By Femi Kusa How was Rotimi Amaechi so emotionally and mentally exhausted in a place like Benin City, where culture is pivotal to daily life, that he would curse anyone there who votes Bola Ahmed Tinubu for President next year as being a "mad" person? He is Vice-presidential ticket mate of Atiku Abubakar and should know the political dangers of mandibular diarrhoea in the wrong place. As a former Governor and Minister he ought to have been well prepared to keep a rough tongue in check unless the brain was misfiring and burning. What if the Oba of Benin likes to vote Tinubu? Goodluck Ebele Jonathan made a similar costly mistake in 2015. He was not a political darling of the North to succeed the departed President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, even if he was Vice-president and Nigeria's constitution was unmistaken that he was the lawful next of kin. Jonathan, godfatherless and acting James Redfield's Poor Me Syndrome, let South-western political activists such as Femi Falan (SAN) do the rooting for him. He became Acting President and President on a platter of gold which he later mistook for personal acumen when, on his own, he came to Ibadan in 2011 to campaign for a Goodluck Jonathan tenure of four years. Maybe he was plain silly, or intoxicated with power. Maybe he assumed former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his mentor, had the South-west around his fingers. President Jonathan declearefd inside MAPO HALL in Ibadan, where celebrated political speeches were long known to be made. Recklessly, the political infant in a Goliath mantle declared that he had come to the South-west to "TAME THE RASCALS". Fire balls and firestorms erupted everywhere. Who was this fellow who had been saying he went to primary school without school bags and shoes to lambast the leaders of a region which, in pre-colonial times and after independence in 1960, produced a substantially larger established population of professionals such as doctors, engineers and lawyers than his own region? According to an internet source, the following is a fair documentation of earliest educated Nigerians: FIRST NIGERIAN LAWYERS 1. ".... the first indigenous Nigerian lawyer generally recognised in historical accounts was Christopher Sapara Williams, who was called to the English Bar in 1879 and enrolled to practise in Lagos in 1888. 2. "...Sir Kitoye Ajasa... enrolled in 1903. 3. "Eric Olawolu Moore...Early legal practitioner who later led the Nigerian Bar Association. 4) "E. J. Alex Kehinde Taylor, Prominent early member of the legal profession. 5) "Sir Adeyemo Alakija...Lawyer and political figure who later led the Nigerian Bar Association. 6)" Jubril Martin...early legal practitioner who became a leader of the Nigerian Bar Association. 7) "Stella James Marke is also recognised as Nigeria's first indigenous female lawyer. She was enrolled on 16 November 1935. "These names are documented in the historical account of the Lagos branch of the Nigerian Bar Association". FIRST NIGERIAN DOCTORS "According to medical historian Adelola Adeloye, the first Nigerians to qualify as medical doctors were William Broughton Davies and James Africanus Beale Horton, who obtained their medical qualifications in 1858. Both were born in Sierra Leone to families of Nigerian, particularly Yoruba origin. The following are the first eight Nigerian doctors of the nineteenth century identified in Adeloye's historical study. 1)William Broughton Davies...1858 2)James Africanus Beale Horton...1858 3)Nathaniel Thomas King...1874 4)Obadiah Johnson...1884 5)John Randle...1888 6)Orisadipe Obasa...1891 7)Akinsiku Leigh-Sodipe...1892 8)Oguntola Sapara...1895 " It is important to note that these doctors qualified during a period when medical education for Africans was extremely limited. Most had to travel to Britain to obtain their qualifications. "Nathaniel King was particularly significant because he returned to Lagos and helped establish modern medical practice there. Obadiah Johnson and John Randle subsequently served in the colonial medical service. The history of these pioneers illustrates how a small number of educated Nigerians helped establish the foundations of modern medicine in the country". FIRST NIGERIAN ENGINEERS 1. "...Herbert Heelas Macaulay is widely recognised as Nigeria's first professionally qualified civil engineer.He was born in Lagos in 1864 and received further training in civil engineering and surveying in England. He qualified in 1893 and subsequently worked as Surveyor of Crown Lands in Lagos before entering private practice. He later became one of the leading figures in Nigerian nationalism. 2."...The next major milestone was the qualification of George Debayo Agbebi, identified in an engineering-history account as the first Nigerian to obtain a university degree in engineering, a BSc from the University of Birmingham in 1911". I felt personally affronted when, as President, Jonathan in January 2011 berated South-west leaders as "RASCALS". Which rascals, I wondered, and by whose definition? Chief Obafemi Awolowo, undisputed leader of the South-west region still this day, gave his people free and compulsory primary education in 1955. In 1956, I enrolled in Chief Obafemi Awolowo's free primary education scheme at ST. ANDREW'S PRIMARY SCHOOL in Ibara, Abeokuta. In 1979, free education in the Western Region covered secondary schools. In Bayelsa state, President Jonathan's home State, Governor Henry Seriake Dickson declared education free in primary and secondary schools only on 14 February 2012, that is 57 years after primary education became free in the western Region and 32 years after frees secondary education. I do not know what spurred President Jonathan to describe leaders of this region in the following words: “ We will control the entire South-west. Lagos is important to us. The entire South-west is too important, too sophisticated and too educated to be in the hands of rascals". Was he disturbed that the regions leaders disclaimed Olusegun Obasanjo, his godfather, as their leader and declined to efface the memory of Chief Awolowo, their benefactor? Whatever it was, President Jonathan mended the fences he broke and, in the last days before the 2011 Presidential election which gave him a four year tenure, the South-west gave him the votes in place of former policeman and former EFCC chairman NUHU RIBADU. The "rascals" never forget insults, and in 2015, the region took President Jonathan out of office and replaced him with retired Major General Mohammadu Buhari for eight years. Jonathan must have meant his insults, and only pretended penitence. He probably considered the South-west "over-developed" and leaned more to the North and the East in crucial appointments and socio-economic preferences. As the North once did with the West, fracturing its leadership, President Jonathan was believed to have tried but failed to take out the leadership of this region.Thus, Mohammadu Buhari became a better choice between the devil and the Red Sea. As this column observed in the third part of this series, the leading Opposition blocs, Atiku Abubakar/Rotimi Ameachi and Peter Obi/ Rabiu Kwakwanso, are yet to say anything tangible they have up their sleeves for Nigeria if the Presidency comes their way. So far, their presidential campaigns have been childish in my view. I miss Chief Awolowo in a season such as this. He would either have found something patently wrong with the Tinubu administration Agenda, torn it into shreds and replaced with something diametrically opposite, if that was inevitable as a"POSSIBLE IMPOSSIBILITY" or, if it was irreplaceable, he would have offered fine-tuning which would have made the authors blush or green with envy. Would Chief Awolowo have lifted a hand against the Tinubu agenda? I vividly remember his aim was to restructure Nigeria in all ramifications for which he asked us all to expect "shocks". Atiku Abubakar and Rotimi Ameachi remind me of the "revisionist" lexicon of communist/socialist literature. I am tempted to describe their INVISIBLE Agenda which they are pretending to be INVINCIBLE as "REVISIONIST". There is no other word I can find right now to describe the Agenda to re-introduce petroleum pump price subsidy without describing possible international and domestic implications of such a plan and how they would be addressed without them becoming new snowballing challenges. Savings from the subsidy are financing several public projects. Federal allocations to the states and local government have grown five-fold, for example. On 8 October, Governor Yahaya announced he had just paid out #10.32 billion in gratuities to clear the last balance of #44.134 billion on his shoulders since 2019. The story is the same everywhere. Civil servants are gulping money and asking for more. Why cant someone think outside the box and think of saving salary expenses with ROBOTICS? If Atiku Abubakar and Rotimi Ameachi have such a plan where is it, and what are the details? Chief Obafemi Awolowo would have told us how much of the wages of Civil servants a few ROBOTS can save to restore petroleum subsidy, as he did for how much spending on refreshments at meetings and how the erasure of refreshments could finance free education at all levels. However, the Chief Awolowo we all know was a FREE ENTERPRISE man! Thus, Rotimi Amaechi was irresponsible with his statement in Benin that, if President Tinubu won the election in Edo state, the conclusion would be that the voters were "MAD" persons. In three months, events would decide if Edo state is a psychiatric space or if saner persons than Rotimi Ameachi live there. He may have been unable to recover from his defeat by Tinubu to a distant second placement by votes in the APC Presidential primaries over which he resigned his membership of the party. There is no doubt he is more at home with Atiku Abubakar, Mohammadu Buhari's secret choice for 2019-2023 Presidency. The President said Nigeria had been wobbling from independence and that none of the fourteen or so men who had governed it had the courage to "uproot" the insecure foundation on which a supposedly vibrant nation was being built. This was a vague reference in my view, to the six mafias in the economy and polity he swore after his inauguration in 2023 to do battle with. Taking the foundation of the country out of their hands and securing it in the hands of the Governors is the fight of "two elephant" which the grass, shrubs and hedges on the battlegrounds do not seem to appreciate, if it costs a night's sound sleep or a meal on the dining table. Without much ado the mafias are 1) The petroleum community.....who bloat Nigeria's domestic consumption, disable the four refineries, set up theirs abroad, import refined petroleum from their foreign refineries, get the government to subsidise the imported refined petroleum from their foreign refineries thereby earning incomes at these two levels. This mafia over invoiced petroleum imports, under supplied the Nigerian market and sold the surplus to Nigeria's neighbours, thereby making Nigeria to shoulder the economic burden of these countries while they pocketed the gains. Even President Muhammadu Buhari who came to power in 2015 saying Petrol subsidy was a scam not only was swept along by the subsidy tide but failed, also, to smell a rat when the country's vehicular traffic offices and factories literally came to a standstill in 2018 and 2019 but Nigeria's domestic petroleum consumption in government books did not decrease to reflect the log jam economy. 2) The currency mafia community...bank managers,directors, government officials and uniforms personnel were involved. Only Banks should have anything to do with currency. However, all sorts of Dicks and Harries sell it openly in street markets. Foreign currency needed by manufacturers to import raw materials was unavailable in the banks. The hiding places for it was in the streets were unlicensed persons brokered the exchange deals. The dismantling of this machinery, like the dislodgement of the Petrol mafia, even if partial, in so far as importation of refined fuel persists, cannot go unchallenged. This community will do what a poisonous snake would do with the finger and person who tries to lift its protective lair...bite and poison the intruder to death! 3) Yet another mafia is the SECURITY COMMUNITY... in every country, they do not want strife to end as they profit from it. The arms industry in the United States need wars abroad backed by the government to survive. In Liberia's war which Nigeria quelled for the international community under ECOMOG, some military top brass and politicians made life-time gains, even in that country's diamond mines.This is a major reason President Jonathan was pressured to reject the help of the international community in Nigeria to militarily eliminate Boko Haram in the bud. Northern power blocs told him and foreign friends of Nigeria : "They are our children!" Now traumatised by "our children" have these power blocs seen a new light? Even President Muhammadu Buhari, once an army general, was a push over for the terrorists and bandits, insurgents and kidnappers. The most noticeable finger he raised against them was his confrontations with EL-ZAKI. El-ZAKI was sponsored by IRAN to infect other countries with a revolutionary brand of Islam unacceptable to the world capital of Islam, Saudi Arabia. To make a headway with security, this community had to be disbanded and neutralised in all forms. Can Atiku Abubakar be entrusted with this job? I do not think so. When the iron was red hot, he did not cast himself against "they are our children" syndrome. He did not object to Buhari's order that the terrorists be not killed but captured alive even when they were killing Nigerian soldiers. Atiku Abubakar did not raise his voice against assimilation of former terrorists by the Nigerian army. When Deborah Samuel was stoned to death in Sokoto, Atiku Abubakar joined other Nigerians to condemn the barbaric stoning of this young student to death but he withdrew his condemnation on social media when the terrorists condemned his condemnation of Deborah's killings. Was he a supporter or antagonist of insecurity in Nigeria? Was he a friend of Nigeria? Did he, thereby, not align himself with the unfortunate barbaric ways and means of his people in resolving disputes? 4) The electricity mafia.....It is one of the biggest mafia with a regional colouration. Since independence in 1960 the North of Nigeria has sought to economically conquer the south in all ramifications, since military conquest through the JIHAD had been obviated by colonial rule. The North relocated several nerve centers of the country to its territory. Zaria appropriated aviation training schools. Abuja kept headquarters of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), formed in Lagos in 1931, although the North account for about 70 percent of Nigeria's out- off-school children's population. The North has no seaport, but the headquarters of the Nigerian Ports Authority is there. Down South, there will now be seaports in Badagry, Ijebu water side, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Onne in addition to the ones already in Apapa and Tin Can Island, both of which are in Lagos from where the NPA headquarters was moved to Abuja. For a long time control of JAMB and the National Universities Commission, like the Petroleum ministry cabinet portfolio, were in the hands of the North. For about 20 years, RILWANU LUKMAN was Nigeria's OPEC representative even when the North had no crude oil wealth, and had the NNPC in his grip. The North also disempowered the South from producing electricity for itself irrespective of possessing a better economy, and centralised production and control in KAINJI. This was childish because River Niger flows through nine countries, and any of them can do whatever its pleases with it. Since the Presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo, it has become an almost impossible task to revive other power generating plants. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu faces one of the biggest challenges of his Administration in the electricity sector. Power supply improves for a while and almost collapses soon after. His political opponents believe they can nail him here, because one of his major campaign promises was that he should not be re-elected if he could not fix electricity. As they seem to nail him, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi in particular appear blind to a safety catch in this famous promise. The safety catch is that, being the democrat that he calls himself, President Tinubu did not solve the electricity problem on a CENTRIST platform. He has given the Governor licenses to produce electricity in their states. Seven of them have begun production. Lagos says there would be 24/7 electricity supply by December. In addition, he is creating two more national grids as back ups to the existing ones, and divided the country into three energy zones. Are some states not bigger than some countries which generate their own electricity? As a part of the freeing of the electricity industry from the cabal which has governed it since independence, Petroleum subsidy withdrawn from the possession of the Petroleum mafia has been placed in the hands of the state and local government. What are they doing with the money? Can that policy be wrong? If 36 cooks are cooking the broth in their private kitchens, that cannot make too many cooks spoil the broth. Nyesom Wike, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, may be talkative. He may be right in saying the Governors, not just APC governors, are lazy.....and failing the President in his war with the electricity mafias. •<em>Opinions, positions or thoughts expressed here are personal and strictly those of the writer/author and do not represent the views of <strong>The Daily Crucible.</strong></em>
