Category: Tribute

By Emmanuel Oladesu, Deputy Editor

The Vice Chairman of Eleganza Group of Companies, Dr. Folashade Okoya, has described her hubby, Chief Rasaq Akanni Okoya, the Aare of Lagos, as a father and husband in a million, and an industrial colossus worthy of pride.

Chief Okoya, who is the chairman of the conglomerate and philanthropist, turns 81 today.

Under the leadership and inspiration of her husband, Mrs. Okoya has successfully run the Eleganza Industrial City Limited, a multiple production line factories in Ibeju-Lekki, despite the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic.

She described Pa Okoya as a “humble, amiable, enterprising, honest, intelligent and prudent businessman,” who through  dint of hardwork and divine grace, became a successful industrialist and employer of labour.

The vice chairman said she had been inspired by Chief Okoya’s disposition to work, resilience, productivity and translation of vast business ideas to the building of one of the most thriving conglomerates in Africa.

She also praised the Eleganza founder for his vision, business focus, commitment to plans, discipline and disdain for laziness and dishonesty.

According to Mrs. Okoya, who holds the title of Bewaji of Lagos and Yeye-Oge of Epe, her husband has immensely contributed to economic development of the country through job creation for employable youths.

Quoting her husband, she said many investors and industrialists would have succeeded in expanding the scope of employment opportunities, if there is regular electricity.

She also threw her weight behind Chief Okoya’s advocacy of technical training for youths for skill acquisition and development in vocational schools and technical colleges.

Mrs. Okoya, who studied Banking and Finance at the Lagos State Polytechnic, Isolo, and Sociology at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka, said educated, trained and enlightened artisans are the future of industries.

Paying tribute to her husband for his philanthropy, she said God has given him the ability to plough back to the society by taking care of the indigent, the needy and the poor.

Mrs. Okoya said: “We thank the Almighty God for showering on you His divine blessings and mercies, and for making you an excellent example of a visionary industrialist, exemplary entrepreneur and successful employer of labour worthy of pride.

“Your life offers an invaluable inspiration to us and many Nigerians to imbibe the virtue of hard work, diligence, dedication, resilience, commitment to set goals, and determination to succeed in the face of all odds.

“It is gratifying that your selfless disposition and concern for the needy and the indigent have made you to plough back to the society through your numerous philanthropic activities.”

She added: “As a family man, captain of industry, community leader and philanthropist,  you have made great impact  on the socio-economic life of our society and earned the accolade of a highly fulfilled elder statesman.

“Our wholehearted prayer is that God should in his infinite mercies continue to shower His multiple blessings upon your household, give you robust health, and grant you more manifold opportunities to continue to render invaluable services to Nigeria and humanity.”

By Ola Awoniyi

High political office is surrounded on all sides by distractions. Experience best teaches this. It is not enough to take into the office a vision and a mission, you will find once there, enough to take you off track, to test your character and agenda. Many failed not because they were not prepared or well-meaning. They did because they no longer saw the goalpost once they found themselves on the playing field.

Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan is apparently conscious of that reality. He believes a political leader must stand for something, to guide and focus their time and energy. A leader who does not stand for something falls for anything. And such is easily distracted. Because Lawan stands for something, he has resolutely focused on what took him from the ivory tower into politics and on all that he believes in as a public servant.

Since his emergence as the 14th President of the Nigerian Senate in June 2019, Senator Lawan’s stand on any issue is an open book. His candour means that he takes a firm position even on controversial issues. And he defends his positions without playing to the gallery or fear of a backlash. Such is called courage of conviction.

Take the proposition in Nigeria for a part-time or unicameral Legislature at the national level. The proponents were often led to it by what they hear about the “jumbo pay” of federal lawmakers and the ‘generous’ funding of the National Assembly. Lawan, not too long ago, challenged them to a public debate.

“I am not here to defend the National Assembly but I’m here to encourage a debate on what the National Assembly means to us as a country or what our legislature means to us as a country and as a people. If you don’t like the set of members in the Ninth National Assembly, change all of us in 2023. Get better people but help support the system to function because that is your protection,” Lawan said at an in-house event in Abuja. Unfortunately, no one has picked up the gauntlet for a healthy national conversation on the issue.

In the Senate, Lawan’s leadership style projects him as only the first among equals. He always assert that he owes his emergence as the President of the Ninth Senate to the Grace of God and the votes of his colleagues across party lines. And that has been his strength and guiding principle in his roles as the presiding officer in the Senate. His focus has been to foster harmony among his distinguished colleagues in the Upper Chamber so that they can deploy their time and energies to working together for Nigerians and the good of their country.

This is evident in the seamless passage of bills and adoption of resolutions on critical national issues. In the Ninth Senate, every member knows they have the liberty to express their views but also a responsibility to respect the views of others. That has created for them a nice work environment where respect begets respect.

Lawan is also a firm believer in the imperative of inter-chamber cooperation. Even as the Chairman of the National Assembly, Lawan refers to the Speaker of House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, as his “brother and friend.” That must explain why they often find a common ground on key national issues. And that also accounts for the smooth passage of critical bills through their two chambers.

Lawan is also convinced of the merit of a harmonious relationship between the Legislature and the Executive. This has drawn him sometimes caustic criticisms but he has stood his ground and is unapologetic.

The benefits of harmony between the two elected arms of government are there for objective eyes to see from the past one and a half years. It has bred mutual respect among the arms and reciprocity in the way each treats submissions from the other. Executive proposals are now treated without undue delay while Bills passed by the National Assembly are receiving prompt presidential assent. That wasn’t the story before the ninth Assembly.

Signing the 2021 Appropriation Bill into an Act on the eve of the New Year, President Muhammadu Buhari revealed that the 2020 budget achieved 97.7 performance, despite the unforeseen havoc of Covid-19. This unprecedented success was facilitated by the early passage of the appropriation bill by parliament and the prompt assent given it by the President. There is reasonable expectation that the 2021 budget will perform even better, having become law before the start of the year. In the past, budgets drag into the middle of the year and routinely recorded low performance.

Lawan will not deviate from a path that has led to obvious progress. Having gained much experience in the parliament, he does not want the threat to governance posed by needless confrontation between the Legislature and the Executive. He has opted to promote harmony in governance for the good of the people.

And he has taken his message of harmony beyond the gates of parliament and government and out to the larger political field. Only last month, he appealed to the Southeast geopolitical zone to continue to work with the other zones towards and beyond 2023 in building the Nigeria of our common dreams.

The Senate President canvassed national unity at Igbere in Abia State where he was honoured with a chieftaincy title. Lawan made it clear at the event that every part of Nigeria is needed to make the country work.

Hear him: “Let’s unite ourselves in this state and indeed in the Southeast. Let’s face common agenda of being in the center of Nigeria. In fact, let’s even attempt to be the leaders of Nigeria because it is a valid aspiration.

“Let’s not stay away from being part of the real center of action in Nigeria. That we can achieve when we sit together and talk among ourselves. Time is of essence. Nigeria needs all of us to be united. Nigeria needs all hands to be on the deck. Nigeria needs the effort of each and every part to make it work and we can make it work.”

The Yobe State-born politician is providing purposeful leadership at the National Assembly and helping in building an environment conducive for national development. This is just a tribute to wish him a happy 62nd birthday.

• Awoniyi is Special Adviser on Media to the Senate President

By Sam Omatseye

We know his trademark bowtie and voice of halting poise like a slow-burning campfire to illumine the brows of nobles.  This vision makes me still wonder why Professor Bolaji Akinyemi’s acts as Nigeria’s external affairs minister did not earn him the tag of “bow-tie diplomacy.” Beneath his jaws and over his not-generous height, we saw his head sometimes bow as though to the ties. They materialised in panoply of colours: red, black, blue, etc.

It did not occur to IBB, his boss then. IBB did it to others with a sort of sardonic non-speech, with a shadow of a smile, as though he had said nothing, or he knew he said it and had forgotten about it. Like an innocent dropping a bomb in a market. Just as he called his media adviser “double chief,” or when he asked his police chief, “Where is Anini?” He was accustomed to discovering a right phrase to characterize an adviser, tease a friend or even lampoon a foe.

But whatever it was, the least of Professor Akinyemi’s worries today is his fashion. Or how a nifty bowtie wove into the delicate ardour of his diplomacy. Spending an hour with him in his Opebi residence in Lagos, you saw a man who knows the world, who studies it, but as he turns 79 today, bemoans it. He bemoans his country more, though, even as an optimist.

He is sad that Nigeria is where it is today with all its potential when he was minister, a professor of international affairs and history, a participant in the maelstrom of the interactions of nations. He had traveled east and west, met heads of states, jousted in conferences, staked Nigeria’s pride, confronted the hubris of nations, of clever tyrants and bemused democrats.

He was a consequential minister because he was a minister also as scholar, coalescing his ideas from the ivory tower and fermenting them for the master’s use as first minister to the world. But the ideas began fermenting long ago, when he was a school boy at Igbobi College, and Christ School Ado-Ekiti, as an undergraduate student at Temple University in Philadelphia, at Fletcher School of Law and diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts and Trinity College, Oxford England.

Not only as student, but also as lecturer, a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, at University of California, Los Angeles. Here in Nigeria he taught at the University of Lagos, during which time he was visiting Fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge.

Almost as though he had to prepare to become minister as scholar-adviser, he was director general of the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs, after which IBB picked him as minister. He left that office in 1987, after about two years. Yet after that, his name gained currency in the dynamic of transition to democracy. Some thought IBB wanted him to succeed him, and efforts were set in motion for a possible civilian berth for a President Bolaji Akinyemi. But as we saw in the rigmarole of that era, Akinyemi was better in his place as international pundit than in the puddle of high stakes political gambit, where the higher the stakes, the bigger the steaks, like MKO Abiola.

Few saw their time as minister on that portfolio as Professor Akinyemi saw his time. It was not a portfolio to junket, but to play an Archimedean card: move the world. He had no illusion that Nigeria was a big player like the United States, or Russia, or the European nations who were racing after Winston Churchill’s dream of a United States of Europe. He had an idea about Nigeria. He saw the east and the west as different orbits. He saw that the dream from Josip Broz Tito of the non-aligned world was tearing apart as the two big powers tried to suffocate the Yugoslav’s fantasy. He thought Nigeria was not a big name in the Non-aligned movement. So, he developed an idea of the Concert of Medium Powers. At that time, he saw Nigeria as a medium power. Would he even think that today of Nigeria, which at that time had developed a defence industry at the same time with countries like Brazil.

To battle Boko Haram, we cannot even make a bomb or a rifle. We scamper to Europe, to Russia, and even as evidence shows from the EndSar protests, we even buy from central Europe. The concept of medium powers was a frustration over the mighty roars of the great powers, their fingers on the nuclear button, their economic swagger, their decision to decide who produces and who cowers. They tell us who is a great Nigerian, what is right for us and how. We are just there to kowtow to the logic of their narratives.

The same Nigeria he was gung-ho about has an army whose tail coils between its legs when the ragtag militants rumble near, when they slit like butchers the necks of farmers, when they run rampant with school boys in their hundreds and take them on long treks reminiscent of armies of surrender. When a president cannot stop them in his neighbourhood, when mothers tremble for their daughters’ lives, especially their virginal integrity.  How can such a nation belong to a concert of powers? How can it even define itself as a power at all?

That must be Professor Akinyemi’s frustration today. He was a diplomat as dreamer, but he knows that diplomacy is not about jaw-jaw, it can be a threat of war-war. They say diplomacy is about threats, bribes and lies. But you cannot do any of these without some sort of armory, either in your bank or barracks. William of Orange of England did not need to shed a drop of blood to send King James1 scampering out of town. The threat was the invasion. That is why the professor must be sad today. Diplomacy is a measure not only of your cleverness but also of your economy. Who will respect a nation whose Naira exchanges for close to 500 to a dollar?

We cannot forget that it is the idea of the Nigerian potential heft that inspired him to suggest making a black bomb, a renaissance of the African warrior. But today, a country that merits that league of medium powers, United Arab Emirates, has launched a rocket into space. Rather we are borrowing rockets to maul forest goons.

When Murtala Mohammed was head of state, he made a famous speech that “Africa has come of age.” That was decades ago, and the same continent, just like Nigeria, is still in toddler state. Akinyemi lamented the turn democracy is taking after a brief spell of hope on the continent. Even a quiescent country like Ghana experienced election violence that left a few dead. Whether it is Uganda, the Congo or Senegal, we are witnessing again a fever of barbarous impulses in politics. In Nigeria, we are taking it for granted that elections will be rigged, and the political office holders must be rogues.

Prof. Akinyemi is also alert to the power of China in the so-called developing world, its lack of finesse, its assertion of strength as rivalry to the United States, a concept that historians and political scientists like Graham T. Allison have called the Thucydides Trap, in which the rising power clashes with a declining one. It happened between Rome and Greece in the Peloponnesian War.

“My fate is wrapped around this belief in the future,” he says. “It makes me look like a fool,” he confesses. He says a third of the country is under the control of brigands, and “I cannot travel to my village without my heart in my mouth.” But he has a faith in generations to come. He has children and grandchildren, and he despairs it will happen under him. Yet, he says all those causing anomie today will die away and new generations will come.

On the National Think Tank, he laments that it has gone the way of other big ideas. Former President Yar Adua who believed in it died, and it has not really had much oxygen since. But he believes that “One great man will bring believers to himself” and rouse our nation. He reels out names like Stalin, Lenin, Churchill, Mandela, Nkrumah, and “wake up the giant in us.” Leadership comes and leadership goes. He is not despondent. He confesses to be broken-hearted sometimes.

The Prof still bursts with a scholar’s brio and a diplomat’s cunning, dissecting and suggesting. He helped give birth to The National Think Tank, an assembly of trusted thinkers. On his birthday, he would still, at breakfast, be looking quizzically at a country he once had an opportunity to save. Yet he is still looking for a way.

Happy birthday.

By Musa Alabe

“No wise man ever wished to be younger.”

 The above quote by Jonathan Swift resonates within my mind as I joined millions of Yobeans and Nigerians generally to celebrate with an illustrious son of Yobe, His Excellency, Governor Mai Mala Buni, the fourth democratically elected Governor of Yobe State, who clocked 53 a few days ago.

It is said that life is not all about your age. Life is about living. So, when your birthday comes, you ought to be thankful for the years that have just passed and anticipate with a happy heart what the coming year will bring.

When God, in His infinite Mercy, created man, the first gift He gave him was life. And God has enjoined every Muslim, as clearly stated in the Islamic holy book, to show appreciation for every blessing given to them.

In the Holy Quran Chapter 14 Verse 7 Allah says: “If you are grateful, I will surely increase you in favour.”

So it is not out of place to join our leader and governor in celebrating and thanking God for sparing his life to see yet another year of his glorious life. Attaining a Golden age and even adding more years to them calls for more than a celebration with our kind-hearted governor and leader of the masses. It is not very common in Nigeria to have a leader that is so down to earth in his approach to governance.

I join in celebrating His Excellency, Governor Buni, because he has, in the spate of the shortest time he has been in office, proven his worth as a good leader. This he practically exemplified through his style of leadership.

To my mind and understanding, leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. And His Excellency has, without any iota of doubts, proven so, even in the calibre and quality of people he brought from all walks of life to work with him.

Yobe is kept on the path of being a working state today because Governor Mai Mala Buni has proven that the greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things, but the one that gets the people to do the greatest things as directed.

As an academician, I believe in the philosophy of His Excellency who has always insisted that to add value to others, one must first value others. Our governor values people and every day bringsthe best out of Yobeans.

Though Governor Mai Mala appreciates associating with people who add value to his works, he remains a true leader who has the confidence to stand alone; the one who has unimpeachable courage to make tough decisions, and the one who has the unparalleled compassion to listen to the needs of others.

Governor Buni does not only set out to be a leader for its sake, but he becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.

I do not intend to write a scholarly piece here because I am a professor. My message here is simple: To celebrate a worthy leader who understands the secrets of Allah’s blessing and his responsibility to lead a people whom Allah has entrusted in his care.

For lack of space and to avoid keeping my readers for too long, I will rather focus this write-up on the strides that Gov. Buni is making in the sector of education, which is my constituency.

When Governor Mai Mala assumed the governance of Yobe in 2019, his first major outing was the convocation of a first of its kind Yobe State Education Summit. And at the end of the highly rewarding submit, he assured Yobeans and Nigerians in general that all recommendations made by the Summit would be implemented to the letter.

One of the first steps taken in that direction was his approval of mass recruitment of qualified teachers following national and international best practices.

The governor had clearly warned that equal opportunities should be given to all qualified Yobeans and Nigerians to apply and be employed. He said the recruitment should be done without recourse to profiling any applicant based on who he or she is; or where he or she comes from. He warned that no favouritism or god-fatherism consideration would be tolerated.

We do not want to favour anybody, we just want to have the best for Yobe and that is the instruction of His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Yobe State.

He said what defines his “next level”, The Mai Mala Next Level, should be “doing things in line with the national and international standards”.

The Governor of Yobe has reiterated, time without number, that if we want to maintain our standard, we have to adopt some strict measures.

The governor has deployed his legendary act of convincing people even in the most difficult times of decision making, in explaining to politicians that though this is a political era, Yobe cannot afford to mortgage the future of its children by keeping the standard low. And to everyone’s surprise, all the political big wigs did not only agree with him, they even became ‘ambassadors’ of such ideology.

The only way forward for Yobe’s educational sector is to change the narratives while thinking outside the box. What we are doing now is bringing lofty ideas from outside the box. It is no longer business as usual.

The declaration of a state of emergency on education was the best thing that has happened to Yobe State. When a state or a sector is in a state of emergency, the norms are set aside for uncommon application of elixirs that will salvage it.

Today, education in Yobe has not only been brought out of comatose, it is now fastly bouncing back and regaining its rightful place amongst the comity of its contemporaries.

It is the vision of Governor Mai Mala; and it is our shared vision too, that when you educate people, you take down barriers. You help them see what it’s like in other situations, cultures and countries. You create a world that is more tolerant of differences and accepting of all.

Of course, the governor is fully aware that education is a long-term investment; the time and money you put in, the courage you have to move through challenges and persevere. But investment in education will keep paying off for the rest of your life.

It is for this reason and many more happening in virtually all sectors of Yobe State that I stand to join the governor of the people as he marks his 53rd birthday.

• Prof. Alabe is the current Chairman of Yobe State Universal Basic Education Board; former Vice-Chancellor, Yobe State University and pioneer Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Bayero University, Kano.