The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • The Sanusi – CBN years

    The Sanusi – CBN years

    With less than 12 months left for Sanusi Lamido Sanusi to complete his first term of five years as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, talks are on in high places on who will succeed him. By now, the desk of President Goodluck Jonathan may be full with the resume of those who feel that they have what it takes to do the job. The CBN governor’s job is not a piece of cake. It is a job with a lot of headache

    At this critical juncture in our country’s life, we need a CBN governor, who is versed in economic matters, and can hold his own among his colleagues globally. What is the worth of a CBN governor who cannot stand head to toe with Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer or America’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve?

    Our CBN governor should not feel intimidated by others because they are from the so – called developed economies. No, he should be bold, assertive and daring in the discharge of his duties because on him rests the hope of a nation, talking monetarily, that is. As an international scholar, Sanusi’s predecessor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, had what it takes to play on the global field. When Soludo spoke while in office, the world listened because he was seen as a man of clout. Despite that, Soludo did not get a second term, which he badly wanted to enable him consolidate on the gains of his first term.

    However, being an international scholar will not automatically translate to success for one as CBN governor. The CBN chief should also understand the terrain in which he operates and do all he can to win the confidence of the people. As CBN governor, has Sanusi been able to do this? In the past four years that he has been in office, what can he point to as his achievements? Can he be said to have enjoyed cordial working relationship with his fellow bankers/economists without breaching the trust reposed in him by the government and the people of this country?

    There is need for us to look at these issues before he leaves so that our leaders will be guided in appointing his successor. Sanusi has already said he is not interested in a second term. Even if he has such an interest, chances are that he may not be considered again, considering his relationship with the present government, Sanusi knows that he is not in the good books of this administration and, as such, it will be implausible to seek a renewal of his tenure under this presidency. He knows that is a dream that will never come true. But should the appointment of a CBN governor be based on relationship with the government in power or on competence?

    Both factors matter because there is no way any president will appoint someone as CBN governor if they cannot work in sync no matter how competent that person may be. Sanusi was lucky because he was appointed by the late President Umaru Yar ‘ Adua, who believed in him. The late president, according to Segun Adeniyi in his book : Power, Politics & Death : A front – row account of Nigeria under the late President Yar ‘ Adua was virtually over the moon following Sanusi’s appearance before the Senate for screening. Segun quoted the late Yar ‘ Adua as saying :

    ‘’I watched some of the exchanges between Sanusi and the senators, and I was impressed. I think the guy is brilliant, but I have also been told about his integrity. I hope I made the right choice’’. Would the late Yar ‘ Adua have said the same thing about Sanusi today if he was alive? The late Yar ‘ Adua gave Sanusi a free hand to run things. Going by Segun’s account in his book, the late president seemed to have more faith in Sanusi than the then Attorney – General of the Federation, Michael Aondoakaa (SAN). This was why he authorised Sanusi to bypass his minister in order to get some bank chiefs.

    Under his banking reform, Sanusi published the list of debtors in newspapers shortly after he took office. We were told the amount these big debtors were owing and they were asked to pay up or face prosecution. For weeks, the alleged debtors and their banks engaged in newspaper battle over the issue. Some debtors denied owing their banks, while those who admitted owing, said they were servicing their debts. Many of the banks rose in support of their customers, saying they were enjoying cordial relationship with them, debt or no debt. The question now is how much of those debts have been defrayed?

    Will it not be good to also publish the list of those who have paid just as the CBN went to town a few years ago with the names of those owing? By far, the most controversial action taken by Sanusi is his removal of the chief executives of Intercontinental Bank, Finbank, Afribank, Oceanic Bank and Union Bank. In one fell swoop, Erastus Akingbola (Intercontinental), Okey Nwosu (Finbank), Sebastian Adigwe (Afribank), Mrs Cecilia Ibru (Oceanic) and Bartholomew Ebong (Union) were sent packing by Sanusi because of alleged mismanagement of funds. He also accused them of stealing. He took the action following the examination of the banks’ books by CBN and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC).

    In law, you don’t punish a

    suspect before his trial. He is

    punished after trial. But in CBN’s handling of this matter, the reverse is the case. In a few days from now, it will be four years that Sanusi removed these bank chiefs and even sold their banks to boot. Many of the things Sanusi claimed to have found out about these banks were for long pepper soup joint gossips during which revellers sat over bottles of beer to give what they consider insider accounts of the rot in our banking system. It is good that Sanusi has unearthed all these as a risk management expert.

    But many find it hard to believe that such a thing could be happening in the sector and yet Soludo, his predecessor, was giving the banks a clean bill of health. By his action, Sanusi is insinuating that Soludo was privy to all the mess. As Segun asked in his book, ‘’the pertinent question therefore was, how could all this have escaped Soludo?” It is a difficult question to answer, but in clearing the ‘mess’ he believed he inherited Sanusi should not be seen doing things to tarnish the reputation of his predecessor and the affected bank chiefs. He should bear in mind that those hailing him today for doing a good job will not hesitate to join others in stoning him if tomorrow they hear that he was involved in one deal or other while in office.

    Some of the questions that will be asked once he leaves are : Is it true that the affected banks were forcefully taken over to discredit Soludo’s banking consolidation? Is it true that two banks were spared similar treatment because of their owners’ connection with the power – that – be? Is it true that BankPHB was seized in order to return the old Habib Bank to the Yar ‘Adua family to reverse the effect of the Soludo banking reform? Was due process followed in the acquisition of the affected banks? How was it possible for smaller banks to acquire some of the banks that were bigger and better than them? Where did the money come from? From Sanusi’s CBN or where?

    Sanusi may believe that he has done well, but I pray that he will not have a successor who will be like him. We can only wish him well after he leaves office next year.

     

  • Element of luck in politics

    Element of luck in politics

    Luck, or providence, is a major factor in politics. In a CNN interview during his recent official visit to China, President Goodluck Jonathan accepted this. He acknowledged that it is his good luck that has guided his political career in Nigeria, including his meteoric rise from obscurity to the presidency of Nigeria. A former university lecturer in Zoology at the University of Port Harcourt, he entered politics in 1999 and, in just over ten years, rose to the pinnacle of power in Nigeria.

    He started his political career as the deputy governor of Bayelsa. When the governor, Alamasiegha, tripped and was impeached for fraud and money laundering, Jonathan took over from him as governor of the state. Barely two years later as governor, he was handpicked by Obasanjo and made the vice president in Yar’Adua’s PDP government. Halfway into his administration, Yar’Adua died and was replaced, in spite of strong opposition from the Northern establishment and his limited experience in politics, as the President of Nigeria, a position that, in his wildest dreams, Jonathan could not have believed was possible. He defied the logic that politics is the art of the possible. He hardly lifted a finger before becoming president. He served out the rest of Yar’Adua’s term in office. He is in the middle of his own first term, and now wants a second term as president. He may yet get it.

    But Jonathan is not the only Nigerian leader who got into high office by sheer luck. Our first Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, got into that office simply because his Party leader, the Sarduana of Sokoto, declined the invitation to go to Lagos. He was very disdainful of Southern politicians and did not want to be contaminated by the Southern ‘infidels’. Instead, he sent Balewa, one of his party deputies. In 1954, Tafawa Balewa, a former school teacher, was appointed the federal prime minister and remained in that position, for nearly 12 years, until his assassination in the bloody 1966 military coup.

    His successor, General Aguiyi Ironsi, the GOC of the Nigerian Army, was a hard drinking and blundering military officer, without the slightest ambition of being Nigeria’s head of state. He had previously served as the head of the Nigerian military contingent in the Congo in 1960, and later as the military attaché in the Nigerian High Commission in London. He was just happy to be the GOC of the Nigerian Army, a post given him as a compromise by the NPC/NCNC federal coalition government. He had not even been recommended for that position by the departing British head of the Nigerian Army, Major General Welby Everard, who, for professional reasons preferred either Brigadier Maimalari, or Brigadier Ademulegun. After the 1966 coup, power was handed over to him by the rump of the federal parliament. Within six months, he fell from power and was assassinated in a counter coup by Northern military officers, who were fiercely opposed to his plan to introduce a unitary system of government in the country.

    Following that coup, power was handed over to then Col. Yakubu Gowon, the chief of staff, who had played no part in the July 1966, coup that ousted Aguiyi Ironsi. In fact, he had returned to Nigeria from a training course abroad a few days before the coup, and was to have been eliminated in the coup. He escaped by sheer luck and was imposed on the country by his Northern military colleagues as the new military head of state. His military superior officers, Brigadier Ogundipe, and Brigadier Adebayo, were not acceptable to the Northern officers responsible for the coup. He was only 32, unmarried, and he did not want the job. He had absolutely no experience of government and, for quite a while after taking over the government, had to be guided by the coterie of federal permanent secretaries. He fought the civil war successfully but was overthrown in 1975 by his military colleagues while attending an OAU summit in Uganda. In some ways, he regarded his ouster as a relief from a job he did not want or relish in the first place.

    He was replaced by then Brigadier Murtala Mohamed who, unlike his military predecessors, had always wanted the job badly, since 1966 when he plotted the ouster of General Ironsi. He did not get there by providence, but by calculation. He had such influence among Northern military officers that it would have been difficult to stop him. But he lasted barely a year on the job before he was assassinated and his military regime overthrown in 1976.

    He was succeeded as military head of state by then Brig. Obasanjo, his deputy. Obasanjo had played no part in the coup and actually went into hiding at the Victoria Island residence of late Chief S.B. Bakare, his old friend, from where Gen. Alani Akinrinade, fetched him. As a compromise between Gen. Danjuma and Gen. Yar’Adua, the ranking Northern military chiefs, Obasanjo was made the new head of state, a job that he did not want at the time. But through providence, or sheer luck, Obasanjo has been twice Nigeria’s head of state. In 1999, he was released from prison where the brutal dictator, Abacha, had sent him to a life sentence allegedly for being involved in a phantom coup plot. Had Abacha not died suddenly in 1999, Obasanjo would have been left to die in prison. But the Northern elite were looking for a Yoruba head of state after it had denied Abiola who won the 1993 presidential election. They wanted a safe Yoruba head of state and Obasanjo fitted that description. Elected in 1999, he served out his two terms as Nigeria’s head of state, another remarkable story of sheer good luck, or providence. This is a position that Chief Obafemi Awolowo struggled for during his long political career, but which he did not achieve, though he was eminently qualified for it. On several occasions, Gen. Obasanjo has publicly admitted that providence played a large role in his professional career, both as a military man and as a politician.

    There are many examples in some foreign countries as well of the factor of luck in shaping the career of other politicians. Had President John Kennedy not been assassinated in 1963, Lyndon Johnson would not have become the president of the US. And had his brother, Robert Kennedy, not been assassinated in 1968, Richard Nixon would not have been elected the US president. At another level, had King Edward V111 not abdicated the throne in 1936, to marry a twice divorced American, Mrs. Simpson, and been replaced by his younger brother, King George V1, Queen Elizabeth 11 would not now be the British monarch, a position she has now held for over sixty years. Had she not been Queen, we would not now be celebrating the latest royal arrival with so much pomp and pageantry.

    It was sheer luck that brought the former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, to power in 1963, when the tottering Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government was narrowly defeated by Labour in the elections. Hugh Gaitskell, the outstanding leader of the Labour Party, was widely expected to lead the Labour Party to victory in the elections, but died shortly before the elections. He was suspected of being poisoned by the Soviets who preferred Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. Harold Wilson was once quoted as saying that a day in politics is a long time, and that as long as there is death, there is hope for every aspiring politician. On both counts, he was right.

     

  • Aregbesola’s real ‘Transformation’

    Aregbesola’s real ‘Transformation’

    Even the most casual observer of the country cannot help but notice the huge gap between President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2011 campaign slogan of “Transformation” and the facts on the ground; in spite of his administration’s bravest efforts the country has been anything but transformed for the better. On the contrary it has, in spite of all the brave claims to the contrary by the president’s men (and women), been on a slide in almost all sectors of society; employment, education, infrastructure, health, good governance, name it.

    The gap between the presidential rhetoric and the substance of the word has so much discredited it in the public eye that even the Peoples Democratic Party would look foolish to stick with it as its slogan for the next general elections in 2015. Yet there are governors, some PDP, some in the opposition parties, who can credibly use the word to describe the impact their policies and programmes have had on their states since their ascension.

    One such governor is the State of Osun’s Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola. Since coming to power three years ago the man has provoked much gratuitous attack from PDP as the leading opposition party in his state and from some sections of the media variously for adopting a state flag and anthem, for his urban renewal programme and for declaring the first day of the current Islamic year a public holiday, among others.

    Of all the criticisms he has come under, the most reasonable-sounding are about his urban renewal programme. This has involved extensive demolition of buildings and removal of containers used as business premises by road sides. However, as any fair-minded critic would agree, such demolitions and relocations of mobile structures are inevitable; as the chef said, if you want to make omelette you must break eggs.

    And as the governor said on the occasion of his interactive session with the media only last week, urban renewal is not just about the beautification of our cities. More importantly it is also about the health and safety of their residents.

    “Those of you who think I am a Lagosian, I am not a Lagosian,” he said on that occasion. “I was born and bred in Ikare (fifty six years ago). But interestingly, when I was born there and bred there, I found out that there was nothing like what we have now. The colonial masters left a tradition that made it impossible to erect any illegal structure to occupy the frontage of any building. As it was in Ikare, so was it here…It was everywhere in the Western Region.  Then what happened to us? Why was this decline and degeneration? Was that the effect of Independence that there must be a decline? No!”

    The abandonment of proper planning for our towns and cities is obviously what has led to the kind of devastations from floods experienced in recent times and to the easy spread of epidemics occasionally.

    What is important, therefore, in trying to recreate and, of course, improve upon the safety and healthy environment of our colonial past is that no governor hides behind his urban renewal policy to illegally demolish the property of his adversaries or to refuse to pay adequate compensation for properties that have to go. So far no one – not even his worst traducers – has accused Aregbesola of either. Nor has anyone accused the man personally of inflating contracts for selfish reasons.

    One important element of his urban renewal policy is the airport he is building on the outskirts of Osogbo, the state capital. The first time I heard of it, my instinct was to dismiss it as one of those things politicians do more for their symbolism of statehood than for their economic value. Later, however, I found out this one was with a difference; it is mainly to provide West Africa with its only facility for helicopter repair and eventually also for the repair of aeroplanes. Right now, all the aircrafts operating in the country go abroad for such repair.

    One of the marks of effective governance is a leader’s ability to attract direct foreign investment to his charge. Until the last three years under Aregbesola, no governor of the state since its creation in 1991 had attracted any such new investment. Since then, however, three companies have set up shop in the state, the first, a garment company in Osogbo that will employ 3,000 workers, the second in Ilesa that will produce flat screen television, laptops, iPads and phones, and the third, and for me the most important, to produce the potentially revolutionary Opon-Imo (Yoruba for tablet of knowledge) for use not only in the state’s primary and secondary schools but also possibly elsewhere in the country.

    Of all the tools any leader can use to lift the people of his state or country out of their ignorance and poverty none has the effectiveness of this tablet of knowledge. The reason is simple and obvious; knowledge is power and countries all over the world have increasingly come to adopt and adapt the new information technology as the most effective tool for imparting knowledge.

    As a lengthy article in The Economist of June 29 pointed out, even a country as literate as America has had to resort to this new information technology to stop its slide in the international ranking in education during the past three decades from first to tenth of the educational level of those leaving high school, and from third to 13th for college students. The magazine’s earlier editorial piece on the same subject in the same edition showed how the new education technology, edtech for short, has been making a big difference in the learning curve of children and adults alike both in America and elsewhere.

    The wisdom and foresight of Aregbesola in investing much of his state’s lean resources in the new edtech lie in his focus on primary and secondary school education. As a journalism teacher at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in the last five years I can attest to the alarming semi-literacy of undergraduates in this country. The single biggest source of this problem, whose most dramatic manifestation are the scandalous rates of failure in West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) examinations, is obvious; the inexplicable abject neglect of primary and secondary education since the First Republic.

    The economics of Opon-Imo alone should recommend its use all over the country. As the governor pointed out to reporters in defence of his spending on the gadget so far, the accusation that he was being wasteful is laughable.

    “The charlatans,” he said, “bribed their way into our system, stole a document and published it. You all read it. They said we bought all the textbooks, digital textbooks for two hundred million, and that is all we spent for the over fifty-six books that are in Opon-imo. If you are good in mathematics divide 56 textbooks costing 200,000,000 from Evans by 150,000, the cost is 26 Naira. Tell us where you can buy a book for N26. Opon-Imo is a world beater!”

    My own arithmetic showed the unit price was actually N23.80. But the beauty of the tablet of knowledge is not only in its economy but in how effectively it can raise the quality of primary and secondary school education in the country the way it is already doing elsewhere in the world.

    In an article entitled “Pass the Books. Hold the Oil” in The New York Times of March 10, 2012, an article which should interest Nigerians as citizens of a major oil producing country, its columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, said when asked every so often which country was his favourite outside his own, he always mentioned Taiwan.

    “‘Taiwan? Why Taiwan?’ people ask. Very simple,” he said. “Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off of — it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction — yet it has the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world. Because rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence — men and women.”

    Almost alone among the country’s leaders Aregbesola seems to have appreciated the significance of mining the talent, energy and intelligence of the children of his state for its future development by massively investing in their education. The dividend of his faith in the youth as tomorrow’s leaders has already manifesting itself in the latest statistics from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics which shows the state as the first in primary school and girl-child enrolment throughout the country.

    “Steve Job,” as he said in his final words during the media interactive, “was not a super human. He only had early interactions with computers. Bill Gates is not a super human. He only had early encounter with technology. Who says our own pupils cannot? That is our vision.”

    Of course, gadgets alone cannot bring about the realisation of his lofty vision. Along with gadgets you need good teachers, something he has also been investing in. Above all, you need good leaders who teach by example. As I have cause to say on these pages not too long ago, Aregbesola, by his simplicity, humility and uprightness, among other virtues, is among this breed of leaders that are rare in the country.

    Hopefully, he can persuade the citizens of the State of Osun that he is the man to beat at next year’s governorship election in the state.

     

     

     

  • ‘Harry, the Soldier Prince’

    Almost all the major international network news stations are still engrossed in the celebration of the new royal baby, George Alexander Louis. He is to be known as His Royal Highness, Prince George of Cambridge. The frenzy and wide coverage of his birth reminded me of a mini-documentary sometime ago on the charming Prince Harry Williams, the proud father of the baby who is now third in line to the British throne. The documentary, which was aired on Cable News Network, CNN, was titled: “Royal Watchers; Harry, the Soldier Prince”.
    The documentary was on Prince Harry and his numerous engagements. Starting from when he was a baby, the documentary ran through the death of Diana (his mother), his sojourn in the British Army, his diplomatic engagements within Britain and other places, his deployment to Afghanistan for military duties and all that.
    Throughout the period the stuff lasted, I stayed glued to the TV set, watching the moving and captivating scenes. During the burial of his mother, Harry exuded the confidence unexpected of a lad at his age. He was composed, calm and devoid of any trace of emotional distraction, as he followed the hearse bearing the body of his mother in an ornamental casket adorned with a bouquet of flowers.
    As a cadet in the elite Sandhurst Military Academy, Harry was a beautiful sight to behold in his trimmed and well-fitted military uniform. His squad mates who were intermittently interviewed described him as a young officer who responded well to training and military discipline. He was said to mix freely and devoid of the opulence of royalty. Every now and then, he was seen in the video clips either marching side by side with his mates or engaged in one military exercise or another.
    When he was deployed to the battle front in Afghanistan, he was seen flying a combat helicopter along with some of his colleagues. Again, he was shown on foot patrol in full combat gear. The scene then changed from Southern Afghanistan to the northern part of the country, where he went on patrol with the armoured unit stationed there.
    The highlight of that patrol was when his team spotted an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) on their route. The tank came to a halt as Harry got in touch with the bomb disposal unit which mobilised and promptly arrived at the scene in a Tomahawk helicopter. On the approach of the helicopter, Harry had thrown out a fire cracker from the tank, ostensibly to pinpoint the area where the device was buried. This was to prevent the helicopter from landing right on top of the IED, which could spell doom. In a few minutes, the device was detonated and Harry and his team continued their patrol.
    The scenes of his diplomatic shuttles include when he represented his maternal grandmother, the Queen, in Jamaica, Haiti, Canada and the rest. Here, he exhibited the statesman in him to the delight of his numerous hosts and the Queen. Everywhere, he went, he distinguished himself as someone who had the passion to mix freely with children and the downtrodden, shaking their hands, hugging them when necessary and sharing chocolates and drinks with them.
    Of course, his wedding that shook Britain was also well advertised. From Harry, the considerate lover who became a teacher and role model for his wife, Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, to Kate herself who, within a few months, rose to become Britain’s fashion ambassador. In one of the clips, some of the dresses and shoes she wore on some of her engagements became widely sought after as scores of people invaded the shops and emptied them from the shelves as soon as they saw her wear them.
    On a visit to Hollywood in California, Harry and Kate were the cynosure of the crowd that lined the routes they took. Not even the well-known actors and actresses that graced the event received the sort of attention and loud ovation that Harry and his heartthrob were bestowed on by the ecstatic crowd. The crowd also carried several placards, one of which read: “Harry and Kate: All we want is a wave”. That underscores the degree of excitement and warmth displayed by the crowd towards Harry and Kate.
    But by far, the most compelling part of the episode which sent cold shivers down my spines was the visit by Harry to Lesotho, a tiny country located on the southern fringes of Africa where he spent two months in an African jungle among the blacks. What was really astonishing in this part of the entire documentary was that he spent the whole two months attending to and caring for AIDS sufferers who form a large proportion of the population. In a brief interview, he expressed optimism that the problems bedevilling the population would be tackled. But he said it was not something that could be done in two or three years. This means that it was going to be a long distance race, especially when he was told that the greatest danger was the primitive belief among the people that “once an AIDS sufferer goes to bed with a minor, the disease could be cured instantly”.
    In his parting remarks there, Harry promised to get back to the country at least twice in a year, “if his military duties would allow him.” That statement underscores his commitment to assist the poor, a deep sense of empathy with their plight as well as discipline as a military officer who does not want his royal background to interfere with his normal life. It would be recalled that the late Diana, Harry’s mother, was involved in many shuttles to the neglected parts of Africa, Asia and other Third World countries where she offered succour and compassion for the poor during her eventful life time.
    As I watched the documentary from start to finish, something struck me. Here was Harry born with the proverbial silver spoon, raised in royalty yet had passion, compassion and empathy for the dregs of the earth. I remember a time in the past when he was shown in some British newspapers sleeping on the bare floor, in chilling winter cold with a Nigerian youth, his companion. At that time, all he wanted was to experience the life of the homeless tramps in the society who have nowhere to rest their heads.
    The irony of it all is that such display of commonality, as exhibited by Harry, is, to say the least, alien to us in this clime and perhaps, in Africa in general. Those who call themselves royal bloods in this part of the world only have passion to acquire wealth, exhibit outlandish lifestyles, acquire expensive wardrobes, show off crazy limousines and all the rest.
    If you look around, when such spoilt children take over their families’ businesses, they easily run them aground. They are lawless, disrespectful, arrogant and lazy. In most cases, they grow up without any good idea of life except to keep on partying, frolicking in night clubs, drug addiction and all other despicable engagements. By and large, Harry’s documentary is a study in humility, the type that is rarely seen in this part of the universe.
    Now that he is a father. It is expected that Harry will devote more time to his family, wife and the new baby. The British Royal Household has an enduring legacy of good upbringing, care and affection. And they are revered all over the place.
    The other day at an Entrepreneurs’ Organisation, EO, Forum in London, we had the privilege of having dinner right at the British Royal Museum. It was a delightful sight to behold, with various royal ornaments dating back to centuries on display. The highlight of the night was the ceremonial locking of the Queen’s gate at Buckingham Palace. It was such a treasured memory that will linger in the participants’ sub-consciousness for a long time to come. Such is the royalty and regality associated with the British monarchy which Harry and George, his son, third in line to the British throne, are expected to preserve!

  • FRSC Ogere; Al Capone & Al Mustapha: Court Marshal? Electricity Power play

    A  response by Dapo A on lane mile costs in America came. Please note that a kilometre is 0.62miles. So the 132km former Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is just 78miles. In the USA, in urban areas, widening costs $2.4 –$6.9 million per lane-mile. In rural areas, $1.6 – $3.1 million per lane-mile. So draw your own conclusions about JuliusBerger/RCC costs and the 48 month contract for 78 miles.

    The now permanent FRSC Ogere roadblock actually breaks the law by narrowing the two lane federal highway to one lane. It is manned by officers standing in the expressway stopping vehicles. The FRSC man actually smashed the mirror of a vehicle dodging arrest, making the FRSC at Ogere a nuisance, a laughing stock and a cause of traffic jams. The FRSC team, as an obstruction at Ogere, has replaced the trailers moved to parks. Is there no one in FRSC with love of country and authority to dismantle this menace? Deliberate, unnecessary and malicious narrowing of the expressway which takes 60-100 cars a minute to one lane is a punishable and towable offence. Who will tow the FRSC? The possession of a uniform must not promote illegality.

    Let the FRSC re-learn the ‘Soyinka’ civilised ways of road safety and not ‘go slow’. FRSC should promote ‘Right lane driving’ and fight over-speeding. Most commercial vehicles take off from motor parks. FRSC/ NURTW joint motor park inspection, ‘particulars’ checks, load assessments, monitoring, registration and passenger manifests will improve the rights of citizens to a safe journey. Install an ‘FRSC Desk’ in every motor park. Who at FRSC is listening? As for the illegal vehicles, the ‘Stop’ method must be applied in a more ‘Keep Traffic Moving’ friendly manner. FRSC needs to get more success with ‘Preventive FRSC Road Safety Strategies’. Prevention is better than cure.

    Al Mustapha is still in the Nigerian Army. Is he a military role model? As Abacha’s Chief Security Officer, CSO, Al Mustapha’s tenure ‘witnessed’ many targeted, attacked and murdered citizens by ‘someone’ using the Army as ‘cover’. There are several explanations. Perhaps the CSO was innocent but incredibly irresponsible and stupid amounting to gross incompetence, negligence of duty and malicious military malfeasance. Perhaps Al Mustapha was the hands-on military leader of a devil team. Perhaps the victims did kill themselves as suggested by that government.

    Sometimes you do not catch criminals for what they do, but for what they do not do. Al Capone was not jailed for murder but for tax evasion. Is there a parallel between Al Mustapha and Al Capone? They both begin with ‘Al’. They ‘are’ both ‘smooth customers’, considered nasty pieces of work. Fifteen years on, the army must exonerate itself and tell of the Al Mustapha Days. Did he acquit himself as an officer and a gentleman? Should the army sit in judgement on the irrefutable, activities of Major Al Mustapha? The army could consider a Court Marshal for ‘Actions Unbecoming of a Nigerian Officer, let alone a gentleman’.

    There will be a flurry of intimidation, ‘let time heal all wounds’ and let ‘bygones be bygones’ as ‘the blood is dry’. Someone will play the ethnic card of North Vs South or even Kano vs. Katsina and the Yar’Adua connection or the Abubakar financial issues. Then there is the Abacha loot still in safe houses? Al Mustapha will have money, Governor of Kano State, Kakwanso has promised, as he seeks a successor. Even Hitler was never tried, but guilty as sin and won by democratic elections and then unleashed evil. Germany lost that war but has gained the same superpower status through peace. A strong lesson for war mongers seeking to write stupid memoirs to themselves. Thank God for Brig Gen Alabi-Isama for putting the records of Obasanjo’s forgetful ‘My Command’ straight! We must counter with money for prosecution. We must donate to a fund, ‘Abacha Victims Justice Fund’, to get justice – civil, military or moral- before the next generation of Al Mustaphas appear.

    The risk of silence in this matter will accelerate the choreographed ‘Rehabilitation of Al Mustapha’ and the dancing on the graves of ‘The Abacha Dead’. In addition Al Mustapha could be rehabilitated in the army and ‘God Forbid’, be given 15 years back-pay, honourable discharge or promotion. There are enough SANs, resting between political tribunal trials, to suggest that he may sue for ‘wrongful incarceration’ even though he was responsible for most of the court ‘adjournments’. If we are not attentive we may soon be facing Senator, Governor Al Mustapha of Kano State, Minster of Defence, Vice President and President Al Mustapha. After all, many did no less ‘Honourable and Distinguished’ things than Al Mustapha to get into nasty National Assembly, NASS.

    The Abacha Dead have families’ ruined financially and emotionally. What compensation does victims of government violence get when politicians crazily and serially award ‘Life Salaries and Allowances- SAP’- to already fat-cat principal NASS officers? NASS, is there a ‘Victims of Government Violence Compensation Act’ or even an artistic masterpiece monument to the ‘The Abacha Dead’ taller than evil, wider than devilry. For Nigeria’s children to live in peace, we adults, must face our suspected killers and their mentors or lose our children in our lifetime.

    Meanwhile, where is Nigeria’s needed 100,000Mw of electric power? Stolen or lost in Nigeria’ power play?

    Power supply is not nuclear physics; the countries with power have good governance, not criminal politicians with two heads.

  • Allah-De: A model, and a monument

    Allah-De: A model, and a monument

    How time flies!

    It seems only a year or two ago – three at most — that a good many of Alade “Allah De” Odunewu’s contemporaries in his years at Kakawa and a host of his admirers gathered to honour him at ceremonies marking his 80th birthday.

    As befitted the occasion, reminiscences of the Man of the Day filled the air – his essential decency, his quiet dignity, his sardonic wit, his mastery of the art of satire, his unwavering professionalism, and the great mentoring skills he brought to bear on the grooming of a generation of Nigerian newspapermen and women.

    I found myself then thinking about Odunewu and two of his younger contemporaries at Kakawa — Peter Enahoro, who entered Nigerian journalism as “George Sharp” and is much better known as “Peter Pan,” and Sam Amuka who began his journalistic career as “Offbeat Sam,” and morphed later into “Sad Sam.” Though their Kakawa overlapped, each exercised editorial suzerainty at different times over the mighty journalism empire that the late Babatunde Jose built.

    Of the three, Odunewu was the most self-effacing.

    The boyishly handsome face of Enahoro, Odunewu’s star predecessor at the Daily Times adorned his column “Life with Peter Pan.” His bohemian lifestyle perfused it. Amuka signed his column with a sketch of his jaunty, hirsute self wearing a floppy hat and blowing a trumpet from the wrong end, and he lived up to that iconoclastic billing.

    Odunewu permitted only an outline sketch of his face to appear on the column, simply called Allah De. It showed him in a thoughtful, Byronic pose, wearing what looked like a French suit, and a skullcap.

    This depiction, it now seems in retrospect, was his way of signaling that though the “Allah De” column would inevitably be a projection of Alade Odunewu the columnist, it was not going to be extension of his person.

    That, after all, was the tradition at Fleet Street, then the mecca of journalism, a tradition in which he had been schooled at the Regent Street Polytechnic, in London, where he won the highest accolade bestowed on students from the Commonwealth.

    From the first column he wrote for the Daily Times after crossing over from the Allied Newspapers group where he had risen through the ranks to the position of editor-in-chief, you knew you were in the hands of a different person – different in temperament, in style, and in his concerns.

    One of the defining attributes of professionalism, sociologists tell us, is the capacity to separate fact from feeling. On this score, Odunewu must be rated the consummate professional.

    He dissected the issues of the day clinically, based on what he judged to be their merits. You suspected that he had to have some affiliations, if only by virtue of his being human. But you could never guess just what those affiliations consisted in. He kept them discreetly, and I should add, decently, to himself.

    The closest he came to volunteering something about himself was during one of the religious upheavals that have now become endemic in Nigeria, when he revealed that his wife was a Catholic. His Hadj title gave away his identity as a devout Muslim, but you could not guess it from his writing.

    It is not for nothing that Nnamdi Azikiwe, one of the finest newspapermen to emerge from these parts, canonised Odunewu as the dean of Nigerian satirical writing. Satire was the stuff of his work. Master of the well-placed innuendo, and of what the British call “damnation by feint praise,” Odunewu deftly laid bare the follies and foibles of his era without wounding the vanities of the men and women of the moment.

    Enahoro took great pride in being “controversial” and “hard-hitting.” Odunewu was self-effacing even when delivering those gentle jabs, those pin-pricks that in the end proved just as effective, even if not as dramatic, as a sensational knockout.

    Those were my reminiscences when Alade Odunewu turned 80, in 2007.

    He died six days ago, aged 85.

    Not much can be added to the tributes that poured forth on that epochal milestone and have been cascading since he drew his last breath.

    Odunewu knew no retirement or semi-retirement for that matter. Long after he quit active newspapering, he was an influential presence wherever journalism was being discussed, contributing insights and suggesting strategy and tactics, and generally helping to raise its professional and ethical tone.

    He steered the Nigerian Press Council for about a decade, monitoring performance, investigating and adjudicating complaints, and providing magisterial guidance for future conduct. The Council had won only grudging acceptance from the media at its inception and, with a person of lesser specific gravity than Odunewu as chair, it would have been marked for failure.

    For the better part a decade, he presided over the Nigeria Media Merit Awards recognising excellence in various aspects of print and broadcast journalism.

    It is a mark of his commitment to the pursuit of journalistic excellence that he personally endowed one of the most prestigious prizes in the business, the Alade Odunewu Prize for Informed Commentary, administered by the premier industry journal, Lanre Idowu’s Media Review.

    Now was it an accident that when new titles entering the Nigerian newspaper market used his name and prestige as strong selling points. Thus it was with The Guardian at its launch in 1984, and much later, in 1999, with The Comet, now defunct, where managing director Lade “Ladbone” Bonuola proudly introduced him as “our leader.”

    Without question, he will be remembered as one of the greatest pillars of Nigerian journalism — pillar by force of personal example, by tireless exertion. In that respect, he was a model.

    He was also a monument – monument to an enduring commitment to the best practices in journalism, to “All The News That’s Fit to Print,” as the evocative motto of The New York Times has it.

    His public service also bore the stamp of distinction. As the Commissioner for Information and Tourism in Lagos State from 1973 through 1975, he helped nurture and consolidate the state’s communications infrastructure. His even temperament and innate sense of fairness and justice suited him especially for the post of Lagos State Public Complaints Commissioner, a remit he discharged with his accustomed distinction.

    As a member of the Federal Electoral Commission that midwifed Nigeria’s transition from military rule to republican democracy in 1979, he was a front-row witness in the manipulations, the opportunistic revisions and the desperate fudging that handed Shehu Shagari and the NPN victory at the first ballot during the presidential race. But you could never get him to discuss them even off the record.

    A man of the utmost discretion, he seemed to have resolved to take those secrets with him to the grave. That may explain, at least in part, why he never wrote his memoirs when he was so abundantly endowed for the task.

    In more than four decades at the front ranks of journalism and public service in a country where the next major scandal is just one news bulletin away, Alade Odunewu served and thrived without being tainted even by a whiff of impropriety.

    There is no greater tribute.

     

    Portions of this article first appeared in my December 11, 2007, column for this newspaper, titled “The Kakawa Triumvirate”.

     

  • The metaphor of Abia Tower

    Two coloured birds sat complacently atop the Abia Tower this cloudy Sunday evening. They were chatting away happily, oblivious of the chaos of motorists below the height of about 100 meters. The gigantic concrete tower stands at the middle of the Port-Harcourt/Enugu Expressway at the interjection into Umuahia metropolis. Beyond its towering height and aesthetic grandeur, there is a quite significant meaning and message in the edifice. The imposing tower, built in Gothic cathedral designs with a concave metallic arch, is the first structure that welcomes one into the Abia State capital. With a certain reassuring air, it announces this hospitality with a bold inscription: Welcome to Abia ; God’s Own State. There are four of this inscription facing the four directions of the road, all written in bold white letters on a background of black metallic plates. The walls are painted in pink and light yellow colours which glow with the translucent lights overlooking the ground from the height. I see the tower as the first brand ambassador of Abia State and it has consistently lived up to this billing with the warmth and friendliness conjured into its magical designs – a quality it transmits to visitors and residents alike as they behold its majestic heights. It embraces everyone and quickly introduces the people and the style of the incumbent leadership. Since 1991 when the tower was built, it has remained a landmark structure with some architectural elegance around it. There is an effort, perhaps unconscious, to re-enact the surreal Gothic designs with its galloping pillars and the hollowness of its interior. A ring of iron bars encircles and secures it and there is a staircase that leads to the first elevation where a greenery of flowers has been laid out like a farm around it. There is a clear effort to create an enduring and beautiful statute. But, there is obviously no intension to have the tower speak in political tunes or stand as a fore-runner to the style of a current political leadership. All former leaders before Governor Theodore Orji saw it as only what it is – a statute, a tower. They could not see the potential in the concrete object as a great image-maker for the state and for the manner of leadership. Indeed, the Abia tower is an embodiment of the Abia story – a journey through stagnation and then revival. It is an epical monument capturing a dispensation in the people’s movement. Though a mere object of cement and gravel, it projects the message that is Governor Orji’s travails and triumph in the corridors of power. It celebrates the revival and the rebirth that are the governor’s stewardship. Before 2007 when Governor Orji came on board, the tower was a statement of stagnation. In very unmistakable terms, it told the story of the style and manner of leadership of Governor Orji’s predecessor. The tower was weather-beaten, dirty, dilapidated and literally abandoned. Happy and well-fed spiders built a mast of cobwebs around its concave parapets. The paintings wore out and the smooth surfaces peeled. The surroundings remained unkempt and overgrown with the inner pavement transforming into a defecation point for hoodlums and motor parks boys around the place. Some letters of the bold inscription cleaned off and the walls cracked with neglect. It was a shoddy sight which provided a parallax view of the eight-years of Abia’s stagnation. In year 2000, when I accompanied some tourists, journalists and movie-makers to attend the eight-day UgwuAbia cultural festival, the Abia tower was an eyesore. It was a demeaning testimony of neglect and stagnation and it spoke volumes about the style of the government of the day. Thank God! Today, there is a new Abia tower. Quite cleverly, Governor Orji saw an opportunity in the tower to tell the message of his vision and the giant political strides. Upon ascension to power in 2007, he quickly renovated the tower and has consistently maintained it as a treasure for the state. Since then, the towering structure has continued to wear a new and sparkling look. It has recovered its charm and mystique. With the new paintings, the bold inscription has come alive. On the ground and around the surroundings, there is a beautiful greenery dotted with flowers. And in place of the old garbage is a beautiful arcade which has added to the beauty of the landscape of this inroad into Umuahia. Indeed, the Abia tower of today speaks eloquently of the new Abia. The new, beautiful outlook, in abstract forms, represent the rebirth and the attendant changes that have come with the liberation. It is a testimony of Governor Orji’s transformation efforts transmuted in a concrete structure. This transformation has seen to the laying of a fresh foundation for Abia, an enterprise under which he converted Abia into a huge construction site. There are many sides to the message of the new tower. The first is the testimony of the two coloured birds. The sense of order and tranquility conjured by the uniformity of the design and the paintings represent the new society of law and order which is the current status of Abia. This air of peace evokes the memory of the governor’s pragmatic struggle to create a society of law and order out of the chaos of the past. There was a time when Abia was almost like a pariah state due to the challenges posed by kidnappers. Today, Abia is an oasis of sanity in the federation. There is security in Aba, Umuahia and other parts of Abia State, a situation that has transformed Abia to a destination of choice for major national events. The JAMB, NUJ, CBN, Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) and other national organizations have all come to Abia to hold their conferences and retreats. This is a testimony to the success of Orji’s commitment and policy in the area of security. From being a pariah state, Abia is now a destination of choice. The second message is coming from the renovated walls of the tower. It speaks of the governor’s large-scale programme of infrastructural renewal. Under this programme, Orji started by laying a totally fresh foundation for the state. With a paltry federal allocation, he has been able to build legacy projects, like the world-class Conference Centre in Umuahia, the new four-storey Secretariat Complex, the new Government House, the Abia Diagnostic Centre in Umahia and Aba, the new High Court building, new modern offices for the Broadcasting Corporation of Abia and a host of other monumental projects. The roads in Aba and Umuahia have been transformed. The third message lay buried in the beautiful grounds and greenery of flowers around the tower. I see it this the governor’s agricultural revolution and his efforts to revive the time-honoured Abia agro-economy. Under this effort, he revived the cashew and palm tree plantations of old. He disbursed N1 billion micro-credit to farmers and established the liberation farms in the 17 local councils of the state. Already, 50 Abians are working at the Okeikpe farms, the pilot project of the liberation farms where plantain is being bred Truly, the Abia tower is a lucid narrative about Abia’s transformation. • Adindu is the President-general of the Abia Renaissance Movement (ARM)

  • As al-Mustapha prepares to join PDP…

    As al-Mustapha prepares to join PDP…

    When Major Hamza al-Mustapha, former Chief Security Officer to late Head of State, General Sani Abacha was recently discharged and acquitted of change of murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Bashorun M.K.O Abiola, by an Appeal Court in Lagos, it felt like somebody messing in ones mouth and putting salt as well, as the Yoruba would say.

    The mess, one can’t swallow, the salt one cannot spit out, if you understand what that means. It was a sweet/bitter verdict that could be described as both victory and defeat for justice at the same time. To al-Mustapha and family, it was victory for justice while the Abiola family naturally felt otherwise. I guess most Nigerians felt the same way as the Abiolas but because the appellate court had spoken, are resigned to leaving everything in the hands of God, the ultimate judge.

    But the Lagos state government (the prosecutor in this case) I guess, might not be inclined to handing over to God yet, as there is still one window of appeal to the Supreme Court left and might be willing to explore that, if only to be seen to have tried everything legally possible to get what the majority (at least in the South west) believes to be justice in this celebrated murder case.

    I deliberately refused to join the bandwagon in condemning or praising al-Mustapha’s acquittal for obvious reasons even though I smelt rat in the whole thing. I could see politics at play here even though one could not point at any particular politician as being behind it. But with speculations in the air that al-Mustapha is about to pitch his tent with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), coupled with the reception he got when he visited the Government House in Kano shortly after his release, one needs no soothsayer to conclude that the former CSO had the support of the ruling party while his trial lasted.

    It might not be out of place to also conclude that the powers that be in the north were sympathetic towards al-Mustapha’s cause as could be seen not only in the enthusiastic welcome he had received so far from his home region, but also in the shocking silence of that class on how to get justice for the Abiolas, after all somebody shot and killed Kudirat and the person was acting under somebody’s order. So, who did it and who gave the order? Until that person or those people are found and punished, al-Mustapha remains guilty in the minds of the people here, the show of shame by Dr Fredrick Faseun of the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) hailing his acquittal notwithstanding.

    In spite of the court’s verdict, if al-Mustapha and his co-accused as they were then, had a hand in Kudirat’s murder or any of the numerous unresolved murders of the Abacha era, definitely they will not go unpunished, both here and in the hereafter.

    My concern here is not even about their punishment if they were indeed involved in the murder, but the red carpet being given to al-Mustapha in particular as if (the murder case apart) he was a honourable, just and competent officer while he held court as the unseen number two in the administration of the late maximum ruler. Don’t forget that al-Mustapha, a mere Major in the Nigerian Army was more powerful than most of his seniors, Major Generals et al including the official second in command in that regime, a three-star General, Lt. General Oladipo Diya. After Abacha, no other person was most feared than al-Mustapha.

    Have we suddenly forgotten all those revelations made at the Oputa panel about the activities of the death squad of that regime that were answerable only to al-Mustapha? Has anybody been punished? If al-Mustapha had no hand in the killing of Kudirat what of the other crimes committed under his watch as CSO? Are we sweeping such under the carpet or has he been cleared? Until we are told that the man is free of all the baggage attached to him as Abacha’s CSO, it would be wrong to parade him as a kind of a hero or victim of vendetta as he wants us to believe. It would even be worse if any political party should roll out the red carpet for him and admit him into its fold.

    It is unfortunate that the PDP already smells opportunities for electoral gains in the release of al-Mustapha, and the young man himself seems to wants to make political capital of it. Apart from visiting the Government House, Kano, controlled by the PDP, shortly after his release, he had been making some political comments and visitations as well.

    He was at the Abuja home of the leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahideen Asari-Dokubo at the weekend where he was beating his chest as being the one whose actions shortly after Abacha’s death gave birth to this democracy. Can you imagine that, coming from an al-Mustapha? He wants us to praise him for not taking over power then, which he could have easily done according to him if he wanted to. What an insult? I think the young man is better advised to take it easy and lie low for some time and not reopen healing wounds. His choice of words and association tend to portray a man with an exaggerated view of his value. The Asari-Dokubo that he visited would either be in detention or a dead man under the Abacha administration that he served. We have not forgotten who killed Ken Saro Wiwa.

    In any case politics they say is all about interest. So, an Asari-Dokubo can hobnob with an al-Mustapha? Wonders shall never cease. All for a Jonathan presidency again in 2015? So all those derogatory things Asari-Dokubo has been saying about the north, what E. K Clark, the Ijaw leader has been saying against the Hausa/Fulani no longer hold water as long as al-Mustapha can help win the northern votes for President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015? Nigeria we hail thee.

    Since al-Mustapha’s release, different Ijaw groups and leaders have been failing over each other to outdo one another in hailing his acquittal, nothing wrong in that if only they are genuine and sincere, but we all know why; 2015. But al-Mustapha should remember the party story of the Biafran leader late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegu Ojukwu, who because he was granted pardon by the NPN government of President Shehu Shagari in the second republic, quickly joined the on his return from exile and took Ndigbo to NPN, thinking that the interest of his people, who had followed Dr Nnamdi Azikwe to NPP that time would be better protected in the ruling party, he was wrong. The rest is history.

    Nothing personal against al-Mustapha, but he should tread softly and realise that the murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola is still fresh and hurting in our memory, beating his chest all over the place or jumping into the political arena would do nothing to heal the wounds, he needs to show remorse and seek ALLAH’s forgiveness for the pains he inflicted on so many Nigerians as Abacha’s CSO. This is more honourable than joining the political fray. A word for President Jonathan and his group as well, Nigerians are no fools again; our mumu don do.

     

  • Oil theft and a minister’s lament

    Oil theft and a minister’s lament

    Did anyone watch the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala bemoan, on TV, the nation’s daily loss of 400,000 barrels of crude before the House of Representatives Joint Committee on Appropriation/Finance two weeks ago?

    It is not impossible that many Nigerians passed off that latest signature cluelessness of the Jonathan administration to the festering menace as one of one of those things – another instance of the systemic meltdown under the current managers – more out of indifference to its trademark incompetence than anything else.

    Unfortunately, we are talking of a development that is at the heart of the survival of the Nigerian nation, a malaise that the nation can pass off only at its peril.

    Picture a minister in charge of the exchequer passing off a loss nearly equal to 20 percent of its projected revenue for a given year? And this presented merely as footnote in the context of turf war between the executive and the legislature over the shape and size of budget – as against what should have been a red flag to summon citizens to war?

    Don’t ask me how bad things can further get. I doubt if it could be worse.

    Those who say Nigeria is a country of infinite possibilities are damn right. What are we talking about here? At a conservative estimate of $100 a barrel, we are talking of a daily loss of $40 million; that is a princely loss of N2.184tn per annum – a figure nearly 50 percent of the entire federal government budget for 2013 – and this lost to shadowy operators!

    The obverse side of the tragedy is that the Jonathan administration does not even know the fraction of the 400,000 barrels stolen!

    Ten percent, 20, or more? Even President Jonathan’s acclaimed coordinator of the economy wouldn’t attempt a guesstimate beyond that “it is not as if the entire 400,000 barrels is stolen, no”.

    Really? What more does she know? “That whenever the pipelines are attacked and oil is taken, there is a total shut down. All the quantity of oil produced for that day will be lost because it means government cannot sell it and it means a drop in revenue.” Good heavens! How about offering Nigerians that for consolation and that coming from our Ivy League minister!

    Let’s attempt a simple arithmetic, taking a conservative figure of 10 percent of the amount as representing the stolen crude. That is some $4 million dollars daily –lost to the illicit trade and in the Gulf of Guinea region that already enjoys the dubious reputation of being one of the most under-policed regions of the world?

    Well, I’m told that the sum is enough to finance Gulf War 11!

    Is anyone still in doubt that the nation is sitting on gunpowder?

    And what did our distinguished lawmakers do? Nothing. No summons to the Petroleum Minister. None to the Navy authorities or even the entire defence establishment. Does anyone see how easy it is for the abnormal to become norm in these parts? No wonder our bored but sometimes hyperactive lawmakers have since moved on to attend to other matters!

    In this however, the lawmakers would seem by far less culpable than the ‘dovish’ Commander-in-Chief under whose watch the nation is being violated and bled.

    In the first place, given what we know of the illicit trade, it is hardly done under the cover of darkness. It cannot be. Hard to imagine is how those super-tankers mooring to the shore to steal Nigeria’s crude escape being caught under the radar of the Amphibious Brigade of the Nigerian Army or the continent’s second largest Navy? And we are told that the business is a daily occurrence? Who’s kidding?

    Let me put things in proper perspective. Oil theft is certainly nothing new – at least not in these parts. At Obasanjo coming in 1999, the daily loss to the activities of criminals stood at some point at 100,000 barrels per day. To its credit, the administration, rather than whine about the menace, actually brought the illegal trade down to 30,000 barrels per day or even less by 2003. The reversal of the achievement, which began under the Yar’Adua administration, is what has now hit the record levels of 400,000 barrels per day under President Goodluck Jonathan.

    To have a clearer sense of the disaster that is daily visited on the nation is to imagine a corporation losing nearly 20 percent of its revenue, not to acts of nature but to activities that are within the purview of those charged with running it. Surely, that would be a good ground for an extraordinary meeting by shareholders to sack both the board and executive management; that is if they are lucky to get out apiece as against seeking a renewal of woeful tenure!

    The greater tragedy is that all this is happening at a time of great dynamism in the oil industry globally. One of the major developments is the revolution in shale oil sub sector primed to ensure that oil imports by leading consumers like the US is drastically curtailed. From barely 111,000 barrels per day production in 2004, the United States ramped up its shale oil output to 553,000 barrels per day in 2011 – an annualised growth rate of 26 percent during the period. As if the trend is not ominous enough for the oil-producer OPEC cartel, the country’s oil imports is said to be down to its lowest levels in two decades with shale oil projected to displace hydrocarbon imports by 35-40 percent in the long term.

    If you thought that an OPEC member country like Nigeria ought to have gone to the drawing board to assess the likely impacts of the shale oil revolution on its revenues, budgets and the economy as a whole, you are tragically mistaken. Indeed, OPEC’s sixth largest producer hasn’t even shown signs of joining the debate anytime soon, not to talk of seeking to evolve a strategy to mitigate the potential long term effects of the revolution on its revenues. Instead, what we have is a nation hung on the menace of oil theft, a legislature on spendthrift mode, and a President on global shuttle looking for foreign help to protect its exclusive economic zone when he should be at his War Room issuing orders to his men to end the menace!

    Let me reiterate what I said at the beginning; it couldn’t get worse. I mean it.

  • Of leaders and dealers: Soyinka Vs Clark

    Of leaders and dealers: Soyinka Vs Clark

    A community with worthy elders never comes to ruin – Yoruba proverb 

    When do elders morph from leaders to dealers?

    The latest foxtrot on the Rivers crisis, by the South-South Elders and Stakeholders, a group led by Pa Edwin Clark, Ijaw leader and presidential godfather, might just offer a clue.

    The Clark-led elders, on July 24, told Governor Chibuike Amaechi to stop blaming President Goodluck Jonathan and Patience, his ever-meddling wife, for the contrived Rivers crisis; told the governor to shape in or shape out; told the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to kick out the governor to serve as warning to other power renegades; pooh-poohed the four northern governors that went on a solidarity visit to Amaechi as cynical meddlers; and branded Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, as an arch-hypocrite who wept more than the bereaved at the legislative banditry of the Rivers G-5, while he kept mute in earlier legislative outlawry in Oyo (where Governor Rashidi Ladoja was illegally impeached) and Soyinka’s native Ogun State (when Governor Gbenga Daniel inspired legislative lawlessness in his gubernatorial dying days).

    Indeed, they practically did a pun on the famous author of The Man Died and his work: that the man died in the Nobel Laureate for his alleged quiet at constitutional outrages in Oyo and Ogun states; while jerking awake at the repeat of the same crime in their Rivers!

    But, of course, Clark and his “elders”, in their release, never bothered with the rigour of reason. All they barked, conceited folks, was the language of power, boasting neither wisdom nor reason.

    The whole thing was some dumb smartie’s response to the five northern governors’ “Save Democracy tour” to former President Olusegun Obasanjo (Jonathan’s estranged godfather), Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, three former soldiers ironically pitched to help save democracy under Jonathan’s reckless assault!

    But again, the Clark gambit was a classic from the brilliant dullness of the Jonathan court: no tactics, no strategy, just stark power blundering and bumbling!

    Even then, if the so-called elders wilfully lost a bit of their wisdom in anticipation of some power gravy, can’t their young Turks at least work hard to safeguard the integrity of their claims?

    The Clark group made the fantastic claim that Soyinka kept mute during the legislative anomie in Oyo and Ogun states. But this claim is either criminal forgetfulness or plain mischief.

    On the Ladoja illegal impeachment, Soyinka called for Obasanjo’s impeachment, linking the Oyo legislative crisis to his complicity – just as Jonathan’s link to the present Rivers affront is crystal clear.

    “Obasanjo has acted sufficiently against the constitution to warrant his impeachment,” Soyinka declared on 20 January 2006. “There is more than enough evidence to warrant his impeachment”.

    That was even a case of 18 (a simple majority) removing the governor in a 32-member legislature, which nevertheless fell short of the constitutionally required two-thirds majority: not a case of Rivers’ “simple minority” of five versus 27! AFP, with Nigerian newspapers, reported the Soyinka stand.

    On the Gbenga Daniel legislative shenanigans in Ogun, where the minority G-9 overthrew the majority G-15, Soyinka was no less hard-hitting. “I wish to state, categorically, this cannot and must not be allowed to stand. I call on the citizens of the state to ensure democracy is restored. A minority” he insisted, “cannot sack a majority”.

    Indeed, since Soyinka’s famous “Daani Elebo” laconic putdown, he had visited every OGD misdeed with ringing condemnation, including dismissing OGD’s as “government by billboard”.

    But where was Clark’s beloved presidential godson in all of these? Feigned culpable disinterest enough to name and retain Daniel as his South West presidential campaign coordinator! For Jonathan, it was, it is and ever shall be: to win and keep power, every constitutional breach is tolerable!

    All these were in the public space. They are eminently verifiable with a push of the computer keyboard. Yet, Clark and his elders made such an outlandish claim! Might these elders suffer criminal senility, just to patch up the ultra-bad case of their beloved godson?

    Even if Soyinka had kept mum: does that justify the criminality in the Rivers Assembly of five (with a fake mace to boot!) trying to overthrow the will of 27, simply because of collusion from Jonathan’s Nigeria Police? That is the futility and hollow arrogance of power, while these so-called South-South elders ought to have built their case on rigour and reason. It falls flat – even in the ears of the dumb!

    But Soyinka was right: if Obasanjo had been impeached for the Ladoja outrage or Jonathan seriously reprimanded for playing dumb, for electoral gain, on the OGD-inspired Ogun legislative crime, this nonsense would not have repeated itself; and the Clark “elders” would not ridicule themselves with woolly thinking to back constitutional evil.

    But maybe it is good Jonathan is pushing his good luck. And maybe, if he pushes it enough, he just might be impeached to avert any future presidential rascality! Did these elders ever think of this dire possibility?

    Really, it is amusing Clark of all people would doubt Soyinka’s total commitment to a Nigeria driven by equity, justice and fair play, and not arbitrary power. Indeed, when Soyinka landed in Ibadan in 1969, after his Civil War Kaduna incarceration, his first response to the war-time jingle, “To keep Nigeria One …” was a snappy riposte: “Justice must be done!”

    A younger Clark was busy collaborating with the same northern forces he now wants to demonise, to willy-nilly protect his godson – a power he doesn’t even have. But that is the way of Nigeria’s power men and women of all seasons!

    Soyinka comes from a diametrically opposed culture: justice men and women of all seasons. And names like Obafemi Awolowo, Tai Solarin, Ayodele Awojobi, Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana – do they ring a bell? They stand for justice and fair play and would battle anyone, no matter where he comes from, even within their own Yoruba stock, that essays impunity.

    So those orchestrated merchants of vulgar abuse, who claim the Yoruba are their problems because Soyinka told Jonathan to rein in his henchmen and women in Port Harcourt, miss the point.

    The Nigerian Presidency is not South-South property. Whoever occupies that post must play by the rules or face the flak of right-thinking citizens – Nigeria is a republic, after all! So it is with President Jonathan.

    As for Clark’s grouse with the visiting northern governors, the late Chuba Okadigbo called it “political arithmetic”. If Jonathan, with his power delusion and certified incompetence, alienates a wide swath of the North and a good chunk of the South West, how does he hope to win a second term? Indeed, if his party is in disarray and he is, for ego, planting further insurrection in his back yard, how does his centre hold?

    Elders are supposed to be wise. Clark and co must do some hard thinking, save Jonathan from self-inflicted ruin and stop playing to juvenile gallery.