Viewpoint
In surveying the political terrain of Sokoto state in the light of the contest to the coveted office of the state governor in 2023, the first point that comes up crystal clear on the turf, is the fact that, it is strictly going to be a two-horse and a half (sic) race. With other political parties playing the role of side attractions, it is in fact, a clash between the standard bearer of the ruling People's Democratic Party, PDP and that of the All Progressive Party, APC.
Also, anyone with a cursory knowledge of the political dynamics of the state will understand that the two candidates, Alhaji Saidu Umar of the PDP and Alhaji Ahmed Aliyu of the APC, are more or less, the mask faces of the two real political masquerades in the state: Senator Magatakarda Wamakko of the APC and Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal of the PDP.
The two principal gladiators had previously encountered each other in 2019 only that, then, Governor Tambuwal was on the field directly as a candidate while Senator Magatakarda was throwing punches from the shadows, using Ahmed Aliyu as a proxy arrowhead. The Senator, a former two term governor, was trounced with the defeat of his candidate after a long drawn, energy-sapping contest finally decided after a rerun and at the electoral tribunals.
The emerging re-enactment of the encounter can be aptly described as a version of an unabating political duel of supremacy in the control of the Seat of the Caliphate. Will Wamakko's tenacity and desperation pay off this time? With Saidu Umar who doesn't have the leverages of incumbency, will he be having it easier, now that, it is a different ball game due to a change in the opponent that is in the ring with his protégé?
In other words, is Saidu Umar, the PDP standard bearer equipped with the requisite political assets and arsenals for the decisive battle ahead? That's; is he possessed of the political strength, surefootedness and steadied enough to repeat the 2019 feat of Governor Tambuwal by inflicting another defeat on the APC?
People in political circles in Sokoto are curious and pondering on the political wisdom of throwing up again someone who was roundly rejected by the electorate at the polls in a previous outing as the party's preferred candidate? Could it be that the powers propelling Ahmed Aliyu are aware that he has acquired new strategies, tricks and weapons in his war chest to avert the humiliation of another disastrous experience this time around? Or is it that the APC talisman and eggheads regard the PDP candidate as a walk-over for reasons of his political antecedents?
To underrate the capacity of Saidu Umar in the 2023 election will obviously tantamount to gross miscalculations to a wrong perception of the man and a gross miscalculations of the prevailing political dynamics in the state. Yes, he is not a dye in the wool politician as can be said of the APC candidate via the godfather of the APC. He has however, covered such a long mileage on the political turf over the short space of time of his political Odyssey that has made him a force to reckon with in the political tableaux of the state. Or else, he could not have emerged the flag bearer of the PDP in the face of the several people of calibre who had aspired to do so.
Alhaji Saidu Umar first forayed into political scene with his appointment as Commissioner for Finance by Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal in 2015. As Commissioner for Finance, he brought to bear the ethics of prudence, discipline, due process, diligence, probity and accountability of an astute Banker and a Finance Administrator. Under his supervision, the state government, for the first time, introduced the Treasury Single Accounting system, TSA, which immediately blocked several avenues hitherto used as drainpipes of plundering the treasury. The measure also led to the recovery of over 1.5Billion Naira stashed away, lying dormant in different bank accounts within and outside the state.
Governor Tambuwal has been widely celebrated for having the vision and for mustering the political will power to initiate radical and transformative paradigm shift from the preceding culture of a recklessness, brazen kleptomania, wastefulness and rudderless drift in the management of the state resources hoisted and pursued as governance policy direction up till 2015. For his role as a dutiful, diligent lieutenant who held then forte in the engine house of the state finance machinery, the self effacing Saidu Umar must be accorded a measure of those accolades. Indeed, his elevation to the position of Secretary to the State Government, SSG, in 2019 was a mark of recognition and reward by an appreciative Governor Tambuwal to an astute, prudent and focused Administrator.
As he goes flying the flag of the PDP in the 2023 governorship race, Alhaji Saidu Umar will definitely enjoy the advantage that goes with his grandeur in the Sokoto traditional setting and establishment as the holder of the prestigious title of, MALAM UBANDOMA of Sokoto who is a Senior Adviser to the Sultan on education, Islamic jurisprudence, the sharing of proceeds of Zakkat, trade and commerce among other critical functions that catalyse social and economic advancement of the society.
On the other hand, his opponent, Alhaji Ahmed Aliyu of the APC, is going into the race from the background as a background politician. His partisan politics began as a, "storm trooper" in the youth vanguard of the then embattled Magatakarda Wamakko in the build up to the 2007 governorship election in the state. His transition from an obscure, zestful youngster into political limelight started with his appointment into the cabinet of Governor Wamakko during which he served as Commissioner between 2007 and 2015 only subtly qualify him as a side-kick and an attachment politically, to insiders who know better.
Ever since his début in the corridors of power, Ahmed Aliyu has remained a flying object under the powerful wings of Senator Wamakko. Theirs is a cozy relationship between a protégé, "a godson" and a dotting mentor, a "godfather” that has manifested in a series of political appointments for the ‘forced’ APC candidate further giving him away as a tool rather than as an implement. This further culminated in in his appointment as the Executive Secretary of the Police Trust Fund, PTF, from where he resigned on the eve of the last APC convention amidst rancour of ‘rat smelling’ of alleged maleficence et-al.
Coming into the battlefield, Saidu Umar enjoys a groundswell of the goodwill and support of the elite who are desirous of keeping the state on the lane of progressive and focused leadership that has been unfolding since 2015. With dazzling landmarks of accomplishments in his tracks and also capped with the obvious formidable pillars of support from Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal and former Governor Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa, whose son is on the ticket as a running mate, the Ubandoma appears like a Colossus, as towering and lethal before his opponent in the ring.
In weighing the prospects of the APC candidate, it is also pertinent to take cognisance of the political gadfly, Senator Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko who, as it is, 2023 is a battle royale. However, most observers believe that Wamakko might have substantially lost the powers of the political magic wand that had held the people spellbound in his hey days, years ago. With the floodgate of prominent members of the APC defecting to the PDP at this crucial stage in the march to 2023, the erstwhile strongman of Sokoto politics is being depleted of the foot soldiers that had fought his battles in the past. Talk of a General without an army!
Whether or not the people of Sokoto are naive and always go for “street sprays” as against good and responsible governance would be manifesting this time around. If their outing in 2019 was a fiasco, in spite of the massive resources and efforts invested, the godfather and godson certainly have a great deal of work ahead in the 2023 edition of the battle for the political soul of the Seat of the Caliphate. The Governor and the Banker, from all indications are battle ready for the godfather and the godson combined.
The politics of divide and rule seem to be approaching it’s extinction in Sokoto sooner than later.
Manuga Buba Milgona This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
By FESTUS ADEDAYO
"The most mis-recommending criterion against a Tinubu presidency is that, in mental depth, the Lagos Landlord is just a whiff higher than Muhammadu Buhari. Remove the cockney accent he feebly mimics, you will find out that most times, his extempore speeches lack coherence, logic and verve".
I was at the Alausa Governor’s Office in Lagos. Accessing the governor was like seeking a needle in a haystack. His Press Secretary had sent word up that an irritant interloper had come to ferret a response to a news magazine’s damming exposé on the governor. After hours of waiting, a commissioner (name withheld) sauntered in and met me where I sat immovably like Mount Kilimanjaro. “You can’t write that story,” he began in a steely voice laced with a veiled threat. “Go back to Ibadan. We will talk to your boss.” That was how the story never saw the light of the day.
The Nigerian Tribune, of which I was the Features Editor during this period, had sent me in pursuit of the facts or fiction surrounding the news magazine’s report. The principal of that ancient school, Government College Ibadan (GCI), had suddenly gone AWOL then, becoming as incommunicado and inaccessible as the proverbial excrement of the masquerade.
Through the grapevine, there was an allegation that Alhaji Lam Adesina, the governor of Oyo State at the time, had ordered that all data of the school’s attendees during the period of Governor Bola Tinubu’s supposed attendance of GCI be brought to him in the Government House, where they were then placed under lock and key. The media that were seeking the corroboration or converse of those claims, went after the Principal of GCI. He had disappeared into thin air. Perhaps, a one-on-one interview with the governor would do?
In 1999, one Dr Waliu Balogun wrote a petition against Tinubu, leveling a number of damning allegations that bordered on fraudulent claims of educational attainments. Among other things, he accused Tinubu of lying in an affidavit attached to his Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) form that he lost his degree certificates while he was on exile between 1994 and 1998. The news magazine later published those details in a gripping exposé which left sour tastes in the mouth.
One after the other, all of Tinubu’s claims, sworn to under oath in the Form CF001 he filled with INEC, were shredded to smithereens by the magazine’s story. St. Paul’s School, Aroloya, Lagos, which he claimed to have attended, was found never to have existed, in the investigative reporting of the magazine, just as his name was conspicuously missing from the records of the Government College, Ibadan, which he claimed to have attended between 1965 and 1968. Indeed, GCI’s alumni association, the Old Boys of the school, debunked the claim of having him as a member. So also was Tinubu’s claim to have attended Richard Daley College, Chicago, between 1969 and 1971. Punctured also were the governor’s claims of being a student of the University of Chicago in the U.S. between 1972 and 1976, as well as obtaining a B.Sc degree in Economics from the university. A request to those institutions for affirmation of Tinubu’s studentship by the magazine came up with a resounding ‘No.’
Till date, in spite of his having vanquished the legal principalities spearheaded by Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), with the Supreme Court voiding Fawehinmi on technical grounds, none of Tinubu’s classmates, schoolmates or even teachers, has come out in public to counter the facts of the legal behemoth erected against him.
Four years later, in 2003, it was time for Tinubu to fill the Form CF001 again, in pursuit of his second term bid. His enemies who were waiting for him to make those claims again were dazed when they saw what the governor filled. In all the columns, the gentleman simply filled NOT APPLICABLE – Primary School: Not Applicable; Secondary School: Not Applicable and; University: Not Applicable! Could that have meant that the man never attended any school?
Tinubu was not alone. Rife as expectations were from the new-found Nigerian republic in 1999, like alligators, renowned for the incredible nasal power of smelling a drop of blood, even in ten gallons of water, Nigerians smelt crises in the cache of scandals that involved newly elected office holders of the republic. Less than three months after commencement of the Fourth Republic, Nigeria began to manifest noticeable cracks. It took political scientists and students of Marxian dialectics to allay our fears and tell us that those cracks were curative, self-correcting and akin to the Marxist postulation of thesis and antithesis which, when they jam, produce a synthesis.
In a quick succession of messy, damming scandals, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari; Senate President, Evan(s) Enwerem and Bola Tinubu got entangled in seismic, roiling scandals of identity misappropriation, subversion of their oaths of office and perversion of truth. While the earlier two were swept away by the typhoon of the crises, Tinubu not only survived the ignominy, to spite the allegations, he is today one of the top three most consequential and powerful Nigerians alive, and a presidential office aspirant to boot.
Salisu Buhari, the affable and young Speaker of the lower parliament had just then been unraveled by the media as an age inflator and certificate forger.
Hitherto a Kano-based businessman, Buhari had made an entry into politics, but barely two weeks after being sworn into office, the now rested news magazine, TheNews, in its February 16, 1999 edition, published details of his age and certificate forgery. The magazine wrote that he was actually born in 1970 and not in 1963 as he had claimed.
Again, TheNews put a lie to Buhari’s claim of having graduated from the University of Toronto, stating that he not only did attend the school, the mandatory youth service he claimed to have undergone at Standard Construction in Kano was equally fiction. On July 23, 1999, like a rain-soaked squirrel, Buhari was contrite, disgraced and admitted all the allegations. “I apologise to you. I apologise to the nation. I apologise to my family and friends for all the distress I have caused them. I was misled in error by a zeal to serve the nation. I hope the nation will forgive me and give me the opportunity to serve again,” he murmured as he resigned from the House. He was subsequently convicted of certificate forgery, sentenced to two years in prison but was pardoned by President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Senate President, Evan Enwerem, was to kiss the canvass a little while after. In the race for the Senate presidency, he had sidestepped his closest sprinter rival, Chuba Okadigbo, for the office by 66 to 43 votes. Shortly after his ascension in 1999, Enwerem was shoved into the sieve, and scrutinised on the allegation of an identity opacity. He was held up on the fire-spitting wire gauze for the falsification of his name. A ball-fire of controversy erupted on whether Enwerem’s real name was Evan or Evans. In the melee, on November 18, 1999, his ouster, spearheaded by Okadigbo and his allies, became a fait accompli.
Between his consequential emergence on the political turf of Nigeria in 1999 and now, only an armchair, analytical yokel will underrate or belittle Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s awesome and colonising genius in Nigerian politics. He became so consequential that some translucent analyses compare him to the sage, Obafemi Awolowo. It appears that immediately he got away from the drowning tidal waves of that identity theft legal tango and the lacerating fisticuffs of his numerous political adversaries, Tinubu tightened his muscles on the political levers of Lagos, a State which had always been the microcosm of Nigeria since it became the federal capital of independent Nigeria in 1960. He saw how the almighty power of the media, like a mammoth whale, almost succeeded in capsizing his ship of state and political career.
Rising from the ashes of the crises, Tinubu encircled his claw-like fists on the media, meandering himself into its total corpus and essentialising himself in its operations. While English crime thriller writer, René Lodge Brabazon Raymond, popularly known as James Hadley Chase, says that fear opens the wallets of the rich, Tinubu’s street chemistry, which he deploys, says that licit and illicit favours, prebends and perks, imprison consciences and arrest captives faster than the glue gum traps mice. Unconscionably, Tinubu waves these aces with the magisterial clinicality of a professional executioner, succeeding in the process in harvesting a huge cache of political, media, government, judicial, corporate, etcetera clienteles inside his massive pouch.
The truth is that since 1960, seldom has Nigeria had a political aficionado who has deployed the genius of the streets in the service of politics, as Bola Tinubu has done. Scarcely can anybody have the mis/fortune of encountering him without becoming a captive of his cash influence. Someone once said that even the god of Mammon would be envious of Tinubu’s sagacity in deploying its essence as a weapon.
Within the span of his Lagos governorship of eight years, from someone who those who knew him said was passably well-to-do, Tinubu grew a monstrous wealth, such that a 2015 back page opinion piece in The Sun newspaper claimed he owned almost half of Lagos and urged Buhari to clone the Vladimir Putin method with which the Russian president neutralised drug czars who funded his presidential emergence. Within this period, Tinubu also acquired a humongous political influence within Lagos and outside, that could rank aside those of the Pharaohs and emperors of old. In 2007, an ex-governor, who witnessed the miasma of power flakes encircling him as he arrived the Lagos airport, jealously told me that it was godlike.
Superficial analyses of Tinubu claim that his vice-hold grip on Lagos can be found in his ability to “build” and plant people in state and national offices, while sustaining a linear pattern of succession. This, such analysts claim, reflects his sagacity. Those who know the modus operandi of this power retention system however put a lie to it. To them, deep beneath it is an opaque, yet fastidiously maintained and pervasively sustained system of mega corruption and the perpetuation of self hegemony, through a carefully mastered mind-coercion, which is promoted by a cultic abidance to an oath of allegiance.
Those who see Tinubu’s strength in his fluid recruitment of aides, should also be able to answer why he suffers the huge casualty of his investment in such persons? Could it be that he uses them as indentured viceroys? Or that the rebellion we see from them is an attempt to set themselves free of his hold? From Babatunde Fashola, Muiz Banire, Akinwumi Ambode to Rauf Aregbesola, and many others, there must be a single thread that unifies Tinubu’s foot soldiers’ rebellion against him. Unfortunately for Tinubu, this same set of soldiers, knowing the secrets of the sustenance of their power machine, are today against his emergence as Nigeria’s president and will willingly supply the fire that will incinerate his ambition. In Yorubaland today, apart from Lagos and Osun States, which APC governor can Tinubu claim to be under him?
If nothing else, the controversy provoked by Chief Bisi Akande’s My Participations unraveled the mythic notion that Tinubu promotes his aides to the top for the love of country. Back and forth arguments, especially about Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s nomination in 2015, revealed that not only is the Lagos landlord obsessed with the self alone, the ascension of others in his loop is secondary and subordinated to the personal interest. The world saw that Tinubu grudgingly acceded to Osinbajo’s candidacy, only when his personal interest hit the rocks.
Last week, however, Bola Tinubu paid a visit to President Buhari, a few hours after the latter granted an incoherent interview where he claimed that if he named his successor, the fellow could be assassinated. A content analysis of the president’s statement must have revealed to Tinubu that he could never have been the one Buhari was referring to. Tinubu must know that Buhari knows that a plan to murder Death would be easier done than assassinating Nigeria’s Mafia don, the Capo dei capi himself.
Yoruba will totally support Tinubu in his presidency dream if he agrees to fill in the INEC forms all those claims he made of his roots in 1999. He must fill in the 2023 Form CF001 St. Paul’s School, Aroloya, Lagos, as his primary school; Government College, Ibadan; Richard Daley College, Chicago and the University of Chicago as his alma maters, without Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi swearing on oath that he filled them for him by proxy.
Counter-arguments have been proffered against the school of thought that says Tinubu’s ultra-stupendous wealth should recommend him against vying for the Nigerian presidency. You will recollect that the military apparatchik argued along this line against an MKO Abiola presidency. Abiola, they said, was as wealthy as to grant Nigeria loans. Weak as the argument was, it is strong in Tinubu’s disfavour, for its moral and deleterious implications. While the world knew that Abiola’s wealth was procured from international dealings, especially in ITT, Tinubu is said to own a pie in virtually every sector of the Nigerian economy, ranging from oil, steel, finance (tax), airline, real estate, to the media, and you name it. These are all operated in names of shells and proxies. In all these, as the Americans say, we can see the bucks but not the shop. What morality will Nigeria be preaching by having a president of such opaque composition and disposition?
Either real or imagined, it is said that the only thing that is real about Tinubu is his person and that every other ascription on him is a borrowed robe. He has not come in the open to effectively disclaim the allegation that his name is not his name; that the parents he claimed were not his; that the certificates he claimed to be his are not and that the schools he claimed to have attended, didn’t know him. I don’t know a baggage bigger than this for a country like Nigeria that is struggling to sell herself to the world, to now have its president burdened by this pernicious pedigree.
With the calamity that the Buhari presidency has posed to Nigeria, it will be more calamitous to have a Tinubu as his successor. Governing Nigeria is not all about identifying surrogates who will man critical political offices for future political gains. Nigeria needs a cerebral, healthy, comparatively morally overboard president, a man – borrowing from Oscar Wilde’s description of his gay partner friend, Sir Alfred Douglas in De Profundis – who is not a man for whom the gutter and all that is in it fascinates.
One would have expected Tinubu to heed the counsel of Apala music icon, Ayinla Omowura. Omowura must have had in mind leaders who are heavy-laden, burdened by baggage of their past, when he counseled that, as all shrubs and leaves in the forest should not be the predilection of a herbalist seeking curative herbs; not all palm trees in the forest should excite the palm-wine tapper either. In Yoruba, he expressed this as, “gbogbo ewe ko l’ojawe nja; gbogbo ope ko l’onigba ngun.” Sagacious leaders who carry stupendous moral baggage of the Tinubu hue should know the forests they ought to venture into.
The forests of presidential contest that the Lagos Landlord is about to venture into is what same Omowura, in his vinyl, referred to as “igbo odaju” – the forest of the heartless, the hard carapace-hearted hunters. At least not anyone who does not have the benefit of a real mother – a real mother’s prayers are like magic, steeped in mystical and metaphysical powers. Anyone, said Omowura, who does not have a real mother who can provide the protection of witchcraft for them, should not venture into igbo odaju. Never! Abraham Lincoln, father of the American nation, also alluded to this when he said, “I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”
Some Yoruba lament what they call the predilection of the Yoruba for pulling themselves down. This piece would be their perfect example. It is thinking like this that has condemned Nigeria to stagnation. The truth is, the Yoruba are very proud of their pedigree and wear it like a lapel on their sleeves. So how can the same Yoruba who have preached moral uprightness to the rest of the world for centuries, now queue behind a man who cannot point his right hand at his father’s homestead? Let the rest of Nigeria be rotten eggs. The Yoruba will still underscore the societal purity. It should gladden us that the Yoruba are the ones revealing the maggots in their home so that when they expose the maggots in others, they will occupy a higher moral ground. It is better for the Yoruba not to lift a presidential leg forward than lift one that is riddled with a festering and putrid sore. In any case, what Nigeria needs is a president that is a leader who is not crippled by ill health and is adequately schooled in the nuances of 21st century solutions to our self-inflicted, existential challenges.
Since independence in 1960, six ‘major’ Yoruba sons have attempted a shot at Nigeria’s civilian presidency (excluding fringe aspirants of Babangida’s political guinea-pig era). They are Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, Chiefs Abiola, Bola Ige, Olu Falae and Olusegun Obasanjo. If Tinubu carries through his recent declaration, he will be joining this pantheon. Of this lot, Tinubu would be the only one whose pedigree is shrouded in a miasma of dubiety.
Yoruba will totally support Tinubu in his presidency dream if he agrees to fill in the INEC forms all those claims he made of his roots in 1999. He must fill in the 2023 Form CF001 St. Paul’s School, Aroloya, Lagos, as his primary school; Government College, Ibadan; Richard Daley College, Chicago and the University of Chicago as his alma maters, without Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi swearing on oath that he filled them for him by proxy.
Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.
A study published by CBD and wellness brand VAAY has analysed and ranked 100 major global cities globally according to how stressful they are.
The study reported in business insider titled: The Least and Most Stressful Cities Index 2021 was conducted based on 15 stress-indicating categories such as pollution levels, traffic congestion, unemployment rates, and access to healthcare to determine the most and least stressful destinations.
The result of the study found that Mumbai in India is the world’s most stressful city. Lagos, which ranked 99th on the list, is the most stressful city in Africa and the only African city in the bottom 10. Some other African cities on the list include Johannesburg, Algiers, Nairobi, Dakar, and Cairo.
Here are the most stressful cities in Africa to live in, according to VAAY.com
Lagos, Nigeria
Lagos is Nigeria's financial hub and accounts for over 80% of the country's foreign trade flows, generating over 50% of Nigeria's port revenues. Overpopulation, and a high level of traffic, among other factors, place the city first on the list of the most stressful cities in Africa.
Cairo, Egypt
Cairo is by far Egypt’s biggest city and the primary centre for economic production and financial control. Due to overpopulation and high traffic, among other factors, the city ranks second on the list of the most stressful cities in Africa to live in.
Dakar, Senegal
As a hub for intercontinental air traffic, Dakar has the second largest port in West Africa and offers very good conditions for committing to the region. The city enjoys political stability, geographic proximity to Europe, and quality reception infrastructures, positioning it as the regional hub for business tourism. Dakar is the third most stressful city in Africa to live in.
Nairobi, Kenya
Nairobi is the undisputed transportation hub of Eastern and Central Africa and the largest city between Cairo and Johannesburg. The city ranks as one of Africa’s top business places, serving as the regional headquarters for both multinational corporations and international organisations. The city is good for business but very stressful to live comfortably.
Casablanca, Morocco
Casablanca is Morocco's biggest city, principal port, and economic capital. Home to north Africa’s largest stock market, the Casablanca Stock Exchange, the city covers the wealthiest and most sophisticated aspects of Morocco's life, style, and architecture.
Due to its growing population, Urban traffic congestion, air pollution and density, the city ranks fifth on the list of the most stressful cities in Africa.
By Farooq Kperogi
With the help of Aminu Tambuwal, Atiku Abubakar has defeated Nysom Wike to win the PDP presidential primaries. I’ve seen people exultingly proclaiming that Atiku will give APC a bloody nose in 2023. That’s misplaced optimism.
Your votes won’t count—like they didn’t in 2019—because INEC is anything but independent. It’s a dutiful, groveling poodle of APC and Buhari and has no capacity or willingness to provide a level playing field for all contestants.
I think there’s no point wasting billions to hold a presidential election whose outcome is already predetermined. INEC’s last-minute extension of the electoral timetable in response to Buhari’s instruction is all the evidence you need to know that that the 2023 election has already been decided. I hope I'm wrong.
But recall that on May 5, INEC told political parties that pleaded with it to tweak its timetable that its “deadline is firm and fixed.” It repeated this on May 10 when IPAC again requested it to extend its deadline.
But Buhari traveled out of the country, called Mahmood Yakubu, and told him to bend his “firm and fixed” deadline. Yakubu then invited the same IPAC guys whose request he’d spurned and told them the “firm and fixed” deadline was now suddenly infirm and unfixed.
If Buhari can unilaterally call the INEC chairman and direct him to loosen a “firm and fixed” deadline in order to give an unfair advantage to the APC, he’ll certainly tell INEC chairman whom to declare as "president" in 2023 irrespective of the actual outcome of the presidential election.
That was precisely what happened in the 2019 election, which Buhari lost by close to 2 million in spite of APC’s massive, in-your-face rigging in Borno, Yobe, Lagos, and Kano. As I write this, INEC has still not provided a comprehensive breakdown of the votes cast in the election like Jega’s INEC did in 2015.
They can’t because Yakubu just arbitrarily plucked figures from the air and assigned them to presidential candidates. That’s what might happen again in 2023, and the signs are already apparent.
Let’s use some of the billions that will be wasted on a pointless, predetermined coronation exercise fraudulently called a “presidential election” to settle ASUU’s demands. That way, we won’t lose twice.
But, seriously, what’s the point of “democracy” if something as basic as change of government through elections can’t be guaranteed, if the body charged with the responsibility to conduct elections can’t even perform a pretense of neutrality?
My illusions have been shattered because I’d thought that Yakubu had learned lessons from the electoral fraud he enabled in 2019, especially in light of the fact that this is his final term in office, which gives him the latitude to not be beholden to anyone-- and the freedom to not have anxieties about losing his job.
At this point, I doubt there are many people who will miss this "democracy" when it is gone and replaced with something else.
Many entrepreneurs talk of loyalty in business partnerships, staff loyalty (or lack of) and loyalty in relationships. These founders expect people to be loyal to them and often get upset when they are not.
If this sounds like you, think of how much frustration or pain it caused you to hold on to the fantasy that people are loyal to you. How disappointed you've been in others when they did not live up to your expectations.
Well, sorry to point out the harsh reality, but no one was born to please you and live up to your unrealistic expectations of them-- not your kids, your staff, your partner and definitely not your customers.
Expecting someone to live their life to meet or exceed your expectations is, at best, naive and, at worst, arrogance. Expecting someone to be loyal to you is like expecting a fish to bark and then being annoyed when it opened its mouth but nothing but air came out. But that's what a fish does, all while you're thinking, damn you for not barking when I wanted you to.
It might seem somewhat sad to come to this fact, like when your kids leave home. But once you're used to your kids leaving home, you now have a lot of space and time in your life to focus on yourself. You accept it because you accept your kids lead their own life, not yours.
It is the same when holding on to the romanticism or delusion that people are loyal to you. If someone applies for a job and gives one-third of their 24 hours a day to work 'for' you, they are not working 'for' you. They are working for themselves. They are working to pay their bills, buy their free time and progress in their career.
It is their career progression, not yours. If you are married to someone, they may be more married to their (your) kids or their career, more than to you. No one wants to accept that kids or a career could be more important to their partner than you, but this is often the case.
And I think this is actually how it should be.
You see, we all have a hierarchy of values. Selfish things are most important to us. Each one of us has our own, individual, unique values hierarchy; even twins have different values.
If my career is my highest, a family might be yours. Your partner may have business as their highest value, you might have freedom. We will also consciously and unconsciously prioritize our highest values, selfishly, above all else-- and above everyone else.
We are only loyal to our own values
And we need to be. Our survival depends on it. We have a selfish gene, and it's a damn good thing we do or we'd all be lemmings. Put your own gas mask on first.
If others appear loyal to us, it's because they meet or align with our highest values. We have things in common. Sometimes (often) temporarily, like when someone works for you for 3 years, but then sets up in competition against you. Sometimes it's for decades, like with a marriage or senior partner.
Letting go of this delusion of loyalty towards you and becoming humble to others' selfish needs and values actually makes us more powerful, and paradoxically more able to align loyalty and create influence.
Simply understand that others are selfishly loyal to their values, and care enough about them to find their highest values. Then align your interests and influence to meet their values, not your values, and they will spontaneously appear loyal to you, because they are loyal to their values.
Help someone progress their career with you and they will not leave. Help a customer get great service and their needs met and they won't go with a cheaper option. Help your partner meet their highest needs and values and they will help you meet yours because we become selfless when our selfish needs are met-- but only when they are met.
Great pain exists in the size of the gap between delusion and reality. That's why 'disloyalty' can hurt so much. But no one is disloyal to you, they are only loyal to themselves. They owe you nothing. Accepting this narrows the pain gap.
You can even experience great empathy in this level of understanding
I used to experience much pain when people would set up in competition against me. I'd given them a platform. Taught them all they knew. Showed them the way. And this is what they do to me?
Here's the irony. I'd done exactly the same to my first employer. Once it had happened to me I had empathy for him. Once I had empathy for him, I was able to see the cycle of life and have empathy for the many who've set up their own business off the back of mine.
I let go of the delusion of loyalty, which not only held me back from fully training staff members I thought would screw me, but I held onto the resentment for many years after.
In fact, it gave me deep gratitude to think I was able to help my competitors on their journey. I was a part of their success and that is a great gift. They gave me one-third of their 24 hours a day for 2, 3 or 5 years-- what an honor to be chosen by them to give this gift.
I'd far rather have trained and mentored many of my competitors than someone else do it because I know them better and can claim some of that credit. Plus, I'd have fired them in a heartbeat if I'd found out they weren't loyal to me, so how is that loyal to them? It's not, because I too am not loyal to anyone other than my highest values.
So, in summary, discover people's values and their selfish loyalties by asking them what's most important to them. Listen, take notes, and link their highest values to your desired actions, influence and loyalties, and you create loyalty. Not to you, but to themselves, which is far more powerful.
If you don't risk anything, you risk everything.
The National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, was formed on 15 May 1994 by a broad coalition of Nigerian democrats, who called on the military government of Sani Abacha to step down in favor of the winner of the 12 June 1993 election, M. K. O. Abiola. The members mostly came from the southwest of the country.
NADECO was roughly a product of another organization, which existed before the June 12 crisis. This was the Committee for Unity and Understanding (CUU). The overriding motive of CUU was the campaign for power shift from the North to the South. CUU was started not long after the Babangida transition-to-civil-rule programme started. Founders and key members of the CUU included Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, Chief Sam Mbakwe, Mr. Ayo Opadokun, Chief Edward Kobani, Chief Lulu Briggs, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, Alhaji Abdulazeez Ude, Ambassador Tanko Yusuf and General Theophilus Danjuma.
However, when the June 12 election was annulled, the CUU, in conjunction with such groups as the Movement for National Reformation (MNR), led by Chief Anthony Enahoro, Egbe Ilosiwaju Yoruba, led by General Adeyinka Adebayo, Afenifere, led by Chief Michael Ajasin, the Progressive Alliance for Justice and Unity (PAJU), Justice Forum and National Patriotic Front (NPF) and several other pro-democracy and human rights groups like Beko Ransome Kuti’s Campaign for Democracy came together to form NADECO in General Adeyinka Adebayo’s house, GRA, Ikeja.
NADECO quickly became the symbol of mass resistance against military rule. On 11 June 1994, using the groundwork laid by NADECO, Abiola declared himself president and went into hiding. He re-emerged and was promptly arrested on 23 June.
This led to a mass protests and the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola, his wife, Kudirat, and several Nigerians paid for it with their lives. Scores of NADECO members including the likes of Senator Cornelius Adebayo, Olatunji Hameed George, Femi Ojudu and many others went on exile for mounting pressure and organising civil unrest on the military regimes.
Nigerians were not weary to insist on their constitutional demand to wilfully choose their leaders. Thus, after close to two decades, their wish was granted. But it came at a very high price.
The anger that came before and after the deaths of these Nigerians forced the Abacha’s successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar (retd.), to set in the machinery for a return to civilian rule within days of assuming office, following Abacha’s sudden death on June 8, 1998.
With the support of the international community, Nigerians went to the polls on February 27, 1999, to elect Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as civilian President, and that was the very first red flag that a military was ruling wearing a civilian garb.
With the arrival of Democratic rule fought for by NADECO’s underground, open-ground, self-exiled and other cadres of Nigerian patriots, one would have thought that military incursion into politics was done with in Nigeria.
Before his election, Obasanjo who previously served as military Head of State, was serving a 15-year prison sentence over a phantom coup.
He was released, granted state pardon and won the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party. He contested and won the election thus getting a second chance to preside over the world’s largest black nation.
The presence of the military was felt, even though it was a Democratic government as the military was more often than not, called upon to deal with civil unrest. Angry soldiers, avenging the death of their comrades in the hands of Niger Delta militants’ also killed scores of men, women and children in the infamous Odi massacre.
The 2007 elections were held after the third term attempt of President Obasanjo failed. The biggest beneficiary of the electoral heist, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, acknowledged this when he took the oath of office.
His tenure was cut short by a terminal ailment which eventually claimed his life. He was succeeded by the then Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan, after what almost became a constitutional crisis. Before his death, close aides of the late President kept Jonathan and most Nigerians in the dark about the true state of Yar’Adua’s health.
It took several street protests and the intervention of the Senator David Mark-led Senate which came up with the doctrine of necessity to break the impasse and transfer power to Jonathan to act as President until 2011, when he contested and won the presidency.
His administration recorded modest achievements but was marred by allegations of corruption.
In the run up to the 2015 general elections, opposition political parties formed the All Progressives Congress. Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), who promised to tackle corruption and tame the monster of insecurity, became the candidate of the APC.
He won the election with Jonathan conceding defeat even before the final votes were tallied. Buhari, who was re-elected in 2019, has also recorded modest achievements in agriculture and completion of several infrastructural projects in the transport sector.
However, his regime has been characterised by allegations of massive corruption, nepotism, economic hardship and insecurity at a scale never before seen.
The Executive Director of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said, “It is sad that this regime has placed greater value on the lives of cows than that of citizens. Armed herdsmen have been going about raping, maiming and killing citizens across Nigeria with most of them not being brought to book. Crop farmers in the middle belt and the South have been at the receiving end. There is banditry across the country, including Zamfara, Kaduna and even in the President’s home state of Katsina.
Speaking in a similar vein, the National Publicity Secretary of the main opposition PDP, Kola Ologbondinyan, noted, “This APC-led regime has taken Nigeria back to a disgraceful level. Nigerians and the rest of the world can testify to the progress made under the PDP since the days of President Obasanjo, right through the Jonathan presidency.
“But today, what do we have? We have a nation where human life has become cheap because of the ineptitude of those in power.
Although there are still challenges, the general consensus among Nigerians is that the worst form of democracy is better than the best military rule.
However, some believe that what is operated in Nigeria is diarchy, an arrangement involving both civilian and military.
The Catholic Arch Bishop of the Sokoto Diocese, Rev Father Hassan Kukah, at a point voiced out his concern for a long term military dominance of Nigeria's politics, which he said had been accentuated by the emergence of two retired Generals, Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari as the President of the country. As a result, he advised retired military personnel, especially the imposing generals to lessen their interference in the political space of the country.
The narrative of the democratization processes in African states cannot be written without a bold reference to the role played by the military class in several African countries.
Nigeria presents a remarkable case, while the military regimes of Olusegun Obasanjo (February 1976 – October 1979) and Abdulsalam Abubakar (June 1998 – May 1999) presented the second and fourth republics, the regime of Muhammadu Buhari (December 1983 – August 1985) would be remembered for aborting the second republic in December 1983.
The democratic change of government in 1999 did not keep the military out of the Nigerian state’s political affairs. The military’s constitutional roles provided for them to not only maintain territorial integrity and defend against external aggression, but also to suppress insurrection and act in aid of civil authorities to restore order when called upon to do so by the legislature. Hence, post-1999 Nigeria has featured a motley of incidents that necessitated, at various times, military intervention to either defend the country’s territorial integrity, assist civil authorities, or act as agents of state hegemony and control in manners reminiscent of previous military regimes in the Country.
Nigeria’s democracy is in a distressed state. It is perhaps apt to state that Nigeria is a democracy from afar, but far from a democracy. According to Thomas Carothers in the 2002 article, ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’, and Larry Diamond in the 2002 article, ‘Thinking about Hybrid Regimes’, ‘reckless and pseudo’ forms of democracy explain the type of Nigeria’s democracy; and for analysts like Ryan Cummings, Nigeria’s democracy is best described as a ‘sham’. The distressed condition of Nigeria’s democracy arises from the failure to fully democratize after its final transition from military rule to democracy in 1999. According to Nic Cheeseman, in his 2015 book, Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures and the Struggles for Political Reform, democratization involves three distinct but overlapping processes. They include ‘the transition to multipartyism, the reconstitution of a new political order, and the later process of consolidating democratic gains. While post-1999 Nigeria has passed through the first two processes, it stalled significantly in the phase of democratic consolidation, allowing different subaltern groups to contest violently for their share of the national cake.
The Nigerian state’s inability to consolidate its democratic journey since 1999 has resulted in a trapped democratization process. A trapped democratization is one that fails for whatever reasons to improve its democratic qualities, measured by its procedure, content, and results. Shola Omotola, in the 2015 essay, ‘Trapped in Transition: Nigeria’s First Democratic Decade and Beyond’, argued that in such transitions, there is always disequilibrium between the demand for and supply of democracy, distinguished by a democratic motion without democratic movement, a sort of cause without effect.
In Nigeria, this caged democratic transition mode has not only created a weak state; it equally has unwittingly paved way for the emergence of ethnic militias and insurgent groups in different geo-political zones across the country. This has led to the deployment of military forces in various internal security operations where they are either operating as stand-alone operations or working in concert with other civil authorities to secure peace.
The Nigerian state’s failure to fully answer the question of democratic consolidation at the post-transition stage was also evident in the gap between the people’s expectation and the reality of governance. As far back as 1986, eminent political theorist, Richard Sklar, in his chapter in the 1986 book, Political Domination in Africa: Reflection on the Limits of Power, captured the failings of democracy in Nigeria after the end of the Second Republic. He noted that:
‘Liberal democracy in Nigeria is debilitated by the effects of economic anarchy and social distemper. A small minority of the population is conspicuously wealthy and privileged while the vast majority seethes with discontent. In Nigeria, liberal democracy is democracy with many reservations’.
Sklar’s position accurately mirrors the present realities of Nigeria because a prominent section of the ‘securitized elite thrives on crony capitalism and patron-client deals in violation of the rule of law, sometimes with benevolent and malevolent attributes’ as argued by Isaac Olawale Albert in his 2012 article titled, ‘The Securitized Elite: A Deconstruction of the Cabals in Nigeria’s Political Economy’. As a result, the Nigerian state has suffered insecurity, capacity and legitimacy gaps. This has been demonstrated in the declining capacity of its institutions to deliver public goods and dividends of democracy. The resultant effect of this is a huge gap between the demand and supply of democracy and good governance in Nigeria, according to Said Adejumobi in the 2010 book, Introduction in Governance and Politics in Post-Military Nigeria.
At this juncture, would it not be right to again invite the NADECO members to come back and finish their job by ensuring that the hands of the military are completely removed from Nigeria’s democracy? Then the generals often referred to as cabals won’t have a say in who becomes what in the country’s democratic governance.
While I invite Senator Femi Ojudu, Olatunji Hameed George, Senator Cornelius Adebayo and other great members of NADECO’s underground, Open-ground and self exiled Patriots to come rescue the nation still from the military, I would end this piece with a quote by Rev Father Hassan Kukah, who said "You know that the military has already taken away most of our years in this democracy, and as you have seen, they are still not yet through with us. "After Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, how many more generals do you want to have as Presidents? Will civilians grow this democracy or will it be the duty of soldiers?
"My people, we must make progress and our democracy will grow. This is not anti-military rally but please soldiers retired and serving give us civilians to rule.
"Let those soldiers who have retired enjoy the benefit of their retirement and let the soldiers who are serving remain in the military and do very well what they set out to do when they joined the military".
Tunji Akinremi writes from Ogun State as a concerned citizen with interest in genuine democratisation of the Nigeria States.
Walter Orthmann, a 100-year-old man from Brazil has been working for the same company since 1938, which officially makes his career worthy of the Guinness Book of Records, reports the BBC.
Orthman began working for Industrias Renaux S.A., a textile company in Brusque, on January 17, 1938, when he was only 15-years-old.
He began as an assistant in the shipping department, but over the years, he was promoted to administrative assistant and, eventually, sales manager.
During his 84-year-long career, Walter went on sales trips all over the world, received his paycheck in nine different currency denominations, and used nearly every commercial airline in the history of Brazilian aviation.
“You have to like to work. I started to work with that willingness and fighting spirit,” Walter Orthmann said, when asked what kept him going for over eight decades.
“You can’t just do any job to say that you are working. That doesn’t work. You’re not going to be able to stand it.”
In February of 2022, Walter Orthmann was officially inducted into the Guinness Book of Records for having the longest career in the same company (84 years and 9 days).
On April 19, he turned 100, but he doesn’t plan to retire from the only company he has ever worked for.
Reminiscing about his beginnings with Industrias Renaux S.A. (nowRenauxView), Orthmann said that there were no computers, phones weren’t used at the company, and texts had to be typed on a typewriter and mailed. There was no public lighting, the streets were just dirt, which became muddy when it rained. There was no running water, and each house had its own well.
Everything is much easier today, Orthmann admits. All you need is a mobile phone and an internet connection, and you can coordinate a business from anywhere in the world. It’s thanks to technology that he is able to continue working, as he no longer travels like he used to.
Asked what advice he would give people dreaming of staying active and working late into their lives, Orthman told Brazilian news site Globo: “Don’t be angry, do everything laughing. Just do what you like to do. I like working here at the company. Don’t have enemies. Apologize. Live calmly. Life is just a passage here on Earth, enjoy it, do what you want.”
The deaths of more than 100 people following an explosion at an illegal oil refinery in Imo state has thrown a spotlight on the lucrative world of illicit refining, which the BBC's Mayeni Jones and Josephine Casserly have been investigating.
Hours by car, motorbike and on foot brought us to a remote illegal oil refinery - a site recently raided and shut down by the authorities.
The smell of oil hits the nostrils first before anything is visible. Then, the lush green vegetation falls away and we arrive at a blackened clearing.
There are puddles of oil on the floor, with burnt, black tree trunks rising from them. The earth is so charred it looks like the scene of a volcanic eruption.
This is part of a creek in the Niger Delta, a dense network of waterways in southern Nigeria.
An oil slick glimmers on the water and what must once have been mangroves is now a tangle of bare, grey branches, their roots tinted with oil.
We are accompanied by local politician, Chidi Lloyd, and his team, who explain how stolen crude oil was brought here by boat.
In the middle of the clearing are two big, rusting metal cauldrons where crude oil was refined or "cooked".
A fire is lit in a pit under the cauldron and the crude oil is heated and condensed into different petroleum products from kerosene to diesel. The heated oil is then funnelled into a cooling chamber.
But this process does not always go to plan - and when it fails, it causes explosions, which can be deadly, such as the one last Friday.
The large death toll reflects how illegal oil refining has become such a huge employer in Niger Delta over the last decade - in a country where unemployment is soaring.
Workers camp out at refineries like this for weeks at a time, often working at night for those behind a highly organised enterprise that involves technical, logistical and financial expertise.
The government estimates that over the last year, more than $3bn (£2.4bn) of oil was stolen. This crude oil, which is siphoned off from official pipelines and then refined in the bush, is sold on the black market in Nigeria or exported.
Soot v 'starvation'
The pollution caused by these refineries is not only felt in the immediate vicinity.
The gas produced in oil extraction is often burnt off, instead of re-used, in an air-polluting practice called gas flaring. But it is not only informal refineries that do this - even though it is against the law - oil companies are at it too.
But as the illegal oil business has been growing, gas flaring has intensified and air pollution has worsened.
It is immediately apparent driving into Port Harcourt, the major city in the Niger Delta.
A thick black cloud of soot hangs in the air, sometimes it is so dense that is impossible to see anything beyond 30m (100ft).
A night spent sleeping in the city can leave a black residue around the nose, despite having the windows closed. A doctor at a local hospital says he is seeing increasing numbers of patients with respiratory problems linked to the pollution.
But some, like Osaja who lives in a lavish mansion in the city and asked us not to use his real name, think this is a price worth paying.
In his soft voice he tells us that he runs two illegal refineries and is involved in supplying stolen oil, as well as refining and selling it.
His collection of luxury sports cars and swimming pool hint at his wealth.
"Is it not better you live with in a polluted environment than you die of starvation? If you are hungry will you smell anything?
"If the reason for the pollution is generating enough funds for everybody to live, you'll even forget that there's pollution," he says.
'Modern-day Robin Hood'
Some of those who have failed to find jobs elsewhere agree.
A photographer in his 30s tell us how he started doing jobs at a refinery in the bush when he could not find enough work.
He "cooked" the crude oil - which produces a lot of smoke that the workers inhale. He said when it went wrong and explosions occurred they would run into the creek, but that did not always bring safety as if there was oil on the water it would catch fire.
Angel investor and CEO, Badal Shah, breaks down the boxes every entrepreneur must check.
Today's investors are looking for a lot more than just a clear and present pitch. Apart from the executive team and business plan---prospective players want to be assured their investment is sound while the company has real plans for growth.
Badal Shah is a multiple-exit entrepreneur with experience in chemical manufacturing, real estate software and healthcare technology. He currently serves as the CEO for his own start up, The Anthos Group, while also being on the board of directors at The Federal Savings Bank and Cabrera Capital Holdings. Herein the active angel investor shares some of the key characteristics he looks for in promising start-ups...
People plus passion
Active investors have heard hundreds of promises regarding the "next big thing". What pitches often miss, however, is the "wow factor". It is essential to highlight actual passion for the project in question.
"I am inspired by people," says Shah. "Those that have tested new concepts, pivoted from their first love and created something that the public is willing to make part of their lives."
Real passion must always radiate from the actual pitch.
Thesis and fit
Start up companies and investors play a lot of matchmaking. In many cases, new businesses bypass an investment because the chemistry just wasn't there. It is important to identify this early on because neither side wants to be micro-managed, or deal with extra stress, in an already high-stress situation.
"It's always difficult to balance being humble with being direct about why your company is the best and most investable opportunity," says Shah.
Building relationships, accommodating to the investor's schedule, and presenting in ways they prefer are important factors that go beyond the actual pitch.
Transparency
When a company asks for a large sum of money, honesty is expected by an investor. As the founders build a relationship with an interested party, it is imperative that they are transparent about all areas of their lives so that the same trust can carry on through the relationship.
"I need to understand the founders philosophies, family life and hobbies," says Shah. "These are important attributes to understand if they can handle the marathon in front of them."
An investor looks at the big picture, so it is important to share all of the details.
"They can have great concepts, but what is their support structure like?" asks Shah. "If it is not intact, the investment can be risky."
Strategic raise
Remember that founders are always in capital raise mode. It may not necessarily be in a formal presentation, but you are constantly being evaluated as you share your ideas with new contacts. The company and your coworkers rely on you for the well-being of this venture.
"A great founder should always be raising capital from strategic investors," says Shah. "The greatest time to raise capital is when the company does not need it."
Listening skills
"Is the CEO an active listener?" asks Shah. "If they are listening, and willing to continuously learn, you have someone that is going to succeed."
The open mind can reach new levels while a closed one misses opportunities. Every entrepreneur can identify certain advice that changed their course. While founders may be the technical experts, they should always be open to ideas and guidance.
"If they are not actively listening?" adds Shah. "It is a dangerous sign and my check is off the table."
When owners are pitching, they are being evaluated far beyond whatever their concept might be. Relationship building, synchronization and transparency will cultivate your meet-and-greets with investors and, as a result, put your business in a great position to succeed.
You know your business better than anyone, but when you’re in the weeds, it’s difficult to zoom out and shift perspective.
There is an epidemic of loneliness among leaders, and the forces that fuel it are insidious. Executives spend their careers climbing ladders of success. They achieve results and recognition through hard work, grit, and collaboration. But when they reach the top of the ladder they realize, ironically, they are more alone than ever. Unable to confide in board members or senior executives for fear of losing trust and hesitant to alert direct reports to sensitive challenges, leaders often work through problems in a vacuum. Even the most inclusive leader can feel isolated and stuck.
Well-known executives have written about the loneliness epidemic, from Apple’s Tim Cook to Starbucks’ former CEO Howard Schultz. It is crucial for leaders to combat loneliness without jeopardizing personal and organizational goals. These steps are for leaders who want to change this paradigm:
BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BOARD
Identify people outside your organization in whom you can honestly and confidentially confide. These individuals become thought partners and sources of out-of-the-box solutions. They are agenda-less sounding boards to help refine ideas and identify landmines or unforeseen consequences. Here’s where you can start your search:
Hire a career coach: It’s a great investment. Find someone who believes in you but will challenge you and identify paths you have not explored.
Reach out to peers with similar roles outside your immediate field: Comb through your network and third-party resources and reach out to schedule informal meetings. Check your ego at the door and start these valuable conversations. And don’t just ask for advice! Offer your engagement—you may be surprised by an overwhelmingly positive response.
Open up to trusted friends for recommendations: Friends who know you well may know people outside your network who could be strong informal advisors. Find open and daring thinkers from different professional and personal backgrounds and demographics.
Seek out mentors: These might be former professors or managers, speakers who impress you, or professionals who you’ve admired from afar. Reach out directly or get introduced through mutual connections.
In my work advising and coaching CEOs, the “Aha!” moments that are generated from our conversations and the creativity that is sparked through our ongoing dialogue are inspiring. But the work starts with you.
ACKNOWLEDGE PAINS, PROBLEMS, AND CHALLENGES (PPCs)
You know your business better than anyone, but when you’re in the weeds, it’s difficult to zoom out and shift perspective.
Label PPCs: In his 2011 book Creative People Must Be Stopped, David A. Owens proposes six “innovation constraints:” Individual, group, technology, societal, organizational, and industry constraints prove time and again to stymie progress. Identifying which constraints lie at the root of PPCs enables you to focus on problem-solving. Then, you can better aim your resources at achieving resolutions.
Don’t problem-create; problem-solve: Problem-solvers notice the challenges ahead of them and, rather than wringing their hands, set immediately to strategizing. They put a name (see above) to their pain points and work through solutions strategically with thought partners.
Keeping such ideation in rarified air, however, won’t do anything for your business or your stress.
IMPLEMENT CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
When I experience a breakthrough with a senior leader, we immediately shift to action items rooted in the here and now, the who and how.
Focus on your internal team: Can Person(s) A implement a solution to address PPC A? Can Person(s) B compile research to alleviate PPC B? If you need outside support, ask your personal board to connect you with the right experts.
Listen to internal feedback: A leader can always learn—from the newest hire and from the most seasoned expert. Create safe spaces for your team to express their ideas. Be open and receptive to feedback.
Growth is uncomfortable: Trust your instincts and embrace the sticky. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to have to change course. Trust that you will figure it out. Know you are supported.
BE OPEN TO VULNERABILITY
I have been tremendously inspired and impacted by the pioneering work of researcher/storyteller Brené Brown. We’re hardwired for connection, Brown explains in her classic book Daring Greatly. “[T]he level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable,” she writes, “is a measure of our fear and disconnection.” It all comes down to being vulnerable.
Ignore fear: Fear makes us disengage. It makes us spiral.
Embrace being vulnerable (and a little uncomfortable): Vulnerability is the most trustworthy path to self-actualization as a leader. It’s the process by which you become open to building your personal board, asking for help, and noticing when you need to pivot.
Foster I-You relationships (a.k.a., people are people): Finding ways to create safe spaces with trusted confidantes and advisors isn’t just “nice to have;” it’s a must for successful leaders. In her work, Brown discusses philosopher Martin Buber’s framework of I-it vs. I-you relationships. I-it relationships are transactional; I-you ones are authentic, building trust and connection.
Be a radical people-person: It may sound silly, but we all forget that the people who surround us—especially those who are challenging us—are more than titles and collections of skill sets, demands, and KPIs. It’s hard to view them as allies. But they are. People will help you solve any problem. But you have to build the relationship first.
Leaders have the power to transform the narrow ladder of success into a wide, expansive staircase where others can rise up. There, at the top of the staircase, the possibilities are endless.
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A recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition found that people who live to be 100 years old follow this eating regimen, according to Martha Stewart Living.
As you already know, lifestyle factors such as the amount of exercise you get every day, as well as how long you sleep at night, impact your health and may even influence your lifespan.
Now, there's evidence that those who eat dinner on the earlier side may even live longer, according to a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition.
This research zeroed in on L'Aquila, a province in Abruzzo, Italy, with a high population of nonagenarians (people between the ages of 90 and 99) and centenarians (people who are 100 years old). In surveying 68 nonagenarians and centenarians in the region, researchers discovered that on average most of them ate early dinners—usually around 7:13 p.m. each night.
After digging into their findings, the researchers also noted that the group followed a tight calorie regimen (they maintained low calorie intake for 17.5 hours from dinner to lunch the next day).
In general, the survey respondents consumed high amounts of cereals, vegetables, fruits, and legumes; low amounts of meat, processed meat, and eggs; and minor amounts of sweets.
They also kept physically active by doing their own upkeep on their land.
"Our results support the importance of a daily caloric restriction lapse, hampering nocturnal postprandial stress and optimising metabolic response, associated with high consumption of plant-based foods and physical activity for the longevity of centenarians from Abruzzo," the scientists added.
We all know that "no pain, no gain" doesn't just apply to lifting weights. If you want to get better at something or achieve a difficult goal, the process is almost certainly going to require you to get out of your comfort zone and suffer a little (or a lot).
But most of us view that discomfort as a byproduct of the process, something to expect and endure but also try to minimize. That's understandable, but it's also holding your back, a new study out of Cornell and the University of Chicago finds. If you want to maximize your success, the research shows, you shouldn't actually chase success. Instead, seek out discomfort. You'll end up reaching your goals faster.
The more awkward you feel, the faster you improve
Say, for example, you want to become a famous comedian. As a first step, you might sign up for an improv class. When you walk in the door, what should you say to yourself? Many people's first instinct would be to give themselves a pep talk about trying to be as funny or creative as possible. That's the end goal after all.
But when researchers actually invited 557 volunteers to show up at a beginner improv class, those who were told to try to make themselves feel awkward and uncomfortable actually performed better and were more persistent than those who just aimed to do well in the class.
Intriguing, you might think, but what does that have to do with me? Of course comics have to get used to feeling like fools. Sorry to break it to you, but so do entrepreneurs.
The research team also conducted a series of follow-up experiments. Whether study participants were studying current events or completing a writing task, those who were told to seek out discomfort ended up doing better at whatever task they were given.
"Overall, the results suggest that we should seek out the feelings of awkwardness or discomfort that are often associated with personal growth, and interpret them as signs of progress towards our goals," says the British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog summing up the results. Or, put simply, whether you're a comic, an entrepreneur, or an aspiring writer, aiming for awkwardness will help you improve faster than focusing on mastery alone.
Art and science agree
The BPS blog points out that, while this research is compelling, it only captures a snapshot in time. Do those who seek out discomfort persist and excel over the long haul, or does all the awkwardness burn them out before they can reach their goals?
This study can't answer that question. But there are reasons to expect that seeking out discomfort might be a winning strategy in life as well as short-term lab experiments.
There is a famous anecdote from the art world that lines up perfectly with this new research. The story goes that a professor at an art school once told half his ceramics class they would be graded on the quantity of work they produced. The other half wre told they would be graded on the quality of their finest piece.
Who did better, the students instructed to produce tons of wonky bowls and lopsided mugs or those told to chase excellence? Those who created more, probably embarrassing work outperformed those who aimed to create a masterwork. Embracing awkwardness won out over focusing on success.
"It seems that while the 'quantity' group was busily churning out piles of work -- and learning from their mistakes -- the 'quality' group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay," the authors of the book that popularized this story explain.
Those who embrace the messy, frustrating process of getting better put in more practice than those who focus on success. Therefore they get better faster. That's why many artists advise those learning their craft to just accept the fact that they will suck at first (their word choice, not mine) and actively try to create bad art.
Science and art seem to be in agreement. If you have audacious goals or are trying to master something difficult, be that ceramics or starting a business, actively seek out the frustration and embarrassment of being bad at your chosen pursuit. Those unpleasant feelings mean you're doing and learning, and it's only by doing and learning that you actually improve.
When Delane Parnell, 29, was growing up on Detroit's West Side, gang violence was a part of life. His mom decided her sons needed to get out of the neighborhood -- at least in the hours she wasn't home.
The solution for Parnell quickly became an after-school job at a cell-phone store. There, he learned not just the basics of doing business but also "the value of character, honesty, and the idea that you should always put your best foot forward in everything that you do," Parnell tells Kevin Ryan on Inc.'s What I Know podcast.
Turns out, Parnell was pretty good at selling cell phones, having tapped his network of fellow high-schoolers and their families as customers. By age 16, he was using his savings to negotiate buying out other local cell-phone stores.
And he saw a future in entrepreneurship: Before he was even 21, he was flying out to Silicon Valley to attend a tech conference and networking to bring tech incubators to Detroit.
Ever since working at the store, he knew he wanted to start his own company and be in charge of his own destiny. He recognized potential in the growth of video games, and specifically e-sports -- but also saw a lack of structure in this thing countless students were spending a lot of their time on.
"I became really obsessed with this idea, and still today, I cannot shake it. The way that I thought about it is, e-sports doesn't really have a competition infrastructure, much like other sports," he says. "There could be so much value created."
He pitched investors on the concept. And publishers. And even loosely-organized high-school groups playing video games. "They all laughed me out the door," Parnell says.
He persisted. And in 2017, Parnell founded PlayVS, which would go on to be the system powering much of American high-school e-sports, and which now is valued at more than $400 million.
Work for someone else, and your success (at least your professional success) is in large part outside your control. You can control how hard you work, how dedicated you are, how loyal you are... but you can't promote yourself. And you definitely can't give yourself a raise.
That's just one reason why entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs. They embrace the opportunities -- and the risks -- inherent in "choosing" themselves. They embrace an "If it is to be, it's up to me" mindset.
Which is great.
Until it's not.
According to Steve Jobs, independence and self-reliance often get in the way of success. As Jobs said:
I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old. "Hi, I'm Steve Jobs. I'm 12 years old. I'm a student in high school. I want to build a frequency counter, and I was wondering if you have any spare parts I could have." He laughed, and he gave me the spare parts, and he gave me a job that summer at Hewlett-Packard... and I was in heaven.
I've never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked.
Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that's what separates, sometimes, the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.
To Jobs, "Do I ask for help?" was a question that predicted an individual's success.
Take the first iPhone. An early prototype's hard-coated plastic screen wasn't hard enough: After Jobs spent a day carrying it around in his pocket, he noticed the screen was already scratched.
Jobs could have gone the self-reliant route. He could have tried to fix the problem himself using Apple's considerable resources. Instead, he called Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning Glass, and described the type of glass he needed.
After a little back and forth -- and a few cleverly effective words of persuasion that you should definitely borrow -- Weeks agreed to help by providing gorilla glass, a product the company had developed in the 1960s but never put into production.
And here's the kicker. When Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson walked into Weeks's office years later, only one memento was on display.
A letter from Jobs that said, "We couldn't have done it without you."
That's the thing about asking for help.
Sure, admitting you need help can make you feel weak, or vulnerable, or somehow "less than" in the eyes of the other person.
But that's not what happens. When you ask for help -- in the right way -- other people don't think about you. They think about how your request implicitly shows you respect them. Implicitly shows you trust them. Shows you value or admire the skills, talents, experiences, or resources they clearly worked hard to obtain.
And gives them the opportunity to make a difference, however small, in someone else's life. Judging by the framed letter on his wall, Weeks was clearly proud to have made that difference for Jobs.
Which is the ultimate reason asking for help can predict success.
Since no one does anything worthwhile on their own, asking for help might just be the first step towards creating long-term, mutually-beneficial relationships that build a foundation for lasting success.
And lasting friendships.
An element that should be included in everyone's definition of "success."