The Nation Newspaper

Category: Steve Osuji

  • Confab: The merry makers in Abuja

    This column will not be distracted by the on-going grand revelry in Abuja which most of us have been deceived to think is a national conference. As has been noted once before in this column, it is indeed more for me a national cake sharing conference than a serious meeting of minds by people in a troubled nation needing urgent catharsis. I dismissed this jamboree first because the chief convener, President Goodluck Jonathan, is not particularly interested in a conference or any scheme to lift Nigeria from her current morass; two, he does not really appreciate the fact that the country he oversees is in extremely dire straits; three, there are a few quick actions he could take in his capacity as the numero uno which will begin to set the country aright, but has neglected to take; four, he could have dredged up the reports of over half a dozen past confabs, (back to Aburi) and set up a small committee to pick out some of those crucial matters troubling us.

    Finally on why I think this conference is a ruse, should it by any chance conclude that a certain Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is the crooked log that upsets our bonfire, would Mr. President gracefully stand down and allow an interim government set our dear country aright? You guessed it!

    We are back on that worn path that we have walked aimlessly since after the civil war. When each head of state reach the end of his tethers and has no more tricks in his bag, he plays the final gambit: set up a talk show; assemble all the politicians and kakistocrats in the land and throw in a sprinkling of the so-called progressives and critics; dole out enough money for them to revel for a few months while the head perfects his next move.

    The scheme is working quite fine so far: so many compatriots who have never seen a million naira in one bunch in the last decade; people whose bank accounts have been cold and forlorn for years suddenly find their treasuries leap to life and a series of glad-tiding alerts warm their hearts every forth-night. Wow! What a fresh lease of life, what good life, what good fortune! In the ensuing licentious three months, the city of Abuja would hear it from some of our nouveau riche delegates; those who love strong drinks would get bacchanal and quaff the quaff of their lives, while those who are hot in the tail will find solace in the bosom of the city’s Cleopatras. The real story of the Jonathan confab will however be told in the winter of the years to come.

    We want to wager that this talk show has the potential to turn out worse than previous ones because of the set of people attending now. We are a more thoroughly dumbed-down nation now. Very few in that hall understand the enormity of issues at stake and the attendant urgency; half the people are gerontocrats who would sleep through the show while many couldn’t care less whichever way it goes – they are there for the money and would do anything (including filibustering) for even more money. Lastly, how many other countries have had as many conferences and still remain in the doldrums? Could it be that we suffer collective mental impairment and require conferences upon conferences before we can sort basic questions of nationhood?

    The power paradox

    While we indulge in what one wants to consider as inanities, important matters that affect the very soul of the polity are passing us by. The other day in far away Windhoek, Namibia, we were told that President Goodluck Jonathan, while on a visit, signed a MoU for the setting up of a refinery in the tiny southern African country. According to report, it would be a private venture between Nigerian and Namibian businessmen. This was all the information made available. But we ask, does it require a bilateral MoU if some businessmen seek to expand their frontiers? Why Namibia which has no crude oil and not Nigeria which has crude but no refineries? If our president could catalyse the building of a refinery in a distant land, why has he not done so for his country that has been embroiled in energy crisis even to this moment? There are so many questions to be asked which suggest that something is fishy, if not phony, about this refinery.

    From Namibia to the Democratic Republic of Congo where yet another MoU has been reportedly signed by Nigeria for the importation of electricity from the Inga Power Dam Plants. According to Mr. Mohammed Wakil, Minister of State for Power, Inga hydro plant being built on the Congo River is expected to generate about 40,000 megawatts on full exploitation. Nigeria is expected to take a chunk of the power to form a West Africa regional power hub. Brilliant idea if we were operating at the magnitude we ought.

    Do we really want to wire power from Congo DR, across three countries to Nigeria? We can’t even transmit all of 5,000 mw today if we generated it! Who will bankroll this seeming outlandish scheme? Just like in energy, the power sector is in a state of chaos and we need all the investment we can get at home. It is like sending troops to Afghanistan when a war is raging at home. We must quit playing games with our country.

  • Small men, big jobs

    A further reflection upon the macabre Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) job interview of two weeks ago brings one to the conclusion that we are being scourged by so many small men occupying big positions. A scan across the horizon reveals that many public officials are ensconced atop such helms that overwhelm them ab initio and leave them floating like waifs all through the duration of their appointment. Since they scant understand the magnitude of their assignments, its essence and strategic imports, they embrace the ephemeral trappings of the office and enmesh themselves in the great money rush.

    Ministry of Interior is among the most strategic offices in any land. It oversees, immigrations, prisons, fire service, civil defence among other para-military organs. Before the NIS deathly job saga did you ever hear of a certain Comrade Patrick Abba Moro? For one who has been at the helm of these strategic agencies of state since 2011, did you ever hear him make a policy statement that envisioned this high office? Did you ever see him visiting our derelict prisons in search of hands-on insight; did you ever see him at far-flung immigration border posts in quest of first hand knowledge of the conditions prevalent out there?

    Apparently, all he has concentrated his mind on since 2011 would be how to organize a job scam that would fleece thousands of poor Nigerian jobless youths. Because the whole exercise was a grand ruse and his mind was set on a nearly N1 billion stash, Comrade Moro’s mind apparently shut down. He stopped thinking; he circumvented all rules, he bypassed NIS which duty it is to recruit; of course he could not conceptualize interview procedures. Only his money was on his mind. Would any serious country appoint such a one to head her interior ministry? And would any man with a modicum of honour still sit in office after his grand heist consumed so many lives and brought national odium? What a dangerously small mind.

    Everywhere you turn under the Goodluck Jonathan dispensation there is hardly a redeeming figure who truly understands the depth of responsibility inherent in his or her high office. All you see are very small people scurrying around with intent only on finding the gravy. Consider Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke at the petroleum ministry: while we are yet to digest her private jet saga, the latest news that streamed in last Monday is that Nigeria plans joint petroleum products refinery with Namibia. She has proven her lack of capacity to the point that she cannot even manage the arithmetic of her job. She cooks the figures from our oil industry so badly that the whole nation is dying of heart burn from the char she feeds daily. Everyday there is an outbreak of sad news and figures from Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s quarters like an epidemic.

    As if these were not enough, a petroleum refinery that will be jointly owned by Nigeria and Namibia is in the offing. This was one of the major decisions reached during President Jonathan’s recent visit to Namibia. The refinery, according to report, will be sited in Walvis Bay and will be wholly private sector financed. Now isn’t it preposterous that Nigeria would catalyze the building of a refinery in another country while there is none functioning properly within her shores in the last two decades? We are the only major crude oil producer that imports all her petroleum products whereas the cost of importing these products in one year would build giant petrochemical complexes

    Nigeria’s vast oil and gas sector has ample capacity to turn around the economy of Nigeria in a very short time. Our gas properly harnessed, would drive electricity while the petrochemicals would fire industries and awaken huge export potentialities across sectors, creating massive quality jobs for our youths. But all these are seemingly lost on Mrs. Alison-Madueke, a billowing material girl who is obviously more enamored with jet-setting, jewelry and all sorts of silly lares et penates that would soon fade away. Surely her mind cannot accommodate such intangibles as legacy and history. Why is history not shaped like a giant pearl just for her sake? One thing is sure though, let them spirit away our collective refinery to Bechaunaland if they choose; the day of reckoning will surely come.

    It is almost an all ramifying phenomenon which is why you cannot single out any outstanding public officials today. Key MDAs that drive our nationhood (health, agriculture, education, industry, science, etc) are dormant and semi-moribund having been sucked of substance and essence. This is what happens to a country when small people take charge of important state affairs.

    BOOK BLURB: 

    Of Conscience and History

    Students of recent Nigerian political history will find “Conscience and History – My Story”, by Peter Odili a rich collection. If you overlook the “Detailed Sectoral Achievements” on chapter F, the book offers some noteworthy insights and uncharted perspectives of our current political experience coming from someone who did not only see it all but participated extensively. Dr. Odili was a two-term governor of Rivers State from 1999 to 2007.
    Conscience cast some fresh light on the dark intrigues and subterfuge that pervaded President Obasanjo’s last days and his endgame; the last minute shenanigans that earned us the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and current President Goodluck Jonathan. The book showcases the devious uses Obasanjo deployed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) under Mallam Nuhu Ribadu to. How Odili’s presidential quest was scuttled by power musketeers who stood to the last minutes to ensure that not only did Odili not get the PDP ticket, his name was expunged from the already prepared speech of the nominee, Umaru Yar’Adua which was to declare Odili vice presidential nominee.
    The book is also an interesting story of a brilliant academic career and an all-round sportsman in his innocent school days; it is the story of the Nigerian civil war and its effect on a fledgling young man. It is a book which some of the actions recorded in it still reverberates. A book which details some legal proceedings that are now landmark precedents in Nigeria’s jurisprudence. It is history in motion, a great read.

  • 2nd Niger Bridge: How Jonathan suckered Ndigbo

    2nd Niger Bridge: How Jonathan suckered Ndigbo

    A native saying in Igboland interprets to the effect that if you make yourself a house rat, the pussy cat will have you for meat. There is no doubt that the current crop of Igbo leaders has morphed into ignoble rats and President Goodluck Jonathan has been playing cat with them. We all remember how the Ohaneze under the leadership of Chief Ralph Uwechue (recently demised and may his soul find repose) personally signed those obnoxious adverts endorsing Jonathan on behalf of Ndigbo. It was unprecedented in the history of Ohaneze or any other major socio-political group for that matter to issue such blanket endorsement. But that was what a sordidly compromised Ohaneze did in 2011. And that is how the southeast states handed Jonathan the highest votes in that election. That is how Ndigbo spread across the country contributed immensely in giving him victory (25% of votes cast) in many states.

    If you thought Ohaneze was compromised three years ago, today, whatever is left of that much-debased body has been handed over to the presidency for a cold, sodden pot of pottage. It does not matter that hardly any of the promises President Jonathan had dished out to Ndigbo from 2007 has been met but have we not seen a stream of even more endorsements gushing from our so-called leaders for Jonathan’s second term even before he has formally declared? As many Igbo leaders scurrying around Aso Rock know, Ndigbo are more deprived now and kept in the fringes under Jonathan’s administration than at any other time. Records show that under this dispensation, the southeast zone got the least vote and disbursements for capital projects.

    Jonathan made numerous promises to Ndigbo but we have come to know that his promises are forgotten the moment he is done reading his speech. Name them: dredging of the River Niger and completion of the Onitsha Inland port (the twain haphazardly executed and abandoned); the dualisation of the Enugu-Abakaliki highway, construction of a dry port in Aba and completion of the power plants in Alaoji and Egbema, to name just a few. Today, there is no power plant functioning in the entire southeast, the private effort by Prof. Barth Nnaji is being frustrated and the much celebrated international airport in Enugu is no better than a wretched domestic wing of an airport.

    But in all these, the most galling is the Second Niger Bridge. The first misconception about this bridge is that it is a southeast project, but we say no; this is a strategic national monument that bridges the divide between the north and south of Nigeria. Remember former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s vote- for- project caper over this same bridge. Obasanjo promised Ndigbo this bridge during his 2003 election campaign among several other projects. It was bad enough that he forgot to deliver it; a few days to his exit from office in 2007 he staged an elaborate ground-breaking ceremony which turned out to be the mother of all deception and mockery of a people. After Obasanjo was gone, the Ministry of Works revealed to a shocked world that the ceremony at the Niger Bridge was a ruse as there was no file to start with.

    A second bridge on the great River Niger is a vote catcher any day in the Southeast. This explains why when Jonathan came along in 2011 he played the same old bridge trick on Ndigbo. I will build this bridge for you before the end of my tenure if you vote me, he told the gullible tribe down the banks of the old River Niger. Now totally disconnected from his previous pledges, he had gone to Obi of Onitsha recently for a rehearsal of the 2015 election campaign when he was reminded about the bridge. Yes, the bridge, the bridge! It actually ought to be nearing completion. Pronto, the project was ‘kicked-off’ in an elaborate ceremony about two weeks later. It is to be a PPP to be completed in 2018 and the bridge will be tolled for 25 years by the concessionaires, Julius Berger.

    What manner of arrangement is this that allows for 25 years tolling? Will the bridge be paved with gold slabs? Who controls this 25-year bondage? Yet Igbo leaders gushed with appreciation; one particularly who spoke at the occasion of the ground-breaking said, “President Jonathan has demonstrated an uncommon love for Ndigbo and Nigeria at large by the commencement of work on the second Niger Bridge.”

    But Igbo wu Igbo unu mu kwa anya? Will you allow yourselves be suckered again. Ta bu gboo; what you do not get now you may well say goodbye to.

     

  • The Peter paradigm

    The Peter paradigm

    hough I had attended Obi’s valedictory service in Awka, Anambra State last Saturday and listened to the outpourings of encomium, I had long made up my mind about the governor, his tenure and temperament. The Awka show only served to reinforce what I believed. If his emergence in Anambra politics was turbulent, his time in office turned out rather paradigmatic but not for the reasons most people tout.

    History will remember Peter Obi glowingly not because he troubled the red earth of Anambra so much or that he let loose a pantheon of brick and mortar over that yet rambling and shambolic entity. Peter is no big dreamer. His essence was his ability to put a leash on power and put it into sedation for all of eight years. Remember the famous words of Lord Acton, the British historian that, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…There is no worse heresy than that office sanctifies the holder of it.” It was the reverse for Obi and Prof Pat Utomi writing in The Punch last Wednesday made the point clearer: “How does a conference of this nature discuss the simple life in political office? Yet in truth office holders squander a great part of the commonwealth in living power.”

    To make it more picturesque, Obi is like the matador who killed the raging bull – power. He got to Anambra when the state was disheveled and dysfunctional and her people had lost every faith in government. In fact, civic and political consciousness was a long forgotten past-time. Before he came, it was an environment of each to himself and God for all. The little palliatives that was wrought by his immediate predecessor, Dr. Chris Ngige, was undone by his godfathers who tried to yank him off the seat of power violently, torching state landmarks and government offices in the process.

    Obi came to a state infested by a crop of wild, ruling party godfathers and uncouth moneybags. That he, a political neophyte, could defeat them in a popular election says something about him and when they stole his mandate; that he could trail them through our moldy law courts until he reclaimed his victory and ruled for eight years would make for a refreshing case study in postgraduate political science classes. Not to mention his patience and tenacity but the legal precedents he has bequeathed Nigeria’s jurisprudence.

    Having killed the ogre of power and buried it, Obi set about running the state with so much commonsense, civility and frugality. Government business across the country today (except the Gov. Fashola’s example in Lagos State) is about 90 percent frivolity and barely 10 per cent work; he managed to reverse that by cutting most of the frills and shunning endless ceremonies and red tapes. Example: On a bright day in Awka, the state capital, you would encounter over a dozen convoys with fleet longer than the governor’s blazing noisily through the awkward city. It was reported that Governor Obi would often give them right of way until most of them came to learn the lesson in humility and public etiquette he was trying to teach them ever so gently.

    The enlightened trader and businessman in him must have made him frugal to the point that his party members almost raised placards against him at a point. But he was headstrong: he wound down governors lodges and guest houses littered all over the country and put them to rent. He abhors entourages large or small; he contained revelry, including champagne quaffing, in government house. He simply cut those excesses that are signposts of federal and most state governments across the land. This must explain the phenomenal feat of not taking a dime of loan for eight years in an era almost every state is on a reckless borrowing binge; and to think that the state got only an average of N3 billion monthly in federal allocation in Obi’s tenure. Not only did he not borrow, he left $150 million in cash and an investment in bonds worth about N30 billion. This is unprecedented in today’s Nigeria.

    Obi will also be remembered for his uncommon dedication to the Igbo. Being a product of a weak and fractured political party, it was wise and pragmatic to align to a centre that is benign and conciliatory. It is a strategy that worked for him.

    Road not taken

    Though he had an integrated development policy through which his government made some impact in education, health and road infrastructure, he was obviously stumped by the local government system which can be said to be nonexistent during his tenure. There still is no replacement for well-structured LGAs and LCDAs for a holistic development of a state. There must be something in the Nigerian system that has killed the third tier of government. Obi was also stymied by party politics as he was unable to grow his party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA. The party in eight years remains as stunted as he met it. Lastly, he was unable to expand the scope of the state’s economy, living mainly off the monthly federal allocation. One example: Nigeria imports palm oil massively today yet the economy of the entire southeast region ran largely on this commodity.

     Climb down to a

    federal appointment

    Obi acquitted himself quite honorably in office as governor of Anambra State and has attained a height that would lead him to statesmanship if he stays on that trajectory. An appointment of any sort as the speculation is rife, would be a climb down. He could support the centre and even nominate appointees but he must shun applying the reverse gear by going to sit in any cabinet. In an age where Ndigbo are a headless body, he has his job well defined if he seeks another job.

    PDP: Angst of the returnees

    Is it possible that the barbarians who stormed the Lion House, the abode of the Enugu State Government last Saturday were marionettes of a former governor of the state who seeks to return to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)? Recall that Chimaraoke Nnamani a former two-term governor and senator has been scrambling to rejoin the PDP recently. Last January, he reportedly staged a backdoor entrée by corralling his hapless ward’s chairman to organise a kangaroo re-registration exercise. Consider the joke of a former governor re-joining a party and the current governor who is the leader is not aware.
    The same jankara scenario played out in Abia state where the former governor is also intent on returning to his spittle in repudiation of the sitting governor. Here the desperate returnee, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu recently boasted in an interview (Sun Feb. 24) that: “Abia State might not be delivered to the PDP in the next election if we are not there because there is no where in Abia that people will ever vote PDP into power if I’m not there and that’s the truth…” What hubris? It is such Machiavellian mindset that generates bad blood and breeds crisis. It is a shame that Igbo leaders who have held leadership positions through these years cannot rise to statesmanship; they are still wading in the muck of petty ward politics and are embroiled in juvenile chicanery. Whither Igbo leaders?

    Has  Jonathan given up on Benue-Plateau?

    They are the killing fields of Nigeria – Benue and Plateau states of the middle belt. More Nigerians are killed there in one week than Boko Haram kills in six months. Villages are razed and thousands turned refugees in their homeland. The government and even the rest of Nigeria have given up on this land of vultures as a vicious war which has been on for over a decade rages quietly. But it all took another turn last Tuesday when the Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam’s convoy was confronted in a gun duel for about one hour. He was said to have escaped by the skin of his teeth. Speaking to a community shortly after, he reportedly said: “My people are being butchered and their homes destroyed. So if the security agents, especially the military, cannot provide security for us, we will have to defend ourselves.” Who says Nigeria is not failing?

  • Boko Haram: Where on earth is the NSA?

    Boko Haram: Where on earth is the NSA?

    Last week, we had asked that the Oil Minister be relieved of the misery of carrying a burden too heavy for her dainty shoulder and save us all from an otherwise imminent peril. Oil and gas is our most strategic asset and not to hand it to a nimbler mind is to court disaster. The raging fuel scarcity across the country is a vindication of that call; it is also a simple testimony that this job is beyond the ken of Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke. We need no seer or specialist to reveal to us that the state of our country today reflects our crises-ridden oil industry under Diezani’s watch.

    Just as oil and gas is the life of our economy, security is the essence of our polity and conversely the National Security Adviser (NSA) sits on the most important seat in the land second only to the president’s. In like manner, that position must go to the very best mind suitable for the job. This point becomes more poignant in this season of relentless terror assault on Nigeria’s sovereignty. This is why we are asking in exasperation: where in the world is Mr. Sambo Dasuki, the NSA ducking? The former security adviser, Owoye Azazi, did not suffer this much shellacking in the hands of the insurgents before he got the boot. But today, with the state of emergency in place, the fiends have continued to pummel the north east of Nigeria, especially Borno and Yobe without let.

    “Where is the NSA?” becomes more urgent and strident if we consider that in the attack in Mafa Local Government of Borno State, last Sunday, it was reported that the locals got ‘intelligence’ of the impending mayhem about two weeks earlier. It was indeed for this reason that just about 35 people were killed when the marauders came rampaging, otherwise it would have been the mother of all slaughter, we learnt. Most women and children were said to have vacated the community.

    We cry in disgust because despite about two weeks’ notice, the terrorists overran and torched the military camp in Mafa as our soldiers reportedly fled. How many innocent Nigerians (including military and security personnel) have been slaughtered in the Northeast in the last two weeks and hurriedly dumped in mass graves like mere dirt?

    We are outraged because the NSA seems merely to chase his tail. We cannot see much professionalism in this fight against terror; we do not see on display, superior intelligence and that pre-eminence of arcane military-cum counter-insurgency intensity. We still see our usual lackadaisical, business-as-usual attitude. For instance, in a state under military garrison, how could a portion thereof come under massive gunfire and explosive attacks for hours without a response from the military? How could so many vehicles in a convoy bearing heavy arms and ammunition move freely about undetected? What is the quality of espionage, surveillance and pre-emptive counter-insurgency?

    We are horrified that since 2009 we seem not to have a basic satellite mapping of the critical areas; we cannot track arms purchase and fund transfers. We cannot make an example of any financiers or elite strategists for this group. We still have not formed solid bilateral co-operation with our neighbours; we still whine and whinge about these fellows escaping through the borders. And who is stopping us from chasing the hoodlums through the bounds and strafing them to smithereens if we are the giant we claim to be and if there was a modicum of seriousness in this whole affair?

    We take umbrage at the turn of events in this war and no excuses seem tenable for what is clearly a leadership failure. One expected Nigeria’s military cum security establishments to have latched on to this adversity to build a world-class team – better organised, better trained, collaborating and benchmarking against the best in the world. But what we hear are sad stories about rancour within the military hierarchies, we hear about so much unprofessional conducts and lack of patriotic zeal in the prosecution of this war. We are galled and inconsolable when some of our boys are brought home for burial bearing that ultimate mark of defeat – a slashed throat.

    We acknowledge that it is a complex, unconventional war; we know that we are faced against a misguided evil that is quick to self-immolate. We also know the terrain is vast and difficult yet we think we have allowed the grass to grow under our feet in this war. And we wager that much of the lapses reside in the office of the NSA because by virtue of his position, he is the chief driver of the war. Maybe we should rethink that office. Perhaps a sound Minister of Defence should render the NSA invalid and superfluous?

    Fuel scarcity! It’s brain

    scarcity, stupid

    Another season of madness has come upon us. Petrol stations across the country have turned to places of bedlam and anomie. Places where Nigerians gather daily from morning till late into the night like a crazed mob, to abuse themselves, throw tantrums and duel in the bid to take fuel. They even meet their ghastly end as a besieged fuel station sometimes catches a spark and go up in flames putting to waste, hundreds of jerry cans, tens of cars and some hapless humans.

    Imagine pictures of this scenario on the internet. What is the rest of the world thinking about Nigeria? Nigerians sheepishly endure this punishment which is probably not known anywhere else on this planet; at least not in any oil-rich nation. We gleefully call it ‘fuel scarcity’ but fuel is never scarce anywhere, it is brains that is scarce in Nigeria. Imagine fuel being scarce in the U.S, UK or even Algeria for one week?

    We have allowed some fellows to continuously hoodwink us into the mindset that fuel could suddenly become scarce. We allow these fellows to get away with the criminal supposition that just because they cannot run refineries, refineries cannot function in Nigeria. For over 20 years we have allowed them to settle on the fraudulent template of shipping out our crude and shipping in petrol from all over the world, including Niger Republic and this must have affected our minds. To think that there could have been giant refining and petrochemical complexes in Nigeria supplying petroleum products to the rest of Africa! I wager that they have damaged our minds with suffering; there is no end to this tormentation until…

    BOOK BLURB: Who did NOT kill Dele Giwa?

    That could have been the title of the recent book by former military spokesman Major Debo Basorun (rtd) but he chose Honour For Sale: An Insider Account of the Murder of Dele Giwa. That makes the account self-explanatory isn’t it? Well, yes but the title will not reveal the sheer courage and rare moral principles of this soldier who had to quit his highly lucrative job because his conscience would prick him to death.
    He quit his job… even at the risk of losing his life; but no way, what temerity! He dragged his bosses – the military president and the entire military establishment – to court. But surely that was the limit of impudence to a junta. He escaped to the U.S. for 18 years. This book is the best account so far of the Dele Giwa saga; it is also the sad histrionics of recent Nigerian military history and a study in courage in public office. Can an officer dare resign his commission in a military government? Has any high profile public official resigned lately on grounds of principle? It is well written and racy. It is a beautifully produced Bookcraft book every discerning Nigerian must read. The publishers can be reached on 08033447889, 08073199967.

  • The Diezani debacle

    The Diezani debacle

    Out of the closet

    Loyal readers of Expresso may have been surprised to find their favourite column ensconced (exposed if you like) on the back page last week. Late Thursday last week, I had packed my bag to go home when news filtered in that Expresso had been ‘promoted’ to the back page of Nigeria’s widest-circulating newspaper. I was flustered for a second. First, my mind was not prepared for this great back-flip. I could have at least taken off with a premeditated debut. Second, who am I to take the place of Baba Segun Gbadegesin? Just because I have a rage of premature grey hairs does not make me capable of lacing the shoes of his intellectual prowess, unmatchable deep insights and measured resoluteness. Now I have been offered up to the world like an eight-day old baby, I joked with Gbenga Omotoso as we discussed the transition. Hidden away in my old abode on page 22, I could safely launch my missiles knowing that only faithful followers would find it.

    Though Expresso which was meant as a light-hearted weekend delight long lost its innocence and mirth to a regime of relentless obduracy; it is sure to get even more starchy and less carefree now that it is more ‘exposed’. Trouble is sure to follow no doubt, especially if the impromptu debut is a pointer. As the first lights of last Friday pierced the new morn, messages and calls poured in almost jamming my handset. Readers who defied the no-calls warning were particularly implacable. Surprisingly, it was the small bottom piece on President Jonathan’s palace shuttles that provoked the most reactions. At a point I too lost my composure and I lapsed into shouting and cussing match with one of the readers. We traded abuses until we were separated by poor network connection. Though I was suffused with shame and remorse thereafter, I also told myself that just because my mug is exposed on the back page of a newspaper does not give anyone the right to kick it about like a ball.

    I formally welcome you dear reader to this enhanced space; be sure to get an enhanced value. It certainly calls for more responsibility, more introspection and to put it the way one of Nigeria most famous beer brands does, it will be triple-filtered and nuanced but without losing the bitter-sweet taste and rich foam head you have come to love since July 2011. Let’s go there!

    What shall we do with Diezani?

    When shall we be able to face up to this monster threatening our very existence? When shall we be able confront and chain our Prometheus? Remember him, the fellow who, according to Greek mythology, stole fire from heaven and Zeus, that god that lived on mount Olympus, chained him to the rock so that vultures would prey on him. How shall we uproot Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke from our Petroleum and Natural Resources Ministry before she brings this house down upon us? Since 2011 when she was appointed to head Nigeria’s most strategic assets – oil and gas – she has proved over and over that she lacks the capacity, the drive and character to oversee Nigeria’s mainstay.

    Besides having not been able to add any value to Nigeria’s vast oil and gas assets, she has found it difficult to maintain even the status-quo. In other words, she cannot seem to be able to work out the arithmetic of her great office; she cannot seem to stop brewing scandals and finagling with figures. Apart from the grave injury her ineptitude (let’s call a spade a spade) has brought to bear on the nation’s economic wellbeing, the image of the country has been damaged to no end by the odium emanating from her corner of the cabinet. Oil and gas is an international business, Nigeria is a big player and her every move is noted by the international community.

    Most notable international media entities have recently highlighted to the world the stench in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), under Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s oversight. For instance, The Africa Report in its bumper edition last year wrote about the opacity and decline of the NNPC; there is hardly any quarter that passes without The Economist of London passing a sad verdict on Nigeria’ oil industry. The journal wrote recently about a “horrifying scope of corruption” in Africa’s biggest oil industry. Financial Times too was unsparing. In the same vein, global bodies like Transparency International; Chatham House, London; Human Rights Watch and the accounting firm, KPMG, among others, have no good word to say about Nigeria’s oil industry today.

    House of sleaze

    There had always been corruption in the Nigerian oil industry no doubt. In fact, the NNPC can be described as a house of sleaze. But under Diezani’s watch, this malfeasance has climbed to Olympian heights: from outright diversion of revenues to dubious subsidies, shady crude swap arrangements, crude sale through middlemen, unaccounted for daily crude allocation to NNPC; massive petroleum products imports; oil blocs gerrymandering, etc. there is almost no depth to the graft at NNPC, particularly now. The governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was queried and suspended from office last week for what many have conjecture be his whistle-blowing on NNPC; the current one being an allegedly missing $20 billion.

    But in all the ruckus in the oil industry, nary a query has gone out to Mrs. Alison-Madueke, in fact she grows impertinent and diffident by the day, seeming to regale in the malodorous suffusion wafting out of her corner. It is amazing that what is required to arrest this debacle is a simple, single change of guards; the appointment of another Nigerian of competence and character who can quickly clean up the house and set the industry back on track. According to Africa Report, Algeria’ state-owned oil firm, SONATRACH is the biggest in Africa today. It is investing $80 billion in the next four years, including $16 billion for four new refineries. Did you ever hear NNPC speak of investment recently? SONANGOL is Angola’s state oil company; it is ranked second in Africa. It is currently investing heavily in Portugal, Asia and Africa. Cote D’Ivoire has no crude oil, yet she runs a profitable refinery; same as South Africa whose PetroSA is a huge, viable state corporation.

    What more to say than that the Diezani debacle is the Nigerian debacle and put plainly, it is President Goodluck Jonathan’s failure. It is the President’s monster, he had better killed it or…

  • BOOK BLURB: Minorities as overlords?

    This column will bring brief reviews and description of new books here every now and then. Today we debut with Jimanze Ego-Alowes’ Minorities as Competitive Overlords, published by Stone Press recently. A long-standing columnist (The Turf Game) in The Sun, Jimanze is one of the craftiest writers around today. You may also find him crazy or crazy-hilarious. He proposes in the book that the so-called minority tribes in Nigeria actually dominate the vital sections of the country. You may not agree with him but you cannot quarrel with his winged wits. Here is a sample taken from chapter nine of the book on “Why the South-West Dominate the Soft-sell Magazine” genre:

    “The Nigerian elite goes to learn all that is known about rocket science or securitised derivatives but is completely ignorant of how to evade gunshots at Mushin or discover how to make more garri with less water and thus drive away hunger.

    “So he returns from his educational travels abroad or at home and prides himself a technocrat. But truth be told, he knows nothing except what he has been taught or explained to in Harvard, Nsukka or Oxford. Appoint him to anything and the local environment will overwhelm and battle him to the ground. In desperation, if not ennui, he enjoins and joins the rest of us to give, take and eat bribes. Bribes by the way are Nigeria’s staple menu, head and shoulder above gbegiri soup or ofe onugbu…”

    Humour, the ability to make arcane matter funny is Jimanze’s forte. Minorities is quite a pleasant book to read. You can reach the author on 08111845043.

  • Fashola and the ‘hood gangs

    Fashola and the ‘hood gangs

    On June 3, 2010, Mrs. Tina Ahenkorah was feeding her two-year-old son, Emmanuel on the corridor of their little house at No. 15 Soremekun Street, Mushin, Lagos. Boy Emmanuel was safe and secure in the bosom of mummy reveling in the filial communion of a late evening repast. Suddenly there was a staccato of gunshots outside the house; on the street. Neighbourhood cult gangs were at their usual gun duel once again; residents ran helter-skelter in all directions for dear lives as guns boomed. When normalcy returned and the smoke cleared, a stray bullet had pierced little Emmanuel’s chest. He died.

    Mr. Ahenkorah, Emmanuel’s father, bearer of this gruesome tale, said arrests were made after his son’s murder but no one told him how the case ended. His little son and many other neighbours killed and maimed that night were mere collateral damages in a senseless narrative of criminality and violence. Ahenkorah extended the sad dimension of the tale when he further explained that after such a gang war, the police would react by stationing an aArmoured Personnel Carrier (APC) at the hot-spots to scare the cultists. But in a few weeks, the policemen and the cultists close ranks and begin to hangout together; drinking and smoking wrapped evil weeds.

    If you thought boy Emmanuel’s story was heart-rending then do not read the story of the Bellos of Idi-Oro area of Mushin, Lagos. It was Monday, January 27, 2014 at about 9 pm. Mr. Bello, who was returning from work, stopped by his wife’s shop in Amodu Street, off Akala, in Mushin. He joined his wife Musili, his 12-year-old daughter Suliat and other neighbours to while away the time in front of wifey’s shop. She had closed shop for the day and they would have left for home but awaited their little boy who was on an errand to buy fuel for use at home. Suddenly, rival gangs stirred the street with wild bursts of gunfire. As usual, everyone scampered for safety…

    When the street became quiet, Mr. Bello picked his 12-year-old Suliat by the gate of the house, her head split open by bullets. His wife, Musili, who was eight months pregnant was shot in the eye and her womb was pierced by bullets. Bello lost his daughter, his wife and, of course, the pregnancy. About 15 bullet holes pierced the door of his wife’s shop; several other neighbours sustained degrees of gunshot injuries. All these were casualties in a war they knew nothing about. And in the manner of collateral damages, they got neither justice nor recompense; they simply buried their dead quietly and nursed their wounds as if they were jungle animals.

    When it pleases these thugs, they simply go gay on the ‘hood as they did one Sunday morning late January at Olaiya Street, Mafoluku, Oshodi. The boys said to be numbering about 100 swooped on the community at about 2 am vandalising no fewer than 50 vehicles and buildings. Residents said that was the fourth time in a sad serial and that it was their manner of reprisal against another notorious gang in Mafoluku.

    Some neighbourhoods in parts of Lagos have actually metamorphosed into gangland jungles with cultists almost fully in control and residents living at their mercy. Some of the most dreaded areas are Mushin, Idi-Oro, Fadeyi, Somolu-Bariga, Isale-Eko, Ajah. This gory fad having gone unchecked for a long time is spreading to other virgin parts of town. Unchecked, youths in some areas make capital of their nefarious activities, begin to glory in it and enjoy bragging rights thereby pushing other virgin neighbourhoods to organise their own gangs. And what is a cult gang if it is not in rivalry with another; if it is not spoiling for a bloody fight and most of all, if it is not testing its prowess in orgies of blood-letting.

    That is what is witnessed almost every week in the hot-spot areas of the city these days – gangs in constant supremacy battles, trying to out-gun each other, trying to out-slaughter each other and inflict even more gruesome mayhem where the last group stopped. As they get emboldened, they get sophisticated: from riding on bikes and tricycles to using unmarked vehicles, from using axes, machetes and dane guns to pump action rifles and AK-47s. They wear bulletproof vests these days and they no longer wait for the cover of the night. The more murders they get away with, the more brazen they become and the more they look the state and federal authorities rudely in the eye. Most worrisome, the more they spread all over the state like cancer.

    What Governor Fashola can do Late January, Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola hinted that he is as worried about the situation as the man on the street when he met heads of corporate organsations. He decried the activities of a group he described as “street urchins” and “area boys” who according to him, had laid siege to the state. He sought the help of the business helmsmen in curbing their menace.

    While it must be noted that Lagos State under this governor has perhaps the best security strategy among states, the street urchins are sissies compared to the murderous gangs. Having said that, the state government must act fast: first, to review and update laws on cultism, arms-bearing and hard-drugs peddling and use in the state. Second, there may be need for a task squad on gangs and hard-drugs use; third, special tribunals may be needed to expedite trial and conviction and lastly, there may be need for publicity campaigns against neighbourhood gangs.

    In the long run, the mushrooming of youth gangs in a fledgling city like Lagos is a failure of local and community governments. As the city grows, various levels of community administrations need grow organically with it. That is, from the landlord/tenant groups to the community development associations, LCDAs and LGAs all working and growing as one body. With such strong linkages, everything in between – family units, schools, hospitals, youth associations, vigilance groups, civic centres, etc. will be under their purview. Today, there is a total disconnect. Hardly anybody knows his councillor anymore and most LCDAs don’t have nary playgrounds where young boys can play ‘set’ as was the case when we were growing up.

    As Lagos strives to take its place among world’s modern cities, we must not allow this monster of youth gangs to fouls up the good work going on in the state. Let’s take some drastic actions to wrestle it to the ground.

    Jonathan on 2015 shuttle while Borno burns

    What irony it was that while President Goodluck Jonathan was on a political shuttle in the southwest of Nigeria last weekend, nourishing his 2015 dreams, the northwest of Nigeria was under siege from hoodlums. As the President moved from one palace to the other, from Ife to Oyo and then Badagry, courting the royal fathers and oiling the machine of his 2015 presidential battle royale, his soldiers were being outgunned in Borno and innocent Nigerians were freely butchered as if they were mere cattle.
    Why should we trust Jonathan a second time if he has failed now to protect peace-loving and law-abiding peasants of Nigeria? If any part of Nigeria can be invaded and over-run for five hours without any response from our government then it can be safely said that we have no government. By the way, royal fathers don’t win votes.

  • Most maligned governor in the land

    You cannot help but sympathize with Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji of Abia Abia State; he must be the most harangued, maligned and abused governor in the land. He is up against an armada of antagonists led by a deep-pocket, very clever, albeit bitter erstwhile godfather who has in his corner, some of the most competent journalists, publicists and propagandists. They have the rare advantage of what is today, perhaps the most-read newspaper in the land. With such a force arrayed against one man and his government, he is bound to look bad, inefficient and incompetent. Indeed he will appear in the eye of the public, whatever colour they choose to tar him. There is no prize for guessing what hue that would be.

    Abia’s ugly narrative But it is only providence that whisks the flies for the cow that has lost its tail. In other words, if not for some divine grace, TA, as Governor Orji is called, and his administration would have become extinct like that copper-coloured three-penny coin (toro). The story of TA and his estranged god-father, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu (OUK) is a very long and corny one that would require an entire book to tell adequately. To situate it in a few words, TA served as chief of staff to OUK in his eight-year rule as governor of Abia State (1999 – 2007). TA must have served his master well, covering his back (and even his front) so diligently that he found him good enough to succeed him. But it turned out that OUK really did not want a successor but a puppet, a stringed marionette that would keep up a façade while he continues to enjoy the over-lordship of Abia State which after eight years had diminished to the size of OUK’s personal estate.

    Thus when TA won the 2007 election and was sworn in, it turned out that he was worse than a marionette for that is capable of some mobility. He was actually an artwork; an inert installation in Abia Government House by OUK that neither moved nor spoke nor capable of any action. So it was that OUK and his clan continued to rule Abia for another three years (making a total of 11 years). Then there came that divine jolting that freed TA and Abia from the spell of OUK. Since then, a fresh light had begun to shine on that entity called God’s Own State where dark principalities had held sway; flowers have begun to bloom in a land that was made arid by a band of ravaging locusts. Abians may go to bed and sleep with both eyes closed. All around, there is a renewed up-welling of harmony, hope and happiness.

    Yes, Abians have regained their freedom. They have broken the chains of economic, psychological and spiritual slavery. Today all the leaders, the political and intellectual elite and majority of the people have risen as one to say never again. But the barbarians are still at the gate baying for blood and seeking to regain their lost paradise.

    PDP through the back door This, in a nutshell, is the ugly narrative of Abia’s recent history. But only the battle has been won, the war rages on with remorseless heavy shelling still resounding. Recall that OUK at the peak of his reign quit PDP, the party that gave him life and founded another political party with which he won two states. But a mansion built on quicksand is only but a mirage. Today, OUK desperately wants to return to PDP (Peoples Democratic Party). Last year he tried to sneak into the fold through the back door but TA who is the leader of the party today by virtue of being the governor of the state, foiled the move.

    Now, hardly had a new PDP chairman mounted the saddle than OUK moving to corral him into admitting him back to the PDP fold. But vintage Igbo wisdom acknowledges that only a tree would stand still when an axe is raise against it. TA simply rallied the party leaders in the state, paid the new PDP chairman a visit and made a few elementary and commonsensical points that every adult ought to understand to wit: OUK’s return to PDP must be on the condition that he must subordinate himself to the current leader (there can’t be two captains in one boat, lest it capsizes); two, he will have to be admitted through the local party organ and his re-admission is to be supervised by the current leadership and lastly, he must pledge to abide by the rules of the party. Anything short of this will throw the Abia PDP into a cataclysm immediately OUK steps into it.

    Let’s try reconciliation The point therefore, is that OUK must realize that his reign in Abia had long-ended, he must come down from his high-horse, he must understand that a good son would one day grow up to his father and even outgrow him. When that day comes the father would have to adjust to living under the now great shadows of his son. In Igboland a father’s fervent prayers is not to raise a child that never grows. A player who cannot discern when the game has change never wins it; the game really has changed in Abia.

    One of the virtues of great leaders is the ability to forgive, reconcile and make peace for the greater good; especially if the goal is for the good of the people. That was the essence of Mandela. If OUK’s craving is not for relevance and personal gains, then he would find it easy to reconcile with the other leaders of Abia State for the greater good of her people. On the other hand, he has achieved a level of greatness and he does not need a political party membership to validate him or grant him relevance. Trying to ‘shock and awe’ a sitting governor and other great sons of the state to submission is clearly a wrong strategy.

    LAST MUG: It’s a Coke, no it’s a fake

    Coca-Cola must have been hit by large-scale fakery. Last Monday I bought a pet bottle of coke and I couldn’t go past just two sips of it. First it erupted like a volcano upon opening it messing up my desk. No, first it was too difficult to uncork so I had to deploy my teeth. I took a sip and a burning-peppery sensation coursed down my throat. This couldn’t be Coke I thought. I took another sip; no, it isn’t. I took a closer look at the bottle and it looked a little rough-hewn. I found another bottle and all my suspicions were con–+–firmed. All the evidence are still on my desk so I could show friends to beware. The Nigerian Bottling company must act fast.

     

  • Sabella Abidde and the mob of Sodom

    This copious quotation from the Bible may well be a fairy tale; especially so for Mr. Sabella Abidde, a columnist for The Punch. His January 22 article (“Of adulterers, thieves, paedophiles and homosexuals”) condemning the same-sex marriage law actually provoked this piece. Going by that intervention of his, the Bible would be mere “Christian anthology”, and God would be “the God of Moses and Abraham”. And to think of a universal God is to be in “denial,…gullible or being brainwashed.” But let’s remind him quickly that the fool says in his heart that there is no God.

    Abidde said in his incensed piece that, “The Torah and the Bible do not explicitly condemn homosexuality and same-sex marriage.” The above extract puts a lie to his assertion. The Bible is actually replete with reproach and damnation for this human perversion which incidentally, had been with man from the beginning of time. The Qur’an describes it as abomination (Surah 29). Displaying so much intellectual arrogance, Abidde terms Nigerians as primitive, hypocritical, retrogressive and even hateful for legislating against homosexuality. He weighs in that reputable scientific and medical journals and organizations in Europe, Asia and America have variously said there is nothing wrong or sickening about homosexuality.

    Abidde and many of our Diaspora brothers and sisters are not alone in condoning homosexuality. Last week, the Archbishops of Canterbury, Justin Welby and the Archbishop of York, both in Britain wrote Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan and Uganda’s Yoweri Musoveni asking them to reverse anti-gay laws passed in the two countries. They argued that homosexuals are loved and valued by God thus are not to be discriminated against. The Catholic Pontiff had spoken in the same vein while South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it more succinctly that his God is not a homophobe. World leaders from USA, Britain, Canada and so on; especially the so-called developed world, have been virtually up in arms against Nigeria for enacting a law against homosexuality.

    Abidde asks: “What kind of a man or woman hates another human being simply because the “others” are of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community?” But it is not about hate but about the inherent danger and corrosive effect of this aberrant behavior to the society. As we can see in the quote above, the people of Sodom had become so morally and spiritually blighted and it is obvious that the early Abrahamic society was ‘dead’ beyond redemption; to the point that God told Abraham that if he found nary ten good people in Sodom, he would save it from destruction.

    How many really good people are in the world today? In a world that glories in carnality like the men of Sodom of yore, how many know the difference between right and wrong anymore? In a hollow and soulless world where churches are empty and God has been intellectualized, how many people read the scriptures anymore. In a British and American age where people live an entire life without seeing a copy of the Bible, humanity will surely perish by its own depravity.

    Abidde and his fellow intellectuals call it ‘sexual orientation’ but the cost of this ‘orientation’ is too horrific to be ignored; in fact no other human perversion can scourge humanity the way homosexuality has the potential to do. For instance, in boarding schools across the country, wide-eyed young lads and lasses are being forcefully and/or guilefully raped by perverted seniors; in the military, cabals of gay top brass recruit younger officers and men into their club with the blandishment of promotions and juicy postings. Many jobless young men and women are initiated into homosexuality in exchange for jobs, favours and connections. Of course these young people were not born with gay ‘sexual orientation’ but necessity has forced them into it.

    For most of these young people coerced into this cult, their lives have been damaged with their social and psychological well-being destabilized. Many of them will never be able to relate well with the opposite sex not to talk of running a proper family. Imagine the death of the man and woman family! What about the harm done to the anal cavity of these young people; and the ensuing permanent damage that leaves some of these young people having to wear diapers in their old age? Abidde never mentioned the diseases that result from anal sex.

    We love gays; they are our brothers and sisters but we hate their behavior. We want them to see and accept that they have a problem so that we can partner with them in the quest for therapy and reform. Finally, even if the new gay mob browbeat us all into acquiescence, even if the whole world goes gay, our maker has His ways. He did it before and He will do it again:

    “Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens. So he overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.” (Gen. 19 vs 24-25)

    Yes, even what grew on the ground they stepped, HE wiped out!