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Category: Opinion

  • Would Abiola have attended the conclave for Babangida?

    Would Abiola have attended the conclave for Babangida?

    “That Buhari participated in any form or shape during the public presentation of a book titled “A Journey in Service”, was a shouting testimony to the unity of the ruling elite and their serial jokes on us.”

    EVEN Muhammadu Buhari, an affliction on Nigeria during the eight years of his presidency – 2015 to 2023 – was there in Abuja last week. Represented. His choice not to attend in person but rather through a proxy was immaterial. That Buhari participated in any form or shape during the public presentation of a book titled “A Journey in Service”, was a shouting testimony to the unity of the ruling elite and their serial jokes on us. The book was the memoirs or author biography of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the military president who ruled the country between 1985 -1993. He was a comrade – in- arm with Buhari until he was not. Babangida or IBB as he’s fondly called by his admirers was reported to be a key player in the coup of 1983 which sacked the first democratically elected executive president of our country, Alhaji Shehu Aliyu Shagari, and installed an usurper, Maj.-Gen. Buhari. It was also the same IBB that inspired the sacking of Buhari and installed himself as military president about two years later. He subsequently imprisoned Buhari without trial for many years. Since then Buhari had not pretended about his being a ‘sworn enemy’ of Babangida until they stopped being enemies last week. At least so it seemed. My Igbo people would say that “ezue ka aha eri udele, atotuo ngiga”. I doubt that this Igbo adage has an equivalence in the English language so I will attempt a poor transliteration. The basket of vulture meat preserved just above the fireplace is brought down when those who partake in the eating of vulture gather together. In much of Africa, probably all of the continent, the meat of vulture is not a delicacy that people hanker after. Indeed, it’s a taboo. So picture in your mind’s eye the type of men who gather to savour the meat of a vulture. They must be less than honourable men. I won’t say they are usually evil and horrible.

    For the life of me I will never contemplate saying that the gathering last week in Abuja was that of vultures, not just the eaters of the meat of vultures. Branding people as vultures in Africa has a history behind it. And that history was bone-crushing and bloody. In spite of commendable efforts at national healing the scars are still evident including jarring artefacts in a museum dedicated to that nightmare. The Rwandan genocide occurred in 1994. It was devastating and tragic, and resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. There are two major ethnic groups in Rwanda – Hutu and Tutsi – who had long-standing tensions between them. The story was that as with colonialism everywhere, the Belgian overlords during the colonial rule created a system of ethnic classification which favoured the Tutsi minority. In 1994 political instability ensued following the assassination of the president, Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu. The president’s aircraft was shot down. The country’s Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) began broadcasting hate messages, inciting the majority Hutu to kill the Tutsi whom it branded as vultures. Between April – July 1994, about one million people had been killed in widespread violence, rapes, and destruction of property. The world stood askance and watched the carnage. On July 4, 1994, a Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) captured Kigali, the country’s capital, and seized power. Paul Kagame has been president of that country since 2000. Now you probably will appreciate why I will never brand last week’s gathering in Abuja for Babangida as that of vultures in spite of the strong attraction to do so. No fewer than 95% of the people at that conclave were rulers and ruiners of this country, past and present. More like ruiners.

    The man who was ‘celebrated’ in Abuja did more things than the vexatious abortion of the 1993 presidential election which the late Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola was post-humourously recognised as the winner. Babangida introduced the punishing International Monetary Fund-inspired structural adjustment programme ostensibly to address economic challenges; creation of the national directorate of employment to tackle unemployment; creation of the mass mobilisation for self-reliance, social justice and economic recovery; and, transition to civil rule which turned out to be interminable, and indeed a ruse. But for the employment directorate, none of the key programmes of Babangida endured to this day. This could be a pointer that the programmes were useless or that continuity has not been the hallmark of Nigeria’s successive administrations. At the height of his delusion Babangida was given the appellation of Maradona, a global football icon from Argentina, Diego Amando Maradona, whose exploits included scoring a goal with his hand (the hand of God) in a World Cup match between Argentina and England. The real Maradona ultimately dribbled himself into shame and disgrace through drug addiction. The fake Maradona also ended up in odium and pariah by annulling what was described as the freest and fairest election in the country. He was subsequently forced from office and into a life of isolation from decent society. When he was forced from office by the one he feared most, the late Gen. Sani Abacha, Babangida claimed that he was “stepping aside”. It has taken one generation for him to take the tentative steps to step back into the limelight. That was what happened in Abuja last week, aided and abetted by his friends and ‘foes’. I will wager to the annoyance of some readers that if Abiola, who Babangida should be vicariously held responsible for his detention and death, were to be alive he would have been part of the Abuja conclave. That’s how the elite roll. They have no permanent friends. They have no permanent enemies. They only have permanent interest-the hold on power both political and economic. One of them said as much the other day. Kayode Fayemi was governor of Ekiti state. He had also been a federal minister. He said the quarrels amongst them (politicians) were social media creations to titillate and distract the rest of us. He said they were not real, never skin deep.

    And the assertion by Fayemi that the joke was on the rest of Nigerians was in full display in Abuja during the attempted canonisation of Babangida. Those that we were once made to believe were hunters and the hunted came together, under the same roof backslapping one another, grinning from ear-to-ear, clinking wine glasses, and shoving them in our faces. Those are the same people over whom we cause divisions in our families, become sworn enemies of our longstanding friends, cut ties with acquaintances, and vow never to have anything to do with otherwise good people who belong to our class. The persons we are making enemies for, and defending with our lives are the same people celebrating their oneness and unity in the open, and conspiring behind closed doors on how to keep their knees on our necks. In which other jurisdiction would a Babangida be positioned to be hoisted in the pantheon of great, visionary and missionary leaders? That’s what is about to happen. The man who said he was “stepping aside” about 30 years ago is ready and being aided to step back into decent society by the people of his class. And we are being made unconscious enablers in the revision of history and rehabilitation of one of our oppressors. How? Why?

    Babangida has just tossed a book into our national conversation. We are now supposed to be pre-occupied and busy discussing aspects or all of his author biography. What he dropped is like that elephant in the midst of blind people. The animal is as big and huge as the part that each blind person in the room feels. Every segment of our country is gloating or grieving over aspects of his offerings. There’s a red meat for everybody. Some amongst the Igbo are over the moon that a participant in Nigeria’s many military coups had finally written that the January 1966 coup was not an Igbo coup. Who didn’t know that except for those who were eager to be sold a lie to keep the Igbo down? He wrote that the symbol of that coup Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was only Igbo in name and that he was as Hausa as they come. He also gave Ndigbo another red meat when he wrote that Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s excision of Biafra from Nigeria was almost unavoidable given the failure of the Head of state, Yakubu Gowon in securing the life and property of the Igbo in the north during that period of national crisis. Another one for the Igbo was his assertion that the so-called Igbo coup cost the lives of some Igbo officers at the hands of fellow Igbo, and that the coup was stopped by an Igbo officer. The red meat from Babangida, the Maradona, to the north and the west was his full-throated and strident condemnation of the cold-blooded killings of their prominent political figures in spite of the leaders’ non-resistance to the putsch. Also for the two defunct regions was the objection to what he described as non-coup activity in the former eastern region and the non-loss of lives of their political leaders.

    However, the one aspect of the book that will keep Babangida in the front burner of national conversation for sometime is the subject of June 12, 1993, and the belated acknowledgement by the principal character during that crisis that Abiola won the presidential election of that year. That singular incident has, rightly so, become a sore point in Nigeria. It evokes extreme emotions and passions. I was a reporter in the heat of the crisis and everyone became a ‘war’ reporter. Sometimes we came back from the theatres of the crisis to craft our story, and then shooting breaks out right in front of the newsroom. You sprang up from your seat to behold through the glass windows of the first floor newsroom of Champion Newspaper House, Ilasamaja, Lagos, the shooting dead by the military of mostly young and defiant men protesting the annulment of the election. It was a bloody and chilling spectacle, the type that any young beholder will take to their grave. A few of the people who were killed in the aftermath of the election annulment in 1993 had names and were mourned. Many of the victims had no names, so to speak. Their respective families bore the brunt for the victims whose remains were recovered. Some parents didn’t have the opportunity for closure by recovering the corpses of their children. About the same fate befell some Igbo who lost their lives and property during “oso Abiola”. And that’s why in the light of the recent conclave in Abuja and the canonisation of villains, the question of whether it was worthwhile to die for Nigeria has resurfaced. Will you still die for this country? The answer might as well be yes, if you consider Nigeria as a value greater than you.

  • Nigerian Youths and revelations at IBB book launch

    Nigerian Youths and revelations at IBB book launch

    By Uzo Owunne

    Recent revelations from Aliko Dangote at Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s book launch, along with Prince Arthur Eze’s own testimony, have once again exposed the deep-seated inequalities that have long defined Nigeria’s economic and political landscape.

    Dangote openly admitted: “He (IBB) called us into a room and gave us banking licenses… He asked us to pay 1 million each for oil blocs.”

    Meanwhile, Prince Arthur Eze declared that he, Dangote, Mike Adenuga, and a few others were “brought up” by IBB, stating that without Babangida’s direct intervention, he (Arthur Eze) “would have long been dead.”

    These statements confirm what young Nigerians have always suspected—the wealthiest figures in Nigeria were not simply products of exceptional hard work and perseverance, but beneficiaries of a system that handed them privileged access to opportunities, resources, and state-backed economic advantages.

    Yet, most of these same individuals now stand on their podiums, telling young Nigerians to “work hard and persevere.” Even more insulting, former President Muhammadu Buhari dismissed young Nigerians as “lazy,” despite the countless obstacles they face in a system that remains rigged against them.

    READ ALSO: Nnamdi Kanu and the trial of Justice Binta Nyako and others

    The hypocrisy is glaring. A handful of men were gifted access to oil blocs, banking licenses, and economic monopolies with little to no competition. Yet, today’s young Nigerians are expected to fight for survival in an economy where:

    • Government policies stifle innovation and favor monopolies.
      • Corruption ensures that only the well-connected thrive.
      • Youth-led businesses struggle due to a lack of access to capital and a hostile business environment.
      • Unemployment and underemployment rates are at record highs, leaving millions without a clear path to prosperity.

    There is a demand for a Fairer Nigeria.
    Nigerian youths are not lazy, and they are not asking for handouts. They are demanding a level playing field—a system where success is based on merit, not political connections or favoritism. They want:

    (1) Transparent Access to Opportunities – No more backroom deals that hand national wealth to a privileged few.(2) Equal Economic Participation – Young entrepreneurs should have access to funding and support without needing elite connections.(3) A Merit-Based System – Policies must promote fair competition, not protect monopolies.
    (4)Government Accountability – Leaders must stop gaslighting the youth and start addressing the systemic issues that hinder progress.

    READ ALSO: AREWA AND THE BURDEN OF THRUTH

    The interesting questions for Nigeria’s leaders become; if the current economic giants were truly self-made, why didn’t they compete on an open, level playing field? Why were they given resources and opportunities behind closed doors while today’s youth – the ones that are not standing on the shoulders of the old privileges – are left to fend for themselves?

    Nigerian youth are ready to build, innovate, and contribute to national prosperity—but they have lost patience for a system designed to exclude them,while the privileged few lecture them about hard work. It is time for real change, not empty rhetoric.
    Statements at the Babangida book launch are revealing.

    Uzo Owunne is a development expert

  • AREWA AND THE BURDEN OF TRUTH

    AREWA AND THE BURDEN OF TRUTH

    By Ahmad Sajoh

    The North of Nigeria is becoming a very big political chess board with various political groups springing up to outdo each other in preaching political correctness or creating a political commodity out of the hopeless, hapless and helpless population. Most of the assumed concerns expressed by these politicians and political actors are simply externalization of the deep rooted self deceit that threw the region into the abysmal pit we now complain about. Some of the individuals I see showing concerns today should have shown just a little of such concerns when they had opportunities to make a difference in the lives of Northern citizens. Almost all of them had opportunities to do so in the past. But today having found themselves out of political relevance or visibility in the public space, what they found appropriate is to now preach what needs to be done to address the plight of the North which to a large extent is the product of our collective negligence as a ruling elite. The most annoying is that some of them speak of the crisis as emanating from political neglect by the current leadership. It’s definitely beyond that. Let me say emphatically that a few of the persons expressing concerns are credible, but majority especially within the political class had opportunities in the past to address these same issues but failed to do so.

    The irony of the North is that the first generation leaders of the North, the Ahmadu Bello’s were privileged children from royal homes or from well to do homes. Some of them had little formal education. But they created avenues for children of ordinary people to acquire quality education and to self actualize. Today these same children of the ordinary people who got everything on a platter took over the mantle of leadership and decided to shut the door on the children of other ordinary people by destroying the education system and instituting a regime that only provides quality and even stable educational calendar to their children and those favoured by them. Another group are those who obtained good jobs and leadership positions by merit without having to know anyone or have godfathers. Today they promote cronyism, mediocrity and a brand of nepotism that will make the most ardent tribal jingoist cringe at the thought of it. As a matter of fact they are so brazen in their self-centeredness that they are now instituting a hegemonic system where they now promote their sons and daughters to continue to provide mediocre leadership similar to or even worse than their own. The National Assembly and other strata of leadership positions today are full of such scions of the old guards. Unfortunately, being over pampered and full of entitlement, all these privileged children know about leadership are the spoils of office rather than its responsibilities. For them ” Leadership is a TITLE rather than a Responsibility ” A second category exhibiting the same dishonourable conduct in leadership is made up of loyal lapdogs or godsons of the powerful individuals who attain power for the sole purpose of carrying out the godfather’s biddings. They are even worse than the sons and daughters. Apart from opening up the treasuries of government to be looted by their godfathers and associates, they equally destroy the institutional fabric of government bodies by making them ineffective even after their exit. It’s really sad.

    “It is either that a Muslim cleric preaches fatalism as a doctrine or a Christian prosperity preacher justified such recklessness as favour from God. The populace are often reminded that their station in life is decreed by God or that it is envy to begrudge a rich person his riches. Very unfortunate indeed. Instead of showing concern for such a sorry state of affairs and emboldened by the support of sundry praise singers, the Northern ruling elite found a good use for the poverty and illiteracy in the region. Too much poverty? Good. Too much illiteracy? Good. Too many hungry, despondent and hopeless young people in the streets? Oh very good. Their solution became something that created the Frankenstein monster we are now facing.”

    So, under such circumstances service delivery becomes secondary. All such leaders are concerned about are the pecks of their offices and the underserved fame or fortune it confers. Of course they dare not deviate from the template of their parents or godfathers. Political office becomes a vast arena for playing elite fantasy games where lavish lifestyles are the most visible dividends. Exotic SUVs are the toys of choice. Birthdays, Wedding ceremonies and even burials became avenues to display criminal opulence and flamboyant lifestyles in the face of abject poverty within society. As this mediocrity and profligacy continues the condition of ordinary people continued to nosedive from bad to worst down to ugly. And they found willing accomplices in the clergy in both major religions. It is either that a Muslim cleric preaches fatalism as a doctrine or a Christian prosperity preacher justified such recklessness as favour from God. The populace are often reminded that their station in life is decreed by God or that it is envy to begrudge a rich person his riches. Very unfortunate indeed. Instead of showing concern for such a sorry state of affairs and emboldened by the support of sundry praise singers, the Northern ruling elite found a good use for the poverty and illiteracy in the region. Too much poverty? Good. Too much illiteracy? Good. Too many hungry, despondent and hopeless young people in the streets? Oh very good. Their solution became something that created the Frankenstein monster we are now facing. They conveniently decided to weaponize the poverty and illiteracy as a means of power ascendancy. They use it to hold power in a vice grip, ceding it only to their children or those they favour. The cycle of bad leadership continues unabated. And as for the youth? Well their solution is to give them drugs and recruit them as political thugs. These are some of the hard truths that are being masked under the veneer of all the political gatherings, the show of concerns and the transactions about voting numbers, political appointments and location of government offices. However, like investigators often force the corporate veils of suspected entities to be removed, one day the veil used to mask the causes of poverty, hunger and deprivations in the North will be removed. The truth will be made known to those being oppressed. Like my people say “one day strong wind go blow and fowl nyash go comot”

    PLEASE READ: American schizophrenic politics and foreign policy

    Perhaps it will be necessary to take a closer look at some of these issues. There is definitely a need for closer scrutiny in order to provide proper perspectives to the issues and to provide appropriate context. Like all parts of the country the biggest problem faced by the North is social inequality which is creating tiny islands of riches in vast seas of poverty. The rich are getting richer while the poor are facing a dire existential crisis. Unfortunately the riches of these people are a direct product of the deprivations of the poor. A system with no shared prosperity is a system destined for perdition. So, what we saw during the August protests is not simply a reaction orchestrated by some enemy political forces as is often explained by some people in authority, but rather the beginning of an uprising by a poor, despondent and oppressed class. Granted that some politicians may have cashed on it to feather their political nests and foist their evil agenda, but soon, very soon they too will become victims of the monster they awaken. When Boko Haram started in the North East, other Northerners felt it was a problem for the North East alone. Even within the North East it was isolated to a group of states identified as BAY states. BAY states stood for Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. Today that isolated occurrence affecting three states has matured into a franchise under different names and forms covering the entire Arewa. In the North West it is banditry, kidnappings and cattle rustling. In the North Central it is farmer herder clashes and ethnic strife laced with some kidnappings as well. Unfortunately the social miscreants have loads of advantages. The availability of hard drugs in the region buoyed by politicians giving the same to their political thugs meant sufficient numbers of able-bodied human resources for the miscreants to recruit for their satanic agendas. And with a ready reservoir of hapless, hopeless, uneducated, unskilled and despondent youth readily available, a stream of recruits becomes always available. In addition, while the social miscreants taunt us with the use of technology to advertise their dastardly trade by opening social media accounts, we have failed to use the same advancements in technology to track them. Otherwise how could kidnappers in the bush demand for motorcycles as ransom, and we send the motorcycles without at least fixing some tracking devices on them? Or am I missing something here? Playing the political card while the North is bleeding must be the most unpardonable thing the ruling elite are doing against the ordinary people of the region.

    As for those who think the problem of the North is to be given more political appointments or to be given political appointments in choice departments, I find their arguments both pedestrian and self serving. The biggest challenges faced by the North of the Country today are basically three. Insecurity, agriculture and education. Perhaps you may add healthcare if you like. Today the National Security Adviser, the Chief of Defense Staff, the two Ministers of Defense and the two Ministers of Police Affairs are all Northerners. If occupying a political office alone is the solution to our problems, then insecurity should have ended in the North long ago. In Agriculture, the two Ministers of Agriculture and the Minister of Water Resources are all Northerners. We should not have any problems with rainfed agricultural production or dry season farming. Don’t believe the lie that our low agricultural production is due to insecurity. No. Many safe and secure arable lands are lying fallow because we have no commitment to provide enabling policy options as well as agricultural inputs to support cultivation both at the National and sub-National levels. Unfortunately majority of the active workforce are in the cities taking drugs and serving politicians as thugs rather than help their aging parents cultivate the land. To make matters worse in a few instances when the Federal Authorities send agricultural inputs to the states, they are shared to politicians who sell them to merchants who in turn sell them sometimes to neighboring countries. The aging rural farming population in the rural areas cannot meet the demands of an increasingly idle population. Need I also say the Ministers of Education and some of the key heads of intervention agencies in the education sector are also Northerners? My take is that it’s not about the appointments, rather it is about the commitments. Appointments alone cannot solve our problems. Such appointments must be backed by a commitment to deploy sufficient political will to address the issues in contention.

    READ ALSO: Maximum government and minimum governance

    I get angry when I hear people talk about the Almajiri system as not structured to provide skills. That is a huge lie. First it is a lie to say that a child must be a “Muhajir” to seek Islamic knowledge. By the way Muhajir means “Immigrant”. The word Almajiri is from the root word Muhajir or the immigrant. The emphasis has always been on the immigration rather than knowledge seeking. Hence parents send toddlers to long distances without care or concern in the name of seeking knowledge that is readily available next door. Why must anyone immigrate from his hometown in order to seek Islamic knowledge? I was an “Almajiri” in the early days of my life. I was born in Mubi and I was taken to one Mallam Umaru Uba in the same Mubi to learn Islamic knowledge. Even though my parents were based in Mubi I relocated to join my mates at the Mallam’s residence. For me the Tsangaya was more of a boarding school. We were the same way as other Tsangaya pupils except that we did not beg for food because we produced our food. Why will anyone send a five year old child to a place a thousand miles away to go and seek knowledge and be expected to beg for food? My parents visited me in Tsangaya once in a while. Some of my Tsangaya mates are today Medical Doctors, Teachers and Business men. One of us is now a US citizen based in that country. But that is not the core lesson. The real lesson is that our Tsangaya had a farm where we produce food for the Mallam. In addition we hewed wood for sale and cut grasses for thatching roofs and elephant grass for weaving zana mats. We sold these items for money instead of begging. Once in a while we undertook some odd jobs like washing clothes or fetching water for neighbors for money but anyone who begged was not compelled to do so by our circumstances. Although at the time I was in the Tsangaya I never went to school many of my mates did. But all of us were taught skills such as thatching roofs, weaving zana mats and building houses using mud. I remember when the wall fencing of my father’s house fell after my return, I was the one that built it with my father and siblings serving as my labourers. I also painted my father’s new chambers as a display of some skills I learned.Those who knew me in Federal Government College Warri could recall that I was both a Barber and Photographer. These were skills I learned both while at the Tsangaya and at Mubi 1 primary school where some of our teachers such as the late Nuhu Muhammed and Bakari Fudamu spoke about developing our talents or learning some skills. So integrating skills in the Tsangaya education and at basic education was possible even at a time when available skills were limited. My mind always buggs me into thinking what’s gwan with us today. Why the retrogression even in our thinking? Why have we suddenly become so unproductive and lazily entitled?

    Talking about productivity, when I was growing up every primary school in Mubi had a farm. Every secondary school had a farm. In addition we had Farm Training Centers and Agricultural demonstration farms run by the Native Authority NA. The correctional center in Mubi had its own farm while the inmates could be hired by farmers to work on their farms. Today our schools don’t even have playing fields not to talk of productive fields. All the farmlands and spaces around our schools have either been sold or appropriated by a greedy ruling elite that is only concerned with accumulating property without productivity. How can a society that is exponentially growing in population while increasingly declining in productivity not be hungry? And the leadership believes the solution is to institutionalize begging rather than encourage productivity. Palliative sharing is now an achievement in governance. Haba! The groundnut pyramids of the past, the cotton fields and ginneries of the past and the textile industries in Northern Nigeria were not products of magic. A return to them will not take rocket science to achieve. They were the results of good leadership and a productive population. What obtained then were annual Agricultural shows where good farmers display their powers and are rewarded with generous prices that encouraged more productivity the next cropping season. It was an annual bazaar where authorities interface with genuine farmers not politicians masquerading as farmers in order to collect inputs and sell. Beyond farming the Agric shows was an avenue for artisans to display their skills in other crafts such as blacksmithing, weaving and related trades and for students to express talents. All were rewarded with incentives to do more. Today we have an indolent and self indulging leadership presiding over a lazy and unproductive population. Their common denominator is a sense of entitlement represented by the relationship woven around the perpetuation of a social inequality status-quo that does not favour the citizens in any way. The leaders feel entitled to jumbo pay and lavish lifestyles. The citizens feel entitled to periodic visits with tiny gifts that neither support their needs nor change their lives. In the end it is just a lose-lose situation for all.

    READ ALSO: Education: Name, policy not Nigeria’s problem

    How do we reset the North? The first step is to stop all pretenses and self deception. All the groupings parading as Northern this, or Northern that, should accept the fact that addressing the crisis in the North requires more than just a transactional political culture that uses the population as a bargaining chip. Deep rooted social inequalities and fallacies should be uprooted and reconstructed. Productivity must return to the North. Drug abuse should be fought with all seriousness. Leadership recruitment should take a different course. Aspiring leaders must present a Pedigree in community service. Building unhelpful hegemonic transfer of power from father to son or godfather to godson will eventually lead to a monumental uprising. We do not expect our populations to genuflect and worship us today, and then later do the same to our children and godsons. Soon questions will be asked by those oppressed class and even the answers we give them will be questioned. The Almajiri system must end not soon but now. Every child should be entitled to family love and care while growing up. The beggars on our streets should be a shame we should blot. The drug use in the North must be fought by all. Free and Universal education must return to the North. Skills acquisition should be prioritized. A group of uneducated, unskilled, unemployed and unemployable youth is a danger even to itself. Young people must be encouraged to replace the aging farming populations in Northern Nigeria. These old men and women can never feed us using their feeble and waning strengths.

    Most importantly a fragmented Arewa that sees itself as composed of different ethnic and religious groupings is indeed a society courting and encouraging strife. We have failed to learn an important lesson from the disasters that befell our societies. Poverty has no tribe or religion, hunger has no tribe or religion. Flood and flooding does not come us in ethnic or religious form. And when insurgents and bandits strike they do not identify religion or ethnicity as the basis of their dastardly acts. They simply express their satanic prowess. The challenges we face do not respect or consider our ethnic, religious or far-North and Middle belt divisions. They affect us as just humans. In the end, we are united in our humanity. Consequently we should wake up to the fact that we cannot address a situation that does not know the difference between our people in a divided and fragmented fashion and hope to defeat it. Nurturing our societies in fear and mutual suspicion benefits none of us. Even those who use micro-nationalism as vehicles for power ascendancy eventually discover that it turns around to consume them. During the August protests no one could distinguish Muslims from Christians, far-Northerners from people of the middle belt. All the different ethnic identities we display melted sway. What we saw were simply hungry and angry rampaging anarchists on the streets. Truth be told? We must face the reality of a population gearing to revolt. They are united by their unfortunate conditions. Honestly they cannot understand entreaties by a ruling elite they see as detached from their own realities. If you need evidence consider the fact that Traditional Rulers, the Ulama and Pastors were not seen as upright moral voices during the August protests. A revolt in the North may be inevitable if something is not than to address the concerns or our ordinary people. And it even be bloody if not averted. But we can stop it by taking the right steps and ending this culture of self deception and pretences to politics. Political expediency cannot replace realistic solutions to what is obviously an existential crisis. We must come face to face with Arewa’s burden of truth.

    Let us remember Alhaji Mamman Shata and his epic song “Mu tashi mu farka ‘yan Arewa…”

    Ahmad Sajoh a former Commissioner for Information Adamawa State writes from No. 35 Oran Street Wuse Zone 1 Abuja and can be reached on aisajo2@gmail.com_.

  • American Schizophrenic Politics and Foreign Policy

    American Schizophrenic Politics and Foreign Policy

    It is so confusing how to square the release posted by the Obama White House in 2014 (see link below), at the height of the kidnap of the Chibok Girls by Boko Haram, during which Michelle Obama played a crucial role to bring global attention to that crisis, with the bombshell allegation by Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry’s that the USAID under the Obama and then the Biden presidencies was actually financing the Boko Haram terrorist group.

    It makes absolutely no sense except within the context of Elon Musk’s DOGE team and their MAGA supporters dropping whoppers of falsehood, outright lies, and disinformation to justify their gestapo approach to “reforming” the U.S. public service. Engaging in mindless firing of government officials, disbanding government agencies and conducting loyalty test within the Justice and security agencies. It is impossible to differentiate facts from fictions. Remember the story about $59 million condoms in Gaza!!

    READ THIS: FACT SHEET: U.S. Efforts to Assist the Nigerian Government in its Fight against Boko Haram

    President Trump just a few days ago blamed President Biden for instigating the Putin invasion of Ukraine when everyone knows that Putin has had his eye on Ukraine for years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin invaded and took over Cremea without provocation during Obama regime. Obama made a strategic mistake by doing absolutely nothing about it other than imposing ineffectual sanctions which probably emboldened him to invade.

    We all need to take a deep breath and treat with more than a grain of salt anything coming from the MAGA crowd which believes in flooding the zone with disinformation and outright falsehoods. They will do or say anything to justify the destruction of what they perceive as the disloyal woke deep-state. Otherwise, why would a Republican congressman openly declare that the U.S. government sponsored ISIS, Alkeida (two sworn enemies of the U.S.) and Boko Haram. One would have expected such a statement from the likes of Bonnie Sander and the ultra liberal Ocasio not from a conservative pro-national security Republican congressman from Pennsylvania. This is turning politics over its head. It makes absolutely no sense just like what’s happening in the U.S. is mind-numbingly nonsensical. You have the U.S. government trusting Putin over its long term allies in Europe. The U.S. VP openly castigated European governments in Munich and openly supported an ultra-right, fringe Nazis political party in Germany as it prepares for an election. Totalitarian Orban of Hungary is a darling of Washington DC. Elon Musk is openly campaigning and offering financial support for political parties aligned with Nazis ideology. We are truly in schizophrenic uncharted political territory.

    _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Scott Perry’s “Africa Lovefest and the Character Assassination of President Barack Obama

    US Congressman: Scott Perry

    Isn’t it curious that both the do-gooder US democrat liberals who are scrambling to save the USAID and the Republican conservatives who are hell bent on destroying it are both using their gullible whipping boy Africa to make their case? The democrat liberals, many of who simply play to the gallery to hide their racist condescending disdain for Africa are storming the USAID HQ claiming that without the USAID all African children would starve to death and our contagious Eboma will jump over the Atlantic and devastate their American Homeland. The conservative Scott Perry and his White Supremacist Apartheid South African Elon Musk argue that they are trying to demolish USAID to safe Africa from Obama and Biden’s USAID which is the sponsor and financial backbone of Boko Haram.

    Yet rather than been outraged by this constant negative narrative and weaponizing Africa poverty by the West to push their theory of the racial inferiority of Africans, we are falling one another to push this same negative narrative.

    What is so demoralizing as an African is that African elites and so called intellectuals are playing true to type to the Whiteman’s characterization of us as gullible people who are driven by their emotion rather than their intellect. That is what is so frustrating with how African intellectuals have fallen head of heel spreading the disinformation by Scott Perry that Obama and Biden were sponsors of Boko Haram.

    Politics makes for strange bedfellows. Who could have imagined in a million years that a Republican for that matter would be the one “spilling the beans” about how the U.S supposedly sponsors terrorism all over the world. Has anyone wondered why this new “activist” in defense of Nigeria. Scott Perry just selectively and conveniently decides to expose the evil that the USAID does just as Elon Musk was driving his bulldozer over the USAID and it just happens that it was during Barrack Obama and Biden presidency that the USAID was sponsoring Boko Haram. What happened during the transition from Obama to Trump before Biden took over. Apparently, Trump the lover of Africa and her shit-hole countries stopped the funding of Boko Haram and Biden continued from where his former boss, Obama stopped.

    Is that logically? But in the post-truth era where confirmation bias is king people no longer critically analyze facts before running to town with disinformation, propaganda and fake news.

    That exactly is the reason Congressman Scott Scott Perry, could get away with accusing the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, of funding terrorist organisations, including Boko Haram. Just like Trump just blamed Biden for instigating the Russian invasion of Ukraine when in fact Russia took over Cremea way back in 2014. Truth does not matter anymore if you can flood the social media airwave with falsehood, fake news, half truths, and disinformation.

    The Blackman capacity for self hate is mind-numbing. The Nigerian social media has been overtaken with the caricaturitization and character assassination of the Barrack Obama the historic first Black US president.

    Who did this to us?

    Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

  • Nnamdi Kanu and the trial of Justice Binta Nyako & others

    Nnamdi Kanu and the trial of Justice Binta Nyako & others

    Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who has been in prison for the better part of the last 10 years is the face of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). He was not the founder. He was at the head of the internal rebellion and the subsequent insurgency that ousted the promoters of IPOB and its handmaiden, the once ubiquitous new Radio Biafra. This radio station stirs deep love, and equally deep hatred and loathing from various sections of a deeply divided Nigeria. Among Igbo youngsters, and they constitute the majority of that nation’s population, as in other population segments in Africa, Radio Biafra was a must listen to. It enjoyed a global reach and so a global followership. At the height of its prowling prowess it was not unusual to hear the majority of passengers inside inter-state commercial buses from the East insisting on the vehicle driver tuning into Radio Biafra for the duration of the trip. I am a witness on occasions when I had a need to travel by that means. On the flip side, haters of Radio Biafra were legion and equally filled with unspeakable bile. The contents of its programming were venomous, hate-filled, irreverent, trenchant and pugilistic. Kanu was a propagandist, and he knew it. Whenever he was on duty and behind the console, the world stopped among youngsters of the Igbo nation wherever they may be in the universe. Nigeria’s former president and affliction, Maj-Gen Muhammadu Buhari, and his co-travelers in that ancient regime could have feigned to be unfazed by the name-calling and two-fisted and relentless attacks on them by Kanu and Radio Biafra, but the truth was that they were unsettled and irritated. At one point, Buhari’s attorney general filed a suit in court against Kanu which key charge was insulting the president. Some lawyers contended then that there was no such crime in our books.

    Just like Buhari before him, the regime of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is using Mazi Nnamdi Kanu as a pawn in their political chessboard. The intention is to use him for quid pro quo ahead of the 2027 election. Tinubu obviously does not understand the make up of a typical Igbo person. Using Kanu as a bargaining chip will not win him any significant support in the Igbo nation when the time comes. He may have a better chance of making inroads in the hearts and minds of the Igbo if he immediately directed his attorney general and minister of justice to file a nolle prosequi as it concerns the torture and trial of Kanu.

    So in a span of one decade Kanu has managed to be the leader of a separatist group, a serial defendant in court cases, eternal accused person, head of a terrorist organisation, sponsor of a violent militia, a detainee, a prisoner, an escapee from a violent and bloody invasion of his father’s compound near Umuahia in Abia state, a man determined by a superior court of having no case to answer, a fugitive from the law, among other labels. The current status of Nnamdi Kanu is that of a man serving prison term for an indeterminate period or sine die without being formally convicted by a court of law for any known crime. Early this month a federal high court in Abuja had ordered that he should be hauled before the court on Monday, February 10. If there was a reason for the sudden arraignment, it was not in the public domain. If it was stated then yours sincerely missed it. The curious thing was that the judge before whom Kanu would appear was his ‘customer’. In local parlance a customer is someone you see often and conduct business with. The name of this federal high court judge is Binta Fatimat Remawa Nyako. She is the wife of a retired Navy General, Rear Admiral Murtala Nyako. In a sense Justice Nyako, and the accused/defendant Kanu are customers after Kanu had gotten a prior trial judge recused from his lingering and obviously interminable ‘trial’. Properly speaking, Nnamdi Kanu is not facing prosecution; he’s being persecuted. He is a prisoner of conscience. Even his persecutors know this as an unvarnished truth.

    As it turned out February 10 was for the resumption of the trial of Kanu on terrorism and other related trumped up charges against him by the federal government. But it wasn’t to be. Justice Nyako was supposed to be seated on her throne. In reality she sat on the throne. The government lawyer, Adegboyega Awomolo was supposed to sit in the front row because of his status as a senior advocate of Nigeria. And he was there. Kanu, the accused/defendant, was as expected in the dock. Ideally, the contestations over fine legal points should be between the prosecuting and defence teams. The judge moderates and holds court, pun intended. It was not to be. It turned out to be a circus and a spectacle soon after the so-called trial got underway. For anyone not used to the Nigerian court system it would have been easy to conclude that the judge and the prosecutor were the persons on trial, the persons in the dock. Kanu did not fight shy in taking over his own defence from his lawyers. He vociferously made accusations, insinuations and inferences that were in no way complimentary to the judge and the lead prosecutor. He alluded to bias, ethical misconduct, abuse of law, corruption, and outright monetary inducements in hundreds of millions of Naira.

    PLEASE SEE: Education: name, policy not Nigeria’s problem

    There were viral videos on the altercations in court on that fateful, really disgraceful day. A national newspaper later captured what transpired after first reporting that the suit had been adjourned indefinitely: Earlier in January Kanu (had) filed a petition against Justice Nyako before the national judicial council wherein he accused her of judicial misconduct over his trial. And days later, the IPOB leader called for his case to be transferred to the south east if no judge at the federal high court in Abuja was willing to preside over it apart from Justice Nyako. At what was supposed to be the commencement of proceedings, prosecutor Awomolo had stated that he had filed and served all necessary documents and so was ready. But defence attorney, Aloy Ejimakor, said that the issue before the court was not about proceeding with the trial. At that point Justice Nyako intervened to explain that though she had earlier recused herself from the case, the chief judge of the federal high court had turned down her decision to withdraw from the case. Subsequently she directed that the defendant should file a formal motion with the chief judge requesting the reassignment of the case to another judge. That was a curious demand by Nyako.

    While the opposing lawyers were haggling about the propriety of a motion for reassignment, Kanu obtained leave of the court to speak for himself on the matter. “Yes, I want to take over”, Kanu responded to a question from Nyako. Kanu then said that he agreed to attend court out of respect for the judiciary. He insisted that Justice Nyako no longer had jurisdiction over his trial, as she had previously recused herself in September of 2024. He turned to the lead prosecutor and said, “a grown up man like you who should be in the village and, who should be making sure that things are done properly, is here subverting the law”. Turning his gaze to the judge, Kanu said he no longer recognised the authority of her court. “Everything you (the judge) said here is meaningless to me. Why is it that when it comes to my case, everything is turned upside-down?” The defendant argued that the memo sent by the chief judge, returning the case file to Justice Nyako, could not override the enrolled order made on September 24, when she initially recused herself”. When Justice Nyako informed Kanu that he was at liberty to appeal the chief judge’s decision, the defendant shot back saying that” if the chief judge disagrees, he should appeal the (recusal) decision” to a superior court. It soon became a monologue with Kanu saying: ”You (Nyako) cannot preside over this case, not now, not today, not ever. You stand recused and you must leave my case. I don’t need you in my case. You are biased. Tell the chief judge that Nnamdi Kanu said so. This is not a court of law. This is a shrine to injustice, and I will not subject myself to it “. Kanu also shot down an attempt by the prosecutor to get Justice Nyako to fix a trial date. “Because of money they are paying you from the AGF’s (attorney general of the federation’s) office, a grown up man like you is here supporting evil. The rule of law says you should go on appeal. The same chief judge, writing this stupid memo, I have recused him before. He sat on an appeal, I took him to NJC, and recused him. Why is he insisting on this one? He wants to embarrass your lordship by asking her to sit on this case“. Apparently flustered, Justice Nyako said: “The only decision I can make right now is that in the light of what is happening now in court, I am going to adjourn this case sine die. But Kanu told the judge that she had no jurisdiction to adjourn anything. “None whatsoever. You cannot make an order without jurisdiction. The memo from the chief judge cannot confer jurisdiction upon you”.

    SEE ALSO: IF KEMI BADENOCH WERE IGBO

    It’s very clear from the so-called trial of Kanu that his persecutors are determined to use politics to blunt and trump law. The federal government has no case against Mazi Nnamdi Kanu except attempting to suppress free speech which is a constitutional right. Assuming, but without conceding, that any charges could be sustained against him, those charges were vitiated by the singular terrorist act of the Buhari regime in abducting Kanu from Kenya and his extraordinary rendition to Nigeria. The Abuja division of the Nigerian Court of Appeal said as much in October 2023. The second highest court in the land had voided all the charges preferred against him. The three-man panel of justices was unanimous in ruling that the government breached local and international treaties to unlawfully arrest and detain Kanu. In discharging and acquitting Kanu when the case was taken off Nyako, one of the panelists, Justice Oludotun Adefope-Okojie, said that the authorities failed to publicly disclose where they arrested Kanu and therefore could not proceed with his trial. “No government is permitted to abduct anybody without following due process of extradition. Nigeria is not an exception”. However, the federal government got the Supreme Court to overrule the Appeal Court decision and return the case file to Nyako’s court for trial. Curiously, the Supreme Court had no publicly stated opinion on the abduction and extraordinary rendition of the victim of the state-sponsored terrorism. Even then it took weeks before the apex court released the formal judgement. Because Kanu was involved the court breached the regulation that stipulated a maximum of seven days. Elsewhere rapporteurs of a United Nations agency that probed Kanu’s abduction and  trial had also come to the same conclusion that the government behaved like a rogue state. The demanded that Kanu should be freed and compensated for the trauma he might have suffered on account of his abduction, an extraordinary rendition to Nigeria, and illegal imprisonment.

    PLEASE READ: Maximum government and minimum governance

    Just like Buhari before him, the regime of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is using Mazi Nnamdi Kanu as a pawn in their political chessboard. The intention is to use him for quid pro quo ahead of the 2027 election. Tinubu obviously does not understand the make up of a typical Igbo person. Using Kanu as a bargaining chip will not win him any significant support in the Igbo nation when the time comes. He may have a better chance of making inroads in the hearts and minds of the Igbo if he immediately directed his attorney general and minister of justice to file a nolle prosequi as it concerns the torture and trial of Kanu. The sentiment even amongst those who are not sold to Kanu’s methods is that Tinubu has inherited and perpetuated the humiliation and trial of the Igbo nation for their lack of support for, and indeed outright rejection of him during the presidential election of 2023, just like his predecessor Buhari. There’s an idiomatic expression about the law being an ass. This is often interpreted to mean that the law can be unreasonable, stupid, inflexible, unjust, illogical or harsh. The expression could also imply that the law may not always align with common sense or moral principles. But the law is really not all these. The greater problem is within the range of persons who manipulate the law for ends other than good. In this category you will find corrupt government officials, litigants, witnesses, lawyers, judges and sundry participants in the judicial process. So let Tinubu, like Buhari, continue to treat the law as an ass because it suits his mean and duplicitous fancies and proclivities.

    UGO ONUOHA, veteran journalist, was the Editor-in-Chief of Champion Newspapers Limited

  • Education: name, policy not Nigeria’s problem

    Education: name, policy not Nigeria’s problem

    AFTER my parents fled Lagos for Mgbidi in the then Eastern region (later East Central State and now Imo State) at the onset of the Biafra – Nigeria civil war in 1967, they registered their children at Central School (primary) in our village. We had been dislocated from St. Jude’s Primary School in the Ebute Metta area of Lagos. Central School was comparable to St. Jude’s in infrastructure, teaching staff, and the quality of instructions. This should not come as a surprise because both schools were run by the Missionaries. They were also located in the bowls of expansive premises. However, Central School had a slight edge because it had a very big green and lush field which served as a football pitch, and for track and field sports events. The only drawback was that the field was located across a major road (now an expressway), the Onitsha – Owerri freeway. On that other side of the road also was the headmaster’s official residence which overlooked the field, and slightly to the left was the ‘i’ shaped teachers’ quarters. If we took time to write about some basic features of what was basically a rural school in the 1960s, it is only because we will have cause to return to it in the course of our engagement today. And it is also because of the recent policy flip flops and our nation’s apparent unseriousness over education since the ill-advised seizure of public primary and secondary schools by the military when soldiers assumed political  power in the 1960s.

    Tunji Alausa replaced Prof. Tahir Mamman as education minister in the last underwhelming reshuffle of the Cabinet of Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The president had said at the time of the Cabinet changes that he dropped some ministers because Nigerians assessed them poorly. But it could be a matter of coincidence that the changes happened at about the same time that the sacked minister was entangled with the controversial subject of the minimum age for the admission of our young adults or children into tertiary institutions. He was reported to have said that any child who was younger than 18 years would be ineligible for admission into the university. Some Nigerians and parents were alarmed and incensed especially because of the suddenness and alleged lack of consultations before the pronouncement. It was reckoned that many kids who were already in the terminal classes in secondary schools may be compelled to idle away for two to three years at home with the attendant risks before they become eligible to sit for the joint admissions and matriculation board examination for admission. The fight was loud, strident and very public. The spat may not be solely responsible for the ouster of the minister, but it may not be entirely unconnected with his sacking.

    That minister’s removal has, however, not cured Tinubu’s regime’s proclivity to put its own foot in its own mouth. His has been a case of one week, one controversy. Some of the president’s men and women speak from both sides of their mouths, and often long before they think through any issue. The other day, it was one presidential aide who wrote in a blog post that the federal government was at the cusp of increasing tariffs on electricity yet again. Nigerians screamed. Producers and manufacturers kicked and baulked at the proposed hike, saying that energy already accounts for a substantial percentage of their operational costs and household expenses. The government backed down, at least for now. The aide later went on a long-winding explanation of how the message was misunderstood, and how what was written was twisted and taken out of context. Last week was the turn of the federal ministry of education.

    READ ALSO: CSOs allege powerful elite depleting Nigeria’s mineral resources

    The minister was reported to have said that the federal government had scrapped the junior secondary school and the senior secondary school segments in Nigeria’s school system. In their place our children will subsequently be made to undertake a straight 12-year basic education before admission into the university if qualified. A national newspaper reported the ‘new policy’ thus last week Friday: The federal government has announced the scrapping of all junior secondary schools (JSS) and senior secondary schools (SSS) in the country and introduced a compulsory 12-year uninterrupted basic education model after which a Nigerian child can aspire to higher education. With this development, the Nigerian government is seeking the abolition of the 6-3-3-4 education system and replacing it with 12-4. This is even as it has sought the approval of the national council on education (NCE) to officially adopt 16 years as the minimum entry age requirement into the country’s tertiary institutions. The NCE is the apex policy-making agency in the education sector.

    Alausa was said to have spoken in Abuja in the presence of the commissioners for education in Nigeria’s 36 states and the education secretary of the federal capital territory (FCT), officials of agencies and parastatals under the education ministry, as well as representatives of development partners. The minister reportedly elaborated by saying that by subsuming secondary education into basic education, students will benefit from uninterrupted learning up to the age of 16, and that the new policy would align with global best practices. He claimed that the reform would reduce dropout rates by eliminating financial and systemic barriers that currently prevent students from completing secondary education. “Extending basic education to 12 years will ensure a standardized curriculum that is uniformly implemented across the nation. This will also facilitate early exposure to vocational and entrepreneurial skills, preparing students for both higher education and employment. Many developed nations have implemented similar systems where basic education spans 12 years, ensuring that students acquire foundational knowledge before specialising at tertiary levels”. The minister rightly said that “When students receive an extended period of compulsory education, they are better equipped to join the workforce with relevant skills. This reform will also reduce child labour and other social vices resulting from premature school dropout”.

    Children in dilapidated classroom

    Barely 24 hours after, the education ministry poured cold water on the minister’s declaration. Its director of press claimed that the minister has not scrapped the extant education system but merely made a proposal to the NCE. “At the extraordinary national council on education meeting held on 6 February 2025 in Abuja, the honourable minister of education, Dr. Maruf Olatunji Alausa, presented a proposal for discussion – not an immediate policy change. The proposal seeks to transition to 12 years of compulsory education while retaining the current 6-3-3(4) structure. A key aspect of this proposal is to eliminate the examination barrier between JSS and SSS, allowing students to progress seamlessly without external assessment at that stage. To ensure a well – informed decision, the ministry will undertake extensive stakeholder engagements over the next eight months, consulting education policymakers, state governments, teachers, parents, and other key players. The final decision on whether to adopt this reform will be made at the National Council on Education meeting in October 2025”.

    The latest proposal on education that appears afflicted by flip flops from the onset may actually be the way to go in the 21st century. But beautiful policy formulations and the tendency to copy and paste what obtained in other jurisdictions cannot be an end to themselves. It takes commitment and doing by those involved in getting desired and beneficial results from policy formulation and implementation. In 1982, 43 years ago, when the current education system was introduced the aims included making primary education (6 years) universal and accessible to all children; equip pupils and students with fundamental reading, writing, and math skills (basic literacy and numeracy); for junior secondary education (3 years) to introduce students to basic pre-vocational skills; expose students to a range of subjects including languages, mathematics, sciences, and social sciences in a broad based educational format; in the subsequent three years of senior secondary education, to allow students to specialise in specific subjects or fields; and, prepare them for post-secondary education or entry into the workforce. The tertiary education segment (4 years) of the extant system was designed for advanced learning which will provide students with in-depth knowledge and skills in their chosen fields; and, then foster a culture of research, development, innovation and entrepreneurship. “Nwanyi da ada ugbere abuo aguo ihe obu na ukpa onu’”. Literally this means that when you fail twice in an endeavour it will be imperative to stop, reflect and take stock. The 6-3-3-4 replaced the colonial education system we inherited from the British. So, unless anybody else lives in denial and scores the current system as a roaring success, the implication is that we have failed in our quest for useful education again. The sensible thing to ask ourselves at this stage is whether “aguba adighi nko, m’obu onye na-akpu isi amagh oru ya”- is the problem that of the barber or the clippers? I wager that in the case of the serial failures in our education system, the barber is to blame. This is not a prayer, but the proposed 12 years of basic education will fail unless we cure the foundational and human problems besetting our education.

    READ ALSO: The six zonal political system and Nigeria’s stability and economic development

    And these problems are in plain sight. The general guideline by UNICEF is for developing countries to allocate between 15-20% of their annual budgets to education. How many administrations at the national and subnational levels have met this recommendation since the return of democracy (rule by civilians) to Nigeria in 1999? None, we dare say. And that should be a pointer to the store we set on education. Evidence abounds that even much of the meagre, miserable and miserly allocations to education are routinely stolen by stakeholders and superintendents in the sector. And arising from the twin evils nothing worth writing home about happens at all levels of our public school system. There are no teachers training colleges worthy of their names; there are no professional teachers in the true sense of the word; teachers in our country are the wretched of the land who grudgingly opt for the vocation when other options fail; they often engage in petty trading and hawking of wares in school premises to the neglect  of their primary job partly because their remunerations are beggarly; the children of our ruling elite do not attend Nigeria’s public schools, in fact they are hardly educated in this country; to put it mildly infrastructure is poor, among other deficits. The truth is that no meaningful teaching and learning can take place in a typical Nigerian public primary and secondary school.

    Now that we have just mentioned the acute deficit of infrastructure let’s return to our opening paragraph and Central School, Mgbidi. It cuts the picture of a typical public school. It’s in a state of utter disrepair. The walls of the classrooms are broken, the floors are more of craters, desks are nonexistent, and the blackboards are visual eyesores. The land assets have been invaded by all manner of persons and individuals,  church and the host community. To cap the absurdity the army who erected a checkpoint right In front of the school has fully taken over and occupied the sports field opposite the school on the Onitsha – Owerri expressway. All manner of shanties have been constructed on the field which also now serves as a parking lot for military trucks. It could be said to be a necessity but what the army contingent in Mgbidi has turned part of the premises of the Central School into is symptomatic of the value this country places on education – abysmally low and unflattering. Policy change now or later will not suffice. “Ka anyi laa oha ajuju”. There’s a need for wider consultations and deeper reflection, and general buy-in by Nigerians. Otherwise…

    UGO ONUOHA, veteran journalist, was the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of Champion Newspapers Limited

  • The six zonal political system and Nigeria’s stability and economic development

    The six zonal political system and Nigeria’s stability and economic development

    Being excerpt of a paper presentation by AVM Monday Riku Morgan (rtd) as a response to the recent creation of Development Commissions for the extant six geopolitical zones.

    This paper argues that the adoption of a six-zonal political structure in Nigeria, as recently partitioned by President Tinubu, could potentially address long-standing concerns about marginalization and governance inefficiencies. Nigeria’s current arrangement of 36 States and the FCT has not resolved ethnic, regional, and political tensions, leading to continuous agitation for the creation of more states. By shifting focus from States to economic development zones, the structure would allow for greater resource management, economic growth, and stability across the regions, and reduce the risk of domination by one ethnic group over another.

    Historically, the amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria in 1914 brought together diverse ethnic groups, cultures, and interests. From the outset, there were concerns about dominance, whether by population, economic power, or political influence. The continuous creation of States was seen as a solution to these fears, giving ethnic nationalities and regions a sense of security and political representation. However, with 36 States and the FCT, the challenge has shifted to inefficient governance, excessive bureaucracy, and strained resources, while agitations for more States have persisted.

    SEE ALSO: Maximum government and minimum governance

    President Tinubu’s six-zonal structure presents an opportunity to address these issues by focusing on regional economic development and governance. Each zone would focus on harnessing its natural and human resources for its development, allowing for a more strategic allocation of resources. By moving to a zonal arrangement, the risk of marginalization would diminish because zones would have more autonomy, and governance would be more inclusive at a regional level, rather than being fragmented into multiple States with limited power.

    Under this structure, the current States would become provinces, and the senatorial districts would have quasi-autonomous powers, reporting to a zonal council at the zonal headquarters. This system of decentralization and regional empowerment would enhance security, as zones would have more resources and autonomy to establish independent Police systems, tailored to the specific security challenges in each zone.

    PLEASE READ: Why Nigerians should not pay tax

    The role of traditional institutions is also crucial in this zonal arrangement. In many Nigerian communities, traditional rulers are central to maintaining peace, resolving conflicts, and providing leadership at the grassroots level. Reinstituting these traditional institutions into the zonal security and governance architecture would create a more holistic and culturally resonant approach to governance.

    Furthermore, the zonal structure would promote healthy competition among the regions, leading to improved governance, accountability, and leadership. As zones work to attract investments, improve infrastructure, and enhance their economies, leaders would be pressured to perform better, reduce corruption, and deliver on their promises to the people. In this way, the six-zonal structure would contribute to the overall development of the country.

    READ ALSO: High cost of governance as an impediment to development

    The paper concludes that adopting the six-zonal political system is a viable solution to Nigeria’s challenges of marginalization, poor governance, and security. It is time for Nigeria to consider a system that emphasizes regional cooperation, economic development, and stronger governance frameworks that promote unity, inclusivity, and accountability.

    Air Vice Marshal Monday Riku Morgan (Rtd) is the former Chief of Defence Intelligence, Armed Forces of Nigeria

  • Maximum government and minimum governance

    Maximum government and minimum governance

    WHAT we have had since the return of democracy (rule by civilians really) in 1999 has been more government and less governance. Successive administrations have steadily expanded governmental institutions without a commensurate positive impacts on the lives of Nigerians. The number of ministries in the states and at the federal level has been on the rise. The same goes for the number of commissioners or ministers as the case may be. Government departments have also exploded so much so that many Nigerians have lost count and track. Their functions are also blurred. The story is worse as it concerns agencies. These creations are not informed by the desire to serve the majority of our people. The ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) mushroom as jobs for the boys. And drainpipes on the commonwealth. They are centres of mindboggling and unimaginable heists on our common patrimony. The situation is so bad that the government sometimes feigns embarrassment. Though in reality the government is not embarrassed. It’s only interested in selling dummies to the people. And successive administrations have elevated deceiving Nigerians to an art form.

    The ongoing charade can be gleaned from this running and recurring story of more than 10 years and counting. In 2011, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) president, Goodluck Jonathan set up what was formally called the Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies. The panel subsequently became known as as the Oronsaye Committee after the name of its chairman Stephen Oronsaye. Oronsaye was a federal permanent secretary, and his committee had representatives from various ministries, departments and agencies as members. The panel sat for about one year, and its primary mandate was to review the then existing (it has become worse now) structure and operations of federal government agencies, with a view to streamlining, rationalising, and restructuring them for greater efficiency and effectiveness.

    READ ALSO: High cost of governance as an impediment to development

    The committee submitted its recommendations in 2012 to the same regime that set it up. Beyond making pious statements, Jonathan did nothing concrete about the report. He was just one year into his own administration after serving out the remainder of the first term of his running mate, President Umar Musa Yar’Adua, who died in office in 2010. In essence Jonathan had a fresh mandate of Nigerian voters, he had no looming election, he set up the committee, and yet he had no balls to implement the recommendations of his own committee. Three years later, Jonathan sought reelection with a promise, among other promises, to implement recommendations made to him three years earlier. Of course, he was defeated. A man who could not explain his failure to effect changes he promised after three years could not be trusted to act differently if armed with a new mandate. The PDP was also swept away in the gale of sacking. In comes the All Progressives Congress (APC) regime of Nigeria’s affliction, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, in 2015. He was touted and promoted as Nigeria’s messiah. But he turned out to be a disaster. The jury is still out on who between Buhari and Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the current occupant of the presidential villa, will be the worst in the history of this country. Buhari vowed to implement the Oronsaye Committee recommendations. He did not. He failed spectacularly. By the way, he failed in almost all he attempted to do in the eight years of his presidency. However, Buhari succeeded only in achieving one thing – taking Nigeria backwards by one generation or 30 years. I did not make up this – read the determinations of many personages on Buhari’s performance, and the current lamentations of his party men who succeeded him.

    “One year, this month, a presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga wrote this on the micro blogging platform X: “Twelve years after the Steve Oronsaye panel submitted its report on restructuring and rationalising federal government parastatals and agencies and a white paper issued two years after, President Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council today (February 2024) decided to implement the report. Many agencies will be scrapped and many others will be merged, to pave the way to a leaner government”.

    Key recommendations of the Oronsaye Committee which have remained on the shelf for 13 years included reduction of statutory agencies from 263 to 161, the abolition of 38 agencies, merger of 52, and reversion of 14 to departments within ministries; abolition of controversial agencies such as the federal character commission, fiscal responsibility commission, and the national poverty eradication programme; merger and restructuring of various agencies including the national agency for the control of aids (NACA) with the centre for disease control, and the national emergency agency (NEMA) with the national commission for refugee, migration, and internally displaced persons (NCFRMI); subsuming and relocating the service compact with all Nigerians (SERVICOM) to function under the bureau for public service reforms (BPSR), and the niger delta power holding company (NDHC) to be relocated to the ministry of power. It was estimated then that if the recommendations were implemented the federal government would be saved almost N1 trillion in operational expenses. The ultimate objective of the recommendations was to streamline government operations, eliminate redundancies, and improve service delivery.

    PLEASE READ: Why Nigerians should not pay tax

    The Report has seen the back of two administrations, those of Jonathan and Buhari, and midway into the first term of the third. One year, this month, a presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga wrote this on the micro blogging platform X: “Twelve years after the Steve Oronsaye panel submitted its report on restructuring and rationalising federal government parastatals and agencies and a white paper issued two years after, President Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council today (February 2024) decided to implement the report. Many agencies will be scrapped and many others will be merged, to pave the way to a leaner government”. The Minister of Information and National Orientation also briefed the press on the issue. Mohammed Idris reiterated the claim by Onanuga that some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) would be scrapped, merged or subsumed into relevant organisations of government. He said that an implementation committee had been raised and that the details of the affected MDAs would soon be published. Like his predecessors Tinubu lied. Instead of scrapping more MDAs have been created including the ministry of livestock that was announced last year.

    Like Jonathan and Buhari, Tinubu has also embarked on playing games with Nigerians on the imperatives of minimum government and maximum governance. In 2014 Jonathan’s attorney – general Mohammed Adoke headed the white paper committee. Nothing came out of it. In 2021, Buhari set up two committees to implement this same report. One committee was headed by a former head of service Bukar Aji with the mandate to review the Oronsaye report and the government white paper. Ms. Amal Pepple chaired the other committee which had the responsibility of reviewing MDAs created between 2014 and 2021. In July of 2022, Boss Mustapha, secretary to the government of the federation under Buhari, established yet another white paper committee, headed by Ebele Okeke, to review the report of the Pepple committee. Obfuscation was, still is, the name of the game. Nigerians are supposed to lose track, and be lost in the maze of committees and panels while nothing is accomplished. Of course, Buhari failed to implement the report. Meanwhile, since 2012 that the game had been on, successive administrations had been busy creating more MDAs, and ballooning the recurrent expenditures and sundry frivolous expenses of the federal government. President Tinubu who has also said he would cut the cost of governance has about 50 ministers in his Cabinet, the highest in the last 26 years. He, it was, who signed a 2024 budget that allocated about N344 billion to the national assembly; the completion with N21 billion of a mansion as the official residence of the vice president; the purchase of a $150 million presidential jet; the procurement of a presidential limousine estimated at hundreds of millions of Naira, and annual recurring procurements of a fleet of luxury sport utility vehicles (SUVs) for government and non-gobernment officials. After discounting the minor operatives there are between 12-15 principal spokespersons in the presidency.

    READ ALSO: Blaming the World Bank will not save our economy. Only us can

    Apart from MDAs, successive administrations have found ways to continue to run bloated government to the pain of citizens. One of such means which has gained traction is the creation of the so-called regional development commissions. So far about five have been created for the north west geo-political zone, for the north east, for the south east, and one for the south west. The south south, a geographical absurdity in terms of name, already has a longstanding equivalent called the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Concerning these creations the north central remains an orphan. All the commissions have their own bureaucracies including chairmen, managing directors, executive directors, non-executive directors, representatives of special interests, and sundry staff members. There’s nothing ‘developments’ about these zonal commissions. They are creations to reward party hacks, and to serve as officially centrally funded clusters for ‘snatch, grab and run’ 2.0 in 2027. Apparently, the only critical qualification for appointment into these commissions is the possession of the APC party membership card. To be competent or a technocrat is a surplus to requirements. The recently created ministry of regional development has an allocation of N2.493 trillion in the 2025 budget now before the national assembly. In the allocation NNDC gets N776.5bn; north west commission, N585.9bn; south west, N498.4bn; south east, N341.3bn; while the north east gets N291bn.

    Maximum government and minimum governance was popularized by a former Prime Minister of India,Atai Bihari Vajpayee. It refers to a situation where the government’s role is overly expansive, intrusive, and controlling, but its ability to effectively govern and deliver public services is limited. As obtains in Nigeria it implies an overbearing and centralised state that tries to control every aspect of citizens’ live often through bureaucracy and red tape. With minimum governance, a maximum government fails to provide basic public services, ensure law and order, and promote economic growth. This concept highlights the tension between the government’s desire to control and its ability to deliver. The idea is that an overbearing government can actually lead to less effective governance. A maximum government is characterized by bureaucratic red tape, inefficient public services, corruption and cronyism, and inadequate law and order, as well as public safety. Interestingly, the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a champion of minimum government and maximum governance, the very opposite of his predecessor’s position. By limiting government overreach, Modi has been credited with creating a more favourable business and investment environment, improving public services, and enhancing the overall well-being of Indians including lifting over 250 million citizens out of poverty in the 10 years from 2014-2024. For context, it means that Modi lifted the equivalent of the combined populations of Nigeria (206m), Ghana (35m), Lesotho (2.1m), Equatorial Guinea (1.6m), Guinea Bissau (1.6m), Mauritius (1.2m), Djibouti (1.05m), Comoros (860,600), Cape Verde (500,000), Sao Tome and Principi (230,000), and Seychelles (105,000) out of poverty within 10 years. And every president in Nigeria has enjoyed two terms of four years each, and yet our country is the poverty capital of the world. We are not lacking examples to learn from. Our problem is that partisan politics trumps everything. We have partisan politicians who are preoccupied with, and consumed by, the next election.

    Mr. Ugo Onuoha, veteran journalist was the Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of Champion Newspapers Limited

  • Nigeria’s children of the dump sites

    Nigeria’s children of the dump sites

    Our children are now chasing out the adults from the business. But in their own case they are mainly foraging for foods that are often not there. On Monday, January 20, a national newspaper published a news feature on the dire situation of some Nigerian children. Its finding was that not many children were currently privileged to have tea and bread for food at home. It said many of them now live off refuse dumps; they carry sacks filled with used cartons, empty drink cans, and discarded plastic bottles and bowls.

    WHAT’S unfolding presently will form part of the foundations for the future of our country. And the picture is not good. That the majority of the privileged and the ruling elite live in denial will not change it. What is looming and getting clearer as daylight is that this will be a future and a disaster that was foretold. Successive regimes, and especially those of the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party since 2015, had been leading Nigeria down a slippery slope. The 15 years or so of the former ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are now being celebrated as the ‘golden years’ of Nigeria, to borrow from President Donald Trump’s so-called American golden age. But as disasters go the PDP as a ruling party was just a shade above this ruinous APC. PDP lived on borrowed robes. It started fairly well under President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) but quickly relapsed into bad ways, profligacy and the expressed feelings of invincibility. The party suffered from low crude oil prices at the beginning, as low as $15 per barrel at the start of this democratic dispensation, but later under President Goodluck Jonathan enjoyed a boom with prices surging beyond $120/barrel. It failed miserably in managing the bumper returns. And so got itself sacked ostensibly by voters in 2015.

    The APC, a hastily cobbled special purpose vehicle that passed as a political party, took power at the centre and in most of the sub nationals subsequently. This party over-promised in its quest for power during the campaigns in 2014. It promised everything under the sun except creating human beings. It even promised to recreate Nigeria and Nigerians. But under Muhammadu Buhari it started very poorly by first denying virtually all it promised, and disclaiming its own manifesto. Its candidate – turned – president Buhari was strident in distancing himself from the promises of the party, the so-called Contract with Nigerians. In terms of ineptitude the APC under Buhari turned out worse than the PDP. In corruption the party and its principal operatives were worse than eye-sores. It piled up debts from every source – offshore, domestic markets, and through Ways and Means which simply means minting Naira banknotes backed by nothing. Yes, nothing. Buhari fumbled and wobbled for eight years, and took the country back by 30 years. He was an affliction of unimaginable proportions.

    Buhari’s successor, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, now going to 20 months on the saddle, appears to be no better in spite of claims to courage and to reforming the economy and the country. He came with a baggage of personal failings, certificates and names controversies, and a questionable electoral victory. So he was dogged by palpable legitimacy issues. Indeed, there was a recent report, which is yet to be refuted (unlike what is in the regime’s DNA), that a foreign lobbying firm was retained with millions of dollars to help burnish his image and to make him appear less a pariah among his supposed peers on the international stage. By some calculations, Tinubu jets out of the country after every 17 days of what now appears to be a visit to the country he is supposed to be governing to, according to his officials woo foreign investors. He cuts a forlorn and isolated figure in many of his trips abroad, especially when he is in the midst of other significant world leaders. Not a good comparison, anyway, but the US President Donald Trump who took office one week ago, yesterday, and without travelling out of his country, has attracted pledges of investments reported to be close to $3 trillion from around the world.

    Nobody needs to dig deep to find out how shallow this regime is and how desperately it looks for a win. Recently, the henchmen of the administration and their choristers started celebrating that the Naira, Nigeria’s national currency, has stabilised at N1,500 to $1USD. Are they for real? At the beginning of the so-called economic reforms and currency convergence, the consensus and the projection was that the rate would settle at N800/$. Rulers with a modicum of shame will not roll out the drums for the current exchange rate.

    The economic policies and programmes of the Tinubu regime are whimsical and his claimed political reforms are inchoate and haphazard. The jury is still out on his quest to make federating units out of the country’s 774 local councils by making them ‘autonomous’ and funding them directly from the federation account. He claims his actions were informed by Constitutional provisions. But that’s self – serving because this same man, in his earlier incarnation as Lagos state governor (1999-2007) fought tooth and nail for councils to be under the suzerainty of state governments. But not anymore today. The only thing that has changed is that Bola Tinubu is now the president. His actions are political and driven by 2027. He wants his fingers in every pie, and foot soldiers to ‘grab, snatch and run’ away with results of the 2027 election, that is, if there will be any elections in the true sense of the word. The same uncertainty is playing out in the economy. Tinubu says repeatedly that he is already seeing light at the end of the tunnel. He might be seeing a mirage. The World Bank has said it would take a minimum of 15 years of sustaining his punishing economic regimen for any impact to be noticed. The hallmarks of the Tinubu economic kalo kalo are that his policies and programmes are not measurable, they have no benchmarks, they have no timelines, and they have no publicly available templates for reviews should the need arise. They are more like the rural Nigerian children’s game of tumbom tumbom.

    SEE ALSO: If Kemi Badenoch were Igbo

    Nobody needs to dig deep to find out how shallow this regime is and how desperately it looks for a win. Recently, the henchmen of the administration and their choristers started celebrating that the Naira, Nigeria’s national currency, has stabilised at N1,500 to $1USD. Are they for real? At the beginning of the so-called economic reforms and currency convergence, the consensus and the projection was that the rate would settle at N800/$. Rulers with a modicum of shame will not roll out the drums for the current exchange rate. But APC has no shame. The party’s serial misrule is on display. Poverty is becoming entrenched in our country. The other day the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives Benjamin Kalu celebrated the rise in diaspora remittances from $25 billion in 2023 to $28 in 2024, as a sign of confidence in Nigeria’s economy. No, it was not. It showed that Nigerians at home were in dire straits, and that the situation had increased the pressure on diasporans to up their remittances. How could it be otherwise with inflation running in the high 30s, the worst level in about one generation?

    The increased diaspora remittances could be the reasons why Nigerians are not yet widely dropping dead on the streets as Europeans predicted and wished would happen in Africa during the COVID pandemic; why some families are still managing to pay children’s school fees at all levels in spite of students’ loan scheme; why some families can still spare a little money for hospital bills; why there’s no widespread starvation; why erstwhile middle class citizens can afford transportation fares to their offices or business premises, or to repair and fuel their cars. If Tinubu’s friend whom he claimed had abandoned his four Rolls Royce limousines had been a destiny – helper, he probably wouldn’t have suffered humiliation brought upon him by friend, the president. A little dollar here and a little pounds sterling and euro there would have kept him going. He would not have been reduced to using a car whose front wheel is susceptible to breaking off in motion without notice on Nigerian roads. In spite of diaspora remittances and other mercies, the Tinubu and APC economic wizardry is taking a huge toll presently on a vulnerable segment of the population. And it presents a foreboding future for our country.

    SEE ALSO: Obasanjo, NNPC’s invitation and fraud foretold

    WASTE to wealth is a fairly popular phrase. Ordinarily, it means a situation where some citizens out of choice visit dump sites to pick out supposed waste and recycle the same to create value and possibly wealth. And this used to be the exclusive preserve of adults. It is no longer the case. Our children are now chasing out the adults from the business. But in their own case they are mainly foraging for foods that are often not there. On Monday, January 20, a national newspaper published a news feature on the dire situation of some Nigerian children. Its finding was that not many children were currently privileged to have tea and bread for food at home. It said many of them now live off refuse dumps; they carry sacks filled with used cartons, empty drink cans, and discarded plastic bottles and bowls. The newspaper illustrated with the story of one Jacob Olorunfemi who claimed that the economy had crippled his parents, forcing him to drop out of school. “I don’t go to lesson(s) anymore because my parents said there is no money… I usually attend lessons like school, where I pay N500 per week. My mother usually sweeps and wash(es) clothes for customers . My father works at a bus park. I have a friend called Sule. He is twelve years old. He used to pick used plastics and condemned items and sell them. His mother beg(s) for alms for a living. He advised me to join him in this scavenging routine and I have been able to save N2,000 since I started”. Jacob is 10 years old.

    Yet there’s another child, Yekini Salam, 11 years old. His late father reportedly left him with a step mother who also had three other children of her own to care for. “I have not been in school for years”, he started. “I dropped out when I lost my father. I don’t know who my mother is but I have a stepmother and three step brothers. I usually hawk wares for my stepmother. But last year she asked me to stop. Sometimes I help people to run errands and they give me tokens in the form of food or cash (in) appreciation. Recently I had to join my friends who are a little above my age in the scavenging routine. I move around places sourcing for plastics, cans and bottles. There are people who I sell to. The materials are scaled (weighed) and I am paid. I want to save enough money to learn aluminium window and door frame construction skills”. The plights of Jacob and Yekini are not just urban phenomena. Children engaging in menial jobs and dropping out of school for various reasons are widespread. The figures for Nigeria’s out of school children range from between 18-20 million. The future is sadly not also bright for some of our children who are fortunate to be in school. The findings are depressing in schools in one of the country’s most populated states. Last Friday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) disclosed that only 9.6% of primary school pupils in Kano showed reading proficiency whilst only 11.2% had basic numeracy skills. The agency’s chief field officer for Kano, Rahama Mohammed further indicated that almost one million children (989,234) of primary school age (about 32% of the population), were “currently not enrolled in formal education in the state”.

    SEE ALSO: Why Nigerians must not pay tax

    The depressing statistics in Kano could be the same across many states in the north of this country. And it will be myopic to blame the situation solely on the emphasis placed on Islamic or religious education in that part of Nigeria. Even if that were to be the case, a more sensitive ruling elite should know that in the fullness of time what’s happening in Kano and some other states would have a cataclysmic national impact, and would have taken steps to arrest the looming disaster. But how can the situation be redressed with no discernable and sustainable national policy on education with widespread buy-in, and with a miserable and miserly allocation to education in the 2025 national and sub nationals budgets. Even before the advent of the APC in governance at the federal level, infrastructure in public schools were dilapidated. They have only become worse. Not many teachers are in the profession out of choice. The teachers in public schools are badly trained or not trained at all, poorly remunerated, ill-equipped, and generally demotivated. Some of them are petty traders hawking their wares right inside school premises. The future of this country is not looking good. But do our rulers care?

    UGO ONUOHA, a veteran journalist, was the Editor-in-Chief of Champion Newspaper

  • If Kemi Badenoch were Igbo

    If Kemi Badenoch were Igbo

    SHE does not take prisoners. And it appears that she will not be pacified. She is neither a cowboy(girl) nor an American, but she can’t stop shooting straight from the hips. Somehow she manages to hit the bull’s-eye with each and every shot. She ruffles feathers everywhere including in the inner sanctum of Nigeria’s presidential villain, sorry, Villa. She has become a thorn, a nightmare, a nemesis, and a gadfly to today’s men of dubious and immoral power. Our obviously idle vice president Mohammed Kashim Shettima, in an attempt to be heard and seen to be relevant tried to shut her up. He was promptly eviscerated, not by the woman on a mission of calling out Nigeria’s misguided rulers but by her low ranking aide. The message in the choice of who responded to our vice president’s silly attack on a major party leader in a country supposedly in the first world was telling. The woman was simply saying that Shettima was so down the pecking order that she could not bring herself to respond to his foolish reaction to her earlier comments about Nigeria, its police force and sundry matters about a country in rapid and inexorable decline.

    Let’s return to what is turning out to be a series of Bad knocks by Ms Kemi Badenoch on Nigeria. Last week, precisely January 18, it was widely reported in the media at home and abroad that the leader of the Conservative Party gave her first major speech of the new year. She reportedly said, among other things, that she did not want Britain to be like Nigeria, a poor country where terrible governments destroy lives. She said her push for ‘real conservatism’ was to guarantee a ‘better, richer and safer’ tomorrow for the younger generation of Brits.

    “…I grew up in a poor country, and I watched my relatively wealthy family become poorer and poorer and poorer despite working harder as their money disappeared with inflation”.

    Kemi Badenoch is a Nigerian. She is also British. She is currently the leader of the loyal opposition party, the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom (UK). She is a breath away from being the prime minister of the country that colonised Nigeria for decades up till October 1, 1960. She is a politician, and so it can be difficult to divorce her person from her public comments and posturings. If you believe any politician it will only be at your own personal peril. Many politicians here and everywhere in the world speak from both sides of their mouths. They are selfish. Everything they do, almost everything they do, is to the service of self. So if Kemi, the current loudest voice in the bashing of Nigeria, has suddenly become forceful in the condemnation of our country, of her country also, it’s essentially for the furtherance of her political career in her country of choice – Britain. She is speaking their language and her audience is enamoured with her. That could be the reason why she came, literally speaking, from nowhere to sit atop perhaps the oldest, and arguably until recently one of the most racist political parties in history. Kemi Badenoch may not be that useful idiot that some Nigerians want to make of her in her commitment to her party.

    Ms Badenoch

    As we said earlier Kemi is a brilliant British politician. And she speaks and acts as one. Having spent almost all her adult life in the UK (she was born there but briefly sojourned in Nigeria before returning at 16), the timidity of undue deference to authority and elders appears to have worn out. For her there seems to be no more inhibition of culture shock. After all, a former British prime minister once told a former Nigerian president (who was old enough to be his father) to his face and in public that Nigeria is a “fantastically corrupt” country, and the Nigerian ruler agreed, also in public. All these happened in foreign land- in London. It’s obvious that when some foreign leaders, in or out of power, speak to our rulers or about our country, they are not mindful of diplomatese or circumspection. Nigeria has become toast and the butt of jokes. That explains why our country would put out a statement announcing an agreement with an otherwise ordinary foreign government, and a nondescript agency of that other country would issue a disclaimer which would sound like a reprimand to Nigeria.

    “But if Kemi were to be Igbo it would have been a lot easier for the rest of Nigeria to label her and then take her on. And down. She would have been called a secessionist and a separatist agitator who is working with some foreign countries to dismember Nigeria. She would have been described as an ambassador of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its main fundraiser abroad. Letters would have been written to King Charles of Britain, the Conservative Party, the UK parliament, the United Nations (UN), and possibly the US Congress calling for the arrest of Kemi Badenoch who they would describe as a terrorist and a clear and present danger to global peace.”

    But we digress. Let’s return to what is turning out to be a series of Bad knocks by Ms Kemi Badenoch on Nigeria. Last week, precisely January 18, it was widely reported in the media at home and abroad that the leader of the Conservative Party gave her first major speech of the new year. She reportedly said, among other things, that she did not want Britain to be like Nigeria, a poor country where terrible governments destroy lives. She said her push for ‘real conservatism’ was to guarantee a ‘better, richer and safer’ tomorrow for the younger generation of Brits. “Why this matters so much to me is because I know what it is like to have something and lose it. I don’t want Britain to lose what it has. I grew up in a poor country, and I watched my relatively wealthy family become poorer and poorer and poorer despite working harder as their money disappeared with inflation”. Badenoch recounted how she migrated to the UK at 16 with her father’s last £100 and a hope for a better life, and vowed she would never allow the UK to become a country like Nigeria. “I came back to the UK at 16 with my father’s last £100 and a hope for a better life. So, I’ve lived with the consequences of a terrible government that destroys lives, and never ever want that to happen here”.

    This would be the second time in as many months that the Nigerian -British politician has called out this country and its rulers. Earlier in an interview with The Free Press, Badenoch had recounted an incident in which she claimed that officers of the Nigeria Police stole her brother’s wrist watch and shoes. She said that the incident and similar encounters had left her with a negative impression of the Nigerian Police, adding ruefully that giving the police a gun had become ‘just a licence to intimidate’ and to rob. Whenever Kemi spoke it was about the state of Nigeria. However, it has become the practice of the extant regime and its supporters to feel slighted by her factual observations. Elements in the Nigeria police rob citizens at gunpoint. And this happens everyday. Police roadblocks are toll plazas and they litter the highways across the country. Some of the checkpoints are equipped with point of sales (POS) gadgets. There are many rogue police personnel just as there are very good and exceptional police operatives. As in other areas of life, the bad ones tar the rest with a dark brush.

    Who wants to deny that we have not had a series of bad and terrible governments including this one headed by Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Kemi kept alluding to? If this country had not been afflicted with a succession of dim-witted and utterly corrupt rulers, there’s no way Nigeria will become and remain the poverty capital of the world since 2019; have hundreds of thousands of its citizens living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps for decades in a country that’s not officially at war; record about 20 million out of school children; contend with over 50% of its more than 200 million in crushing poverty; suffer from severe energy deficit including having about 70% of its population outside the national electricity grid; and, suffer from the humiliation of non-state actors contesting the sovereignty of the country by occupying territories and imposing taxes and levies on hapless Nigerians. The afflictions of Nigeria inflicted on it by her clueless and insensitive rulers are legion. It takes a patriot to speak to them and to call out the government. So Kemi Badenoch is an authentic patriot. She is different from the ‘patriots’ created at every turn by the men in power. This class of ‘patriots’ have a short shelf life- eight years at the most.

    Badenoch family

    But if Kemi were to be Igbo it would have been a lot easier for the rest of Nigeria to label her and then take her on. And down. She would have been called a secessionist and a separatist agitator who is working with some foreign countries to dismember Nigeria. She would have been described as an ambassador of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its main fundraiser abroad. Letters would have been written to King Charles of Britain, the Conservative Party, the UK parliament, the United Nations (UN), and possibly the US Congress calling for the arrest of Kemi Badenoch who they would describe as a terrorist and a clear and present danger to global peace.

    If she were to be Igbo the Nigerian government would have claimed that she was plotting treason because her kinsman did not win the presidential election in 2023. She would have been labelled as a gunrunner, a patron of the eastern security network (ESN), founder of the murderous unknown gunmen, and the inspiration for the diverse insecurity besetting the southeast states. It would have been claimed also that her activities were being funded by Mr. Peter Obi so as to discredit and destabilise and, ultimately to overthrow the federal government of Nigeria.

    If Kemi Badenoch were to be Igbo the rest of the country would have been united in a campaign to strip her of her Nigerian citizenship. The Igbo living in Nigeria but outside the Igbo homeland would have been going through hell. They would have been visited with bodily harm, their landlords would have served them quit notices, their businesses would have been attacked and destroyed, and the markets where they are dominant would have been torched. Anything to decapitate and castrate the Igbo would have been fair game. And the host governments would look the other way.

    Well, Kemi Badenoch is Yoruba and British. And power is in the hands of a Yoruba with crumbs left for the Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri. With a Muslim – Muslim presidency they should know how to sort themselves out. The ‘pity us’ statement issued on Sunday by a presidential aide Daniel Bwala in response to the latest salvo from Kemi would only be good enough for the trash bin. The only worthy response would be for this regime to roll up its sleeves and begin the hard work to salvage this country. But do our current rulers have the capacity and the appetite and the disposition to do so?

    UGO ONUOHA is veteran Journalist and former Managing Director & Editor-in-Chief of Champion Newspapers Limited.