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Professor Ayo Banjo was educated at the universities of Glasgow, Leeds, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Ibadan. He had his secondary education at Igbobi College, Lagos and had had primary schooling at Oyo where he was born in 1934 on the grounds of Saint Andrews College to a highly educated father who had graduated from Foura Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and his trajectory in life was determined by how hard he was willing to push himself because money was not the problem as it was for many of his compatriots. His illustrious father even rose to be a college principal and a parliamentarian representing one of the Ijebu constituencies in the Western House of Assembly thus having toes in the two critical agencies of growth and modernisation in Nigeria, the church and government. Ayo Ladipo Banjo comes from an illustrious family of five children, four boys and a girl and they all did well, his older brother was a famous medical doctor and his junior brother an academic librarian; the last of the boys was at the Ibadan Grammar School where he distinguished himself as a famous footballer who took to business as an adult. The oldest and youngest brothers have joined the saints triumphant unfortunately.
Ayodeji Ladipo Banjo who turned 90 on May 2 was former vice chancellor of the premier university of Ibadan. Bravo erudite Professor (emeritus ) of English Language at the University of Ibadan from where he took a voluntary retirement about three decades ago. Having taught in one capacity or the other since 1966 and rising from the position of lecturer to senior lecturer, professor and head of department, Dean of Faculty of Arts, Deputy vice chancellor, acting vice chancellor for a year before becoming finally, vice chancellor from 1984 to 1994. He has been pro chancellor and chairman of the governing councils of the universities of Port Harcourt and Ilorin and the new Anglican mission-endowed Bishop Ajayi Crowther University ending finally as chairman of the governing council of the National Universities Commission.
His career spanned a period of 60 years or slightly more. He can rightly be called “Mr Nigerian University”. He is a recipient of several accolades and fellowships of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, (FNAL) NNOM, National Order of Merit and a grateful country has honoured him with the title of Commander of the of the Niger (CON) the highest national honour for distinguished service to the country in education. He has been visiting professor of English to the University of the West Indies and held a visiting fellowship at Cambridge University. Not many people know about his role as a teacher of English in government secondary schools in the old government colleges including a stint at the Government College Ugheli now in Delta State where his late wife hailed from. Service as a secondary school teacher gave him the insight which informed his writing a successful book on English language at that level. The teaching of English to people whose mother tongue was not English apparently influenced his research interest at university. His life epitomises the statement that service deserves its reward and Nigeria has rewarded Professor Banjo with numerous appointments including serving as chairman of the board of literature award of Nigerian Natural Liquefied Gas (NNLG) and was also called to advise government on remuneration of university staff several times when university staff downed their “tools” so to say. In all these interventions, he has fought for the sector and refused to give up when his advice was turned down. He has been pained when universities were poorly funded despite government prodding of the sector to expand in the face of growing students applications for admission. He foresaw the founding of private universities but he expected their entry to be in an orderly fashion to complement government efforts in the area but not in the commercial trading fashion by which the expectation of making money had lured all kinds of characters into the venture which has led to duplication of academic and professional offering with little distinction or difference from one another.
I have had occasional discussion with the iconic scholar on this and I know he is more passionate and pained by the unwieldy nature in which higher educational institutions has developed in Nigeria than those of us who have taken public position on this tragic situation.
The University of Ibadan which he headed for practically 11 years was hobbled by the weight of non-academic distractions of provision of municipal services totally unrelated to the normal call of universities in other climes and places. Universities were for exchange of ideas and teaching of students without being burdened down by municipal inefficiency. How to return universities to its primary purpose of research and pedagogy was a problem faced by Banjo and his colleagues confronting militant trade unionism of academic and non-academic staff. Those at the helm of affairs in the universities who know what to do have surrendered to political interference and the desire to keep their wretched jobs while constantly threatened by those in government and their supervisory bureaucracy.
Like the country the problem of the university has become hydra headed to the point of irreversibility, Professor Banjo remains a constant reference point in university administration like Professor Kenneth Onwuka Dike as vice chancellor of Ibadan and Professor J.F Ade Ajayi as vice chancellor of Lagos. He will continue to be remembered for his high integrity and transparency and commitment to good university administration.
He and I live in the same area of Ibadan undistinguishable from other areas of poorly maintained roads. He lives in a simple house that unlike many Nigerians who have held high positions in the country is not different from those of his neighbours. He joins all of us in our neighbourhood association to contribute money to pay local security services, repair security gates and to plead for mercy from electricity provider to deliver power to struggling teachers who need to read to do the normal duties of professors. Forget about potable water; everybody has his or her own dugout well or borehole from which we all at least get water to clean our toilets and to wash plates and utensils in the kitchen while we buy bottled water to drink but we cannot bet our lives on the quality of the bottled water! Everybody who can afford it is a local government on his or her own providing water, electricity and security in modern Nigeria!
This reminds me of a story by late Professor Ladipo Akinkugbe, distinguished professor emeritus of Medicine in Ibadan who said after attending a conference in Oxford University in England, he went out to buy a pump and giant switch and spare parts for his generator followed by an English colleague who innocently asked him if he was into big time farming somewhere in the bush near Ibadan. When the English man was told what he bought were for his house he could not understand or believe him. Professor Banjo can be very funny especially when we discuss our neighbourhood affairs and how to “encourage “the NEPA people to remember us that we need light to remain relevant in our lecture rooms!
On a personal note, when I was pro chancellor and chairman of the governing council of Ekiti State University, I invited him and Professor Kayode Oyediran, and Professor Olufemi Bamiro, all former vice chancellors of the University of Ibadan to help me choose the best vice chancellor for the newly amalgamated three state universities in the state. Of course they did an excellent job and when the governor who is statutorily the Visitor saw the calibre of the people involved, he said if Professor Banjo had a hand in it, he, the governor, would not vary the recommendation and he quickly acceded to my request by appointing Professor Dipo Aina, a first class soil scientist who elevated the university to a higher level by virtually rebuilding it
Professor Banjo is big man academically and physically and there are unfortunately not many of his type in the current leadership of Nigerian universities. He has used his talents to help along with others to establish the Nigerian Academy of Letters of which he was the second president. Unless he was sick or engaged with state affairs, he has been a permanent feature of the Academy of Letters and the Academy remains eternally grateful.
Live long, distinguished and iconic academic and university administrator and leader of men.
Popular singer Yemi Alade recently drew the ire of some online commentators when she decried the frequency of house demolitions in Lagos. Some of these commenters’ vociferous defence of the government’s decision to demolish houses left me wondering if this is not schadenfreude. Do these people truly believe in the irreproachability of the government, or derive vicarious joy in watching relatively well-off people’s houses being bulldozed? Either way, when it comes to issues of house demolitions, the chatter that attends them is also a problem. We tend to focus on the wrong things. The real trouble with the demolitions is that they are done under the guise of improving the cityscape. Yet, year in and year out our urban spaces remain dysfunctional. What good have the demolitions done?
Last year when the Lagos State government was demolishing houses around Lekki, Ajao Estate, Alaba Market, Abule Egba, and Ladipo, most of the discussion was about the ethnicity of the house owners. Groups alleged that the houses selected for demolition belonged to Igbos, and that the demolition was political vindictiveness. Other groups bounced out with proof that more of those houses belonged to Yorubas, and therefore the allegation of ethnic bias was unfounded.
In all of the bickering and bitter exchange of which tribe the house owners originated from, we forgot to ask what follows. How is the city being rebuilt? Are there options other than demolition that we can explore? Can we imagine a re-organisation of our urban spaces without wasting so much capital that people invested in what is being destroyed? Truth is, too many demolitions do not suggest seriousness about restoring the master plan of an urban landscape. What it signals is a stunted imagination, a chronic inability to think.
Look beyond Lagos State (where another round of demolition is ongoing) and you will find the same attitude elsewhere in the country. Virtually every Nigerian leader has a plan to destroy but no concomitant one to (re-)build. It has become customary to read media reports of this governor planning to demolish 160 houses. Another time you read that that governor too will demolish an entire estate. The one who was just inaugurated yesterday arrived with a plan to level down a street. What you will hardly hear is their plans to at least re-build. Ours is to plunder, never to plough or preserve. For a poor country without a sustained flow of capital, we lack the prudence to manage resources. The little we have, we are rather too quick to bulldoze them.
Let us take, for instance, ex-Rivers governor Nyesom Wike. When he was first appointed as Minister of Federal Capital Territory, one of his early addresses to the press was his plan to demolish anything that stood in the way of his vacuousness. The sadistic relish with which he talked about bringing down erected structures was quite telling of his barbarism. Like the primitive man who cannot reason beyond what instinct dictates, Wike takes the demolition exercise as the end. Ask him what his vision of the FCT should look like and how all the buildings he is bringing down will help him achieve it, and I can guarantee he will have no clue whatsoever.
He has not quite thought about it, and he is still not going to think about it simply because you asked. Why? Because he is not out to achieve anything in the FCT other than accumulate wealth and power. Wike just wants to destroy, and that is also because he knows nothing else to do. He was not appointed to be a city builder anyway. He is where he is because he helped the All Progressives Congress win the 2023 election and will remain there to help them win again in 2027. He uses his office like a political trophy because that is all it is. Like his fellow demolishers in parts of the country, Wike lacks any sophisticated idea of how our urban spaces ought to be rebuilt and how cities should function. They just want to repossess land and re-award it to their cronies.
Before we fall into the temptation of thinking that Wike’s administrative excesses are unique, consider former Kaduna governor, the one-man evil called Nasir El-Rufai. This was a man who made a career out of house demolitions while he too was the FCT minister. The praises he received for restoring the FCT master plan must have turned his head the other way because, as governor, he demolished houses as if they were built with pebbles. For instance, in 2020, a random poster appeared on social media saying a restaurant and lounge in the state was going to be the venue of a “Kaduna Sex Party.” Without waiting to verify if there was truly going to be a sex party, the state Urban Planning and Development Agency demolished the building on his orders. They were clear on their reasons for bringing down the building until they got some blowback. Then they changed their rationale to alleging the “illegality” of the structure.
El Rufai not only spent a chunk of his tenure demolishing everything from churches to houses, he continued that state-sanctioned malevolence even hours before he handed power to his successor. The Gbagi community where he carried out this final demolition had to be reportedly held down with dozens of security agents who left their trademark sorrow tears and blood in their wake. El Rufai did all of that but (re-)built virtually nothing. Ask him how better Kaduna State functions due to that demolition exercise, and you see a man who was just wicked for nothing.
Then there are categories of beasts who demolish as a sign of conquest, a vanquishing of their political opponent. Successive governors do that for malicious reasons. One of the first things Emeka Ihedioha did as governor was to destroy Akachi Tower, as if Rochas Okorochas built it with his money. I passed that monument shortly after it was tampered with, and the sight was disheartening. What manner of humans are we? In Kano, they brought down a flyover built by the former governor Abdullahi Ganduje because some folks with a low bandwidth of intelligence said the aerial view of the design looked like a Cross, a Christian symbol. Kano was a Muslim state and anything that smelled “Christian”—especially a structure close to the government house, the seat of political power—needed to be destroyed.
Kano governor Abba Yusuf’s demolition spate got to a head this January when some victims sued the state for N30bn. They alleged they had lost about 30 members and goods worth N260bn to the demolition. The governor agreed to settle out of court for N3bn. So, he not only cost the state lives and capital, he will still pay a token for what he broke. In Lagos, the Landmark Beach Beach on Victoria Island was demolished to give way to the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, an ambitious public infrastructure project. The project had hardly been announced when they brought the business operating there down to a wreckage. We are quick to destroy like that because it is easy; it requires neither thinking nor empathy. We can find a way to build around those structures, but that will task the imagination we lack.
Unfortunately, a society that builds to grow does not destroy so frequently unless it is truly necessary. Why? Because, at the end of the day, what we call a developed society is a consequence of additive growth. You add onto what is on the ground, not make a habit of subtracting. At the rate we are going, we will end up merely circling on the same spot forever. We will build 12 things and demolish 13, and then wonder why nothing ever grows on this land.
Many Nigerians were aghast when they learned that military authorities had begun the controversial ‘Operation Safe Corridor’ initiative to ‘rehabilitate and reintegrate surrendered and repentant Boko Haram terrorist members.’ But it had the backing of President Muhammadu Buhari with Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State also fully embracing it the moment he got to office. While I understand the social problems Zulum may have been attempting to solve, I have always believed that the entire programme is wrongheaded. Any policy based on appeasing criminals at the expense of justice for their victims cannot, in my book, be justified.
Incidentally, many stakeholders in Borno State, the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency, were also critical of the idea. For instance, the Shehu of Borno, Abubakar El-Kanemi, is on record as saying it would be difficult to cohabit with ‘repentant’ killers. “Many people were killed along with their property. And you people (government) and the media expect us to forget and forgive the repentant terrorists?” he queried. Senator Ali Ndume (currently the senate chief whip) was no less vehement in his opposition. “I am completely against the idea. You are just telling people to go and join Boko Haram and then repent…that’s a totally unacceptable way of solving problem.”
In February 2020, Ndume publicly denounced the announcement by the military that another batch of 603 ‘repentant’ insurgents had completed their de-radicalisation programme. He alleged that most of those earlier integrated into the communities had gone back to their old ways. “Many among those released have since run away. The government should know what to do about them, but not reintroducing someone to you, who has killed your parents or your relations”, said Ndume who recounted the atrocities committed by Boko Haram in his community. “In my village, mallams that are Muslims, not ordinary Muslims but mallams, elders above 60, were taken to an abattoir and slaughtered by Boko Haram. 75 of them…Not that they even apologised to you, they apologised to the government with the thinking that government has failed and that is why they are being pampered. They are like Kharajites. They will never repent.”
That ‘prophesy’ came to pass last week Tuesday night when ‘repentant’ Boko Haram insurgents (who dressed in military uniform) invaded a police station in Maiduguri to set free eight of their colleagues who had been arrested earlier with 476 grammes of illicit substances. “Thereafter, they went and attacked Nigeria Immigration Service and NDLEA check points after the welcome to the township gate and they burnt it down,” according to the Police Public Relations Officer in Borno State, Kenneth Daso who said arrests were made. Although Daso was silent on injuries and death, there are reports of fatalities.
I have on three occasions deployed Ndume’s argument to oppose this warped idea, especially given the factor of timing and the issue of justice. You don’t pamper killers with goodies and send them back to the families of their victims in the middle of a war that has no expiry date, I warned. De-radicalisation, as I also pointed out in the past, is never an easy option, even in advanced countries that have all it takes. To effectively tackle the issue of ‘reformed terrorists’, according to Sabariah Hussin, a research analyst at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) in Singapore, the authorities must be well equipped to handle the various reintegration challenges. “This requires strong political will, adequate resources and the involvement of the wider community,” Hussin wrote. “An under-appreciated aspect of the reintegration process involves community engagement.”
It is evident that in Nigeria, we do not have what is required for a proper deradicalization process, which also takes time. It’s certainly not about preaching sermons to killers. Former Agriculture Minister and then chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Chief Audu Ogbeh spoke to this same issue three years ago. “We are currently witnessing large scale surrender of large numbers of Boko Haram insurgents, among whom are bomb makers, commanders, arsonists, rapists, and child snatchers,” said Ogbeh who then asked: “Do we have good reason to cheer and hope for an end to this decade-old insanity? Is ‘I am sorry’ enough to bring relief to Nigerians and the thousands of dead and maimed?”
The unjust nature of the idea was further elaborated upon by Mr Abba Ali at one of the Internally Displaced Camps (IDPs) in Maiduguri called ‘Bakassi’ in 2020. “Imagine you had your children murdered, your wife raped and killed. The culprits are arrested, and the government tells you they are now repentant. And while you are still at an IDP camp, with your family disorganised, and you are struggling to get food to eat, the government brings the culprits, feeds, and clothes them, gives them education and money to start a business and sends them to come and be your neighbours” Ali told VANGUARD newspaper. “I learnt that many of them who pretended to surrender were not only given money and certificates after their graduation from a radicalization centre in Gombe, but they were also allowed to be reintegrated into the society to mingle with their victims. It is very shocking to me.”
It would be shocking to every rational person. And with what happened last week, it is now obvious that the suggestion that anybody can appeal to the conscience of these criminals is ludicrous. Meanwhile, the same formula was tried with bandits in the Northwest before it exploded in the faces of everyone. “With good engagement, education and enticements like jobs and other things, they will leave this work. But we need a partner, and we need the government to understand”, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi once rhapsodized while pushing a case for negotiations with bandits. “To secure schools, why not engage the bandits? Engage them; they are not many. You can count them with your fingers. How can you guard schools? It is not possible.”
I wonder what Gumi would now say to Governor Dikko Radda of Katsina State who last week accused unnamed government officials and security personnel of aiding banditry, which he described as “a business venture for the criminals and a business venture for some people who are in government and some people who are in the security outfits and some people who are responsible for the day-to-day activities of their people.” These are weighty charges coming from a governor, but the greater concern is the extent to which the problem has grown in a state where former President Muhammadu hails from. “…in Katsina, we have more than 100 different camps that are being led by somebody. So, they have many leaders, many camps and if you’re negotiating with camps A and B and don’t negotiate with camps C and D, it will not bring any lasting peace,” said Radda. “Even if you negotiate with the leaders, the other leaders may not necessarily comply with the directives of the leader. So that is what makes the negotiation very difficult. That is why I said I would never go into negotiations with any criminal at the point of weakness.”
A combination of porous borders, weak signal and technical intelligence, lack of proper data regarding who exactly is a Nigerian and the influx of illicit drugs including Tramadol have given rise to sundry cartels of opportunistic criminals. I commend the military for their efforts and the sacrifices they make on behalf of our nation. But it was always obvious that a policy of appeasement cannot work with insurgents in the Northeast or bandits in the Northwest. As I have often argued on this page, the connecting thread for the variants of violence we are witnessing across Nigeria is the loss of what Max Weber described as “the legitimate use of physical force” to criminal cartels. And until we muster the requisite capacity and political will to effectively confront those who trouble the peace of our country, we will continue to be at their mercy. But for now, the federal government must discontinue this ill-advised policy.
CP Adeoye and Matters Arising
Following my last Thursday column, ‘The Billionaire Police Commissioner’, Mr Aderemi Adeoye responded on his Facebook page, apparently for the benefit of his Alpha Trust Investment Club members who then circulated the message. “The publication (my column) is nothing but junk journalism. I will be appearing on Arise Television by 9am tomorrow Friday 3rd May 2024 to show how unintelligent the article is and throw light on all issues surrounding renegade members antics to blackmail us,” Adeoye wrote on the platform. “If you are interested in knowing the truth in a no holds barred manner, please tune in.”
Last Friday morning, I watched Adeoye on ARISE as he tried to justify his actions and I leave readers to their judgement of his performance. But I need to clarify a few issues concerning my column. One, did I check for the registration of Alpha Trust Investment Club at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)? Yes, I did. The search came up with five companies with similar names: Alpha Trust Nigeria Limited; Alpha-Trust Divine Resources Limited; Alpha Trust Company Nigeria; Alpha-Mage Trust Insurance Brokers Limited and Alpha Intercity Trust Securities Limited. But Adeoye made some clarifications on ARISE. “The name of this organisation is Alpha Trust Investment Club. Our loan arm is registered as ATIC Cooperative Multipurpose Society Limited, which is registered with the Lagos State Government. We carry on investment under the business name of ATIC Ventures and Business Services and that is the name that is registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)”, Adeoye said on ARISE. So, I concede that the business is registered, even though with a different name. But the devil, as they say, is in the details. This business (ATIC Ventures and Business Services) has only three people listed as proprietors (not investors) at the CAC: Aderemi Olufemi Adeoye, David Kaykay Egbele and Akanbi Babatunde Olanrewaju. “Principal business activity: Real estate and importation of vehicles.” That’s what is on the official record with nothing about Alpha Trust Investment Club there.
If Adeoye says this company belongs to 1400 Facebook members, I choose not to contest that. The fact that he controls a business worth N20 billion doesn’t mean he is a billionaire, Adeoye told ARISE. That is also a valid point, especially since he explained that the 11 million shares that he alluded to in his PUNCH interview do not belong to him. Incidentally, a friend forwarded this message to me last Thursday for my response: “Good afternoon, Sir. I just went through this (link to my column added). Please, if you don’t mind. Can I have a brief audience with Mr. Segun Adeniyi? I don’t mind a tripartite call. I also don’t harbour any grievance based on the content of his piece. I only want to explain a few things. My brother is definitely not a billionaire, among other things. The investment club is registered with LASG as a cooperative. It’s not a company.” I declined speaking with the said brother but appreciated his point.
On the allegations by those Adeoye considers ‘renegade members’, I have received a deluge of messages from some of them. I have also received in my mail several unsolicited documents, including from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Lagos State Ministry of Commerce and Cooperative where the business is registered. My attention has also been drawn to Section 160 of the Investment and Securities Act, 2007 on ‘Authorization of Collective Investment Scheme’ that may have been breached. I have also seen a copy of the 8 March 2024 letter to the Inspector General of Police, Mr Kayode Egbetokun, personally signed by Chief Afe Babalola, SAN, on behalf of a lady who made damaging allegations against Adeoye, ‘the Chairman’ of the investment club. Babalola ended the letter with an appeal to Egbetokun: “I passionately, but humbly, appeal that you use your good offices to investigate the matter, prosecute the perpetrator(s) for fraud and assist the said (name withheld) retrieve her trapped fund from the Scheme.” Since the issue between Adeoye and his Facebook Club members is of no interest to me, let me leave out the lurid details in the letter. Besides, it is also fair to say that I know members of the club who defend Adeoye.
One of them, a very close friend and former classmate now based in Belgium sent me a message. “I am still a member of ATIC. The N20 billion belongs to ATIC and not to Remi Adeoye personally. I don’t think he needed to mention ATIC in his disengagement speech, but ATIC is not a Ponzi Scheme,” she wrote to which I replied that it was not me that described it as such and that I never even heard about Adeoye or the scheme until I read his police pull-out speech last week. My concern, I explained to her, is whether a public official could engage in such a business. “I don’t know the rules of the police, but I know a lot of people have one business or the other on the side for their families,” she replied. I conceded this same point in my column last week: “I am not opposed to legitimate ‘side hustles’ without which it is difficult for professionals to stay afloat in Nigeria.” However, the fact that other people may be doing it does not mean that there are no ethical and legal muddle that a police officer should strenuously stay away from.
Now to the questions I posed: “How could Adeoye have been diligent in his work as a law enforcement officer if he spent considerable time chasing money from people whose backgrounds he had no idea of—including those who could be criminals? Are there no regulations within the police that frown at a serving officer establishing and running a business venture, especially of this nature? Are police officers exempted from the code of conduct for public officials in Nigeria?”
Adeoye said that what he is running on Facebook is not a business. “So, we don’t have an office, we don’t have overhead costs, we don’t have employees, we don’t pay salaries, we don’t have a generator, we don’t have official cars. The only thing we spend money on is organising our physical meetings and this is paid for by membership dues, which is N5,000 per member, per annum,” Adeoye said although he forgot to mention that the online club also has no website which we can describe as another ‘cost-cutting measure.’ But despite having no structure, Adeoye wants us to believe all the 1400 members were verified. “Usually, we demand to see a workplace identity card and we go further to verify it. We do background checks, and we insist that any member we admit must not have any criminal record. Those who have pending matters with EFCC are excluded.” I would have asked how this extensive and obviously expensive vetting process (including of those abroad) is done and who the WE are but then, what is the point?
For a venture that has no support system (no office, no staff, no website, no vehicle), it is remarkable that Adeoye could undertake all these and still be diligent at his work, especially at a period Nigeria is facing huge security challenges: “We bought hundreds of plots at N750,000 per plot in 2019 and today each plot is worth N12 million. It is determined by the market price. We subscribed for 600 plots and in Ibeju Lekki we subscribed for five plots.” And on accountability: “We are not answerable to anybody, except to our members, the BOT, and the management for our record, unless you bring a court order for us to account to you. Everything we do is published for our members to read. At the AGM, our accounts are approved.” Adeoye has struggled to wave away what he said at his pull-out parade but he was reported by several publications, all of which quoted him on Adeoye has struggled to wave away what he said at his pull-out parade but he was reported by several publications, quoting him the same issue of his post-retirement plan. The Daily Trust report is the most comprehensive: ‘My firm now worth N20bn, will give Dangote a run for his money —Outgoing Anambra CP – Daily Trust.’
Now to my interest on this matter. I am aware of the provisions of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 on code of conduct for public officers. Section 1 states: “A public officer shall not put himself in a position where his personal interest conflicts with his duties and responsibilities.” And Section 10 states, “A public officer shall not be a member of, belong to, or take part in any society the membership of which is incompatible with the functions or dignity of his office.” These are Constitutional provisions. Even if we overlook several other things, should we not be concerned if a law enforcement official initiates a ‘Facebook business’ that would elicit being accused of unwholesome practices while still in uniform? Besides, Section 95 of Police Act, 2020 on ‘Private Business and Conflict of Interest’ states: “A police officer shall not, while in service, be directly involved in managing and running any private business or trade except farming”—the only vocation also permitted a public official by the Constitution.
Let me reiterate that I have nothing personal against Adeoye and I had no inkling of his problem with some of his Facebook ‘business partners’ until the Google search led me to the petition. It was the same search that led me to his response in PUNCH which I also quoted copiously. And in writing my column last Thursday, as I do every week, the only motivation was public interest. My main concerns stem from issues of possible conflict of interest, divided loyalty, abuse of power/office and what I consider sacred lines that should not be crossed, especially by senior law enforcement officers. For instance, all the certificates of shares issued to members that I have seen were all signed personally by Adeoye which means he was running the business while still in uniform, notwithstanding his claims to the contrary.
Adeoye has been insisting that no law stops a public servant from investing or from belonging to a cooperative. But this is only an attempt to be clever, and by half. From Adeoye’s own admission, there is a registered business venture in which, according to a CAC search, he is one of the proprietors, and the business activities of the venture are real estate and car importation. The law does not allow a public officer to be the proprietor of a business venture. There is a clear breach there, and not just of any law, but of the constitution. I hope he will also submit all the nine GTBank accounts that are used for this business to public scrutiny.
It is conceivable that some of Adeoye’s Facebook friends joined the club because it was floated by a serving senior police officer. There is a probability that Adeoye could have put official time and resources in the service of a cooperative outside the police force. There is also the possibility of a senior law enforcement official using his position to bully and hound those who disagreed with him. This whole venture has potential abuse of office and abuse of public trust written all over it. That’s the more reason a serving police officer should steer clear of such undertakings.
On Tuesday, Adeoye released an ‘ATIC UPDATE BROADCAST’ on his investment platform where he stated, “We need 10 copies of ThisDay Newspaper of Thursday, 4th May 2024 urgently. We will pay N1,000 for each copy we can get. We want to make those who published falsehood against us pay for their perfidy.” That sort of language from a retired police officer is a not-too-subtle threat but Adeoye doesn’t scare me. He then concluded his message: “I invite ATICIANS in Abuja Zone to join me at Transcorp Hilton Hotel Abuja on Saturday for a Press Conference during which we will address the blackmail against our Club and Cooperative. We will have lunch together afterwards. The bill is on me. Members who are able to make it are requested to come in their ATIC Tee Shirts as top. We will hold preliminary discussions afterwards on our direction in business.
Adeoye is now retired from the police, so he is free to pursue whatever he wants without the justified restrictions imposed by public service rules and the constitution. I am also aware that Adeoye has reported me to the THISDAY ombudsman, threatening to take legal action, which is fine by me. He doesn’t own the court, so we meet there. He said his shareholding is “just a little above half of” the 11 million ascribed to him. He also alleged that I am being sponsored by renegades and an unnamed ‘low-life criminal’, which underscores why a public official, especially a policeman, shouldn’t get into such transactions in the first place. If he admitted a ‘low-life criminal’ to the club, what does that say about his judgement and the quality of checks he claimed was done by his Facebook Club and the risk that he has exposed his office to? As said earlier, Adeoye’s active involvement in this venture while still a public servant raises serious ethical and legal issues, which still seem lost on him, possibly because he thinks he is forever untouchable and that he can bully everyone. But this is a public interest issue, and Adeoye cannot intimidate me.
While I await Adeoye’s legal challenge, the NPF will do itself a world of service to take a dispassionate and professional look at this matter with a view to erecting and strengthening guard rails and to ensure that the institution is not brought into disrepute by certain acts and businesses some of its officers and men might think are permissible. Especially if and when things go wrong, as they sometimes do when money is involved. Relevant regulatory and accountability agencies must also be interested in the ethical and legal issues thrown up by the Adeoye saga. This case should be of special interest to the Code of Conduct Bureau, the custodian of ethical conduct for public officials. It is important that boundaries set by the constitution be respected and strengthened.
[OPINION] President Tinubu’s First Year in Office: Propelling Nigeria Towards Renewal - Mohammed Idris
AdminThree weeks from now, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will mark his first year in office. As we approach that first anniversary, it is only natural that the entire nation will be looking back and reflecting on the journey so far. In this piece, I would like to highlight some of the foundational elements of the thinking underpinning the work that President Tinubu is doing to reset and remake Nigeria. I believe that the more Nigerians are able to understand the ‘whys’ behind the ‘whats’, the easier it will be to connect the dots between the vision and its outcomes.
I will start by reiterating known facts: that President Tinubu came to the Presidency with eight years of experience as the Governor of the largest subnational economy in Africa, during which he mastered the art of implementing enduring institutional and process reforms. The President also showed up with an unparalleled understanding of the private sector, honed by his high-flying career as a corporate executive in the oil and gas industry. These have no doubt shaped his approach to the task of leading Nigeria. It is with these in mind that I will now turn to highlight five core principles or ideas that underpin the President’s leadership vision.
Firstly, President Tinubu is resolutely focused on policies and actions that will attract long-term local and foreign investments to Nigeria, knowing that every naira and dollar of new investment in the country means new jobs, increased productivity for local consumption and for export, and much-needed economic growth. For these investments to happen, the business environment must be conducive. This is what is fueling the painstaking rebuilding of the credibility and capacity of the Central Bank. It is also why we have extensive tax and fiscal reforms ongoing, to reduce the burden on businesses.
It is why Mr. President has established the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Development Fund (RHIDF), which is mobilizing billions of dollars for infrastructure projects that will reshape the country’s landscape – our roads and highways, airports and seaports, power plants, and so on. It is equally what explains the constant engagement with local and foreign investors, in which the President plays the role of Chief Marketing Officer with great energy and enthusiasm — and with remarkable success. In the last one year, we have seen investment commitments in excess of 30 billion USD, across various sectors.
Secondly, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is focused on policies and programs that provide direct and targeted economic relief and benefits to the pockets and livelihoods of Nigerians, by way of grants, education loans, food and fertilizer distribution, cash transfers, health insurance, and consumer credit. As we speak, disbursement has since commenced of the nano-grants of fifty thousand Naira each intended for one million Nigerians, part of a larger 200 billion Naira MSMEs credit program.
The National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) is currently being repositioned to ensure that it delivers maximum value to the intended beneficiaries, without the distortion of middlemen. This vision of targeted economic relief has also led to the launch, in recent weeks, of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) and the Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation (CrediCorp), as well as the work going on to negotiate a new minimum wage that will touch the lives of millions of Nigerians. A Presidential Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) initiative to provide a cheaper alternative to petrol and diesel for transporters and commuters is also being finalized.
Thirdly, the President understands that desirable developmental outcomes often require a temporary period of pain and adjustment. He seizes every opportunity to be seen and heard asking for the understanding of the Nigerian people. Speaking recently at the World Economic Forum meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he said, “Concerning the question of subsidy removal, there is no doubt that it was a necessary action for my country not to go bankrupt and to reset the economy and the pathway to growth. It was going to be difficult, but the hallmark of leadership is making difficult decisions when they need to be made.”
On the foreign exchange regime reforms, he said, “The currency management was necessary, equally to remove the artificial element of value in our currency. Hence, our local currency finds its level and competes with the rest of the world’s currencies as we remove corrupt arbitrage and opaqueness.”
President Tinubu wants to build a Nigeria that is confident and competitive on the global stage. Because of this, we can no longer afford certain ways of doing things. We must push past the false comfort of certain ingrained habits and practices, and endure inevitable but temporary discomfort, because we are certain that ahead of us lies lasting reward.
Fourthly, we have a President who listens very actively to the opinions of Nigerians, who does not allow ego to get in the way of doing what is best, and does not shy away from implementing adjustments in the policy-making process, where necessary. When the Students Loan Act required some more work, he wasted no time in getting this done. He sent the Act back to the National Assembly, where it was revised in record time, and returned for presidential assent. Today we have a much-improved Act that will deliver even greater value to the young Nigerians for whom it is intended.
Fifthly, President Tinubu is an adept communicator who leads by example, and wants Nigerians to always be in the know regarding the decisions being taken on their behalf. As the Minister of Information and National Orientation, I can attest to the enthusiasm that I have always seen in him, which has helped greatly in my work. I have personally enjoyed the President’s support to inaugurate a pioneering National Communications Team (NCT) that brings together key communications experts in the Presidency and the Federal Government, alongside the heads of our public information agencies. Our goal is to ensure that Nigerians are carried in a timely and transparent manner, as the President intensifies his determination to deliver on the Renewed Hope agenda. Nigerians will in the months ahead see even more effort from us to communicate this journey of transformation.
Let me now also add this: We were well aware, from the very start, that the task we signed up for as a party and a government — to renew the hope of Nigerians, and to convert that hope into genuine satisfaction, under the inspired leadership of President Tinubu — was never going to be an easy one. That is in fact why we put ourselves forward; because we knew that at this critical juncture in our history, Nigeria requires thinking that is fresh, audacious, and pragmatic; and we are confident that we can deliver this, against the backdrop of a world assailed by myriad fiscal, geopolitical, and technological challenges. Under President Tinubu’s watch, we will rebuild and restore the faith of Nigerians in their country.
As the implementation of our administration’s first full-year budget gathers momentum, Nigerians will increasingly see, across all sectors of the economy, concrete manifestations of the renewed hope they ushered in a year ago. This is where I will again ask for the continued understanding and support of all Nigerians, and for the media to strive to become fully alive to its democracy-nurturing obligations.
As a government, we must be held accountable for all that we have promised the people of Nigeria. At the same time, we also deserve to have Nigeria’s budding success narratives reported and amplified with enthusiasm, and without distortion. With a committed President and team, as we move into the second year of the administration, there is no doubt in my mind that things can only get better for this blessed and beautiful country of ours.
•Mohammed Idris, fnipr, is the Honourable Minister of Information and National Orientation of Nigeria.
Anytime the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examinations are written, there is bound to be headline news! No wonder, then, that JAMB is every newsman’s delight! The down-to-earth disposition of its Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, apart, the many battles and wars that JAMB perpetually fights against election malpractice and its beneficiaries before, during and after its examinations always make headline news. The last JAMB exams were no exception.
When one had thought that the hijab controversy had been finally laid to rest, some overzealous CBT centre officials exhumed its ghost again, barring a hijab-wearing candidate from the examination hall. Bedlam! You would think this was more than an isolated case! Mercifully, the prompt intervention of the JAMB officials on ground and the explanation, afterwards, of JAMB’s image-maker, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, arrested the situation and prevented the fleeing ghost from escaping into town to wreak havoc! Religion issues are damn too touchy here - and needlessly so. If hijab or any form of dressing is not employed to aid cheating in examinations, I think the wearer should be at liberty to do so. Avoid trouble!
Next was the news of parents caught in the act of writing the examination for their wards. What kind of parents are those? And what manner of children as well? In my own days, few parents knew anything about university education and how their wards got there. My father only knew I had gained admission when I went to ask him for the school fees. My mother only stepped her feet on the University of Ife soil on my graduation day. Now, when a father or mother writes exams for their child, how will the child cope when he gets into the university? He must continue to cheat and cut corners and the parents must be available to provide all the support and encouragement.
If standards are falling, this must be one of the reasons. Examinations are meant to determine competence and qualification for the next level but once the system is perverted and the incompetent and less qualified gain ascendancy by foul means, then, standards are bound to get compromised. Thus, we have students who get to the university and are unable to cope. It is only cases of lecturers stalking students for sex that make the headlines, what of students running after lecturers, vending whatever, to pass their examinations? All manner of unhealthy practices go on in our tertiary institutions orchestrated not only by randy lecturers but also by students who cannot cope with their studies on fair grounds.
The many layers of examinations that we have erected have failed to effectively arrest the slide in rectitude. WAEC and NECO, JAMB and Post-JAMB: Still, the cankerworms of examination malpractice remain with us. The quality of graduates that we produce today leaves much to be desired. We have certificate-flashing youths all over the place who are not employable. I was at a workshop recently where a Professor complained to the organizers that the Youth corpers assigned to work with him knew next-to-nothing. The workshop organizers fought back bravely: ”Sir, they are your products. You trained them for three, four or more years. You examined and certified them okay. You awarded them certificates and unleashed them on society. We are the ones who should be complaining to you and not the other way round!” Silence!
Are we surprised at the reported mass failure in the last JAMB examinations? According to reports, 77 percent of the 1,842,464 candidates whose 2024 UTME results were released by JAMB scored less than 200 marks out of 400; meaning that only 23 percent scored 200 marks and above. Now, only the first generation universities and a handful of state and private universities usually set their admission cut-off marks at not less than 200. Others fall as low as 120 marks over 400. I have heard demands of 100 marks shouted down at JAMB stakeholders’ meetings! With the general failure witnessed this time around, I wonder whether the cut-off marks for many will not be as low as 100 marks or even less! Where are we going?
Another controversy raised during the last JAMB examinations was the Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, hinting that the Federal Government plans to review and peg the minimum entry age into tertiary institutions at 18 years. That way, the FG plans to climb its tree from the leaves! Who did this to us!
In my own days, your right palm, passed over your head, must touch your left ear before you were deemed old enough to start elementary or primary school. That was in the sixties. School age then was six years minimum but how touching your left ear with the right hand passed over your head mathematically translated to six years, I cannot explain. In an age when birth certificates and declaration of age were not commonplace, that was the standard procedure that was strictly adhered to.
When I began to have children, I took my first child to Nursery school at age 18 months! My wife and I were working class. So, dumping her (for that, actually, was what it was) at Je’le-o-sinmi (give the home a break) was the best option available. Her first report sheet carried the teacher’s remarks: “Cannot read”, Cannot talk”, “Cannot write”. I was livid! But, truth be told, was it the teacher’s fault - or the baby’s? At 18 months, what else could I have reasonably expected from both ends?
Now that there are talks of making 18 years the minimum entry age to tertiary institutions, the right place to start is at the elementary level, reverting to the old school age of six years at the least. But we must learn from the Chinese how they engage their pre-elementary school children and do likewise. Videos of the Chinese model trend on the internet. So much havoc was done to us by colonization, which made us abandon our own traditional ways of life for the inferior quality imposed by the rampaging colonialists. The little good they did, we have ruined with the mindless corruption that has run riot in every facet of our national life.
The colonialists imposed their language and we have, to all intents and purposes, lost hold of ours. It will take a lot of grit to claw our way back. Let our children spend the first six years of their life correcting that. The colonialists also imposed their religion and demonized ours. Religion thus became an opium which was employed to dull our intellect. They point us to paradise in heaven while they mindlessly exploit our human, material and natural resources to create paradise for themselves here on earth. To have a feel of the good life, we “japa”to their countries. The racial discrimination they inflict on us apart, the brain drain that goes with “japa” further accentuates our misery and deepens our penury. They imposed their educational system and took away our traditional educational system of passing knowledge and values from generation to generation. Today, we read and write but the education we get is not functional.
The colonialists subverted our value system while imposing theirs. Our culture is perverted. We hanker after their way of life - their food, their drink, their medicine, their mannerism, and their dresses. We are hardly original in anything again but are copy-cats of the ways and methods of foreigners. Yet, in virtually everything, we have found, to our chagrin, that our way of breastfeeding our babies, our diet of whole grains, our roots, barks and leaves, our culture, etc. are vastly superior to theirs. We have only been led by the colonialists “among the sharps of the forest” like Kofi Awoonor moaned in “Songs of Sorrow”. “Returning is not possible. And going forward is a great difficulty”.
But we must return! Those benefiting from the present system, who glamorize and glorify it, whose pot of soup it is and whose bread is buttered by it will not give up without a fight. The disadvantages of letting our children start school before attaining the school age of at least six years far outweigh its advantages. There are always prodigious children - but that is the exception rather than the rule. Robbing our children of their childhood; rushing them into an early adulthood that is beyond their capability; thrusting upon them responsibilities they cannot cope with at such a tender age; all of these visit upon them vicissitudes they are least prepared for. Education devoid of maturity is a disaster waiting to happen.
LAST WORDS: JAMB, for good reasons after the Ejimeke Mmesoma forged result saga of 2023, decided not to release any official “best results” again! But with the avalanche of “best results” daily swarming the internet since May 1st when the latest JAMB results were released, we can safely echo William Shakespeare’s character, Cassius, in “Julius Caesar”, that the fault is not in our stars nor in JAMB but in ourselves that we choose to stoke the embers of needless controversy perpetually! Who gains?
The truth, however, is that many of these internet "best result" may still not qualify the candidate for admission because it is just one leg of a three-leg process of Ordinary or A Level result, JAMB score and Post-UTME score that combine to give a candidate his or her final score. We have seen some "best results" without the right subject combinations or good O or A Level result. There have also been "best results" with absymal post-UTME performance. When the aggregate of all the scores is taken and a so-called "best result" fails to make the cut-off marks, another round of needless controversy and pointing of accusing fingers ensue.
Many "best results" also fail to gain admission because a disproportionate number of them want to read Medicine, Pharmacy, Law, etc where the competition is cut-throat because the carrying capacity of the universities cannot accommodate the avalanche of requests.
I have been privileged to attend series of JAMB stakeholders' meeting and I know that contrary to another fake news already making the news on social media, JAMB does not unilaterally fix admission cut-off marks; the universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, and monotechnics congregate in the open, where they discuss, debate and decide for themselves and by themselves their cut-off marks session after session with the JAMB Registrar, Oloyede, merely playing the role of a moderator or an impartial umpire.
How many candidates, their parents and the know-it-all emergency, half-baked and yellow journalism social media "journalists" have these useful information? Ignorance is costly! Deliberate falsehood more so!
In my viewpoint, education is the single most important thing there is in the world. While everyone might have a different definition of education, its importance remains undisputed. By receiving a systematic education, people gain knowledge and develop skills and character traits crucial for a certain standard of life. In the recent past days, what we have noticed as the outcome of the released JAMB results is quite disturbing and sad. Therefore, let’s start with the position and contribution of a long-standing friend Solomon Mickey Manford, a retired educator with almost four decades of cognate experience within and outside the school environment.
First, the underlying factors of underperformance in the educational sector. JAMB as a case study: JAMB has just released its latest results and the social media is awash with both the positive and most importantly, the negative aspects of the results. Characteristically, we are all shedding crocodile tears even though we contributed to the malady that has befallen our children. Why should we cry when responsibilities are shirked with reckless abandon? Where, when, and how did we get it wrong? The good hands in the teaching profession are leaving in droves for greener pastures elsewhere but we continue to postpone the evil day believing that prayer is the key?
Secondly, permit me to refresh you with the following analysis staring us in the face: they don't want their children to be teachers:
1• Presidents/Vice
2• Senators
3• Members-House of Reps (HoR).
4• Local gov't chairmen.
5• Supreme Court judges.
6• Appeal Court judges.
7• High Court judges and Magistrates.
8• Lawyers
9•Ministers
10• Commissioners
11• Bankers.
12• Engineers.
13• Directors.
14• Deputy directors.
15• IGPs.
16• DIGs.
17• AIGs.
18• CPs.
19• Generals and top brass of the military, police, and paramilitary.
20.Even the teachers themselves and owners of schools.
The list is endless. Added to all these, some well intentioned philanthropists and state governors pay for WAEC/NECO fees of students without providing the necessary wherewithal facilities and infrastructure that will enhance their success.
Primarily, they erroneously put the cart before the horse preparatory to be led to the abattoir to be slaughtered. So, why are we crying wolf when there's none?
In his book titled, "Cry Not My Beloved Country" Allan Parton, a South African writer, sums it all up. Whose child will take a up teaching as a profession? Especially, in a society where the cut off marks to tertiary institutions of education are either the least or one of the lowest.
Essentially, the teaching profession is gradually becoming extinct and we're not bothered because we have the resources to educate our children abroad. History is replete with the bitter experiences we encounter which should have propelled us to get it right. Unfortunately, we don't learn from it because it doesn't have a direct effect on us. But it has a way of catching up with us when we least expect only to chase shadows and leave the substance.
Thirdly, apart from the above, what other factors contribute contribute to the not too encouraging performance of our children?
a) PARENTS: They are always in a haste thinking education is rocket science where success is achieved overnight: many of us jump classes for our children, and register them at 'Miracle Centres'. Some go to courts to get affidavits and forge the ages of their children.
b) SCHOOLS: For pecuniary gains, they turn a blind eye because they need money to foot their bills. Besides, the 21st-century parent is interested in results and does not care how the results were achieved. This is done with the connivance of the teachers in their employment.
c) TEACHERS: They're culprits in the system because they have become academically lazy, intellectually dormant, and have lost their sense of direction.
d) LEARNERS; They're lazy knowing very well that they would be assisted when it matters most. Some are underaged, immature, and are aware that help is available.
e) SECURITY AGENTS; A handful of students, mercenaries and impersonators are arrested and prosecuted each year but it doesn't serve as a deterrent because the punishments are not stringent enough to serve as a deterrent to others.
f) JUDICIARY; Culprits should be dealt with severity and if necessary, close down schools found culpable for at least five years.
g) INVIGILATORS; They're the last hope but some few bad eggs in the system compromise for a slice of bread. They are sometimes coerced to keep mute when evil is perpetuated. The chickens have come home to roost, so why do our students perform creditably at NECO/WAEC while struggling to pass JAMB?
h) GRIEVOUS OVERSIGHT; The FCT as a case study has over 10,000 secondary schools and less than 10 technical schools. This is an aberration because students who have the potentials in excelling in technical, vocational and trade centres reluctantly attend secondary schools only to fail in the end. Why do we have so many secondary schools and not a single privately owned technical school in FCT? I pause for an answer.
Remarkably, we congratulate JAMB for a job well done and exposing the atrocities in the system and wish them greater successes ahead. May this not be a flash in the pan so the tempo must be intensified for Nigeria to regain its past glory among the comity of nations.
In conclusion, permit me to place it on record, that the lives of great men remind us that we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave footprints on the sands of time behind us. One thing about the footprints in the sands of time is that they are too indelibly engraved and too difficult to be wiped away by the surge of lies and deception from provocateur rabble-rouser. Therefore, failure to achieve the set goal will be considered a failure of leadership. We're heartbroken to note that, 1.4 million out of 1.8 million students who sat for the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination scored below 200. Hence, there is an urgent need for government to prioritize education, security, and investment in agriculture as fundamental solutions to the escalating crisis.
Finally, to our children, It's not enough to go to school, you must also help yourself by arming yourself with the requisite knowledge and skills.
Richard Odusanya
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One of the finest persons I have ever met and worked with was Sir Michael Agbolade Otedola. The General Ibrahim Babangida administration had foisted a two-party system on Nigerians in 1989 following the president’s inclination to end his military junta and embrace the civil form of government seen around the world. Nigerians had no other option apart from the established National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The General Ibrahim Babangida’s transition idea led to a high definition jostling and tent pitching either with the NRC or the SDP among politicians and Nigerians.
I was a budding woman at the time with an inchoate idea for a pan-Nigerian social order. The politics of the region which Sir Michael and I came from has a clear political idiosyncratic peculiarity. The choice of many elders of thought among the Yoruba people was the SDP. The SDP became the dominant party among the Yoruba people. The likelihood of the NRC winning any state of the Yoruba people was going to be a herculean task. Sir Michael knew this but chose to stride along this unpopular path for the NRC and for his persuasion.
Both parties were preparing for their various State Elections, Congresses and National Conventions. I was a delegate for NRC, representing the Lagos Mainland Constituency. My euphoria of this political accomplishment as a youthful woman was reaching the skies. I was hopeful with clearness and I was prepared to give the best of my talent for this political process. As I watched the contestants lobbying for our votes, I saw Sir Michael in his glittering white apparel from afar as he exchanged greetings with people and listened as they talked and responded with a few words and signs of assurances. Some of the contestants have spoken and lobbied for support and vote. I kept my mind opened until I heard the last of them. My choice must come from my conviction.
Sir Michael was plain. You would find no sensationalism or sentimentalism with him. His plainness was piercing and penetrating. If you cared for pragmatism, you would choose him over the voluble charismatics who mesmerized listeners with fancy words.
Having listened to almost the contestants at all levels, I saw a number of delegates around with positive energy throwing the support for Sir Michael. At this point, I was already on board in support of Sir Michael. I knew it would be the beginning of a greater political relationship with the sage.
The hour came and it was like streaks of light breaking through the forest glades — Sir Michael was walking slowly towards a few of us from Lagos Mainland Constituency. He was accompanied by Late Otunba Anthony Olusegun Odugbesan and two other persons. He stopped and greeted us pleasantly and said, “Look at my people, I know we have the same dream to make Lagos State the centre of excellence. Please join me and let us get it done.” The whole of my mental configuration changed when I heard him say these words. Little did I know that time would present him with the opportunity to coin an official sobriquet for Lagos. He presented “Lagos: Centre of Excellence”. This slogan has come to stay. Every governor after him struggled to make Lagos the Centre of Excellence. No one has set a better challenge to succeeding governors than Sir Michael Agbolade Otedola.
He spoke of his plan about how to make Lagos a Centre of Excellent. We were so amused at his vivid, artless, and realistic plan for infrastructure, education and entrepreneurship. His goal was a people oriented vision. He wanted to raise a population of youths from dependence to entrepreneurial capacity and humane capitalism. He believed that reducing poverty among Lagos residents would be a way to growing a giant economy for Lagos. He told us that having a plentiful wealthy population would ease the government from the burden of avoidable liability because a wealthy population’s contribution would cut across investment and employment of labour, infrastructure surplus, education improvement, healthy culture and physical planning.
After Sir Michael addressed us, I was chosen amongst the 3 delegates to respond, and I asked why he chose NRC as his platform given that the majority of Yoruba elders chose SDP, a factor that made the party to have a greater hold on Lagos and other Yoruba region states. I wanted to know his drive for taking a path with a slim or infinitesimal chance of winning the gubernatorial seat of Lagos. He looked at me as if he was trying to find a connection with me for choosing the NRC. He said, “Maybe you and I are here for the same reason. I don’t need to conform to the popular leaning to win this election. I don’t need to win through a crowded system. We are at a time people knew what they want. I have to defeat that crowded system because I know what my people want. The path to glory is usually narrow, visible and lucid for a nonconformist but it is difficult for a conformist to see with clarity while on the broad way.”
The manner he presented his response was like there was no strong challenge against him. I could see in him a dawn reality. He was so sure that he was steps ahead those on the otherside of the divide. His courage was spilling over me and I quipped, “Baba, I agree with you and I am going with you all the way to win with you. I am ready for any task.”
“Thank you for your choice”, he responded. He added, “Here in Lagos, the NRC is the narrow path and that is why I am with them. The narrow way screens you more than the broad way. You have to work and recreate things with attention and focus but in the broad way you will be faced with distractions, wrangling, many lackeys brouhaha, shortchanges, distrust, and even patching up with irreconcilable differences. Governance is not a party of lackeys but a process of building sustainable bridges between the government and the electorate. We will win and make Lagos the Centre of Excellence. Can we do it together?”, he asked with self-effacement.
Before I made my answer, he took me by the hand and we sauntered softly towards the exit door of the arena. “Nike, we have a lot more to talk about. I’m inclined to giving you some tasks to do.”
“Sure Sir, I’ll do them”, I said unassumingly. He handed me his private telephone number and requested me to call him after the meeting for further conversation. It wasn’t a feeling of excitement moving in my sinews as we parted but I wondered how magical it was that I made a wish earlier and in a moment it became realistic. That wonderment hovered over me until the end of the meeting. I was super excited when he was declared the winner and announced as the NRC gubernatorial candidate for Lagos. As a man without rancor, he was accepted by all concerns within the NRC as the arrowhead for us all. A lot of us moved into the campaigns with the satisfaction and assurance that we have a credible and ingenuous candidate to face the sprawling political juggernauts.
A night after the congress for gubernatorial election, I called his telephone line. He was as full of life as he spoke. He said to me, “Nike, there is no time for delays. We have to meet this afternoon. I want to know what you can do before I start assigning responsibilities for the general election. Can you come to my Impact Press office at 2.30pm?” When I got to his office area, his personal assistant led me in. Late Otunba Anthony Olusegun Odugbesan was in the office with him. He was a man of undeniable discretion. Sir Michael asked as he looked at me with a beam on his face, “Nike, may I know you more”? “Sir, I am a Lagosian. I acquainted him with my origins— both paternal and maternal lineages. He was persuaded of what I stood for as a rising woman that I would be useful and resourceful to him.
Sir Michael commended my bearing and youthful savvy. He told me that he believed that I had the capacity and the ability to mobilise support for him in no small way. My first assignment he placed me in the fundraising dinner committee along with Mr Nduka Obaigbena as the headship of the committee, a youthful tested doyen of journalism, Dr. Doyin Okupe, Engr. Buba Galadima, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, Mr. John Dara his Personal Assistant and Ms Queenette Alagoa (one of Chief Tom Ikimi’s aides). After telling me that he wanted me to be in the fundraising dinner committee, he said to me, “The destiny of our Party in Lagos is in our hands. I won’t fail but you all have a big role to play to help me deliver my promise of winning. I will break the fortresses of our opponents. I didn’t rebut his suggestion of having me on the fundraising committee even though it was a difficult one.
After that meeting with Sir Michael, Late Otunba Anthony Olusegun Odugbesan became a man I could run to when I needed direction. He was open to enquiries and was always prepared to suggest useful applications. If anyone was worked up and began to suffer from a drought of ideas, Otunba Anthony was the relief we could count on. I remembered 10 years when Sir Michael passed on, I was unavoidably absent during the rites of passage. Entries of tributes had been closed but Mr. Bisi Lawal, a former Chairman of the Board of Eko Hotels Ltd was able to help me reach Mama – Lady Doja Otedola who ensured that my tribute is received and published among the Eulogies for his funeral.
Sir Michael was a genius in managing his teams. For him, our success depended on working with ease and leverages. He would make us to understand that failure begins with going out without a plan of what to achieve and a strategy for achieving it. So we created plans and formulated strategies and followed through to realise every plan without distraction. We knew what we wanted at every point and went for it without delays and distractions.
The SDP was very loud and widespread. Late Chief MKO Abiola of the SDP, as the Presidential Candidate (God bless his memory). They dominated the media, they dominated the streets
with rallies, funfairs and posters. Sir Michael pushed for a different campaign strategy. “Win the electorate one-by-one”, he told us. He said, “If we win them one-by-one, you would have extracted a promise or a commitment from the voter because of a mutual relationship and trust you establish with them.” Thus, we decided to embark on the campaign with a door-to-door evangelical approach. The people we met understood us and assured us that they are with us. They heard our voices and we heard theirs. Hearing the people’s voices was Sir Michael’s strategic measure of identifying with the people and telling them directly that he was for them all the way.
On December 14 1991, the general election took place. We were in the situation room with a host of Sir Michael’s campaign strategists and key players. There was no tension. We were conversing and laughing. No one took the process with a do or die behaviour. Sir Michael was in a good spirit as usual. He cast his vote at his home stead, Odoragushin in Epe Local Government Area. Everyone in the room believed that the results of the election will be in our favour. We were not surprised at the outcome.
Sir Michael Otedola’s administration was short-lived. General Sani Abacha interrupted the Third Republic democracy and imposed his junta before the Interim Government led by Late Chief Ernest Shonekan could fulfill its mandate of reorganizing the annulled June 12 1993 general election. After Sir Michael’s
NRC was announced as the winner of Lagos gubernatorial election, he started planning for assumption of office with a clear mindset of what he wanted to do. He had plans for every of his key campaign players, and has ardent supporters but he wasn’t imposing his desire on any of them. When he called me that he has plan for me - that he had earmarked something for me in his government, I quipped like a child full of exhilaration, “I want to be on the board of Eko Hotels.” I didn’t wait for him to say what he planned giving me. He was stunned at me. For the first time, I noticed what the surprised looks of Sir Michael was like. He made no attempt at persuading me to put aside my desire. He softly asked for a couple of times, “Are you sure that is what you want?” “Let me take off with that for now, Sir”, I responded. Being resilient and enamored with my answer to him, he appointed me into the board of Eko Hotels shortly after his inauguration on January 2 1992.
Sir Michael Otedola assumed office after years of military governorship administration. He worked like a horse and intentionally touching every segment of Lagos State public service, overturning restrictions and replacing them with viable designs and policies. The maestro held that the government must not be impeded by blockades if it must be seen as the government of the people. He owed the electorate the promise of constructing bridges between the government and the people and the duty of making the state a centre of excellence.
Choosing the sobriquet, “Lagos: Centre of Excellence” Sir Michael intended to remind everyone that is resident in Lagos that we have a collective responsibility to make Lagos the Center of Excellence. However, the intent of the slogan has been so thoroughly abused or unexecuted. We must ignite the intention of the message and let Lagos residents to intentionally and consciously start doing things for the sake of the excellence of Lagos.
It is on record that Sir Michael could work till 1:00 am before leaving his office at Alausa and still resume work at sun rising. It was unfortunate that he was allowed no time to sow the much he planned— the military came back!
Sir Michael was a man of many parts and was profound in all the parts. He was a man of a deep religious affiliation, a teacher, a trained journalist, a public relations connoisseur, an industrialist, a politician, a loving husband, and a delectable father. His passion to execute his conviction was never transient until a perfect outcome was actualised. However unpredictable he was, he kept a convivial and magnetizing ambiance. His atmosphere was full of light and sweetness. There was no boredom around him. Once he believed in you to be capable of something positive and impactful, he would provide you the platform to run with your ability. He would be calm and wait for you to tender the report of your task at the expected time. Sir Michael had no time for a close marking. He expected that we demonstrate our sense of creativity and skills ingeniously and truthfully. He would let us know that our results would announce us. If, therefore, you want to be announced, show him your impactful work in record time.
On this date, May 5 2014, of his demise, I reminisced the past and recollected this beautiful experience with Sir Michael. Everyone that has worked with him must have something of excellence to say about him. Put all stories about this quintessential legend from whomever, you will find that the straightness of Sir Michael Agbolade Otedola is indelibly captured in all testimonies about him as an exemplar of a sound leadership marshal.
Live Forever, Sir Michael!
Written from Lagos by:
‘Nike Jones
May 2024
11
The news of the appointment of the Nigeria billionaire banker, Jim Ovia as the chairman of the Board of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has elicited reactions from many Nigerians. Concerned observers have tried to proffer explanations about the motive behind what is considered by many as bizarre appointment. The Jim Ovia that everybody knows will not touch government appointment with a long pole. The foremost Nigerian banker and corporate icon does not lobby nor need government appointment. It is therefore strange to many that he could condescend to accepting an appointment under Tinubu having rejected such offers in the past. The main questions on the lips of the concerned observers include: why would he want to make a volte-face this time? Why would he want to smear his impeccable reputation by associating with a regime battling with credibility issues?
Mr. Jim Ovia, a banker, a business mogul and an investor is the founder and chairman of Zenith International Bank, one of the key players in the Nigerian financial sector. He has a reputation for promoting excellence and meritocracy. A stickler for rules; he believes strongly in the values of honesty and integrity. Those close to him say that he has the personality type that is averse to adverse publicity and scandal and would do anything to avoid them. Thus, it might sound odd for him to consort with politicians, save for business purposes, let alone accepting a political appointment. It is said that Jim may not punish his employees for not making profit but must punished anyone involved in fraud or anything that will tarnish the reputation of the bank. He abhors anything that has to do with scandal including litigation. As much as possible, he avoids litigation. It is believed that one of the reasons he invested heavily in technology and people is to ensure quality customer service to reduce reputational risk. And it is on record that the Jim Ovia’s Zenith bank has the least cases of litigation and fraud among the banks in Nigeria.
It is not exactly clear why Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has to pick on Jim Ovia. According to the official statement, the chairman of Zenith Bank was appointed NELFUND board chairman ostensibly for him “to bring his immense wealth of experience and professional stature to this role.” But the question is: does one require the skill of a banker to manage the said student loan funds? Is NELFUND a financial institution? Does the role of NELFUND involve financial intermediation? Of course the management of the student loan board may not involve investment analysis or risk assessment analysis.
The job is purely administrative and procedural. A retired school bursar or school teacher with even a background in History or Religious Studies can manage the said funds without stress. People as making conjectures about this, more so, as Tinubu is not known for appointing people based on merit or competence. His major consideration for appointment is loyalty rather than performance. Clearly, if Tinubu is interested in results, he would have given Mr. Ovia the Central Bank or the Finance Ministry, where his competence will be better deployed, rather than student loan board, to manage.
Expectedly, many have wondered why the banking guru has to identify with the Tinubu’s government. Are his multi-billion investments in Lagos under threat? Is he using the appointment as a means to secure the release of his protégé, Emefiele, the erstwhile Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor who is currently being hounded by Tinubu’s government for implementing a cash swap policy prior to the February, 2023 general elections; a policy interpreted by Tinubu and his group as an attempt to frustrate his presidential ambition? Or is he using the appointment as a way to dissociate himself from the alleged offenses committed by Emefiele when he held sway as the CBN governor? Whatever the reason, I sincerely hope that Jim Ovia is not being blackmailed or arm-twisted into accepting appointment from Tinubu against his will.
Without doubt, the presence of Jim Ovia among Tinubu’s men would be a big image boost for a government that is encumbered with a heavy legitimacy and credibility burden. Indeed, the government propagandists would brag about it, and as usual, drop Jim Ovia’s name among those allegedly made by Tinubu. To them, anyone who has government appointment is made by the one that appointed him. This is because they erroneously think that government appointment is not about service but an opportunity for self-enrichment. Tinubu is a maker of men but ironically, the state that he claimed he built has the worst number of area-boys and street urchins in the southern part of the country. He could not train or rehabilitate the horde of Lagos area-boys and yet he is a maker and developer of men. Lagos has more destitute and out school children and it is still educationally disadvantaged despite the huge revenue inflow. How many schools did he build while he “reigned” in Lagos? How many skill acquisition centers did he establish in his Lagos? Lagos State has one of the worst literacy cases in the whole of Southern Nigeria? So who did he make?
I am one of the many Nigerians that are skeptical about the Tinubu’s proposed student loan scheme. To me, the program is a misplaced priority and a white elephant. Nigeria needs investments in education but not in populist white elephants. In the colonial era and in the immediate post independent era, when Nigeria had acute man power shortages, such program would be effective and necessary and not now that Nigeria has surfeit of university graduates roaming the streets looking for non-existent jobs. Nigeria needs investment in the educational sector but not in the bogus loan scheme program. The investment we need in education should be in the area of technology, human development and provision of environment suitable for learning in addition to result-oriented curriculum development.
Nigeria operates outmoded, wishy-washy curriculum that tends to produce helpless, dependent jobseekers. Nigeria needs the curriculum that will produce entrepreneurs; that help learners develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Investment in mass education should be at the primary and high school level in order to reduce the number of out of school children and should be targeted mainly at the alimajiris and the area-boys of the North and Southwest respectively. But the APC government would not invest in this area for obvious reason. It would mean educating, liberating and depleting their army of political tools needed for election rigging. The previous investments in this area by the Babangida regime through the nomadic education scheme and Jonathan Administration through the Alimajiri School program were frustrated by the forces opposed to liberating these street urchins from bondage.
Secondly, the student loan scheme may be seen as a vehicle for the political “settlement” and might be hijacked by politicians to siphon public funds by granting loans to their cronies, stooges and ghost students. That is why many believed that the program may turn out to be a camouflaged conduit pipe for public funds and may never get to the indigent students and those that it is intended. Tinubu’s propagandists may defend the appointment of Jim Ovia by claiming that it is the importance the president attached to the program that informed his decision to engage the person of his caliber to manage the funds. But it left to be seen if that is the case.
Certainly, the Nigerian students do not need the spurious loan scheme that might not be accessible after all. What they need is quality education. They need the right technologies, the facilities and the conducive environment that will promote learning; that will make them graduate when they should, not a compromised system that will make them spend five or more years for a four-year course. The Nigeria youth need an effective man power development program that will support and equip them with the relevant skills for the future not area-boy policies that will mortgage their future. They require a robust economy that will empower their parents and sponsors to fund their programs. They don’t forbid a healthy economy that will promote work-study program as it is done in other countries. What they don’t need is Tinubu’s prebendal economy where some live on hand-outs and freebies in the name of palliatives. Nobody wants Tinubu’s poverty and hunger expansion program that has subjected the citizens to a life of misery.
It is therefore worrisome that the great Jim Ovia would accept an appointment into an agency that is susceptible to becoming a cesspool of corruption. And it is doubtful if he would come out of it without smearing his hard earned reputation except he resigns promptly.
You are a very senior professor. Your monthly salary is N700,000, pre-tax. This past weekend, you and other petrol users bought a litre for N1,000. Your car uses 10 litres of petrol per working day. There are five working days in a week. That gives your car 50 litres of petrol per week, the cost is N50,000. There are four weeks in a month. Fifty thousand naira in four places makes it N200,000 – just to fuel your car. Because your residence is allocated Band E by NEPA, your ‘I-better-pass-my-neighbour’ generator will use 10 litres of petrol per day. In 30 days, that gives you 300 litres of fuel. At N1,000 per litre, the cost is N300,000. Do the maths. Petrol alone takes N500,000 from your pre-tax N700,000 salary. Tax takes about N120,000. Do the maths again. What is the way out? The Yoruba will join you to ask: Kí ni ònà àbáyo? Kí ni?”
A young taxi driver sat on the bonnet of his car some years ago thoroughly frustrated by Nigeria’s unending petrol mess. A television reporter asked him to speak on his experience in that filling station where he sat, stranded. He looked straight into the camera and said he wanted “the world to come to an end, this moment. I want all of us to die – all.” He thought Nigeria was a wilderness with a succession of fake Moses leading the country from Egypt to Egypt. To the taxi driver, mass death of victims and their victimisers would be the neat, equitable way to end all suffering. I watched the video and heard more than what the gentleman said. People who think and say what he said are persons who have run and got to the end of running. They are people who have shifted and shifted and have hit the wall.
Over the course of life, suffering, one way or the other, is inevitable. We do not need a priest to convince us of that. But, why is it that here, in this country, time and change give no relief to the poor?
As I write this, everyone is at the petrol station – exactly as they were 30 years ago when they thought democracy was the messiah that would dry their tears. In petrol stations where there are no queues, the price there is killing; where the price smiles a little, bedlam reigns. If matters remain as they are, driving a car anywhere in Nigeria will soon be a mark of the beast, the ultimate evil. Very soon (and I am so scared to say this), having money to buy petrol will be an exposure to marks of the dragon – the kind that is in the Christian Bible: ten horns, seven heads, “with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” Why is this democracy this ugly and so unprofitable to the people?
There is a joke about a man from Israel who demanded to know why Moses promised his ancestors good life, took them out to wander in the wilderness for forty years only to deposit them in a land that has no oil. I won’t be shocked to hear this said about our democracy. What is the worth of that struggle and that vote that birthed this suffering?
Our dog boasted in the last election that there was no danger in Tiger’s forest. That boast appears to have killed it. A saying in Yoruba approximates this: Ajá kì í dán’nu kò séwu lóko ẹkùn. Stealthy, strong Tiger is an ambush, apex predator; dog is one of its preys. The wisdom here eluded many who refused to trust the truth. They are now left behind, stranded by their faith in man born of woman. In their bowl of gaari, they now have water in destructive excess.
You are a very senior professor. Your monthly salary is N700,000, pre-tax. This past weekend, you and other petrol users bought a litre for N1,000. Your car uses 10 litres of petrol per working day. There are five working days in a week. That gives your car 50 litres of petrol per week, the cost is N50,000. There are four weeks in a month. Fifty thousand naira in four places makes it N200,000 – just to fuel your car. Because your residence is allocated Band E by NEPA, your ‘I-better-pass-my-neighbour’ generator will use 10 litres of petrol per day. In 30 days, that gives you 300 litres of fuel. At N1,000 per litre, the cost is N300,000. Do the maths. Petrol alone takes N500,000 from your pre-tax N700,000 salary. Tax takes about N120,000. Do the maths again. What is the way out? The Yoruba will join you to ask: Kí ni ònà àbáyo? Kí ni?
With ‘Darkness Falls’ as its title, the second part of Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Weep Not, Child is about a country in distress, about a village where light is morbid and darkness is saviour. It is about a home that is no longer a place for telling good stories. It is here that we are asked to “turn to the Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter 24.” Here we are told that we “shall hear of wars and rumours of wars” and that “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places.” We are told that as horrible as these occurrences are, “they are (just) the beginning of sorrows…And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”
Could this moment be Nigeria’s hour of that prophecy? The havoc wreaked in town today is worse than the experience of the ill-starred, anecdotal sentry of Apomu whose oracle (ifa) got stolen and his wife snatched. He reached for his divining chain (òpẹ̀lẹ̀) and saw it in the mouth of an audacious dog. He pursued the dog to retrieve his last hope but the dog ran and jumped into a deep well. While panting, the distraught man was asked what next? “It is time to leave this town,” was his response – (Ìlọ yá Oníbodè Àpòmù, wón kó o ní’fá, wón gbà á l’óbìnrin, òpẹ̀lẹ̀ tí yíò tún fi tọ ẹsẹ̀ e rè, ajá tún gbé e lọ. Ó lé ajá, ajá kó sí kànga. Wón ní, ‘Ilọ yá àbí kò yá?’ Ó ní, ìlọ yáá…).” Today is worse than that hopeless situation. I have never been as afraid for Nigeria as I have been in the last one week.
The people are hopeless and helpless but they are quiet. And that is dangerous. There is a passage in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart which warns about silence and its potent danger: “Mother Kite once sent her daughter to bring food. She went and brought back a duckling. ‘You have done very well,’ said Mother Kite to her daughter, ‘but tell me, what did the mother of this duckling say when you swooped and carried its child away?’ ‘It said nothing,’ replied the young kite. ‘It just walked away.’ ‘You must return the duckling,’ said Mother Kite. ‘There is something ominous behind the silence.’ And so Daughter Kite returned the duckling and took a chick instead. ‘What did the mother of this chick do?’ asked the old kite. ‘It cried and raved and cursed me,’ said the young kite. ‘Then we can eat the chick,’ said her mother. ‘There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.’ Nigeria’s streets are scanty and sad; neighbourhoods are dank and dark. Where the ice of fuel scarcity appears to be thawing, the price has remained prohibitively high. In food markets, traders’ looks are forlorn; buyers’ heartbeats are irregular. There is darkness in every home where light used to shine. Yet, there is quiet, silence, midnight, graveyard chill where prophets used to warn.
In Matt Lorenz’s ‘The Meaning of life in the Wilderness’, we are told that “the wilderness is a space where human beings can go morally astray.” True, many and more have gone astray here. Henry Bugbee, in his The Inward Morning, says that “our true home is (the) wilderness.” I read this and wanted to disagree. I wanted to ask how our home could be the wildness -uncultivated, uninhabited, inhospitable wild. But, then, I remember William Butler Yeats’s thoughtful line: “…the world is more full of weeping than you can understand.”
As long as we breathe, we keep hoping (and praying) for deliverance from evil. There is a line of divine promise in Ngugi’s ‘Darkness Falls’: “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved…” He was quoting the Bible.
We will endure this to the end because we’ve been promised salvation. But, when is the end and where is the saviour? Or, when is the saviour coming? The government is quiet and silent. It acts the perfect I-don’t-care way of lords who have climbed the hills and have seen the very end of the world. But its defenders are not quiet. They blame the past and point at similar acts of official betrayal. What is in uniformity is no longer a shame. There is no new thing under the sun. They open history books of countries outside Africa, the first world. They say “even America once suffered what we suffer. We will be out of the problem one day.” They say the media of that and other countries still reminisce about their own era of anomie. One of such reflections is Reis Thebault’s “Long lines, high prices and fisticuffs”, a Washington Post’s 2023 video on the 1970s petrol shortage bedlam in America. “The line of cars stretches for blocks. Pumps run dry. Newspapers warn of a great ‘gas crunch.’ President urges calm. Panicked motorists turn on one another.” Thebault wrote, mimicking headlines from Nigeria’s future. If the abobaku of this regime come to see this Washington Post content, they will grab it with eureka; they will use it as a justification for the criminal betrayal that professed this suffering. What a country!
The elephant’s hunger is the shame of the forest. America would have remained where it was in 1970 if what it had were bumbling leaders like ours. To the US, the owner would rather starve than for the thief to be without food. We have that proverb, the United States appropriated it long ago to solve its “pumps run dry” problem. I always wonder why the elephant of oil-rich Nigeria keeps rumbling in the forest and goes to bed hungry. Imagine the Eskimo queueing for ice. But here, children of butchers fight over bones.
What really is the cause of this fuel scarcity? There is neither cohesion nor coherence in the little we’ve heard from persons who sit atop our welfare. All we’ve seen (and we are seeing) are quick-and-slow marches of crass confusion. What are they doing apart from fixing themselves up in vaults? The sheep of Nigerians won’t forget if they do well and provide it just bran. But they are behaving like àgbà òsìkà sowing suffering in people’s lives. They soil their breast pockets with red oil of impunity and keep a straight face. Is it true that this is all about jacking up the price of petrol as instructed by the holders of the Nigerian yam and knife? It is like land grabbers setting fire to a whole market because they covet the land. They are killing us without drawing a sword (apanimáyodà). But, they can eat their excess without scorching the city. Unfortunately, that is what they are doing with their take-it-or-leave it disposition to the petrol wickedness they put on the table. It is dangerous.
I borrow again from Yeats. In his ‘The Wind Among the Reeds’, the poet tells the powerful that he, “being poor” has only his dreams to nurture and keep. Then he begs them: “I have spread my dreams under your feet;/ Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” The people are the eye of the earth. If this government must tread on them, it should do so gently.
[OPINION] Workers problematic search for justice at the National Industrial Court - Owei Lakemfa
AdminTHIS year’s May Day was an opportunity for Nigerian labour centres to examine how workers are faring under the laws and their general well-being in a stifling socio-economic society. It was an occasion which revealed that even their quest for justice, in a supposed arbitration system, can be quite problematic.
Justice Benedict Bakwaph Kanyip, President of the National Industrial Court, NIC, presented the first paper on ‘Labour Laws and Trade Unions in Nigeria’, while the second presentation on ‘People First In National Affairs’ was by Mr Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN.
The former began by trying to convince the audience that the NIC is neutral, even- handed and reliable which showed that after all, “Lady Justicia’ is blind”.
Mr Falana did not appear to agree. He pointed at the connivance between the NIC and government against labour. He said: “In recent times, whenever workers decide to embark on industrial action as a last resort, the Federal Government and state governments usually rush to the National Industrial Court to apply for an interim order of injunction. Instead of asking the government to put the trade unions involved on notice, the Court will grant the order to stop the planned strike.”
So, the issue whether the NIC or, indeed, the courts are neutral, especially where government is involved, became one of the major issues that arose at the Pre-May Day Lecture.
It is difficult for the poor to get justice, not just because the laws are made by the rich in the interest of the rich, or that the judge is necessarily pro-status quo. The fact is that the poor man, struggling to feed himself and his family, does not have the funds to hire a lawyer or engage in lengthy litigation. So, as we say in Nigeria, he leaves ‘everything to God’.
This scenario is worse in the case of a worker who may take his rich employer to court. It, therefore, serves the ends of justice for the establishment of a special industrial court that would speedily and conscientiously arbitrate between the employee and employer without being bogged down by technicalities. In other words, the industrial arbitration court should be more interested in the justice of a case than its technicalities. Such a court should not be so much interested in lawyers citing old cases. So, the procedures of the industrial court, unlike those of normal courts should be flexible, requiring knowledge of industrial relations and not necessarily the technicalities of the law. It should be such that the worker would not need a lawyer to present his case. It should be like the Biblical King Solomon’s court where litigants personally presented their cases and the judge dispensed justice.
This intent to promote industrial harmony and social justice was the reason for the establishment of the NIC as a tripartite court. To ensure this, the tripod of the industrial relations system: government, employers and workers, had institutional representation in the court. So, the NIC and its judgements benefited from the invaluable experiences of these institutional representatives. Another major advantage in the NIC’s composition was its guaranteed independence as the judges were independent of government and did not owe their career progression to anybody in government. As a reporter covering the NIC, one of the best judges I knew was Mr Bernard Obua, then Deputy General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, who was not a lawyer. Indeed, I covered cases where trade unionists without legal background, represented their unions and won cases, sometimes against established lawyers representing multinational corporations. These gave the Industrial Arbitration Panel, IAP, and the appellate NIC, lots of prestige.
All these changed when lawyers and government collaborators staged coups and pushed the institutional representatives of the employers and workers out of the NIC, leaving only appointees of the government. Secondly, membership of the NIC became restricted to only lawyers. Hitherto, a graduate of a recognised university, including lawyers, with a minimum ten-year post- qualification experience could be NIC judges. The additional proviso was that such a person must have considerable knowledge and experience in the law and practice of industrial relations and employment conditions in Nigeria.
The transformation of the NIC into a regular court, also changed its thought process. It was therefore no surprise that Justice Kanyip propagated views that can be termed anti-worker. For instance, he claimed that workers have no right to go on strike. When I pointed out that this may amount to forced labour because a human being has the right to work or refuse to work, he claimed he was presenting the position of the International Labour Organisation, ILO. I googled the ILO official website and it stated that: “The right to strike is recognised by the ILO’s supervisory bodies as an intrinsic corollary of the right to organise protected by Convention No. 87.” It went on to state that: “As early as 1927, the ILO explicitly recognised that the right to strike existed…a recognition which was not challenged by employers for more than 60 years.”
Further more, the Nigeria courts have made various declarations on this. For instance, in Union Bank of Nigeria, Plc V. V. MRS. EDET (1993) the courts held that: “It appears that whenever an employer ignores or breaches a term of that Agreement, resort could only be had, if at all, to negotiation between the Union and the employer, and ultimately, to a strike action should the need arise and it be appropriate.”
Justice Kanyip also flew another kite: that a strike action is an individual, not a collective right. By this he argued that a worker can opt out of a strike. On this, I also challenged him on the basis that a trade union is about the unity of the collective and its supremacy over the individual. So, if a union ballots its members and 90 per cent decide the union should go on strike, it is only democratic that this decision is upheld irrespective of the feeling of a single individual.
There was also another contentious issue. The judge held that irrespective of Section 5(4)of the Trade Union Act which states that no new union should be registered where one already exists, any new union that applies should be registered. In a sense, he is backed by the ILO position on plurarity, but this defeats Nigeria’s 1977 decision to stop the endless proliferation of unions by registering unions at industrial, not company level. Given this, government can destroy unions in the long run by simply registering multiple trade unions in every sector or even company. If the NIC is now a duplication of the Appeal Court, why not scrap it?
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The issue of minimum wage or salary increase or by whatever nomenclature is a complicated policy issue. The wage increase is neither good nor bad, but as a policy choice, it must be tied to some ultimate objective and benchmarked on the projected cost of living and inflationary trends over a given period.
A pay rise can improve employees’ motivation while giving them more purchasing power and disposable income. It may result in businesses being shut down, hyperinflation, joblessness, and a decline in the value of the national currency. At face value, salary increases are a tool to address inequality, poverty, and welfare or an incentive to check corruption. However, the issue is more profound than this surface-level discourse.
Recently, the federal government announced a new salary raise for mainstream federal workers. This is not the new minimum wage; at least, that is what we are told. Some state governments followed suit with discordant tunes. The truth is that for the average Nigerian worker, with headline inflation at 33.2% by March 2024 and food inflation at 40.1%, the current wage is insufficient and cannot sustain any worker. This underscores the need for the government and all labour employers in Nigeria to review salaries. However, the government’s current economic realities and financial position make it challenging to create a salary increase that is not backed by increased value and productivity. While it may seem complicated, this measured approach is necessary to avoid harsh negative implications on the economy and the unintended backlash on people with low incomes and many on the fringes of our society.
Expectedly a policy to help people experiencing poverty and create some semblance of equity within our socio-economic ecosystem, salary increases for government workers, albeit less than 25% of the workforce, will have ramifications. Given these difficulties evident in the new policy, the government and labour leadership must play a balancing act to midwife a new salary structure that is fit for purpose yet germane to the multifaceted nuances of our current economic reality.
The wage increase will result in both negative and positive economic impacts. On the negative side, inflation will worsen, small and medium-scale businesses (SMEs) barely managing to survive will be hugely impacted, and the cost of doing business will skyrocket. How many SMEs can afford this increase? Most of the companies are struggling with paying the existing minimum wage, given the rise in the cost of doing business, interest in loans is over 40%, the cost of raw materials is over the roof, consumers with little income are squeezed to a pulp by the constant increase in prices. Besides, how many state governments can afford it? Most Nigerian states have failed to optimise their potential and go cap in hand every month to FAAC. Across a sizeable economic terrain like Nigeria, a uniform nationwide minimum wage may be foolhardy. Costs of living are divergent across the country. States should negotiate with labour unions for acceptable minimum wage structures in different states and geopolitical zones. There may be an urgent need to de-link the minimum wage issue from national politics.
On the positive side, wages should increase in tandem with the cost of living. It will keep workers motivated and may even help the economy rebound. A living wage is not only desirable but expedient. What Nigerian workers earn today is a “symbolic wage” and has no practical bearing on reality. The federal minimum wage, currently at N30,000, was last raised in 2019 when the inflation rate was 11-12%. The purchasing power of the naira has since been eroded by 276% (compared to the 2019 rate). Nigeria is ranked 44th in Africa for minimum wage, according to Prof. Kemi Okuwa of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research. These factors indicate the need for a wage increase to address the growing disparity between wages and the cost of living.
When implementing wage increases, the government must exercise caution to ensure that its devotion to its responsibility does not have the reverse impact. The government must develop a robust economic plan to reduce the cost of living as well as mitigate the ripple effects on low-income workers, SMEs, and the macroeconomy. We remember the infamous Udorji’s commission saga and its economic impact. Many economic historians have pointed to the significant shake-up of the salary structure by the Udorji commission as one of the major problems of Nigeria’s economy in the 1970s that upended our pricing system and created significant price inflation in the economy. We must learn from history! A situation where the monetary reward for work is increased but not based on productivity will often lead to unwarranted inflation.
Productivity and added value creation should be a significant consideration among many bases for ascribing monetary wage increases, not just policy or legislation. Can the government link the increase in public servants’ wages and salaries to measurable productivity? Any increase in the cost of production and labour at this point, with no corresponding increase in added value to production, is not sustainable and often is an aberration to the system. Therefore, a balanced approach that considers both the need for increased wages and the economic reality of our country is crucial. This will ensure that our wage policy is fair and sustainable in the long run.
The problem with government-induced increase is that only a limited number of workers, civil servants at the federal level, will get the money; many states may claim they need the means to pay that. Even if the state civil services pay that, combined with the federal civil service, they make up less than 25% of the employed workforce in Nigeria. Most of our workforce comprises low-wage workers, whom SMEs and organized private sector firms employ. These small businesses are struggling to pay the N30,000 per month minimum wage, much more than the new minimum wage. This minimum wage will make these workers poorer if they do not get it like the civil servants because they all buy from the same market.
Besides, making unenforceable laws does not make sense. In other climes, it is against the law not to pay the minimum wage. It is enforced with explicit punishment for breaking the law. In Nigeria, this is different. Nothing happens even if any tier of government fails to pay the minimum wage. Most businesses will completely ignore the new salary structure, and there will be no legal consequences. The government must put some teeth to the new minimum wage rule for equity and justice and at least make it stick across the board. It must also consult widely and make the minimum wage more realistic.
I understand the need for an increase in salary because of hyperinflation that has eroded purchasing power. However, I am preaching caution and a measured approach to dealing with this issue by considering all the ramifications and putting measures in place to cushion unintended consequences. Our recent experience has shown that a salary increase may start a merry-go-round of cyclical inflation that begins with a salary increase, and then inflation eats up the value, and then we are back to where we started. In an economy with over 40% food inflation, all stakeholders must apply caution and careful measures in implementing a new salary structure. However, governments (federal, state, and local) cannot afford to play politics with the issue of “living wage”.
The implications of creating new salary structures and increasing the minimum wage are complex and multifaceted, requiring careful consideration of various factors, including economic conditions, industry dynamics, and social equity goals. Although I advocate for workers getting a living wage and meaningful salaries, given our current economic realities, a more measured approach based on value addition, productivity, and accountability will suffice. As the new wages are implemented, a corresponding demand for increased productivity must be implemented by all stakeholders to make the system sustainable.
I understand the need for government intervention in this, especially the political benefits to the government in terms of reasonable public opinion and support, good labour relations and collective bargaining dynamics, and the corresponding public and political debates and legislative actions this generates; however, the economic exigencies – potential job losses, negative impact on SMEs, and inflationary pressures – must be paramount and considered.
A living wage is the right of every Nigerian, and we must fight for that to reduce income inequality gaps and fight multidimensional poverty. High productivity and less economic legislation are the way forward, and the current confusion in the debate over a minimum wage needs to be more holistic and better informed. All the variables must be on the table, devoid of political grandstanding.
[TheCable]
Nigerian politics is far too divisive and toxic. In addition to the toxicity, there is a pervasive self-fulfilling prophecy that holds that all public servants are corrupt. As a result, both elected and appointed public officials in the past and present are unfairly subjected to relentless media trials based on this assumption, usually on trumped charges.
This sets the scene for understanding the current media trial that Okezie Ikpeazu, the former governor of Abia state, is facing. Among other claims, his successor, Alex Otti, asserted that his predecessor had paid N10 billion for an Abia state airport that did not exist. Otti claimed to be quoting from a forensic audit report that he had ordered, though it hasn’t been released to the public or printed in a government gazette.
Otti appears to be acting like a magician, pulling what he pleases from the audit report—if it truly exists—and presenting it to the angry public, who act as juries and judges in media trials. The report is already accomplishing its goal of running Okezie Ikpeazu down.
However, it appears a boomerang is in the making. Otti’s credibility could be damaged, as will that of his young government, which many believe is off to a smooth start if the information he released against Ikpeazu and released to the public to facilitate a media trial turns out to be false. Nobody will ever believe Otti again, and that will be pathetic.
“Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus” is a Latin aphorism that translates to “false in one thing, false in everything.” At common law, it is the legal principle that a witness who falsely testifies about one matter is not credible to testify about any matter. A witness who makes a false statement regarding one issue is not credible to testify about any other matter, according to common law.
The Stuart Treason Trials in the late seventeenth century are where the common law doctrines of “falsus in uno and falsus in omnibus” first appeared. The notion served as a required presumption that a witness was untrustworthy if they had previously lied in court.
English courts started advising juries way back in the nineteenth century that they could assume a witness who gave a false statement was not trustworthy. A required presumption of unreliability for witnesses or sources that have previously provided misleading testimony must also be upheld by discerning minds. A person must enter equity with clean hands.
Applied to the accusations made by the current governor of Abia state against his predecessor, whom he accused of embezzling N107 billion from the state during his tenure, including the assertion that Okpeazu spent a whooping N10 billion for an Abia state airport that never existed. Otti said his claim was the outcome of a report by one of the three best worldwide audit firms, as he defined them, which he said he commissioned to carry out a forensic audit as soon as he took office.
Ikpeazu’s aides and some informed Abians have dismissed Otti’s claim of Ikpeazu paying N10 billion for a nonexistent airport as a malicious fabrication, saying that no additional money was ever paid beyond the N10 million paid for the preliminary spade works, such as site identification, clearing, and the like. They posit that the project was halted because it was widely believed that an airport was not a priority for Abians at the time.
The forensic audit report has reportedly not yet been made public, despite attempts to obtain a copy of it. Subsequent inquiries have shown that the aforementioned audit report has not yet been formally presented to and approved by the Abia State Executive Council. Otti hasn’t even allowed his executive council to see it and is still keeping it close to his chest.
Furthermore, what is in the public domain points to the fact that the payment for a nonexistent Abia Airport used to stigmatise and mock the former governor, Ikpeazu, does not exist, just as the Abia State Airport does not exist either. So one might wonder why there is a rush to selectively release to the public portions of the audit report that is not yet been adopted.
The question is: Is Governor Otti simply trying to play politics with the public’s perception for optics’ sake, providing something for the media trial of his predecessor, and igniting a media frenzy? If Governor Otti did fabricate the N10 billion tales, he may have unintentionally destroyed any credibility that may have been in the forensic audit report since it is laced with lies that may have been injected to mask the truth.
It is right to state that Section 308 of the Constitution prevents Otti from being sued while he is in office for defamation. According to Section 308 of the Constitution, “no civil or criminal proceedings may be instituted against the President, Vice-President, Governor, or Deputy Governor, and they may not be arrested or imprisoned, nor may any process of any court requiring or compelling their appearance be issued against them.” So, Otti is safe.
However, Ikpeazu still has some recourse (after the harm he sustained is confirmed by Otti’s inability to substantiate his claim). Once the falsehood is confirmed, the audit report will be rendered meaningless, and the public will perceive it as more of a witch hunt than anything else.
When Nyesom Wike became the governor of Rivers state, a similar situation occurred there as well. He launched a comparable audit inquiry into the tenure of Chibuike Amaechi, his predecessor. Because the report was a witch hunt, it never saw the light of day. It was a precedent Otti should have been familiar with.
In particular, Otti should officially receive the report without further delay, have the Abia State Executive Council adopt it, and leave it available for public review as well as impartial, independent interrogation and investigation. If it is true that Otti did not fabricate at least some parts of the report to get media conviction against his predecessor, making the audit report available to the media shouldn’t be an issue at all. The fact that this procedure was the one that ought to have been followed also underlined the fact that Otti was essentially putting the cart before the horse when he released portions of the forensic audit report piecemeal, which many have trashed as untrue.
Ikpeazu’s experience demonstrates that the media trial of public officials in Nigeria has deep ramifications and implications for the battle against corruption. Even if the victims can prove their innocence, they are not granted real relief because the accusers never go back to debriefing the Nigerian public about the lies they peddled or offering an apology to the good Nigerians who have been maligned and falsely shown to other people as criminals.
In Ikpeazu’s case, Governor Otti must come clean by providing the media with proof of the funds made for the fictitious Abia State Airport, along with the name of the receiving firm or firms. If Ikpeazu never paid such money and there is no such evidence, Otti owes Ikpeazu a public apology.
The media should keep a close eye on this case, as it is a seriously developing story. Either Ikpeazu paid N10 billion for the airport or he did not, or Otti made up the tale or he did not.
As required by both the ethics of journalism and the law, the media should continue to hold public officials innocent until their guilt is proven by the courts and should assist in advocating for justice for those who have not been found guilty as charged. In addition, the media must continue to follow the two golden laws of journalism: hear the other side of the story and, when in doubt, leave out, while also conducting more in-depth investigations.
To determine if this is a case of falsus in uno or falsus in omnibus—”false in one thing, false in everything,” as many now suspect—Nigerians are waiting for the declassification of the Otti’s forensic audit report. He who alleges must prove.
Okezie Ikpeazu should take turns laughing last and should have his integrity back if indeed the phantom airport payment is a fabrication and politics.
Dr Law Mefor, an Abuja-based forensic and social psychologist, is a fellow of The Abuja School of Social and Political Thought. He can be reached via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Twitter:
As widely expected, Togo’s national electoral commission has declared the ruling Union for the Republic (UNIR) Party, as the overwhelming winner of the country’s divisive parliamentary and regional elections held on 29th of April 2024, paving the way for President Faure Gnassingbe to accomplish the dream of prolonging his 19-year stay in power.
According to the results announced by the Commission on Saturday, the UNIR won 108 of the 113 available seats in what opposition parties and civil society groups dismissed as a sham vote that followed the government-pushed constitutional changes approved by the UNIR-dominated parliament 10 days before the elections.
David Dosseh, one of Togo’s prominent civil society activists fighting against injustice and impunity, has described the changes as a “constitutional and electoral coup.”
Speaking after the elections as a panellist on a television programme with this writer, Dosseh explained that “most of Togo's estimated nine million citizens have not seen the texts” of the constitution passed by the parliament on the 19th of April.
The hurriedly passed changes preceded by two postponements of the elections have far-reaching consequences on Togo’s political governance and electoral system.
Without adequate consultation, the changes turned Togo from a presidential to a parliamentary governance model and from a direct system of electing the President/Prime Minister to an indirect one.
Ninety-one MPs had emerged from the opposition-boycotted 2018 parliament elections in Togo.
Following the changes, the number of parliamentarians was increased to 113, who are now to elect the President of the Republic, with a largely ceremonial status for a five-year mandate.
The MPs from the majority party in parliament will also elect the Prime Minister/President of the Council of Ministers with executive powers, who will serve for six years.
This is even though, Article 2(1), SECTION II of the 2001 ECOWAS Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, clearly states that “No substantial modification shall be made to the electoral laws in the last six (6) months before elections (in member States), except with the consent of a majority of political actors.”
Before the latest elections, ECOWAS, the regional economic bloc had sent a pre-election fact-finding mission from 15th - 20th of April to Togo.
The objective of such missions in the past was to ascertain the level of preparedness, identify challenges if any, and determine whether the political environment met international standards for credible and transparent elections.
Like in previous elections in Togo, where politics has been dominated by the Eyadema family since the country’s independence from France in 1960, the last polls were overshadowed by political tensions and government suppression of opposition and public protests.
Faure assumed power in 2005 following the death of his father Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled Togo with an iron fist backed by a notoriously repressive armed forces for almost four decades.
According to the opposition, the same armed forces, with senior officers drawn largely from the Kabye ethnic group of northern Togo, imposed Faure on the country and have continued to support him to the hilt. They are afraid of losing power to another ethnic group while Faure is also riding on the crest of his father’s dictatorship.
Faure’s current mandate ends in 2025 but with the ‘fait accompli’ achieved with the pre-determined outcome of the elections based on questionable constitutional and electoral changes, the coast is now clear for him to assume the position of Prime Minister/President of the Council of Ministers to elongate his tenure.
Dosseh acknowledges that neither the opposition parties nor the civil society groups in Togo are in a strong position to challenge the Faure government. This is mainly because poverty and repression have been weaponized, leaving the citizens in a traumatized, if not dehumanized state of permanent fear.
External support also appears not forthcoming. For instance, ECOWAS, which under normal circumstances, should take a principled stance by calling out the Togolese government over the violation of the regional protocol appears to be “playing it safe.”
Four of its 15 member States - Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger - are under military dictatorships, and the last three countries have already served notice of their intention to quit the regional organization altogether.
According to diplomatic sources, there is therefore the fear by the ECOWAS leadership that Togo could join the rogue group if the organization came hard on the country.
So, instead of capitalizing on the recent positive development in Senegal, where the opposition parties combined with the population and vibrant civil society groups to checkmate President Macky Sall, who had wanted to play a similar tenure elongation game, ECOWAS has developed cold feet, further eroding what remains of its dented integrity and reputation.
Faure has contributed to the disunity in the ECOWAS ranks by fraternizing with the military juntas and making the regional sanctions ineffective. By sparing him the consequences of his “bad behaviour,” ECOWAS is vindicating critics who accuse the organization of weakness and inconsistency by applying one set of rules for “political, constitutional and electoral coups” and another for military coups.
The critics have cited several recent instances, such as the dissolution of Guinea Bissau’s Parliament by President Umaro Embalo; former President Sall’s sacking of Senegal’s Electoral Commissioners close to the last presidential election, which his ruling party lost, and now, the controversial constitutional and electoral changes, less than two weeks before the parliamentary and regional elections in Togo.
While the implications and potentially negative consequences of the Faure government’s violation of the ECOWAS protocol against an unconstitutional change of government may yet unfold, the regional organization, along with the African Union and La Francophonie, which observed the elections at the invitation of the administration in Togo have failed the people of Togo and Africans in general.
Against their standard practice, the three organizations did not issue Preliminary Observation reports on the elections. They merely released a timid joint statement, saying that the vote was “inclusive,” contrary to widely held opinion in the country.
By their act of omission or commission, the three organizations might have allowed the Faure administration to use them to rubber-stamp an illegitimate act.
The ECOWAS Commission in 2009 stopped the then-President Mahamadou Tandjan from dissolving Niger’s parliament, and also in 2011, declined an invitation to observe the presidential election organized by then-President Yahya Jammeh because there was no level playing field for the poll.
The Commission refused to recognize the outcome of that election and Jammeh held another election in 2016, which he lost but wanted to claim victory before ECOWAS intervened, resulting in his current exile to Equatorial Guinea.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has its headquarters in Banjul, the Gambian capital, yet the AU could not muster the courage to take the type of tough but principled decisions that earned ECOWAS international acclaim.
If ECOWAS is to regain its past glory, this is the time for more tough, strategic result-oriented, impactful, transformational and pro-people actions borne out of critical thinking.
Inconsistency, duplicity, fear, or sitting on the fence will further divide the organization and derail the regional integration goal of its founding fathers.
On the other hand, Togolese citizens, especially the pro-democracy advocates owe themselves and the region a patriotic duty to work together against all undemocratic forces in their country.
Time and circumstances might be different, but the anti-apartheid fight in South Africa is an illustration that outside support will only complement a focused, united and aggressive internal struggle.
Right, liberty or freedom is taken not given!
**Ejime is an Author, Global Affairs Analyst, and Consultant on Peace & Security and Governance Communications
[OPINION] In Nigeria, judicial appointments have become network of corruption - Chidi Odinkalu
AFOLABIFools at the top would cause damage to any system not to talk of the fragile institutions of a fledgling democracy.”—Charles Archibong, A Stranger in Their Midst: A Memoir, 97 (2021)
IN the last week of April, 2024, Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Olukayode Ariwoola, co-convened and chaired a “National Summit on Justice” in Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital. Addressing the participants “with a profound sense of responsibility”, the CJN invited them “on a journey of comprehensive reform to ensure that justice is not only dispensed but also perceived to be dispensed fairly and impartially.” More specifically, he asked them to identify “gaps and inconsistencies that hinder the efficient administration of justice.”
No issue is as afflicted with such gaps in knowledge and inconsistencies of practice and yet so dispositive of outcomes in justice administration as judicial appointments in Nigeria. Yet, it is the one area about which little is public and debate is discouraged.
On 21 December 2023, the Senate consented to the appointment of 11 new Justices of the Supreme Court, all of whom used to be Justices of the Court of Appeal. In addition to the 11 vacancies, mortalities and retirements together combined to create a total of 22 vacancies that the NJC approved to be filled on the Court of Appeal bench. On 24 January 2024, the President of the Court of Appeal, PCA, Monica Dongban-Mensem, with consent of the National Judicial Council, NJC, led by the CJN, wrote to all heads of courts in the country to request nominations to the Court of Appeal.
Three years earlier, when they met on judicial elevations to the Court of Appeal on 19 November 2020, the Federal Judicial Service Commission, FJSC, had approved a rule proposed by Monica Dongban-Mensem, that “judges that had not spent up to five years on the Bench” and “those who would not spend up to five years if appointed before retirement” should not be considered.
On 2 April 2024, the same FJSC approved 22 nominees by Monica Dongban-Mensem for appointment to the Court of Appeal, including six from the North-Central; five from the South-East; four from the South-West; three each from the North-West and South-South; and one from the North-East. To reprise the formulation of Chief Justice Ariwoola, this list is full of “gaps and inconsistencies.”
One of the nominees from the North-Central is Eleojo Enenche from Kogi State. He was only appointed a judge of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, in November 2021 from his then position as personal assistant to the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court. Enenche spent nine months attached to Olukayode Adeniyi, a senior judge of the same High Court. At less than three years as a judge of the FCT High Court, few of his cases would have come to judgment and it is unlikely that any of his judgments would have been tested on appeal. On any objective reading of the applicable criteria, this is at best a profoundly premature preferment.
Eleojo Enenche is not the only one in this category. Sister-in-law to a senior politician and former junior to an influential Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Victoria Nwoye, the nominee from Anambra State, became a lawyer in 2005 and worked in the Customary Court system in Abuja before being sworn in as judge on 2 December, 2019. She is currently reading for an LL.M at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, the state capital. Of the 30 judges currently in service in Anambra State High Court, she is last at number 30 in seniority and clearly below five years as a judge.
Born on 9 March 1959, Henry Aja-Onu Njoku, the nominee from Ebonyi State, does not have five years before mandatory retirement at 70. Nominated from Lagos State, Lateef Lawal-Akapo was born 6 August, 1959. From Nasarawa State and born on 2 November, 1959, Abdullahi Liman is currently the third most senior judge in the Federal High Court. None among these three has judicial shelf-life to spare for the Court of Appeal.
The applicable rules of the NJC require all judicial nominations to be accompanied by a “detailed medical certificate of fitness issued by government hospital or medical institution.” Although health information is ordinarily confidential, this requirement makes the health status of judicial nominees a matter of public interest and for good reason too
In June 2023, Nyesom Wike, the husband of one of the nominees from the South-South, Eberechi Nyesom-Wike, publicly announced that she had been diagnosed with cancer in 2022. Ordinarily, cancer survivorship is computed at the threshold of five years post-diagnosis. It is proper and human to wish a cancer patient full recovery. It is a brutal and relentless disease. But it is doubtful that advancing a cancer patient to an equally relentless judicial office necessarily enhances the cause of their well-being (unless the administration of justice is not the primary consideration).
On this list of nominees to the Court of Appeal, Oyo State, which already has two Justices of Appeal, will receive another two, the only state to be so favoured. This will bring to four the number of Justices from the state from which the out-going CJN hails. By contrast, Ogun State, which is also in the South-West, has only one Justice of Appeal – Adebukola Banjoko. In this round of appointments, they will get none.
To understand the perverse incongruities in the Court of Appeal preferments, it is relevant to mention that there is also a contemporaneous process of hire into the bench of the FCT High Court. That list contains a daughter-in-law of the CJN, a daughter of the PCA, and a daughter of the current CJ of the FCT, among many judicial daughters on it.
It does not take a major feat of insight to figure out that the CJ of the FCT High Court, the PCA and the CJN are clearly doing mutual back-scratching in judicial appointments.
It also disincentivizes honest, hard-working judges.
This is also a clear violation Rule 11(iv) of the Code of Conduct for judicial officers in Nigeria which requires that “in the exercise of his administrative duties, a judicial officer should avoid nepotism and favoritism.” The irony is that Olukayode Ariwoola would not be able to get away with this tendency if he were to be Adajo Agba (Chief Justice) of Iseyin or of Oke-Ogun. That is a sad commentary on the current state of the judiciary that he will leave behind when Olukayode Ariwoola departs from office on 22 August 2024.
A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.