Category: Korede Yishau

By Olukorede Yishau

There is an argument by some journalists that all reporting is investigative in nature. But, while every day reporting makes use of some techniques used by investigative reporters, journalism has different forms.

One very important form is investigative journalism, a form of journalism in which reporters are expected to deeply investigate a single topic of interest. It may be crime, political corruption or corporate wrongdoing. It involves the use of a set of methodologies that can take years to master. High standards of research and reporting, and in-depth inquiries help to track looted public funds, abuse of power, environmental degradation, health scandals, and other hidden facts.

So, it is certainly not like every day reporting or what I call routine reporting, which involves going to beats, attending press conferences and rewriting statements and so on.

Investigative reporting is time-consuming and a reporter may spend months or years researching his subject and preparing a report. It may involve travels across states, nations and, a lot of the time, it involves being undercover.

An investigative journalism handbook published by the UNESCO defines investigative journalism as: “exposing to the public matters that are concealed–either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents.”

But, this important form of journalism is under threat everywhere. In the United States, for instance, a 2002 study shows “that investigative journalism has all but disappeared from the nation’s commercial airwaves”. Advertisers have reduced spending on media organisations reporting too many unfavourable details about their businesses.

There is a raging question about the practice of this important journalism form: Can an investigative reporter do without lying?

Well, the simple answer is this: the idea of undercover reporting, which is at the heart of getting in-depth and well-research investigative story involves not revealing your identity. Does not revealing one’s identity amount to lying?

At the heart of this topic is unearthing of secrets using public records and data for social justice and accountability. And to do that you must be able to rely on primary sources, form and test hypothesis, and engage in rigorous fact-checking. The dictionary defines “investigation” as “systematic inquiry”.

Investigative journalism is no tea party. There is a saying that “to be a journalist is to look for trouble”. This is very relevant to in-depth journalism. The reason is simple: In-depth reporting swims in the same ocean with corruption, negligence and failure of systems. And when you are in the same boat with these three, trouble is not far away because the men and women who perpetrate corruption, system failure and negligence do not want their secrets unearthed. Theirs are stories they do not want told.

I once had to do an investigative report on the tussle over the Olowo of Owo stool. This was at a time the then Olowo had run away from his throne. When I got into the town, it was tense. Meanwhile, my employers expected a report detailing what the palace looked like. When I got to the palace, I noticed that youths were watching a football match. I read the mood and knew it was not a time to flaunt my profession so I did not go with anything that could easily lead to being identified as a reporter. I only had a pen and one small paper to just take some notes. I had no big jotter, just a dirty piece of paper on which I noted the plate numbers of damaged vehicles and other details I felt could enhance my report.

I was eventually suspected and I had to lie that I was in the palace to watch the football match. Did they believe me? I doubted because I noticed that someone was detailed to monitor me. I slipped out of the palace and out of the town. So you must be able to sense danger and escape to safety.

Investigative journalism does not come cheap. In the face of dwindling revenue, media houses now struggle to fund investigative journalism. The media in Nigeria have for years been struggling, with not a few on some form of ventilator as if afflicted by COVID-19. The industry has not seen any major investment in the last few years. No thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, which has made us strangers in this world we wrongly assumed we knew like the back of our palm, things have even gone worse.

For the majority, salaries are either not paid or terribly delayed. There are times journalists go for months without pay. As you read this, hunger virus has plagued many a colleague. Hundreds have kissed their jobs bye-bye.

Only a few publishers constantly pay what can truly be described as a take-home package. I can count them on my fingertips. They are that small. The majority do not pay well and sadly, they struggle to pay these peanuts.

Coronavirus has plummeted sales and advertising that had dropped earlier. The lockdown worsened things and getting up on its own without external help is a task our comatose industry is not capable of. Newspapers have had no choice but to cut pagination to 32. Print-runs have also been reduced. So, funding for investigative reporting is the last thing on many a publisher’s mind. It has deservedly taken the back seat.

But the society needs investigative journalism because of its change value. The good news, however, is that there are organisations, such as the Cable Newspaper Investigative Journalism Foundation, International Centre for Investigative Reporting, BudgIT, and Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Reporting, now filling the vacuum by providing funding for reporters to keep this important form of journalism alive. So, you can submit pitches to these organisations. You don’t even have to be a full-time employee of a media organisation to access this funding. Freelance reporters also get the funding.

My final take: The bad men and women are still wrecking serious havoc on our finances, our institutions and other facets of our society, and exposing them is a task that must be done, and in-depth journalism is a sure banker in giving them a bloody nose.

By Olukorede Yishau

For those conversant with Charles Dickens, the brilliant mind behind ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, the title of this piece is not unfamiliar. Those familiar with Okinba Launko can also easily relate to this piece’s title because of the writer’s usage of Dickens’ words to breathe life into three of his literary outputs.

It is ironic that I read Okinba Launko’s ‘The Best of Times’, a collection of three novellas, at the worst of times, for the world and for our dear nation. As though COVID-19 and recession are not enough, the men in power appear sworn to make us suffer. Poverty seems the legacy they want to leave the majority with.

Launko, for those in the literary community, is the same as the highly-revered Prof. Femi Osofisan, whose footprint can never be erased from the sands of time. The University of Ibadan, where he retired, and the world of playwriting have no choice but to defer to him, forever on account of his enormous intellectual contributions.

The three novellas packed together in ‘The Best of Times’ are ‘Kolera Kolej’, ‘Ma’ami’ and ‘Cordelia’.

‘Kolera Kolej’ is satirical. It is set in a country where cholera breaks out in its university leading to deaths. The leader of this country, which has the same mannerisms with Nigerian leaders, abdicates his responsibility by granting guided autonomy to the university. Intrigues ensue in picking the pioneer leader for the new republic and all kinds of factors, except merit, come into play. Blackmail is not in short supply in the new republic. In the end, not much is achieved because favouritism, egotism, and many anti-development sentiments dictate the pace.

This novella will make you laugh. The ridiculousness of the decisions taken by the leaders of the college and the country displays the lack of foresight and patriotism that many a Nigerian leader is famous for.

‘Ma’ami’, which inspired a film of the same title by veteran filmmaker Tunde Kelani, is about the extent a mother can go to get her child his needs. It is also about poverty and how some see occultism as a way out. Reading the novella makes me feel like seeing Kelani’s cinematic representation all over again. The points of divergence also easily hit me, in the sense that I easily identify the addition to the film version.

‘Ma’ami’, narrated in the first person by the son, is not just about mother’s love, it vividly paints the extent people can go to make money. Imagine a father sacrificing his son for a money-making ritual! It also tells the corruption of government officials who allow extraneous factors in deciding who has a space in the market and who does not. This novella also shows the importance of a father-figure in a child’s life. Despite all Ma’ami does for her ‘Termogene’ of a son, all it takes to test his loyalty is the sight of his father and the evidence of his filthy lucre.

‘Ma’ami’ is filled with drama and the author resolves the conflicts brilliantly. Telling the tale in present tense gives it this immediate presence and I just love it. The end of this story will have you asking yourself questions. You may even reread to get a second opinion.

In ‘Cordelia’, romance meets politics, politics of the men in military fatigue with all its attendant dangers.

It takes off on a crisis-filled note. A lecturer in a university is disturbed about the state of his marriage. His once-sweet wife has become the devil’s envoy. In the opening pages of the story, we see clear evidence of the lecturer’s state of mind, including his inability to teach his students. One of them later confronts him in his office about his shoddy lecture. Like a typical man, he sees no reason to discuss such a matter, especially with his student. The student in question is accompanied to the lecturer’s office by another student named Cordelia. Unknown to the lecturer, she is about to be at the centre of a major riot in the institution. Cordelia’s father is a minister in the military government. Minutes after the two students leave the lecturer’s office, he is alerted by a colleague to martial music on the radio. This sort of music in Nigeria is associated with a military coup. It turns out there has been a coup and the leader is none other than Cordelia’s father. Before the implications of what has just happened hit the lecturer, Cordelia’s friend rushes back to him, panting. Protesting students are about to lynch Cordelia for her father’s role in removing a government seen as benevolent. The description makes me feel the author is referring to the Murtala Mohammed administration.

A drama, however, ensues while Cordelia’s friend is still trying to convince the lecturer to help save her from the mob; his wife comes into the office and accuses him of having an affair with his student. No explanation is acceptable to her. He eventually locks her in the office to go and save the girl in danger. He returns to find out that his aggrieved wife has turned his office upside down. She even tore his research papers and sets him back many years.

More drama is to come. Information gets to the military that Cordelia is with him. His house is invaded. It turns out the invader is Cordelia’s in-law to be. She is relieved seeing him and he takes her away. She thinks she is his father’s emissary. How wrong she is. Not long after, another set of military men invade his house and it dawns on him that the men who have Cordelia are keeping her for reasons far from noble.

Call ‘Cordelia’ drama upon drama and I doubt if anyone will fault you.

‘Ma’ami’ and ‘Cordelia’ are suspense-filled with each chapter ending with a cliff hanger and thus luring a reader to the next page and, in the process, getting hooked like a hard drug user. This is certainly not easy to pull off. Osofisan achieves this with magisterial competence.

‘Kolera Kolej’ is the icing on the cake for a time such as this. I am made to understand this was written over four decades ago and the afflictions troubling the nation in focus are similar to what still troubles our nation in almost every facet of our public life. This makes one wonder if we will ever get things right by gaining independence from nepotism, favouritism, corruption, political elites’ impunity, and more.

My final take: ‘The Best of Times’ is a pleasure to read. But above all, it is a reminder that Nigerians certainly deserve better than the mediocre performance from the political elites. Is asking for good governance too much? It certainly is the right thing.

By Olukorede Yishau

Politics, the world over, is a male-dominated enterprise, and it is more so in Africa where violence is almost sine qua non with politics.

A few years ago, our darling Onyeka Onwenu commented on how the political arena is rigged against women with meetings held mostly at night.

Nollywood actress Kate Henshaw also had choice words for the political process. After her failed bid to represent her Calabar South Federal Constituency of Cross River State in the House of Representatives, in December of 2014, she said money was a big issue against female participation in politics.

“We need to be able to support women. Women are over 50 per cent of the Nigerian population and we have 200 million, so let’s just say we have 100 million women. You heard what that House of Reps guy was saying? He said don’t give women too much power. He has already told you. Look at Rwanda. Over 60 per cent in the House are women. Cleanest country. Cleanest. Safest. Because women are there,” Henshaw said.

While Rwanda seems an outlier in Africa, the story of female marginalisation in politics is not a peculiarly African phenomenon. It is a worldwide problem.

In July this year, American politician Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Hispanic and female, was verbally assaulted by a fellow representative, Ted Yoho, who is alleged to have called her a “f–king bitch”.

Ocasio-Cortez, popularly known as AOC, denounced the attack; she was miffed, not just because of the personal nature of the attack, but on account of what she described as a culture “of accepting violence and violent language against women, an entire structure of power that supports that.”

In August this year, in an intervention titled “Are male ministers getting away with murder?”,  I had tried to call attention to what appeared to be double standards in how male ministers and  political appointees are allowed latitude while their female counterparts are given short shrift, even by fellow appointees, the media and the general public.

The catalyst for that August piece was  a supposed human rights organisation’s harangue of Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Sadiya Umar Farouq and the virulent attack on NIPOST Chairman Maimuna Abubakar by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) media handlers during which she was called a “a privileged young lady who happened to be appointed to high office”.

In that piece I had noted that “I feel a pattern of harassment of female ministers seems to be emerging in Nigeria and I will provide a few examples. Where women ministers have been accused of some malfeasance, the reaction of the horde is almost mob-like. The cries for crucifixion are very loud and there is always that unspoken – doesn’t she know she is a woman?”

A report last week reminded me of that August article and what I believe is a negative fixation against female politicians and appointees in Nigeria.

In the report with the headline “Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Farouq, Weeps as Communication Minister, Pantami, ‘Disgraces’ Her at Federal Executive Council Meeting”, the online paper reported a supposed verbal altercation between Umar Farouq of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development and her Communications counterpart, Dr. Isa Pantami.

The incident, as reported by the online paper, involved a presentation by Pantami of the “ministry’s planned activities for approval, which included the mapping and registration of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) across the country. Immediately after the Communication Minister’s submission, a furious Farouq raised her hand to speak and express objection to the approval for such activities pending review and approval from her ministry.”

I would have read the report and filed it away as one more evidence of men and women of power engaging in power play until I read the end of the piece where the online paper had written: “Farouq, who had always used her closeness to President Buhari to intimidate, manipulate and harass her fellow ministers, was humbled.”

Reading that bit I was immediately reminded of a comment I had made in my aforementioned August piece where I had said: “The vilification of women in politics is just one of the many injustices the female folks face in our country. It is so bad that when a woman is doing well many of us believe she must have used the ‘bottom power’. Brilliant women abound and even when we acknowledge their brilliance, we still find a way to rubbish their records by attributing their rise to extraneous factors.”

Here in an otherwise balanced report, a culturally-biased view is being espoused to wit – whatever Umar Farouq has achieved is not because of her brilliance or acumen, but because of a perceived closeness to the president.

The second reason I paused was because of the dramatis personae involved. Dr. Pantami seems to be developing a penchant for getting into spats with his female colleagues. In May this year, in a public show of shame, Pantami had allegedly evicted Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) Chairman Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa and her staff out of a space offered to them by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), which is under the Ministry of Communications.

Mrs. Dabiri-Erewa, in a social media post, insinuated that Pantami disrespected her because “she is a woman” by bringing armed security personnel to chase them out.

While I do not wish to hold brief for Mrs. Dabiri-Erewa, I believe the issue could have been better handled since both work for the same government.

The same applies to the Pantami vs Farouq imbroglio. If a letter written to a fellow minister was not replied, it would have been a simple courtesy to put a call through and remind her, especially in a country with a lax civil service and bureaucracy. What if Sadiya Umar Farouq was not aware of the letter?

My final take: The online medium sees the Pantami and Farouq altercation as a proof of “division among top aides of President Muhammadu Buhari” but I prefer to see it as a culturally-influenced inability to see women as equal partners in steering the ship of state and it is regrettable.

By Olukorede Yishau

Our streets are filled with sorrows, tears and blood. Everyday people are caught up in dramas they are unprepared for. If you need evidence of this, open the metro sections of our newspapers.

But the strict rules of journalism, at times, kill the joy of the acts of men and women on the street. To find the missing link, Peju Akande, writer, PR expert and co-founder of thisislagos.ng, deploys fictional techniques. This makes for a more relaxed telling of the happenings on our streets.

Her book, ‘Tales from the Street’, presents a kaleidoscope of death, despair, sorrow and tears. The 217-page book is a thrill. It is unabashedly Nigerian, pidgin and street lingos find home in the writing and you will only not laugh if sadism runs in your blood.

One thing the author does with this book is pointing out the morals of each tale, without necessarily being pushy.

Her language is simple and easy to understand. I daresay it is a book everyone can relate with and it will be worth your time.

Olukorede Yishau

 

In the last few weeks, Kunle Afolayan, one of Nigeria’s most amazing filmmakers, has become more popular. Reason: His latest film, ‘Citation’, has gained grounds on Netflix, a global streaming platform. Being a Netflix Original, the streaming of the film is not restricted to a particular zone, it can be streamed almost everywhere in the world.

Before Afolayan’s movie started breaking records on the platform, another movie from Nigeria, Oloture, started doing better than any other Nigerian product on the platform. It also has the advantage of being a Netflix Original, the second from the country. The first was Genevieve Nnaji’s ‘Lionheart’.

While ‘Citation’ is about the sex-for-grades challenge in our tertiary institutions, ‘Oloture’ is about prostitution and trafficking in girls. Both movies are based on true-life events. ‘Lionheart’ is about giving the girl-child her dues.

These three Netflix Original movies, which are centred on women and girls, sync with my last read: Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Condition’, where the narrator, a girl named Tambu, is made to stop school and all is done for her brother to continue. Even her efforts to find a way out are ridiculed by her father all because she is a girl. “Have you ever heard of a woman who remains in her father’s house?” He asks and before an answer is provided, he adds: “She will meet a young man and I will have lost everything.” This aligns with what a Ugandan notes in Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu: “As a boy if you wander too often into the kitchen doubt is cast over you.” Tambu’s father’s attitude strains their relationship and they live in “peaceful detachment”.

Afolayan’s ‘Citation’ reminds me of the University of Lagos lecturers accused of sex-for-grades. One of them is a pastor. In the secretly-recorded video, Dr. Boniface Igheneghu, who is also a Foursquare pastor, promised to help a supposedly ‘17-year-old’, who was actually an undercover reporter. From their first meeting for ‘tutorials’, Igheneghu began to reveal creepy intentions.

He told the girl: “How old are you? 17, and you look very big like this? Don’t you know you are a beautiful girl? Do you know that? You are not beautiful; you are a very beautiful girl. Do you know I am a pastor? And I am in my 50s. What will shock you is that even at my age, if I want a girl of 17, all I need is to sweet-tongue her; give small money and I will get her.”

At a second meeting, Igheneghu prayed with the girl “to lead her to Christ”. He directed her to repeat after him: “Lord Jesus Christ; I confess the Lord Jesus Christ; I accept that you are my Lord and saviour. Guide me and direct me. Thank you, Jesus. Don’t worry about your admission. I will work on it.”

He soon asked her: “Have you started knowing men?” When the girl asked what he meant by ‘knowing men’, he said point-blank: “Have you started having sex? Look anything that we discuss, you are sure that your mother will not hear?”

At another meeting secretly filmed, Igheneghu spoke about a place lecturers take their prey for sexual escapades at the UNILAG Staff Club. He said: “There is an upper part of the staff club where lecturers carry out their deeds; they call it ‘cold room’.”

In this cold room, girls are meant to experience another side of the cold world they are part of. Igheneghu also said ‘cooperating’ students are favoured with good grades. “She pays with her body,” he said, “You have to be obedient to have your admission.”

Igheneghu told the undercover reporter to kiss him after locking the door and switching off the light in his office in an attempt to demonstrate what the cold room looked like.

“Do you want me to kiss you? Lock the door; I will kiss you for a minute.”

The girl asked: “Did you lock the door?”

“Yes,” Igheneghu whispered.

He asked her to come closer.

Girl: “I am close to you already, sir.”

Igheneghu added: “Sit down…Come close”

Girl: “OK.”

Igheneghu: “Look…(wrapping his arms around her)…“You are so stiff.”

He concluded: “I can call you to come any day; if you don’t come, then you know you are gone. I will tell your Mom you are disobedient.”

The girl responded: “Ok Sir”.

Two girls, who he had harassed before, shared their experiences.

The first girl said: “He will tell you to come to his office. He will lock the door. Sometimes, he will want to grope you; sometimes, he will dry hump you. He likes to pick on struggling students because he knows that they are very vulnerable and there is nothing they can do.”

The second girl said: “I never ever gave my consent once. There was a time he was preparing for Bible study, he was groping me and he was writing down scriptures.”

We are still a long way from giving our women and girls a world free of worrying that evil may befall them because of their gender. Our society’s foundation is laid in such a way that a girl is at a disadvantage. It is so bad that when a woman is doing well many of us believe she must have used the ‘bottom power’. Brilliant women abound and even when we acknowledge their brilliance, we still find a way to rubbish their records by attributing their rise to extraneous factors.

In many a home, girls cook, wash clothes and keep the house clean. Boys watch television, play games and wait for the food to be served. So, these boys grow up to expect their wives to do everything. Many fathers in our society see a lady through her womanhood—her education counts less.

Most times, when a woman cheats, she is in trouble, and when her man cheats, she is still in trouble of ensuring the other chic does not take the man forever.

Aside from the family unit, society also helps to put the female gender down. Our politicians are also guilty in this respect. Women are made to play second fiddle. Most times they are used as entertainers at political events, where they sing praises of men who are party leaders.

My final take: We should all play our roles to end deliberate discrimination against women and instances of taking advantage of them in form of sex-for-grades and sex-for-jobs. Men should stop making them play second fiddle. They are brilliant and smart and deserve all that men have.

By Olukorede Yishau

Time has no wings yet it flies. It flies so high that we often lose track of things past. It flies so high that the labour of our heroes past often ends in vain.

Today, I remember Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa. It has been 25 years since Saro-Wiwa was killed. November 10 made it 25 years that the military junta of the late Gen. Sani Abacha chose to go for the messenger rather than the message.

A lot of water has gone under the proverbial bridge since then. Ogoni, the significant part of Rivers which Saro-Wiwa fought and died for, is still on its throes. Oil giants’ evil deeds on its land are still telling on the health and wealth of the people. Many other oil-bearing communities in Rivers are also down on their knees. No thanks to Shylocks masquerading as oil giants.

The Niger Delta still grapples with a lot of issues. Close to the year of the birth of the Amnesty Programme, the agitation in the region took a new twist. Before the deadly twist, Saro-Wiwa had been judicially murdered. Several other people had been killed by security operatives under one guise or the other. With intellectual activists like Saro-Wiwa out of the way, another generation of activists took over. This set believes if you make peaceful change impossible, you make violent change inevitable. They also believe it is illegal to be lawful in a lawless environment. So they took to arms in their quest to prove a point.

They damaged oil pipelines at a devastating speed. They bombed military boat houses. They siphoned barrels of oil.  No thanks to these dare-devils, oil installations were blown up and oil workers feared to go to the rigs and others. The economy bled. The country was losing billions daily.

All the violence and blood-letting were because of oil, a commodity that is non-renewable and will fizzle out with time. And, after oil, we will remember Oloibiri and how oil has left it impotent. We will remember Ogoni land and how oil killed its leading lights, such as the great Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa. We will remember oil and remember with dismay that Ogoni people had no choice but to drink benzene-contaminated water. We will remember oil and remember poverty, degradation, rejection and desperation. We will remember oil and remember imageries of luxury here and there, but in short supply.

Long after oil has stopped being our main source of revenue, we will remember wealth was something many heard about and saw when the rich chose to throw their weight about. We will certainly remember that despite all the wealth around the region, many students and pupils stayed at home because school fees were gold and diamond their parents could not afford.

How can we ever forget that while oil reigned in some parts of the Niger Delta, they never saw night. Reason: The multinational firms in these areas have their flow stations so close to homes and send out gas flares throughout the day. So, the only way to differentiate between night and day is to check their wrist watches.

We will always remember that while oil was the lord, oil pipelines in many towns were not underground and often burst, damaging soils and existence. Will it be possible to forget that the people shouted, protested and threatened violence over their fate, yet change refused to come?

The oil giants seem to have another licence: to send their hosts to early graves so that their leaders can have all the wealth for themselves, including the little they manage to spend on basic amenities. This environmental genocide is having serious effects on the people. And we will never forget.

Long after oil, we will not forget that strange diseases killed the people, pregnant women developed strange allergies while health centres were ill-equipped to take care of their health needs. We will never forget that several people developed aggravated asthma and respiratory symptoms, such as coughing and difficult or painful breathing, chronic bronchitis, increased and premature deaths were not uncommon.

We will always remember that while oil was the lord, oil majors were more interested in the oil than in the people. They can die for all they care. We will remember their mantra: Oil is more important than man.

How can we ever forget that while oil reigned we all forgot agriculture which, before independence from the colonial masters, paid our bills.

Long after oil, we will remember the interventionist agencies set up to improve the lot of the Niger Delta people. We will remember how, at a point, the oil cash meant for the betterment of the people were given to an herbalist by the head of the board of an interventionist agency. We will remember that one of these agencies became a cesspool for corruption where contracts were hawked like bean cakes, where insiders encouraged outsiders to sue the agency so that judgment debts could be shared. We will not forget that while oil reigned, greedy men stuffed dollars — millions of it— in safes tucked away in poverty-stricken communities. We will remember the yachts, the private jets, the mansions, the diamond wristwatches and the world they bought with stolen oil cash.

We will remember that men and women thrust into positions of influence used them to acquire affluence. We will apparently not forget that in the oil era men lost their conscience and humanity to the extent they bought guns for the youths to take out political adversaries.

I doubt if we will forget that oil’s curse began with the enactment of the Mineral Ordinance by Nigeria’s first Governor-General Sir Frederick Luggard in 1914. We will remember that in 1937, the British colonial government gave the exclusive rights of exploration and exploitation to Shell D’Arcy, which could not actualise this mandate because of the Second World War and a year later entered into collaboration with British Petroleum — formerly Anglo-Persian Oil Company— for oil prospection in Nigeria. Their early efforts yielded 450 barrels of crude oil in Akata I Well in 1951. Further successes were made in Oloibiri in 1956 and Bomu Oil Field in 1958 when oil was struck in commercial quantity.

When we remember oil, we will have at the back of our minds the 12-Day Revolution in the Creeks in 1967, which was championed by the trio of Isaac Adaka Boro, Samuel Owonaru and Nothingham Dick in a failed bid to secede from Nigeria.

We will also remember protests and agitation by groups, such as the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), led by the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed by the Gen. Sani Abacha Administration.

My final take: When we remember these facts, we will remember the pains, tears, sorrow and blood that followed. We will also not forget the good things that oil brought, but we will continue to debate whether or not we would have been greater if agriculture had not been abandoned because of black gold.

Rest well, dear Saro-Wiwa and fellow Ogoni travellers.

Olukorede Yishau

 

THERE are times all you want to do is keep calm and stay in your own lane, but against your wish, people will draw you out. One such irritant looked for my trouble a day ago by dabbling into a presidential matter. Imagine an ordinary citizen who cannot pay his bills complaining about what the President has done or has not done. Mere mortals like him have no right to query the President, who upon being elected deserves to be deified!

Let me give you a background to what this irritant was complaining about: On July 1, President Muhammadu Buhari requested the Senate to screen and confirm 41 non-career and one career ambassadors for appointment. The president’s letter of request was read on the floor at plenary by the Senate President Ahmad Lawan.

Some of those who made the cut are the immediate past Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, Mr Debo Adesina (Oyo), Ex-Minister of State for Defence Ademola Seriki (Lagos), a former Editor with ThisDay, who was also a commissioner in Delta State, Mr Oma Djebah and Mr. Dare Sunday Awoniyi (Kogi).

Other non-career ambassadors-designate include Umar Suleiman (Adamawa), L.S. Mandama (Adamawa), Oboro Effiong Akpabio (Akwa Ibom), Chief Elijah Onyeagba (Anambra), Abubakar D. Ibrahim Siyi (Bauchi), Philip K. Ikurusi (Bayelsa), Hon. Tarzoor Terhemen (Benue), Paul Ogba Adikwu (Benue), Al-Bashir Ibrahim Al-Hassan (Borno), Brig. Gen. Bwala Y?suf, Bukar (Borno) and Prof. Monique Ekpong (Cross River).

Also on the list are Ominyi N. Eze (Ebonyi), Yamah Mohammed Musa (Edo), Maj. Gen. C.O. Ugwu (Enugu), Dr. Hajara I. Salim (Gombe), Obiezu Ijeoma Chinyerem (Imo), Ali M. Magashi (Jigawa), Prof. M.A. Makarfi (Kaduna), Hamisu Umar Takalmawa (Kano), Jazuli Imam Galandanci (Kano), Amina Ado Kurawa (Kano), Amb. Yahaya Lawal (Katsina), Ibrahim Kayode Laaro (Kwara) and Abioye Bello (Kwara).

The President also nominated Zara Maazu Umar (Kwara), Henry John Omaku (Nasarawa), Chief Sarafa Tunji Isola (Ogun), Mrs. Nimi Akinkube (Ondo), Adejaba Bello (Osun), Adeshina Alege (Oyo), Ms. Folakemi Akinyele (Oyo), Shehu Abdullahi Yibaikwal (Plateau), Hon. Maureen Tamuno (Rivers), Faruk Yabo (Sokoto), Adamu M. Hassan (Taraba), Alhaji Yusuf Mohammed (Yobe) and Abubakar Moriki (Zamfara) as non-Career Ambassadors-Designate.

Buhari also sought the lawmakers’ nod for Mr. Sulyman Sani as a career ambassador representing the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The seats became vacant after the president recalled no less than 35 ambassadors. He retained 12, including Dr. Uzoma Emenike (who served in Ireland), Prof. Tijjani Muhammad Bande (Permanent Representative to the UN), Yusuf Tuggar (Germany), Dr. Eniola Irele (France), Adeyinka O. Asekun (Canada), Maj.-Gen. Chris Eze (India), Dr. Eniola Ajayi (Hungary), Joseph Olusola (Togo), Uyagwe Igbe (Mozambique), Baba Madugu (Switzerland) and Muhammadu Rimi Barbade (United Arab Emirates). The President, it was learnt, reviewed their performances and decided to retain them for distinguishing themselves. They are, however, due for reposting.

Days after the Senate got the names, Buhari withdrew two nominees. They are Akpabio (Akwa Ibom) and Brigadier-General Bukar (Borno). Mr. John J. Usanga replaced Akpabio and Air Commodore Peter Anda Bakiya Gana (rtd) replaced Gen. Bukar.

On July 22, the nominees were confirmed by the Senate. While giving the Senate’s nod for these men and women to be the faces of the country abroad, Lawan advised the Federal Government to consider either closure or merger of some of its foreign missions if there was no resources to properly fund them because there was no need to send an envoy to a foreign land to represent the country without making adequate provision for the embassy’s administration.

Since the Senate’s confirmation of the nominees, busy bodies, like the irritant I earlier complained about, have been counting the number of months and days since our foreign missions have been without representatives. They say it is almost four months or more and wonder what is delaying the deployment of these men and women.

An attempt to explain to them that COVID-19 is not done with the world yet has met with opposition. These irritants claim the president has travelled outside the country. They also claim that the president is always slow in taking vital decisions. There is nothing these loud mouths will not say.

Another irritant shocked me when he attempted to establish a relationship between delayed decision making and the dire straits we are in as a nation. According to him, prompt decision making would help Nigeria to curb a situation where girls, according to the World Bank, get an average of 7.6 years education, and boys get 8.7 years of education. In fact, this irritant added that prompt decision making can help to put an end to a situation where one in three Nigerians lives in poverty, which represents 32 per cent of Nigerians. This guy went further to say prompt decision making can help curb a situation where thirty-seven per cent of children suffer from malnutrition. To add salt to injury, he said prompt decision making is capable of ending a situation where about half of Nigerians still use unsafe or unimproved sanitation.

When he was saying all these balderdash, I was just looking at him and pitied him because he who does not know the king toys with his power. We all need to make these irritants understand that what the president can see sitting they can never see even when they use a ladder the length of a ten storey building. The president reserves the right to name ambassador-designates and refuse to deploy them to the field.

The other day we were all forcing him to speak on the Lekki shootings and when he spoke, we became speechless so it is better we just allow Mr President to act when he feels like; after all, his wisdom is beyond us all.

But despite all my explanations, one of the irritants on my neck has not stopped asking me: When will the envoys be deployed? And I ask: Must envoys be deployed?

 

By Olukorede Yishau

You need to have been from one end of the United States of America to the other to appreciate the title of this intervention. The ‘States’ in the middle are not like Sokoto and Lagos; they are like Nigeria and Kenya.

You can travel days on end and still not see the last of America. Even by air, travelling round this massive enclave is tasking. Two days ago, in the heat of the presidential election brouhaha, I became aware that our own J.P. Clark in his ‘America, Their America’ described it as a continent masquerading as a country. I started holding this view and sharing it in private discussions years ago when I had the opportunity to experience its vastness. In my mind, I started substituting ‘states’ with ‘countries’.

If you study their history, you will understand that the country qualifies to be a continent. For instance, there used to be a Republic of Texas. That was after it stopped being part of Mexico when General Sam Houston won its independence. Houston was named after him after it was founded by land investors in 1836. Gen. Houston was president of the Republic of Texas before it became part of the U.S.

America is an interesting nation so I was not ready surprised about how the presidential race has turned out.

Looking at the whole drama takes my mind back to that night Barack Obama won his re-election. I was in the audience. In Chicago, where I monitored the polls with colleagues from around the world, about fifty polling precincts opened at 7am eastern time, which was 2pm in Nigeria on November 6, 2012. The precincts we had been advised the day earlier by the chairman of the Chicago Board of Election, Mr. Langdon Neal and Communication’s Director, Mr. Jim Allen would be in places, such as gymnasium, church lobby and even bars. Allen made it clear to us at a briefing the day before at the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Chicago that access to the polling places, which we called polling booths back home, could only be possible if a form signed by Langdon was filled out and shown to electoral judges on request. The Board made almost ten copies of the forms available to foreign correspondents.

The day, for me, began about 4a.m. eastern time, which had become a regular time for me to wake up since I got into the U.S. May be because my body was telling me that was 11am back home or I was just being driven by the call of duty to file reports for our special report section.

At this polling centre, which was not far from the legendary Mohammed Ali’s home, we saw an advance system of voting. To vote took an average of ten minutes, largely because the election was not only presidential. In different states of the U.S., people also voted for Senate, House of Representatives candidates and other candidates, may be for County positions. In Chicago, some officials of Cook County were also elected. A form of referendum was also done on an issue of importance to the state.

But, as good as the system was to those of us from Africa, some voters complained that they still had to manually mark a paper. They believe everything should be digital like it existed in some other states in the country. They wonder why the early voting was 100 electronic and why the main election was a mix of manual and digital. The day before, Langdon told reporters that the Election Board chose that system to have a back-up in case the electronic system messed up or to have physical evidence in case the results were disputed.

After the rounds of polling places, it was time to get to the Election Night Party of the Obama for Africa at the McCormack Place, Chicago. Getting into this vast empire was not easy. We had credentials or accreditations to go in. But even at that we had to be frisked. Our electronic devices and our bags were physically searched. We had to go under a metal detector and there were dogs around to snooze out any hidden weapon.

Time was about 430 pm eastern time (about 11.30pm in Nigeria) when we got into the work stations provided for the media. But frustration awaited us when we discovered that the wireless internet access that we were told existed was almost non-existent. I was sad that I would be in the U.S. and would not be able to file report of the winner of the historic election for my paper’s front page. I was also sad that a Skype appearance at a live programme organised by the U.S. Consulate in Lagos on the election would not be possible. We eventually settled for a phone format, which also had to be abandoned because of bad reception. A lady offered us her phone’s hotspot, which our colleague from Togo, Silvio Combey, used for a Skype appearance with the embassy in Lome. The hotspot chose to fail when it was our turn.

As the hours began to roll in and polls began closing, my anxiety began to mount. I spoke with my direct boss on phone telling him the total results might not be ready. I was told the management had decided that the paper for Wednesday must show a clear direction of who would lead U.S for the next four years. He said the editors were willing to wait till 5am (Wednesday) Nigerian time, which was 10pm eastern time.

Luck ran my way some minutes before Obama made it pass the 270 mark Electoral Votes when a colleague from Ghana, Isreal Laryea, who was one of the few able to get a very slow access to the wireless internet provided by the Obama for America offered me his system to work with. And I was very happy that I was able to send the story at the nick of time. My spirit was lifted when as I called my boss, Mr. Adeniyi Adesina, that my story was in, he was screaming that Obama had been declared by CNN. It was a proud me who told him: “I have sent the story.” As I cut the call, I heard him say to someone: “Check the box, Korede said he has sent the story.”

This feat energised me to eagerly wait for Romney to concede and for Obama to make his acceptance speech. I soon received a mail from the Obama for America that he was on his way to where we were to accept his re-election.

Obama walked into the cavernous hall at McCormick Place, filled with deafening cheers. His supporters had been waiting for him to make his acceptance speech. His ascension to the podium was at 12:35 a.m. eastern time as Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” played over the speakers.

Some of the supporters openly cried when he was called the winner. Actress Vivica Fox was one of those who gave in to tears. Friends held one another and hugged. Some danced like it was going out of sync. It mattered not to them that the mood at the Mitt Romney camp was gloomy.

Dressed in a black suit and blue tie, Obama waited for the crowd to quiet, hugged his wife and daughters, stepped to the podium and smiled.

His wife Mitchelle and children Sasha and Malia left the stage for him to make his last acceptance speech as America’s president-elect.

For the close to 30 minutes that he spoke, he cut the image of a man who knew his opponent almost humbled him. The first thing he said after ‘thank you, thank you’ was: “It moves forward because of you.”

After the speech, he stood on the podium, waved at the audience and Mitchelle and the kids walked back to the stage. They hugged like one happy family. Then, Joe Biden and his wife joined. They exchanged hugs. And from the blues came fireworks. Other dignitaries joined them on the podium waving and clapping as the fireworks beautified the arena.

It all came to an end when they all left the stage. Time was 1.30am eastern time. As we left the venue and waited for our driver in the cold morning, I was happy and glad that I made history with Obama.