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OPINION: ‘The Reign Of Our Emperor’

Published

1 year ago

June 3, 2024

By Lasisi Olagunju

The Japanese national anthem is a one-stanza song known as Kimigayo; its English translation approximates ‘The Reign of Our Emperor’. The worth of the anthem is in its adulation of limitless power:

“May thy reign last long!

May it last for tens of thousands of years

Until tiny pebbles grow into massive boulders,

And moss covers them deep and thick.”

When I heard that our president has brought back a national anthem discarded 46 years ago, I told myself that if a peacock person would be a thief, he should steal an item of diamond’s worth (Bí oge ó bá j’alè, a gbé oun t’óye é). A president who wills a thing and it is done (be, and it is) deserves more than the tepid ‘Nigeria We Hail Thee’. If you and I had sung the Japanese anthem to our president last week, he probably would have grabbed it as his ‘priority’. He would have dropped the expired alien song he adopted.

If it takes Nigeria sixty-four years to run mad, how long will it take it to enter the market naked? In theme, notes and mood, the new Bola Ahmed Tinubu anthem expired a long time ago. And this is not just about the archaic “thee” in the opening line. Nor is it about the cliched insults embedded in “native” and “tribe” – racist words that string together the author’s ‘superiority’ thought. The anthem expired because it was composed for a season, and its reason is long gone. Take for instance the lines: “Our flag SHALL be a symbol/That truth and justice reign.” In syntax and semantics, that promise could be said to be appropriate at independence in 1960. But sixty-four years after using our Green-White-Green flag, is it not too late in the day for the flag to start promising something? We cannot have a ‘new’ anthem in 2024 that sings a pledge on behalf of a flag which went up in 1960.

With its lyrics and music made by aliens, the ‘Nigeria-We-Hail-Thee’ anthem came in 1960 with a stained banner. Its conception and birth sat to put on its forehead incisions of bastardy. When it was announced as our national anthem days to independence, Nigerians roundly rejected it as an unwanted baby from two strange wombs. Ezekiel Mphahlele’s ‘Nigeria on the Eve of Independence’ published in 1960 speaks to the complaints and controversies: “A couple of musicians went out to prove that the (anthem’s) music was, in part, a plagiarism from an English church hymn; others thought the idiom was altogether foreign and the composition had captured little or nothing of the Nigerian atmosphere; still others blatantly said Nigerian music should, in the name of independence, have been chosen from the 500 entries that came from Nigerians themselves. Others again had argued that the music should have been composed first and then the lyrics fitted to it, instead of the other way round.”

Anthems have emotive, mobilisation reasons. They are battle cries; fanfares and flourishes of patriotism. They are songs of praise and of heroism. In their anthem, Russians sing daily about “our sacred country” and “our beloved country”. They tell their country “We are proud of you.” Like the Russians, Argentines sing “to the great people of Argentina”; Mexicans to “Oh Fatherland.” Every word of those anthems was homemade and, so, they resonate with all who sing them. We don’t have that here again with the imported, second-hand song imposed on us. Do the anthem dictators know that babies respond not to lullabies from strangers? The old-new anthem of Nigeria is just a song. Where the president and I come from, our heads do not swell from chants made by strangers. We say an alien – an àjòjì – can sing rárà but he must not use it to serenade our mother. No one can sing our song better than we, just as no one can carry a baby better than its mother would do.

We have a president whose attention is away from Nigeria as the keystone of his decisions. We have a president who has just impulsively borrowed charity from abroad. In doing what he and his servile lawmakers did last week, Tinubu and our band of legislators have rendered in vain the labour of our heroes past. They brought down a national anthem composed by Nigerians for Nigeria; they proudly exhumed and re-foisted foreign-made ‘Nigeria We Hail Thee’ anthem on us. And they, without shame, celebrated it with flutes and bèmbé drums.

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The Englishman’s charity begins at home. Britain’s ‘Rule Britannia’ was written by the Scotch poet, James Thomson. The music was composed by an Englishman, Thomas Arne. It is called Britain’s Patriotic Song, not its anthem. But its famous opening and closing line “Britons never, never, never will be slaves” speak to a people with enormous self-pride and self-respect. Their anthem, ‘God Save The King’, is not an importation, it couldn’t have been. The lyrics of America’s ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ belong to the muse of poet Francis Scott Key, an American. Germany’s ‘Deutschlandlied’ was written by a German, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben in 1841. Credit for the words and music of France’s ‘La Marseillaise’ goes to Rouget de Lisle, a Frenchman. Our tiny West African neighbour, Togo’s anthem is ‘Terre de nos aïeux’ (Land of our forefathers). Its words and music were authored by Alex Casimir Dosseh-Anyron, a prominent Togolese musician. Our regional rival, Ghana, does not have our self-hate, self-disdain malaise. It preens in its pride as the star of black Africa. Ghana’s anthem is ‘God Bless Our Homeland Ghana’. It was written by a Ghanaian, Michael Kwame Gbordzoe.

Tinubu’s anthem is a mis-adornment, an old tapestry on a false wall, a bale of velvet from an alien loom. It is an adoption without modification; an anachronism and a classic in reverse patriotism. My people say a real man’s adornments (oso) must follow him from home to the street; it should not be the other way round. But it is the other way round with this àlòkù (second-hand) anthem. Our readopted anthem was written by Lillian Jean Williams, a British expatriate working in a federal ministry in Lagos in the late 1950s. The music of the anthem belongs to Frances Benda (real name Charles Kernot), said to be a professional pianist and private music teacher at the Carol Hill School of Classical Ballet, London.

National anthems are totems of identification; they are signs by which nations reaffirm their identity boundaries. That is what Karen Cerulo, author of ‘Symbols and the World System: National Anthems and Flags’ said. If we agree with this author and with others who have knowledge and sense, then whatever we adopt as our national anthem must necessarily be homegrown. That was the spirit that changed the anthem in 1978 to ‘Arise O Compatriots’, a brew from five Nigerian poets and a music genius from the Nigeria Police.

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Nigerians are appalled by what their president and his lawmakers have done. Online and offline, they puff and reject the stale insult from the past. But our president is not remorseful. He told a group of northern leaders on Thursday that going back to the nationally rejected anthem was his priority. He said he did it with the relish of fulfillment. That is the stuff emperors are made of. Their crush must be their people’s love. It is compulsory.

Even Tinubu’s ardent backers are embarrassed. The few who mumble support excuse the misadventure with the claim that he did it to demilitarise our lives. They say the homegrown anthem was a product of the military in government. I told a former university vice chancellor on Friday night that here, no one is allowed to be half lame. If you would lose limbs, you lose both; if you would be blind, you do completely in both eyes. The one-eyed is a potential wrecker of peace. I told the ex-VC that the president should have gone further back to hoist the British flag – the Union Jack – inside Aso Rock and on the dome of his National Assembly complex. He should henceforth make us sing his master’s ‘God Save the King.’ The professor added to the list. He said since Tinubu wanted to cancel every national symbol the military gave us, he should get rid of the naira and go back to the Nigerian pound. He said the president should decree that driving on the right lane should be abolished and left-hand-drive cars outlawed. Even the Villa, the Dome and the whole of the Three-Arms Zone in Abuja should be demolished and rebuilt. They are all products of the unwanted military.

“Some people say, okay…say what? Is that your priority? It’s my priority. I agree with the National Assembly…”, the president told Arewa leaders on Thursday. I feel him. He apparently loves the song of his youth. I agree with Distinguished Professor Ali Mazrui that “patronage for the arts can be nostalgic.” Yes, we all like oldies. But a president or king is not allowed to have an elephantine affection and a morbid longing for symbols of his people’s slavery. Besides, it is perilous for a nation to have drivers glued to the rearview mirror. They will crash the vehicle. The president (and his lawmakers) will be begged, going forward, to embrace the present and the future and drop unnecessary nostalgia. We will implore them to pick knowledge and reason and drop prejudice. We will beg Tinubu to talk to his habitual blind impulse and go hug deep reflection. It is only then that we will be safe from ghastly mishaps such as this alien anthem and its predecessor, “subsidy is gone.”

If what we were singing was not sweet and meaningful enough, could we not write and sing another? A country of 200 million people, with world class poets and musicians, has just completed a cycle of shame importing an expired national anthem. Our panting lawmakers with their uncharacteristic speed in bringing back the dead had no time for reflections. They and their principal in the Villa had no thought for our pride as a people and the history of our freedom as a nation. ‘Independence’, to them, is just a word. The dead are too dead to know how much it costs to dig the grave and buy a coffin.

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If we had known that this president and his National Assembly boys were dead serious about traveling back to 1960 – and to the cemetery of colonialism – to exhume the skeletons of an anthem for our children to learn and sing, we would have begged them to protect our pride and honour as inheritors of a goodly heritage of resistance to servitude. We would have told them that yes, you don’t kill vulture and you don’t eat vulture. Our fathers say it is taboo to do either and both. But they also say you can kill vulture and you can eat vulture and survive doing so if you listen to your inner self. There is a method to every madness. If you must dance to an alien beat and get sprayed with crisp dollar and naira bills, you must step the song down on your street and let your transformer work on its tension. Paul Nettl (1889-1972), German-American musicologist, was a pioneer in national song scholarship. In 1967, he published his classic work with the title: ‘National Anthems.’ Its English translation was by Alexander Gode. In that seminal work, Nettl enthused that nations can borrow songs and melodies from wherever but must do it with sense and competence. He writes that “one people will not adopt the melodies of another without letting them undergo certain alterations commensurate with its (the people’s) own character.”

If we must go back to the colonial past, why couldn’t we review, update and make fresh the old? But, just as our leaders have no time for self-improvement, they had no patience to read through, update and detoxify the rustic anthem. With all the racial prejudices in the song, they hoisted it in our heads. They can still redeem their image by editing and amending what they have done. ‘Shall’ is a modal verb that predicts the future, expresses intent and shows determination. The line about the flag promising to be a symbol of something can be tinkered with by replacing the ‘shall be’ there with (the to be verb) ‘is’. Having “Our flag IS a symbol/ That truth and justice reign” – although a white lie – would still have sounded well and better than the embarrassingly forever promise we have there today. How about taking out the problematic ‘tribe’ and let ‘faith’ come in for peace to reign? Our old-new anthem may then read “Though faith and tongue may differ…” The offensive “native land” can also yield the space it currently occupies for, maybe, “homeland.” Countries review the lyrics and melodies of their anthems. Our neighbour, Ghana, did it a couple of times.

Why are we even discussing this? Some wise persons have pinned the whole anthem exercise to a carefully laid out scheme of distraction. They say this regime rules by distraction; that the government overloads the attention of Nigerians by deliberately taking unnecessary disruptive steps. They may be right. Eunuchs do that; they needle their bride and display her pain as proof of their virility. The government was one year old last week; it had little gains, much pains as dividends for all of us, excluding its core directors. The regime brought the anthem controversy and got the hungry talking about something else apart from their hunger. I have read Thomas Cottle’s ‘The Art of Distraction’. I note his discussion of ‘distraction’ in the context of “life led with conflict and confusion”. I have also read James Williams’ ‘Democracy Distracted’. I note his claim that man has an “almost infinite appetite for distraction.” I hold that this government has demonstrated that it has a limitless, boundless capacity to satiate that appetite.

Those who allowed themselves to be distracted slept last nightlllƙ federal government with limitless powers engaging a disparate set of 36 weakened, impot toentlllullu stat Think of Nigeria as a unitary state. The court case that continues this month has the potential to achieve that. The deft moves of today have replicas in history. Think of Napoleon Bonaparte and France of 1799. Think of Germany of 1933 and the rise of the strongman. Think of the aftermath. Think.

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OPINION: For Tinubu And Sanwo-Olu [Monday Lines 1]

Published

6 hours ago

June 9, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

“When lions battle, jackals flee.” Isaac Newton wrote that to his bitter rival, Gottfried Leibniz. It was a barbed remark on their feud over who between them invented calculus. The more you read of the mutual respect those two had for each other, the more you wonder why they ended their respective careers in very bitter, reckless animosity; the more you also ponder over the cost of that fight and whether it was worth the troubles.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos are two big men who are not equals. One is the boss, the other the boss’s boy. They are not equals, so, there cannot be a rivalry between them over feats and achievements. But they fight; and it is right here in the open. I’ve heard people demanding to know what they are fighting over. We do not know. Let no one talk about Lagos speakership. The sack of Mudasiru Obasa, which was as abortive as Dimka’s coup of 1976, was just what it was – a symptom; it was a reaction to something; there was an underline cause. What was it?
Sanwo-Olu and his boss are no Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz and so their fight couldn’t be over who takes the priority on a matter designed to help humanity. If there is a delectable Queen Cleopatria somewhere, I would have drawn a parallel between what is unfolding in Lagos and what unfolded between Rome’s Octavian (Augustus Caesar) and Mark Anthony. But there is no seductress in the mix, I will, therefore, not deliver to age what it is no longer capable of tweaking.

So, what did Sanwo-Olu do? Or what did he not do? Both sides are not talking. All we’ve seen was an ungracious rejection of a friendly gesture; the snub of a handshake by the more powerful potentate. We’ve also seen a convenient skip of the junior power where he ought to speak.

Politics is a fast-paced game. You slept yesterday at the war camp and woke up today to news of a ceasefire. But the wise knows that political feuds inflict invisible wounds. They use that to explain why political wounds never heal and wars never end even when you read texts of forgiveness consequent upon atonement for unknown sins and apologies for unstated crimes.

Some people are happy, clinking glasses over the power buffetings in Lagos. They drink to the health of the feud; they wish it greater vigour; they wish its fire is unquenchable. These are people who do not like Lagos and its politics at all and who have been their victims. They see the fight as the elixir that would cleanse the land of all its sins and cure it of its sicknesses. They talk of power and its excesses. They point at Akinwumi Ambode, the man who was brought low so that Sanwo-Olu could ride high. They remember Babatunde Fashola who escaped breathlessly simply because he was like Coca-Cola, more popular and successful than the parent company. They point at a Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos who serially used three deputy governors in a tenure of eight years. If I were the president, I would also look at this unedifying statistics and repack my big and small intestines.

A leader should be very careful on the way he treats his people, particularly, the companions who look up to him. There was an Orangun of Ila who bulldozed his way to power with charms, and then elevated the humiliation of his principal chiefs to an art. An Ila historian wrote that the king’s “humiliating treatment (of the chiefs) reached intolerable proportions when he frowned at seeing the Iwarefa (the kingmakers) in decent attires. When a chief made a new garment, he was obliged to excise the breast and patch it with a rag.” But every reign, no matter how glorious or inglorious, must come to an end. How did it end for that oba? He didn’t die on the throne. His character gave him a fate which made him farmer outside power. Ó fi’gbá ìtóòrò mu’mi nínú oko (he drank water with ìtóòrò melon calabash on the farm). I suggest you read ‘The Orangun Dynasty’, a very rich 1996 book on the history of the Igbomina stock of the Yoruba, authored by Ila Orangun’s very first university graduate, Prince Isaac Adebayo; check pages 40 and 41.

A leader is a masquerade; he must not tear his own veil. When a leader makes and unmakes subordinates, he rends his own cover. “Ènìyàn l’aso mi” is a Yoruba expression which, in English means “people are my clothes; they are my covering.” As a Yoruba proverb, it emphasizes the importance of people in people’s lives. Whatever cloth the masquerade wears is that ‘thing’ that makes the wearer an Egungun. He must protect it because it is his store of power. But my people say power is like medicine; it intoxicates. A researcher adds that “ultimately, the accumulation of power becomes dangerous even to its owners.” Is that why someone saw “a link between mask and menace”?

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So, when we interrogate the use of power by the one we have come to call Lagos, we should always remind him that the costume is the sacred adornment which people see, respect and venerate in the masquerade. For a leader, his principal boys and girls are his costume, they are his cover. He needs them when harmattan comes with its fury. And harmattan will come whenever the masquerade repairs back to the grove when the festival is over, and it will be over.

Even lions, kings of the jungle, place great value on strong bonds within their prides for survival and well-being. There is an old Irving King song on this: “The more we get together/The merrier we’ll be.” That song emphasizes human interconnectedness; the support embedded in community.

Jackals are opportunists, and they are many in this Lagos fight. Newton’s feuding-lion imagery is an evocation of the themes of strength, of hierarchy, and of consequence. It defines the strained relationship of one big expert with the other big man. The other part of his proverb ‘bombs’ the miserable jackals, minions who lurk around the battlefield, who thrive in chaos and on scraps from the feuding powers.

American novelist, Herman Melville, says a thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men. We should not live our lives as if we exist only for ourselves. Public ‘spanking’ of a governor for unknown and unsaid sins is petty. A president should have snubbed rebuff as his option of engagement. If I were him, If a ‘boy’ offended me, I would just ‘face front’ and concentrate on delivering the Chinaware I carry unbroken. If your load is a pot of palm oil, avoid stone throwers.

But the president is not pacifist me. He enjoys fighting wars after wars. He is like Sango who desperately desired a fight but found no one to fight. Sango looked round and pounced on the wall and wrestled with it. There was also an Aare Ona Kakanfo who itched for a battle and could get none. He stoked a rebellion at home against himself and by himself violently put it down. Because of this and many more like it, the man was nicknamed Aburúmáku (the wicked one who refuses to die).

Are there no elders again where the feuding feudal lords come from? I read texts calling for propitiation. Why not? Appeasement without reason may look stupid but Napoleon Bonaparte settled it long ago when he said that “in politics stupidity is not a handicap.” Borrowing lines from Ulli Beier, I would say that now that men appear to have failed to stop this war with reason, women should be called upon to come and kill the fire. Our mothers are like Osun, “the wisdom of the forest; the wisdom of the river. Where the doctor failed, she cures with fresh water. Where medicine is impotent, she cures with cool water.”

The first lady should therefore step out, open her Bible (KJV) to Mark 4:39 and read to her husband: “And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”

If she does that, I will be encouraged to give the president two lines from William Shakespeare: “Come, wife, let’s in, and learn to govern better;/ For yet may England curse my wretched reign” (2 Henry VI, IV, ix, 4).

If our president’s reign won’t be cursed for wretchedness, he should prioritise the people’s welfare over serial petty fights with his boys. Nigerians are panting at home and reeling in pains at work; on the road, they groan. They are not entertained at all by presidential beer parlour brawls like Musician Ayinla Omowura’s last fight. You don’t become king and still keep trysts with crickets. No.

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OPINION: Ijebu And Their Six Tubers Of Yam [Monday Lines 2]

Published

6 hours ago

June 9, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

One of the first jokes I picked when I moved to Ibadan 30 years ago is that failure of patronage is the only reason a drummer would go to Oke Ado. The Ibadan surmised that the Ijebu who lived almost exclusively at Oke Ado part of Ibadan never ever got moved to spend a dime on bards.

Those who minted that joke should come back from the dead and see what we see now with the Ijebu. When the day breaks tomorrow, I will go to Oja’ba in Ibadan and ask folks there why their ancestors with relish said that the Ijebu did not appreciate good music and would not put their money on it. The Ijebu I see today do what the Ibadan said they would not do. In a magnificent way, they mass in their capital annually and stage a spectacular festival of culture and splendour. They call it Ojude Oba (the King’s Forecourt). It is an annual festival of sumptuous songs and dance, a parade of success and cultural opulence. They held another edition yesterday, and it is already contagious. Other Yoruba towns appear to be getting bitten by the Ijebu bug. We watch as they evolve.

The Ijebu are a very scrupulous people. It is in their oríkì that their fathers had six tubers of yam: they ate two, sold two and offered two to their gods. You can ponder that again: with moderate six survival items, they did justice to their present; justice to their future through trade and investment; justice to the divine who held the rope of life. Anyone who approaches life methodically like this is not likely to fail in any enterprise. In nuanced ways, the oríkì suggests that those who managed the six tubers did not eat with ten fingers. Their descendants still do not do it today: they party hard but they also work hard and trade intelligently; they worship God with utmost devotion.

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I watched a short video clip of the Ojude Oba event at 8am Sunday (yesterday). I grinned seeing everywhere in immaculate lush green, meticulous. Sponsors of the event, Mike Adenuga’s Globacom, has done it for a record twenty years. And both company and owner say they won’t stop doing so forever. Patriotism is love of country. So, what is love of home? “In love of home”, says Charles Dickens, “the love of country has its rise.” That is what Adenuga and his Globacom commit themselves to with Ojude Oba till eternity. With Globacom’s heavy lifting, Ojude Oba has become the biggest cultural festival in Nigeria today. They say they are taking it even further than where it is. Something there to copy by every big, rich man and woman from other towns. The ones who feel too big to lift their homestead to glow will likely live ‘homeless.’ We all should know, as William J. Bennett did, that “home is a shelter from storms – all sorts of storms.”

I did not read history, but I am a lover of history and a believer in what it teaches. I keep seeing in the past the road that led to today, and a possible pathway to the future. T. O. Ogunkoya, author of ‘The Early History of Ijebu’ published in December 1956 offers some glimpses into the elements that make up the Ijebu gene:
“Nobody knows the date of the first migration to Ijebu or the course that it took. Tradition states that it was led by a man named Olu-Iwa accompanied by two warrior companions, Ajebu and Olode. Olu-Iwa settled at Iwade, for Ijebu-Ode itself did not, as yet, exist. Ajebu was instructed to mark out with fire the boundary of the new land. He went westward to the lagoon and marked out the boundaries to the North, South and East as well. To Olode was given the task of marking out and planning the future city, a task which took him more than three years. So well did Ajebu and Olode do their work that the new town was named after them as ‘Ajebu-Olode’, now corrupted and called Ijebu-Ode.”

The writer of that history said “there was ample evidence in favour of this tradition. He wrote that “In Ijebu-Ode today there stands in a prominent place in Olode Street a tomb dedicated to him and bearing the inscription ‘The resting place of Olode.’ In Imepe Street there can be seen a tomb dedicated to the memory of Ajebu. It may be taken for granted that these two men are historical figures whose names have been perpetuated in the name of the city.

Ogunkoya wrote that there is another theory of the origin of the name. He said “Portuguese maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries showed cuidade de Jabu or ‘the city of Ijebu.’ Now it is argued that the Ijebu, in common with people of similar ancestry, used the word Ode as a generic name for a town. So the Itschekri people had Ode Itschekri (Warri). The Ondo had Ode Ondo and the Ilaje Ode Ilaje. In Wadai (Sudan) there was an Ode Ijebu, suggesting the transference of the name of the ancient home to the new. In support of this view it is to be noted that until very recently all the village people in the province referred to the city simply as Ode. As they themselves are Ijebus they merely point to their capital town without associating their name with it.”

Note the meticulous mapping of the boundary and the planning of the city. Note that the exercise reportedly took whole three years! Note the communal appreciation of the pioneers who got the job done. Put all those side by side what other chapters of their history say of their survival as a people. They pay attention to details. They valourize themselves as masters of money. They say they’d been spending shillings before the white man arrived (Omo a n’áwó silè k’Óyìnbó tó dé/ Òyìnbó dé tán owó òún pò si). I plan to ask my Ijebu friends what that means. I will tell you whatever they tell me.

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Fourteen Years Of FOI: CTA Holds S’south Roundtable As Edo AG Seeks Open Governance

Published

7 hours ago

June 9, 2025

Editor

By Joseph Ebi Kanjo, Benin

Edo State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Dr. Samson Osagie, on Monday said that any state government that desires to achieve true accountability and citizen engagement
must throw open the windows of its public institutions.

Osagie spoke at a South South Regional Roundtable on 14 years of Freedom of Information Act in Nigeria organized by the Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA) in collaboration with the Edo State Ministry of Justice.

Represented by Mr. Festus Usiobaifo, Principal Counsel, Edo State Ministry of Justice, the Attorney General, while noting that his ministry, has, over time, “supported disclosures through inter-agency cooperation, training of public officers on compliance, and advisory opinions that promote openness in governance,” stressed that there is room for improvement.

He added: “Our ministries, departments, and agencies must not wait to be asked before releasing public information.

“Data on budgets, contracts, procurements, and public health, for instance, should be available by default.”

Earlier, in her welcome address, Executive Director, CTA, Faith Nwadishi, noted that the regional roundtable was part of a broader effort under the “Strengthening Accountability and Governance in Nigeria Initiative (SAGNI)—a 12-month project we are implementing with support from the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Programme (RoLAC) and funding from the European Union through International IDEA.”

The ED, representated by Mr. MacDonald Ekemezie, Programme/Communication Manager of CTA, added that the regional roundtable became necessary “because the challenges around access to public information in Nigeria have reached a critical stage,”

She further noted: “Even with efforts made by CSOs, some ministries and agencies, it is still difficult to obtain clear, timely, and complete information from most government agencies especially at the sub-national level and Local Government Areas.”

The ED lamented that fourteen years after the signing of the FOI, its implementation remains weak, and that many citizens are not aware of it or does not know its usage.

“Fourteen years later, we must ask ourselves, ‘How far have we really come? Yes, there has been progress. But implementation remains weak. Many public institutions still operate in a culture of secrecy, while some are yet to establish the FOI unit.

“Some websites are inactive even when the laws require proactive disclosures of information by MDAs. Some agencies both at the federal and sub-national levels outrightly refuse to respond to FOI requests,” she said

On the level of usage amongst citizens, the ED said “from our work and recent baseline study in Anambra, Edo, and the FCT, we have seen the same patterns over and over again:
Over 70% of respondents have never used the FOI Act.

“Only 45.8% know how to apply for information.
Among those who have tried, over 75% received no response.
Youth, women, and persons with disabilities—some of our most critical voices—remain largely unaware or unsure of how to use this tool.”

In his goodwill message, Chairman, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Edo State Council, Comrade Festus Alenkhe, lamented that despite ascension by President of Nigeria and recent judgement by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, many states are yet to fully implement or respond to FOI request.

On his part, Dr. Jude Obasanmi, Chief Responsibility Officer, Jose Maria Escriva Foundation (JOSEF)., said based on the review at the roundtable, there was a need for continuous and sustained engagement because “people should not define the benefit of the law based on their comfort zone”.

“Today, there is a governor and tomorrow another person will be governor. So, let us put a mechanism in place, such that if tomorrow that person is not there, such law they enacted would also be beneficial to them after leaving office.”

He said though they have achieved a level of success, there is room for more engagement to carry more people along in FOI implementation.