The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Reforms, Corruption  and Justice

    When  a former  Minister of Nigeria challenges Nigerian legislators  to a public debate over their salaries  and fringe benefits she is saying boldly  and clearly that it cannot  be business as usual on the cost  of governance in  Nigeria. In  Brazil  the President of the nation accepted the challenge of the demonstrators in Brazilian cities who disturbed the matches at the last FIFA Confederation Cup in June   and made proposals to Parliament that certain percentage of Brazilian oil royalties shall be devoted to education and   health. Yet  in Nigeria strikes by Nigerian lecturers  have become a way of life rather than lecturing in the universities because the lecturers claim they must strike to resurrect  the  comatose university system while their students   become victims of the idle mind and hands  with the attendant  socio  economic  consequences. In  Egypt, believe it or not former despot Hosni Mubarak  has been freed by an Egyptian court  and the judge said the judgement is final while the man who succeeded him as the elected  President of Egypt Mohammed Morsi is in detention in  a  place that nobody knows  in the land of the Pharaohs;   and in Zimbabwe  89  years  old President Robert Mugabe has been sworn in to  seventh  presidential term in a ceremony  in Harare  boycotted by the man he defeated Mr Tsivirangai.  Surely, one can say c’est la  vie  or such  is life as the French are wont to say.

    But  then in  all these issues  there  is  struggle  going on and a titanic one at that,  between those  defending the status quo obviously because it  pays them to do so at the expense of the rest of society. Just  as in some cases those fighting for their perceived rights don’t bother if the baby is thrown away with  the bath tub as long as they get what they want or what they think is their right. All  these struggles however take place in an atmosphere that calls for justice and order  as expected in a democracy powered by a rule of law which seem to have gone to sleep  while on duty on its watch. Or  why should Nigerian legislators abuse  Oby Ezekwesili  because she quoted authentic figures from the Federal Ministry of Finance on the salaries  of the legislators?  Why  should Brazilian legislators  now refuse to pass  the reforms proposed by President Dilma Rousseff  into law a month after the riots in Brazilian cities that saw these same legislators diving for cover for dear life at the time of the Confederation Cup? Why  should Mugabe still be grinning like a school boy winning his first prize at his seventh coronation as it were,  as the president of Zimbabwe after a rigged election like the opposition has  done a lot to substantiate?   And  pray, why should   Mohammed Morsi be in detention  in Egypt while Mubarak who was carried to court on a sick bed, in a cage  to face corruption charges , is now  a free  man – while the victor of the elections that strangled  and confiscated  the Mubarak regime to the dustbin of history  is  nowhere to be found in public? Obviously  there is something rotten in all these events that leaves   a sour taste in the mouth  but then we have to face the facts that unpleasant as they may  seem to observers, they are issues that will not go away just by wishing them so, and that is why we have to dissect them here and now today.  At  least to show that we are not totally befuddled by them and can at least  occasionally read between the lines.

    Taking them serially we start with the Ezekwesili revelations  which are not  original because she was quoting  statistics from the Ministry of Finance. What is unique is that she  has the guts to say that these salaries are not fair in a nation bedeviled with the poor welfare conditions of our citizenry and she  should know,  having been at the Mount Olympus of exploitation of the Nigerian masses as a Czarina of the sale of our public enterprises and  as a  Minister of Education. However,  her records while in office are immaterial  here, and should not disqualify her from the salutary task she has set herself in telling our legislators that their salaries are out of this world and make the cost of governance prohibitive. For her   guts and diligence in sourcing for vital statistics on the matter she has my unfettered admiration and l  enjoin our legislators to listen to her soft voice now or find out what happened to the rich and mighty in France  with the storming of the  Bastille during the French Revolution against  the ruling class in  France.

    In  Brazil  the President a lady like our  Oby Ezekwesili, Dilmar Roussef responded positively to the demands of the rioters that disrupted the staging of the Confederation Cup by FIFA in Brazil. One could say she did this to forestall a bigger disruption in the 2014  FIFA world Cup to be hosted by Brazil as well as the 2016  Olympics also slated by Brazil and one could be right. No  president will want his or her nation to be disgraced after going to great and very expensive lengths to win such glamorous and prestigious hosting rights. But it is in the nature of the reforms to placate the demonstrators that the Brazilian president has won my heart while I have scant respect for the Brazilian legislators trying to stall her proposals in Parliament. This  is because the demonstrators had complained about  increased transport costs and long hours spent in traffic  in commuting to and from work and the fact that   Brazil’s  riches in sports are not trickling down to the masses. So a responsive president  proposed to Parliament a huge $14bn bill for transportation and another bill that gives a huge percentage of new oil royalties to education and health  so that the masses can benefit from the riches of Brazil before next year’s World Cup and the 2016  Olympics  and the legislators in Brazil are trying to stall on the passage of these public spirited and pragmatic socio economic palliatives. Really l  feel sorry for these legislators as the Brazilian public knows the zeal and sincerity with which their president has pursued their welfare  and should know at the appropriate time what to make of their elected representatives in Parliament.

    In  Nigeria   however the issue of education especially in  the ivory tower is being handled with levity and a rather cruel one at that. Now  our youths spend eight years for a 4- year course and in most cases are not sure of when they are to graduate. Really I am fed up with the strikes and the lecturers as well as the government who is their employer as both have made a mockery of the tenet and objective  of industrial relations which is industrial harmony. For now  the Nigerian university  system is in disequilibrium and shambles  and the ultimate scapegoats  are our Nigerian students who are the   undoubtedly  the future of this nation. However,  the Minister of Finance complicated issues  further  and said the Federal   government could not afford   what  the striking   dons were asking for. She  quoted a figure which the striking dons denied  although they gave a lesser figure all the same . The Minister  obviously missed the fact that the matter  was beyond a budget issue and she should not have used the affordability concept in that context. Obviously people have asked if her children are schooling in any Nigerian university and she deserves the question and should  answer or resign. All  Ministers or legislators should also be asked that question and if   their wards or children are schooling overseas  they should just leave office. This  may sound stern now, but a time will come when it will be a litmus test to know those who have a stake in leading Nigeria now and in the future and especially  out of the present paralyzing strike syndrome. For now, I grieve with the Nigerian undergraduate in Nigerian universities who should be telling both the unyielding government and the strike loving lecturers what Shakespeare put in the mouth of the dying fighter in Romeo  and Juliet – a plague on both your houses, for you have made worms meat of me‘.

    I  take  Egypt and Zimbabwe  together in that in  terms of despotism and tyranny they are birds of the same feather. Indeed  in both nations this week you may say  of the two despots – Mubarak and Mugabe –  as it is usually said of successful  businessmen,  that they were smiling all the way to the bank! Mubarak was flown by helicopter out of prison to a military hospital for house arrest, what ever that means as his generals have Egypt’s democracy very well under their boots and have used even the courts to free their master and leader in the best spirit of spirit de corps you can find any where in the world today . So where is justice in all that?. Yes, the  army in Egypt has  made a bloody ass of the law  and made a mockery of the rule of law in that ancient land. But   then,  I  blame the Muslim Brotherhood which was patient for decades till Providence gave it power to tame  the army,  its ancient enemy in Egypt. But the MU   with  Morsi, frittered its  unique opportunity away in less than two years,  because it forgot an ancient dictum of the law that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands,  especially  in a democracy. So  the Brotherhood’s  high handedness and undue haste in establishing its values estranged it to those with whom it upstaged Mubarak in the first  street  revolution of 2011,  only for  it and Morsi to be consumed by a fiercer   democratic tsunami two years later,  with its elected president nowhere to be found and its spiritual leaders back in the custody  of Egypt’s  power loving and blood thirsty army. As  for Mugabe he has had his swearing in this week and must have sent a message to Mubarak  on his new status of house arrest. Mugabe obviously must have blamed Mubarak for trusting the Americans   in 2011  and  must have assured  him that what happened to Mubarak   in Cairo could never have happened to him in Harare. And he could be right,  as at 89,  there is not much time to spare to enjoy his  seventh coronation or  swearing in  after the ritual of a stage  managed election, as expected of a democracy which he has hijacked again and again  in Zimbabwe.

  • Averting the revolution to come

    Averting the revolution to come

    Although it manifests itself as a crisis of the economy, the various maladies that have brought Nigeria to the very brink of collapse have their root causes in the structure of the Nigerian state, the character of the country’s politics and the sheer moral bankruptcy of its ruling elite. This was the submission of the late Professor Claude Ake, in one of his characteristically insightful pieces titled ‘What is to be done?’

    The solution to the country’s protracted crises of poverty, instability and underdevelopment thus lies largely in the political realm and not in the supposedly a-political IMF/World Bank economic technocrats to whom the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have handed over the country’s destiny over the last one and a half decades.

    So severe has the Nigerian crisis degenerated; so alarmingly has poverty deepened and so appalling has become the inequality between social classes that fears of the possibility of a mass revolution have been echoed in the most unexpected, conservative quarters.

    Former Minister of Solid Minerals and later Education in the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, has once again drawn public attention to one of the key manifestations of our dysfunctional political system. A key member of the Obasanjo administration’s economic management team and ‘due process’ enforcer, Mrs.Ezekwesili has a way of making government officials catch cold anytime she sneezes. Speaking at a one day dialogue session on the ‘Cost of governance in Nigeria’, Madam ‘due process’ threw another bombshell, when she disclosed that members of the National Assembly have expended over N1 trillion over the last eight years.

    Coming on the heels of the disclosure last week by The Economist magazine, that Nigerian legislators are the highest paid in the world, Mrs Ezekwesili’s assertion naturally touched the raw nerves of the legislators and put them on the defensive. Just as presidential aides did when Mrs Ezekwesili accused the Jonathan administration of financial profligacy earlier in the year, spokesmen of the National Assembly largely ignored the message and went crudely after the messenger.

    They would like to know, they said, how much was allocated to her office when she was a Minister. Some wondered why she focussed only on the legislature and neglected other arms of government when computing the cost of governance. A member of the House of Representatives accused Ezekwesili of mischievously lumping together salaries and allowances of the legislators and their aides, salaries of civil servants, capital projects and the running costs of other institutions under the National Assembly.

    Now, many of these observations are pertinent and the former Minister would do the public a lot of good by shedding more light on these questions. Luckily, the former Minister has challenged the legislators to a public debate on her assertions. Such an open debate will most certainly enable her amplify on the issues raised in her lecture. Much more importantly, it should shed light on exactly how much our legislators take home as salaries, allowances and other perks that are now treated as classified and confidential information.

    This column agrees entirely with the legislators that in all probability members of the executive and their innumerable aides may also be receiving humongous amounts from the public till. Again, the whole issue of outrageous salaries and allowances for elected public officers is not limited to the federal level. It is also necessary to go down the line to reveal what public officers are collecting as remuneration and other perks at both the state and local government levels. Such information will enable the country come up with remuneration for public officers at all levels that is commensurate with the productive capacity of the Nigerian economy and is sensitive to the abysmal living conditions of the vast majority of Nigerians.

    Of course, Mrs Ezekwesili is not the first to call attention to the outrageous amounts that our public officers award themselves in a society where the majority survive on less than one dollar a day. At a public lecture last year, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi LamidoSanusi, caused uproar when he disclosed that 25% of the Federal Government’s overheads went to the National Assembly. And speaking recently at the Second Annual Capital Market Retreat in Warri, Delta State, the CBN governor said the country spends 70% of its earnings on salaries and entitlements of civil servants.

    In his words “At the moment 70% of Federal Government revenue goes for payment of salaries and entitlements of civil servants leaving 30% for development of 167 million Nigerians. That means that for every naira government earns, 70 kobo is consumed by civil servants…The various tiers of government should cut down their recurrent expenditure and use the funds to provide basic infrastructure like schools, hospitals etc”.

    Pointing out that Nigeria does not need 109 Senators or 457 members of the House of Representatives to make laws for her, Sanusi condemned a situation in which the bulk of the country’s total revenue is consumed by the executive, lawmakers and civil servants.

    There is no doubt that the degree of impoverishment in the land coupled with the criminal inequality between a microscopic wealthy elite and the majority of poor Nigerians is a time bomb waiting to explode. Already a full scale class war is being fought although it manifests as kidnapping, armed robbery, communal violence, religious intolerance, ritual killings and other sundry acts of wanton criminality.

    On the streets of Lagos, you now have scores of urchins who ought to be in school but are armed with bottles of liquid soap and brushes to forcefully wash the windscreen of cars stranded in traffic for a token fee. If something urgent is not done to ameliorate the situation in the land, such street urchins may turn nastier. They may forcefully extort money from motorists by threatening to destroy their vehicles. It is that bad.

    I agree entirely with Mrs Ezekwesili that “We must debate public policies as a nation because if we don’t debate public policies, we are going to make silly mistakes because we didn’t involve the stakeholders so policy debates must be encouraged”. Coming from Mrs Ezekwesili, this is a most welcome, even surprising position. For, I had always associated her with those World Bank and IMF technocrats who believe there are no alternatives to their strange brew of neo-liberal cocktail, which they administer in equal measure to all their patients irrespective of the ailment!

    In this respect, I was highly impressed and encouraged by the excerpts of a paper delivered by the Deputy Governor, Financial System, of the CBN, Dr Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for Scholars in Washington. Lamenting the continued dependence by Africa on the developed world making it difficult for the continent to maximise the inherent opportunities of globalisation, Dr Moghalu said: “We should also note that in this context (extraction of the natural resources), growth could be taking place, but no structured transformation, which creates real wealth is happening…the status quo, based on unrestrained free markets without a conceptual grasp of the opportunities, limitations and even the different kinds of capitalism and their implications for African countries, as well as the exact role of the government and the structure of world trade, cannot create an ennobling environment for Africa to matter in the world economy.”

    With such fresh, out of the box thinking by a key member of Nigeria’s policy establishment, there may yet be hope that new ideas can emerge from Nigeria to liberate the country from poverty, underdevelopment and gross inequality while also helping to avert the revolution knocking so impatiently on our creaky door.

  • Eagles’ coaches’ tantrums

    Eagles’ coaches’ tantrums

    Super Eagles coaches like to heat the polity with every good outing. They enjoy putting their employers NFF on the spot. Eagles’ coaches disparage NFF with their convulsive decisions. Sadly, we are emotional when dealing with matters concerning the Super Eagles, hence the despicable monster status the coaches now enjoy. I have decided to pluralise this discussion by using the term coaches instead of being specific, even though I know where the buck stops with the team’s technical crew because I don’t have any grudge with any member of the technical crew. I also feel that decisions emanating from the Eagles are binding on the group.

    Eavery time the coaches choose to make the NFF look like puppets either through their utterances or decisions on the team, the world laughs at us.

    A simple decision shouldn’t be made difficult because of a coach’s tantrums. Employees cannot dictate to the employer. They either obey or look for another job.

    I cringe when I read about NFF’s poor financial status, especially when they plead with the coaches to appreciate their position. So, when an employee chooses to do things that would incur more costs, it is either he doesn’t believe them or just wants to be mischievous.

    Global practices suggest that coaches don’t change winning squads. I wonder why ours is different. Our coaches have perpetually changed the squad since February 10, when the Eagles clinched the Africa Cup of Nations diadem, such that pundits have asked when this rebuilding will stop.

    That coaches who are being owed salaries submitted a 42-man list to prosecute the September 7 qualifier against Malawi in Calabar shows the height of insensitivity to the issues at stake.

    Nigerians applauded the clinical manner with which the Eagles dwarfed Bafana Bafana in the Mandela Challenge played on August 10. We are, therefore, shocked that the coaches could submit on August 20 a list that suggests another rebuilding.

    We must encourage the NFF to stop this drift, if the coaches cannot call themselves to order. Equally unacceptable is the fact that our opponents don’t think it is worth their while to stay in camp for the Eagles game. They know that Nigeria and Malawi are not on the same pedestal, irrespective of what their coach is saying- pure mind games. So, why our coaches so desperate to camp 24 home-based players at grave costs to the NFF, only to pick five of them for the main team? Who doesn’t know the five best home-based players? They are Sunday Mba, Godfrey Oboabona, goalkeeper Chigozie Agbim, Azubuike Egwuekwe Muhammed Gambo. Why do they want 24 players in camp?

    The Eagles squad that beat Bafana 2-0 in South Africa needs perhaps Victor Moses, John Mikel Obi, Emmanuel Emenike and goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama to strengthen it. If the coaches are sincere, they should know that these additions will rip Malawi to shreds.

    The talk of using the opportunity to prepare for the CHAN 2014 is laughable because the 2014 World Cup appearance is sacrosanct.

    As for the Europe-based stars, we know that they must play their weekend games before coming to the camp. The earliest time they can get to the camp is Tuesday morning. The team’s camp will be full by Wednesday; so, what is the talk of camping? Is this not what happens in other climes? Our coaches must grow up and work in tandem with the NFF, lest they remain unemployed after this appointment with Nigeria.

    Coaches and their FA chiefs work in concert when picking squad members, with the coaches having their way in the final selections.

    NFF must ignore these coaches and dictate what they want done. I agree with pruning the squad to 23. We have played enough matches for the coaches to easily pick 23. These 23 players must be highly populated by home-based stars. After all only 14 players can play a game and that includes the stipulated three changes. We must cut costs. We don’t need to break the bank to beat Malawi. If we spend fortunes beating Malawi, how can the NFF be solvent?

    The coaches can have their say on technical issues, but the NFF must have its way in administrative matters. He who pays the piper dictates the tune. Not so?

    Where is Osaze?

    He is alone, pondering where he got it all wrong? He must have learnt his lessons, if he thinks he caused his problems. In his solitude, he will be thinking about his future, a future devoid of conflicts. He will learn to respect people and understand that no one is an island.

    Osaze Odemwingie has burnt his candle on both ends. He was the pearl of all the clubs that he played for, until his success got into his head. He threw decorum into the dungeon, preferring to pillory his coaches and mates on the social network. Many tagged his conduct as childish. But Osaze thought otherwise. For him, it was simply an expression of his fundamental human rights, no matter whose ox is gored. Now he knows better.

    A gifted player whose presence in his hey days drew applause from everyone, Osaze’s now attracts hisses and sighs. But some people feel that he will surely get right when he returns. Those in this school argue that he needed this rude reawakening to be a better player. At 31? What is left in his career? Perhaps, Osaze could be another Roger Milla. It is possible, only if he can convince Super Eagles coaches that his old ways are past. Will they believe him? Is he talking about playing for Nigeria again? His double-speak on this issue has made it difficult for people to know how to rescue his brilliant career from being extinct.

    Should we fold our arms and allow Osaze’s career crash? I don’t think so; after all, he is not injured. We should cousel him. He needs to be told that conduct counts for more than all the millions he has acquired. He must change his attitude. He must learn to respect constituted authority. He should know that there areseveral ways of seeking redress.

    Reports from West Bromwich Albion suggest that Osaze has been shown the door. He has until September 2 when the current European transfer window closes to decide if he would still play soccer at the top level again.

    West Brom has, however, left a caveat where he could be reconsidered, if he fails to get a club at dusk on September 2. Is this what Osaze is worth? No way, only if he does not appear to think he is too big to play in the lower league- the English Championship.

    Osaze should learn from Obafemi Martins’ mistakes. Martins dumped Newcastle simply because they were relegated. Newcastle is in the Premier League but Martins’ career is dwindling. Had Martins gone down with Newcastle, he would still be in the Premier League, showing his stuff like Shola Ameobi.

    Interestingly, Queens Park Rangers (QPR), which caused his last problem, wants him. But he feels too big to play in the lower rung. A word for Osaze: grab the QPR deal and reinvent hiyour career. I would be shocked if QPR doesn’t get promoted to the elite Barclays English Premier League next year.

    Besides, playing for QPR will offer him an opportunity to show the elite sides some useful lessons about the depth of his talent. Harry Redknapp is renowned for doing the impossible with clubs that he handles. He won the English FA Cup with lowly Portsmouth. If Redknapp wants Osaze, he should go immediately. Osaze can reinvigorate his career by offering to buy out his contract or pay the difference of whatever QPR is offering. He needs to start playing again.

    For now, QPR fans don’t love him. The manager has blacklisted him. The club is making it difficult for him to leave by insisting on three million pounds transfer fees. It would have been chicken change for him but for his unruly conduct under the guise of being fearless.

    Osaze’s future is in his hands and it is sad that a boy who gave everything playing for Nigeria is rotting away in Europe because of his conduct.

    With unforgiving coaches in the Eagles, Osaze must stoop to conquer. This includes going to QPR to shock the football world. Redknapp holds the key for an exciting season for Osaze. Come on boy, take the chance.

  • From plurality to what?

    From plurality to what?

    Plurality defines the Nigerian state. It is a state endowed with plural nationalities, plural languages and dialects, plural religions, including plurality of intra-religious sects, and plural sensibilities. Since plurality and diversity are synonyms, we might as well say that diversity is the reality of the Nigerian state. But this is no news to anyone. Indeed, we acknowledge it in many ways including in the lyrics of our first National Anthem: though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand. The question that we have yet to settle is how we should deal with the plurality that defines us. Do we simply wish it would go away? Do we actively suppress it? Do we celebrate it? Or do we actively engage it in a productive way and make it a blessing rather than a curse?

    Last week, I agonised over the most dreadful disease of problem-denial that ails the country. Today I deal with the specifics and offer a way out of the dilemma of an eagle that is incapacitated by the weight of its wings.

    Back in 1960, we acknowledged our plurality and actively engaged it, ensuring that each region managed its human and natural resources in ways that were beneficial for its peoples and the entire country. If one determined that it needed to invest in the development of the human talents of its entire people, we let it be. If another focused on benefitting the elite cadre and sustaining the hierarchical ordering of the society, we didn’t stand in the way. We acknowledged the fundamental right of each to manage its resources with the recognition of derivation as an important principle of revenue allocation. The country was on the right side of the discourse on the management of plurality. But then something wasn’t right and things fell apart.

    In a genuine effort to deal with the ringworm that afflicted the political system, we applied a medication suited for leprosy. We chose to kill an irritant ant with a sledge hammer, and in so doing we killed the dream of unity-in-diversity by denying diversity and embracing uniformity.

    The reality of the menace of political ringworm was not in question. It had to do with the tone of political debate and the intolerance of the players in the political arena. But we failed to treat that ailment talk less cure it as is evidenced by the nature and tenor of current political debates. Political leaders still take pleasure in hypocritically heating up the polity with diatribes concerning the other.

    The leprosy medication ended up destroying the nerve of our nation-space, causing debilitating pain that has impacted our drive and militated against our flight into the space of giants which we are supposed to be.

    Centralisation and unitarisation is the Achilles Heel of this republic, and like every weak spot, it can spell its downfall. We may pray as we want, but even the scriptures attest to the need to combine faith with work and wonders aloud if we could multiply grace while we dwell in sin. The singular sin of a political structure is the deliberate distortion of the relationship between its component parts and this is what we have managed to do in the last forty-seven years.

    Consider the following. We have centralised all security services including the police, but we have not seen any improvement in our security situation. One rationale for centralisation of security is that states executives may use the police for political purposes. It’s unclear how that rationale squares up with what’s going on in Rivers State now. And assume that the tendency to politicise state police is real. Are we so out of ideas for dealing with such scenario? Are there no constitutional means of ensuring that the management of state police is kept out of politics?

    There have been proposals for the centralisation of all elections, including state and local government elections. The assumption here must be that states cannot be trusted to conduct free and fair elections into their local governments. But we have witnessed cases of election fraud, rigging, and manipulation with elections conducted by INEC. And now the new idea is for local governments to come under the federal authority through direct funding. For, if state governments have no budgetary relationship with their local governments, the reality is that they will have no political relationship with them. Yet local governments are units within particular states.

    Recent events show clearly that some options are not available to the Nigerian state in the matter of dealing with the plurality of its component parts. The reality of geography ensures that nationality groups cannot be assimilated one into another. That reality seals our fate as a plural state. Political leaders and actors affirm it in various ways when they are sincere and honest. They embrace their kith and kin especially when they thrive no matter where they may reside in and outside the country. Of course, they can be hypocritical if and when they are sure of its political benefit.

    There is another way we show that nationalities and ethnicities rule our space. Residency rights should normally come with responsibilities. But we claim the rights in various ways and then renege on the responsibilities. Census times and election times see the most inter-sate and inter-zonal movements of people across the nation. Yet both of these are politically essential and sensitive activities in a republic. Consider the case of Lagos. If many of its residents go back to their home states for census only to come back after, Lagos is shortchanged and placed in a position of disadvantage in the allocation of resources that are essential for residents. What has been the response of political leaders to such a reality?

    It is also not an option to exclude, excise, or alienate one nationality or another from the assembly of nationalities that make up the republic. Every nationality has a unique contribution to make to the upliftment of the nation’sprofile and deserves an adequate space to do so as well as the respect of all. To do this, however, we must recognise the uniqueness of each, what it brings to the table, and what it needs to make its contributions. For far too long, we have fallen prey to the political manipulation by the elite who exploit national sentiments for political advantage. But that doesn’t mean that nationality is unreal. It means that it needs to be actively and productively engaged for the good of the nation.

    If neither assimilation nor excision is an option in our engagement with our diversity and plurality, what is? From the foregoing, it seems clear that our option is to acknowledge the reality, embrace it, welcome it, and make it work for the good of the nation. This is sometimes referred to as the pluralist approach to nation-building. Pluralism recognises, affirms, and respects plurality. What holds together members of diverse cultural, linguistic, and religious nationalities that comprise the Nigerian state is the right and privilege of citizenship. Since none can assimilate another or be assimilated, and since none canexcise another or be excised, we must devise an ingenious way of inclusion and recognition of all in the varieties that each brings to the fold. The political arrangement that best deals with this is federalism in its purest form. That, in all seriousness, is the task that we have to perform successfully.

  • Anambra guber: Who killed Soludo?

    Anambra guber: Who killed Soludo?

    There is dagger in men’s smile,” that is how William Shakespeare captured a similar plot as this in his days. Though this Anambra situation seem insignificant and indeed many would rather play it down, but the deft shafting of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo in his quest for the Anambra State top job portends deep-reaching augury not just for the individual in the mix of the shenanigans but for the entire Igbo race. In other words, the back-stabbing and emasculation of Soludo in his quest to lead Anambra is a knife in the back of Ndigbo. But the stab is deeper and more injurious because it is obviously self-inflicted.

    There is no doubt that Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo is the man to beat in Anambra State’s governorship election coming up in November. Former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, who acquitted himself most remarkably well on the job; a first class scholar and an economist of international renown Soludo lost narrowly to the incumbent in the last election in 2010 flying the flag of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. This time, the political calculations in his party has changed and the new powerbrokers of PDP are out of his league and they seem easily discomfited by his intellectual prowess, self-assuredness and the strong Igbo libertarian world view. It was apparently long decided that not only that the now tenuous umbrella of the PDP would not provide him cover, his contesting the Anambra guber would be inimical to PDP’s interest.

    APGA-cadabra Having determined that, Soludo was promptly nudged out of PDP as a first step, he was then lured into the supposedly Igbo party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA. Having been reassured, he promptly purchased APGA nomination form for N10 million and was fine-tuning strategies for participating and triumphing in the primary when his detractors moved again. The fear of Soludo must be the beginning of wisdom for the PDP hawks. He was reportedly approached to jettison his quest for the top job but he insisted on going through with it having gone so far. But not wanting to leave anything to chance, a jankara screening committee was set up by the APGA hierarchy whose primary target was obviously Soludo. Pronto, Soludo and some unknown quantities had been screened out; they are not fit to contest even in the primary. How is it that someone who was corralled into joining APGA and who was promised a fair shot at the contest? Someone who had bought nomination forms for such huge amount and who had started setting up campaign structure is suddenly not fit to attempt the primary?

    Of course we are not told why he is not eligible apart from the mutterings from some quarters that he had declined to join earlier when he was approached and that he came around too late. But they forgot that until a few weeks ago, APGA had been a banana case running from one court room to another. It can even be conjectured that Soludo was instrumental to the rapprochement in APGA or that APGA was reconciled for the sake of arresting Soludo’s ambition. It does not require a pundit to see that the race for Anambra’s number one job is a three horse one between Andy Uba, Chris Ngige and Soludo. If PDP would grab Uba and APC flies with Ngige, why would APGA shun Soludo if it is not a marionette dangling from another man’s strings? If the APGA clowns fool themselves successfully, do they by any chance imagine that they can fool the generality of Ndigbo who had hoped that they had a party in APGA? Which of those motley fellas they have pre-qualified will expect to beat Uba or Ngige in any election in Anambra State?

    APGA’s nunc dimittis The PDP will take no prisoners in this Anambra election having serious implications for 2015. It would not brook to share its glory in a southeast in which Anambra is the most strategic. On the other hand, APGA’s loss of Anambra would mark its demise and the passing into history of a once upon a time Igbo party. Maybe it is just as well that APGA should die because it never served the Igbo cause for which it was supposedly founded. It will be trite to say that APGA finally sold its wretched soul and litigation-wracked body for a pot of porridge; it is quite self evident now what we had only conjectured all this while.

    Just because we are traders does not mean that everything we have is for sale. Some things are supposed to be priceless, only to be nurtured and preserved for national pride, for posterity and for collective edification and well-being. But the leaders of this APGA – the incumbent governor of Anambra, Mr. Peter Obi, the chairman of the party, Chief Chekwas Okorie and all the other dramatis personae in this farcical epic will have to answer to the Ndigbo and her posterity for they rode on our back; they will have to answer to history some day when all this hurly-burly is done.

    It will be recorded that at this critical juncture of Igbo history, they failed us; at their moment in the sun when they had the opportunity to stand up for Ndigbo, to uplift them, to help them reclaim their dignity and manhood, they chose to trade it off.

    Though Soludo may have been killed politically, it is only a momentary setback. In fact this deadly blow could serve as a wake-up call for him to begin anew; change his template, review his strategy and return to the arena. The entire world beckons, Nigeria calls and Igboland yawns for an authentic, honest and fearless leadership. It may well be providential that APGA would achieve its expiry date soon. Away with the imp, away with the ogbanje party; this rascal abiku has served its inglorious time, it must move on into its pre-destined oblivion so that Ndigbo may begin to pick the pieces of their political lives. There is need to find a new, genuine Igbo voice, a new Igbo spirit and a new Igbo body that will negotiate our place under the Nigerian sun standing on our feet, using our head and not our stomach.

  • Just me…being self-righteous (3)

    We belabour the ‘Nigerian dream.’ We abuse the idea that life will get better, that progress is assured if we keep faith, obey the rules and work hard, that prosperity is guaranteed if we continue to tread the slow, steady path to progress and a prosperous future. And in pursuit of these lofty ideals, we pervert the steady, measured, impartial course of the universe; hacking pliant paths to our dreams, from the crossroads where gluttony fosters depravity.

    Eventually, we awaken to a cold, bitter truth: We are being sacrificed. The Nigerian dream we are sold isn’t worth our sacrifice. And the individual dreams we pursue, aren’t worth a smidgen of what we make them out to be. By the time we all struggle to achieve our dreams; Nigeria will be finished. Given that each tribe may finally achieve its dreams of nationhood via secession, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw to mention a few may establish their new nations.

    When we do, the swollen belly of our idiocy and pride shall become clearly visible to us. When it does, it shall suddenly dawn on us that, all along, we had been blindly acting to a script prepared by career predators from Western nations of Europe, America and our ruling class.

    The truth shall become clearer to us in intensity and impact and we shall hopelessly realize that we are being sacrificed. We will all be sacrificed; some of us much quicker than others. As it is now, so shall it be in our new nations, the Biafran youth, Ijaw youth, Oodua youth and Arewa youth to mention a few, shall become disposable indices in the scheme of things.

    But until then, we will continue to have today and squander it on the altar of racism and greed. Today, it’s impossible to see any offspring of our ruling class engage or become embroiled in the familiar tragedies that mar our lives. It’s always the children from the breadlines, struggling middle class and backwaters that are involved. We are the youth divide traditionally expected and required to function and serve as unquestioning muscles and ordinary cannon fodder in the ruling class’ blueprint of pillage and destruction.

    The decline of Nigeria is a story of gross injustices by the ruling class to the citizenry. But that is only an aspect of it, the greatest injustice is that meted out by individual citizen to self – the youth particularly. And this predominant malaise often plays out in our corruptibility and disinclination to foster a more humane leadership and society.

    Today, we suffer declining standards of living, stagnant and falling wages that are hardly paid at due time; we suffer curtailment and absolute denial of our basic wages, long-term unemployment, slave labour, escalating crime wave, among other ills.

    Together, we perpetuate gruesome realities of the weakest being crushed decisively and maniacally by the affluent and strong. Together, we perpetuate a story of unbridled sectarian, ethnic and corporate power that has taken our government hostage, overseen the dismantling of our cultural heritage, societal and entrepreneurial values.

    But if the ruling class, in connivance with predatory nations and institutions from the so-called ‘first world’ is responsible for plundering our natural resources and bankrupting the nation, we, the youth, are responsible for even worse atrocities.

    We serve as the tools by which the ruling class and its cohorts overseas plunder and destroy our nation. The virus of political corruption, the perverted belief that only political and material profit matters, has spread to distort our thoughts and understanding of right and wrong. Today, it manifests in endemic proportions plaguing our communities with religious and political terrorism, economic and cyber-terrorism to mention a few.

    Today, the Nigerian society dies a gruesome death basically because we lay to waste, our youths and we, the latter, by our suicidal actions and thoughts, submit ourselves as hopeless prey to the Nigerian ruling class and their cohorts overseas.

    Everyday encounters with gluttonous gangs of struggling youth reveals among other things, that many of us are the same social products as our peer from the aristocratic divide. Conditioned by life’s harshest vicissitudes to survive at all cost, we lay in wait, striving and bidding our time until we are ably positioned and strong enough to serve or rob the rich whose life we earnestly covet and decry.

    A visit to any night club, party, religious organization or office still attests to this fact. Ambitious and upwardly mobile youth from the breadlines or struggling working class families engage in a variety of excesses to the applause of mates yearning to be in their shoes. Either as advance fee fraudsters, bankers, journalists, accountants, secretaries, factory hands or ordinary clerks, youths from the breadlines daily engages in a bitter, desperate struggle to chance on the shortest possible cut to sudden and stupendous wealth.

    We seem beset by a greater and unexplainable fear beyond the fear of poverty amongst other harsh realities of their lives. Fear plays a greater part than hope: we are infinitely buoyed and obsessed with thoughts of the money that we could make or the possessions that might be taken from us or elude us, than of the joy and value that we might add to our own lives and to the future of our fatherland.

    Most of us, like our more privileged peer crave the best of everything without actually sweating for it. And when we do sweat for it, our industry is tainted by vigorous dashes of impatience and duplicity. In our work, we are haunted by jealousy of competitors, and a fleeting interest in the actual work that has to be done. We spend greater time and passion defending unjust privileges that we are desperate to enjoy.

    Such appalling youth constitute a greater segment of the human element expected to salvage Nigeria from eternal ruin and bloodbath. Consequently, our society becomes more rudderless and unstable and vulnerable, on our watch. Now that Nigeria as our fathers, ‘the wasted generation’ made it, and we the youth, aggravate it, have begun to collapse, we withdraw from the possibility of rebirth, and instead choose to exploit the infinite possibilities in our fragility and predicted collapse.

    It’s about time the Nigerian youth started postponing immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices spurred by conviction that the future can be better than the past. Beyond the politics and inanities of our existing ruling class and political parties, we face far more difficult questions at our moment in history: How do we reconcile reality with promises that have been made to us? How do we make the best of our circumstances at the backdrop of indefensible leadership failure and disillusionment of the citizenry?  How do we evolve and nurture to fruition, a new vision to help us deal with our gruesome realities, even as we chart a promising story of the future? How do we divorce ourselves from the pains and disappointments of the past – particularly those that many of amongst us had no stake in but yet internalize and perpetuate unexplainable miseries thereby?

    How do we redefine “Peace, Unity and Progress” with our lust for “Life, Liberty and Happiness?”  How do we become more human than we are now?

    • To be continued…

  • Memo to legislators

    Dear Legislator,

    “Let there become of you a nation that shall call for righteousness, enjoin justice and forbid evil. Such men shall surely triumph”.

    Q. 3: 104.

    This is the second time in three years that a letter of this kind is coming to you from this column. The first was in 2008 barely nine months after some of you resumed in your respective legislative houses. Though the contents of both letters are hardly different the need to write again is informed by the fact that a genuine preacher should never be tired of repeating himself even where and when the addressee chooses to be deaf and dumb as in the case of some of you.

    “Conscience”, according to Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio, “is an open wound which only the truth can heal”. But one can talk of healing a wounded conscience only where it has not become cancerous. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) told us in one Hadith that hypocrites are known by three signs: “When they talk they lie; when they promise they renege and when they are trusted they betray”. Most of you so much typify that Hadith as if the Prophet had Nigerian legislators in mind when he expressed that axiom.

    You will recall that when you started nursing the ambition to become legislators, whether at the federal or state level, or even as chairmen or councillors in local governments, your first announcement was that you wanted ‘to serve your people’. Based on that announcement, people rallied round you and embraced you as their representatives. That announcement was your first political covenant. It was not between you and the people in your constituency alone. Since it entailed your promise and the trust of the people, Allah’s hand was in it and He will surely hold you accountable for it because you made such promise voluntarily. It does not matter whether you were genuinely elected or rigged into office thereafter as usual.

    Deception

    Your original intention for making the announcement will be weighed against your action on getting to office. And you will be judged accordingly when you leave the office. That is quite different from the actual rigging that brought you into office (if you are part of that abominable gambit) after depriving your fellow human being of that position which rightfully belongs to him. Just as you will call on God for justice if you were in his shoes so he will take your case to God’s court. And the prayer of a cheated person, according to Prophet Muhammad (SAW), never suffers divine denial.

    You must remember that it is only God’s judgment that can neither be manipulated nor appealed. And no matter how long it may take, Allah’s judgment will be executed perhaps when you least expect. On that, you are left to your conscience if you have one.

    In Islam, two issues are exceptionally fundamental which Allah does not treat lightly. These are sacredness of life and justice. It is a great iniquity for any human being to engage in murder and injustice under any guise. Thus, anybody who kills fellow human beings extra-judicially in the name of religion is nothing but a pagan. In Islam, killing of a fellow human being deliberately is such a grievous sacrilege that cannot and should not occur without commensurate punishment.

    Besides paganism, nothing draws the wrath of Allah as fast as these two crimes which Satan may continue to ask you to ignore at your own peril. Murder is physical termination of the life of a fellow human being. Injustice is to kill a person mentally, psychologically and spiritually by denying him his right.

    In Islam, rule of law is the foundation of justice but legislation is the material with which that foundation is built. Those who voluntarily chose to legislate for others must see themselves as the foundation layers of justice who should not, deliberately or inadvertently, betray the course of justice. Can this be said of you?

    How honourable?

    Honourable legislators, you are addressed as honourable today neither because you are more qualified intellectually than those for whom you are legislating nor because you are wiser and more experienced than them. What makes most of you legislators is sheer expediency arising from queer inadequacies sadly fostered by our so-called political system which gives room for gerrymandering. If such opportunity comes your way illegally, let it not be mistaken for good luck. It may rather be a calamity waiting to strike in future. And when it strikes, no one except Allah can tell the extent of its effect. At least you can see how the consequences of the heartless annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election have become a draconian spectre chasing the ghost of Nigeria even after two decades of licking her wound.

    Due to lack of conscience, most of you may not have noticed, but you need to be hinted that shortly after you took oath of office, most of you started subverting the covenant you voluntarily reached with the people who elected you. That covenant is to serve them (the people). And those who serve are nothing but servants. But no sooner had you been sworn into office than you started calling yourselves leaders. That is why most of you often find it difficult to bend a little backwards and report to your constituencies on how you are serving them.

    The focus of some of you, as soon as you reach Abuja or your state capital or even the headquarters of your Local Governments automatically shifts from service to the people (which was your promise) to self service. And the betrayal is not of the electorate alone. It also affects your matrimonial homes.

    Surrogate spouses

    Since most of you are in those headquarters without your spouses, the first thing you do after settling down is to search for alternative but illegitimate sexual partners who act as surrogate your spouses. And the cost is borne by the same betrayed electorate. Not only that. You also began your primary duty of legislating by first fixing your own salaries and allowances against all norms of morality and at the expense of those who made it possible for you to become legislators. We have started hearing of the varying figures of amounts of money you are regularly sharing as inconvenience allowances even prior to the commencement of your legislative duty.

    You turn the privilege of legislating into a right and use it to intimidate the poor masses and ride roughshod over them. When you occasionally pretend to interact with those masses it is for the purpose of preparing their minds for the next election in which you hope to be returned, possibly, unopposed. And for this reason, you cunningly pay them pittances while making another fake promise to improve their well-being during your second or third term.

    Some of you have spent twelve or eight years in those legislative houses. Yet, there is no sign at all in your immediate constituencies that anybody is representing the people of those constituencies. You are satisfied with their milling around you for pittance even as you assume that they are satisfied with such pittance.

    Self aggrandisement

    When you travel abroad officially, at people’s expense, you are never alarmed by the way political or economic systems work in those countries. The primary concern of some of you is the latest cars plying the roads of those countries and the most magnificent mansions in their estates that you consider as befitting to your new status. Thus, when you return home, your next goal is acquisition of those elements of vanity. That is why every political office holder in Nigeria today is riding or eager to ride the newest jeep from the European, American or Japanese factories even as you own or want to own mansions in the choicest estates in Nigeria. Why won’t corruption be legislated into legitimacy?

    And now, Nigeria is held to a standstill because you must doctor the annual budget presented to you by the executive to your own favour so that the largess generated by the executive arm may be jointly shared in the spirit of ‘rub my back I rub yours’.

    Most of you as fathers and mothers will want your children to grow up as responsible men and women, yet, most of you have nothing in you that can serve as good examples for those children.

    Reminder

    Perhaps it is necessary to remind you that everything in this world is based on condition. The world itself did not come into existence without condition. Man was originally created to be Allah’s servant in the garden called the earth. And all other things in that garden were ordered to obey and serve man on condition that he (man) would also obey and serve Allah. That service was not an imposition. It was voluntary.

    Before putting man in charge of the world at all, Allah had consulted far and wide with all the stake holders concerned. Each of them declined responsibility except man who, out of greed and arrogance, volunteered to take charge and be responsible for it.

    Allah states this clearly in Q. 33 V. 72 thus: “We offered the ‘TRUST’ (of the world) to the heavens; to the earth and to the mountains; but they refused to bear it and were afraid of it. Man who undertook to bear it, has proved to be unjust, foolish”.

    By consulting so far and wide, Allah had elicited and got covenant from every creature. Those among them, that declined responsibility cannot and will not be asked to account for the occurrences therein. Accountability of the world solely rests on man’s shoulder according to the covenant he reached voluntarily with Allah.

    Covenant with Allah is the most fundamental law of existence. It is not one sided. As man has responsibilities to bear so does Allah has obligations to fulfil. It is from the covenant with Allah that all other covenants in the life of man, including those of marriage, trust and confidentiality, are derived. That covenant is what others call oath.

    Oath of office

    In Islam, oath, whether private or public, does not necessarily require Muslims to carry the Qur’an in one’s hand as done in Nigeria particularly at this time when oath of office has become a meaningless symbol. No oath is ever made without Allah being a witness to it. Besides, He has assigned two Angels (Raqib and ‘Atid) to every human being as secret police officers. The duty of these Angels is to record all utterances and secret actions of each person to whom they are assigned. The one records good deeds, the other records evil deeds. Their recordings are both in video and audio forms.

    This is fact contained in Q. 50: 16 where Allah states that: “We surely created man and ‘We’ know the promptings of his mind and are closer to him than his jugular vein. We assign two guardians to watch him, one on his right and the other on his left. No utterance (from him) or action shall escape the records of these vigilant guardians….”

    It is from the functions of these invisible police that researchers came about the idea of video, audio and other technological devices used especially for espionage.

    Blind trust

    With this scenario, you can see what damage some of you (legislators) are causing to the present and future generations of this country in a bid to display your illegally acquired loot through corruption. By interpretation, the problem of corruption engendered by gross indiscipline in Nigeria today is not with the youths alone. It is rather more with the parents, some of whom are in the legislative arm of government.

    Nigeria remains in darkness today after 50 years of independence because the priorities of those of you in government are permanently at variance with the country’s national priorities. For instance, one would have thought that rather than fighting corruption the way Obasanjo presumably started it, what a focused and sincere government should have done was to initiate a re-orientation revolution to enable all Nigerians know why corruption is evil. The Murtala Muhammad and Buhari/Idiagbon regimes experimented this successfully and Nigeria was briefly better for it.

    Fighting corruption haphazardly as Obasanjo did during his agonizing eight year tenure is like starting the building of a house from the roof. Nigeria wasted those eight years chasing shadow in the name of fighting corruption while the monster kept feeding fat on the blood of poor Nigerians using ‘BLIND TRUST’ as cloak. That method must change.

    Rare opportunity

    Legislating is a rare opportunity to serve one’s nation meritoriously. But some of you seem to have turned that opportunity into one of self-enrichment as well as that of securing the future of your own children at the expense of the lives of other children. All these are done at the expense of the wretched people around you whose role in democracy has been relegated to voting once in three or four years. You have forgotten that wealth is Allah’s endowment which cannot be inherited except by Allah’s will. Who inherited the expansive wealth and kingdom of King Solomon? Haven’t you ever seen some money bags of yester years wallowing in abject penury today? When will you learn your lesson?

    My dear honourable legislators; search your conscience and fear God. Remember that some people had legislated for this country in the past. There were even those who usurped the roles of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary together, in the name of military rule, made possible by coup d’état. Where are they today?

    Legislation, like governance, has its tenure. Four years may look endless, but for the wise, it is not more than a flash of lightening which only a fool may want to rely upon while walking his way through the darkness of the night.

    Peculiar factor

    You are in the house of legislation to make laws for today and tomorrow. Ordinarily, that duty should be on part time and not full time basis in a serious country where patriotism holds sway. But since everything in Nigeria has a peculiar factor, it has become a rule that those who are legislating for us must take the lion’s share of our national cake even through the budget. That is why you randomly roar to the total embarrassment of the country that the President or the Governor must be impeached. Such impeachment becomes a serious business only when your salaries, allowances or social welfare are not provided as at when due and as you want. It does not matter to you whether or not the entire workforce in Nigeria remains unpaid for years or all the Universities in the country close down completely and permanently. It is rather shameful and disappointing that even some of you (especially Muslim legislators) can participate in such evil charade despite your proclamation of Islam.

    Conscience, though invisible, has a mirror which only a few people know of. That mirror is shame. A person without shame is a person without conscience. And that is the main distinction between a genuine Muslim and a nominal one. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) admonished thus in respect of shame: “once you are bereft of shame, you can go ahead to do whatever you like”. This means that without shame you are a nonentity who can even strip naked in the market place. We can all see the example of this in a former President of this country.

     Service to humanity

    Honourable legislators, let it be kept permanently in your hearts that the only thing which keeps people alive in history even long after their demise is service to humanity. Prophets Isa (Jesus), and Muhammad (SAW), had neither bank accounts nor estates to bequeath to anybody. Their heritage is more than any material wealth for the entire world today. That heritage is service to humanity. What is your own planned heritage if only for posterity? That is a big question which only people with conscience can answer.

    Remember that you are in a ship already voyaging on the high sea towards the shore. At the shore are the customs officers waiting to check the contents of your cargo. Be always at alert. Remember that if you cultivate friendship with Satan he will favour your wish. But if he grants you one favour, he will take ten from you in return. Be Muslims by name, conduct and mannerism. Whatever you do as Muslims will affect the image of Islam in one way or the other. I hope you will return home as Muslims that you claim to be and not as renegades. Remember all this and adjust now that you may be able to raise your head aloft when others will be losing theirs.

  • A recent trip to Ghana –1

    My father, David Osuntokun like most young people from my hometown Okemesi went as an adventurer to the then Gold Coast in the 1930s well before I was born. In my hometown of Okemesi, it was not unusual to find many people speak Fante or one of the Akan languages which they acquired when they were working in the then Gold Coast, now Ghana. My dad was involved in mining Manganese in Nsutta somewhere in the centre of Ghana. He also acquired some education and was able to function as a catechist on Sundays apparently ministering to the considerable Nigerian community in the mining town. Ghana was therefore referred to in my hometown as ‘Oke-Okun’ that is, “abroad”. Many of my people suffered in the 1960s when they were deported from Ghana by the Busia government. Unfortunately, this was reciprocated in the 1980s by the Buhari government when millions of Ghanaians who were economic migrants were deported for being involved in criminal activities. This was a charge that remained unproven. This is an episode that is better forgotten in the history of the amicable relations between the two countries.

    My dad made some money in Ghana and built a rambling house in our home-town Okemesi for himself and his two uterine brothers one of whom was older and the other younger and used the rest of the money he made to engage in trade as an Osomalo which was the favourite pastime in our area in those days.

    The point to make is that I have a history of relationship with what is today Ghana. In 1963, before I entered the University of Ibadan while I was teaching at Oduduwa College, Ife, I led a students’ excursion group to visit the then vibrant Republic of Ghana under its ebullient and visionary President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. We visited the University of Ghana at Legon, the then Kumasi College of Science and Technology, Achimota College in Accra where we stayed as well as Prempeh College in Kumasi which played host to us while in Kumasi. We also visited Tema, the artificial port created by Nkrumah on the Gulf of Guinea and the site of the Volta Aluminium Complex. We also went to Akosombo Dam where Ghana’s hydro-electricity is generated.

    At that time because of our young age, we did not quite appreciate what we saw. People of my generation somehow felt inferior to Ghanaians because they beat us regularly in soccer, we danced mostly to their musical tunes played by E.T. Mensah and Ramblers Dance Band and because they got independence in 1957, they were the leading African country. In spite of their size and population, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah towered above all African leaders. He, Sekou Toure of Guinea and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt along with Pandit Nehru and Joseph Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Dr. Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia and possibly Chou En-Lai of China were responsible for launching the Non-aligned Movement. Nkrumah made our political leaders particularly our Prime Minister Sir Tafawa Balewa look puny and irrelevant in African politics. This made us young people to admire Nkrumah and Ghana well above our own leaders and our country. Nkrumah also wrote books which when I entered the University of Ibadan, we read in our political science class particularly his autobiography Kwame Nkrumah and his Africa Must Unite which was a call to all African states to unite in order to survive and to liberate the rest of Africa that was still under colonial or settlers’ subjugation.

    In fairness to Nigerian leaders of the first republic, Nigeria was and is a more complex country than Ghana because of our complexity of cultures and religions as well as the multitude of our languages. Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa has sometimes being dismissed as too conservative and ineffective but that is not true. He was more of a practical politician and a realist but unlike Nkrumah, he did not leave any lasting monuments or legacies of his regime.

    In Ghana today, tourists and officials of foreign governments cannot but be impressed by the monuments that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah left behind. The Flagstaff House that is, the office of the President, the Aburi Gardens standing some miles away from Accra on a hill and serving as an escape residence for the President more like Camp David in the United States and Checkers in London is a source of pride to Nkrumah’s genius of forward planning. He even built an Africa House on the grounds of parliament which he hoped would be the headquarters of the African Union to which he committed huge amount of resources in support of the Pan-African Movement and the liberation of the continent from colonialism. After his death in Romania of Prostate Cancer, his body was given full military honours and national burial in Conakry where Ahmed Sekou Toure had declared him a co-president after his overthrow in 1966. His body was later removed from Conakry and buried in his hometown of Nzima in the Nkroful area of Western Ghana and it was from there that Jerry Rawlings removed the body for the third time to be interred in a national mausoleum on the Accra polo grounds where in 1957 Nkrumah had declared Ghana independent. It was Rawlings who appreciated more than anybody the contribution of Nkrumah to Ghana and Africa’s development and it is interesting to note that today’s young people in Ghana live in adoration and gratitude to Nkrumah who laid the foundation of what is now arguably the best run country on the African continent.

    • To be continued

  • Is Shekau dead or alive?

    Is Shekau dead or alive?

    His grainy internet picture shows him wearing a turban. This is the only photograph of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau that is often used by newspapers. Nobody has seen him in public, except perhaps, members of his group, who are privileged to come in contact with him in the line of their deadly business. Thus, Shekau is more of a spirit than a human being. But he has a reputation of being a hard hearted and non – compromising fundamentalist.

    There is a $7million reward on his head for the atrocities committed by Boko Haram, but Shekau seems unperturbed. He (or is it his ghost?) still comes out once in a while to either  issue threats or claim responsibility for some attacks carried out by the sect. He spoke nine days ago, but the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) wants us to believe that it was not him that appeared on video posted on Youtube on August 13. The JTF claims that Shekau may have died of gunshot wounds in Amitchide in Cameroon on August 3.

    If Shekau is dead, JTF should be able to prove to the world beyond reasonable doubt that this dreaded human terror is no more. The irony of it all is that the JTF itself is not sure whether Shekau is dead or alive. Its statement on Shekau’s well – being did not serve the purpose for which it was issued. The statement, I believe, was issued to clear the air over the death or otherwise of the Boko Haram leader, but it ended up confusing the public the more.

    Until the statement was issued, the public knew nothing about the fate of Shekau. We didn’t know that there was an encounter in which he was allegedly shot but escaped with wounds. The JTF believes that he must have died from those wounds. What informed the JTF’s belief? We don’t know; all that we know is what is contained in its statement, which the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has described as hasty because the circumstances from which JTF drew its conclusions do not ‘’add up’’.

    The military is not known to do things haphazardly. It takes its time to dot the I’s and cross the T’s in life and death matters before it comes out with its position. When it concerns the death of a person, the military is even extra careful because it knows the implication of saying a person is dead when that person’s death is not confirmed.  The military double checks its facts to ensure that they are correct before pronouncing a person, whether a soldier or a bloody civilian like Shekau, dead. That is the military tradition. And JTF, we believe, is  operating under that rule.

    Shekau is not just any member of Boko Haram; he is its linchpin. He is to Boko Haram what the late Osama bin Ladin was to Al Qaeda before he was killed by the United States (US) Naval SEAL 5 in May, 2011. Shekau is not a small fry whose death should not be confirmed before it is made public. In breaking the news of the death of such a person, there is no need to rush things. Such a death  can only be confirmed after a thorough and painstaking exercise.

    If Shekau has indeed been killed, what Nigerians expect is a categorical statement from the authority, detailing how, where and when he was killed. The statement should not be equivocal.  It must be clear, succint and unambiguous. As it were, the JTF statement cannot pass muster. This was the dilemma we found ourselves at our editorial meeting on Monday evening when we got the JTF statement. Do we take it at its face value and run with it that Shekau may have been killed as claimed by JTF? Do we do our independent findings to ascertain the true position of things?

    We resolved to err on the side of caution by settling for the latter option. We found out that even within the military, the JTF claim was not well received. The military found it difficult to believe the JTF story that Shekau had been killed without concrete proof of his death. Where is the body? Which doctor confirmed him dead? Where was he killed? These are some of the questions begging for answers in the JTF statement. If Shekau actually died in Amitchide, Cameroon, has the JTF visited the place to see the body and confirm that it is really his?

    In the face of the doubts expressed by the DHQ over JTF’s position, that statement is not worth the paper on which it is written, except the task force can convince us  with clear cut evidence that Shekau is dead. We saw proof beyond reasonable doubt when bin Ladin was killed by the Americans. We saw his body being buried at sea. And we saw a confident President Barack Obama, exultantly responding to a question that: ‘’I can assure you that Osama bin Ladin will no longer walk the surface of the earth’’.

    We need this kind of compelling evidence and talk to believe that Shekau is dead. For now, we don’t know what to believe. Is Shekau dead or alive?

    Making of an empress

    First Lady Patience Jonathan

    seems to court controversy

    with her actions.  It appears she enjoys the image she is cutting for herself. No first lady has been this controversial in our 53 years of nationhood. Wherever the First Lady goes, she leaves pain and agony in her trail.  She seems not to care what the people think about her and the pain she inflicts on them whenever she visits their states or holds a ceremony in Abuja.

    A few months ago she was in Lagos and the metropolis was virtually shut down because of her. People were held up in traffic for a whole day.  It was a terrible day for most motorists who swore and sweated in traffic. Till today, Dame Patience has not apologised for her action. Her husband, who is our president, does not treat us the way she is doing. President Goodluck Jonathan, give it to him, takes the people into consideration, whenever he is visiting Lagos.

    Since he understands the nature of the place, he does his shuttle in and around town in a helicopter to avoid a traffic gridlock, which his movement on the road may cause. For all his wife cares, the people can go to hell whenever she is visiting their states. As in Lagos, so was it in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, when she visited a few weeks ago.  The Garden City was at a standstill because of her visit. Last week, Abuja had a dose of this treatment. The First Lady was hosting what she called: ‘’Celebrating Nigerian Women for Peace and Empowerment’’.

    The event was well publicised. Forty eight hours before the ceremony, the people were informed that the access road leading to Eagle Square would be shut to traffic. Motorists thought it would be a minor irritation. But when they got to the road on the day of the First Lady’s event, they got a shocker. There was no movement. They could not get to their offices, which they could from inside their cars. To walk past the stern-looking policemen on the road would be suicidal.

    In short, that day, the Federal Capital City, especially the Central Business District (CBD), was a no go area. It was cordoned off by the stern-looking policemen, who blocked all access routes to the Eagle Square. What the people went through that day is best captured in the words of some of them as reported in the papers last Friday. ‘’I met the traffic right from the Yar ‘Adua Centre and immediately turned away from that road and followed another route only to be confronted by a more serious snarl in the town’’, said a motorist.

    Another said : ‘’I make most of my daily earnings by taking passengers to the Federal Secretariat and Eagle Square but on Thursday, I had to turn down many passengers because all the access routes to the CBD were blocked and there was traffic everywhere..’’ Must the First Lady inconvenience the people any time she so wishes? It is high time the president called her to order, that is if he is not a party to these her  irritating actions.

  • Power sector and spin-doctors

    Power sector and spin-doctors

    Nigerian power problem seems to defy solution, not because of lack of good intentions or efforts on the part of our leaders, but because such efforts have often been designed to fail. Tragically, like most intractable man-made Nigerian problems, the same leaders, the source of the sector’s woes and some victims of their greed often go spiritual, asking for divine intervention. Like typical victims of underdevelopment, some have said the sector is doomed because its headquarters was dedicated to the Yoruba god of thunder. Some have even suggested three days of national fasting and prayers. Unfortunately, the current efforts of the Jonathan administration, designed and packaged by the same set of leaders that derailed the previous efforts including the Obasanjo roadmap, is not likely to end the nightmare of Nigerian victims of PDP inept handling of the power sector in the last 14 years. The omen from the unfolding events in the last three weeks, gives no assurance of any form of solace to troubled Nigeria electricity consumers.

    For instance, last week, about 60 licensed Independent Power Producers (IPPs), owned by some PDP leaders or their sympathizers, under the aegis of (IPPAN), led by its chairman, Professor Jerry Gana, a former minister of information, current chairman of University of Lagos Governing Council and a permanent feature in every PDP administration since 1999, visited the Ministry of Power to give

    government a set of conditions before the IPPS can effectively take off.

    Chief among the body’s demand is government granting to IPPs, a waiver for the importation of gas-related machinery and equipment.  Others include government funding and supply of pre-paid meters, government provision of funds that could be readily available should the bulk trader not meet up with its commitments and finally taking cognizance of uncertainties related to operating independent electricity plants, they appealed to government not to leave them alone entirely, but to consider taking shares in their various companies. “We are craving the support of government by way of equity participation. We are open to government coming to take 5 -10 per cent equity in our companies just like it is doing for the newly acquired DISCOs.” They are probably asking for what happened in the aviation industry.

    The government through the minister has agreed that ‘on equity participation, whenever the Federal Government through the National Council on Privatization (NCP) arrives at putting in shares in the

    sector, we will be ready to assist the IPPs by owning equities in the IPP companies. We are ready to do whatever will promote or facilitate an enabling environment for IPPs to thrive,” It is obvious those who will benefit from such self serving policy of government reinvesting in private firms after divesting its interest and selling public firms held in trust for the people to private concerns at such scandalous

    amounts which has prompted probes set up by government to direct some of the firms be taken back.

    If we need further evidence that president Jonathan Roadmap for Power Sector Reform  whose focus  is ‘market reform, change of the current ownership, attracting new investment in generation into the market, expanding the transmission capacity, providing for government divestment’, like the 2005 Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSR Act), which called for ‘unbundling the national power utility company into a series of 18 successor companies: six generation companies, 11 distribution companies covering all 36 Nigerian states, and a national power transmission company, is not going to bring relief to Nigerians soon, the interview Dagogo Jack, the chairman of the presidential task-force on power as well as member of presidential Committee on Power, is all that is required.

    Asked if there is a time frame for the new licensed firms to start yielding dividends, he said since government  has no control over private firms, the best government can do is to ensure they ‘sustain the current 4500MW level, if they cannot increase it’.

    What has become apparent is that PDP inherited a little over 200MW from Abacha’s regime.  This according to Segun Agagu, minister of power under Obasanjo, was moved up to 4,200MW in 2002. There was no evidence of any further improvement until the end of Obasanjo’s tenure. But then it was PDP men themselves that alleged a rip off.

    First, President Yar Adua, Obasanjo successor alleged that over ‘$10 billion was spent on power by the Obasanjo administration with nothing to show it’. The Speaker of the House Representatives, Dimeji Bankole’s put the amount frittered away at over $16 billion, while the House power probe committee Chairman, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu’s figure was $13 billion. President Jonathan’s own three year road map after an alleged expenditure of 8 billion dollars has pushed the power capacity to 4,517MW (miserable 4% of what South Africa generate) in December 2012.

    In other words, after eleven years, and expenditure of between 18 and 24 billion dollars depending on which of the PDP leading members’ figures you want to adopt, PDP secured a marginal gain of about 2500MW.

    This was in fact wildly celebrated by the then minister for Power, Professor Bath Nnaji who announced gleefully that “With regards to generation, Nigeria is moving ahead by ‘leaps and bounds’, adding that the ‘only problem facing the sector was that of transmission.’ (His transmission firm is to be commissioned soon in Aba by President Jonathan) In fact the president was less restrained. He told CNN Christian Amanpour in far away New York that Nigerians were celebrating his unprecedented achievement in the power sector, a claim which forced the ever resourceful CNN anchor woman to ask for prove from residents of darkness enveloped Lagos.

    But one thing has remained constant. The same set of PDP men, involved in PDP ‘family war’ over the power sector  are also today actively involved in the on-going new efforts either as ministers, governors, senators or IPPs members or as wild celebrants of the absurd.

    Two weeks ago, the nation witnessed a significant drop from the peak of 4,517MW attained on December 21, 2012 to 3,443MW, a drop Prof. Chinedu Nebo, the new power minister attributed to the shutdown of the Chevron gas plant, while admonishing to Nigerians ‘to learn to cope with this type of experience each time there was to be a routine maintenance’.

    And as if we are all pupils of kindergarten, it was this period Dr Doyin Okupe, the president’S Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs chose to celebrate the report of NOI polls, carried out in July 2013 which curiously indicated that 53 percent of Nigerians sampled in the exercise were satisfied with the President’s performance, with majority of respondents attributing the high approval rating to improvement in power supply across the country.

    Okupe remains unrestrained.  According to him, “It is expected that by the time most of the hydro power dams which are currently been rehabilitated also resume operations by the end of September, (40 days from now) most Nigerian cities will have more hours of power supply from the National grid…” Dr. Okupe was not done:‘The implication of this and other reforms, “is that without any doubt, before the end of 2014, Nigerians’ long held dream of joining the worlds list of countries with uninterrupted power supply will be closer in reality than it has ever been,’ he triumphantly declared.

    And working on the theory that Nigerians have short memories, he ignored the fact that it was in June, a month before the survey that the Minister of State for Power, Zainab Kuchi, after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC), publicly declared: “We have 160 million Nigerians now and we are only giving power to 40 million of that population, what it means is that there are about 120 million Nigerians that are without power and wish to buy power”.  The minister for power, Nebo, who was present at the press briefing also added “the situation where only 25 per cent of Nigerians have access to electricity is a nightmare caused by human beings used by evil forces”.

    I think it is pointless asking how Dr Okupe and his pollster arrived at 53%.