Business
THE WAYS TO NIGERIA’S PRESENT CRIMINAL REVOLUTION. by Chief Bisi Akande,
- (Chairman at the presentation of the book, “Nigeria : the Path We Refused to Take” by Basorun Seinde Arogbofa, in Akure on Tuesday, 25th July, 2017.)
We gather here today to present a book titled “Nigeria: The Path We Refused to Take” by Basorun Seinde Arogbofa. To me, it is a pleasure and a privilege to be asked to chairman this occasion and I have, therefore, chosen to talk, not on the path we refused to take, but on the path of misadventure that led Nigeria to the present ugly crossroads.
The military involvements in politics for twenty-nine years out of Nigeria’s fifty-seven years of independence has drawn back and miniaturized the sense of democracy and good governance among Nigerian political leaders so much that political discussions are no longer issue-based or interesting. This situation becomes very dangerous for the future of our society -particularly among the growing youths on whom the likes of Seinde Arogbofa are labouring so much to restructure intellectually.
A cardinal point in teacher education is that adolescence represents life’s transition when youths want to be like adults but they lack the confidence and the experience of selecting options among changing circumstances and for confronting challenges arising from varying universal problems. Apart from relatively few science students who perform token experiments of knowledge in their science laboratories, all other youths, including those having no advantage of going to school now, in Nigeria, largely find themselves inadvertently doing experiments of their knowledge among the societies of ‘yahoo-yahoo boys’, drug pushers, ‘419 advanced fraudsters’, ‘boko-harams’, ‘badoo ritual killers’ cults’, militant-terrorists, and several other gangs of hoodlums.
This situation of violent criminality and insecurity with the incidences of waves of armed robberies, kidnappings, ritual killings, cattle rustlings, suicide bombings and treasury looting has exerted so much pressures on our security agents that cases like pickpocketing, shoplifting, knife crimes, raping, burglary and other common misdemeanors have totally become trivialised as mere pranks or jokes too insignificant for police attention.
Already, the military that brought those situations to Nigeria have moved back to their barracks. Nigeria is left helplessly choosing newbreed leaders from among the youths who are struggling out, directly or indirectly, from the influence of the various societies of criminal gangs. All other emerging gentleman professionals, who are not in politics, are fast becoming grumblers and self-declared ‘misfits’ in most Nigerian societies, wondering if Nigeria can ever return to its old glories and workable attractions. They, in the meantime, are imagining where would be the place for their own children being presently brought up from elite environments.
The Nigerian newbreed elected and selected leaders, judging from their societal backgrounds described above, find it difficult to be aware that Nigeria is ten years backward in road assets: it has 193,000 kilometers of bad roads instead of 300,000 of well paved roads; it requires not less than one trillion Nara annually to probably catch up by 2025. Some of the newbreed elected leaders do not even appreciate that the 60,000 kilometers of roads that are being claimed to have been paved out of Nigeria’s present 193,000 kilometers of bad roads have already been taken over by pot-holes. Such leaders are crowded in State capitals and Abuja, bluffing the rest of us at our roadless villages with fleets of exotic cars under their control.
These our newbreed psychedelic elected and selected leaders need to listen attentively to the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors who recently declared that the Nigerian Federal Government alone would need some three trillion naira annually to fix its infrastructural deficits. With the zig-zag production and fluctuating prices of crude oil, these newbreed elected and selected leaders have not convinced themselves as to where this huge money would be found to define Nigeria’s future economic trajectories, but they are constantly and breathlessly battling for constituency project allowances.
The country representative of UNICEF in Nigeria, Mr Muhammed Fall, was reported, recently by Freedom Online media, to have put Nigerian children who are not attending Primary school at 10.5million. At 35 pupils per classroom, 300,000 class rooms and 300,000 additional teachers are needed if their parents can be convinced to send them to schools.
Many of Nigeria’s elected and selected newbreed leaders come from such cultures where sending children to school is abhorred and they remain comfortable with that.
In our days, Western Nigerian parents’ resistance to sending children to school was resolutely battled and degraded by the Obafemi Awolowo administration. Awolowo’s government thoughtfully opened technical schools, schools of agriculture, farm settlements and a marketing board for farm produce price stabilization. By making agriculture very profitable and beneficial for the developments of his people in the West, Awolowo made it so attractive that there was full youth employment. Even at a time, the Nigerian Federal Government was owing Awolowo’s administration in the Western Region a huge debt from the proceeds of farm commodities. That was why demands for revenue allocation by derivations (now being compared with ‘resource control’) was melodious in his political music.
Robert Mugabe was somewhere quoted to have said “How do you convince the upcoming generations that education is the key to success when we are surrounded by poor graduates and rich criminals?” This aptly describes the situation the military’s involvements in politics and the 1999 constitution have hoisted on Nigeria too.
Nigeria began as a controversial state of many nations. The 1999 Constitution is Nigeria’s greatest misadventure since Lugard’s amalgamation of 1914. The constitution puts emphasis on spending rather than making money, thereby intensifying the battles for supremacy between the legislature and the executive while the judiciary is being corruptly tainted and discredited. The constitution breeds and protects corrupt practices and criminal impunities in governance. The 1999 Constitution can never be beneficially reviewed and the ongoing piecemeal adjustments or amendments can only totally blot the essence of national values and accelerate the de-amalgamation of Nigeria. All the angels coming from heavens cannot make that constitution work for the progress of Nigeria. It should only be scrapped as a bad relics of military mentality; and it ought to be temporarily replaced with the 1963 Republican Constitution to enable a transition for the writing of a suitable constitution.
Otherwise, the 1999 constitution would continue to dwarf Nigeria’s economy and stifle the country’s social structure pending a disastrous and catastrophic bankruptcy.
Ladies and gentlemen, the search for a better future has now become a function for every Nigerian because criminal revolution can lead to chaotic revolution over which no one has control.
It is my prayer for us all to fare well on our way out of the country’s present sorry pass.
Bisi Akande
NNPCL and Corruption’s Final Throes
By Pius Olasanmi
In the twilight of the Obasanjo administration, when Nigerians were still capable of being outraged, when Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries was a buzzword that still held some mysticism to bamboozle citizens, during a conversation, a certain man said something profound. The man said, “As a businessman, if I were the owner of these refineries, knowing that they are three decades old, I would take the last money I have, hire bulldozers, raze them to the ground, and obtain loans to build new ones.”
When we pressed him further on why he would engage in such waste, he explained that repairing the refineries is the real waste. He explained that even if the TAM were honestly carried out, a thirty-year-old refinery would never compete favourably with a new one that would integrate contemporary technology. Operating at its best, such a refinery would never be comparatively more efficient. It is therefore pointless to have spent another one naira on the refineries at that point.
A few months later, I had a conversation with a then-lawmaker on an entirely different matter. I mentioned that the National Assembly has failed by not crafting legislation that would criminalise and punish public office holders who foist wrong decisions on the country. The logic: a public office holder need not steal to be punished, wrong decisions should attract penalties for an office holder who opts for the worst of all options when there are less injurious ones.
These established premises speak to the ongoing nauseating efforts at revisionism by those who wrecked the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and its previous iteration, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Notably, this campaign to rewrite history is traceable to Engineer Mele Kolo Kyari, the disgraced immediate past Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL and his hirelings. They have suffocated the news and the public opinion space with even more lies than they spun while in office.
The Saint Kyari campaign is anchored on convincing Nigerians that the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna Refineries were fully functional when he was booted out of office. So brazen is the campaign that one of its talking heads challenged the group chief executive officer (GCEO), Engr. Bayo Ojulari, to “inform Nigerians categorically what happened to the functioning refineries he inherited from his predecessor, Engr. Mele Kyari.” The effrontery.
We have not forgotten so soon the charade that followed the baffling claim that Nigeria has spent $2.8 billion on the repair of the refineries, while they are not churning out even a single litre of refined product among them. Saint Kyari and his goons played all manner of tricks, all of which embarrassed President Bola Tinubu, who had counted on ticking off the return to productivity of the refineries as part of his achievements, only to realise that he was deceived into celebrating phantoms. Tragic.
Lest we forget, 200 trucks were arranged as props in a well-directed video clip to celebrate the re-streaming of the Port Harcourt Refinery. The disappointment. Nigerians were to learn from several reports that the Port Harcourt refinery was not producing and was instead using old, stored petroleum products to load trucks. Worse still, the Kyari crew was passing off sanction-tainted Russian-sourced crude oil refined in Malta as locally refined products. More insult was piled on the assault on our collective sensibility with the lies that the Port Harcourt Refinery exported semi-finished products. Brazen.
Meanwhile, Kyari and his hirelings called those who pointed out or protested these glaring scams all manner of names. They hid behind industry technicalities and jargon to create the impression that those of us who knew Nigerians were being robbed did not understand what we were saying. The point remains that a $2.8 billion investment can potentially build a refinery with a capacity of around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Of course, the actual capacity of such a refinery will depend on various factors, including the complexity of the refinery, the technology used, and the location. That is the amount that Kyari’s regime at the NNPCL took and did not give Nigerians refined products.
Fast forward to Kyari’s sack and the appointment of Engineer Bayo Ojulari, who has demonstrated that things can indeed be done differently. Kyari’s exit was expectedly followed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) going after him and his associates. The extent of the theft is better understood against the backdrop of N80 billion being found in the bank account of one of his associates. They went on the run.
Perhaps because the EFCC was biding its time on securing international warrants for the arrests of these characters on the lam, they have become emboldened. They have decided to fight back and rewrite the story of their participation in the greatest fraud against Nigerians. Engineer Ojulari’s renewed mindset, which is entrenching a semblance of the transparency Nigerians demand, became their natural target. The demons that once roamed around the corporation came out with malevolence. They started spinning stories of corruption to tarnish the incumbent who refused to hide their crimes. The objective: bring Ojulari down. But alas, he is winning the war as it stands.
His innocence is proven, and it is glaring that those who want him out are mere charlatans who can no longer ply their corrupt wares because of the impact of the new reforms. Corruption in the NNPCL is in its final throes. The fake news being unleashed against the incumbent leadership is akin to corruption’s last kicks as reforms in the sector strangulate it and its practitioners. The reforms must take place in the NNPCL, whether the industry demons like it or not.
As a parting shot, Kyari and his associates would do well to prepare their defence. In addition to accounting for the $2.8 billion they laundered in the name of repairing the moribund refineries, they must also answer for the poor decision to fix that which is irretrievably broken. Awarding contracts for Turn Around Maintenance of 59-year-old refineries that a right-thinking person had suggested should be demolished almost twenty years ago, when they were only 30 years old, is criminal. Trying to deceive Nigerians that the fake repairs worked is treason.
Olasanmi is a public affairs analyst writing from Lagos.
GRANDIS 5STAR LUXURY APARTMENT & SUITES SET TO REDEFINE LIVING IN VICTORIA ISLAND
Set to Rise elegantly against the Lagos skyline, is the Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites. According to Adejuwon Ademola, The General Manager of the Development company, it is more than just a residential building
“it’s a lifestyle statement. Standing 17 floors high in the heart of Victoria Island, this revolutionary masterpiece of modern architecture will offer a panoramic 360° view of Eko Atlantic, Victoria Island, and Ikoyi, transforming every apartment into an exclusive penthouse experience for the world’s most discerning elite.”
Developed by Dumarco Construction Limited, a globally acclaimed company with decades of delivering complex, high-value projects in the highly regulated petroleum, oil, and gas industries, Grandis 5Star brings unmatched international safety standards, uncompromising quality, and timeless elegance into Nigeria’s luxury property market.
> “When you live in Grandis, you’re not just buying a home—you’re investing in peace of mind, world-class safety, and an effortless luxury experience that will remain pristine for decades,” says Adejuwon A. Ademola, General Manager of Dumarco Construction Limited.
The Gold Standard in Safety and Quality
Dumarco’s roots in the oil and gas sector mean the company operates to some of the strictest safety protocols in the world. Every stage—from conceptualization, design, construction, to long-term maintenance—follows internationally accepted procedures and quality assurance measures. Cutting corners is simply not in Dumarco’s vocabulary.
> “In the oil and gas industry, there’s no room for compromise. We’ve brought that same discipline and zero-tolerance for mediocrity into property development,” says Ademola. “That’s why Grandis will be one of the safest and most enduring residential developments in Nigeria.”
To ensure transparency and prevent (project complacency), Dumarco deliberately separates the developer, contractor, and consultant roles, engaging only the most competent professionals in each respective field. Dumarco’s project team includes globally recognized contractors such as Julius Berger, Cappa & D’Alberto, and Elalan, Migliore Construczione & Tecniche (MC&T) and their partners VENCO IMTIAZ CONTRACTING COMPANY (VICC) based in Dubai, UAE, Business Contracting Limited, alongside leading consultants like Morgan Omanitan & Abe, LAMBERT, and James Cubitt.
Grandis – Investments, appreciation, returns and profitability
Our selection process for the location of the project alone was pains-taking and completely thorough scientific process. Top professional companies were employed to conduct a scientific data acquisition and analytical survey of the entire Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki and Eko Atlantic before a project site is selected. Analyzing and acquiring areas developmental charts and trends, studying and gathering historical and present sale prices, rental charge and occupancy rates over a 50 year period from every individual street before the selection of the location of any of our developments especially true for the Grandis Project
He adds,
“Our clients and residents can be rest assured that the location of Grandis has been scientifically proven through all existing data to provide our clients with a 100% occupancy rate, highest developmental location, highest rental income and investment returns. ”
The Grandis Experience
Located minutes away from international corporate headquarters, embassies, and landmarks such as Eko Hotel, Radisson Blu, and the Radisson Red, Grandis offers unmatched convenience for professionals, diplomats, and high-net-worth individuals. Every residence is designed for both indulgence and efficiency, with high-grade finishes, smart-home systems, and private amenities that ensure seamless living.
From sunrise over the Atlantic to the glittering Lagos night skyline, residents will enjoy uninterrupted luxury, supported by discreet and highly trained staff, advanced security systems, and a design that prioritizes comfort and privacy.
> “We designed Grandis for people who want everything—security, elegance, convenience, and the assurance that their home will look as spectacular in 20 years as it does on day one,” Ademola notes.
A Legacy That Lasts
With its combination of visionary architecture, peerless safety, and meticulous maintenance planning, Grandis is built to remain iconic for generations. Thanks to Dumarco’s meticulous approach, the building’s service charges are expected to remain low while its value and appeal continue to appreciate over time.
In a market often marred by shortcuts and substandard practices, Mr Ademola says
Grandis stands as a beacon of what luxury living should be—safe, spectacular, and built to last.
“Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites — Where safety meets sophistication, and every detail is designed for a life well-lived.”
He added
Website -www.dumarcoltd.com
Project website – www.26idowutaylor.com
Email [email protected]
Tel / WhatsApp +234 9077777883
GM – Adejuwon A. Ademola
Tinubu Overhauls NTA Leadership: Media Powerhouse Rotimi Pedro Takes Helm as DG
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has announced a major shake-up at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), appointing renowned media executive Rotimi Richard Pedro as the new Director-General in a move widely seen as a bold step toward modernising the state broadcaster.
Pedro, a Lagos native, brings nearly 30 years of expertise in broadcasting, sports rights, and marketing communications across Africa, the UK, and the Middle East. A trained entertainment and intellectual property lawyer, he also holds an MSc in Investment Management and Finance from City University Business School, London.
In 1995, Pedro founded Optima Sports Management International (OSMI), which rose to become one of Africa’s leading sports content providers—distributing premium events such as the English Premier League, UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, and CAF competitions to audiences in over 40 countries.
His career highlights include top roles at Bloomberg Television Africa and Rapid Blue Format, as well as advisory work for FIFA, UEFA, Fremantle Media, and the African Union of Broadcasters (AUB). At the AUB, he was instrumental in securing exclusive pan-African free-to-air media rights for all CAF competitions.
Alongside Pedro’s appointment, Tinubu named Karimah Bello from Katsina State as Executive Director of Marketing, Stella Din from Plateau State as Executive Director of News, and Sophia Issa Mohammed from Adamawa State as Managing Director of NTA Enterprises Limited.
Industry insiders credit Pedro with building commercially viable broadcast platforms, driving sponsorship growth, and delivering world-class content to African audiences. His appointment marks one of the most significant leadership changes at NTA in years—signalling the government’s intent to strengthen the broadcaster’s competitiveness in a fast-evolving media landscape.
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