By Olusegun Adeniyi
In a December 2016 piece titled ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, I used a ‘case study’ involving five scenarios to explain the Nigerian condition. And since every Nollywood movie must have a sequel, I crave the indulgence of readers to release ‘Part 2’ of that column today.
SCENE ONE: In the course of a break-in at a local branch of the Central Bank (not Nigeria), one of the robbers, holding a pump action gun, shouted: “Don’t move, if you don’t want to die. The money in this bank belongs to the government while your life belongs to you.” With that message, everyone in the banking hall lay down quietly. That was a “mind changing concept”.
When Mudashiru Obasa—who was removed as Speaker on 13 January 2025 by 36 out of the 40 members for alleged misconduct, abuse of office and financial impropriety—invaded the Lagos State House of Assembly last Thursday, his replacement, Mojisola Meranda, said he was acting a theatre. By Monday afternoon, it had dawned on Meranda that the forces bent on bringing Obasa back to office were not play-acting. Smelling the coffee, Meranda surrendered, and ‘King Obasa’ is now back on the throne! All the huffing and puffing of the past two months against a power-drunk presiding officer who has lorded himself over them for a decade have now been upended. After succumbing with tears, the Lagos State House of Assembly members now know that in Nigerian politics ‘two plus two’ does not always equal four. In our country, as Obasa has demonstrated, to adapt a popular saying, ‘one with God(father) is the majority’.
SCENE TWO: When a lady in the banking hall lay on the floor in a suggestively provocative manner that exposed too much flesh, one of the robbers shouted at her: “Please cover up! This is a robbery, not a rape operation!” That is called “being professional”.
The Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation recently presented its 2019 report to the National Assembly. It revealed that 178,459 firearms, mostly AK-47 rifles, were missing from various police formations nationwide. Some 3,907 assorted rifles and pistols could also not be accounted for as of January 2020. But the police high command, according to a Daily Trust report on Monday, has traced the development to negligence and poor knowledge of weapon handling by some of their personnel. Put simply, it is about lack of professionalism! While that may be true, it cannot be the only plausible official explanation for this malaise. “Countries that are experiencing conflict or widespread armed violence tend to lose control of ammunition in their national stockpiles, be it through theft, loss, or battlefield capture,” Conflict Armament Research, a UK-based non-profit organisation, once stated after revealing that many weapons recovered from bandits in Zamfara State belonged to Nigeria’s security forces. The federal government must fish out and deal with the rogue elements within these agencies who are selling weapons to criminals.
SCENE THREE: When the bank robbers returned home with the loot, the youngest of them (a graduate of a local university) asked the leader of the gang, who did not complete primary education, “Big brother, can we begin to count the money so as to ascertain how much we got from the operation?” He received an instant response: “You must be very naive! There is so much money in these bags that it will take us several hours to count. Just put on the television. It will not be long before we know from the news how much we took from the bank!” That is called “experience” which, as they say, is the best teacher.
Almost all the Senators who have spoken on the sexual harassment allegation by Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan against the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio have been dismissive. Essentially because the allegation first came not on the floor of the senate but on television and only after Akpoti-Uduaghan had been dragged before the ethics committee. “The Senate does not conduct its affairs based on what is trending on social media,” chairman of senate committee on media and publicity, Yemi Adaramodu, said on Monday. “The only issue before the Senate is Senator Natasha’s non-compliance with the standing orders. All lawmakers are expected to speak from their designated seats, and any breach of this rule undermines order in the chamber.”
Even before Akpoti-Uduaghan formally presented her petition yesterday, I knew this matter would not go away quickly since it borders on alleged transactional sex. Nigerians enjoy such salacious stories. That perhaps explains why one of the most trending issues in the last two weeks has been the ‘bedroom cost’ of a Lamborghini between a female influencer and a top male musician. Yesterday, there was a public protest by Akpoti-Uduaghan’s supporters who were later countered by pro-Akpabio supporters. From experience, no matter what happens on the streets, it is not too difficult to predict that at the end, it is God’s-Will that shall be done!
SCENE FOUR: When the robbers had left the bank, the manager directed the supervisor to call the police quickly. But the supervisor said to him: “Not yet time for that! Let us take $1 million from the vault for ourselves and add it to the $7 million that we previously embezzled”. That is called “thinking outside the box” or to put it in the proper Nigerian lexicon, “applying wisdom”!
Following last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, Governor Siminalayi Fubara directed the recently elected local government chairmen in Rivers State to transfer power to Heads of Local Government Administration (HLGAs) in their respective councils to prevent any vacuum. The apex court had nullified the local government elections conducted on 5 October 2024, effectively removing the chairmen and councillors across the 23 local government areas of the state. But the forces against the governor are not relenting and he knows. That perhaps accounts for stories about the State Chief Judge mooting the idea of going on leave for one whole year! Regardless of all pretensions to the contrary, the fight in Rivers State is not, and has never been, about principle or public good. It is a fight for supremacy between a godfather and his estranged godson, even when public opinion appears to be on the side of the latter.
SCENE FIVE: That night, there were media reports that $10 million was taken from the bank. Meanwhile, the robbers counted and counted and counted, but they could only find $2 million. Immediately sensing what must have happened, the near-illiterate leader of the robbery gang told his boys: “We risked our lives for only $2 million while bank manager took $8 million with just a stroke of his pen.” Lost in thought, he began to hum Fela Anikulapo’s famous song, ‘Authority Stealing’ until others joined him: ‘Armed robber him need gun/Authority man him need pen/Authority man in charge of money/Him no need gun, him need pen/Pen got power, gun no get/If gun steal eighty thousand naira/Pen go steal two billion naira…’
I doubt there is any admonition I have repeated on this page as many times as that by Laolu Samuel-Biyi that “If you want to keep hope alive in Nigeria, don’t look at the budget.” Yet, I find it difficult to keep my own counsel. Anybody who has tried a run-through of the 2025 budget cannot but see isolated billions of Naira in many MDAs that are not tied to any specific projects— funds that are going to ‘disappear’ by December before we introduce another cycle of money-sharing (that the budgeting process has become in our country) for 2026.
Not knowing what to write about this week, I decided to ‘improve’ on that bank robbery joke first deployed nine years ago. The ‘five scenes’ offer embedded lessons, even if in a perverse sense, about contemporary events in our country. If the task of modern politics, is “to tame the power of the state, to direct its activities towards ends regarded as legitimate by the people it serves, and to regularise the exercise of power under a rule of law,” according to Francis Fukuyama, the crisis of Nigeria today, in practically all spheres of our national life, is that the elite cannot see that it is ultimately in their enlightened interest to subscribe to such ideals. That then explains why wherever you turn in Nigeria today, what you find is a flight of common-sense.
A day in Kebbi Tomato Farm
Armed with a ventilated plastic crate, each of the 600 young men and women (all wearing hijab uniforms) competed furiously penultimate Friday afternoon at the GB foods in Ngaski, Kebbi State. As they harvested tomatoes and I watched the workers (each of whom would be paid according to the number of crates they filled by the end of the day), I could see the opportunities for empowerment through agriculture that we have failed to harness in Nigeria. But first, what took me to the farm that also has a tomato paste factory?
On my way from China last October through Qatar Airlines, I met a young man at the airport in Doha who introduced himself to me as Tokunbo Aderibigbe, a media/communication manager for GB Foods. After the usual exchanges, Tokunbo said he would like me to see what they are doing with tomatoes at their agro-processing farm in Kebbi State. While I agreed to the idea, I said that for security reasons, my visit would have to coincide with whenever a government delegation visited the farm. So, when Tokunbo informed me two weeks ago that the Minister of State for Trade and Investment, John Enoh, was visiting their farm in Kebbi, I signed on to the trip. And I was impressed with what I saw.
Spanning 1,500 hectares, the farm boasts a 620-metric-tonnes-per-day processing plant that generates hundreds of direct jobs, which the company plans to double in the next expansion phase. By focusing on local production, GB foods and Tomato Jos, another leading company in the sector, are playing a key role in the reduction of our dependence on imported tomato paste. But much more importantly is how they are empowering smallholder farmers and creating employment opportunities for local people in the communities where they operate. On average, the number of casual workers engaged on the farm daily is put at about 1,200. Although one could see a heavy-duty tomato harvester machine on the farm, they chose to use the local people so that the community could own the project and in turn protect the farm—a very wise decision that has paid off.
Nigeria is reputed as the second-largest producer of tomatoes in Africa after Egypt and the 13th-largest in the world. But with only about 2.3 million metric tons of tomatoes annually, our country still depends on the importation of tomato paste, largely due to post-harvest losses and the number of inadequate processing facilities. Meanwhile, the trip to GB foods in Kebbi from Abuja took us on a 50-minute flight to the airstrip in Kontagora, Niger State, before a punishing four-hour journey that should ordinarily take no more than one and a half hours if the road were good. The MD of GB Foods, Vincent Egbe with whom I rode, explained the seasonal nature of tomato planting which also requires a specific climatic belt for it to grow and thrive. While the yield at their farm in Spain is 100 metric tonnes per hectare, for Nigerian farmers who rely on rudimentary methods, the yield is 5 metric tonnes per hectare. At their mechanised farm in Kebbi, they have already achieved 78 metric tonnes per hectare.
Tomato cultivation, as Egbe told me, requires a high level of sophistication. “It is an emotional plant that requires the right nutrients while the amount of water and fertilizer must be measured. The first 30 days determine the yield. Most Nigerian farmers plant directly in the absence of nursery (green house),” said Egbe who took me through the processes. “90 percent of tomato is water, so every seedling requires 180 litres of water minimum, and that is a challenge in our country. Four or five states in the north have the water but only three have other ingredients.”
In its August 2017 report, ‘Tomatonomics – Examining Nigeria’s La Tomatina Prospects’, Augusto&Co, a research and credit rating agency, wrote that despite “the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) ranking tomatoes as the vegetable with the highest priority in Nigeria, the annual import bill on tomato is close to $100 million, as over 750,000 tonnes is lost yearly to wastages.” The situation has since improved with some policy initiatives by the federal government. For instance, the National Tomato Policy (2022 – 2026) was designed to cut down on post-harvest losses and curb the import of tomato concentrates by increasing imports tariff from 5 percent to 50 percent and an additional $1500 levy per metric Tonnes. But there are challenges.
At a round table last October to enhance tomato productivity and reduce post-harvest losses, the National Tomato Grower’s Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria, (NATPAN) president, Abdullahi Ringim, said the non-enforcement of ‘tomato levy’ has created a funding gap in the sector. He noted that some of the major inflationary costs of fresh tomatoes include the impact of pests and increased cost of transportation, among others. When you add insecurity in farming communities, high tariffs on machinery and spares, regulatory bottlenecks etc., one can understand the challenges faced by investors in the sector.
Despite these challenges, Enoh commended the efforts of GB foods given what he saw and experienced. But the trip was quite revealing in other respects. On the tarmac in Abuja, as we were boarding, I noticed the man in the cockpit who was clad in kaftan. “Is that not Bala?” I asked to which I got an instant response from Tokunbo, “Yes, that is Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah.” Until 2023, Na’Allah represented Kebbi South Senatorial seat and was the Deputy Majority leader in the 8th Senate. Incidentally, GB foods is in his constituency. “Bala, is this your hustle now?” I asked the moment I entered the aircraft and in typical Nigerian fashion, Na’Allah replied with a question, “Is it not a legitimate hustle?”
Na’Allah’s story in the aviation sector started about two decades ago when his second son, now a captain, was then studying at Cape flying school, South Africa. The young man challenged the family at a breakfast table to go and learn how to fly if they considered it an easy vocation. As Na’Allah once told me, they took up the challenge and he secured admission at the Nigerian College of Aviation, Zaria while his late eldest son, Abdulkareem, went to Phoenix Aviation in Florida. His last daughter, Aisha, who was by his side in the cockpit on our trip two weeks ago, studied at the Aviation College, Ilorin and later in Florida. That was how they built a family of pilots. So smooth was our flight and flawless the landing that when we arrived back in Abuja, there was a spontaneous applause for the Na’Allahs from all of us. The message Bala Ibn Na’Allah, who is also a lawyer, sends to many of his colleagues is that politics should be a vocation. Not something on which to build their lives.
But back to GB foods . I believe that the federal government should assist such enterprises with special agricultural subsidies to reduce the cost of fertilizers, pesticides and other farm inputs. Addressing the challenge of regulatory bottlenecks that impede most businesses in Nigeria is equally important. We should also encourage other stakeholders to enter the sector. Interestingly, the Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer of the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), Cornelius Oluwasegun Adebayo, has been sharing with me his vision of farm clusters across the country and with what I saw at the GB foods in Kebbi, I believe we can use agriculture to address the challenge of poverty, food insecurity and youth unemployment in Nigeria.
• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com
