I am resuming this piece with a quote from Hajia Naja’atu Mohammed who addressed the students of great ABU Zaria recently. She said, “The easiest way to destroy a nation is to withdraw education.” I must add withdrawing or denying university education to the citizenry is tantamount to catastrophic and systematic annihilation of society. Conversely, revitalization of the university education is methodological treatment of societal ailments, just like the emphasis of university education in the song of Aminu Alan waka “idan ta gyaru, al’uma ta gyaru”. Education is not only a fundamental human right but a moral obligation to the leaders – democratically elected or autocratically anointed; otherwise, the consequences of ignorance would consume both the leaders and the led.
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The Strike by the Nigerian Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress set for this week has been postponed. The labour unions were ready to go on unlimited strike following the inability or unwillingness of the Government to introduce significant palliatives that would assuage the intense suffering of workers confronted by a cost of living crisis that has made feeding, transport, medical care, etc. almost impossible for the working class. When I listened to President Tinubu’s Independence Day address, the main message I heard was that he is aware of the suffering of the people and is acting to address it. What workers are saying is that they do not see any evidence yet of what is being done to alleviate their suffering. It is not clear what deal was done with the labour aristocrats leading the unions to stop the strike for the moment but the reality is that if the cost of living crisis is not addressed in a substantive way very soon, the explosion would be coming and it may not even be from wage earners. The World Bank says say that only 12% of the working class earn a formal wage in Nigeria. The vast majority are farmers or informal workers who have no unions, voice, or structure to articulate their interests and they are even more affected by the cost of living crisis.
The popular view among stakeholders that IPPIS is killing the Nigerian University System is fait accompli. IPPIS stands for Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). It is a payment platform of personnel emolument, which the Federal Government of Nigeria adopted over ten years ago to flush out ghost workers, enhance efficiency, and address the corrupt practices related to salary payments in the public sector. Have these three objectives been achieved – ghost workers removal from payrolls, efficiency enhancement, and blocking leakages? It has indeed achieved the opposite. The truth is those who were immensely corrupt are the same people at the center of IPPIS operation, a case of a thief hired to guard a property.
This text was published three years ago when Nigeria marked its 60th year of independence. Nothing has changed except for the age, now at 63, as the conditions remain the same. The text is therefore being reprinted today with only one change: @60 has been replaced by @63.
Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina is a man of so many outstanding parts – an academic, banker, investment and development expert, diplomat, visionary leader, technocrat, mentor, team player/builder/leader, boardroom guru, political economist par excellence, agricultural expert, farmers’ minister, an icon of corporate world, a private sector mover, the African development icon, the African development czar, a sage tearing away from the crowd and a potential Novel Peace Prize Winner.
This was first published by Daily Trust on Saturday, 17 November 2012. It encapsulates my mission and how I want to be remembered.
On Wednesday, the Kano State Governorship Electoral Petition Tribunal sacked Abba Kabir Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples’ Party (NNPP) as governor after deducting 165,663 votes from the total votes he scored during the election. The three-member panel of judges led by Oluyemi Asadebay ruled that the ballots containing the votes were not certified by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Despite the tribunal’s ruling, Mr. Yusuf will remain in office until the appeal court and possibly the supreme court gives a final ruling on the matter. I have not studied the judgement so I would make no comments on subtractions that go only in one direction but the outcome is concerning to many in Kano.
As mentioned in the first part of this piece, the 2006 Africa Fertilizer Summit in Abuja was a turning point for African agriculture. The Summit’s impetus birthed the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). As the first Vice President of AGRA, Adesina led one of the boldest and most considerable global efforts and finance initiatives that leveraged over $4 billion in Bank finance commitments to Africa’s agriculture sector.
Tenaciously in leadership style with a head high, Adesina is a replica of Indian Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi used a non-violent strategy to achieve free independence for his native country, India; Adesina was mobilizing human, financial, and other resources to feed Africa. Indefatigability in human salvation, Adesina is a replica of his mentor, Dr. Norman Borlaug, of blessed memory, a prestigious American scientist who covered a distance of 9,859 km to Asia and fathered the Asian Green Revolution, thereby saving millions of souls from ravaging and liquidating hunger in the late 1960s. Adesina has been tenaciously using his talent, position, and connection to empower smallholder farmers to multiply their food production for Africa and beyond.
After some discussions on the encouraging story of a young entrepreneur on our Barewa Old Boys WhatsApp group, a couple of classmates and I decided to visit Mustapha Gajibo to better understand his engagement in renewable energy and project of the design and production of Nigerian electric vehicles. We were all impressed with his vision, drive, ambition and above all his commitment to seeking modern workable solutions to Nigeria’s challenges. From his base in Maiduguri, he has been producing electric cars since 2017. Recall that in 2017, there was no electricity in Maiduguri because the supply line had been blown up by Boko Haram. What audacity to think of producing electric cars in a city that did not even have electricity at the time I asked. His response was that precisely for that reason, it was important to seek solutions and if the city had no electricity it had a lot of sun which could be harnessed to charge the vehicles.