Connect with us

Opinion

Rauf Aregbesola Discourse: From Governance To Big Development

Published

on

Funding Public Education In Nigeria: Towards An Alternative Financing Model

By
Tunji Olaopa

Just barely two weeks ago, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola, former governor of Osun State and the current Minister of the Interior of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, celebrated his 64th birthday. Not one given to frivolities, he organized an online colloquium to mark the day. It was themed “Government and Big Development.” And I had the honor to have been invited to speak at the resoundingly successful seminal event. William Barclay the Scottish theologian and author said clearly that “There are two great days in a person’s life – the day we are born and the day we discover why.” There is no doubt that Ogbeni Aregbesola has discovered his own why. And that has been demonstrated by his knowledge-propelled governance credentials in all his years in public office, and especially from Lagos state to the state of Osun.

Both in character and achievements, Aregbesola has remained, in his own unique way, mercurial and sterling. His Marxist principles keep him firmly entrenched in a populist ideology that keeps the people at the centre of his governance model. And the annual colloquium signals his willingness to institute a continuing conversation that keeps reshaping the template of good governance on behalf of Nigerians.

At this year’s colloquium, the Vice President of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, made two crucial points that will serve as the premise for my intervention. The Vice President’s concerns relate to two correlated issues of the burdensome cost of governance that keeps draining Nigeria’s depleting resources, and Nigeria’s low productivity profile which deeply constrained a return on government investments.

These two issues speak in serious terms to the development predicament of the Nigerian state. And it means a lot that the Vice President was able to hit the nail on the head. The bloated nature of the workforce of the public service, however, must be seen in terms of the near-absence of the right competency mix, skills composition and organizational IQ, rather than of the number of workers, most of whom do little or nothing but with a very few doing too much.

This implies that while creative rightsizing and institutional restructuring are imperative as the change management options, government will not win except it comes to the change dynamics with equity. And this demands that a focus on payroll as a target for efficiency-savings, must also be complemented by the urgency of unbundling the entire expenditure structure of government through rigorous productivity audit.

Unfortunately, the demand for big development that attends sufficiently to the well-being of Nigerians must be a holistic and comprehensive reform. This is essentially what the “bigness” of big development actually suggests. It speaks to a state-induced massive development leap. Such a leap creates the required momentum that is capable of creating desirable multiplier effects that deliver sustainable national transformation.

Big development conceptually connotes an optimistic development scenario of macroeconomic possibilities that, for instance, produces a double-digit economic growth through the game-changing sustainable contributions of value-adding and critical growth-propelling sectors and drivers.

In the social science literature, big development is often taken to be the task of a capable developmental state. Such a state is developmental to the extent that it is able to deploy the capability readiness of an efficient and flexible public service institutional architecture.

Singapore, Japan and the Asian Tigers provides a ready example of states whose development trajectory has been qualitatively transformed as a result of dogged structural, institutional and leadership dynamics.

Since independence, and despite its best efforts, Nigeria has displayed an almost pathological incapacity of moving from governance vision and policies to performance outcomes in terms of development that activates its institutional frameworks to deliver infrastructural development to Nigerians. In summary, Nigeria lacks the capacity to get things done.

In institutional reform terms, this is another way of saying that the devil in Nigeria’s non-transforming development initiatives and change management lies in the mix of a number of complex and correlated issues: i) the politics that Nigeria’s political class plays; ii) leadership IQ, sophistication and sincerity; iii) human resource capacity deficits, especially in the dynamics of policy implementation; iv) unstable macro-economic climate; v) policy, programme and project discontinuity, poor programme design, poor resource allocation; vi) lack of disciplined execution; and vii) corruption and the rentier culture. Overall, Nigeria is held in the unfortunate grip of the ever-confounding and almighty Nigeria Factor which incapacitates every functional idea, model or paradigms that had worked elsewhere.

The optimistic news however is that transforming the Nigerian state into a democratic developmental one is not an impossibility. While appreciating the fact that Nigeria has not lacked in significant visions and development planning since independence, we need to note that visions and plans constitute only 15% of the development challenge. On the other hand, 85% is about the political will to push the implementation of development and policy execution through the complex and messy implementation trajectory.

In deploying the required political will to jumpstart the change Nigeria needs to get things done, the entire leadership class in Nigeria—from the president to the governors (together with their ministers and commissioners)—is faced with a critical question: What type of changes can be realistically achieved in 4 years that will bring government promise to the point of efficient services delivered effectively to Nigerians? This question speaks to the crucial short time and limited resources any sitting president and governor have to achieve a qualitative move from governance promise to tangible development outcomes.

The starting point of the whole structural and institutional transformation of the state into a developmental one commences with a deep-seated transformation of the state itself, especially in relation to the market and its dynamics for how government does its business.

First, Nigeria needs to craft a formidable and viable national development agenda or plan. And at the heart of such a development plan is the priority given to the need for a national productivity paradigm shift in the national economy that is matched with smart implementable strategies, and the capacity to mobilize all sectors of society to implement it. The deployment of strategies will be fundamental at two levels.

The first level requires urgently attending to the cost of governance burden through a national waste reduction strategy that will not only deal with institutional redundancy, but also get all critical sectors of the economy to articulate their productivity plans based on agreed national benchmark. This will also include productivity tools and metrics that will enable labour and management to both sign up for a revised collective bargaining framework that will facilitate the implementation of a new benchmarked ratio of capital-overhead-personnel budget backstopped by a new compensation system.

The second level of institutional strategies demands attending to the operational and performance dynamics of the MDAs. This is where it becomes imperative for the state to redefine its role and that of the MDAs vis-à-vis the market and the private sector as a formidable engine that can calibrate the growth of the national economy. Once the role of the private sector is determined, then the strategic recalibration demands an alternative service delivery model that enables the MDAs to focus on their core functions while outsourcing their non-core functions to the private sector. This makes the public-private partnership model a significant model of doing business for government.

Once this is taken for granted, it now remains for the MDAs to be taken through rigorous change management procedures that will make them capacity ready to deliver on their core functions of supporting policy making with strategic intelligence, mobilizing required resources to execute, regulate, etc. This is where the execution problematic becomes a critical risk factor in the need to achieve big development. It is in the implementation of the reform of the performance and productivity metrics of the MDAs that the devil really resides in the details.

Thus, apart from streamlining the MDAs’ productivity targets into the national development plan, there is the specific need to lay the structural foundation that will shift them from policy designs to policy intelligence and creative implementation capacity. One important step will be to outline critical bureau-pathological issues, like a bloated workforce and declining professional ethics for immediate attention. This also demands that critical gaps—capacity, policy, process, resource and performance—be dealt with. Another important step is to categorize the MDAs for a selective reform capacitation exercise on the strength of their significance.

The public institutions to be targeted for capacitation fall into three categories: (a) MDAs that implement national priority programmes, (b) public institutions that regulate rules-based market players, investments points of opportunity, SMEs and the rule of law, and (c) institutions that facilitate welfare-oriented social impact, services and human capital development. And the key is to reengineer the MDAs’ management systems in ways that target their operational and processual frameworks in ways that enable them to embrace project management culture, particularly ones that leverage strategic PPP modality.

This also includes putting in place strategic performance metric: job evaluation, skills re-composition, regrading, new pay structure and the rethinking of the intellectual contents of skills for running the business of government.

The desire for big development, in the final analysis, speaks to the emergence of a critical mass of political and bureaucratic leadership, that will be willing to go the whole hog with rethinking and rejuvenating Nigeria’s governance and development dynamics, with the agenda of making real the goal to build a democratic and developmental state. That, for me, is Nigeria’s future; a date she is meant to keep with her citizens who ought to benefit from the social contract with a great state.

Prof. Olaopa presented this paper at the Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s Annual Colloquium and Webinar on the theme ‘Government and Big Development’ held on the 29th of May, 2021.
Prof. Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary & Directing Staff, National Institute For Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos. tolaopa2003@gmail.com

 

 

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Opinion

Religious Mumu

Published

on

Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon
Prof. Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” – Galileo Galilei

Religion remains a much-debated issue, especially in Africa. It is one of the determining factors of our identity. It determines who we are, our beliefs, actions and reactions, and even our thought processes. Africans had their own culture and traditional religion until the advent of western civilization, which brought with it the ‘gift’ of Abrahamic religions—,Christianity and Islam—and judged African traditional religious practices as evil, pagan practice and witchcraft. The missionaries did a thorough job of making people believe that their religion was superior and righteous. Africans accepted these imported religions, and their traditional beliefs began to fade. Christianity and Islam are now the new order, and people are extremely devoted to these newly found Gods. 

The Toyin Falola Interviews recently played host to music composer and songwriter, Beautiful Nubia. The question of Beautiful Nubia’s stance on religion pops up during the interview. He is known to promote African spirituality but has also defended foreign religions as advantageous. In response, he talks about his ancestral line: his paternal family were Olu Orogbo devotees (the Yoruba god of letters), and his maternal family were Ifa priests and Esu devotees. He said, “religion has always fascinated me like it gets people’s minds.”  He opines that spirituality ties into what gets people so much into religion. Although he no longer practices religion, he affirms that these religions have positively influenced people to do good and show kindness to their fellow human beings.

He states, “Any organized religion has a set of dogma or doctrines they use to guide you to put you in there. You are there; it is like a strait jacket to keep you on the straight and narrow. Why I said religion is a good thing is because the purpose of this is to ensure that you stay on the straight and narrow, that you do good things.” We can agree that religion has contributed to the rise of morals to a certain extent, as the fear of God keeps many people from doing evil. It has curbed wickedness and negative traits inherent in humans and made many people see the world in a new light. Religion has spread the message of doing good and becoming a better human being.

                                        Beautiful  Nubia

The issue, however, is not the practice of these religions but the ability of leaders to sway people easily. Although imported religions have helped to stop the extremities of African religious practices, it has only accentuated people’s gullibility. Beautiful Nubia further states, “What is wrong with religion is that it gives certain people the power to use their followers. It is not the religion itself; it is the human beings who run these religious organizations who use their power to extract money from them and push them in the wrong direction.” Owning a church is one of the easiest and quickest ways to get rich, particularly in Nigeria. All that is needed to succeed in this business is to be a good actor, have nice clothes (suits, particularly), can win people over with words and give yourself an extraordinary title such as Rabbi

It is common knowledge that the major reason why people attend church and Jumat services religiously are that they seek solutions to their problems. As much bad governance is enough to seek God’s intervention for various human issues ranging from terminal illnesses, protection, promotion, unhappiness, barrenness, unemployment, and marital problems, to poverty, which is an average African’s motivation to seek God’s face, also cause people to become staunch believers. To get swift, miraculous answers to these problems, many people fall prey to the traps of “men of God”, who only look to fill their pockets and bellies. This explains why a “pastor” would shut down his church after winning a 100 million Naira bet.

Pastors and Muslim clerics are considered mini gods who can do no wrong. The Bible verse, “touch not my anointed and do my prophet no harm,” is an ever-ready response by Christians in defense of their highly revered pastors who would not think twice before taking advantage of their desperation to get their problems solved. They forget that a “man of God” is first a man. Religion has rendered humans gullible to the extent that they excuse things their religious leaders do that are not even in tune with what is written in the Holy books. How do you explain a pastor who sleeps with a woman looking for the fruit of the womb and says his sperm is the anointing that will cause her to have her child? What do we say to a pastor who instructs his congregation to bring a greater percentage of their salaries to him so that God can answer their prayers? Should the man who claims to be an alfa but has exploited so many people in the name of being a ‘wonder healer’ be left alone? Churches and mosques nowadays see the desperation of people and feed off it. Many people come to church for prosperity and get ripped off the little they have, all in the name of miracles, signs and wonders. You could be in a church service and then suddenly hear the pastor say, “I see seven stars. I need seven people who will give the Lord Seven Hundred Thousand to come out now at the count of seven. One, Two…Seven!” You will be amazed at the number of people who will run to the altar to give the ‘Lord’ that amount of money in this present economy. Unsurprisingly, some borrow money to give to their pastors to receive blessings, then struggle to pay back the borrowed money. Monkey dey work, Baboon dey chop.

These men of God add false doctrines to their fraudulent, shady activities. Beautiful Nubia quotes his mother, a Christian singer, as saying, ” any church where they are a lot of people there, you know there are telling them lies there.” He made an example of a Muslim cleric who tells his followers that every other person is evil, an infidel and a pastor who tells his congregation that their Jesus is not a Jesus of poverty, that He died for them to be wealthy. It is now rare to find churches that preach about the kingdom of God and how to live a life that pleases God. Churches today entice and then mislead people.

Sometimes, people realize all these things are wrong but lack the courage to question these atrocities. According to Beautiful Nubia, “…as a child, you are fully indoctrinated, and as an adult, you are scared to question these beliefs.” Asking a pastor why he preaches only prosperity and how to get rich as a Christian would be considered as seeking the wrath of God because the pastor can call down fire to consume his ‘enemy’. Questioning an Imam on why he sleeps with young girls will only attract curses from the Quran on such a person, followed by “who are you to question God’s prophet? The ways and dealings of God are mysterious”. Really, who dares question these men of God? The fear that has been unconsciously programmed into your mind from a very young age holds your voice and makes you look away from the evils of these religious leaders.

This is not to say that there are no genuine men of God, but there is a plague of greedy religious leaders who, because of their power over their members, influence them to bend to their will while satisfying their greed and lust. “We should not focus too much on religion being our enemy. We need to focus more on ourselves, fix ourselves, and we can use traditional wisdom to do that”, says Nubia. The way we question and demand accountability from the government should be the same way we question our religious leaders. Not every “God says” is true. The Bible in 1 John 4:1 says, “Beloved , believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” Many religious leaders are gods of their bellies and are only out to exploit people to put food in their fat stomachs and live expensive lifestyles with their poor congregation’s money. Child of God, shine ya eye!

This is Part 1 of the report on the interview with Beautiful on March 19, 2023. The extensive interview, which has received millions of views across different platforms, talks about the role of music in society. For the transcripts, see:

YouTube

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7fyHlf1QIsI

Facebook

https://fb.watch/jn7id9OeYd/

 

Continue Reading

Opinion

Death At Dawn, Rebirth At Dusk 

Published

on

Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon
Prof. Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

 

I

Death

Twilight-zone, Afterlife, What-Mays, and Whatnots;

Questions that transcend mortal thoughts.

Uncertainties plucked by the hands of certainty

pondering life beyond the galaxy.

 

Philosophies, religions, and sciences; 

Ancient lenses to dissect and ponder.

Beliefs, opinions, and standpoints in their multiplicities;

Scalpels that open the heart of certain death

Blazing free the skins of uncertainty.

 

Science, a nobility I revere,

But it stammers answering to the afterlife.

For science is knowledge and knowledge from experience 

But the dead neither speak, nor take records.

 

Their journeys, ordeals, triumphs or woes?

No one bears witness.

But as dead, we must all be witnesses;

witnesses that testify not.

So, for now, we survive the knowledge of death.

 

II

On my Agbàlàgbà head lies my Ọ́kpụ́ Ágwụ́

With eagle feathers, rare and honorable

Adorning it for three scores, a decade, and some more days.

I had flipped my Kente given by the Gaa

And danced to crescendos from Gàngàn drums

 

I have been celebrated and celebrating 

For the miracles, I have worked with pen, paper, keyboard, and brain

I have taken the tales we tell in my village square beyond the Atlantic

Changed the songs that disdain us into appraisals

I have called my brothers not to point to our fathers’ house with their left hands

 

I have honed Africa and beyond

To answer the calls of the people’s need

I have reached the thinkable and done the unthinkable

So, I danced and keep dancing. 

 

Suddenly, I felt a touch on my host?

Electrifying my hand, leg, brain, and my whole

Telling me that my jur from the Dinka people awaits me.

That my hourglass tells of crossing the bar.

 

I thought I knew what it was like,

But my grasping convictions of approaching jur were perceptions

Just surviving the death of the knowledge of death

So, arms wide open ready to abound

 

What was there to fear?

No catacomb of secrets

No palm oil-drenched white garments

I have taken many to my gourmet

To feast and to see.

 

What was there not to fear?

With medicine men and women,

Syringes, lights, water, ECG, Oximeters, voices, and touches

Hovering around me like a sacred etutu

Making conversations with me and beyond

 

I was thrown into a pool of reminiscence

one leg and a part of me were already in the boat

It beckoned but I heard another. 

 

A loud voice like my mother’s.

Who takes a journey without locking his home?

Who takes the jur with unpatched palm fronds on his hut?

While the thunder rages up the sky?

The walls are broken and Balogun journeys?

So, I left the sea to clear the cobwebs and light up the night lamb.

 

The past few weeks have opened new lights of understanding to me. I now see the world from different hills and have helped to reach new resolutions. I know I have written about “transitioning to nothingness,” but my emphasis was on the “nothingness” with lesser attention on “transitioning.” I think we need to continue to ask questions. Philosophies, religion, sociology, psychology, science, and other ramifications are mere perceptions and we are uncertain. The transitioning occurs when death becomes an angel to hug not a beast to fear. We do not know what it entails but one must always endeavor to go with clean hands. 

My recovery from an illness may have offered me a fresh opportunity to shout some more, point to societal needs, and settle unfinished businesses. No, not those caused by my personal undoing, but rather those of the people who would be left unguided, and for matters untold about life, society, and individuals. I can say I have passed through the lessons of tantra transfiguration, to use an elegant phrase that I recently came across, to move from secular to sacred activism. No one survives death because of its finality, but when it seems that you did, it is a renewed quest, offering a new purpose.

Continue Reading

Opinion

Professors On INEC’s Will (3)

Published

on

Readers’ Showers Of Encouragement
Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

The debate has progressed well so far. Our professors, whose strokes have centred on their fellow professor’s manned INEC have tried as best as they could not to confine their impressions solely to the prism of subjectivity. Even when their impressions seem to be subjective, they still make allowance for contrary views, for opposing views. This obviously gives clarity, objectivity and logic to the subject at hand. Is the will of INEC of a professor minder and mincer of words’ control the will of the people or of the masses? On whose side are the Professors who are as concerned as almost everybody is with what is going – or with what has gone on – primarily about our Presidential 2023 elections? Our Professors who are debating the subject constitute the courageous and prophetic Nigerian voices of our day. Their authentic and responsible thoughts are not restricted to the local or regional. They are also not confined to electoral duties and responsibilities expected of the umpire and the will that belongs elsewhere. The truth about the quality of leadership about our country and elsewhere is also told in the debate of the literati.

Professor (Mrs.) Razinatu Mohamed in her submission, in her salvo-cum-explosion actually, drew attention to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s explosive explosion in the presidency. If Professor Osinbajo had provided the right vice-presidential leadership there would not have been the need for him to explode as he did as per a viral video Professor Razinatu Mohamed referred her fellow debaters to. “What has he been doing in the eight years of their administration? Irritated my foot; he is complicit.” Not done, Professor Razinatu drew attention to the kind of leaders that Nigeria and Africa need: “Leaders that understand the rudiments of modern socio-economic development and systems; Leaders that understand the crux of requirements for economic growth. Leaders that could demonstrate to the rest of the world that just as the world needs Africa, African countries need the world in a symbiotic relationship and partnership context where assistance becomes a dual role…..” 

Razinata’s concern is clear. Nothing in Nigeria will climb out of its hollow hole. In fact, the will of the people will remain hollow so long as a hollow mincer and minder is in charge of its electoral affairs. 

Professor Da Sylva perhaps responds better to Professor Razinatu Mohamed’s algebraic stroke. “Unfortunately, Nigeria’s democracy is trapped in its primordial self-made ethnic and religious sentiments and so, standards, merit, competence and pedigrees are measured by their curious divides of religion and ethnic inclinations. Until we all come to realize that heavens help those who help themselves, Nigeria ain’t going no-where – meeen!” 

    But below is Professor Da Sylva’s sledge hammer response to Professor Razinatu Mohamed’s Osinbajo hammer blow:

“Prof Osinbajo’s office demands he does what he did. Besides, it shows maturity and spirit of sportsmanship on his part. Every loser in a game “healthily” contested, is naturally expected to do the same. The only difference which again shows Osinbajo’s magnanimity is that in this context, the contest under reference was neither healthy nor just. The umpire seemed compromised and merely worked to a prepared answer. Yet the gentleman did the needful. I guess, brothers and sisters, that we should put all that behind us, and work for our common good, and the wellbeing of the country, provided the mythical Aso cabal will let the President-elect be, and let the masses be, and as such, they should not create any cause for us to think otherwise, lest they provoke our sense of patriotism to take appropriate action! I guess that those were the reading or feelings of the dirty-minded Aso Villa cabal. People that kill with sword never wish that any folk should pass a sword over their heads, a wise saying goes in Yoruba. The human principalities simply suspected that should they allow PMB to give the VP the intended latitude, they might not be able to control him. I remember on his return from London, he commended the efforts of his VP while he was away. He said he would still continue acting while he would still have some more rest at home. The following day everything changed, PMB decided to take charge as the President. I suspected some back door politics was playing out. My co-debaters, quite naturally, you’ll agree with me that, it is not over-ambition or sheer opportunism as you might insinuate for any deputy in an office to aspire to the next higher office, in a legitimate manner, there is nothing really unusual about it, and it would amount to killing a mosquito with a sledge hammer, should Oshinbajo be crucified for that, if at all. And as for his wishing Buhari’s non-recovery, I think that, again, like my Sister R, is a little unkind and not fair to the gentleman who I know to be a servant of God. He knows as much as I do, by our true Christian orientation and Biblical injunctions that, should he ever wish Buhari’s death or wish him any form of misfortune in those trying periods of the President, God Almighty who we serve would deal mercilessly and ruthlessly with him. That is what Psalm 41:1-13 is all about. So rule that out, because it is not, and could never be in his character. I can vouch for him. Rather, I saw him in those times that he acted for his principal, as someone zealous and appreciative of the trust his principal invested in him, and as such he tried to do his very best to merit the trust and the opportunity! I know and I am also sure that this is what an IBK, or a Razinat, would have done too had they found themselves in a similar situation! It does not amount to wishing one’s principal any evil, not at all. Not everyone can be like Chief Obafemi Awolowo who resigned his position under Gowon when the regime became financially reckless shortly after the civil war. Awolowo also gave very profound argumentation to justify convincingly his actions. He also turned down some other appointments including the “49 Wise Men of the Constitution Drafting Committee.” Oshinbajo couldn’t have resigned, normally, and naturally his principal, PMB should have supported him as a capable successor, but again, the President’s ethnic and religious bigotry took the better part of the President. Besides, PMB’s mind was long poisoned against his VP, a clean job by the Aso Villa cabal. IBK, Lady R, until the faceless cabal is permanently silenced the wheel of Nigeria might continue to go round in a circle, and to nowhere in particular”.

And Professor IBK takes the floor: “Prof. DAO, yours is a powerfully convincing submission, at least in a large measure. Now I am willing to hold a slightly different opinion about Osinbajo. Yet, I cannot fathom why he chose to run against Tinubu, days or weeks after the latter had begun his campaign in the party primaries. There’s much we don’t know about why OSBJ decided to run against BAT. Nothing is wrong with that politically but a little problematic from an Ethical or, at least Moral, point of view. Osinbajo did a poor job of it and came out a distant 4th in the primaries. I think he didn’t read the situation correctly and was probably misled by some cabal of sorts. Either way Osinbajo made a politically fatal error in this regard. Perhaps he must have sensed, or was told, that BAT was not the anointed candidate, or that BAT would be crippled by some ill-health or a medical condition. I remember the party’s screening committee publicly recommending that only younger contestants would be recommended to the NWC or such. Clearly there was an attempt to sideline BAT. Whatever the explanation, Osinbajo make the error in his campaign of promising to be more Buhari than Buhari. A man despised by whole sections of the northern population, a man whose reputation for laziness and incompetence was on the ascendant. Anyway, all is now history and Osinbajo has not given a good account of himself in this particular case. Prof DAO, I think your concept of the Trickster should account for Osinbajo’s situation here. FULL DISCLOSURE: a very close family member of mine was drafted to head Osinbajo’s campaign effort in Kano. We discussed extensively about Osinbajo’s pledge to carry on with Buhari’s policies. There was bewilderment and shock within the members. A week later half of the membership resigned on account of Osinbajo’s increasing identification with Buhari’s policies. Many mistakenly thought that Osinbajo was Buhari’s anointed one! I could go on…”

Interestingly interesting and intriguingly intriguing, dear, dearly dear readers: this debate.

To be terminated by the columnist-terminator and terminator-columnist next week after Professor Olu Obafemi’s summation of the debate he presided over.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.

Continue Reading

Top Stories

%d bloggers like this: