The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Poverty of the marginalisation discourse

    Poverty of the marginalisation discourse

    There are two aspects to the issue of the alleged marginalisation of the Yoruba in the country’s contemporary political economy by the President Goodluck Jonathan administration – a matter of topical discourse in recent times. First is that raised by the reform-minded Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) and has to do with the perceived persecution or bias against the South-West states in recruitment into different arms of the public service including the alleged mass retrenchment of officers from the region in certain ministries, departments and agencies of the Federal Government. This perceived marginalisation is of an essentially purely constitutional and legal nature as it revolves around the Federal Character principle provided for in the constitution. The imperative of reflecting the country’s federal character in appointments and recruitment into public agencies is meant to meet the criteria of fairness and balance in an ethno-culturally plural polity like ours without negating the critical factor of merit. To demonstrate this allegation of marginalisation of the South West, the ARG cited the example of 792 cadet officers recently recruited for training at the Customs Training College, Kano, with 263 from the North West, 168 from the North Central, 157 from the North East, 91 from the South-South, 68 from the South East and 45 from the South West. It would, of course, be important to know the total number of applicants from the various geo-political zones involved in this particular exercise as well as the criteria for recruitment before an objective and informed conclusion can be reached. There will also be the need for more detailed information on the recruitment, elevation and attrition statistics across a wider cross section of the service for a scientifically rigorous position to be taken. However, this form of marginalisation depicted by the ARG can be challenged legally as it involves constitutional issues and the Federal Character Commission can be taken to task on the discharge of its responsibilities. In the same vein, anyone unjustly dismissed from the public service simply for reasons of alleged ‘ethnic cleansing’ can seek legal redress.

    However, the second form of marginalisation complained of by the Yoruba Unity Forum (YUF) is largely political and far more controversial. The YUF is largely made up of progressive politicians of the older generation, mostly identified with the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s political thought and practice. They include respected elder statesmen such as Chief Reuben Fasoranti, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Chief Olu Falae. Speaking on behalf of the group recently, Chief Olu Falae lamented that the pattern of political appointments by the Jonathan administration “is an attempt to excise the zone out of the federation.” He specifically contended that the interest of the South West had been negatively affected by the “side-tracking” of the Yoruba from such key positions as President, Vice-President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Deputy Speaker of the House, Acting President, Court of Appeal, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief of Staff to the President, Office of the National Security Adviser and the Head of Service of the Federation. I personally do not see what the millions of ordinary people in Yoruba land are missing because a member of their ethnic group is in none of these so-called key positions to “eat” on their behalf. After all, there are several illustrious Yoruba indigenes in the Federal Executive Council even if some would complain they are not in the so-called ‘juicy’ ministries (whatever that means).

    It is indeed not difficult to demonstrate the poverty of the kind of marginalisation discourse pursued by the YUF and Chief Olu Falae. A Yoruba man occupied the most important office in the land between 1999 and 2007. Did that improve the fortunes of Yoruba land? Did it reduce the level of unemployment and abject poverty in the region? Did it help in upgrading infrastructure? Despite Obasanjo’s dismal first term performance, the ‘progressive’ leaders of the region urged support for him in 2003 simply because he “is our son”. Of course, the wily soldier-farmer exploited the opportunity to rout the opposition and install PDP ‘mainstream’ governors in five of the six South West states excluding Lagos. The fortunes of the region continued to nosedive abysmally until the progressive resurgence that has resulted in the current developmental renaissance across the ACN states. The poverty-stricken state of most of the north today, despite the dominance of power at the centre of the region’s power elite for most of our post-independence history, makes nonsense of the notion that having your kinsmen occupying ‘juicy positions’ is a guarantee of development. It is equally as fallacious to contend that because Jonathan, an Ijaw man, is President today, means that the Niger Delta is any less marginalised than before he got into office.

    The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of Nigerians, irrespective of ethno-regional origins or religious faith, will continue to be marginalised from prosperity, excellent health care, qualitative and affordable education, effective security, first class infrastructure and jobs for as long as we maintain this monstrous structure that enables a few parasitic and ravenous elite to congregate at the centre through “key appointments” to engage in a feeding orgy ostensibly on behalf of “their people”. I identify fully with the view that we must substantially restructure this deformed federation to ensure substantial decentralisation of powers, responsibilities and resources to the lower levels of government to stimulate development from bottom up and not the other way round. Chief Falae argues that the South West supported Jonathan massively in the 2011 elections and that the President “got the endorsement of many Yoruba progressives, especially the leadership of the Yoruba Unity Forum”. Now, was this support given to Jonathan because the Yoruba voters wanted their kinsmen given “key appointments” or because they believed Jonathan could offer the nation effective and transformational leadership? Similarly, the argument has been made that Yoruba activists were prominent in the Save Nigeria Group (SNG) that insisted that Jonathan assume office as President in accordance with the constitution following the late President Jonathan’s incapacitation. Again, was this advocacy that the constitution should be adhered to borne out of principle or to secure future appointment favours?

    I see absolutely no reason why a Mrs.Mulikat Adeola-Akande should be preferable as Speaker of the House to an Aminu Tambuwal. All that matters is that the dynamics of the political process was allowed to play itself out in accordance with the constitution and stipulated rules. It does not matter one bit to the welfare of the vast majority of the people in the South West if a Yoruba is Senate President, Chief Justice of Nigeria, Head of Service or any of those other positions. What matters is that all positions be filled on merit, fair play and due process. In any case all this distracting marginalisation discourse does little credit to the amazing competitive developmental strides being undertaken today across the South-West including Edo State. That matters more to me than some parasitic “come and eat” appointments at the centre. Let us end with the following extract from a message sent to the Western Regional Conference of the Action Group in Ibadan on 6th July, 1963, by Chief Obafemi Awolowo who said “It has been suggested with unabashed falsity, that the Yorubas are being relegated to the background in the affairs of the Federal Government, partly because the Yorubas are not united, and partly because the Action Group has not participated in the affairs of the Federal Government like the NCNC and NPC…whilst the Action Group does not participate in the Federal Government since January 1960, some outstanding Yorubas have been in the Council of Ministers since the last Federal elections…It must be recalled that the Action Group did participate in the Federal Government from 1957 to 1959; and it would be interesting to know what the Yorubas gained especially because of this participation”.

  • Islam’s future in America

    Instinct is the main cursor of vision. It is the indicator of where today’s ship will anchor tomorrow. A man without instinct can be likened to a blind bull struggling to pass through the hole of a needle. Without instinct there can be neither projection nor premonition. All visionary prophesies are based on instinct.

    It was only by instinct that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was able to prophesy the signs of the last days when he said: “One of the signs of the last days is for the sun to rise in the West and set in the East….” This prophecy is pregnant with meanings. Which sun was the Prophet talking about? Was it the physical or the hypothetical? Only a few people of other religions in history were able to comprehend that prophecy as much as the celebrated (Christian) Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).

    Based on his understanding of the contents of the Prophecy, Shaw decided to study Islam through deep researches. And consequently, he concluded as follows:

    “The Medieval Ecclesiastics, either through ignorance or bigotry, painted Mohammedanism (Islam) in the darkest colours. In fact, they were trained both to hate the man Muhammad and his religion. To them he was anti-Christ… I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing face of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him, the wonderful man, and in my opinion, far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the saviour of humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness.

    I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today…”

    America was just emerging as a champion of the modern world when Bernard Shaw made his famous prediction quoted above. Western civilisation was then restricted to Europe and Shaw had taken any emerging civilisation from America as an extension of that of Europe. He had thought that whatever would be acceptable to Europe ought to be automatically acceptable to the emerging power of the New World, the former being an offshoot of the latter. He was right.

    Although, Islam had reached America long before Christopher Columbus arrived in what was then perceived as a New World, very little was known about the Muslims in that country until 1886 when one Noble Drew Ali of North Carolina started to spread Islamic faith to the black masses in the new world. However, that Noble D. Ali’s jihad became prominent with the growth of media influence in the United States did not necessarily make him the first American Muslim preacher.

    It is on record that the famous Arab geographer Al-Idrisi (1100-66) wrote about Muslim sailors who ventured from Lisbon to the Caribbean and were met on arrival by native people who could speak Arabic. Those natives were already preaching the divine religion through their culture and traditional lifestyle.

    Al-Idrisi, (according to Encarta Encyclopaedia) was an Arab geographer, scientist, and author of one of the greatest geographic works of the medieval world. He travelled widely throughout the Mediterranean region, and joined the court of Roger II of Sicily in about 1145 where he worked in Palermo for the rest of his life. His major works include a ‘silver plan sphere’ showing a world map, a sectional map of the world, and a geography text (the Book of Roger) that contains information from his own travels and reports from persons sent from Sicily to obtain new information. (See Encarta Premium 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation).

    Since inception, Islam has not only been spreading its tentacle across the geo-political arena of the world while playing a pivotal role in reshaping the world economic order it has also been living up to its reputation as the fastest growing religion in the world. The evidence of this is vivid in the United States where the growth of Muslim community is on an average of 350,000 per annum.

    Today, Bernard Shaw’s prediction of the early 20th century is no longer a mere dream. It has rather become a reality with geometric acceleration. Today, there are about 2,106 mosques and 300 Islamic schools in the US. These, added to about 750 Muslim associations, the community is in control of over 330,000 businesses as well as 210 regular publications. All of these are not only providing jobs for the residents. They are also enhancing America’s social security.

    The top five states with the highest number of mosques are: New York: 257; California: 246 3; Texas: 166: Florida: 118; Illinois: 109 and New Jersey: 109.

    Muslim population in America increased dramatically with a large influx of Muslim immigrants following the liberalisation of US immigration policies in the 1960s. According to a 1993 report by the American Muslim Council, there were between 5 and 6 million Muslims in the US in 1999. The ethnic percentages of this population were then put as follows: African American: 42%; Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi: 24%; Arabs 12.4%; Africans: 5.2%; Iranians: 3.6%; Turkish: 2.4%; Southeast Asia: 2%; White Americans: 1.6% and others: 6.4% excluding 5,000 Hispanic Muslims.

    Among these, women accounted for over 75% of European American Muslims. And about 70% of Muslims in the US lived in 10 states. These were: California , New York , Illinois , New Jersey , Indiana , Michigan , Virginia , Texas , Ohio and Maryland . As far back as 1910, African Muslims had exceeded a population of 100,000 in the South American country of Brazil. And long before then the West had taken vivid interest in Islam and the lands it dominated all over the world.

    But despite over 60,000 publications by the Western Orientalists between 1800 and 1950 disparaging that divine religion and denigrating the personality of prophet Muhammad (SAW), Islam continued to wax stronger even as it displayed dynamic tendencies on a regular basis. Today, with a global population of about 1.7 billion adherents in the world and with certain mundane ideologies and philosophies crumbling like a pack of cards, Islam has remained an unstoppable religion, the implacable hostility of the West to it notwithstanding.

    Islam made its first physical appearance on American soil in the sixteenth century when Muslims were brought as slaves from Africa but were forced to convert to Christianity. These Muslims were followed by a new wave of immigrants who came in the late nineteenth century as labourers from Middle Eastern countries like Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In the second half of the twentieth century, a large number of Muslims came from virtually every country of the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia who were more sophisticated than their predecessors. As those immigrants settled in large cities and small towns, they built mosques, Islamic cultural centres, and schools. Although African-American Islam emerged in the early twentieth century, it was not until the sixties and seventies that Islam through them became visible, but yet a religion of immigrants, in the American society. Today, Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and the third largest religion after Christianity and Judaism. Given this fact and taking into consideration the new wave of American Muslims (i.e., first generation children of immigrants, Americans converting to Islam, and the growing African American Muslim community), Islam has finally emerged as an American religion. American Muslims, who have grown in number to about well over million, have succeeded in transforming Islam into an American religion, but these Muslims seem to be more concerned about their survival as a religious minority in a largely un-Islamic society. American Muslims have so far resisted adaptation and change in a Judeo-Christian society based upon secular values. Today, American Muslims live as a minority “in a dominant culture often ignorant of or hostile to Islam . . . and are challenged by an America which, despite separation of church and state, retains a Judeo-Christian ethos.” The question now is this: will Islam survive in America?

    But the real root of Islam in the US can actually be traced to 1790 when the South Carolina legislative body granted special social status to a community of Moroccans which gave that community the freedom to practise its religion. And in 1797, President John Adams signed a policy declaring that United States had no “character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musulmen (Muslims)”.

    Then, in his autobiography, published in 1791, President Benjamin Franklin stated that he “did not disapprove” of a meeting place in Pennsylvania designed to accommodate preachers of all religions and concluded that: “even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.

    Thomas Jefferson on his own defended religious freedom in America including those of Muslims and explicitly mentioned Muslims when writing about the movement for religious freedom in Virginia. And in his autobiography also, Jefferson wrote: “When the Virginia bill for establishing religious freedom which was finally passed,… a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometans (Muhammadans), the Hindus and the infidels of every denomination.” As a confirmation of that policy, President Jefferson also joined the Tunisian Ambassador for an Iftar (Ramadan fast breaking) in 1809.

    Also, in 1888, the American Ambassador in Philippines, Alexander Russell Webb surprisingly embraced Islam and became the first prominent Anglo-American Muslim in history. And in 1893 he was the only person representing Islam from the US at the first Parliament for the World’s Religions.

    Subsequently, the coming into the American Muslim fold of people like Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Muhammad Ali, Abdul Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and a host of others in the mid 20th century came to boost the image of Islamic religion tremendously in the US thereby attracting many adherents.

    Given the above historical antecedent, it is only normal to expect that some inquisitive people outside Islam might raise inquisitive questions. One of such questions was raised by John L. Esposito the author of ‘Islam: The Straight Path’ (published by Oxford University Press in 2005, pp216). His question went thus:

    How possible is it to be fully American in a society often characterised as Judeo-Christian or secular and at the same time retain Muslim faith and identity? If majority of Americans need to realize that Muslims are indeed ‘us,’ many Muslims must also struggle with the nature of their identity, to reconcile the relationship of faith with that of national identity.

    Are they Muslims in America or American Muslims? For American Muslims, as for American Jews, how to simultaneously retain one’s distinctive religious identity and values and also become part of the majority culture, part of the fabric of the society is a major challenge in the ‘American melting pot”.

    Esposito closed the question as follows: “Should American Muslims attempt to integrate into American society or would they be better off remaining alienated from society in order to preserve their Islamic

    Identity?” In other words, Esposito wanted to know which will eventually prevail: Americanisation of Islam or Islamization of America.

    That question can be best answered by the Americans. At least wherever they too go or settle, they hardly allow themselves to be culturally assimilated. Americans are generally known to live in isolation anywhere they go and no one has ever queried their policy of isolationism. It will therefore amount to discrimination to expect Muslims in America or people of other religions, for that matter, to get assimilated into American culture at the expense of their faith.

    In an article once published in the New York Times, titled: ‘Muslim Schools in the U.S.: A Voice for Identity’, Susan Sachs wrote on the rising demands for Islamic schools in the U.S. saying that “across the country,

    Islamic schools…that offer religion and Arabic classes…are expanding and flourishing, with many becoming oversubscribed so quickly that principals are scrambling for money to build more. Thus, the surge in the number of Islamic schools may be attributed to the success and determination of a Muslim community that strives “to define itself as a cohesive religious minority in the secular American society”.

    Earlier, ‘The World Street Journal’ in its August 7, 1987 edition reported thus: “At a time when Marxism is so debilitated and is being shored up by capitalism; when Christianity lacks much of the missionary fire that once drove it; when Maoism is all but entombed with its founder and when democracy sounds only a muted appeal to much of the world, Islamic fundamentalism stands out as the movement on the march”.

    By and large today, not only is Islam formally recognised as the second religion after Christianity in the US, it has also become a tradition for the President and his cabinet to host Muslim leaders in that country to Iftar during the month of Ramadan.

    Today, with technology virtually reaching its climax, and backed up by over 60% of the world’s oil reserve in the Islamic world, the rising of the sun from the West as prophesied by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is becoming undeniably vivid.

    Were George Bernard Shaw alive today he would have been delighted to see his prediction come true even as Islam remains undaunted in the face of unbridled persecution in the West. Despite the malfeasance of some vagabonds going about killing innocent people and pillaging the society in the name of Islam, Allah’s divine religion remains like a pure spring incessantly watering the plants and animals around it. The refusal of some animals to drink from its water does not stop it from bringing forth the enlivening water. Rather, it is the rebellious animals that will die of thirst.

  • An institutionalised assault on human dignity

    An institutionalised assault on human dignity

    A Commissioner of Police was gunned down just yards from his home. A rising artist was the victim of cult rivalry. Kidnappers are having a field day in all regions of the land. And while Boko Haram still beheads and maims, we are seeking amnesty for the yet unrepentant sect. Even when there are genuinely uplifting stories such as the one that was the subject of this column last week, the disgusting nature of the sad ones can overwhelm. They are the ones that catch the attention of outsiders, including those that we need for investment. Thus Nigeria has again made the United States “travel advisory list” countries. So, while foreign students flock to Ghana on Summer Study Abroad programmes, they would have nothing to do with Nigeria.

    Thomas Hobbes’s social contract theory characterises the state of nature as the hellish situation that motivates the creation of the political state. For him, a political state is morally justified to impose obligations on members because, given the egoistic, calculating, acquisitive and possessive character of human nature, life without such a state would be nasty, brutish, and short. It is in recognition of this tragic reality in the state of nature without political authority that rational human beings would agree to combine their resources to establish a political state with authority.

    A standard textbook critique of Hobbes is that since philosophy is a reflection on experience, and since the only experience that Hobbes had was with his native 17th century England, his theory must be limited in its applicability. And in this part of the world, our first generation political leaders used to remind the Western world of the paradise on earth that was traditional Africa. Leopold Senghor and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere are only two of the most outspoken defenders of an African heaven on earth that was disturbed by the marauding forces of imperialism. They presented the West as the bedrock of individualistic dog-eat-dog mentality.

    Two questions arise: First, how much difference is there between African and Western value systems? Second, are African societies exempt from the state of nature account?

    With regard to the first question, I contend that a genuine comparison of Western and African value systems must take place at the same level: traditional values with traditional values and “modern” values with “modern” values. The traditional is an endangered species in both contexts. Therefore all we have for genuine comparison is the modern version of our value systems. In this, it’s clear that there is no difference in kind between the values that motivate an American in New York and what enervates a Nigerian in Lagos.

    The difference is in the constraint in the way of each. The New Yorker wants what Michael Jordan has. He knows if he tries to ambush MJ to rob him of his property, the law will quickly catch up with him. So he refrains from that option and tries to work hard at improving his basketball skills. Otherwise, he’d just have to limit his ambition. Of course, there are daredevils who would try an ambush and risk going to jail. That’s what prisons are for and there are plenty of them, including the maximum securities.

    On the Nigerian side, while the values are not different, the contexts cannot be more diametrically opposed. The opportunities that exist for the New Yorker are hardly there for the majority of Nigerians. So with similar ambitions, the opportunities are quite dissimilar.

    In such a circumstance, there is a need for even a greater focus on constraints. Make crime so unrewarding that people without opportunities would not be lured into a life of crime. Unfortunately, however, no state in Nigeria has what any of its US counterparts has. In addition to, or perhaps because of the opportunities that are made available for those who care to take advantage, the security system is effective in the US. In Nigeria, however, a state is not in charge and cannot effectively secure itself. Therefore there is little or no check on a would-be criminal in a world without opportunities. This is what the state of nature account depicts: where human nature is as described, and there is no effective authority to constrain individuals, it would be a war of all against all.

    My second question pertains to the applicability of the state of nature account to Nigeria and other African countries. To be sure, Hobbes is not the only contract theorist with an account of the state of nature as its basis. John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau provide their own accounts. But while Locke’s state of nature is not as dire as Hobbes, Rousseau’s is the most idyllic. For Rousseau, the state of nature is a state of peace and innocence; what is missing there is the moral virtue of citizenship. For Locke, the state of nature is a state of peace, where anyone can punish violators of the laws of nature. What is missing is the impartiality of an independent magistrate. Hobbes is the most realistic of the three.

    Hobbes’s realism is in recognising, even as our traditional thinkers do, that no one is beyond criminality if they think they can get away with it. That’s why humans are not saints. This is why, wherever human life is valued, and human dignity is respected, it is protected against abuse by a code of laws that is systematically enforced.

    Cultism is alive and well in Nigeria. We even idolise the cultists and we are not ashamed of the implications for the country’s profile of sharing horrific images of their decapitation in the hands of rivals on the front pages of our national newspapers. A state governor made a succinct observation early this week on the pattern. Two days later a national paper featured another grisly image of the shattered face of a human being.

    We may pretend as we want; but there is no denying the fact that our present situation is that of a genuine state of nature unlike any that the philosophers imagined. In another pathetic narrative, a woman who lost three children to Boko Haram gunmen who also forced her into widowhood overnight recently brought tears to the faces of prominent men and women. They wondered what kind of a people we are and what kind of nation would allow the dignity of humans to be so sullied. We have resources to squander but not enough to provide security for citizens. This is contrary to reason. But reason assumes we value human life; the truth is that we don’t.

    Which brings me to the question: What values do we really espouse? Does it make sense for us to continue to demean Western individualistic values when we don’t even approximate the value Westerners place on human lives? We do not make provisions for bringing our children to their God-given potentials. We neglect the aged and the homeless; and we make no provision for widows while those without children are on their own. Poverty eradication programmes for the poor have become wealth enhancing programmes for the rich. Our religions place premium on the poor. But our clerics now preach the gospel of wealth; and so, armed bandits and assassins prowl for their own share, without restraint.

    Who will save us from our home-grown inhumanity and devastating assault on human dignity? Who will offer the Change that we desperately need?

  • NNPC’s $1.5b caper: it’s a loan; no, it’s a gift

    Nobody is going to radically restructure that putrid enclave called the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. Not under this government, not with the subterranean political structure prevalent today. Therefore, there is not one chance in one hundred that we, the ineffectual hub of armchair critics (as they call us) will have the salubrious opportunity to write glowing articles about vast refineries and petrochemical complexes rising in majesty and piercing the Nigerian horizon. The type of silvery steel -and- pipes leviathans we see in post cards from Singapore, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. We will never see (or write about) such wonders of the modern world that have become composites of nearly all great crude oil producing nations.

    All we see around here, all we are made to write about are grim, sad stories of scams, of crude oil spills and damaged environment; of pipeline breaches and hellish petrol fires lapping up entire communities. NNPC, the national petroleum corruption symbolizes for us Nigerians, graft, anguish, darkness… a sad, sad story that seems to run forever. We, the denizens are left prostrate at the foot of a bastard behemoth inured to criminality.

    NNPC is a story of numerous sad stories and here is yet another one. Do you remember the fuel subsidy crisis/protests of January last year? Do you remember the probe panels, counter probe panel and heaps of committees? Of course you do remember the high garbage of sleaze swept out from under the carpets of the NNPC? All the billions of naira NNPC gave away to their partners-in-crime which they pretend to be prosecuting now? Well if you thought that was such a big scandal then you must be a learner in the ways of the NNPC. It has now come out that the difficult- to-quantify billions stolen in the guise of subsidizing our petrol price is only a child’s play. It has come out that there is a foreign leg to the local fuel subsidy scam.

    Not long ago, a foreign wire service carried the news that our dear NNPC had drawn a N1.5 billion loan from foreign creditors. When Nigerians picked the news, they set upon making their usual noises. The House of Representatives seeing what seems like yet another opportunity rather than a challenge, quickly set up a Joint committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream and Downstream)/ Aids, Loan and Debt Management/Justice, to investigate the report.

    LEGACY OF LIABILITIES, LEGACY OF LIES: Standing before this House Committee, the Petroleum Minister Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke swore that what the NNPC took is not called by the name, loan as reported but that what it has is called by the name, ‘forward sales agreement’. Let’s hear it from her: “the NNPC neither took a loan of N1.56 billion nor was planning to do so. What the corporation did was to enter into a forward sales agreement with its international creditors that supplied products to the country in order to settle outstanding liabilities dating several years back.”

    She continues, “The NNPC has a legacy of liabilities and this has resulted in cash flow challenges. The Board of Directors approved this transaction; it was not a loan. There was no $1.5 billion loan taken by the NNPC; but there is an internally accepted forward sales agreement to enable it offset fuel subsidy debts.”

    She made it known that the Ministry of Finance also approved the deal which by extension, means that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) is in the know and by a little further stretch, the Presidency must have authorized the deal. Mrs. Alison-Madueke elaborated further: under the forward sales agreement deal, (which we understand had been concluded, and money exchanged hands), NNPC will supply the creditors about 15,000 barrels of crude oil per day for a period of five years to liquidate the debt.

    Mr. Andrew Yakubu, the group managing director of NNPC also testifying before the House Committee weighed in with more detail: “the forward sale structure has the following features: to enable NNPC to immediately forward sale 15,000 barrels of crude oil and raise the sum of $1.5 billion to liquidate outstanding trade bills. The arrangement is based on a forward sale which allows a future sale of agreed quantities of 15,000bpd of crude oil to a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for a period of up to five years in consideration of the sum of $1.5 billion paid by the SPV to NNPC. The $1.5 billion will be used to offset part of the petroleum imports bills. Yakubu also made it known to the House Committee that the total outstanding indebtedness of the NNPC is $3.5 billion noting that $1.5 billion only covered the first phase of the repayment agreement with a balance of $2 billion still to be paid.

    BETWEEN LOAN AND BARTER: NNPC in its usual manner, takes Nigerians on a winded trail in a matter that is so simple and straight forward. Of course this has been its trademark over the years. It simply lapses into shadow boxing and stealth decoys when it has been caught out in its usual atrocious fare. Whether that deal is a loan, barter, backward or forward transaction is immaterial, money has changed hands in exchange for crude oil. NNPC had consummated a whopping $1.56 billion deal in a shady, less-than transparent and unaccountable manner. For such a very big deal, the National Assembly and the people of Nigeria would never have known about it were it not for foreign news media. The crude oil being fast-forwarded and fast-tracked is surely not part of the estate of Yakubu or Alison-Madueke, it still belongs to Nigerians and they ought to know.

    It is funny, if not childish when the NNPC people make a simple transaction look like high finance. NNPC simply got cash from some people abroad and sign off our crude oil for a period of five years. So whether we call it a loan, a barter, an exchange, cash-for-crude swap, whatever; it’s just one more shady deal now on a grand scale to sate the thirst of a cash-crazed presidency. Who are the creditors, when was the debt incurred, why is the payment with crude an equivalent of thrice the debt? And we even have $2 billion of this so called debt left. A phantom debt as it stands because NNPC has hidden the detail from the people. This is one probe the House must not sweep under its dingy carpets. We are watching.

    LAST MUG: (1) Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu sans B.Sc. Now that the erstwhile governor of Abia State, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu has been stripped of his ill-gotten first degree certificate from Abia State University, (ABSU), EXPRESSO has this small advice for him. He should proceed on an education exile, enroll properly in a university, abroad for a six-year programme that will probably earn him a masters or doctoral degree. He should adopt a total immersion technique which will help him absorb the learning, culture, character and the ambience of the academic environment. This is the crucial missing link in his eventful life; this will safe him from the crushing unraveling he seems bound for now. This will also give his successor some space to breathe and do his bit, and Abia state and her people will be the beneficiaries.

    (2) ABC Transport: 20 years of pace-making: Mr. Frank Nneji and his ABC Transport Company must be one of the best things that happened to Nigeria in the last two decades. The 20-year-old long-distance bus company is an ode to vision, entrepreneurial spirit and steadfastness. Frank and his ABC are a Nigerian model story that will be told well someday. For now, EXPRESSO, an ABC regular felicitates with a pacesetter on its 20th. The road is still far ahead.

  • Cowards’ anthem (4)

    The night has murder in the eye, and the day, murder in the heart; every promising dawn drips with blood. One ill begets another, and our successive maladies, a great deal more.

    The solstices of sanity have sagged; we have become indiscriminate pawns in the theatre of the absurd. Thus today, we find“virtue” in the insanity of the rampaging hordes of Maiduguri and Jos. If you look closely enough, you will discover the politics that excite the madness they incite. Perhaps you would get to understand why peace-loving neighbours become blood-thirsty brutes and the average human becomes subhuman.

    And now that we have found honour in the novelty of explosives, Nigeria has awakened to the reality of the situation…our situation. It doesn’t matter whose loved ones died in the last bomb blast neither does it matter what towering hopes we extinguish by undesirable detonations, we too have found bombs, and we shall use it whichever way pleases us. We shall exterminate whoever we deem fit.

    And these too are “simple measures” to be had, “survival strategies – to be precise,” if you can learn to analyse the matter from the perspective that pleases. The wars we make are only the beginning of something else: mass murders, famine, rape, interminable hate and sorrow everlasting. Today, fear’s moon flower spreads across our clans. We ought to fear tomorrow but we don’t.

    If we leave today as we have made it, tomorrow, our children shall smart diarrheic, with distended tummies and skeletal limbs until their final gasp in our theatre of death and genocide. Our toddlers shall lust for dried egg yolk and cornmeal, even when stale; it shall become the staple diet to die for, and kill for. We shall learn to grovel and die and kill for measly fruits and rations, even if rotten.

    Our neighbourhoods shall be bloodied by carcasses of friends and family we have learnt to love but would betray whenever providence displeases our dark, desperate desire for survival. Those child soldiers whose stories offer amusement on the watch of international news media shall become the source of our greatest worries. The cherubs for whom we shed sweat everyday shall become little angels of death at the behest of heinous godfathers and warmongers.

    Our children shall man our streets armed with AK-47s, fishing harpoons, machetes, kitchen knives, and hand grenades. They shall take turns to decapitate you and me if we are unfortunate to belong to the divide that displeases.

    Our mothers shall become comfort women, our daughters too. Our sisters shall become vessels of wanton delight to occupation forces and militia of various shades and honour; and we shall support the decadence painfully, and whole-heartedly.

    The chastity we love to protect shall become the staple by which we quell our dark, dark desires; the currency by which our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters purchase and repossess everyday, their right to life, at the mercy of the elements of the order that be.

    And this is just a glimpse of the meltdown; the revolution that you seek would bring greater bloodshed than you think. The secession that you seek would hardly profit you, and me.

    Forget the folly of the misguided newspaper; it is not enough to propagate disunity in the interest of deep pockets. It is not enough to moot murder or “necessary sacrifice” or whatever you choose to call it, selectively. It is not enough to dispense death daringly to the households of those we deem fit.

    At whose behest do we exterminate those that we deem expendable? Who decides the lives to be extinguished, the futures to be snuffed out like candle-light in the course of a tempest? What politics, what philosophy excites the madness to which we play native?

    Is this the revolution that we dream? Is this the prologue to the order of our sweetest fantasies? I see nothing but death, sorrow, and death. And we are in the thick of it.

    Carcasses of friends we had known, relatives we had loved and neighbours we shared with, shall line our streets and sidewalks with unparalleled stench and dire breadth.

    And we shall all be held accountable; you, with your AK-47, fresh-filed dagger, sword; me, with my in-depth analyses, riotous pen and wit.

    Together we play puppet to the designs and fantasies of despicable hate emissaries and war-mongers. Tell me, these tragedies that we incite, at whose doorsteps are the black flags hoisted? Who gets to be on the receiving end?

    Kindly show me a Governor’s child, Senator’s wife, Minister’s sibling among the mangled and decomposing corpses in mass graves we dug in Ife-Modakeke, Borno, Bauchi, Kaduna, Jos, to mention a few.

    Show me the corpses of the ruling class and all those that we hold answerable for the tragedies our lives have become. I wish no evil on our incumbent leadership but their corpses are nowhere in the scenes of genocide; it’s the ordinary citizen that gets to die – defenceless folk like you and me.

    Yet we blame the ruling class, curse the times and kill each other; tell me, what madness commands our wanton sprees? What platitudes, what tokens incite our hearts to such bestiality and senseless murder?

    It’s our neighbours, family and friends that we decapitate in the thick of night and break of daylight. How can that be the uprising that we dream? Tell me, who would enjoy the fruits of our mindless bloodbath after we exterminate neighbours, friends and family in whose interests we claim to make the revolutionary cry?

    The ruling class is on to our game. That is why they use us against each other. Painstakingly, they master the art of misdirection by experimenting on you and me.

    The noise has quietened on familiar monstrosities that betide our land; we have got more pressing issues to deal with. Now, we dream of secession. Let us begin to secede if in the new order, leadership we currently endure shall be kept miles from our corridors of power. Let us begin to secede if our women shall suffer no abuse and peace shall remain to blossom undisturbed in our front yards and backyards. Let us begin to secede if our broken parts shall exist without racism and discord.

    Let us begin to secede if we shan’t re-enact tragedies we invoked by Federal might and Biafra. Let us begin to secede if evils that incited our clamour to separate shall disappear in the new lands of our dreams.

    If you take the pains to see through our scholarly rhetoric and sensational headlines, you will see that nobody can resolve the tragedies that persist in our motherland until we rid our government houses of the minority holding the majority hostage. Hopefully we shall get to understand that sophistry we propagate about the futility of further coexistence shall come in handy still, in the orders of our dreams, for we who fail to tread the path of wisdom now shall persist in folly even when left to our ‘separate’ devices.

    A grown up thing has happened and it requires that we respond as adults but even adulthood confounds us. Thus we respond the easiest way we deem, as cowards.

    • To be continued.

  • ACN governors and infrastructural development

    If a foreigner were to come to Nigeria and wonders how to identify which party is in government in any state in Nigeria, the best information to be given to him would be watch out for road construction, drainages, youths mobilization as a distinct mark of ACN administration in the states under the party’s control.

    This distinction began in Lagos first with Governor Bola Tinubu and further dramatised by the stupendous efforts at the reconstruction of the state by Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola. His example has now become a yardstick of measuring performance of ACN administered states.

    In this regard, the whole sale reconstruction of city roads in Ado-Ekiti and Ibadan is a miracle to behold. I went to primary and secondary school in Ado-Ekiti many years ago and now, I am a regular visitor to the city, the Kayode Fayemi administration has so much changed the face of the city that I can no longer recognize anywhere unless I am told where I am.

    The crisscrossing of the city by dualised roads has definitely given Ado-Ekiti the much desired appearance of a capital city. What the city needs is for individuals especially those whose houses border on the highways to rise to the occasion and give their homes face-lift so as to synergize with the newly constructed roads of the city.

    Ado-Ekiti is much smaller than Ibadan. Ibadan is definitely the largest city in tropical Africa even though through manipulation of figures by the National Census Board, we are now told Ibadan is the third largest city coming after Lagos and Kano. I totally reject this claim on the grounds that there has been no epidemic that has wiped out people of Ibadan and that the population of the city could not have contracted dramatically the way the National Census Board claims; that is of course another issue for another day.

    Governor Abiola Ajimobi has done what nobody believes could have been done to bring Ibadan, a largely traditional African city to modernity. He has removed or he is removing all the shanties that constitute an eye-sore to every visitor to Ibadan. If the Governor can finish all the projects that he has embarked on in modernising the city, his name would go down in history along with those of Lagelu, Oluyole, Ogunmola and Latoisa as the builders of Ibadan. I cannot but celebrate Ajimobi because Ibadan is my second home. I completed my secondary school in Ibadan and I am an alumnus of the University of Ibadan and I reside in Ibadan, so, I am an Ibadan man by any definition and I should therefore be happy if Ibadan is doing well just as I am very happy that Ado-Ekiti, the capital city of my home state is doing well.

    It is not Ado-Ekiti alone that is being opened up by Fayemi, every part of Ekiti is feeling this infrastructural revolution. The road linking my home town of Okemesi with other towns through Ita-Awure was abandoned for more than a decade but it has now been reconstructed and opened up to traffic. Okemesi is a border town and according to Prof. Anthony Asiwaju, my colleague at University of Lagos, all border lands whether of state or country should be given special preference and attention in order to encourage the feeling of patriotism and loyalty so as to avoid developing a feeling of separation, alienation and attraction towards their neighbours on the other side of the boundary.

    I think Prof. Asiwaju’s theory is correct and my governor has done something about the apparent neglect of border towns in our state. What is good for Okemesi will be good for Moba LGA, Effon- Alaaye and Omuo. But in the meantime, all praise should go to our amiable and indefatigable governor.

    In 1967, I was a graduate student in Canada and one of my professors, one Professor Farley was coming to Nigeria for a conference at the University of Ibadan, I decided to send him to my folks in Nigeria and on his return, I wanted to find out his impression, he did not think twice before telling me that Ibadan was the biggest slum that he had ever seen!

    Ajimobi’s efforts in Ibadan would change the face of Ibadan forever and I pray that he would have the resources to complete the Ibadan road revolution he has embarked upon. When one looks at what is going on particularly in Ekiti, Oyo, Edo, Osun and Ogun states, the question one asks himself is whether there were no governments before the advent of these ACN governors. It is like foundational infrastructure is newly being built and I hope our people would be sensible enough to continue to elect and elect these governors who having put their hands on the plough would not look back until the work of development is done. Our people should realize that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. In the process of urban renewal, some properties would necessarily have to be pulled down. We should not whine and complain too much because government is only seeking the greater good of all.

    Alfred Graf Von Schlieffen, Field Marshal and Chief of Staff of the Imperial German Army in the 19th century developed a defense strategy which envisaged the possibility of Germany being attacked from the East and the West and in readiness, instigated the construction of fast-moving railway lines and roads to move troops back and forth from warfronts in the East and the West so that once an enemy is knocked out in either direction, troops could be moved to where they are needed. Adolf Hitler, the German Chancellor (1933 – 1945) added the building of autobahnen (express roads) to the Schlieffen plan. In war time, the efficient transportation network was remarkably decisive.

    After the collapse of Germany in 1945, this efficient network of transportation grid and German ingenuity proved decisive in what the Germans called “wirtschaftswunder” (economic miracle) of the German recovery. A country or state that is not in permanent motion is a dead country or state. Transportation is key to economic development and once the ACN states complete their transportation revolution, rapid economic development is bound to follow.

    Yoruba land ko ni baje; o baje ti ! Nigeria ko ni baje o; o baje ti !

  • Will they ever be found?

    It is painful when we lose our loved ones. We mourn; we weep, but in our hour of bereavement, we are consoled by the fact that at least, we know that they are dead. We also know where their remains are buried and can visit their graves, if we so wish. But the reverse is the case if a loved one goes missing. The pain becomes skin deep because we long to see such a person, but don’t know where to look. In our waking and sleeping, one question keeps nagging at our minds : where can this person be? Is he dead or alive?

    This is a question that can drive people crazy because of the pain they feel inside. I can only imagine what people who have had this kind of experience would have gone through because it is just inexplicable. How do you explain it that a grown man just stepped out of his house and never returned. Is it ordinary for such a thing to happen or is there a sinister motive behind it? In a society where we believe that things just don’t happen but are propelled by certain esoteric forces, it becomes harder to explain. We are ready to make allowances when children disappear.

    We try to rationalise such disappearance as one of those things that the youth engage in. “He will soon return home”, sympathisers will tell the family, until it becomes crystal clear that he may never return after a long futile search for him. Is it possible for a man to leave home and decide never to return? What could have pushed him to take such action? Is it marital problem? Is it poverty or inability to discharge his responsibility as head of family? Is it because of a terminal ailment? We could go on and on because it is a mystery yet to be unravelled.

    It is a mystery because as those considered to be frustrated with life disappear, so do those believed to have no woory in life. So how do we explain the disappearance of a man satisfied with life? Is it that he just became suddenly frustrated and decided to end it all? Yes, some may have planned their disappearance, but I believe that many would not have wished to vanish into thin air just like that if they could help it. If that is the case, where could these people be? Have they been killed? Were they used for money rituals? It is hard to say what has become of these people, but are the security operatives up and doing in finding them?

    The police may have hit a brick wall in their investigation, but these are not cases which files should be closed just like that. They should not be treated as open and close cases. They are matters that should be kept in view because we don’t know when the break that will give the police the desired lead will come. In the past few years, many Nigerians have disappeared; some prominent and some not so prominent. On Tuesday, this paper carried the story of a Army lance corporal, who disappeared about 30 years ago.

    Lance Corporal Fredrick Uwerhiavwe left home on a fateful day in January 1983 and never returned. His family is looking for him till today. His wife said she went looking for him at work at the 1 Infantry Division of the Nigerian Army in Kaduna, but rather than assist the poor woman in her search, she was reportedly ejected from their quarters. Since then, we have heard about other disappearances. Razak Gawat, a television presenter, went missing last year. So were Aminat Saibu,15 and Olaide Shittu, 38.

    Thirty years is a long time

    for a person to be

    missing. By now, you will say the family should be coming to terms with the reaslity of this fact. It is not that easy because Uwerhiavwe disappeared when it seemed there was nobody to ask questions about his disappearance. His children were small then. There was nothing the little brats could have done except to bid their time. The time, to them, has become ripe to demand what happened to their father from his employers. I pray the Army will cooperate with them. A man, the Yoruba say, does not ask for what killed his father until he is strong enough to do so.

    It is a good thing that Uwerhiavwe’s children have launched a search for their father, because no matter what, they deserve to know what happened to him 30 years ago when he told his wife that he was going to work. Did he get to work? If he did, was he involved in an accident? What happened to him in the accident? Doesn’t his family deserve to know if anything untoward happened to him? Thirty years after his disappearance, we ought to help his family members answer these questions and more in order to help them overcome this trauma. While at that, the police should step up investigation into the other cases too.

    Readers’ TURN

    RE : Before Maina is sacrificed
    Can the press tell us that it has investigated all the claims by Maina and where the recovered pension funds are being kept? FROM : 08094431394.
    The piece was awesome. Now, I am convinced that we still have objective people in this nation. FROM : 08069401317.
    A preliminary report of the task team was presented to the Economic Management Team on October 23, last year. We, however, await the court to interpret the legality of the Senate’s action against Maina. Why couldn’t the Senate wait for the task team to finish its job before embarking on the Upper Chamber’s so-called investigation? FROM : 07026340888.
    It was a touching piece. Poor Maina! Or is it youthful exuberance or poor sense of history that has brought him all this trouble? He should just have submitted his report quietly without opening his mouth too wide in self-glorification, knowing that no panel report, no matter how important to the public has ever seen the light of day in this country! As things have turned out, we may never know the truth, yet our senior citizens are suffering as they cannot access their pension after retirement. FROM : Pensioner, 08059932631.
    What is clear is that it is impossible to fight corruption and win under the existing social system. This is because the system protects the corrupt in high places. The way out is to change the social system. Which class will undertake the task? The exploited? FROM : Amos Ejimonye, Kaduna, 08039727512

  • What Nigerians demand of Jonathan and PDP

    PDP zero-sum struggle for power without responsibility has begun in earnest. The battle line as it was in 2010 is once again between President Goodluck Jonathan and the northern political class whose current public face is Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State. Jonathan who has now come of age has taken the battle directly to his political adversaries.

    The chairmanship of Nigerian Ports Authority and that of Board of Trustees of the PDP (BoT) considered critical for electoral funding and victory have both been ceded to 80 years old Tony Anenih, the celebrated ‘fixer’. The president has in his pocket, Bamanga Tukur, who is as ruthless as other past PDP chairmen such as Ahmadu Alli whose son like his was involved in alleged fuel importation scam, Prince Vincent Ogbuluafor, taken to court by Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) for aiding three bogus companies who claimed to have executed jobs worth over N2.2billion’, and Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo.

    Tukur has also effortlessly caged Jonathan political enemies in the South-west, neutralized the influence of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) headed by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and installed Godswill Akpabio of Akwan Ibom as the chairman of newly formed PDP Governors parallel forum.

    The president has ignored the claim by Governor Aliyu, the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum that he signed a document with the northern governors back in 2010, to the effect that he would do only one term. Dr Doyin Okupe the president’s spokesman has however dismissed Babangida’s claim as diversionary. He says the president considers such claim as “an invidious attempt to sway him from his chosen pursuit of the set out constituents of the transformation agenda which form the basis upon which Nigerians overwhelmingly elected him to steer the ship of the nation in 2011.” Whatever that means.

    But the president’s wife not known for any form of obfuscation has along with other PDP women of goodwill started to count the chicks before the eggs are hatched. For Patience Jonathan, ‘100 opposition cannot defeat PDP’. And as for the PDP Women Leader, Kema Chikwe, her group she says “is confident that when President Jonathan returns in 2015, women would be talking about 50 per cent, no longer 35 per cent affirmative action”.

    Indeed, other Jonathan strategists have moved beyond whether Jonathan would run or not .They have plotted how he would effortlessly capture 11 of the 19 states in the north and five of South-east and six of South-south.

    Now that we have been told our input may not count for much in President Jonathan’s return to Aso rock in 2015, we can at least remind him of other pending issues beside his uncompleted ‘transformation agenda’ Dr. Okupe so romantically talked about.

    May we remind the president that in spite of his chest-beating about achievement on electricity, 150m Nigerians still have to ration 4,600MW after PDP’s 13 years in power and frittering away of close to $20b compared to 150,000MW South Africa generates for her 35m population.

    That our roads are in worse state of disrepair than PDP met them 13 years ago. (Governor Fashola of Lagos only last week threw a challenge at the federal government to identify a 100 kilometre road they have completed anywhere in the country this past 13 years.)

    But far more than decay in infrastructure, the president is aware of the international community’s warning of possible collapse of the Nigerian economy in the next three years with the dwindling oil fortunes arising from US drive for self-sufficiency in energy coupled with the massive corruption of Nigerian ruling class. This was long before the recent ACN alert.

    We may also wish to remind the president that even if he and the PDP do not give a damn about Nigerians who they assume suffer from collective amnesia, they can on account of Nigerians having become the butt of expensive jokes by players in the international community such as David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain and Bill Clinton, former US President who literarily told Jonathan to his face that Nigerian ruling class are thieves, to revisit the following outstanding issues before his foreclosed return to Aso rock in 2015.

    On the Lawan Farouk House committee report of alleged theft of N1.7trillion by fuel importers, Okupe had said we should praise the president for insisting the son of his party chairman fingered in the scam faces the law. Today while he and his accomplices are flying around the world, Nigerian SANs and judges have told us they are busy discussing ‘plea bargaining’ on their behalf in absentia.

    We may need to remind the president that his Ribadu Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force discovered N10 trillion was lost to crude oil theft, from a yearly loss of 250,000 barrels per day or N1 trillion yearly. But Shell Nigeria’s Managing Director Mutiu Sunmonu said only on Monday that “The volume stolen, today, including over 60,000 barrels per day from Shell alone, is the highest in the last three years.” He did not forget to add the obvious: that government should confront the big men behind oil theft. In 2011, Nigeria lost $7b to oil theft.

    The same Ribadu Committee reported that N178 billion worth of refined petroleum products was stolen from the pipelines, through vandalism orchestrated by thieves. That has continued unabated even with the substitution of our ill-equipped naval men with companies owned by repentant militants that have secured mouth-watering contracts. Shell claims it spent $1.1m to repair damaged pipes in Nembe Creek in 2012.

    We have also only seen cosmetic changes in NNPC which the report claims incurred $5 billion (N785 billion) short-payment from sale of domestic crude and recorded a deficit of N298 billion from the accounts of its 16 subsidiaries. The report has more. $183 million (N28.7 billion) remained outstanding from signature bonuses.

    And still outstanding is Oby Ezekwesili’s recent claim that the regimes of late President Umaru Yar’Adua and that of President Jonathan squandered $67bn from the country’s foreign reserve. In spite of Okupe’s wild claim that it was an attempt to bring the Jonathan administration down, Nigerians believe Ezekwesili’s challenge for a debate is a step in the right direction.

    Nigerians are also interested in knowing the number of aircrafts and helicopters President Jonathan intend to add to his current fleet of 10 since 2015 is settled. Sahara Reporters had alleged in its edition of December 5, 2012 that while most major countries in Europe and Asia maintain mostly two aircraft in their presidential fleet, the Jonathan-led administration spends estimated N9.08bn annually on 10 Presidential jets.

    And finally, I also think Nigerians will also want the president and PDP to give account of all recovered loots from their indicted party members and sympathizers. This is in view of the claim of an Anti-Corruption Network that the N191bn assets seized from the Managing Director of the defunct Oceanic Bank Plc, Cecilia Ibru cannot be accounted for. According to them, their “investigation and physical visits to some of the properties in the United States and United Kingdom revealed that some of the properties claimed to have been forfeited are still in her custody directly or indirectly.”

    Perhaps our story would have been different if only President Jonathan and PDP had dedicated half of the energy currently deployed towards how to share spoils of office comes 2015 to serving Nigerians like Obafemi Awolowo and his AG party once did for the West and Ahmadu Bello and his NPCparty replicated in the North in the 1960s.

    The above few demands therefore, contrary to the conclusion Okupe will most predictably reach, are not designed to bring down PDP and Jonathan administration we are told is already destined to return to power in spite of 13 years dismal record, but to aid those who have started to question the sanity of Nigerians.

  • Who will stop the gunman?

    Who will stop the gunman?

    WILL the police ever find Commissioner Chinweike Asadu’s killers?

    To many Nigerians who have lost faith in the system the answer is simple – no. Inspector-General Mohammed Abubakar has vowed to bring the killers to justice. In fact, there has been a whirlwind of arrests in Enugu, the city in which the Kwara State Commissioner of Police was cut down in a hail of bullets last Saturday. Doctors are battling to save the lives of his orderly and driver.

    Asadu was driving home after dropping a lawyer-friend of his who came visiting. A bus carrying four armed men blocked his car. He was ordered out of the car. He did. His orderly also came out. The gunmen found Asadu’s driver, Oliver Omeh, a corporal, in uniform and opened fire, killing the commissioner and leaving the others injured. By the time Asadu’s guards rushed to the scene, the gunmen had vanished into the thick, dark night, perhaps never to be seen again.

    Did Asadu underestimate the security situation in Enugu? Why did he not take enough guards, knowing that trouble blows no siren? Who was the visitor? Were the gunmen after the Camry and fired the lethal shots out of panic? Can Omeh and Aloha Olaniyi, the driver, identify them? Were the gunmen robbers or contract killers?

    The puzzles are as numerous as the number of unresolved assassinations that the police say they have been tackling. What is clear is that the police have lost a fine officer and a good man, going by the tributes that have been pouring in since the tragedy occurred- less than three months to Asadu’s retirement date, a date to which he was excitedly looking forward. But are these accolades genuine? We may never know.

    With Asadu’s murder have come more troubles for the police, who are yet to find the Pension Task Force Team leader, Ibrahim Maina, a man they protected with a battalion for months as if he was the most important of all our VIPs. The Senate issued a warrant of arrest for Maina to come and explain how billions of pension cash went missing. Maina ran to the court to seek protection. He got none. Then he went underground. From his hiding place, he kept organising protests, pushing the authorities to leave him alone. He will surely show up again, perhaps for a bigger assignment, when everything is calm.

    Should Senate President David Mark see police chief Abubakar today, his first question is most likely to be: “Where is Maina?” “We are looking for him sir. Rankadede sir,” the IG will, most likely, reply. Both will smile, shake hands, crack some jokes and move on.

    Farouk Lawan – I’m sure you remember him – is facing bribery charges in court, after a long, winding and grinding investigation that went everywhere but, in the view of many, got nowhere. The lawmaker confessed to collecting some $620,000 bribe from businessman Femi Otedola, but vowed not to surrender the evidence to the police (He doesn’t trust them?). He was hauled before the court after so much noise from those who felt that even Mr Integrity needed to prove his integrity- if indeed he had any. The case is on, but the question remains: “Where is the cash?” We may never know.

    The popular thinking is that if these seemingly simple cases remain unresolved, how much more murder, murder under the cover of darkness, and assassinations. The Igwes. Bola Ige. Odunayo Olagbaju. Isiak Mohammed. Jafaar Adam. Theodore Egwuatu. Harry Marshall . Layi Balogun. Funsho Williams. And many more.

    The police have lost so many men, unsung and, most likely, unmissed by the force they served and died for. They are never remembered. In some cases, their families get thrown out of the barracks soon after their death, left alone to fend for themselves in a beautiful country troubled by ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing.

    The Asadu murder has ignited many thoughts on crimes, criminals and crime fighters. Among us are men who live in the past, in the dark past when life meant little and people were slaughtered in a savage world of brutes and bullies. These are ritual murderers, who believe human blood and body parts can, by some mystical powers, yield money.

    A newspaper reported on January 30 the case of a man who found a human head on the road opposite his home in Jos. A headless body cut into many parts was recovered on Tafawa Balewa Road, also in Jos. The body was later identified to be that of a resident of the city. These are just two among many. We may never know who these savages are.

    Almost two months after some bodies were found floating on the Ezu River in Anambra, there is still no clue to who the dead were. The police vowed to resolve the mystery; they are yet to. Politicians have been visiting the community to offer the residents “pure water” and make inciting statements that can never aid the resolution of the mystery, but deepen the kind of animosity that may have led to the problem. Did the bodies drop from heaven? Is there a big conspiracy among those who lost their loved ones to keep quiet for fear of being given the same treatment? Was it a mere expression of our callousness and loss of humanity? We may never know.

    The other day in Kano, a 42-year-old woman was arrested for selling dogs. There was a song and dance about her arrest. According to the law enforcers, that was the second time she had been arrested. The woman said she knew no other trade. What happened to her eventually? We may never know.

    Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole has been accusing the police of complicity in the murder of his private secretary, Olaitan Oyerinde. The police have denied this, alleging that the comrade-governor is using his position to hurl abuses at them. Oshiomhole’s case is simple. He says the gun used by Oyerinde’s killers had been with the police since April 24, 2012, before the murderers struck. It was, according to the governor, retrieved from the police exhibits room and presented as the one used to kill Oyerinde, whose activist-friend was initially arrested for the crime, but let off the hook by a court that found that the police were tampering with his rights. Besides, the suspects arrested by the police are different from those being held by the State Security Service (SSS). Now, who is to face trial for the crime? Who killed Oyerinde? We may never know.

    As we reflected on the Oyerinde murder, a colleague recalled a joke that once appeared on this page to reinforce his belief that the police will surely find Asadu’s killers because, according to him, he was one of them, their own man. Here goes the joke, once again, dear reader: “In an effort to determine the top crime fighting agency in Nigeria, the President narrowed the field to three finalists: SSS, Army and Police. The three contenders were given the task of catching a rabbit that was released into the forest. The SSS went in, placing informants all over the place. They questioned all plants and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigation, the SSS concluded that rabbits do not exist. The army went into the forest. After two weeks without a capture, they burnt the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit. They made no apologies. The rabbit deserved it.

    “The police went into the forest. They came out two hours later with a badly beaten hyena. The hyena was yelling: `Okay, okay; I agree! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!`”

    Will the police find Asadu’s killers? Who will save us from the gunman?

     

    Jonathan goes to Borno, Yobe

    HE President will be in Maiduguri, the beleaguered Borno State capital, and Yobe State today and tomorrow. There will be no excited school pupils lining the road and waving the national flag. Markets will be shut and residents will stay indoors. A strange visit.

    The Borno State Government has declared a public holiday, apparently after considering the massive security implication of the official visit. The Inspector-General is leading 3,000 policemen. There will be no fewer than 100 secret agents and an army of Civil Defence personnel. The Chief of Defence Staff, Vice Admiral Ibrahim Ola Sa’ad, will coordinate the operation.

    The visit is coming after that of nine All Progressives Party (APC) governors – and a deputy. They visited the city’s biggest market, drawing applause. Presidential aide Dr Doyin Okupe said Dr Goodluck Jonathan planned to visit this week and that the governors merely took the wind out of his sails in what he derogatorily called a stunt and a circus.

    Must Okupe talk? If the President’s visit isn’t a show of bravado against the Boko Haram insurgency, what is it? Should there be any big deal in the President visiting any part of the country? What message will the visit bring us – that the Federal Government has made Borno and Yobe safe for all? Who will believe that?

    Anyway, au revoir, President Jonathan.

  • OBJ at 76

    OBJ at 76

    If  Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the first premier of Western Region and opposition leader in the First Republic, was, as the late rebel leader, Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu described him posthumously, the best leader Nigeria never had, former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who celebrated his 76th birthday yesterday, will probably go down in history as Awo’s anti-thesis of sorts; arguably the most endowed Nigerian leader who had the opportunity and luck Awo never had but blew his chance to be truly great.

    General Obasanjo is probably the most hard-working and energetic leader Nigeria has had. The story is often told of how, as chief of staff of the assassinated head of state, General Murtala Mohammed, he would work into ungodly hours after council meetings to prepare notes on what actions needed to be taken and by whom, and yet be the first on his desk the following morning. Today at 76 – probably older as his estranged son, Gbenga, has said – he has remained as hard working and energetic as ever.

    Not only is the young septuagenarian probably the most hard-working and energetic leader Nigeria has had. He is also one of the country’s most intelligent and knowledgeable, as anyone who has had even the most casual interaction with the man will testify. His intelligence and knowledge is also pretty evident in several of the books he has written and in his media interviews and public speeches, especially those delivered off the cuff.

    Again, the man has proved himself as effective and decisive a leader as any in the world. Issue after issue, the man took decisions quickly and pursued his goals with single minded determination.

    Not least of all, the man is probably Nigeria’s luckiest leader. From being the field commander on hand to first accept Biafra’s instrument of surrender after his predecessor, General Benjamin Adekunle had virtually finished all the dangerous fighting, through surviving the coup attempt of 1976 and succeeding his assassinated boss, General Mohammed, to returning to power in mufti after barely escaping the gallows at the hand of his near-nemesis, head of state, General Sani Abacha, Obasanjo seems to have the knack, or the luck, if you will, of being at the right place at the right time.

    The trouble with the man is, first, he was never really as disinterested in power as he or his friends and associates would like the world to believe. Second, it is pretty obvious to even someone with half an eye, that the man, at least in his second coming, put his virtues more in service of himself than in that of his country.

    As we all know the man became a world celebrity when he apparently kept the word of his boss and surrendered power in October 1979 to an elected government. The operative word here is “apparently.” Apparently, because, as I have pointed out on these pages more than once, there is evidence to suggest the man didn’t really want to leave back then. That he eventually did was partly because his putative attempt at getting the last summit of the then Organisation of African Unity he attended as head of state in Monrovia, Liberia, to include a statement in its communiqué that Nigeria was not ready for democracy, failed. He also left because three of his most powerful lieutenants, his second-in-command, General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, his army chief, General T.Y. Danjuma, and his police chief, Inspector General of Police M.D. Yusuf, insisted the men in khaki must return to the barracks where they belonged.

    Whether the man wanted to leave or not, the fact was that he was sensible enough not to risk being thrown out. To that extent he deserves credit for leaving. However, after tasting the forbidden fruit of power, in a manner of speaking, the man apparently developed a huge appetite for it. An evidence of this was his failed, perhaps at that time, unrealistic, ambition to become the Secretary General of the United Nations. Another was his initial acceptance of an offer by military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, to him to head an interim government after Babangida “stepped aside” in 1993, the interim government which was eventually headed by his fellow Egba, Chief Ernest Sonekan.

    Probably the most conclusive evidence that the man’s eventual return to power in 1999 was not mere accident but a thing he had deeply desired was a story my friend, Mr. John Dara, the presidential candidate of the National Transformation Party in the 2011 elections, once told me on a visit to his rather modest office in Abuja.

    Pretty early under General Sani Abacha’s regime in 1994, he said, Obasanjo once asked him through one of his brothers-in-law to become his presidential campaign manager. Apparently Dara came highly recommended to Obasanjo as a chieftain of the powerful Middle-Belt Forum and the man who managed the improbable success of Chief Otedola in beating Alhaji Lateef Jakande in the Lagos governorship elections conducted under General Babangida’s transition programme. Dara also had a reputation of being a big thorn in the flesh of the late Dr. Sola Saraki, the undisputed godfather of the politics of Kwara State where they both came from.

    At first, said Dara, he declined. Not long after that he was approached by a younger brother of General Sani Abacha through a friend to also manage the general’s plan to swap his khaki for mufti in spite of his promise that his regime will be brief. Again, said Dara, he declined.

    However, after persistent pressure from his friend, he relented somewhat and agreed to meet Abacha’s younger brother. Still the meeting, he said, did not produce the desired outcome for his host. His argument was that Abacha was likely to face at least two formidable, possibly insurmountable, obstacles – General Yar’Adua, whose presidential ambitions as a retired officer was an open secret, and General Obasanjo who had become a credible and effective moral voice at home and abroad against military rule.

    Following this observation, he said, his host revealed that in a matter of weeks these obstacles would be removed. Thus sufficiently alarmed, Dara said, he contacted Obasanjo’s in-law and told him he was now ready to meet with the general, not to handle his presidential campaign as such, but to warn him about the danger he faced. The meeting eventually held and he warned Obasanjo of the danger. The general never heeded the warning – not even after it was confirmed by his friend, former American president, Mr. Jimmy Carter, when he warned the general not to return home from a trip abroad.

    Obasanjo, never one to be accused of cowardice, returned home from his trip. The rest, as they say, is now history; he, along with Yar’Adua, were duly picked up by Abacha’s security men as coup planners and sentenced to death. International pressure on Abacha forced him to commute the sentences to life but only Obasanjo came out alive, following the mysterious death of Abacha in 1998.

    He was soon drafted, seemingly reluctantly, to become the president that would heal the deep wounds inflicted on the country by, among other things, the crisis of the cancellation of the presidential election of June 12, 1993 whose presumed winner was the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola.

    Sadly and tragically, instead of healing wounds, Obasanjo allowed himself to be consumed by vengeance for the wrongs he suffered. Instead of leaving vengeance to God, as a self-declared born-again Christian, he went after everything he apparently believed Abacha stood for. Presumably, as he approached the end of his second term in 2007, he came to the sudden realisation that he was leaving little of a legacy behind by which history would judge him kindly.

    Predictably he tried to secure a third, some would even say, an indefinite, term with its obvious implication of diverting resources, material or otherwise, from serving the public interest. Equally predictably – Nigeria has for long proved the political graveyard of anyone who thought he was indispensable – his bid failed.

    At the same time, the man who first left office in 1979 with a reputation of someone who did not abuse his office to amass great wealth, today has the sad reputation of a man living in soulless opulence. It was as if in his second coming, he’d concluded that his relatively Spartan conduct in his first coming was a mistake.

    All his recent efforts at revising the record of his public career notwithstanding, history will certainly not be as kind to him as a leader with his great qualities deserved. He had the opportunity to use those qualities in his country’s best interests like no Nigerian leader ever had, but he blew it.