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OPINION: Atiku Versus Tinubu And Nigeria At 63

Published

2 years ago

October 2, 2023

By Lasisi Olagunju

Where witches contend and exchange punches, mere men do not stand by to watch. But part of the job of a journalist is to see and report; sometimes he runs commentaries on bouts – not minding if the pugilists are gods or principalities. There is an ongoing offshore Bola Tinubu versus Atiku Abubakar rumble-in-the-jungle, a perfect heavyweight bout between power potentates. These two used to be very good friends and political soul mates. But Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar were also allies and in-laws. Yet, when it was time for Caesar to confront Pompey by crossing the Rubicon in January 49 BC, he did so without looking back. Caesar crossed that river after charging his army with the famous lines: “Let us go where the omens of the gods and the crimes of our enemies summon us. The die is now cast.” With those words, Julius Caesar determined his own fate; he sealed the fate of Pompey and altered the course of their country’s history forever.

In faraway Chicago, United States, Atiku and Tinubu spent the whole of last week panting for balance as they perched on the alien branch of the US judicial system. For whatever reasons, Tinubu has been fighting very hard to fire-proof his university records. He failed the first time; he failed the second time less than 48 hours ago. The court bout continues today over who has or does not have certificates. Tomorrow, it will be over; we will know who is a liar between the two friends; we will know if our president is a man or woman; we will know if Tinubu will be free and Atiku will be silenced forever.

In its handling of this case, the American judiciary has comported and discharged itself with admirable cleanliness. We’ve seen speed; we’ve seen so much openness, decorum, competence and diligence. We’ve seen a strict adherence to rules and facts. In the rulings, there were no abusive words, no bad grammar, no dodgy logic, no invidious, shameful technicality. There was no duplicitous dithering in delivering prompt justice; the sentences were simple, the language was plain, there were no ambiguities on what the court meant and what it said. I would recommend all that ennobling work ethic to what we have here as judiciary. Nigerians who are following the US case are shocked at the consideration for time and respect for timeliness by the two courts that have handled the matter. Nigerian judges and lawyers surely have something to learn from those judges.

FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: The North And Tinubu’s Appointments

Evergreen English novelist, Charles Dickens, wrote in his ‘Bleak House’ that “it won’t do to have truth and justice; we must have law and lawyers.” I rewrite that to read: it is not enough to have law and lawyers; it is more important to have truth and justice. But you can’t have justice where the process is programmed to surrender to roadblocks and succumb to bottlenecks. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois delivered its ruling two days ago. It gave an order and remembered to give a deadline for compliance with that order. Very quickly and with an air of finality, it stressed that it would “not extend or modify these deadlines” because of the injustice that would attend its doing so. The court even told the party that lost not to bring an application for a stay of its order saying “… any request for a stay before this court will be denied.” The words of Justice Nancy L. Maldonado in making those declarations were clear and direct. The case suffered no wicked adjournments and delays. Is that not how it should be, ordinarily? 17th century English philosopher and jurist, Sir Edward Coke, wrote on the imperative of speedy trial of cases. It is to him we owe the phrase “justice delayed is justice denied.” William Shakespeare in ‘Hamlet’ describes “the law’s delay” as the “whips and scorns of time.” Everyone, including those who do it, knows that delayed remedy is zero remedy. Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, said something similar: “Delay of justice is a denial of justice…To put right this wrong, we will in this court do all in our power to enforce expedition.” I wish I could find a phrase like that to quote from the Nigerian judiciary. A judicial system that is built on opacity of procedure and deliberately slow administration of justice will ultimately breed its own destruction. How? Victims of delayed justice feel helpless; they see the system as being rigged against them; they feel cheated, frustrated and angry; they develop their own idea of justice without recourse to the courts; they take the law into their own hands.

Chicago State University has been firmly asked to bring to court the bird in its pocket. We wait to see the colour of that bird. While every Nigerian holds their breath on how this Chicago case ends, I suggest they go back and read how the Pompey versus Caesar contest ended. We have the whole of today to do that.

Tomorrow will come and we will see the end of the Atiku-Tinubu mud fight in a foreign land. While we wait and watch the tragedy, shall we ask questions of our country and interrogate why we are where we are? This is particularly important when you know that whatever happens in that Chicago case may not have any positive impact on the life we live. We are on holiday because independent Nigeria was 63 yesterday. But I feel what we marked could not have been a celebration of the country’s’ independence anniversary; it looked more like the funeral of its promise.

FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: ‘Alaafin’s Stool Is Not For Sale’

We have become a country of beggars. Almost every call or text message is a desperate request for help. I am almost certain that the economic pain we feel today has never been felt by any generation of Nigerians since the country was created by the British in 1914. Apart from the power people and their friends who spawn excess, everyone else yawns in want. If the country hasn’t collapsed, tell me what has happened to it.

The United States dollar crossed the expressway and exchanged for one thousand naira last week. In simple terms, it means a bullion van of one billion naira now weighs just 100 bales of $100 dollar bills (one million dollars). What is the worth of an increasingly worthless currency?

Exactly one hundred years ago (1923), the photo of a German lady using banknotes to light her stove shocked Germany. Yet, a year earlier, some boys were shown flying a kite made of their country’s useless currency. There was, in another photo, a man using the currency notes as wallpaper because it was cheaper to use than buying “the cheapest rolls of wallpaper.” Before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the exchange rate of the German mark to the American dollar was 4.2 to one; same as the British shilling, the French franc and the Italian lira. But Germany lost the war and entered turbulence. By November 1923, the German mark had fallen to 4.2 trillion marks to one US dollar. “A wheelbarrow full of money couldn’t buy a newspaper,” a commentator reminisced, and added: “Shopkeepers couldn’t replenish their stock fast enough to keep up with prices, farmers refused to sell their produce for worthless money, food riots broke out, and townspeople marched into the countryside to loot the farms. Law and order broke down. The German attempt at democracy had been completely undermined.” Is that where Nigeria is going?

What is the future of presidential democracy in Nigeria? I do not know if our politicians are hearing what the people are saying about this question. They say it benefits only politicians and their palaces and that it has wrecked the people. Democracy has failed Nigerians and everyone knows.

FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Judges And The Future Of Elections

Guinea’s military Head of State, Mamady Doumbouya, addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, September 21, 2023. He questioned the credentials of Western democracy and the good it had done for the people of Africa. Did our leaders listen to his concern on the unequal distribution of wealth which he said created endless inequalities, hunger and poverty? “When the wealth of a country is in the hands of an elite while newborns die in hospitals due to lack of incubators, it is not surprising that…we are seeing transitions to respond to the profound aspirations of the people,” he said.

With our country clocking 63 years in pain and turbulence, shouldn’t we decide now that enough is enough? Michelle Obama said during the recent US Open 2023 that “when things lie in the balance, we all have a choice to make. We can either wait around and accept what we’re given. We can sit silently and hope someone else fights our battles. Or we can make our own stand.” Some of us took a stand a long time ago: we won’t be silent or keep quiet. We won’t stop asking Nigerians to accept to be their own physicians. For members of my own generation, how many years have we lived? If things continue as they are, how many more do we have? Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’ tells you to open your eyes “and look within.” And you look as commanded. And the song asks if you are “satisfied with the life you’re living?” Of course, you have looked “within” and what you see you do not want (even for your enemy) but you think you are forever helpless. It is like everyone desiring heaven but nobody wanting to die. How do we enjoy the bliss of paradise without dying?

At independence, our national anthem came with a promise that “our flag shall be a symbol/ that truth and justice reign.” The generation of Nigerians who sang that song promised “to hand on to our children/ a banner without stain.” We proceeded to ask God of all creation to grant us one particular request: “Help us to build a nation/ where no man is oppressed” so that “with peace and plenty/ Nigeria may be blessed.” We aborted that promise. That abortion was celebrated with pomp in Abuja yesterday by those in power; the poor marked it asking why they had to be hungry when their country was said to be very rich. There is so much wealth around and about us but there is also so much misery and want. Paradox is the only figure of speech that will explain that. Our situation is difficult to explain but it is not very different from an epoch strung together by Charles Dickens in the opening lines of his ‘A Tale of Two Cities’: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…” We know what the other way of Heaven is. That is where 63-year-old Nigeria is, right now.

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[OPINION] ADC: Death, Onikoyi And A Hunter’s Pouch

Published

39 minutes ago

July 6, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

Death does not kill alone/Nor does he fight singly/He goes to war with plenty of warriors…/He sends Disease first/He sends Paralysis next/He sends Loss/He sends Curses…/Death finally comes to kill the hunter’s father/Who drinks now of heavenly water.”

The lines above are from Professor Bade Ajuwon’s, ‘Ogun’s Iremoje: A philosophy of Living and Dying’, taken from Sandra Barnes’ ‘Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New’. It is a chant (Ìrèmòje) by one Lamidi in Akeetan, Oyo, Oyo State in 1976 for Ogundele, a deceased hunter.

Ìrèmòje is Yorùbá poetic dirge sung at funerals of hunters. The bards, in total submission, acknowledge that no armour is strong enough to shield fate. They employ the imagery of the hunter’s pouch, the English man calls it the quiver, the Yoruba hunter calls it the apó. Mourning bards lament that Death kills the hunter like one without the apó. Death kills a sick Babalawo like one whose vestry isn’t full of curative barks and roots. To reinforce this, Yoruba again say that what will be the death of the hunter lurks right there inside his apó.

A strong Yorubaman from the hinterland that he is, President Bola Tinubu must have listened to countless lines of Ìrèmòje like the above. Since Wednesday when the African Democratic Congress (ADC) was launched, expropriating the wisdom in those hunters’ dirges, the Nigerian president must have realized that the firm ground upon which the giant, (Ominran) stands could suddenly become slippery, leading to his fatal fall.

The bard in the Ogundele chant above would seem to have compared the ADC warriors warring against Tinubu to Death’s strike. The launch of ADC last Wednesday may be the first battalion that Death, those who want to unseat the president, sent to warn him.

Though oxymoronic, a great man can fall to his own folly and vanity. Irish poet, Oscar Wilde, once brought out this oxymoron in his The Picture of Dorian Gray when he said, “a great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures.” This Wilde saying may be the purport behind a folktale told to children in pre, colonial and even immediate post-colony of Yorubaland. It was the story of a mythical valiant warrior who, either out of excessive power or inability to realize the fault lines of his prowess, transformed into a crocodile.

Powerful and dreaded, the warrior, who had magical ability to transform into an animal, one day decided to repeat this magical wizardry. He asked that a traditional mat be brought out. As he laid on it, with a white cloth spread over him, by the time the cloth was unwrapped, he had transformed into a huge crocodile. Since, in the words of same Oscar Wilde, no man can be too careful in the choice of his enemies, the warrior’s friends immediately turned against him. Having found out that the only taboo against that animal transformation wizardry was raindrops, the warrior’s friends ganged up and decided to invoke a torrent of rain.

The Delesolu compound in Oje, Ibadan North East Local Government of Oyo State, parades this same mythical narration of their ancestry. History has it that the great grandfather of the Delesolus did almost like the warrior in the above crocodile mythology. He, too, transformed into a crocodile. Then rain began to fall on the huge animal. Unable to return to his human form as a result of the raindrops, the distressed crocodile walked helplessly into the bush and into the nearest river. He never returned. Till today, anytime a child is born into the Delesolu family, a live crocodile is placed beside the baby. In 1944, a giant crocodile was brought into the compound as a totem, a reminder to the crocodile progeny that wisdom can kill the wise.

But those who have followed the Nigerian president’s political trajectory compare him to the Onikoyi, a renowned war general in the Oyo empire who lived around the 16th to 17th centuries. So many epithets have been used to describe Tinubu, one of which is that he is a ‘Master strategist.’ Onikoyi too was. Tinubu is so politically fearsome, so they say, that he possesses a mind of his own. Describing him further, they say he is a man who, in the words of award-winning Nigerian author, Chigozie Obioma, in his The Fisherman (2015), is “not the kind of man who would dip his foot in another shoe because his own was damp; he would rather trek the earth on barefoot.”

Onikoyi held command over 1469 men who were famous for fighting to death. They never turned their backs to the enemy. Onikoyi’s war prowess was such that nobody could defeat him.

Like a whirlwind gathers dirt into its concentric circle, erstwhile Tinubu friends gathered at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Center last Wednesday. Virtually all of them were once friends and associates of the Onikoyi. From Atiku Abubakar, Nasir El-Rufai, Rauf Aregbesola, Rotimi Amaechi etc, the list is endless. It includes David Mark, a man who, as military general, derisively told Nigerians that they were banished forever to a life of impoverishment. And Judas Iscariot Aregbesola. Onikoyi, too, was betrayed by one of his friends whom he favoured severally.

Envious of his valour, other warriors attempted to cut Onikoyi to size, to no avail. They then courted this friend who they paid handsomely to trigger a fight between Onikoyi and a best friend of his. In the battle, Onikoyi killed his friend and the warrior turned into a bush rat, thereafter making the forest his home. The middle friend who betrayed him had a huge tree fall over him, killing him instantly.

Since Wednesday when the ADC unfolded, it will appear that the president and the APC have been losing the messaging war. From far away beautiful Caribbean island Sea of Saint Lucia where he and his principal were ensconced, the message of Death seemed to have hit the presidential team badly. So, Bayo Onanuga sought to remind us that the ADC is an assembly of grousers. While lifting the veil off its leaders one by one and their political sins, he even predicted their waterloo.

Onanuga needed to rewind the clip of his words to hear his own grumpy voice. Nigerians are aware already that right there in the ADC assemblage are political sinners; but, is the APC any better? If he says ADC lacks ideology, what is APC’s ideology? A minister was clearly accused of corruption, of filching billions of the people’s money in collusion with some star boys in the federal executive council. The president sacked her. Till date, she has not been tried. Corruption is said to sit in its imperial glory, just as maggots do on a decomposing meat, in Aso Rock as we speak. A cavalierly looting of Nigerian patrimony, perhaps unprecedented in Nigerian history, is the credo.

So, is political party about sainthood? If sainthood was the qualification for assembling to form a party, the crew that came into federal power in 2015 would not be there. Muhammadu Buhari was a despot who had his hands bespattered with the blood of Bartholomew Owoh, Bernard Ogedengbe and Lawal Ojuolape.

In 2023, Tinubu himself was one of the most unfit persons to be Nigeria’s president if a leader’s past was an index for voters’ consideration. I am not aware of any presidential candidate in the history of Nigeria’s electoral politics who heaved as hefty a baggage into the polls as the ex-Lagos State governor. He however got off into Aso Rock because many Nigerians believed he had the capacity to change their lives. Two years down the line, the reverse is the case. Nigerians crunch suffering as you eat crunchy nuts. All we hear are Marabout statistics of betterment whereas when we go to markets, we are faced with the tyranny of existence under a government in whose veins blood doesn’t seem to flow. So, reminding us of the past of the ADC coalition members is hogwash. It won’t wash.

But the Atiku ADC seems to be getting the messaging right. And Nigerians are listening to it. Though we know its members do not have any redemptive DNA and will also betray us if they ever get into government, their messaging resonates. Is life better for Nigerians now than it was in 2023? To imagine Aregbesola, whose government pauperized the poor Osun State civil servants as he paid them half salary while wasting billions of Naira on a needless airport project, now claiming that ADC is coming to “rescue the poor”! Though he is one of the greatest dis-advertisements of the ADC coalition, notorious for his dunce-like dances (ijó dìndìnrìn) and maladministration, Aregbesola asked an apt question: “Is today better than yesterday, or yesterday was better than today?”

Let suffering Nigerians answer that question. It is a question personal to them. Tinubu has spent two grim years that lacerate Nigerians. The next two years do not seem to offer any hope that life would be better. The people’s sorrow daily remarries them to God as they tend to be more religious these days. It is so bad that, in the words of Wilde, Nigerians, majority of whom are lords of language, lack words to describe their anguish and suffering.

Yet, still in the same words of Wilde, the president and his people “(fill their lives) to the very brim with a life of pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine”. It reminds me of a line in Fuji music lord, Ayinde Marshal’s song. He sang that, the Nigerian life that is so difficult and painful to chew or swallow, is same world some Nigerians at the top eat crushingly like one eating hot yam (Ayé t’énìkan ńyó je, l’àwon kan ńje súà bí eni ńje isu.)

For almost one whole week, the presidency literally relocated and hibernated in Saint Lucia, with no decipherable outcome for Nigerian people. Someday, the real fact of what took the presidency to this tiny island and the amount of the Nigerian wealth incinerated on the jamboree would be revealed. Was our wealth secretly tethered by the feet of Dionysus, Greek god of wine, pleasure and revelry, in Saint Lucia? From Saint Lucia, the presidency is junketing to Brazil for the 17th BRICS Summit. It would be its 18th country to visit in two years.

It is however too early in the day to come to a conclusion of what the coming days will be. Both the ADC and the APC are gathering missiles of war. While I agree with FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, that none of the coalition crew is competent to articulate the anger and hunger of the Nigerian people, the Tinubu government inflicts hunger on the people. In this case, both Tinubu and the coalition group are like the proverbial bedwetter who is incompetent to haggle the price of aro, used by local drycleaners to curtail urine smell. The Nigerian people are capable of articulating their anger. In 2027, it will be evil politicians against the people.

On the surface, Tinubu’s famed wizardry would win him another four years in office. He is Onikoyi reincarnate, isn’t he? However, history tells us of an Onikoyi reincarnate who died on the battlefield where three trees met overhead. His corpse was not discovered until several days after. By this time, his decomposing corpse had been mercilessly half eaten, in the words of Beier, by vultures and “child of the eagle sitting on the silk cotton tree” and “child of the hawk waiting on the camwood tree”.

The braggadocio of the APC group is getting muffled now. The voice of the fawning Senate President who said the president would win 99.5% in the 2027 votes is receding too, no thanks to the coalition. The APC, ADC and the PDP will have to deal with Nigerians’ current reality of hopelessness in the midst of plenty. And tell us why we have to vote for them again. Or else, political Death will kill the Onikoyi like a hunter who lost his apó.

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Police Pension Scheme Violates Constitution, IHRC Tells Tinubu

Published

14 hours ago

July 5, 2025

Editor

The International Human Rights Commission, Nigeria, has thrown its weight behind the renewed push by the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, for a comprehensive reform of the Contributory Pension Scheme, as it affects retired officers of the Nigeria Police Force.

This is contained in a diplomatic memo addressed to President Bola Tinubu and titled “A Diplomatic Appeal for Police Pension Welfare Reform in Line with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

In a statement signed on Saturday by IHRC’s Head of Media and Strategic Communications, Fidelis Onakpoma, the commission said the current pension arrangement for police personnel amounts to a constitutional breach and urged the President to take urgent corrective action.

The Head of Mission, IHRC , Ambassador Duru Hezekiah, was quoted in the statement as saying, “The commission firmly supports the Inspector-General of Police’s ongoing advocacy for a just and equitable pension scheme for retired police officers.

“We call on President Tinubu to urgently address the systemic flaws in the Contributory Pension Scheme, which violate constitutional provisions guaranteeing dignity and adequate social support for public officers.”

Citing Sections 17(3)(f) and 34(1)(a) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), IHRC said the Nigerian state is legally bound to ensure the welfare and dignity of its retired officers, a responsibility it is currently failing in.

According to the commission, thousands of retired police officers are living in hardship under a pension system that disregards the realities of law enforcement service.

“The Constitution mandates the state to ensure the wellbeing of retired officers, not to abandon them to a broken system.

“The current structure of the CPS as applied to the police is inadequate, unfair, and incompatible with Nigeria’s constitutional values. These officers spent their lives in service—often in the face of extreme danger—yet they retire into poverty and indignity,” the IHRC stated.

The commission’s intervention follows a high-level meeting convened by the IGP on July 1, 2025, at the Force Headquarters in Abuja.

The meeting brought together delegations from the National Association of Retired Police Officers of Nigeria, led by AIG Paul O. Ochonu (retd.), and the Coalition of CPS Retirees, led by CP Henry Njoku (retd.), to address mounting concerns over pension inadequacies.

During the meeting, Egbetokun reiterated his resolve to push for a more just and practical pension structure, describing the current system as a gross injustice.

“Our retirees deserve dignity, support, and a structure that reflects their sacrifice and service to Nigeria.

“We cannot continue to subject our heroes to a pension scheme that is clearly unfit for the nature of their work and the risks they bore,” the IG declared.

Egbetokun’s comments echoed sentiments he had expressed earlier in February during an interactive session with retired officers at the Police Resource Centre in Abuja, where he criticized the CPS as “deeply flawed and unfit for the realities of Police service.”

The IHRC amplified this concern, highlighting what it described as an unjust disparity between Police and military retirees.

While the latter are exempted from the CPS and benefit from a more suitable pension arrangement, police retirees, the commission said, continue to suffer from a scheme that fails to provide basic security in old age.

“The military has rightly been removed from the CPS because of the peculiar nature of their job. The same logic applies—if not more so—to police personnel.

“Our police officers risk their lives daily, and they deserve a pension structure that reflects that reality. Anything less is an affront to justice, equity, and national security,” said Hezekiah.

In line with Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, the IHRC urged the Presidency to act decisively in addressing the disparity and upholding the constitutional and moral obligations of the state to its law enforcement agents.

“Reforming the police pension structure is not merely a policy issue—it is a constitutional and moral obligation. We believe this government has the opportunity to right this historical wrong and restore dignity to our Police retirees,” the statement read.
(PUNCH)

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FG To Spend N17bn On Lagos Bridge Damaged By Fire

Published

14 hours ago

July 5, 2025

Editor

The Federal Government has negotiated the cost of the Iddo Bridge rehabilitation from an initial N27bn to N17bn.

The Minister of Works, Sen. Dave Umahi, made this known to journalists during an inspection of the bridge on Friday in Lagos.

He said, “Julius Berger quoted, I think, N27 billion or thereabout, but after much negotiation and discussion, we now arrived at N17 billion.”

Umahi commended Julius Berger Nig. Plc. for demonstrating a sense of cooperation under its new leadership.

He described the company as a “born-again Berger”, attributing the breakthrough in negotiation to the understanding and openness of its new managing director.

The minister reiterated the government’s commitment to prudent spending, insisting that all contractors must align with the ministry’s standards and directives.

Umahi noted that the project had been reviewed from mere rehabilitation of the burnt section to a major work.

He expressed concern over the poor condition of the bridge, blaming it on years of neglect and human abuse, including illegal occupation and collisions by heavy-duty trucks.

He said that three spans of the bridge were severely damaged by fire, which he attributed to activities of illegal occupants who had built makeshift homes under the bridge.

“They brought in chemicals, built block walls and set up homes. Then, they set up fire that burnt the bridge and damaged three spans. Now we are going to fix the bridge completely,” Umahi said.

The minister said the Iddo Bridge, now with a headroom of about 4.5 metres, had suffered significant structural damage due to continuous hits from trucks and illegal structures beneath it.

He announced that the ministry would be creating a headroom of at least 5.6 metres.

He said that the Federal Ministry of Works was committed to restoring the bridge for the safety of all Nigerians and ensuring such incidents would not occur again.

On the issue of displaced persons, the minister said that no one would be allowed to return under the bridge.

“Nobody will stay under Iddo Bridge again as long as I remain the Minister of Works.

“The lives of the people are more important,” he said.

He warned that the government would no longer tolerate any abuse of national infrastructure.
NAN