The big story this week is that the Nigerian government has suspended the evaluation and accreditation of degree certificates from universities in neighbouring Benin and Togo. The announcement comes a few days after an undercover report by Daily Nigerian exposed certificate racketeering from a university in Benin. The suspension, according to the ministry, stands pending the outcome of an investigation involving the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education of Nigeria and the two countries as well as the State Security Service (SSS) and the NYSC.
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An Igbo adage says that when an anomaly persists for one year, it becomes the norm. So slowly, steadily but surely, it is becoming a norm, an accepted aberration, for a president in Nigeria to appoint himself as a minister. It is like saying in a country of 200 million-plus, there is no one good or capable enough to hold that particular office except the man entrusted with the running of the nation.
Once again, there is outrage throughout Nigeria as armed men invaded communities in Plateau State over the Christmas weekend killing an estimated 200 innocent villagers and forcing tens of thousands to flee their land in search of self-preservation. For Plateau state, it has been over twenty years that such attacks have occurred regularly. As is the tradition, our President, Bola Tinubu, in a statement in Abuja by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, condemned the attacks and ordered a manhunt for the killers. Tinubu assured Nigerians that “these envoys of death, pain, and sorrow will not escape justice.” We have heard such condemnation/promise to act hundreds of times from our successive Ogas that all we do is shrug our shoulders and move on until our turn comes.
My last week’s piece closed with a poser: Are the two Ministers of Agriculture and Food Security, Senators Kyari and Abdullahi, capable of breaking the jinx of poverty and hunger associated with Nigerians? Answering this question requires an in-depth analysis of Tinubu’s policy and direction toward achieving food security for Nigeria. Petroleum subsidy withdrawal skyrocketed the fuel price by 217% that caused astronomical cost of living. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared a state of emergency on food security on July 14, 2023, to cushion the effects of the subsidy removal. As I wrote in this Column, the declaration of emergency is the best policy pronouncement of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT).
Rivers, a state so rich because God blessed it with an abundance of crude oil and gas, is named after the many rivers that border its territory. Forty per cent of Nigeria’s output of crude oil is produced in the state. It also has deposits of silica sand, glass sand and clay.
One thing everyone was agreed upon is that Salihu Lukman, the famous trade unionist turned politician is a very stubburn man. For almost a decade, he has been very steadfast, focused and committed to transforming his party, the All Peoples’ Congress (APC) into a democratic, ruled-based, open, people-focused and people-led party that would set the highest standards in internal party democracy. Six books and hundreds of memos, letters and pamphlets later, the party has not changed and Lukman has not deviated from his laser-focused advocacy to change it. On Tuesday, he invited the party, comrades and friends to the public presentation of his latest book – APC and Transition Politics.
Food security refers to the situation when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle. Food security is a state in which food is quantitatively and qualitatively available, accessible, and affordable to meet the nutritional needs of the people over a given period. People are food-secured when they have physical and economic access to enough food for active and healthy living. Therefore, food security for people in a community, state, or nation is entrenched in four pillars: quantitative, qualitative, accessibility, and time. The difficulty of attaining food security surges with increased population and economic meltdown, making achieving food security in Nigeria arduous. What has been the food security situation in Nigeria?
In the first part of this write-up, we saw how in 1983, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), afraid of defeat, capitalised on Shehu Shagari’s perceived likeability and reversed the election timetable and started with a vote for the president.
Yesterday, the Rivers state governor, Siminalayi Fubara, signed the 2024 Appropriation Bill of N800 billion into law. It appeared to be a banal act as has been done by so many other governors. Rivers however is special drama. He had transmitted the Bill to the State Assembly only the previous day. Calling the 4 legislators he submitted the Bill to as the State Assembly is a bit of a stretch as the body is composed of 32 members. The court appointed speaker he works with had dismissed the 27 other members of the Assembly for carpet crossing the previous day. It would have been silly old type unrealistic comic Nollywood drama has the issue not been such a serious one.
Agriculturally, Kano has been a lucky state. Four decades ago, a non-nonsense and visionary Governor, Police commissioner Audu Bako of blessed memory, built a multi-million Naira Tiga dam with a capacity of 1.9 billion cubic meters of water through direct labor. Then, it was the biggest dam in Nigeria. The dam was built to irrigate 64,000 hectares of land and supply water to several communities. In addition to the Tiga Dam, Audu Bako equally built the Thomas Dambatta and Minjibir dams, irrigation schemes, and the Kafin Chiri dam. A decade later, under the democratic dispensation, another visionary governor, the charismatic Abubakar Rimi, emerged with an unsatiable appetite for developing agriculture and rural development. He built over ten dams across Kano State, and four of such dams are located along Dayi – Gwarzo – Kano Road, which is evidence of his excellent stewardship. Still, in the early 1990s, when some states with privileged information of Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG 2000) entry into Nigeria were foot-dragging to host SG 2000, Kano state went the extra mile and courted to accommodate and partner with it. That made Kano state the first beneficiary of SG 2000 interventions in Nigeria.