SUNDAY 12TH MARCH 2023

As Rainy Season Starts, NiMet Cautions Pilots, Passengers, Others against Thunderstorms Kasim Sumaina in Abuja The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has urged pilots and passengers to be wary of thunderstorms and other dangerous

weather conditions following the onset of rains, stressing that thunderstorms can also cause delays, diversion, and cancellations of flights.

It noted that the effects of thunderstorms are dangerous to

the aviation industry, particularly the aircraft operations, and passengers, adding that the threats extend to the safety of lives and property.

NiMet noted that rains currently prevalent in the Southern parts

of Nigeria and occasionally around the central states, are usually accompanied by severe thunderstorms, which are bound to affect air navigation.

In a statement issued yesterday

by its General Manager in charge of Public Relations, Muntari Yusuf, the agency said: “NiMet predicted rainfall to be earlier than the longterm average in most parts of the country during the 2023 Seasonal

Climate Prediction (SCP). The onset is expected to start from the coastal states of Bayelsa, Rivers, and Akwa Ibom in early March, progressively Continued on page 5

O b a o f B e n i n C o n g r a t u l a t e s P r e s i d e n t - e l e c t , T i n u b u … Pa g e 8 Sunday 12 March, 2023 Vol 28. No 10196

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Labour Party Threatens to Occupy INEC Offices Nationwide over Commission’s Refusal to Allow Inspection of Materials Accuses INEC of reconfiguring BVAS without the representatives of parties Obi’s lawyers vow to take legal action against electoral umpire

Segun James The Labour Party (LP) has accused

the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of frustrating its petition against the outcome of

the 2023 presidential election by not allowing it to inspect election materials as ordered by the Appeal

Court.

LP also raised the alarm that INEC had started reconfiguring the

Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) without the presence of the representatives of political parties.

This is as the legal team of the Continued on page 5

Kalu, Wase, Jaji, Betara, Others Eye Gbajabiamila’s Seat as Race Kicks off Tinubu, Shettima, APC leaders to meet N’Assembly members-elect tomorrow over zoning of principal offices May settle for Christian senate president to balance same faith presidential ticket Deji Elumoye, Adedayo Akinwale and Udora Orizu in Abuja With the issuance of the certificate of returns to the members-elect of the House of Representatives by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the race for the principal offices, particularly the speaker, has begun, ahead of the inauguration of the 10th National Assembly on June 13, THISDAY’s investigation has revealed.

THISDAY also gathered that the meeting between the President-elect, Bola Tinubu; his vice, Kashim Shettima; the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its National Assembly members-elect scheduled for Monday in Abuja, has a two-point agenda – zoning of the principal offices of the National Assembly and the March 18 elections.

Ranking members of the House believed to be interested in the position of the speaker include its current Spokesman, Benjamin Kalu (APC, Abia); Idris Wase (APC, Plateau); Muktar Aliyu Betara (APC, Continued on page 5

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT… L-R: Senator-elect for Anambra Central, Senator Victor Umeh; Labour Party governorship candidate in Abia State, Mr. Alex Otti; and the presidential candidate of the party in the just concluded general election, Mr. Peter Obi, during Obi’s appreciation visit to Abia State… weekend

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SUNDAY MARCH 12, 2023 • T H I S D AY

SUNDAY MARCH 12, 2023 • T H I S D AY

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SUNDAY MARCH 12, 2023 • T H I S D AY

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MARCH 12, 2023 • T H I S DAY, T H E S U N DAY N E W S PA P E R

NEWS

443 Boko Haram Terrorists Surrender as Death Toll in ISWAP Clash Rises to 300

Kingsley Nweze in Abuja

No fewer than 443 more Boko Haram terrorists and family members who escaped the week-long sustained massive attacks by the Islamic State of West Africa (ISWAP) fighters in Borno State have surrendered to the military.

This is as the death toll arising from the clash between Boko Haram fighters and ISWAP has risen to 300 on the side of Boko Haram.

223 Boko Haram elements surrendered to the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) troops in Diffa and Gueskerou, in the Republic of Niger, between March 7 and 10, 2023.

Another 220 members of the Boko Haram terrorists surrendered to the troops of Operation Hadin Kai on March 10. The surrendered fighters revealed that the ongoing rivalry between both factions had forced them to escape to safer areas.

Since February 27, 2023, the members of the Boko Haram sect have been fleeing their enclaves amidst deadly attacks targeted at the group in Gaizuwa, otherwise known as Mantari, Gabchari, Kashmiri, Maimusari in Bama, Yale in Konduga and Magumeri, by their former allies now turned bitter adversaries.

In one of the attacks led by three notorious ISWAP Commanders, comprising Mallam Abubakar

Maina, Qaed Malam Dahiru, and Qaed Mallam Dahiru in Guzamala, over 200 Boko Haram militant jihadists, including their women and children, were reportedly eliminated.

The onslaught against the group continued on March 8, 2023, when more than 100 were killed on the fringes of Baga, Marte, and Dikwa.

This time, the terrorists targeted only the men and spared their family members.

According to Zagazola Makama, a Counter-Insurgency Expert and Security Analyst in Lake Chad, the Government of the Republic of Niger, through its Public Relations Information Directorate, had reported that the week was marked by displacement of several groups of families of terrorists leaving the Sambisa forest for Lake Chad on the Niger side.

Also, the Director of Defence Media Operations, Defence

Headquarters, Maj Gen Musa Danmadami, estimated the number of surrendered Boko Haram members within the last two weeks at 1,332. This figure has, however, increased in the following days.

It is left to be seen how the deadly rivalry between Boko Haram and their erstwhile partners in battle, ISWAP, will shape the dynamics of the more than a decade-long bloody insurgency in the Lake Chad region.

Leader, Senator Ali Ndume; former Governor of Gombe State, Senator Danjuma Goje; Chairman of Senate Services Committee, Senator Sani Mohammed Musa and Chairman of Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Jubrin Barau.

Sources claimed all the interested Senators are already reaching out to their colleagues, especially the new Senators-elect.

One of the contenders for the coveted seat of the Senate President, Senator Barau, has already met formally with 70 senators-elect in Abuja.

The aim of the hosting at Transcorp Hilton during the week was for the Senators-elect to form the needed bond ahead of the inauguration of the federal parliament in June.

THISDAY learnt that Senator Barau organised the event to enable him to interact with his colleagues.

However, a member of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the APC told THISDAY that the party may settle for a Christian Senator-elect as President of the Senate “to douse the tension generated by the same faith presidential ticket of our great party, the APC.” No fewer than 98 out of 109 senators were given certificates of return last Tuesday by the INEC at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

A total of seven political parties won senatorial seats, with APC topping the list with 50 seats.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won 29 seats; Labour Party won six; New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP) two; Social Democratic Party (SDP) also two; the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Young Peoples Party (YPP) won one seat each.

KALU, WASE, JAJI, BETARA, OTHERS EYE GBAJABIAMILA’S SEAT AS RACE KICKS OFF Borno); Aminu Jaji (APC, Zamfara); and Alhassan Ado Doguwa (APC, Kano).

THISDAY, however, learnt that the ruling APC, which secured majority seats in both the Senate and House of Representatives at the February 25 polls, has not decided on the zoning of the presiding officers of the 10th National Assembly.

It was gathered that in line with the parliamentary tradition, rules, and convention, the political party with the most legislators is expected to form the majority caucus and produce the presiding officers.

The party with the dominant members would also constitute the majority leadership. In contrast, the party with the second highest number of lawmakers in the chamber would produce the minority principal officers.

The principal officers, who are the leaders of the majority and minority caucuses, are constituted based on the membership configuration in the lower chamber.

While the majority caucus is expected to produce the majority leader, the deputy majority leader, the chief whip, and the deputy whip, the minority caucus will produce the minority leader, the deputy minority leader, the minority whip, and the deputy minority whip.

Ranking members, who are returning for the second or more time, are automatically qualified to contest the principal office positions either from the majority or the minority caucus.

Out of the 360 seats in the House of Representatives, the All Progressives Congress (APC) won 162 seats; while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won 102.

The Labour Party (LP) and the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) won 34 and 18 seats, respectively, while the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) got four seats.

On their part, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and African Democratic Congress (ADC) won two seats each, while the Young Progressive Party (YPP) clinched one seat.

Following the issuance of certificates of return to the members– elect last Wednesday, the race for the two major presiding offices - Speaker and Deputy Speaker has begun among ranking lawmakers who are members of the APC. With the current Speaker, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, and the Presidentelect, Senator Bola Tinubu coming from Lagos State, the current speaker will likely not retain his position in the 10th National Assembly.

THISDAY learnt from a close

associate of Gbajabiamila that he would prefer to play any other prominent role in Tinubu’s administration to return to the House as an ordinary member.

Gbajabiamila was conspicuously absent at the International Conference Centre (ICC) Abuja venue of the presentation of Certificates of Return, fuelling speculations that he might take a more prominent position in the incoming administration.

Though the APC has not zoned the officers, further investigations by THISDAY revealed that the Southeast and North-west geopolitical zones are strongly being considered for the speaker position.

However, only six of the 43 members-elect from the South-east geopolitical zone are serving in the current Assembly, including the current House spokesman, Hon. Benjamin Kalu (APC, Bende Federal Constituency in Abia), and the Chairman of the House Committee on Aviation, Hon. Nnolim Nnaji (PDP, Nkanu-East/West).

However, those who make a case for the North-west on the speaker’s position argued that the Senate President should go to the South-east.

They maintained that the speaker’s position is enough to compensate the North-west for producing the highest number of votes for the APC in the presidential and National Assembly elections, given that the outgoing President, Muhammadu Buhari, hails from the zone.

However, other members-elect from other zones, such as the North-central and North-east, are said to be interested in the position.

Among the South-east lawmakers, Kalu (APC, Abia) is believed to be seriously mobilising his colleagues to emerge as the speaker, while Hon. Idris Wase (APC, Plateau) is also eyeing the top job from the North-central geopolitical zone.

Similarly, Hon. Muktar Aliyu Betara (APC, Borno) is contesting the position from the North-east geopolitical zone.

From the North-west geopolitical zone, the duo of Hon. Aminu Jaji (APC, Zamfara) and Alhassan Ado Doguwa (APC, Kano) are both eyeing the seat.

Tinubu, Shettima, APC Leaders to Meet N’Assembly Members-elect Tomorrow over Zoning of Principal Offices

Meanwhile, the meeting between Tinubu, Shettima, the leadership of the ruling APC, and the National

Assembly members-elect scheduled for Monday at the Banquet Hall of the State House, Abuja, will discuss the issue of zoning and the March 18 elections.

A ranking APC Senator who was also re-elected during February 25, 2023, National Assembly poll told THISDAY that the meeting was called to preview the March 18 elections and discuss the zoning of the leadership of the 10th National Assembly billed for inauguration in June.

The South-south Senator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the APC leadership believed it was high time the federal parliamentary election was reviewed to plan ahead of the next Saturday’s elections According to him: “Monday’s meeting will not only review last month’s poll that produced majority APC Senators-elect for 10th National Assembly but will also ensure that all hands are on deck to ensure that coming Saturday’s elections are crisis-free with the ruling party consolidating and improving on its stronghold across the country”.

He added that the second item on the agenda of the meeting scheduled to start by 2 pm with APC National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu presiding, is the issue of the leadership of the 10th National Assembly, which is supposed to be handled by the party leadership as it presently has 57 Senate seats out of the 98 Senate seats declared so far.

APC leaders, he further said, would use the forum to brief the elected parliamentarians on their line of thought over where the presiding officers of the two chambers of the 10th National Assembly will come from.

Sources at the weekend also told THISDAY that both the South-east and South-south are favoured to produce the Senate President of the 10th Assembly as the race hots up.

On Friday, APC National Vice Chairman, North-west, Dr. Salihu Lukman, had called on the party’s leadership to zone the positions of the Senate President and the Speaker House of the Representatives to North-west, South-east or Southsouth.

THISDAY’s investigation revealed that the odds favoured the Southeast and South-south to occupy the number three seat in the land.

A source who preferred to remain anonymous told THISDAY that while the former Governor of Abia State, Senator Orji Kalu, is eyeing the covered seat, former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Senator Godswill Akpabio, Senator Osita Isunaso

AS RAINY SEASON STARTS, NIMET CAUTIONS PILOTS, PASSENGERS, OTHERS AGAINST THUNDERSTORMS followed by the inland and central states.

“All of these pose significant threats to the safety of lives and property. The effects of thunderstorms are more hazardous to the aviation industry, particularly aircraft operations, and passengers.

Thunderstorms can also cause delays, diversion, and cancellations of flights, as aircraft are often grounded in the face of severe weather,” it explained.

The statement further noted that the recent thunderstorms recorded in coastal and inland states showed that the agency’s predictions were on-point, reliable, and accurate.

NiMet further noted that for areas, where thunderstorms are expected,

the weather hazard could cause significant disruptions, stressing that thunderstorms could lead to turbulence, lightning strikes, strong winds, heavy rainfall, down draught, microburst, and hailstones.

It said thunderstorms could also cause delays, diversions, and cancellations of flights, as aircraft are often grounded in the face of severe weather.

As a measure to mitigate the effects of thunderstorms on the aviation industry, the agency assured pilots, the aviation industry, and airport users that it had installed weather monitoring systems, thunder detectors, satellite receiving ground stations, and Automatic Weather Systems (AWS) across

airports (and other stations) nationwide.

“Pilots and flight crew members should obtain adequate departure, en route, and destination weather information and briefing from NiMet offices before flight operations for effective planning in their air navigation operations.

“The agency has also developed various products and services to help track the thunderstorms and its attendant hazards. The Pilot Briefing Rooms are always available for services,” it added.

NiMet, therefore, advised all pilots and airline operators to exercise caution during flight operations and adverse weather due to the commencement of the rainy season.

and the Governor of Ebonyi State, Dave Umahi are also interested the position.

The source said: “The South-east is favoured under the circumstances, and I know Orji Kalu is positioning for it, and he’s lobbying Asiwaju very well.

“Umahi wants it too, but I think what will count against him is that he’s a first-timer. But some people say that it doesn’t really matter, that it is not in their rule that a first timer cannot do it. After all, Godswill Akpabio was a first-timer when he became a principal officer.

“I also know Akpabio too is pushing for it, but I don’t know how that will pan out. Akpabio argues that the position is not sacrosanct to the South-east, it is whoever can get the support.”

Other ranking APC Senators being tipped for the 10th Senate Presidency include former Senate

LABOUR PARTY THREATENS TO OCCUPY INEC OFFICES NATIONWIDE OVER COMMISSION’S REFUSAL TO ALLOW INSPECTION OF MATERIALS presidential candidate of the LP, Mr. Peter Obi has vowed to take legal action against the commission over its “deliberate” refusal to allow its client to inspect presidential election materials in line with the orders of the Court of Appeal.

At a press conference in Lagos yesterday, the party’s spokesman, Dr. Yunusa Tanko, accused INEC of disobeying the order of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, which directed it to grant the party and its presidential candidate, Obi, access to true certified copies of materials used in the conduct of the presidential poll.

Tanko said the order of the presidential election petition tribunal was duly served on INEC on March 3, even though the commission was also present and represented at the tribunal when the order was made.

He added that the party also sent a letter to the commission on March 6, reminding the electoral umpire that it was yet to obey the order.

Tanko threatened that LP might ask its supporters to stage protests nationwide at the offices of the commission over its refusal to obey the court order.

“It should be noted that in a democracy like ours, the rule of law must triumph not only in our legal system but also in our body polity. Parties to litigation, like in the instant case, must accept and obey every order of the court in good faith, and no party should be seen to employ self-help to disparage or disrespect an order of the court, which, if not checked and curtailed, could undermine our democracy, the rule of law and constitutionalism.

“The action of INEC under reference also constitutes, for all intent and purposes, an act of judicial insubordination and willful refusal to comply with the order of the court,” he said.

He noted that while INEC has refused the party access to the election materials, the commission had also started reconfiguring the BVAS machines without the parties’ representatives in the case in attendance to confirm the data being backed up.

“We, therefore, call on the general public to note the level of lawlessness and brazen disobedience to a lawful order of a court by an important statutory agency such as INEC, which is a well-calculated attempt to undermine and frustrate the presentation of the petition by

the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Obi before the tribunal in good time.

“We, therefore, want to state that we will not fail to call our supporters to march to INEC offices nationwide in a non-violent protest, which is allowed by law. This is to curtail the flagrant disobedience to court orders by INEC,” he added.

Tanko, who maintained that Obi won the presidential election from the results submitted by its party agents from the polling units, urged Nigerians to vote for the candidates of the party in the rescheduled March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.

Meanwhile, Obi’s legal team has vowed to take legal action against the INEC for the commission’s “deliberate” refusal to allow its client to inspect the presidential election materials in line with the orders of the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal had issued an order allowing Obi, the LP, and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to inspect materials used for the February 25 presidential election, which INEC declared was won by Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

INEC, on March 6, filed a motion on notice, praying the court to vary the orders to enable the commission to reconfigure accreditation machines used for the election to enable their use for the forthcoming governorship and state assembly elections.

The appellate court, at its discretion, allowed INEC to reconfigure the BVAS but insisted that its earlier order granting Obi access to election materials still exists.

INEC, in reaction to the ruling, stated, “We wish to reiterate that the commission is not against litigants inspecting election materials.

Consequently, it will continue to grant all litigants access to the materials they require to pursue their cases in court.”

But a member of Obi’s legal team, Alex Ejesieme (SAN), told THE WHISTLER that the electoral umpire had not granted them access to election materials.

“Well, we have written to them (INEC); we have done everything possible, and they have refused to allow us to inspect. So, we will review our positions this weekend, and by Monday, we will know the next thing to do,” the lawyer said.

He accused INEC of deliberately trying to delay Obi’s legal team from instituting a petition against the presidential election as prescribed by the Electoral Act, adding that the electoral umpire knows that accessing the election materials will expose alleged ballot rigging in the election.

“Yes. You know, what they are doing is deliberate. Ordinarily, the proper thing for us to do is to commence committal proceedings against the INEC chairman and the officers involved but remember, by the Electoral Act 2022, we are supposed to file a petition.

“So, what they are trying to do is to divert attention,” Ejesieme said, adding, “we will take steps to mount pressure on them to allow us to have copies of the electoral materials in line with the order of the court of Appeal.”

While the collation of presidential results was ongoing on February 26, the LP, PDP, and the Action Democratic Congress (ADC) agents had boycotted the exercise and called for the cancellation of the election.

International observers from the European Union also accused INEC of a “lack of transparency” due to its failure to immediately transmit results electronically from polling units to its public result viewing portal.

Regarding access to election documents, Section 74 of the Electoral Act 2022, reads as follows, “74 (1) The Resident Electoral Commissioner in a state where an election is conducted shall, within 14 days after an application is made to him by any of the parties to an election petition, cause a true certified copy (CTC) of such document to be issued to the said party. “(2) Any Resident Electoral Commissioner who willfully fails to comply with the provisions in subsection (1) commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a maximum fine of N2,000,000 or imprisonment for a term of 12 months or both.”

However, with the revelation

by Tanko that the order of the presidential election petition tribunal was served on INEC on March 3, while the party also sent a letter to the commission on March 6, the 14 days deadline allowed by the law for INEC to produce the CTC of the election documents has not expired.

T H I S DAY, T H E S U N DAY N E W S PA P E R • MARCH 12, 2023

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NEWS

WE FEEL YOUR PAINS...

L-R: Lagos State First Lady, Mrs. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu; Wife of the President-elect, Senator Oluremi Tinubu; and Wife of the Deputy Governor, Mrs. Oluremi Hamzat, during a visit to various hospitals treating victims of the Lagos bus-train crash…yesterday

Nigeria's Annual Trade Volume Rises to Near Pre-COVID Level

Festus Akanbi

The 169 per cent year-on-year increase in trade surplus recorded by the federal government for 2022 has almost put Nigeria’s annual trade volume at the positive threshold of the pre-COVID years, data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has indicated.

According to the NBS data, Nigeria recorded a N1.2 trillion goods trade surplus in 2022, as export bills (N26.8 trillion) outweighed import earnings (N25.6 trillion) for the first time since the preceding year (N2.23 trillion in 2019).

Nonetheless, the 2022 surplus represents a 162 per cent improvement over the N1.94 trillion goods trade deficit in 2021.

The report also showed that Nigeria’s total merchandise trade in 2022 increased to N52.4 trillion from N39.75 trillion in 2021, while total export value grew by 42 per cent to N26.8 trillion from N18.91 trillion in 2021.

The country’s trade balance was N5.37 trillion in 2018 but fell to N2.23 trillion in 2019.

The following year, global trade volume fell as the economy grappled with limiting the movement of people.

Nigeria’s exports were reduced by 35 per cent, falling from N19.19 trillion to N12.52 trillion.

Imports also fell significantly, but not enough to compensate for the

large gap in export figures caused by falling crude prices.

Nigeria’s previously positive trade balance turned negative at the end of the year, leaving a deficit of N178.26 billion, which ballooned to nearly N2 trillion by 2021.

However, in a report contained in the Cowry Weekly Financial Markets Review & Outlook (CWR), which was released on Friday, analysts noted that the increase in total exports was greater than the increase in total import value, which stood at N25.59 trillion (23 per cent higher than N20.84 trillion in 2021).

According to the report, total trade fell by 4.52 per cent in the fourth quarter to N11.72 trillion, compared to N12.27 trillion in the third quarter of 2022, as total exports exceeded total imports.

“An analysis of the data filed shows that Nigeria exported mainly ‘mineral products’ which amounted to N5.7trillion, or 89.11 per cent of total export value; this was followed by “vehicles, aircraft, and parts thereof; vessels, etc.’, which were valued at N199.29 billion, or 3.13 per cent of the value of total exports, and “products of the chemical and allied industries,'' worth N169.27 billion, or 2.66 per cent of the value of total exports.

Meanwhile, export value during the quarter was dominated by crude oil exports (N4.9 trillion), which accounted for 77 per cent of total exports.

Gunmen Raid Abuja Estate, Abduct Pastor, Wife, 13 Other Residents Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja Kidnappers have abducted a pastor and his wife and two members of his family and 10 other persons during a raid on Grow Home Estate in the Chikakore community of Kubwa, in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The victims were abducted during the one-hour raid on the estate on Friday night.

Residents said the hoodlums responsible for the attack were armed and only managed to escape with their victims through the forest after a gun duel with local vigilance

members.

Some sources in the community disclosed that some of the victims managed to escape from captivity following the gun exchange between the criminals and the local guards.

However, the pastor and his family members were said to be unaccounted for.

Policemen from the Byzahin division and the Kubwa Area Command later visited the scene for preliminary findings and interrogated some of the victims.

The FCT police command was yet to release any statement on the attack as at the time of filing this report.

“Non-crude oil exports stood at N1.5 trillion, or 22.76 per cent of total exports, of which non-oil products contributed N732.24 billion, representing 11.51 per cent of total exports.

The report noted that: “For the import values, which declined 15.5 per cent in Q4 to N5.4 trillion, there were mineral fuels (N1.9 trillion), imported machinery and transport equipment (N1.3 trillion), and chemicals and related products” (N694.68 billion).”

“The value of imported manufactured goods in the quarter under review stood at N2.5 trillion, a decrease of 14.11% compared to the value recorded in Q3 2022 (N2.9

trillion). The report said that this value also declined by -18.43 per cent compared to the value recorded in Q4 of 2021 (N3 trillion).”

According to the report, the positive trade balance was recorded during the period despite the weaker Naira (9.09 per cent yearon-year to N461.50 in 2022), weaker demand for export commodities, the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which translated to weaker trade flows among nations, and the continued high import costs as companies were hard hit.

It noted that demand for consumer, intermediate, and investment goods fell sharply across the board due to these

outcomes.

The report explained that the value of other oil product imports in the fourth quarter of 2022 was N1.9 trillion, a decrease of 18.18 per cent from the value recorded in the third quarter of 2022 (N2.3 trillion), but an increase of 10.40 per cent from the value recorded in the same quarter of 2021. (N1.7 trillion).

In the review, Nigeria’s major trading partners were China and Belgium, according to the report.

At the same time, exports went to Spain and the Netherlands, with superior-quality cocoa beans and sesame seeds being the two main agricultural products traded.

“We note that Nigeria’s trade balance can be further improved through policies aimed at export promotion, especially for non-oil exports. This can be achieved if FG creates an enabling business environment to improve trade and exports, just as seen in the recent rise in the trade balance,” the report said.

It also stated that the pressure on the Naira as a result of depreciation, rising inflationary levels, and headwinds faced by global trade in 2022 as a result of slowing economies and supply chain congestion globally have resulted in the shrinkage recorded in Nigeria’s total trade balance.

PANDEF Raises Doubt over INEC’s Sincerity to Conduct March 18 Elections Sunday Aborisade and Emameh Gabriel in Abuja The Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has questioned the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) sincerity in conducting a free and transparent election by postponing the governorship and State House of Assembly elections three days after obtaining court approval to reconfigure the Commission’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).

The body has also described how the electoral umpire postponed the governorship and state House of Assembly elections earlier today, March 11, as Machiavellian.

In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Ken Robinson, PANDEF noted that it was less than 72 hours to the scheduled Governorship and State Assembly elections before the Court of Appeal, Abuja, granted INEC the relief they sought because if not given they won’t be able to hold the polls. They gave the impression the elections would hold as was scheduled”, but after the judgment, the commission suddenly shifted the elections, creating “room for more misgiving.”

PANDEF, in the statement, recounted how various reputable organisations, both local and

international, had scored the performance of the INEC on the February 25, 2023, presidential and National Assembly election as “far below expectations.”

It cited: “Reports of BVAS defects, INEC’s failure to promptly upload results to its Portal from the various polling units across the country, with excuses of technical glitches, undermined the outcome of the electoral process.

PANDEF, however, insisted that the developments were “totally unacceptable, particularly, given the repeated assurances of President Buhari and INEC of free, fair and credible elections, though the same election has resulted in a national assembly that somewhat reflects the new political outlook of the country.”

The group lamented that “with the huge amount of taxpayers’ money that was disposed to the process, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, should be personally held responsible for the observed lapses and inconsistencies.

Therefore, it demanded that the commission reassure Nigerians of its readiness to ensure that the lapses and inconsistencies observed during the February 25 election will not reoccur in the governorship and state assembly elections, now

shifted to Saturday, March 18, 2023.

“PANDEF notes that it was less than 72 hours to the scheduled governorship and state assembly elections before the Court of Appeal, Abuja, granted INEC the relief they sought because if not given, they would not be able to hold the elections.

“They gave the impression the elections would hold as was scheduled, but after the judgment, they suddenly shifted the elections, creating room for more misgiving.

“PANDEF recalls that various reputable organizations, both local and international, had scored the performance of the INEC) on February 25, 2023, the Presidential and National Assembly election was ‘far below expectations.’

“PANDEF cites that reports of BVAS defects, INEC’s failure to promptly upload results to its Portal from the various polling units across the country, with excuses of technical glitches, undermined the outcome of the electoral process.

“PANDEF insists that these occurrences are unacceptable, particularly given the repeated assurances of President Muhammadu Buhari and INEC of free, fair, and credible elections.

“Though the same election has resulted in a National Assembly that somewhat reflects the new

political outlook of the country.

“Accordingly, with the huge amount of taxpayers’ money that was disposed to the process, the Chairman of INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, should be personally held responsible for the observed lapses and inconsistencies.

‘PANDEF further notes that Forum’s preferred candidate in the presidential election, His Excellency Peter Obi, of the Labour Party (LP), has also expressed dissatisfaction with the results declared by the INEC and is already in court.

“We shall, therefore, withhold further comments on the subject matter until the courts make a final decision.

“Meanwhile, PANDEF urges all dissatisfied with the outcome of the February 25 election to seek judicial redress and not take laws into their hands not to exacerbate tension in the country.

“PANDEF hopes that the courts would dispense justice without fear or favour. Nigeria is greater than any individual or group.

“Finally, it is pertinent to demand that the INEC reassure Nigerians of its readiness to ensure that the lapses and inconsistencies observed during the February 25 election will not reoccur in the Governorship and State Assembly elections, now shifted to Saturday, March 18, 2023.”

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SAVOURING SWEET VICTORY… L-R: House of Representatives' members-elect: Adegbesan Joseph (Ijebu-North/East/Ogun Waterside); Gboyega Nasir Isiaka (Yewa North/Imeko-Afon); Olumide Osoba (Obafemi/Owode/ Odeda/Abeokuta North); Isiaka Ibrahim (Ifo/Ewekoro); Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State; Adewunmi Onanuga (Remo); Isiaq Akinlade (Yewa South/Ipokia); Tunji Akinosi (Ado-Odo/Ota); Afolabi Afuwape (Abeokuta South) and Femi Ogunbanwo (Ijebu Central), displaying their certificates of return during an All Progressives Congress parley at the governor’s country home, IperuRemo, Ikenne Local Government Area of Ogun State…weekend

Stock Food Items, Imo will Be on Lockdown, NLC Warns Residents Ajaero using labour union to actualise political agenda, state govt alleges Uzodimma sacks labour commissioner

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja and Amby Uneze in Owerri The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has urged the Imo State residents to stock their basic food for survival as the union prepares for an indefinite strike.

The labour union had on Tuesday accused officials of the of the Governor Hope Uzodimma’s government of disrupting its state congress and unleashing mayhem on workers exercising their rights to elect their leaders.

The NLC president, Ajaero, in a statement, had declared the union’s indefinite industrial action in the state.

Ajaero said the union had instructed its State Councils across Nigeria to prepare for the State Delegates’ Conference for the election of new leadership in all the council areas of the

country.

He alleged that the Imo State Government “sought to influence the outcome of the elections in the state,” by offering gratifications to the delegates to vote for their “chosen candidates.”

“This meddlesomeness was resisted by the delegates who refused the unholy offerings and baits to vote for their chosen candidates,” he said.

The president claimed that the state government was enraged by the delegates’ rejection of their offerings and resorted to violence ostensibly to disrupt the exercise.

“When it was obvious to the government and their goons that their stooges were going to overwhelmingly lose in the elections, thugs who were armed to the teeth descended on the delegates inflicting various degrees of injuries on them, chasing them

Oba of Benin Congratulates President-elect, Tinubu Adibe Emenyonu in Benin-City The Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare II, has joined the list of eminent Nigerians to congratulate Nigeria’s President-elect, Senator Bola Tinubu, for emerging as the winner of the just conducted presidential election.

The monarch said Tinubu’s victory at the poll “is a victory for all Nigerians,” citing his antecedents as former Governor of Lagos State and one of the country’s foremost nationalists.

He conveyed his accolades in a letter of congratulation he addressed to the President-elect on behalf of himself and Benin Kingdom at large on March 3.

Oba Ewuare II described Tinubu as a unifier and detribalised Nigerian, who would move Nigeria to greater heights.

The letter read in part: “May I respectfully write on behalf of myself, the Royal Court Benin, members of the Royal Family, and Benin Traditional Council to happily congratulate you on

a well-deserved election as the President-elect of this our great country, Nigeria.

“Your victory is victory for all Nigerians with hopes and aspirations for a better Nigeria.

Given your antecedents inter alia as one of the foremost nationalists and successes recorded as the Governor of Lagos State, I am confident that you will excel in the discharge of your onerous mandate that has now been democratically placed on your shoulders by the people of Nigeria.

“Going by your acceptance speech, you have already indicated that you are ready to be a unifier.

We join other well-wishers and Nigerians to thank God for a peaceful hitch-free election and wish you a successful tenure.

“As you prepare to take up you onerous responsibilities as the President-elect of this great country, we wish you well and once more a hearty congratulations to your Excellency,” Oba Ewuare II wrote on behalf of Benin Kingdom," the monarch explained.

away and carting away materials meant for the conduct of the elections that was supposed to be at the heart of the conference.”

But in a statement made available to journalists at the weekend, Ajaero said the union was preparing to shutdown the state with indefinite strike.

But in a swift reaction, the Imo State Government alleged that it had classified information indicating that Ajaero was in a secret agreement with some collaborators to use his office to actualise the governorship ambition of his kinsman.

Ajaero said the state government had deliberately terrorised the residents through some negative actions of operatives endowed with the state’s powers.

He also accused state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Declan Emelumba, of peddling falsehood.

The NLC boss alleged that the Imo State government had turned the once-prided “Eastern Heartland” into a toxic and highly unpleasant environment.

Ajaero said: “Hobbesian state of nature, a state that once prided itself as the Eastern Heartland, has become prevalent, exposing not just workers in the state but

institutions and individuals to the most horrendous of scare, fear, and violence in their daily activities.

“In the pursuit of our legitimate strike action to restore sanity to the state’s industrial relations sphere, we wish to advise that those traveling to Imo State through the airport to look for other alternatives, those that make use of petroleum products should make efforts to seek alternatives and those that use electricity to seek other options outside the national grid.

“We are resolved to press home our demands, and until these infractions are remedied, we will continue escalating the industrial action till the government is compelled to show reason and restore meaningful and effective dialogue in the state,” Ajaero explained.

He gave some of the reasons for the industrial action, including 20 months arrears of salaries owed to some workers stigmatiSed as ghost workers; the declaration of about 11,000 workers in the state as ghost workers; intimidation and harassment of trade union leaders; and continued use of thugs and instruments of violence against workers in the state among others.

However, the state government

said it had classified information indicating that the Ajaero was in a secret political agreement with some collaborators to use his office to actualise the governorship ambition of his kinsman.

According to the state government, the agreement was reached three weeks ago at Emekuku in Owerri North Local Government Area, where Ajaero agreed to work to destabilise the administration of Governor Hope Uzodimma.

According to the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Emelumba, the said relative, a serial governorship aspiration spanning PDP and APGA, had already picked the form of one of the political parties for his ambition.

Emelumba said at the meeting that another relative of Ajaero and the governorship aspirant was selected as the arrowhead of the battle as the new NLC chairman in the state.

The commissioner noted that the plan was for Ajaero and his relatives to unleash strikes on the state administration to make it unpopular.

“From the information available to us, the strike declared by Ajaero is derived from the Emekuku

agreement and, therefore, politically motivated. Also, to ensure that the plot succeeds at all costs, Ajaero has been moving from one labour leader to the other lobbying for support,” Emelumba alleged.

He said that it was because of the haste to activate the implementation of the agreement that Ajaero threw all caution to the wind by unilaterally imposing a Caretaker NLC Chairman on the state and declaring strike without any notice to the state government as demanded by Labour laws.

Meanwhile, Governor Uzodimma yesterday sacked the state Commissioner for Labour and Productivity, Ford Ozumba.

The Commissioner for Information, Declan Emelumba, in a statement yesterday, said the sacking was with immediate effect.

Uzodimma was said to have directed Ozumba to hand over all necessary documents to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Labour and Productivity immediately.

While there was no reason given for the sack, it may not be unconnected with the rift between the NLC and the governor.

Perish Thought of Upturning Tinubu’s Victory, NADECO Tells Atiku, Obi

Segun James

The National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) Renewal Group has advised opposition parties agitating against the declaration of Senator Bola Tinubu as President-elect to perish the thought of upturning his victory.

In a statement issued yesterday in Ado-Ekiti, the group described Tinubu’s emergence as presidentelect as the best that had ever happened to Nigeria in recent times.

Its National Leader, Prof. Atilade Adeeyo, described the action of the Labour Party (LP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to upturn Tinubu’s victory through

the tribunal as an exercise in futility.

He said efforts by the two runners-up at the presidential election of February 25, Mr. Peter Obi of the LP and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, challenging Tinubu’s victory, would not yield any positive result.

He advised the duo to accept defeat honourably so the country could advance.

Adeeyo described Tinubu as a strategic and patriotic leader whose strong political structure spread across the country’s six geo-political zones.

He said Tinubu won the elections partly because “he is a beautiful bride that all Nigerians love.

“President-elect Senator Tinubu has an impressive track record as a patriotic leader.

“He displayed this uncommon leadership trait when he served as the governor of Lagos State.

“He deployed competence and enduring capacities of a pan-Nigeria cabinet in his government to achieve giant strides in Lagos State, and we all are witnesses to the awesome development that state has got,’’ he said.

Adeeyo said that most patriotic Nigerians love Tinubu because he is a builder of men, not one who pulls others down.

“This is why Nigerians will experience the best of governance

under his watch as president.

“We can also assure our teeming youths to be rest assured that Tinubu will ensure that their yearnings for a greater future are taken care of when he mounts the saddle of power.

“We are standing up for our nation, and Nigeria will work again. The families of those that died in the post-annulment of the 1993 presidential election will wish the annulment never happened.

“I speak for thousands of members in the NADECO Renewal Group and urge Nigerians to allow peace to reign so that we can enjoy the renewed hope promised by the president-elect,’’ Adeeyo stressed.

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BUILDING EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION… L-R: Director, Trade Promotion, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dr. Sunnie Omezia-Michael; Executive Director, Project, Fenchurch Group, Lolu Akhigbe; President, LCCI, Chief Michael Olawale-Cole; Group Chief Executive Officer, Fenchurch Group, Mr. Olufemi Bakare; and Director General, LCCI, Dr. Chinyere Almona, during a courtesy visit by the chamber's leadership to Fenchurch Group in Lagos...weekend

Obi Urges Anambra, Edo Residents to Vote for LP Candidates, Says they Won’t Remove Soludo You’re deceiving voters, Anambra gov replies David-Chyddy Eleke in Awka and Adibe Emeyonu in Benin-City The Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, has charged voters in Anambra to vote for the candidates of the party in the forthcoming House of Assembly elections, saying that they will not impeach the state governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, as is being speculated.

Obi also called on the LP supporters in Edo State not to be discouraged by the outcome of the presidential election urging them to vote for party’s candidates during the state House of Assembly election on March 18.

Obi made the call on Friday night, during an interview with journalists, after a closed-door meeting with the House of Assembly candidates in Awka, the Anambra State capital.

But in a swift response, Soludo has described the call by Obi for

people of the state to vote massively for LP candidates as deceptive, adding that it was also meant to lay landmines for him.

The Labour Party’s presidential candidate was fielding questions on the claim made by Soludo in a viral video that he would not work with lawmakers from other political parties and that they would only receive salaries.

The former governor said his interest was for a better society and development, not for the governor’s removal. He charged the candidates to ensure they worked with Governor Soludo when they attained victory.

“We are not urging anyone to impeach any other person. We met with our assembly candidates, calling on Nigerians to vote for the Labour Party on Saturday.

“We are not asking anyone to go and impeach anyone. People should not be afraid of impeachment. We

only seek to get things right in Nigeria. If schools are functional, hospitals working, and other facilities, we have no problem because that is our priority,” Obi explained.

However, the governor, through his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Christian Aburime, has described Obi’s call as deceptive.

Aburime said: “That call was meant to deceive Anambra people.

Obi cannot be talking about development in Anambra but also about asking the Anambra people to elect lawmakers from the opposition party to work with Soludo.

“He (Obi) worked with a legislature dominated by opposition lawmakers from the PDP when he first came in as governor, and he knows that it was not easy for him. He even suffered impeachment because of that, and we hope it is not the same thing he wants to set

Soludo up for.

“Anambra people should go all out next Saturday and vote for APGA if they want the developmental strides of Mr. Governor to continue.

“Anambra people supported Obi during the presidential election, and besides, Soludo refused to interfere as the people trooped out to vote for Labour Party, even before Soludo made the environment conducive for people to come out and vote.

“We have voted for the Labour Party in the presidential election, but for the House of Assembly election, we are voting for APGA, and we want Anambra people to know so,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Obi has called on the LP supporters in Edo State to vote for party’s candidates during the state House of Assembly election on March 18.

He urged them to sustain the tempo by voting all the candidates

of the party in the Saturday, March 18, state House of Assembly and governorship elections across the state.

Obi, who made this call when he paid a ‘Thank you’ visit to the state, moved with his convoy from the New Benin Market through Mission Road to Sapele Road before terminating at Adesuwa Road, where he addressed a large crowd of supporters.

He urged the supporters to complete what they had started on February 25 by voting en masse for Labour Party candidates in the March 18 elections, adding that a movement that cannot be stopped had commenced.

He said,” I must urge the Labour Party supporters not to be discouraged by the outcome of the presidential election.

“Nigeria must not be allowed to remain the way it is. There must be a paradigm shift from the present state to a better and prosperous Nigeria.

“We have begun the journey of

a new Nigeria. The movement is real, and nobody can stop it. We will not allow Nigeria to remain the way it is. We will continue to vote for the Labour Party,” Obi said.

He said a retreat would be organised for all the victorious candidates of the Labour Party to teach them what to do in the quest to change the political narratives of the country.

The national chairman of the party, Julius Abure, said the candidates for the House of Assembly election in Edo State had not stepped down for anyone and that no Labour Party candidate was being sponsored by any other party.

He appealed to the residents of the state to come out en masse to vote for candidates of the party to secure victory.

Earlier, the state chairman of the party, Kelly Agbaloi, thanked the presidential candidate, and the national chairman for visiting the state adding that their presence had further given a boost to all the ‘Obidient’ supporters in the state.

Ekiti Gov Threatens to Order Arrest Congratulates Nigerian of Traders Rejecting Old Naira Notes Buhari Professor for Winning $300,000 Bayelsa govt calls for calm over cash crunch

Olusegun Samuel in Yenagoa Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Biodun Oyebanji, has threatened to arrest and prosecute traders and service providers who reject the old denominations of N500 and N1,000 notes.

This is as the Bayelsa State Government yesterday called for calm, following the pains of residents of the state due to the implementation of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) naira redesign policy and the Supreme Court ruling on the old N200, N500 and N1000 currency notes.

In a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr. Yinka Oyebode, and made available to journalists yesterday in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, Oyebanji appealed to traders and business owners in the state to stop creating hardship for the residents.

The governor explained that the old N500 and N1,000 denominations remained legal tender by the ruling of the Supreme Court, which extended its validity date till December 31.

Oyebanji said that his office had been inundated with the outcry of the people due to the hardship being faced as a result of the low circulation of the newly redesigned Naira notes.

He said the Supreme Court had, by its March 3 ruling, extended the validity date for the old naira notes in a case instituted by some states, including Ekiti.

Oyebanji said that the state’s refusal of many business owners to accept the old naira notes for transactions was unlawful.

“This is an appeal to all residents of Ekiti to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court, which has provided a reprieve for the people by extending the validity date of the old naira notes till December 31.

“As honourable people, what is expected of us is to abide by the ruling of the apex court and continue to accept the old naira notes as means of transactions and not to inflict further hardship on one another by rejecting it.

“Government will not hesitate to arrest and prosecute business owners found rejecting the old

naira notes,” the statement quoted Oyebanji.

He, however, assured that his administration would continue to explore avenues to make life more meaningful for the people as it continues to build a more prosperous state.

Therefore, the governor appealed to the market women and men, artisans, transporters, filling stations, supermarket owners, school proprietors, and service providers to remain law abiding and accept the old naira notes.

He also urged the commercial banks and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to make the old and new currencies available in their branches and at their Automated Teller Machines (ATM) to ease the stress residents go through to get money for their daily and commercial needs.

Meanwhile, following the cash crunch being experienced in Bayelsa State, the state government has called for calm due to the cash crunch.

A statement signed by the state Commissioner for Information,

Orientation and Strategy, Hon. Ayibaina Duba, urged residents to be calm and not engage in acts that could jeopardise the peace of the state.

"The government notes that on March 3, the Supreme Court ruled that the old notes, which had been phased out by the CBN, remain legal tender till December 31 this year.

"While the state government is not against the naira redesign policy of the CBN or the federal government, it is however not comfortable with the method of its implementation that has resulted in further hardship on people of the state and, indeed, the country.

"The government, therefore, urges business operators in the state, particularly banks, traders and keke (tricycle) to take into consideration the Supreme Court ruling in order to reduce the pains of people of the state.

"The government also calls on the CBN to take immediate steps to ease the burden of doing business in the state by making implementation of the policy less cumbersome", the statement added.

History Biggest Prize President Muhammadu Buhari has saluted a Professor of History and African Diaspora Studies, Florida International University, Saheed Aderinto, for winning the prestigious Dan David Prize — the largest financial reward for excellence in the historical discipline in the world.

The President, in a statement issued yesterday by his spokesman, Mr. Femi Adesina, commended the selection committee of the international award, created 21 years ago, for recognising the vital and scholarly contributions of the Nigerian to the study of history, which sheds light on the human past.

President Buhari noted with delight that in acknowledging the works of the first and only Nigerian to win the prestigious prize of $300,000, the selection committee lauded the University of Ibadan-trained historian for “situating African history at the cutting edge of diverse literatures in the histories of sexuality, nonhumans, and violence, noting

that it is exceptional to see a single person leading scholarship in all of these fields.”

The president expressed the hope that honouring the founding President of the Lagos Studies Association would continue to spur the teaching and learning of history among students and scholars in the country and beyond.

President Buhari said as a firm supporter of the teaching of history as a stand-alone subject in all basic and secondary schools across the country, he valued the support of individuals and leaders in the discipline like Aderinto and other organisations in improving the quality of learning in the education sector.

The president hailed Aderinto for being a worthy ambassador of the country, adding that his commitment to a discipline that reminded Nigerians of an Igbo proverb that says: “A man who cannot tell where the rain began to beat him cannot know where he dried his body.”

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News Editor: Gboyega Akinsanmi E-mail: gboyega.akinsanmi@thisdaylive.com,08152359253

MOBILISATION FOR SANWO-OLU… L-R: Consultant, Association of Waste Managers of Nigeria, Mr. Olalekan Owojori; Executive Director, Finance, Lagos State Waste Management Authority, Mr Kunle Adebiyi; President, AWAMN, Mr. David Oriyomi; Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, LAWMA, Mr. Ibrahim Odumboni; and Chief Technical Officer, LAWMA, Dr. Olorunwa Tijani, during an endorsement of the re-election bid of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, at a door-to-door campaign in Ikeja, Alimosho and other towns, organised by AWAMN and LAWMA in Lagos… recently

Nigerian Communication Experts Recommend More Research on Nigerian Elections Renowned Nigerian communication experts have given their verdict on the recent presidential election campaigns and the results of the voting, as announced recently by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC).

Their verdict, which aligns with those of many segments of the international media community, is that many things went wrong with the planning for voting, the conduct of the elections, the communication of the results, and the aftermath.

They acknowledge, nevertheless, that there was much that went well with the elections, and recommend more research to understand what happened and consequently the strengthening of democracy through free and fair elections.

The Nigerian communication experts who represent multiple communication associations that include the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE) and the Association of Communication Scholars and Practitioners of Nigeria (ACSPN) reported that among the things that were adjudged to have gone wrong in the lead up to the election were the divisive, unethical, and unprofessional communication campaign strategies, tactics, and messages that created unnecessary tension in the polity.

They also found that there was overemphasis on religion and ethnicity and the exploitation of personal and group identify in appealing to supporters.

Their other criticisms of the campaigns include the unnecessary denigration of individual presidential candidates, their character, and personality, and overpromising on the preparedness of the electoral institutions, especially INEC, which had assured the government and people of its absolute readiness for the successful conduct of free and fair elections.

The negative influence of money in buying votes and bribing electoral officers, the unexpected decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to introduce new Naira notes within a very short time, and the use of politicians instead of trained professional communicators as spokespersons for some of the political parties were adjudged to be some of the avoidable flaws.

Relating to the conduct of voting, the transmission, and the eventual announcement of the final results, the communication experts observed that INEC failed to live up to the voters’ expectations because of the delays in the delivery of voting materials in

Ex-LASAA MD, Sanusi, Canvasses Support for Sanwo-Olu Segun James The immediate past Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency (LASAA), Mr. Mobolaji Sanusi, has called on the people of Lagos to support the reelection bid of the state governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and his running mate, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat comes Saturday, March 18.

Sanusi, a corporate legal consultant, hinged his call on Sanwo-Olu’s sterling performance, which he noted cut across all areas of governance in the past four years.

His call for Sanwo-Olu’s support was contained in a statement he issued yesterday, lauding the state governor and his deputy for forging a united

front in the running of the state’s affairs.

“As Lagosians, one of the important things for us to do, going into the election, is to renew the mandate of Mr. Governor by confidently casting our votes for him to ensure continuity of his developmental strides.

“Sanwo-Olu and his running mate have in the last four years taken development in the state to a greater height thereby sustaining Lagos’ top spot in the comity of states across the federation,” Sanusi said.

Sanusi went on to dismiss insinuations that the candidates of the Labour Party and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Gbadebo Chinedu Rhodes-Vivour and Jide Adediran respectively pose any threat to Sanwo-Olu’s reelection.

some centres, the failure of the much-publicized new technologies of BVAS and iRev, which did not work optimally in many areas due to man-made errors that could have been avoided.

Professor Lai Oso, Ex-President of the ACSPN in his presentation identified the persisting influence of the old traditional values of ethnicity, religion, and regionalism, which this time were moderated by the new forces of social media and youth enthusiasm, especially following the #ENDSARS uprising in Lagos. It was sad that although traditional communication practitioners were active in the election campaigns, they allowed themselves to be controlled by the politicians, who had no regard for professional standards. In his words, “while the print media were greatly influenced by ownership, regionalism, and ethnicity, our television anchors saw themselves as celebrities and threw journalism ethics to the winds.”

Professor Oso adds further that

“while the results as announced

by INEC are not completely unexpected, we have tended to over-emphasize the negative aspects of our politics, and unwittingly engaged in unnecessary de-marketing of our great country.

Many things are right with Nigeria, and these deserve more attention in our media.”

Among other communication experts at the assessment workshop were Mrs. Bunmi Oke, ex-President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), Mr. Chido Nwakanma, President of the International Association for Business Communication (IABC), Dr. Lekan Fadolapo, the Director General of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), and Comrade Christopher Isiguzo, the President of the Nigerian Union of Journalists and the African Union of Journalists.

The participants recommended increased interest for funding election communication research that

Prof. Lai Oso will yield accumulated knowledge about Nigerian politics and thereby contribute to the strengthening of democracy and democratic purposes.

This assessment workshop, which was organised by the Consortium of Nigerian Communication Experts (CoNCE) was the fifth in the series of

communication engagements, designed to examine the various uses of communication in the 2023 election cycle. The event attracted 145 registrants from diverse communication sectors that include higher education, journalism, advertising and public relations, and regulatory agencies.

Ikpeazu: Obi Has No Similarities with Alex Otti Abia State Governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, yesterday said that the candidate of the Labour Party in the state, Dr. Alex Otti, has no similarities in character with the presidential candidate of the party, Mr. Peter Obi. Ikpeazu, who spoke with journalists in Aba, said while Obi was noted for his modest, frugal and simple lifestyle, the LP candidate in the state was the opposite.

He said that Abia voters were aware that there was

no connection between Obi and Otti’s schools of thought.

He also said that the move

by Otti and the LP in the state to capitalize on what has been described as the “Obi Political Tsunami” to capture the Abia Government House would fail because the people were aware that Otti was not Obi in all ramifications.

Ikpeazu equally said the Obi phenomenon must not be narrowed down to the

efforts of LP, stressing that doing so would diminish the huge efforts put in by several angry Nigerians and first-time voters, who were not members of any political party but found a credible candidate in Obi, who they were willing to put allow to be the pilot of their new nation.

He, however, said it was now unfortunate that many people, who ordinarily would stand no chance of clinching any political position because of their bad

character and poor relationship with the people, are hiding under Obi to bamboozle their way to power and calls for caution.

He said: “In Abia, our people know that Obi is not Otti. They know that both of them represent different things altogether. Their records are there. Obi, as a governor did not retrench Anambra workers, but Otti as a bank Managing Director retrenched bank workers.”

Katsina NNPP Sacks Deputy Guber Candidate, Party Executives Francis Sardauna in Katsina The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Katsina State, has sacked its deputy governorship candidate, Muttaqa Rabe-Darma, the state party Chairman, Sani Liti, and other top executives.

The Director of Media and Publicity of the NNPP, Nasiru Usman-Kankia, disclosed this while briefing newsmen on

the decision of the party at the weekend in Katsina, saying they were sacked for anti-party activities, including Thursday’s endorsement of the All Progressive Congress candidate, Dr Dikko Radda.

“As you are already aware, a section of the state executive leadership of the party convened an unauthorised meeting on

Thursday, March 9, the decision of which almost rocked the party.

“An emergency exco meeting comprising 19 out of 29 members was conveyed to discuss the immediate and remote causes of the illegal meeting.

“Facts have emerged that the illegal meeting was unconstitutionally convened

without the consent of the state executive committee.

“It was also discovered that even when invitations were sent for the illegal meeting to state and local government exco members and ward chairmen, they were informed that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss and disburse funds for the settlement of polling unit agents and ward coordinators.

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Obi Prevented North from Retaining Presidency, Says Wike Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt Rivers State Governor, Mr. Nyesom Wike yesterday noted that the decision of the presidential candidate of Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi to contest the last presidential election prevented the north from retaining the presidency.

Contrary to insinuation that he did not support Obi, Wike added that what most people failed to

realise “is that LP’s presidential candidate remains his hero of the 2023 presidential election.”

He made the remarks during an interactive meeting with Technical Dealers Association of Nigeria, Computer Dealers Association, Garrison Phone Dealers Association and Building Materials Traders Association in Port Harcourt yesterday.

At the session, Wike said the decision of Obi to contest the presidential election on the

platform of the LP prevented the north from retaining power after the end of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure.

Wike described LP’s presidential candidate as the hero of the 2023 presidential election, saying LP’s presidential candidate “is my hero.” He said: “If Obi did not contest, power would have gone back to the north. The whole of South-south and South-east that

PDP lost would have been won if Obi did not contest.

“The hero in this election is Obi whether you like it or not. I am not here to please you. Obi is the hero. He may not have been pronounced as the winner. There is no problem about it. The law will take its course.

“If Obi did not run this election, power would have remained in the north. Whether

he is declared a winner now or not, history will be on his side that he fought and fought well,” Wike explained.

He said the reason he did not publicly declare support for any presidential candidate was because G-5 governors had unanimously agreed to ensure the emergence of a president from the south to succeed Buhari.

While G-5 governors as-

siduously worked for power to return to the south, Wike said his immediate past predecessor and former Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, mobilised votes for Atiku Abubakar.

He said: “If Amaechi loves the Igbos, why did he not support Obi? Instead, he supported Atiku.

He did not want power to return to the South because he lost APC ticket.”

Makinde: I’ll Treat Christians, Muslims without Favouritism Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan Oyo State Governor, Mr. Seyi Makinde yesterday pledged that he would serve the people of the state equally and fairly without any bias or favouritism when re-elected.

Makinde also noted that when re-elected, his administration would continue to be fair and just in relation with all religions in the state as he had done in the last 45 months.

He made the promise yesterday when he paid a visit to Aare Musulumi of Yorubaland, Edo and Delta states, Alhaji Daud Akinola, in Ibadan, Oyo State capital.

The governor, who received Akinola’s blessings, also garnered Chief Imam of Ibadanland, Sheikh Abdul-Ganiy Agbotomokekere’s support for his

re-election bid.

The duo of Aare Musulumi and Chief Imam of Ibadanland commended Makinde for governing the state with the fear of God as well as being fair to the Muslim Ummah and adherents of other religions in the state.

They equally commended him for the renovation of the Oja’ba Central Mosque, Ibadan, which they noted had been yearning for renovations for years and then prayed for the success of the governor in his re-election bid.

At Aare Musulumi’s residence yesterday, Makinde noted that he would continue to serve the people of the state with fear of God when he is re-elected as governor.

He said: “I will continue to be fair and just in relating with all religions in the state. As we have done in these last 45 months, we will continue to be fair to all religions.

Lagos Train Accident: Bus Driver Apologises, Begs for Forgiveness Segun James After currying blame for the incident that led to the bustrain collision at the PWD by Shogunle railway line, on the Agege Motor road, Lagos on Thursday, driver of Lagos State Government Staff bus, Oluwaseun Osinbajo has pleaded with the accident victims to forgive him.

The driver, who works with the Lagos State Ministry of Transport, told some family members that visited him at the State Criminal Intelligence and Investigations Department (SCIID) yesterday that: “It is a pity this has happened. I beg everyone affected to please

forgive me in the name of God.” Blaming the cause of the accident on a mechanical fault in the bus, the driver is further quoted as saying “It was not my fault. How could I have ignored warning signs? The bus had a mechanical fault.

However, some survivors from the accident have insisted that the 44-year-old driver had his earpiece on while driving and ignored the directive of the Flag Officers at the rail line.

This is as the police disclosed that they were still awaiting the outcome of the medical report, which includes a blood sample to ascertain if the driver was on drugs or mentally fit.

After 68 Days of Captivity, Police Rescue 14 in Zamfara Officers of the Zamfara State Police Command have rescued 14 kidnap victims after 68 days in captivity.

The rescue, the Command’s spokesman Mohammed Shehu said, was in conjunction with the vigilante, and the victims were freed near Munhaye forest after the officers dislodged a bandits’ camp belonging to kingpin Dogo Sule.

“As a result of the operation, 14 hostages comprising two male adults, seven females, and five children below of age of two years were rescued,” the statement from Shehu added.

“In the course of debriefing, the victims informed the Police detectives that, on 1st January

2023 at about 23: 00hrs, a large number of suspected bandits armed with sophisticated weapons stormed Anguwar Mangoro and Gidan Maidawa villages in Gusau LGA and abducted them to their camp where they spent 68 days in captivity.”

The victims were then taken to the Police Clinic, Gusau for medical treatment and thereafter reunited with their families.

The Commissioner of Police CP Kolo Yusuf, the spokesman added, has congratulated the victims for regaining their freedom. He is a reassuring resident of the state of continuous commitment to protecting the lives and property of the citizens.

CONGRATULATIONS… L-R: Lagos State Deputy Governor, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat, lawmaker-elect for Mushin II Federal Constituency, Mr. Toyin Fayinka, and wife of the Deputy Governor, Mrs. Oluremi at the presentation of Fayinka’s Certificate of Return to Hamzat in his Ikoyi residence, Lagos …. yesterday

Ondo Begins Construction of Cenotaph in Honour of Owo Carnage Victims Fidelis David in Akure The Ondo State Government yesterday commenced the construction of a befitting Memorial Park in honour of the victims of the terrorist attack on St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, leading to the gruesome murder of 41 persons.

The state government disclosed that the memorial park would be completed by May

2023 to mark the first anniversary of the Owo carnage, The Governor of Ondo State, Mr Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN) revealed this yesterday during an inspection visit to the site of the Memorial Park, located in the heart of Owo, a sprawling ancient city of Ondo State.

At the construction site, Akeredolu disclosed that the state government “is determined not to forget the souls, who were

gruesomely murdered while worshipping.

He also disclosed that the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who visited Owo to commiserate with the state and the people after the incident, would be invited to inaugurate the project when completed.

He said: “Let me thank the Odopetu of Akure Kingdom, Architect Femi Bello who

designed the project. I want to thank him very much, because he showed interest in this project.

His interest is beyond the normal.

“By the time we finish this Memorial Park, it will be a beauty to behold and it is going to measure up to any Memorial Park anywhere because the architect has taken his time to do so much good work here. It is for us to just wait and see it.

Leave Political Parties Alone, Concentrate on Elections, NNPP Tells INEC John Shiklam in Kaduna and Ibrahim Shuaibu in Kano The New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPC) has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to allow political parties run their affairs while it concentrates on the management of elections.

This is just as the governorship candidate of the party in Kaduna State, Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, has urged the residents of the state to reject governorship candidates

promoting religion and tribal sentiments in the March 18 elections.

Reacting to the Supreme Court judgment that ordered the commission to accept Senator Rufai Hanga as the senatorial candidate for Kano Central in place of former Kano Governor, Ibrahim Shekarau, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Dr. Agbo Major said INEC should not involve itself in who becomes a candidate of a political party.

INEC had refused to accept Senator Hanga as the candidate, declaring Senator Shekarau as the winner of the election even when he had left the party.

But in a judgment on Friday, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of both the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal and directed the Commission to accept Hanga as the candidate for the election Major said: “Our victory at the Supreme Court was not unexpected because it is not

INEC’s responsibility to determine political party’s candidates.

Their responsibility is to engage in election management and not to decide who the candidate of a political party should be.

“The truth is that from the beginning, we have never been afraid of that case all along, right from the High Court to the Appeal Court and now, the Supreme Court. We have defeated them roundly in these three courts,” he explained.

Court Sentences PDP Chieftains to Two-year Jail Term over Money Laundering Kingsley Nwezeh in Abuja A Federal High Court sitting in Bauchi has sentenced two chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to a two-year jail term each for their complicity in conspiracy and money laundering to the tune of N142 million.

The presiding judge Justice Hassan Dikko convicted the duo on March 2, while ruling on a two count charge brought against the defendants by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,

(EFCC).

This was revealed in a statement issued the spokesman of the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren released at the weekend.

The statement said the defendants were first arraigned on June 4, 2018 and re-arraigned on October 16, 2018 on a two count charge for allegedly receiving over N142 million to influence the outcome of the 2015 presidential elections in Bauchi State.

The defendants had pleaded not guilty to the charges, setting

the stage for the case to proceed to full trial.

In the course of trial, the prosecution presented one witness and tendered documents marked as Exhibits A1, A2 and A3. Both defendants testified in their respective defence.

At the close of evidence, the final written addresses were filed, exchanged and adopted on January 17, 2023, with the prosecution asking the court to convict the defendants as charged.

The defence, on the other

hand, submitted that the evidence presented against the defendant by the prosecution was not credible and urged the court to discharge and acquit the defendants.

Justice Dikko then reserved judgment for March 2.

In the well-considered judgment that lasted more than three hours, Dikko reviewed the facts of the case and the submissions of counsel and arrived at the conclusion that the prosecution proved the cases against the defendants beyond reasonable doubt on count one

15

THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER MARCH 12 , 2023

BUSINESS

Editor: Festus Akanbi 08038588469 Email:festus.akanbi@thisdaylive.com

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16

THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER MARCH 12 , 2023

POWER

As Local, Foreign Investors Jostle for Stakes in Geregu Power Barely three months after being listed on the Nigerian Exchange, Geregu Power Plc has not only sustained its impressive showing as one of the most traded stocks for the period, but the company is also attracting institutional and strategic investors who are taking stakes in the company, writes Festus Akanbi

I

n a challenging environment like ours, where many companies have to cut corners to make ends meet, analysts said it takes a lot of gut for a private utility player to open itself to public scrutiny by listing in the capital market.

However, for the handlers of Geregu Power Plc, which is owned by serial investor and billionaire businessman Femi Otedola, listing the company’s share on the Nigerian Exchange on October 5, 2022, was the best way to give the power company the clear advantage it needed WR PDNH D VLJQLÀFDQW GLͿHUHQFH LQ WKH VHFWRU in which it operates.

Raising Shareholders’ Appetite In barely three months after listing, Geregu Power Plc has become the eighth most valuable stock on the NGX with a market capitalisation of N813 billion, about 2.67% of the Nigerian Stock Exchange equity market.

Shareholders have continued to identify with the company’s share, which closed at N325 per unit on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NGX). Geregu Power began the year with a share price of N149.00 and has since gained 118% on that price valuation, ranking it third on the NGX in year-to-date performance.

Market watchers attributed the shareholders’ enthusiasm to the fact that the stock has accrued an outstanding 59% over the past four weeks—the third best on NGX. Interestingly, Geregu Power is the 16th most traded stock on the Nigerian Stock Exchange over the past three months (December 7, 2022 March 8, 2023), and it has traded a total volume of 209 million shares—in 3,606 deals—valued at N31.1 billion over the period, with an average of 3.32 million traded shares per session.

Investment analysts said with the current standing in the stock market and the company’s audacious moves to increase capacity, it is not VXUSULVLQJ WKDW IRUHLJQ LQYHVWRUV DUH ÀJKWLQJ head over heels for stakes in the company.

Geregu Power Plc was founded on November 10, 2006, and operates in the utility sector, VSHFLÀFDOO\ WKH HOHFWULFLW\ LQGXVWU\ Analysts believe that one masterstroke decision taken by the board of Geregu Power was the initiative to approach the capital market. $QG VR WKH FRPSDQ\ ODVW \HDU EHFDPH WKH ÀUVW power-generating company in the country to be admitted into the Mainboard of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) by way of listing by Introduction (LBI).

The company’s 2.5 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each at N100 per share were admitted on the Exchange.

Consequently, listing Geregu’s shares added N250 billion to the market capitalisation of NGX, further boosted liquidity in the Nigerian stock market, and provided opportunities for wealth creation.

As Foreign Investors Jostle for Stakes in Geregu Power Some institutional and strategic investors began to show interest in the company no sooner after the company entered the Nigerian stock market. Today, the Fund for Export Development inAfrica (FEDA), an impact development unit of the Africa Export and Import Bank (Afreximbank), and the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), a Chinese state-owned electric utility corporation, are two formidable strategic investors in Geregu Power.

In a recent interview, the company’s Chief Executive, Akin Akinfenwa, spoke on the company’s planned expansion and explained why FEDA has decided to acquire 5% equity.

According to him, adherence to world-class corporate governance and practices, which is driven by good leadership at the board and the PDQDJHPHQW OHYHO LV WKH ÀUVW UHDVRQ

Geregu Power Plc He gave the second reason as the FEDA’s ÀUP EHOLHI LQ WKH FRPSDQ\·V VKRUW PHGLXP and long-time goals towards becoming a power company of choice in Nigeria and the West African sub-region. He said the third one, ZKLFK KH FRQVLGHUV YHU\ VLJQLÀFDQW LV )('$·V belief in the Nigerian electricity supply industry as a key driver for structural transformation for trade on the African continent. “These are the three broad messages responsible for these transactions.”

“If you may recall, FEDA is also joining the state grid corporation of China as an additional investor, and they have been here before FEDA; when you look at it, yes, it opens the door for institutional and administrative investors that may want to be part of the growth of the power plant and its success story.”

Capacity Building The company is determined to boost its capac- Otedola ity and increase shareholders’ returns to ensure the sustained positive momentum gains are not ZDVWHG 7KLV ZDV WKH FRQÀGHQFH H[KLELWHG E\ Akinfemiwa, who unveiled Geregu Power’s said: “You may recall in 2013, at the start of robust expansion plan in another interview with the privatisation process and when we acquired Geregu Power Plc, the installed capacity was the Arise News Channel.

Already the company management said it PHJD ZDWWV DW D WLPH %XW WKH HͿHFWLYH FDSDFLW\ is determined to ramp up generation to 1,300 was less than 100 megawatts. We ramped up megawatts within the next two to three years. capacity not only to 414 but also we increased It plans to achieve this after it must have run it to 435mw. So today, we are producing 435 combined circle operations based on the two megawatts, of which 70 to 80 per cent goes to the grid because of grid constraints.” existing plants in Geregu.

On the delayed energy transition plans by The company already has an existing plant that generates 435 megawatts. In addition, it is the federal government, Akinfemiwa stated: also planning to acquire a nearby plant with an “Again, we must accept that Nigeria is in a delayed energy transition plan, particularly installed capacity of 440mw.

“After this is achieved, we would run a when it comes to renewable sources on the grid. combined circle operation based on the exist- So what we are going to do in the interim is to ing plants to ramp up capacity to 1,300mw,” ensure we maximise the hydrocarbon potential of capability for a nation to ensure that we can Akinfemiwa said.

Speaking on what to expect, Akinfemiwa contribute our quota to the national grid.” stated: “Our expansion goals are very, very, Actualising Vision of World-class Standards ambitious, and what I will say is that in short The purpose of the listing of the company was to medium term, we are trying to take advantage captured

by Otedola, who stated that “the listing of our immediate environment, that is, Nigeria as a net exporter of fossil fuel. This means our of the company was the actualisation of a vision short and medium-term goals will be based on to bring world-class standards in governance, sustainability, and business processes to the thermal generation.”

Going down memory lane, Akinfemiwa company and the Nigerian electricity sector.”

He added that “listing on the Main Board of the Exchange will ensure that the company’s ORQJ WHUP JURZWK LV DVVXUHG DQG LWV EHQHÀWV ZLOO be passed on to our esteemed shareholders.”

In his comment, the CEO of Excredite Consulting Limited, and a former commissioner at the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Mr. Eyo Ekpo, reportedly said: “I KDYH ORRNHG IRUZDUG WR VHHLQJ WKH ÀUVW OLVWHG electricity company in Nigeria. I hope there will be much more shortly because I believe the democratisation of ownership in the sector is vital to its growth.” &RQÀUPLQJ WKH IHDU WKDW WKH HQHUJ\ VHFWRU in Nigeria remains plagued by issues that limit investment into a sector in dire need of a sustainable upgrade, Ekpo said, “The electricity sector requires competent management that adheres to standards of corporate governance and respects regulatory rules.

“Being publicly listed brings with it the obligation to be more transparent and more responsible in delivering services,” he said.

Otedola’s Midas Touch Analysts in the power sector attributed Geregu Power’s record-breaking achievements to Otedola’s determination, a savvy businessman who clearly understands virtually all of the sectors he invests in.

They contended that the NationalAssembly’s UHFHQW YRWH RI FRQÀGHQFH LQ *HUHJX 3RZHU IRU meeting performance targets speaks volumes about the company’s character.

At the end of the recently concluded threeday investigative hearing on the power sector recovery plan, the lawmakers blamed the power sector hiccups on the lack of coordination among players responsible for power administration in the country. However, the committee singled out two of the six privatised GenCos-Geregu Power and Transcorp Power for meeting the performance targets.

7KLV ZDV UHLQIRUFHG E\ DQRWKHU YRWH RI FRQÀdence from the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), Alex Okoh, who stated, “Geregu Power met its minimum performance target in 2013, whereas the other four GenCos did not for a variety of reasons. It increased its output from 414mw at handover to 435mw.”

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T H I S DAY,, T H E S U N DAY N E W S PA P E R • MARCH 12, 2023

SOFT FINANCE with AYO AROWOLO The only column you may need to read on everything personal finance, money, investing -and other life matters

EMAIL: AYO.AROWOLO@THISDAYLIVE.COM PHONE: 08086447494( SMS ONLY)

Wisdom Nuggets From The Masters (1) A number of the readers of this column have sent me notes requesting that I share with them tips I picked from the successful people I have interviewed. They want tips they can apply to their careers, businesses and life, generally. In this first part, I’ve decided to pull out one key nugget shared by each of the persons I have had the privilege of interviewing in diverse areas. Please enjoy: JIMI ABGBAJE

anti-corruption. God did it! I became one of the co-founders of Transparency International (TI), a global non-government organisation dedicated to preventing and tackling corruption. I had wanted to start a PhD in International Law but I came under the influence of a teacher, Baroness Shirley Williams, at Harvard University, United States, who persuaded me to study Public Policy because she believed that was what our continent (Africa) needed. She was right. An incredibly brilliant mind, my very much older friend Baroness Williams, who only last year retired from the House of Lords is one of Britain’s foremost politicians who had also been a Minister of Education under Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1976. She was absolutely right.

Public Policy completely changed my professional life and that is what I am today. So, it was my father and Shirley Williams who influenced my choice of career

Pharmacist, business owner and politician No guarantee that your best plan cannot fail

“NO GUARANTEE THAT YOUR BEST PLAN CANNOT FAIL” In setting up my business I made it very clear that I wasn’t going to run a family business. I was going to run a business that would outlive me and that meant that I needed to put in place a solid structure and have some measure of a succession plan. I was fortunate to have very good hands working with me. In putting a succession plan in place, I relied on brilliant people who were in their young marriages at the time. The two I was relying on to take over left. The balancing of work and spouses by them affected my business at a time I had already gone into another calling, i.e. politics. This left a big gap that slowed down the growth of the business.

I also took up agencies and distributorships for well-established multinationals. I exposed my company financially only to realise that they didn’t ever really stick to their commitments. Their sole purpose was to get profit for themselves by all means. My consolation was that I was able to dissuade many younger colleagues from going down the same path. Better to build your own brand from scratch than build somebody else’s that has no commitment to you.

The lesson: there is no guarantee that your best plans cannot fail.

SHYGLE WIGWE

Pastor and retired public servant

Agbaje

Utomi

Olashore

Ezekwesili

Wigwe

Sharma

PAT UTOMI

Scholar, political activist and boardroom guru

“KNOW YOUR BOSS’ KEY RESULT AREAS( KRA) There is something that came up frequently in my teaching at the Lagos Business School: I tell the students, especially young managers, that one of the easiest things you can do is managing your boss. Many people don’t realise this, they think managing the boss is massaging his ego, but it is not so. You have to know your boss’ Key Result Areas (KRA) - that is what he is being evaluated on by his own bosses. If what you are doing advances his key results, even if he is the devil, he will not hurt you. Without actually knowing this in theory, that is what my career has always been about. It has never been about me, it is about how can I advance the purpose, the course of this thing which usually is something that advances the course and cause of the boss.

When I went to work for Volkswagen, the company had a lot of trouble, a terrible image in the public, there were labour problems and all sorts. I chose instead to look at the big issues; where the company was going. At that time, I was not consciously looking at advancing my boss’ KRA, but that was exactly what I was doing. Of course, I was rewarded for my efforts as I became the first Nigerian to manage the company. Besides as Paul Collier’s UNIDO-supported study of China”s dramatic rise in manufacturing shows China triumphed going the way I had suggested Nigeria go when he interviewed me at VWN in 1987. You do not get on that side of history if you think only of your immediate interest.

So, it was very important to focus on what is very important to the survival of the organisation, not on yourself, what you are trying to get or to show your boss that you know too much. Secondly, you have to imbibe the virtue of humility. The truth of the matter is that so many people are so focused on themselves that people can’t see them. They see their projection and many times that takes away from really feeling the person and their humanity is lost.

ABIMBOLA OLASHORE

doctor or an engineer, it is taken. Once you are good at literature and the arts, it is assumed you are going to become a lawyer or an accountant. I didn’t like biology so becoming a doctor was out of it for me.

And everybody will naturally guide you, if you are good at chemistry and physics, they tell you to go and become an engineer. I filled JAMB form, I was barely 15 then and I wrote first choice: engineering, second choice: accountancy. My parents looked at me and say you must be a confused man, how do you combine the two? I got the second-highest mark for engineering in that year’s JAMB. I was taken at the University of Ilorin straight. My parent said you are still too young, you are even confused, go and do A-Levels. The following year, I came back and filled JAMB form, I now turned it around, first choice: accountancy; second choice: engineering. My father said I can see you are still confused, go and continue your A-Levels. I was eventually taken to do electronics engineering in the UK. But immediately I entered the four walls of the university, I knew I made a mistake.

I graduated, but I sold all my books on the day of my graduation. I did not follow my instincts, but a university education is good, I can’t say it was wasted, but I have wasted time. I started all over again.

After graduation, I came back to Nigeria, joined Deloitte and started doing accountancy. Go and check, I am an ICAN multiple prize winner, that

“GO WITH YOUR INSTINCTS” There is so much noise around that you sometimes will begin to question if your instincts are telling you the right thing. Therefore, as a person, you have to follow your instincts. You must be very clear as to what you want to do. I will tell you why I chose that as number one. When I was in St. Gregory’s College for my secondary school, I was very good at Maths and sciences and the assumption will always be you either become a

That taught me a lesson, if you want to keep your life, you have to keep your mouth shut. When you open your mouth too wide, you are heading for destruction. That is why I don’t talk anyhow and I advise people to watch

Investment banker and educationalist

is because I was doing what was on my mind. I excelled.

OBY EZEKWESILI

Economic policy expert, former minister of education in Nigeria and political activist “LET YOUR CAREER BE PURPOSE DRIVEN” My father wanted me to be a chartered accountant and I trained to become one. After my Masters, I worked for Deloitte Touch & Akintola Williams, where I trained as a chartered accountant. I was a child that was precociously interested in good governance, prompted primarily by my enabling father and my experience with the (Nigerian) Civil War and military governance. As a child, Dad and I would always discuss public affairs at every opportunity and I became very conscious of social and political issues beyond my age. The war had a deep effect on my family following the loss of relatives and possessions.

It left many families including mine scotched but my father raised us to never allow anything to enslave our souls. As he explained how poor governance was a reason for misery when we returned to Lagos after the war, my little self would promise him that “I would do something about poor governance when I grow up.” It turned out that I would do something later to put me in a position where I could address good governance, transparency, accountability and

*HE WHO KEEPS HIS MOUTH SHUT WILL LIVE” It is often said, the fish that closes its mouth escapes the hook. That is the truth. When I was in the Army, I was sent to Kaduna on a short posting to man the One Brigade workshop. There, I shared a flat then with Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, one of the leaders of the 1966 coup. There was this particular day a Brigadier summoned me to his office and spoke derogatorily against the Igbos and the GOC then, General Aguiyi Ironsi. I felt bad about that and I related it to Nzeogwu who tried to calm me down promising that he would deal with the Brigadier and his likes very soon. I didn’t know how he was going to do that being just a Major. But shortly after I returned to Lagos, there was a coup and without knowing those who were behind it, I said to myself, Nzeogwu has done this.

But I didn’t say it out, if I had, I would have been arrested as part of the coup plotters and probably killed, because soon after it was announced that the leader of the coup was Nzeogwu. I would have been arrested and accused of having knowledge of the coup plan. But thank God I didn’t say anything to the hearing of anyone. That taught me a lesson, if you want to keep your life, you have to keep your mouth shut. When you open your mouth too wide, you are heading for destruction. That is why I don’t talk anyhow and I advise people to watch their tongues.

RAJIV SHARMA

Personal development expert and Neuro Linguistic Programming Practitioner *BEGIN WITH THE PURPOSE” Most people don’t realise that they live their life in autopilot mode. It is important to start with the picture in your mind. Imagine the picture of the result you want to achieve. Once you can see the picture and take mindful actions, there is a higher possibility of you turning that picture into reality.

That picture keeps you focused on the results.

Results, not efforts, matter. I do this on a daily basis. I learnt that sometime back when I started learning Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

When I started my career in 1990, I had difficulty getting a job after acquiring my management degree.

I kept giving my CV and kept rejecting jobs because I wanted to be a manager. But I got frustrated, the pressure was so much. So I took a job as a salesman, which was not by choice. It was just because there was nothing else. For the first six months, since I never wanted to be a salesman, I kept circulating my CV in other places.

In January 1991, my first boss called me and gave me a sack letter which interestingly, changed my life. I said to him, you can’t sack me I am a first-class management graduate. He looked at me and asked me, ‘how many cars have you sold?’ I said I hadn’t sold any. He said ‘we are not hiring MBAs we want you to sell cars. He told me I had one-month notice to sell cars or get out. I had sleepless nights. What I did was to locate the best four salespersons in the company, and attach myself to them. I picked the best of their sales strategies and started to apply them.

By December 1991, I was the best salesman in the company, I had sold 1000 cars. I created a picture of the result I wanted and focused on making it happen. It works.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R ˾MARCH 12, 2023

GLITZTRIBUTE

Mashood Mustapha: Celebrating a Patriotic Statesman @60

Opeyemi Aregbesola

D

iamond Jubilee is an important milestone in a person’s life. Surviving the hurdles of life and attaining the Diamond age is something everyone looks forward to. However, providence has made it so that not everyone lives to record this milestone in prosperity and perfect health. Thus, Mashood Mustapha attaining the Diamond age with a sterling track record is a feat that must be celebrated.

Mashood Mustapha, fondly called MM by friends and associates, is an accomplished businessman and a politician of high repute. Born on March 11, 1963, into the family of Alhaji Usman and Alhaja Hassanat Mustapha in Ilorin West Local Government Area of Kwara State, MM has grown to become a shining star whose brightness illuminates the lives of those who come in contact with him.

MM is a compassionate, generous, and detribalized statesman. To him, everyone is equal irrespective of religion, ethnicity, and political leanings. His penchant for giving is further reflected in the way both the young and old troops to his GRA Ilorin residence whenever he is in town.

MM’s plan to establish a foundation that will cater to the indigents is a testament to his magnanimity. Like or hate him, MM has built a legacy that will outlive him.

Mashood Mustapha’s political journey is intriguing. MM made inroads into the murky waters of politics in 2001 after successfully building a professional career that spanned 2 decades. When MM ventured into politics, he was fully prepared to swim with the sharks having been groomed on the nittygritty of politics by his father who was a Finance Commissioner for Kwara State in the Second Republic. MM has greatly mastered the art of politics; little wonder why he has remained relevant in Kwara political settings.

MM was a force to be reckoned with in the 8 years (2003-2011) administration of Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki. He served the administration in different capacities as Special Adviser to the Governor on Local Government and Chieftaincy Matters, Special Adviser to the Governor on Special Duties, and Deputy. Director General of Mandate Campaign Organization for the reelection of Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki as the Executive Governor of Kwara State. He also served as Commissioner for Lands and Housing, and Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources.

In 2011, Mashood Mustapha contested the House of Representatives position under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and was elected through popular vote to represent the good people of Ilorin West/Asa Federal Constituency where he brought to bear his wealth of experience in the service of his fatherland. While in the House of Reps, he was the Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream); Member, House Committee on Marine Transport,

Mustapha

Environment, Privatization and Commercialization; Federal Capital Territory (FCT); Steel, Industries, National Population Commission, Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes; HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Control, and Niger Delta Ministry. MM left an indelible mark in the lives of his constituents and his performance as an Honorable member of the House of Representatives was impressive.

His versatility as well as the ability to network well with Honorable Members and Senators, earned him the position of Special Adviser to the Senate President on InterParliamentary Affairs, Protocol and Special Duties. In 2015, MM was appointed as the Coordinator of the Kwara State chapter of Buhari/ Osinbajo campaign organization and he performed excellently.

MM is the pioneer of the most formidable political group in Kwara state, Team MM. This group cuts across the 16 Local Government Areas of the State with thousands of members. Team MM was established in 2017 for the actualization of the governorship ambition of Mashood Mustapha.

Although Mashood Mustapha was a major contender for the governorship seat in 2018 under the platform of the All Progressives Congress

(APC) in Kwara state, he set aside all considerations and participated actively as the vice Chairman of the 2019 APC Strategy Group. The group which comprises movers and shakers of Kwara politics, was established to ensure the victory of the APC during the 2019 general elections.

MM also organized a campaign rally for the election of Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq as Kwara State Governor in 2019. MM’s efforts and those of other loyal party members yielded the desired result when the party’s governorship candidate emerged victorious at the poll.

MM retained his vice Chairmanship seat when the 2019 APC Strategy Group metamorphosed into the 2023 APC Strategy Group. As the Vice Chairman of the group, MM played a laudable role in brokering peace amongst warring factions in the APC, especially, in Kwara Central Senatorial District ahead of the 25th February Presidential and National Assembly elections.

The victory of the APC in Kwara Central was partly due to MM’s mediatory efforts. MM is also working assiduously towards the re-election of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq having being satisfied with his performance in the last 4 years. MM’s political trajectory over the years has

proven that he is a patriotic statesman who places common interest above personal interest.

Aside from being a political strategist par excellence, MM also has an impressive business profile.

MM is an astute businessman whose business conglomerate cuts across countries like Ghana, Dubai, and Burkina-Faso. He is the Chairman/ CEO of Crystal Group Nigeria Limited, Crystal House Ghana Limited, and Crystal Trading Company Dubai, UAE. He is also the current Chairman of the Board of Patrons of Nigeria-Guinea Bissau Chamber of Commerce, and Patron of the Ilorin Elite Club.

MM’s business empire has created jobs for both skilled and unskilled labour across Africa.

MM has over the years, received several awards for his socio-economic contributions to the development of his fatherland. In 2020, MM was conferred with the chieftaincy title of Olu-Omo of Yorubaland in Ghana.

As someone who has worked closely with MM for years, I make bold to say that the likes of Mashood Mustapha are rare. Aside from being a critical thinker, MM is goal-driven and he pushes those around him to aspire for greatness. I wish him the best as he sails through the Diamond age.

OPI NION

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T H I S D AY MONDAYSunday MARCH 14, 2022 12 March, 2023 Vol 27. No 10142

opinion@thisdaylive.com

www.thisdaylive.com

BOLA TINUBU, MAY YOUR ROAD BE ROUGH!

ABIODUN KOMOLAFE urges the President-elect to be focused

Lagos is not a no-man’s land, asserts FEMI FANI-KAYODE

LAGOS, MY LAGOS!

I

See Page 20

ELECTIONS AND MACHINE VOTES OKELLO OCULI writes that the current plot to create ‘’computerrobot’’ leaders would protect ‘neo-colonial’ economies and dead politics

See Page 20

EDITORIAL

THE KILLING OF BORNO FISHERMEN

See Page 45

make no apology for saying the following.

Lagos is NOT no-man’s land. It belongs to the Yoruba. Other than winning the Presidency, the most important thing for the Yoruba to do today is to ensure that Babajide Sanwo-Olu is re-elected as Governor of Lagos State.

We welcome visitors and strangers with love, kindness and open arms because that is our nature but we will never let them rule over us in our father’s land, take our land and territory and deprive us of our patrimony, heritage and ancestry.

Anything short of this would be an abomination and would attract the wrath and curse of God. We know who we are and we know what is ours. Nothing and nobody will take that from us. It is time to reclaim Lagos and the first step to doing that is to vote for Jide in the governorship election on Saturday. I call on all sons and daughters of the West and all true friends of Lagos and the West to come out and vote for Jide and the APC on that day.

Permit me to add the following.

I have spoken up for the Ibo probably more than any other non-Ibo in my generation over the years and in the recent past and I did so when most people remained silent and watched them suffer the most extreme form of persecution, wickedness and barbarity.

I am also one of those that believes strongly in the ‘handshake across the Niger’ and I enunciated my position boldly and clearly at the famous Enugu conference in 2018 when others were scared to speak. Finally my belief in the concepts of restructuring, self-determination, equity and justice remain unshakable.

I also remain a strong advocate of the unity and indissolable fabric of our rainbow coalition and beautiful union and our quest to establish an exemplary and enviable multi-racial, multiethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious nation where every individual, regardless of tribe or faith, finds a place under the sun.

That is the sacred vision of our forefathers and it is for that vision and preservation of the unity of that unique and marvellous rainbow coalition and great nation of bright and beautiful ethnic nationalities that millions of people died during our civil war.

A heavy price was paid for our unity and the butchers bill for the preservation of our union was very high.

That is all the more reason why we should preserve it at all costs so as not to belittle and mock the sacrifices made by so many and the oceans of blood that was shed to keep us one.

Nigeria is a great, powerful and beautiful nation with so much potential and we shall do all we can to make her even greater and better by striving to live in pace and unity with one another. However this does not mean that we can take each other for granted or treat one another with contempt.

This does not mean that we must indulge in grabbing the land and coveting the homes of others in the name unity. This does not mean that we are a nation of anything goes where only the loudest, strongest and most aggressive have their way or where anarchy, ignorance, fascism, ethnic nationalism, racial hegemony, primitive irredentism and barefaced domination reigns supreme.

This does not mean that we will tolerate

and allow others to re-echo the expansionist dreams and divisive and weighty words of the late jurist, member of the Legislative Council and Ibo nationalist Charles Daddy Onyeama (the distinguished and respected father of our Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama) in 1945 when he told the Ibo State Union at the Island Club in Lagos that “the Ibo domination of Nigeria is only a matter of time”.

The angst and fears of the Yorubas, Hausa Fulani, Ijaw and other non-Ibos that heard those words at that time were further fuelled and rekindled four years later in 1949 when, again in Lagos, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe himself, the Ibo leader of the NCNC, a great nationalist and the man who was almost elected Premier of the old Western Region and was later elected Premier of the old Eastern Region said, “it would appear that the God of Africa has specially created the Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of the ages”.

I guess little has changed over the last 78 years when it comes to the desire of some to want to dominate others, lead them by force and take over their land and all that is theirs.

How sad that is.

Finally this does not mean that I will sit by silently or idly and accept the absurd notion, emotional blackmail and intellectual tomfoolery of those that say that Lagos, my Lagos, the city that I come from, that I was born in, that I grew up in, that I lived in for most of my life, that my parents and grandparents were buried in and that God-willing, when my time comes, I shall also be buried in, is a ‘no man’s land’ .

Lagos may be an increasingly racial and cultural melting pot but she is NOT a no man’s land. The history is clear. Lagos is Yoruba territory and she constitutes a vital and integral part of the South Western states of Nigeria and the Yoruba nation. Whether anyone likes to hear it or not this is an incontrovertible fact.

As Yorubas she is our pride and joy, our shining city on a hill, our New Jerusalem and

a stellar example and reflection of our liberal, cosmopolitan, civil, accommodating and generous disposition to strangers and outsiders who, over the last few decades, have made her their home.

Yet no matter how kind and accommodating we Yorubas are as a people and no matter how many non-Yorubas we integrate with, we shall NEVER conceed one inch of our territory to them or allow them to claim our land, culture, values, patrimony and heritage as their own.

The day I, as a Yoruba man, can claim that Enugu belongs to me or that I can safely open a stall in Enugu market or that I can become Governor of Enugu state is the day that I shall review my position. Until then I will not do so.

Permit me to conclude with the following.

I am a proud father of nine children, six of whom have mothers that are not Yoruba and three of whom have a mother that is only half Yoruba. This proves that I am an intergrationist and I believe in building bridges and creating a society which allows for and encourages the mixing of ethnic bloodlines, racial tolerance and peaceful co-existence. l am a liberal and I do not believe that it is right or proper for one race or ethnic nationality to look down on or discriminate against another.

In my view we are all one, regardless of which ethnic nationality you come from or which faith you espouse.

However this does not mean that I am prepared to sacrifice my racial and cultural identity on the alter of historical revisionism.

The history is clear and the facts speak for themselves.

For a non-Yoruba and particularlyanIbotoclaim thatLagosbelongstothemorthatsheisa‘noman’sland’ isnotonlyabsurdbutalsodeeplyinsulting.

Each time they say it they are slapping us in the face and spitting on the graves of our revered forefathers.

Fani-Kayode is a former Minister of Aviation

20

T H I S D AY SUNDAY MARCH 12, 2023

OKELLO OCULI writes that the current plot to create ‘’computer-robot’’ leaders would protect ‘neo-colonial’ economies and dead politics

ABIODUN KOMOLAFE urges the President-elect to be focused

BOLA TINUBU, MAY YOUR ROAD BE ROUGH!

In the choice of a fitting title for this piece, the late Professor Tai Solarin, one of Nigeria’s foremost educators and social activists, readily came to mind. May the labour of our heroes’ past not be in vain!

That said, the title of the write-up suggests an overview of an anticipated journey and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Metaphorically, a rough road suggests an onerous means of achieving arduous set goals. However, the good news is that it keeps the journeying people awake and at alert all the time, because the road is not smooth.

Coming to Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, the current situation of Nigerians necessarily implies that Mr President-elect’s road to the Promised Land must be pretty bumpy. Nevertheless, the requisite and functional input of Nigerians is to be diligently responsible for sustaining the consciousness of the roughness of the journey; otherwise, we may end up going 50 years backward in our historical walk as a country. In other words, agitation for development must never stop so that President Tinubu will keep working, until the time Nigerians are able to proclaim ‘uhuru’. But, if Nigerians find some palliative solutions and they relax prematurely, the aftermath may be a monumental disaster of sorts; and the leader after Tinubu may not have the dexterity and the determination of the ‘Jagaban of Borgu’.

Yes, the roughness of Tinubu’s road is one which will make the Nigerian society to be development-conscious. This no doubt will make it to be demanding for development within the ambit of the law and availability of resources. Otherwise, there won’t be growth. People can only grow when they’re able to conceptualise the vision and the type of development they want. Take, for instance, when the late Martin Luther King Jnr. said he had a dream, he was envisaging a utopian situation which, even the Ralph Abernathys and Bayard Rustins of the struggle never believed could ever come to fruition.

It is instructive to note that, till date, no mortal has rivalled the relevance of King’s ‘I have a Dream’ Speech of August 28, 1963. So, it’s good to say: ‘May Bola Tinubu’s road be rough!’ Well, that doesn’t mean that people should unreasonably – in an unrestrained profile – trouble his government. Since development thrives in an atmosphere of peace, agitations shouldn’t become violent ventures or exaggerated clamours for desires that are not realizable in ten years. Nigerians need not engage or burden Tinubu’s government with reckless agitations or bigger arguments that are only drenched in sheer sophistry.

Taking a trip down memory lane, that Nigeria has been searching for leaders since the attainment of independence without

painstakingly probing the visions in them is no longer news. For instance, the thinking of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa when he became Nigeria’s Prime Minister wasn’t how to develop the entire country. To discerning minds, Balewa came with the Northern Agenda a la Premier Ahmadu Bello’s directive.

When the military struck, it also came with its own ideas. For example, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, who led the January 15, 1966 putsch, was never tested.

Upsettingly, his coup soon reflected an Igbo ethnic agenda. Somewhere, somehow, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi showed up and became the Head of State. Not long after, Yakubu Gowon also showed up as a product of the famous ‘July Rematch’. A Northerner, he, too, subscribed to the Northern Agenda.

And, at some point, Emeka Ojukwu came and crystallised the ‘pogrom’ narrative. Is it therefore any wonder that the fractures in our fusion have remained problematic; and that the fault lines have always been pronounced in our day-to-day dealings with one another?

Aren’t they fractures that have thrown merit away, all in the name of trying to balance what even nature has not balanced? Regrettably, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) that was established to address the national question ended up merely scratching the surface of the problem!

In this age and time, Nigerians don’t need a novice to become their leader, especially, when it comes to issues revolving around Public Finance and Financial Engineering. If we may ask, would a Godwin Emefiele (as CBN Governor) have gone before a Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (as Nigeria’s president) to pontificate about naira redesign - a policy that has now landed Nigeria in a mess? Again, that’s where the choice of Tinubu makes him more suitable!

“Charity”, they say, “begins at home.” I have argued elsewhere that Tinubu is “not only representing the APC but also has a cosmopolitan worldview!” To put it bluntly, how the president-elect rearranges the face of politics, particularly, in the Southwest zone will go a long way in defining his political life as a worthy Nigerian and Nigeria’s president.

While he needs to take a critical look at the ethnic colouration of Lagos politics, for other states in the zone, the feelers in town point in the direction of people being disillusioned. In their view, the resources and political benefits do not trickle down; and people are angry!

Anyway, that’s a topic for another day!

Taking in general terms, political leaders in Nigeria have gone rapaciously greedy; and the response of the political parties to the crying needs of the people is grossly inadequate! Since there’s mass unemployment everywhere, party faithful look up to the political parties for survival.

Unfortunately, the palliatives from the parties no longer get to the downtrodden but the waiting ‘reapers’ who grab them without caring a hoot about how others fare. Hence #EndSARS! The tragic truth is that political leadership in Nigeria has not been under the appropriate domestic pressure. It is because there are no consistent agitations for development that our leaders are often into ‘owambe’ mood. That’s why many of them can afford to change known residential apartments and cruise around in exotic cars. It’s also the reason they’re found mostly in the company of women of easy virtue, wasting away executive time and resources.

KOMOLAFE writes from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State

ELECTIONS AND MACHINE VOTES The impact of Information Technology in liberal democratic elections gained dramatic visibility in recent presidential election contests in the United States of America (USA).

Vigorous contamination of election processes was deeply entrenched in the country’s politics.

Police dogs were used to frighten AfricanAmericans who dared to arrive at polling centres.

What was new was the use of electronic messages to weaken enthusiasm in those likely to vote for Hillary Clinton; while FOX NEWS is accused of combining ‘’selling lies’’ to Republican Party voters, with not reporting what is tagged as ‘’SOCIALIST’’ views.

Multinationals have supported television and radio advertisements to promote racist attitudes against selected candidates; and massive repetition of slogans.

In Kenya, the 2017 and 2022 elections saw computers accused of altering numbers of votes against a candidate who was leading in opinion polls. In a late February 2023 interview, Raila Odinga asserted that a triangle of computers based in Holland, Venezuela and Kenya communicated with each other and awarded higher vote scores to William Ruto; while reducing votes cast for Raila Odinga.

The involvement of NATO’s diplomacy into Ruto’s victory in the 2022 elections is assumed to be as punishment of former president Uhuru Kenyatta and his ally Raila Odinga IRU ÀQDQFLQJ WKH YLFWRU\ RI )HOL[ 7VKLVHNHGL in the presidential elections of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

His victory was feared to bring in patriotic governance which would resolutely combat chronic looting of the country’s rich natural resources. Moreover, Tshisekedi brought DRC into becoming the largest and most populated country (92 million) into the East African Community.

The success of African diplomacy in expanding the territorial and economic space of the East African Community had to be punished not celebrated by Europe. Buhari’s regime was showing that a creative Nigerian regime can inject new energy into West Africa GHVSLWH WKH LQÁRZ LQWR WKH UHJLRQ RI ZHDSRQV from a severely disrupted Libya.

Dictatorships in Sudan under Omar Bashir, was marked by a political blindness which led to the country breaking up when South Sudan seceded in 2011. Idi Amin’s Uganda and Arap Moi’s dictatorship in Kenya, midwifed the 1967 collapse of the East African Community.

A 2022 election victory in Kenya (generated by computers telling lies about votes scored), could lead to dictatorial impulses which could harm development in the region.

The defeat of Moyo in Zambia despite the use of squads which terrorized people (including extorting funds from market ZRPHQ IRU ÀQDQFLQJ WKH SUHVLGHQW·V HOHFWLRQ campaign), did not stop victory by the opposition candidate with a margin of over ONE million votes. A fake victory achieved with lies by computers, would have been investment in severe loss of legitimacy; and potential conflicts by angry voters.

There is talk about a global retreat of democratic regimes into dictatorships. Africa suffered a collapse of patriotic democracy into military terrorism directed and planned

by Euro-American intelligence operatives.

Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo was assassinated barely six months after his winning a democratic election.

A plot to simultaneously overthrow democratically elected Julius Nyerere in

Tanzania, Milton Obote in Uganda and Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya and replace them with Oscar Kambona, Grace Ibingira and Tom Mboya (Secretary Generals of ruling parties, respectively), failed narrowly.

The plot sought to create a shield of client regimes to protect the racist regimes in Southern Africa. The current plot to create ‘’computer-robot’’ leaders would protect what Kwame Nkrumah describes as ‘’neocolonial’’ economies and dead politics.

There is a diplomacy of panic which has followed the injection of investments

by China across Africa; with focus on constructing infrastructure. For over 60 years colonial governments (of Britain, Spain, Portugal, Germany and France),refused to construct them. African governments aspire to use infrastructure to push economic and industrial development.

Mao Zedung denounce those he called ‘’RUNNING DOGS OF IMPERIALISM’’.

Dogs can be dangerous creatures.

Those infected with ‘’rabbis’’ bite pass on a deadly disease. Regimes imposed through manipulated election results with computers, is ‘INVISIBLE TERRORISM’ against peaceful development in Africa.

Just as rabbis kills by infecting the brain of a victim, this terrorism would kill governance by paralyzing patriotic policymaking.

Liberation movements in Algeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, 1DPLELD DQG $QJROD PRGLÀHG VNLOOV IRU defeating dictatorships. Mao Zedung, Ho Chi Mihn and Fidel Castro wrote about these skills. Amilcar Cabral (in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde), and Samora Machel in Mozambique, ‘Africanised’ these reports.

Their focus was on ‘clearing the swamp of colonial poison’ in minds of impoverished, exploited and oppressed rural and urban compatriots. These conditions became ‘LAND MINES’ to exploded under the feet of colonial troops.

They brought ‘’AWARENESS’’ of their conditions and their potential CAPACITY to change it. The mind received power in WORDS spoken by a political activist into eyes and ears.

PROF OCULI writes from Abuja

45 T H I S D AY SUNDAY MARCH 12, 2023

EDITORIAL

Editor, Editorial Page PETER ISHAKA Email peter.ishaka@thisdaylive.com

THE KILLING OF BORNO FISHERMEN The shocking attack on Mukdolo in Borno State holds lessons for Nigeria

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The federal government cannot continue to hawk the claim that the insurgency war is ‘technically over’. It is not

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LETTERS

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46

T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R ˾MARCH 12, 2023

GLITZFOCUS

Meet Adenike Fajemirokun, Dangote Industries’ Group Chief Risk Officer Dr. Adenike Fajemirokun is the Group Executive Director and Group Chief Risk Officer of Dangote Industries Limited. She drives the executive model and manages the corporate portfolio of the Group President’s Office, which includes project oversight, business operations, strategic partnerships, and other related special duties that have to do with the president’s mandate within the organisation. As the group chief risk officer, she leads the risk management functions for the Group and oversees the company’s governance model and enterprise risk programme. She is a renowned Risk Management & Insurance specialist with over 21 years’ diverse experience in developing and implementing Risk Management strategies in Financial, Engineering, Manufacturing and other Industries. In a conversation with leadingladiesafrica.org, Fajemirokun talks to us about her journey into becoming a chief risk officer in one of the most renowned industries in Africa.

Tell us more about yourself

I

am Dr. Adenike Fajemirokun, Group Executive Director and Group Chief Risk Officer at Dangote Industries Limited. In the early stages of my career, I worked as a Civil Engineer with one of the top engineering firms globally: Ove Arup, and went on to become a Consummate Risk Manager. During my PhD, I developed a disruptive model for my industry at the time– a Risk framework for shopping malls in the United Kingdom. Succeeding this, I gained the attention of numerous Investment Banks who were quite interested in what I was doing and felt the model could also be applied to the banking sector at that time. This prompted my introduction to Investment Banking and my career has since evolved, with the central theme of finding sustainable solutions to problems as my driving principle, which always has been my motivation throughout my professional journey. Over the years, my profession has transitioned from Civil Engineering, to Investment Banking, to becoming the Head of Risk Management in a Nigerian bank, and now to manufacturing.

At Dangote Industries Limited, my role is multifaceted beginning with my portfolio as GED Special Duties, to heading Procurement, Transport Management, Insurance, and Risk Management. My position also entails managing the President’s Portfolio and Strategy which is dynamic and changes quite frequently based on the Group’s mandate.

The various hats I wear predominantly involve solving problems as they arise. Finding effective solutions to tough problems is at the core of what I do.

As an African woman, what are the major challenges you have faced while building your career?

I believe one of the major challenges I have faced is ageism relative to position at different stages on my career journey as a young African woman. However, generally, I have often been blessed with progressive-thinking leadership and mentorship, this perhaps may be attributed to my character and cultured/ professional disposition as well.

How did your journey of being the first Female Chief Risk Officer for sub-Saharan Africa’s leading manufacturing group begin and what was it like?

I wouldn’t say first female Chief Risk Officer…and if I may also reframe the question, globally you would find

that most Risk Officers are women.

However, being in manufacturing as a Group Chief Risk Officer (GCRO), yes! and with an organisation our size, it has been challenging. But resilience, excellence and obviously competence are important tools in the solutions set.

In what ways have you been able to demonstrate equity in your workplace policies?

First, organisational culture must be equity aligned, and luckily, I’ve worked with companies that endeavor to strike a balance for inclusion in terms of women in leadership. However, it is inherent in me to execute based on performance as opposed to anything else, which should be the drive at an individual level. But at corporate levels and in efforts to break-biases systemically, it is important that equity is embedded.

Has having female mentors played a huge role in your career? If yes, how?

I have benefited immensely from mentorship both male and female. To be more specific, there were particular seasons in my career progression that I had female mentors who played significant roles in my professional journey, especially during my childbearing years. It was immensely helpful to have women that were supportive. There are two women especially, who played crucial roles as stepping stones at a critical juncture in my career and I consider myself blessed to have had them.

Do you think women can play more roles in the risk management system and how?

Definitely. I think women are generally better Risk managers. Better thinkers through the objective risks that we face.

We are a lot more thorough and less impulsive in making business decisions.

So, I think women can certainly play more roles in Risk management. Most of the strongest ones I’ve worked with have also been women.

What’s your opinion on women inclusion/ equity in your field?

I think there’s an aggressive push, and we are now more than before more intentional about it. However, I do believe that with this level of intentionality there has to be a clear demarcation between people being right for the role and people just there to fill seats, because the benefit really comes when you make sure that you are playing to people’s strengths. There’s the danger of, for the sake of balancing equity, we are just filling seats, and that for me is a risk. So, by being intentional we must touch on all these crucial points.

Fajemirokun

T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R ˾MARCH 12, 2023

47

GLITZ ENTERTAINMENT

5 Women Championing Female Inclusion in Entertainment Industry In commemoration of International Women’s Day marked every March 8, Vanessa Obioha and Iyke Bede compile a short list to highlight the female figures, from actresses to film producers, singers to festival organisers whose contributions in the past year continue to shape the minds of generations of women in Nigeria and beyond, helping them inch closer to attaining equality and equity Onyeka Onwenu

Nicknamed The Elegant Stallion, Onwenu broke down many doors in the music industry to become one of the few female singers to compete with her male counterparts in the ‘80s. She walked so that the likes of Tems could soar, yet, she continues to build more legacy to encourage other women outside the entertainment sphere.

Recently, she collaborated with the Rose of Sharon Foundation to release the inspiring ‘Rise Up’ to uplift widows who suffer economic hardship, prejudice from outdated cultural practices, and mental health breakdown impacted by their loss. She aimed to heal them through the song’s lyrics, and support them financially through proceeds.

Tems

The vocal powerhouse, whose 2018 hit ‘Mr Rebel’ took music lovers by storm, continues to etch her name in the annals of global music with her success streak.

Her most recent record, a Grammy win in the category of Best Melodic Rap for her contribution to Future’s ‘Wait For U’ sets her on a pedestal as the first mainstream female afrobeats act to win the awards. She received this honour after Wizkid, and Burna Boy earned recognition from the Recording Academy in the same year for their contribution and original works respectively.

Now leading a legion of contemporary Afrobeats female acts, Tems sets the bar high, inspiring this crop of artistes to aspire to international renown.

Real Warri Pikin

Having gone through her fair share of living through fear of paying back debt owed to financial institutions and

Onyeka Onwenu

Anita Asuoha (a.k.a.

Real Warri Pikin’)

Chioma Ude

Tems

surviving it, Anita Asuoha, aka Real Warri Pikin, on International Women’s Day, rewarded 20 small-scale women entrepreneurs in Abuja with N1 million (N20,000 per entrepreneur) to assist them to grow their businesses.

She achieved this feat through her foundation RWP Foundation which has helped women entrepreneurs for the past four years.

Funke Akindele

From her early days playing Bisi in the popular youth-centric sitcom ‘I Need To Know’, Akindele has proven time and time again that gender is no limiter to success. And this shows with her claim to occupying the top two spots on the list of highestgrossing films in Nigeria with ‘Omo Ghetto’, and ‘Battle on Buka Street’.

Just like her onscreen character Jenifa, Akindele

Funke Akindele

continues to redefine the meaning of success for the everyday woman. She’s currently running for the office of Deputy Governor in Lagos State in the 2023 gubernatorial elections.

Chioma Ude

For more than a decade, Chioma Ude has been spotlighting African films on the continent and beyond through the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF).

The annual festival pools creatives from different parts of the continent to a week-long feast of screenings, discourses, pitches, networking, and, of course, a glamorous award show for competing films vetted by a cerebral panel of judges.

Through this gathering, Ude has also launched aspiring filmmakers as well as helped film production companies collaborate on projects. Recognised as one of the leading film festivals in Africa, Ude leaves an indelible footprint in the film industry for other women to emulate.

iREP Brings Screenings to the Suburbs The 2023 edition of the i-Represent International Documentary Film Festival (iREP) will witness the soft launch of inner-city screenings (ICS), a project that will feature screenings in some select suburbs of Lagos.

Since its inception, iREP has made Freedom Park its home for cerebral gatherings with a few iconic venues for some select events.

But for its 13th edition, screenings will take place in Ikorodu, Bariga, Ajegunle and Ejigbo.

“We hope to use the screened films to awaken the interest of the participants to their civic responsibility,” stated the Festival Programme Directorate. “The ICS project will also help us in fashioning a critical aspect of the agenda for the iREP 2023-24 main project: the Documentary Film Curriculum Development project.”

Scheduled for March 16-19, the festival is narrowing its lens to Nigeria in Self-conversation, a departure from its

broader theme Africa in Self-conversation. This is in part due to the political transition happening in Nigeria.

Its choice of the theme ‘Documenting the Underserved: Agenda for Nigeria 2023’ is informed by the desire to address cogent issues in the national polity, particularly to direct the attention of young people “to the power of documentary films in empowering them to be active participants in the discourses in their socio-political, economic and cultural environment.”

The festival which will have speakers like Prof. Awam Amkpa of New York University, and Niyi Coker Jr, of the Africa World Documentary Film Festival (AWDFF), will focus more on films produced by Nigerians, about Nigeria, and for Nigerians; in particular those in the suburb communities of Lagos where public amenities such as schools, health, water, power and hygienic/environmental services, etc are usually in short supplies.

Showmax Reimagines Football Legend, Jay Jay Okocha

Animated illustration of Jay Jay Okocha the chosen one

For its first original animated series, Showmax sets its sights on the Nigerian football legend, Augustine ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha. The 13-episode series titled ‘Jay Jay: The Chosen One’ reimagines the childhood of the football star who played for the Nigerian national team between 1993 and 2006 and led the country to Olympic victory at the 1996 Atlanta games. Okocha also played in three FIFA World Cups and has become a celebrated football commentator.

The series captures Jay Jay as an 11-year-old boy who dreams of representing his school at a prestigious football tournament with a team made up of his rag-tag group of friends. The series charts Jay Jay’s passion for football, as well as his love for the animal kingdom, who in return for his fight against illegal poaching, bestows superpowers upon him.

“I’m honoured to have an animated series that reimagines my childhood,” said Jay Jay. CEO of Showmax and Connected Video at MultiChoice, Yolisa Phahle, added, “We are so excited to bring this first-of-its-kind series to our streaming audience. Not only is ‘Jay Jay: The Chosen One’ another locally inspired Showmax Original, it marks the beginning of our adventures in animation.”

The series which will premiere on April 6, is voiced by a talented Nigerian cast, including award-winning teen actor, Prince Unigwe, who voices the character of young Jay Jay; veteran actor Chinedu Ikedieze, Samuel Ajibola, pro-footballer turned actor, Eric Obinna; Tinsel actress Mena Sodje; upcoming actor Lexan Peters, and child actor Pamilerin Ayodeji.

The series soundtrack features music from popular Nigerian singer and vocalist, Waje.

Olivia and Juicy Jay

BBTitans Update: No Bad Feelings for Blue Aiva, Says Olivia When the hosts of Big Brother Titans, Ebuka ObiUchendu and Lawrence Maleka, revealed the housemates who nominated the pair, Juiovla (Juicy Jay and Olivia), during last week’s live eviction show, Olivia was clearly stunned by one housemate: Blue Aiva. Her shock was somehow understood given the way she felt nominating her friend during the nomination process.

In an interview with Glitz Entertainment, Olivia cleared the air about her feelings toward Blue Aiva.

“I’m actually an emotional person so when Big Brother asked me why I was nominating Kaniva (Kanaga Jr and Blue Aiva), I felt like ‘was I betraying my friend?’” she said.

“I was going to nominate her. Assuming my partner went to the Diary Room, he was going to nominate Kaniva.

So I don’t really see it as a betrayal because we were going to take them out. It’s a game. No bad feelings for her. She saw me as competition and tried to take me out despite the friendship and all.”

Juicy Jay also expressed confidence about his relationship with Yvonne.

“I’m really confident about my relationship. I think when we meet outside, we are going to make this work.”

This week saw Big Brother breaking up the pairs.

The remaining 12 housemates will now play the game as individuals. Meanwhile, Ipeleng who won the Head of House this week also got the supreme veto power and secured a place in the finale as the race for the coveted prize of $100,000 gets fiercer.

A

WEEKLY PULL-OUT

12.3.2023

ODUNAYO SANYA

Levelling the Playing Field for Women The Executive Secretary of MTN Foundation, Odunayo Sanya, is a woman driven by purpose. Since she assumed her role in 2021, she’s been at the forefront of driving impact interventions in different areas for the foundation. With the International Women’s Day global celebration, marked every March 8, focusing on going beyond equality and embracing equity, Sanya tells Vanessa Obioha how the foundation is prioritising women’s needs through its recent initiative - Y’ellopreneur ASSISTANT EDITOR OLUFUNKE OLAODE/victoria.olaode@thisdaylive.com.

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COVER

Every Woman Has to Identify Her Own Success

Sanya

F

ifty is the milestone age for many people. It is that age that screams your achievement and the legacy you want to leave behind.

For Odunayo Sanya who turned 50 last year, it is about embracing her purpose.

“I keep asking myself where the time went,” she said in mock amazement during a recent interview.

To be sure, Sanya’s looks do not in any way betray her age. Whether in weaves, braids, or cropped hair, her calm demeanour exudes a youthful aura that is even more complemented by her winsome smile.

As she embraces her new age, the MTN Foundation’s Executive Secretary is all about trying to find meaning in her now.

By her ‘now’, she meant being

intentional to “deliver impact to myself, more people and my environment. Bottom line, do everything, align my resources, my abilities, and my capacity in such a way that I become a better version of myself and I become useful to other people and enable them whether as an individual, in my career, just anywhere I find myself.”

Sanya grew up in a home that is built on virtues and values. Her parents treated her and her siblings as one. There was no special entitlement given to a particular gender. In her parents’ eyes, particularly her late Dad, they were all first human beings. The values instilled by her parents still guide her today in every decision she makes, be it career, spiritual life or family.

“My dad taught me to be open-minded,” she said. “He believed that we were all human beings. So for us growing up at home, it wasn’t about if this is a son or a daughter. My dad never referred to any one of us in that regard and I

tried to be intentional about observing this. I never heard him say my son, my daughter.

No, it was my child, my children. It was so much about being open-minded to the possibilities of a human being first. The fault lines of old are he is male, she’s female, he’s from here, she’s from there and all of that.

My father’s position has really stayed with me and I think it helps to get the best out of people, out of relationships and generally, to be able to have desired outcomes.”

Indeed, these values have played out in the way she handles the affairs of the foundation since she assumed her current position in 2021. Having joined MTN Nigeria in 2005 as a Manager in Customer Management, she has climbed the rungs of the ladder steadily and shown efficiency to steer MTN Foundation in achieving its set goals which are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and national priorities.

“The goal of the foundation has always been to improve the quality of life of Nigerians, in the communities that we operate as MTN. And we achieve this through various interventions in the areas of health, education, youth development and other national priorities and initiatives. Of course, all of these are done on a sustainable basis.”

Founded in 2004, the MTN Foundation was set up to manage CSR initiatives for MTN Nigeria. It kicked off operations in 2005, the same year Sanya joined the parent company, MTN Nigeria. The interventions of the foundation cut across two major portfolios which are youth development and national priorities.

Over the years, the foundation has embarked on various projects that speak to its target mission. From Y’ello Doctor, a health-related initiative that brings health care closer to the people in the hinterlands, providing state-of-the-art equipment to hospitals, supporting the art community as well as creating platforms for youth development.

“I always say that it is not rocket science why we must focus on the youth. That’s the largest demographic of our population. For us, we focus on upskilling them, providing them with tools, access, knowledge and opportunities such that they can become economically active citizens, either through the route of entrepreneurship or through the route of employment. But the bottom line is that they must be better off and be in a position to contribute to the socio-economic development of our country.”

Under the Y’ello Doctor project, Sanya revealed that about 52,000 people have been reached in the communities visited.

To carry out its mission effectively and efficiently, the foundation’s choice of projects implemented is informed by data. Before moving into any community, as explained by Sanya, they carry out a baseline assessment to be sure that the intervention is right for the community.

“Governance is not negotiable at MTN Foundation. All our selection and approval processes for projects are conducted in a manner that emphasises transparency.”

Likewise, the foundation measures impact via monitoring and evaluation. They also carry out assessments on the field and engage members of the community. By doing so, the foundation is able to drive out the negative indicators as well as modify and make better interventions.

Women are not neglected in the mix, be it through the Y’ello Doctor project or other mother and child health programmes, the foundation prioritises the needs of the female gender. Last year, it embarked on an audacious project to equip female entrepreneurs called Y’ellopreneur.

“It was discovered in 2019 that only two per cent of female-founded businesses were able to access venture capital globally.”

Given the low turnout of women, the foundation created Y’ellopreneur to solve some of the setbacks that female entrepreneurs face.

“The first thing is capacity. So the question for us was how do we build capacity? It wasn’t just about throwing grants or loans at women but how do we build the capacity in such a way that these things we do will have a multiplier effect.”

Apart from capacity, Sanya identified access to funding as another setback for female entrepreneurs.

When the foundation finally rolled out Y’ellopreneur last year, it received about

40,000 applications. Only 500 were trained out of which 150 women were to receive funding in form of loans to the tune of N2 million with about a 2.5% interest rate.

To help in the capacity building of the women, MTN Foundation partnered with the Enterprise Development Centre of PanAtlantic University.

“At the end of the day, every woman that completed the training came out with a business plan. And that is one thing women have struggled with in the past. How do you come up with a bankable business plan? They all have their business plans and we have been receiving testimonials from them.

“This is a milestone for us at the foundation. So, we are done with the capacity building and we believe we have contributed to moving these women to a point where they are skilled, the gap has been closed a bit.”

Recently, about 200 out of the 500 women pitched their business plans to the foundation for equipment loans. The foundation partnered with the Bank of Industry to implement this section of the programme.

Sanya also pointed out that the foundation is deliberate about the kind of businesses they support.

“We really want to contribute to the real economy. We are funding women in the value chain of agriculture, circular economy; women in recycling and processing who source their raw materials locally because we are very particular about that, considering the rate of inflation.”

Given the cultural challenges that still relegate women and silence their voices, Sanya believes that women should not relent in shattering glass ceilings.

“We have seen an upsurge in the number of female executives that now sit in the boardrooms. Are we there yet? No. But we have moved from where we used to be. I brought it home to MTN. There is a deepseated commitment at the group level and at the upper level in this case, Nigeria, where we say that we want to have a 50-50 representation across management and we are almost there.

And so things have moved for women and it can only get better with women.”

She continued: “In terms of shattering the glass ceiling, I think we need to continue to push that narrative of self-authorship. At the end of the day, it’s down to the individual, make yourself count. Be more than just a number in the statistics of the world. That’s it.

So, a lot of confidence building in women, we put the girls back in school, beaming the light intentionally on women knowing fully that when you train a woman, you train a nation,” she argued.

Success for today’s woman today to Sanya is not a linear definition.

“I think success is relative and I believe that women really should define what success means to them. We’re both women, but you’ll be shocked that your definition of success is different from mine. That is where authenticity comes in, the originality and the ability to own your path, own your story, and stay on your lane. You know, those cliches that people use, but I think it starts with every woman defining what success means to them and what it is for them. What is their picture of success, and it could be family, relationships, personal achievements, income, or corporate accolades.

I think the most important thing is that as a woman you’re in control of your success parameters. You own your journey, and you are authoring yourself. Every woman has to define what success means to them.”

As March 8 is globally celebrated as International Women’s Day, this year’s focus is on going beyond equality and embracing equity. Equality and equity are two terms that are often used interchangeably but have different meanings. Sanya shared her thoughts on what this year’s theme means to her and how MTN Foundation is implementing it in its projects.

“I like to use this analogy of equality as giving the tall and the short man a ladder with the same number of rungs to reach a height, but equity is actually giving the shorter person, a taller ladder,” she said.

“It is this thinking around equity that drove the foundation towards these gender-based programmes because, for us, we needed to target resources at women such that they can close the gap with other people in society. At MTN and the foundation, we’re focused on as much as we can to level the playing field for women through our interventions and programmes. We will continue to provide equity-based solutions, pushing this narrative of equity across our various initiatives, and hopefully, we believe that we will see the desired outcomes in good time.”

T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R ˾MARCH 12, 2023

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HighLife Ireti Kingibe Retires Senator Philip Aduda’s Reign

with KAYODE ALFRED 08116759807, E-mail: kayflex2@yahoo.com

...Amazing lifestyles of Nigeria’s rich and famous

Dr. Deji Adeleke: A Man Who Ticks All the Boxes for His Family and Friends at 66

Are legends made from the ups and downs of human life or are they born that way? This question springs to mind when one considers the life of people like Adedeji Adeleke, the billionaire extraordinaire whose influence reaches across states and industries.

Upon clocking 66 recently, Adeleke once again became the center of attention among the wealthiest people in Nigeria.

You may know Adeleke, the billionaire from Osun State whose family stands at the top of the chain for sheer prestige and brilliance.

On March 6, Adeleke clocked 66 years and brought smiles to the faces of the people that know him very well. Despite being humble, his actions and affiliations have always been enough reason for even his peers to respect him.

For his 66th birthday, Adeleke did not make too much noise, not even a beep on

social media. Once again, this is because of Adeleke’s quiet nature, which contrasts the people known to be the closest to him: his son, Davido the musician, and his brother, Ademola Adeleke, the Governor of Osun State.

With the Adelekes, it is always excellence upon excellence. It is said that the 66-yearold CEO of Pacific Holdings Limited and President of Adeleke University is as unrestrained in his application of novel business principles as he is in doling out his possessions to make others happy.

Consequently, his philanthropy stands on the same level as his business acumen and general contribution to establishing the best corporate model in Nigeria.

For all people, big and small, relative or stranger, Adeleke is worth emulating in many things. Considering how much he

Adeleke

has contributed to the growth and fortunes of his children and brothers, the man remains one of the biggest sponsors of individual and communal progress in Osun and Nigeria. So, at 66, he is a blazing fire lighting the way for others to follow.

Kingsley Obiora: The Quiet Operator at CBN

Kingibe

To the casual observer of the 2023 elections, especially the presidency, nothing much has been accomplished except that a political party that seemingly appeared from the bottom nearly reached the peak of power. But for people who are more thorough in their observations, different players on the senatorial side of the election field are also standing out. Ireti Obiora Obiora Kingibe is one such player, and There are all kinds of people in this world, her victory over Philip Aduda many of whom are striving to be great, in the Federal Capital Territory and others that appear to have grasped the (FCT) Abuja has shown her to be secret behind greatness. Kingsley Obiora, a proud lioness. the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank The excitement of the Labor Party (LP) winning the senatorial seat of the FCT has not worn out.

It continues because, one, the person taking over the highly One must master a field of endeavour coveted position is a candidate of before entering into another field. This has the LP and a woman. Secondly, always been the idea behind expertise, that this woman seemingly came experts are not made in a day. But Tokunbo Abiru, the banker that is known for his role out of the left field to forcefully in the revitalization of Polaris Bank, has terminate the reign of Aduda, turned this logic and tradition on its head. a senator who has been entering into the domain of politics, representing FCT for the last 12 Since Abiru has achieved nothing short of a years. miracle. Even now, while experienced It was a joyous day for politicians are failing in their bids, Abiru is scaling one height after another.

LP members in Abuja when Considering that this is the second the Independent National time that the people of Lagos East are Electoral Commission (INEC) committing their senatorial distinction announced that Kingibe had into the hands of the banker-turnedemerged as the winner of the politician, it says something of Abiru’s FCT senatorial seat after getting prowess that he has been able to earn their trust.

202,175 votes. On the other The result from the polls for the Lagos hand, Aduda, who is the threeEast senatorial district was a bit different term senator of the senatorial district and a member of the Peoples Democratic Party Politics is not a game of minds and (PDP) got 100,544 votes. machinations. There is much more to the With Kingibe taking over, exercise of democratic leadership than meets the eye. Former Ekiti State governor, Ayodele it is the start of a new era. The Fayose, admitted this during an interview with lady in question is currently TVC on Wednesday, March 8, 2023. However, being celebrated everywhere due to his comments on the loss of the for being able to surmount the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential odds stacked against her. candidate, Atiku Abubakar, folks are saying that Fayose has retired the latter and given him So, it is a new era for the occasion to back down and resign from his people of the FCT senatorial attempts to confront the waves from the justdistrict. With Kingibe and her concluded presidential election.

LP in charge, things are bound Times are changing but the rules of politics to change. After all, Senator remain the same. Fayose has somewhat Aduda has had 12 years to build admitted to the fact that the loss of the PDP during the just-concluded presidential election an empire unique to himself is on its head. Fayose explained during the and the PDP, while under the TVC interview that he had made attempts to federal leadership of a rival block the gaps that he knew might undermine party in the last eight years. the success of the party, but he was not Thus, things are bound to successful.

According to Fayose, he had approached change—which is not a bad thing in this scenario.

of Nigeria (CBN), belongs to the latter group.

Despite being one of the most powerful individuals in the country due to his position at the apex bank, Obiora maintains a low profile, quietly discharging the requirements of his role.

Since the naira redesign policy of the CBN took Nigeria by storm, all eyes have been focused on CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele.

To the people that consider the policy to be sound and brilliant, Emefiele is a strong pillar raised to return Nigeria to the competition stage with other developing nations. But very few people understand that Emefiele’s stability and strength derive in part from Obiora’s virtuosity.

To those that know very little about the CBN Deputy Governor, Obiora is a brilliant young man that has come a long way. At 46, he has shown himself to be capable of holding down the fort in the absence of his boss, going

so far as helping to strengthen the economy of Nigeria against economic crises and disasters.

Obiora can play such a strong and vital role due to his robust experience in the corporate sector. Before becoming Number Two at CBN, he worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the United States as one of the organisation’s alternate executive directors. So efficient was Obiora in the performance of his duties that he was tasked with representing the interests of 23 African countries, including Nigeria, at the IMF Executive Board.

Much remains to be said about the man from the South-south. However, he prefers to keep a low profile as he attends to his duties at CBN. Even now, with CBN at the thick of things, Obiora remains a distinguished individual that only cares about his obligations and executes them exquisitely.

From Banking Hall to Politics: Tokunbo Abiru Smooth Running Political Career than many people imagined. Abiru emerged as the winner with 178,646 votes, whereas the runner-up got a total of 80,249 votes. In other words, Abiru got more than two times the votes that his immediate rival could get from the people.

Amazingly, Abiru has only spent around 30 months as a politician. As people would recall, he retired from being the GMD/CEO of Polaris Bank to take up the senatorial seat left behind by Senator Bayo Osinowo after the latter passed away before the completion of his senatorial tenure. So, since December 2020, Abiru has been representing Lagos East and doing it so marvelously that the people believe he will be able to accomplish more if given another opportunity.

Thus, for Abiru, great things are on the horizon. He remains peerless and continues to demonstrate his incomparability among other politicians on the same level as he.

Abiru

to advise him to settle issues with Rivers Ayo Fayose Retires Atiku State governor, Nyesom Wike. He said that Atiku had invited him at some point and he to Atiku the importance of having Atiku on National TV explained Wike by his (Atiku’s) side. He said that the

Fayose

former Vice President did not listen to him, and so the loss happened.

After explaining his side of the story, everything became clear. Apparently, Fayose informed Wike about the meeting with Atiku before it happened. Fayose told Atiku that he would have to tell Wike about it, and only visited the former VP after Wike had approved it. Furthermore, Fayose advised Atiku to travel to Port Harcourt to meet Wike, even if it is in secret. However, for Atiku to lower himself to such a degree and beg someone that lost again to him in the primaries was clearly too much for him. That’s Fayose’s narrative, in a summary.

While many have praised the former Ekiti governor for clearing the air on his role in Atiku’s journey, others think that he has further damaged the prestige of the former VP. What will come from this remains to be seen.

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HIGHLIFE

On Osinbajo’s Last Birthday in Aso Villa In the Good Book, we find strong statements like, “there is a spirit in man and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding” and “by wisdom is a house built and by understanding is it established.” In more ways than one, both of these statements have been lived out in these eight years by Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President of Nigeria. Even now, as he tidies his office to pass the mantle on, his wisdom and understanding are outside the grasp of his peers.

Many people have taken a sorrowful attitude to the last birthday celebration of VP Osinbajo in Aso Rock. Knowing that he will leave the presidential residence with his boss, President Muhammadu Buhari, these folks are saddened and wish that the VP would spend a few extra

years there. But who says that this is all there is to the professor? And why does it seem to keen observers that the celebration of Osinbajo’s 66th birthday brought a lot of relief to the political elites in Nigeria?Of course, President Buhari did not hesitate to praise Osinbajo on the many things he has assisted him with throughout their service as Chief and Assistant Chief of Nigeria.

Compared to others, the President knows that Osinbajo’s life is not coming to an end at 66 simply because this was the last birthday in Aso Rock as the VP. To the diligent, the future is a fine country filled with opportunities.

Thus, even as Osinbajo signs the handful of documents left as he prepares to hand everything over to the masters of the imminent era of federal governance, it was with cheers that he celebrated his 66th birthday. Yes, it was his last

Osinbajo and wife, Dolapo

birthday celebration as Nigeria’s VP. However, it was not his last as a man of grace and understanding, diligent and visionary.

Will Akinwunmi Ambode Congratulate Tinubu?

Ambode

When people talk about water passing under the bridge, they point out a lot of things.

Chief among these things is the possibility of that water never returning. So the idea that the matter between President-elect Bola Tinubu and his godson of yesteryear, Akinwunmi Ambode, has passed under the bridge is stale now that there is a chance for them to meet again. But life is a potsherd with grains of surprises on it, so nobody ever knows what the future holds.

The former governor of Lagos State, Ambode, certainly does not know what the future holds. Despite his matchless talent in administration and management, the man has also shown himself to be patient without being cunning, wise without being proud, and humble without being off-putting. But whether these admirable characteristics would endear him again to Tinubu is something that only Tinubu knows.

Many people were rattled when the All

Progressives Congress (APC) emerged as the winning party after the 2023 presidential elections. Past acquaintances of the Presidentelect likely danced knowing that they will benefit from his victory in no small way. But what about Ambode? Did he cheer with those that have benefitted from Tinubu’s influence over the years? Or did he groan with those that have offended Tinubu? Only Ambode knows.

But we can tell which category Ambode falls in depending on his reaction to Tinubu’s new quasi-presidential status. If he sends a congratulatory message to his former godfather, it would indicate that he is happy at the latter’s emergence as President-elect.

However, if Ambode remains aloof and makes no move to celebrate Tinubu, that would suggest to observers that he is holding a grudge.

What will be the outcome of all of these calculations? Will Ambode congratulate Tinubu or not? We shall see.

How Unique Motors Boss, Adebiyi Adeshina, is Changing the Face of Auto Business in Nigeria with New Ambassadors It is always a thing of joy when a businessperson takes initiative to redefine the scope of their business and expand it.

This is one of the many things that Unique Motors and its founder, Adebiyi Adeshina, are known for. Recently, the leading automobile business stirred the nest of the industry when it gathered two young talents and made them ambassadors.

Social media is still agog with the news that Unique Motors boss, Adeshina, has given a chance for two Nigerians to shine even more as the ambassadors of his automobile company. The individuals in question do not need an introduction as they are well-known across Nigeria: Chinenyenwa Desire Okoebor and Habeeb Okikiola. And if those names are unfamiliar, how about Chichi and Portable?

Adeshina has given social media fanatics things to talk about in the last couple of years, especially with his Unique Motors becoming more and more prominent in the auto

industry. However, he really made a show of strength this time when he got BBN superstar Chichi and singer/songwriter Portable (also known as Dr. Zeh) to be his ambassadors. The two are joining a long line of popular celebrities who have also helped Unique Motors prove its worth across different industries, especially the entertainment industry.

Some of the most popular Unique Motors ambassadors include comedian Cute Abiola and Nollywood sensation Femi Adebayo. With Chichi and Portable joining the Unique Motors gang, Adeshina is destined to see the peak of the auto business in Nigeria. Then again, his innate nobility and social standing already let him see further than his peers.

Overall, Adeshina is proving time and again that he is matchless in the auto business. Even as he continues to add new celebrities to his ambassadorial retinue, Unique Motors is getting more and more established.

Adeshina

What a Week for Senator Bukola Saraki Life has been described as many things and in many ways, but few individuals have been able to boast about their having a handle on life.

Senator Bukola Saraki is not one of these people. Despite his expansive political influence and evident depth of understanding, not even he is able to defend himself against circumstances. The present is proof of Saraki’s helplessness in the face of life.

The end of February 2023 and the start of March proved to be a difficult trial for Senator Saraki, the glorious former president of the Nigerian Senate. The presidential elections proved to be a bit too much for him, as did the National Assembly polls.

Even more momentous was the health condition of a dear friend of his who eventually succumbed to the summons of the other life and passed away.

The dear friend of the former Senate President that passed away is the renowned auto dealer and Chairman of Lanre Shittu Motors, Lanre Shittu. According to reports, Shittu passed away on Monday, February 27, 2023, at the age of 65.

Moreover, he celebrated his 65th birthday just a few weeks prior. Thus, it was a painful loss for his relatives and friends, including Saraki who attended his burial.

Saraki also lost the opportunity to deliver Kwara State to the hands of his presidential candidate, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar. Atiku lost Kwara to the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Tinubu who got 263,572 votes as opposed to Atiku’s 136,909 votes.

As if that is not enough, Saraki’s party also lost the National Assembly elections in Kwara Central senatorial district to APC’s Salihu Mustapha.

With 109,823 votes, Mustapha pulled the power from under PDP’s Bolaji Abdullahi who got 69,202 votes.

Clearly, Saraki’s influence in Kwara as a whole and Kwara Central, in particular, is waning. Thus, things are not looking great for him and the seeds of sadness and frustration all emerged against him successively.

Will Jack-Rich Get an Appointment?

Jack-Rich

Politics is a complex game, like a maze with many twists and turns. Those inside this maze are never really sure what the end will be, but they have to trust in something. For popular politician and President/Founder of Belemaoil Producing Limited, Tein Jack-Rich, the source of political confidence and assurance of ultimate victory at the end of the maze is the President-elect, Bola Tinubu. But how well will this play out for Jack-Rich?

With people like Jack-Rich who have given their best for Tinubu to win, many Nigerians are wondering if there are good things in store for them.

It has to be said that Jack-Rich is a staunch APC member. Despite standing out during the party’s primary as a presidential aspirant, he did not hesitate to throw his weight behind Tinubu when the latter won

the primary. Unlike many others, Jack-Rich was more loyal to the party than to popular opinion and social conscience. Thus, during the campaigns, he also demonstrated his respect for Tinubu.

As many would recall, Jack-Rich, who was a frontline member of the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) from Rivers State, was among the first people to assert their loyalty to Tinubu. Jack-Rich went so far as donating his campaign office to Tinubu for the marketing of the latter’s presidential ambition in Rivers. He was also among the first people to congratulate the Presidentelect on his victory at the polls.

Based on all of these things, Jack-Rich is the center of attention. Nigerians are wondering if Tinubu has something specific in mind for him. Then again, time will tell.

Saraki

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R ˾MARCH 12, 2023

LOUD WHISPERS

with JOSEPH EDGAR (09095325791)

Seun Kuti: My Lagos, Our Lagos, Their Lagos

This is one very sensitive debate. Before you jump in, I suggest you wear a crash helmet and protective gear otherwise, you may come out needing the attention of an orthopedic surgeon.

Anytime there is an election, this debate

comes to the fore. Proponents will start shouting, ‘Lagos is a no man’s land, Lagos is owned by the Aworis, Lagos is owned by the Igbos, and all sorts. It is only the Ibibios that have not jumped in to stake a claim to Lagos. The Binis, Tivs, Ijebus, and even Zango Kataf have all come out to stake a claim to this dazzling pearl where people still sit on the bridge to ‘poo poo’ into the lagoon.

Apart from providing very powerful infrastructure for those who like to commit suicide, Lagos also provides so many things for so many people. The yahoo-yahoo boys find sanctuary in its bowels, the drug lords find a huge and growing market and the call-girls will never exchange it for Dubai.

This is its attractiveness. Lagos is our own Hollywood, New York and Paris depending on which side of the city that you live and love.

Anyways, the Oba of Lagos, the very wellrespected Oba Akiolu is the one that has made the most resounding claim to Lagos and rightly so. He is the King and most recognised of all the kings that litter every street and cranny of the state.

He is the one that was reported to have said that any ‘Igbo’ who will not stand in line will be pushed to the lagoon. This can only come from he who owns it all.

The funniest claim is that of the Igbos. This funny lot, because they have carved out market colonies, simply think that they can ‘own’ Lagos. From Oyingbo Honda Market, to Ladipo Spare Parts market and from Ajegunle down to Aspamanda and Alaba, they have taken over completely and this now gives them the right to claim a ‘no man’s land’ status in Lagos as if they are the United Nations.

Then the rest of Yoruba land will shout in different Yoruba dialects- Lagos is part of Yoruba land. The cry became more strident when Dangote built the refinery and Sanwo-Olu declared open the deepsea port and MC Oluomo started wearing clean uniform. Lagos is Yoruba land and belongs to Yoruba people. Meaning that all Yoruba from Ilorin down to the Marina, yes that area around CMS bus stop, belongs to the Egbe Omo Oduduwa.

Just as the debate was reaching its crescendo, my bald-headed friend Seun Kuti raised his head and kuku just scattered the whole thing. ‘Lagos is owned by the Portuguese,’ he claims. Na who name am get am, he railed. “Why Ibadan no get Portuguese name?” he asked with red eyes and bulging muscles as the smoke he was inhaling hit a chord in his whittled

down brain. “Yesssss”, he continued feeling like Einstein. “Na Portuguese get Lagos so make all of una go siddon and anybody wey no gree, make he come Shrine make we fight,” he concluded.

My people, the debate rages on o. That was how I was being interviewed on live TV and the very beautiful presenter in short skirt with her lovely thighs exposed and with me staring at the thighs, hoping to get her number after the interview, just asked me question of the century: “Mr. Duke of Shomolu, who owns Lagos?”

I looked at this ‘small girl’, looked at her cameraman, looked at the make-up artist and stood up, removed the microphone and just walked away on live TV. I did not stop walking till I reached Shomolu.

Stupid girl. I should come and answer, me that I am still paying house rent; me that my children still dey school; me that I don’t pay tenement rate, I should come and join debate that will see me living in a Canoe at Makoko, I no answer o.

But secretly let me just tell you guys, if you promise to keep it a secret. Well, I think it is people from Iragbiji that owns Lagos o. But if you ask me in public, I will not answer you o. Kai!

Yakubu

Buhari

Kwam 1

George

PROF MAHMOOD YAKUBU AS AN EMINENT PERSONALITY The first time I ever came across this eminent personality was during his interview at Chatham House in London.

I was not there o but watched it on ARISE TV. There was something about his big head and the way he shaved which left no bumps that made me not really trust him. The way he was doing head like a comedian but with a serious look, made me start to fear for the elections.

My people, I was correct. This man cannot even conduct a free and fair election in the smallest brothel in Shomolu. His BVAS will not work. How person can still stand proudly and be talking after superintending the worst ever election exercise in the history of mankind, beats me. Where them pull this one come from?

Professor of wetin him be sef? Sad thing is that, in the very before of our eyes, he is sitting there on live TV announcing some very funny results and daring people to go to court with the confidence of an Italian mobster. I never see this kind one before o.

Everybody, even my dead mother knows that this whole exercise was a fiasco and shame no let the man to even resign and say, “guys I don try, this thing don pass me,” but instead he is still riding the tail of this lion that has been infected with

Gonorrhea very proudly like a truly tested warrior.

This is really sad. What legacy, what kind of history has he created for himself and his generation. This was really a sad occurrence. This election simply just worsened our matter. Kai.

Even when the Naira fiasco and the fuel wahala started and you reached out in a panic, I said, “Lord forget about it, let’s focus,” the elections will wipe out all that bad dreams.

But see what your brother has done. He has thrown up the worst ever election since Saddam Hussain made himself the sole candidate for election in all of Iraq. What will the history books now say about you? These elections have not given us the massive platform to say a last big hurray as we leave the stage.

As I woke up this morning, I just thought of you and pity ran through my veins and that is why I thought of reaching out to you. How are you, my friend? I hope you are not taking this whole thing too bad? It is well my brother, don’t think of it too much. You tried your best. You released billions, went on the campaign trail, did not intervene in the process and tried very hard to be a statesman on the matter.

This cannot be your fault. This sham cannot be your fault. But then again, the bulk stops at your table and it is your legacy that will be thrown up when history passes judgment. This can be a very heavy yoke, but don’t worry, when that time comes, we will appeal or throw Uncle Lai Mohammed on the matter. So don’t worry.

The most important thing is that at least if for nothing else, you have countered Chief Obasanjo’s record of being a military dictator and two-term civilian president. I suspect that this is why he doesn’t like you.

It is well my brother, don’t think too much about it because of your blood pressure. We don’t want you falling sick and people will start calling you Jibril again. Take it slowly, you did your best. It just wasn’t good enough.

It is well. Later my guy. Kai!

Kuti

PRESIDENT BUHARI, HOW ARE YOU FEELING? My brother, I thought of reaching out to you this morning. How are you feeling? I hope you are seeing all the carnage going on as a result of this fiasco we have called an election. As we discussed, it was your legacy these elections were all about.

Remember I had mentioned to you during our last discussion at the Hague that since the only thing you can count as any real achievement these last eight years was the capture of Nnamdi Kanu, we needed to strengthen that with a very powerful action and we zeroed in on the elections.

You had agreed that a free and fair election that would throw up a very popular President-elect was the only thing that would make Nigerians forgive you.

You saw reasons o and swore to ensure credible elections before we ate that evening. You even swore that even if it meant you sacrificing your last cows, you will ensure that we have credible elections and I believed you.

BODE GEORGE, WHEN ARE WE LEAVING? Baba at close to 100 years had said emphatically that he would go on self-exile in the event of a Tinubu victory. Well Prof INEC has made the possibility of a geriatric exile very real.

He has announced his archenemy President-elect and people are reminding Chief George of his pledge.

Chief George being an honourable retired Naval officer has been reported to have reenergised his pledge. He had said that the plans were still very warm and that he would still go on exile. Well, isn’t he lucky? All these court cases will give him some time to clear his affairs and plan very well his exile because he must go o.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R ˾MARCH 12, 2023 The Baba was not strategic in his statements and I just laughed. He cannot be like Baba OBJ who rather than say he will go on exile, stood in front of TV cameras to tear the photocopy of his PDP ID card. Baba left the original just in case, because in Nigeria you never know these things.

Instead of our Daddy to pledge with sense, he just say he dey go exile over a Jagaban who is so crafty that even a newly minted baby at Island Maternity will suspect that any which way o, this Baba from Iragbiji will not carry last in this race.

Well anyways, Chief George will just have to go. My advice is that he has to be careful which country he will be spending his last days in. He should not go to Brazil; the naked samba girls will give him cardiac arrest. He should not try South Africa. Those ones don’t know the difference between Igbo man and a retired Yoruba politician. As far as they are concerned na all the same, and gbam tyre on your neck.

His best bet is to go to Cotonou. He will still get ‘ewa egoyin’, he will still get access to his juju man and very importantly, he can be sneaking in and out of Lagos without our notice.

Lord, when can I come and help you pack? You must go o. We are tired of failed pledges. Be a leader.

BLESSING ADENIRAN: HOW DO YOU BURY A CHILD? Let me first send a heartfelt apology to you, my sister. I had penned a very touching ode on the back of the burial of your very beautiful daughter, Whitney.

Immediately I pushed it out, my brother Yemi Shodimu reached me: “Oh Edgar, this is very sad. She is a neighbour.”

The next minute, I saw a blog carry my write up and without really acknowledging me. They had culled the write up from one ‘Bami’ on Instagram.

I fired. I no dey waste time o my sister.

I fired. I called both Bami and the blog kleptomaniac. Remember that the Guardian of UK was reported to have called a certain President-elect that name so the word was still in my head.

Only for people to start calling me to say that ‘Bami’ was the mother of the poor child. Shame catch me o. I was really ashamed and did not know how to pull back. So here am I saying sorry to you in public. Please forgive me if you saw the write up. No vex.

But seriously, how do you bury a child?

I saw you at the grave side and felt your pain. I cried with you o. I really cried with you. The tears cascading down your pretty face and the dark glasses hiding the pain in your eyes from the world. You screamed our screams. We parents are together with you.

How can you take your child to the interhouse sport and bring back her corpse?

How on earth are we expected to give a rational explanation for this kind of thing?

My sister, only Jehovah can console you.

Only the Lord of hosts can give you the strength to bear this magnitude of loss.

It is too heavy for any one person to carry and this is why we parents are all standing by you and carrying the weight with you.

Kai! Tears as I write... no consolation.

Nothing can numb this pain so we cry.

Let’s cry mummy. Kai! KWAM 1, HOPE NO PROBLEM? If you grew up in Shomolu, there is no way you will not know Kwam 1. Forget that he has changed his name so many times, the Wasiu Ayinde Marshal that we all know cannot change in our very eyes.

As a young boy in Shomolu, I used to sit in my mother’s little chemist shop and watch this fine young man with the gold tooth come and sit down at the next door printing shop with his good friend Kunle Atoyebe . They will be chewing roasted corn and coconut and asking my mother who they all fondly call, ‘Mama Calabar’ to join them.

Me I will be telling my mother in Calabar not to mind them o, before I go and get a linen wearing and non-English speaking fuji singer as step father. Kai! KWAM 1 has come a long way in Nigerian music. He is a pillar and has attained the kind of longevity most artists can only pray for. He has fine tuned the

strategy of morphing and reinventing himself hence his continued relevance on the scene.

We no longer hear of his contemporaries and when they come on stage, look like caricatures but KWAM 1 still retains his

elegance and essence and I want to believe that his penchant to be with some of the most beautiful women is part of his success story.

His new wife is a wonder. Kai! Come and see how beautiful a woman can

BOLA TINUBU, IT’S RAINING LAWYERS

Tinubu

Oga is wallowing in a leprous victory, receiving all sorts of guests and even visiting red socks-wearing Tony Elumelu who kuku use the opportunity to do ‘content’ for his very robust reality TV show on Instagram – here is Tony!!!

While Oga is wallowing in his very funny victory, rain is falling outside o. Atiku has hired 19 lawyers, all SAN, Obi has hired his own 18, all SAN and daddy himself has hired 49 with my favourite lawyer, Chief Wole Olanipekun, heading the team.

Now everybody na lawyer. Water don pass garri as my Warri friends say it.

Everybody is going to court which is a good thing and has shown just how much we have matured as a people.

Before, with this kind thing, na sorrow, tears and blood that we will be seeing on the streets. I thank God so much that we are now a matured people and this could go straight to the maturity that has been shown by the aggrieved candidates. I thank them.

Unlike their predecessors who swore that there will be ‘blood of baboons’ on the streets, these ones have decided to go to court. Even Atiku wore all black and did a Sowore by leading a peaceful protest to the INEC building where I heard that the eminent Professor on seeing the half-naked women Atiku brought, shouted Haram and ran into the loo.

So today, apart from being a POS and fuel attendant, the most critical and influential career you can wish for yourself is to be a lawyer. You can imagine how this situation has boosted growth in that sector. All stakeholders in that industry; from the tailor who is sewing the gown, to the

photocopying people near the court, to even the women selling ‘paranga’ around the premises, will be touched by this new largesse in the industry.

My only advice to the Presidentelect is that he should not go fall into my own mess with one bank like that. They had invited me for a job interview and later called me that I passed and I should come and do medical. I did medical o, the doctors tested me for everything and me, I kuku seized the opportunity to ask the man, that he should test my kini, that the thing does not stand like that again. After that, HR said I should choose which official car I would like between Pajero Jeep and Toyota Landcruiser. I chose the Pajero SUV because of the last chair at the back, which I felt would come in use when I want to have meetings with my young staff who have not met their target.

Anyways, that was how after like three weeks of going up and down including issuing me an ID card, they called me to say that the outgoing MD said: “I no be their material.” My people, that was how ‘Staff elect’ ended for me o.

So, my lord, tread softly on this President-elect matter. Receive low level visitors, never start work on the cabinet yet and yes you can say things like – your government will ban handouts in our universities – like I heard you pronounced but never put the seal of the president in your new jeep yet, and please don’t sew new cloth yet. Finally, don’t sell the Bourdilon house yet until all these court cases come to an end so we are not surprised o. Kai, President-elect of the world. Nigeria, we hail thee.

Shebi Kenyans are laughing at us now. Na wa o.

be. Her height, her gait, her carriage, her complexion and much more importantly, her eyes. Those eyes are so sexy. In Shomolu we used to call those kinds of eyes, ‘oloju come and do,’ and that is why to my surprise, when she leaned in to give the great KWAM 1 a kiss at his last birthday party, he pulled back.

Me, I shout for where I dey watch the thing o. How for the life of me would he pull back. Is it old age or will he need an intern to assist so that I can send in my CV? Anyways, I wish the great legend a happy birthday, many more fulfilled years and a continuous sweet relevance as he steadily releases those melodious fuji tunes that remind me of my childhood. Happy birthday egbon mi.

AYO ADERINWALE: THIS IS ‘JUSTRITE’ A lot of people don’t know this man but the few of us who know him remain blessed. A fountain of knowledge with a front row seat in the pantomime that is Nigeria’s political circus on the back of his very close relationship with Chief Obasanjo.

But today, I don’t want to talk about his political pedigree there but to congratulate him and his Madam for the wonderful stride that they have achieved with their JustRite Supermarket franchise.

Growing to over 17 outlets across Lagos, Ogun and Osun States, the retail familyowned department stores continue to provide jobs and other services to Nigerians.

The other day at his 60th birthday party which was held at the Federal Palace Hotel, I sat with my brother, Osagie and his very beautiful wife, Abiola OjoOsagie. You know say, if you see a lion in the afternoon something wants to happen.

I said to Biola, “what are you doing here?” She said, “Edgar, what are you doing here?” I told her that I am hungry so I branched to see if they have afang, but you and this your AfricInvest PE Firm, you cannot just come to Owambe for nothing. Something wants to happen oooo, tell me. She smiled and looked away.

So, I was not surprised, when I later saw the reports that her firm AfricInvest had invested in the expansion plans of JustRite. I was excited cos this partnership would lead to the aggressive push of the franchise towards getting a larger part of the market which will in turn mean more jobs for Nigerians.

Well-done guys, let me just say that I am especially very proud of you guys. Welldone.

CHRIS ROCK AND A SLAP FOR THE AGES If you watched last year’s Oscars you would have seen an angry Will Smith walk up the podium and give Mr. Rock the dirtiest slap in global TV history. Me, I first thought it was part of the show, you know how Americans can do anything for ratings and as such just kept watching without as much as wondering what just happened in front of a global audience.

It was real o. The slap was juicy and real. All sorts happened after that and the world moved on. Russia was killing people in Ukraine so why would we concentrate on two overfed fat black moguls going at themselves because of a woman. One year after, Chris Rock gets a first of its kind live show on Netflix and lays it in on Will Smith. Mbok, Will Smith and his wife suffered in his hands. This was his revenge. As he cannot fight, he used his mouth. Nothing was sparedmocking their adulterous situation, to calling Will ill-bred to coming back at Jada, this was a cowardly fight back.

The yellow sissy called Chris Rock simply just disgraced himself by hurling abuses at Will just because he was still pained. He wasn’t a gentleman about it and ended up messing himself further if you ask me.

As a man, if you slap me, I slap you back and we fight. If I beat you, fair, but if you beat me, I will shake you and go and bathe and move on.

Ask Gisorin the bully who gave me the beating of my life in Shomolu. I stood up from the gutter, vomited and thanked him and moved on. That is how men fight, not go on live TV one year after and be calling the other man’s wife ashawo. Shame Chris Rock. Shame.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R ˾MARCH 12, 2023

Adebayo Adeoye bayoolunla@gmail.com; 08054680651

SOCIETY WATCH

For Bola Shagaya, a Felicitous Moment

Soname

Kunle Soname Scores Another First There is no point repeating the fact that billionaire businessman, Kunle Soname is making great strides in all his numerous business interests.

Also, it won’t be an exaggeration if one describes him as one of the most successful sports business entrepreneurs in Africa. For the founder of Bet9ja, Nigeria’s number one online bookmaker company, he has shamed his detractors that earlier thought he couldn’t make success in the gaming business.

Soname has been able to nurture the business into a conglomerate.

One thing the Ogun State-born quiet achiever, who has recently dabbled into the aviation business with his ValueJet, has also enjoyed is scoring first. He has scored many firsts in the course of running his business, which we gathered he has done on many occasions. Soname has once again scored another first and crested his name in the minds of many across the nation.

Soname’s ValueJet recently became the first aircraft to berth at the newly constructed Ogun State Agro-cargo Airport in Ilishan-Remo, Ikenne Local Government of Ogun, which incidentally is the same local government Soname hails from. You can guess how delighted he was!

While the plane landed with its crew, it was given the popular water shower salute which marks its record-breaking move as the first airline to touch down at the airport with attendance from top industry players, government functionaries like Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Minister for Aviation Hadi Sirika and many royal fathers from the state.

Serial Contender, Segun Adewale’s Song of Lamentation Continues On the Lagos travel scene, the name Segun Adewale, popularly known as Aeroland, by virtue of his vast flourishing travel and tours agency, is not a name to be ignored.

But it seems the businessman is fast becoming a laughing stock among those that are conversant with his political odyssey. This is on account of his relentless ambition to clinch a political seat in either chamber of the National Assembly over the years.

Unfortunately, this ambition has never come to fruition having failed abysmally on the many occasions he has thrown his hat into the ring. Society Watch gathered that his political paths have been laced with more thorns than roses.

His sad tale would definitely make a good book as he has not been lucky with his aspirations since 2007 when he set his eyes on the political position.

The serial contender in 2007 and 2011 contested election into the state’s House of Assembly but lost, amidst allegations of rigging.

In 2015, he also contested election into the Senate under the Peoples’ Democratic Party, but he was defeated by Senator Adeola Solomon, fondly called Yayi.

His story took a more pitiful condition when he was sacked from the PDP as a factional chairman of the party loyal to Senator Ali Modu Sheriff.

Bola Shagaya is undoubtedly in a happy mood. Her disposition at the moment can be likened to the proverbial horse, which according to the Yorubas, would ride freely without any obstruction in the belly of the Kwara State business mogul. The quintessential woman is indeed on top of the world. The reason behind her joy? Her son, Muktar Shagaya, has made her cheerful.

The young man, in the February 25, 2023, presidential and National Assembly elections, won a seat in the House of Representatives to represent Ilorin West/Asa Federal Constituency.

All over the world, stories abound of successful businessmen and women who wish their children to follow in their footsteps for many reasons. However, those that know the billionaire businesswoman attest to the fact that she comes across as a liberal-minded individual who allows his children to choose their paths in life.

So when Muktar chose to go into politics, Shagaya never objected to his dream. She gave him her blessings, not without some words of wisdom though. Shagaya, to some extent, is not apolitical.

It was gathered that if there is anything that matters to her the most, it is the welfare of her children. They are her life project and indeed she instilled discipline, respect, patience and all the necessary features that make a man stand out in society including solid education and cultural discipline. She is also very protective of them like the mother hen and has ensured that the success of her children remains paramount to her at any time.

It was also gathered that the younger Shagaya, a man of action with few words, showed bravery and tenacity during the campaign period, not leveraging on his mother’s influence politically as he went all out to campaign vigorously in order to win his election.

Those within the federal constituency disclosed that his respectful nature, cerebral prowess, pedigree, oratory skills and exposure are qualities that attracted him to the electorates who promised to elect him as their representative. They are more than confident that the Shagayas are noble people who love development. So his emergence

Shagaya

as their representative, they chorused, will bring about rapid development.

Ifeanyi Ubah Surmounts Yet Another Hurdle

Ubah

Billionaire businessman and politician, Ifeanyi Ubah can indeed be described as someone who has been blessed by the Almighty God and he is grateful to his Creator.

But unknown to those who covet his successes, he has faced many challenges that would ordinarily consume even some so-called brave men. He is not new to battles though and is always with his battle gear.

Ubah has proved to his detractors that he is indeed a cat with nine lives. In other words, the more they try to bury him, the more he sprouts like a seed in a well-fertile land.

Though he is a lone fighter, he has proved beyond reasonable doubt that he is indeed a warrior, as he has always emerged victorious in all his legal battles so far.

The senator representing Anambra South in the upper legislative chamber once again was able to clear another hurdle when he won his way back to the National Assembly, beating his opponents in the elections described by our

source as the toughest in the area. Like the aphorism “The tougher the battle, the sweeter the victory,” Senator Ubah is currently basking in the euphoria of his victory.

Many would not forget in a hurry how he inflicted pain into the political careers of two political godfathers in Anambra state, Chris and Andy Uba. The Ubas will never forget him for the rest of their lives: he shockingly demystified them and made their political dynasty crumble before their very eyes.

Before he won his election to the National Assembly in 2019, it appeared that the oil magnate had been so unlucky politically.

He seemed to have hit a cul-de-sac in his political journey, which started from All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and has taken him to two other political parties, Labour Party and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).

Fashion Icon, Funmi Ajila-Ladipo, Hits Diamond Age Funmi Ajila-Ladipo’s face has many times in the past served as a reference point for the entire fashion industry in Nigeria, serving the industry in various human resource capacities. This has no doubt endeared her specially to many fashion designers/practitioners and fashion connoisseurs in and outside Nigeria.

She may not have pioneered the Nigerian fashion industry, but her role and impact in the industry are worthy of recognition, and her name deserves a special place in the history of the sector. The two-term former President of the Fashion Designers Association of Nigeria (FADAN) and CEO of Regalia By Fal, was able to connect a strong and abiding synergy between the earlier fashion designers and the newer generation, thereby creating a bridge that eventually birth a Nigerian fashion industry that today stands the test of time.

The fashion icon, perfectly blends a youthful beauty, style, grace and colours that her stitches perfect for her, that immerses her figure into being a model of models.

So when the fashion icon and glamorous woman stepped out last week for her 60th birthday, it was a perfect night for her as her friends also came out to share in her happy moment.

Married to an advertising guru, Rufai Ladipo, the woman of substance is not literally showing any sign of ending her romance with fashion design, a creative endeavour that has given her so much fame.

By all standards, she is a designer par excellence. The fair-complexioned woman, who hails from Ekiti State, is one of the few who have done the nation’s fashion industry proud. She launched her outfit, Regalia

Ajila-Ladipo

Couture, some decades ago, and she has trained and continues to inspire younger ones who love fashion design.

Extraordinary Philanthropic Nature of High Chief Ben Amuta

Amuta

“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver’’ - Maya Angelou.

If there is one man who enjoys giving and generosity, it is High Chief Ben Amuta,

the Executive Chairman, Beneks Group.

The Onowu Il of Umudioka, Dunukofia in Anambra State, is a man born with the heart of giving.

The reason is not far-fetched; his extraordinary philanthropic nature of educating children of the downtrodden in society can be described as numero uno. He does this through a foundation he started 20 years ago, the Chief Ben Amuta Educational Foundation.

The foundation, as gathered, covers bills of the indigent students from secondary, tertiary and up to master’s level.

It was disclosed that this extraordinary gesture has earned him honours and awards both at home and abroad.

The suave businessman has become a force to reckon with in society, while his popularity has continued to soar higher for his act of generosity.

The businessman, though not born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, he was able to rise above the adversity of life.

The Anambra State-born trained under his maternal uncle in the popular Onitsha market where he learnt a trade that exposed him in no small measure to diverse areas of businesses, including the importation and marketing of motor spare parts, cosmetics and exotic wines of choice. These vast and cultivated business traits gave him the leverage of traveling across the globe, including Europe, Asia, the UK, and the United States of America.

After all the successes recorded over the years, he never gave up on his dream of going back to school to seek more knowledge.

He enrolled as a student at the University of Lagos and graduated with honours in Business Administration. He further attended the prestigious Strategic Business School of Lagos. He currently holds an academic degree of Doctor of Business Administration American in Strategic Entrepreneurship and Leadership from the European – University.

This has given him more edge over some of his contemporaries.

THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER ˾ JUNE 24 2012

ARTS & REVIEW A

PUBLICATION

12. 3. 2023

Beyond Testing the Waters, An Artist Plods on For John Chichetam Okoronta, winning the Life in My City Art Festival’s overall first prize seems to be the validation he needs to forge ahead on a more fulfilling artistic career. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke writes

I

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EDITOR OKECHUKWU UWAEZUOKE/ okechukwu.uwaezuoke@thisdaylive.com

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THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER MARCH 12, 2023

INTERNATIONAL United States of Black Africa as a Desideratum: Morocco-Tunisian Saga as Catalyst

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frican Continent without the Maghrebin Region, Now a Desideratum: Morocco as an Agent Provocateur,”was the title of the Vie Internationale of Sunday, February 5, 2023. The column was written against the background of the US-led NATO policy consideration to use Morocco as a possible staging point in fighting Russia for invading Ukraine. The invasion, which Russia has described as‘special military intervention’ is on-going. The point was made that Morocco appeared to have been more of a centrifugal force, more of an agent of disunity and an agent of the West to foment trouble in Africa and undermine Nigeria’s national interest, particularly in the West African region.

Morocco had been used as a staging point for the Entebbe Raid against Idi Amin of Uganda who aided and abetted international terrorism. Even though the hijacking of an airplane in which there were many Israelis was very condemnable and for which there must not be any compromise, our point is the frequent choice of Morocco to be used for logistic assistance to launch attacks. Attention was also drawn to how Morocco began to undermine the OAU objectives of total decolonization with its open chair policy at the OAU meetings whenever the issue of independence of the Spanish Sahara was raised.

As if this Moroccan case was not enough, Tunisia, also of the Maghreb, added insult into injury with the policy declaration of its President, Kais Saied, who said, on February 21, 2023 that the black African migrants in his country were responsible for the insecurity and development setbacks inTunisia. He therefore orderedTunisian officials to take urgent measures to tackle irregular migration.Without doubt, there is absolutely nothing wrong in declaring unwanted irregular migrants.The truth however is that President Saied was more xenophobic and racist than the pretentious argument of insecurity.

As President Saied put it, there is a criminal plan aimed at altering ‘Tunisia’s demographic make-up to consider it solely African with no affiliation to the Arab or Islamic nations.’ More important, he said the influx of sub-Sahara African migrants must end. ‘The undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations,’ President Saied told the Tunisian National Security Council. This is the main reason why the making of a United States of Black Africa has become a desideratum and why the African leaders’Agenda 2063 should be redefined and put in the context of Africa of Black Africa.

AU and Tunisian Foreign Policy PresidentSaied’sforeignpolicycommentonallegedillegalmigrants raises many concerns for various reasons. First, like Morocco,Tunisia appears to be serving the interest of Italy and is being used as an instrument of protection of extra-African interest. For instance, Italy, in particular, wants Tunisia to stop migration into Italy by all means. This point is especially buttressed by the observation of Ben Amor who noted that‘Saieds’s comments about migrants showed he had obviously and totally caved in to pressure from the Italian authorities to stop the arrival of hordes of illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa,’President Saied, Ben Amor further contended, sees the immigrants as bringing‘violence, crime and unacceptable practices’to Tunisia (vide RFI reports of 22 February 2023;mhttp:// www.rfi.fr). In other words, if there had not been great pressure by Italy onTunisia, there would not have been any need for stating that Tunisia had‘obviously and totally caved in to pressure…’

What is most uninteresting in the comments of theTunisian leader is not the issue of illegality of immigration but the originating countries of the migrants which are sub-Saharan countries. Sub-Saharan Africa was specifically referred to by Tunisia and Italy. And true enough, in international politics, Africans have generally acquiesced to the classification of Africa into two using the Sahara desert as the factor.

This gave room to the existence of ‘below the Sahara desert and above the Sahara desert.’ Below the Sahara is synonymous with sub-Sahara, while the above the Sahara is synonymous with the Maghrebin countries. They are considered more developed and are also referred to as North African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, are located going by Article 1 (d) and 1(e)

VIE INTERNATIONALE with

Bola A. Akinterinwa Telephone : 0807-688-2846

e-mail: bolyttag@yahoo.com

Onyeama of the 1991 Abuja Treaty on establishment of an African Economic Community.

Explained differently, the target of President Saied’s comments is basically black Africa. But why are Italy and Tunisia against black African migrants? Following President Saied’s speech and order to his security officials to take‘urgent measures’to tackle irregular migration, there have been several attacks almost every day on black migrants. They are being kicked out by their landlords and are being physically assaulted. The situation has been so critical that even the migrants that have official residence permits, even the legitimate students with scholarships, have to quickly apply to their embassies for assistance in evacuating them from Tunisia.

The issue in this case is the conflict between the policy remark by the president and the policy implementation by the security agents. President Saied talked about illegal migrants against whom urgent measures were to be taken. In other words, only documented migrants should be allowed inTunisia. However, the implementation of the order was carried out as if the order was meant to place a blanket ban on black African migrants. Although the President might say one thing in the public and still give further directive on the implementation strategy discreetly, the problem for black African migrants remains the wickedness of xenophobic policies.

This is an international discrimination of the first order.

Reportedly, there are 21,000 purported illegal migrants inTunisia.

Immediately after President Saied’s order to the security agents to take necessary steps to curb migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the migrants were mercilessly dealt with as ordered, the Ivoirian Ambassador inTunis said 1,100 Ivoirians, out of a total of 7000, applied for urgent evacuation from Tunisia. Malians and Guineans similarly and promptly sought to be evacuated. In fact, Guineans have not only been evacuated, they have reportedly also reciprocated the Tunisian saga. The situational reality as of today is an Africa that is divided against itself, and seriously laying a foundation for deeper

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Based on these provisions, in which way is the containment of sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia consistent with the obligation to promote greater unity and solidarity in Africa? In which way does the Tunisia policy helpful to the acceleration of political and economic integration of Africa? In fact, development of Africa is to be sustained not simply at the level of economic, but also at the socio-cultural, levels. President Saied is very afraid of black African culture coming to pollute the Tunisian Arab culture. Did Tunisia not know when she signed the Constitutive Act of the AU? Was she induced into error of signing the Act? However, while major efforts are being made to sustain African unity, African growth and development, African security and African identity, very glaring efforts are also contrarily being made by Tunisia to dissociate itself from one Africa. Tunisia, like Egypt, presents itself as African in the morning, as Arab country in the afternoon, and indifferently in the evening. In the process, foreigners, as well as black Tunisians, are discriminated against even within Tunisia. Indeed, Tunisian policy is very inconsistent with the African Union’s efforts at continental unity and regional integration. It is therefore unacceptable to be preaching politico-economic African integration, on the one hand, and forcing out citizens of Member States of the African Union to which Morocco and Tunisia also belong, on the other.

The solution to this recidivist mistreatment of African Black migrants is the re-definition of Africa to carve out a United States of Black Africa.

animosity or hatred. Some migrants refer to Tunisians as‘very savage’and described their hatred as‘hatred without reason.’The other major concern is that there are Tunisians in various parts of Africa, particularly in West Africa and most of the immigrants in Tunisia are from the West African region. Should Tunisians be mistreated and similarly be declared personae non-grata in West Africa?

Fourthly, President Saied purports to be what he really is not.

President Saied, after a tête-à-tête with the Guinea Bissau leader and currentECOWASChairman,PresidentUmaroSissocoEmbalo,declared as follows:‘I am African and I am proud to be African?True enough he is an African but which African? He is Arab and Arabophone African who is anti-Black Africa so to say. He does not want the culture of the Arab African to be denatured by black African migrants. As such, he is not and cannot be a black African. Claiming to be simultaneously an Arab and a Black African can only give room to international cheating to borrow the idea of Professor Bolaji Akinwande Akinyemi, who once noted that gains and opportunities that are meant for Africa, and particularly black Africa, are often taken by others like the Arabophones. Morocco once applied to become a member of the European Community but to no avail. Another concern is the motivation behind Morocco’s application to become a member of the ECOWAS. Why? Morocco is in North Africa by OAU classification.

Each region of Africa is required to promote regional integration with the ultimate objective of harmonizing all the five regions’efforts for the purposes of continental integration. Whatever is the case, there is still a political lull over Morocco’s membership.

Today,Tunisians do not want sub-Saharan migrants in their country.

Under what contexts can Tunisians be compelled to accept what they are against? Non-acceptance of illegal immigrants is quite understandable as noted earlier above. If the action of President Saied is informed by illegality of migration, how do we also explain the mistreatment of blackTunisians? How do we explain those black Africans residing legally in Tunisia but preferring to return to their home countries? Why would students on scholarship and those in their last university year want to to be quickly evacuated from Tunisia? If sub-Saharan people are not wanted in any part of the world why should black people seek to impose themselves where they are not wanted? Where is the black dignity and self-respect if one is seeking self-imposition? The policy of regional integration should be largely predicated on mutual respect.

Fifthly, President Saied’s comment raises issues in international law and secondly, conflicts with the fundamental objectives of the AU. In the context of International Law,Tunisia is simply saying that she does not care about the sanctity of arguments. Besides, the mistreatment of non-white, seen by many scholars as an expression of racism per excellence, also raises many issues bothering on African regional unity and integration. Explained differently, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was established in 1963 with the ultimate objective of promoting African continental unity and development. For this main purpose of continental unity and development, the policy of accepting and sustaining the international borders inherited at the time of political independence, was adopted as a guiding rule of intra-African relations.

More interestingly, the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action meant to promote the economic development of Africa in the period 1980-2000 was not only adopted, the 1991 Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community was additionally done to harmonise national efforts at unity and integration. The belief was to promote national unity and integration as a first step to achieving continental unity.

This is precisely why the 1991 Abuja Treaty provides in its Article 1(d) and 1(e) for the re-classification of Africa as a continent of five regions, rather than accepting the United Nations’ consideration of Africa as a single region. This is also why the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was negotiated and adopted.

Towards the United States of Black Africa Every country, every sovereign state has distinct foreign policy objectives, which can be shared and conflicting. For example, as France is considered as Nigeria’s immediate neighbor by propinquity, Nigeria does not want any French influence in her immediate neighbourhood that will be detrimental to the protection of her own national interest. In the same vein, France is hostile to a Nigeria that will be capable of undermining French interests in Africa, in general, and in Nigeria’s immediate neighbor, in particular.

The focus of United States foreign policy is largely predicated on a set of quadrilateral pillars: the pillar of protection of the United States and its citizens and allies, especially in terms of self-preservation; the pillar of ensuring continual access to international resources and markets; the pillar of maintenance of balance of power in international politics; and the pillar of protection of human rights and democracy.

In many cases, the protection of these objectives can be by manu militari or by use of brute force.

Put differently, while balance of power may be of special interest to the United States, the same may not be true of small powers. In fact, the pursuit of democratic culture does not mean much for dictatorial regimes. It is against this background that the analysis and understanding of the mistreatment of landed immigrants in Tunisia should be carried out and understood. In this regard, what is the foreign policy attitude to Tunisia on migration? Why are landed immigrants considered personae non-grata inTunisia?The explanations will be helpful in understanding the desiderata for an Africa of Black people without the Arab world.

Read full article online - www.thisdaylive.com

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THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER MARCH 12 , 2023

CICERO

Editor: Ejiofor Alike SMS: 08066066268 email:ejiofor.alike@thisdaylive.com

IN THE ARENA

Is ‘Go to Court’ Wild Goose Chase for Justice?

With the inability of any presidential candidate who lost an election to upturn the victory of the winner since the advent of democracy in Nigeria, the winners who have become confident and boastful of securing favourable judgment have always dared the losers to go to court. Could this be a signal that the desired justice may not be given? Alex Enumah asks

W

ith the conclusion of the presidential election, the battle has shifted to the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja.

According to the results released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Senator Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) defeated 17 other candidates who took part in the election.

Expectedly, Atiku and Obi rejected the outcome of the contest and dragged Tinubu, INEC and the APC to the tribunal. The two candidates at separate press conferences in Abuja accused INEC of reneging on its promise to deliver transparent, free, fair and credible elections.

According to observers, voters and the opposition parties, the presidential poll was characterised by the disenfranchisement of voters, alleged rigging, violence, intimidation of voters, manipulation of results, under-supply of voting materials, late arrival of materials, and ballot box snatching, among other malpractices.

Despite these alleged irregularities, INEC announced the results and urged the aggrieved parties to approach the relevant courts.

What perhaps angered most Nigerians was the braggadocio with which INEC and members of the APC dismissed the complaints of the aggrieved political parties, asking them instead to “go to court” if they were not satisfied with the results.

For instance, in its response, the APC said it was prepared to meet Atiku and Obi in court. Its spokesman, Mr. Festus Keyamo, said Atiku’s decision to challenge the outcome of the results was welcome.

In a press statement, Keyamo said they were prepared to meet their challenge, no matter the nature of the challenge, anywhere and anytime. He added that Atiku firstly breached the zoning principle within his own party by insisting on running for president when that was clearly against the mood of the nation.

Also reacting to Obi’s claim, the Director of Media and Publicity of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Mr. Bayo Onanuga said his principal and party would be willing to engage the former Anambra State governor only if he had concrete evidence to prove he won the presidential election.

Onanuga argued that for Obi to claim victory in an election where the Labour Party candidate emerged third was “very weird”.

He said Obi, like every Nigerian, was entitled to seek redress in court provided he was convinced his team had evidence of the electoral fraud to present before the tribunal.

The idea of going to court was first mooted by INEC when it advised the aggrieved parties to challenge results in court.

Before the declaration of the winner of the election, the PDP agent, Senator Dino Melaye, and other party agents, had staged a walkout of the National Collation Centre in Abuja over INEC’s delay in uploading the presidential election results to the election

Ariwoola results viewing portal (IRev).

They also accused INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu of rigging the electoral process. The parties demanded that the presidential election be conducted afresh, saying it was not free and “far from being fair or transparent.”

But INEC asked the parties aggrieved to approach the court. In a statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the INEC chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, the commission said the call for Yakubu’s resignation was “misplaced”. He also said the allegation by Melaye that the INEC chairman allocated scores to parties was unfounded and irresponsible.

“The 2023 general election processes are in their final stages of completion. It is only fair for aggrieved parties to allow the conclusion of the process and approach the courts with their evidence to pursue their cases,” he said.

Many analysts have frowned at the “go to court” or “we will meet you” mantra which is fast gaining traction in the country each a crime is committed or there is deliberate violation or breach of the law.

Apart from the inability of the courts to nullify or upturn the victory of a winner of any presidential election in Nigeria, the judiciary has not acquitted itself well enough over the years to boost the confidence of the aggrieved candidates and their supporters.

While Atiku and Obi recalled a good history of the judiciary in their

political lives, political analysts have argued that the contemporary history of the judiciary can no longer affirm it.

Although the courts are said not to be sentimental and would only adjudicate in a case based on the submissions before them, certain judgments have only exposed the partiality of the judges.

This, perhaps, explains why many are not excited about the ‘let’s meet in court’ concept.

In Nigeria now, it is common to hear people daring anybody crying for justice to go to court. To these sets of people, because of the influence they command or their wealth, they feel that they can influence judges to deliver cases in their favour.

Whether in the Rotimi Amaechi or Governor Hope Uzodimma’s case, or the Senator Ahmad Lawan and Godswill Akpabio’s cases and many others, Nigerians have viewed many decisions of the courts with suspicion.

Though Atiku and Obi have gone to court, providing sufficient evidence to prove their allegations of malpractice is a different ball game, given the difficult challenges in proving allegations of fraud in election petitions.

Already, Obi’s quest to challenge Tinubu’s victory experienced its first setback on Wednesday when the Court of Appeal, Abuja turned down his request seeking to stop INEC from reconfiguring the BVAS equipment used for the conduct of the February 25 presidential election.

The court held that granting the request would jeopardise the electoral body in the conduct of the March 11 governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections.

Many analysts had argued that INEC wanted to use the March 18 elections to blackmail the court to accept its request. There are concerns that the electoral body may wipe off or tamper with the evidence in BVAS. The opposition parties were shocked that the court agreed with INEC’s assurance that the information on accreditation contained in the BVAS devices had been uploaded into its back up server and could be accessed at any time.

It was indeed surprising that the same INEC that gave Nigerians every assurance that it would use its improved technology to conduct the February 25, only to renege on the election day, could convince anyone that it had uploaded the relevant information into its back-up server.

Currently, many Nigerians feel that the greatest debt judicial officers owe the country is to make sure that an election rigger should not be allowed to answer the president of Nigeria. They said that since judicial officers live in the country with everybody, and hear and witness what happens in the society like every other person, it should inflame them to help the country to deliver justice that is clear to everybody, not technicalities.

The imperative of the country’s common survival compels the justices to assist in weeding out dead things and destructive politicians by the roots and quicken the growth of a new country.

P O L I T I CA L N OT E S

Lessons as Gov Yahaya Apologises to Christians

Uzodimma Yahaya

Afraid that the people of his state, particularly Christians, could vote against in the March 18 governorship election, Gombe State Governor, Muhammadu Yahaya, last week apologised to the Christian faithful in the state for all the wrongs he must have perpetrated against.

Yahaya, who is seeking re-election, tendered the apology during a meeting last week with leaders of the state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) at the Government House.

In 2021, Yahaya refused to announce Musa Maiyamba, a Christian who is also a graduate of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), as the new Mai (king) of the Tangale kingdom, despite being chosen by the kingmakers.

Following the claims that the governor was attempting to impose a Muslim on the kingdom,

CAN in the state called for a three-day fast and prayers. It also called on him to respect the wishes of the people.

Before then, the governor had refused to appoint a Christian, Justice Beatrice L. Iliya, as the state Chief Judge.

The name of Justice Iliya, who was most senior judge in the state judiciary, was on many occasions omitted from the lists submitted to the Nigeria Judicial Council (NJC) by the state because was a Christian.

Even when the NJC turned down the state’s Chief Judge’s nominee list over the omission of Justice Iliya, the state government refused to be bothered. Instead, it kept on appointing a Muslim as acting Chief Judge.

Even when the discrimination attracted widespread condemnation from all and sundry, the state government did not care.

Now that his re-election is here, the governor is desperate and running from pillar to post, seeking forgiveness.

Though speaking during the meeting, he did not say what he was apologising for, everybody at the meeting knew.

Instead, he said his administration might have made some errors. He added that as a human being who is capable of erring, he thought it wise to apologise and seek a fresh start.

While promising to do better in his second administration, he said the upcoming elections should be devoid of sentiments. He called on the Christian community to vote for him again for the sustainability of the development of the state.

The Christian community at the end of the meeting unanimously agreed to forgive the governor and pledged to work toward his reelection bid.This should serve as lesson to others.

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THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER MARCH 12 , 2023

BRIEFINGNOTES Ado Doguwa’s Many Troubles Barely 24 hours after the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Alhassan Ado Doguwa, was granted bail in the sum of N500 million over his alleged involvement in culpable homicide, illegal possession of firearms and breach of public peace, his reelection bid suffered fresh setback following the removal of his name from the list of House members-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission for allegedly forcing the electoral body to declare him as winner under duress, Ejiofor Alike writes

R

eprieve may have come the way of the embattled Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Alhassan Ado Doguwa last Monday when the Federal High Court in Kano, presided over by Justice Muhammad Yunusa, granted him bail in the sum of N500 million, but this could be the beginning of his problems.

The lawmaker representing Doguwa/Tudunwada Federal Constituency in Kano State was charged with culpable homicide, illegal possession of firearms and breach of public peace.

He was arrested last month by the police for his alleged role in the killing of several persons and burning of the secretariat of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) during the presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25.

The police had confirmed that at least three persons were killed when the campaign secretariat of the NNPP in Tudunwada was set ablaze.

In what his opponents described as his desperation to win his reelection bid to realise his ambition of emerging as the next speaker of the House, Doguwa was alleged to have personally led the thugs that set ablaze the NNPP secretariat.

Two persons were also reportedly burnt to death during the crisis that broke out during the collation of the results of Doguwa/Tudunwada House of Representatives’ election, in which Doguwa was eventually announced winner ‘under duress’.

The lawmaker, who was first elected into the House of Representatives in 1992 on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), returned to the Green Chamber in 2007 and has remained there since then, scheming to emerge as the next speaker in June.

He reportedly polled 39,732 votes to defeat the candidate of the NNPP, Yushau Salisu Abdullahi, who polled 34,798 votes, according to the Returning Officer, Professor Ibrahim Adamu Yakasai, who allegedly made the announcement under duress.

Following his alleged acts of violence during the last elections, Doguwa was taken to a Kano State Magistrate’s Court, where the magistrate, Ibrahim Yola, ordered his remand.

However, on Monday, Justice Yunusa granted him bail in the sum of N500 million.

Doguwa’s lawyer, Nuraini Jimoh (SAN), had told the court that his client was presumed to be innocent pursuant to the provisions of Section 35 (6) of the Constitution.

The court also ordered the lawmaker to drop his passport with the court registry, pending the conclusion of his trial.

He was also restrained from going to his constituency for the gubernatorial and state

Doguwa House Assembly elections.

His joy was however short-lived as indications emerged on Tuesday that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had removed his name from the list of the elected members of the House of Representatives.

INEC’s remark on the election result of Doguwa simply read: “Declaration made under duress.”

Doguwa’s alleged display of acts of thuggery and violence did not start on the day of the presidential and National Assembly elections.

Before the elections, THISDAY had in January reported his alleged acts of violence, but the security agencies turned a blind eye to his activities.

In a video that went viral, Doguwa, who spoke mainly in Hausa at a political rally in Kano, had threatened prospective voters to vote for the APC or be dealt with.

“To God who made me, on election day, you must vote for APC or we will deal with you.

“I’m saying it again: On election day you either

vote for APC, or we deal with you.

“Repeat after me, in Doguwa you either vote for APC or we deal with you,” he said.

But reacting to the outrage that greeted his threat, the lawmaker had claimed that his statement was not a threat but campaign rhetoric peculiar to Kano politics.

“Asking people to vote for APC or we deal with them simply means – like what you can call shenanigans, political brouhaha, which we make simply to ginger our supporters, to let them feel that we are on the ground and we will get it right,” he reportedly explained.

However, an amalgamation of dozens of groups under the aegis of Groups for Democracy wrote to Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State, kicking against the rumoured plan to make him the next speaker due to his alleged ignoble public conduct.

Doguwa was also dragged to court over the threat he issued.

The plaintiff, Oseyili Anenih, who filed the suit at the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court on December 20, 2022, said Doguwa’s ominous statement, which contravened Section 93 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, was “capable of causing threat, fear of use of force or threat in the minds of ordinary Nigerian electorate.”

The majority Leader had one month earlier allegedly attacked the deputy governorship candidate of the APC in Kano State, Murtala Garo, with a teacup during a meeting.

Though the lawmaker denied that he attacked Garo, the deputy governorship candidate had told BBC Hausa that the majority leader violently invaded a meeting at the deputy governor’s residence and made several “baseless accusations” against those in attendance, including the deputy governor, Nasiru Gawuna, who is also the party’s governorship candidate.

Garo alleged that the majority leader became violent and injured him with a teacup while he was trying to defend himself against some of the accusations.

He explained that Doguwa accused them of not inviting him because they were sharing money.

However, in his defence, Doguwa explained that he was in the meeting to find out why the federal lawmakers from the state were not invited but their colleagues at the state level were in attendance.

Doguwa said while he was asking the deputy governor, “this boy (Garo) responded by saying ‘so what if we did not invite you?’ He started abusing me in the process; he broke a teacup and slipped into it injuring himself.”

Contrary to what people are saying, I did not throw a teacup at him,” Doguwa reportedly told BBC Hausa.

Despite the alarm raised by an amalgamation of dozens of groups under the platform of Groups for Democracy for Doguwa to be called to order, the security agencies never invited him.

The Groups for Democracy wrote to Governor Ganduje urging him to call Doguwa to order.

The governor’s spokesperson, Mr. Abba Anwar, confirmed the letter by the Groups for Democracy.

He disclosed that the group noted that Doguwa was not the type of person needed as a Speaker of the House of Representatives.

“What transpired at the deputy governor’s residence, started by Hon. Doguwa is nothing but disrespectful to our governor’s choice of gubernatorial candidate and his running mate,” the letter added.

Despite the warning, Doguwa had remained untouchable until many people lost their lives on election day.

With all the criminal allegations hanging on his neck, his ambition to become the next speaker is in jeopardy.

NOTES FOR FILE

One Train Accident Too Many

Okhiria

Asofthetimeofwritingthisreport,sixpersonshadbeen confirmeddeadfromtheaccidentinvolvingatrainanda LagosStateGovernmentstaffbus,whichwasconveying workers to their offices.

TheaccidenttookplacelastThursdaybetweenShogunle andIkejaaxiswhenthestaffbusveeredintotherailtrack andwascrushedbyanoncomingtrain.Manypassengers wereinjuredintheaccidentandsomeweretakentothe trauma centre of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH).

SpeakingwithjournalistsatLASUTH,GovernorBabajide Sanwo-Olu,saidapartfromthetwovictimswhodiedon thespot,fourotherswereconfirmeddeadatthehospital.

Witnessesatthescenesaidthebuswasattemptingto crosstherailtrackwhentheoncomingtrainrammedinto it.The train reportedly dragged the bus from Shogunle

to the PWD area of Ikeja.

Assoonastheaccidenthappened,ManagingDirector oftheNigerianRailwayCorporation(NRC),FidetOkhiria, blamed it on the driver of the bus.

On his part, the Minister of Transportation, Mu’azu Sambohasdirectedanimmediateandfullinvestigation into the unfortunate.

AstatementbytheDirector,PressandPublicRelationsoftheministry,HenshawOgubike,notedthatthe ministersympathisedwiththevictimsoftheunfortunate incidentandprayedforthereposeofthesoulsofthose that died and quick recovery for the ones injured.

FormanyNigerians,thisisonetrainaccidenttoomany.

Anytimethereistrainaccident,itiseithercondolences orpassingtheblame.Thatiswhereitendsuntilanother accident happens.

Eachtimeithappens,nolessonislearnttoforestalla futureoccurrence.Nobodyisprosecutedfornegligence and nobody is ever sacked. Even the NRC would not swiftlymovetoputtrafficofficialstomanbusycrossingpointstoaddressthesituation.Lifemovesonasif nothing happened.

In Nigeria, there are a plethora of laws under which negligent government officials are supposed to be prosecuted. Even the so-called investigation mentioned by the Transportation Minister, Sambo was a mere semantics. Nothing came out from previous investigations.

In developed countries, issues like this is not usually swept under the carpet.While investigations are conducted, culprits are prosecuted as a deterrence.

This is usually not the case in Nigeria.

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CICERO/ISSUE

Biggest Losers in National Assembly Elections

From governors who wanted to retire to the National Assembly after their two tenures of eight years to the incumbent federal lawmakers that sought re-election, several prominent politicians lost their bids to go to the Senate and the House of Representatives in the February 25 elections, Udora Orizu reports

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any two-term governors and ranking members of the National Assembly could not realise their politicalambitionsintheFebruary 25 elections.

Some of the affected politicians in the South-east, some parts of the South-south and Lagos State, according to Premimu Times, lost due to the Peter Obi wave which swept across regions and redesigned the political landscape of Nigeria.

Others in the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost due to overconfidence and complacency. Below are some of the major victims Ifeanyi Ugwanyi Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State will not be going to the National Assembly this year as he was defeated in the senatorial election by Okechukwu Ezea of the Labour Party.

Ezea scored 104,492 votes to emerge as the Senator-elect for Enugu North Senatorial District.

Ugwuanyi polled 46,948 votes to return second.

The governor is a member of the rebellious G-5 governors.

The people of the senatorial zone were said to be unhappy that the governor who had earlier spent 12 years in the House of Representatives without bringing any dividend of democracy to Igbo Eze North/Udenu Federal Constituency, wanted to go to the senate after eight years in office as governor.

Okezie Ikpeazu Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State also lost his senatorial bid as he was defeated by former Minority Leader of the Senate, Eyinnanya Abaribe of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). Abaribe scored 49, 693 votes, while the governor had 28,422 votes to come third behind Labour Party (LP) candidate, Chinedu Onyeizu, who scored 43,903.

Ikpeazu, who is described by his opponents as the worst governor in the South-east, lost to the incumbent senator due to his poor performance.

Ben Ayade Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River lost his bid to the National Assembly on the platform of the APC as he was defeated by the incumbent senator for Cross River North, Jarigbe Agom-Jarigbe of the PDP. Ayade, who was in the Senate between 2011 and 2015, polled 56,595 votes against Jarigbe, who scored 76,145 votes.

Interestingly, Ayade was the only loser among his party’s three senatorial candidates in the state.

Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Aminu Masari, which led to his exit from the APC. Bala Ibn Na’Allah Another popular senator who lost his reelection bid is Bala Ibn Na’Allah of the APC. He lost to the PDP’s Garba Maidoki for Kebbi South Senatorial District.

Na’Allah got 70,785 while Maidoki polled 75,232 votes to clinch the seat.

Ugwanyi

Ayade

Ortom

Ikpeazu

Bagudu

Suswam

Samuel Ortom One of the most notable upsets in this election season was the loss of senatorial bid by Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State who is also a member of the G-5 governors.

Ortom, a PDP member, asked his supporters to vote for Peter Obi of the Labour Party, in protest against Atiku Abubakar. But in the Benue North West contest, Mr Ortom was defeated by Titus Zam of the APC despite risking his life to defend the people of the state against herdsmen for eight years .

Simon Lalong Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, is one other influential politician who failed in his bid to

Philip Aduda Another major upset in the election was the defeat of Philip Aduda, a four-time senator representing Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He defeated by Ireti Kingibe of the Labour Party (LP).

Kingibe scored 202,175 votes to emerge the winner, as against Aduda of the PDP who came second with 100,544 votes.

Senator Stella Oduah and Mrs. Ebele Obiano In Anambra North Senatorial District, two “heavyweights”—Stella Oduah of the PDP, who is the incumbent senator and the state’s former First Lady, Ebele Obiano of APGA, were swept away by Tony Nwoye of the Labour Party.

Nwoye, a former governorship candidate in the state, polled 94,779 votes to defeat Oduah who polled 50,146 votes and Obiano who scored 48,212 votes.

Oduah, a former Minister of Aviation, has been in the Senate since 2015, while Obiano exited the Government House with her husband last year.

Ndudi Elumelu TheMinorityLeaderoftheHouseofRepresentatives, who represents Anochia/Oshimili federal constituency of Delta State, Ndudi Elumelu was also defeated by the candidate of the Labour Party, Ngozie Okolie, who polled 53,879 votes to Elumelu’s 33,456 votes.

Lalong

Ishaku

Abubakar Bagudu The Kebbi State Governor, Abubakar Bagudu, lost to his estranged godfather and former governor of the state, Adamu Aliero in the contest for who was to represent Kebbi Central Senatorial district in the 10th assembly.

Aliero got 126,588 votes while the governor scored 92,389 votes.

Bagudu was in the Senate in 2008, while Aliero has been in the Senate since 2015.

Gabriel Suswam Former Governor of Benue State, Senator Gabriel Suswam of the PDP lost his bid to return to the Senate to Emmanuel Udende of the APC. Suswam, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) got 103,303 votes while Udende polled 141,405, to emerge Senator-elect for Benue North East senatorial zone.

Kabiru Gaya Former Governor of Kano State, Senator Kabiru Gaya’s 16 years reign in the Senate was ended by Kawu Sumaila, a former member of the House of Representatives.

Gaya, the candidate of the APC scored 192,518 votes but that was not enough to beat Kawu of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), who got 312,857 to emerge the representative of Kano South Senatorial district.

Nkeiruka Onyejeocha The Deputy ChiefWhip of the House of Representatives Mrs. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha also lost her re-election bid to the Labour Party candidate, Amobi Ogah.

Onyejeocha has been representing Isuikwuato/ Umunneochi Federal Constituency in Abia State since 2007. However, her 8,752 votes were less than the 11,822 votes scored by Ogah.

Abiodun Olujimi The Senator representing Ekiti South Senatorial, Mrs. Abiodun Olujimi also got swept away on 25 February.

TheformerSenateminorityleader,whopolled36,191, was defeated by a former newspaper catoonist, Yemi Adaramodu of the APC, who polled 63,189.

Al-Makura

Ekwunife

go to the National Assembly.

Lalong, who contested on the platform of the APC, scored 91,674 but was defeated by the PDP candidate, Napoleon Bali, who got 148,844.

Darius Ishaku Another upset is how the incumbent governor of Taraba State failed in his bid to secure the Taraba South senatorial seat under the PDP. He lost to David Jimkuta of the APC, who got 85,415 votes while Ishaku polled 45,708. Ishaku, who spent a lot of time outside the state, was also said to have performed poorly as governor.

Uche Ekwunife The Senator representing Anambra South also fell to the Obidient wave. However, she was defeated by a familiar opponent, Victor Umeh, the candidate of the Labour Party.

Umeh polled 103,608 votes while Dozie Nwankwo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) emerged as runner-up with 69,702 votes, leaving the incumbent in third position with 49,532 votes.

Ekwenife and Umeh’s rivalry go way back to 2015 when the two first fought for the senatorial seat. Ekwuenife won that first face-off and repeated the feat in 2019.

Tanko Al-Makura Former Nasarawa State Governor, Senator Tanko Al- Makura, lost his return bid to represent Nasarawa South on the platform of the APC. Makura, who had governed the state for two terms, scored 76,813 votes and lost to Mohammed Onawo of the PDP, who scored 93,064 total votes.

Ahmad Babba-Kaita Senator Ahmad Babba-Kaita’s loss of his senatorial seat was arguably the greatest shock in Katsina State due to his popularity. Babba-Kaita, who is representing the Katsina North on the platform of the PDP lost his reelection bid to Nasir Zangon-Daura of the APC. Babba-Kaita had a running battle with both President

Bashiru Ajibola Senator Bashiru Ajibola, a former university don and Senate’s spokesman, was also defeated in Osun State. In his case, he was a victim of Governor Ademola Adeleke’s growing influence in the politics of the state.

Governor Adeleke, whose election was nullified by the state governorship election petition tribunal, appears to be ready to show his opponents that he is in charge ahead of the determination of his appeal by the Court of Appeal.

Chinedum Orji Chinedum Orji, who is the Speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly and son of former governor of the state, SenatorTheodore Orji had a nightmarish experience on the election day as his quest to move to the National Assembly on the platform of the PDP was truncated by Obi Aguocha of the Labour Party.

Bankole Wellington (Banky W) The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Eti Osa Federal Constituency of Lagos State, Bankole Wellington once again lost his bid for a seat in the House of Representatives, this time around to a relatively unknown candidate of the Labour Party, Attah Thaddeus.

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CICERO/ISSUE

Gadzama

Ikpeazu

Olanipekun

Battle of Wits Looms as 89 SANs Slug it out at Presidential Election Tribunal This year’s Presidential Election Tribunal will be a legal milestone and an incredible battle of wits as the three leading political parties - Peoples Democratic Party, Labour Party, and the ruling All Progressives Congress hired a total of 89 Senior Advocates of Nigeria to take on their cases, Wale Igbintade writes

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he legal tussle between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP), and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) over the outcome of February 25 presidential election has taken a new dimension following a report that a combined team of 89 Senior Advocates of Nigeria have been engaged.

Sources within the camp of the warring political parties said that the array of legal luminaries, drawn from different chambers, are presently being furnished with materials that could be tendered as evidence in court.

The APC candidate, Bola Tinubu, was announced the winner of the keenly contested election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The former Lagos governor polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the LP flag-bearer, Peter Obi, who got 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes, respectively.

But Atiku and Obi rejected the results announced

by INEC, with each claiming at separate press conferences that the election was fraught with violence and massive rigging.

The drama took a twist penultimate Friday when the two major opposition candidates were reported to have approached the court to seek permission for the inspection of election materials used during the poll.

Few days later, Tinubu’s camp also sought the court permission to have access to examine the said electoral materials for the alleged illegality by the opposition.

Last Wednesday, Atiku’s camp announced that it had assembled 19 SANs to challenge the results of the poll.

While briefing his legal team at his campaign office in Abuja, the former vice president tasked them to “establish the claim of illegality in the February 25 presidential election and reclaim the mandate of the Nigerian people.”

He told the team that apart from reclaiming the mandate from those who undertook the electoral heist that was not a reflection of the will of Nigerians, the legal team should also use the opportunity of the trial to strengthen constitutional democracy in the country.

The team, led by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, JK Gadzama, has 18 other SANs. They include Chris Uche, Paul Usoro, Tayo Jegede, Ken Mozia, Mike Ozekhome, Mahmood Magaji, Joe Abraham, Chukwuma Umeh, Garba Tetengi and Emeka Etiaba.

Others are Chief Goddy Uche, Prof. Maxwell Gidado; the National Legal Adviser of the PDP, A. Ajibade, Mr. O. Atoyebi, Mrs. Nella Rabana, Paul Ogbole, Nuremi Jimoh, and Abdul Ibrahim.

Atiku’s Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, after the meeting, said, “Atiku raised a team of 19 Senior Advocates of Nigeria. You (Tinubu) claimed you won the election, yet you

gathered 50 lawyers; what are you gathering them for?”

“It is imperative that they work assiduously towards reclaiming the mandate, not necessarily because of him (Atiku) and the PDP, but to strengthen democracy and the electoral process and for generations unborn.”

With the latest move, the legal tussle now has 89 SANs, who are ready to outwit one another for their clients.

The National Secretary of Labour Party, Umar Farouk, said: “We have more than 20 SANs that are willing to participate and offer their services for the renewal and emergence of a new Nigeria. As I am talking to you, our lawyers are working on it.

“But this is not something we can discuss on the pages of a newspaper. All I can tell you is that we have started ‘trekking’ to the court,” he said.

However, information reaching THISDAY said the legal team would be led by Chief Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN).

As expected, the APC has expressed its readiness to defend its victory in court. On Tuesday, the ruling party also announced the appointment of a crack team of experienced lawyers to defend the President-elect.

The legal team consisted of 12 SANs and the National Legal Adviser of the party, Ahmad El-Marzuq.

In a statement titled “APC Appoints Presidential Election Petition Legal Team,” El-Marzuq said the legal luminaries were carefully selected based on their vast experience in election petition matters, constitutional law and litigation.

Their appointment was announced a few days after the Chief Spokesman for the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo, said Tinubu and his camp would not be intimidated by the legal threat of the opposition.

El-Marzuq also disclosed that the team of SANs would be led by Prince Lateef Fagbemi, a renowned lawyer, who has successfully handled various high-profile election matters and other landmark cases.

Others are Sam Ologunorisa, Murtala Abdulrasheed, Rotimi Ogunesom Olabisi Soyebo, Gboyega Oyebowale, Pius Akubo, Aliyu Saiki, Oluseye Opasanya, Tajudeen Oladoja, Kazeem Adeniyi and Suraju Saida.

But the APC Presidential Campaign Council disclosed that 12 SANs do not reflect all the legal team who volunteered to defend the Tinubu.

While speaking with one of our correspondents on Wednesday, the PCC Director of Media and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, revealed that as of the time of filing this report, the total number of legal luminaries on their side had risen to 50.

Onanuga also identified popular legal luminary, Wole Olaonipekun SAN, and the PCC counsel, Babatunde Ogala SAN, as leading the other pack of the APC team.

He said: “The earlier list released by the APC partially just reflects the lawyers who will be involved

in the case. It does not capture the full picture. I am aware, for instance, that Wole Olanipekun is the leader of the team. And of course, the man who has been representing Asiwaju all these while in the court, Babatunde Ogala, is also a member of the team.

“I am aware that what we have in the public arena is just a partial list. There is no conflict concerning it. But there is an ongoing move to harmonise the list as one. Altogether, I think there are about 50 of them in all.”

Section 134 of the Electoral Act, 2022 provides that a party who intends to challenge the process and or outcome of an election can do so on the following grounds: (a) A person whose election is questioned was, at the time of the election, not qualified to contest the election; (b) The election was invalid by reason of corrupt practices and non-compliance with the provisions of this Act; or (c) The respondent was not duly elected by the majority of the lawful votes cast at the election.

An election, according to Cornelius Gabriel of Olisa Agbakoba Legal (OAL), can be questioned on the grounds that it was invalid by reason of corrupt practices or non-compliance with the provisions of the Act. The Electoral Act, the Regulations and Guidelines for the conduct of Elections regulate the conduct of elections. This places a compulsory duty on INEC to adhere to the provisions of the above laws in order to have free, fair and credible elections and a breach of the Act and Guidelines has far-reaching consequences.

For instance, the failure of INEC to upload election results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV) in real-time using the BVAS, electoral violence, disenfranchisement of voters, intimidation, manipulation of election results, mutilation of result sheets etc are all incidents of corrupt practices and non-compliance, which the Electoral Act frowns at and are grounded upon which an election can be challenged.

The court in Iniama v Akpabio (2008) 17NWLR(pt.1116) 225; OKE V MIMIKO (2014) 12 NWLR (PT. 1388) 322, among others held that a petitioner who pleads corrupt practices and non-compliance with the Electoral Act must establish by evidence their effects on the outcome of the election. That is, for a petition to succeed under these grounds, it must be proven that there was non-compliance and that the non-compliance substantially affected the result of the election.

Interestingly, Section 137 of the Electoral Act, 2022 provides that it shall not be necessary for a party who alleges non-compliance with the provision of this Act for the conduct of elections to call oral evidence if the originals or certified true copies manifestly disclose the non-compliance alleged.

For a Petitioner to succeed on this ground the evidence adduced in support of the allegation should come directly from the officers who were on the field where the votes were counted and or collated.

This requires party agents from each polling unit where corrupt practices are alleged must be called to testify in court as evidence of a person who merely received the figures without being present is hearsay which is not admissible. The court is therefore not going to rely on the testimony of agents from other polling units or other wards.

The attitude of our courts has been to treat the testimony of agents from other polling units as hearsay evidence which is not admissible. See: Buhari v Obasanjo (2005) 13 NWLR (P. 941) Interestingly, the petitions filed this year will throw up new compliance issues that are a substantial departure from the decision in the case of Atiku Abubakar & Anor v INEC & Anor LER (2019) CA/ PEPC/002/2019. The compliance issues will be around the use of technology. Of note is the use of card readers, BVAS, and IREV. The Osun case of Oyetola and Anor v Adeleke & Anor is in this sense a prelude to this new era.

According to Sanctus Ejeh of OAL, any petitioner approaching the election petitions tribunal on grounds of non-compliance must not only ensure he puts together a formidable legal team that comprises experts in the use of technologies provided under the Electoral Act 2022, but must also be abreast with innovations introduced by some relevant sections of the 2022 Act. These innovations in the Electoral Act will be the game changers at the election petition tribunals. For instance, although the court was reluctant to grant an order of inspection of card readers in the case of Atiku Abubakar & Anor v INEC & Anor supra, with Section 47(2) of the new Act providing for mandatory use of BVAS, an all together different approach is anticipated from the court.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court in the extant case refused an order for inspection of INEC server on the basis that the Act did not make provision for a server. But a community reading of Section 60(5) of the 2022 Act and Article 38 of the Regulations and Guidelines for the conduct of Elections 2022 is expected to bring in a new dimension to the issue. Section 60 (5) provides: “The presiding officer shall transfer the results including total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot in a manner as prescribed by the commission.” It is in line with the power donated to INEC in the above section, that the commission released the Regulations and Guidelines for the conduct of Elections 2022. Clause 38 of the regulation provides: “the presiding officer shall electronically transmit or transfer the result of the polling unit, direct to the collation system as prescribed by the Commission; use the BVAS to upload a scanned copy of the EC8A to the IReV as prescribed by the commission.”

This Regulation as a subsidiary law is binding on INEC and all players in the election. Hence, substantial compliance with some of these innovations is expected to dominate proceedings at the election petition tribunals.

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THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER MARCH 12, 2023

ENGAGEMENTS

with ChidiAmuta e-mail:chidi.amuta@gmail.com

Return of the Tribesmen

I

n a bid to retain power beyond 2015, former president Goodluck Jonathan ran a campaign with a somewhat foolish and simplistic slogan: “Neighbour to Neighbour”. I believe the aim of it all was to emphasize the sense of communal good neighbourliness that had been the kernel of national unity among Nigerians of all hues over the decades.

With the benefit of hindsight, that tepid and colorless slogan served a useful purpose even if it did not deliver a continuation of the Jonathan presidency. It served to underline the essential sense of community and commonality of destiny that prevailed while Jonathan was at the villa. In every sense, the Jonathan presidency was a national gesture of goodwill in aid of fairness, equity and justice towards our Niger Delta kith and kin.

President Jonathan reciprocated that good gesture by handing to his successor a nation that was in tact and in which ”Neighbour to Neighbour” was an article of faith. Sadly, Mr. Buhari who inherited that united nation from Jonathan is about to hand his successor a more imperfect union.

For all his unrelenting political adventurism and rascality, former president Olusegun Obasanjo must be commended for engineering the political leadership selection process of his party to deliver that morally beneficial outcome of the Jonathan presidency. That outcome was strategically in the service of a nation troubled by selective injustice.

Even if Jonathan recorded no earth shaking breakthroughs as president, he at least remained faithful to the unity of a nation that gave him so much without caring about his humble and remote Ijaw beginnings.

Against this backdrop, the just concluded 2023 presidential election has beamed our best hopes and worst prospects. Take the good part first. Against a concrete wall of skepticism and cynicism, we will by next Saturday have gone through yet another series of elections, marking 24 unbroken years of democratic succession. With all the imperfections and anxieties, we can safely say that democracy has found a home and a future here.

However,the2023presidentialcontesthas also revealed something ugly about us which many thought had diminished. The unfolding outcome of the election process has exposed the return of rabid ethnocentrism in some parts of the nation. We are still, sadly, a deeply tribalistic society. In the media influential South-west, national discourse is currently bleeding profusely with all manner of ethnic myth making and unnecessary revisionist effusions. The outcome of a rather important presidential election is being reduced to spirited arguments about ethnicity and the ownership of parcels and portions of the Nigerian real estate. In fact, a new wave of toxic identity politics has signaled the return of a resistant strain of tribalism among many Nigerians including ,unfortunately, the highly educated and widely travelled elite.

It was foreseen and intrinsic in the very picture of this season’s contest for presidential ascendancy. The three front running candidates were an unconscious resurgence of Nigeria’s tripodal politics of ethnic preeminence. With a Yoruba Bola Tinubu, a Fulani Atiku Abubakar and an Igbo Peter Obi, the subterranean impulses that would drive the election and condition its outcome were very much predictable. At best, loyalty to party would trump primordial sentiments. At worst, partisan endorsements of each candidate would assume a regional ethnic appeal that could grow into a national appeal.

Since Obi and Tinubu are southerners, the familiar computation was that both of them would at best match up to an Atiku northern demographic predominance. The race would then become a north-south confrontation which would again be perfectly manageable and predictable. On the other hand, an outcome that pitted Peter Obi against Bola Tinubu as co-equal contenders would be a nasty political replay of the familiar contest of cultural superiority between Yorubas and Igbos. A modified Awolowo versus Azikiwe contest was a foreseeable scenario while

Tinubu

an Ahmadu Bello/Balewa duo of superior contestants look on.

In spite of his statistical second place score in the election result so far, the Atiku threat was more muted than Peter Obi’s disruptive presence. Atiku was important in this election mostly because the PDP as a party has a long standing footprint on the political landscape.

On the contrary, the Tinubu versus Obi contest though separated by nearly two million votes has turned out to be the more dominant and consequential contest of this last presidential election. By putting up such a valiant show of political clout, Mr. Peter Obi has come from a political nowhere to literally annoy the Gods of the Nigerian political status quo. His winning streak blazed a trajectory through unfamiliar territory to redefine the national political landscape. Peter Obi, in one breadth, unified the Igbos of the south east by sweeping all the five states of the zone. He has politically reconciled the Igbos and their immediate neighbours in the South-south states of Edo, Delta, Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Rivers states. His winning trajectory shot up northwards by taking the core middle belt states of Plateau, Nasarawa, and arguably Benue with significant inroads into Kaduna and Taraba states and parts of Adamawa.

To add to his national appeal, Mr. Obi swept the polls in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. Overall, the man won the election in 12 states, the same number as both Tinubu and Atiku.

By far the more troublesome and perhaps consequential outcome is Obi’s defeat of Bola Tinubu in Lagos state of all places. That outcome has turned out to be something of an act of political iconoclasm. For the Yoruba and Mr. Tinubu’s devotees, this would seem to be the most consequential outcome of the election. It does not matter wherever else Peter Obi and his disruptive Obidients won, the Lagos win is like an arrow in the heart of Hercules. On the positive side, it does confirm the cosmopolitan and truly national character of the demographics of Lagos as the nation’s melting pot and heartbeat. It is to the panNigerian demographics such as the one in Lagos that Obi’s message of a new Nigeria was targeted. Lagos heard him loud and clear.

The explanations are obvious. Lagos has a very national and cosmopolitan population.

As the economic nerve centre of the nation, Lagos is the centre of youth unemployment and ferment. It is the place where the most diverse population of youth and young at heart are gathered. As the home of multinational corporations and international business activity, the messaging of the Obidients resonates

most loudly in Lagos. More importantly, the message of the Labour Party and the Obidients appeals more to a detribalized Nigerian audience who are hungry for a better nation with a level playing field for economic competition and socio political equity.

Consequently, Igbos as Nigeria’s most economically mobile ethnic nationality though everywhere in the country are more abundant in Lagos which is to them a bursting market. With an affinity to trade, commerce and general enterprise, they have a sizeable population in Lagos and other urban and semi urban centres of economic activity both in Nigeria and along the West African coast.

What unites capitalism and democracy is that both thrive on a certain spatial expansiveness. They both emphasize the freedom of citizens to live and thrive anywhere in a given nation space. Both democracy and capitalism are underpinned by an inherent mobility of capital, labour, resources and persons in quest of an enabling environment. For profitability.

Wherever an enterprising people settle in pursuit of their enterprise, they feel a sense of belonging hence they establish factories, shops, schools, and build homes, raise their children and induct their families. Over time, the settler business communities begin to overwhelm their host environments and therefore alter the demographic profile of their new home. In every place where the business environment encourages diversity, there is always a demographic consequence. The settlers increase and multiply often at a rate faster than the indigenous population with obvious political consequences. The United States population has altered along these lines in the last thirty years with political consequences. Nonetheless, the settlers remain culturally distinct and pursue their political and economic interests through the political alignments they feel will enhance their interests.

Obi’s victory in the presidential election of February 25th in Lagos state is the product of first the appeal of his message to the youth and youthful majority of the state who cut across ethnic and religious divides. The single most visible other majority in his support base are the Igbo traders and urban youth. The rest are other Nigerians of diverse nationalities and faiths who are attracted to his message of an alternative to politics as usual.

Unfortunately, a devious political narrative has been floated in Lagos and parts of the south west that the Igbos are about to take over Lagos. It is further said that given their overwhelming vote for the Labour Party in the presidential election, the Igbos may be

plotting a takeover of Lagos from its Yoruba owners. In the course of this unhelpful narrative,ethnicsentiments haveflaredupbetween the Yorubas and the Igbo population in high density neighbourhoods of Lagos. Some acts of arson targeted at markets dominated by Igbo traders have been alleged. In general, there have been subtle threats to lives and property on both sides even by the elite. A climate of unspoken fear of something no one dares name currently hangs over Lagos in the run up to the governorship election next Saturday.

In the process, a whole needless debate about who “owns” Lagos has germinated once again. A great deal of this debate is being sponsored by mischievous political interests who are inspiring misguided traditional rulers. A governorship candidate of one of the parties has been compelled to go about Lagos proving that he is not of some non -Yoruba origin! All this is in spite of a constitutional guarantee of the right of every Nigerian and law abiding foreigner to live and invest anywhere in Nigeria without fear of discrimination or negative branding.

Frompointofviewofindigenousproprietary and cultural ownership, everyone knows who “owns” Lagos. There can be no argument or disputation about the right of the people in Isale Eko to assert their ownership rights over a substantial portion of the real estate called Lagos. This is perhaps in the same sense that American Indians of the United States or the Aboriginals or Australia have a right to claim ownership of both countries. It is through legislation that the rights of all indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands can be credibly protected in perpetuity. I am not aware that Nigeria or Lagos state has any such laws in place at the current time.

Because Lagos is growing at such a fast rate, a time will come soon when it will be difficult to identify who really is an original Lagosian. Because of that imminent reality, it may become necessary to begin contemplating creating special reserves for indigenes of Lagos. This may involve carving out protected lands in Lagos state where original Lagosians could be settled and where their values, institutions and norms may be preserved in perpetuity. In the absence of any such provision, what will obtain would be existing state and federal laws guided by the constitution.

Outside the existence of any such special legislation, the applicable law remains the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

That constitution grants to every Nigerian wherever they may be the right to reside in any part of the federation and assert the full rights of citizenship . And because Lagos is a cosmopolitan metropolis which is a home to persons of all nationalities both Nigerians and foreigners, the meaning of “ownership” is no longer governed by traditional cultural rights. In Lagos or New York or London or Brisbane or any other modern metropolis, individuals partake in the ownership of the city through the normal process of property acquisition or occupancy. You buy, lease or rent a piece of real estate in the city where you choose to live and that title deed or deed of lease confers on you a right of ownership to that part of the city. To that extent, every legitimate property owner, leasee or tenant in a city is to that extent part of the ownership of the city in question. For as long as such persons are in full compliance with the range of obligations and rights of citizenship, they become legitimate owners of the city or state of which it is part. As things stand, the owners of Eko Atlantic City now own the entire Atlantic beach of Lagos in perpetuity as far as the eye can see into the Atlantic shoreline.

Therefore, the near xenophobic reactions to the Obi electoral win in Lagos are wrong headed and mischievous. That win is not an ethnic affront on the proprietary and ancestral rights of the Yorubas as the indigenous population of Lagos. It is instead a political outcome which testifies to the growth of Nigerian democracy from an essentially ethnic driven expression to a reflection of the preferences of Nigerians wherever they may live.

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B AC K PAG E C O N T I N UAT I O N WHAT THE TAXI DRIVER TOLD ME are saying he doesn’t have a structure. If Obi becomes president today, you will see that all these things will stop. He will stop the states from coming to Abuja to collect allocations every month. He will tell them to go and generate the money they need and spend it as they want. Every governor will sit up and Nigeria will change.”

At this stage, I waded in again.

“Oga, Obi as president cannot stop any governor from having a convoy or collecting federation allocations. The president in a federal system under a democratic order has limited powers. He is not a military president. He cannot order any governor around. Every state is like a country on its own. I fear for Obi. The expectation is too much. People will ascribe to him the power he doesn’t have if he becomes president. If some things don’t change, they will start abusing him. I have been praying and hoping since 2003 that Obi would one day become president of Nigeria, but no one president can change this country all by himself. All the governors and council bosses must put in their shifts.”

Frank’s response was neat and close to perfect. I doffed my hat for him.

“I agree with you,” he said, calmly. He was back to the Frank that I met before boarding his taxi. “But there is something called leadership by example. If the governors see that Obi as the leader is doing things differently, they too will like to be like him.

They will fall in line.”

While I was still digesting his point (by the way, that is also my position, although I extend leadership beyond the president in my own arguments), he went a notch further.

“You will notice that Labour Party is no longer the same since Obi joined them. Many politicians who know that Obi is innocent (I guess he meant “honest”) are now joining the party. Before you know it, Labour Party will be running many states as a model.

They will gradually take over Nigeria. You will see a new Nigeria.”

I objected. Some of these guys were once in other parties. If they were bad before, joining LP won’t make them good. Changing parties doesn’t change character. But Frank had a good answer.

“But we the people that supported Labour will vote them out if they don’t perform.

They don’t have an option other than to perform because they know we are ready for them. We did not collect shishi to vote for Labour. Instead, we spent our own money,” he said, revealing that they plan to vote massively for Labour again in the Lagos governorship poll. With a sense of regret, he said he wished Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, the former governor of the state, had been brave enough to join the party when overtures were being made to him last year. “He was a good governor. He would have won hands down,” he said. “I thumb-printed Labour in all ballots without

knowing the candidates.”

I picked quite a lot from what the taxi driver told me. First, I remain thankful that people did not take to the streets after the results were announced. Frank said many things that could have led to violent protests. Obi’s supporters obviously believe everything they read on Twitter.

For instance, Frank alleged that the CBN sent a bullion van with the new naira notes to Tinubu’s house. An allegation does not have to be true to cause public disorder: the SAP riots of 1989 were sparked off by a magazine article that never was. The riots in the north in 2011, with 800 reported deaths, were fuelled by a conviction that Buhari won but INEC rigged in favour of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Second, based on the prevailing mood of his supporters, Obi should work actively to help Labour win as many states as possible in the governorship and house of assembly elections. In 2011, Buhari won 12 states in the presidential election but his party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC, now part of the APC), produced only one governor two weeks later. Based on his immense popularity in certain demographics, Buhari believed he won the presidential poll and was so upset by the outcome that he did not as much as lift a finger for CPC governorship candidates thereafter. Obi can learn a thing from this and leverage on his momentum so that his party can do well

in the state elections.

Third, there is clearly a genuine, organic and resolute “Obi-dient” movement, made up of Nigerians, home and abroad, who are fed up with the status quo. I could touch Frank’s passion. How Obi builds on this will be key to his political fortune. He should critically analyse the zones where he did not do well and develop a viable strategy. Jonathan became president in 2011 by winning 16 of the 17 southern states with big margins as well as seven of the 19 in the north. He scored at least 25 percent in 33 of the 36 states and FCT. Nobody has become president of Nigeria by winning only two northern states. And I say this without prejudice to Obi’s election petition and allegations of rigging.

In sum, it took Buhari 12 years to expand his “Buhariyya” movement beyond the core north. Obi need not wait that long. Buhari never got 25 percent in any southern state until 2015. Although his supporters really believed he won in 2011, it was not until he had mainstream allies outside his region and religion that his dream became a reality. He had been winning with comfortable margins in the north because of the organic following.

They saw him as an “innocent” man. But his famous 12 million votes were never enough to make him president until he penetrated the south through the south-west in 2015.

Tinubu too could not have won if he did not do well in the north. Lessons.

And Four Other Things…

TRAIN PAIN On Thursday, a train crushed a bus in Lagos state, leading to six deaths and leaving many with life-changing injuries. All because the driver reportedly failed to stop at the rail crossing. We were told other cars stopped, but the driver supposedly believed he could pull it through. He survived and is now in police custody, to be charged with manslaughter.

While we apply the law fully to serve as a deterrent, collisions are becoming worrisome: a similar accident happened in Abuja not too long ago. Government must put fail-safe mechanisms in place. And what happened to the good old barrier? We need a mixture of measures. Otherwise, the next collision is just waiting to happen. Predicable.

NEW CRIMINALS The ill-fated naira redesign policy is bringing out the criminal instincts of dishonourable Nigerians. With people now forced to use electronic means in the absence of the new currency, trust Nigerians to milk the shaky system. I was somewhere when someone used his card and said he had been debited but the vendor didn’t get any alert. It turned out the guy did not have sufficient funds but was trying to defraud the lady. Elsewhere, a colleague was debited twice by a PoS operator who claimed the transactions failed.

My colleague complained to her bank but was told the transactions were successful. We are clearly not ready for this but don’t care who suffers the pains. Cruel.

WASTING WOMEN On gender equity, Nigeria would score F9 any day. Some African countries, such as Senegal and Rwanda, are making remarkable progress, giving women up to 50 percent representation in cabinets and legislative bodies, but we continue to keep our own women down. I like to celebrate little wins, but the outcome of the national assembly elections was an unmitigated disservice to gender equity. It is not for lack of trying by our women, but the system is institutionally rigged against them.

I hope the incoming administration will do more to address this imbalance. Let it be said that we are not doing women a favour through inclusion — we are only making good use of our full strength. Fact.

UMPIRE GAMES The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is under heavy attack over the February 25 elections, particularly because of its failure to upload results electronically as it had consistently promised.

Although this did not break any law — a court has interpreted the Electoral Act to mean INEC has discretionary powers on the mode of transmission — the umpire could have done better with test-running the system and spotting and fixing possible hitches long ago.

Good enough, almost all the results from the over 176,000 polling units have been uploaded and interested Nigerians are downloading and doing the math by themselves to scrutinise what the umpire announced. Progress.

THREE EXCITING GUBER RACES OF MARCH 18TH Doherty of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), who is, by a country mile, the most experienced and most credentialed of the challengers.

However, and sadly too, what the candidates bring to the table is likely to be drowned out by two things: the rematch of the derby between Tinubu and the anti-Tinubu forces and the heavy undercurrent of primordial politics that the main contending sides cannot fully absolve themselves of. The whole country will keep a close watch on how things turn out in Lagos State on Saturday. Whatever happens, this is certain: there will be future iteration of the Lagos derby.

Adamawa: Unlike Lagos, Adamawa State has a recent history of swinging between parties. It was a PDP state from 1999 to 2015 when it moved to APC. By 2019, the state was back under the PDP umbrella. Adamawa is the home state of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate in the February 25th presidential election. Atiku won handsomely in Adamawa, polling 417, 611 votes, and securing 57.12% of the votes cast, his highest haul by percentage nationwide. Tinubu managed to scrape 25% with 182, 881 votes. This is a sharp contrast to 2019 when Atiku barely got ahead of the line with 412, 266 votes to President Muhammadu Buhari’s 377, 488.

In this electoral cycle, Atiku clearly enjoyed the homeboy advantage in Adamawa politics (where incidentally he was elected governor in 1999 but gave up the position to contest and serve as Vice President).

Atiku is not negatively perceived as running Adamawa as his fiefdom and his recent performance at the presidential poll should be a boon to the PDP gubernatorial candidate and the incumbent governor, Alhaji Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri. But things are a bit complicated in the state known as the Land of Beauty.

Fintiri, a former speaker of Adamawa’s House of Assembly who also served as acting governor of the state for three months in 2014, is facing a stiff challenge

L-R: Sanwo-Olu, Rhodes-Vivour and Adediran from Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed, the governorship candidate of APC. Senator Aishatu Binani, as she is more popularly known, was a member of the House of Representatives between 2011 and 2015 and has been the senator representing Adamawa Central Senatorial District since 2019. She is well resourced, amiable and popular, which puts her in good stead against Fintiri who many people in Adamawa are said not to be too hot on. Some of these people reportedly include ranking politicians in Fintiri’s PDP. There is a good chance that Senator Binani may become the first elected female governor in Nigeria. Incidentally, it was in neighbouring Taraba State that another woman came very close to achieving that feat. In 2015, late Senator Aisha Alhassan, popularly known as Mama Taraba, gave Arc. Ishaku Darius a good run in the election which was inconclusive at first and stretched into a re-run. Senator Alhassan challenged Darius’s victory at the election tribunal and was actually declared the winner by the tribunal but the decision was not sustained on appeal. There are some who still believe that Mama Taraba actually won but was not favoured by ethnic and religious factors in Taraba which do not apply in Senator Binani’s case in Adamawa. With

increasing decline in female representation in Nigerian politics, the keen contest in Adamawa has both political and gender implications. It is a race to watch.

Benue: Of the three states discussed here

today, Benue is the most probable to flip.

Tinubu defeated Obi by a mere 2,096 in the presidential poll while Atiku came a distant third. Tinubu secured this narrow but surprising victory on account of the soaring popularity of APC’s gubernatorial candidate, Fr. Hyacinth Alia, a Catholic priest, said to have been recruited by Senator George Akume, a former governor of the state and Tinubu’s ally. Fr. Alia, a force of nature in the current electoral cycle in Benue, ironically secured victory for a Muslim-Muslim ticket in a predominantly Christian northern state where religion was expected to be the major deciding factor.

The gubernatorial contest is likely to be a straight fight between Alia and Hon. Titus Uba, the current speaker of the Benue House of Assembly and candidate of the ruling PDP. The remarkable showing by LP in the presidential poll is likely to be overshadowed by local issues in the governorship election. Governor Samuel Ortom is unlikely to vote or campaign for

LP this time. Even Obi, LP’s presidential candidate, refused to ask for support for Hon. Hernam Hembe, LP’s governorship candidate in Benue. Also, if religion is available to be mobilised this time around, it can only be in the priest’s favour.

The APC candidate has survived three primaries within his own party. On Saturday, he will be up against the power of incumbency and some elements within his party. If he is able to pull it off, he would not only be returning Benue to the APC fold (Ortom was elected under APC in 2015) but would also become the second Catholic priest to be elected the governor of Benue State. The first was late Rev. Moses Adasu, who became the governor of the state in 1992 under the banner of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). *** The governorship contests in the three states highlighted here are by no means the only interesting races or the only ones that will be keenly contested or likely to be flipped. It will be exciting to see the effect of the Obi/LP momentum in the governorship races in Enugu State (where Obi polled 94% of the votes cast) and Abia State (where LP has a very strong candidate and secured 88% of the votes cast). Also of interest will be the governorship races in the K-states (Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, and Kebbi) of the North West where the opposition parties won the presidential poll despite APC being the ruling party in the states. Sokoto State, where PDP, has been hanging by a thread, should also be of interest.

There is Delta State where Senator Ovie Omo-Agege of APC, with backing from an unusual quarter, looks poised to give Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori of the incumbent PDP a good run for his money. And then, there is Oyo State where Mr. Seyi Makinde, the only G-5 governor up for re-election, has a major battle on his hands especially from the APC that he did not actively work against on 25th February. For sure, the political map of the states will be redrawn next weekend. What is not clear now is by how much.

SUNDAY MARCH 12, 2023 • T H I S D AY

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Sunday 12 March, 2023

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UT H

& RE A S O

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Price: N400

MISSILE

NNPP to INEC

87 +

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1

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“INEC should allow the parties run their affairs the way they like. It would have been a different issue if we did not conduct another primary to replace Shekarau.”– The New Nigeria People’s Party asking INEC to allow political parties run their affairs while it concentrates on electoral management.

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SIMONKOLAWOLE SIMONKOLAWOLELIVE!

simon.kolawole@thisdaylive.com, sms: 0805 500 1961

What the Taxi Driver Told Me

W

ith five Bolt drivers cancelling on me (they are, after all, never reliable), I opted for the taxi at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos. The driver, whom I will simply call Frank, was softspoken and friendly, so much so I did not haggle when he told me the fare was N7,000. I asked him why it was that expensive and he mumbled something about the airport charges which have gone up “despite the hardship in the land”. He said he had to pay N1,000 at the park.

I like to pick the brain of the average Nigerian to get a grasp of the view from the streets, so I was very eager to hear Frank’s takes on some of the developments around us.

The first thing he told me was the suffering caused by the naira redesign. As I expressed my sympathies on the sufferings slammed on Nigerians by the policy, I could see Frank go up in flames of anger.

“They said they did it so that Tinubu would not win the presidential election,” he said, almost shouting. “So why did [President Muhammadu] Buhari still allow them to rig the election?”

“You believe Buhari rigged the election for Tinubu?” I asked, as gently as I could.

“Well, if he didn’t want the election rigged,

Obi he could have stopped it,” he replied, still a bit agitated. “Peter Obi won this election.

It is very clear.”

“He won?” I asked timidly, given the emotions of the moment.

“Of course, he won! Everybody voted for Peter. Where I voted, all of us voted

for Peter! We voted, waited and heard the results. We called everywhere and it was the same thing.”

“In Lagos?” I needed to be sure.

“Not just Lagos, all over the country!”

“Including Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, Niger, Bauchi—” “Yes, everywhere! Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, youths — everybody voted for Labour, but INEC changed the figures. In Lagos, Obi beat Tinubu by over 500,000 votes but they reduced the margin to 10,000. It was the same thing everywhere. They were giving Obi’s votes to Tinubu and Tinubu’s votes to Obi!” Frank did not even reckon with Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, the PDP candidate, as if it was only Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Obi that slugged it out.

“You know what INEC did?” he asked, rhetorically. “They didn’t upload the results to their portal because they wanted to rig the election. They uploaded only national assembly.”

Frank, by the way, turned out to be more than an ordinary Nigerian. His English was, grammatically, more polished than much of what I read on Twitter. Even though he was talking at the top of his voice, it was not out of aggression. It was passion. I could feel his anger, pains and frustrations: he evidently

loves Nigeria profoundly and, just like me, wants the country to be better than this. As I would discover, he had lived in Austria and the UK for years before returning home.

He suddenly switched the topic of discussion — or so I thought. It was a detour.

“It is only in Nigeria that an immigration official in uniform would be pushing a trolley for a white man. What a shame! You can never see that abroad,” he said. He also hit out at the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the airport landlords. He didn’t know he was touching a raw nerve. I am the most pained Nigerian concerning the state of things at MMIA — whether it is the air conditioners that hardly work or the chaos right from undergoing immigration checks to picking your suitcases and exiting the airport. We are shaming ourselves before the whole world in the simplest of things. If we cannot run an airport decently and efficiently, how are we going to run a nuclear plant?

“We have too many norms that are not right,” Frank continued. “You will see a government official using a convoy of cars, with dozens of security men following him.

Do you know how much it costs to maintain them? It costs us billions. These are the norms that Obi wants to change. This is the structure in place that he wants to dismantle and they Continued on page 62

WAZIRIADIO POSTSCRIPT

Three Exciting Guber Races of March 18th

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t least 20 of the 28 governorship posts that are up for grabs on March 18th have a good chance of slipping out of the hands of the political parties in power in those states. This is a remarkable development because the unsafe seats constitute more than 70% of the governorship races at stake.

Most governorship seats used to be safe for the governors or their anointed or for the candidates of the ruling parties. It seems not anymore. As Bob Dylan reminded us: ‘The times they are a-changin.’

It is tempting to put this down to the yet uninterrogated shifts of the current electoral cycle. There is a bit of that, but there is also much more. The enhanced competition in the coming governorship races is due mostly to local dynamics (remember, all politics is local), the performance/gamble by the incumbent governors, the sheer force of the personalities in the races, the not-well-acknowledged difference that the introduction of technology is making in our elections, and the increasing maturity of our politics.

By my reckoning, a flip from one party to the another is likely in the governorship contests in all the seven states of the North

West, in all the three states of the South West that are not off-cycle, in three states in the South South, in three states in the North East, in two states in the South East, and in two states in the North Central.

While the political actors in these states are soaked in tension and political neutrals and plurality advocates are enjoying the high-octane political theatre, the security forces need to be on high alert about potential threats to public order during and after the polls.

Today, I will focus on three of the more than 20 governorship races that I think will be keenly contested. I picked the three based on the multiple factors at play.

The three are the gubernatorial races in Lagos, Adamawa, Benue states.

Lagos: Since 1999, Lagos State has been governed by the same party or its earlier incarnations (from Alliance for Democracy, AD, to Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, to All Progressives Congress, APC). But that is a charitable way of putting it.

Another, and more popular, version is that Nigeria’s commercial capital has, for the past 24 years, remained under the thumb of one man, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who served as elected governor between 1999 and 2007 and has remained the state’s

political godfather.

The victory of Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) in Lagos in the February 25th presidential election is classic urban revolt: a clear blow to Tinubu’s ego and his hold on Lagos. It has also created both a momentum and a belief that make vulnerable Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the incumbent governor of the state. Until that humbling verdict, APC’s grip on Lagos, even when increasingly challenged from one electoral cycle to another, appeared assured. Not anymore. As the axiom goes: a day can change a lot in politics.

Tinubu is not on the ballot on Saturday but he remains the major factor in the governorship election. The coalition of interests that humbled him in his fiefdom in the presidential election will be keen for a repeat performance to show that the first defeat was not a fluke and to complete the job of extricating the state from his grip. On his part, Tinubu (now the president-elect) will want to reassert himself as the political lord of Lagos. It is both a proxy battle and a grudge fight.

Beyond predicting that it is a going to be a keen contest between Tinubu and the political, ethnic, religious, class and demographic coalition that handed him a stinging rebuke in Lagos in the

presidential poll, it is difficult to say how the pendulum will swing in Lagos on March 18th. For one, the vote against a Muslim-Muslim ticket avidly pushed by the pastors of some churches will not have the same resonance since Sanwo-Olu is a Christian.

Also, members of a certain opposition party that voted against the presidential flagbearer of their party are likely to vote differently in a local election. So the death of that party in Lagos politics is a bit exaggerated. Ethnicity, which ordinarily shouldn’t be a factor in a melting pot and a cosmopolitan space, has been injected directly and indirectly into the politics of Lagos by the different sides.

Unfortunately, it is being crudely and heavily mobilised in the gubernatorial race. It is difficult to know how much impact this will have.

Ordinarily, all these should count in the keen contest expected in Lagos on Saturday: Sanwo-Olu’s achievements and missteps in office and the profiles and promises of his key competitors such as Mr. Olajide Adediran of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of LP and Mr. Funsho Continued on page 62

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