Category: Opinion

Geo-Political review of the Nigeria economy.

By : Ishowo Malik A.

08165511716.

We apparently understand the concept that Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and culturally diverse federation of 36 autonomous states. The political landscape is partly dominated by the ruling All Progressives Congress party which is otherwise and popularly known as (APC) which controls the executive arm of government and holds majority seats at both the Senate and House of Representatives in the parliament, and majority of the States.

However, the General elections to distinctly elect a new president, the federal and state legislators and Governors as well were held in February 25 this year and March 11 respectively and evidently President Muhammadu Buhari will have completed his second term in office by May 29, 2023, and will hand over to the next government and administration.

Moreover, since the year 2011 in those days as we also all understand that the security landscape of the nation has been shaped by the war against Boko Haram and other terrorist groups too numerous to mention in the northeast in addition to the incessant cases of banditry and kidnappings in the north-west and parts of the southwest most particularly. The southeast continues to witness unrest resulting from separatist agitations. Only God can intervene to that.

However, if we look into the economic overview of the economy, we will evidently discover and even understand that high oil prices since 2021 did not boost the performance of the Nigerian economy and has been the case in the past. Rather, macroeconomic stability weakened, amidst declining oil production, a costly petrol subsidy which is consuming a large share of gross oil revenues, exchange rate distortions, monetization of the fiscal deficit, and high inflation. The deteriorating situation of the economy is not inspiring and motivation to still remain in the nation.

Consequentially, the Nigeria economy with all the issues surrounding its atmosphere is not something worthy of applauding or praising its government and administration as well. However the country have been facing enormous challenges that are too numerous to mention.

Apparently, in predominant time the civil workers also regarded as the Civil Servant are consecutively coerced to do certain things that are not convenient for them, which is regarded as a repugnant and a repulsive circumstance.

The increment of workers salary by relatively 40% last week actually seems like a blessing to them, most importantly the teachers working at the federal level, the increment seem to be a blessing to them. Though it an evident situation and circumstance that Doctors and Lecturers were excluded from the salary increment, due to the obviousness that their salary have been increased not barely few months ago.

However, the fervent prayers of government staffs and administrators as well is for the minimum wage proposed arrangement to come into fruition as proposed by the Buhari’s government and administration.

The atmospheric condition of the nation is not fostering to youths at the moment. Imagine a student at the University studying a certain course in school with foresight of getting a dependable and reliable Job. But unfortunately, after the successful completion of school with a good grade, job opportunity is not put into consideration by the Government. However, this case evidently made some young graduates too be relatively involved in “Cyber Crimes” Such as Hacking into online platforms, bank accounts, defrauding the foreigners and other likes. And apparently the government sees this as an an highly committed criminal offence in the nation.

Consequentially the Government didn’t make provision of job opportunities, so why wont all these cyber offences exist in the nation.

The only advice to government is for them to perform the necessary roles and responsibilities to create jobs, most pertinently the youths and graduates as the case may be.

ISHOWO, Malik Ayomide.

Ishowo is a student/ learner / political and media enthusiast based in llorin, Kwara State

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In the aftermath of INEC’s declaration of APC’s Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential election, a broad range of Nigerians from a certain demographic category have been squirming in a confused welter of bruised emotions.

I can relate to their psychic trauma because I experienced it in 2016 when Donald Trump was declared America’s president. I was in distress for a whole week. But some people are exulting in Tinubu’s victory for reasons that seem immaterial, even inane, on the surface, but which are significant and symbolic, nonetheless.

I was personally indifferent to, and invested no emotions in, the outcome of last Saturday’s election because it was as predictable as tomorrow’s date. The PDP that faced off APC in 2019 was fractured into four feuding, mutually annihilating factions to fight APC in 2023, which has remained more or less unchanged. What could go wrong with that?

Atiku Abubakar’s PDP, Peter Obi’s Labour Party, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s NNPP, and the G 5 governors were all in a united PDP in 2019. In 2023, they not only splintered, they sabotaged each other with more ferocity than they confronted APC. Only the wildest stretch of Pollyannaish fantasy would expect a more or less united APC to be defeated by a fragmented opposition.

Nonetheless, I want to transcend the outcome of the election and explore the emotional universes of the people who are deeply hurt by Tinubu’s victory— and of people who revel in it— because the election, more than any that Nigeria has had since 1999, was more about the emotional politics of identity and representation than it was about anything else.

Tinubu is a fatally flawed personality. Not even his most ardent supporters deny that. But it isn’t just his personality that triggers the anxieties of people who are upset by his victory. It is the public script of his representational politics, which is that he self-identifies as a Yoruba Muslim.

Since outgoing president Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim, has ruled for eight years, if Tinubu rules for another eight years, it means Nigerian Christians would be shut out of symbolic representation at the top of the presidency for 16 years at a stretch.

But it gets even worse. If/when power returns to the North (since Tinubu is from the South), it will most likely go to a northern Muslim, possibly for another eight years. That would be 24 unbroken years of Muslim domination of the Nigerian presidency.

Many people won’t admit this, which is fine, but it is the prospect of this reality that animates the passions and emotional investments of many Nigerian Christians in the outcome of the election, and why they have a hard time coming to terms with Tinubu’s win. But let’s face it: Christians have a valid and legitimate reason for their anxieties.

If the situation were reversed, Muslims would feel and act exactly the same way—perhaps worse because we have been habituated to dominating the presidency. Imagine for a moment that Olusegun Obasanjo handed over power to a northern Christian (say Theophilus Y. Danjuma) who chose an Ijaw Christian from Bayelsa as his running mate.

Imagine again that they went ahead to win the election and would, in theory, rule for another eight years after which the presidency would go back to the South where a Southern Christian is certain to win the nomination of the party and possibly rule for another eight years.

The possibility of Muslims being excluded from the presidency for 24 years at a go would be sure to activate visceral identity politics among northern Muslim voters. That’s precisely what we’re seeing from Christian voters, and it’s entirely reasonable.

In fact, Buhari’s political rise in the Muslim North— and the evolution of his fanatical, religiously tinged support base—was inspired by the sense of alienation that most northern Muslims felt by Obasanjo’s in-your-face public displays of born-again Christian religiosity and his appointment of Christians to positions that Muslims dominated in the past. So, in more ways than one, Obi and Buhari are the products of the same politics of religious identity.

Obi and Buhari also share the same qualities of self-righteousness, pretence to austerity, populism, hyperbolised or fictive past “achievements,” and weaponisation of mass anger against the Establishment that they are, in reality, a part of.

There is one more thing they share: the delusion, buoyed up by the delusionary tyranny of echo-chamber self-affirmation, that they can win a national election through appeals to a narrow religious constituency and that any outcome that defies their quixotic expectation is the consequence of rigging.

Like Buhari in 2003, 2007, and 2011, Obi can’t get 25 per cent in nearly half of the country’s voting population because the reason for his wild popularity in one half of the country is the precise reason for his revulsion in the other half.

Like all past elections, last Saturday’s election was obviously marred by inexcusable irregularities, made even more inexcusable by the fact that INEC spent stupendous amounts of money to integrate improved high-tech protections against electoral malpractices. But even if the conduct of the election were faultless, the outcome would more or less be the same.

The best possible outcome for Obi in the election was for him to marginally win the popular vote— both because three Muslims divided the Muslim vote and because Obi’s supporters were more energised than others— but fail to be declared winner because he fell short of getting the required spread in about half of the country.

In a runoff with Tinubu, Obi would be severely trounced because most Atiku and Kwankwaso voters would gravitate toward Tinubu since the election was about identity and, historically, candidates who rile up a narrow primordial base of the electorate without tact never win a national election. It took Buhari’s intentional and strategic transcendence of his northern Muslim base to win a national election in 2015.

I hope Obi can learn from that. Some of us his early supporters who saw merit in electing someone from the Southeast in the interest of national integration found that we had no place in his exclusionary political universe where he is the hero that must be worshipped and the messiah that must be “obeyed,” where uncouth, vituperative, intolerant, mouth-breathing automatons reign. He ran the Christocentric version of Buhari’s Islamocentric pre-2015 campaigns.

Like Obi’s supporters today, Buhari’s supporters always said he wasn’t declared president—even when he appealed only to northern Muslims—because he was “rigged out.” Yes, the elections were often rigged, no doubt, but even without rigging, a snowball had a better chance of surviving in hell than Buhari or Obi winning a national election with their offputtingly fervent subnationalist appeals. Smart, strategic politicians don’t play politics of identification with a narrow group to a crescendo if it can become a major political liability with other groups among the electorate.

Nonetheless, in spite of my souring on the naively exclusionary electioneering of Obi, I am crossed at people who are gloating over his defeat. He represents a constituency that is legitimately apprehensive about the possibility of their decades-long symbolic exclusion from the orbit of power. This needs to be addressed with sincerity. Anthropologist Margaret Mead shows us that empathy, that is, the capacity to inhabit other people’s mental worlds and imagine their pain, is the beginning of civilization.

But I also recognise that there are people for whom Tinubu’s victory is liberating and redeeming not because of Tinubu as a person but because of what he embodies. He is the first ever southern Muslim to be Nigeria’s president or head of state. Most people thought this wasn’t even in the realm of possibility because of the notional expectation that the South would always be represented by a Christian and the North by a Muslim. By becoming president, Tinubu has also opened the possibility of a northern Christian president in the future.

More than that, he is the first Yoruba person from outside Ogun State to be in the upper echelon of political power in Nigeria. All the notable national Yoruba political figures—from Chief Obafemi Awolowo to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, from MKO Abiola to Ernest Shonekan, and from Oladipo Diya to Yemi Osinbajo—that Nigeria has seen are from Ogun State.

Tinubu was born in Osun State but identifies as a Lagosian. There are people for whom this is important, and I respect their feelings, too.

Well, I hope Tinubu and Shettima will come to terms with the enormity of the tasks before them and not repeat the mistakes of the Buhari regime.

HOW THE CASHLESS AND OLD NAIRA NOTES POLICY HAS AFFECTED NIGERIANS

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  BY: Ishowo Malik A.
  08165511716
  18/2/2023.

It’s no longer news that the cashless and the old naira notes policy have been forcefully imposed on the citizens of Nigeria

However, since then, predominantly and virtually everyone including myself have been lacking cash in hand and pocket as well, in which the experience is however regarded as a critical state to us. Imagine the stress being encountered consistently by getting just #2k naira cash in the country. The stress is honestly an inexplicable one. You would have to move around helter and skelter from one location to another before getting it.

Moreover, if by chance, you stumble on a POS attendant, the charges that will be placed on you will still be extremely high, which is not suppose to be.

Apparently, if you want to withdraw 1k in some place, you would have to pay 20% charges, that is evidently #200 which is relatively unbearable to we the citizens of the country.

However, just because of this cash crunch and old naira policy, a friend of mine also uploaded on her status barely few days ago that she is in need of cash in replace of bank transfer. This, because she doesn’t see anywhere on campus to withdraw cash, so she needs you to give her cash, so that she can transfer to you. Can you just imagine that for God’s sake! That is just a basic example of what the cash policy has caused to people.

Similarly, I also have another friend who went through this unbearable crises, left with eating nothing sometimes to classes. Aside, if he sees cash from his friends on campus which is very rare before he can see friends or a friend who even have a cash in hand or pocket as the case may be.

Consequentially, I can not also count the number of times I went through the demoralized situation, most especially last week and even the previous weeks as well. However, sometimes also I even denied myself some little things just to avoid not spending all the cash in hand due to cash scarcity on campus and even off campus as well.

However, this cash policy and old naira notes has hampered a lot of lives in the country at the moment, most especially students and workers across the country.

By: Ishowo M. A
08165511716

Ishowo is a student, learner, political and media enthusiast based in llorin .

Levi Obijofor

The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is a man challenged by age, fragile health, and memory lapses. Yet he insists it is his turn to become Nigeria’s president. That is where the problem starts. No one should be deluded that the presidency belongs to them. Nigeria’s presidency is not assigned or allocated to anyone on the basis of their wealth, their assumptions about their entitlements, their region of origin, and the sacrifices they made to sustain the current government.

What is it that Tinubu wants to accomplish as president at the risk of his failing health and other major health difficulties? Tinubu is ambitious. Everyone knows that. He has already communicated his aspiration to the nation months ago when he claimed, ahead of the APC presidential primary, that it is now his turn to become president (emilokan).

The problem with ambition is that once it is kickstarted, it is harder to control. From the realm of surrealism, dreams mature and take on the elemental force of unquenchable fire known as ambition. Dreams change the mindset of men and women and catapult their views into the world of make-believe or fantasy. The good thing about dreams and ambition is that none of them is considered a cardinal sin or a crime against humanity. Everyone is free to dream. And everyone is free to have political aspirations.

At a lower level, Tinubu has dominated politics in Lagos State, ever since he served as two-time governor from 1999 to 2007. He also served as Senator for Lagos West during the Third Republic. Perhaps it is the power he held over those years that swelled his head to believe that it is his turn to become Nigeria’s president. Since that time, he has dominated Lagos political space to the extent that he could single-handedly determine who should be governor or not.

It is said that anyone who wants to be governor of Lagos State, including sitting governors who want to seek re-election, must seek the special blessings and support of Tinubu. Akinwunmi Ambode who was elected Governor of Lagos State in 2015 ignored this point. The immediate consequence was that his path to re-election was blocked effectively because he fell out with Tinubu. He was swept off his executive seat during the party primary. As a result, he served for one term only, from 2015 to 2019.

Despite his power in Lagos, Tinubu has struggled to spread his influence to other southwest states. So, he is not the almighty kingmaker in all the southwest states.

In the past few weeks, Tinubu has been trending on social media because of his precarious health condition that has exposed his physical, psychological, emotional, and mental state. At public events, he struggles to remember key events and people’s names. His speech is slurred as he wrestles with how to pronounce some words. His blunders have continued to multiply. Every new day provides insights into the deteriorating cognitive condition of the man who wants to be president.

By defying his health, age, and mental state, and by pushing on as APC presidential candidate in the face of all the public embarrassments, Tinubu has given Nollywood actors material they use to reduce him to the butt of criticisms. On social media, he is depicted as a sick man and mocked openly for his inability to pronounce common words. While it is not good to taunt a man or woman on account of their declining health, Tinubu has made things difficult for himself, his family, and his party leaders by committing blunders on a regular basis.

If he is not fit enough to withstand the physical strains of election campaign travels and public speaking, he should quit honourably. No one wants to see a Nigerian president commit embarrassing slipups in international fora attended by world leaders. Every day, Tinubu’s handlers are challenged by the uncertainties of how to ensure that his mistakes are curtailed to the minimum, so that he does not make Nigeria an object of international scorn.

Tinubu’s public appearances that result in disasters at home could be managed and tolerated but not blunders he would commit at international events. The risk must be reduced. The danger therefore is that if Tinubu wins the presidential election next year, he could export his gaffes in Nigerian public spaces to overseas countries where people would ridicule Nigeria. We can deal with Tinubu’s embarrassing struggles with wrong pronunciations and memory lapses and his fragile health while he is still in Nigeria but how do you control or restrain him from committing avoidable errors above the capacity of diplomatic officials and APC leaders in overseas countries?

Surely, no one can stop or prevent Tinubu from committing major bloopers during appearances at global conferences and international intergovernmental meetings featuring presidents and prime ministers and other heads of governments. No one can predict what a man with failing cognitive health condition can do or say in a public forum.

Apart from uttering unintelligible words that his closest aides could hardly decipher during his campaign appearances, there is nothing that Tinubu says during public addresses that makes sense to anybody, despite the fact that his leading supporters applaud him even when they know the man has made major mistakes. You must wonder why APC men and women who surround Tinubu during political party rallies clap for him even when it is obvious to all of them that Tinubu’s words were unfathomable and meaningless.

When Tinubu addresses an audience, he equivocates. He hesitates. He pauses in the middle of sentences. At other times, he appears lost about what he was going to say. How do you revive such a man? The APC minders who are tasked with looking after Tinubu have devised a solution. For example, on one occasion when Tinubu could not pronounce the word “umbrella”, a woman serving as a prompt beside Tinubu uttered loudly “umbrella” and Tinubu chorused immediately after the woman had muttered the word.

In addition to issues relating to Tinubu’s health, debate has persisted over the demographic details relating to the correct year of his birth and his current age, his educational qualifications and the institutions where he received his qualifications, and his original hometown. Uncomfortable and troubling questions raised in the public sphere over all these issues have tended to distract public attention from Tinubu’s messages during his presidential campaign rallies. People are no longer asking questions about how Tinubu plans to govern as president. Instead, people are asking questions about the year the man was born, his state of origin, his educational qualifications, and the institutions that awarded him the qualifications.

Tinubu’s responses to questions during his campaign rallies, and even his public addresses are combative, confrontational, and sometimes bellicose in tone and language, making him appear like a man at war with himself. Tinubu needs to understand he can answer questions in a civil manner without insulting his audience. He can be diplomatic, thoughtful, and judicious in his responses to questions.

So far, his biggest character flaw and undoing is the demeaning language he uses sometimes to describe Nigerian youth pejoratively as hungry, bored, and ready to be recruited to do menial jobs that require non-nutritious food to compensate them. Putting down youth is politically disastrous. That error would haunt Tinubu one day during and after the 2023 presidential election.

You cannot belittle a powerful force that has the capacity to determine the outcome of the presidential election. Two years ago, President Muhammadu Buhari described Nigerian youth as lousy, pampered, lacking initiatives, and purposeless. Today, they have not forgiven Buhari for the insult he heaped on them in a foreign land.

By Abimbola Adelakun

It is understandable why the Labour Party will withhold their presidential candidate from attending debates or similar public forums if his counterparts in the All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party do not show up. Appearing at such venues while fellow contestants get to pretend they are busy doing better things can diminish. Why fritter your worth on low-stakes engagements in a society where debates do not necessarily win you an election? Yet, the LP can do better than make Obi’s (dis)appearance a mere reaction to his counterparts. Debate forums are an essential aspect of democratic processes because they are spaces to advance and defend the ideas and ideologies that determine the fate of the nation.

Serious politicians use such platforms to coherently articulate their understanding of issues, advance their plans and projections, and highlight how they intend to deliver on their visions. That is also why you should hardly expect the APC candidate — and even that of the PDP who will take the cue — to refuse to show up. That is not how they know to win elections.

Yes, the APC presidential campaign rambled several excuses justifying the failure of their candidate, Bola Tinubu, to be at Sunday’s town hall meeting organised by AriseTV. He will possibly also avoid future gatherings where he will have to speak extemporaneously to a crowd not pre-selected for his benefit. Truth is, he would be foolish to attend presidential debates. He would be far better off being jeered for running away than risking the thorough self-demystification that will follow his appearance at those forums. There is no benefit for him to subject himself to any town hall meetings, debates, and even media interviews outside the arrangee shows his aides create for him.

First, their party is incumbent, and meeting the public to canvass for votes means he would have to defend their record. Honestly, there is no winning that game if he plays it. Nobody — and I repeat, nobody — thinks Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) has done a good job. Even the APC stalwarts are embarrassed about how he has turned out to be the worst leader in the history of modern Nigeria. These days, when even his minions appear on television, you can practically hear the hand-wringing in their voices when they inundate you with a litany of apologies like ‘recession,’ ‘oil price,’ ‘pandemic,’ ‘Russia-Ukraine.’ They started out in 2015 blaming every evil in Nigeria on the “16 years of the PDP” and are still not short of excuses. Tinubu, who also played a decisive role in planting Buhari into power, will have to answer for Buhari’s failures if he faces the public. Nothing about his career as a public officer suggests he understands accountability. The only language he speaks is ‘loyalty,’ not to any higher cause — mind you — but to himself alone.

Second, presidential debates are also a forum to put forward your record as a CV to the public and justify why they should give you a job. Of what can this jeun soke politician boast? Of course, they will mention ‘Lagos’ as his record of success, but even that is a negative. Look, no matter how many tantrums their errand boys throw on this matter, it will not stop me from pointing out how Lagos is a failure. The same political collective has ruled that state for 23 years, yet it ranks very low on every livability index. The crux of cityness is based on the quality of the public infrastructure that makes for good education, healthcare, security, mobility, leisure, hygiene, and shared community facilities. Of how many of these does Lagos boast? Recently, road transport workers in the state went on strike to complain about the extortion they suffer at the hands of the state-sanctioned louts managing their motor parks. The impunity and pure robbery that typifies the experiences of these beleaguered road transport workers are illustrative of the genius farce that runs the state. There is no real substance to all their lauded achievements; much of it is merely extractive. The only thing that works for them is the propaganda architecture that allows the papering over their daily raid of the lives and livelihood of the people.

The third factor is the amount of physical and mental stamina required to withstand a public forum like a debate while absorbing the hostility expected to exude from both the in-person audience and those viewing the broadcast on millions of electronic devices. Presidential debates are a space for gladiators who can endure such and still stand. They typically have some practice in the art of rhetoric, the simultaneous contestation and defence of ideas. The political debate culture was built around people who can think on their feet, not tired men who cannot recall the last time they had a fresh insight. Not enough politicians in Nigeria have been trained for the process. Many of them cut their teeth through one-way dialogues with hired crowds who throng the campaign grounds — not to listen to anything the politicians have to say — but merely wait for the right cue to break into the song of “on your mandate we stand.” The audience knows the process is a farce, and theirs is to supply the background noise.

Outside those spaces, Tinubu is very vulnerable. His handlers will be smart to keep him away from scrutiny. I do not expect him to go to any debate they have not specially curated for him to shine. If Tinubu should attend a presidential debate, I can imagine how flustered he will be if he has to answer the lingering question of how he became a bagman for a drug cartel and the moral implications for the nation. For a man whose gaffes already supply comedians, skit makers, meme-makers, and TikTokers with content, he will be a self-writing joke for a whole week. He has survived his public engagements by depending on a battery of ghostwriters, speech writers, and spin doctors who pretend they can extract sense from the incoherence of a man whose political philosophy is built on the infrastructure of the stomach.

The question for the rest of us is how to proceed from here. Debates are crucial to inscribe the ethos of democracy, but what do you do when the candidates of the so-called major parties are unlikely to attend them? They are wedded to the tactics of winning elections based on the sentiments of religion and ethnicity, and public debates expose them. The PDP vice presidential candidate represented his team on Sunday but asking presidential candidates to debate the vices (pun intended, yes!) of their opponents is demeaning. If the APC/PDP candidates continue to stay away from public forums, it will be unfair to continue to ask the third-party candidates to perform the mental and physical labour while the APC and PDP reap the benefits of not getting scrutinised.

At the same time, I worry when parties like the LP calibrate the public appearances of their candidate on who else shows up or not. The point of having a third party was not to merely replicate the toxicity that characterises the supposedly big two. It was to break the stasis they represent. The goal was to depart from the standard political means — which had become wholly oppressive and entirely non-regenerative — and to begin forming new habits. Obi’s handlers should rethink how they can balance the ethical necessity of subjecting their candidate to public dialogue without risking his overexposure.

By Tunde Odesola

‘Let’s talk about sex’ was a monster hit released in August 1991 by an all-female, Grammy award-winning American hip-hop group, Salt-N-Pepa.

Formed in New York City in 1985, Salt-N-Pepa, in their audacious song, which is a dialogue on the dangers of unprotected sex, advocates the need to tear open the mask of shyness society wears on sex.

The album was released in an era when people were shy to disclose their HIV/AIDS statuses, but basketball superstar, Magic Johnson, had just revealed his HIV status, providing the fire for the song to blaze atop billboard charts across the world.

Curiosity kills the cat, not the journalist. In this article, I hope curiosity won’t kill me as I poke my nose into ancient palaces to dissect sex and sexuality, not among mortals, but among kings, queens and concubines cavorting in the vortex of conjugal pleasure.

Let’s talk about sex. Something doesn’t add up for the wisest of all kings, Solomon, the son of King David, to have only three children from 700 wives and 300 beddable concubines at a period when Man hadn’t discovered the wisdom of arresting semen in condom technology.

That was an age when David, Solomon’s father, sang in Psalm 128:3, “Your wife will give you many children, like a vine that produces much fruit. Your children will bring you much good, like olive branches that produce many olives.”

Did Solomon choose to have just three children? Why? Did he become impotent at some point? Was he using his phallic force mainly for pleasure and rarely for procreation? Is the Holy Bible silent over the actual number of Solomon’s children? Questions rhetoric.

Do you wonder why a man would marry 700 wives and have 300 concubines? I have an answer. The son, Solomon, fathered by a lecherous king, David, who slept with a woman, Bathsheba, whose husband, Uriah, he, David, killed, must have an extraordinary libidinal appetite.

The late King of Afrobeats, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, whose hobby was sex, also had eight children from his first wives, and the 27 wives he married in 1978. Some birds surely know how to fly without perching.

I perch under the eaves of the castle of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, having just arrived on a flight from the palace of the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi. I watch, I listen.

It’s six moons since Iku Baba Yeye transited to join his ancestors in the underworld. The sun is yet to dry the flood of mourning. The palace is still hollow. Oba Adeyemi’s beautiful queens can no longer get the royal heat that consummates coital pleasure. And the rains are here. So, what happens to the bereaved queens? Can they remarry?

At the eaves of the Ife palace, I listen, I watch. I see Ooni Ogunwusi seated in his imperial majesty. A fair-skinned maiden strolls in through the big gates, the king smiles and motions her with a nod to a room rightward. After some time, another fair-skinned maiden saunters in, Kabiyesi smiles again, and motions her with his irukere (horsetail) to a room leftward. Shortly afterwards, a third light-skinned maiden swaggers in, and Kabiyesi points her to a room in the hallway.

I thought the Kabiyesi would stop at three because three is a powerful number in the metaphysical realm, symbolising trinity and the three divisions of the day. The elders also say the iron tripod doesn’t spill the soup, “Àrò mẹ́ta kìí da ọbẹ̀ nù.” But I wasn’t right.

Then a beautiful dark-skinned maiden strides in through the gates, the Kabiyesi beams, and signals her to a room nearby. And, in succession, two fair-skinned maidens sashay into the palace, with the king smiling and nodding them towards their respective rooms. I listen, I watch. I see many more empty rooms.

I don’t envy the six maidens in the harem of Oba Ogunwusi because in a house where six women compete for the love of a man, five stars can collude to dim the brightness of the moon, ashes can be sweeter than salt, the ant can grow bigger than the elephant and rumours of slaps over parking lot dispute may soon wear the garb of reality with broken bottles designing maidens’ skins. So, I won’t congratulate them.

By the way, where’s the Ooni’s ex-queen from Benin, Edo State, Zainab Wuraola Otiti Obanor? I learnt the delectable Benin ex-queen has remarried and moved on with her life since divorcing the Ooni in August 2017.

Where’s ex-queen Silekunola Naomi from Akure, Ondo State? Almost one year after her celebrated divorce from Ogunwusi, Naomi has maintained a dignified low-profile, keeping her love life and social life out of scandal.

There are so many myths about kings and queens. One of such is that an oba’s wife can never remarry even if the oba is dead or divorced. What would happen to anyone who sleeps with an oba’s wife or ex-wife?

Ogunwusi, speaking through his media aide, Moses Olafare, said an ex-queen could remarry once necessary traditional rites were done to free her from the marriage covenant entered into when she was being married.

The kabiyesi said, “No woman deserves to be subjected to perpetual bondage of marriage embargo but traditional rites have to be done to avert possible ugly consequences.

“There are traditional rites of matrimonial covenant done for the queens being married and it’s only commonsensical to procedurally reverse the covenant in accordance with the spiritual traditions of such kingdoms.”

Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Lekan Balogun, said it was an abomination for anyone to take over the wife of a king, who is believed to be second-in-command to deities. Olubadan spoke through his media aide, Mr Oladele Ogunsola.

A contestant for the Alaafin of Oyo stool, retired Archbishop of Methodist Church of Nigeria, octogenarian Ayo Ladigbolu, said the wives of the late Alaafin could remarry, adding that age and self-respect could, however, prevent them from doing so.

Commenting on whether the Alaafin’s queens could remarry without undergoing cleansing rites, Ladigbolu who is a cousin to the late Adeyemi, said, “It could be abominable in view of the mysteries surrounding royal weddings and its peculiarities, aura and taboos The nature of their previous conjugation will determine the rituals involved in the cleansing rites.

On the consequences of Alaafin’s queens remarrying without undergoing certain rites, Ladigbolu said, “As in all obligatory situations, one can expect that if a royal spouse exposes her sacred embodiment to any other without due cleansing or ‘separation’, there may be unpleasant consequences the nature of which cannot be enumerated.”

A prince and former Governor of Osun State, retired Brigadier General Olagunsoye Oyinlola, however, said there was nothing wrong in an oba inheriting the harem of a departed oba. He said, “My father inherited wives from his predecessor, and my mother was one of those inherited, that’s the custom. Nothing bad happened to my father.”

A first-class oba, the Eselu of Iselu land in Ogun State, Oba Akintunde Akinyemi, said a queen that went through traditional rites when marrying a king can never remarry, adding that anyone that slept with such a woman would be ruined for life.

“The wife could die after the demise of the oba. But, in a case where the woman didn’t do traditional rites, she’s free to go anywhere, she can even have extra marital affairs. The traditional rites involve taking blood samples.”

Another first-class ruler in Oyo State, the Onpetu of Ijeru land in Ogbomoso, Oba Sunday Oyediran, said wives of a departed monarch could choose to be inherited by the incoming oba or choose not to remarry, lamenting that modernisation had eroded Yoruba culture and tradition.

The Alawe of Ilawe Ekiti, Oba Adebanji Alabi, said it was unorthodox for the wives of a late monarch to marry somebody else outside the palace. “It’s generally assumed that wives of departed obas will be inherited by the reigning monarch. They may not have an amorous relationship but it’s the responsibility of the monarchs to take care of them,” said the first-class ruler.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @tunde odesola

Twitter: @tunde_odesola

By Farooq Kperogi

With an unusually inept Central Bank of Nigeria governor like Godwin Emefiele and the unprecedently anything-goes climate that the Muhammadu Buhari regime has engendered in the last seven years, I won’t be surprised if the main motive force for the CBN’s move to redesign the naira is to accomplish a plan to put Buhari’s face on one of the notes.

If you think my thought-process is absurd (and it actually is absurd) remember that wildly implausible absurdities have become the main currencies of this regime. For example, Emefiele who should have a more intimate and rarefied knowledge of Nigeria’s monetary policy than anyone once thought the value of the naira was in an inexorably downward spiral because a Nigerian-owned UK-based website called AbokiFX was publishing the black-market foreign exchange rates of the naira.

Emefiele even offered to engage in a physical combat with Oniwinde Adedotun, the owner of AbokiFX, so the value of the naira could rise again! That’s not a normal human being whose judgement anyone should trust and who can be defended against absurdist intentions.

In an unexampled, norm-bending fatuousness, he even became openly politically partisan by unsuccessfully running to be president on the platform of the ruling APC while still a supposedly apolitical CBN governor. In which halfway normal society does that happen?

In a May 14, 2022, column titled “Emefiele: A Corrupt, Inept, Heart-Attack-Loving Presidential Wannabe,” I described Emefiele as an “infernally incompetent, exceptionally corrupt, mind-blowingly self-serving, incomprehensibly clueless, overweeningly ambitious, and cruelly insensitive” person and revealed his embeddedness in partisan political corruption right from when PDP was in power. He has only gotten worse.

Now, also consider the fact that Buhari appointed Ahmed Halilu, the older brother of his wife, Aisha, as the head of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting, which prints Nigeria’s currencies. Halilu was first quietly appointed as one of only two executive directors at the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting in late 2019. I called attention to it in an October 19, 2019, column titled “Buhari’s House of Commotion and Mamman Daura’s ‘Glass House’.”

People either didn’t care or were too overwhelmed to react, as is now usual with Nigerians’ attitude to the aberrations of the regime, so Buhari went ahead and promoted his brother-in-law from an executive director of Nigeria’s currency printing company to its head on September 1, 2022. Again, no eyebrows were raised.

With an ineffectual, uninformed, obsequious, servile, and partisan CBN governor like Emefiele who is beholden to the Aso Rock cabal and Buhari’s brother-in-law as head head of the company that will print the redesigned naira notes, would it be any surprise if Buhari’s portrait appears on, say, the 200 naira note, particularly given Buhari’s recent monomaniacal obsession with how he will be remembered when he leaves office?

And there is a model for Emefiele and Halilu to copy. In January 1973, Uganda’s Idi Amin decided to change his country’s currency and emblazon them with his portrait.

Reuters’ January 29, 1973, reporting on this is worth reproducing because it partly reflects what may happen in Nigeria in the next few days: “Following the introduction of new currency in Uganda, people have been flocking to banks to exchange their old notes. The new currency bears a portrait of President Amin. This is the first time a Ugandan leader’s portrait has appeared on banknotes… The old bank-notes, which contain mainly political symbols, cease to be legal tender on 9th February 1973….

“Ugandan border guards have been instructed to search anyone entering the country to ensure that old currency notes do not find their way back into Uganda. Even diplomatic luggage has been searched. Uganda is anxious that any ‘old’ currency previously smuggled out shall not be smuggled back for exchange.”

Outside of a desire to emboss Buhari’s portrait on naira notes, very little of the justification given by the Central Bank for the redesign of the naira makes sense.

For instance, Emefiele said, “in view of the prevailing level of security situation in the country, the CBN is convinced that the incidents of terrorism and kidnapping would be minimised as access to the large volume of money outside the banking system used as source of funds for ransom payments will begin to dry up.”

That makes no sense for two reasons. One, as Omoyele Sowore pointed out in a tweet, “When Boko Haram wanted to release the first batch of kidnapped #Chibokgirls they specifically request for Euros and were paid in #Euros. They also claimed some well-placed Nigerians have stacked Naira at home, truth is that most well placed Nigerians spend foreign currencies.”

Two, kidnappers increasingly request that their ransom be paid to bank accounts, and they haven’t be traced even when they’re exposed. A WhatsApp message trended in May 2019 about a woman who was threatened with abduction and given the option to deposit money into an account.

The woman enlisted the help of her banker friends to get the account number flagged so that the kidnappers may be caught. The message said, “Bank did checks.

Bank said the account cannot be flagged else they will lose influential clients. How so? The names attached to the account are powerful names.”

In a July 28, 2021, story titled “Kidnappers in FCT Begin Collection of Ransom Through Banks,” the Daily Trust also revealed the bank account information of a kidnapper to whose account ransom was paid by one Mrs Aminat Adewuyi.

The kidnapper had an Access Bank account with number 1403762272 and the name associated with it was Badawi Abba Enterprise. I publicised this report in my October 23, 2021, column titled “Sponsors of Nigeria’s Terrorist Bandits,” which went viral. But the kidnapper is still walking free.

So, combating terrorism and banditry can’t possibly be a reason for redesigning naira notes. I have a sneaky feeling that most of the reasons the CBN governor gave for changing the design of the national currency is merely a cover story to conceal the real reason.

Whatever it is, this is an all-round ill-thought-out, ill-timed, and wrongheaded policy that will inflict enormous hardship on everyday folks like it did in 1984 when Buhari did another boneheaded currency change that pauperised millions of people. My father, for example, didn’t get back his money until he died in 2016.

On Friday, Finance Minister Zainab Ahmad said she was not in on Emefiele’s plan to redesign the naira, adding that it “portends serious consequences on the value of the naira to other currencies.” Talk of a confused and discordant government!

Atiku in America: From Saraki’s “aide” in 2019 to Tambuwal’s in 2022

PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar is in the United States on the invitation of the US Chamber of Commerce. But like in 2019 when he shocked his critics by visiting the US when some people said he couldn’t, certain people on Twitter are spreading dumb lies about how he got here.

In 2019, distraught Buharist minions lied that Atiku travelled to the US as an “aide” to Bukola Saraki to evade FBI arrest! Now some people on Twitter are saying he came to the US as an “aide” to Sokoto State Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal.

I’d thought only cognitively low-wattage Buhari supporters propagated this transparently foolish falsehood, but supposedly educated people are peddling this same mendacity in 2022.

Atiku is a prominent person whose dossier the US already has. He can’t hide and can’t ride on anyone’s coattails. He applied for a visa, gave his biographical information to the US embassy in Nigeria— including his biometric data—as a precondition for getting the visa.

Because he had a more prominent national and international stature than Saraki and Tambuwal do (he was Nigeria’s number two man for years) he couldn’t possibly lie to the US embassy about being an “aide” to Saraki or Tambuwal. That would have been an easily detectable lie that would have caused the consular officer to laugh uncontrollably—and deny him a visa instantly.

It’s absurd to believe that a 75-year-old former Vice President of the world’s most populous black nation would lie about being an aide to a 59-year-old Saraki or a 56-year-old Tambuwal.

At the point of admission into the US, visitors give their passports to immigration officers, who run them in the system to verify that such visitors are the people they say they are—and to determine if they’re on any wanted list.

That means US immigration officers knew that Atiku Abubakar was Nigeria’s former vice president at the time he got into the US. If the FBI wanted to arrest him, he would have been arrested there and then.

Most importantly, though, diplomatic immunity of visiting foreign government officials does NOT extend to the aides of such officials. It only extends to the foreign officials’ family members. So even if Atiku had lied that he was Saraki’s or Tambuwal’s aide, as preposterous as that sounds, he would still have been arrested if he was on FBI’s wanted list.

Nigerian Tribune

Following the suspension of the eight months strike embarked upon by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in Nigeria, IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI examines what becomes of the fate of the two newly-registered unions by the federal government and if the two unions can subvert the solidity ASUU has built across public varsities in over 15 years.

AS government universities open their doors to students tomorrow, following the decision of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to obey the ruling of the Court of Appeal compelling it to resume work, all may still not be well. One of the issues that the returning varsity teachers will have to contend with apart from waiting for government to fulfill some of their demands is the issue of newly approved industrial unions for the universities, Congress of Nigerian University Academics (CONUA) and National Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA).

Though the intention of the government that approved the registration of the two unions has been well advertised, which is to break the firm grip of ASUU on academic operations in government-owned universities, what is not certain is how members of the newly registered unions will function or if they will openly antagonise ASUU in its crusade for improved funding of tertiary education in the bid to effectively play the role government wants them to play.

But ASUU leadership as well as some of its members, who spoke with Sunday Tribune said CONUA and NAMDA were not a threat to their union. According to them, the two unions and their members can never derail ASUU from its objectives. According to ASUU National President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, the government can register as many trade unions as it likes, what is of uttermost importance for his union is the success of the crusade to enthrone quality and sound academic culture in the nation’s university system.

It will be recalled that ASUU had, in the early hours of Friday, called off its eight-month-old strike, which it embarked upon on Monday, February 14, 2022 to protest the non-implementation of the 2009 Memorandum of Understanding reached with it by the federal government, stating that despite its suspension of the industrial action, its agitated issues, among which are total revitalisation of public universities and a review of lecturers’ salaries and allowances, have not been satisfactorily addressed by the government.

In the statement signed by its president, Osodeke, the union had said: “NEC deliberated on the recommendations of the Rt. Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila-led committee within the framework of the FGN/ASU’s Memorandum of Action (MoA) of 2020 on the contending issues that led to the strike action.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the issues include funding for revitalisation of public universities, earned academic allowances, proliferation of public universities, visitation panels/release of white papers, university transparency and accountability solution (UTAS) as a broad spectrum software to stop illegality and provide for an alternative payment platform in the university system, renegotiation of the 2009 agreement.

“While appreciating the commendable efforts of the leadership of the House of Representatives and other patriotic Nigerians who waded into the matter, NEC noted with regret that the issues in dispute are yet to be satisfactorily addressed.

“However, as a law-abiding union and in deference to appeals by the president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), and in recognition of the efforts of Honourable Gbajabiamila, and other well-meaning Nigerians, ASUU NEC resolved to suspend the strike action embarked upon on February 14, 2022.

“Consequently, all members of ASUU are hereby directed to resume all services hitherto withdrawn with effect from 12:01 on Friday, October 14, 2022,” the union had added in the statement.

As part of moves to bring the striking university lecturers back to class, the federal government had reportedly promised to release the sum of N50 billion to take care of outstanding earned allowances and N170 billion for salary increase.

The government also promised to release N300 billion for revitalisation of the institutions and hand over subsequent payments of the lecturers’ salaries and allowances as well as those of other university workers to the governing council of each of the federal institutions from 2024.

There were also reports that the government has pledged to modify the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) to accommodate the peculiarities of the University Transparency Accountability System (UTAS), a payroll system developed by ASUU for the payment of salaries and allowances of university lecturers and the Universities Peculiar Personnel Payroll System (UPPPS) developed by the Joint Action Committee of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities.

But before making these promises, the government had registered CONUA and NAMDA in the heat of the contending battle that lingered between it and the university teachers, a move, many believed was made to clip the wings of the striking lecturers’ union.

While conveying the approval to the leadership of the two unions at a meeting in Abuja, the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, had said that their registration would help to liberalise the academic sub-sector and make for more freedom for university workers.

The minister said: “In view of the above, I, Senator Chris Nwabueze Ngige, in the exercise of the power conferred on me as the Minister of Labour & Employment, do hereby approve the registration of CONUA and NAMDA.

“The Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment in the discharge of her mandate in the management of employment relationships and the administration of trade unions to ensure harmonious industrial relations system in the nation has decided to approve the registration of two more trade unions in the Nigerian university academic sub- sector. The university sub-sector is a major development plank of any nation’s socio-economic growth.”

“In view of this registration, you are entitled to all rights and privileges accruable to a union of similar status which include the right to receive check-off dues of members. You can now go back to your institutions and open the doors of your classrooms to teach the students,” the minister had said.

But the government’s move has continued to generate criticisms among stakeholders, who described the action as illegal. Many observers were of the view that aside the Nigeria constitution proscribing the presence of two unions in a sector, the government’s move would create more problems in the system instead of addressing the multi-faceted issues that led to shutting down the public varsities for almost a year.

In response to the public concerns, CONUA National Coordinator, Dr Niyi Sunmonu, had insisted that the union was formed to give a new approach to handling issues affecting universities across the country.

He said: “The registration of the Congress of University Academics (CONUA), as a trade union in the Nigerian university system, is monumentally historic. The hurdles we have faced to get here, since 2018 when we submitted our application for registration, have been seemingly insurmountable. The registration is therefore the validation of the power of the human will. It asserts the value of courage, initiative, focus, tenacity, patience, forbearance and persistent positive thinking.

“We are immensely grateful to the Honourable Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, and his team of diligent staff for insisting on merit, due process and thoroughness all through the processing of our application for the registration of CONUA. The very strict and dispassionate review of our application brought out the best in the membership of the union.

“We regard the registration of CONUA as a sacred trust, and pledge to reciprocate by devoting ourselves unceasingly to the advancement of university education in this country. We would make the details of our programmes available to the public in due course. For now, we are giving the assurance that we would work to ensure that the nation is not traumatised again by academic union dislocations in the country’s public universities…,” the CONUA chairman had said.

He reportedly claimed that since the union was birthed years back, it had made in-roads in keys institutions, like Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike; University of Benin; Federal University, Lokoja; Federal University, Oye-Ekiti; Kwara State University, Malete; Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; University of Nigeria, Nsukka; University of Jos; and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, among others.

Speaking in the same vein, CONUA chairman, UNIBEN chapter, Dr Ishaq Osagie-Eweka, explained that as a trade union, it is offering a platform to academics seeking to approach issues of conditions of service differently. According to him, CONUA as a union does not believe in strike or closure of universities as an approach to bringing the attention of employers to issues of conditions of service.

“CONUA is a trade union offering a platform to academics seeking to approach issues of conditions of services differently as against the ASUU Marxism approach.

“Therefore, CONUA is here for academics seeking alternative approach to negotiating with employers on conditions of service, strike and closure of universities is a “No” for CONUA,” he had said.

When asked if the coming of CONUA could bring lasting solution to problems bedeviling university education in Nigeria, Osagie-Eweka said CONUA would continue to engage the Federal Government towards ensuring the peculiarities associated with duties of lecturers are captured by IPPIS.

But in its reaction, ASUU described the registration of CONUA and NAMDA by the government as inconsequential, saying their existence does not pose any threat to its existence. Professor Osodeke in his reaction said the government’s move would not in any way affect ASUU.

“The move does not in any way affect us. We are a disciplined and focused union and we know what we are doing and what we are after. Let them register as many unions as they like. That is inconsequential as far as we are concerned. We are not also in any way threatened. The sky is big enough for birds to fly.

“We know our members; we know our strength and we also know what our vision and mission are. Our members are not saboteurs or bootlickers. Our struggle is for a better educational system in the country. If the system is good, all of us will benefit and it is not only ASUU members’ children and wards that are going to benefit from improved funding and the provision of better facilities in our institutions,” he said.

In his own reaction, a former ASUU chairman in Anambra State University and current Head of the Department of Political Science in Nnamdi Azikwe University (UNIZIK), Professor Jaja Nwanegbo told Sunday Tribune that there is no way CONUA will be able to break ASUU due to the strong internal mechanisms and democracy the union has emplaced across the Nigerian universities for decades.

He said that beyond the claims of CONUA national coordinator, the union is not known to many lecturers across Nigeria as it exists mainly in OAU, where it began, following a crisis in the ASUU chapter of that university after falling out with the school management.

“Yes, there is this constitutional provisional provisions that enshrine freedom of association, which allows everyone within an organization to choose to belong or not to belong to a particular association. It must be noted that before the two new unions came onboard, there have been some academic staff members that did not belong to any union at all. So in the light of this, I believe the registration of the two unions will actually not affect ASUU in any way. And this is because even the national coordinator of CONUA had in recent interviews attested to the validity of ASUU’s positions in the struggle that just ended. So for me, I can’t see anything that will pose a challenge to ASUU going forward, considering the fact that the academics know what they want and how they want it. More so, the CONUA is basically an OAU affair,” Nwanegbo said.

“It must be clearly stated that ASUU has not been asking the government to give it one Kobo. In fact, since 1997, all the union has been clamouring for is a total revitalisation of the Nigerian university system, so that the institutions will be better place for learning and human advancement. Yet the government has been clamping down on the union. I believe the newly registered CONUA will power much more agitation than ASUU has done if it’s really a body of academics. I believe the new body too will make the same demands in the coming years if they are really academics. So, I do not see them pulling down the value and strength of ASUU across the universities,” the don added.

Corroborating this assertion, Professor Francis Egbokahre of the University of Ibadan, said: “CONUA has been around for quite a while. But they seem to find strength when there is an ASUU crisis. I simply don’t think they have a concrete agenda of their own. And if they have, I believe it hasn’t been persuasive. I don’t see them as a group that can undermine the solidity of ASUU in any way.

“First of all, their membership strength is not convincing. It is just a case of individuals who are unhappy with the status quo, but have not been able to muster enough strength and energy across the country to be able to win any soul. Don’t forget that they arose from OAU as a result of an internal crisis, which then turned into an ASUU crisis with the branch. So it is still basically an OAU affair and a little bit in UNIBEN too. Above all, as far as I am concerned, I don’t really see them, including NAMDA, being a force within the academia. I would have loved to see more credible individuals with academic presence and the kind of value and ideological weight we have in ASUU. I believe if no union has been able to break the rank of ASUU for over 15 years, I don’t see how these two new unions can do that now,” the don explained.