The Nation Newspaper

Category: Korede Yishau

  • Aridolf, Aridolf, Aridolf 

    Aridolf, Aridolf, Aridolf 

    A novelist once told me his experience with a fiction editor not versed in African culture. During the editing of his last novel, the English editor queried a dialogue in which a mother called her daughter thrice. The editor argued that once was enough since the child had no hearing impediment. The author had to explain to the editor that in Africa, especially Nigeria, when a person is called thrice, it denotes a warning.

    I remember this during my recent visit to Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital, when I stayed at Aridolf Resort, a massive facility said to be owned by the wife of a former president. The hotel is advertised as having 138 rooms, including 19 suites and junior presidential and presidential suites.

    The first sign that all is not well with the facility is encountered right at the entrance: The metal detector sitting by the revolving door is idle. Guests just walk in freely using an unmanned door by the revolving door. Before I forget, there is no thorough checking at the main gate into the hotel.

    The hotel has beautiful chandeliers and other accessories, which are now so dirt-infested that their beauty is fading, it has many rooms that are in disuse, it has a gift shop only so designated, it has rooms with clear signs of poor maintenance and it has so many things working against it.

    In this hotel, the intercom has packed up, wi-fi is no longer available, remote controls for television and air-conditioning system are either not available or the batteries have reached their lifespan and, to add salt to injury, guests who want room service have to either walk to the restaurant, laundry or call the mobile phone of a receptionist to access this service. Besides, the owner is said to be interested in the minutest details of why tubers of yam and loaves of bread are easily exhausted. Yet, things are falling apart. There was a day I wanted bread and egg and, after waiting for over one hour, the waiter brought only scrambled egg and announced gleefully that there was no bread. Wow! I almost lost it.

    There are ‘naked’ wires in rooms and elsewhere. Water wasn’t in supply in some rooms. And cobwebs are having a swell time in places they are regularly supposed to be expelled from. The elevator has since packed up and light and services are just jagajaga but I must add that their food is good! It looks understaffed.

    My disappointment with the hotel made me go on the internet to see what past customers had to say, and they had plenty to say; plenty of bad stuff.

    This is one: “I am a very frequent traveller but this is the worst hotel I have ever stayed in. The checking in was a nightmare. The hotel rooms were booked, paid for and rooms were allocated one week before our arrival, only to be told our rooms’ keys could not be found. Apparently, our rooms had been sold. We were given some dirty rooms after one hour. The rooms were dirty and smelly. We had no choice of another place to stay. We complained but the manager refused to attend to us. We had to wait for two hours to get food in the restaurant. The towel could have been sourced from the cesspool. The white could pass for grey. There were too many staff shabbily dressed who had no clue about working in a hotel. In short, this is a hotel from hell. I will not recommend it to anyone.”

    This is another one: “I went to Nigeria to get married and my wife who is Nigerian asked for her family to book a hotel there. The outside of the building is not bad at all. The point is the hotel is not maintained. It was said that the owner basically built it to clean money and it’s not maintained at all. It’s dirty, the electricity goes and comes and it’s random, there is no Wi-Fi and forget about a normal breakfast. As in every place in Nigeria, everything comes with money, so expect the typical stuff about it…. the personnel were ok and polite, that’s true. However, there are not enough personnel to maintain the hotel. When we were there maybe 20 rooms were booked. It’s a really big hotel so imagine how it works. The place is not clean and in a couple of years will basically fall down as no one takes care of it. Coming from Europe and getting used to a different way of life impresses yourself as this is not a proper place. Even with that, it is better than other places. As with everything in Nigeria, I wouldn’t recommend you walk around without knowledge as it’s not secure. I can’t be bothered to say Nigeria itself is not secure and less when you are white as everyone will try to charge you, blackmail you or just take your money for every stupid reason. So in conclusion, not a good hotel to be. The problem is there are not too many options around. We moved to another one after a couple of days. It was better yes. But don’t expect to find a normal hotel like in Europe in Nigeria. Whatever an Ibis or a simple Holiday Inn are luxury hotels compared with every hotel I’ve been to in Nigeria, even luxury ones. I have to highlight the amount of dirt in every place but I have to highlight again that no one really takes care of it. I wouldn’t even recommend breakfast or food there just in case.”

    And yet another one: “Massive imposing structure with stair rails in gold and overweight chandeliers. Untrained staff dressed as if they are going to attend to goats. No systems in place. You leave your key in the morning to attend to issues you bring to their attention…they only do so in the evening while you are in the room. I doubt their staff have had any training in customer service. ..never mind running a hotel. Management is conspicuous by its absence. A waste of precious space.”

    And this last one: “The rooms are in run-down and poor condition. The shower is not working, neither is the refrigerator. The wallpapers fall off the walls, the bulbs in the lamps are broken. The bathroom is run down. Simply awful.”

    My final take: This massive but decaying Aridolf Resort is close to a hotel project initiated by the Bayelsa State government but abandoned and was christened by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan as a monument of shame. I hope Aridolf does not end up a monument of shame the way things are now at the Yenagoa-based hotel.

  • Development knows no ethnicity, no religion

    Development knows no ethnicity, no religion

    In ‘Adú’— a Netflix movie about how the destinies of a six-year-old boy and his older sister intersect with an environmental activist and a civil guard—an immigrant falls to his death while trying to jump a barbed wire fence that separates North Africa from Europe. The Immigration officials at the border are tried for his death. They are set free. One of them carries out research on the dead man and discovers he was a political prisoner from an African country. When he shares this fact with a colleague, one of his reactions is that the Europeans erected the fence to remind Africans to solve their own problems. These problems are about the development of the continent, of which our dear Nigeria is supposedly its giant.

    If you have had the opportunity of travelling around Nigeria, you will know that it is a nation in need of development. We need roads, we need drainage channels, we need to stop desertification, we need to end banditry, we need to end terrorism, we need to combat corruption in public and private lives, and we need to fix so many things.

    There are so many villages and towns in the country that do not have electricity. The towns and cities that have electricity have to use generating sets as their main sources of power while the public supply has turned to an unreliable source.

    Many areas are inaccessible because of bad road networks. This does not mean that roads are not being built; it also does not mean the railways are not getting better. What it means is that the pace of our development is slow. Terribly slow. So many are the challenges facing us as a nation that we cannot make much progress if we walk instead of running! Sadly, we are not even walking fast enough; in fact, we are crawling.

    Amid these deficiencies in our national life, we concentrate on the mundane when leadership is being discussed. We are a country blessed with many ethnic nationalities, and we live in a world that is filled with several races. We all together make the world colourful; we also make it dangerous and we make it acrimonious with unnecessary superiority contests.

    There are ethnic groups that believe they are superior to the other, and there are races that think their places in this world were specifically carved for them by the heavenly bodies. They carry on as though others are slaves and should serve them. Maybe God revealed that to them via the still voice!

    But let’s look at this fact: In Nigeria, we speak Ijaw, Hausa, Nupe, Igbo, Yoruba and plenty of other languages. The Ijaw are in the Southsouth, the Hausa occupy no mean space in the North, the Nupe are also in the North, especially Niger State, and the Igbo call five states in the Southeast and some states in the Southsouth home. The Yoruba are the Lords of the Southwest.

    From this pool, we pick our leaders from time to time. Being a very religious and multi-ethnic society, how we worship and what language we speak play a significant role in determining who gets our support during the electioneering period. It would have been wonderful if we could pray poverty away, pray good roads into existence and pray corruption into extinction.

    Some ethnic groups, especially the Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba have had more shots at the central government, producing presidents more than other ethnic groups. The Ijaw got a rare shot when President Umaru Yar’Adua died in power, his deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, took over, went on to win his own election but lost his second term bid to President Muhammadu Buhari. The Igbo, save the short-lived military regime of Gen. Thomas Aguiyi Ironsi and the ceremonial presidency of Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, have tried unsuccessfully to lead at the national level. There are so many ethnic nationalities, too, that are far away from the powerhouse.

    One lesson that has been clearly shown by the Yoruba, Igbo and Ijaw men who have been at the powerhouse is that what you do with power has nothing to do with where you come from and how you worship God. The development of society is more about having a leader with the milk of human kindness. A poet puts it succinctly when he said no matter the language you speak development has nothing to benefit from it. It is either you know what you are doing or not. A man is a man and a race, a race! Development thus benefits more from the quality of the man than where the man comes from.

    A man who does not understand the economy will fail at managing the economy no matter his ethnic group or religion; a man who is security illiterate and also unwilling to surround himself with those who understand the security architecture will fail woefully no matter his ethnic nationality; a man who has no milk of human kindness is bound not to see the need to make life abundant for his people. In fact, he will derive joy from their sadness and he will continue to steal as if there is no tomorrow without his bottomless secret vaults being filled with cash.

    We are at that stage of our national life again when leadership dominates discourse but, unfortunately, ethnic nationality and religions are taking a chunk of the time spent on discussing this all-important topic. It should be about the deliverables.

    My final take: I have absolutely nothing against political parties deciding to zone seats to areas so as to give a sense of belonging to the people. But what I abhor is a situation whereby we make it look like the ethnic nationality or the religion of the person we are putting in power will have any impact on his or her performance. No, it has no effect whatsoever on it.

    Care must be taken to ensure that in agreeing to allow an area to produce the leader, the dreg does not end up getting the job. The best from the area where the power has been ceded should get the prize because, in the long run, what will determine the person’s performance is his ability and not ethnicity.

  • The khaki boys are going mad again

    The khaki boys are going mad again

    We thought their time was gone. We rejoiced when one by one our continent was rid of them. Our experience with them was so bad, so terrible, that seeing our presidential palaces without khaki boys or men calling the shots brought us so much joy, so much relief. Now, I fear, as these boys, these men, are emerging and claiming a place in the sun on our continent.

    Of recent, there have been coups by military officers on the African continent, the latest attempt was on Tuesday in Guinea Bissau— a country with a long history of military coups. And analysts have warned that African leaders must play by the rules to deliver good governance and the citizens must rise to their civic responsibilities by demanding accountability.

    In August 2020, late Malian President Ibrahim Keita was kicked out in a coup. Keita, who became president of the West African country in 2013, died at the age of 76 in Bamako recently. He was two years into his second five-year term when he was toppled following widespread protests against his government.

    A year and a month after Keita was shown the exit door, Guinean President Alpha Conde was given the same treatment.

    The situation in Sudan saw two attempts, one failed and the other shot Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan into power. Everything is now upside down in that nation and killings are going on as though they are normal occurrences.

    A day before the presidential inauguration, the bad boys also attempted to take power in Niger, our next-door neighbour. Thank goodness they were resisted and sent back to the bush where they belong. There has also been a coup attempt in Burkina Faso.

    As usual, these coups have seen the detention of political leaders.  The African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the West, have condemned the coups and have called for a return to civil rules but these boys are not moved. The hammer struck on the earlier offending countries did nothing to stop more from taking the dangerous rule. The deviants in Mali even announced the severance of ties with ECOWAS and France, its colonial masters with whom it had maintained a relationship since Independence.

    I am happy that ECOWAS is not treating the bad boys with kid gloves. Borders with Mali have been shut. Sadly, the people are suffering. The vast landlocked nation of 19 million people borders seven other nations, which have shut their doors against it, except Algeria and Guinea, for obvious reason. Guinea and Algeria have left their sea and air borders open to Mali.

    Aside border closure, which signified suspension of trade, its assets in the Central Bank of West African States have been frozen and member states’ ambassadors have been recalled.

    Still the men in khaki are not relenting. Their leader, Colonel Assimi Goita, has proposed to stay in power for up to five years before restoring constitutional rule. Some days ago, the military instigated a protest over the ECOWAS sanctions.

    For some people, military coups are caused by the failure of democracy, lack of social nets and the inability of democracy to engender development. Corruption of the political class is another cancer eating at the heart of democracy. Election rigging and tenure elongation have also come in handy for military boys to stage coups.

    But are coups the answer to the failure of democracy? Certainly not. From the experience of the past military interventions, the promises made by coup plotters have always been short-lived. They never last. The coup plotters always turn out worse than the politicians they send out of office. In several instances, they also become politicians and never want to leave office.

    For me, I say to hell with military intervention in governance. They are trained to defend the territorial integrity of their nations and not to lead. No wonder they are always a failure. Military rule is an aberration and it will always remain so.

    In order not to give these guys the excuse for going mad again, politicians should ensure good governance in Africa. They also need to play by the rules and be accountable to the people. Bad governance, corruption, cronyism, election rigging and tenure elongation are the triggers of political instability that must be avoided.

    West Africa, of which Nigeria is the biggest, should not be where it is. It should have gone farther. My trips around the sub-region have largely made me ask the question: When are we going to start? I have also come to the conclusion that the buck stops at the table of its leaders for its sorry state.

    And the rain started beating us from the dawn. The leaders of the region at independence were treated as demi-gods because they were the founding fathers

    The blame for its stunted growth is no one’s but theirs. And, perhaps, a complacent citizenry. Democracy should be seen as a necessity and not otherwise. The quasi-democracy that many of the countries in the sub-region operate is not doing us any good.

    All over the sub-region, leaders who had nothing before coming into office suddenly become overnight billionaires, owning businesses everywhere and stashing money in numbered accounted oversees.

    Worse still, the lucre of office even gets into their heads and, as their tenure winds to an end, they plot how to stay in office for life. Where that is impossible, they move to install their lackeys whom they believe will protect their interest. Some even want to install their sons.

    My final take: African countries must entrench mechanisms that promote constitutionalism, accountability, democracy, and good governance. A governance structure that values the peaceful coexistence and economic development and battles inequality must be put in place.

    Collectively, we must ensure that our leaders do not take us for granted. We must ask for our dues and ensure we get them. While not asking us to be violent, when we insist and refuse to be intimidated, the leaders will have no choice but to let our will prevail and we will succeed in frustrating the men in khaki from having the needed excuses to usurp power. They must be stopped from going mad again.

  • To Ado Doguwa with admiration

    To Ado Doguwa with admiration

    When I first knew you, you were Chief Whip. Now, you are House Leader. I was amazed to find out you are a first-class graduate of the Bayero University Kano (BUK). Back then in 2020, you had 27 children from four wives. As a true Moslem, you can’t have more wives but can have as many children as you want and just some days back, one of your beautiful wives had a baby girl. Now, you are the father of 28. What a record to envy. For some of us who have only two children, we have a long way to go to beat your record. I am sure I will fail if I even try so excuse me.

    Since the news broke, some funny chaps have said having kids with reckless abandon is not a thing to be proud of. They say even when you need to marry four wives to fulfil your religious obligation, each wife can have one kid each or a maximum of two.

    Don’t mind them, Honourable. I admire the fact that you are a man of your words. I can recall that the new addition to your family was a fulfilment of your promise that you would continue counting. You renewed this vow some days back when you said: “I want, by the grace of God and your prayers that the count would continue.”

    At 56, I daresay you still have all the time in the world to double the record. For now, your target is to have 30 by next year so that you can appeal to your colleagues to amend the Electoral Act to enable you to have a polling unit in your house.

    I will forever remember that you so much love your wives that you once took them to the floor of the House and introduced them gleefully. These beautiful women obviously adore you and with alacrity stood up as you were ordering them to stand up for recognition. They waved at your colleagues and took their seats. They beamed with smiles as the House erupted in shouts and laughter. Your eloquence was admirable and it kept making your colleagues erupt in laughter (though I suspect many of them were being mischievous).

    You said and I quote: “Mr Speaker, he began, “I will let you know that with me today here are my four respectable wife (sic). Alim, stand up please, one. Umma, stand up. Binta should stand up… Mr Speaker, honourable members, I asked them to stand here to respect the House on behalf of my family and another reason is to let you know that when members call me a powerful man, I am not only powerful on the floor of the House, I am also powerful at home. These four wives, Mr Speaker, what I meant by asking them to rise up (sic) is to demonstrate to members of the House that when you call me a powerful parliamentarian, I am not only powerful on the floor, I am also powerful at home. I deal with four wives.

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    “These four wives you are seeing, these four wives you are seeing, Mr Speaker, have produced 27 children for me. These four wives you are seeing have produced 27 kids for me and I am still counting, I am still counting.”

    House of Representatives Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila was so impressed that he refreshed your memory— despite your protest— that you once confided in him that it took one of your sons to remind you that you were his father. According to Gbajabiamila, you had seen some eight kids playing late in front of your house and you ordered them to go home, only for one of them to ask: “But baba, this is my house”.

    Now, that the figures are increasing, mischief-makers wonder if you will be able to remember them all without the help of their mothers.

    As you were speaking that day on the floor of the House, some female colleagues of yours, especially from the South, looked stunned. They obviously could not process how in this modern world one man has four wives and close to 30 children and is still counting. They probably also had, at the back of their mind, the claim by a one-time Emir of Kano that polygamy was the problem of the North, where you come from.

    In your case, I suspect you have money— plenty of it— to take care of the kids. So, go ye and keep multiplying. It matters not if you cannot recognise all the children. Once you can recognise their mothers, the mothers will identify their children or the children can do that for themselves. The essence of having fewer children is to spend less income on immediate survival needs of food, housing, clothing and education. You do not need to worry about such income-saving measures. Money dey yafunyafun. Great men like you also need not disturb their brains remembering their kids’ birthdays, not to talk of disturbing themselves about going out on a picnic or vacation with them. All that matters is to keep giving their mothers money for their upkeep and to impregnate the mothers to help Nigeria attain that enviable status that beckons. After all, the huge population is an asset for investors. Ask MTN if in doubt.

    As someone who has always been in government, either by appointment or election since you finished your national youth service, your bread is well-buttered. My hope—jokes apart— is that you have enough in the vault for your wives to sustain themselves and their kids in case of the unexpected, which we all as mortals have absolutely no control over. We will leave when the time comes whether we like it or not. I am sure you know that as a devout Moslem.

    My final take: I hope you (Hon. Hassan Ado Doguwa) have a trust fund for these children you are producing at an alarming rate so that when you reach 101 and leave this world, the children will have something to fall back on. I also hope you are educating them well. Anything short of planning a better tomorrow for them is the wickedness of the highest order.

    My best wishes till I write to you another time.

  • To Hanifa with love

    To Hanifa with love

    You were just five; just five years of age and life had not begun in the real sense of it, but ended because of yet another mad man. Our streets are filled with crazy men, men who should be in psychiatric wards but, because like every other thing, we do not take mental illness seriously, they have free reign and help to further mess up our society.

    We allow people with serious psychiatric issues to roam freely without getting medical care, we allow them to do many other things, including founding churches and being General Overseers and dishing out visions and prophecy only a sick soul should be capable of. The one who caught your life short said he used poison. Your offence I understand not. He said he needed money to pay the rent of the land on which his school was situated. You were a pupil of this school. Hanifa, you were killed by a teacher, the proprietor of the school your parents entrusted you on.

    You were beautiful and we can only imagine how you would have aged gracefully. The fool has denied us the opportunity of seeing you bloom, of seeing you become a cynosure of all eyes, of seeing you walk and never stumbling, of seeing you do exploits, and of seeing you break boundaries and barriers.

    Your father, Abdulsalam Abubakar, the one who shares a name with our last military Head of State, said 30-year-old Abdulmalik Tanko—the madman who killed you— kept deceiving the family about your safety, took ransom and still proceeded to kill you. Your father was happy when you were discovered but he was sad you were not found alive. The madman did not act alone. He had an accomplice named Hashim Isyaku, a 37-year-old man.

    According to your father, you were in the third term of your attendance in the school whose head took your head figuratively speaking. He called his school Noble Kids School, but he was the most not noble of men. If only you had been left at the Islamic school you were attending, maybe you will still be with us.

    After he kidnapped you on December 4, 2021, he didn’t contact your parents for over a week and later sent a text message. He followed it up by dropping a nylon bag at the entrance of your home. The nylon contained your sweatshirt, the badge on your hijab and a photo of you. About an hour after the nylon was discovered, he sent another SMS to inquire if your parents had seen the evidence that he was holding you ransom. He turned down your parents’ plea to speak with you. Instead, he chose to show them another proof of your living by directing them to Kwankwasiya Estate on Zaria Road, where he dropped another nylon containing your hijab without a badge. It was at this moment he demanded N6 million ransom, threatening to kill you if they did not comply.

    Some money, according to your father, was raised and dropped at the same spot in Kwankwasiya Estate. The police had been tipped off and were supposed to intercept him and take him away, but he was fast and had gone before the law enforcers could act.

    “That night, not more than 20 minutes after, he called, furiously ranting that the ransom money was incomplete; that we must complete it otherwise he would kill her. When I reported to the security agents again, they instructed us to comply, pleading that they would nab him this time.

    “Unfortunately for him, he didn’t change the location for collecting the ransom, so we went and dropped it. When he came out of hiding and was about picking it up, the security agents swooped on him,” your father said in an interview.

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    Dear Hanifa, your death has led to an uproar. From President Muhammadu Buhari to Governor Abdullahi Ganduje and many other Nigerians, outrage has been expressed. Ganduje has closed the not noble school that the mad man was running. The madman has also been speaking. He said he did not kidnap you for ritual purposes. He said he killed you to raise money to pay the rent of the school he was running. He was just saying nonsense upon nonsense and all I could mutter was “may God punish you” for killing and burying you in a shallow grave.

    The police spokesman in the state, Superintendent of Police Abdullahi Haruna Kiyawa, said: “In Dec. 4, 2021, at about 20:30 hours, a report was received from a resident of Dakata Quarters, Nassarawa, Kano State, that one Hanifa Abubakar, 5, was kidnapped and a ransom of N6 million was demanded,” he said. “Sustained efforts and prolonged follow up led to the arrest of Abdulmalik Mohammed-Tanko, 30, and Hashim Isyaku, 37, all of Tudun Murtala quarters, by a detective team of the Department of State Service (DSS).

    “During investigation, Mohammed-Tanko confessed that the victim, Hanifa, was his student at a private school in Kwanar Dakata, Nassarawa, Kano State.

    “He kidnapped her and took her to his house where he contacted her relatives and demanded a ransom of N6 million.

    “On Dec. 18, 2021, having realized that the victim recognized him, he claimed to have poisoned her to death. He conspired with Hashim Isyaku, and buried her in a grave located at the private school premises at Kwanar ‘Yan Gana, Tudun Murtala.”

    The accomplice’s version shows that one Fatima Musa, 27, was also involved. Fatima was also arrested in connection with the offence.

    Hanifa, the PPRO said your “body was exhumed and taken to Mohammed Abdullahi Wase Specialists Hospital, Kano, where it was examined and later released to the relatives for burial according to Islamic rites”.

    It is painful that your parents were put through agony for about two months; you were already cold and decaying in the shallow grave where the fool who took a ransom on you chose to bury you instead of returning you home, to your parents.

    My final take: People like Abdulmalik Tanko do not deserve to live; they should leave this world. In fact, they should never have been born. They are so evil-minded and make this world difficult to navigate. They are the sharks that other smaller fishes have to avoid to stay alive. The sad thing about this whole scenario is that Tanko’s arrest will not serve as a deterrent to his type. They are just sick and controlled by forces beyond them. We should shut them behind tightly-closed doors, give them food and drugs for the rest of their lives.

    Sleep well, dear Hanifa, sleep tight and have sweet dreams.

  • How to be a bootlicker in Nigerian politics

    How to be a bootlicker in Nigerian politics

    When you find yourself as an aide to an average Nigerian politician, there are rules you have to obey if you do not want to get booted out within the twinkling of an eye. Principles are nothing. Obey your principal. Your boss’s happiness supersedes every other thing. Be ready to tell lies and sing, more appropriately praise-sing.

    Loyalty is 100 per cent and disagreeing with your principal’s point of view on issues amounts to disloyalty. There is something you must take as a Biblical injunction; your principal’s enemies are your enemies. You must inherit them. Give them a bloody nose. There is no limitation to the inherited enemies. A familial relationship means nothing here. If your father opposes your principal, oppose your father, if your mother speaks ill of your principal, chastise her, and if your wife despises your principal, divorce her. You must see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil as far as your boss is concerned. If you don’t get this, forget about it.

    Celebrate his achievements like they are personal to you. Mourn his failures as though they are yours. Follow his steps as though they are the oxygen that supplies you with life. You must always remember and act as though recruiting you was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Always remember that.

    It is true that looking power in the face helps leaders to be better leaders. But, old boy, remember always that this is Nigeria and politicians are gods, small gods with big egos— egos that must be fanned and air-conditioned by sycophancy.  Tell him his agbada is powerful. Praise his pair of shoes. Hail his cap. Don’t forget to commend his strides, real or imagined. If you are the type who feels politicians with big houses, plenty of cars and other luxuries of life are wasteful, you must perish this though and never express it. Praise his taste. Admire his choices. Respect his positions.

    Pay attention to your principal’s idiosyncrasies. If he is the type who likes small girls, those fine girls who like to flaunt flesh, then you have to know where and how to source them. There is, however, a caveat: When you supply him babes, never let it be known to his wife that you play this important role. Remember madam’s words can be law. So, balance the pendulum.

    If your boss is the type who likes listening to his own voice, you better be ready to listen to him talk and talk and talk without interrupting him. Part of you will like to be tired. Kill that part. Kill it dead like that insecticide advert said. And when he asks for your opinion, give an opinion akin to the one he has expressed on the issue. It is no time to be sanctimonious and blabbing about some nonsense principle. You have no principle other than that of your principal.

    Always mention to him what a privilege it is working with him. Tell him that working with him is like going through training you were never offered in the university. In fact, liken what you have learnt from him to what you would have learnt at a business school or an executive MBA.

    There are times your principal will get angry, abuse you, call you names and remind you how useless you are, this is not a time to say anything other than sorry sir. You must not make the mistake of complaining in the presence of fellow aides. One of them or more than one of them will tell him to increase their ratings with him. Even when you do not complain, a fellow aide can lie against you to improve their rating. You worsen your case when you now give them a tool to finish you. Your ranting can be recorded and played back to him. It is a dog-eat-dog setting.

    If you have a wife and children and they live in a town different from you, do not prioritise them over your boss by announcing to him every second that you want to go and see your family. Leave your family. Send them money. Speak with them on phone. Let the boss feel he owns you. That way you gain more ranks. Leave seeing your family to when the boss travels out of town or country without you or when he willingly asks you to go spend time with your family.

    It is very essential that you must be in the good books of your principal’s wife. Help her even when she needs no help. Carry her bag. Clean her mess. But, never divulge information about your principal’s extra-curricular activities to her.

    Your phone must be reachable at all times. It is a sin punishable by sack if you cannot be reached when the boss needs you.

    You must know how to rig an election, snatch ballot boxes or pay to buy votes. If you cannot do a combination of this, at least know how to do one so that you can win your polling booth and unit for him on election day. It is a cardinal sin for your principal to lose in your unit and your ward. Know this and know peace.

    But when you get tired of the shenanigans that working with an average Nigerian politician entails and you want to quit, please, quit from afar and go afar after doing this. The secrets in your hands can mark you out as a person of interest. Remember life has no duplicate.

  • The Nigerian President of my dream

    The Nigerian President of my dream

    We are on the match again, we are looking for Mr President and, throughout this year, it is going to be politics all over. Party politics will peak like it has not in the last few years. Aspirants seeking to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari have started coming out, and more will come out as days become months.

    Our country really needs a leader who will both inspire hope and deliver results. 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.

    No time but now that we are preparing for another presidential election is appropriate for us to search our souls. I have searched mine and I believe, instead of lamentation and whining about our circumstances, we should let those seeking to lead our nation know the kind of nation we want.

    I worry for our nation when ethnicity rears its head; I cry inward 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 also believe I should be able to change my indigene status when I move elsewhere in the country.

    The dreaded Boko Haram sect is still on the rampage. Many out there are looking for jobs that are not available. 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 outside of our shores.

    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.

    There is a scary development around indigeneship that has reared its head in our nation. Now, we see instances an indigene of a state who resides in another state is considered by those at home as an outsider. This has come to play in states such as Osun and Ekiti, during electioneering campaigns. Indigenes living in places like Ibadan and Lagos have been portrayed as outsiders. You hear politicians saying they do not want ‘Lagos or Ibadan people’. The impression these guys create is that you can only identify with your state if you live in your home town. Yet, many back home depend on remittances from those in Lagos and Ibadan to survive.

    Another development that scares me is 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 root are educated but hopeless.

    In Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s ‘Season of Crimson Blossom’, a woman was well over 50 before she got her groove and 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.

    I seek a President who will end this era of epileptic supply of electricity. I will be glad that day when 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 certainly want 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 look forward to 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).

    I look forward to a president who will develop our tourism sector, permanently solve the power challenge, defeat the terrorists and make the country a no-go-area for bandits.

    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’.

  • Spewing nonsense in the name of our Father

    Spewing nonsense in the name of our Father

    The things that come out of her mouth are baffling, the manner she says them are worrying, and the reactions of her followers are troubling. Many have nicknamed her Mummy G.O. Her name is Evangelist Funmilayo Adebayo.

    In her world, it is a sin to be a football star, a comedian, a breakdancer, a pair of jeans wearer and a COVID-19 vaccine receiver. These strange beliefs of her are spread through her videos, which are everywhere on social media. Aside from these ridiculous claims, she also says anyone who cut his hair low to the extent that his scalp shows has successfully bought a free ticket to hell. Perfume and necklaces wearers are also hellfire-bound, according to this interesting character.

    Her reason for committing breakdancer to hell is that its originator, Michael Jackson, got power from the land of the dead.

    She claims Nollywood actress, Tonto Dikeh, is not a human being by birth, and that whoever listens to the music of Tiwa Savage will not make heaven. And if you are a beneficiary of the American Visa Lottery, there is no rapture for you when Jesus returns.

    “I can say Roll-On is good but do you know Sure! Sure! Very simple but highly demonic. There is a perfume called Iris, if you use that perfume, I’m telling you, the spirit of fornication will come upon you. There is another perfume called Happiness, very cheap with fine odour, many people know it. My dear, if you have started using it, something different will be happening to you, and you will never please God that time,” she adds to her list of doubtful claims.

    A mobile handset is a tool for communication but this wonderful madam says: “All of you children telling your parents to buy handset for you on your birthday, you’re asking for the ticket to hellfire.” Haba!

    Mummy G.O. does not have the exclusivity of spewing nonsense in the name of our Father in heaven. Like our mother in the Lord, there is another clown, also a woman, who claims that anyone who has dreadlocks will automatically go to hell. Her interpreter interpreted dreadlock as irun were( an insane person’s hair). She claims that in the spiritual realm the hair represents snakes. This same clown also claims that not paying bride price will lead the defaulter to hell. She even used a model, a woman, to show that when bride price is unpaid, it hinders the wife’s progress in life.

    There is also the popular Indaboski Pahose, the Southeast-based Prophet Odumeje, who relishes showing us funny theatrics, including getting the devil to visit his church and his technical team interviewing the devil, who boasted that he was the first pastor standing up to him. This man’s theatrically violent performance is only one example of bizarre practices that have crept into Christianity. I have a feeling he will make a good actor if only he will try out his talent in Nollywood.

    Aside from men and women who spew out all manners of nonsense in the name of our Father, there are those who also commit all manners of atrocities in His name. One of such is Michael Oluronbi, who is now in jail in the UK.

    Oluronbi saw nothing wrong in having sex with his church members. Painfully, some of them were kids so it will not be out of place to describe him as a cradle snatcher.

    Oluronbi was the definition of evil. The self-proclaimed pastor, who is a trained pharmacist, was convicted by the Birmingham Crown Court, United Kingdom, for sexually assaulting six girls and a boy. Some of the girls, who are now adults, are siblings.

    He raped one of them in her mother’s bedroom and her room downstairs where the church’s altar was when mother was working at night. One of them had five or six abortions over the space of five years.

    To add salt to injury, Oluronbi’s wife, Juliana aided his evil ways. She was also found guilty and is awaiting sentencing any moment from now. Some of the victims said Mrs. Oluronbi took them for abortions on two or three occasions.

    Read Also: I didn’t say most things attributed to me – Mummy GO

    Oluronbi’s evil started in the 80s in Cherubim and Seraphim Church of God, Ayo ni o Edgbaston parish, United Kingdom. The church was on Gillott Road in Edgbaston, Birmingham in the 1980s and belonged to Juliana’s parents.

    In 1989, Oluronbi broke away with about 40 members to set up his own Cherubim and Seraphim Church of God. A single mother of six offered him the sitting room of her family home in Winson Green, Birmingham, for service.

    Some of Oluronbi’s victims are the children of single mothers. His first move was to sow a seed of discord between, the woman and the father of her children. Oluronbi said he saw visions that her kids’ father was a bad person and ensured he was banished from the house.

    “I did not want him as a husband. I wanted him for his prayer, his guidance. He was a pastor of the church and I wanted him for the security of my children,” the woman told the police.

    But Oluronbi wanted much more and he got it. After succeeding with that, he started a sexual dalliance with her but the evil in him made him reach for her daughters, and he was able to convince each of them not to reveal their affair to the other.

    Trusting God is not akin to suspending one’s brain, and serving God is not synonymous with being gullible. Certainly, having faith has absolutely nothing to do with being stupid. Every man of God is first a man. Like the rest of us, they make mistakes. It is wrong for anyone to sublet his or her life to them. We must always use our brains.

    Our society is a place where people who should be receiving serious psychiatric attention are roaming the streets free and not a few of them have found themselves on the pulpits. The unfortunate part of this scenario is that they have audience who not only believe them but also put into practice the nonsense they spew regularly.

    Aside those who have psychiatric issues, I seriously believe that some fraudsters are also on the pulpits and are using their 419 tricks to get people to buy into their nonsense and, in the long run, they cash out and live big because of the gullible.

    Sadly, religion is the opium of the masses. In it, we find solution to everything we do not understand and it is not about to change. What should, however, change is the avalanche of ‘were alaso’ ( sick but well-dressed folks) on the pulpits. Their place is in psychiatric wards and not on the altars.

    These clowns are just lucky that our Father is merciful and does not strike like the god of thunder.

  • Of greed and its dividends

    Of greed and its dividends

    Olabode Lucas, a retired Professor of Crop Physiology and Nutrition, regularly contributes opinion pieces to newspapers in Nigeria. He has done so for sixty years. He has a new offering and it is not an opinion piece. It is a novel, the kind that Chinua Achebe would have described as ‘not innocent and guilty of an agenda’.

    The novel, ‘Dividends of Greed’, tells the story of Aremu Olotu and his wife Joyce. It also tells the story of Jude Okagbue and a couple of other characters.

    The novel kicks off with Aremu Olotu and Jude Okagbue being posted to a rural community school for their one-year compulsory youth service. Olotu is the son of the late Gbajero Olotu, who died when he was about to enter the University. He studied Sociology while Jude Okagbue studied Mathematics at the New Town University, Busa.

    At the school, they give their best and are retained after the service year. Soon Okagbue leaves for the United Kingdom to study law. At this point, the focus shifts to Olotu as Okagbue fizzles out until a ‘cameo appearance’ towards the end of the novel.

    Olotu’s path crosses with that of a soldier, Lt. Uyi Osaigbovo, who works in the accounts department of the Army. The duo become close and hang out regularly. Along the line, Joyce becomes pregnant for Olotu and a wedding is quickly organised. With the help of the soldier, Olotu and Joyce start a business, which Joyce runs successfully despite her low level of education. The agreement is that the soldier gets a cut of the business as a partner.

    One day Lt. Uyi Osaigbovo appears in the home of the Olotus bearing a trunk he claims contains the regalia and staff of office of his traditional ruler father which, according to him, his brother is planning to sell to foreigners. Olotu accepts it for safe-keeping.

    Not long after this, Lt. Uyi Osaigbovo is arrested and tried for corruptly enriching himself. Olotu becomes afraid thinking that his closeness to Lt. Uyi Osaigbovo, whom he calls ‘future General’, may implicate him. In the end, no one interrogates him. Lt. Uyi Osaigbovo is jailed for 20 years. During his travail, he finds a way to send his passbook to Olotu with the instruction that his share of the business should be deposited there, a request Joyce convinces her husband against. She claims Lt. Uyi Osaigbovo will rot in jail and that obliging him is also capable of implicating them.

    The years roll by, the once faithful Olotu starts an extra-marital affair and bears a son outside of wedlock. A military coup ushers in a new military regime and the new government uses granting of amnesty to prisoners as a way of celebrating the anniversary of its takeover of government. Five years into its life in power, it releases future General and he traces the Olotus, expecting not to only get his share of their business, but also retrieve his trunk, which the Olotus have since discovered contained ten million Naira— which at that time can buy 2,000 brand new Peugeot 504.

    The climax begins after this and greed sets, in and death follows. The truth in the saying that earth knows no fury like a woman scorned also comes into play.

    Olabode’s novel is set in fictional Zonga, a country where appointments are done on ethnic considerations, where deforestation is on the rise, where military incursion into politics is the norm and where revolution is seen, by many, as the only way out of its quagmire.

    Though the setting is Zonga, the similarities between this fictional nation and Nigeria are glaring. Like Nigeria, Zonga is a highly fragmented country with political competitions among ethnic nationalities. Like Nigeria, the country almost disintegrated under the military and it took a bloody civil war to stop the disintegration. Like the Nigerian military did for a long time, the Zonga military abandoned its traditional role of giving security to the people and added the role of giving political leadership and direction to the people. Its Generals competed with themselves to carry out coup d’etat to rule the country.

    Like Nigeria, Zonga has had more military rulers than civilian rulers. And, like Nigeria, Zonga’s military rulers were trained at the Sandhurst Military Academy in the United Kingdom, where they were taught to be apolitical. Like it usually happened in Nigeria, the night before a coup in Zonga was characterised by military members of an elite club staying away.

    That this work is a clever blend of a few real-life events in Nigeria with fiction is confirmed by the fact that we see military administrations that share everything with those of Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Muhammadu Buhari.

    We also see Enitsha, whose sounds and sights are the same as Onitsha’s. We see Zenin City, whose vibes are the same as Benin City. We see Zonga Youth Service Corps, which is not different from the National Youth Service Corps. We see Zonga, whose soul, spirit and body is Nigerian.

    My final take: It is not good to be greedy. Its dividends are never juicy, neither are they tasty. When someone helps you, make it a point of duty never to defraud the person of its entitlements. It is not for fun that they say to whom much is given much is expected.

  • Sanwo-Olu and this joke called federalism

    Sanwo-Olu and this joke called federalism

    On Tuesday, we all got another piece of evidence that we are deceiving ourselves as a nation. Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu was at an estate in Magodo to intervene in a crisis that has seen policemen from Abuja, the nation’s seat of power, lay siege and make the new year start on a sad note for the residents. The governor urged the police to vacate the estate, but the Chief Superintendent Officer in charge of the suspicious operation told Sanwo-Olu that he would ‘with due respect’ do no such thing. The governor’s plea that the officer should call his superior was also turned down with ‘due respect’. There is an above above the governor!

    The governor’s encounter with the CSP, for me, is another clear sign that we are a joke as a nation. It is one of the several things militating against our growth and development.

    Our Constitution, whose preamble lies that it was put together by ‘we the people’, recognises the governor as the Chief Security Officer of the state. But, in reality, as clearly shown by this event, this is one of the many lies in this strange document that guides our life as a nation. The policemen obey no one but the Inspector-General of Police, who takes orders from the President. So, President Muhammadu Buhari is the CSO of each of the 36 states of the federation. The fact that the government of a state like Lagos spends so much money on the police every year means little or nothing. When the chips are down, the police ‘with due respect’ ignore the governors and align with the centre, where their pay comes from. It is a case of he who pays the piper calling the tunes.

    Read Also: Magodo: Outrage over police officer’s refusal to obey Sanwo-Olu

    The issue of who controls the police has been around for a long time. Politics has played a sad role in this. It was believed that the control of the police must be centralised to prevent politicians at the state level from using them against opponents. Unfortunately, elements at the federal level have also used it in questionable circumstances.

    The funny federalism that Nigeria operates borrows nothing from the advanced world where the government at the centre bothers itself only with issues of national security, international diplomacy and such issues of gargantuan proportion. Instead, our own federalism determines how the natural resources in a state are explored, how the Value Added Tax in a state is shared, how a state is policed, how the local government is administered, and how other minute details of a state’s life are worked out.

    Every month, state governments take turns in Abuja to take their share of the national cake. Our governors regularly go cap in hand to beg the Lords in Abuja for porridge. We see this shameful pilgrimage often, so much that we have become used to it and now see it as normal.

    I believe sincerely that the challenge with electricity is self-inflicted. The Constitution puts electricity matters on the exclusive list and when states establish power plants, they have no control over the distribution channels, and as such have no control over how the power generated from the plant is distributed. The Federal Government has ceded the distribution to the clowns called distribution companies and we are all witnesses to the nonsense they do. Many of them simply don’t know what to do with the power they have been given.

    The danger in the kind of federalism we operate played out during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration. The administration refused to release local government allocation to Lagos State. Obasanjo’s excuse was that the Bola Tinubu administration created new local governments. Our strange Constitution gives states the power to create local governments, but it gives the power to list these local governments in the Constitution to the Federal Government. It is a case of giving with one hand and taking back with the other. Despite court pronouncements, Obasanjo held on to the money. It took the Umaru Yar’Adua administration for Lagos to get its due.

    We do not need a strong centre. What we need are strong federating units that contribute to the centre and not a centre that is so powerful that states have to cower before it. What we have now allows a President to determine who enjoys federal largesse and we are witnesses to instances where favours are dispensed along party lines. The country belongs to all irrespective of party affiliations.

    States should control their resources and contribute to the centre. With a weak centre, the do-or-die over who becomes president will die down. It is warped logic that our federalism allows a state that destroys alcoholic beverages to benefit from VAT paid on the forbidden drink. If you do not like a woman, you do not deserve the grace she carries. It should be as simple as that.

    I blame this warped federalism for the illegal mining going on all over the country. From Zamfara to Osun and elsewhere, locals, with help of fraudulent foreigners, are milking the nation dry. Traditional rulers are not left out of this economic sabotage. If our law does not overburden the Federal Government with what it clearly lacks the capacity to do, we should be earning so much from our gold, our bitumen, our tantalite, our granite and our so many other natural resources. We are instead fixated on oil as if that is the only thing we have, and even that we are messing it up. Big time. Management of these resources should be vested in states. It has no business being on the exclusive list. It is this funny list that has left the vast bitumen deposits in Ondo untapped and thus leaving a potential money-spinner wasting away. We need to stop being a nation of potentials and donning the toga of a land where potentials daily become money and jobs.

    My final take: I sincerely see absolutely no sense in a law that allows a CSP to disobey a CSO. It is senseless that our strange law allows the CSP to tell the governor, the so-called CSO, that his orders are from Abuja and only Abuja can tell him what to do. We will go nowhere if we continue with this joke of a federalism.