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OTHERS' VIEWS

Southern Nigerians have asked me two trivial but persistent and important questions about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The first is why most Hausa-speaking northerners don’t call Tinubu “Jagaban” as a standalone title like southerners do. Since I am from Borgu, I’ve also been asked why Tinubu was knighted as the “Jagaban Borgu” or the “Jagaba of Borgu.” And what does the title mean, anyway?

I didn’t think the questions were worth a response, much less a column-length one, because, until now, Tinubu was either just a major, if unofficial, political player in the Buhari regime or a candidate for president. Now that he is president, I think these questions are deserving of a response in the interest of historical and political education. 

Hausa-speaking northerners don’t say “jagaban” as a standalone word because it is ungrammatical in their language. The usual word is “jagaba.” When it transforms to “jagaban” it must be followed immediately by a place name because the additional “n” in the word is a preposition that signifies “of.” So, it is either “the Jagaba of Borgu” or “Jagaban Borgu.” If the title is not associated with a place, it’s simply “Jagaba,” not “Jagaban.”

To say “Jabagan of Borgu” is to commit an ungainly interlingual prepositional tautology since “n” and “of” mean exactly the same thing. Of course, interlingual tautologies are not uncommon. For example, we say Aso Rock even when “aso” means “rock” in the Gbagyi language. We say “Lake Chad” even when “chad” means “lake” in Kanuri. And we say “Sahara Desert” even when “sahara” means “desert” in Arabic.

Since linguistic habits often form and evolve outside notions of correct usage, I won’t be surprised if even Hausa-speaking northerners start to call Tinubu “Jagaban”—or even “Jagaban of Borgu.” Nigeria’s southwest is, after all, the country’s sociolinguistic pacesetter because of the centrality of Lagos as the cultural capital.

 So, what does “jagaba” mean? Well, it’s the Hausa word for chief warrior, warlord, frontrunner, or simply a brave man. It’s derived from “ja,” which means pull and “gaba,” which means front in the Hausa language. A jagaba is therefore someone who leads from the front, which is another way of describing a war commander. In other words, “Jagaban Borgu” or the “Jagaba of Borgu” means the Chief Warrior of Borgu.

The title was conferred on President Tinubu in February 2006 by the late Alhaji Haliru Dantoro who was Emir of Borgu in New Bussa from 2002 to 2015. Dantoro and Tinubu struck up an enduring, if unusual, friendship in 1992 when both of them served as senators in IBB’s abortive Third Republic. Dantoro was a senator on the platform of the National Republican Convention (NRC) and Tinubu was elected on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Although they belonged to different political parties, had diametrically opposed ideological temperaments, and Tinubu was much younger than Dantoro, they hit it off and sustained their friendship even after Sani Abacha dissolved the senate.

On February 26, 2006, exactly four years after Dantoro became emir, he knighted Tinubu as “Jagaban Borgu” (or the Jagaba of Borgu) and Remi Tinubu, his wife, as Yon Bana Jagaban Borgu. “When God made me the Emir, I said this man was there when I was in dire need of help, so why can’t I use my position to make him what I feel will help him in future politically?” Dantoro said in a news interview before his death.

Dantoro’s graciousness toward Tinubu doesn’t come to me as a surprise. As I pointed out in my November 07, 2015, column titled "Tribute to Haliru Dantoro, Emir of Borgu,” Dantoro was a conciliatory, even-tempered, and pleasant person who loved to build bridges across cultures, regions, ideologies, and faiths. Six months before his death, former President Muhammadu Buhari testified that even though he imprisoned Dantoro in 1984, along with other Second Republic politicians, he forgave him and even went “ahead to establish [a] very strong and cherished personal relationship” with him.

Dantoro and my father’s immediate younger brother, J.B. Kperogi, were also fierce political rivals in the Second Republic in the old Borgu, yet when I had a chance to meet him in 1999 as a young reporter and he recognized me as the nephew of his former political opponent, he was kind and gracious to me, asked after my uncle, and emphasized the importance of unity in the old Nigerian Borgu that is now splintered in parts of Kwara, Niger, and Kebbi states. 

Having said this, it’s important to state that “jagaba” is not a Borgu title; it’s borrowed from Hausa land. The ancient Borgu empire was a pluri-ethnic, confederate polity and was peopled by many ethnic groups, but mostly by the Baatonu (whom Yoruba people Bariba, Ibariba, or Baruba), the Boko (or Bokobaru/Bisa), the Fulani, the Kambari, and the Dendi people.

 Ancient Borgu stretched from what is now northeastern Benin Republic (where a Borgou state exists) to present-day Baruten and Kaiama local governments in Kwara State; Borgu and Agwara local governments in Niger State; and Bagudo and Dandi local governments in Kebbi State.

In 1904, Nigerian Borgu, which Lord Salisbury once angrily derided as "a malarious African desert…not worth a war," was initially designated as a province by British colonizers. That was the equivalent of a state in modern parlance. It was later downgraded to a “division” of several provinces, including Kebbi Province, Kontagora Province, and finally Ilorin Province because it wasn’t economically self-sustaining.  

When Kwara State was created in 1967, most of Borgu (except Bagudo and Dandi) became a part of the state and existed as Nigeria’s largest local government area until August 27, 1991, when IBB carved out what is now Borgu and Agwara local governments to Niger State. What was left of Borgu in Kwara State became Baruten and Kaiama local governments.

I don’t know why Dantoro didn’t give Tinubu a title that is native to the Bisa/Boko-speaking people of New Bussa, but Professor Halidu Usman, the Emir of Desa (known as Ilesha Baruba by Yoruba people) in the Baruten Local Government in Kwara State once defended handing out Hausa-derived traditional titles because, according to him, the repertoire of native Borgu titles is severely limited and has been exhausted in light of the changing cultural environment.

In any case, Borgu has always been a melting pot that fuses multifarious cultural influences from far-flung places. Many historic and deeply entrenched Borgu royal titles have Hausa or Kanuri roots. Take Kilishi Yeruma, for example. It is a fossilized, time-honored title in all of Borgu for the heir apparent to the throne. It is derived from a fusion of Hausa and Kanuri.

Kilishi is the Hausa word for rug (which symbolizes the throne) and Yeruma is the corruption of the Kanuri “yerima,” which means prince. The town of Kishi in the Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State, was founded by a Borgu prince called Kilishi Yeruma, and Kishi (or Kisi) is the short form of Kilishi. It’s a historical fact that people of Kishi are intimately familiar with and proud of. That is why the Iba of Kishi attends the yearly Gaani festival in Borgu.

Interestingly, when I discussed Tinubu’s Borgu title with my paternal uncle a few days ago, he jokingly wondered if Tinubu was aware that he was shirking the duties his title required of him by removing fuel subsidies, which has multiplied the deprivation of border communities such as Borgu.

 

 

Southern Nigerians have asked me two persistent, trivial questions about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The first is why most Hausa-speaking northerners don’t call Tinubu “Jagaban” as a standalone title like southerners do. Since I am from Borgu, I’ve also been asked why Tinubu was knighted as the “Jagaban Borgu” or the “Jagaba of Borgu.” And what does the title mean, anyway?


I didn’t think the questions were worth a response, much less a column-length one, because, until now, Tinubu was either just a major, if unofficial, political player in the Buhari regime or a candidate for president. Now that he is president, I think these questions are deserving of a response in the interest of historical and political education.


Hausa-speaking northerners don’t say “jagaban” as a stand alone word because it is ungrammatical in their language. The usual word is “jagaba.” When it transforms to “jagaban” it must be followed immediately by a place name because the additional “n” is a preposition that signifies “of.” So, it is either “the Jagaba of Borgu” or “Jagaban Borgu.” If the title is not associated with a place, it’s simply “Jagaba,” not “Jagaban.”

To say “Jabagan of Borgu” is to commit an ungainly interlingual prepositional tautology since “n” and “of” mean exactly the same thing. Of course, interlingual tautologies are not uncommon. For example, we say Aso Rock even when “aso” means “rock” in the Gbagyi language. We say “Lake Chad” even when “chad” means “lake” in Kanuri. And we say “Sahara Desert” even when “sahara” means “desert” in Arabic.

Since linguistic habits often form and evolve outside notions of correct usage, I won’t be surprised if even Hausa-speaking northerners start to call Tinubu “Jagaban”—or even “Jagaban of Borgu.” Nigeria’s southwest is, after all, the country’s sociolinguistic pacesetter because of the centrality of Lagos as the cultural capital.

So, what does “jagaba” mean? Well, it’s the Hausa word for chief warrior, warlord, frontrunner, or simply a brave man. It’s derived from “ja,” which means pull and “gaba,” which means front in the Hausa language. A jagaba is, therefore, someone who leads from the front, which is another way of describing a war commander. In other words, “Jagaban Borgu” or the “Jagaba of Borgu” means the Chief Warrior of Borgu.

The title was conferred on President Tinubu in February 2006 by the late Alhaji Haliru Dantoro who was Emir of Borgu in New Bussa from 2002 to 2015. Dantoro and Tinubu struck up an enduring, if unusual, friendship in 1992 when both of them served as senators in IBB’s abortive Third Republic. Dantoro was a senator on the platform of the National Republican Convention (NRC) and Tinubu was elected on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Although they belonged to different political parties, had diametrically opposed ideological temperaments, and Tinubu was much younger than Dantoro, they hit it off and sustained their friendship even after Sani Abacha dissolved the senate.

On February 26, 2006, exactly four years after Dantoro became emir, he knighted Tinubu as “Jagaban Borgu” (or the Jagaba of Borgu) and Remi Tinubu, his wife, as Yon Bana Jagaban Borgu.“When God made me the Emir, I said this man was there when I was in dire need of help, so why can’t I use my position to make him what I feel will help him in future politically?” Dantoro said in a news interview before his death.

Dantoro’s graciousness toward Tinubu doesn’t come to me as a surprise. As I pointed out in my November 07, 2015, column titled “Tribute to Haliru Dantoro, Emir of Borgu,” Dantoro was a conciliatory, even-tempered, and pleasant person who loved to build bridges across cultures, regions, ideologies, and faiths. Six months before his death, former President Muhammadu Buhari testified that even though he imprisoned Dantoro in 1984, along with other Second Republic politicians, he forgave him and even went “ahead to establish [a] very strong and cherished personal relationship” with him.

Dantoro and my father’s immediate younger brother, J.B. Kperogi, were also fierce political rivals in the Second Republic in the old Borgu, yet when I had a chance to meet him in 1999 as a young reporter and he recognized me as the nephew of his former political opponent, he was kind and gracious to me, asked after my uncle, and emphasized the importance of unity in the old Nigerian Borgu that is now splintered in parts of Kwara, Niger, and Kebbi states.

Having said this, it’s important to state that “jagaba” is not a Borgu title; it’s borrowed from Hausa land. The ancient Borgu empire was a pluri-ethnic, confederate polity and was peopled by many ethnic groups, but mostly by the Baatonu (whom Yoruba people call Bariba, Ibariba, or Baruba), the Boko (or Bokobaru/Bisa), the Fulani, the Kambari, and the Dendi people.

Ancient Borgu stretched from what is now northeastern Benin Republic (where a Borgou state exists) to present-day Baruten and Kaiama local governments in Kwara State; Borgu and Agwara local governments in Niger State; and Bagudo and Dandi local governments in Kebbi State.

In 1904, Nigerian Borgu, which Lord Salisbury once angrily derided as “a malarious African desert…not worth a war,” was initially designated as a province by British colonizers. That was the equivalent of a state in modern parlance. It was later downgraded to a “division” of several provinces, including Kebbi Province, Kontagora Province, and Ilorin Province because it wasn’t economically self-sustaining.

When Kwara State was created in 1967, most of Borgu (except Bagudo and Dandi) became a part of the state and existed as Nigeria’s largest local government area until August 27, 1991, when IBB carved out what is now Borgu and Agwara local governments to Niger State.

I don’t know why Dantoro didn’t give Tinubu a title that is native to the Bisa/Boko-speaking people of New Bussa, but Professor Halidu Usman, the Emir of Desa (known as Ilesha Baruba by Yoruba people) in the Baruten Local Government in Kwara State once defended handing out Hausa-derived traditional titles because, according to him, the repertoire of native Borgu titles is severely limited and has been exhausted in light of the changing cultural environment.

In any case, Borgu has always been a melting pot that fuses multifarious cultural influences from far-flung places. Many historic and deeply entrenched Borgu royal titles have Hausa or Kanuri roots. Take Kilishi Yeruma, for example. It is a fossilized, time-honored title in all of Borgu for the heir apparent to the throne. It is derived from a fusion of Hausa and Kanuri.

Kilishi is the Hausa word for rug (which symbolizes the throne) and Yeruma is the corruption of the Kanuri “yerima,” which means prince. The town of Kishi in the Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State, was founded by a Borgu prince called Kilishi Yeruma, and Kishi (or Kisi) is the short form of Kilishi. It’s a history people of Kishi are intimately familiar with and proud of. That is why the Iba of Kishi attends the yearly Gaani festival in Borgu.


Interestingly, when I discussed Tinubu’s Borgu title with my paternal uncle a few days ago, he jokingly wondered if Tinubu was aware that he was shirking the duties his title required of him by removing fuel subsidies, which has multiplied the deprivation of border communities such as Borgu.

 

The past one week has been one of the most momentous in the life of the nation. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu dared the undared, and triumphed. He passed a knotty test of leadership. The first of its kind. Under a haze of threats of strike by labour unions over the abrogation of petrol subsidy, President Tinubu showed peerless leadership, preparation, and attunement. When preparation meets leadership, Tinubu happens.

THE PETROL SUBSIDY BLUES

With mounting national debts, desiccating revenue, haemorrhaging economy, corruption, and shadowy sectoral enterprise, the removal of subsidy on petrol is coming at an auspicious time. It is either we slither down the snaky tunnel to certain economic peril or we buck up, pull together, and confront this bogeyman menacing us for decades.

 

Tough decisions are expected. President Tinubu affirmed a fait accompli when he said in his inaugural address that petrol subsidy ‘’is gone’’. The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021 signed by former President Buhari already made the petrol subsidy regime inoperative. Although the effective abolishment of the scheme was delayed until the end of June 2023, there are no funds to finance the deficit.

 

But the President had been forthright and genuine about his intentions on petrol subsidy. He said during the campaigns that he would not maintain the parlous order, and that he would stop the haemorrhage.

Nigeria had been borrowing to fund petrol subsidy. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) was spending as much as N400 billion every month to subsidise the petrol price. According to Mele Kyari, NNPCL CEO, Nigeria has racked up $6 billion in petrol subsidy debts. The scheme is projected to have wolved over N11 trillion in eight years. This is clearly not sustainable, not even for any avidly populist government. Without an accurate data of Nigeria’s daily petrol consumption quota, the petrol subsidy regime was nebulous and prone to abuse, and chronic venality. Much of the subsidised product is believed to be smuggled to neighbouring West African countries by profiteers.

 

The argument for petrol subsidy retention is an emotive one that obviates the filth in the system. Nigeria is a quasi-socialist country, a highly subsidised country. Corruption thrives partly because of the regime of subsidies.

EARNING PUBLIC TRUST

The President once said he had prepared himself, all his life, to lead Nigeria. His artful management of the concomitants and corollaries of the petrol subsidy removal accents this conviction. He has triumphed where many leaders failed. How did he do it?

On Monday, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) suspended the planned strike. Earlier, the Joint Health Workers Union of Nigeria (JOHESU) suspended its planned strike as well. A government delegation had been meeting with the labour unions, negotiating terms of entente. The president, himself, had met with the leadership of JOHESU. He did not stay behind the ornated walls of his office while his aides do the jaw-jawing. He got his hands on the wheel.

The President was unambiguous about his proposition to the unions – providing palliatives, particularly minimum wage review — to cushion the effects of petrol subsidy removal. At a meeting with some governors, the president had said: “We need to do some arithmetic and soul searching on the minimum wage. We will have to take a look at that together, and the revenue. We must strengthen the source and application of our revenue.’’

The federal government and the labour unions agreed to ‘’establish a joint committee to review the proposal for any wage increase or award and establish a framework and timeline for implementation” and ‘’to review World Bank Financed Cash Transfer scheme and propose inclusion of low-income earners in the programme.’’

Evidently, the President anticipated a problem and primed a solution.

During the campaigns, the President made a valiant statement on axing petrol subsidy and other economic blackholes. What many considered a political suicide attempt at the time. But he stuck to his guns.

He said: “By all means, you must have electricity. And you won’t pay for estimated billing anymore. When I become president, multiple exchange rates will go away. Write it down. How can we be subsidising fuel consumption of Cameroon, Niger, Benin Republic? No matter how long you protest, we are going to remove subsidy. We can do it. We are educated enough.’’

The honesty, courage and forthrightness exemplified by the President in this instance was infectious. He did not dilly-dally or play around the critical issue with political chicanery; he made a firm statement and asked Nigerians to hold him to his word.

And staying true to principle, his first presidential dispatch was to permanently seal the drainpipe. He showed sincerity of purpose, genuineness, and clarity of mind. Honesty is infectious. Nigerians saw the sincerity of the President and the decisiveness of his leadership. He did not get into the saddle and change from Rock and Roll to Rhythm and Blues; he maintained the same tempo; the same energy, the same oomph; the same vision, the same truth, and the same purpose. When preparation meets leadership, Tinubu happens.

The President has earned public trust and goodwill for his honesty and firmness of character. He is aware. Two days after his inauguration, two law enforcement agencies got into a public brawl. He did not dither. He did not vacillate. He did not look away. He issued a stern reprimand.

Nigeria has a leader who is not afraid of taking tough decisions for the greater good. The President may have prepared himself for leadership, but destiny prepared him for Nigeria at this time.

A major issue during the week, was the advice by a member of Nigeria Interreligious Council (NIREC) and former National Director of Legal and Public Affairs, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Evangelist Samuel Kwankur, to the Northern leaders to caution the former Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, to refrain from inflammatory statements capable of setting Nigeria on fire.

 

Kwankur was reacting to statements credited to the former governor in which he allegedly told his audience before handing over to his successor that the Islamic dominance in Kaduna had come to stay and had been successfully replicated at the federal level.

El-Rufai spoke in Hausa. I only have a passing understanding of the language. But those that are versed in it, allege that he had sniggered that the emergence of Bola Tinubu had silenced CAN, the umbrella body of Christians in the country and that he would ensure an uninterrupted Islam-dominated government in Kaduna and at the national level for the next 20 years and beyond.

Now, in a highly volatile and religion-sensitive setting as Nigeria and especially, a complex entity as Kaduna, the remarks by the former governor, are uncalled for. They are not edifying. At his age and the positions he had held, either as governor, Director-General, Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, El-Rufai, should be seen and addressed as an elder. Elders are cautious and measured in outings and utterances.

 

Age and position mellow the activism in one and make him sober and reflective. But this does not seem the case for the former governor. In fact, it can only take those not familiar with his antecedents to be surprised that he could be associated with the careless comments attributed to him. He is free with words and deploys them at will, not minding the consequences.

On the alleged Islamisation comments, he was on familiar track. Recall that as a governor, he had, in flagrant disregard to the complex cultural and religious sensitivities of Kaduna, appointed a fellow Muslim, Hadiza Sabuwa Balarabe, as deputy and carried on as if it did not matter. He even encouraged his successor and protégé, Senator Uba Sani, to follow the odious step.

For El-Rufai, a man of brief size and height, controversy seems a second name. He courts it and revels in it, even at the cost of public good. He is never tired of playing games with important issues. To him, everything is politics and politics is everything.

Recall when he threatened international election observers that they would be evacuated in body bags if they ventured into the country to monitor the 2019 presidential elections. Recall, also, when he claimed being asked to offer bribes by Senators during his screening for ministerial appointment, during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency but when pressed to provide evidence on his claims, he chickened out, saying God was his witness.

Once on this space, I had noted that the former governor acts the good boy, when it suits his agenda and hits hard when he has an interest to pursue. He has not deviated from that path. For him, scruples are matters of convenience to be observed when necessary but can be discarded, if need be. He is shrewd. And cold! The trend, now, is the scramble by leading members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), for appointments at the centre. El-Rufai is equally on heat, sort of, in that regard and needed to court the attention of President Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima, his fellow Muslims.

Of course, there is nothing wrong in his aspiration for any job or position that animates him. He is also free to support any candidate of any religious persuasion that excites him. They are all within his constitutional rights. The beauty of democracy is plurality of views and opinions. It is a game of numbers but certainly not without principles and guidelines. El-Rufai should not be allowed to re-write those rules while pursuing his personal interest. He cannot be allowed to create the bubble and move on, as he has always done. He should be stopped from his antics before they do enormous harm on Kaduna state and the country at large.

 

Kaduna was the capital of the defunct Northern Region and the seat of government from where the late Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, provided people-oriented governance to the region. Till date, it remains the pride of the North and every Northerner of note. Nigeria has always passed for a secular state where no particular faith has dominance over others. There is no state religion. The situation should remain so.

The danger in the careless remarks by El-Rufai, is that they are capable of setting the country on the edge. The immediate past Muhammadu Buhari administration did not manage the diversities in the country very well. It rather widened the major fault lines among the citizens on ethnic and religious grounds. El-Rufai was close to the government and a visible ally to Buhari. A system with people like him on drivers’ seats can hardly make progress.

Tinubu and Shettima need to be on the watch. The controversies and contentions surrounding their emergence are yet to settle. The suspicion on their same-faith ticket is still thick. They also have the huge tasks of national healing and reconciling the various tendencies in the land. Nigeria has witnessed so much waste of its citizens over avoidable circumstances to allow petty issues as religion and choice of leadership burden it more.

Recent reports by the people of Southern Kaduna, under the aegis of Atyap Community Development Association (ACDA), that 518 people have been killed, 20 villages ransacked, 18 burnt down, and thousands of victims rendered refugees across many communities from 2017 till date, over the persistent attacks and killings in Atyapland in the Zangon Kataff Local Government Area of Kaduna State, should matter to the new authorities in the state and Abuja. El-Rufai was the governor at the time of these gruesome occurrences. The figure speaks volume of what lies ahead if he is allowed to forge ahead with his Islamisation agenda.

Speaking of late Chiefs Obafemi Awolowo and Ladoke Akintola politics, I have a pertinent personal testimony to tender. I had a pretty early and unique exposure to Nigerian politics which can be literally cited as baptism of fire. I was born into one of the contradictions of Yoruba politics which fostered in me a lifelong skeptical attitude towards the totality of Nigerian politics and its received wisdoms. 

My first memory of life on this planet was as a witness to an arson attack on our residence, as me and my grandmother fled the scene. She had earlier refused entreaties to leave the compound because in her consideration, her son had not committed any crime, let alone, the generic accusation of public office theft, with which, the Western regional political leadership under the premiership of Ladoke Akintola were collectively tarred. Her son and my father, was Chief Oduola Osuntokun, who served as cabinet minister from 1955 to 1966 straddling the premiership of Chiefs Obafemi Awolowo and Ladoke Akintola. 

Why would, perhaps, one of the most ethically upright and conscientious public servant of his generation be subjected to the censure and demonisation that was visited on those who took sides with Akintola in the violent Awolowo/Akintola schism that rocked the Western region from 1962 to 1966? It is on record that, as Minister, he midwifed the establishment of the ikeja, ilupeju and bodija housing estates without allocating a single plot of land, directly or by proxy to himself. 

More significant was the character witness of being the only Minister exonerated by the Justice Kayode Esho panel that was charged by the first military governor of the Western region, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi to probe the preceding Akintola government. Neither did he partake of the widespread election rigging that characterised the 1965 regional elections in the Western region were the testimonies of his opponents in the four general elections he contested to be believed. 

This was the riddle I had to grapple with as a child growing up in the Yoruba society of the late sixties and early seventies. Yet, in acknowledgement of one of those rare moments of ‘good things happening to good people’ 

I would, at this juncture, want to express my immense appreciation and gratitude to the Odua group of companies, for deeming my dad worthy of adoption as a political role model in its memorialisation of Yoruba exemplars. The debt of gratitude I owe, commensurately escalates, with the choice of my uncle, Professor Olukayode Osuntokun for the same recognition in the academic/ professional category. 

In earnest, the phenomenon of Awolowo’s embodiment of Yoruba politics, began with the formation of the egbe omo Oduduwa in 1948. ‘In 1951 he founded the Action Group, with some of the Egbe’s members as its nucleus, and in the process became the party’s first president. In the same year, the party won the first elections held in the Western Region, and Awolowo subsequently served as leader of government business and minister for local government. 

From 1954 to 1959, as premier of the Western Region, he worked, assiduously, to establish the imperishable legacy of the socioeconomic transformation of the Western region with such enormously successful progressive policies as free universal primary education and free health care for children. The constitutional provision of 

regional autonomy that undergirded the practice of Nigerian federalism gave him the latitude to make a peerless impact on the socioeconomic development of the Western region and thereby eternally capture the imagination of the Yoruba people.

From the authentic and the original to the mutant and superficial, the Awolowo political brand has run the gamut of the Action Group, AG, Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, Social Democratic Party, SDP, and the Alliance for Democracy, AD until all pretences and affectation of any such brand were thrown overboard at the formation of the All Progressives Congress, APC in 2015. 

The stillborn outreach of Awolowo to the similarly rigorous modernisation platform of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and the NCNC was resurrected in the formation of the United Progressives Grand Alliance between the AG and the NCNC (shorn of its Western region component) in 1964. ‘Up until the eve of the civil war, argues Ralph Uwechue, Nigerian politics was dominated by the big three tribes….In this triangular fight the key to victory was the combination of any two sides. It did not matter which two’

This was the political challenge and context that subsequently tasked Awolowo in his bid to become the Prime Minister of Nigeria in 1960. Thus advised, he reached out for a coalition with Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, NCNC (dominated by the Igbo writ large Eastern region). For reasons that were not quite clear, his hands of fellowship were spurned by Azikiwe in preference for Ahmadu Bello and the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC. 

Beyond the speculation of a tit for tat display of ethnic chauvinism, semblance of an explanation may be found in the calculations of patronage politics and benefits accruable to any of the southern regional rivals that secures an alliance with the Northern region partnership. In the event, the most insidious by-product of this alliance was the lapse into ideological normlessness and a resultant prioritisation of the politics of consumption over the sacrificial and tasking politics of development.  

The coup and counter coup of 1966 and its ultimate degeneration into the civil war in 1967 required Awolowo and the Yoruba to make a choice of which side to support between the North and the East. It was a no easy choice and it would take the strategic cultivation of Awolowo by the northern dominated federal government and the non strategic implacability of Ojukwu and the Eastern regional political elite to break the tie. Integral to the choice was the notion that whichever party that released Awolowo from prison was always guaranteed to reap a debt of gratitude from the Yoruba political leader. 

Nonetheless, the natural allies of the North among the Yoruba was the Akintola faction and this dialectical contradiction reasserted itself in the political isolation of Awolowo to its regional stronghold in the 1979 presidential election. The fact that he felt compelled to seek recourse to the incredulous (and non-starter) presidential ticket comprising himself and Philip Umeadi from the South East was an indication of his

insurmountable political distance from the north. The futile defiant gesture of this presidential ticket ironically bolstered his credentials as the avenging angel of the progressive political movement of Nigeria. 

The bitter political reality of Nigeria was that Awolowo would only have a fighting chance of realising his presidential ambition once he was ready to capitulate and played the protégé to the mentorship of the feudal conservative North. This option of self-abnegation (otherwise coined political compromise) was, of course, one step too far for Awolowo to contemplate and the reality must have dawned on him even if he gave the impression of being oblivious of it. 

Out of the ashes of Awolowo’s frustrations as leader of opposition at the national Parliament, rose his belligerent backward glance at the position he voluntarily relinquished and bestowed on Akintola. As the tension between the two intensified, so did pressure grow on Akintola to seek a powerful external ally in the regionally controlled federal government. In the circumstance, Akintola entertained no compunction in accepting the terms of the relationship including, especially, the implication to serve as proxy for Sir Ahmadu Bello and Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa. 

A critical aspect of the ensuing patron/client relationship was the entitlement to increased patronage (appointments, scholarships etc) from the federal government. This sense of entitlement played out in a chauvinistic inter ethnic jostling between the East and the West for the dispensation of pork from the senior partner. 

The struggle was theatrically captured in a witty rendition by Akintola in his peerless mastery of Yoruba illocution and lores. It was accomplished through a dexterous manipulation of the surname of Dr Ikechukwu Ikejiani who was the chairman of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, ECN. Intended to illustrate the lopsided patronage of the Igbo to the disadvantage of the Yoruba at the federal government level, Akintola parodies “Ikinni a ni, ikeji a ni, iketa a ni”. Pronounced in Yoruba tonation, Ikejiani means, the ‘second one is given’. 

Deriving from this deliberate malappropriation, the late Premier draws a sketch of a tendentious marginalisation of the Yoruba corresponding to the gluttonous satiety of the Igbo. He then contrived a three line stanza to prove the point, with a preceding ‘Ikinni a ni’ (the first is given) to Ikeji a ni (the second one is given) followed by Iketa a ni (the third one equally takes!). 

Ultimately, the objective of Akintola was (for the Yoruba) to supplant the Igbo as the new favoured beneficiary of federal government largesse

The incendiary tribal jingoism was perniciously echoed in the ivory towers and the point of incidence was the university of Lagos. In the words of Tim Livsey, “The University of Lagos, like the universities at Ibadan and Ife, was affected by the rise of the NNDP (Akintola’s party), which had formed a coalition with the NPC in the federal government. The NNDP took the federal education portfolio, and installed nominees on the University of Lagos council”. 

“A crisis broke out in February 1965 when the university council announced that Prof Eni Njoku, the founding vice-chancellor, would be replaced by Dr Saburi Biobaku. Njoku was considered a capable administrator, and his dismissal was widely understood in ethno-political terms because he was Igbo and supported the NCNC. ‘It will be difficult for the Council’, noted the ‘West African Pilot’, ‘to escape the charge that it has practised naked tribalism’’.

Like Akintola before him, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s politics is predicated on the victimisation of the Igbo on one hand and voluntary (albeit gainful) submission to the protective custody of the Muslim North on another. The former was unfurled in raw and open display of latent genocidal threat to the Igbo during the 2023 general elections in Lagos while the latter was heralded by a subordinate partnership in the formation of the APC and a crowning Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket. 

Substantially and within the context of Yoruba politics, the emergence of Tinubu as the President of Nigeria is an epiphenomenon of the transition from Awolowo politics to Akintola politics. Indeed, it is the ultimate triumph of Akintola’s vision of Nigerian politics encapsulated in a menu comprising pragmatic hostility against the Igbo; pragmatic deference to the north and pragmatic monetisation of politics. 

Whether President Bola Tinubu exhibited extraordinary courage speaking about removing subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) at his inauguration is debatable.

In raising the debate, we should consider whether Tinubu or any other person elected now has any choice but to end this subsidy regime. The answer is no and for at least two reasons.

The first is that Nigeria is in dire financial straits. Saving the trillions the government claims to spend on subsidies yearly will save us some trouble.

Secondly, the Petroleum Industry Act, of 2021 has already initiated a new legal and governance structure for the oil and gas sector, and payment of subsidies has no place there. In fact, but for the incompetence of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, which suspended the implementation of the Act, Nigeria would, by now, have taken its baby steps and contended with the initial challenges of the policy. But our leaders, taking governance for a joke, are mostly after populism.

 

Doesn’t this contradict the suggestion that Tinubu did not display unusual courage at Eagle Square? No.

The point is that Tinubu became President when Nigeria had no choice but to do something about this subsidy regime. This is the reason Vice President Kashim Shettima told the media: “… either we get rid of the subsidy, or the fuel subsidy gets rid of the Nigerian nation….” This decision had to be made, courage or no courage.

While speaking about courage, however, we should also ponder whether courage is just a raw display of ability. I don’t think so, especially concerning leadership and public policy. Accompanying a leader’s audacity must be discretion and compassion for the people. Even more so in a society that requires multi-level changes. 

 

I agree that Tinubu espoused change in that off-the-cuff declaration at Eagle Square. But one person or even a select few cannot change a country. It is a fallacy that democracy won’t accommodate. Enduring change occurs when people buy into and pursue a vision with as much vigour as their leader. The measure of effective leadership is how much success you make in transmitting your vision to others; only then can you achieve change. I suggest that discretion about timing, communication, and compassion for the people are embedded in courage.

One of the most phenomenal stories of the rebirth of nations is Singapore under the leadership of the inimitable Lee Kuan Yew.

Although Yew sometimes tended towards benevolent dictatorship, he made deliberate efforts to raise social consciousness and gain the understanding and support of his people through mass mobilisation. His government’s “greatest asset was the trust and confidence of the people.”

In his book, From Third World to First World, he discusses when he wanted to reduce traffic congestion around the capital. He explains: “…I learned that if I wanted to get an important proposal accepted at all levels, I should first float the ideas with my ministers, who will then discuss them with the permanent secretaries and officials. After I got their reactions, I would discuss the proposal with those who had to make it work. If, like the transport system, it concerned large numbers of people, I would get the issue into the media for public discussion. Hence, before we decided on an underground mass rapid transit, we had a public debate for a year….”

 

On another occasion, he reckoned that nurturing talents for the country’s future depended on reducing the rate male graduates married “less educated and less intelligent women.” 

Yew went on prime-time television to say that these men were stupid, which brought consternation. To douse the tension, he presented a 1980 study conducted in Minnesota, United States, showing that nearly 80 percent of a person’s makeup is from nature and about 20 percent from nurture. He established a Social Development Unit headed by a lady who exemplified his vision to facilitate the actualisation of the revolution he envisioned.

Soon, many of those upset at his “discriminatory” and “disrespectful” position saw the point. The government achieved this through continuous public sensitisation and consensus building. That process of change management, which includes getting the people’s buy-in, is what successive governments need to improve in Nigeria. President Tinubu must resist the temptation to take Nigerians for granted by first taking actions that impact their lives and explaining them later. This is more so because he inherited a considerable trust deficit between the government and the governed, and he must work hard to restore confidence. 

Concerning removing subsidies, for instance, there are sound economic arguments to band around. But in convincing the people, we must maintain sight of the socio-political and governance issues involved. This includes the tentative nature of gains made from previous attempts to remove subsidies and the unconvincing results of subsidy removal on diesel, kerosene, and aviation fuel. What did the common man gain from this other than a price increase?

 

Indeed, the opacity in the oil and gas sector makes the petrol subsidy a corruption haven. There are arguments that Nigeria would do much better subsidising production than consumption. This is even though petrol is a factor of production for many small and medium-scale enterprises in the country. They also say that the masses only have tokenistic benefits from the tonnes of money invested in fuel subsidies. The idea is that rather than fund the indulgences of the rich, who drive multiple cars, conserving the trillions otherwise spent on subsidies and investing in same social services and physical infrastructural development does more for the people.

All of these make good sense, yet the government should make Nigerians understand why they must first undergo the pains of subsidy removal before enjoying the dividends of good governance.

 

 And it is a fundamental question. When you consider that the most frequent excuses given by successive governments and analysts revolve around massive corruption and the smuggling of petrol to neighbouring countries, you wonder why the government cannot tackle corruption and make its Customs service more efficient. These are basic crimes that are within the purview of a responsible government. How does the government outsource the solution by adopting a decision that hurts the people? Why can’t government deal with crime?

We can extend this argument to ask how a government that can’t secure its border hopes to wrestle with oil theft or deal with the problem of light weapons and small arms. How is it the people’s lot to bear the pain of the government’s failure to make the refineries work after reportedly spending $25 billion on maintenance in the same country where a new refinery was just completed for $18.5 billion?

 

How do you justify fostering economic hardship on the people when government officials throw ostentation in their faces? When politicians live large amid the same people who strive to survive? How is it that in all the years that we have attempted to remove subsidy, successive governments have failed to strengthen the processes and remove some, if not all, of the opacity around governance? It is so bad that the immediate past President went from declaring that there was nothing like subsidy in 2012 to ending up as the leader that spent over N11.75 trillion on the same phantom! How?

So, as the Tinubu administration commits itself to removing subsidies, it must give cognisance to the rights of Nigerians to know and be treated well in the process. This is not so much about palliatives as it is about ensuring that government explains its past failures and enunciates specific benefits from this policy. These promises should also be specific, measurable, and time-bound such the people can hold the government accountable.

 

The government must also show its capacity to govern effectively. We must stop giving citizens (who, by electing leaders yield their destinies to the government) the impression that certain crimes defy the government’s capacity. Bring everyone who has cheated the country to book and show that no one is above the law.

Government must also reduce waste and the glitz associated with public office. Above all, there must be more transparency and accountability in public offices. No society governed by the level of arrogant opaqueness in Nigeria will make sustainable progress, subsidy, or no subsidy.

Nigeria is more divided than ever, and the politicians of Nigeria have gone completely mad. It is as though everybody is now totally beyond control. Nigerians have replaced the Constitution with just one word: Impunity.

Of course in this matter of impunity, there is no difference between the parties and the politicians because crossing party lines rampantly like harlots-on-heat is all the rage. There is no redemption in sight for the odious lot. These wanton Nigerian politicians need to be reminded of what happened in Ghana back in 1979.

Then Flight Lieutenant John Jerry Rawlings decided to have a say in the power equation of Ghana by shooting to death three former Heads of State, Generals Ignatius Acheampong, Afrifa, and Fred Akuffo.

 

Nigerian politicians always lamely assert: “It can never happen here. Nigeria is not Ghana bla… bla… bla…” We only need to be reminded that there is always a first time. Democracy should not be reduced to blackmail as is being currently done in Nigeria. Things are going mightily wrong here, and the leaders appear not to notice.

Hunger has reached unprecedented levels in the history of the country. In the Second Republic, the then Transport Minister Umaru Dikko infamously said that there was no hunger in Nigeria because the people had not started eating from the refuse dumps.

Nobody in their right mind can deny that Nigerians are today scavenging for food from the refuse heaps behind the homes of the rich and powerful. Cost of living is now out of the reach of the so-called average Nigerian. Little wonder most people now take refuge in betting and gambling, and generally wiling away time in the new-fangled churches that promise all kinds of miracles.

The rulers ought to see that there exists in Nigeria today a separation of the government from the people. In one of his more famous poems, the late German playwright Bertolt Brecht made the suggestion that the government ought to dissolve the people and elect another “people” since the people had forfeited confidence in the government!

It is this kind of dangerous pass that leads to bloody revolution. It appears as though the powers-that-be are not in the know that much of the world views Nigeria as a joke, a lost cause. Every report emanating from all cardinal points point to the fact that Nigeria is actually a failed state.

 

The uncontrolled killing spree of the Fulani herdsmen grates the mind. The vexed matter of Biafra is on the upsurge. The Niger Delta insurgency is threatening to come back in full force. Kidnapping is now the rule rather than the exception. Mind boggling robberies take place with the police running for their dear lives.

Security which ought to be the first guarantee of the government is only observed in the breach. For every Nigerian, it is now OYO (i.e. On Your Own!). Something needs to be given now. When Acheampong was carrying on in Ghana with the largesse of incumbency, he thought quite little of the danger that Rawlings represented.

The initial mutiny of Rawlings was of course thwarted and he was thrown into prison, awaiting execution, only for his group to upturn the apple cart which led to the public execution of Acheampong, Afrifa and Akuffo on charges of corruption.

Things change and remain the same in Nigeria – or in fact get worse: Inconclusive elections… Hopeless budgets… Endless fuel queues… Collapsing currency… Diabolical darkness… Forex abracadabra… Presidential tourism… Judicial absurdities…

People are more or less left embracing self-help. The overconfidence of our ruling politicians reminds me of a passage I read in the trashy fiction of my teenage years, to wit, James Hadley Chase in The Sucker Punch: “It is only when a guy gets so full of confidence in his ability that he is wide open for the sucker punch. I have seen it happen again and again in my racket. A guy commits murder, fakes an alibi and thinks he can cover up. Then wham! And he is flat on his back. Only he’s damn sight worse than a busted jaw.”

Our caterwauling politicians are not unlike the ungainly crooks in the genre thrillers of James Hadley Chase. They will, like all the fictional characters, come to a tacky end in the archetypal mode that stresses: Crime does not pay.

We need to be reminded that the democracy that Ghana is being praised for today came at a steep cost. Rawlings was the man who made change possible in Ghana. It is so saddening that Nigeria may end up needing the shock treatment like that of good old J.J. Rawlings to get its bearing right.

Of course it is not too late in the day for Nigerian leaders to tell themselves the home truth and thus avert the doom that the Rawlings treatment portends. This is not a warning – it is a revelation.

The storm in Sudan has been raging for almost two months and it has shown no sign of abating. More than 1, 800 persons have been killed and no less than 1.6 million have been displaced. Aljazeera has reported that Saudi Arabia and the United States brokered peace talks have been suspended. It is a blame game on which party breached the ceasefire agreement yesterday and who punctured the delicate calm understanding today. The combatants are by now well known. They are the mainstream armed forces loyal to Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the Head of Government on the one hand, and the Rapid Support Forces on the other headed by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. These consist of paramilitaries loyal to former warlord Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti. Muscle flexing between the two senior officers was deliberately triggered by the fallen President Omar al-Bashir now standing trial at The Hague. The speculation was that he set one party against the other so that he could hold on to power through the impossibility of marriage of minds against his brutal and despicable rulership. He was eventually kicked out in 2019, but the seed of a power struggle had long been sowed even before then according to reports. As is usually the case when rivalry is driven by envy and hate, complicated by conceit, the situation drifted to the point the two parties had to choose between peace and war. Unfortunately, as they were armed and could be said to be equally matched, they elected the latter—war!

Over the ages when confronted with that choice, man has always fallen for war and destruction. Do we need to cast our minds back to history? Has the war between Ukraine and Russia not proven the point and, indeed, gotten complicated before our very eyes with the attendant and unbelievably mindless destruction of lives and property? Let’s reflect upon it. Consider it: homelessness, long and hopeless columns of displaced people fleeing to safety. On the last count, 1.6 million. It is easier to destroy than to build. Because building requires effort, man will rather permit indolence to prevail than allow exertion to take the front burner in the struggle with himself. Consequently, the recourse to war and the attendant ruination, hiding under the cover of national integrity, prestige, and justice. Only on Tuesday, a dam in Ukraine was blown with bombs, blamed on Russia enemy action. Over 80 communities were reportedly being evacuated. On Wednesday, six missiles described as “unstoppable” were shot down by Ukraine.

The inalienable property every human being is endued is the gift of free will, the freedom to choose. To be or not to be. And every choice has consequences, some grave and ruinous while others uplift and build up. They could engender peace and harmony if the choice springs from the thought of peace, from the high, noble, and that which is pure.

Justice is desirable and attainable. It must be a goal. But there is a lack of understanding of what the terms mean, that is national integrity, prestige, and justice. Take for example, Justice. Justice is severe. And usually, we go out in search of justice from others and not from ourselves. But justice must start from self. When a man is first severe with himself, he will be just to others. Man resorts to war for his own self-glory, power, influence, acknowledgment, and admiration. We human beings seek to attract attention to ourselves and cultivate fame rather than the nobility of the spirit. We work deliberately to be known in history. The battle is with oneself and not with his neighbour. According to the higher knowledge spreading on earth today, each has enough on his hands to battle — with himself until the end of his life in this world.

The Rapid Support Forces was set up by President Bashir to crush the rebellion which had festered for more than 20 years in Southern Darfur that had complained of political and economic exclusion by the central government. At the end of the military action in Darfur, the two parties cooperated to oust President Bashir in 2019. There was collaborative working in power sharing between the military and the civilians that led the protests which triggered the fall of President Bashir. This arrangement broke down following continuing protests over economic difficulties in the country. The coup brought the military back into governance, but this again did not reduce the protests because the civilians wanted oversight over the military in power and demanded the fusion of the two separate arms of the Armed Forces, the mainstream and the Rapid Support Forces. Hamdan Dagolo (Hemedti) threw his weight behind the transition to democratic order. This raised fresh tension because this did not go down well with the military ruler, Burhan. Justice was also demanded for the killings of pro-democracy activists which occurred in 2019 and for those killed by the security forces since the 2021 coup. They were said to be no fewer than 125 activists and protesters.

It is unfortunate that when the drive to hostilities came to a head on the cliff, it could not be arrested and there was a headlong plunge into the valley, turning Sudan into a land of war. This is proof that mankind has not advanced a jot from the point they were thousands of years back when savagery and merry-making were man’s ultimate and when he found fulfillment in war. It is only the instruments of war and merry-making and raiment that have changed, not man himself. In place of swords, machetes, and arrows by warriors on horses, there are now Abrams tanks, Challenger 2 and Leopards 2 tanks; B-52 bombers and Jaguar bombers, missiles, marines, and chemical weapons and nuclear bombs.

Progress lies in everyone changing, from the leaders to the led, in everyone genuinely seeking true knowledge, and having firm volition for what is good and in giving purity to our thoughts. The knowledge that must be sought must be the one that explains the origin of man, his tasks, and his goals. With the attainment of such knowledge, it can then be seen whether wars are part of the tasks and whether they advance a human being towards his goal in the world. Terrible and terrifying consequences of war have been visited on Ukraine as well as Sudan since hostilities came to a head in the two countries; first to the human person and then to their land, environment, and property. The consequences will return to those flying the bombers themselves or those firing long-range tanks, Leopard 2, no matter how heroic they may feel after every raid on their targets. For every injury and death brought by the wars, there are horrifying consequences, indeed, encompassing indescribable torments, beyond the earthly. The citizens will live in anxiety for their lives until the hostilities cease completely.

How then does a war start? It brews from wrong living by human beings even if they are far-flung at the other end of the world. The consequences return in reciprocity to their authors. All around us is living, vacuous as it may appear. There is ceaseless surging and weaving around each person. A new carpet of fate is woven without stop which a person will be compelled to experience at a later date. The hour of return will depend on the nature of the seed sown. We learn in higher knowledge spreading across the globe today that at each moment, a person stands in the reactions of his past activities. He is connected with the threads he has spun, threads from the radiations of his volition. He who spins threads of goodness in all his activities, for example, is enveloped in kindness to him, in peace and upliftment. In a similar outworking, there is no one who is evil that gets away with it, nor is there anyone who does good and gives understanding consideration to his fellowman who is himself not ennobled. As it is for goodness and compassion, so is it with peace. He who wants peace must long and work for it, otherwise, the weaving will be such that he will fall into the hands of those with his nature, who don’t want peace. He will be entrapped in the company or acquaintanceship of those with tendencies for evil. A man cannot do evil and be unfair to others and expect peace — even if he fasts and prays until Kingdom come, for the Lord, the Creator, cannot be mocked. Prayers must be said in deeds.

Every seed sown through activities of each person goes through nurturing and nourishment, through every maturation process until it bears fruits which the sower is compelled to harvest. The fruits come multiplied. A seed of an orange planted comes at harvest with multiple orange fruits and from year to year until the tree is either cut or uprooted. It is the same as with a seed of the mango. Every activity that proceeds from a person attracts similar activities from other people. The activities form fields of power and activity where they are nourished until fruits appear and ripen. Once these fruits have taken on form ethereally, it is a question of time before they manifest physically. Those who contribute to the cultivation of the fields are not just from one part of the world but are found wherever there are human beings. At the time of harvest, every contributor will have his share corresponding to the measure of his contribution. It follows that an action for which another person who may be a complete stranger living at another end of the world is being condemned and pilloried has been strengthened by the critic, unknown to him. That there is unabated crisis engulfing many parts of the world is because the field of wrong activity and evil is ever widening. This will continue to be until the nourishment itself ceases. In the two wars that the world is witnessing, the Ukraine-Russian war and the war in Sudan, the so-called superpowers are competing for superiority and in the display of weaponry technological advancement!

What is palpable today is the rate at which the fruits ripen, the acceleration and intensification at which eruption occurs whether in economic or political spheres. And sudden deaths! All this is a consequence of increased motion brought about by intensified Light pressure under which our world is held in these times. What used to take long is no longer so. Threats that used to take years before a resolution was found, either at a round-table conference or in war now take a few weeks, or a few months before they translate into a war or open hostilities of a lesser degree.
The activities referred to cover thoughts, speeches, and actions. Those who get caught in hostilities are those who are homogeneous to providing anchorage for the returning fruits at a particular time. They get caught either by engaging in direct war, its conception or planning, or by getting wounded or killed in demonstrations in different parts of the world which may be removed from the theatre of the war itself. At this height of the Russian-Ukraine War, those who have not contributed to its ensuing either through wrong concepts, comments, opinions, or actions are bound to know peace in their hearts and environment.

In other words, it can be seen from the foregoing that the escalating wars pre-date the dispute between Ukraine and Russia and the subsequent invasion of the latter; or the internal antagonism in Sudan. The excuses and rationalization are only tools that are in the hands of actors who found themselves thrown up for the manifestation of earlier events pressing for materialization. It is the tools the entire world debates, not the cause. The materialization must find itself in cocky, stubborn fellows. If it were not so, how do we explain the rigid positions of the combatants? Everyone who participates in the crisis in whatever form, from the design of the arms to the manufacture and sale will be held to account and this will mean his having to go, himself, through intensified upheavals greater than the ongoing wars in the two zones.

Through the beaming In the Light of Truth, mankind is helped to see the immutability of the Laws of Nature which are living and self-acting as the eyes and self-enforcers of the Will of God, the Almighty Creator. They ensure that every deviation from what is right is brought to the attention of the protagonist so that, in love and justice, he can free himself from the guilt by going through it.

The outbreak of war is manifestly a sign of the decline of humanity despite all the helps through enlightenment over millennia. Man has devoted a greater part of his energy and time to fashioning weapons of destruction than to what will remake the world. The tool for remaking the world is as spelt out In the Light of Truth which answers all questions of life and existence. Man has reached his wits-end. He has to grow up to avoid the calamity that the two wars signal. It is not too late for the parties involved to stop these wars. It is a question of the decision to long for peace.

Two key personalities – Festus Keyamo and Nasir el Rufai - who played important roles in the just-concluded Buhari era have just proven two adages to be absolutely true. For el Rufai, there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face, and for Keyamo, all that glitters is not gold. These two men, who have probably been role models for many, have recently unraveled in the most embarrassing and shameful manner, so much so that those who held them in high esteem would be having second thoughts by now. None of us, especially from Southern Nigeria, had ever suspected that Nasir el Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State, is a religious and tribal bigot; an extremist and a Muslim fundamentalist. For decades, this man has carefully burnished his image as a cosmopolitan, liberal and open-minded professional who attended a Catholic school in Kaduna in his early days, spent time in Abeokuta during NYSC and cultivated friends and contacts from every part of the country. He served as a no-nonsense minister of FCT during the second term of the Obasanjo administration and was highly regarded as one of the four technocrats and reformists of that administration (the others were Dr. Oby Ezekwesili; Ngozi Okoji-Iweala and Esther Nenadi). But in a recent video which has since been viewed by millions of Nigerians, el Rufai is heard spewing derogatory and hateful words against Christians and promoting Islamic fundamentalist agenda.

I cannot bear to repeat some of the words that he said because they’re so repulsive, offensive and repugnant. The entire Christian community in the country, and even moderate Muslims have been scandalized, outraged and embarrassed by el Rufai’s bigotry. A lot of people are asking: Is this the real el Rufai we had always known; or is this video AI-generated? People who know him well, like the Chairman of Kaduna chapter of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Rev Joseph Hayab, says the video is the real el Rufai and that the former governor is a chameleonic pretender who had been hiding his true colours for political expediency. I had expected that by now, President Tinubu would have condemned el Rufai’s vile and dangerous sentiments in its entirety and distanced himself from them, more so since the kernel of the message was a direct reference to the President and his Muslim-Muslim. If the new administration does not immediately repudiate these incendiary statements, many would go away with the impression that they probably reflect the thinking of the government, especially since the President himself had never condemned those who stoked ethnic violence in Lagos during the governorship election. The el Rufai video reminds us of the character portrait former President Obasanjo painted of him in his memoire, My Watch. Obasanjo describes el Rufai as a pathological liar with ‘’inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue’’. He says el Rufai has a penchant to destroy the character of people, including relations and those close to him. I now agree.

His eight-year tenure as governor recorded the greatest number of interreligious killings, abductions and violence, especially in Southern Kaduna which is home to persons of Christian faith and minority ethnic groups. The people of Southern Kaduna have consistently maintained that the various attacks were meant to achieve ethnic cleansing and total annihilation of the various non-Fulani tribes in the area. They accused the federal government of Muhammadu Buhari and state government of doing little or nothing to protect them. But as governor, el Rufai’s routine response to these criticisms was to point to the fact that he’s appointed people of Christian faith and some from other parts of the country into his cabinet. But we know that such appointments are mere tokenism. The real insights into his dark mind are in the trending video.

Festus Keyamo has also unraveled in the most unimaginable fashion. He served the Buhari administration as Minister of State, in the Ministry of Labour and Productivity. Keyamo went into public service with the reputation of a SAN and criminal prosecutor who took on many corrupt persons for the for the EFCC. In Lagos, where he began his career, we all knew him as a human rights activist trained by the legendary Gani Fawenhinmi. His political career started in 2018 when he was appointed Spokesperson for the re-election President Buhari, the same role he served at the Tinubu Campaign, even though he was still serving in government. But as the 2022 campaign season became more and more intense, Keyamo became more and more inflammable and vitriolic. He boasted ceaselessly on TV that he’s the best prosecutor in the country. On Wednesday, May 24, at the valedictory session of FEC, Keyamo read a prepared speech in which he told the President, Vice President and other members of Council that the position of Minister of State he had occupied for four years was illegal and unconstitutional. One member of Council told me, ‘’I could not raise my face to look at the President when I heard those words’’. Silence and embarrassment enveloped the chamber. It was an unprecedented self-indictment by a SAN who ought to know the implication of such a thoughtless remark. Immediately, Nigerians made a mockery of him, with some asking that he refund all the salaries and allowances he’d earned for occupying an illegal position.

But the worst was yet to come. Last week, a judge of the Federal High Court, Abuja, Justice James Omotosho dismissed Keyamo’s case against the ICPC and Atiku Abubarkar as frivolous, vexatious and abuse of court processes and slammed him with a N10 million fine that would attract a 10% per annum interest charge. The judge said Keyamo acted as if he was ‘’an errand boy’’, adding that ‘’it was high time public officers knew that statutory agencies should not be used to settle public discord’’. The SAN had, in the heat of the last year’s campaigns, asked the court to compel the ICPC and Code of Conduct Bureau to investigate Atiku Abubarkar for corruption. He had given the two agencies 72 hours to conduct their investigations. But the court ruled that ‘’the plaintiff should know that these agencies are at liberty on when to investigate and when to conclude’’. Immediately after the judgement, Atiku’s media office issued a statement, asking the senior advocate to throw his law degree away because it is worthless. ‘’Keyamo’s incompetence has been confirmed by Justice Omotosho. One wonders how he was elevated to the rank of Senior Advocate’’, the statement said. I can’t remember when last a judge and a presidential candidate upbraided a senior lawyer in those kinds of words in the same week. These two embarrassing incidents should be a sobering and learning moment for Keyamo. I advise him to introspect his activities during the campaigns and his conducts as a public officer. Afterall, at 53, he is not too old to unlearn bad habits and pick up good ones.

Homosexuality has in contemporary times been hotly debated and discussed but with little attention paid to the persons involved. I have been guilty of this excessive concentration on its politics and diplomacy; its local and international misuse, and its commercialisation, to the detriment of the human beings involved.

During pregnancy, some babies may not be fully developed. This situation during fetal development may lead to birth defects such as missing limbs and other physical malfunctions. Some babies may be born without genitals; girls born without vagina are said to have vaginal agenesis.

 

There is also what is classified as ambigous genetalia; these are babies born without clearly defined male or female genitals. There are, of course, hermaphrodites: babies born having both male and female genitals. There are also babies born that do not fit into the male and female binaries; a baby may be born with large clitoris but no vagina opening; another could be born with labia-like scrotum.

 There are females whose bodies produce high testosterone which leads to increased muscle and bone mass giving them a male physique. This is natural and nobody should be punished for their natural makeup. This is why I opposed the International  Association of Athletics  Federations, IAAF, when it ruled that 800 metres Olympics Champion, Caster Semenya  must take drugs to suppress  such hormone. It is possible for such females to feel they are men, just as there are males who feel they are female.

These various birth circumstances and other natural cases may lead to different sexual preferences including being chosen by nature to be homosexuals rather than they making that choice. Now, there is no way such a choice can be criminalized.

Homosexuals are as old as the rest of  humanity and had not been seen as a challenge to other peoples.  This  was largely  the case  until powerful people,   for their own ends, became proselytes of homosexuality and began championing it. They began  presenting society as a dualistic composition and  a competition between  homosexuals and non-homosexuals. They present homosexuals as the minority group in society with special needs and entitled to  special privileges, recognition and  empowerment. These tribe of the rich and powerful, seek to turn the world upside down like they did in Iraq; manufacturing  essentially non-existent conflicts.  They have gone out not just to  try to promote and impose a  gay culture on the rest of humanity, but also to punish people who resist. This  they are doing to  a number of African countries.  But the issue is not about race. It is more  about those who  benefit from any given  situation which is  the intuitive nature of the capitalist mind set.  

Things got to a head in Hungary when  134 members of the Parliament on  December 15, 2020, ratified  a law that reinforced the right of  Hungarians to self-identify in accordance with their sex at birth. The new law emphasized that: “The foundation of the family is marriage and the parent-child relationship.” It added for emphasis that: “The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”

Some other countries reacted in more drastic ways by not just criminalising homosexuality but also  exploiting popular sentiments to bare their fascist fangs by imposing the death penalty.

The challenge to homosexuality  is not the sexual orientation, but its  exploitation, commercialisation and weaponisation.

 There are well funded non-governmental organisations, NGOs, that are going round the world  spreading  the ‘gospel’ of homosexuality and recruiting even children. There are cartoons and films depicting homosexuality as the way of life for the powerful and rich.

 There are school text books for kids on homosexuality. Soon, it may be part of the basic curriculum in nursery and primary schools. Last week, a message that went viral was titled: ‘Inclusion of sex and homosexuality in Nigerian Primary and Secondary School Textbooks’. It purports to list text books and pages promoting homosexuality, vulgarity and abortion. There are now homosexual children clothes lines in the West.

Just as some groups in the West promoted the so-called war of the sexes, so are they promoting the war of sexual orientation. Pro-homosexual NGOs have penetrated various strata of society. Given the prevalence of poverty in many parts of Africa, the NGOs are at the mercy of Western donors and many tend to align with the changing focus of their donors. So, if an NGO gets funding to promote homosexuality, that precisely is what it is going to do as it must justify the funds it is receiving. The same goes for anti-homosexual NGOs many of which are being promoted by churches in the United States. These American churches have since 2007, sent over $54 million promoting anti-gay campaigns in Africa. Globally, they spent over $280 million. The American Fellowship Foundation alone in ten years from 2008, spent over $20 million on Uganda.

On March 8, 2022, the United States government announced a $2.6 billion 2023 budget for foreign aid to promote gendrer equality and equity. A lot of this will go to promoting homosexuality which is lumped with checking discrimination amongst girls and indigenous women. Since 2012, the US government  has spent $41 million promoting gay rights.

The question is: if the West is interested in Africa’s development, why impose economic sanctions because the continent refuses to be dictated to on sexual preferences? 

Africa is being turned into a battle ground. No lessons appear to have been learnt in the split of the Anglican Church when Canterbury tried to impose the homosexual culture. In fact, it was the Nigeria Church that led the revolt.

 

What this type of diplomacy has resulted in, is the mobilisation of other citizens against gays. This has led to serious antagonism against our homosexual brothers and sisters. This backlash is the cause of the rising tide against homosexuals and the spate of draconian laws against them. 

The approach of some of the Western countries offend the sensibilities of many African peoples. They need to understand that  the challenge in Africa is not the sexual orientation of peoples but the struggle for existential survival. Such countries  need to realise that their ways are not our ways; our people are not their people, our culture is not their culture and our future is not their future.  So they need to treat other people with respect. 

It is almost impossible, and in any case, not advisable for homosexuals to have their own distinct communities in Africa. A change of perception and approach will lead to mutual existence by all.

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