Cloned Nigerian Anchor

Author: Wale Alonge

LG Autonomy Must Become Nigeria’s 1964 Civil Rights Fight

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration will be remembered—for good or ill—for its bold systemic reforms: the removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of the Naira. But perhaps the most consequential, destiny-shaping, and legacy-defining reform is the pursuit of local government autonomy.

Sadly, its importance is largely unappreciated. We live in survival mode. Nigerians worry about what to eat today, not about distant reforms whose benefits may not be seen tomorrow. Fuel subsidy removal and naira floating shook people at the existential level; hence they dominate the headlines. But local government autonomy—though quieter—has the potential to change Nigeria’s governance forever.

The Bold Supreme Court Route

Unlike subsidy removal, which Tinubu casually announced in his inaugural speech, he knew local government autonomy could not pass through the legislature. As a former governor, he understood the enormous grip governors hold over senators and representatives. Any such bill would have been dead on arrival. He therefore chose the unconventional but brilliant route—through the Supreme Court. That singular move reveals how monumental the reform is.

Governors Will Not Give Up Without a Fight

Across Nigeria today, governors are doing everything possible to frustrate implementation. They will not give up their honeypot fiefdoms without a titanic fight. Local government allocations are their oxygen, their war chest, their piggy bank.
Osun State shows us how consequential this struggle is: the government and opposition are locked in a fight-to-the-finish over who controls local government funds. Neither side can afford to lose. Only the suffering masses lose.
Governors in Nigeria are among the most powerful people on the continent. They are political Santa Clauses, distributing patronage to the loyal and punishment to dissenters. Even powerful cultural organizations such as Afenifere and Ohaneze tread carefully—they too want their share of the goodies. Nobody dares to fall into the bad books of a governor.
This is why only a handful of so-called “crazies” and “knuckleheads” dare to take them on. But truth be told, the battle for local government autonomy is not a fringe struggle—it is our collective struggle.

Nigeria’s Civil Rights Moment

Just as Black Americans in 1964 rose to demand their civil rights against systemic denial, Nigerians must rise to demand true local government autonomy. This is our civil rights moment.
Why? Because local government is the only tier of government closest to the people. It is where the school roofs collapse, where rural roads decay, where health centers go without medicine, and where farmers are either empowered or abandoned. Without local government autonomy, development remains centralized in the hands of governors who dictate winners and losers.

Community Efforts Are Not Enough

In Ijesaland, we have set up a Local Government Monitoring Committee. It is a commendable step, but let us be honest: such committees are like trying to stop a raging elephant with needles. They lack constitutional power to enforce accountability. Governors and their parties control who contests local elections, and unsurprisingly, they always win in landslides. Community monitoring is better than nothing, but it cannot uproot entrenched abuse.

Freedom Is Never Given Freely

Let us be clear: governors will never willingly surrender control of local government allocations. Asking them to do so is like asking a pig to abandon its muddy pond. It will not happen voluntarily.
To wrestle power away requires nothing less than a civil rights–style movement. Freedom is never handed down. It must be fought for, demanded, and seized.
If Nigerians are serious about grassroots development, accountability, and true democracy, then we must treat local government autonomy as our 1964. Afenifere, COYN, and other activist communities can help mobilize, but the power must come from ordinary Nigerians who refuse to be shut out of their own governance.

Conclusion

Tinubu may have taken the boldest step by going through the Supreme Court. But without citizen action, governors will suffocate the reform. This fight is not about Tinubu, APC, or PDP—it is about the people versus the political elite.
Local government autonomy is not just another policy tweak—it is the foundation of genuine democracy and development in Nigeria.
The governors will not give it up. The people must rise up and take it. This must become Nigeria’s 1964.

Adewale Alonge, PhD, Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

09/04/2025
President Trump’s visa revocation policy against Nigerians

… A bullying tactic in an incoherent geopolitical game of Throne

Wale Alonge

It is beyond ludicrous, the reason purportedly given by the US consular office for the recent revocation of visas already issued to Nigerians. When did Nigeria and Nigerians become a national security threat from which America and Americans must be protected?

In term of contribution to America’s economy as measured by GDP, number of patents, contribution to technological innovations, to academia as measured by number of published articles in reputable academic journals and numbers of leading professionals in critical areas to American economy from medicine and health care delivery, to the finance and fintech sector, to academia and many others, Nigerians rank among probably the top three of all immigrant community in the USA.

Like his Tariff policy, President Trump is weaponizing immigration and visa issuance as retaliatory tools in pursuit of his incoherent foreign policy agenda and enemy list.

With the warm embrace between Presidents Lula of Brazil and Tinubu during his recent state visit, Nigeria and Nigerians should be prepared for more visa revocation and other retaliatory policy measures. Brazil has become enemy number one for Trump and he Trump seeks to interfere in Brazil’s domestic policy in the court case against its erstwhile dictator wannabe Trumpian Bosenario.

Additionally Brazil is one of the arrowheads of BRICS which Nigeria has signified interest in its membership.

What President Trump is underestimating in his blunt and bullish use of American power, is the power of national power and pride. It was on full display in his now iconic Oval Office verbal brawl with seemingly weak, outmatched and cornered Ukrainian President Zelensky who stood up boldly to Trump and his tag team refusing to subject Ukraine national pride to bullying by Trump.

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Trumps’s Visa crackdown linked to Nigeria’s refusal to house asylum seekers

Nation states have almost inexhaustible elastic pain tolerance when it comes to defending their national pride and sovereignty. It is the only logical reason Ukraine is still standing against all odd from Russian bombardment just like Great Britain did against Nazi German bombardment during world war 2.

Trump will soon learn like other bullies that the game is over once you stand up to them. President Trump needs to know that diplomacy is a very nauced delicate game of carrot and stick, overuse either of the two, you lose.

In the words of incomparable Maya Angelou

You can revoke Nigerian visas. You may even impose punitive tariff. You may trod us in the very dirt
But still, like dust, Nigeria Will rise.

Sadly for America, a country that I love and to whom I have pledged my loyalty as a naturalized citizen for decades, while not forgetting or abandoning my Nigerian roots, Trump’s policy is not advancing American wider foreign policy objective. Rather it is weakening and dissipating the deep well of friendship, goodwill and loyalty from its many allies across the globe and pushing them into the waiting embrace of its most potent competitor for global dominance, China. We are seeing that on display as India, Russia and China are engaged in full romantic embrace for the whole world to see.

Our collective hope is that this mind numbing season of anomie in US global reputation would not do so much damage that it is becomes almost unrecoverable.

Adewale Alonge, PhD, Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

09/03/2025
Contextualizing the lovefest between Presidents Lula of Brazil and Tinubu

Wale Alonge

Many have been totally taken by surprise by the over-the-top grand reception and welcome that has been extended to President Tinubu and his delegation by his host President Lula of Brazil. No doubt, Nigeria and Brazil have had cultural and historical ties dating back to the shipment of our people across the Atlantic on cruel inhumane slave ship. That cultural connection cannot be overemphasized. We also must not underestimate how much the entire global has acknowledged and credited President Tinubu for his bold, transformative, yes painful reform agenda. It has done a lot to restore much needed confidence in our country even as the citizens groan under its excruciating pain. There can be no gain with pain.

Having said all that, we will be missing the boat if we fail to contextualize the over-the-top warm embrace and welcome mat being extended to Nigeria and President Tinubu by Lula of Brazil within the context of the broad geopolitical realignment taking place in the globe with the erratic unpredictable, and unreliable leadership in Washington DC. The Trump administration is upending what many have assumed for decades as settled norms. America as the bastion of democracy, of federalism, and of a predictable global order is under assault and is being revealed as a mythology.

The entire globe, including the U.S. once reliable ally, Europe no longer trusts Washington DC. Everyone is scrambling to find a realignment of an alternative global order.

Brazil’s Lula is looking for allies across the globe in his titanic conflict with Trump. Nigeria, with its reform agenda under the presidency of Tinubu and its re-emergence as Africa’s powerhouse is becoming once again an attractive bride. There is also the BRICS agenda to contend with.

So, yes while we cannot underestimate the influence of
Tinubu as president. we must see the lovefest between Nigeria and and Brazil within that broader global context.

Nigeria is rising and many of us are missing the train by focusing on the current challenge of the reform agenda. Like I tell many of my fellow Nigerians in the diaspora there will be gnashing of the teeth when many people realize that they have lost out of the early bird windfall and find in a few years that Nigeria has become unaffordable the longer they wait to jump in.

Nigeria is transforming in our very own eyes and yet many are too distracted to see it. Brazil is sending that message loud and clear. The question is will we harken to it and catch the wave before it is too late.

Wale Alonge

08/27/2025
My Advice to My Fellow Nigerian Diaspora Baby-boomers and Empty-Nesters

Happy Easter to everyone. I just popped in on this platform after over two months of hiatus. Sadly nothing seems to have changed. Tinubu bashing still lives on supremely. My advice, don’t make your judgement about Nigeria based on the hyperbolic shenanigans you read on social media. Before I am misunderstood and misrepresented, let me state clearly that Nigeria remains a poor under-developed country it has been for a very long time. So if you are comparing Nigeria with the U.S, UK or Canada or whichever country to reside in, you are still living in lalaland. Yes, Nigeria is no Nirvana but neither is the country you reside in. Every nation has its own fair share of shit. We are now seeing that sons of the countries we used to lionize have more shit than we ever imagined.

Having made that clear, many of us in the diaspora who haven’t gone home in a long while might not recognize their streets when they return home. While many of us are here moaning and gripping about how bad life is in Nigeria, your community is being transformed with redevelopment. The mud house facing the street where mama Mukaila used to sell moinmoin has been bought probably by an Igbo brother. Mama Mukaila’s husband whose body was buried in front of the house has been exhumed and reburied. In its place a glittering glasshouse grocery store is now booming with customers. This is happening particularly in the southwest which has become the safe haven for our Igbo brethren and other Nigerian ethnicities running away from the insecurity in their villages. Dangote has staked almost his entire investment nest egg in the southwest not because he hates his Fulani homeland but because he sees value in it. While we are running away from our homeland and complaining how terrible the Nigerian system and institutions are, foreigners are coming in and finding opportunity in the high risk low reward Nigerian business ecosystem and thriving.

“My advice, especially with the level of xenophobia in the U.S. and across the globe, and the fast nature of life abroad and our children doing their own thing, getting old in this place with no backup plan back home is a fool’s choice. Your retirement nest eggs will go further outside of this place. By the way, even your American born colleagues are spending their retirement years japaing to low cost South America and Europe. Why shouldn’t you make your own back-up plan.“

Challenge and opportunity are two sides of the same coin, if you focus too much on the one side and do not flip it over, you will be seeing only half of the movie. Yes, Fulani herdsmen and kidnappers are still at their nefarious business, yet the Lagos-Ibadan express is no longer just littered with mega churches but with mega industrial parks. Warehouses and manufacturing outfits. Someone is building them and they don’t have two heads.

The force of market competition is now gradually controlling fuel prices and many independent oil marketers who used to manipulate supply to gouge people during oil scarcity will soon have to merge with big marketers or be squeezed out of business. Long lines at NNPC stations which used to wrap around sometimes for miles because NNPC used to have the cheapest price are long gone. I remember people parking their car overnight at NNPC stations but no longer. You will not read that story on your WhatsApp fora.

The arrival hall into Nigeria used to be our national embarrassment with disorderliness reigning supreme, well that has changed. While not yet perfect, the arrival hall is slowly becoming a national pride. The escalator still runs a little faster than necessary but you might be shocked how smooth the immigration check-in has become if you hadn’t been home a while. While Nigerian airline agents have not totally stopped their shenanigans about weighing passengers luggage, even the check-in process has improved.

Yes, youth unemployment, insecurity, grinding poverty, our dilapidated public schools and large mass of unschooled children remain huge challenges and the ever widening gap between the rich and poor is now wider than the Gulf of Mexico. Yes you read me right, it is still called the Gulf of Mexico by the sane rational world. But there are signs of progress if you take your blinders off and shut down your WhatsApp forum for a while to regain your sanity.

President Tinubu is no Midas who can turn rubble to gold. His government is not without the the usual Nigerian political shenanigans, but slowly, methodically and without making noise Tinubu is restructuring Nigeria institutionally. He is doing so with local government autonomy, the proposed tax bill, and recently the setting up of regional development authorities for each of the six geopolitical zones. If we now fail as Nigeria to take hold of the new opportunities presented by local government autonomy to hold those who collect the monthly allocation for our villages accountable, the shame is on us. Ditto for the regional development institutions. Rather than sit ten thousands miles in another man’s land throwing stones at your homeland, go home once in a while and visit your village. The country you live in is no paradise on earth. If in doubt listen to your local evening news on your local TV stations. How many people got shot today in Chicago, Miami or Philadelphia? If you a visitor would you not be too scared to venture outside yet we all go about our daily lives. Nigerians are doing the same back home, making lemonade out of lemon.

Many of us armchair critics who see nothing but hell in Nigeria will be shocked if in a few years, we find Nigeria unavoidable. Our saving grace is still the favorable exchange rate. With the way our man in DC is running this place and the decimation of our 401k, that advantage might not last forever.

Nigerians celebrating Diaspora Day

My advice especially with the level of xenophobia in the U.S. and across the globe and the fast nature of life abroad and our children doing their own thing, getting old in this place with no backup plan back home is a fool’s choice. Your retirement nest eggs will go further outside of this place. By the way, even your American born colleagues are spending their retirement years japaing to low cost South America and Europe. Why shouldn’t you make your own back-up plan.

Our folks back home are not sitting idly, complaining. The uncle who keeps telling there is nothing to return home to in Nigeria is living in his own house, no matter how modest it is. Many Nigerians in the diaspora can’t compete with many of our classmates back home and not all of them are corrupt politicians.

Those who enjoy bashing Tinubu can do so. Remember eni ba fi Oju Ana woku Nigeria, Ebora a bo laso. Some of us need to go home and smell the roses and stay off the negativity of WhatsApp fora.

Ire o.

Adewale Alonge, PhD, Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org, writes from Dadeland, Miami, Florida

04/22/2025
Sen Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan orchestrated recall: a new low in misogyny and abuse of power.
By Wale Alonge

The prevalence of misogyny, acquiescence to egregious abuse of power, and the flagrant disregard for procedures on display in the defense of a man accused of sexually harassing a senator is alarming and disheartening. The orchestrated effort to maliciously discredit the alleged victim, supported by numerous individuals on social media, including the COYN platform, is equally disturbing.

It is widely acknowledged that sexual harassment and exploitation of women are pervasive issues in our society. Yet, many men have chosen to support and justify one of the most egregious abuses of power in the Nigerian senate, citing senate rules as a justification.

I pose the following questions to some of the male folk who are attempting to persuade us to disregard common sense and the evidence before us by advocating for the “sequence of events theory”: That their posers about the breach of senate rule by Senator Natasha preceded chronologically her allegation of sexual harassment against Senate President Akoabio. Hence her accusation had nothing to do with her allegation. If you genuinely believe that the accusation of breaching senate rules against Senator Natasha Akpoti Uduaghan was unrelated to her allegation of sexual harassment against senate president Akpabio, then please answer the following questions:
- Would the senate have suspended Senator Natasha based solely on the alleged breach of senate rules had she not accused the senate president of sexual harassment?
- Is the senator’s alleged breach of senate rules severe enough to warrant her constituents initiating a recall effort?
- Does anyone genuinely believe that the recall process and its expedited completion emerge organically, without being orchestrated and funded by powerful forces intent on suppressing the scandal?
If you cannot answer affirmatively to any of these questions, how can anyone objectively defend the blatant abuse of power exhibited by the Nigerian senate in its treatment of Senator Natasha Akpoti Uduaghan? This defense defies logic, fairness, objectivity, respect for justice, and adherence to rule-based politics.

In conclusion, the Nigerian senate has established a new low in misogyny and abuse of power in its handling of the Natasha-Akpabio scandal. It is essential to note that no one is disputing the guilt or innocence of the two individuals involved in the scandal. The truth of the events is known only to the two parties. What is being contested is the unmistakable effort by the Nigerian senate to tip the scales of justice in favor of the alleged perpetrator and to excoriate and punish the alleged victim in the most severe and appalling manner. In a reasonable system, the victim would have been given the benefit of the doubt, especially considering our society’s alarming statistics on sexual harassment and exploitation of women. This is an undeniable fact supported by extensive research data and our collective lived experience.

The impact about the blight of the Natasha-Akpabio scandal will reverberate for decades to come. Its victims might by our daunted or granddaughters who are now witnessing the re-victimization, brutal excoriation and the crude and severe punishment being meted out to powerful Senator Natasha Akpoti Uduaghan would get the chilling message that in Nigeria, victims of sexual harassment had better kept their mouth shut and take their abuse and dehumanization in silence. That society will punish them severely if they spoke out. This is indeed a sad watershed episode in our nation’s history and the treatment of victims of sexual harassment and exploitation.

Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org
03/26/2025
The suspension of Senator Natasha: A return to the dark days of women sexual exploitation and harassment.

“If we were planning to send the clear and chilling message to our young ladies, our children and grandchildren, who face sexual harassment on a regular basis, to shut up, suffer in silence, raise no alarm, suffer humiliation and retaliation quietly, we couldn’t have chosen a better case to make the point than the Natasha-Akpabio Scandal.”

That in the year 2025, a powerful lady, a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Natasha Akpoti-Udanghan, who is also married to a highly influential husband, and who just as she released a bombshell alleging being sexually harassed by the senate president, was suspended for six months, marks a sad day for women’s right and their bodily autonomy in our country. To add insult to injury, this national show of shame occurs only hours away from March 8th, the International Women’s Day.

We do not need research statistics to tell us that sexual harassment and sexual exploitation of women in Nigeria is a true epidemic. We all know it in our daily and past lived experience.

READ ALSO: EFCC questions ex-minister over alleged N138million fraud

In a study by Owoaje ET, and Olusola-Taiwo O. titled “Sexual harassment experiences of female graduates of Nigerian tertiary institutions” and published in the 2009-2010 edition of International Quarterly of Community Health Education, the authors reported that majority (69.8%) of the respondents had been sexually harassed, with the main perpetrators being male classmates and lecturers. About two-thirds experienced the non-physical type of sexual harassment; 48.2% experienced the physical type. Non-physical harassment included sexual comments (57.8%) and requests to do something sexual in exchange for academic favors (32.2%). Physical forms of sexual harassment included unwanted sexual touching (29.4%) and being intentionally brushed against in a sexual way (28.9%). The effects experienced by victims were depression and perceived insecurity on campus. Sexual harassment is not just a common occurrence confined to Nigerian tertiary institutions, it is prevalent across the society, in the workplace, houses of worship and in everyday living, including women just walking in the street when men often feel entitled to make sly and sexually demeaning comments and sometimes unwanted physical touching.

Sadly, in our patriarchal male-dominated misogynistic society, victims of sexually harassment who are predominantly women are often shamed, intimidated, disbelieved and revictimized.

That same scenario would seem to be playing out in the high profile allegation of sexual harassment levelled by Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan against one of the most powerful men in Nigerian politics, the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio.

Let me state here that I take no side on the guilt or innocence nor on the veracity or falsehood of the allegation by the senator. Just as sexual harassment is extremely damaging to its victim, in the same manner, false accusation of sexual harassment can cause tremendous and sometimes irreparable reputational and psychological damage to the falsely accused.

READ ALSO: FIOA use will eliminate obstacles and biases against women – stakeholders

Until a few days ago when the story broke, I had never heard the name of Senator Akpoti-Udanghan. My position has nothing to do with her public profile nor position. My position would have remained the same even if she were a pepper seller. The good news about the sad situation is that it enabled her to beam a bright light on the ugly side of our society, our pervasive problem with sexual exploitation and harassment of women to which we have played the ostrich with its head in the sand for a very long time.

“Many on social media have suggested that the lady senator bore a higher burden of proof because ostensibly she had made similar allegations before as if sexual harassment was a one time affair. Yet, no one has suggested that because Senator Akpabio had been accused before, he automatically should be presumed guilty which would be equally as ridiculous as the position many have taken against Senator Natasha.”

In a case of sexual harassment, neutrality is absolutely essential. Both the accused and the accuser must be afforded the same right and no one should be placing a finger on the scale of justice no matter who is involved. In this case, we are not just talking about a finger on the scale of justice but the full weight and force of the powerful senate is being applied punitively against a fellow senator who has come forward with an allegation against one of the most powerful men in the country. If we were planning to send the clear and chilling message to our young ladies, our children and grandchildren, who face sexual harassment on a regular basis, to shut up, suffer in silence, raise no alarm, suffer humiliation and retaliation quietly, we couldn’t have chosen a better case to make the point than the Natasha-Akpabio scandal.

Now, the accusing Senator Natasha is facing her night of long knives with her colleagues, women pressure groups, and socio-cultural association coming after her to assault her reputation, including insinuation that she was a woman with loose moral who has had six children from six different husbands! Yet official records shows she only has three children. Even if it were true that she has six children from six husbands, what business of ours is that? Does that fact only give anyone a license to sexually harrass her?

Her case, not surprisingly, has become a cause célèbre, a soap opera made for TV. In the process the opportunity that this high profile case presents for us as a society to face our national shame in the epidemic of sexual harassment and exploitation of women is being frittered away.

Sexual harassment is one of the most insidious, most embarrassing situation a woman can face. Sadly, it often boils down to ‘he says she says’ as only the two involved often know. Our society has so much sexually objectified our women that most victims of sexual harassment are too ashamed to talk. Women often get re-victimized, or blamed for dressing provocatively and hence blamed for their abuse. We all are aware of this but we only choose to play the ostrich game.

Our society often gives the men the benefit of the doubt. Sadly, it is not unusual for fellow women to join in the attack of the accuser. Many on social media have suggested that the lady senator bore a higher burden of proof because ostensibly she had made similar allegations before as if sexual harassment was a one time affair. Yet, no one has suggested that because Senator Akpabio had been accused before, he automatically should be presumed guilty which would be equally as ridiculous as the position many have taken against Senator Natasha.

With her suspension now, many would see it as an attempt to shut her up. Not only that her constituency would be denied her representation in the senate. Yes, rules must be enforced but the legal system is not a blind robotic instrument of punishment. In this circumstance, hiding behind the rule to yank off a senator who has just accused the senate president, who is nothing more than the first among equals having just been elected like any other senator, smarks of intimidation and abuse of power and procedure.

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This will send a chilling message to our daughters and granddaughters. It is a sad day for women’s right, for women sexual and body autonomy and their protection from coercive sexual harassment, abuse of power and sexual exploitation. One can only hope that society with one voice will say enough already. Sexual harassment is a malignancy that our society must attack frontally. Pressure must be mounted on the senate to recall the senator and to allow due process to take place and if she is found to have made a false accusation, the full force of the law should be applied against her. Making false allegation of sexual is destructive to the victims, because it creates the atmosphere of the boy who cries wolf the next time a true victim comes out to lodge a complaint.

Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

03/08/2025
American Schizophrenic Politics and Foreign Policy

It is so confusing how to square the release posted by the Obama White House in 2014 (see link below), at the height of the kidnap of the Chibok Girls by Boko Haram, during which Michelle Obama played a crucial role to bring global attention to that crisis, with the bombshell allegation by Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry’s that the USAID under the Obama and then the Biden presidencies was actually financing the Boko Haram terrorist group.

It makes absolutely no sense except within the context of Elon Musk’s DOGE team and their MAGA supporters dropping whoppers of falsehood, outright lies, and disinformation to justify their gestapo approach to “reforming” the U.S. public service. Engaging in mindless firing of government officials, disbanding government agencies and conducting loyalty test within the Justice and security agencies. It is impossible to differentiate facts from fictions. Remember the story about $59 million condoms in Gaza!!

READ THIS: FACT SHEET: U.S. Efforts to Assist the Nigerian Government in its Fight against Boko Haram

President Trump just a few days ago blamed President Biden for instigating the Putin invasion of Ukraine when everyone knows that Putin has had his eye on Ukraine for years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin invaded and took over Cremea without provocation during Obama regime. Obama made a strategic mistake by doing absolutely nothing about it other than imposing ineffectual sanctions which probably emboldened him to invade.

We all need to take a deep breath and treat with more than a grain of salt anything coming from the MAGA crowd which believes in flooding the zone with disinformation and outright falsehoods. They will do or say anything to justify the destruction of what they perceive as the disloyal woke deep-state. Otherwise, why would a Republican congressman openly declare that the U.S. government sponsored ISIS, Alkeida (two sworn enemies of the U.S.) and Boko Haram. One would have expected such a statement from the likes of Bonnie Sander and the ultra liberal Ocasio not from a conservative pro-national security Republican congressman from Pennsylvania. This is turning politics over its head. It makes absolutely no sense just like what’s happening in the U.S. is mind-numbingly nonsensical. You have the U.S. government trusting Putin over its long term allies in Europe. The U.S. VP openly castigated European governments in Munich and openly supported an ultra-right, fringe Nazis political party in Germany as it prepares for an election. Totalitarian Orban of Hungary is a darling of Washington DC. Elon Musk is openly campaigning and offering financial support for political parties aligned with Nazis ideology. We are truly in schizophrenic uncharted political territory.

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Scott Perry’s “Africa Lovefest and the Character Assassination of President Barack Obama

US Congressman: Scott Perry

Isn’t it curious that both the do-gooder US democrat liberals who are scrambling to save the USAID and the Republican conservatives who are hell bent on destroying it are both using their gullible whipping boy Africa to make their case? The democrat liberals, many of who simply play to the gallery to hide their racist condescending disdain for Africa are storming the USAID HQ claiming that without the USAID all African children would starve to death and our contagious Eboma will jump over the Atlantic and devastate their American Homeland. The conservative Scott Perry and his White Supremacist Apartheid South African Elon Musk argue that they are trying to demolish USAID to safe Africa from Obama and Biden’s USAID which is the sponsor and financial backbone of Boko Haram.

Yet rather than been outraged by this constant negative narrative and weaponizing Africa poverty by the West to push their theory of the racial inferiority of Africans, we are falling one another to push this same negative narrative.

What is so demoralizing as an African is that African elites and so called intellectuals are playing true to type to the Whiteman’s characterization of us as gullible people who are driven by their emotion rather than their intellect. That is what is so frustrating with how African intellectuals have fallen head of heel spreading the disinformation by Scott Perry that Obama and Biden were sponsors of Boko Haram.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows. Who could have imagined in a million years that a Republican for that matter would be the one “spilling the beans” about how the U.S supposedly sponsors terrorism all over the world. Has anyone wondered why this new “activist” in defense of Nigeria. Scott Perry just selectively and conveniently decides to expose the evil that the USAID does just as Elon Musk was driving his bulldozer over the USAID and it just happens that it was during Barrack Obama and Biden presidency that the USAID was sponsoring Boko Haram. What happened during the transition from Obama to Trump before Biden took over. Apparently, Trump the lover of Africa and her shit-hole countries stopped the funding of Boko Haram and Biden continued from where his former boss, Obama stopped.

Is that logically? But in the post-truth era where confirmation bias is king people no longer critically analyze facts before running to town with disinformation, propaganda and fake news.

That exactly is the reason Congressman Scott Scott Perry, could get away with accusing the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, of funding terrorist organisations, including Boko Haram. Just like Trump just blamed Biden for instigating the Russian invasion of Ukraine when in fact Russia took over Cremea way back in 2014. Truth does not matter anymore if you can flood the social media airwave with falsehood, fake news, half truths, and disinformation.

The Blackman capacity for self hate is mind-numbing. The Nigerian social media has been overtaken with the caricaturitization and character assassination of the Barrack Obama the historic first Black US president.

Who did this to us?

Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

02/18/2025
A Plea to Prioritize Peace, Unity & Development of Ijeshaland as Monarch Receives Staff of Office

The new Owa Adimula Obokun of Ijesaland, Kabiyesi Clement Adesuyi Haastrup Ajimoko III, has officially ascended the throne of his ancestors. It is absolutely the fact that the process of his choice and the rapidity with which he was presented the staff of office, to put it mildly, is unique and unusual. However, given the caliber of great and eminent Ijesa leaders including our Asiwaju Yinka Fasuyi, our Baba Sawe, virtually all the Kabiyesis in Ijeshaland, led by the Elegboro, the President of the IDC Elder Supo Shadiya, Alhaji Lateef A Bakare, Yeyerise of Ijesaland, eminent jurists like Dr. Adedotun Onibokun and other key stakeholders, de creme de la creme of the Ijesa high society, commissioners, the Ijesa grassroots, paramount rulers from across the state and, of course the Governor, all in attendance within a space of less than 24 hours.
That should send the unequivocal message to all to sheath their swords, to prioritize Ijesaland’s hard earned subsisting environment of unity, peace and development that eluded us for decades until now, over and above the pain of our preferred candidate not making the cut.

Yes, we wished the selection process had been 100% and by the book, but we can not allow the perfect be the enemy of the greater good.

Kings and rulers are ordained by God. There can only be one king in palace at one time. The Bible enjoins us in Romans 13:1-7: that People should submit to governing authorities because they are established by God. The Bible did not tell us to submit to only the authority whose emergence was done via our preferred modality.

Does Kabiyesi Adesuyi possess the gravitas, the intellectual, physical, and material acumen to occupy the throne? Was he eligible as a descendant of the ruling house? Would he probably have emerged had the process dragged on for weeks? Is he the most qualified, based on personal qualities, experience, accomplishments, national and global connections that will come in handy in attracting development to the community? Is he the worthy Ambassador Oba for Ijesaland who is already equipped with the charisma and wherewithal before ascending the throne to become relevant from day one among the first tier of Obas in Nigeria? Is he an Oba who will not be going cap in hand begging or grabbing and selling community land for sustenance and become an errand boy for the Ooni Ife?
Yes, many of us are aggrieved that proper protocol might not have been followed to the letter, but if you can answer affirmatively to the questions, we must do the honorable thing by following the lead of our Ijesa leaders and submit to the authority of our new Kabiyesi.

We must prioritize the peace, unity, non-violence, growth, and development of Ijesaland as more paramount than who the paramount king is. We should not write off the Kabiyesi based on how he ascended the throne but give him the space to prove his mettle.

Given the circumstances of his ascension to the throne, it would be expected of our new Owa who has just been installed to prioritize and devote all of his energy to healing the fissure the process adopted in his selection has created in Ijesaland, to unite the divided Ruling House, regularize and legitimize the process, the procedures, the paperwork for the chieftaincy institution in Ijesaland, whose underbelly has been exposed for the world to see. We shouldn’t have high chiefs in Ijesaland whose paperwork at the state level has not been regularized if one is to believe the story about why prominent kingmakers were excluded from the selection process. Sadly, our traditional monarchical institution, whose reputation has already taken a bad beating over these past decades, has just gotten another huge punch in the gut. The implication is that the new Owa has a lot of work to do to rebuild the institutional reputation of our monarchy, restore the citizens confidence, and respect for this hallowed institution, as well as reposition it to its past glory. It is only then that His Royal Majesty can meet up the huge expectation of Ijesa at home and abroad to accelerate and build on the solid foundation of unity, peace, and community-led development that has already been laid. His first official duty of announcing the appointment of Alhaji Lateef A. Bakare as the Ajiroba of Ijesaland was a stroke of genius.

Sir LAB is a grassroots man with his ears to the ground who knows the pulse of the Ijesa society. He would serve him in the reconciliation and healing process.

The better news is that some of the heavy lifting has already been done under the able leadership of Asiwaju Fasuyi and the exceptionally talented team of seasoned community leaders and stakeholders who have worked diligently to create an ecosystem of development.
The flip side of that great news is the challenge it poses to the new King , and there is no doubt he will meet and exceed. The standard of expectation for performance of Ijesa for their monarch is now through the stratosphere. Ijesa have no stomach and patience for incompetence or the go-slow approach. The new monarch would need a huge bust of energy, creativity, wisdom, a listening ear, and innovative 21st century approach to community governance to manage a high energy, highly motivated, development-oriented citizenry. It is our obligation and commitment as his patriotic subjects to support him as he embarks on this Herculean task. May the reign of Owa Obokun Adimula of Ijeshaland, His Royal Majesty Clement Adesuyi Haastruup Ajimoko III bring renewed unity, peace, harmony, and unprecedented development to Ijesaland.

Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

12/31/2024
The Ills of Ethnicising Badenoch-Shettima Clash

“… the attempt to yorubalise the clash between the Vice President and Kemi Badenoch is bad politics for President Tinubu. Not only does it put the President and his Vice in an awkward position, it risks creating a political headache for the president in the north, a region that was critical to his 2023 electoral victory and that will be needed for a repeat performance in 2027.”

A popular Yoruba adage says when an elephant dies all kinds of knives come out of their sheaths for a piece of the action. In the same vein, a political crisis on social media such as the dust-off between Kemi Badenoch and the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, or the titanic rumble in the jungle clash between Dele Farotimi and Afe Babalola represent a tantalizing opportunity for all kinds of groups to gain notoriety and to launder all kinds of agenda. After the initial broad-based condemnation of Kemi Badenoch for denigrating Nigeria, the ill-advised intrusion of Vice President Shettima into the controversy, has brought out the ugly side of Nigeria ethnic animus. No sooner had the VP asked the British leader of the UK’s opposition Tories Party, to drop her Yoruba name, if she was ashamed of our Nigerian ancestry, to which she responded with an equally ill-advised ethnic slur against the north, than many Yoruba groups ran to her defense.

This post in the SaharaReporter by the UK based Yoruba Union has taken the Yorubanization of the Kemi Badenoch controversy over the top. It is doubtful even if the Yoruba Union group is a registered entity in the UK as no such document could be retrieved in a search of Yoruba registered entities in the UK (see https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/search?q=Yoruba+Union&page=5). Its website is also very scanty in terms of its organizational structure and executive board. I might be wrong of course, but it looks like a fairly new entity.

Yet, this Union has put out a post that includes a potpourri admixture of issues from IG Egbetokun, to Kemi Badenoch versus Shettima, Dele Farotimi Versus Chief Afe Babalola, to police brutality during #Endbadgovernance and a host of inflammatory and denigrating statements about the north. Given its track record, the choice of Sowore’s SaharaReporter might raise some suspicious glance. This attempt to throw every and any spaghetti on the wall to see which one sticks smacks of gross opportunism by this group to get some media leverage from the various controversial issues on the Nigeria social media landscape.

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Beyond that, the attempt to yorubalise the clash between the Vice President and Kemi Badenoch is bad politics for President Tinubu. Not only does it put the President and his Vice in an awkward position, it risks creating a political headache for the president in the north, a region that was critical to his 2023 electoral victory and that will be needed for a repeat performance in 2027. Asiwaju Tinubu as governor of Lagos state and in his political alliance with General Buhari clearly played a post-ethnic, cosmopolitan, broad based nation-wide politics. Not only did he appoint non-Yoruba to his cabinet to the chagrin of many people, given the apparent ingratitude shown by the beneficiary ethnic group, but he built a broad based nationwide political empire on whose cor-tail he rode to Aso Rock.

Unlike Peter Obi who allegedly ran an Igbo-centric campaign spiced with his attempt to religionise his campaign toward the end with his Muslim-Muslim candidate campaign, Asiwaju Tinubu ran a broad-based, nation-wide campaign. He never ran as a Yoruba candidate. Yes his Emilokan speech talked about Yoruba having earned the ticket, but his campaign did not run on an ethnised agenda. Had he, he would have lost the election in a landslide. To start with, a huge chunk of his own Yoruba people campaigned vigorously against him candidacy. A majority of the major Yoruba mega-churches opposed his candidacy on the basis of the Muslim-Muslim candidate tag, the Yoruba media, a faction of the Afenifere, and a large chunk of the Yoruba intellectuals also went sour on him. Former President Obasanjo unleashed the vast political capital to defeat Asiwaju Tinubu. They all failed thanks to the strategic politics played by Tinubu and sheer fortune of a fractured opposition.

It bears reminding ourselves that Asiwaju lost in Lagos state (his political base), in Osun state and if my memory serves me right, he either lost or split Oyo state with the former Vice President, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). So it is not too far-fetched to say that Asiwaju Tinubu won his presidential election in spite of the less than maximum support from his own people. On the other hand Obi won in the east in a Tsunami with the Igbo. Asiwaju Tinubu owes his narrow victory largely to the support he garnered from the north despite the fact that Alhaji Atiku a northern candidate also ran in that election. Of course we all knew that Tinubu was crushed in the southeast.

It is therefore a great disservice to President Tinubu’s re-election prospects to tokenise and wrap him in the Yoruba candidate garment. It is doubly unhelpful to denigrate the north as uneducated terrorists. Playing the tribe card by insulting “the Vice President and asking him to stop harassing their daughter (whatever that means) and urging him to focus on his Almajiri people who are being used as terrorists” like the Yoruba Union of UK noted in its release is not only despicable, it smacks of ethnic stereotyping. More importantly, it is bad politics for Yoruba and for President Tinubu in 2027.

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So, as we transverse through this Kemi Badenoch drama, frankly more like an unnecessary tempest in the tea cup, it is important that we don’t lose perspective and not allow ourselves to be distracted from the prize, a focus on helping the president succeed in the big and consequential reform agenda he is pursing. If he succeeds, our country succeeds. We need to tone down on our hyper-ethnicised rhetoric and politics. Otherwise President Tinubu risks ending up a one term president without building bridges to other ethnicities especially the north. Antagonizing the north and denigrating them as uneducated Boko Haram is a dumb thing to say. It is putting President Tinubu’s reelection prospect in grave jeopardy.

Yes, ours is a country suffering from unbelievable identity crisis, from a debilitating trust deficit between, among and sometime, within the ethnic nationalities that make it up. A mixture of ethnic nationalities, many of which feel trapped in an unwanted union.

We must understand that as much as we might dislike each other and wished that we were not yoked together in a union that was put together without our consent, Nigeria is the only country we have. Nigeria is not the only nation that came into existence in that fashion. The entire continent was carved out by Europeans who were more interested in preserving their fiefdoms of exploitation than what was good for the continent. That phenomenon of nation states emerging as a result of conquest, colonialism and imperialism has been around since antiquity and it is not peculiar to our country nor the African continent. We have the choice to either work harmoniously to build a true nation state out of the geographical expression that the European created in 1914 or engage in highly destructive seccessionist agitation. Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it. No matter the flowery optimistic language of secessionists who point out to their so called “peaceful” break-up of Yugoslavia (ask the survival of Serbian genocide in Kosovo and Srebrenica) and the Soviet Union, it is unlike that Yoruba nation will emerge via a peace treaty with other Nigerian ethnicities. Sending petition to 10 Downing Street when the UK has its own internal secessionist agitation, is dumb. The Biafran disaster should be instructive. Nigeria is our present reality and we must all do our part to make it work for us.

Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

12/21/2024
Nigeria Social Media and the Badenoch Obsession

Yes, our country can definitely use some diversion from the daily grind of the economic Tsunami, inflation and price volatility that is making life tough for our people. However, the level of obsession with this lady Kemi Badenoch who was a non-factor in our daily existence until through her political smarts, she reached the pinnacle as leader of the Tory opposition, has become so obscene and nauseating. Even our Vice President who should be focusing on the overflowing plate of his primary responsibility to assist the president in making life livable for Nigerians could not resist poking his nose into the hot potato.

Even our dear brother Sunday Igboho, after the blow-back from his recent misadventure to No. 10 Downing Street has found a new cause célèbre to get out of this his recent hibernation. He has taken on the VP for attacking a Yoruba woman. When are we going to hit the time-out button and say enough is enough? Let the Brits bury their own dead while we bury ours. Our Gbarunmi (help me carry load) cannot take the ownership of someone’s burden. Our load is so humongous its weight is turning us into the hunchback yet, we are asking others to pile theirs on top. No be juju be that?

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Many on social media are applying the old political playbook in assessing the impact of the Nigeria controversy on Kemi Badenoch political fortune. The lesson we just learned from Trump’s historic comeback electoral victory in the U.S. is that what the old media establishment regards as gaffe, cultural war and controversial no-go topics, resonate with the electorate if they sense the genuineness, consistency and straightforwardness from the politician. Trump broke all the rules of political convention, accused immigrants of eating pet dogs and cats, and said things that in the old political game book should have sunk his candidacy. Yet, he defied gravity and rode into a historic comeback victory. The old rule of politics of evasiveness, political correctness, pandering, slickness and playing it safe is out of the window.

Nigerians on social media including VP Shettima can shout themselves hoarse till they turn blue, they are of no consequence and have zero vote or say in Kemi’s political future. It is mere “ariwo lenu vendor” like Great Fela sang about the eons ago.

We are just wasting time, blowing hot air and hyperventilating for nothing. Sadly, that has become the stock in trade of Nigeria social media, people mindlessly sharing the same garbage content ad nasseum.

Frankly being anti-Nigeria might be good politics for Kemi. She wouldn’t have gotten to the position she is, being a black woman with a foreign name without being a shrewd astute politician. She knows exactly what she is doing which is why she is upping the ante and escalating the controversy. So let’s go at it, make as much noise on our WhatsApp fora all we want. It’s no skin off Kemi’s nose.

Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

12/16/2024