The Nation Newspaper

Category: Steve Osuji

  • Love letter to gallant Kenyan women

    It is an old story which expectedly, won’t leave the social media circuit. It is the story of Kenyan women who took to the streets to protest their husbands’ underperformance and inability to get them pregnant.

    A touchy bed bedroom matter you would say, but some perspectives: first, it will amount to an over-generalisation to describe them as Kenyan women as stories have conveniently headlined. They are actually a section of women from a county known as Limuru, Kiambu. So it is not a country-wide phenomenon (unless more facts unfold to prove one wrong); not even country-wide.

    Having made that important clarification, the grouse of the women is that because their husbands imbibe too much alcohol, their ability to perform at optimum in bed as well as the other important function of getting them pregnant may have been impaired.

    Pressing the point further, they noted that married women abound in the county but only few are pregnant. And the problem is with both the young and old they claim, threatening to relocate to another county if nothing was done to assuage their obvious conjugal woes. For solution, they recommend that government should make strict laws to curtail their men’s binging on alcohol to certain hours during week days and weekend.

    This uprising actually took place late last year but it remains in the front burner because the issues raised are deep (no pun please), universal and I dare say, pervasive. Some Nigerian men have been talking like Don Juan in the social media, threatening to invade Kenya and give succour to the aching women. But I wager that that may be sheer braggadocio. I wager again that the average Kenyan fella is no different from his Nigerian brother in every material particular. We shall return to this later.

    One is inclined to see these women as heroines for taking to the highways, what is considered a bedroom taboo. These Kenyan women are truly stars of a new narrative having bucked the trend to voice their frustrations against what is obviously an incipient penile tragedy looming across Africa and the emerging worlds.

    One cannot help but love and admire the courage of these gallant amazons who have exhibited characteristic Masaiac courage in standing up, defying African tradition to highlight what might well be the new scourge afflicting the modern African man. Challenging what looks like a looming matrimonial atrophy.

    It is said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But let’s tweak that a little to say, there is no fury like a woman aroused and left unfulfilled. In fact it may well be better to scorn a woman by not starting at all than to leave her mid-sea. This I believe is the contention of these brave women. Why take a wife and bond her under your roof if you are not man enough at your conjugal duties? They are simply demanding for their men to man-up in the bedroom and stop sabotaging it all with excessive booze. A wife of course has a fundamental right to love and sex from her legally married husband. A full-fledged woman (and have you seen a typical Kenyan woman in her prime?) in a freshly consummated matrimony cannot ask for anything less than a regimen of steamy, intimate sessions which should culminate into a baby bulge in the shortest possible time. This is not too much to ask.

    Imagine the trauma and psychological agony of the denial of this matrimonial entitlement; and out of no genuine reason than male foolishness and waywardness. And you expect the other person to live and die in mind-bending silence? So protest may well be some form of therapy.

    Inebriating the mind, body and soul from the Central, down to the South and East of Africa, it is a well known fact that since the post-colonial era of the 60s, alcohol consumption has remained an issue. Many writers of these regions have highlighted it in their works. One such is Meja Mwangi who in Going Down River Road paints a grim picture of independent Africa covered in dusty poverty and suffused with cheap alcohol. The kind of liquor that chews the guts and damages the soul, not to mention libido.

    But these gallant Kenyan women may have rekindled a light and someday soon, Africa just might begin to pay attention to the effects of alcohol on the continent. Because the African man is of innate physical strength, he could imbibe heavily for a long spell of his life without his system being impaired. But this may be changing as modern living takes its toll.

    The hitherto redoubtable African stud is giving way to an effete mulatto nourished on junk-ish Macdonald’s fries and ersatz rice from Asia. Today’s African man bred on processed food is less vital than his father and even less so, his grand father. Yet he consumes even more alcohol today due to the stress of modern living. Of course too much alcohol bugs down his organs, wears his muscles and causes much lethargy to his libido. And don’t forget the new scourge of the African man, his withering prostrate gland.

    Like Kenya, like Nigeria. It may well be the same problem with Nigeria but because the Kenyan women are upfront and less inhibited, they have forged a noble coalition against their drunken husbands. There is, however, evidence of heavy drinking in Nigeria too. In the last decade, Nigerian men may have been imbibing more alcohol and performance enhancing drinks more than ever. From beers to spirits, wines, energy drinks and even wild, local concoctions.

    In the last five years, there has emerged in Nigeria, a rash of alcoholic ‘bitters’ both from the big brewers and dingy backyards. Many go by such suggestive names like ogidiga, mokogan, jango bitters, lion bitters, champion bitters, hit-and-run bitters; all sorts. And there is a legion of unlabelled others with exotic primary colours ostensibly made to imbue libidinal prowess.

    In a place where health and regulatory authorities have been overwhelmed and just anything goes … down the Nigerian man’s gullet and into his system, there is indeed danger ahead. With sustained consumption of these delirious poisons, not only will our male libidos suffer in the long run, more kidneys will crash and livers will fail.

    If nothing is done, in 10 years very few Nigeria men will be able to bring on a viable erection for nary one minute. Quietly, our new lifestyle is scourging our man and manhood. The African male specie must begin to re-learn a lot about life and living in this age lest African women migrated to ‘far countries’ to find conjugal bliss.

    In summary, the best masculine physiognomy is one in which the blood and the entire body systems are clean, fluid and uncluttered, not necessarily the muscular. Too much alcohol, too much junk food and lack of conscious physical exercise will only put a man out of action early in life.

    To think that simple antidotes work magic: natural foods, fruits and vegetables, moderate to no alcohol, a lot of water and hygiene is it. In fact, some of the simple cures for poor libido include watermelon, ginger, garlic, nuts, bananas, sweet potatoes and bitter leaf juice. And talking about hygiene, most of us men would climb into bed to our partners with breath booming with booze and such stuff we picked from those corner bars and we expect it to actually turn her on. I doubt that it does.

    But just as most women are thought to keep clean and many actually do; men too must be conscious to be clean, especially for bed. And guy, here is one test for you as you climb into bed tonight: take a peek at the sole of your feet – what you see is a testimony to the state of your body and even your soul.

    Once again, this is to the brave Limuru, Kiambu women of Kenya.

     

    OUK versus TA: Unending pettiness

    One is much troubled that the current debilitating inertia in Abia State has been reduced to a joking matter by none other than a former helmsman of the state who held sway for about 12 years. The stand-off in that state portends a huge economic and infrastructural debacle that may not be easily quantifiable. The people of the state are paying and will pay heavy price for some time to come.

    But former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu writing in his column (SaturdaySun, July 9, 2016) only trivialised issues by heaping all the blames on his arch-enemy, immediate past Governor T.A. Orji. In 41 paragraphs of a running drivel, he blamed all the woes of Abia and some of his own on TA.

    But one is a witness of the Abia story from 1999 to 2007 when OUK ruled Abia; and 2007 to 2011 of TA’s tenure he usurped. As it is well known, it was the locust years of Abia when nothing worthwhile sprouted in the land and nothing stood; a time of extreme violence when all Abia elders and statesmen were chased out of town.

    It is a long, sad story that one believes history has noted accurately. But suffice to say that at a time when worthy Igbo elders were brainstorming in Owerri over the Igbo condition, OUK was busy stoking the fire of parochial politics in Abia. What a pity, what pettiness?

  • This wilderness…

    I have taken the title above from Kofi Awoonor, the late Ghanaian writer, poet, diplomat and academic. In his 1971 novel, This Earth, My Brother, is the line, “This earth my brother, shall witness a crashing collapse…” Awoonor, who by the way, was killed in the 2013 terrorists attack on a mall in Nairobi, Kenya was interrogating a woe-begone post-colonial Ghana in his famous novel.

    Awoonor rued the seeming wilderness that his country had lapsed into after the white man left and his compatriots took hold of the helms of power. It is this conundrum of hopelessness, an unyielding dark horizon that pervades Black Africa over half a century after independence that conjures in one, the image of a blighted wilderness.

    It is uncanny that this ominous picture would keep flashing in one’s mind in Nigeria of 2016. But the sad truth is that Nigeria has never managed to live the great example providence thrust upon it to live in the continent of Africa. It is remarkable that Nigeria in spite of her size, endowments and modest successes, still has the ruinous capacity to fall apart at the snap of the finger.

    It’s a pity that Nigeria remains till this moment, a tottering, clay-footed giant that can disintegrate like Sudan, Rwanda and Congo. “This wilderness, could witness a crashing collapse”, is the full-stretched title of this piece and it is informed by the dark auguries that continue to line our skies even after we thought we had secured a fresh beginning in the new government led by President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Flashback, flash-forward: surely, it is only a wilderness that remains accursedly bare and barren from season to season; no flowers bloom, and rains guarantee no greenness. Exactly this time 50 years ago, this same nation was careening into a bloody civil war – the war came to pass consuming about two million compatriots. That orgy of hate and resentment has remained with us and is indeed bearing more asinine of springs.

    It is a wilderness where only yesterday, the president mobilised 1,000 soldiers to the far-northwestern-most part of the country to pursue cattle rustlers. We are so mono-minded and we hardly ask the right questions. How come every corner of the country is so vulnerable yet we have about 774 local council areas in the country? The reason is that these tiers of government which would have served as veritable outreaches of development and growth to our hinterlands are mostly moribund. Therefore, there are no buffers around our borders and outer fringes of our country and even our lives. Thus we are buffeted from all corners. We are forever exposed and vulnerable and under all manner of attacks.

    Is it not a hungry youth who has no stake in his country and who has never seen any government in his entire life who would take to rustling another man’s cattle? Youths who have been abandoned and left to the vagaries of the elements would easily become enemies of the environment that alienated them. And how do we respond: we send troops after them.

    It is a wilderness where cattle breeders roam the wilds with AK47 and slaughter farm owners in their paths. And it is only reminiscent of the wild, wild western worlds where the settled science of animal husbandry remains a boundless, free-ranging preoccupation. The rest of the world has contained and confined the cattle business in sophisticated ranches that nourish the world with milk, cheese and choice beef.  Not us, the dwellers of the wilderness.

    It must be a wilderness where topnotch military officers keep the funds meant to prosecute a war; renege in arming the boys properly and turn around to court-martial them for being shot in the back; for cowardice.

    It is only in the wilds that just three air force chiefs are being arraigned for a combined looting carnage of N21.5 billion. Here is the sordid checklist of properties seized from just one of the officers: a shopping plaza in Abuja worth N980 million; a residential mansion in Abuja worth N450 million; an executive mansion in Abuja worth N710 million; a four unit terrace house worth N720 million; a 35-room uncompleted hotel in Abuja; a parcel of land on Bourdillon Road, Ikoyi, Lagos; a block of 12 serviced flats on Parkview Estate, Ikoyi worth N1.8 billion and a quarry in Abuja worth $694,000. All of these cumulatively are worth about N9.6 billion. Just one man stole so much from a country’s treasury and we still call it a country and not a wilderness?

    His superior and bandit-in-chief has returned N2.3 billion via two bank drafts. Where in the world can few individuals remove so much from government treasury if not in a wilderness where animals roam? Many countries in Africa cannot raise a draft of N2.3 billion at a go.

    Finally, it is only in an irredeemably arid place that a fellow who is supposedly a senator of the federal republic would stand on the floor of the hallowed chamber to assault another senator who happens to be female and married. Senator Dino Melaye had threatened to beat up his colleague, Senator Oluremi Tinubu as well as deploying insolently vulgar and sexist language against her.

    Hardly anything seems to change as we are assailed by some shtick uglier than yesterday’s every new day. State governments cannot pay salaries anymore, ‘ghost’ workers are edging out the non-ghost workers. Yet in this digital world, no one can burst the ghoul on the payroll.

    The world around us is forever forlorn and blighted; well, for one streak of hope from the quarters of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, which is locked in a relentless battle against graft. For instance, never before in this land had top military brass been brought to account or their budget scrutinised. And to think that defence ministry always had the fattest budget through these years.

    There may well be a streak of hope if the ongoing spat with systemic greed is properly managed.

    Aguiyi-Ironsi: 50 years after

    Sam Omatseye, chairman of The Nation’s Editorial Board cut the issues clean in his inimitable style on this space last Monday: “The Biafran ghost still spills cold blood.” He notes in his piece titled: The Biafran Ghost. He says further: “We may deny it and say our nation is not negotiable, but the past keeps growling and badgering. The more we claim we are together, the more apart we get.”

    One of the biggest casualties of the failed First Republic is General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, Nigeria’s number one soldier and first military head of state. It will be 50 years on July 29 that he was gruesomely murdered by his aides in a betrayal most sinister. He and his noble host, Col. Adekunle Fajuyi.

    For a man who led Nigeria’s first peace mission; who tried to hold the country from disintegration and who never participated in any putsch, his country has done him much injustice almost obliterating his essence.

    As Omatseye seems to say, Nigeria may well be hiding from the ghost of Biafra instead of putting it to rest in the manner civilised nations do: memorialise it.

  • Insolvent states: 10 points to ponder

    One of the long-running fallacies of Nigeria’s politics is the statement in some quarters that some of the 36 states of the federation are not viable. Some pundits even dare suggest that states be merged or that we returned to the long-discarded regional arrangement as a cure for all our ills. While a few knowingly make this proposition out of mischief, many have jumped on the merry wagon out of crass ignorance of the dynamics of economic development and nation building.

    But any clear-headed fellow would know that what makes a state or nation viable or flourish into prosperity is never the quantum of natural resources providence endowed it with. It is always the mindset of the critical leadership, the values inculcated in the people and a sustained culture of patriotic ethos and even national pride.

    One finds it preposterous when educated persons declare that a state with a population of a million to two million people and vast arable land mass is not viable. This is one of such misconceptions that have kept many parts of the country underdeveloped and now bankrupt.

    About 50 years ago, Singapore had a worse economic potential than any state in Nigeria today: a low-lying marshland reclaimed from the swamps of the Malay Peninsula. It was an environment tailor-made by nature to exist in desolation and perpetual muck.

    But by the sheer power of one man’s vision and unquenchable tenacity, those miserable pieces of marshy islands is today, the most developed city state on earth. It is the centre of world finance, shipping services, oil refining, chemical and pharmaceutical production. Lee Kuan Yew who built Singapore having won independence for his people could have sat over the lean cow that it was then and milked it to death. The kind of short-sightedness we have seen in our leaders since independence.

    This small mindset in our leaders still persists till this moment. A president or governor claims the mantle of leadership and all he does is to sit down and milk that single cow of state to death instead of nurturing and nourishing it into a large herd, into plenitude for the good of the land.

    Narrow-minded leadership is the fantastic difference we see today between Nigeria and Singapore. It is small-mindedness and folly that makes the difference between a viable place, a wasteland and paradise. Bayelsa State could have been a paradise for instance if it ever had a Yew since its creation.

    Yet, our bad behaviour persists and pervades the vast rich fringes of Nigeria. Some people sit on portions of the land, farting and guffawing over it and they turn around and tell us their portion is not viable and that the state is on the verge of bankruptcy. They sit still, obdurate, unthinking, un-teachable and inured to change.

    In the last two years, a long-foretold crude oil crash came upon us as if by surprise. Two years on, we cannot still see a radical shift in gear from any quarters. Today, about 15 states of Nigeria are said to be hovering at the precipice yet no serious attempt at a radical revamp. Well below are some tips for structured change:

    One: A change of mindset: most governors are still carrying on as if nothing has changed. But they must do a few things in the immediate terms if they don’t want to be booed out of office in the next couple of years.
    They must cut costs drastically and radically. For instance, I would immediately shutdown the Office of the First Lady and mop up the vast expenditure poured there. I would rethink the concept of the security vote. I would review appointees, deputy governor would have to man a ministry; ceremonies and trips would be almost nonexistent, etc.

    Two: Review workforce: Any serious government must know the size of its workforce especially now. Whatever it costs, government must find out the number of civil servants on its payroll before it can quietly manage it according to requirement. The bureaucracy bazaar must stop forthwith. Three: Review projects: major ‘earthshaking’ projects state governments embark upon, like airports, super-highways, etc must be put in abeyance now. Most projects must be revenues-yielding and must be structured under public-private partnership.

    Four: Review tax template: it is the height of low, if we can say that, when a state with a population of over three million declares N2 billion as internally generated revenues for 12 months.  The activities in motor garages, markets, commercial areas, personal income taxes, etc would amount to much if captured accountably.

    Five: Review current revenues centres: some government agencies in states can actually generate enough revenues to run the affairs of the state. Some of these include the transport companies; land registries and other commercial outfits. Such businesses must be run more professionally now and made target driven.

    Six: Create more revenues centres: In the medium term, more commercially driven agencies aimed solely at generating revenues must be created. If necessary, this could be on a PPP basis. For instance, entertainment and recreation centres; hardly any state capital has a standard zoo and family resorts. This is a huge earner if done well.

    Seven: Create agriculture value chains: most countries of the world still depend largely on agriculture for their sustenance. While developed one are at the processing end, less developed ones are at the production rungs of the value chain. Agric remains one of the biggest businesses in the world.

    A state can decide to produce all the poultry products consumed within its borders and beyond; another can focus on milk. These two items for instance are multi-billion dollars businesses and they are still largely imported into the country.

    Poultry products and milk have large and long value chains that would on their own galvanise the economy of states.

    Eight: Expand sports and entertainment bases: Not many state chief executives have been able to discern the huge opportunities inherent in these two aspects of human endeavor as tools for creating youth employment and generating revenues. With a bit of organizational acumen, numerous talents can be harnessed from these areas which translate to wealth.

    Nine: Catalyze establishment of industries: many states cannot boast of even one company that employs at least 5000 staff. And it is not as if there are no such companies across the world seeking virgin outlets but it is for a lack of requisite efforts by the governors.

    Ten: make the local governments work: No matter what a state government might do, it does not get the local council areas working accountably, most of its efforts would ring hollow. Ensuring the bulk of the LGAs federal allocations get to their various destinations will signpost the first important step in developing a state in an integrated manner. Not to get all your LGAs working is to embark on an exercise in futility.

     

    Abia logjam: Orchestrated bad faith

    The logjam and subsequent shutdown of Abia State for over one week (and still counting) is dripping with bad faith that is bound to set our democracy back many years. In the first place, the court in giving the judgment didn’t need to instruct the electoral body to act post haste on it.

    And the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was carrying on as if it was the one to form the new government in Abia. Both the court and INEC knew Governor Okezie Ikpeazu would indeed head for the appellate court. And he did. But INEC in its haste to take over Abia Government House shuffled the court papers.

    But this kind of bad behaviour in the polity would always have the un-salubrious effect of invoking damaging precedence on the polity. And can anyone quantify Abia’s economic losses these few days?

    Finally, this INEC is fast losing the aura and respect conferred on it by the last chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega. Apart from assaulting our sensibilities, we cannot afford to return to the days of jankara INEC, can we?

  • EXPRESSO, five years on…

    Exactly five years ago (Friday, July 1st, 2011), this column made its debut on the pages of this newspaper. Straight from a misadventure of a political appointment, I thought I had seen it all (my career having run the gamut from production editor to reporter, bank manager, editor and political appointee), I thought sitting on the editorial board of a national newspaper and casting a knowing and jocular glance at polity would be the right thing to do next.

    But I was wrong. The column over these years has been all but a cup of hot coffee it was intended simulate. Nigeria continues to present herself as a columnist’s nightmare. Imagine saying the same things everyday in different ways! Imagine doing so for five years! That could drive a man to the precipice, couldn’t it?

    The very first piece of Expresso says it all. It speaks about diversification long before the crude oil price crash; it speaks about prudence and proffered some simple ideas about how to gear up a state to sufficiency; it even warned President Goodluck Jonathan about re-appointing Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke… if only our leaders bother to read our humble opinions…

    Gov. Ajimobi: I dey laugh! (Friday, July 1st, 2011)

    Yes, it is the most cynical kind of laugher, the type Baba (You know who) taught us. But it is nothing personal to the Oyo State governor, AbiolaAjimobi, no. I am actually laughing at all the governors across the country who have just won a hard-fought election.

    Hard-fought or hard-bought election if you like; whichever it may be, must be like a stroll in the park now for most of them in the face of a rapidly unfolding labour brouhaha. I have singled-out Ajimobi as a representative of all the other governors on account of his maiden broadcast to the workers and people of Oyo State recently over the N18,000 minimum wage palaver.

    He is only the template for this article. In the broadcast, the Oyo helmsman had bemoaned the caper of a wage increment lobbed at him by his nemesis, the out-gone Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala. He regaled us of how Akala spent a huge sum just to perfect and institutionalise the ‘damaging’ new wage regime as a sweet parting gift. Ajimobi’s broadcast is indeed dirigible and one could hear Akala bellowing away in signature raucous laughter over palm wine and pounded yam in his Ogbomoso homestead where he has repaired to. Surrounded by kinsmen and residual sycophants, holding court, he would mock: “Ajimobi thinks winning an election is all there is to governance, by the time he is through paying this new wage, he would wish he had lost the election.” More laughter…

    But truly, governance or more appropriately, governorship(ing) will no longer be fun as it used to be when governors were lords and they had loose billions to play around with. By default, we may have ushered in our own quiet socio-economic revolution. Have you paused to ponder how labour achieved a minimum wage increase of about 150 per cent (from N7500 to N18,000)? Was it the pre-election fever that blinded all concerned to the implications of this chunky hike? Was it the mood of a populace stewing in ire upon the revelation that each of our National Assembly members needed a bullion van to cart home his pay? Was it a well-timed strategic labour manoeuvre? Did labour stampede the system to gain an undue advantage to the detriment of the rest of the polity or is there a divine design to it all?

    Methinks change is forcing itself upon us. The change that by sheer coldness of heart and mischief, we refused to embrace over the years, providence seems to the hauling at us like Boko Haram bombs, pardon me. Now Governor Ajimobi expects us to weep with him when he tells us in his maiden broadcast that if he implemented the #18,000 minimum wage the state would be in deficit every month as Oyo’s total monthly income is #4.2 billion. No sir, we de laugh. You asked for the job remember? If you can’t pay resign, says labour. I don’t agree with them but they have a point there.

    Conversely, Governor B. RajiFashola expects us to clap when we read that he has rushed to disburse about #5 billion of our tax money to pay a few hundred zobo-drinking civil servants who scarcely do any work. No, we are not clapping. In fact as the days go by, we shall have to be calling on him to account for what will amount to about #150 billion per annum (in wages, pensions and gratuities) of our revenue dished out to a few people. In due, time we shall seek to know the cost-benefit of spending such huge amount on a minuscule fraction of the population, and for him to show us in concrete terms, the returns on such spending.

    This #18,000 matter will yet unravel all of us.  Ajimobitells us in his maiden broadcast that Oyo generates a miserable #1 billion monthly. That’s a laugh. Between Tokyo and Auxillary (and all the other gears attached to each of them in motor garages across Oyo state) I bet they are doing double that number. Indeed, any state that cannot generate enough revenue internally to run its affairs is either not fit to be so called or the governor is not worthy of that title, or both.

    Therefore, we expect Governor Ajimobi in his next broadcast, (which ought to be quarterly) to declare that in the first quarter, his administration had managed to raise the IGR to #5 billion per month and hopes to raise it to #10 billion by year end. That would be showing a class apart from Akala wouldn’t it? And how ecstatic that would make Oyo people?

    In Ajimobi’s next broadcast, we will expect him to tell us how he intends to raise Oyo state to an enterprise doing a turnover of #150 – #200 billion annually. We want to hear how he is diversifying the economic base of his vast state and how the first shipment of his agric export will be due by year end. He will tell us how he intends to catalyse the setting up of at least five major industries each year making a total of 20 in four years. We expect to see in the next broadcast how Ajimobi has kept his administration lean and trim with only optimum number of appointees, cutting wastes and extravagance. To think that a certain state governor in Nigeria was alleged to have had about 2000 appointees! And another spent in building a fancy government house, a sum that would have been enough to build an entire new city. If nothing else, this #18,000 wahala will put paid to such madness. We will expect Ajimobi to tell us how many aides he has and their total annual emolument. We expect him to be upfront with us on his security vote and we expect him to make his MDAs work for the people by empowering his commissioners and aides. We don’t expect him to tell us how he jumps from one sky-scrapper to the other trying to do everything. He is not superman not king kong.

    Lastly, we expect him to tell us how his team dialogued with labor and got the optimum graduation of the minimum wage. We need to know how he has gone about re-orientating the civil service to make them truly serve and add value. We must know how many exactly is Oyo state work force; how he pruned the redundant class, retrained and reassigned them and how he ‘killed’ the teeming ghosts in the service.

    It is not the best of times to be a governor in Nigeria as it may no longer be business as usual (of sharing monthly federal allocation). But it is also the best time to be a governor for history makers.Those who will be sober, who will roll up their sleeves and see the #18,000 minimum wage as a challenge and an opportunity to excel. I do not think it is the best time for long, magician’s caps, the type we saw Governor IbikunleAmosun don the other day. It will not be time for flying abroad in search of any woebegone foreign investor as we hear Governor KayodeFayemi did recently. Any investor who is not on the internet must be an invader, more like. We hope a few other governors will find some good in this Ajimobi template. We wait.

    Last mug: Dieziani really shouldn’t comeback yet

    Delectable Mr. Deizani Alison-Madueke seems to be among the favourites of President Jonathan’s former ministers to return to her job. Her name is on every list of would-be appointees favoured by the President. It really will be a pity if she returns. There are so much sordid allegations swarming around her like flies that picking her,inspite of these would do the President little good.

    She needs to be left out to go clear all the debris of serious corruption allegations against her as immediate past oil minister. Insisting on her will thoroughly diminish the Jonathan Presidency before it had chance to take off.

    • Apology: Last week I had left a banger on the headline: “Corruption: Lessons Alhaji thought me.” That was actually a bomb as many readers pointed out. And who else do we blame than the devil, the enemy that made me so blurry I could not separate my thoughts from a tense I had been taught over 40 years ago. Apologies dear readers.

  • CORRUPTION: Lessons Alhaji thought me…

    There are some men you come across in the course of life’s journey you wished had fathered you. Not because by the slightest of stretch, you disavow your paternity or you would rush to trade places; no.

    The reason is that as you forge character and mindsets in the searing crucibles of boyhood, adulthood and even manhood, precepts change rapidly and old perceptions are tweaked by new realities. So you are likely to come across men who are imbued with those extra qualities and impetuses which you desire and admire. And are bound to leave live-long imprints on your life.

    Such is the case of Alhaji. He is a man of awesome stature and presence. Towering above six feet and sturdy with it, he is a man of few words. He is laconic in the manner of a typical British middleclass gentleman. This perhaps arises from his long association and training from them.

    He used to be agonizingly fastidious and methodical with work – any size of work he had to do or gave you to do. He was thorough to the point of pain. For instance, he would rework an address until you, his aide get dizzy. Indeed, he worked like a clock, if not better.

    He reached the pinnacle of his career rising to be the chief executive of a bank as he seemed to have been destined to be by the sheer force of his work ethic and trove of intellect.

    It was at this point I served as his personal aide and media manager (of the bank) about 16 years ago. Alhaji thought me about the back-breaking discipline of work: the nullity of efforts without results and even the futility of results that fall short of desired targets – and yet again, all the things in-between.

    One of those days, I had informed him I had to leave the appointment as a bank manager to edit a new national newspaper. He did not initially understand why anyone would  prefer the turbulent world of journalism in Nigeria to the settled and pristine house of mammon where life is sunny and living paved in cobblestones.

    After many days when it was obvious that I really had to go, he gave me some unforgettable parting shots which have remained with me like precious pearls. From hindsight now, I think Alhaji must have notice the smoke of idealism billowing above the head of the heady young man seated before him.

    And he said to me, changing a system takes time, it is a long, painstaking and methodical effort. Things have gone bad over a long time and it will take some time to fix. I know you and your friend (Sully) are burning with the zeal to change the world but it has to be a gradual process.

    Then he dropped this clanger: “Corruption for instance, is like a forty-foot tanker laden with fuel and you have to turn it around a narrow roundabout. A wise driver must do it slowly, patiently and methodically. If he gets impatient and tries to do it hastily; of course the tanker will tip over and its combustible cargo would go up in flames and consume the entire neighbourhood including the driver.”

    This was in 2003, over 13 years ago during the reign of President Olusegun Obasanjo when corruption ravaged the land and Transparency International consistently consigned Nigeria among the league of bandit nations.

     

    New IGP and injustice against Ndigbo

    Many readers of this column will jump to the conclusion that one raises this matter of inequity because one is Igbo. But justice has no tribe. This is not the first time this matter of PMB’s injustice to Ndigbo will come up here and it won’t be the last it seems.

    A new Inspector-General of Police has been appointed concluding PMB’s rout of Ndigbo from the nation’s security establishments. This has never happened before.

    At the National Security Council meetings where crucial life and death decisions are taken, Ndigbo are not represented. This is a dangerous precedent. For a group that represents at least one quarter of the country, this is deliberate exclusionism that cannot be explained.

    We say this because in a few years hence, if power changes hands and the Northwest or Northeast is excluded in this manner, we all would have to condemn it as unjust. It is actions like these that nation fracture nations and sow seeds of perpetual discord.

    The danger of this seeming small matter of today will germinate into a big iroko tree many years after.

    Meanwhile, I congratulate the new acting IGP, Mr. Ibrahim Idris.

     

  • Ode to Beauty Haram

    Expresso is back. After about a six-month interregnum, your award-winning column returns. Nigeria is in the harmattan of her nationhood; a time of despair and unbelief perhaps too tenuous for column keeping. It is a time reason has given way to anger, guns and gunboats. Our docile and acquiescent pasts have today brought us culminations of a bitter kind. But is this by any chance denouement?

    The above-titled article was published on May 2nd, 2014. Ardent readers of this column will remember it. But the truth is that it was written about six months earlier under the title: “The beautiful thief.” It was stuff from the furnace of a columnist’s deviant umbrage at the wanton pillage of the treasury back then. It was irreverent and explicit, taking liberty on the dowager, Diezani Alison-Madueke. Of course that was pure ‘defamation’ and no responsible editor-in-chief would let it run. Evidence was at loggerheads with proof and in this trade, what you can’t prove you must spike regardless of the weight of circumstantial evidence. So the original piece had to be reworked and re-jigged and fettered with the cold chains of nuance.

    Diezani, the powerful oil minister in the last administration has not been convicted still but the revelations emanating from all quarters are as mind-twisting as we all conjectured. We knew she had her hands almost six feet deep into the till and that she was impunity cast in the mold of a beautiful woman. But we all watched helplessly as our commonwealth was being voraciously gobbled by those charged with their keep.

    She defied the National Assembly and railroaded the judiciary. Of course the presidency was her plaything. The EFCC now acting up was blind-sided and the ICPC was busy chasing petty civil servants and drawing the fine line between stealing and corruption. Meanwhile Lady D was on the rampage! Her N3.58 billion ($18m) home in Abuja, was only discovered by the EFCC recently. And her swaggering allies, Jide Omokore and Kola Aluko, did they just accumulate an alleged $1.8 billion assets today?

    More important, has the NNPC, the cove of corruption, been rid of all the conditions that bred Diezani? Not at all, the sleaze probably goes on, perhaps on a lesser scale… we must begin to re-imagine our processes and rethink our methods… now the flash back.

    ODE TO BEAUTY HARAM: Beauty is transcendental. It is providence’s final testament to man’s elevated status. Beauty, no matter the form or configuration, is imbued with the divine: a bougainvillea tree in glorious bloom; a stream coursing merrily  through the country side; the setting sun in blazing orange radiance over white-caped kilimanjaro  and the mother of all beauties – a sculpted damsel set down all so delicately among earthlings by our creator.

    Yes, womanhood is the mother of all beauties ever created because it is the only kind of beauty with fluttering, seductive eyes. It is through femininity that our creator found a collocation between man and celestial beings.

     

    To the grand old man of Law @ 85

    This is to Professor Obi Benjamin Nwabueze, (SAN) who turned 85 recently. A lawyer, university teacher, administrator, statesman and patriot, he is probably the most luminous legal mind of his time and certainly the most prolific having authored no fewer than two dozen books in constitutionalism and constitutional law.

    Just a sampler of his sturdy intellectual stature: starting from 1962 he taught law in England, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland and Ghana. He also helped draft the constitution of some of these countries. In Nigeria, he left his imprint at the universities of Lagos, Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello, Ife, Jos, Anambra State University and the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.

    Among the first laureates of the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) Nwabueze’s life of brilliant scholarship, industry and zealous national service probably has no comparison today.

  • A note for Pa Audu Ogbeh

    This column had been distracted from its original plan last week. One had quickly had to change course when a fellow columnist with The Punch, Abimbola Adelakun, came out on the back page of her paper to state categorically that: “God cannot solve our problems for the simple reason that he has never solved any country’s problems.” One needed to correct that notion of God; at least the Christian God one know if only for the sake of her numerous readers who may happen to be Christians, so that they are not misled or confused. Our God solves and can solve all problems, but only according to his own designs.

    I also discerned from Ms Adelakun’s piece, taken in context, that she was only expressing her frustration with the state of the nation. She had made reference to Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State and Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly, two honchos of this administration speaking out exasperatedly at the very sad turn of things in the country in the first few months of the Muhammadu Buhari administration. “How does a government that promised massive “change” begin to write its own epitaph so early?” is Ms Adelakun’s damning question.

    I honestly feel her pain. I am probably more pained and Nigerians of goodwill must have their face badly furrowed by worry today. These days you catch yourself already throwing those harsh words we threw at ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. Less than one year after crusading so much to usher in PMB, one has already written nearly a dozen critical articles against his administration. We never bargained for this.

    But it is the sense of hopelessness that galls most critics. The utter inertia and rudderlessness currently pervading the polity have left even die-hard supporters of PMB disillusioned.

    Many federal civil servants have not been paid for about three months. “Even Jonathan’s time was not like this,” many are heard saying now. Fuel scarcity never lingered for so long a spell in Jonathan’s time, is the refrain at filling stations, as Nigerians go through harrowing time over a problem that ought to have been managed six months ago.

    Over the weekend, an aide of the president told Nigerians that PMB never promised to reduce the aircraft in the presidential fleet. This manner of ‘yam-headedness’ only fuels the notion that this presidency is reading the script upside down or had none from the outset. There, we were bursting our knuckles and lampooning former President Jonathan about the folly and profligacy of running an ‘airline’ from the presidency, while airlines in the country were withering.

    Why do we love the company of few cranky republics like Russia (24), Mexico (18), Pakistan (14), Morocco (11), Kuwait (13), Philippines (10) and Nigeria (14, now 9) have at least a dozen craft in their presidential fleet? Most others have less than five and some like Britain has none at all with her prime minister flying public airlines, such as British Air or Virgin Atlantic. US, probably world’s number one manufacturer of aircraft, has only two jets designated to the presidency, while Saudi Arabia with all the money in the world also has two. Whatever the case may be, whether he promised or not, cutting the number of aircraft in the presidential fleet is one of the quick wins Nigerians expected from a Buhari administration, considering that it ought to be an exemplar of frugality and good sense. Especially so, now, that the country is in dire straits and needs to shed fat quickly. Apart from Arik Air, it is doubtful if any other Nigerian airline can boast of 10 planes in its fleet. Why then would the presidency keep all these planes and for what purpose? And the impertinence of insinuating that he not promised rectitude and good governance!

    It is for some of these reasons that one wanted to direct one’s humble thoughts towards some crucial ministries and some tested individuals manning key MDAs. Chief Audu Ogbeh, the current Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), is one such.  Over the years, he has grown to be one of the better respected politicians of his time. Going by his trajectory in public life, he was a minister at a young age in the 80s and can be said to be the ‘last’ chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s final annexure of the party.

    One actually expected Chief Ogbeh to play more advisory roles in the PMB era, but being a farmer, it is just as well that he mans the agric beat, which is probably most crucial today. And if Chief Ogbeh fails, Nigeria would have sunk deeper into economic morass. Unfortunately, he hasn’t much time, thus he must identify the quick wins and win them quickly.

    He said recently in Kano that Nigeria expends N1.3 trillion on food importation annually. It is great that he has those grave numbers, but we are not interested in them. The last person on that seat, a popinjay, spent over four years bandying outlandish figures and doing little. The next time chief throws a figure at Nigerians, it must be followed by his immediate, medium and long-term measures to turn the tide of massive food importation in the next three years.

    Here are a few ideas for him to ponder upon: on July 24 (“A ‘drumstick’ for PMB”) and August 14 (“Chicken season”) this year, one had said it all on this page. And the idea is simple: we can start a fresh agric revolution beginning with poultry economy. Consider the economic effect of producing all our poultry products in a Nigeria of about 170 million people. Consider the entire poultry value chain.

    Poultry products were banned in Nigeria 15 years ago but no enforcement. Customs officials and their co-travellers (smugglers) have been the chief beneficiaries of that law. Chief Ogbeh can pick the gauntlet now. He can rally all the stakeholders; Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) led by Dr. Ayoola Oduntan has been doing marvellous work. They need structured, institutional support.

    Chief Ogbeh must rally the Customs, the chicken producers, the feed-millers, the maize farmers, cold room owners, chicken and egg processing groups, vets, Ministry of Information (for massive campaign), governors, etc. By Christmas 2016, Nigerians must consume wholly home-grown poultry; that will be a huge milestone to celebrate, that will be the real agric revolution. In two years we can consume wholly Nigerian rice and in four years, we should have banished imported milk from our shores with model ranches boasting milk and meat processing lines. If these things are as difficult as rocket science, I want to be educated.

    We trust that Chief Ogbeh can drive this change through the MARD and begin to deliver quick, concrete results in no time.

  • Good tidings from IGP Arase

    Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, has been quietly tinkering with the police and making the right overtures. The recently established Complaint Response Unit (CRU) of the police, for instance, will give Nigerians more say and more leeway in the activities of the Nigeria Police.  Now there are numbers you can call if any police personnel infringes on your right or behaves in a manner that debases the uniform. This is a crucial milestone.

    He has succeeded largely in keeping the police off the roads; a programme started by his predecessor, Mohammed Dikko Abubakar. He must not relent in his quiet reforms: quality training, improved welfare and discipline are the ingredients that make for a modern police. We must reclaim our police; we want a police with ample self-esteem, one we can be proud of.

  • Making Nigeria better – with God

    Today, I have had to break with our unspoken professional code, which quietly admonishes that we columnists should never pick on each other. Not in public and particularly so, not using our columns to counter each other or seeming to attack one another’s opinion as held in his or her column space.

    But here today, I am constrained to break with that tradition. Columnnauts would have noticed that the above title is derived from Abimbola Adelakun’s title on the back page of The Punch, yesterday, December 3, 2015. She had written: “Making Nigeria better without God.” In my reckoning, Abimbola is perhaps the best female keeping a column in Nigeria today. She reminds of Amma Ogan and Doyin ‘Lipstick’ Okojie. Feisty, irreverent and sometimes gung-ho, she lays it light, smooth and fluid. It is a style readers do not fail to connect with and enjoy.

    Though her title turned out eventually, to appear a bit superfluous and strained, she crossed the line enough for this intervention. (Back to it later.)

    The other infraction is as appears in the boxed piece: “Wabara: column as calumny” That speaks for itself and requires no further explanation.

    Of course, one had things lined up for the space, which had to be swept aside especially for this fresh and compelling matter of our Maker being dragged into the Nigerian mire. There is no doubt that most of us are currently suffering what I once tagged, “Acute Disillusion Syndrome” (ADS). This term was first used by yours truly during the days of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. It was repeated in early 2012 during the ‘subsidygate’ protests. You recall that the then President Goodluck Jonathan after his election victory seemed to have responded with an astronomic fuel price hike on the first day of 2012. This had spawned a widespread protest across the country. From then, it was a downward spin for his government. Nigerians got so disillusioned that they could not stand him any longer. You know the rest of the story.

    Just six months after President Muhammadu Buhari’s ascendance to power, this debilitating ADS has crept in on us once again. Everything seems to stand askance, everything seems to be going wrong and suddenly, no one seems to have any answer anymore. Columnists are buffeted with a gush of ominous auguries and there is a suffusion of sad tales for writers to bear.

    The Faleke fallacy One had meant to put in a word in the Kogi conundrum. One wanted to ask what James Faleke’s point is? Why is he foolhardily throwing spanner in the works? Until the election process is fully and logically concluded, he has no legitimate mandate; he is still a ‘property’ of his party and under the will of INEC. He is not yet a political persona or entity.

    One is surprised that one is not hearing the cries of ‘party supremacy’ now that that principle is truly being infringed upon. Faleke ought to know that you cannot contest a guber election if you did not contest in a party’s primary. It’s too early for him to feud with his party and pick bones with INEC. Did his party make a mistake in making him running mate? He must remember it is a rare privilege.

    If his principal did not pass on, he would still be number two. Now that his boss is dead, should he make succession a do-or-die affair? If his party that gave him the opportunity in the first place, in their wisdom, chose someone else to replace the fallen candidate, he should simply toe the party line. The wisdom of an Igbo adage is that a man must resist the temptation to challenge his benefactor to a duel just because he thinks he has grown up to him.

    Presidential junket Recall that President Obasanjo did it, President Jonathan did it and now President Muhammadu Buhari is doing it. You must remember that nursery rhyme from the last election. Why do Nigerian presidents enjoy being airborne? Those who are taking tabs say President Buhari has travelled to 20 countries in six months; making him perhaps the most travelled president in the world – another bad sign.

    It is either that he is more comfortable abroad in which case we can safely conclude that he is running (escaping) from his (our) sad reality or he is doing something out there more important to him than the good of the country. Nigeria is back at the nadir of the worst days of the Jonathan presidency, yet our president is in flight.

    So much to be said, so much pain to be borne; the pain of disappointment and the grief of dashed hopes and expectations; the grim prospects of tomorrow as a shroud. So much to say that prose has grown prosaic and trite. The wild grass we uprooted and burnt are standing again today.

    Yes we can make  Nigeria better… with God There is also the need to drop a note for the new ministers, but all these have to wait. The overwhelming despair in the land would get to any man of goodwill, not the least a columnist and one of Adelakun’s conscientiousness. One understands her pain. She is particularly piqued that Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, had quipped that Nigeria’s troubles were beyond the ken of mere men and thus must be taken to the realms of God.

    And here is where Adelakun crossed the line when she wrote: “Where do we go from here? Definitely not to God like el-Rufai suggested. God cannot solve our problems for the simple reason that he has never solved any country’s problems. Countries have, in fact, had to repudiate God to progress.”

    My old mother hearing this kind of assertion would have been so aghast she would insist you spit immediately (bu pu asu!) so that you do not swallow blasphemy!

    My dear Bimbo, one does not know how to put this in the fewest most effective lines for you, but being an intelligent woman, it would suffice to say that you need a bit more understanding of the essence of God. God cannot be repudiated; God still solves problems – individual and collective. And God can solve Nigeria’s problems – in His own way and in His own time.

    He tells us (who know him) not to be overly troubled when we see these things happen. He has purposed them, He made everything… “Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket, And are counted as the small dust on the scales;…” Isaiah 40: 15. I recommend Isaiah 40 to Abimbola but am afraid she may need to read it 40 times over to begin to appreciate it.

  • Wabara: Column as calumny

    I fear to do this, but one is most constrained. For the fact that Ebere Wabara is not just a colleague of the pen, but a friend. However, only a true friend can speak truth to another. In the past couple of years, Wabara has found and even enjoyed a certain obsession to malign the immediate past governor of Abia State, Chief Theodore Ahamefule Orji (TA). Hardly any two weeks pass without Wabara deploying his column to abuse and heap insults on his traducer.

    In November alone, four out of five weeks, Wabara has lent his column to his indecent and indecorous pass-time. Here are samples: November 2, 2015: (1) “In December last year, the immediate past governor of Abia State and the worst ever in the annals of the state, nay Nigeria, Theodore Ahamefule Orji (TA) (clownishly known as Ochendo)…”

    (2) Novemeber 9, 2015, Wabara writes: “I do not know what is holding EFCC,” laying all manner of accusations on the graft agency because it has not done its bidding on TA. (3) November 16, 2015, Wabara writes: “Just an appetiser to whet your appetite: do you still recollect that immediate-past governor of Abia State, Theodore Ahamefule Orji (stupefactiously known as Ochendo).” Here he reminds President Buhari how TA dealt him a bad hand during electioneering. Ouch!

    (4) November 30, 2015, Wabara writes: “It is the final word on the tragedy, which hallmarked governance in God’s Own State between 2007 and 2015 – when TA ingloriously held sway.”

    All of this in just one month; consider what has been in the last 36 months and you would understand the quantum of damage and injury that has been heaped on one man just because another man has access to a space in a national newspaper. If you were not a columnist would you have raised an IED? What about the law courts?

    My friend this cannot be right, this cannot be fair by any measure and this certainly is unethical and unprofessional. And we must say so lest some young people in journalism schools across the country begin to think this is the way it is done.