The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Funtua and chief of staff

    Funtua and chief of staff

    Sam Omatseye

    Since President Buhari’s chief of staff Abba Kyari passed, newspapers have been frothing with speculations of his successor. One name that came out like an irritation was that of former minister, publisher and what some call the cabal. He is Ismaila Isa Funtua. He came out to dissociate himself from it. He is 78, and happy with what he is doing. He does not belong to the self-indulgent class of senior citizens who would die in office. He would be none of it. Funtua was a benefactor of Kyari, and even was instrumental to making him editor in his heydays.

    The media could have called him, a former president of the Newspaper Association of Nigeria and one of the mainstays of International Press Institute, and asked him if he was interested. He wasn’t. Other names came up including former Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima, a senator who would not submit his mandate.

    Eyes should point to a man like Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, the director-general of the National Intelligence Agency, an ambassador of vast experience, a close associate of the president, and Mamman Daura. Abubakar would play well into that crowd. He is young and energetic and with the right instinct for the role.

    Many have written tributes to Kyari, and it seems our people don’t understand that when a big man dies, our jobs are not to praise or vilify, but to look clinically at legacy. Many fail to mention Kyari’s irony as a man who saw the world, and learned everywhere, but was instrumental to the lopsided image of the administration, cosmopolitan in outlook but insular in execution. What was the chief of staff doing in Germany to cut power deals and where was the power minister? Or why did he flay lawmakers for not isolating themselves when he did not do same? Why a member of NNPC board? Or why did he want to preside over security meetings when the  National security adviser was not handicapped? While praising his virtues as lawyer, administrator, banker, et al, we should remember that he did not do any of that as a public servant. What concerned us and posterity was chief of staff.

  • Malice as virtue

    Malice as virtue

    Sam Omatseye

    We don’t make politicians like Richard Akinjide anymore. Or even lawyers. He was a man who understood malice and turned it not only into a virtue but also into a sort of glamour. But first, he made a good career of it.

    I could not but ruminate on this idiosyncrasy of this man when he died last week.  He belonged to that class of statesmen who did not believe in joining the other group. He did not love the quality of compromise. He shone in his own ideological skin. He did not envy the “wicked.” He did not aspire to the pollution of the age.

    He was Akinjide, conservative, virulent, brilliant and successful. Yet many would deny him the tag of statesman because he was thought an ideological retrogressive. This writer thinks so, but I do say so with a sort of envy. He did not belong to the mainstream of his tribe. But he was a toothache that gave worry to the whole jaw. An Ibadan man whose group found a way to lose virtually every poll since the 1950’s, Akinjide still stuck to his position to his dying day. He was a loser as glamour.

    He was successful as some people might say. He was a federal minister. He was attorney-general of the federation. He was a lawyer and made senior Advocate the same day with his great foe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He did that in spite of the cauldron of disaffection from his own people. He ran his race, and he cut the tape, in spite of his Yoruba race.

    When he became a SAN, he might have embraced Awo. But what history recalls was not their joint celebration but celebration as grudge match. In the same hotel in Victoria Island, they clinked glasses in different rooms. Awo thought Akinjide a political wayfarer of bad warfare who turned the law to the service of servile causes for profit. Akinjide thought Awo was a naïve lawyer who he defeated all the time and was not a SAN worthy of his – Akinjide’s – luminous robe.

    Akinjide did not need anyone’s praise. He did not need anyone’s money. He did not need anyone’s epaulette. He was a proud and contented hater. He had peace just to see his enemies squirm because of him. And they did squirm.

    Even when you defeated him, you knew he was down but not out. So you did not beat him. Your victory was Pyrrhic. When Bola Ige of the acerbic tongue flunked him out of the debate floor over whether his family bred thugs from Awo’s free education, he suspected Akinjide would come back. He returned in the camouflage of the garrulous Oluloyo to flush Ige out of Molete as governor of Oyo State. Till his dying day, Ige ached at the mention of Akinjide’s name.

    As for Awo, he must have thought of Akinjide like Jefferson and Adams thought of each other in their dying moments. John Adams and Jefferson were foes to the death. And when Adams lay dying, his last words were, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” Jefferson had died five minutes earlier wondering the same thing of Adams.

    The point though was that Akinjide conceded Awo’s superiority in political organization. But that was obvious. He said Awo was an inferior lawyer. He also thought Awo was no better in wisdom. In stature though, Akinjide is a puny figure to the Ikenne titan. He did not admit it, and the Awoists are not happy that he still arrogated to himself a position of grandeur that belonged elsewhere.

    This peacock element of Akinjide made him a source of admiration to his friends and foes. Where he thought he did the most harm was on the legal pulpit of what is called twelve two third. Many see it as a legal battle, but it was both legal and political, and he won. Awo and Awoists will go to their graves grieving, but that is the singular battle ground that the Ibadan warrior exacted his pound of flesh – raw, bleeding and juicy. They never got it back.

    If Akinjide turned to the other side, his prestige and myth might have diluted. He didn’t. He remained the ideological foe. The man who looked the other side. The man who scorned when he smiled, the peacock who strutted and preened.

    We don’t have them today. He remained the metaphor of the politician without compromise. He was with the NPC with his Akintola crowd of NNDP. He was with NPN. He was with NRC. He was with PDP. He was, in the words of Henry Thoreau, not a joiner who are like pigs who come together in a sty to feel warm. The only time he had common cause with Awo and the progressives was in the early days of the Ibadan People’s Party when his coalition saved the west from Zik’s onslaught into Yorubaland. After that, he was done. Like Lot’s wife, he never looked back. The Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler wrote that “it is easier to fight for one’s principle than to live up to them.” Akinjide was one rare personage who lived up to his. We cannot say so of the politics of today.

    Many we see in PDP today were in APC. Many in APC were in PDP. This is an age of the harlot, of convenience. You may call him a quisling to his race, a lawyer as carpet bagger, a serial dissenter. But he was Akinjide. His apology was to none.

    I had a short shave with him shortly after I started this column. He called this essayist. I was in the car and I picked up the phone. “My name is Richard Akinjide,” he announced. I recognised the voice, but I still ventured mischief. “Is this the Richard Akinjide sir.” He said yes. He was impressed with my writing and he would want to meet with me. I eventually saw him at his office in Lagos.

    It was quite a good conversation marked by bonhomie of ideas and he introduced me to his daughter and future minister Jumoke, who was then beneath the public radar. We discussed many contemporary issues and he was such a mind. As he accompanied me out of his office, I saw a cartoon applauding his Twelve Two-third cause celebre. I said, “I like every other thing on the wall except that.” That was the last moment of our friendship. He would not speak with me after that.

    His enemies wished they are like him in an age of harlotry. He was what the writer said, “My enemy is gone. A soul divine like myself is dead.” His malice paid off.

  • Living with COVID-19

    Living with COVID-19

     Emeka Omeihe

     

    Scenario-building on post corona virus disease, COVID-19 Nigeria may for now, seem somewhat hasty or even preposterous.

    This is to be understood given the immediate preoccupation of the various governments to contain the increasing spread of the viral disease. Faced with this daunting challenge, it would appear a waste of valuable time speculating on the possible consequences of the pandemic for the country when and if it is finally contained.

    But such speculations will evoke different feelings if they have to do with easing off of some of the stringent measures to stem the spread of the disease. Because some of these measures are largely temporary, they will have to be relaxed someday to allow normal life return.

    There is a limit beyond which we cannot stretch the measures without activating both the necessary and sufficient conditions for socio-economic unrest.

    The reality is that the lockdown will somehow be eased off to allow for the resumption of normal activities. This will come with its own challenges as efforts are still in place to contain the spread of the disease. The challenge is in effective measures to take to live with the virus especially given that continued lockdown and sit-at-home are glaringly inconsistent with the conduct of social organization in this country.

    How do our usually crowded schools, markets, churches, eateries and hotels respond to such safety rules as social or physical distancing, the use of face masks, regular washing of hands etc.? How do we maintain social distancing in our transportation system without escalating the cost? These and many others are the challenges we will have to contend with when the lockdown is lifted or COVID-19 defeated.

    Given the absence of any known vaccine for the treatment of the disease, the reality is that we will have to live with it for now. Even when it has been defeated, there is still no guarantee that it will not re-surface sometime in the future. So, some of these preventive measures may have to live with us in the foreseeable future.

    Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres captured the situation most succinctly when he said a safe and effective vaccine may be the only tool that can return the world to a sense of ‘normalcy’.

    Yet, the fact that many of those infected, have successfully been treated and discharged gives a glimmer of hope that the virus is incapable of wiping out mankind from the face of the earth. The thing is to prepare to live with the disease now and when it has been substantially tamed.

    A recent survey by a group of Harvard Scientists captured the situation thus, “A one-off lockdown won’t halt the novel corona virus and repeated periods of social distancing may be required into 2022 to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. One thing that remains almost certain is that the virus is here to stay”, they concluded.

    Going by the figures from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control NCDC, the total number of infected persons successfully managed and discharged stood at 152 while 13 people lost their lives to the disease as at Thursday night, last week.

    The fatality rate represented less than 10 per cent of patients successfully treated and discharged.  It is something comforting in the absence of any known vaccine for the cure of the disease that had kept even the most advanced nations of the world on their knees.

    This success ratio in the management of COVID-19 patients coupled with scientific efforts to develop the relevant vaccine, gives hope that the virus can be tamed if not permanently, temporarily. Thus, our response to the pandemic should be in two phases – one dealing with how the citizenry can conduct their lives in the midst of the ravaging viral disease, while the other relates to the post-COVID-19 era. President Muhammadu Buhari captured these challenges in his national broadcast last week when he said the pandemic has changed the world as we know it.

    In response to these dynamics, he directed about 13 ministries to jointly develop a comprehensive policy for a “Nigerian economy functioning with COVID-19”.

    Implicit in this directive is the realization that the pandemic will live with us for some time and our system may inevitably grind to a halt if we do not evolve suitable measures to resume normal economic life while battling with it.

    That is the challenge the committee has been saddled with. But even if the committee succeeds in working out models for effective functioning of the Nigerian economy as the pandemic persist, that is not all there is to it. There are other equally potent dimensions to the challenge.

    The pandemic has adversely affected our socio-political and cultural organization such that serious adjustments both within the period of the scourge and thereafter have become patently inevitable. There is no doubt about that. Not with the manner of spread of the virus requiring citizens to social or physical distancing; wearing of face masks, washing of hands regularly and general personal hygiene. It will definitely re-define our social organization and relations.

    Read Also: Adeboye: Nigeria will recover faster from COVID-19

     

    A return to ‘normalcy’ while the pandemic subsists should even be more scaring given the poor state of our health infrastructure; debilitating poverty that earned us the unenviable sobriquet of the world poverty capital and a burgeoning population that has largely remained hewers of wood and fetchers of water. How to conduct daily living in a largely disorganized, disoriented and unstructured economic and socio-political milieu will be quite daunting.

    For, much of the measures the pandemic is forcing on our people are largely inconsistent with the daily living circumstances of a vast majority of our citizens that wallow in abject poverty. This group pays scant attention to these rules even as many still believe the pandemic is a hoax.

    Ironically, this country is bountifully endowed with huge natural resources by Mother Nature which should have been effectively deployed to create wealth and transform the lives of the citizenry positively but for inept, amateur and irrational leadership that wallows in self-aggrandizement and ethnic chauvinism.

    When these stark existential challenges are juxtaposed with the staccato of measures to keep the virus at bay, the reality of what we face during the pandemic and thereafter becomes more glaring. The upsurge in robberies in Lagos-the epicentre of the pandemic is only indicative of the dissonance between some of the measures to contain the scourge and the material conditions of our people.

    The hoodlums who have taken to the streets robbing innocent ones both during the day and at night can no longer stand the lockdown notwithstanding its merits. They represent the wretched of the earth without anything to fall back on. For them, it is better for the virus affliction to send them to their graves than hunger. That is part of the contradictions that have been elevated to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    More fundamentally, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of our weak systems, institutions and processes. It has more than anything, exposed the inherent dangers in paying scant heed to the development of world class health infrastructure and allied facilities in the country in preference for medical tourism by an uncaring leadership. It has drawn our attention to the reality that whatever we make of our country will someday come back to haunt.

    Who could have foreseen a few months back that countries will shut their borders to non-citizens? It would have sounded absurd if someone had told some of our leaders that at this time of the year, they will not be able to seek medical treatment abroad no matter the amount of funds at their disposal.

    These are some of the lessons of the current pandemic. Whether our leaders will learn the hard way this time around, will be the defining factor on where we find ourselves in the days ahead.

  • All eyes on Buratai

    All eyes on Buratai

    Femi Macaulay

     

    All eyes are now on Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai, following his publicised relocation to the Northeast theatre of war, to physically and actively lead the war against Boko Haram. It remains to be seen how Lt Gen Buratai’s physical and active participation will give the Nigerian troops an advantage over Boko Haram.

    The Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Colonel Sagir Musa, said in a statement that Lt Gen Buratai had “relocated fully to the Northeast where he is overseeing and directing the overall operation in the theatre and other Nigerian Army operations across the country.”

    It is unclear why the army boss took the decision at this time, and why he did not do so earlier. It remains to be seen whether his move will make a difference.

    Perhaps Lt Gen Buratai is haunted by his tough talk during the Nigerian Army Special Day at the 41st Kaduna International Trade Fair on March 7. The army boss, who spoke through the Chief of Policy, Nigerian Army, Lt Gen Lamidi Adeosun, was reported to have said that the army would crush Boko Haram in a matter of days.

    That did not happen, and the war against the Boko Haram insurgents, which has gone on for more than 10 years now, is looking like a war without end.

    Perhaps Lt Gen Buratai’s relocation is a face-saving reaction to the recent news of the exploits of Chadian troops in the anti-terror war. A report said:   ”About 100 suspected Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) were… killed around the Lake Chad Basin and cache of arms recovered by Chadian troops in an operation led by President Idris Debby.

    “The operation codenamed Wrath of Boma was launched by President Debby following the murder of about 92 Chadian soldiers by the terrorists in a recent ambush…According to video footage and information from the operation available on the internet, Debby, who said he would not accept defeat from the terrorists, led his armed forces to battle at Kelkoua bank and Magumeri… The troops were said to have also destroyed several BHTs bunkers, recovered cache of arms and arrested a top BHT commander.”

    On Lt Gen Buratai’s relocation, according to the army spokesman, “While addressing troops of Special Super Camp Ngamdu in Kaga Local Government Area of Borno State on 9 April 2020, Gen. Buratai said that he will be with them to the nooks and crannies of the theatre.”

    He recalled that “the COAS had been on operational tour to troops’ locations in the Northeast Theatre of Operation since Saturday the 4th of April, 2020.

    During the tour, he was at the Army Super Camp 1 at Mulai and the Special Forces Super Camp 12 at Chabbol near Maiduguri on Wednesday 8 April 2020 where he interacted with the officers and addressed the troops respectively.

    “COAS was also at the Forward Operations Base at Alau Dam, and also personally led the troops on patrol round Mairimari and Maigilari Forests.”

    Lt Gen Buratai should know that talking tough is not enough to win a shooting war.  He tried to boost the morale of the troops at Ngamdu Special Super Camp during a special Easter celebration, declaring that he would not leave the theatre of war until the Boko Haram insurgents had been defeated.

    He told the troops:  ”We are here; we will not leave this camp until we substantially degrade these criminals… we shall be there with you, no going back once we commence.

    We will be with you in the valleys, on the hill, in the jungle, in the river and so on…. We are here and we will make sure that we get ourselves properly motivated, properly equipped…”

    The first test came sooner than they expected; “barely 72 hours after,” according to a report. It was a signal that should awaken the army boss to the realities at the theatre of war.

    “Boko Haram insurgents… launched an attack on the Army Special Super Camp at Ngamdu, a border town between Borno and Yobe where the Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Tukur Buratai relocated to launch a final onslaught on the terrorists, “the report said.

    Read Also: Buratai’s camp under Boko Haram fire

     

    “But the insurgents tested their confidence by launching the attack on the camp even as Buratai and his officers are apparently mapping out strategies on how to deal final blows on the terrorists.

    “Sources at the camp, who are not authorised to speak with the press, revealed that the insurgents came in mortar gun trucks from the south-western side and opened fire.

    “Other sources revealed that mortar guns where launched in the camp but no fatality was recorded. Some of the troops were said to have sustained minor injuries.”

    By relocating to the theatre of war, Lt Gen Buratai has probably played his last card. He should know that if this move does not bring the desired result, which is the clear defeat of the terrorists, it would amount to nothing more than an elaborate stunt.  In the event that the latest counter-insurgency effort under Lt Gen Buratai fails, such a failure should result in his exit.

    Lt Gen Buratai should demonstrate that he has the capacity not only to lead the counter-insurgency effort but also win the war against Boko Haram. Appointed Chief of Army Staff in July 2015, Lt Gen Buratai, 59, was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in December 1983 into the Infantry Corps of the Nigerian Army, and has been in service for 36 years.

    His operational deployments include Military Observer at the United Nations Verification Mission II in Angola, Op Harmony IV in the Bakassi Peninsular, Op Mesa, Op Pulo Shield, Op Safe Conduct, Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), in Chad, Op Zaman Lafiya, and Op Lafiya Dole.

    It is interesting that Lt Gen Buratai, who attended Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, has a degree in History from University of Maiduguri, and a degree in Philosophy from Bangladesh University of Professionals, Dhaka. He is also a graduate of National Defence College, Mirpur, Bangladesh.

    The combination of history and philosophy should motivate him to make history by defeating Boko Haram, and make him reflective enough to grasp the difference between success and failure.

  • The 5k Naira Republic

    The 5k Naira Republic

    Sam Omatseye

     

    I PITY the almighty naira. This is not what it is supposed to be. It has seen its plum days. It did not only rule; it reigned. It did not strut like the dollar or the pound when I was a child, but its notes rustled with promise. The naira huffed and puffed. It was worth its weight in gold.

    When we transitioned from the pound to the naira, we chanted and hoped. In memorable notes, Baba Sala gave us minstrelsy performances in jingles and dance, celebrating and delineating the various naira notes.

    One Naira was a lot to hold. A thousand naira was a salary of big men. Company managers in the 1970’s earned gloriously who took home three hundred naira a month. Car loans of three thousand naira gave you a good car. You rented a great flat in choice areas of town with N40 a month. Even up to the 1980’s, N5000 gave you a car, a new one.

    Now we are demonizing people with N5000. In this COVID-19 era, anyone who has a bank account of N5000 or more is regarded as happy enough not to qualify for federal government cash transfer, although the COVID-19 palliatives differ from the conditional cash transfer. For the poor, the distinction is not necessary. They will accept anything to tide over this turbulence.

    Suddenly we are giving value to the Naira where it does not deserve. The world ridicules us that Nigerians live on less than two dollars a day, and that amounts to about N8,000. That sum, by world standard, is awful. But we are making those who earn even less than one dollar a day look like princes.

    Five thousand naira could buy a car in the blossomy days of the naira. What can it do today? It is like a former millionaire who lost the luxury years of posh cars and decadent parties to the locust of bad times. He now waits at bus stops to commute.

    Five thousand naira cannot feed a family for a week, no matter the frugal genius. We should not make it look like those who earn 10,000 or 20,000 earn anything in this cash transfer. They will accept it. But it does not save them.

    Another condition for cash transfer is that it should focus on the urban poor. That’ s a good idea. The urban poor, the sufferers of capitalism, are worse off than the rural poor. In rural Nigeria, they feed on what they plant and pick and kill. They retain the hunter-gatherer instinct. They thrive on what they get. The urban poor live on what they are given, and they don’t get anything near what the world calls a living wage. They are like the characters captured in Festus Iyayi’s novel, Violence.

    The naira has failed, but it has not fallen. The Bible times bewailed the poor fate that befell money, and it wrote, “money failed in the land of Egypt…” The apocalypse can fall on a currency as we have seen in some countries like Argentina, Ghana and Zimbabwe. Money became a burden more than an enabler. As Isaiah noted, “the land is utterly wasted” and explained earlier that “as with the people, so with the priest, as with the servant, so with the master…as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower…”

    Money value falls gradually all over the world. In his classic, The Return of the native, Thomas hardy writes of a man who in the 19th century came into money and how much was it? Eleven thousand pounds. He was a wealthy man. Not in today’s England.

    So, we should be mindful of those we think can flourish, so we know who to nourish. Anybody earning N5,000 is like a destitute in today’s Nigeria. By taking it for granted that the money should go to people with bank account, we take it for granted that the very poor can be reached in the banks. Many of them have no bank accounts. It is a failure of imagination to think that bank accounts will do. They should follow the Lagos model of employing political mobilization tools to reach the destitute among us.

    The system also assumes that those who top their phones with less than 100 Naira are a tool to reach the needy. That might be true. There are many, though, who cannot afford a phone, and they borrow to make calls. There are too many things that are luxury to many people in this society. Just as one generation’s rich is another’s poor, a pauper in a rich man’s imagination is actually a comfortable man. Our comforts make us into snobs but make the poor sob. George Bush Sr. fell into a storm when he walked into the supermarket and did not know of the new sales machines. Marie Antoinette made her husband Louis 16th the last monarch in French history when she asked protesters to eat cake if they could not afford bread. It is the same acceptance of low standards that made graduates hot cake first and wastrels of the economy now. We have disenfranchised some citizens with our opulent imagination. By making the poor look rich, we have made the destitute a non-citizen, like Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man.

    We are now a 5000 Naira republic by that policy. The notion may be noble, but not wise.

     

    A tale of two bags

     

    ORDINARILY, her name does not ring a bell. And even as politics goes, she is not even a belle. But she is trying to bell a bad cat. An APC cat.

    The task is to divert the attention of  Akwa Ibom State from high and sublime issues of development. Blessing Osom Edet is going junk and prurient. If she is a party face, she is also the APC façade. She wanted to represent the people under the APC in the state house of assembly, and the people spurned her. And now, her idle mind is accusing the government of parsimony. What does that mean? That Governor Udom Emmanuel’s government is not opening the state coffers for lazy drones. She wants a rebirth of stomach infrastructure, Akwa Ibom style. It has spun attention and a flurry of backlash on the social media. She is invoking corruption as an instrument of governance.

    Because of that alleged stinginess, the allegation says women are now bidding farewell to their marital vows to bow to men of means in the PDP with their husbands’ tacit consent. She is, in essence, demonising a whole generation of Akwa Ibom women as citizens of what novelist Henry James calls “the big, bright Babylon.” They have abandoned God and their faith for filthy lucre. Evidence? She has none. What a self-indictment! But many are saying her cry is not about money, or faithless wives, or conniving husbands, but about 2023.

    Haba! If they want to focus on a battle for the next set of electoral champions, do they have to invent ghost stories? Why not focus on the issues, and not tissues of lies. Why make a bedlam out of marital beds, or lies about who lies with whom?

    Issues abound to tackle rather than who sleeps with whom? First, why is there a bout of tranquility in a state in which blood and death was routine. A man of peace put an end to an era of human waste. Rather they are romanticising the pre-Emmanuel era of Ghana-must-go bags. They want it back. Well, if we recall, it was an era of two bags: moneybags beside body bags; deaths and dollars. But Governor Udom Emmanuel said he has come so his people may have life and have it more abundantly. They should take him to task on that. No news of shootings at churches, or at homes or rallies. Is that not true?

    He is staking claims at making an industrial hub of his state, from coconut refineries, to syringe factories and metre hub, etc. With Ibom Air, he has lined the Nigerian sky with its top-of-the-line aircraft. Any counterpoint? We should focus on facts, not phantasmal delirium that fuels tabloids and the nadir regions of the internet.

     

     

  • Enahoro: Pardoning a ghost

    Enahoro: Pardoning a ghost

    Sam Omatseye

    Should Anthony Enahoro rise from the grave in gratitude to the Buhari government, or go to court as a ghost to charge the government for pardoning him with impunity? It is a rare act of unsolicited generosity.

    If anything, maybe we can take the pardon as an act of goodwill to one of our sages of nationalism, who fought as Zikist, and was a jailbird three times. At independence, he was with Awolowo, the number one avatar of our history, in what was known as treasonable felony. Gowon forgave him and others, including Awo, and became minister of information for almost decade before Murtala edged out Gowon.

    So although he was investigated over some funds in FESTAC and was charged over his pro-democratic onslaughts, he was never indicted. How do you forgive me when I did not commit a crime? It is a puzzle that the Attorney general must clear.

    Or was he pardoned for being Enahoro, which would be an original sin? Then it would not be him alone but all others like Awo and Jakande. The Enahoro family saw it as a sort of accolade, but a pardon is not sought but by a sinner. In our history, Enahoro was more sinned against than sinning by the state from Colonial times to the military era. Let his only pardon rest in peace.

  • The Strangers

    The Strangers

     Sam Omatseye

    Round one: Wike hits Sirika. Sirika falls, and grumbles. Wike, never smiling, hits again in court, and smells blood.

    The audience hails and boos, awaiting round two. Meanwhile, Wike belches and allows himself a half smile, a cynical crease on his cheek.

    To some, it is an issue between a governor with a scratchy voice and a minister with a muffled voice. To others, it is a wrestling match between a bristling David and hectoring Goliath. Even others think it is an atavistic test of federalist will as to whether the centre should hold or hold off.

    But the matter is never open and shut. Matters like this tend to push people into a binary stand-off. Some say Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike is right, others say Wike is peevish, his soul rots with malice because he cannot get the same money flowing to Lagos State.

    The shadow war is on federalism. For sure, the Buhari administration has never been an admirer of the federalist idea, and has therefore never pursued any law or bill that would concede its powers to any constituent part. So, it has been easy for it to ignore Soyinka, Falana, et al, when asked to restrain from unilateral shutdowns.

    The argument for the presidency has been simple: this is an unusual time. We cannot afford the luxury of law when nature is mowing down our civilization. Many, including this essayist, agree with Buhari because Covid-19 respects no legal niceties in its onslaughts. Not even a behemoth like the United States. Wike seems to paying the centre back in its anarchist coin.

    So, just as the federal government was closing down Lagos and Abuja, some state governors were doing so, too. We were, as it were, back to the state of nature. Or, shall we say, back to the nature of the state. Everybody was going to take care of its territory. Wike, therefore, announced a shutdown of his state and dared anyone, including the centre, to violate.

    That led to scene one of the ongoing drama. Caverton Helicopters flew in some expatriates, and Wike saw an affront. The centre cooperated with him in the commissioner of police and the commander of the Air force base. The centre did not hold for Hadi Sirika, the minister of aviation. Two key federal figures embraced Wike. In the Jonathan era, Wike had ironically challenged his predecessor in a contempt of federalism when he, too, was a minister. Coronavirus, though, did not flare then.

    He got two pilots arrested, shut down Caverton’s office, and sued them to court, offering to testify when the case opens. If we are in a state of nature, whose state is it? Is it the Hobbesian one where it is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short?” Or is it Rousseau’s where it was more neutral seeking all to come together for courtesy and peace? Or is it Locke’s Christian world view of Adamic cooperation? In the end, most philosophers, including John Rawls, saw the state of nature as reason.

    Reason is what should prevail now. Ego is Hobbes. If both sides cannot agree on federalist reflexes, it means reason should prevail. For one, Wike was in his right to demand that the centre ought to notify his office that such a flight was bound to his state. That is why the constitution calls him the chief security officer. Two, in an era of testing, why would the minister not insist that those they were allowing to move from state to state were certified free of Covid-19 before travelling and also letting the state know that?

    The minister’s assertion that the governor puts the CP and the commander in jeopardy may be right. They ought to clear from the centre. They report to the centre, not the state. But it reflects the odds and awkwardness of the constitution, which presumes a courtesy too refined for our temperament. So, Wike as a lawyer may be looking at life before law. We need to have people before the law.

    Wike has been accused of not sorting it out with the federal government before his action. They are right. That is where the law of nature segues from Hobbes to Rousseau. We don’t want what Hobbes calls “a war of all against all.” That will help no one.

    There was something boorish about Wike’s act. His resort to the court also means he has jettisoned the state of nature and turned it into his own version of reason. But to echo Shakespeare’s Shylock, “Is that the law?” We should find out. At least, the Rivers State Governor has bowed to the rule of law, even if he seems to be trying to choreograph it. If it goes as far as the Supreme Court, it may be out of his hands.

    But what we want is not the state of nature the Hobbes style, but the reason style. It is a matter that could have been resolved by a phone call. Maybe we don’t want such phone dialogues. Each may spew out venom over the waves. But it is like the fight between couples. They are squabbling over whether the door should be locked or not, but the beef is deeper than that. It is just a symptom of a deeper grudge. Wike has been angry with the centre and the centre has been ignoring Wike. It is a grudge of strangers, some partisan pus.

    When Novelist Albert Camus wrote The Plague, it was less about a scourge than a metaphor. It reflected many aspects of society other than rats infecting people who were dying. It was about human beings bringing out their deeper faults and characters in the sewer of their beings, a reflection that while the disease may be a stranger, the real strangers were the people who lived in the town of contagion during Nazi occupation. Ironically, Camus also wrote a novel called The Stranger. Pharaoh was not evil before or after the plagues but in spite of them.

    In all, Wike and Sirika, like Camus’ characters, are at war with perceptions of propriety. At a time when law is luxury, ego should give way to a level head. There is still room for that. And that can be done within hours of shuttle diplomacy.

    We expect to see that. The real virus is not some pesky contagion from Wuhan, but us. We cannot sit at table to wipe the microbes out of our robes. What should have started as a courtesy is now stinking like a corpse.

    So, the fight between the centre and state is not what law applies, but who wants to be right. But if the matter is about saving lives, then Wike is right. People came before civilization, and no care is too much to prioritise the species. It may be an emotional reaction but laws do not respect contagion and contagions do not wait for laws. So, in the last instance, the Rivers State governor probably did not want to take chances. If ego drives Wike here, the facts favour him. Life precedes law.

  • UITH scandal

    UITH scandal

    By Emeka Omeihe

    What could have prompted a professor and specialist in infectious and non-infectious diseases to conceal vital information on a corona virus disease COVID-19 patient he brought for treated at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH)?

    Can he reasonably plead ignorance of the manifest symptoms of the disease with the travel history of the patient and when he had previously advised him to self-isolate? Or, was his action intended to cover up possible stigmatization in view of his family link with the patient?

    These are some of the questions miserably and inevitably thrown up by the death of a COVID-19 patient, Muhideen Obanimomo at UITH last week. The nagging posers are further reinforced by the circumstance in which the professor, AK Salami personally brought the patient to the accident and emergency unit of the hospital, caused him to be admitted and treated for abdominal disorder with the corpse released to him for burial upon his death.

    But for frantic calls from anonymous people volunteering information on the patient, the hospital would not have known his travel history, the fact of his isolation and that the signs of the ailment were clearly manifest but concealed by Salami for very inexplicable reasons. Sadly, the information came too late. The corpse had already been released to him for burial according to Islamic rites before the authorities came to terms with the reality of the situation.

    Reports from the UITH management indicated that after the corpse was released to him, he immediately proceeded with arrangements to him buried with relations, Imams and sympathizers in attendance. The burial arrangements had already been completed before the hospital authorities became aware of the fact of the patient’s travel history, his self-isolation for 12 days and the complications for which he was eventually rushed to the hospital.

    Having successfully concealed vital information on the patient and coupled with the high position Salami occupies in the hospital, many of his colleagues especially the junior doctors he supervised, clustered around him in an attempt to save the life of his relation by all possible means. A simulated scenario would be one in which nurses and junior doctors will be running over each other, trying to impress their boss by the way they responded to issues surrounding the patient’s treatment. I can imagine a good crowd of medical professionals trying to lend a helping hand in the firm belief that they had the confidence of their senior colleague.

    But all that turned out awry. Salami had a well crafted script intended to deceive his colleagues. It was all make-beliefs and tissues of lies. The reality was that the patient was a clear COVID-19 case and had in fact manifested all symptoms of the disease before he brought him to the hospital. As information was further to reveal, he had even asked the patient to self-isolate for 14 days on his return from the foreign trip. And after 12 days in isolation, serious complications arose prompting him to rush him to UITH.

    There is therefore no shred of doubt that Salami was fully aware that his relation was afflicted by the disease for which he died few hours after he was brought to the hospital. Why he trod that dangerous path knowing the full implications of his action is as curious as it is confounding. This is more so with the larger implications of his action on the safety of his colleagues at the accident and emergency unit, those at the mortuary section and others that gathered for the funeral rites of the deceased.

    Perhaps, a measure of the mortal harm that unethical and irresponsible conduct inflicted on the society is the fact that 28 health workers in that hospital who had contact with the deceased have been sent into isolation. Seventy-five other persons who had contact with the deceased either by way of participating in the burial or visiting on condolence have also been netted by the Kwara State government and quarantined. Offa town, the ancestral home of the deceased has been placed on total lockdown for fear of escalation of community spread.

    The town is under intense fear and trepidation especially given the very rapid manner the corona virus disease spreads. The predicament of the town was captured very succinctly by the traditional ruler of Offa when he decried the stigmatization of people of his community by neighboring communities. He painted a pathetic picture of how every Offa indigene is currently being avoided like a plague for fear of contracting the virus. That is how bad the situation is. It mirrors most vividly the extent the conduct of one individual who is supposed to show the light for others to follow can put an entire population in harms’ way because of contrived misdemeanor.

    That is the burden the Offa community and the entire people of Kwara State have to contend with-a very costly and unethical conduct that could send many innocent ones to their early graves. It is good a thing that the state government has activated the services of the relevant agencies to track down all those that had contact with the deceased or his widow that was reported to have tested positive to the disease.

    Contact tracing must be pursued with renewed vigour to stave off the prospects of escalated community spread. The danger posed by the incident is not just limited to Offa or Kwara State but the entire country given what we know of COVID-19. That is what makes that error of omission or commission a very costly one.

    It is good a thing Salami has been suspended by the management of the university even as serious investigation is underway to unravel all circumstances of that scandal. But without prejudice to whatever finding the institution may come up with, it is obvious Salami has become an unmitigated liability to the health care delivery system. He can no longer be trusted to remain in practice.

    Unless new findings deviate from what is now in the public domain, (we do not see that possibility), Salami has no business remaining in that institution a day longer. Apart from relieving him of his current position, he must be made to face the full weight of the laws of the land. Nothing can be more irresponsible and callous as deliberately exposing innocent citizens to mortal harm at a time the nation is battling with a pandemic that is threatening to wipe the human race from the face of the earth.

    Given the increasing vulnerability of health workers to the disease, it is a sad commentary that one of theirs for reasons best known to him could contemplate actions that would further compound their lot. The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has been reeling out figures on the number of health workers currently on self-isolation because of the contacts they were suspected to have had while attending to patients. We have also been treated with the poor safety conditions in which they work- absence of the necessary safety gears and poor working environment that predisposes them to the danger of the virus infection.

    There is also the challenge of lack of full disclosure and vital information concealment by patients which combine to make health workers most vulnerable to the virus affliction. All these are enough challenges to health workers. To add the type of story that emanated from UITH to these debilitating challenges is akin to adding salt to injury. That is why Salami’s act of indiscretion must be treated with all the seriousness it deserves to act as a deterrent to others.

    This case is indeed very peculiar. It throws up more questions than answers. That is why the public deserves to know the full details of all the explanations the suspect would make in the course of the investigations. A psychiatric investigation must form part of the overall inquisition.

  • Eye-opening virus

    Eye-opening virus

    By Femi Macaulay

    Importantly, the coronavirus crisis is an eye-opener for people in power. Last week, Senate President Ahmad Lawan, House of Representatives Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Boss Mustapha, showed that they had experienced an epiphany.

    When Lawan and Gbajabiamila met with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Umar Farouq, on April 7, they criticised the Federal Government’s Social Investment Programme (SIP), supervised by Farouq’s ministry, and argued that it should be reviewed and reinvented.

    According to a report, “The SIP has gulped over N2 trillion since 2016 when the special intervention fund was created as annual budgetary allocation targeted at the poor. The sum of N500 billion was provided in the budget every year since 2016. Also, in the wobbly 2020 budget, the sum of N500 billion was voted for the SIP.”

    Lawan said: “The National Assembly is very much interested in the current intervention initiatives of the Ministry particularly with respect to the disbursement aimed at assuaging the plight of the poorest of the poor in Nigeria against COVID-19.

    “We feel that we need to work together with you to ensure that there is effectiveness, there is efficiency… that those who are supposed to benefit, benefit directly.

    ”When, for example, some conditions are set, that those who will benefit will have to go online, through the internet or BVN (Bank Verification Number) and the rest of it.

    “I want to tell you that the majority of those who are supposed to benefit have no access to power. They have no access to Internet. They have no bank account, so no BVN.

    “In fact, many of them don’t even have phones and these are the poorest of the poor. Yet, some of the conditions or guidelines which you set inadvertently leave them out.”

    He continued: “Now with Coronavirus, they need our attention more than ever before. The time has come that we review the ways and manner we use to deliver the services under the SIP to Nigerians.

    “We need to be better in terms of strategy for delivery and definitely, what we have been doing in the past cannot deliver exactly what will solve the challenges of the most ordinary and most vulnerable Nigerians.

    “So we need to put on our thinking cap and work out some strategies on how to identify the poorest persons in Nigeria. I think we have not been able to reach far out there to get them properly captured.”

    It took four years to arrive at this point. It took the coronavirus crisis to arrive at this point. Now that the country is at this point, the authorities should improve the SIP.

    Two days after this illumination, Mustapha, who is also Chairman of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, expressed concern about the country’s healthcare system while briefing the leadership of the National Assembly on his group’s work.

    Mustapha was quoted as saying: “I can tell you for sure that I never knew our entire healthcare system was in the state at which it is until I was appointed to do this work.

    “Our health infrastructure is in a most deplorable state.  If countries in Western Europe or America can be overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, my prayer is that we don’t get to that stage. We do not have an infrastructure that can carry that burden.”

    After he was reported to have given this insight into the country’s health system, Mustapha was reported to have told journalists that he had been quoted out of context.

    “Yesterday, I mentioned at the National Assembly that I became fully aware of the state of our medical system during the execution of this Task Force assignment. It has become clear that this has been taken out of context,” Mustapha said.

    “I must clarify that I am aware and have indeed been a champion for the reform and transformation of the health care system. However, this PTF assignment has afforded me the opportunity to dig deeper, interrogate and x-ray the system better. So for anyone to think that I didn’t know the level of deplorable state of our healthcare system is a complete misrepresentation.”

    He went on to paint a picture of the circumstances of his birth: “For the benefit of those who do not know me well, I come from rural Nigeria. I was born in a village almost 64 years ago that didn’t even have a hospital, it had a small missionary dispensary probably with one midwife, no birth certificate was offered. So I don’t even have birth certificate, I have declaration of age… So from birth I know the state of our healthcare system, I am not a foreigner.”

    Mustapha added:  ”But having to serve in this committee gave me a further insight into what is happening. Most of the things you see around as specialists, hospitals or clinics, you just see the buildings; you don’t know what is inside. But, being in this committee has given me opportunity of walking into these facilities, looking at what they have in relation to what they ought to have, my conclusion on that is that they don’t have what they ought to have.”

    These observations are disturbing.  The coronavirus pandemic has further exposed the country’s underdeveloped health system. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), adequate financing, a well-trained and adequately remunerated workforce, well-maintained facilities as well as leadership and governance that provide clear direction are necessary for developing health systems.

    Among other things, the Federal Government needs to allocate more funds to the health sector, in line with the Abuja Declaration of 2001 when heads of state of African Union countries pledged to set a target of allocating at least 15 per cent of their annual budget to improve the health sector.

    Nearly two decades after, Nigeria, which hosted that significant conference, is yet to implement the resolution. For instance, less than five percent of the Federal Government’s 2020 budget is allocated to health. This is not how to develop the country’s health sector.

  • And the president spoke

    And the president spoke

    Emeka OMEIHE

     

    Penultimate Sunday’s national broadcast by President Muhammadu Buhari seemed to have put to rest raging controversy over his silence while the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the country. Though somewhat belated, it is nonetheless good a thing the president eventually spoke to the nation.

    Before then and while responding to criticisms, Information Minister Lai Mohammed had said it was not yet the appropriate time for the president to address the nation on the matter. Toeing the same predictable line, the special adviser to the president on media, Femi Adesina rationalized the inability of his boss to address the nation as a matter of style.

    He seemed to have come out more clearly when he said the style the president has adopted is to set up a presidential taskforce committee headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF to handle matters arising from the pandemic. By extrapolation, he was implying that having set up the taskforce such a broadcast may no longer be necessary. He is entitled to his opinion.

    But as fate would have it, the president eventually addressed the nation in a manner reminiscent of what his counterparts across the world had been doing. The fact of this has put to serious question the issue of style as a credible reason for his inability or reluctance to address the nation all this while.

    And if the president’s style differed from those of other world leaders, how then do we place his recent nationwide broadcast? It would seem the reason adduced for the president’s inability to touch base with his constituents at the peak of the pandemic lack public appeal.

    The matter has neither anything to do with style nor the setting up of the taskforce. These excuses pale into insignificance and zero impact in the face of the direct intervention of the man with the mandate of the populace to superintend over the affairs of the country. The buck stops at his table.

    Maybe the excuse offered by Mohammed that it was not yet the appropriate time for the president to address the nation makes better sense. But then, the appropriateness of the time the president spoke is another contentious matter altogether.

    It took about five weeks from the time the first incident case was reported in the country and three months since the pandemic emerged in the world scene for the president to speak. How appropriate that timing was and its efficacy will be borne out by some of the measures rolled out in his broadcast.

    In that much expected broadcast, the president had among others indicated that right from the time COVID-19 was turning into an epidemic; his government started planning preventive, containment and curative measures in the event the disease hits Nigeria.

    Read Also: Buhari Newswatch’s founding Director at 70

     

    He said the first confirmed case of the disease in the country was on February 27, and by the time he spoke on March 29, it had risen to 97 cases. What this explanation was intended to serve is that his government was on top of the situation all this while.

    The situation in his calculations had not gotten that bad for him to speak despite the fact that corona virus had long been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization WHO. He is entitled to that view. But given what we know of the fast spreading nature of the virus, the pitiable state of our health facilities and the ravaging poverty in the country, the nation needed quick therapeutic responses and assurances from the highest quarters that necessary efforts were on top gear to contain the pandemic.

    It was imperative to secure assurances that the president was really in charge especially given speculations all this while about a cabal in the presidency that has become a cog in the wheel of the nation’s progress.

    Only the president’s address could have provided the soothing tonic direly needed at that period of serious national emergency. Even then, the fact that the number of those infected doubled a few days after the president’s speech and has been on a steady rise corroborates the view that the president’s intervention should have come somewhat earlier. Perhaps also, this point will become clearer when some other measures in the broadcast to contain the pandemic are subjected to critical appraisal.

    Among the tough and desperate measure announced by the president were the cessation of all movements in Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory and Ogun State for an initial period of 14 days. All citizens are to stay at home while travel to and from other states have been put on hold. All businesses and offices within these locations are also to be shut within the period.

    The period in the view of the president will be used to identify, trace and isolate all individuals that have come into contact with confirmed cases and also restrict further spread to other states. He also banned the movement of all passenger aircraft, both commercial and private jets while special permits will be issued as the need arose.

    Before then, our borders had been shut down and international flights banned except for emergency services that will be allowed on special permission. But criticisms have trailed the president’s order banning movements in Lagos, Ogun and the FCT.

    Those who took up the president on this, contend that we run a constitutional democracy and it is illegal for the president to take over the affairs of states without the express consent of the people of that state through their elected representatives.

    They are of the further view that it is only the governor of a state through the House of Assembly of the state that can make such declarations. The fear is that if such infractions are allowed, they could lead to abuse of powers by the executive.

    There is merit in this position. But we are in very dire times. And the circumstances of the times may not permit strict compliance with such constitutional issues. The nature of the pandemic does not even allow either the national or the state assemblies to sit in deliberation of such matters.

    Even then, the action of the president is largely in the public interest; to safeguard the lives of citizens put at grave risk by the pandemic. To that extent, we have to live with the measures.

    If the president were to wait for the national or state assemblies to sit before the action, things would have got out of hands. But that also brings to mind the excuse offered by the information minister that it was not yet the appropriate time for the president to speak.

    Had he been very proactive on the matter, the needed synergy would have long been built before we get to the point where the president will take resort to actions that are seen to infringe on constitutional governance. This is the issue to contend with.

    These issues would have been properly harmonized had the president squared up to the challenge of engaging the nation before the pandemic got to the point of limiting public gathering. Then, it would have been possible for the National Assembly to play its role.

    But that opportunity has been sadly foreclosed by our response time. The point is that some of the measures enunciated by the president should have come much earlier especially given the mode of transmission of the virus.

    Had we promptly shut our borders and halted international and local flights when returnees were importing the virus into the country, perhaps the rising incidence of the disease with heightened fears of community spread would have been nipped at the bud.

    The case of 127 returnees from Côte d’Ivoire who returned to Osun State with a good number of them testing positive bears this out most poignantly. Had they arrived at the Ogun State land border before some of these measures were rolled out, we would have been worse for it.

    Even now, our land borders are still porous. Herdsmen from neighboring countries still have a field day straying into the country. If nothing urgent and serious is done to halt check movement, efforts to halt the scourge may come to naught. We shudder at such prospects.