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38—SATURDAY Vanguard, NOVEMBER 23, 2019<br />
It takes a lot to be an inventor. It<br />
takes a lot more to manage<br />
innovations and innovators. From<br />
Nigeria’s bitter and unfortunate civil<br />
war, we were only able to keep some of<br />
the relics at the Umuahia war museum.<br />
Nigeria could not seek to harness the<br />
skills and resources of the team that was<br />
behind the innovations in the civil war<br />
for technological development. The<br />
Biafran enclave survived on various<br />
petroleum products that were not<br />
imported for 30 months before the<br />
collapse. For almost 30 years now<br />
Nigeria has been surviving on imported<br />
petroleum products and now shopping<br />
for downstream investors in roadshows<br />
across the world. The United States, the<br />
United Kingdom, France, Germany,<br />
Japan, other G7 members and indeed<br />
other Organisation for Economic<br />
Cooperation and Development, OECD<br />
countries are out of our refining palaver<br />
but may be interested in supplying<br />
Nigeria petroleum products. We are now<br />
left with Russia, China, India, Saudi<br />
Arabia and some others in the<br />
Organisation for the Petroleum<br />
Exporting Countries, OPEC and OPEC+<br />
for refining talks.<br />
We may have been utterly profligate<br />
and not prodigiously stupendous in<br />
using the proceeds from crude oil. And<br />
we have consistently flared the gas<br />
component. Oil is an exhaustive<br />
commodity that its use is now being<br />
determined by the influential nonproducer-consumer<br />
nations that have<br />
started a countdown. These countries<br />
are heavily subsidising Plug-in electric<br />
vehicle as a veritable substitute for fossil<br />
fuels. In the words of the South African<br />
born Israeli statesman Abba Eban<br />
(1915-2002), History teaches us that<br />
men and nations behave wisely once<br />
they have exhausted all other<br />
alternatives. And the craze now is for<br />
renewable energy. When Thomas Alva<br />
Edison (1847-1931) foretold that<br />
renewable energy and not oil was the<br />
future, he was misunderstood because<br />
The challenges of innovat<br />
ator<br />
ors<br />
in global development<br />
of the cost outlay then. The quest for<br />
innovation and the dependence on<br />
fossil fuels drove him to think about<br />
solutions in natural energy that was<br />
not exhaustive. He developed a<br />
suitable storage battery that could<br />
Nigeria’s poor record in<br />
discovering and<br />
supporting innovators,<br />
patenting and protecting<br />
intellectual property rights<br />
may give out Obasanjo’s<br />
technology<br />
power what was the first electric car<br />
in 1912.<br />
The system Edison developed was<br />
abandoned for the gasoline-powered<br />
internal combustion engine which<br />
cost was half the price of his electric<br />
car valued at between US$500 and<br />
US$750. Edison’s thought on oil and<br />
solar (renewable) energy in the 19th<br />
century was that he would put<br />
money on solar, an inexhaustible<br />
source of power and hoped we do<br />
not wait until oil and coal run out<br />
before tackling the problem. Today,<br />
global demand dynamics and<br />
geopolitics of oil reduction is giving<br />
a policy shift to the electric vehicle<br />
that Edison had the breakthrough<br />
over a century ago. More<br />
governments are now committing<br />
to fossil fuel car bans to meet their<br />
Paris Agreement commitments. But<br />
we know that petroleum would still<br />
be relevant for more than a century<br />
to come even if fossil fuels are<br />
jettisoned. It is all about innovation<br />
to reduce carbon emissions.<br />
Nigeria’s case is becoming a matter<br />
of emergency. Necessity they say<br />
is the mother of invention. There<br />
are very many innovative minds<br />
like Thomas Edison in our country<br />
that are not given opportunities and<br />
right environments to express their<br />
endowments.<br />
Our survival as a nation is in the<br />
hands of the downtrodden masses<br />
that toil day and night to eke out<br />
bare existences. The Wright<br />
Brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright<br />
that had little formal scientific<br />
training, solved a problem as<br />
complex and demanding, which had defied<br />
better-known experimenters for centuries<br />
and invented the aeroplane in 1903.<br />
These seemingly ordinary bicycle<br />
repairers in the United States emerged to<br />
change the world. The Wright Brothers not<br />
only solved a long-studied technical<br />
problem but also helped create an entirely<br />
new world beyond measure. The account<br />
of Durojaiye Kehinde Obasanjo and many<br />
more may indeed solve Nigeria’s<br />
numerous problems. Obasanjo developed<br />
a sea craft or hydroplane but could not<br />
get funding. His jet car can run on the land,<br />
sea and in the air. When the CNN<br />
interviewed Obasanjo on April 12, 2017,<br />
he said: “We want the whole world to know<br />
it is possible to have a kind of machine that<br />
can move on land, on the sea and fly and<br />
perhaps move under the sea. That’s my<br />
ultimate goal,” he explained. Obasanjo<br />
was thinking about Lagos city’s heavy<br />
traffic and congestion woes to come up<br />
with this solution. In January 2019, he<br />
drove the amphibious car which runs on<br />
fuel and solar energy alternatively, for 15<br />
hours from Lagos to Abuja to seek the<br />
attention of Nigerian authorities. Did he<br />
succeed?<br />
Nigeria’s poor record in discovering and<br />
supporting innovators, patenting and<br />
protecting intellectual property rights<br />
may give out Obasanjo’s technology. The<br />
KennyJet might have been produced<br />
about 10 years before the CNN traced him<br />
to Obadia in Yaba, Lagos for interview.<br />
Was it coincidental that Aerospace giants,<br />
Boeing in November 2017 acquired<br />
Aurora, which specialises in unmanned<br />
flight, established in-house autonomous<br />
flight research unit Boeing NeXt in 2018<br />
to develop the autonomous passenger air<br />
vehicle? On January 22 2019, Boeing said<br />
it completed the first electric vertical takeoff<br />
and landing (eVTOL) flight that lasted<br />
less than one minute. Other aerospace and<br />
auto giants are now jumping into the<br />
market. Relevant agencies should pay<br />
attention to Durojaiye Kehinde Obasanjo’s<br />
innovations before other more developed<br />
countries take him away.<br />
For the past four weeks or so, I had<br />
cast a glance, over a gulf of more<br />
than a decade, at the preposterous<br />
claim Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, the founding<br />
Chairman of the Economic and Financial<br />
Crimes Commission, made and which<br />
Nigerians swallowed most credulously,<br />
like crazed simpletons. Years down the<br />
line, with books having been written<br />
(where that claim received some<br />
comments), and sundry events have taken<br />
place that opened new vistas of looking at<br />
that obvious but audacious falsehood<br />
backed by no iota of evidence anywhere,<br />
I have felt the time was ripe to take on all<br />
those who pledged themselves to work as<br />
knights in the service of Satan, by<br />
replicating that obvious whopper.<br />
Always, I used Police Statements made<br />
by Ribadu himself, his second – incommand<br />
at the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim<br />
Lamorde and the Central Bank of Nigeria<br />
(CBN) staff that was seconded to the EFCC,<br />
to prove the incorrectness of their pro-<br />
Ribadu claims and to the politics behind<br />
such stances – calculated fabrication to<br />
harm the person Ribadu and the<br />
Obasanjoists were up against; James<br />
Onanefe Ibori, the former Governor of<br />
Delta state. I wanted to also link it with the<br />
newspaper with the old Bendel state area<br />
that may be buying a used printing press<br />
masked as a new one and more<br />
shenanigans in Daily Independent.<br />
This time, I had tasked myself to remain<br />
focused on just one man and his one book;<br />
PROF WALE ADEBANWI AND HIS A<br />
PARADISE FOR MAGGOTS – THE STORY<br />
OF A NIGERIAN ANTI-GRAFT CZAR. But<br />
then, several things intervened; first, I saw<br />
the video where that lady who was<br />
kidnapped with her husband and nine –<br />
year old daughter while they were visiting<br />
Nigeria from Britain, recounted her<br />
family’s ordeal.<br />
That video arrested my attention. No, it<br />
was not just that she offered to be raped<br />
instead of her teenage daughter and her<br />
husband or that her daughter is still being<br />
haunted by that experience and would<br />
wake up at night screaming as though she<br />
was still a prisoner of the kidnappers, or<br />
that she claimed that her family has agreed<br />
never to set foot on Nigerian soil again,<br />
Who Protects Nigeria’s<br />
Interest?<br />
and that not even their dead bodies<br />
would be returned to Nigeria for burial<br />
as they had irrevocably broken every<br />
relationship with Nigeria – a country<br />
that broke every covenant or<br />
responsibility she had for and towards<br />
them.<br />
I was still trying to come to terms<br />
with debating whether it was realistic<br />
for a citizen to expect his country to<br />
offer him adequate security or any<br />
other service, when I remembered that<br />
Lagos had been ranked as one of the<br />
most dangerous cities to be a woman<br />
in and that Nigeria as a whole came in<br />
for strong reckoning when nations as a<br />
whole were considered.<br />
Thomas Reuters Foundation, not the<br />
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did the<br />
ranking. The news that followed that is<br />
that Nigeria was also adjudged the third<br />
Most Dangerous Place To Live In The<br />
World<br />
Anyone would be right to argue that<br />
the indices that led to such abysmal<br />
rankings accumulated during the years<br />
preceding the All Progressives<br />
Congress (APC) ascendancy into<br />
political power, and that person would<br />
be right. I don’t want to argue that such<br />
reductionist arguments have their<br />
limits, or should have or they would<br />
invariably touch on a year like 1984/<br />
85 when a Major-General Buhari was<br />
in power inside Dodan Barracks.<br />
What really got Prof Adebanwi off my<br />
sights this week was the reported<br />
killings that trailed the governorship<br />
elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states.<br />
Is it not the fifth year a messianic<br />
party, the APC, and its more<br />
messianic flag-bearer, President<br />
Mohammadu Buhari were voted into<br />
power? If yes, how many years<br />
should it take to organise free, fair and<br />
peaceful elections?<br />
Some people had made us believe<br />
that if only Prof. Maurice Iwu was<br />
removed, Nigeria would change.<br />
Now, that man has been gone from<br />
that office for almost a decade. So,<br />
why does the electoral problem<br />
continue?<br />
Why is it that though the APC came<br />
into power in 2015, by November of<br />
2019 it has not been able to provide<br />
something as ordinary as electronic<br />
voting? Instead, election times have<br />
been turned by hoodlums into times<br />
of blood-letting. The part that really<br />
frightened me was that the Inspector<br />
General of Police was quoted by some<br />
newspapers as saying that some<br />
criminals in fake police uniforms<br />
tainted the election. Really? How<br />
many of them were arrested? If<br />
criminals could wear fake Police<br />
uniforms to maintain their own<br />
version of order during an election in<br />
which security personnel were<br />
adequately mobilised, then all hell has<br />
broken loose in Nigeria.<br />
And that election took place in just<br />
two out of 36 states of the federation!<br />
Please, has anybody noticed that it<br />
took just a matter of days into the life<br />
of this present Republic for some<br />
heroic PDP members of House of<br />
Representatives to have formed an<br />
opposition arm of the party, as it were, and<br />
began to rein in an Obasanjo who had little<br />
regard for either the constitution or the<br />
National Assembly? Former Govs. James<br />
Ibori, Uzor Orji Kalu, Victor Attah, etc<br />
opposed Obasanjo as they called for internal<br />
democracy. Ghali Umar Na’Abba led the<br />
gallant Representatives such as Nduka<br />
Irabor, Chidi Duru, Sadiq Yar’Adua, etc. Then<br />
a power drunken PDP, annexed by Obasanjo<br />
himself and Obasanjoists ensured that people<br />
like Na’Abba and Irabor did not return to the<br />
National Assembly. Irabor narrowly escaped<br />
assassination attempt; someone shot a bullet<br />
through his roof and into his bed – at night!<br />
Well, the PDP character of internal<br />
opposition to their strong men continued<br />
when people like the immediate past Senate<br />
President, Bukola Saraki, rather than<br />
surrender their staunch beliefs, joined the<br />
opposition APC and helped it into power.<br />
Then, when APC proved as dictatorial to them<br />
as PDP, they raised their rebellious flag once<br />
again. But this time, to no effect. They received<br />
the treatment the Irabos and Na’Abbas got<br />
in 2003. They could not retain their posts.<br />
Ibori and Kalu, for instance had to barely<br />
scrap by to retain their posts in 2003. And<br />
since then, they have been faced with<br />
constant battles.<br />
Well, Nigeria has had a STRONG President<br />
in Obasanjo, and she has one now in Buhari.<br />
What happens when a RENEGADE president<br />
gets into Aso Rock? Perhaps we don’t even<br />
need to get such a man for disaster to strike.<br />
James Bryce visited USA in the 1880s and<br />
concluded that the real danger to American<br />
democracy may not even come from a<br />
renegade President as the real danger to the<br />
constitution would come when “A bold<br />
President who knew himself to be supported<br />
by a majority in the country, might be<br />
tempted to override the law. He might be a<br />
tyrant, not against the masses, but with the<br />
masses”.<br />
Some Americans fear that they have such a<br />
President in Donald Trump. But to guide<br />
against our getting there, some Nigerian<br />
politicians must think Nigeria first – above<br />
their ethnic groups and political parties. They<br />
must begin to rally together as patriots - for<br />
Nigeria’s sake.