The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Borno diaries (1)

    Borno diaries (1)

    When the plane landed in Abuja, I thought I would proceed alone. Maybe not alone. With a sprinkling of humans, four or five, who were on the flight with me from Lagos. As the air hostesses cleaned up the seats and floor, the whole interior felt like a ghost room, but perfumed, upholstered, lighted. I and the few other passengers who remained were like interlopers in a conclave of spirits.

    I remembered what a co-passenger sitting beside me remarked when I told him I was not disembarking.

    “I am going to Maiduguri,” I announced.

    His remark was wordless. A sigh. As he rose to leave, his tongue came back to him and said he left the city in 2000 and had never returned.

    Consolation came when head after head, torso after torso filled the aircraft aisle. Goodbye ghosts, welcome flesh and blood. And human chatter. Within twenty minutes, the seats were all but occupied. We were set to taxi to where many in the south and outside the northeast have avoided like a plague the devil leased to earth. The aircraft bobbed into the air and in another hour, we descended on Maiduguri, my first ever foray in that city. When a little boy, we had a family friend, who was like an auntie, who had lived almost all her life in the city before relocating south. We used to call her Sister Maiduguri.

    As I disembarked into the sultry city, my head bubbled with reports and pictures and legends about Borno. Boko haram in clear-eyed terror, babies without parents, widows, dilapidated infrastructure, deserted streets, markets in retreats, soldiers on high alert. Fear, blood, the augury of Armageddon.

    It did not take long to erase my anxiety. I looked at the eyes and body language of people around the airport. No self-awareness about safety, no furtive looks, no avoidance of touch, or shrinking from a straggle of people. My luggage came to me and the car rode into town. It was a Sunday. I asked my guide, “are those kids at school today?”

    “Yes, they are just closing,” he said, no rebuke in his eyes. Boys and girls walked alone, in twos, in groups. They were heading home from school. It was the main artery of the city. Lining both sides of the road were shops, offices, homes, including an estate I would visit with the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, in a few hours.

    But once I met my host, Gov. Shettima, who was driving his car himself in a convoy, we set off to my pet curiosity: schools. Our first visit was at the Yerwa Government Girls Secondary School. The girls knew he was coming. As soon as the gates flung open, a chant exploded into the air: “Baba oyoyo, baba oyoyo.” The girls, all swathed in hijabs, in their hundreds splashed around the vehicles and security had to plough a path for the governor. He had brought some supplies, food and drinks, for the school. He met with the head prefect, Aisha Alhaji Ibrahim, and wanted to ascertain that meals came to the students. He gave his direct phone number to the ward and asked her to convey to him update. He warned the staff not to interfere with her on pains of official repercussion.

    It is a boarding school, but beside the gate 60 classrooms were under construction to be fitted with air-conditioners and tiled floors. It is one of the evidence of a city and state on the rebound after years of rapine and dislocation from the militants called Boko Haram.

    I reflected as we left the school full of ecstatic young females what happened just a few years ago. Then Governor Shettima had lamented how even the Maiduguri Airport was like a minefield, where the hoodlums bested our soldiers and the ragtag army had hoisted its flags in about two-thirds of the state. That was the Jonathan era. Enter Muhammadu Buhari, and the army has pounded the terror band back to the forest. The city, not completely immune from the irrational work of the suicide bomber, has enjoyed far-reaching relief that it can put up and secure a place like Yerwa Government Girls Secondary Schools.

    Other secondary schools like this are erupting all over the state. The other that caught my fancy has not yet been named.

    “We are trying to get either German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Michelle Obama to come and commission it when it is ready,” said Governor Shettima. Whoever comes will have it named after her. It’s another girls’ schools. Walking through the premises brought to mind the tragedy of the Chibok girls. The classrooms are being fortified with bullet-proof doors and windows. Inside the air-conditioners will be supported by ceiling fans. The hotels are at advanced state of construction including the hostels, dining block and kitchen, all bullet-proofed. Gov. Shettima wants it ready for inauguration in January for 1,300 students.

    Primary schools also are getting attention. In one of the poorest areas of the city, a school was ready for inauguration. Located in an area called Bulunkutu Talakawa, it is a project of partnership with SUBEB as well as corporate concerns like SEC and even Oando. It has a capacity for 300 pupils but will take off with 210, 90 for nursery and 270 for primary. Setting up the school is one thing, rallying the young in the area to attend is another. All facilities are ready, including chalkboards, furniture, teachers, toilets. Gov. Shettima has made available 100 bags of rice, beans and cooking oil available for feeding.

    While undertaking his pre-inauguration inspection, he observed that the walls were not high enough and not even barbed. Criminals could scale to plunder and murder. So, he ordered crowing the walls with barb wires as pre-condition for take-off. As we drove out of the school, a huge number of lads and girls lined the street. Even the school did not have the capacity to cater for the needs of the area. It is called Bulunkutu Talakawa because it is the hovel of the poor. Another area is called Bulunkuta Abuja where the relatively comfortable live. Along the road, the governor’s fears were confirmed with idle young men sitting  on high walls not far from the school.

    Not far away was a primary school the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, had supported with all the facilities of a modern education for a school for orphans. It is walled in, with sober painting, secure doors and windows. In another part of the city, a CBN complex has been acquired by the state government and converted into over 400 units of flats, both two and three bedrooms. Occupants must adopt an orphan as condition. Schools are under way on an adjoining land to cater to the estate.

    The IDPs are being accommodated in this schools as way to bring back a city and prostrate people back to life.

  • Ayomike: A man for all seasons

    Ayomike: A man for all seasons

    I had planned privately to surprise him with a visit in Warri. I had never met him in person. On phone we spoke so regularly it seemed we had even hugged. There had been no tactile contact between me and Johnson Oritsegbubemi Sunday Ayomike. When news came that he passed, I was more than heartbroken. I lost a father. When he turned 90 in April, I asked him how he felt.

    He said, “my body is weak, but my mind is very active.” He was a man of the mind. I recall our many intellectual engagements, whether about a derailing political elite, the decline of debate, the materialism of a decaying generation, or a column he read, or the failure of our people to appreciate the study and sublime compulsion of history, he was always high on the marks.

    As an author, he sent me several books, those he wrote and classics he had read. He was immersed in Itsekiri history, and he was sensitive to what German philosopher Nietzsche called the “theory of eternal return,” how history comes when we think we have forgotten it. I cannot forget his prelude to any important point during our phone dialogues, “look, Sam…” and he would go off from idea to idea. As The Nation newspaper editorial characterised him, he was a renaissance man, an author, administrator, teacher, raconteur, activist, peacemaker, curator, historian. My former teacher, Professor Femi Omosini, who taught me the renaissance years, described Leonardo Dan Vinci, as “a universal man of the renaissance, a jack of all trade and master of many.” Ayomike was no Dan Vinci, he was our own JOS, our own renaissance man, who combined ethnic fidelity with nationalist elan. We don’t have men like him anymore. O de ju ma.

  • Limits to buck-passing

    A weird current of political discourse emerged in the last one week or so. Though the idea has been canvassed by regime supporters with varying degrees of emotion, its connotation has remained largely imprecise.

    Comptroller-General of Nigerian Customs, Hameed Ali fired the first shot when he claimed more than 50 per cent of positions in Buhari’s government were handed over to members of the PDP who fought against the actualization of his regime. Hear him: “But I must confess here that we have been infused by people who were not part of this journey and these people are the ones that call the shots today. That is why we are derailing”.

    Other key personages have publicly talked along the same line. And in the heat generated by the embarrassing reinstatement of former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abulrasheed Maina, the presidency claimed loyalists of the former regime in government were responsible for that mess.

    Such is the new dimension the blame game has taken. Before now, it was a fad for the Buhari regime to blame the previous government for the mismanagement of the economy, looting of the nation’s treasury, mindboggling corruption in the land and virtually all that is bad with the country. But with two and a half years gone, people are increasingly losing patience with such drab, irritating and escapist antics.

    Those who voted in Buhari did so in the hope that he will make the needed difference. Having voted for the change which the APC promised, the social contract they entered into is for the government to take immediate steps to make the needed difference. What they have been getting instead has been a bundle of excuses, buck-passing and blame game.

    Having overstretched the limits of these excuses and sensing public cynicism to its aversion to assuming responsibility for its actions, the same government has found a new window for doing the same old thing. This time, the strategy is to blame those in Buhari’s government dubbed PDP members for the policy summersaults and scandals that cast serious slur on the integrity of the regime especially, its much touted war against corruption.

    That was the reading of the claim by his media aides that loyalists of Jonathan regime in government were responsible for Maina’s reinstatement. That was also the purport of Ali’s claim and others who spoke in the same vein.    With the leaked correspondence from the Head of Service of the federation, we now know better. It is clear the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister for Justice, Abubakar Malami who issued three letters in three months to stampede the Civil Service Commission into that unwholesome action was appointed by Jonathan and works for him. What of the president himself who was reported to have been briefed on the backlash of the action on the overall credibility and success of the war against corruption but apparently chose to ignore it?

    As the truth is in public domain, there are attempts to harass and intimidate Oyo-Ita for the leakage of her response to the query issued her. There is an attempt to make her a scapegoat for saying all she knew about the Maina mess. And the convenient angle is to accuse her of leaking her reply. And who says the Chief of Staff Abba Kyari’s office could not have leaked the letter?  So why issue her query in the first instance when it is clear that the powers that be were privy to that development?

    It is confounding that the same president who brushed aside protocol to order the sack of Maina when the lid to the scandal was blown open is reported to be in the know of the reinstatement. Evidence of complicity by his government in the Maina scandal is not in doubt. Not with the disclosure by the family that he was lobbied by the government to return and be part of its change agenda. Not with the revelation that the DSS provided him security. The processes that smuggled the fugitive into the country and to the civil service are responsible for wherever he is hiding today. So nobody should sacrifice Oyo-Ita for doing her job very well. In a clime that rewards merit and hard work, she would have been highly rewarded for seeing the future.

    It is a sad commentary that a government which seeks to justify its legitimacy by fighting corruption is being serially ensnared in covert moves to cover the same manifestations by its functionaries. The Maina incident is one embarrassment, too many. The war against corruption has sadly lost traction. Not with the tepid handling of allegations of corruption against the former SGF, Babachir Lawal and DG of NIA, Ayo Oke. It took too long for the president to sack the two men.

    Ironically, key functionaries of this regime accused of one corruption infraction or the other increase by the day. The impression we get is that many of the current office holders are not on the page with Buhari on the war against corruption. Not only have many been entangled in one corruption allegation or the other, it strikes as a verity of corrupt people fighting corruption. It is left to be imagined what will be left in a situation where corruption is left to fight itself. Unless urgent and very credible measures are taken to reeve up the momentum and credibility of the campaign, the battle is as good as lost.

    If current office holders cannot key into the anti-corruption crusade; if attitudes, orientations and dispositions of the public still predispose them to corruption, it shows how detached and artificial the current strategy for fighting corruption is. Above all, it indicates clearly that we are yet to get at the root of the objective conditions that reinforce and sustain corruption in a plural society. That has been the missing link.

    Perhaps, having realized the wide gap between its preachments on corruption and facts on the ground, regime supporters have now invented a new technology that seeks to hold PDP members in government liable for the failures of the Buhari government.

    It is unclear what those who canvass this view want to achieve. It is also cloudy what they mean by PDP members in Buhari’s government. In the face of this definitional ambiguity, the first temptation is to assume that the reference is to former PDP members who coalesced into the APC during the 2015 elections. Amongst them were former governors some of who are serving as ministers now, former legislators and key politicians with considerable war chest et al. These were the people that made it possible for the APC to defeat an incumbent president. Could it be the group Ali is fingering for not sharing in the ideals of the party that will disappear when it comes to blame sharing for the failure of the regime? Could it be they that occupy more than 50 per cent of the positions in the current regime?

    If the reference is to this category of people, then those who canvass that idea are being very selfish and unserious. Didn’t they know they were of the PDP stock when they were lobbying them to decamp? You cannot use them to scale into power only to turn round and accuse them of capturing most of the offices. It makes no sense at all. Even then, the APC was a marriage of strange bedfellows and has largely remained so years after it secured victory. What is expected of a serious political party; a party of the future is conscious efforts to wild together the diverse orientations and tendencies to the amalgam into a cohesive body sharing in a common ideology. That is yet to happen.

    The other assumption is that the reference is to all those in government-civil and public servants. This is further reinforced in the absence of evidence that Buhari appointed members of the PDP into his government. There is no evidence of any PDP member in all his political appointments to talk of 50 per cent. So we are left with career men and women as the possible targets. If that assumption is correct, Ali and his supporters would want civil/public servants to be replaced with APC members. What a dangerous and impracticable idea!

    It is difficult to comprehend the logic of this new political language. And unless its foot soldiers come clear with facts and figures of the PDP members stalling the progress of this government, their claims add up to nothing. It is a cheap tactics in buck-passing that signposts how low the government has descended.

  • Paideia

    Paideia

    Nestled in one of the high-flown suburbs of Lagos, The Civic Centre was a place for a sober event. Not often do ex-classmates amass big names to a hall to ponder the dynamic of secondary education in Nigeria. Especially at a time like this when few pay attention to our schools. Rather, everyone who can afford it wants their wards out of the county.

    It was the old boys of Government College, Ughelli, the September 1973 set, who organised it. I am an old boy of that set, and we sat together early in the year to work out a podium for a fest of ideas. We had it October 26. The chairperson was a well-known intellectual, exponent of mathematics and the first female vice chancellor in Nigeria, Professor Grace Alele-Williams. Another distinguished female, former teacher and educationist Senator Oluremi Tinubu, also starred in the event. From the north was one of the brightest minds anywhere, Governor Kashim Shetima of Borno State. Another well-honed personage, the charismatic Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State. Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode was represented by his special adviser on education, Obafela Bank-Olemoh. The chairman of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, came around as well. The JAMB Registrar Professor Ishaq Oloyede missed the event but distinguished it with a representative Professor Afeez Oladosu.

    We had a good range, and the audience enjoyed each speaker. Professor Alele-Williams surprised me when she showed up, and she observed it when she materialised at the venue. She had doubted she would make it because of the imperative of countervailing event. But there she was. And she kicked off the event with engaging speech about the decay of education and she spoke on the virtue of not only education quality but the essence of gender sensitivity. Setting of the panel discussion was Governor Dickson, who spiced his speech with jibe at GCU for not granting him admission he applied. But his heart was still with the school. He spoke about grassroots education and his speech showed how he was retrieving the state from the backwaters to the modern ways. He emphasised the value of secondary education and reeled out what he had done with the Ijaw Academy as well as his being the first governor to install boarding school in the state. He was challenged when he became governor as to where he would get the funding for boarding schools. “Now in Bayelsa, we have almost 15 model boarding schools.” About 3000 students are now on government scholarships.

    Borno State Governor Shettima stunned everyone with his delivery. Levitating his talk with philosophy, statistics and anecdote. A politician with the fastest rising profile in the country, he had impressed Nigerians with his courage and aplomb in the nasty days of Boko Haram. Many saw at the colloquium that it was no hollow courage. Deep intellectual engagement and moral vision were on display that day from his lips. With clear-eyed diction and eloquence, he spoke of efforts he was making to turn Borno around in the wake of militant depredations, a thing I have personally witnessed and will document soon on this page. He spoke on the girl child but warned that if we do not take care of the youths today they will take care of us tomorrow.

    Senator Tinubu gave a pungent delivery about gender education. Speaking against the background as a former teacher, organiser of children and mobiliser for generational good, she warned about taking care of what we imbue the young with. She spoke with heart and mind to a rapturous audience. Pinnick draped the air with talk on sports and Prof. Oladosu who represented Prof. Oloyede spoke on standards.

    Gov. Ambode lamented the decline, which he chalked up to lack of funding. He noted that funding was not adequate, but innovative ideas. Code Lagos launched recently is one of such innovative ideas to vault students to global standards and students in the state will learn how to code in three years.

    From all that happened it was clear what we wanted. As we all know, education is not just about what we ingest from textbooks. But it counts. It is not just what we hear from the thespian fervour of our great teachers. We cannot discount that.

    It is not only about the strict regimen in the routine glory of a school day from dawn to dusk, including cleaning our bed spaces, ironing our uniforms, observing prep hours, etc. But we have to tally these into it as well.

    It is about all these. The lucubration, the punishments, the praises for a great essay in class, a smooth crack at a mathematical puzzle, a score at the football field, etc.

    This is education of the mind, body, and spirit, a light that lights everywhere. That creates what the Greeks designated as Paideia, which entails the cultural education that gives birth to a model citizen, what the British call a gentleman in a noble sense, or the American with a picture shorn of feudal overhang. In Nigerian, the closest I can associate with it is what the Yoruba call Omoluabi.

    That is the legacy of Government College, Ughelli, to us who have made it. We of the class of September 1973 are proud of this legacy, and whatever we do, whether we soar in the high places of the world or not, we know that we carry in us a sweet burden to do good to this society. And that is why we chose the topic for the Colloquium, Raising a Wise Generation.

    Unmistakably present was the poet and GCU old boy John P. Clark. Governor Shettima reminded us of his books, including America their America, Ozidi and Song of a Goat. Also his brother, another old boy Ambassador B. A. Clark materialised.

    GCU was as of 2003 a shadow of its old glory. A boarding school system had collapsed into day school, and weeds garlanded the landscape darkly. The classrooms blocks lost colour, and teachers were low-grade. Under the leadership of the late Gamaliel Onosode, who was the president of the old boys, it was decided to start work on the school. We needed N350 million to revive a school of one mile square and bigger than most universities, with nine halls of residence, four standard football fields, two hockey fields, an athletics field,  two lawn tennis courts, etc. The old boys have raised over N500 million.

    We are still working. Boarding is back, buildings restored and still more work to do. My class has set out to build a tech centre for modern technology from technical drawing, to metal work, to wood work, to software and hardware, computer skills, programming, etc. Gov. Shettima wondered why Nigerians were still focused on mundane matters when the world was under the spell of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc.

    What we are doing at GCU should be an eye-opener to all. Our great schools are in decline. Was it not a disgrace that Queens College was grappling with deaths from water? As senator Tinubu said, education is not for government alone. GCU old boys are asking to be part of governing council. If we are to save the secondary school, we need to follow the model of GCU. Government College Umuahia that gave us the great Achebe is doing same.

  • Maina mess

    Certain developments in this country, oftentimes cast serious slur on our commitment to high standards of morality in public office. Even as our leaders regale in high-sounding ideals and platitudes, what you find on ground is often, a mismatch between precepts and practice.

    The failure of most government programmes and policies is largely attributable to dissonance between policy formulation and implementation. We are not lacking in new ideas. Neither are we in short supply of the needed interventions to extricate the country from the myriad of challenges that left citizens as hewers of wood and fetchers of water despite our huge resources endowments.

    When it comes to implementation, what you find is an uncanny display of negative ingenuity by some people to sabotage new policies for self-serving interests. Extant structure of our federation where the centre holds everything and controls everything, accentuating primordial competition has been fingered for this attitudinal dysfunction.

    That may also explain the current mess where a former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdulrasheed  Maina, declared wanted four years ago on allegation of mismanaging N2 billion of the funds, could sneak into the country, reinstated into his former office, promoted and paid arrears of salaries and allowances. He had carried on in this infamy under questionable security protection for six months until the lid was blown off a fortnight ago.

    For a regime that touts the war against corruption as one of its three cardinal programmes, the incident was such a monumental embarrassment that President Buhari, brushing aside all protocols ordered his immediate sack. The propriety of the president’s intervention in such a purely civil service matter has been questioned. It however, shows how bad the situation had become.

    But that is beside the point. The key issue is that a man declared wanted by the EFCC and placed on Red Alert by INTERPOL beat our security architecture and returned to the country unnoticed. And without answering to charges hanging on his head, he was re-absorbed into the civil service on promotion and even scheduled for another promotion examination. It is not clear how the correspondence for his re-absorption arose in the first instance. All that we have been told is that the letter for his re-engagement emanated from the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami.

    How the mater got to Malami before he issued his advice is yet unclear. We are yet to be told if Maina petitioned Malami directly or he acted unilaterally. Available records indicate that Malami issued a letter to the Federal Civil Service Commission FCSC in April to give consequential effect to the judgment that voided the warrant issued against Maina which formed the basis for his query and subsequent dismissal.

    The FCSC deliberated on the matter and requested the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation OHSF to advise the permanent secretary, Ministry of Interior to consider the AGF letter and make appropriate recommendation to the commission. The OHSF consequently advised the Interior ministry which at its Senior Staff Committee meeting on June 22, considered the AGF letter seeking the re-instatement of Maina on grade level 17 but recommended that he be re-engaged on grade level 16 instead.

    This was communicated to the OHSF which in turn forwarded the recommendations to the FCSC for action. The FCSC considered the recommendation from the Interior ministry and approved Maina’s re-instatement with effect from 2013, the date he was sacked from service. The commission also approved his participation in the next promotion examination to grade level 17. That is the level of correspondence that smuggled a fugitive accused of corruption back into the civil service.

    We are not privy to the critical details and other observations by the OHSF and the Interior ministry. But it is strange that the official file of the suspect containing the grounds for his sack could pass the various departments and commissions without anyone raising questions. This suggests high level of conspiracy in the turn of events that brought about the mess the Maina affair has become. But even as the critical details of all that culminated in this sordid pass are yet to be unravelled, it is clear both the AGF, Abubakar Malami and the Minister of Interior, Abdulraman Danbazzu cannot escape culpability for this national embarrassment.

    It is curious Malami relying on the said voiding of the warrant of arrest, glossed over the serious case of corruption hanging over Maina’s head. Not done with clearing him for the alleged offence, he went further to recommend his re-instatement and promotion. One had expected the chief law officer of a regime that trumpets anti-corruption campaign to have taken more than a casual perspective of the Maina situation. He should have been in the fore front of raising questions with recommendation for the suspect to clear himself of the alleged offences. Either by errors of omission or commission, he failed this procedural test.

    More than any other character to the controversy, Malami has serious questions to answer. Though collusion between him and Danbazzu cannot be ruled out, details of how the former’s advice was sought before he issued the contentious memo must be unravelled. And it is only after that has been ascertained that the faces behind the mask will emerge.

    It is clear the president is not on the same page with some of his lieutenants in the war against corruption. Perhaps, that accounts for the nosedive in the anti-corruption campaign. Aside the occasional seizures and forfeiting of properties of officers of the former regime, it does appear the war means little to some of the current office holders. And the tepid handling and cover up of suspected infractions by the same government have not remedied matters.

    Nobody will be surprised if the government comes up with excuses seeking to extricate the two ministers neck deep in the Maina mess. It will not sound strange if those responsible for the security privilege Maina enjoyed since his return are not exposed to face the wrath of the law. Reports that his re-instatement was in preparation for him to join the APC and contest the governorship election in Borno State in 2019 makes the matter more ridiculous. Buhari must act very fast to disabuse the impression gaining currency that anti-corruption meant little for people in his government. He must move fast to wield the big stick before the action and inactions of some of his officers rubbish whatever credibility is left of his anti-graft war. He should set example with some of his officers mired in one form of corruption scandal or the other.

    The attempt by some of his aides to blame imaginary sympathizers of the former regime for bringing back Maina makes no sense at all. Not with clear evidence of those who authorized the re-instatement. Not with the disclosure by the family of Maina that he was lobbied, persuaded and brought back to the country by this government. Not with the revelation by the same family that the same government was responsible for providing him DSS security. The government contrived this mess and must take clear steps to clear it. The way this matter is handled will say a lot about the much touted anti-corruption campaign.

    One vital point the opposition brandishes is that most of the people jailed during Obasanjo’s regime or impeached for corruption related offences were their party members and governors. That point cannot be wished away. And it has become more relevant in the face of attempts by regime supporters to blame loyalists of the former government for any and every thing including the most ridiculous. Buhari must demonstrate that he can wield the big stick against officers that give bad name to his administration. Or in the alternative, not bother us with the noise his anti-corruption campaign has become.

  • Don’t bother OVI

    Don’t bother OVI

    Ethnic entrepreneur Nnamdi Kanu came on the news last week for the wrong reason. Some mischief makers are asking Abia State Governor Okezie V. Ikpeazu to fish him out. When did Kanu ever become the problem of the state governor? Was it not the Operation Python Dance that had responsibility over the renegade? Was that not the issue of Abuja and the federal centre?

    When Kanu holed himself up in a false grandeur of Biafra leader, no one pointed an accusing finger at the State governor because he had nothing to do with it. If the man escaped, what were the soldiers and security agents doing? The real question should be, what did the security operatives know? Or did they not have their eyes on him? if so, who is to blame? They should let Gov. Ikpeazu do his job as Nigeria’s apostle of local content, focusing on how we can make a living and prosper by indigenising our taste through enterprise.

  • Buhari’s horde of witnesses

    It was interesting reading accounts of emergency witnesses seeking to exculpate President Buhari from the sectional interpretation of his request to the World Bank. The deluge of self-assigned witnesses followed disclosure by World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim that in their first meeting with Buhari, “he specifically said that he would like us to shift our focus to northern regions of Nigeria and we’ve done that”.

    Not unexpectedly, the statement at once, drew stern criticisms from several quarters given the sectional tinge it conveys. And for a country where sectional and primordial cleavages are always in contention, it is not surprising the length some critics have gone to impugn the integrity of the president as a sectional, clannish and biased champion. And when this is juxtaposed against some other past actions of his, the furore generated by the statement can be better understood.

    Kim is not a Nigerian. Neither can he be said to nurse any ulterior motive either in running the president down or in the politics of the country. He was just responding to reporters’ questions. All this add serious weight to the account of his encounter with Buhari and the avalanche of criticisms that have trailed it.

    Apparently sensing danger in the surge of the attacks, two of the governors present at the occasion, Kashim Shettima of Borno State and Adams Oshiomhole, then governor of Edo State hurriedly jumped into the witness box with their own accounts of what they understood the president to have said. The main thesis of their evidence was that the president spoke against the background of the huge crisis in the north-east of Nigeria consequent upon the Boko Haram insurgency that had devastated the region.

    Buhari’s demand they said, was for more focus to the north-east given the peculiar circumstances of that region especially as Buhari had just taken over the mantle of leadership. The two witnesses were in agreement on this. They also pointed out that a governor from the south-west and south-east were equally present when Buhari made the demand. The purport of the latter is that the president could not have possibly made sectional demands with some southern governors in attendance. These governors are also Buhari’s witnesses and are there to corroborate their evidence. And since none of them has come up with anything to the contrary, neither has Kim produced fresh evidence to sustain the sectional undertone in his statement, nor is he likely to do so, we are not left with any other option that to give Buhari the benefit of doubt.

    Then, there could be two possible sources to the misunderstanding: It is either Kim did not fully comprehend what Buhari said or Buhari failed to articulate and communicate his views very lucidly or both.  Whichever, the responsibility for whatever gap there is to the discussion should rest squarely on the shoulders of Buhari. It is therefore unfair for some self-assigned witnesses and other regime apologists to be fingering imaginary enemies for allegedly twisting the discussions out of context.

    Kim’s statement is unambiguous. The much that can be argued as regime supporters have done, is that it should be situated within the context it was spoken, whatever that means. This position could also be a subterfuge to evade reality. Even then, it is still the duty of the speaker to clearly contextualize his statement to leave no room for ambiguity. And if anybody has issues with the statement, he should direct his anger to the man who failed to communicate or contextualize his statement such that Kim took his plea to be for the entire northern part of the country.

    So the attempt to blame phoney enemies for allegedly twisting the president’s statement out of context collapses irretrievably in the face of this reality. There is nothing in Kim’s account that was twisted by critics. The meaning given to it is precisely what it conveys. The main issue was perhaps, in the president’s inability to contextualize his statement such that Kim could fully understand him.  Ironically, the misinterpretation worked in favour of the northern region as the bank went ahead to focus its development in that region. Vicariously, the north is the beneficiary of that communication gap since the bank did what they understood the president to have said. So who do we blame for this? Or are we now going to re-direct such development projects to the south that has been adversely affected by the inability of the president to put his request in context?

    Beyond this however, why do we wallow in self-denial of elements of preferential treatment by leaders either present or past? Is the evidence of Buhari’s horde of witnesses meant to imply that he is a detribalized leader with no trace of sectional prompting? Or put differently, why did that level of public outrage trail the disclosure by Kim?

    Answers to these lie in public perception of Buhari’s image. Those accused of capitalizing on Kim’s statement to get even with the president were not just fouling the air. Neither can it be said they were unnecessarily alarmist and unpatriotic. Some of them may have been very hard on the president. But they adduced corroborating evidence between his previous actions and utterances and the one in contest. If that was the first time Buhari was entangled in sectional controversy, that could perhaps, have been excused. But it was not.

    Around the same period he met with the World Bank, he was also lampooned for saying he would give preferential treatment to sections that gave him 95 per cent votes as against areas that gave him five percent. Since much of his votes came from the north, the purport of that statement was not in doubt. Even then, his initial personal ap pointments were almost exclusively northern, composed mainly of his relations. His key military appointments were also disproportionately skewed in favour of the north brazenly excluding a major tripod on which this country was erected.

    The excuse then was that he needed to appoint people he could trust. Those who canvassed this view lost sight of the absurdity in having a sitting president with a mindset that he can only trust and work with his close relations and people of his ethnic stock in a country of about 180 million. The moment such convoluted and puerile excuse was accepted, was the time the stage was set for what we are currently harvesting. Even if we excuse Buhari for perhaps, not contextualizing his request to the World Bank, it is not possible de-odorize the sectional stench that pervades his actions and major decisions.

    And when elections are fought along sectional and primordial lines as was in 2015, the outcome is not hard to predict. Why do we still place much premium on rotation, tribe and religion in political recruitment instead of merit, qualification and competence? In this, we can locate why there is bound to be suspicion Buhari is deploying the office to satisfy the north in the same prebendal fashion foremost political scientist, Richard Joseph characterized the politics of the Third World. That is why every section wants a shot at that office. Until we have whittled down the enormous powers at the centre, we are deluding in collective deceit assuming that the current pass would soon peter out from our political chessboard.

    So it should not surprise anyone if Buhari indeed asked the World Bank to focus on the northern region. He could have been doing that in many other areas without notice. After all, we have had people ask: what did Jonathan do for the South-south in his six years in office? Those averse to cries of sidelining of the South-east by the current regime are quick to point at the inability of their sons and daughters who allegedly dominated Jonathan’s government to do anything for their zone.

    Shettima and Oshiomhole may have succeeded in contextualizing Buhari’s request to the World Bank. They may have succeeded in saving him from himself in the instant case. Had the president adorned the toga of a statesman; had his previous actions and utterances not given out his sectional predilection, they would have had no cause to jump into the witness box with such frenzy. But then, can the leopard change its colours?

  • When silence means contempt

    When silence means contempt

    The president has always seen silence as a mark of dignity in a time of crisis. When he opens his mouth eventually, he spews out venom that neither gives him nor the office he occupies any form of dignity.

    Tall, gaunt, lean of face with a straight stare and loping strides, his smile comes across more like a lickspittle than a royal. Yet, behind that simpering exterior is a granite heart. However, little cunning or high thinking dresses up his hearty resolves. So, in the final analysis, what we have is not the Buhari of nobility but a pretension to the high moral act. Sometimes that façade confronts us in the form of silence.

    Occasionally he does speak. When he breaks his silence, he ruptures not only peace but logic. As I have noted in the past, Buhari’s soul is a battle between the martial impulses of his breeding and the entitlement of his ambience as a Fulani hierarch. And then there is a third. He has managed, since his ouster from power as head of state, to cultivate the talakawa. So, he sees himself as a sort of royal with a common touch. He is simultaneously on top and at the bottom, a prince and pauper, a head and herdsman, at once erupting from the floor and swooping down from heaven.

    How does such a man operate in a democracy? Well, unless democracy tames him, he will see it as his right to tame democracy. That is the war going on with the man we elected president. His silence on the N9 trillion scandal only portrays his contempt for institutions and persons who want to tame him like colt to the discipline and humility of popular persuasion. If democracy is about the triumph of popular persuasion over collective will, Buhari is bending to the side of the will. As French philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau has argued, collective will often cloaks despotic arrogance. Robespierre and Danton, even Napoleon, were culprits.

    As a soldier Buhari works with diktat. As a royal, he sees the world from the hill top. As a talakawa patron, he gives them love in his own light. In return, they give him worship. Democracy therefore will work for him the way he operates with the talakawa. He expects us to bow down to him. He is the king of our democracy. He abides the contradiction.  Men like Churchill or General Dwight Eisenhower had high-born sensibilities, but hey were cowed by the institutions of democracy. Buhari acts otherwise. The thing is that Buhari is not high-born, he has acquired the streak by age and his rise in the military and social graces of the land. When you expect to give, it means you define the love in your own image. The targets of your love only do one thing: worship you.

    What we have is the making of the Aristotelian tragic flaw. Like Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Buhari’s flaw is hubris.  That explains why his speeches and comments in times of crisis tend to be condescending.

    We witnessed it early in his tenure when he would not set up a cabinet. Or when his wife rattled him, or when he reacted to the scandal around his army chief, or when recently he fouled the air when he returned from his medical leave and came down in primitive anger against the Southeast. There are some storms he has never found worthy of his tongue. Chief among them is the poisonous lop-sidedness of his appointments. He is still mum on Babachir Lawal and Ayo Oke, and even the rumbles among his principal officers in the presidency. Some jump out of the shadows. Like his request to a World Bank chief that the institution should focus work on the north.

    This perhaps explains why he has been frozen from the neck up in spite of the uproar over his NNPC appointments. So, following from that, why would we expect him to say something about the new tempest on Nigeria’s oil. All he did was retreat to is familiar terrain on the N9 trillion ambush of our national treasure.

    Now, he may see his silence has golden, as a way of standing above the rolling waters, of asserting his rectitude. But that could be so if he has come out with a line of wisdom through his lieutenants. His lieutenants have actually been quiet, too. It was all left in the hands of the culprit-in-chief to hand over the boil to his appointee, Maikanti Baru.

    If his explanations had found traction in reason, we could have pardoned the president. We could say, well, it was all a case of mistaking a mouse for an elephant. But the big elephant in the room has remained one man: Muhammadu Buhari.

    He acts as though it is mere matter. It will pass over, his image as a man of purity will shield him, so he does not have to be above board.

    After all, some of his followers have been treating him as a god. They swear by him, they risk cholera by drinking water on dirt roads, they worship head on the ground as though on prayer ground. So how can he submit to mere mortals to explain.

    He does not need to explain when Baru says he sought permission from him (Buhari) to make such a consequential decision. He does not need to react when he bypasses the man he appointed to the position as board chairman of the NNPC. He does not see it fit that he set up a board that the NNPC Act invests with powers and a mere mortal he puts there as GMD subverts their authority and boasts about it in Buhari’s name. Does he not know that as president, the only person to whom he can hand over authority is a minister or vice president?

    The constitution says so. Or does he read the constitution? If he cannot delegate to himself since he is oil minister, he automatically hands over to his minister of state. By bypassing that, he has violated due process. And he does not want to talk about it? By the way, is it damning to note that these contracts were purportedly signed when he was on medical leave? He himself had said his men brought him files to sign in London. If he did not sign Baru’s, did he give him a nod. If he did, he violated the oath of office, and is that not enough for him to resign, or for impeachment proceedings to begin?

    Does he not know that matters like this should involve the BPP? Did he not hear the voice of Oby Ezekwesili on that? Did he not hear his GMD draw false equivalences by saying that Kachikwu did the same thing, therefore there was nothing wrong? Is that the way to fight corruption?

    If a man like Baru can play fast and loose with our endowment as a people, where do we place those who are faithful like Dakuku Peterside in NIMASA and Professor Ishaq Oloyede at JAMB. The president was quick to order the probe of the predecessors and rightly so. But he is easy on the humongous erring of his “man” Baru. They say it is not cash contract, and so not contract “as such.” Abi dem think say we be mumu?

    As far as this column is concerned, unless Buhari reviews and annuls the contracts, his war on corruption is melodious lie, an exercise in hypocritical grandstanding. He is therefore hiding in silence. The silence is roaring, and our ears are full with its every decibel.

  • Kachikwu/Baru diatribe

    Perusing the response of Group Managing Director of the NNPC (GMD-NNPC), Maikanti Baru to allegations against him by Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu shows clearly that the matter cannot be resolved in the court of public opinion.

    With yawning gaps and inability to address some of the substantive issues to the letter, an independent inquiry is the way to get at the root of the matter. Since Baru’s response following President Buhari’s directive raised new issues and therefore cannot put a seal to the controversy, it became difficult to fathom how the new issues will be addressed especially in the unlikely event that Kachikwu will come public with fresh facts.

    For a man still battling suspicion of having leaked his letter to the president to the media, he will be definitely hamstrung in taking on Baru to clear some of the new issues, inaccuracies and distortions he may find in that response. The dilemma is: should Kachikwu have responded to the new issues or not? If he did, he would be adding to the credibility baggage of a government whose image was badly dented by the weighty and scandalous disclosures. It could also be construed as a further attempt to discredit the government and enough grounds to associate him with the leakage of the letter.

    If he did not, he would have played into the hands of Baru and the government especially given the attempt in some quarters to dismiss the allegations as lacking in substance. There is no doubt that the government is uncomfortable with the turn of events and would seek every avenue to fault Kachikwu. Baru himself has been busy renting support as is evidenced by the solidarity visits/support for him by labour unions in the industry even when the allegations are yet to be determined.

    And one begins to ponder what business the unions have in a matter that is still unfolding. Or is it part of the culture of division and fear the minister referenced upon in his letter?

    Apparently to unknot this dilemma and save Kachikwu the burden of allowing Baru get away with some of the gaps; inaccuracies and inability to address some of the troubling issues, associates of the minister would not let go. They have come up with searing posers to show that the issues are not as simple as Baru has made the public to believe.

    The substance of Baru’s response is that extant laws and regulations do not mandate him to consult either the minister of state or the board of the NNPC in the award of contracts. Hear him: “the law or rules do not require a review or discussion with the minister of state, or NNPC Board on contractual matters”.

    He believes that since the president combines his executive powers with that of minister of petroleum, he has no business letting Kachikwu into the running of the affairs of the organization. And since he claimed no money was lost to the organization, it is deemed all the necessary and sufficient conditions for transparency and due process has been satisfied. He armed himself with the further claim that Kachikwu followed the same process when he held forth as the GMD of the NNPC.

    Hiding under this legal angle and the fact Buhari combines the portfolio of the petroleum minister with his executive position; Baru would want to be cleared of any wrongdoing even if he loses nothing taking the minister of state and the board into confidence. Ironically, that is not all there is to the legal dimension.

    Attention has been drawn to Section 130(2), 148(1) of the constitution and Section (1) of NNPC act. This section of the constitution deals with the powers of the president. Nowhere did that section allot the portfolio of the minister of petroleum to the president. In other words, it was not intended by the framers of the constitution that the president should usurp the powers of the minister of petroleum. So Baru cannot find safe haven in the legal angle since the constitution takes precedence over and above the NNPC and Procurement Act.

    Even then, issues have been raised regarding the claim that the Tenders’ Board rather than the Board of the NNPC has the responsibility to award contracts. The technicalities of these cannot be resolve here as they should be left to a commission of inquiry. But even without apportioning blames, it is obvious that Baru made a desperate attempt to take refuge under technicalities to evade the scandal of having the tenders’ board solely appointed by him as the final authority on contractual matters without reference to NNPC board.

    The same NNPC Act also stated that “the affairs of the corporation shall be conducted by a Board of Directors of the Corporation” and has overall supervisory powers of the corporation. How possible is it then to contend that these supervisory powers preclude the award of contracts. And what interest is served by ousting the board such roles in matters of contracts running into billions of dollars? Or put differently, what does Baru stand to lose if the board is taken along in such awards? Again, is the course of due process and transparency not advanced by openness rather that secrecy?

    Baru’s contention has to be taken with a pinch of salt given that even when he sidetracked the minister of state and presented some of these to the acting president for approval, he was duly advised to clear them with the minister. But he would not have any of this. It was therefore obvious that Baru was more interested in short cuts to circumvent the prying eyes of Kachikwu in the affairs of the corporation. Such conduct cannot further transparency and due process irrespective of the legal loopholes under which he sought to take refuge. There is more to it.

    He claimed Kachikwu as the GMD of the NNPC followed the same reporting line. In this, he is economical with the truth as the situations were quite different. As at the time Kachikwu reported to the president, there was no minister of state and no board for the NNPC. So, citing the instance to justify his situation cannot hold water. At best, it is an attempt to conceal information and deceive discerning members of the public.

    But even if Baru could conveniently hide under legal technicalities on the award of such humongous contracts, what laws supported the key appointments he made without either reference to the minister of state or the NNPC board he chairs? Is it surprising that he evaded aspects of this allegation against him? The fact of this casts serious slur on whatever point he sought to make on the position of the law on the award of contracts in the corporation. And as we have seen, even his claims are still largely provisional.

    Since new facts were adduced by Kachikwu’s loyalists to throw more light to the claims in Baru’s reply, the NNPC has come forward again with new claims associating the minister with some of the contracts it awarded and other decisions of the corporation. We may yet be treated with another response from those loyal to Kachikwu and the altercation will have no end.

    That is why an independent inquiry such that the Senate has promised to initiate points to the way forward. Such a panel of knowledgeable and legal minds will have the comfort of mind to go through our laws and make recommendations that will put a check to some of the embarrassing disclosures emanating from the current controversy.

    Beyond this, it is very clear Baru was merely exploiting gaps in extant laws to run the affairs of the NNPC as a sole proprietorship. The motive cannot further the course of due process and transparency. Even if one was tempted to give him the benefit of doubt on the position of the law in the award of contracts, the fact that he sidetracked both the minister of state and the board in making the controversial key appointments exposed the duplicity of his motive. Or is it surprising that the appointments excluded the South-east in the same manner Buhari excluded the zone in the composition of the board of the corporation.

    The government might be making efforts to cover up this huge embarrassment as was with similar cases where key officials of the regime were accused of corruption. But it cannot afford to leave the weighty allegations hanging without dire consequences to its touted war against corruption.

  • Et tu Jonat

    Et tu Jonat

    Ibe Kachukwu rocked the chair of his boss last week. The chair is not yet at anchor over his NNPC expose. It came like the dossier of betrayal. But while most Nigerians set eyes on the stark irony of a man of integrity facing the biggest allegation of fraud in Nigeria’s history, my mind went to three things. First to the second biggest fraud scandal in Nigerian history, which was also associated with Muhammadu Buhari. It was the N2.8 billion fraud, which in today’s money comes close to N9 trillion that his appointee, Maikanti Baru, allegedly freeloaded and crafted into a raft of bone-headed contracts.

    The second thing that came to mind is that elections have consequences because campaigns will always haunt us as voters. The third leads to the Otuoke chieftain, the serpentine Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. It was Jonathan who gave us Buhari, and if we weep today, let us go to where the rain started to beat us. It turned from drizzle into downpour. This is about betrayal, and how a man who gained the trust of a country became the ultimate turncoat.

    The man who once claimed a pan-Nigerian mandate became the pan-Nigerian Judas. This column will therefore look at the psychology of the man who made Buhari possible. I shall wait till next week before full comments on the N9 trillion scandal in the hope that the president will have something to say for himself. Kachukwu’s has launched a tomahawk missile at his integrity and he better have a nuclear shield. In any civilised clime, he should at least have uttered a preliminary statement, either confirming or denying Kachukwu’s report that Baru signed all those contracts with his approval. That was the cardinal sentence of the epistolary episode. It requires no investigation. He should know if he approved or did not, unless he claims that his ill-health subdued his memory. The narrative is more about him than his implant at the head of Nigeria’s honey pot.

    If Jonathan played Judas to his country, it should be no surprise that he had a habit of doing so to people who trusted him. But other than the nation he betrayed, he let down his region. The Niger Delta is Nigeria’s ware earth. He did little to elevate a area racked with militancy, massive poverty, environmental decay, educational drift and health hazards. I told my fellow Niger Deltans that Jonathan was not the one we needed to represent us. But sentiment overtook good sense, and the story is now in the history books.

    When he returned to Bayelsa after the Buhari Shellacking, he told a crowd in Yenagoa that he did not expect a rousing welcome. He said he thought “the people would stone me because I know I didn’t do much for you.”

    He turned into a taste of ashes the prophetic hope of Chief Awolowo when the sage said, “I look forward to the day, not in the far distant future when an in Jaw would be president of our republic or a vice or vice versa.” The top desire of many in the region was the construction of the east-west road. He left it fallow, a long, sprawling, treacherous stretch, lurking, serpentine and deadly, just like his psyche.

    He betrayed a region, and then he betrayed humans who made it happen for him. In that sense, he had something in common with the Owu chief, who put him there. We witnessed the last days of Yar’Adua. Obj came out swinging his rhetoric in Jonathan’s favour. The Owu chief gave birth to Yar’Adua, and in the uncertain days of the ex-president’s ill-health, Obj made it known he was ready to bury Umoru. Jonathan smacked his lips in the shadows, waiting to cruise to the throne. He eventually did, and then he played Brutus. People like Jonathan and Obasanjo are guilty of what psychologists call a fear of gratitude. They are afraid to say thank you because it would diminish them and take away from the swagger of their majesty.

    The same thing is tormenting the North Korean leader. The portly tyrant has lined up for death all those who knew him in his diaper days, including his uncle he executed. A Roman leader who rose from slave eliminated all those who knew him in his plebeian years. So, it was in character for Jonathan to go after the Owu chief and humiliate him. He even went as far as defanging him in his lair, Ogun State. He pulled the rug of his political structure and handed it to his foe, Buruji Kashamu. He also parried him after parleying with him to nominate Muraina Ajibola as speaker of the House of Representatives. He stunned OBJ by picking Mulikat Adeola. Other casualties were Gbenga Daniel and his daughter, Iyabo.

    Did he not betray Timipre Sylva? In this narrative of Bayelsa PDP, it was more of the betrayal of his former governor colleagues who sent quite of few emissaries of peace and reconciliation to the former president. He was cajoled and begged to let Sylva be. He would agree in an air of felicity and then turn back to his default Judas kiss.

    Recently some have wondered why the present Bayelsa State governor, Seriake Dickson, has barbed him and left him bloodied on the public square. Few forget that he never really wanted Dickson to succeed Sylva. He had another candidate who never made it. That explains why he never really embraced Dickson when he became governor. His wife, patience, publicly humiliated Dickson at public events, once shunning him in protocol in public. The Bayelsa governor showed extreme tolerance while Jonathan was president because he did not want to show a crack in the house while a fellow Ijaw man was president. I learnt that, in the Governors Forum election that deflated Jang, Dickson’s vote may have gone for Jang but his heart did not, because he did not want a public row on Jonathan’s home turf. Loyalty tests principles.

    One of the heartfelt betrayals for this author was the humiliation of the late Dora Akunyili. The woman set the template with a memo for the now famous Doctrine of Necessity that calmed subversive elements in the country and allowed Jonathan to sail to Aso Rock. He never saw the woman after he became Nigeria’s leader and Akunyili was treated with cold shoulder and denied access to Jonathan before she died.

    “The saddest thing about betrayal,” says an anonymous writer, “is that it never comes from enemies.” That was Jonathan. There is a reason Caesar says to Brutus, Et tu Brute. Not so much its meaning but that he says it in the native language. You too Brutus! But Shakespeare was kind to Caesar, who also stabbed Pompey, his boss, in the back. With betrayal, “there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. He was a man in whom I had an absolute trust.” That was Shakespeare in Macbeth, another turncoat tale.

    Sometimes betrayal is grand, about a man waking up to find out he had believed a lie, a bad leader, a quisling. Like in The Remains of The Day, a novel by the latest literature Nobel Laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro. A butler learns late in life he had aped his master to endorse the wrong philosophy like Nazism. On a personal level, he failed who should have been the love of his life.

    Like the butler, GEJ betrayed both country and friends. He also betrayed his birth region. When such things happen, people look elsewhere for succour. Buhari came along with the lure of integrity. Have we made a mistake on that? The N9 trillion scandal must not be left to go the way of other scandals. If it is the biggest scandal, it should not be the biggest cover-up.