As Fashola Delivers ‘TheNiche’ Lecture

When the newspaper came on board in April 2014, the editorial policy captured its mission: “TheNiche will always anchor its position on the need for social justice, fairness and respect for human and communal rights … will be uncompromising against any form of discrimination and subjugation either by tribe, gender or religion.”

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On Thursday, September 8, 2022, former Lagos State Governor and Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, will deliver the 2022 edition of TheNiche Annual Lecture at the MUSON Centre, Onikan Lagos.

Getting the minister to deliver the lecture is by no means a walk in the park. We didn’t expect it would be considering the fact that as a hands-on minister traversing the length and breadth of the country, ensuring that projects under the purview of his ministry are delivered timeously, time will always be a challenge.

But the theme of the lecture – 2023 Elections And The Future Of Nigeria’s Democracy – did the magic. Fashola is not only cerebral, he is an unrepentant democrat, always seeking ways of deepening Nigeria’s democracy, which is still fledgling at 23. The lecture provides him an opportunity to live his passion.

The 2023 elections will be consequential. Though six months away and campaigns yet to be officially flagged off, politicians are already crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country, shadowboxing their way through all manner of policy disputes. They are making a show of tackling the myriad problems the post-Buhari era will present, while avoiding any direct engagement with opponents.

The elections will be consequential because Nigeria is at a crossroads, haunted by demons many thought had been long exorcised. Seven years of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has brought out the worst in Nigerians. Ironically, while this self-inflicted leadership crisis and the uprising it has engendered is bringing out the beast in us, as the late Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, noted in his epic song, “Beast of No Nation,” it has also re-ignited the hitherto dimming Nigeria’s democracy candle light.

*Fashola 

Having realized in a hard way that elections have consequences, many Nigerians, particularly the youths, who constitute over 70 per cent of the country’s population, and who hold the wrong end of the country’s democracy stick, have decided to take their destinies in their own hands by not only voting but also ensuring that their votes count.

They have become politically active and the social media has ensured that they control the narrative. Their voices are heard loud and clear and for the first time in Nigeria’s electoral politics, the people to whom power rightly belongs are reclaiming that right.   

So, the previously flickering democracy light is brightening up. For the first time since 1999 when the Fourth Republic was birthed, a credible third force has emerged and the 2023 presidential election is promising to be a three rather than two-horse race.

Again, because President Buhari is ineligible to run in 2023, being term-limited, many believe that he will be more disposed to allowing free, fair and credible elections. For a leader that has suffered severe credibility deficits even in areas like anti-corruption which many thought was his natural turf, credible 2023 elections will help him claw back some legacies as the unavoidable verdict of history beckons.

So, six months to the elections, the country is buzzing politically. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), next year’s elections will be held on February 25 and March 11, 2023. While the presidential and National Assembly elections will hold on February 25, twenty-eight governorship elections will hold alongside elections to 36 state Houses of Assembly on March 11.

But the campaigns for the presidential and National Assembly elections will commence on Wednesday, September 28, 2022 and end midnight, February 23, 2023, while that of governorship and state Houses of Assembly will commence on October 12 and end midnight, March 9.

So, the die is cast. In realization of this fact, TheNiche has scheduled its 2022 Annual Lecture to hold 20 days before the flag-off of the campaigns.

When the newspaper came on board in April 2014, the editorial policy captured its mission: “TheNiche will always anchor its position on the need for social justice, fairness and respect for human and communal rights … will be uncompromising against any form of discrimination and subjugation either by tribe, gender or religion.”

In pursuit of these ideals, the organization in 2018, set up a foundation – TheNiche Foundation for Development Journalism – a vehicle to drive the annual lectures, our very idea of an ideal Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

The maiden lecture with the theme, “Development reporting and hysteria journalism in Nigeria,” was delivered by Professor Kingsley Moghalu, journalist, diplomat, erudite scholar and author, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor of Practice in International Business and Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party (YPP) in the 2019 elections, while Remi Sonaiya, another prolific author, columnist for TheNiche, Professor of French Language and Applied Linguistics, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), and only female presidential candidate in the 2015 general election under the platform of the KOWA Party, was the chairperson.

The choice of the lecture theme which held at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) on April 20, 2018, was informed by the hysteria that preceded the elections and the need to lower the rhetoric.

The focus shifted, and rightly so, after the election was won by the incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari, to the economy. TheNiche clinically analyzed that the economy was heading for the rocks and there was an urgent need to make it the dominant issue of Buhari’s second term.

So, the October 15, 2019 lecture aptly themed, “Business and accountable governance: The obligations of leadership,” was delivered by Nigeria’s foremost interdisciplinary scholar, Prof. Anya O. Anya, a leading light of the intellectual community, statesman, scientist and boardroom guru, professor of Biology who is distinguished for his work in parasitology, Nigerian National Medal of Merit awardee and former Chief Executive Officer, Nigeria Economic Summit Group Limited, under the chairmanship of Dr. Christopher Kolade, diplomat and academic, veteran broadcaster and former Director–General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, Chief Executive and Chairman of Cadbury Nigeria Plc and former Nigerian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

What would have been the third and fourth lectures in 2020 and 2021 were stymied by the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic that made all forms of public gathering a taboo. Had the lecture held in 2020, the focus would have been on the youths as Dr. Kolade strongly suggested in 2019. And he was prescient considering the youths-led EndSARS protests that convulsed the country.

Hopefully, the issue of Nigerian youths and their future in a country that has treated them so callously will be the theme of the 2023 lecture. But, first things first, hence, on the eve of another pivotal election, TheNiche has, once again, shifted the focus to politics and the country’s leadership recruitment process.

This year’s lecture which holds exactly two weeks from today will be delivered, as earlier stated, by Fashola, a learned silk, while 96-year-old Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, veteran First Republic politician, human rights activist, former Liaison Officer to late President Shehu Shagari and founding member of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) will chair the event.

The choice of both the lecturer and chairman was a product of painstaking deliberations.

But beside the two tested democracy giants, a panel of five discussants drawn from the academia, media, civil society, political class and the INEC, will interrogate Fashola’s lecture in real time.

And just like the guest lecturer and chairman, the panel of discussants was painstakingly selected. Victor Chukwuma, Professor of Physics, renowned for his immense contribution to the development of Astronomy and Space Science in Nigeria, a Fellow of the Astronomical Society of Nigeria and the Nigerian Institute of Physics, a poet and public intellectual; Martins Oloja, Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, an acclaimed columnist; Dr. Dakuku Peterside, redoubtable politician, former member of the House of Representatives, former Director-General NIMASA, and a columnist with TheNiche; Mrs. Ene Obi, activist, Country Director ActionAid Nigeria, Convener Situation Room, and the indefatigable Festus Okoye, a senior lawyer, INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, made the list.

The discussions will be moderated by another erudite scholar, Anthony Kila, experienced lecturer and public speaker, Jean Monnet professor of Strategy and Development, Director at the Centre for International Advanced and Professional Studies (CIAPS), who is also a columnist with TheNiche.

It is a complete package. Since the announcement was made that Fashola will deliver this year’s lecture, some have asked the question: Why Fashola?

To such people, an APC chieftain and one of the ruling party’s foremost ideologues, will be partisan in his intellectual offering.

My answer is simple: On Thursday, September 8, 2022, ensure that you are seated inside the Agip Recital Hall, MUSON Centre, Onikan. Fashola, Nigeria’s Fourth Republic democracy poster boy, will assuage every anxiety because what is at stake is beyond any individual and political party. It is the future of Nigeria’s democracy and the Minister has, beforehand, assured that it will be a rich intellectual harvest.

*Amaechi is the publisher of TheNiche