The Nation Newspaper

Category: Steve Osuji

  • Vacation pickings: on Jonathan, Okonjo-Iweala, Ango, e.t.c.

    Great to be back on the beat after a few weeks’ absence though a reporter is never completely off the news track. Just as a paranoid old man would fear to close his eyes in sleep lest he never wakes up again same way a true man of the pen would not take his eyes off the news lest he misses the great (news) ‘rapture’. In the same manner, though Expresso was on vacation, he kept his finger on the pulse of the country. Below are some vacation pickings:

    2015: Would President Jonathan bite the bullet?

    Now that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has released the time-table for the 2015 elections, anytime soon, President Goodluck Jonathan will break the ice. He will have to make that most important announcement of his life now, to wit: whether he will run for the presidency of Nigeria next year or not? That seat has never been more contentious but not just because it is the number one stool in the land but because some elements in the north of Nigeria believe the pendulum of the presidency must swing back to their corner of the country. They feel terribly hard done by since their kinsman, President Umaru Yar’Adua died on duty in 2009 barely two years in his first term and his vice, Jonathan had mounted the saddle. They are inconsolable in their grief.

    But the incumbent, Jonathan, who got the job by divine default, so to speak, believes he is entitled to a second term; besides his people never got around to the big seat in all of Nigeria’s five decades some have argued. But at the end of a second term he would have ruled Nigeria for ten years. So as it stands, Nigeria seemingly sits on the horns of dilemma. Expresso’s verdict is: yes, Jonathan is entitled to a second term in office and has every right to contest. But no, he does not deserve a second term in office because he has grossly underperformed in nearly six years on the saddle. Nigeria is worse off today than in 2009 and he is unlikely to win in a free and fair election today than in 2011.

    Now what is to be done? Should he resign as has been suggested by some opponents? No, that would amount to abdication. No leader does that. As we await Jonathan’s confirmation of intent to run in the next election, is it possible that he can buck the trend? Can he shame his detractors and take the wind off his opponents’ sail? Can he bite the bullet? Can he mount the rostrum and make that historic announcement that defines an epoch and rewrites history? This is the most crucial moment of Jonathan’s life; he is today, poised at the juncture of history where he could choose to be among the greatest Nigerian (and African) leaders or plunge into the abyss of ignominy like many before him.

    Can President Jonathan make that most difficult but noble announcement? Can he bite this bullet?

    Time for Okonjo-Iweala to go

    One loathes to note once again on this page that the second coming of our dear Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has turned out to be a debacle and she may well find a reason to step down now that she has any honour left. The Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy (CME) seems to have lost the capacity to put the economy together again. Just three quick points will suffice for now. First, corruption has blossomed under her watch with appointees in a free-for-all pillaging of the treasury at a magnitude we have never experienced before. She could well be the Coordinating Minister of Corruption (CMC). All the institutional checks against official corruption are under-funded and debased under her watch.

    Second, for three fiscal years consecutively (2012 to 2014) we have become convinced of her inability to prepare a basic annual budget or implement one. She promised from the outset to reverse the outlook of the budget by bringing down a crazy recurrent expenditure which gulps more than 70 percent of Nigeria’s income. She has been unable to do that because she has not shown us that she is on top of the economy as it were. Year on year, the budget has come out as a roadside bin where all manner of thrash is thrown in. It is shocking that an Okonjo-Iweala’s budget contains an 11th jet for the president! Our budget is littered with so much rubbish items that one wonders whether the document passed through the scrutiny of the CME the Budget Monitoring Office (DMO). We shall blame it on fatigue… let Madam CME take bow (out) please.

    Ango Abdullahi and other saber rattlers

    As we say in my place, it is good for the wind to blow hard enough sometimes so that it might reveal the naked hind of the hen. In this quest for the presidency in 2015, we have seen the nakedness of some elite of the north. Some who we had so much respect for have proved to have the most unsightly behind. Everyday, people we hitherto regard as elders and statesmen; learned and well-spoken invoke hate, bitterness and blood upon the polity. As if they don’t get enough blood from the daily bomb outs and slashing of throats. When it is not Professor Ango Abdullahi, it is Dr. Junaid Mohammed, Nasir el Rufai, Abu king Shuluwa and their ilk. They scream at the rest of us that blood will flow and Nigeria will become a Hobbesian state should power not return to the north in 2015. Let it be known this is the truest sign of cowardliness; but nobody is cowed and only a fool thinks with his muscles. Then again, the problem of the north is nowhere near the seat of the presidency but a grim elite that holds its people hostage and refuse to change with the times.

    Aregbe’s new beard

    It was a pleasant surprise the other day to see Osun State governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola wearing a trimmed and managed beard. No longer the shaggy, rowdy, free-growing facial locks. Expresso had picked on the famous beard late last year and it had generated a heated, albeit, healthy debate in the house to the point of calling in an expert to determine whether it is haram in Islam to trim the beard.

    I am sure the good people of Osun, not the least madam, will be happier for Aregbe’s new look. Also salutary and statesmanly is the governor’s decision to consider giving schools back to their original owners as has been advocated on this page. It is vintage leadership to listen and reconsider issues when necessary. But yet again there is a new troubling matter: the 200,000 capacity Christian Convention Centre to be built by the state government in Oshogbo. We say it is a no, no, no. Great as the idea is, it is not government’s business. No matter its economic value government can only support, but never to erect such structures. We hope it is not late to backtrack.

    And Pa Alampasu bids goodbye to poverty

    Surely that name, awkward as it may sound, must ring a bell now. Yes, Dele Alampasu is the young boy between the posts when Nigeria’s glorious lads thrilled the world to a sweet dose of football in the Under-17 World Championship. When Dele returned to his rustic Itoki, Ogun State neighbourhood after his exploits, the sleepy community came alive in wild jubilation. If it seemed like fairy tale for Dele, it is reality for Papa Alampasu. His joy knew no bounds; the lowly okada rider was quoted to have said that God had rescued him from a life of crushing poverty. No more okada for him, he declared. In fact, Pa Alampasu has determined to migrate to the lights and glitz of Abuja, away from his dark, crushing village setting.

  • MANDELA: The great Nigerian snub

    The mere suggestion by the Presidency that it was not a snub further rubs pepper on the injury. It is to tell us that we don’t even know when we are insulted. It is like someone giving you a backhanded compliment and then turns around to try proving to you that he did not mean to insult you. In order words, you are so thick to decipher a put down. This is where our government and the people in charge of our affairs are. How can we properly analyse the situation, learn the lessons there-from and make sure it never happens again if we do not see the situation for what it is?

    I speak of course about the Nelson Mandela memorial service of Tuesday in South Africa in which Nigeria attended as an on-looker while six selected heads of governments across continents rendered eulogies in honour of the great African leader and icon of the modern world, Mandela. President Barack Obama of the United States represented the western world; Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff stood in for South America; India spoke for Asia and Namibia could be said to have taken up the slot of Africa. Other speakers included President Jacob Zuma of South Africa; President Raul Castro of Cuba and the UN Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon.

    People have argued that on account of Nigeria’s frontline activism during the apartheid era alone, she deserved a spot at the podium during the memorial rites of Nelson Mandela. That may be true for Nigeria provided streams of funding, was an operational base; imbued the struggle with strategic training and logistical support. Nigeria was also in the vanguard of the Organization of African Unity’s boycotts and economic blockade of the apartheid regime. She boycotted the 1976 Olympics Games on account of the South African situation and British Petroleum (BP) was thrown out of Nigeria and its assets confiscated. These are just samples of actions taken by Nigeria in her drive to free the people of South Africa and help them regain their freedom from white oppression.

    But one thinks it would be far-fetched and presumptuous to expect the events of about three decades ago to govern the moment. Nigeria needed not have played roles in ending apartheid to deserve a special place at the memorial of Nelson Mandela. Nigeria was ignored simply because she has not lived up to her stature and eminence in the scheme of things in Africa and the world at large. Nigeria’s sheer size in the continent, her political and economic magnitude if well harnessed, ought to give her an unassailable pre-eminence in Africa.

    But because leadership has failed increasingly in the last few years, she has not lived up to her dominant and influential roles on the continent. If we had got our acts right, Nigeria ought to supply the bulk of critical manpower in tertiary institutions, finance, judiciary, defence and security across most of black Africa. And by virtue of our abundant oil and gas resources, we ought to supply the entire continent with fuel energy, bitumen, gas, electricity and other industrial by-products of crude oil. These are natural influencers that go with our sheer size and natural endowment but which lack of vision has deprived us.

    Lastly, the extremely poor quality leadership of the last two decades has completely reduced Nigeria in the esteem of the peoples of Africa and the world that we are no longer worthy to be mentioned in the gathering of the best of the world. We must face the harsh fact that Nigeria’s leadership has become so leprous today that the world would conspire to ensure that it does not take the same podium of honor taken by world leaders of note; by our unremitting malfeasance, we have alienated ourselves. Nigeria moves inexorably south when the rest of the world faces north.

    Year-on-year, we are rated among the most corrupt people in the world, among the most diseased and the most poor; they note the cash stash of our presidents, ministers, legislators and politically exposed people in all parts of the world with quiet disdain. They see us regress in all human development indices like child mortality, education enrolment, diminishing per capita and the inability to conduct elections. All the fundaments of human civilization are in recession in Nigeria and they know that we are inexorably a dying country. When our matter is raised among the comity of nations, they sigh resignedly fearing that Nigeria is bound to end up as the last big, basket case of the 21st century.

    Snubbing Nigeria at the Mandela memorial was neither a mistake nor a chance happening; it was a well reasoned, calculated and pre-meditated action designed to save the face of the world from a Nigerian embarrassment. But true to type, our leaders miss even this point.

    Is PIB the be all and end all?

    I have never given a damn about the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) in all the years of its roundabout trips between that National Assembly and the Petroleum Ministry. First I had the natural inclination to suspect that something must be wrong with a legal document that is a tome of 223 pages. What the heck? Second, I hold the oil ministry and its key subsidiary, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, as currently constituted, in eternal disdain seeing how other national oil firms have grown over the year and lifted the economy of countries. Third, I never thought a legal framework or the lack thereof is the bane of Nigeria’s oil sector – the stunted growth, the rabid corruption and the unrestrained madness in that quarter cannot be as a result of an absence of a particular piece of legislation.

    But in the heat of a debate over our blighted oil industry recently, a respected colleague availed me a copy of the PIB insisting that my perspective would change should I endeavor to go through the rather rumbustious tome. If it has such redeeming values, how come the National Assembly has kept it in its underground cellar for over a decade; how will it clean the Augean stable that the NNPC has become? Still skeptical though, I have promised to give it a shot some good day when the weather is sunny and there are glimmers of hope in the horizon.

     

    NOTE: EXPRESSO proceeds on vacation till January 2014. This is wishing you dear reader a song-filled season and may you wake with a bright new sun on the other side of this annal.

  • Junaid Mohammed and other cowards

    Cowardice, unbeknownst to many is a deceptive pathological condition. A coward always wears the camouflage of bravery and courage yet he is merely a weasel. Like a bully, he is imbued with the inexplicable urge to hurt and torment others but he cannot stand a prick of the pin. He will rouse a murderous mob but will tunnel into the ground when blood begins to flow. Such is the state of mind of some Nigerians who have made it a pastime lately to beat the drums of war and destruction over the 2015 presidential election.

    One such person is Dr. Junaid Mohammed, a Russian-trained physician and a veteran politician who made his mark as an acolyte of the great Malam Aminu Kano. Once upon a time, Mohammed was one of the most personable, well-spoken and well loved-politicians across even ethnic zones of the land. He was considered a ‘radical’ politician with progressive and people-oriented ideas. He was supposed to have drunk from the fount of that apostle of talakawa politics and perhaps ought to have been the touch-bearer of that ideological school, inheriting Aminu Kano. But Junaid Mohammed like a storm-tossed ship has not been able to find any political relevance since the demise of his mentor. He has moved from one party to another, from one ideological extreme to another and aligning with some strange bedfellows or another all in search relevance and even gravy.

    Our most beloved Junaid Mohammed, that eloquent young man in the House of Representatives of the 80s has in his old age ironically, grown into an ethnic jingoist and rabble-rouser. In an interview in last Sunday Sun, he simply broke the bounds of decency and decorum expected of someone who ought to be an elder statesman and nationalist. Asked whether President Goodluck Jonathan should run for a second term in 2015, he had this to say: “He is humble enough to know the consequences of his action, should he insist on running. But let me warn that he should not do anything that would plunge the country into avoidable anarchy.”

    He spoke further: “Quote me, if Jonathan insists on running, there will be bloodshed and those who feel short-changed may take the warpath and the country may not be the same again. His running will amount to taking about 85 million northerners for a ride and that is half the country’s total population. So, there will be bloodshed. We don’t pray to get to that level before his ethnic and tribal advisers pull him back.”

    Apparently, Mohammed has joined the bandwagon of the North-for-president-in-2015-or-no Nigeria campaign. In his obvious anger he was unguarded and uncontrolled in his utterances. He even rained abuses on the president: “We now have this nincompoop as president.” We may not like Jonathan but he remains the president of Nigeria and he occupies our sacred stool. We can correct and even upbraid without lapsing into naked and personal abuse. Our elders especially must set that example of civility in political discourse for the younger ones.

    One is particularly nonplussed by Mohammed’s invocation of violence and mayhem upon his fatherland should he and his part of the country fail to grab power once again in 2015. It is quite a puerile and infantile notion to think that any part of the country can be intimidated into surrendering power to another by mere threat of violence or even actual acts of bloodshed. It never happens that way. Second, statements like this do the North no good and it triggers that annoying sense of birthright and entitlement to the throne. That is not on and it is never acceptable. The North has held the number one spot longer than any other part of the country and unless it is telling the rest of us that it is indeed a birthright, others are equally entitled to it as well.

    Need we also remind that no president relinquishes power on account of threats of bloodshed and prospect of violence; not when he is constitutionally entitled to contest for another term in office? Power is gained through strategic thinking, building of consensus and pushing of laudable policies to the people, the ultimate beneficiaries.

    Lastly, whose blood is Dr Mohammed bringing to the altar for sacrifice? Of course not his children’s or his family members’ and surely not his own or his close friends’? It brings us back to the logic of the coward: he is often quick to pledge the blood of others in exchange for his selfish ends. But call for his own head and he dies before you unsheathe your sword. Have you seen our Mujahideen Asari Dokubo recently, the one who wears permanent scowl just to scare the rest of us? A few hours’ arrest recently in the Republic of Benin rattled him so much that he sings like a troubled canary about enemies of President Jonathan’s second term who pursued him across the border. Jonathan must have a second term even if the heavens fall, he declared extending that weird logic. The same manner our octogenarian Papa Edwin Clark finds every opportunity to say to us, woe betide you all if Jonathan does not return.

    But these are old tricks deployed by cowards when they sense an imminent defeat and loss. In 2015, what will be, will be – as has been ordained!

    LAST MUG: Gov. Amosun’s tower and aspects of S.W. integration

    I was waiting for the right moment to comment on the laudable South West integration agenda when I learnt about Gov. Ibikunle Amosun’s tallest building in Africa project. While one would return to the emerging flaws of the integration soon, Expresso humbly appeals to the Ogun governor to shelf the idea of a tower (of Babel?) which is a mere ego trip and holds no economic good whatsoever. All over the world, governments hardly build skyscrapers; they are economic propositions of individuals. Is the Cocoa House for instance fully occupied? Is it yielding revenues? Is it well maintained?

    We feel insulted when our governors tell us they travel abroad to seek investors; such anachronism really need to be jettisoned. And the Malaysians partnering Ogun to build a white elephant will do well for us developing our agro-industrial estates based on oil palm, cocoa, maize and cassava instead of building us a tower of wastage.

    It is the same ego-tripping that governs the rash of airports in Ekiti and Osogbo when the ones in Ibadan, Akure and Benin grossly under-utilized. Why not modern light rail lines that link major cities of the Southwest? Or are these airports and towers what the integration document ordered?

     

  • PDP- APC 2015 slugfest

    This is a season for seers, witch doctors and prophets (a friend pronounces it pro-fits). It is also an expansive time for pundits, pseudo-strategists and musclemen. Wow, o set tie le, the stage is set, to put it in the Igbo street parlance. What a large stage for intrigues, shenanigans, subterfuge and long knives? Mark my word, from now up until 2015, Nigeria will become one large, simmering cauldron of politics and bitter battles for the soul of the presidency and by extension, Nigeria. Everything else may have to wait: the budget, the economy, infrastructure, social welfare, nothing else but politics will matter; yet nobody will be able to fathom how it will play out – where are the futurologists?

    THE NEW APC CHALLENGE: The fledgling All Progressives Congress, APC, the result of a merger of a few parties in Nigeria had what may be described as a breakthrough last Tuesday when five rebel state governors from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP decamped to join APC thereby giving it an almost equal numerical strength with the PDP. Though the move seemed to have been long in coming, the reality of it carries an impetus that most pundits had not calculated. The import is that first, two major political parties (the one progressive and the other conservative, so to speak) have become a reality in Nigeria today; two, depending on the groundswell of activities leading to the 2015 elections, the two parties have 50-50 chances of winning the number one spot (the presidency) in that election; three, this new development has the potential make Nigeria’s democracy for good (and even Nigeria the country) or mar it and of course, both the negative and positive consequences of this new development will be at a grand scale.

    To elaborate on the last point, if for instance the two parties are guided by democratic ethos and they agree to play by the rules; if they play politics of principles and purpose, politics without rancor and bitterness and allow the people choose their leaders at the poll, Nigeria would have found the path to growth, development and modernity. If on the other hand, they engage in bitter and rancorous politicking which may eventually lead to crisis and implosion, perhaps there may no longer be an entity known as Nigeria post 2015. These two possibilities are real and latent.

    PDP PROGNOSIS: How would PDP handle its current diminution and seeming unraveling? Since it came to power in 1999, it had never tire to boast that it was the biggest party in black Africa and after its last electoral victory in 2011, the refrain from not a few members was that it would be in power for another 60 years. How they worked out the arithmetic is a mystery but their cockiness was infectious especially among their members. But no action of members of this behemoth suggested that they were at work on their talk. Telltale signs to buttress this fact are numerous. PDP cannot complete its headquarters and in fact, the abandoned, half-built crudity is today a sorry site somewhere in the heart of the capital city. It stands as a metaphor to the soulless giant that is PDP.

    PDP’s internal crisis is legendary as it is historical. Its first president, Olusegun Obasanjo, a former general turned politician had little understanding of democratic ethos. As president, he was a megalomaniac who coveted power as much as he abused it. In just a few months, he routed the party that brought him to power rendering the founding fathers impotent and inconsequential. Deploying his enormous presidential powers he eventually put the party under his acrid armpit; creating the nebulous position of president as party leader and party chairman and subordinate and indeed an ‘appointee’ of the president. He effectively damaged the possible emergence of a Nigerian mega-party in the mould of an Africa National Congress (ANC).

    It could be argued that Obasanjo’s shortsightedness and power-mongering nature ruined PDP. For the eight years of his reign he was content to have the party in his leash, arresting its development, allowing it no quality administrative structure, no proper office and worse no institutional memory. By the time Obasanjo left office, PDP was no better than a department in the Presidency with him as the leader-deity. In his narrow-mindedness, he even changed the rules of the party to pave way for him to become the chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) shortly after his tenure as president. He resigned in a huff recently when it dawned on him he could not eat his cake and have it. He forgot he ceded the position to the presidency once upon a time.

    This long prognosis is to make the point that PDP today is Goodluck Jonathan and vice-versa. Members defer to the president to think for the party and to direct the party. They read his lips and watch his body language. Much of what happened in the last three years and what might happen in the years leading to 2015 will depend on the capacity of Jonathan to drive the party. That is a tough call.

    THE 2015 INCUBUS: But because he already has a mindset to get a second term in office in 2015, nothing else will matter but 2015 presidency. It will be the same mindset with everyone else who claims to be a PDP member. It will be a zero sum game: second term or nothing. Nobody would think about the party or strategy or long-term; indeed as far as they are concerned: no presidency, no PDP. And it is a point to note that if PDP loses power at the centre, it is sure to become disarrayed and perhaps die. But since its object is to return to power in 2015, it will fight and fight dirty to hold power. Yet even if it wins 2015, it is still only a question of time… PDP is a mere contraption, an unsustainable entity at best, never an institution: a victim of its historical contradictions.

    THE APC CONUNDRUM: The APC (still-in-formation) is actually a tougher political proposition than the PDP except that it has the peculiar opportunity of hindsight. If they think strategic and beyond 2015 (without necessarily giving up on 2015) they will have a better date with history but do they have the requisite competences and the patience of a marathoner. Let say APC is yet a running story…

    LAST MUG: the drivers’ licence miasma

    It is failure, a blundering failure of a monumental scale. Why have the simple tasks of issuing drivers licences and number plates become some kind of space science in Lagos? The combined team of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and the Lagos State Government (LASG) have been bungling through these chores and making life difficult for Lagosians for nearly two years now yet there is no end in sight. People pay all sorts of fees yet they do not get the documents for months. To rub salt on the injury, Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIO) and FRSC officials waylay people and extort them. Who will rescue us from our governments?

  • Ndubuisi Kanu at 70: An officer and an activist

    Save for a full page advert in a national newspaper signed by the Lagos State governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola on November 3rd, the exact day he turned 70, one did not notice any other sign that Rear Admiral (retired) Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu had reached that landmark age. We have increasingly become a people who do not know how to celebrate, or to put it better, we celebrate too much but with our stomach. Therefore, we celebrate the wrong things and for warped reasons. We celebrate people we ought to be stoning having lost a sense of authenticity. We have grown acutely bubble-headed, undiscerning and un-historied, living only moment by hunger-induced moment. These days, almost always, our media are filled with a celebration of all the wrong people we erroneously call leaders.

    Such was it that only a brief tribute from Governor Fashola ushered one of the finest naval officers and democrat of this age into the septuagenarian league. “Today we celebrate a preeminent elder statesman, a proponent of true federalism and a champion of democracy,” the advert speaks of Kanu. You may say that the man was once an administrator of Lagos State thus such a commemoration was not out of place but he was first a military administrator in Imo and I do not remember any such recognition from that quarter. Not from the Nigerian Navy which he served remarkably in nearly all units and of course not from Ohaneze Ndigbo where he has been a member of its ime-obi for quite sometime.

    It is not that the taciturn general is in dire need of tributes and recognitions for apart from the fact that he may have piled up enough accolades which come from personal achievements to last him a life time, he is not one to worry about or hanker after such vain-gloriousness. To think that all these years he was not bestowed with any national honours, the medals which have become as common as the fake jewelry you find hanging around the neck of every man and woman by the street corners. Twice he was in the apex military ruling body in Nigeria. First he was a member of the Supreme Military Council, (SMC), 1975 – 1978 under General Olusegun Obasanjo and the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC), 1985 – 1989 under General Ibrahim Babangida.

    Other key political exposures were his tour of duties in Imo and Lagos States in the complex post-civil war years of Nigeria’s mid-70s. But in his military career in the Nigerian Navy, Kanu proved to be an intelligent and thoroughbred officer. Enlisting in 1962 after his secondary school education at Metropolitan College, Onitsha, he trained at the National Defence Academy, Kharakvasla and Naval Engineering and Electrical College both in India. He was the best all-round cadet in India in 1965. Also at the Newport War College, Rhodes Island, USA he came out top of his class as the best graduating student as well as the best midshipman (1st class). He traversed nearly all commands of the navy rising to the position of Rear-Admiral in his 28-year career before he retired in 1990.

    But unlike most of his colleagues who march straight into oblivion after a long, regimented military life, Kanu has remained relevant in the polity in a manner not known of military officers. He has led quite fearlessly, the life of an activist and democrat. Participating most robustly in national discourses he even mounted the barricades and led protests with civil right groups in Lagos. The Ovim, Abia State indigene has shown what one may describe as an uncanny zest in the socio-political affair of the nation since the 90s. Many consider it an extreme act of courage if not fatalistic of him to have joined and become a staunch member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) which was almost single-handedly responsible for kicking out Nigeria’s military junta from power. Most of the military brass tacks that Kanu now faced from the other side of the divide were his contemporaries. The consequences could have been dire to him, his family and businesses. Apparently, his love for Nigeria seemed a paramount and over-riding consideration.

    Way back in 1993 he had written a book: The Way Forward: Sovereign National Conference, which could be a veritable blueprint for the advocates of another national conference of today. The retired officer also wrote: The Military, Politics and Human rights and the Economy. As a mark of the people’s champion and mobiliser he is, his office on Victoria Island Lagos has served as the meeting point and secretariat of Ndigbo Lagos for nearly two decades.

    Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu has turned out to be a true statesman, a patriot, a soldier and a social scientist of note. Most remarkably, he is an activist not for the limelight or the popularity most people crave from it for he is a very self-effacing man. A proof of that is that while most of his contemporaries haul bag-loads of titles and honorary degrees, he seems not to care about such inanities, such medallions of vacuous men.

    In this prime age of 70, it is hoped that the navigator will continue to give fillip and provide fuel for the firing of the ship of state. More important, many would wish he could direct some thought and attention to the issues of socio-political and rights activism in the southeast, a phenomenon that is almost as cold as yesterday’s porridge in that side of the country.

    LAST MUG: Ha ha, thinks refineries

    Is it not funny that our oil minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke only speaks with the foreign media these days about matters concerning us denizens of Nigeria? The other day in London, she told Bloomberg Television that Nigeria’s four refineries would be sold by the first quarter of 2014. But she knows it’s all empty talk with no iota of substance. She told us nearly two years ago that four Greenfield refineries will be built but no sod has been turned anywhere till now.

    She will never be able to get anything done even if she stays in that position for 20 years. She is a failure. She is very comfortable with a fraud-ridden system that ships out 60,000 barrels of crude daily to fictitious refining plants; a dark subsidy regime that sucks nearly N2 trillion from the treasury yearly. She has left a legacy of graft that may never be surpassed in the annals of our oil sector. No redeeming value whatsoever is in sight.

     

  • ANAMBRA ELECTION: It’s a two-horse race

    It is too close to call. It may even go to the wire. That is how difficult it is to predict who wins the governorship election in Anambra State come Saturday, November 16, 2013. Ask any two Anambrarians and they are likely to mention one of two names: Willie Obiano or Chris Ngige. As many samples as you take and as many times as you pop the question, these two names come up alternately. Obiano is the candidate of the ruling party, All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Ngige is of the All Peoples Congress (APC).

    There is of course Ifeanyi Ubah of Labour Party, a noisome upstart who has managed to stand out in a crowded field and Tony Nwoye, the inconsequential candidate of the beleaguered Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP). There are a handful of other pretenders but there exertions will not count for anything at the end of the day.

    THE NGIGE CHALLENGE

    A true Igbo character: First on Ngige for the only reason that the letter ‘N’ comes before ‘O’ and not for any particular bias for any of the two candidates under review. The greatest thing going for Dr. Chris Nwabueze Ngige ironically is his true Igbo character which is also the chief campaign point against him. His platform APC is being touted by his opponents as a south west party, while his comments during the Igbo ‘deportation’ from Lagos snafu is being tied around his neck like lead. But Ngige, discerning Igbo people will tell you, is the truest Igbo leader alive today. He understands perfectly, the Igbo situation in the Nigerian equation and he knows exactly what is to be done.

    It was in his quest to liberate Anambra and by extension, Ndigbo that he entered into an unholy alliance with Chris Uba and the PDP cabal during his first coming as governor. The result of that adventure is still being enjoyed in the state. He is today referred to as The Liberator of Anambra State. Anyone who has encountered Ngige knows that he has the wiles, the wisdom, the courage and hardihood that define a true Igbo man. Though brief of stature, when it comes to Igbo cause, Ngige would stand taller than any in the political arena today.

    A populist and a man of action: When Ngige was Government House Awka between 2003 to 2006, he showed what a thinking and smart governor can do in a short space of time and win the heart of his people. Where his predecessors built up excuses why they failed, he built roads and public utilities in the way Anambra people had not experienced since the First Republic. He instantly won their confidence and admiration.

    Other little matters: The 61-year-old medical doctor is well educated, tested, experienced and will need no further tutoring. He will hit the ground running and is more likely to come with no godfather encumbrances. On little snag though may be that he is given to over excitement, that disease of most men of power in Nigeria. Can he muster that level of sobriety and reflection required to deliver optimal benefits to a land still much disheveled and unstable.

    WILLIE ‘WHO’ AND THE INCUMBENT

    A tough team to beat: The best thing going for Chief Willie Obiano is the incumbency factor of Governor Peter Obi. Among his contemporaries, Obi has shown the most comportment in high office; he has also delivered some modest performance adopting an integrated development strategy that has impacted every corner of the state. His commonsensical approach to governance has also ensured some stability in a virile and difficult to manage entity. He has shown over the years that he is not the typical Nigerian do-or-die politician. On the other hand, his civil, unexcitable and austere ways have confounded his opponents and won him many followers in a land where swashbuckling in a winning virtue.

    Having created a candidate in his own likeness, all these pluses will work for Obiano who looks cast in the mold of Obi. Like obi, he has a business background; he is an accountant and a thoroughbred professional who rose through the ranks to the position of an executive director in a bank. Some solid track record of work counts for something no doubt. The continuity of the steady development of the state as initiated by Governor Obi is also a big plus.

    The APGA, Ojukwu and zoning factors: Apart from coming under the halo of incumbency, not to be ignored is the APGA- as- Igbo- party factor. As this election approached, APGA, perhaps the most fractious party in the land made up most magically, mustered a candidate and rallied behind him. Chief Victor Umeh, the hitherto embattled party chairman has never looked so happy. He has been the chief of campaign for Obiano and knows the terrains a bit. They sell APGA as Ndigbo’s and Ndigbo to APGA. At every stop, they throw in the well loved name of late APGA leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu as some kind of talisman.

    There is also the zoning factor. Governor Obi had determined that Anambra north which had never produced a governor ought to be given a chance. It makes sense but many questioned and even faulted his motive with some insinuating that he was merely working to his own answer. But the gain in it is that an entire Anambra north senatorial zone may already be in the bag for APGA.

    Other little matters: Like Ngige, Obiano is well educated but unlike him, he has no political experience whatsoever. He also seems like a man who may be hamstrung by godfathers; one who may not possess a mind of his own.

    Finally, it promises to be an interesting election and another huge test for the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, the federal government and security agencies. Can they manage to render a free, fair election?

    This column will neither call nor endorse for that is the prerogative of Anambra people; both Ngige and Obiano are in my view passable candidates and either of them will expectedly, do well for Anambra people. Let the people step out tomorrow and make their choice.

  • ODIMEGWU: The courage of his convictions

  • POT POURRI: Of Rochas, Aregbe and Adesina

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jonathan’s women of power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

  • Agric minister’s rice conundrum

    Agric minister’s rice conundrum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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