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 The text is therefore being reprinted today with only one change: @60 has been replaced by @63.
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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.
With head high, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) continues to celebrate its judicial but false victory over the FGN-ASUU case, which the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) judged in September 2022 and May 2023. Part of the Court’s overall judgment is “Call off the strike; the government is legally right to implement the no-work-no-pay policy.” This phrase has made FGN celebrate the clipping of the ASUU’s wing, the bunch of “trouble makers” who have become “clogs” in the wheel of university progress as they always demanded more funding for university education in Nigeria. They were defeated, their ego was shattered, and some of them paid supreme price, and the rest are leaking and still nursing their wounds. They dare not go on industrial action again and are coerced to “teach” their students for the peanuts they get as salary. Any striking worker will face the wrath of the “no-work-no-pay” policy, and the union will be “legally” dealt with. This victory made the FGN refuse to implement the 23% salary increase the government offered the workers during its industrial action. Even the so-called 40% salary increment across the salaries of Federal workers paid at the beginning of this year, the university workers were excluded. The society nodded its agreement with government action by remaining silent and thinking that the ASUU agitation for more funding was unnecessary. When ASUU suspended its strike action, FGN stayed quiet and pretended to have resolved all contending issues.
In the past three years, at least eight African countries have witnessed military coup d’états. This is coming when it was thought that Africa’s democracy had come of age when we were beginning to think that coups had gone for good, consigned to an era in the past when African governments were led by the military.
The coup in Gabon this week is most unlikely to be a regime change. Gen Brice Nguema, the head of the junta is a relation of the Bongo family and started his career as body guard to Omar Bongo, the father of the deposed President who had ruled for 42 years. The coup occurred minutes after President Ali Bongo had been declared winner of a rigged election. He had been incapacitated since he suffered from a stroke in 2019 and the optics of a president without the capacity to govern has been an issue since his stroke. The symbolism of someone who is incapable of exercising power rigging election after election posed the question of how much longer can the charade last. When there was an attempted coup in January 2019, the army responded immediately rounding up the culprits. As everyone knows, Gabon is too precious for France to allow regime change. In the coming days, it will become clearer who allowed this coup to succeed.