Opinion
Baba, abeg free us
By Tunde Olusunle
It is just fitting that several words and expressions which etymology derive from Nigeria, have found their ways into global dictionaries. As at 2020, nearly 30 such inventions had been accommodated by the Oxford Dictionary. They include: okada, tokunbo, gist, k-leg, mama put, danfo, bukateria, chop, eat money, among others. Kannywood, ember months, to put to bed, non-indigene, next tomorrow, and many others, have also been wholly adopted into modern day dictionaries. I wonder, however, if the expression, free me has been so taken in. “Free me” evolved from day-to-day conversations on the streets of the Niger Delta. Some people tell us matter-of-factly, that the expression was birthed on the alleys of Warri. The famous, multilingual city is at the heart of Nigeria’s oil-bearing department of the country, crisscrossed by intriguing creeks, breathtaking mangroves and infinite swamps. The Niger Delta region remains an immensely robust contributor to “Nigerian Standard English,” (NSE), as scholars of sociolinguistics will confirm. This is not forgetting the imprimatur of the zone on the entire gamut of contemporary arts and culture. Free me is a widely deployed expression which can be interpreted as “let me be” or “leave me alone.”
In a few weeks from now, maybe days actually, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president in the last eight years will be out of office. Nigerians have endured eight long and forlorn, rough and tough, hungry and angry, famished and anguished, dreary and teary years under a man whose desperation to be president, knew no bounds. By his third attempt in 2011, he broke down in listless cry on national television, vowing never to run for the office anymore. Bola Tinubu who ran to succeed him, poked fun at Buhari, while on a pre-presidential primary consultation last year. He jived about Buhari’s trippings on his initial triple attempts, before he, Tinubu strung together the coalition which finally berthed Buhari in 2015. Buhari would, on his inauguration, tell us he was a “born-again democrat.” Buhari’s reelection in 2019 and the more recent pre-transition election last February, have been mired in more opacity than transparency. It has been described as the worst ever witnessed in our electoral history. Indeed, the 2007 elections previously ranked as the most dubious presidential polls, before Mahmood Yakubu led the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), to deliver the most fraudulent elections in Nigeria, ever.
Buhari’s swansong after his largely catastrophic years as Nigeria’s head, however, consists of inflicting more hurt on the national psyche, rather than contrition for his multiple infringements on our collective wellbeing. For the avoidance of doubt, his scoresheet after his eight-year stint in office has been serially interrogated and certified wholly disastrous and grossly uninspiring. His sojourn in the highest office in the land has for the most part, been an earthquaking sham. The misery level of Nigerians have never been as markedly southward under his watch. Ethnoreligious schism; socioeconomic stasis; pervading mediocrity; legitimised corruption; systemic impunity; aggregate insecurity; staggering hyperinflation; disabling unemployment; accentuating poverty; overarching disillusionment have been the engraved insignia of Buhari’s administration. Under him, Nigeria wrested the pendant of nurturing the “most dangerous city to live in the world.” Our good old Lagos wilfully received that baton of dishonour from drug-crazed South American cities, while also being “chartered” as the “poverty capital of the world.” Under Buhari, Nigeria bested previous records of citizens of countries elsewhere in the world, worsted and wasted in peace time.
In recent weeks, Buhari has been soliciting forgiveness from the mass of Nigerians which his superintendence inflicted with discomfort, disorientation and grief. Before his recent supplications, however, his more sensitive spouse, Aisha, had volunteered apologias on his behalf. She recognises for a fact that her husband wilfully, almost, invented and foisted lachrymose on a preponderance of hapless country people, in the course of his tour of duty. Buhari’s sojourn as Nigeria’s political leader, soured the Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth, as it were. This is the title of the most recent prose work authored by Africa’s first, and West Africa’s only Nobel Laureate for Literature, Wole Soyinka, which one is borrowing. Nigerians have been anything but excitable in the past 96 months of Buhari’s superintendence.
With a not-too-savoury performance curriculum vitae in the estimation of most Nigerians, it was expected that Buhari will quietly disembark from the national political scene when his time is up, and allow Nigerians pick up the smithereens of their lives. Oblivious of the causticity of bile and venom harboured against him by Nigerians, Buhari has been unduly, even irritatingly talkative in recent weeks. Thinking he will be missed while out of office for instance, he announced how very far away he hopes to stay from Abuja the nation’s headquarters. He wouldn’t want to be misconstrued as meddling in governance and administration of the nation, in the successor dispensation.
Buhari hopes to be in his birthplace, Daura in Katsina State in the initial six months of his disembarkation, before relocating to Kaduna, political headquarters of northern Nigeria. Should he find retirement in his primordial home bothersome, Buhari has threatened to migrate to Niger Republic. Daura he posited, is less than 10 kilometres from his traditional roots. Hope Buhari knows he will not be the first Nigerian leader, military or civilian to return to “base” after service to nation. Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Goodluck Jonathan before him, have had different addresses in their various home states since they left office. Shehu Shagari lived in his native Sokoto State before his demise. But Buhari has been whining in our ears like a swarm of bees as though his post-disengagement itinerary should be of any special interest or concern to us.
I wish Buhari knows how very eager Nigerians are to see his back. I wish he has an idea about how keen his compatriots Nigerians are about the coming of Monday May 29, 2023 when he will handover to a succeeding leadership. Of course there are genuine and subsisting issues arising from the last general elections. Buhari and his “un-Independent” National Electoral Commission, (INEC), torpedoed popular will and paved the way for the most contentious general elections in Nigerian history. At the last count, a record 1,044 petitions have been filed against the results declared by INEC in the 2023 polls. The National Judicial Council, (NUJ), recently released the names of 257 judges to adjudicate on fall-outs from the elections.
Rather than fizzle out as innocuously as possible, Buhari’s last days are days of accentuated tauntings for hapless Nigerians. Reminds of the Biblical expression in 1 Kings Chapter 12 verse 11, to wit: “My father made your yoke heavy, I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips, I will scourge you with scorpions.” Nigerians were ushered into the new year by an ill-thought currency redesign and replacement. This sucked up liquidity in the economy in the name of inventing a pseudo-cashless milieu, and precipitated unfathomable inconveniencing for the people, and dislocation for the economy. The Poultry Association of Nigeria, (PAN), recently estimated the losses of the industry to be in the neighbourhood of N50 Billion, within the period.
Typical of the sloppiness with which institutions have been administered under Buhari, the national population census earlier fixed for Wednesday May 3 to Friday May 5, 2023, has been put off. This was after an estimated N400 Billion earmarked for the project had probably been released to the National Population Commission, (NPC). It was about the same sum that was spent on the largely controversial elections, results of which in many cases, will be decided by the judiciary. This is just as the lingering impasse about the removal of subsidy on petroleum products has been front-loaded to the incoming administration, another classic example of Buhari’s dodgy approach to issues requiring official willpower and decisiveness.
Still in the twilight of his government, the departing president recently signed up for a foreign loan to the tune of $800 million, from the World Bank. The said sum will, according to its very nebulous description, be used to cushion the after effects of the removal of fuel subsidy by the federal government. Small comfort. Having deferred the subsidy removal until the advent of a new government, popular opinion is that the loan be reverted to its lenders. This is to forestal the wilful siphoning of the fund by adept state officials who have been serially complicit in the impoverishment of Nigeria and Nigerians. This is just as the nation’s foreign indebtedness nears the N45 Trillion mark, with 96% of resources accruing to government committed to debt servicing.
Not done, Buhari this eve of his exit, has announced a regime of new taxes and tarrifs on certain goods, all calculated to further traumatise Nigerians. Finance minister, Zainab Ahmed listed products which will be affected by the new levies to include alcoholic beverages, cigarettes and tobacco. Motor vehicles and telecommunication services including mobile telephony, fixed telephony, internet services will also cost more for Nigerians. Yet these are Buhari’s constituents already groaning, grunting, grieving beneath the dead weight of erstwhile state-spun discomforts. Buhari’s end-time inventions, easily remind of anti-people rulers in the Holy Bible. But this is the parting banquet and bouquet Buhari has laid out for hapless Nigerians.
President Buhari should spare us his previews into his proposed retirement plans. Whether he opts for Maradi or Niamey or Ouagadougou or wherever is not of immediate concern to Nigerians. We should let him know that he will not be missed by most of us. Except of course those who profited from legitimised thieving under his watch, where reptiles, primates and insects became state actors. He will be missed by those suited by his wholesale dismantling of the bridges and binders that hitherto held our multicultural, multilingual, multireligious country together. He should please allow Nigerians pick up their lives from the dizzying abyss he brought them, so they can chart new courses. Introspection into his reign engenders spontaneous pangs of pain. They are better not in our remembrances. Buhari should please free Nigerians and stop taunting us, jare.
Tunde Olusunle, PhD, poet, journalist, scholar and author is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE)
By Tunde Olusunle
It may be well over two years to the next cycle of general elections in Nigeria. For the people of Apa/Agatu federal constituency in *Benue South, however, the measure of their participation and integration into the governance scheme will be defined in the run-up to the general polls that year. Nine local government areas make up the predominantly Idoma country of Benue State also labelled Zone C in the senatorial tripod of the geo-polity. The zone is also home to the Igede ethnic stock and the Etulo. Local government areas in “Benue Zone C” include: Apa, Agatu, Oju, Obi, Ado, Ogbadibo, Okpokwu, Otukpo and Ohimini. The other zones, Benue North East and Benue North West, are wholly dominated by the Tiv nationality, striding across 14 local government areas. They are christened Zone A and Zone B in the local political scheme of the state. Federal constituencies in Benue South are: Apa/Agatu, Oju/Obi; Ado/Ogbadibo/Opokwu and Otukpo/Ohimini.
The subjugation of groups and ethnicities considered demographically smaller, by the larger groups which has dominated Nigeria’s politics over time, has not been any different for the Idoma of Benue State. Until the circumstantial emergence of a Yahaya Bello from the Ebira ethnicity in Kogi State in 2015, the Igala had the relay baton of governorship of Kogi State, in rounds and succession. The Ebiras and the Okun-Yoruba zones in the state could only aspire to be serial deputies or Secretaries to the State Government. This political template was virtually cast in stone. The Ilorin people of Kwara State have similarly wholly warehoused the gubernatorial office, sparingly conceding the position to other sociocultural groups in the state. The only exception was the concession of the seat to a candidate from Kwara South, in the person of Abdulfatah Ahmed, by his predecessor, Bukola Saraki in 2011. Even at that, there were murmurs and dissent from those who believed Ahmed came from a community too close to the Ilorin emirate to be of genuine Igbomina stock, which prides itself as the pure Yoruba species in Kwara State.
Twenty-six years into the Fourth Republic, the maximum proximity of the Idoma to Government House, Makurdi, has been by the customary allocation of the Deputy Governor’s slot to its people. Ogirri Ajene from Oju/Obi, the charismatic blue-blood of blessed memory, was deputy to George Akume, incumbent Secretary to the Government of the Federation, (SGF), from 1999 to 2007. Akume it was reported, genuinely desired to be succeeded by Ajene who exhibited competence and loyalty and could build on their legacies. The Tiv nation we understand, shot down the proposal. Gabriel Suswam succeeded Akume and had the urbane multipreneur, Stephen Lawani from Ogbadibo as deputy. Samuel Ortom, a Minister in the Goodluck Jonathan presidency who took over from Suswam opted for Benson Abounu, an engineer from Otukpo as running mate, while Hyacinth Alia, the Catholic priest who succeeded Ortom, also chose as deputy, Samuel Ode, who was also a Minister in the Jonathan government, from Otukpo. Arising from this precedence, Apa/Agatu has not for once, been considered for a place in Government House, Makurdi.
In similar fashion, the position of Senator representing Benue South, has repeatedly precluded Apa/Agatu federal constituency. David Alechenu Bonaventure Mark a former army General from Otukpo, took the first shot at the office in 1999. He was to remain in the position for five consecutive times, a distinctive record by Nigerian standards. Mark would subsequently become President of the Senate and the third most senior political office holder in the nation’s governance scheme for a string of two terms between 2007 and 2015. He was replaced by Patrick Abba Moro, who hails from Okpokwu and was a former teacher, in 2019. Abba Moro who previously served as Minister of Interior in the Jonathan government from 2011 to 2015, won a second term at the 2023 general elections and remains substantive Senator for “Benue Zone C.” He is indeed incumbent Minority Leader of the Senate, and thus a principal officer in the leadership scheme of the “red chambers.”
While Moro is barely two years into his second term, there are suggestions that he is interested in a third term which should run from 2027 to 2031! This is the core issue which has dominated contemporary political discourse in Benue South, especially from the Apa/Agatu bloc. For Apa/Agatu, it is bad enough that they are repeatedly bypassed in the nomination of deputy governors in the scheme of state politics. It is worse that they are equally subjugated by their own kinsmen within the context of politics in *Idoma and Igede land.* This is particularly worrying when both local government areas constituting the Apa/Agatu federal constituency, Apa and Agatu, are not in anyway deficient in human resources to represent Benue South. Names like John Elaigwu Odogbo, the incumbent *Och’Idoma* and respected clergy; Isa Innocent Ekoja, renowned Professor and Librarian; Sonny Togo Echono, FNIA, OON, Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund, (TETFUND), and John Mgbede, Emeritus State Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), Benue State, readily come to mind.
Major General R.I. Adoba, (rtd), a former Chief Training and Operations in the Nigerian Army; Professor Emmanuel Adanu, former Director of the Kaduna-based National Water Resources Institute, (NWRI) and the US-based specialist in internal medicine, Dr Raymond Audu, are eminent Apa/Agatu constituents. There are also Ada Egahi, long-serving technocrat who retired from the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, (NPHDA), and Super Eagles forward, Moses Simon, (why not, hasn’t the retired soccer star, George Opong Weah just completed his term as President of Liberia)? The Member Representing Apa/Agatu in the House of Representatives, Godday Samuel Odagboyi, an office previously held by Solomon Agidani, as well as Adamu Ochepo Entonu, is, like his predecessors, a prominent figure from the resourceful Apa/Agatu federal constituency.
The Olofu brothers, Tony Adejoh, a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police, (AIG), and David, PhD, a renowned management and financial strategist, who is also an Emeritus Member of the Benue State Executive Council during the Ortom dispensation, are from the same federal constituency. So is Abu Umoru, a serial entrepreneur who represents Apa State Constituency in the Benue State House of Assembly. The continuing intra-zonal alienation of Apa-Agatu from the politics of Benue Zone C, remains a sore thumb which must be clinically diagnosed and intentionally treated in the run-up to 2027.
If previous top level political office holders from Idomaland in general and Apa/Agatu in particular, had diligently applied themselves to tangible, multisectoral development of the zone and constituency, the present clamour for inclusiveness would probably been less vociferous. *River Agatu* which flows from Kogi State, and runs through Agatu before emptying into *River Benue,* is a potential game changer in the socioeconomy of Apa/Agatu, Benue South and Benue State in general. Properly harnessed, it can revolutionise agriculture and aquaculture in the state, beyond subsistence levels which are the primary vocations of the indigenous people. Rice, yam, guinea corn, millet and similar grains, thrive in the fertile soils of the area. These can support “first level” processing of produce and guarantee value addition beneficial to the primary producers, before being shipped to other markets. River Agatu can indeed be dammed to provide hydro-electricity to power the entire gamut of Idomaland.
The infrastructure deficit in Benue South with specific reference to Apa/Agatu is equally very concerning. A notable pattern in Nigerian politics is its self-centeredness, the penchant for political players to prioritise their personal wellbeing and the development of their immediate space. This has accentuated the ever recurring desire of people to ascend the political pedestals of their predecessors if that is the principal window by which they can also privilege their own primary constituents. Motorable roads are non-existent, seamless travel between communities therefore encumbered. Expectedly this has been a major impediment to subsistent trade and social engagements between constituents and their kinsmen. Primary health facilities are almost non-existent, compelling people to flock to Otukpo, headquarters of Benue South, for the minutest of medical advice and treatment.
Apa/Agatu pitiably bleeds from the relentless and condemnable activities of vagrants and bandits who have reduced the constituency into a killing field. Reports suggest that in the past 15 years, no less than 2500 lives were lost to the vicious attacks of marauders and trespassers in the area under reference. This unnerving situation has compelled engagements between concerned Apa/Agatu leaders, and the leadership of the Nigeria Police Force, (NPF). The prayer is for the swift establishment of a mobile police outpost in the troubled sub-zone to contain bloodletting. The proposal, anchored by AIG Tony Olofu, NPOM, (rtd), and Echono, has received the blessings of the police high command. At the last update, a commander for the outfit had been named, while the deployment of personnel had begun in earnest.
It is very clear that in the march towards 2027, Apa/Agatu will refuse, very vehemently, to be sidelined and trampled upon in the political scheme of their senatorial zone. Abba Moro may desire a third term in the Senate, but the people of Apa/Agatu are quick to remind him that his curriculum vitae as a politician is sufficiently sumptuous for him to yield the seat in the “red chambers” and sit back like an elder statesman. They remind you that for a man who began his working life modestly as a lecturer in the Federal Polytechnic, Ugbokolo in 1991, Abba Moro has done extremely well for himself in Nigerian politics. For reminders, Abba Moro was elected Chairman of Okpokwu local government in the state as far back as 1998. Ever since, he has remained a permanent fixture in Nigeria’s national politics.
The people of Apa/Agatu will put up a determined fight for the Benue South senatorial seat in 2027, and no one should begrudge them. They are the proverbial ram which was pushed to the wall, which must of necessity push back with angered horns to liberate itself. They are already engaging with their kith across “Benue Zone C” to ensure that intra-zonal equity, fairness and justice, prevails in communal politics.
Tunde Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja
By Dr. Ag Zaki
On Thursday, 9 January 2025, Prince Adewole Adebayo presented a keynote address at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos. The occasion was the annual conference of a group of professionals, business executives and experts codenamed J9C for January 9 Collective. The theme of the Conference was “Business and Policy Strategy: Examining the Role of Reform in enhancing the ease of doing business in Nigeria.” Prince Adebayo is a versatile cerebral man of many parts, a lawyer, a multimedia practitioner, a real estate investor, a large-scale miner, a philanthropist, a community developer, and the 2023 Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The organisers of the J9C conference introduced him as an intercontinental lawyer because he currently practices law in over sixteen countries.
The full speech of Prince Adebayo at the occasion is available online and can be accessed by clicking at this url: https://youtu.be/SsHkcJbVNRg?si=ebvoOVqGh0zVOsnt or by scanning the QR code above. However, we are presenting the salient take-aways from this most incisive keynote address below for the convenience of interested persons and for the public good.
THE TAKE-AWAYS
Preamble
1. Not every change of policy or programme is a reform. A reform is a fundamental change in the activities, programmes, and policies structured to cause improvement. Genuine government reforms are people oriented and so citizens can interject, comment or contribute.
2. Reform may be internally motivated, externally forced or imposed, or technological driven.
3. The government of Nigeria must first reform itself to be able to implement development-oriented reforms to improve the country’s economic performance.
In general terms
4. Fiscal and monetary reforms are critical and are urgently required in Nigeria. While government can freely control its fiscal reforms, it must be bound by market forces for realistic and realisable monetary reforms.
5. Economic reforms must positively affect developmental policies, programmes and projects to engender economic growth, increase in efficiency, and lead to stability. Economic and political reforms must be implemented pari-passu for untainted policies and programmes.
6. Urgent structural reforms are required in areas of legal reforms, laws on banking controls and regulations, lending and borrowing as well as land matters.
In specific terms
7. Reforms which are aimed at targeting ease of doing business must be aligned with the Malam Aminu Kano maxim that “all civil servants should abstain from contracts or business”.
8. Nigeria must break the current odious and unwholesome conspiracies between policy makers, civil servants, and contractors, which can lead to irreversible endemic corruption, long foreseen by the revered Malam Aminu Kano, and which can permanently damage the economy.
9. Structural reforms must ensure that land laws open up maximum benefits and potentials of the land, encourage labour productivity and efficient and transparent entrepreneurship rules including registration, capital and lending matters.
10. Tax reforms should be broad-based, not about sharing of revenue but promoting productivity and competitiveness in all aspects of endeavours and infrastructure reforms should make transportation of people and goods safe and cost effective.
11. Monitoring economic crimes must be thorough and should go beyond arresting of “Yahoo boys” and those spraying Naira notes, but those devaluing the Naira and abusing economic rules and regulations.
Warnings
12. Adebayo left some stern terse warnings for the business sector and for the government of Nigeria.
13. Business executives and professionals should not ask or encourage government for specific reforms but for general broad-based reforms as firm-specific reforms can enhance operations of specific firms or business in the short term but will ultimately kill the industry.
14. Government should not meddle into business or be guided by partisan businessmen; government should meet business only at the junction of regulatory framework.
15. Government should be selfless and honest in carrying out reforms, incorporate measurable performance indices and ensure that reforms are implemented in a way not to inflict pains or punishment on the people.
# DrZaki25, 903 Tafawa Balewa Way, Abuja
By Eigbefo Felix
His Excellency, Senator Monday Okpebholo, the Executive Governor of Edo State, has demonstrated that he is a blessing to the state through his policies, appointments, initiation of road construction across the three senatorial districts, and his deep love for the people of Edo State.
Governor Monday Okpebholo has begun fulfilling the five-point agenda he promised the good people of the state since his inauguration.
In the area of security, he has shown total commitment. He assured the people of Edo State that he would ensure their safety, and true to his word, the state remains peaceful, which has brought joy to its residents. He has provided the necessary support to security personnel.
The governor increased the subvention for Ambrose Alli University (AAU) from ₦40 million to ₦500 million. He also promised to address the issues facing AAU medical students. Additionally, he has started renovating primary and secondary schools across the state, underscoring his understanding of the importance of education.
The agricultural sector has taken a positive turn as Governor Okpebholo has allocated ₦70 billion to the sector. Recognizing agriculture’s importance to both the state and the nation, he is positioning Edo State to become the food basket of the nation with his investments in the sector.
During the electioneering period, Senator Okpebholo promised to create 5,000 jobs within his first 100 days in office. He has already begun the process, and soon, the people of Edo State will benefit from these employment opportunities. Unlike in the past, he will not rely on MOUs before making appointments. Furthermore, he has started appointing Edo State indigenes, rather than outsiders, to various positions.
Governor Okpebholo has commenced road projects across the state, from Edo South to Edo Central and Edo North. He believes that when roads are motorable, the prices of goods in the market will automatically reduce.
He has also begun investing in the health sector, understanding its critical importance to the people of Edo State.
Governor Monday Okpebholo’s initiatives and actions affirm his dedication to transforming Edo State for the better.
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