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Category: Columnist

  • Climate action is the gateway to a new era of growth and prosperity for Nigeria, By Simon Stiell

    Climate action is the gateway to a new era of growth and prosperity for Nigeria, By Simon Stiell

    Bold climate plans can drive Nigeria’s economic take-off, improving living standards, and delivering massive benefits for people, businesses, and the economy.

    The Nigerian government has set ambitious, transformational targets—to lift 100 million people out of poverty and achieve a 7% economic growth rate.

    Climate action – from installing solar panels, to diversifying crops – is key to reaching these goals, bringing electricity to over 85 million Nigerians without access, and ensuring economic stability and rising living standards.

    Last year, the global clean energy boom surpassed $2 trillion, according to the International Energy Agency. Nigeria has a prime opportunity to seize a major portion of this growing market. Doing so will drive investment, create countless new jobs, and build resilience against the climate crisis, protecting Nigeria’s people and economy.

    The key to unlocking these benefits for Nigeria’s people is a strong new national climate plan. All countries have to put together new plans this year under the Paris Agreement. Major developing economies such as Brazil have already delivered theirs, because they know that strong plans will deliver huge human and economic benefits.

    One thing was very clear to me, during my meetings last week with parliamentarians, senior government officials, civil society, and businesses in Lagos and Abuja: Nigeria is committed to climate action. And it has every reason to be.

    This country has huge advantages in this increasingly competitive global race: abundant solar and wind resources, critical minerals like lithium, vast mangrove forests that protect against floods, and, most importantly, its inspiring and dynamic people.

    Now is the time for deployment of solar energy instead of expensive diesel, and investing in green buildings, clean infrastructure, and creating a domestic manufacturing base.

    Climate change is already hitting Nigeria hard—from floods in the south to droughts and desertification in the north, climate impacts are slashing up to 5% off GDP. Coming from a small island, Carriacou, I know this firsthand. Last year, my home was battered by Hurricane Beryl, causing devastating destruction. I’ve seen lives and livelihoods ripped away.

    But now is no time for despair. There are steps Nigeria can take today to make a difference. It can prioritize climate resilience by strengthening infrastructure to withstand extreme weather, planting drought-resistant crops, and protecting natural defenses like mangroves and forests. A National Adaptation Plan can provide the framework to drive these efforts forward, and boost progress right across the Sustainable Development Goals.

    None of this is possible without finance. Significant investment is needed—fast. As COP30 President, Brazil is laser-focused on increasing global climate finance for developing nations, despite political headwinds. We will work with Brazil to deliver on finance commitments made in at the COP29 climate conference last year, including on how to increase global climate finance to $1.3 trillion a year.

    But this isn’t just about finance from governments. Private sector investment is ready for takeoff in Nigeria and many other developing economies. From big business in Lagos, to the micro, small and medium enterprises throughout the country – which makeup 90% of Nigeria’s vibrant, innovative economy.

    Nigeria can become a world leader in clean and climate resilient industries, if barriers to action are addressed. Every business and investor I spoke to said they needed lower costs of capital and more accessible and predictable financial flows. We also need to address risk perception – too often costs of capital reflect outdated ideas of the challenges of investing in Nigeria, and other developing countries.

    A strong climate plan will only deliver its full potential if it works for everyone. Nigeria’s incredible diversity—its regions, industries, and communities—must all share in the massive benefits climate action can bring. That means ensuring clean energy reaches every home and business, that farmers from the north to the south gain from climate-smart agriculture, and that investments create opportunities for people across the country.

    That’s why I’m encouraged by Nigeria’s inclusive approach—ensuring every voice is heard and every sector understands their role. Because this is about real benefits Nigerians can see and feel in their daily lives: more jobs, less pollution and better health, and stronger businesses.

    By bringing everyone on board, Nigeria can seize this moment to drive economic growth and improve lives, with thriving communities future powered by clean, affordable energy, accessible to all.

     

    Mr. Simon Stiell is the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

  • The Balewa road Tinubu is travelling, By Festus Adedayo

    The Balewa road Tinubu is travelling, By Festus Adedayo

    An ancient Yoruba anecdote narrates the destructive nature of the tongue. Its moral is specifically targeted at leaders who make unconscionable decisions as dictated by their fleeting passion. It is the tragic life and reign of King Odarawu. Odarawu was an Alaafin in the old Oyo Empire. His brief reign in the late seventeenth century, after he succeeded his father, Aláàfin Ajagbo, made him the first Alaafin to be rejected by the Oyomesi, the Oyo Empire’s council of state. Odarawu was a prisoner of his tongue and fiery temper. These led to the brevity of his rule. His vile anger and the calamity it wrought became almost a totem that the Empire deployed to teach lessons of leadership; that leaders must exhibit precis in tongues and tame impassioned words.

    The Reverend Samuel Johnson told the Odarawu story in his authoritative Yoruba nation biography, The history of the Yorubas, (p 169). As was the custom, at his installation, Odarawu was asked to name his enemy. Without mincing words, the Prince named Ojo Segi, a town in the kingdom. On what provoked the enmity, Odarawu went down memory lane. Years back, the Prince had gone to buy corn meal (eko) for dinner. Unbeknown to him, the woman who sold the eko was the Baale’s wife. The price of a wrap of eko was then a cowry, and Odarawu bought six. He, however, paid five cowries, according to the privilege of his birth. The Baale’s wife, feeling insulted and not aware of his princely status, decked Odarawu’s face with a dirty slap.

    She then repeatedly shouted “thief!” at him for trying to withhold a cowry off her legitimate earning. As he was being installed as Alaafin, Odarawu asked the council for one favour: the destruction of Ojo Segi. Though the Oyomesi acceded to his request and brought the town to ruins, the council agreed to do away with Odarawu. In their estimation, the new king was a heartless tyrant. If, out of malice against a single woman, he could have macabre pleasure in the destruction of a hapless people, he was not worthy of the kingdom. Oyo people thereafter rejected Odarawu, and, in frustration, he committed suicide.

    In today’s Nigeria, one character who personifies Aláàfin Odarawu is the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike. Last week, at a temper session in Abuja he called ministerial briefing, in fit-like burst of anger, like King Odarawu, Wike named his enemies. They ranged from Siminilayi Fubara, Bayelsa State governor, Duoye Diri, and the like. Wike’s persona needs critical dissection by psychologists, political scientists and psychoanalysts. Since he left office as Rivers state governor, Wike has been the butt of jokes for his reversibility and torrid anger.

    Even President Bola Tinubu, last year, acknowledged his “mercurial” disposition. Aside from his fitful anger, Wike possesses this weird knack for reversing himself at the drop of a hat. His impassioned statements and emotions get reversed the way an old Bedford lorry needlessly backtracks. Wike speaks in the superlatives. From his absolutist comments on persons in the past, he suffers reverses that show him as little-minded. Peter Odili, Rotimi Amaechi, Diri, Fubara, the PDP, APC and even Bola Tinubu can point to carcasses of Wike’s reversibility.

    Ancient wisdom teaches that at critical moments, leaders need to exhibit self-restraint and forbearance. Wike suffers anaemic deficiency of those virtues. He is grossly mouth-loose, and his temper is his most destructive possession. The mouth, as harmless as it may seem, is a tinder, a combustible weapon. Yoruba compare the incandescence of the tongue to an alligator pepper (ataare), which they say burns even its own outer seed covering (ataare o gbona t’ohun t’epo). Wise leaders use it sparingly. The moment the mouth is set a-loose, its destructive effect is unimaginable. In the Ifa corpus, Èṣù Odára, being the most gluttonous of the Irúnmolè, (deities) reputed with the task of ferrying human appeasements from earth to heaven, is most times depicted with the vice of a lose mouth.

    Before or about the time of the Latin discovery of the maxims of equity and justice, as profoundly explored in the sayings, audi alteram partem (let the other side be heard) and nemo judex in causa sua, (no one should be a judge of their own case) the Yoruba had discovered justice as bedrock of their society. Just like in many societies of the world, the concept of justice in Yoruba indigenous jurisprudential thoughts is robust. Through a prescriptive exploration of proverbs, aphorisms, lore and mores, Yoruba’s thoughts on justice guide rulers and society on the path of virtue, peace and progress. In his “Awon Oju Odu Mereerindinlogun” (The 16 Divination Poems: 2014) an exploration of the Ifa corpus, Professor Wande Abimbola cited one of the Ifa verses which says, “a one-sided judgment arrived at on the basis of a party’s evidence is inhuman and wicked; why did you judge without recourse to the other party?” ([A]nikandajo, o o seun; Anikandajo, o o seeyan; Nigba ti o o gbo t’enu enikeji, emi l’o dajo se?).

    To the Yoruba, the unjust ruler is wickedness personified. He works against the principle of justice which demands impartiality, thereby inflicting gross wickedness on the people. Also implicit in this is that the one judging in a matter should not be a party to the dispute.

    Last week, the Rivers State imbroglio took another dimension. At a meeting he held at State House, Abuja with representatives and leaders of the Niger Delta, under the umbrella of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), President Tinubu went on a self voyage. Not only did he name himself Nostradamus for seeing tomorrow of Rivers politics, he conferred ancient African elders’ foresight on himself, which, I will argue presently, is misplaced. The president took his guests on a sanctimonious sermon of strict adherence to the rule of law and admonished that judiciary was crucial to harmony. He then urged Fubara to “stoop to conquer.”

    In December 2023, President Tinubu held a similar conclave session of sanctimony with Fubara and Rivers stakeholders. While the world wondered what transpired at the meeting, former Rivers State Commissioner, Chief David Briggs, lifted the veil. According to him, Tinubu had boasted, “I’m the leader of the APC in Nigeria. And you are telling me when babies are born into my family, I should ask them to go!” Tinubu thereafter dictatorially got the parties, including Fubara, to sign a pre-written agreement, literally holding the holster of a corked Barreta pistol to Fubara’s head. In the words of Briggs, “He (Tinubu) emphasized the fact that he is the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and anybody who tends to say no to what he is saying, it has consequences.”

    What many don’t know is that Tinubu is an arch-monarchist who pulls a blanket on his pre-modernist persuasions. This he does by mouthing democratic rhetoric. In June, 2024, at the commissioning of the Goodluck Ebele Jonathan Expressway in Abuja, a hyper-elated Tinubu described the appointment of Wike as one of the best he ever made. To me, this is a poor reading of persona by the president. Yoruba will condemn anyone as lacking ability of thorough examination if they rejoice at a ripening plantain/banana rather than being sad that it is beginning the process of rotting (Ògèdè nbàjé è l’o npon). Among my people, if you own the whole world but lack character, what they call Iwa, you have nothing. Ask a professor friend of mine to describe a man of tremendous achievements and brilliance who lacks character, he would say, “he is this, he is that. Full Stop!” He meant the person had nothing.

    A few days after the PANDEF meeting with Tinubu, Nyesom Wike held the Ministerial Press briefing. As usual, his choleric persona was on display. Whenever he flies into a fit, you would think Wike would burst an artery the next minute. At the meeting, Wike’s venom sprinkled everywhere. The Ijaw got theirs. PDP got its and everyone but Wike was a fool.

    On threats that Ijaw would blow up pipelines if Fubara was impeached, Wike’s loose temper found no anchor. “Who told you Ikwerre people cannot blow up pipeline? Who told you Ekpeye people cannot blow up pipelines?… Let the whole country be blown up!” And when asked what happens if Fubara is impeached, he bellowed in that infamous guttural of his, “Rubbish. Nonsense. Who is he? Nonsense!”

    In the Rivers imbroglio, Wike clearly nurtures a Samson complex. It is also called nihilism, the type Adolf Hitler harbored. It was what Bob Marley insinuated when, in his ‘Real Situation’ track, he sang, “total destruction, only solution.” It is what the Yoruba descriptively call the “Atare o gbóná t’ohun t’epo” mentality (rather than the rat suffering the denial of eating from the farmer’s field of cowpea seeds, let the cowpea farm be scattered so that, neither the rat, nor the farmer has the peas). Since his bile went riot at the temerity of his godson, Fubara, to possess a mind of his own, Wike has trodden this “Atare o gbóná t’ohun t’epo” route. He doesn’t care if Rivers people die of hunger.

    At Tinubu’s meeting with PANDEF, when the president said he was a friend of the rule of law, he got cacophonous guffaws across Nigeria. Really? See who is talking about the rule of law! Tinubu’s recent and past political history disown this self chest-thump. For 25 years, Tinubu has sustained his iron grips on Lagos State with a combination of cultic abidance, deadly hold and rule of brunt, all garnished with heavy dole-outs of cash to buy loyalty. At best, as I said earlier, Tinubu is a staunch monarchist, a student of the Bashorun Gaa school of power. This was aptly demonstrated in his successive enthronement of governors since he left office in 2007.

    While the world sees democracy and continuity, underneath the surface is dirty grime. While Akinwumi Ambode got a premature rout from office for querying the godfather’s pokenose into Lagos till, Raji Fashola escaped by the whiskers. Today, Jide Sanwo-Olu is on the cross for being a man of his own and daring to flex a power muscle which only the godfather has a patent to. Why should he remove a haughty, self-conceited Mudashiru Obasa without the godfather’s say-so? Nigerians recently saw the true colour of the president’s bedfellow dalliance with the rule of law in the gangsteric takeover of the Lagos House of Assembly which he unpretentiously sponsored. Same last week; the president exhibited his conquest of this “rule of law” when he hoisted Obasa and the entire House on the cross of Aso Rock. What a victory of the rule of law!

    Last week, Nigerians also saw another victory of Tinubu’s rule of law. This time around, it was in the courts. Peter Odili, the ‘enemy’ of Wike, had his judicial envelope from prosecution removed by the Supreme Court. This was coming after 18 years and coincidentally, at a time when the former governor had become vociferous in denunciation of Wike. Same last week, the installation of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as Emir of Kano was removed by the Appeal Court. The world is aware that Tinubu and his APC surrogates had quartered Aminu Ado Bayero, the dethroned monarch, as alternate Emir in an ancient mini-palace in Nassarawa. Sanusi must be taught the lesson of his life for being friend to Nasir El-Rufai who is threatening the president’s lifetime ambition and family inheritance. Rule of law, however, prevailed last week and the court took judicial notice of the president’s heartfelt political yearnings. May Allah be praised.

    A godfather of huge credentials, it will be expecting the impossible to imagine that Tinubu would not support a fellow godfather, his FCT minister, Nyesom Wike. Though Tinubu advertises boldness, it is apparent that he cannot stand the gruff and incandescent temper of Nyesom Wike. It will seem that he does not have the balls, too to peer torchlight into the dilating eyes of this leopard, the animal which inflicts lethal marks on any animal in the jungle (Ògìdán olólà ijù).

    I remember that immediately after Chief David Briggs lifted the veil on the meeting with Tinubu in 2023, I said, if Tinubu had acted like a statesman and not an APC leader and godfather, Rivers State would not be the smoking cauldron that it is today. I asked if Tinubu had ever called Wike to his office to tell him the simple truth. I doubt. The truth is, Wike’s totalitarian approach to power and his violent disposition can only flourish with a godfather of similar captive persuasion as Tinubu. The day Wike is told by a superior force like the president that no one can hold on to power ad-infinitum and single-handedly hold the polity to ransom like this, is the day the good people of Rivers would be rid of their Wike-inflicted conundrum.

    Tinubu’s self-imposed deafness to the warnings of history in how he fiddles with fire in abetting Wike reminds me of a similar equation in Nigeria’s First Republic. The Western Region turmoil began like a minor crisis as this. Like an unperturbed Balewa, Tinubu is not bothered that, manipulating judicial instrumentality, Rivers State is today literally frozen. A contumacious legislature, whose strings are being pulled by Wike, has adjourned the House sine die to prevent the presentation of the 2025 budget. The people could starve for all they and Wike care. As Tinubu is backing Wike, Balewa was Chief S. L. Akintola’s backer, too in a political chess game that was to later consume the duo.

    While on a tour of Benin in June 1964, still feigning ignorance of the crisis, Balewa was quoted to have said that he could not judge the intensity of lawlessness in the West on account of newspaper reports of the brigandage. As he departed Nigeria in October 1965 for Accra to attend an OAU meeting, he was quoted to have said that report of violence in the region was contrived. At the Ikeja Airport, he was asked by journalists what he was going to do about the fire raging in Western Nigeria. He tucked his bother inside his flowing babanriga, looked round and cynically declared; “Ikeja is part of the West and I cannot see any fire burning.” Like Balewa, today, all Tinubu sees are the magnificent edifices Wike builds in Abuja and the arresting asphalt he paints Abuja roads with. He cannot see that Rivers is burning and hurting.

    As ancient wisdom says it is the beginning of a crisis that is known, nobody knows its end, that fire consumed Balewa on January 15, 1966. It eventually became a disease that would ultimately kill its sufferer which is always pampered. The fire that burnt Balewa and Nigeria arose from the shield he gave Akintola which Tinubu is today recreating.

    During this period, Balewa provoked an editorial comment in the Nigerian Tribune to wit that: “Whether Abubakar (Balewa) intervenes or not, (we are) convinced that this is a war the people are bound to win.” On the morning of January 15, 1966, the silently burning fire Balewa ignored became a national conflagration. The first military coup in Nigeria effectively ended the lives of Balewa, Akintola and others. Unfortunately, the people didn’t win. Nigeria went into captivity of jackboots politics for decades after. Can anyone whisper to Tinubu that this Rivers State Balewa route he is travelling can only lead to destruction?

  • Dual Power Situation in Osun and the Implications, By Kolade Ismail

    Dual Power Situation in Osun and the Implications, By Kolade Ismail

    By Kolade Ismail

    As the Osun State chapter of APC backed up its rhetoric with action and took over the administration of the local governments in the state on Monday sequel to the Appeal Court verdict in its favour, we now have a dual power situation in the State.

    In the context of Marxist theory, dual power is seen as a transitional phase in the development of a revolutionary situation, where the existing state power is challenged by a new, emerging power.

    However, in the context of a state with one party controlling the state government and another party controlling the local governments, dual power can lead to a range of challenges and implications that need to be carefully managed.

    Even with the struggle for fiscal autonomy for the local government administration in Nigeria, the state House of Assemblies still make laws for the administration of the local governments.

    Therefore, dual power in a state with one party controlling the state government and another party controlling the local government can lead to a complex and potentially conflicting situation.

    This phenomenon can result in power struggles, conflicting interests, and priorities between the state and local governments.

    Some of the key implications are better imagined than experienced by a state. I will review some of them in the context of the Osun situation and also offer possible political solutions in the second installment of this piece.

    Conflict and Power Struggles:
    The coexistence of two power centers can lead to conflicts and power struggles between the state and local governments, hindering decision-making and policy implementation. The fiscal autonomy of the local government comes to the fore here. In practical terms, how would the possible disagreement be managed?

    Inefficient Governance:
    Dual power can result in inefficient governance, as the two power centers may have different priorities and agendas, leading to a lack of coordination and coherence in policy implementation. With the gubernatorial election in sight and both parties want to deliver dividends of democracy to attract support from the electorates, the challenges that may arise are better imagined.

    Representation and Accountability:
    The existence of two power centers raises questions about representation and accountability, as it may be unclear which government is truly representative of the people’s interests. Which party is really in power? Whose interest are they representing? These are some of the questions that can only be answered on the field.

    Potential for Gridlock:
    Dual power can lead to gridlock, as the two power centers may not be able to agree on key policies or decisions.

    Impact on Economic Development:
    The uncertainty and conflict arising from dual power can deter investment and hinder economic development.

    Kolade Ismail, a politician, writes from Ode-Omu in Ayedaade Local Government Area of Osun State

  • From America first to America alone: The lab meets the street, By Azu Ishiekwene

    From America first to America alone: The lab meets the street, By Azu Ishiekwene

    It’s nearly 20 years since Mark Steyn wrote a non-fiction book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. 

    Steyn, a Canadian newspaper columnist, could not have known that the kicker of this book title, which extolled America as the last bastion of civilisation as we know it, would become the metaphor for a wrecking ball.

    Steyn thought demographic shifts, cultural decline, and Islam would ruin Western civilisation. The only redeeming grace was American exceptionalism. Nineteen years after his book, America Alone is remembered not for the threats Steyn feared or the grace of American exceptionalism but for an erratic president almost alone in his insanity.

    The joke is on Steyn

    In less than one month of his second presidency, Donald Trump has declared an imperial intention to seize property outside the US and rename international boundaries. He has hinted at annexing a sovereign country, criminalised migration, and dragged his largest trading partners, including his neighbours, to the negotiation table at gunpoint.

    When America Alone is mentioned today, it’s not a defence against threats to Western values or civilisation; it’s simply that Trump’s America First has turned the country into a clear and present danger to the values that built and prospered America and the rest of the world. America is losing its way, alone and aloof, in a brazen insularity that evokes pity and surprise in equal measure, even amongst its harshest critics.

    Yet, as Trump danced on the grave of Adam Smith by instigating a trade war that has left the world on edge and global markets in turmoil, the president appears determined to take America beyond pity, surprise, and loneliness. America will soon be ignored.

    Trump’s case

    What is Trump’s case against Mexico, Canada, China, America’s neighbours and its most significant trading partners? The US president accused the first two of not doing enough to control the flow of fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid analgesic more than 50 times more powerful than morphine, into the US.

    Apart from his perennial accusations against China of stealing US technology and other unfair trade practices, Trump also accused Beijing of sending ingredients for making fentanyl to Mexico. Mexico has been Trump’s punching bag since his first term when he wanted to build a wall funded by that country to keep out the so-called human caravans, drug cartels and other criminal gangs from entering the US.

     

    Polariser-in-Chief

    Perhaps Trump has a just cause to take America back from drugs and crime, not to mention his redemptive mission for aliens in some parts of the US now reduced to “eating the dogs and the pets.”

    However, for a president who said in his second inaugural address that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier,” instigating a chaotic trade war, once described by Adam Smith as “beggar-thy-neighbour”, is anything but a peace offering.

    Tariffs might be the most beautiful word in Trumptionary. However, nothing sets the world on fire in the lexicon of international trade, such as tariffs, quotas, and sometimes subsidies.

     

    A different world

    Even when the world was far less interlinked than it is today, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (enacted to protect US farmers and businesses from foreign competitors), which imposed a 20 percent tariff on imports, was resisted with retaliatory tariffs by 25 other countries, creating significant distress around the world and worsening the Great Depression.

    The reality in today’s profoundly connected world is worse. Within hours of the president announcing the 25 percent tariffs, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso fell. The Canadian dollar reached its lowest value in 20 years, while the peso hit a four-year low. Stock markets lost billions, and commodity prices surged.

    Counting the cost

    Before the one-month tariff pause between the US and its neighbours, analysts forecast the tariffs would hinder US GDP growth by approximately 0.25% to 0.3%. The tariffs on Canada and Mexico alone could decrease overall economic output by around $45 billion, with potential losses escalating to $75 billion following retaliatory measures.

    Of course, these are all aside from the potential impact of unilateral tariffs on US jobs and consumer prices and a global supply chain crisis in fragile recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The pause does not affect China, and a tariff war between the world’s leading economies is afoot. In what must rank as one of the cruellest ironies of these times, China, not the US, is honouring the rules-based system by first taking its case to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), while Trump threw tariff bombs on Truth Social.

    The jury is out on the immediate and long-term damage caused by this trade war. It did not leave any winners the first time Britain used it in the 19th century, when it enacted the protectionist Corn Laws, or when OPEC used it in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War. America First is a long winter in America Alone. The damage to the US and the rest of the world will linger long after the Trump years.

     

    Dagger in Africa’s back

    Africa is not spared in the all-out war. The continent is perplexed that USAID, one of the longest-standing tools of US soft power, is folding in the chaos of America First. The independent US government agency created by Congress 64 years ago to deepen the strategic partnership between America and Africa on issues ranging from security to health and the environment is closed for now, not by an Act of Congress, but by a Trump fiat.

    No one is precisely sure what his official auctioneer, Elon Musk, plans to do with USAID or what will replace it. What is certain is that this bridge is broken.

    Countries like Nigeria received $1.02 billion in 2023, Ethiopia $1.7 billion the same year, and Kenya $512 million in 2024. Others, including Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, and South Africa, also received various sums to fund their food security, humanitarian, and health programmes. USAID was neither perfect nor America’s Hail Mary for Africa. It was, by and large, a mutually beneficial programme. But Africa must now look elsewhere, or better inwards.

    In addition, it’s unlikely that a tariff-obsessed Trump would renew the expiring African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which opens the US to duty-free access to over 6,000 products from the continent.

    Elsewhere, the war may be about human caravans, fentanyl, or pirated chips. In Africa, whose immigrants in the US face deportation in large numbers, it’s about all of these and more. It is about losing friendship with a country that was once an inspiration and, more often than not, a moral force for good.

     

    Pyrrhic victory

    The White House may be enjoying a victory lap, but chaos was not the only way for Trump to settle his grouse or to save America from the world. For example, under President Joe Biden, Mexico deployed 10,000 troops to the US border before, without a threat. For Canada, the price of appointing a fentanyl czar is far less than the long-term damage to US-Canada relations.

    We already know how the war against China will end: Beijing will make new friends and spread its influence elsewhere, while Washington will make new enemies.

    Africa must accept that America First is more than a slogan under Trump. It is where the unfinished experiments of his first term and the promise of chaos during his last campaign meet the street: America Alone.

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It. 

  • Amaechi, el-Rufai and Tinubu’s kernel, By Festus Adedayo

    Amaechi, el-Rufai and Tinubu’s kernel, By Festus Adedayo

    Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde, in his lowest moment in prison, drew a comparison of how he sank from being one of the greatest writers of the late 20th century into a bisexual pedophile. Son of Anglo-Irish intellectuals, Wilde was a writer with lacerating wit. He equally dressed flamboyantly and garnished his writings with flamboyant imagery. He was however bisexual, a precursor to the creed Donald Trump detests today. Wilde’s ordeal began when he issued a civil writ against 9th Marques of Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, for criminal libel. John was the father of Wilde’s homo liaison, Sir Alfred Douglas. Though he won the suit, evidence from the trial made Wilde eligible for trial for gross indecency in homosexual acts. It became one of the first celebrity trials of the century. Overwhelming evidence confirmed that the writer of the famous The Picture of Dorian Gray indeed seduced teens into homosexual activities. At age 39, the court held that Wilde seduced Alphonse Conway, a boy of 16. Another teenager of the same age, Walter Grainger, claimed Wilde threatened him with “very serious trouble” if he revealed their homo dalliance.

    Convicted and sentenced to two years maximum penalty, Wilde was in jail from May 25, 1895 to May 18, 1897. He spent the term in Newgate Prison in London, Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons and then to London to Reading Gaol. While, as a prisoner, he was being moved from Wandsworth to Reading, he faced the lowest point of his life when a crowd which spotted him on the train’s platform jeered at and spat at him. In his De Profundis, also known as Letter to Sir Alfred Douglas, which he wrote in his last year in prison and published posthumously, Wilde had written: “She (his mom) and father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honored, not merely in literature, art, archeology and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into synonym for folly.”

    I told the tale of Wilde’s unravelling above to illustrate how human beings and nations unravel. In the last two weeks, the world saw America unravel, its dirty entrails revealed to the world. Before now, the narrative was that it was African and Third World despots and leaders who shared animal features with our ape ancestors. They reacted according to the stimuli of their whims and intrinsic human wickedness. They were emotive and made no effort to shroud their human passions and desires. Many African leaders have, over the century, been profiled as despots because they couldn’t tame their passions and emotions. They came across as wicked and self-centred, sometimes acting out as narcissists. No doubt a product of close to a century of colonialism, it was believed that some of these beastly leaderships the Third World produced could not be found in America. On the contrary, “God’s Own Country” was the manifestation of human purity and America epitomised the height of the purest of human character.

    When a situation makes everyone equal in action, the Yoruba have allegories with which they justify it. One way they do this is to invoke the imagery of an African chicken’s pen. As a way of reducing the costs of daily sustenance, most African homes maintained pens. They are enclosures within compounds where livestock or pets are kept. They serve as immediate relief from the rigour of dashing to the market for protein. At dusk, these animals, especially the local livestock, are lured from roaming around compounds into the various pens/cages, lest they become prey to reptiles. Because this practice is replicated in virtually every home, when it is time to equalise human action, it is invoked as an allegory. It illustrates a sense of similarity; that, what is done beyond the shores of individual localities is the same, irrespective of any allusion to sophistication. This is found in the aphorism, “everywhere, without exception, at dusk, hens are packed inside the pen” (ibi gbogbo l’a tií ńk’ádìye alé).

    This aphorism has served as an excuse for failure. It has also served as justification for horrendous human actions. It is a weak line explored to say that corruption or evil is innate in every man, no matter the clime or skin colour. Despots have invoked it to claim that their actions were normal human reactions. More importantly, the aphorism has served to legitimise and sustain that theory which says that, there is a beast in every man, apologies to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s musical line, “…this uprising will bring out the beast in us”.

    Many analysts who got sucked into the theory of American leaders’ ‘righteousness’ and Third World leaders’ beastliness, find another aphorism as justification. With it, they explain racial leadership character differences. So, they ask if it wasn’t the same rain that fell on and nurtured the bitter-leaf tree into its repulsive bitterness that also fell on the sugarcane which in turn comforts man with its sweetness (Òjò tó rọ̀ sí ewúro náà ló rọ̀ sí ìrèké). The bitter-leaf, in this case, was African leaders who were demonised for almost a century as wicked and selfish. The sugarcane is American leaders whose perceived purity lifted their countries to the zenith of positive global reckoning. This subsisted until about two weeks ago when America’s self-imposed righteousness unravelled.

    Mobutu Sese Seko illustrates this bitter-leaf leadership thesis. Born Joseph-Dèsirè, he was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997. Then came Robert Mugabe, who served as the president of the Republic of Zimbabwe from 1987. And Francisco Macìas Nguema, first president of Equatorial Guinea from October 12, 1968, till 1979 when he was overthrown.  So also was Ahmed Sèkou Tourè, the first President of Guinea. From 1958 when he came into this position, he was there till 1984. The continent also had the likes of Abacha, Charles Taylor, Siad Barre of Somalia, Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, Hissene Habre of Chad, Idi Amin Dada of Uganda and many more. America and the west constructed a cemetery for all of them and cast them in boulders of infamy. It must be said that virtually all these African despots claimed they did all they did to make their countries great. Like Donald Trump.

    But, how were we to know that America itself was the proverbial ‘physician, heal thyself’? The last two American presidents, especially Trump, deconstructed America so badly in the eyes of the world, making them not different from Third World countries.

    At the twilight of his administration, President Joe Biden shocked the world when he issued an official pardon for his son, Hunter. At that time, Hunter was facing sentencing for two criminal cases. In September, he pleaded guilty to tax charges and was found guilty of illegal drug use and possession of a gun. He became the first American sitting president’s child to become a convict. In 2001, Bill Clinton equally pardoned Roger Clinton, his younger half-brother, who had been convicted of a 1985 cocaine-related offence. During the first coming of President Trump, in 2020, he equally pardoned Charles Kushner, father-in-law of his daughter, Ivanka. He has also recently announced that this same Kushner will be America’s ambassador to France. On his first day in office, in the confetti of Executive Orders he signed, Trump also pardoned more than 1500 of his supporters who were serving prison sentences for their participation in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
    The attack was said to be the final denouement of a seven-part plot by Trump to overturn the election. In 36 hrs, five persons died, one of whom was shot by the police. A police officer also died a day after being assaulted. Scores were injured, including 174 police officers and damage caused to the US exceeded $2.7m. While it was a riot in America, if it occurred in one of those Third World countries, it was a coup. Whether successful or otherwise, the masterminds were coup plotters, susceptible to America’s usual paternalistic rhetoric. The prisoners were Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) fanatics protesting his presidential election loss. Trump was sentenced to over 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, in efforts to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election. These convictions signal that in Trump, America now has its first and only criminal elected to its presidency. Such self-serving actions and criminality were hitherto ascribed to nepotist dictators for which African leadership had incontestable patent.
    Today, you would see Mobutu Sese Seko, Robert Mugabe, Francisco Macìas Nguema, Ahmed Sèkou Tourè, Abacha, Charles Taylor, Siad Barre, Omar Al-Bashir, Hissene Habre, Idi Amin Dada, all wrapped into one in Trump. He is as conceited as the typical African despot, arrogant in his self-righteousness as all of them rolled into one, and persuaded, like them, in his own vain conceit. President Trump recently hinted he would walk through the same ignoble track of a third term in office, though the US constitution forbids it. It was a low for which Olusegun Obasanjo suffers the worst unpleasant appraisals till today and for which all the despots above are reserved a place in the hell of global estimation. Trump, in a recent parley with House Republicans, said, “I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100 percent sure”. He continued, “I think I’m not allowed to run again;” and asked rhetorically, in a prodding of Mike Johnson, the House Speaker,  “Am I allowed to run again?” He said further, “Mike, I better not get you involved in that”. All he got from Johnson, an ex-constitutional lawyer, was a chuckle, with other lawmakers sharing an infectious guffaw at this American Wonder.
    Trump had previously dismissed insinuations of a third term when he said, “I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you do something…Unless you say, ‘he’s so good, we have to just figure it out.’” That same week, Andy Ogles, a Republican House member, had introduced a bill which sought allowance for Trump to run for a third term. Ogles’ alibi, bowing to Trump’s prodding of ‘he’s so good, we have to just figure it out,’ was that Trump “has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history” capable of “restoring America to greatness”. If the world knows Trump enough, it will know that America would soon receive its first genetic transplant of an African sit-tight  leadership. Trump is provoking trade war, withdrawing America from globally-beneficial institutions like WHO, threatening to harness territories like Greenland, all in the name of his MAGA.
    Donald Trump’s son, Trump Jr., recently hallmarked his father’s Greenland harnessing when he made a surprise appearance there. Immediately, Nigerian maga on social media asked what stops President Bola Tinubu from cloning the same nepotist hubris and weave his son, Seyi, round Aso Rock. Trump should be made to know that, at the end of all these, yes, America will be lush once again for Americans. However, that country would have forever lost the savour of respect and dread for which the world stands in awe of it. By the time Trump ends his Adolf Hitler-like preferencing of his Aryan race as the most superior in the world, America would wake up lost and naked.

    As Trump is busy affirming the “everywhere, without exception, at dusk, hens are packed inside the pen” to the world, in Nigeria, former Rivers and Kaduna state governors, Rotimi Amaechi and Nasir el-Rufai, are struggling to deconstruct the thesis. At an “Impact of democracy on the national economy” in Abuja last week, both acted from the playbook of a typical adulterous woman sent packing from her erstwhile home. Underlining their “dogo turenchi” is the theme that, while the present government, from which they are estranged, is performing horribly, if they had played prominent roles therein, it would not have been otherwise. That submission attempted to deconstruct the “ibi gbogbo l’a ti nk’adiye ale” thesis.

    Quite frankly, Amaechi and El-Rufai were dead right. Nigerians are too docile and possess incredibly short-spanned memory. It is these two limitations that Nigerian politicians capitalise upon to catapult themselves into power. When you add the infectious poverty that afflicts the Nigerian to the mix, you have at your fingertips zombies. Evergreen Anikulapo-Kuti got it right. “My people sef, dem fear too much…” he lamented. While many attribute this to the sparse blood spillage in our fight for independence, some say our docility is a product of our comfort. You cannot also fault el-Rufai’s claim that there is no internal democracy in the ruling APC. But, if I may ask, which party in Nigeria observes internal democracy? The former Kaduna governor had equally lamented that, “You cannot afford to have illiterates, semi-illiterates, and cunning people as your leaders. This is why we end up with the poor leadership we have today.”

    My take is that indeed, Nigeria, America and many parts of the world are today facing an Autumn in good leadership. Global leadership is fast decoupling from the people who constitute its foundation. If Amaechi and el-Rufai had been in plum offices today under the APC, there would be nil or marginal differences in the people’s sorrow. Nor any complaints from them. Their comments above are the usual initial traps politicians set to seduce electorates penultimate launching new parties or entering into alliances. Both Amaechi and el-Rufai were in office when the Muhammadu Buhari government dealt incalculable blows on good governance. It was the most opaque, naive and directionless in Nigeria’s history. Yet, we didn’t hear any hoopla from the duo.

    On the whole, Trump is teaching leaders of the world that indeed, “everywhere, without exception, at dusk, hens are packed inside the pen”. As Trump’s Third term ambition grows, it will trigger a wave of African leaders also nurturing perfect alibi for sit-tightism. This brings me to an intersection to disagree with el-Rufai’s claim that the present APC leadership is illiterate. I agree more with ex-youth and sports minister, Solomon Dalung, who recently said that the combine that surrounds power today is educated but lethal. Cunning and sadistic, yes, they are. It is why I am of the opinion that it will be difficult to dislodge Tinubu from power.

    Rather than sounding sanctimonious, el-Rufai, Amaechi and the Nigerian opposition will need to abandon rhetoric. I am sure that what God deployed to drive Satan away from Heaven wasn’t mere demagogic narratives. What the Nigerian opposition needs to do to drive away the Morning Star is to recreate an American Donald Trump as an aspirant for Nigeria’s No 1 office. A Trump clone will dislodge the current ruling establishment. In Trump is a symbolism of leadership madness, unconventionality, criminality and unorthodoxy. Don’t our people say it is only a meek face that gets riven with pimples (Ojú tó rọ ni rore nsọ)? Yoruba reckon with this when they say, you must deploy madness to cure madness. While campaigning for votes, Tinubu himself said you cannot snatch the kernel from the palm-nut with rhetoric. What Nigeria’s opposition needs to dislodge the kernel from the hard palm nut is a stone on the floor and another stone to smash it at the top.

    Ganusi and the fire this time

    All over the world, musicians are reputed to have patented argots, slang and jargon that signposted global conversations. In the tiny Island of Jamaica, the unkempt, locked-hair, weed-smoking, reggae music singer, Peter Tosh pioneered the word ‘Rasta’ as prefix for devotees of a new religion that began to reign in the West Indies. That religion believed that His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, formerly Abyssinia, and the last Emperor of the Empire, was “King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and Elect of God”. In a musical track titled “Rasta Shook Dem Up” released in 1966, Tosh patented the usage of the word for worshipers of Selassie named “Rastafari.” It was derived from Selassie’s pre-monarch name, “Ras Tafari Makonnen,” “Ras” having come from an Ethiopian Semitic word meaning “Duke” or “Prince”.

    In the early 1980s, when Yoruba Awurebe music icon, Alhaji Dauda Adeeyo, alias Epo Akara, was accused of couriering Indian hemp to Abidjan, Cote d’voire, his traducers had an upper hand in spreading the news. He had to denounce it in a track he called O wa l’Abidjan. In it, he sang that he was engaged in legitimate sale of Ankara clothes which was a major trade in the French-speaking country. A new kind of cloth style became known as L’Abidjan in the Southwest of Nigeria then.

    About two weeks ago, Yoruba Fuji icon, Wasiu Ayinde, unwittingly added to the lexicography of the Southwest. His mother, Animotu Sadia, had passed and among a beehive of people who flooded his Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State home for the burial were Islamic clerics. In Yorubaland, clerics at such occasions, whether Christian or Muslim, have come to be synonyms with scavenging for perks and food. Islamic clerics are the most notorious. I remember that while growing up, a very unflattering but predominant phrase that was bandied about was, “If an Alfa goes to an occasion, how to know that the event was fruitful and he ate to his fill was that the Alfa’s elbow would be soaked in oil” (Bí Aafa ba lọ òde, bí òde bà dun, igbunwo l’a tí mọ, torí yíò mú epo dẹdẹ ni!).

    An apparently clandestinely recorded video had Ayinde complaining that the flood of clerics to his house in the guise of condolences, was stomach-driven. This was not the novelty Ayinde pioneered. The lexicographic enrichment came from the musician’s usage of a barroom, society’s lowlife slang to describe the scavenging. He said the clerics had chosen his house, rather than his father’s house at Fidipote area of Ijebu-Ode, to “Ganusi.” Ganusi can be used either as a noun or verb and has literally shut down the social media in the various mutations it has suffered.

    Many people have done a syntactic and lexical examination of “Ganusi” since then, many times without fruition. It is most probably a weave of two words “Ga enu” (prized open like a trap) and “si” (to) to arrive at a word which conveys the meaning of a deliberate ploy to fill the tummy. Such act of prizing open the mouth is deliberate, purposive and tendentious, while not being real as it is concealed. Ayinde was obviously communicating a tendency that is getting worse in society where everyone has become a scavenger of the other person.

    Though uttered at the height of frustration with nectar-sucking propensity of virtually everyone in Nigeria today, an Islamic cleric who angrily replied the musician reminded him that Ayinde, being a beggar (alagbe) – as musicians are known from time immemorial – was equally a scavenger.

    “Ganusi” has become a social commentary on how virtually everyone in Nigeria is scavenging for survival, either legitimately or illegitimately. Whether Ganusi is done by designer suites-wearing contractors in Abuja, babanriga, Isiagu or agbada, or by touts at motor-parks who demand to be given a piece of the pie who rudely demand, “Big man, let me also Ganusi your wealth” (Baba Alaye, e je ki nganusi).
  • Trump, again…, By Azu Ishiekwene

    Trump, again…, By Azu Ishiekwene

    On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the U.S., on January 19, 2017, I wrote an article I could easily write now. It was entitled “A Memory of America on Obama’s Last Day.” With minor edits, it’s worth repeating as Trump happens again as the 47th President of the U.S.

    Only exceptionalism could have offered that opportunity. Only exceptionalism could produce a Barack Obama and, eight years later, bring forth a Donald Trump—one neoliberal and the other a neo-anything-is-possible.

    The peculiar aspect of the U.S. is that everything is extraordinary. If any doubt remains, the election of Donald J. Trump, who takes office on Friday as the 45th President of the United States of America, resolves the matter.

    Everything about Trump is unsettlingly peculiar. He has weakened his party, exploited voters’ most basic instincts, ignored the media, and mocked U.S. allies. Nonetheless, he has secured a victory that has made him even more powerful and audacious. Everyone else, including the party and the nation, seems weaker, more bewildered, and divided.

    In Trump versus the rest of the world, Trump is the indescribable enigma. The rest are demystified and stranded.

    As the new Trump world order emerges, exceptionalism – once a distinctly American concept – assumes a different significance. I grappled with that word when I first encountered it from my lecturer, Ayo Akinbobola, many years ago in school.

    Exceptionalism. How do I explain it? It’s that special quality for which most people love America; the idea that you can become whatever you wish to be, whoever you are, regardless of your background; that through hard work, persistence, and innovation, you can attain grace from grass; that America is the only place on earth that confronts its diversity with courage, not shying away from its own worst demons; that America is a land of both genius and demagogue, each pursuing their path, but within a system that also strives to protect the weak and vulnerable while, some would add, paradoxically creating its own weak and vulnerable.

    I learned from my US-trained teachers in school and saw from the cowboy movies I watched growing up that this made America unique.

    My first American friends embodied the generosity of spirit I had always heard about. Melvin and Paula Baker, whom my family and I met during a holiday in Florida over ten years ago, have consistently treated us like family, offering themselves and everything they have at our disposal whenever we visit.

    Melvin and Paula are white, but colour or creed has never been a concern—whether we or they are visiting. Occasionally, I’m amused to see them sweating over a meal of pepper soup, even when it contains the mildest spices.

    America is exceptional not because it is perfect but because, despite its flaws, people like Melvin and Paula made it extraordinary.

    Then 9/11 happened. Fear took hold, and exceptionalism faced its most significant test since Vietnam. The political elite and the military leaders started a catastrophic war in Iraq by dressing up fear and suspicion as facts.

    That changed everything. Al-Queda, the Taliban, ISIL and other terror franchises around the world were born by the mother of all wars from which America and the world have not recovered.

    I felt the change around this time seven years ago when I visited the U.S. before Christmas. A young Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had planted a bomb in his pants to bring down a commercial plane over Detroit. Coming at America’s vulnerable moment, there was a severe backlash from that incident.

    During my visit in January 2010, many U.S. airports and border posts opened a black book for Nigerian travellers. The intrusive body searches at these airports and the cold, hostile stares at non-whites left me in no doubt that something was changing in America.

    But Barack Obama’s election was supposed to halt the tide; it was supposed to send a message that America had not wholly forsaken exceptionalism, that if a black guy with a funny Muslim-sounding name could become president in America, you could be what you want to be – no matter who you are – if you work at it.

    That’s Obama’s story, which he calls “the audacity of hope.” How else could someone born to a Kenyan father and raised by an Indonesian stepfather become a senator and then the 44th president of the United States?

    Yet, some say that it is precisely this exceptional quality that is the trouble with America. They say it is exceptionalism that produced an Obama who is not black enough to meet black expectations, not white enough to be accepted by whites, and not brown enough to attract the sympathy of those in between.

    Evangelicals regard him as the anti-Christ for endorsing stem cell research and despise him for his late remarks on gay rights. Millions of Nigerians will also not forgive him for never once visiting the world’s most populous black nation during his eight years in office, opting instead to throw stones from Ghana, the country’s backyard.

    It’s a deep bucket, but who can deny that America’s exceptionalism produced a miracle that Martin Luther King could only dream of?

    Eight years ago today, America was on its knees, broken by a catastrophic terror war and greedy Wall Street.

    Globalisation was also taking its toll and would become a significant factor in U.S. politics. To think that this was the moment when the country elected its first black president –when the lines of failure seemed to have fallen in the most unpleasant places – is hard to imagine now.

    But it happened, and Obama made the most of his lemons. In several ways, he’s leaving America better than he found it: jobs growing, the country cured of its addiction to oil, its economy in better shape, and its youth unleashed and innovating.

    Obama is leaving without the scars of scandals that marred many of his predecessors. The dignity of his office is intact.

    Only exceptionalism could have provided that chance. Only exceptionalism could produce an Obama and eight years later produce a Trump – the one neo-liberal and the other neo-anything-is-possible.

    In the days ahead, no one is exactly sure what to expect – not pollsters, pundits, or even members of Trump’s cabinet. But we’ll see, one tweet at a time, just what is left of what has made America exceptional.

    Ishiekwene is the editor-in-chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • What you might expect in 2025, By Azu Ishiekwene

    What you might expect in 2025, By Azu Ishiekwene

    “Arsenal fans are currently over the moon, testosterone pumping – and why not? The story will not change in 2024… the odds are not in Arsenal’s favour… My forecast is that despite setting his ducks in a row, (Godwin) Obaseki’s candidate would lose in September. His biggest undoing would be the large army of political enemies he has created in the last eight years – some inevitably from the reforms he introduced, but others, and in a far larger number, avoidably from his mean-spirited, opportunistic politics.” — What You Might Expect in 2024, December 29, 2023.

    This is the fifth in my series of annual forecasts. For a part-time Nostradamus, my record has been above average. The forecasts usually come earlier, in the last week of December. Yet, the potency of this edition is not diminished by the delay.

    I made a particularly catastrophic forecast for last year, which has left a puree of tomatoes on my face and those of a significant segment of the liberal press in the US, led by CNN: that President Joe Biden would defeat Donald Trump. That didn’t happen—not because Biden didn’t beat Trump, but because Biden was not in the race.

    There were a few other misses, but on the whole, whether it was about Arsenal, the value of the exchange rate by year-end, or when Dangote and the public refineries would start production, I was bang on the money.

    A word for ministers

    Let me start with some unsolicited advice for politicians, especially President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s ministers. Their biggest mistake this year would be to take the president’s statement during the December media chat that he won’t replace them at face value.

    He said he wouldn’t replace them, not that he would keep them at any cost. I forecast that by May 29 or earlier, the president will replace ministers, especially those who have since outlived their IOU value. As pressure mounts ahead of the pre-election year, no fewer than five of them will be replaced or reassigned by the end of 2025.

    Fighting Tinubu

    It’s 2025, but it feels like 2027. It has been this way since the end of last year. Leading politicians from the north, notably former Jigawa state governor Sule Lamido, spent much of 2024 regretting that the region supported Tinubu and swooning over how to stop his reelection. The schemes will reach a fever pitch this year as the government presses ahead with the Tax Reform Bills, which are perceived as anti-north.

    The tax bills won’t be the only thing over which northern politicians would raise a battle cry, even though it’s unlikely that they will stop the passage of a watered-down version.

    When the government’s deadline against keeping dollars outside the banking system expires in July, those saving the greenback for the next election will cry foul and demand an extension, if not an outright rejection of the policy. They will argue that 1) the government has no right to tell them what to do with their money and 2) it targets northerners, who are dominant operators in bureaus de change.

    In the same way, the census, as planned, is unlikely to be held this year. Some states, especially those in the opposition, would declare it an ingenious attempt at gerrymandering ahead of 2027. If the federal government goes ahead, they might repeat what happened in Lagos in 2006, when Tinubu was governor: mount a legal challenge, failing which the states would conduct their separate “census” and declare their figures valid.

    Opposition in disarray

    Yet, this is the year of the ultimate scramble for presidential favours, especially among politicians who can’t afford to wait for another four years in the cold. They’ve been joining the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in trickles. As the shambles of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) becomes a ruinous heap and the Labour Party produces more heat than fire, more and more will flock to the APC.

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar will remain the PDP’s albatross despite his efforts to act as its best card. Those hoping for an opposition coalition to challenge the APC in 2027 will be disappointed. The likely arrowheads of such a coalition—Atiku, NNPP’s Rabiu Kwankwaso, Labour Party’s Peter Obi, and political strategist-in-a-limbo Nasir El-Rufai—would be unable to find a common ground.

    Ambition, ego, and a perennial distrust of one another will ruin these strange bedfellows. Whatever is left of their political remains will be buried by their heartbroken followers. The new exiting class of second-term governors, likely from the South West and the North East, with money, ambition and a desire for fresh conquests, particularly Seyi Makinde and Bala Mohammed, will overplay their reach.

    Twice lucky

    Governor Charles Soludo will likely be returned for a second term in November despite snippers from his party, APGA, and outside.

    Where’s the money?

    On the national stage, I worry about the economy. My advice is to view government officials’ rose-tinted forecasts with caution. The coming onstream of the Dangote Refinery, especially, and the partial production from the Port Harcourt Refinery helped ease pressure on foreign exchange demand, mainly because crude was purchased in naira. It would be interesting to see how this naira-for-crude arrangement will hold, especially as Dangote Refinery expands its markets outside Nigeria.

    Prices would likely be more stable, with marginal improvements in the macroeconomic outlook. However, with the relatively high debt level, more borrowing crowding out private sector credit, and 2,604 uncompleted projects inherited from previous governments, it will be hard to find cash.

    Feeding the cash cow

    Revenue will continue to be a problem for at least two reasons: First, the government’s main cash cow, crude oil earnings, is unlikely to reach the anticipated 2m bpd, and the benchmark oil price of $75 pb might prove overambitious.

    Multiple sources told me that current production levels are around 1.4-1.5m bpd, discounting for condensate. However, unless the government radically restructures the NNPCL, the weak and heavily politicised structure will underperform.

    Shell’s $5 billion investment in Bonga is good news but will not crystalise until 2028/29. There are no new investments in the country’s mineral mining leases that NNPCL incompetently manages to inspire confidence or significantly relieve the current budget cycle.

    Second, the government’s effort to improve farm output and moderate food inflation—currently the most severe threat to social security—is still in its early stages. Food inflation will remain relatively high this year, likely around the five-year average of 35 percent. Retooling the value chain to deliver results beyond the current subsistence levels will require radical steps for at least another cycle to bear fruit.

    Managing discontent

    To stave off social discontent from hardship, governments at all levels must invest more in the weak and vulnerable, especially the growing army of urban youths who will drift more into cybercrimes in significant numbers this year. As for security, the final piece of the puzzle for establishing the state police will likely be completed this year, leaving only the paperwork for its implementation.

    Between Arsenal and Trump

    Is this finally the year broken Red Hearts will mend, the Year of Arsenal? It would be easier for Trump to take Canada as the 51st State of the US than for Arsenal to win the Premier League in May. If the club is exactly where it was this time last year (40 points after 20 games), the odds are that it will end up where it did in 2024: nearly there. The crown in 2025 is Liverpool’s to lose.

    Trump 2.0’s pledge to execute the most extensive mass deportation in US history, just like his dubious promise in his first term to build a wall at Mexico’s expense, will be mired in litigation, logistics, and obstacles by some states and other institutions. It will hardly take off. However, he would have much greater leeway with his protectionist trade policies, potentially sparking retaliation from major US trading partners.

    The great thing about Trump is that he won despite evidence that he would be the most unguarded US president in recent history. Nothing he does will surprise.

    Ishiekwene is editor-in-chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It

  • Back story of Tinubu interview, By Azu Ishiekwene

    Back story of Tinubu interview, By Azu Ishiekwene

    Apart from General Sani Abacha, I have met one-on-one with every Nigerian leader since 1992, from General Ibrahim Babangida. However, I have only participated in one televised live group media chat with former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    If you have met Obasanjo before – whether for an interview or anything else – you might agree that he’s a handful and more. You never know what to expect with Obasanjo, especially when he is in his lair.

    I narrowly missed being punched by the former president during an untelevised interview in his Library in the Villa in 2004 for asking why his government was letting a political outlaw, Chris Uba, run amok in Anambra State. The combined effort of presidential aides, the late Remi Oyo and Professor Julius Ihonbvere, rescued me from Obasanjo’s fury.

     

    Are you OPC?

    My experience wasn’t very different during the live presidential media chat. I had asked him why he ordered a shoot-on-sight against members of the militant Yoruba self-determination group Oodua People’s Congress, OPC, which operated mainly in the South-West, Obasanjo’s home base.

    He was livid. He warned me, on air, that if I were going to bring the irreverence of my weekly column to the Villa, he would immediately throw me out of the panel. I insisted on an answer, to which he said: “If you’re a member of OPC, tell your people that I mean what I said!”

     

    Three presidents, different styles

    Presidents Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, and Muhammadu Buhari, whom I also met at different times in different untelevised encounters in the line of duty, were distinct in their peculiar ways.

    Yar’Adua spoke a little, measuredly and candidly. Jonathan was gentle, felicitous, and vulnerable without a care in the world. Buhari was taciturn, defensive, and tight-lipped, except when you touched on a raw nerve, mainly around his family or his relationship with Babangida, with whom he has had a fascinating Tom-and-Jerry relationship.

    I poked Buhari on this soft spot in an untelevised group interview in 2016. His unusually animated, angry reply inspired a widely publicised story that covered The Interview magazine, entitled: “Why Babangida removed me from power.”

     

    Road to interview

    The Monday televised interview with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu differed in many ways. Multiple sources, including those inside his cabinet, had pressured him to host an interview many times, but he refused, insisting that the time was not right and that there was much to be done.

    In October, 17 months into his presidency, there was a nearly interview on the eve of the planned second round of the #EndBadGovernance protest. He cancelled it at the last minute for personal reasons.

    When I received a message on December 18 that I had been selected for a panel to interview the president, I assumed it would be live. Not that there’s any journalistic rule forbidding a recorded interview. Some of the best interviews I’ve read about or seen, from Oriana Fallaci to Larry King, were recorded. In a more recent example, the CNN interview with President-elect Donald Trump was recorded on November 25 and aired on December 12.

     

    Live or recorded?

    However, I hoped the interview with Tinubu would be live – a point I later found was shared by all panel members – because this was the first nearly halfway into his presidency. If eating this toad had taken 19 months, it’s better to eat it big for Nigerians to hear their president engaging them unfiltered.

    The choice of live or recorded can sometimes be tricky. Like Ebenezer Obey’s famous story in the song of the Journeyman and his Donkey, you can’t please everyone. Some want it live because it allows spontaneity and could sometimes be a window on the persona of the interviewee. Others prefer a live interview for traps to catch the interviewee in their unguarded moments, which is why others oppose it.

     

    The panel

    We—a panel of seven—comprising Dr. Reuben Abati (ARISE TV/ThisDay), Maupe Ogun-Yusuf (Channels TV), Nnamdi Odikpo (NTA), Jide Otitoju (TVC), Umar Farouk Musa (VOA), Ruth Olurounbi (Bloomberg News), and me—wanted to have this interview live and for two hours for the reasons I’ve explained.

    That didn’t happen. Hours before the interview, which was postponed from Sunday to Monday because of the tragic deaths from palliative stampedes in different parts of the country, we finally settled for 90 minutes. The questions were entirely ours to decide, and that was what happened.

    Some folks have been upset that the interview was not live and, to make matters worse, not a brawl. One gentleman, obviously with a heavy heart, said: “I expected my seniors on the job to rattle the President.” I get that. Another was not even interested in the interview. He aimed at me instead, saying that even though I’m an Igbo man (which I’m not), I did not wear a red cap (which I’ve never worn) because of an “inferiority complex!”

     

    To cut or not?

    It’s the nature of recorded interviews—and this one was no exception—that not everything is aired. Twenty questions were prepared, and at least 17 were asked point-blank, excluding unscripted queries and follow-ups.

    Among the unaired questions were whether the President considered Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, a political liability and whether direct payments to the local governments were not a derogation of the principle of federalism, which recognises the centre and the states as the fundamental constituent units of the federation.

    Questions also arose about #EndSARS and state police and whether the president would request the Code of Conduct Bureau to release his assets, as one or two newspapers requested under the FOIA of 2011.

    His answers were fascinating. He described Wike as a performing minister and a very good man. He said it twice, slowly but louder and with a hearty laughter of approval the second time. In response to the Supreme Court’s judgement on local government autonomy, he said: “There are at least two ideological views on that. The thing is that the Constitution created the local governments, and there isn’t such a thing as ‘unfunded mandate.’”

    Translation: If the law created local governments, it is not unlawful for them to receive their funding directly. That debate continues.

     

    ‘I’ll consider’

    On state police, he said he didn’t expect any obstacles but expected a negotiated outcome in the country’s best interest. His response to the question on asset declaration was even more fascinating. I remember that in 2012 this question left Jonathan with a media chat black eye. He was asked if he didn’t care about the growing public demand that he should declare his assets. In what was initially thought to be a slip, he said: “I don’t give a damn!” That turned out to be a damn good headline the next day.

    Tinubu took a different approach. He said he had done his part by filing his assets as required by the law and would do so again at the point of exit. But when asked if he would ask the CCB to release it since there is currently no law mandating the CCB, despite the FOIA, he said: “I will consider doing so.” That, I think, is worth holding onto.

    Everything couldn’t be covered in a one-hour broadcast, and perhaps one live or recorded interview will hardly satisfy the pent-up hunger to hear the president. But one presidential interview at a time, the gap is closing.

     

    •Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • Does it still make sense to trust Tinubu?, By Azu Ishiekwene

    Does it still make sense to trust Tinubu?, By Azu Ishiekwene

    This was tough to write. My heart resisted it, but I yielded to my head. The petrol in my car, a 2.0-litre 2012 Tokunbo Camry, was at half-tank the day before writing. 

    When pump prices went from 195/litre to 617/litre between May and June 2023, I parked my Jeep and, despite being occasionally mistaken for an Uber driver, opted for the saloon, which, as of the third fuel price increase by September this year, cost about 65k to fill up.

    After petrol pump price went up again by about 15 percent last week, it would now cost about 80k to fill up the saloon, depending on where you bought petrol from and how badly the pump was rigged.

    The changes in petrol price and energy costs have affected everything else, from the price of fish to milk and the cost of bread and grains. Essential medicines are a different thing altogether. Life was hard. But it’s been a nightmare for millions more since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government was inaugurated.

    Generation crisis

    In July, The Financial Times said the hardship under Tinubu has triggered “the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.” The newspaper gave the president credit for tackling two of the most malignant economic problems in decades – the petrol subsidy and fixed exchange rate – but said the shock therapy was so disjointed that calling it “Tinubunomics” would be a joke.

    But Nigerians hardly need a foreign newspaper to render their misery in torrid colours. They know this was not the life promised. Tinubu pledged to prioritise security and jobs, tackle the mounting debt, and improve infrastructure when he took office. He came with a pro-business credential and a track record of success in Lagos that was difficult to ignore.

    In the last year, however, with millions impoverished by the government’s economic policies and two major nationwide protests against hunger and bad governance, Tinubu’s reputation has taken such a severe beating that promises of light at the end of the tunnel have been brushed aside.

    Turn of excuses?

    His government has explained that the rot was worse than expected; that whereas previous governments since 1973 said oil money was not the problem, but how to spend it, President Muhammadu Buhari handed his successor an empty treasury, to which the response has been: yours is a continuation of the APC government, deal with it.

    Complaints about post-Covid-19 supply chain problems, long-standing structural problems, the protracted legal challenge to his election, and a hostile opposition have also been dismissed as untenable for a man who said it was his turn to govern.

    Temptation

    Yet, I wouldn’t write off the government, however tempting. If Tinubu’s shock therapy has been disjointed, and his economic policies severely criticised by a despairing public, the tax-and-spend remedy by The Financial Times, the West’s standard response to budget deficits – apart from the added trope about transparency and corruption – is hardly the cure in Nigeria’s case for at least two reasons.

    Apart from severe loopholes, rampant poverty makes it difficult to expand the tax net or improve the yield, except if the government wishes to levy taxes on blood. Poor industrialisation, even de-industrialisation, and heavy dependence on imports, especially food imports, compound the problem and further reduce wiggle room to raise badly needed cash.

    For Tinubu to dig Nigeria out of its current hole – and I believe he still can – efforts to restructure government income, including taxes, by repurposing the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) must be matched by policies that create wealth.

    Options for compound problems

    The government should intentionally target industrialisation and food production, with reduced foreign input. Unfortunately, widespread floods have piled on insurgency and kidnapping to reduce farm supplies and worsen food inflation.

    Yet, while elites like me complain the most and the loudest, the measure of Tinubu’s success is not how much petrol I’m able to buy in my car but the impact of government policies on the rural poor, mainly farmers, who make up the bulk of the country’s 220m population.

    Tinubu must work with Nigeria’s state governors, who collect security votes monthly before thinking of what to do with it to fix the security problem so that farmers can return. The country needs a system to incentivise farming, one far better managed than the Anchor-borrowers’ scheme under which the Buhari government staged occasional shows of huge grain pyramids that disappeared as soon as the events were over.

    Examples from elsewhere

    There would be no easy options. Examples of countries that have turned things around show that their leaders defied the norm in pivotal moments. Deng Xiaoping reversed Zedong’s isolationism by introducing market reforms and imposing a one-child policy.

    Lee Kuan Yew ignored Western prescriptions of democracy, even laying down markers for the foreign-owned Strait Times, limited protests, and restricted strikes and industrial actions.

    Those who obsess about diversity and size would find India a good example. To the displeasure of the elite, Indira Gandhi focused on rural India. She achieved self-sufficiency in food production, reducing poverty and laying the groundwork for long-term national development.

    One thing common to all three but lacking in Tinubu’s government is energy and speed of execution. For example, three months after he announced an interim measure to remove tariffs on grains and essential pharmaceuticals, the Customs have yet to get the memo – or perhaps they have, and it’s been washed up by red tape.

    Sitting on the mines

    Sadly, oil isn’t about to take the backstage soon. Yet, our assets, especially oil mining leases in seven blocks, including OML 111 and disputed Pan Ocean assets, have been poorly managed by NNPCL. The corporation that ought to be alarmed at divestments from the upstream and midstream is too busy piling on the government’s debt by brokering crude-for-loan deals to think of what to do with massive, fallow oil assets that it has cornered since 2009.

    Experts estimate that prudent management of these assets could increase Nigeria’s production quota by between 500kbpd and 1mbpd and improve the pool of investible funds. How and why, despite his experience in the oil industry, Tinubu indulges NNPCL’s damaging and scandalous incompetence, only he can explain.

    Eat that frog!

    But I’m not giving up on him yet. I’m hoping he was playing politics when the political pressure group, the Patriots, led by the statesman Chief Emeka Anyaoku, visited him, and he said he needed to fix the economy before restructuring the country.

    Except he prioritises that, the current system, which puts revenue sharing ahead of innovation, competition, production and reward, but instead creates a phantom of Abuja as Father Christmas, will continue to retard the country’s progress.

    It’s not Tinubu’s fault that the states are yoked to Abuja. However, he cannot make any lasting changes, keep his election promises on security, jobs, the economy, or infrastructure or even inspire the states to depart their waywardness without changing how the country is governed.

    He starts to lose me, not when I pay a higher petrol price but when his actions show, irretrievably, that despite his solid credentials as an advocate of restructuring, he is determined to put the cart before the horse.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • When you miss your step, By Funke Egbemode

    When you miss your step, By Funke Egbemode

    She has lost two children. One via miscarriage, the other through still-birth. They just couldn’t afford basic medical-care. So, when she gave birth to her son, she was not just over the moon, she vowed to protect him with her life. She told herself she would breastfeed him for 18months and work as hard as she could to give him a great life.

    However, fate had other plans. Tola’s breasts, as full as they were couldn’t produce enough milk to feed her son. She ate, drank everything that was prescribed to help her lactate generously, but her milk just dripped in drops, frustratingly. She squeezed and pressed. Then, as if the breast too got tired of the squeezing and pressing, they stopped producing even the drips in drops altogether.

    Tola told her husband, Moses, that it was time to start their son on baby formula. The young father could not afford it. The new mother was already carrying most of the responsibilities in the home. Indeed, she had just paid the rent. Her husband, a graduate of Economics had not been able to find a job ‘commensurate’ with his qualification, and he wasn’t ready to settle for less than his second class, upper degree required. He didn’t want to be a school teacher or work anywhere that is not a financial institution.

    Tola had preached and begged, prayed and cried but Moses knew what he wanted. Their infant son like his father also knew what he wanted. So he cried like his mother day and night. The poor boy didn’t understand his mother’s empty breasts or his father’s empty pockets.

    One day, out of desperation, the couple added adult milk in warm water and put it in a bottle for their hungry three-month-old. The boy sucked on the bottle like his life depended on it. He stopped crying, he slept all night. But something worse was looming. Two days later, Tola noticed her son was restless. His tummy was hard, distended. They ended up in the hospital. Of course, the infant had no digestive system to process ‘Peak Milk’, and he almost died.

    Tola almost lost her mind as she helplessly watched her helpless son fighting for his little life. Moses just wrung his hands and prayed for a miracle. Again, the lot fell on Tola to find the money to save their child. An old flame and ‘toaster’ who she had thus far resisted came to their rescue.

    Long story short, the baby was discharged with strict instructions for his diet and meal plan. Moses and Tola quarrelled constantly and Tola put the welfare of her son first. The ‘toaster’ continued to ‘help’ with baby food, then rent, then health care. Toasting intensified and Moses and Tola’s marriage continued to flounder until it crashed, painfully.

    What kind of a man insists that he will not take what is available in the absence of what is desirable? It was his son, his only child’s life that was at stake? Then what kind of woman takes money from another man to take care of her child. Infidelity has no other name. And infidelity is unacceptable. It’s a sin. Indeed, a crime against man and society.

    Assuming, without conceding, that Tola lifted her skirts or parted her wrapper for another man, was she wrong to have done so to save her child?

    She should have taken a loan, borrowed money from one of the loan apps, right? Those are options too, I agree. But have you seen a hen protecting her chicks from the hawk? Do you think the hen considers her own life and limbs when she chooses to go after the hawk? She can’t even fly, yet she thinks she’s big enough to threaten a hawk.

    Mothers all are mother hens. Voice of reasoning they cannot hear when their children’s lives are threatened. Every voice, including the judgmental ones, pales into insignificance when their children come under any threat, even an imagined one.

    When a woman misses her steps in the choice of a marriage partner, a lot of things will go wrong with her life. I’m restraining myself from concluding that everything will go wrong with her life. One of the things that are likely to happen to her is divorce. However, while separation and or divorce aren’t the final bus stop in her journey. She’s likely to do lots of detours before she gets to a point-of-no-return.

    She will consider cheating.

    She may then cheat.

    She will consider love potion.

    And actually deploy it.

    She will lie to and manipulate her husband.

    She will become overly religious or loose her religion altogether, in frustration.

    She will be depressed .

    She will end up a mental case.

    She will become sickly .

    She is likely to die young.

    She may not make heaven, paradise.

    Choosing carefully with your head screwed on tight is a matter of life and death in marriage.

    Knowledge that marriage is not just any relationship is what every girl must pursue diligently.

    Marriage is a lifetime journey. And yes, I repeat, I insist, marriage is a lifetime contract.

    It does not matter if you opt out halfway, midway, along the way or you go the whole hog. Marriage defines a woman one way or the other. It makes or mar that choice you make. Of course, it affects the man too.

    It is only marriage that has the capacity to rename a man or a woman. She’s either successfully and happily married or she’s separated or divorced. A man who’s made two bad choices in marriage is regarded with suspicion.

    “Why are women leaving him”?

    “Maybe his thing is small.”

    “No, he’s stingy”

    “He always beats them, that’s why they leave.”

    “Or did he fall from his mother’s back?”

    I won’t bore you with the judgements that are passed without any kind of hearing on women whose marriages fail. You know women hardly ever win, fair and unfair hearing. The society almost always declare us guilty. Even when a woman is paroled and decided to pick up the pieces, a failed marriage dodges her steps. She’s after one. She’s a divorcee. She can’t keep a home. She’s arrogant. If she becomes successful at whatever she does between one failed marriage and another attempt at a new one, you’d hear things like;

    “The money has gone to her head”

    “That one, she can’t submit to any man”

    “She’s just looking for a man to control”

    Marriage does not leave you alone, whether you succeed or fail at it. Do not take the choice of a life partner lightly. Choose wisely, carefully, because your life and your life-after depend on that choice.

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