The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Healing in vain

    Healing in vain

    Even if God ruled after an appeal from the Supreme Court in favour of President Bola Tinubu and his APC, some citizens will still hoot to the heavens and even anoint Beelzebub as a superior jurist. It is rage thrashing about in a forest. Some derided them by saying they can now appeal to the tennis court. But a tennis court has rackets that plays balls, and not the racket that plays on the mind. It has tennis players, not racketeers.

    It is part of what Wole Olanipekun (SAN) derided when he said they are worse than Alice in Wonderland, adding that even Alice had a destination, unlike Atiku  and Obi. Atiku and his coattail Obidients had no shore even in their fantasy. Lewis Carroll’s work of children literature is called nonsense literature in a sublime sense, although some critics have designated it Roman a Clef. Whatever the story, it is time for the wandering disease to stop, what Cyprian Ekwensi in his The Burning Grass called Sokugo.

    The Supreme Court victory is no excuse to gloat, to emote at the expense of the losers even if the Atiku and Obi crowds continue to bellyache, especially by deploying otherwise respected minds among them to delegitimise the verdict.

    It is time to bind the wounds, to transcend the anxiety of divisions, and rebuild a nation. More than a nation, a community. More than a community, a soul.  Not since the prelude to the civil war has Nigeria lived in a neighbourhood without neighbours. It is time to follow Lincoln’s precept of malice towards none.

    It begins with the president, and he cannot do it alone. Atiku and Obi must restrain their mobs and privilege Nigeria over partisan, tribal and sectarian forces. I think the President should start an initiative and a dialogue, and once the other group sees it as heartfelt, they will have no choice but to follow. If they do not, he should not stop. Both sides must kneel to heal. Humility will give us the ideas to be brothers again. As William Wordsworth noted, “Wisdom is often nearer when we stoop than when we soar.”

    To reconcile is always an adventure, and it is no easy one. Bishop Matthew Kukah, in his latest book, Witness to Reconciliation, demonstrates how fraught and even frustrating it is to build a commonwealth in Nigeria. His book was on Ogoni, a little sliver of a vast country, and he was assigned by President Olusegun Obasanjo to reconcile the federal government, Shell and the Ogoni people.

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    In spite of his efforts, including a near assassination of his person, bitterness still roils that oil-maligned community. Watch this. Kukah did not operate as a politician or bureaucrat but as a priest on a mission of love. He had no budget, funded no office, had no retinue, sought no remuneration, had no official car. So, it was a hardscrabble job. All the ingredients of Nigerian malaise were slimy in the tale, including our institutions.

    He, however, for whatever reasons, did not mirror the media coverage and its tendencies in his book of over 200 pages. The church, the political elite, the business world, the masses of Ogoni. We witnessed factions and fracture at every turn. There were lies, witch-hunts, fears of death, corruption, bold-faced confessions, and violence. On the other side, we saw the symbolisms, the church leaders and their cleansing ceremony, two presidential visits, dances and self-serving rhetoric, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Presidential Implementation Committee.

    The stature and apparent neutrality of the Bishop was not expected to defrock him of allegations of compromise. He noted that Ledum Mitee and Magnus Abe, prominent Ogoni sons, cast him as a Shell charade, saying he was plotting with the federal government to return Shell to Ogoni land. Abe, according to the report, apologized in a public confession for amassing about a thousand signatures to the Pope to discredit the cleric and even rid him of his sacerdotal chair.

    An instance that looked amusing, if it were not tragic. The state governor had a town meeting about why the schools were not built in a community. The contractor had been given money, but the people forswore any local to work with the contractor because they wanted the money and not the school. The contractor started giving them money. Infant minds, no school. It reminds me of a senator who told me a few years ago that he had gathered his constituents to inform them he had some bulk money for projects in the community. He called for proposals to implement their visions. In one voice, the people yelled, “what projects. Just share the money.” He broke into tears. This same thing happened to another governor who gathered stakeholders on what projects they would want implemented. The shameless men said, Let’s share the money.

    In Ogoni, Bishop worked with Mitee and MOSOP to erect monuments to peace and Obasanjo was to unveil it with a peace centre. Governor Peter Odilli mobilized all the money, but when Obasanjo showed up for the event, viola, there was no monument nor a peace centre.

    Bishop was so trusted that when OBJ was leaving office, Kukah had written his report and getting ready to leave. But Yar’adua retained him and when he died, Jonathan would not let him go. Even at that, his puffy minister Allison Madueke temporised on the issue of Ogoni cleanup until she left office. The Buhari administration acted supine. He postponed a visit, raised the people’s hopes of coming only to be a no show. In the end, after a report, UNEP was given a runaround, the people saw no peace. The cleanup has still not been accomplished. Shell is not there, and there is no replacement. Some farmers even spill their own farms in quest for compensation.

    Kukah’s witness follows his earlier book, Witness to justice, on the same subject. He may write a third. But it is a parable about how a society cannot come to peace in order to enjoy the enormous wealth under its feet. It is the story of Nigeria. It is a lesson for Nigeria to learn.

  • Senator Ndume is angry

    Senator Ndume is angry

    In response to my short piece last week, Senator Ali Ndume wrote the following, warts and all.

    “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have bothered to respond to the disrespectful comments you made on my person. But because you look matured in photographs, I decided to respond.

    First, everyone in Nigeria know that I stood for the emergence of Senator Godswill Akpabio as Senate President because of my belief in justice, fairness, stability of Nigeria and because the President begged me to lead the campaign as Director General not because of what you call “juicy committee or position.”

    In fact, I was begged to accept the positions of Chief Whip and the Vice Chairman of Appropriation Committee not that I asked for them. You can find out.

    You don’t know what happened that day and as is common with compromised journalism in this country, you didn’t care to even find out or even call me or your reporter attached to the Senate to get the facts.

    You were in a hurry to insult me, taking advantage of your pen and position. May be for a chicken fee.

    As you suggested, Insha Allah, I will always go to the mosque and as part of my prayers I will ask Almighty Allah to punish you for not only insulting me but tried to assassinate my character. Insha Allah, you will see, hear, feel, touch or sense it when Allah answers my prayers which He usually does. Fortunately most Nigerians know Ndume is not a whipping person.”

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    I wonder why the senator exposed his poor writing skill and confirmed suspicions that some of our lawmakers should return to school. He said he responded “because you look matured in photographs.” How shallow. Why would you assess a person based on a superficial thing like a photograph? For your information, it is “mature” not “matured.” English 101. He also wrote “chicken fee” instead of chicken feed. He should have employed a publicist to assess his writing before disgracing himself.

    On the idea of compromise, or being paid to write, this is not the first time this essayist would get that. It often comes from those who have lost the argument, often from lowlifes, pugnacious and callow intellectual nymphs. But for it to come from a senator, a man who wanted to lead a branch of government? He should apologise or tender evidence. Or I may contact my lawyers over such infantile rant. From his behaviour, it is obvious he did not support Akpabio from his heart. If he didn’t want the positions, why did he not turn them down? He can still leave. We practise democracy, not despotism.

    He does not even support Allah. Allah does not accommodate liars in his name. He did not address the question as to why he has not apologised to the institution of the senate. Rather he is going to ask for God to punish. The punishment will come to him for lying, and for acting like a baby deprived of a kilishi. He should beg for forgiveness.

  • Justice Okoro’s name, tribe and a retired justice

    Justice Okoro’s name, tribe and a retired justice

    In my novel, My Name is Okoro, that has been studied in universities, including at graduate level, I play on the name Okoro. The lead judge on the Supreme Court verdict on the presidential election brought it to mind.

    is from Akwa Ibom State. In my novel, the name is borne by an Urhobo man who wanders in search of his wife in Biafra, and his name throws up an anxiety of identity.

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    The name reflects our interwoven identity. In Yorubaland, there was a man called Okoro, which means bitter. The name means something else in Urhobo and Igbo, and it amused me as some trolls made light of the Justice’s authenticity as a person. The other issue from the verdict came from retiring Musa Datijo Muhammad, who implied the CJN compromised the composition of the bench because no one from the southeast was on the panel. It was an irresponsible point because he, as a justice, cannot be reading what is in the mind of a jurist. He has a point that the bench needs diversity, especially in the southeast and south-south. Okoro was the lead judge. Mohammad should have explained what role he played as deputy to the CJN on changing the scenario. He may be acting as rabble rouser. His statement detracted from the substance of the case. Justice is supposed to be blind. A tribesman on the bench suddenly loses his physical eyes but acquires a juridical one. That is what he should have said. Anyway, since he became CJN, Olukayode Arowoola has said plans are afoot to get more justices. Some have died from the southeast. He did not kill them. But he has sworn in 23 federal court judges and nine to the court of appeal. But we need them ASAP. The retired judge should not rattle the sabre. He should have focused on the substance of the matter, if he cannot say what role he himself played to improve the scenario.

  • Where are they?

    Sadly, two abducted high-profile professors of medicine were in the news last week when the President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Dr Uche Rowland Ojinmah, lamented that the country’s medical professionals were endangered.  At an event on October 24, during the association’s 2023 Physicians Week in Umuahia, Abia State, Ojinmah, perhaps hyperbolically, observed: “The menace of the kidnapping of doctors, dentists, and their relatives has become a daily event to the point of desensitisation.”

    He highlighted two disturbing cases, saying, “Let me also remind the government of Cross River State that we are still awaiting the return of Prof. Ekanem Philip-Ephraim. To the Abia State government, we are still waiting for information on the whereabouts of Prof. U.U. Iweha. We will not stop asking. Kidnapping and insecurity, I must tell you, are now major causes of medical brain drain, and we call for action, not rhetoric”.

    It’s been more than a year since Prof. Iweha, a professor of Surgery, was abducted. He was the provost of College of Medicine, Amachara, Gregory University, Abia State, before his abduction on June 5, 2022. He had served as the chief medical director (CMD) of Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSUTH), Aba, and CMD Abia State Specialist Hospital, Amachara.

    According to his son, Chukwudi, he had rushed back home from church on the day, to prepare for an event where he was scheduled to represent the Chancellor of Gregory University, Prof. Gregory Ibe. The kidnappers were waiting for him at the gate of his house in Umuajameze Umuopara, Umuahia South Local Government Area (LGA) of Abia State.

    He said the kidnappers initially demanded a ransom, which the kidnappee’s family paid. They were then told that they would find him at the Army checkpoint at Isiala Ngwa by the express road.  They went to the place, but he wasn’t there. The kidnappers stopped picking up their calls.

    “As a family, we cannot discern the motive behind this evil act or even point an accusing finger at anybody,” he was reported saying, in June, on the first anniversary of his father’s abduction. He criticised the police investigation of the incident, and appealed to the Abia State governor, Alex Otti, and the lawmakers representing his community at the state and federal levels to help “bring this matter to a positive conclusion.”

    “We are still looking for our father,” he stated, adding, “We appeal to the media to create further awareness of our painful and traumatising situation, with the hope that anyone with information will come forward, and it will lead to the rescue or release of our father.”

    Women of the Umuopara clan had dramatically staged two demonstrations in August 2022, demanding government intervention and effective action from the security agencies. Also, the Abia State chapter of the NMA went on strike for three days in June 2022 to force the government to take action on the abduction issue.

    Nothing has changed. Prof. Iweha’s whereabouts are unknown. Who kidnapped him? Is he dead or alive? These questions demand answers.

    It’s been more than three months since Prof. Ekanem Philip-Ephraim was kidnapped “at about 9:00 pm” on July 13, 2023. The incident happened “around Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries Church, off Atimbo in Calabar Municipality LGA.” A report said “four robust individuals arrived at the professor’s facility in a Toyota vehicle pretending to be patients and then whisked her away.” A professor of Neurology, she was a consultant at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH), Cross River State, before her abduction.

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    The NMA, Cross River State chapter, in a statement in August, lamented that after “28 days in captivity and 21 days when we last heard from her, the situation has remained unchanged,” despite “the withdrawal of services and continuous peaceful protest.”  The group noted that within the past five years, 14 doctors had been kidnapped in the state, adding, “we cannot continue to save lives while ours and that of other law-abiding citizens is under constant threat by armed bandits and kidnappers.”

    Nothing has changed in this case too. Prof. Philip-Ephraim’s whereabouts are unknown. Who kidnapped her? Is she dead or alive? These questions also demand answers.

    It is disturbing that the NMA president numbered “kidnapping and insecurity” among “major causes of medical brain drain.” The country’s medical sector-related human capital flight, which has escalated alarmingly, was formerly mainly blamed on bad governance and  poor working conditions.

    Indeed, the exit figures concerning healthcare professionals in the country are troubling. More than 9,000 medical doctors were reported to have left the country to work in the UK, Canada and America, from 2016 to 2018. Also, more than 700 medical doctors trained in Nigeria were said to have relocated to the UK from December 2021 to May 2022, a period of six months. The number of Nigeria-trained nurses registered in the UK was said to have grown from 2,790 in March 2017 to 7,256 in March 2022.  Notably, Ojinmah said at an event last October: “Nigeria-trained doctors are leaving in droves for Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. No official figures yet, but it can’t be less than 2,000 as of today.”

     The country’s doctor-patient ratio is dangerously low, and is nowhere near the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) standard doctor-patient ratio of one doctor per 600 people. With only about four doctors available per 10,000 people in Nigeria, it is unsurprising that there are issues regarding availability of, and access to quality primary healthcare services in the country. There is no doubt that the problem is compounded by the flight of healthcare professionals.

    The unresolved abductions of the two professors of medicine further underline the scale of insecurity in the country. It is sad that they were kidnapped, and their whereabouts are unknown. This is a familiar picture in the context of the country’s security crisis. That is fearful. 

    There are several other unresolved kidnap cases across the country. When such cases are unsolved, it adds fuel to the fire. The evil agents of insecurity should not be allowed to thrive. The authorities should urgently deal with the monster.  

  • A cattle market and quit order abuse

    A cattle market and quit order abuse

    One was taken aback reading the screaming headline; “Northern group withdraws quit notice issued to Igbos”, which got copious space in the media last week.  Since the initial quit notice passed seemingly unnoticed, its withdrawal obviously raised curiosity as to what led to the order in the first instance.

    What could have given rise to such a sweeping order on a major ethnic group in the country? Was there any skirmish within the polity that could warrant such or is it one of those instances when events in other parts of the world would be vented on the local population?  How come such event of seemingly national weight escaped public notice?

    With this curiosity, I made quick to read through the text of the story. But to one’s utter consternation, there was no event of any serious national attention to warrant the order. There were neither ethnic clashes nor the usual combustible rhetoric that could pitch any ethnic group against the other. Neither was there any altercation between the Igbo ethnic group and the northerners.  Nothing of such!

    It was just all about a rag-tag northern group that goes by the name, Northern Consensus Movement, NCM, arrogating to itself the powers to expel an ethnic group from the north under very inexplicable and hazy circumstances. The group which is said to be an amalgam of community based socio-cultural and economically-inclined northern organizations was withdrawing a 14-day ultimatum it purportedly issued to the Igbo to quit the north.

    The NCM just took a cue from sundry northern groups in the habit of arrogating to themselves the powers of issuing quit threats to the Igbo at slightest disagreement. But, the issue involved in this instance does not deserve all that noise.

    They had misconstrued an order by the Abia State government converting the Lokpanta Cattle Market in the Umunneochi Local Government Area that has been serially fingered for providing cover for all manner of criminality to a day and non-residential operations. The measures followed credible intelligence that the operation of the market both during the day and at night coupled with the fact that cattle dealers live inside it, provided cover for all manner of criminals to launch attacks on innocent people using that highway.

    For whatever reasons, this measure was twisted as a quit order to cattle dealers who are mostly from the north to leave the state. How that misrepresentation came about can only be explained by the leadership of the NCM. The state government was compelled by the twisting of the directive to issue a statement explaining that no such quit order was given. It followed it up with a meeting with the leadership of the NCM.

    The statement issued by the NCM withdrawing its purported quit order to the Igbo was the outcome of their meeting with Governor Alex Otti. Both the withdrawal order and disclosures by the NCM leadership after the meeting showed clearly the mischief in twisting an unambiguous directive.

    The group’s president, Awwal Aliyu while announcing the withdrawal of the quit notice, had said they realized there was no tribal sentiment attached to the state government’s decision. According to him, Otti meant well and is interested in the safety and security of traders in the market contrary to the allegation that he had asked northerners resident in the state to leave.

    This speaks volumes. And if one may ask, at what point did the issue of quit notice arise in the course of the decision by the Abia State government to restrict the market to operate during the day and on a non-residential basis?  How an innocuous policy measure to safeguard lives and property lent itself to ethnic interpretation is at the root of the many challenges stultifying the development of this country.

    Perhaps, only those who misread the state government’s directive can reasonably give a clue as to how the confusion arose. But the body language and position taken by Awwal after their meeting with governor Otti appear to have let the cat out of the bag.

    His disclosure and eulogy for the governor for agreeing to assist vulnerable members of the northern community to rent accommodation outside the market strike at the root of the mix-up.

    The envisaged displacement of those who converted the market to their personal residences is the source of the distortion.  Uncomfortable with the reality of having to seek rented accommodation outside the market, mischief makers went to town and invented a quit order to northerners to sway sentiments of ethnic and parochial hue to their side.

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    To allay the fears of the cattle dealers, Otti went out of his way to promise financial assistance to vulnerable ones to enable them rent accommodation. That gesture must have assuaged the fears of the cattle dealers who had converted the market to their places of residence.

    But the choice of where cattle dealers and sundry herdsmen reside; how they pay for their accommodation are essentially their private concerns. If the government’s gesture is what it takes to get those residing inside the markets out, the end would have justified the means. If that is the prize Abia State will pay to secure that axis of death, sorrow and awe, so be it.

    The state government may not be unmindful of the huge sacrifice in deploying its scarce resources to pay house rent for cattle dealers and herdsmen. But whatever financial inconvenience it suffers to find enduring solutions to the unceasing criminalities along the Lokpanta-Umunneochi-Uturu axis will be a worthwhile sacrifice.

     Before the directive restricting the market to day operations and on non-residential basis, the state government had in conjunction with security agencies embarked in an operation around the market vicinity. Discoveries were quite revealing. A 160-room brothel and shanties suspected to harbour kidnappers and other band of criminals were located and destroyed.

    In the course of the operations, some kidnappers were arrested even as millions of Naira suspected to be ransom from kidnapped victims was recovered. There were clear indications that the area is a hotbed for sundry criminalities.

    The government gave a graphic account of how criminal elements took control of the area raising obstacles along the expressway to seemingly control traffic. But these were decoys for slowing down vehicles deliberately to allow single passage only for informants to alert their collaborators to rob them at some point along that highway.

     It was based on these startling findings, the state government came up with the informed decision which unfortunately was twisted out of context. Good a thing, those who misread the government’s intentions now know better. Their fears of how to secure accommodation outside the market they hitherto saw as their residence has also been allayed by the promise of some form of financial assistance.

    Abia State government has the total endorsement of this writer in the decision to tame the monster of insecurity in that axis, which has over the years defied the authorities for whatever reasons. It is gratifying that since after the raid and destruction of the shanties and brothels, insecurity has reduced in the area. The government should expeditiously implement its twin decisions restricting the market operations to day and on a non-residential basis after allowing time for those residing inside it to find accommodation elsewhere.

    But it remains a huge surprise that contrary to the practice, cattle dealers and all manner of herdsmen were all this while, allowed to convert the market to their residences in that winding highway that serves as border to three states. Little wonder the near state of anarchy that reigns supreme around that area.

     That axis has remained a sore point and national embarrassment with men of the underworld exercising control over its ungoverned territories. Time without number have the ease with which criminal elements operate around the cattle market location led to friction with the host communities routing for its relocation.

    The issue is not about relocation now. The market is being restricted to day operations and non-residential. With these twin measures, the Abia State government in liaison with security agencies and security arm of the cattle dealers union will move to secure the entire market vicinity. There will be no more loitering in the guise of night business around the market. It will be easy to detect those hanging around the market at odd hours to commit heinous crimes. Abia State government is on the right path to untying the puzzle of devious insecurity around that axis. They deserve all the support and encouragement to consign the spate of criminalities for quick monetary gains in that zone to the dust bin of history.

  • Warri(or) in town

    Warri(or) in town

    Warri is the city of my boyhood, where I walked barefoot, and played in the sands. It was in the early 1970’s. School, play, dirt, joy, tragedy. I lost my kid sister Sarah.

    But Warri is not the city I grew up in. The city of exuberance, of a lilting, syncopating pidgin English, of spontaneous eruption of youths on football fields. We lofted kites into a benevolent sky. We threw stones to pluck down rubber seeds before we stacked up the seeds to aim and scatter. Of lo- hanging ebelebo. We adored the wealthy of those days, especially their cars. 1960 car plates belonged to Edewor. And for Odibo it was 4444. We hailed whites, quite a few in Warri, then. Oyibo Pepper if you eatie pepper, you go yellow more more. It was a revelry in chants and dances as the Caucasians walked away as though oblivious of the giddy rapture about them.

    It is a city with a great past, of proud people and fertility of business and mental agility. For business, we had oil, and companies like Chevron, Shell, AGIP had offices there, and their workers thrived and swaggered. In fact, it was urban legend that apartheid abounded in the markets. For wives of oil workers, sellers charged special prices. You anticipated their ornate appearances.

    The port worked, and some people boasted as NPA workers. Its stadium was a place of  footwork. The Warri Wolves had such star players as Martins, Owolo and Didiare. What tearjerker for me when the Benin Vipers – now Bendel Insurance – roared into Warri to humble my team. Josiah Dombraye’s ball juggling wizardry and devil’s footwork made mincemeat of us.  Such a spirit with the ball. My father Moses had to console me. I saw the match, though, at Hussey College grounds.

    But the city fell. It saw quite a few bad times. There was the violence between the Itsekiri and the Ijaws. A needless cousin war, a conflagration that lapped up the young and the sap of the city. It choked the entrepreneur’s elan and sent businesses out of town. Exit Chevron. Exit Shell. Exit profit. It brought a history to its knees. It was not a place we used to call Wafi, with its echoes of street life, parties, bonhomie, commerce. It stooped as any place bowed by blood and bombs.

    Warri went down in gasps. Some of its youth became part of the army of militants. For a long time, rather than divert resources to save the city, the state governments wanted to save the state from the ravages of errant youth stalking the city, domiciled in creeks and bushes.

    But in this republic, a lot of resources have gone to the state capital Asaba. Asaba was not “Warri’s mate”, in the language of the area. It was a sleepy town known as a gateway to the east. IBB made it capital as tribute to his late wife, the charismatic Maryam. Asaba’s gain, Warri’s gloom.

    Warri now needs a warrior, a new kind of Warri, a warrior of rebirth. A Warri(or), that is. The new Sheriff in town has now wagered part of his legacy on bringing back Warri to its lost glory. He wants to be, in the words of Isaiah, the “repairer of the breach… restorer of paths to dwell in.” He has vowed to “build up the old waste places.”

    With a new project amounting to  N78 billion, Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori is putting Warri on notice. With Julius Berger, it has a 27-month onslaught into the city’s infrastructure. This will cover Enerhen Junction Flyover, the Effurun Roundabout ¾ Cloverleaf as well as expansion and pedestrian bridges. It will also have DSC roundabout flyover which will, as the  Commissioner of Works, Reuben Izeze explains, will work simultaneously after the groundbreaking ceremony  next month. The PTI Junction will not be left out but may have to wait for the relocation of the 330KVA power transmission lines on its path. This will not compromise the 27-month deadline.

    Izeze says funding is not an issue as the budgetary arrangement is in place. “The funding came and shall be coming from His Excellency’s determined and courageous decision to tighten our vaults, eradicate frivolous spending and channel our resources into meaningful development.” This will combine FAAC receipts, 13 percent derivation and internally generated revenue. Already, 25 percent of the contract sum has been mobilized.

    This is perhaps Gov. Oborevwori’s fulfilment of a vow when flood ravaged a part of the city, and it went viral. He responded with a virile pledge: “We must revamp Warri.”

    The news waves failed to capture this news item that ranks as one of the largest ever investment in infrastructure in a city of its size in one lump in this country. It is an effort of enthusiasm, and a scaling of Warri as priority.

    The greater story is not to rival Asaba but to deploy infrastructure as a conveyor belt for commercial renaissance.  Asaba remains administrative capital, Warri the commercial nerve centre, much like Lagos and Abuja, New York and Washington.

    Infrastructure work is not just about fancy roads and flyovers, although its aesthetics boosters the soul. The Warri environment can, at times, be an eyesore. I expect that the new lease will embolden the people to move from filth to finesse. It is in itself an economic venture. It means purchases of materials to make blocks and irons to prop the bridges. That is in itself a revival of market. It brings a lot of employment, and ancillary jobs, in agriculture and medicine and services.

    This is what Maynard Keynes described as demand pull. FDR revived American economy after the great Depression and even today, Joe Biden has rebooted America as the most thriving economy today after years of slow growth with his Infrastructure Plan Act.

    Infrastructure work of this sort can also signal an event as we read in David Mcculough’s epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was not only about building the best suspension bridge but also about landmark events in the lives of people. It was a well of memories of those born, those who died, those who committed crime. It was noted that Mark Twain was writing Huckleberry Finn, then.

    The suite of flyovers, bridges, road expansions and roundabouts should stir the city. It is how governors make things happen. It is, if carried out with due diligence, a triumph of the imagination. It will be a project of peace. All the work will illumine at night with streets lights. So, with work, crime will retreat. It is lack of self-pride that actuates criminal propensity.

    The project will also dovetail into the east-west road project, just as the Fourth Mainland Bridge proposed for Lagos will link the Coastal Road imagined by Works minister David Umahi.

     There are other things to do for Warri, including the ports and stadium and schools. But with a project like this, others will find a way. Warri will no longer  be a city where only comedians and stage clowns survive. The city itself gave us comedy as if laughing at itself and its squalor. It is time for the city to laugh. It is part of the governor’s MORE agenda, and one can only say, MORE of that. 

  • Whipping Ndume

    Whipping Ndume

    Ali Ndume may not understand it, but he whipped himself sore last week. The worst of it was that he lied in the name of his God. It was a simple matter. Senate president Godswill Akpabio ruled him out of order for bringing an extraneous matter to the floor. He should have collapsed like a mouse into his chair.

    Rather than play a disciplined part by taking his seat as others  would do, the man in charge of discipline displayed a stunning lack of decorum. While the matter was still under discussion, he rose and walked out.  I think the man is souring over Akpabio’s victory as senate president. Ndume actually was one of the persons Akpabio reached out to  after he won the polls to that exalted chair. He even gave him what they call a juicy committee. Apart from being chief whip, he is vice chair of appropriations committee.

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    But some people do have a sense of searing irony. He said he went to pray. I hope he remembered to beg God for forgiveness as he kneeled and muttered his words. The same feet with which he walked away should be true and his lips with which he defied authorities should not lie at the mosque. Or else, Ndume will have to return to the mosque to do penance.

  • Splurging at UNGA

    Splurging at UNGA

    The news made the rounds that President Bola Tinubu and his entourage spent N442 million at UNGA, and commentators went to town to trash the president. I wonder what they were thinking on TV, newspapers and the ululating social media. The president went to UNGA to make negotiation with potential big-name investors to bring hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of investment to the country, and they are bellyaching over a small sum relative to its windfall. Some commentators are so filled with hate they lack perspectives and contexts. They don’t know what it takes for many government representatives  to negotiate with  experts. The ceremony of the president and the heads of the corporations is just the icing. If they don’t know this, the pundits should ask first before spewing ignorance. Maybe they expect the staff to visit the top players of the world economy from a third-rate hotel in Brooklyn.

    Read Also: 78th UNGA: President Tinubu and his defining moment

    It is not as if the news was not in the public domain. What amount of money do you expect from meetings with such titans as General Electric, Exxon Mobil or Meta Technologies? In India we knew of billions in pledges. Expect America to be smaller? Prejudice can make dullards of smart minds.

  • Election litigations

    Election litigations

    Emerging statistics on the 2023 election-related litigations raise serious concerns on the future of representative democracy in this country. Figures of pre and post-election litigations released by government officials question the capacity and continued relevance of elections in adequately reflecting the collective will of the electorate as expressed at the ballot box. Interestingly, these issues hinge on the philosophical and conceptual role of the electorate as the ultimate sovereign.

    It is not that the trend is entirely new. But the escalating number of contestants relying on the judiciary to determine the rightful winners is a serious threat to the growth and sustenance of the democratic culture in its pristine form. Nothing illustrates the inability of the electoral process to approximate the collective will of the people than the indiscriminate resort to litigations to redress perceived infractions.

    Though the constitution envisages that aggrieved contestants could seek legal remedy by making provisions for it, it is not anticipated that any and every electoral contest will end up at the courts. Something must be off beam in an electoral process that overwhelmingly relinquishes to the courts, the direct rights of the people to choose their leaders.

    That is the sad impression conveyed by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC when they said they had more than 1,000 pre-election litigations in the build-up to the 2023 general elections.

    Its director, Legal Drafting and Clearance, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Babalola said the figure emanated from primaries conducted by political parties and substitution of candidate’s names. Additionally, the failure by political parties to adhere to their constitutions and timelines for the conduct of primaries contributed to the bloated figure.

    The data for post elections litigations released by the President of the Court of Appeal PCA, Justice Monica Dongban- Mensem at the commencement of the 2023/2024 legal year is even more revealing. Of a total of 1,280 political offices contested for in the 2023 elections, 1,209 petitions ended up in the courts for adjudication.

    This represents 94.453 per cent of the elective positions contested for during those elections. Only in 71 offices representing 5.547 per cent of the contested positions did the elections go unchallenged at the courts. This would at once suggest either the primaries/elections were fraught with glaring irregularities or the existence of a culture of refusal by politicians to accept defeat or both.

    By contrast, available independent data indicated that only 663 petitions or 44.32 per cent of the positions contested in the 2015 elections ended up in the courts. But one significant thing in that year’s election was that the presidency went unchallenged.

    The 2019 elections produced 766 petitions representing 51.2 per cent while that of 2011 featured 769 or 51.4 per cent of all the offices contested for.  These statistics speak for themselves. But one thing that stands out distinctly is the unprecedented upsurge in election litigations arising from the 2023 elections.

    This should be something to worry as it conveys the inevitable impression of a groundswell of dissatisfaction with the outcome of both the primaries of the political parties and the elections proper. But as worrisome as these outcomes are, they did not come as a big surprise.

    Not with the rancour and acrimony that characterize the primaries of the political parties. Not with all manner of infractions that combine to diminish the credibility and sanctity of our elections. The figures are reflective of the level of progress or lack of it on the democratic chart despite all pretensions.

    It remains a sad commentary that routine internal affairs of the parties as primaries are characteristically marred by scant regard to rules and intractable disputes culminating in large scale litigations.

    Scant regard to internal democracy is the big issue here. An electoral process is already compromised in a situation political parties show strong aversion to the rights of party members to choose their candidates for elective offices.

    Imposition of candidates, substitution of the names of successful candidates with cronies, friends and favoured ones and lack of adherence to rules and the constitutions of the parties combine to diminish the sanctity of party primaries. In the last election, instances exist of individuals who did not contest the primaries, yet their parties gave them a clean bill of health to fly their flags.

    Ironically also, in some of the recorded instance such decisions were challenged in the courts, the candidates that did not go through primaries were still able to win in court rulings that have continued to confound the public. Court rulings like these are at the centre of reservations on the increasing resort to the courts to determine the true representative of the people.

    There is genuine fear that excessive reliance on the judiciary to determine winners of elections abridges popular sovereignty as it takes away the rights of the electorate to choose their candidates. Go to court has become a popular advice for any complaint on electoral matters. There may be nothing wrong with going to court to redress perceived electoral wrong.

    But it is being applied in a very pejorative manner; a franchise for all manner of infractions in electoral matters. The unfortunate undertone is that all in fair in electoral contest including ignoble subversion of the rules. You can go to court but allow us subvert the process first, they seem to be saying.

    Those quick to urge the aggrieved to go to court will not be inclined to do so if they are sure the judiciary will live up to its bidding as impartial arbiter; the last hope of the common man. But they know the Nigerian judiciary is not isolated from the glaring ills that plague the larger society, ills that accentuate the culture of winning elections by fair and foul means.

    Conscious of the obstacles in conclusively proving electoral cases; the huge toll they take in the finances of the litigants and the Nigerian factor, its purveyors aim at procuring from the judiciary the victory that eluded them at the balloting process.

    One agency that should be held squarely for the inability of the ballot process to conclusively throw up undisputable candidates is the electoral umpire, INEC. Even as the inordinate penchant by politicians to win elections through devious means impact adversely on elections outcome, the buck largely stops at the table of INEC

    It should take responsibility for the inability of the ballot process to throw up generally acceptable results. Such prospects were high as the last elections approached, especially with the introduction of sophisticated technology to enhance credibility and general acceptance. That optimism has been dealt a death blow by the facts of these litigations.

    Read Also: INEC to parties: Stop malicious rumour mongering

    A situation more than 94 per cent of all the contested offices in the country ended up in the courts say much on the credibility and acceptance of those elections. It is possible to raise all manner of excuses. We can blame political parties and politicians for circumventing and sabotaging the rules. But INEC should be held squarely for much of the crisis of confidence that assail the ballot process.

    The confidence of the electorate in elections as a true reflection of the collective wishes of the people is increasingly waning. It is not enough for our leaders to parrot and grandstand on the values of democracy when at the slightest chance they invent all forms of strategy to sabotage the rules of the game.

    As a governance framework, democracy is guided by rules; it assumes the character of any other contraption when these guiding principles are observed in their breach. This calls for further electoral reforms such that will tie the hands of INEC by ensuring the ballot process is truly reflective of the collective will of voters. That right cannot be abdicated to the courts without stultifying the sovereignty of the electorate.

    This should instruct moral re-engineering of the psyche of average Nigerian to political cultures of decent electoral conduct. That was perhaps, what Prof. Toyin Falola referred to as moral restructuring at the 2023 Faculty of Arts Lecture of the Lagos State University.  We need a dose of attitudinal change and reforms to correct the noxious impression that politics is the quickest route to illicit wealth. Until then, there may be no end to this madness.

  • Renewing war on corruption

    Renewing war on corruption

    Will the exit of the old authority figures from two major Nigerian anti-corruption agencies, and the entrance of new ones, positively change the story of the country’s unimpressive and ineffective fight against corruption?

    This is an inevitable question following the recent appointments of Ola Olukoyede as executive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and Musa Adamu Aliyu as chairman and chief executive officer of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

    President Bola Tinubu’s spokesperson, Ajuri Ngelale, in a statement, notably described Olukoyede’s new role as an “important national assignment,” adding, “a newly invigorated war on corruption undertaken through a reformed institutional architecture in the anti-corruption sector remains a central pillar of the President’s Renewed Hope agenda.” 

    He also said Aliyu’s appointment was “in furtherance of the Renewed Hope mandate to reform key institutions and invigorate Nigeria’s war on corruption.”  The emphasis on reform was an acknowledgement of past failure.

    According to the presidential aide, Olukoyede “is a lawyer with over twenty-two (22) years of experience as a regulatory compliance consultant and specialist in fraud management and corporate intelligence. He has extensive experience in the operations of the EFCC, having previously served as Chief of Staff to the Executive Chairman (2016-2018) and Secretary to the Commission (2018-2023).”

     He said Aliyu “has embarked upon many far-reaching reforms as the Attorney General of Jigawa State since September 2019,” has a doctorate in law, and was “named as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria-designate in October 2023.”

    Olukoyede’s appointment, for a renewable term of four years in the first instance, has been confirmed by the Senate, which is expected to also confirm the appointment of Aliyu, who will have a five-year tenure.  

    It remains to be seen how both men will approach the fight against corruption. There is no question that Nigeria needs to fight corruption with greater seriousness. Two events in July, about two months after Tinubu’s inauguration, highlighted public disenchantment with the anti-corruption war that the administration inherited from the Muhammadu Buhari presidency. Buhari made a lot of noise about fighting corruption, but positive results were hardly visible.

    At an event in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, on July 10, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Call to Bar of Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), activist lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) observed that “The level of corruption in Nigeria has assumed a very dangerous dimension.”  He said: “We have a situation whereby highly placed public officers steal money meant for building hospitals, people are dying on our roads, money for ecology meant to fight erosion are also being stolen.”

    Read Also: Kano to tackle corruption despite intimidation, says Yusuf

    Falana added: “President Bola Tinubu must show leadership and lead an anti- corruption crusade. Some of those who are going in and out of the villa are standing trial for looting the treasury of this country. So, wrong signals must not be sent to our people and the international community.”

    This event was followed by a two-day national anti-corruption conference in Abuja, July 11-12, organised by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA) and the Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch (CEFTIW). The theme was “Nigeria and the Fight Against Corruption – Reviewing the Buhari Regime and Setting Agenda for the Tinubu Administration.”

    HEDA chairman Olanrewaju Suraju, in his assessment of the Tinubu administration’s first steps towards fighting corruption, said: “If we want to go by what has been happening so far in terms of the fight against corruption, we can’t for now, say that we have any good reason to believe that there is going to be any serious fight against corruption.”

    Olukoyede inherited “no fewer than 25 high-profile corruption cases involving former governors, ministers and senators,” according to an investigative report published on October 22. The cases involve “not less than N772.2bn and another $2.2bn, alleged to have gone missing through money laundering, fund diversion and misappropriation,” the report said. Some of the cases seem interminable.

    Anti-corruption activists had criticised the EFCC under the previous chairman, saying most of the convictions claimed by the agency involved online fraudsters, and that high-profile political players were treated as sacred cows. They also alleged that “Some of the commission’s officials simply negotiate with suspects, get assets and cash retrieved and do plea bargains. This opens limitless opportunities for corrupt bargaining and self-enrichment by the operatives of EFCC.”

     The immediate past chairman of the agency, Abdulrasheed Bawa, had eventually resigned after the Tinubu administration suspended him “to allow for proper investigation into his conduct while in office.” The federal government said there were “weighty allegations of abuse of office levelled against him.” His detention since June, without charge, does not help the anti-corruption war.

    The new EFCC boss gave an insight into his thoughts on how to fight corruption during his screening by the Senate. He was reported saying, “I will do more in the areas of blocking the leakages. We spend more money fighting corruption when we could have spent less to prevent it.”

    He gave concrete facts and figures concerning a survey he did, which covered three years, 2018 to 2020. The picture was food for thought. “I picked just one scheme, one species of fraud, which is called contract and procurement fraud. I discovered that within the three years, Nigeria lost N2.9tn,” he narrated.

    “When I put my figures together, I discovered that if the country had prevented the money from being stolen, it would have given us 1,000 kilometres of road, it would have built close to 200 standard tertiary institutions; it would have also educated about 6,000 children from primary to tertiary levels at N16m per child.

    “It would have also delivered more than 20,000 units of three-bedroom houses across the country. It would have given us a world-class teaching hospital in each of the 36 states of the country and the federal capital territory.”

    Now he can put his anti-corruption ideas into practice. The EFCC and the ICPC are symbolic of the country’s fight against corruption. Fighting corruption is serious business, and these anti-corruption agencies must not give the impression that they are mere anti-corruption symbols.

    The new authority figures in these agencies must demonstrate a new drive, and launch a renewed fight against corruption so that the country can truly have renewed hope of crushing corruption.