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OPINION: Mike Adenuga And The Ijebu Spirit

Published

3 years ago

May 1, 2023

By Lasisi Olagunju

It was almost a missed call; or, more appropriately, an ignored call because the telephone number was unusual – an eight digit number. But, something told me: pick it, and I did.

“Hello, is that Mr. Lasisi Olagunju?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered, waiting for what would come next.

“My name is Mike Adenuga…” It took me two, three seconds to process what I just heard: Adenuga? Of Globacom? The voice sounded real. I heard myself exclaim “Ha!” He heard me too and burst into laughter; he laughed heartily.

Then, he followed up; telling me that he called to appreciate what I wrote. “I have just read your most recent article,” he said while commending the language, the choice of words. That was four years ago. He was referring to my August 19, 2019 piece I entitled: “Awujale’s Ojude Oba ‘swansong.’” He, particularly, thanked me for the mention I gave him and his company in that piece. But – I told myself – words about him and his exploits were in not more than two paragraphs, yet he was effusive in appreciation!

“Are you from Ibadan,” he asked me.

“No, sir. I am from Eripa.” I could guess what would follow.

“Eripa? Where is Eripa?”

“Eripa is in Osun State, sir.”

“Osun State. Osun State. Why are you not from Ibadan? You should have come from Ibadan.” I burst into laughter; he laughed too.

Then, he said some other great things and ended the call. The significance of that conversation was not lost on me. The man who just called and spoke so affectionately with me is one of Africa’s authentic richest and best. The call was a surprise king-size call; it is impossible to forget that moment.

That reach-out speaks to the man’s humanity and the values undergirding his essence. I noticed that the hugely successful businessman used the Yoruba honorific pronoun ‘e’ for poor me throughout that encounter. It was a lesson in humility and the reason why the great is great and will remain so. It was a privilege that was also a reminder that the world was reading and watching; and that the writer should be very careful about what he writes and how he writes it. When you choose to speak or write, you’ve become an egg thrower; you cannot repack whatever you have unleashed. I learnt that lesson from home and had it burnished one busy evening in 1996 or thereabouts. Mr Biodun Oduwole was our Editor-in-Chief. He sauntered into the newsroom that evening, glanced through a story, looked up and commented: “You people should be careful in your choice of words when you write. These things that we write, just one line is enough to build or destroy…”

I have, these past days, read with relish tomes of tributes from Adenuga’s fans and beneficiaries on his 70th birthday. The climax came on Saturday, 29th April; it was his day and the way it was marked showed that what was celebrated was not just the billionaire or his billions. More significantly celebrated was the social value of the billions the man has – the humanity behind the wealth. How does it feel to be 70 in great wealth and gracious quietude? Those who have been there will tell us. We know one thing, however: Man is not born perfect; he has weaknesses but men of distinguished provenances age quietly and get better; the tannins get dissipated; a bouquet of rich flavours seep in – exactly like extraordinary wines of 70 years, preserved and aged under ideal conditions- right temperature, stable humidity. I carefully read many of the tributes, testimonies and testimonials. His ways teach us that you don’t have to be in politics and public office to impact humanity in positively unforgettable ways. Adenuga deserves every great thing that has been said about him. He deserves more – including this postscript.

We hear and read of Adenuga’s astounding life-saving interventions involving the high and the low, particularly the low. I remember a case: A member of Globacom’s PR team sent me a WhatsApp message three years ago. It was a video clip that had gone viral. The sender accompanied it with a request: “We are looking for this woman. Can you help?” The lady in the video was stark naked. She was shown in her thatched hut flinging away her own scant wares. She was obviously not insane. What I was seeing in that video was not madness; it was the world showing the woman how wicked it could be. The strange behaviour was the victim’s reaction to the harassment she was getting from some agents of state; the wicked could be heard behind the camera issuing threats. We tried and searched everywhere but couldn’t locate the woman. Months later, I read in a Glo in-house magazine that the hunt had yielded results; she was discovered deep in the woods of a village on the outskirts of Badagry, Lagos State. She was met broken and bruised by life. The woman’s consequent trip to Adenuga’s presence in Banana Island was a journey of total rebirth and reinvention; her story changed positively forever. There are many of such search-and-rescue stories involving the quiet man of means who clocked 70 on Saturday.

Adenuga has had very many profound engagements with the Nigerian society. In my 2019 piece on Ijebu’s Ojude Oba, I said the king’s thoughts had an intriguing confluence with Adenuga’s intervention in telecoms in Nigeria; the need to enthrone the right values in public and personal policies. Nigerians of 30 years and younger might likely not know that digital mobile telephony came as expensive as wanting to be president of Nigeria. Payment was as unfeeling as Multichoice’s erratic, ever-increasing DSTv subscription fees; the SIM card you get for free today was N30,000 or more. Worse, it did not matter that you made a phone call for just a second – you must pay for 60 seconds. It was ‘buy a second, pay for a minute’ –which was N50. Phone users cried and wailed but the kingly ‘foreign’ operators dispensing telecom favours in 2001, 2002 insisted that per second billing was not possible. Then the Ijebu man came with his Glo on 29 August, 2003 and, from that point, telecom kingmakers stopped playing god – a second’s call started attracting a second’s pay across all platforms. SIM cards became affordable; Glo leveled the ground for the rich and for those on the other bank of life. What heartless business said was impossible became possible; Adenuga’s entry and intervention snatched back for Nigerians their country from the jaws of invasive Shylocks in telecoms. The crocs ate their own jaws, teeth and all; they surrendered. You can now see why the beneficiaries of Adenuga’s life and business choices are not only Globacom’s 55 million subscribers. The entire country is his beneficiary. That is why his quiet 70th birthday was made deafeningly loud by usual and unusual people. The reason I am writing this, wishing him well.

How does it feel to be wealthy? A Yoruba saying says having a lot of money gives peace of mind (ìfòkànbalè); an old musician, Yusuf Olatunji, defines “having money at home” as the father of peace (baba àlàáfíà). And, so I ask: What is the purpose of wealth? Or, how does wealth advance one’s goal in life? I go to Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher, who exhaustively engaged the subjects of wealth, life and happiness. What is the ultimate purpose of life, he asked? It is to be happy; and happiness is “to find joy, contentment and satisfaction in one’s pursuits and relationships.” He further described ‘happiness’ as “the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” He said a person is happy “who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1101a10). In other words, to be truly happy, you need money, you need lovers, friends; you need skill, knowledge, sound education, sound health and other “external goods” sufficient for a lifetime, enough for “a complete life” – and you deploy all these “in accordance with complete virtue” for the general good. When a man of means sets targets of goodness and meets them; when he chooses a life of ‘seclusion’ and of quiet bonding and connectedness with the high and the low; when he avoids the tempting flashlights of loud giving, he achieves for himself a definition of happiness that goes beyond the limits set by the masters of philosophy.

I read some headlines that described Adenuga as the “Spirit of Africa.” What I see is the never-say-die spirit of the Ijebu in the man. Many roads lead to the Ijebu market; the successful homeboy, most times, chooses that one which is rarely taken. And it leads gracefully to the throne of grace. The apple never falls far from the tree. The 2019 article that attracted that telephone call from the Globacom chairman was on Oba Sikiru Adetona’s preemptive demand on the kind of person that should be allowed to succeed him as the Awujale. The oba spoke at that year’s edition of the annual Ojude Oba festival sponsored by Adenuga’s Globacom. And there, he said what no oba likes to say – words about death and succession: “When I eventually go, please, go for a capable successor. Reject any candidate that will put Ijebu land into regression. Do not politicise the process of selecting my successor. Do not go for people that will draw Ijebu backwards. If the next ruling house does not present a viable candidate, please, reject him and go for the next ruling house with a capable candidate. Do not go for moneybags that will destroy the achievements Ijebu land has recorded so far.” I felt (and still feel) that only an unusual king of an unusual people would so calmly breach the iron wall of fear; a sovereign talking so loudly about his own after-reign.

Two things stand out in that royal statement: viability of leadership and repudiation of unethical deployment of resources. If the oba had said what he said before a Nigerian general election, his dove would have been accused of chanting incantations to the hearing of our politicians’ irritable pigeons. What he said is truth that gives allergies to priests and principalities of Nigeria; angels who share kola nut lobes with the devil. But, the oba’s words were straightforward and his audience well-defined. His Ijebu people were his audience. Every Yoruba person knows something about the Ijebu’s affinity with money. They are not menial because they know money lives in elevated grounds. While the Yoruba of the hinterland were beating their chest with cutlasses and hoes and saying ìgbé l’owó wà (money is in the bush/farm), the Ijebu, very early in life, rejected that business sense; they proudly told themselves that the city was their own farm. Daniel R. Aronson’s ‘The City is Our Farm’ (1978) is about Ijebu families and their very eloquent ways and means to fame, power and wealth. People who know the Ijebu know they’ve always had money and know how to spend money. Their carriage, however, suggests that the value they place on wealth is directly proportional to how it benefits the world of the wealthy. It is the functionalist route; a rejection of wealth for wealth’s sake. They measure the social value of money in terms of the functions money performs. That, incidentally, is the position of grand old economist, Walter Stewart (1885-1958) in his ‘Social Value and the Theory of Money’ (1917: 984). Wealth profits the wealthy only when it is virtuous in usage and makes the less fortunate happy. Did you not read testimonies on this in articles, columns and advertorials, etc celebrating the essential Mike Adenuga on Saturday?

Every nation has founding ethics which define its values and shape its people’s politics and economics. The Awujale knew his people and why he believed leaders affect destinies – and that money should not be a city’s electoral college. What picks leaders is in their history. Tradition says the story of Ijebu and its stellar spirit started with the migration (from wherever) of an inventive people. Read T.O. Ogunkoya’s The Early History of Ijebu (December, 1956). It tells us how from their beginning and across centuries the Ijebu have proven to be a resiliently resourceful people with a very rich history in war, politics, trade and commerce. They have always been a people of “change and continuity.” They traded with Europeans before colonialism and gained power and prestige. They are a people who send power and money on errands, not the other way round. They can be very tenacious in pursuing goals and unyielding to challenges. Like lions, they hold their ground and defend their territories. The British-Ijebu war of 1892 was essentially a war over trade and routes. They lost that war, but they gained the respect of the British who saw how worthy the Ijebu were as an adversary.

We gain a better insight into what is stocked in that DNA when we read the words of a pioneer Yoruba clergyman, R. A. Coker of the Church Missionaries Society (C.M.S.) in one of the church’s ‘Annual Letters’ dated December 19, 1897: “The Jebus are an ambitious people and will not be rivalled. They are quick at acquiring the art of anything and are too impatient to go through a thing systematically. For instance, they cannot see why the art of reading could not be acquired or accomplished in a week at most (as well as) master carpenting, shoemaking and tailoring. One man learnt to read the Bible in a month. Very large numbers of books are sold – 600 portions of scripture….Many begin to read from curiosity or in order to know what their companions may be boasting of or from some other motive” (see J.D.Y. Peel, 1977: 130). That was over 200 years ago. There is no way you read their contemporary history and look at them today without those same traits winking at you. If Adenuga was denied a GSM licence in 2001, lost $20 million and he dug in and reapplied, paid $20 million again and got it in 2002, you can understand where he was coming from.

Excellence is never an accident; that, again, is from Aristotle. The philosopher added that excellence “is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” Trees tower in the forest because they mastered the art of putting the wind on the leash. With their deep roots and sturdy stems, they shame storms; they habitualize excellence for the world to marvel at and applaud. And, the fruit is a product of the tree and the soil that sires it. Peel (1977) said Ijebus are “one of the most distinctive Yoruba-sub-groups.” The British sociologist was right. In politics, commerce, religion, scholarship, entertainment and in virtually all other sectors, Ijebu’s exclusivity and distinction have not stopped to amaze the world around them. That sub-group gave us Obafemi Awolowo; gave us Tai Solarin and Wole Soyinka, Prince of Isara. It is a corridor with a womb for giants, producing world champions, the pride of the black race. Think of boxers Anthony Joshua and Israel Adesanya, current global sensations. Today’s biggest is Mike Adenuga who sits atop the throne of business – and of philanthropy.

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Ex-IYC President Demands Toru-Ebe, Oil River States Creation, 33 LGs In Bayelsa

Published

6 minutes ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

Pioneer president of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC),
Dr Felix Tuodolo, has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to create Toru-Ebe and Oil River states.

The former commissioner for Ijaw Affairs in Bayelsa State also urged the government at the centre to create 33 Thirty-three (33) additional Local Government Councils for Bayelsa State.

Tuodolo, who said Bayelsa is one of the largest oil and gas producing states in Nigeria, added that the state accounts for a substantial portion of the country’s oil production, estimated to be around 35-45%.

He noted that despite the state’s significant contribution to Nigeria’s GDP, land and river mass and huge potentials for steady growth and development, the state currently had only eight (8) Local Government Areas, emphasising that Thirty-three LGAs were proposed for creation to make Bayelsa a constitutional state since the 1999 Constitution stipulates that every state must have a minimum of ten LGAs.

The statement read, “Importantly, the three major tribes in Nigeria all have their own states. The Yorubas have six states, the Hausa- Fulani has 19 northern states and the Igbo has five, and now seven with the resolutions to create a sixth state for them and an extra state in each Geo-political zone, which Ijaws strongly supports. But the Ijaws do not have a single state because the only Ijaw state, namely, Bayelsa, does not even meet the requirement of a state with only eight LGAs. The proposed new thirty-three LGAs for Bayelsa must be created for the Ijaws to accept that they have a state. Nigeria should take seriously the creation of 33 additional LGAs in Bayelsa State. This 33 LGs creation was as old as the creation of Bayelsa State.

“These including other demands made by the INC Global in the envisaged new constitution include: (d) Protection and remediation of the Ijaw environment (6) Federal resource contribution through resource control and payment of tax (1) True federal Constitution (with no unitary colouration) (g) Reintegration of own vide the wholesale prosecution of the Ijaw struggle for self-determination, which had lasted centuries (h) Improve the quality and quantity of representation in the Ijaw region”, he added.

Dr Tuodolo also threw his weight behind the call by the INC Global the creation of Toru Ebe State out of the present Ondo, Edo and Delta States.

He argued that the oil revenue from the Ijaw areas in the three states accounts for the largest revenue accruing to the National Economy, stressing that despite the receipt of the 13% Derivation Revenue by the 3 states (Delta, Edo and Ondo), the Ijaw areas which are mineral producing had been denied of any meaningful development.

“The proposed state with a population of 2.7million people has natural landscapes with beautiful beaches and lengthy coastline which can be annexed into a blue economy and tourism that will make the State economically viable”, he noted.

The INC Global also demanded the creation of the oil river state.

“We proposed Oil Rivers State that will comprise Ijaws in Rivers and Akwa ibom States. These areas remain the most naturally blessed but environmentally degraded in the entire world with massive oil (exploration) and gas flaring threatening the very survival of the People”, he emphasised.

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OPINION: US And FFK’s Drum Of War

Published

1 hour ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

By Suyi Ayodele

On our way we are going to fight

On our way we are going to war

If it happens, we die on the battlefield

Never mind we shall meet again

Kóláwolé agbára únbẹ

A lè ja o

Fuji icon, Abdulrasaq Kóláwolé Ilori, popularly known as General Ayinla Kollington, waxed the above lyrics in his 1986 album, E Bá Mi Dúpé.

Kollington left the Military as a non-commissioned officer. When such a man says he is heading to the front lines, his relations have every reason to worry, given his limited or non-existent experience he possessed in real combat.

But the fuji crooner’s case is far better than the position of Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK), former Minister of Aviation, who, on Sunday, warned the United States of America, USA, that there would be war should the Big Brother, US, make good its threat to intervene in Nigeria’s plight in the hands of insurgents, militarily.

Here is what FFK said about the impending military action threatened by President Donald Trump of America: “… if he carries out his abominable threat, there will be a war. We shall not leave the country, but we will fight it out with them…”

When a man promises to give you a cloth to wear, our elders caution that you should first look at the rag your would-be benefactor puts on. What is FFK’s pedigree that he would threaten war with the US? Who prepared pounded yam for him and asked him not to worry about the soup with which to eat it (ta ló gún iyán fún un tó ní t’obè ò sòro)? Could it be that the Ile Ife-born politician listens more to the lyrics of Kollington above? Or is there an intoxicating spirit somewhere ministering to his sanguinary needs?

FFK’s father, the Late Chief Victor Babaremilekun Adetokunbo Fani-Kayode, known simply as Remi Fani-Kayode, was elected the Deputy Premier of the defunct Western Region in 1963. His principal was the late Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola. Remi Fani-Kayode was so powerful in the Akintola administration that he was nicknamed, Fani Power. He was, indeed, a great power wielder, consummate politician, brilliant lawyer and alternate Premier of the most cosmopolitan region. He was romanticised such that friends and foes feared him.

But on the night of January 15, 1966, some young military boys under the leadership of the late Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, decided to overthrow the government of Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister. When the soldiers struck in Ibadan, capital of Western Region, the man known as Fani Power was picked up effortlessly!

Accounts of that mid-night raid across the capitals of the three regions of Nigeria and Lagos, say that Chief Remi Fani-Kayode did not fire a single catapult at the mutinous soldiers who came for him! Neither did he scratch the skin of the soldiers with his fingernails. Remi Fani-Kayode simply obeyed as he was thrown, like a bag of Kano onions, into the trunk of the van the soldiers rode to his place.

Those who witnessed that era and who knew Fani Power, say that FFK is nowhere near his father in terms of reach, boldness and dexterity. Yet, when the old Fani-Kayode saw guns, his ‘boldness’ evaporated as he begged for his life and led the rampaging soldiers to the residence of his principal, Akintola, where the late Yoruba Generalissimo was said to have shot several times at his assailants before he was overpowered and killed.

Almost six decades after his father surrendered willingly to a few Nigerian soldiers that came for him at the dead of the night, FFK is boasting that should Trump make good his threat to send troops to our shores, “We shall not leave the country, but we will fight it out with them!” Pray, from whom did he inherit the boldness? Has he ever used a catapult to kill a lizard before such that he would boast of a full-blown war with the US?

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How did we get to this stage in our nation’s history that the American President, Trump, would have to warn our government to wake up and halt the ‘genocide’ of Christians in the country, otherwise, America would rise to the occasion?

In a series of tweets over the weekend, Trump threatened to send military help, promising that he would be coming to Nigeria “gun-a-blazing.” I checked the semantic implications of the phrase, “gun-a-blazing”, and my dictionary says it means: “to do something with great energy, force, and enthusiasm or be very aggressive…”

Ask me a hundred times, I will tell you that Trump means business. Yes, the motive may not be altruistic; it can never be, not with the Western world. But his choice of diction indicates a man who will do what he has said. And, sincerely, I pray that it doesn’t get to that level. Should it happen, the jubilation among Nigerians will make the jubilation when General Sani Abacha expired to pale into insignificance. This will be so, not necessarily because Nigerians are less patriotic. But more because the present administration has not demonstrated any strand of leadership in protecting the lives of the people!

Trump went ahead to say: “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it is going to be fast, vicious and sweet.” Other top Pentagon officials and political advisors of Trump had also spoken in that direction. It appears an American interest is at risk in Nigeria. The signs are ominous enough for any serious government to ignore. More worrisome is the fact that the Tinubu government’s vuvuzelas who are always quick to respond in aggressive manners to this kind of threat, are loudly silent!

The US, we all know, does not joke with its interests, anywhere in the world. Moreso in “a disgraced country” like Nigeria as Trump christened us. Who do we blame for this? Nobody should be naive enough to think that the US is talking because it loves us. Something is at stake; something that is of a huge benefit to the US, I dare say! So, how did our cock demystify the comb on its head for the Fox to play with? Remember the fable of the cock and the Fox?

Our mothers told us that at the beginning of life, the Fox feared the cock because of the redness of the comb on the cock’s head. The Fox believed that the comb was fire, and it avoided the cock, accorded it its due respect.

But when a man has what it does not value, it gives it out cheaply. For whatever reason, the cock, one day, approached the Fox and told the Fox that it had no reason to fear him because the comb was nothing but a soft mound of flesh. To prove that, the cock asked the Fox to touch the comb and when the latter did and was not scourged, it descended on the cock and made a feast of it. Of course, chicken venison is usually delicious, and the Fox does not forbid a good meal. This is why the cock, and other of its avian family members, are delicacies for the Fox.

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Right from our independence, Nigeria has played major roles in the maintenance of peace and tranquillity on the continent of Africa. We were not just christened Giant of Africa for fun. In the Congo crisis and other crises that threatened the existence of Africa, the Nigerian Military distinguished itself. We restored order in many countries and stabilised democracy in not a few others.

But for the roles of Nigeria in the West Africa sub-region military intervention codenamed the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), probably, countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone would have been in tatters today. Our military personnel distinguished themselves in those campaigns and were awarded laurels by the United Nations (UN).

Also, when the apartheid White overlords held on to the jugulars of our South African siblings, Nigeria was the rallying point. The nation committed personnel and resources to get South Africa its independence. The entire world acclaimed our feats, and we savoured the moments, beating our chests that we are indeed, the Giant of Africa in deeds.

Now, in the year of the Lord 2025, America is issuing us a threat to fix the insurgency ravaging our nation or it sends troops to come and fix it for us in a fast, vicious and sweet manner! How did we get here? What happened to the wonders our Military performed in foreign lands? Why can’t we replicate what we did to help others in our own land?

In answering these questions, we draw strength from the table of the cock and the Fox and more in the moral lesson of an old man and his son on why no man should lend himself as an instrument in any evil machination.

The aged man, according to the story, gathered his children and told them that in all they did, their names must not be mentioned when evils were being planned. When asked why, the old man said that no evil perpetrated by any man would go without a full remittance to the plotters.

Next door, the narrative says, was an equally old man who terrorised the community. But contrary to the projection that no evil man would die without reaping the fruits of his evil deeds, the old, wicked man prospered, had seven sons and five daughters; all of them also prosperous, and he died peacefully.

While his funeral rites were underway, one of the children who took the moral lesson from his father reminded the father that his theory was wrong and cited the case of the dead wicked old man. The father looked at his son and said: “No man who has not been successfully buried can be said to have died a peaceful death.”

The father and son were still at the a-tete-a-tete, when they heard a loud bang from the wicked man’s compound. What followed was a great burst of flames and the corpse lying in state together with the 12 children of the deceased, were trapped in the inferno and burnt beyond recognition! At his funeral, the wicked old man lost all he had here on earth!

The story states further that what ignited the fire was a spark from the gunshot fired in traditional salute to the deceased. The spark dropped in a keg of gunpowder and the resulting flame spread rapidly to the thatched roof, where gallons of palm oil were stored on the rafter, fuelled by the harmattan wind.

The man who relayed this story to me said that it was from that cradle that he made up his mind that never would he join anyone in any evil plot. Such comes back to haunt and harm their perpetrators.

This is what the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration is reaping as Trump threatens military action. It is the reward of the evil voyage of 2014 Tinubu, the late General Muhammadu Buhari, Rotimi Amaechi and Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, as opposition leaders then made, when they approached the US Government of Barrack Obama to block President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan from accessing military fighter jets and other arms and ammunition needed to confront the Boko Haram and other insurgent groups of that period.

Through destructive opposition and the desperation to get Goodluck out of the way, the Tinubu gang sold Nigeria cheaply to the US Government. I have checked the photo of the foursome with John Forbes Kerry, the US Secretary of State under Obama, as they negotiated away Nigeria’s sovereignty in their bid to gain control of power.

Eleven years down the line, that evil voyage has come to collect its IOU from Tinubu. Unfortunately, of the four who sold out Nigeria to the US in 2014, one of them, Buhari, is no more. Today, both Amaechi and Oyegun are poles apart from Tinubu, who is left to carry the ant-infested firewood of that desperate misadventure!

So, what do we do in this circumstance? One, we must agree that there is a genocide of Nigerians across the Federation. This genocide may not necessarily be targeted at the Nigerian Christians; the fact remains that the proportion of Christians killed so far towers far above their Muslim counterparts. Someone, somewhere, is waging a war against the nation and our government remains lethargic!

The second admittance is that in its response to these mindless killings, the Nigerian Government, in the last 11 years of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, has been non-existent. Truth be told, the Tinubu government’s emphasis on politics above the welfare and safety of Nigerians, gives credence to the designation of Nigeria as a slaughter slab. There is no way anyone will be able to rationalise the unfeeling reactions of President Tinubu to the calamities bandits and insurgents are visiting on helpless Nigerians.

This is therefore the best time for Tinubu to show that he has the aptitude to lead this country. He should make no mistakes about it: the US will strike if the situation continues. That will be too bad, not only for the President, but for all of us. The cost will be too much for us to bear. Our government must act, and act decisively.

Rather than asking us to prepare for war against the US as FFK suggested in his response, the Tinubu administration, I suggest, should show more seriousness in the fight against the killings going on across our nation. It is an embarrassment to the nation, and more to the Commander-in-Chief, for bandits, armed with sophisticated weapons, to flood our cities to attend the wedding ceremonies and other social engagements of their ‘commanders’ and our armed forces did nothing!

It is a shame that while the rain and bad roads would not allow the President to visit the victims of the attacks in Benue communities where over 200 Nigerians were slaughtered, the same elements allowed him to attend the state banquet the Benue State Government organised in his honour. He ate, drank, belched and flew back to Abuja, leaving the living to bury their dead! That shows the priority of the president at that critical moment, politics above the people’s safety!

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Tinubu Directs Education Minister To End ASUU Strike

Published

1 hour ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

President Bola Tinubu has directed the Minister of Education, Mr. Olatunji Alausa, to move quickly and resolve the lingering industrial dispute with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, saying he does not want another strike to disrupt academic activities across Nigerian universities.

Speaking to State House correspondents after meeting the President at the Aso Rock Villa on Tuesday, Alausa said the government had already met “literally all” of ASUU’s demands and is now working to extract further concessions from the President.

“The President has mandated us that he doesn’t want ASUU to go on strike, and we’re doing everything humanly possible to ensure that our students stay in school. The last strike they went on for about six days was not really needed.

“We’ve met literally all their requirements. Now we’ve gone back to the negotiation table. Part of my visit here today is to also explain where we are with the ASUU strike to Mr. President and to extract more concessions from him,” the minister said.

He described the most recent six-day warning strike as “not really needed,” noting that his visit to the President was both to explain progress and to secure more executive backing for education and human capital.

“The last strike they went on for about six days was not really needed. We’re talking to them…Now we’ve gone back to the negotiation table. We’re talking as he spoke to the leadership this morning. We will resolve this.

“And part of my visit today here is to also explain where we are with the ASUU strike to Mr. President and to extract more concessions from Mr. President,” he stated.

ASUU, Nigeria’s principal university lecturers’ union, has long taken the Federal Government to task over funding shortfalls, salary arrears, the renegotiated 2009 FG–ASUU agreement, the rollout of University Transparency and Accountability Solution in place of IPPIS, and the dilapidated state of tertiary infrastructure.

Over the years, strikes by the union have disrupted academic calendars, delayed graduations and diminished the global competitiveness of Nigerian universities.

In October, ASUU launched a two-week warning strike after citing the government’s failure to honour its demands, including the conclusion of the renegotiated agreement, payment of arrears, and revitalisation of universities.

According to the Education Minister, the Tinubu administration has consolidated negotiations by creating a single committee, under the leadership of Yayale Ahmed, to deal with all tertiary-staff unions, including ASUU, the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, and the Colleges of Education Staff Union. This replaces the previous arrangement in which each union had its own committee, he noted.

“What we’ve done now is to expand one single committee. They’re dealing with both academic and non-academic unions…There is no ultimatum. Everything is calm, and they understand this is a listening government,” said Alausa.

The minister also pointed to a new Federal Tertiary Institution Governance and Transparency Portal, which publishes data on enrolment, budget allocations (personnel, capital, recurrent), intervention funds, endowments and grants.

He said the portal currently covers federal universities, polytechnics and colleges of education and will extend to state and private institutions.

“We are running an evidence-based government…If you don’t have data, it’s like you’re flying blind,” he added.

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