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OPINION: Vultures And Hornbills Of The North

Published

2 years ago

January 30, 2024

By Suyi Ayodele

In my place, we say one vegetable does not chase another out of the plate. South-South’s Edikang ikong soup is a practical illustration of that saying on inclusiveness. Has northern Nigeria ever heard of this other saying among the Yoruba?: Should Ogedengbe (Ijesha war General) be tending his ware of beads while Aduloju (Ado Ekiti war leader) is exhibiting his guns and bullets at same time? (Sé é ye kí Ògèdèngbé maà pa àte ìlèkè, kí Adúlójú maá pa àte ìbon ní Adó Èwí?). This caution speaks to war-baiting and the two warriors’ capacities to inflict maximum damages if war breaks out. Almost all of northern Nigeria is facing existential problems today. That should be enough soup on their plate there, but no. Their hunter, with an elephant on his head, is busy digging for crickets of agencies and departments. Security should be of prime importance to the leaders of the region instead of knocking their heads on the wall over inconsequential issues of relocation of some government agencies and parastatals from Abuja to Lagos.

The North is angry with the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The region’s anger, misplaced and infantile as it is, should not be treated with levity, especially by an ambitious person like President Tinubu. It is certain that the North will not wean itself of its perilous selfishness easily, and anytime soon! That is embarrassing, given the level of poverty in the region. By now, it should be common knowledge to southern Nigerians that the last nationalist lives down South. In all the northern elite’s calculations, Nigeria is secondary whenever northern interest or agenda is concerned. For an average leader of the North, the ‘region’ comes first before the entity known as Nigeria. But that has not translated to the economic or social development of the zone. The North still remains a region where the majority live in abject poverty and deprivation, and a very few live in affluence. That is the contrast of the north and in the north. So, who do the north’s elite speak for whenever they mouth “marginalisation of the north?”

Anytime the North is out of power at the centre, it sings songs of war. The only thriving business of the region is the government. The poverty in the zone takes the back seat as long as the power equation is concerned. The leaders up there have started singing the usual war song. Led by its new day ‘commander-in-chief of northern interest, Senator Alli Ndume of Borno State, the north has warned President Tinubu that his decision to relocate some departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos, would have “political consequences.” Tinubu is a politician. Most politicians, especially in this season of the locusts, are greedy. They hardly finish their breakfast before asking what will be served for lunch and dinner. It is obvious to the blind that President Tinubu has his eyes fixed on his second term. It doesn’t matter if he has not even completed the first year of his first four-year term. Or, if his first eight months in office have been rudderless and disastrous on virtually all fronts. It is useless advising the president to focus on governance first and leave second term.

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The North knows this, and that is why it has come out with the threat. How does one advise President Tinubu at this period? The counsel of our elders in this regard is that no one advises his relation not to aspire to inherit his father’s chieftaincy title. So, President Tinubu has every reason to be worried about the “political consequences” of his decisions on CBN and FAAN. Ndume is like the proverbial tadpole dancing on the surface of the water. We all know that its drummers are beneath. This time around, the drummers are obvious and audacious. The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), and the Arewa Youth Forum (AYF) are all out with their proverbs of war. If you ask me what my reaction is, I will tell you straight on that Ndume and his gang are like the goat that scratches the ground with its hoofs. It cannot, and will not devour its owner.

If there is any time President Tinubu has my support 100 per cent in the last eight months, it is on the decision to move those CBN and FAAN departments to Lagos. The threat from the North becomes irrelevant here, for me. Whatever fear anyone down South may be nursing over the threat by the North over the relocation of those departments in the CBN and the FAAN is because the rest of the country has over-indulged the North. The region, expectedly, has become like a spoilt brat that needs to be placated anytime it cries for candies. If I were President Tinubu, I would go ahead and relocate those departments to Lagos and move others to other different locations where they will give the nation more economic advantages. Tinubu should look into the NNPCL and move some of its departments to Port Harcourt, Calabar, Uyo, Warri, or Yenagoa, where they can operate optimally Nigeria does not explore a single barrel of crude from Abuja. Why then should we have all the departments of the NNPC in Abuja? President Tinubu should go ahead and dare the Ndumes of this world. If I were him, I would challenge the ACF and its appendage, the NEF, and also give the gloves to the AYF to come to the ring. I assure the president that nothing will happen, as we say on the streets! Any policy that will serve public interest should be implemented without batting an eyelid. The “consequences” of the decisions will be borne by all. In case President Tinubu is becoming scared, let me encourage him with this folk song: Tinubu dakun má mikàn, a p’agbo yí o ká (2ce) (Tinubu, please don’t be perturbed; we have formed a ring around you). Gbogbo ènìyàn rere únbe léhìn re ò (All men of goodwill are behind you). Tinubu dakun má mikàn, a pagbo yí o ká (Tinubu, please don’t be perturbed; we have formed a ring around you).

This is not about the ethnicity of the president. Even at that, I owe the North or whoever no apology for speaking this way. A time will come when enough will be enough. The North must come to that realisation one day that Nigerians need one another. Nobody has the monopoly of threat. What is at stake? 2027? May God keep us together beyond that date. Ndume and his northern leaders should know by now that Nigeria is like the proverbial calabash, which is turned upside down. If it cannot be opened, it can be broken. That is how far the north and its over-indulged elders and leaders have pushed the rest of the country. And if I may ask, which North are Ndume and Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, Chairman, Board of Trustees of ACF talking about? Does it include Benue and Plateau States, Taraba, and Nasarawa? Those states have, in the last eight years, become the killing fields of the same North. Incidentally, the massacre in those states started when a ‘core northerner’, the most lethargic General Muhammadu Buhari, became president. Go to Benue and Plateau States today and ask the people there, which one they prefer, between their lives and the relocation of some CBN and FAAN departments to Lagos. They will ask you to take away Abuja itself and give them back their lives that are being daily snuffed out by the same untrained children of the North! Maybe we should tell Ndume and Dalhatu and others in their mould to wake up and smell the coffee. The North of the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, is gone.

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I challenge the leadership of ACF to organise a referendum today and see how many states across the River Niger would opt to remain in the North. There is a saying in my place that three years after the community has ceased from following one, one will still be hearing the sounds of footsteps! That is the illusion that is making Ndume talk about “consequences.” The Borno senator should look back and count the number of the people that are behind him in this his northern agenda. The North and its leaders, I will advise, need to reassure the people of Plateau, Benue, Taraba and Nasarawa States that their lives count before they can convince them that they are being ‘marginalised’ by a Yoruba man.

And come to think about Abuja and its headship of Nigeria as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Whatever Abuja is today, these weeping northern leaders have the South, nay, the South-West, to thank for it. It is bad to have people who are either not good students of history or forgetful students of history to speak for a people. That is exactly what Ndume and his gang are. In the alternative, they could deliberately be mischievous because of their self-serving tendencies; and pretend not to have read, or heard that the Yoruba nation, which they are accusing of marginalising Abuja and the North, made Abuja happen in the first place. How could an otherwise brilliant Senator Ndume have forgotten the 1953 Constitutional Conference in London, where the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in his best advocacy, called for a centralised and neutral capital for Nigeria outside Lagos? Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) backed up the advocacy with several publications, the most notable of them being the pamphlet: “Lagos Belongs to the West”. In that piece, the AG and its leaders argued thus: “A large area of land should be acquired by the Federal Government near Kafanchan, which is almost central geographically, and strategically safe comparatively, for the purpose of building a new and neutral capital. The new capital should be built on a site entirely separate from an existing town so that its absolute neutrality may be assured. Being the property of the federal government, it would automatically be administered by it in the same way as Washington, D.C. in the USA or Canberra in Australia. Such a capital would be a neutral place indeed.”

There are libraries and archives, including the British Council in Kaduna, where the north and its leaders can get copies of the material. Incidentally, the political forebears of the same North that is shouting today fought Awolowo and others who proposed the new federal capital then to a standstill! Is it not ironic that the ones who helped in sharpening the teeth of the north are the first victims of the north’s bite?

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I think, and I am being sincere about this: the Borth is pushing its luck too far. It is not every time the region will be threatening the rest of us at the slightest provocation. Most unfortunate, in this case, is the fact that the North’s threat over the relocation of those departments of parastatals is unwarranted. It saddens one to note that the North keeps putting its dagger at the tiny, fragile rope that binds the nation together. The region keeps on acting as if it is the air the rest of the country breathes. If, for instance, 2027 comes and the rest of the country feels that the North wants to undermine them, what do the Ndumes and Dalhatus of the North think will happen?

In case the North decides to continue with its recalcitrance and insists that President Tinubu would suffer “political consequences” over the CBN and FAAN issue, permit me to impose on the region’s leaders, the wisdom in this saying of my elders: “Igun balè ó hún f’orin pòwe (The vulture lands and turns every song to a proverb). Àkàlàmàgbò balè ó únsòrò ìjà (The ground hornbill lands and it is talking about fighting). Bó bá dì’jà tán Igún á wulè pà lórí (When the fight breaks out, the vulture will simply go bald-headed). Gòngò Àkàlàmàgbò á yo léhìn orùn, gbogbo ayé á rí (The goitre scar of the ground hornbill will show at the back of its neck for the entire world to behold). Give or take, if anything happens to the tender oneness of this nation, the north has everything to lose. The North and its leaders will be exposed for who they are because the region suffers more in a disunited Nigeria. Should that happen, the elite of the North will have no Abuja to run to when their masses come after them to ask daring questions! By then, “The Lady of Means” would no longer bring her wealth to service the extravagance of the north and its leaders. The implications will be too grave for them. The real “consequences” will be felt up north. Like Prophet Micah says in the Holy Writ, (Micah 6:8), we have shown you, o man, what is good and what is bad; choose and choose well!

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Out-of-school: Group To Enroll Adolescent Mothers In Bauchi

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

Women Child Youth Health and Education Initiative (WCY) with support from Malala Education Champion Network, have charted a way to enroll adolescent mothers to access education in Bauchi schools.

Rashida Mukaddas, the Executive Director, WCY stated this in Bauchi on Wednesday during a one-day planning and inception meeting with education stakeholders on Adolescent Mothers Education Access (AMEA) project of the organisation.

According to her, the project targeted three Local Government Areas of Bauchi, Misau and Katagum for implementation in the three years project.

She explained that all stakeholders in advancing education in the state would be engaged by the organisation to advocate for Girl-Child education.

The target, she added, was to ensure that as many as married adolescent mothers and girls were enrolled back in school in the state.

“Today marks an important step in our collective commitment to ensuring that every girl in Bauchi state, especially adolescent who are married, pregnant, or young mothers has the right, opportunity, and support to continue and complete her education.

“This project has been designed to address the real and persistent barriers that prevent too many adolescent mothers from returning to school or staying enrolled.

“It is to address the barriers preventing adolescent mothers from continuing and completing their education and adopting strategies that will create an enabling environment that safeguard girls’ rights to education while removing socio-cultural and economic obstacles,” said Mukaddas.

She further explained to the stakeholders that the success of the project depended on the strength of their collaboration, the alignment of their actions, and the commitments they forge toward the implementation of the project.

Also speaking, Mr Kamal Bello, the Project Officer of WCY, said that the collaboration of all the education stakeholders in the state with the organisation could ensure stronger enforcement of the Child Rights Law.

This, he said, could further ensure effective re-entry and retention policies for adolescent girls, increased community support for girls’ education and a Bauchi state where no girl was left behind because of marriage, pregnancy, or motherhood.

“It is observed that early marriage is one of the problems hindering girls’ access to education.

“This organisation is working toward ensuring that girls that have dropped out of school due to early marriage are re-enrolled back in school,” he said.

Education stakeholders present at the event included representatives from the state Ministry of Education, Justice, Budget and Economic Planning and Multilateral Coordination.

Others were representatives from International Federation of Women Lawyers, Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE), Bauchi state Agency for Mass Education, Civil Society Organization, Religious and Traditional institutions, among others.

They all welcomed and promised to support the project so as to ensure its effective implementation and achieve its set objectives in the state.

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OPINION: Fubara, Adeleke And The Survival Dance

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

By Israel Adebiyi

You should be aware by now that the dancing governor, Ademola Adeleke has danced his last dance in the colours of the Peoples Democratic Party. His counterpart in Rivers, Siminalayi Fubara has elected to follow some of his persecutors to the All Progressive Congress, after all “if you can’t beat them, you can join them.”
Politics in Nigeria has always been dramatic, but every now and then a pattern emerges that forces us to pause and think again about where our democracy is heading. This week on The Nation’s Pulse, that pattern is what I call the politics of survival. Two events in two different states have brought this into sharp focus. In both cases, sitting governors elected on the platform of the same party have found new homes elsewhere. Their decisions may look sudden, but they reveal deeper issues that have been growing under the surface for years.

In Rivers, Governor Siminalayi Fubara has crossed into the All Progressives Congress. In Osun, Governor Ademola Adeleke has moved to the Accord Party. These are not small shifts. These are moves by people at the top of their political careers, people who ordinarily should be the ones holding their parties together. When those at the highest levels start fleeing, it means the ground beneath them has become too shaky to stand on. It means something has broken.

A Yoruba proverb captures it perfectly: Iku to n pa oju gba eni, owe lo n pa fun ni. The death that visits your neighbour is sending you a message. The crisis that has engulfed the Peoples Democratic Party did not start today. It has been building like an untreated infection. Adeleke saw the signs early. He watched senior figures fight openly. He watched the party fail to resolve its zoning battles. He watched leaders undermine their own candidates. At some point, you begin to ask yourself a simple question: if this house collapses today, what happens to me? In Osun, where the competition between the two major parties has always been fierce, Adeleke was not going to sit back and become another casualty of a party that refused to heal itself. Survival became the most reasonable option.

His case makes sense when you consider the political temperature in Osun. This is a state where the opposition does not sleep. Every misstep is amplified. Every weakness is exploited. Adeleke has spent his time in office under constant scrutiny. Add that to the fact that the national structure of his party is wobbly, divided and uncertain about its future, and the move begins to look less like betrayal and more like self-preservation.

Rivers, however, tells a slightly different story. Fubara’s journey has been a long lesson in endurance. From the moment he emerged as governor, it became clear he was stepping into an environment loaded with expectations that had nothing to do with governance. His political godfather was not content with being a supporter. He wanted control. He wanted influence. He wanted obedience. Every decision was interpreted through the lens of loyalty. From the assembly crisis to the endless reconciliation meetings, to the barely hidden power struggles, Fubara spent more time fighting shadows than building the state he was elected to lead.

It soon became clear that he was governing through a maze of minefields. Those who should have been allies began to treat him like an accidental visitor in the Government House. The same legislators who were meant to be partners in governance suddenly became instruments of pressure. Orders came from places outside the official structure. Courtrooms turned into battlegrounds. At some point, even the national leadership of his party seemed unsure how to tame the situation. These storms did not come in seasons, they came in waves. One misunderstanding today. Another in two weeks. Another by the end of the month. Anyone watching closely could see that the governor was in a permanent state of emergency.

So when the winds started shifting again and lawmakers began to realign, those who understood the undercurrents knew exactly what was coming. Fubara knew too. A man can only take so much. After months of attacks, humiliations and attempts to cage his authority, the move to another party was not just political. It was personal. He had given the reconciliation process more chances than most would. He had swallowed more insults than any governor should. He had watched institutions bend and twist under the weight of private interests. In many ways, his defection is a declaration that he has finally chosen to protect himself.

But the bigger question is how we got here. How did two governors in two different parts of the country end up taking the same decision for different but related reasons? The answer goes back to the state of internal democracy in our parties. No party in Nigeria today fully practices the constitution it claims to follow. They have elaborate rules on paper but very loose habits in reality. They talk about fairness, but their primaries are often messy. They preach unity, but their caucuses are usually divided into rival camps. They call themselves democratic institutions, yet dissent is treated as disloyalty.

Political parties are supposed to be the engine rooms of democracy. They are the homes where ideas are debated, leaders are groomed, and future candidates are shaped. In Nigeria, they increasingly look like fighting arenas where the loudest voices drown out everyone else. When leaders ignore their own constitutions, the structure begins to crack. When factions begin to run parallel meetings, the foundation gets weaker. When decisions are forced down the throats of members, people begin making private plans for their future.

No governor wants to govern in chaos. No politician wants to be the last one standing in a sinking ship. This is why defections are becoming more common. A party that cannot manage itself cannot manage its members. And members who feel exposed will always look for safer ground.

But while these moves make sense for Adeleke and Fubara personally, the people they govern often become the ones left in confusion. Voters choose candidates partly because of party ideology, even if our ideologies are weak. They expect stability. They expect continuity. They expect that the mandate they gave will remain intact. So when a governor shifts political camp without prior consultation, the people feel blindsided. They begin to wonder whether their votes carry weight in a system where elected officials can switch platforms in the blink of an eye.

This is where the politics of survival becomes dangerous for democracy. If leaders keep prioritizing their personal safety over party stability, the system begins to lose coherence. Parties lose their identity. Elections lose their meaning. Governance becomes a game of musical chairs. Today you are here. Tomorrow you are there. Next week you may be somewhere else. The people become bystanders in a democracy that is supposed to revolve around them.

Rivers and Osun should serve as reminders that political parties need urgent restructuring. They need to rebuild trust internally. They need to enforce their constitutions consistently. They need to treat members as stakeholders, not spectators. When members feel protected, they stay. When they feel targeted, they run. This pattern will continue until parties learn the simple truth that power is not built by intimidation, but by inclusion.

There is also the question of what these defections mean for governance. When governors are dragged into endless party drama, service delivery suffers. Time that should be spent on roads, schools, hospitals, water projects and job creation ends up being spent in meetings, reconciliations and press briefings. Resources that should strengthen the state end up funding political battles. The public loses twice. First as witnesses to the drama. Then as victims of delayed or abandoned development.

In Rivers, the months of tension slowed down the government. Initiatives were stalled because the governor was busy trying to survive political ambush. In Osun, Adeleke had to juggle governance with internal fights in a crumbling party structure. Imagine what they could have achieved if they were not constantly looking over their shoulders.

Now, as both men settle into new political homes, the final question is whether these new homes will provide stability or merely temporary shelter. Nigeria’s politics teaches one consistent lesson. New alliances often come with new expectations. New platforms often come with new demands. And new godfathers often come with new conditions. Whether Adeleke and Fubara have truly found peace or simply bought time is something only time will tell.

But as citizens, what we must insist on is simple. The politics of survival should not become the politics of abandonment. Our leaders can fight for their political life, but they must not forget that they hold the people’s mandate. The hunger, poverty, insecurity and infrastructural decay that Nigerians face will not be solved by defection. It will be solved by steady leadership and functional governance.

The bigger lesson from Rivers and Osun is clear. If political parties in Nigeria continue on this path of disunity and internal sabotage, they will keep losing their brightest and most strategic figures. And if leaders keep running instead of reforming the system, then we will wake up one day to a democracy where the people are treated as an afterthought.

Governors may survive the storms. Parties may adjust to new alignments. But the people cannot keep paying the price. Nigeria deserves a democracy that works for the many, not the few. That is the real pulse of the nation.

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Human Rights Day: Stakeholders Call For More Campaigns Against GBV

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

Panel of discussants at an event to commemorate the International Human Rights Day, 2025 on Wednesday called for more campaigns against Gender-Based Violence, adding that it must start from the family.

The panel of discussants drawn from religious and community leaders, security agents, members of the civil society community, chiefs, etc, made the call in Benin in an event organised by Justice Development & Peace Centre (JDPC), Benin, in collaboration with Women Aid Collective (WACOL) with the theme: Multilevel Dialogue for Men, Women, Youth and Critical Take holders on the Prevention and Response to Gender-Based Violence (GBV).

The stakeholders, who said causes of GBV are enormous, called for more enlightenment and education in the family, community and the religious circle.

Security agents in the panel charged members of the public to report GBV cases to security agents regardless of the sex Involved, adding: “When GBV happens, it should be reported to the appropriate quarters. It doesn’t matter if the woman or the man is the victim. GBV perpetrators should not be covered up, they must be exposed. We are there to carry out the prosecution after carrying out the necessary investigation.”

Earlier in his opening remarks, Executive Director, JDPC, Rev. Fr. Benedicta Onwugbenu, lamented that (GBV) remains the most prevalent in the society yet hidden because of silence from victims.

According to him, GBV knows no age, gender or race, adding that “It affects people of all ages, whether man or woman, boy or girl.”

“It affects people from different backgrounds and communities, yet it remains hidden because of silence, stigma, and fear. Victims of GBV are suffering in silence.”

On her part, Programme Director, WACOL, Mrs. Francisca Nweke, who said “women are more affected, and that is why we are emphasising on them,” stressed “we are empowering Christian women and women leaders of culture for prevention and response to Gender-Based Violence in Nigeria through the strengthening of grassroots organisations.”