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Now that World Cup is Over Can We Stop This Farce Called National Sports Festival?

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By Godwin Kienka

The Qatar 2022 Football World Cup was unique and outstanding in many ways. It was the first to be held in the Middle East and the Arab world – not in Saudi Arabia or the Emirates but in Qatar, an oil-rich country of about three million people and what a show they put up.

They built state-of-the- art stadia and for a small country that is 11,571 km square, the farthest stadium was 40km from the city centre.
Transportation, organization and security were top-notch and although accommodation was expensive for some, they made adequate arrangements for all classes of visitors.

The Qataris were roundly rewarded with a high level competition that was breath-taking, exciting, laced with mind boggling upsets and several records.

Argentina, one of the pre-tournament favourites went from “grass to grace” – suffering a humiliating 1 – 2 upset by Saudi Arabia and then rebounding to win the trophy to crown Lionel Messi’s outstanding football career. Morocco upset 2010 world champions, Spain in the group stages and went on to become the first African country to reach the semifinals. And boy!  What a final the sports world got!

There were two generations of football superstars on the pitch – Lionel Messi of Argentina and Kylian Mbappe of France – separated by a little more than a decade in age – and they did not disappoint. Both of them, no matter how you slice it, delivered one of the best finals in the history of the World Cup with the victory going to the nation that it meant the most to. Needless to say, that Nigeria with a home match against Ghana to qualify did not make it to the World Cup.

However, while the entire world was focused on the FIFA Men’s World Cup, Nigeria, the “oil-poor” nation, was tucked in one corner holding its National Sports Festival (NSF) in Asaba, Delta State.

The NSF debuted in Lagos in 1973 with very lofty goals. The two major ones were to engender unity in the country and to hasten the development of sports in the nation by identifying and developing talent. It did not disappoint. It became Nigeria’s mini Olympics with the regions and then the States taking it really seriously and developing sporting talent in their domain. Some went as far as inviting other nations to play friendlies to win the football gold which was then regarded as the “star” medal. You represented a State either because you lived there or you schooled there. I know because I represented Oyo State in Tennis as a student of the University of Ibadan in the “Oluyole 79” NSF. We were camped for weeks, paid handsome allowances and were properly kitted.

The NSF started a downward spiral when some low performing States ganged up to demand that the NSF become an age group, grassroots event in order to discover younger talent. Of course, the underlying objective was to dilute the field and make the under-performing States become a little more competitive. Their wish was granted and there began the age cheating syndrome in Nigerian sports with State officials, even sports commissioners, almost coming to blows to push through obviously overage athletes. Standards dropped, the media lost interest and sponsors turned their backs on the NSF.

It got so bad that I was constrained to make a submission to the Minister of Sports, Samaila Sambawa, in 2006 through the late Babayo Shehu who had retired as Director –General but was well respected in sporting circles.

The late Babayo Shehu and I met at the Le Meridien in Abuja and I detailed the benefits of an open NSF and even went as far as to suggest that international athletes in the diaspora should be welcomed to represent their home States or the State that produced them to make the NSF our own mini- Olympics. The highly – convinced ex director-general took my paper to the Minister and the end result was the conference of directors of Sports accepting a semi-open NSF with, if I remember correctly, a 50 -50 participation of adults and juniors.

The Ogun State 2006 NSF became a very successful event, attracting sponsorship and excellent media coverage. Records were broken in many sports events and ironically, the directors in the Ministry of Sports turned around to claim credit for the outcome of the festival. The Sports Reform Committee of 2016 which I was privileged to be the team lead also recommended an open NSF with sports men and women in the diaspora welcome to participate – a recommendation the then Minister, Solomon Dalung, dutifully implemented.

However, at this point when the potentially lucrative NSF was expected to be  a commercialised, private sector driven, well organised celebration of our best sporting talent, the competition has become flawed, extremely corrupted if you like, in certain respects. I am here not interested in the subpar organization of the Delta 2023 NSF as far as accommodation for officials and athletes, transportation and facilities – specifically athletics – were concerned. I am more piqued by the shenanigans in representation, qualification and the purity of the competition. States have made it a dubious sporting enterprise where medals are literarily bought. Medals are going to the highest bidder for the services of sports men and women.

Although there is a six-month or so residency rule, the States with the cash are finding legal excuses to circumvent that. Players, they argue, could be sent to any State or even overseas to prepare for a competition as long as they are on their “payroll”. A payroll which is often doctored. So, you find athletes representing a State they have never visited in their lives. In every NSF year it becomes a race to engage and hold down the champions in every event or one of the top four, no matter where they reside or hail from. These are funds that would have better benefitted the youth in the States if invested in facilities, grassroots and schools’ sports competitions. Good money wasted on mercenaries for two weeks of fame!

But beyond that, as I wrote in my book, Sports in Nigeria – Going Round in Circles, there are believable allegations of athletes with 95% chance of winning medals “contriving” to lose to opponents from medal ‘buying’ States so they can share the cash. Some States ‘promise’ as much as one million Naira for a gold medal.

The NSF has become a joke. Serving only the top athletes, the sports commissioners and directors of sports in the States, the host State and the Federal Ministry of Sports. If a country with close to 40 Sports Federations has to depend on a biennial sports festival to discover its potential sports stars then that nation is using the wrong sports compass. There was even talk of making the NSF international.  Of course, the real motive for such an absurd plan is very easy to decipher.

I wonder if the NSF would have held at the time it did had Nigeria qualified for the World Cup?

Godwin Kienka is Director of the International Tennis Academy and author of Sports in Nigeria – Going Round in Circles.

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OPINION

The Battle Against Inflation the CBN is Losing.

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By Nick Agule

Video: These are cows after eating crops on a farm are crossing the highway between Nasarawa and Benue States to continue eating up crops on farms on the other side of the road. This is a major reason for food shortage in Nigeria at the moment which is spiking food prices.

We are feeding animals at the expense of humans!

But when the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) meets Tomorrow and next – 25th & 26th March 2024 – the members are likely to hike interest rates because they think food inflation in Nigeria is being caused by excess liquidity (too much money supply) in the economy and thus there is too much demand for food.

The textbook solution in a situation such as they think is to tighten money supply by increasing interest rates which will then make savings rates more attractive and thus people will prefer to save instead of consumption. The more they save, the more the liquidity is mopped up which then slows down inflation.

However, the MPC members seem to be oblivious of structural issues that are spiking food prices in Nigeria which have nothing to do with excess liquidity as follows:

Only 2.5% of Nigeria’s arable land is cultivated (figures provided by President Buhari in 2021). This means we have basically not yet started serious industrial agriculture in Nigeria.

The reason for the poor statistic of cultivation above is because farming in Nigeria is largely by manual labour and not much food can be produced without mechanisation and improved seedlings with fertiliser and other modern farming inputs.

Even the 2.5% cultivation is no longer happening because a large number of farmers have been driven away from their farms into IDP camps killer herdsmen and sundry bandits.

In areas where farming is still happening, the cows come and eat the crops as the video shows. 

 There is huge cost-push inflation in imported food prices because of the exchange rate crisis thus resulting in less food being imported.

All the factors above have contributed to low food output and availability in Nigeria.

From rudimentary economics, prices of commodities are determined by the forces of DEMAND and SUPPLY. But it appears that the MPC members think it’s only demand that is spiking inflation in Nigeria and they are not giving any consideration to supply deficits as a causative factor for inflation as well. Because dealing with supply deficit requires interest rates to the cut so that producers can access cheap credit to produce more! So far, the MPC is not thinking about this. When you increase interest rates in a stagflation (low output, low employment and high inflation), it makes the situation worse!

And to show the MPC is getting something wrong, the more MPR they hike, the more inflation goes up! In the last MPC meeting on the 26/27th February, inflation rate was 29.9% with food inflation at 35.41%. The MPC increased the MPR from 18.75% to 22.75% to fight this inflation. But instead of lowering, the inflation called their bluff and rose to 31.7% with food inflation spiking to 37.92%. Food inflation does not respond to interest rates hikes because even if interest rates are hiked to 100%, people will not save, they must buy food to feed their families!

If the MPC spikes the interest rate at this week’s meeting, the result can only be one way – inflation will spike further because this inflation is not demand-pull!

Going through the minutes of the last meeting of the MPC, there is a sense that the MPC members are spiking interest rate to equate inflation rate or interest rate to go higher than inflation rate. Members think this is what will attract foreign direct investments. But if we pay high interest rates on dollar funds we take in, where are we going to commit such funds and earn high enough returns to pay the interest and still make a profit? If Nigerian banks take deposits at high interest rates, where can they lend to earn enough to pay the interest rate and other costs? The monies will just be sitting in the banks! And here the MPC increased the CRR to 45% instead of lowering it to ensure lending to an economy screaming for growth!

It is high time now for the MPC members to change direction. There is no point pushing interest rates to go higher than inflation rate, this will hurt the economy even more. The MPC will better begin to cut rates so that the economy will start experiencing high growth that will eventually lower the inflation rate. This will be made possible if the MPC members rethink their conclusion that Nigeria’s inflation is resultant from excess liquidity in the system! MPC members must give due consideration to the other causative factors of inflation too.

Also, it is high time now for the coordinating minister of the economy to begin holding joint economic policy meetings of the monetary policy and fiscal policy authorities because the MPC alone cannot control inflation and boost output without the fiscal authorities also coming to the table and working together in harmony and with unity of purpose.

Bottomline is that it will be a bad day this week if the MPR is further hiked.  

Twitter: @NickAgule

Email: nick.agule@yahoo.co.uk

Facebook: Nick Agule, FCA

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OPINION

Edo, Ondo 2024 Reechoes Bitter Tribal Politics of 2023 Elections

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Mr Godwin Obaseki
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By Ehichioya Ezomon

In 2020, Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki fought the political battle of his life for a second term in office. Midyear, he’s disqualified by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), headed by Senator and former Governor Adams Oshiomhole as then national chairman.

In 2016, Oshiomhole had “imposed and installed” Obaseki as his successor.

But the godfather-godson relationship didn’t last, as Obaseki decried Oshiomhole’s “godfatherism,” and connived to have him suspended from his ward in Etsako West Local Government Area of Edo North, and sacked by the courts as APC’s chairman.

Oshiomhole denying Obaseki a re-election ticket prompted Obaseki to defect to opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which granted him automatic ticket, with which he contested and won the September 2020 election.

But in the course of the campaigns, former Lagos State Governor and acclaimed “National Leader” of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu (now President of Nigeria) called on the people of Edo State to vote for the APC candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, who’s chaperoned by Tinubu’s close ally, Comrade Oshiomhole.

It’s a wrong political move at a time Obaseki, his campaign and supporters alleged – with no concrete evidence, and yet believable – that Oshiomhole had carried out a script written by Tinubu, to disqualify Obaseki from the APC governorship primary.

When Obaseki’s still in the APC, he led a group of governors and party chieftains to Tinubu’s Bourdillon road home in Ikoyi, Lagos, to solicit his assistance to settle the feud between him and Oshiomhole, and Tinubu, short of shunning the parley, remained noncommittal, thus sending signals that he sided with Oshiomhole’s antic to deny Obaseki a second term ticket.

The backlash from Edo people against Oshiomhole for “instigating” disqualification of Obaseki from the APC primary, was also extended to Tinubu for his alleged “interference in Edo politics,” and hence the coinage: “Edo no be Lagos” – a reference to Tinubu’s stranglehold of politics of Lagos State.

So, “Edo no be Lagos” became an anthem, and the rallying cry for the Obaseki campaign, members and supporters of the PDP, and Edolites across party lines, who felt Oshiomhole (and Tinubu) committed a “political sacrilege” by denying a return ticket to Obaseki whom he’d backed for governor in 2016.

Thus, the Obaseki campaign adopted three strategies that worked for the governor’s re-election without a referendum on his “achievements” from 2016 to 2020: Deploy Oshiomhole’s “betrayal of Edo people” – particularly the Binis of Edo South, where Obaseki hails from; replay Oshiomhole’s campaign of calumny against Pastor Ize-Iyamu during the 2016 election, to denigrate and demarket him, and promote Obaseki’s candidacy that Oshiomhole sponsored; and harp on Tinubu’s “interference” in Edo politics.

Now to the 2024 governorship election in Edo State where another version of “Edo no be Lagos” or “Edo no be Yorubaland” – with a ting of tribalism – has emerged in the lead-up to the September 21 poll. But first, recall that the 2023 General Election in Lagos State witnessed an intense recline to tribal politics between the Yoruba and Igbo – the one trying to stave off alleged plans by the other to dominate Lagos politics by declaring the state as “a no man’s land” to be “captured” in the 2023 elections.

True to the fears of the Yoruba, the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP) and former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi defeated Tinubu in his Lagos homestead in the February 25, 2023, poll. So, ahead of the following March 18 governorship election, alarmed conservative Yoruba resorted to whipping up tribal sentiments, telling liberal Yoruba that the intention of the Igbo wasn’t just to takeover Lagos – where they’ve an unverified 5m population – but also to bring the entire South-West geopolitical zone under Igbo domination.

Besides calling for “Yoruba Ronu” (‘Yoruba, Think’) – a phrase used by the legendary Hubert Ogunde “in his famous 1964 play,” warning about intra-ethnic divide among politicians in Yorubaland that could give way to external infiltration – the agitation for “Yorubaland for the Yoruba” culminated in rallying for Yoruba nationalism and supremacy in Yorubaland.

As noted by Yusuf Omotayo in a piece, “The True Meaning of ‘Yoruba Ronu,’” first published in The Atlantic of July 10, 2023, “Yoruba Ronu has recently become the anchor on which Yoruba politicians have championed calls for fanatic support. The original core message of the phrase, however, is unity rather than ethnic disrespect and Yoruba supremacy.”

The Yoruba agitators backed up their alleged “Igbo Agenda” with declarative statements and videos issued and posted by social media influencers, calling on members of the “Obidients Movement” – the mass of voters who backed Obi’s presidential run – to “vote massively” on March 18, for the LP to takeover Lagos State.

And for good (or bad) measure, the LP featured as its governorship candidate Gbadebo (Chinedu) Rhodes-Vivor, who’s a Yoruba father and Igbo mother and wife – and whose utterances and actions, even on the campaign trail, tended to play up his affinity to Igbo more than to his Yoruba heritage.

The Yoruba agitators dug into Mr Rhodes-Vivor’s social media posts – which some alleged were manipulated – in which he backed activities of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) – a group fighting for secession from Nigeria; his lead participation in the October 20, 2020, #Endsars violent and bloody protests in Lagos; and his intention, if elected governor, to dethrone the Oba of Lagos, and install an Igbo as replacement, declare an annual “Igbo Day” for Igbo to celebrate their traditional and cultural heritage, business acumen and dominance of the commercial and political affairs of Lagos, and give Igbo unfettered access to control all markets and commercial places in Lagos State.

These and other issues worked against the LP and Rhodes-Vivor’s ambition on poll day, giving the ruling APC and the amiable but assailed Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu a landslide victory, and crowning the “Yorubaland for Yoruba” agitators’ fierce campaign for “Yoruba Ronu” with defeat of the “Igbo campaigners” of “Na we build Lagos, na we own Lagos.”

Meanwhile – and sadly – the tribal politics of 2023 elections has resurrected in Edo and Ondo 2024 elections. In Edo, the LP candidate and former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr Olumide Osaigbovo Akpata, had to do a hit music in Bini, to prove that he’s a bona fide “son-of-the-soil” from the prominent family of the Akpatas of Benin Kingdom.

Decked in traditional attire, Mr Akpata leads “the cultural troupe” in a Bini song and graceful dancesteps to trace his paternal and maternal roots to ages, and pleads with Edo people that he isn’t a stranger or a Yoruba, as his political traducers want to portray him in the intense mobilisation for the LP primary, and the governorship poll on September 21.

Amid lingering doubts as to Akpata being “truly” Bini and Edo, a tweep (a user of Twitter) posted “an advisory” on X (formerly Twitter) for Igbo residents in Edo State not to dabble in the local politics of who the parties field for the governorship, but to mind their civic duty of voting for their preferred candidate.

This stirred instant reactions from Yoruba netizens (habitual or keen users of internet), who reasoned that the advisory was issued to Igbo residents in Edo State because the LP candidate’s middle name – Olumide – is Yoruba, and hence anathema to the Igbo.

The Yoruba say what’s sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. If Igbo supported Mr Rhodes-Vivor with a middle name of “Chinedu” and Igbo mother and wife for the LP governor in Lagos, why should Igbo steer clear of canvassing for Mr Akpata with a Yoruba name of “Olumide” as candidate of the LP in Edo State?

Similarly in the PDP in Edo State, governorship candidate Asue Ighodalo faces scrutiny as to his Esan roots from Ewohimi in Esan North-East of Edo Central. In 2023, Dr Ighodalo, a Lagos-based lawyer and industrialist associate of Governor Obaseki, reportedly hired “an interpreter” to convey his aspiration for governor to his ward members in Ewohimi. Now, critics query his “Edoness” for “growing up and working in Lagos, and marrying a Yoruba.”

In Ondo State, lawyer and veteran politician, Chief Olusola Oke, has a primary huddle for marrying an Igbo named “Nkem” as a second wife, who’s reportedly “very close” to Mrs Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu, the Igbo wife of the late Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN), who died from a protracted ailment on December 27, 2023.

Accused of being an “Iron” First Lady with a domineering streak – and allegedly advancing the interests of Igbo to the detriment of the Yoruba in Ondo State – Mrs Akeredolu’s ethnic relationship with Mrs Oke may cause Mr Oke the primary ticket of the APC, and ultimately the governorship if the agitators for “Yorubaland for Yoruba” deploy “Yoruba Ronu” in the APC yet-to-be-scheduled April primary for the November 16 election in the state.

This is the stage we’re in Nigeria’s bitter politics, in which tribe and state of origin of spouses and their parents, living permanently or for a considerable length of time in their states of origin, and ability to speak fluently the local language, and imbibe the traditional and cultural nuances of the people, now determine one’s ambition for elective political position(s).

It’s happened in Lagos, in the case of Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivor failing the governorship in 2023 partly because – in the estimation of the conservative indigenous Yoruba – he’s not “Yoruba enough” for having Igbo mother and wife, and “displaying disdain” for Yoruba language, traditional and culture.

It also occurred in 2023 in Enugu State, where a resident of Ebonyi State origin was told by the locals that he couldn’t – as a “stranger” or “non-indigene” – become governor of Enugu. “A person from Ebonyi cannot be our governor in Enugu. God will not allow that” (to happen), one of the speakers – with members of the audience concurring – told the bewildered politician at a gathering to intimate the people about his governorship ambition, which ended thereafter!

On May 4, 2022, Senator Adeola Olamilekan (alias ‘Yayi’) (APC, Lagos West), gave in to emotions when his constituents in Ogun West gifted him nomination forms, to contest in the 2023 poll to represent the district. Pre-2015 general election when Chief Olamilekan wanted to represent Ogun West – his district of origin in Ogun State – there’s strong opposition that he wasn’t a Yewa man from the district. Some even claimed he’s from Ekiti State.

He’d to seek his political ambition in Lagos West (he’s Reps member from 2011 to 2015), which he won and represented from 2015 to 2023. But reportedly eying the governorship of Ogun State in 2027 that’s “zoned” to Ogun West, Olamilekan made attempts to switch from Lagos West to Ogun West, and met with the same resistance from APC members, three of whom filed a writ in court to stop him.

However, majority of his constituents – who’d heard about his political exploits in Lagos West – rallied for, and 71 of them purchased the nomination forms for him to contest in the primary and election, which he won, and now represents Ogun West in the 10th National Assembly.

There’re also instances of women, who weren’t allowed to vie for elective political offices by chieftains of parties in the states they’re married into, and asked to go look for slots in their states of origin. That’s how, for example, Mrs Daisy Ehanire Danjuma – wife of former Chief of Army Staff, and Founder and Chairman Emeritus of TY Danjuma Foundation, Gen. Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (retd) – left Taraba, her state of marriage, to seek senatorial slot in Edo State and won in 2003 (PDP, Edo South).

Can this bitter tribal politics in Nigeria be reversed? It’s doubtful, as the 2023 general election that’s supposed to subsume the primeval cleavage actually accentuated it, as fears of domination by residents fueled anxiety and outrage among the local and indigenous peoples across many states of Nigeria!

Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.

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OPINION

Tinubu: The Choice between Fifth Columnists and Northern Traditional Rulers

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By Ayuba Ahmad

From Katsina, of all places, came a report the other day of little children protesting against the high rate of banditry and kidnapping in the state. The action was in response to the increasing wave of invasions of schools, kidnappings and, killings of children particularly in the north of the country.

With the seemingly unabating scenario, we may soon be witnessing replications of the Katsina children’s protests in other parts of the country in times ahead.

We have since had the experience of abduction of the breathtaking number of 287 children in Kaduna state and scores of others in Sokoto state barely a week after the unprecedented Katsina Children Protest.

There have been several reports as well, of protests by adults, against the deepening level of hunger in the land. The incidents have unfolded in Niger, Osun, Adamawa, Lagos, Kogi, Nasarawa and Kwara states among others. Beside the rising incidents of highway robbery especially targeted at trucks transiting food items and other basic essentials of life, are also the disturbing reports of looting of government stores, warehouses and silos of strategic reserves.

President Tinubu’s administration cannot afford to play the proverbial ostrich by burying its head in the sand in the face of the burgeoning infernos. As it is, those who have his ears at the corridors of power, paid aides, spin doctors, palace courtiers and jesters, appear incapable or are wilfully refusing to avail him with the correct pictures of the prevailing situation.

Under democratic and military political dispensations, people of southern Nigerian extractions, have at various times, held the highest political office in the country either as Head of State or President. Prominent examples are, Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan and now, Bola Tinubu.  They have in between them, ruled over the affairs of the country longer than their northern compatriots since the start of the ongoing Fourth Republic.

This is in spite of the North’s superior population which in turn, confers on the region tremendous leverage in nationally conducted electoral contests. The region has however,  decided at several critical turns in the country’s political history, not to wantonly deploy this portent political advantage.Three of such historical instances will suffice to buttress this point.

In the June 1993 presidential election, the North overwhelmingly voted for late Chief MKO Abiola of the now defunct Social Democratic Party, SDP, against one of their own, late Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention, NRC. That show of magnanimity was repeated in 1999 when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo ascended to the nation’s pinnacle of political power very largely due to the solid support he had in the cream of the elites and electorate of the North.

With the north giving President Tinubu 5 million of the 8 million votes that earned him victory in the 2023 presidential contest, there is no gainsaying which of the nation’s geopolitical divide deserves the garlands for the  feats of Tinubu and  of the APC in that year’s historic elections.

This piece, more or less a rejoinder, was triggered by a recent article titled: “From Palace to Politics, Fulani Emirs Mass Against Tinubu” by one Francis Ojo. Ojo’s article comes across as a voyage in a brazen exercise of hauling unprintable invectives  on the highly revered institutions and persons of the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Dr Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III  and the Emir of Kano, His Highness Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero.

In the warped perception of the author, the two royal fathers ought not to have lent their voices to those of the several other well-meaning leaders in the country,  in drawing the attention and accordingly, admonishing the President on the prevailing  poverty and attendant creeping hunger and, anger among the people.

Using the auspicious occasion of the visit of the nation’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu to his Palace, Emir Aminu Ado Bayero, had made a passionate appeal on the President to adopt more effective and pragmatic solutions to the raging  hunger and starvation across the length and breadth of the country.

Though, the Emir acknowledged that the “crisis preceded this government”, he said, “the situation has however become more alarming and needs urgent attention.” According to him, “the government should come clean on this matter and talk to Nigerians in the language they would understand.”

Also speaking earlier at a forum of northern Emirs and Chiefs, His Eminence, Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar similarly drew attention of the President Tinubu’s administration to the stark reality and potential grim backlash of the heightening level of poverty and hunger.

The Sultan noted that, the prevailing air of restraint and quiet amongst the citizens was in large measure, due to the fact that “people have been talking to them.” According to him: “We have been talking to them…I pray to Almighty Allah that they will not wake up one day and say, ‘we no longer believe in you’. That would be the biggest problem.” 

In a show of appreciation for their courageous and wise commentary on the state of the nation, Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar and Emir Aminu Bayero have been extolled and celebrated by a broad-spectrum of enlightened, well-meaning citizens in all parts of the country. The encomiums are in appreciation of their  bringing the respected and weighty moral authority to bear at such a crucial and trying time such as the nation is presently going through.

On the other hand, in the warped, hate-tainted logic of Ojo, the matter-of-fact and fatherly counseling of the Sultan and the Emir were nothing but the “politics of the massing of Fulani Emirs against Tinubu.” To him, while the views of Emir Aminu Bayero translated to his “sending insults to Tinubu”, the Sultan on his part, was merely “sending his threats” to the President.

 An enlightened and urbane leader that he is, Tinubu would not, of course, be bought on such bunkum and balderdash.

In the course of his treacherous fabrications and twisting of facts, Ojo alleged that “northerners fanatically defended President Muhammadu Buhari all through his eight disastrous years in office.” In his view, the northerners, especially their leaders, do not; therefore, have the “moral justification to be criticizing President Tinubu’s administration which is barely eight months in office.” Nothing can be further from the truth.

More than any other groups and individuals, the likes of Professor Ango Abdullahi and Dr Hakeem Baba Ahmed, on the platform of the Northern Elders Forum, the fiery clerics, Sheikh Ahmed Abubakar Gumi and Bishop Mathew Kuka of the Sokoto Catholic Diocese were simply the most vociferous voices of  criticisms against unpopular government’s policies and programmes throughout the tenure of President Buhari.

Also, northern traditional leaders, the Sultan and significantly, the Emirs of Katsina and Daura, were unrelenting in calling attention of President Buhari to the abysmal state of insecurity and otter negative fall-outs of the policies and programmes of his administration.

Just as they opted for late MKO against Alhaji Tofa based on the former’s demonstrated traits of a philanthropist, his capacity and his  credentials as a Pan Nigerian leader, the North, in 2023 tilted toward Tinubu. Their going against his main challenger, a fellow northerner, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku was essentially because, Bola Ahmed Tinubu was seen as a much capable candidate.

Those now claiming Tinubu’s presidency as their exclusive preserve have conveniently, so soon in the day, forgotten that Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential polls in Lagos and Osun states which are the two states where, for very strong symbolic reasons, he should have had his best showing.

On the whole, it is so obvious that Ojo and his cohorts are  mere puppets, poor wretched lumpens that are unwittingly, serving as pawns in the manipulative hands of scheming puppeteers and, the Fifth Columnists. The ultimate goal of the masquerades behind the masks, is a vicious and cynical agenda aimed at the very heart of the President. The Year 2027 is  the visible object of their schemes, machinations and poisoned darts.

President Bola Tinubu should be grateful to Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar and Emir Aminu Ado Bayero for telling him the truth that his aides will not avail him with. He is also very importantly, to be wary of the Fifth Columnists, the Janus-faced people who only profess loyalty and affection but are in truth, his very worst enemies.

Ayuba Ahmad is a Kaduna-based Public Affairs Commentator.

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