PT State of the Race: Storm over Tinubu’s same faith ticket By Bisi Abidoye

Mr Tinubu on Tuesday finally picked Kashim Shettima, a senator, former two-term governor of Borno and a Muslim, as his running mate. And a storm has since pounded him within and outside the APC. As presidential aspirants took the podium one after the other to announce their withdrawals for Bola Tinubu at the National Convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abuja on the night of June 8, a terse message began circulating on social media among the delegates. “Reject Muslim-Muslim ticket,” it said. The source of the message was anonymous. But there was no doubt as to its purpose: to force the delegates to ponder the dilemma awaiting their party should they nominate the former Lagos State governor as its flag bearer. The party’s powerful state governors had agreed that the ticket should go to the South. Mr Tinubu was the only Muslim among the southern frontrunners. But he was also the only one among them not suitable to pick a running mate from the Northern Muslim majority base of the APC, and so the obvious target of the message. An official of the party later rose to shoot down the message before voting started, assuring the Convention that no aspirant had taken such a decision. But just over a month after his landslide victory in the primary, and after weeks of dithering and the subterfuge of a placeholder, Mr Tinubu on Tuesday finally picked Kashim Shettima, a senator, former two-term governor of Borno and a Muslim, as his running mate. And a storm has since pounded him within and outside the APC. Power shift Many may have forgotten that the dominant issue in this election cycle had been the clamour for the next president to be elected from the southern part of the country, after the eight-year tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari. But the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) added its own demand that the president should also be a Christian since Mr Buhari is a Muslim. However, after the association was accused of targeting Mr Tinubu and trying to deny the rights of southern Muslims, it tweaked the demand to a rejection of a Muslim-Muslim or same faith ticket. It was therefore no surprise that CAN, the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria and Christian leaders especially in the North have taken Mr Tinubu’s pick of Mr Shettima as a slap to their faces. John Hayab, the chairman of CAN in Kaduna State, which long-running war with Governor Nasir el-Rufai heightened when the governor picked Hadiza Balarabe, a fellow Muslim, as his deputy for the 2019 election, has been understandably bullish on the controversy. In an interview with Vanguard newspaper shortly after Mr Tinubu announced Mr Shettima last week, Mr Hayab said CAN had prepared for the announcement. “We have put some media outlets on notice. All we are waiting for is the right signal to give a full-blown reaction. We’ll escalate this issue because our call for fairness and the balancing of the presidential ticket for the sake of justice, unity and fairness apparently fell on deaf ears. “However, CAN is strongly determined to sacrifice everything to protect the interest of the Church in Nigeria. We will not be moved by any form of intimidation,” the CAN leader in the Northern region added. Surprising, however, has been the reaction of Babachir Lawal, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation who was one of those who collected the APC nomination form for Mr Tinubu back in May. Following the announcement, he demanded President Buhari veto Mr Tinubu’s choice, and after the president demurred, vowed to lead a campaign against his party’s candidate among Northern Christians. Ironically, Mr Lawal was a member of the Planning and Strategy Committee of the Tinubu Campaign Organisation that also advised the candidate over the selection of his running mate. The committee had highlighted the merits and demerits of Muslim-Muslim and Muslim-Christian tickets but did not rule out either of the options in its report. While acknowledging that a Muslim-Christian ticket would sustain the established religious balance in presidential tickets since 1999 and appeal to Christians in the North Central and North East, it however warned that Muslims in the North-West and North-East might vote for northern candidates such as Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, which could result in a substantial loss of votes for the APC. On the Muslim-Muslim option, the committee said it would neutralise the voting strength of the PDP and NNPP and satisfy the Muslim community which has the numerical voting strength and has been the mainstay of support for the APC. But it also warned that the combination “will trigger a large-scale revolt from the Christian communities across Nigeria against our party, thereby resulting in substantial loss of votes that may affect the overall victory of the election. In our current nascent democracy, it has never been tried but when tried, the winner was not sworn in, even though it was adjudged as the most free and fair election.” Since Mr Tinubu announced his choice, Mr Lawal appeared to have taken the seeming snub of Christians personal, going across television stations and issuing statements to attack Mr Tinubu and predicting his doom. He had acted in the same manner days before the presidential primary after Mr Tinubu’s outburst in Abeokuta in which he derided the president. A storm forewarned Since the anger of the Christian community was forewarned, why did Mr Tinubu go ahead to choose the combination, which for the first time in the Fourth Republic left out a major faith from the ticket of a major party? First, it may be expedient to stress the point now that religious balance is a recent concept in the Nigerian political processes. The First Republic ran the parliamentary system and did not feature a direct election of the President and Prime Minister. Also, the first two military rulers in the 13-year military interregnum that followed, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and Yakubu Gowon, both had deputies of the same Christian faith as themselves. But in the first election, after Nigeria switched to the American-type presidential system, the candidates of three of the five parties were northern Muslims who saw the need to pick southern Christians as running mates to expand their reach. However, the two southerners among them, Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe, who eventually returned first and second runners-up respectively in the 1979 presidential poll, picked fellow Christians. The National Party of Nigeria, which had the most support outside the region of its candidate, Shehu Shagari, won the poll, albeit not without controversy. In the next election of 1983, Mr Awolowo picked a Muslim running mate but that was perhaps because he had realised the need to appeal to Northern voters, whom he appeared to have ignored with his previous pick of Phillip Umeadi from the old Anambra State in the South. However, after yet another military intervention, during which some events had awoken religious sensibilities in Nigerians, there was an uproar when Moshood Abiola picked Babagana Kingibe as his running mate for the ill-fated June 12, 1993, presidential election. At that time though, the two parties allowed on the field were essentially government parastatals. The military government of Ibrahim Babangida had formed the parties by decree after denying registration to any of the scores of political associations formed by the politicians. After Mr Abiola’s ticket defeated the “balanced” Muslim-Christian ticket of Bashir Tofa and Sylvester Ugoh, many political observers hastily ticked the election as the moment Nigerians rose above sectional and religious divisions. Unfortunately, however, the whimsical annulment of that election by Mr Babangida pushed Nigeria into a political impasse that has deepened the same divisions. Mr Babangida’s military government had advised Mr Abiola to pick Paschal Bafyau, a Christian from Adamawa State and president of the Nigeria Labour Congress at the time. Although he has cited one flimsy reason after the other to explain why he voided the election, the former dictator has never included the absence of religious balance among the reasons for denying Mr Abiola’s ticket its electoral victory. Regional and religious balance Parties in the Fourth Republic have since embraced regional and religious balances as a tradition. But the observation of that tradition has been made convenient by the fact that the major tickets have exclusively featured Northern Muslims and Southern Christians since 1999. Each of those two groups constitutes the religious majority on its side of the country but a minority on the other side. It is largely for that reason that no Northern Christian or a Southern Muslim (until Mr Tinubu) has been on the presidential ticket of a major party in this dispensation. Jerry Gana, David Mark and Sarah Jibril are some of the Northern Christians to have run for the tickets of major parties or on the tickets of smaller parties, but none of them recorded large impressions on the polity in their presidential bids. If they were southerners, they probably would have been more successful in their quests. Tinubu’s travails In that regard, we can better understand Mr Tinubu’s travails. He has seized the Christians’ southern ticket. To show fairness to the dispossessed and balance the national political equation, Christians asked him to use his historic feat to also disrupt the political order across the two rivers, by handing the Christians the northern ticket that has by tradition belonged to Muslims. While such a geo-religious Minority-Minority ticket has dim electoral prospects, it has a high moral value. It will elevate Christians to a height they have never attained before in the North and show the progress of Northern Christians in the political calculus. The same scenario will apply to Southern Muslims going forward. However, in his statement announcing Mr Shettima’s pick, the APC candidate tried to discourage the elevation of religious divisions. He said: “I am mindful of the energetic discourse concerning the possible religion of my running mate. Just and noble people have talked to me about this. Some have counselled that I should select a Christian to please the Christian community. Others have said I should pick a Muslim to appeal to the Muslim community. Clearly, I cannot do both. “Both sides of the debate have impressive reasons and passionate arguments supporting their position. Both arguments are right in their own way. But neither is right in the way that Nigeria needs at the moment. As president, I hope to govern this nation toward uncommon progress. This will require innovation. It will require steps never before taken. It will also require decisions that are politically difficult and rare. “If I am to be that type of President, I must begin by being that type of candidate. Let me make the bold and innovative decision not to win political points but to move the nation and our party’s campaign closer to the greatness that we were meant to achieve. “ Here is where politics ends, and true leadership must begin.” Realpolitik Notwithstanding those stirring words, realpolitik was the overriding factor for the candidate in the choice. The APC, perhaps due to its antecedent of leveraging the popularity of Mr Buhari among Northern Muslims to unseat the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015, continues to rely on the support of that segment of the population. President Buhari not being on its ticket for the first time in its life takes the APC into uncharted territory. Mr Kwankwaso, who is from Kano in the North-West; Mr Abubakar, who is from Adamawa in the North East; and newcomer Datti Baba-Ahmed of the Labour Party who is from Kaduna also in the North-west; will certainly seek advantage in the campaign for Northern Muslim votes should the ruling party give its ticket to an adherent of the other religion. Religion has become a big part of people’s identities in the North and has basic influences on their interactions. The Northern Christians, who sometimes dispute that they are the minority in the North, are in a struggle for self-assertion against their Muslim neighbours who have dominated the politics of the region and Nigeria. That rivalry runs deep. So, just as Mr Lawal is angry at his side being overlooked, so would members of his party of the other faith feel had they been the side overlooked. Mr Tinubu and the APC probably see it as suicidal to leave the rich electoral field of the Northern Muslim voters to its opponents, just to score a moral point with a symbolic gesture. Another point that has been made by some APC supporters, albeit inelegantly, is that the APC has never enjoyed strong support among Christian communities especially in the two easter zones of the South and across the North and that nominating a Christian running mate will not change that situation. In the 2015 and 2019 elections, most Christian leaders openly campaigned for opposition candidates and the APC lost in most Christian-dominated areas. The APC is probably braced for the continuation of that trend and thinks it wisest to focus on standing firm with old friends. However, there are seven months before the elections and the implications of Mr Tinubu’s choice would have become clearer before the polls open on the morning of February 25. Kwankwaso’s running mate Mr Tinubu was not the only presidential candidate to substitute his running mate last week. Mr Kwankwaso of the NNPP did the same by naming Isaac Idahosa as his substantive pick. The choice has attracted little attention and Mr Kwankwaso may even be envious of Mr Tinubu for the fury that his own choice had ignited. The NNPP had spent some time in a merger talk with the Labour Party until both parties went their separate ways after failing to agree on which platform to adopt and who between Mr Kwankwaso and Peter Obi should lead a joint ticket. Mr Obi was the first to name his own substantive running mate while the NNPP hopeful waited until the last day to file his own pick with INEC. Mr Idahosa is a newcomer to politics. But that does not mean he was unknown. He is a pentecostal pastor from Edo State but based in Lagos. It is not clear which state he will choose as his political base. It is also uncertain what value he will be adding to the NNPP ticket. But videos of him that appeared since his nomination show he performs miracles. Mr Kwankwaso has focussed his activities in the North. Apart from a few big-name politicians defecting to the party in Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom, the NNPP remains unknown in most parts of the South. The party and its presidential candidate have even noticeably fallen off from attention on Twitter, where it had momentarily become visible while the courtship with Mr Obi lasted. To run a serious presidential race, he has to find his way back into attention, this time on the ground in the South too. Maybe that is the reason he chose the miracle worker, Mr Idahosa.

Kashim Shettima and the fury of Christendom, By Festus Adedayo

Let’s have Christendom do more critical assessments of the candidates, please. The truth is, at this precarious stage of Nigerian national life, religion is far too minute an issue that should bother us, no matter the frustration, mistreatment and maltreatment by the forces of Ananias and Sapphira on the prowl. Topmost of our concerns, if we are truly interested in the togetherness and future of Nigeria and our children, is security, followed by the economy and national cohesion. Thus, I expect that Christians will centralise their concern about Shettima around how true or not the allegation that he is in bed with terrorism. Two anecdotes of the extreme reaction of scorned women will avail, if you are looking for a corollary to Nigerian Christendom’s tempestuous anger at the choice of Kashim Shettima. A Muslim and former governor of Borno State, Shettima was recently chosen as vice presidential candidate to Bola Tinubu, a Muslim and presidential flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC). In traditional Africa, which celebrates centuries of polygamy, incidences of husband-wife tension, confrontation, jealousy and bitterness have led to the destruction of polygynous homes. One of such is Richard Edward Dennett’s anecdotal explanation of the life of Africa through folklores. Dennett, an English trader who lived in what is today Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), translated a native story of two women in polygyny, whose husband had gone into the forest in search of game. On the day of his return, the women then decided to prepare chicoanga, a native bread, for him. As the younger wife went in search of condiments, the elder wife tried to kill the son of the younger wife, ostensibly due to perceived favouritism in the home and, apparently, because the child was a “much brighter and more intelligent child” than hers. In mistaken identity, however, she killed her own son. Orlando Owoh, late Yoruba musician renowned for his guttural voice and predilection for affixing anecdotes to his musical offerings, also gave fillip to this anecdote. His own narration, not dissimilar to the DRC anecdote above, also speaks to the extreme that a woman scorned in matrimony, either real or imagined, can go to. In the Owoh allegory, the senior wife in the matrimony also feels the insufficient possibilities of advancement of her schooling child. She then laces a beautifully prepared porridge meal meant for her senior wife’s son with a lethal poison. Unfortunately for her, the meal was eventually devoured by her own child. The two allegories above point to extreme reactions and the extent that Nigerian Christendom may go in its tirade against the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket. English playwright, William Congreve, explains the anger better through a line, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” in his The Mourning Bride. The line, recited from this tragic play during its first performance in 1697, has since become an enduring reference to the fury of females when cross. It was uttered by a character in the play called Zara, a queen, who upon being captured, gets entangled in a lethal love triangle. Like the commotion that always follows the favoritism of decisions taken by a husband in a polygamous home, Kashim Shettima’s choice has kindled a fire of discontent in the Nigerian religious polygamy. In its decision to pick Shettima, the APC choice has rightly been interpreted by Christians, the major co-wife in a polygynous relationship in the polity, to mean insolence, impudence, disdain and a belittling of their teeming population in Nigeria. A conflict of co-wives in polygamous families in Africa is often characterised by commotion, petty accusations, outbursts of verbal abuse, harassment, physical violence, accusation and counter-accusation. Provoked by the uneven distribution of privileges and attention in households – whether material or sexual – the conflicts that come with the tempestuous relationship of co-wives in African polygamous marriages are ubiquitous. Those embroiled in polygamy know that one sure way to avoid its attendant fury is through fairness, equity and justice. However, these are very rare virtues that can be dispassionately dispensed by mortal men. Even the Islamic holy writ counsels equitable relationships with women as basis for delving into the stormy waters of polygny. A serial philanderer and polygamist, my musical idol, Ayinla Omowura, at some critical point in his life, came to the realisation of the dilemma of polygamy and counseled, in a vinyl he entitled Oniyawo pupo – Multiple Liaisons – that agabagebe – imparity, hypocrisy and injustice – will ruin an inequitable polygamous home. This chaotic environment seems to be a most fitting analogy that can explain the scenario that Tinubu and his APC provoked by their unconscionable choice of Shettima. While in polygamy as a cultural practice, the hierarchy of wives is a notorious fact accepted by all parties, with the hierarchical positioning of “wives” hotly avoided in the Nigerian religious polygamy. Framers of the Nigerian constitution, aware of the bedlam that these wives could unfold, inserted it in the grundnorm that the state would be equitable in its dealings with and treatment of its incendiary religious wives. Non-compliance with the principle of parity and equity in polygamy has led to strife, riots and discontent in times past. The co-wives of Christianity, Islam and traditional religious practices have hotly contested spatial relevance, with dire consequences for the polity. This has bred conflicts of immense proportion. However, not minding the constitutional non-recognition of any principal wife by the Nigerian state, rulers of Nigeria, over the years, have gone ahead to delineate the marital space, not hiding their flawed affections for Islam as the principal wife. Christianity has been allotted the position of the second wife. …I however think that Christians and Nigerians in general are treating skin rash, in this fuss over Kashim Shettima’s religion, while neglecting a far more debilitating manifestation of leprosy. Southern Christians, especially, are not being as critical as they should be in this regard. From all they have gathered about Tinubu, estimating his presidency – God forbid – through the lens of religion, to my mind, is a lame mis-direction of focus. Since 1966 when the military took over government and proper federalism was thrown into the sewer, and up until about two decades ago, of all the noticeable cleavages of Nigeria’s aspiring nationhood, religion was never dominant or, at best, it played a superficial role in considerations for elective, selective or appointive offices. Ethnicity has been a far dominant cleavage which Nigeria has battled since Fredrick Lugard selfishly soldered uneven nations together as a country. Even under the unelected despotic military rules of Aguiyi Ironsi, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, to Abdulsalami Abubakar, where balancing was not expected to be an issue, there was less furore about the religious composition of those running the State. That was why Babagana Kingibe could pair with MKO Abiola and their audacious sameness of religion was immaterial once the ticket held promise of a greater Nigeria. However, the infernal decision to annul the results of the 1993 election by the ruling class of the time drove Nigerians to their different tents. Then emerged the scramble of Nigerians for an identity which represented a canopy that could shield and protect the people from the manic and Dracula-like teeth of the Nigerian state. Religion came to their rescue. From 1999, the duo of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari have reified ethnicity and made it, as they say on the street, big deal. In his dual appearance as Nigerian leader, Obasanjo struggled to cripple the cleavage of ethnicity. If Nigeria had had earlier or successive leaders with such mindset as Obasanjo’s, the country would most probably be on her way today to wiping out ethnic considerations in matters of state. Obasanjo’s government made nonsense of an emilokan or awalokan (it is my or our turn) as a motive for an ethnic group to rally round leadership. In Obasanjo, Yoruba sucked fewer oranges from the Nigerian governmental tree, even when they had their son at the top. TEXEM Advert While promoting the Aliko Dangotes of this world to undeserved financial superstardom, Obasanjo was obsessed with the crippling of his Ogun State kinsman, Mike Adenuga Jr. on baseless and trumped up allegations; haranguing him in the process in an unprecedented acrimony. Contrarily, Jonathan and Buhari clothed their kins with decorative apparels. I am sure Obasanjo is regretting his gross, silly selfishness in the guise of nationalism today. Buhari went even a notch higher than Jonathan in decorating his kinsmen with pearls. Region and religion became the passport for occupying national offices under him, so much that even terrorists who kill Nigerians in droves get presidential support for their ultra violence, once they flash their shared Fulani identity with the president. With all these as backcloth, it will be arrant nonsense to quarrel with Christendom for fussing over the poster of a principal wife that Tinubu and his APC have proclaimed on Islam by their choice of Shettima. The fusses can be likened to the physical and verbal aggression that is common in polygamous homes. It is a clear clone of how, in traditional Africa, frustrated at being cast in a second fiddle role to play in the home, a scorned woman, trying to preserve, secure and maintain her position, resorts to the gory and diabolical antics as told by both Orlando Owoh and Richard Dennett. Wives, most times the scorned senior wife, went/go into unimaginable extents to wreak havoc on the matrimony. These negative actions range from securing dangerous love charms, potions, entering into witchcraftcy, sorcery and even, murder. Tinubu and his APC seem to have given sexual and affectionate privileges to Islam as co-wife in a secular Nigerian state and cannot now complain about the anguish and mental torture that Christianity feels as a result of this humiliation. Having said all the above, I however think that Christians and Nigerians in general are treating skin rash, in this fuss over Kashim Shettima’s religion, while neglecting a far more debilitating manifestation of leprosy. Southern Christians, especially, are not being as critical as they should be in this regard. From all they have gathered about Tinubu, estimating his presidency – God forbid – through the lens of religion, to my mind, is a lame mis-direction of focus. I do not think a religious individual will carry the kind of heavy, tarnishing load of allegations of malaises which Tinubu and Shettima carry on their persons today. These are acts and individual manifestations which Christianity teaches its members not to be unequally yoked with. I think that the allegations against the duo are far more weighty infractions as to make Christian fusses over their religious orientation needless, or at best secondary. Let’s have Christendom do more critical assessments of the candidates, please. We all know that those politicians who religionists furiously canvass to be in office because of their Islamic or Christian names are as far away from religion as gold-plated metal is far from original gold. Whether they bear Christian or Muslim names, the main religion of those office-seeking fellows is politics. Some analysts have labeled as misbegotten the clarion call to bring to the front burner allegations against both Tinubu and Shettima. They also label those allegations as old wives’ tale. However, sane people should know that unexplained accusations of drug couriering in about two decades, recently sauced with incontrovertible and unassailable loads of evidence, for which the accused has no single word of rebuttal, should rank first among our bothers. Else, we are all just going to have a Pablo Escobar reincarnate in Aso Rock. An explaination of this baggage should carry a far more consequential weight than the texture of his religiosity of that of his anointed vice. An old wives’ fuss about whether Tinubu is a czar of fakery or not is, to my mind, far more damaging and of national importance to all of us than concerns about whether the same man, whose wife shares a similar pedestal with Christian elders, will be equitable in dealing with other faiths. Illustrated by the intervention of the biblical Queen Esther on behalf of her people in King Ahasuerus’ “zi oza room,” against the rampaging forces of Haman, the power of the bedroom that women command cannot be discountenanced. This is against the backdrop of the fact that the Nigerian constitution has made robotic mannequins of vices and deputies in a presidential system of government; a fact that is always further exploited by men occupying these executive positions, who harbour totalitarian and totalistic views of power. You may want to ask what Yemi Osinbajo has been able to swing the way of Christendom in his eight years of figurative vice presidency. Now, extending this counterfactual situtation further, what can Ifeanyi Okowa swing for the Christian fold in an Atiku Abubakar presidency, God forbid, that Remi Tinubu cannot swing far more in her husband’s presidency – God forbid? The truth is, at this precarious stage of Nigerian national life, religion is far too minute an issue that should bother us, no matter the frustration, mistreatment and maltreatment by the forces of Ananias and Sapphira on the prowl. Topmost of our concerns, if we are truly interested in the togetherness and future of Nigeria and our children, is security, followed by the economy and national cohesion. Thus, I expect that Christians will centralise their concern about Shettima around how true or not the allegation that he is in bed with terrorism. A man who had at his beck and call a heap of classified state dossiers while in office and who should know – Goodluck Jonathan – has come in the open to accuse Shettima of dalliance with terrorism, while he was governor. This is a weighty allegation and in dire need of cogent explanations, not the waffling on the social media. There are also flying allegations that Shettima, as Borno State governor, prodded by Lagos, was behind the Chibok girls kidnap, so as to demonise the Jonathan government, preparatory to the final death-knell on his government by the APC. The allegation claims further that the girls thereafter entered a place of no return because the kidnap turned awry. It is also alleged that Shettima’s reward for that daredevilry was the Nigerian vice presidency. A number of other untoward allegations decorate Shettima’s neck like slave trade era neck-manacles. This is a man who, God forbid, Tinubu becomes Nigeria’s president and any evil, God forbid, happens to him, stands the chance of being Nigeria’s president. With this, he will then return Nigeria to the terror-laden years of Muhammadu Buhari, where the cadavers of priests and men of God in general have become special delicacy in Fulani herdsmen-terrorists’ pot of soup. Let’s have Christendom do more critical assessments of the candidates, please. We all know that those politicians who religionists furiously canvass to be in office because of their Islamic or Christian names are as far away from religion as gold-plated metal is far from original gold. Whether they bear Christian or Muslim names, the main religion of those office-seeking fellows is politics.

The Muslim-Muslim ticket and religious mobilisation in Nigeria, By Jibrin Ibrahim ByJibrin Ibrahim

What is new in Nigeria today is the climate of suspicion and fear over what many Christians see as an Islamisation agenda. The APC elected a Southern Muslim, while the PDP elected a Northern Muslim with a Southern Christian running mate. It might well be that these choices were activated by the strategic search for winning combinations but for many within the Christian community, the strategies adapted might also have religious connotations… It has become very divisive and significant confidence building measures would be necessary to make the case that there is no hidden agenda against the Christian community. The Muslim-Muslim ticket chosen by the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has generated controversy since 2015, when he sought to be Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate. Today, he is the presidential candidate and therefore got the opportunity to implement what he has canvassed for a very long time. It is clear that Bola Tinubu is not a religious bigot and is therefore not making the choice to achieve a religious objective. He belongs to the group of analysts that believes the 1993 victory of the Abiola-Kingibe, Muslim-Muslim ticket was a winning formula. The argument is that a Yoruba candidate from the South-West needs the to generate electoral support from the core Northern Muslim electorate to win. The reasoning in the APC camp is that the 2023 elections might be a close call, with the Labour Party taking significant Southern and Christian votes and Kwankwaso’s New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) taking a big chunk of the Kano and core Muslim votes. This is not the only political permutation being circulated. Others have argued that there is a significant Christian vote in Northern Nigeria that would be alienated by the option of a Muslim-Muslim ticket. These votes would therefore be lost to Tinubu’s APC and go to the Labour Party, or Atiku’s PDP might emerge as the beneficiary of the calculus. This would also have an impact on many Christian majority states and constituencies where Christians enjoy numerical advantage. The danger is that the very long campaign period that is coming up might have a focus on religious mobilisation along this divide, and that would be very bad for the future of Nigerian democracy because, essentially, issue-based politics would be thrown under the bus as religious affiliation becomes the key signifier of political choice. The current vice president to Muhammadu Buhari, Professor Yemi Osinbajo is a pastor of the Redeem Christian Church of God and there is no evidence to suggest he was able to use his position to achieve results for the Christian community. The general situation is that Nigerians are very dismissive of the vice presidential position, often arguing that all powers are in the hands of the president, which might not be completely true. The massive level of heat generated by Tinubu’s proclivity for a Muslim vice president might seem to suggest that the position is an important one and that therefore the stakes are very high. The current vice president to Muhammadu Buhari, Professor Yemi Osinbajo is a pastor of the Redeem Christian Church of God and there is no evidence to suggest he was able to use his position to achieve results for the Christian community. The general situation is that Nigerians are very dismissive of the vice presidential position, often arguing that all powers are in the hands of the president, which might not be completely true. The reason why the Muslim-Muslim ticket generates so much controversy is because what is at stake is not the strategic concerns about winning permutations, but real anger within the Christian community, of the imbalance in political appointments under President Buhari. Earlier this week, for example, the Christian political leaders within the APC in the nineteen Northern states met in Abuja on July 11 to deliberate on the issue of the party’s Muslim-Muslim ticket and its implications for the country. They argued that the president, the chairman of the party, deputy chairman North, the president of the Senate, the speaker and deputy speaker, and now both the presidential candidate and his running mate, etc., are all Muslims. The narrative is that of the marginalisation of Christian leaders. They also point out that the preamble of the APC’s constitution states that it, “will guarantee equal opportunity for all, mutual and peaceful co-existence, respect and understanding, eliminating all forms of discrimination and social injustice among Nigerian”, and that the Muslim-Muslim ticket appears to have violated this provision. They conclude that: “Nigeria is a multi-religious and a constitutional democracy and NOT a theocracy with religion as a major national fault line which cannot be whimsically manipulated without dire political consequences on our peaceful co-existence as a people”. What is new in Nigeria today is the climate of suspicion and fear over what many Christians see as an Islamisation agenda. The emergence of Boko Haram and their Jihadi agenda has always been read to be the spearhead of this agenda. At the same time, there has been significant spread of the farmer-herder conflicts and violence, which has developed into large scale banditry and mass kidnapping, also largely seen as another part of the hidden agenda against the Christian communit The former secretary to the Federal Government, Babachir Lawal, while expressing his anger at the Muslim-Muslim ticket declared: “Now tell me which Christian will vote for APC with the following contraption: Moslem presidential candidate (Lagos), Moslem vice presidential candidate (Borno), Moslem national chairman (Nasarawa), Moslem deputy national chairman (Borno), Moslem president (Katsina); Moslem Senate president (Yobe); Moslem speaker (Lagos); Moslem deputy speaker (Plateau) e.t.c. APC the great! Wu na de try woh!” Maybe it is worthwhile reminding ourselves that Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria contested the 1979 presidential election with Philip Umeadi as his running mate. Both were Christians and Southerners. Way back during the First Republic, Awolowo promoted an electoral alliance for the 1964 general election, the United Progressive Grand Alliance, in which the two main parties were his Action Group and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons led by Nnamdi Azikiwe, both Southern Christians. After the elections, Azikiwe refused to form a government with Awolowo and linked up with Ahmadu Bello’s Northern Peoples’ Congress. To go back to the 1979 election, Nnamdi Azikiwe, leader of the Nigerian Peoples’ Party, also had a Christian-Christian ticket with Professor Ishaya Audu as his vice presidential contestant. Both were Christians; the latter a pastor, while Azikiwe was from the South-East and Audu was from the North. What is new in Nigeria today is the climate of suspicion and fear over what many Christians see as an Islamisation agenda. The emergence of Boko Haram and their Jihadi agenda has always been read to be the spearhead of this agenda. At the same time, there has been significant spread of the farmer-herder conflicts and violence, which has developed into large scale banditry and mass kidnapping, also largely seen as another part of the hidden agenda against the Christian community. The dominance of Muslim officers in the command and control of the armed forces and security agencies is often cited as proof of this agenda. It is for these reasons that the Christian community has advocated for the next president to come from the Christian community on the basis of the zoning of the presidency to the South. The APC elected a Southern Muslim, while the PDP elected a Northern Muslim with a Southern Christian running mate. It might well be that these choices were activated by the strategic search for winning combinations but for many within the Christian community, the strategies adapted might also have religious connotations. That is where we are on the matter today. It has become very divisive and significant confidence building measures would be necessary to make the case that there is no hidden agenda against the Christian community.

A baker holds a loaf of orange-fleshed sweet potato bread in her bakery in Nnewi By Ronald Adamolekun

SPECIAL REPORT: Facing high wheat prices, Nigerian bakers turn to potato puree The paste made from orange-fleshed sweet potato is becoming the new normal in bread-making in Nigeria, where bakeries have fallen on hard times following record jumps in production cost. In the midst of a sunlit room in Nnewi, south-east Nigeria, a woman measures out four parts of sweet potato puree – the colour of apricot – into a large basin containing six parts wheat flour. She adds sugar, butter and other ingredients for making bread. Six hands lift the basin to empty it into a mixer and, later in the process, the bakers would work the mix into dough, cutting out various sizes and toss them into pans, ready for the oven. Minutes later, straight from the oven, milky yellow loaves stand arranged on shelves and the scent of baking, mingled with light wood smoke, warm the morning air. A car parked outside begins to take delivery to shops and roadside retailers around town. The puree, paste made from crushing a new breed of potato called orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) after steaming it, is becoming the new normal in bread-making in Nigeria, where a good number of bakeries have fallen on hard times following record jumps in the cost of producing bread. Taking the plunge What passion, or optimism, could have engulfed a young woman to the point of selling her only investment, a promising one at that, and ploughing the proceeds into cultivating OFSP just because she heard people talking about the spud at a seminar? Twenty-nine at the time, Maryann Okoli, who owns the bakery, returned one day in 2018 to Port Harcourt from a workshop in Umuahia to convert her one-hectare cucumber plantation into an OFSP farm because the latter offered enchanting prospects. “I ran into them, I am someone that is very inquisitive. I said ‘I want to know this thing more,’” she told PREMIUM TIMES. “But I got more attracted because of the health benefits, the nutritional benefits.” Out of the thrill of her new discovery and because that could help others solve their health problems, she started out talking to almost everyone she came across the gospel of the wonders of a miracle spud that not only holds the balm to wide-ranging ailments like diabetes and nutritional blindness but is also used for making foods as varied as pastries, juice and pap. Because the market was incredibly huge and she was raring to enlarge her share of it, Ms Okoli was soon confronted with a major challenge. After putting it on Facebook, calls came from all over Nigeria and she was inundated with calls from other parts of Africa also. Interestingly, it was only the processing of OFSP flour and puree she was doing at that point. But supply constraints stood in her way, for her farm was not yet in perfect shape and, as the pressure mounted, it was clear to her she would soon be faced with unmet demands. To make up for the hiatus in sales from the 10 months between land clearing and harvest, Ms Okoli would buy the potato from some parts of northern Nigeria, where it was mass-produced and then resell. Helped by the vibrant market, she sold the entire produce from the one hectare within two weeks. With 17 staff now on her payroll, Ms Okoli produces at least 5,000 loaves of bread a day and said she makes 100 per cent gain from producing juice from OFSP. “It’s highly profitable. Wherever I go for training, especially master bakers training, after training them because it’s always practical training, we always calculate the profit margin,” she said. “In a bag of flour, when you include 40 per cent of OFSP to a bag of flour, you are making a minimum of N5,000 to N8,000 ($12 to $19) profit in a bag. You make more money by adding potatoes.” With varying degrees of success, bakers like Ms Okoli are turning to OFSP puree to make a new kind of bread in Nigeria that is cost-effective and at the same time promises great health benefits, a culinary breakthrough that could radically redefine how bread is produced and priced in a country with the highest cost of bread in Africa. That shift seems fitting at a time when record spikes in the prices of wheat flour and sugar is making bread, once a staple affordable for the poor, a luxury to middle-income households. Nigeria’s food inflation touched its 15-year high in April 2021, with cereal and bread being two of the key drivers cited by the statistics office. By May 2022, the inflation rate stood at 16.82 per cent. Flour and sugar account for roughly four-fifths of the input in bread production, according to Emmanuel Onuorah, president of Premium Breadmakers Association of Nigeria (PBAN). As meagre as 1 per cent of the 4.7 million tons of the wheat projected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be consumed by Africa’s most populous nation this year would be produced at home, leaving the humongous balance at the mercy of importation. The commodity tops Nigeria’s food import bill every year, with the country’s wheat spend for 2021 approaching $2.5 billion from $1.5 billion two years earlier. That has set the government on a race to limit access to foreign exchange for wheat imports so that it could conserve its dollar reserves. But that policy of limiting access to foreign currency, turning importers to the black market, is putting an enormous squeeze on the prices of bread, which soared by over one-third in the one year to March, while a good number of bakeries are facing failure to thrive. “About 40 per cent of my members are closing shop,” Mr Onuorah told local television station TVC in December. OFSP could be grown all year round in all states in the country because of its drought-resistant character, meaning the new bread-making method could prove sustainable. In places like Kenya, Malawi and Rwanda, OFSP puree bread has seen large-scale commercialisation, and the International Potato Center (CIP) has asserted it could be one big answer to “the double burden of malnutrition in Africa and beyond.” OFSP bread has been discovered to have a longer shelf life than wheat-based bread and its wide acceptance by bakers could radically disrupt the bread market in Nigeria. According to the research body, the demand for OFSP puree in Kenya alone is estimated at $5 million every year, implying the innovation has gone beyond merely helping to scale back bread-making costs and offering several health benefits. It has come to be seen as a veritable tool for tackling rural poverty and is a good income source for farmers who supply the spud. Bakers say producing OFSP bread is cheaper than when only wheat flour is used to make flour depending on how much of the puree is combined with wheat flour. Equally, it helps reduce the use and cost of sugar because the potato already contains some measure of sweetness. Foods ranging from biscuit, chin-chin, meat pie, shawarma, burger, African salad, garri, pap, sweetener and juice to thickener for soup, stew, stodge and other pastries could be made from the potato. Ms Okoli has been able to develop a recipe that enables her to make bread from as much as 40 per cent OFSP puree combined with 60 per cent wheat flour in order. But success in how much of the puree is used to make bread varies among bakers. “The market is there because people like the bread very well,” she told PREMIUM TIMES. After she started cultivating potatoes, the love for value addition soon got a hold of her, and she was impelled to look beyond production and sale to take a chance at processing. Pilot sessions opened up ways of converting the potato to puree (which she described simply by her as mashing cooked OFSP roots after peeling and boiling them) and flour form and being in touch with a contact at National Root Crops Research Institute in Umudike, Abia State played its part in adding layers of value. Making the puree wasn’t viable for business, she said, because her original plan was to sell it as she was yet to start a bakery then. It ferments few days after processing because its shelf life is short, which means it would prove a hard sell to bakeries and other end users. The flour offered no true comfort either, for it is not as cost-effective as the puree. The “flour is costly because it has dry matter content,” Ms Okoli said. “… If you use flour to bake, it will not give you the (usual) colour and your bread and pastries will be on the high side because it has dry matter content. But if you use puree … you make more profit and the nutrient is more concentrated, the colour, the paste.” So she couldn’t go far. Funding from the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2019 eased the path for starting an initiative she named Esomchi Foundation and setting up a bakery in Nnewi the year after. “It is the profit we are generating from Esomchi Foods, a private sector (business), that we are using to run Esomchi Foundation as a project we are doing,” she said. The CIP commissioned her later to train 18 people from Nigeria’s six geo-political zones in a move aimed at getting the knowledge down to the grassroots. Subsequent empowerment partnerships between her foundation and organisations like HarvestPlus (a unit of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture), United States Agency for International Development via its Feed the Future programme, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Association of Master Bakers and Caterers of Nigeria (AMBCN) followed. There have been some research and development trials by SANO Foods, an organic food-focused company based in Lagos, part of which have led to how to improve the puree’s shelf life. It can last long “If you have continuous electricity supply or the period of outage is not too long for it to ferment,” Odedoyin Monsuru, its head of operations, told PREMIUM TIMES. “It is that fermentation you must avoid. If it doesn’t ferment, it can last up to eight months, twelve months,” he added. But consistent electricity is a tall order in Nigeria, which has one of the lowest electricity consumption in the world. SANO Foods has on its product mixed garri and fries made from potato and, besides the people and outlets it supplies all manner of organic convenience foods to, it was able to build a small, separate clientele of bread makers that bought its puree in the past. That is where those with enthusiasm for food processing and value addition could borrow a leaf, considering that OFSP puree and flour processing can carve out a distinct market for itself that could help supply bakeries and may even fill the demand of individual end-users and households. Like Ms Okoli, SANO Foods tried its hand at processing the potato into flour but the conversion ratio was quite disappointing as just one-eighth of the quantity of the potato processed could be turned to flour. So, the company has refrained from commercialising it. Yet, it has its own beauties. The flour has a longer shelf life than the puree because it is in powder form, and it is better suited as a convenience food that could be easily purchased from supermarkets and stores, with its ready-mix nature making it a candidate for easy meal, fit to be prepared at home as snacks and pastries for adults and kids alike. One farm owner who did not want to be named said his farm has been contracted by a company to produce OFSP flour exclusively for them from a plantation of two acres. It will form part of a pilot project to test the waters before the company starts expanding. From the farm owner’s conversation with PREMIUM TIMES, the firm is investing in R&D and keeping its operations under wraps and is waiting for industry regulators to green-light the move before it launches into the market proper. In a December 2021 Facebook post, SANO Foods, which also runs a bakery, said its puree could help cut over 30 per cent of bread production costs. The firm collaborated with the Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi (FIIRO) in Lagos in a seminar planned to promote awareness last year. It has held similar programmes with the National Agency for Food & Drug Administration and Control, AMBCN Abuja, Lagos and Osun states chapters as well as the Nigerian Economic Empowerment Development Strategy. Originally, SANO Foods went into a partnership with AMBCN with the expectation that the partnership would help open up the OFSP bread market but has now fallen out of favour with the association on conflict of interest grounds. An official at SANO Foods spoke of the failure of AMBCN to honour its agreement to promote the puree among its member because of the latter’s refusal to grease the palm of the union’s leadership with cash running into millions of naira, an affirmation of how Nigeria’s graft-ridden Establishment often kills masterstroke ideas that could benefit humanity. SANO Foods said it had already gone into production before that happened and, consequently, about 80 per cent of the puree it produced for that purpose was wasted. In some way, it put paid to its push to drive the consumption of the bread among Lagos’s estimated 20 million people. The setback has forced it to park the ambition of continuing puree supply to the four bakeries it was selling the puree. Distribution to them has now taken the back seat until the end of the current planting season. The company has itself cultivated a vast OFSP farmland in Ogun State to ease sourcing for potato roots and is optimistic the backward integration push will help cut costs. Teething problems and breakthroughs At the early stage of experimentation, a number of bakeries faced difficulties in getting the OFSP dough to rise and in making it fluffy after introducing the puree to the mix and that had implications for the texture and look of the bread. It came out flat, unlike wheat-based bread. Observations from trials revealed the greater the proportion of the puree the higher the likelihood the dough will struggle to rise, making the bread to be flat. Getting it right still remains a challenge of the recipe and is forcing some bakers to cut the proportion of puree to flour to as low as 10 per cent and others to 20 per cent. Ms Okoli said she has been able to turn the corner and now uses as much as four parts puree with six parts wheat flour, with her bread almost physically the same as conventional wheat-based bread. Bunarich bakery, which has also walked that path, told PREMIUM TIMES her OFSP bread dough did not rise the first day the recipe was trialled in neighbouring Omega Bakery. Both bakeries are located in Ibeju Lekki, a suburb of western Lagos. “So whenever I am doing this one now, I normally double my yeast. You know why it’s like that? You know that potato puree, you have to freeze it,” Irenosen Ohafina, the bakery owner said. “So that ice will slow down the yeast because normally even if you are using (purely) wheat flour, if you mix with cold water, the one you mix with cold water will take a longer time to come up before the other one.” She used to buy puree from SANO Foods. Locals, who are largely unlearned, are able to differentiate her OFSP bread from other types of bread because of the colour and it’s difficult explaining the health benefits to them. But she said the recipe has helped her scale back production costs. SANO Foods admitted if it is able to succeed in ramping up the OFSP puree composition in its bread to say 40 per cent and meaningfully reduce costs, the bakery will cut the price of its bread. “The drive is to make people eat healthy with little cost. People always say eating healthy is expensive. No. what we are preaching at SANO Foods is that people should be able to afford healthy food. Even the low-income earners should be able to afford it,” Ms Odedoyin said. “If we can crash it, if we can make it, the cost of production to be very low, that will be perfect for us. We will definitely bring down the price of bread and make people go for it and people can afford it.” Research institute FIIRO has made advancement in enhancing the OFSP value chain and has developed a process technology for manufacturing high-quality shelf-stable puree from OFSP. The institute can now fabricate various unit operations for its production for small and medium-scale entrepreneurs. Oluwatoyin Oluwole, the head and director of the institute’s food technology unit, told PREMIUM TIMES her organisation has also established appropriate process technology for producing crunchy baked cookies that are 100 per cent OFSP, OFSP meal (fermented or unfermented) and OFSP flour that can be utilised in food formulations such as in noodles production and confectionery products. She observed that OFSP is yet to be cultivated in vast quantities in Nigeria, which makes it pricey to some extent, and she She feels advocacy on its various processed forms and utilisation is low and should be stepped up. The Federal Government’s intervention is crucial, said Mrs Oluwole, who is optimistic OFSP is capable of enhancing food and nutrition security in the country and could help promote reduction of refined sugar inclusion in baked products including bread. “Adequate funds are also a limiting factor in developing OFSP value chain as both pre-harvest and post-harvest aspects of the value chain are both crucial for a sustainable OFSP value chain,” she said. “The Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi, Lagos in conjunction with National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike will need to synergize on how to improve the supply chain of OFSP and its cultivation in which both organisations will be involved in pre-harvest and post-harvest activities of the OFSP supply chain respectively.” Mrs Oluwole feels awareness of the use, cost benefits and nutritional benefits of OFSP is still low in Nigeria compared to its wider adoption in places like South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Mozambique and Rwanda. FIIRO has made commendable progress in how much puree is combined with wheat in making bread. Yet, the biggest stride known so far belongs to the CIP, whose efforts have produced bread in which 45 to 50 per cent of wheat flour has been substituted with OFSP puree, making it a good vitamin A source and a tested means of pruning costs. CIP is leading an advocacy that seeks to position the potato itself at the forefront of the battle against hidden hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. In Kano, northern Nigeria’s most populous state, women are adding colour to the cottage industry by innovating snacks from the puree. Yusuf Dollah, the country manager of HarvestPlus, spoke of how that turn in small-scale processing is helping the women “earn income from the comfort of their homes.” Delight Bakery, one of Kano State’s top bakeries, introduced OFSP bread to the state after its owner attended a training sponsored by the CIP and facilitated by Esomchi Foundation. Nigeria’s soaraway energy costs risk killing the golden goose Since the outset of hostilities in February, the Russia-Ukraine war has kept crude oil prices volatilely high above $100 per barrel and in Nigeria which imports nine out of every ten litres of diesel it consumes, energy costs are hitting new highs. Rotary oven, the oven type many bakeries use, is powered by diesel, whose price has surged at least three-fold since the year started and might rise further. The crisis is dealing a blow to bakery activities, with the bakery unit of SANO Foods now running scheduled operations in order to beat costs. Abuja-based Farm Organics processes organic, non-genetically modified specialty foods and counts OFSP as the produce around which it is building its core innovative products and services according to the information available on its website. When contacted by PREMIUM TIMES, it had started skeletal operations and could not tell when next its bakery would run, citing high diesel cost. “When I started baking, I started using the firewood oven before I bought my first rotary oven,” said the owner of Bunarich Bakery. “Cost of firewood at Ibeju Lekki here is something else. We have to go as far as Ogun State to get firewood. You know it’s not easy. But I’m using rotary oven.” On account of irregular electricity in her bakery location, Okoli has been using an industrial oven powered by firewood right from the time she started, implying only her mixer and mixing machine use electricity or diesel. It can bake bread loaves from four bags of flour at a go. “Because we buy it in the truck, we can buy firewood of like N150, 000 ($365.1) and use it for a minimum of three weeks,” she said, suggesting that she is doing well to weather the energy crunch. “Because of the increase in the price of diesel, we use N2,000 worth of diesel every day. Before, we used N2,000 diesel for four, or five days. Then we were buying it N200, now it’s N650, N700 (per litre) in Nnewi.” Now that the bakery is doing light production, her bakery uses fifteen bags (50kg each) of flour daily. She cited transportation as a major constraint as only three vehicles are currently doing distribution and is certain her bakery would be using as many as fifty bags a day considering the huge oven capacity if there are enough vehicles to service it. “Sometimes if I am around and I say ‘let me go and see customers again,’ I will supply bread with my car. We will do like 20 bags that day and we will sell them all that day.” Using firewood to power her oven means she won’t feel the pangs of energy costs much and that also is helping keep the prices of her bread affordable. Its OFSP bread that is specially designed for kids comes in the size of a doughnut and sells for as low as N50 ($0.12) on the street. Even though the firewood use raises questions about sustainability and carbon emission, they are not likely to pose a real threat at least for now given Africa’s slow march towards cleaner energy. The wonder spud and its health benefits “Let food be thy medicine,” said Hippocrates about 2,406 years ago. When the Greek charismatic physician issued that “decree”, no one knew it would take about two millennia and a half before four passionate scholars could give it thought by turning food into medicine. Developed by a team of CGIAR researchers at the CIP, OFSP was introduced into Nigeria in 2012 as a crop capable of considerably suppressing the prevalence of childhood malnutrition in the country and which could help address a number of severe health conditions among adults. The nutrient-dense spud, a miracle of bio-fortification, has a high concentration of beta-carotene, an organic, red-orange pigment that converts to vitamin A in the body after it is consumed. Its development owes its debt to Howarth Bouis of HarvestPlus and three CIP researchers – Maria Andrade, Robert Mwanga and Jan Low – whose pioneering efforts in developing the breed were rewarded in 2016 with the $250,000 World Food Prize sometimes called the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.” The award six years ago to the four scholars was the fruit of a quarter of a century of rigorous and dedicated research labour culminating in what Jan Low calls in Science Direct journal “a disruptive innovation to address a pressing need”. Bouis was nursing the idea of developing staple foods to provide micro-nutrients that could combat the bugbear of malnutrition in Africa and sweet potatoes seemed to him one of the viable candidates. Because processed foods that are fortified with vitamin A tend to be expensive and unaffordable to rural and poor households, Bouis and his team felt that developing a popular crop like sweet potato by increasing its pro-vitamin A content and micronutrients through selective breeding will make the crop more nutritious as it is growing. This will help “poor households get more than half of their calories from staple foods, and rural households most often consume what they produce”. This way of enriching foods, called bio-fortification in nutrition parlance, differs from the conventional food-to-food fortification procedure in that the latter is often conducted through food processing by companies, who infuse nutrients from other sources as supplements in their food products. “The challenge of addressing micronutrient deficiencies, or so-called hidden hunger is that it is not obvious to those who suffer from it,” Mr Low said. “Hunger pangs are clearly associated with insufficient energy intake. But no one wakes up saying “I crave vitamin A today”. Since poor populations especially rural dwellers worry less about vitamin and nutrient intake but are rather concerned with what can fill their stomachs, an effective means of getting vitamin A to them and of making it affordable is bio-fortifying staple and common crops and one beauty here is that rural households most often consume what they produce. The World Food Prize has called the OFSP the “single most successful example of bio-fortification.” More than one in every three Nigerian children aged 5 years and below suffer stunted growth, a medical condition linked to vitamin A Deficiency (VAD), while 30 per cent of preschool-aged children in the country are deficient of vitamin A. That has made VAD not just a public health problem but also a national emergency and there is wide optimism among pundits that OFSP might hold the magic wand that could cure related ailments. For adults, the potato is seen as a dietary remedy for poor vision, poor productivity, stomach ulcers, and diabetes and is used for easing arthritis pain and helps reduce mortality and anaemia in pregnant and lactating mothers. “Just two slices of OFSP bread provide 10 per cent of an adult’s daily vitamin A requirement,” says the CIP on its website. “We are now exploring puree use in humanitarian assistance programs, to extend its nutrition benefits to even more people.” Its programme manager for Nigeria, David Obisesan, said in a video every part of the crop could be consumed from the leaf, which is used as vegetable to the root, itself a repository of stupendous nutrients that are one of food science’s biggest blessings to modern life. Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation, one of CIP’s latest brainchilds, is setting sights on ways to develop a robust value chain that will enable participants at each level to gain tremendous exposure to production, processing and utilisation of OFSP. That will in turn help battle poverty, hunger and malnutrition on the continent. The players comprise root producers, vine multipliers and other people involved in its value addition particularly in rural Africa. Smallholders, women and youths have been listed as targets. Sub-Saharan Africa has a bad name for vitamin A deficiency as one of the places with the highest incidence in the world. A research in 2020 by six food science scholars including Jan Low herself reveals nearly half of under-5 children in sub-Saharan Africa are vitamin A deficient, making them prone to childhood blindness and, in certain cases, premature death. That West and Central Africa are way behind the rest of the continent, with only 29 per cent of children between ages 6 and 59 months receiving high-dose vitamin A supplements as of 2020, piles on the agony. But nutrition interventions through OFSP, whose cultivation is increasingly becoming one sustainable means of getting vitamin A to vulnerable populations in rural Africa, could also help tackle chronic childhood health issues like poor cognitive development, morbidity, reduced immunity and diarrhoea head on, experts say. SANO Foods is nursing a plan to stimulate acceptance of the bread among kids by promoting it among school-owners and authorities of elementary schools from the perspective of how it could better childhood health. The company aims to leverage the school feeding programme run by most states to introduce the initiative and will emphasise how the Vitamin A component could help tackle childhood malnutrition through the introduction of the bread to children’s meal. And this seems viable given the affordability of the doughnut-sized bread sold for as low as N50 by Esomchi Foundation, which could even be complemented with the juice made from OFSP for a stronger vitamin A-rich meal. “The juice is another centre of attraction in the OFSP value chain. There is no exhibition I will go to that people will not cluster around my exhibition stand because of the juice,” Ms Okoli said. “Most people are telling me that after drinking it, they go back home and sleep very well and we don’t add sugar to it. Now that we are approaching Easter, I’ve got about three big occasions that need it in large quantities. Some people will tell you I want 250 bottles, I need 300.” The model which involves the inclusion of OFSP in school children’s meals has seen proven success in the States. “In the US, some schools have added sweet potato puree to the lunch menu to boost the nutrition quality of those meals,” says the CIP. By the same token, FIIRO is setting sights on school-age children as the target consumers of its OFSP shelf-stable cookies, planned as an intervention strategy to promote beta carotene-rich food products for boosting vision, aiding growth and enhancing immune functions. One of the institute’s innovations called OFSP-based non-instant meals could be prepared as porridge for children and adults alike. In Osun and Kwara states, the CIP teed off a school meal initiative between 2014 and 2017 centring on revolutionising childhood nutrition by embedding OFSP in the menu of public schools. Bankrolled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the project trained bakers on the inclusion of 40 per cent OFSP puree in making bread. Fatai Ganiyu, who gained empowerment through the programme, was supplying OFSP bread to as many as 20 schools in one of the local governments in Osun State as of 2017. An arrangement with a local farmer farming close to his bakery enabled him to buy 60kg of OFSP every 2 weeks. “At the moment, I can’t meet the demand for OFSP-wheat bread. I supply the OFSP composite bread to 20 schools; part of the Oriade local government elementary schools. And the children love it,” Mr Ganiyu told the CIP. Between the middle of 2015 to 2017, the number of schools enrolled on the state meal plan called O-Meals School Feeding Program had risen from 17 to 186. Every week, 41,216 children were fed with OFSP. Vitamin A deficiency in children is perennially problematic for nutritionists, food technologists, dieticians and other healthcare officers in Nigeria. But there are strong possibilities that a countrywide embrace of OFSP bread and replicating the Osun State model of incorporating OFSP-based foods like porridge into pupils’ meal programme in other states could seize the trend. Nigerian kids are lovers of bread and this could prove one sure way of catching them young. “Just 125g of fresh sweet potato roots from most orange-fleshed varieties contain enough beta-carotene to provide the daily pro-vitamin A needs of a pre-schooler,” the CIP said and that seems to be good for Nigeria, which is home to the world’s second-largest population of malnourished children. The potato has been developed to have a climate-smart character that will withstand dire growth conditions, making it both drought- and heat-resistant. The spud is cultivated by its vine, has a production cycle of three to four months and can be planted all year round in Nigeria provided availability of water is guaranteed. Researchers say it can be grown in all of Nigeria’s thirty six states. But farmers still face threats from low yield on account of poor agronomic practices and the post-harvest damage caused by a weevil pest called “Cylas” in local parlance after its botanical name, “Cylas formicarius,” could sometimes be monumental. When they plant, farmers “might not even tell you that Cylas has entered and they will supply you like that and you will lose a whole lot of money because Cylas moves faster on the ground than when it is inside the soil,” Okoli said. “Once Cylas affects it on the ground, if you harvest it unknowingly and it spreads on the potatoes you plan to use in one month or two months, it will affect it and maybe within two weeks to three weeks, it will eat it up.” Her foundation has been in conversation with the CIP, which has assured it would work on how to control the pest. “I encountered them (cylas) during my first cultivation back in 2020. The effect on vines are defoliation and make tubers taste unpalatable,” agronomist Emmanuel Yahaya told PREMIUM TIMES. He feels many bakers haven’t heard of the OFSP bread recipe but some of those in the know have been approaching him to buy the potato. “Demand has obviously outmatched supply…. You have more consumers been aware of the health benefits of OFSP now than before.” Sometimes, Yahaya receives orders from fellow farmers whose production capacity straggles behind demand. In Ajebandele village in Obokun Local Government Area of Osun State, where Ademola Adepoju farms on two-and-a-half acres of land, something else is bringing good fortune aside from the root. He said in 2017 he expected to earn about N1.6 million just from selling OFSP vines to farmers. READ ALSO: Prices of bread to increase further as bakers prepare for strike Esonu Udeala, who lives in Kubwa in the suburb of Nigeria’s capital Abuja, supplies the root to buyers, processes it into flour for delivery to all parts of the country and trains people on the products in its value chain. He has made several false starts in getting bakers in the metropolis to adopt OFSP in making bread but that hasn’t dampened morale. About five of the bakeries he knows, apparently seeing the idea of making bread from potato as ridiculous, ignored him. But with baking costs rising by the day, they are returning to him to show them how the bread is made. “Now with the war in Ukraine and Russia … they are now running to see how it is made. But unfortunately, this is the wrong time because this is the dry season. Production of potato happens in the raining season. Even though I am trying to do irrigation farming, there is no encouragement,” Mr Udeala told PREMIUM TIMES in March. The day before, he dispatched one 50kg bag of the potato to Umuahia, where bakers had converged at a session to learn how OFSP bread is made, and Udeala said he went through hassles including travelling to Nasarawa to meet the demand fully, noting the difficulty of soucing the spud during dry spells. In 2021, the farmers he mobilised incurred big losses on account of the glut in the market, which depressed prices. Through Esomchi Foundation’s engagements with local farmers in Nnewi, communal rapport has been cultivated, much of which is evident in empowerment initiatives that last year shared roughly three hundred potato vines to women farmers free of charge. The idea is to help local people cultivate the crop in their kitchen gardens ultimately to combat dietary diseases and help local farmers expand production. Part of that involves taking farmers through agronomic best practices that will help boost yields and produce roots fit for consumption. The NGO makes interventions in connecting farmers to offtakers in order to fill demand in a market where availability lags far behind need. Even though the potato could be chewed and consumed raw, people with dietary diseases most times find it difficult doing so. “Presently now, I am using it for pap, powdered pap. And that one is another super product that a lot of all these people on health challenge” are craving to have, she stated. From the root, she also makes foods that are equivalents of custard and tomato paste, and she has avowed that the sweet potato is suitable for food-to-food fortification. In 2019, the scale of the impact her efforts are bringing to humanity had enlarged beyond mere individual and communal testimonials; it had become institutional. When she got a call that year from a university hospital saying they got to know the sweet potato when they heard about her and that it had aided some of their patients in dealing with eye problems, hypertension and diabetes, it was clear to all that her efforts had received the stamp of authority. The people she introduced it to, she said, have witnessed huge relief in health conditions such as rheumatism, arthritis and ulcer after eating the potato. A testimonial from a local, Jovita Azubuike, highlights the phenomenal potential of the potato as a remedy for eye tumour. Azubuike, a seamstress, rose from sleep one day in December 2018 to find her eyes swollen, meaning a major setback to her trade had happened. Ophthalmologists found the tumour impossible to handle after diagnosis in an upcountry eye clinic, making it pretty hard for months to continue sewing for a living. She would hear later of Esomchi Foundation from which she got a recommendation to try and consume the potato, which after some time healed what medication could not cure. Now the tumour is gone as all traces of redness in her eyes. “As you can see, I am back to my business,” she said. This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Oge Udegbunam contributed research to this report. Infographics by Kabir Yusuf. Multimedia by Lere Mohammed. Page planned and produced by: Ezekiel Oyero

'How democracies die: what history reveals about our future' by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Sometimes democracy dies with a bang. A coup d'état that brings down the government. A march on the capital, as martial law is declared and the state media is taken over. This is the way it usually happens in films and television programmes. Quickly and forcefully. But more often, democracies die slowly. In plain sight, at the hands of elected officials. Through the gradual erosion of political norms and institutions, as detailed in the new book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt – How democracies die: what history reveals about our future. The authors argue that history does not repeat itself, it rhymes. By examining history and looking at the patterns we can find the rhymes that signpost creeping authoritarianism – the threats to the checks and balances that are supposed to prevent the election of demagogues. For Levitsky and Ziblatt, "democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box." The four main indicators to look out for are: Rejection of (or weak commitment to) the democratic rules of the game Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents Toleration or encouragement of violence Readiness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media Levitsky and Ziblatt provide examples from history of how to act in cases like this. Sometimes you have to work with people you are ideologically opposed to in order to preserve democratic ideals, as was the case in Belgium and Finland in the 1930s, we are told. Given the current political climate, the global rise in populist extremist parties and hyper-nationalism, this book is a timely reminder that democracies do not always die in darkness. Sometimes they die with the lights on, by people elected through democratic means. But by examining history we can gain insight into measures each of us can take to protect our democratic rights. "Protecting our democracy requires more than fright and outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from other countries to see the warning signs, and recognise the false alarms (…) and we must see how citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert breakdown." If you would like to read this book it is available at the Council Library and can be requested via Eureka. About the authors: Steven Levitsky is Professor of Government at Harvard University. His research and teaching focus on political parties, democracy and authoritarianism and weak and informal institutions in Latin America and across the developing world. He is the author of two books: Competitive Authoritarianism and Informal Institutions and Democracy. Daniel Ziblatt, also Professor of Government at Harvard University, is a leading authority on contemporary Europe and democracy and authoritarianism in Europe from the 19th century to the present. He is the author of Structuring the State and Conservative Political Parties and the Birth of Modern Democracy in Europe. This publication does not necessarily represent the positions, policies or opinions of the Council of the European Union or the European Council. The contents are the sole responsibility of the authors. The Council library is located in the Justus Lipsius building, at JL 02 GH, Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175, 1048 Brussels (Froissart entrance) – opening hours Monday to Friday 10.00 – 16.00. It is open to all staff of the Council of the European Union and the European Council, trainees, permanent representations of member states, staff of other EU institutions and bodies, and researchers and students upon request. Access to some library holdings may be restricted to on-site consultation.

EXCLUSIVE: Senator Stella Oduah Abandons Claims Of Having Degrees, NYSC Certificate, Submits Secondary School-leaving Certificate With Only 2 Passes In Recent Affidavit To Electoral Body, INEC

From the latest affidavit submitted by Oduah to INEC on June 24, 2022, the senator who had claimed to have degrees and the National Youth Service Corps certificate, submitted a senior secondary school leaving certificate with only two passes. BY SAHARAREPORTERS, A former Minister of Aviation, Senator Stella Oduah has altered some of the personal information she submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in 2022 from the one submitted in 2018. From the latest affidavit submitted by Oduah to INEC on June 24, 2022, the senator who had claimed to have degrees and the National Youth Service Corps certificate, submitted a senior secondary school leaving certificate with only two passes. The National Youth Service Corps had disclosed that Senator Oduah, representing Anambra North in the National Assembly, did not complete the mandatory one-year NYSC programme. This was disclosed in a letter, marked NYSC/DHQ/PPRU/783/Vol III. The letter was in response to an inquiry made by a group known as the Concerned Anambra North PDP Stakeholders. The group had written to the NYSC, alleging that some officials of the agency colluded with Oduah to bury the truth. The NYSC responded through a letter by the Director-General of the programme, which was signed on his behalf by the Director of Press and Public Relations. The agency said Oduah commenced her NYSC programme in 1982 but absconded. Oduah swiftly reacted in the letter addressed to the Director-General, NYSC and titled, “48 Hours Notice to Retract Your Statement as Contained in Your Letter Dated 24th May 2022 Ref No. NYSC/DHQ/PPRU/783/VOL 111”. In the letter signed by Ezennia Nonso Chukwudebe, Director, Media and Publicity for Oduah, the senator described the statement made by the NYSC as reckless. She gave NYSC “48 hours to retract your statement failing which legal actions shall be commenced against you.” Meanwhile, in a signed affidavit Oduah submitted to INEC on October 18, 2018, ahead of the 2019 general elections, exclusively obtained by SaharaReporters on Sunday, the lawmaker claimed she has a BSc in Business Administration and attended St. Paul’s College Lawrenceville, Virginia, USA from 1978-1982. In the document, she noted that she attended St John’s Primary School, Odoakpu, Onitsha, Anambra from 1969 – 1973 and Zixton Secondary School, Ozubulu, Anambra State from 1973 -1978. But in the recent affidavit in support of personal particulars submitted to the electoral body, INEC, on June 14, 2022, Oduah has carefully abandoned claims that she has a BSc in Business Administration and attended St. Paul’s College Lawrenceville, Virginia, USA from 1978-1982. The lawmaker only claimed she attended primary and secondary schools, obtaining just FSLC (First School Leaving Certificate) and GCE (General Certificate of Education) in 1973 and 1978 respectively. Nothing was filled in the space for higher qualifications. Oduah attached a copy of her GCE result issued in June 1978 in which she only had passes in Mathematics and Commerce, which were the two subjects recorded for her on the Ordinary Level, West African Examinations Council GCE for June 1978. A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Prince Casmir I. Ajulu, had called on Oduah to withdraw from the 2023 senatorial race following the certificate forgery allegation against her. Ajulu, who is a founding member and convener of PDP in Oyi Local Government Area of Anambra State asked Oduah to emulate former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun. Adeosun resigned in 2018 after the allegation that she tendered a forged National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) exemption certificate as part of her credentials. SaharaReporters had reported that the lawmaker representing Anambra North Senatorial zone did not complete her National Youth Service. The Director-General of the NYSC had said though Oduah was mobilised for the national service in 1982/83 and deployed to Lagos State, she absconded after the orientation and never completed the service. In a statement obtained by SaharaReporters, Ajulu said all relevant documents of the Senator would be forwarded to the National Working Committee of the PDP together with an affidavit verifying the facts contained therein for necessary action. He had said, “From the afore-stated facts, it is not in doubt that Senator Stella Adaeze Oduah committed fraud by claiming that she completed her service year and was issued with NYSC discharge Certificate. She also committed perjury by deposing an affidavit to the effect that she lost her original NYSC discharge Certificate. “By the extant provision of the law, she is estopped from occupying any public office having not participated or obtained exemption letter from the NYSC and having deposed affidavit to the effect that she graduated from a foreign higher Institution with B.Sc. (Business Administration).”

Crude oil theft in Nigeria is “organized crime” – Chevron Nigeria CEO by Chike Olisah

Crude oil theft in Nigeria is organized crime and should be differentiated completely from host community issues. This is according to the Managing Director of Chevron Nigeria/Mid Africa Business Unit, Richard Kennedy who said this in a panel session held at the recently concluded NOG Conference in Abuja. Mr. Kennedy made this remark when he was asked to comment on the host community provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act. Crude Oil Theft is Organized Crime Mr. Kennedy emphasized the need not to confuse the agitations of host communities of oil-producing areas with the spate of crude oil theft being carried out in the area. “From my experience, the issue with crude oil theft should not be confused with host community issues. It is much much much bigger than that. It is completely different from host community issues. Quite frankly it is organized crime.” He also revealed that the level of theft is costing Nigeria millions of dollars daily in lost revenue which could have helped solve our fiscal challenges. “The volume of crude that is being stolen is well beyond comprehension. You can see some of the figures in the press, maybe it’s about 100,000 barrels per day at $100 per barrel and that’s $10 million per day that is being stolen. And NNPC owns 60% while taxes of 85% are paid so it’s a huge loss for the country.” The Group CEO of Oanda, Wale Tinubu also weighed in on the issue at the oil and has summit revealing about 20% of Nigeria’s daily crude production is lost to oil theft. “There has been a 43% reduction in our production from March 2020 to May 2022. We lose almost 20% of our daily crude production to oil thieves and pipeline vandals and 20,000 barrels a day of oil is lost to oil theft. Basically some three million barrels on average yearly is lost to oil theft and pipeline vandalism.” Challenges with oil theft Nigeria has been experiencing some of the worst crude oil theft in its history with millions of dollars lost daily. Several allegations have been made against the ability of security agencies to guard the pipelines. Some have even alleged the complicity of security agencies in the spate of pip theft being experienced. Recently the Chairman of Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) Gbenga Komolafe, revealed that only about 132 million barrels of the 141 million barrels of oil produced in the first quarter of 2022 were received at export terminals. Komolafe said, “This indicates that over nine million barrels of oil have been lost to crude theft…this equates to a loss of government revenue of approximately $1 billion…in just one quarter,” He added, “This trend poses an existential threat to the oil and gas sector and, by extension, to the Nigerian economy if left unchecked.” Theft of crude oil grew from 103,000 barrels per day in 2021 to 108,000 barrels per day on average in the first quarter of 2022, according to Komolafe.