The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Aare Afe Babalola

  • Why October 21 is dear to my heart…Aare Afe Babalola

    Why October 21 is dear to my heart…Aare Afe Babalola

    To the founder, Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), October 21 is a significant day in his life.

    “I have observed that October 21 has a lot to do with my destiny,” Babalola announced to the excited gathering at the university’s second convocation.

    “It has always been a good day in my life.  Anyday I have a judgment to be delivered and it falls on that day, rest assured I am going to win the case,” he added.

    Little wonder that precisely a year (October 21, 2013), after ABUAD held its maiden convocation, graduating 130 from the Colleges of Sciences and Social and Management Sciences, the university graduated another 336 students from the Colleges of Law,  Sciences and Social and Management Sciences last Tuesday.

    Besides Aare Babalola attachment to the date, ABUAD’s commitment to uninterrupted academic calendar, Babalola explained, is due to the university’s determination to ensure that students graduate as and at when due.

    “I want to specially thank you (parents and guardians) for believing in me and in particular for choosing ABUAD, which was only a year out of 136 older universities in this country four years ago. You believed that ABUAD would provide quality education without any disruption in academic calendar. “You were right! It is a fact that those who registered at the same time with your children in other universities may still be in their second or third year; but your children are graduating on schedule. There is no extra week, day, hour or minute. This is why so many students, who took JAMB examination this year chose ABUAD as the university of first choice. ABUAD which is only four years old came second out of 50 private universities so chosen.”

    According to Babalola, his foray into university education has opened his eyes to the realisation that people are opposed to change. Nonetheless, Babalola said this has not dampened his spirit, noting that the university management remains relentless in its crusade to ensure that the right culture is inculcated.

    Over the last one year, Babalola said the university has attained greatness, increasing its manpower from 750 to 1,500, while students enrollment increased from 2,000 to 3, 750. The legal luminary added that the university also established a multi-million naira Talent Discovery Centre that has over 29 vocations, and its five-star Guest House, which cost N2.5 billion during the period.

    He urged guests to visit the university farm, which he described as a shining example of how an ideal internally-generated revenue could be initiated and sustained by tertiary institutions.

    He expressed happiness that the nearly five-year-old university scored 100 per cent accreditation by the National Universities Commission (NUC), and was the first university to secure full accreditation in Medicine at just one visit by the NUC.

    The university’s best graduating student, Miss Ogunbusola Oluwatosin Joy, who had a Cumulative  Grade Point Average of 4.96, attributed her feat to the support from her alma mater and her parents.

    “I wish to thank Afe Babalola University and our lecturers for their untiring efforts ever since this journey began. I also wish to thank my parents, who stood by me through thick and thin, as well as my course mates and other graduands. I wish to say that the journey has just begun. We should not relent. We must be encouraged to trudge on because the sky is our limit,”she said.

    Though Oluwatosin said she would not reject the offer of automatic employment given her by alma mater; yet she would love to do her masters programme immediately before considering further plans.

    ABUAD’s Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof Michael Ajisafe, said 334 students graduated. Of the lot,  47, comprising 37 females and 10 males, had First Class. One hundred and twenty eight, and 113 bagged second class upper and second class lower degrees, while 16 made third class.

    Ajisafe said ABUAD has continued to blaze the trail, winning numerous awards and getting a clean bill from professional bodies.

    Ajisafe’s predecessor and pioneer Vice-Chancellor, Prof Sidi Osho, who was in attendance, urged the graduands to keep the university flag flying and continue to be good ambassadors of their alma mater.

  • Akunyili was a dogged fighter, says Afe Babalola

    Akunyili was a dogged fighter, says Afe Babalola

    Frontline lawyer, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), has said Nigeria will miss former Director-General of the National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), the late Prof Dora Akunyili.

    Babalola said the late Akunyili would be remembered for her fighting spirit, doggedness and large heartedness.

    The former Minister of Information and Communication died in an Indian hospital on Saturday. She was 59.

    In a tribute, titled: Dora Akunyili: Sunset at Noon.

    Babalola said their paths crossed in 2001 during her crusade against fake drugs, when she was NAFDAC’s boss.

    As the agency’s lawyer then, Babalola said he noticed Akunyili’s doggedness and uprightness even in the face of an attempt on her life.

    He said: “What stand this professor of Pharmacy out are her patriotism, determination, selflessness and strength of character to use her office and, indeed, her all, for the good of the majority.

    “I was very close to the departed star, as the lawyer to NAFDAC during her tenure as DG. NAFDAG and I affirm that she was bold and courageous: for it is only a bold, courageous, determined, focused and selfless person that will continue a battle after she escaped death by the whiskers after the assassin’s bullet pierced her head-gear on Boxing Day in 2003.

    “After the unsuccessful attempted murder, an unperturbed and unruffled Dora Akunyili quickly put that behind her and continued her crusade as if nothing has happened. What a woman of virtue!

    “She pursued the case of her attempted murder with vigour and verve. As her lawyer, we prosecuted the case from the High Court to the Court of Appeal. Now, we are at the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, Dora is no more to witness the outcome of the appeal at the Supreme Court.”

    Babalola said it was after Prof Akunyili mounted the saddle as NAFDAC DG that the agency was shot into the limelight.

    According to him, the late Akunyili brought honour, performance and panache to her office, following meticulously every case that NAFDAC handled and ensuring offenders were duly prosecuted.

    Babalola, who is also the founder of Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), recalled how he offered Prof Akunyili the post of pioneer Vice-Chancellor of ABUAD.

    The frontline lawyer said she gladly accepted the offer five years ago, but later turned it down following a political appointment she got from the Federal Government.

     

  • Afe Babalola urges govt to take over substandard varsities

    Afe Babalola urges govt to take over substandard varsities

    Afe Bablola University of Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) Founder Aare Afe Babalola (SAN) has urged the National Assembly to pay more teeth to the ongoing amendment of the National Universities Commissions (NUC) Act than it currently has.

    He said the four decade-old Act, which just passed through its Second Reading, should be empowered to close down substandard universities, forfeit such university’s facilities to the government and jail its founders and teachers.

    In his keynote address yesterday at the opening of the 29th conference of the Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (AVCNU), hosted by ABUAD, Babalola said: “Recently, the NUC released a list of 36 illegal universities operating in the country. From the list published on NUC’s website, the universities were located in every part of the country. Many indeed had very curious sounding names which should have alerted reasonable and discerning minds to the fraud represented by the institutions.

    “The question then is: How do we get out of this embarrassing quagmire? The answer is that government should urgently and immediately amend the NUC law and give the commission sufficient powers of immediate and outright closure of illegal universities with further powers of severe sanctions including forfeiture of the university’s properties to government while promoters, founder, councils, and teachers of such illegality should face life imprisonment.”

    Babalola said though NUC is empowered to regulate universities nationwide, Section 4 of the NUC Act merely gives the commission advisory role to the Federal Government and states on the creation of universities, adding that  only private universities feel the full weight of NUC ‘s power.

    He said this situation has made many states to  establish universities based on purely political rather than educational or logistical considerations, with little or no funding to back them up.

    Babalola said: “In order to make them more popular in their constituencies, some established universities and multiple campuses in their hamlets or villages, which often lack infrastructure. The laboratories and other teaching facilities in some universities are below standard expected in secondary school. There was the case of a graduate of engineering who never saw an engineering laboratory throughout his university days.”

     

    “Recently the authorities of a university disengaged over 700 acacdemic and non-academic staff who were found among other reasons, to have gained employment into university with questionable credentials. yet these same persons, prior to the discovery of the anomaly had probably spend years in the university teaching students, some of whom are today probably also teachers in one institution of learning or another.

    He continued: “As far as some states are concerned, there is no room for recommendation of UNESCO that states should allocate 26 per cent of their revenue to education. Some states allocate less than one per cent of the budgetary allocation. In a particular case, a state government allocated only N50 million to its university for capital project over a period of several years.

    The frontline lawyer further tasked vice chancellors to assist NUC via innovativeness and resourcefulness to meet universities minimum standard as recommended by the commission or even surpass them.  Aare Babalola also urged vice-chancellors to be good leaders, credible, accountable operate open door policy and seek ways of attracting funds for their institutions rather than rely on government funding alone.

    Corroborating Babalola NUC Executive Secretary Prof Julius Okojie said applying sanctions to erring universities would go a long way

    “I exactly support what Afe Babalola has prescribed,” Okojie said. “Now let me say those universities may just be graduating anybody, but if we don’t continue to publish them on our website, they may think that they still exist. They can’t work or obtain any certificate in this country. We pursue them every day and we also use the police to close their facilities. We are on top of the situation.

    The NUC boss also lamented that as against impression in certain quarters, many Nigerian students are studying in ramshackle universities in Ghana against better facilities at the home front.

    “They (students) are in thousands (in Ghana) but they are coming back home now.  I sent some education correspondents to Ghana and they saw what was happening there. The reason people gave for going to Ghana is because we didn’t have adequate resources here; whereas the universities they attend in Ghana are not even recognised by Ghanaian government. They (Ghanaian government) look the other way, their children don’t even go to there. One university can have just one building and they will call it a university.”

    Speaking earlier, AVCNU chairman Prof Joseph Ajienka said the association conceived the theme in view of the plague that usually confronts a nation like Nigeria which is endowed with so much natural and intellectual resources; yet channel a sprinkle of it to education.

    “Our university system has one major challenge-inadequate funding. It is crusade by the failed policy of free tuition. If governments have the courage and political will to solve this problem, our university system will come alive and competed with its counterparts in the global innovation ecosystem. Our governments have been advocating transformational agenda. True transformation is not about buying technologies and importing everything. True transformation is first of all about people accepting new values and facing the challenge of change courageously.”

    The event was graced by the Ekiti State Governor Dr Kayode Fayemi and his Ondo State counterpart Dr Segun  Mimiko the Ewi of Ado Ekiti, His Royal Majesty Oba Rufus Adeyemo Adejugbe (Aladesanmi III), and former NUC Executive Secretary Prof peter Okebukola, among others.

     

  • Adeyemi College of Education honours Babalola

    Shortly after breakfast tomorrow (May 22), another colourful feather will be added to the already well adorned cap of the elderstatesman, farmer and educationist, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN. The Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo will present him with its Distinguished Fellowship Award for his remarkable work as an educationist and as part of the activities marking the College’s Golden Jubilee.

    The college has rolled out the drums since Monday (May 19) to celebrate 50 years of its existence and its 23rd Convocation, which grand finale comes up tomorrow.

    This Award is coming 22 days after the Forum for International Green Sustainability (FIGS) crowned the multiple chief and many-sided man as the Africa Man of the Year in Food Security 2004 for his exploits in  food security, job creation as well as the monumental investment he has made  in  his ABUAD Enterprise Farm.

    FIGS is a  Non-Profit organisation with Tax Exempt Status in the United Kingdom. Its   mandate is to bridge the widening gap of extreme hunger and poverty in every home in Africa, one crop at a time. It was inaugurated in Nigeria as a Regional Chapter in Abuja in 2006 with 52 mentors and over 1,000 Volunteers in the six geo-political zones of the country.

    The erroneous perception of farming being old fashioned has become the anchor of FIGS global campaign while championing the cause of youth inclusiveness in sustainable agriculture, capacity building amongst farmers, stakeholders and Green initiatives and Food Security in over 23 Countries including Sub -regional Africa.

    Babalola whose formal education ended at Emmanuel Primary School, Ado-Ekiti, where he obtained his Standard Six Certificate because of paucity of funds for him to go further in those early days, went on life with an unbending determination and by dint of hard work to obtain two Bachelors’ degrees (B. Sc. Economics and LL.B) by private study.

    Since then, Babalola, who was at various times a pupil teacher, a secondary school teacher, vice principal, university lecturer, economist, auditor, administrator, farmer and educationist, has been so many things within the country’s educational landscape, so much so that he is a former winner of the Senior Teachers of Nigeria Award by Association of Nigeria Teachers.

    The unflinching contributions of Babalola, a man who has built and donated towering edifices to many tertiary institutions in Nigeria, started with his patently selfless wavering of a 5 million British Pound Sterling legal fee in 1982 just for a federal institution to be established in his home state of the bigger Ondo State then.

    It was this altruistic and patriotic gesture that gave birth to the Federal Polytechnic, which was first sited in Akure before it was relocated to Ado-Ekiti, Babalola’s homestead, when the Federal University of Technology took off in Akure. It is on record that as Chairman of the Federal Polytechnic, which he part funded, Babalola did not take any allowance, rather, and on a continuous basis, he kept on expending his own resources.

    In 2,000, Babalola, a man bitten by the bug of excellence, was appointed Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council of the University of Lagos, during which time he was able to see first-hand and bare-facedly the rot and decay that characterized the nation’s educational landscape. Together with his colleagues in the Council and the University Administration, they were able to turn the fortunes of UNILAG around so much so that that university became the best around that time and he was voted Best Pro-Chancellor twice (2005 and 2006).

    But because that was not enough for him and more importantly because of the urge to change things for the better, to give education a befitting face lift and to show that it is possible to have good quality, functional and reformatory education, he establishedhis wave-making AfeBabalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), to lead others by example in quality, functional and reformatory education.

    The University, which began academic works on January 4, 2010, has received many accolades from eminent personalities and notable institutions within and outside Nigeria. For example, the All African Students Union with Headquarters in Ghana acknowledged the university as the “fastest growing private university in Africa”, the European Business Assembly in Oxford gave it Socrates Award for the Best Enterprise in Africa, 2011.

    The university, though only four years old now has been rated by the Global University Webometric as the second (2nd) Best Private University in Nigeria and number thirteen (13th) of the totality of the 157 universities in Nigeria. It recently secured 100 per cent accreditation in all the fourteen Programmes presented to NUC for accreditation in 2013. The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) has also accredited all the seven engineering programmes. Similarly the Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN) also granted full accreditation for its computer programmes.

    The Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), the Regulatory Body for Education in Nigeria, described it as a model, benchmark and reference point, former President of Nigeria, Chief OlusegunObasanjo described it as a model, former military leader, Dr. (Gen.) Yakubu Gowon (retd) described the setting as “superlative and impressive with nothing of its kind that I have seen so far in this country or anywhere”, President Goodluck Jonathan also described it as “Notably one of the most outstanding individual contributions towards government educational project”.

    At the international level, UNESCO, which acknowledged ABUAD as one of the prestigious universities in Africa, has invited  the university to collaborate with it on issues relating to education, particularly on the Flagship Programme 2 of Operational Strategy for Priority Africa (2014-2021) titled “Strengthening Education Systems for Sustainable Development in Africa: Improving Equity, Quality and Relevance” and further volunteered “to publicise UNESCO-ABUAD initiatives on its website”, thereby ‘portraying the university as one of the shining beacon of excellence in its endeavour to be one of the best universities in African and the world’.

    The university operates the collegiate system and has seven of such colleges: the College of Law, College of Natural and Applied Sciences, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Social and Management Sciences and College of Arts and Humanities as well as the College of Education. It also offers Entrepreneurial and Leadership training to make its graduates all-rounder human beings that do not have to wait for anybody to give them white collar jobs before they can be gainfully employed.

    As leaders in functional, quality and reformatory education, the university initiated and developed programmes in Social Justice, Intelligence & Security Studies, Human Biology and Mechatronics.Today, ABUAD is the only university in Nigeria offering such programmes and NUC has gone ahead to adopt them as the benchmark for any university that may want to offer these programmes in future.

    It also has a gigantic Entrepreneurial Talent Centre with26 different sports, a rare phenomenon in any university around today and an Agricultural Enterprise Centre which has been designated by IITA as a Centre of Research where students learn many areas of Agriculture.

    The Centre boasts of      110,000 Mango trees,    500,000 Teak trees, 310,000 Gmelinatrees, a Moringafactory worth over N1 billion, 600 fish ponds with at least 5,000 fishes in each of them, and a    Feed Mill worth over N500,000.00 as well as an Animal section made up of a Piggery, Snailery, Turkey, Guinea Fowl, Quail and Mushroom as well as an incubator.

    Today, the mustard seed that was planted four years ago has grown and blossomed into a great oak tree as the first set of our 103 students from the College of Sciences and the College of Social and Management Sciences were released to the world at a very colourful maiden convocation ceremony on October 21, last year. Testimonies abound about the respect and honour appreciative members of the society accord these ABUAD Ambassadors.

    It must be in appreciation of all these national and international recognitions and encomiums that the new College of Industrial Development (UID), Ghana, appointed the four-year old university to mentor it as the ‘Mentoring Tertiary and Affiliate Institution.

    Undoubtedly, ABUAD is an ‘incubator’ that would enable Babalola to ‘replicate’ himself in the ‘leaders’ of tomorrow through function. Certainly, ABUAD and its Founder are going places.

     

    •Tunde Olofintila wrote from Lagos.

  • Politicians, Nigeria Police and 2015 elections

    Politicians, Nigeria Police and 2015 elections

    On two different occasions in the immediate preceding week, Elder statesman and frontline legal icon, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, expressed grave concern about the preparedness of the Nigeria Police for next year’s general election, at least judging by the cornucopia of challenges facing the Force. The first occasion was at the opening of his University, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD’s) maiden Certificate Programme in Social Justice in Ado-Ekiti on February 10 while the second was at the closing of the class work of the two-month programme on February 14 where he took a cursory look at the problem of logistics, manpower and poor welfare as well as poor remuneration bedeviling the Nigeria Police. And if a man of Babalola’s stature and standing ruminates over the same issue twice within a week, then it calls for serious and concerted consideration. Babalola’s palpable fear and concern are not only germane but equally apposite in a country where elections are seen and conducted as wars and characterized by gory carnage where people often loose lives, limbs and means of livelihood as well as billions of Naira in both ambulatory and non ambulatory properties. In his book, “Here comes the Commander-in-Chief”, the crusading cleric and columnist, Gabriel Akinnadewo, said: “Since the end of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970, Nigeria has fought many wars. Yes, wars because election in this country is war. We fought in 1979, 1983, 1993, 1999, 2003 and 2007. Another one is coming in 2011…”. That was at when Akinnadewo wrote his piece and he could not have been more pin-point accurate and apt. But another one is coming in 2015, the mother of all elections, which does not promise to be any different from those before it judging by the deeds, actions and particularly the on-going defection and counter defection as well as the proclamations of the nation’s political gladiators. Judging by the history of election in the country, the federal government, with the cooperation of the federating states and indeed the generality of Nigerians, has an herculean task to ensure a peaceful, free and fair as well as a credible election come 2015. But is the Nigeria Police, made up of no more than 370,000 Officers and Men sufficiently equipped to do such a job in country of 160 million people? It goes without saying that a Police Force of 370,000 Officers and Men grossly fall short of the United Nation’s Manpower Standard which prescribes that an Officer should police 400 citizens. With manpower of 370,000, a Police Officer in Nigeria has the arduous task of policing 4,324 citizens, 3,924 clear citizens above the UN standard. No wonder then that Babalola is advocating that the NPF should immediately embark on a massive recruitment drive not only to meet the UN minimum standard, but prepare itself for next year’s election in a country where politicians have turned elections to a “do-or-die” affair, to borrow their language. Beyond the issue of logistics, it is an open secret today that the NPF lack the necessary logistics to function effectively. Said Babalola: ”There are no sufficient vehicles for patrol. Even where there are some vehicles for patrol, there is problem of fuelling which hinder the operations of the Nigeria Police with extreme profundity” He added: “Poor communication network needed for efficient and effective operation are the major factors affecting the Nigeria Police. Therefore, their jobs are made extremely difficult”. Closely related to the issue of poor logistics is another equally worrisome problem of poor welfare. Babalola noted that in advanced countries, police are well accommodated and this affects their morale and enhances their operations. But the obverse seems to be the case here where police personnel struggle for accommodation with the civil population in Nigeria. Consequently, their performance, self-esteem and morale are greatly affected. Beside the above, it is a well known fact that the personnel of the Nigeria Police are poorly paid than any other police personnel in Africa a development which makes the police to find it difficult to compete favourably with other organization at the employment market. Because of the uncomely remuneration structure, people who would naturally have enlisted in the police and add world class value would not touch a career in the force with a 10-metre pole, thereby allowing the intellectual quality of some personnel of the Nigeria Police to leave much to be desired. Babalola believes that this trend can be reversed if the Federal Government could increase the salaries of police personnel, thereby insulating them from corruption. Besides, he argued, if their salaries are increased, quality persons will be attracted to the Nigeria Police and impact positively on its productivity. One is however encouraged by the report in the January 31, 2014 edition of The Nation that the Federal Government is planning to spend Billions of Naira on the reformation of the Police. It certainly made an interesting reading because the federal government would appear to have taken this decision because it is aware that the Nigeria Police is facing some challenges that are making the performance of its constitutional and statutory duties onerous and very difficult. This obviously is a better way of addressing the parlous state of logistic and infrastructural problems that have been the lot of the Nigeria Police rather than the attempt in 2012 to change the police uniform for about N18 billion at a minimum of N3,000 per set and at two sets for each of the 320,000 p0lice men in Nigeria then. But ensuring a peaceful, free fair and credible election in 2015 is not the job of the Nigeria Police Force alone. The politicians have a role to play by playing the game according to the rules and by engaging less in inflammatory and provocative proclamations. They should take a cue from the mercurial and evergreen declarations of world class political philosophers and political pundits like George Washington, John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. among others so that our elections are not turned to wars, characterized by maiming, killing, burning and looting. But all is not lost after all. Nigeria still has today and tomorrow to rework things by deliberately developing the courage and the will to bring its yesterday to bear on its present and fashion a workable political blueprint for its political tomorrow, at least for the sake of future generation who would definitely ask questions about what Nigeria did with its past. The gubernatorial elections coming up in Ekiti and Osun states later this year will be the barometer with which to measure what may happen next year. God help Nigeria.

  • Afe Bablola, Okonkwo: Let us emulate Mandela

    Afe Bablola, Okonkwo: Let us emulate Mandela

    Prominent Nigerians yesterday urged African leaders and people to emulate the late former South African President Nelson Mandela.

    Eminent lawyer Aare Afe Babalola (SAN) urged African leaders to emulate the virtues of the late anti-Apartheid hero.

    Babalola said Mandela’s legacies could turn around the socio-economic predicament on the continent.

    In a statement, titled: Mandela: The Lessons of His Leadership Style, the legal luminary said Mandela had always been a man after his heart.

    He said: “When Mandela was sentenced to life in prison in 1964, an unperturbed and unruffled Mandela delivered a powerful speech that became the corner stone of the manifesto of the anti-apartheid movement, to wit: ‘During my lifetime, I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society. It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die’.

    “When he came out of prison, he did what African leaders would not do by voluntarily relinquished power not because he was no longer strong or able, but largely because he was a selfless, humane and humanistic human being.

    “He successfully and firmly resisted every attempt to pressurise him to continue in office at the expiration of his first term, preferring instead to become an elder statesman and etch his name in gold and serve humanity in other areas. He did not tread the path of ignominious exit like most African leaders.

    “He was not a member of the infamous club of sit-tight leaders, a phenomenon which has become the fad in Africa thereby demonstrating in clear terms, that the despicable practice of turning governance in Africa into a personal fiefdom through the manipulation of constitutions and political processes is no longer fashionable.

    “By the way he handled power, particularly his acclaimed acknowledgement of giving younger people like Thambo Mbeki a shot at governance instead of himself fighting tooth and nail to have a second term, stands Mandela out as a shining exception to the Lugardian postulation.

    “The Mandela style of leadership teaches us that we need committed, patriotic, selfless and disciplined leaders who have self control and have only one goal: that of benefitting the people they governed. Mandela served his people. He never benefitted from the state. Rather, he gave his all in the service of his people. Like Jesus Christ, he even offered his most precious possession, his life, in the pursuit of the good of the majority. That was the peak of selflessness and service to humanity.

    “African leaders should not only borrow a leaf from the Mandela persona, they should always have it at the back of their mind the moment they cannot render the service their people desire and deserve, they should bow out of power instead of being avaricious and stealing people’s patrimony.

    “Like Mandela, they should use their talents, time, money and goodwill for the good of all. That is why the world is jubilantly celebrating the exit of the Madiba.”

    The Deputy Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Annie Okonkwo, said the late former South African President was a universal icon and an exceptional Pan-African.

    The politician said the late Mandela was a rare African whose deep convictions unnerved tyrants to reverse themselves and whose elegant humanism compelled global adulation and praise.

    In a statement by his spokesperson, Mr Collins Steve Ugwu, the senator said: “As a face to the faceless and a name to the nameless, Mandela bore the light of redemption with an intensity that scared darkness and a courage that conquered oppression without submission.”