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Those who know Mr. Olayemi Cardoso will agree he got his current job as the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria on a platter of solid professional background and strong personal attributes. His pedigree is rich as his character is unsullied. Cardoso had a remarkable private sector career where he shone brilliantly in banking, stockbroking and consulting.
Cardoso also came from a very solid family pedigree. Nigeria’s late Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, appointed his late father, Mr. Felix Bankole Cardoso, as the first Accountant-General of the Federation in 1963. The late elder Cardoso served with enviable record till 1971.
Part of the remarkable private sector career of Olayemi Cardoso was his appointment as the Chairman of the Board of Citi Bank in Nigeria.
Cardoso began his public service journey when he became the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning in the cabinet of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Governor of Lagos State as he then was in 1999. In addition to superintending that ministry, Cardoso was charged with several other responsibilities including heading important cabinet committees that birthed landmark agencies in the state. Cardoso was known for enforcing strict budgetary discipline that contributed significantly to the overall success of the Tinubu administration in Lagos. He refused to authorise the release of funds for projects or programmes that had no budgetary head. For all of that and many more, Cardoso was nicknamed the Headmaster.
Armed with a Bachelor of Science degree in Managerial and Administrative Studies and Masters in Public Administration from the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School of Government and parading strong personal attributes, Cardoso is obviously a perfect fit for the CBN top job. He is calm but firm, strict but fair, prudent but practical, straightforward and honest with loads of integrity. These are the unique qualities he carried unto his job at the apex bank and his major selling points when on September 23, 2023 he officially assumed office with the Senate confirmation of his appointment.
However, it does appear Cardoso will need much more than that to succeed in his present assignment. Under him, the CBN seems to be doing the right thing or doing things right: thinking and working on coming up with appropriate monetary policies, moving to rein in the rising foreign exchange rates and particularly achieve an appropriate value for the naira, which Cardoso believes has been undervalued.
But in the wake of the floating of the Naira, some of the variables shaping the value of the national currency, including limited production in the country as a result of insecurity, Nigerians’ high taste for imported products, dwindling exports, poor dollar remittances, humongous school fees of Nigerian students abroad and medical tourism all of which engendered a strong demand for dollar, far outweighing supply, seem to be clearly beyond his control.
Until these situations change for better, no amount of monetary policies by the CBN will work any miracle, hence Cardoso’s predicament. For instance, in his presentation at the sectoral debate organised by the House of Representatives two weeks ago, the CBN governor lamented that the growing number of Nigerian students studying abroad, increasing medical tourism and food imports have led to the depreciation of the Naira against the Dollar. According to him, over the past decade, foreign exchange demand for education and healthcare totalled nearly $40 billion, surpassing the total current foreign exchange reserves of the CBN, while personal travel allowances accounted for a total of $58.7 billion during the same period.
Another critical yet intriguing factor but seemingly odd in Cardoso’s reckoning is the perception in some quarters of some of the decisions of the CBN, which the apex bank considers purely administrative, but which some others give strange connotations.
One of such is the decision to move some departments of the bank; notably banking supervision, other financial institutions supervision, consumer protection department and payment system management department from Abuja to Lagos.
Indeed, until the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, spoke on this issue last week, I had reckoned that the imperative of the planned relocation of some CBN departments and the headquarters of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria from Abuja to Lagos was evident enough. I had reasoned that the Northern politicians including Senator Ali Ndume from Borno State who had moved to bring down the roof over the development were merely playing politics.
The Emir of Kano, a highly revered royal father, raised the ante last Monday while receiving the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, who was in Kano to inaugurate the School of Law Building named after her by Maryam Abacha American University of Nigeria, and had stopped by to pay a courtesy call on the Emir.
Emir Bayero, whose speech was translated from Hausa to English Language by a senior palace counsellor, had told the First Lady to convey his message to President Tinubu. He said among other things: “We are indeed suspicious on why Mr. President single-handedly relocated key departments of CBN, and outright relocation of FAAN to Lagos.
“We are receiving a series of messages from my subjects, and most of them expressed concern over the relocation of CBN and FAAN to Lagos. President Tinubu should come out clean on this matter and talk to Nigerians in the language they would understand. Do more enlightenment on this matter. I, for one, cannot tell the actual intentions of the government. We should be made to actually understand why the relocation of the CBN and FAAN offices back to Lagos.”
Many will wonder why some members of the northern elites are losing their cool, misinterpreting this move and, perhaps inadvertently, heating up the polity on this rather elementary matter. Is their reservation altruistic? Or are they just being sincerely mistaken and reading unnecessary motives into the policy? With the benefit of hindsight, one can say that Cardoso and his team should have understood the political dimensions of the decision better and undertake a more effective public enlightenment on it rather than treat it as a purely administrative matter. Knowing the kind of people and country that we are and the fact that ours is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural society where every action or decision is viewed from ethnic and religious lenses, the CBN ought not to have released the news about the movement of the departments concerned in a routine manner as it did.
It should have released the news with the detailed information and explanation behind the move. The CBN Communication Department should have deployed all in its arsenal to explain the movement to its critical stakeholders and the general public. The apex bank should have seen the movement beyond a mere administrative move, which is within its remit to do. The bank should have situated the movement and anticipated the social and political meanings some may give it. That is how things run in Nigeria.
A deeper and detailed explanation was later provided when Cardozo appeared on the floor of the House of Representatives in Abuja. I was there at the session and witnessed it all. Asked by one of the members of the House from the North, at the session, the rationale behind the movement, the CBN Governor said: “There is nothing political in the movement. We didn’t change any plan. It has always been like that to ease banking supervision. Most of the banks are based in Lagos. So it works well for supervision if our officials are there with them and close to them and close to those the banks interact with. It’s for administrative convenience. It’s also cheaper for the CBN.” He also disclosed that the movement of the departments concerned to Lagos is also important because, according to him, the country is at the point where there is a need for more banking surveillance.
It is important that the CBN governor draws the appropriate lesson from this. He should learn from this experience that though his job of superintending the country’s monetary system is a professional and economic one, yet it has its political aspects. His decisions have consequences not only on the economy but also on the political front. As such, the CBN Governor must always pay attention to the political ramifications of his decisions.
He must be political without being partisan.
Indeed, his situation is also not helped by the fact that he has had very political predecessors-in-office including the high-sounding Professor Chukwuma Soludo, the soft-spoken but loud former Emir of Kano, Khalifa Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and the immediate-past Governor, Godwin Emefiele (this one even attempted to contest for president while holding the office as CBN governor).
There are a couple of things to say on the hoopla about the staff transfer though.
One, President Tinubu is receiving attacks over the movement. Emir of Kano says he must reverse it, urging the First Lady to deploy the feminine soft power to actualise this. Yet, to all intent and purposes, the President that is being asked to reverse the transfer may not have been apprised of the decision because he does not micromanage those he gives responsibilities to where their unique expertise and experience are called to service. The CBN on its part may not have briefed the President because Cardoso had seen the planned movement as purely administrative.
Secondly and more importantly, those who are responding negatively to the policy are treating Abuja as if it belongs to the North rather than being the symbol of the entire country as the Federal Capital Territory. In that capacity, as the FCT, Abuja belongs to all and belongs to no one. In the same vein, as the economic capital and nerve center of the country, Lagos is a melting pot where representatives of virtually all ethnic and cultural groups in the country reside and earn a living.
There is absolutely nothing that says that the headquarters of all Federal Agencies must be located in the Federal Capital even when economic considerations and efficiency dictate otherwise. Some federal agencies reside neither in Abuja nor Lagos at present and their work go on unimpeded.
In any case, President Tinubu’s pan-Nigerian outlook and credentials are too well known. His ability to build political and personal networks and relationships across the length and breath of the country were partly responsible for his victory in the keenly contested 2023 presidential election. He will be the last person to approve or support any policy designed to be detrimental to any part of the country.
But for CBN Governor Cardoso, all of that represents his baptism of fire and a wake-up call for him to be a little more flexible particularly in matters that have wider political connotations.
– Rahman is a Senior Presidential aide
I don’t even understand it any more.
Nigeria was destined to win the 2013 AFCON. I believed it with all my being.
Then it did not happen!
It is very significant that the federal govt still went out of its way to reward the team as if they won! That, is very significant, because the Eagles were rewarded even for not coming first!
But why?
I was there at the stadium in Ebimpe. We were cruising to success. Then it happened!
Paseiro? Okay, fate has determined his fate. He is leaving with adequate rewards for his effort. But no more! Let him go! He is not good enough for the future. No sentiments, just the bare facts.
Now, I have learnt of 6 Nigerians that died from watching the semifinals and final matches of the AFCON. It is unheard of in my entire relationship with Football. 6 persons and still counting, from the tension of Nigeria not winning? What does this sacrifice of innocent lives mean? We will never know!
In the past 24 hours, I have learnt that a teacher in my own school, a gentleman we all call ‘Ten-Ten’ because of his love for football, died as he was watching the Eagles start to lose to Ivory Coast.
I also lived in the house of Chief Labiyi in Oke Ado in Ibadan. He was the former Principal of Ibadan Grammar School. Wale and Jide were Chief Labiyi’s children. Wale died last week whilst watching the Super Eagles lose to Cote D’Ivoire.
I learnt about these two deaths in the past 24 hrs. This adds to the 4 other Nigerians that were reported to have died whilst watching the disappointment of the Super Eagles’s performances between the semi-final and final matches.
There is something about those matches and the seeming ‘sacrifices’ made by these 6 (and possibly more) Nigerians that loved their country so much, and died under the pressure of wishing for the country’s success.
I am just leaving Ibadan.
I arrived Nigeria and have not gone home in Lagos to see my family members. I drove straight to Ibadan to be a part of the burial ceremony of my friend and colleague, Phillip Kweku Kolawole Boamah, who died some moths ago. Phillip was a Ghanaian football player that played for the national team of Nigeria and was part of winning Nigeria’s first continental club football trophy in 1976.
His death and burial were a solemn reminder of our collective mortality.
I am grateful to the children who organized a very dignified and befitting funeral.
Yet, it was a reunion of some sort.
At the end of the event, a few friends from those years back in the day in Ibadan, came together to share ‘communion’ of lunch and drinks in remembrance of Philip.
In the picture are old Comradès in the business of fun in Ibadan - from left of picture- Tokunboh Adejumo (my in-law), Godwin, Yours truly, Gbola Bakre, and Pius Aludo, leaving qn old ‘joint’ for our reunion!
I am still thinking and working out the connection between that and Nigeria’sloss at AFCON. Was losing a price to pay for what could have been a bigger ‘disaster’? We will never know, will we?
I have received so many condolence messages from friends and persons I do not even know on the death of my boss, brother and friend, Dr. Herbert Wigwe. Indeed, the outpouring of grief across the country has been overwhelmingly comforting. I thank you all.
But this evening, I received a strange call from a friend, who told me that Herbert’s death is a punishment from God because when Access Bank acquired Intercontinental Bank, some people who worked for the acquired bank had developed heart attack and died. I lost my cool and told him that he’s talking nonsense.
Even before Access bought Intercontinental in 2011, there were many mergers and acquisitions in the banking industry arising from the banking consolidation of 2004 and 2005. The bank I worked for then merged with four others and formed a new, bigger bank. Many lost their jobs, but they ended up reentering the industry as the sector expanded, while some others changed careers. Those who attended business school would recall that all M&As will always result in job losses because the synergy created usually lead to some redundancies. This is typically presented in the equation: 1+1 = 3.
Herbert is not the first person to die in an air accident. Remember ADC, Dana and Bellview air crashes? Did the passengers all die because of what they did? In 1995, many school kids coming home for Christmas holidays from Abuja died in Sosoliso air crash in PH. Did those children die because they bought a bank? Did they die because of their sins? What of those air crashes involving Ethiopian airlines, Malaysian airlines and other international airlines?
Is air crash the only way that people die tragically? What of those who die from drowning, fire disaster, electrocution, armed robbery attacks or even kidnapping? Is it also because of whatever they did on earth? What of women who die from childbirth? What of children who die from the six childhood killer diseases?
The person who called me this evening presented a very uninformed and nasty understanding of death, ethereal and esoteric matters. He was very insensitive to the huge loss that has befallen me. I am happy that I gave him a piece of my mind.
Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe (15 August 1966 – 9 February 2024)
He made a living, and a fortune, pitching and being pitched to. In a viral video circulating in the wake of his passing, he’s captured pitching his latest project: a new University. “This is your project, and you will protect it with everything you have,” he says, in pidgin English. “There will be no University like this, no just in Nigeria, but even in Africa.” The crowd—young men from his ancestral home, where the University is sited—is fired up, and break into song and dance intermittently. This son-of-the-soil addressing them looks unsure whether to dance or not. He’s clearly far more at home in gilded boardrooms, speaking English, not pidgin. At the same time, venturing passionately into unfamiliar territory is how he’s managed to come this far.
Besides passionately sharing his many visions, Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe loved nothing more than closing deals, and executing projects. “His answer to me was always the same: my brother, done!” says someone who grew close to him in recent years. Over the course of two decades, Herbert, alongside his best friend and business partner, Aigboje (“Aig”) Aig-Imoukhede, whom he first met in 1989, built Africa’s biggest bank by customer base, and Nigeria’s largest by assets. At the time of his death, Access Bank Plc was settling nicely into a world-conquering phase, expanding aggressively in and beyond Africa.
His empire included his non-profit, The Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe (HOW) Foundation. (He signed-off social media posts with #HOW). Wigwe University, taking shape in Isiokpo, his bicycle-loving, masquerade-flaunting, oil-rich hometown, in Rivers State, to “raise the next generation of fearless leaders.” Craneburg, one of the most prominent construction businesses in Nigeria today, founded by his wife, Chizoba. And several other business ventures he personally founded or invested in, often quietly.
He was energetic, restless, ambitious. Executive Director at Guaranty Trust Bank at 33; Group Deputy Managing Director of Access Bank Plc at 36; Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at 47. He talked fast, moved even faster. Together, the pair of him and Aig formed one of the two most intriguing tag-teams in recent Nigerian banking history—the other pair being Fola Adeola and Tayo Aderinokun; the older-by-a-decade co-founders of GT Bank, from where Aig and Herbert resigned as Executive Directors in 2002 to buy and lead Access Bank. (Tragically, Tayo Aderinokun passed away in 2011—only a year younger than Herbert would be at his own death).
In their days running Access Bank, Aig and Herbert earned reputations as taskmasters. (Aig describes it, in his 2021 memoir, as “our fabled work ethic”). Critics saw them as willing to go to any lengths to achieve whatever they sought. The landmark takeover of Intercontinental Bank in 2011—which tripled their customer base—was believed to be a hostile, even ruthless, one. Not uncommon allegations, admittedly, at that level of performance.
“M&A Mindset”
In the wake of his death, the tributes pouring in all point to a man who was incredibly kind and supportive to many, always looking out to offer a helping hand. There was always room in his circle for people he considered smart and ambitious. His Executive Assistant came from Diamond Bank, which Access acquired in 2019.
His “Mergers and Acquisition mindset” (as a tribute by Alex Otti, banker and current Governor of Abia State, described it), fueled much of what he accomplished. Never satisfied with the status quo, he was always nudging the people around him to dream and to do more. Gbenga “GB” Agboola, founder of Flutterwave, one of Nigeria’s fintech Unicorns, recalls the challenges Herbert regularly threw at him: “GB, what’s the size of your ambition?” “Why wait to invest back in Africa?” “Who is the next GB? Back them! Make the journey easier for the next guy!”
He’d earned the right to ask this of others. When he and Aig took over Access Bank in 2002, it was 65th in size, among Nigeria’s 89 banks at the time. Today, the bank is setting African records. When his tenure as CEO of Access Bank came to an end in 2022, he stepped up to become CEO of Access Corporation, the new Holding Company created for the financial services group. Not having to directly run the bank did not diminish his influence in any way. It allowed him to add more to his plate, in fact. He was named President of the influential France-Nigeria Business Council in May 2023. He began to devote more time to his University, for which he budgeted half a billion dollars in personal investment.
Not to forget the palatial new home in Ikoyi, Lagos—built by Craneburg—of which breathtaking video footage has emerged since his death. It is said that, till the end, he was still requesting additional work on the edifice.
Giving and collecting
He gave generously to countless causes, often quietly. His church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) City of David parish, in Lagos, was a big beneficiary, especially in its mission to help poor children. Under his leadership, Access Bank sponsored the annual Lagos City Marathon (he died on the day the 2024 edition held), as well as sporting events and arts festivals within and outside Nigeria.
It is hard to think of a more ambitious Nigerian art collector than Herbert. In his vast collection sit two iconic pieces: separate portraits of him and his wife, Chizoba, painted by Kehinde Wiley, whose most famous painting is an official portrait of President Barack Obama. (Another famous Wiley portraiture subject is former President Olusegun Obasanjo, painted as part of a project documenting African Heads of State).
His passion for art also included acquiring, at significant cost, iconic work of Nigerian origin from foreign owners. There was the long-lost-but-found “Tutu”, painted in 1974 by Ben Enwonwu—for whom Queen Elizabeth sat for a sculpture, a decade before Herbert’s birth)—which Access Bank acquired in 2018. Also in the Access Bank collection, a set of seven wooden Enwonwu sculptures, commissioned by the UK’s Daily Mirror in 1960, for its new London Headquarters.
A wingless end
On a helicopter flight in 2017, Herbert told a protégé, “When it’s your time, it’s your time.” He was not unfamiliar with the grief of bereavement. His older brother, Osita, died in a car accident in 1997. Three years later, his pregnant cousin and her husband were killed in another tragic car crash. Then there was his recent cancer scare. Even as he became more health-conscious, quitting alcohol and taking personal fitness seriously, the fragile-ness of life was never lost on him. One of his last posts on X ended with: “Let us number our days.”
The final day came most unexpectedly, on a “wintry” February night, in the United States of America. Aboard an Airbus H130 helicopter chartered to fly him, his wife, Chizoba; eldest son, Chizi; and friend, Bimbo Ogunbanjo, from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, for the 2024 Superbowl, an annual fixture on his calendar. Exactly what happened to the chopper is still being pieced together by investigators. None of the four passengers and two crew members aboard survived.
He is survived by aged parents, three children, and siblings. And a sprawling business empire—including private investments in several businesses—the true size of which may never be fully known. “The scale of what he’s leaving behind, mostly uncompleted, is staggering,” says a friend.
In 1961, shortly after completing the Daily Mirror sculpture series, Enwonwu, the celebrated sculptor, said of the 7-piece collection: “I have tried to represent the wings of the Daily Mirror, flying news all over the world.” There is a 2017 photo of Herbert posing with the collection at an art exhibition in Lagos in 2017, a suited eighth figure amidst the ‘winged’ wooden posse. A fitting pose for a man who gave wings to every project he embarked on, and to many of the people he met on his life’s journey.
In an ironic twist of fate, the end came for him in the air, on a wingless aircraft—without a pitch persuasive enough to stave death off.
“I remember a friend of mine in the oil industry, who during a meeting of an economic think tank. He called the then president aside and said, ‘Mr President please stop this subsidy, we are tired of making money…We’re bringing in this fuel at an elevated cost and half of it is exported out of Nigeria by the same people collecting money for it”
There is an apparent consensus of opinion that Nigeria has not had a good outing under the stewardship of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The main extenuation for this lapse is that he inherited a basket case from his predecessor, Major General Muhammadu Buhari.That may well be the case but this extenuation flies in the face of his own verbalised utmost quest and carnal desire (lifelong ambition) to become the president of Nigeria. I do not exactly recall whether it was
Usman Dan Fodio who counselled society to be wary of whoever desires the aroma of power the most. Buhari’s obsession with power and what he did with it for eight years proves the point. May Nigeria be spared the repeat of the Buhari cross all over again.
Beware of what you crave, you may just get it. Having now been gratified with the object of his ‘lifelong ambition’, Nigeria lies prostrate before President Tinubu but he has so far failed to master the moment. In fairness to him and unlike his predecessor, he has largely refrained from making a song and dance of the Buhari (dysfunction) extenuation. Save when he characterised the transition from Buhari to his government as ‘moving from darkness to a glorious dawn’. While the characterisation of the former President’s tenure as an era of “darkness” is apt, it would amount to standing reality on its head to cite the incumbent president’s tenure as anything near a glorious dawn.
The potential crowning glory of the Buhari dysfunction and one I regret not supporting was his desire to foist former President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan as the president of Nigeria. And he was thick enough to try it. If he had succeeded, he would have sufficiently radicalised Nigerian politics, and clarified the choice before the country as never before. Already cut too deep, the cleavages would have irretrievably cut deeper. The affront was bound to foster a make or break crisis whose ramifications would force a fundamental constitutional review of the status quo or worse.
Imagine the spectre of Vice-president Atiku Abubakar as the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP candidate and Ahmed Lawan as that of the APC, and the certainty that the election will be rigged in favour of either presidential candidate. To the contrary, with the election of Tinubu as a sop to the Yoruba, Nigeria has won a battle but lose the war. As we have come to learn, the restructuring din has quietened down to a whimper. A very smart politician, contemporaneously I
cannot recall him ever owning restructuring as priority- that is if he ever touched the idea at all on his campaign rostrum.
As programmed, he has deflated the bubbles of the only viable status quo answer to the question of what ails Nigeria. I was surprised at the conniving power politics posture of the Yoruba intelligentsia towards the realpolitik of contemporary Nigeria. The better option of Peter Obi was put down as representative of Igbo triumphalism! It went all the way back to the politics of playing the Yoruba against the Igbo.
I marvelled at the spectre of respected scholars who taught us on how tribalism is the bane of Nigerian politics becoming the standard bearers of the very ill they professed against. It was the perfect opportunity to breach the to- your- tents-o-Israel barrier that had kept Nigeria down for so long. Love your neighbour as you love yourself, thus sayeth the Lord. And it was reckoned as one of the most important commandments.
“The two great commandments, as found in Matthew 22:36-40, are to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart” and “love thy neighbour as thyself.” The Lord did not qualify the commandment as applicable only to those you like. It is a challenge to our individual and collective morality and test of commitment to principles, to stand by a principle when it is not convenient to do so. The more cynical of them rationalised their position with the logic that if Nigeria is fated to ruin and damnation, it makes sense to have your son at the commanding heights!
As you might have rightly guessed, the reference to Rawlings in the caption is a metaphor for a near revolutionary take over of government. To a considerable extent, the inability of Tinubu to stare down the challenges and problems of Nigeria boils down to not wanting to commit class suicide. If he really wants to commit to doing his job well, he has two options.
One is to go for a constitutional review towards the end of securing the restoration of federalism. The other is to lead by the power of example. The latter point is not as trite as it sounds. In the affairs of men, it is inevitable for society to experience crisis and tribulation. So by itself, the bad spell Nigeria is going through is neither new nor unprecedented. What matters most is the demonstration of enlightened self-interest, the capacity of the ruling elite to mobilise the citizenry by the power of personal example and discipline.
Within the context of Nigeria, It may sound utopian, but think of a shirtless Rawlings driving a bulldozer. If you have your leaders miraculously borrow a leaf from this playbook, the masses will forget they have not eaten a piece of meat for weeks.
I do not need to go into the sordid details but the statement of intent indicated in the budget presented by the president a few months back is a contraindication of leadership by example and a mockery of the Nigerian masses. It is a budget of how not to mobilise the people behind your leadership. It is not a budget of how to exhort your people to think of what they can do for their country and not what their country can do for them.
As Nigeria’s cup of iniquity overflows with no discernable silver lining in the dark horizon, my mind has been waxing subjective and unorthodox dimensions. In my last outing, I wrote of making atonement for the sin of our forefathers participation and connivance in the slave trade as a spiritual panacea for what increasingly appears to be a digging deeper into the hole of mass immiseration and underdevelopment. I got this inspiration from the most accomplished American president, Abraham Lincoln. He believed that the American civil war over the institution of slavery was punishment and atonement for the role of America in the transatlantic slave trade.
As I contemplate the ratcheting up of public service corruption in Nigeria today to the level of unimaginable perversion and sickness, my mind wandered to how Shehu Yar’Adua came to terms with the dilemma. I doubt if decent society has any lessons to learn from the peculiarity and oddity but it is story worthy of being told. It is a story of how effective he was in securing his political goals and objectives. It was as cynical as it was effective. If the former number two man in the military government of Obasanjo, was sending a political subordinate on an errand, he would inquire about the cost implication of the task. Having been apprised of the financial implication, say ten million Naira, he would give the money as requested. He would then top up the money with another ten million, so the fellow would have less incentive to fignal with the original ten million. And it worked!
In theory and practice, I do not know how to substantiate this primitive formula but ranged against what presently obtains, it appears to me a good bargain (if we can get ten billion naira value for a contract awarded for twenty billion).
It is six months now since Isa Yuguda has made his earth shaking revelation. The response of the President was to cast a vote of confidence in the man at the centre of the worst scandal in Nigeria and reappoint him as the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. Neither has he deemed it worthwhile to invite the remorseful friend of Yuguda to come and tell all he knows as a participant-observer who has become tired of making billions at the expense of the Nigerian public
If I were to choose between the governed and its government, I will choose the latter. This is because it has been established that the former are fortune hunters who in a world of ‘survival of the fittest’, seize every available opportunity to inflict hardship on their fellow compatriots while the latter is saddled with the onerous task of keeping man who is often insane under control. Nothing brings this home more vividly than the ongoing war of attrition being waged not just by the political and economic elite, but by ordinary Nigerians against Nigerians.
We have all become vultures feeding on the blood of the most vulnerable. From fuel subsidy scammers, foreign exchange speculators to the Kano food distributors who short-changed farmers but locked up food items in warehouses while people starve, the egg and bread hawker on the streets of Lagos who attributed high cost of their wares to dollar exchange rate, the first instinct is always how to exploit the vulnerable.
I discovered from a nearby grocery store last Sunday that the price of a loaf of bread had gone up to N1, 300. It used to be N1, 000. Since there was no value added, I decided to drive to another store where I thought I could get ‘coconut bread’ for N1,200. There also, I discovered the price had gone up to N1,600. After wondering when we started importing flour and coconut, I was forced to buy the bread. The story was not different from my neighbour who supplies us fresh eggs from his farm at N2,400 per crate. The price has gone up to N3,500, per crate. He attributed the difference to high cost of drugs needed to treat his birds.
High cost of living has led to demonstration against government in a number of Nigerian cities. Last Thursday, it was the turn of Kano State. The city’s residents took to the streets calling on President Tinubu to come to their rescue as they could not “eat three square meals even the one square meal is now becoming difficult, as a bag of rice which used to go for N25,000 now attracts N70,000. And “Sugar which was sold for N8,000 now goes for N75,000”.
But as if to confirm we are all vultures, three days later, on Sunday February 11, the Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-corruption Commission confiscated 10 warehouses with hoarded assorted foodstuffs in Dawakin Tofa Local Government Area of the state. According to Muhyl Magaji, the commission’s chairman, “The owners have been issued notice to report to the commission preparatory to facing charges before the court of law for their illegal activities”.
Perhaps we need a journey through memory to remind ourselves how greed by a few fortune-hunters led to the removal of fuel subsidy by government and the floating of the national currency resulting in current massive depreciation and escalating cost of living.
Fuel subsidy scam started at the onset of the fourth republic when PDP stalwarts and their sibling defrauded the nation to the tune of N1.7trillion by “forging papers without importing a pint of fuel,” in the words of Audu Ogbe the then PDP national chairman. A probe by the National Assembly indicted a number of fuel marketers. (Otedola masterminded a DSS sting operation to nail Lawan Farouk for receiving bribe in order redmove his name from the list.)
Then a forensic probe of Sanusi’s (CBN Governor) allegation that $49.8b was not transferred to the federation account by NNPC confirmed $10.8billion was never reconciled. Andrew Yakubu, NNPC group MD later said $8.76B of the amount was used for subsidy. (An Abuja High Court presided over by judge Ahmed Mohammed who ordered EFCC and CBN to transfer $9.8 million and 74,000 pounds recovered from Andrew Yakubu to an account under the control of the Chief Registrar of the court in March 2022, discharged and acquitted him of all charges).
Sanusi however insisted such expenditure without appropriation was unconstitutional especially since subsidy on kerosene had been cancelled by Yar’Adua since June 15, 2009 when it was discovered that ‘if anyone was benefitting, it must be marketers and government officials. Sadly, about N500 billion was purportedly spent on kerosene subsidy in four years when the product was hardly available at filling stations or sold for N150 as against consolidated N50 controlled price. President Jonathan knew about the scam but shielded his friends in PDP, NNPC and the petroleum ministry.
Buhari similarly failed the nation. Isa Yuguda, former governor of Bauchi State and chairman of the committee on subsidy in 2009 told Channels television “I am sad to let Nigerians know what I saw. We came across situations where subsidy was claimed on pipeline that never existed…. Those that claim to pump the product and those that are in the subsidy scam, they just fill papers, invoices and they claim subsidy on it”.
Yuguda was sure Buhari as president who doubled as oil minister for eight years, was aware of the scam. Buhari lacked the political will to act. He chose instead to leave the poisoned apple for his successor by refusing to budget for fuel subsidy beyond June 2023.But no sooner President Tinubu declared during his inauguration that ‘fuel subsidy was gone’, than the vultures in the guise of marketers swung into action. Within an hour of the statement fuel disappeared from filling stations across Nigeria or sold for about N700 per litre where available.
President Tinubu also admitted inheriting ‘a rotten’ financial system. The Jim Obazee-led special investigation of Emefiele’s tenure as CBN governor was to later unearth a damning report of monumental mismanagement, fraud and arbitrariness, looting, diversion of funds, forgery and collusion against Emefiele and about 15 others. Specifically, the was an investment of billions of dollars in over 500 banks IN USA, UK and China without approval of CBN board. There was £543,482,213 in fixed deposit in one of the banks in UK.
From alleged manipulation of the forex markets by banks, First Bank, UBA, Zenith, Access and GTB reported a combined N1.38trillion in forex revaluation in the first half of 2023.
As at July 2023, there was also N26.627 trillion in ‘ways and means’, whose “management was dogged by a lot of arbitrariness with funds taken out of the national treasury without necessary authorization”.
Government’s efforts at stabilizing the exchange rate through the unification of the official and parallel market exchange rates “hailed by economists and other stakeholders” have continued to be sabotaged by “some commercial banks who hold long-term foreign exchange positions to enable them profit from the volatile movements of exchange rate”.
In a move to reduce the pressure on the naira, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has raised a 7,000-man special task force across its 14 zonal commands to clamp down on dollar racketeers.
For President Tinubu, the subsidy removal and the floating of the national currency were fait accompli. Unlike President Jonathan and Buhari, there was no escape route. There was just no money to run the government. With 97% of our resources going into servicing debts, borrowing was not an option.
To reduce the burden of Nigerians, President Tinubu must recover our monies from all indicted oil marketers. The banks and some others owe AMCON close to N6trillion. These taxpayers’ monies must be retrieved from the banks and other debtors who are today serving senators or live like princes.
And as an elected sovereign, the president must be reminded he is free to take ‘protective measures including invasion of personal privacy and assault on group culture’ to safeguard the interest of the state.
THE American World Bank and the Europe an International Monetary Fund, IMF, have in the past few weeks circled round Nigeria like vultures waiting for the prey to die.
The twin organisations have become more active and quite audacious since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came to power on May 29, 2023. They are like predators, ready for the kill.
While Nigerians are hungry and their anger is beginning to boil over to street protests due to the stifling economic policies of the Tinubu administration, these organisations are praising Tinubu to the high heavens and telling him to tighten the noose round the necks of the people.
Inflation is at 32 per cent. Fuel price increased from N238 per litre on Inauguration Day to N617-N700, and the Naira has dipped from a depth of about N700 to the dollar last year, to over N1,500. While these have resulted in devastating consequences, both institutions tell Tinubu he has not gone far enough.
In its Friday, February 9, 2024, statement, the IMF praised Tinubu for making “a strong start”. It further encouraged him to heavily tax hapless Nigerians as part of a so-called “ambitious domestic revenue mobilisation agenda”.
In the statement signed by its Spokesperson, Julie Ziegler, the IMF, like a school master to an errant pupil, told Tinubu: “Fuel and electricity subsidies are costly, do not reach those that most need government support and should be phased out completely.” In other words, it is instructing him and his team to further increase the current prices of fuel and electricity.
The IMF also encouraged Tinubu to take more foreign loans because in its view: “Nigeria’s capacity to repay the Fund is adequate under the baseline.” As an incentive, it offered trade-offs “… between urgent humanitarian needs and debt service, including to the Fund”.
These IMF assessments and instructions tally with those of the World Bank. The latter’s Lead Economist for Nigeria, Alex Sienaert, had on Wednesday, December 13, 2023, told Tinubu: “We think the price of petrol should be around N750 per litre more than the N650 per litre currently paid by Nigerians.”
So, why are the IMF and World Bank so callous and inhuman? It is simply because that is why they were set up in the first place; to exploit poor countries, degrade and destroy their production capacity, control their resources and destroy their education system so they will be incapable of thinking. For instance, while the twin agencies are insistent on increasing the price of fuel, they do not encourage the local refining of fuel by an oil producing country like Nigeria. That will go against the belief they have instilled in the African people; that our role in the world is to produce raw materials while their God-given role is to manufacture.
This is why apart from raising what Franz Fanon called ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ as elites, they also go for the jugular by destroying our education system and convincing generations of Nigerian governments that we do not need to know about our past. That was why until 2022, they banned the teaching of history in all Nigerian schools.
Surely, it is dangerous to allow slaves to be educated. But where it becomes inevitable, the bosses of the IMF and World Bank, try to ensure that the education the former slave colonies receive, are uncritical, subservient, if not useless.
Let me tell you a verifiable story. The World Bank told African countries in the 1980s that they do not need universities; what they need is technical education to run a basic economy. So, it discouraged African countries from developing education by seeking to destroy the existing university education.
It got a listening ear in the Babangida military regime that thought learning is a danger to its dictatorship. The regime which had accused academics in tertiary institutions of “teaching what they are not paid to teach”, agreed with the World Bank to stop funding university education.
So, both sides in 1987 signed an agreement for the World Bank to carry out a “restructuring exercise” of all federal universities in Nigeria using a loan facility of $120-150 million.
Under the “Eligibility Criteria for Federal Universities” the government accepted the conditionalities of the World Bank which included the freezing of recruitment of all categories of staff, mandatory staff retrenchment, increase in tuition fees for remedial and non-degree students, cancelling remedial courses in the Arts and phasing out sub-degree programmes that are being offered in other tertiary institutions.
Other World Bank conditionalities accepted by the Nigerian government, include eliminating post-graduate programmes in any department that had not yet graduated undergraduate students, phasing out any department that has been “in existence for more than ten years, but has less than 40 full time equivalent undergraduate students” and phasing out any department that has been “in existence for more than ten years, and has less than two thirds of the normally required academic staff.”
The World Bank also demanded the commercialisation of facilities which may include classrooms and lecture theatres, and that the procurement of 60 per cent equipment by the universities “shall be in accordance with standard specifications and approved manufacturers“ of the bank. To cap these, the bank demanded that it must scrutinise all the curricular of the universities and that there must be the mandatory importation of expatriate staff whose salaries are to be heavily topped.
The bank and the conniving Babangida regime agreed that Nigerian universities must meet all the conditionalities between June 1990 and June 1994. All these were published by the World Bank under its “Progress Report on the World Bank-Federal Universities Adjustment Operation.”
The country was saved the implementation of this destructive agreement due to mass protests by the media, professional associations, academics and students. In its desperate attempt to implement this World Bank gambit, the Babangida regime shut down many campuses and shot four students of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.
This slavish project was buried when in the bloody April 22, 1990 aborted coup speech, Major Gideon Orkar gave one of the reasons for the coup as: “The cowing of the university teaching and non-teaching staff by an intended massive purge, using the 150 million dollar loan as the necessitating factor.”
The twin institutions, which exercise power without responsibility, are predatory birds, and as the 1969 title of James Hardley Chase novel asserts: “The Vulture is a Patient Bird.”
The World Bank and IMF remind me of ‘The Vultures’ a poem by David Diop in which he wrote: “In those days, When civilization kicked us in the face, When holy water slapped our cringing brows, The vultures built in the shadow of their talons, The blood-stained monument of tutelage.”
Suddenly the walls collapsed! Wow! The barriers were completely removed. All these obstacles you are seeing on your way will melt away. Yes, they will. They must! It will happen suddenly, totally, swiftly. You will look for them after reading this message and you will see them no more. Nothing can block your blessings again. God has blessed you and it cannot be reversed. Yes, this is our season. Are you not seeing it? No wall, no barrier, no obstacle, no power, no conspiracy can stop us. God gave the Israelites the city of Jericho, but the walls were impregnable. It was high, broad and well-fortified. The gates were tightly shut and roundly guarded. It was simply humanly impossible to go in and conquer it. You know this story very well. God had to push down the walls himself. Look at that incredible account again, “When the people heard the sound of the rams’ horns, they shouted as loud as they could. Suddenly, the walls of Jericho collapsed, and the Israelites charged straight into the town and captured it.” Joshua 6:20. Every wall standing against you will fall today! Yes, those angels that push down the walls of Jericho are still around.
Maybe, we will go back a bit to get the background of this display of this rare phenomenal divine power. God miraculously took the Israelites across the muddy River Jordan. The records had it that immediately the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant stepped into the river, it parted. Yes, the God that divided the Red Sea will also divide the Jordan. He is always ready to repeat what he has done for us in the past. God of yesterday is also the God of today and tomorrow. He does not change. He will do everything necessary to confirm his words and keep his promises. He had already given Israel the Promised Land by oath and the detailed boundaries hundreds of years ago and will not allow any obstacle to stand on their way. Listen, no barrier can stop the plan and promises of God for your life. He said that forever his word is settled in heaven (and on earth). God’s program for your life is settled forever. It cannot be changed, hindered or truncated by any circumstance, man or devil. But you must also play your role very well and on time. What did Israel do to attract the divine fulfillment and possession? Listen very carefully.
Immediately they crossed the River Jordan, the people were circumcised and they also celebrated the Passover. These two events, sacrifices and dedication automatically activated their possession and victory. They were necessary if they must take over the Promised Land and conquer their enemies. And they were commanded by God himself. You can not totally possess your possessions or be completely victorious if you have not reestablished and reactivated the divine covenants over your life. I wish you have my book / audiobook – Power of Sacrifice by Gabriel Agbo. Most people miss this point and they rise and fall freely. Your level of obedience and dedication will always determine the depth and height of divine commitment to you. Israel will possess their possession but they must first go through the reactivation of their dedication to God. And immediately they did it, God said that he has rolled away the shame of their slavery in Egypt. My God! How deep is your dedication to him? How strong is your obedience?? Tell me. This may be why you are still finding it difficult to fully locate, possess and stay in his blessings. We will continue. Share this message with others. God bless you!
[OPINION] Lawyers Are Not Traders, The Legal Practitioners Act Is The Only Authority That Allows Practice of Law In Nigeria - OluKayode Ajulo, SAN
AdminThe purported signing of the Enhanced Trade Investment Partnership (ETIP) Agreement between the Nigerian and United Kingdom governments has garnered significant media attention. This agreement aims to foster collaboration in various sectors, including finance, trade barriers, healthcare, investment, customs and trade facilitation, agriculture, intellectual property, creative industry, and legal services. Speculations have arisen regarding provisions that may permit UK lawyers to engage in legal practice within Nigeria.
The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), has strongly criticized the provision allowing UK lawyers to practice in Nigeria, following the announcement of the agreement by the Minister of Industry, Trade, and Investment. While the Minister has maintained that no such provision exists in the agreement, it is essential that we examined the legality of this alleged provision within the framework of the Nigerian law.
It is important to note that the legal profession in Nigeria is regulated by statutes and subject to specific regulations. Sections 8(1) and (2) of the Legal Practitioners Act Cap L11, LFN, 2004 establish that a "legal practitioner" has the right to represent clients in all Nigerian courts, contingent upon the payment of annual practicing fees. However, certain enactments may restrict the right of representation in specific courts.
Section 24 of the same Act defines a "legal practitioner" as an individual entitled to practice as a barrister or both as a barrister and solicitor, either generally or for specific purposes. The Act clarifies that an individual can practice as a barrister and solicitor only if their name is listed in the roll. Inclusion in the roll requires that a person, whether Nigerian or foreign, be called to the Bar in accordance with section 4 of the Act and provides the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Nigeria with a certificate of their call to the Bar as mandated by section 7(1)(a) and (b) of the Act.
In the case of Tijani v. F.B.N. Plc (2014) 1 NWLR (Pt. 1387) 57, it was held that :
"Section 24 of the Legal Practitioners Act defines a legal practitioner as a person entitled in accordance with the provisions of the Act to practice as a barrister or as a barrister and solicitor……….” (P.74, paras. F-G)
Also in the case of Oketade v. Adewumi (2010) 8 NWLR (Pt. 1195) 63, it was held that:
"By the provisions of the Legal Practitioners Act, a person is entitled to practice as a barrister and solicitor if, and only if, his name is on the roll. And "legal practitioner" means a person entitled in accordance with the provisions of the Act to practice as a barrister or as a barrister and solicitor…………By section 2(1) of the Act, the only person in the legal profession wearing his professional name to practice law in Nigeria is a legal practitioner and the definition of a legal practitioner in section 24 of the Act does not include a firm”.
Furthermore, in the case of F.B.N. Plc v. Maiwada (2013) 6 NWLR (Pt. 1348) 444,
"By virtue of section 24 of the legal practitioners Act, Cap. L11, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, "legal practitioner" means a person entitled in accordance with the provisions of the Act to practice as a barrister or as a barrister and solicitor…..Only legal practitioners, human beings called to the bar, can practice by signing documents.” (Pp. 482-483, paras. G-A; 506-507, paras. H-C; 532, paras. E-F)
Section 4(1) of the Act stipulates that a person may be called to the Bar if they are a Nigerian citizen and meet the necessary character and qualification requirements. Similarly, non-Nigerian citizens can also be called to the Bar if they fulfill the requisite qualifications and character criteria. Furthermore, the Act allows for the possibility of practicing as a barrister authorized by warrant, subject to specific conditions.
Under section 2(2)(a) and (b) of the Act, the Chief Justice of Nigeria may grant authorization to practice as a barrister in specific proceedings to individuals qualified to practice as advocates in countries with legal systems similar to Nigeria. However, such authorization is contingent upon the payment of a fee specified in the warrant, and legal practitioners whose names are listed in the roll take precedence over those authorized by warrant.
Based on the aforementioned provisions, it is evident that the practice of law in Nigeria by foreigners cannot solely be facilitated through agreements or memoranda of understanding (MoUs) signed by the Nigerian and UK governments or any other foreign nation. The rigorous processes outlined in the Legal Practitioners Act must be diligently followed, and unqualified individuals cannot gain admission to the Bar through unofficial channels unless the legislation is amended. Any attempt to contravene these regulations will be strongly opposed.
Overall, the essence of this discussion, pertains to certain personalities being more devout in their adherence to Christian principles than the Pope himself. This observation arises from the fact that the Attorney General of the Federation, who holds the highest position in the country's Bar Council and the Chief Legal Officer has not made any statement or press release regarding the signing of the Agreement. Instead, we have only heard voices such as the Minister of Industry, Trade, and Investment championing and expressing strong support for the Agreement, seemingly focused on the economic benefits while disregarding the potential negative impact on the legal profession in Nigeria.
However, it remains clear and indisputable: lawyers are professionals, not traders. Our profession has its own boundaries and should not be interfered with by unqualified outsiders for any reason, as they may lack the foresight to comprehend the risks this Agreement poses to the legal profession and the erosion of its professional standards.
John J. Parker, a former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeal for the Fourth Circuit in his address to the student body of the University of South Carolina Law School, Columbia, eloquently distinguishes the aforementioned subject matter. He argues that "the practice of law is a profession - not a business or a skilled trade. While both involve elements of profit and service, the fundamental difference lies in this: the primary objective of a trade or business is personal gain, whereas the primary objective of a profession is public service."
One finds this proposition rather puzzling, as it is not difficult to imagine a future where, through a simple decision from a trade minister or any other government official, a non-Nigerian citizen could potentially gain the ability to run for a position in our National Assembly, the Office of the President, or even become a Governor of a State, all through a memorandum of understanding (MOU).
Conclusively, as a legal practitioner with a proven track record in Nigeria, I firmly believe that our noble profession consists of honourable men and women who should not be subjected to interference based on trivial matters, unrealistic or theoretical approaches, as it is already built upon solid foundations that remain unblemished to this day.
Herbert Wigwe everyone knew, but not many knew the backbone behind his immense success. I called you Chiz Baby. Queenette Allagoa called you Chiz Burger. Most called you Doreen. I remember when you came back from the United States of America 31 years ago. You were just 26 years old, armed with your university degrees and ready to start life afresh back home. We immediately bonded over our unique family dynamics and love of trading. I remember marvelling at your capacity to switch back and forth from an American accent to a Nigerian English accent with ease. I was immediately drawn to your infectious laughter which could be heard from a mile away and your tremendous industry. You were born into privilege, but you were never afraid of hard work.
Your dad, the late Chief Cyprian Chukwuemeka Nwuba (Uncle CY) was a chartered accountant and had worked for Shell Petroleum Development Company where he rose to the position of African Financial Controller, before transferring to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation where he was the Group General Manager, Finance and Accounts, before his retirement. Your mum was a senior public servant who worked in the education ministry before she took you, Alex and Pauline to live with her in the United States.
Despite spending your impressionable years growing up in the U.S., we would head out daily to Oke-Arin market in the heart of Lagos Island where we tried our hands at wholesale trading. I would later drop my forays into Oke-Arin market and give up the shop that my parents had paid for me as I forged a new career in journalism. But you never did, frugally saving and turning around every penny that you made until you became an immensely wealthy and successful businesswoman with interests in construction, real estate and the hospitality sectors.
I remember the beginnings of your relationship with Queenette, which was to blossom into a lifelong unbreakable sisterhood. Today, she’s inconsolable without you, but remains thankful to God for your life. I remember your first meeting with Herbert, then a young, freshly minted General Manager at Guaranty Trust Bank, and the twinkle in your eye after introductions had been made. It was at Queenette’s house where we used to hangout as young women, laughing our heads off and without a care in the world. I remember your wedding to Herbert and the reception at the Muson Centre. I remember Chizi’s birth a few months after and Tochi’s four years later. We would still hangout at Queenette’s house where Herbert would often turn up after work to pick you up, but only after he had helped himself to a hearty meal of edi kai kong, afang or fisherman’s soup that were regular staples at Queenette’s abode.
I recall when you ventured into the construction industry. Just a few of us knew that Craneburg Construction Company was your baby. You would regale me with stories about size of the contracts your company was taking on and I was amazed at your trips all over the country, executing and monitoring road, infrastructure and building projects. You would sometimes call me from Bauchi or Sokoto State and I would ask, “Chiz Baby, what on earth are you doing there?” You would always respond with your trademark laughter, “Ijeoma, I am working.”
It was your construction firm that built the highways, bridges and toll plaza from Lekki Phase II all the way to and within Epe town, making the journey to Ijebu Ode in Ogun State less arduous. It was your construction firm that built roads and flyovers in Ondo, Imo, Adamawa, Ogun, Bauchi, Gombe and other states. You took on airport construction projects, oil and gas, and marine projects like fish to water. Today, Craneburg is one of Nigeria’s largest, diversified construction groups that employs 7,000 people working across all major sectors of the economy. When you were not travelling around Nigeria, you would take off to China or Hong Kong to import all sort of things that you sold. No enterprise was too big or too small for you to handle. You revelled in it like very few people could.
I once asked you how Herbert felt about your far-flung business interests. You responded, saying that your relationship with him was built on trust and he was a confident man who was very supportive of your business. Herbert was later to confirm this over ten years ago when he proudly confessed to a mutual friend that you were probably wealthier than he was. More recently, in an interview on Arise News Channel, when the interviewer Ojy Okpe asked Herbert what his most prized possession was, without skipping a beat, he said you were his most prized asset and his everything. This was how much you meant to him. You were anything but a trophy wife. You were an equal partner in a blessed union made on earth and now in heaven.
As I watched your relationship with Herbert thrive, I was later to understand that it was your independence, industry and mutual love of children that solidified your bond as a loving couple. Just like Herbert, you loved children dearly and I watched your family grow with the addition of David, Hannah and Okachi. I remember your love and dedication to your children. Despite your business interests, you always took off for several months at a time watching over Chizi and Tochi in the UK when they were at boarding school and university. When David and Hannah were old enough to go to boarding school, you did likewise. I remember when you told me that Herbert found it difficult to let go of David and how he cried like a baby when he was dropped off at prep school in the UK. You and Herbert absolutely adored children and were planning to have more because they brought both of you tremendous joy.
Barely a week before you embarked on your final journey to the United States, I called you to introduce you to a friend of mine who wanted to build two multi-storey buildings in Lagos. Irrespective of the numerous projects that you were already handling, you were very grateful and excited at the new prospect and within 24 hours had met with her and her team at their office in Ikoyi. My friend is very sad at your passing but has promised to go ahead with Craneburg Construction as a mark of remembrance of your dynamism and industry.
Chiz Baby, what will we do without you? You were a beautiful woman, not just in looks but in spirit. You never, ever flaunted your success. You were always God-fearing, humble, playful, shrewd and intelligent. Last Saturday evening when I heard that you, Herbert and Chizi had been declared missing after the helicopter crash, I kept calling Alex your brother who was extraordinarily brave that night. We held on to whatever glimmer of hope that we had that all three of you had walked away from the crash and would be found. But as the night wore on and we learnt that you were no more, I completely lost sleep.
All I could do was to go down memory lane of our early beginnings as I showed you the lay of the land and introduced you to the few friends that I had. I thought of our minor scrapes as young women and our ability to move past them. I thought of your interactions with my mum and dad whenever you came round to visit. I thought of your interactions with your parents and siblings Alex, Pauline, Tolly, the late Anana and Chinny and how much you loved them. I thought of Tochi, Hanana, David and little Okachi who you, Herbert and Chizi have left behind. It was like watching life through a kaleidoscope.
Chiz Baby, right now we can only console ourselves in the knowledge that you and your dearest Herbert left behind separate, yet intertwined sustainable legacies through which we shall remember both of you for eternity. Thankfully, Tochi is your daughter through and through. She is almost the same age today as you were when you returned to Nigeria over three decades ago. We believe in her capacity, with the support and guidance of her numerous uncles and aunties, to look after and bring up her younger siblings in a manner that would make you, Chizi and Herbert proud. Despite the heartbreak, they will grow, prosper, and carry on the baton of the Wigwe family. They will be fine!
Sleep on my dearest Chiz Baby. Sleep on my dearest Herbie. Sleep on my dearest Chizi. And may your souls rest in eternal peace.
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What you wish today may not be so appealing tomorrow, the world is evolving, and in its evolution dynamics change. Strategies are dynamic and ought to evolve according to circumstances. Time is an element you have little or no control over, but never fail to seize the moment. What is most important is you have a career plan, no matter how humble or lofty, it is your plan and like the lens of a glass, keep your thoughts and aspirations focused therein, sooner or later, you will generate enough heat and light a fire.
As in a lens, there is no time frame when the heat would generate a fire, the clouds could cover the sun momentarily but eventually it will pass. The winds could cool the heat or rains may fall but all these shall come to pass in time, let not your desire to accomplish wane. Nurture strength of spirit, believe and focus on yourself, you have no time to indulge on others, be thankful for God’s Grace upon your life, He that brought you thus far, shall never forsake you. What we term as misfortunes and setbacks only strengthen you, for what does not eliminate strengthens.
Fear is your greatest enemy, for he who dares wins. Be bold and daring, you are a stakeholder in this country, this continent and the world, and not a tenant. Globalize your aspirations where possible, but also be content with your humble strides, what is important is do positive things no matter how modest it may seem. Attitude in numerology is 100, imbibe the CAN DO SPIRIT, if I can think it, I can do it, or how else could the Wright brothers have developed the aeroplane? Consider where the world would be today without the daringness of those two brothers. Do not for once think there is someone out there looking out for you, or bail you out in your times of need, you are now O. Y.O, on your own.
Unfortunately, governance and caring do not correlate in Nigeria. Aspire for what will bring the greatest good to yourself and society. For instance, if theoretically, each one of you impacts positively the life of ten persons and they in turn impact a further 10 and thereon, in six short years we should impact the lives of millions of people.
That may sound absurdly impossible and impracticable, only because we have not made giving the creed in our lives. In tough times, develop the resilience to overcome, nobody said it would be easy, but never lose focus, always look at the sunnier side to life.
For me, when the times are rough and tough, I take to music. I learnt how to play the saxophone in a tough period in my life, do what you enjoy, to keep you in such moments sane, never allow disquietude overcome you, that is a sign of despair and the beginning of failure. Remember, quitters never win, and winners never quit. Personally, I’ll will respect you if you aim high and miss, rather than aim low and hit. Be of self discipline, for if you are unable to discipline self, which is self conquest, how could you conquer the world?
Ego is a diabolical weakness not a strength, it’s size corresponds to your weakness. Samson was a conqueror until he lost self discipline. Be punctual in your affairs, it’s better to be an hour early, than a minute late. Rather be the hammer than the nail, but never fail to show compassion in all your affairs for you are not just a human being, but a humane being. Surround yourself with people you can learn from, not those that entertain you for they are of transient value. Study and understand your failures, it’s telling you something. Pace yourself, we all have our race to run. It’s not necessarily for the swiftest.
Remember Kodak, they invented the digital camera, but failed to understand the digital revolution. Always improve and keep abreast of advancements, it’s an ever changing world. Never stand still, time is the greatest and scarcest resource in the world, but, remember as Martin Luther King once said ,“if you can’t fly, run, if you can’t run, walk and if you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means keep on moving”. Your watch phrase should be “good better best, won’t you ever rest, nay, until my good is better and my better is best. Let the DESIDERATA by Max Erhmann be you creed to life, it goes this way; “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful and strive to be happy. In all frankly, self first, for if you are of no use to yourself, you can hardly be of value to others.
So set forth, your time is now.
Now let’s talk about Nigeria, Africa and indeed the world. Our population, resource base, positive aggression make it imperative that we play a dominant role in the black world or at least in Africa. That we claim we are the largest economy in Africa is akin to dwarfs arguing who is taller. The size of our economy which is hardly $500b is equivalent of perhaps two persons in the United States, several companies in the United States are far larger in worth than all of Nigeria, we need to contextualize ourselves vis a vis the rest of the world.
We still remain one of, if not the poorest nation on earth per capital. Ours is the typical “in the abundance of water the fool is thirsty.”
But there’s a new sound bite in the air. A trillion dollar economy in the next couple of years. But how do we achieve this and how does it better and prosper each or majority of us? What are our strengths that we can build upon that makes us as a collective, participants and beneficiaries in the overall upbuilding of our country. But a nation with the right planks can help catalyze this. And the proposition is based on four anchors, SKILLS, HEALTH, INFRASTRUCTURE AND TECHNOLOGY. Our world today is skill-based. Automation has over the past 200 years been replacing labor and over the last 50 years this pace has accelerated. It is automation that saw to the irrelevance of slave labor in the west and not morality and is currently leading to higher than required production levels that require unsophisticated markets for dumping. That explains the selling of good quality cheap products to the less developed, making it unattractive for this world to become productive entities in themselves. To bridge the productivity gap, we urgently need to bridge the skills divide. I’m not referring here to education per se; we have a sizable number of those. I am referring to a system of education that impacts on an individual a unique ability that is contributory to the overall beneficial growth of society, in other words, functional education as distinct from communicative education as we now have, that enables us read and write. The Germans have by their educational system articulated this perhaps more than any other country on earth with its high content of vocational studies and practical exposure during training, allowing and indeed encouraging innovation. It’s hardly conceivable that an automobile engineering student would not have dismantled and rebuilt an entire car by the date of graduation and his final year thesis being on how to improve some system within the vehicle. And to aid this further, German manufacturing businesses are an integral part of the educational system. The Chinese have recently adopted a similar system. Our inability to develop and implement a functional healthcare delivery system, has led nationally to both physical and economic hemorrhage. Physically, our productivity is one of the lowest on the continent and indeed the world. Malaria as a single scourge accounts for no less than 15 to 20% decrease in workers output, not to talk about poor nutrition and its impact on physical and mental health development. Besides, given the amount spent as international funds transfer around the world on healthcare and the attendant high cost for healthcare locally, it is nightmarish to fall sick in Nigeria. Stating broadly, until functional medicare is available within five minutes walk from our places of residence, as do churches , universal healthcare delivery will remain a mirage.
One of the great mitigations to achieving our full potential as a people and a nation is the absence of infrastructure. The paralyzing road, rail, air and seaport infrastructure mitigates the rapid movements of good, and persons.
The poor communication system does not help either; this mitigates the provision of services. To date our telecommunications system is a cellular one, which is a secondary means of communication with very limited data ability as against trunk lines with fiber optics with much larger data band width. What we call land lines, are indeed primary communication systems.
I need not talk about power or energy infrastructure. Ironically, Nigeria remains the single largest petroleum gas pollutant in the world. Flaring approximately 25 billion cubic ft. of gas daily, an equivalent of 25 million liters of diesel, an amount that could fuel enough turbines to power the entire continent, is simply inexplicable. Imagine if we piped the gas to every part of the country and made subsidized gas our stimulant to industry in our quest to achieving global industrial competitiveness. After all we flare the gas.
You have to use what you have to get what you want. And embracing technology would be the catalyst. Technology and particularly information technology is the growth trajectory for the next 50 years.
As sophisticated as it may seem already, it is still in its infancy and the only only way to bridge the development divide between the northern and southern hemispheres is to expedite our knowledge in this sector. It is indeed more crucial in today’s world than the study of English as a language and matched only by mathematics. (Truth is to study IT one must have a reasonable command of the language of instruction).
The usual question when I so postulate on what ought to be done is this: where is the money coming from? My answer is simple, several sources of financial engineering could bring this about, however, one obvious low hanging fruit, is amortizing our oil resources. With an estimated 40 billion barrels there must be a way to leverage on the short term this resource, indeed, it’s not so much the resource but rather our credibility as a nation that is hampering our collective access to capital. The true challenge is not finding the money, but its maximum, prudent utilization and this has thus far eluded us. Recent budgetary allocations betray succinctly this statements.
Is it easy? NO, and it should not be. The bumps and hiccups along the way only help to sift the boys from the men, the girls from the ladies or better put, determine the entrepreneurs from the flock, thereby improving and putting focus on the productive gene pool. But this would require tremendous discipline, fastidiousness and for us an uncommon drive. But bear in mind, HE WHO DARES WINS!!!
The foregoing are excerpts from a pre-convocation lecture given recently by Mr. Duke at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria
Old students’ associations can be a bridge between the past and future. In several countries, academic institutions owe their survival and development to the vibrancy of these alumni bodies. But though they engender a spirit of unity necessary to surmounting difficult challenges facing our country today, we are yet to sufficiently tap into this critical opportunity. Or at least so I thought. Until January last year when I received a call from former Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Director General, Mr Sola Omole. He made what I considered a rather unusual request on behalf of Fiditi Grammar School Old Students Association (FIGSOSA) of which he is a member. To mark its 70th anniversary this February (then 13 months away), FIGSOSA wanted a commitment from me that I would write a column about the standards of education in Nigeria over the past 50 years.
Five months later, 22 May 2023 to be specific, I received a letter jointly signed by FIGSOSA national president, Professor Adesola Ogunniyi, chairman of the anniversary’s organising committee, Mr Oladapo Lagunju and Omole who chairs the publicity committee. After highlighting the theme for the 70th anniversary, ‘Sustainable Youth Development—Roles for Old Students Associations’, they formally made their request. “Our desire is that using the celebration and our theme as background, you review our education standards and perhaps proffer ways of improvement,” their letter stated. “We want this to be our contribution to the all-important debate about the place of education in Nigeria. We request that this suggested piece appear in your backpage VERDICT column on any day between the 12th and 16th of February 2024.”
I thank the leadership of FIGSOSA for their concern about education in Nigeria. I feel very humbled that they consider my intervention on the issue of any consequence. Honestly, I have found it difficult to process the amusing request. Whoever came up with the idea obviously has more faith in this column than I do. But for whatever it is worth, considering the reminder I got last week, I intend to keep my promise. First, let me say a few words about Fiditi Grammar School in Oyo State.
Founded in 1954, the late Mr Christopher Okigbo (who would become a globally renowned poet) was a teacher and later vice principal and sports master at the school. The duo of Okigbo and then principal, Chief Alex Ajayi, according to Omole, recruited Teslim ‘Thunder’ Balogun as coach for the football team that won many laurels. Other prominent products of Fiditi Grammar School include Dr. Bode Olajumoke, a prominent lawyer, businessman and former Senator who was for 20 years FIGSOSA National President, Professor Adejare Agboola of Applied Botany Department at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Professor Olufemi Durosaro of the University of Ilorin, and Professor Samson Omotosho of the University of Phoenix, Arizona, United States. Major General Kola Ogunkoya (rtd), a one-time NYSC Director General, Naval Admiral Segun Egbedina (rtd), who commanded NNS Aradu, AIG Lanre Bankole (rtd) as well as Professors Bridget Sokan, Adekunle Akinyemi and Ogunniyi, (current FIGSOSA president and consultant Neurologist), are products of the school. Of course, there are hundreds of other prominent ex-this, ex-that who have also passed through the school. Omole himself was for several years the General Manager, Public Affairs, Chevron Nigeria Limited, before returning to NTA as DG.
Now to the issue at hand. While FIGSOSA asks that I review education in Nigeria in the past five decades, I believe it would be more productive to share my thoughts on their 70th anniversary theme because it centres on the role that alumni associations can play in the development of education in our country. Indeed, the immense benefits of alumni networks have led to the establishment of global charity organisations including ‘Future First Global’, based on the findings of a research study that covered countries in Asia, East and West Africa, Latin America, North America, Europe and the Middle East.
The study, sponsored by the Open Society Foundations, reveals how former students can engage with their alma mater as role models, mentors, work experience providers and trusted advisers. Former students, according to Future First Global, UK, are an incredible and largely untapped resource that every school has. “We think there are over 500 million adults globally who would give back to their old schools if they were asked, and yet we estimate only 2% are currently doing so.” Not surprisingly, while only two percent of adults polled had engaged with or gone back to their former high (secondary) schools, 52 percent of those asked said they would be willing to do so. Therefore, we have a pool of resources that can be harnessed for the development of our education sector, especially in Nigeria. And I am delighted that FIGSOSA is leading the way.
From primary school which lays the foundation, to university which prepares students for an increasingly competitive job market, all levels of education are important. But perhaps the most important is High (secondary school) that stands in the middle. In an ideal scenario, this level of education covers a broader scope of subjects with just enough depth to prepare and equip an individual with the requisite knowledge for gainful occupation and economic self-sufficiency. But this critical sector, which provides the foundation for building productive and conscientious members of society, is seriously challenged in Nigeria. The fact that many of our university students are ill prepared for rigorous intellectual engagement and the graduates are unfit for the job market reflects the quality of the foundation they received in secondary schools.
This is a systemic problem. While most of us are products of public schools, we have long opted to send our children to private schools (and I also plead guilty here), without caring about those who cannot afford the huge costs. Of course, we all know what a succession of governments, at all levels, have done to public schools in Nigeria. Yet, the point we must underscore is that public schools have significant social missions they fulfill in every society. The most critical is that they guarantee equal opportunity for all children regardless of their parents’ social status. In the process, they help to unify a diverse country.
To secure the future, we must defend the integrity of our learning spaces. And beyond what government should do, meaningful interventions from alumni associations can make a world of difference. If anybody has a doubt about the crisis of education in Nigeria, the sight of fully suited-up young men and formally dressed young women (most of them graduates) distributing leaflets for housing estates should drive the point home. That some supposedly educated people believe they can build their life on, or find fulfilment in, distributing leaflets on major roads and street corners is telling. In recent years, my wife has been championing a free education scheme for indigent children in Abuja through her Not Forgotten Initiative (NFI) School. With that, I have seen the abysmal level to which our public schools have degenerated. And we cannot all just fold our hands.
Let me identify four areas in which our public secondary schools are deficient and where alumni associations can help to redress the situation. First is in the provision of adequate infrastructure and ensuring a safe and conducive learning environment. The second is in providing essential tools that include well equipped laboratories with required technical equipment, well stocked libraries, and access to computers. In many of our public schools today, students access basic tools through their imagination, which makes it difficult to comprehend most of the theories they are being taught.
It is noteworthy that to mark its 70th anniversary, according to Omole, Governor Seyi Makinde has been invited to open a skills acquisition center just completed for Fiditi Grammar School by FIGSOSA. “The centre will train school leavers, even those without a formal education, in various trades such as information technology and allied trades, carpentry, fashion design, catering and culinary skills among others,” Omole said of a project that should be emulated by other stakeholders in the alumni space if we must reposition the education sector in Nigeria. “This initiative is being undertaken in the belief that only those who can create and sustain personal entrepreneurial initiatives will survive in the unfolding global economy.”
However, as critical as conducive learning environment and infrastructure are, teachers are unarguably the most important element in formal education. Unfortunately, many of the teachers allowed into the system lack sufficient qualifications and the ones who possess these qualifications have not been cherished by the government. Tied to this is the issue of remuneration which remains abysmally poor. Aspiring to be a teacher was once a prestigious calling but the majority who enter the profession today are those who have no other means of livelihood. We need to change that paradigm.
Finally, there must also be an increase in funding. Nigeria’s yearly budgetary allocation to education pales in comparison to many other African countries and falls short of UNESCO’s recommended standard of at least 26 percent. Meanwhile, even the meagre budgetary allocation is mostly spent on recurrent expenditures, leaving little money for infrastructure upgrades and capacity building. If we are serious, we can use alumni associations to revitalize education in Nigeria. But the intervention must be structured.
In November 2019, a former Chairperson of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), and then President of the Queen’s College Old Girls Association, Mrs Ifueko Omoigui Okauru posed a question at a townhall session on improving transparency and accountability in basic education in Nigeria. The question has not been answered: Can Nigerian authorities, as a pilot scheme, allow alumni associations to run some of our public schools for a specific period to see if it could help halt the decline of the educational sector in the country?
Omoigui-Okauru, who revealed that she met then education minister, Mallam Adamu Adamu to discuss wide-ranging issues on public school management in Nigeria said “the Queens College Old Girls Association has made a proposal to the federal government to take over the administration and management of the school for a pilot period of three years. The school can be permanently turned over to the association if government is satisfied with the management after the pilot period.”
I don’t know what happened to the proposal, but to revamp public schools in Nigeria, this is an idea worth considering. In a country where the government will continue to find it increasingly difficult to meet up with its responsibilities, we must encourage alumni associations to play a greater role. We need them to be more involved with the boards of school management and they can offer useful suggestions on the relevance of school curriculums to the demands of the professional workplace.
There will be a day to look at the private schools because they are also part of the problem. Last year, the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) alleged that many private school owners in the country employ quacks as teachers. Even though the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS) rejected the allegation, it is a serious issue we also need to examine. Just as we need to look at the role that Parents Teachers Association (PTAs) can play and the state of teacher’s training institutes across the country.
Education remains the bedrock of national growth and development, and we all have a part to play by giving back to the institutions from where we studied. If we do nothing, the rot will continue and haunt us all in future. FIGSOSA is therefore reminding us that Alumni associations are critical stakeholders in the process of reforming the education sector. And to the extent that efforts to bring about sustainable change in the education system in Nigeria is a collective task, alumni associations must be allowed to play a critical role.
Once again, I wish FIGSOSA and all its members a happy 70th anniversary.
Goodnight, Herbert Wigwe
Having followed what turned out to be the most entertaining and unpredictable African Cup of Nations (AfCON) football tournament, with its twists and turns, I had a desire to watch the final live. I was therefore excited last Saturday afternoon when, in graciously granting my request, Vice President Kashim Shettima said I should be at the Abuja airport presidential wing by 1PM next day (Sunday) to join his delegation to Abidjan for the match. Unfortunately, a few hours later, news broke of the death in the United States of Herbert Wigwe along with his wife, son and others. I had to send a message to the vice president that regrettably, I would no longer travel because of the tragedy.
I considered the late Herbert a friend, but it is with his parents that I have a special relationship. When in June 2022 they marked their 60th wedding anniversary, I wrote about how, since 2001, Pastor Shyngle Wigwe, a former NTA Director General, had taken me almost like a son—and always called to pray for me and my family. I cannot begin to imagine what the Wigwes have been going through since Saturday. The overwhelming suffering and intense emotional pain that parents experience after such tragic bereavement, according to ‘Compassionate Friends’, a global NGO committed to supporting grieving families, “shatters core beliefs and assumptions about the world and the expectations about how life should unfold.” My thoughts and prayers are with the Wigwes at this most difficult period.
In her column, ‘Telling Chizoba’s Story’ yesterday, Ijeoma Nwogwugwu provided rare insights into the life and times of Mrs Wigwe who died alongside her husband in the helicopter crash. It is a moving and fitting tribute to a remarkable woman. Meanwhile, it was on a personal project, Wigwe University, that Herbert had lately invested considerable time, energy and resources. When we last spoke in December, he promised to take me to see the campus located in his ancestral Ikwerre land in Rivers State. That will no longer happen. I hope there are people who will help sustain that legacy.
For the WhatsApp philosophers who use the death of successful people to write and circulate drivel on the pretext that ‘life is fleeting’, ‘all is vanity’ etc., they must understand that Herbert has run his own race and is now with his maker. “Each man’s death diminishes me,” John Donne wrote in his immortal poem. “For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” Herbert perfectly understood that nobody is guaranteed tomorrow. In a post on his official X (formerly Twitter) handle on 19th January, he left a fitting epitaph for the rest of us. “Today and always, let us remember that life is a precious gift – a chance to breathe, feel, love, experience and connect,” he wrote in a prescient manner common only to those who are spiritually alert. “Let’s honour this gift by living with purpose, kindness, and gratitude, making every moment count. Let us number our days.”
May God comfort his loving parents, remaining children, family members and his bosom friend cum business partner, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede.
- You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and
I was going through some old files in my closet the other day when I saw some documents and receipts that absolutely cracked me up. Among the browning, time-worn papers was the receipt from a private primary school for the payment of my first daughter’s fees.
It was a middle-class school that charged N5,000 naira per term. Attached to the fading receipt was a thank you note by the bursar. I rocked with laughter. This was in 1995 when, after nearly seven years of working, my monthly salary was around 60k or so. I will not forget how my mother reacted when she found out how much I was paying for her granddaughter’s termly fees. “Did your university tuition cost that much?”, she asked despairingly.
Of course, it did, but not by a lot. As I held that rusty receipt in my hand on that day, the shock and despair in my mother’s face about how prices had gone up and how things had changed, for the worse, flooded my mind.
Yet, within three decades of my mother showing concern, the joke was on me. By this time, it was no longer a laughing matter.
“Ilu le o…!”
I had somehow managed to find out how much my daughter was paying for my granddaughter’s school fees in a school certainly more upscale than the one she attended, but by my reckoning, unlikely to be among the A-List schools in her part of town.
What she was paying for my granddaughter’s kindergarten per term was roughly ten times my salary after seven years of working. I couldn’t help wondering what my mother would have said or done if she had lived to see the school fees of her great-granddaughter, a kid enrolled barely out of her diapers! And this was only three years ago.
Many things in the old files in my closet reminded me of how the times are changing. When I think of Victor Olaiya’s famous highlife song, “Ilu le o!” (literally meaning, Country hard!) released over 40 years ago which was supposed to have captured the misery of men and women complaining about the hard times, I wonder exactly what the moaning was about.
Nuts for the rich
A few days ago, I had a conversation with my local cashew nut seller. I had been buying cashew nuts from her since when a bottle cost N800, which was not up to four years ago. Slowly, but steadily, the price climbed to N1,000, then N1,200, then N1,500 and before you could say, “cashew,” it became N4,000 per bottle – roughly the cost of my daughter’s one-term school fee in the late 1990s.
How do you buy a bottle of nuts for N4,000? Perhaps because I drive a big car – which is a Tokunbo, by the way – the nut seller thought she had me hooked; that I should be able to afford the nut, whatever the price. Well, she was mistaken and I told her so. Of course, she pleaded that it was not her fault that it was – you guessed right – the exchange rate! Dollar or not, I won’t buy cashew nuts now priced as luxury items.
Of course, I know about the fiber, protein and healthy fats that come from cashew nuts, not to mention blood sugar control, heart health and weight loss. But at 72.5kg, and with the gift of a stature that can eat both pounded yam and mortar without them showing, why should I lose sleep over weight? Whatever cashew nut offers, especially in fiber, I will get from sweet potatoes.
But cashew nuts are not the whole story of this cost-of-living crisis. Even potatoes have doubled in price. According to a BBC report, prices in Nigeria are rising at their fastest rates ever in the last 30 years.
This was how the BBC report described it: “A standard 50kg bag of rice, which could help feed a household of between eight and 10 for about a month, now costs N77,000,” that is, about double the price last December. The prices of other staples such as beans, garri, maize and millet have also gone up, costing the average worker two months’ minimum wage for a bag.
Portion control
Portion control was a frequent point of argument in my house. It’s a problem with men, of course, but it’s worse with African women brought up to believe that the proof of spousal care is in the size of the husband’s weight, measured by the amount of food on his plate. It’s considered taboo in many places, especially in the South of Nigeria, for example, for a man’s plate of soup to have only one piece of meat or fish. Or for his dough, famously called swallow, to appear miserly.
This well-intended culture of culinary excess is captured in Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart, where the story is told of a wealthy man who gave a feast at which guests on one side of the table did not see those on the other side from morning until night when they managed to level the mountain of food set before them during the new yam festival.
If, however, Okonkwo’s guests were living in today’s Nigeria, where a sachet of water in a 50cl plastic bag costs N20, more than twice the price last year, they would be lucky to find enough water to drink after a meal of afafata, chaff of rice grain, which is now a staple in parts of Northern Nigeria.
My point about portion control is that after years of struggling to convince my wife, and often the female domestic staff, that measurements and smaller food portions, including far fewer pieces of protein in my meals don’t mean lack of care, the cost-of-living crisis is finally driving the point home!
As for other things such as the cost of petrol and other energy costs, which increased by 216 percent from N195 per litre after the removal of subsidy last May, I threatened to buy a bicycle to augment my transportation cost before a concerned staff warned me of the risk of cycling nearly 15 kilometres to work across two major highways.
There is, however, one area of adjustment, which after futilely struggling to contain without luck, I have decided to seek “divine intervention”, as we say: my BP medication. In a country where less than five percent of the population have health insurance and the rest pay out-of-pocket for treatment, persons with underlying medical conditions have been badly hit by the current inflation rate of 28.9 percent.
It’s not a laughing matter. Last year, for example, a packet of Co-Diovan 80/12.5mgs, my recommended BP management medicine, cost about N8,000. Now, it is N24,000 and still rising for the same packet which lasts 28 days.
Trouble in the world
Of course, it’s not a uniquely Nigerian problem. From New Zealand to Nepal, countries around the world have been battling with a serious cost-of-living crisis. This crisis is a combination of factors ranging from COVID-19 and the supply chain problems that followed, to the war in Ukraine and extreme climate changes across the world.
In fact, Nigeria is not listed among the 10 African countries with the highest cost of living, a list that features Senegal at the top, with others such as Cote d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Cameroon and Kenya, among others.
Just like economic problems imitate physical diseases, countries with underlying structural problems have been the worst hit. The difference from place to place, however, has been in how leaders repaired trust and mobilised resources in response.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu campaigned for his current job knowing full well there won’t be a honeymoon from day one. I’ll need to file something urgently in my closet that my granddaughter might see someday to show that my vote for him was not a mistake.
Those who bear the name Valentine dread the month of February like a plague. Besides close friends who always demand that you celebrate your name in grand style, most confront you with all manner of questions bordering on the concept that your name is supposed to embody. Thus, you are asked whether you were born on the 14th of February or whether you were a by-product of a love affair that took place in the month of February. One fact I have come to discover over the years is that people take those who bear the name of Valentine as experts in all known techniques of love, starting with its fundamentals to its metaphysics.
Despite much research, we cannot tell unequivocally the exact date the feast started, nor the route by which it entered into history. Perhaps it is connected to the life of a certain St. Valentine who was said to have suffered martyrdom in Rome as the Church hagiography would want us to believe. Perhaps, as the legend of the saint’s heroic faith says, it grew out of the love shown to prisoners by the saintly Valentine. Perhaps it has to do with the period in the year when birds of the earth look for mates. Perhaps it is another case of substitution of a pagan feast by Christian feast as a subtle way of blighting paganism at the bud. We do not know. Valentine’s Day is part of history whose beginning has been forgotten, and whose end we shall never reach.
The popularity of Valentine’s Day could be linked to the nature of the theme it celebrates – love. Writing about love, Archbishop Fulton Sheen called it “the most used, and the most misunderstood word.” The misunderstanding inherent in the nature of love often provokes people to ask questions such as: How much of what we claim as love is love indeed? Does love have different levels and spheres? Is it possible to love our neighbor as ourselves, as the Holy writ prescribes? What is love? These are the questions with which the most comprehensive theories, treatises, and analyses of love find it necessary to begin.
To the Greeks, love could be Eros, Philia, and agape. Plato’s ladder of love in the “Symposium” has different loves for its rungs, up to what we commonly call “Platonic Love”. St Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between love in the sphere of passion and love as an act of will. The former he assigns to what he calls the “concupiscible faculty” of the sensitive appetite; the latter, to the rational or “intellectual appetite”. Sometimes, people talk about metaphysical, contemplative, material, and acquisitive love, etc.
Whatever form love takes, it implies a complex psychical experience of strong attraction to, intense desire for, vivid appreciation of, a profound interest in, one's object of love. The object of love could be a fellow being, institution, cause, or even nature. It involves tender affection, sympathetic understanding, admiration, and loyalty, with reference to its object.
But apart from a few people who recognize the fact of plurality of love in their analyses, most of us, especially the youth, talk abundantly of love, commonly in the sense of amorous appetite. These are people who confess their loving the object of their love more than their own mothers. Recall the “sugar in my tea” and similar stuff. Our elders consider this form of love to be a form of “possession” or “madness”, and would frown at anyone who would propose it as a fit guide in the choice of a marriage mate. They do this, knowing that once the erotic side of love diminishes or fades away altogether, the disinterested element fades too; interest in the other’s happiness evaporates, all tender feeling is eroded, and the one desire is to get away. This is what Lucretius called “erotic befuddlement”. What Dedriot deridedly described as “the voluptuous loss of a few drops of liquid.” It is a spark thrown off by the contact or nearness of two opposite bodies.
In pursuit of this type of love, there is nothing that human beings have not done, or are not capable of doing. The love potion that some ladies brew for men they suspect of unrequited love has no platonic aim. It is not out of generosity, rather to get the object of their longing, that men spend lots of money in wooing women. Women themselves do as much. To attract men, they dress in manners to arouse precipitate passion. Eyelashes are darkened with gum ammonia. Cheeks and lips are painted with sticks of minium or alkanet roots. Adjustable eyebrows are used and often pencilled with lampblack or pulverized or sulphuret of antimony, sometimes it is thinned to diverse shapes or shaved off entirely and painted “crescent moons” or other forms. Eyelids are shaded with kohl. All sorts of things are rubbed on the face, in the hope that it will make them look beautiful. Some in the villages still wrap their fingernails overnight with henna leaves to make them purple. Padded brassieres are used to make the breast look poised and … Breast enhancement has since become part of beauty regimen. There is no part of the woman’s body, in pursuit of men, that has not been perfected, decorated, refined, stretched and squeezed, bleached, reformed, compacted, and shortened.
Higher than the afore-described love is what is often called genuine friendship. In this type of love, there is often the predominance of altruistic motives. It springs from mutual admiration. Here, love is thought to precede desire and to determine its wishes. Marriages built upon this type of love are often successful. Mature lovers discover that marriage transcends the act of multiplication of the species or the fantasy of sexual acts. There are some men who think that all a woman appreciates in a man is when he brandishes the erectile organ to her satisfaction. No. Marriage is more than that. It demands deep understanding and maturity from both partners.
All the foregoing classifications and distinctions, inexhaustible though, belong to the theory of human love. But the fact of love’s diversity extends to the Christian theory of love. Christianity brought about a basic shift in man’s thinking about love. Christianity sees love not in the emotion or passion, but from the infinite perfection and creativity of God. Writing to the Corinthians (2 Cor 13: 6) St Paul said that “love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth...” God Himself is love (I John 4: 4). “Love ye one another”. In this profound sentence, God summarized all the commandments. Love rules the world and was, perhaps, as Parmenides thought, “the very first thing created by the gods to rule the world”.
The key to peace in the world is for men to embrace the ethics of Christ – love. Confucius taught a version of it in his rule of reciprocity (golden rule). Immanuel Kant espoused it in his book, The Metaphysics of Morals in what he called the “Maxims of Categorical Imperative”. All great religions teach it. Until we start to imbibe this golden rule (love), the battle to re-make the world can as well be labelled a utopia.
The sooner we use the day of Valentine to promote this type of love, the better the world will become.