Opinions

Pigeons That Won’t Fly, Bloody Baboon and Philemon Punishment, By Festus Adebayo

why did the pigeons flatly refuse to bear Buhari and Uzodinma’s peace messages to to the land of the dead

Published

4 years ago

January 17, 2021

Fatalists haven’t yet returned from the market square. They had rushed there to parrot what they called the eerie signification of the news of pigeons that won’t fly at the National arcade on January 14. It was at the Nigerian fallen soldier heroes’ anniversary. According to them, there was a weird symbolism in President Muhammadu Buhari’s futile move to prod memorial pigeons to fly. Imo State governor, Hope Uzodinma, also encountered same futility in his quest to get the pigeons to fly. Over the years, this ceremonial action had traditionally got the pigeons flying into the sky. However, at the Armed Forces Remembrance event last week, Buhari and Uzodinma’s pigeons merely diffidently looked at them, I dare say, with bemused disdain.

In reality, what have stubborn or hesitant pigeons got to do with Buhari/Uzodinma or the current Nigerian situation? Shamanism and spiritism explain pigeons’ mannerism better. Shamanism is a religious practice which involves practitioners interacting with a spirit world through an altered state of consciousness, the most being through trance. According to it, pigeons, which are one of the first birds that man tamed and creatures that have lived as man’s companions for centuries, symbolize home and security. They equally symbolize love, peace and are thought to be messengers that deliver gifts of physical, emotional and mental healing to man. As spirit messengers, they are a channel of communication between the living and dead worlds. When they are released to fly into the sky on fallen soldiers’ anniversaries, they are a totem expected to be instruments of communication with the land of the dead, a national invocation of the spirits of the dead, if you like. This is in the mould of My Song Burst, a traditional poem of the Ghanaian Ewe tribe that has been around for a while.

In the above poem, the invocator of the spirits of the dead had chanted: My song bursts in the name of Toti with vòsa //Taking a regal step//Dare the hyena howl, let him howl//Let the watchdog thunder endlessly.//The God of song has descended on Ahòsuglo.//War has begun, says So-kple-So,//We shall ourselves adorn.//Master Singers, Choric Leaders//To you we kneel in homage, Announcing neither death nor sickness.

Not minding their unhygienic and slovenly nature, pigeons are complex as a phenomenon and have an intelligence that people seldom connect with. Their messenger assignment fascinates me. One of such was in a song entitled Ajiko’gba ede (Singer of two hundred songs) originally sung by late Yoruba Apala music legend, Ayinla Omowura, which was later redone by another legendary Fuji musician, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister. Therein, Ayinla claimed that the secret of his singing prodigy was from an encounter with a certain mystery Man With Two Hundred Songs who resides in a mystery land. He had sent the pigeon to the mystery man for a clone of his mystical singing gift. The pigeon flew away to deliver the musician’s message and emerged therefrom bearing a pod of songs on its beak. Like the benevolent hunter in another ancient Yoruba creation folktale who swallowed a snake which later became the worms in man’s belly till today, upon the pigeon’s arrival, the musician said he chanted some incantations that turned the pigeon and pod from the mystery Man With Two Hundred Songs into a phial. He then swallowed the phial and that became the origin of his prolific singing ability.

Sorry, I digressed. Now, so why did the pigeons flatly refuse to bear Buhari and Uzodinma’s peace messages to the land of the dead, the dead soldiers, our forebears who pre-deceased us and thereby became our ancestors? Is it that they are angry with us, with Buhari and Uzodinma, their administrations or the rivers of blood that maroon the land? Being messengers of peace, were the pigeons saying that the duo’s hands were antithetical to peace? Could the pigeons be affirming the fear across Nigeria, especially with emerging narratives which go that, 51 years after the Nigerian civil war, Nigeria is literally in a state of war, never been this divided and close to explosion?

Fire spitting Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Hassan Kukah, had provoked the most recent saber-rattling discourse in Nigeria, in the magnitude of the fire on American Capitol Hill. The latter fire was presumed to have been ignited by President Donald Trump, an action recompensed with his impeachment last Wednesday.

Kukah had begun his 2020 Christmas homily, which he entitled A Nation in search of vindication, with his usual harmless demeanour and gradually brought out the desirable nukes. According to the firebrand Bishop, not minding the void of hopelessness that the Buhari government cramped Nigerians into, the people should be happy that Buhari was not a non-Northern Muslim.

“Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any non-Northern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has done by his nepotism and gotten away with it. There would have been a military coup a long time ago or we would have been at war,” he said.

Kukah was not done. He continued: “This government owes the nation an explanation as to where it is headed as we seem to journey into darkness. The spilling of this blood must be related to a more sinister plot that is beyond our comprehension. Are we going to remain hogtied by these evil men or are they gradually becoming part of a larger plot to seal the fate of our country? President Buhari deliberately sacrificed the dreams of those who voted for him to what seemed like a programme to stratify and institutionalize northern hegemony. He has pursued this self-defeating and alienating policy at the expense of greater national cohesion,” said Kukah.

Kukah’s nukes have since exploded, provoking a repeat of Salman Rushdie-like threats and fatwa. On January 6, a statement issued by Khalid Abubakar Aliyu, Secretary General of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam, a Muslim group, tagged Kukah’s message “irresponsible and seditious.”

Aliyu claimed that though the message was shawled as a “political hogwash,” with intent to deceive the innocent, “there is no doubt that it was a poisoned arrow fired at the heart of Islam and Muslims in Nigeria, hence the need for this intervention.” I pray thee, why would Aliyu slander Islam as representing the regression of the Buhari government? This aggressive interloper then went further to say that “the Bishop’s statement was a prepared address considering the occasion and the audience, one cannot but agree that it was a calculated attempt to insult Islam which is typical of him. His veiled insinuation that Muslims have a pool of violence to draw from is disgusting, disheartening, as well as condemnable.” Another group, the Ummah Movement, headquartered at the National Islamic Centre (NIC), Zaria, expressed same umbrage at Kukah’s homily, demanding that the Nigerian security apparatus should “question Bishop Kukah on his incitement to a coup, persistent and deliberate stirring of communal conflict and slanderous targeting of the majority Muslim population of Nigeria along with their faith.” They asked Kukah to leave his domain, Sokoto State. I reckon that the fate of Akaluka would have been instigated on the Bishop if he were an ordinary folk.

In his own reply, Special Assistant to the President on Media, Garba Shehu, sought group empathy for the president. “Father Kukah has greatly offended many with his controversial remarks against the government and the person of the President,” he said. Who are the many who feel offended by Kukah’s statement? Perhaps, Aso Rock contractors, their minions and Islamic zealots like the groups above? I challenge the presidency to give the secret service agents go-ahead to conduct a sampling of Nigerians’ views on Buhari, both Moslems and Christians. They may be shocked to hear that Kukah’s statement has a huge resonance with the views of the common people on the street of Nigeria.

Wholesale and without let, virtually all the Islamic and Northern groups that came out to attack Kukah’s homily have admitted the content of his allegation that Islam and North have been convenient shields for Buhari’s mis- or zero governance. If anyone is looking for why Nigeria has retarded in decades and how characters like Buhari managed to come into leadership office and festered along the line, it is because spineless groups like the above encourage them. There is nothing that Kukah said about Buhari that is not the subsisting narrative in the public domain. Indeed, worse submissions of his directionless government are bandied about in market places. He and his administration have become such a cruel joke, so much that the rumour that a mere effigy is what is placed in Aso Rock as decorative ornament persists in public and private discourses.

The truth is that Buhari’s rudderless government has no reference in modern history. It is neither borne of his religious affiliation nor his ethnic base. It is native to him. The pains sustained from his brand of governance are religious and ethnic-blind as virtually all Nigerians, irrespective of their ethnicity or creed, feel the wrack. Buhari is just unexampled in his ill-governance and any attempt to situate him in an ethnic or religious portfolio will boomerang. Were Buhari’s visionless government to bear any ethnic or religious colouration, he would have been bothered enough to stop the volcanic destruction of his own Katsina and northern home by insecurity and banditry. He is apparently too lost in a world only he occupies.

At that critical juncture, Buhari’s lapdogs in the hue of Jama’atu Nasril Islam and the Ummah Movement suddenly found an accomplice and alibi, something in the mould of what Yoruba will call the slovenly widow who, rebuked for not taking her bath since her rites of widowhood began, blamed her filth on her husband’s death. A band of hooligans, abetted by President Donald Trump’s divisive and violence-baiting howls against the November presidential election, stormed the Capitol in what has been described as the most audacious in recent history, fouling that hallowed ground with their hubris. Trump got an impeachment for that audacity. Now, the All Progressives Congress, (APC) in a rather more-disgusting-than-amusing statement, asked that Trump should have learnt from the Buhari example. What example? Even supporters of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, whose equally lame duck government brought upon us this Buhari calamity, because Nigerians, at the polls, wanted anything other than his cluelessness, said Trump should have copied the creek-born ex-president’s pander to the whims of the ballot box. They forgot that we know that Jonathan caved in to his own effeminacy, rather than any democratic conviction.

Some Nigerian and African commentators thought Africa had found a lawless ally in the unruly Capitol Hill irritants which to them equates an American example. For instance, Zimbabwean President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, while condemning the violent protests on the US Capitol by pro-Trump rioters, said that, with such lawlessness, the US “has no moral right to punish other nations under the guise of democracy.” Mnangagwa was apparently griping from last year’s economic sanction imposed on Zimbabwe by Trump. The American President had cited concerns about Zimbabwe’s democracy. Do they know that Africa is a geriatric continental leadership where a member, Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda for 35 years now, bullied self into another contest recently and his brawn won the election. A few weeks ago, ageing Museveni – he is 76 years old – had literally placed fetish optics by the feet of Ugandans. If lying face down, in the glare of television cameras, to do a planking press-up, which to him was an affirmation that he was fit to continue ad infinitum in office, age notwithstanding, isn’t fetish, I wonder what is. What about the geriatric slumber of his governmental ideas?

Buhari, Mnangagwa and other African leaders who felt they had found comforting place of refuge to rationalize and legitimize the slide in Africa by pointing at the foiled coup at the Capitol, missed the point real good. The Capitol misadventure was a novel aberration, an American pus-oozing sore that its institutions immediately rallied round to cure. One of the ways America treated this gaping and embarrassing sore was by a legislative bi-partisan agreement to expel the putrid Donald Trump pus. In Africa, we leave such pus and wound to fester unhindered, allowing them gather gangrenous greenery. African leaders have done worse than Trump and the system turns a blind eye.

In May 2011, after losing the presidential election, Buhari, then an ex-Head of State, swore in Hausa at a press conference held in Kaduna that, “If what happens in 2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon will all be soaked in blood.” Indeed, not long after, the baboons and dogs began to be drenched in blood as the picture got clearer. Protesters loyal to him went berserk, spilling blood and Boko Haram insurgency subsequently hit the roof. Nigeria then became ungovernable for Jonathan. Yet, that same Nigerian system, with the support of its leadership, elected the self-same man as president in 2015. Since he became president, Buhari has abetted economic violence, insecurity and hopelessness by a combination of his actions and inactions in office, far tripling that of Trump, yet the system allows him to luster. And we all gather here to attack America which has since confronted its heuristic manifestations and has surely taken necessary actions to ensure that the country never walks that alley ever again?

Whenever talks about the evil and inept combine that births a leadership as Buhari’s come up for discussion, as well as the fawners who exculpate it like the Jama’atu Nasril Islam and Ummah Movement, I always liken their hatred for Nigeria and Nigerians to what I call the Philemon wound. Philemon was a character in South African writer, Can Themba’s famous and award-winning short story entitled The Suit. The story tells of Philemon, a middle-class lawyer. He had an adulterous wife called Matilda and both of them lived in Sophiatown. Devoted as Philemon was to Matilda, the latter is fond of turning his home into a tryst immediately he leaves for his office. On this particular day, Philemon is told of the escapade of his wife again. Rather than his wont of leaving for home late in the evening, Philemon sneaks home in the middle of the day. As the lawyers say, he caught his wife in flagrante with the lover. In the melee that ensued, the lover scampers out of the window but forgets his suit jacket.

To effectively deal with Matilda, Philemon then concocts a strange and bizarre punishment for her. It became a routine he spells out to Matilda. She has to behave to the suit which he hangs on the shelf as a honored guest. This involves treating it with utmost respect, feeding it, providing ample entertainment for the suit and taking a walk with it, while discussing with it as an animate object. In conceptualizing the punishment, Philemon reckons that this treatment would serve as a bitter and constant reminder to Matilda about her adultery. Remorseful, psychologically beaten and humiliated, Matilda eventually dies of shame.

Whatever Nigerians did to Buhari, he should be persuaded to please forgive us and halt this Philemon wound that his administration is inflicting on us. We apologize for our adultery of going to bed with him in 2015.

Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.

Opinions

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.