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Eminent lawyer and politician, Oba Mekunu Owolabi Salis has commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on his Man of The Year Award by a combined team of editors of This Day and Arise News.
The Ikorodu-born who made history as the first black African to travel to the North and South Pole, all within a season, described Tinubu as an anomaly 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, Salis remarked that the President made a Southerner the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory for the first time.
He hailed the combined team of editors of This Day and Arise News for the objective sense of appraisal which informed their choice.
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 award might have been motivated by mischievously derogatory motive.
“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 $40 million, 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) .
He added: “If one may borrow ex-president Olusegun 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.”
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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 scrutinuosly 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.
“Awards should therefore be devoid of politics, prejudice, nepotism, connection, sentiment, highest bidder or favoritism of any sort,” he advised.
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