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OPINION: Federal Republic Of Loans

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By Suyi Ayodele

Reasonable people borrow for production; we borrow to fund contracts of bloated values!

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Lord Polonius is heard advising Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend”.

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Shakespeare is saying here that borrowing does no help; that what it does is to damage the financial situation of the borrower and his friendship with the lender. More tragically, it ruins, as Polonius further advises, “And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Husbandry here suggests innovation and deep thinking. Borrowing kills both.

Why work hard to make money when you can borrow and default in payment? You can read that again!

One of the reasons why poverty walks the streets of Nigeria in a three-piece suit is the reckless way the government borrows money to fund corruption and consumption. Unfortunately, our all-yes-men National Assembly under the watch of Godswill Akpabio is readily available to approve anything from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. As we get suffocated with the previous loans, Akpabio and his gang are there to approve more loans!

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For instance, in a recent article by the Economy Post on Nigeria’s indebtedness under the current administration, President Tinubu is said to have borrowed N56.6 trillion in his first 23 months in office. The article says: “… is N18.7 trillion or 75.2 percent less than N75.26 trillion loans taken by former President Muhammadu Buhari in the whole of 8 years. Under President Tinubu, Nigeria’s public debt has jumped from N87.379 trillion as at June 2023 (one month after Mr Buhari’s exit from power) to N142.319 trillion as at September 2024. The debt reached N144.67 trillion ($94.23 billion) in December 2024. With the World Bank’s approval of a fresh $1.08bn loan to Nigeria to support education, nutrition, and economic resilience in the country, the total public debt is now above N144.67 trillion, which is a worry to financial experts.”

And when one tries to draw the attention of the government to this alarming situation, the usual refrain from those in power is that Tinubu inherited a badly managed economy from Buhari! What escapism! Who is deceiving who here?

Last Tuesday, May 29, was a frenzy day in Nigeria. It was the day the administration of President Tinubu turned two years old. The political class did not disappoint. Government hangers-on, favour-seekers and lackeys alike tried all they could to outdo one another. Praise-singing the ‘performing’ President was not in short supply! President Tinubu, no doubt, savoured the occasion. You can’t blame him. Who wouldn’t, given the gullibility of the blind followership system we have here? Nigeria is a cruise, let us eat our popcorn and lick our ice cream. That’s how we roll!

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Some state governors also enjoyed the moments as their praises were sung into high heaven. If we were to go by the celebrations, Nigeria should be a paradise on earth. But it is not; Nigeria shares borders with the hot hell, going by the palpable pain on the streets! If all the praises showers on President Tinubu were true, why then the pain in the land?

I read some comments from some people in the government. I listened to a few praise-singings from those who are close to those in government. Nothing confirms the paddy -paddy nature of the government of the day more than the drums rolled out for the President and the state governors that day. It is, as a multi-billionaire I know is wont to say, ‘a case of someone helping someone.’ Sycophancy has never been scarce here, we have more than enough of it!

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The biggest lesson for me in it all is in the saying of our elders, to wit: Àrùn tó ún se Lémibájé kó ló ún se omo rè, Lémibájé ún sunkún owó, omo rè ún sunkún oko – what ails Lémibájé is different from what ails her daughter, while Lémibájé cries over lack of money, her daughter laments her lack of a husband. We don’t suffer the same ailment as our leaders.

Truth be told, our leaders are far away from the reality of the situation of the people they claim to lead. The Aso Rock Villa and other Government Houses across the country are simply too impregnable; too impenetrable for the occupants to feel the heat on the Nigerian streets. Aso Rock Villa is too soundproof to hear the agony from the streets.

The BusinessDay of that same May 29, 2025, ran its Editorial on the topic: “Nigeria’s Electricity crisis is a national Security Threat.” Above the Editorial was the paper’s cartoon for the day. The cartoon tells more graphically, the attitude of President Tinubu to the litany of woes confronting the nation under his watch.

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The cartoon is the caricature of the President watering a flower bed with the inscription: “2027.” Behind him is a house branded “Nigeria”, on fire. Rather than stretch the water hose to combat the conflagration ravaging the Nigeria House, the President is seen watering his 2027 second term bid! For all that matters, Nigeria can burn as long as the second term of the President is secured!

That is exactly what is happening in the country today. Governance has receded to the back seat. The Villa is no longer interested in what is happening to the masses. In all the states of the Federation where the governors are in their first term, their attention has shifted from governance to their second term ambitions. Ambition is, indeed, the last refuge of failure!

This is the season of endorsements. This is the season of rent-a-crowd support pulling devices. The level of political ‘realignment’ or ‘reengineering’ is alarming! Governors, senators, federal legislators and members of the states houses of assembly are falling over one another as they move from their opposition parties to the President’s ruling party. In all, President Tinubu is playing God! His aides and supporters are telling him that his ‘good’ works are attracting the opposition to his fold. Who will tell him the truth?

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But the reality on the streets is alarming. Nigerians are going down by the seconds as poverty keeps shooting arrows of economic depletion at them. The masses are not just at the receiving end of the malady going on in the political circles. They are the victims of the insensitivity of the locusts in power. There appears to be no solution in sight. We are hooked!

Yet, Tinubu cares less. Rather than being sober, he is taking the ‘battle’ to his ‘enemies’ and ‘perceived enemies.’ Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State was the president’s latest victim. You need to watch the video of how the President openly embarrassed the Lagos State governor at the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway event over the weekend! Nothing can be more condescending, nothing can be more unstatesmanlike! But nothing spoils; that is why Tinubu is Tinubu!

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While the President thinks of himself as the best thing to happen to Nigeria and his Hallelujah orchestra are drawing the cord of the harp in his praise, those managing our economy are saying the obvious; Nigeria is going down the drain! What do I mean?

Get a copy of the Nigerian Tribune of Monday, June 2, 2025. Read the screaming headline: “Manufactures lament mounting challenges.” Check out the riders: “Say 767 manufacturing companies shutdown in 2023”, “Over 18,000 jobs lost in 2024”, “Cost of imported materials surged by 118%” and “Spending on alternative energy hit N1.11trn in 2024.” Then weep for our dear fatherland.

Segun Ajayi-Kadir, the Director-General, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), who gave the alarming figures at the Businessday Manufacturing 2025 Conference held in Lagos, said that apart from the exchange rate depreciation in 2024 by 53 percent, manufacturers paid a whopping sum of N76.64 trillion in 2024 to import raw materials, an amount he calculated to be an increase of 118 percent from the 2023 figure!

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The manufacturing sector, Ajayi-Kadir lamented, “…is now facing the combined storm of FX losses, rising raw material costs, high energy prices, multiple taxation, escalated borrowing costs, infrastructural deficits and policy uncertainties”,
adding that “It is not surprising that the sector’s growth has been on a decline for years, falling to 1.40 per cent in 2023 and further dropping to 1.38 per cent in 2024. The sector’s quarter-on-quarter growth reflects a similarly negative trend.”

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The above and many more that the MAN boss mentioned are the true report cards of President Tinubu, the media razzmatazz of his second year in office notwithstanding! The Presidency may live in self-delusion; the suffering masses can feel the heat. If “767 manufacturing companies shut down in 2023”, one can imagine the numbers that joined the league in 2024 and what to expect in the current year. It is a sad situation, only the President doesn’t know that!

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We are still waiting for the Vuvuzelas in government to tell us that it is not true that factories and other business ventures spent N1.11trn in 2024 to source for alternative energy when Aso Rock Villa itself is on the verge of spending N10 billion on solar power for the President and his family living in the presidential quarters!

That is the level of insensitivity we have in this era. How it never occurred to the policy maker that such a venture is an open declaration of lack of trust in the National grid beats one’s imagination! How the Presidency failed to realise that the simple message in that singular act is an open resignation to fate and a signal to the populace that all is lost with the National Grid, is another low for the government.

Nigeria did not get to this parlous state in one day. Not even in one decade. It is also not true that the present administration of President Tinubu is the sole cause of our woes. The bitter truth, however, is that this government and the immediate one before it, have taken the nation deeper into the bottomless pit of penury!

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It doesn’t matter the number of spin doctors out there defending the present administration, those in government, in their few sober moments, know that they have done more damage to the nation’s economy than any other person before them!

Unfortunately for the supporters of the government, the figures are there to show that no government has been this brazen, tactless and reckless as the Tinubu administration in formulating pain-inflicting policies. That the president gets away with all the shenanigans going on in his administration and is most likely to get away with more clueless policies will not change that!

The Economy Post’s piece in reference here situates the issue properly when it submits that: “However, while Mr. Tinubu’s debt has been monumental, the effect of naira devaluation cannot be ignored. President Tinubu has taken some external loans from the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and other multilateral financial institutions. But that is at a time the naira exchange rate has weakened against other major currencies.

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“As at the time President Buhari was leaving power by late May 2023, the exchange rate was less than N800/$. Data from FMDQ Securities Exchange showed that the naira exchanged at 775 to a dollar on May 26, 2023. Mr. Tinubu came to power on May 29, 2023. Hence some of former President Buhari’s external loans were taken when a dollar exchanged at less than N800. However, President Tinubu has taken some of his loans at a point when the naira exchange rate is at over 1,500 to a dollar. The naira was quoted at 1,552.53 to a dollar on Thursday at the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market (NFEM), according to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). In fact, the naira has weakened by over 70 percent since May 29, 2023, when Mr. Tinubu came to power….”

The summary of the Economy Post’s article is that President Tinubu should stop the blame game, wake up and smell the coffee of poverty his administration is brewing for the poor masses to drink! He who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing, goes the saying. The Presidency should allow that to sink.

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Even as I penned this, the President had transmitted another set of requests to borrow to the pliable National Assembly. The new requests amount to N34.15 trillion in external and domestic loans. And guess what the loans are meant to address; a domestic bond issuance of N757.9 billion to settle outstanding pension liabilities and a new external borrowing plan of over $21.5 billion, (N33.39 trillion)! at the official exchange rate of N1,590 per dollar.

By the time the approvals come, Nigeria’s public debt, analysts said, would exceed N180 trillion! For a government that recently ‘celebrated’ a great feat of paying off the nation’s IMF loan, one begins to wonder if President Tinubu’s mission is to make poverty go global, as they say in our street lingo!

The most damaging part of the Economy Post’s piece on the Tinubu’s penchant for loans is the aspect where the article dwells on the Nigeria’s total debt, where it submits that the “Nigeria’s total public debt increased to N142.3 trillion as of September 30, 2024, representing an increase of 5.97 percent (N8.02tn) from N134.3 trillion seen in June 2024.

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“Data from the Debt Management Office (DMO) showed that external debt in dollar terms increased from $42.90 billion in June to $43.03 billion in September 2024. However, the total sum has not factored in Mr. Tinubu’s recent loans, especially from the global lender, the World Bank.”

If the people in my place were to give a befitting name to President Tinubu and his followers as they are clinking wine cups in celebration of the President’s two years in office amidst soaring debts, they will simply be christened: Amúgbèsèsewà – he who uses debts as ornaments!

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OPINION: Ofala: Glo And An Invite From Agbogidi

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By Lasisi Olagunju

‘Teacher of Light’ is the title of a biography of Chinua Achebe written by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Tijan Sallah. What does it mean to teach light? Or, rather, what is light? If you know what darkness does, you would know what light means and the value it holds.

“When the moon is shining, the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.” With that proverb and its moon metaphor, Chinua Achebe established himself as a true teacher of light. My muse pushed the proverb to my presence as I read through an invitation to me from the Obi of Onitsha asking that I be part of this year’s Ofala Festival. It occurred to me that moment that it is not only the moon that gives light; culture is an illuminator, it also gives light, especially to people like me who routinely forget how to dance to ancestral summons.

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I had the very rare privilege of being honoured by the Nigerian Academy of Letters with its Honorary Fellowship in August this year. From the North to the South, only three Nigerians were so honoured: I was one; my brother, culture scholar and media icon, Jahman Anikulapo, was one; the deeply intellectual Obi of Onitsha, His Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe (Agbogidi), was the third, the biggest of us. At that ceremony, the Obi, who said he had looked forward to meeting me, met me, held me and has kept me close as a son.

So, his invite to the Ofala Festival came. The festival holds this week. I wish I could be there as the king’s guest; but wishes are not horses. Because the mountain here is blocking the view of the mountain over there, I cannot honour the invitation. So I prayed for the success of the festival. The Obi answered with a thunderous ‘Amen’.

Ofala? I checked and found that the word “Ofala” is an enduring offspring of the Igbo words ọfọ (authority) and ala (land). Ofala is history retold in performance; it is also culture renewed. It relives the Obi’s authority over the land and its people.

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Ofala is Obi’s return from sacred silence. The festival celebrates royalty’s reborn, and the Ndichie’s renewal of loyalty to the king. In Iru Ofala and Azu Ofala, the king returns from ancestral presence to repossess his warriors with their red caps.

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Etymologists say the word ‘festival’ derives from the Latin ‘festum’. Anthropologists have followed the word through centuries and civilisations as its meaning evolved across cultures and disciplines. Émile Durkheim and James George Frazer were influential figures in early anthropology. Scholars, in summaries, say that to Durkheim and Frazer, festivals are communal expressions of belief and solidarity. They say that with festivals, people renew their social and spiritual bonds. In Ofala, we see that they are right.

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Leo Frobenius, German ethnologist and archaeologist, was in Africa on multiple occasions between 1904 and 1935. In the 1910s, Frobenius observed festivals in diverse places; he documented them and saw in them vital celebrations of familial, tribal, and religious life deeply rooted in ancestral history and beliefs.

The German observed right. Ofala and similar festivals bind communities; they celebrate social cohesion and keep sacred traditions alive. They fuse communal history with spiritual renewal and survival. In them, the rhythm of everyday life comes alive.

Ofala has grown to attract great brands. Its major sponsor is telecoms giant, Globacom, which has been there since 2011. I have very solid people in Globacom, which makes me an envoy of its greenery and deepens my interest in everything, particularly, festivals in which the company is involved.

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The Yoruba tell their children: When you behold greatness, honour it with reverence. Tí o bá ri olá, pón olá lé. That is what I am doing here. It is what Globacom’s long partnership with the Obi and Ofala does; an act of reverence to the greatness of the culture that birthed them.

From Lisabi in Abeokuta to Ojude Oba in Ijebu-Ode, and from Ofala in Onitsha to other vibrant festivals across the land, Globacom’s partnerships reflect a philosophy rooted in understanding that just as a zebra is defined by its stripes, a people are defined by their culture. In other words, a person without culture is like a zebra without stripes. Sustaining culture is sustaining the people.

That is what corporate sponsorship does to cultural events. Obi’s people say in a proverb, “Nku di na mba na-eghere mba nri (The firewood of a community cooks for that community).” Globacom’s firewood has kept the flame of the festivals it supports alive, warming the hearts of millions who gather yearly to honour tradition.

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To sponsor a festival is one thing; but to nurture its essence and future is another. Through resources and resourcefulness, community engagement, and cultural reverence, Globacom has redefined what corporate responsibility can mean. That is what I gleened from the firm. I agree with those words. Shakespeare writes in Hamlet that “The purpose of playing… is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.” The playwright suggests that the aim of acting and theater is to reflect reality, showing “virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.

By supporting these festivals, the company, Glo, holds up a mirror to our shared identity, allowing us to see ourselves, our beauty, our resilience, our history.

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Globacom became a major sponsor of the Ofala Festival in 2011 and has sustained the sponsorship yearly since then. Fourteen years on, like the Ekwe and the Udu, two Igbo drums beating the same rhythm, the company’s unwavering support has demonstrated that corporate success and cultural preservation can walk (and work) together. I read this out and my friend, the Igbo man, chipped in: “Egbe bere, ugo bere” (let the kite perch and let the eagle perch). When business and tradition walk together, culture gains.

The Yoruba routinely remind us that it is when we walk in the rain that we know who truly walks with us. Companies get involved in arts and culture for various reasons. Some, like leeches, place their names beside great traditions so as to benefit from the greatness. But what I see with Glo here is much more than profit in cash and kind. I see a telecoms giant, wholly indigenous, that has chosen to walk tall with the ancestors, deploying its enormous muscle to connect the past and their history to the world of the modern. One word defines this; it is renewal.

The rich who spend on their people’s historical and cultural essence are not frivolous; neither are they stupid. It is patriotism; if you like, call it cultural nationalism. The wealth of culture, like all wealth, grows when shared.

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Cultural promotion yields dividends that confound account books. It stitches the torn fabric of community; it keeps the hearth of local enterprise burning, and rekindles pride in who we are and where we come from. It renews pride in our shared heritage. It makes us all richer.

If you do well the society notes and records all you do for posterity. The Alake and paramount ruler of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo said in 2017 that “Glo is number one in culture and support for the people. The company pioneered per second billing and others followed.” The Alake wrote that admirable testimonial eight years ago. The flag of patriotism is still there on the mountain top, flying.

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In Ofala, the king dances the dance of joy of a fresh start. In the drumbeats and dance steps, the king delights that yam is harvested as proof of life, not of death. The beats retell a people’s story as told by the ancestors. A people are as strong as the stories they tell of themselves.

This weekend (Friday and Saturday), Onitsha will be draped in Globacom’s green, the colour of growth and renewal. Colour green in French is vert, the Italian call it verde, the Spanish, in Castilian voice, say it is verde. They all draw their source from the Latin word for green which is viridis, a word that denotes freshness and vitality. History is an endless rope. English words, verdant and viridian, have this same Roman ancestry. To viridis again belongs “a large family of other words that evoke vigor, growth, and life: virere (to be green, to be vigorous), vis (strength), vir (man, masculine singular), ver (spring), virga (stem, rod), perhaps even virtus (courage, virtue).” For those insights, check French professor of medieval history, Michel Pastoureau’s ‘Green: The History of a Color’ as translated by Jody Gladding.

Whenever I meet Globacom chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga Jr, I intend to ask him the specific reason he chose colour green for his giant.

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I congratulate the Obi and Glo as the moon glows on Ofala. In the dance of that festival, drums speak, colours sing, and heritage dances. In perfect rhythm, the people breathe, act and rejoice as tradition bathes in innovation. With the moon shining brighter, Obi’s land is renewed this weekend. Congratulations, Agbogidi.

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OPINION: ‘Federal Highways of Horror’

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By Lasisi Olagunju

You know where the latest anti-government journalists are in Lagos? Kirikiri. On a day that Nigerians were celebrating an additional spur of 100 kilometres to the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, the killjoys of Kirikiri struck. They took a happy, joyous people of 200 million on a gruelling, bumpy ride across the country. They ran painful stories of craters and potholes and headlined them: ‘Federal Highways of Horror.’

It is a miracle that our Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, has not pummeled the Lagos newspaper called Vanguard. It ran the bad stories. It is still unclear why the minister has not rebuked its owner and spanked its journalists for publishing what they were not supposed to publish. Not once, but twice, last week they allowed the devil to use them to tell stories of collapsed federal roads from the north to the south. Their stories portrayed hardworking Umahi as a failure in monumental proportions.

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Those journalists, injected with an overdose of impudence, said they did an investigation. They painted a grim picture of federal highways across multiple Nigerian states suffering severe neglect. They said the neglect has made travel dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming. They wrote as if they were sent to pull down a house built by God.

In the South, they came up with a long list of bad roads. They said northern states shared the same story of pain. They described some roads as crater-filled horror scenes; some as barely passable, others as sites long abandoned by contractors. On the few ones harbouring contractors, the signs they displayed showed slow men at work.

It does not rain; it pours. Amid narratives of millions of bad federal roads, Umahi made himself professor last week. “I am a professor of Engineering,” he announced on national television. Professor Umahi? I pray he is not asked to name the king who blessed him with that chieftaincy title. Some Arise News television journalists, whose eyes lack lashes, forced him to make himself professor. They habitually tug at the hem of Umahi’s professorial gown. They pelt him with questions that should never be asked. They remind our working Minister of Works that a river that is not dirty does not hide its depth. Last week, they demanded the cost of federal roads per kilometre. Who does that? And, I am happy, Minister Umahi gave it back to them. He said they are illiterates. Yeah. Don’t they know that for our federal government, spirits decide the total costs of projects? If they were truly not illiterates, they would know that this government is a wholesale seller and buyer; it is too rich to do retail business measured with short tape rules and elementary school rulers.

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Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, thought because he was governor and engineer he could join the talk and say that calculating the average cost per kilometre was possible in road construction. He was similarly told by our minister to shut up or he would be summoned to a debate on the very difficult mathematics of road construction. Umahi said he is Makinde’s senior in engineering. Senior Prefect Umahi described electrical electronics engineers as ‘technicians’ who must not speak on project costs.

Now, what we are told to hold as knowledge from Professor Umahi is that it is impossible to know how much a kilometre of road costs in Nigeria until such projects are completed. God is great. The World Bank must have missed that wisdom back in 1999 when it created the Road Costs Knowledge System (ROCKS), a database that calmly lists what it costs to build or fix a kilometre of road from Umahi’s village in Ebonyi to Makinde’s Ajia in Ibadan. A key feature of the World Bank’s ROCKS is its record of actual and estimated road work costs, clearly defined per kilometre and per square metre. Apparently, only in Nigeria do roads and their costs defy mathematics and logic.

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In utter helplessness, we watch the roads and their costs stretch and shrink like chewing gum depending on whose fingers are working the calculator. While other countries classify their roads by type and cost per kilometre, we prefer a more spiritual approach – if you are an enemy, call it faith-based budgeting.

Clarity is the father of all openness. Why is it missing here? Again, that is not a question or a proverb that we must hear again from anyone, especially professional troublemakers called journalists. What is the problem of Nigerian journalists? Because their eyes have no skin, they query power. Where a cup is half-full, what our journalists see all their lives is a half-empty cup. They didn’t start today. They are historically insolent. What they do to this government, they did to even our ancestor, Lord Lugard, in 1913, one full year before Amalgamation. On 8 March, 1913, one rude journalist working with a newspaper called Lagos Weekly Record wrote that Lugard was a wicked, ruthless character, “a man whose walking stick is a pistol and whose thoughts by day and dreams at night are punitive expeditions and military patrols.”

And what was Lugard’s reaction to such attacks? He fought them with laws and knocks. At a point, he documented their impudence with a letter to his wife, Flora. In the letter, he bunched the journalist with all the other “educated native” who deserved no sympathy. He wrote about the native enemy of the state: “His loud and arrogant conceit are distasteful to me, his lack of natural dignity and of courtesy antagonise me.” Lugard’s biographer, Margery Perham, graciously remembered to put this in the book: ‘Lugard: The Years of Authority’ on page 585. If you can’t get Perham but are fortunate to get Jonathan Derrick’s ‘Africa, Empire and Fleet Street’, check the details there. They are on page 115.

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So, as Lugard, the creator of Nigeria rightly wrote, the Nigerian journalist is arrogant and lacks courtesy. Such are called alárífín in Yoruba. In the days of old, the crime of àrífín carried capital punishment. Aróbafín l’oba npa. But today’s journalists are lucky that they are in a republican democracy. Even then, someone should pay for their bad behaviour. The slap they get from ministers like Umahi is the first tranche of the cost of their bad manners.

What should the state do to the conceited who won’t let expressway contracts be awarded expressly in peace? I have a solution to their problem: Like the Vanguard, they should all be relocated to Kirikiri; all of them, from Lagos to Ibadan; from Ibadan to Lagos. And, if I had my way, I would tip off Umahi and all his harangued hardworking colleagues to award contracts this week for more cells for enemies of the president’s coastal elephant and other projects of renewal. Their new accommodation should enjoy maximum security. They deserve Kirikiri, Kirikiri deserves them.

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What comes fast cannot be delayed again. It happened to cricket. Cricket set his wedding day and simultaneously asked his doctor to start preparing for child delivery. The contracts for a safe house for Nigerian journalists can be awarded today, or, latest tomorrow. There is no need for formalities. Exactly like the Coastal Road contract, this is another no for competitive bidding. We already know contractors with proven track records of expertise in casting beams and building cells. We select and hit the site digging. We can fix the contract cost after the job is done.

From this point, we see long shadows over the country; there is no clarity about important things government do. But, one day soon, like sun rays, clarity will force its way in; it is the father of openness.

Now, beyond the scaffold of satire, I wish I could just tear the mask and tell Minister Umahi that what we have today under his watch is road transportation without roads. And he is Minister of Works in charge of roads. It is a shame.

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In May this year (2025), I wrote ‘The shame of Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road.’ The first two paragraphs of the piece read:

“Mr Dele Alake represents Ekiti State in the Federal Executive Council. Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola represents Osun State in the Federal Executive Council. Mr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo represents Ondo State in the Federal Executive Council. All three of them are the president’s core men. Each time the council sits and approves federal roads for reconstruction in states other than theirs, what goes on in their minds? They are very powerful ministers but all federal roads that lead to their states are decrepit and abandoned. And they know. So, what is the problem?

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“The Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road that links these ministers’ states to Lagos and to the North is the worst in Nigeria. Senate leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, is from Ekiti State. He belongs to the president’s inner caucus. Tough-talking PDP Senator Francis Fadahunsi represents Ife-Ijesa senatorial district. There are seven other senators and several Reps of APC and PDP from those three states. Has anyone heard them say or do anything to make that road well again? Do these people go home and how do they get home whenever they go home? Nigerians of all states lose lives and limbs on that road daily. Death by installments on the road is harrowing and it is a daily experience. It is a fitting tribute to the attention we pay to our people’s welfare.”

That was on May 12, 2025 (five months ago). If the road was “going, going” when I wrote that piece, it is gone now. Gone. An ex-senator told a columnist in May this year that N20 billion had been “released for repairs” of that road. In August 2025, Umahi announced the release of 30 percent of the contract sum. How much is the contract sum? Don’t even go there. If you go there, the minister will be angry. He will remind you that you are not a road professor. If you must ask any question at all, ask what has happened to what Umahi said was released, his 30 percent. Ask, because, nothing that is worth one kobo has happened on that road this year.

But the total collapse of the road did not come to me as a surprise. By the noon of May 12, 2025 when I published the article, one of the senators I called out in the piece called me.

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“They have just read to me what you wrote.” He told me. Big men don’t read newspapers; newspapers are read to big men. Senator said he laughed at my naivety. He wondered why I was disturbing myself writing rubbish about a contract that may never be executed.

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“Do you think Nigeria can ever be better than it is? (Sé ìwo rò wípé Nigeria lè dára jù báyìí lo ni?)” He asked and proceeded to shame me with names, facts and figures all of which answered his question with a no. He said I should record and publish all he said. I laughed at the audacity of his directive. An orphan like me will never dare court a wound on the back.

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Besides, I was taught early in life to make my eyes flexible enough for them to see the nose. That was the wisdom that eluded Partridge who claimed to know it all, and because he made that claim, he blocked his own opportunity to learn Ifá from the pigeon. ‘Mo m’Obàrà, mo m’Ofún,’ tí kò j e kí ẹyẹlé k’ àparò n’Ífá (I know Obàrà, I know Ofún’ made the pigeon not to teach Ifá to the partridge).

So, my pigeon listened attentively to the incantation from the hawk. This senator ended his long, windy speech with a submission that the Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road, and other federal roads in the South-West were decrepit and abandoned because the Works Minister “does not like hearing South-West at all.” I heard him and sighed.

When the outspoken gentleman spoke with me five months ago, he was a PDP senator. He has since moved to Dave Umahi’s party. Now, I wonder if he will still say what he said now that he is in APC.

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Author and literary critic, Robert M. Wren (1928-1989), in 1982 wrote “The Last Bridge on ‘The Road’: Soyinka’s Rage and Compassion.” He tells us that in 1962, Wole Soyinka, in a Lagos Daily Express essay entitled ‘Bad Roads, Bad Users, Bad Deaths’ captured Nigeria’s enduring road crisis. Writing with outrage and in satire, Soyinka lamented the deadly state of the highways. He agonised over the state of the Lagos–Ibadan road (Mile 34); there was what he called “the death-trap at Ife”, and “the last bridge on Ikorodu Road.” Soyinka recalled and deplored a senator’s refusal to carry a crash victim with a spinal cord injury to Ibadan. More than six decades later, the roads are still bad, very bad; they still kill; senators are still cold-blooded; they still wonder why anyone bothers to care that the roads are bad.

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Edo GIS Denies Report Of 17-year-old Purchasing 14 Hectares Of Land

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The Edo Geographic Information Systems (Edo GIS) has debunked reports circulating on social media that a 17-year-old boy purchased 14 hectares of land in Edo State and was subsequently denied a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) by Governor Monday Okpebholo.

In a statement released by the Director of Press, Tunde Egbiremonlen, the agency clarified that no such transaction exists in its records.

According to the statement, a 17-year-old is legally considered a minor and, as such, is not eligible to register land ownership under Edo State law.

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The Edo GIS system will automatically reject such applications due to age restrictions,” the statement read

READ ALSO:Edo Promises Effective PHCs In 192 Wards

“In the first place, a 17-year-old cannot apply for registration of land in Edo state because that age bracket is assumed to be a minor; the Edo GIS system will automatically reject the application.

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“To compound the objective of the rumour-mongers, the peddlers of the story did not explain where in Edo state, such 14,000 hectares were purchased by the minor.

READ ALSO:Edo Gov Sacks Education Board Chair, Names Replacement

Egbiremonlen also pointed out inconsistencies in the viral report, noting that it failed to mention the specific location of the alleged 14 hectares and described the story as “deliberately mischievous and fabricated.”

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He accused the originators of the false information of attempting to cause disaffection and blackmail the government, saying significant funds were spent to circulate the fake news.

Edo GIS urged the public to disregard the claims and remain vigilant against disinformation aimed at undermining the government’s credibility.

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