Author: Martins Oloja

MEDIA veteran Martins Oloja’s piece on “Five Tactical Errors Tinubu Must Clear” dated September 7, 2024 is scintillating as usual. I don’t know that any journalist in Nigeria has achieved the mastery and understanding of how government runs like him (unless of course Azikiwe but he was just a titular president.) He’s certainly a top governmental expert ironically from without. I am highlighting a few more errors of my own in the spirit of helping a nation in doldrums especially as they were not addressed in the president’s broadcast. 1. THE DAM DAMAGE The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning,…

LET’S continue with the vital questions to our leaders in Western Nigeria on the points at issue in this serial – curious systemic failure (in Yoruba land). As I concluded last week, we need to continue this serial to ask the southwest leaders to pinpoint the future-ready constituency projects they have implemented since 1999 when we set off this unbroken democracy. Here is the thing, before they begin to celebrate the meretricious South-west Development Commission they have just conjured, we need to interrogate their legacies. As I noted in the 2018 preface to this serial, the power of the budgeting…

LET’S leave Abuja, federal powers and other federalism haters this week again and continue with some self-examination of our Western region we have been celebrating as the pacesetter region that sits on a hill that can’t be hidden. We need to use the passage of the South West Development Commission (SWDC) Bill this week to ask questions from leading lights of a region that is supposed to be the light of the black people of the world, Nigeria. Here is the real question, what has the region done with the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission set up since…

I WAS in Akure this week for a significant colloquium on the power of local government elections in a democracy that should ordinarily trigger development agenda. Specifically, the Chairman of the Ondo State’s Independent Electoral Commission, (ODIEC) Joseph Aremo, PhD, associate professor of Law, invited me to speak on ‘Voter Education, Civic Competence and Role of Stakeholders’ in the Local Government Election, which comes up early next year. The (two-day) sensitisation workshop for political parties and key election stakeholders under the theme: ‘Election Stakeholders, Grassroots Democracy and Good Governance’ afforded us an opportunity to speak some truths to powers. The…

IT is another time to relive the consequences of ‘the writing on the wall’ that our former leader, Muhammadu Buhari did not bother to read when the oracle drew his attention to it on Sunday February 16, 2020. The then President didn’t like anyone raising any alarms around him, even if they were of national security dimension. Anyway, there are records that the Daura strong man didn’t end well as the bogeyman of the Buhari era is still here with us. The writing has appeared again for Buhari’s organic successor. It is believed that he can’t afford to ignore the…

PERMIT me to reintroduce myself to those who may not understand why I have decided to write on detected ‘tactical errors’ the presidency needs to clear for the majesty of democracy to emerge in Africa’s most populous country. In the last 36 years of my journalistic legwork, I have covered nine (9) Heads of State and Presidents of Nigeria before our current leader emerged. And so I think in all modesty, I can look into the seeds of our presidential times and advise on how to clear some tactical, tragic or even strategic errors of any serving president of our…

‘THERE is a time for everything…’ as the ancient word reveals to us. I dedicated the last two weeks to ‘Why Teachers Too Should Get 300% Pay Rise’. I promised to continue this week but this is a time to look at a weightier matter of teaching – the socio-economic challenge that is threatening the foundation of tertiary education in Nigeria. Most of the media organs have been raising alarms on how unbearable electricity bills have begun to cripple academic and non-academic activities in Nigerian universities and polytechnics. Sadly, instead of managing the threat to our development as a priority,…

AS I promised while rounding off last week, we would have to continue with the discussion points here on how to ensure that we borrow some brilliance from some Nordic countries, especially Finland where they dignify and reward teachers more than their judicial officers and other civil servants. Talking about significant Reward Package for Teachers may have been a very stale and laughable subject in our country at the moment I would like to remind our leaders and the ruling class that it is one of the issues that should ordinarily dominate even parliamentary debates in the context of nation…

IT is another time to freeze our fixation on to many political stories and focus on some consequential governance issues that make or mar the future of Africa’s most populous nation that the black race too has been waiting for as a source of pride and confidence. Thankfully, we no longer wonder that why the leadership of the Senate would continue to deceive the people that employed them about their remuneration package. The truth they all attempted to use the media to hide in a grave could not stay there. At least one them has confirmed what they all tried…

AS we await manifestation of a litany of promises of renewed and deferred hope, we can also begin to reflect on where the rain that has been beating us since 1999 actually began. I reflected on the rainmakers on an unusual beat the other day in Lagos. On Saturday August 3, 2024, there was a significant memorial service in Oregun, Ikeja Lagos, which brought together two of our prominent and significant citizens. It was a memorial service in honour of the late Dr. David Olayinka Oloruntoba (June 14, 1961 – February 14, 2024. The orthopedic surgeon who had set up…

AS I was saying, let’s continue with our concentration on a promised serial on the limitless opportunities that the Livestock Subsector offers all of us instead of the bugbear of consequences of the planned #August 1-10 Peaceful Protest on Hardship” that some politically exposed people are disparaging instead of managing through some strategic public relations mechanism. And here is the thing, instead of blaming phantom foreign interests and enemies, some of the president’s men and women should engage in critical thinking such as studying afresh what some experts and public intellectuals have suggested on how to promote Agriculture value chain…

THE age-long challenge of ‘information overload’ is beginning to affect us in this part of the world and our leaders at all levels are exploiting it to prevent people from deepening understanding of the multifarious challenges they daily ignore in the context of their primary responsibility – security and welfare of the people. Yes, ‘information overload’, that blight, which can be seen as the excess information available to a person aiming to complete a task or make decision. This new challenge to mankind, which now impedes the decision-making process, daily results in poor (or even no) decision being made –…

AS Editor of “The Guardian” in 2014 when he clocked 80, I did a 16-page special edition, a wrap-around on Wole Soyinka, the legend. I wanted to write a Special “Inside Stuff” Tribute on the Nobel laureate as he clocks 90 today. But when I found the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature Presentation Speech on W.S by Professor Lars Gyllensten, of the Swedish Academy, a writer’s block overwhelmed me. So, I am presenting to you a greater ‘outside stuff’, a classic on Professor Soyinka, I mean what you may not have read or have forgotten about the proudly Nigerian literary…

ALIKO Dangote doesn’t need any introduction to Nigerians and indeed Africans. He is generally believed to be the richest man in Africa and his wealth is from entrepreneurship and investment that can be fact-checked. He isn’t one of those the iconic Mahatma Ghandhi once classified as “sinners” who become “wealthy without work”. He has become a global citizen of Nigerian extraction. But today isn’t a day to talk about Dangote’s profile. I am quite curious and concerned about what he has been lamenting about. I think it is important for us as informed citizens to do some contextual reporting about…

LET us pray that our leaders who are quite resourceful at causing distractions would not exploit the CNN presidential debate tragedy in the United States where they have a tale of two strange candidates from both dominant parties to take some steam out of the current significant lessons from Nairobi, Kenya, Africa. Yes, our leaders’ cyber soldiers are everywhere, blasting social commentators who don’t praise their under-performing principals. Let’s hope that the loud echoes from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda will arrest their attention this time. Let’s believe that they will realise now that it is a small world of transparency…

IT is expected that our people, notably our leaders and the elite who attended the inauguration of President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second term last week are following political developments in South Africa where institutions of governance and democracy are deepening democracy for development at the moment. I hope our big men in Abuja who watched the inauguration live on global networks have taken their time to study the South Africa’s 2024 election as a process, not just the simple but short and impressive inauguration at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. I would like to continue with the deconstruction of…

AFTER watching all the shenanigans, peccadillos, frills and thrills of the strange Democracy Day June 12, 2024 last week, I had wanted to write on the inconclusive list of ‘Heroes of Democracy” President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s historians drew up and made public on May 29, 2024. I wanted to deconstruct the list, which markedly diminished the democratic landmark as an event rather than a process. I intended to reveal from my June 12 “diary of a debacle” as Professor Olatunji Dare’s book on the subject calls it, and list more significant “Heroes of June 12 Debacle” that the Tinubu Government…

WHILE still basking in the glory of realising a lifetime ambition in March 2023 as president-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu had then assured Nigerians that his administration would not only be a government of national unity but also of national competence. Specifically, there was a statement to that effect on March 16, 2023. In that remarkable message, there was a glimmer of “hope of a better tomorrow” Ngugi says, “is the only comfort you can give to a weeping child”. As I was saying here, in what looks like Buhari’s “I-Belong-to-no-body” famous speech on inauguration day on May 29, 2015,…

I HAD planned to continue with the conclusions of my reflections on the chaotic presidency of our current leader especially when the presidential communications office touched off more chaos last week on the eve of their first year in office and 25 years of unbroken democratic dispensation. Most of my valued readers including some respected scholars had earlier advised me to continue to suggest to the chief executive of the federation on how to fix the chaos his leadership style has triggered. I had a draft until two related issues arising from the chaos in the presidency led to fresh…

THE Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration that will clock one on Wednesday this week has been both historic and chaotic. And so for the love of our country, as some will be praying for the administration, others will be speaking in tongues about management of expectations and strategies, some of us on the beat of public affairs commentary should do what the chief executive of the federation needs most at this time: writing on truthsome of the reputation managers would like to hide in a grave. The trouble with hiding truth in a grave is that it won’t stay there (grave)…