I love reading my friend, Mallam Nasir Ahmed El Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State. You may not always agree with him. You may not like his style. Some even think he talks too much. But here is a man who is passionate about Nigeria, and about governance. He fears no foe and he says and do what he believes in. I prefer him to the caterwauling princes who pretend to be concerned about advancing the cause of the people but are always thinking of the next election and the next appointment. These are those a friend of mine refers to as the “kids without the whiz.” They abound in our land, but El Rufai is different.

Hence, when El Rufai talks we must pay heed.

To this end, however, I’m worried about the statement made recently by El Rufai about two Nigerians; one the backward North and second the developing south. I think he got things wrong and he needs to be quickly corrected.

It is very important to correct this assertion so that some non-discerning elements from the South will not start jumping up and dancing. They will not as profoundly delusional as the elephant, who was about to be made king of the jungle where the lion has set a trap with his chief adviser the tortoise on a throne set atop massive hole; a o merin jo ba!

It is a fallacy to say that the south is developing. Every part of Nigeria is at best yearning for development. At worst we have a profound reality, an uneven pace of development across states around which Nigeria has been divided since 1967.

See, it may be high time we stop analyzing Nigeria in the spectrum of North and South protectorates, because that regional divide ceased on January 1, 1914. Nigeria since 1967, has been a nation of states.

Some state being lucky every now and then to be blessed with great administrators, like Baba Jakande in Lagos or Chief Ajasin in Ondo, or Ahmed Tinubu and his golden team in Lagos, in a more recent era.

What becomes obvious on deeper analysis, is that discounting for historical advantages secured between 1952 and 1966 with regional governments in place across Nigeria, what emerges is a nation deeply united in bad governance, poverty index and quality of outcomes.

We have one large underdeveloped country which calls for the attention of all of us, be it North or South. El Rufai assertions may be true some twenty to thirty years ago, with the advantages the South secured in pre-independence governance. I can write a book to put a lie to that assertion now based on the facts known to me.

I have traveled around this country North and South; I have seen things for myself . I am therefore not talking from the prism of someone who sits in Washington and the western capitals and come up with some fake indicators. I know and I can assert that the neglect of many years has come to haunt both the North and the South. I am from the South West. That part which I know so well is living on past glory.

Today education in the Southwest is growing in quantity and not quality. The products rather than portending hope for the future is largely lethal to the health of society. Just go to Facebook and see the quality of the grammar these products of neo-Southwest education propound daily on the platform. It truly will sadden everyone or anyone.

I come from Ekiti which is largely in conventional wisdom regarded as the bastion of education in the Southwest.

The myth abroad is that every household can boast of one or two professors. While this may be true in the past, it unfortunately no longer ring true. Here is a state where a governor used to encourage “miracle examination centers” for students, with invigilators bribed to look away so that the students could cheat and top the league table of states.

This produces at the end of the day a high percentage of performance and rating for the state, that is subsequently celebrated by the Governor whose perfunctory attempt at caring is a careless head fake to excellence and perpetual ode to mediocrity! Now the products of that appalling situation are out of school and are recruited into “yahoo yahoo” and “yahoo plus” as they are called. Parents are now known to look for money to buy laptop for their wards to engage in this despicable business of scam. What a country!

Contrast this with the thousands of students sent out on scholarship by northern governors to some of the good schools abroad yearly, a policy akin to that of China that has made major leap by learning or stealing from the accomplishments of western nations. So southerners, let no one deceive you that you are developing. You’re living on past glory! Leave education and go into food production. Or do I say agricultural production.

Most of the foods consumed in the South today are produced by the North. The youths down here are no longer encouraged to farm. Where there is some modicum of farming going on, it is done by the Ebiras of Kogi, the Igedes Of Benue State and the young farmers from Benin republic. Travel through Benue to any surrounding states you will encounter a gang of youths with cutlasses in hand and hoes hanging on their shoulders joyously heading to farm. Now we have Benue yam, oranges, mango, cashew etc. Contrast this with a trip from Kabba and go through Ondo or Ekiti and head towards Lagos you will see villages all the way where young and able bodied men are playing table tennis and other sports at 11.00 am or filling pot holes while begging for money from travelers. This cannot be progress

The beef we consume, the tomatoes, the yam, the beans , the water melon, the goats for our pepper soup are grown or reared by peasant farmers and transported to the South for our dinner table. The average southerner wants an office job, and there are not enough to go around! In vast areas of our land, young people roam the streets with half bottle filled up with codeine and hard drugs, when they grow despondent and dangerously educated. In the past four years there has been a near revolution in the agricultural production and processing in the North.

The landscape of Kebbi, Kano, Jigawa, Sokoto and many other northern states have been turned to huge plantations of wheat, rice, and sugar cane. This is being followed up with huge processing plants put in place by the private sector in collaboration with the Central Bank. These programs were on willing state, willing partner basis.

After all, the CBN Governor is Igbo and we cannot claim discrimination. Over three hundred billion has been disbursed through Anchor Borrower Program and NIRSAL was originally capitalized to the tune of $500 million to work with states that have leadership and capacity to engage. Jigawa is going heavily into the red goat rearing with the goal of processing their hides for the consumption of the world animal skin market which has hitherto been dominated by Morocco. Cash trees are being planted by the forward looking governor of Jigawa who has seen that the market for both hard and soft wood in China is limitless.

He got the idea when he attended a meeting where deforestation and illegal lumbering was discussed. Instead of digging in against loggers, he volunteered to plant more trees for collective prosperity! In Kaduna where Governor El Rufai governs, the biggest animal feed plant in Africa was commissioned two years ago.

Just imagine the spin-off effect on grain farmers across the North. In Healthcare, his state has been the largest recipient of aid from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as the Kaduna’s primary healthcare system is being transformed. This is even as only a small glitch which will soon be resolved will ensure Kaduna state get the cheapest ever loan from World Bank to transform her schools. Of course, this is after the Governor bravely reformed the school system by sacking fake teachers and employing more real ones!

El Rufai knows the truth. He is too clever not to. I think he may be saying what he said to ginger his brother governors to do more for their people or at best humoring our people for political advantage. Least of course and very unlikely was that he sought to lure the South of the country to a false sense of accomplishment. For four years the Buhari administration advertised her anchor borrower program in agriculture. Let us ask how many southern governors took advantage of this program?

The ministry of agriculture under the same government came up with a cocoa farm renewal program. No enthusiasm was shown to it. Instead we had a fellow, whose best idea was to cultivate marijuana for export. Good luck. A friend of mine visited a government agent in charge of this last week. What he told him was depressing. “Why are your government so disinterested in this program that would have been of benefit to your people?” was the question he raised that requires answers from our governors.

Travel around the South and see the army of youths who are unemployed. Yes there are similar army in the North as well but the values even in their deprivation is different. Northern unemployment numbers are also seasonal according to NIBSS, rising in the dry season due to lack of irrigable lands. That is not even going to last forever, as various programs to revive the River Basins are ongoing and the employment number up North will stabilize. I have journeyed around the country with people of power.

Wherever we have been we have been mobbed by these youths. While the Northern variants of it shout “Sai Baba”, the South variants shout, “give us the money”. Their eyes are blood-shot , their teeth discolored and reeking of the smell of drugs , enough to get you high. Their sense of entitlement is legendary.

When you try to pacify them by offering them the change in your pocket they throw it back at you saying “ this is not our money.“ Before you know it they are throwing rocks at your convoy. This was my experience as we travelled around the Southwest during the last election. I was ashamed.

Yet our governors live in affluence, appointing several assistants with no defined or productive functions. All they are after is making money from government. This for me is not an indicator of development. We have too many gods rather than governors. This may not be pleasant to some of my friends who are governors. My apologies.

I am saying this because it time we must say the truth to ourselves. It is kidnapping and banditry we are seeing now. If we don’t take actions rebellion may knock on the door. Young men and women who should be employed after half baked Education are unemployable. Even after massive cheating schemes, Southwest states still continue to underperform in standardized tests done in Nigeria.

At last count, Abia and Anambra led in 2018 while Oyo, Osun and Ogun were below National Average. Add to the fact that the gap in education is inevitably closing. While in 1990, the North had 14 universities, the South had 27. Today that number is 58 and 102 respectively. This is a 414% versus a 370% improvement. Slowly but surely.

In poverty ranking, while the impact of a more diversified economy is felt in lower poverty rates, the Southwest especially continue to house the highest numbers of the urban poor who continue to depend on welfare from remittances to stay afloat. Poverty better measured in the number of people living their best life will reveal a very different measure I suppose. In the ease of doing business category that measures current governance, Kaduna was the leader, followed by Enugu while Southwestern states lagged behind at last 10 position with Oyo and Osun struggling for last position with Nasarawa. It is horrible. It is bad.

Our Governors are now Demi-gods. They will rather do business with themselves, the Lebanese, than with Nigerians, and have infused the system with frustrated businessmen who rather take their monies elsewhere. Truth is, a fair comparison will reveal that we are jostling for position among laggards. Let our governors, both in the North and the South, come up and reassess themselves and govern in the true sense of the word.

The accoutrements of power are so much than the responsibility. They should begin to do away with the meretricious and opt for the things that will uplift their people. They should not abandon their role to the omnibus Federal Government.

Nigeria as a whole cries for development not a part as expostulated by my dear friend Governor El Rufai. The devil is in the details. We must rise up and demand good governance across board.

• Senator Babafemi Ojudu is the former Special Adviser on Political Matters to the President , and aide to His Excellency, Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo.

Bola Ige left a legacy of a puritanical rhetorician in the nation’s politics. He spoke the proverbial Queen’s English with an uncommon cadence, matched with a clinical diction and easily caught the attention of listeners with a depth, laced with ideas and progressive philosophies. Check this important instance: Military leader Abdulsalami Abubakar had then asked politicians to assemble and decide the future of Nigeria’s politics, after the demise of Maximum Ruler, Sani Abacha. Venue was at the Towry Coker wing of the International Conference Centre. In audience were the cream of the Nigerian political class, comprising men and women of different political hues.

It was a de-ethnicised, detribalized and integrated gathering. All seated, the moderator beckoned on the late politician, whose hands were now up, signifying an intention to speak  and who was supported by a cross-section of the assembly to articulate their plans.  The man, once christened the Cicero of Esa-Oke, stepped on the microphone and began.

His voice, oscillating between the Mezzo, the Contralto, and the Tenor, was good enough to still the hall, just as it suspended them for the next sentence, evening up to deep meanings in the senses the speaker was making.  He was measured, penetrating, and deliberate. When he was done, his audience applauded to know end, as he had exhausted their hearts’ desires.  Bola Ige was celebrated. He was a man of ideas, rich with content and possessing a great power of conveyance. There was probably no need for anyone else to speak, afterwards, save for the replica delivery courage of Orji Nwafor-Orizu, who complemented from a “youthful” paradigm.

The Esa-Oke native proceeded, therefrom, to be a definer in the post-military era politics, playing key roles in political flows and governance, until he was cut- down by the assassin’s bullet, in his modest Ibadan home. Long gone, it would seem his pattern has also gone. But see: nature often has no place for vacuum. It might be tough to spot a mathematical resemblance. But resemblances would come all the same. Nature propels, in shapes and sizes, through learnings, via experiences and by way of understudying. Nature is beautiful, in an ability to replace, to reactivate and revive past and extant processes and procedures. It is the reason the past may be gone, but the past still lives on. It is also the reason there could be improvements, progressions and growth, despite the beauty of yesterday.

Memories, remembrances and nostalgia, might yet have their places over things gone, but the fact of continuity runs deep in the affairs of men. It is why the legendary Uncle Bola Ige may be no more, but there is a Busayo Oluwole Oke, incidentally stepping out from the Bola Ige Esa-Oke vicinity, to continue the ideas and projections of the legend and making a qualitative mark from his own anecdotal “little corner”, with great potentials for excellence.

In the first instance, however, let us see this context: Oluwole Oke has hitherto essentially operated from the prism of the Federal House of Representative. The population of the place is relatively large, at 360. Almost a crowd, it could drown, obfuscate and becloud the potentials of an individual. It could birth anonymity, and muffled the voice of even a Bola Ige. The population challenges the observer to be thorough in the recognition of quality. In nature, as well, there would always be a star, or stars.  Identifying stars requires some attention to detail and with good eyes as a means. There have been stars amidst a crowd. There have been stars in the Federal House of Representatives. There are still stars, even as I write.

The legislature may be suffering from a perception of a self-aggrandizing lot, but the perception has regularly led to the danger of generalization. It is why tarring a whole with one brush is problematic for epistemology. And the more reason the unique identities of ideas and action men, like Oluwole Oke, would yet spring out. Patterned, purposeful and as rhetorical as the departed Bola Ige, Oluwole Oke is not your regular, stereotypical legislator.

Coming into politics from a business background and with interest in fiscal and monetary policies, education, security and defence management, micro-economic management, and multi-lateral integration, he performs from a pedestal of change, of progress, combined with zeal to leave a legacy. Thus far, Oke knows the pulse of his people, sensing their cynical disposition to men of power. He relates with the predilections of his class, spotting their limitations at the level of a propensity to be self-serving. He envisions tomorrow, as a day of reckoning, and is in terms with the difference he could make, so that tomorrow can exonerate him.

Oke is therefore at home with yesterday, today, and the offerings of tomorrow, over-morrow, and ever after. His missionary records in the House Defence and Procurement Committees are reference points. Check the Defence Committee for instance. First, he was committed in the drive for accountability, marshaling scary military minds, on transparency, accountability and openness, in a traditionally and statutorily reticent sector, needing a new wave of improvement in a collective quest to secure the nation’s borders and to deal with internal insurrection.

In the process, he crossed paths, ruffled feathers, but managed to survive, until his passion for service delivery was identified as his reason. He did no less in procurement, the forte where this writer first encountered him. Over here, he was focused on the mission and the vision of the reform, highlighting the details of quality, competition and value-for-money, which the programme came with. The procurement reform was to ensure the closure to previous losses in the government contracting and expenditure process.

Oke led the expansion of ideas on the scope and perimeters of the transformation, through the legislature. He operated from the point of view that implementation is partly a function of understanding and meaningful exchanges. He regularly brought this to the fore, while he functioned as the house chair on procurement. In the two committees, as well, Oke was noted for an easily differentiated over sighting, not one ridded with harassments, intimidation, or coercing,  but rather with intellection-all geared towards performance improvement, productivity enhancement, efficiency management and sustainability.

Upon his re-election into the house, Oke has begun again. Though not yet at the level of committee performance, but through elevated political competitiveness. He aligned with like minds, including popular Ndudi Elumelu, effervescent Lynda Ikeazu and the active others like Anayo Edwin, Gideon Gwadi, Toby Okechukwu, Adekoya Abdul-Majid, Lego Idagbo, Nnoli Nnaji, and Victor Nwokolo. Others are Chris Azubogu, Sylvester Ogbaga, Edwin Anayo, Toby Okechukwu, Offor Chukwuegbo and Darlington Nwokocha from The Patriots group, and together they engineered the 9th Assembly Progressives, comprising 60 non-APC Members that saw to the emergence of Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila.

With the group at his behest, and although to the revulsion of his party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Oke moved to demonstrate the glory in bi-partisan integration, sometimes important for institutional stability and growth. He was reportedly not motivated by prebendal considerations, or some anticipation for prime committee placement, but rather the discovery of the possibilities in the union of minds across aisles. He could not have been otherwise with his successes in business, his experiences as a ranking member and his personal abilities to excel, but was rather propelled by the greater glory in communion.

And to the usually ephemeral party suspension, he volunteered: “It is unfortunate if the party suspends its most loyal member for towing the path of honour and constitutionalism. I owe my party and its leaders a duty of care to advice appropriately as one of the ranking members of the House. I have discharged that duty. I advised my party leaders about our House Rules provisions about nomination of our leadership. The PDP alone cannot do it without other eight political parties. On speakership, the PDP had no candidate. I follow my conscience. I followed what my constituents clamored for. I followed practices and procedures” Just another bit of his philosophical, epistemic tendencies. Bola Ige may be gone, but it is morning yet for a protégé. Bon Vogage, Busayo Oluwole Oke.

• Dr. Adeniyi, University Lecturer, Communication and Public Affairs Expert, wrote in from Abuja.