With the announcement by the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Lucky Irabor, that five suspected attackers of St Francis Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State, have been arrested, and confirmation of same by the state governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, Nigerians can heave a sigh of relief. This at least shows that some progress is being made on the matter and the killers may not, after all, escape the long arms of the law as is sometimes the case in similar crimes. This is not all. Apprehension of suspects involved in crimes is indication to the criminals that no matter how fast they run, they cannot escape the wrath of the law.

Armed men stormed the church on June 5, and killed no fewer than 40 worshippers. About 100 others sustained injuries during the attack, which left the rather peaceful town in shock, several days after. It also led to claims and counterclaims over those behind the attack and even their apprehension. For instance, on June 9, barely four days after the attack, Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, said the attack was orchestrated by Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP), a claim that Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State dismissed as speculative.

Later in the month, Ondo State Command of the south-west security network, Amotekun, said it had arrested some suspects linked to the attack. Adetunji Adeleye, the state commander said “We have arrested a number of those who perpetrated evil at the St Francis Catholic Church in Owo”.

“We have also recovered the vehicle they used last after the deadly operation. We have also recovered some of their weapons.”

We did not hear of further progress from any other quarters on the matter until the CDS’ media briefing where it was initially announced that four suspects, including the mastermind of the attack, had been arrested. Two were later apprehended.

The Director of Defence Information, Major-General Jimmy Akpor, said “Recall that the Chief of Defence Staff during his parley with media executives and editors yesterday, Tuesday 9 August 2022, informed of the arrest of four terrorists among those who carried out the attack on St Francis Catholic Church, Owo on 5 June 2022.

“They were arrested through a combined operation by military and DSS personnel at Eika, Okehi LGA, Kogi State on 1 August 2022. Those arrested include Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza (a.k.a Bin Malik), Momoh Otohu Abubakar, Aliyu Yusuf Itopa and Auwal Ishaq Onimisi.”

He added that two other suspects — Al-Qasim Idris and Abdulhaleem Idris — were arrested at the Omialafara (Omulafa), Ose LGA, Ondo State on August 9, barely a few hours after Gen. Irabor’s press briefing. The arrests, according to Major-Gen. Akpor, were made through the collaborative efforts by military and DSS personnel.

There seems not much controversy as Gov. Akeredolu himself attested to the arrests.

“Now that the military has announced it, I can tell you that five of them have been arrested now. They are still on the trail of the rest. The home where they lodged in Owo and the person that accommodated them before the attack, has also been arrested”, the governor told the leadership of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), led by the state chairman of the council, Mr Leke Adegbite, who paid him a courtesy visit after the arrests. “We did not spare a moment. I am happy that the Chief of Defence Staff has announced it. We have known for a while but we needed not to come out with it because more works are still ongoing. I can confirm that this arrest has been made. And they are still on the trail of some of them.”

We commend the security agencies for apprehending some of the suspects and hope that they would intensify efforts towards arresting the others. Although it would have been better to foil the attack through credible intelligence network, going after the suspects is the only way to mitigate that terrible omission.

More important, the authorities must follow up the arrests with a diligent prosecution of those already arrested. The general impression out there is that bandits hardly have their day in court in the country. We recall the instance of the Federal Government announcing that it had concluded arrangement to prosecute terror sponsors only to renege. There have been several other reports of alleged cover-up of bandits arrested. The Owo incident should not follow that trajectory.

Lives were needlessly lost to the senseless attacks. Properties damaged. It is high time the government demonstrated its zero tolerance for such cold-blooded murders by ensuring that those involved in the Owo massacre have their day in court.

As we have always said, even when the courts have convicted the suspects and served them their due comeuppance, it would not bring back the dead. But it is the best we can get in the circumstance to ensure that those killed in the course of the crime get justice.

Once more the Nigerian military has strongly asserted that the country will not employ mercenary soldiers to combat the pervasive insecurity in the nation. At a media briefing last week, when asked if Nigeria will employ mercenaries, the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor, reiterated: “Where lays the loyalty of the foreign fighter? To Nigeria or self? The men and women of the Armed Forces fight to protect Nigeria not because they are paid to do it. It is because they, we see it as a duty.”

In March 2021, the National Security Adviser, Maj. Gen. Babagana Monguno, vowed that the full force of the nation’s military will be visited on the insurgents, and he stated categorically that mercenaries will not be employed. According to him: “The President’s view and directive is that we will not engage mercenaries…. This is basically a presidential directive. And there are so many issues when you come to the issue of mercenaries. It has to do with national pride also.” Gen. Monguno was reacting to call by Governor Babagana Zulum and others for mercenaries to tackle Boko Haram.

While we commend Gen Irabor’s gush of patriotism, just like Maj. Gen Monguno did last year, there is the need to interrogate dispassionately the call for Nigeria to hire mercenaries. For us, the question should be whether the mercenaries would do a better job fighting the terrorists than our armed forces are doing? If they will, then we support the call to hire their services. Towards the end of tenure of President Goodluck Jonathan, when the 2015 general election was threatened, the mercenaries were brought in to quench the spreading fire.

Was that success a flash in the pan, or are there competences or motivations that the mercenaries have that our armed forces don’t have? Perhaps it is the fees for their services that Gen Irabor alluded to, which spurs them to better performance? Or is it that they have superior training compared to our armed forces? Gen Irabor should explain the disparity in terms of successes, or are such claims mere illusion? The authorities need to make a dispassionate decision based on facts on ground.

For instance, it is strange that despite the information that bandits terrorising the country are located in known forests, the armed forces have not moved in to apprehend them. The governors of Kaduna, Katsina and Niger states have said many times that certain forests within their states have been taken over by bandits, and criminals come from there to attack villages and even towns. The same is applicable to other parts of the north-west and north-east, where several forests are presently infested by these ‘worms’.

We thought that the national army would have been mobilised to clear the forests of these bandits, so that Nigerians can have peace. Even the nation’s capital territory, Abuja, has become a target for these criminals, with our army sometimes ambushed. We are also aware that many soldiers have deserted the army, out of fear that they could be consumed by the ongoing war. There are reports of high casualty in the war against Boko Haram, insurgents and bandits across the country, even as allegations of concealment of fatalities linger.

Like we said earlier, the national interest should be whether the mercenaries can stem the tide and change the narrative. Of course, we are not unmindful of the patriotic instincts of the leadership of our military. But we urge for a decision to be made, after a dispassionate analysis by the National Security Council and experts, on what is in the best interest of our bleeding country.

A new initiative is being brewed by government to secure the schooling environment across Nigeria. Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister Zainab Ahmed lately made known that the new plan would incorporate diverse sectoral agenda by the federal and state governments, as well as local councils, “with an emphasis on ensuring adequate budgetary allocation in order to create a safe learning environment for teaching, learning, and restoring confidence in the education system.”

According to the minister, the new initiative will be launched before the end of third quarter 2022, and it will be implemented in phases, beginning with most-at-risk states, council areas and schools’ host communities. In an address to a high-level summit in Abuja penultimate Thursday involving representatives of the security agencies, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, the diplomatic corps and some government ministries, she said the Federal Government was working with the other tiers as well as host communities to plan for financing safe schooling environment and ensuring that shut schools are securely reopened.

Represented by Permanent Secretary Aliyu Ahmed, the minister said the new plan would “clearly outline how Nigeria intends to protect her schools and other learning places, so that our children can once again return to learning in a safer and more secured environment.”

This latest plan was unveiled against the backdrop of a still-birthed Safe Schools Initiative (SSI) that was launched in 2014 by the former Goodluck Jonathan administration following terrorists’ attack on Chibok Girls’ Secondary School in Borno State. Some $30million was reportedly mobilised under that initiative to fund secure schooling environment, towards ensuring that young people are not only safe in going to school across the country but also have environment suitable for learning and growth free of fear. The SSI was spearheaded by a coalition of Nigerian business leaders working with the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, along with some other UN agencies and the Nigerian government.

Under that old initiative, no fewer than 500 schools were targeted to be provided new classrooms, fences and armed guards. “The aim of the plan is to ensure that young people are not only safe in going to school but that we also provide an environment ripe for learning, growth and development free of fear,” Mr. Brown said in May 2014.

Whereas the programme was launched in response to mounting violations of the right of children to education, it obviously hasn’t yielded expected results. Many schools, especially in the North, have come under terrorists’ attack since the Chibok incident where more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted. It is not certain exactly how much was raised under the SSI, what happened to the funds, and how much has been done to keep schools safe. What is certain is that whatever was done did not even scratch the surface of the problem. Late in 2021, the administration of Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum remodelled and rebuilt the Chibok school with state funds after the foundation stone that was laid by the Jonathan administration for construction of an international standard secondary school in place of the local structures destroyed by insurgents foundered for over six years. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister at the time and now head of the World Trade Organisation, laid the first bricks of the project.

Now that there is talk of a new initiative for which financial plans are being orchestrated, questions will continue to be asked about where the huge funds raised under the SSI went down. For obvious reasons, donors will not be eagerly forthcoming for the new programme as they were for the SSI. Besides, there must be extra guarantees that the new initiative won’t get stuck like the old one, before we could seriously talk about making the schooling environment safe in Nigeria.

Glorious news — that after eons of planning and setback, Lagos would start own internal rail transit in January 2023!  Even more glorious: Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu pointed to visible, specific and verifiable landmarks that the rail talk is not just gas.

That is the apt summary of the governor’s Lagos rail road show of August 7.  After four hours of project inspection, the crystallisation of the rail dream is near, not far.

Still, the historical irony of it all may be lost on many.  The late Alhaji Lateef Jakande, governor of Lagos from 1979 to 1983, indeed started the Lagos Metro Line rail project, which the Federal Military Government (FMG) of Major-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari shot down.

But it is the same Buhari, as elected president, that has pushed through massive rail federalisation and liberalisation, such that the Lagos Red Line rail station at Agege could co-habit with the Agege station of the Lagos-Abeokuta-Ibadan-Kano rail, incidentally named after another former Lagos governor, Babatunde Fashola.

Not only that: the Lagos Red Line, from Agbado to the Lagos Marina, would share the same corridor with the federal Lagos-Ibadan rail, the common sense at which the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency growled, on the excuse that the rail tracks were federal territory, upon which no state government must encroach.

That intransigence set back the rail component of the Lagos urban transport mix, for which many lines were designed by the government of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu (1999-2007), but which the Obasanjo Federal Government blocked by crass legalism.

Even after, to kick-start the Blue Line (ultimately to run from the Lagos Marina-Orile Iganmu-Mile 2-Okokomaiko down to Badagry), then Governor Fashola had to fight tooth-and-nail to stop successive People’s Democratic Party (PDP) federal government from blocking the project.  Ironically, however, but for the bad judgment of Governor Akin Ambode, the Blue Line should have been running today.

So, it’s all these myths and near-misses that Governor Sanwo-Olu would break, as indeed the 2023 launch date verges on reality — and from all we see, it’s a credible promise and projection.  From the governor’s schedule, the Blue Line would start commercial shuttles in January 2023.  The Red Line, which the Sanwo-Olu government started from scratch, would burst into life later in that first quarter.

This is a feat for which the Sanwo-Olu government has earned due praise.  As the Federal Government under President Buhari, which started and completed the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge rail within its term, Sanwo-Olu would be setting a record as the first Nigerian sub-national government ever to start and complete a rail project within a four-year first term.

But even as the Blue and Red lines near delivery, the governor is talking of advanced feasibility studies on four new rail lines that the Lagos State government would reveal before 2022 rolls out.  Those lines are already in the rail master plan that produced the Blue and Red lines.  Other things being equal then, the two lines to roar into life in 2023 are only the beginning of what historians might later dub the Lagos crackling era of internal rail.

This is personal triumph for Governor Sanwo-Olu, who by his acts, has clearly learnt from the mistakes of his immediate predecessor, Governor Ambode.  By continuing where Governor Fashola left off on the Blue Line, Sanwo-Olu replicated what he had done with the Fashola Lagos Homs project, which Ambode, for reasons best known to him, also abandoned.

By this single act across two crucial sectors (housing and transport), Sanwo-Olu has put back on track positive continuity that has made Lagos the state of example since 1999, when the Tinubu government started it all.  Never again must the state de-rail from that track!

Besides, vibrant rail is good news for the Lagos economy.  A rail-powered economy, with its relatively cheap fares, could vigorously combat cost-push inflation, particularly on basic goods.  That could trigger saner living and economic comfort, which should, if maintained and sustained, trigger prosperity and ease of life that the state has not experienced in years.   So, on the socio-economic front, 2023 is a year to look forward to, at least in Lagos.

The coming of rail could also hallmark the strategic strike against the menace of ‘Okada’ on Lagos highways, with its grisly harvest of hewn limbs and crashed skulls.  That latest anti-‘Okada’ tactics are holding, given the mixed results of the latest bans on specific areas.  But rail, with its mass sweep of commuters in their hundreds and thousands, would hopefully take away the market!

That is why the governor and his hardworking team must ensure that the rail promise is delivered to time.  The Lagos economy might not be the same again — as the mega-city is set to get the transport options it deserves.

He had done some notable work. But he had so much ahead of him. He was the director of the new Netflix and EbonyLife Films co-production Elesin Oba, The King’s Horseman, billed to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.  It is a screen adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s well-known stage play Death and the King’s Horseman.  It was yet another signpost in a burgeoning filmmaking career. This year also, he directed the first Netflix Nigerian Original Series Blood Sisters.

Biyi Bandele’s death on August 7 cut short an expressive creative life. He was 54. His debut film as a director, Half of a Yellow Sun, was reported to have got a “rapturous reception” at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. It was based on the 2006 novel of the same title by Chimamanda Adichie. He directed Fifty, which was screened at the 2015 London Film Festival; and also directed the third season of the popular MTV drama series, Shuga.

His other directorial credits are FELA – Father of Afrobeat (2018), a documentary for the BBC; and his self-produced documentary, Africa States of Independence (2010).

His transition to filmmaking was striking.  He had made a name for himself as a writer before he was attracted to the screen. In a 2013 interview, he had told the gripping story of how his father’s war experience in World War II drew him to writing.

He said:  “When I was a child, I remembered war was something that sprang up a lot in conversations on the part of my dad who talked about the war like one big party. But my mum and grandmother would remind him of how he came back from Burma. He came back in a straitjacket. You know, he completely lost it.

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“It was something that pained him for the rest of his life. He had one or two bullets that were left because it was safer where they were than trying to get them out. He had this recurring nightmare where he would wake up in a fit and we would have to restrain him because it would take him a few minutes before he realised he was not at war and somebody was not trying to kill him. That was probably one of the things that turned me into a writer.”

He showed early promise, and won a short story competition when he was just 14. As an undergraduate studying drama at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, he won the International Students Play Script Competition in 1989 with an unpublished play, Rain. He also won the 1990 British Council, Lagos, award for poetry.

When he moved to London, at the age of 22, he went with the manuscripts of two novels he had written.  The books were published, which was a testimony to his writing skill. He had a stint at the Royal Court Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

His plays include Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994) and Two Horsemen (1994), which was selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival.

He also wrote novels, including The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1991), The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams (1991), The Street (1999) and Burma Boy (2007), which was inspired by his father’s war experience.

Bandele’s writing life took him to places. He was writer-in-residence at Talawa Theatre Company (1994 to 1995), resident dramatist at the Royal National Theatre Studio (1996), the Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge (2000-2001), and Royal Literary Fund Resident Playwright at the Bush Theatre from 2002 to 2003.

There was no question about his creative passion. He was said to have been planning a film adaptation of his novel, Burma Boy, and finished writing another book, Yoruba Boy Running, which he recently submitted for publishing. He left an impressive legacy of multidimensionality.

In the best tradition of scholarship and intellectualism, contrary to expectations that eminent Professor of Geography, Akin Mabogunje, who turned 90 on October 18, last year, would roll out the drums for a loud celebration, he opted for a modest anniversary. Now, he has passed on before he could have the opportunity for another birthday anniversary. A world renowned academic, he distinguished himself, not only in academia, but also in public service as he was regarded as the “Father of African Geography”. He was the first African president of the International Geographical Union (1980-1984) and the first African to be elected as a Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1999). He became Nigeria’s first Professor of Geography at the University of Ibadan, in present-day Oyo State, in 1965.

Among the several awards he has received for academic, professional and administrative excellence, the Vautrin-Lud Prize he won in 2017 stands out as a symbol of his distinction. It is the highest honour in the field of geography and known as the “Nobel Prize for Geography.” He is the first African recipient of the prize, which was instituted in 1991.

It was not for nothing that President Muhammadu Buhari extolled him for “the historic roles he played in the structuring, growth and demography of the country.” Mabogunje in the 1970s notably led the team picked by the Federal Government to provide necessary environmental information on the new territory that became the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

The country has benefitted in no small measure from his geographic expertise, notably in the creation of the Directorate of Foods, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) in 1986, and the establishment of the National Board for Community Banks in 1990. His involvement in these projects reflected his passion for community development, especially at the grassroots. Another important national assignment he got based on his professionalism was the chairmanship of the Presidential Technical Committee on Land in Nigeria.  As a result of the demand for his services at governmental levels, he had chaired various commissions, committees and panels to carry out works related to urban and regional planning.

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Remarkably, even when he turned 80, he was still involved in development duties and had to ask then President Goodluck Jonathan for disengagement.  He said in an interview: “I was still in charge of the National Land Reform, which the late President Yar’Adua saddled me with. I was still in charge of the Lagos Mega City Development Authority which ex-President Obasanjo had saddled me with. And I was still in charge of Technical Committee on Housing and Urban Development.”

Not surprisingly, his age was not an issue when the founders of the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy sought a chairman for the institution. “It was not easy for me to say no. They recognised that at my age I couldn’t run around but I could advise them. It was that appeal to the situation of governance in my country that made me accept,” he explained.

Mabogunje is a patriot who is concerned about government and public policies, and he advised that the presidency “should strengthen local governments to engender development.”  Another piece of advice from him: “States that can’t perform should merge.”

His trajectory makes him richly experienced to suggest solutions to the country’s underdevelopment. He was a member of the Western Nigerian Economic Advisory Council in 1967; member of the Federal Public Service Review Commission, 1972; Chairman of Nigerian Council for Management Development, 1976 and Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, Ogun State University, now Olabisi Onabanjo University.

After his secondary education at Ibadan Grammar School (1943-1948), he earned a first degree in Geography at the then University College, Ibadan, in 1953. He got a doctorate in the same discipline from the University of London in 1961. He is known for his contributions to “the academic literature of contemporary geography, development, rural-urban migration, urbanization, and environmental challenges in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.”  He was one of the earliest recipients of the Nigerian National Order of Merit.

In June 2020, he demonstrated a sense of legacy by donating his library to Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, saying “The younger generations will rise from building on the knowledge of the past.”

Professor Akin Mabogunje dropped anchor on August 4, 2022, having played his part fully on this side of the Great Divide; he lived a life that would keep challenging future generations on the need for integrity, dedication and patriotism. Yes, the man died, but he lives on through his noble legacy bequeathed to Nigeria and the world.

A great reformer got heckled out of office by the same powers and principalities he had tried to checkmate.  But that setback turned a Pyrrhic victory.

His lasting legacies in academic reforms and campus sanity have trumped his traducers, giving the Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, a fresh breath of life.

That is the tenure summary of Prof. Lateef Hussein (1946-2022), 6th vice-chancellor of LASU from 2005 to 2011. For his reformative pluck, he was dubbed “Saddam Hussein” by the hailing or nailing campus community during his activity-packed intervention years.  He passed away on August 31 in Lagos, and has since been buried according to Muslim rites.

Before Hussein, a professor of Physics and Dean of the University of Ibadan Faculty of Science, left UI for the LASU job, LASU was a hot bed of student cultism.  Many of its academic staff were also well and truly shocking by their clannish mindset. Indeed, the students hailed one of Hussein’s predecessors as “Olori Ebi” (clan head), a moniker that VC perhaps swallowed to earn the loyalty of student hotheads and reckless staff in order to maintain some unholy peace.

As a hot bed of cultism and reckless academic unionism, LASU had become captive to a tiny but noisesome cabal in the university community that routinely held the majority to ransom, as it did the university authorities — and crowed about it. Besides, Lagos, the epitome of cosmopolitan taste, was brewing a university, which was becoming the stark bastion of clannish thinking.

That double whammy deeply repulsed Prof. Hussein, so much that he swore to stamp it all out and replace it with global best university practices.  Indeed, he re-shaped LASU in the image of UI, where hitherto he had spent most of his academic life. When Prof. Hussein arrived, LASU had developed a national notoriety in student cultism, with campus toughs preying on helpless campus girls. Control and monitoring was made difficult by near-zero night life on the campus, being a non-residential university.  Many times, undeveloped areas of the campus passed for safe haven for cultist crimes under the pall of darkness.

For starters, Hussein relocated part-time students away from the main Ojo campus of LASU.  Then, he weeded out many of the so-called campus veterans: “professional students”.  By imposing rigorous academic monitoring, he ensured that students that had vegetated on campus for years after a four-year course, for instance, but still posted poor grades, were shown the door.

These two acts drastically reduced violence on the campus, which somewhat supported the hunch that those veteran students were the nest of cultists. But even after purging this nest, he moved against and expelled cultists thrown up by the university’s intelligence network.

By the time he finished with that cadre, he turned his big guns on their colluders among the academic staff, thus imposing rare sanity on some hitherto untouchables.  That sent out the alarm, long and shrill: a new sheriff was in town!

That breath of fresh air was what the quiet majority needed to rally round the new order. From the vice-chancellor, the clarion call was clear: LASU was an academic community and must be seen as such.

To walk his talk, he instituted direct interface with students, faculty by faculty, where he got feedbacks.  That was held every semester.  During those parleys, the issue of “missing results” — so rife back then — cropped up.  He pronto set up a mechanism which compelled lecturers to timely fish out “lost” results, after students had lodged complaints, or face grave sanctions.

That proved hugely popular with the students, particularly female ones, hitherto routinely bullied by some unscrupulous academic staff. But as expected, it brewed distemper among the affected bully staff.

Still, the vice-chancellor couldn’t be clearer: Degree and allied diploma programmes must be treated with despatch, so that students were promptly graduated.  That was the turning point — which has defined the university till today, away from its old chaos.

Though Prof. Hussein’s second term was a shoo-in (he clearly did a good job of his first), the old guard, under unions early in that term, mobilized against him, alleging that he had neglected their “welfare”. That marked the end of his tenure —  a fate his successor, Prof. John Obafunwa, would share four years later.

But no matter how his tenure ended, “Sadam” Hussein’s good works have triumphed over short-term challenges. LASU and its students post-2005 have been the better for it.