Opinions

How The Lawan Senate Failed Its First Major Test By Reuben Abati

Published

6 years ago

July 30, 2019

Senator Ahmed Lawan is the Chairman and President of Nigeria’s 9th National Assembly. Senator Ahmed Lawan emergence as Senate President was prefaced by a lot of politicking and brick-bats within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of which Senator Ahmed Lawan is a member and between members of that party and the opposition parties particularly the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the country’s former ruling party, now the main opposition.

The PDP wanted a power-sharing arrangement if not a competition for space and influence in the entire National Assembly. Leaders of the APC insisted on a winner-takes-it-all proposition, especially with regard to the principal positions in the National Assembly. The APC went a step further: it insisted on anointing those persons the party’s chieftains wanted to be in charge of the National Assembly. The obvious reason for this desperation, and the attached emphasis on loyalty to the party, can be traced to the fact that in 2015, the politics of the leadership of the National Assembly was hijacked by forces led by Senator Bukola Saraki. Party leaders were left wondering what hit them.

By the time the dust settled, Saraki and his team had taken over control of the Senate. Yakubu Dogara and his Democrats team dominated the leadership of the House of Representatives. Saraki as Chairman of the National Assembly and Yakubu Dogara as Speaker of the House of Representatives were both members of the ruling APC, but they were independent-minded and determined to lead an independent legislature. The Godfathers of the party who believed it was their divine right to dictate the direction of not just the party but the entire government could not control them. From 2015- 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari thus had a testy relationship with the National Assembly, especially the Senate as the Saraki-Dogara-led 8th National Assembly refused to be intimidated. The ruling establishment would not take things lightly. Saraki and his wife were charged with corruption. Saraki was taken to the Code of Conduct Tribunal. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accused Saraki of malfeasance and also investigated his wife. Key bills sent to the President for his signature were rejected and sent back. Budget proposals took months, because the Presidency and the Legislature could not agree on the details. Saraki and Dogara later moved to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Yakubu Dogara would also not show any iota of enthusiasm to become a sycophant of the Executive arm of the government. President Buhari is on record as having accused both men of “lack of patriotism”.

For all of this and other reasons, you can forgive the chieftains of the APC for seeking to make life easier for the President by seeking to impose a pliant, malleable and “loyal’ Federal legislature on Nigeria after the 2019 general elections. The intention of the leaders of the APC, relying on the declared victory of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC in 2019, is as we have seen, to protect the Executive arm of government at the Federal level. Hence, they named the principal officers of the National Assembly long before the votes were cast in accordance with Section 50 of the 1999 Constitution. They had their way. Everything went exactly according to the ruling party’s dictates. But then, this automatically created a moral dilemma for the newly emerged principal officers of the National Assembly. The dilemma is this: having emerged as anointed candidates of party leaders and the President, would they act in the national interest and run an independent legislature in line with the doctrine of the separation of powers? Will a National Assembly led by Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila perform its expected oversight functions and be accountable to the people of Nigeria? Or will it end up as a rubber-stamp Assembly, acquiescent and subservient? Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila promised to be independent and be the best that they can be, even if I recall that they both said also, that they would not go out of their way to antagonize the Executive.

Since the inauguration of the National Assembly on June 11, the Speaker of the House of Representatives has been accused of using the platform of the Blue Chamber to do the bidding of a party chieftain. We refer to the crisis in Edo State over the proclamation order inaugurating the Edo State House of Assembly, and the threat by the House of Representatives to take over that Legislative Assembly, after a session that dripped with emotionalism and sycophantic bias. Before then, shortly after inauguration, the leadership of the 9th National Assembly had also been accused of sucking up too recklessly to the Presidency, seen as they were, going to the Presidential Villa to genuflect to the President. But the most shocking development since the June 11 inauguration is the manner in which the Senate has failed its first major test, with regard to the screening of Ministerial nominees for President Muhammadu Buhari’s second-term cabinet (2019 -2023). In 2015, it took President Muhammadu Buhari about 6 months to appoint a cabinet of 36 persons. Many Nigerians were disappointed. Such delay over an important task of statecraft creates uncertainty, promotes distortions and compels the investment community to become apprehensive. The absence of a functioning government and an Executive arm in charge of so many constitutional responsibilities slows down the country. The Buhari government practically struggled through its first term because it failed to hit the ground running. Buhari’s apologists choose to blame past administrations for this omission. There are Nigerians and international observers who disagree with them, and who submit that such delay should not be allowed to repeat itself ever again.

This is why many Nigerians were alarmed when in 2019, after the election of February 23 which brought President Buhari back to power and the inauguration of his government on May 29, 1999, and the June 12 Democracy Day which he declared, that the President still failed to announce a cabinet. Every one waited with bated breath as history threatened to repeat itself. About the same period, there were Presidential elections in other parts of the world. In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa was elected with 57% of the votes. He announced a new cabinet within a week: a cabinet that was remarkable for its gender-sensitivity, inclusion and reduction of size. In May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also re-elected in India. He promptly announced a new cabinet. Joko Widodo returned to power in Indonesia. He is showing, funny as he is, a better sense of purpose. The other day, Boris Johnson was elected by an overwhelming 66% of the 160, 000 votes cast by Tory members, as leader of the UK Conservative Party and as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He has since formed a cabinet, a youthful, gender-sensitive, and ethnically diverse cabinet and has held his first cabinet meeting.

In comparison, Nigeria is still going through the ritual of identifying Ministers. The Senate which is responsible for screening and approving Ministers in line with Section 147 (2) had to inform the President that it was willing to postpone its annual recess by a week, and screen the Ministers if only the President would bring a list. The leadership of the National Assembly even took the additional step of going to the Presidential Villa to have dinner with the President. The President told them he was “under a lot of pressure”, and he prefers to appoint as Ministers, “persons who are known to him”. The following week, both Nigerians and the Senators made the Ministerial list an issue. The business community complained about stagnation. In one week, the stock market lost billions of Naira on account of creeping uncertainty. Eventually, President Buhari brought a list of 43 names who since July 23, have been appearing before the Senate for screening.

The list is not worth the wait. The screening process is ridiculous, some say it is a charade, some of us feel that the screening is a waste of time. In 2015, President Buhari promised a lean government; he merged some of the Ministries and submitted a list of 36 Ministers. In 2019, he has submitted a list of 43 Ministers, which points to big government and bigger overhead and a reversal of principle. The 2019 list passes the test of the Constitutional threshold which requires the President to pick at least one Minister from every state of the Federation. But it fails the gender test: only 7 women out of 43 (about 17% and absolutely no improvement gender-wise over the 2015 list). The list also fails the general test of inclusion. The average age of the nominees is 50+ leaving the Nigerian youths who wanted a place at the Ministerial table with a short end of the stick. Those who wanted a Government of National Unity have also been disappointed. The Ministerial list is exclusively an APC list. South East Governors of the PDP and APGA who submitted names of nominees were tactically ignored. President Buhari in choosing those he knows has submitted the names of party loyalists and 14 former Ministers. Questions have been raised quite legitimately about the selection process and how and why President Buhari retained 14 Ministers and added a total of 29 names who do not necessarily inspire undebatable justification about integrity and competence.

The screening process itself has been a huge disappointment and an anti-climax. Out of 31 Ministers screened by Monday morning, 18 were asked to just take a bow and leave. By the end of the exercise, we expect that up to two-thirds would have taken a bow. This screening process has been totally without rigour or colour. It is the Senate’s first major test under Ahmed Lawan’s watch and the result is woeful, if not absolutely ludicrous. Before now, the Senate had promised Nigerians that it would conduct a rigorous screening process. Instead, it has chosen to molly-coddle the nominees. The argument that the Rules of the Senate allow the Senators to ask persons who had been in the federal legislature before now to take a bow and go turned out to be an excuse for sycophancy and abuse of privilege. The Senate violated its own rules when it over-stretched that privilege. Female nominees were asked to take a bow and leave. We were denied the opportunity to hear them out – that’s sexist. One nominee was asked to take a bow because he comes from the same state as the Senate President and his brother has been a loyal and committed party man. That is nepotism! Another nominee was described as “handsome”. What nonsense! The Senate President actually used his mouth to describe one nominee as a “beneficiary by chance”. What’s that? A minister by chance? That’s stupid.

Even the nominees who were subjected to some friendly conversation to give the whole thing a veneer of seriousness got at best a handshake. Abubakar Malami, one of the returnee 14 stood before that Senate and gave a general interpretation of Section 174 of the 1999 Constitution in an attempt to justify the Buhari government’s routine disobedience of court orders. He made a disingenuous case for the superiorisation of national interest over private interest in a manner that ridicules the sanctity of court orders and Chapter 4 of the 1999 Constitution on Fundamental Human Rights. He misinformed the Assembly on the spirit and the letter of the law. He over-stretched section 174 beyond prosecutorial discretion. It is not within his remit to cherry-pick. There are lawyers in that Senate. It is the job of the lawmakers to make laws for the good governance of the country. There was nobody in that Senate who could stand up and engage Malami on the overriding importance of Chapter 4, the most sacred part of the Constitution which cannot be amended without the concurrence of two-thirds of the National Assembly.

Someone asked Festus Keyamo to recite the second stanza of the National Anthem, but the Senate President who had reduced himself shamelessly to the role of a goalkeeper of the Buhari FC, raised an objection and directed that the question should not be asked. I also don’t think that was an intelligent question but generally, the Senators could not come up with anything more intelligent other than to ask Junior WAEC questions because they were probing in the dark. Nobody knew the portfolios of the would-be Ministers. Hence, the entire exercise was at best a guess-work. Rather than insist that the President should provide the portfolios forthwith as many Nigerians had demanded, the Senate turned itself into a Presidential Liaison Office and started arguing that there is no such provision in the Nigerian Constitution. Is it everything that is written into the Constitution? Common sense is important in legislative work. But nowhere do the framers of the Constitution write expressly that the law must be interpreted in accordance with the rules of commonsense and equity, even when anything to the contrary would amount to a violation of the law.

Ahmed Lawan’s Senate lacks the moral right to reject any Ministerial nominee. It would have been better, all things considered, if the lawmakers had just received the President’s list, endorsed it at one sitting, and proceeded promptly on their recess. The utterly incompetent screening process, the Senate’s silly extension of its scope of discretion and the sheer display of sycophancy – clearly confirm the impression that this is simpliciter, a rubber stamp National Assembly. In the end, the Constitution grants the President of Nigeria the powers to choose his own team as he deems fit. It is just that a cabinet list of party apologists and loyal associates is not in Nigeria’s best interest. Not seeing through that, Ahmed Lawan’s National Assembly is most urgently in need of soul-searching, re-set and sober reflection. This should be the next assignment for a seemingly heavily compromised 9th Assembly.

Reuben Abati, a former presidential spokesperson, writes from Lagos.

Related Topics:Reuben Abati Senate President Ahmed Lawan

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Between Japan’s Kaizen philosophy and Nigeria’s National Values Charter

Published

4 days ago

January 31, 2025

Seyi Babalola

By Temitope Ajayi

Two days after DeepSeek took the world by surprise, a Financial Times report warned that the West should be worried by how China appears to be leading the Artificial Intelligence race.

Financial Times says the emergence of DeepSeek from the shadows, catching the West unawares, is a strong indication that China has mastered the art of ‘Kaizen’.

I recall that my first encounter with Kaizen, the philosophy that underpins the rise of Japan as the Asian economic powerhouse, is about 10 years now.

Societies like China, Japan, and South Korea that anchor their development models on their culture and value systems continue to break new grounds and are far ahead in innovation and human advancement.

At the heart of Japan’s success, especially in the manufacturing and service sectors, is the work ethics that are firmly rooted in the Kaizen philosophy. ‘Kaizen’ is a Japanese word that means continuous improvement or change for the better. The quest for excellence and attention to detail have been weaved into the social and moral fabrics of Japanese society as a matter of obligation.

It is this philosophy and social imperative that the Japanese take into product designs and execution. It is, therefore, not surprising that the world sees continuous improvement in every new edition of Japanese products like Toyota automobiles.

The concept of Kaizen became popular in the United States by the 1980s when it was discovered that the performance of Japanese companies was much better than their American counterparts. It became apparent that the difference between Japanese and American companies in terms of effectiveness and operational efficiency was the application of the Kaizen principle.

Kaizen philosophy is similar to the Yoruba Omoluabi ethos. Every major ethnic group and subculture in Nigeria and Africa has its own equivalent of such value systems.

We can only imagine our pace of development and progress as a country if we develop a national value system around the virtues of excellence, honour, and integrity. This means our workmen and women will pursue excellence as second nature in everything. Politicians will embrace public service as a matter of honour, and citizens will accept integrity as an article of faith in undertakings.

Our society is hemorrhaging as a result of value degradation. It is heartbreaking how badly we have drifted because we neglected our cultural values and practices that served as the guiding principles of society.

It is the responsibility of leaders at all levels to direct society to embrace enduring values that edify and promote human development. I believe we can still recover lost grounds. This is why the efforts being made by the Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu-led National Orientation Agency to re-ignite a new wave of consciousness through the National Values Charter should be appreciated and promoted. The values charter has already been approved by the Federal Executive Council. President Bola Tinubu is leading this renewed effort to push value re-orientation to the forefront of public policy and national development agenda.

-Ajayi is Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Media and Publicity

Opinions

Tinubu’s quest to overcome the power sector gridlock

Published

2 weeks ago

January 20, 2025

Seyi Babalola

By Temitope Ajayi

Angered by the appalling situation of Nigeria’s electricity supply sector over several decades of doing the wrong things by successive governments with no remedy in sight, even after hundreds of billions of public funds had been expended, President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018 chose a different path that had worked in other jurisdictions.

He reached out to the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel to help solve the protracted power gridlock in Nigeria. The discussion between the two leaders gave birth to the FG-Siemens Energy AG Presidential Power Initiative in 2019. Under the terms of the agreement of the Nigerian Electrification Roadmap, Siemens Energy would ramp up electricity generation in Nigeria to 25,000 megawatt in six years, in three phases, from an average of 4000 megawatts the country had been stuck with for decades.

President Buhari was quite bullish about the project such that he put it under the direct supervision of his office with his Chief of Staff, late Abba Kyari, as the directing officer. The former president who didn’t want the project to be derailed by bureaucratic bottlenecks and red-tape made sure all man-made obstacles and deliberate obstructions were bulldozed with Abba Kyari in charge.

The unfortunate demise of Kyari in 2020 arising from Covid-19 while in Germany to get the power project underway rolled back the speedy implementation of what would have been a game-changer in Nigeria’s elusive quest for a stable and reliable power supply. Nigeria’s economy had been blighted by years of poor electricity supply. From available records, Federal Government has spent over $30 billion dollars to revamp the sector in the last three decades without any substantial progress. The economy is run on generators with Nigerians spending a staggering $10billion dollars (N7.6 trillion) annually on petrol and diesel to run their generators including the cost of maintenance, according to a 2024 report, “Beyond Gensets: Advancing the energy transition in Lagos State” published by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL).

True to his campaign promise to build on the achievements of his predecessor across all sectors and improve on governance performance in areas where it is required, President Tinubu, in demonstration of his unshaken believe in continuity of governance, took on the FG-Siemens Power Project as part of his priority projects in the energy sector.

It is necessary to state that this all-important power project had suffered undue delays since July, 29, 2020 when the Federal Executive Council approved the payment of €15.21m and N1.708bn as part of Nigeria’s counterpart funding for the offshore and onshore components of the project.

Managing Director, Siemens Energy Nigeria, Seun Suleiman, was quoted as saying then that, “Siemens Energy is committed to working with the Federal Government of Nigeria through the FGNPowerCo to see a successful implementation of the presidential power initiative. We have successfully carried out a similar project in Egypt.

“This project will transform the energy landscape of the country, and we are grateful the government has entrusted us with this notable initiative. We are capable, and we will deliver excellent results.”

In 2021, FGN Power Company, the Special Purpose Vehicle established by the Federal Government of Nigeria for the implementation of the PPI, announced the commencement of the grid network studies and power simulation training for technical experts in the Discos, TCN, NAPTIN and NERC, including provision of specialized power simulation softwares for TCN, NERC and all Discos. By December 2024, more than 100 experts across the sector have been trained on power systems simulation and network planning with skills to better manage the grid operations at various levels.
In the same year 2021, the Federal Executive Council approved the contract for the supply of 10 mobile substations and 10 power transformers by Siemens Energy for quick reinforcement of the grid as part of the pilot Phase of the project. Reports by FGN Power Company indicate that all the equipment have since been supplied and installed across the country.

However, the overall pace of the project delivery in terms of meeting timelines has not been impressive.

On assumption of office, President Tinubu saw the need to continue with the project and how timely delivery can transform the power sector for a country that desperately needs a reliable power supply for industrialisation and grow its economy. The status of the project came up at a bilateral meeting between President Tinubu and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during the latter’s working visit to Nigeria in August 2024 in Abuja. At a follow-up engagement in Dubai in December 2024 during COP28, the Nigerian Government and Siemens Energy AG signed an accelerated performance agreement aimed at expediting the implementation of the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) to improve electricity supply in Nigeria. The agreement that was signed by Kenny Anuwe, Managing Director/CEO of FGN Power Company and Ms. Nadja Haakansson, Siemens Energy’s Senior Vice President and Managing Director for Africa, was witnessed by President Tinubu and Chancellor Scholz.

Under the accelerated performance agreement, Siemens Energy will see to the end-to-end modernization and expansion of Nigeria’s electric power transmission grid with the full supply, delivery, and installation of Siemens-manufactured equipment.

Furthermore, the agreement will ensure project sustainability and maintenance with full technology transfer and training for Nigerian engineers at the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

In a major demonstration of President Tinubu’s commitment to the power project and a positive shift towards execution, the President led the Federal Executive Council on December 16, 2024 to approve €161.3 million Euros for the execution of the contracts in the first batch of the Phase one of the projects across the country following earlier approval of the transaction by the Bureau of Public Procurement.

Addressing journalists after the FEC approval, an enthusiastic Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, with the renewed vigour to deliver on the project said, “at the Federal Executive Council meeting, there were basically two approvals for the Federal Ministry of Power, as I presented. The first was actually an approval for the award of contract for engineering, procurement, construction and financing for the implementation of the 331 32 KV And 132 33 KV substations upgrade under Phase One of the Presidential Initiative, popularly known as the Siemens project consequent upon completion of the pilot phase of this project.

“So, the Federal Executive Council considered it necessary for us to move forward as promised by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria at a meeting he held with the President of the Republic of Germany.”

The latest FEC approved scope of work includes upgrade of TCN substations in five locations of Abeokuta (330/132/33kV), Ayede (330/132/33kV), Offa (132/33kV), Onitsha (330/132/33kV) and Sokoto (132/33kV). These substations were carefully selected as Batch 1 of the brownfield scope of the Phase 1 projects to increase the wheeling capacity of the transmission network grid.

In the same vein, FGN Power Company will implement assets upgrade and enhancement in the distribution networks, in collaboration with the Distribution Companies (Discos) to ensure last-mile delivery of the evacuated power to industrial customers and residential consumers. These locations are load centres that are currently underserved and require swift enhancements. The execution of the project will be fast tracked and completed under the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration.

It’s important to state that the FGN Power Company has started working on other priority brownfield and Greenfield projects in target load centres across the country. Special attention is also being paid to the execution of systems and products to enhance grid resilience and stability to reduce the frequent occurrences of grid disturbances.

In December 2024, Minister of Power Adelabu commissioned the mobile substation in Saapade, a suburb of Shagamu in Ogun State. This has enhanced power evacuation and delivery to industrial customers within the Shagamu hub. Similarly, another mobile substation was commissioned at the Ajibode area of the University of Ibadan to enhance power delivery to the university community and adjoining areas. Before then, mobile substations and power transformers have been commissioned and energized in Ajah Lagos, Mando Kano, Jebba Kwara State, Okene Kogi, Amukpe Delta, Potiskum Yobe, Apo Abuja and Ihovbor Edo.

While the implementation of the Presidential Power Initiative is going on, President Tinubu has equally inaugurated the Presidential Metering Initiative, which aims to increase the rate of smart metering of all customers in a commercially sustainable manner. The roll out of the metering solutions has started. It is expected that the combined impact of assets upgrade through Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) and metering through the Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI), coupled with efforts of subnational electricity markets will bring lasting solutions to the challenges of electricity supply in Nigeria.

With President Tinubu’s committed leadership, the parlous state of the power sector will be reversed, and Nigerians and the economy will experience a new lease of life with reliable electricity supply that will geometrically increase productive activities. Indeed, the president’s strategic approach to resolving the multifaceted challenges in the power sector is yielding visible results. The restructuring of the tariff regime, intervention in the commercial imbroglio on gas supply, additional investments in infrastructure through PPI, enactment of the new Electricity Act which provides legal framework for further decentralisation of the sector and devolution of more responsibilities to the subnational governments, are all part of the renewed hope agenda for the power sector to bring sustainable solutions.

-Ajayi is Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Media and Publicity

Opinions

Kemi Badenoch: It’s time for a Rethink

Published

1 month ago

December 29, 2024

Seyi Babalola

By Tunde Rahman

Kemi Badenoch’s ill-advised denigration of Nigeria has refused to go away. Her belittlement of the country of her ancestry is still generating passionate public discourse within and outside the media space, and it appears the matter will not go away anytime soon.

Exasperated by Kemi Badenoch’s misguided attacks on Nigeria, Vice President Kashim Shettima recently counseled her to drop the Kemi in her name and bleach her ebony skin to white to further appease her Tory party and British establishment. And perturbed and seemingly lost by all that, my daughter, Kemi Mushinat, who recently graduated in Communication Studies, asked what was wrong with the name Kemi. There is nothing wrong with the name, I explained. But a lot is wrong with Kemi Badenoch (Nee Adegoke), the Leader of the British opposition Conservative Party, who opted to behave, as the Yoruba would describe it, “bi omo ale to fi owo osi ju we ile baba e”, meaning like a bastard who would go out to denigrate her ancestry by pointing the offensive finger at her roots.

Honour and dignity are inherent in the name Oluwakemi, indeed in any name. But what confers dignity, what glorifies a name, is the character the bearer brings into it. Kemi Badenoch left much to be desired, disparaging Nigeria, our motherland. She painted a gory picture of her growing up years in Nigeria from the middle of the 80s to around 1996, highlighting stories of poverty, infrastructure decay, decadence, corruption, police excesses, and leadership failure. Perhaps some of her narratives could be true, particularly in the time that immediately followed the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) misrule and the indiscretion of the emergent military regime. However, her stories reek of generalisations and prejudices often associated with most analyses by a section of Western media and commentators. They view Nigeria with their jaundiced lenses, describing the country as made of a Muslim North and Christian South, oblivious of the various Christian minorities in the North and, the plethora of Muslims in the South and the multiplicity of ethnic groups in the two divides that make a mockery of any analysis of a monolithic North or South. They view us Africans with many unproven, unorthodox assumptions.

My problem is with Mrs. Badenoch, an African, whichever way you slice it, and the character she has chosen. When Vice President Shettima lambasted her for demeaning Nigeria, Kemi Badenoch thought she had a clincher:

“I find it interesting that everybody defines me as Nigerian,” she said. “I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba). That’s what I am. I have nothing in common with the people from the North of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is; those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”

In that statement, the Tory leader disavowed Nigeria and excoriated the North but exalted the Yoruba. She repudiated the whole, attacking one part of the nation but embracing another. Kemi Badenoch grossly misfired, hiding under the finger of ethnic nationalism.

Perhaps it would have been pardonable if, for instance, she opposed Nigeria’s federal system and canvassed regionalism or confederacy. To condemn one race and elevate another is like playing one part against another. That utterance is dangerous in a diverse and volatile society like ours. The North (read the Hausa-Fulani, Kanuri, Tiv, Birom, Mangu, Ibira, Nupe, and many others who cohabit the entire Northern region) is no enemy of the Yoruba as Mrs Badenoch insinuated. The North voted massively for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Yoruba man, to emerge president in 2023, as they did for the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, the winner of the annulled June 12 election in 1993. To label them the enemies of the Yoruba is condemnable.

Badenoch’s Yoruba roots emphasise good character and promote good neighbourliness, religious harmony, peaceful co-existence, respect for elders, and respect for other people’s rights. That is why Yoruba intermarry with members of different ethnic groups. It’s also commonplace in Yorubaland to find members of the same family having adherents of Islam and Christianity cohabiting together without any hassles. Boko Haram or its last vestiges poses a security challenge, perhaps a religious and sociopolitical challenge, for Nigeria, not just for the North or the North-east which is why the government and our armed forces have battled to a standstill and are still battling the insurgents.

Therefore, the values the UK Conservative leader espoused did not represent the Yoruba. They are not the values the Yoruba would showcase, uphold, and promote. Yoruba has a rich history of culture, tradition, leadership, and loyalty to constituted authority.

Mrs Badenoch’s formative years, which she derided with negative stories of decadence, perfidy, and corruption, were part of Nigeria’s dark periods when the military held the country and the people by the jugular.

Is Kemi Badenoch now giving the impression that nothing has changed in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos, where she grew up after birth in London? Is she giving the impression there have not been significant improvements in the standard of living and infrastructure, with the rehabilitation of existing roads and opening up of new ones; in transportation with the multi-modal system complemented by water transportation and now the rail system, among other things? Despite its challenges, there is no doubt there has been a remarkable development in Lagos from the foundation laid by then Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu (now President Tinubu) from 1999 to 2007 till the present Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to the point that Lagos has emerged as one of largest economies in Africa. Lagos State has made significant progress across all indices of development such that if it were a country, it would have ranked the sixth largest economy on the continent.

What has emerged in the entire Kemi Badenoch’s saga is her seeming double-face or multiple-face. When she was campaigning to represent her diverse Dulwich and West Norwood Constituency in the UK Parliament in 2010, she had appealed to the Nigerian community, comprising Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani and Igbo, under the aegis of “Nigerians for Kemi Badenoch,” pleading for help in the election. A campaign document that surfaced on social media showed she had reached out to all Nigerians in that constituency while highlighting her roots. In that document, Badenoch had said to her Nigerian supporters:

“I need your help. I’m running for parliament in the 2010 UK general elections. The race is very tight. Last year, the News of the World surveyed this constituency, and the forecast was that I would win. Things are much tougher this year as the party has dropped nationally in the polls. I need your help.

“I am asking for your help now to support a Nigerian trying to improve our national image and do something great here.”

After winning the election, however, she deployed her situation in Nigeria as a talking point to rally support for her policies, for which she was accused of exploiting her roots for political gains.

Her rhetoric has drastically changed with her emergence as the Leader of the Conservative Party. In the carriage, conduct and statements, she is now out to please the White establishment, particularly the White wing of her Conservative Party, subjugating her people to make Britain look good. She doesn’t mind running down anyone, including the Nigerian people and the British blacks generally.

Will this advance her politics or status? I do not think so. The British respect culture and tradition. Running down a country’s history and culture may not attract much attention. Britain also respects her relations with other countries, particularly Nigeria, given our age-long relationship. Nigeria is a significant trade and investment partner of the UK in Africa. According to the UK Department for Business and Trade, as of December 20 2024, the total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and Nigeria amounted to £7.2 billion in the four quarters up to the end of Q2 2024, an increase of 1.2% or £86 million in current prices from the four quarters to the end of Q2 2023.

Britain would not want to harm that substantial trade partnership and excellent relationship between the two countries in any way.

Also, several Badenoch’s Conservative Party members do not share her attitude towards Nigeria. In Zanzibar, I recently ran into Jake Berry, a top Tory Party member and former Cabinet member in the UK. While discussing the Badenoch matter, he said most Conservative Party members disagreed with her.

Kemi Badenoch has recorded an outstanding achievement in two decades of entering British politics. She joined the Conservative Party at the age of 25. Today, she stands not just as the Leader of the biggest party in Britain’s history but also as the highest black person in the United Kingdom. Her extraordinary accomplishment should have been used to inspire young people to achieve similar feats and as a foundation to inspire positive change in her country of origin, not to denigrate Nigeria or cause division and disaffection among her people. It is not too late for Mrs Badenoch to rethink and toe the line of rectitude.

-Rahman is Senior Special Assistant on Media Matters to President Tinubu.