Achievers are people willing to go the extra mile to make things happen. They do this both for the sake of humanity and self fulfilment. They find meaning in making things happen in an extraordinary way. That is what it means to be an achiever who deserves  to be recognised.

The world is replete with one consensus-reward for honesty, accountability, transparency and good work.

Therefore, rewarding an achiever or a highly resourceful  person with encouraging words is to spur him or her to put in more effort to accomplish more tasks for the overall benefit of society. As for those in public service, they go an extra length to contribute to the much needed societal development. Acknowledging and rewarding contributions of an achiever promotes enterprise and industry.

The world’s oldest Excellence Awards, The Nobel Prize: motivated by Alfred Nobel in 1901, was born out of the desire to recognize and reward outstanding contributions in various fields to encourage achievements that benefit humanity, focusing on Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace.

Some of the world’s most outstanding and oldest excellence awards are; Academy Awards (Oscars) initiated in 1929 to reward excellence in entertainment and film industry. Others include: the Fields Medal in 1936, the highest honour in mathematics and Turing Award in 1966, which recognizes groundbreaking contributions in computer science. There is also Order of the British Empire initiated in 1917  recognizing public service, arts, science, and charitable contributions.

A few of the above awards, recognized globally for their prestige and historical significance are being sustained for their impact in shaping, inspiring, motivating and bringing out the very best in individuals’ field of endeavour.

This is what DAILY ASSET annual awards was set out to emulate; to fuel and inflame passion, zeal and innovation in men and women, young and old. The awards are motivated by the prospect of accomplishing something important and making a difference, both in their own and other people’s lives.

Achievers innovate, stimulate and energise teamwork. They push frontiers of development.

High-achievers remain enthusiastic. He or she does the best in profering solutions, even when everyone else sees things through the prism of impossibility. Simply put, achievers think out of the box.

People gather every other day for myriad reasons. But when an organisation (DAILY ASSET) with a constitutional responsibility, under Section 22 of the Nigerian Constitution, to

mirror society and hold public officers accountable for their stewardship, pulls together eminent personalities from diverse backgrounds for the sole purpose of honouring those that have excelled in their chosen fields, then society is being shaped for the better.

As a result, the gathering to celebrate outstanding individuals and corporate entities who have demonstrated exceptional dedication, innovation and impact in their fields is the contribution of DAILY ASSET to setting high standards. It is also to appreciate excellence. In a world with multiple blocks of failure and few for success, some individuals and corporate entities who rise above board calls for our collective applause.

By recognizing these achievers, we acknowledge the power of hard work, passion, and perseverance. Their successes will motivate others to strive for greatness, creating a ripple effect of excellence that can transform industries and communities for the overall advantage of the country.

To our honorees, your work shines brightly. We are proud to recognize your excellence. Your commitment to your craft is a testament to what is possible when talent meets opportunity. You are role models, showing us what is achievable with dedication  and determination.

As we honour our awardees,  we also acknowledge the impact of their ingenuity, which no doubt will continue to inspire present and future generations.

By Iyorwuese Hagher OON.

I read Dr Reuben Abati’s recent article in ThisDay titled “The Importance of Kashim Shettima” and found it troubling and problematic. The article is troubling and problematic in its presumption and motive, and it is entirely unnecessary.

Three years into the Tinubu Presidency, Reuben Abati, one of Nigeria’s most celebrated journalists and public intellectuals, and an oracle of Aso Rock, has to sound the gong to announce, “The Importance of Kashim Shettima”, which should be self-evident.

Something somewhere is wrong. Disturbingly wrong.

If Dr Abati’s motive is to coerce President Bola Ahmed Tinubu into prematurely reappointing the VP, through coercive public opinion and the mass media’s hypnotism, in favour of Kashim Shettima, then the article does more damage.

It reads like a manifesto for stupefying both the President and APC voters.

The article portrays Kashim Shettima’s “Importance” as an omnipotent, mechanised force, while the President and somnambulant APC voters are the “Unimportant” who must obediently acquiesce to the dictates of powerful media spin doctors.

Abati justifies his article as a response to people flying kites bearing the names of pretenders to “Kashim Shettima’s job,” which he says makes Shettima uncomfortable. He names Yakubu Dogara, Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso, Professor Bala Gana Zulum, Caleb Mutfwang, General Christopher Musa, and even the Most Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto. These, Abati reminds us, are merely childish, because none of them, in Abati’s eyes, has anything to offer President Tinubu. Rather than fly a childish kite, Abati seems ready to enter the political conversation, like the youth of Borno who shouted “No Shettima, No Borno votes.” Abati is ready to take his own chair and hurl it at anyone who opposes his journalistic will. And hurl he did. Poor Donald Trump is hit by Abati’s missile twice. He calls Donald Trump, the US President, the “Self-appointed defender of Christians” in Nigeria and the “Self-styled Commander of the World”. 

Abati attributes to President Trump one of the reasons the “Important Kashim Shettima” might not return as Vice-President, concluding that Donald Trump might resist the Muslim-Muslim ticket. Abati adds complexity to his spin by calling on those who birthed the Muslim-Muslim ticket to rise up and defend Nigeria’s sovereignty against Trump, because nobody should use Shettima’s religion against him. It violates his human rights.

But Abati’s sights on “The Importance of Shettima” become deadly. He scoffs at the Christian community in the North, describing them as “Wallowing in triumphalism” because of the misguided U.S. President’s favour and his unjustified attack against the Caliphate! How can the grieving, impoverished, and erased Christians in the North be blamed by Abati for wanting his Shettima’s job, when all they are praying for is the freedom to return from the exile of IDP camps to their ancestral lands, freedom to be alive, to feed themselves, and to educate their children? Abati is cruelly blaming the victims whose lives are structured by rhythms of fear, poverty, and death. This is simply beyond the pale.

Abati calls on the people who birthed the Muslim-Muslim ticket to rise up and defend Nigeria’s sovereignty, which presumably is the Muslim-Muslim ticket.

The most damaging fallout from Abati’s article is that, after disbanding the Christian and Muslim pretenders to the throne (Shettima’s job) and “flying childish kites”, Abati jumps into the ring, gloves and all, and aims at Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He taunts the president, “Nigerian politics is far more complex and different from the containerised, localised politics of Lagos State”. The simple implication is that, if, as Governor of Lagos State, Tinubu got away with changing his deputies after his first term in office, he should not dare repeat that feat on the “Important Kashim Shettima”, who, according to Abati, “Tinubu should rescue his Vice-President from the harassment and mental torture of having to hear every day that other persons want his job.”                 

I hope neither the Vice-President nor Dr Abati will be angry with me for pointing out the article’s inherent weakness and its potential to cause harm. Vice President Kassim Shettima is a good man. He was an excellent two-term governor of Borno State and a Senator. But the job of VP does not belong to him; it belongs to the Nigerians. “We the people” hired him and his principal to these jobs. Furthermore, Abati should never disparage or humiliate other high-ranking Nigerians who might aspire to that office. It is within their right to aspire. 

Finally, I wish to conclude by highlighting the immense difficulty Nigerians have in coming to terms with the truth about us.  In 2019, I aspired to be president on the SDP ticket. Our party was tied up in acrimonious litigation and failed to present a candidate for that election. A friend gloating over my fate told me that no Nigerian from the North Central or the political Middle Belt should ever aspire to the offices of president or vice president. Southern presidents, usually Christians, skip the North Central Zone of the North to choose a Muslim vice-president in the North. Sadly, Muslim presidents from the South also prefer Muslim vice-presidents from the North.  This is why Reuben Abati cleverly ignores names from the North Central Zone, a major APC voting population. His kite flyers do not bear the names of Senator Simon Lalong, nor the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume. 

We have always heard rumours of many other people who claim to be eminently better qualified than Akume. We often hear that Akume was to be replaced. And very many people are jostling to become the SGF during President Tinubu’s second term. Akume is never perturbed. He does not anguish nor hire spin doctors to tout his loyalty and qualifications. The job of SGF does not belong to him, and he knows that a thousand journalists sounding gongs in the president’s ears to reappoint him now would not matter. 

Was Abati’s omission of Senator Akume’s name from the kites flown at Shettima’s job an honest oversight or a strategic one? It is difficult for any Nigerian to belittle the political oracle of Benue State, who has been a key ally, friend and battle-tested commander alongside the president: a two-term governor, three-term senator, an honourable minister and now the SGF. Furthermore, Akume has never lost any political fight. Like Tinubu, he anointed the three successive governors of Benue State. He is the most dominant and visible person in North Central State and the APC leader. He is poised for more political victories. Perhaps Abati honestly did not consider Akume’s high-flying kite. Senator Akume is shy, humble, respectful and not corrupt. He built his distinguished, cerebral public life by recognising the value of teamwork. He obviously does not want Shettima’s job. His own is a handful, keeping the nation working for Mr President. 

After all is said and done, there is nothing further to say or do about this VP matter. The appointment and removal of the vice-president are the President’s sole prerogative. When the President’s spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, dismisses this VP matter as a “non-issue”, it should rest.  

Iyorwuese Hagher

Dayton, Ohio.

Never in the history of Nigeria has the persecution of Christians gained international attention as it is doing presently. It was only when President Donald Trump of the US raised concern that the genocide of christians was reaching an intolerable level, that the Nigerian government was jolted into action.

President Trump and the American Congress vowed to take necessary actions to protect christians from further killings. Among the actions to be taken include military attacks on the areas he said christians are being persecuted.  

Reacting to President Trump’s allegations, the Nigerian government denied the existence of Christian genocide in the country or the genocide of any other religion.

The government added that although the Nigerian leader, Ahmed Bola Tinubu is a muslim, he is married to a Christian Pastor. Speaking in a similar vein, the sultan of Sokoto, Mohammed Abubakar III, said Nigerian Christians and Muslims have been living in harmony and there was nothing like genocide. Again, a muslim cleric, Sheik Ahmed Gumi said Muslims were equally facing persecution from the indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB) and that President Trump should address the issue as well. 

From the Christian groups, Bishop David Oyedepo condemned the killing of christians in Nigeria and called for decisive action to halt the menace. Senior Pastor Paul Enenche equally condemned the killing of Christians, especially in the North. He ( Enenche) enjoined the government and the international community to take action to stop the killings. According to reports, Nigeria has become a center of christian martyrs in the world. 

The declaration of Sharia laws in Northern Nigeria in 1999 and the emergence of Jihadist groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West Africa (ISWAP) among others, all of them targeting christians worsened the situation. According to an April 2023 report by the international society for civil liberties and rule of law, at least 52,250 persecuted Christians have been killed in the past fourteen years. This number is alarming and disturbing. It is intolerable for a heterogeneous nation like Nigeria to face danger rather than peace and national security. 

Nigeria did not need to wait for Donald Trump to remind her of the persecution of Christians or any group in Nigeria. The killings that have been going on in Plateau and Benue states, all christian states are lending credence to President Trump’s position. 

Aware that the debate for and against Christian genocide could degenerate into a Christian/Muslim or North South divide at a time when social cohesion, national unity and fraternal solidarity are essential towards forging a common front against our common enemy as a people, DAILY ASSET calls for restraint. While we call for caution, the government must understand this basic principle of citizen engagements and refrain from joining issues with victims of persecution, be they Christians or Muslims. Keen watchers believe that the needless debate surrounding the cry of Christian genocide in Nigeria should serve as a wake-up call to the powers that be who often use religion for propaganda purposes.

The constant refrain by the antagonists of Christian genocide in Nigeria that Muslims are equally killed, if not more affected by mass killings in Nigeria clearly underscores this arrogance of ignorance of the meaning of genocide. That the general definition of genocide is ‘’the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular, ethnicity, race, nationality or religion, with the intent of destroying them in whole and part’’, simply means that when Muslim terror groups like ISWAP, Boko Haram and Killer Fulani herdsmen kill fellow Muslims, it doesn’t raise concern of genocide as much as when Christians are killed. 

The truth is that genocide is a peculiar kind of crime that takes into cognisance the identity – ethnic, racial, national or religious – of both the victim and perpetrator in order to isolate the hate factor that motivates the crime in the first instance. And when Muslims are killed by Boko Haram and ISWAP terror groups, it is because in the consideration of these Jihadists, such Muslims are not Muslims, but when they kill Christians it is because they are in faith and in practice, Christians. So, the number of the Muslim dead even if higher than Christians, do not technically count as Muslim fatalities as the killers do not think them different from the Christians they have killed because as far as they are concerned their Muslim and Christian victims are nothing but unbelieving infidels whose blood is ‘’halal’’. And this is why Christians in Nigeria are and should be more worried than Muslims.

There is no wisdom on the part of some Muslim authorities who have failed to empathize with grieving Christians who have lost loved ones, ancestral lands and property worth billions of naira. Furthermore, we see no moral justification the claim that Christian leaders raising the alarm to throw the country into a religious war. Such position do not hold water because Christians are truly being persecuted due to the failure of the government to prevent the killings. And Christians were not the first to cry out for help against what they perceive to be targeted killings of genocidal proportion against them. Despite the fact that for many years, Fulani bandits have been wreaking havoc in the North West of Nigeria, rustling cattle of fellow Fulani cattle breeders, killing and kidnapping them for ransome, no genocide claim was made by the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria [MACBAN] until Fulani cattle breeders were massacred on the Mambila Plateau by ethnic Mambila militia men some time in2017.

Genocide starts with the killing of one individual and the thinking is that if the targeted killings of Christians persists, the numbers of the dead will rise to a level that will tally with the definition of Christian genocide in Nigeria. To prevent this, deliberate and reasonable steps must be taken to halt any kind of killings in the country.

DAILY ASSET is therefore calling on the Nigerian government to be firm and decisive against Jihadist groups killing Christians and even Muslims over the years in the Northeast and other regions of the country. This should not be reduced to politics. While we strongly believe in one united Nigeria, all religious groups including Christians and Muslims must be given a sense of belonging, fairness and justice. It is curious that as soon as President Donald Trump made his “guns a-blazing” statement about Christian genocide in Nigeria and his vow to intervene if the Nigerian authorities are unable to contain mass killings of Christians in Nigeria, the government took defensive posture along with some prominent Muslim authorities.