The Nation Newspaper

Category: Steve Osuji

  • National confab: Jonathan admits failure

    National confab: Jonathan admits failure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • NIGERIA @ 53: How presidency and governors immiserise us

    NIGERIA AT THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE. Fifty- three years after independence, our dear country totters dangerously at the precipice. But that in itself does not pose such a morbid danger to the entity. What is troubling is that Nigeria’s critical leadership seems not to appreciate how close we are to an irrevocable doom. They therefore carry on blissfully using a template that is bound to lead us to our collective atrophy.

    THE PRESIDENCY IS THE WORST CULPRIT. It is business as usual for the presidency, the fulcrum of leadership and the key catalyst for change. But the capacity to lead and effect basic changes is too low to engender radical, paradigmatic changes which are what we sorely and urgently need now. The presidency which controls over 50 per cent of the nation’s revenues continues on its binging, wastefulness and a worrisome inability to focus on the major problems.

    ACUTE INABILITY TO MANAGE THE BUDGET is at the heart of the matter apart from the well known old enemy, corruption. All the institutional levers for implementing the budget may have crashed as we hardly achieve 20 per cent of our capital budget year-on-year. Capital expenditures are hardly released to the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and whatever little is released are roiled in corruption and inefficiency.

    Though we do not need the corroboration of the National Assembly, House members who were on oversight inspection of MDAs projects last week found only about 30-40 percent project execution with three quarters of the year gone. If this has been the story in the past one decade or more, what it simply means is that there has been little or no development going on in the country over this period.

    LIKE PRESIDENCY LIKE STATES. The 36 states of the federation are no better than the presidency. All the state governors without exception effectively disburse both the state and local government funds without proper recourse to the executive council or the state houses of assembly. State budgets are mere formalities hardly implemented while the LGAs don’t have budget anymore. The result: most governors expend the state’s resources loosely and recklessly as if they were pocket money but often in whimsical and myopic ways.

    Naturally, all the statutory institutions for orderly distribution of resources like the ministries, the agencies, the LGAs and development areas have been shutdown in most states. The decrepit state of ministries across the country is enough proof that there is no life in them how much more delivering service to the people. Please take a trip to the LGA and LCDA secretariats across the country and you will find most of them overgrown by weeds. Of course it is common knowledge that most of the LGA heads and key personnel who are mere errand boys and girls of the various governors do not dare live in the vicinity of their LGAs. They all live in the state capital or posh and secured parts of town and only come to office when there is money to share.

    NO GOVERNANCE GOING ON HERE. The result is that what we have is a semblance of governance. We see the presidency hee and haw over a few projects and our supermen governors engage in so much abracadabra in cities and a few towns. A vast expanse of the country is left in total neglect and disarray. This explains why hardly anything is working in spite of Nigeria’s huge earnings; it explains the burgeoning youth unemployment, and criminal activities like kidnapping, baby factories, and armed agitation.

    To cut a very long story short, we cannot be governing our country wrongly and expect the right results; the current template is not sustainable and if the president and governors insist on it, the country will meet its perdition sooner.

     

    FEEDBACK: Re: Iwuanyanwu: Selfish politics to the end

    Good morning Mr. Osuji, Iwuanyanwu has been a great disappointment. A very young man when he came to public prominence, he quickly imbibed a cynical disposition to business and politics. His Hardel and Enic Construction Company became known for shoddy and poor jobs and abandoned road projects. As a pioneer student of in 1981 of the Federal university of Technology Owerri, I still remember today a donation he announced towards some projects at our then campus at Samek Road, off Okigwe Road. He donated some large number of bags of cement and staff, students and the audience hailed him. He then announced that the donation was conditional upon his company being awarded one of the contracts in the campus and the university authority agreeing to hire one of his warehouses for storing the cement. It was a deflating anti-climax for us all then. Today, nobody knows what he stands for in politics. – 08188884775

    Steve you have always made my day each time you show the brilliance in your use of the pen. The likes of chief Iwuanyanwu must be told the home truth. Fire on at full throttle. -08039568640

    Brother Steve you hit the nail on the head. Iwuanyanwu has no noble principles and swims any government in power – tyrannical, fascistic or blood thirsty. He says Igbo are not organized and coordinated but what has he done towards Igbo unity. I am truly disgusted with that man. From Gabriel, Aba. – 08051481333

    Steve my brother Chief Iwuanyanwu is indisposed and can never recover. In fact that is all about him since we know him and he cannot change. From Charles Umunnakwe, -07039095549

    Hi Steve. I will still say that the major problem of Ndigbo is that the political space is left in the hands of ‘freerollers’ who misconstrue Igbo political world view. You can imagine someone like Ojo Maduekwe who dropped from being foreign minister to accepting an ambassadorial posting. People like Iwuanyanwu will continue his ‘trade’ until serious Igbo wake up from their slumber. Maybe you should start something like Ohaneze Renewal Group. There are more than enough young, vibrant Igbo elite who can anchor that. From Olu, 08033013597

    Leave press work, contest for presidency, it’s your right. From Anu, 08165124180

    Dear Steve, after reading Iwuanyanwu’s Calabar statement, I could not believe it. For long I have been wondering when someone would stand Ndigo in front of the mirror. Iwuanyanwu is not alone in this politics of the stomach. What has so-called mainstream politics got my people from Obasanjo to Yar’Adua to Jonathan? May god save us? – 08086135704

  • Wetin ministers dey do sef?

    Last week we had said that 39 and not nine ministers should have been fired by President Goodluck Jonathan. I had held that barely half a dozen so-called ministers know why they sat on their exalted seats while picking at random, both the sacked and retained public officials for a quick performance review in the last two years. Many readers reacted insisting that my list was not comprehensive enough while pointing out some woeful non-performers I seemingly spared.

    Diezani Alison-Madueke , minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources seems the most detested and disagreeable to readers. How could you have missed her out, many queried? I quite agree with them that she has been the least stellar and disappointing of all the Jonathan’s men. Ironically, she holds the most important job in the land after the president of course. Her failure is an entire story that would probably require a serial when the time ripens but suffice to say that surprisingly, she brought nothing to her office for one who had played in the oil sector most of her life.

    She simply picked up the decadent template that had been operational in that office for about five decades and even debased it further. In other words, she just collects rent and fritters it with such frenzy. She has not brought a penny value to the industry that is supposed to drive Nigeria’s growth and development. If she is sacked today, she would have been remarkable for three things, a flurry of corruption allegations trailing her tenure like flies; the multi-trillion naira subsidy scandal that passed under her nose yet she feigned ignorance; and third, we will all remember the PIB (whatever that is) and how she has wasted our time singing PIB, PIB, PIB! May be we would have been better off with a beautiful parrot as oil minister. We just teach the bird to sing PIB and it would probably make a better job of it.

    She promised to build what she calls the Greenfield refineries after the January 2012 fuel subsidy protests but everything promised in the wake of that upheaval has turned out to be lies. She insists that refineries and petrochemical complexes cannot be developed unless the so-called subsidies are removed but even countries like South Africa that has no crude deposit have numerous large and viable refining complexes functioning. The same international oil companies that would not develop or add value to our crude oil are developing and running huge modern refining and petrochemical complexes in Asia, Europe and America. Mrs. Alison-Madueke has turned out the worst in the long list of incapacious and visionless oil ministers. What a crying pity.

    Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, minister for Finance and the Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy (CME), also came up for mentioning as among the failed ones requiring to be expended. Yes the CME has not been able to pull her weight considering the enormous powers conferred on her. Life has turned out worse for the average Nigerian regardless of the meaningless positive ratings from abroad. The budget, her primary task and a key driver of the economy has remained mired at all its crucial stages of preparation, appropriation and implementation. It has become certain that Mrs Okonji-Iweala does not have the grit and aplomb to pull this economy from the brinks.

    Other ministers that drew an especial ire of the readers are agriculture minister, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina and Olusegun Aganga of the ministry of Trade and Investment. These two are said to be adept at playing to the gallery and making so much sound and fury with little significance. Someone pointed out that Aganga has sign over a dozen phoney MoUs with so much fanfare with hardly any progressing further from the signing ceremony. One such example is the $2.55 billion biofuels project which MoU was signed by Aganga late 2011. The pilot project ought to have been completed December last year. We are not aware of any such ‘giant’ project anywhere; there are several other examples.

    When Aganga is not signing phantom MoUs, he is regaling us with some chimerical huge Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) flowing into Nigeria like Ogunpa river flood. But many Nigerians can only watch in bemusement as the little, little Western Union change from their long-suffering ‘exiles’ abroad is being co-opted into Aganga’s pool of achievements in office. But we know better to understand that when government claims Nigeria’s FDI inflow is the largest in Africa, its all lies and deceit.

    Dr. Adesina on the other hand was early this year, embroiled in the Nigerian wonder of delivering 10 million GSM telephones to rural farmers as if phones were major implements for farming. He has become clever at telling us how much we spend annually to import rice, palm oil, wheat, fish, vegetable oil and other items we can easily produce but he has not been able to devise a means to transform our agriculture.

    Rice farming presents the greatest opportunity were the minister serious and capable. Nigeria is perhaps the second largest importer of rice globally, giving away over $1 billion annually. But there are key stakeholders in rice production in Nigeria and there is a Rice Fund which has become a sink hole of corruption. The minister has not driven local rice production beyond the level he met it two years ago and the huge fund is still sunk somewhere used more as slush fund than for local rice development.

    These are the visible ministers, most others are so docile and inactive we do not eve know them two years on and that is so very convenient for them to live in obscurity, to hide in the shadows while enjoying the perks of office and giving nothing back. Wetin ministers dey do sef? Ministers such as Abba Moro, (Internal Affairs), Sarah Ochekpe, (Water Resources), Tanimu Turaki (Special Duties), Chukwuemeka Wogu (Labour and productivity), among others. What really do they do? By the way, do we really need ministers?

    FEED BACK: Re: 9 ministers sacked, should have been 39

    Brilliant piece, however Jonathan should axe himself too in addition to the 39 ministers suggested. He is just too clueless and wasteful. Motunrayo, Ibadan, 08067564858

    I have just finished reading your piece… you miss the point on the Agric. Minister. If you ask a peasant farmer in northern Nigeria, he is like a god to him thank you. From Abdullahi Mohammed, 08095592257

    Steve you wrote well but did not say anything about the girl with the protruding beautiful eyes who frittered away 2 billion bucks on private jets. Isn’t it incredible that while others are being booted out, she is loved and left alone? 07025885993

    Thanks Steve for that clinical assessment of GEJ’s ministers but don’t you think that the failure of about 39 students in a class of about 43 is a failure of the teacher himself? Now can you point to a singular achievement of the emperor himself? From F.T. odugbemi, State of Osun, 08033565813

    Steve that was mean but if truth must be told, GEJ and his cabinet leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Thanks for that stringent x-ray of executive inertia. 08037910012

    Steve I have criticized your articles in the past but concerning the sacked ministers, I score you a hundred and one per cent. Well done. 07058534745

  • Nine ministers axed:should have been 39

    Good riddance! Be gone and fare thee well. This is what we all must say to the ministers fired from President Goodluck Jonathan’s cabinet on Wednesday. We hear some of them burst into tears, while they actually ought to jubilate and be grateful that they were relieved of a burden that was obviously breaking their weak backs. Many Nigerians had long expected this sack but Jonathan doodled apparently not quite understanding the essence of a cabinet. Many expected a near clean sweep; or something like 19, or even 39, for left to this column, only about three to half a dozen of the lot have shown that they can think through their responsibilities and deliver any result.

    SELF-SERVING PRESIDENCY But by this cabinet change (if we must call it that), Jonathan has shown how pitiably mixed up he is in his bid to run a government and how he is not ‘working’ and his administration will continue to flounder even if he stayed a 100 years in office. Now he has sacked these fellows by the tag of ministers not because they were not up to speed on the job but because they will not serve his political purpose in the coming months. The pack of Ruqayyat Rufai, Okon Ewa-Bassey, Olugbenga Ashiru, Ama Pepple, Shamsudeen Usman, Hadiza Mailafia, Olusola Obada, Bukar Tijani and Zainab Kuchi have been marinated in the rich trappings of Jonathan’s presidential powers that often becomes Nigeria’s public office holders, in the past two or more years.

    But what we call a cabinet here is a glorified royal court where the king’s men didn’t have to work or exert their minds; all they need do is to be ever present at the royal court, smile broadly at the king’s lame jokes to be acceptable in the king’s presence. Now this horde has become an irritant to the king and they are hereby thrown out like litter. This is the way our executive cabinets have worked at all levels since the British left these shores; members of the executive largely serve the boss and not the people. Now they have been sacked not because they have not performed in their duty posts but because they are deemed no longer useful to the boss man.

    NO GRAND VISION President Jonathan fell deep into the same hole like all his predecessors. He picked underlings, party wags, personal aides, in-laws and mistresses of party big men to form a cabinet. Some had never held down a serious job in their lives and many who can never run a store were saddled with an entire ministry and accompanying agencies. Because neither the boss nor the messengers have any strategic vision for the job or the country, they end up destabilizing the system instead of adding or bringing any value to bear on it.

    The result is that after four or even 20 years, the country would not be much different from how they met it. Our education for instance, would be in the doldrums and ASUU would continue to bicker; we will keep having a ministry of planning that cannot see beyond today and ministry in charge of housing that cannot manage to build a row of sheds in four years. Therefore, naught upon naught is naught; there is no grand vision, no overriding national interest being pursued and no strategic perspective brought to the job.

    In this light it would be asking too much if we begin to question or interrogate the performances of these so-called ministers in the last two years. Safe to Gbenga Ashiru who managed to project some respectability in Nigeria’s foreign policy, most of the others (including those still on their seats) cannot be remembered for any positive contribution while they warmed their various seats. Prof. Rufai in the education ministry will be remembered for protracted ASUU strike and education policy that changed every session. She seemed always out of her depths while her upstart junior minister was rather illiterate for such most important job. Both the president and his appointees can’t seem to fathom the import and majesty of education in this age.

    Mama Ama(l) Pepple, a retired civil servant, one would wager she doses half the time in office having segued from a lifetime of wearisome Nigerian bureaucracy into heading a ministry. One cannot remember that she delivered anything, not in housing, not in urban development in two years. Mrs. Obada was noticed cutting tapes here and there and that was all. Prof. Ewa-Bassey was neither seen nor heard anywhere and it would not have mattered if we did not have a ministry in charge of science and technology. Mrs. Mailafia manned one of the most important ministries in modern times but bet she did not realize just how critical issues of environment are in today’s world. She never lifted off the ground. Mrs Kuchi, the junior minister for power could not be expected to have put in any work if her senior counterpart was de-fenestrated and thrown out by the scruff of the neck; all one has for her is sympathy.

    The same emotion I extend to Mr. Tijani, the junior for agriculture who must have been dazed by the bamboozling and bombastic razzmatazz of his senior man, Akinwunmi Adesina. Shamsudeen Usman who was in-charge of National Planning was particularly pathetic. He has been around as cabinet minister for nearly two decades under various governments and manning different ministries. All these years, one hardly remembers him for any performance on the job or freshness of thought; he is remembered as a time-server and bench warmer. This last outing however, completely unraveled the former bank chief. As the man in charge of National Planning, not one day did he give the nation nary a thread of insight about our condition yesterday, today or tomorrow. Worse, the vision 20-20-20 which was on his corridor died a natural death right their in his hands. In fact he carried on as if he was doing the rest of us a favour serving us in the executive council.

    Beyond the sacked ones, most of the rest really ought to be chucked out if it was really all about service. Just a few instances: what on earth is Ms Omobola Johnson (Communications) doing there; what can we point to if she leaves today? Same for Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu (Health), one cannot see any imprint or monument. Labaran Maku has not brought anything to his office apart from the odium of a ministerial visit (we remember him for something at least); Goodsday Orubebe (Niger Delta ministry) has nothing to offer, same for Onolememen (Works). Akinwunmi Adesina is all fancy foot works with neither depth nor results and ditto for Olusegun Aganga who has lived a fantasy world of phantom investors.

    Apart from one or two, this cabinet and its leadership have been a debacle, to say it straight. Let’s be rid of them!

  • Endless agonies over FRSC and NERC

    Restraining from writing this piece for quite sometime now has in itself amounted to enduring a niggling pain. For over two months, I had deliberately held down the urge to bare my mind on the troubling misgivings one has about these two federal agencies. One held back ‘fire’ perhaps in sympathy for the young, ebullient compatriots heading them who need encouragement to succeed instead of barbs of criticism. But the more one shied away from doing it, the more one is tormented by the need to render this apparent public service.

    The Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC and the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC both have their jobs well-defined and cut out for them. They are however imbued with a particular good fortune in the sense that aspects of their schedules have direct and immediate impact on the populace nationwide but even better still is the fact that these activities are monstrously revenue churning.

    First FRSC: apart from devising means of ensuring safety on federal highways, it has a much more lucrative task of issuing driver’s licences and number plates. These services which enjoy a sitting-duck customer base of no fewer than 70 million are in a torrid mess right now. There are few processing centres and even those are pock-marked by touting and racketeering mainly insider-induced. People pay for many months without being issued documents or getting service. The stories emanating from licensing offices are long and ugly but this bit will suffice.

    NERC on the other hand and as the name suggests ought to regulate electricity distribution, metering as well as oversight the new private operators. NERC is better known to Nigerians today as a ‘crazy’ government agency that only specializes in increasing electricity tariff especially at a time of blinding ‘blackout’ and near zero power supply. But if people could live down the ‘thrombosis’ of tariff increase in a time of ‘darkness’, how are Nigerians supposed to swallow the fact that they paid for meters for years and they never get them. Just like FRSC, NERC is so fortunate to have over 100 million Nigerian households begging to pay just any price for these meters that ought to be free in the first place. My personal experience is that a close friend paid about N50,000 and it took nearly four years to get the one-phase meter.

    At times like this, one remembers forlornly, a Dora Akunyili, Ifueko Omoigui and even Stella Oduah in this era of stupefying inertia. What the trio have in common is that they proved most convincingly that with the right leadership and drive, even government agencies will work in Nigeria. They showed us that you could cut through the fat of bureaucracy to get the results you want. No excuses. I want to wager that an Akunyili would have delivered meters house-to-house starting from Bonny Island upwards through katsina right up to the outer fringes of Chad and the Niger Republics. An Omoigui would have devised a 48-hour home delivery method for anyone who concluded his vehicle documentation process. Service, service, service; no excuses.

    The pity is that the two helmsmen (Osita Chidoka, FRSC and Dr. Sam Mbah, NERC) are young, vibrant and well-regarded young people; how they succumbed so supinely to inertia and put Nigerians through such untold agonies is difficult to tell? (Perhaps they have insights the rest of us cannot fathom whereupon this space will be availed them for any article that would shed light on the issues raised above).

     

    Readers speak

    Below are a few of the SMS reactions to last week’s article: Kwankwaso, Haruna, Odimegwu and fictional censuses, published on this space:

    Ha Mr. Osuji, why did you write with such anger today? The truth is that we are all guilty of self preservation when the issues affect our tribes. See how ‘Baba Clark’ and Asari Dokubo gyrate over any criticism of President Jonathan. You have also ‘defended’ Igbo nationals when criticized e.g. minster of Aviation, among others. What of the recent accusations and counter accusations over Fani-Kayode’s article which was precipitated by an Igbo man’s claim that Lagos is no-man’s? In my view, these are all natural reactions because we belong to our tribes FIRST before we are Nigerians.. – 08034726625

    Most of the time, I find your comments disgusting. Your are not different from Haruna Mohammed in fanning the embers of tribal hatred. Odimegwu has spoken, let it be. – 07026802510

    God bless you my brother! Igbos are everywhere in this country giving credence to our false unity. Igbos should withdraw to the east like the Yourbas and Hausas have done and Nigeria will cease to exist. From Obinna, Aba, 08072175614

    You are an irritating pollutant, a disgusting opinionist whose mind is possessed by tribal misconceptions. The earlier you are shown the way out, the better for our dear newspaper. Don’t kill yourself while trying hard to tell and defend a tribal lie. Come to the north and take a census of at least one household and your tribal infection may be healed. – 08085536615

    Oga Osuji, thanks immensely for being very sensitive to national issues. Some people out there just think others are ‘mumu united’. That others don’t talk of the fraud called national census doesn’t mean they are fools and those committing the fraud will always have a field day. Thanks for calling Malam Haruna to order in his subjective feature. From Monday – 08033691236

    Dear Mr. Steve Osuji, your piece is a masterpiece, God bless you. – 08164483725

    I read your piece and I think your conclusions are wrong and mere sentiments. All indices supporting high population such as early/child marriage, polygamy and poverty are more prevalent in the north. That high figures are cooked up for the north as you insinuated cannot be correct. From A. Ojo, Lagos. – 08023535890

    Thank you Steve for your work on Odimegwu, Kwankwaso, etc. – 0803541017

    Opara-ukwu Igbo! That is what you are Steve Osuji. Thanks for your exceptional disquisition in EXPRESSO, 30.8.13. Your bold refreshing candor is re-enlivening to countless Ndigbo. Iwu akataka! From Ogbuehi M. – 08034868081.

    Honestly sir I am very much proud of you and I am happy to know that there is someone who can think and stand by the truth. I just want to encourage you to do more. – 08069265966

    I have just read the charade you submitted on Kwankwaso and Odimegwu your kinsman. For irrationally chasing Igbo sentiments and churning out the rubbish that the Igbo is better than every other human on earth, you are a disgrace and a curse to your pen profession and your so-called race. Shame on you and the tabloid that gave you the platform. Nigeria does not need your arrogance. From Salau@LKJ -08036001282

    For just firing a bullet into the air, those who are benefitting from the falsehood are developing heart attack. The only advise I have for Odimegwu is: let your strategies be coded before those beneficiaries of falsehood ambush you. From Effiong, Calabar – 08072003205

    Well done Steve! The judgment from the Census Tribunal which invalidated 2006 census results from 14 LGAs in Lagos (see Sun, Vanguard of 31.8.13) has validated your piece if it needed any. There will always be crisis in a country built on injustice, for instance Kano is touted to be in the same population bracket with Lagos yet old Kano had 44 LGAs. When Jigawa State was created from this same Kano, it was allotted 27 LGAs making old Kano to have 71 LGAs while Lagos remains at 20 LGAs. Can anyone quantify this singular injustice in terms of federal revenue allocation?! Please keep it up Steve, change will come someday, somehow. From Amaku, – 08151529021

  • Kwakwanso, Haruna, Odimegwu and Nigeria’s fictional censuses

    Kwakwanso, Haruna, Odimegwu and Nigeria’s fictional censuses

    There is an age-old Igbo wisdom concerning the managing of a rascally child’s internal injury; these people of yore thought of everything you know. The scenario is this: the playful, rascally child had gone and earned himself an internal injury and his mother (it’s always mothers of course bless them) would apply the hot water dabs. Since you are not exactly sure where lies the heart of the injury, mothers, (wise as spirits), would watch carefully and determine the sore spot by the reaction of the lad as they apply the hot towel. The saying therefore translates thus: you linger upon and dab harder where the child feels the most pain.

    This old tale illustrates the matter between Eze Festus Odimegwu, chairman of the Nigerian Population Commission, NPC, and some of our northern brothers notably Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State and Malam Mohammed Haruna, a senior colleague and syndicated columnist. Odimegwu simply applied the dab where it pains most in order to heal an injury fast and expectedly, there is an angry and excited reaction from those who were living off the old, retrogressive order.

    But before I return to Kwankwaso and Mohammed, let me blame Odimegwu for belittling himself by accepting such a silly job. One of the most brilliant men to be found anywhere, first he ought to have known that what we call census in Nigeria are fictional, farcical and silly waste of time and resources and as long as we are yoked the way we are under this dour flag of ours, you will always have the same falsehood he talks about which we have had since 1816 as he claims. Therefore, one expects him to be perspicacious enough to understand that he could never change a system that had been ingrained and perpetrated for over 200 years, with crafty British colonialists helping to perfect it, we must hasten to add. He ought to have known that census in Nigeria is the northern hegemonists’ primary instrument of domination.

    With their contrived census figures, they get more states, more LGAs and more electoral wards. With their bogus head count they dominate the military and security organs; the civil service and the entire government apparatus. They heft more allocation from the federation account, and they perpetually make the rest of us, especially Ndigbo second class citizens. One is particularly disgusted that Odimegwu didn’t seem to have this perspective otherwise he would never have taken a job that has been perfectly designed to fail. If he knew he would never have gone about opening his mouth so wide to speak so ignorantly about changing the system. How dose he plan to change the warped template of Nigeria’s head count? Would he morph into a bionic man and be in every household in Nigeria? From Birnin Nkonji in the uppermost fringes of Sokoto State to Ribao where Taraba State kisses the Camerouns he would lead all the counting teams and man all the collation units? If he has devised a fail-proof satellite mapping technology, how can he determine that one quarter of the much-touted huge population of Kano, Kwankwaso country are not probably Ndigbo and perhaps one third of the inhabitants are Christians, among other vital stats that cannot be captured from above?

    One was appalled that after years of excellent work life in the best of multinational corporations and with the best global minds; after the self-lacerating third term ruckus and the circumstance of his exit from his high office he remains quite excitable if not exuberant. Even if he has manufactured a wand to conduct the perfect census for Nigeria, considering the sensitivity of the process and the deep import of a national head count in a primitive society such as ours, one would expect him to keep his strategies very close to his chest. Lastly on Odimegwu’s shortcomings, he also suffers the Igboman disease: he tends to love Nigeria more than other Nigerians, he wants to outdo the average Nigerian and he strives harder and wants to be more nationalistic in an environment where constituent nationalities take care of their tribal interests first. One quick example: while Nnamdi Azikiwe was playing the nationalist (to the eternal pain of Ndigbo), Obafemi Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello were more interested in taking care of their people and their region.

    Having said all these, I think Odimegwu should quit that silly job and as Ndigbo say, ka o we kwa yere onwe ya ugwu. Because Odimegwu utterly disrespected himself by accepting an accursed job that is why Kwankwaso, at the drop of a pin, would brand him a drunkard who has been inebriated from brewing beer all his life; but we know the hypocrites who drink in their closets and from their prayer kettles in the bid to fool their god. It is not enough to recommend his sack he has to be abused too. Haba Mr. governor how really would census figure affect your running of Kano State today?

    My brother of the pen, Malam Haruna was, true to type, quick to bring his lucid mind to bear on a farce. To be fair, every part of the country now does their best to rig the census figures but the north just has the patent to the ‘winning’ formula. But when highly learned men like Haruna begins to abet and justify a well-known fallacy then doom beckons on the land. Why is our country so distraught and disheveled today, we wander about as if we are not part of the world community? It is because we are living many lies the worst of which is that we base our policies on fictitious headcounts. Haruna, like most of us, know full well that we have been living a lie but because it benefits him, it is okay. I am sorry to say that he suffers acute myopia. The earlier we return to the path of truth, the better for us all.

    On the other hand, the likes of odumegwu if they are wise, instead of straining to fix Nigeria’s broken China, must begin to apply themselves to the urgent project of rejecting the vassal status Nigeria has consigned Ndigbo to. Census my foot!

  • Anambra guber: Who killed Soludo?

    Anambra guber: Who killed Soludo?

    There is dagger in men’s smile,” that is how William Shakespeare captured a similar plot as this in his days. Though this Anambra situation seem insignificant and indeed many would rather play it down, but the deft shafting of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo in his quest for the Anambra State top job portends deep-reaching augury not just for the individual in the mix of the shenanigans but for the entire Igbo race. In other words, the back-stabbing and emasculation of Soludo in his quest to lead Anambra is a knife in the back of Ndigbo. But the stab is deeper and more injurious because it is obviously self-inflicted.

    There is no doubt that Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo is the man to beat in Anambra State’s governorship election coming up in November. Former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, who acquitted himself most remarkably well on the job; a first class scholar and an economist of international renown Soludo lost narrowly to the incumbent in the last election in 2010 flying the flag of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. This time, the political calculations in his party has changed and the new powerbrokers of PDP are out of his league and they seem easily discomfited by his intellectual prowess, self-assuredness and the strong Igbo libertarian world view. It was apparently long decided that not only that the now tenuous umbrella of the PDP would not provide him cover, his contesting the Anambra guber would be inimical to PDP’s interest.

    APGA-cadabra Having determined that, Soludo was promptly nudged out of PDP as a first step, he was then lured into the supposedly Igbo party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA. Having been reassured, he promptly purchased APGA nomination form for N10 million and was fine-tuning strategies for participating and triumphing in the primary when his detractors moved again. The fear of Soludo must be the beginning of wisdom for the PDP hawks. He was reportedly approached to jettison his quest for the top job but he insisted on going through with it having gone so far. But not wanting to leave anything to chance, a jankara screening committee was set up by the APGA hierarchy whose primary target was obviously Soludo. Pronto, Soludo and some unknown quantities had been screened out; they are not fit to contest even in the primary. How is it that someone who was corralled into joining APGA and who was promised a fair shot at the contest? Someone who had bought nomination forms for such huge amount and who had started setting up campaign structure is suddenly not fit to attempt the primary?

    Of course we are not told why he is not eligible apart from the mutterings from some quarters that he had declined to join earlier when he was approached and that he came around too late. But they forgot that until a few weeks ago, APGA had been a banana case running from one court room to another. It can even be conjectured that Soludo was instrumental to the rapprochement in APGA or that APGA was reconciled for the sake of arresting Soludo’s ambition. It does not require a pundit to see that the race for Anambra’s number one job is a three horse one between Andy Uba, Chris Ngige and Soludo. If PDP would grab Uba and APC flies with Ngige, why would APGA shun Soludo if it is not a marionette dangling from another man’s strings? If the APGA clowns fool themselves successfully, do they by any chance imagine that they can fool the generality of Ndigbo who had hoped that they had a party in APGA? Which of those motley fellas they have pre-qualified will expect to beat Uba or Ngige in any election in Anambra State?

    APGA’s nunc dimittis The PDP will take no prisoners in this Anambra election having serious implications for 2015. It would not brook to share its glory in a southeast in which Anambra is the most strategic. On the other hand, APGA’s loss of Anambra would mark its demise and the passing into history of a once upon a time Igbo party. Maybe it is just as well that APGA should die because it never served the Igbo cause for which it was supposedly founded. It will be trite to say that APGA finally sold its wretched soul and litigation-wracked body for a pot of porridge; it is quite self evident now what we had only conjectured all this while.

    Just because we are traders does not mean that everything we have is for sale. Some things are supposed to be priceless, only to be nurtured and preserved for national pride, for posterity and for collective edification and well-being. But the leaders of this APGA – the incumbent governor of Anambra, Mr. Peter Obi, the chairman of the party, Chief Chekwas Okorie and all the other dramatis personae in this farcical epic will have to answer to the Ndigbo and her posterity for they rode on our back; they will have to answer to history some day when all this hurly-burly is done.

    It will be recorded that at this critical juncture of Igbo history, they failed us; at their moment in the sun when they had the opportunity to stand up for Ndigbo, to uplift them, to help them reclaim their dignity and manhood, they chose to trade it off.

    Though Soludo may have been killed politically, it is only a momentary setback. In fact this deadly blow could serve as a wake-up call for him to begin anew; change his template, review his strategy and return to the arena. The entire world beckons, Nigeria calls and Igboland yawns for an authentic, honest and fearless leadership. It may well be providential that APGA would achieve its expiry date soon. Away with the imp, away with the ogbanje party; this rascal abiku has served its inglorious time, it must move on into its pre-destined oblivion so that Ndigbo may begin to pick the pieces of their political lives. There is need to find a new, genuine Igbo voice, a new Igbo spirit and a new Igbo body that will negotiate our place under the Nigerian sun standing on our feet, using our head and not our stomach.

  • Homosexuals: What Pope Francis didn’t say

    The world is going gay! Each new day another country endorses same sex marriage. Each new day, world leaders, Christian leaders and even our iconic Archbishop Desmond Tutu have continued to make room for and extend the conjugal rights of same sex people. While the moral majority is nigh being at the receiving end now, it faces an imminent danger of a harmful role reversal. Still nonplussed and trying hard to come to terms with what is obviously a gay revolution, the Catholic Pontiff, Pope Francis weighs in in favour of gays and dampens the spirit of heterosexuals who are now derisively called ‘homophobes’.

    In a chat with journalists after a tour of Brazil recently, the pope declared that even though homosexual acts are sin, people with homosexual orientation must not be ‘judged’ or ‘marginalised’. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge him,” the pope said. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this (orientation) but that they must be integrated into society,” he said. In other words, homosexual act may be sinful, homosexual orientation is not by itself wrong or sinful? But is it possible to have homosexual orientation without committing homosexual acts?

    Surely, hardly any man can claim to be more Catholic or even Christian than the pope but the point that must be made here is that this remark from the pope represents the single most important endorsement to be enjoyed by people with gay tendencies across the world. Has the dam finally broken, has the last vestiges of resistance to what is clearly an aberrant human behavior been lost? Man and man (or woman and woman) living together and cohabiting is abhorrent to humanity and sinful in the sight of our Christian God. It is not about marginalizing or judging, it is about repudiating our creator and the grave danger this act portends for humanity now, in the future and in the hereafter.

    Homosexuals will always remain people who have deviated from the natural course of God, they need help – psychological and spiritual help. For this reason, I reproduce below, an article by William Consiglio, titled: “Understanding Homosexuality” published on page1081 of the Parents Resource Bible. I have taken the liberty to modify the title thus:

    Help for homosexuals

    God’s word is truthful, and we can rely on it. It reveals God’s standards about life and human sexuality. In Romans 1: 24-27 we can see four moral and spiritual truths about homosexuality.

    Homosexuality is a behavior. The Bible never calls homosexuality an identity or an alternative sexuality created by God. The Word says: “Women… indulged in sex… with each other. And the men… doing the shameful things with other men…” (v.26-27).

    Homosexuality is a sinful behavior. Sinful means that such a behavior is displeasing to God. The Word says: “God let them go ahead in every sort of sex sin” (v. 24).

    Homosexuality is a substitute for God’s natural plan. God’s Word says that “ even their women turned against God’s natural plan” (v. 26). God created all people to be heterosexuals. Homosexuality is a spiritual and emotional disorientation, deviation and disorder in his plan.

    As with all sin, the root of homosexual behavior is caused and maintained by those who refuse to honour God. “They knew about him all right but they wouldn’t admit it or worship him or even thank him for all his daily care” (v.21). All sin is a turning away from God. All healing comes from a return to God. Spiritually and morally, homosexuality is a sinful behavior that distorts God’s natural plan for human sexuality.

    Homosexuality is not the unforgivable sin. It is important to understand that homosexual behavior has emotional and psychological roots. While homosexuality is sin, it is not the unforgivable sin. God knows that all of us are sinners, prone to emotional wounding and disordered behavior

    John 8: 1-11 contains the story of an adulterous woman who was brought before Jesus. If this had been a homosexual person, what would Jesus have done? Jesus loved the woman just as he loves all sinners, including homosexuals. He forgave her and commanded her to stop sinning. He said, “Neither do I (condemn you). Go and sin no more” (John 8:11) God loves homosexual people and call them to repent and be healed. He seeks their conversion and not their shame and ruin.

    There is healing for those overcoming homosexuality. How can those struggling with homosexuality “sin no more”? How can they change their feelings, behavior and life-style? There are six elements to an effective healing program for Christians who are overcoming homosexuality:

    •The overcommer needs personal relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ. He or she needs to become a child of God. Only Jesus can give the overcomer this relationship to God because as he says, “no one can get to the father except by means of me” (John 14:6). “To all who received him (Jesus), he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

    • The overcomer needs a personal life that includes regular study and meditation on God’s word and a vital life of prayer.

    • The overcomer needs to be actively involved in a good Bible teaching/preaching church that offers fellowship and nurture in Christian holiness.

    • The overcomer needs a good Christian friend or married couple with whom to share burdens and be held accountable…

    • The overcomer needs to be committed to professional Christian counseling to learn about the roots of homosexuality, gain personal insight, and work through emotional healing.

    • Finally, the overcomer needs to be involved in a group support ministry with other overcomers. It provides HOPE – a place of Honesty, Openness, Prayer, and Encouragemnet. God loves the overcomer, so there is plenty of hope for those trying to overcome.

    LAST MUG: Fani-Kayode goes off the hook

    It is shocking that so much hatred and bigotry had remained percolated in some people all these year and that those demons were all this while looking for an opportunity to break free. One of such is as manifested in Femi Fani-Kayode’s interminable diatribe: “The bitter truth about the Igbo in Nigeria.” Surely it could not be this small matter of ‘deportation’ of 14 Igbo people to Onitsha that brought about this unhinging. Femi has created an ethnic mud-fight where none really existed and he is reveling in it all by his self.

    But one is pushed to interject his fun when he went so low as to release a shortlist (or is that his long list?) of all the (Igbo) women he enjoyed ‘intimate’ relationship with in his wild-oat sowing years. Gush, did Femi have to name names of women who are now married and running families? We thought this was the antics of excitable high school boys newly exploiting their libidinal prowess. To think that this is a one-minister in this country! I think opinion molders will do well to show a little more restraint when they put pen to paper.

  • In the Glo of an original Nigerian

    In the Glo of an original Nigerian

    There is always a special up-welling of patriotic zeal each time one encounters the hallowed deep green logo of the Glo brand. It is especially so across the borders say in Cotonu or Accra. One often lapses into the reverie of what might not have been had the Glo dream been extirpated. As this authentic and pioneering Nigerian brand rounds off a decade of GSM telephony in Nigeria and on the West Coast of Africa, one cannot help but be lured into a tribute to what has come to epitomize the typical Nigerian dream.

    Thereabouts August 29, 2003, Globacom Limited, an offshoot of the Mike Adenuga Group rolled out the Glo brand of mobile services. One still remembers the bold and almost inimitable launch show held at the freshly wrought Golden Gate Restaurant in Ikoyi, Lagos. The show featured Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka (WS) and juju music king, Sunny Ade. It was a sublime evening to be remembered for the delicate expression of culture, (Yoruba culture especially), intellectualism and a digital new horizon. One framed an especial image of WS seated on stage, behind a microphone with a pyrotechnic of lightning effects in the background. One also still remembers Sunny Ade cashing in on one of his old classic tunes, ‘365 is my number’, which he adapted to the moment to become ‘0805 is my number’. It was a product launch that became a cause célèbre in itself.

    If that memorable Glo launch sent a chill down the spine of competition, it also must have revealed to all interested parties, a fresh new insight into the persona of Adenuga, the one his friends and associates call the bull. It indeed requires the grit, the derring-do and the blood-thirstiness of a raging bull to have to first snatch the GSM licence and second, to sustain the new business for a decade in a peculiar Nigerian environment. The shenanigan over acquiring the licence is too detailed and complicated to recount here but suffice to say that Globacom was perhaps the only indigenous firm that bade in 2001 but the gormless government of the day denied it the licence preferring two foreign firms. Two years lapsed; two years of pleading, cajoling and perhaps horse-trading before there was a change of mind by the gods of that era. Two years of huge grounds lost to competition, of missed opportunities, of haemorrhaging through cost of funds, of dreams dangerously deferred and psychological aggravations.

    It is a tribute to Adenuga’s tenacity and vision that his flame was not quenched by the Nigerian factor which was obviously at play at that time. Obviously driven by forces unknown to the rest of us, he eventually got hold of the licence and launched his Glo brand of gsm service into a Nigerian market that had been assailed for two years by two South African brands – MTN and Econet; multinationals that had played the global system of mobile telephone service field for years in countries across Africa. Adenuga was undaunted, he took the multinationals on head long unsettling the market by crashing prices and unleashing new initiatives. In only a short while, Globacom made aggressive in-roads into Nigeria’s hinterland and soon, Glo became the network of choice for Nigerians.

    Today, glo has become an international brand hoisting Nigeria’s flag in Benin Republic, Ghana and perhaps Cote D’Ivoire. Today, Glo is a multinational in its own right; today it is a great Nigerian story, it is a metaphor for the immense untapped potentialities and capabilities of Nigeria and Nigerians. Glo is a testimony that from the ashes of a-once-upon-a-time NITEL can yet emerge a multinational global telecommunications empire that is purely Nigerian. But for Globacom, there may never have been an authentic Nigerian gsm firm operating in the virgin and highly lucrative Nigerian market. More important, Glo may well be the first original global brand of true Nigerian origin. Along with Dangote, Zenith, GTBank, Access and Transcorp, Nigerian businessmen have in the last decade shown their mettle to the world.

    On its 10th anniversary, every Nigerian must take pride in and salute Mike Adenuga and the Globacom family. Now that the national telecoms backbone (NITEL) is moribund, the entire telecoms data of Nigerians would have been solely in the hands of foreign firms if we hadn’t Glo; how foreboding. We urge the Glo team to continue to strive to build an institution that will conquer the world (yeah, rule your world) and last till eternity – that must be their binding credo.

    Ben Nwabueze’s book of life

    It is actually the book of his life; a life a little over four scores. Professor Benjamin Obiefuna Nwabueze (SAN) can be said to be peerless in Nigeria today as far as intellectual endeavor and output go. He has just released a combo of a biography – a two-volume 719-page story of his life. The book, titled: “Ben Nwabueze: His Life, Works and Times – An Autobiography” was released in Lagos recently. It is indeed the story of the rich life of a man who is not only prodigious in learning and knowledge but also in putting all these into a wonderful legacy of books. If you sought a truly learned man, Professor Nwanbueze is in a class apart and if you do not own any of his bulky collection of about 30 books, then you are probably not learned. Especially so if you are a lawyer and you have not read his land and constitutional law books then you must have studied in South Sandwich Trench, wherever that may be.

    He is among the last of Nigeria’s grandee generation – extremely sound of mind, deep in learning and culture. His life is a book that is worth reading having been everywhere, seen everything and perhaps done most things. He is a lawyer, a university teacher, businessman, boardroom player, public administrator, patriot and author. Much sought after in his hay days, he had done scholastic and legalistic duties in over a dozen countries of the world and helped in drafting constitution in another half a dozen countries. About 30 years ago, he was an honoree of the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNOM).

    Only one person is fit to tell the story of this grand old man from Atani, Ogbaru LGA of Anambra State and that is him. His autobiography may fittingly be described as a book of life.

  • LASG’s human ‘waste’ crisis and other tales

    Straight away, it’s a faux pas, a very embarrassing policy misjudgment that one believes the Lagos State Government must be giving a serious rethink right now. Something must have been amiss somewhere as one cannot imagine an enlightened cabinet as Governor Raji Fashola’s voting to ship ‘alien’ destitute and derelicts to the nearest bus stops away from Lagos, it’s an ill-digested novelty. And if we may remind, what this calls to mind is that governance (everywhere) need be more rigorous in its work, it must take especial pains to SOLVE problems not throw them into shredding machines and government must at all times, strive for the greater good of humanity for that is its raison d’etre. Having said that here are some points to ponder on the ‘deportation’ of the homeless 70 saga:

    ONE: People of Onitsha woke up last week to find a small crowd of hapless souls near the head bridge by Upper Iweka flyover. They had been dumped there in the dead of night by officials of the Lagos State Government, (LASG) they claimed and recounted a tale of woes. Officials of the LASG initially denied but when their denial would not stick, they told the ‘true’ story. Yes, it’s routine practice that had started for sometime, they are homeless destitute picked off the streets of Lagos and having rehabilitated them for a while, must send them back to their home states. LASG cannot possibly manage the influx of the dregs of the society into its burgeoning city. They were not dumped in Onitsha, they were reunited with their people, besides there is no ethnic undertone as the same method had been adopted for destitute from Oyo, Ogun and the north of Nigeria.

    TWO: The fact that LASG had to carry out the ‘operation’ in the dead of night then lied about it initially means that it must be aware that it is doing something wrong; something heartless and inhuman. Whether the ‘dumping’ had gone on for a decade or that the destitute are routinely and democratically dispersed into the four winds of Nigeria does not make the action right. It simply means that no rigour was applied to solving a social problem.

    THREE: LASG must learn to take the bitter with the sweet. A big city cannot be too picky about the people it wants within its borders. All the able-bodied, law-abiding, hardworking and creative ones are welcome; those who can generate taxes, and help build the city can stay while their wretched siblings must stay away? And to venture into the ethnic hue of the matter, you will not normally associate Igbo with destitution so if out of say one million, a hundred or two are banana cases the city should be able to accommodate that. It is called the law of averages which evens things out. Let’s also remember that every city of the world has destitution challenges – London, Paris, New York – the dirt poor and homeless are a part of the human race after all. There are Nigerians in some of these cities in fact, over two decades ago, Newswatch magazine reported on Nigeria’s destitute community in London.

    FOUR: It is true that Lagos State is a special case and deserves to enjoy some special status in the federation as has been canvassed by many for sometime now but regardless LASG must be upfront and paradigmatic in managing most of its challenges because they will only grow with the city. For instance destitution is likely to increase and not reduce in years to come so long term solutions are required. The Ministry of Social Welfare sure has a department in charge of derelicts, castaways and the wretched of the society; if this lowliest class in our midst has become such major challenge to the government, what thoughts have been put into the problem? What new grounds have been broken? Why can’t we have model camps and settlements in different locations for these dregs where they can be afforded proper rehabilitation? Why can’t we have a Destitute Fund like the Security Fund which individuals, other states and international bodies could contribute to with proper conceptualization and promptings? What is the public awareness and sensitization strategy for tackling this problem? How have other mega cities managed their own citizens of the streets? Who says Lagos City cannot create a universal model for managing this class of people? True, Lagos may have a case, its method is most baleful even to the city as we have seen from the backlash arising from the action so far.

    FIVE: With pervasive poor governance across the land and with the local government system effectively moribund in Nigeria today, social crises like destitution will assail us at a scale we have not known before. Since we cannot put these people into a compactor and tip them into the Lagos lagoon or the River Niger as the case may be, we must recourse to thinking better and working smarter.

    POPE FRANCIS AND ARCHBISHOP TUTU’S TAKES ON GAY MARRIAGE

    The gay war of attrition gains more grounds and big followership by the day and we the ‘victimized’ majority are taking a serious whacking. First it was the respected Archbishop Desmond Tutu who weighed in in favour of gay marriage when he declared that he will not serve a homophobic god. Now ‘homophobes’ is the ‘ugly’ name for those of us who think it is wrong for two men or women to engage in conjugal relationship not to talk of solemnizing matrimony. Gee, what a terrible name; it’s even worse than homosexual.

    If you thought you couldn’t begin to argue matters of faith with an archbishop, what do you do when the pontiff now makes a declaration on a matter of the kingdom? Nothing really one can add but what is sure is: there will be dire consequences when most of the world goes gay and secondly, God, through the bible condemns homosexuality in clear terms and that must be the standpoint and shield of the ‘homophobes’.

    THE RETURN OF UMARU DIKKO

    You must remember Alhaji Umaru Dikko, the doughty politician of the Second Republic who fled to self-exile to Britain after his party, National party of Nigeria (NPN) brought that era to perdition. Remember the episode of his being crated for repatriation by the Muhammadu Buhari administration for trial for his role in that highly corrupt era. All that is history now. He was pardoned long ago and he has been living quietly since until now. The Peoples Democratic Party has made him a member of the National Disciplinary Committee of the party. All the kakistocrats in the land are regrouping aren’t they? The auguries are not bright are they?