailability of multitudes of existing and vacant houses for the teeming masses of the nation.
    Against this background, our leadership and other stakeholders, at this critical moment of our chequered history, need to be pinched with some piercing needle of truth. If anything, it is a moment of change on the socio-political and economic sphere. Change! Not just of political captains, crew or cult as consummated on May 29, 2015. But change of a nation’s long-standing but mistaken attitude that has conferred the identity of status-marker on house ownership.
    To be candid, for as long as housing is not perceived and treated as a social product, millions amidst the populace would remain homeless, scavenging and hibernating in public places, while millions of exotic houses, owned by few of their compatriots, mostly remain vacant or, at best, under-utilized.
    Indeed, the spirited efforts of successive administrations in Nigeria to achieve housing-for-all have, over the years, been rendered a nullity, majorly, by a methodology that betrays a perception of housing as an economic product.
    In the first place, direct provision of housing facilities by government, however massive and well-intentioned, as manifest in Lagos State under the largely welfare-oriented administration of Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande, can never suffice as an adequate cum enduring solution of all times. It is tantamount to an attempt by government to produce and sell food items to most, if not all, of the citizens. What an impossible dream that has made supposed low-cost houses, in most states of contemporary Nigeria, a no-go-area for the masses.
    Even if political exigencies will always make direct building and sales of houses by government unavoidable in our country or in any other developing one, I feel that it must come as a supplement to massive and thriving private investment in a conducive and healthily-competitive environment created through governmental policies.
    In such a context of my dream, the social content of housing investment, would be contributed by government through regulatory policies that would not only assist private service providers to thrive on generally low costs, but also ensure that their outputs, that is, housing products, are available and affordable to the diverse socio-economic classes of Nigerians, reflecting the universal realities of the high, middle and lower class distinctions.
    Through a social reality-based revolution in the housing sector, the market would, at all times, have something, not just anything, but havens of comfort, for everyone, particularly least paid public servants currently on the statutory minimum wage of N18,000 as well as the mass of self-employed traders and artisans occupying the lower space of socioeconomic activism.
    One major auxiliary of this social revolution is a highly flexible payment system that would ease home-ownership through an income-friendly mortgage system. Through the payment of monthly stipends by low-income earners, ordinarily ‘unaffordable’ housing products would, thus, become affordable to the largest chunk of the populace.
    The social investment contribution by government would be fore-grounded on the status of housing as a social security item which the 1999 Constitution describes as a primary function of government. In concrete terms, this will logically entail diverse official mechanisms aimed at reducing to the barest minimum, the costs incurred on land acquisition and processing by private service providers possibly registered under a special social security housing scheme by government.
    Sincerely-speaking, it is not the case that every existing mould of private investors would automatically serve as a ready material for the social re-engineering hereby advocated. A line must be drawn between purely business-oriented investors on one hand, and entrepreneurial-investors on the other. My take is that it is the latter set that would help, in view of their relative longer-term profit vision, in contradistinction to the former.
    Lastly, since no barber can be so skillfully efficient that he would shave another person’s head while the head owner cum carrier is absent, the cooperation of the people, the citizens, whose interest is to be served through social innovations in the housing sector, can and must be pragmatically enlisted. The bitter realities of the ‘omo onile’ (family land owner) syndrome, should be seen and treated as a necessity which is a mother of inventions that would facilitate the banishment of homelessness in Nigeria.

    •EmmanuelKing is a real estate entrepreneur.

  • Enter President Trump

    FIRST, to eat the humble pie: I was wrong in my projection – mark it: not prediction – last week that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would win the United States presidential election. No hair splitting is intended here, but there is a distinction between projections and predictions. Projections are evidence based and logically derived. On the other hand, predictions, like prophecies, range from being truly divinely inspired to being downright whimsical and merely pretentious to arcane insight. That is the stock of the psychic tribe, like the T. B. Joshuas of this world.
    Rational projection on any endgame simply is punditry. And the last time I checked, it was perfectly admissible intellectually to play the pundit. But pundits do have their bad day, and I had mine last week. So, let’s move on. Maybe I owe some explanation, though, of the rationale for my projection on the American election that went so terribly wrong.
    I make no pretenses about my personal wish that Hillary carried the day in that election, and any seeming evidence of that likelihood bolstered my courage to openly take a stand. But it is universal knowledge now that Hillary didn’t win the U. S. election. Republican nominee Donald Trump did, and resoundingly too, in an epic upset that locates him to take office on January 20th, 2017, as the 45th President of the United States. It was as well an electoral sweepstake that saw the Republicans retaining the control of both chambers of the U. S. congress.
    Without prejudice to the choice American voters have made, which is now law, it had seemed improbable that Mr. Trump would wade all the tides that beset his candidature. Actually, leading up to Election Day, there were reasons to think the tycoon-turned-politician was headed for a punishing electoral defeat.
    To begin with, he is the first in his country’s entire history without scant experience in political office or military service to attain the presidency: a real estate developer and reality television star, coming in from the wintry world of business. At 70 years, he will be the oldest to be inaugurated to his first term in the top job. But easily the most formidable chink in his political armour were self-sabotaging eruptions that dogged his electioneering. And we could just recap samples here.
    In a country founded by immigrants, and where Latinos along with other minority groups formed a quantum of the voting population, Mr. Trump entered the presidential race swinging at Mexican immigrants whom he dubbed rapists and criminals. He also vowed erecting a frontier wall on the southern border with Mexico. On campaign trail, he proposed a ban against Muslims entering the United States. And he wasn’t shy putting it on record that he would mass deport illegal immigrants if he becomes President. Now, that is not counting the many misogynistic slips, which ordinarily should alienate female voters.
    The potential challenge to Trump’s candidature wasn’t limited to his personal traits, there was also the dysfunction of his party platform. The Republican establishment so underrated his political value that the party palpably flinched at handing him its ticket. And when sheer voter power threw him up as the nominee, the party viewed his emergence with helpless trepidation and near-fatalist resignation to what seemed to it its dimmest chance ever of getting a serious shot at the White House. The party establishment was at such odds with Mr. Trump that, against the run of historical practice, Republican leaders hobbled on promoting his candidature. And following the leak early October of an old recording of the reality star bragging about improper contact with women, the party platform swiftly cut lose from the Trump ticket, in apparent fear that he could well drag Republican congressional candidates facing their own elections down with himself.
    Those factors considered, Mr. Trump seemed an improbable winner in an election tightly fought with another candidate who was apparently politically grilled, and who ran on a united party platform bolstered by a keen power of incumbency. But that wasn’t even the sole basis for my faulty projection. Polling of potential voters is an integral part of electoral practice in the West, and virtually all reputed pollsters on the American election for many months before Election Day projected a Clinton win.
    The trend, to boot, was by no means limited to American pollsters. On the eve of the November 8 election, Clinton was ahead by four points in a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aggregate of opinion polls, even though that projection fell within the stated margin of error. Not that it was the first time the polls were wrong: the polls were widely off mark on the 2015 British elections, and as well on the Brexit referendum in June, this year. So, why were the polls so wrong again?
    Data analysts in the West are yet probing for answers, but it seems agreed as it were that true voter behaviour can hardly be gauged with accuracy ahead of polling. “We treat polls like weather forecasts, but voters are inherently unpredictable…Politics can feel as unpredictable as the weather…But those are two very different kinds of forecasts. One is based on natural science, the other on social science. People are different from planets – they can change their minds, they can decide to not share their opinions or they can flat-out lie. And that’s before you even get to some of the statistical issues that make polling inaccurate,” data journalist Mona Chalabi wrote in the UK Guardian last week.
    A mollified pollster named Mike Murphy was so disillusioned that he vented his grievance on his Twitter handle, @murphymike. “I’ve believed in data for 30 years in politics, and data died tonight. I could not have been more wrong about this election,” he said.
    Mr. Trump winning the U. S. presidential election came down to one thing: voter power. Pollsters obviously underestimated the number of hidden Trump voters – people who stormed the polling precincts on Election Day but never showed up on survey radar. A self-proclaimed lover of polls himself, Mr. Trump, before the results emerged last week, said he no longer believed most of them. “I do think a lot of the polls are purposely wrong. I don’t even think they interview people, I think they just put out phony numbers,” he told journalists.
    Well, let me be clear that I yet think Mr. Trump’s victory in the American election did not make his bullish pedagogy right. But the beauty of democracy is for voters to have their way – however their choice may seem. And there are useful lessons to learn from Trump’s doggedness and cult following among the American electorate, which successfully upended the Washington establishment in a voters’ revolt.
    In the face of a cold shoulder from his party, and a forest of survey data suggesting he was on the back foot, Trump defiantly affirmed he would win the election, and he won. He needed a near-perfect run through the swing states, and he got it – taking Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, among others. But he didn’t go pursuing victory by seeking to compromise the system, he rather dug in with voters. And from voting demographics, it has emerged that his appeal resonated with a largely overlooked bloc of blue-collar whites and working-class voters who felt the American promise had eluded them, and who found in Trump a champion.
    Every attempt anywhere to pervert due process of the electoral system is directly indicative of disregard for the electorate. But supremacy of voters is the very essence and hallmark of democracy, and that is a virtue we must continually strive to entrench even in our own experience here in Nigeria. On this score, it is clear the U. S. elections have again shown the way.

  • When we live for others

    SOME weeks ago, I watched in utter amazement, the grieving people of Thailand. They wore black clothes and openly cried and wept. They had lost their king and mourners in their thousands, lined the streets to watch the royal convoy carrying the body of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
    I also read the moving tributes of mourners and that got me thinking. It was a practical devotion, appreciation and love for a leader and monarch who meant a lot to his people.
    I decided to leave out other condolences from European and Asian royals, world leaders and the UN General Assembly and Security Council that stood in silent tribute because I am concerned with the honour at home.
    It is important for me to state at the onset that King Adulyadej was neither faultless nor blameless. As a king, he must have stepped on toes but what is incontestable is that he lived for the common good. His reign, no doubt, positively affected the lives of many of his people and their generous public and private show of emotion validates this thinking.
    The people of Thailand may not have the kind of problems Africans have but they are human beings like us. They are perceptive and discerning, so when they are treated well by their leaders, they react spontaneously.
    I have read and witnessed wild jubilations that erupted in many African countries at the death or overthrow of an elected leader or a despot. This contrasts sharply with the Thailand experience where citizens showed genuine love to a departed leader even at the ripe age of 88 years. What this means is that in most countries in our continent, including Nigeria, those in public office hardly earn the support and love of those they lead. They are, for the large part, disconnected from the people.
    Our experience in Nigeria is not different even though I know that we are not in short supply of true heroes and leaders.
    Many people may have forgotten but some of us in politics today cannot easily forget the heroic and patriotic roles of Nigerians and even foreigners in the build-up to Nigeria’s return to democratic government in 1999. At that moment of grave national crisis, these characters played great roles. I still remember some of them in the independent media and civil society groups but sadly, nobody remembers or celebrates them today.
    But we are still a country with a rich history. Like King Adulyadej of Thailand, many Nigerians remember our founding fathers with fond memories and reverence for their vision and devotion to the struggle for freedom. I am afraid no Nigerian leader today can inspire that near cult followership, devotion and popularity of political actors of the First Republic.
    In my Independence anniversary reflections two months ago, I expressed hope. Nigeria is workable and I know that with commitment and the right leadership, Nigeria will take its rightful place.
    This commitment is not in short supply among our people. Some Nigerians in their small corners are volunteering and working very hard for our country, even without government support. Many heroic feats by patriots in various spheres of life occur daily but are largely unrecorded. These exploits is the foundation for my hope.
    I am happy that this national bravery is going places. One of such acts of heroism takes place every day here in Abuja. We are all witnesses to the laudable activism of Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaigners in the last two years or so. These activists have remained resolute and true to their commitment to the return of 200 school girls who were abducted from their school in Chibok by Boko Haram. We have all seen in the group, a steady progress in strength, dedication and purpose even in the face of unwarranted insults, abuse and name-calling.
    Nigeria has enormous challenges no doubt. We have earned more revenue than most African countries but this did not translate in better living conditions for the generality of our people. Unlike some countries in our continent, we are daily confronted with a myriad of manmade problems like nepotism, ineptitude, bigotry and religious particularity.
    In our country today, people do not generally think highly of their political leaders like the Thai. So if we all agree that our leaders nowadays cannot inspire as much hope and devotion like our heroes past, then we must quickly get to work. Leaders must study and apply the principles of balance in leadership and followership which centres on the concept of power and responsibilities. In addition, our country has to evolve a leadership selection process for occupiers of public offices. This is the only way to prepare and sustain those who are qualified and ready to serve.
    This is the challenge. And we must begin to live for others if we hope to make sense of our existence. In the words of Gina Marie Warswick, an American school teacher, “a life of service to others is the life which makes a difference, not a self-serving life of materialism, fanciful travel and fun”.

    •Lawani, former Deputy Governor of Benue State is an industrialist and philanthropist.

  • Pensioners: Open letter to President Buhari

    Your Excellency, Sir, when President Yar’Adua was alive, I wrote an open letter to him about pensioners and their condition in Nigeria. I told him how primitive it was for the federal government, through its Director of Pensions, to wickedly and senselessly direct poor pensioners to always report at Abuja for verification.

    Thousands of pensioners would travel from different parts of the country to Abuja for the senseless verification. In effect, many of them died on the road while those who managed to get to Abuja would sleep under the bridges or just anywhere, as Abuja is a very expensive city where no Nigerian pensioner could afford an accommodation, not to talk of feeding. Luckily, I had stumbled on a newspaper report, the Tribune to be precise, in those days, which reported how a young man who wanted to collect his late father’s gratuity was asked to cough out 40% by the officers-in-charge at the pension house of horror, before he could get his father’s gratuity! I then included the report in my letter to the late president that the reason for asking people to always come to Abuja for verification was for the pension officials to negotiate away 40% of retiree’s gratuities and pensions. No wonder the pension house of horror became a goldmine for pension officers, I concluded. On this matter Yar’Adua, as a listening president, acted swiftly and cancelled the dangerous programme and corrupt system of pensioners’ verification in Abuja. The mind boggling report of 40% deduction from retirees’ gratuities opened the can of worms of corruption in the pension house of horrors.

    Things got worse under president Jonathan who kept quiet when pension officers were caught stealing billions of pensioners’ fund, which explained why pensioners could not get their pensions even as of today. Perhaps the retirees’ problem with government could have been averted if not for the ineffectiveness of the Labour Unions and members of the National Assembly. The Labour Unions forget that they would one day graduate to retirees and suffer the same fate being suffered by the current retirees. Even members of the National Assembly usually feel unconcerned because the matter does not concern them or affect their jumbo salaries and allowances. As far as the Labour Unions and Legislators are concerned, the pensioners can go to hell, if there is hell, even though many of them have relatives and friends who are retirees. But I was surprised and happy when, at one time, the former Senate President, David Mark, in one of his rare utterances about pensioners, was so angry about the plights of pensioners that he pronounced curses on pension officers for stealing pensioners’ funds, and for the habitual non-payment of pensions and gratuities as and at when due. I openly wrote in praise of David Mark and asked him to work on a legislation that would make it mandatory for the government to pay gratuities and pension arrears with interests because it is money owed to pensioners by the government. If interests are paid on the arrears that should be treated as money borrowed from pensioners by the government, and is being withheld in fixed accounts, pension thieves would no longer be interested in fixing pensioners fund for making quick money because whatever interests accrue from the arrears of pensions and gratuities belong to the pensioners and not to the pension thieves. Unfortunately, the former Senate President never followed up his sensible gesture which now looks like a political gimmick coming out of the Senate Chambers at that time.

    Sir, the present letter to your Excellency is reminiscent of my open letter to your predecessor, president Goodluck Jonathan, on the plight of pensioners. On the vexing issue of non payment of gratuities and pensions regularly and on time, I had a few questions for your predecessor in office (and which you may read with profit even now). Excerpts from The Nation, January 24, 2014, p21, to President Jonathan:

    “Your Excellency Sir, are you aware that it is only in this country that pensioners do not receive their pensions, as and at when due, every month, like those currently in service? Are you also aware that, in this country, many pensioners are still owed probably up to 10 years, and that it is the pensions of those who had died since this period, together with unpaid pensions of those still alive, that are being stolen by officials in the pension house of horror?  Mr. President, do you, for a moment, examine the life style of the people in your government in relation to the pitiful plights of the people you govern? Can you, therefore, say, with good conscience, that non payment of hapless and helpless retirees’ pensions and arrears is an act of good governance?”

    “Now, Mr. President, Sir, are you aware of the 53% increase in pensions for retirees from July 1, 2009 which your minister of finance, Ngozi Iwealah, cut down to 33%, and the total cost of which your Technical Committee had calculated from July 1, 2009 at 53%? Is it true or not that the same 53% which was recommended from July 1, 2009, had been paid to the armed forces? Would it not be just and proper that these arrears are paid with interests from July 1, 2009 to date?  Or are you delaying payment of the pensions and arrears so that more pensioners would die and the arrears of their pensions could go to the living pension thieves once more?”

    “Lately, Sir, the newspapers have carried the frustrating news and even wrote editorials that your government failed to pay December salaries to Federal workers and pensioners, thus denying them the opportunities of celebrating Christmas and the New Year while you and your ministers, special advisers, their children and relatives consumed as much food as would have catered for millions of unpaid civil servants, pensioners and other poor Nigerians at that festive period that comes up only once in a year, at which time pensioners and civil servants were dying daily from non payments of salaries and pension arrears?  It is just as if the government under your leadership and those of the states are enjoying it all, and perhaps saying that those pensioners that have survived penury so far should forever keep quiet or, if they like, jump into the lagoon or the atlantic ocean! But I believe in the truism: “Nobody knows what his/her future would be, and this future starts from the next moment”.

    Now, Sir, it is surprising that even as we write, the condition of pensioners in this country has not improved significantly even under the present administrations at both the Federal and State levels. Federal pensioners are still owed many years of pension arrears after President Jonathan’s approval of 53% increase since 2009. The Police and bloody civilians are still fighting for the non negotiable 53% increase. Does this mean that pensioners are forever doomed in the hands of successive governments in this country? God forbid! The latest rumour is that the 20% cut from the original approved 53% has been passed down as income tax and deduction or contribution to housing programme in which pensioners do not, and cannot, participate while pensioners’ stipends are tax free. Of course, pensioners all over the country had protested over this illegal and wicked deduction of 20% out of the 53% as approved by your predecessor on July 1, 2009, and which had been approved for payment after the Wages Commission and the National Universities Commission (NUC) were said to have prepared 53% payment arrears for inclusion in the budget.

    Sir, if our various governments (past and present) in this country are not wicked and selfish, it ought to have occurred to them that payment of gratuities and pension arrears in bulk sum instead of in installments would help pensioners to build or buy their own houses with their pension arrears paid at once. Also there is the danger of pensioners dying during installmental payments of arrears. On this matter, I once gave kudos to the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo when a proposal to pay gratuities and pension arrears by installments was made to him by his Minister of Finance. Obasanjo lambasted his minister saying that it was wrong and inhuman to ever think of paying a pensioner at 70 or 80 years by installment when there was no guarantee that such a pensioner would still be alive the following year to collect the next installment of his/her gratuity or pension as being proposed. He therefore recommended payment of gratuities and pension arrears to affected people who, by the grace of God, were still alive to collect and enjoy their pension arrears which may enable them to own their own houses in their life time after working for many years without being able to build houses of their own! In short, Sir, Obasanjo’s sensible position was that payment of arrears of pensions and gratuities should never be staggered.

    When critically considered, we could see the perceived wickedness and selfishness of government officials, most of who own houses in big cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt (in Nigeria) and  also USA, UK, France, Dubai and other expensive locations in the world. In Abuja, for instance, there are many mansions owned by individuals, like in Maitama, which are not occupied but only guarded by maigards while many Nigerians have not a single room to live in, not to talk of having a one bedroom shanty in any of Abuja ghetto areas. Yet, pensioners who would have seized the opportunity of using their gratuities and pension arrears to own houses in their country homes or non expensive locations in Nigeria  are willfully and cruelly denied the big opportunity of doing so by wickedly staggering the payments of their arrears which they cannot properly use for building their own houses. The reasonable thing to do to help pensioners is to pay them a lump sum of the arrears of their pensions and delayed gratuities at once. As Christmas and the New Year festivities are fast approaching, Nigerian workers and pensioners must be prepared to face the doom and gloom of unpaid salaries and pensions, as usual, in December 2016, by both the federal and state governments while people in government will enjoy themselves to no limit with their families and relatives as if we are not all children of God – all blessed with only one head, one mouth, one stomach and similar organs without discrimination of status before Him. God has not been so partial as to create some people who can sleep in more than one room and live in more than one house at the same time!

    Even right now, Sir, the present Federal Government has been paying four years arrears of pensions by irregular, truncated, installments. After many years since 2009, pensioners were paid one year of 4 years arrears only a few months ago, with no undertaking about when the remaining 3 years of arrears would be paid. This is wicked and selfish for those who are actually swimming in Naira, Dollars, Pound sterling and Euros, and living in mansions with their families while they still have many mansions all over the country and abroad to the bargain! This is just one aspect of the many sins which our governments and their officials must acknowledge, confess and ask for forgiveness not only from God, but also from the poor Nigerians they may have cheated and traumatized to no end. But the pertinent question remains about the plight of pensioners in this country: will the present be like the past and the future be like the present? Thanks. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    • Professor Makinde, FNAL is DG/CEO, Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance, Osogbo: 08038011118

  • Made in Nigeria: As the campaign grow bigger…

    One of the immediate responses to the current economic crisis in Nigeria was the resolution of the 8th Senate to stand up to the challenges posed by the recession. In words and action, the 8th Senate under the leadership of Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki assembled to provide solutions to the cries of Nigeria over the biting economic crisis through motions and legislation.

    The recession has necessitated a shortage of foreign exchange for the local manufacturers to procure needed raw materials. Amongst resultant effects has been spiraling unemployment. This is coming with the unquenchable appetites of Nigerians for foreign made goods.

    In its decision to tackle this hydra-headed monster called recession, the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria under the able leadership of Dr. Saraki moved to amend the extant Public Procurement Law in Nigeria by making it mandatory that preference should be giving to locally produced goods and services before attempting to purchase any foreign made goods.

    Moreover, the amended procurement law made it compulsory that a certain percentage of the contract sum should be paid up front and in good time to enable local producers meet up with foreign competition. Indeed, the Senate has on June 16, 2016 passed the amended procurement law that is currently awaiting concurrence by the House of Representatives.

    Aside the prioritization of key legislation, the Senate President has granted audience to several interest groups championing the Made in Nigeria Goods project. He was visited by the Southeast Amalgamated Traders Association, the Innoson Vehicles Manufacturing Company, and the National Economic Summit Group who eventually tagged their recently concluded summit ‘Made in Nigeria’.

    At all these and during such visits,  Saraki made the Buy Made-in-Nigeria goods, and support Nigeria-Made goods, his central message, urging Nigerians to patronise locally-produced goods in order to develop the economy. In one such visit, he was aptly quoted to have stated that ultimately the ‘Senate cannot legislate patriotism’.

    To Saraki, this is the only way out of the present economic crisis. From his perspective, the Senate President believes the purchase of locally made good is tantamount to economic recovery, wherein, he stated that since the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) are the biggest spenders, that they should be made to first and foremost patronise locally made Nigerian goods before purchasing foreign made goods.

    It was no wonder recently that the Nigerian Army bought into the Made in Nigeria Project, ordering from the Aba leather industry the production of 50,000 pairs of combat booths for Nigerian soldiers.

    It was this that prompted the executives of Leather and Allied Products Manufacturers Association of Abia State (LEAPMAAS) to visit Abuja to thank the Senate President for his tireless efforts in championing the Made in Nigeria movement.

    The spokesman of LEAPMAAS that came to appreciate the Senate President, Chief Ben Hart commended the Senate President, Dr. Saraki and the Senator representing Abia South, Enyinnaya Abaribe for their support in propagating Made in Aba goods, saying ” Sir, we are here to express our gratitude for your support and appreciation in this Made in Nigeria Project.”

    After remarking on Dr. Saraki’s locally made attire, the elated leader of the delegation said, “ Today, we confer on you the title of the Ambassador of Made in Aba goods. We also commend Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe and the entire Senate for supporting the passage of the Public Procurement law. By this singular action, you and the Senate have institutionalised Made in Nigeria goods”.

    “ We commend you for your tireless propagating advocacy for Made in Aba goods. We use this opportunity to assure you and the Senate that we shall continue to improve on the quality of Made in Aba and indeed Made in Nigeria goods. Good produced in Aba are indeed of high quality. There is nothing that can be manufactured elsewhere that we cannot produce in Aba”.

    In response, Dr. Saraki congratulated the Aba traders for the recognition now being given nationally to their efforts and their products. He said: “I commended you about what you are doing. I promised you when I came to the trade fair you organised in Abuja and said that with the support of my colleagues here in the Senate, we will take the campaign beyond that of a thing restricted to only trade fairs. I promised that we will make it the agenda of all Nigerians.  Today, we have made it a national project. I commend you that over the years you have been there, giving your support for the government and proving that you have the capacity to do it. We told you that time that we are going to pass a law to support your efforts and make it compulsory for government agencies to patronise your products before resorting to foreign goods. On June 16, 2016, we passed the amended Public Procurement Act.

    “I have a promise from the House of Representative that they will soon pass theirs. Government must ensure that they must patronise locally made goods. It has started with the Army. If the Army is doing that, I also challenge all the other agencies whether it is Air force, whether it is Navy, Customs, even the Road Safety, Civil Defence to procure their booths and other items from Nigerian manufacturers. I also challenge all Senate committee chairmen to impress it on all agencies they supervise during their budget defence that they must compulsorily patronise local goods.

    “If there is any agency that is making it difficult for you to sell your goods or deliberately bypassing local goods to purchase foreign goods, let us know. We will take up the case. We will ensure MDAs comply with the procurement law. This is the only way to save our economy. They must give evidence that they patronise and purchase locally made goods. Our plan is to ensure that a huge chunk of the N2 trillion that government spends every year on procurement should go into the pockets of Nigerians and help to create employment and improve our Gross Domestic Products. We know that government spends close to N2trn in good and services, even if you look at the budget if all these agencies, it is enough for you to increase your production and that will make Nigeria to take over some of the West African region.

    “This is a very big agenda that we are promoting, I want to thank my colleagues and assure you that we’ve kept to our promises, so you do not need to disappoint us. You should produce quality goods, well packaged and ensure you keep faith with your agreed delivery date. On our own part, this is an agenda we believe in, we will continue to support you”, the Senate President stated.

    Asthe Senate President addressed the group, he was surrounded by his colleagues, mostly those from the South-East states like Senators Enyinnaya Abaribe, Mao Ohuabunwa, Hope Uzodimma, Obinna Ogba, Chukwuka Utazi, Adamu Abdullahi, Baba Kaka  Garbai, among others.

    • Okocha is Special Assistant to the Senate President on Print Media. 

  • Wike, INEC and Rivers rerun election

    As the new date for the Rivers State rerun election inches closer, some political actors in the state have started reigniting signature inflammatory rhetoric. The state governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, in particular has put forward conspiratorial theories on purported  plan by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)  to manipulate the election results in favour of his party’s opponent.

    Many are not too surprised about this claim – a claim they view as antics of politicians based on their seeming incurable penchant to deploy everything in their arsenals to win at all cost in every elections. Nonetheless,  the unsubstantiated allegations and brazen attacks  being thrown at INEC on daily basis by these actors since the announcement of December 10 as the new date for the rerun election continues to bleed the heart.

    Why will people be casting aspersion on the credibility of INEC just for a singular aim of achieving their selfish political agenda not minding the negative effect  such actions will have on the electoral umpire as one the major organs that is sustaining democracy in the country? The Prof. Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC has left no one in doubt of  its unwavering commitment not to renege on its pledge to ensure that  all elections conducted under its watch are not only free and fair but also credible. That was why I was shocked  to the marrows of my bones recently when I heard that Wike accused the electoral umpire of  colluding with the All Progressives Congress (APC) to rig the rerun election. Interestingly, the APC also accused INEC of working with Wike’s party to rig the election.

    Though Wike and his co-travelers in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are not wrong to raise alarm over the syndicate that was recently bursted for printing fake election result sheet for the  rerun election, pointing accusing fingers to INEC  was not only out of place but was also a well calculated plot to  rubbish the image of the electoral umpire. The posers  any sane mind should ask those accusing  INEC  for this ugly development are many. Does INEC  really need to churn out fake election materials to manipulate result? If INEC truly wants to rig the election, why will it do that when it can produce any amount of original materials it deems fit for any election?  Has INEC released the sensitive materials for the election, which is always done few hours to the election, to know if there is any correlation between the fake and original materials? Has investigation been concluded on the issue to really know the face behind the syndicate?

    While I am not in any way holding brief for INEC, it is important to remind Nigerians that even the APC in Rivers State has  also  in number of times accused the same INEC  of favouring PDP in the state . This shows that INEC is unbiased and does not take instruction from politicians. Some elections recently conducted across the country which saw  to the emergence of  winners from different political divides testified to this. The  senatorial election conducted in Kogi State were won by PDP; same as Bayelsa gubernatorial election, while APC won the governorship in Edo and Kogi states.

    That  is why I have always dismissed with a wave of hand those who accused  INEC of delaying the Rivers rerun election to favour a political party. To put the record straight, before  Senator Ike Ekweramadu’s motion  on the non-conduct of election in Rivers State which resulted  in  the Senate threat to stop plenary if the election is not conducted by December 10,  the electoral body had earlier fixed the date for the rerun for the sme date. In fact, Ekweremadu’s motion had intended to slam an immediate ultimatum on INEC if the election is not conducted before end of November, which prompted the chairman of Senate committee on INEC, Senator Abubakar Kyari to inform the Senators that the commission already told his committee that it would conduct the Rivers election on December 10!

    It is  unfortunate that instead of blaming politicians for delaying the election, all sorts of invectives are erroneously being poured on INEC  for allegedly orchestrating the delay  in spite of the commission’s readiness for the elections. Many have also gone as far as saying that if election can be successfully conducted in ‘Boko Haram-torn  Sambisa forest’ what is stopping INEC to delay elections in Rivers State.

    The answer to this is simple, Boko Haram goal is to carve out a territory for itself, hence they are not interested in what goes on in the nation’s political system. On the other hand, in Rivers State, political actors always go to the  trenches in any election to win by force. They use all measures; they divide to conquer, supplying arms and money to unemployed youths who are used and dumped after the election. They instigate people to fight and kill each other because of election, in order to be able to achieve their objectives. The consequence of this has been damning. In the March 28 rerun election in the state,  seven people were  said to have lost their lives in the state, including a youth corps member, Okonta Samuel, and two soldiers.

    Political actors in Rivers State should learn from the September 28, Edo State gubernatorial election  that was totally devoid of violence; it is no doubt a testament to the competence of  INEC  in guaranteeing credible and conclusive polls when political actors and other stakeholders play according to the rules.

     

    • John, a public affairs commentator, writes in from Lagos

  • Tribute to Ambassador Jolaoso (August 19, 1925 – September 25, 2016)

    The only word that can adequately capture this personage is the word ‘elegance’. Olu Jolaoso is the epitome of elegance. Elegant in looks, in style, in taste, in manners, in conduct, and in character.

    I first met him at Igbobi College long after he was a student there. He had come, as was then the practice, as a pupil teacher, on vacation job. He was my teacher. As a boy, we treasured the image of this extremely good looking teacher in front of the black board, chalk in hand. He had such an arresting look and I, in particular, admired him and wished I would one day be like him.

    He was a teacher, in the mould of C.O.D Ekwensi. Both of them were part-time teachers at Igbobi College. To them, teaching was a passion; a vocation. Paradoxically, it was also a past time; a hobby to be savoured and enjoyed. Moulding the minds of young boys and passing on knowledge meant a good deal to them.

    When in his final year, I went up to the University College Ibadan, Olu Jolaoso was there. I now see him in my mind’s eye on the athletic field: An elegant and majestic figure, turning the curve of the 220yards track with such effortless grace, like a powerful thoroughbred, breasting the tape to win. So he equally did in the 100yards sprint. He and his colleagues, including Godfrey Eneli, quartet in the 440yards relay race, were the great athletes in our university days. They made us feel extremely proud in the West African inter-Universities Games that were then in vogue. Olu Jolaoso on the sports field was an elegant sight to behold.

    Fate brought us together once again, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Commonwealth Relations in 1958. Providence brought teacher and student together as colleagues. The elegance in character shun through. In all the years we spent together in the Ministry of External Affairs, Olu had absolutely no difficulty accepting me as a colleague.  Never at any time, never once did he give the impression that he was older in age, experience and in maturity. We got along very well in our private and official lives. Never any sign or flicker of condescending attitude towards me.

    In a fulfilling and glorious career, otherwise sadly punctuated by memories of intrigues by colleagues, Olu remained the decent man of honour he was. Through the vicissitudes of life in the ministry, Ambassador Olu Jolaoso could be counted upon as a team player; loyal to his colleagues, loyal to the core in fighting injustice.

    I could recall when six of us were about to be summarily dismissed from the service for dare having the courage and temerity to challenge constituted authority on a cause we deeply believed in. Olu stood firmly with us, his colleagues.  Fortunately, destiny intervened. Despite our betrayal, we survived. Most of us reached the apex of our career in God’s own appointed time.

    What an irony it is in this nation that our earliest days happened to be the best, the most glorious. Olu belonged to that generation of Nigerian diplomats, career and non-career, now with hind-sight, adjudged to be the best – difficult to surpass. This was the generation of Chief Olumide Omololu,  Alhaji Abdulmaliki, Ade Martins, M.T. Mbu, Francis Nwokedi, L.O.V Anionwu, D. C. Igwe, John Mamman Garba, Simeon A. Adebo, Adedokun Haastrup, Gabriel Onyegbula, Isa Wali, Sule Kolo, Chukwuemeka Ifeagwu, Chike Chuwkwurah, Leslie Harriman, Philip Asiodu, John Ukegbu, J.T.F Iyalla,  Aminu Sanusi, Edwin Ogbu, Alhaji Muhammadu Ngeleruma, Tayo Ogunsulire, Edward Enahoro,  Olu Sanu, Soji Williams,  Ime Ebong, Victor Adegoroye, George Dove-Edwin, B.A Clark and many others, sadly gone ahead. These were, in essence, the pioneers of the Nigerian Diplomatic Service of which Olu Jolaoso was a proud and distinguished member.

    Olu served in various capacities as a young officer at home and abroad including being Chief of Protocol of the Federation. He was our Ambassador to the then Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ambassador to Western Germany, to Tubman’s Liberia, and finally to the United States of America.  In all these countries, he served with elegant dignity.

    Olu spoke my dialect fluently; the dialect of Aniocha Ibo ethnic group. I sometimes wonder whether he was more fluent in it, than in his own native Yoruba. I share the same distinctive dialect with Marcie, his most devoted, most beloved wife and companion, whose lineage is from my clan and home town, Ibusa, in Delta State.

    What type of grave could swallow up such outstanding elegance? Men such as Olu can never be swallowed up; can never die. Their spirits live forever.

    May his soul rest in peace. May his family be comforted.

     

    • Ambassador Olisemeka CON is former Minister of Foreign Affairs

  • At last, President Trump!

    Against all odds, real and contrived barriers, predictions and prescriptions, against all rules of political correctness, decorum and civility, against unquestionable hostility from mainstream media and stiff opposition from the so-called Washington D.C. establishment, millionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump has emerged as President-elect of the United States of America. He has, as one commentator had earlier predicted, succeeded in “insulting his way into the White House.” He will take over from Barack Obama, on January 20, 2017 as the 45th elected President of unmistakably the most powerful country on the planet, after having engaged in the bitterest, nastiest, sardonic, most acrimonious, ruthless, divisive and incendiary electioneering campaigns like none Americans have ever before seen or experienced.

    Though not necessarily a glass-ceiling shattering event, his electoral victory is nonetheless remarkable and truly history-making: unlike most occupants of the exalted office of President of the United States, he had never before held public political or administrative office, never served in the armed forces. And, I must add, he won the prize against the backdrop of the most inflammatory and often malevolent campaign rhetoric that smacked of gangsterist diplomacy (an oxymoron) and gave the rest of the world jitters, if not nightmares – anti-Muslim and other hate speeches, profiling Mexicans and Latinos as criminals and drug pushers, characterization Black Africans as good-for-nothing, lazy, sex-crazed criminals, insisting he would bring back torture, water-boarding and killing of families of anyone America classifies as terrorist. He eulogized Vladimir Putin as a great leader, better than Obama; railed and ranted against the Chinese and advocated trade protectionism; claimed America would retrench from its long-standing NATO commitments which had made America the great global power that it had been since the end of WWII; he asserted he was not be incommoded by nuclear proliferation if Japan and others had their nuclear weapons; in general that the US might withdraw from internationalism into isolationism all over again, a move that would give China and Russia the requisite leeway to take over global leadership.

    It is still too early in the day to speculate whether he will be able to do any of these once he settles into office and the humongous and immensely complex realities of world politics begin to stare him in the face. His baptism of fire will begin during the transition period. The next two months before being his swearing in this coming January will severely test his knowledge of politics, economics, domestic and international security and world affairs in general, most especially his patience and attentiveness as he will have to undergo grueling sessions of daily briefing, and as he struggles to put together his cabinet team, and decides on the thousands of presidential appointments to be made. It is hoped that his legendary lack of patience will not be a hindrance to him and that he will be able endure and grasp the intricate details of daily intelligence briefings by the NSA and CIA and others, or he might simply play into the hands of ambitious intelligence and national security apparatchiks who ordinarily would prefer to conceal some things from him. A casual reading of the history of both the CIA and NSA will reveal several instances of actions and operations undertaken across the globe that were cleverly hidden from presidential authorization and even congressional scrutiny.

    In his politics, little of which is known and understood till now except as exemplified by his year-long electioneering campaigns, Donald Trump has never really come across as a team-player and party loyalist: he literally hijacked the Republican Party and converted it into his own; alienated most of the GOP big-wigs and even put the political survival of its elected congressional members at grave risk; bitterly squabbled with everyone who didn’t agree with him; exhibited bitter and toxic temperament and lack of patience and concentration; and he was deliberately abusive, rude and vitriolic in his responses to comments and criticisms and took no prisoners.

    Whilst the jubilation goes on and many are reeling from the evident shock, perceptive observers of American politics and international relations are agitated and unsure what the next four years portend for the rest of the world. How and in what directions will American foreign policy move remain matters for intelligent speculation, as this unprecedented victory has implications and consequences for America’s role and leadership in global affairs. Will the US retrench from or abdicate its leadership of the Western world and the Atlantic alliance in the face of a rampaging Russia’s hegemonic outreach in Eastern Europe, the Baltic and the Middle East? How, for example, will a Trump presidency respond to China’s moves in the South China Sea? What about China’s role in the BRICS trying to challenge the dollarized global economy? What is Africa’s fate under President Trump, against the backdrop of America’s creeping re-colonization and militarization of the continent through the expanding AFRICOM? Questions, and still more questions! What about the series of complex emergencies, crises and wars in the Middle East: Iraq, Syria, Yemen; the burgeoning threats to Saudi Arabia, and of course endless wars in Afghanistan? How does Trump intend to handle the tensions generated by the hostility between two Asian nuclear-weapon nations of India and Pakistan? What about Libya, Egypt and the rest of North Africa? Will Japan be encouraged to develop its own nuclear weapon capability? If so, what happens to the menace posed by the hermitically sealed North Korea and the ambitious Islamic Republic of Iran? Can the US totally recoil from its internationalist foreign policy? And if, so what are the implications for the rest of the world?

    The next few years will severely tax and test our intellect and analytical skills to fathom what this Trump victory portends. Britain is facing as yet uncertain future and consequences from the Brexit vote. It was never the intent of its protagonists to win but merely to obtain sufficient political leverage to exact more concessions from the European Union. Whether the United Kingdom will remain a single united country for much longer after its final exit from the EU is debatable. Is America truly prepared for Trump’s foreign policy?

    I had observed in an earlier article in this newspaper (“America Truly Deserves Donald Trump!” The Nation, Tuesday, April 26) that though one of the beauties of democracy is popular participation in leadership selection, it is fraught with the problem that wrong choices can also be made. Even though I cannot yet be categorical that Americans have made a wrong choice, there is no question in my mind as I had argued then, that by what we know thus far of his well known toxic brand of politics, Donald Trump has deliberately stoked and fanned “the dangerous embers of racial hatred, religious intolerance, Islamophobia, ethnic-baiting, racial profiling, and xenophobia, that will haunt America for a long time to come.” All we can do is wait, watch, and pray as the same man will, come January 2017, become the next Commander-in-Chief of a vast military machine that parades unquestionably the most formidable nuclear arsenal on earth. God help us!

     

    • Prof. Fawole writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, ILe-Ife.

  • Where is the United States that I used to know?

    Now the hurly-burly’s done
    The battle has been won and lost
    (Adapted from Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, scene 1, 4-5)

    This piece was going to be written irrespective of the outcome of the elections. In fact, it is being written two days before the election because the outcome is irrelevant to the core message of the article. In a war fought without restraint, where all available weapons, nuclear, thermonuclear, biological, etc. were deployed, there can be no victors, only the vanquished, and that means the whole of humanity.

    This election did not create the American ugliness that the whole world has been exposed to. That ugliness has always been there. What masked this ugliness was a consensus (some might say a conspiracy) among the elite and the mainstream media to filter out the ugliness and present to the world an image of the United States characterised by the Kennedys, the Obamas, the Georgetown set, the Harvard-Cambridge set. Buried out of sight were Appalachia, rural Alabama, rural Mississippi, rednecks, various white militias etc. The political system filtered out the flotsam and jetsam of the political actors and presented to the world the Bush family, the Kennedys, Jimmy Carters, Nixons, Kerrys, McCains etc. and pretended that the racists and the fascists did not exist in the United States. Then along came Donald Trump and the world came face to face with a modern-day Hitler and felt what the world must have felt in the 1930s when the original Hitler came along. The modern-day Hitler has demonised every minority including women, immigrants, African-Americans, Jews, Moslems etc. And by the way, why has the International Criminal Court been silent about the hate campaign that has been mounted by Donald Trump? If this were taking place in an African country, the ICC would have taken to a megaphone to issue dire warnings and threats of prosecution.

    That a Trump surfaced in the United States is not the issue here. In fact a Trump is not an aberration in American politics. Until the 1980s, most of the Southern Governors and Senators were rabid racists who today would belong in the dock for crimes against humanity. That is the cesspool from where Trump emerged.

    The wording of the title of this article shows there was once an America that I admired so much. My first trip to the United States was in 1962. I fell in love with that country. I admired the friendliness of the people and I found the can-do-attitude of Americans infectious. All in all, I spent five years there. I was not blind to the faults of the United States. After all, it was and is a nation of human beings. And that means it was not a perfect nation. But I found also a nation that recognised the need to do better and to work at addressing the injustices of their society. And so where have all the flowers gone?

    My main concern in this article is why did the flowers go and why has this cesspool become main street and mainstream now. As I write this, the public opinion polls give Trump 43%. If Clinton wins the election, everyone would let out a huge sigh of relief or maybe I should say a huge bellow of relief and proclaim that the system worked. This would be a terrible mistake. In the German 1932 elections, Hindenburg won 49% of the votes while Hitler won 30% of the votes. And yet by January 1963, Hitler had become the Chancellor of Germany.

    Why the Trump phenomenon will not be a flash in the pan is because the phenomenon is a manifestation of a protest vote against a declining status of the United States in the world. I did not say that the United States is no longer a superpower but the United States does not call the shots as she used to. As long as the United States called the shots in the world, as long as American goods flooded the world, as long as the United States through a Pax-Americana bestrode the world like a colossus, mainstream United States was predictable and favoured.

    But the times are a’ changing as Bob Dylan the American iconic folk-singer who is the latest Nobel Literature Prize winner titled one of his songs. There are new rising kids such as China on the block and a resurgent Russia is snapping at the heels. Unlike in the past where the prosperity of America was based on the exploitation of the rest of the world , the rest of the world, by accepting lower wages have cornered the industrial landscape of the world which has led to loss of jobs and industrial output and those artificial high standards of leaving that America was once used to.

    Scholars of international relations are all agreed that the most dangerous time for the international system is when a descending power confronts an ascending power. There is a school of analytical thought which maintains that World War 1 and World War 11 occurred when an ascending Germany collided with the descending powers of France and Great Britain.

    What is playing out in the United States is how the United States confronts its status as a declining world power having to deal with an ascending Chinese power and an increasingly assertive Russian power.

    The Trump phenomenon will not go away irrespective of what happened on November 8. That is what disturbs and frightens me. Is the United States going to graciously accept a new and complex international system where the United States does not call the shots alone or is the United States through the Trumps of America be prepared to bring down the world on all our heads? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

    A postscript to the 2016 United States election is my expectation that from now on, there will be less hubris from the United States diplomatic representatives in lecturing others about how to conduct themselves in electoral matters. Of course, I doubt this. Arrogance has longevity of its own. Power and arrogance go together.

    Another postscript is the statement credited to Donald Trump that he would only consider the election free only if he won. What a third world mentality from the United States.

    America needs help. The biggest test for the United States is whether the United States will realise this and accept the help. The biggest help will have to come from the United States itself. The good news is that the United States has this uncanny ability to reinvent itself and do so successfully. And she has done so before. In the 1930s, the United States like the rest of the world was hit with a depression that drove Germany, Spain, Italy and others into fascism. The United States was fortunate to have had Frankling D. Roosevelt, the right man in the right place at the right time. He led the United States back to prosperity without turning her back on democracy.

    Hopefully, Hilary Clinton will prove to be another Franklin Delano Roosevelt who will ensure that America will show grace under pressure.

     

    • Professor Akinyemi is a former minister of external affairs

  • For Kola Banmeke, dedicated civil servant, true friend

    My relationship with you Baba (Kola coined the word ‘Baba’ with which we always addressed each other) started at the University of Lagos in 1962, where we were foundation students. We were drawn to each other by discussions which were thoughtful and thorough. We became very close friends throughout undergraduate years. On graduation you began your civil service career in Ibadan Western Nigeria, and I did same in Kaduna Northern Nigeria.

    Your tutelage was along the footprints of Chief S.O Adebo, the quintessential civil servant, from which you developed an amazing analytical mind. With the creation of States in 1966, I moved to Ilorin while you were still in Ibadan, and both of us journeyed at weekends to visit each other. We discussed far into the night and sometimes to the early hours of the next day. These discussions cemented our friendship.

    Thereafter, you joined the new Lagos State, while I was transferred to North-East State. In your new post, you developed into the breed of the finest civil servants among whom honesty and integrity held sway. Like Chief S.O Adebo, you always insisted that your subordinates tell the truth, in spite of the decaying virtues and ideals of the public service.

    This quality manifested in your lifestyle.  You maintained a dogged determination not to take advantage of the many opportunities of the what-is-in-it-for-me syndrome all through the very high offices you held.

    After your retirement, you resisted the pressure to join your former boss, Vice-Admiral Mike Akhigbe, when he was appointed Chief of General Staff (de- facto Vice-President) in Abuja.  Not many people would have turned down such an opportunity. Right to the end, you demonstrated a remarkable contentment.  Although you often wondered how Nigeria’s public service had taken such a full turn around to the bottom of the ladder, you were convinced, all the same, that there are still many good officers in the service.

    On the home front, you did your very best.   You stood above irresponsibility in family management.  No one could accuse you of busy-body third party intervention. Your love for the children was exemplary, and this was same for extended family members with whom you shared commendably.

    How can I thank you for your fatherly care on my two children, in the University of Lagos, and in your home away from school? How can I repay your dedication?

    May God keep and bless your amiable wife who has kept the home front stable, supporting you all through.  May His protection encompass her and all the children.

    You were never weary of coming to support me in various activities in my home town, Kabba. On those innumerable visits, you always came along with some of UNILAG’S First Eleven (foundation students) and other Lagos friends. Memories of your visits to various parts of the North also linger on: Maiduguri, Misau, Kano, Monguno, Baga (in Lake Chad) Makurdi, Keffi, ZangoKataf, and others too many to recall. And everywhere you went, you spread your warmth, jokes and joy.

    “For every time there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die,” says Ecclesiastics of the Holy Bible.  Baba, you have traversed both times, and you are now on your journey home.

    Now and always, the question begging for an answer in my mind is Don Williams’ “Time oh time, where did you go?” And Louis Armstrong’s gentle answer is “We are travelling in the footsteps of those who’ve gone before… but we’ll all be united on a new sunlit shore.”

    As you go, your song should continue to be “O when the saints go marching in, when the saints go marching in, O Lord I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in.”

    Baba, as I am sadly not able to attend the obsequies. I bid you farewell and the blessings of God’s grace.   In my sorrow and hope, my song shall always be Jim Reeves’  “God be with you till we meet again…at Jesus Feet.”

     

    • Pa Olowolayemo contributed this tribute from Abuja.