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Counting our blessings from the protests 

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Counting our blessings from the protests 

By Kunle Oyatomi

Many are wont to mourn and count their losses after a period of hostilities, conflict or bitter experience, such as Nigeria witnessed during the 10-day #EndBadGovernance protests nationwide. Well, I’m going to disappoint the reader who thinks I’ll be following that beaten track. I’m going to be like our leader, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who as he addressed his compatriots during the crisis, saw nothing but hope and fulfillment of collective dreams at the end of it all, despite the destruction and deaths that accompanied the wild riots, especially in parts of the north. Of course there were losses. I’m not ignorant about that. I can’t be like the ostrich which erroneously assumed that because it hid its head in the sea sand, all else about its body was also hidden. Wrong. I’m also not saying that we didn’t suffer casualties; but it’s turning out that from these losses, we’ve secured great gain. 

 My first insight into hope ahead came from my study of the president’s widely publicized Radio-TV address while the protests raged. He said: ’’My dear Nigerians, especially our youth, I have heard you loud and clear. I understand the pain and frustration that drive these protests, and I want to assure you that our government is committed to listening and addressing the concerns of our citizens…But we must not let violence tear our nation…Under the circumstances, I hereby enjoin protesters and the organisers to suspend any further protest and create room for dialogue, which I have always acceded to at the slightest opportunity. Nigeria requires all hands on deck and needs us all – regardless of age, party, tribe, religion or other divides, to work together in reshaping our destiny as a nation.’’ Later, the Federal Government was, through the Minister of Industry, Trade and investment, Dr. Doris Uzoka Anite, to lead us into the depth of what the nation lost to the ‘we’re hungry’ demonstrations. She declared: ‘’The loss of lives during the protests is saddening. My thoughts are with the families affected. The looting, resulting in billions lost, is a severe setback for our economy and entrepreneurs.’’ 

The Minister said Nigeria lost an estimated N500b to the crisis. Going into a few specifics, Anite said in her official X handle: ‘’…around N52 billion worth of goods were destroyed while the death toll from the protest… (was)21.” No doubt, these are grievously humongous human and economic bereavements. But, as I said at the opening of this piece, I’d not be bogged down by them; we should rather move on, encouraged by what began to emerge after the so-called days of rage. Events moved at a faster pace than the speed of the demonstrators and their sponsors.

These developments represent gains we can’t overlook. They amount to gains we must reckon with, because they far outweigh the losses. They point to a threshold of hope. Quickly, the Tinubu Administration rolled out a 10-fold initiative that gave us a silver lining at the end of what looked like a dark tunnel. These included the Student Loan, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) Initiative, Micro and Small Business Loans, Housing Initiatives, Nano-Business, and Skill-Up Artisans Programme, (SUPA). What do we discern from these projects? They target the youth and the deprived of society. In a word, they are addressing the same challenges our young people were impatiently warring against. These were not just idle propositions by the Tinubu government. Not at all, because the CNG project has since been launched by the president. 

He has just inaugurated 30 CNG buses with 3000-passenger capacity. How about the Student Loans Scheme? It has also come into effect. Only days ago, the media was awash with reports that our universities have been receiving tens of millions of naira from the federal authorities being disbursement of the loans. Now, you’d be wondering if the government hasn’t handled the issues of insecurity and food shortages. It has. The government has deployed 10000 security operatives to protect farmers from hoodlums who invade their lands and hinder productivity, thus denying the society from the benefits of food production. 

These protectors of our farmers are to operate all over the federation. Still on crime, news has just reached Nigerians that the central government, through the National Orientation Agency, NOA, has developed an application known as Mobiliser meant for youths to report crimes and criminality in their areas within their comfort zones. NOA DG, Issa Lanre-Oniru said the project has a two-fold agenda: to enable the youth have a sense of belonging and to engage them in the war against insecurity. The federal government of Bola Tinubu has also quickly moved to reverse the migration of Nigeria’s health workers to the Western Hemisphere. 

Tinubu just approved the National Policy on Health Workforce Migration to contain the challenges facing the country’s human resources in the healthcare system. The government said ‘’the policy is more than just a response to the ongoing exodus of healthcare professionals but a comprehensive strategy to manage, harness, and reverse health worker migration.’’ The Tinubu administration has also cast its attention on the industry sector, to wit, Ajaokuta Steel, a most wealth and employment generating centre, which has been left moribund for decades since it was commissioned. The government has brought in 23 advance team of Original Builders of Ajaokuta Steel Company from Russia for Technical Audit with a view to resuscitating the complex and make it viable for the benefit of Nigeria and its citizens. The Russians have already inspected several units like the thermal power plant, light mills and Oxygen Plant among others. And as international observers considered all these interventions of the Tinubu era in less than one a half years, they returned with a verdict that Nigeria now ranks as a Top Investment Destination in Africa. 

What were the yardsticks: economic performance and potential, market accessibility and innovation, economic stability and investment climate, as well as social and human development. What we deduce from all these is that although there are still challenges of foreign exchange shortages and infrastructure deficits, Nigeria is poised for a reawakening that would make it recognized as a giant not only in Africa, but also in the global space. All we need is to allow the Tinubu Administration a gestational era to be characterized by patience and cooperation on the part of the citizens.

*Oyatomi Esq. is a member of Independent Media and Policy Initiative, IMPI, Abuja.

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Osama, For Good Governance and Social Justice Through the Radio

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Osama, For Good Governance and Social Justice Through the Radio

By: Balami Lazarus

Osama. Does it ring a bell? Yes, it does on the Plateau. The Osama I am writing about is that individual who is known for his good works for humanity on the radio and outside the studio. Osama is a gentleman but is outspoken and has a mind of his own.

My Osama in this context is a personality, a brand, and a trademark. Osama is a broadcaster, radio presenter, and popular comedian on stage and in the entertainment industry in Jos-Plateau and beyond. Since the writing is sailing, I will later reveal the identity of who this young man is and why he is so passionate about good governance.

The fights for human rights, social justice, and good governance have been the cries and topic of discourse of so many Nigerians, especially good governance. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights activists are the leaders in these struggles, whereby their roles cannot be overemphasized. The quantum of spoken words, public lectures/enlightenment programs, workshops, seminars, etc., has not brought many changes in our systems because there was little or no action by you and me as Nigerians.

I remembered when I was very active in the struggle for human rights and social justice. As Deputy Secretary General (DSG) of Democratic Alternative (DA), we were much concerned with democratic alternative processes and social justice with a whiff of good governance, and this has been the case for some NGOs, as I know.

I came to understand from my experiences that, as a country, we have good public-oriented programs, but our major challenges are implementation and follow-up that come with too many talks but no individual action or collective responsibility because many Nigerians are fearful, and this has made me a one-man advocate/crusader for human rights and social justice. Like the subject of this work.

Now back to the subject. Osama is a brand package, fearless advocate, and mouthpiece for good governance on the Plateau through Town Hall, a popular radio program aired by JFM 101.9 FM. Jos is widely listened to. He was born as Ehis Akugnonu. But Osama has overtaken his certified name. Therefore, my continued use of Osama is justified in this work because I realized that many times your other name (also known as) tends to dominate and overshadow your real name.

Osama is redefining the fight for good governance by personal efforts through follow-up and speaking on them, putting the government on their feet to improve and do better. ‘I am for good governance, and I will continue to speak on this matter.’ He is purposefully driven by his passion for good quality and better systems to have an enabling environment where the systems are working for progress and development.

Balami, a publisher/columnist 08036779290

Osama, For Good Governance and Social Justice Through the Radio

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In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying Ignoring Red Flags and The Panacea (2)

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In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying Ignoring Red Flags and The Panacea (2)

By: Balami Lazarus

I saw it coming. As a writer, my works and I have been verbally attacked several times. I raised an eyebrow at how some readers react by using bad language on issues, opinions, and views. Well, that is their way of expression when they are displeased, but I feel it is grotty.

And here is the conclusion of the “controversial piece,” as one caller puts it. For me, there is nothing controversial about this discourse but the truth of the grotesque happenings in married homes. And the way out, as I earlier wrote, is divorce.

Recently there has been an inflation of brutal murders in marriages; those killed are mostly women and children, and fewer men. What justification does one have to continue in a marriage where there are threats, violence, and unhappiness generated by the presence of either the husband or the wife? And unknowingly one becomes prey hunted by an in-house predator.

Sharks areamong the most intelligent aquatic animals. Their sense of smell is very sharp; they can smell and detect blood or any red object in water from a far distance and come for it at near the speed of light. Therefore, women’s body chemistry is like that of sharks; they sense and notice things easily. But what is wrong with many of them in marriage that they are unable to detect landmines or red flags early in their marriages? Where there is a threat to life with the intention to hurt, harm, and/or cause grievous injury or death, that is when they realize they are living in gross bondage if they are lucky to come out of it alive.

As students at Pluto College Sharam in Kanke-Plateau State, we were told and made to understand as boys to treat our girl students with love and care and be there for them when the need arises. That was one of the lessons that came from the late Dr. Sumaila Ndayako (Rector), as he was known and called. As boys, we dared not humiliate, insult, or threaten them in any way; rather, we were to take them as our sisters by extension. This has taught me to respect and care for the opposite sex.

Moreover, my association, membership, and experience with some human rights organizations have enlightened me with rights, liberties, and freedom garnished by respect for individual differences, rights and privileges, consent, and action. With this knowledge put together, I consider marriage never a do-or-die affair but a privilege with consent to be a husband to a woman who also has rights/consent to be a wife and live in matrimony. Why then humiliation, abuses, and domestic violence?

I have observed in my experience as a married man that if you take away some women from their husbands, they will die, and vice versa. Despite the domestic violence and abuses inflicted on either party, he/she is willing and prefers to die in such gothic marriage situations because one among them has a deep spiritual attachment to the marriage. This is common in Christendom, where “till death do us part.” My question here is, what kind of death? Intentional, accidental, or natural? This created injunction clause does not hold water in life-threatening marriages.

Living in a shark-jaws marriage, I always blamed women who had seen the red flags but refused to leave such marriages and the house-husband (husband). I further came to understand that patience and the pretext that all is well have caused damage to both spouses in terms of emotional and traumatic agonies and some to their graves.

Therefore, spouses that are trapped in this valley of death with its quagmire should know that marriage is a thing of choice. Likewise, divorce is permissible as a panacea for both to be alive to breathe freely.

Balami, a publisher/columnist, 0803677929

In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying Ignoring Red Flags and The Panacea (2)

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In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying, Ignoring Red Flags, and The Panacea (1)

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In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying, Ignoring Red Flags, and The Panacea (1)

By: Balami Lazarus

In the quite beautiful town of Zhimbutu, where men held sway, lording over their wives, some with brutality, few with love,

care and romance others in different ways. While some women are also lords over their husbands with impunity. Fear of getting married gripped young ladies seeing the ways their mothers were being treated and relegated to the background in the affairs of their homes as married women.

The home of Mr. and Mrs. Kwanchinkwalo Xhosa is full of regrets, anger, and bitterness, where Mrs. Xhosa has been treated as an object in the marriage partnership. The red spots were obviously fermented with bubbles ready for brewing.

Similarly, some good number of marriage homes are full of regrets where love, peace, and understanding

and harmony are strangers rejected and kept in a labyrinth of doom where one of the parties is placed in a perpetual tan of unhappiness surrounded by fear in the thickness of smoke, a forced resident.

Long before, now as a young man, a legitimate product of marriage. I took marriage as a mere secular social contract of partnership bounded in love and understanding where two have agreed to live together as husband and wife in matrimony.

However, I have never taken marriage to be a do-or-die affair, which has been the stock of some persons, even when and if the two—husband and wife—can no longer live together, having exhausted reasonable avenues to no avail. Here I am.

for outright divorce as a panacea for the final dissolution of the marriage.

To this day, I have been asking myself, why did I even get married in the first place? For sex, procreation, companionship, norms, tradition, or obligation? While marriage to a larger extent has deprived me and many others of some air of freedom and liberties to do or not to do at any space of time, I suppose. Moreover, the enterprise called marriage has taken away the ‘who’ in many men and

women and made them something else. It has further forcefully taken the lives of many spouses who ignored the red flags and fear of divorce. And besides, many have taken upon themselves to live or die in an unhappy/venomous venture of marriage that is infested with ‘dysentery’ and ‘cholera,’ where death is lurking because husbands or wives lack the guts, will , ability, and/or capacity to invoke the dead-end solution.

Let me now punctuate the work with some questions: Were you forced into it? Was it under duress? Was it at gunpoint? I believed the answers were all no. What will then prevent an individual from liquidating his unprofitable marital interest in such an intense business called marriage to be free from wahala that may likely result in crime?

In such a situation, I advocate for divorce as the only and final panacea, which has a comfortable place as a clause in my dictionary of marriage. Divorce is rarely used in some quarters, no matter what. While my wife and I have sincerely agreed in the course of our marriage journey that at any point in time, with or without any reason/cause, either party can quietly and peacefully walk out of the marriage to avoid who knows what?

In the history of failed marriages and crime findings, it has been shown that one of the parties is forcing his/herself on the other spouse because one of them has a profound and compounded emotional or spiritual attachment to the marriage. The case of the late Mrs. Osinachi Nwachukwu (2023), the gospel singer, was a classical example. Patience and excessive spiritual attachment led to her being killed by her husband, one Mr. Nwachukwu. The same is also applicable to men who fall victim in the hands of their wives. This situation has created two prime suspected killers living in a marriage cocoon.

Balami, a publisher/columnist. 08036779290

In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying, Ignoring Red Flags, and The Panacea (1)

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