The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Sherriff’s certificate

    Sherriff’s certificate

    Going home is always an education. I was at Warri recently for a royal fest, but I had eye on a project, a massive flyover project in the city that the Delta State Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori set in motion late last year. From the airport, I did not wait for long to see. The car ran into a traffic jam. In Warri? This was not Lagos. I asked the driver, “wetin dey cause this go slow na?” He replied, “na Sherrif bridge o,” he replied cheerfully.

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     That part of town was now different. The contractors created a bedlam of service to the city with cranes here and there, traders humming to profits and workers’ shirts and trousers whose colours had succumbed to the imperatives of dust and other materials of work. From the beginning, the flyover curved into space and I observed a happy disruption to the life of the Wafarians as the residents called themselves. Somebody asked after I saw the flyover, “the governor try?” I answered in the affirmative.it is good to see a mega project in my childhood city after years of paralysis. It is good to see a project rise from the ground into a potential marvel. I hope that much progress will continue. Governor Oborevwori has shown of late that he wants nothing but quality. He cancelled a contract to build a model stadium in Warri because of a bumbling contractor. He has revamped major arteries like Lower and Upper Erejuwa Roads and security has brought back night life. His thoroughness made him order a contractor back to site on the Isheagu-Ewulu Road in Aniocha Local Government. Hence, former President Goodluck Jonathan, in a flush of political innuendo, said the best certificate the Sheriff can advertise is his work for his people. So far, it’s A on that report card.

  • Imo Police and stranger kidnappers

    Imo Police and stranger kidnappers

    That kidnap incidents hardly attract newspaper headlines any more in this country is just stating the obvious. The metastasizing nature of the malfeasance should ordinarily be a guide in this direction.

    What may attract public attention to this criminal activity is perhaps, the new dimension it assumes from time to time and its gravity. That was precisely the situation when an Abuja-Kaduna train was attacked with fatalities and scores herded inside impenetrable forests where they languished for months.  

    The same sentiments coloured the recent kidnap of 20 medical students somewhere in Benue State on their way to an event. The significance of the later incident does not lie as much in the sheer number of the abductees as in their would-be profession.

    Before this incident, many commercial transport buses had been waylaid by bands of criminals and herded into the forests where they had horrifying encounters, securing their freedom after paying huge sums of money as ransom. If such incidents were reported at all, not much attention was given to them.

    When last week, national dailies came awash with headlines on the busting and arrest of a five-man kidnap gang terrorising Obinze and Avu in the Owerri West Local Government Area of Imo State, one was taken aback as to the reason for the special media attention. What is the big deal in smashing a gang of five seemingly amateur kidnappers? Is it in the sheer number of those arrested, borne out of special interest in security issues in Imo State or what?

    But a cursory reading of the story began to indicate that there was really a revealing dimension to the story that may have been responsible for the headline focus. And that has to do with the dramatis personae in the alleged criminality.

    What were the issues?  The story told by the Imo State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Henry Okoye in a statement was that the police anti-kidnap squad arrested a five-man gang of kidnappers terrorising Obinze and Avu communities in the Owerri West LGA of the state after the kidnap of a 26-year old woman from her Obinze residence.  The gang which was said to be behind most of the kidnappings in that vicinity had held their victim captive in the forest for days before she was freed by the police, unharmed.

    Among the items found on gang members were one pump-action gun, five cartridges, two daggers, a cutlass and an assortment of items suspected to be charms. That was not all.

    When they were profiled by the police, their identities gave them out as, Umaru Usman, from Mauree, Sokoto State,  Tukur Yau from Dawakin Kudu in Kano State, Musbau Sabo from Warsaw LGA in Kano State, Abdul Ibrahim from Sokoto and Jubrin Idris also from Sokoto State.

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    It was only then it struck that the reason the arrest attracted generous reportage in the national media may not be unconnected with the identity of the arrested suspects. All of them are non-indigenes of the state; having come from the far northern parts of the country to hibernate in the forests at someone else’s backyard to commit crimes.

    It was therefore not for nothing that the Imo State Police Command took pains in detailing the names of the suspects and their states of origin. In matters of this nature, it is not unusual for the security agencies to withhold such details just to play down the fault-lines of our federal order.

    But that consideration was waived apparently on account of the mortal harm kidnapping and sundry criminalities have wrought on lives and properties in the state in the last couple of years. What we have seen since the festering insecurity in the state has been a tendency by security agencies to blame any and every criminality in the southeast on purported self-determinations agitators. And it has been serving their purpose even at the risk of obfuscating the complexity of the issues at play.

    This mind-set has tended to blur full comprehension of the character and dimensions of the criminalities that have left sorrow and awe on many families with socio-economic activities at their lowest ebb. So if the police busted a notorious kidnap gang terrorising some communities and it happens they are all strangers to the area, that is something worthy of note. You cannot effectively fight crime if you do not understand its character and dimensions.

    That may have been the rationale for giving out the names and states of origin of the suspects as well. We now know that some of the criminal activities in the state are solely organised and directed by bands of stranger elements taking refuge in the forests. It also gives an inkling into the mortal danger allowing people of questionable motives unhindered access to the forests and bushes at the backyards of the indigenous population portend.

    This is not the first time a band of stranger criminals terrorising the same local government will be unmasked in Imo State. In January last year, the state police command in conjunction with local vigilante similarly stormed a forest between Avu and Ihiagwa in the same local government and arrested five kidnap suspects.

    Their names given by the police in a statement then were, Muazu Awuta, Abdullahi Abubakar, Ozeru Sabo, Saddam Sulieman and Bashir Yahaya. All of them were from Jau LGA in Jigawa State.

    When the forest was combed, two decomposing bodies, telephones, shoes and wristwatches among other items, were found. Five operational motorcycles belonging to the suspects were also found within the vicinity.

    When the two incidents are paired, certain facts begin to emerge. The first is that the kidnap rings are non-indigenous to the state as they are composed exclusively by stranger elements. The other which is a corollary of the first, is that the forests provided them the cover for their illegal enterprise. The discovery of motorcycles also suggests they may have hidden under the cover of commercial bike riders to perpetrate their heinous crimes in the state.

    These are the clues the law enforcement agencies are expected to work on to diminish crimes and render its manifestations a dangerous enterprise. But the revelations by the two incidents are not entirely new. They are encapsulated in the age-long agitations against open grazing of cattle.

    The main grouse against open cattle grazing in recent years has been on account of the cover it gives sundry criminals to hide in the forests to levy war on the rest of the society. Ungoverned forests and bushes have been the greatest impediment to the war against kidnapping and ancillary criminalities.

    Incidentally, the complex politics of open cattle grazing as opposed to modern forms of animal husbandry has not helped matters. And with the presence of herdsmen in the forests, it has been a daunting task drawing a line between the genuine herders and the criminal bands taking advantage of the situation to commit sundry crimes.

    Had the ban on open cattle grazing in parts of the southern states been effective, it would have been pretty difficult for the criminal ring of stranger elements to find abode in the forests at the backyards of the indigenous people.  Then, no stranger element would have had any excuse to lurk around the forests at other peoples’ backyard. 

    So the issues are clear. The reason somebody will come from Sokoto, hide in the forest at my backyard and attack me at will, is because of the presence of herdsmen which blurs differentiation between the genuine ones and the criminals.  The solution is simple. Whether our leaders find the political will to address this time bomb, will be a measure of their seriousness in finding lasting solutions to festering insecurity fast drifting the country to the precipice.

    But there is another activity in the forests that injects complications to the security of host communities – the activities of another band of stranger elements purporting to be hunters. Writing under the title, ‘Hunters or criminals in disguise’, this writer had in this column drawn attention to complications this activity injects into the festering insecurity.

    The article followed reports from Imo, Ondo and Delta states of the presence of stranger elements dropped off in various locations with dogs and some ammunitions purporting as hunters. A social crusader in Imo State, Chinonso Uba had in a widely circulated video, queried their motive and called for regular combing of the forests.

    Ondo State security outfit, Amotekun had arrested 149 of such people in black spots notorious for kidnapping and sundry criminalities. But the Delta State police command which arrested and profiled some others curiously certified them as genuine hunters even when guns were found on them. Despite the curious verdict by the Delta police, the puzzle remained what business stranger elements with zero knowledge of the forests had invading those areas in such numbers. What kind of gaming will take them from the far north with their dogs and arms to the forests of the local people without authorisation from the local community? The answer can be located in the busting of the two criminal gang of stranger elements hiding under the cover of the forests to terrorise Imo communities.

  • A royal way to prize

    A royal way to prize

    It was a first and a fest. The Warri Kingdom was feting itself, and it paraded a grandeur of a roll call consisting of some of its prominent sons and daughters.

    Piloting all this was the king himself, Ogiame Atuwatse III, CFR, complete in suave aura and regal charisma, the crown, the regalia, and a train that included two boys.

    One of them is the ofongbo, or horn blower, who heralds his presence.

     The other is the omuda or sword bearer.

    And why not?

    The Ogiame was marking his third year on one of Africa’s most storied thrones. The celebrations strode day after majestic day, including in ancient Ode Itsekiri.

    Its crescendo was in the palace hall, packed with guests and subjects, and afire with the joie de vivre and pride of a glorious paradox: a kingdom flourishing in a democracy. Other than the festal optics, the king was setting a standard in monarchy: a meritocracy.

    So, he set up the Royal Iwere Society (RIS), a platform of civic engagement not only within the Warri and Delta State but going to far-flung reaches in Nigeria and the world.

     He inaugurated the first set of awardees of what is now known as the Royal Order of Iwere (ROI).

    On the list were Sam Amuka, the trailblazing journalist, veteran and grandee of the pen, Amaju Pinnick, OFR, renowned football administrator and NFF veteran, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, executive vice president NAPIMS and a corporate maven, Dr. Dere Awosika, MFR, a well-known Nigerian technocrat and former permanent secretary in three ministries, Julius Rone, OFR, a mainstay of the gas industry often called the gas king, Omatsola Ogbe, a well-known development expert who heads the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, Ade Mabo, a Harvard-trained entrepreneur and philanthropist, Alfred Temile, an oil and gas giant,  Misan Harriman, a world-renowned photographer and Eworitsewarami Justin Wilbert, a whiz-kid who stunned the academic world as a student of the famous Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja by clutching nine A1s in nine subjects at WAEC.

     Ogbe was not present and his investiture was deferred.

     Ditto Harriman, who had an urgent international assignment.

    Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan received her award virtually.

    The rest were present, clothed in Itsekiri wrapper and top with beads hugging their torsos.

    One after the other they danced before the crowd and king as they were named to receive their honours. Each honoree danced with two other men, including a palace chief who nominated them, and the solemn grace of the Itsekiri dance steps energized an approving audience. Some of the acceptance speeches stood out, including those of Amuka, Amaju, Mabo and Awosika.

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    Amuka took a humble tack on his honour as usual, not referring to his exploits as a professional and a John the Baptist of the profession.

     He rather orated in Itsekiri, manifesting his eloquence and praising Iwere and the king for the honour.

    An elated Amaju Pinnick spoke about his work for Iwere and his enthusiasm to do more, in employment and raising a new generation.

    Temile  says he employs four thousand staff directly.

    Awosika  is the daughter of the First Republic Minister, Okotie-Eboh, but did not allow her father’s pedigree to define her own accomplishments.

    Her husband, Chief Awosika, was there to share in the spotlight.

     Mabo moved the crowd with his biography and the tale of childhood when the mother sold all she had to fund his education.

     He is one of 10 children, the only one she could afford to train. He is paying back as a philanthropist with a deluge of scholarships to children along the Benin River. His mother died of cancer resulting from a medical negligence after a pin was forgotten in her body. Harriman is a world-wide phenom unveiling iconic photos of historic moments and cultural icons from Georgio Amani to Julia Roberts.

    His works have graced exhibitions and attracted aesthetic appreciation.

    He is the son of the great Nigerian real estate pioneer, Chief Hope Harriman, and sister of former House of Representatives member, Temi Harriman.

    The choice of Wilbert is a nod to a coming generation and a counter-narrative to the trend lamented by the Olu about children who now see no value in education.

    Wilbert, now a student at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, had A1s in such subjects as Chemistry, Mathematics , English Language, further mathematics and Economics. He scored 348 out of 400 in JAMB, “placing him in the top 0.01 percent of all candidates.” Addressing how the awardees were selected, effervescent compere Patrick Doyle quoted the Ogiame and said it was “not random or sentimental but deliberate.”

    The Olu enunciated the canvas of the ROI awards saying that, going forward, it will not be restricted to sons and daughters of Iwere land. It will not exceed 10 recipients each year, he announced. The honours were not chieftaincy titles, and do not go through the process and rites of that conferment. This is a purely secular garland, and it is new and even revolutionary in monarchies that fetishise feudal privileges.

     Hear the Ogiame: “For most of our existence, we have celebrated and honoured people by elevating them into the orbits of power, around governance and leadership.  While that has had its merits, we have long overlooked our greatest and most important resource, our common people.”

    The RIS, he promised, would be a platform for engagement with the larger society, giving lectures, colloquiums and other such programmes that will make the RIS a conduit of ideas and civic progress.

     “I make bold to say, that this award will not be restricted solely to Itsekiri recipients.

     Anyone who calls Warri home, by birth, naturalization, association or residence, such a person is also open to being nominated…the Lord has placed us as a force for good in this land called Nigeria.”

     The honours show that you can be chiefly without being a chief. It is an example of a royal way to prize. 

  • Soyinka’s pride, Obidient prejudice

    Soyinka’s pride, Obidient prejudice

     The Obidients are angry with Nigeria’s top bard, and how bad they hate him I knew in my visit to the National Theatre, Iganmu.

    The one we knew was the National Theatre. The one that is coming is Wole Soyinka Theatre, and that explains the firestorm of envy.

     Obidients, come over and see theatre wonder. It is not Carnegie Hall, or any of such world renowned places of entertainment and culture.

    This is Nigeria’s domesticated answer to the world.

    I was told that an impressed Soyinka has undertaken a tour. When the late songbird Onyeka Onwenu took a tour, she looked forward to performing there said one of the guides, Ronke Kuye,  CEO of SANEF, one of the firms working on the renovation.

     How marvelous it would have been to watch the throaty genius strut and stun behind the proscenium of the main bowl or at the banquet hall.

    To quote the poet Shelley’s poem, because of death, the “fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear/No longer will live, to hear or to see” the wonder of Onwenu onstage.

    The tour guide was Ade Laoye, managing partner of ECAD Architects. In a tour that outlasted an hour, I and a few other reporters walked through the ins and outs of what we used to call “fila Gowon” as a child.

    Fila means cap in Yoruba. This was folk metaphor to characterize the façade of the edifice.

     It shows that the concept and beginning was Gowon’s work. It was finished for Festac ’77, an extravaganza and one of the cultural highlights of my childhood.

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    We saw the VIP section, in its beauty and exclusive air. The art works, including the stained glass of Grillo. Artworks finely carved and evocative, including works done by Benin sculptors most of whom are dead.

     Some of the structures remain like the foyer floors, columns and pillars, a testament to the painstaking work in those days. For instance, the main auditorium is benumbing with its tiers from the ground floor to the VIP area to the top layer. It is billed to take 5,000 persons. The stage is now nimble with capacity not just for a coruscation of lights but the technology of gymnastic performance.

    Other than the main hall, there are three cinema halls.

    The backdrop features where the make-up rooms technical prompts. Everything is spick and span, including their showers. We also saw the security, especially against fire outbreaks.

    Two large art exhibition halls are situated near the road leading to the parking area that can take over 250 vehicles. We also walked through the kitchen, a comprehensive offering that will star an international chef.

    The tour guide assured me it will provide egusi soup as well as it can get all sorts of breads.

    A backend row of offices signals its employment potential. We concluded it with the banquet hall, a breathtaking, C-shaped expanse with a stage, grand carpeting and a classic piano that has survived over four decades. It is working. And Sterling Bank chief executive, Abubakar Suleiman, thumped a few keys for emphasis. Imagine Onyeka on that stage.

     It is the work of the Bankers Committee that have deployed money and personnel for this cultural gift.

     It also shows that the best path to development is a partnership of government and private concerns, and that trumps corruption and delay. We are seeing this with NLNG.  So, Obidients, don’t cry. It’s named for Soyinka and, as playwright Goethe wrote, “the likes of thee have never moved my hate.” The same author wrote, “one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.”

    They should accept the theatre in Soyinka’s name. It’s a fait accompli. Or else, it’s their fate to lament.

  • Fake certificates’ scourge

    Fake certificates’ scourge

    What could be the justification for the piecemeal implementation of the recommendations of the inter-ministerial committee on degree certificate racketeering recently set up by the federal government?

    That is the question elevated to the fore by a recent directive from the Federal Ministry of Education requiring all higher institutions to regularly submit their matriculation lists not later than three months after matriculation ceremonies. The list, the government further said, must be submitted through the “dedicated channel of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board JAMB”.

    The directive is said to be one of the recommendations of the inter-ministerial committee set up by the federal government following revelations on fake degree milling in the Republic of Benin. A national daily had unveiled how a Nigerian reporter, Umar Audu obtained a degree certificate in the Republic of Benin within six weeks and even got enrolled for the mandatory National Youth Service Corps programme, NYSC.

    Sequel to that embarrassing exposure, the federal government suspended the accreditation and evaluation of degree certificates from universities in the Republic of Benin and Togo. It went further to empanel an inter-ministerial committee to investigate the allegations and find lasting solutions to the scourge.

    But in what appeared a haphazard implementation of the committee report, the federal ministry of education just announced that the committee has submitted its report and the minister approved the above measure for implementation. Curiously, nothing was said of other recommendations of the committee or the government’s position on them.

    This has raised questions regarding the propriety of piecemeal implementation of the recommendations of the committee. The committee’s major and urgent task was to investigate allegations of degree milling in universities in neighbouring countries and at home and find lasting solutions to them. The case of foreign universities is even more urgent in view of the suspension of evaluation and accreditation of degrees from Benin and Togo.

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    Given this, the expectation is that in rolling out measures to ensure the integrity of certificates awarded by Nigerian universities, prime attention ought to be given to allegations of fake degree racketeering from Benin and Togo. Nothing of such was heard. Instead, the focus of the directive is on Nigerian universities. How that addresses the case of universities in neighbouring countries is left to be seen.

    The case of these foreign universities demand utmost resolution given the suspension placed on their degree certificates. Following that blanket ban by the Nigeria authorities, foreign universities which hitherto accepted categories of degrees from Benin and Togo for postgraduate studies have turned their backs against them.

    There have also been reports of discrimination and rejection of degrees from the two countries within the Nigerian labour market. But, not all the degree certificates from those countries are fake just as is the case with our local universities. There are accredited and recognised universities in both countries awarding internationally recognised degree certificates.

    But the suspension order has led to their rejection, albeit temporarily. Many of our sons and daughters schooled in those countries and graduated through the normal channel. As the suspension lasts, they can neither be mobilised for the mandatory NYSC programme nor get employed. That underscores the urgency for the release of government’s position on recommendations of the committee as they relate to those countries.

    Part of the measures would be the release of a list of accredited and recognised universities in those two countries. Whereas this will at once resolve the issue of fake and phony institutions, it is largely circumscribed in addressing the kind malfeasance that aided Audu to obtain a degree from a university in Benin Republic within six weeks. The latter can be taken up with the governments of those countries. But the university involved in the Audu case must be blacklisted.

    There are other measures the government can take to ensure the credibility and authenticity of degrees awarded by foreign countries just as the one it has directed the universities in the country to do. It is vital therefore that the government moves fast to unveil its position on the recommendations of the committee as they relate to the universities in Benin and Togo.

    Benin and Togo may not be alone in this scandal, just as Nigeria is not free from it. But the bug infesting the universities in those two countries may have crept in through our borders on account of proximity and geographical contiguity. This may sound uncharitable but it has sound basis on account of the high number of our citizens seeking educational opportunities in those countries.

    Universities in those countries especially the private ones, are sustained largely by the Nigerian students’ population. Since the suspension of accreditation and evaluation of degrees from Benin universities, their students’ population has pummelled. So the domino effect of the so-called Nigerian factor may have activated the scourge of fake degree mills in those countries.

    This should not be surprising to anyone. Ours is a country of illegalities, fakery and quackery. It has not always been so. How that bug came to permeate the fabric of our society remains troubling. But at the centre of its all, is bad leadership. The high level of corruption in public places and the reluctance of those in positions of authority and responsibility to play by the rules have let the society loose.

    Nobody seems to believe in standards, ennobling principles. It starts from and nurtured by some of the policies of various state governments at the secondary school levels. What do you expect when school principals are demoted and punished for the inability of their Junior Secondary School students to post excellent performances at the Junior WAEC?

    It is no longer hidden that teachers dictate answers to students at that examination level just to make sure the school is seen in the eyes of the authorities to be doing well. Doing well? With this mind-set, many of the students no longer care to pay attention during lessons, knowing they will eventually scale through even when they know practically nothing.

    It is at that level the nurturing for faking and all manner of forgeries are incubated. It should therefore not come as a surprise if a preponderance of beneficiaries of this flawed educational system take this malfeasance further by forging degree certificates and deploying same to be mobilised for the NYSC.

    That was the scenario that played out at the University of Calabar where the NYSC recently demobilised 54 fake corps members fraudulently mobilised for the programme by a syndicate. The discovery followed the observation of the vice chancellor of the institution that the list of those mobilised for the programme contained names outside those sent by the university.

    A closer scrutiny of the list exposed the 54 fraudulent names including a bread seller around the university vicinity. What a shame! The NYSC has promised to prosecute the culprits including the syndicate in the university that generated the fictitious list and assigned matriculation numbers to them. That is how bad the situation has become.

    Who knows how long this fraud has been going on before the discovery? Had this particular one gone undetected, the culprits would have had no problem printing fake degree certificates and securing jobs with them backed with the NYSC certificates.

    The University of Calabar is not alone in this as reports of certificate racketeering permeate all strata of the nation’s educational system and all arms of the government. Not long ago, Lagos State University, LASU was embroiled in embarrassing certificate selling scandal when sting operations conducted by security agencies in conjunction with its former vice chancellor resulted in startling revelations.

    That investigation exposed how certificates of the university had been sold to willing buyers for between N2million and N3million depending on the course. A syndicate of academic and non-academic staff was the brain behind the generation of matriculation numbers, award of marks and degree certificates to people who never saw the four walls of that ordinarily, highly rated institution. That is the rot in our education system.

    How to stamp out this rot both in our local universities and their foreign counterparts was the major plank of the terms of reference of the inter-ministerial committee. Curiously and despite their copious terms of reference, all we have seen is just a directive from the federal ministry of education to all higher institutions to submit their matriculation lists to the ministry not later than three months after matriculation ceremonies. Is that all there is to the recommendations of the inter-ministerial committee?

  • The accused

    The accused

    Once again, Joe is in the news. Joe Ajaero, that is. This time, he has no bloody nose or the scream of the end of the world when a thug gave him a once-over after a once-over across his jaw.

    This time, he is not at war as a minimum wage exponent when he hit us with an anti-climax of a wage. He growled for the moon as a salary for workers but ended up settling for the dust of the earth as pay.

    This time, he is not pleading neutral just as he did not after he was neutered in the Labour Party dispute. This time, it is dead serious, as serious as potentially giving the state an upper cut, a bloody nose for Aso Villa.

     If true, then Ajaero sought to give unto the state what the thugs gave him in Imo State as an interloper in partisan politics.

    As serious as treason. As serious as terrorism funding. As serious as the accused wanting to turn it around and smear the accuser with the guilty charge.

    So, that is where we are today with the NLC president whom the police have tainted with allegedly trying to capsize the state.

    He was merely invited. But the fellow is busy, and why won’t he? He is a labour leader, labouring as a bee. After all, there is plenty of aluta business buzzing between now and August 29, lots of meetings, table thumping, hands across the chest with anthem singing. We just learned about their mellifluous merit in high places.

     They put their throaty gifts to the service of the Villa, and serenaded their archenemy named Bola Tinubu when he underwrote their anti-climax of 70-thousand-naira minimum wage. If they were chummy with him, why can’t NLC trust the police to invite their honcho? I am not saying the charges are true, and that is the point. No one knows if the charges against the labour leader is valid or can tar him with the scarlet letter of a subvert, an enemy of the state.

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    But he ran to his lawyers who quickly intimated the world that the man is actually a busy man. Of course, treason charge can wait, is less important than grinding his affairs with quotidian drudgery, is superior to lounging in his ten-story building contemplating the next strike,  the next power gridlock, the next street march and rumble, the next rage.

     Maybe lolling in his office day after day can lull the charges to sleep. Are we not a nation of amnesia? We can forget it happened. We cannot forget when all these started, though. The police raided its ten-story building. Labour labeled it a raid on their own office. A lie. The police raided a second floor, while they, the ever-lofty labour, were heavenly in their tenth floor. The police denied it many times but true to labour, they would not admit to lying.

     The NLC did not have what philosopher Karl Popper designated as falsifiers, by which he means you must have evidence to prove a thing to be untrue for you to be credible. NLC had no facts.

    It hugged propaganda. But treason has no room for that. He is playing on a populist impulse. Some drivel is now abroad that the police is after him. For what? No reason adduced.

    After all, he and his bushy-haired partner just turned choristers for the number one citizen. Why would he, after they titillated him, want to squelch Ajaero with such monumental accusation? But I think the matter is simple. If his mind is clear, why not appear? Why make a dance of anticipation?

    The Bible says, the wicked man runs when no man pursues him. Is Ajaero acting like an Agbero by not showing up? Or is he guilty? The police say the second floor tenants a person of interest who is a foreigner and involved in terrorism.

    The person is unmistakably an Ajaero tenant. Naturally, there must be communication between landlord and tenant. But the police claim, in that communication, there are questions that they want the NLC chief to answer.

     We don’t know the content of the communication. If the matter is such that he is not guilty, why not show up? Only Ajaero, his lawyers and the police – and, of course, the foreign bandit – know the content. All of us outside know nothing.

    We can therefore not accuse the police of bad faith or of good intention. This is beyond a presumption of innocence for Ajaero by some lawyers and pundits. It is a verdict of guilt on the police without proof. The charge that they want to frame him is plausible, but you cannot frame him in this democracy and get away with it. You need evidence, and the police ought to be aware of this sine qua non. Perhaps that is why they invited him and did not arrest him.

    Or is Ajaero trying to make a histrionic fare with this episode? Do they want to hype it by baiting the police to arrest him? That way, even if he is guilty, the narrative will turn the accused into the victim? Do they want to turn it into a famous 19th century Dreyfus scandal that involved a cover-up, and led French author and novelist Emile Zola to write J’ccuse, meaning “I acuse,” that essay that exposed official hypocrisy? Are they trying to fake a coverup by ratcheting up a cause celebre out of it? It will become more of a drama than a potential threat to the state. It will be the irony of Henrik Ibsen’s play in which the friend of the people is now cast as the people’s enemy and vice versa.

      Caution to both police and the NLC leader and his lawyers that a potentially small matter could mutate from a cause celebre to a curse, or an exaggeration of a cause. The contexts of the so-called hunger protests haunt us.

     National security adviser Nuhu Ribadu said his office trapped over N60 billion and $37 million in cryptocurrency meant to overthrow the state through street protests. We want whoever is involved to be brought to trial, and quickly too.

     The malice of election loss is too deeply felt by the sore losers.

    To be happy, they must exercise the apocalypse of a Samson syndrome to exorcise the Nigerian state. I hope the Ajaero case is not a new window to pursue such a malicious project.  

  • M.K.O’s confidant at 70

    M.K.O’s confidant at 70

     Since this page is about democracy, I shout out to one of Abiola’s confidantes, Chief Olu Akerele, who turns 70 August 29th. He was one of the lieutenants who saw him in jail and may not be alive today if Major Al Mustapha had made good his wish to eliminate him. As Akerele told me, the former Abacha point man said he had “me in his gunsight one night while I was trying to penetrate and reach Chief Abiola in detention house. But something just held him from pulling the trigger to waste me.” This same  Akerele alerted me to two cars, a Jetta and 505 Peugeot, trailing me in those heady days in the nation’s capital when I was Abiola’s newspaper, the Concord, managing editor for Abuja. Akerele’s last conversation with Abiola was an instruction ahead of the fatal visit of the Americans led by Susan Rice, that he should “go get in touch with Kola and our friends to organize the biggest reception in Lagos for my return.”

    There was a reception all right, but the celebrity was, as Akerele put it, in a casket with ice blocks. The hero had a big crowd waiting, but a lugubrious shadow fell over the faithful and upended a dialogue for a future that did not come. He recalled a phone call from now President Tinubu insisting that a proper inquest into his death, including an autopsy, must follow the tragedy and he put his weight and resources towards that struggle. The matter of his death is still wrapped in mystery undermined by a controversy today. Abiola had only a Bible and Koran for reading, but Akerele smuggled in newspapers. “I played this dangerous role until I was arrested,” he said.

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     A curious revelation: Mustapha detained him at the Aso Villa gate to put an eye on him.

    But Akerele wondered, why were many a southwest politician and cultural figure going in and out of the villa? The story of those last days and the politics of NADECO and apologists during that awful time has yet to be fully told.

    Akerele and Abiola’s son Kola were family emissaries to the current president to give national honour and June 12 holiday for the democracy icon. And Tinubu took over the struggle until the spirit of that quest became flesh and blood under Buhari. Meanwhile, Akerele must be thankful that, in spite of his health struggles in recent times, he is a living, breathing man at 70.  

  • Haba Atiku!

    Haba Atiku!

     These days I am full of sympathy for Atiku Abubakar. How else can I feel when a man who is verging on his eighth decade gets so angry, not only angry but bitter, not bitter and angry, but frustrated, and after frustration, we hear him bluster, and when we examine the bluster, it ripples with lies. And what nature of lies? Puerile, perverted and small. Is it the onset of an unknown malady, or is there a peculiar old-age affliction associated with election loss? His series of tirades turned more absurd when he took on the NNPCL over Oando and Tinubu’s son, Seyi. It was not what he wrote that told the story and exposed him but the reply from NNPCL’s Olufemi O. Soneye that turned such an old man into a fuddy-duddy.

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     Lie: that President Tinubu and Wale Tinubu have shares in OVH.

    They have no evidence. The evidence we know is that OANDO has long divested its shares from OVH. If a son of a man has business dealings with the son of another man, does it follow that if both men do a thing, the sons must be involved? It is possible but we don’t assume this until we have proof. Alhaji Atiku, tender your evidence. Stop this babyish rant in public. You are nearing 80.

  • Two men

    Two men

    As he went to bed, peace was the only thing he wanted that night. It was the only thing that eluded him. So, in his underwear, he heard a noise. It jolted him. Before he turned, they had broken into his room. He couldn’t ask a question. He couldn’t dress up. They swept him, underwear and all, from his home onto the back of a truck and zoomed off under that blanket of night.

    He thought the end had come for him. No one knew about the horror except his captors and himself whether they were taking him to a hideout to beat him to pulp and dump him for dead? If that happened, no one would know who did it and why?

    After what seemed an eternity on the truck with only the sky as witness and the wind in ominous whisper, they stopped at a building. A few moments later, he was in a jail cell. What a relief that he was in the company of armed robbers, murderers and other never-do-wells in society. At least, he was not dying that night.

    No one spoke to him. No one told him why he was there. He lived in that sty and suspenseful fear for 48 days. What happened on the 48th day? Gen.  Sani Abacha died. For the goggled tyrant’s death, he had life and freedom.

    This was not in Southern Nigeria, or in the Southwest or Lagos. It happened in Kaduna and to Uba Sani, now governor of the same state where he might have been gaoled to extinction.

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    It was Abacha’s goons, soldiers with cargoes of death and foreboding, who came that night. They hated the June 12 struggle. Uba Sani was a June 12 soldier, and he emblematized the northern dimension of the democracy struggle often ignored and downplayed in the narrative of that era. He also typified what we termed NADECO at home. That part of NADECO was not headlined like the NADECO Abroad, but they kept the firelight and fury alive to defy a soldier elite who forswore any promise of democracy. They brandished the temperament of Bashorun Ga’a, the Old Oyo empire tyrant who equated himself to God on earth until he met his vanquisher. What happened to Governor Sani and he survived was similar to what happened to Bagauda Kaltho, also from the North and a reporter, who did not survive to tell his story.

    This perspective is piquant against the background of the recent protests that have turned out to be the hand of Esau but the voice of Jacob. The two voices that questioned the conscience of the protests were two top-tier figures in government today in the June 12 struggle, the most consequential wave of protests in this generation. They are President Bola Tinubu and Governor Sani. The knit of democracy has bonded both men over the years. It is significant that one is the president and the other is a governor, and they have tried to show that these protests did not represent the lofty and sacrificial spirit for which they could have died.

    The revelation at the Council of State meeting last week tells of $37 million and N60 billion linked with the protests. While we await the facts and the persons in the shadows of this potential treason, the protests reflect what happens when we get a democracy without a proper groundwork.

    We cannot forget that by 1999 when the soldiers abdicated, they gave us a democracy chockful of military apologists. Such persons know nothing but democracy by fiat. At the forefront was the Owu chief, Olusegun Obasanjo, who ran the country with a soldier’s hubris and bred lieutenants who knew no other logic. The third-term agenda and the impunity of electoral heists have continued to haunt the country. Nor was Muhammadu Buhari immune to the rapine of liberty in spite of his advertisement of Pauline conversion to a democrat. In the Niger Delta, we witnessed the mutation of an ethnic war as a recruiting ground for militants as we saw in the Northeast the birth of Boko Haram after an elite created an alternative society to embed a new tribe of militants. Five-year-olds twirled Russian flags even if they could not read or write. They were asked to be the face of hunger when they never knew anything about exchange rates nor went to market to buy anything. That told us that the almajiris became a metaphor for a devious political class that instrumentalized a mob to upturn a democracy they did not, in the first place, believe in. The mob was not the first in this republic. It may not be the last. Ignorance is tinder for tumult. The big men lolling in their plush abodes knew a good tool for a putsch.

    That could have happened if the NADECO group did not turn onlookers when the military apologists took centre stage. When NADECO Abroad held a meeting in London on how to respond to a new era, they dithered and waited while the apologists became the “authentic” voice. They had probably grown war-weary. The current president tried to dissuade them from their somnolence. They prevaricated and temporised. Then Tinubu advanced a sentimental caveat. He said, “Ok, mo fe lori maami.” Translation. “I want to see my mother.” With that excuse, he left London and dived into the trenches at home. It turned out he saw things ahead of the others. He became a lone voice from Lagos trying to set fire to their thatched houses of the so-called new democrats. He might not have done it alone, if they all coalesced while the iron was hot enough to reshape a democratic force for the future. Instead, he had to build it piecemeal.

    The call for a new constitution is a consequence of NADECO pussyfooting. So, if we are going to have a new constitution, on whose authority are we going to pursue it? There is no basis in this constitution to do it. If the president does it, on whose authority other than that of a president who is bound by the 1999 constitution. There is no provision that empowers him to dump the law that made him. To do it will make him a despot.  How will a National Assembly finagle its way between birthing a new document and annulling itself with a referendum? The Patriots may mean well, but how do we overthrow a Constitution to build a new one?  There are three models of constitution-making in the modern era. They are the American, French and British. The French have their fifth constitution, but they have a basis in one constitution to move to another. The British thrive on conventions and will invite anarchy to call for a constitution. The American is over 200 years old, but it has no basis for a new constitution. So, they have 27 amendments already. It is the American model that can work for us. Or else, we court disaster. We lost the opportunity in 1999 and the great elements of NADECO prevaricated away the opportunity to do so. As Henry Thoureau noted, “you can’t kill time without injuring eternity.”

    Some of the so-called NADECO at home had become cosy with the soldiers. This point was made by Governor Sani when he and a few others, including Shehu Sani, looked askance at the soldiers as they tried to implant a new constitution and republican age.

    But nothing is wrong in our constitution that we cannot change with amendments. Or else, we topple democracy and earn chaos. That is why top men in government like the president and Gov. Sani who were in the trenches have seen through the bogus men who, through partisan malice, want to play Samson and bring down the system. They are like the soldiers who came for Sani. They were habitues of the night of our country. Shakespeare in his Hamlet says, they are “doomed for a certain term to walk the night.” That term for the army has long expired, just as Gov. Sani’s 48 days ended.

  • Imo’s ‘That witch must die’ event

    Imo’s ‘That witch must die’ event

    If an advocacy group has its way, a church programme against witchcraft scheduled for Mbeiri in the Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State, must not be allowed to see the light of the day.

    The group known as, Advocacy  for Alleged Witches, is piqued that a church pastor, Angel Uzoma has scheduled a crusade for August 30, at his church premises during which he intends to mount an anti-witch campaign in the state.

    The group’s director, Leo Igwe has therefore asked the state police command and the Department of State Services, to halt the plan by the pastor to mount the anti-witch programme because its outcome will result to the murder of alleged witches. Igwe displayed a photograph of the billboard for the event already mounted in different parts of the state with the theme, ‘That Witch Must Die’ to drive home his case.

    For him, the event should not be allowed because its outcome will instigate and provoke witch-hunt in the state. “This event instigates and sanctifies accusation, persecution and murder of alleged witches” even as suspected witches are often attacked and killed during and after such programmes, he further warned.

    The opposition raised by the advocacy group against the publicly advertised anti-witch religious programme has serious merit. Both the theme of the programme and our experience in allegations of witchcraft make it mandatory that our law enforcement agencies cannot afford to turn a blind eye to that potentially offensive and lawless church activity.

    ‘That witch must die’ conveys the unmistakable impression that there exists a witch. And when found, death penalty albeit, through jungle justice must be the punishment for it. But that goes against the laws of the country which criminalises suspicions for witchcraft or any illegal action taken to avenge the suspicion.

    So the advocacy group was well on point when it contended that the programme will instigate, sanctify accusation of witchcraft and possibly lead to the murder of suspected witches. That is the reading of the message contained in the billboards mounted in different parts of the state. Or, how else will the alleged witches die during the church event if not through jungle justice?

     Even if the pastor could also procure the death of suspected witches through some supernatural means or touted power of miracles, that also cannot be justified on any ground. There is everything wrong with the theme of the church crusade and the activities to actualise it to be allowed to proceed as advertised.

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    Curiously, it has taken the protestations of the Advocacy for Alleged Witches to draw the attention of the law enforcement agencies to this potent danger. That is the case which people have against the security agencies when they accuse them of not being proactive enough or intelligence driven in the performance of their duties. It is a huge disappointment that billboards advertising death sentence for witch suspects could find their way in and around Imo State with the security agencies looking the other way.

    Not with our experience in issues concerning alleged witchcraft. The reported jungle justice which has come to denote the fate of witch suspects across the country does not leave anybody in the comfort of mind that witch suspects during the event will fare any better. There must be suspected witches during the event (either within the congregation or outside of it) else its purpose will be defeated.

     Witches will not die if there are no witches. The programme theme admits the existence of witches together with all the devilish powers allegedly attributed to them. Its objective is therefore to instigate, provoke, find and kill a witch or witches. It must achieve this objective for the campaign to garner popular appeal and succeed.

    There is the temptation to rationalise the church programme as part of the Pastor’s right to freedom of worship as effectively guaranteed by the country’s constitution. The instant case is a warped conception of religious freedom because the programme seeks to criminalise and levy death sentence on witch suspects. The laws of this country do not allow a church such powers. That is the dividing line between freedom of worship and the kind of activity the religious group is about to embark upon.

    This is not the first time programmes that deal with witchcraft will generate heated controversy. If a  purely academic seminar organised by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN could generate demonstrations with calls for its outright cancelation, it is inconceivable how one in which alleged witches are to face jungle justice can be allowed to hold.

    An international conference on witchcraft slated for UNN in 2019 with the theme, “Witchcraft, meanings, factors and practices” had led to serious protests from various religious organisations. The demonstrating church groups had alleged that the event was all about the gathering of witches and called for its outright put off.

    The pressure was so much so that the UNN authorities had to prevail on the organisers of the conference the, Prof. B.I.C. Ijomah of the Centre for Policy Studies and Research to change the theme to, “Dimensions of Human Behaviour” before it was allowed to proceed. But that controversy forced the keynote speaker, Prof. David Ker to withdraw.

    The Director of the centre Prof. Egodi Uchendu, regretted how ordinary academic conference was twisted out of context to create confusion even as she expressed happiness that the controversy did not significantly affect the participation level. Nonetheless, the conference gave a good account of itself.

    In his paper titled, “The wealthy are no witches: Towards an Epistemology and Ideology  of Witchcraft among the Igbo of Nigeria”, Prof Damian Opata said the way witchcraft is propagated and believed by some Nigerians has continued to kill development of knowledge on the issue.

    He may have had the likes of the emerging church event in Imo State in mind when he said, “Pastors, seers in the foreign religions and charismatic priests in variegated persuasions very frequently use perceived attacks by witches and wizards to put fear in the minds and hearts of their various congregations”. The truth he said, is that witches and wizards exist for those who believe they exist and do not have existence for those who do not believe in them.

    It may be added that these pastors, seers in foreign religions take to this course of action in order to hold their adherents hostage, manipulate and exploit them. And they largely succeed because of fear, poverty, illiteracy and fickleness of the human mind.

    Professor of Sociology and Anthropology UNN, Peter Jazzy Eze toed similar lines when he argued that witchcraft did not exist but existed in the minds of people who believe in it. He contended that science and technology have overtaken superstitious beliefs in witchcraft which have no empirical validity.

    The contributions of these scholars are no doubt, of great value in advancing knowledge on the subject matter. Ironically, the heuristic value of the contributions would have been lost, had the UNN seminar been cancelled outright as canvassed by those who saw it as nothing but a gathering of witches and wizards.

    Ironically, it is intolerance of such robust discussions that has overtime, sustained weird beliefs in witches and witchcraft on these shores. Had sufficient awareness been created on the subject matter, it would have been a herculean task selling the idea of witchcraft to the citizenry such that is about to be exploited through the controversial church programme.

    Then, we would not have got to the point one pastor or magician touting to be a seer could hoodwink and draw large audience on the guise that witches must die during or after his crusade. Ignorance, poverty and disease provide the oxygen these pastors require to sustain their trade.

    It is no coincidence that climes where people take easy resort to superstition fall within the underdeveloped or developing nations of the world characterised by abject poverty. So, the causative factors for such beliefs are known. They can be realistically addressed by tackling ignorance, poverty and disease through meaningful development such that addresses the material conditions of our people consigned into hewers of wood and fetchers of water. 

    As long as these huge disparities in human capital development index persist in this country, so long will all manner of people exploit the citizenry through weird beliefs and ideologies. The crusade billed for Imo State is one of such; its offensive theme and direction must change if the event must proceed.