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OPINION: Our President’s Love Affair With The IMF

Published

2 years ago

February 19, 2024

By Lasisi Olagunju

A colleague yesterday shared a 1992 campaign video of Chief M.K.O. Abiola promising to demystify governance in Nigeria and stop “people’s heads” from being “shaved in their absence.” A professor friend (political scientist) commented that “that’s partly why he never became president.”

Becoming president or king comes with a price. When ‘The Price of Kings’, a political documentary on Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, was released in 2011, the Financial Times titled its review of the film: ‘All about the art of compromise’. The reviewer describes the film as a portrait of leadership; he talks about “years of gritty compromise and the abandonment of previously held principles.” He goes on to ask: “What sacrifices would you make for what you believe in? What, in other words, is the collateral damage, personal and political, of statesmanship?”

In January 2012, today’s President Bola Tinubu as opposition leader rallied his economists and got them to tell him the implication of fuel subsidy removal. They wrote it for him. He read it and liked it; he signed it and put his name on it. Conscious of the verdict of history, of posterity, and for emphasis, he got it published – one and a half pages – in his newspaper, The Nation of January 11, 2012. Check the newspaper’s pages 43 and 44. The grim summary of Tinubu’s economists’ damning opinion was that if petrol subsidy was withdrawn in Nigeria, the poor would stop breathing and the rich would suffer. The prophets’ exact words are that “there will be less food, less medicine, and less school across the land. More children will cry in hunger and more parents will cry at their children’s despair…. Poor and middle class consumers will spend the same amount to buy much less. The volume of economic activity will drop like a stone tossed from a high building.”

Eleven years after what has turned out to be an accurate reading of the future, the man who signed the prophecy became president and proceeded to feed to the nation what he had pronounced as poison. A minute after swearing an oath to work for the welfare of the people, Tinubu became a victim of his own prophecy. What happened? You think he did not know the implication of ignoring his seers? He did. Was it sheer self-destructive wickedness? Again, I say no. So, why? The truth is election alone does not make a president here. Our presidency is by election and affirmation. Our votes are subject to affirmation by the kingmakers in London and Washington. The principal does not appoint an agent so that the agent would be master of himself. As opposition leader, Tinubu could independently hire economic advisers who told him the truth. As president, he cannot and dare not choose advisers whose views are at variance with the kingmakers’. The president is endorsed to act strictly the script as given to him by the film director. The script writers are the choice makers. They are the double ‘monsters’ headquartered on Pennsylvania Avenue and H Street, Washington DC.

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Mr. Femi Falana, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, last week asked President Tinubu to stop obeying the IMF. He asked the president to reject IMF’s latest advice asking him to further increase the prices of fuel and electricity in Nigeria. Falana will not get a response from the president; the presidency will ignore him. The Senior Advocate ought to know better. The Nigerian government cannot glare down behemoths who hold the knob of life. No poor president has ditched the IMF and the World Bank and slept well since the two were born in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. If you know you won’t sleep with them, do not take their money – and power. If you can’t run errands, never apply and accept to work for them. The presidency of Nigeria is not a detached power house; it is some people’s gate house.

Falana in his intervention wondered why the IMF kept quiet when the British government, last year, paid almost 40 billion pounds ($50 billion) in energy subsidies. He asked why the United States’ doubled its subsidies for renewable energy from $7.4 billion in 2016 to $15.6 billion in 2022. He wondered why the IMF did not ask these countries to stop what they were doing with subsidies. Falana noted that the French government had announced that it would continue to subsidise electricity bills into 2025. Falana said: “The IMF has not called on France to stop subsidising electricity and increase electricity tariffs. So, the IMF’s anti-subsidy campaign in Nigeria should be flatly rejected.”

Tinubu cannot obey Falana and disobey the IMF and its brother, the World Bank. If he tells them no, he will pay. Whatever the earthworm tells the ground is what the ground does. The president is the ground, the Bretton Woods are the earthworm. There is an old video of President Olusegun Obasanjo saying his Central Bank governor, Charles Soludo, “was not really a fan of the World Bank” and was always showing it in words and deeds. The president said he, one day, warned Soludo: “never you say no to the World Bank; otherwise, they will rub your face on the ground – but never you do their bidding.” That is how tough it is – say yes without doing yes. Either way, you will pay.

Shaving people’s heads in their absence is the simple meaning of international politics and global finance. Two of the barbers – the ‘head cutters’ – are the IMF and the World Bank. They are the ones we are asking this president to disobey. The man knows why he is putting his feet where he is directed to put them. If he does not, to which god will he run when trouble comes? But he is wrong. Why has he not read what became of those who did what he is doing? He should read BBC’s Budget Blunders, UK’s ‘Dash for Growth’ budget of 1972/73, the 1976 Pound Sterling crisis, the tragedy of Keynesian measures and IMF’s involvement.

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Before this Tinubu, there was a Tinubu in Lagos who made and unmade kings in that city. Lagos of the mid-19th century belonged to big boys from the colonial office, rich returning slaves and a few homegrown wealthy merchants. Madam Efunroye Tinubu not only belonged to the latter group; she literally had the balls of everyone in her firm grip. She was the female, local version of the 16th Earl of Warwick, the overbearing power and property baron “who carved out a position for himself by the strength of his sword.” This Earl had neither the authority nor the right to raise or depose kings” but he did both with cruel equanimity. He did, and P. C. Dharma gives him a generous mention in her 1947 article on ‘Kingmakers of India.’ Madam Tinubu was exactly the Earl in Lagos of the mid-1880s, an arbiter of royal and economic powers. Bold, courageous, no-nonsense, ruthless, her history in Lagos and, later in Abeokuta, is about making kings and using kings. The ones who demurred, who raised objections or showed reluctance, suffered loss of crown and scepter.

Falana asked why the two finance institutions are not giving first world countries the same drugs they are prescribing for us. I think I can answer that question. Small gods do not teach Sango how to inflict maximum damage. Besides, chief priests of the sacred grove are beyond the canes of masquerades. The masqueraders who tried that in the past lost their costumes. I use Madam Tinubu again here to illustrate this. The lady without means transited from poverty in Abeokuta to power and wealth in Lagos. Tinubu was made very rich by the colonial economic system. She was very useful to the government and the business community. She traded in men and goods for her profit and for the good of the powers-that-be. She made very good money. She loved and coveted the white man’s trade and riches but later detested the meddlesomeness of the alien in Lagos affairs. She started plotting the downfall of the masters. The first was in January 1855; it failed. The second was in March 1855. The grand plan was to expel or neutralize all the European merchants in Lagos. The plot was called off, last minute, because two British warships showed up fortuitously in Lagos waters. A deadly disturbance two months later got the British to expel Madam Tinubu from Lagos, never to come back.

No one on the mountain top desires such a fall. ‘Expulsion from Lagos’ is the title of the chapter that tells this part of Madam Tinubu’s epic story in her biography ‘Madam Tinubu: Merchant and Kingmaker’ by Oladipo Yemitan. I read it (starting from page 54) and thought the woman who later rose again and became the first Iyalode of Egba got what he gave her victims. Her boat met every furious tide with fury. The intrigues, the shifting and shifty loyalties on those pages present good lessons in compromise and consequences.

We will be asking our president to hate himself if we insist he must spurn the orders of those that give life to his government. If we would ask anyone to say no to the IMF, it would not be this president. His bones are weak; we should leave him alone. Why can’t we make the rejection by ourselves? The Yoruba say a man uses his own mouth to reject a meal. They also say no one begs another into slavery. Everywhere the Bretton Woods have been successfully glared down and shown to be dumb, it has been the people themselves who did so. But we are not normal people. We always look for king-size heads to help us break our coconuts. If we can’t find one, we simply withdraw into our prayer houses and intensify supplications for ‘divine intervention.’

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Normal babies cry at the sight of injections. There is a trending WhatsApp video that shows an unbelievably calm baby while being inoculated. With that video is a caption mocking how we suffer pain here without crying. The baby betrayed neither pain nor anxiety. That baby is Nigeria and its long-suffering people. We take and endure knocks and, like Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist in the workhouse, we ask for more. American abolitionist and fiery anti-slavery orator, Frederick Douglass, in August 1857 warned that the extent tyrants go is set “by the endurance of those they oppress.” Douglass added that victims of power would be hunted in the north and flogged in the south “so long as they…make no resistance, either moral or physical.”

For millions of my countrymen, life is literally nasty, brutish and short. Every home sobs. Rice was N70,000 per bag last week. This week opened with rice becoming N80,000. Cement sold for N10,000 per 50kg bag on Friday. Naira slid to N1,700/dollar at the weekend. Our minimum wage of N30,000 equals $17. How did we get here after the experience of previous disasters? The IMF gave us some prescriptions some forty years ago. The calcifying effects are still in our blood system. In 2023/2024, that same Doctor Death came back into our embrace. Ola Rotimi wrote ‘Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again’. Why should people’s head go bad more than once? Madness and insanity are synonyms. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Frank Wilczek, theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States and 2004 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, examined that quote and called it the “Einstein Insanity”— because the quote is attributed to Albert Einstein. Einstein was that thinker who held that if we are not insane, we should be able to predict the consequences of our actions. He was the physicist who believed that human stupidity is one of the two infinite things in the world. He refused to accept that the world is inherently unpredictable. He strengthened his argument with a sound bite from the celestial: “God does not play dice with the universe.” But, here, we are being ruled by dice players – poor players; people who roll the dice, and roll it again – and again, because the results they expect are not what they get. What they do with Nigeria is what my childhood called tokíní tokéjì. They use the people to play Baba Ijebu; they bet with people’s destiny.

Amid all these came from the north last week a regional threat to the president by traditional and religious leaders. They said their people were hungry and restive and that they could no longer control them. Every sentence they uttered sounded like a threat of Armageddon. Their concern would have carried weight if the shouters had done so when their Muhammadu Buhari was in power and was messing up everyone, everything, everywhere. But they maintained complicit quietude and passivity when their evil reigned. Because of their past of unholy silence, their present angst could not resonate with the street in the south. I saw and heard people mocking these northern leaders and their groans. They lost it. Ironically, the Yoruba content of the south is working hard to follow that same road of vicarious infamy. There is an insidious, invidious campaign for indifference going on. I was called “a perennially sulky bad boy” last week by a gentleman who claims to be a ‘Yoruba leader.’ That was because I had the audacity to speak about hunger and pain in the land. The ‘Yoruba leader’ thought Yoruba brotherhood with the president should have stitched my mouth. I thought if he was truly Yoruba, he would be familiar with the causal relationship between criminal, idiotic silence and a bad head.

The rain has not stopped; nobody should say that it is not as heavy as yesterday’s downpour. Things may still get worse. Today, staying at home is hot as hell and there is no safety on the road. It is the perfect Yoruba situation of Ilé ò gbàá, ònà ò gbàá (the home rejects him, the road won’t accept him). Uproars daily follow naira’s death by installment. We sob as if we do not know that the illness that won’t heal will kill. Unfortunately, you feel pain only if you wear the shoes. Those assembled by Tinubu to halt the drift do not have their wealth in weakness. Every fall of the naira swells their bùgá. But they may be wrong. My political economics teacher told me that the way these things are going, every soul in this ship is in danger. He said life vests won’t help and escape boats may be useless.

News

Trump Places Nigeria, 14 Others On Partial Travel Restrictions To US

Published

11 hours ago

December 17, 2025

Editor

The United States has partially suspended the issuance of immigrant and non-immigrant visas to Nigeria and 14 other countries, citing concerns on radical Islamic terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State operating freely in certain parts of the West African country.

Specifically, the classes of visas affected include the B-1, B-2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J Visas.

President Donald J. Trump, on Monday, signed a proclamation expanding and strengthening entry restrictions on nationals from countries with demonstrated, persistent, and severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing to protect the country from national security and public safety threats.

The United States also cited the Overstay Report, noting that Nigeria had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 5.56 per cent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 11.90 per cent.

The Proclamation includes exceptions for lawful permanent residents, existing visa holders, certain visa categories like athletes and diplomats, and individuals whose entry serves U.S. national interests. It narrows broad family-based immigrant visa carve-outs that carry demonstrated fraud risks, while preserving case-by-case waivers.

While the proclamation continues the full restrictions and entry limitations of nationals from the original 12 high-risk countries established under Proclamation 10949: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, it adds full restrictions and entry limitations on 5 additional countries based on recent analysis: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria.

On October 31, the U.S. President Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern (CPC)” for the persecution of Christians by violent Islamic groups.

In a Truth Social post, Trump hinted that the US will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria and may very well go into the country, “guns-a-blazing,” and that the military intervention “will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians.

In his first term, President Trump imposed travel restrictions that restricted entry from several countries with inadequate vetting processes or that posed significant security risks.

The Supreme Court upheld the travel restrictions put in place in the prior Administration, ruling that it “is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority” and noting that it is “expressly premised on legitimate purposes”—namely, “preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices.”

Trump in recent weeks has used increasingly loaded languages in denouncing African-origin immigrants.

At a rally last week he said that the United States was only taking people from “shithole countries” and instead should seek immigrants from Norway and Sweden.

In June 2025, President Trump restored the travel restrictions from his first term, incorporating an updated assessment of current global screening, vetting, and security risks.

News

OPINION: Man-of-the-people, Man-of-himself

Published

12 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Editor

By Suyi Ayodele

Whatever Comrade Adams Oshiomhole lacks in height and body volume, he makes up for in mischief. If you are not prepared for the mud, don’t engage the pint-size Edo senator in any combat.

His greatest weapon is his tongue. This is why he prefers to be called ‘Comrade’ – just an appellation he acquired in his hey days in the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), when the masses thought that he was fighting their battles. His public persona tilts towards that of the man-of-the-people. But on a scrutiny, the man is a man-of-himself.

Comrade’s best strategy in any argumentation is sheer sophistry! His eloquence is top-notch, his argumentative prowess arresting and his rhetoric captivating. He can be sarcastic and can also be deadly acerbic! He speaks and gyrates at the same time. Give him a microphone stand a bit lower than his height; Oshiomhole still leaps forward to emit incomprehensible verbiage. He is a dramatist par excellence. No. He is the drama itself! He combines all the characterisation of a folklore as he quadruples as heroic, non-heroic; anti heroic and A-heroic figure – beating the trinity to a distant second place!

Oshiomhole is a man one cannot afford to hate. He is equally a man too dangerous to love. His basket of mischief remains inexhaustible, his repertoire of goodwill also bottomless! He disappoints when one expects wisdom; and equally excels just when one gives up on him. A master of confusion while he remains unperturbed, Comrade is a summary of the dysfunctionality of the Nigerian political system! He displayed that in good measure last week.

I would have made a huge cash-out last week if the childhood experience I had over gambling had not taken the better part of me. Someone, who was ready to put anything to it that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s ambassadorial nominees like Reno Omokri, Fani-Kayode and Mahmood Yakubu, the former Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would not make it through the senate, had staked a huge amount of money. I held a different opinion. He asked us to bet, not like the small finger-thrust displayed by Governor Monday Okpebholo on national television recently. This was real-time betting.

I was tempted to enter the ring especially when he was willing to double his stake while mine remained static. But I remembered that I must honour the solemn pledge I made to my late father. I assured the old man that I would never gamble again in my life. I had used the two Kobo he gave to me to buy Phensic, a type of analgesic medicine of those days, to play kàlòkàlò. It was an experience I never hoped for again. As the offer came, my father’s voice rang in my head: É s’ómo kèé hì ta tété kì ha jalè (a child who gambles will eventually steal). I declined and I lost what would have been a Christmas bonus!

Alas, the screening turned out to be a hollow ritual; a drama of the absurd with Oshiomhole playing the lead villainous character! The former governor of Edo State was at his sophistry best at the screening of the 68 rotten tomatoes and sweet potatoes President Tinubu packaged as ambassadorial nominees and sent to the Senate for screening and approval. Many of us were entertained by the charade the National Assembly displayed at the ‘screening’. The only people who were disappointed were those who expected the senators to ‘skin’ the nominees.

As it turned out, all the 68 nominees were cleared. Any moment from now, Reno Omokri will be presenting his letter of credence endorsed by Tinubu, to the president of his ambassadorial post. By then, Tinubu would no longer be a “drug Lord” and certificate forger as Omokri alleged when he ‘was in the world’! It was Omokri’s screening that provoked Comrade Oshiomhole to tackle one of the oldest senators in this political dispensation, Ali Ndume of Borno State.

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For Oshiomhole, who, in one of his numerous campaign frenzies, had once opined that once a politician decamped to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), all his sins are forgiven, one cannot put anything past the Iyamoh-born politician. No cause is too dirty for him to defend, no candidate is too unpopular for him to support, project and vow for.

A short voyage to the Comrade’s political shenanigans. In 2016, as the out-going governor of Edo State, Oshiomhole, while projecting the chairman of his economic team, Godwin Obaseki, as the governorship candidate of the APC, said that Obaseki was the “compressor” of the air conditioning of the state economic successes under his watch. He told the people to vote for Obaseki because Obaseki was the one who brought all the funds the government used in achieving feats for the people.

Then he went after the jugular of Obaseki’s opponent and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu. Comrade Oshiomhole said that in his entire life, I quote him: “I have never seen a pastor who lies effortlessly like Ize-Iyamu.” He went further to label Ize-Iyamu as a violent pastor “who carries Bible in the day and gun at night.” The crowd cheered. He added so many other unprintable expletives and Ize-Iyamu lost the election.

Four years later in 2020, Obaseki and Oshiomhole fell apart. As the National Chairman of the APC, Oshiomhole denied Obaseki a second term ticket. Obaseki, who had earlier got Oshiomhole suspended from the APC, changed to the PDP and picked the party’s gubernatorial ticket.

On the other side, Ize-Iyamu left the PDP and picked the APC ticket. Edo people waited to see what Oshiomhole, who had been disgraced out of the APC national chairmanship office, would do. Brazenly, Comrade took over the campaign machinery of Ize-Iyamu. Oshiomhole on several occasions knelt to beg the people to vote for Ize-Iyamu!

Oshiomhole told bewildered audiences from town to town that he was misinformed of Ize-Iyamu’s character! He said so, jumping from one end of the podium to another without any modicum of remorse! According to him, after the practice of dipping Agege bread into a hot beverage, the next best thing that has ever happened to humanity is Ize-Iyamu! Fortunately, the people could see through the Comrade’s hypocrisy! His candidate was beaten blue-black at the count of the ballot.

That was the Oshiomhole that spoke last week in defense of Omokri’s nomination as an ambassador. In his warped reasoning, now that Omokri had weaned himself of his infantile perennial attacks on the character of President Tinubu, ‘all his sins are forgiven’ and he is worthy to be an ambassador! His argument, if projected further, is that once a man becomes transformed, his past would no longer count!

That argument did not sit down well with Senator Ndume, and possibly some others who would rather get Omokri to explain how he saw the light and heard the voice on his way to Damascus to persecute Tinubu! Oshiomhole’s response was his sophistry of “when I talk, those who have not been governors should listen”, as if we have not seen governors and former governors as witless as the next-door fatuous Gardner in this dispensation.

The elders of my place said when a song is bad, nobody justifies it as being a palace song. That is exactly what Oshiomhole did in his defence of the irritation that Omokri and his ambassadorial nomination have constituted. Who would ever think that a day would come when a once fascinating character like Comrade would rise to defend a figure like Omokri!

The response by Ndume that he had been senator before Oshiomhole ever dreamed of becoming one took the argument to the highest buffoonery! What has been the impact of the decades Ndume has spent in the senate on his people? How many of his constituents are in captivity? How many of the people he represents are working as slaves on the farms of bandits so that they can live? Beyond the numeric of his years in the senate who Ndume epp?

Things happen. One of the things that have happened to Nigeria is the current senate – a dump site for former governors. No sane mind will not be scandalised by the conduct of the senate under Godswill Akpabio! The upper chamber has turned into a stinking chamber pot of anything goes. Last week, the chamber took the perfidy of “bow and go” to another annoying level when virtually all the ambassadorial nominees were cleared without any serious questions asked.

What, for instance, are the wives of former governors nominated as ambassadors bringing to the table? What are their pedigrees? Are they not the same peacocks we saw when their husbands were governors? Beyond rubbing pancakes and spending our patrimony as non-state actors, how else can we assess those ex-first ladies?

Without sounding pessimistic, except for the career diplomats among them, the rest of Tinubu’s ambassadors are disasters packaged in golden wrappers. The qualities of the figures nominated by the president and endorsed by the senate speak to the quality of those in power today. Sure, no man gives what he does not have. President Tinubu has given us his best men and women as our ambassadors. We wish them diplomatic successes!

Adibe Emenyonu and Michael Adeleye: It is hard to say goodbye

We lose those dear to us. That is what nature dictates. Every loss is painful. But when it doubles, it becomes very painful. I experienced double losses this last weekend. Two souls, very dear to me, were lowered to their graves. The reality that I would not see or talk to them again hurts!

I joined a group of other journalists led by Patrick Ochoga of the Leadership Newspapers, who doubles as the Chairman, Edo Correspondents Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Edo State Council, to Obibiezena community in Owerri, Imo State, for the funeral rites for Adibe Augustine Emenyonu.

Emenyonu, whom I called Adibs, slumped and died on October 18, 2025, at the age of 62. He was – imagine Adibs now being referred to in the past tense – until his death, the Edo State Correspondent of ThisDay Newspapers. Our paths crossed over two decades ago in Benin City where we plied the ‘he-said’ and ‘he-emphasised’ trade of journalism together. Adibs was a fearless and colourful writer.

Even when I left journalism for the corporate world, we continued to bond. On my return to the pen fraternity after 16 years, Adibs received me warmly, opening his contacts to me like many others did. We became closer, turning friendship to brotherhood!

I was devastated, when on the morning of Saturday, October 18, 2025, Ochoga called to announce: “Leader, I have bad news for you. We have lost Adibe!” The news was hurtful and seeing Adibs, naked in the morgue when I visited alongside the Edo State NUJ Chairman, Festus Alenkhe, and others, broke me.

Talk of a man who laboured and did not eat the fruits thereof; talk of Adibs. He was a good father to his four beautiful daughters. Three of them are university graduates today and the last baby of the house is a sophomore. Two of the three graduates attended private universities, and the last girl is also in a private university. But the man who toiled to ensure the girls got good education is no more. This is a tragedy!

Travelling to Obibiezena to pay my last respect to a wonderful friend was an eye opener. I saw Adibs’ modest country home bungalow. I saw his bust, commissioned by Genevieve, his first daughter, with Adibs’ traditional ishiagwu cap. I dared him on several occasions to wear the cap to Igbo land, and I felt sad. I became sadder with the reality that Adibs’ 93-year-old mother was inside a room in the house while the rites of passage were being performed for the son who travelled home every month to attend to her!

The entire Obibiezena mourned Adibs! The wailing, when his body arrived for the traditional lying-in-state was infectious. The old, walking with the aid of walking sticks turned up. Everyone spoke well of the departed. When I was asked to talk to his Obibiezena Development Union (ODU) executive, I gave a new name to Adibs – Adáraníléadáraníta. It means he who is good both at home and outside. Adibs was. His people testified to his goodness, his kindness, his generosity and his commitment to the community. He was, for many years, the Secretary General of ODU!

Adibs was a devout Catholic. He never joked with his creator and faith. In his ‘mischief’ whenever we talked about our religious inclinations, he would ask: “Are you sure you are a Pentecostal or a penterascal?” Adibs had a deep voice, and he equally had a deep character. Like all humans, he had his flaws. But his greatest strength was his inability to betray a trust. He was dependable, he was reliable!

I could not bring myself to go near his grave as Adibs’ remains were lowered. Coincidentally, Adibs was buried under the same avocado tree he used to taunt his friends, anytime he was in the village saying: “I am sitting under the avocado tree.” Now, Adibs sits no more, he rests, permanently, under the avocado tree! Fare thee well, Adibs!

As we journeyed back to Benin, my mind was in far away Canada, where another friend and brother, Michael Adeleye, simply Mike, was being committed to mother earth.

The news of Mike’s demise was broken to me by another friend, Tunde Laniyan. I met the duo during my voyage to the corporate world. Mike adopted me as his elder brother and all through, he called me “Oga Suyi”. His respect for age and experience remain inimitable. There was no time of the day Mike could not call to ask: ‘Oga Suyi, ki ni kin se’ (Oga Suyi, what should I do?). Mike resigned and left for Canada with his family. I was in the know of the plan to relocate from incubation to fruition. And while over there, we maintained that line of communication.

On October 9, 2025, at about 3.09 pm Nigerian time, I sent a message to him thus: “Hello. How are my people? Can you get this book for me: “For One More Day”, a novel by Mitch Albom.” Six minutes later, Mike responded with a screenshot of the book and asked for confirmation, which I did. “Okay, I will order it now. I should get it latest tomorrow. Then we shall discuss how to send it to you.” He responded and the following day, he had the book.

After the initial plan of sending the book by hand through someone travelling to Benin failed, Mike put the book in the mail on November 1, 2025. At my last tracking shortly before I dropped off this piece, the information on the tracking platform was to the effect that the book is with the Nigeria Customs having been presented to the agency on November 20, 2025, at 11.04 am! The country we live in!

We kept chatting and then the news came. Mike is dead! How? What killed him? Just like that! Mike, gone like vapour! Mid this year, Mike called to announce that he had completed his house in Lagos. “Oga Suyi, it is your project o”, he gleefully announced. I answered by saying that I was looking forward to being hosted to a meal of pounded yam whenever his family visited Nigeria. Now, Mike is gone and gone forever! What is this life!

As I penned this, my mind raced to Mummy Oyin, Mike’s wife. The two were inseparable; they were more than a husband and wife. How is she coping, herself? What about the two beautiful daughters? Why should nature be this cruel! Mike was industrious. He had hopes and aspirations.

They caution us in Christendom not to mourn as unbelievers. I will keep to that doctrine.

Rest on Mike; sleep from all your labour! May the good Lord comfort your wife and children. Good night, Mike, fare thee well!

News

Okpebholo Presents ₦939.85bn ‘Budget Of Hope, Growth’ To Edo Assembly

Published

13 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Editor

Governor Monday Okpebholo of Edo State on Tuesday presented a ₦939.85 billion 2026 Appropriation Bill christened ‘Budget of Hope and Growth,’ to the state House of Assembly.

Presenting the budget, Okpebholo said the 2026 fiscal plan was carefully designed to build on the foundation laid in 2025, while expanding the reach of government programmes to directly impact the lives of Edo people across all sectors of the economy.

The governor said the budget prioritises critical areas of sustainable development, including security, infrastructure, agriculture, education, job creation and healthcare.

He stressed that his administration remains committed to delivering “development the people can see and feel.”the governor, the budget prioritises critical areas of sustainable development, including security, infrastructure, agriculture, education, job creation and healthcare, stressing that his administration remains committed to delivering “development the people can see and feel.”

A breakdown of the proposal shows a total expenditure of ₦939.85 billion, with capital expenditure standing at ₦637 billion, representing 68 percent of the budget, while recurrent expenditure is pegged at ₦302 billion, accounting for 32 per cent.

Okpebholo explained that the strong emphasis on capital spending reflects his administration’s determination to fast-track development through strategic investments in roads, schools, hospitals, water supply, housing and other high-impact economic projects across the state.

He disclosed that the 2026 budget would be funded through Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) estimated at ₦160 billion, Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) allocations projected at ₦480 billion, capital receipts and grants of ₦153 billion, ₦146 billion from Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), as well as other viable revenue windows available to the state.

The governor, who assured Edo residents that his government would not impose unnecessary financial burdens on citizens, noted that the administration would instead intensify efforts to strengthen revenue systems, block leakages and improve public finance management.

Under sectoral allocation, the economic sector received the largest share with ₦614.2 billion earmarked for agriculture, roads, transport, urban development and energy. Priority areas include rural and urban road construction, completion of two flyovers, drainage works, urban renewal, and expansion of farm estates and irrigation facilities.

The social sector was allocated ₦148.9 billion to cater for education, healthcare, youth development, women affairs and social welfare.

Planned interventions include extensive school renovations, recruitment and training of teachers, expansion of primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities, as well as investments in youth skills, sports and entrepreneurship programmes.

For governance and service delivery, the administration sector received ₦157.7 billion to drive civil service reforms, staff training, deployment of digital tools, improved revenue collection systems, support for ministries, departments and agencies, and the full rollout of e-governance platforms.

The justice sector was allocated ₦19 billion to strengthen the courts, improve justice delivery and support legal reforms and access-to-justice programmes, while regional development and local government support will focus on grassroots empowerment, community road construction, rural electrification, water and sanitation projects, and security outposts in border communities.

Governor Okpebholo said the 2026 Budget of Hope and Growth is anchored on his SHINE Agenda, built on five pillars—Security, Health, Infrastructure, Natural Resources/Agriculture and Education—with the overarching vision of creating a prosperous and united Edo State where every citizen feels the impact of governance.