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OPINION: Ooni, Alaafin And Yoruba’s Endless War

Published

4 months ago

September 1, 2025

By Lasisi Olagunju

A race of giants. The Yoruba had been producing monumental men and women long before Nigeria became a country. Professor Adelola Adeloye’s ‘African Pioneers of Modern Medicine’ (1985) has a list of eleven Nigerians who qualified as medical doctors between the 19th century and 1901. Ten out of the eleven were Yoruba. Check out their names and the dates they qualified: William Davies (1858), Nathaniel King (1874), Obadiah Johnson (1884), John Randle (1888), Orisadipe Obasa (1891), Leigh-Sodipe (1892), Oguntola Sapara (1895), R. Akinwande Savage (1900), C. C. Adeniyi-Jones (1901) and W. Cole (1901). Those are the Yoruba ten.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in his autobiography, described the Yoruba as “a fastidious, critical and discerning people.” As trailblazers, their enviable record of being pioneers goes beyond medicine; it is in every field. Again, look at these lines distilled from A. G. Hopkins’ ‘A Report on The Yoruba, 1910′ published in 1969: Henry Carr, born in Lagos in 1863, was the son of a freed slave with Egba provenance; he got a B.A. in 1885 with honours in mathematics and the physical sciences and played pivotal roles in early Lagos’ political life. Obadiah Johnson was the son of a liberated slave from Oyo who was born in Sierra Leone in 1849, took a B.A. in 1879, went back to school in England, qualified as a doctor in 1884 and returned to Lagos in 1886 to play great roles in the history of medical practice in Nigeria and in the cultural history of the Yoruba. Christopher Sapara-Williams, son of an Ijesha man with strong Egba connections, was born in Freetown in 1855. He was called to the English Bar in 1879 becoming the first Nigerian to become a lawyer. “He settled in Lagos in 1888, established a thriving legal practice, and became prominent in the political and social life of the town.” E. H. Oke was a senior official in the Legal Department of the Lagos government of the early 20th century. He authored ‘A Short History of the United Native African Church: Part 1, 1891 to 1903’ published in 1918. Adegboyega Edun (1860-1930) “was a Methodist minister and schoolmaster who became Principal of the Wesleyan Boys High School in Lagos from 1893 to 1902, when he was appointed Secretary to the Egba United Government. W. T. G. Lawson was the son of a (Yoruba) government interpreter in Sierra Leone. He qualified as a civil engineer and was Assistant Colonial Surveyor in Lagos from 1879 to 1886, when he retired from government service.” Of course, you and I know that Yoruba’s legacy of firsts was carried over into the 20th century; we are in the 21st and the facts are still here, notorious.

A people with this pedigree should normally be above petty squabbling. But that is not so with the Yoruba; they drop the elephant and go after crickets. You would want to ask what their problem is. My friend and Punch columnist, Abimbola Adelakun, told me yesterday that it was “the curse of enlightenment”; the afflicted knowing enough to paralyse themselves. They have the dubious blessing of what my teacher, Professor Adebayo Williams, recently described as a “squabbling and dissolute elite.” They routinely fight themselves over nothing.

On Monday, August 18, 2025, a needless statement was dispatched from Oyo to Ile Ife over a chieftaincy title given to an Ibadan man by the Ooni of Ife. Just as it happened in c1793 in Apomu market, the statement from Oyo has turned out the spark needed by those angling to rekindle the blaze that burnt the past.

The Yoruba are supposed to be the well-clothed moin moin, but they behave more like akara, naked and caked. They are daily exposed to the elements by their knack for division, friction and discord. They get bent and broken by what Vera Schwarcz calls the “accumulated weight of outworn habits.” It means very little that they are well-taught and knowledgeable with more than two centuries of advantage over their neighbours. They rarely collectively profit from their endowments. It is a curse.

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I am an Oyo-Yoruba. I have watched in horror as some Yoruba persons, self-interested actors, use the opportunity to say what had always been unsaid, and should be unsaid. You would think this house is another Tower of Babel, or the very abode of Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and chaos. Nothing that binds the family together has been left unquestioned. Some have even extended the war to the Yoruba language and its dialects. They sweat to define what is standard and substandard; what is superior and what is inferior and the implications for the users.

For 100 years (1793 to 1893), the Yoruba fought the Yoruba, neighbour plundered neighbour, brother sold brother into slavery. It took a superior power from outside, the British, to impose peace on that race of discord. If Nigeria disintegrates today and each ethnic group goes its way, the Yoruba will most likely resume their internecine wars almost immediately. That is my conclusion after weeks of watching and monitoring reactions to the unfortunate simmering supremacy spat between people who claim to support the palace of the Ooni of Ife and that of the Alaafin of Oyo, and their tributaries.

What I have seen and heard in the last three weeks evokes unsettling echoes of the Yoruba civil wars of the late 18th and the 19th centuries when obas, princes and generals turned their energies inward and left the nation vulnerable to external forces. You hear and read some comments and gasp. Even where you thought you would meet wisdom, you got there and saw its opposite sitting regal, holding court. You would think the resolution of a supremacy war between the Alaafin of Oyo and the Ooni of Ife is the elixir that would cure today’s security-sick Yoruba, fix their terribly bad roads and feed their hungry. They excitably keep the ember of war glowing. Wisdom has not whispered to those doing the fanning that when brothers waste their strength and dissipate energies fighting each other, strangers seize the inheritance. It happened in the 19th century. Then, as now, the struggle was less about destiny and deliverance; it was more about pride and prejudice with devastating consequences for the collective.

The Yoruba energy and intellect fascinated the white man right from the first contact. Gary Lynn Comstock of the University of Chicago Divinity School, USA, wrote in ‘The Yoruba and Religious Change’ (1979) that “of all the societies in sub-Saharan Africa, the Yoruba of south-western Nigeria are one of the most extensively studied native group.” Toyin Falola and Ann Genova in ‘Yorùbá Identity and Power Politics’ (2006) call our attention to the fact that as far back as “1897, Samuel Johnson wrote in the preface to his pioneer work, ‘The History of the Yorubas,’ (that) educated natives of Yorùbá are well acquainted with the history of England and with that of Rome and Greece…”

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They have all these, yet, they fight dirty in the mud like pigs. Their distant ancestors preached moderation even in ennobling pursuits. They told their young to “never stay too long on the farm like hopeless slaves (and) never stay too long at home like the miserably lazy.” But in matters of power and politics, they are extremists. Today as in the past, they fight civil wars and ignore the glaring reality of their present dire situation. More than it was 122 years ago, today’s Yoruba country is hemmed in by far graver existential challenges: economic, political, security, and a generational crisis of values. Yet, what excites their political and traditional elite is which antiquated throne is senior to, or more ‘imperial’ than others. Wisdom has not told the feuding race that to stoke embers of rivalry between two thrones that should embody unity and wisdom is to indulge in a needless diversion from the urgent work of survival and renewal.

Their fathers said “if we don’t forget the bickering of yesterday, we will have no playmate.” Yet, the Yoruba (groups) remain captive of their history of wars and bloody bickering. They worship the past and pour libations to exaggerated stories and histories. But we’ve been told that “all history is tendentious, and if it were not tendentious, nobody would write it. History is therefore never history, but history-for.” Hidemi Suganami, Professor of the Philosophy of International Relations, opens his ‘Stories of War Origins: A narrativist theory of the causes of war’ with that two-sentence quote. He credits the first sentence to R. G. Collingwood’s ‘The Idea of History’ (1994) and the second to C. Levi-Strauss’ ‘The Savage Mind (La Pensee sauvage)’, published in 1972. Both lines remind the reader of Robert Cox’s much-quoted statement: ‘Theory is always for someone and for some purpose.” And it leads me here to ask why the Yoruba people tell or write (or rewrite) their histories.

The Yoruba forget nothing and remember everything. Professor Toyin Falola, in his ‘A Research Agenda on the Yoruba in the Nineteenth Century’ (1988) notes this fact. He writes that “the twentieth century inherited some of the unresolved issues of the nineteenth century, notably problems of intergroup conflicts; competition for power among individuals and lineages; redefinition of functions and criteria for chieftaincy titles, etc.” He adds that “communities with turbulent experiences have continued to remember these in their relations with others.” What we’ve seen since the latest Oyo vs Ife ‘war’ of words has its root in those “unresolved issues of the nineteenth century.”

H. G. Wells wrote ‘The War That Will End War’ (1914). The title of that book was immediately applied to the First World War as “the war to end all wars.” But the Second World War started eleven short years after the first. The Yoruba started a civil war in 1878 and for the next 16 years killed and maimed one another. They boasted that the 16-year-war was the war to end all wars. They were wrong. The war has not ended, it is still on in 2025; you have it being fought in inter-communal skirmishes; in sub-ethnic and obaship supremacy contests.

I read R. C. C. Law’s ‘Yorubaland and its History’ and the reviews therein of ‘Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century’ by J. F. Ade Ajayi and Robert Smith; ‘Owu in Yoruba History’ by Akin Mabogunje and J. D. Omer-Cooper; ‘Revolution and Power Politics in Yorubaland 1840-1893; Ibadan expansion and the rise of Ekitiparapo’ by S. A. Akintoye; ‘The Political Development of Yoruba Kingdoms in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ by Peter C. Lloyd; and ‘Yoruba Towns and Cities: an enquiry into the nature of urban social phenomena’ by Eva Krapf-Askari. R. C.C. Law reviewed those works and zeroed in on Akintoye’s submission that the successful revolt of the north-eastern Yoruba (the Ekiti, the Ijesa, and the Igbomina) against the rule of Ibadan in 1878-93 determined “that no one Yoruba state would (again) attain the position of primacy earlier enjoyed by Oyo.” The present pushing and shoving should be read as an attempt to assert or put a lie to that determination.

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If you are implicated in this crisis that started three weeks ago, I urge that you calm down, reflect deeply and ask what benefits will accrue from this dog-eat-dog war of histories. In the present controversy as in all previous ones, I see manipulation and exploitation of history. I see attempts being “made to take political decisions which did not recognize the nineteenth-century changes.” I see history, particularly of the 19th century, being put to different uses by the disparate peoples and interests in Yorubaland. This insight is not mine; it belongs to Professor Falola who notes in the 1988 piece cited above, that “the ‘new Oyo empire’ of the twentieth century benefited from the achievements of the Old Oyo empire before the nineteenth century; (that) Ibadan suffered political decline because of the interpretation that it was a satellite of Oyo with rulers whose appointments were sanctioned by the Alaafin; (that) Ile-Ife ignored its military defeats and humiliation in the nineteenth century and quickly resorted to the Oduduwa myth to attain political prominence and (that) those who had no claim to previous glories, whether on the basis of pre-1800 power or myth, (have) adopted several other innovative strategies.

I am not done with the historian, Falola. He reminds us that in the last century, “traditions played a dominant role” in Yoruba politics, but often not in their purest sense. Rather, what different subgroups stressed were those aspects of history that could best serve their “sectarian and political advantages.” Thus, Ibadan, seeking legitimacy for the Olubadan title and later a crown, popularized the myth of Lagelu, an alleged Ife prince and founder of the city, even though, in Falola’s words, Ìbàdàn’s early settlers were “Oyo-Yoruba refugees.” Oyo itself, after relocating under Atiba to Ago Oja, downplayed the new order while clinging to the grandeur of the old. It still does. The Ijesa, for their part, highlighted their imperial past to assert superiority “over their neighbours (including Ife),” conveniently ignoring myths that would place them in a subordinate lineage to Ile-Ife. Ile-Ife,
as stated earlier, “ignored its military defeats and humiliation in the nineteenth century and quickly resorted to the Oduduwa myth to attain political prominence.” Across Yorubaland, even communities of relatively recent origin have invented traditions to trace their roots to Oduduwa, all in a bid to “derive certain political advantages.” Falola’s conclusion is that such “deliberate distortions of history and traditions” were strategies of survival in the turbulent eras of the past.

If 2025 feels like 1825 in crises and controversies, it would mean that two hundred years of Yoruba education and civilisation are a waste. Unprofitable exertions and meaningless supremacy contests between revered thrones repeat a dangerous cycle. The Yoruba elite should reflect and ask themselves if fetishising history and myths is the solution to insecurity and poverty that wrack their people’s present and imperil their survival. The wise does not fight himself. Enough should be enough.

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OPINION: Time For The Abachas To Rejoice

Published

16 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

General Sani Abacha was a great teacher. He pioneered the doctrine of consensus candidacy in Nigeria. He founded a country of five political parties and when it was time for the parties to pick their candidates for the presidency, all the five reached a consensus that the man fit for the job was Abacha himself. Today, from party primaries to consensus candidacy; from setting the opposition on fire, to everything and every thing, Abacha’s students are showing exceptionally remarkable brilliance.

Anti-Abacha democrats of 28 years ago are orchestrating and celebrating the collapse of opposition parties today. They are rejoicing at the prospect of a one-party, one-candidate presidential election in 2027. Abacha did the same. So, what are we saying? Children who set out to resemble their parents almost always exceed their mark; they recreate the parents in perfect form and format. Abacha was a democrat; his pupils inherited his political estate and have, today, turned it into an academy. Its classes are bursting at the seams with students and scholars. Aristotle and his Lyceum will be green with envy, and very jealous of this busy academy.

Like it was under Abacha, the opposition suffers from a blaze ignited by the palace. But, and this is where I am going: fires, once started, rarely obey and respect their makers.

My friend, the storyteller, gave me an old folktale of a man who thought the world must revolve around him, alone. One cold night, the man set his neighbours’ huts on fire so he alone would stand as the ‘big man’ of the village. The man watched with satisfaction as the flames rose, dancing dangerously close to the skies. But the wind had a scheme of its own. It hijacked the fire, lifted it, and dropped it squarely on the arsonist’s own thatched roof. By dawn, all huts in the village had become small heaps of ash.

Fire, in all cultures, is a communal danger; whoever releases it cannot control its path. The Fulani warn that he who lights a fire in the savannah must not sleep among dry grass, a wisdom another African people echo by saying that the man who sets a field ablaze should not lie beside raffia in the same field. Yet our rulers strike anti-opposition matches with reckless confidence, believing fire is a loyal servant that burns only the huts of opponents. They forget that power is a strong wind, and wind has no party card and respects none.

When it is state policy to weaken institutions, criminalise dissent and have rivals crushed with the excuse of order, the blaze spreads quietly, patiently, until it reaches the bed of its maker. Fire does not negotiate; it does not remember or know who started it (iná ò mo eni ó dáa). In politics, as in the grassland, those who weaponise flames rarely die with unburnt roofs over their heads.

The folktale above is the story of today’s ruling party. People in power think it is wisdom to weaken, scatter, or destroy opposition platforms outright. They have forgotten the ancient lesson of the village: When you burn every hut around you, you leave nothing to break the wind when it blows back. A democratic system that cannibalises opposition always ends up consuming itself. Our First Republic is a golden example to cite here. History is full of parties that dug graves for their rivals and ended up falling inside.

Literature is rich with warnings about the danger of lighting fires; they more often than not get out of control. In Duro Ladipo’s ‘Oba Koso’, Sango is the lord of fire and ultimately victim of his fire. In Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, we see how a single spark of regicide grows into a blaze of paranoia and bloodshed that ultimately consumes Macbeth himself. In D. O. Fagunwa’s Adiitu Olodumare, we see how Èsù lé̟̟hìn ìbejì is consumed by the fire of his intrigues; Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ shows a similar pattern with Macbeth: Okonkwo’s role in Ikemefuna’s death ignites a chain of misfortunes that destroys his honour and his life. In ‘The Crucible’, Arthur Miller’s characters take turns to unleash hysteria through lies, only to be trapped by the inferno they created. Ola Rotimi’s ‘The Gods Are Not to Blame’ and even Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ echo the same lesson. Again and again, literature insists that those who start dangerous fires whether of ambition, deceit, violence, or pride, should never expect to sleep safely. Always, the tongue of the flames turns and returns home.

Abacha must be very proud that the democrats who fought and hounded him to death have turned out his faithful students. From NADECO to labour unions and to the media, every snail that smeared Abacha with its slime is today rubbing its mouth on the hallowed hallways of his palace.

Under Abacha, to be in opposition was to toy with trouble. Under this democracy, all opposition parties suffer pains of fracture. Parallel excos here; factional groups there. Opposition figures are in greater trouble. It does not take much discernment before anyone knows that Tiger it is that is behind Oloruntowo’s troubles; Oloruntowo is not at all a bad dog. But how long in comfort can the troubler be?

In 1996, Professor Jeffrey Herbst of the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, United States, asked: “Is Nigeria a Viable State?” He went on to assert – and predict – that “Nigeria does not work and probably cannot work.” He said the country was failing not from any other cause but “from a particular pattern of politics …that threatens to even further impoverish the population and to cause a catastrophic collapse…” That was Nigeria under Abacha. We struggled to avert that “catastrophic collapse”; with death’s help, we got Abacha off the cockpit, and birthed for ourselves this democracy. Now, we are not even sure of the definitions of ‘state’, ‘viable’ and ‘viability’. What is sure is that the “particular pattern of politics” that caught the attention of the American in 1996, is here in 2025. As it was under Sani Abacha, everyone today sings one song, the same song.

Abacha died in 1998; Abacha is alive in 2025. It is strange that his family members are not celebrating. How can you win a race and shut yourself up? My people say happiness is too sweet to be endured. The default response to joy is celebration but we are not seeing it in the family of the victorious Abacha. Because the man in dark goggles professed this democracy, this democracy and its democrats have apotheosised Abacha; he is their prophet. They take their lessons from his sacred texts; his shrine is their preferred place of worship.

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“As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before Me; every tongue will confess to God.” – Romans 14:11. Our political lords copied those words and, in profaned arrogance, read it to Nigeria and its terrorised people. Now, everyone, from governors to the governed, bows; their tongue confesses that the president is king, unqueriable and unquestionable.

When a man is truly blessed, all the world, big and small, will line up to bless him and the work of his hand. Governors of all parties are singing ‘Bola on Your Mandate We Shall Stand.’ In the whole of southern Nigeria, only one or two governors are not singing his anthem. Northern governors sing ‘Asiwaju’ better and with greater gusto than the owners of the word. In their obsessive love for the big man’s power and the largesse it dispenses, they assume that ‘Asiwaju’ is the president’s first name. They say “President Asiwaju.” The last time a leader was this blessed was 1998 – twenty-seven years ago.

Our thirst for disaster is unslaked. All that the man wanted was to be president; he became president and our progressive democrats are making a king out of him. And we watch them and what they do either in sheepish horror, complicit acquiescence or in criminal collusion. We should not blame the leader for seeing in himself Kabiyesi. That is the status we conferred on him. Even the humblest person begins to gallop once put on a horse. True. Humility or simplicity disappears the moment power unlimited is offered.

The chant of the president’s personal anthem is what Pawley and Müllensiefen call “Singing along.” It is never a stringless act. Worse than Abacha’s Two-Million-Man March, we see two hundred million people, crowds of crowds, move together in one voice, bound by an invisible script and spell. We feel a ‘terrorised’ democracy where citizens learn, through bowing, concurring and context rather than conviction, to sing the song of the kingly emperor. People who are not sure of anything again discover that synchronised voices create safety, and belonging. They proceed to stage it as a ritual for economic and political survival.

The popular Abacha badge decorated the left and right breasts of many fallen angels. Collective chanting signalled loyalty and reduced individual risk. Under this regime of democrats, the badge will soon come, but the chant is louder and wider cast. Unitarised voices have become instruments through which power is normalised, and by which dissent is dissolved.

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Two years into this democracy in 2001, Nigerian-American professor of African history and global studies, Raphael Chijioke Njoku, warned that “new democracies often revert to dictatorships.” He was a prophet and his scholarship prescient. We are there.

There are sorries to say and apologies to drop. On September 8, 1971, Nigeria killed Ishola Oyenusi and his armed robbery gang members because they stole a few thousands of Nigerian pounds. Why did the past have to shoot them when it knew it would stage greater heists in the future? It is the same with Sani Abacha and his politics. Why did we fight him so viciously if this grim harbour was our destination? I do not have to say it before you know that the spirit of the dead is out celebrating its vindication.

American political scientist, Samuel Huntington, in his ‘The Third Wave’, lists four typologies of authoritarian regimes: one-party, personal, military and racial oligarchy. The last on this list (racial) we may never experience in Nigeria but we’ve seen military rule and its unseemly possibilities. The emergence of the first two (one-party and personal dictatorship) was what we fought and quenched in the struggle with Abacha. Unfortunately, the evil we ran out of town has now walked in to assert its invincibility. What did Abacha’s sons do that today’s children of Eli are not doing ten-fold? Democracy is a scam, or, at best, an ambush.

Politicians have borrowed God’s language without His temperament. They have restructured the Presidential Villa into Nigeria’s Mount Sinai where commandments descend on tablets of gold bars. The whole country has become an endless Sunday service; the president sits on the altar, ministers and party chieftains swing incense burners, emitting smokes of deceit and self-righteousness; the masses kneel in reverence and awe of power. They look up to their Lord Bishop, the president, as he dispenses sweet holy communion to the converted – and dips the bottom of the stubborn into baptismal hot waters. We were not fair to Sani Abacha.

We cannot eat banana and have swollen cheek. But we can eat banana and have swollen cheeks. What will account for the difference is the sacrifice we offer to the mouth of the world. The words of the world rebuke absolute power. By choking the space for alternative voices, my Fulani friend said the ruling party is setting the whole political village ablaze, including the patch of ground on which its own structure stands. No parties or leaders survive the inferno they unleash on others. The flame of the fire the ruling party ignites and fans today will, inevitably, find its way home tomorrow.

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Ex-Nigerian Amb., Igali, To Deliver Keynote Address As IPF Holds Ijaw Media Conference

Published

17 hours ago

December 15, 2025

Editor

…invites general public to grace event

A former Nigerian ambassador to Scandinavian countries, Amb (Dr.) Godknows Igali, is billed to deliver a keynote address at the second edition of the Ijaw Media Conference, scheduled for Wednesday, December 17, 2025, in Warri, Delta State.

In a statement jointly issued by Arex Akemotubo and Tare Magbei, chairman and secretary of the planning committee respectively, said the conference, with the theme: ‘Safeguarding Niger Delta’s Natural Resources for Future Generations,’ speaks to the urgent need for responsible stewardship of the region’s land and waterways.

According to the statement, the conference will feature
Dr Dennis Otuaro, Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, as the chairman while a former president of the Ijaw Youth Council, Engr Udengs Eradiri, will deliver the lead presentation.

The statement described Otuaro’s chairing the event as a reflection of the conference focus on policy, accountability and sustainable development in the Niger Delta.

According to the statement, both the keynote speaker and the lead presenter are expected to shape discussions on environmental protection, governance and the role of the media.

According to the statement, the Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Hon. Emomotimi Guwor, is expected to attend as Special Guest of Honour.

The statement further list Pere of Akugbene-Mein Kingdom, HRM Pere Luke Kalanama VIII, first Vice Chairman of the Delta State Traditional Rulers Council, as Royal Father of the Day, while Chief Tunde Smooth, the Bolowei of the Niger Delta, as Father of the Day.

Others include: Mr Lethemsay Braboke Ineibagha, Managing Director of Vettel Mega Services Nigeria Limited; Prof Benjamin Okaba, President of the Ijaw National Congress; Sir Jonathan Lokpobiri, President of the Ijaw Youth Council; Hon. Spencer Okpoye of DESOPADEC; Dr Paul Bebenimibo, Registrar of the Nigerian Maritime University, Okerenkoko; Chief Boro Opudu, Chairman of Delta Waterways and Land Security; and Chief Promise Lawuru, President of the Egbema Brotherhood.

The organising committee said the conference is expected to bring together journalists, policymakers, community leaders, and researchers to promote informed dialogue and collective action toward protecting the Niger Delta for future generations.

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Okpebholo Pledges To Clear Inherited Salary Arrears, Gratuities At AAU

Published

17 hours ago

December 15, 2025

Editor

Edo State Governor, Monday Okpebholo, has assured the management of Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, of his administration’s commitment to addressing accumulated unpaid salaries, gratuities and other critical challenges inherited from past administrations.

In a statement, Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Dr. Patrick Ebojele, said the governor gave the assurance when he received the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor (Mrs.) Eunice Eboserehimen Omonzejie, and members of her management team on a courtesy visit to Government House, Benin City.

Okpebholo, who congratulated the Vice-Chancellor and her team on their appointments, noted that their presentation underscored the depth of challenges confronting the institution.

“From what you have outlined today, it is clear that Ambrose Alli University was on life support. I must commend the progress you have recorded so far since assuming the office,” the governor said.

“I am impressed by your efforts, and I want to assure you that in any way possible, this administration will support the university to reposition it and restore its lost glory.”

Addressing the issue of accumulated salary arrears, the governor described the non-payment of staff salaries over several years as unfair and unacceptable.

“It is not right for people to work and not be paid. The issue of unpaid salaries, pensions and gratuities running into billions of naira is something I will take as a project,” he said.

“These are issues inherited from the past government, and we will address them.”

Okpebholo also acknowledged other concerns raised by the university management, including hostel infrastructure, accreditation-related challenges and facilities required for programmes such as Medical Laboratory Science.

“This year’s budget is already at an advanced stage, but I expect that these critical needs will be properly captured in your budget proposals. Once that is done, we will see how best to move the institution forward,” he added.

Earlier, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Omonzejie, explained that the delay in paying a courtesy visit to the governor was due to a recently concluded accreditation exercise and the need to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the state of the university.

She noted that the university she inherited was in a moribund state, plagued by infrastructural decay, unpaid salaries and accreditation challenges, among others.

Omonzejie expressed profound appreciation to Governor Okpebholo for what she described as “life-saving interventions” since his assumption of office.

According to her, the governor’s approval of an increased monthly subvention, restoration of affected staff to the payroll, support for graduating backlog medical students, improved security logistics, and the facilitation of road construction through the Niger Delta Development Commission have significantly revived the institution.

She also formally presented pressing needs requiring urgent attention, including accumulated unpaid salaries, pensions, gratuities and union deductions, as well as the construction of lecture theatres and hostels to enhance accreditation and expand student intake, particularly in the College of Medicine.