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[OPINION] For Yoruba Muslims and Pentecostals - Lasisi Olagunju
“Can the Yoruba Christian really avoid sharing things Islamic? If you are a pentecostal Yoruba Christian and you will see it as a sin to celebrate the next Sallah with me, what you will need to throw away will be more than my food. You will stop praying entirely in Yoruba because almost all the key words in the established Christian payers are taken from Arabic/Islamic texts. You will stop calling prayer ‘adura’ because it is from the Muslim ‘Du’a’. You will stop using the word ‘aanu’ (mercy) because the word is rooted in an Arabic word. A new word has to be coined for alafia (peace, wellbeing) because its root is also Arabic. Sermon will stop being called ‘iwaasu’ because it is from the Arabic ‘wa’z’. You will, furthermore, need to change your wardrobe and come up with new designs beyond what you call Yoruba dresses.”
The audience at the 1903 (third year) lecture of the Royal African Society in London listened with rapt attention as African nationalist, Dr. Edward Blyden, took them back to antiquity when “the most enlightened nations of Greece, Asia, and Egypt” held the opinion that “God revealed himself only in Africa.” Great men of that period, including Alexander the Great, rushed to the great oracle of Africa to drop offerings and “learn the will of God.” A few centuries after that epoch, Blyden lamented, Africa, the “first home of God” where He “buried His great truths” had travelled full circle and had come to be identified by the ‘civilised’ world of the 19th century as “the last home of the devil.”
“Now, things have so changed that it is the opinion of some that God is everywhere except in Africa,” Blyden agonized in the lecture which was on ‘West Africa before Europe.’ He went on to predict that “Africa’s turn will be sure to come again” when it would reclaim its place as the “refuge for seers who see and for prophets who prophesy.” Blyden said when that time would have come, an utterly materialized and exhausted Europe would go back to Africa to learn about God. The lecture is in the July 1903 edition of the Journal of the Royal African Society, Volume 2.
Just a hundred years after that lecture, the Blyden prophecy has come true. We’ve reclaimed our place as “the first home of God”. Nigeria, which houses the highest percentage of Africa’s population, qualifies to be celebrated as the global “refuge for seers who see and for prophets who prophesy.” Across faiths, we incubate and hatch men of God and gods of men – in their thousands. We speak and act for God here without counting the costs.
There is something cool about setting precedents. The immediate past Oyo State Governor, the late Abiola Ajimobi, won a second term election in 2015 and pronounced himself Koseleri (it-has-never-happened-before). Nigerians enjoyed an unprecedented three-day leave from work last week. In some places, the holiday lasted the whole of the week. The abstinence from work was the country’s way of celebrating Muslims’ 30 days of total abstinence from day-time meals – and from all sins. Allowing one abstinence to provoke another abstinence made all of us pious and sinless. It was surreal. The holiday should have endured till eternity.
While the holiday lasted, some friends shared their sallah experiences with me. They thought another koseleri was happening in Yorubaland: their pentecostal Christian neighbours refused to eat their food. “They said it was sin to share in our feast,” one of them said, sadly. “That was not who we are”, another added. I told them it is not really a new strain in Yoruba Christianity. I have RCCG and Deeper Life friends who celebrate and dine with me during Ileya. I also have RCCG and Deeper Life friends in whose mouths our good old eran Ileya (sallah ram meat) has lost its holiness. The twists started before the close of the last century when pentecostal Christianity came in costumes of fundamentalism.
Can the Yoruba Christian really avoid sharing things Islamic? If you are a pentecostal Yoruba Christian and you will see it as a sin to celebrate the next Sallah with me, what you will need to throw away will be more than my food. You will stop praying entirely in Yoruba because almost all the key words in the established Christian payers are taken from Arabic/Islamic texts. You will stop calling prayer ‘adura’ because it is from the Muslim ‘Du’a’. You will stop using the word ‘aanu’ (mercy) because the word is rooted in an Arabic word. A new word has to be coined for alafia (peace, wellbeing) because its root is also Arabic. Sermon will stop being called ‘iwaasu’ because it is from the Arabic ‘wa’z’. You will, furthermore, need to change your wardrobe and come up with new designs beyond what you call Yoruba dresses.
British Africanist J.D.Y. Peel’s ‘Christianity, Islam and Orisa Religion’ published in 2016 addresses some of these on pages 162 and 163. It says the agbada dress which you proudly assert as yours is a donation from Islam, perhaps from persons more northerly than northern Nigerians. Anglican missionary, Henry Townsend, in 1847 saw agbada’s acceptance and growing popularity and wrote that the “Mohammedan costume is become very fashionable with the young and gay” and “is by no means put on as a religious peculiarity.” If you read David Heathcote’s ‘The Embroidery of Hausa Dress (1977), cited by R.O.R. Kalilu’ (1997), you will have a clue that the embroidery (jakan) on your agbada “developed from Mali (and) is associated with Quranic scholars and teachers.” You must have heard the saying: Ise agbada kii se Imale (poverty of lack of agbada does not afflict a Muslim). I heard that from the genius of Yoruba Sakara music, Yusuf Olatunji.
There is no escaping the oneness of the world. Do the anti-Muslim pentecostal realize that Bible chapters and verses are numbered in Arabic numerals 1,2,3 etc. The word, ‘Algebra’ is from the Arabic al-jabr. Indeed, the whole “method of equation solving” in Mathematics is from Arabic.
When we speak about what Lord Lugard did with Southern and Northern Nigeria in 1914, we use the word ‘amalgamation.’ Scholars have agreed that ‘amalgamate’ descends from the Arabic al-malghama which means what ‘amalgam’ means.
In your everyday lives, you can’t escape words that have Arabic ancestors. The ‘sugar’ in your tea is from the Arabic word ‘sukkar’; cotton is from ‘qutum’, your overcoat got its ‘jumper’ name from the Arab’s ‘juppa.’ We can go on and on and conclude that it is pointless and fruitless for my Yoruba pentecostal friends to seek to run away from dining with Muslims and their Islam.
Now, the insular Christian has ideological bedmates in Yoruba Islam. There is this Imam in Ogbomoso shown online last week emitting fire and pronouncing everyone outside Islam as hell-bound. His voice was divisively loud and his penal tongue baleful. I listened to him and wondered where he was coming from. I once discussed clerics like this with the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi. “Taa lo ko won ni kewu (who taught them Quran/Arabic?)” was the oba’s rhetorical response to our worries. True, we should ask questions of competence when we hear such papal pronouncement from supposedly learned people. What he said was not what my Mallam taught me in Madrasha. If God had willed, He would have made all of humanity to belong to one nation (see Quran 5:48; see Quran 42:8); and one religious community (Quran 16:93). But, in His wisdom, God didn’t; instead, “to every people”, he sent “an apostle” (Quran 10:47). The Yoruba forbid saying or hearing what that Imam said about other religions. It is unYoruba to speak the language of perdition – they say man is not God.
It is in the character of the Yoruba to celebrate persons who speak with decorum. The highly regarded, thoughtful Chief Imam of Offa, Alhaji Muhyiddin Husayn, was at a Laylatul Qadr event in Ogbomoso a few days to last week’s sallah. His sermon at the programme was a tour de force on how to have a calm sea of peace. I heard him warn against unguarded utterances. He told the Chief Imam of Ogbomoso to win acceptability with character and close his running tap of hot words: “It is when you stop uttering words that words will stop uttering themselves,” he told the Imam. He added that bad words can’t win wars: “if you’ve seen war before, you will fear war” and “war knows no friend.” He cited examples with his own ascendancy experience. “The years I spent warding off attacks were enough as a man’s full tenure,” he said. But, he added, you would win if your tongue is bridled, if you do right and respect elders and pay hate with love. “One can gain an office with force”, he counseled, “but it takes patience and wisdom to sit there in peace.” Words, they say, draw kola nut from the pocket and can also draw sword from the pouch. The consequence of not listening to reason is having one’s milk spilt and the mug broken.
Ask master-potters if refiring can make whole again a broken pot. It is there in the experience of our fathers that a pot once broken, cannot be mended. There are several lethal pronouncements in Yoruba history with the pot metaphor at the centre. That is why we emphasize peace and unity in all our affairs.
The story of Islam and the Yoruba is the story of how leaf becomes soap. Scholars from the earliest of times have always marveled at how the Yoruba seamlessly combine opposition and accommodation when it comes to religion and religious matters. Fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam have neither comfortable bed nor cushion seat to relax and flourish in Yorubaland. And they won’t tomorrow. There is no family without both Muslim and Christian wings. In books and arts, we encounter moderation and cross-religious handshakes that emphasize the Yoruba moderation in matters of faith.
I read Gbadebo Gbadamosi’s ‘Odu Imale: Islam in Ifa Divination and the Case of Predestined Muslims’ published in the Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, June 1977. In it, I encountered discussions on Ifa verses which tell us of Yoruba Muslim clerics, “their dress, travels, and the patronage which they enjoy from the people.” Ifa speaks of “Babamale ‘Bewu gereje/ti yio fi gbogbo aye se ofe je (the Muslim man/ who wears voluminous garment/ who will have the whole world as free bounty).” I read Razaq Kalilu’s ‘Bearded Figure with Leather Sandals: Islam, Historical Cognition And the Visual Arts of The Yoruba’ ((1997). Here, the author asks the reader to note earlier works which suggest that Sango, the third Alaafin of Oyo, was “favorably disposed to Muslims” to the extent that he got an oriki: “Ogbori odo s’aluwala ‘male (He that sits on a mortar to perform ablution like the Muslim.”
Whether Christian, Muslim or nothing, humanity is one – or supposed to be one. One hundred and fifty nine years ago, Harvard-trained American scientist, Pliny Earle Chase (1820-1886), sought to use similar words and word-sounds found in Yoruba and other ‘world’ languages to prove what he called the “universal brotherhood” of man. In a 39-page seminal article published in an 1865 edition of the ‘Transactions of the American Philosophical Society,’ Chase did a painstaking comparison of some Yoruba words and word sounds with some others found in Arabic, Latin, Greek, English, Hebrew, Chinese, German, Coptic, Gothic, French, Dutch, Egyptian, Italian, Finnish, etc languages. He examined similarities in sound and meaning of prefixes, suffixes and midfixes found common across Yoruba and those other languages. He, in particular, draws our attention to what he calls “the marvelous grammatical affinity that exists between the Yoruba, Egyptian, and Coptic Languages.” Copiously using T.J. Bowen’s ‘Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba Language’, he argues that it could not have been mere fortuitous occurrence of coincidences that “auro” (owuro)- morning/dawn in Yoruba is “aurora” (dawn) in Latin, just as “awari” (search) in Yoruba shares sound and meaning with the English word “aware”. He writes that there is “oro” (wealth) in Yoruba just as its Latin sound-mate, “aurum”, means gold. Chase notes with considerable interest that the word ‘duro’ means “to stay” (or stand firm) in Yoruba, and ‘duro’ in Latin means hard, harden, toughen, become stern. Incidentally, I also found that there is a similar Hebrew word, ‘dura’ which, among others, means ‘endurance.’ Chase’s conclusion is that humanity is one vindicating the Biblical assertion that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts, 17:26).
The world lounges under a fatal canopy. You should be following the escalated bloodshed in the Middle East. The standards and the double standard. It may still get worse. Just as it is in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, carrion birds are hooting at noon; ravens, crows and kites are flying above the “sickly” world. But, what we need is love to defeat war. And, we will have this if we are able to take care of the devil in race and religion. It is difficult. Daniel Defoe, in his ‘The True-Born Englishman’ (1701) writes that “Whenever God erects a house of prayer,/ The Devil always builds a chapel there; /And ’twill be found, upon examination (that) / The latter has the largest congregation.”
FG targeting tax incentive measures to boost economic growth nationwide – Wale Edun
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, says the Federal Government intends to reduce the cost of tax expenditures and ensure that tax incentives have a positive impact on the economy.
Edun said this while discussing the recent approval of incorporating an Incentive Monitoring and Evaluation Platform (IMEP) into the existing Import Duty Exemption Certificate (IDEC) process as captured by a statement released on Monday.
According to the Minister, the IDEC automation, which was introduced as from 1st March, 2020, is a fiscal incentive by the Federal Government under the Ministry of Finance to boost sectors of the economy by exempting critical players from paying import duty and all other statutory customs charges respectively.
- “This is to provide the Federal Ministry of Finance with a robust automated tool for more effective Monitoring and Evaluation (M &E) measurement of the impact of all customs duty exemptions issued by the Ministry to government entities, companies, non- governmental oganisations (NGOs) and international organisations,” Edun said.
He stated that the system is set up to block and limit access to those who don’t qualify, enforce adherence to fiscal policies, and offer a detailed analysis of how tax incentives affect the economy.
He said that this approach will also help in preventing the misuse of tax expenditures, enhancing the economic benefits derived from fiscal incentives, and improving the direct evaluation of the impact of tax incentives on the economy.
Key features of Incentive Monitoring and Evaluation Platform (IMEP)
Speaking further, Edun identified some of the critical aspects of the Incentive Monitoring and Evaluation Platform (IMEP), which include:
- Duty waiver claw back mechanism for issuance of demand notices to defaulters which would prevent misuse of issued incentive,
- E-report generation,
- A centralised database,
- Factory geo-location tagging,
- Industry qualification status validation, and
- Inter- ministries department and agency (MDA) integration.
Edun also announced that a webinar will be held on Tuesday, April 23, 2024, to explain the updated IDEC process.
[Nairametrics]
Kaduna Assembly Begins Probe Of El-Rufai Administration
The Kaduna State House of Assembly, on Tuesday, set up a 13-man adhoc committee to investigate financial transactions, loans, grants and projects execution under the immediate-past governor of the State, Malam Nasir El-rufai.
Hon. Yusuf Mugu, member representing Kaura constituency, moved the motion on matter of public importance that the loans borrowed by the former governor be investigated.
Details Later…..
[Leadership]
Hoodlums Attack LG Secretariat In Ekiti
Some suspected hoodlums from Obbo-Aiyegunle in Kwara State on Tuesday attacked Ilejemeje Local Government secretariat and some residents of the town over land dispute.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the alleged hoodlums were heavily armed and fired gunshot to scare residents.
The local government secretariat windows and doors were vandalised as workers ran for safety.
Speaking on the attack, the Eleda of Eda- Oniyo, Oba Awodipo Awolola, explained that the hoodlums attacked some people with charms in their farms, saying one person had been hospitalised.
Oba Awolola said the incident had caused trauma and fear among residents of the community.
He urged the state government to intervene and settle the dispute between Ekiti and Kwara residents, to avoid bloodshed of innocent lives.
The traditional ruler appealed to the security agencies to mobilise more officers to the community to prevent further attacks on residents.
Reacting, the Chairman of Ilejemeje Local Government Area in Ekiti, Mr Alaba Dada, expressed shock over the incident, adding that security officers had been mobilised to the town.
(NAN)
Revisit Kwankwaso, Ganduje’s disagreement, Lukman appeals to Tinubu
Aformer member of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling party in Nigeria, All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Moh. Lukman, has called on the party’s leaders, including President Bola Tinubu, to intervene in the political dispute between two former governors of Kano State, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Abdullahi Umar Ganduje.
Lukman urged the leaders to revisit the issues that led to their disagreement and find a way to resolve the rift.
He said would be an opportunity to renew APC in Kano state and by extension northwest and the entire north.
Lukman’s position which was contained in a statement issued in Abuja on Tuesday, April 16, also advised the leadership of the party not to limit the engagement of issues surrounding all the political challenges facing APC as a party to only the issue of bribery allegation against Ganduje.
He said: “Being progressives requires honesty, which given the current political reality, we must accept that Sen. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and his NNPP have a stronger support base in Kano state. Noting that Sen. Kwankwaso was in our party up to 2018; and acknowledging that between 1999 and 2019 both Sen. Kwankwaso and Dr. Ganduje worked together, we need to revisit issues surrounding their disagreement.
“On no account should APC leaders limit the engagement of issues surrounding all the political challenges facing us as a party to only the issue of bribery allegation against Dr. Ganduje.
“If this means another round of negotiation for political alliance or a merger with Sen. Kwankwaso and NNPP, our leaders should proceed to act accordingly. President Tinubu and the APC must take full advantage of the current reality to renegotiate the support base of the APC.
“Renegotiating the support base of the APC should also be about reigniting the progressive credentials of the APC.”
The former Director General of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF), however, noted: “It is very painfully disturbing that unless this kind of opportunity is utilised to the fullest, based on which new actors such as Dr. Kwankwaso with a strong commitment to democracy based on principles are recruited into our party, the downward slide and retrogression towards conservatism and lawless management of the APC will continue.”
On allegations of corrupt charges against the party’s national chairman, Lukman said: “Without doubt, this situation presents an opportunity for President Tinubu to demonstrate his progressive and political dexterity. It is a low-hanging fruit, which, if properly managed could also save the politics of Dr. Ganduje.
“The hard truth is that, somehow, the politics of Kano state was mismanaged and as it is, if we were unable to win the election in Kano state when we were in control of the Kano state government, it would be foolhardy to imagine otherwise.
“APC leaders must be reminded that one of the promises in 2015 based on which Nigerians supported us and gave us the mandate to rule the country for the last nine years was the commitment to fight corruption. If there is any instance requiring us, as a party, to renew our commitment to fighting corruption, this is it. We must appeal to especially President Tinubu and all APC leaders not to consent to any action other than supporting Dr. Ganduje to take advantage of the current reality to clear his name.
[TheNation]
FG begins disbursement of N200bn palliative loans
The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment says it has begun disbursement of the Presidential Conditional Grant Scheme to verified applicants after an exhaustive selection process.
The government, through the Bank of Industry, had said it would be disbursing three categories of funding totalling N200bn to support manufacturers and businesses across the country.
In a progress report posted on the trade minister’s official X (formerly Twitter) handle on Tuesday, Doris Aniete stated that an unspecified number of beneficiaries have received their grants, adding that by Friday, April 19, another significant disbursement will be made to a substantial number of verified applicants.
She said, “We are pleased to inform you that the disbursement process for the Presidential Conditional Grant Programme has officially commenced. Some beneficiaries have already received their grants, marking the beginning of our phased disbursement strategy.”
“By Friday, 19th April 2024, a significant disbursement will be made to a substantial number of verified applicants. It is essential to understand that disbursements are ongoing, and not all applicants will receive their grants on this initial date. However, rest assured that all verified applicants will eventually receive their grants in subsequent phases.”
This is coming more than eight months after President Bola Tinubu announced the grant for manufacturers and small businesses and two weeks after applicants were directed to submit their National Identification Numbers as part of the requirements to obtain the grant earmarked to cushion the effect that recent economic reforms have had on businesses in the country.
In the address, the president said he was determined to strengthen the manufacturing sector, increase its capacity to expand, and create good-paying jobs.
“We are going to spend N75bn between July 2023 and March 2024. Our objective is to fund 75 enterprises with great potential to kick-start sustainable economic growth, accelerate structural transformation, and improve productivity.
‘’Each of the 75 manufacturing enterprises will be able to access N1bn credit at 9 per cent per annum with a maximum of 60 months repayment for long-term loans and 12 months for working capital,” Tinubu said.
The programme, riddled with multiple delays and a complex registration process, had received several criticisms from prospective beneficiaries.
The President of the Association of Small Business Owners, Femi Egbesola, had decried the slow pace of data collation by the supervising agencies, alleging that genuine businesses were being deliberately discouraged from accessing the loans.
More details soon…
[Punch]
Man Utd speak to Garnacho over social media activity
Manchester United have spoken to Alejandro Garnacho after the winger liked social media posts criticising manager Erik ten Hag over his handling of the player.
The Argentina international, taken off at half-time in their 2-2 draw at Bournemouth on Saturday, liked two messages on X, by United fan and YouTuber Mark Goldbridge.
One post accused Ten Hag of “throwing (Garnacho) under the bus” because of comments the United boss made about the 19-year-old’s performance.
The other said Garnacho “had a poor first half but taking him off at half-time and holding him up as the problem is a joke”.
Garnacho swiftly “unliked” both messages, an action the club believes shows contrition, and a United source told the PA news agency the matter had been dealt with internally.
The teenager has become a key player for United this season, scoring nine goals and providing four assists in 42 games.
The incident follows one in September when Jadon Sancho said on X that he had been made a “scapegoat” after being left out of the squad for the Arsenal match, with Ten Hag saying he had trained poorly.
Sancho said he would “not allow people saying things that (are) completely untrue”, interpreted as accusing Ten Hag of misrepresenting reasons why he was not in the side.
The 24-year-old was banished from the first team before being loaned to Borussia Dortmund in January.
Ten Hag’s position has come under renewed pressure after the draw against Bournemouth, which left United seventh in the Premier League table, 13 points off the top four.
The FA Cup is the only silverware that United can win this season — they take on second-tier side Coventry in the semi-final at Wembley on Sunday.
[Vanguard]
Kano anti-graft agency files fresh charges against Ganduje
Kano anti-graft agency files fresh charges against Ganduje
[OPINION] Onyema: Running Business With A Soul - Abdullahi Tanko
There is a strong belief among business leaders around the globe that businesses should no longer be about just making money. Every business should care deeply about society. This is why we frequently now hear of corporate social responsibility. Businesses are these days greatly concerned about social issues like inequality in society, poverty, primitive diseases, environmental protection, discrimination against women and minorities, and the entire gamut of social justice. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and David M. Rubenstein are among those involved in the Giving Pledge, some of the world’s richest men who have resolved to give much of their wealth to charity or worthy social causes.
Nigeria’s Allen Onyema, founder and chairman of Air Peace, is easily Nigeria’s version of these globally known entrepreneurs because of his commitment to the common good. The Lagos-London flights which his Air Peace started on Saturday, March 30, 2024, bear an eloquent testimony to his passion for the public good. No sooner he started the lucrative routes than foreign airlines in Nigeria announced drastic reductions in their fares. The foreign carriers, however, cleverly attributed the cutbacks to the Central Bank’s clearance of a backlog of $7bn owed them and the recent marginal gain in naira value. Interestingly, a section of the Nigerian media fell into their mind game and carried their propaganda without proper analysis. But that’s a story for another day.
As Tunde MacAlabi, the founder of the Africa International Investment and Trade Exhibition and Fair noted a few days ago, British Airways now charges N1.25m for a one-way ticket to London, and no longer N3.5m, as was the case a few weeks ago, even during the winter which is normally a low season. KLM has come down from $1,500 a few weeks ago to $641 for a trip from Lagos to Amsterdam. Turkish Airlines now accepts N1.76m instead of N5m, to fly a passenger from Lagos to Istanbul. The list goes on. The good news is that the slashes are on average about 50%, and the reductions may continue in the foreseeable future. All this is because Nigeria’s Air Peace is charging a mere N1.2m for the busy Lagos-London route.
The Air Peace chairman, noted MacAlabi, could have gone into a deal with foreign airlines to keep the Lagos-London fare high because of its enormous lucrativeness, but the patriot in him would not have allowed it. Onyema used his planes in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic, when most airlines in the world were in a total mess, to lift Nigerians who were under the sustained barrage of xenophobic violence in South Africa back to the country free of charge. He lifted 286 persons home on May 29 and 301 others the next day. He has also brought home distressed Nigerians from war-torn Ukraine and Sudan free of charge in 2022 and 2023, respectively. He has supported the Nigerian national football team without looking back. All this without regard to tribal, sectional, regional, religious, and gender differences.
Against this backdrop, Nigerians are touched deeply anytime Onyema says that his reason for setting up Air Peace was not to make money but to serve the tremendous social purpose of providing jobs for Nigerians and creating business opportunities where they could serve as suppliers and consultants. I have attended two such meetings in Abuja in the last two years. Indeed, it was his late father, as he revealed, who made him set up Air Peace in 2012 and the following year it commenced commercial operations. It is today Nigeria’s largest air carrier, with 38 planes. It began when Onyema’s father asked him to employ teeming kinsmen and others flooding the house for financial assistance. He took to the airline business because he already had a private jet and acquired some aircraft management experience.
It is logical to hold up Allen Onyema as a quintessential Nigerian practitioner of shared prosperity, the concept that everyone in society should benefit from prosperity. The idea that a business should exist purely for the shareholders is now discredited. Shareholder capitalism which the likes of Milton advocated fiercely has fallen out of favour because it has created or worsened many problems in the world like the phenomenon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. In place of shareholder capitalism, there is now stakeholder capitalism. Stakeholders in a business are not just the investors but also the workers, the suppliers, distributors, the host community, the government, and even non-government organizations (NGOs). Among the top persons who have embraced this new thinking is Klaus Schwab, the German engineer, economist, and founder of the famous World Economic Forum whose annual meetings in January in Davos, Switzerland, are attended by thousands of top government leaders, writers, business leaders and thought leaders around the globe.
It is delightful that there are Nigerian entrepreneurs who subscribe to shared prosperity. Onyema stands out even among his peers. The new Lagos-London operations by Air Peace mean more aircraft for the airline, more direct and indirect jobs for Nigerians, and, of course, more prosperity for our people. To repeat the obvious, the Lagos-London flights have resulted in radical reductions in fares by Nigerian travellers. The cuts mean more savings for the people and more investments in their well-being and their businesses. The Air Peace founder truly runs a business with a soul.
Malam Abdullahi, a retired director in the federal public service, lives in Abuja.