Category: Steve Osuji

Nobody is going to radically restructure that putrid enclave called the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. Not under this government, not with the subterranean political structure prevalent today. Therefore, there is not one chance in one hundred that we, the ineffectual hub of armchair critics (as they call us) will have the salubrious opportunity to write glowing articles about vast refineries and petrochemical complexes rising in majesty and piercing the Nigerian horizon. The type of silvery steel -and- pipes leviathans we see in post cards from Singapore, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. We will never see (or write about) such wonders of the modern world that have become composites of nearly all great crude oil producing nations.

All we see around here, all we are made to write about are grim, sad stories of scams, of crude oil spills and damaged environment; of pipeline breaches and hellish petrol fires lapping up entire communities. NNPC, the national petroleum corruption symbolizes for us Nigerians, graft, anguish, darkness… a sad, sad story that seems to run forever. We, the denizens are left prostrate at the foot of a bastard behemoth inured to criminality.

NNPC is a story of numerous sad stories and here is yet another one. Do you remember the fuel subsidy crisis/protests of January last year? Do you remember the probe panels, counter probe panel and heaps of committees? Of course you do remember the high garbage of sleaze swept out from under the carpets of the NNPC? All the billions of naira NNPC gave away to their partners-in-crime which they pretend to be prosecuting now? Well if you thought that was such a big scandal then you must be a learner in the ways of the NNPC. It has now come out that the difficult- to-quantify billions stolen in the guise of subsidizing our petrol price is only a child’s play. It has come out that there is a foreign leg to the local fuel subsidy scam.

Not long ago, a foreign wire service carried the news that our dear NNPC had drawn a N1.5 billion loan from foreign creditors. When Nigerians picked the news, they set upon making their usual noises. The House of Representatives seeing what seems like yet another opportunity rather than a challenge, quickly set up a Joint committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream and Downstream)/ Aids, Loan and Debt Management/Justice, to investigate the report.

LEGACY OF LIABILITIES, LEGACY OF LIES: Standing before this House Committee, the Petroleum Minister Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke swore that what the NNPC took is not called by the name, loan as reported but that what it has is called by the name, ‘forward sales agreement’. Let’s hear it from her: “the NNPC neither took a loan of N1.56 billion nor was planning to do so. What the corporation did was to enter into a forward sales agreement with its international creditors that supplied products to the country in order to settle outstanding liabilities dating several years back.”

She continues, “The NNPC has a legacy of liabilities and this has resulted in cash flow challenges. The Board of Directors approved this transaction; it was not a loan. There was no $1.5 billion loan taken by the NNPC; but there is an internally accepted forward sales agreement to enable it offset fuel subsidy debts.”

She made it known that the Ministry of Finance also approved the deal which by extension, means that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) is in the know and by a little further stretch, the Presidency must have authorized the deal. Mrs. Alison-Madueke elaborated further: under the forward sales agreement deal, (which we understand had been concluded, and money exchanged hands), NNPC will supply the creditors about 15,000 barrels of crude oil per day for a period of five years to liquidate the debt.

Mr. Andrew Yakubu, the group managing director of NNPC also testifying before the House Committee weighed in with more detail: “the forward sale structure has the following features: to enable NNPC to immediately forward sale 15,000 barrels of crude oil and raise the sum of $1.5 billion to liquidate outstanding trade bills. The arrangement is based on a forward sale which allows a future sale of agreed quantities of 15,000bpd of crude oil to a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for a period of up to five years in consideration of the sum of $1.5 billion paid by the SPV to NNPC. The $1.5 billion will be used to offset part of the petroleum imports bills. Yakubu also made it known to the House Committee that the total outstanding indebtedness of the NNPC is $3.5 billion noting that $1.5 billion only covered the first phase of the repayment agreement with a balance of $2 billion still to be paid.

BETWEEN LOAN AND BARTER: NNPC in its usual manner, takes Nigerians on a winded trail in a matter that is so simple and straight forward. Of course this has been its trademark over the years. It simply lapses into shadow boxing and stealth decoys when it has been caught out in its usual atrocious fare. Whether that deal is a loan, barter, backward or forward transaction is immaterial, money has changed hands in exchange for crude oil. NNPC had consummated a whopping $1.56 billion deal in a shady, less-than transparent and unaccountable manner. For such a very big deal, the National Assembly and the people of Nigeria would never have known about it were it not for foreign news media. The crude oil being fast-forwarded and fast-tracked is surely not part of the estate of Yakubu or Alison-Madueke, it still belongs to Nigerians and they ought to know.

It is funny, if not childish when the NNPC people make a simple transaction look like high finance. NNPC simply got cash from some people abroad and sign off our crude oil for a period of five years. So whether we call it a loan, a barter, an exchange, cash-for-crude swap, whatever; it’s just one more shady deal now on a grand scale to sate the thirst of a cash-crazed presidency. Who are the creditors, when was the debt incurred, why is the payment with crude an equivalent of thrice the debt? And we even have $2 billion of this so called debt left. A phantom debt as it stands because NNPC has hidden the detail from the people. This is one probe the House must not sweep under its dingy carpets. We are watching.

LAST MUG: (1) Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu sans B.Sc. Now that the erstwhile governor of Abia State, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu has been stripped of his ill-gotten first degree certificate from Abia State University, (ABSU), EXPRESSO has this small advice for him. He should proceed on an education exile, enroll properly in a university, abroad for a six-year programme that will probably earn him a masters or doctoral degree. He should adopt a total immersion technique which will help him absorb the learning, culture, character and the ambience of the academic environment. This is the crucial missing link in his eventful life; this will safe him from the crushing unraveling he seems bound for now. This will also give his successor some space to breathe and do his bit, and Abia state and her people will be the beneficiaries.

(2) ABC Transport: 20 years of pace-making: Mr. Frank Nneji and his ABC Transport Company must be one of the best things that happened to Nigeria in the last two decades. The 20-year-old long-distance bus company is an ode to vision, entrepreneurial spirit and steadfastness. Frank and his ABC are a Nigerian model story that will be told well someday. For now, EXPRESSO, an ABC regular felicitates with a pacesetter on its 20th. The road is still far ahead.

t is one of the most thrilling passages in the Bible. It is at once profound, dramatic, deep and a touch comical. The story as told in the Gospel of John chapter 8, goes about how early one morning while Jesus was teaching in the temple, a mob of scribes and Pharisees, His haters and mortal enemies who sought for any excuse to nail him, dragged a woman before him. They said to Jesus: “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such a one should be stoned. But what do you say?” Of course they were testing Him, seeking for something of which to accuse Him.”

Having read their minds, he remained mute and busied himself doodling on the floor. When the mob remained persistent in demanding an answer, He looked up and said to them: “He who is without sin let him throw a stone at her first.” He resumed His scribbling. When he looked up once again after a while, the mob had slinked away, leaving only the alleged adulterer standing there. “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

I have opened this piece with this little story to illustrate how bestial and murderous men had always been towards the women folk. There is even a Mosaic law somewhere in the Bible which escapes me now, that stipulates that if a man as much as suspects her spouse (yes, mere suspicion) of any hanky-panky, the woman could be made to drink a poisonous potion. Should the hemlock kill her, then her accuser would have been vindicated. If on the other hand she survived it, then life resumed as usual and the man suffers no consequence from his ‘false’ accusation.

Such is the fate of the ‘fair sex’ that has left her in a perpetual state of victimhood and at the mercy of her other half who is supposed to be a partner and soul mate. Where is all this coming from you might ask? Well, the above illustration may well be a child’s play in today’s world. My fears were triggered by the unprecedented carnage against the women folk today. A recent report that by 2016, the world would have achieved a landmark record of the one billion mark in the number of women that might have suffered at least one form of violence including, murder, rape, assault, battery, acid attack, in the hands of their men folk lends credence to my observation. Sound the alarm! This has surely gone off the handle. And the statistics emanating from across the world is indeed horrific.

South Africa (SA) seems to be the rape capital of the world as numbers coming out from various institutions show; with the United States coming a distant second. About 500,000 rape cases are said to be reported in SA annually while a whopping 25 per cent of SA men have admitted to committing rape. And how about this: one out of every three (yes, 3) SA women are said to have been raped. Could it be that raping of women is the primary vocation of South African men? But they are not the only terribly depraved hunks on earth. It is said that 230 cases of rape are reported in the United Kingdom everyday while a woman is forced into sex in the US nearly every six minutes, bringing the total of the number of women that may have been raped in the US to about 22 million. Phew! Demon, thy name is phallus, or vice versa.

Nigeria has not done badly in this despicable orgy of violence against women, VAW. Unlike in the human development indices in which she often performs woefully, she has acquitted herself well in this department. Though Nigerian men may not be overly suffering from testosterone trouble like their US and SA counterparts, they seem to excel more in the area of physical violence like battery, acid birth and outright killing. It is thus estimated that about 25 million Nigerian women may have been violently abused. Listen to the news, read the newspapers daily and there is a streaming of reports of violation of the female gender. Here are a few samples from last weekend newspapers: a 46-year-old church worker in Abeokuta raped a 12-year-old-girl kept in his care. “I raped her and later gave her Panadol. I also threatened to kill her if she told anybody. I blame the devil for my action,” says the fiend. Another ‘monster’ called Jegede in Ibadan strangled his fiancée and her two-year-old boy. Yet another ‘ogre’ in Asaba called chukwudi, beheaded his wife after a dispute.

We still remember the infamous case supposedly of four Abia State University students who made a video of their rape scenes and posted it on the internet exposing their victim. In a part of Nsukka in Enugu state, elderly women usually from 70 years are on the verge of becoming an endangered species as they have become the rape targets of much younger men who probably have fetish motives. In Plateau, Benue and some northern states, pubescent young girls seem to be their favorite. All across the country, women, young and old are abused and savaged at will by bestial men and at every turn; sadly, most of these demon-possessed men walk away unpunished. According to rights groups, only a small fraction of these heinous crimes is reported. This is because sexual abuse and violation of the woman person come with so much stigma. There is also sex for appointments, for jobs and for favors to the point that few female folks can get anything without the debasement of giving sex in exchange. And the chain goes all the way from the highest echelon to the street corners and village paths.

Legislation is weak, prosecution is almost zero and advocacy is poor and haphazard. Apart from Lagos state and Ekiti (where action is being driven by the wife of the governor), most other states have inadequate or non-existent legislation to effectively tackle this monster. In fact many states still don’t consider VAW an important issue. But indeed, assault on the women folk is perhaps the worst scourge afflicting the world today. The UN, governments across the world, must step up campaigns and devise actions against the indignities and outright butchery of the woman folk.

In our various communities, in home and at personal levels, we all have a duty to frown at any trace of violence and abuse of women. Fathers must more than before, exhibit love towards their wives and the women around them, especially where there are children. Let men who are men indeed, seize every opportunity to show that it is most cowardly of any man to as much as lay a finger on a woman; not even to raise his voice. Let real men never shy to show that the feminine gender is the most exotic creation of God; she is to be doused with love and not acid. Let us teach our boys that with love, you can never go wrong with a woman; and to our girls: resist any form of indignity from any man.

LAST MUG: NNPC’s $1.5b fuel subsidy yarn: This oil ministry and NNPC people will lie until all their teeth fall out. Were we in a decent country, all the top people in our oil industry today would have been arrested and given a summary treatment. When did NNPC incur this subsidy debt of $3.5b? How does NNPC justify her plan to supply some fictitious creditors 15,000 barrels of our crude oil DAILY for FIVE YEARS to offset just $1.5b most likely phantom debt? Why should we believe Diezani Alison-Madueke about foreign subsidy debts when she is so befuddled about the local ones? This must be the foreign leg of the fuel subsidy scam; the House must probe every detail.

There is an emerging consensus today that the trouble with Nigeria is low leadership quotient among successive leaders of the country in the past four decades. The kind of low quality leadership that is lacking in vision, patriotism and a sense of history; the type that has been replicating and preserving itself via an uncanny multiple fission. But the other matter with the polity is the unstated but deep-seated apathy towards the Igbo race in Nigeria. In a country where agreement is hardly reached on any national issue, Igbo-stomping is hardly one of such. Anything to stymie the Igbo is game in the national scheme of things. This may well be the real problem with Nigeria.

And the Igbo, the merry victim of his habitat generally trudges on, oblivious, raucous, rampaging and foraging into new ‘enemy’ territories seeking sustenance in an environment that wishes it turns to vapor. Igbophobia was at the root of the 30-month civil war in which this fellow was goaded into near-extermination by majority of his hate-filled neighbors. It started by simple peer envy – oh, he has taken over the Army, all the top officers are Igbo; ah he has taken over the civil service, the Stock Exchange; oh he has taken over the country – they kept ringing the hate bell until it became a consensus. Then all that was needed was the precipitant, the rationale to trigger their hate. Then it came, they swooped on this fellow, this hateful mob, they stripped him to his pants, to the bones and they left him kwashiokored and half dead.

This is a better forgotten era in our history is often called up when one sees traces of it in the polity in any guise at all. Such fresh case is the impertinent accusation thrown at the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. General Azubuike Ihejirika recently that he is ‘Igbonising’ the army as reflected in the recent recruitments in the force. Beyond the obvious assault of the accusation, the ‘poor’ General was put on the stump and made to sweat out a rebuttal before the watching world. Not exactly the way to treat a General and a COAS unless he is an Igbo that he is. To think that this is the first Igbo to hold this position in post civil war Nigeria; after over 40 years; the simple import is that no Igbo could head the Nigeria Army all this while no matter how competent, brilliant or high in ranking.

It is not possible that Ihejirika could ‘Igbonise’ the Nigerian Army even if he so desires because there are ample checks in the recruitment process, which includes the Army Council, headed by the president; there is the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and there is also the Minister of Defence. And if one must add, if the Army is ‘Igbonised’ for once so what? Igbo remains an important part of this polity and has as much right as any to have a dominant number in the Army as other have had in the past. It is called equity.

It is important to note that military politics in Nigeria is almost one and the same with Nigeria’s politics and it has been dominated by the North especially in the past 40 years. At a point in the 80s and 90s, the military, police, civil servant, the entire polity was ‘northernised’ and indeed, with impunity. No COAS was put through the sufferance of sweating through a public explanation of any purely military exercise. Today an Igbo general has to come under live media to tell the whole world why he has a few more men in one or two states.

But nobody quarrels about the fact that in the Council of State, the highest consultative body in the land where decisions that could affect the very life of this country may be taken, no Igbo man is represented. This is the result of years of inequity in the distribution of political power in the land. Nobody is weeping about the fact that two or three states in the North were skewed to have more military personnel, more police, more federal civil servants, more local councils, more federal allocation, etc, than the entire South East zone put together. In other words two states in the North probably have more soldiers in the army than the entire South East quota yet the Igbo is not going about raising hell over such deep injustices that the polity heaps on him.

This is why today, when the Igbo ask for one more state for her zone to bridge the gulf of injustice her neighbors have dug around her over these years, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) would stand up with so much licentious impunity to say: no, the Igbo can never have another state just because we say so; others would deliberately obfuscate the argument with shouts of unviability of states. But we are talking about equity in the sharing of what belongs to us all – give me the measure that you measured for yourself. If the South East gets at least one more state as it rightly deserves, it will get a few more soldiers, a few more policemen, civil servants, students in federal schools, more local councils more allocation… it is called equity, we cannot hide from it if we seek to build a proper nation.

Finally, if perchance Ihejirika managed to wangle a few more okoros and okorobias into the army so what! Supposing they are more qualified, more competent? What about the prerogative of the chief? Isn’t it what happens in other establishments? Someone should see the staff list of the Central Bank of Nigeria (?), the Customs, the Federal Capital Territory, etc. Let us close by saying that we know what to do if we want to set things right. In this matter for instance, the Federal Character Commission (FCC) is the body that ought to do staff audit of all federal establishments, publish their findings and make the necessary corrections. But the FCC works in the breach these days. Nothing seems to matter in this polity anymore; well, unless there is an Igbo ‘consensus’.

LAST MUGS: (1)Anambra budget hiatus: could it be true what was in the news about Anambra state budget still being reviewed by the State House of Assembly? Is it true that some commissioners did not know a thing about their budget while many of them refused to answer the call of the House? We are more inclined to believe that this report about Anambra’s 2013 budget is incorrect because the first quarter of the year is almost gone!

(2)Lagos VIO’s overtime: we read the other day that the Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO) of the Lagos State Government is going to start working 24/7 henceforth in order to rid the state of un-roadworthy vehicles. Hmn, we can only chuckle at this new-found overdrive and we can only beg the VIO to take it easy on the populace. If they could please keep to their normal official time; things are tough enough as it is.

(3)FRSC’s grand jamboree: it has been reported that the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, is planning a bumper international conference perhaps worthy of its status. And how about this: 11 international speakers will ‘grace’ the occasion. Wow, how we love to jaw, jaw and the more foreigners we get to talk down at us and tell us what we already know, the happier we are. Well let’s just caution that the FRSC seems to do everything else these days but its job. How will this conference safe lives on our highways?

PROLOGUE: The Call of the Wild: This matter of the rather desperate return of Chief Orji Uzor Kalu (OUK) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), keeps reminding me of Jack London’s more than a century- old classic, The Call of the Wild. Those who are familiar with this little but hounding book will recognise that PDP and even to a larger extent, Nigeria, could well be the setting for London’s 1903 epic novel. Simplified, The Call of the Wild is about the crazed era of the gold rush of the early twentieth century when the Western world thought there was a surfeit of gold in the ice-decked Northern hemisphere. The quest for gold in a hellish environment was brutish and ultimately futile as “In the end, the gold is washed away. It returns to the earth from which it was pried.” The Call, in summary, tells us that we humans in our frenzied pursuit of the banal, miss the essence of life.

PROGNOSIS: I had written about Kalu and his attempt to re-join his PDP cohorts late last year after the Wadata House (PDP’s Abuja head office) drama during which his state governor literally mobilized to fence him off the precincts of the building. Though the action of the Abia State governor had caused a stir, I had argued that Kalu’s desperation to regroup with a party he jettisoned about seven years earlier to found his own party, is, to say the least, embarrassing and inimical to his quest for Igbo leadership. I raised numerous questions including the fact that he would never in the life of him, have brooked the effrontery of a parallel camp in a party where he sits as a governor and leader. NEVER. And I posited that if he had a political party that captured two states in the Southeast and which Ndigbo were willing to align with had he provided the requisite leadership, and he threw it all overboard, then his leadership credentials are suspect.

One would think that Kalu would sleep over this ill-advised and utterly denigrating political gambit. Not by any chance, it seems. He must have had a most remarkable Yuletide plotting and sharpening the dah for his next political masterstroke which is to seize the Abia PDP – by any means possible. The plot matured in the New Year and by mid January, some village wags were corralled into issuing Kalu a verisimilitude of a PDP membership card. Knowing that loose brotherhood called PDP very well, you could ‘generate’ a membership card and register by any street corner if you so desperately seek to do so. It is a very loose, if not lousy confederacy, PDP.

When it came out that Kalu had eventually returned to the PDP passing through an obscure bush path in his Igbere village, one only had a good laugh. This is the ultimate Orji Kalu redox – a desperate and diminishing quest for relevance; and it had to be executed secretly in a rustic, nether area of the country; far removed from the rest of the world. Say, how could this show have escaped the ubiquitous beam of the media? How could an Orji Kalu return to PDP without feasting and fanfare; without the knowledge of party leaders in the State? Again, is this how the OUK persona has shrunken? Why wouldn’t the PDP hierarchy accord him some respect by way of a reception?

Now that Kalu has ‘rejoined’ PDP through the back yard, has he publicly renounced the leadership of his party, the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA)? Or is it possible to be a member of one party and a leader of another? What is his message to his mass of confused followers currently trapped in PPA? Where does this leave Ndigbo and Kalu’s campaign for an Igbo to be the next president of Nigeria?

EPILOGUE: What we see here is opportunism sneaking into bed with megalomania. It is indeed a call of the wild. This entire enterprise is all about three persons: Orji, Uzor and Kalu locked in a futile yet maniacal pursuit of the great ‘prize’. It is gold rush as always. Poor Abians are the grass that will be trampled in this turf fight being set up by Kalu. The sitting governor will now be distracted more than ever as he spends time, energy and resources fending off the onslaught of Kalu and his hounds and fighting for the soul of PDP in the State. Isn’t there is a certain godly virtue in stepping away from the arena, especially after you have done your bit and allowing your underlings some space to make even their own mistakes? To tarry in the arena eternally is to play god.

Kalu could have led and can still lead PPA to greatness if he was a leader. Where are honour, principle and dignity in this singular move of crawling back to PDP? This explains why few leaders have emerged from Igboland lately; most so called leaders are desperate hustlers even after being two-term governors. It is hoped that kalu would someday grow bigger than Abia, than even PDP.

LAST MUG: Maku’s merry-go-round across Nigeria: Irrepressible federal information minister, Mr Labaran Maku has his job well-defined and cut out for him but we wonder why he is currently criss-crossing the country trying to do the jobs of state information commissioners and chief press secretaries. Pity, that Maku may have happened upon the dubious template used by the erstwhile occupier of that office, Prof Jerry Gana and he chose to run with it. What great pity? The no-brainer he calls the “Good Governance Tour” which takes him across the States of Nigeria must be part two of the Media Tour of about 10 years back that earned Gana no plaudits.

How can Maku deign to tour the 36 States and inspect their projects? That’s what we call Afghanistanism in journalism; he should be inspecting and showcasing federal government projects. That is his brief and he is failing at it if he must know. Even the modest efforts of his government are not adequately showcased to the public. Where are the power plants? Where are the green field refineries? Where are the on-going airport remodelling? Where are the FG-assisted rice plants? Where are the strategic grain silos? Where are the burgeoning new federal universities? There must be some roads being fixed by FERMA and the Ministry of Works; where are they? Where is the monthly Nigeria Journal that was doing a bit of this sometime ago? Where is his Ministry’s weekly reports and updated website, etc? Honorable Minister there is so much on your table to do so quit chasing the wind and dabbling into other people’s job which you lack the capacity to do anyway. What would be your legacy?

The clean-shaven criminal: if a clean visage betokens a benign heart, Mr John Yakubu Yusufu would be an angel. I have never seen a better shaven face since Gillette declared war against the male beard (don’t look up now) and other bodily hairs. Did you see his photo in the papers yesterday? He cropped even his eyebrows so clean as if to erase his guilt. Of course we all must know Yusufu now; the deputy director of Police Pension Office who admitted to stealing over N20 billion. We ask: if a mere deputy director could heft so much cash, where were his directors, permanent secretary, t he supervising minister and the auditors? What manner of man would covet so much cash and what manner of system would let him have such access?

I have been away on holiday for about forty days. Though I was only able to remove myself from the buzz of the newsroom and the whirls and paranoia of the news process, I could never extricate myself from the news and the Siamese companionship it has provided over these years. In spite of vows to the contrary, a day without my morning dew of news seemed like a void in the history of mankind. So as I lolled between Lagos and the Southeast and particularly, waddling through the red-cloud dust of long- forgotten roads in Igbo countryside where I holidayed, I still managed to get a whiff of the news.

Being garroted by news, so to speak, was distracting enough; I did not realize I was taking a mental note of major activities to boot. My mind simply would not play to instruction as football coaches would say of their boys when they fluff a game, by shutting down its news compartments. Well, what to do than to take advantage of a bad situation by compiling a list of the big issues that broke while I was away – in some order of importance…

The Police College metaphor: This yeoman’s job of Channels Television that is bound for awards was not high on my list of big issues until our dear President Goodluck Jonathan visited the scene of the ‘crime’. What had we not written about the Nigeria Police – their subhuman nature, their demonic tendencies, their habitations – but never before was it captured on camera like Channels did. And when the president did his impromptu inspection, the first I have seen, I was full of admiration and fresh hope welled up in me… but it seem I rejoiced too soon. Then President Jonathan laid an egg, to paraphrase a classic newspaper headline.

One brilliant moment that laid a template for eternal validation of the president and he quenched his light! The Ikeja Police College muck is a metaphor for the Nigerian condition. Nigeria is a big muck that requires a Nehemiahian drive, energy, character, vision and tenacity. For a brief moment, as the president gawked at the ruins of the college, I thought a Nehemiah had come to work. But woe alas! I was cut down by a re-revelation of the Jonathan persona. The president was re-voided in the eyes of watching Nigerians. It was as if we woke up suddenly and returned to death.

NNPC’s $1.5 b loan caper: until the Channels expose on the Police College, this was my pick for the news of the period. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, was about concluding a clandestine foreign loan! The deal was almost concluded but for the expose from a foreign wire service. Questions: how many other such ‘loans’ had NNPC taken in our name in the past? And before we enquire about what NNPC does with money, the real question is what really does NNPC do? It does not drill crude, it can’t run refineries or build new ones, it lacks the capacity to import and distribute refined products, it cannot safeguard the pipelines or stem oil theft, it is stumped by its most important duty which is managing the Joint Venture process. But most painful of all, it is violently corrupt. And with its new reach of hijacking foreign funds in our name, it has grown to the status of an evil enclave.

Let us rename NNPC tormentum, some kind of crude machine for dishing punishment to the people; it has epitomized the ‘oil curse’ and somebody must document a case study on how not to manage oil wealth using the NNPC. Former federal minister, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili was so moved by this new scam to aptly come up with the phrase, “Republic of NNPC”. But that explains it all for after the incoherence about taking a loan to pay off even more loan, you would expect that heads would roll. But no such sanctions, the oil minister, the group managing director, everybody is still on his or her sit plotting more plots for that is all they seem to do. And the plot, make no mistake, often goes deep to the bottom of the very top. That is why it has remained unchanging seemingly but let’s be consoled brethren: bad behaviours only last for so long.

Governors on AWOL: speaking of bad behavior, the photo of four Nigerian governors decked in winter coats and posing on a heap of London snow turns out an eloquent repudiation of the lies they try to sell Nigerians in that fake wintry posture. That carefully cropped photograph also corroborates the lie and fakery that Nigeria, no, Nigerian leaders and Nigerian governance have unrepentantly become. The picture on the front page of many newspapers on Wednesday January 23, 2013 had Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom State), Gabriel Suswam (Benue), Sullivan Chime (Enugu and), Rotimi Amaechi, governor of Rivers State and chairman of governors Forum, Nigeria.

They had taken the pains (and our pound Sterling) to go to London and pose in the blistering snow just to prove to Nigerians that Governor Chime who had been away from office since September is hale and hearty. It was Turai, the wife of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who was quoted as saying that she would rather her husband died in office than returned home to proper rest, care and recuperation. And truly, that gentle soul was chaperoned to his death by a greedy cabal’s lust for power and relevance.

Governor Chime, like Suntai and a few others is obviously seriously ill. It would have been most honorable to come clean to his people, even at the pain of losing that seat. That is the hallmark of character and that is the cornerstone for building a great nation. Yes when leaders show character a nation and her people are edified. Surely the governorship isn’t the utmost for Chime and his ilk. There must be more important things in life than being a governor. And for all the governors aiding and abetting falsehood: we say, shame.

And several other pickings… what would it pay you to extend this rehash the way they do in Nollywood films. Bad governance in Nigeria is in a torrid flux and the more we report, the more rapidly things happen. It would suffice to reel out a list of some of the key issues I found deserving of your notice while I was away. I picked an interview granted by Mr Elias Mbam, chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) in which he claimed that political office holders are literally robbing the people. Hear him: “While the basic salaries of political office holders are largely known and perhaps pegged to what RMAFC has determined them to be, their allowances are mammoth, opaque and unconstitutional.” But the National Assembly would rather not discuss this matter but time will come when it must be discussed, by fire or by stones.

· There were pictures of the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi frequently wearing his turban to the office. It is as if he can’t wait to be the emir of Kano. Well mum is the word here o!

· Did you read it tucked inside the papers somewhere that 100 companies have been forced out of the Nigerian Stock Exchange since after the crash? Nobody has told you how many thousands of investors – poor Nigerians suffered in all this. No resolution, no recompense, no lessons learnt but more money has been dole out to many of the miscreants who caused the crash.

· Malam Adamu Ciroma granted an interview in which he stated categorically that former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Jonathan “bought PDP delegates with dollars in 2011” presidential primaries. Sadly, we all know that ‘fact’ and we live with it!

· Nigeria’s telecoms subscriber spent N111 billion talking in 10 months (January to October 2012). What a loquacious people.

· Ten million mobile telephones for Nigerian farmers. What boondoogle scheme? Does Nigeria really have 10 million people who can be truly called farmers? Not likely.

· And lastly, the power situation worsens and Prof Chinedu Nebo comes in smoking like all previous power minister. Hmm.