The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • Pilgrim’s purpose

    Pilgrim’s purpose

    The President is on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.”

    “Good for him”

    “As far as I know he is the first Christian President to do so while in office.”

    “Good for him.”

    “Is that all you have to say? Good for him? Whoever thought it was bad for him?”

    “You never thought it was bad for him? So what’s your problem? Why is it an issue?”

    “Whoever said it was an issue? And I didn’t say I have a problem, either.”

    “How many Christian Presidents have you had in the country, anyway?”

    “Well, we had Grandpa Nnamdi, Uncle Yakubu, and Brother Sege, and none of them made the pilgrimage while in office.”

    “Grandpa Nnamdi didn’t have enough time before he was booted out. Uncle Yakubu couldn’t afford it because he was at war. And Brother Sege didn’t need it; his enemies needed prayers and the favor of God more than he. So there you have it.

    “Just think of former President Obasanjo for a minute. Of course, he claimed to be born again and he had prayer sessions which he led at the Villa. And after his presidency, he enrolled for a Divinity diploma at the Open University. But he didn’t look to me as someone who wore religion like agbada or toga. In fact, many people questioned his claim to spirituality just based on his “up-in-your-face” approach to his political opponents. To his credit, however, he didn’t exploit religion for political purposes. Remember how he dealt with the Christian governor of Plateau State.”

    “Are you suggesting that Jonathan is politicizing religion?”

    “I am not suggesting anything. Why are you always putting words in my mouth? At any rate, it’s only a matter of perception and the beholder’s eyes may be cataract-infected. What is it about politicization that makes it obnoxious? For some, religion is itself political. And I am not talking about the politics of church governance and all its ugliness. While Islam enjoins holy pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina at least once in a lifetime, Christianity has no such injunction in relation to Jerusalem or Bethlehem. As you know from our Sunday School classes in those days, Apostle Paul was persecuted for taking Christ’s message of hope and salvation to the gentiles, meaning non-Jews. So there is some element of politics intrinsic to any social institution, including religion.

    “The challenge that a public figure, indeed, a rallying point for national identity such as the president faces is how to negotiate the personal identity of faith with the general interest of the nation. He cannot because of his position abandon his faith. On the other hand, he cannot because of his faith alienate or divide the nation.

    “Consider the case of President Obama. During his first campaign, his opponents sought to tie him up with the fiery rhetoric of his Pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright. On assumption of office, Obama chose to tread the field of religion softly, choosing not to identity with a particular church home in Washington DC, and only worshipping at different churches as the “spirit” directs. Of course, that also infuriates his opponents who now accuse him of being a closet Muslim. Heads they win, tails he loses!

    “Now let us go back to our good friend and leader, President Goodluck Jonathan. You asked me whether I thought that he was politicizing religion. I think what you should ask is what I thought was the purpose of his pilgrimage.”

    “Alright, thanks for the correction. So, then, my good friend Opalaba, what is the pilgrim’s purpose?”

    “Being neither an insider nor a mind-reminder, I should say that going beyond what we are told can only be an exercise in speculation, which is fine provided that we make an honest declaration as such. The President told us that he was going to seek God’s face on behalf of the country. And Lord knows that Nigeria needs His face now more than at any other time in her checkered history.Consider the many afflictions and concerns: Boko Haram; ASUU; National Dialogue imbroglio; ministerial scandals; anemic economy; nPDP; APC; and of course 2015.

    “The God of Boko Haram insurgents which is certainly rejected by the majority of Muslims, is one that feeds on the blood of innocent people, Christians, Muslims, and traditionalists. A war has been declared on Boko Haram by the government and the resolve of the people. Yet it appears that the insurgents are not retreating. Whatever God Boko Haram relies on must be a powerful entity that the combined forces of Nigerians and their Gods have not been able to overcome. In the circumstance, it makes sense for the President to seek God’s face where He can be found, and that is Jerusalem.

    “ASUU is not a violent organization. It has been in the forefront of providing education for our young men and women and feeding our industries and businesses with sound minds and creative geniuses over the years. But the president is surely tired of incessant strike by ASUU and nothing seemed to have worked. Threats have been issued; prayers have been offered; and rituals have been performed. ASUU remains intransigent. The President is out of tricks at home.

    “And can you understand how a goodwill gesture has been turned into a political nightmare? Surely constitutional conferences have been held in Nigeria since 1922. But when the military struck and declared the republican constitution invalid in 1966, a genuine crisis of legitimacy was created. And since 1990 there has been an unceasing demand for a genuine Sovereign National Constitutional Conference of the people by the people and for the people. Jonathan was reluctant but then he changed his mind and succumbed to the will of the people. But look at how it has turned out. It’s unclear what the President wanted: is it a constitutional amendment? Is it a sovereign conference? Is it a talk-shop without the power to enact its decisions? These questions are being asked and pressed when a serious crisis engulfs the Advisory Committee that he had set up to recommend an agenda for the conference. How on earth does an advisory committee on national dialogue end up with one of its own scuttling dialogue with a clear demonstration of intolerance of dialogue?

    “The economy is cash-strapped according to one of the President’s ministers. And without a robust economy, the President’s agenda is on life-support. The 2014 budget is about to be presented but it is unclear how much of the many of the proposed projects can be delivered.

    “I do not need to go into the challenges emanating from the politics of 2015. The New PDP is a thorn in the flesh, a bug in a not-to-be named part of the anatomy. Crush the bug and you crush the part. What is one supposed to do? Go to where the God that answers prayers is located. That, for Jonathan, is the rationale for slouching to Jerusalem.

    “I know what you’re thinking. We were taught in Bible class that God is everywhere, even in the tiny bedrooms of our youth.The injunction is to seek God when He can be found and to call Him when He is nearby. This is about time, not about place. So why does the President need to travel miles to seek the face of God?

    “This takes us to the heart of the politics of pilgrimage, the pilgrim’s purpose. Christians learn fast from their Muslim brothers and sisters. As mentioned earlier, pilgrimage is not an injunction of Christ. But since Christianity, like Islam had its origin in a place, Christians adopted the idea of pilgrimage as a desirable religious practice.

    “But Muslim political leaders do much more with pilgrimage than perform religious duties. They fraternize and strategize. And of course, they make deals. Consider the number and caliber of the men and women on the President’s entourage. And consider the fact that as president, he can tie his religious performance with duties of state. So he gets to chat with the President of Israel. And he gets to seek partnership on security, something that Israel has perfected beyond reproach, and interestingly, not with deep faith in the Christian God.”

  • Sultan @ Seven

    Sultan @ Seven

    In a few days time, His Eminence, Dr. Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, the Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) will be seven years on the throne. He assumed the exalted royal office as the 20th Sultan on November 6, 2006. And his impact both as a royal father and the Commander of Nigerian Muslim Ummah has been unprecedentedly historic. When he was five years on the throne, yours sincerely wrote an article in this column which remains as current today as it was then. Thus, the article is repeated here for the records. Please, read on:

    “In every crowd of horizontal men there is always one vertical man who deserves honour not much because of his vertical position but because of the significant difference which that position makes to the crowd”

    History and man are like Siamese twins or a pair of scissors. The one cannot do without the other. History makes man just as man makes history. And the reciprocal baton continues to change hands between them as long as they remain in existence.

    Seven years ago, in Nigeria, an innocent human crescent lay hidden in the firmament of the orbit waiting to be sighted before prompting Nigerian Muslim Ummah into a united folk. That crescent is the towering personality generally known today as the SULTAN. The gentleman’s name did not ring any bell in Nigeria before he was named and crowned ‘THE SULTAN OF SOKOTO’ in November 2006.

    Thus, the emergence of Brigadier General Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar (rtd.) as the successor to the exalted throne of the great Sokoto Empire without any controversy came as a surprise to many Nigerians. At 50 years of age then, many people believed that he was one of the youngest men to become the Sultan in many years. But he disagreed with such suggestion and recalled that his own father, Sultan Abubakar Sadiq III who died in 1988 ascended the throne at the age of 37.

    With a sound military background and a diplomatic and modern travelling exposure, this Sultan has been perceived since coming into office as a millennial royal Captain divinely designated to pilot the affairs of Islam and the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria with great success.

    Philosophers who assert that every new century has a way of producing a great leader may be right after all. The example of His Eminence, Dr. Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar is a manifest attestation to that assertion. Ever since he assumed the exalted royal office about seven years ago, this great man has convincingly exemplified all the qualities of genuine leadership. Every statement he has made socially, religiously or politically and every action he has taken officially or personally has proved to be a school from which all well-meaning people have learnt one lesson or another.

    Five years after his assumption of office, the symbiotic relationship of history and man was reconfirmed in Zaria, on Wednesday, (November 23, 2011), where a galaxy of well-meaning men and women from all walks of life assembled to say “we are here to bear witness”. That was the day His Eminence was installed as the CHANCELLOR OF AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA. The occasion was just one of many laurels accruing to him since he assumed office.

    An American President, Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), once described a leader as “a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like it”. By his activities and functions so far, Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar has proved Truman right by demonstrating to Nigerian Muslim Ummah that the time has come for the reformation not only of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) but also the Sultanate.

    When he assumed office seven years ago, he hinted that the Sultanate would be put on the internet to enable all educated Muslims have access to their leader.  And in this age of computer, can anyone lay claim to any serious knowledge without adequate access to the internet? That is why he decided to start the reformation of the Sultanate through the instrumentality of the internet. And as an exemplary leader, he demonstrates his leadership prowess by possessing mastering fingers on the computer.

    In Islam, education is the first law. It is only through it that man can understand life in all its ramifications. That was why Allah’s very first revelation to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) ordained education thus: “Read in the name of Allah who created; He created man from clots of congealed blood; Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One, Who taught man by the pen; He taught man what he did not know…”Q. 96:1-4. To further emphasize the compelling need for education in Islam, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was reported to have said in one Hadith that “knowledge is a lost treasure. Muslims should look for it and pick it wherever they could find it”.

    Without education there can be no information. And without information there can be no progress. That is why the Sultan started his reformation of the Sultanate from the premise of education. It is only with education that most problems in this world can be solved without much ado. Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar also believes that education without social harmony is like a virtue without value and that there can be no harmony in a society where people are overwhelmed by ignorance and penury as is the case in Nigeria. Thus, he has consistently focused on both.

    At his installation as the Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University two years ago, Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, told the crowd that the current socio-economic indices in Nigeria were a clear indication that the country had begun to drift. He lamented that despite the nation’s unprecedented resources, development had failed to match the national wealth.

    In his words: “Corruption has emasculated our progress even as poverty and unemployment have pushed citizens to the brinks, fuelling and confounding social conflicts and inter-communal crisis has extracted heavy toll in both human lives and property”. He went further to say that: “Persistent insecurity has generated panic and anxiety; our social and physical infrastructures are far from meeting the needs of the nation; the country appears to be adrift and at the core of all these is moral decay engendered by ignorance and greed.”

    He also noted that the reform of the tertiary education sector could not be effective without putting in place, the progressive developments required in the basic and senior secondary education sectors insisting that “our state governments, especially those of the North, must begin to realize the enormity of the challenges facing the education sector and take urgent and necessary steps to address these challenges.” He lauded the founding fathers of the ABU, especially, the late Sarduana of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and urged the authorities of the school to continue to abide by the cardinal principles on which the institution was founded.

    That is the renascent Sultan for you, a man who is at the topmost echelon of the tree of comfort but feels so much concerned about the plight of the peasants who are deliberately consigned to the weeding of the shrubs without hope through official policies. He has never relented in his advocacy for good governance and denunciation of corruption and religious intolerance.

    When he was invited in January 2010 as a Special Guest of Honour to a religious seminar organized by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) with the theme: ‘Knowing Your Muslim Neighbour’, Sultan Abubakar delivered an historic speech that reverberated meaningfully across the entire world. And in May, same year, he also invited the leadership of CAN to a special conference of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) held in Kaduna. The theme of that conference was: ‘Islam in the Eyes of the Christians’. He is the first Nigerian first class Monarch ever to engage in such an interfaith affair at the national level and his speech on that occasion was also electrifying. Please read an excerpt from that speech as presented below:

    “….we initiated, as we had done for the JNI, a thorough review of the activities of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs [NSCIA] and an extensive reform of its structures. It is our firm belief that these reforms are not only desirable but necessary, to reposition the Council to play its strategic role as the apex Islamic body in the country and to respond, effectively and meaningfully, to the challenges facing the Muslim Ummah in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society. We have had extensive consultations over the last one year and have received very useful inputs on the reform agenda from all the constituent bodies of the Council. Our strategic objectives in this exercise had been and shall remain: firstly, the promotion of Muslim Unity and Solidarity, to accord the Ummah the ability to speak with one voice and to act and work together for the advancement of Islam.

    Secondly, the development of Education and Economic Enterprise, to enable the Muslim Ummah play an active role in the socio-economic life of Nigeria is a sine qua non.

    Thirdly, the promotion of peace and religious harmony both within the Muslim Communities and between the adherents of Islam and those of Christianity is a joint effort that cannot be handled with levity.

    Fourthly, the establishment of effective linkage with Government, at local, state and federal levels, to safeguard the interest of the Ummah and to build consensus on those vital issues that bind us together as a nation must be pursued and sustained.

    It is therefore our hope that as we bring this reform process to its logical conclusion, we will receive the support and patronage of the entire Muslim Ummah as well as the co-operation of all stakeholders including State Governments and indeed the Government of the Federation”.

    “….The task of overcoming Nigeria’s problems calls for sacrifice, dialogue and understanding; and all national stakeholders must overcome the myopia of greed and self-centredness to move this great nation forward and safeguard its strategic interests….we must begin to look into the future with hope and confidence and to ensure, first and foremost, that we shore up the foundations of our political system. The National Assembly, and indeed all tiers of Government, should not relent in their current efforts at Electoral Reform and in ensuring that Nigerians have a genuine electoral process that guarantees free and fair elections. Unless and until we do that, our nation will continue to be haunted by the unholy alliance between fraudulent elections and illegitimate electoral outcomes, the consequences of which we all know too well. We must break away from this vicious circle and confer on Nigerians the power and indeed the ability to decide, freely and willingly, who leads them at all levels of governance”.

    “….There is also the urgent need for us to re-evaluate our conception of leadership as a nation…. needless to add, that there is no way we can make genuine progress as a nation when a significant number of our populace wallows in abject poverty unable to secure the requisite means for their sustenance and to cater for the health and educational needs of their families. Democracy must build a humane society capable of looking after the legitimate needs of its citizenry. For it to be truly successful, it must be able to bring real progress to all sectors of our diverse society.

    “Finally we must all work hard to limit the influence of wealth in our society and to support those values that promote social responsibility, excellence and hard work”.

    That is Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar a leader who knows the problems of his followers and associates with them in solving those problems. Through his humble interaction with all Muslims in Nigeria irrespective of tribal or geographical boundaries, he has become the first Sultan to create a strong feeling of a united Ummah under a competent and kind leadership. And by speaking out incessantly against policies which seem to deliberately impoverish ordinary Nigerians across board, this Sultan has brought a rare hope to Nigeria and the Muslims are the luckiest for it. Such a leadership deserves allegiance, loyalty and regular prayer from the Ummah. We pray for the elongation of his life with very sound health and regular Allah’s guidance.

  • POT POURRI: Of Rochas, Aregbe and Adesina

    Gov. Okorocha running Imo like Rochas Foundation: Imo State under the watch of Governor Rochas Okorocha is in dire straits. Pay no heed to the propaganda blitz you see on television and read in newspapers, the heartland of Igboland suffers under the blight of the poorest quality of leadership. At the heart of the matter really is that the governor is acutely intellectually incapacitated to lead that modest entity but he is blissfully ignorant of this fact and worst still, he is a closed shop, impervious and impregnable to ideas or institutional guidance. The result is the people of Imo have woken up to find that they have installed a naked king – one who is restless and hyperactive with it. One who is quick to sally up an iroko tree in the majesty of his nakedness unbeknown to him.

    Naturally, this strange visitation leaves Imo people shame-faced, dumb-struck and utterly subdued. Imo today looks like the path of a violent hurricane – everything is upturned yet nothing is fixed. Of course there is a wide disconnect, a gulf between the government and the people; or more accurately, between the governor and the people for he is the government and the government is him. For instance, he disbanded his cabinet long ago and has been running a one-man show, but it is just as well because members of his cabinet were no better than his errand boys and girls.

    The local government areas are cold and dead with most of the secretariats overgrown by weeds. There has been no election and there is not likely to be one. There are no heads of this second tier of government either. Rather he orchestrated the crisis in the LGAs and initiated an illegal contraption he called community government; otu abughi eziokwu – so much scamming. The much touted free education policy is a huge joke but none is amused.

    The real tragedy however, is that there is no economy in Imo today. The place has been turned into an arid land where hunger ravages the people. The governor must have construed the state as some sort of phony Rochas Foundation long sustained by spell-binding marketing tricks.

    All we see in Imo today in the guise of governance is so much madness without method. He rode on the back of the people to power promising to rescue the state. After two years, it is clear he is merely a fantasist himself in need of help and rescue. And more pathetic, he has a voracious and insatiable hunger to covet. Consider this confounding paradox: there is acute hunger in his domain because he keeps all the money yet he remains very hungry. Surely Imo people cannot wait till 2015 to dislodge this tragic aberration.

    Governor Aregbesola making simple matters complex: Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State does not look like a terribly complex persona. Right from his days in Lagos, even though he loves his politics dearly, he comes across as an easy-going man who was always so quick to act to impress his people. But as governor, in spite of his best efforts (and he makes such great effort to get work done), he always seems to rub off people the wrong way – from his oft soap-box-like grandstanding, to his shaggy beard and his Islamic religion fervor – he always seems to leave some sour curd for people to chew.

    But Ogbeni’s current education reclassification exercise is by this column’s estimation, an unwarranted exercise in mysticism and magic. Formal education is education and it is education; there is absolutely nothing to reinvent. In fact it is actually the simplest task a smart and empowered education commissioner can routinely carry out without breaking nary a sweat.

    First, he must hand over private schools hijacked by the errant military regimes of yore back to their owners where they are willing to take them back. Lagos State under Governor Bola Tinubu set this pace over a decade ago to the applause of all and the result has been most salutary (please go see St. Gregory’s, Holy Child, Anwar Islam today, to name just three). This handover will immediately free up funds, human resources and time for the uplift of the remaining government schools.

    Someone must convince Ogbeni that the problem with schools and indeed education in Osun and even Nigeria is not the school calendar, structure or classification. There is nothing wrong with the 6-3-3 system and splitting hairs about re-classification adds little value. What to do is first, declare education state’s core priority sector; two, fit the MDAs under education properly to take institutional responsibility; three, appoint the right leaders for the MDAs; four, impress upon them that education is crucial and empower them; five, capture your desire in the budget by paying attention to all details and providing appropriate funding.

    With close supervision, the commissioner and his team (agencies under his watch) will deliver needed results most routinely. For instance, in one budget cycle, all the dilapidated school facilities in Osun can be fixed. Teachers will be trained, labs will be equipped and standards will be benchmarked against the best in the world. These and more will be done as a matter of routine without much fanfare.

    Who says state must provide uniforms and even meals when it really cannot afford to. It is ok that Ogbeni has a strong intention to effect change but not for its sake.

    Agric Minister, just what the spin doctor ordered: What shall we do with our dandy Agric Minister, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina? It may well profit the nation more if we created a ministry of entertainment and theatrics for he is more adept at these arts than the crucial sector of agric he currently meddles with. Just as stakeholders decry the burgeoning rot and inertia he is bequeathing the sector, our dashing, jet-set minister staged a side-show in far away New York, USA. It was a fantabulous Eminent Persons Group to advise President Jonathan on the way forward on the Agric Transformation Agenda!

    Dr. Adesina simply corralled Messrs Bill Gates, Kofi Annan and IFAD’s Kanayo Nwaeze to a fancy New York hotel suite and had the president shake hands and snap photos with them. Well let it be noted that if President Jonathan is fooled by Adesina’s razzmatazz, the rest of us are not. To drive home our point, we throw these few posers and hope he will give Nigerians honest answers: 1) How much rice has been imported through our borders this year and what quantity is smuggled? 2) Can he account for Nigeria’s rice development fund, how much do we have so far, who is managing it, who has benefited? 3) Same for the Cassava bread development fund, 4) and the Cocoa fund; what about the three million cocoa seedlings withering away at CRIN?

    Under a more conscientious minister, Agric would employ millions of jobless Nigerian youths but Adesina has been extremely disappointing and history will record him as the spin doctor he is.

  • Dreaming the past

    Dreaming the past

    The above quoted Hadith was particularly in reference to leadership in any given society. When the Prophet was to send Mu’az Bn Jabal to Yemen as Governor, he asked him a pointed question as a way of confirming that his choice for the post was right. He asked Mu’az: “how will you govern the people in that country?” And the latter responded saying he would use the laws of Allah as contained in the Qur’an. Then the Prophet asked: “and if you cannot find a relevant solution in the Qur’an? Mu’az said he would use the Prophetic tradition (Sunnah). Then the Prophet further asked: “and if relevant solution is not found in Sunnah? Mu’az said he would adopt the consensus of opinions of learned scholars’’. Then, the Prophet asked: “and if you cannot get a consensus? Mu’az said he would use analogical deduction based on the three sources of law mentioned above. Thus, with Mu’az’s satisfactory responses, the Prophet technically confirmed the four sources of Islamic law by which any leader in an Islamic society should govern. The summary here is that governance should be by law and not by whim.

    Thereafter, the Prophet counselled him as follows: “when you get there, my dear Mu’az, endear yourself to the people and do not be hostile. Be kind to them and do not be wicked. Be lenient with them and do not be harsh. Be considerate with them and do not be dictatorial. Be compassionate to them and do not be sadistic. Be sensitive to their plight and do not be indifferent. Be transparent and do not be seen as corrupt. Be a man of your words and do not be seen as a liar. Fulfil your promises to them and do not renege on such promises. Be trustworthy in utterances and actions and not be seen as a betrayer of trust. There are three signs by which a hypocrite is known. When he talks he lies; when he promises he reneges and when he is trusted he betrays. Remember that a leader is like a shepherd who cannot claim to be successful in a day until he has coasted home the last sheep in his flock. And every shepherd shall be asked by the Almighty Allah about what he does with the flock in his care’’.

    Bedrock of Peace

    Thus, the historic conversation between the Prophet and Mu’az confirms that good leadership is the bedrock of peace, decency and progress in any society. Today, many countries including Nigeria are dangerously restive because of deviation from that yardstick by irresponsible leaderships. A nation without a responsible leadership is like a body without head. Such a nation is likely to wander aimlessly and indefinitely in the wilderness of life just like the Egyptian gypsies of yore even as her citizens wallow helplessly in abject penury.

    Man ordinarily takes food for granted until he faces hunger where food is not available. He takes sound health for granted until he falls sick. He takes freedom for granted until he becomes a prisoner and he takes peace for granted until he faces war. One of the signs of living in a bad time is to keep remembering the good old days with nostalgia. Such is a confirmation that the past was better than the present. This is the situation in which overwhelming majority of Nigerians find themselves today in a country naturally and abundantly enriched with milk and honey.

    Time Changes

    Who could have believed some years back that this same country called Nigeria might become a beggars’ own country one day? When political calamity engendered by economic mismanagement struck Ghana in the 1980s, Nigeria was the only rescue haven in Africa for hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians who trooped into this country for all sorts of jobs including menial ones. Thus, from that experience, one would have thought that a lesson had been learnt by Nigerian leaders never to subject the citizens of this country to a similar misfortune. But alas, the situation in the past 30 years or there about has proved otherwise. Ironically, the reality today, is that the citizens of this sixth largest oil exporting country in the world have become beggars being deported from a onetime calamitous Ghana that sought and got economic rescue in Nigeria. The same Ghana is today a model for Nigeria virtually in all things that is decent and civilised.

    God, in His infinite mercy does not create any living thing without adequate provisions for its existence. He endows individuals and nations with wealth in time and space as a trust. But He does not physically come down to manage such wealth for anybody. Neither does He give anybody the authority to redistribute it. But in the end, the managers of such wealth will be asked to render account on how they managed it. Individuals and nations become humanly and materially rich only by Allah’s will at the place and time divinely earmarked for it. Any manipulation of such wealth by certain greedy cabal can only pave way for an untold calamity.

    Like a fly in a bottle of wine which drinks and drinks till it dies in there, today’s Nigerian rulers see their position as an opportunity to suck Nigeria’s oil dry at the expense of the masses to whom that oil rightly and legitimately belong. These rulers have forgotten that if the oil reserve had not been divinely meant for this generation it could have been discovered and consumed by many generations long before ours.

    Dream Land

    Nigerians of today have found themselves in a dream land. They are not only dreaming of what they ought to be as against what they are. They are also dreaming of the good old days in this same country that once gave them the confidence to build hope in their future as well as that of their children. That hope has practically become forlorn. Without necessarily sounding pessimistic, if there is any expectation for an ordinary Nigerian today, it is for death as despair is currently the song on most lips.

    Telling the history of Nigerian oil cannot end with the present generation. It surely extends to the future. Where are the founding fathers of Nigeria especially those who strove for the discovery of oil? Was the current situation their dream? Even as Prime Minister and Premier respectively, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto borrowed money from banks to purchase a car and build a bungalow. They never possessed more than those even when their political contemporaries were accumulating empires. It is easier to be a legatee than to be a legator. The greatest spendthrifts are those who do not know the source of money in their possession.

    It is rather ironic that oil wealth which serves as the source of fortune for many countries is the main source of Nigeria’s misfortune. At least this country was economically steady and progressive before the so-called oil boom. At least there was no oil money when Nigeria went through a civil war for 30 months without borrowing one kobo. Why has oil boom become oil doom?

    In his nine years in office as Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon took the price of PMS from 6k to 9.5k per litre. After him was General Murtala Muhammed an obvious man of the people who never tampered with the price of oil till his death in 1976. It was General Olusegun Obasanjo who first took oil price by a leap moving it from 9.5k to 15.3k in his three and a half year reign from February 1976 to October 1979. In his own three years and three months in office, President Usman Shehu Shagari never tampered with the price of oil. And General Muhammadu Buhari who succeeded him maintained the status quo as he never increased fuel price even by one kobo during his 20 month rule. Thus, between 1979 when Obasanjo left office and 1985 when Buhari was overthrown, the oil price remained same and Nigeria did not fail as a nation.

    The turning of the Screw

    When the self-styled Military President Ibrahim Babangida took over in1985, his first focus was on oil. It was he who moved the price of PMS from 15k to 70k in his eight years of governance. It was the turning of the screw. But by far the greatest leap of oil price in Nigeria was introduced by Chief Earnest Shonekan an interim Head of State who took the price from 70k to N5 within the 87 days of his illegal rule.

    Then General Sani Abacha the maximum despot who forcefully high jacked power in October 1993 moved the price of PMS from N5 to N11 within his five years in office. That was an average of N1 increase per year. When Abacha died in 1998, General Abdul Salami Abubakar became the Head of State and virtually concentrated on oil. He can be called Nigeria’s Head of oil fields. It was he who took the price of PMS from N11 to N20 within the ten months he ruled Nigeria. When General Obasanjo returned to office as elected President in 1999, his first port of call was oil. Capitalizing on the precedent laid by General Abdul Salami Abubakar, he went ahead to raise the price of PMS from N20 to N70 within eight years he spent in office.

    Exhibition of Power

    Now, to prove that removal of the so-called oil subsidy by previous rulers in Nigeria was a child’s play, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan decided to surpass them all even if all Nigerians would go to the gallows. After consultations with various stake holders and interest groups including traditional rulers, religious leaders, Labour Unions, ASUU and NANS, all of whom objected to any removal of subsidy at that precarious time in January 2012, Mr. President decided to go ahead with his plan not minding any contrary opinion. His argument was that facilities like roads, hospitals, schools, refineries and rail system must be provided even if that would be at the expense of the lives of Nigerians. And such removal must be done at a time when the feeding allowance of his family and that of his deputy is unilaterally fixed at about one N1billion per year. And at the end of it all, the money realised from the callous increase of fuel price was audaciously embezzled in the glare of the public. No further question. Yet, President Jonathan was calling on Nigerians to sacrifice while the cost of his medical services in the Presidential clinic was about N1.2 billion per annum even as another whopping sum of N300 million was earmarked for replacement of his kitchen utensils. For his trips abroad in 2012 alone about N10 billion was earmarked. But to show a good example of sacrifice, he and his Ministers resolved to cut their salaries by 25% though we were not told the amount of each cabinet Minister’s salary. And nothing was said about their undisclosed allowances. That is exhibition of power for you.

    Thus by one man’s signature appended to an obnoxious policy imposed on the populace, it became certain that many lives would be lost, many marriages would collapse, many children would drop out of school and many private business agreements would crumble thereby causing irreconcilable rifts across the land. These did not happen in the time of Yar’Adua because there was no cause for such.

    Yar’Adua’s Legacy

    With YarÁdua as President, Nigerians did not see their newly rekindled hope ending up in a paroxysm of despair as is the case today. Until Yar’Adua came on board as President in 2007, every other person that ruled Nigeria except Shagari and Buhari had claimed that there was subsidy on oil.

    Due to his short time in office, Yar’Adua might not have been perceived as a great achiever but the few achievements he recorded were quite remarkable. If those achievements had been sincerely inherited and maintained, Nigeria would not have been plunged into such a quagmire as we are witnessing today.

    At least with Yar’Adua’s few achievements, many ‘FIRSTS’ can be attributed to him in the history of Nigeria. For instance, he was the first Nigerian President to publicly declare his assets and those of his wife on assuming office. He was the first Nigerian President to publicly admit that the election which brought him into office was flawed thereby promising to reform the electoral process the machinery for which he sincerely put in place before his demise. And he congratulated the gubernatorial candidate of the Labour Party, Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State, who won a court case against a PDP Governor Olusegun Agagu in the spirit of political sportsmanship. Yar’Adua was also the first Nigerian President to confess that there was no subsidy on petroleum products and therefore reduced the price of PMS (petrol) from N70 to N65 per litre. Not only these, he was also the first Nigerian President to declare amnesty in a warless situation to ventilate a conducive atmosphere for permanent peace. If he were alive and remained in the saddle the present situation of insecurity would not have arisen. Perhaps that was why he called himself a servant leader.

    Yar’Adua as a mortal being might have his own weaknesses, nevertheless, his short period as President wrought a remarkable foundation for this country. If he had not been magnanimous enough to display the ingenuous tactics of declaring amnesty at the time he did, the story of Nigeria would have been quite different today.

    Nigerians continue to remember the good days of Yar’Adua today because the foundation he laid for a new beginning in his time has begun to crumble so soon in the hands of his successors. Just two years before her centenary celebration as a country, the President is telling Nigerians that the security problem in the country is bigger than a civil war and he can hardly handle it. Given the current situation where leaders are not models, who will save Nigeria from the devilish prediction of the West that this country would break up in 2015? That is food for thought.

  • Jonathan’s women of power

    Never underestimate the power of a woman, is an age-old maxim any wise man must take to heart. But the power of three strong women locked in one cabinet is bound to give way to volcanic eruption of Versuvius magnitude. This is the huge distraction the Federal Executive Council, FEC, is currently faced with and which has continued to stump the President Goodluck Jonathan administration. We refer of course to the president’s women; the great powers behind the throne of this administration: Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke and Princess Stella Oduah. There is also the First lady Patience, but she remains a non-Cabinet member power bloc and an essay for another day.

    Okonjo-Iweala joined the administration on her self-recognition based on stint as finance minister during the Olusegun Obasanjo era and clout as former World Bank boss. Though she fell out with the former president in the wee days of the administration, her reputation remained intact as she returned to her beat in Washington. When Jonathan won in 2011, he needed a minister with experience, international clout, integrity and professional savvy to oversee the nitty-gritty of the economy. Okonjo-Iweala, a well-healed economist and technocrat fitted the bill, or so we all thought. So she was gifted with the position of Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy (CME).

    Alison-Madueke is first of all, a home-girl of the president’s and he is said to have been a long-term admirer of the dainty damsel. There was also a family bond that dates way back. A doctoral degree holder in architecture, she was in the Shell group where she rose to be an executive director even though she remained a fringe player in the giant international oil corporation, (IOC). She was drafted into government in 2007 during the Umaru Yar’Adua administration first in the Ministry of Transportation, then Ministry of Mines and Steel, (2007 – 2011). Jonathan appointed her Minister of Petroleum Resources in 2011 where she has remained till date.

    Stella Oduah, a princess of Ogbaru land in Anambra State, she practically worked herself up the greasy poles of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, marrying one of the lumbering corporation’s top-notch and breaking off to start Sea Petroleum Oil and Gas, a firm that was to become one of the major petroleum products dealers in a short span of time. She is no doubt a woman of steel and she showed her hand during Jonathan’s 2011 presidential election when she apparently beat off the party hawks to sit atop the ruling party’s campaign administration and finance machinery. She was also at the helm of a nebulous money machine known as Neighbor-2-Neighbor (N2N) which churned out funds as if it were a mint. That was how come all through Jonathan’s fractious party primary and subsequent bitter campaign money was spent as if it were sands of the Bar Beach. Thanks largely to the Princess.

    Now these three women of clout, mountainous egos and enormous means have been yoked together under (or if you like, into one cabinet) and the result is a deadly triumvirate. In the realm of womanhood, no woman is better than the other, especially when presented before the court of men. There is nothing a woman resents more than being openly treated as inferior to another woman – in a relationship, in marriage, in whatever circumstance. Making Okonjo-Iweala CME certainly did not rub off well on Alison-Madueke and Oduah. What is so special, what has she got over us and where was she when we fought the bitter battles for the electoral victory? All these questions are sure to pop up now and then.

    The first cracks were noticed during the January 2012 petrol subsidy scandal when the decision to jerk up the pump price of petrol was concluded and announced between the Oil Minister Alison-Madueke and the president without the knowledge of the CME and most other members of cabinet. Huge so-called oil subsidy payouts had been made, sometimes with forged documents without recourse to the finance ministry. Okonjo-Iweala had openly admitted her office’s ignorance of the shady subsidy transactions further deepening the furor between the twain. There has been really no love lost between the two haughty and supercilious women culminating in the current fiscal trauma being foisted on the economy as a result of the NNPC finagling with funds meant for the federation account.

    A less rooted and powerful minister would have been consumed by the subsidy-gate and the sheer mess that was unearthed by the probes set up by the oil minister which largely indicted her. But there was no sign of that, not even a query was known to have been served her. Several nauseous scandals had spawn around her but the most recent being a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC which detailed how she had totted up about N2 billion junketing the world in private jets with the facts emanating from departments under the aviation ministry.

    In the bitter rivalry between these dowagers, the current scandal threatening to consume Princess Oduah of Aviation Ministry may not be unconnected to what is becoming a dog-eat-dog conflict. Apart from her unmatchable role in muscling Jonathan into the presidency, at the Aviation Ministry where she was of course given ample leeway and access to cash, she simply ran off with the ball and turned Nigeria’s aviation around 360 degrees in the manner it had not been done in over 40 years. In spite of the warts in her execution, her effort is monumental and she immediately became the poster girl and exemplar of Jonathan’s vacuous transformation agenda. Her ratings soared even higher in the cabinet.

    This triumvirate of course has the ears of Mr. President and soon, alliances formed around them. Some of their colleagues now have to latch on their coat tails to push their matters. In fact, during the recent sacking of ministers, it was Alison-Madueke who had save Agric Minister, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina who was an Obasanjo nominee. Such is their powers and such is the debasement of the cabinet that this FEC has become a bazaar of malfeasance and an enclave of arch-rivalry and deadly antagonism.

    Writing in his, In Touch column on the back page of this paper, September 23, 2013, Sam Omatseye in his inimitable style captured the phenomenon thus: “It is quite clear that the economy is divided into two orbits. Okonjo-Iweala holds sway in one while Madueke rules the roost in the other… we can see that there is no coordination in this economy.”

    There is no coordination even in the ruling party, PDP and neither is there coordination in the country. What is Jonathan going to do about all this?

     

  • Confab confusion

    Confab confusion

    The euphoria that greeted the President’s surprise decision to allow Nigerians to talk about the terms of their coexistence, following decades of incessant demands for a Sovereign National Conference hasn’t subsided when steely monkey wrenches were lobbed into the wheels, raising questions about the clarity of the president’s vision and the Advisory Committee’s sense of its assignment. Clarification is essential now before it is too late in the game.

    First, what is the assignment and mandate of the Advisory committee? From its terms of reference, the committee is to draw up a feasible agenda for the proposed national dialogue/conference; it is to make recommendations on structure and modalities, and on the determination of group representation; it is to advise on a timeframe, on a legal framework, and most significantly, the committee is to “advise government on legal procedures and options for integrating decisions and outcomes of the national dialogue/conference into the constitution and laws of the nation.”This last piece in the list of the committee’s terms of reference should raise concern about the ultimate outcome of the national conference, and it is unclear if the committee itself has paid adequate attention to this issue.

    The suggestion in that item of the committee’s term of reference implies that the national dialogue is another avenue in the process of amending the 1999 constitution, a task which the National Assembly has taken up without break and without end since 1999. If this is the President’s idea, then it is clearly incongruous with the proposals for a national conference that predated the 1999 constitution. The agitation for sovereign national conference has not focused on the anomalies of the 1999 constitution, plenty as these are.

    Rather, pre-1999 constitution advocates of a sovereign national conference have always focused on the structure of our federation and its inadequacies especially since 1966. The 1999 constitution, is one of the symptoms of an underlying disease caused by years of military- imposed constitutions. It follows then that the 1999 constitution is itself anomalous on dual levels: a military imposition, and a grossly outlandish one as such. It cannot therefore be a justifiable goal of the national conference to rescue the 1999 constitution by way of amendments.

    It appears that Dr. Femi Okurounmu, Chair of the Advisory Committee, shares this view about the 1999 Constitution and therefore appears to have a different understanding of the committee’s task vis-à-vis the President and the National Assembly.

    In an interview that he granted to a national newspaper, Dr. Okurounmu had the following comments in response to a question about the relationship between his committee and the National Assembly: “The National Assembly is starting from a “given”, that is, given the 1999 Constitution, what amendmentswe want to make to it? That is their starting platform. We are starting from the basis that we have no constitution at all. And depending on what the people want, what kind of constitution do the people want? We are starting from the basis that nothing is “given” and everything is subject to examination and review.”

    There is no doubt that Dr. Okurounmu speaks the mind of a super majority of Nigerians who have been persistent in their advocacy for a national conference. However, his position appears to be at odds with that of the President and members of the National Assembly. As reported widely in the media, the president used the occasion of Salah celebration to make a policy pronouncement on the national conference, stating that the recommendations of the conference are to be enshrined in the 1999 constitution.

    The President put his point thus: “So we need to come up with some bills in those areas we have agreed and we’ll push them to the National Assembly. Of course, some of those bills have not come out from the National Assembly, but we believe that even in the constitutional amendment that is going on, some will be useful.” Continuing, President Jonathan remarked: And this national dialogue is even critical and is coming at the right time because the National Assembly is thinking about how they will amend the constitution. So, the results of the discussion, of course, will be passed to the National Assembly.”

    If the National Assembly is busy compiling offending provisions of the 1999 Constitution for amendment purposes and the decisions of the National Conference are to be passed on to the National Assembly as recommendations, and these may end up jettisoned by the powerful forces in that body, then the effort would have come to naught. Is the odour here that of deception or naivety? It really doesn’t matter as long as it is a foul odour. Yet, if we go back to the item of the terms of reference underlined above, the President was clear about what he proposed.

    On its part, the National Assembly, which has been reluctant to support the convocation of a sovereign national conference on the grounds that there cannot be two sovereigns, apparently came to accept the idea of a national conference on the understanding that it would still have the last say. This is presumably the reason for the volte-face on the part of the Senate President. As far as he and his colleagues are concerned, the nation should be happy because it gets to dialogue but NASS is satisfied because it gets to decide. Is this what it comes to?

    If Senator Okurounmu is right about the starting point of the Advisory Committee (and I have no doubt that he speaks the mind of millions of Nigerians), then the assumption is that “we have no constitution at all” and the task of the national conference is to fashion out a people’s constitution, which boldly and proudly proclaims the preamble “we the people” truly and sincerely. And if the constitution thus drafted will be subjected to a referendum by the people as the Chairman also averred, then the sovereignty of the people is affirmed. The National Assembly normally has no responsibility for making a new constitution; it only has the power to amend an existing constitution.

    The confusion is a fundamental one and it seriously begs for clarification:

    First, does the President envision the national conference as a talk-shop, the purpose of which is to propose amendments to the 1999 constitution to be passed on to the National Assembly for enactment? If so, why do we need such a talk-shop when the National Assembly is already working on amending the constitution?

    Second, does the President envision the national conference as a forum for representatives of Nigerian nationalities and interest groups to discuss the fundamental issues of their national existence and experience and come up with a new constitutional framework that is subject to a referendum by the people? If so, why do we need the National Assembly to ratify what the sovereign people have approved?And even if we do place the new constitution before the National Assembly, must it be as amendment to rather than as replacement of the existing constitution?

    Are the Advisory Committee and the President really on the same page? If not, are the enthusiastic embracers of the President’s offer hopelessly condemned to Asiwaju Tinubu’s “I told you so”? It won’t be strange. He has always had the instinctive gift to smell rat.

  • Festival without festivities

    Festival without festivities

    Were it possible for the dead to wake at will, Prophet Yusuf (Joseph), the great son of Prophet Ya‘qub (Jacob), would have resurrected in Nigeria at the request of wretched Nigerians. And his mission would have been the interpretation of a dream like that of a Pharaoh of centuries ago which saved Egypt of yore from the scourge of a looming hunger.

    But alas! The absence of a dreaming Yusuf has rendered the situation in this country hopeless. Despite unlimited human and material resources available in this so called ‘Giant of Africa’ Nigeria continues to wallow helplessly under a jaundiced economy like a centipede drowning in a   poisoned brook.

    Last Tuesday, October 15th, 2013, Muslims all over the world celebrated ‘Idul Adha subsequent to Arafah day which came up the day before. But unlike their brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, overwhelming majority of Nigerian Muslims celebrated that festival without any festivity. At the instance of injustice based on avarice and aggrandisement on the part of the ruling class, the ingredients of festivityhad long been banished in this country. Thus, many worshippers spent the festival season in hunger.

    This iron period in which the government is at once promising to emancipate the masses from the scourge of  hunger, starvation and abject poverty, while at the same time threatening to guillotine the same masses through the instrumentality of oil, is an indicator of indefinite despair.

    Nostalgia

    Generally, there is nostalgia in the land, not only for the days of oil boom when life was relatively comfortable for all and sundry but also for the era of abundant farm crops when the thought of feeding was not much of a concern to most citizens. Nigerian Muslims and non-Muslims alike are today yearning for the return of those days when wives could confidently ask their husbands for festival gifts and children could demand for new dresses, shoes and wrist watches from their parents. Those were the days when festival seasons were really festive and the graph of marriage carried some indices of value. Those were the days of friendliness among neighbours, good wishes among colleagues, mutual confidence among spouses as well as general peace and tranquillity in the society.

    Now, those days are gone. And they seem to have gone forever. Today, we have found ourselves in a situation against which we had long been warned in a couplet rendered by an Arab poet quoting two disciples of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) i. e. Ubayyi Bn Ka’b and Abdullah Bn Mas’ud. It goes thus:

    ”This is the period in which truth is rejected in its totality while falsehood, corruption and betrayal of trust are held aloft; should this period linger with its woes and tribulations, the world, may soon assume a situation where no one will rejoice over the birth of a new baby or grieve over the demise of a dear relative”.

    Sensible Queestions

    Nigeria is fast becoming a dramatic entity mysteriously coded in parables. It will take an unprecedented revolution to decode it and dislodge the insensitive actors who are monopolising the stage with boredom. In ordinary circumstances, a forward-looking country should encourage her citizenry to ask some probing questions such as: Who are we? Where are we coming from? And where are we going from here? Those are some of the questions which all rational human beings should ask themselves constantly.

    But such questions have been rendered irrelevant in Nigeria because the circumstances of life here have changed the priorities of ordinary citizens. The only question now in vogue, which everybody in government seems to be answering tacitly, is this: ‘what am I getting from being in this office?

    That very question is the real drama that permanently engages the attention of Nigerian civil servants. It is the question that robes Nigerian Police in a garment of shamelessness with a banished conscience. It is the question that crowns money as a demigod which forbids human feeling. It is the question that fosters greed andfetters Nigeria to the stake of endemic corruption. It is the question that presents mirage to Nigerians as the only substance worthy of pursuit.

    What can we say of a man who fixes his eyes on the sun but does not see it? Instead, he sees a chorus of flaming seraphim announcing a paroxysm of despair. That is the parable of the country called Nigeria. Like the Israelis of Moses’ time, Nigerians have become gypsies wandering aimlessly and wallowing in abject poverty in the midst of abundance. What else do we expect from Allah beyond the invaluable bounties with which He has blessed us?

    Nigeria is not lacking in forest and arable savannah. She is rich in rivers and mountains all of which are great resources for people who are seeking reasonable comfort and are not self-deceptive. What she lacks is a responsible and patriotic government that can sincerely highlight its priorities according to the yearnings of the ordinary people. That food is becoming a threat to Nigerians today is an irony emanating from naivety and massive corruption in our government quarters especially since 1999 when the current democracy first beamed a ray of hope to the people.

    Cost of governance

    In Nigeria today, the cost of running the government alone is enough to render the country bankrupt. The retinue of federal ministers and a galaxy of Presidential Advisers are major causes of poverty in ghe coungry today. Even America with her huge economic resources, large population and financial wherewithal has only ten ministers? Why must we have separate ministers for agriculture and water resources? Where is the federal government’s farm to justify this? Why must we retain an obnoxious immunity clause in our constitution which facilitates monumental corruption for the serving Governors who are hypocritically chased around but never caught for trial on the allegation of embezzlement after they might have left office?

    Besides, what informs the idea of the so-called constituency allowances for legislators, which run into billions of naira without anything to show for it at a time when innocent women and children are crying for food? No one would have thought in 1999 that artificial hunger could be added to the abysmal level of poverty in Nigeria despite the unprecedented rise in price of oil in the international market. The ubiquity of beggars and lunatics in our cities and towns is a confirmation of this assertion.

    Governance in Nigeria has become an artful trick adopted by a cabal to bamboozle the populace into blind submission. The propaganda in the 1980s was almost hypnotizing: ‘food and shelter for all in year 2000!’ That slogan was changed in the 1990s to: ‘Vision 2010!’ And when year 2010 began to approach, the slogan again changed to: ‘Vision 202020!’

    Self-deception

    Now, without roads, without electricity, without functional rail transportation system, without jobs for majority of the able-bodied citizens and even without food on our tables, we are still being cajoled into believing that Nigeria, a country without coins, would become one of the 20 biggest economies in the world in year 2020. Isn’t that a deliberate and audacious deception? No country in history has ever been known to have achieved economic vibrancy by magic. Nigeria cannot be an exception.

    In an FAO report in 2008, about 300 Nigerians were said to be dying of hunger daily in their own country.

    The government needs to be told that no miracle can yield any success based on the ramshackle foundation laid down by one man (from the prison) who, as President, could hardly reason beyond the siege mentality of a prisoner. A fire brigade approach to food crisis in a country like Nigeria is a shameful reaction to an avoidable melancholy.

    Egyptian Experience

    Yusuf (Joseph), the son of Ya’qub (Jacob), did not know that he could have any solution to a fundamental problem of a country other than his own. Neither did his brothers who sold him into slavery know that he could be a solution to a major problem in another land. But the accident of history never ceases to play itself out. Without Yusuf, only Allah knows what the history of Egypt would have been today. And without a Pharaoh’s dream of drought, the story of Yusuf would have been totally different from what we now know it to be.

    If Egypt had any major plight when Yusuf was in prison in that country, it was Pharaoh’s dream. It turned out that Yusuf’s imprisonment in Egypt was a blessing, not only for Egypt but also for Yusuf and his family. What could have been a repeat of that episode here in Nigeria, turned out to be a regrettable bizarre. The rest is left to history.

    I was a student in Egypt in the 1970s when the hostility between that country and Israel was fierce. Egypt was then an ally of the (now defunct) Soviet Union while Israel was virtually a satellite of the United States. Not only did Egypt suffer isolation from NATO member countries of Europe and America but the Soviet Union which was supposed to be her main ally was also not forthcoming with any meaningful assistance beyond the supply of scanty weapons. Thus, the Egyptian government had to take its destiny in its own hand by buckling up firmly in other to fend for its people at that critical time.

    Realizing the importance of food supply especially in a war situation, Egypt mobilized all her agricultural resources around River Nile and forgot about any food importation. The result was tremendous and thus, the fear of food insecurity was averted.

    In the mid 1990s, Uganda, a sub-Sahara African country, found herself in the position of ancient Egypt. A colossal drought broke out in that country killing thousands of people and virtually wiping out the entire cattle in the country. No Pharaoh had any dreamed premonition and no Yusuf was in a prison to translate any dream into a solution.

    Ugandan Experience

    What the Ugandans did to find a solution was to reset the country’s agricultural focus. Rather than concentrating on tilling the land and rearing the cattle, which drought had eroded, a new focus was brought to bear. Uganda took to ‘bee farming’ as a relieving alternative. The seriousness which the government of that country paid to the new focus was such that Uganda today is a country to reckon with in the production and supply of honey and other bee products to the European communities. A substantial amount of honey consumed in Europe is currently supplied   by Uganda as well as Kenya and Tanzania. And those products have become the second biggest foreign exchange earner for Uganda after coffee.

    Today, Nigeria is not afflicted by drought or famine. Neither is she engaged in a war. Yet, the Nigerian government has learnt no lesson from any of the above named countries simply because there is oil in large deposit. Now, the general fear in the land is that of hunger even in times of festivals.

    How Nigeria arrived at such a deadly scourge is irrelevant for now. What is relevant is how to get out of it. Like Egypt of yore, Nigeria will need a Yusuf to unravel the mystery surrounding the dream that brought this scourge about.

    Irony

    It is ironic that people who live by the river bank can’t get water to drink when those living in the desert can find a reliable oasis to combat any drought. Given all the resources with which we are endowed, Nigerians should have no business with poverty let alone food crisis.

    Capitalism, which was once an economic ideology propelling mercantilism, has moved a step ahead, especially in Nigeria where official theft has become a profession. Capitalism is now a religion through which its adherents worship money. To such adherents, accountability is a mere riddle which only the poor may wish to unravel.

    It is only in the interest of those in government, especially those in the executive and legislative arms who are most active in sharing public funds, to let the national wealth spread across board legitimately if only to avoid the current Nigerian elite situation where every house has become a prison in which the occupants are voluntarily jailed. To ignore the rule of law and shun justice in a land blessed with milk and honey is to cultivate trouble with insecurity in all its ramifications.

  • Agric minister’s rice conundrum

    Agric minister’s rice conundrum

    He is handsome, suave, always well turned out and highly articulate; not unlike a revolver. When he speaks, his audience listens, they get carried away and often he works them up to a standing ovation. Of course we refer to our Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Ishola. In the last two years he has turned out to be the ultimate mesmerizer holding Nigerians in awe of his presence and the presidency spellbound by his vacuous speeches and postulations. But it is all a ruse, this column has found. Adesina has sat on one of the most important sectors of the economy through these years without an iota of idea how to move it forward.

    One example we will showcase here shortly is what we call the rice conundrum, a miasma that has become a national calamity and a token of Adesina’s noisome tenure and stark inefficiency. Before we get to that, it is rather disturbing that anywhere we turn we hear what has become the raucous sound of Adesina and his agric exploits across the country but ask critical questions, look beneath the surface and it is all empty talk.

    Speaking at the Agribusiness Forum in Brussels recently, he said, “We have developed staple crops processing zones, which are to set up food manufacturing plants, a cluster of infrastructure, to close the missing link between agriculture and industry…we decided to turn comparative advantage in food production into competitive advantage by adding value through processing.”

    He said so many things like adding value to low-value crops like cassava ans sorghum, putting billions in the hands of farmers and creating millions of jobs for the youths in the sector. Taken in by Adesina’s empty loquacity, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala blindly sings Adesina’s chorus. According to Okonjo-Iweala, “Now in agriculture, where we are seeing strong results, over 2.5 million seasonal and full time jobs have been created, for instance, 450,000 jobs created are in dry season rice.”

    With due respect, these are all lies, damned lies and cooked up government statistics. As you read this, legitimate rice importers and local farmers are on the verge of being put out of business by organized and well-known smugglers in Nigeria. Mrs. Esther Olufunmilayo is the president of Rice Distributors Association of Nigeria. In a recent interview Vanguard newspaper, she explained that most of the rice his members have sold this year is smuggled rice. She noted that government increased the tariff and levy on rice import from 35 to 1010 percent while the tariff in neighbouring Cotonuo ports is still 30 percent. The tragedy therefore is that Nigerian importers are out of business because it is starkly unprofitable to import through Nigeria’s ports; government loses millions of dollars in tariffs to Benin Republic and our modest efforts at local rice cultivation withers.

    Another group of stakeholders, the Rice Millers, Importers and distributors Association of Nigeria (RiMIDAN), has also cried out over the multiple jeopardy that is rice business in Nigeria today. RiMIDAN through its secretary, Shaibu Mohammed, warns that the federal government would lose about $1 billion in duties this year as a result of massive and unprecedented rice smuggling currently going on. But apart from government’s loss of revenue and local importers being put out of business, more injurious to Mohammed is that the huge investment by their members in local rice farming and processing will come to naught soon because their product cannot compete with the smuggled rice.

    We bet that our Agric Minister, Adesina is not aware of this perilous state of affair in Nigeria’s number one staple food. In all his talking and doing, the minister is not in tune with the critical stakeholders in the rice value chain – from the levels of paddy production, processing, marketing, importations and distribution of rice. While he goes about postulating about banning rice importation in two years’ time, absolutely nothing is being done to work towards that objective apart from announcing it in the media.

    A notorious and most damning example is the National Rice Development Fund (NRDF) which levy was increase to about 100 percent in January; there is no record, no trace of this Fund anywhere. No known committee, no panel or body managing this huge fund for the development of the Nigerian rice sector towards an eventual banning of importation. The NRDF has been kept under the radar for too long; Dr. Adesina is duty-bound to tell Nigerian the status of this fund if he wants to be taken serious about his activities during his tenure. Unless otherwise proven, the Rice fund is perhaps the biggest fraud in the Agric Ministry today.

    As if to corroborate the fact that Nigerian government and Dr. Adesina are merely pulling wool over our eyes, the African Agric and Foreign Ministers’ side-bar during the recent World Bank-IMF meeting in Washington noted that Nigeria lags behind most other African countries in agric financing. Already, countries Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Niger and Senegal have met or exceeded the 10 percent annual budgetary funding target for agriculture. And since 2003, 32 countries have created national agric investment plans that lay out priorities for meeting funding goals. Nigeria is not part of all this.

    The summit deliberated extensively on how to sustain the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) which was launched in 2003. But Nigeria is nowhere to be found on the CAADP benchmark as her agric sector had thrive on shambolic, haphazard hits and misses in the past one decade. The real tragedy however is that the agric sector is so crucial that unless we show more seriousness, the current staggering youth unemployment will remain with us and eventually do us in.

    There is an urgent need to change our paradigm and unleash the enormous potentials in the sector through large-scale integrated mechanized farming in every part of the country. This technology has been perfected centuries ago and we only need to adopt and adapt it. The Ministry’s duty is to catalyse the process. The presidency must urgently find an agric minister who understands this process, who has the hands-on and presence of mind to get real work done quickly and not a talkative who is more at home in five-star hotels and seminar environments. Dr. Adesina will not get us any results even if he stayed on for 20 years.

  • National confab: Jonathan admits failure

    National confab: Jonathan admits failure

    It’s a cop-out. Finally, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has (perhaps unbeknown to him!) openly admitted that he is not the man for these times. He is not the game changer; he is not the great Nigerian who would lead us into that glorious modern nation we all yearn for. He is neither a man of history nor for the history books. After four year in Aso Rock, four years of commanding the Nigerian Armed Forces, four years of presiding over the Federal Executive Council and four years of shepherding over 150 million of the world’s largest and most dynamic Black race, calling for a national dialogue certainly cannot be the best option available either to the president or for the people.

    A RASH OF WORTHLESS CONFERENCES: Between the London conference prelude to independence in 1960, through Aburi down to the sham conferences of Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo, any discerning mind would know that we have had enough national dialogue to solve our problems if the intent is to build a modern nation. President Jonathan by virtue of his learning, prominence and roles in national affairs in the past four decades is aware of this rash of conferences; and if not, he has access to them – the procedures and outcomes. Running through these conferences are the agitations, hopes and desires of Nigerians and the various ethnic groups. Some of them would also contain a notation of all the ills afflicting the country and some of the immediate and long-term actions required.

    IF JONATHAN WAS A BIT PERSPICACIOUS: If President Jonathan had it to give or if he was given to be the one to lead us into the new land he would have attended to some of the most pressing issues blighting the country by now. Do we need another national conference to realize that we are running a terribly skewed and unsustainable federalism? There are a slew of issues that the president could have attended to by merely pushing executive bills through the National Assembly or by taking advantage of the on-going attempt at constitution review.

    Who would quarrel with the president if he had for instance, started a gradual whittling down of the powers at the centre for the overall good of the country? Who would resist if he had made a moved to restructure of the Federal Revenue Allocation formula by conceding a little more to the states and local government areas? By the same token, he could have achieved immense result if he had allowed some partial autonomy to the states to control the police, collect some sales taxes (like VAT), run primary and secondary education fully among sundry other trivia that the federal government dissipate so much energy and resources upon yet does so badly.

    President Jonathan needs no national dialogue to bring his mind to bear on the question of statutory allocation to local councils which is perhaps one of the problems ravaging the polity at the moment. The rash of malcontents, social dissonance and a seeming state of unyielding poverty is not unconnected to the fact that huge funds meant for the third tier of government never gets there. This sad turn of event which has gone on since 1999 is obviously unsustainable considering its untold economic and socio-political costs to the nation. One expects the president to be at home with the import and magnitude of this grave national problem and to have proceeded to initiate policies to change it.

    CONFERENCE WITH AN AGENDA: It is amazing how naïve Nigerians can be especially when they choose to; how come everyone is singing alleluyah as if the mere act of calling for a conference has resolved all the problems buffeting the country. From the chairman of the agenda panel, Senator Femi okunrounmu to Father Matthew Kukah it is as if Nigeria has suddenly reached Eldorado. “Jonathan has just successfully carry out a bloodless ideological coup against the agitators and his enemies”, crooned eminent clergyman Kukah in an interview.

    But I put it on notice today that this dialogue is not unlike the contrivances of President Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Olusegun Obasanjo which were just devices to buy time, deceive the populace and distract attention from their obvious leadership failures. Like these former leaders, Jonathan has failed woefully and now at the crossroads, he reaches for the old trick. Like these previous failed leaders and at least for self-preservation (that is what the so-called dialogue is all about anyway), the conference will be lined with all sort of landmines and hidden agenda. Would President Jonathan initiate and supervise a talk that will banish the centre and grant the ethnic nationalities their desire to live along regional and zonal lines?

    WHO PAYS FOR THE JAMBOREE? We do not require any special clairvoyance to see that Jonathan’s dialogue will end in disarray like Obasanjo’s or the report would be left to gather dust till post Jonathan. But the question we have not asked is who is paying for this folly? Government would shell out billions of naira for a talk jamboree yet it cannot fund our universities, most federal roads are in utter disrepair and capital expenditures are not being released to MDAs. We hope that the Okunrounmu panel in working out the agenda would also work out the cost of organizing the talk. Nigerians deserve to know and they must be told this time around, the cost of staging this show.

    Apart from the fundamental questions of our federation, will this conference lead to the creation of more jobs, to better funding of our education and improvement in our facilities? The answer is no. We all, including the president knows what Nigerians need – it is good, sincere leadership.

    LAST MUG: WHERE IS THE WORKS MINISTER? Yours truly travelled through the Lagos- Benin highway to Owerri last weekend and it was a patented nightmare of a journey. On the outward journey we were still for about two hours between Ijebu –Ode and Ore thus reaching Owerri late at night. The journey back to Lagos took a bizarre turn when Ijebu-Ode-Ore road was declared near impassable and we had to do a merry-go-round through Ondo, Ife, Ibadan to Lagos. We were on the road for 15 hours for an eight –hour journey. It is obvious that this Minister is incapable of repairing this stretch of road he has been joggling with for nearly two years. It is the same story in many other areas across the country commuters are going through hell on our highways. Who will show some compassion?

  • Security and the national conference

    Security and the national conference

    I have dealt with the important issue of security as the foremost responsibility of government in a liberal democracy more than I really wish to. But recent events have brought it to the fore of our attention one more time. The unfortunate execution of innocent students in their sleep is the worst nightmare of any parent and of a government that cares. And it’s unclear how many more we must experience before we come to the realisation that our government has failed us in the matter of security. The second is the embarrassing face-off between the federal government and the Rivers state government and its fall-out on the security of the state.

    In view of its importance, then, security has to be a priority item on the national conference agenda. Since reasonable citizens have disagreed over the monopoly of internal security by the federal government, we have to have a rational discourse over how best to security the lives and properties of citizens and why state police should be a practical option.

    We must realize, firstly, that those opposed to the creation of state police have not taken a stand on its constitutionality. They know that doing so would beg the question whether the constitution rightly prohibits the idea. And since the debate itself is predicated on the present legislative efforts to amend the constitution, it would have been grievously out of sync to argue against it from a constitutional perspective.

    Secondly, there is a consensus on the part of citizens that the present federal police systemhas undermined the security of citizens. From its inadequacy in dealing with armed robbery, kidnapping, militancy, and other crimes that endanger citizens and undermine the development of the nation, it is crystal clear that the system is broken.

    Third, a majority, if not all of our political leaders know about the effectiveness of state and municipal police in other lands. So it would be disingenuous of anyone who has seen it work elsewhere to doubt its effectiveness here.

    Two concerns have been raised against the institutionalisation of State Police. The first is the potential for the abuse of statepolice by politicians, especially governors and the party in power. The second is the issue of financing the system. In other words, everyone appears to agree on (i) the present perilous state of internal security, (ii) the inadequacy of the federal police to deal with it, and (iii) the universally acknowledged effectiveness of state and local police in dealing with internal security in any nation. But because of the fear—imagined or real—that politicians, especially governors are likely to use it as an instrument of oppression, and uncertainty about where the funds are going to come from, reasonable and well- placed patriotsare against the institution of state police.

    Neither of these concerns appears to me unresolvable. At most, they are challenges that reasonable people can meet and overcome. Take the case of funding. If security is the foremost responsibility of government, surely state governments can be expected to source for the means of discharging this responsibility even if it requires moderating expenses in other sectors. Indeed, an effective system of internal security has the great potential for generating internal revenue that not only pays for itself but also yields substantial dividends for investment in other sectors. Certainly such a regime can expect to attract a decent amount of domestic and foreign investment into the state. With business and industrial investment, opportunities are created for youth employment which in turn creates buying power, which leads to more investment and the circle can only be a virtuous one.

    There is a second consideration about funding. Even now that the police falls under the exclusive list of the Constitution, state governors cannot be unconcerned about resources available to the police commands in their states. For, they are still responsible for securing their citizens. A good number of governors have created State Security Commissions that raise funds for the police, while some raise their own vigilante groups. It may be argued that what such Commissions source from businesses and charitable organizations are grossly inadequate to fund state police. The point, however, is that when duty calls, human creativeness always provides an unfailing response.

    How about the major concern that state governors and their party members will use State Police to harass their opponents? This is not an imaginary fear because it happened during the First Republic. But the reality of the experience of almost half a century ago, vivid as it still might be in the inner recesses of our minds, cannot be a reliable yardstick for determining how we should live our lives. Consider an analogy. Fifty years ago, we were sleeping with our doors and windows wide open, enjoyingdivinely endowed fresh air. We would be crazy fools to indulge in such fun today no matter how remote our villages are. Instead we rely on fans or air-conditioners and generating sets.

    The mark of our humanity is rationality, and endowmentwith which we are able to think through the most efficient and effective means of meeting the challenges that we face and identifying the most efficient means of satisfying our wants and needs.

    If we are wary of the experience of the past—premiers using state police to torment opponents—and we know that federal police has not worked efficiently and effectively to secure us, then we have to put on our thinking caps and device an effective means of avoiding the unacceptable experiences of the past. We might want to ensure that governors—we got rid of Premiers—do not have a monopoly of supervisory authority over the State Police. We do this by creating a police system that is civil but apolitical. Each state might have a State Police Commission that is transparently independent,with representation from major sectors of the civil society, and financially autonomous, with constitutionally guaranteed revenue.

    Secondly, if we are fearful that governors may use state police to rig elections—harassing political opponents while empowering the rigging industry of supporters—then again we need to device a means of avoiding this inauspicious outcome. Presently, state governmentsare responsible for local government elections while INEC is responsible for federal and state elections. This is in itself an anomaly in a federal system which the conference must also open to discourse. In any case, if the first proposal is acceptable and the governor has no monopoly power over the police, then the fear of using it to rig elections would have been misplaced.

    There is a final consideration. For almost 20 years now, since the elections of 1993 and its aftermath, there has been one constant refrain against proposals for changing our way of doing things, especially those that we all agree are not working. Whether it is change from dictatorship to democracy; or unitarism to federalism; the opposition has always expressed a baffling lack of confidence in our collective maturity. We were told that we were not mature for democracy; that the kind of federalism we seek is dangerous in light of our present political circumstance. And now we are told that state police is for mature societies. The people making these claims consider themselves mature. In fact it is their maturity that gives them the audacity to advise against taking steps that they believe the country is not mature to take.

    Will this country ever be sufficiently mature to take one small step toward its destiny? And when it is deemed ready, will there be a country?The President’s Committee on National Conference has its work caught out.