The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • South West APC leaders must beware

    South West APC leaders must beware

    “People who always want to have their ways at all cost and never provide better arguments but rather want to force their petty ideas on others are anarchists and pocket despots who will ultimately fail’ -AWO, during the Omoboriowo crisis  in Ondo state, exactly 30 years ago (1983).”

    Something is afoot in the South West APC and it is guaranteed to negatively affect the party if its leaders will not face up to it and deal squarely with it now that they still can. I am not one to speak from two sides of the mouth as neither my being Ekiti, nor having the rare privilege of being educated at Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, will permit it.. I have written previously on this page about the PDP’s plan to encircle the South West in a pincer-like movement, effective 2014, using mostly disgruntled or over ambitious ‘members’ of the progressive camp who, our leaders, unfortunately, believe are beyond reproach. And if care is not taken, these ‘gentlemen’ will, before their very eyes, emerge the Labour Party gubernatorial candidates in their respective states and there would be nothing they can do.

    Something tells me this is a well-funded PDP project being coordinated by two Southwest governors, one serving, the other ex. At the recent launch of Prof Ropo Sekoni’s book at the Muson Centre, Lagos, one of these individuals, confessed that much to both Professor Akin Oyebode and myself. And this is where a too trusting Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose name, one of them keeps dropping at the drop of a hat, readily comes in.

    Without a scintilla of doubt, but behind his back, I must have used close to a million words defending Tinubu at several fora in the past 10 years, all because I believe in what he represents. And this has nothing to do with my writing for The Nation newspaper. Anyway, The Nation was not established 10 years ago. I have told all who care to listen how, long before he became governor, he had been promoting and extending the frontiers of democracy. I have written about how he mobilised and sent, both Hon Wale Oshun and now, Senator Femi Lanlehin, with funds to a West African country to assist in the campaign of a presidential candidate long before he became governor. Today, hardly does any official event happen in Lagos without representations from Ghana and Sierra-Leone, owing largely to his political reach. And, but for him, nobody knows where exactly Obasanjo would have left Yoruba land. I never cease to pray that the good Lord will continue to lead him aright. Directly on his handling of the removal of Hon Bamidele as Chairman of the Ekiti ACN Caucus in the House of Representatives, an event for which many Nigerians commended the discipline and orderliness in the party, Opeyemi gleefully came back to Ekiti to tell his few followers that Asiwaju merely came to Ekiti to play politics and that he supports his aspirations all the way. Though we know this is what Fela would have called shakara, such talk, unfortunately, emboldens his misguided supporters who, unknown to Asiwaju, have also been assured of federal support in matters involving the police.

    Full scale disturbances have therefore occurred each time Ope visited the state with APC members always being at the receiving end because it is also a PDP plan since the Police Affairs Minister, an Ekiti and a wannabe gubernatorial candidate, is on orders to deal with APC members.

    In respect of this plan, I recently wrote somewhere as follows: ‘We are inching toward the final denouement. This scenario will soon play out in both Ekiti and Osun States where elections are due next year. Starting innocuously, sleeping agents of the PDP, who are otherwise APC ‘members’, but inexorably destined for the Labour Party will, acting as agent provocateurs, mess up the current peace in the South West. The police, in turn, would thereby get the alibi they need to arrest and detain, indefinitely, targeted leaders of the APC as has happened to the Interim APC Chairman, Mr Jide Awe. Now, the plot has shifted to the governor’s Special Adviser on Security, who usually foils their many evil plans and whose town, Iyin -Ekiti, was the latest of Hon Bamidele’s hot spots, backed by members of the Dr Fasehun wing of the OPC. Reminds one of the new UPN!

    The plot is aimed at crippling the APC ahead of the 2014 election. If they succeed in Ekiti, Osun will be next. It is all a strategic bating which is not the brainwave of dunderheads, but a well-choreographed scheme of evil geniuses hell bent on having the South West under their stranglehold again. Indeed, mere writing about them is dangerous enough, but write we must if democracy must survive in this land.

    In a private letter to Hon Bamidele this past week, Igede-based Abiola Olufemi affirmed that the legislator had actually started holding nocturnal meetings all over the state long before the Appeal Court decided in favour of Fayemi, all in the hope of contesting against him. He wrote him in 2011:’ You were sending rice and vegetable oil all around the state and preparing the ground for your contest as you thought Fayemi was going to lose at the Appeal Court. But to your amazement, Fayemi became governor and rather than support him, you were too bitter about the senatorial ticket given to Ojudu. That was why you started branding Fayemi a non-performer, bandying about 2006 census figures in order to pillory the governor. I was so miffed that I had to react with an article I titled “Opeyemi Bamidele’s Selective Amnesia”. Rather than change, you granted more than ten interviews within two days, sounding more hysterical than ever. Like many of your concoctions, you claimed that the leadership had not endorsed Fayemi.

    For the avoidance of doubt, you have as much right as anyone to aspire to be governor. But I ask: were you truly attacked? In this computer age, social media and the lot, you failed to provide a single photo or video evidence of the attacks. Where are the scars or the wounds? Where are Jaruu’s marks on you? I don’t really like him, but I don’t also think you should demonise him in your attempt to make Fayemi look bad! The latest claim of attack from your camp has its roots in an incident that happened at a party in your hometown of Iyin-Ekiti on Friday, 23 August, 2013. Jaruu was uncharacteristically cool under your boys’ provocation but Niyi Apase who came later with his fellow members of the Gani Adam faction of the OPC couldn’t stomach it when your Fredrick Faseun faction of the OPC attacked him. You saw it all, but never called them to order since it would make a good spin for the tabloid.’

    I quoted that letter at some length for the reading public to know the truth about these many ‘attacks’ on Opeyemi. I know, first hand, both in his quest for the Senate and this one, that party leaders sincerely pleaded with Hon Bamidele to take things easy. In the Senate case which he never ceases to claim he won, I know, as a member of the ACN state screening committee, appointed by the National Chairman of the party, that the election was inconclusive as the rerun never took place owing to threats of ‘war’. In the current case, I am equally aware that long before the party leaders came to Ekiti to endorse Fayemi, both Chief Bisi Akande and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu met with the duo and actually believed they had settled it all, but Opeyemi did not do any of the things he promised the party leaders.

    In conclusion, I will like to plead with those close to Hon Bamidele to let him know that he needs no alibi to move to another party, if he must, to fulfill his ambition rather than take us back to those rancorous days of the PDP in Ekiti.

  • Iwu’s troubled conscience

    Iwu’s troubled conscience

    There is no indication Maurice Iwu, former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), will read this piece. He says that having learnt from former President Olusegun Obasanjo the resentful and vexatious habit of not reading Nigerian newspapers, he feels disinclined to read what people have said and still say about his management of the 2007 general elections. Given the way he vigorously put it, even if we could find someone to read this piece and freely redact its highlights for his spurned consideration, he would still be unresponsive to a habit that has stood many enlightened people well since newspapers became a staple of modern civilisation. “This is my first public function since I left office as INEC chairman,” he began with a disagreeable hint of self-importance. “I learned one thing from my former boss Olusegun Obasanjo never to read newspapers or watch news…That is the only way to focus on what I am supposed to do.”

    For a professor who is presumably an expert on something, and whose life and works are supposed to be devoted to blowing up the delusions of the ignorant majority, it is curious what lessons, and what examples, his bizarre tastes are inexorably drawn to. To him, newspapers represent a distraction rather than a resource tool. By his admission, since he needs to focus on his tasks, which he paints grandiosely in the nothingness of imprecision, it is strange that as a former public official he does not recognise that one of those tasks is to respond to public assessment of his stewardship. But if he says he loathes reading newspapers, we must allow him the liberty of stewing in the juice of his own ignorance. This, however, will not deter us from judging his time in office or commenting on his remarks whenever he indulges in sophism, as he did last week.

    Indeed, he made a few tendentious remarks last Tuesday in Abuja during the public presentation of Amanze Obi’s book, Delicate Distress. For a professor who wishes to be left alone to focus on his job, it is surprising that he was unable to interpret properly what his main task was in 2007 when he umpired the general elections of that year. Said he: “In 2007, Nigeria didn’t want elections. It wasn’t about giving Nigeria an election. It wasn’t about who won or how ballot boxes were snatched. The challenge I had was to ensure that Nigeria remained one indivisible country. We did that and many people thought it was easy.” I will return to his dubious conclusion that Nigerians didn’t want elections in 2007, a claim he offered absolutely no proof to substantiate. For now, let us instead consider his interpretation of his brief in 2007. There is nothing in the provisions of the electoral act relating to his office or his responsibilities that grants him the exalted task of safeguarding the unity of the country. Instead, he was simply expected to deliver a free and fair poll. It is apparent that that singular misinterpretation of his assignment was at the bottom of the multiple malfeasances associated with his regulation and moderation of the general elections of that year. The challenge of sustaining Nigerian unity, as he inelegantly and conceitedly put it, was one he assigned himself. No one, not the constitution, not his paymaster, nor yet the electoral act gave him the job he so gratuitously defined for himself.

    Professor Iwu specialises in pharmacognosy, a branch of science that has nothing to do with politics, except of course metaphorically. It is a rather direct science and a branch of pharmacology dealing with the study of natural drugs or active substances found in plants. If he needs to apply logic in his speciality, it is certainly not the kind of intricate logic familiar to social scientists who deal with subjective and often imprecise human behaviour. On the contrary, plants offer very precise and clearly distinguishable morphologies, irrespective of whether we are dealing with its anatomy or its external nature. It is, therefore, not surprising that Professor Iwu has had to rephrase his assignment in terms familiar to his expertise, and in ways that suited and excused his abject surrender to the whims of his employers.

    Dissatisfied with not letting bad enough alone – and he would have done well to emulate his other illustrious predecessor, Humphrey Nwosu, who waited for about 15 years to make peace with his equally troubled conscience – Professor Iwu wondered why instead of criticising his performance Nigerians did not celebrate his ‘achievement’ of keeping Nigeria one. How grossly mistaken can one be! Not only did his criminal miscarriage of the 2007 polls gravely threaten the unity and stability of the country, it set the country back by many decades and still continues to dog its march to democratic nirvana. If Nigeria remained one after the 2007 electoral debacle, it was not because Professor Iwu advanced the cause of unity, or even knew how to, but because Nigerians were themselves either determined to stay together notwithstanding the multiple provocations from the Iwus and Nwosus of this world, or had surrendered to the insuperable and paralysing resignation Britain’s manipulations had brought upon them since independence.

    It is truly numbing how Professor Iwu excused his failings. He said the 2007 polls were not about who won or lost, or about how ballot boxes were snatched. If he had not recast his assignment in terms of the unexampled arrogance he was accustomed to throughout his five-year tenure, all the while pretending there was a nexus between his office and Nigerian unity irrespective of his failings, he would have understood perfectly that his job was to ensure Nigeria held a free and fair election; and that unity, often a by-product of a fair election, was not his to procure or guarantee. In his Abuja remarks, Professor Iwu reminded his audience it was not easy transiting from one elected government to another. He should be reminded that that transition took place without the help of his puny talents, twisted logic, and the recklessly flawed election he superintended.

    The most shocking remark he made last Tuesday was that in 2007, Nigeria didn’t want an election. We may never know why the professor told this awkward lie to himself. Would Nigerians have furiously fought and defeated Chief Obasanjo’s third term agenda if they didn’t want an election? Would they have turned out in their millions if they hated the ballot box as the professor suggested? If they didn’t want an election that year, but wanted Chief Obasanjo out of office, what replacement did they have in mind given the constitutional provision of term limit? It took 15 years after the June 12, 1993 presidential election for Professor Nwosu to summon the courage to admit the truth of the election he supervised. Perhaps eight years is still too early for Professor Iwu to admit the truth of the election he bungled, and his conscience not seared enough to push him into reconciling with the oath he took and into making peace with the country he betrayed.

    It speaks volumes, however, that last Tuesday the professor spoke fondly of Chief Obasanjo as the mentor from whom he learnt the execrable habit of living in denial and deprecating media accounts of contemporary events. Indeed, we hope that sometime in our lifetime, Professor Iwu will be prodded into remorse by the shrill wailing of the agitated scruples left in him, as Professor Nwosu was unable to stay silent in the face of the loud protestations of his conscience.

  • Yar’adua Part 11

    Treader while responding to a news report in The Nation on the return of Taraba State Governor Dambaba Suntai and his intention to resume office made a rather poignant remark that captures the drama that has been playing out in the last one week in Jalingo.

    “Yar’ardua Part 11, we are enjoying it,” the anonymous reader wrote. He was obviously likening the controversy over the state of health of Suntai who returned from medical treatment abroad after ten months to that of former President Umaru Yar’adua who was finally declared dead after many attempts by his wife and aides deceive Nigerians.

    After undergoing medical treatment in Saudi Arabia during which he was reported to be brain dead, a claim that was denied by his aides, Yar’adua was flown back to the country and the impression was given that he was recovering.

    I remember reading some of the claims that he was already walking unaided in the Presidential Villa and playing lawn tennis when in fact the condition of the late President was getting worse.

    After all the lies peddled by the cabal led by the former first lady, Turai, who wanted to hold on to power at all cost, they had no choice than to announce his death when he finally gave up. Perhaps he would have gotten better if he had remained abroad undergoing treatment since the country does not have the medical facilities and personnel to attend to him.

    Like in the Yar’adua case, Suntai who obviously has not fully recovered and still needs the best of medical treatment was hurriedly flown back last Sunday and the cabal around him is desperately doing everything to fool Nigerians about the governor’s health status.

    Suntai arrived last Sunday and had to be aided to disembark from the aircraft in Abuja and Jalingo. He could not utter a word and barely managed to smile and wave to those who came to welcome him.

    Instead of allowing him to continue to get the much needed rest he needs and medical attention, he had reportedly written to the State Assembly to resume, sacked the state executive and appointed some new aides.

    Instead of the expected state broadcast, a recorded few minutes video has been shown on the state television with the governor purportedly swearing in the new Secretary to State Government and Chief of Staff and greeting the people of the state.

    After finally being allowed to see the governor, majority members of the state house of assembly have declared the governor unfit and asked him to return to US for treatment.

    Ordinarily, there should be no controversy over whether the governor is well or not. If indeed he is as his collaborators claim, he should come out and say so. He should perform some public functions and leave no one in doubt that he is physically fit to resume duties.

    He has stayed away for ten months and the state has been governed by his deputy so why the hurry to return.

    Those aiding the governor clinging to power are obviosly doing so for selfish purpose. They need to know that the governor’s life is more precious than whatever position they want him to hold on to.

    This kind of hide and seek game cannot continue for too long.

  • Sense and nonsense in Taraba

    Sense and nonsense in Taraba

    Governor Danbaba Suntai was obviously in pains as he disembarked from the aircraft that brought him back to Nigeria last Sunday. He is doubtless still recuperating, perhaps agonisingly slowly, from the injuries he sustained when the small plane he piloted crashed near Yola, Adamawa State last October. But whether that recuperation is fast or substantial enough to enable him resume his duties as governor is now mired in acrimonious debate. Neither at the airport nor anywhere in his state has Mr Suntai directly addressed the public. Instead, he has offered a few minutes of unconvincing taped video message to his state and the public.

    While Tarabans were still trying to make up their minds on how to view their governor’s return, and while the acting governor, Speaker of the State House of Assembly and a majority of the state’s lawmakers were steeling their nerves to resist the governor’s obsession with power, the controversy became even more intense and convoluted. Sixteen lawmakers, together with the Speaker and the acting governor, insisted there was no way the governor would be allowed to resume duty. He still needed medical attention, they said. He manifested clear symptoms of brain injury that would take a long time to heal, some medical specialists averred. Some Tarabans even concluded that the governor and his minders’ manoeuvres reminded them of the chicaneries of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua who was also too unwell in his last months in office to function as president, but was exploited by a cabal to wreak havoc on the country.

    If the Taraba drama were limited to the caricature it has become, we would safely enjoy it from the comfort of our homes. But with the determination of the anti-Suntai forces to unhorse the governor growing into a bitter struggle for power, and the pro-Suntai forces clinging desperately to power, the struggle could plunge the state into a violent and embarrassing confusion. On account of what he has manifested since his return, I really doubt whether Mr Suntai can still function as governor. He needs more care than he and his minders care to admit. However, the constitution contains provisions for resolving such difficult matters. I find it appalling that the House of Assembly, which obviously musters a majority to back the Speaker’s anti-Suntai point of view, evades due process and seems to embrace strong-arm tactics. Instead of tomfoolery, let the legislature constitute a medical panel to examine the governor’s ability to continue in office. I doubt whether in such an open case the empanelled doctors would betray their oaths by telling open lies. Nor do I think their conclusion would be any less self-evident than the clear incapacity of the hapless governor to perform the most gentle and menial of tasks.

  • 2004-2007 as PDP/Nigeria’s years of hope: fact or El-Rufai’s delusional fantasy?

    2004-2007 as PDP/Nigeria’s years of hope: fact or El-Rufai’s delusional fantasy?

    I must start this piece by stating that I have neither read nor am I about to read Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai’s new book, The Accidental Public Servant. At some point down the line, I will read it. Some of my professional friends and political comrades whose critical judgment I trust have read the book. While they are not exactly full of praise for the book, they all say that it is worth reading. But please don’t take this as either a recommendation for El-Rufai’s new book or worse still an endorsement for it. My friends’ and comrades’ opinion of the book is not the reason why I will read it. Rather, the sole reason why I will eventually read the book is because ever since he wrote a devastating critique of the late president Yar’ Adua and his administration from a centre-right perspective while Yar’ Adua was alive, I have followed his essays and blogs closely. I have read nearly all his essays since then and I periodically visit his personal website. The only thing I resolutely shun when I visit this website is the column that invites visitors to have a glimpse of El-Rufai’s latest personal activities. This indicates to me that the man has, or wishes to have, a fan club; I leave that to that to the young, the credulous and the fellow travelers of his ideological forays into the wilderness of contemporary Nigerian elite politics.

    In my opinion, El-Rufai is quite easily the brightest and most articulate spokesperson for the centre-right ideological and political position in Nigerian politics today. Later in this piece, I shall indicate what exactly this centre-right position implies, but for now let me add that for me, El-Rufai has the added interest of being the first politician and intellectual from the North to both articulate and embody this centre-right worldview with coherence, consistency and panache. In other words, while we have had brilliant radical leftist intellectuals and dedicated and unwavering politicians and spokespersons of the right aplenty from the North we have never, in my view, had a centre-right representative of the caliber of El-Rufai from the North. [Incidentally, we have not had one from the South either!]

    Needless to say and as I hope to demonstrate in this piece anyway, I am not using these ideological terms reductively. When I shall have finished what I have to say in this piece, I hope that it would have become clear that I do not think that his centre-right views exhaust all that could be said about El-Rufai. On the strength of the things that he says in his writings and the passion with which he says them, he is quite possibly a genuine patriot and a humanist. It just so happens that a man like the subject of this essay who is as open and even aggressive about his ideological beliefs ought to be taken up on those beliefs.

    On this last point, I now move directly to the substance of this piece, El-Rufai’s passionate espousal, in a recent article titled “Stunted Potentials Hobble Our Nation”, of the claim that the years 2004-2007 during Obasanjo’s second term in the presidency marked a period of great hope and promise not only for Nigeria but for Africa and the Black race. I think that this claim is both factually erroneous and morally bogus and indefensible, but before I state my reasons for this view, it is useful to state El-Rufai’s arguments in support of this claim on their own terms.

    The bottom line in that article, “Stunted Potentials Hobble Our Nation” is the view that politics in any context is only as good as it is congruent with national aspirations. Between 2004 and 2007, states El-Rufai, there was a perfect congruence between politics and national aspirations in our country. On this claim, El-Rufai goes on to assert vigorously that those who “inherited” power after 2007 – Yar’ Adua and Jonathan – lacked such congruence on a monumental scale. “National aspirations” between 2004-2007 included such key elements like the shrinking of both the expenditure of governance and the participation of government in business; the creation of a modern national identity card system; a road map to a potential boom in the solid mineral sector to relieve the over-dependence on crude oil; strengthening of the banking system; a national mortgage system to drastically reduce a 17 million housing units deficit; and monetization of fringe benefits to reduce the lavish and wasteful lifestyles of public officeholders at the expense of the state.

    I admit it: reduced to this bare summary, there does not seem to be anything particularly extraordinary about this set of programs and ideas. But in the context of the discursive rhetoric of El-Rufai’s passionate arguments in the article, these ideas take on an urgent, visionary quality. Repeatedly, El-Rufai states again and again in the article that the vast majority of Nigerians are poor, subject to insecurity, prone to vastly inferior or inadequate hospitals, clinics and amenities while those in power wallow in obscene consumption and display of wealth. He pleads that time is not on our side, that our leaders must get their priorities right or we will sink further and further into devastation by insecurity, corruption, and poverty. One could not agree more with El-Rufai on these observations. And in a phrase that I particularly found resonant, El-Rufai in the article describes budgetary procedures in our country as a “fictographic art” full of much drama and noise but disconnected from the things that could cure governance in Nigeria of its endemic wastefulness, incompetence and paralysis.

    In contrast to all of this, El-Rufai argues in the article that between 2004 and 2007, Obasanjo’s administration charted a course that was bold, visionary and confident in its mission. Here is a sentence from the article that gives a flavor of the rhetorical flourish with which El-Rufai makes this claim: “The vision of that Obasanjo administration was to make this the last generation to merely speak of Nigeria’s potentials. We were determined to realise those potentials, confident that we had the talents to create wealth from the vast natural and human resource endowments of the country, leveraging the energies of its young people and latent assets in the Diaspora.”

    No great debating skills or prowess are needed to demolish this claim. 2004-2007 happens to coincide with Obasanjo’s second term in office. From his near impeachment close to the end of his first term (1999-2003), Obasanjo came into his second term a bitterly insecure ruler, a wounded lion who wanted to make everyone pay for his injured pride. He became paranoid toward all real and suspected enemies within and outside his party, the PDP; conversely, he demanded absolute loyalty from everybody, from members of his cabinet to the lowliest functionary of the presidential villa. He subjected the party to his absolute control. He ran government like a fiefdom, while paying lip service to respect for technocrats and a special responsiveness to foreign bilateral business and governmental powers. He ignored or even flouted decisions of the Supreme Court that went against him or his administration. He used government to enrich his cronies, sycophants and hangers-on. In some particularly notable instances, he placed mediocrities in high office, as in the case of the barely literate hair dresser that he made the Speaker of the House of Representatives. In some states of the federation, he installed stark illiterates like Andy Ubah and Lamidi Adedibu as political godfathers with more real power and authority than the executive governors of the states concerned. In the year 2006, he had a prolonged, bitter feud with his Vice President, Abubakar Atiku, in which both men voluntarily revealed how gross and unconscionable they were in looting the coffers of the nation to enrich themselves and their cronies. Perhaps the most important economic legacy of his rule was a massive transfer of wealth into a few hands at the expense of the vast majority of Nigerians. And his rule ended with the disgrace of his failed bid to have a third term in office, but not before he had taken the whole country through extremely bitter, cynical and divisive elite politics.

    Is it the case that, in making the claim that this period marked years of hope and promise for Nigeria, El-Rufai is ignorant of these universally known facts of Obasanjo’s performance in office between 2004 and 2007? No, absolutely not, for El-Rufai was in the thick of it all as one of two or three of the most trusted of Obasanjo’s loyalists during the period. As a matter of fact, El-Rufai presided over the privatisation of state and public enterprises through which a vast transfer of wealth to private hands was made in those years of Obasanjo’s second term. More specifically, El-Rufai was objectively an accomplice to the subordination of the party to Obasanjo’s personal megalomaniacal control; he provided both the practical muscle and the justificatory rhetoric for how a “strong leader” with a sense of mission and “national aspirations” could and should bypass ignorant and backward party bosses. Of course, it was not the case that the PDP was ever much of a disciplined, enlightened and patriotic party. But both Obasanjo and his loyal servitor, El-Rufai, belonged to the party and they putatively held their cabinet posts at the pleasure and in furtherance of the aims of the party.

    I understand that in his new book, El-Rufai is highly critical of Obasanjo, though reportedly in a careful, muted and nuanced manner. As I remarked earlier in this piece, I have not read the book so I don’t know the distance he has traveled between the book and this more recent article in which El-Rufai aggressively touts Obasanjo as a ruler who, between 2004 and 2007, seemed to be Nigeria’s, Africa’s and the Black race’ answer to all our problems. I would argue that this issue throws some light on what I said earlier in this piece about the centre-right worldview and praxis of El-Rufai. Stripped of all the rhetoric, the central ideas of El-Rufai in the article under review here are, one, that the market, not the government, should be the motive force of the economy and, two, once the state or the government has provided the basic infrastructures, it should sell off all state and public assets and enterprises to those who have the means to buy them. But since in ideology what is left unsaid or unspecified is as important as what is said and specified, we must note that it is out of a deliberate silence that El-Rufai completely leaves out the matter of how those to whom public wealth is transferred come by the means with which to buy and own public assets. In the Nigerian case, the answer to this all-important question is that it is the same state, the same government from whom they get the means to buy and buy cheaply from the state or government.

    On a closing note, let me remark that in the article I have been discussing in this piece, El-Rufai never once mentions the PDP by name. The only party that he mentions is the newly formed APC and this is strictly only to suggest that the “agenda” of Obasanjo in those years between 2004 and 2007 should be the only agenda of the APC. And even then, his faith is not really in that party; rather, it is in a strong leader with the vision and will to complete, in El-Rufai’s own words, what those who “inherited” power from Obasanjo could not accomplish – the “mission” spelt out in the “national aspirations” articulated by Obasanjo in those pregnant, promising years. This “leaderism” is the right-wing core of El-Rufai’s centrist faith in a market-driven economy under the expert management of efficiency-minded technocrats. I understand that after he decamped from the PDP, El-Rufai joined the CPC. That party has fused with others into the newly formed APC and as a consequence, El-Rufai is hedging his bets on the APC. In Nigerian elite politics, we know only too well of the phenomenon of AGIP – Any Government In Power. Thanks to El-Rufai, let us now also recognise APIP – Any Party In Power.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Re: Why do we need lawmakers when we do not even have law keepers?

    I have just read your piece reflecting the subject above and could not agree more. I just have to react because it seems as though u and I were thinking alike from distance apart.

    Just yesterday in Owerri, I was standing by to pay for a roasted corn when an “Honorable” member of Imo State Legislative Assembly drove past me and many others waiting to grab their own corn. Once the idiot in a larger-than-life SUV with ISHA plate insignia saw that traffic was heavy on a Right turn (we were at a T-junction) he turned Left against the traffic and was trying with all impunity to wave other vehicles (with the right-of-way) off the road so he may cruise more freely away.

    Once I saw this, I lost my cool. I ran like I never did before, slapping my hands on the body of the car, shouting on top of my voice to attract attention: What manner of law do you guys make! Ehn! Tell me! What manner of law do you make for crying out loud! Do you realize what u are trying to do? ! Nigger you are breaking the law! The law you made!…and so many other invectives I was raining on the idiot as I could catch my breath. I was visibly mad, I tell you! By now people had gathered as he came to a stop as I was still shouting, banging on his Octopus of a truck, and acting, even telling him to take me to police or court for having “disrespected” an “Honorable Member”. Behold and Alas, he lost words, as more people had gathered; he rolled up his glass which was earlier rolled down to see the ant shouting and banging on his truck, and quietly turned back to join the legal direction of the traffic. So I agree with you that we don’t need laws when the law-makers are the law-breakers. As for their jumbo pays even as ASUU is asking for nothing other than Fed Govt honoring an agreement it already entered into in 2009, we cannot but appreciate the paradox Nigeria has come to represent. Where are we gonna run to? Shame on them for raping Nigeria in broad daylight. And for you: keep up the good work of informing and may you find peace and God’s blessings for “earning” your pay.

    H. I. E. Ph.D. (Atlanta).

    Just read ur piece on lawmakers. I worked with a senator from d biggest senatorial district in Nigeria. D constituency allowance which u d press constantly refer to as monthly salary is N106,000,000 every quarter for a Senator & N104,000,000 quarterly for a house of reps member barring the basic salary and other allowances.

    Do the math for Abike Dabiri Erewa who has been there for 14 years now! Senator Ganiyu Solomon has been there over 10yrs now. Their various constituency project should definitely be in excess of 3,400,000,000 (Naira) per constituency!!!

    We have 106 Senatorial Districs and 360 House of Reps Constituencies! But where are these projects? Where?

    O. O. 2348086511995

    … The politics in Nigeria is rob my back I rob yours. Not only the lawmakers are guilty, those fixing their wages are also laden with guilt. The executive (is) also rotten. Just recently a minister was accused of blowing N2 billion on chartered plane alone, no one has come up to deny that.

    M. 2348033691236

    Phew! I certainly appreciate the compliments, prayers and passion. I was ever so glad our communication was mediated by the networks or else I probably would have seen some eyes bulging out, neck sinews straining, spittle flailing in all directions and fingers tautly emphasising the words. However, two things struck me here.

    The first is that Nigerians are understandably angry at the macabre dance of deception that politicians are doing in the name of governance. Development responsibilities have been ostensibly shared between the federal, states, local governments and the national assemblies. But between the federal, states, local governments and national assemblies, as the tradition goes in story books, nothing resembling development has really touched the people’s lives. All over, the farmers still go to their farms with little hoes slung over their shoulders, feet shod in rubber flip-flops, skins stretched by the sun, eyes hopelessly vacant and stomachs still as flat as when Noah worked on his ark in the heat of the noon day sun. The women too are still hewing wood for supper, fetching water from long distances, cleaning children’s running noses (thick with the stuff) with their bare hands (and sometimes, yerk!, with their mouths!), walking bare feet transporting the farm’s produce on their heads. Worse, Nigerian roads are still some of the worst in the world, and my house still does not get electricity during the day. PHCN now waits for me to be fast asleep before grudgingly giving my house some slivers of the stuff. I ask you! I ask you!

    With the kind of money mentioned above, added to the development allocations from the federal, states and local governments, I honestly expect to have begun to see changes in the lives of the people. By now, I expect farmers to be wearing something closely resembling boots as they ride on their tractors across their endlessly stretching acres of farm. Naturally, tobacco-stained smiles will replace anxiety-induced frowns and I assure you skins will fill out through the power of the milk of kindness. By now, I expect the women to be using Kleenex for their children’s noses. I also expect clean water to be running through my Jacuzzi. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with dreaming about owning one. Someday.

    The second thing that struck me is that even though the real power belongs to the people, they are more cautious about exercising it than leaders are about brazening their own acts of perfidy. The leaders know this and take advantage of it. Only when pushed to the wall will the people act. Acts narrated above are not frequent, but they have begun; and this is why leaders should begin to beware. What started the Arab Spring was really no more than pent-up anger that was looking for where to happen. The recklessness of the state provided the playground.

    The recklessness of the Nigerian state seems to be rising daily. Murmurings about the emoluments and allowances of the assembly men and women had hardly dried up before we began to hear rumours about how the presidency and state executive members are giving gifts worth more than a billion Naira to the newly wed son and daughter of some government functionary in Abuja. Frankly speaking, I don’t know what they expect those children to do for a living. Work?! Yet, many Nigerians there are who technically ask their children to ‘focus’ on WAEC or GCE and leave JAMB for a while. Truth? They can afford only one or the other at a time. The wonderful thing is that the government pretends not to know these things.

    Now, you do the math. The people are angry, and the people own the power. The day is not long when anger and power will come together in one cataclysmic gale. I would prefer that happens in the ballot box rather than on the streets. In the ballot box, you can control your emotion. You can restrain yourself by only punching a hole in the offending party’s box rather than poking your fingers in the eyes of people who are doing little or nothing and being paid in billions. A word is enough…

  • David Mark’s theory on constitution without citizenry

    David Mark’s theory on constitution without citizenry

    What Nigeria’s lawmakers elected on the platform of the 1999 Constitution need to do is to listen to citizens whose votes brought them to the national assembly.

    David Mark’s recent pontification on the need to have a constitution that shuns people’s wishes is not new to politics in our country. The military ruled Nigeria for decades without a constitution. Even the 1999 Constitution that David Mark holds to heart as sacred enough not to need any referendum that involves those for whom the constitution is ostensibly written was crafted by former military colleagues of the Senate President. It is not Senator Mark’s militaristic notion of constitutions that should surprise citizens. It is his conviction as an elected senator by citizens that creating a constitutional process cannot be determined by citizens once there is a ‘constitution’ on ground, regardless of how citizens feel about the constitution.

    The fear of citizens inherent in Senator Mark’s effort to avoid citizens in efforts to create acceptable constitutions can be likened to what Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates, one of the youngest federations in the world, said about his vision for Dubai’s development: The real crisis is rather one of leadership, management and perennial egotism. This is the kind of crisis that is bound to happen when lust for power prevails over granting people the love and care they deserve, and when the interests and destiny of one individual (or a small group of individuals as in the case of Nigeria’s National Assembly) become more important than those of a whole nation.

    Writing further about the transformation of Dubai within a federation, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said: Our distinctive development experience in the UAE is a good example of what can be done when God blesses a country with an unselfish leadership that strives for the good of its people and not its own. Good leadership puts the interests of the community as a whole before those of any specific group….There is a world of difference between a leadership that is based on love and respect, and one that is based on fear.

    I am quoting Rashid Al Maktoum extensively to underscore that Senator Mark’s view that the process of making a constitution, captured in provisions of a constitution that citizens believe is an imposition on the country by military dictators, smacks not of respect for Nigerians but of fear of Nigerians by those that happen to occupy positions of legislative leadership. Insisting, as the Senate President has done, that the legalistic aspect of the 1999 Constitution is the matter at stake is to miss the point of the essence of constitutions. Constitutions become embodiment of laws that must be respected and obeyed only after they have been created by a process that has the blessing and consent of the people whose political behaviours constitutions are created to regulate.

    What Nigeria’s lawmakers elected on the platform of the 1999 Constitution need to do is to listen to citizens whose votes brought them to the national assembly. Millions of citizens are saying that the 1999 Constitution was not created with their consent and that the desire of citizens to participate in the 1999 election to move the country from military autocracy to electoral democracy does not and should not constitute a sufficient condition for the post-military political leadership to assume that citizens accept that the only thing to do with the 1999 Constitution is to ‘panel beat’ the document in whatever manner lawmakers believe in, without involving citizens in the process.

    What is implicit in Senator Mark’s theory about the current constitution not having a space for sovereign national conference is the conviction that Nigeria is about promoting statism, rather than creating a country or community of interests held by human beings. Statism refers to a notion that a country should be run as a bureaucracy, with emphasis on what those charged to run the bureaucracy prefer to do, rather than what citizens prefer to have. Our lawmakers need to realise that our country is in a process of democratisation and that real democracy is likely to be elusive until a people’s constitution is adopted to guide the country’s political culture. This should not be anything too difficult for our legislators to get in a country that went into election in 1999 without seeing a copy of the constitution that has now become untouchable to citizens.

    Holding briefs for authors of the 1999 Constitution and promoting the constitution as a sacred document that is available only to elected lawmakers to review without any substantial input from citizens is a dangerous thing to do. Our lawmakers who have chosen to amend a constitution that citizens prefer to be replaced need to know that for a constitution to be acceptable and respectable to people, citizens must believe in the transparency of the process that leads to the making of the constitution. Citizens had gone to court to challenge the claim in and by the 1999 Constitution that it was authored by the people of Nigeria. Late Biodun Oki spent the last years of his life to prove in court that the 1999 Constitution is not a constitution created with the consent of the people.

    Senator Mark’s worry: Where will the Sovereign National Conference be deriving its sovereigntyfrom, and under what framework? How will the conference be convoked and by whom and under what terms?” indicates the Senate President’s preference for statism as an approach to solving a fundamental political problem about the welfare and wellbeing of citizens of a country. These are questions that citizens should be given the opportunity to answer. Each constituency can prepare a handbook for its lawmaker to take to the national assembly on how to convoke a national conference. But this will be possible only in a context in which lawmakers see themselves as representatives of citizens, and not as their masters.

    Nigerians calling for a sovereign national conference are doing so for an obvious reason: demilitarising the Nigerian polity by replacing a constitution imposed on the country by a group of military dictators with a constitution negotiated freely by citizens. Callers for a people’s constitution believe that the military must have had a hidden agenda behind the 1999 Constitution, more so that the constitution did not see the light of day until after the election of 1999. Lawmakers who subscribe to the tenets of democracy need not act in a way to suggest that they also accept the hidden agenda behind a constitution imposed on Nigerians by departing military dictators. Senator Mark’s recent quibbling about sovereignty and sovereign national conference gives the impression that the national assembly is averse to referendum, because it is afraid of coming to terms with the real feelings of millions of Nigerians about the current constitution. If Nigeria is going to get its economics and development right, it is, asDaronAcemoglu and James A. Robinson, authors of WhyNations Fail have observed, necessary to get its politics right. Getting our country’s politics right requires a transparent process of creating a constitution that is acceptable to the generality of the people. And lawmakers should act on the side of citizens on how to bring about a constitution that is acceptable primarily to citizens, and not just to lawmakers.

  • Kidnappers and the demolition policy

    It is not clear what logic is behind the thinking that demolishing kidnappers’ properties would be an effective deterrent to kidnapping. But whether it is a deterrent or not, a few states have unthinkingly enacted laws empowering their governments to demolish or confiscate kidnappers’ properties. Interestingly, some of these states don’t even wait for the courts to prove the guilt of kidnappers before their properties are brought down. Timidity and perhaps also ignorance have not allowed the victims to test the validity of the laws in the courts, or if not the validity, then at least the processes. For even if the laws were valid, and I doubt if they are in light of the constitution, there is no kidnapper’s property that has so far been demolished in accordance with due process.

    One of the kidnappers involved in the abduction of Professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was demolished shortly after he was arrested. The courts had not yet heard nor judged the case when the government hastily brought the property down. Chief Bonaventure Mokwe, the detained proprietor of the Upper Class Hotel in Onitsha is in court to prevent the Anambra State government from confiscating his property. It was brought down after some dry skulls were found in the hotel premises. He is yet to be found guilty of the crime, but the government has gone ahead anyway to demolish the hotel.

    In neighbouring Delta State, the Uncle P Guest House, estimated to be worth about N150 million, and owned by a retiree, Mr Pius Ogbeni, was also brought down, allegedly on the orders of the state government, for harbouring a kidnapper. The suspect had lodged in the hotel, like any other guest, for five days before checking out. His alleged victim was said to have been rescued in very controversial circumstances from the hotel. Today, no one is even sure where the victim was rescued from. But while the case was yet to be heard, let alone tried, the hotel was brought down.

    Kidnapping is of course a very serious crime that should not be condoned. But so, too, are murder and armed robbery. If the last two do not cause an abridgment of due process, there is no reason not to subject kidnapping to the ambits of the law. Apart from the dubiousness of the kidnapping law itself, and the indefensible, if not immoral, haste with which the governments demolish properties, there is a clear lack of rigour in the anti-kidnapping law. Has the death penalty curbed or eradicated armed robbery?

    In light of the abduction of Mike Ozekhome, a prominent Nigerian lawyer, it will be hard to counsel restraint in tackling kidnapping. But counsel I must. Let the states, which have passed laws on kidnapping, take a second and more reasoned look at the laws. More importantly, let them follow due process and not jump ahead of the law in their populist desire to fight kidnapping. I suggest that victims of government’s arbitrary application of the law test the matter in court, and test it to its limits. I doubt they can lose if there are still enough judges who can call their souls their own, and who understand the deeper import of law and justice.

     

  • Political hangovers, costly  jokes and  diplomacy

    UN  chemical  weapons inspectors are due to leave  Syria today,  that is if the US  and some of its allies have not attacked Syria   by now, albeit on a limited scale  , as was  being drummed up   with frenzy on the world media by Thursday this week.  Ed  Milliband,  UK   Labor Party Opposition leader put spanner in the works on attacking Syria  for  a war mongering PM David  Cameron by insisting that he would wait for the report of the chemical weapons inspectors,  as he is learning  the lessons of the Iraqi  invasion by Tony Blair , then British PM  and former US President   George Bush in 2003. That  is the first  political   hangover  we identify today and that   has  caused  British diplomacy to halt in its stride as it prepares for  an attack on Syria  with the hangover of the 2003  Iraqi  invasion premised on false information on the availability of weapons of mass  destruction, dogging its tail.

    Hangovers of the type we take on today in global diplomacy and politics are very much like the alcoholic type that prevents the victim from thinking straight the following morning or taking most of the morning to get his acts   right. That really was what   happened  on  Syria  to the US  and its allies this   week and which provoked a most undiplomatic joke from the Russians whose Deputy Foreign Secretary brought the house down with the cruel though hilarious joke that the US in the Middle East and on Syria was behaving like a monkey  with a grenade. That  joke too was vintage  hangover that left the US  and its president not knowing whether to cry or laugh at least judging from the sober mood of the US  president in the CNN interview in  which he sounded so solemn but still ended up saying nothing, except that he had not made a decision to attack even he  though  he  insisted that  no  one denies that chemical weapons had been used in Syria. Before we examine the prevarication and dithering of the US president on a decision that he could not take even though he had admitted that a war crime has been committed,  let us digress a bit, to look  at  situations  rather   similar    in anxiety   and humor in Ghana and Nigeria, over two very important issues, namely  post election litigation in the   presidential elections in Ghana and the conduct of census in Nigeria.

    According to reports, Ghana   in the last  few months  became  literally a huge court room because of the televised  hearing of the petition against the election of incumbent President John Mamah  by the man he defeated  Nana Akuffo Ado. Mamah got 50.7 %  of the votes cast four months ago and has been  in office for five months and Ghanaians find it difficult to believe that he could lose office if the Supreme Court in Ghana,  which is hearing the case,  rules that his election is illegal . Poor Ghanaians, they  should take tutorials in Nigeria where it is the norm rather than the exception for any election to  be visited with post election litigation .Indeed some state governors have almost completed their terms before post election tribunals ruled they were elected illegally and truncated their tenure . So  Ghanaians  should brace themselves for any eventuality from their  Supreme   Court as the heavens will not fall, in spite of the huge deployment of Police men all over Ghana in anticipation of the decision of that court. Such anxiety is a way of life in Nigeria and the joke is usually  on the loser which is what democracy and elections are all about – no cheating.

    Another joke on a very expensive side but on   census  – an  issue that Nigeria’s democracy  heavily depends,  was that by the Kano State Governor  Rabiu  Kwankanso  on the utterances of the newly appointed Chairman of the National Population Commission –NPC Chief Felix Odimegwu, former MD  of the Nigerian Breweries Ltd. The Census boss was reported to have told the press that Nigeria has not had any credible census since 1816 and blamed the  situation  on the distortion ,and falsification of figures for selfish reasons. According to the report,  Odimegwu said  ‘even the census conducted in 2006  is not credible. I have the records and evidence produced by scholars  and  professors of repute. This is not my report. If the current laws are not amended, the planned 2016 census will not succeed.’  The Kano State Governor not only faulted Odimegwu utterances in criticizing past censuses  and his predecessors in office, he asked the president to revoke Odimegwu’s appointment on the grounds that he had worked only in the brewery all his life. According to the Governor, ‘my guess is that he is taking a lot of   his products and that is why we feel that his appointment is a mistake because he cannot be the Chairman of NPC and at the same time attacking what his predecessors  have done‘

      Jokes  apart,  however,  both the governor and the NPC  boss  are both right in their observations on the census.  So the issue of the former brewery boss’ ‘hangover’ on census matter and history in Nigeria, is a trite issue and is indeed diversionary, as the NPC  boss of Public Affairs  Committee has been quick to point out on the matter. Census  in Nigeria  has been tainted with fraud  and irregularity   from time immemorial. What Odimegwu said was very correct. However it is not his duty as the new census boss to say that publicly. Indeed  I have confidence that the new census boss will conduct a credible census both if he is allowed and not sacked before the 2016 census and if he himself does not shoot himself in the leg with his utterances. As  for the governor he is using the brewery connection to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. I don’t think he will succeed but I know the race is on to get rid of the new census boss  and the reason is simple.

    The north has been the main beneficiary  of skewed census figures inspite of its  physical terrain which cannot support the figures that have always been ascribed to it from previous censuses. It  is only in Nigeria that the population  of  destinations  of migrations have lesser population than the source of the migration. This is the Achilles heel  of the censuses conducted in Nigeria so far and the bane of their credibility and integrity.This  is where the joke really is on the Kano State governor in his anxiety to defend the present   census status quo and get rid of Odimegwu. Again, jokes and hangovers aside,  I am sure the NBL,  over which the new census boss presided  so successfully, has very illuminating  figures on consumption patterns of   all its   products, and not only the alcoholic ones,  all over Nigeria,  especially the north and that knowledge will  certainly  assist Nigeria to  conduct a proper census in 2016,  if the new census boss gets that far,  on his new seat.

    Let  us now go back to the diplomatic hangover of the Iraqi  invasion on British  diplomacy   as well as the Russian monkey and grenade joke on the US over the Syrian crisis. Again nothing illustrates the hang over     with  Britain more than the debate in the British  Parliament  this last  Wednesday and its comparison with a similar debate when the Parliament gave Tony Blair the authority to invade Iraq. Last Thursday the leader of Tony Blair’s party   Ed  Milliband was   indecisive and did not want to make the mistake that Blair made then . But then Blair spoke so eloquently  then that the Leader of Opposition then  now Foreign  Minister    Alex Hague gave his support by saying that this Opposition as it was then, ‘stood shoulder to shoulder with the PM‘  then, as Tony Blair was,  and it was a fine time for British diplomacy and collective responsibility, in a time of crisis. Of  course the moment lost its allure  and glory  when it was later discovered that the intelligence on availability of weapons of mass destruction was lacking . That  discovery poisoned the political career of Tony Blair leading to his removal  from office and has haunted his political and diplomatic fortunes since. But then, what have his opponents and so called friends made of it?  Nothing  as the debate in Parliament last week showed. Instead,  Blair’s error and an urgent need not to repeat it, pervaded the Parliamentary debate like a bad odor leaving a paralytic smell of inaction  and indecision to act on a clear violation of international law. Evidently Blair’s enemies are having a dose of their own medicine but this time the joke is on them as they now appreciate the anguish of those who took action in 2003  only to find  out   later that intelligence was incorrect   and  those waiting for intelligence   now, while infants and women are being killed with chemical weapons under their nose and they cannot be men   enough to act in the name of  humanity to effect a mere deterrence. Instead they jaw , jaw as if in a secondary school debating  society. Really  I  think Tony Blair  is having the last laugh that he at least was decisive when it mattered. Which really is the difference between real men and boy scouts in the British Parliament last Thursday   over Syria  and the use of chemical weapons.

    On  the Russian monkey grenade joke I think the Russians may soon discover that that may be one joke too many. Following  the giving of asylum   by Russia to the US security contractor who leaked US official secrets to the internet, the joke may be costly in terms of US reaction in Syria . At least to make the Russians laugh with the other side of their mouth the Americans may hit some   military   sites  in Syria this week . Barak Obama’s body language  on CNN  on Syria this week  was guarded , but his posture was that of someone trying to manage a bad joke or live through a nightmare. Especially during a week   in the US commemorating the scion of Non – Violence, late civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. But  again, the hangover of the   2003 Iraqi invasion which Obama condemned to get elected, is playing a bad joke on the same Obama going to action without the evidence of weapons inspectors like his predecessor and Tony Blair   did  in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Really  in diplomacy as  in  politics, one  man’s meat can also be another man’s poison and   vice versa.

  • FIFA shouldn’t ban Keshi

    FIFA shouldn’t ban Keshi

    Stephen Keshi needs help. We must save his coaching career. Keshi has unwittingly fallen into the mind games trap set for him by Malawi’s coach Saintfiet, who feels that is the best way to distract him. He must be joking.

    We know why the Belgian is crying wolf over Keshi’s seemingly uncouth utterances, which at that time he thought was an expression of his angst against the coach for daring to insinuate that Calabar was unsafe. We mustn’t make Keshi Sainfiet’s fall guy.

    Nigeria will beat Malawi groggy, but it shouldn’t come with any price – FIFA ban on Keshi. It is on this score that this writer feels that a ground work should begin to free Keshi from this trap. It is good to read Keshi’s comment that he didn’t mean what he said the way in which the Belgian interpreted it. Good talk, Big Boss. Now you know that English isn’t our mother tongue and we need to watch our utterances.

    This writer warned Keshi in this column on the need to address foreign coaches as Europeans instead of whites. My comments arose from what he said in dismissing the contributions of foreign coaches to African football. Rather than heed the advice, he tagged me an enemy. Keshi knows better now.

    We have led Keshi to this path because we have condoned his jibes at his employers. Perhaps, Saintfiet’s case will compel the Big Boss to choose his words carefully, especially when addressing those whose views are different from his.

    However, we cannot allow a coach that we rejected disgrace our best, no matter what. When FIFA’s letter comes, NFF chiefs must get good lawyers to respond to it. Given where Keshi has been in the last decade or more (California, US), such terminologies don’t mean any harm.

    We must explore the possibility of using diplomacy in getting Saintfiet to take it easy when he comes for the game in Calabar. The Belgian is angry with the way in which he lost the Nigerian job. Malawi FA chiefs could be persuaded to talk with him on the need to embrace peace. Such soft landing mechanism can provide the platform for Keshi to apologise to him at the post-match meeting.

    Sports Minister Bolaji Abdullahi should exploit the possibility of speaking with the leader of the Malawian delegation to urge Saintfiet to back down on his pursuit of justice from FIFA over what he has termed Keshi’s racist comments.

    The allegation is weighty. Nigeria will lose more, if Keshi is axed by FIFA. Without any doubt, Keshi would be found to have infringed on the rules of the game, given the Luis Suarez vs Evra precedent in the Barclays English Premier League. Suarez called Evra a “negro”, a word used in his native Uruguay to describe a dark-skinned person. Between “negro and white dude,” the difference is the same because it describes the colour of the skin of the individuals concerned. On that score, Keshi is culpable. What we don’t know is what the punishment will be. But it could be a lengthy ban. If it happens that way (God forbid), Daniel Amokachi cannot sustain the good foundation Keshi has laid.

    Going through a FIFA document on racism, it appears that Keshi may be banned for five weeks or even more. There is also the clause for first offender or a minor case, depending on how FIFA eggheads classify Keshi’s matter. My worry about the FIFA five-match ban is its description. Is it five FIFA World Cup matches or any five matches that Nigeria plays? It could be five FIFA World Cup matches, depending on when the decision is taken, then no 2014 World Cup for the Big Boss (God forbid). If it isn’t, then Keshi could sit out any five games. Sincerely, Keshi must learn how to talk to people respectfully. It won’t take anything away from who he is.

    We should save Keshi from this organised chaos by employing diplomatic moves through government-to-government discussion or FA-to-FA jaw-jaw. But I must warn that these two meetings must be done after the game, perhaps at the post-match conference. Only post-match discussions will suffice, lest we are accused of match fixing.

    If Keshi escapes this ban, his public speeches should be curtailed, especially those in the foreign media. Keshi should know now that he is the face of our football. Whatever he says counts. He can do with some polish ing by his media men.

    One is miffed that Saintfiet is being given cheap publicity, with this needless saga. But, who is to blame when you have a talkative of a coach? Who?

    Victor Moses’ cross

    Victor Moses must be cursing himself for joining Chelsea now that the “Special One”, Jose Mourinho, isn’t favourably disposed to having the Super Eagles gem in his squad.

    Mourinho’s decision is shocking because he had showered encomiums on the Nigerian, until he left Chelsea for Nigeria’s game against South Africa on August 10 as part of activities marking the Mandela Challenge in Durban.

    When the story broke that Mourinho had declared Moses missing from the team, I knew that his days at Chelsea were over. Mourinho doesn’t tolerate indiscipline. There is no second chance for defaulters. So, for Moses, the game is up.

    Moses needs to leave Chelsea to plan his future. He must remain in England to show Mourinho what he is missing. Moses should be prepared to pay the difference in whatever negotiations is struck to have him out of Stamford Bridge.

    With the 2014 World Cup in Brazil looking like a reality for Nigeria, Moses has no business sitting on the bench of any club, irrespective of the glut of stars there.

    We are told that Moses could join Liverpool next Monday, which is good. If it doesn’t happen, Moses must quickly decide on his future before the next transfer window opens in January 2014.

    Cry for D’ Tigers

    I’m not a fan of Nigerian coaches. So, I’m surprised that Nigeria’s senior basketball side lost to Senegal at the AfroBasket tournament holding in Abidjan, Cote d’ Ivoire.

    After the 2012 London Olympic Games, I wrote here that D’Tigers’ major problem was coaching. Our coaches exhibited poor understanding of the matches in London. I canvassed refresher courses for them. I was shocked when the coach resigned his appointment. I expected the NBBF not to look in his direction when the opportunity to recruit a new coach became necessary. But they did, making it imperative to ask if they are shocked that D’Tigers lost the game to Senegal?

    In Nigeria, we have this habit of engaging the reverse gear and expect the car to move forward. Ordinarily, NBBF ought to have sent the coaches who handled the squad at the London 2012 Olympic Games for refresher courses where they would be taught the finer details of the game, especially how to read matches.

    With this failed adventure, I expect the NBBF to send our coaches on refresher courses. If it cannot raise the cash, the federation can invite renowned basketball coaches to retrain our coaches. Their methods are archaic for a game that is dynamic. The rules of basketball change by the day and except our coaches are shown how matches are read they would continue to increase our pain with myopic decisions on the court.

    It hurts that the Nigeria side that has collegiate students in the US and some others who play in the reputable NBA won’t be in Portugal for the World Championships. We cannot continue with this trend. It must change.

    Welcome Robinson Okosun

    Psychologist Robinson Okosun returns to the Super Eagles after being dropped due to paucity of cash in the NFF. At that time, the body’s president, Aminu Maigari, promised to return to the status quo when its finances improve.

    Now that Okosun is back, one only hopes that he concentrates on his job. The players spoke glowingly about his contributions in lifting their spirit, especially before the quarter-finals game against Cote d’Ivoire.

    I had written about the need for Okosun’s return, largely from the perspective of his being knowledgeable. The Eagles would have been the only team in the world without a psychologist.

    Maybe soon, Coach Silvanus Okpala would rejoin the team. It is a possibility and I look forward to it. Welcome Okosun.