Eminent lawyer and politician, Oba Mekunu Owolabi Salis has commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on his Man of The Year Award,2024,by a combined team of editors of This Day and Arise News.
The Ikorodu-born Lagosian who made history as the first Black African to travel to the North and South Pole,all within a season, described Tinubu as a maverick iconoclast who does not necessarily conform to established norms,as aptly referenced by the panel of Awardees.
Corroborating Tinubu’s audacious non-conformism, as referenced by the Editorial Awardees, he remarked that Tinubu made a Southerner the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory for the first time, contrary to the popular, even if unofficial notion, which hitherto had regarded it as a taboo, except and only if held by a northerner, borne of the erroneous belief that it’s the Hausa-Fulani ancestral right of exclusive inheritance.
He hailed the combined team of editors of This Day and Arise News for the objective sense of appraisal which informed their choice, despite their relationship with the president which as a subject of common knowledge, had for some time, not been too cordial.
He observed that initially when the news of the award greeted the public space, not a few must have received it with a pinch of salt, thinking with a skeptical twist of mind that the prize might have been motivated by mischievously derogatory motive just in the sense in which Adolf Hitler was awarded Man of The Year by the American TIMES Magazine, despite his ignoble role in triggering the violent socio-political eruption that was to explode into the Second World War in the course of which he reportedly sentenced six million Jews to the gas chamber, in a massive racial genocide unprecedented in the annals of human existence.
“But going through the body of criteria as adduced by the juridical committee of editors, “for his audacity in introducing very unpopular but promising reforms, driven by his sense of convictions rather than pandering to sheer sentiment or the crowd,”as the editors remarked,with references to laudable gestures such as external reserves jerking up for the first time after some years,to over Forty million dollars ,coupled with his tax reforms,Local government autonomy and pragmatic initiatives in the Oil and Gas sector,I could not but commend the juridical team of editors for their objective sense of judgement.”
“While I commend the president for the well-deserved award, it becomes equally apposite to hasten to emphasize that Awards should not be seen as an end in itself, but rather a means to an end”, said Salis, who in 2019 contested for governor on the platform of Alliance For Democracy(AD).
“If one may borrow Ex-President Obasanjo’s words in his admonishment to Ibrahim Babangida that SAP must be applied with human face,so does it become not only apt, but also timely, to admonish that reforms where they appear overly draconian must necessarily be tempered with human face.”
On the fore-going, he argued that reforms must not overly be injurious to the poor, who beyond other factors are the very raison detre for governance, just as they constitute above all, the preponderant factor, in terms of their overwhelming numerical magnitude, which towers far above other socio-economic classes of the society, because even as the Great Awo, once did say, at one of his campaigns during the Second Republic: “God so loved the masses that he created them in greater numbers far more than the rich”.
” It is against this background that it becomes pertinent to advise the president on the need to factor more than ever before,the interest of the masses into consideration,in a way that they do not go through, draconian pang of “hell-on-earth” before the reforms begin to yield fruitful dividends.
This is to say that reforms must be made to serve the people, especially the poor, rather than the poor being sacrificed as a canon fodder for reforms.
For instance, any initiative leading to increase in external reserves and higher G.D.P., must essentially reflect positively on the welfare of the people, otherwise it could not be counted as being of much utility”,he stated further.
Commenting on the palliatives reportedly being dispensed by the President, Salis advised on the need to evolve a pragmatic mechanism to ensure that they are scrutinosly deployed to effectively affect the target beneficiaries which they are actually meant for, quite unlike before that such gestures have had no impact on the common man which they are actually meant to serve.
On a commendable note,he remarked that the concept of an Award for distinguished exploits, as instituted in 1927 by the American TIME Magazine is indeed a highly laudable one, in that it fires the impulse for distinguished achievements with the ultimate aim,on the part of the individual,to propel the society to a higher paradigm of dynamic growth and development.
“As a locomotive force driving the engine of growth, the visionary concept of an award becomes more particularly significant in the developing countries like Nigeria, particularly at a time like this, that demands men of excellence who in their diverse field of endeavor, would contribute in their own ways to lifting the nation to the enviable heights of the founding fathers”, he stated further.
He, however, advised that “to further deepen the laudable exercise by way of an added value, media organisers of awards should cast a penetrating focus on Nigerians in diaspora, who are really taking the American society by storm, through their distinctive achievements in their various fields of endeavor – like yours truly (if I might add on a humorous note,without blowing any trumpet) who achieved the hitherto unaccomplished feat of being the first Black African (Note:not Black American)to travel to the diametrically extreme Frigid Zone of the North and South Pole.” ” Recognising these esteemed cream of our worthy ambassadors abroad – by means of strategic medium such as these would not only be a sure way of encouraging them to do more,but also firing their zeal to take recourse to the home turf,in patriotic service to their fatherland”.
” Awards should therefore be devoid of politics, prejudice, nepotism, connection, sentiment, highest bidder or favoritism of any sort”, he advised ” Poignantly illustrative in setting the pace, for this ethical integrity” according to him, ” is the American TIME Magazine which initiated the tradition of Man Of The Year.”
“Running through the trajectory of their titular coronation of Man of The Year Award, one discerns the patently objective nondiscriminatory policy that had seen them conferring the title in 1938, on otherwise improbable quarters like Adolf Hitler, the notorious global villain, who apart from sentencing a staggering number of six million Jews into the gas chamber, later went ahead to plunge the entire world into the global cataclysm of the 1939 to 1945 World War.
“Equally worthy of note were notable communist figures like Stalin, who held the title twice in 1939 and 1942, including Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan Strongman(2006)and Vladimir Puttin 2007, in spite of their ideological antagonism against the capitalist ideological ethos of America. Ditto the Iranian, Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), despite his implacable rabid hatred of America,” he stated further, noting that Award recipients itemized above were all maverick iconoclasts.
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