The Nation Newspaper

Category: Steve Osuji

  • Re: David Mark in the vortex of history

    Re: David Mark in the vortex of history

    Dear readers, this article was first published here February 17, 2012 and re-run March 30, 2012. I serve it to you a third time as this matter has assumed a global dimension; and embarrassingly so too. The Economist of London in its current edition brands Nigerian lawmakers as the highest paid in the world. There is nothing to add to it than to reiterate the Igbo adage that when a baby sobs and points at a direction, if its mother isn’t there, its father surely must be.

    Leaders without vision do not care about history. They are too dim and too enamored with the trappings of this fleeting moment to spare a thought for tomorrow. They bury themselves in the inane perquisites of today’s office and position; they deny the reality of tomorrow and ignore the power of history. But surely there will be tomorrow and history will be told as long as there is life on earth. If only leaders in positions would stop awhile and pop the question at themselves: how will history judge me?

    How will history judge the current Senate President, David Bonaventure Mark? I have elected to ask this question on this page for many reasons. First it was triggered by the news recently that each Senator will get a N16 million state-of-the-art jeep as official car and second, at the end of this tenure, he would have been in the Senate for a total of 16 years, eight of which would have been at the helm of the National Assembly (NASS) as Senate President. This position makes him the de facto number two man in the land. But most important, providence has hoisted him onto a position to tinker with history, to shape history, to direct history and in deed to make history. So we ask today, what has he done (will he do in the remaining period) with this gavel of history handed to him? But sorry to say that so far, he has bungled his moments in history and here are some reasons why:

    Poor personal leadership example: As has been mentioned above, the senate presidency is the second most powerful and influential position in the land and Mark would have done eight years by 2015. Under a more perspicacious and insightful personage, that position has the capacity to bring about far-reaching changes in Nigeria. By sheer effusion of personal examples from the man at the helm, the legislative arm (down to the State assemblies) would have been the unblinking moral compass of the various governments.

    We saw a glimmer of this leadership precept in the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. He said he would uphold the rule of law, he showed practical examples at the critical time and soon the judiciary caught on to it and this was reflected in the court rulings of that time. He declared his assets and made it public for the whole world to see; the first time any president would do that in our recent history. Without being prompted, his vice and other governors followed suit. In less than three years, Yar’Adua made more salutary impact on the psyche of Nigerians and had more positive influence on our system than President Olusegun Obasanjo did in eight years. Today, the bonfire billowing in the upper chamber can be seen burning most assuredly in all the houses of assembly across the land. Just like the Senate, they have all become hollow chambers of mercantilism and debauchery.

    Lack of probity and transparency: All of a sudden Nigerians can’t tell anymore, how much their legislators earn. All we know now is that being a legislator in Nigeria (at any level) is the best job in the world. It must be the highest paying and most risk-free job known anywhere. Never a headache from any graft agency as other government officials suffer; in spite of the cries and clamour by the populace the legislature insists on creating a fiscal haven of its own that defies appropriation acts and revenue guidelines.

    The hallowed chambers of the National Assembly seem ensconced in the bosom of mammon and held spell bound by its self-awarded boundless perquisites of office. NASS is certainly the new honey pot of a rotten Republic. Legislators have become so licentious that they would corral banks into granting them billions of naira in loans to share. At what interest rates and costs to the taxpayer? It is on this framework that the current Senators would award themselves a N16 million official car in a time of severe austerity in the land. At a period the populace has been badgered into relinquishing the only ‘subsidy’ they enjoy; at a time that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has determined that 100 million Nigerians are dirt poor earning less the$1 a day. It is doubtful if any other senator anywhere in the world rides such an exotic machine at tax payers’ expense.

    Oversight function, oversight extortion: This is the most critical function of the legislature apart from passing bills. But this key instrument of check and balance has been bastardised and debased. It has become an instrument for self-aggrandisement and extortion. MDAs across the country are comatose and non-functioning because oversight function on them is weak or nonexistent. If the legislature is compromised by the MDAs where would it find the moral authority to exercise oversight? Any wonder things like turnaround maintenance (TAM) on our refineries are mired, a road project right under the nose of the Senate in Abuja is overpriced to the tune of N38 billion; corruption grows organic and cancerous in the land eating up the entire fabric of the society yet nobody seems to know what to do. What about the probe panels in various legislative assemblies? Mum is the word on this ‘cash cow’.

    People alienated and unrepresented: May we urge the Senate President to do an unscheduled tour of the constituency offices of his members and while at it, inspect the constituency projects for which huge funds are allotted to his members. It is a stark fact that most Nigerians do not know their legislators; there is hardly any functional constituency office anywhere, no projects for monies allotted and no town hall meetings. No country will grow one inch with legislators of this ilk.

    In conclusion, the NASS has become very toxic to this country, unbeknown to the members. The onus is on David Mark to resolve to pick his spot in history. Let’s note that history is not about the wealthiest man or the most powerful of his time but about he who brings the most positive change to his people and society. Fortunately he still has a bit of time. Few quick things he can do quietly with his colleagues include fashioning out a simple, workable code of conduct,; making sure that member have standard and functional constituency offices, ensure town hall meetings are held regularly by members, ensure that the auditor-general of the federation does his work and releases his annual report promptly, and ensure probity, accountability and transparency in the finances of the Senate. The Senate can rescue the country from the current slide down the slope if it resolves to have a fresh start.

  • The reign of the Kakistocrats

    The reign of the Kakistocrats

    They are prisoners of power Trapped in its glistening prism of time and space They are shackled in its golden chains and gilded bracelets Oh how they serve term…

    It will not be necessary to go into the labour of defining kakistocracy since examples and illustrations abound to make the meaning plain. This idea had been tugging at me for some time but was finally triggered by a report in the newspapers last Sunday. It is titled: “Anenih, Tukur’s feud deepens.” The report is a narrative of the endless dog-fights in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hierarchy. It details how the lingering bad blood running between Chief Tony Anenih, chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) and Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, chairman of the party. Professor Jerry Gana and Chief Ike Ekweremadu who were planning the convention of the party had gone to the chairman’s house for consultation. The chairman, Tukur was said to have shut them out, making them wait outside the gate of his palatial Abuja residence for over half an hour before they made an about turn, wooden-footed and cloudy faced.

    Party chairman, Tukur had rebuffed and rubbed dust on these who are no mean party members because they had been sent by BoT chairman, Anenih who deigns to control and fix the affairs of the party even though he occupies a mere ceremonial position. This mild drama happened late last week. By early this week, the entire Gana convention planning committee had been thrown in the dustbin for some woolly reason. But at the bottom of it all is power struggle. The PDP has been unable to hold a convention for some years neither has it been able to elect proper officers and committees. The ruling party is today, akin to a grounded aircraft that has been converted to an excursion site: though the engine hums and revs, it is incapable of lifting off the ground.

    This is vintage kakistocracy starkly illustrated. Kakistocracy is the reign of humdrum: humdrum people, humdrum party, humdrum government translating to a humdrum country. Kakistocracy is to be led by vacuous people who have lost touch with reality and have been too far disconnected from the people they lead that they are incapable of applying the reverse gear. Chief Emeka Anyaoku laid it bare only last Sunday. Giving a talk in Lagos, the eminent diplomat said the country is facing a crisis while our leaders and elite are living in denial of those facts. Dear readers, since we have known the likes of Anenih, Tukur, Gana, and co., did we ever know them for any public good, monumental performance in public service, social contract, national pride, flag and country? Ladies and gentlemen, has it not always been about vacancy in Aso Rock, juicy ministerial appointments, Nigerian Ports Authority, big contracts and political bickering? This is kakistocracy in practice.

    Kakistocracy is the very obtuse action of a president heaving plane loads of his cabinet members, governors and hangers-on (you may call them businessmen) across continents and oceans on a supposed state visit to China. The last time such a crowd was on a state visit anywhere was when the Queen of Sheba visited king Solomon: “She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels that bore spices, very much gold and precious stones;…” (1Kings 10 v.2 NKJV). That junket to China last week is perhaps the worst thing that has happened to the dignity and esteem of Nigeria since independence.

    Weight for weight, China does not have more resources than Nigeria and in fact, we have not tapped nary ten percent of our natural resources while our intellectual wealth is yet to be scratched. All the loans and grants from China we sing about, is just a small fraction of Nigeria’s one month oil earning or a small portion of losses to oil theft of about 400,000 barrels per day. Leveraging on this quantum of earnings, there is no amount the Chinese would give us that we can not muster ten times over. Indeed under a smart leadership, Nigeria ought to be lending money to China with a population of about 1.5 billion people. Nigeria under President Goodluck Jonathan is the only country in the world that cannot safeguard its strategic national assets. Since miscreants and petty rogues steal our oil and we don’t know what to do, we may consider drafting the Chinese navy.

    Kakistocracy is morbid politics of power for the sake of it. While the Chinese we love to visit acquire power for the sake of country, for the people, for building lasting monuments, and with the aim to transform their country to showpieces other nationals would marvel at, we hunt down power for the sake of it. We chase power to loot the treasury and cart away to China, South Africa and Switzerland. We grab power to destroy our institutions so that we can be tin gods.

    Kakistocracy is the presidency subverting order and the rule of law by supporting a renegade faction in a governors’ forum election; it is the torpedoing of the constitution and the impunity of hirelings trying to upstage a State House of Assembly by force. Kakistocracy is the presidency’s refusal to condemn the rampaging renegades who have brought the Rivers Assembly to a state of ferment and the entire state to a stand-still.

    Kakistocracy, to paraphrase Prof.Pat Utomi, is the prevalence in government, of people lacking in quality and capacity to govern; it is a place where there are no elders, where the elders have been compromised with contracts and appointments and all such gravy. Kakistocracy is leadership by the worst people in the land.

    LAST MUG: No Sam, it’s time to act: Dr. Sam Amadi’s piece, “It’s Time to Think,” on the back page of Thisday newspaper, July 12, 2013, is brilliant in espousing the current dangerous mindset of the people ruling Nigeria today. By the way, Amadi is the chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Committee (NERC). While one would forgive him for suggesting that Nigerians are empty and unthinking (which according to him, explains the current inertia in our national life), what is his NERC thinking in relentlessly increasing electricity tariff in the face of endless darkness? My brother I think NERC should do some work and … yes, think less.

    GEN. ALABI-ISAMA’S BIAFRA: Numerous readers of this column who have inundated me with enquiries as to how to get a copy of GEN. ALABI-ISAMA’S BOOK, “TRAGEDY OF HISTORY” reviewed on this page last week, may call the following number for copies of the book: 0811-513-1881

  • Gen. Alabi-Isama’s Biafara

    Gen. Alabi-Isama’s Biafara

    Biafra is dead, long live Biafra! This is the feeling on gets upon reading General Godwin Alabi-Isama’s recent interviews and upcoming book, The Tragedy of Victory. I have the rare privilege of interviewing the ebullient retired general and skimming through a review copy of his civil war memoir, to be presented to the public in Lagos on July 18 at the NIIA, Victoria Island. The Tragedy, according to Alabi-Isama, is the on-the-spot account of the Nigeria-Biafra war as prosecuted in the Atlantic theatre that is, the seas and rivers front of the war. He was involved with the 3Marine Commando (3MCDO) as Chief of Staff of the command and serving under such illustrious commanders as Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle, Generals Alani Akinrinade and Olusegun Obasanjo.

    Alabi-Isama’s is a 670-page tome with the unique feature of containing hundreds of photographs taken during the war. It must represent one of the most captivating accounts of the Nigerian conflict coming from someone who was only a 27-year-old who played a major role in such a historic moment of a nation’s life. Here are some points to note:

    DEBUNKING OBASANJO: Before Alabi-Isama’s book, the only other book telling the war story from the federal government point of view is My command, written by General Olusegun Obasanjo. According to Alabi-Isama, his numerous war photographs and the need to put the lie to My Command prompted him to pen his account. He thinks Obasanjo’s book is an exercise in self-glorification, vain, misleading and full of lies. He never minced words in saying it. Page by page, he punched holes into Obasanjo’s book pointing out the inaccuracies, over-claims and outright lies. In his opinion, Obasanjo was cowardly, of low IQ and obdurate to boot especially in comparison with the other commanders he had served.

    A particular narrative in the book (page 409) is of how Obasanjo took over the command of the 3MCDO from Adekunle on May 16, 1969 just a few months to the end of the war tends to sum it all up. It is sub-titled: “Obasanjo’s first battle experience – a fiasco: Briefing over, Col. Obasanjo was ready to go as commander of 3MCDO, but his very first move was a disaster. In complete disregard to our advice, he planned an attack from the same problematic Sector 1 under Lt. Col.Godwin Ally. The target was again Ohoba, a town about 40 kilometres south of Owerri where Adekunle’s conventional war tactics had resulted in heavy casualties earlier on. Obasanjo did exactly what Adekunle had done by reinforcing failure. The pity of this failure, however, was that Obasanjo himself was not there at the war front to experience the tragedy. He ordered Lt. Col. Godwin Ally to counter-attack. He saw them advance, but turned back and travelled to his HQ in Port Harcourt, a distance of about 240 kilometres away. Obasanjo had no operational HQ in the field which we call command post in the army. He had no map of the operation, there was no intelligence report as to the strength of the enemy and their reinforcement capability, or how far behind their reserves were. He just thought that the troops would simply get up and capture the place. The atmosphere everywhere was abysmal…”

    A FEDERAL STORY: Beyond demystifying Obasanjo’s image as the great general and war hero who ended the conflict, the book is also largely a story about the federal side of the war. It offers us a rich detail of command structures, positions, operational strategies, tactics and a fresh insight on how the then head of state, General Yakubu Gowon prosecuted the 30-month war. More than any other book on the Biafran war, The Tragedy regales us with interesting details of battles, encounters, skirmishes, environments and even the atmospherics of war. The book is dotted with numerous juicy tidbits that will be of interest to Nigerians, young and old. It is indeed the account of an officer who was truly in the thick of it from the beginning to the end particularly in the marine sector. And with the benefit of hindsight, he is able to point out some of the blunders made in prosecuting the war from both sides.

    COMMANDO WOMEN, CANNIBALISM AND PARTIES GALORE: The beauty of Alabi-Isama’s book is that the author has numerous photographs to corroborate his story. When he talks about commando Women, there are pictures showing the likes of Mrs Florence Ita-Giwa, Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, Margeret Ekpo and Cecelia Ekpenyong, to name a few in the thick of war ‘actions’. They were called 3MCDO ladies and were engaged in various odd duties including ‘intelligence’, cooking, party girls and whatever other uses soldiers put beautiful women in war zones to. And talking about parties, the book records so many scenes of dancing and frolicking one would wonder whether the Nigerian men in the war zones missed anything. Indeed, the impression is that war is ‘sweet’.

    There are other stories of cannibalism, ‘drinking’ garri with urine, a snake (perhaps an anaconda) swallowing a soldier and the troop thinking it to be witchcraft, etc.

    NDIGBO, THE POGROM, THEN AND NOW: Alabi-Isama admitted that yes, Igbo were slaughtered and that their may have been a pogrom but he rationalizes it to be the result of the killing of other tribe’s leaders in the first coup. He thinks that in a feudal system that the north was, when the leaders who won the bread are killed there is no telling the consequences. He admitted that in pre-war Nigeria, Igbo dominated everything – the civil service, trade and commerce as well as the armed forces and to have killed the leaders of the other tribes in a coup was unbearable for the feudal populace of the north. Though he did not state it so directly, his narrative shows that there was clearly Igbo envy at that period and the coup was only a needed excuse to seek to decimate and even terminate Ndigbo.

    The Tragedy is indeed a rich and refreshing angle in the Biafran story which every Nigerian must read but there will be a lot of questions he may be called upon to answer on the ‘Igbo question’.

  • Five things Gov. Fashola ain’t getting right

    Five things Gov. Fashola ain’t getting right

    Let me first raise a mug of my favorite beer (no brand name dropping now) to our dear governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola (BRF) on his turning 50 last Friday. I welcome him to our club, the golden age of gray and wisdom; a great club if you know how to live it. Great guy yea; and the song has been sung ad nauseam, I bet even he doesn’t want to hear it anymore.

    But suffice it to articulate in a few words what one considers to be the BRF essence. He stands out clearly as the best governor in Nigeria today and perhaps the greatest leader of this age first because he has remained unaffected by power and second, he has exhibited leadership by sheer force of personal example more than any one else among his peers. Put differently, bewildering grace under the enormous influence of power and such transparency that is self-accounting, self-evident and that seems to ring through and true. Let us add a work ethic that is alien to today’s leaders. He has indeed been the real breath of fresh air in a Republic that is suffused with charlatans and power hogs.

    We are daily embarrassed by governors and political leaders who seem to have no clue as to why they are in office, who are so excited by the office they occupy that it has become an end in itself and indeed, the end of the world for them. Many show such manifest greed that you can see currency notes sticking out of their ears and dangling from the neck of their spouses and family members. While BRF has managed to put a handle on power, most of his contemporaries are virtually being storm-tossed in the rise and tide of power. And the tragedy is that they are not aware of that fact. But while a book could be written on the BRF paradigm in this murky ocean of mis-governance, here are a few things not quite right in Lagos today.

    LGAs AS ROAD TO NOWHERE: perhaps the most tragic phenomenon blighting the country today is that we have turned our local council governments into a mere concept. Our LGAs have become an endless, worthless and mischievous argument while the hapless inhabitants languish. All over the country – from Sokoto to Borno, from Bayelsa to Anambra, Edo, Ondo, one cannot find any glittering example of a 3rd-tier administration at work. What we have now range from the most opaque system to sheer brigandage. And the result across the country: extreme impoverishment of the larger population which yields itself to extreme crimes like violent robberies, kidnapping, cultism, human trafficking, militancy and terrorism. Because hardly any economic activities go on in our local administrative units, large swathes of our people and territory are left bare and barren.

    This is the case in Lagos under BRF as it is in most parts of the country. This explains why the more BRF does, the more he has left undone. For every one facility he provides, there are about 57 others thus the need to work in tandem with the 57 administrative units for Lagos to lift from its morass of decay, crimes and slumhood. While one does not wish to be embroiled in the constitutional debates and politics of it, the point remains that BRF has not been able to device a mechanism that would make the local councils work.

    ONE MAN SHOW? Another point to ponder about the BRF era is a lack of robust delegation of responsibilities to cabinet members and aides. Though it is a national affliction of Nigeria’s leadership and not peculiar to BRF, we long for the day when our governors, presidents and heads at all levels would retreat to the background, to the quiet crannies where concepts and ideas reign while the aides are allowed ample initiatives to play the field. I look forward to the day when a works commissioner for instance, would own his projects, run his projects, sell it to the people and commission it without the governor ever showing his face. Most governors are busy building roads, culverts, gutters, classroom blocks and flyovers that they miss the most important point which is governing.

    OTHER POTENTIALITIES OF LAGOS: There is a notion that Lagos State is so fortuitously situated; that indeed the gods had provided all the food the state needs and that she only needs to prepare it. That is true to some extent. The revenue templates are there for instance and the dough would stream in in billion unhindered, no matter who is in the Round House. The BRF government has particularly perfected taxation as its main stream of revenue (you won’t believe that one has been taxed off one’s pants!). We have not seen this government pursue the other economic potentialities of the state other than taxes and rents. For instance, tourism, her aquatic splendor which is largely dormant, agric export, ICT and entertainment could be catalyzed to be huge revenue machines.

    REAL SECTOR IN REGRESS: Lagos State used to be the thriving hub of manufacturing and industrialization. Today, though there are still some machines rolling but they seem cranky, exhausted while many have simply packed up. Recently no fewer than 70 companies were delisted from the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE); these were hitherto thriving entities mostly based in Lagos, providing quality jobs and impacting the state’s economy. A drive through Oba Akran Avenue/Henry Carr axis of Ikeja Industrial estate is sure to make your heart sink – vast industrial complexes have been converted to miracle churches.

    Apart from picking juicy taxes from companies, when was the last time government engaged organized business groups with a view to ameliorating their challenges and ensuring their continued existence? How many new major real sector operators have berthed in the state in recent years and what are the strategies for attracting and sustaining businesses?

    HIGH-MINDED and HIGH-HANDED? BRF’s obvious high mind seems to naturally breed high handedness and this has largely defined his style of governance. It is a style that earns bounteous results but it also draws its flaks. Examples abound: the doctors’ strike palaver could have been better managed knowing that we are dealing with the high end of our society that could not be banished. The reverse case is the commercial cyclists (okada) who were off-handedly banished just because we could do so. With a little more circumspection, they could have been better managed and contained to the benefit of all. The okada affair is ironically, to the benefit and ruination of the police in the state today. The state university affair is also a point to note. The state must never be perceived to be profiting from public education. If subsidies are banished, if fee must be charged, it ought to be just enough to run well. The suspended bridge toll too could have been priced at half the current rate and the economy of the state would never have collapsed in September or even the near future. If we have paid for the bridge to be built, why do we have to pay even more to use it?

    Having made these points, we reiterate that BRF remains the best among his peers by miles.

  • POT-POURRI: Governor Jonathan and other stories

    POT-POURRI: Governor Jonathan and other stories

    Most Nigerians must be pretty sick of and wearied down by President Goodluck Jonathan and his obsession with the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF). The impression hitting us out here is that the president suffers multiple nightmares over NGF and Governor Rotimi Amaechi. In between shuttling out to attend some piddle-diddle foreign meetings (better left for the foreign minister or vice president) and taking on NGF-Amaechi, there seems to be nothing else happening.

    It just makes one wonder whether the president would rather be a governor, which explains the above title. Two years gone in the life of the Jonathan Presidency and nothing to report (thanks that all the anniversary noise has died down and one can really attempt an assessment). The two critical questions to ask any leader in a tenured position are: are the people you lead happier with you today than when you started? Would you win an election if held today? If you want an honest answer Mr. President, it is no, no. The truth is that Nigerians are disappointed and disillusioned and there are hardly achievements (concrete or symbolic) to point to. Without sounding apologetic, one says that not to malign but on the contrary, to offer some help.

    In two years, the Jonathan presidency seems to have only done well in alienating Nigerians, impoverishing them or both. The presidency ought to be troubled that east, west, north or south, we cannot find true, core supporters rooting for the president; not young, not old, not male, not female. That is indeed worrisome. Yes, he has faced enormous security challenges since inception but he would earn no plaudits for managing the problem well in the face of the enormous funds thrown at it. And this brings us to the issue of today; it is as if the security distractions are not enough and the president creates invidious palaver of his own, helping to bug his self down and drag the presidency to the bog.

    The feud with Governor Amaechi of Rivers State who is the chairman of the NGF came to a head last month when Amaechi trounced the president’s candidate in a re-election. Yet there is no let up, instead a subterfuge faction of the losers was installed and the ensuing tussle has continued to take its toll on the entire country with our president not too far removed from the commotion. Last Wednesday, the authentic version was to meet and the presidency climbed down from its kilimanjaroic heights to torpedo that meeting by fixing a Presidential dinner the same day, the same hour. But Gov. Amaechi showed more grace by aborting the NGF meeting to honour the president. That is statesmanship.

    How much lower can it get? Presidential handlers should be depressed that each time they try to cut down Amaechi he grows even taller. The Goliath illogic teaches that he should never engage David in combat because win or lose, Goliath loses anyway. The presidency at its regal and majestic summit should never be in desperate contention with any body or group for any prize because the president’s loss is our collective loss; a president’s hiccup is a national hiccup which is why he/she must stay aloof, removed and detached.

    It has been canvassed in this column earlier that the right approach would be for the president to decidedly ignore the NGF. The simply reason being that the much desired second term (which we all know is the bone of contention) does not ultimately depend on whether he has the NGF in his pocket or under his armpit. Rather, it would depend on how much work he delivers to the people. The lesson again, a Goliath will never win a David.

    STATE OF THE NATION BILL: Jonathan won’t talk to us. It is strange that President Goodluck Jonathan has shot down the State of the nation Bill which would have given him a platform to address his people once a year. The National Assembly has passed the bill but number one thinks differently. It is the practice in many parts of the world for president/heads of state to give an elaborate speech detailing the activities of government in the course of the year. Smart leaders make a world of this opportunity: they set the stage as they would and pick their roles to the delight of their people. In the U.S. for instance, the State of the Nation Address is a cause célèbre. Why President Jonathan would shy away from it is unfathomable.

    DAVID MARK: death for oil thieves, death for corrupt politicians to. Senate president, David Mark recently advocated death sentence for oil thieves in Nigeria. Perhaps alarmed by the reports from the Nigerian national Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that we may have lost about N7 trillion to oil thieves in 2012, Mark thinks imposing death penalty would be the antidote. One is surprised that Mark seeks to eradicate ringworm while leprosy ravages the land. Can he not see the direct and indirect links between official corruption and oil thievery? Can’t he see it is a bazaar, a feeding frenzy of corruption? The Ogas at the top are neck-deep into it and everybody else helps his self. What is good for Jonah is good for Marc and for Tom, Dick and Harry. There is so much President Mark can do to kill the monster sitting right there in his chambers; so much.

    OSUN N10BILLION ISLAMIC BOND: ouch Aregbe. Our comrade governor, Rauf Aregbesola is fast growing into an unmanageable enigma. Today he blazes a trail to the right and tomorrow he counters it with a blast to the left. We thought the first lesson in leadership is to leave religion out of government. But our dear gov would not only embrace it, he does not faint to poke it in the eye. Yesterday it was about hijab and Muslim holiday, now it is about OSUN ISLAMIC BOND. Surely the state can raise bond without the distraction of starting a holy war. All these religious wahala he is invoking will not add an iota of good to his work as a governor and worse, he messes with an otherwise good legacy. Some of these seeds he sows today will grow into ‘evil’ trees 20 years hence. How would he love that for legacy?

    SUNTAI PHOTO SHOW: why doesn’t he just resign? No week passes without we seeing the photo of Taraba State’s ailing governor, Mr. Danbaba Suntai in newspapers straining to show that he is well, that he can stand erect, that he can stand. We sympathize with Suntai who was involved in an unfortunate plane crash, we feel for his household. But the wise action to take now is to resign as governor and allow the state to move on. Running a state is onerous enough for the fully fit. We think that in the interest of the people of Taraba and for his sake too, he should take a graceful bow. That would be most honorable.

    EXPRESSO IS TWO: long live Expresso. July 1st is second anniversary of the debut of Expresso. A long, wearisome and obdurate road it has been but the beat must go on. I raise my glass to all the ardent readers, they are the mainstay of this column.

  • The Malabu malfeasance

    MOUTH-WATERING OIL BLOCK: It is a 15-year-old story showcasing Nigeria’s oil sector at it messiest, successive Nigerian governments at their puerile best, multinational oil companies at their shadiest and why Nigeria remains among the poorest countries in the world despite huge oil resources. It has gone on for so long in the hushed manner of Nigeria’s oil business until The Economist of London removed a bit of the veil on it last week (June 15, 2013 edition). It is a story of greed, brigandage and the grand-scale pillaging of a country as probably has never been witnessed in modern history. The sordid story concerns a mouth-watering oil block, OPL 245 awarded to a fictitious firm, Malabu Oil and Gas which had no records, assets or staff.

    According to the report, Malabu was ‘established’ only a few days before it was handed this oil block estimated to have a possible 9 billion barrels of oil! A certain fellow called Dan Etete who was Nigeria’s Petroleum minister in 1998 must have awarded the oil block to himself and of course fronting for fellow rogues in government then including members of the Abacha clan. The dictatator, General Sani Abacha was Nigeria’s head of state then. This matter has dragged for so long because in the conclave of thieves, there is no speaking in low tones over a big loot; and this one is humongous. Therefore, the fight over it has been protracted between Etete and his gang, Shell/ENI and NNPC/the presidency. The news today is that Shell/ENI after plodding through the murky tunnels of OPL245, finally shelled out the sum of $1.3 billion, verisimilitude of a bribe if not the real thing, to pay off all petty thieves, fraudsters and government officials who have cottoned on to this deal for 15 years.

    SHELL-SHOCKED AND UNASHAMED: Though Shell pretends to have dealt with the government of the day and also pretended that it paid out such huge sum to the Nigerian government but the oil giant was well aware that it was dishing out slush fund into a “black hole”. It was a ‘pay’ brokered by (don’t be surprised) Mohammed Bello Adoke, the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice. Shell’s bounty according to The Economist, may have been “round-tripped” back to bank accounts controlled by public officials. The magazine says further: “Of the $1.1 billion, $800 million was paid in two tranches to Malabu accounts. This was then transferred to five Nigerian companies that appear to be shells. One of these, Rocky Top Resources, received $336.5m some of which seem to have been passed to unknown “various persons”, according to the EFCC’s reports. Some $60m went to an account controlled by Mr. Etete who has said that he received $250m in total for his role in the deal…”

    Global Witness, the NGO that trails official corruption across the world sees the OPL 245 affair as “a lesson in corruption.” If ever one had any doubt as to the ethical status of Shell, this singularly desperate deal has exposed it for what it has always been, a roguish multi-national. Shell remains the detestable British Empire still trading in Nigeria only by another name. It is a Luggardian behemoth that is divisive, corrosive, corrupt and corrupting. Over the years, Shell has been leveraging on Nigeria’s weak government and lack of institutions to get away with mass murder, so to speak. Its home government seems to be hand-in-glove with her trading outfit making no efforts to rein it in. Unlike what obtains in the U.S. lately where multinationals are bound by corporate governance rules and laws of the U.S. (which is why many officials of multinationals operating especially in Nigeria have been convicted and jailed), it does not seem to be so in Britain and many E.U. countries.

    Shell which for more than 50 years, has controlled over 60 per cent of Nigeria’s oil wealth was reprobate even in its dealings with the Niger-Delta environment in which it operates. After so many years, the region remains desolate, retarded and damaged. In cahoots with Nigeria’s renegade governments, Shell never made any comprehensive effort to lift and develop even its immediate vicinity of operation. It is acute deprivation that led to the restiveness and militancy which erupted in the last decade. Unfortunately, Shell is deeply engrained in the Nigerian morass that there seems to be no stopping it or changing its mindset – well, perhaps until the oil is drained.

    ETETE, NIGERIAN ELITE, NNPC AND A COUNTRY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT: The Economist report avers that Nigeria is “arguably the most complex environment of all,” to transact business. Please read the most corrupt environment of all. Nowhere else would a serving minister of petroleum award itself a juicy oil block using a ‘nonexistent’ company yet he is allowed to benefit immensely from such crass corruption helped by the country’s chief law officer, the attorney-general. Ratty Mr. Etete, typical Nigerian elite, had been convicted of money laundering in France; the huge sums being the bribe money from foreign investors while he was in office. In a serious society, Etete ought to have been arrested, prosecuted and jailed, instead, he was allowed to profit hugely from a grand fraud he hatched and executed as a public official.

    Why has Nigeria grown into a banana republic? Because it ranks among the most corrupt countries of the world having maintained its position in the top five of the most corrupt table in the last decade. In the Malabu affair, those who ought to sanction the culprit became the chief beneficiaries; top government functionaries scrambled to get a share of the loot. Consider the list of Nigerians mentioned in this deal aside Dan Etete, there is notoriously corrupt Diepriye Alamieyeseigha who is the acclaimed boss of our sitting president. There is the Abacha family, Abubakar Aliyu and Adoke. Nigeria’s oil industry has become an elaborate fraud where serving government officials including heads of government scramble for and award oil blocks to themselves through proxies. Nigeria’s chief resources which ought to be developed for the good of all are handed to a few who become stupendously rich to the detriment of the populace.

    For a long while, Nigeria has lacked patriotic and purposeful leaders thus the country has been running literally on auto-pilot; without governments. This explains why the country has become so imperiled with a mass of jobless youths threatening to upend the ship of state. Sadly, those at the helm even now are so enamoured of immediate gains they are blind to the imminent danger. They seem to have lost any sense of right and wrong too. In other countries, this Malabu affair that has brought us so much international odium would have elicited judicial enquiries that would shake up the entire nation. Not so here, it has long been swept under the carpet because everybody is involved. Everybody, what a shame!

  • Like June 12, like Biafra

    TOFA’S FICTIONAL JUNE 12: I was in a quandary as to how to open and manage the long, sad story of Biafra and June 12, 1993 in just about 1000 words until I read Alhaji Bashir Tofa’s comment on the issue. Recall that June 12 represents the day Nigerians voted for a certain MKO Abiola; the day they bonded and chose Nigeria for the first time in her life and for her sake. Remember June 12, the E-day that took the baton from the Biafra war on our relay race of infamy. And remember Tofa, the neophyte who was drafted to run against MKO on that day of history, a man whom the gods ensconced on the laps of history but who can’t figure out that phenomenon even 20 years after.

    What did Tofa say? He said that the June 12, 1993 election is fiction, a dead issue. If you thought he made a mistake, he didn’t, he repeated it a few days later in Daily Sun interview (Wednesday June 12, 2013, page37) thus: “I sincerely believe that it is an episode that we need to get over with and look forward to a better electoral process and, therefore, a better democracy.” Gee! This really is the real problem with Nigeria; we are so blessed with non-leader leaders. How could a former presidential candidate, a leader in every respect describe his country’s history as fiction and ask that it be forgotten? How can you manage today and shape tomorrow if you discard yesterday? Is it possible that Tofa cannot see the connection between yesterday and today or, is he simply shuffling the cards of perfidy that has been perfected by the average Nigeria elite? Can’t he see that for 20 years June 12 has not gone away and like an aggrieved ghost, it will not? It has to be atoned.

    JUNE 12 AS A SHORT CHAPTER IN THE BIAFRA BOOK: If Tofa cannot fathom a history in which he was an actor-observer, how can he decipher the mysteries and metaphysics of the Biafra war of 46 years ago? Of course he suffers a blurred vision (or no vision at all) like most Nigerians, and surely cannot see that June 12 is but a short, sad chapter in the Biafra-Nigeria story. Whereas June 12 is an injustice to MKO Abiola and Nigerians of goodwill, Biafra was injustice to the Igbo race and humanity. Whereas Abiola lost his mandate, his wife, his businesses; a few Nigerians died and we lost our resolve to reconstruct our mother land anew, Igbo race suffered genocide. Untrammeled genocide executed with licentious impunity. It was about the extinguishing of the lives of about one million people, yes 1000,000 people. It was the infamy of a brother gleefully slaughtering his brother man, woman and children by sword, by axe, by machete, mortars and by starvation. It was a cold calculation to exterminate.

    The Biafran injustice unlike June 12 is the story of vengeful hatred, of mass killing of a people on the streets of Nigeria, of beheading people and loading their torsos on Eastern region bound trains, of cutting open pregnant women and harvesting their fetuses, of forced digging of own graves and burying alive, of mass execution, and mass burials on shallow graves…of unspeakable blood-cuddling bestiality not known in modern history. To begin to talk of material losses of Ndigbo in that blight is to chase a rat when one’s house is blazing. Is it the malicious shrinking of Igboland into a potato-sized, landlocked area it currently occupies, the excising of the mineral rich areas, the seaports and worse, seizure of entire towns and cities built up by the Igbo. For instance, the entire Port Harcourt which built by Igbo was hijacked and to hide the infamy, a funny re-designation of the streets and neighbourhoods with quasi-Igbo names was enacted. Thus after the war, Umokoro (the children of Okoro) suddenly becomes Rumuokoro, a blatant rumour and national thievery that has remained unchallenged till today. Oh, what woeful national chicanery turned to state policy! And we have lived this lie for 46 years.

    The Biafran injustice, unlike June 12, is the orchestrated brigandage of seizing Igbo houses and estates across the country in the guise of abandoned property. If it is not coordinated stealing on a national scale, how could a man abandon his property in his country? And many are still keeping those stolen properties till today, suffering no pang of conscience, passing to their generations, accursed, bloody heritage. What about the stolen shares, voided insurance policies, lost cash balances in the banks, lost businesses and business debts? It was a holocaust by another means but unlike Hiroshima which has continued to enjoy physical, emotional and spiritual restitution, Biafra gets only snide remarks and Igbo have received no concessions, no reconstruction, no reconciliation and no sign of remorse from their traducers.

    THRIVING CULT OF VILLAINS: Tofa calls June 12 fiction because Nigeria too is fictional. He wants us to forget it because we are a people living in denial. All this means nothing to him because he is a part of the growing cult of villains leading us as we shamble through this journey to nowhere. They do as they like, they say what they would, they live in a heady, heedless world of their own. They invoked Biafra upon us, reaped the bounties and left us to nurse the wound and live the trauma. For them Biafra was fiction better forgotten and un-interrogated; same June 12 – fictional Nigerian history.

    But what might be the mindset of a man who participated in the history of a people and does not recognize it. Tofa did not see his duty as a leader in Nigeria in June 1993 to re-enact a robust democracy in Nigeria. The same way General Ibrahim Babangida could not see that history was handing him a gift as the maker of modern Nigeria. He was so enamoured by the immediate fropperies of power he couldn’t see it. Sadly, he still has not seen it as he still not reconciled to it. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is MKO Abiola’s kinsman who suffered from acute case of sibling envy. He bad-mouthed Abiola even in his travails and in death, he would not acknowledge or recognize him notwithstanding that he was the chief beneficiary of June 12. His tragedy today however, is that even after enjoying the largesse of June 12 as a two-term president of Nigeria he remains a wee little personality under Abiola’s shadow.

    General Sani Abacha is gone, so ingloriously gone that he is better left well alone. Chief Ernest Shonekan who was a subterfuge president for a few unremarkable days is still around or is he? Same for Senator Arthur Nzeribe the master of no scruples, the old man who would leak the soup plate with his tongue as Igbo would throw their jibe. He who was in the vanguard of that mindless scheme called ABN; the very instrument for scuttling June12. Where on earth is he now? Name them: Chief Tony Anenih is still up and about, roaming the world seeking to fix things that are not broken. Anenih was the erstwhile chairman of Abiola’s party that won an historic election. We must not forget General David mark, reigning senate president. He was among the young Turks, the giddy ‘Babangida Boys’ in the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) whom Babangida said, said Abiola must not be president. Mark still has not said anything to Nigeria on June 12.

    Enough said. But a man who does not know where the rain started to beat him, will never know where it stopped beating him, that is vintage Chinua Achebe. If we do not know that our troubles started with Biafra and the Igbo question we will be long in the cold.

  • Beware your child may be dangerous!

    This must be the age of ‘unleavened’ evil for want of a more suitable word; a time when we must always expect the worst each day. Evils that never happened before, even in the dark ages, seem to be returning from the pit of hell to torment mankind every new day. A 64-year-old man, Chimezie Osuigwe, who is a former school principal somewhere in Oguta, Imo State is said to have kept his mother’s corpse in his house for about 10 years. It is yet to be ascertained whether he killed his mother and for ritual as suspected. And he won’t say why he embalmed and co-habited with his mother’s remains for a decade.

    From Akwa Ibom State is a recent report that a teenage mother buried her child alive and from Gusua in Zamfara State, 25-year -old Kamal is reported to have killed his mother and two sisters and dumped their bodies in Gusua River. In Odukpani, Cross River State, Samuel Nsa picked up a machete and hewed his father down as if he were a tree. Samuel had allegedly stolen a goat on May 27, 2013 and when the youths brought a complaint to his father, the78-year-old tired of his son’s criminal life, denounced him whereupon an enraged Samuel reached for the machete…The other day in Woolwich, England, we and the entire world saw the two British-born Nigerians butcher a man right in the middle of the road in broad daylight. More disturbing however, is the story of 18-year-old boy, Olanrewaju kayode-Aremu. That Olanrewaju killed his 46-year-old father, Victor kayode-Aremu is not terrifically shocking but the story is in the manner he committed the act.

    At about 10.00pm on May 1, 2013, as the rest of the family watched television downstairs in their duplex house in Eti-Osa, area of Lagos, Olanrewaju had trailed his father upstairs to his room and attacked him with a kitchen knife. His father managed to make it downstairs to the sitting room but son pursued father and right before his mother and younger siblings, Olanrewaju stabbed his father repeatedly as if possessed by a demon. Olanrewaju is said to have stabbed his father about 10 times leaving him no chance to live.

    “I killed my father because seeing him makes me angry,” said Olanrewaju. “The truth is that I always feel sad and angry anytime I see my father. I was just getting angrier when I was stabbing him because he didn’t love me…He forced me to study Geology in the University (instead of his preferred biochemistry)… my dad knew (I hated him) because I am always cold when he is around me.”

    Olanrewaju on why he killed his father noted further that he used to maltreat him. On that dark day of May 1st, he said he had complained that he was ill but nobody paid any attention, not the least his father who had a second wife and never cared.

    The world is surely in distress. The world is assailed by what I want to call ‘cyberpsychosis’ or ‘infomania’. It is the death of abomination; the internet age is damaging our children irretrievably; there is no abhorrent material they cannot find on the net. The more violent and bestial computer games are today, it seems the more profitable for the hawkers. Parenting today has become doubly difficult. For instance, yesterday our parents worried about teenage pregnancy, today it is about young girls in the business of making babies for a fee. It is a tough age to be a good parent; in fact I want to think that a good parent of today may be identifiable by his/her long, shrew-like mouth. Yes she gets that from talking and talking with little result. Here is a supplement I found in my bible (The living Bible, Parents Resource Bible, page 1165) written by ROLF ZETTERSTEN. It is titled: THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR. I hereby reproduce it with the title:

    What parents can do

    It is called March Madness, and to millions of basketball fans it is the sporting event of the year. The National Collegiate Athletic Association selects America’s top sixty-four teams and pits them in do-or-die contests. For several weeks the tournament is held in arenas across the country, and roundball fans are glued to their television sets.

    The capper to March Madness is appropriately called the Final Four – when the surviving quartet of teams meets to determine the national champion. The site of the three-game play-off becomes a Mecca for basketball enthusiasts. One year I had the opportunity to attend the Final- four tournament at New Orleans, Louisiana, where more than eighty thousand fans gathered to celebrate and witness the sporting contest.

    All the main events were held at the Superdome, a massive indoor coliseum that normally hosts professional football games. Even though I had no particular allegiance to any of the teams, it was not hard to get swept up in the excitement inside the enclosed stadium. Bands from each school blared fight songs as their respective supporters sang along. The cheerleaders motivated their fans to participate in chants and yells. People were dressed and painted in their team’s colors.

    Of course, once the games began, the cheering intensified. I was sitting in front of a large section of University of Michigan alumni. Every time their team scored, they applauded, hooted and screamed as if their lives depended on it. Many of the fans brought signs with them that conveyed clever slogans.

    I’ll never forget one such poster because it suddenly brought me back to reality. At one point in the game, after the Michigan team made a comeback, one man got up from his seat and began parading up and down the aisles holding a large cardboard sign above his head with this message: This is What We Live for.

    Although many people in the crowd apparently agreed with his theme, it had an adverse effect on me. I suddenly had a healthy dose of proper perspective. I turned to my friend who was also reading the sign and said, “I’m sure glad this isn’t what I live for.”

    I was reminded of the apostle Paul; if he held a sign above his head, it would have said, “For me, living means opportunities for Christ, and dying – well, that’s better yet!” (Phil.1:21). In other words, his existence had only one purpose – to serve and glorify God. And Paul viewed his inevitable death as a promotion because it would take him to the Lord’s presence.

    So what do we live for? “Opportunities for Christ.” I believe they can begin at home, where we demonstrate our faith in simple, everyday ways. We live for accepting and loving our spouse. We live for teaching our children the wonderful truths of God’s creation. We live for demonstrating God’s forgiveness when our family members fail. We live for supporting our relatives when they need help. We live for encouraging children. We live for teaching them God’s Word and leading them to faith in Christ. We live for enjoying quiet moments with loved ones. We live for laughter around the dinner table. We live for achieving the intimacy that God wants us to have. We live for demonstrating the benefits of a disciplined life-style. We live for modeling charity, hospitality, and equality to others outside our family circle.

    Sure, I’m crazy about competitive sporting events. The Final Four, the World Series, the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, and the NBA Finals are thrilling highlights of every year. But they are nothing compared to the excitement of a family intent on living for God.

    Again, what do you live for in your house hold?

  • If it requires emergency…

    If it requires emergency…

    It is trite now isn’t it to interrogate the necessity of the emergency proclamation on a vast chunk of Nigeria’s northeast region? A Presidential announcement had gone out over two weeks ago and the National Assembly has also cast the stamp of law on it giving us: The Emergency Proclamation Act, 2013. Declaring ‘war’ on insurgents who have been terrorizing the state of Nigeria since 2009 is perhaps, President Goodluck Jonathan’s boldest step in two years of his administration. It is no doubt his smartest move so far earning him loud applause by the populace. Why it took so long in coming having claimed the lives of no fewer that 3000 Nigerians, is indeed, the question many are asking?

    By way of background, the large swathe of land covering the three states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe has the longest border areas northeast of Nigeria covering the stretch of Cameroon, Chad and Niger republics. These are largely unmanned territories; more like ‘no-man’s land’. Over the years, a motley coalition of marabouts, marauders, religious fanatics, shamans, trans-border gangs and fleeing Al qaeda elements have found home in this virtual waste land. Over the years, they have become overlords of this stark mountainous vast land and unchallenged, they continued to get emboldened and grow in influence. These people living in the extreme fringes found more accommodation when they were recruited as political tugs and enforcers. Over time, they began to show the locals some form of leadership mixed with religious fervor, a duty governments in the area had long abdicated. This of course won them followership of the teeming masses of the citizenry. The ‘Islamist’ sects were therefore, only tried to fill a vacuum created by government over the years.

    Sending a mass of troops, tanks and air-power to Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States while laudable, is really the easy part and certainly not the solution. It is at best, a palliative and at worst the beginning of a protracted terrorist war to be prosecuted in tricky desert-cum hill country terrains. What we have embraced rather too enthusiastically is unfortunately, not a shooting expedition; it is a thinking engagement, an intelligence excursion. It is an economic war and most important, a challenge to leadership. While emergency proclamation is good in so far as it wins us some respite from incessant suicide bombings and stems the slaughter of innocent citizens, it is quality leadership that will win the ‘war’, sustain peace and usher progress for a new Nigeria.

    Unfortunately, we are in a clime where government deigns to solve social problems without a thorough understanding of the cause. I wager that this government has not rigorously diagnosed the root cause of the Boko Haram insurgency, the violent crimes and extreme social malaise plaguing every corner of our country today. It is troubling to hear the puerile and common conclusions that poverty and underdevelopment are at the root of our current woes. And one is doubly troubled to see government’s facile response to the problem with such policies as Almajiri Schools, road construction and other ad-hoc measures. We also shudder when we hear the president speak of glittering successes in the fight against terror.

    Sorry, the problem is deep, very deep. What we suffer today is five decades of mis-governance and the trouble is that we still don’t get it; we still have not diagnosed the cancer, the ailment continues to fester. We are today, harvesting the evil weeds planted wittingly and unwittingly by the successive governments of Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Shehu Shagari, Mohammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalam Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and now, Goodluck Jonathan. It must be said without equivocation that none of our past helmsmen was an outstanding leader. They all seem to have emanated from the same umbilical cord and therefore, have used the same reactionary template to approach Nigeria’s governance.

    We are saying that governance is not rocket science. It does not require any act of genius to deliver a modicum of good governance any where; all that is required is to keep faith with the system. For instance if the federal and state governments in Nigeria keep faith with their annual budgets for the next two years, half of all our trouble will abate.

    In fact, it’s the budget, stupid. It is the lack of keeping faith with the annual budgets at all levels that has impoverished the people; that damaged all the institutions and social systems. The police college that became no better than a pig’s sty before our eyes and before the eyes of all the successive governments listed above is budget failure. The entire police establishment which over the years was reduced to a hollow shell bereft sense, essence or intelligence, is a budget issue. The BOKO Haram insurgents, the hardened youthful kidnapper, the child-trafficker and baby merchant are all largely results of impaired budgeting over five decades. If funds trickled down to all the nooks and cranny of the country, to every facet of live of the people as designed in annual budgets, half of these problems would have been attenuated.

    The other half would be tinkering with our geographical configuration and fiscal structures with the aim of unbundling the polity for better performance. For instance, why is the federal government keeping over 50% of the nation’s revenues most of which goes to running a lumbersome and parasitic bureaucracy? Does President Jonathan have the vision and drive to wrought fundamental changes in the polity that will emancipate the country and give her fresh impetus? These are the emergencies we need.

    What we are suggesting here therefore, is that we just might require emergency proclamation in the nature, tenor and character of our leadership lest we would not have moved one step forward six months down the road. We ask that emergency should be the beginning of a rethink of the current mode of governance; a time to look at the template we have used over the years and make critical amends. If it requires emergency…

     

    LAST MUG: Indecorous Obasanjo

    Ouch! That is terribly in bad taste and tends towards an unbecoming meanness of mind. How on earth could Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former president, statesman and member of the National Council of State (NCS) choose to attend Jigawa State function over a Presidential Democracy Day ceremony? Obasanjo did not only hang out with Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State last Wednesday, May 29, he openly put down President Goodluck Jonathan and lame-ducked him to no end.

    That is in very bad taste, crude and un-presidential; we expect more restraint from elders especially of Obasanjo’s status in times of national crisis and not to throw petrol at the fire. In trying to hit at the incumbent, he is unwittingly desecrating our Presidency and that sacred stool. To think that Obasanjo brought us all to this sorry pass; that he also failed woefully in his eight years rule not being able to deliver any critical infrastructure. Yes we may be disappointed with Jonathan’s presidency but we are even more pissed off with Obasanjo’s restlessness and infantile grandstanding. What makes him think he has the divine right to choose and foist presidential candidates on Nigerians? We have learnt our lessons, which I believe includes shunning anybody supported by Obasanjo when next we vote.

  • Like Mali, like Nigeria

    Like Mali, like Nigeria

    How that the Presidency has eventually acted by facing the security challenges bedeviling the country eyeball-to-eyeball, I rerun this piece published here on Friday March 29, 2013. Declaring emergency andembarking on a shooting war is the easy part, the main WORK is to DECLARE GOOD GOVERNACE across the entire country. Please read carefully:

    When reality struck me smack in the face, I could not cry; I actually laughed out loud as if to say, Nigeria, “I dey laugh o!” To think that Nigeria, a crumbling entity actually sent troops to Mali to quell insurgency! On a second thought, it occurred to me that our presence in Mali is not altogether altruistic; it is largely because there is some dollars to share. I will not discuss here, the number of military trucks, armoured personnel carriers and assault rifles Nigeria to make her fit to embark on a foreign peace mission. The question today is that is Nigeria truly more stable than Mali? Is it more secure, is it better governed and better led?

    Reality check

    Not that one didn’t have an inkling of the dire situation the polity in enmeshed in especially under President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch, but reality dealt me a dirtier slap when I read a report of a terrorist attack in Yobe state last Monday. Let me present the report verbatim as carried by National Mirror newspaper (Tuesday, March 26, 2013, page47):

    “Gunmen yesterday morning attacked the Bara Divisional Police Station in Yobe State killing one police man.

    “Bara is the headquarters of Gulani Local Government Area of the state.

    “Sources said that the attack began at about 1:00 am and lasted for about two and half hours.

    “The attackers burnt the police station and went away with the three cars parked in the premises.

    “The Yobe State Commissioner of Police, Mr Sanusi Rufai who confirmed the incident to journalists in Damaturu, the state capital, said though the police station was burnt with rocket propelled launcher and explosive devices, the attack was repelled by security operatives .

    “He also said that the police man killed was a corporal, adding that the slain victim was slaughtered by the gunmen in his residence at about 5:00 am after the attack on the police station.

    “The attackers, according to the police boss, also destroyed MTN and Glo telecoms masts.

    “The gunmen also carted away three local government vehicles.

    “The commissioner, however, said no arrests had been made in connection with the attack and no individual or group had claimed responsibility.”

    This attack comes exactly one week after the massive devastation of the New Luxury Bus Park in Sabon Gari, Kano, also in the Northwest of Nigeria. Yobe is a vast swath of border state. So are Borno, Adamawa, Taraba, Jigawa, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, kwara and even Oyo and Ogun. These states deserve special security attention, to say the least. From the account of the attacks in Yobe, it is obvious any notion of security in Nigeria is merely a ruse; we seem to be living by sheer Grace. For such a sensitive state where attacks have been rampant in the last two years, security is still virtually non-existent. This explains why a gang of hoodlums would operate for four hours (1pm to 5am), sacking police station, LGA office, damaging telecoms facilities and driving away with about six vehicles without a trace; they could have had breakfast if they wanted.

    Stories like Yobe’s are happening everyday across Nigeria. Last Friday, in Ganye town which is the headquarters of Ganye LGA in Adamawa State, gunmen stormed the Ganye Prisons, overpowered a combined team of Mobile Police, soldiers and other armed forces to free about 127 prisoners. About 25 people lay dead after the attack including the deputy comptroller in charge of the prison, Mallam Baba Musa. In Benue, the Tivs and the Nomadic Fulani are engaged in a killing spree; kwara, Ebonyi, Cross River, are theatres of communal wars with security agent over-powered and in retreat. Plateau State’s matter is a full-fledged debacle where perhaps, more Nigerians have been slaughtered than cattle in the last 10 years. Just last Tuesday, 28 people were killed and several villages razed in an overnight raid in Ryom Local Council. As has always been the case, Ryom could have been a jungle or the centre of the Kalahari Desert for there was no sign of government or security presence as the blood fest went on. In the south-south and south-east parts of the country, kidnappers and ritualists reign as security agencies wish they would be left alone.

     

    Where there is no government

    The reality that should be poking sticks into our eyes is that this entity has buckled terribly. Henry Okah, master-mind of the Abuja the bomber was tried and jailed in South Africa last Tuesday; James Ibori, was jailed in London recently but hardly any high profile criminal can be convicted or jailed in today’s Nigeria because our leaders have been castrated by corruption and our institutions suborned. The reality that most of us are wont to deny is that all else has failed in Nigeria except the stream of oil revenues that our leaders steal and fritter away as soon as they are earned.

    Our reality, which we tend deny, is that there is hardly any governance going on in Nigeria today. Yes, we see some governors and ministers deigning to do some work but they are not governing; they are merely executing odd, oft ill-conceived projects. Governance by a simple definition is working the institution, not working the helmsman. Therefore, while there are a few projects going on in some towns and city centres, a vast swath of space is overlooked along with larger population. Most of the 774 LGAs across the land are untouched, ungoverned and famished. Hardly any socio-economic activities go on there as the state governors hijack and squander the funds meant for this tier.

    Again, our unspoken reality is that our hinterlands are so withered and wasted that any band of boys with as many as six assault rifles could seize a chunk of the country and have the police, army, airforce running helter-skelter in their usual reactionary mode. Such is our reality and our predicament. Our naked reality is that Nigeria is no better than Mali today and if we knew any better, the UN should be considering a standby troop for Nigeria before the last few cords snap. Our REAL reality is that the current leadership lacks the capacity to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Our leaders are only single-minded about holding power; what a pity, blind people desperate to rule a dead country.

    FEED BACK: Kalu’s Njiko Igbo and a tear for Ndigbo

    Happy Sunday Steve read your article in The Nation (May 17). What is the meaning of Njiko? Before you answer me I would like to console you. As a northerner I honestly admire such Igbo politicians like Ken Nnamani, former Senate president. The Igbo should rally round him for he might be their saving grace. To that extent, no need to weep for Ndigbo. Have a nice day – 08051571477

    Mr. Osuji I like the way you always tackle Igbo causes, but you were criminally silent when Gov. T.A. Orji sacked Igbos from other states while retaining non-Igbos – 08037649389

    Brother Osuji people like you who are still able to talk to our people should continue to do so. I returned to Igboland to find a weak and divided people. I had thought my people were strong. Rather they find so much pleasure in inflicting pain on their people. We run to outsiders to give us political power instead of looking at ourselves and bonding together.- 07063315222

    I love your write ups in The Nation. Please keep it up. – 07037999888

    It appears to me that the unique thing that makes the Igbo man prosper in business is the very thing that is his Achilles heel when it comes to politice. What that unique thing is can only be defined by the Igbo themselves – 07042325266