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50 Years After The Firsts; Has Ogun Prepared The Next?

Published

8 months ago

February 4, 2026

History Is Not a Development Plan

By Abiola Odetola

There is a kind of love that claps. And there is a kind of love that tells the truth. As Ogun State turns 50, it would be easy, maybe also expected to write the familiar tribute, the great names we produced, the firsts we claimed, the achievements we once wore like a crown, or probably eulogize the current governor and government for its many achievements.

However, Ogun is a state of immense pedigree in Nigeria’s modern story, a place that has repeatedly supplied the country with its thinkers, reformers, builders, and dreamers.

Ogun did not merely participate in Nigeria’s story, it helped write it. But anniversaries are not only for applause. They are also for audit.

If Ogun at 50 is only a celebration, then we have learnt nothing. Because a state that is truly serious about its future does not only praise the past, it interrogates the present and prepares the next fifty years with painful honesty.
This is that conversation many don’t want to have openly.

I write not as an observer, but as one whose identity is stitched into the Ogun story by birth, by upbringing, by daily realities, and, to the glory of Eledumare, by work and service. I write with the kind of loyalty that does not end at sentiment. I have read about the strides of our forebears, seen Ogun in its pride, and I have lived its contradictions.

And it is that contradiction that must concern us most today: how can a state with so much history still struggle to translate that inheritance into a consistently rising future?

The danger of Ogun at 50 is not that we will forget our past. The danger is that we will hide inside it.
History should be a foundation, not a hiding place. Legacy should be a launchpad, not a resting mat. A people cannot build tomorrow by endlessly reciting yesterday.

So the harder question must be asked, one that cuts beyond ceremony and nostalgia. Fifty years after the firsts, has Ogun prepared the next?
Ogun’s political history is impossible to tell without invoking towering figures whose ideas reshaped governance, education, federalism, culture, and civic duty in Nigeria. Names like Obafemi Awolowo, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, Tai Solarin, Wole Soyinka, Fela Kuti, Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo, Justice Atanda Fatai Williams, and Justice Adetokunbo Ademola did not merely occupy offices or stages; they built ideas that outlived them.

But herein lies our quiet failure: we mastered leadership, but neglected succession.We built icons, but failed to build pipelines. We celebrated brilliance, but did not institutionalise its transfer. We raised legends, but did not systematically prepare replacements.

Political leadership in Ogun has too often become custodial rather than generational, focused on preserving relevance, not preparing successors. The result is a dangerous vacuum where younger people grow up hearing stories of greatness without being handed the tools to recreate it.

So today, we must ask without sentiment and without fear: who is the political leader of Ogun State today in the mould of ideas, not office? Who is thinking about Ogun’s future beyond the next election cycle? Who is grooming the next Awolowo, Solarin, Soyinka, not in personality, but in intellectual rigour and moral courage?

As Ogun marks 50, we also stand at the doorstep of another election season, a moment that will quietly shape not just the next four or eight years, but the next fifty. Yet, the signs are worrying.

The same political warlords, many who have dominated the space for decades and failed the sustainability test from Ijebu to Egba, are sharpening daggers, not to build consensus, but to protect territory. Young professionals, technocrats, reform-minded servants, and emerging leaders are already feeling the weight of suppression, voices muted, ambitions caricatured, innovation treated as insolence.

Personal aspirations have become endless, often at the direct expense of youth inclusion.
This must be said clearly: a generation that will not live in the next fifty years has no moral right to mortgage that future with ego, factional battles, and needless political fracas.

Nature does not tolerate vacuum. Leadership transitions will happen, whether planned or chaotic. The only real question is how prepared the next leaders will be.

Today, many of Ogun’s socio-political and traditional leaders are between the ages of 60 and 90. This is not an insult; it is biology. But wisdom demands something of this reality: intentional transfer of power, knowledge, and responsibility.
Who is engineering young minds towards development rather than desperation? Who is preparing Ogun’s youth for leadership rather than patronage?

One of Ogun’s most painful contradictions is this: our young people are thriving, just not at home.
Across Nigeria and the diaspora, Ogun sons and daughters are holding their own in finance, technology, medicine, law, academia, arts, sports, and entrepreneurship. They are building systems, running companies, shaping policies, and competing globally.

Yet many do not see Ogun as a place where ambition can legally and competitively flourish. Too often, talent is met with suspicion rather than support. New ideas are strangled by old gatekeepers. Young voices are silenced in community and political spaces. Merit is sacrificed on the altar of loyalty. Innovation is treated as rebellion.

We have normalized a culture where young people are told subtly or directly, “wait your turn,” even when the system offers them no real seat at the table.

This culture does not build states. It empties them.

Cultism. Internet fraud. Prostitution. Skill gaps. Hopelessness. These are not moral failures unique to Ogun youth. They are responses to blocked opportunities.

When legitimate pathways are closed, illegitimate ones thrive. When skills are not taught, shortcuts are taken. When voices are suppressed, anger festers.

The real tragedy is this: the same energy that fuels these challenges could power Ogun’s renaissance only if properly channelled.

Youth energy is raw capital. Unrefined, it explodes. Refined, it builds nations.

This is why Ogun must now confront the question it has avoided for too long: where is the Ogun Youth Agenda?

Not youth empowerment as charity. Not youth inclusion as rhetoric. But a deliberate, state-wide youth development framework that treats young people as the primary infrastructure of Ogun’s future.

An Ogun Youth Agenda must be the organising principle of the next ten years, aligning education with skills, industry with apprenticeship, governance with mentorship, and politics with succession. Without this, every other plan will fail, because no state rises above the capacity of its people.

If Ogun is to matter in the next fifty years, youth development cannot be an afterthought. It must be the strategy.

There is a large pool of youth in Ogun State today largely not engaged.

In the long run, Ogun must raise leaders, not just office holders. It must export ideas, not only people. It must become a place where talent can succeed legally, competitively, and sustainably from home. It must position itself not as a feeder state, but as a shaper of Nigeria’s future.
This is not idealism. It is survival.

As we celebrate fifty years, let us ask the question that truly matters: where are the next Awolowo, Mike Adenuga, MKO, Fela, Tai Solarin, Soyinka, Oba Otudeko, Fola Adeola, and many others we all know, not just in name, but in preparation?
More importantly, who is deliberately posturing young Ogun minds for that level of greatness?If the answer is silence, then our celebration is premature.

Ogun’s history is not its destination. It is its responsibility.

Those who built the past deserve honour. But honour does not mean control. At this stage, leadership must be measured not by how long power is held, but by how well it is handed over. Not by how loudly history is invoked, but by how intentionally the future is prepared.

One truth must now guide Ogun beyond 50: history is not a development plan.

Has Ogun prepared the next?

History does not reward inheritance. It rewards stewardship.

The future is already watching.

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Business

Turning Africa’s Raw Materials Into Wealth: The ARMS 2026 Industrial Agenda

Published

3 days ago

September 29, 2026

The Gleamer

By Joel Ajayi

For decades, Africa’s vast natural resources have powered industries and economies far beyond the continent, while many African countries have remained largely exporters of unprocessed commodities and importers of finished products.

That familiar pattern is now coming under renewed scrutiny as policymakers, researchers, investors and industrialists seek to change the direction of Africa’s resource economy.

At the centre of that conversation is the second edition of the Africa Raw Materials Summit (ARMS 2026), scheduled for October 19 and 20 at the Abuja Continental Hotel, Abuja, under the theme: “From African Feedstock to African Factories.”

Organised by the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), the summit is being positioned as more than another gathering of policymakers and industry stakeholders. It is intended to provide a platform for confronting the structural challenges that have kept African raw materials largely disconnected from local manufacturing.

Africa has for years operated largely within a “pit-to-port” economic model, exporting raw materials while importing expensive finished products.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of the summit on Tuesday in Abuja, the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of RMRDC, Prof. Nnanyelugo Martin Ike-Muonso, said the event would bring together policymakers, investors, researchers, technology providers and industrialists to develop practical strategies for transforming Africa’s abundant natural resources into industrial wealth.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply the abundance of resources, but the continent’s ability to transform those resources into industrial value, employment, technology and wealth within Africa.

Nigeria alone, according to the RMRDC, has more than $582.4 billion in documented non-renewable natural resources, while the wider continent possesses substantial deposits of critical minerals, agricultural raw materials and industrial feedstock.

Yet, the benefits of this resource endowment have often been constrained by inadequate processing capacity, weak infrastructure, limited technology, financing gaps and fragmented regional value chains.

From Dialogue to Industrial Action

ARMS 2026 builds on the maiden edition held in May 2025, which attracted more than 1,000 delegates from across the world.

The inaugural summit also witnessed the unveiling of the Ten-Year Raw Materials Transformation Roadmap (2025–2034) by the Minister of State for Industry, Senator John Owen Enoh.

The roadmap was designed around areas including technological capability, climate-resilient processing and backward integration, establishing a policy framework for greater domestic utilisation of Africa’s raw materials.

The second edition is expected to move the conversation further by bringing policy, capital, technology and industrial stakeholders around practical mechanisms for turning raw materials into locally manufactured products.

One of the major proposals highlighted by the RMRDC is the 30 per cent Mandatory Value Addition Bill, which seeks to establish a statutory minimum level of value addition to Nigerian raw materials before export.

The Council says the proposed framework could support job creation, import substitution, foreign-exchange conservation and increased manufacturing contribution to the economy.

Building the Infrastructure for Value Addition

The industrial transformation envisaged by ARMS 2026 goes beyond legislation.

A major concern is the “missing middle” between where raw materials are produced and where factories are located.

Poor transportation networks, inadequate cold-chain facilities, weak rural roads, limited testing and certification infrastructure and border-related delays can make locally sourced materials more expensive and less competitive.

Consequently, logistics and infrastructure constitute one of the five principal pillars of the summit.

The objective is to develop more reliable corridors connecting farms and mines with processing centres and manufacturing facilities, thereby reducing losses and improving the movement of industrial inputs.

The Digital Dimension

Technology is also becoming an important part of the Council’s strategy.

The RMRDC says it has developed the Nigeria Integrated Information Statistical System for Raw Materials and Products (NISSRAMP), described as a digital repository containing information on feedstock deposits, specifications, production outputs and industrial absorption rates.

The Council has also highlighted its transition towards paperless operations and its certification as a Data Controller/Processor of Major Importance by the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.

Such digital infrastructure could provide investors and manufacturers with better information about the availability and characteristics of raw materials while supporting more informed industrial planning.

Turning Waste Into Industrial Inputs

Another major component of ARMS 2026 is the proposed expansion of the circular economy.

The summit will examine how agricultural by-products, mine tailings, scrap metals and biomass can be recovered and reused as inputs for new production processes rather than being treated simply as waste.

The RMRDC argues that such an approach could lower raw-material costs while supporting more sustainable and climate-resilient manufacturing systems.

For Africa, where industrial expansion must increasingly balance economic development with environmental considerations, waste industrialisation could become an important part of the continent’s manufacturing conversation.

From National Production to African Value Chains

The African Continental Free Trade Area is another important element of the summit’s agenda.

The RMRDC sees AfCFTA as an opportunity to create regional value chains in which raw materials sourced in one African country can be processed and supplied to manufacturers in another.

Under such a model, Africa would move beyond simply exporting commodities to external markets and develop stronger internal networks for supplying chemicals, refined minerals, agricultural inputs and other industrial materials across national borders.

This approach places regional integration at the heart of Africa’s industrialisation strategy.

Bridging Research and Capital

A recurring weakness in many developing economies is the gap between research and commercialisation.

Innovations may emerge from universities, research institutions and laboratories without receiving the financing, equipment or market connections required to become commercially viable.

ARMS 2026 intends to address that gap through technology commercialisation and capital linkages, connecting research outputs with investors, development finance institutions and industrial off-takers.

The RMRDC has also cited partnerships with the Bank of Industry for commercial-scale post-harvest processing and a South-South technology-transfer partnership with the National Innovation Centre par Excellence in Shanghai, China.

A Larger Industrial Conversation

The scale of ARMS 2026 is expected to be significantly larger than the maiden edition.

The organisers project more than 1,800 delegates from all 54 African countries and global industrial partners.

The programme will feature high-level policy dialogues, technical panels, an advanced raw materials and technology exhibition, industrial site visits and the African Raw Materials Industry Awards.

The exhibition, in particular, is expected to showcase locally fabricated processing machinery, advanced domestic materials, green chemicals and engineered commercial inputs.

Beyond the speeches and exhibitions, however, the real significance of ARMS 2026 will ultimately depend on what happens after the summit.

Africa’s challenge has never been a shortage of raw materials. The more difficult question has been how to transform those resources into factories, products, skilled employment, technology and sustainable economic opportunities.

For Nigeria and the rest of the continent, the proposed shift from “pit-to-port” to “feedstock-to-factory” therefore represents a broader debate about the future structure of African economies.

ARMS 2026 seeks to place that debate firmly on the industrial agenda — with value addition, technology, finance, infrastructure, circular production and regional trade at the centre.

If the commitments and partnerships generated by the summit translate into measurable industrial activity, the event could provide another platform for Africa to examine how its enormous resource base can support stronger domestic manufacturing.

The message from the organisers is clear: the continent’s raw materials should not only leave African soil as commodities; they should increasingly become the foundation for African industrial production

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