The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Anti-solar conspiracy; ‘Solar Generation’ must replace ‘Generator Generation’

    As there a conspiracy against solar energy – another energy conspiracy like the generator conspiracy? How else do we explain that Nigeria with 85-100% sun days has no solar farms while the UK with 20% pathetic sun days per annum has 157 solar farms and 229 awaiting approval not including roof-top millions of mini-solar plants? The UK expects solar enterprise to deliver 20GigaWatts of power by 2020. Africa has no such plans. A small physics lesson: 1,000watts =1Kilowatt; 1,000 kilowatts or 1,000,000 watts=1Megawatt; 1,000Mw=1Gigawatt=1,000,000,000watts or 1billion watts.  Nigeria@52+ makes 3- 4,200Mw.  Africa needs visionary ‘Mr. Solar President’ Leadership.

    Has any African engineer, politician or professor visited a solar farm in Spain, Israel, UAE, UK or USA? Why is this failure to commit to new technologies allowed when our electricity powerless Africa has a mega-sun stroking our land and Nigeria has epileptic 3-4,000Mw after billions of dollars? Why are Africa and Nigeria still holding ‘talk-shop’ conferences on ‘solar energy as a way forward’ but giving mega-contracts for imported turbines for 50 year-old power plants using non-renewable energy, instead of creating the long overdue ‘New African/Nigerian Solar Generation’ to replace us- the ‘Generator Generation’?

    Is our leadership blinded by the government-allocated perks of office – the 24-hour generator and vehicles with anti-sun tinted windows?  The leadership should recognise the technological and moral value of taking Africa and Nigeria solar before God relocates the sun to those who value it more? ‘God gives and takes away’. God can take away the sun if we misuse it as much as we have misused that other energy gift from God, petroleum. Imagine solar energy being provided to Africa by underground cable from the UK, Spain, Israel, UAE or USA. The sun shines on everyone. Why cannot we grasp the future? Nigeria gives citizens 12 watts of average power per person. South Africa gives 457, Zimbabwe 113, Zambia 61 and Ghana 29. Will Nigeria ever become ‘solar wise’? Since Africa is technologically challenged, why do we not turn to the gloriously powerful sun? Tell the AU, ECOWAS, governments and the private sector to get power from the sun, everyone!

    Solar energy is to electricity what the cell phone was to communications –a great leap forward, cutting out the PHCN men. It will not get better with the new power companies who will overcharge. The sun is being underutilised by Nigerians, individual, government and the private sector, who are victims of a conspiracy against the spread of solar energy. Are the conspirators forcing government to use high tariffs and taxes on solar imports? Are oil marketers afraid of losses from reducing patronage and generator companies for the same reason?

    Nigerian authorities are afraid of committing ‘big’ to the new technology which is not new at all and has been around since the dawn of time and has been largely ignored, to our loss, except for sun drying clothes and food items. Nigeria started with the sun and then went underground to coal and petroleum. Now we must come up to the surface again and harness the sun. It has already been done so there is no point Nigeria’s NUC giving ABU N10m to research solar energy as was done some years ago. It is on international record that the prices of solar panels and rechargeable batteries have fallen by over 80% making solar energy affordable. Why is cheap solar equipment not available in Africa? Conspiracy! Entire cities are run by solar abroad. Africa, wake up before they steal the sun and sell it back to your children in a bottle!

    The UK offers government subsidies to families and companies to purchase solar equipment. Such subsidies are not available in Nigeria and denied to Nigerian ‘Sun Energy Seekers’. CBN gives N10b to ABU and billions in rescue money to banks while the federal government gives $200m to Nollywood and billions to textile manufacturers. Few economists have calculated that a large chunk of this financial support will be spent on generators and fuel.  Every Nigerian and every economist knows that the mantra for survival in family, and business is ‘Get Electric Power Right And All Will Be Added’.

    It is not too late for government to target solar power by increasing grants, solar loan portfolios, reducing interest rates on loans, longer term loans to increase solar power use and reduce pressure on the new power grid roadmap. We do not want another talk shop, no actionless ‘Solar Energy Conference’.

    If the current government fails to take solar seriously will the new party? Will the APC, vaguely promising 40,000Mw in four or eight years, rethink and embrace a serious manifesto ‘Solar Power Roadmap’? The powerful people, rich with money obtained from the murky waters of Nigerian commerce and politics, want dependent citizens. Solar energy in the home frees the owner from the grid and solar farms can also supply the grid. Solar is a generator without pollution.

    There are a few African solar projects. Solar energy empowers and reduces poverty –not the goal of Africa’s powerful governments. It is the goal of the poor and their NGOs, seemingly powerless to change government ‘secret plans’. The world must get the poor vote to matter in politics. The voice of the people is the voice of God. We want solar energy today or will make it a 2015 election issue! Fight the ‘Anti-Solar Conspiracy’. Who is afraid of solar powering Africa and Nigeria?

  • Abubakar Shekau’s fate

    A pall of confusion may have descended on security circles in Abuja following the reported killing of Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the rampaging Boko Haram sect, by the operatives of the Joint Task Force, JTF, in Borno State. Last Monday, Sagir Musa, a lieutenant-colonel and spokesman of JTF, dropped the bombshell in a statement which alluded to the fact that Shekau might have died of wounds he allegedly sustained in a gun battle with operatives of the JTF at the Sambisa Forest in Maiduguri. Sambisa had all along been the fortified headquarters of the sect. Musa said that the Boko Haram leader was seriously wounded on June 30, by the Special Forces and was taken to Amitchide, a border community in the nation’s border with Cameroun, for treatment. He said Shekau did not recover from the gunshot wounds.

    The statement said, “Shekau was mortally wounded in the encounter and was sneaked into Amitchide – a border community in Cameroun for treatment.”  Musa added that a video released purportedly by the Boko Haram leader on August 13, was a deceit by a member of the sect to convince members to continue with the insurgency. He added that the video was “dramatised by an impostor to hoodwink the sect members to continue with terrorism and to deceive undiscerning minds”.

    Ordinarily, one would have thought that the killing or the eventual death of such a most wanted and notorious terrorist would have been a matter to be celebrated with photographs and banters in security circles, but this has not been the case. Instead, we are witnessing a preponderance of silence from official and security circles, a situation that seems to have confused almost everybody, except those who are in the know of the true situation of things as regards the fate of this high-priced criminal.

    It would be recalled that at the height of his madness, a $7m bounty was placed on Shekau’s head, which makes him the most priced criminal in this part of the world till date. Nobody has seen any recent photograph of Shekau, even if taken in death, like it happened some years ago in Angola, when Jonas Savimbi, leader of the UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), a group that had destabilised the country for decades, was put forward for public view when he met his violent death. That singular event put paid to all the speculations about Savimbi’s possessions of a senseless, invincible ‘magic’ that had made him to appear and disappear at will for several years before he was eventually cut down by hot pellets.

    The same thing happened to the two sons of Saddam Hussein – Uday and Qusay – who were both killed after the US-led invasion forces cornered them at a luxury apartment which served as their hideout in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul on July 22, 2003. The death of the duo represented the biggest coup for the coalition forces after the fall of Baghdad, more than three months before then. That singular opportunity offered Washington a genuine hope of a turning point in the bloody guerrilla war and laid the grounds for the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein. While briefing the public at a late night press conference on the day of the incident, an elated General Ricardo Sanchez, the Commander of the ground forces in Iraq, said, “We are certain that Uday and Qusay were killed today. We have used multiple sources to identify the individuals.” Photos of the faces of the two fallen brothers were then taken and sent to Baghdad, where they were identified by Saddam’s private secretary, among others.

    All these were proofs of what the invasion army was able to accomplish in their campaign in Iraq, even before Saddam was himself captured in a hole some months after, specifically, on December 13, 2003. So, it is quite unfortunate that rather than provide proofs of Shekau’s death, the public is being treated to mere propaganda, half-truths and, perhaps, a tinge of fallacy. Otherwise, why should the JTF spokesman say something and nobody, not even at the Army headquarters or the government itself, has come out to corroborate, confirm or put speculations to rest by telling the people the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

    However, it was gathered that the military High Command in the country was jittery about the release of the statement on Shekau’s purported death because of the growing lack of evidence around it. Top security goons in Abuja are said to be wallowing in a pool of disbelief, especially with the assumption that the statement could have been a product of sabotage and an unnecessary contest for glory by the JTF, which is prosecuting the war against terrorism. Furthermore, the release of the news of the killing of Shekau to coincide with the date a new division of the Nigerian Army was taking over from the JTF, was also being viewed with suspicion. The army recently established a counter-terrorism division in Borno State. The division, which is expected to come under the command of a major-general, was established to deal with terrorists and terrorism that have gained currency in that part of the country.

    From all indications, the death of Shekau need not have thrown up any controversy, except that some people may be fighting for attention and glory. In the first instance, Shekau is a fugitive, who is wanted dead or alive. Therefore, if the JTF says he has been killed in an encounter with security forces, the onus is on the JTF, the military High Command or the federal government who declared a state of emergency on some parts of the North and ordered military action, to come forward with convincing evidence. This, they should do as quickly as possible to erase the doubts the news may have left in people’s minds.

    After all, we are all witnesses to the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda terrorist group at Abbottabad, in Pakistan, after about 10 years of being hunted by American forces. As a guide against public outrage, particularly in order to avoid turning his corpse or burial place into a Mecca of sort, where his sympathizers will now pay annual pilgrimage to, the Americans simply claimed to have lowered his body into the deep sea never to be seen again. This generated a lot of confusion until video clips and actual photographs of the bloody encounter started flying all over the place. As they say, seeing is believing – the videos and photographs were used largely to convince the doubting Thomases that, indeed, Osama Bin Laden will never walk on the streets of the planet earth anymore.

    Personally, I am not too sure that Osama’s body was buried in the deep sea. What my intuition tells me is that his body was ferried to the US to be used for forensic analysis in a laboratory. Perhaps, it could be to decode his senses and get to the inner workings of the brain of a mass murderer, a suicide bomber, an assassin, or maybe, a religious fanatic on the precipice of mental malady. As for Shekau, we all know he is a drug addict, a rapist, a terror-personified and a merciless man hunter, whose greatest interest is to cause the suffering of his fellow men. So, if this sort of man like Shekau has been killed or he is dead, either by gunshot wounds or rat poison, he deserves an inglorious end.

    The only thing now is that, if need be, his body should be exhumed, videoed and photographed for all to see that nemesis has finally caught up with the serial killer. In that case, this regime of denial, half-truths, conspiracy of silence and all that will give room for wild jubilation among the people and banters among the security forces. With Shekau and his deputy, Momodu Bama, conveniently out of the way, the war on terrorism is half won, except that there may be other lesser evils lurking around, waiting to inflict pains on innocent people. Time will certainly take care of those ones!

     

  • Why Odimegwu should get the president’s boot

    Why Odimegwu should get the president’s boot

    IF ever a man stands as indisputable evidence that the garb does not necessarily make the man, Eze Festus Odimegwu, Chairman of the Nigerian Population Commission (NPC), is such evidence.

    Thirty four years ago or so, the man graduated from University of Nigeria, Nsukka on top of his class with a first class honours in Chemistry. He soon joined the Nigerian Breweries Plc and, as one would expect of a man of his brilliance, he rose through the lower rungs of the company to eventually become its managing director and chief executive officer in 1997. He left in 2006.

    In the course of his brilliant career he attended leadership and management courses in some of the best universities in the world, including London Business School, Wharton Business School and Stanford University Business School.

    It was this brilliant man that President Goodluck Jonathan saw fit to appoint as the Chairman of the NPC in June last year. A little over one year on, the man has done and said everything to prove the president could not have been more wrong in his choice.

    If, as is possible, even probable, the president was taken in by the man’s academic brilliance and apparently successful career in appointing him to the very sensitive job of Nigeria’s head-count, the president should never have been, understandable though it is.

    This is simply because in spite of the man’s brilliance and successful career he had exposed himself long before his appointment as chair of NPC as one of the most obsequious Nigerians when, in the twilight of his brewing career, he chose to become one of the arrowheads of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo’s infamous Third Term Agenda.

    So obsequious was the man in his role as a leading promoter of President Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda that it appears to have brought his otherwise brilliant career to an ignominious end when, rather than leave on his own, he seemed to have been gently shoved off for playing too much politics at the expense of his job as the boss of Nigeria’s top brewing company.

    For a man who seemed so servile to President Obasanjo, it is truly shocking that he has since turned full circle to denigrate the man over one of the few successes he managed to chalk up in his eight years as president. For, Census 2006, probably save that of 1991 conducted by the late Makama Nupe, Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa, is arguably the least controversial census ever carried out in this country since its first nationwide headcount in 1921.

    At the heart of this controversy has always been the notion that the more sparsely populated North can never be more populous than the densely populated South, as all our headcounts have always shown. So strongly held is this notion in the South that even otherwise well educated Southerners like Senator Abraham Adesanya, the late leader of Afenifere, the umbrella Yoruba cultural group, would peddle the nonsense that Northerners counted their cattle, goats and sheep among their population!

    As if to disprove the numerical superiority of the North, President Obasanjo, well ahead of the 2003 general elections, initially made the possession of a national identity card by any Nigerian 18 and above conditional for the exercise of their voting right, in clear contravention of the Constitution and contrary to the electoral law. In the end, he was forced to go back on his insistence when it became obvious that it was logistically impossible to provide every eligible Nigerian with the ID card before the elections.

    All the same the project went ahead in November 2002 and when the results were released in May 2003, it suggested an even wider margin of population between the North and the South than was the case in all the previous censuses. For example, whereas the 1991 headcount showed a ratio of 53.23% for the North against 47.77% for the South, Obasanjo’s ID card project showed the North had 54.50% of the country’s adult population as against 45.50% for the South.

    It was highly instructive that the ID card project was carried out at a time the president, his Minister of Internal Affairs, the late Chief Sunday Afolabi, the supervising minister who was a staunch Afenifere and Awoist, and Mr Deji Omotade, the late head of the Department of National Civic Registration (DNCR), were all not only Southerners. They were indeed, South-Westerners, the arrowheads of the campaign against the North’s numerical superiority vis-a-vis the South.

    In spite of this exercise many a Southerner still clung on to the apparently mistaken belief that the population of the North was fiction. One such Southerner was Chief Bode George, the Peoples Democratic Party chieftain who was jailed for corruption several years ago but who seems to have since returned to reckoning in the party. The population of the North was fiction, he told a rally organised by the Southern Leadership Forum in Enugu in December 2005, a rally which clearly had the imprimatur of Obasanjo’s presidency. They will make sure the 2006 headcount, he told the rally to a thunderous applause, exposed the fiction. “We will fix it,” he said.

    The 2006 census came and went and apparently all the Bode Georges of the world couldn’t “fix it.” The result the headcount which Mr. Samuila Danko Makama, Odimegwu’s predecessor, announced in October 2006 showed pretty much the same distribution the country had seen since before independence in 1960.

    Odimegwu, it seems, has come to his job with an open agenda to do what many with even bigger political clout than he possesses have failed to carry out. As Mr. Makama pointed out in an interview in the Daily Trust of June 27, at his very first address of the NPC staff after his appointment, Odimegwu tried to discredit all the headcounts that have been conducted in the country since Adam.

    “The most shocking aspect,” said Makama, “was that he said all previous censuses in Nigeria, a section of the country has been cheating other sections, and that I failed to correct that, and that he had come to correct that.”

    Since then the new census boss has been singing one variation or the other of this same theme of a fictitious Northern population. Like most of his regional compatriots he seems to have clung on to the ignorant, possibly merely mischievous, belief that the North is mostly a barren desert that cannot have the population it has been credited with all these decades. They simply refuse to educate themselves about the country’s geography which would have shown them that only the northern fringes of the region are semi-arid and that the vast portion of its 730,885 square kilometres, which is more than 2/3rd of Nigeria’s 923,768 square kilometres, is arable and produces most of the country’s food and livestock.

    His most recent display of ignorance about his job was his widely publicised press conference of August 20, in which he repeated his ill-considered and arrant nonsense that the 2006 census was cooked up. His evidence? The say so of one census official, Inuwa Mohammed, who he said once told an NPC meeting to review the census figures that it was all cooked up.

    Apparently it does not matter to the man that, all told, there has been no more than 370 or so petitions nation-wide against the NPC’s 2006 headcount and that more than 75% of these petitions have been thrown out by the census tribunal.

    The president cannot do worse than retain someone who has displayed so much ignorance, insensitivity and mischief as Odimegwu has, as the country’s census boss. Not only has he displayed so much ignorance, insensitivity and mischief, he goes down on record as the first census boss in the country’s history the vast majority of whose colleagues would carry out a full page newspaper advert announcing their vote of no confidence in his leadership.

    If the president wants the country to have a census in three year’s time with any chance of being acceptable at all, he should sack Odimegwu today. If nothing else, any man, no matter how brilliant, who would praise a leader to high heavens today only to turn round and crucify him tomorrow as Odimegwu has done to Obasanjo, simply because the man is no longer in power, does not deserve any responsible job, not to talk of one as sensitive and important as the headcount of a country as big as Nigeria.

     

  • Bayelsa’s gifts to Nigeria

    In the comity of minority groups in Nigeria, Bayelsa can be considered the least of them. Whereas it is the only homogenous Ijaw state – the home base of all Ijaw people and the epicentre of Ijaw civilization and culture, yet it is the least in terms of land mass and population. The entire state covering the land, vegetation, creeks, rivers and ocean is 21,110 km2 (8,150 sq mi). Going by the last census, the population is put at 1,998,349.

    The state was carved in 1996 out of the old Rivers State and is thus one of the newest states of the Nigerian federation.

    This is the state where crude oil was first discovered in Nigeria in commercial quantity. In fact it is on record that Bayelsa has one of the largest crude oil and natural gas deposits in the whole country. Aside from its natural endowments, Bayelsa also enjoys the rare privilege of producing the first President to emerge from a minority ethnic group.

    The discovery of oil in Oloibiri in 1956, according to Wikipedia, ended almost 50 years of unsuccessful oil exploration in the country by various companies. Indeed, the discovery launched Nigeria into global reckoning as a major oil-producing nation, considering the fact that over 5,000 barrels were pumped per day from the swampy oilfield of OML 29, measuring about 13.75 square kilometres.

    No doubt, the enormous wealth that came from the discovery of oil, ultimately accounted for the substantial investment in infrastructure by the then federal government in building the capital cities of Lagos and Abuja. It is, however, sad to note that the developments were done at the expense of the land from whose womb the wealth came. The oil wells in Oloibiri have since dried up. The land and its inhabitants lie desolate. The community is a shadow of itself, stripped of all its virtues and today it has become a clear metaphor. What a shame!

    In shame we have forged on as a people, carrying with us the deep scars of injustice, neglect and deprivation even as we take solace in the divine intervention that miraculously brought about the emergence of a President from among us.

    We also take solace in the contributions of our heroes to the Nigerian state, sons of the soil, whose giant strides have brought great honour and pride to our nation at different times and space. Today, we pay glowing tributes to men like Prof. Lawrence B. Ekpebu, from Okoloba, a once picturesque village in Bayelsa, now ravaged by the harsh consequence of exploitation of oil in the Niger Delta. From a destitute background where there was hardly opportunity to attend primary school, he went on to become the first African to bag a Harvard degree, graduating with Honours in Government with specialization in International Law and Relations. He won one of Harvard’s most coveted prizes for graduating seniors, the Francis H. Burr (1909) Prize Scholarship and broke an all- time record as the only black person to ever achieve this feat in the history of Harvard till date. Indeed, his achievement prompted the institution to grant scholarships to not just Nigerians but Africans and the Caribbeans. As a result, the scheme produced additional 200 professors from Nigeria alone and several others across the African continent among whom are Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, Kalu Idika Kalu and His Excellency, President Quattara of Cote Ivoire. Prof. Ekpebu went on to bag Masters from Princeton University and later PhD from Harvard.

    There is also Ernest Sissei Ikoli of blessed memory (1893–1960), a nationalist and pioneering journalist, a native of Sangana, Akassa, in Brass Local Government Area of present day Bayelsa State. Ernest Ikoli was very prominent in pre-Independence Nigerian politics and remains the first man from present day Bayelsa State to have made as much significant foray into national politics. As a journalist, he was the first editor of the famous Daily Times in Lagos in its formative era in 1926 and as a politician, he was the President of the Nigerian Youth Movement. In 1942, Ikoli even represented Lagos in the Legislative Council. Another significant first by all standards in the history of Nigerian politics!

    Many will remember Melford Obiene Okilo, (November 30, 1933 – July 5, 2008), a proud Ijaw politician of Ogbia extraction from Emakalakala in Bayelsa State. He had a long and distinguished career as a politician from pre-Independence Nigeria, but his career as a politician gained tremendous prominence in post- independence times until his untimely demise in 2008. He was a Member of Parliament from 1956 to 1964 and minister in the First Republic. He was Governor of old Rivers State between 1979 and 1983 during the Second Republic and Senator representing Bayelsa East between 1999 and 2003.

    Only recently, the nation had cause to mourn the painful demise of General Andrew OwoyeAzazi, who died in an ill-fated helicopter crash last year. He had a distinguished military career and was arguably one of the finest in the history of the Nigerian Military, who rose to the pinnacle of the force. A Chief of Army Staff and later Chief of Defence Staff, Azazi, a native of Peretorugbene in Ekeremor LGA, Bayelsa State, was appointed National Security Adviser by President Goodluck Jonathan on October 4, 2010 and died on December 15, 2012.

    We also remember with fondness the great Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro (September 10, 1938 – May 9, 1968), better known as “Boro”, was a celebrated Niger Delta nationalist and Nigerian Civil War hero. He was one of the pioneers of minority rights activism in Nigeria and perhaps the very first to take up arms against the Nigerian State to agitate for the rights of the oil producing minorities of South- south. His legacies remain true to us even to this day.

    What’s the idea behind the reeling out of the profiles of these proud Ijaw sons of Bayelsa extraction? It is to draw attention to the fact that we have as a people over the years, in spite of the negative classification and distorted perceptive lenses, have done more perhaps more than most people will readily want to admit, to project the ideals of a united and egalitarian Nigeria. Undeniably, Bayelsa State is a blessing to the nation.

    It is in keeping with these ideals and to further push the frontiers of our collective interest as a nation, irrespective of the fault lines upon which our so- called unity in diversity was etched, that another great Bayelsan, the Governor of Bayelsa State, Henry Seriake Dickson chose to serve as chairman of the PDP National Reconciliation Committee.

    Those who criticized his appointment did not take long to realise that the man they presumed was inexperienced and “infantile” to chair the reconciliation committee was the brain behind the negotiation that ensured the suit stopping the party’s convention slated for August 31 was withdrawn. It also didn’t take long to prove to the skeptics and cynics that Governor Dickson’s persuasive and consensus building skills, not just as politician, but as a brilliant lawyer with years of outstanding records of achievements at the bar ensured that peace was restored to the feuding parties in PDP Ekiti and Anambra states.

    At a time like this when our nation’s unity is under severe threat, we must be able to draw a clear line between rendering service and playing politics. We should all take pride to work for the unity and development of our country and by so doing stand together to resist those exploiting our diversity to harp on those things that easily pull us apart. We must emulate the personalities whose remarkable profiles, who at different times rose beyond pettiness as gallant patriots and gave their all to render service to the nation by embracing and envisioning an all-inclusive approach to achieve national cohesion and unity.

     

    • Iworiso-Markson sent this piece from Yenagoa.

  • Again, Sege talks the talk

    Somewhat, former President Olusegun Obasanjo figures himself some incarnation of Chief Obafemi Awolowo – the one who must sneeze and the republic must catch a cold.

    The huge difference is that while Awo walked the walk before talking the talk, Obasanjo talks the talk without walking the walk.

    Awo, it was, who on his yearly medical sojourn abroad, on the defunct British Caledonian Airways, would release his annual state-of-the-nation bazooka, that elicited so much heat and tirade, from the sitting government and its luckless officials, who felt obliged to respond to Awo’s blazing fire of cold stats with a fusillade of vulgar abuse.

    One of the most celebrated of such dog fights was Awo’s alert that the economy, under Second Republic President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, was heading for the rocks. Stung, Prof. Emmanuel Edozien, celebrated former professor of development and international economics at the University of Ibadan and President Shagari’s chief economic adviser, with Chief Adisa Akinloye, the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) national chairman, went for Awo’s jugular, in a fierce, two-man pincer attack.

    But when the passion of sentimental battle cooled, the government ate crow. A few months later, the Shagari government went to Parliament, tail between two hind legs, clutching an economic stabilisation bill, to pad an economy in free fall.

    That confirmed Awo’s earlier warning. That showed the futility of hysteria against well reasoned alerts. That reinforced the Awo mystique.

    Since his public policy activism started during that same Second Republic, Obasanjo had always coveted such Awo-like mystique. But tragically, he has always lacked Awo-like work ethic, or personal morality, the such that declared when his contemporaries were carousing with women of easy virtue, he, Awo, was punishing his mind, searching for solutions to Nigeria’s problems.

    That explains why, even from the grave, Awo sounds credible, plausible and rigorous: thanks to his numerous books that have addressed and proffered sane solutions to some, if not most, of Nigeria’s perennial problems.

    But a living Obasanjo, beyond his false piety, often sounds like the human equivalent of a grating drum – grating because it is empty; and is wilfully deaf to the irritating sounds it makes, when it insists on rolling itself!

    That is the long and short of Obasanjo’s pastime of public policy interventions, the latest of which was his Ibadan heroics of pontificating on failed younger leaders! That itself was a grand irony: for the megaphone blaring out that condemnation was the ultimate in failed leaderships across generations! But then, self-nailing is one of Obasanjo’s divine gifts!

    After some self-serving books, a pretence to scholarship and intellectualism, and a “three-term” presidency (one as jackboot head of state, and two as elected – if controversial – civilian president), Obasanjo remains very much part of, hardly any solution to, the problem he periodically rails against. His motive is to clutch at relevance at all cost.

    Indeed, analysing Obasanjo through what he says of others in his books, and what others say of him in theirs, is a rich experience.

    In Not My Will, he talked down on Gen. Yakubu Gowon, his war-time commander-in-chief, as some ungrateful and duplicitous coup plotter, on account of unproven allegations on the Bukar Sukar Dimka coup.

    Yet, Gen. Gowon probably has in his fingernail more honour, nobility, grace and charity than Obasanjo would ever have in his whole being, even if he lived a million years!

    In the same book, he talked down on Awo, saying what Awo hankered after all his life, he got on a virtual platter of gold. That was gloating on his first coming as military head of state. Yet, even after his second coming of two presidencies, and a clatter of books to articulate his thoughts, Awo, dead since 1987, still towers, like Gulliver in Lilliput, above the living midget still hustling for attention in his hoary years, when he had every opportunity – but blew it – to make his mark, and make it good.

    In My Command, his Civil War account, Obasanjo demonised everybody, especially the formidable “Black Scorpion”, Benjamin Adekunle of the Third Marine Commando fame. But Brig-Gen. Godwin Alabi-Isama, a brain box in the war’s Atlantic theatre has shown, in his own account, The Tragedy of Victory, with maps, pictures and devastating logic, that Obasanjo’s Command was just a tad less than grand fiction, driven by narcissistic conceit. Ben Gbulie, another combatant, though on the Biafran side, hinted as much in an interview The Nation published on August 25

    Even if Alabi-Isama had an axe to grind with Obasanjo – in his book, Alabi-Isama accused both Obasanjo and Gen. Theophilus Danjuma of easing him out of the army – Nasir El-Rufai bears no such burden.

    Yet, Obasanjo’s profiling in El-Rufai’s The Accidental Public Servant, particularly the former president’s comical denial of his failed third term project and the ultra-corrupt suborning by a sitting president, of Nigeria’s Business Royalty to “donate” to a presidential library swindle, is anything but flattering.

    And like some daemon that must sear its victim long after it had exited the scene, the best Obasanjo could bequeath a country that has given him all, aside from his irritating leadership sermonising, is presidential paralysis: Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua, a goodly soul clobbered by bad health, was virtually dead on arrival; and the famously uncritical Goodluck Jonathan, finding out the hard way that it takes more than good luck, and a conspiratorial pan-Nigeria mandate of Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt, to have a stellar presidency.

    But that, at the national level. In his native South West, all Obasanjo inspired was a reactionary “mainstream”, with a garrison command and electoral banditry in tow, that sapped the people as it bloated the greedy and corrupt client-reactionaries. It was rolling back, for eons, Awo’s proud legacy.

    But to Obasanjo, that is fine. In the absence of near-zero legacy in real terms, contrived presidential Lilliput, just to make Obasanjo the Gulliver of his unsung era, is fair game.

    If Jesus the Christ had the divine mandate to die so that humanity might live, Obasanjo’s narcissistic mandate, it would appear, is for his country to die so that he might live! That, of course, is the sum-up of his empty grandstanding on leadership, when it is clear that, on that topic, he is a brilliant failure, wilfully un-confessed but proven.

    Of course, Obasanjo would remain great as long as Nigeria is chained to the current Lilliputian level. But the moment it breaks free – and it must – Obasanjo would embrace his fate in the dustbin of history.

    If Nigeria must attain its manifest destiny, the present generation of leaders must shun Obasanjo and his empty rhetoric.

    Instead, they must push for a super structure, not super humans: super structure that manages the best of geniuses but curtails the worst of villains that strays into governance.

    Such a system would end the era of unrepentant super-failures like Obasanjo, who run their mouth because of the strange conceit that they boast worse failures as successors.

  • Not a task for the self-serving

    Not a task for the self-serving

    The wholesale review of the 1999 Constitution that the National Assembly is currently undertaking, with not a little help from the Presidency, was from the outset a dubious venture.

    That document was drafted in haste and wreathed in secrecy so encompassing that not even President Olusegun Obasanjo who swore to protect and defend it and abide by it had seen it at the time he took office. After going through it, the late Gani Fawehinmi warned that it was strewn with booby traps, and that the framers did not take into account Nigeria’s altered political environment and the yearnings of the people.

    Its defects soon became clear even to those who stood to profit the most from them. Piecemeal amendment followed piecemeal amendment, but defects kept surfacing. Instead of abandoning that strategy and calling for a new Constitution, to be prepared by a Constituent Assembly and ratified by sovereign people of Nigeria in a referendum, President Jonathan Goodluck and the National Assembly settled for a trainload of amendments — as many as 75 at one point, 54 at the last count – in an exercise they now call a constitutional review.

    A Constitution that requires 54 amendments in one fell swoop is a constitution crying to be re-written altogether. But they will hear none of it. They are pressing ahead with this untidy strategy, armed with the self-serving and threadbare claim that the sovereignty of the Nigerian state inheres in them, and that since there cannot be two sovereigns in the same political space, a Sovereign National Conference or a Constituent Assembly has no place in the present scheme of things.

    They conveniently forget that they were elected to make laws for the governance of Nigeria, not to rewrite a new Constitution through the back door. Nor are they mindful that, even with all its imperfections, the 1999 Constitution declares unambiguously that sovereignty belongs to the people, and that the government derives its authority from the people.

    In any case, what kind of constitutional review is it in which the protagonists gather a more or less rented crowd in one city in each federal constituency for several hours in one day, presents them with a “template” of 54 proposed amendments, ask them to vote for or against each with nary a debate, and then celebrate the outcome as a triumph for popular consultation, the kind of which has never been witnessed in the history of constitution-making in Nigeria?

    The whole thing is a sham, and a prologue to future political grief.

    That much is clear from what happened the other day when the National Assembly set out to amend the law governing nationality. It botched the effort spectacularly and ended up, according to many persons learned in the law, actually endorsing child marriage.

    Senate President David Mark has said that the Senate was “tricked” into voting for a law upholding that atrocious practice. He deserves full mark for candour. But his candour raises many troubling questions. On how many other issues or occasions has the Senate or the House of Representatives been “tricked” into enacting one law or another? Where is the expertise, the mastery, in a legislative body that can be so easily swindled? Where is the judgment?

    Today, nobody can say with certitude where the law actually stands on child marriage. If the Senate vote is not revisited, it will probably take a ruling of the Supreme Court to clear the air, all because legislators arrogated to themselves the task of rewriting the Constitution through the backdoor – a task for which they are ill-equipped.

    The on-going constitutional review, as its protagonists have chosen disingenuously to call it, is misbegotten. It was conceived in bad faith. The way it is being carried out will not win plaudits for transparency, political sagacity, or competence.

    There is yet one more development that makes it clear that on-going review does not belong in the province of the National Assembly. That is the issue of local government “autonomy”.

    The House of Representatives voted for amendment that would make local councils autonomous, but the Senate voted against.

    “Autonomy,” whether in political science or praxis, or in the sociology of the professions, is a beguiling term. But what does it really mean? What does it mean in the context of the proposal before the National Assembly?

    The local government is probably the first layer of government citizens encounter, and the layer they encounter most frequently. When effective and efficient, it touches the lives of the residents in fundamental ways, improving their quality of life. Even in dysfunction, it still has consequences, deleterious ones to be sure, for the residents.

    How it is to be organised and structured, what powers it will exercise, and what status it will enjoy: these matters are far too important to leave to the determination of a legislature whose members always have their eyes on the main political chance.

    They belong, instead, to the people – the people who will be most affected by the policies and programmes of the local government, the people as sovereign exercising constituent powers. The people have neither surrendered nor delegated those powers to a body elected to make laws for the governance of Nigeria.

    What the National Assembly is doing in the name of a constitutional review is therefore a usurpation, and a self-serving one at that. Constitution-making is not a task for the self-serving.

    To return to the issue of “autonomy”: In a polity that is supposedly a federation but is in many significant respects centrally administered, what will this so-called autonomy consist in? How will local government councils enjoy autonomy when the states enjoy no such thing?

    Those advancing the case for local government autonomy probably have in mind a situation in which local government councils will receive their financial allocations directly from the Centre and disburse the funds as they like, without any interference from state governments. They reject the present practice, whereby state governors can dissolve elected councils at will, for political reasons.

    If this is what the “autonomy” they are canvassing consists in, there is much to be said for it. But why save it for local councils and deny it to state governments?

    What is the meaning of “autonomy’ in a setting in which a state governor is vested with responsibility as “chief security officer” of the state, but the police commissioner is appointed by, and takes his orders from, the Centre and actually operates at cross-purposes with the elected governor as in Rivers State, to cite the most recent example of this practice?

    Only a comprehensive overhauling of the Constitution – an overhauling that takes into full account present realities and the yearnings of the people – can make for a more harmonious union. The task of preparing such a Constitution, warranted by the preface “We, the people”, belongs to a Constituent Assembly or a Sovereign National Conference.

    The on-going constitution review, it is necessary to insist, is a costly sham. Its protagonists are sowing the seeds of future grief.

     

  • The Barber boy

    At the Barber’s shop at the weekend a young man, about my son’s age, was scraping what was left of the hair on my head amidst continuing ‘desert encroachment’ when he suddenly stopped, cleared his throat and said; ‘sir, may I ask you a question?’ Sure, I said, wondering what he had on mind.

    As you never can tell with the younger ones nowadays, my mind in the next few seconds before his question wandered far and near for a clue as to what he wanted to find out from me. But before my mind wandered too far, his young voice interrupted and asked; ‘sir, is it good to have higher (tertiary) education?’

    Immediately he said this I knew the young man is troubled. Ordinarily at his age (18/19) he should be in school instead of ‘barbing’ away his time to earn a living, but there he was, working as a barber. Why you may want to ask.

    Yes he is indigent; he’s been battling WAEC for his GCE ‘O’ Level for about two years now and decided to take a sabbatical so to speak from WAEC exams for at least a year to work and earn some money before attempting his GCE again and later JAMB, but he is confused and doesn’t really know whether that route is the best for his future.

    His worries are many, chiefly among which is the growing number of unemployed graduates out there, with little or no prospect of either securing a job or creating one for themselves. He wants to go to the university to study for a degree in civil engineering and become a ‘building contractor’ (using his own words), but he is afraid that he might end up with no job after struggling through university, as most of the unemployed graduates out there, and wants an assurance from me that tomorrow would be better and that he should go to the university.

    Though I tried my best to allay his fears of how bad Nigeria’s tomorrow could be with the way things are going in this country especially with youth unemployment, he didn’t look convinced that tomorrow would be better, President Goodluck Jonathan’s so called transformation agenda notwithstanding.

    I thought of how many of our youths, like him, are afraid of the future and what it holds for them. My mind quickly went to the ongoing strike by university lecturers and how ASUU and the Federal Government are toying with the lives and future of these young Nigerians forced to stay at home and be idle because they could not agree on how to fund tertiary education in the country.

    It is this kind of idleness and hopelessness about the future that drive some of our youths to either go into crime or run out of the country in search of a better tomorrow elsewhere.

    As I was talking to this young man, I remembered what I just read in the Sunday papers, few hours before, about a certain young boy, a teenager who hid in the tyre compartment of a Lagos bound Arik Air aircraft from Benin, the Edo State capital. The boy, Daniel Ihekina, wanted to fly away, or better put, stowaway to what he believes would be a better future than whatever he was experiencing back home in Benin.

    I am sure Lagos wasn’t his intended destination as he could have hipped a ride in the back of one of those trucks that bring goods to Lagos from the inter land daily instead of risking his life flying into Nigeria’s commercial capital in the belly of an aircraft. He probably thought that flight was headed for Europe or America where ‘they pick the Dollar or Euro on the street’ and the ‘roads are paved with gold.’ That seem to be the thinking of most of these young Nigerians, faced with a bleak future at home, who seek greener pastures outside Nigeria, even in place like Libya (albeit Ghadafi’s Libya) of all places.

    Some of them have lost their lives while attempting to cross the Libyan desert en-route Europe via Italy. Some are marooned somewhere in North Africa unable to cross to Europe and left with no money return home. Some, having sold all their belongings and investments or caused their families to sell all they have to fund their ill-fated and illegal trip are too ashamed to return home empty handed and have turned to either destitute or prostitutes (if they are females) to earn a living where ever they are holed up. Yet the stories of these unfortunate Nigerians have not deterred some of our youths from running away from the hopelessness at home.

    But is the situation so bad? The answer could be yes and no as one could argue convincingly on both sides. But suffice to say that Nigeria needs a sort of Marshall Plan for her youths in order to secure our future, a better future as a people and a nation. It wasn’t like this in the past, we are told, as the future was rosy for our youths then. They had everything laid out for them; good education; well paid jobs (they were spoilt with choices); and the right atmosphere to build a good family with African values. Can we say this about Nigeria of today? No. Why?

    It is easy to blame our stars for this but the blame really is in us. We have had bad leaders over the years, who have squandered all the goodwill and riches of the land to now impoverish us. When our elders remind us that it wasn’t like this before, they are quick to point at when Nigeria had to rely on revenue from agriculture to fund our development. They talk of the eras of cocoa in the west, groundnut in the north and palm oil in the east. They are right as then we were cutting our coats according to our cloth and things were running smoothly.

    But all of a sudden, oil money came and we became super rich without necessarily working hard for it. As stupid as they were, our leaders encouraged us to abandon agriculture for the petrol-dollar. It is a long story between then and now, but regrettably today, that oil money is at the root of all our problems and troubles

    You can give your own interpretation to it, but the truth is that greater troubles lie ahead in the next few decades when this oil will either no longer be in greater demand or would have dried up and we would be left with nothing if we don’t plan now for Nigeria beyond oil.

    Nigeria beyond oil: The role of the Editor was the theme of the recently concluded All Nigerian Editors Conference in Asaba, Delta state. From the presentations made by the invited guests who included some state governors and ministers, it does appear that our leaders are ready to wean Nigeria’s economy from over dependence on oil revenue and seriously planning a resuscitation of agriculture which has the capacity to create millions of self sustaining jobs for our teeming army of unemployed, especially our youths.

    If this can be seen through successfully in the next few years and a solid foundation laid for a multi product economy, may be the future would not look all that bleak for the likes of the Barber boy and Daniel Ihekina.

  • PHCN: The day after

    Power-starved citizenry ought to be forgiven if they barely paid any heed to what was supposed to be a milestone in the quest for steady electricity supply. Blame it on reform-fatigue, the deadline for payment for the preferred bidders of the generating (GENCOs) and distribution companies (DISCOs) closed Wednesday last week without the typical bang that one would have expected. Save for the few sighs here and there, it may well have sneaked on us like the proverbial thief in the night.

    Not that it was entirely shorn of some drama though. Some 96 hours before the Wednesday deadline, there were in fact apprehensions about the preferred bidders being able to cough out the balance to make good their bid. There were equally reports about outstanding sticking points between the government and the powerful electricity workers union on the issue of severance packages; indeed, there were hints, at some point, that the preferred bidders had served notice on the federal government that the final payment will be kept in abeyance until all outstanding liabilities were cleared.

    And all of these were going on in the context of the latest rumble in the banking sector: the apex bank’s so-called sterilisation of 50 percent public sector deposits with immediate, direct impact in the tightening of liquidity in the economy.

    Of course, if it seems any attestation that Nigeria is a place where miracles happen, the historic process designed to usher in the regime of liberalisation of the power sector sailed almost flawlessly and without serious hiccups. It was too good to be true. By close of work on Wednesday, nine out of the 10 bidders for distribution companies (Discos) had paid in full; it also emerged that four preferred bidders for generating companies (Gencos) had also perfected payments to assume ownership of the entities. Only two fell by the wayside. CMEC/EUAFRIC Energy JV, the preferred bidder for Sapele Power Plc which reportedly made a “substantial” payment; Interstate Electric Limited, the preferred bidder for Enugu Distribution Company, failed to make any payment aside the initial 25 percent by due date.

    The exercise therefore can claim to be an unqualified success. However, the issue of whether the intractable power crisis is finally over just by mere coming to pass of the milestone event is one that Nigerians would have to wait to answer in the coming months. I do not think however that anyone should be in doubt as to the historic import of what happened. Aside heralding a new beginning for the sector, it also promises a new paradigm for doing business. Taken together with the foundation laid by the Power Sector Reform Act 2005 and the Power Sector Roadmap of August 2010, there is absolutely no longer any question about the stage being set for turning the power sector around. Perhaps, what is left is the debate on what the change of ownership portends in the short, near or even the long term; no longer at issue is the need to dismantle the inept, irredeemably corrupt and dysfunctional utility firm and its the antiquated business models and architecture.

    While we celebrate the overdue interment of the Power Holdings Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and its bundle of bad rubbish, I need to enter a caveat though that the development alone is neither the magic wand nor the cure-all pill that the sector requires to get out of the bind. What it does is offer a new basis, or, if you like, direction to salvage a sector that has been held down by the twin forces of monopoly and corruption.

    In any case, no one disagrees that a dime of public funds sunk into the old behemoth is anything but money down the drain. After nearly eight years of reform odyssey and a capital spend in excess of $16 billion from the public till, we may have, as ex-President Obasanjo once touted, earned ourselves a global record in power expenditure; we have also arrived at a point where it has since become an embarrassing understatement to state that the deliverables come far short on expectations.

    This is why the import of the tectonic shift in the power sector should not be understated. First, it means that those vanishing billions we hear at budget defence sessions can, at least theoretically, be put to other uses. It also means better prospects of investment and hence value delivery in the long run – something that most Nigerians would readily affirm as alien.

    Agreed, all of the above may not sufficiently address the question of what the future holds in store. First, I don’t that anyone should be mistaken about the changes as merely about substituting the tyranny and the crass inefficiency of the erstwhile government monopoly for the potentially exploitative antics of a compulsively-obsessive market operator. Both of course represent the different sides of the same coin of bad business practices that denies the consumer the value for his money’s worth.

    Going forward, the development must go with the understanding of what the requirements are under the transition period, and what is clearly a long journey to a liberalised power sector driven by the ethos of competition and fair market prices. The milestone at this stage needs to be understood for what it is: a transitional one. Parcelling the erstwhile behemoth among disparate players does not itself qualify for competition. Far from it; the suggestion that the development marks the dawn of competition smirks of a misuse of the word. The nation’s expectation of revamped, robust, efficient, cost-driven, and well-regulated electricity market is still a long way ahead.

    Finally, I must say that things can only get better; however, how well things turn out would largely depend on the role of the regulator – the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). For much of what is clearly an uncharted course, NERC has done admirably well at least in terms of setting out the ground rules for the players and also in generally keeping faith with the entire reform programme.

    But then, that is not nearly a fifth of the job NERC needs to undertake; or is it?

     

  • Beyond Shekau’s death

    The reported death of Abubakar Shekau, leader of the dreaded Islamic sect, Boko Haram is bound to generate considerable interest within and outside the shores of this country. The Joint Task Force JTF had last week announced his possible death as a result of injuries sustained in a clash with Nigerian troops.

    According to the JTF, “Shekau might have died between July 25 and August 3 in Amitchide, Cameroun, after being mortally wounded in an encounter at the Sambisa forest”.

    Since that report, opinions have been torn between optimism and disbelief as the JTF could not provide credible evidence to substantiate its claims beyond relying on intelligence reports. Its position is not remedied by the position of some defence officials who have described the announcement as hasty. The officials also queried why it took the JTF so long and the eve of their departure to make the purported death public.

    For the unnamed defence officials, the confirmation of such a report would involve a thorough scrutiny including substantive evidence from the Cameroonian side which the announcement by the JTF fell short of.

    The news of the purported death of Shekau should be of considerable public interest in more ways than one.

    First, it would signal a very significant success in the fight against terrorism that has in the past couple of years, held this country to its knees. Lives and properties of inestimable value have been lost in the process. It has also come with challenges that have thrown to question our corporate existence as one indivisible country that guarantees co-habitation among its distinct units. The death of Shekau will no doubt demoralize his supporters and change the tempo of the terrorism engagement. It will also be a huge moral booster for the military and the Jonathan regime that have told whoever cares to hear that they are winning the war on terrorism.

    Besides, it will equally enhance the confidence of the international community in the country’s capacity to take its destiny in its own hands. This is more so when it is realized that even the United States of America US had labelled Shekau and two other Boko Haram figures as “specially designated global terrorists” and placed the sum of $7 million on Shekau’s head. Thus, his death will be of considerable interest to the US especially given that those responsible for it might make claims to this hefty sum of money.

    Expectedly, the US has swung into action to ascertain the facts of the matter. Its State Department Deputy spokesperson, Ms Marie Harf believes the death of Shekau if it is true, will set back Boko Haram operations and remove a key voice from its efforts to mobilize violent extremists in Nigeria and around the world. What is evident from all these reactions is that though the death of Shekau will gladden the hearts of many, it is by no means the end of the war on terrorism. Equally evident is the fact that the report is still viewed with subdued caution.

    Reservations on the matter are therefore to be expected. More over, this is not the first time such a report on his death is making the rounds. With the hindsight of a similar report that turned out false, not many would want to buy the latest one until it is proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Osama Bin Laden, the world dreaded terrorist leader was severally reported to have been killed at the Afghan mountains by the US when the man was enjoying himself in his palatial Pakistan residence. All these finally came to limelight when he was hunted down and bombed at his mansion in Pakistan where he lived with his wives and children. So it is not out of place if the latest report on the death of Shekau is being viewed with studied caution. It could turn out a ruse. Shekau could be somewhere savouring the escapades of his foot soldiers. He may not even be part of the fighting force if he is real.

    But Minister of Information, Labaran Maku would want us to resolve the doubts created by the unsubstantiated report in favour of the military. His position is anchored on the fact that the killing of Shekau ought to be a logical progression of events since the onslaught against the insurgents started with the declaration of state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. He said if the military was successfully prosecuting the war against terrorism, then there should be no reason to doubt its claim on Shekau’s death. Such a report he said, should give us more confidence on the capacity of the military to tame the monster.

    The optimism of the minister is not out of the way. There is no doubt that the killing of Shekau or the eventual defeat of the terrorists will gladden the hearts of our people who have suffered immeasurably since the terror war commenced. It is the wish of every fair-minded Nigerian that this senseless campaign be subdued. Thus, the killing of its leader would send the signal very clearly that the terrorists are being smoked out of their hiding places and the battle will soon be over.

    Yet, such confidence in the capacity of the military to win the war cannot be earned when claims on successes are bandied without substantive evidence. We will be happy if Shekau is either arrested or killed given that he is the brain behind all the atrocities that have been committed in the last couple of years in this country in the name of terrorism. It will also gladden the hearts of many if terrorism can be brought to an abrupt end now.

    But such optimism must be anchored on credible and verifiable successes by the military in the battle field and not speculations that may turn out to be false. That appears to be the point of departure when the minister wants us to resolve scepticisms arising from the inchoate information on the purported death of Shekau in favour of the military.

    The dangers in accepting Shekau’s death in the absence of very credible evidence far outweigh its temporary gains especially if it turns out to be false. For one, it will give the military a false sense of success that may end up obfuscating its overall calculations on the war. It is more promising to have a correct picture of the battle on the ground than celebrate successes that may soon turn out pyrrhic. Calculations anchored on such inaccurate information may turn out very disastrous.

    For another, even defence authorities are not enthused by that report for the same reason of unreliability. There are insipient suggestions that the JTF released the information at the eve of its departure and after a message purportedly by Shekau to position itself for credit in the event he is eventually confirmed dead. All these do not imbue confidence in the overall credibility of the report.

    Before now, we were told by the amnesty committee that it had signed a ceasefire agreement with Boko Haram represented by Shekau’s deputy. Even when Shekau in his usual video message repudiated that report, the committee still insisted that the ceasefire agreement was real. But the JTF came out some weeks ago to tell the nation that Shekau’s deputy has just been killed in a battle in Borno. These contradictions do not help matters. Neither do they give confidence that the latest report should be trusted in the absence of credible evidence. It is therefore pertinent that the military should avoid dishing out information they are unsure of. That is the way to earn public confidence and enhance overall credibility in the very difficult engagement the military has embarked upon.

  • Nigeria beyond oil

    Nigeria beyond oil

    When an idea is planted and it grows, it does not necessarily generate joy. Since my days in the University of Ife, now known as the Obafemi Awolowo university, I had always contemplated our prosperity with fear.

    In the early 1980’s I began to understand the fragility of oil. It gave us the Lagos high rises, erected our phallic flyovers, emboldened a civil war, but embossed on our psyche a suicidal hubris. Oil did not only glisten, it served as our insurance against inferiority complex. It gave General Gowon the vanity to proclaim that Nigeria’s problem was how to spend its huge tranche of oil cash.

    General Murtala Muhammed meant Nigeria when he announced that Africa had come of age. For him, Nigeria that was the part of Africa had become the whole of Africa. Oil meant other things had to shrink. The pyramidal swagger of our groundnut did not, however, shrink. It disappeared. The palm oil produce, rubber, cocoa, and other examples of salutary pride, shrank. So did methodical approach to governance. So did morality, so did conscience. So did our obeisance to the dignity of democracy.

    We became a prodigal nation beholden to the spell of having, in spite of the threat that having could impose on us the wretchedness of having nothing.

    That was the motif of the conference held last week by the Nigerian Guild of Editors. The theme, Nigeria Beyond Oil, revived my fear. It gave me the sort of sensation Caribbean author George Lamming referred to when he said, “something startles where I thought I was safest.”

    In spite of the fact that we had always spoken of a post-oil Armageddon for our economy, we have not articulated it in a language as succinct and penetrating. That was why I wrote that when an idea is planted, it does not necessarily generate joy. Nigeria Beyond Oil draws from the concept of Delta Beyond Oil as initiated by the Governor of Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan.

    But what does it mean? Many have spoken of it as though it is a call to the hoe, to return to our arched backs and humus soil. That accounted for why speaker after speaker at the NGE conference reified agriculture as though once everyone turned into a harbinger of food, our problems would recede into memory.

    We forget that food is wealth just as health is wealth just as the infrastructure and education of a people is wealth. Secretary to the Government of the Federation Pius Anyim set an important tone by showing to those who did not know that while oil is on its way out as the world’s supreme fluid, it is suffering a fall in value because of the many countries, especially in Africa, that are discovering it in huge quantities. The United States, in its ever-ready impulse to disrupt technology, had come up with shale oil and gas.

    But it took the voice of Governor Uduaghan to articulate it as an integrated idea. So, when he is constructing a road between Asaba and Ughelli, or providing scholarship to PHD levels to all indigenes with first class anywhere in the world, when he valorises healthcare for the vulnerable, young and old, it is because all of them have to work together to give us what economist John Kenneth Galbraith calls the affluent society. When did Germany discover oil? Never. What country holds the EU’s economic jugular? Germany. Those with oil act as though they don’t have them. Example? New Zealand. Such countries and even parts of countries like Alaska, put away the oil money aside so that the lean cow cannot swallow the large one.

    Nigeria Beyond Oil, like Delta Beyond Oil, does not vitiate the power of the farm. It actually elevates. It tells us to use it to grow food, but it is not to grow food alone, but know the value in the context of other things we do. Renewable energy comes in many manifestations. It comes from corn, comes as wind energy, as solar power, etc.

    But we cannot do anything without shedding the prodigal son syndrome. It abhors extravagance and the absence of discipline. It does not accept the irresponsibility of a minister who spends, because she can sign the cheques, the sum of N2 billion jacketing around the world in private jets.

    It is part of the Gowon legacy that our problem is how to spend the money. When Gowon said it, we were still a poor nation, if we are poorer today. The rich are richer than the former rich though. In the early 1970’s, the Mideast crisis shot up oil prices and our current accounts fattened like the Biblical cow. Nigeria became flush with money but we did not flush out poverty. The peacock class acquired a new vanity of squander-mania. We learned that a federal minister who did not care for champagne unless it cost N1 million at that time, and we applauded. Just as a president took it upon himself to visit countries all over the world as a sign of diplomatic finesse and bonhomie, or when clothes evoked subaltern smallness unless they were called wonyosi.

    The prodigal son had become us, and before our eyes, education standards fell, groundnut pyramid flattened, the naira plummeted from its pride to four to a Naira. Today, it is about 160, but we all know we are holding the money at that point artificially with oil money. Now that oil price is on its way down, we shall progressively have little power to prop the Naira. Its crash will have consequences that will make Nigeria so nervous that our devotion to God would make the evangelical fever of today look like the righteousness of the Pharisees.

    The Russian poet, Nekrasov, once described his country as “wretched and abundant.” He probably had Nigeria in mind with its huge oil reserve, agricultural plenty with produce rotting daily, with copper, gold, coal, etc. Yet the agriculture minister with bow tie keeps talking a big game with little evidence while we have a huge reserve of poverty.