The Nation Newspaper

Category: Steve Osuji

  • Shame on you, America

    Yuck, you suck, you suck like hell! The big, bad guy we all hate to hate has finally gone whacko. You finally stood up to us in your live image: America, your name is Trump, yes, Donald Trump. You didn’t cast your vote – no, for that would be the craziest election ever – you merely cast yourself in your true mould which is Donald Trump. The cyber age cowboy; half honcho, much bravura like a street college graduate!

    Gee, there you go – a scowling, swashbuckling 70-year-old with a shock of annoying hair. And aren’t you annoying? You are largely half-illiterate and you don’t even know it. Not because you are not about the sharpest mind around, but because of your limited world view and your awkward methods.

    Now how can it be that in your so-called election, the majority voice, the popular vote does not win at the polls but a college of about 600 people decides the fate of about 300 million people? Isn’t that a travesty?

    Now thousands of shell-shocked citizens are on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Houston Texas and numerous other beautiful corners of this land, chanting “Not my president!” He ain’t my idea of a Prez either. Oh, what a calamity, America you are at war with America. Ah, America you are now confronted by your own very Jekyll and Hyde moment; a moment your soul is rent in two. Today, you are Hillary (America) Clinton and Donald (America) Trump – the very best of your system and the very banal and warped. You have chosen banality over rationality and you are gonna have to deal with it for at least four years. What a pity.

    You sure have a caper in your hands don’t you? I wager that if you are lucky, you might just get away merely bruised and dented, otherwise, you may just have suckered yourself into the beginning of the end of the American age. What an ominous coincidence: 9/11 and 11/9.

    Oh what a disgrace! How could you America, vote a president who is friend with that diminutive dictator? How could you vote a president who is a tax evader? I thought that was enough to disqualify anyone? How did the FBI split many hairs about the silly matter of private emails and allowed tax-dodging?

    Oh America, how did you trump (yes, trump) yourself so and blew a chance in a millennium to make history; to install a great woman POTUS; the first and probably the best of her kind. More baffling is the statistic that more women voted Donald than voted Hillary. And how could that be? Yet women speak of gender equality and here they fluffed a chance to take the number one seat on earth?

    Why did I think no American woman would vote Donald, the self-confessed p—sy-grabber and who is proud of it? To think that you, American woman voted a woman abuser; who can fathom the wondrous ways of the feminine gender? It’s true after all that bad guys win fair hearts; read fatal attraction.

    Well, so long as it isn’t a fated election for you, America. But you sure sucked it to the rest of the world, America-crazed world. If it were up to my country Nigeria, Hillary would have been president-elect last year not last Tuesday. You won’t believe it but some of us here shed a tear too for Hillary. For reasons not quite clear and rational to us, we are Democrats here.

    You burst the asses of our prophets and pundits here as well, showing them up as profit (eers) and junkies. And shall we say that American stupidity has its own uses too. Next time our prophets speak, we now know to cross-check with the Chinese monkey that predicted this Trump tragedy right… against 150 to zero odds.

    But hey Yankee, now that you’ve got everyone one’s monkey up, what are you gonna do? Ha, ha!

     

    Senate and the Magu travesty

    It will amount to a travesty of justice and a taint on the 8th Senate if Mr. Ibrahim Magu is not confirmed as substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). It is almost a year since President Muhammadu Buhari sent Magu’s name to the Senate.

    Not a word from the Senate and Magu’s acting status would soon elapse automatically, making his position a nullity. This is not acceptable. The Senate of the Federal Republic cannot choose and pick who to confirm or act based only on its own whims. We suspect foul play here.

    Magu is not without flaws of his own, but he is eminently qualified; he has done a damn good job of his extremely tough assignment so far. He should not only be confirmed, he should get a written commendation if our Senate were peopled by honourable men.

    So much to say yet, but let’s just note for now that the Magu matter is deeper than it seems and may well define this Senate’s life more than any other issue.

  • $30b loan, not a dime for Southeast

    It’s just as well that the Senate shoved aside the proposed plan by the federal government to borrow about $30 billion. It is hoped that a lot more diligence would be brought to bear on the document. And of course, it is expected that a little more sensitivity and political wisdom is applied in allotting the projects especially as concerns the Southeast zone.

    The president’s expenditure plan to the National Assembly seems patently shoddy and ad-hoc in nature that the only good about it may well be the methodical exclusion and sidetracking of the Southeast. Here are the big ticket projects: Mambila power plant (Northeast); Coastal Railway at the Calabar- Ph deep sea segment (Southsouth); modernisation of Lagos-Ibadan-Kaduna-Kano railway (Southwest-Northcentral-Northwest) and Abuja mass rail transit phase 2. Not even a tangential mention of the Southeast; it surely cannot be an accident.

    This attitude; let’s call it malevolent inequity will eternally set back any country and indeed damage its soul. We will return to it.

    When the federal government announced its intention to borrow such a huge chunk of dollars from multilateral institutions recently, not a few Nigerians were apprehensive. A whirlwind of debate was immediately set off with the house divided down the middle.

    And when the breakdown of projects was released later, the dialogue only gained momentum. One was not moved anyhow by the loan quest because one never thought that Nigeria’s problem was a dire shortage of cash more than a paucity of ideas and the energy to get results in quick time.

    One had said it here several times that even though we have about 50 per cent revenue shortage today, that does not make Nigeria broke and prostrate to the point of frantically scrounging for cash. The refrain from the managers of our economy is: ‘spend ourselves out of recession’. This is the same antidote deployed by the US and her allies way back in 2008 when the West was hit by a violent recession.

    But we ask, though the symptoms may be the same and the problem may bear the same appellation, the prognosis may well differ.

    The US, Japan and some developed countries of the West pumped trillions of dollars in their economies to reflate it all right, but it is basic knowledge that these are well-developed service and production economies that can absorb trillions of dollars in their massive shop-floors and expand their exporting frontiers.

    But Nigeria’s economy is still about 90 per cent import dependent. Again, when you borrow billions of dollars in a state of fiscal indiscipline, the chunk of it would be vired to workers’ emoluments and overheads, importing petroleum products, staple foods, home appliances, service parts for presidential jets, travel allowances, school fees and foreign medical bills.

    Yes, we have outlined projects to be embarked upon, but even this will involve huge importation of materials and machinery. Worse is that most of the so-called projects are not likely to be realised in five years and perhaps another five years to begin to yield revenues if any. Result: we will remain in recession for a long time yet and probably sink deeper because we are not doing the right things.

    Again, I say Nigeria is not broke and liquidity-starved but that government is pursuing the wrong policies. We only need to move aggressively from an import-dependent country to a service-driven and highly productive country.

    Let us start from the very simple and the most basic. President Muhammadu Buhari in one of his pre-inauguration statements promised to revive Nigeria’s national airline upon resumption. But few months in office the story changed to something like flag carrier not our priority, meaning that there was no think-through before the initial pronouncement. More irksome, who worked out the economics of it to determine that it wasn’t priority or cost effective?

    Today, government is bugged down with and must cough out over $600 million foreign currency flight ticket revenues of foreign airlines. If Air Nigeria was flying, this amount will surely be far less plus attendant jobs and technology transfer opportunities. Over 30 African countries have carriers including minnows like Rwanda, Botswana, Mauritania, Gambia, Namibia and Burkina Faso. Among Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Maroc and South African Airlines, the federal government probably has about $200 million unremitted ticket earnings.

    Air Nigeria could have got half of that. And the good news is that it would have cost the country next to nothing to set up if she knows what to do. The African countries running airlines don’t have anything over Nigeria. Now instead of Nigeria becoming a hub for air transport in Africa and taking the best advantage of the sector, we are today stuck with how to pay out huge ticket dollars to other countries’ airlines.

    This is just one example. One can list 12 other strategic interventions this government would have consummated quickly since May 29, 2015, which would in concert, have kept this economy stable if not buoyant. But what we have had and still have are wasted opportunities, inertia and a general lack of a grand vision.

    Are we serious about stopping the massive importation of petroleum products? We could have achieved 50% of that six months ago. Are we focusing the proper attention on agriculture with a target to stop food imports? Are we methodically revamping cocoa, rubber, palm oil and cotton industries? What are the target dates?

    Which serious government borrows money to build power plants, railway lines and roads these days when international concession funds are out there and can be accessed? Nearly all these projects listed for the loan can be built and operated by foreign consortia with private capital. Did anyone around here ever considered international open bids for these projects?

    Finally, on the small matter of excluding the Southeast of Nigeria from this loan bazaar, it must be depressing, if not agonising to people from this part of Nigeria that their zone do not deserve any major project in a loan they would partake equally in paying back. What a pity? What can we say than to conclude that it only reinforces the cast-in-stone mindset we know too well of PMB towards Ndigbo. And as we have said here several times, this most un-presidential behaviour would hound his presidency all the way to the end and impugn his persona even long after his time.

     

    Callousness at Min. of Defence

    With the recent news of mind-boggling malfeasance in the Ministry of Defence (MoD), and what we are still hearing, shall we say that callousness has met corruption? We hear that in Command Schools which are under the Military Education Corps, more than half of their teachers are temporary workers who are paid only about N20, 000 to N30, 000 monthly.

    We also hear that most of these teachers have been in this temporary position for between 10 to 20 years without conversion. Again, we hear most of these teachers are master’s degree holders.

    And how about this? In the past six years, there has not been promotion for teachers in the directorate cadre of Military Education Corps. But this may not be strange except that each year MoD invites hundreds of qualified candidates to Abuja for a four-day phoney promotion interview. And every year for the past six years, the story has been the same: NO VACANCY.

    And the question is: if there was no vacancy to promote to the directorate cadre, why does MoD invite teachers to Abuja from all over the country without one kobo of estacode? In whose interest is this annual jamboree and who is getting rich by it?

    If the Ministry of Education (MoE) conducts the same annual interview and promotes every year; if MoE pays candidates estacode for the Abuja trips why is it different with MoD? Are military schools’ teachers being treated like slaves because they are civilians? Will MoD treat uniformed men this way? Will they withhold military officers’ promotions for six years?

    Apparently, MoD is still not completely clean of corruption yet; it seems to require a further clean sweep.

  • Nwabueze: PMB must listen to this oracle

    Nigeria remains in a flux. So much happening, yet our lives remain painfully in regression or static at best. Worse still, we all seem to have exhausted ourselves. One cannot help forming the eerie imagery of duelers now prostrate in the dust after a long affray – pile of bodies half covered by dust, barely alive…

    And we have been through all the issues over and over again, yet it’s either that there is nobody out there or there is acute hearing challenge. Today, there is simply nothing fresh to comment upon; same old humdrum about catching suspected thieves. At a time like this, a pot-pourri of small issues proves handy. I was to pick on Jimoh Ibrahim and his antics in the upcoming Ondo State governorship race. Someone needed to tell him to eschew his perennial rascality and allow us to tend to our democracy. This column was going to tell him that in some detail.

    One was to poke at Ibe Kachikwu’s phantom refineries and the wildly escalating crises in the petroleum sector. There is also the adjunct matter of a renewed wild-goose chase in the Chad basin for oil and Nigeria’s burning of billions of naira in this 30-year old quest. One’s attention was also drawn to the APC governors’ tiff with the president over sidelining them in the federal appointments booty.

    But all of these issues had to be swept aside upon reading a note from Professor Benjamin Nwabueze to President Buhari. For those who may not know, Nwabueze is an octogenarian, an elder statesman and one of the most rigorous minds of his age alive today. Of course, his glittering academic and work lives have been subjects of tomes of books. An academic and legal titan, he is by miles, the most prolific and most cerebral of his time.

    His prodigious work ethic and intellectual eminence is like luminous morning sun and is evident in the constitutional history and law faculties of numerous African countries.

    Prof. Nwabueze has been a strident critic of this administration; sometimes uncomfortably so. But the old man is a die-hard patriot who is deeply passionate about his convictions in matters concerning Nigeria.

    Rising from a meeting of the Igbo Leaders of Thought (ILT), a body he chairs, he urged PMB to change his style of governance. He did not say anything new other than merely reinforcing the cogency and indeed, urgency of some irksome matters. Since we want the government to take an especial note of these things, here are bullet-points:

    Herdsmen palaver: this matter of licentious herdsmen being perceived as some kind of nascent islamisation of Nigeria is utterly dangerous. And it is gaining currency in the south of Nigeria. This column does not believe in the religious imputation and colouration of the cattle-rearers’ brigandage, but the presidency does not seem to appreciate the situation.

    From Kaduna to Benue, Kogi, Enugu, Ekiti and indeed even Abuja, cattle and their breeders are on the rampage, killing, maiming and destroying farms. Yet the president cannot seem to respond appropriately and adequately. It is as if he has given a tacit nod to these marauders. Nwabueze warns about a matter that might throw the nation into an unquenchable conflagration if nothing is done urgently.

    • Appointments in the nation’s security services: this singular action of PMB will not only haunt his tenure but has pork-marked his presidency, his persona and his history. He has also left a dangerous precedence that will plague the polity for a long time. It is difficult to explain how about 15 key security and strategic positions are parcelled solely to his kinsmen.

    He also mentioned the recent sack of over 40 officers in the Army and wondered if it is by accident that most of them are from the South?

    • Nwabueze advised PMB to release Nnamdi Kanu of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) unconditionally and engage the people in dialogue, noting that the demand for self-determination does not necessarily mean secession. His words: “Political agitations for self-determination are taking place in various parts of the world, in Europe, Asia, America, etc. The agitators are not massacred with state- owned arms and ammunition, but are brought round for dialogue. The situation here should not be different. Dialogue is the approach.”
    • Of corruption fight, noise and propaganda: he says while ILT is not against the fight against corruption, the manner it is being prosecuted is unacceptable. “The fight is highly skewed against perceived opponents of the party in government. People are arrested and bank accounts are frozen without due process…” He noted that a few current appointees have been fingered in monumental corruption, but the government pretends not to notice.
    • On the economy, the Avengers and recession: he averred that this is the worst economic situation ever and urged the government to address the immediate cause by engaging the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) in a dialogue.

    Prof. Nwabueze said so much more. But we will conclude that any thinking government would not only listen to him carefully, but would do well to keep a line of communication with him.

     

    Abia’s dirty politics

    Abia State in the Southeast of Nigeria is tagged ‘God’s Own State’, but its politics has been anything but godly. Indeed, some desperate politicians in the state who cannot live down their fall from power and serial humiliation at the polls have continued to wrestle in the muck and be-splatter mud to anyone in sight.

    One target of this dirty fight is the immediate past governor, Chief Theodore Ahamefule Orji, who has been the relentless butt of media attacks by his fallen godfather and former ‘owner’ of Abia State. All manner of hack writers and newspaper advertorials are deployed every week to shoot down one man.

    In utter show of desperation, the last set of advertorials has those jaded pictures of Chief Orji supposedly in a shrine taking oath. It is shocking how blackmailers shamelessly publish photos, which showcase their evil handiwork in the first place.

    But Chief Orji has nothing to be ashamed of. Any patriot must be willing to make even the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of his people. A great leader must be ready to go to any shrine – if that is what it takes – to retrieve his people from a dark, fetish abyss to a new day of light and progress. In fact, those TA Orji shrine pictures should be mounted on billboards across the country to show the courage of one man and the persecution he had to suffer to make Abia the safe, peaceful and unshackled state it is today.

    There must be a limit to bitter politics and campaign of calumny isn’t there?

  • US and 12 North’s governors

    How I look forward to that day when a president or governor of mine would be in power for four years without travelling to any oyinbo man’s country for one reason or the other. That for me would be the day that Nigeria finally attains independence. But Nigeria remains in bondage – colonial bondage, mental bondage that has left us bewilderingly underdeveloped.

    Look all around you. It has to be a British international school or American university for it to be of acceptable quality. There has to be a white skin managing our football or running our shop for it to gain validity. On the social media, you see our young, virile men wedding some shrivelled white women who could have been their grandmothers right here in Nigeria’s marriage registries with friends and relatives ‘rejoicing’ with them.

    We didn’t want the Whiteman; we fought for freedom from colonialism but today ship about 80 per cent of our resources both at individual level and as a nation back to the Whiteman. Every young man or woman wants to travel ‘abroad’. Most of our pregnant women would rather travel to the US to be delivered of their baby. We want to dress like the Whiteman, we eat mainly imported food.

    But most troubling is that our leaders – the politicians, intelligentsia and the business class who ought to know better – seem to think that what defines their essence best are their foreign bank accounts, mansions abroad, the foreign schools their children attend or how many times they fly abroad each year.

    Our men in power who ought to show better examples if not patriotic zeal seem not to know any better or care. With only a few exceptions, most governors travel abroad more than they tour their states. Recall that President Olusegun Obasanjo shuttled the world as if time was running out on him. He claimed he was trying to reunite an estranged Nigeria to the rest of the world. He claimed he was on the hunt of foreign investors.

    President Goodluck Jonathan also did a bit of sight-seeing and Muhammadu Buhari after him has not lagged behind in executive junketing. It explains why Nigeria’s Presidential Jet Fleet is among the largest in the world. Obasanjo and Jonathan acquired more jets and Buhari would not let go of them even in these lean times. Such is the colonial tragedy that a country that cannot maintain a national carrier has more jets in its presidential fleet than UK, US, Germany and Japan put together.

    This long prologue brings us to the matter of the day. As you read this, 12 governors from the North may still be in the United States of America. According to report, they have travelled under the auspices of the US Institute for Peace (USIP). They were also hosted at the White House on Wednesday. It was not reported whether the governors met with President Barack Obama. But they met with Obama’s National Security Adviser, Susan Rice; US secretary of State, John Kerry among other top state officials. Recall that last August when Kerry visited Nigeria he only toured northern Nigeria and met with the 19 governors of the North. That visit sparked heated controversy, as many in the South viewed it with deep suspicion. They wondered whether Kerry was on a state visit or a visit to the Northern Nigeria.

    The Christian Association of Nigeria described it as divisive and inimical to the unity of Nigeria.

    With this current visit, which was almost secretive, apprehension is rife as to the motive. Yes with religious extremism in the north of Nigeria, which culminated in the Boko Haram terror war of the past five years, it is understandable that the US would want to engage the leaders of the North a lot more. But other parts of the country, especially leaders with foreign mentality, would feel left out and indeed take it as being punishment for being of good behaviour.

    Beyond the north-south dichotomy, as far as most of these governors are concerned, it is the photo opportunity with Obama, Kerry or Rice that matters. For them, visiting America is merely a junket of sight-seeing, shopping and salting away a few more dollars.

    Our governors are hardened and cast in bronze. Nothing moves them except the sweet perquisites of office, looting of treasury and the next election. This is the life of most Nigerian governors; they don’t care much about anything else. They know the cause of the problems at every level but they would rather not do the right things.

    For instance, which of the governors would truly be accountable? If governors apply as much as 70 per cent of the resources available to their states, there would not be so much poverty and strife in Nigeria.

    It is common knowledge that the complete decimation of our local government administration is at the root of most of Nigeria’s problems today. Which of these governors in the US would commit to properly setting up the LGAs in his state? Which of them will apply the funds of the LGAs judiciously, accountably and for the people in the LGAs?

    Even if Obama visited these governors everyday; if they lived in the US and worked in Nigeria, nothing will change if they have the same overlord mindset.

    Just as Alhaji Kashim Shettima, governor of Borno State, who led the northern governors, feared that Nigerians did not trust their motives for being in the US, we do not trust them; they have not earned our trust. Hear him: “Majority of our citizens will quickly conclude that we are here on jamboree…

    “Our visit to Washington is an opportunity to re-engage with our American partners on the most vital issues that can help us to quickly make transition from volatility to a phase of peace development in northern states of Nigeria.”

    It is remarkable that elected chief executives of Nigerian states would have to travel thousands of miles to the Whiteman’s land, burning public funds to gain insight on the problems in their backyard. This is happening in 2016. What a calamity!

     

    Abati and the demons of Aso Rock

    It might be said that the average Nigerian’s mind may still be fixated at the levels of spirits, demons, principalities and strange, unseen powers. Reuben Abati knows this and he exploited it to the hilt. Last weekend, the social media was abuzz with Abati’s article: The spiritual side of Aso Rock.

    Abati was the chief spokesman for the immediate past president, Goodluck Jonathan. To conjecture or ‘reveal’ if you like that some unseen spirits live in Nigeria’s number one address is indeed a wild-fire material and to come from a ‘learned’ authority who has just left that rarefied edifice, must be some form of holy gospel.

    But Abati, one of the best of this profession, was clearly playing to the gallery. He is trying to whip up primordial emotions and perhaps escape with some excuse as to the crashing failure of his boss while in the saddle. We are neither impressed nor taken in.

    Both Abati and his principal were swept off by the strong tidal currents of power. It’s understandable, it happens to even the best of leaders. Abati needs to be more sober and reflective so we can all learn the mistakes of that colossal failure. To fail twice would be double tragedy.

  • The gingerbread man

    I’m quarter gone…

    I’m half gone…

    I’m three-quarters gone…

    I’m all gone!

    When the night is far spent, wise elders converse in proverbs and laconic quips. That’s an Igbo dictum. The epigram above represents the famous last words of the gingerbread man, the protagonist of the old fairytale of the same title. It is the favourite of children from age to age.

    An old lady finishes baking gingerbread cookies she had shaped like a man. As she opens the oven to relish her handiwork, the little creature leaps out and takes to his heels. And that begins the epic story of the gingerbread man.

    Assuming a mind, body and soul of its own, the boisterous biscuit begins to run for its life so to speak: it detests being eaten by its baker (maker) or anyone else for that matter. No one can catch me, it chants merrily as it races out of the house into the courtyard and straight into the countryside. It keeps running, beating anyone along the way including the man of the house cutting wood in the courtyard.

    It out-manoeuvres every chaser; man and animal, taunting them and indeed daring them to catch it. It succeeds so well until it happens upon a stream.

    One wasn’t there of course, but one can imagine that it must have screeched to a halt upon the realisation that it is made of mere dough after all and one more step would convert it into a soggy mass. But who was on hand to help him across but ‘good’ old Mr. Fox. Hop on my tail, Gingerbread Man and I will ferry you across, volunteers the wily fox.

    Well, he can’t eat me hanging on his tale, thinks Gingerbread Man. But a fox will be a fox; he has his plan carefully perfected obviously. Halfway across the stream he called out: hey, my tail aches, would you please move over to my back. Further upstream, Mr. Fox says again: would you please shift to the tip of my nose, my back is about to cave in. Mr. Gingerbread Man dutifully obeyed.

    Near the other side of the stream, Mr. Fox simply flips Gingerbread Man off the tip of his nose and catches him in his mouth. Thus ends the bread man inside the belly of the fox and not that of his baker.

    Moral: whatever you do, eschew heedlessness.

    Application: no leader can run a country by heedless obduracy and mono-mindedness. In other words, several inter-mingling variables are often at play in statecraft and a careful meshing of these is what brings the best report.

    The anti-graft war: yes we must kill the monster of corruption and it must be said that this government has shown more honesty of purpose than any other since Nigeria’s independence. But the method of prosecuting the war has become self-vitiating, to say the least. Shock and awe tactics which ought to be an introductory strategy has become the modus operandi.

    The novelty of this strong-arm-media-hype tactics has waned and the initial gains are being corroded. And the more they are still being deployed, the more they grate on our sense of propriety.

    It is expected that by now, deep into the second year of this administration, some strategic institutions would have undergone total revamp with the intent of ensuring that even now, such mind-boggling official graft we quarrel with is not going on. The Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAGF) is one such that ought to be operating at 100 per cent optimal now. Is it not shocking that governments at all arms and levels are hardly audited and when we deign to do so, it is never timeous?

    It is at the point of audit that most of the financial malfeasance can be tracked. Even the licentious looting going on in the National Assembly can be tracked by proper independent audit regime.

    Is the office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation capacious enough and intellectually equipped for the massive corruption war we are waging? Where are the requisite bills and law reviews that we expect to see at this juncture? Can we, for instance, make laws to compel all MDAs to render annual accounts publicly? Isn’t it trite that those who handle public funds should naturally render annual accounts to the public? The immediate effect of this measure is that it will make public officials accountable and more conscious in the use of public funds.

    What really is the duty of the Itse Sagay committee? Has the police system undergone any restructure to act more efficiently? Why have the DSS and the EFCC usurped the functions of the police? Even the EFCC remains a crude, brawny agency thoroughly over-burdened and thriving more on brute force.

    Last weekend, the secret police stormed the abodes of some judges, two of whom are justices of the Supreme Court, in the dead of night in what they described as ‘sting’ operations. The motive here may be noble, but the method is poor and a disincentive to the graft war.

    A couple of weeks earlier, the anti-graft agency was locked in a battle of wits with the wife of the former president. For over two weeks the media and the populace were immersed in disquieting frenzy over what ought to have been a quiet, discreet, investigation.

    It has been announced that eight more judges are to be pulled in as well as some senior lawyers. Early this week, it was reported that the cases of corrupt past governors are to be reopened. Now who takes on all his ‘enemies’ at once? Who fights on all fronts? And again, the capacity issue.

    We fear we may already have a gingerbread man syndrome; or better still, a gingerbread president who is heedlessly chasing the bad citizens in our midst, while the good ones face extinction by starvation. A little more energy must be applied to the economy. We fear that by the tacit support of the DSS’ coarse tactics of last weekend, the presidency emboldens the agency to inch towards repression.

    The same logic that bars you from clandestinely packing a man in a crate and shipping him to Nigeria (even if he had stolen an entire country), would forbid you from knocking down the doors of an unarmed, not-considered-dangerous judge (or any citizen at that) in the dead of night, in the presence of his family. If any of the judges was fatally harmed in the process, how would DSS explain it?

    It can also be argued that this singular act is designed to over-awe the judicial arm of government and make it less independent, jelly-kneed and to kowtow to the executive arm. Because the executive has monopoly of state force, it must always deploy it with utmost circumspection. It must be absolutely above board. This raid does not pass the test. It is a stark negation of civil ethos, rules of decency and democratic norms.

    This same operation could well have been carried out in the day time; more swiftly and efficiently without the ruckus. That action, lawful as it may seem, portrays a bumbling DSS and bears all the imprints of dark, autocratic tendencies. It must be condemned vehemently. Never again should non-dangerous suspects be taken in this manner ever.

    Again, corruption is a canker threatening our very existence but would you pull the down the country just to defeat corruption? We have allowed our atmosphere to be choked with sordid tales of sleaze that hardly any investor would venture into this place now. We are saying that while we pursue thieves, we must allow the country to breathe and function. All the EFCC seems to do daily is to scream thief! thief! thief! In a superficial process that has become jaded what subsists is high drama and theatrics.

    We’re quarter gone!

     

    Lagos’ status: Senate’s mala fide

    It smacks of bad faith of the treacherous kind that the Senate of the Federal Republic would casually throw out a Bill to grant Lagos State some special status. We do not ask that the Bill presented by Senator Remi Tinubu (Lagos Central) be granted express passage, but we think it deserves a thorough and more rigorous examination.

    If only from the point of view that Lagos is no longer a Southwest state but a Nigerian mega-metropolis in the mould of New York, London, Rio de Jeneiro and Johannesburg. Making Lagos the city of our collective pride must be the duty of every Nigerian.

    Some reasons: about half of Lagos’ educational, health facilities and various other social amenities are enjoyed by non-Lagosians at highly subsidised rates. Federal roads traversing the city have long been abandoned for the state government to maintain and there is hardly anyone in the Senate who doesn’t have a locus in Lagos.

    The points for granting Lagos some concession are numerous and robust. The Bill will have to be re-presented sooner; the governor may need to set up a consultative/lobby group of eminent persons… and a successful Lagos would no doubt impact greatly on the rest of the country.

  • Peter, truly phenomenal

    Let me apologise upfront to readers that the title of the piece here last week was meant to be “Dangote: Alas, our deus ex machina!” This was the intention of yours truly. But alas, what you got was “deus ex machine!” what a calamity! My machine was too forward in correcting my spelling. Once again, accept my apologies.

    This week, we shall revisit one of the heroes of this column, Mr. Peter Obi, former governor of Anambra State. He finally got Nigerians to notice him after his speech on October 1st at The Platform, an event of the Covenant Christian Centre. Ironically, he only repeated what he had been saying and doing in the last decade or so when he forced himself unto Nigeria’s abominable political scene; yet Nigeria’s media space is bursting with adulation as if Obi just dropped from Mars; so much for the attentiveness of the populace.

    Expresso had done four full length articles on Obi. The first is: “Gov. Peter Obi’s agonistes”, (July 22, 2011); “The Peter paradigm”, (March 14, 2014); “Troubled governors and Peter Principle”, (June 19, 2015) and “Crisis in the states: Buhari will need Peter Obi”, (October 30, 2015).

    Having reported the Nigerian story and her major dramatis personae for nearly three decades (and in fact having worked with one governor), I make bold to say that the Obi story is truly phenomenal and his tenure as governor was exceptional.

    Even out of office in the last two years, he has comported himself better than most of his contemporaries. He gave his successor a wide berth, improved himself at some of the best graduate schools in the world and remained single-minded in his charity to missionary schools. Of course he is nowhere near sainthood nor is he without fault, but our mired nation will sure need a clear head and solid mind like his.

    Reproduced below is “The Peter Paradigm”, first published here on March 14, 2014:

    The Peter paradigm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jet-lagged Presidency

    After 17 months, the presidency finally puts up for sale, two jets out of a total of 10 in the Presidential Air Fleet (PAF). Some of the remaining craft would go to the Nigeria Air Force in due time, we are told.

    It is salutary that this is happening at last (though grudgingly, it seems) however, the refrain out there is: “a little too late.” We concur because Nigerians had expected that this would be among the first actions taken by President Muhammadu Buhari upon ascending power on May 29, 2015. Considering that he does not require the National Assembly or emergency powers to whittle down the number of jets on the PAF to just two, what was the delay about? At least about N5 billion would have been saved if this action was taken a year ago? Would it not have made a better impression on the people if the review had been completed at a go with an especial note as to the possible earnings and savings from the exercise? This government does not seem to understand the atmospherics of governance. People want to ‘know’ that their government is working; they want to ‘see’ evidence of work. They want to see that eight of the 10 PAF jets have been painted to Nigeria’s colours as the nucleus of a new national carrier; they want to see the president in a mega rice farm/plant/full process poultry farm or an emerging co-locative refinery. They want to see that crucial things that will take us out of our current mire are being pursued.

    We can’t quite SEE anything now.

  • Dangote: Alas, our deus ex machine!

    Gee, Nigeria may well have happened upon her deus ex machine – the one man who has the solution to all our problems; the superman who is doing all the things our government cannot do.

    How about this checklist: his tomato farm will resolve all of Nigeria’s tomato issues no matter how paste-thick they may be. His rice enterprise is the mother of all ventures that will end the billion dollars quasi-rice import racket from Southeast Asia.

    His brand of cement has not only overtaken Nigeria, it rules Africa. And this one that may well confirm his super-human status: he is building a refinery and petrochemical complex that will not only avail Nigeria all petroleum products, but will supply all of Africa and beyond. You will understand the magnitude of this feat if you remember that for the past 30 years, Nigeria has been spending at least one quarter of her foreign exchange earnings on importing petroleum products.

    Irrational as the idea of exporting crude oil and importing in return, over a dozen finished products is, successive Nigerian governments have done this for over 30 years and they are poised to do it until Dangote’s kingdom comes.

    Of course we speak of Aliko Dangote, the pride of Nigeria and Africa’s richest man. And as if to prove that he is truly the alter-government, he intervened in our affairs recently and bingo, government responded like Pavlov’s dog.

    Dangote, seeing that this government was on the path of a slow, excruciating death by humdrum and inertia, advised it to sell some stakes in two of her best assets – Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG).

    The thinking behind what is obviously an ultra-capitalist thesis by Aliko is to generate instant forex cash to shore up the naira and afford us a few more shiploads of junk imports say for another six months or more. But he may have cleverly misted over what happens after six months or one year.

    And we ask: Did he conveniently forget that in one and a half years, this government has not been able to pick up any sticks let alone  laying them straight as far as the economy is concerned? Did he forget that this government still has no clear policy not to mention a guiding plan of action yet? Are we to believe that the great Aliko does not know that all the money in the world would scant help a man who has no roadmap or vision?

    Perhaps he is reading the lips of our Finance Minister Mrs. Kemi Adesina, who caught in the heat of an utterly mesmerising moment, blurted that we (Nigeria) will spend our way out of recession! Apparently mimicking what President Barack Obama told Americans in his country’s period of economic upheaval a few years ago. But you don’t even need much education to know that America and Nigeria are two countries, buffeted by two dissimilar circumstances and having two wildly different economies.

    One simple difference: America is a producer/exporter economy, while Nigeria is an importer/consumer economy. When therefore our Finance Minister tells us we will spend our way out of recession, we suffer mental tremor seeing the vacuity of her statement.

    And when they say Nigeria is broke one just laughs knowing that money is not the issue. A country of about 170 million people with about 30 million tax payers is broke? It is confounding to say that a country that has the capacity to earn N2.2 trillion in one quarter (even in recession) is broke.

    I wager that Nigeria is NOT broke! It is suffering from the twin diseases of lethargy and a lack of vision – two most debilitating ailments. Indeed, scores of opportunities abound within and outside our shores but for lack of drive and a dearth of insight. Investment capital abounds all over the world, but only the smart can see and harness them.

    One good example is advertised recently in national newspapers: a consortium of multinational investors had concluded bid to bring in N68 billion cash investment into Lagos, Nigeria in one single project. But for over one year, this move has been stalled by this same government caught up in the throes of recession.

    As the story goes, over one and a half years ago, a consortium had won a competitive concession bid for the National Theatre fallow land. This is part of Federal Government’s original master plan for converting the areas around the National Theatre, Iganmu into an entertainment city. The proposed project would will include a five-star hotel, water park, shopping complex, cultural arcade, office blocks, power plant, waste disposal facility as well as the rehabilitation of the 40-year-old edifice, which has become the shame of our nation.

    The relevant government ministries and agencies concerned signed off on this project more than six months ago. According to an open letter to the President published in some newspapers this week, the Public-Private Participation agreements have been negotiated by the joint team of the National Theatre management, Ministries of Justice, Finance,  and Information and Culture (mother ministry). While the Ministry of Justice approved the draft agreements, the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), the authority on concession of Federal Government assets, has issued a certificate of compliance.

    With all due diligence done, the project awaits almost indefinitely, the approval of the Federal Executive Council (FEC). One would think that a country in distress requiring jobs and huge foreign capital would grab every opportunity presenting itself and even dig up more. Apart from paying government about N68 billion in cash, an attendant massive construction would bring further investment of over N100 billion. The prospect of thousands of jobs and business opportunities this singular project will unleash on Lagos in a few months is so bright.

    Beyond jobs are the questions of environment, aesthetics and national pride. In August 2013, Chris Wanjala, a Kenyan Professor of Theatre Arts, who was in Lagos during the Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC ’77), was in Port Harcourt. Apparently nostalgic about the awesome National Arts Theatre of 1977, he stopped over in Lagos to see that edifice of his awe. As the story went, he wept at the ugly sight that confronted him. He wept for Nigeria, he wept for Africa. He wept at the retardation that has been the lot of the continent in the last four decades as symbolised by the ruins sitting spat in the heart of Africa’s mega city.

    It is not just the Theatre, in fact the country is littered with numerous decaying Federal Government edifices requiring concessioning for immediate, foreign cash; and which can be developed to create wealth and jobs. There is the old Federal Secretariat, Ikoyi, (and numerous other massive such secretariats across the country unutilised and wasting), old Defence House Lagos; Race Course, Lagos; National Stadia in Lagos and Abuja to name only a few.

    That this government would contemplate selling even a share in an already thriving and well-run firm (NLNG) in the face of so many wasting assets only affirms all the things that trouble us.

    Aliko is a great man by any measure, but he is still a MAN. He is not infallible. Let government realise we have an emergency and run; let it think radical reform, let it think local production and let it draw a plan.

  • Proverbs around Patience

    Igboland where proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten have an especial proverb. It is a proverb about proverb and so deep is it that it is a double-header or two-pronged if you like. It says, ‘chi jie oka a la n’ ilu’ and the reverse being, ‘chi jie ilu a la n’oka.’

    First, it says, when night has fallen and the day is far spent, elders speak in proverbs of the most arcane and laconic types. The type of proverbs only the truly wise and well bred can decode quickly without encumbering the rich repast of elders’ discourse.

    And the reverse suggests that when the sun has fully settled in the West and the day and its elements are tired and weary, conversations are devoid of proverbs and double-speaks. Matters are dealt with point blank, devoid of ambiguity.

    Import: when the chips are down, call up wise elders.

    But make no mistake, plodding with proverbs and indeed supping with it is not the preserve of balding grey men of the East. It may be said that wherever there are elders, there is bound to be a rich repertoire of proverbs with which they quaff their powwow.

    There is also a particularly intriguing one from the Yoruba of the Southwest: ‘Ibi pelebe la ti n je ole.’ – it also has two legs but we shall come to the second one much later. Just like all African proverbs, this short sentence can be described as the moin-moin chronicle. And by way of back-grounding, moin-moin is bean cake, but we refer here to the traditional one steamed in those broad fresh leaves that give it a special flavour.

    Moin-moin must have its origin from Nigeria, perhaps from Yoruba land where they have created a variant called elemi meje – one imbued with seven spirits. Moin-moin elemi meje is garnished with diced boiled eggs, diced boiled liver, corned beef, etc. It is probably the most sumptuous food of Nigerian origin especially when paired with the corn meal, pap. This for me is far more nourishing and balanced than the much coveted Nigerian jollof rice, which Mark Zukerberg obviously relished when he visited recently.

    Sorry about the long digression and back to our proverb. Ibi pelebe la ti n je ole simply means we eat our moin-moin (aka ole – from its slim corners. In other words, we tackle important issues from the easy parts. For more disambiguation, when you un-wrap your steaming, sweet-flavoured moin-moin, it has a high mounded middle and two flat sides. Instinctively, we almost, always attack it from the slim sides before we broach the high, rich middle where all its rich treasures are stacked.

    Import: no matter how hungry you may be, you eat your moin-moin with some method and order. Or, follow the rules no matter the temptations to act otherwise.

    Now the other leg of this proverb mentioned above is a mischievous twist brought about by some friends who can be said to be Now the other leg of this proverb mentioned above is a mischievous twist brought about by some friends who can be said to be possessed of twisted temperaments.  Here is the trick: ole means moin-moin but the word also means a slothful person when pronounced appropriately. Therefore, ibi pelebe la ti n je ole can easily be twisted to mean that you take out the lazy man from his vulnerable sides… Now don’t laugh, that is the way of proverbs.

    Import: in beating up a man who is already weak and prostrate, nature abhors that you pulverise him and turn him to dust no matter his offence.

    Here is another scenario, a parable told by a city friend. Once upon a time, he said, a man travelled for a fortnight leaving his wife and children behind. He returned one afternoon unannounced and found his wife right in the bosom of another man.

    He was aghast of course and dashed into the kitchen for a weapon fit for the moment. But in one magical second of light, he remembered that he had been ensconced in the lush bosom of another wench. In fact the scents of his wild escapades of that morning still lingered on him. That thought dampened his savage instincts…

    What to do? He hee-ed and hawed until the intruder made good his escape. He would have been no better than a lowly animal if he had passed any cruel judgment on his wife and lover wouldn’t he?

    Import: who is without guilt?

    And this last one; one early morning, as Jesus taught the people, a mob of scribes and Pharisees dragged a woman before him allegedly caught red-handed in the act of adultery. The law of Moses demands that such a woman be stoned.

    But of course his accusers seek to nail him. Jesus continued scribbling without paying them any heed. They keep pestering and he looked up and said to them: “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first. He resumed his scribbling and the mob slinked away, everyone of them.

    Import: who is without sin?

    Now a recap and closure: a time comes in the annals of any nation when it must seek out a body of its elders; true clear-headed elder who would deploy proverbs, parables and the wisdom that comes with age in dealing with peculiar turns in the affairs of state. They can see through the hullabaloo and mob excitement and approach our affairs with much circumspection and reflection.

    Boiling it down, the ongoing heckling of Patience Jonathan over her perfidious past will at best yield us only a few million dollars. One dares say that primitive accumulation is the way of almost all our ‘first ladies’ present and past. Not one of them would point a grubby finger at Patience lest the finger withers; hardly any can stand questioning by EFCC.

    It may profit us more to tweak the system to work for all times; to ensure that first ladies at all levels do not abuse their position. This will ultimately serve Nigeria better than the demeaning Patience carnival currently going on. It’s not good for us.

  • The troubles of Bishop Samson

    You are bound to be aghast and offended at the flamboyance and opulent displays of Bishop Tom Samson in the media recently. As his story goes, he is the Founder and General Overseer of Christ Royal Family International Church. It is a ministry he built from nothing to a multi-billion naira ecclesiastical empire.

    And today, Brother Samson lives in obviously obscene opulence: Bentleys, stretched Hummer limousines, a retinue of mobile policemen and a private jet in the offing according to him.

    Any true Christian seeing all these is bound to worry. The scriptures remain constant about worshipping God and mammon. Remember the story of the young rich man who cannot bear to relinquish his wealth and follow Christ and how difficult it would be for the rich to make the Kingdom. And Ezekiel 34 says: “Woe to the Shepherds of Israel who feed themselves!”

    Living in reckless splendour especially in a season of hunger and depression cannot be of God; it depicts a troubled soul.