The fate of the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu, remains uncertain two months following her suspension amid allegations necessitating an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) probe.

Despite the EFCC concluding its investigation and submitting an interim report to the Presidency, Nigerians are yet to learn of any decisive action regarding Edu’s case.

Reports from Daily Trust indicate that the EFCC’s investigation, initiated after Edu’s suspension on January 8, has culminated in a recommendation to prosecute the suspended minister.

The submission of the interim report has sparked speculation on the next steps, particularly with some high-profile individuals and political figures rallying for leniency towards Edu.

Senate President Godswill Akpabio, among other influential personalities, is allegedly exerting pressure on President Bola Tinubu, advocating for a “soft landing” for Edu.

In contrast to Edu’s contentious situation, Halima Shehu, the suspended coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA), appears to have been absolved of wrongdoing by the EFCC’s interim findings.

The source said, “The leaked documents about releases by NSIPA under Halima have been scrutinised by the EFCC. Those expenses are found to have followed standard procedures because all relevant parties endorsed their signatures.

“The monies were discovered to have been released for the purposes they were earmarked. Besides, Halima only continued the disbursements from where her predecessor stopped. And this was to avoid litigations, because the contractors had presented certificates of no objection.”

Another source said, “But a strong personality in the Villa was not happy with the report from the EFCC and therefore told those who brought it to take it back and review the report further.”

The EFCC spokesman, Dele Oyewale, spoke with the platform about the claim that an interim report had been submitted to President Tinubu and said an investigation into the matter is still ongoing.

Asked when the investigation would be concluded, considering that credible sources had confirmed the submission of an interim report, Oyewale declined further comments.

The spokesman of the Senate President, Eseme Eyiboh, when reached out to on the allegation that Akpabio was working hard to secure “a soft landing” for the suspended humanitarian minister, said, “Betta Edu is never in the legislature and she is not a minister appointed by the president of the senate.

“I recall that she was suspended by her appointer and not the president of the Senate. This was intended to pave way for an official public service procedure. There is no way the president of the Senate could have or can influence the determination of the fate of any minister and particularly Dr Betta Edu.”

As the bank relationship manager of two leading agro-based companies in Nigeria, namely: Presco Plc and The Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc, I made several visits to the companies' plantations in Benin, Edo State between 2000 and 2003.

The sight of several thousands of hectares of oil palm plantation was always a beauty to behold. I particularly found the fully automated oil refineries of the two companies awe inspiring. At the end of each visit I came to appreciate the immense potential of the country as an agricultural powerhouse.

During one of my visits, I made an observation that the heartbeat of the companies' huge operations is the nursery. At the nursery, thousands of oil palm seeds are planted and nurtured into quality seedlings for about a year. The nursery serves to protect the seedlings until they can withstand harsh weather conditions. From time to time, oil palm seedlings from the nursery are transplanted to virgin or old plantations that have been cleared of bushes or old oil palm trees. The nursery guarantees the continuity of the business. To this end, the companies make an enormous investment in the maintenance of the nursery.

With the benefit of my plantation visit experience, I always wondered why we pander to the dictates of Bretton Woods Institutions along the line to offer no protection by way of subsidies to our fledging industries and vulnerable citizens but to open our economy to the vagaries of global economic conditions. Bretton Woods Institutions' economic pills fly in the face of the law of nature - the inherent attribute of all classes of animals to nurture and protect their young ones until such a time that they can stand and fend for themselves.

Also, the second-best theory of welfare economics states that if all distortions in the economy cannot be eliminated, you cannot tell whether eliminating or reducing a particular distortion will lead toward or away from equilibrium. Of all the distortionary factors there are, the most pernicious for our economy is corruption. Even in our administration of subsidies - introduction or removal - corruption is embedded. We carry on as if there is a corruption-embodied economic growth model to bequeath to the field of economics. Given our peculiar situation, what we need is help with taming the hydra-headed demon of corruption not the disproportionate preoccupation with subsidies.

The conclusion of the matter is that subsidy is an integral part of life, nobody pays the full cost of living!

Whatever happened to catchy governance phrases, of which this country had a surfeit in the last 50 years? Why are governments at all levels today regurgitating dry phrases such as “palliatives”, “reforms,” “it’s the fault of my predecessor” and “we see light at the end of the tunnel,” which could be an oncoming goods train? Maybe that is just as well because if one quarter of the catchy governance phrases spewed in the past had delivered on their lofty promises, Nigeria would have been an Eldorado by now.

Today, Nigerians are complaining about food. Governments at all levels are talking about palliatives. Some people are even looting warehouses and waylaying food trucks on the highways. Whatever happened to Operation Feed the Nation [OFN] that military Head of State General Olusegun Obasanjo launched in 1977? Nearly 50 years before a Farmer Governor surfaced in Niger, Obasanjo enjoined everybody to cultivate every little space around his house. The Head of State himself was seen on NTA slugging a hoe, cultivating a maize farm right inside Dodan Barracks. Three years later President Shehu Shagari launched the Green Revolution. How come, after 50 years, we cannot feed the nation and many of our farms are parched, not green?

Whatever happened to the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure [DFRRI] of the IBB era, headed by Air Commodore Larry Koinyan? In the wake of his unpopular Structural Adjustment Program [SAP], IBB rolled out a palliative, not of free rice, but of rural infrastructure that will assist farmers to move their produce to urban markets. It was a classic case of teaching people how to fish rather than giving them fish.

Probably no peacetime program in Nigeria ever received quite as much trumpeting by government officials as Health For All by the Year 2000. Billboards, flyers, radio and TV jingles, endless interviews by government officials all trumpeted it throughout the 1970s and 1980s. How come that millions of Nigerians are still sick today, cost of many drugs has tripled in recent months alone and our health workers find a reason to go on strike every now and then? Not to be left behind, Federal Ministry of Agriculture, prodded by UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, promised us Food for all by the Year 2000. Federal Ministry of Housing followed suit with a promise of Shelter for all by the Year 2000. Twenty-four years after the deadline, millions of Nigerians are still looking for health, food and shelter.

In the 1980s, Federal Ministry of Health led by Prof Olikoye Ransome-Kuti promised to combat the “Six Childhood Killer Diseases” through the Expanded Program on Immunisation, EPI. Every mother in Nigeria was taught how to mix sugar and salt in the Oral Rehydration Therapy, ORT. Those two extremely important programs saved millions of children’s lives. Why are they not being trumpeted anymore? Where is the Rural Water and Sanitation [RUWATSAN] program that we heard so much about in the 1980s? It promised to deliver boreholes and running water to all towns and communities, a very good idea because water-borne diseases account for a large chunk of our health care budgets. Forty years since Ruwatsan, why are we still talking about open defecation in Nigeria?

One of the catchiest phrases in Nigerian history, which also fell very short after nearly 50 years, was Universal, Free, Compulsory Primary Education, UPE. In  the early 1970s, endless radio jingles and billboards trumpeted it. Although it was General Gowon who conceived it, General Obasanjo launched it with great fanfare in 1976. Twenty-four years later when he returned as civilian president, he expanded and relaunched it as Universal Basic Education, UBE. It turned out not to be universal because we have a guesstimated 15 million out of school children today. It was not free because millions of kids today are in high-paying private schools while public schools too found various ways to fleece parents. It was never compulsory because many parents do not send their kids to school. It is even doubtful if it is education, since many of its products today cannot read a book.

Where are the Gifted Children’s Schools that Education Minister Professor Jibril Aminu created in the 1980s? His idea was to pluck especially gifted kids out of the normal school system and concentrate them in special schools that could breed Nobel Prize winners. Pray, where is the Nomadic Education program that Aminu also created? All the pastoral kids that we see today rearing cattle, were they not supposed to have been injected into that program? By now the cattle must be in ranches for lack of herders.

Innumerable times, successive Federal Governments set target dates to end gas flaring from the oil fields, complete with threats of hefty fines and license revocations. One newspaper reported at one time that the oil giants found that it was cheaper to pay the fine than to invest in the technology to end gas flaring. What about the environmental cost of flaring and the health of people in the surrounding communities? These days, government’s economic team speak so much about “reforms”. Some people see these reforms as reincarnations of Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Program, SAP, only that it was not preceded by a Babangida-style “national debate on IMF loan.” CBN Governor Yemi Cardoso’s “merger of exchange rates” phrase is not as catchy as IBB’s “Second-tier Foreign Exchange Market, SFEM”.

Whatever happened to the 1980s phrase “local sourcing of raw materials”? In that era when foreign exchange was very scarce and you could get jailed for hawking dollars around, government officials spoke everyday about the need for industries to locally source their raw materials. Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman said in 1982 that the dollars and pounds spent by Nigerian industries to import raw materials exceeded the value of their produce, meaning they were simply siphoning funds abroad. In the 1980s government also propounded the phrase “export-led recovery.” Import-led collapse is more like it, with everything from toothpicks to razor blades competing for scarce forex.

Central Bank, where is your early 1990s program of “respect the naira”? CBN-sponsored radio and TV jingles admonished market women, butchers, taxi drivers and gamblers to stop mutilating the naira. A cartoon in The Triumph newspaper depicted a fat CBN official telling a crowd to respect the naira. One famished Nigerian in the crowd said, “Respect? Oya, release that one for your hand and see. We love the naira!”

Since the 1980s, successive governments have been promising us 10,000 megawatts of electricity. Some of them, such as Obasanjo II’s, Jonathan’s and Buhari II’s even fixed deadlines, only to breach all of them. Obasanjo’s first Power Minister, Chief Bola Ige, promised stable power within six months. President Umaru Yar’adua promised to declare a State of Emergency on Electricity, which he never did, instead he said his predecessor spent $16 billion on power “without commensurate results.” Poor me, I even offered Malam Umaru a [naïve] advice at the time, that why don’t you go to Ukraine, hire a 4,000 KVA floating power station, sail it to Lagos, of the kind they use off the coast of Arctic coast, connect it to the national grid, then you get a respite while you tackle the power problem?

Why is Nigerian society bedeviled today by kidnapping, banditry, child trafficking and baby factories? Wasn’t General Obasanjo’s 1977 Jaji Declaration supposed to have taken care of all these? When ace broadcaster Adamu Augie interviewed him on NTA, he said the goal was to make Nigerian society “fair, just, humane and African.” Unfair, unjust, inhumane and un-African is more like it these days. Shagari continue from where Obasanjo stopped by launching the “Ethical Revolution” in 1982, I think. He even created a Ministry of National Guidance in 1983, a concept borrowed from Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser. Buhari/Idiagbon regime capped it all with the War Against Indiscipline [WAI] in 1984.

Are we no longer doing “new breed politics” that Babangida promised in the early 1990s when he banned “old breed politicians” from participating in his transition program? Everyone who held a governorship, ministerial or other high political office was banned and only the young were allowed in. only that, new breed politicians ran behind the scenes to the old breed and sought for “endorsement,” very much like school and job applicants ask older folks to be their referees because neither school principals nor employers trust a new breed without a record of his own!

In 1991 when going to Hajj was cheap, the late Hajiya Bilkisu wrote a column titled “Hajj For All By the Year 2000. This year when a hajj seat costs nearly six million, Hajj For Few By the Year 2024 is more like it.

I said something earlier about the catchiest peacetime phrase. On the other hand, there was no catchier war-time phrase in Nigeria than the one propounded by General Yakubu Gowon in the late 1960s, “To keep Nigeria One Is A Task That Must Be Done.” Everywhere you turned, there was a large billboard with a picture of the youthful Commander-in-Chief Major General Yakubu Gowon, clean shaven except for his dark mustache, looking intently ahead at God-knows-what. Why don’t we have a catchy phrase to address Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru, bandits, communal warriors, IPOB, Yoruba Nation agitators and secession advocates masquerading as “restructuring”?

Since 1975 when General Gowon and other West African leaders created ECOWAS in the mold of European Economic Community [EEC], one of the catchiest phrases in Nigeria has been “free movement of goods and persons.” After 49 years, what we had in recent years was free movement of coups instead, with constitutional rule overthrown in four ECOWAS member states. A fifth one narrowly escaped by postponing presidential elections at the last minute.

Our foreign policy too is now lacking in catchy phrases. Where is “Africa is the centerpiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy,” written into the 1999 Constitution? Look, where is “Concentric Circles foreign policy” launched by Foreign Minister Prof Ibrahim Gambari in 1984, or the “Concert of Medium Powers” launched by his successor, Prof Bolaji Akinyemi in 1985? Can’t we find another catchy foreign policy today, such as, “Knock the Sahelian bums” or “Throw out the Yanks, Limmies, Gauls, Russians, Nippon and Chinks”?

Moses

   When the children of Israel rebelled against God and the leadership of Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, God was angry and decided to destroy them.  But Moses ‘wrestled’ with God to change that decision.  He went as far as rejecting an offer to make out of him a great nation instead of Israel. Yes, an intercessor must always be selfless, unselfish. Moses argued and showed God the reasons why he should not destroy Israel at that point in time.  At last, he succeeded in convincing him.  Let us read it:    “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long will these people reject me?  Will they ever believe me, even after all the miraculous signs I have done among them?  I will disown them and destroy them with a plague.  Then I will make you into a nation far greater and mightier than they are!  ‘But what will the Egyptians think when they hear about it?  Moses pleaded with the Lord.  They know very well the power you displayed in rescuing these people from Egypt.  They will tell this to the inhabitants of this land, who are well aware that you are with this people.  They know, Lord that you have appeared in full view of your people in the pillar of cloud that hovers over them.  They know that you go before them in the pillar of cloud by the day and the pillar of fire by night.  Now if you slaughter all these people, the nations that have heard of your fame will say, ‘The Lord was not able to bring them into the land he swore to give them, so he killed them in the wilderness.’

   “Please, Lord, prove that your power is as great as you have claimed it to be.  For you said, ‘The LORD is slow to anger and rich in unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. Even so he does not leave sin unpunished, but he punishes the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations. Please pardon the sins of this people because of your magnificent, unfailing love, just as you have forgiven them ever since they left Egypt.’   “Then the Lord said, ‘I will pardon them as you have requested.”  Numbers 14:11-20

  My God! Excellent and successful intercession! Great Moses! Look at the sweet result. This is a typical ‘wrestling with God’.  Some men are indeed great. Read the above passage over again. Moses did a wonderful job here.  He went on, putting forward every reason under the sun why God should change his mind on destroying the people of Israel through a plague for their faithlessness, disobedience and foolishness. He practically threw God’s words back to him. He achieved his aim by making God to rescind that judgement. Great success! Great Moses!  Listen,    God said, “Come now, let us argue this out.”  Isaiah 1:18.  Yes, he is looking for men and women that will hold him with reasons why he should do what we want him to do.  And this is what wrestling with him means. How many of us are ready for this? Can you stand between him and the people??

Jacob

   Another man that taught us that we can actually hold on to God and struggle with him in prayer until we receive what we want from him is Jacob.  Jacob is a perfect example of a man wrestling with God. They had the match at midnight prayer.  There is no situation that wrestling with God in the midnight cannot change. True!     I have repeatedly said this in my book / audiobook Power of Midnight Prayer that any man or woman that masters this act of midnight prayer will remain unconquerable throughout their life.  This does not in any way mean that challenges of life will not come, sure they will, but you will always be on top of the situation. I say this by personal experiences and also testimonies from others.  When Jacob was coming back from exile and was to meet an angry and well armed brother – Esau, he was afraid, confused and was trying every trick to escape the rage of a brother who was coming to pay him back for his (Jacob’s) treachery.  In that precarious situation, Jacob wrestled with God and changed the entire situation to his favour.  Praise God!  Please let’s go through this very interesting account of Jacob’s wrestling with God:

   “But during the night Jacob got up and sent his two wives, two concubines, and eleven sons across the Jabbok River.  After they were on the other side, he sent over all his possessions.  This left Jacob all alone in the camp and a man came and wrestled with him until dawn.  When the man saw that he couldn’t win the match, he struck Jacob’s hip and knocked it out of joint at the socket.  Then the man said, ‘let me go, for it is dawn.’ But Jacob panted, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ ‘What is your name?’  The man asked, he replied, ‘Jacob.’ ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob,’ the man told him.  ‘It is now Israel, because you have struggled with both God and man and have won.’ ‘What is your name? Jacob asked him.  ‘Why do you ask?’ the man replied, then he blessed Jacob there.’ Jacob named the place Peniel – ‘Face of God’ for he said, ‘I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.’  The sun rose as he left Peniel. ‘Then, in the distance, Jacob saw Esau coming with his four hundred men.  Jacob now arranged his family into a column with his two concubines and their children at the front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last.  Then Jacob went on ahead as he approached his brother, he bowed low seven times before him.  Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him affectionately and kissed him.  Both of them were in tears.” 

   What a reversal of fate! There are things I would like us to note about Jacob’s attitude towards this particular encounter with God.  Jacob was persistent; he made sure that the man (God) did not win the match and he also refused to let him go without blessing him.  And he got his blessings at last.   The sun rose upon Jacob and his fears were immediately tuned into favour. When we follow this same principle, we are sure to receive the same result.  This is exactly what wrestling with God is all about - persisting until you receive your blessing from him.   Find the above story in Genesis 32:22-31, 33:1-4.   Now also look at the way Hosea puts it, “Before Jacob was born, he struggled with his brother; when he became a man, he even fought with God.  Yes, he wrestled with the angel and won.  He wept and pleaded for a blessing from him.  There at Bethel he met God face to face, and God spoke to him – the Lord God Almighty, the Lord is his name!”   Hosea 12:3-4.   That is Jacob for you!  He started wrestling right from the womb. He wrestled with his brother, he fought with God and he also wrestled with the angel and won. And I want to add that he also wrestled with his father-in-law to get his wealth and wife of choice. He understood the game perfectly well. It is called wrestling Match! Yes, that guy was determined right from the womb to make the most of his opportunities. He was determined to see all the promises of God come to pass in his life. So, he wrestled! Fight for your destiny. Fight for your vision. Fight for the promises of God for your life. Don’t give up! We will continue. Share this message with others.

Yet, we remain here. To whom or to where shall we turn? “We must make Nigeria a viable place for people to stay, and not a place to run away from.” I heard that counsel from African Development Bank Group’s president, Akinwumi Adesina, last week Wednesday in his lecture after receiving the Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership in Lagos. I heard him and asked myself who would make Nigeria “a viable place for people to stay.” Those who print money and steal what they print? Those who serenade banditry with negotiation? Where are the leaders? Adesina in that same lecture looked deep into the past and declared that “Nigeria missed its best opportunity to be great under a ‘President’ Awolowo.” I heard that truth and whispered to myself that Nigeria is an expert at missing ways. Yoruba musician, Ayinla Omowura, sings about the one destined to eat hideous vulture, forbidden bird of carrion. Omowura sings that “the head that will eat vulture will not listen. If we give him chicken to eat, he will reject it. 

“What is the State?” Louis Blanc, politician and historian in 19th century France, asks himself.

He answers:

“The State, under democratic rule, is the power of all the people, served by their elect; it is the reign of liberty.

“The State, under monarchical rule, is the power of one man, the tyranny of a single individual.

“The State, under oligarchical rule, is the power of a small number of men, the tyranny of a few.

“The State, under aristocratic rule, is the power of a class, the tyranny of many.

“The State, under anarchical rule, is the power of the first comer who happens to be the most intelligent and the strongest; it is the tyranny of chaos.”

 The lines above I took from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s ‘The State: Its Nature, Object, and Destiny’ (1849). Nigeria is a fine combination of four of the five Louis Blanc’s definitions of the state. In case you pretend not knowing what the four are, this should be a guide: Last week, Finance Minister, Olawale Edun, frontally accused the defunct Muhammadu Buhari regime of criminal printing of about N23 trillion naira. Northern senators on Saturday alleged a criminal infusion of N3 trillion into the 2024 budget of Nigeria by powerful ghosts in Abuja. On Friday, in one northern state, a judge sentenced two kidnappers to death by hanging but quickly undermined himself with an advice to the felons to seek pardon from the executive “since no life was lost in the process of kidnapping.” On Thursday, bandits abducted 287 students in Kaduna. On Saturday, bandits invaded a Zamfara school and stole 15 students. Before the school abductions, senior brothers of the bandits, Boko Haram, had kidnapped over 400 displaced persons in Borno. In Benue and Plateau, a murderous campaign against helpless people is on without ceasing. From the desert to the coast, agonizing cries of existential woes rend the land. What we have is chaos pro-max.

Yet, we remain here. To whom or to where shall we turn? “We must make Nigeria a viable place for people to stay, and not a place to run away from.” I heard that counsel from African Development Bank Group’s president, Akinwumi Adesina, last week Wednesday in his lecture after receiving the Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership in Lagos. I heard him and asked myself who would make Nigeria “a viable place for people to stay.” Those who print money and steal what they print? Those who serenade banditry with negotiation? Where are the leaders? Adesina in that same lecture looked deep into the past and declared that “Nigeria missed its best opportunity to be great under a ‘President’ Awolowo.” I heard that truth and whispered to myself that Nigeria is an expert at missing ways. Yoruba musician, Ayinla Omowura, sings about the one destined to eat hideous vulture, forbidden bird of carrion. Omowura sings that “the head that will eat vulture will not listen. If we give him chicken to eat, he will reject it.”

That is the nature of destiny – determinist philosophers say it is inevitable; people of religion agree but add that it is also inscrutable. Should it be Nigeria’s destiny to be a jungle forever? It looks like there is nothing we can do about it. Arab folklore character, Nasrudin, walks with utmost innocence along an alleyway. He is deep in thought and careful about not putting his feet where he may have them injured. But a man falls from a nearby roof and lands on Nasrudin’s neck. The fallen man is unhurt; innocent Nasrudin has a broken neck. He is asked what lessons he learnt from that experience. Nasrudin tells his disciples to note the place of fate in his fate. He asks them to note that the other man “fell — but my neck is broken!” At independence, Nigeria had all the chances to be great, but it soon had the ill-luck of falling into the mouths of big cats of the jungle. They’ve finished with the flesh, they are cracking the bones.

Adesina’s lecture focused on what he called five critical areas that would save Nigeria and transform the people’s lives. He said the government should make rural economy work and provide food security. He said our rural areas “have become zones of economic misery.” He is right and correct. He said the city falters today because the village has been abandoned to faltering. The result is “the spread of anarchy, banditry, and terrorism” – what he called the “troika of social disruption” entrenching themselves to our collective sorrow. Adesina said our leaders should give health security for all, provide education for all, give affordable housing for all. He told us quoting data by UN-Habitat, that “in Nigeria, 49 percent of the population live in slums …That is a staggering 102 million people!” He exclaimed and told our leaders that what Nigerians needed “is decent housing and not upgrading of slums…There is nothing like a 5-star slum. A slum is a slum… ”

Then, Adesina reached the fifth of his points: Our leaders should be accountable: “If people pay taxes, governments must deliver services,” he said and quickly added that “taxation in the absence of a social contract between governments and citizens is simply fiscal extortion.” He stressed that Nigeria must enthrone fiscal decentralisation for a true federalism.: “To get out of the economic quagmire, there is a compelling need for the restructuring of Nigeria…Instead of a Federal Government of Nigeria, we could think of the United States of Nigeria.”

Those are great ideas. But in this country, the bush is the way – because the blind is the guide. Leadership will always make a difference. In a 2002 academic piece, psychologists Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzio and Annie Mckee speak on the imperative of societies enthroning leaders with positive emotions. They say the society achieves equilibrium when it is governed by leaders with a sense of accountability; leaders who know how to transform “the art of leadership to the science of results.” One writer said “the executive mind is impotent without power, power is dangerous without vision, and neither is lasting or significant in any human broad sense without the force of integrity.”

No enduring structure can stand on a faulty foundation. American singer and songwriter, David Allan Coe, asked us not to look at the beauty of a building. He said “it is the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.” British architect, Stephen Gardiner, was more philosophical about the place of foundation in people’s affairs. He wrote that “good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design.” We cannot solve Nigeria’s problem by ignoring the fissures in its foundation.

We tell the knock-kneed that what he carries on his head threatens a fall, he asks us to stop looking at the top. “Look at the base!” He points at his impairment, the awkward gait of his lower limbs. Think about how every road taken has led to nowhere. Think about our propensity to leave the vaults of our destiny open and complain about theft later. The Monday, October 10, 1960 edition of TIME magazine contained a report with the title: ‘Nigeria: The Free Giant.’ It was supposed to be a celebration of Nigeria’s independence which happened ten days earlier. But the author of the piece nursed a fear about the future of the brand new country. He wrote that “backward African nations inevitably must suffer the chaos of a Congo when the blacks take over.” Congo got its independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960. It fell apart on July 5, 1960 – less than a week after independence. The TIME magazine described that Congo as “a panorama of disaster.” How do we describe our Nigeria since independence?

A dark prophecy of inevitable chaos was published for Nigeria ten days after independence. To “inevitably suffer the chaos of the Congo” was a strong statement. The dictionary meaning of ‘chaos’ is “complete disorder”. If you like you can replace the word with “mayhem” or “bedlam” or “a mess.” There are a million other words that share meanings of madness with the chaotic. ‘Inevitable’ means “certain to happen.” Its other synonyms are ‘unavoidable’; ‘inescapable’; ‘fated’. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet we hear the protagonist, Hamlet, King of Denmark, seeing “providence in the fall of a sparrow.” In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare says the love birds are “star-cross’d” – stuck with their tragic end, their fate. It was the destiny of the Congo to explode within a week of its freedom from foreign rule. It has been Nigeria’s destiny to hop from disaster to catastrophe. But why?

If destiny will manifest itself in a disaster, it presages itself. It is not rain that falls without warning the blind and tapping the deaf. Thirty-eight years ago, Chief Awolowo himself spoke on the evils which dominated the hearts of Nigerians “at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities.” In his famous letter to the political bureau set up by the military in 1986, Chief Awolowo spoke about “the abominable filth that abounds in our society.” He said as long as Nigerians remained “what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them.” He warned that unless we allowed our hearts to be impelled “to make drastic changes for the better,” Nigeria stood the chance of succumbing to what he described as “permanent social instability and chaos.”

The chaos is here. We feel it in the price of food and drugs and in the cost of life itself. It is overwhelming. Today’s government reacts by grumbling about the malfeasance of its predecessor. Yet, the past was a disaster that came dancing without a mask. After Muhammadu Buhari was declared reelected in 2019, the late Dr. Obadiah Mailafia said in his March 4, 2019 Nigerian Tribune column titled ‘A guide for the Perplexed’ that Nigeria faced “what amounts to a peace of the graveyard.” He said he saw “fear and alarm in the eyes of certified patriots.” He noted that “only Almajirai in tattered rags from the president’s home region are celebrating with daggers and bayonets spoiling for a fight that nobody is really interested in.” He called on “genuine statesmen to (come and) salvage our democracy from the jaws of catastrophe.” History should have guided the public intellectual. Mailafia should have read Chief Awolowo. Nigeria is not structured to have “genuine statesmen” as its managers. Vulture does not eat clean meat; its meal is carrion.

Adesina declared that “Chief Awolowo was bigger than Nigeria. He said Awo “was the pacesetter and forerunner for development in Africa.” He spoke about Awolowo’s “intellectual capacity, vision, pragmatic social welfarism (which) helped him accomplish what was seemingly unimaginable at the time.” Adesina listed Awolowo’s firsts: “He built the first skyscraper in Africa — the Cocoa House. He built the first television station in Africa, WNTV. He built the Liberty Stadium, the first of its kind in Africa. He implemented a blueprint for development that focused on building human capacity through massive programs to educate the people, develop skills, lift people out of poverty, provide massive rural infrastructure, and develop institutions that turned farmers into wealthy entrepreneurs…Chief Awolowo implemented the sustainable development goals decades before the phrase was coined. He was an inspiration for Africa, far beyond the shores of Nigeria. His philosophy…helped shape programs and policies in other countries.”

Where I sat was some seats away from where Adesina stood and spoke from. Where he stood was a few seats away from where the government of Nigeria sat, expressionless. I heard Adesina; I turned and asked a colleague who sat beside me if he thought Nigeria could benefit from the wisdom of the bow-tied. I told my friend that Adesina’s first four points rested on the fifth. Nothing positive will happen unless Nigeria’s crooked structure is worked on by surgeons. But, where are the physicians? Even if the surgeon is found and present, Nigeria is as difficult and dangerous as danger could be. The country is that mental patient who hates his doctor because he hates being cured of his ailment. Nigeria kills its prophets.

Adesina’s five pills are capable of healing Nigeria. But Nigeria won’t listen to him. It did not listen to Awolowo. It doesn’t listen to the wise. It is a conundrum – an abductee of its crooked structure. In the 1999 Yoruba political film, Saworoide, we hear the old man Adebayo Faleti (Bàbá Òpálábá) chanting the praise name of his Jogbo Kingdom: “Jogbo bí orógbó, Jogbo bí orò (Jogbo, bitter as bitter kola; dangerous as oro cult). With two eyes, you can cope at the riverside; with two eyes, you will survive Kaduna; but you need twelve eyes to survive in Jogbo. With two mouths, you get by in Ibadan; with two mouths you get by in Lagos; but you need 18 mouths to survive in Jogbo…” Nigeria is that Jogbo – a sick, deformed, bitter country in need of a surgeon.

Heirs Holdings, a leading African investment company dedicated to improving lives and transforming Africa through strategic long-term investments, announced the launch of its new subsidiary, Heirs Technologies Limited, with an ambition to empower Africa's digital transformation through innovative and locally tailored solutions.

Heirs Technologies endeavours to provide value added services that capitalise on top-tier expertise while guaranteeing accessibility locally. The company's range of offerings include IT consulting, which encompasses advisory services, business transformation, system integration, licencing, and partnerships. Additionally, Heirs Technologies will offer various managed services covering IT operations and business process outsourcing.

To achieve its vision of propelling Africa to the forefront of the global technology landscape, Heirs Technologies will strategically invest in cutting edge technological solutions and develop platforms that foster collaboration among diverse stakeholders. Central to the company’s plans is to develop local capacity through meticulously tailored skills development programmes.

Heirs Holdings’ Group Chief Executive Officer, Emmanuel Nnorom, expressed his excitement about the launch while reiterating the company’s mission, "We are embarking on a journey fueled by innovation and driven by purpose. Our mission isn't solely about creating products; it's about shaping the future of technology, one groundbreaking solution at a time."

The launch of Heirs Technologies reaffirms Heirs Holdings' steadfast commitment to invest in sectors that provide long-term returns and have the ability to transform Africa’s economy. Heirs Holdings has been a pivotal player in various sectors critical for Africa’s development including financial services, energy, power, healthcare, real estate, and hospitality.

"The introduction of Heirs Technologies marks a significant milestone in our journey towards accelerating progress for future generations across Africa," said Tony O. Elumelu, CFR, Founder & Group Chairman, Heirs Holdings. "Technology has the power to catalyse development, and we are committed to harnessing this potential to unlock new innovations that will improve lives and transform our continent.”

For more information about Heirs Technologies, please visit www.heirstechnologies.com

Heirs Holdings is a leading African investment company committed to improving lives and transforming Africa through strategic investments and sustainable development initiatives. With a diverse portfolio spanning multiple sectors, including financial services, energy, power, healthcare, real estate, hospitality and technology, Heirs Holdings is dedicated to driving inclusive growth and building a prosperous future for Africa.

Following the adoption of red berets as an insignia by the supporters of Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, some residents of the state have been raising eyebrows.

Supporters of the governor, under the umbrella of Lucky Aiyedatiwa Campaign Organisation Foot Soldiers (LACO-FS), have been wearing red berets as their symbol.

While inaugurating the group, Aiyedatiwa was seen putting on the beret, which has been described as a symbol of cultism.

With the development causing uproar within the social media space of the state, some people stated that such a move will further embolden cultists in their activities across the state.

They also stated that cultists can use the avenue to perpetrate crime by disguising themselves as supporters of the governor.

Speaking on the issue, a public affairs analyst, Oluwagbega Ajongbolo, said, “What exactly are Lucky Aiyedatiwa and his supporters bringing into Ondo State with their berets? What’s the idea and ideology behind donning red berets on the streets of Akure and Akoko? What’s the socioeconomic belief of a typical Aiyedatiwa supporter? What does Aiyedatiwa stand for?

“If this is not about their economic and political beliefs, should we be scared that a set of people, led by Mr Governor, have now adopted a style of clothing that has significant meaning and messages it is passing across? Are we safe in Ondo State?”

On his part, Sunday Terebo said, “Ondo State, which way, when I saw this in Ondo town yesterday, I thought Vikings were having converged in Ondo state. Make una fear God ooo, but no withstanding fight, no dey always guiding yellow still remains the victory colour.”

For Niyi Arogbo, “Now that Aiyedatiwa has adopted a red beret, let Chief Olusola Oke use a yellow beret, while Senator Jimoh Ibrahim uses a blue beret, and Wale Akinterinwa chooses black. Make sure we systematize everything. Make sure we start the battle from there. Ondo 2024 will be so interesting.”

Omoduni Olamide: “Red Beret is known for cultism and violence. Now that the state governor has aligned with the brand. Are we safe in Ondo State?”

Reacting, the State Director of Information of LACO-FS, Kayode Fasua, distanced the group from cultism-related activities.

“It is benumbing to come across grave expressions on social media, especially through some Twitter handles (now rebranded as X), that our group is bringing cultism to Ondo State for the simple reason that we don red berets to our campaign rallies.

“While those bandying the insinuations of thuggery or cultism have bombarded the net with their tar brushes, they fail woefully to prove any instance of violence in our activities and find it hard to produce any pictorial or camera evidence of where Aiyedatiwa supporters under the aegis of LACO-FS are armed with any weapon at all, much less a dangerous one.”

[DailyPost]

Against the backdrop of the resurgence of the mass abduction of pupils, the Federal Government has said schools in 14 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, are at risk of attacks by bandits and insurgents.

The National Coordinator of Financing Safe Schools in Nigeria, Hajia Halima Iliya, confirmed to The PUNCH on Sunday, that the data of at-risk schools had been collected for intervention.

Iliya declined to identify the states, but the Commander of the National Safe Schools Response Coordination Centre, Nigeria Security, and Civil Defence Corps, Hammed Abodunrin, said they included Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Benue, Yobe, Katsina, FCT, Kebbi, Sokoto, Plateau, Zamfara and three others.

No fewer than 465 pupils, teachers, and women abducted in the past week are still in the custody of their captors.

Fifteen pupils of an Islamiya school in Sokoto State were kidnapped in the early hours of Saturday, less than 72 hours after 287 schoolchildren and teachers were abducted from the LEA primary school and the Government Secondary School both at Kuriga, in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

However, 28 of them were on Sunday reported to have escaped 259 in captivity.

A few days before the Kaduna incident, 200 female Internally Displaced Persons were taken away by terrorists in Borno State.

The women were kidnapped in Ngala, the headquarters of Gambarou Ngala in Borno state while fetching firewood in the bush.

On Sunday, there were reports that nine of them had regained freedom remaining 191 in captivity.

Penultimate Thursday, bandits abducted an undisclosed number of people in the Gonin-Gora community in the same Chikun LGA of Kaduna, prompting residents to barricade the Kaduna-Abuja Expressway in protest.

As a response to the April 2014 abduction of the Chibok school girls, the Safe Schools Initiative was launched by the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, alongside the Nigerian Global Business Coalition for Education and private sector leaders at the World Economic Forum Africa.

Safe schools

The initiative entails a combination of school-based interventions, community interventions to protect schools, and special measures for at-risk populations.

The Federal Government inaugurated the Safe Schools Fund with a $10m contribution and another $10m pledge from the private sector.

In further support for the programme, the Federal Government budgeted N15bn for the SSI in the 2023 fiscal year.

Speaking on the programme in an interview with one of our correspondents on Sunday, Iliya explained that the implementation of the SSI had started in several states.

Responding to questions on what was being done to fortify schools against bandit attacks, she said, “The project has taken off. We commenced implementation in 2023 with the flag off of the National Safe Schools Response Coordination Centre, which we intend to replicate at state and local government levels.

“The states have selected most at-risk schools in each senatorial zone for the implementation of National Plan on Financing Safe Schools Programme (2023-2026).’’

In response to the development, the coordinator explained that state governors had expressed plans to provide funding for the SSI for the protection of pupils and teachers in the identified locations.

She added, “Some states have made provision for the Safe Schools Programme in their 2024 budget in line with the National Plan. We intend to engage the states to guide them through the implementation.

“We’ve communicated to all the states; letters have been written for inclusion of Safe Schools in their budget and for them to select the most at-risk schools. More than 11 states have responded. The budget from states is for them to work on physical infrastructure such as fencing state schools and put other control measures.’’

Iliya further disclosed that the Federal Ministry of Education and the NSCDC had conducted some training for their men, adding that the Nigeria Police had trained senior officers, including all divisional police officers across the country on Safe Schools.

According to her, the security forces have commissioned equipment that would be deployed to various state commands for the operations.

“Data of at-risk schools from 14 states, including the FCT have so far been collected for intervention. The Defence headquarters and DSS (Department of Security Services) are expected to mainstream Safe Schools through capacity building of their officers. N15b was provided and released as takeoff in 2023; utilisation is still ongoing,’’ she stated.

The Commander of the National Safe Schools Response Coordination Centre, NSCDC, Abodunrin, said the four-year project was being implemented simultaneously in all the states but in phases, adding that it began with the sensitisation and training of security personnel late last year.

He condemned the latest abductions of school pupils, noting that the attackers operated in locations with poor telecommunication service.

Abodunrin said, “The attacks are unfortunate. What the attackers do is to look for soft targets. They now go to villages where they feel they can quickly operate before help can come. They also target when communication networks are bad. The cases in Ekiti and Kaduna are examples where community members could not quickly call for help. There is also the need to raise more awareness in the communities.

“There is a need for more cooperation. Schools are to register on www.nssrcc.gov.ng detailing their addresses and at least a phone number. Registration is free. Any registered school will automatically be on a database with their coordinates for easy accessibility.

“There are patrols. Global standards do not allow security operatives to be in schools for various reasons. Those who want to target them may kill or injure students and other members of the school communities in the process. There will be more patrols.’’

The commander also said that since security requires personal attention, students and teachers would be given training on personal safety and protection.

“Equipment and platforms are also being developed to facilitate easy communication even without a network. They will be trained on this too. Capacity of various communities are being built in the areas of personal security and information management for effective preventive and response efforts,’’ he disclosed.

Adamawa, Kebbi

On the states that have been identified to be at risk of attacks, Abodunrin said, “Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Benue, Yobe, Katsina, FCT, Kebbi, Sokoto, the Plateau, Zamfara.

“These are the states where the state governments have submitted the list of vulnerable schools to Safe School Financing and some of them have already donated Response centres to NSCDC for coordination.

“Some commit to including Safe School in their budgets for the centre to commence operations. Note that all states’ commissioners for finance were addressed by Safe School Finance for cooperation. You may still seek further clarification from Finance (ministry).’’

Continuing, he noted, “Those selected (states) are where concentration is. What the centre is doing in conjunction with NSCDC is to be proactive by making the sensitisation and community engagement national.

“All states of the federation now have Safe School Desk Officers/Coordinators. These attackers would look for soft targets that they think the government is not considering at present.’’

Meanwhile, the state commands of the NSCDC in Gombe, Kano, Osun, Taraba and other states said they were involved in the SSI implementation.

The Gombe State Commandant, Muhammad Bello, noted that his officers were ensuring that no school child was abducted in its safe school project.

He said, “We are ready to face the problem even though we are dwelling in a serious challenge in the area of logistics, and transportation but I will not allow it to impede securing schools and our children. We are doing our best, shortage of mobility will never impede safeguarding children.’’

In a statement, the spokesperson for Osun NSCDC, Kehinde Adeleke, said the Safe School Programme was operational in the state but identified mobility challenges in covering all local government areas in the state.

The Taraba State Commissioner for Education, Dr Augustina Godwin, on Sunday, said the state government had beefed up security around schools, especially in areas prone to banditry attacks since November last year.

In a telephone interview with our correspondent in Jalingo, Godwin said the state government had embarked on the building of perimeter fencing of most schools in the state as a first layer of security.

Godwin said, “We have credible intelligence regarding the plans by bandits to carry out massive school children abduction in the state, and so, the sad incident in Kaduna did not come to us as a surprise.

“The government has engaged personnel of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, and the state security outfit- Taraba Marshall to provide security in our schools.

“We have also formed the Safe School Security Committee as requested by Unicef. We have also identified schools with serious security needs based on their location and we have fortified such schools with more security.

“Just last week, I embarked on supervision of schools to see the level of security presence in our schools and I was impressed with what I saw on the ground.

“For the schools that are yet to get security personnel, we have provided dedicated phone numbers for school principals and teachers to call in case of any incident,” she said.

Sub-regional forces blamed

Meanwhile, the Presidency has described the recent cases of kidnapping across the country as efforts by ‘’sub-regional geopolitical forces conspiring to undermine the government of President Bola Tinubu.’’

Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr Ajuri Ngelale, affirmed this when he spoke on TVC’s Politics on Sunday monitored by The PUNCH.

On the programme titled ‘Counting the Cost of Presidents Tinubu’s Reforms,’ Ngelale revealed that the Federal Government was already receiving support from the United States government for the release of students kidnapped in Kaduna.

“I will say this: across the north, we understand that some of the sub-regional geopolitical forces that are currently at play are actively conspiring against the stability of Nigeria,” said the President’s spokesman.

Ngelale assured Nigerians that the Federal Government was on top of the situation and had received support from the US government to secure the release of the school children and address the regional forces at play.

“We understand that and we are not sleeping. We are responding to it and we’re doing it in a concerted way, with our neighbours.

“And it is worth noting that the United States Government has also pledged its assistance to ensure that there is a full return of all of the schoolchildren who were kidnapped recently in Kaduna.

“But the point is we are going to continue to intensify our collaboration not just within the region, but internationally to make sure that some of the regional actors that are conspiring against our nation are brought to justice and ultimately silenced in the future,” he explained.

The Presidential spokesman lamented that with increased security in major communities in the South-East and South-West, the government was working to extend coverage to vulnerable far-flung settlements in the north.

“First of all, the President has been very clear that this is an administration of no excuses. If you look at other parts of the countries that were in flames before he took office, such as the South-East and parts of the South-West for example, you will know the level of work that has gone into securing our nation.

“Where we still have some challenges is in the North-Central in the North-West and to a lesser extent in the Northeast. There’s still a lot of work to be done along the Kaduna axis. Remember the time when you could not travel by road on the Abuja-Kaduna highway? Now, you’re able to do that.

“Now the problem is when you have these far-flung communities, we do have these hit-and-run incidences of not just violence and killings, but kidnappings and hostage-taking,” Ngelale explained.

He toed the line of the First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, proposing capital punishment for kidnappers, saying, “I think that there’s going to have to be some sort of robust legislative reform that makes it clear to every citizen of our country that if you kidnap anybody, you will be killed by the justice system.

“There will be a death penalty attached to it. I don’t see how this can be solved if we don’t do this and see to its implementation.”

[Punch]

THE Students Loan scheme, planned to be floated in the next few weeks, is an ingenious creation of a problem that does not exist. I explained this as the Lead Discussant at the Federal University of Technology, FUTA, Branch of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, Colloquium on Wednesday, March 6, 2024 in Akure. I had begun my submission by enquiring if a citizen has a fundamental right to be an illiterate. I did not think so, but argued that even if he does, the collective rights of society supersedes such an individual right.

I pointed out that it is in realisation of the indispensability of education to society, that Chapter Two of the Constitution directs that: “Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy and to this end, Government shall as and when practicable provide free, compulsory and universal primary education; free secondary education; free university education; and free adult literacy programme.”

So, if education is so fundamental to human existence, and if societies need an educated citizenry to run, why should it not invest in education? Why should the citizen take a loan to be educated?

I took the audience through the trajectory of the loan and my observations. The Students Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act 2023, was signed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on June 12, 2023, exactly 14 days after he came into office. This gives the impression that the bill was signed in a hurry. On the other hand, it might have been signed on trust since it was introduced by former House of Representatives Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to the new administration.

The June 12 date was also Democracy Day, marking the commemoration of the June 12, 1993 annulment of the presidential election by the military regime led by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida. So, did President Tinubu, who played a role in the de-annulment struggle, see a correlation between democracy and the Students Loan Bill?

The title of the new law, ‘The Students Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act 2023’, gives the impression that it is meant to grant ‘Access to Higher Education’ in the country, which is not the case.

Nigerians access to tertiary education is limited primarily by available admission spaces. This led to the 1978 establishment of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, to manage the admission process. So, the introduction of the loan scheme would not lead to increased admission slots.

Given the fact that, generally, tuition fees are not paid in public tertiary institutions, coupled with the reality that nearly all those who send their wards to tuition fee-paying private universities can afford to do so, it is curious why the Student Loan Scheme is being introduced. This is more so when Section 3 of the Act states that the loan is “only for payment of tuition fees”.

My conclusion was that the Tinubu administration intends to introduce tuition fees into public tertiary institutions through the backdoor. I also pointed out that the challenge students face in our tertiary institutions is primarily upkeep. More so with hyperinflation. But the Act forbids students from accessing the loan for anything other than payment of tuition fees that do not exist in public schools.

If the loan is for only tuition, how will indigent students feed and accommodate themselves in the campuses? How would they buy books and other materials for their studies? How would they carry out necessary research? So, I submitted that the interests of the students and the government do not coincide. Also, the Act disqualifies a loan applicant if “any of the parents had defaulted in respect of students loan or any loan granted the person”. This is like visiting the sins of the parents on the children.

Another aspect is that the new law grants beneficiaries a two-year post National Youth Service Corps moratorium before the repayment begins. Working beneficiaries who dodge repayment risk a N500, 000 fine or two-year jail or both fine and imprisonment.

I pointed out that given the reality of mass unemployment , many beneficiaries are likely to default as unemployed graduates will be unable to repay the loans. I pointed that in the United States, students loan has become like an albatross. The outstanding debts in 2021 stood at $1.7 trillion. Secondly, some youths are not getting married because of the burden of the students loan. The sociological implications of this include the promotion of depopulation, burden of single motherhood and increase in absentee fathers. Also, some American youths do not go to college because they want to avoid the loan trap. This partly informs why some developed countries are seeking professionals from the underdeveloped countries to run their system.

I concluded that the scheme may endanger the future of the students and, by extension, society. As alternative, I submitted that government should live up to its responsibility of funding education. This I pointed out it can do, amongst other ways, by restoring the scholarship and bursary awards to students which used to be provided by all tiers of government.

Professor Bayo Aborishade while also opposing the scheme, narrated his experience in the scheme in the country before it was abolished in the late 1970s.

“I took a students’ loan scheme in 1974.It was N400 per annum. I paid back to the last Kobo, but most students never paid back a Kobo. Many of them were children of rich Nigerians who had the means, but saw the scheme as free money. On the loans form, they filled fake guarantors, the state never checked, and the loans were never repaid.

“In my days, the loan was for upkeep. There was no tuition fee, nor is there tuition fee today. The intention of the government is quite obvious: that it is going to introduce tuition fees. But there are enough funds in Nigeria to fund education in a country where a single minister could within weeks of being in office, have access to billions of Naira. The politicians know how to take care of themselves. It is a class issue; if you don’t belong, you are finished.”

Dr Olawale Bello, concurred that government is trying to introduce tuition fees, adding that it has commenced the process by pushing the universities to increase sundry fees.

FUTA Vice Chancellor, Professor Adenike Oladiji, said government should not be judged by what people assume are its intentions. She is confident that the Act will be revisited in line with the intentions of government.

The FUTA SSSANU led by Comrade Felix Adunbi conferred ‘Labour Friendly Award’ on Ondo State Governor, Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa, who was represented by Head of Service, Bayo Philip. The union also conferred the Labour Activist Award on me.