Category: Steve Osuji

Igbo, emasculated and castrated:For Ndigbo, the valiant race by the Niger River, Southeast of Nigeria, this must be the worst time in their history. Not even during the genocidal Biafran war which saw the structured extermination of over a million of their kind were they so emasculated and seemingly castrated as now. Once a sturdy leg of the tripod that made up the entity known as Nigeria, today Ndigbo are relegated, unclassified, made anonymous and irrelevant in the political equation of today’s Nigeria.

Examples abound to corroborate this proposition and we will never be tired of reciting them: Ndigbo have never headed the government of Nigeria since independence in the true sense of it; Ndigbo are the largest tribe in the land and pre-independence censuses and population projections upheld that fact. But by a cruel sleight of hand and through dubious post-independence censuses, the population of Ndigbo of the Southeast zone of Nigeria has been finagled with and made inconsequential. The rest of Nigeria is at peace with itself to downgrade Igbo population for the purpose of domination. But a nation can live a lie only for so long.

There are more examples of deliberate decimation: Igboland is one of the most densely populated areas of the country yet by a criminal political machination, the least number of states and local government areas were created in the Southeast zone, thus ensuring that the most people get the least of the national resources. For instance, the three Northwest states of Kano, Jigawa and Katsina have more local councils than the entire Southeast. You can guess what this translates to in terms of revenue allocation.

Since after the civil war, population censuses and state and local government creation have been deliberately deployed as weapons of socio-economic stagnation of Igboland. The vicious effect of these obnoxious state policies targeted at Ndigbo ring true in areas of revenue allocation, federal appointments; enlistments in the armed and paramilitary forces to name a few. Such is the injustice a people have had to endure in a polity called the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Heaping salt on Igbo injury: In the midst of all these, one is terribly troubled to hear people who are supposedly Igbo leaders speak in manners that seem to heap red-hot coal on the injuries of Ndigbo. Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu is one of such Igbo leaders who have become disconnected and disoriented about the situation of his kinsmen in the current Nigerian milieu. He has over the years missed the opportunity to emerge as a veritable voice of Ndigbo, having never at any turn, upheld the interest of Ndigbo.

Speaking to newsmen in Owerri, Imo State, last weekend, he showed the stuff he is well known for when he suggested that Ndigbo should wait till 2027 before they can aspire to Nigeria’s number one seat. According to Iwuanyanwu, if the elections of 2015 are not properly handled, situations could deteriorate to a point that it may be difficult to control. He therefore appealed that, “My people of the southeast who are legitimately demanding for the presidency of Nigeria should subjugate this ambition to the unity, peace and stability of Nigeria by supporting (the) south-south.”

He said further: “After south-south has completed its tenure of eight years, the presidency will naturally go to the North…After eight years of the North the presidency will come back to the south. When it comes to the south, it will automatically be the turn of southeast since Southwest and South-south have taken their own turns.” Wow! What baby babble! The grist of his thought is that Ndigbo are donkeys required for hefting difficult political garbage in Nigeria. Two, there is a simplistic supposition that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is the only party in the land destined rule forever. Third: that the turn-by-turn; chop-i-chop syndrome of his class as opposed to merit and performance will continue to hold sway. Lastly, how could an elder tell us that if one man does not have a second term of office the country would perish? If that be the case let it perish by all means! No individual or group must be allowed to hold the country to ransom; not from the north or south.

In the first place, it is most discomfiting to us that an Igbo leader of Iwuanyanwu’s age and standing still holds an appointment. Which contemporary of his from other ethnic groups holds such silly appointments; as chairman of board of a third generation university at that? Then again, why does he keep demeaning and aggravating us? Even if it were meet that Ndigbo would wait in serfdom till the next 50 years to be president, we do not need him telling that to the world.

Again, one is sorry to note that Chief Iwuanyanwu may be living in a time warp. Ndigbo, the real Igbo people have moved on and left him behind with his power-mongering ilk. The average Igbo has been living his life in spite of government, irrespective of Nigeria’s oil wealth and without Aso-Rock. These commodities are the stock-in-trade of Chief and his fellow rapacious elite; since after the war, they have sat atop our commonwealth making sure it only trickles down to the people. When therefore he speaks about Ndigbo vis-à-vis the presidency, he speaks only for himself.

Tell us something else: We, Ndigbo want to hear his opinion on the dilapidated federal roads in the southeast like the Enugu/Onitsha and the Enugu/Port Harcourt highways. He should tell us why there is no power generating plant in the entire southeast? We want to know his thoughts on the situation in the northeast where every third person killed must be an Igbo. How many Ndigbo have been killed, how many injured and displaced? How many luxury buses burnt and how many businesses damaged? What succor for his kinsmen, innocent victims whose only crime is that they are law-abiding citizens?

Why on earth is our elder telling us to seat pretty and be canon-fodder in this sham republic? Can’t he see that this is a lost republic where cowards and opportunists who live off Aso Rock and want power by all means have thought their ill-bred rascals how to make bomb? Once they have started hiding bomb under the hijab, it becomes a pastime, they never stop. It’s a historical fact. Why should Ndigbo remain in this republic of murderous people who serve bomb for breakfast, serve bomb for lunch and serve bomb for dinner? If we had elders, they should have reclined into the ime obi… Igbo wu Igbo unu mu kwa anya? Lee nu ariri!

There is no doubt that Ndigbo suffer leadership vacuum since after Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ikemba Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. There is need for the current crop to rise to the occasion. Governor Theodore Orji, chairman of Southeast Governors’ Forum has been quietly at work on the Igbo cause since he ascended the office a few months ago just as his predecessor Governor Peter Obi tried to do. Senator Uche Chukwumerije has also represented Ndigbo well as one of the true Igbo whose strident voices ring loud from the exalted chambers of the Senate.

But there is need for a rebirth. Ohaneze Ndigbo has become compromised and diminished thus the need for a new forum to lead the rebirth of Igbo nationalism, the Igbo state, the Igbo persona and the Igbo ethic in the emerging states.

And the winner is… EXPRESSO!

Last Saturday in Owerri, Imo State, yours truly won the Nigeria Media Merit Award (NMMA) Alade Odunewu Prize for Columnist of the Year, 2013. It was particularly exhilarating to have lifted the bronze gong man before a cheerful crowd of my people in Owerri. I owe it to the greatest Writer of all, God and to you dear reader for always charging me on.

A body of four articles were entered and since none has been singled out by the assessors, I will try to publish one or two here in the weeks ahead.  The articles are: “One billion women…put down by men,” “The Malabu malfeasance,” “The Agric. Minister’s rice conundrum,” and “Five things Gov. Fashola aren’t getting right.” This award will be considered a call to arms – to shoot sharper for you.

e are a country conceived in harams, born into harams and reveling daily in harams. In our luminous moments of sobriety, we must remember to say thanks goodness for Boko Haram, the haram that woke us up to our life of invidious harams. In fact, if Boko Haram does not kill Nigeria, it will mark its final reawakening.

 A small quiz for you dear reader: what are the most vicious harams Nigeria suffers from today? You may never guess it, in fact some of you may think it is Boko Haram but I will tell you. The first haram is the Federal Government sitting on, and wasting about 53 per cent of Nigeria’s resources; the second is the National Assembly (NASS) appropriating to itself an indeterminate quantum of Nigeria’s resource and making away with it bold-facedly like bandits and the third is the fact of all the 36 governors across the country hijacking funds meant for our local government areas (LGAs), thus rendering them, all 774 of them, a wasteland.

This devious trinity born out of avarice and megalomania has imposed on Nigeria its current existential traumas and it will only be a question of time before Nigeria eventually implodes and fails irretrievably. To make my point plain dear reader, Nigeria will fail sooner or later, if we continue with this system of the Presidency and NASS sharing and wasting more than half of our national revenues while governors and state legislators feast on the other half.

Of Boko Haram, ring worm and leprosy Though they pretend not to see the cause and effect relationship, we will not stop telling them. The major outcome of our current warped structure; this unholy trinity among the Presidency, the NASS and the  governors is the cause of the eruption and festering of Boko Haram in our land.

 Boko Haram did not start in 2009; it started a few years earlier. A few officials of the so-called LGAs in most of the north of Nigeria were particularly notorious for gathering once a month (sometimes in a private residence) and sharing the revenue allocation from the Federation Account. There was nothing else going on than this monthly rape of a people by a few. The simple result is that most of the sprawling expanse of land in the north of Nigeria became unmanned wasteland. This was particularly so in the complex, mountainous Northeast no-man’s-land bordering Chad and Cameroun.

While the federal government and NASS reveled in Abuja and the governors were cocooned in their state capital, a vast swath of the country lay waste and vulnerable to all manner of intruders. If LGAs and development areas (LGDAs) were functional, Boko Haram and all other marauding criminals plaguing the land today would have been nipped and contained before they became viral.

Is it not of elementary knowledge that the better the quality of administration at the local levels, the more diversified and rapid growth we will experience across the country? A thriving LG administration with the full complement of its executive, legislature and concomitant judiciary and security systems would drive the economy of our vast rural areas. It will ensure the upkeep of rural schools, hospitals, cottage industries, the security of community and rural infrastructure. Just imagine 774 administrative units deploying a quarter of Nigeria’s resources and operating at about 70 per cent capacity. Nigeria’s problems would simply evaporate.

This aphrodisiac called power

But never have our LGAs been more emasculated and ruinously manipulated at any other time than now. The governors are quick to point at ‘too much power’ at the centre and at the least opportunity they step up and seize every power available in their local domains. The subsisting constitution allows some semi-autonomy to the 774 LGAs under the oversight of the governors and the state assemblies.

It allows for an elected chairman, a council and access to federally allocated funds. All of these under the supervision of the state, but sad to note that ALL the states, without exception, have failed under this arrangement. The governors simply keep revenues allocated to the LGAs, making them all to wither away. How salutary it would have been to see one, just one example of a state where the LGAs are thriving, no matter by what political alchemy.

But what we have in the last 15 years is that governors allow LGAs just enough money for salaries for a bloated staff (half of them ‘ghosts’) who are largely unproductive. The governors keep most of the money, remain in the state capital and run from pillar to post pretending to develop the state. Many of them even side-track their ministries and agencies.

A populace ostracised and abandoned

What we have, therefore, is a country in which over half of the populace is ostracised and stranded. No matter how much boom the country may enjoy, it never percolates to the majority. This extreme deprivation of the majority results in all manner of extreme sociopathic behaviours like insurgency, kidnapping, cultism, ritualism, violent robberies, human and body parts trafficking as well as making babies for sale among a legion of ills.

It is troubling that our governors cannot fathom the futility of the current aberrant situation. It is a shame that not even one of them could work out a template that could have made the LGAs work in his state. To think, as some of them claim, that they are all in mortal fear of LGA chairmen making away with the funds. But as my Owerri people would jibe: is premium stockfish manufactured only for the palate of the Njemanze royalty?

Now that the NASS has proposed autonomy for the LGAs, it is not enough to pronounce they must realise there is lacuna somewhere and think through the implementation process. Who would the LGAs be responsible to? There must be a role somewhere for the people to hold their local leaders accountable. We must evolve a viable and vibrant LGA system; that is the way to build a wholesome country.

T.A. Orji: How to ‘kill’ a governor

This column had once written about the Governor of Abia State, Chief T. A. Orji, being the most maligned in the land. But recent events have shown that that was child’s play compared to the barrage shellacking daily unleashed by his traducers.
It is common knowledge that there is no love lost between the Abia helmsman (T.A.) and his erstwhile boss, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu (O.U.K.). Since T.A. regained his freedom from the asphyxiating bear hug of O.U.K., his erstwhile godfather, he has never been forgiven and he is not likely to get any reprieve. It is a tough fate for T.A. who daily comes under the blitzkrieg of two national newspapers, tarring him black and raking up all the muck in the land against him.
The attacks from these two national dailies (The Sun and New Telegraph) owned by O.U.K . get more haunting by the day as O.U.K. is frustrated in his attempt to return to his old party, PDP, and bid for a senate seat.
Why would a man who has been everything (including being a governor for 10 years) be so desperate to return to a meal he had spat on? It betokens a stark poverty of the soul when a man who has everything thirsts so lustfully for such little things.
No governor can stand the biased scrutiny of two national newspapers. Train mischievous cameras on any state and you are bound to find dilapidated inner town roads, some untended refuse dumps and one or two neglected facilities on the outskirts. It is unfair, unjust and sheer victimisation to make it seem as if Abia State is the headquarters of bad roads in Nigeria. We all know that all cities across the country are strewn with failed roads!

We live in a time and season when merit and performance hardly earn you public office. Work until your bottom falls off; be as sharp as razor or as straight as nail, that is your predicament. In millennial Nigeria of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it is he who passed his exams that is considered brilliant and not necessarily the other way round.

PDP has dumbed-down public service so much in the last 16 years that it has become almost an aberration for really smart people to get to the commanding heights of government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) where they can lead change for the good of all. PDP has institutionalised mediocrity so much they don’t even know the difference or any other way of doing things right. What do we see today, mediocrity cohabiting with idiocy and daily giving birth to a retarded nation?

Before now, a portion of appointments were allowed on merit, but today, everything goes to all sorts of wriggly creatures crawling around the party – from ministerial appointments to board jobs. The result is that just anyone can become your minister these days and we have seen party thugs on boards of several strategic national agencies. And we seek to be a great country?

If a man was, ab initio, too small for a job, it would be illogical to expect him to stand out in carrying out the responsibilities attached to it. But performance seems not to matter to us anymore, which is why seven ministers of the Federal Republic would step down with fanfare and so audaciously announce that they would want to contest to govern states. But EXPRESSO insists that none of these ministers would get my vote as none showed any brilliance in his first ministerial duties to deserve elevation. The out-gone ministers are: Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu (Health); Mr. Nyesom Wike (State for Education); Mr. Labaran Maku (Information); Musiliu Obanikoro (State for Defence); Emeka Wogu (Labour and Productivity); Samuel Ortom (State for Industry, Trade and Investment) and Darius Ishaku (State for Niger Delta). Let us do brief x-rays of these ministers who would want to be governors.

Prof. Chukwu, one heck of a lucky fellow:  Chukwu seeks Ebonyi State government house: this Prof is a lucky man; he is like the fellow in the Igbo proverb whom the gods helped to crack his palm kennels. As health minister for three and a half years, he neither had a vision for the sector nor was he able to deliver any ad-hoc capital projects.

He could not even manage his fellow doctors and he had the singular record of overseeing the longest doctors’ national strike in our history. He just went through the dreary motion of the office all the time he was there. But he seems to have a pact with providence. Just as he was going down with his damning ordinariness, Ebola came upon us. And not that he and his office responded with particular ingenuity but the credit crawled up to him all the same and he left in a blaze of unearned glory.

This lucky fellow poised to waltz into Ebonyi Government House in like manner but this is just to remind him that not all of us are fooled. Poor, poor outing this last one. He had better raised his game on the next job.

Wike, the political animal: Barr. Wike guns (no pun please) for Rivers’ government house. Swashbuckling Wike is your usual carpetbagger. For him politics must be an end and the end of all things must be politics. He was chief of staff and perhaps protégé of incumbent Governor Chibuike Amechi, who in the tradition of the PDP, nominated him for a ministerial appointment. Hardly had he gotten to Abuja than he bared his bottom to his ‘master’ (as we say in Igboland) and now threatens to chase him out of town.

Classic PDP subterfuge politics but that is not the story for today. Wike has spent the better part of his tenure as the substantive head of a ministry that one rates the most important in the land. Under his watch, tertiary education was shut down for as long as he bothered to reckon and he never really cared. But it would not even be fair to judge him by such strikes as they have become a part of Nigeria’s education ‘culture’.

Unfortunately, there is nothing else to judge Wike by on the job because he was busy politicking and was more in Port Harcourt than Abuja. We cannot even assess his capacity because he did not exert himself on the job in any notable manner for us to pass any judgment whichever way. His obsession was always the Rivers’ government house and it is well we leave him with the voters of the state. Let it be on record, however, that he never really attempted to do our job as education minister.

Maku, made for the establishment:Mr. Labaran Maku seeks to take over Nasarawa State’s house. Maku was always in his elements in the federal cabinet. A one-time student union leader and rights activist, we will remember him mainly for being the Squiler of the cabinet. Not because he was the chief spokesman of the government but for his often unreasoned and unreasonable rationalisation of every action of his ‘boss’.

You may argue that he could not have done it otherwise but we have seen occupants of that office in the past do that job with so much equanimity and common sense. Maku neither lifted his office nor left a recognisable legacy. He brought nothing new and he did even the routine poorly. Now he wants to ‘liberate’ his poor Nasarawa State. Well, Expresso wishes him and his people well but hastens to remind that his performance in FEC for over four years was dismal.

Obanikoro, the great Lagos gambit: He wants another shot at the Lagos house. He is back on a familiar beat of angling for the Lagos house. After his long stint in Ghana as Nigeria’s ambassador, he was handed this FEC job which he had been at for less than one year. Defence is a tricky job and he was junior minister at that. But a terror war is raging and there is nary a sign that he applied his mind to it or to anything during his short spell.

Koro has been in public life or shall we say glare for quite some time and sorry to say that he has not carved the persona of a man with any mission or vision whatsoever. Why should Lagosians vote for him? What track record is he going to have to sell now? Nothing to report.

Ortom, Wogu, Ishaku, a dozen a dime: In other not to waste your precious time dear reader, let’s gather up the remaining three fellows and price them as one; what my people will call ikwekota onu – that is selling off the remnants of your goods on the cheap after a long day, so that you may get on to something more important or just call it a day.

Samuel Ortom wants to govern Benue State, Wogu seeks the Abia house and Ishaku is gunning for Taraba. One never noticed these people standing erect (again, no pun please) even for one day in all their time at the FEC; not to say anything about standing for anything one remembers. Now they want to be governors. One wishes them luck and sincerely hopes that if perchance they get there, they would disappoint me; I would gladly cover my face in shame and recant when that happens.

Uduaghan: Ode to salubrity

I met Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State once; I think it was late 2011 and the first encounter was on the lawn tennis court in the governor’s quarters. He was hard at play with some of his aides; an after-work knock-about it seemed. He did not seem such a great tennis player and some of his aides-opponents beat him real good, showing him no reverence on the court. But he took it in his strides, turning the other cheek so to speak.
He was sweating profusely as he left the court and led us to the lodge to grant my colleague and I an interview after he had freshened up. One had met governors; very few allow time for after-work exercise because they seem always to be operating from under the weight of what is of course, an onerous responsibility. In fact for many, work is a 24-hour thing, thus to find a governor playing in the evening was fascinating. But also apparent on that first encounter was his quiet, stolid mien and the evidence of strengths subdued and restrained.
However, as he celebrated his 60th birthday midweek, his wife Roli put it all in perspective in an interview she granted Daily Sun. She said: “We have been married for 26 years plus and he has never raised his voice at me. It’s like he has shock absorber hidden somewhere in his body.” She went further to aptly describe it as “a very sensitive conscience” that will never want to offend. Yes, his must be among the most cultured and cultivated minds in the polity. It must be something from his training as a medical doctor and his deep public service work experience: let’s call it salubrity. This is wishing him many more salubrious years ahead.

What a week that was, a week that has presented us with a salad of very important personalities at the dinner table of history; sublime history stealing through the life of a nation like a thief. The dramatis personae are the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.), former Works Minister Dr. Hassan Lawal and former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi.

  Dasuki’s umbrage and Nigeria as ‘money miss road’: The ignorant world out there not conversant with the shenanigans of international politics and power play would see Nigeria today as a cash-crazed country of people bereft of sense or even sensibility. Why else would a country this size haul cash all over the place shopping for arms and ammunition in dark alleys in this digital age?

And why has the NSA, Col. Sambo been bungling serially, basic arms acquisition routine since his appointment? The first time, he was reported to have disbursed $3 million to some shadowy Pentagon go-betweens early in the year to procure arms for prosecuting the terrorism war. That deal hit a dead end.

Three weeks ago, Nigeria’s ‘raw cash’ of $9.3 million was intercepted by the South African authorities as some official ‘touts’ of the federal government tried to offload it at an obscure airport ostensibly for some black market arms deal. The dust from that odious scandal was yet to settle when the South Africans landed Nigeria another killer blow with the interception of another sum of $5.7 million in very strange and unsavoury circumstance.

Dasuki’s outburst: It is bad enough that Nigeria flunks her critical intelligence transactions; being imperceptive and making elementary mistakes; Dasuki’s angry outbursts threatening retaliation against SA’s business interests in Nigeria is, sorry to say, primitive and negates the rules of decency in international corporate ethics. He must realise that SA’s law, like in all properly ordered places, is no respecter of personalities. It is no respecter of ‘big man’; not even the president can escape investigation and trial when he contravenes the law.

Second, in procurements of such sensitivity, why was the diplomatic channel ignored; why were the intelligence and military channels not co-opted?

Third, do we need any extra-sensory perception to figure out that if the West (for reasons best known to them) would not sell you arms, it would ensure that you would never be able to procure from areas of its spheres of influence. It cannot be by chance that Nigeria’s efforts to get arms from South Africa’s dark corridors are not only being frustrated but exposed. Get wise Mr. NSA and look East if we truly seek for arms.

  Finally, it is a mark of Nigeria’s acute debility that her Defence Industry Corporation (DIC) cannot produce basic arms and ammunition, the type that would have been sufficient to tame a minor insurgency like Boko Haram. Its contemporaries in Brazil, India and Malaysia are producing fighter jets. What gives Nigeria the impetus to contest for a permanent UN seat with SA and Egypt when we cannot manufacture basic rifles? When is a nation? Who is thinking? As Dr. Lawal coolly walks away from a N6b fraud charge: A time would come very soon when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) would completely lose the moral authority to prosecute anyone. Why for instance should I submit myself for prosecution over say a measly N10 million matter while government officials who have purloined billions of naira are daily allowed to march gleefully into the sunshine with their loot intact under their belt?

Consider this sordid Nigerian story. Late in September, EFCC counsel Wahab Shittu must have felt like a circus clown at the Federal High Court, Abuja, as he told the court to throw out the 47-count charge suit of N6.4 billion against former Minister of Works Dr. Hassan Lawal.

Lawal and his co-conspirators practically walked away with this sum meant for building a bridge across River Benue, linking Nasarawa and Kogi states. This matter had been in court for about four years; over 130 exhibits had been tendered, enough to nail the rogues and put them away for a very long time. But Lawal was dragged to court in the first instance because he must have brought trouble upon himself by repudiating the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. The Federal Government does not have that rather tacky habit of prosecuting its thieving members; where are you gonna start from if almost everyone is in on it?

But my sympathy goes out to my brother, Shittu, who was yeomanly in carrying out the dirty job. Hear him: “Without prejudice to the merit or otherwise of the matter, I have firm instruction that the case against the accused persons, all of them, be discontinued.

“To assure you that I did not make the application out of my own volition, I asked them to put it in writing and they did. So, as an obedient servant, I have no other choice than to carry out the instruction. I hereby apply that the charges be discontinued and the accused persons discharged.”

It is obvious that Lawal must have made up with PDP. There is no doubt that this order must have come from our formless Minister of (no) Justice, Mohammed Adoke. His has been a glittering legacy of saving corrupt officials from going to jail. Apart from Lawal, there is a long list of highly corrupt officials he has sprung from going to prison. Adoke has a large FMCG (Fast Moving Corrupted Goods) factory and its hot product is called ‘pleabargain country cakes’. They will plea-bargain the country at the least opportunity the rate they are going at it.

Have you ever wondered why Nigeria is currently afflicted with so much carcinogenic corruption yet no public official ever gets convicted? Since Adoke captured the EFCC a few years ago and put it under his armpit, the commission has suffered fatal asphyxiation. Those damaging the soul of this great nation will surely face the harsh judgment of history.

The coronation of Peter Obi

Woe alas! Peter Obi finally bit the bullet. It was bound to happen. In fact it was only a question of time. In deed the former governor of Anambra State was on Tuesday crowned the de facto Igbo leader at a very complex period of both Nigeria and Igbo epoch. It was at his private residence in GRA, Onitsha, that the cream of Igbo elite gathered ostensibly to persuade him to jump ship from his party APGA to PDP. It is a formidable roll call: Ike Ekweremadu, Ayim Pius Ayim, Gov. T.A. Orji, Gov. Akpabio, Emeka Ihedioha, Hope Uzodinma, Ben Obi, Uche Chukwumerije, to name a few. If there ever was a powerful delegation to a man’s house in our generation, that was one. If there was a quality representation of Igbo leadership, that was one. Is the Onuiyi Haven being remade one better? One hopes the crowd realised that they had just anointed a leader? One hopes Obi has acquired the grit, the political maturity and the sense of history to wear this flowing robe. One regrets that he had to jettison APGA and join the black-hearted PDP; but APGA remained a stillbirth, an ogbanje that is doomed from conception. One regrets that he had to emerge at a point when Ndigbo are weak and prostrate; are a negligible quantity in the Nigerian political equation. But the years ahead will tell. The unlikely politician with the effeminate voice, Obi, turned out the pleasant surprise of this era, acquitting himself wonderfully well as governor of Anambra State. However, the job at hand is expanded, term-less if not lifelong, thus terrifically onerous. It requires the sagacity of a Cicero and the guiles of a Machiavelli.

The logic of the loony: The raging war in Nigeria’s Northeast borders and the role of the U.S. and its allies remind me of the logic of the loony in the village market. In his peregrinations, he would often tell anyone who would listen how he did not start the great fire but saw bonfires everywhere in the village and not to be out-done, torched his own father’s house too. His ‘logic’: let all the burning burn together so that all the quenching would be quenched together.

 On August 29, on this space, I raised questions the United States and its allies must answer concerning our five-year-old Boko Haram insurgency that has now morphed into a full scale military encounter with the Nigerian State. When I wrote that piece, BH had captured just one town (Gwoza) in Borno State. Today, in spite of the best efforts of our military, including aerial bombardments; BH threatens to overrun Maiduguri, the capital of Borno.

In brief, I had asked why the incipient crumbling of this bumbling behemoth called Nigeria has coincided with America’s prediction about 10 years ago. I had wondered why the efforts of the U.S. and its friends to rescue the abducted Chibok girls and help stem the tide of Islamist insurgency in Nigeria petered out with the same intensity with which they rushed into the fray a few months ago. I asked how come the rascals suddenly got better armed and emboldened after the intervention of the U.S. I queried how America and Britain could intervene in Iraq and Syria, states of near-anarchy, but found it difficult to do same in Nigeria. Numerous other questions were raised in that piece. And one wonders, are we confronted with the loony logic here: let it burn so we may pick the pieces later?

Lame and fantabulous excuses:Since then, one has been able to glean what might seem like a blanket answer to these posers from various sources but one still thinks they are unacceptable and, indeed, very lame excuses from our Western friends. Their response only reinforces the conjecture of many that there may be more to this BH affair than meets the eye. Those who have been suggesting an international conspiracy may well have something.

The fantabulous excuse U.S. officials have mooted for sneaking out of the Sambisa forest and out of the country is that Nigeria’s military establishment has been deeply infiltrated by the BH group, therefore, the Americans feared they would be badly compromised working with the military. It sounds preposterous that the U.S. actually came in, mapped the forest, determined the location of the abducted Chibok girls, got other intelligence that might help end the insurgency yet, they simply walked away on account that they can’t trust Nigeria’s military? This is difficult to believe.

Pressed recently by the fast-rising quality Sunday newspaper, The Niche, a U.S. embassy spokesman confirmed that: “U.S. assistance to Nigeria amounts to $626.9 million in fiscal year 2012, $699.8 million in fiscal year 2013 and an estimated $705.9.million in fiscal year 2014.” This converts to a total of about N329 billion in funding assistance over three years to the Nigerian government to tackle the BH insurgency. The most critical question for the day, therefore, is: which Nigerian government officials are the U.S. dealing with in disbursing these enormous funds in the last three years? If the U.S. can trust Nigerian officials with cash, how come they cannot be trusted with vital intelligence to break the back of the insurgents? Why has the Nigerian military remained ill-equipped in spite of such inflow of U.S. dollars? Why was the support not in the form of quality weaponry and ammunition instead of cash? Its air force is still grappling with 40-year-old Alpha jets which at 20,000 feet above sea level may pick out the difference between a praying ground and a military training ground. Going by Monday’s clandestine South African arms purchase debacle, why are  the U.S. and the West delaying delivering government’s arms order?

Again, where are BH’s heavy weapons coming from? Where are they stockpiled? Who is paying for them, through which means? Where are their training bases? We are talking about an area of operation that is just about one-tenth of the country and we insist that between the U.S. and its allies, they can answer these questions and quietly cap this small eruption. If they can operate in such states of chaos and anomy that Iraq and Syria now represent, Nigeria is no doubt an oasis of serenity in comparison.

Parable of the wimp and his abducted wife: to set the record straight as was done in the first article, this is actually a Save-Our-Soul (SOS) cry; it is by no means a suggestion that the U.S. and its allies owe us a duty to intervene in matters purely internal and sovereign; not in the least. It is indeed an admission that we have failed and in no position to help ourselves. We have become like the wimp in the tale whose abode was invaded by a band of marauders. They had carried off his dear wife and instead of chasing after them, he  cried to his friend. His friend set off in hot pursuit of the rascals and found the poor woman violated and dumped not too far away.

The ‘kindly’ friend had taken the traumatised woman to his house ostensibly to stabilise her. After a few market days, the wimp knocked on his friend’s gate to retrieve his wife. But his friend announced to him from over the fence: hold your peace dear friend, your wife is in no condition to return to you just yet; besides, if you were this anxious when she was hauled off by those rascals, she would be in your house now. Moral: what you cannot stand up for you may not lay claim to.

In other words, yes, the sovereignty may have buckled under but we insist that we cannot apply the loony logic either to let it all burn so we may pick the pieces later. And to insist that there is none in Nigeria who can be trusted with useful intelligence is to mock the entire Nigerian universe. That would be a terrible mistake. A fallen Nigeria will make a catastrophic splash across Africa. Or is anyone for a juicy clean-up contract?

Tread softly, Prof. Jega

I do not subscribe to the call for the resignation of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, over the proposed restructuring of polling units (PUs). It is rather inchoate to do so besides the fact that one thinks he remains one of the few shinning lights in our much-debased public service. One is actually taken aback reading the usually intrepid Dr. Alex Ekwueme joining a band-wagon of raucous elders to call for Jega’s resignation.

First, the so-called PUs restructure is still a proposal, a framework for states’ INEC to review. It is true that the new structure is inordinately skewed against Southern Nigeria and worse so, the Southeast. We must all study it carefully and make our input and not seek to sack Jega yet.

It does not add up that the South would have only 30 per cent of the proposed PUs against 70 for the North. It is even preposterous that the entire Southeast would be allotted almost the same number of PUs as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). This negates all logic as the five states of the Southeast are larger than the FCT in terms of land mass and population. Again, regardless of the results of Nigeria’s voodoo population censuses, it is a fact that the Southeast is among the most densely populated areas of Africa.

 We therefore urge INEC to shelve the restructure for now until it has achieved a foolproof electronic voters’ capture. Jega must be experienced enough to know that most of the voters’ lists he premised the new PU structure upon are spurious. We understand that INEC seeks to achieve logistical convenience and smoother election-day results but all that can wait till post 2015.

Tread softly, Prof. Jega