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Category: Louis Odion

  • Atiku: The peril of inordinate ambition

    Atiku: The peril of inordinate ambition

    Atiku is a conflicted bigot, consumed by inordinate ambition. He remains a bare-foot slave to an empire the Nigeria of the twenty-first century has outgrown.

    In 2011, he battled Jonathan for PDP ticket, on the argument that the ‘North has not used up its two term slots’, following Yar’Adua death in office on May 5, 2010. (Forget that he stubbornly refused entreaties not to go to court when the same Umar Yar’Adua was declared winner in 2007 in the spirit of ‘northern solidarity’ and fought like a wounded lion up to Supreme Court.)

    But he got a shellacking at the PDP primaries in 2011.

    In 2014, he, still driven by that inordinate ambition, again led the rebellion of nPDP to evacuate PDP in protest of Jonathan’s bid for 2nd (3rd???) term; that it was ‘the turn of power to shift to the North’, for the ‘sake of justice and equity’.

    In 2018, realising he stood no chance against President Buhari’s winning 2nd term in 2019, he migrated back to PDP. Of course, he suffered another shellacking in 2019.

    With the power of Dollars (??) and thoughtless invocation of the ethnic card at PDP’s May primaries, he overpowered Southern contenders (like Wike) to the presidential ticket.

    Read Also: Atiku: A matter of character

    Ideally, aside constitutional imperative imposed by PDP’s own zoning arrangement and convention, the PDP ticket ought to be the preserve of anyone from the South. In South-South, the natural choice would be Nyesom Wike on account of his tireless utility for PDP all through its trying moments since 2015 and when the likes of Atiku chose to play renegade for pure self-aggrandisement.

    In South-East, the choice would be Peter Obi who was Atiku’s runningmate just in 2019. Comparatively, the South-East would even appear more deserving on account of Igbo’s  Catholic fidelity to PDP since 1999.

    But Atiku will sacrifice national unity, put knife on the fragile thread that holds Nigeria together, in a desperation to rig the fulfilment of the long-standing prophecy by marabouts (according to ex-President Obasanjo) of ruling Nigeria some day!

    But faced with same temptation at a defining moment in June, northern APC governors shunned the ethnic card. They were patriotic enough to collectively concede the Presidential ticket to the South, as a mark of unwavering commitment to Nigeria’s continued unity, cohesion and harmony.

    With the catastrophic Freudian Slip before a northern audience in Kaduna, Atiku just reaffirmed his commitment to destroying Nigeria’s unity to achieve his marabout-propelled presidential ambition.

    The supreme irony is that this is the same man promising to ‘unify Nigeria again’ in his ongoing campaign messaging.

    But this presidential ‘candidate of habit’ will soon find again that the Nigeria of his depraved, bigoted dream no longer exists.

  • TRIBUTE TO TUNJI BELLO @ 60

    TRIBUTE TO TUNJI BELLO @ 60

    By Louis Odion, FNGE

    ‘The one who clasped me in his wings through dark life clouds and heavy career storms until I landed the harbor of no fear’

    Though sounding casual, it nonetheless caught me completely off-guard, leaving this numbing sensation that reminded me of what a treacherous hammer blow did to my temple back in my amateur boxing days.

    Yet, his question was this simple: “What’re your plans for the future, Louis?”

    “Abroad”, I mumbled on regaining composure, but hardly able to conceal the shame of being yet incapable of a clear-cut vision of life ahead.

    “Abroad?,” he probed further with his accustomed quick smile meant to put me at ease, “To do what?”

    While I was still stammering for words that fateful afternoon in late 1991, Mr. Tunji Bello’s interjection was brusque, yet most candid: “Look, you have to understand something. Without sellable skills or good education, most of those rushing abroad end up doing menial jobs like dish-washing at fast food joints. Louis, I see you have great writing talent. Just be focused and diligent in what you do here, the sky’ll be your limit in Nigeria. You don’t have to go abroad and be a slave.”

    And the parting shot: “To go far, you must get university education. You’re still very young.”

    Three decades later precisely, the foregoing statements still echo in my ears trenchantly today. I would, in fact, even consider that my own epiphany.

    Indeed, as the youthful, affable and influential editor of Concord’s Group Politics Desk, coupled with his old affinity with student unionism, Mr. Bello naturally attracted, with gravitational force, the company of youth corps members and Industrial Trainees like myself back then.

    In the coming years, he would choose to get intimately involved in my affairs beyond the limits of office, affording me the loyalty of a genuine friend, availing me the fierce protection expected of a true biological elder brother I never had.

    The now familiar story of how a little boy without formal training in journalism rose from the humble station of a mere stenographer to become the editor of an esteemed title in Nigeria’s leading media empire within seven years will always sound like a fairy tale.

    Let it now be known that the credit for that incredible trajectory belongs largely to none other than Mr. Bello through a decade-long show of uncommon compassion at that “little boy’s” moments of dire need, unstinting solidarity amid countless tribulations at work and instinctive brotherhood during emotional turbulence outside office.

    What made this quite significant is the ocean of contrasts yet between us. Indeed, age, tribe, tongue and creed differ. But true generosity of spirit has been characterized as the capacity to give without expecting, to lift those not in position to repay immediately or in the foreseeable future. So, I reckon Mr. Bello’s sustained help along the way could only have been motivated primarily by an abiding genuine love for fellow human beings.

    Through the good and bad times later, there are few values I would then imbibe from him. Chief among these is the early realization that talent was not enough; character matters even more.

    Inspired by the force of his example, I learnt never to be shy to demand just compensation for my toil, but in no circumstance ever accept any pay for my conscience. I also learnt the nobility in never staying neutral during moral crises, especially when justice is involved. That, above all, what makes us family is sometimes not blood, but shared values.

    For easier recognition, the moral universe invariably evoked by Mr. Bello’s radical example could, for instance, be readily glimpsed from a zero tolerance for “jeun jeun”  or “keske” (PR) stories for politicians or political/business interests under his editorial scrutiny either as head of Group Politics desk or substantive editor of Sunday Concord and later National Concord.

    Like Joseph Putlizer, the media immortal, he believes the moral obligation of journalism to the society is to always speak for the voiceless, siding unmistakably and unreservedly with the weak and vulnerable.

    So, anyone who filed a report that reeked of even the faintest trace of that pecuniary odor by headline or content risked being summarily slapped with heavy fine of several barrels of “OPEC” (also code-named “Operation 1759”) on behalf of “the masses” of Nigeria, redeemable instantly to “The Secretariat” over which Mr. Bello himself presides as Life President, deputized by Comrade Kayode Komolafe, with yours sincerely as the dutiful “Secretary General”. (Well, for the benefit of the uninitiated, more clarity on this “OPEC” later.)

    Before our life-changing conversation of 1991, I must confess that I had caught the prevailing affliction of young impressionable Nigerians of the 80s and 90s to “check out”, acutely impatient with the moment.

    Arriving Lagos at age 18 in the late summer of 1991 from Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, I was literally bare, with no connection whatsoever. Then, Concord Press offered me a place to undertake the mandatory Industrial Training having obtained a National Diploma in Secretarial Administration. I only needed a toe-hold in Concord to unleash my energies.

    All along, amateur boxing had offered a vent to relieve a certain restless vigor I felt in my body. While writing expressed the poetry I heard from my soul.

    Now under the Concord climate, I chose not to be limited to the stenographic corner. Within two weeks of being assigned to Sunday Concord, I got a feature story published.

    Surprised that the type-written copy had no single error, Mr. Sunday Alabi (then the deputy editor) initially wondered if I had copied it from somewhere.

    His doubts however vanished the next week when I turned in another “clean copy”. He then mentioned my “exploits” to the editor, Mr. Dele Alake, who generously approved that my name be added to the “weekly transport claims” paid journalists as incentive.

    Naturally, I began to spread my wings to the daily title. So, in a good week, Comrade Lanre Arogundade could publish up to two or three of my writings as Features editor. While Mrs. Ewaen Osarenren and Mr. Taiwo Ogundipe also “accommodated” me in the “Midweek Concord” Section.

    So much that, one day, the daily editor, Mr. Nsikak Essien, invited me to his office and said something that almost made me cry: “Louis, well done. I note your hard work. You write so well. But I understand you don’t yet have a degree. Go get admission to the university and I’ll get Concord management to give you a scholarship.”

    While growing “fame” was in itself already intoxicating, all these bylines also translated to big money for me monthly once I filed claims…

    That indeed was the small world of little “fortune and fame” I was becoming rather content with until my path crossed Mr. Bello’s.

    The June 12 crisis of 1993 would disrupt Concord’s fortunes. When Mr. Bello was mandated by the management to pilot Daily News leased from Lateef Jakande (following the proscription of Concord by Babangida), Mr. Bello shortlisted me among the “Dream Team” boasting arguably the cream of Concord’s editorial army, even though I wasn’t yet a graduate.

    And when Concord was restored following the Abacha coup of November 17, 1993, he influenced the regularisation of my appointment as a correspondent on Concord’s Group Politics desk against company policy requiring a minimum of first degree/HND to enter the editorial cadre.

    Overall, it is impossible to work under him and not become infected by his critical spirit, this passion for social justice and contempt for power. His leadership style was charismatic. Designations were merely for administrative convenience as far as meeting editorial targets was concerned. Everyone proof-read for the other. We were always locked in intellectual jousts all the time, punctuated by raucous banters. That formidable faculty included Sam Omatseye, Victor Ifijeh, Jonas Agwu, Gboyega Amonboye, Abdulwarees Solanke and Idowu Bakare.

    Though the leader, Mr. Bello was never too proud to allow his juniors take a second look at his writings and criticise freely before the scripts were passed for production. That way, he imbued subordinates like us with self-confidence, the strength of conviction to hold our ground anywhere.

    That charismatic leadership would, however, come under severe test when MKO was clamped in jail and Concord encountered difficult times. The management relied on him to talk to a number of editorial staff like us to abandon better remunerations elsewhere (THISDAY) and return to Concord after the second proscription by Abacha that lasted a whopping eighteen months.

    He returned as the new editor of Sunday Concord.

    Even as salaries grew more irregular, our dedication to duty remained unflinching. For keeping the wheel of production running despite great odds, special tribute should however be accorded all those who ensured the river of “OPEC” continued to run deep in its dark viscosity. (Those still insistent on further divulging of this highly classified professional secret are hereby excused to proceed by themselves and yank off the scanty apron now left on the visage of the proverbial masquerade.) Of course, that brew communion or “Operation 1759” was sometimes first grounded with “solid minerals” (agriculturally termed “bitter collar”), supplied exclusively by Comrade KK.

    Conversely, it took the same ensuing “hard times” in Concord for me to feel the depth of Mr. Bello’s own personal generosity and loyalty. The period coincided with when I had enrolled for a degree programme at UNILAG. It was only natural that his accustomed fraternal airs as leader also helped foster family spirit in Sunday Concord. That birthed deep fellow-feeling.

    In my Year 1 at UNILAG, for instance, all my drama text-books came from Sam Omatseye’s library. When I had to rent an apartment close to the office for convenience, the rent was provided by the editor while a donation from Yomi Idowu partly helped furnish it. When the rents expired, Mr. Bello was also kind enough to fix me up in an apartment owned by his father-in-law, now late Pa Meschak Ibidapo.

    Schooling full-time and working full-time was quite grueling. Meaning I had to endure a choking schedule virtually round the clock, for six days in a week, for four years on end, without a car, thereby learning the true meaning of responsibility early in life.

    Even more challenging was the attack that came in the office at some point. Fresh from school one afternoon, I was summoned to the editor’s office.

    After waving me to one of the two seats before his huge mahogany desk that day, he took me into confidence about a new development.

    Two of my senior and far older colleagues had knifed me savagely before him. Apparently unaware of the bond between us, they went to complain that my concurrent full-time schooling was “clearly against company policy” and affecting my productivity.

    “Well,” he continued in a conspiratorially low tone, lest his secretary – a very lanky man with mischievous smile – in the ante-room could eavesdrop, “I just called you to tell you not to worry in case you received any query from them. I can tell what you’re presently going through is tough. But rest assured that as long as I remain editor here, your job is secure.”

    Without Mr. Bello’s protection at that critical moment, I probably would have been forced to withdraw midway from UNILAG. The other option would be to continue but quit the job providing financial support, however little and irregular.

    When my friend and “co-conspirator”, Segun Adeniyi, had to migrate to THISDAY early in 1999, Mr. Bello’s emotional pain of losing a good hand was palpable. His apprehension seemed worsened by the suspicion that Segun might have “sweet-talked” me to join him.

    To be doubly sure, the editor quickly recommended to the management to make a preemptive counter-offer. In a single day, I was promoted by three steps to take Segun’s place as Assistant Editor!

    The big break came barely six months later. Following Mr. Alake’s nomination as Information Commissioner by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in June 1999, Mr. Bello was named the new editor of National Concord. His erstwhile deputy in the Sunday title, Comrade KK, was promoted the editor. Now, a vacancy opened for deputy editor of Sunday Concord.

    When the management eventually met, I happened to be among the shortlist of five. The story was told that, while most members considered me hardworking and obviously the youngest, the issue of my coming in with OND came up and was going to count decisively against me.

    From what I heard, it was Mr. Bello who then informed the management that I had not just recently bagged a degree from UNILAG but also came out with Second Class Upper (2.1).

    That was it!

    No sooner had the management meeting ended than the news of my elevation hit the airwaves like a hurricane. As it filtered into my own ears, what echoed back were the words Mr. Bello had uttered eight years earlier about the necessity of higher education.

    In the final analysis, the big point should not be lost. When the golden opportunity came, possession of a degree meant I could seize the moment effectively.

    In the parlance of practising Christians, destiny-helper describes a God-send. Looking back to my own desperate hour of need, I can’t think of anyone more qualified to be so described today than Mr. Bello.

     

    • Mr. Odion is the Senior Technical Assistant on Media to the President. Being excerpts from a new book, “In Pursuit of the Public Purpose – Essays in Honour of Tunji Bello at 60”.

     

  • Heeding the national call again…

    NO longer speculation; this is to confirm that, God willing, I shall assume duties in the coming days as the Senior Technical Assistant (Media) to President Muhammadu Buhari.

    In media circles, they call me “Capacity” or “Unbreakable” because, I guess, I don’t fit into regular category. Truly, my clothiers, Goddy Mekwene (Vivid Imagination) and Benny Obaze (Bevista), often tease that nothing fits my “troublesome coconut head” but an “extra, extra large” cap.

    So, when the Vice President and widely acclaimed man of God, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, began to explain my portfolio as “technical” last week, I knew an entirely new classification has to be made again for the “Lagos boy” from “Odiguetue” (in Edo State) under circumstances that could only have been divinely dictated.

    To become Edo Information Commissioner in 2011, Comrade Adam Oshiomhole broke the rules. Comrade Osagie Obayuwana started off as the Attorney-General and Commissioner of Justice in 2008. His community is a stone’s throw from mine. So, with my first outing in July 2011, it was the first time in Nigeria’s political history that two state commissioners would come from the same ward (Ward 7 of Ovia North-East, Edo State).

    Following reports last week of my appointment as the Senior Technical Assistant on Media to the President, naturally, I was inundated with calls and messages from friends, associates and wellwishers. While those expressing goodwill are appreciated, I took particular note of the apprehension expressed by a good many others as to whether I had fallen for the temptation of accepting to trade the liberty of a writer for the comforting invitation to “come and eat” in Abuja.

    Well, such concerns are legitimate.

    On a jovial note, let me say that I am intimately close to my professional colleagues and forerunners at the Presidency – Femi Adesina, Garba Shehu, Laolu Akande and Senator Femi Ojudu – to attest that they have not been “chopping” anything well above what their illustrious careers in journalism spanning decades had not already afforded them long before accepting to serve President Buhari in 2015.

    But those who ever entertained such worries could not truly be counted among those who know me intimately or are aware of the testimonial from my first outing in Edo. Of course, during that four-year adventure, I gave the job my best shot. With bare hands, we confronted PDP’s ruthless godfathers all the way, never afraid of any fight, emboldened by nothing more than a steely conviction in the justness of our cause, narrowly escaping assassination on April 29, 2012, until Hurricane Buhari, propelled by people’s power, not only swept PDP from the ATM they had reduced Abuja into but also dislodged their now vegetating lords from the makeshift political “oxygen mask” on March 28, 2015.

    For me, it is another challenge to make a difference in the service of our fatherland. We cannot keep whining about decline in leadership from afar and yet be unwilling to show how things can be done differently. In a democratic environment, it is only by deploying the force of idea in the contestation of what option to pursue in policy conception, formulation and execution that we can hope to make sustainable change possible in our fatherland. We can disagree without being disagreeable. All it requires for the public space to be hijacked completely by “thieves” is for the self-anointed “angels” to stay away and remain indifferent.

    In my first outing in Edo, I had a clear idea of what my mission was as media professional with a social conscience: helping to manage information and strategic communication. So, the day after General Mohammadu Buhari was declared president-elect in April 2015, I had a surprise news for the then Edo governor. I told him that since we had succeeded in securing the homeland against the onslaught of the vicious PDP godfathers and that the progressive forces led by Buhari had routed PDP in Abuja, I believed my mission in Edo had been achieved, hence the need to move on.

    One’s position in the last four years of engaging the public space through the agency of columnism has been that of critical solidarity with PMB. While opinions will naturally be divided on the President on the basis of partisanship, there are virtues of his that are never in dispute. Even the fiercest critics cannot deny his personal integrity, humility, forebearance, genuine compassion for the poor and the vulnerable, frugal taste, contempt for primitive acquisition and patriotism.

    These are values I share also.

    We have seen these lofty qualities on display at the many twists and turns of the Buhari trajectory in the last four decades across the national firmament. As we learnt from history, to gain public acceptance in 1983, the soldiers of fortune had to name Buhari head of the coup that buried the second republic. Later, the good soldier from Daura would not bend his high principle of incorruptibility. Till the end, he refused to compromise his values in exchange for the security of office, and was more than willing to let go the summer night they finally came for him.

    Through PMB’s force of personal example in the past four years, we have seen money increasingly losing its power in political contest. That is not to say perfection has been attained. Let it be recognized that it is not everything that grows in the orchard that was planted by the diligent gardener; weeds are inevitable.

    As a testimony, not a few media managers will agree that the 2019 presidential election was the cheapest in the nation’s history. Just one indicator: media advertising was generally very low. PMB’s parsimony meant a breather too for the opposition as no one came under pressure to auction their property to match the financial firepower of the ruling party, unlike in the past when anyone with access to CBN would simply outmuscle others with Naira. In most places, APC had to rely on Buhari’s charisma to sell.

    With such prudence, the leader invariably inspires a culture that ensures the nation’s scarce resources are utilized only for things that benefit the people more.

    Unlike what happened in 2014/2015, Buhari would not have approved the $2.1b meant to buy arms to fight Boko Haram be shared like candy to the ruling party’s fat cats and obese rats, thus not only denying our long-suffering troops a fighting chance against the worse adversary the nation has ever known, but also endangering the very basis of our national existence.

    Again, one cannot have any moral difficulty serving Professor Osinbajo. Through deeds more than words, he has continued to demonstrate what is possible when high integrity is matched with matchless intellect in the pursuit of common good for the society.

    The scripture forever teaches us that the people rejoice when the righteous are in authority. For a nation whose values had been debased over the years by a succession of political pimps, where conmen have been misnamed as heroes, cant canonized as substance, where people seem too eager to spend what they don’t earn, this very loyal Vice President offers some hope that the paradise lost can indeed still be regained and national pride restored.

    Of course, there is no way I can tell the story of my first transition from the newsroom to public office without acknowledging Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. He, it was, that prevailed on me in 2011 to take up the offer from Edo, counseling that, if nothing at all, it would offer me an experience I could never learn in the university about not just realpolitik but also feel the true pulse of the national condition, thus equipping me to write better in future.

    There are great lessons to be learnt from Jagaban as well. The story of the Tinubu evolution is undoubtedly a profile in consistency and uncommon courage in the defence of a conviction. A true test of a man’s character is taken not in the time of convenience, but by the choices he makes under great temptations in adversity.

    When easy compromise was profitable and switching political camp was most glamorous, Tinubu preferred to endure the loneliness of opposition and, with uncommon equanimity, bore the vicious onslaught of rampaging PDP for more than a decade as a key opposition leader.

    While latter-day revisionists are quick to attack him more out of envy of the influence he presently wields in the polity, only a few are charitable enough to also acknowledge his self-sacrifice in the popular struggle for democracy against military despotism in the 90s.

    Without any strong hope of surviving Abacha’s ubiquitous hitmen even while on exile abroad, much less the faintest chance of ever returning home to vie for Lagos governorship in 1999, Asiwaju would give up all his life savings to bankroll NADECO. As Colonel Tony Nyiam (rtd) recently revealed, at some point, Tinubu started selling his property and putting the proceeds at the disposal of the struggle to restore democracy in Nigeria, while several others were seeking easy accommodation with Abacha at home to either secure their next meal ticket or for continued political relevance.

    So, as I heed the call to serve at the national level, I am conscious of the burden of moral responsibility. With my eternal hero, Professor Wole Soyinka – from whose transcendental example we learn the values of integrity, justice, honour, courage and patriotism – already giving me his fatherly blessings, I proceed without fear. I didn’t accept the Edo offer in July 2011 without consulting him. His great counsel had echoed in my ears throughout the days I spent in Benin.

    Back in my native Edo, the great Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, forever reminds us that, being products of an illustrious DNA, we have no choice but be men and women of character and courage. Nor can I afford to disappoint my friend and big brother, the “Wake and See” governor of Edo State, Godwin Noghehase Obaseki.

    I already assure my three “big daddies” in Lagos and Akure – Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, Sir Joseph Arumemi-Ikhide and Pa Seinde Arogbofa; my spiritual mentor – Pastor Paul Adefarasin of House on the Rock; and God-sent “egbons” – Tunji Bello, Dele Alake, Professor Pat Utomi, Ex-Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo, Jimoh Ibrahim, CFR, Senator Musa Adede and Oseni Elamah that I shall not depart from the values of integrity and patriotism they taught me.

    Let me conclude by saying that I cherish the fraternity this forum fostered between readers and my humble self in the last four years. As I take up the gospel of the “Next Agenda” in the coming days, our conversation will continue, in fact more frequently.

    God Bless you all.

     

  • A Butcher’s judgement …… typically British

    A POOR reading of the verdict by the London court slapping a historic penalty of $9b on Nigeria last Friday is viewing it as an affirmation of the law of contract. No, it is not. Rather, it is the orchestration of international politics and neo-colonial power-play at their vilest.

    Indeed, let no one be deceived that objectivity is assured in the interpretation of international law by even angels, especially when the interests of multinationals are in dispute concurrently across jurisdictions. In such circumstance, pure nationalistic instinct is likely to trump fidelity to reason or the universal principle of fairplay.

    For ages, the doctrine of sovereign immunity was, for instance, often invoked by powerful nations of the West to commit blue murder anywhere across the universe. But good students of history will recall that attempt later in the 70s by newly independent African nations to draw on the same principle ended ghastly. In the international court, it now became fairly convenient to invert Lord Denning’s new theory of “market place” to hand Nigeria the short end of the stick in the landmark case of Swiss-owned Trendtex versus Central Bank of Nigeria.

    A similar – if not identical – conflict is what is being stoked invariably by P&ID vs Nigeria. In choosing not to view things from the prism of the U.S. court (which can justifiably be seen as unencumbered by any possible nationalist bias), there is, therefore, a compelling reason to see the London court’s Justice Christopher Butcher as bending the arch of justice to favour a home company, with a covetous eye on Nigeria’s substantial assets domiciled within the U.K.

    Given the severity of the penalty awarded, it was as if Justice Butcher opted to literally act out his fearsome name by dealing savage knife blows on Nigeria’s jugular.

    What then appears ludicrous back at home has been the attempt by some cynical elements to scrounge some mileage from this sad development for their petty partisan politics. Only genuine patriots would have seen the development first as more of a huge slap on the nation by foreign interests, even if our leadership failing to an extent would still be admitted.

    Note, the local airwaves had barely crackled by midday with the highlight of the London judgement when the social media was drowned with the hysteria of PDP agents against President Muhammadu Buhari as the sole culprit. They claimed the fine resulted essentially from his malicious discontinuation of another of Jonathan’s visionary projects.

    But when more media insights began to pour in, that spin had to be modified ingeniously. The following day, Jonathan’s salespeople decided to sweep the entire blame to the gravesides of both ex-President Umar Yar’Adua and Rilwan Lukman now incapable of defending themselves.

    Now, let us concede that Jonathan was completely locked out of Aso Rock while the sneaky contract was being facilitated by “the cabal” as the then ailing president was gasping for oxygen and Lukman (the oil minister) seemed too self-absolved in hauteur to submit the details of the contract agreement to the scrutiny of Michael Aondoakaa commonly regarded then as essentially a comical Attorney General.

    But nothing can absolve Jonathan of liability for the non-consummation of the contract beginning from February 2010 as acting President and three months later as the substantive following Yar’Adua’s demise. P&ID began to complain more than a year later. By the time the company eventually resorted to arbitration in 2012, Jonathan’s much beloved Diezani Allison-Madukwe had of course become entrenched as almighty oil empress.

    From what we now know, she obviously was too preoccupied with either signing Nigeria’s patrimony away to her younger “admirers” like now fugitive Kola Aluko in sweetheart oil-swap deals or immersing herself in the sheer effulgence of her mammoth jewelry collection to have mustered the presence of mind to grasp the contract idea, much less contemplate what benefits might accrue therefrom to the nation.

    So, it bears restating that national interest was least served by those who committed Nigeria into such contract with improbable terms to begin with. That rape of Nigeria was not helped by Jonathan’s subsequent sloppiness. Today’s sorry outcome is traceable to yesterday’s tardiness.

    But by far more atrocious is the taste of British jurisprudence the nation was offered brusquely by the London court last Friday. While the dereliction of Nigerian officials is regrettable, nothing can however explain the juridical logic summoned by Justice Butcher to enter a judgment that negates morality and mocks all the principles of natural justice.

    Note, to corner this windfall, nothing in the convoluted narration made in British and American courts in the last seven years suggested that P&ID engaged in much toil between 2010 and 2012 other than its officials carrying briefcases around Abuja and meeting with Nigerian officials. It never as much as cracked any soil in Calabar to erect the envisaged gas processing plant (as expressly stated in the contract pact), to which Nigeria was expected to lay hundreds of kilometre of pipes.

    To generations of blacks still stuck today with the trauma inflicted by the colonial disruption of African civilizations, Justice Butcher’s latest travesty must be a sad reminder of the culture of plunder and predation for which imperial Britain was quite exceptional even among fellow European exploiters in history.

    Were the verdict to be enforced to the letter, it should qualify as the single most punitively prohibitive fine ever imposed in history on a sovereign nation relative to her fiscal strength. The $9b sanction represents a whopping twenty percent the nation’s present foreign reserve and a third of the current national budget.

    At the arbitration court in London in 2012, P&ID began by filing claims of $40m expenses and proceeded to add “lost earnings” in the twenty-year tenure of the agreement based on impossible operation benchmarks of more than ninety percent capacity utilization and a patently unrealistic expectation that oil never fell below $100 per barrel.

    As if that was not already shylock enough, the judge opted to play Father Xmas by granting the petitioner’s additional prayer that compound interest be paid on the fine imposed on Nigeria. That explains how P&ID’s preliminary claim of $40m in 2012 mushroomed exponentially to the $9b awarded last week.

    No sane person will accept such sham without a fight in the first place. Buhari could, therefore, be said to have acted most patriotically by refusing the initial hefty $800m payout proposed by a departing Jonathan in May 2015. In any case, with Nigeria technically insolvent by the time PMB was taking over having lapsed into a recession described as the worst in a generation, there practically was no way Nigeria could have paid, assuming the new administration was even willing.

    Expectedly, the government soon mounted a vigorous counter-attack by filing appeal in the U.K and the U.S. against the claimant. Whereas the U.S. upheld Nigeria’s objection to the enforcement of the claim by pleading sovereignty, the British court chose to dismiss the plea as “frivolous”.

    What makes the Butcher’s verdict all the more curious is a subsequent media expose suggesting a determined conspiracy to raid Nigeria’s exchequer. Ahead of the judgment, a whopping twenty-five percent stake of P&ID was snapped up in a strange deal by a hedge fund manager known as VR Capital Group in March. Since the Friday judgment, the sidetalk in global financial circles is that the hedge fund manager had all along been pulling levers of influence in the U.K. and the U.S. to make Nigeria either settle or be willing to forfeit her assets. So, it would then seem the vultures had long been hovering overhead as the nation began to wallow in the British dock.

    Now the big question: did VR Capital Group read Justice Butcher’s mind ahead? Or, could his judgment be mere coincidence?

    Developments like this will only reinforce long-held suspicion that the British jurisprudence is half of the times tainted and can, therefore, not be trusted to avail us justice on own accord without us standing up to the system, nor can its integrity be vouched for to protect our interest behind our back.

    For instance, a survey conducted sometime ago by an anti-corruption group, Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, came with the damning report that one in five people using the courts in the U.K. said they or a household member paid a bribe for favourable outcome, even as one quarter of people in the country believe the courts and judiciary are corrupt. But the supreme irony is that British leaders or officials are often the first to label us as the most dubious or “fantastically corrupt”.

    A decade ago, I had a rather funny encounter with a British “expert”. I had been invited by a Nigerian-born promoter of a start-up to sit in during a presentation by the visiting consultant. Because the service concern would be prospecting in the international market beginning with Europe, it was necessary that an high-profile office be opened in London. So, the guy’s brief was to design an international marketing roadmap.

    To me, the visiting specialist had sounded authoritatively smooth with his power-point presentation with a laptop inside the dimly-lit penthouse office until he veered into the media aspect. Not knowing my media background, his proposal here was nothing short of a crafty splitting of what ordinarily should be a single activity into assorted briefs for the sole purpose of escalating the costs to justify about a million British Pounds he was demanding as fee for the London outing.

    Once the presentation was over and I was invited to comment, I took out a hammer, went straight to the media section and mercilessly knocked down the castle of fraud our friend had meticulously erected.

    Apparently now seeing things differently, our host did the smartest thing by aborting the signing off on the deal.

    Needless to say that the trio didn’t as much as utter a word to me while we flew back in a private jet to Lagos that day, nor offered me a handshake while departing at the local airport.

    Till date, what I still cannot understand is how they expected me to betray a man, my own countryman, so trusting to have invited me to join the session in the first place. And the lesson I learnt is never to assume a white guy will not try to fleece me given the opportunity even while customarily affecting superior airs.

    Reacting to the London judgement, the Nigerian government has pledged to not only appeal but also vigorously defend national interest to any length possible. It is the most sensible thing to do.

  • The return of Krest and Tuketuke

    AFTER a rather long spell, it is time to pause our weekly diagnosis of the Nigerian condition and examine a raft of treacherous words or phrases that has since infiltrated national conversation whose ubiquity or frequency is likely to leave the casual readers or the uninitiated utterly befuddled.

    The whole idea is to provide contexts and contents to such mutants.

    Krest: Its onomatopoeic sibling is “crest” which denotes a crown or insignia or pedestal. The stock of this popular beverage dramatically changed in June after being implicated in a rape claim by Mrs Busola Dakolo against COZA’s pastor, Biodun Fatoyinbo.

    From time immemorial, folks were inclined to assume the brew was harmless, far from carcinogenic, being certified clinically as “non-alcoholic”. But not after reading Mrs. Dakolo’s jeremiad that it was improvised as the obliterating chemical applied specifically by the flamboyant preacher almost immediately after allegedly taking her virginity at age 16 that unforgettable dawn.

    In her rather graphic recall of the encounter, the “Gucci Pastor” hurriedly fetched a bottle of Krest from his car, uncorked it and reportedly force-fed her with a considerable measure of its content. Bearing in mind its distinctive bitter lemon taste, folks didn’t need any further clue to conclude, with a knowing nod, on what could have been the sole aim: wipe the faintest fingerprint that might reveal the crime as well as foreclose possible foetal germination of any kind.

    Since Dokolo’s story broke, market intelligence would appear to be pointing at an exponential rise in the demand for Krest. What no analyst can confirm with certainty, however, is whether any correlation exists between the rising consumption and the discovery of the other post “recreational use” the drink can be put. It is perhaps for this reason that some public-spirited individuals are already proposing whether it might not be conducive to public health at this point for relevant agencies like NAFDAC to issue an official statment modifying the existing classification of the drink and adding a clause expressly soliciting “parental discretion/supervision” in the procurement and consumption of the drink henceforth, particularly for females of pubescent age.

    The urgency for such extraordinary official intervention seems, in fact, underscored by grave apprehension already being expressed in many quarters following reports that the “Gucci Pastor” had staged a triumphant return to the pulpit he was forced to evacuate a month ago by public outrage, without any evidence of undergoing any prosecution nor serving any penance over the alleged transgression.

    Tekno: Techno is universally taken as the shorthand for technology. In his heyday, Fela, the inimitable Afro Beat exponent, made perhaps the most inventive attempt to track the etymology of “technology” to Yoruba roots with a syllabic breakdown to “te-ki-ina-lo-ji” (activating energy through a device/button).

    But budding hip-hop singer, Augustine Kelechi, has brought a new twist with his indiscretion to embark on a street dance with half-clad vizens on Lagos highways few days ago. What prompted public outrage was a viral video of the show of shame recorded by a motorist and uploaded onto the social media.

    Adopting the stage monicker “Tekno”, the twenty-something-year-old first captured public imagination four years ago with the song “Baby Kpalanga”. In a strong-worded statement at the weekend, Bolaji Sanusi, the Managing Director of Lagos open advertising agency (LASAA) announced a probe, threatening to prosecute those involved in the indecent show once a prima facie case could be established.

    According to Section 136 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State (2015), any person found committing any act of gross gross indecency with another person in public shall be liable to a three-year jail term. Meanwhile, while youthful Kelechi will need more than the hypnotic lyrics of “Baba Kpalanga” in the days ahead to win back the adulation of an outraged public, it is clear the word “Techno” also now describes a sophomoric stupidity to engage in naked dance in the public.

    Proclamation: It used to be a workaday term in the executive-legislature interface in the last twenty years of uninterrupted democracy until June when it assumed a new meaning in Edo State, disguised as a struggle to determine what constitutes the appropriate protocols of legislative quorum. But, in real terms, it is a facade for a seething cold war between the political mentor (shhhh, it’s shameful to be called “godfather” now!) and the mentee who seem to have been careless enough to allow busybodies infiltrate their ranks. And the feud has, sadly, snowballed into a deadly power-game, name-calling and washing of family’s sordid undergarments in the market square.

    The phrase, in part, describes illicit trafficking in human commodity in the parliamentary chamber whereby a faction of a supposedly ruling party procures members-elect, and carts them off to be ware-housed in a distant safe haven with a view to easing regime change seamlessly against the presiding faction, in the likely event that push eventually comes to shove.

    And it further captures when both the Gomina (Yoruba for Governor) and his estranged mentor choose to live in acute denial and rather resort to speaking in parables. Taking poetic liberty, one of them would, for instance, track the genesis of the kerfuffle to an attempt by the other to wolf down both the communal yam and the seedling, in what reminds us of the grosteque architecture of Tuketuke politics of old.

    Of course, that is a coded reference to the now familiar – even hilarious – allegory of the hyperactive groom seeking to “borrow from tomorrow” popularized by my brother and friend, Segun Adeniyi. In-laws had been forced by repeated distress calls from the bride to regroup at the new couple’s matrimonial home barely two weeks after wedding, seeking to settle what was beginning to look like a big puzzle.

    To their relief, as the story goes, they soon found that it was not as if the young wife was being starved of food, attention or money.

    It took the deployment of sagely tact by the mediators to finally unravel the mystery. They decided to meet the wife in camera. Then, she opened up: the groom was too excessive in his conjugal demands, almost round the clock, resulting in her acute exhaustion.

    When confronted, the young man admitted right away, defending that it was all borne out of obsessive love and a personal resolution never to commit adultery.

    Long story short, the in-laws eventually departed before nightfall on a happy note, having heard both parties solemnly agreeing to a pact of mutually acceptable frequency of their conjugal transactions henceforth.

    But by the afternoon of the following day, the still bullish groom had already drawn down the “quota” for the opening day. So, when he again cozied up to the wife at the first sign of dusk, she naturally flared up: “But you’ve taken all the allocation for today!”

    Ever so forthright, the groom admitted, “Yes, I know”, and added the clincher, “May I borrow from tomorrow’s then.”

    To the Gomina, those raiding the communal barn for both the yam and the seedling are like the randy groom wishing to “borrow from tomorrow”. That is, taking from what is meant for the unborn generations.

    For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Edo lingo, Tuketuke is a generic phrase for a category of vehicular apparitions in a halo of smoke limping on the highways – a menace to both commuters and the community. In political terms, it refers to a proclivity to parlay power to prey on the people, “borrow from tomorrow”, in the most primitive manner that annuls all guarantees of human dignity.

    So, “proclamation” is also euphemistic of “Tuketuke” politics rebranded with some of the partisans, obviously chaffing under the yoke of disrupted “stomach infrastructure” and the rupture of juice pipelines, now preferring to dance naked and barefoot at the communal square, not ashamed to flaunt necklaces made of glutton’s teeth.

    AMCON: When next you hear the name mentioned, you need to pay more attention to the inflection in the second syllable. If among financial aficionados, what you might likely hear is, “I’m conned”. A jovial, even cynical, derogation of AMCON. So, hard as the activist streak Muiz Banire, SAN, the new chair of the AMCON board, might be bringing to the table, getting the “top 20” said to be owing a whopping 67 percent of the N5 trillion owed AMCON to comply, will not be easy at all.

    Among the heavy debtors are two former governors and a sitting senator.

    Of course, that some individuals could be audacious enough to obtain hefty loans and now refuse to pay speaks directly to the ingrained culture of impunity pervading the land.

    But anyone with inside knowledge of the nation’s debt industry in the past one and a half decades will attest that there are other buccaneers yet to be captured in the much touted shame list. The patriotic intention of AMCON as a debt management agency floated at the height of the global credit crunch of 2008/2009 was virtually undermined from the outset. How? The prerogative for determining the size of debt owed was left entirely to the usurers, not the borrowers. Given the permissiveness of that season, the common belief is that figures submitted to AMCON for bailout were mostly sexed up by bank executives looking for cheap cemetery to bury liabilities incurred in unrelated transactions, without the debtors having the chance to verify.

    So, while the bank honchos have since sanitized as well as deodorized the books and thereafter moved on to declare the usual super-normal profits to their shareholders, it is the debtors and AMCON sharks now locked in shouting match over the exact amount owed.

    Hence, the sneer “I’m conned” whenever the N5 trillion debt is mentioned these days. Of course, the joke is at the expense of Nigerian taxpayers whose commonwealth is thus trapped.

     

  • Python in the parliament

    A serpent will ordinarily evoke anxiety. Fear is added if that nocturnal creature were found slithering up from the depth of a communal well. To the superstitious in these parts, such spectacle can only be indicative that the surrounding community had either come under a plague or arrived at its threshold.

    So, when reports came last week that the “hallowed chamber” of Ondo State House of Assembly had suddenly come under the occupation of a python just before the commencement of a plenary, public responce was understandably hysteria.

    A photograph of the invader purportedly taken live and splashed in the chilling account on the social media, is the stuff only found in a magic-realist fable, with a section of the giant snake shown suspended from the broken ceiling.

    Not even CNN, the global media giant, could resist the temptation to report the phantasmagorical development on its online platform.

    After reading such report, anyone could, therefore, be pardoned if they succumbed to sheer imagination by visualizing a sprawling gallery strewn with discarded gavel, forgotten shoes and scattered sheets after the about two dozens frightened lawmakers had managed to scramble through the emergency exits to safety on that dark day.

    Of course, it would be pointless to ask if, faced with possible death from snake-bite, anyone had even remembered to whisk the much prized mace along this time.

    More, let it be noted that, with the assembly forced to adjoin indefinitely in such distress and utter disorientation just days after a top state functionary admitted that some Fulani herdsmen were officially engaged at some point as bush navigators, we were inadvertently denied perhaps a golden chance to ascertain if overwhelming public opinion across Ondo’s eighteen councils would not be enough to persuade the college of twenty-six lawmakers to pass a motion on that fateful day compelling Governor Rotimi Akeredolu (a.k.a. Aketi) to, as a matter of urgent public emergency, explain whether cells of Miyetti vigilante sighted on some highways of the Sunshine state, brandishing dane guns and blunt daggers, were now to be taken as the pilot scheme of the state police of which advocacy he would appear to have become so implacably fastidious lately.

    But 48 hours later, we would hear a starkly different story from Aketi, whose other observable passion is Indian hemp farming, in what sounded like a calculated attempt to disown his own share of the blame.

    During a “fact-finding” visit to the assembly complex, it was a self-righteous Akeredolu we saw seeking to weave a conspiracy theory by arguing that 1) the snake story was entirely fabricated; 2) the cited dilapidation should be blamed on the leadership of the legislature for poor housekeeping, and 3) his tenancy in power for less than three years should not be held accountable for the cumulative pillage the termites had inflicted on the chamber’s roof for donkey years.

    Without any attempt at concealment, Aketi’s tone reeked of a strange magisterial finality of the prosecutor-juror; far from the open-mindedness expected of a fact-finder, let alone the objective detachment of a senior lawyer under the circumstance.

    But, at best, whatever view the governor expressed could only be entertained as an opinion; it cannot be entered as the truth.

    By taking liberty to also insinuate blackmail, Aketi only left one with the impression that someone wanted to stampede him into awarding a sweetheart contract.

    Curiously, before the phalanx of Government House television cameras that day, Speaker Bamidele Oloyelogun, who had adopted the language of anger, desperation and destitution on the day of the incident, began to em, em, em modify his words to a worship of Aketi within earshot.

    Obviously intimidated by the governor’s presence, Mr. Speaker quickly conscripted the media as the fall guy. As if a short gun was put to his temple, he was now accusing the media of “blowing things up”. To be sure, the Chairman of the house committee on information was quite unambiguous in his recall of what transpired: “When we were about to enter into plenary, a big snake just ran out of the chamber which disrupted our sitting and we had to hurriedly leave the chamber.”

    Taken together, maybe the issue is whether the species sighted was actually as gargantuan as that depicted in the social media; but certainly not that the story was entirely made up.

    Indeed, in the age of social media with little or no fidelity to truth, there is no doubt that lies are made to appear more seductive these days while the few facts often get mangled beyond recognition. While it should be admitted that a controversy of this nature invariably underscores the absence of rigour of true journalism thus far, at least one indubitable fact can be distilled from the muddle — the space presently designated as “hallowed chamber” in Akure is clearly now a monument to dilapidation and shame. Thank God, no attempt was made to paper over the holes in the ceiling, or deny the ravages of the termites over the years.

    In seeking to push the patently escapist argument of “media mischief” on this matter, both Aketi and the Speaker could, therefore, not be said to be familiar with the cautionary wit of immortal Khalil Gibran that an exaggeration is only a truth that had lost its temper. For, regardless of the fierce official arguments to the contrary, the truth surely lies between Aketi’s self-righteousness and the Speaker’s half somersault on the one hand, and the media reports on the other.

    It is quite disturbing that none among today’s political “prodigal children” in Ondo appears to feel ashamed that an edifice their ancestors labored hard to build over forty years ago and officially designated on February 3, 1979 as the “hallowed chamber” of the old Ondo State (from which Ekiti was excised in 1996) for the sole purpose of fashioning laws to foster the happiness and prosperity of the people has been allowed to wither.

    Again, while in hot pursuit of a scape-goat, it did not seem to occur to the governor and the speaker that that very squalid chamber accounts for a critical section of the public space for which not less than a whopping N2 trillion has been appropriated in the last twenty years of uninterrrupted democracy, to maintain either under capital or recurrent subheading. In 2019, for instance, Ondo’s budget is N190b, while that of 2018 was N180b.

    Like his three predecessors, Aketi would not allow any chance slip without trumpeting his own idea of “total transformation” of the state from the “decay inherited”. But if an institution as critical as the assembly chamber — the very sanctuary of lawmakers themselves — could suffer such neglect, one can then imagine the plight of the lesser sectors.

    Another point: this incident surely reinforces the old argument for fiscal autonomy for both the legislature and the judiciary. Apart from Lagos, legislative and judiciary arms in most of the states are still at the mercy of the executive arm for funding. It explains the buck-passing we saw between Aketi and the speaker. The former was quick to defend that the chamber could have been better maintained from the funds released to the legislative arm. While the speaker, in turn, contended that adequate allowance was made consistently for a complete overhaul of the property in previous budgets, but the fund was never released.

    Truth be told, the speaker is correct. It is only in Lagos that the speaker or chief judge would not have to constantly go cap in hand to the governor’s to literally beg for the release of budgetary provisions or funds to meet the challenges of their respective offices. That leaves room for a governor harboring some grudge against the other institutions of democracy to literally sit tight on the funds, teeth-clenched to boot.

    Come to think of it, Ondo ordinarily prides itself on the mantra of “Sunshine State”. On the website of its Budget Ministry, the following lofty words are proclaimed as the corporate vision: “To make Ondo State the best administered state in Nigeria and the cynosure of all eyes of which all its citizens shall be proud; where equity, justice and fairness shall be the driving forces of government action.”

    But for the truly proud citizens of the province noted for perhaps the tallest cocoa pyramid in the South-west, utter shame is what is ultimately spelt by even the mere suggestion of a snake ever peeping from the assembly’s dingy rafter, much less the certainty of a drooping ceiling, and the probability that the presiding speaker missed death providentially by not being on seat when finally a section of the roof collapsed right on his desk under the weight of treacherous termites.

    That should be the takeaway from the drama at the Ondo assembly last week.

  • Re: Genocidal herders and the siege to Odualand

    I totally agree with your thesis and conclusion that the menace of rogue herders poses an existential threat not only to the South-West but the country as a whole, hence the urgent need for the government to see this as a big challenge to the corporate existence of the Nigerian nation.

    Like you rightly observed, the rogue herders should be isolated from the good Fulani who have always lived peacefully with their Yoruba neighbors in the local communities. The bad eggs are coming from outside our shores and appear to be taking advantage of our porous borders to enter the country with dangerous weapons. They are looking for other people’s land to take over.

    It is important that security agencies alongside the local vigilante groups take a proactive step before the people are forced to resort to self-help.

    From the many accounts of victims who survived their ordeal at the hands of these bandits, the language they speak is foreign, which then confirms that they are illegal aliens.

    These are the rogues that should be isolated and dealt with by our security agencies. They should stop repaying our natural hospitality in the spirit of ECOWAS to make life miserable for our people.

    I hail from Port Harcourt but work presently in Ilesa in Osun State and due to the nature of my work, I commute from Ilesa town and Akure, the capital of Ondo State, frequently. I have lived in Ilesa for upward of seven years now and in all those years, I have never experienced the sort of apprehension people now generally feel about using either the Akure-Ilesa expressway or the Osogbo-Ibadan highway.

    I think the governors of the South-West owe it to their people to shun political correctness and come up with drastic measures to stamp out this menace and remove fear that is now growing.

    As the Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces, I believe President Mohammadu Buhari has the capacity and experience to tackle this issue. I plead with him in the name of God to do the needful and urgently.

    • Samson Briggs,

    Ilesa, Osun State.

    I thought that your elevated position as a leading Nigerian columnist and former commissioner should help in healing our country. When you valorize OPC denizens – “Left to OPC, it is doubtful if the combined forces of these evil herders can survive a day or two of pitched battle across the Yoruba forest”, you forget that things aren’t often as simple as they might appear. These “vermins” as you described the Fulbe herdsmen, is a throwback to Nazi Germany and Rwanda; and we know what happened to those so described, as you did the herders in your piece. They were massively slaughtere! Surely, that can’t be your own wish too for the Fulbe herdsmen. Recent arrests in “Odualand” showed other than “genocidal herdsmen” as the only perpetrators of crime! The factors are too complex and distinguished columnists like you should rise beyond the OPC level of chauvinism to assist understanding.

    • Anonymous,

    Abuja.

    This is the question/conundrum: these killers are NOT challenging the “security” or authority of the State and the State is also NOT challenging the activities of these marauders.

    The State subsumes our security under its own impetus/architecture of which the people play no part—we CANNOT expect an armed force that alienates the peoples, that kills “ordinary” people on a whim, that regards “ordinary” people as “bloody civilians”, whose renegades are NEVER punished for their infractions, whose living conditions are also nothing to write home about, we cannot expect this “security” architecture to attend to our security.

    This means, the State is, ab initio, BIASED in favor of these killers because the State itself is an organized terror machine.

    Even if it is agreed that Boko Haram is challenging the authority/security of the State, the State is still BIASED in favor of Boko Haram hence the emergence of IDPs whose continuity shows the level of BH’s “success” and which is possible only because of the state is “alienated” from the People.

    So, the question is WHY?

    The existential threat facing ALL of Nigeria rests on this alienation of the people making up Nigeria from the Nigerian State architecture. There is no need for any “security summit” in a state designed for the protection and security of her peoples as this will be a GIVEN. For example, an “automatic” security response would have been provided in an Autonomous Oodualand, with no need for any “security summit” – even if diplomatic tactics with our “neighbors” in the north would also be deployed.

    That is why all sorts of excuses were provided by the central government in the beginning – and now confounded by deliberate strengthening of the herdsmen by the same Central government under a narrative that says the problems can be resolved by addressing economic issues in the north, for example, almajirism, which is NOT a question of underdevelopment but a CULTURAL issue which should be tackled as such; after all, Yoruba Muslims don’t encourage or don’t even engage in such a practice; pandering to herdsmen by the central government through various “initiatives” etc.

    Solve the foundation of the State and the herdsmen’s atrocities will be history.•

    • Pathfinder International

    To say the government of the day is not complicit by their neither-here-nor-there responce to the activities of these herders is an understatement. At the height of the herdsmen murderous escapades in the Middle Belt region, the government’s body language was one of derision, making all sorts of excuses for the herdsmen.

    At a time a presidential spokesperson gave the morbid advice to victims of the atrocities of the herdsmen to either give up their land or die defending it. It is such tacit pampering that has emboldened the terrorists to up their game and move into the forests of the Southern region.

    Our major problem as a country is that we love to live in denial, even when death is starring us in the face.

    When you fail to properly diagnose a disease, it will be difficult to administer the right drugs. We were quick to label the non-violence activities of the IPOB as terrorism and went ahead to proscribe them. But the Federal Government is reluctant to properly profile the murderous activities of the assault-rifle-wielding herdsmen of now. If you do not agree you have a disease you certainly cannot submit yourself for treatment. That is the point we have unfortunately found ourselves.

    No amount of meetings and discourse will stem the violent activities of these terror squad without a firm deterrent plan. We may end buying some time and allow the cancer to fester. As long as we do not do away with the nomadic system of cattle breeding, we will still be open to having all violent criminal elements taking up all our ungoverned spaces as herders to continue to visit death, rape and plundering upon us.

    • Johnnie Eze

    Enough of this double-faced approach by South-west leaders, especially since former Gov Fayose of Ekiti State left office. The South-west legislatures should pass a law, like their Benue State counterpart, prohibiting open grazing in their respective states.

    • Ambrose Akor

    The silence of the FG is most disheartening as these “herdsmen” keep destroying farms in the most productive agricultural areas of Nigeria; an action tantamount to levying war on Nigeria!

    • Remi

    Both the verbal and body language of the government show beyond doubt a bias or sympathy for the  criminal herders, be they foreigners or locals. Or why would the Nigerian Army refuse to engage invaders or drive them out of the lands being occupied, especially in the Middle Belt? It is as if the invaders came on INVITATION.

    • Yemi Ogunsola

     

    Corrigendum

    In last week’s article entitled “Osoba’s cold wars and last laugh”, Prince Julius Adelusi Adeluyi (Chairman of Juli Pharmacy) was mistyped “Akinlusi Akinluyi”. The typo is regretted.

     

  • Osoba’s cold wars and last laugh

    Growing up, he flirted with boxing. We see a glimpse of that aspiration in the blurry picture of a puny ten-year-old raising a guard in over-sized gloves on page 176 of the book.

    But if any portrait is framed by the chronology of the many storms weathered, hurdles surmounted, adversities endured and foes conquered in Chief Olusegun Osoba’s new autobiography, it is undoubtedly that of a stellar marathoner whose secret is an uncommon fortitude.

    If forbearance exalted him in almost six-decades-long career in journalism and politics, even more remarkable is the temperance summoned in the rendition of the trials and triumphs by the master story-teller. In reliving the hard-earned victories, nowhere in “Battlelines – Adventures in Journalism and Politics” are we assailed by the slightest hint of gloating or triumphalism.

    Nowhere is this more evident than in the recall of the emotionally bruising and psychologically devastating encounters with the troika of OBJ, OGD and Amosun in the combustible politics of his native Ogun State in the last two decades.

    For the Akinrogun of Egbaland, there is surely more to a name. With “Olusegun” translating roughly as “the conqueror”, there can be no better evidence of a predestination to prevail over adversaries. That steely durability could only have resulted from a fortitude steeped in deep spiritualism cultivated early in life as a young boy who not only held on to the coattails of his evangelist uncle (Joseph Ayo Babalola) constantly on apostolic crusades, but also took to heart lessons from the sermons delivered. In literary theory, “imaginative omission” is making a far more significant statement by leaving unsaid words otherwise ironically the most expected.

    To be precise, one of the enduring tales from the contemporary political folklore in Ogun is how a trusting Osoba fell cheaply for OBJ’s treachery and duplicity on the day of governorship polls of 2003. The story is told that while PDP infantrymen were busy laying siege to polling stations across Ogun as well as other five states in the South-west to enforce a forceful displacement of Alliance for Democracy (AD) by the ruling party in Abuja, foxy OBJ personally opted to adapt a martial tactic of decoy by suddenly paying an early morning visit to Osoba and, as usual, requesting his host prepare a feast. Who was a governor to decline a presidential request?

    By time the gourmet and palmwine had been exhausted, as the story goes, the power rug had disappeared from under Osoba’s feet as well as four other Yoruba governors (except Lagos) in a poll the court later adjudged to have been massively rigged. By not confirmimg or denying that account in the memoirs, Osoba only nourishes the story.

    Akinrogun only stops at recalling how, following the strong rumor of a Judas agenda, OBJ had sworn repeatedly before Afenifere leaders, Yoruba governors, ranking Obas and men of God of not harboring any intention to betray AD governors of his native South-west who had resolved to help him electorally in the then pending general polls by ensuring AD did not field a presidential candidate.

    But how naive of them to have trusted a battle-hardened general!

    Read Also: Osoba at 80

    Nonetheless, what the episode clearly reinforces is the image of OBJ as most traitorous and apostactic.

    As events later proved, OBJ’s contradictions ensured that the political hegemony he sought to foist in Ogun collapsed within the next two electoral cycles. Once divested of presidential powers in 2007, his own very adopted political son (Gbenga Daniel) began to assert himself and soon cut off the apron strings of a domineering progenitor.

    As for OGD, it is perhaps also a measure of Osoba’s innate capacity to wear out a quarry with a combination of superior stratagem and mental stamina that the “imperial” governor who literally made Abeokuta a no-go-area for Akinrogun for eight harrowing years would be denied his most cherished desire at the end – foisting his surrogate as successor in 2011.

    So obsessed with raw power and overtaken by a sense of self-importance at some point, preening OGD even famously made a joke of the title of “Akinrogun” (the worthy one who revels in fighting battles) to “Akinrogun-sa” (the warrior who absconds from battlefield).

    But, of course, it would have been most unbecoming of a truly wise elder to divulge his battle secret to a younger quarry before the decisive duel.

    With his anointed eventually crushed in the governorship contest by Amosun heavily backed by Osoba’s forces, OGD must have realized too late that he had rejoiced too early.

    The same war manual invoked against OGD would seem to have been deployed effectively to checkmate Amosun who double-crossed Osoba almost as soon as he became governor in 2011. Again, like the biblical Job, Akinrogun had to switch to his forbearance mode for another eight years. Enter the “Te Agba Loju” movement as the new resistance force in Ogun.

    Indeed, while the party lasted, vain Amosun literally painted the town red and sought to remould any conceivable object in his own image. But there remained one big trouble with the borrowed political ensemble: the shirt fits while the trousers were oversize.

    Expectedly, in the twilight of his tenure, Amosun had one last desire – to impose a successor. He boasted about his invincibility. But a calculating Akinrogun was busy perfecting his gameplan. Braggadocio is for the political upstart. Only the truly gifted chessmaster knows that the ace is reserved as the endgame.

    Eventually, Amosun was denied the pleasure of crowning his own successor as Osoba’s favorite won. In the memoirs, Osoba considers being addressed as “reporter” as the best accolade. His foray in the journalism realm is no less compelling.

    To the younger ones who look up to this journalism titan for professional inspiration, the Osoba signature is quite inimitable. His accustomed simplicity – this cosmopolitan playfulness – masks an awesome facility for national networking at a lightning speed to assemble facts to fleshen a story.

    For him, there is instinctive kinship with any member of the journalism fraternity, regardless of generation or echelon. And if he is still widely adored in media circles decades after quitting the editor’s perch, it is partly because of his accommodating airs and generosity of spirit to others.

    I cite three instances by way of personal testimony. Sometime in 2004, when vacationing Akinrogun learnt I was visiting London, he insisted I must not leave the U.K without seeing him. On the appointed day, I took evening train and was too trusting of my skills as investigative journalist to dare imagine I could still locate his address in a gravely quiet neighborhood however late.

    As I continued to count on my navigational skills even as dusk morphed to night, jocular Akinrogun was monitoring and directing my steps. After I had exhausted all my wits, Osoba, barely a year he stopped answering “Executive Governor” in Ogun, personally drove down to whisk me from the spot where I was marooned on a British night.

    We joked all the way down to his home. He teased that sleuthing tactics that might crack things up for a Lagos boy in Oshodi or Ajegunle were unlikely to apply in London. His residence was a modest duplex which mortgage he started paying back in the 80s.

    After a memorable evening, he again personally drove me back to the train station and gifted me a fat envelope to “shop for your wife and my grandchildren”.

    When I turned 40 some years ago, Benita Obaze (of Bevista/Jevista fame) took it upon himself to host a reception in my honour in Ikoyi, Lagos. A mere text message from Obaze was enough invitation for Akinrogun. He didn’t consider me too “small” in status, accomplishments, age and every thing to honour me with the monumentality of his presence. He sat through the ceremony beside respected Pa Julius Akinlusi-Akinluyi of Juli Pharmacy (as chairman), from the beginning to the very end.

    Of course, wherever and whenever he sights Tunji Bello, Kayode Komolafe and I together, he is always the first to acknowledge a quorum is formed for “OPEC” session, regardless of the recessionary onslaught of “shale gas” in recent times.

    So, on behalf of the surviving members of “OPEC”, here is wishing Akinrogun happy 80th birthday.

     

    Obaigbena @ 60

     

    Mercurial, tireless, innovative,
    there can be no dispute about his
    preeminence in the pantheon of journalism greats in post-colonial Nigeria. Long before ICT solutions became commonplace, Nduka Obaigbena, the Prince of Owa kingdom in Delta State, had always pushed the Nigerian media faster than the leisurely pace it probably would have wished. So, the torrents of plaudits on him in the past few days are well deserved indeed. Here is wishing The Duke happy 60th birthday.

     

    Arogbofa’s ‘Testament’ @ 80

     

  • The conscience of a nation

    The cell-phone beeped frantically. With the caller ID with-held, it was easy to surmise that it was either a foreign call or someone preferring anonymity. Pressing the receive button, my hunch was dead right. The baritone voice was unmistakable: it was the literary lion himself roaring from his den on the other side of the Atlantic.

    “Hey Louis, what’s the trouble at home this time?,” he teased in his accustomed patriarchal flourish.

    “Good day, Prof,” I responded and, excited that my repeated dials had finally paid off, quickly switched to the sarcastic mode Kongi had set. “It’s Maradona again o. Of all the idle pensioners left in Nigeria, the NLNG people just declared that he’s the only one fit to give keynote address at the next Prize ceremony.”

    Indeed, heavy dust had been raised earlier on this day in September 2007 following the unveiling of General Ibrahim Babangida as the lead speaker at the exclusive shindig, to which the who’s who in Nigeria’s literary community get invited annually.

    As editor of Sunday Sun then with a robust literary section, this writer was urgently seeking Professor Wole Soyinka’s comment, to set the agenda ahead of the presentation ceremony scheduled for the following weekend.

    Without mincing words, Kongi released the expected bombshell: “Abominable!!”

    His logic was simple: having been linked to the unnatural deaths of a few literary celebrities as military dictator and having presided over an order that flagrantly stifled free speech, it was simply unacceptable that the microphone be yielded to the former military dictator at a ceremony intended to celebrate the spoken or written word.

    To him, that amounted to dancing on the graves of the likes of poet Mamman Vatsa (a military general summarily executed over the alleged 1985 military coup despite passionate pleas from the nation’s leading writers including Soyinka) and Dele Giwa (celebrated journalist dispatched by a letter bomb on October 19, 1986).

    With such thunderous denunciation by Kongi, yours sincerely was left salivating with some malicious pleasure at a steaming exclusive and did not think twice before making it a front-page story with the headline, “NLNG Award: Soyinka moves against IBB.”

    Predictably, Soyinka’s eruption instantly triggered a concatenation of lightning and thunder across the land. Literary icons like Professors Niyi Osundare and Okey Ndibe added to IBB’s misery with their barbs. There were a few dissenters, however. At the end, the 2007 edition of the Literature Prize organized by the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas was completely overshadowed by the debate on the propriety or otherwise of inviting a military dictator to a literary feast.

    Fleeting as it may seem, the foregoing anecdote nonetheless speaks to one fact: another confirmation of Professor Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka as the conscience of a nation blighted by vanity and amnesia, with a deep moral voice whose resonance not only sends fear into the hearts of men of power but also inspires generations of men and women to stand up and be counted for good.

    By and large, what truly makes Soyinka great is not so much for the monumentality of a talent that spews pithy poetry, gripping prose and transcendental drama. His greatness lies more in the courage and character he brings to bear in creativity.

    At an age when no territory seems restricted any more, when many yesterday’s heroes and heroines have been exposed to be counterfeits, when more and more of the surviving statesmen would rather trade away their honour for temporary gains, Kongi remains an exemplar, distinguished from the multitude by his trademark hoary mane accentuated by an equally immaculate goatee.

    My early contact with him was through the channel of the written word. Beginning from secondary school, to the polytechnic and later the university, I read tons and tons of Soyinka’s works to find my own feet as a writer. As many students will attest, Soyinka’s poems were a source of dread and torture.

    But the Kongi I would later encounter as journalist was a pleasant man. Despite his world celebrity status, his humility is very numbing and, as the good teacher, he never allows any opportunity to mentor the younger ones pass.

    As one of the pioneers of THISDAY back page back in mid-90s, this writer was introduced to him by a professional ‘egbon’ (senior), Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, during a flight to Abuja from Lagos.

    “Oh, your face is already familiar,” he said, offering me a handshake. “You’re one of those I read on THISDAY back page.”

    Coming from the owner of the word himself, the Nobel laureate, a famous name I grew up worshipping, I felt completely flattered that my own little juvenile jottings made some sense to Soyinka. I took his contact and tried to stay in touch. Thus began a relationship that grew from acquaintanceship to discipleship. He has a natural affinity, instinctive solidarity with anyone in the writing fraternity.

    I have seen him deploy his awesome clout to extract better deals for fellow writers. While delivering a keynote address at the inaugural edition of the NLNG Prize for Literature many years ago, Soyinka had tactfully bad-mouthed the organizers for being too “stingy” by the amount set aside as the Prize money in view of the “fortune you daily amass from the soil of Niger Delta.”

    In clear breach of protocol, he thereafter unilaterally declared that in the exercise of his “natural powers” as the “defender of writers” the amount was upped from 10,000 to 30,000 US Dollars. The Kongi’s coup elicited a standing ovation from the galaxy of writers gathered in the expansive hall that night. The rapturous applause continued when his speech ended. Reading the mood in the audience correctly, NLNG’s MD had little or no choice than announce the approval of Soyinka’s proposal.

    To the younger ones like yours sincerely, Soyinka’s father-figure stature naturally makes him a guardian. But despite the wide age difference, Kongi also relates to you as a friend with incredible sense of humour. During one of his frequent visits to Nigeria, he gladly consented to an interview request I made. The only problem was time, because he had several speaking engagements already lined up.

    Finally, he decided to squeeze out time in-between a lecture at the National Arts Theatre, Lagos.

    On the D-Day, we were already more than thirty minutes into the session when I suddenly noticed that the tape-recorder was stuck. My heart skipped with embarrassment. I quickly demobilized the gadget and played back. Lo, not a single word was recorded!

    “Haba! Louis, shame on you. You mean a journalist of your standing still carries around a counterfeit recorder,” he teased, without the slightest sign of irritation that his precious time had been wasted on account of an avoidable mechanical malfunction. Graciously, he accepted we begin afresh.

    His fiery pen and caustic tongue notwithstanding, Kongi remains tender at heart; one who may disagree with you in principle, but never holds back in the fellowship of humanity or be detained by bitterness over the past. Only that could possibly explain the complicated relationship he has had over the years with his kinsman, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    Feisty OBJ had decided to veer from the political turf as sitting president in 2005 to engage Soyinka in an epistolary joust. In a statement he personally signed, he took a swipe at Kongi for criticizing his policies.

    But discerning observers who read the open letter could not but raise their hands in panic immediately, fearful of the approaching literary wrath on the proverbial errant native doctor who carries his ritual offering past a mosque.

    While it was easily conceded that OBJ was cantankerous by nature, many had expected that his fabled native intelligence would have served him well by dissuading him from venturing into a square rope against Kongi in a literary duel.

    Their worst fears were soon proved right. Soyinka’s response was an atomic bomb. By the time the smoke cleared, OBJ’s presidential garment was torn beyond recognition. For once, the Ota chicken farmer became tongue-tied. Months later, the animus that open ‘roforofo’ (dirty fight) had generated would not prevent Kongi from showing up at the funeral of OBJ’s spouse, Stella, who died suddenly following complications arising from a medical procedure in Spain.

    When OBJ finally met with Kongi face to face on the aisle outside the funeral parlour, the story is told of how the president exploded in a playful rage, ‘Wole, iwo! (Wole, You!)’, raising an arm in mock threat. Defiant Kongi fired back, “Segun, Ori e!”, thumping his own head in a supreme Yoruba gesture of contempt.

    Obviously more embarrassed than amused by such show of audacity, the band of guards around the President cleverly looked away.

    Again, when Chief Emeka Ojukwu qualified the victory he achieved in the sham elections arranged by the Abacha junta to select delegates for the 1994 Constitutional Conference as conferring on him a mandate “superior to June 12”, vintage Soyinka gave expression to popular thinking in the country then by simply dismissing the ex-Biafran secessionist as “an expired warlord”.

    That critical riposte would not prevent Kongi from attending Ojukwu’s burial in 2012 to pay last respect to a personal friend.

    Same generosity of spirit is very much in evidence in his warm relationship today with General Yakubu Gowon. At the presentation of a memoir by Oba Eradiuawa of Benin in 2014, Soyinka continually poked good-natured jokes at Gowon while giving a keynote address, to the admiration of the audience. It was hard to believe that it was same Gowon who had clamped him into the gulag during the Nigerian civil war. In fact, his 20-month solitary confinement birthed the book, “The Man Died”.

    When it was his turn to speak, the former head of state threw the crowd into a fresh bout of laughter by cautioning Kongi to watch his tongue: “You should remember that it was because of the same sharp tongue of yours that I sent you to prison in the 60s.”

    Being the first black man to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Soyinka’s life surely sends an enduring message: the infinite possibilities of the black race and the value in character. Here is wishing him happy 85th birthday.

  • Rape, Fatoyinbo and Mrs. Dakolo

    Not only the charge against the preacher appears abominable, his defence and the chorus of his supporters sound even strange. What would make the sin of rape Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo is accused of more grave is the suspicion – let alone, the high probability – of deep trust being betrayed in the exploitation of the vulnerability of an under-age girl.

    Thus, he trampled first on her dignity as human being, then robbing her pride as a woman.

    Inferrable from Busola’s narrative on her beginning is the absence of a father. That was the vacuum Fatoyinbo exploited. Her mom was not only pious, but also charitable enough to agree to share parental dominion over the sixteen-year-old with the clergy as the “spiritual father”.

    And the “Gucci Pastor” apparently began to thirst for something beyond the sonority of her voice as choir-girl in the musical interlude to his Sunday sermon at the Ilorin temple of the COZA ministry back then.

    According to Busola, Fatoyinbo started priming her for the carnal attack by ironically deploying ecclesiastical weapons: Christian books and sermons in audio. Being so close to the family, he knew the Sunday her mom and siblings couldn’t make the service because they were out of town.

    So, like a seasoned marksman, the stalker perfectly timed his raid for the first light of the next morning, a Monday. In nightgown, trusting Busola opened the door for a man she had innocently mistaken for “spiritual father”, but who allegedly turned out to be a merciless hunter and could barely wait to fire his corked dane gun.

    Apparently to wipe the faintest trace of fingerprint as well as foreclose possible foetal germination of any kind, a bottle of Krest (lemon soft drink) was reportedly brought and administered by the accused on the victim at the crime scene, almost immediately.

    More in shock than the sensual consciousness of what just happened, all Busola could recall hearing next was: “You should be happy this was done to you by a man of God”.

    The assault, she recounted, was repeated another day, now in the open on a desolate street. And several more of such coital encounters.

    What has given Busola’s voice uncommon trenchancy on the national airwaves since the story broke last weekend is that she is not just a wedded mother of three but also wife of Timi Dokolo, a successful musician. (And the minstrel deserves a salute for extraordinary courage and character in standing by the wife to speak out in an environment that ordinarily promotes the culture of silence by feeding the fear of shame.)

    By now telling her story, there is no doubt Busola is seeking healing for a trauma that must have haunted her over the years.

    Mrs. Dakolo’s testimony is only the latest in what has become an epidemic of accusations against Fatoyinbo in what would make the proverbial randy he-goat look like a novice. In 2013, the “Gucci Pastor” was also enmeshed in allegation of infidelity with a church member called Ese Walter.

    After Mrs. Dakolo’s bombshell at the weekend, another lady named Dolapo Oseji came up with the allegation that Fatoyinbo had similarly tried to take advantage of her years back while visiting Lagos, despite being a close family friend. She refused a reported solicitation to spend the night with him in his hotel room because, “He made it seem so innocent but I was already in my twenties and knew it was inappropriate to spend a night alone with him for whatever reason.”

    In another testimony, Nollywood actress, Stella Damascus, alleged the “Gucci Pastor” had raped her friend.

    One other Franca E. was even more graphic in her own accusation of attempted rape against Fatoyinbo. She recalled being lured from Abuja as church worker to accompany him on “envangelical mission” to Lagos and, for effects, named the plush hotel in highbrow Ikoyi.

    She claimed capturing a glimpse of him in bathroom towel with her phone camera, his derogatory remarks on his wife and audio recording of his allegedly offering N200,000 to buy her silence following her refusal to get laid.

    When traumatized Franca later confided in a former COZA church-worker, she would receive more shock. She alleged that the unidentified lady confessed to have indulged in a year-long assignations with the “Gucci Pastor” and, upon being jeered at as “Ashewo Mary Magdalene” during a quarrel with someone one day, later sought her own emotional healing by simply excommunicating herself from the church.

    Interestingly, Fatoyinbo’s initially vociferous choir of defenders, notably led by his coterie in the church and a few internet Good Samaritans, has since gone mute, if not entirely offline as more voices rise up.

    From official quarters, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, never timid when underprivileged are oppressed, has lent her voice to the public outcry for justice.

    With protesters barricading COZA temples in Abuja and Lagos on Sunday, it is clear more “victims” would be emboldened to speak out in the coming days in what is beginning to look like a replay of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that rocked Hollywood in the United States last year.

    Given such overwhelming history, it becomes very difficult indeed to keep giving Fatoyinbo the benefit of the doubt.

    From my own experience in pursuing similar leads to often staggering outcome as newspaper editor over the years, I am strongly persuaded to believe Mrs. Dakolo more than I would accept the “Gucci Pastor’s” fierce denial.

    Indeed, when actresses Rose McGowan and Ashely Judd first accused Weinstein in 2017 in New York Times of sexually assault them several years back, the Hollywood mogul had dismissed her with a straight face. But with eighty-five more compelling testimonies pouring in, the hitherto “almighty” movie producer was eventually forced to confess. The world would later know how one rampaging he-goat had parlayed his power over the decades to exploit vulnerable women seeking movie career.

    The more reason one, therefore, finds Fatoyinbo’s threat to sue as apparent defence strategy to be grossly inadequate. Much more is certainly expected of a cleric in the circumstance, especially one in whom ordinary folks often repose trust as God’s agent on earth.

    Read Also: Video: Pastor Fatoyinbo raped me repeatedly- Busola Dakolo

    So, the least expected of a supposed man of God is to submit himself to unfettered investigation by an independent body.

    With more allegations eroding trust, the threat to sue only looks more like a familiar page from the sin manual of the proverbial guilty running when no one pursues. It is a reminder of the now common joke of someone accused of receiving bribes in U.S. dollars and rather than submitting his pocket to public scrutiny as a mark of honour, begins to threaten litigation.

    As a newspaper editor, I treated a story of someone linked to international credit card fraud and who, as a defence strategy, chose to hire a senior lawyer to intimidate a media house with funny epistle in a shameless gambit to barricade the truth.

    It is gratifying to note that the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and PFN (Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria) have reappraised their initial indifference by announcing an interest in the unfolding drama.

    Good enough, with the police authorities already declaring they only act on petitions, advocacy groups should not have any difficulty on how to proceed. It is important that CAN and PFN join in the quest to establish the truth in this matter with a view to curbing further erosion of public confidence in the presbytery.

    They should realize that what the rest of the nation find confounding is how a mouth obviously made soggy already by so much alleged iniquities could still affect a confidence to profess salvation to anyone.

    It is reassuring to hear the pastor has finally agreed to step down in responce to public outcry. But that is not enough. If Fatoyinbo indeed has any honour, he should prove that by also quitting this sick comedy of threatening litigation and then follow up his stepping down with submitting himself to an independent inquiry to prove his innocence.

    Overall, there are surely few preliminary lessons from the the development of the past few days. One, we need to teach and encourage our daughters to speak out, never to be afraid.

    Two, parents should realize that neither the tranquilizing drudgery of provincial existence nor the understandably choking pressure of city-life is enough alibi to outsource their sacred responsibility as the primary moralizing and socializing agents of the children to any “spiritual daddy”.

    They should be wary not to put their wards in the care of those who easily take advantage of them.