Political Statements That Seemed Harmless But Proved Costly

"My hands are tied" - Justice Sodeinde Sowemimo

"Money is not Nigeria's problem, but how to spend it" - General Yakubu Gowon


"The worth of a child born and bred in Nigeria cannot be compared to that in the United States." – Yakubu Gowon

"If you Tarka me, I will Daboh you" - Godwin Daboh

"Until I see someone eating out of the gutters before I believe there is poverty in Nigeria"– Umaru Dikko

Stupid is What Stupid Does: Nigerian Govt Orders Sack of Striking Doctors - Kayode Adebayo

Nigerian public office holders think and act stupid. They lack crisis management techniques. This is the same stupid solution that Babatunde Fashola adopted, when doctors were striking in Lagos State a few years back. He ordered the sack of the striking doctors, just like Adebowale. Like I said at the time, foreign governments and companies would snatch some of them up quickly. Saudi Arabia and Dubai are good example of countries that offer good pay to Nigerian doctors. Nigeria has only 35,000 medical doctors and needs at least 237,000 doctors to be comfortable. Instead of Nigerian public officials trying to work with striking doctors, they act stupid by firing them and eventually losing some of them to foreign countries. They will never learn.

Stupid is what Stupid does. You can't stop Stupid from acting Stupid.

Pius Adesanmi - It Will Get Worse Before it Gets Better

One argument being pushed by the Federal Government (via Osinbajo et al) and supporters of fuel subsidy removal (appropriate pricing, deregulation, downstreaming, market remedy - they have called the beast so many names my head is spinning) borders on the idea of the impenetrable darkness which always looms before the glorious light at the end of the tunnel. This is a very seductive argument, supported by the great spiritual and literary texts of the world. It is a powerful motif in literature, a recurrent theme in myths and legends: great difficulties, pitch darkness, then, light!

In the great literary mythologies, from the Greeks to the Romans, via Ananse in Ghanaian folk tales and the Tortoise in Yoruba folktales, pitch darkness and the light that follows it at the end of the tunnel are always moderated by one inescapable element: sacrifice. So here is the basic plot of one of the greatest motifs in human imagination: darkness + sacrifice = light. The emphasis is on sacrifice.

A Second Republic's Minister of Transportation, Umaru Dikko, is dead

A prominent northern politician and Minister of Transportation during the Second Republic, Umaru Dikko, is dead, his son, Bello Dikko, has said.
Mr. Dikko, 78, died early Tuesday in a London hospital, family members told reporters.

He has been sick for “quite some time” and suffered three strokes in a row, a family member said.

Details later….

Meanwhile, below is Wikipedia entry for Mr. Dikko.

Umaru Dikko (born 1936, Wamba) is a Nigerian politician and was a trusted adviser to President Shehu Shagari. He was also the Nigerian minister for Transportation from 1979-1983.

He started playing a role in the nation’s governance in 1967, when he was appointed as a commissioner in the then North Central State of Nigeria (now Kaduna State). He was also secretaryof a committee set up by General Hassan Katsina to unite the Northerners after a coup in 1966.^[1] In 1979, he was made Shagari’s campaign manager for the successful presidential campaign of the National Party of Nigeria. During the nation’s Second Republic, he played prominent roles as transport minister and head of the presidential task force on rice.