The Nation Newspaper

Category: Korede Yishau

  • The Chi who wrote about chi

    The Chi here is not the guiding spirit in Igbo cosmology. This Chi is Chigozie Obioma, the author of An Orchestra of Minorities, in which the chi is the narrator. You can say Chi wrote about chi and you will be right.

    If there is any paragraph in Chi’s book that will stay with me for a long time, it is where the chi speaks of “the land of lack, of man-pass-man, the land in which a man’s greatest enemies are members of his household; a land of kidnappers, of ritual killers, of policemen who bully those they encounter on the road and shoot those who don’t bribe them, of leaders who treat those they lead with contempt and rob them of their commonwealth, of frequent riots and crisis, of long strikes, of petrol shortages, of joblessness, of clogged gutters, of potholed roads…and of constant power outages”.

    I am sure we all know this land, which Chi used the chi to talk about. But my concerns today are my take away from my Monday evening chat with Chi— a first-class student at the Cyprus International University, where he won a scholarship for a second degree and stayed back to lecture before America beckoned. At 27, his novel The Fishermen, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shook the literary community. Now at 33, he is an Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His An Orchestra of Minorities, in my view, has the potential to do better than The Fishermen.

    For someone with these sterling records, you will expect Chi’s head to swell like Ijebu gari. But no, he acknowledges the fact that luck had a role in his achievements in life.

    He says: “I have classmates; we went to this elite school top programme in creative writing and I was like the only one who sold my book, even from the set before us. Then there is this girl who just sold hers, and there is another about to sell hers. That is out of about 22 people. Some of them are working in McDonald now, getting very low pay but they are fantastic writers.  Not everybody is going to succeed in that…You need luck.”

    Another takeaway from our encounter is that art endures more than anything else. That is why he believes the first focus of any work of art should be the artistry. “Fiction, for me, is a lot of things. It is a story but it is also how you tell the story. For instance, everybody can draw, but what makes a great painter is the light, the colour, the shades brought to the drawing. 200 people can draw a portrait of you, but one will stand out and people will say this is a work of art.”

    He adds: “I think it is a mistake when you just set out to pursue an agenda. Artistry should be the focus. If not, you end up writing propaganda and I see that a lot. True it can get you a lot of money and fame because everybody is politically wired, but it will not endure in the end. What endures in the most is the art.”

    This quest for enduring art has created a problem for him. The problem is that he is always on the lookout for ways, other than the traditional, to tell stories. No wonder he wrote an over 500-page long novel in which the narrator is the chi. “I don’t like to tell stories in a traditional way so I am always thinking of an invention.”

    Those who have read Chi’s essay, The Audacity of Prose, will not be surprised about his ‘disdain’ for the traditional.

    “The essential work of art is to magnify the ordinary, to make that which is banal glorious through artistic exploration. Thus, fiction must be different from reportage; painting from photography. And this difference should be reflected in the language of the work — in its deliberate constructiveness, its measured adornment of thought, and in the arrangement of representative images so that the fiction about a known world becomes an elevated vision of that world. That is, the language acts to give the “ordinary” the kind of artistic clarity that is the equivalent of special effects in film. While the special effect can be achieved by manipulating various aspects of the novel, such as the structure, voice, setting, and others, the language is the most malleable of all of them. All these can hardly be achieved with sparse, strewn-down prose that mimics silence,” he argued in that essay for The Millions.

    I left Labule restaurant in Ogudu-GRA, Lagos that Monday with the feeling that pursuing one’s passion and standing for what you believe are enduring virtues. Before studying in Cyprus, Chi was at a private university in Enugu. But, his chi led him away from the place, which he saw as a time-waster. “I did Economics in a Nigerian private university in Enugu but it was a complete waste of my time. I left there because I was always protesting and they were going to throw me out.” His chi led him to Cyprus where his star shone and soon America saw it and liked it and we are all reaping the goodness through The Fishermen and An Orchestra of Minorities and more to come.

    He also struck me as very principled. Or, how do you see someone who pulled his book from a dollar-denominated prize because he felt the sponsor was causing havoc to the people?

    My final take: I love the fact that Chi also put to good use the interesting dynamics of his childhood. He is the fifth of twelve children. Their home in Akure, the Ondo State capital, was noisy. As a recluse, he would always hide and books provided him safe havens. This Chi, who speaks Yoruba, Igbo, English and Turkish, started reading as early as six years of age. And the more he read the more he discovered he could also write. Noise thus produced a world-class writer. What this means is that we can always make something of whatever situation we find ourselves.

  • Lakiriboto… The truth we flee from

    We live in a world ruled by fears. We pretend a lot. We see many of our afflictions as taboos: things that must not be talked about in the open. So, we suffer in silence.

    We fear to talk about rape. I am talking about a girl— a child— being raped by her father or an uncle. We treat sexual assault, sexuality and mental health conditions with levity.

    We fear to talk about the fact that we still own slaves in this twitter age. I know we do not call them slaves; we call them house helps or housemaids, but the treatment we give them shows that they are nothing but slaves – they cannot sit on the couch; they can’t eat on the dining table; they can’t watch television in our presence; and they can easily be identified when we go out with them. Their dressing, their hair, their shoes and all tell them apart.

    You may wonder why I am sermonising.  Please blame it all on Ayodele Olofintuade. She has this amazing novel, which deals with issues we gloss over. She calls it Lakiriboto Chronicles. It has a sub-title A brief history of badly behaved women.

    Set mainly in Ibadan, it is, in the main, the story of four women and one man. There are some minor characters here and there who all contribute to make the story tick.

    The story kicks off with the death of Alhaja, Moremi’s grandmother. This death provides for Olori Ebi, a man of questionable past, the opportunity to steal all of Alhaja’s properties. Morieba and Moremi are stumbling blocks he must deal with. He thus orchestrates Moremi’s relocation to Lagos, where she becomes a maid to Tola. Though Tola is a relative, her badly-behaved doctor-husband, Wale, makes Moremi and Kudirat, also his wife’s relative, feel like modern-day slaves. To make matters worse, his itchy fingers are always touching inappropriate areas; even his children who he named Jesutomi, Jesuwalaye and Jesulayomi are not free from his satanic touches.

    Tola, who suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), confronts Wale about his abuse of their daughter. He pretends not to know what she is talking about. Tola eventually gets fed up and with Morieba’s help, she, her children with Kudirat and Moremi, relocate to Ibadan.

    Olori Ebi’s plot to steal Alhaja’s properties ascends a new pedestal when he gets a girl to become amorous with her and get it captured on photo and video. With the pictures he tries to blackmail her into letting him have all of Alhaja’s belongings. It is at this stage that Morieba confesses her gay status to Moremi as a way of breaking Olori Ebi’s back.

    At a point, the person who helps Olori Ebi to get the photographs and video becomes greedy and wants to extort Morieba; thus paving the way for a high-wired counter-plot, which sees Morieba setting up Olori Ebi and cunningly getting all the vital documents in his hand. It also emerges that Amope, Moremi’s mother, has been a victim of Olori Ebi’s plot to own all. For years she battles drug addiction, which she gets enmeshed in because her stepbrother (Olori Ebi) sees her as a stumbling block that must be removed at all cost.

    Significantly, Tola’s abuse as a child by her father, and her mother’s handling of it, tell a lot about parenting. Some mothers are not worth the label at all. Instead of crosschecking her daughter’s words, she simply writes it off and beats the hell out of her. Her attitude throughout portrays her as a good example of a bad mother. She allows the long-held tradition of silence in the Alagbado clan make nonsense of her professed love of God.

    A major twist in this book is Tola agreeing to return to Lagos with Wale after he traces her to Ibadan. No one suspects her ulterior motive with the sudden change of mind. She becomes submissive in Lagos. And it is at this point that Wale’s Christian life is further exposed as phony. We find out he likes violent sexual acts. To catch him and punish him, Rita (Tola’s other personality) takes over and pretends to become a convert to his weird sexual ways and through this she kills him so neatly that even the police hold her for manslaughter and not for murder.

    MPD, also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, is a mental condition where two or more distinct personalities are believed to control the behaviour of a single individual. In Tola, the second personality is known as Rita and she is the daring one.

    Olofintuade’s language is seductive. Her narrative skill is good. She tells her story with vigour, with zeal and a presence of mind that leaves out no vital details.

    This definitely is an important book. It is the second book I have read of recent, which brings Ibadan alive; the other is Abimbola Adelakun’s Under Brown Rusted Roofs.

    This book also has elements of the Yoruba cosmic. From time to time, we see Esu (Not Satan, mind you) playing a role once in a while.

    Olofintuade gives Lakiriboto, a Yoruba word that is used to describe a woman whose vagina walls are closed for penetration, a metaphoric meaning. It is adapted here because the book is about women who refuse to be controlled by societal norms. These women take charge of their sexuality, their finances and fates.

    My final take: Leadership should not be about gender. Brilliance has no gender, so should leadership. But, in our mediocre society, men are automatically given leadership roles because of their gender even when they lack the cognitive requirement to deliver. And when women are in positions of authorities, not a few of us attribute it to reasons other than their capabilities.

    I wish Olofintuade, whose children book Eno’s Story was shortlisted for the NLNG Prize for Literature in 2011, more blood in her veins to tap the computer keypad for more exciting fictions.

     

  • Apostle Iberiberism and friends

    It was a Class of Four – Dr. Bukola Saraki, Godswill Akpabio, George Akume and Abiola Ajimobi – these four political leaders fell a fortnight ago. But going by the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to delist outgoing Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, from the list of elected senators, the class has increased by one. It actually ought to have been a class of five!

    I welcome Okorocha, the apostle of Iberiberism, to the unenviable class of giants whose bid to be in the ninth National Assembly failed.

    Not long after Okorocha was declared winner, the man who declared him duly elected, cried out that he did so under duress. INEC later came out with a statement that any candidate declared winner at gun point would not be recognised. The threat became real earlier this week when the commission published the list of senators-elect and His Excellency’s name was omitted.

    This interesting development came at a time Okorocha’s son-in-law and his preferred successor, Uche Nwosu, was duly defeated by former Deputy Speaker Emeka Ihedioha. Ihedioha, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, was Okorocha’s closest rival in the 2015 election. For His Excellency, it was double jeopardy. He was missing in action yesterday when certificates of return were presented to real senators-elect.

    The jeopardy of  Senate President  Saraki  also became double with the loss of the governorship election by Razak Atunwa, former Kwara State House of Assembly Speaker, whom he sacrificed a lot to install as governor. Before Atunwa’s defeat, the ex-Kwara State two-term governor fell to YahayaOloriegbe, who is now senator-elect for Kwara Central senatorial district.

    Like Saraki and Okorocha, Akpabio, who a fortnight ago was beaten hands down by Chris Ekpeyong, a former deputy governor to Obong Victor Attah, also suffered a second jeopardy. He had boasted that with his might, NsimaEkere, his deputy when he was Akwa Ibom State governor, would be the next governor of their state. But last Saturday, Ekere suffered a resounding defeat. He lost terribly to Governor Udom Emmanuel.

    Akume, an ex-governor of Benue and All Progressives Congress (APC) leader in Benue State, appears to also be heading a similar path. First, he was defeated by Orker Jev. Though the governorship election, in which he supported Emmanuel Jime, is inconclusive, it will take some miracle for Samuel Ortom of the PDP to be defeated.

    While Akume’s second ‘loss’ may yet be averted, Abiola Ajimobi, Oyo State governor, does not have this luxury. He lost his senatorial bid to Kola Balogun. Last weekend, his bid to have BayoAdelabu succeed him failed when PDP’s Seyi Makinde was elected.

    Saraki, Akpabio and Akume are sitting senators. Ajimobi was a senator before becoming governor, and was cocksure he would become senator once more, contrary to a prayer he once said that there was no position he craved again after leading Oyo.

    Like I noted on this space a fortnight ago, Saraki’s fall is the loudest. He was the undisputed leader of Kwara politics—a position he hijacked from his father, the late Olusola Saraki, who was Senate Leader in the Second Republic. While Saraki was serving out his second term, his father wanted his younger sister, Gbemi, to succeed him. The younger Saraki would have none of it. He stood up to his father. Not a few saw sense in his position that the position should not be made a family affair. So fierce was the battle that his father had to abandon the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for him and tried to install his daughter through a lesser known party. As it turned out, the younger Saraki triumphed by installing outgoing Governor Abdulfatai Ahmed. The political feud was settled thereafter. But it was clear to all  that son had displaced father as the new strongman of Kwara politics. The Second Republic Senate Leader joined his ancestors not long after.

    As senator and later as senate president, all knew where power was in Kwara. Ahmed never failed to acknowledge Saraki as his leader. House of Assembly members from the state knew who to pay allegiance to, and House of Representatives members worshipped the ground on which the ex-bank top gun walked.

    Like Saraki, Akpabio was lord in Akwa Ibom. When he sneezed, many caught cold in Akwa Ibom. But his fall began not long after he installed Udom Emmanuel as his successor. It was completed last weekend with Ekere’s defeat. He is blaming it all on INEC. My response: I just dey laugh!

    Undoubtedly, the uncommon governor, as Akpabio liked to address himself when he was in charge in Akwa Ibom, has had an uncommon fall. We were expecting he would help President Muhammadu Buhari win Akwa Ibom, but he could not help himself not to talk of helping the president.

    Akume, like Akpabio and Saraki, was governor. He was governor from 1999 to 2007 and has been in the Senate since then. He installed Samuel Ortom as Benue State governor. Some months back, Ortom dumped APC for PDP. Akume remained and vowed to deal with his estranged godson. In his heydays, anybody who wanted political power in Benue sought him out. If not for Jev, he would have been in the Senate for the fourth time.

    As a sitting governor, many thought Ajimobi should have easily been able to win election in one senatorial district. But he lost and certainly life after May 29 will never be the same again. The pain of the losses will have its political effect on Ajimobi, who may now have to battle Communications Minister Adebayo Shittu for the state’s ministerial slot. Both have never been on the same page. Shittu wanted to be governor, but was screened out by the national secretariat of the party for skipping National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme. He became a minister despite Ajimobi’s objection.

    I must touch a bit on Ogun State Governor IbikunleAmosun, who, though succeeded in his bid to become a senator, lost his gamble to have AdekunleAkinlade as Ogun State’s next governor. DapoAbiodun, the man he fought tooth and nail to thwart his bid to be governor, will be the new landlord in Oke-Mosan from May 29 —which also will mark his 59th birthday.

    My final take: It gladdens my heart that Okorocha and Amosun did not succeed in their bid to prove that they were more popular than their party— the vehicle, which took them to the government houses. If the duo had gotten away with their anti-party activities and install candidates who ran on parties other than APC, they would have started seeing themselves as tin-gods. Now, they know they are lost gods! And to that I say to the people and God be the glory.

  • As we vote again

    I am young, very young – depending on who I am talking to. But to Opemipo and Toluwanimi, daddy is old, in fact very old.

    The fact is I belong to a generation whose first choice of schools was public schools. I could count the number of private schools around at the time I had my elementary education. Now, the situation has changed. Private schools are now the first choice, not just at primary and secondary levels, but also for higher education. Public universities are taking the back seats. However, huge fees are the main reason public universities are not empty.

    I am reflecting because barring any last minute bad luck, we will have ‘new’ leaders tomorrow. Some of them will be re-elected and some are being elected for the first time as governors and lawmakers.

    And I have requests to make of them. As I once noted, I doubt if there is anyone who honestly can say he or she is not troubled by the state of our nation. To the best of my knowledge, there is discontentment in the land. Some have even predicted a bleaker future if something drastic is not done. The economy is struggling; and security challenges are refusing to give way.

    These new leaders must give us a Nigeria where the migration of Nigerians through the Sahara desert, a development which is akin to walking with eyes open into enslavement, will become history. The exodus is to escape the Animal Farm we currently inhabit. Most of the men and women who take this route are educated but hopeless.

    The sad migration tale was well-captured in Nze Sylva Ifedigbo’s debut novel My Mind is No Longer Here. Their displeasure with Nigeria leads young men to a cheat called Yinka and a bigger cheat called Otunba.

    Otunba says to the guys: “You see, eyin boys, let me tell you something nobody else will tell you. Hunger is a very good thing. Our people do not know this. That is why they remain poor. They think hunger is a bad thing. No, Hunger is a blessing, I tell you. There is no motivator like hunger. It is only hunger that can make you do anything without fear. You see, when I see young men like you wallowing aimlessly about, I tell myself they have not yet tasted hunger. Because when you taste hunger, nobody will tell you to get serious and do something about it.”

    In another instance, he says: “I tell people I am rich today because I was hungry yesterday.” But he adds the icing on it all, when he says: “But I was not just hungry, I did something about it. Today, see where I am? All those mouths that were running like watery toilet, talking nonsense against me back then, where are they today? The ones that are not dead yet are well on their way there. Every day they are on my phone, begging me for pocket money. These are the same people who said I was doing boy-boy for the military and that I was a friend of killers.”

    The situation at home for many Nigerians have made sense of this quote from Ifedigbo’s book: “When your home cannot offer you a bed to sleep peacefully on, a neigbour’s home becomes appealing.”

    Our health facilities must improve. Governors and lawmakers have a lot to do about this. Not a few have died this week because what we call medical centres are consulting rooms that they have been since the military era. Even the private clinics where we pay through our noses cannot compete outside of our shores. Nigeria can reap from medical tourism instead of the current situation where we are the major loser to this trend.

    Aside the health sector, the new leaders must ensure our schools can compete with others in the advanced world. This way we will make our way out of the Third World. What is wrong with being a First World?

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) only recently called off its strike over the poor state of university education.  It went on strike to protest the government’s inability to implement an agreement on funding the university system. By studies conducted by ASUU in 2010, the cost of training undergraduates to full accreditation status is $3,364. With student population put at no less than 800,000, close to N2 trillion is needed to fund the education system.

    Our current budget is N9.12 trillion. Of this, capital expenditure has 31.5 per cent, which comes to N2.87 trillion. Recurrent non-debt spending has N3.51 trillion earmarked for it in 2018. N2.01 trillion is meant for debt servicing. The entire sum meant for the Ministry of Education is N542 billion. If everything is given to universities, it still will not achieve the aim. We will need to add the N55.15 billion meant for health, the N300 million for National Health Act, the N25.1 billion for promotion and development of value chain, the N5.30 billion for National Grazing Reserve Development, the N109 billion for Universal Basic Education Commission, and many, more for university education to be what it really should be.

    Our new leaders, who will emerge after tomorrow’s poll, must give serious thought to making our education sector the envy of all.

    There is a special assignment I wish the governors and lawmakers in the Niger Delta can do. There is graveyard silence in the Niger Delta. Boys have become used to free cash and they use every available excuse to demand cash from contractors handling development projects and so on. Leaders must find a way to end this sad situation.

    I am sick and tired of the current situation where everything but national interest seems to take the first position. The leaders that will emerge after tomorrow’s polls must make the difference. Even the old ones who will be re-elected must have a new direction.

    Their direction must be such that will find solution to the bad picture of Nigeria painted by Chigozie Obioma in his sophomore An Orchestra of Minorities. The Nigeria of today is captured in these words: “But he thought even more that these people were happy because they had been lifted from places where they were suffering into this new country. The plane had lifted out of the land of lack, of man-pass-man, the land in which a man’s greatest enemies are members of his household; a land of kidnappers, of ritual killers, of policemen who bully those they encounter on the road and shoot those who don’t bribe them, of leaders who treat those they lead with contempt and rob them of their commonwealth, of frequent riots and crisis, of long strikes, of petrol shortages, of joblessness, of clogged gutters, of potholed roads…and of constant power outages.”

    My final take: We must get out of the hell we have collectively made our dear country. Heaven is sweet and that is where we belong. Our leaders must show us the right way there.

  • Big four, big fall

    Dr. Bukola Saraki. Godswill Akpabio. George Akume. Abiola Ajimobi. These four political leaders fell last weekend. Their bid to return to the National Assembly was thwarted by lesser known politicians. Saraki, Senate President and ex-Kwara State two-term governor, fell to Yahaya Oloriegbe. Akpabio was beaten hands down by Chris Ekpeyong, a former deputy governor to Obong Victor Attah. Akume, an ex-governor of Benue State and All Progressives Congress (APC) leader there, was defeated by Orker Jev. And Abiola Ajimobi, Oyo State Governor, lost to Kola Balogun —the younger brother of one of the new obas in Ibadan.

    Saraki, Akpabio and Akume are sitting senators. Ajimobi was a senator before becoming governor and was cocksure he would become senator once more contrary to a prayer he once said that there was no position he craved again after leading Oyo.

    Saraki’s fall is the loudest. He was the undisputed leader of Kwara politics – a position he hijacked from his father, the late Olusola Saraki, who was Senate Leader in the Second Republic. While Saraki was serving out his second term, his father wanted his younger sister, Gbemi, to succeed him. The younger Saraki would have none of it. He stood up to his father. So fierce was the battle that his father had to abandon the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for him and tried to install his daughter through a lesser known party. As it turned out, the younger Saraki triumphed by installing outgoing Governor AbdulFatai Ahmed. The political feud was settled thereafter. It, however, was not long after that the Second Republic Senate Leader joined his ancestors. But what was clear to all was that the son had displaced the father as the new strongman of Kwara politics.

    As senator and later as senate president, everybody knew where power was in Kwara. Ahmed never failed to acknowledge Saraki as his leader. House of Assembly members knew who to pay allegiance to, and House of Representatives members worshipped the ground on which the ex-bank top gun walked.

    Will Saraki spring a surprise in the governorship election by ensuring Razaq Atunwa, the PDP candidate, is elected to replace Ahmed? If this happens, it will be a major victory for him, but the omens are scary. The people of the state seem set to complete the enough is enough (o to gee) cycle.

    Like Saraki, Akpabio was lord in Akwa Ibom. When he sneezed, many caught cold. But his fall began not long after he installed Udom Emmanuel as his successor. When the signs started showing, I wrote a piece titled Emmanuel’s Will on Friday, August 28, 2015. In it, I pointed out that Emmanuel was acting as though he was afraid of a fight with Akpabio. Aniekan Umanah, who was the Commissioner for Information at the time, was livid in his reply to me. In his rejoinder, he said it was “really appalling that one so often gets to read some gibberish in newspapers, all in the name of commentaries or opinion”.

    He declared with a note of finality: “I will not allay Yishau’s fear about the strong camaraderie existing between the duo of Their Excellencies, Governor Emmanuel and former Governor Akpabio. They are not going to fight anytime soon or later as you wish. Indeed, for those who are waiting to be entertained with a fight by both leaders, they should prepare for a long wait.”

    We certainly did not have to wait too much. Interestingly, when the fight broke open, Umanah was one of the first victims when he and other Akpabio men were eased out of government. Umanah re-aligned with time. He is now with Emmanuel. He won an House of Representatives seat on Saturday.

    The uncommon governor, as Akpabio liked to address himself, has had an uncommon fall. We were expecting he would help President Muhammadu Buhari win Akwa Ibom. He could not help himself, not to talk of helping Buhari. He fell in an uncommon manner.

    Akpabio’s fall has seemingly confirmed what his first deputy governor, Patrick Ekpotu, said last August. Ekpotu, in a statement, said his former boss’s influence was overrated.

    Ekpotu, who was Commissioner for Information under Attah, said Akpabio’s defection was “long awaited”, and showed that he was incapable of operating within an opposition platform because of “his usual reliance on force of power apparatus”.

    He said: “His recourse is often to rely heavily on apparatus of state security to cow people into submission and dominion. His decision to embrace the APC now, among others, is because APC is today the custodian of that state apparatus. And I think he is highly mistaken for misapprehending that President Buhari is cut out in the weaknesses of a former President that was recklessly used to his political peril and became the first to dump him.”

    Ekpotu went on: “Even if Buhari avails him the security apparatus, remember that Akpabio is not used to elections, which is the norm today, but ‘return of entire number of votes’ in INEC register to himself.

    “But With INEC’s card reader system today, hardly would we have such number of votes in consideration, let alone to be ‘returned’. So, all odds are against him and the APC.”

    In that statement Ekpotu added that a shock awaited the former Senate Minority leader, saying: “A journey into that past rather evokes disdain and repugnance following its glaring shortcomings to which the people had long answered objections and cannot allow a replay, no matter where Akpabio derived his inspiration. I see, not just the PDP in the state, but also majority of its citizens playing this out strongly, stoutly, and committedly in days ahead.”

    Akpabio, Ekpotu observed, is “surrounded by those who constantly drum to him the beauty of his weird world, he gets encouraged to live in delusion. He is fully conscious of these shortcomings, but rather than work to improve on them, pretends that all is well.  And APC will soon know his true value.”

    Now, the question is: is there any miracle Akpabio can still perform in the March 9 election to ensure that Emmanuel is replaced with Nsima Ekere? The omens are scary, really scary.

    Akume, like Akpabio and Saraki, was governor. He was governor from 1999 to 2007, and has been in the Senate since then. He installed Samuel Ortom as Benue State governor. Some months back, Ortom dumped APC for PDP. Akume remained and vowed to deal with his estranged godson. In his heydays, anybody who wanted political power in Benue sought him out. I doubt if that will still play out with his fall to Jev. If not for Jev, he would have been in the Senate for the fourth time.

    Ajimobi’s case is a bit different from the trio. As a sitting governor, many thought Ajimobi should easily win election in one senatorial district. But he lost and certainly life after May 29 will never be the same again. Even if APC wins the governorship, the pain of loss will have its political effect on Ajimobi, who may now have to battle Communications Minister Adebayo Shittu for the state’s ministerial slot.

    Shittu and Ajimobi have never been on the same page. Shittu wanted to be governor, but was screened out by the national secretariat of the party for skipping National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). He became a minister despite Ajimobi’s objection. I see a major fight ahead of these two sworn enemies!

    My final take: In politics, falling is not a sweet music, especially for giants such as Saraki, Akpabio, Akume and Ajimobi. Their fall is only sonorous in the ears of their opponents and adversaries. I urge them to be humble now that they are low, as advised by John Bunyan, so that they shall ever have God as guide.

  • I will not write about tomorrow

    Last Friday, I wrote about ‘tomorrow’. ‘Tomorrow’ came but not the way we expected. ‘Tomorrow’ was postponed till tomorrow. We were supposed to queue, get accredited and cast our votes for our next President and National Assembly members, but the umpire messed us up and pushed ‘tomorrow’ till tomorrow. Now that I am not certain about the whole thing again, I will rather write about books— yes, books; those paperback or hardcover or e-books that can fly you to Jamaica, Cyprus, Liverpool, United States and more while you are in the comfort of your home.

    They make you laugh, they make you cry and they make you think. Books. They make you enjoy your own company. They make you steal, yes— steal time to be alone to live in the world of men and women far or near. They make you crave deeper meaning. Books, oh books!

    I will not write about tomorrow. Instead I will tell you about Of Women and Frogs, written by Bisi Adjapon. In this debut novel, we see Nigeria, we see Ghana. The Ghana we see is a country that went to hell and returned. One fact that a deeper meaning will reveal on account of reading this book is that like Ghana, Nigeria has also been to hell, but unlike Ghana, Nigeria is not back. We are still trying to find our way back. It is taking so long that many are wondering if the labours of our heroes past are not in vain.

    I will not write about tomorrow. Instead I will tell you about another book that brings the sorry state of things in our nation to heart. Chigozie Obioma’s sophomore titled An Orchestra of Minorities can easily be mistaken as the tale of the main characters. In this case, an average reader will see Obioma’s sophomore as the story of Nonso, a poultry farmer, and Ndali— who he calls Mommy. A deeper reader will discover much more in this tale. The big takeaway for me in this book is the subtle political sub-theme in the book. It is encapsulated in these words: “But he thought even more that these people were happy because they had been lifted from places where they were suffering into this new country. The plane had lifted out of the land of lack, of man-pass-man, the land in which a man’s greatest enemies are members of his household; a land of kidnappers, of ritual killers, of policemen who bully those they encounter on the road and shoot those who don’t bribe them, of leaders who treat those they lead with contempt and rob them of their commonwealth, of frequent riots and crisis, of long strikes, of petrol shortages, of joblessness, of clogged gutters, of potholed roads…and of constant power outages.” This is like telling the sad story of our nation in one relatively long paragraph. And from the look of things, changes are not about to happen.

    Let me also tell you about Nze Sylva Ifedigbo’s debut novel My Mind is No Longer Here.  It is the story of four men—Donatus, Chidi, Osahon and Haruna. Connecting all of them is Yinka, who preys on their avarice and ignorance.

    Donatus is a photojournalist, who worked for a newspaper whose publisher is a big-for-nothing fool. Salaries were not paid promptly, allowances non-existent and welfare zero. Chidi is an undergraduate who suddenly feels the urge to hit it big. Osahon, on the other hand, has been on the run from Benin where he is wanted for cult-related offence. As for Haruna, his case is different. The medical doctor just feels tired of Nigeria after his mother’s death and he feels going abroad is it.

    Their displeasure with Nigeria leads them all to Yinka, whose motive for wanting to help them go abroad is far from noble. The signs that Yinka’s gestures may not be noble are glaring, but these men are blinded by their frustration with Nigeria. Their minds are simply no longer here. Even when family members call these guys’ attention to possible danger in the offer from Yinka, they lie to make the whole thing look good. All that is important is to just get out of Nigeria, which is likened to hell.

    The near monologue between these guys and Otunba shows how crooks with money prey on the desperate.

    Otunba says to the guys: “You see, eyin boys, let me tell you something nobody else will tell you. Hunger is a very good thing. Our people do not know this. That is why they remain poor. They think hunger is a bad thing. No Hunger is a blessing, I tell you. There is no motivator like hunger. It is only hunger that can make you do anything without fear. You see, when I see young men like you wallowing aimlessly about, I tell myself they have not yet tasted hunger. Because when you taste hunger, nobody will tell you to get serious and do something about it.”

    In another instance, he says: “I tell people I am rich today because I was hungry yesterday.” But he adds the icing on it all, when he says: “But I was not just hungry, I did something about it. Today, see where I am? All those mouths that were running like watery toilet, talking nonsense against me back then, where are they today? The ones that are not dead yet are well on their way there. Every day they are on my phone, begging me for pocket money. These are the same people who said I was doing boy-boy for the military and that I was a friend of killers.”

    The main message in this book is: “When your home cannot offer you a bed to sleep peacefully on, a neigbour’s home becomes appealing.”

    I will still not write about tomorrow. Instead I will tell you about more books I have read with messages for our nation.

    In Eghosa Imasuen’s second novel Fine Boys, boys love blood, love violence and they feel insecure without the badge of confraternity. Confra, as they like to abbreviate their affiliation, is life. These boys remind me of politicians like Colonel Dibarama and Eunice Pam in Richard Ali’s debut novel City of Memories. Eunice and Dibarama have followers who are ready to kill and die for them.

    Our situation reminds me of a conversation in Toni Kan’s Iron Age, one of the short stories in Nights of the Creaking Bed:

    “Motu, you must leave with me. The land is doomed. There is no hope here.”

    “Exile is not an option. I would rather die than flee.”

    “Motu, this is not about exile.”

    “Then what is it about?”

    “It is about safety.”

    My final take: I will not write about tomorrow. However, whatever tomorrow brings, do not waste your life on anybody’s account. Your blood is precious; after all, you are made in God’s image. Go out and vote, but remember that your safety must come first.

  • Tomorrow

    Tomorrow will be an interesting day. It will be better for some people; it will be bad for others. Some people will cry; others will rejoice. Although there are 73 candidates seeking to be president, it is a two-horse race between All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar.

    The also-in-the-race are: Moghalu Kingsley (YPP), Ositelu Isaac Babatunde (Accord); Abdulrashid Hassan Baba (Action Alliance);  Omoyele Sowore (AAC); Chike Ukaegbu (AAP); Shipi Moses Godia (ABP); Nwokeafor Ikechukwu Ndubuisi (ACD); Ezekwesili Obiageli Katryn (ACPN); Mailafia Obadiah (ADC); Yabagi Sani Yusuf (ADP); Nwachukwu Chuks Nwabuikwu (AGA); Umenwa Godwin (AGAP); Obaje Yusufu Ameh (ANDP) and Durotoye Adetokunbo Olufela (ANN).

    This list also includes: Shittu Moshood Asiwaju (ANP); Fasua Tope Kolade (ANRP); Ibrahim Aliyu Hassan (APA); President Buhari (APC); Shitu Mohammed Kabir (APDA); Gbor John Wilson Terwase (APGA); Yusuf Mamman Dantalle (APM); Obinna Uchechukwu Ikeagwuonu (APP); Dara John (ASD); Angela Johnson (AUN); David Esosa Ize-Iyamu (BNPP); Ojinika Geff Chizee (C4C); Abah Lewis Elaigwu (CAP); Etim Emmanuel Ishie  (CNP); Ukonga Frank (DA); Awosola Williams Olusola (DPC) and Osakwe Felix Johnson (DPP).

    The presidential ballot will also have: Dr Onwubuya (FJP); Okotie Christopher Oghenebrorie (FRESH); Akhimien Davidson Isibor  (GDPN); Eke Samuel Chukwuma (GPN); Albert Owuru Ambrose (HDP); Madu Nnamdi Edozie (ID); Chukwu-Eguzolugo Sunday Chikendu (JMPP), Fagbenro-Byron Samuel Adesina (KP), Kriz David (LM); Muhammed Usman Zaki (LP); Adesanya-Davies Mercy Olufunmilayo (MAJA) Bashayi Isa Dansarki (MMN); Santuraki Hamisu (MPN); Rabia Yasai Hassan Cengiz (NAC); Ademola Babatunde Abidemi (NCMP); Salisu Yunusa Tanko (NCP); A. Edosomwan Johnson (NDCP); Akpua Robinson (NDLP); Ishaka Paul Ofemile (NEPP); Asukwo Mendie Archibong (NFD); Atuejide Eunice Uche Julian (NIP); Ike Keke (NNPP); Maina Maimuna Kyari (NPC); Ibrahim Usman (NRM); Moses Ayibiowu (NUP); Felix Nicolas (PCP); Abubakar Atiku (PDP) and Ameh Peter Ojonugwa (PPA).

    They include: Victor Okhai (PPC); Major Hamza  Al- Mustapha (PPN); Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim (PT); Israel Nonyerem Davidson (RAP); Osuala Chukwudi John Kennedy (RBNP); Nsehe Nseobong (RP); Da-Silva Thomas Ayo (SNC); Ahmed Buhari (SNP); Balogun Isiaka Ishola (UDP); Mark Emmanuel Audu (UP); Inwa Ahmed Sakil (UPN); Nwangwu Uchenna Peter (WTPN); and Ali Soyode M. (YES).

    Although these also-in-the-race candidates will openly claim they are in it for victory, I believe losing will not come as a surprise to them; and they are not expected to cry. After all, what one knows already should not make one open mouth in amazement!

    The cries are expected from supporters of either Buhari or Atiku—depending on where the pendulum swings.

    Cries will also be heard among the 1,904 candidates vying for the 109 seats in the Senate and the 4,680 battling for the 360 seats in the House of Representatives. Figures from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) show that 225 women are contesting for senatorial seats. The figure is the highest in the country’s history. Not a few of them will cry tomorrow. The omens are scary.

    Will any of the incumbent governors seeking a space in the Senate have cause to cry? Five APC governors, Ibikunle Amosun, Kazeem Shettima,  Abiola Ajimobi, Rochas Okorocha, and Ibrahim Gaidam, made the list for election into the Senate.

    I have a feeling that at least one of the two oldest candidates, former Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Adamu (72) and Tanno Patrick Onobughakpo (71) of Kowa Party, will lose and cry.

    The race will also be interesting in Kogi State. Will Dino Melaye make it back to the Senate and make Smart Adeyemi cry? What fate awaits Godswill Akpabio and Senate President Bukola Saraki? Tomorrow will tell.

    Please in the spirit of tomorrow, let me once again share with you what I expect after tomorrow’s presidential race.

    All I want is change, real change! I also want ethnicity to stop rearing its head; I cry when the issue of who is an indigene insists on taking the front row; and I wonder why I cannot be an indigene of anywhere I choose to live in Nigeria.

    I want a president who will end the migration of Nigerians through the Sahara desert, a development which is akin to walking with eyes open into enslavement. The exodus is to escape the Animal Farm we currently inhabit. Most of the men and women who take this route are educated but hopeless.

    Please I need a President who will fix the health sector. Not a few have died this week all because what we call medical centres are consulting rooms that they have been since the military era. Even the private clinics where we pay through our noses cannot compete with their counterparts overseas.

    I want a President who will ensure we never go back into recession. The fears of relapsing into recession are coming at a time many in their private lives cannot feel the fact that we ever got out of recession. In fact, millions are in depression.

    In the past, our leaders have been callous in the management of our resources. Past error is no excuse for the current government not to change our fortunes like it promised. In Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s award-winning Season of Crimson Blossom, a woman was well over 50 before she experienced what it really means to be a woman! It is not too late for Nigeria. We can experience the much-desired orgasm even at this age!

    The President I want is the one who can right the wrongs of the past. I want a President who will make nepotism a thing of the past. I want a President who will ensure no Nigerian feels left out because of which part of the country he or she comes from.

    This era of epileptic supply of electricity must end, and I certainly want a president who can do just that. It will be good that one day our electricity generating sets will only be useful for picnics at beaches and such places where temporary source of power is required.

    I want a President who will provide enough direction for members of the National Assembly to truly legislate in the interest of the people and not out of any pecuniary interest. I am sick and tired of the current situation where everything but national interest seems to take the first position.

    I also want a President who will give us a Nigeria where our schools can compete with others in the advanced world. I long for a President who will take Nigeria out of the Third World. What is wrong with being a First World?

    I look forward to a President who will deliver a Nigeria where we can reap from medical tourism instead of the current situation where we are the major loser to this trend.

    I look forward to a President who will make our economy so robust that we can hold our head high anywhere in the world and our green passport will command respect and not scorn.

    My final take: I want a President who will give us a Nigeria where oil takes the back seat and agriculture and tourism take the front seat and contribute more to our foreign exchange earnings and Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

     

    • Part of this piece appeared on this space last week.

  • Before we vote

    I had absolutely no problem identifying the country Chigozie Obioma painted in his latest literary offering An Orchestra of Minorities. In the country, many are poor and suffer; it is a land of lack; a land of man-pass man; a land where a man’s greatest enemies are in his household; a land of ritual killers and kidnappers; a land of petrol shortages, long strikes, joblessness, potholed roads; and epileptic power supply. And its people are glad escaping abroad.

    These problems did not start today. They have been with us for decades. Four years ago, we felt that the government in power was not doing enough. We were promised change by the then opposition party. The elections came and went and the opposition won. Our hopes were high, but it did not take long before we realised that the change mantra was just a campaign slogan. It was largely meant to win the elections and not to determine what would happen thereafter.

    To be candid, some changes have been recorded. We no longer have so much free cash running around. If anything has shown that, it is the scarcity of fund this electioneering season. This time four years ago, dollars were flying about. Some landed in the hands of traditional rulers; others in the pockets of political actors; and some trickled down to the electorate. Now, we do not have such free cash. We have seen almost no fund-raising dinner. We used to have many in the past, where billions were raised to buy votes. The opposition has accused the ruling party of scaring away businessmen who usually supported the political class with funds for campaigns.

    Another thing that has changed is the atrocities carried out by insurgents. Then, they used to be the lords of Sambisa. Now, they are scattered. But, let no one lie to us that Boko Haram has been defeated. Their decapitation is still far from reality.

    Not a few projects are also going on, such as the Second Niger Bridge, the rail projects, Mambilla electricity project, roads and many more. But I will be deceiving myself if I fail to say we expected more than these. The economy, for instance, has been having bouts of malaria. And from the look of things, changes are not about to take place.

    You may be wondering if I am now wishing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will upstage the All Progressives Congress (APC). My candid view: Like Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka, I have no confidence in both. All I want is change, real change! I also want ethnicity to stop rearing its head; I cry when the issue of who is an indigene insists on taking the front row; and I wonder why I cannot be an indigene of anywhere I choose to live in Nigeria.

    I want a president who will end the migration of Nigerians through the Sahara desert, a development which is akin to walking with eyes open into enslavement. The exodus is to escape the Animal Farm we currently inhabit. Most of the men and women who take this route are educated but hopeless.

    Please I need a President who will fix the health sector. Not a few have died this week all because what we call medical centres are consulting rooms that they have been since the military era. Even the private clinics where we pay through our noses cannot compete with their counterparts overseas.

    I want a President who will ensure we never go back into recession. The fears of relapsing into recession are coming at a time many in their private lives cannot feel the fact that we ever got out of recession. In fact, millions are in depression.

    In the past, our leaders have been callous in the management of our resources. Past error is no excuse for the current government not to change our fortunes like it promised.

    In Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s award-winning Season of Crimson Blossom, a woman was well over 50 before she experienced what it really means to be a woman! It is not too late for Nigeria. We can experience the much-desired orgasm even at this age!

    The President I want is the one who can right the wrongs of the past. I want a President who will make nepotism a thing of the past. I want a President who will ensure no Nigerian feels left out because of which part of the country he or she comes from.

    This era of epileptic supply of electricity must end, and I certainly want a president who can do just that. It will be good that one day our electricity generating sets will only be useful for picnics at beaches and such places where temporary source of power is required.

    I want a President who will provide enough direction for members of the National Assembly to truly legislate in the interest of the people and not out of any pecuniary interest. I am sick and tired of the current situation where everything but national interest seems to take the first position.

    I also want a President who will give us a Nigeria where our schools can compete with others in the advanced world. I long for a President who will take Nigeria out of the Third World. What is wrong with being a First World?

    I look forward to a President who will deliver a Nigeria where we can reap from medical tourism instead of the current situation where we are the major loser to this trend.

    I look forward to a President who will make our economy so robust that we can hold our head high anywhere in the world and our green passport will command respect and not scorn.

    I want a President who will give us a Nigeria where oil takes the back seat and agriculture and tourism take the front seat and contribute more to our foreign exchange earnings and Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

    My final take: I want a President who will give us new songs, not songs of sorrow, not songs of despair, but songs of joy, songs of a country which experiences orgasm at old age and hold on to it forever! I do not want a President like Samusangudu in Adebayo Williams’ The Remains of the Last Emperor.

  • When your chi tells your story

    Like most great novels, Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities can easily be mistaken as the tale of the main characters. In this case, an average reader will see Obioma’s sophomore as the story of Nonso, a poultry farmer, and Ndali— who he calls Mommy. A deeper reader will discover much more in this tale set largely in Umuahia, slightly in Lagos and Abuja, and a lot in Cyprus.

    On the periphery, it reads like this: Nonso, a 24-year-old lonely orphan, sees Ndali trying to jump off a bridge into water. He persuades her against it. To show how painful it will be, he flings two of his prized fowls into the water. She rescinds her decision and both of them go their separate ways. They run into each other months later. Ndali feels she owes him her life. He is to find out that heartbreak was responsible for her attempted suicide. A relationship soon starts and before long, Nonso feels like marrying Ndali and tells her his plan.

    And then begins the real drama of their lives. Ndali’s father is rich, stupendously rich, and finds it difficult to accept an illiterate poultry farmer as son-in-law. Through Ndali’s brother, Chuka, Nonso is humiliated a couple of times. The humiliation gets him thinking and talking with Ndali and a friend, Elochukwu, and in the long run, he discovers that getting an education may swing things in his favour. Another dilemma sets in: with universities in Nigeria ever on strike, he wonders how many years it will take to complete a degree. Still, he picks the matriculation form, but soon opts for the option of selling his valuables and heading abroad for studies. Everything appears set until he gets to Cyprus and discovers he has been scammed.

    Cyprus turns out hellish. Passers-by call him “slave”. He is mistaken for the Brazilian football star Ronaldinho, and the jealous husband of an expatriate nurse from Germany who helps him turns things upside down. He turns out one of the minorities in faraway land and his shouts for help or his cries for bailout sound more like an orchestra without efficacious power. Returning home only aggravates things. And a lot more sad events follow, which you need to find out!

    But on a larger scale, An Orchestra of Minorities is deeper than just the tale of Nonso and Ndali. It is the story of the power of love, the sacrifice a man or a woman is ready to make for love not to suffocate and die. It is a wrestle between destiny and determination. It is rich in folklore and it is a morality tale, with betrayal and revenge as major themes.

    This tragicomedy told by Nonso’s chi, the word for guardian spirit in Igbo cosmology, is far more ambitious than Obioma’s critically acclaimed debut The Fishermen. No one knows you better than your guardian spirit, and using this all-seeing spirit as the narrator gives Obioma the opportunity to tell it all despite the fact that the narration is in first person. The omniscient nature of the chi also gives Obioma the leverage to dwell in the spiritual realm, such that parts of the book read like magical realism. We see the spirit taking leave of the host’s body to spy. We see the chi putting thoughts in the host’s mind in order to influence his actions. We see chis of two beings having a chit-chat. We also see a ghost crying in a bus pleading against a marriage on account that the suitor is a murderer. Of course, the one the ghost is speaking to cannot hear, only the chi does. And we see the chi at times helpless while Nonso faces the adversities of life. We equally see the chi fascinated by the workings of an aircraft, especially after taking leave of its host to wander outside of the plane thousands of feet above sea level. And, let me confess, this book has got me thinking whether it is my chi trying to influence the course of my life when thoughts are dropped in my mind.

    Since the chi is giving testimony before God, it gives the book an oral feel and makes it highly lyrical. The language is beautiful. The figurative language is amazing and rich. If you doubt me, take these samples: “Anungharingaobialili, when a man encounters something that reminds him of an unpleasant event in his past, he pauses at the door of the new experience, carefully considering whether or not to enter it.”

    And: “Ijango-Ijango, over many sojourns in the human world, I have heard the venerable fathers, in their kaleidoscopic profundity, say that no matter the weight of grief, nothing can compel the eyes to shed tears of blood.”

    I like the similes and metaphors in this staggering 516-page novel. Two of my favourite similes are: “like insects around a glob of sugarcane” and “like a thing with wheels into the future”.

    The proverbs are good too, really good. They are African, Igboish if you like; and it gives the book the Things Fall Apart feel.

    I must not fail to point out the subtle political sub-theme in the book. It is encapsulated in these words: “But he thought even more that these people were happy because they had been lifted from places where they were suffering into this new country. The plane had lifted out of the land of lack, of man-pass-man, the land in which a man’s greatest enemies are members of his household; a land of kidnappers, of ritual killers, of policemen who bully those they encounter on the road and shoot those who don’t bribe them, of leaders who treat those they lead with contempt and rob them of their commonwealth, of frequent riots and crisis, of long strikes, of petrol shortages, of joblessness, of clogged gutters, of potholed roads…and of constant power outages.” This is like telling the sad story of our nation in one relatively long paragraph. And from the look of things, changes are not about to happen.

    My final take: Obioma talks about long strikes, and ASUU’s strike coincided with the release of the book in the United Kingdom and the United States. We hear progress is being made. But will a day ever come when we will be back in the golden era when a four-year course will not be extended? This is a task that must be done because without it, we will remain in the hell we are and perish there.

  • Crazy billing, crazy DisCos

    When President Muhammadu Buhari took over power, he made a statement to the effect that we must kill corruption before it kills us. I am rephrasing that to read: We need to kill Ikeja Electric before it kills us. I came to this conclusion some days back after it made me mad. For about one month (between November and December last year), I was outside the country. There was a lone occupant in my apartment in Mende, Maryland, during the period. I was thus shocked when the electricity bill for the period was over N25,000. I complained and paid N15,000. Nothing forewarned me that the worst was coming. My current bill, fellow Nigerians, is about N50,000. Before then, there had been occasional flip-flops. But this particular madness was a first for me.

    Naturally, I was mad when the bill was presented to me. I simply refused to collect it from my landlord’s aide. He explained that the marketer who brought the bills left them in a hole in the compound and ran away after they were rightly rejected.

    When I narrated my ordeal to colleagues in the newsroom, I was asked if I was running a bakery in my flat — a reference to a montage on Channels Television in which a victim of crazy electricity bill asked a rhetorical question: Am I baking bread?

    I am not baking bread. Most times the flat is even empty. Of the two air-conditioning systems there, one has not worked for months. Most times these days, books occupy my attention than television set. So, nothing justifies the crazy billing. Even at the height of having five people living in the apartment, I never had to pay more than N15,000.

    My experience is not peculiar to me. Many have been experiencing this, and for long too. The electricity distribution companies are quick to blame it on the fact that customers like me do not have meters. My response is: it is the duty of the distribution companies to meter each apartment.

    Incidentally, on Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill seeking to criminalise estimated billing in the country. This was done after considering the report of its committee on power sector. Many members of the House, including Speaker Yakubu Dogara, have been victims of crazy, estimated bills. His country home, he once noted, was billed some N80,000 monthly. So it was not surprising when the report was unanimously adopted after Deputy Speaker Lasun Yusuf put it to a voice vote.

    The bill seeks to criminalise estimated billing and make the installation of prepaid meters compulsory for all power consumers in Nigeria. My sentiment exactly! It is fraudulent for Ikeja Electric and others to resort to estimation instead of actual meter reading.

    House Leader Femi Gbajabiamila, who sponsored the bill, believes it is not justifiable to continuously charge consumers for power not consumed. Shamelessly, those gaining from the fraud were at the public hearing to plead that the status quo should remain. I am at a loss why Minister of Power, Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED) opposed the bill. They claimed it would worsen electricity challenge. How?

    Fashola said the bill could crumble the electricity sector, noting that the financial challenges of metering must first be addressed. My answer to this is that it is not my responsibility to address this challenge and I should not be made to bear the brunt of someone’s irresponsibility!

    As far as I am concerned, the Senate should quickly pass the bill and send it to President Muhammadu Buhari to sign into law.

    Since licences were given to Ikeja Electric, Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) and nine others, they have shown that they lack what is needed to make success of the sector. It has been garbage in, garbage out. Consumers regularly express their displeasure through blockades of electricity distribution companies’ offices over poor service delivery occasioned by erratic billing and epileptic power supply. Consumers, consumer advocacy groups, regulators and legislators have shouted themselves hoarse. The courts are having hectic schedules with cases filed by shortchanged consumers.

    It appears to me that the investors rushed into the deal thinking it would be all rosy like the situation when GSM licences were issued. I understand that at least one is willing to return its licence having discovered hell trying to run the company.

    BEDC is having serious challenge with the Edo State government. Governor Godwin Obaseki even walked out the company’s management team from a meeting for its abysmal performance. Edo is literally in darkness. So piqued is the Oba of Benin that he pleaded with President Muhammadu Buhari some days back that he should ensure BEDC’s licence is not renewed. I suspect that if something is not done soon, the Benin monarch will invoke his spiritual powers to force the non-performer out of town.

    A report by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) shows that the 11 DisCos received 128,791 complaints from consumers in the third quarter of last year. 153,227 complaints were received in the second quarter. The report published on NERC’s website also shows that BEDC had the highest number of complaints. I was not surprised that Ikeja DisCo was number two.

    The complaints center on service interruption, poor voltage, load shedding, metering, estimated billing, disconnection and delayed connection. It is not surprising that the number of complaints on metering and billing dominated the complaints. Metering and billing accounted for 53 per cent of the complaints. 68,749 complaints in the third quarter of last year were on metering and billing. 103,636 billing and metering complaints were recorded in the second quarter.

    The report notes: “This implies that an average of about 747 customers complained about metering and billing per day in the third quarter of 2018.”

    Instructively, the NERC has 25 operational forum offices in 24 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to attend to customers’ grouses. During the third quarter of last year, the forum offices received 1,959 complaints from customers who were unsatisfied with DisCos’ decisions.

    My final take: We must end estimated billing now. No one should be made to pay for electricity not used, and no one should also fail to pay for electricity consumed. Either way, it is fraud. Installation of meters in homes is a task that must be done to end crazy and unjustifiable billing.