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Let’s Redesign the Fundamental Structure of Nigeria – Ooni of Ife

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2 years ago

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By Eric Elezuo

The Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, has once again, lent his voice to the call for devotion of power, and has canvassed the urgent redesigning of the Nigerian structure, saying the structure as presently constituted has outlived its usefulness.

The royal father, revered as the custodian of the Yoruba culture, made the remarks while moving a motion for devolution of power as a guest speaker during a one-day dialogue on “Youth, Religion, and the Fight Against Corruption” organised by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), at the Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja.

The Ooni came hard on the nation’s administration, saying it has lost its focus as insecurity has practically overtaken every aspect of the economy and sector with kidnappers running riot in spite of the many security apparatuses in place. He lambasted the ruling class, accusing them of creating a wrong path for the youths to latch on, believing in the bargain that it is the way to go.

While preferring a solution, Ooni Ogunwusi said the structure of the country must be redesigned as it had become very flawed. He queried the rationale behind allowing the offices of the president and the governors to become as powerful as they are presently.

“Let us change it and let us talk to ourselves if we want this country to grow, let us go back to our local communities, and let us do all these things Community policing, Community governance, Community legislation, charity begins at home, everything starts from somewhere. The way you groom your youth is what they will meet in the future,” the traditional ruler said.

While also cautioning the leaders to desist from inordinate amassing of wealth, he pleaded with the followers to follow with their eyes wide open so they don’t get misled.

Below is the details of Ooni’s speech:

The President, we thank God Almighty for your life and all the things you are trying to do and attempting to do for the benefit of our nation.

I greet all the traditional rulers and all the religious leaders that are here.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen.
Your eminence came to this Podium and said he will adopt what I will say despite the fact that he has not listened to what I will say but he will adopt it. Well, I won’t say you’re on your own, but I will say something now; where did you get the spiritual powers to switch off the light in this Auditorium? So, the Chairman of EFCC will actually scrutinize you and I will be a witness to expose you further.

Today is another red-letter day for our dear country, and I will give a very wonderful appreciation to the Chairman of EFCC; for coming up with this initiative of things that we should be talking about in our country, truth be told, it’s a problem of our dear country. Religion – that’s where everybody hides. You call on God whom you have never seen before and whom you will only believe in. You use the name of God to perpetrate all sorts of things; after doing it you run to churches and mosques and various traditional organizations and you continue to use the name of the Supreme Being that you have never seen.

God is there, we are here, what are we all doing? We are the problems of this country. We are the problems of actually the mirror that we are showing the youth because they do believe that nobody is there for them. Nobody is standing for them so why can’t they go into so many immoral acts; Yahoo yahoo and all what have you? A lot of cybercrime because there is a clear disconnect between the leaders and the lead. And truth be told, these are things we need to be talking about. For the chairman of EFCC to come out to say prevention is better than cure; it’s about time for us to be talking about it. Not only talking the talk and the normal jamboree we do in Nigeria. We are known for that.

For the last 60 years we’ve been talking in this country what impact have we made? The truth be told in this country, we have very bright minds that can turn things around.

Well, let’s look at the structure and the system of this country, the structure has a clear flaw, and let us face that flaw. Why should we continue to make governance very very attractive? Why? We are the ones aiding and abating crime ourselves. Why should you encourage everybody to be the president? It’s only one person that will lead us. Why should you encourage everybody to be Governors? Why should you continue to create an avenue for all our leaders to be all in all, lord and almighty – you cannot touch them. The National Assembly leaders, all the senators, all the House of Assembly members both at the federal level and at the state level why? we all look up to them – they come into their various constituencies and they all do so many things, they are like lords. So, an average youth will think that these leaders; for them to be getting away with a lot of things, means I have to look for a quick way to get to the top as well. So, the system is actually booming and growing Corruption, we need to look inwardly, we need to look inwardly in this country and tell ourselves the truth that we are the architect of our problems. We are! We just keep talking we haven’t faced the fact that we are the problem of this nation. All of us! All of us! Let us tell ourselves the truth.

Let’s redesign design the fundamental structure of this country; Devolution of powers. Why should we make the president of Nigeria, the governor, and the presidency, so powerful? The EFCC chairman innocently said something here that he will go after the presidency, he will go after the Judiciary, he will go after the legislative. Uhmm! I will be praying for you ooo. I will be praying for you I will pray and fast for you. Some people have been there before for you, let’s be truthful. How did they end? They try to do certain things maybe they listening to their leaders and their masters who put them there. I will pray for you, I mean it ooo. The Yorubas will say we need to do more abuse for you. It’s not easy! He has spoken very very wonderfully well that he wants to make a mark but a lot of people will misread him that after putting you there, you want to go after us. When are we going to grow in this country? When? When? We all sit down and talk there is the problem in Nigeria. Maybe the day those youths are actually lavishing wealth and trying to oppress them because yes, they do cybercrime we have a lot of University Vice Chancellors here. In fact, those students are richer than lecturers now. Those students, drive better cars than lecturers and those lecturers that are earning so much send stipends, and they will be looking at them that how are they doing it. One way or the other they will fall into corruption. So corruption is everywhere! Don’t let us deceive ourselves.

Our leaders will so much be successful in the private sector they will gather lots and lots of hundreds of millions to go and do PR for them to get political appointments. What are they going to do when they get there, they will steal! That’s what they would do because the system has made that kind of portfolio and office to be very attractive. So many Nations that we can do a peer review mechanism with.

Let us make laws, let us review our Constitution, and let us stop deceiving ourselves. It is very little impact our leaders can make. If we know that we cannot make much impact, we will keep talking. We will keep talking every year and things will continue to get worse because the population is growing very rapidly. An average Nigerian now is between 18 and 20 years old; that’s the average Nigerian age now. So what are you going to tell those coming generations, if we don’t look inwardly and change the structure? It is clear Devolution of powers. Go and make local government and the root of our heritage, customs – make them powerful – go and make the local government chairman more powerful than even the president and the governors. If we don’t do this, we are in trouble in Nigeria. We will continue to talk. You will continue to feed fat and continue to bring corruption to the table of our religious leaders. They sat down on their own you are coming. They will tell you to kneel and will pray for you before you become governor. You go to the mosque, they must do so many prayers for you before you can become a Minister. They will do so many prayers for you before you can become National Assembly members. It’s a problem! It’s bad culture! Let us change it and let us talk to ourselves if we want this country to grow, let us go back to our local communities, and let us do all these things Community policing, Community governance, Community legislation, charity begins at home, everything starts from somewhere. The way you groom your youth is what they will meet in the future.

At some point in Nigeria, in some places in Nigeria, we don’t he of banditry. There’s nothing like that. If you steal government money, and you come home, they will send you back. They will send you back just like 30 to 40 years ago, they will send you back. At some point in this country, our leaders will give prisoners charges like 100 years 80 years 90 years like big big big charges they used to give them, we don’t hear of things like that any longer in this country. Let us talk to ourselves that we need to change the structure.

The way the Chairman of EFCC is doing, that lets him engage people publicly and talk about youth, religion, and the fight against corruption.. Let us engage ourselves, and see where the problem is. The fundamental problem, I have said it. I will keep saying it any time I have this opportunity, we cannot survive with what we have in Nigeria now, it’s not possible. Anybody that says we will survive with it, let that person come out. It’s a lie! Even if you are the genius of this world, it’s not possible. Let us change the structure of this country. Let us take power, structure, and governance, back to our doorstep so that everybody can reorientate the mindset of Youth from that point. You can reorientate the mindset of whoever our leader is at the top of Affairs someday you will start to groom that person. But if you say with what we have right now, it’s a white lie. Nothing can change!

On this note, I want to implore each and every one of us, we all have a stake in this country. It is not only our leaders. For every leadership, there is followership. If you are a follower, do what is right, and what is just. If you are a leader, do what is just and right. You are a servant! Stop amassing wealth! What do you want to use it for? Do you want to continue oppressing people? Someday, they will face you. We don’t pray for that to happen in Nigeria.

God bless our dear country, and God bless all of us, and God bless our Leaders.
Thank you very much!

The Ooni of Ife is known to have always spoken truth to power, and on many occasions, to the very faces of the leaders.

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Remembering Biafran Warlord, Dim Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu (1933 – 2011)

Published

21 hours ago

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November 8, 2025

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By Eric Elezuo
He came as a unifying force, defying all known luxury to settle for career he was in love it – military. His name was Dim Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu; a Nigerian soldier turned Biafran Warlord as a result of exigencies that ‘cannot be ignored’.If Ojukwu had lived till date, he would have been celebrating 92 years on November 4, the day he was born. But Ojukwu died on November 26, 2011 after a brief illness in London. He legacy has remained evergreen, especially among the Igbo speaking tribe of Nigeria, residing in the south-east region of the country; a people, he gave his utmost best to liberate from the shackles of mass murder, supervising a bloody war with little or no arms and ammunition for 30 months.

Ojukwu is the toast of the average Igboman, his shortcomings notwithstanding.

Born with the shinniest of silver spoons in the Zungeru area of colonial Nigeria, on November 4, 1933, to one of the wealthiest individuals of his time, Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, the young had the best of everything life could offer, growing up. He was educated at obe of the most prestigious institutions in the country then, King’s College, Lagos, and later at Epsom College in Surrey, England.

He proceeded afterwards to Lincoln College, Oxford University where he obtained a master’s degree in Modern History in 1955. He returned to Nigeria to serve as an administrative officer and suddenly, contrary to expectation, he joined the Nigerian army, and grew by the ranks. He was the first of a kind, joining the military with a retinue of academic successes and certificates.

It would be noted that Ojukwu joined the army in protest. He was protesting the termination of his appointment in civil service when he was posted to Calabar, by the Sir John Macpherson at the instant of his father.

A breakdown of Ojukwu’s sojourn in the field of academics has it that at the outbreak of World War II when he was seven, his father sent him to St. Patrick’s School and CMS Grammar School both in Lagos. In 1944 at the age of 10, Ojukwu started studying at King’s College, Lagos. In 1945 when Ojukwu has stayed for two years in Kings College, his father, who want him to be educated in England, made consultations from his English friend. Epsom College in Surrey was recommended and by 1946, he was sent there for an advanced education.

Ojukwu stayed at Epsom for six years. During that time, he excelled in academics as well as in sports and athletics. He played rugby for the college winning the spring javelin throwing and discus. At 18 he entered Lincoln College, Oxford and studied briefly in 1952. Loius wanted his son to be a lawyer as it was the most common in Nigeria but Ojukwu wants to read modern history. Between 1952 and 1955 he studied law and later switched to history. He also joined the West African Students’ Union in Oxford. During his final years, he joined Oxford Rugby Union as wing three quarter in Lincoln College’s team. Ojukwu graduated with a B.A in arts in 1955 and travelled back to Lagos. He would later return to Oxford to obtain his M.A.

His destiny was beginning to get shaped when six years after Nigeria’s independence in 1960, a group of military officers overthrew the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa-led civilian government. The failure of the coup brought General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi to power, and he appointed Ojukwu as the Military Governor of the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region.

Following a pogrom against the Igbo in several parts of Nigeria, especially in the north after the coup that claimed Aguiyi-Ironsi’s life, Ojukwu, as the governor of Eastern Region, engaged the government in several diplomatic discussions on the road to peace. An accord was reached during some of the parley, one of which is the popular Aburi Accord.The failure of the Accord and continuous pogrom led Ojukwu into seceding from  Nigeria, declaring the Republic of Biafra, and becoming its first Head of State. The action led to a civil war, which has been argued in many quarters as a genocide against the Igbos of the then-Eastern region.

Ojukwu did not have what it takes to fight the war as regards weapons. He only had the determination and willpower of his people. But that did not take them far as the Nigerian military, with support from the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, came out victorious, using the weapon of hunger and alleged genocide.

Ojukwu’s effort to use the foreign media to highlight the plight of Biafran civilians and depict the war as genocide against Igbos went unheard, receiving recognition only from France, Haiti and Cote d’ Ivoire among one other two others. He lost the war after superlatively standing off the Nigerian military with its massive oversea’s support, and with it, the young Biafran nation and about three million Biafrans.

Ojukwu subsequently fled to Ivory Coast in exile, where President Félix Houphouët-Boigny granted him political asylum. He returned to Nigeria 1981,when President Shehu Shagari granted him total amnesty.

Though he tried unsuccessfully to grab political power, he made his mark for himself and his people. He began by fighting to reclaim all his property across the country, and married the 21-year-old Bianca Onoh, daughter of a one time governor of Anambra State, C. C. Onoh.

He died in 2011 at the age of 78 in London, England. His body was returned to Nigeria, where Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan gave him a state funeral, a funeral suitable for a general, which he was. He was buried with full military honours, including a 21-gun salute from the Nigerian Army, and thousands of people attended his funeral.

To some, Ojukwu is a contentious figure in the history of Nigeria, but to many, especially the Igbo, he is a hero and wears a messianic cloak. They believe that though the war was lost, a statement was made in the loudest of voices.

Today, however, the voice of Biafra has re-echoed, first from MASSOB, and presently from Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafra (IBOP).

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HURIWA Demands Probe As Nine Soldiers Accused of Links to Boko Haram Allegedly Escape from Custody

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4 days ago

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November 5, 2025

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A major security breach has hit the Nigerian military after nine soldiers reportedly escaped from a guardroom at Maimalari Cantonment, Maiduguri — headquarters of the Army’s 7 Division.

Military sources said the incident occurred around 2:15am on Monday.

Most of the escapees were said to have been detained for alleged links with Boko Haram and involvement in arms trafficking in the North-East.

“There was a jailbreak on Monday around 0215 hours at Maimalari Cantonment. Nine personnel detained mostly for dealing in arms running with terrorists escaped,” a source, according to some media reports, confirmed.

One of the fugitives has since been recaptured, while a manhunt is underway for the remaining eight.

The military has reportedly launched an internal probe to uncover how the soldiers succeeded in breaking free from the high-security facility.

Meanwhile, a pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group – Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) of Nigeria has condemned the criminal activity of letting out such high value suspects at a time that the nation is gripped by the threats of the United States of America government’s threats to unleash military airstrikes targeting Islamic Terrorists like Boko Haram terrorists and ISWAP.

HURIWA believes that if the report is factually accurate, then there is more to it than meets the eyes. It means that there is a high network of conspiratorial plots from the topmost echelons of the command structures and these collaborators and saboteurs of the war on terror must be identified, arrested, prosecuted for treason and jailed for life.

HURIWA tasked the Chief of Defence Staff, General Olufemi Oluyede and the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu to take the matter as a high priority case and to go after the escapees just as the commander charged with securing their detention should be immediately suspended and all those who participated in aiding and abetting their disappearances must be arrested and prosecuted for sabotaging the counter terrorism war in Nigeria.

“If this is true, it means that the claims made by the Borno state governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, of the existence of saboteurs of the war on terror within the Nigeria Army is much deeper than we are all contemplating.”

The Rights group stated that although the Nigerian Army is yet to react to the development at the time the media filed this report, the escapees were alleged to be involved in arms trafficking to terrorist groups operating in Nigeria’s North-East just as it was gathered that reports of the jailbreak have led to serious concerns within Nigeria’s security sector.

HURIWA expressed disappointment that saboteurs embedded within the nation’s military circles orchestrated the ugly development just few days after President Bola Tinubu appointed new service chiefs as a way to pass a message that they are invincible but the civil rights advocacy group stated that allowing these important and strategic suspects who sabotaged the war on terror to escape without being caught on time, it therefore means that there is the urgency of the moment to review the entire spectrum of military operations against Boko Haram terrorists given that their informants and suppliers of weapons have successfully penetrated the military institution, which is a very big shame.

“When we call for heads to roll, we truly mean that many bad eggs must be immediately weeded out of the Army given that they are actually undermining the National security of the corporate entity of Nigeria. It is time for a transparent overhauling of the security operations against terrorists in the country.”

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Should I Have Traveled with My Enemies’ Children, Wike Defends Traveling with Sons to Official Assignment

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5 days ago

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November 4, 2025

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Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has reacted to viral photos showing his sons accompanying him on local and foreign trips, saying he has the right to carry them along.

He argued that his sons, as master’s degree holders, need the exposure.

“What law says that my sons shouldn’t travel? Let the FCT say where they paid ₦1.

“What official matter? Did they sign any document? It doesn’t need to be a personal trip.

“What’s wrong? So, I can travel with anybody from the FCT. I can travel with anybody in Nigeria. I have that right.

“Oh, come on, they have to know how Nigeria is. They have to learn about government,” Wike said on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.

Asked whether he was teaching them to become politicians, he said, “No, that’s not correct. My first son is a lawyer. He said, ‘No, I’m not going to practice. I want to be a farmer.’

“I said, ‘What do you mean by this? He said, ‘No, this is what I want to do.’ I said, ‘Okay’. What do you do?

“They’ve gone for training in Spain. They’ve gone for training in Lisbon.

“My second son finished from King’s College — a master’s degree in Economics. He said he wants to be in real estate.”

The former Rivers State governor also said he is happy that his sons behave responsibly and give him comfort.

“I’m so happy that I have children who have given me comfort, who have not given me problems.

“Assuming they were somewhere smoking. You would have said, ‘Oh, look at these children now. Who are they? I will not travel with my enemy’s children,” he added.

Wike has been spotted with his sons at official events, including the commissioning of projects in the FCT.

Last week, he was criticised by some Nigerians for taking them to a summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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