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OPINION: Now That The President Is Back
Published
11 months agoon
By
Editor
By Suyi Ayodele
You could not have noticed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came into the country on Sunday because he breezed in at night. Nigerians should be happy that our husband is back. We don’t deserve any explanation about how our husband, who told us he was going to China, ended up in the United Kingdom (UK). That is what a woman who married an Òrò, the nocturnal spirit of darkness gets. Òrò walks only at night; it tells no other spirits its movement. Not even members of his household.
Kollington Ayinla, Fuji lord, once sang about an adulterous woman. The woman, the musician sang, bade the husband goodbye on a trip to Kwara, but was spotted in Abeokuta; when she said she was going to Kano, she ended up at Ita Faji in Lagos. Yet she says she does not tell lies! Elders of our land say a woman who gets married to a socialite must add patience and perseverance to her virtues. We welcome back Mr. President from the land of the unknown, where he conducted unknown businesses on our behalf. We have rulers and ruiners here. We have never been fortunate to have a leader at the helm of affairs of the nation. And we can’t do anything about that. A man lives with whatever destiny is assigned as his portion.
Before our husband departed to China and surfaced in the UK, he approved a minimum wage of N70,000 a month for workers. That was when petrol was sold for between N700 and N750 a litre. But while away, the ones he left to tend to us increased fuel price to N868/litre. That was for the government-controlled NNPCL retail outlets. Other players in the market, especially the ubiquitous independent marketers, sold the products at N1,200. That is an average difference of N500 per litre, depending on the location. A few hours before the nocturnal arrival of our Òrò husband back to Nigeria, the NNPCL announced that it bought a litre of petrol from the expected ‘saviour’, Dangote Refinery, at N898/litre. That means the NNPCL will sell between N950 and N1,120/litre. The independent marketers will, no doubt, up the stakes and sell at N1,600 or more. Mr. President’s new minimum wage is no longer relevant. The take-home pay can no longer take anyone home. Now that the President is back, he must do something.
Before President Tinubu left for China, he set the tone for another layer of suffering for Nigerians. A litre of fuel he met at N198 when he took over on May 29, 2023, suddenly jumped to N896 at the NNPCL mega-filling stations across the country. Other marketers started selling at between N1,000 and N1,200 per litre in some states. In many other states, the price was higher than that. We had no option. We groaned under the big phallus of our husband, and we moved on.
Expectedly, Aso Rock Villa gave the usual explanation. The Presidency did not ask NNPCL to sell fuel at the new price. NNPCL replied that market forces determined the new price. Helpless and hapless Nigerians were left in the middle of two lying institutions. Nigerians know that it was not a spirit that gave the order. But nobody owned up. Nobody has ever owned up to anything in Nigeria. We are a country on autopilot. Anything goes here, just as our resilience increases anytime the bitter pill is shoved down our throats. We swallowed them without complaints, and we waited for the next mistreatment. Lucky rulers and ruiners they are. I mean those who superintend our affairs. They get away with many things.
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Coincidentally, as our husband arrived from an unknown journey, the government decided to divert our attention. The handlers of Tinubu are experts in perfidy and diversionary tactics. They know some stubborn wives in the federation might want to ask how President Tinubu ended up shaking hands with King Charles III of England when we all held corporate prayers for his safe trip to China. They threw something new at us all.
The media became culpable this time around. Everywhere we turned, we were assailed by the news of NNPCL sending hundreds of trucks to load fuel from the Dangote Refinery. An incurable Tinubu apologist who had the temerity to send the video of the trucks loading the products at the Dangote Refinery to me has since not picked up my calls. His shame, I can understand. Hardly had he sent the video, in a celebratory mood, with the did-we-not-tell-you victory signature, than the show of shame between the NNPCL and Dangote began.
Nothing has been done in a transparent manner in this 16-month-old government of Tinubu. Since the day Dangote announced the readiness of its refinery, there has been one tale of mistrust, denial, and inefficiency between the refinery and the NNPCL. Nobody can say exactly the volume of crude oil the NNPCL has ‘sold’ to the Dangote Refinery. Nobody knows how much the nation has made from the transaction. We cannot say if we are running at a loss, or if we have made any gain. At a time, we were all about to shout, Eureka, the price of fuel went rooftop. Now, the controversy is how much Dangote Refinery sold the lifted products to the NNPCL. The confusion is so great that nobody remembered to ask Tinubu what he went to the UK to do or what he brought us from the trip when the president sneaked into the country like the proverbial Òrò.
The NNPC, through its spokesman, Olufemi Soneye, said it bought a litre of fuel from the Dangote Refinery at N898. The implication is that the corporation will not sell below the cost price. If we all go by that calculation, the NNPCL retail outlets will sell a litre at about N1,100, or more. The independent marketers and other fellow shylocks in the industry, who had before the N898/litre lifting price, been selling between N1,200 to N1,400/litre, will increase the price to between N1,500 to N1,600, depending on the location. The singular implication is more pain for the masses who will have to bear the brunt of the inefficiency of those we elected, or who elected themselves, to be rulers and ruiners over us.
The way and manner NNPCL announced the new cost price from the Dangote Refinery shows only one thing: shamelessness! How on earth did we get to this level that nobody in government has any modicum of decency? Should there be any controversy over a matter of this nature when the NNPCL has four refineries: two in Port Harcourt, one in Warri and another one in Kaduna? Who should be talking about buying from the other? Yet Soneye and the Corporation he speaks for are gloating over the fact that the Dangote Refinery is not being truthful about its selling price when the refinery put a lie to the NNPCL claim of N898/litre cost price.
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The Dangote Refinery’s communications man, Anthony Chiejina, hours after the NNPCL announced the N898/litre cost price slammed the Corporation, describing the claim as “both misleading and mischievous, deliberately aimed at undermining the milestone achievement recorded today, September 15, 2024, towards addressing energy insufficiency and insecurity, which has bedevilled the economy in the past 50 years.” The refinery went ahead to ask Nigerians “to disregard this malicious statement and await a formal announcement on the pricing, by the Technical Sub-Committee on Naira-based crude sales to local refineries, appointed by His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR, which will commence on October 1, 2024, bearing in mind that our current stock of crude was procured in dollars.” It reminded the hapless people that the refinery “sold the products to NNPCL in dollars with a lot of savings against what they are currently importing. With this action, there will be petrol in every local government area of the country, regardless of their remote nature.” So, Chiejina and his Dangote Refinery expected us to clap for them with this statement?
Why is a simple matter of documentation becoming like the proverbial Akara which turns to bones in the mouth of the toothless man? If Dangote Refinery knew that it did not sell the products to the NNPCL at the claimed price of N898/litre, why can’t the company disclose how much it sold the products? Why should we wait for October 1, the almighty day of President Tinubu before Nigerians will know how much it costs the government to lift the much-desired products from the Dangote Refinery? Dangote Refinery said in its rebuttal that the NNPCL made “a lot of savings against what they are currently importing”, and we ask: how much, precisely? What is the Dangote Refinery hiding, such that it cannot put the controversy to rest by coming out clean with the actual cost price? If the notorious Adajoowu (unjust judge) were to adjudicate over this controversy, who would he pronounce as truthful? The NNPCL has said and reiterated that it had documents to back its claim that it bought the products at N898/litre. Where are the documents? All the Dangote Refinery is expected to do is to say, “No, we sold to you at XYZ naira”, end of story!
But should we blame Dangote and his refinery? When has the Dangote group ever acted in the interest of the Nigerian masses? From its forays in the consumable/edible markets to cement and now to petroleum, Dangote has only thrived whenever a monopoly is involved! The man has no capacity to play where other stakeholders can also hold their ground. That is why since the commencement of this latest venture, the Dangote Refinery, there has only been one controversy or the other. The endpoint is for Dangote to be the only fish in the ocean for fuel sales and distribution in the country. Our support for the refinery is just to ensure that the huge investment does not die off for the sake of those who earn their living from it. We knew long ago that no matter how one decorates the hog, its natural place is the mud.
I recall that on this page, on July 30, 2024, under the title: “Dangote Refinery: Blind man and his yam scrapers”, I wrote extensively about this Dangote-NNPCL shame. The Nigerian Tribune, in its Editorial of July 29, 2024, titled: “Dangote Refinery Issue”, also cautioned both the government and the refinery. But it appears that like the incorrigible Monkeys of the Pampas of Argentina, neither party has learnt nor forgotten anything. But that is not shocking to some of us. The truth about what is happening between the Dangote Refinery and the NNPCL is yet to be revealed. My inner mind tells me that it is deeper than what we are reading in the media, or we see happening. I believe so much that something messy is going on given that against all wise counsel, the NNPCL decided to sell our crude oil to the refinery in Naira when everything it put in place to get the crude oil is paid for in Dollars!
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More intriguing is that amid all the issues confronting us, President Tinubu still finds it difficult to stay in the country and face the job he elected to do. This attitude of the president to our common calamity is what the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Iba Gani Adams, said in his last week’s open letter to Tinubu, “is becoming indifferent, insensitive and unresponsive to the plights of millions of Nigerians who can no longer meet their daily needs.” The Yoruba generalissimo said of the NNPCL debacle on fuel price and the untold hardship it has visited on Nigerians as the handiwork of “the perverted, opaque, unintelligible, wicked, and corrupt handling of the petroleum sector.” He warned the president that the situation would not continue without a reaction from the people, as “using propaganda, power of coercion, and rough tactics to oppress Nigerians” would not last long.
I cannot agree less with the Aare Ona Kakanfo. The thrust of the open letter, in my understanding, is that Tinubu has not represented those who believed in him, and he should redeem his image. If the Aare Ona Kakanfo did not tell the President, it is not from my mouth that you will hear that the nation, under the watch of President Tinubu, has been taken over by blood-sucking demons, the worst of vampires, who have sucked us so badly that we have become anaemic. Just as Iba Gani Adams asked if President Tinubu thinks his foreign “counterparts treat their citizens the way you are treating Nigerians?” I wish that now that the president is back, and before he embarks on the next foreign trip, he should look at the issues that will make life seemingly comfortable for Nigerians and avoid a situation where all his “campaign promises have suddenly become failed promises,” like the Yoruba generalissimo pointed out.
This is my passionate appeal to the President. President Tinubu must save Nigerians from the Dangote Refinery and the NNPCL. The president must save us, especially our brothers and sisters in the North from bandits. While away, thousands of our compatriots in Maiduguri, Borno State, were rendered homeless by a collapsed dam. Many other dams are in the same condition as the Alau Dam which wreaked untold havoc in Borno State. Now that the President is back, he must save us from collapsing dams; they are all over the place. What about the unending construction of bad roads in the hinterland such as the Ibadan-Ife Road; and Sagamu-Benin Roads? He should complete the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and many others in the same terrible state across the country.
And most importantly, now that the President is back, he should amend the Minimum Wage Act and get the National Assembly to pass it immediately – the NA has the reputation of passing bills in under 20 minutes and he should sign the new Minimum Wage Act to the law immediately and pay immediately. The old rate of N70,000 was based on the old price of N700/litre. Now that the falcon can no longer hear the falconer, before things fall apart for everybody, the president should act and save the masses.
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Morayo Afolabi-Brown, the long-standing host of Your View and Managing Director of TVC Entertainment, has officially resigned from TVC Communications after 12 years with the network.
Her resignation was confirmed in a statement issued by Edward Akintara, TVC Manager, PR, Corporate Communications & Marketing, on Monday, stating that her last working day will be Thursday, August 29, 2025.
Morayo’s decision to step down, according to the network, is to enable her to pursue a long-held passion project she has nurtured over time.
“We celebrate her for the incredible impact she has made, not only on Your View, but also to millions of viewers across Nigeria and beyond,” the statement partly read.
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The company acknowledged Morayo’s contributions to the growth and success of Your View, describing her departure as significant, but assured viewers of the show’s continuity and quality.
“Morayo will be dearly missed, however, the show remains strong and will continue to deliver the quality and relevance our audience has come to expect,” the statement added.
TVC Communications thanked Morayo for her years of service, describing her as a source of inspiration and wishing her success in her next chapter.
“Her legacy at TVC Communications will endure, and she will always remain a cherished member of the TVC family,” the company stated.

By Suyi Ayodele
When last week, Professor Ango Abdullahi threatened that “the North is watching”, what did he mean? You must love the professor of agronomy for his unambiguity. He is not the type that leaves his audience wondering. He concluded his lamentation with a call for action.
The North, he reasoned, must demand accountability and be united against the ‘injustice’ meted out to the region. Hear him: “We must be proactive. We will be asking questions. And this time, we expect answers. If we do not speak up and insist on fairness, the marginalisation will continue, and our children will inherit a more broken and divided nation.”
The government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is just 26 months old. But the North lays all the problems bedevilling the region at the helmsman’s feet. Leaders of that region said that Tinubu and his government should be blamed for the entire woes that have been the lot of the North. They said so with a sickening entitlement mentality and the finality of a Presiding Bishop. That is a big shame!
They were also magisterial in a manner that depicts a no-nonsense-cane-wielding class teacher. The North, their leaders submitted, would, through its mouthpiece, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), write to President Tinubu to demand explanations on “some developments” in his government.
The region’s elders were not joking. Tinubu, must, for instance, explain: “Why the sudden relocation of CBN departments (from Abuja to Lagos)? Why the mass retirements (where and when)? And why were 15 new directors recently employed -with only four from Northern Nigeria?”
Those were the words of Professor Ango Abdullahi, NEF Chairman. He spoke last Tuesday at the Government-Citizens Engagement Forum put together by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation (SABMF). And President Tinubu had better assemble convincing explanations for “these developments.” Why? The former Vice Chancellor, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, warned: “These are not coincidences. They are decisions with CONSEQUENCES, and the North is watching!”
I do hope Tinubu knows the implication of being watched by Big Brother. If I were Mr. President, I would simply pad my buttocks like we used to do in our primary school days, when we stuffed exercise books into our pants to cushion the effects of the strokes of cane from our teachers. Of course, like Big Brother in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, those eagle-eyed teachers always found out our naughty games, removed the exercise books and flogged us like the last cow to the herder! Is the President ready for the flogging of his northern masters?
When will the North be asking President Tinubu those ‘pertinent’ questions? When will the region be demanding for “answers?” While we are hazarding a guess, let me summarise the North’s position as enunciated in Kaduna last Tuesday: it is obvious, and very obvious, too, that Nigeria is never one and can never be one! This is the Nigeria of our time. Those who midwifed the contraption called Nigeria must be turning in their graves reading what the northern elite are saying concerning the backwardness of the region.
I am not Steve Cavanagh, the author of The Devil’s Advocate. I equally don’t want to play the devil’s advocate here. Tinubu has enough men and women, his night soil men, to carry his can of smelly chamber pots for him. My mission here is to ask us to examine the North and its claim of ‘marginalisation’, ‘injustice’; ‘unfairness’; ‘insecurity’ and ‘education backwardness’ in relation to out-of-school children and determine who is to be blamed.
There is a Yoruba saying that has a deep meaning. One cannot put the coral beads on the waist of another child whereas one’s child has a rotund waist, the saying goes. It is a Yoruba call for solidarity. The surface implicature is that one should rally round one of his own.
In the deeper sense, it means no matter how bad one’s child is, his conduct must be accommodated in the true sense of solidarity. It is saying that such a badly-behaved child should be preferred to another child from outside the family. In essence, ethnic solidarity should take the front burner above common good. Do I subscribe to that philosophy?
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I answer by saying that our tendency to condone everything the political class offers us in the name of tiwa n’ti wa (our own is our own) is the bane of our development as a nation. Our inability to call out our relations eating bad insects is the reason why we have not been able to sleep peacefully because of the intermittent whooping cough from the relations.
What is bad is always bad. A President should not be ‘supported’ based on where he comes from. Our solidarity, our fidelity and devotion methinks, should be to sterling performances and not to the ethnicity of the driver of our collective destiny. We should be more concerned about abundant life for the people rather than the ethnic background of the President.
A North that kept quiet when Muhammadu Buhari drove the vehicle of this nation to the bottomless pit has no right to complain if Tinubu decides to put the vehicle back on the reverse gear with his Stone Age economic policies. Likewise, Tinubu’s brothers and sisters will be eternally wrong to clap and cheer when the man who promised hope is delivering hopelessness!
No nation moves forward that way. No meaningful development can take place in a nation populated by the máa jó lo mo ńwo èyìn e (keep dancing, I am watching your back) orchestra even when the percussion churns out discordant tunes! Nigeria can only become a success the day we individually and collectively agree that once one’s child comes with a twisted waist, the coral beads should be tied round the waist of a child with a well-formed waist irrespective of who sired her!
This is why I love the balance in the Yoruba worldview. The elders of the land who say one cannot put the coral beads on the waist of another child whereas one’s child has a rotund waist, also caution that it is only when one’s masquerade dances very well at the arena that the one holding the cincture will be proud and happy (bí eégún eni bá jóo’re, orí á yá atókùn). Only a child that is doing very well deserves the support of the clan.
The average Nigerians are not necessarily tribal jingoists. No! The elite, for their selfish reasons, are the ones fanning the embers of disunity. It pays them to see the masses divided alongside ethnic interests. An average Nigerian, the common man on the street, craves for results, successes and any good policy that can put food on his table. Nothing more.
Give the presidency to Ibrahim Momoh, the vice presidency to Musa Adamu; the senate presidency to Jalingo Tundunwada and the speakership of the House of Representatives to Chiroma Abdumalik. Then make life more abundant. Guarantee security, build roads and supply uninterrupted power for 24 straight hours every day of the week, common Nigerians on the streets will go about their normal businesses and celebrate the good things of life they have in abundance. The problem of ethnicity, marginalisation’, ‘imbalance’ and what have you are creations of the rapacious elite!
It happened recently when our Super Falcons won the 10th WAFCON trophy for us. Check the team, check the composition. Nobody complained about any imbalance or marginalisation. Nobody talked about Federal Character, our euphemism for sacrificing merit for mediocrity. Nigerians were all united, cheering the girls to victory.
We hugged one another, we backslapped one another, and we celebrated when the girls won. When they were two goals down at half time, we all prayed for their victory. When eventually they won, we forgot that Imo state alone had six of its girls playing for us! That is what success is all about; that is what achievements bring. Our unity as a nation is more defined in the beautiful performances of our leaders.
If a loaf of bread goes back to N250 today; if a litre of petrol sells for N120; If Nigerians can travel from Lagos to Maiduguri on the highways without any fear of kidnappers or bandits; if farmers can plant and harvest their produce in peace, I take a bet, Adamu Abubakar in Maiduguri will celebrate Tinubu; Okechukwu Okafor in Ikeduru will forget about the nsogbu-nsogbu drumbeat of war in the South-East and Jumoke Abodunde in Emure Ekiti will tie her wrapper and dance to celebrate the president’s achievements. The masses of the North, and the peasants of the South are united by one denominator: abject poverty. And they also have one common enemy: the elite, the political power holders who have become the proverbial locusts eating the vegetation of the nation.
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So, whether the elite gather in Kaduna, congregate in Ibadan, assemble in the Coal City of Enugu, or foregather in the swamps of the Niger Delta to lament our present parlous state, they are not doing so for any altruistic reason. The masses should know that the communiques issued on regional marginalisation, infrastructural decays and the alarming numbers of out-of-school children in those gatherings are not because the elite love the masses.
The recent cries of marginalisation and what have you is because another set of locusts are in power today. It is all about self-serving interests and nothing more. Those who milked the nation dry during the administration of Olusegun Obasanjo never complained. They became the champions of the masses only when Musa Yar’Adua started changing the political landscape to their disfavour. And as soon as Goodluck Ebele Jonathan took over and started patronising them, they simply dissolved into the government choir group.
When Buhari came and made the North his only constituency and another part of the country a mere “dot” on the nation’s map, the today’s agitators, talking about marginalisation, were deaf and dumb. They only got their voices because Tinubu has decided to be the third generation of greed, who, our elders say, must be a burglar, by not just making his South-West his catchment area but positioning his Bourdillon boys in choice places. It is a vicious cycle that will take a long time to break!
When Professor Ango Abdullahi said that 80 percent of Nigeria’s out-of-school children are from the North, did he not know when the rain started to beat the North education-wise? The elder statesman schooled in Ibadan from 1961 to 1964. Did he not see the wonders that Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s free and compulsory primary education of 1955 did then? When in 1979, the same Awolowo upped the ante and extended the free education policy to secondary school level and adopted that as one of the four-cardinal policies of his Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), what was Ango’s counsel to the North-dominated National Party of Nigeria (NPN)?
How do you strike a balance between a region which started free education in 1955 and the one which in 2025, would have its daughters married off in their cradles while the leaders who are expected to champion the development of the region hide under the cloak of religion to approve such perfidy? Why would the North not have the largest number of out-of-school, and in most cases, never-in-school children when its elite see children roaming the streets begging for alms, as “normal and our way of life?”
What were Professor Abdullahi and his twin brother, Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), saying when they complained of the North being marginalised? How do you marginalise a region that has occupied the nation’s number one seat for a period of 47 years out of our 65 years of independence, leaving Tinubu’s South with a miserable 18 years? Or they think we all should buy their waggish, ill-conceived and duplicitous calculation of the Nigerian nationhood from 1999?
Did Nigeria start today? How could the professor and his main ACF man have forgotten that Nigerians started voting for their leaders since 1957 at the centre when the late Tafawa Balewa became the Prime Minister? Who will teach Professor Ango Abdullahi and Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu basic political history of Nigeria outside their non-adding-up narratives?
We can blame President Tinubu for the poor performance of his government in the last two years. But it would amount to a sin against heaven and earth to blame him for the backwardness of the North. No! It is callous, pure bitterness and completely insane, to lay the blame of the insecurity, the growing number of out-of-school or never-in-school children of the North and the poor infrastructure of the region on the man who came to power just 26 months ago.
The rain beating the North now did not start in the last two decades. And as long as the Ango and Dalhatu of the North think that emotional blackmail is their weapon to whip up sentiments in the North, it will not just continue to rain over there, it will pour, torrentially! Enough of this entitlement mentality, enough of this boast of “the North is watching”. The South is not blind too. If we can’t watch down South, we can use binoculars!
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If 2027 is the reason why the NEF thinks that it can issue streetwise JAMB questions to Tinubu, I can only pity the President who has failed to live up to the expectations of the people who voted him to power. Let Ango Abdullahi and Bashir Dalhatu take a bus ride from Kaduna to Ekiti, let them travel from Lagos to Ibadan, from Port Harcourt to Yenagoa and from Akwa to Enugu, they will discover that no road exists anywhere.
If they are bothered that Tinubu is not doing anything about the banditry and the insurgency of the region, sad occurrences created by the same North, they should know that down South here, our wives are raped in the presence of their husbands and that our daughters are defiled while their parents remain helpless!
The North should know that we are being kidnapped at the rate of three for two and half kobo (méta tóró)! And guess what? The ones tormenting us, I mean more than 80 percent of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes down South, are the same untrained children of the North unleashed on us by the failed leadership of the region!
Agreed that in 26 months, the Tinubu administration has not demonstrated enough aptitude for the job he spent his entire adult life pursuing. It is also a fact that President Tinubu has not been able to show that he understands the basic nuances of governance at the federal level. That, however, is not an avenue to blame the President and his administration, directionless as it is, for problems that have been with the North right from the very foundation of the region. That is pure injustice to the lethargic outings of the administration!
When a memorial event is organised, it is to dwell on the achievements of the person being honoured. Sir Ahmadu Bello, no doubt, did his best for the North. One cannot query him for projecting the wellbeing of his people the way he did. It is therefore a huge disservice to his memory if those he bequeathed such lofty ideas and ideals, turned out to be prodigals in power and wasters of enviable legacies, who today turn around to look for excuses and sacrificial lamb! That is exactly what the last Tuesday Kaduna gathering did to the colourful memories of Ahmadu Bello!
Rather than look for scapegoats for its self-inflicted problems, the North, I think, particularly, its elite class, should do a retrospection, and take the wisdom of the saying of our elders who posit that what is destroying Ado lies in the hands of the princes of Ewi (Omo Ewi), the king of Ado Ekiti (Ohun tó ba Adó jé wà l’ówó Omo Èwí). If the North must develop, its leaders must first release the region from the shackles of poverty with which they have held their people bound to violence!
News
UNICEF Advocates Six Months Maternity Leave From Working Mothers In Bauchi
Published
20 hours agoon
August 4, 2025By
Editor
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called on the Bauchi state government to initiate a six months paid maternity leave to working mothers in the state.
Dr Nuzhat Rafique, UNICEF’s Bauchi Chief of Field Office, stated this in a news conference in Bauchi on Tuesday to market the 2025 breastfeeding week.
According to her, the six months maternity leave would help the mothers to initiate the six months exclusive breastfeeding for their children and help in improving their health status in general.
“We really need the state government, the health system to play their roles to support the mothers.
“If the state government has a policy for six months paid maternity leave, that would play a huge role in the better nutritional status of children and initiation of exclusive six months breastfeeding for the mothers.
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“Staying with the child automatically ensures better care and hygiene of the child, making them free from diarrhea which is one of the major causes of malnutrition,” she said.
Rafique added that unless women were fully supported, it would be difficult for them to do the right things like initiate breastfeeding on time, continue exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and initiate complementary breastfeeding till 24 months.
She, however, called on the state government to also come up with breastfeeding corners for working mothers to feed their children after resumption from the six months maternity leave.
Rafique said that if mothers didn’t have a good private place to feed their children, it would be difficult for them to continue feeding by working, performing and contributing towards the state’s progress and the country at large.
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“These are the foundation for having a healthy, intelligent, productive next generation.
“There is a formula we need to promote which is one, six and 24.
“One means that the first hour of the baby must be initiated with breastfeeding, six means that a child must be exclusively breastfed for a good six months and then the initiation of complementary feeding along with the continuation of breastfeeding till 24 months,” she explained.
Earlier speaking, Mrs Philomena Irene, UNICEF’s Nutrition Specialist in Bauchi, revealed that over 15 states have extended paid maternity leave to working mothers across the country like Kebbi, Borno, Kaduna, Plateau among others.
READ ALSO: How UNICEF’s Initiative Changes Narrative Of Access To Healthcare Services In Bauchi
“We want the media to help us amplify the benefits of breast milk, the benefits of breastfeeding both to the mother, the child and even the society at large,” she said.
On his part, Mr Abubakar Sale, the Bauchi state Nutrition Officer, appreciated UNICEF for supporting the state in terms of improving the healthy living of pregnant women and children, not only on nutrition but other aspects of health.
“The government is trying its best to see to the improvement in especially exclusive breastfeeding and other nutrition indicators in the state.
“We are doing our part together with other partners and media practitioners are very important to amplify or inform the members of the society the importance of exclusive breastfeeding so that in our next survey, we will be able to improve,” he said.
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