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Abiola Ajimobi: Mistake Or Mystique? || By Festus Adedayo

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“Like every leader, Ajimobi has his own character flaws. Strong are however these flaws that they dwarf a myriad of good traits in him. No matter his flaws, Ajimobi has greatly transformed Oyo State. He however left myriad other areas that need tackling. Whoever is announced as governor today will need to take Oyo a notch higher than Ajimobi will be leaving it in May”.

The last two weeks must have been very challenging for the governor of Oyo State, Abiola Ajimobi. Assailed on all fronts due to the loss of his bid for the Oyo South senatorial district in the February election, the electoral loss became an opportunity for Ajimobi to be pummeled on all fronts by those who had nursed boundless grouses against him, especially in the last eight years of his administration of the State. The social media became the most fertile ground for his pummeling; real and concocted permutations of his political fate were traded on the go like they do at the security exchange market. Extrapolations were made from this to arrive at a worse fate which they projected could befall his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the gubernatorial election held yesterday. Those who claimed to be in the know narrated details of an alleged order from leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, banning him from afflicting the party with his alleged bad luck and recent maladministration of the state. Having been opportune to work with Ajimobi, I should be able to offer a dispassionate assessment of the character of the man they call Constituted Authority, a man whom I worked closely with for about six years – about two years before his ascendancy into power and four years of his being the governor of Oyo State. I feel that my conscience will not acquit me if I don’t lend my voice to the debate on who exactly Ajimobi is.

By the way, I apologise, dear reader that this piece will basically be ad hominien, dealing strictly with individuals, their character, rather than either issue or policy or even society in general. I am however of the opinion that it can be beneficial to society if we assimilate the general lessons to be learnt by plotting its graph from the specific to the general. By so doing, society can, by that very fact, draw one or two lessons therefrom. Leaders themselves cam tease out basic rules of engagement in administering men from messages the piece passes across.

I met Ajimobi for the first time sometime around 2002. I worked for the Tribune during this time. Highly respected broadcaster and current CEO of Oyo State Broadcasting Corporation, Yanju Adegbite had approached me to interview him in his bid for the Senate. He had just left the National Oil as managing director.

Meeting Ajimobi at his Oluyole Estate, Ibadan home that afternoon, he struck me as a very purposeful character. He demonstrated robust élan and fantastic grasp of issues of leadership. You could not but be swept off your feet at the sight of this handsome man. I penetrated the nooks and crannies of his heart like a purposeful cross-examiner will do; from his father, the late Ganiyu Ajimobi, his time in the oil industry, stint with Mike Adenuga, his vision for the state and his leader, Late Lam Adesina. Like a typical Ibadan man, he was an extrovert and garnished every of his words with the Dauda Epo Akara-kind anecdotes. I left with a very impressionable view of his character. As I made to leave for my office at Imalefalafia, Ajimobi saw me off to the gate of his house. Till today, Adegbite never tires to regale me with the story of a fat gift extended to me that I declined that day. I, perhaps was too swept off my feet to bother about rewards.

Fate was to bring us together again in late 2009. A reader of my column in the defunct National Life newspaper had called the line affixed to the page. I took particular dislike to his calling, rather than texting as demanded by the columnist. Calmly apologising, he wanted me to be part of a strategy team being put together by a gubernatorial candidate of the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). I wasn’t hesitant to decline. He entreated and I caved in. It later turned out that the candidate was Ajimobi. This particular Sunday afternoon, I was again at Ajimobi’s house, after about seven years. He hadn’t changed much, still youthful in carriage. We sat in a place that served as his car port which was also a thoroughfare into the house and analysed Nigeria and Oyo politics. He struck me as cerebral. Conversely, Ajimobi was apparently fascinated by my grasp of issues, especially my reportorial instinct. From then, our paths were wedged together, until 2015.

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For four years in his cabinet, Ajimobi demonstrated uncommon leadership. His first cabinet was an array of dedicated professionals who loved him to the core. Less than ten per cent of them are there now. Those were people who could look him in the face and tell him hurting truth. Those were men of grit and valour. Don’t get me wrong: During same period, Ajimobi exhibited some attitudes that would make you want to snigger at him.

I really do not want to discredit those who saw/see Ajimobi’s persona in the negative. They are entitled to their dislike of him. I am also not saying he doesn’t possess those traits. Like every other human being, Ajimobi has scores of foibles. I am only by this piece saying that he is like the dual face of the proverbial Yoruba gangan drum where what you perceive of it is restrictive to your perception. For instance, Ajimobi possesses stubbornness for whatever he believes in and cares less whatever the rest of the world thinks about. After the media strategising for his 2011 election, a welter of antagonism stood against my appointment into his cabinet. My antagonists all found comfortable anchor in the former governor of Oyo State, Alhaji Lam Adesina who, rightly so too, couldn’t stand my person. I was a major thorn in his government’s flesh. One day, the Great Lam summoned the newly elected governor to his Felele, Ibadan home and asked him who would head his media. When Ajimobi mentioned my name, Great Lam, as our Yoruba people say, literally spurted saliva in the air and said this was impossible. Stubbornly, Ajimobi stood his ground.

For four years in his cabinet, Ajimobi demonstrated uncommon leadership. His first cabinet was an array of dedicated professionals who loved him to the core. Less than ten per cent of them are there now. Those were people who could look him in the face and tell him hurting truth. Those were men of grit and valour. Don’t get me wrong: During same period, Ajimobi exhibited some attitudes that would make you want to snigger at him. I can speak boldly for the four years I was a member of his cabinet. He was dedicated to the course of Oyo State. I nearly bailed out of his administration in the first one year as the rigour was breathtaking. He left office most times about 1 a.m., worked till about 4 a.m. at home and we literally had to go drag him off bed by 9 a.m., preparatory to, most times 10 a.m. schedules. As his media adviser, he gave me unqualified access and never staffed my office. He also gave me free hand. Many of the press releases I issued, he read them just like every other person the second day upon becoming public knowledge. I could walk up to his bedroom and I made bold to say, I was never part of the fawners who told him what he needed to hear. I will give just two examples.

A Tribune reporter had just been assaulted by an Operation Burst team of soldiers and my phone was buzzing with calls from all over the world. I walked up the governor’s office but his ADC said I couldn’t see him as he was in a meeting. “Let him say he doesn’t want to see me,” I blurted out as I approached his door. Ajimobi opened it instantly. He was surrounded by – I forget now – who had come to meet him.

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“What’s the problem? I know you come here only when there is a problem,” Ajimobi had said. I replied in the affirmative and told him the problem. I had hardly relayed the issue at stake to him when the fawners around him said there was no big deal that soldiers beat up a journalist. I diffidently told them that there was a big deal. Ajimobi then told me to go and do the needful but not to hurt the soldiers who were helping us to restore peace in the state.

The second was when Ajimobi was persuaded by some government appointees to rise against two media houses in Ibadan. At meetings, in private, I told the governor that we would be roasted if we did that. Grovelers who apparently pushed him to this cliff insisted that he needed to show his brawns. One day, I arranged for the governor to visit one of the media houses. The accolades he received from the staff and its almost-century-old proprietor – now late – was so huge that when we later arrived the governor’s Oluyole Estate home, he hopped out of his car and came straight to me. “I must thank you for standing out. While everyone else said we should fight these people, you insisted we shouldn’t and today, we are reaping the dividends. Thank you so much,” Ajimobi had said. My head swelled by a centimetre, I must confess. So why would you as an aide not want to bite the bullets for such a boss who goes off the handle periodically but returns each time he finds the truth, to apologise to a small aide like me?

“I suspect that the bane of Ajimobi’s persona, especially during his second term, is that he reads too much of and seeks to practice the tenets of Robert Greene’s forty-eight laws of power. Greene’s, you will recall, is purely Machiavellian, moulding rulers who have few pints of blood running in their veins. Whenever Ajimobi acts according to the precepts of this book, he is a Machiavellian and not Jean Paul Sartre’s humanist that I saw in him while serving under him”.

After about three years of not seeing him, I met my ex-boss last August. He was pleased to see me. As usual, I told him where he hit his leg against the stone in our relationship and where he had been an excellent boss. He apologised to me for his wrongs and I did too for my infractions towards him. If you ask me, I will say that I suspect that the bane of Ajimobi’s persona, especially during his second term, is that he reads too much of and seeks to practice the tenets of Robert Greene’s forty-eight laws of power. Greene’s, you will recall, is purely Machiavellian, moulding rulers who have few pints of blood running in their veins. Whenever Ajimobi acts according to the precepts of this book, he is a Machiavellian and not Jean Paul Sartre’s humanist that I saw in him while serving under him. He benefitted thousands of people in his eight years in office but unfortunately, a major character flaw in him turns this array of beneficiaries against him as soon as he acquires them.

In Ajimobi is a brilliant, perceptive and articulate leader, the type that any society needs. No one, not even his most bitter critic, would doubt Ajimobi’s patriotism and commitment to the development of Oyo State. He has done more roads than any government in the recent history of that state. More importantly, he enthroned and sustained peace in the state infamously described as a garrison at the height of its security infamy.

Like every leader, Ajimobi has his own character flaws. Strong are however these flaws that they dwarf a myriad of good traits in him. No matter his flaws, Ajimobi has greatly transformed Oyo State. He however left myriad other areas that need tackling. Whoever is announced as governor today will need to take Oyo a notch higher than Ajimobi will be leaving it in May.

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This piece will be the first in a series of the intrigues and intricate web of the Ajimobi government.

My Friend, the Professor of Political Science

“Our teachers – Adigun Agbaje, Eghosa Osaghae, Rotimi Suberu and the like saw academy in Aiyede right from the start. He was profound and deep in his analyses of issues. I remember an Osaghae class where he taught us Feminist Epistemology. While I sought to delete the course because of the difficulty it posed, Aiyede was atop the class”.

The Council of the University of Ibadan, during the week, announced as professor, Emmanuel Remi Aiyede. Professor Aiyede is of the Department of Political Science of the university. He and I were classmates in the master’s class of the department, graduating in 1995. In our class, he was decidedly the best, demonstrating a mastery and grasp of the course that baffled all.

Some of us who had our first degrees in Philosophy were very proud of him, as those whose first degree was in Political Science marveled at how, in the one year of the Master’s programme, Aiyede colonised the whole class with an amazing finish. His first degree in philosophy was from same University of Ibadan. With our mutual friend and classmate, Wale Adebanwi, who is also a professor at the Oxford University, United Kingdom with a PhD in Political Science from Ibadan and another in Anthropology from Cambridge, we constituted a tripod. He and Adebanwi were however more academics-inclined. Aiyede scored 68 per cent in the final computation of our results and later began his PhD immediately, which he finished in record time.

Our teachers – Adigun Agbaje, Eghosa Osaghae, Rotimi Suberu and the like saw academy in Aiyede right from the start. He was profound and deep in his analyses of issues. I remember an Osaghae class where he taught us Feminist Epistemology. While I sought to delete the course because of the difficulty it posed, Aiyede was atop the class. In the last 20 years or so of his completing his doctorate degree, he has given academy an undiluted dedication which makes this academic laurel not surprising. Like me, aside his Philosophy background, he also had a stint in a newspaper house in Edo State which further cemented our bond. Aiyede has over the years been a delight to his friends. His areas of research are Political Institutions, Governance and Public Administration, while his major works have focused on Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations, Representation and Electoral Systems and State Politics and Policy. His current project is Social Protection and State Formation in Africa.

He and Adebanwi have turned out to be world-class scholars whom I am proud to be their friend. Here is wishing yet another of my professor friends big congratulations.

 

 

Dr. Festus Adedayo is a renowned journalist

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Opinion

The Insect That Inhibits Enjoyment of Matured Kolanuts, Alli Okunmade II and The Agbotikuyos

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As I was ushered into his expansive Alarere compound that Saturday morning, I was told to exercise patience as Baba would soon come downstairs. I was quick to notice that where I was told to sit was where he would hold court.

A large portrait rested against the wall behind the table that faced where I sat.

The Akoko leaves on his cap was an indication that the picture was taken on his elevation to a new position and that much was confirmed by the congratulatory message on it. There were smaller pictures of him with other chiefs, each telling a different story.

While studying my immediate environment, ideas started coming for the intro of the interview I came for. Of course I was not the only one waiting; people came for different reasons. Political followers, extended family members and even those who came to seek help were all there.

A slim, dark skinned woman seemed to be the most vocal member of the political class. She reminded the others about a particular rally where a fight almost broke out but she doused the tension with her song, “ẹ ma jẹ ka ja o, ẹ ma jẹ ka ja o, ohun to wa nilẹ o to pin, ẹ ma jẹ ka ja” (don’t let us fight, don’t let us fight what is on ground is enough to go round, don’t let us fight).

As High Chief Lekan Balogun (as he then was) emerged from the main building, all rose to greet him. On sighting me, he asked to be allowed to attend to his people first since I would take more time. By the time it was my turn, we had barely spoken for a minute when he got a trajectory-changing telephone call. He told me there had been some trouble in the family compound leading to the arrest of some young men. He therefore needed to proceed, as a matter of urgency to the Police Area Command at Iyaganku.

Then came the questions, “so, Adejumọ, do we reschedule? Where are you going when you leave here?” I said I was going to Ring Road and when he heard that I didn’t come in my car, he asked me to ride with him in his white Toyota Sequoia. Seeing the low-hanging fruit the ride presented, I asked if we could commence the interview.

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When I asked about his continued involvement in politics despite a rule by the then Olubadan, Oba Odulana Odugade that members of the Olubadan-in-Council should steer clear of partisan politics, he smiled and said, “You see, that rule was not for everybody but for politicians who went about with thugs, exhibiting their nuisance values all over the city. It was because of politicians harboring miscreants that kabiyesi made that proclamation. So, it is not that we should not take part in politics but that we should be peaceful about it”. He did not fail to acknowledge Oba Odugade’s tour de force in instilling discipline and ensuring that peace reigned.

Those who have interacted with Oba (Senator) Balogun Allí Okunmade II would readily attest not just to his eloquence but his intellect. It was obvious he had read all there is to read on some matters and he usually quoted famously from the likes of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao among many others.

His unctuous sense of humour is what many would miss. In the heat of the brouhaha that trailed the murder of a former transport union Chairman, he addressed a press conference in his house and in the interaction that followed the media parley, he singled out City People’s Dare Adeniran asking whether he knew what Eruwa, the name of his hometown connoted. Journalist and Public Affairs Analyst, Bisi Oladele tóo spoke of Kabiyesi’s avid sense of humour on air recently.

Though save, urbane and sophisticated, whenever it was time to lead from the front, Okunmade II was never found wanting. As a politician and family head, he priortized the welfare of his followers. And once he believed in a cause, he would defend it with everything he had. We once asked how he knew a former Senate Leader was innocent of the allegations brought against him during the “Eléwé Omo” saga and he delved into conspiracy theories. “Sometimes people kill their friends so that their enemies could get punished for it”, he averred.

A true Alli Iwo son and archetype of the Ibadan warriors of the days of yore, Oba Balogun would not hesitate to defend himself and followers from danger. His residence once came under attack from gun wielding suspected political thugs. It was shortly after this incident that I visited and as we left Alarere, I noticed private bodyguards. Seeing my bemusement, he explained that he had written to the Commissioner of Police, but if the police was not going to protect him, he would take no chances.

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Another encounter I had with him was when he held sway as the leader of the kingmakers during the installation process of his predecessor, Oba Saliu Adetunji. The Seriki issue had reared it’s head again and a chief had gone to court to stall the installation. At the press conference held at Mapo Hall, I asked what situation the Seriki line was in and the answer High Chief Balogun (as he then was) gave shaped the narrative. Making the chief’s case look like an irresponsible quest, he made it known that as at that time, Ibadan had no Seriki. “The last Seriki we knew was High Chief Augustus Adisa Akinloyè and he died years ago, so there is no Seriki line”, he affirmed.

With Olubadan Alli Okunmade’s transition, Ibadan has lost a gem. The marks he left will however be spoken of for a long time to come. With his status as the first PhD holder to rule the ancient town, he joins the pantheon of record breaking Ibadan monarchs; he joins the likes of Oluyedun (son of Afonja of Ilorin) who first used the Kakanfo title in Ibadan, Iba Oluyole, the first to simultaneously rule Ibadan while holding the title of Baṣorun of Ọyọ, Baalẹ Shittu (son of Aare Latoosa) who became the first son of a past ruler to ascend the throne, Baale Fijabi II, the first Ibadan monarch born in the town, Oba Okunola Abaasi Aleshinloye, the first to bear the Olubadan title and Oba Daniel Tayo Akinbiyi, the first to wear a beaded crown from the day of his coronation.
With the vacant throne, the opprobrium that trailed the movement of palace drummers to the home of the Olubadan designate, Balogun Olakuleyin is quite understandable since it is mostly from non-indigenes. Quite unknown to many, the Ibadan obaship system is a portmanteau of tranquility, order, capacity building and unpretentious loyalty to the city.

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It is a transparent system in which the next monarch is already known. As such, while one family is mourning the departed, the next in line is celebrating a feat that has eluded many families. That explains the term “ọmọ Agbotikuyo” (children of those who rejoice on hearing news of death) often rendered among praise names of Ibadan. It is so decisively upright that no Olubadan will ever have to await a court verdict to validate his obaship.

And who says it is not worth rejoicing over? The journey to the throne commences when one becomes the Mogaji (family head) of his compound and for those who eventually make it to the top, the process takes about four decades. There have been talks about Ibadan being ruled only by old men but true to the words of Oba Adetunji Aje Ògúngúniso, “the Olúbàdàn throne is never contested for and only those who live long can ascend it”.

So, what our monarchs seem to lack in physical strength, they have in native wisdom and significant experience having become family heads at much younger ages.

Thanks to the significantly credible monarchical arrangement, as Ibadan bids the scion of Ali Iwọ Jogioro Apewaajoye farewell, it is ready to welcome Oba Owolabi Olakuleyin.

 

Adejumọ sent this piece from Ibadan

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Wayward Ways and Means, epidemic kidnapping 

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File photo of The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun

We are about to witness a mud-fight between two gods of integrity. In a Nigeria where the mantra is, if you see something, say something, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, elected to say something. And he did say something last Wednesday. “We talked about inflation, where has it come from? It’s come from eight years of just printing money. And the issue is that that money was not matched by productivity…For eight years, the weak were left to their own devices. It is the privileged few that took everything” he said while appearing before the Senate Committee on Finance.

Edun’s appearance in the senate was a total shellacking of the administration of Mai Gaskiya, Muhammadu Buhari. Falling short of naming that government one in same frame with Ali Baba And the Forty Thieves, Edun accused Buhari of every conceivable economic malfeasance, finally heaping the blame of Nigeria’s current economic regression at his doorsteps. He went ahead to promise that the Tinubu government would audit the N22.7 trillion ways and means advance which the Buhari regime incurred.

Bashir Ahmad, former media aide to Buhari, was however of the opinion that blame-shoveling was bad politics. Comparatively, he said, the PDP was better at dressing its stench in pleasant deodorant. Posting on X, Ahmad wrote: “I often wonder why, as a government, we concentrate more on amplifying the faults of the previous administration rather than acknowledging its numerous achievements. The PDP seems to have a more skilful approach to politics than we do in the APC…it’s rare to find instances where President Yar’adua’s (PDP) government criticized President Obasanjo’s (PDP) or where President Jonathan’s (PDP) government faulted President Yar’adua’s (PDP).”

What they cooked that burnt down the house of Nigeria is gradually exposing itself. Get your popcorn and be ready for the rumble in the jungle. When someone tries to hide behind their finger, my people compare them to the exact scenario that both Bola Tinubu and Buhari find themselves today. Their story is perfectly told in the Epa and Aja tale. The tick, which the Yoruba call Epa, is a parasitic member of the Arachnida family of insects. Arachnids are a class of joint-legged arthropods which include, among others, spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, etc. As parasites, they feed on mammals, birds, and sometimes reptiles and amphibians. They feed on the blood of their hosts by attaching to them firmly with their proboscis. In consuming their blood, ticks satisfy their nutritional requirements. When a tick parasitizes its hosts, it acts as vector through which serious diseases that affect humans and animals are transmitted into the host. Eventually, while the tick is satisfying its survival quest, the host will suffer either diseases or anemia and eventually die. So, when Epa assumes that it is killing the host; take for instance, Aja, the dog, unbeknown to it, it is killing itself. The day the dog dies, the tick dies too. Yoruba express this as Epa npa’ra e, o l’ohun npa’ja.

Though he may right now be sunk in the pastime of feeding his cows in Daura, the truth is, Muhammadu Buhari’s self-imposed title of Mai Gaskiya may be on its way out of the retired General’s lapel. There is an ongoing attempt to deconstruct him as either the most naïvely inept Nigerian president to have lived or the imbecilic landlord who opened his house to burglars and watched while they looted his treasure. Buhari’s own political party, the APC-led government, is spearheading this deconstruction. So, should his successor, living through the mantra of “see something, say something” which has seized the information highway today, keep sealed lips and not disclose alleged massive theft of Nigerian patrimony that it is privy to? Should Tinubu see the wound on the sole of his foot as one that has familial imprimatur and thus walk loose with it? Should he say something about the massive theft that went on during the Buhari government which he has information about or say nothing? Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edu, chose the latter.

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Either as blame-shoveling or “saying something when something is seen”, Buhari looks like he is in a very bad shape, image-wise. He has unfortunately landed in the hand of a successor government that is ready to scapegoat anything in sight to justify its inertia. Already, it is clear to everyone that if there is one thing in surplusage from this government today, it is blame-shoveling and immense capacity to reverse itself. In the last nine months, we have seen the government blame everybody, everything but itself for its inability to do the magic it advertised so ebulliently during the campaigns. COVID-19, Godwin Emefiele, PDP, Buhari and all what ought-nots have suffered this victimhood of government’s antics. Edun and this government have also blamed Emefiele’s alleged reckless spending of the overdraft that the Buhari government collected from the CBN as largely accounting for the food and security crises that Nigeria is battling. Right now, Nigeria is seeking Interpol’s help to arrest three suspects alleged to have stolen the sum of $6.2m from the CBN, using Buhari’s forged signature. They are believed to have done this in cahoots with Emefiele who is on trial on 20-count charges. My haunch is that, if Emefiele has his days in court, the courtroom will explode like Hiroshima did and the matter may drift off like a fog, similar to the Sambo Dasuki security fund scandal. In the same vein, this government has reversed itself so effortlessly on policies it advertised with glee, like Jay Jay Okocha did on the field of play. The last reverse was the annual levy it imposed on expatriates which it revoked pre-beginning last week.

 

For an administration like the Tinubu government that is tottering in pitch darkness and fumbling for a way out, the eternal wisdom in the tale of the tick and dog seems self-explanatory and self-evident. The “Epa npa’ra e…” presents in a number of nuggets. First is that, it can come in the form of the question that has been asked repeatedly: How can the Tinubu government, and virtually all its runners, divorce themselves from the 8-year colossal wastage and failure of the Buhari government? The president, like a nursing mother, hunchbacked Buhari into power and gave him the wings with which he flew. Until a railway line halved them into their two separate ways, Tinubu defended every of the Buhari policies with the vigour of a matador. From insecurity, Fulani herders’ rapacious bloodletting, (where are the cows?) to dwindling economy and every allied matter of state policy, Tinubu was there for Buhari. Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the president, has almost had the mucus dripping out of one of his nostrils flip inside the second as he struggles to claim that Tinubu never requested Buhari to enter the forest of the brave – the Igbo igbale. So, for the Tinubu government, through Edun last week, to surgically try to separate itself from the Buhari government will be akin to an Epa which is trying to kill the Aja. Edun, with froth metaphorically foaming out of his mouth, attempted to do that last week.

Unfortunately for the government, head or tail, it loses. This is even if it listens to the self-centered counsel of Ahmad and elects to make the calamity wrought by the Buhari government a family affair. Its situation would be comparable to that of a man all alone inside a bunker who decides to allow a stench-like fart escape from his buttock. He, all alone, will bear the stench. How reconcilable would it be for Tinubu to say that the Buhari he deodorized as recently as December last year, as emanating “from the rarest phylum of virtuous servant-leaders,” whose emergence could be likened to that of “leaders…(that) happens only by divine orchestration,” a man of “absolute and undiluted integrity” had now been discovered to have sat on a government that is surrounded by a mass of maggots?

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We were still battling the waywardness found in the Buhari government’s Ways and Means when, as usual, Nigeria relapsed into its perennial orgy of massive kidnap of school pupils. The latest happened last Thursday at the Government Secondary School and LEA Primary School, Kuriga, Kaduna State. About 280 pupils and teachers were said to have been abducted by bandits. This has triggered national outrage. The bandits were reported to have invaded the Kuriga area of the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State by shooting at their victims in a Gestapo manner. As usual of Nigerian Aso Rock Villa, government is flexing its effeminate muscles and throwing threats into the sky. Sub-nationals and individuals too have tethered their usual empathy offering at the grove of this rapacious god of banditry.

The incessant incidences of kidnapping in Nigeria have grown into a hydra. They have become a source of national threat. Nigeria, according to researchers, boasts of a phenomenally large public and private schools which are nearly 97,000, the largest in Africa. Its primary education sector, according to Aly Verjee and Chris Kwaja, is roughly equivalent in size to the 98,000 public elementary and secondary schools in the United States. Today, these schools are under severe threat from terrorists.

The above-named scholars collated the history of Nigeria’s bloodletting. According to them, in their research work entitled An Epidemic of Kidnapping: Interpreting School Abductions and Insecurity in Nigeria (African Studies Quarterly Volume 20, Issue 3, October 2021) beginning from 2014, “the small, non-descript town of Chibok in Borno State in northeast Nigeria” earned the notoriety worldwide with the abduction of 276 girls. Since then, Nigerian northern schools have known no peace. Though the abduction sparked global outrage, Nigerian governments have moved on nevertheless. The Chibok abduction which was the cusp upon which the APC government wove its political campaign to seize power from Jonathan in the 2015 election was hung on, contributed immensely to the defeat of Jonathan. He was accused of mishandling the kidnapping. However, some top persons in this government were alleged to have organized it to embarrass Jonathan. Buhari thereafter campaigned on a pedestal of promise to restore security to Nigerians.

The scholars’ collation of the spate of kidnappings is frightening. According to them, before Chibok, other kidnaps were carried out though they attracted less media campaign. This was because the AC, CPC alignment and realignment was afoot and the masters of media orchestration in the AC had not aligned with the Buhari CPC. In 2013, 41 students and one teacher were shot/burned alive at the Mamudo Government Secondary School in Yobe State. Same year, another 44 students and teachers were murdered in a separate incident at the College of Agriculture, Gujba, about 120km east of Mamudo, reported Verjee and Kwaja. Similarly, in February 2014, another educational institution in Yobe State, which happened to be the fourth, was attacked. After the attack, 59 students were killed at the Buni Yadi Federal Government College, 30km south of Gujba. This was followed by the Chibok abductions in April 2014. With Buhari, the man who flaunted his epaulettes as a military general in civilian attire now in office, 110 girls got abducted from the Government Girls Science Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State in February 2018.

December of that year, said Verjee and Kwaja, saw another mass abduction in Buhari’s home state of Katsina. More than 300 boys were forcefully taken out of the Kankara Government Science Secondary School. Equally, on December 19 of that same year, 18 students of an Islamic school in Dandume, close to Kankara, were detained by a kidnapping group, while in February, 2021, 42 people, which included 27 students, were kidnapped from the Government Science College in Kagara, Niger State. On February 26, figures bandied, of between 279 and 317 students, were kidnapped from the Government Girls Secondary School in Jangebe, Zamfara State. In March 2021, there were two further mass abductions and three attempted abductions, all in Kaduna State. On March 11, 39 students were abducted from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in Mando. A tip-off to the Nigerian Army averted the kidnap on March 13 of pupils of the Turkish International Secondary School, Rigachikun. On April 20 of same year, 20 students and three staff of Greenfield University in Chikun, Kaduna State were abducted. Five of them got killed by their captors. Plateau State was to get its own share on April 29 when four students were abducted from the King’s School, in Gana Ropp, Barkin Ladi. Then, on May 30, 136 children and several teachers were taken from the Salihu Tanko Islamic School in Tegina, Niger State. In June, 103 students were abducted from the Federal Government Girls College in Birnin Yauri, Kebbi State and on July 5, 121 children were abducted from the Bethel Baptist High School in Maramara, Kaduna State. So many more that space would not allow us reel into happened as figures provided by Verjee and Kwaja.

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It will appear that, under Tinubu, Nigeria has entered its season of kidnap epidemic again. In the paper under discourse, Verjee and Kwaja made some recommendations that I found to be very profound. The first is that successive Nigerian governments have conflated the social challenge of kidnap for security challenges and as such, have solely treated school abductions as security problems which needed to be solved solely by military response. Government does this by fortifying the schools. In doing this, Nigeria is merely treating symptom rather than a national disease. Why it is impossible to get a let out of this is that, first, due to the large scale of Nigeria’s education system, deployment of soldiers and police in the protection of schools can never work.

Rather, according to Verjee and Kwaja, government must first address the trust deficit that exists between state security actors and the people. A very meager percentage of Nigerians perceive state security actors as credible. They have always had a checkered history of corruption and violence. There is a profound belief out there that Nigeria’s top security chiefs do not want insecurity to end due to the money they make from it. This perception fuels further fear of militarization and repression, leading to predatory behavior of state security actors.

Whatever it will take, Nigeria must get to solve the pandemic of school kidnappings. The audaciousness of its perpetrators and the seeming combine of many forces in carrying out the kidnappings make it very complex to get rid of. We must as well realize that this epidemic is just a tiny fraction of Nigeria’s political economy of violence. We have always had an ineffective and underperforming state, as well as sparse economic opportunities which have been fueling the school kidnappings. Already, the Kaduna government has rented private negotiators to secure the release of the kids. At the end of the day, multiple of millions of Naira would be paid to these no-gooders and like the boulder of Sisyphus, in no long a time, the terrorists will strike again. And Nigeria will begin another round of sorrow, tears and blood.

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The North is angry!

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Northern Nigeria used to have a cult of power called the Kaduna Mafia. The Kaduna Mafia decided who would become the Nigerian president, which road to build, which to abandon, which industries to be cited and where. When it couldn’t help but hand the reins of power to the south, it determined which weakest link to exploit. The 1976 assassination of Murtala Muhammed and the handing over of power to Olusegun Obasanjo explains this. If the Kaduna Mafia was bothered about the north-centric disposition of Obasanjo, it could have defiantly handed over the reins of the military government to Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, at that time a lieutenant colonel in the army. Nothing would have happened. When it handed power to Obasanjo, it had to ensure a triple promotion for Yar’Adua, the Fulani scion whose stock needed placation. He was named Chief of Staff Supreme Military Headquarters, with the brief to curtail Obasanjo’s probable excesses against the north.

Though the Kaduna Mafia seemed to have hit its expiry at the time Muhammadu Buhari came into office, the northern oligarchy was resolute about the Daura General’s emergence. And Buhari didn’t disappoint. His administration inflicted one of the most atrocious ethnic and cronyistic governments on Nigeria.

But today, the North is angry. This time, the subject of its annoyance is the planned relocation of some key departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos State. In time past, when the north got annoyed, it was akin to the shrill cry of the pied crow. The crow is a bird the Yoruba call the Kannakanna. So many myths surround this strange bird. The most outstanding of its mysterious features is its queer and unusual cries. These, the Yoruba, in their deep into mystical beliefs, associate with calamities. Yet, the Kannakanna has other features, one of which is that, it does not lay own eggs but rather chooses to harry other birds off their own egg nests. This bit about harrying other birds seems to be true. It, however, has no known explicable biological reasons. The other myth woven round the bird is that the Kannakanna does not lay its own eggs. This has been disproved by ornithologists.

When you compare the ancientness of northern elders’ cries in Nigeria whenever they feel things are not going their way with this strange bird, you will find out that the Kannakanna has a lot in common with the elders of the north. This mysterious bird is known among the Yoruba to be the bird of the elders; elders in this wise, witches and wizards. In some other instances, obeisance is paid to witches through chanting of their cognomen. One of these chants is that the witch is the owl with copper-like eyes – owiwi oloju ide. Witches are also simultaneously reputed to have their legs bespattered with camwood – osun. Beliefs in witches say that the crow is a messenger of these unique beings of African women. It is the animal they send on their mysterious, most times destructive assignments. Always decked in black apparel – its quills – a few other species of crows have white apron-like quills on their chests. Though it feeds mostly on ants, the Kannakanna’s most cherished meal is the hatchling of a sparrow (eye ega). The sparrow itself is a social, homely, very small, seed-eating bird with conical bills. It will fight its assailant to a standstill if annoyed. That is why when a spat is in the offing between two groups or individuals, the Yoruba will say that they smell a fight in the proportion of what happens when the crow attempts to beat the hatchling of a sparrow – “Kannakanna na omo ega…”

So, the north is annoyed. This time, the north that is annoyed is represented by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF). A few other voices have spat into the void and lapped the sky-spiraling spittle with their faces. One of them was Ali Ndume, the senator representing Borno South in the National Assembly. While the NEF, through its Director of Publicity and Advocacy, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, said that the relocation of the CBN departments would lead to brain drain, Ndume delivered his in form of a subtle threat. He said, if the Yoruba-born president of Nigeria goes ahead with the relocation of those departments, this “move would have consequences.”

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For Ndume, who is today the self-appointed one-man squad spearheading the north’s dissonance with government’s policies, the president is being ill-advised by the people he derogatorily labeled “Lagos boys” in the corridors of power. Hear him: “All these Lagos boys who are thinking that Lagos is Nigeria are just misinforming and advising the President wrongly. Those political cartels that are in the corridors of power are trying to misinform the President and we will tell the President. The President will take action. They are not doing any favour to Mr President because this will have political consequences”.

If you are imbued with the steady eyes to see the unseen, ears to hear the unsaid and ability to penetrate the thin veneer of today to arrive at Nigeria’s atrocious past, Ndume will remind you of the ubiquitous Kaduna Mafia. The only difference is that the Kaduna Mafia was not as loquacious, nor visible as the Borno senator. In Bala Takaya and Sonni Gwanle Tyoden (eds) book, The Kaduna Mafia: A Study of the Rise, Development and Consolidation of a Nigerian Power Elite, (1987) this mythical, sect-like northern Nigeria powerful force’s role in Nigeria’s political economy was rightly dissected. Operating under similar historical evolution and characteristics as the Mafia in Italy, Spain and the United States of America, the book used the septic-tank darkness nature of the Italian Mafia to explain the Kaduna Mafia. It said it “is such that for (the Kaduna Mafia) to continue its existence and pursue its objectives with the required effectiveness, it cannot but subject its identity, nature and activities to obscurity. (Secrecy) is one of the hallmarks of a successful mafia set-up”.

The Kaduna Mafia, a faction of the Nigerian bourgeois class and northern oligarchy, escalated the ethnic politics between the north and the south in the 1970s to the 1990s. The Mafia was a set of amorphous but lethal power-baiting individuals. Within this period in the life of Nigeria, this narrow group interest held the rest of Nigeria to ransom. It dictated the political and economic barometer of the country and blithely decreed the future of Nigeria. It perfected underdevelopment, focusing solely on development of the north and like godfathers in today’s politics, was narrow-minded and self-centered. Like the roach, the Kaduna Mafia had very sensitive political antennae with which it sniffed the pendulum of power and ethnic gains. Realizing that the best place to manipulate power was outside the locus of power, the Mafia fiddled with policies in such a way as to ensure that the north made maximum benefits through strategic positioning of policies and structures. Using the façade of Islamic puritanic posture, the Kaduna Mafia was be able to conceal its selfish political and economic interests before the overall intent got exposed to a larger Nigeria.

The overall effects of the Kaduna Mafia’s ethnic politics were negatively consequential for Nigeria. In the military, for instance, the first and only Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, was clairvoyant about the future hegemonic hold of uniformed men on the running and ruining of Nigeria. Thus, he ensured that a number of qualifications for entrance into the military were waived for northern boys enlisting in the military in 1959 to the 1960s. In height, education and mental acuity criteria, many northern boys who didn’t measure up became soldiers, rising to become military governors and even Heads of State. This ultimately inflicted colossal damage on the future of the country. One of such boys was Muhammadu Buhari. In terms of academic qualifications, he obviously didn’t have the school certificate requirement. He also ranked very low in terms of depth. How was anyone, even Bello, who had much charisma and depth, to imagine that someday, Nigeria would be in the hands of a Buhari? The rest, as they say, is history.

So, when Ndume and the NEF began the resurgence of their crow cry about a north under siege, what came to the minds of other parts of Nigeria is similar to the cry of a butcher who is being stalked by a threat of death. So when the butcher screams that death was about to take hold of him, the question people ask is, didn’t the animals he had mercilessly butchered too have blood flowing in their veins? Yoruba render this as, “Iku fe pa alapata, o nkigbe; omo eranko t’o ti da l’oro nko?” What this pithy saying advocates is the need for fairness at all times as whatever one is unwilling to stomach, they should refrain from imposing it on others.

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The current federal government is trying to relocate CBN departments like the Banking Supervision, Other Financial Institutions Supervision, Consumer Protection Department, Payment System Management Department, and Financial Policy Regulations Department from Abuja to Lagos? Ex-CBN Deputy Governor, Kingsley Moghalu, was the first to thaw its ice by labeling it an unnecessary wolf cry. In a tweet on X, he claimed the Lagos office, which he said had been completed and inaugurated approximately 12 years back, was underutilized while the staff of the CBN at the Abuja headquarters “exceed the health and safety limits of the building, hence the need to relocate.” He said the relocation was “rational, given that the market entities supervised by these departments are predominantly located in Lagos.”

While corroborating Moghalu, CBN former governor and ex-emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, said “Northern politicians will shout that this is moving from Abuja to Lagos. Abuja is a federal capital not a northern issue. So long as this is a principled decision, the noise should be ignored.” According to him, “All this noise is absolutely unnecessary. The CBN has staff manning its branches and cash offices across the Federation. Moving staff to the Lagos office to streamline operations and make them more effective and reduce cost is a normal prerogative of management.”

Now, why does the NEF relish this idea of northernizing Abuja? Does this Kaduna Mafia-incarnate think that localization means ownership? Countless times, the South-South people have cautioned those who see the FCT as their patrimony, reminding them that the glittering roads of Abuja were paved with oil money from their soil. It was this same northernization of Abuja reasoning that bred the vacuous clamour for a northerner to be FCT Minister at the beginning of this present government and the gas-lighting of the incumbent.

Before the February 4, 1976 promulgation of Decree No 6 by the Federal Military Government of Nigeria which initiated the removal of the national capital from Lagos to Abuja, there had been previous advocacy for its relocation. One of such was made by Chief Obafemi Awolowo at the 1953 constitutional conference held in London. It was Awolowo and his Action Group’s contention that Lagos must be merged with the Western Region while a new federal capital should be built in central Nigeria.

Following this up, the Action Group published a pamphlet in 1953 with the title Lagos Belongs to the West, where it articulated that “(Lagos) is strategically… highly vulnerable. Geographically, it is not by any means properly suited to serve as the headquarters of the Central or Federal Government. Lagos is to Nigeria what Calcutta is to India. What we need now, to pursue this analogy, is a New Delhi.” The party then made this proposal: “A large area of land should be acquired by the Federal Government near Kafanchan, which is almost central geographically, and strategically safe comparatively, for the purpose of building a new and neutral capital. The new capital should be built on a site entirely separate from an existing town, so that its absolute neutrality may be assured. Being the property of the Federal Government, it would automatically be administered by it in the same way as Washington, D.C. in USA or Canberra in Australia. Such a capital would be a neutral place indeed.”

In August I975, the Supreme Military Council formed a Committee on the Location of the Federal Capital, one of whose members was Dr. Tai Solarin, Headmaster of Mayfair College, Ikenne, who had written many articles in the Tribune newspapers advocating relocation of the capital from Lagos to the north. One of such was a 197I article he wrote with the title Lagos ‘should go’. Other members of the committee were Dr Ajato Gando, the only member with a background in geography and urban planning; Reverend Colonel Pedro Martins from Lagos, and Justice T. Akinola Aguda as Chairman. The Aguda committee, made up mostly of westerners, recommended Abuja as the FCT. If the SMC had northernization of Abuja in mind, it probably would have made the committee an all-north affair. While its initial planning and implementation were undertaken by the Military Government of Generals Murtala Muhammed and Obasanjo, Gen Ibrahim Babangida eventually relocated Nigeria’s capital to Abuja.

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One of the terms of reference for the establishment of the new capital was to ensure that it was a truly neutral city which would accommodate Northern, Eastern, and Western peoples and where these peoples would co-exist in harmony. The SMC was wary of the new capital not being free from the rancorous historical legacies of state capitals where dominant groups imposed themselves on previous urban centres. Today, with the nauseating ethnicization of Abuja and an opaque reading of sentiments into national policy matters like the FAAN and CBN relocation by northern crows, the fact that there was a predominant Northern influence in the process of construction of Abuja has made the noxious perception rife today that the FCT is a northern bequeathal. What NEF, Ndume and others are doing by locating ulterior motives in the relocations from Abuja to Lagos is northernizing the ownership of the FCT. Otherwise, the president should be left with the prerogative to decide what policies best suits its administration. What Nigeria needs now is healing. What the framers of the FCT establishment and Awolowo’s Action Group envisaged was a neutral capital which it no longer is. NEF, Ndume and the likes are curating an Abuja that is a threat to unity and indeed a potential symbol of the escalation of the North-South discord.

Should Abuja ever be an issue for ethno-religious claim? It was conceived to be a city of love and not hate. It was conceived as a city of equality and not of superiority of one part over another. That was why the Federal Government paid off the original owners of the land and created Suleja for them. As Nigerians, we owe one another that duty of respect and love – and Nigerians can love! I experienced it last Friday during the burial of my mother. Nigerians of all classes and ethnicities, public figures, private figures helped me in seeing my mother off to eternity. Governors who I, at one time or the other, wrote against; senators I once queried their patriotism to Nigeria; captains of industry, North and South; farmers , artisans, white collar, blue collar people – everybody from everywhere gave my mother a state burial. I thank them immensely. The lesson for me there is that I should stay on the track I have chosen for myself while I plead that we work harder to make Nigeria a haven for all Nigerians who are still alive. Enough of bickering over nothing – not over Abuja, especially!

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