The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • Ooni’s passage: Away with savage traditions!

    It was with utter shock that one read that the famous university town of Ile-Ife was shut down for an entire day in honour of the revered monarch, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Alayeluwa Olubuse II. There is no doubt that in the pantheon of Yoruba monarchy, the Ife throne ranks among the top.

    But this still does not explain why the town would be on lock-down for a whole day and probably many nights until the body is interred. Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), one of the biggest in Africa, is to be shut. Banks, hospitals, markets, all business activities; indeed all souls are to remain indoors and anyone who strays will be doing so at his peril. This is the unstated part of the close-down.

    What happens to emergencies like women in labour and urgent health challenges? How many lives would be lost on account of this medieval practice? What is the economic cost? How long are we going to continue with this savage ab’oba ku tradition? To what end is this barbarity? It feels like a log of wood when someone else’s corpse is concerned. How would it be if one of the governor’s kin is missing during this period or any prominent person’s child is caught down in the mix?

    It is hoped that the state government and the in-coming Ooni would review all of this and modernise the throne.

  • The parable of death

    The parable of death

    Preamble

    The corpse of another prominent Nigerian has just been brought back to country for burial today after weeks of self-deception in the name of culture. Such is the common experience especially in the southern part of the county where to be born or to die abroad is ignorantly considered a prestige.

    Historians never agreed on when and where the first human couple, Adam and Hawau (Eve), died. Some claimed that they died and were buried in India. Others believed they lived and died in the Gulf area of the Middle East. According to the latter’s account, which Muslims tend to believe, Adam and Hawau met at a place near Makkah called Arafah which later became the general assembly centre of Muslim Pilgrims. The account suggested that after their expulsion from Paradise, they lived partly in the valley of Makkah and partly in Jeddah (75 kilometres away by the Red Sea).

    The duo, Adam and Hawau, were said to have left Paradise separately following their expulsion only to meet later at ‘Arafah (which means recognition) after a long period of wondering. Their sojourn in that region of the world shows that the Middle East was the first place of human settlement. The existence of an ancient rectangular house called Ka‘bah is a testimony to this assertion. Hawau was believed to have died and interned in Jeddah, which is why the place was named Jeddah an Arabic word meaning Grandmother.

     

    The first human death

    Neither Adam nor his wife Hawau knew anything called death until one of their first two sons killed the other.  The two sons – Habil and Qabil (Abel and Cain) had clashed over the choice of a wife. The tussle led to the killing of Habil by Qabil. But the focus here is neither on the cause of their clash nor the killing of one by the other. Rather, it is on the lesson which Allah wanted to teach humanity through that episode.

     

    The lesson

    Shortly after killing his brother, Qabil fell into a dilemma over what to do with the corpse. He was not worried as much by his conscience over his crime as to what would become of the corpse. But while thinking on what to do, two birds of the Roller family appeared before him and started fighting each other. In no time, one killed the other.  The strange scene attracted the attention of Qabil like a tragic drama. He watched the incident with full attention as the killer bird used its legs to dig a grave-like hole, pushed the corpse of its vanquished brother into it and covered it up. From that wonderful scene, Qabil got the idea of what to do with the corpse of his brother. And he buried him. Thus, the lesson was learnt that this human being created from the earth would eventually return to the earth.

    What Qabil did not know at that time, however, was that the two birds, which became his teachers, were Angels. And the lesson learnt from their experience was not just about death and burial but also about when and where to bury a human corpse. If Allah had wanted ceremony and ostentation to be lavished on burial, the killer bird would have demonstrated same in the drama. Qabil did not move the corpse of Habil to any other place for burial because his bird teacher did not do that. Like the killer bird, he also buried his brother at the very spot where the latter breathed his last.

     

    When death strikes

    In Islam, death is supposed to be the determinant of where the demised should be buried. Death takes life at a particular time and place according to its own natural schedule of duty. It gives no hint of the exact time and place to strike. And, after striking, it does not anticipate the transfer of a corpse across any major distance. That is why the body of any demised person starts to decompose just hours after it becomes lifeless. To confirm this, the Quran chapter 31: 24 says: “No soul knows what it will do tomorrow. No soul knows where it will die and be buried”.

     

    The first Muslim group

    The first group of the Makkans who embraced Islam at its inception suffered so much severe persecution in the hands of pagans that they had to migrate to Abyssinia (Now Ethiopia) for safety. While there, a number of them died and their wives and children became widows and orphans respectively. All those who died in Abyssinia were buried in that country. Another group of the earliest Muslims migrated to Taif. A number of them also died there leaving widows, widowers and orphans behind. Their bodies were not transferred back to Makkah for burial

    Over this, some unbelievers may argue that those emigrants were fugitives who had no courage to bring back the corpses of their relatives for burial. But what of those who died in the battle of Badr in which Makkah pagans came all the way from Makkah, a distance of about 650 kilometers away, to engage the Muslims in a war in Madinah? The corpses of the Muslims who died in that imposed war were buried right there at the battle ground despite the nearness of Badr to Madinah and the Muslims’ victory in that battle?

     

    The Prophet’s example

    It should be remembered that one of the most painful deaths to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was that of his uncle, Hamzah, the great warrior who fell to the spear of a Makkan pagan in the battle of Uhd and was buried right there at the foot of mountain Uhd in Madinah where the battle took place. In fact, no one who died in another town or country among the Muslims was ever brought back to his original home for burial. Not even the corpse of the Prophet or that of any of his disciples who died in Madinah was returned to Makkah for burial. The reason for this is to avoid the transfer of bitterness and mental agony arising from the death of a person from one place to another.

     

    Implication

    Not only that, it is also to avoid the unnecessary strain and expenses which such transfer can unleash on some people. That was why great disciples like Abubakr, Umar Bn Khattab, Uthman Bn Affan had to be buried in Madinah where they died rather than Makkah where they were born. Also, Ali bn Abi Talib and Mu’awiyah bn Abi Sufyan were buried in Iraq and Syria respectively where they served as caliphs and died.  Even Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet and 72 others who were massacred by the forces of Yazid bn Mu’awiyah at Karbalau in Iraq had to be buried where they were massacred despite the nobility of their pedigree.

    In Islam, death, like birth has no propensity for any display of aristocracy. And, ascribing one to it is a sign of ignorance and primitivism. Islam abhors extravagance in whatever form and it admonishes against it. That is why the great religion does not take kindly to commercial exhibition of coffins and ostentatious funerals. These are actually prohibited in Islam. Coffins can be used to convey corpses from the place of death or mortuary to the cemetery but such coffins must not be ornamentally decorated. Neither must the Muslim corpses be extravagantly shrouded for burial.

    The idea of keeping the corpse in a morgue for a long time after death, to allow for ostentatious funeral and extravagant spending in a society where poverty is manifest, is an act of callousness based on ignorance. Neither the expensive shroud nor the ornamented coffin with which the corpse is buried has any benefit to the soul of the deceased. It is sheer wastage, which has no use even for the relatives of the deceased. That idea, which is rampant, especially in some parts of Nigeria today, is hardly different from cremation done by the Buddhists, the Hindus and others with fanfare in the Far East.  Both are a product of ignorance and vain-glory.

     

    Blind imitation

    As usual, Nigerians do not copy anything negative without surpassing the original. Fraud and narcotics as well as terrorism are some examples. The fashion now in vogue in Nigeria is for any public official or private moneybag to travel abroad for medical treatment at the slightest feeling of an ailment. It is as if Nigerian money is outlawed from providing the best hospital here in Nigeria. The concept is to separate the rich from the poor since an exclusive hospital for the rich will sound illogical in a country peopled overwhelmingly by with paupers. Even when some of those sick travellers will be treated abroad by their fellow Nigerians, they do not see anything wrong in spending their ill-gotten money abroad to the detriment of their home country. They seem to enjoy being flown back home lifeless if only to display aristocracy in death. Thus, your death is not considered newsworthy unless your corpse is flown into the country via Muritala Muhammad International Airport (MMIA), Lagos or Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja for public display. Yet no lesson is learnt that even Muritala Muhammad and Nnamdi Azikiwe died and were buried here in Nigeria. Can anybody cite a clear difference between death in Europe or America and the one in Nigeria? Why must our money be audaciously stolen alive in Nigeria and brazenly spent in death abroad?

     

    Extravagance

    With the huge amount of money spent by Nigerian sick travellers on treatments abroad and on flying their corpses back home, one can understand why Nigerians are so wretched that their lives are not worth more than a dollar per head per day despite the billions of dollars accruing to the country from our oil wells. It is necessary to thank God however, that though ‘Tokunbo’ products dumped in Nigeria daily are uncountable, the human corpses amongst them are those of the aristocrats and not of the innocent indigent class.

     

    Leveller of mankind      

    Death is a leveller of mankind. It does not distinguish between the rich and the poor.

    We shall all die willy-nilly and we shall all be buried in the belly of the same mother earth where the bones of masters and servants or those of sworn enemies may struggle together for space. Mother earth can be described as man’s inseparable companion. She accompanies man day and night, in life and in death. She surpasses biological mothers in playing her role in the life of man. From a chip of her natural being, man is said to have been created. Allah tells us in Qur’an that “From her (the earth) ‘We’ created you and into her belly ‘We’ shall return you”.

    In playing the role of a mother, the earth carries man on her back while the latter remains alive. And in death, she incubates him in her belly in readiness for the resurrection that will see him through the inevitable Day of Judgment. In that process, there is a similarity between the duties of a primary mother (the earth) and that of a secondary mother otherwise known as biological mother especially in respect of conception and delivery.

    While the biological mother cares for man only when she and man are alive, the mother earth cares for him both in life and in death. Unlike that of the biological mother, the life span of the mother earth is indefinite.

     

    Age of the Earth

    Some scientists have given us different ages of the earth using all sorts of technological instruments. But the only authentic statement on that can come from the Almighty Allah Who created the earth. If scientists have the means of telling us the age of the earth, do they also have the means of determining her life span? The earth is not just a carrier of unlimited weight; she is also a scale of unlimited measure. She weighs the load on her head as well as the one in her belly and balances them up for natural equanimity.

    Without the earth, mountains and oceans would have no habitat to call their own and the long term fossils which turn into what we call minerals would have had nowhere to hibernate. Before all these and millions of other unidentified matters came into existence, the earth had been. And when all of them might have vanished into permanent oblivion, according to their scheduled time, the earth will continue to be until natural termination time comes.

    We know that man was created from the earth. We know that the earth accommodates all living and non-living things on and in her. What we do not know is the source of the earth in creation. From what was the earth created? In luring us to reasoning, Allah has severally called the attention of man to the nature of certain creatures like the mountains, the valleys, the oceans and the seas, the minerals and the human and animal fossils buried in the earth as well as the varieties of plants and insects which dot the earth like a galaxy of stars on the Milky Way. He has also challenged man to observe the very nature of the wonderful carpet called the earth.

     

     No difference

    The earth in America or China or Australia is not different from that of Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or Italy. And no earth is superior to another except with Allah’s conferment of sacredness.

    Were the aristocrats privileged to calve out a separate portion of the earth for themselves, they would have restricted the masses to a disadvantaged area of the earth. But the thinking of man is different from the planning of Allah. Celebration of funerals so flamboyantly as often exhibited in Nigeria is nothing more than celebration of vanity which fetches the celebrator no profit. In Islam, it is ordained to care for the dead in spirit and in action. But such should not at the expense of the living. Doing so is a glaring evidence of ignorance which no civilised people would ever want to pursue.

  • Iran: Netanyahu faces Obama

    Iran: Netanyahu faces Obama

    Whenever imperialists penetrate a territory they pilage it devastatingly and subjugate the juggernauts therein almost irredeemably. That is surely their act”.  Q. 27:34

     

    Monologue

    Conspiracy is the most deadly instigator of war. It has consistently been the the most reliable weapon for the survival of imperialists whether in the primordial or contemporary times. But where a strong conspiracy is countered by another equally strong conspiracy within an imperial hegemony the tendency is for the bubble to burst. That has invariably been the cause of the fall of empires and the undoing of powerful regimes throughout human history. The break up, in 1991, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is the latest example of this assertion.

     

    The gathering Clouds

    Now, there are indications that some clouds are gathering in the horizon with the threat of a tempest which consequence is quite unpredictable. It is all about the recently sealed agreement between the Western Powers and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme which had given the Western Powers many sleepless nights before now. Subsequent to that agreement, a controversy ensued, especially in the United States, on whether or not the agreement that allowed Iran to continue but reduce the tempo of her nuclear programme was desirable at all. One of the foremost proponents of that agreement is the United States herself led by President Barack Obama who has become the self-appointed spokesman for its support and is now championing a campaign for it.

    It may sound ironic that the same Obama who championed the opposition to the Iranian nuclear programme and even initiated and recommended sanctions to American allies against Iran is also the one championing the campaign for the   acceptance of that country’s nuclear programme. But in international diplomacy, that cannot be strange as it only shows the momentary reality on the ground. Based on experience, Obama’s contention is that the Western Allies only have a choice between acceptance of Iranian nuclear programme and a war as he emphasized that the alternative to the earlier is the latter. Apparently, Obama has seen what other members of the alliance are yet to see.

     

    The Jewish Position

    On the other hand, Israel, the only nuclear power in the entire Middle-East, which now feels threatened by Iran’s seeming rivalry, has become so jittery over Obama’s stand on this nuclear issue that she has quickly initiated a massive media campaign against it and voted an initial $1.7 million for that campaign. Incidentally, the current recess of the American Senate has provided an opportunity for that Jewish State to lobby the American Senators against passing a bill which Obama is planning to present to the Senate very soon on the matter. Thus, a battle line of propaganda has been drawn between Barack Obama’s Democrat regime and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jewish fright. And, of course, the American Senate is the main arena of that diplomatic battle.

    Just two days ago (Wednesday, August 5, 2015) while President Obama was addressing the American citizens, through the media, on this volatile issue, some hundreds of American Jews took to American streets to protest against Obama’s proposed bill and continuation of Iran’s nuclear programme. Meanwhile, some analysts have been toying with some diplomatic questions relating to this matter: Can Israel really confront America, her surrogate parent (that helped her to acquire nuclear power) on this issue? Is America, a well known belligerent nation, only dramatizing for the world to see with the intention of giving an excuse to make a u-turn if she fails in this controversial issue? Can America sincerely jettison Israel, her surrogate child and dedicated policeman of the Middle-East? There are many more pushing questions for which the days ahead must provide answers. And the world is waiting.

     

    Genesis of the Crisis

    Retrospectively, the genesis of the face off between the West and Iran took roots in the latter’s unexpected revolution of 1979 which shut her door against the West’s economic exploitation of her citizens. It was 36 years last February (2015), since Iran jumped on the world stage with a surprising revolution that beat the West hands down. February 11, 1979 was the climax of a struggle, in that country, which began in 1963 between the oppressed people seeking independence from the shackles of imperialism and the implacable oppressors that wanted to keep that country’s innocent peasants in perpetual subservience by using the imperial stool of Shah Pahlavi.

    The success of that revolution has since changed the grand design of the Western powers for the Muslim world. That grand design was first expressed by a British Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bennerman in 1907 when he observed as follows:

    “There are people who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources.  They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate these people from one another….If, per chance, this nation were to be unified into one state, it would then take the face of the world into its hands and would separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never- ending wars. It could also serve as a spring board for the West to gain its coveted objects”.

    Sir Bennerman’s observation, following a discovery that the Middle-East would control 1/5 of the world’s wealth was in further pursuance of an earlier demand by Theodor Herzl, a leader of the Zionist movement founded in 1879. Herzl, an Austrian Jewish lawyer and journalist demanded as follows:

    “Let sovereignty be granted us (Jews) over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest, we shall manage by ourselves…”

     

    The Balfour Declaration

    In response to Theodor Herzl’s demand, another British Prime Minister, James Arthur Balfour issued a devastating declaration that now bears his name (Balfour Declaration). That 1917 declaration has since put the entire Middle East in an incessant turmoil. The declaration that conceded a major part of Palestine to the Zionists as a home read in part:

    “His majesty’s Government views which favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective…. The rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country shall not be prejudiced by the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”

    To facilitate that objective effectively, some other Middle East countries had to be incapacitated economically and politically by excising from them, a juicy chunk of their lands. Thus, Lebanon was excised from Syria and Kuwait from Iraq. The strategy was to cause a dissension among the citizens of those Countries with the intention of breaking the bond of Muslim unity which Bennerman had targeted in his infamous 1907 speech quoted above.

     

    The logical Question

    How does Iran come into this when she is not an Arab Country? That is the logical question that anybody who is not quite familiar with the Middle East and the intricacies of its political and economic set up will ask. Naturally, Iran is affected by three major factors: Politics, economy and culture. And by culture here, we mean ISLAM. Iran is a foremost Islamic Country even if her official language is not Arabic. And, as an Islamic Country, whatever affects other Muslim Countries must affect her.

     

    Iranian Revolution

    No one believed in 1979 that what started like a small political billow, initiated by Iran’s unarmed Mullahs in the city of Qum, could grow into such a great magnitude of political ‘earthquake’. And so, by the time the foggy dust from that billow settled, a new Iran had emerged from the debris of the old. Thus, against the wish and expectation of the capitalist West, the secular, monarchical Iran became an Islamic republic. The drama was quite electrical.

    Characteristic of the West, all hands were on deck, at that time, to ensure that an Islamic republic did not succeed the tyrannical monarchy headed by the Shah Pahlavi, heavily backed up by the oppressive West. America was most active in that ambitious but vain effort. She would not easily allow the massive benefit she had been enjoying for years in that oil-rich country, under the Shah regime, to slip out of her hands just like that. Thus, under the pretext of wanting to rescue her citizens from the siege laid by Iranian students on that country’s embassy, in Tehran, the US attempted an invasion of the country. The espionage activities by the American diplomats, inside that embassy, against the new Islamic government in Iran had warranted the siege.

    While a number of US F15 bomber jets were approaching Iran, the then American President Jimmy Carter engaged his country’s press in a momentary chat without giving any hint of the impending military operation. The tactics was to divert the attention of the press and that of the country from the illegal Pentagon’s military expedition. But no sane person can ever fault the contents of the Qur’an. More than 1400 years before that incident, a verse of the Qur’an had been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “They (the unbelievers) scheme, and Allah schemes. Allah is the supreme schemer”. Q. 3:54.

     

    Why Jimmy Carter failed

    Jimmy Carter’s thought was that by the time he would be finishing with the press the news would have reached him that America had successfully invaded Iran. He had therefore intended to announce the news of his ‘great’ successful scheme to the press. And that would have served as his impetus for wining that year’s election for a second term in office. But, as Allah would want it, instead of the expected success news, what he got was a shock of his life. Two of the F15 fighters deployed for the operation miraculously collided in the air just at the point of entering Iran crashing with their contents, and consuming the lives of 16 top air force officers on board while the other jet fighters had to turn back having run into confusion. When this devastating news reached Carter, it was too much to hide and it quickly became a public knowledge.

    Thus, the mighty, imperialist America failed woefully with her technology, in circumstances she has never been able to analyze and explain convincingly. With that scheme, it became obvious that Jimmy Carter of the Democrat Party had dug his own political grave. And of course, he lost that year’s election to the cowboy turned Politician, (Ronald Reagan) of the Republican Party. For about 444 days (well over a year), thereafter, the 52 American diplomats held hostage in the American Embassy in Tehran remained under the siege of the Iranian students. It took high-level diplomacy, through third party countries, to get them released.

     

    The current Nuclear Concern

    Thus, the cold relationship between Iran and the West further deteriorated recently when Iran started a nuclear project with which to prop up her economy. America responded with a threat saying the United States would not tolerate any nuclear project in Iran because she could not trust that Islamic Republic of Iran. And of course, America’s voice was re-echoed by the United Nations, through the mouth of the latter’s Secretary General, Ban Ki-moo. After all, it is only a fool who will not know that the UN, as presently constituted, is the greyhound of the US through which the latter randomly barks at the rest of the world.

    But for the recent Iraqi episode that became regrettable for America and of course, the North Korean case, which has become a cancerous sore on the head of a rabid dog that the US represents, another Gulf war would have been in plan by now. What most people did not know is that the secret of American military gangsterism around the world is neither due to technological advancement, nor military superiority per se. America’s 1979 failed rescue mission in Iran has confirmed this. That secret is rather in her ability to cause dissension among other nations and races of the world.

     

    Conclusion

    Iran has never been a prey to America’s direct military aggression because she has never played a fool dancing to the sour music of that predatory country. But one fact that has become clear about the US political trend, ever since her withdrawal from isolationism in 1945, needs to be mentioned here. Her internal politics has regularly been dictated by her foreign policy. Thus, many American Presidents have either won or lost elections at home due to their adopted foreign policies. Will this also repeat itself? The days ahead will answer these questions as events continue to unfold.

  • War-weary already?

    War-weary already?

    It’s no coincidence that my home-visit ended the way it began with familiar taunting and scolding by Opalaba. I couldn’t just sneak out without saying bye for now to my old chum. And I didn’t expect that it would be a “good-seeing you” affair.  With issues burning his tired mind, who can blame the old warrior for being war-weary?

    “So you are on your way back to where you belong?” he fired a familiar salvo. “You parachuted in and are now parachuting out. I am sure, like old anthropologists, you have seen more than enough to make your specialist analysis on the nation of your birth and her people.”

    I knew where this was going and I decided not to catch the bait.

    “I beg your pardon”, I replied.  “When did it become a crime to make intelligent remarks on observation and experience? And I do not hold brief for anthropologists. Indeed I think some of them buy into our interest in separating ourselves from the world just to perpetuate exploitation and corruption. We say our democracy must be different because we are different. Those anthropologists that buy into this phobia theorise cultural relativity. But our human needs remain the same, don’t they?”

    “They sure do remain the same. The matter that afflicts Aboyade also afflicts all Oya devotees. And if we don’t get our acts together now, we never will. But I am afraid our people are war-weary already. We have been through so many wars: war against corruption; war against indiscipline, and war against terrorism. When is it going to end? Opalaba submits.

    In fairness to my friend, I saw that frustration on the faces of the patriots that I encountered. It is the fear of the unknown. Where is all this going to end? How is the country going to fair? Is PMB in full control or is he being teleguided by vested interests? These are the questions I encountered.

    But who can quarrel with the war against corruption? It has eaten deep into the fabric of the nation. The leakages in the oil sector could have adequately taken care of the quality education of the youth. Is there a sector of the economy that corruption has not impacted? The military, police, teaching, medical, immigration, customs, clerical, private security, banking, messenger, postal service, etc are all neck deep in corruption.

    The negative impact of corruption on our economic and social institutions is enormous and it’s not limited to the tangibles. It eats our national body as well as its soul. It dampens the spirit and quickens the death of the body. So why won’t it be fought?

    “You must grant, however, that some are skeptical and have counselled PMB to go softly on corruption so it doesn’t affect economic development”, Opalaba observed.  “I would have thought that without fighting corruption to death, economic development cannot take off. But some experts have cited the case of China and Malaysia.”

    I responded that one factor they missed is the difference between the use of proceeds of corruption in Nigeria and in other countries. Elsewhere national resources are not siphoned outside the boundaries of their nations and the proceeds of corruption are ploughed back into the economy. In Nigeria on the other hand, the economy loses out to corruption because the looted funds are siphoned out to develop other economies. In the beginning it was the developed economies that reaped the fruit of Nigerian corruption. Now it’s Dubai and other gulf nations. We must fight to liberate the nation from a second round of exploitation”

    If the war on corruption succeeds, it will also impact the war on terrorism.  Terrorism is a child of corruption. Corrupted mind sires terrorism. Whether terrorism comes in the form of religious or political ideology, what is clear is that if a mind is not corrupted, it will not turn to terrorism.

    On its part, indiscipline has a close and symbiotic relationship with corruption. On the one hand, corruption is the mother of indiscipline. On the other hand, indiscipline begets corruption. The more corrupt a society becomes, the more undisciplined it is. The ones who milk the coffers of the treasury are the most undisciplined. They already show this character trait by flouting the laid down rules and the oath of office they took. They can buy their way without any qualms.

    On the other hand, indiscipline is the first culprit and therefore the source of corruption. If you cannot discipline yourself, you will succumb to the temptation to steal and accumulate that which is not yours. An undisciplined person is a greedy person. By way of inference then, indiscipline is a source of corruption, which is a source of terrorism. One might argue then that the war against indiscipline, if properly focused, can lead directly to the defeat of terrorism.

    Opalaba agreed but then observed that “we are far from winning the war against indiscipline. Since 1984, when the war was first declared by PMB, the target of the war has become so hydra-headed that it has resisted capture. I recall that two years ago, you made the feat that Governor Ajimobi was performing in Ibadan and other parts of the state the focus of a column titled: “I see therefore I know”.

    “The Ibadan environmental and infrastructural renovation was superb. It was also meant to help traders who had been living on the major roads of the city with their wares to avoid untimely death from traffic accidents, which were quite common then. To make it attractive and appealing, the governor built markets very close to where traders liked to display their wares on the roadside. But go back now and see what has happened. The roadside markets are back and thriving along the Molete corridor as well as Dugbe and Adamasingba areas. What else can a government do?

    “Whether we agree that indiscipline is the mother of corruption or not, it is clear that the son is now the father of the mother because it has taken on a life of its own. It is responsible for the loss of revenue, which should normally fuel the development of human talents, which in turn is the most important ingredient for rapid industrialisation and economic growth. But when resources are not available because they have been lost to corruption, human development is lacking. The human resource that is not developed is not going to be idle. The devil finds work for him. The result is the various forms of anti-social behaviour and easy recruitment into cults and terror gangs.”

    “A few years ago, a New York Times columnist zeroed in on our plight by showcasing states without oil revenue that have made it in the league of great nations just because they had the good sense to develop their human talents. I am not suggesting a one-to-one correlation between good educational system and high level of discipline. I am suggesting tendencies which can be corroborated from global experience.

    “Take a tour of the major streets in our metropolitan areas. You will find hawkers of all kinds of goods. They are mostly youths aged seven to 21. These are supposed to be the most potentially-productive group in a nation. But they are not in school and their country doesn’t mind what they get into. If the war against indiscipline is to succeed, it must start from this group. We gave up on them too soon.

    “We must design a system that provides for the vocational training of dropouts from our mainstream institutions. We must provide a system that allows those who cannot gain admission to the four or five – year university programmes. This is what two-year community colleges are designed to accomplish. It is waste of human talent to have more than half of our school age young men and women hawking pure water on our streets,” Opalaba concluded.

    “I concurred. This is why we cannot be war-weary. If we give up on the three major wars now, there is a guarantee that this nation will crumble under the weight of their collective onslaught.”

  • Away with boju-boju debtors’ list!

    Clever by two-thirds. Bankers must be the cleverest people in the world (well, may be after magicians) and the average Nigerian banker is straight away an evil genius. Perhaps it’s something to do with managing money, which we all know is rooted in Mammon. You couldn’t co-habit daily with this malevolently avaricious spirit without being brought under its deleterious influences. The point therefore is that you can never beat the banks and you can never win with them. A former boss used to describe Nigerian bank managers as “legitimate criminals”, but on the other hand, he regrets that he could not do without them.

    One knows a bit about Nigerian banks and I chuckled when they began to assail us with a rash of supposed delinquent loans list. List, what list, I thought to myself. The country will probably come to a stop if the real list of the raiders of our so-called banks are published. No bank would dare publish the ‘real’ list, one wagers; what we have are what I want to call boju-boju lists, that is, a make-believe lists.

     The real list may never come to light; the list which has the names of bank directors and major shareholders is not for public consumption. What about the list with the big moguls and political heavy weights; those would be in classified document files. Their delinquent loans are usually written off as bad loans or rescheduled. Some are even given new loans to liquidate old ones.

     First point to note is that there is no agreement among banks on the title of the debtors’ lists. Thus we have: “List of Loan Defaulters;” “Delinquent Credit Facilities;” “Schedule of Non-performing Loans,” “List of Bad Debtors;” etc. One supposes all these mean the same thing, don’t they?

    Husband and Wife Nigeria Limited. Apart from one or two exceptions, most of the delinquents showcased by nearly all the banks are small time, husband and wife businesses and traders. Many of the big culprits who had raided the banks in cahoots with bank management have been sprung or kept in other ‘special’ lists.        Also to be noted is the fact that the showcased “outstanding balance” is only half the picture. For instance, if an initial loan of N100 million with a repayment value of N130 million over three years goes bad after the debtor had managed to pay about N110 million over four years, would it be fair to compound the interest on the outstanding N20 million and slam the debtor with an “outstanding debt of say, N70 million? In other words, the list ought to have presented the original loans as some of the debtors may have paid more than twice the original sum. Other notable features of the debtors’ lists include the fact that many banks are exposed to government departments, Houses of Assembly, local government areas, staff cooperatives and workers’ unions. How such loans were secured and managed considering the fluid nature of these entities is difficult to fathom. Another point to note is that most of the loans are overdrafts, some of them running into hundreds of millions of naira; even billion. How is this so?

    The manner of presentation of the list only exposed the shoddiness in the procedure and processes of some of the financial institutions. You would notice some banks stating just one name (perhaps a first name) as the director or entity that consummated a loan. Then of course, while some banks have as low as 50 names on their lists, others ‘boast’ of over 200 delinquent debtors. That must say something doesn’t it? Is there something like a debt-drenched bank?

    Central Bank culpable. Though we had said at the beginning that bankers are extremely clever people and that they jolly well do what they have to do to have, keep and relish other people’s money till the end of time, the quality of central banks often defines a country’s banking system. Where the apex bank is half as smart as the turks running the banks, sanity and stability would often reign.

    In Nigeria’s situation, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has traditionally always trailed behind deposit money banks, especially since the deregulation era of the 1990s. You must have heard such things as jankara banking and we have witnessed all sorts of ‘minor’ storms and upheavals in the system these past quarter century, yet it is not certain whether our banks are better off today than those heady days.

    The CBN was moved to insist on this ‘drastic’ expose of ‘debtors’ when it recently discovered that delinquent loans in the system had hit N400 billion comprising about 1,000 firms and some individuals. But this must be a tip of it all if one knew anything about our banks. What about all those king-sized debts AMCON was grappling with and the kings and deities behind them? Are we going to have a separate list for their ilk?

    And where on earth was CBN when all these cash were being crunched by credit monsters in our midst? It is true that these boys are indeed clever and often keep at least three parallel accounts of business at any point in time but that is why CBN is the regulatory bank. How does it keep track of these plucky men and women in smart suits?

    How come many of the banks always flout their lending limits? Why has CBN spoken about setting up a credit bureau (CB) for over 30 years, yet would not set it up? We would never have such serial and chronic defaulters if we had a functional CB, would we? At least we would not have such cases as one customer taking hefty loans from many banks.

    Finally, now that we have seen the ‘earth-shaking’ lists, what next? What are we going to do with the preponderance of moribund husband and wife businesses, which seem like they are being ‘scape-goated’? What next? This is for the CBN to answer.

     Meanwhile, the current boss of the apex bank, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, is a thoroughbred alumnus of Nigeria’s new age bankers. He understands the ‘issues’ and he is sure-footed in this ‘jungle’, only he can ring the critical change. He must not be shy to push this change; history beckons, Mr. Emefiele!

    El-Rufai as new ‘governor of example’

    It was Babatunde Fashola, the immediate past helmsman of Lagos State, who wore that appellation (Governor of Example) during his eight-year stint. Today, Governor Nasir El Rufai may have quickly grabbed that tag, which authorship must be credited to Sam Omatseye, chairman of the Editorial Board of The Nation.

    El-Rufai did not only touch down sprinting when his peers were still feeling through their commodious offices, he has been saying (and doing) all the right things. First, he has vowed to hand the LGAs every kobo that accrues to them and even more. Second, he abolished government’s sponsorship of pilgrims and he is ridding the streets of Kaduna of beggars.

    However, and most remarkable, is his recent decision to cancel the vexatious indigene-settler ruckus that has plagued Nigeria since the beginning of time. Every Nigerian who resides in Kaduna is automatically a citizen, El-Rufai declares. Great leadership is made of stuff like this. We can only pray that he walks his talk.

  • #harsh-truths-to-northern-elite

    About three years ago, I had written in this column that then fledgling Boko Haram was the shame of the northern elite. Expectedly, I was vilified to no end. But little did we (yours truly, his readers and drillers alike) know that what was happening then was mere child’s play. Between 2012 and now, so much innocent blood has drenched the Nigerian soil to the point that atonement may be impossible. But the point remains now as then, that the extreme criminality that the terror of Boko Haram has become, is the shame of the elite of the north. This point must be made without equivocation.

    Three recent issues have warranted a reiteration of this view which is even more valid today. First is the ‘face-off’ between Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna State and the beggars of Kaduna. The second is the new-wave sacrificial offering of nubile little girls in an endless festival of suicide bombings and thirdly, the recent $2.1 billion World Bank loan for the reconstruction of the northeast of Nigeria.

    An elite in retreat The point today as I made it then is that from the period of the violent outbreak of the Boko Haram (BH) sect up to this moment, the elite of the North have failed woefully to put up a well-reasoned and concerted response to deal with the evil.  As the sect callously made an ocean of blood especially in the Northeast, the elite of the North, (religious, intellectual, political and business) even more callously favoured a tacit accommodation of the scourge for the first few years.

    Where was the funding for BH coming from? Where was BH drawing its intellectual and logistical resources? Who purchased the arms, ammunition, rocket launchers and the dozens of armoured carriers the BH deployed to overrun many Nigerian towns at a time? For a region that boasts of about half a dozen former heads of state; current and former governors; respected traditional rulers; hundreds of well-trained retired military officers and a good number of men of means into the land, not one committee has been set up to date to as much as give a thought to the BH tragedy.

     An initial acquiescence grew into fear and cowering. Hardly anyone was known to have stood up to the gang in defiant condemnation. It was convenient for many leaders of the north to hide behind the north-south politics of the Goodluck Jonathan era. Some simply found comfort in their corners and said to themselves: “since he chose to ‘usurp’ power, let him stew in the juice of insurgency”. It did not matter that hundreds of their compatriots were daily wasted in the heedless blood fest.

    BH as brainchild of the northern elite The point must also be made clearly that BH is the creation of some leaders of the north. While it may be argued that it may be the unforeseen outcome of poor quality leadership and ineptitude in high offices, it is elite failure albeit. Of course the feudal system of the north continues to take its vicious toll and fuelled by an uncontrolled and exponential population growth. Further, while it was the trado-religious lords who held sway in the days of yore, today, the political class has taken over with even more deadly intuition. As we know, in feudalism, there are only kings and serfs; or the ruling class and the hoi-polloi; hardly any middle ground.

    In the mid-80 while one was on National Youth Service in Sokoto, it was a culture shock then to witness a horde of scruffy, unclad children invade the camp refuse dump each day foraging for food. That scene has lingered most graphically in one’s psyche more than 30 years after. We must admit that it is an unconscionable and indeed wicked elite that would look on as children roam the streets with begging bowls; feed straight from dunghills or even lead cattle from Maiduguri to Majidun! Between medieval and modern states The elite of the north must be told to make those hard choices between living in ancient times as subsists largely in the north now or building a modern country as we have in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, UAE and the rest of the Muslim world.

    This is where El Rufai’s feud with the beggars of Kaduna comes of note. He, in concert with his colleagues of the 19 states of the north must immediately abolish the pernicious almajiri culture (if indeed it can be regarded as culture). It must be the highest act of irresponsibility for a man and woman to sire children and set them loose into the world with begging bowls in hand. If you brought a child into the world, you must take some responsibility to rear him. This must be the essence of our humanity and the crux of a legislation being proposed here.

    El Rufai and his colleagues must enact – and if possible – a pan northern Nigeria law to abolish the almajiri culture immediately. This singular legislation will greatly stem the social dysfunction in the north. Why can’t we begin to deliberately uphold family values, child rearing and early education? Why has the local government system which ought to lift our rural population become near extinct in Nigeria?

    In the same manner, we must begin a phased abolition of nomadic life. It is ignorance that has pushed the Myetti Allah Cattle Breeders to seek to metamorphose into an alternate ‘army’ instead of a regional economic construct. Where in the 2015 world, dear reader, do people still lead cattle over thousands of kilometers just to make basic living? Not in many sensible places any more. The result is that they may have slaughtered more compatriots than cattle in the last five years mainly in the bid to fend off rustlers as they take livestock through long trails.

    Again, El Rufai and his brother governors of the north must begin a concerted and expedited rethink of the milk, beef and hide economic value chains. Think for a moment that Nigeria imports almost 80 percent of milk consume by her 170 population. Animal protein production in Nigeria is still an ad-hoc business while animal wool and processed leather are massively imported.

    State governments can catalyze the livestock value chain and unleash the inherently huge economic potentials of milk, beef, leather and wool production. Countries like Argentina, Brazil and Australia would make good benchmarks. Let us develop ranches in the vast swathes of Borno, Bauchi, Yobe, Adamawa, Taraba, Kaduna and even Niger. We could start with pilot schemes. Pastures are nurtured these days and many species of grass mature in weeks. Why are we still trapped in pre-medieval nomadism?

    Again, a savage elite The north, let it be said plainly, has some of the richest people in the world. One could count at least two dozen individuals richer than their states: TY Danjuma, the Dangotes, the Dantatas, the Mai Deribes, the Babangidas, the Yar’Aduas, the Indimis, Sani Bello, Rilwan Lukman, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Atiku Abubakar, Ado Bayero and Abdulsamad Rabiu, to name a few. This is not discounting the numerous new-rich politicos; all the former governors for instance.

    The World Bank has granted a loan of $2.1 billion to revamp the northeast. This class of northern elite in concert, probably has more net-worth than the World Bank, they can raise $21.1 billion for the same purpose. They must consciously resolve to help lift the north from its present morass of despair and sub-humanity. They can start a sustained change campaign on family values for instance. They can build early learning centres and primary schools in areas too remote for government to reach. There are a thousand and one ways they can give back to this earth that has proved very clement to them.

    When the nose cry, the eye cries too The people of the south of Nigeria may choose to be aloof and comfortable about the backwardness of the north but that would be basking in blissful ignorance. The federal government has spent trillions of naira in the last five years battling BH. That is cool cash that would have been spread round the country on development projects. The World Bank loan mentioned above for the reconstruction of the northeast will be paid by you and I, for instance.

     But we need more than loans; we need elite change of attitude and resolve.

  • Restructuring the presidency and the nation

    Restructuring the presidency and the nation

    THERE is every good reason to believe that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) means business and is serious about restructuring government agencies for better outcome. The latest evidence is his declaration in far away Washington, DC, the capital of the industrial world last week. To the disappointment of political jobbers but to the pleasure of genuine change enthusiasts, Buhari announced that he will not appoint ministers until he has put in place good structures to prevent the kind of rot that he is trying very hard to clear. Who can quarrel with that?

    As President-elect, Buhari had set up the Ahmed Joda Transition Committee to work with former President Jonathan’s team. The Joda Committee received the 18,000 page report of the Anyim Federal Government Committee on May 25th.  It worked hard to make sense of the report and make its recommendations which it submitted in an 800-page report to President Buhari shortly after the inauguration of the new administration.

    It is significant to note that when he submitted his committee’s report, Joda had urged the nation to be patient with the president as he mulled over the report to determine what was best for his administration and for the country. He noted unambiguously that the transition from one political party to another was not an ordinary one and that the President needed time to digest the report and do the best.

    As a deliberative leader, who understood the historical significance of his election and who took his mandate seriously, Buhari decided to take his time to study the report before moving on with any appointments. This is reasonable especially in view of the disclosure by Chairman Joda that due to time constraint, his committee wasn’t able to interview and seek clarifications from former ministers and government operatives on their hand-over notes which were received only four days to the May 29 inauguration.

    In the circumstance, Buhari and his team had to carefully sort issues out on their own. In view of that situation, is it reasonable for the president to start with ministerial appointments? It makes perfect sense to see clearly where the nation is, align its present condition with the destination PMB wants to lead it; and on the basis of these appoint individuals who will be round pegs in round holes.

    In a media interview that he granted after the submission of his committee’s report, Malam Joda observed that Buhari cannot afford to make the kind of mistakes that previous administrations made. He made particular reference to the military era when security reports on prospective appointees were not considered before appointments were announced only for such appointments to be rescinded shortly after they were announced.

    Joda noted further that since Buhari had made up his mind that he was going to have perfect people work with him, every prospective nominee had to be scrutinised well to avoid past mistakes. This explains the need for time and the presidential declaration in Washington, DC. Patience is counseled.

    Beside appointments, the other major issue in Joda’s report is the recommendation for the restructuring of the executive branch. From media reports, it appears that the committee had recommended a maximum of 36 ministers to satisfy constitutional requirement and cover the restructured ministries. If the President accepts the recommendation, he will have started on a good and promising note. From the leaks concerning the ministries and agencies recommended for merger, the committee has rendered a good account of its stewardship. The ball is in the court of the president.

    By the same token, however, with the courageous restructuring of the executive branch, other extant structures cannot be kept in place to avoid pouring new wine into an old bottle.

    First, there is a crying need for the restructuring of the legislative branch and its budget. This has been a sore finger in the body politic and the growing pain can be allowed to linger only at the expense of our national comfort.   Some defenders of the indefensible have argued that among other necessities, each NASS member must have at least 5 aides. But they have not provided any reasonable justification for such wastage.  Sure some private professionals do need aides to care for the house, cook their meals, and carry their portfolios and handbags. But do they charge these to company accounts?

    Second, state governments certainly need restructuring in the face of the obviously unsustainable cost of governance. It is unfortunate that states now depend on federal bail out to pay staff. I am sure that the situation is not totally due to gubernatorial incompetence or profligacy. Most of them inherit huge bureaucracies that put a drag on capital development. The question is whether a few must determine the pace of government investment in infrastructure? Sure every governor needs a rethink of large cabinet for far too many ministries. If PMB takes the lead, states must follow.

    Finally, the nation as a constituency has the most need as far as restructuring is concerned. Unfortunately, this is also the space where the most challenge is. Are members of the president’s party on the same page? Is he able to summon the political courage to challenge his party to take the high road?

    For far too long, at least since 1966, the federal government has grabbed too many functions, with far little success, and a monumental failure in the matter of satisfying the yearnings of the people, which is the sine qua non of governance. We have been getting the same failing results for almost fifty years and we still keep doing the same thing. That is insanity and we need to come back to our national sense.

    In the case of those functions such as citizenship and immigration matters, including the issuance of international passports, which are rightly assigned to the federal government, we err grievously in the over- centralisation of such functions. A passport holder had her name incorrectly written on her passport by Immigration agents. But she was told that the correction cannot be made in Lagos where the mistake occurred. She had to go to Abuja to have the mistake corrected. This makes no sense.

    In every aspect of our national life, we embrace our ethnic nationalities. We protect and promote our diverse cultures, and we respect and seek to conserve our various traditions. What is even embarrassing is that ethnics protect their own kin no matter the depth of corrupt practices they are identified with.

    To succeed, however, genuine and justifiable ethno-national interests need a governance structure that is truly federal. With such a structure, each ethnic nationality can do the most for itself in terms of promoting its cultural traditions and giving the best education to its residents. This is done effectively only by making states and zones the loci of some of the most important functions of government.

    It is true that many states lack the viability needed for success and zonal collaboration becomes essential to generate adequate internal revenue so the dependency on the center is eliminated. Fortunately, it now appears that we have moved away from treating geo-political zones as no-go areas which was where we were during the National Conference. Some had argued then that zones have no place in the constitution and therefore none in governance.

    Speaker Dogara has perhaps inadvertently legitimised zones with his recommendation for the sharing of House principal offices among the six zones as a requirement of Federal Character. We should now expect zones to feature more effectively in our discourse on restructuring. This is an unintended consequence of the embarrassing NASS leadership crisis.

  • Of JAMBGATE and Nigerian Law School

    Of JAMBGATE and Nigerian Law School

    “Surely, Allah does not change the situation of a community until that community is ready for a positive change” Q. 13:11 

     

    Preamble

    The Nigerian mass media throbbed, last week, with the shocking news of an unprecedented scandal allegedly perpetrated by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in relation to post JAMB examinations and admission into Nigerian Universities for 2015/2016 academic session. The strange game is tagged ‘JAMBGATE’ by this column (The Message).

     

    The Shocking News

    According to the shocking news, which spontaneously caused a national brouhaha, JAMB had surreptitiously shortchanged thousands of Nigerians by unilaterally changing the choices of applicants for admission into certain Universities without the knowledge of those applicants. For instance, names of applicants who made Universities of Nigeria, Lagos, Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello, Obafemi Awolowo, Benin, Calabar and others their choices of study were sent to certain private Universities or public Universities far away from the ones they chose without any recourse to them.

    It was a monumental fraud typical of the impunity with which the immediate past Nigerian Federal government was known. The cat was first let out of the bag at the University of Lagos where hundreds of parents and their wards resorted to protests even as some of them took JAMB to court. Anyway, enmeshing in such a scandalous act is not strange about JAMB.

     

    In Retrospect

    In the 2009 for instance, the University Matriculation Exam (UME) in Nigeria was subject to serious controversy when the poorest results ever released by that body almost caused a revolution. Much to JAMB’s embarrassment, the spokesmen for the Board later revealed that the machines which optically graded the papers had erroneous answers and the JAMB changed some students’ scores by as much as 15%. Ever since, there has hardly been a year without some examination skirmishes continually paving way to public loss of confidence in that Board. Surely, something fundamental is wrong with JAMB which requires sanitization.

     

    Reaction

    Reacting to the alleged scandal, the Federal Ministry of Education ordered an immediate reversal of that obnoxious act which was not known until the affected candidates had reached their post JAMB examination centres. Although the ministerial intervention was welcomed as a momentary relief for the affected candidates and their parents, analysts think that the highly embarrassing case must not end there. They contend that the scandal should be officially investigated by an independent body and the culprits be brought to book. To some observers, that scandal was part of the usual ‘under table’ bunko by which most Nigerian public office holders are known and which gave Nigeria the international appellation of a ‘corrupt nation’.

     

    Observers’ Thought

    The similitude of that scam, according to those observers, was like the case of the so-called fuel subsidy removal which Goodluck Jonathan government callously forced on the already wretched masses of Nigeria to further deepen their abyss of penury in 2012. The end result of that evil policy was a monumental official scam that is still haunting today Nigeria like a demonic spectre. It seems that the customers of the Jonathan’s era of scandalous impunity are yet to realize that a clement wind of CHANGE has begun to sweep our dirty country clean hence the current JAMBGATE.

    Were the government of impunity still in place, the JAMBGATE saga would have, as usual, been upheld to justify the usual ‘under the table’ deal that would have forced thousands of qualified University admission seekers to either go to private University or forget University education altogether. That is Nigeria for you a country in which sanity, until two months ago, was an aberration and impunity was the rule.

     

    Information

    The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) was established in 1977 by the then Federal Military Government of Nigeria. It has since become Nigeria’s official Entrance Examination Board for candidates below the Advanced Level (A/L) education seeking admission into all Universities in the country. Before then, the existing federal universities in Nigeria (numbering seven by 1974) conducted their own ‘concessional’ entrance examinations and admitted their students according to their individual policies. With time, however, that system of admission was observed by the federal government as having limitations through a waste of time and resources in the process of administering the examination especially on the part of the candidates.

    The Committee of Vice-Chancellors therefore felt concerned about the general clumsiness in the coordination of admissions into the nation’s universities especially when the problem of admission into the universities became more acute with the establishment of additional six universities in 1976 by the Federal military government.

     

    Duties of JAMB

    In addition to its functions, JAMB is also supposed to undertake the following duties statutorily:

    Conducts the Universities Matriculation Examination (UME) and sends the results to Universities chosen by the candidates, so that each university selects and recommends candidates to JAMB for admission.

    Allows each university to conduct tests/interview termed screening for candidates (since . . .) before selecting those to recommend;

    Conduct similarly, entrance examination for candidate applying to Polytechnics and College of Education;

    Admits qualified candidates by Direct Entry to Universities that recommend them;

    Allows these institutions that operate Remedial Programmes to admit successful candidates, but announced in 2007 that it was counseling such from 2008. (For further information, please, see Perspectives on the History of Education in Nigeria, 2008).

     

    Key Departments of JAMB

    JAMB consists of eight key departments which statutorily carry out the day-to-day operations of the Board.  These are:

    1. Office of the Registrar which is headed by the Chief Executive who is appointed by the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, on the recommendation of the Ministry of Education. The Registrar is responsible for the execution of policies of the Board and the day-to-day running of the affairs of the Board.

    By law, the Registrar shall hold office in the first instance for a period of five years and shall be eligible for reappointment for the same period as the president may be pleased from time to time. It is through this process that all applicants do register and get printed results online.

     

    Comment

    With JAMB becoming the gateway to tertiary education in Nigeria that examination body must live up to its responsibilities by upholding the national trust reposed in it and by utilizing that trust to propel the potential greatness of Nigeria as a foremost African country. It is pertinent for JAMB to understand that any failure on its part is Nigeria’s failure in all spheres of life since without qualitative education any nation can be pronounced dead. Thus, with such a strategic position, JAMB must know that it cannot afford to take the Nigerian populace for granted.

    Like JAMB like Nigerian Law School

    For good observers of education in Nigeria, JAMBGATE could not have come as a surprise. What JAMB did to cause uproar last week is what the Nigerian Law School has been doing in recent time. As a matter of fact, it was as if JAMB borrowed an idea of a ‘profitable’ venture from the Nigerian Law School. How many Nigerians know today that the Nigerian Law School that was once the right of every Law graduate in the country to be qualified for practice has become a privilege for just a few?

     

    Point of Departure

    Unlike in the past when the test of the prowess of the legal profession in Nigeria was accentuated by the Nigerian Law School, the real accentuation of Law practice in the country today, in grooming the practitioners of that profession, has become an instrument of power in the hands of a few who hold sway in that School. Through the use of that power the children of the poor have been tacitly declared personal non-grata in the Law profession. For instance, out of about 6000 students of Nigerian Law School in 2013/2014 session, only about 2000 were able to cross the huddle of the Bar exam. Although that cannot be strictly attributed to administrative policy the conditions laid down for enrolment in the Law School are strict enough to dissuade some students from concentration.

     

    Objective of Decentralisation

    The original objective of decentralizing the Nigerian Law School was to enable the Law Students from each geographical zone to attend the Law School in his or her zone with convenience. But this was changed by the authorities of that School who are now allocating Law School campuses arbitrarily to those students irrespective of their zones of origin and depriving them the right of changing their allocations if they are not satisfied. For instance, students from the Southwest of Nigeria who wanted to attend the Lagos Law School were arbitrarily posted Yola, in Adamawa despite the Boko Haram threat to lives. And those from the North-West who chose Kano were posted to Enugu campus without an option. The cost of this alone especially for indigent students is distractive enough. Yet, these students will still be forcefully posted to anywhere for in the country for National Youth Service after their call to the Bar. What kind of country is this?

     

    Unaffordable Charges

    The exorbitant, unaffordable levies charged for reseat in the Bar exam have prevented thousands of potential Lawyers from becoming legal practitioners. The imposed cost of feeding per meal alone is enough to scare away any prospective Law student from enrolling in that School. Eventually, thousands of University graduates in Law who are unable to realize their dream by passing through the Law School have become like marauders roaming the streets of Nigeria like Egyptian gypsies of yore, after five years of rigour in the University. What kind of country is this? And in this case, what is the difference between JAMB and the Nigerian Law School?

     

    Autocratic Song

    The song of these days, as far as the Nigerian Law School is concerned is that ‘the Law Profession is not for the Poor’. And to emphasize that oppressive song, the tuition and other fees in that school have been taken beyond the affordability level of an ordinary Nigerian. Besides, all sorts of oppressive polices are being regularly formulated to reduce the number of Nigerian Lawyers drastically and to discourage new entrants into the profession. Thus, the Law profession in Nigeria is gradually becoming an exclusive right of the senior practitioners in the profession whose children are seen and treated as their heirs apparent. For how long will this be allowed in a country that claims to maintain human rights and freedom of exercising such rights? God save Nigeria.

  • OUK vs. TA: The limits of knavery

    The unwary in the land may have been led to believe that Abia State is the worst run in the last four years. They may even begin to think that its immediate past governor, Chief Theodore Ahamefule Orji (TA), is the only governor in the land. This is the result of sustained and unrelentless campaign of calumny against him by his predecessor, Chief Orji Uzo Kalu (OUK).

    Using the instrumentality of two national newspapers and some of the best columnists in the land, OUK literally tied TA to stakes throughout his tenure. Consider the image of a man hounded and stabbed viciously for four years. To think that it is all born out of mischief and outright knavery. In fact there must be something utterly sinister about the proverbial pot going on a road show to prove that the kettle is black.

    In all the ceaseless attacks by his predecessor, he never uttered a word. Even though he is disposed to have all the facts about Abia State Government in the last 16 years, and could put his traducer away by just one fool-proof deposition, he refused to be drawn to the mud fight.

    The latest antics of serialising a supposed petition against TA for days in a national newspaper must be the limit of self-mockery. The petition was supposedly for the period, 2011 to 2015 while cleverly overlooking 1999 to 2011 when OUK held sway in Abia and ran it like a family provision store. Leadership is surely a more elegant enterprise.

  • A Season of Salvos

    A Season of Salvos

    This is supposed to be a season of festival and festivities for the Muslims all over the world. The festivities are necessitated by the completion of Ramadan fasting that lasted one full month and ended last Thursday. In a season like this, traditionally, messages of felicitations do flow across religious and ethnic boundaries as a token of tolerance and spiritual accommodation.

    At Easter and Christmas for instance, Muslims often send such messages to their Christian brethren. And at Eidul Fitr and Eidul Adha, Christians do reciprocate in the like manner.

    But this time around, something seemingly went wrong in Nigeria which left sour taste in the mouth and should not be repeated in future. Instead of the usual felicitations, what transpired between the two main religious bodies in Nigeria was quite different. Please, read the strange salvos as released through the mass media:

    First Salvo

    OLOYEDE, NIREC & MERCHANT OF LIES

    The attention of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has been drawn to the series of lies spewed by the Secretary-General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and ex-Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, wherein, among other issues, he deceived Nigerians that:

    We have decided to speak because perception can be made stronger than reality. We can no longer continue to keep quiet because we are in a society that is gullible and where people swallow lies hook, line and sinker. The continuos (sic) attempt by Oloyede to mislead the public should not be allowed to succeed this time around. He has been giving an impression that every Christian leader in Nigeria, except his two friends, were dragged into the 2015 partisan politics. But good enough, he contradicted himself by saying that Muslim leaders under NSCIA decided to gang up against ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. He had claimed he is not a religious leader and this is just the problem the Nigerian Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) has been facing. NIREC cannot function because it is a conglomeration of religious leaders from one group and mix-grill of politicians and traditionalists on the other hand. That is the reason for all the confusion in NIREC.

    The likes of Oloyede have carefully, for his personal interest, with the blessing of his mentor, the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar 111, refused the true composition of religious leaders, thereby making NIREC ineffective. How do we explain the exclusion of respected Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi and astute Islamic preachers like Sheikh El-Zaki Zaki, an amiable President of Supreme Council for Islamic Preachers in Nigeria, Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed Ibn Nurain, from an umbrella body of religious leaders like NIREC, whereas CAN comprises all Christians in the country?

    We want to appeal to Oloyede, having admitted that he is not a religious leader to honorably resign from as the National Coordinator of NIREC for the organization to move foreward. We Christians did not raise any objection to the position he has been occupying for close to 10 years. But now that it is the turn of Christians to produce the Executive Secretary of NIREC, Oloyede, with the active connivance of of the Sultan of Sokoto, who is a co-chair of NIREC, has frustrated every move for NIREC to meet in the last two years. Yet, these same group of persons, turned around, polarized NIREC along ethnic and religious consideration, dishing out wrong impressions and lies why NIREC has not been meeting.

    We are also averse to the falsehood peddled by this merchant of lies that nothing serious should come out of the National Conference because to him, the decisions were taken based on errors of composition. According to him, the composition of delegates was anti-North and anti-Islam. But to the best of our knowledge Christians and Muslims had six delegates each. So how does the issue of religion and ethnicity arise? When did Oloyede, from Ogun State, become a Northerner to be their spokesperson?

    We are not ignorant of the plan of Oloyede and the Sultan of Sokoto not to allow the meeting of NIREC to hold, until the expiration of the tenure of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor as CAN President. This is the reason for the last minute cancellation of the NIREC meeting scheduled for March this year in Abuja by the Sultan without consulting his co-chair, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. Till today, the Sultan has offered no apology, no explanation and has shown no remorse. Yet, Oloyede and the Sultan have been dishing out lies at if it is Pastor Oritsejafor that doesn’t want NIREC to meet. This kind of politics of deceit by politicians on religious garb is what has brought Nigeria to its knees. Our Muslims brothers from the North should be wary of characters like Oloyede who are interested in stoking fires of religious and ethnic acrimony. Perhaps, only time will tell his true mission.

     Sunday Oibe, Director of National Issues,

         Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN)

    Second Salvo 

    THE RANTING OF A FRUSTRATED CLERIC

    The attention of the Muslim Ummah of Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) has been drawn to a Press Statement entitled ‘OLOYEDE, NIREC and MERCHANT OF LIES’ purportedly issued by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and signed by one Sunday Oibe who claimed to be the Director of CAN’s National Issues.

    The bellicose press statement, quite uncharacteristic of CAN, was apparently issued by a clique of Christian charlatans who are masquerading in the cloak of religion within CAN. Ordinarily, the CAN we know very well which consists of decent gentlemen and women of dignity would not have issued such an unguarded statement, especially at this festival period of Eidul Fitr when congratulatory message from Nigerian Christian brethren to Nigerian Muslim Faithful was as usual expected.

    Thus, we refuse to believe that such a reckless statement attacking the personality of His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) as well as that of the NSCIA Secretary-General was issued by CAN.

    Issuing such a baseless and inflammatory press statement to attack the topmost leadership of the Nigerian Muslim Ummah in the name of CAN at this time confirms the fictitious source of the obnoxious press statement. Thus, we call on the genuine CAN leaders (not charlatans) to take a second look into the contents of that press statement purportedly issued on their behalves with a view to investigating its source because we do not think that such a statement with such a vulgar language could have emanated from the CAN’s ‘Glass House’ which Nigerian Muslims hold in very high esteem.

    As for using NIREC’s inability to hold meetings as the reason for issuing the belligerent statement by its seemingly frustrated issuers, MUSWEN hereby advises the NSCIA to maintain its usual cool-headedness and maturity in consigning nauseating statement to the refuse bin of nuisance without value where it rightly belongs.

    What NSCIA should rather concentrate upon this time is its ongoing contribution to overcoming the pervading insecurity as well as eradication of corruption in the land especially with the recent return of Nigeria’s $15 million surreptitiously funneled to South Africa early this year for clandestine importation of illegal arms into Nigeria by those charlatans, courtesy the new era of ‘CHANGE’.

    It is understandable that the perpetrators of such evil machination, having become like a beheaded snake struggling to smear the immaculate dresses around with its blood would want to pull anything with them to the abyss of oblivion. MUSWEN therefore calls on the NSCIA to ignore the ranting of such charlatans who think that by resorting to mudslinging they could divert public attention from their evil acts and draw undeserved sympathy to themselves. NSCIA is too busy now to be distracted by irrelevant noise from some sinking elements whose usual lotus has become sour. Eid Mubarak to all Nigerians!

    Femi Abbas, Media Consultant to MUSWEN

    Third Salvo

    Incidentally, the two salvos above coincided with another, far away in Britain. ‘The Message’ also brings you the benefit of that in the following report:

    “In a speech in Birmingham on the government’s five-year plan to defeat home-grown extremism, Mr. Cameron set out four major areas that needed attention: countering the “warped” extremist ideology, the process of radicalisation, the “drowning out” of moderate Muslim voices, and the “identity crisis” among some British-born Muslims.

    He said the focus of his speech was Islamist extremism – not Islam the religion – and that moderate Muslims also hated the “sick world view” of extremists. “I want to work with you to defeat this poison,” he said and listed a number of government’s strategies to be used in tackling extremism with possible focus on tacit gagging of the generality of Muslims in Britain.

    Fourth Salvo

    In a swift response to PM David Cameron’s speech in Birmingham, Dr. Shuja Shafi, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, issued the following statement:

     “We support sound evidence-based measures that confront terrorism effectively. Muslims across the world and in our country in particular, find the conduct and values of ‘Daesh’ to be abhorrent. We agree with the Prime Minister that we must de-glamourise the Daesh cause. It is neither revolutionary, nor cool, and it certainly is against the basic teachings of Islam. We all have a part to play in this, including the media.

    We worry, however, that these latest suggestions will set new litmus tests which may brand us all as extremists, even though we uphold and celebrate the rule of law, democracy and rights for all. Dissenting is a proud tradition of ours that must not be driven underground.

    Challenging extremist ideology is what we all want, but we need to define tightly and closely what extremism is rather than perpetuate a deep misunderstanding of Islam and rhetoric, which inevitably facilitates extremists to thrive.

    We have heard for too long now that Muslim communities either condone, or are not doing enough to condemn the extremists who act in their name. Yet, poll after poll indicates that this is not the case.

    Above all we must recognise that the paths to extremism and terrorism are complex and varied. Of course Daesh is barbaric and is based on a distortion of Islamic precepts but we must be careful not to be over-dramatic and simplistic. There is no magic solution that will make terrorism go away.

    We urge the Prime Minister once again to put his words into action – a one Nation Britain will emerge through dialogue and engagement with all sections of the community including mainstream Muslim organizations and those who have differing views.

    The threat of Daesh is real, as is the appeal they hold on some young people.  We should not drive young people into the arms of extremist recruiters by denying them a sense of dignity and self-worth. In this sense we welcome the Prime Minister’s call for better integration and for giving young people better life outcomes. But these measures should be pursued in spite of, not because of the terror threat we face.

    Above all we need to allow for real political issues to be discussed and debated robustly and not drive our youth underground for fear of being cast extremist”.

    (Daesh means surreptitious indoctrination through deliberate misinterpretation of fundamental religious tenets)

    Comment

    In a nutshell, what would have ordinarily passed for a joyous season of celebrations and felicitations ended up as one of accusations and stigmatisations along religious lines in both Nigeria and Britain. But should this be the case? That is the big question for the readers of this column to answer. Eid Mubarak!