The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • The new Fayemi challenge

    Lest we forget how Ekiti a ‘historically and culturally identical’ land of honor was desecrated. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in all his majesty surveyed our land and settled for an Ayo Fayose as a replacement for Niyi Adebayo as governor of Ekiti State. Following a contrived dispute between Abiodun Olujimi, impeached Fayose’s deputy and the Speaker of the state House of Assembly, a state of emergency was declared in October 2006. General Tunji Olurin, Obasanjo’s kinsman was installed as sole administrator. It was obvious his mandate was to do a hatchet job of preparing the ground for rigging Segun Oni into office in the same manner Dr Koye Majekodunmi did in Ibadan during the first republic when he reinstated Akintola who had been constitutionally removed from office as premier and prepared the ground for the rigging of the 1965 regional election in his favour.

    Two years of purposeful leadership has already eclipsed eight years of political upheaval, violence, uncertainty and anxiety that characterized Obasanjo’s self-serving intervention in Ekiti. Peace has gradually returned to Ekiti, and today, Kayode Fayemi is dedicated to the ‘the restoration of the core Ekiti values of passion, courage, integrity, meritocracy and honour.’

    He is building roads and renovating schools. He has already equipped students and teachers with about 30,000 laptops. He has put in place a social programme that caters for about 20,000 elderly citizens. His free health programme is said to capture about 60 per cent of the population.

    But we are left with permanent scars of Obasanjo’s assault on our people and our land of honour. The most visible scar of Obasanjo’s selfish intervention in our affairs is the army of school dropouts following the near collapse of the educational sector of the state during the PDP years of locust. Ayo Fayose, it would be recalled, preferred poultry farms to medical school while a better equipped Segun Oni enmeshed in PDP politics of ‘sharing’ ignored informed suggestions to expend his energies on secondary schools instead of establishing universities the state could not support financially.

    One very sad example as governor Fayemi recently pointed out is that Christ School, unarguably the best in the state, and one of the best (like my own St Joseph’s College Ondo) in the federation, was in recent years recording less than 10% success in the West African School Certificate examinations. Most of the dropouts, spread around the state in the last 10 years have since found new callings as Babalawo (traditional healers), political thugs and pastors.

    One manifestation of this development was what happened in Emure last week, when misguided youths took law into their hands, disrupted market, stoned their traditional ruler the Elemure of Emure, Oba Emmanuel Adebowale Adebayo, and chased the community chiefs out of the palace.

    Their grouses: harvests of deaths of young people in their community arising from accidents such as those involving “two undergraduates from the community who died in a motorcycle accident in far away Ado Ekiti on Valentine’s Day, and, three persons who also died in an accident on Ikere – Ise – Emure road when the vehicles they were travelling in had a head-on collision”. The youths wanted their traditional ruler and his chiefs to explain how the members of their community met their death in such ‘strange circumstances’

    But if the governor thought the misguided youths with wild views were all he had to deal with, he was wrong. He also has the traditional rulers whose bemusing response to what by all accounts was an idiotic demand was a plan to ‘organise an interdenominational religious prayer session’ to curb harvests of deaths through motor cycle and car accidents.

    In the circumstance, Governor Fayemi has an arduous task in a state where religion has become the most thriving industry, second only to political thuggery, where misguided miracle seeking youths, instead of working, depend on periodic handouts from politicians, and a state where the only value added to the lives of citizens by traditional rulers who share five per cent of local council allocation in addition to gifts of new cars from state government is prayers.

    The task we are giving to the governor will now include the enforcement of God’s injunction that we must all ‘live by our sweats’ and the labelling as 419ers all misguided youths and community leaders who try to swindle God through endless prayers even after He, our almighty Father has decreed ‘we must all reap what we sow’. Their accomplices-the fake pastors who are insisting our youths can reap where they have not sown, must be declared enemies of the people and handed over to EFCC.

    For those honest Ekiti youths who want to live by their sweat and reap what they sow, the governor can call their attention to the good news Senator Babafemi Ojudu brought back from his recent tour of Israel. Ojudu cited the case of three young graduate farmers he met in Israel during the tour who post an annual turnover of $12m by cultivating tomato for export through a new irrigation method.

    Our hard-working and creative governor who has a way of getting things done must find a way of convincing our fraudulent young prosperity gospel preachers and their gullible miracle seekers that a new wave of miracles currently coming out of Israel, a war-ravaged, desert, land of unbelievers, who killed Jesus the son of God and thereafter unrepentantly proclaimed ‘may his blood be on us and on our children’, are also possible here.

    Happily, Ekiti is not a barren land. Ojudu has said arrangements are being made to irrigate 40,000 hectares of land throughout the year and that this is to be parcelled out to youths who genuinely want miracle based on God’s injunction that we must live through our sweat. The overpaid traditional rulers who have been reaping from where they did not sow should be given responsibility to mobilise the misguided youths of their various communities towards productive endeavours. They have lived as parasites for far too long with powers without responsibilities. Fayemi must find a way of making them more relevant to their communities.

    The stakes are high but the governor cannot afford to fail in this arduous endeavour because of its far-reaching implications for the future of our state. In another 10 years, today’s youth on whom he is investing so much are going to become doctors, lawyers and other professionals. As a social scientist, he knows today’s fraudulent miracle seekers, if not liberated, will provide only an insecure environment for his dream new generation of proud Ekiti young professionals. We are today witnesses to such failures in some parts of our country where those on whom huge investment had been made with the hope of bringing development back to their communities have been driven out to seek refuge and fulfilment in other areas including foreign lands.

  • Lord Lugard and the 1914 Amalgamation of Nigeria

    Lord Lugard and the 1914 Amalgamation of Nigeria

    The period between 1900 -12 was one in which the two halves of the protectorate, inheriting fundamentally different forms of administration and underlying political and social structures, diverged radically in administrative and political styles.

    The administrative structures in Nigeria before amalgamation were really diverse. It was as if Britain was really creating two different countries. When Lugard returned to Nigeria as Governor General in 1912 and introduced the amalgamation in 1914, largely for financial reasons, the content of the amalgamation was profoundly influenced by Lugard’s previous experience in Northern Nigeria and his disdainful attitudes towards Southern Nigeria. In effect, there was little or no amalgamation, for Lugard simply superimposed on the colony the existing structures in Northern Nigeria, particularly the obnoxious system of indirect rule. Lugard made no serious effort to bring Northern and Southern Nigeria under a uniform and central administration. For most of the time, he governed the colonial territory from the North in an administrative system that was so evidently incongruous.

    From his Political Memoranda, his Amalgamation Reports, and his numerous writings on the new colony, it is doubtful that Lugard, or most of his successors in the colony, really did think of Nigeria’s future in terms of a single political entity. Lugard’s successor as Governor General, Hugh Clifford, had warned in 1919 that ‘the coordination of all administrative work should be directed from a single centre’. His successor, Richard Palmer, disagreed with this view, and instead averred that Nigeria ‘was a mere geographical expression, the European label attached to three divergent though contiguous chunks of Africa’. British colonial policy in Africa was vastly different from the French colonial policy of assimilation that envisioned its colonies as possible French states in future. Lugard and most of his administrative successors in Nigeria did not have such a vision for Nigeria.

    The amalgamation, now being celebrated by the Federal Government, was certainly very unpopular in both Northern and Southern Nigeria at the time, and was vigorously opposed by the educated Lagos elite. In the North, the powerful emirates were opposed to it, as it was feared that a centralised administrative system would weaken their authority, which in fact depended on British rule, while in the South it was feared that it would lead to the introduction of the unpopular system of indirect rule and the curtailment of the few political rights that the Lagos-based educated elite enjoyed under the legislative council system. Sir Arthur Richards, another Governor General, while reviewing the 1923 Clifford Constitution had stated that his main objective was to promote the unity of Nigeria. But through his creation of regional councils in the three provinces into which Nigeria was divided, he reinforced the already existing trend towards regionalism in Nigeria. Richards justified his new Constitution for Nigeria on the ground that Northern Nigeria wanted little or nothing to do with the South. This view was subsequently echoed in the 1940s by both Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello, who stated quite clearly that they both regarded Nigeria as a mere geographical expression, and not a united country. In fact, Sir Ahmadu Bello complained publicly later that ‘the mistake of 1914 (meaning the amalgamation) has come to light’. It was as a compromise that a federal system was introduced as best suited to Nigerian conditions.

    The amalgamation created modern Nigeria, but it was not without some strains as it forced the various ethnic groups of Nigeria into a single political unit. It was like trying to force a political union among France, Germany, and Britain. Belgium is a good example of a country in which two separate and distinct nationalities have been lumped together with predictable results, similar to the situation in Nigeria. In fact, it was only in Nigeria that the British colonialists used the word ‘amalgamation’. This term was never applied to any of their other colonies in Africa, or elsewhere. Whatever we may consider to be the merits of amalgamation, it is not an event for us to celebrate. It is demeaning. We should merely mark it as a major event in Nigeria’s political development. I know of no other former British colony that has celebrated its acquisition in this manner. The idea has no precedence in Africa. It was British colonial genius that produced Nigeria. But they will not be celebrating it for obvious reasons. In fact, if they tried to celebrate the occasion, we should object to it as demeaning to us. Our African brothers will certainly consider the planned celebration rather strange. As a nation, we have worked hard and tirelessly to keep this nation united. But we should not celebrate an event in our colonial history of which we should not be proud.

    Of course, the amalgamation was a historic event in Nigeria and cannot be forgotten completely. The intention here is not to completely denigrate British rule in Nigeria as it did the country some good. It introduced western education in the South and a system of justice that was fair on the whole. But it is my well considered view that we should merely mark the amalgamation with seminars, and not celebrate it as if the idea was that of our people and leaders.

    It is a pity that Nigerian and African history are no longer being seriously taught in our schools and Universities. If they were, we would certainly take a different view of this plan to celebrate this episode of our history. Professor Tamuno, the chairman of the planning committee of the celebration, is a historian of note, and a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan. He understands fully the point being made here. It would be better for him to advise the government that, instead of the planned elaborate celebrations, we should merely mark the event by holding seminars and lectures all over the country. This would be far cheaper, more relevant, and more meaningful. What we need is a sober reflection on what amalgamation really meant to Nigeria. I intend to discuss this in my next series of articles in this paper.

  • APC: Nigeria’s political Macedonia

    The coming of APC following the merger of ACN, CPC, ANPP and APGA to form a formidable political party is like the call to Paul of Tarsus to come to Macedonia and liberate it from paganism. I have always wondered who would liberate Nigeria from the death grip of the PDP after almost 14 years of non- performance. Fourteen years is a long time in the history of man and in the history of nations. A child of 14 years would be a strappling teenager who would not be oblivious of his or her environment. So it should be with a nation. The PDP appears to me tired and totally bereft of what to do to advance the interest of our country. Nigerians are generally not too demanding of their government. What they want are regular electricity, regular supply of water, security, good roads and good schools as well as other appurtenances of modern life. These are services some of which they are ready to pay for if available. When the PDP came to power in 1999, we were told that within six months there would be regular supply of electricity. We were also told that within four years of their administration, power generation will hit 10,000mega watts. We were also told that once we liquidated our foreign debts, whatever we were using to pay the debts annually will now be diverted to roads construction. None of these promises and commitments has been met. Our hospitals have remained consulting clinics, our roads have become death traps, our infrastructure generally have remained backward and almost non-existent. It will be very difficult for anybody to find an area in which we have made progress. Internal security has collapsed; we are still generating less than 4,000 mega watts of electricity for a population of more than 170 million compared to South Africa’s 35 million people who enjoy their country’s generation of close to 150,000mega watts.

    When I was young, our universities compared and competed with those of Canada, Australia and the UK. My B.A. Hons 2nd Class Upper Division of Ibadan gave me access to PhD programme without having to have a Masters degree. Today products of our universities have to do one make up year abroad before they can register for Masters Degree. All these have taken place under the PDP’s watch yet the PDP is hanging on our neck like an incubus against which we are helpless. Elections have been held three times since 1999 and all attempts to throw off this yoke have failed because elections in Nigeria are neither fair nor free. The poorer the party performs, the greater the votes they award themselves at election time. Who is therefore going to rescue us from this malevolent political party called the PDP? We have prayed, fasted and in some cases demonstrated against their policies to no avail. We are victims of the dictum that a country deserves the government it gets. In the meantime, corruption has become the second name of Nigeria and like a strong gale it is blowing everything before it and one is afraid that if there is no change it may destroy all of us.

    This is why the coming together of all progressive forces constitutes an answer to the call of patriotism and it behoves on all people of good conscience to rally round the party and deliver this country from the jaws of destruction and from political precipice and economic ruination brought on us by the PDP. I am sure the PDP itself would be relieved if it loses power in 2015 because it has run out of any idea of governance and it is too ashamed to surrender power unless this power is wrested from it.

    This is why the APC is a welcome development. At least we will have a chance to try another party that has a totally distinct idea of what to do in power rather than the present situation where most of the leaders of the ruling party are involved in primitive accumulation of money and a feeding frenzy on collective national resources. A party whose credo as exposed by one of their former leader was that service in government was a call to come and eat rather than to serve. This is the party that the APC has come to rescue from its own vomit. If all things go well and if the APC leadership is selfless, patriotic, self-abnegating, self-sacrificing and driven by the desire to rescue and salvage the nation, they should put aside all ethnic, personal, regional and religious consideration in selecting their leaders and in fielding the combination that will bring victory and succour to Nigeria in 2015. There is no dearth of leaders in the APC who can be president but emphasis must be on competence, incorruptibility and experience. The problems of this country are so many that we need energetic leaders; energetic leadership does not mean youthful leadership. The time to start preparation for 2015 is now. In this preparation, the APC must ensure that government facilities are not used against it and this will include the Police and the electoral commission as well as the armed forces. We must ensure that a non- performing political party is not returned to power by hook or crook.

    I want my children to inherit from my generation a country better than I met it. What presently exists is a travesty of governance and I am ashamed that this is all that this resourceful and cerebrally endowed country has. The fault is in us not in our stars. It will not matter where the president of the country comes from if he performs well. Our problem is that the routine performance of government duties by those in authority is a cause for celebration. Victory at recent football competition has been made the opium of the people and money left from the denuded coffers of government is being frittered away without budgetary provision on footballers. Governance has been shoved aside in parliament and in the executive to celebrate a mere football victory. This sterility of idea about what governance is will come to an end when APC comes to power in 2015.

  • The final showdown

    Between governors and the people, there is no love lost. Many will not touch the governors with a 10-foot pole because of their excellencies’ perceived imperialistic attitude. Our governors love power and they like to flaunt it by dominating their environment. Governors like to dominate everything even though they are not generals, who former military leader Gen Ibrahim Babangida once said ‘’like to dominate their environment’’. In the IBB school, only generals dominate their environment.

    Our governors seem to have put a lie to that statement with the way they have taken over the political landscape not only in their states but across the country. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors, in particular, are not only chief executives of their states, they also hold sway in their party.

    The governors have a lot of say in the party. With their number, they determine who becomes the national chairman, the presidential candidate and so on and so forth. When they band together, they are a threat to the leadership of their party, which does all it can to appease them on such occasions. When the governors take on their party, it is quiet interesting because the friction exposes the underbelly of the acclaimed largest party in Africa. PDP is large no doubt, but its so-called behemoth size always seems to be the source of its frequent internal crises. To a large extent, parties are defined by conflicts and crises and their ability to manage such problems.

    There is no political party in the world without its internal strife, but the ultimate test is in the party’s management of the crisis so that it does not get out of hand. More often than not, PDP’s crises threaten the polity for no other reason than the fact that it is the ruling party. When there is a crisis in the party, the polity quakes, with governance coming virtually to a standstill.. This is especially so when the president and the governors are quarrelling. And their spat has become a recurring decimal in recent times. If they don’t fight over who should become national chairman, they are sparring over which candidates should be fielded in an election.

    Better still, there may be a clash of personal interest between the president and the governors. At the moment, the president is fighting the governors over his political future. The governors have a body under which they meet and take certain decisions in their states’ collective interest. The Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) comprises all the 36 governors, meaning that the membership cuts across party line. As presently constituted, 23 of the governors are from PDP; six, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN); three, All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP); two, All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA); one each for Labour Party (LP) and Congress for Progressives Change (CPC). Although the president has some differences with the Forum’s Chairman and Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, he has extended the fight to the group.

    By interfering in the affairs of NGF, the president seems to have forgotten that it is not an extension of the PDP of which he is the national leader. The NGF, in case Jonathan seems to have forgotten, is a body of states’ chief executives elected on different party platforms. So, he cannot dictate to the group how it should be run. There is nothing that will please the president more than to destabilise the Forum because of his feud with Amaechi, who he suspects of harbouring presidential ambition. Though Amaechi has repeatedly denied having an interest in the 2015 presidential race, Jonathan and his loyalists are not satisfied with the governor’s explanation. Jonathan and his men believe that Amaechi is using the NGF to gain political leverage and boost his chances for the presidency.

    This is why they are desperate to oust Amaechi as NGF chair and castrate him politically. In politics as in war all is fair, I concede, but it is wrong for the president to use federal might to destabilise an association all because of one man. The NGF is an association of duly elected governors; what is more as Nigerians, they are free to associate within the ambit of the law. Has the body done anything illegal? The answer is no. Is it wrong, that is assuming it is true, for Amaechi or any other PDP governor for that matter to harbour presidential ambition? The answer again is no. Should the president use underhand tactic to get rid of a political foe all because of that person’s perceived interest in an election which may even be held behind many of those now showing overt and covert interest in the poll?

    “Let tomorrow take care of itself,” the Bible admonishes us, but we will never take heed. We are always scheming and struggling for power when we don’t have control over tomorrow. The president may use Amaechi’s perceived ambition to kill the NGF, if the governors do not come together to resist him. This is not Amaechi’s fight simplicita; it is all the governors’ fight because of the crude manner in which Jonathan wants to get him out of the way. If he succeeds, who says Amaechi’s successor may not suffer the same fate in future once he stops being a ‘good boy’.

    Amaechi may have stepped

    on Jonathan’s powerful

    toes, but that does not give the president the right to use his enormous powers to deal with the governor. We are hearing about videos being showed at the Villa to reveal the governor’s ‘sins’ as if we are back in the Abacha era.

    Pray if a governor could be recorded at a public function and the video later used against him without his knowledge, only God knows what will happen to mere commoners if we fall prey to Jonathan whose eyes are now everywhere. Yet, our president, to quote him, is neither “a general” nor a “Pharaoh”. If this is how meek presidents behave, I would rather go for a general or a Pharaoh because at least, we will know where we stand with such a leader. With Jonathan, you don’t know anything until you are hit by a tonne of brick. The NGF has never been in this kind of bond in its 14 years of existence.

    Not even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, as tough as he was, took on the NGF the way Jonathan is doing. Will the governors allow him to have his way or will they fight him to finish? There may be something yet we don’t know about this our ‘affable, amiable, gentle and meek’ president. Very soon, he will unravel in our presence, that I am sure of.

    With him instigating the PDP governors to form a parallel forum, Jonathan has shown that he will stop at nothing to impose his will on us. With this kind of attitude from the president, we may be in trouble as a country. This is why I align myself with the submission of Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu at the NGF’s meeting in Abuja on Monday that “there is no basis for forming the PDP Governors’ Forum (PDP-GF). The PDP-GF is a deliberate move by the Presidency to split the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and turn it into a tool to be used. By forming another forum within a forum, it means forces from outside are at work. A dictator is going to emerge”. That is if he has not emerged already. The question is are we ready to resist this dictator? It is Amaechi today, we don’t know whose turn it may be tomorrow.

  • Jonathan and 2015: Okupe’s pure wind

    Jonathan and 2015: Okupe’s pure wind

    Last Wednesday, the bellicose Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr Doyin Okupe, dismissed as “diversionary,” a declaration by the Niger State Governor, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu, that in the run up to the 2011 elections President Goodluck Jonathan “signed” an agreement with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors to serve for only one term.

    Governor Aliyu made the declaration the weekend before in a phone-in programme, ‘Guest of the Week’, on Liberty Radio, a Kaduna based private FM radio station. It is apparent that the governor made the declaration against the background of clear indications so far that the President will re-contest for his job in 2015, come rain or shine.

    “I recall that at the time he was going to declare for the 2011 election,” the governor said, “all the PDP governors were brought together to ensure that we were all in the same frame of mind. And I recall that some of us said given the circumstance of the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua and given the PDP zoning arrangement, it was expected that the North was to produce the president for a number of years.

    “I recall that at that discussion it was agreed that Jonathan would only serve for one term of four years and we all SIGNED the agreement…I think we are all gentlemen enough so when the time comes, we will all come together and see what is the right thing to do.” (Emphasis mine).

    These were the remarks Okupe has since dismissed as diversionary – and a diversion which he said his principal is determined to resist with every ounce of his strength. The president, he said, is simply too pre-occupied with his commitment to transform Nigeria into a land flowing with milk and honey to allow himself to be dragged into the campaigns for the next presidential election.

    “We,” Okupe said, “wish to state categorically that this is neither the time nor the season to begin electioneering campaign…and so President Goodluck Jonathan will not jump the gun. Mr President will stoutly resist any disguised or open attempt to drag him into any debates, arguments or political discussions relating to a presidential election in 2015. The President considers this 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.”

    When the celebrated journalist and novelist, George Orwell, said in his famous essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’, published in 1946, that “Political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible,” he could not, of course, have had your typical Nigerian politician in mind, much less a 21st century Nigerian presidential spokesman. But if he did, he couldn’t have been more spot-on in his dismissal of political speech as a lot of bull. “Political language,” he said in the essay, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

    Anyone living in Nigerian in recent times, even if he were half blind – except, of course, if he is Okupe and his likes – can see that the presidential spokesman’s attempt to rebut Governor Aliyu couldn’t have been more disingenuous. Few statements, if any, could have been worded to make barefaced lies sound truthful, murder respectable and pure wind appear solid.

    To begin with, most disinterested Nigerians and close foreign observers of Nigeria know that President Jonathan was never “overwhelmingly elected” in April 2011. On the contrary, it is pretty obvious he was overwhelmingly rigged into office, beginning with the dubious PDP primaries, all the way through the manipulation of religion and ethnicity and the abuse of state’s fiscal power and its instruments of violence to square or squash dissent, to finally getting the courts to dismiss opposition rejection of the results on legal technicalities.

    Second, even Okupe knows that his principal has been anything but single-minded in his pursuit of his Transformation Agenda, which, in any case, was an unaffordable shopping list rather than a set of coherent and achievable objectives. If the President has been single-minded in the pursuit of his campaign promises, incoherent and unrealistic as they were, the country would have been a lot better today than it was in April 2011.

    The truth, assuming the likes of Okupe care for one, is that if anyone is guilty of diverting the president’s attention from his job, it is the man himself, certainly more than anyone else. This much is obvious from his single-minded determination last year to replace the “recalcitrant” Timipre Sylva with the loyal Seriake Dickson as the governor of his home state, Bayelsa, and hunt Sylva down into oblivion. It was also obvious from his single-minded determination to impose the loyal Alhaji Bamanga Tukur as chairman of the PDP, even after the gentleman had been roundly rejected by his immediate North-Eastern constituency to which the job had been zoned.

    No less diversionary is his self-inflicted current face-off with Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State whose crime, it seems, is that, like not a few two-term governors, he is suspected of harbouring presidential ambition. At least twice last week the President tried, but failed, to remove Amaechi as the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum. Before then his self-appointed godfather, Chief Edwin Clark, had taken out a two-part full page adverts in several newspapers to rant and rave at the Forum for its imagined antipathy towards his godson. Chances are those adverts did not cost the old man one kobo.

    What all this suggests is that the President is single-mindedly determined not to let anything or anyone whatsoever to get in the way of his second-term, some would say third-term, presidential ambition, having been sworn into the office twice already. If anything has been diverting his attention from doing his job, it is this single-minded focus on 2015.

    So it is really disingenuous for Okupe to accuse Governor Aliyu, or for that matter anyone else, of trying to divert the President from carrying out his transformation agenda. The governor apparently did not lie when he said the President signed a deal with the PDP governors to serve for only one term on his own steam. The proof that Aliyu spoke the truth, at least for once, given his reputation as a public officer who talks and equivocates too much, is crystal clear from the egregious response to his claim by friends of the president which in effect says, “So what if the President signed a deal?”

    Politicians everywhere do deals often with no intention to keep them. But only in Nigeria do they sign and seal deals with no intention whatsoever to honour them. Worse still, it is only in Nigeria that a politician can look you straight in the eyes and accuse you of diverting his attention from doing his job for simply reminding him that he has not kept his word.

    The surprise in all this, therefore, is not that the President signed a deal apparently with no intention to honour it. It is not even that his spokesman will attempt to make a lie look truthful or make murder look respectable or give pure wind the appearance of solidity.

    The surprise is that even after the President and his estranged benefactor, former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, categorically denied the zoning and power rotation deal in PDP, Governor Aliyu would still talk about the President’s word as a gentleman being his honour in spite of all the indications so far that the man would rather Nigeria breaks up than honour his word not to contest the next presidential election.

     

  • Political crime of preventable suffering; El Rufai’s autobiography

    Political crime of preventable suffering; El Rufai’s autobiography

    When a government takes power it must take on responsibilities to the citizenry. In Nigeria political power is an end in itself. The only activities advertised are self-perpetuating ‘re-election engineering’ supported by theft and accumulation of masses of public money to fill ‘war chests’ to execute a re-election project. This ‘politically legitimised’ but totally ‘criminally illegal’ budget diversion in the moral custody of the political class to personal and party war chests deprived the budget of functionality at every level of growth and development.

    Nigeria has suffered from the political roundabout of ‘win-budget-political theft-budget failure-election corruption-win-budget-theft-budget failure etc’. This preoccupation of politics with self-perpetuation and unenlightened political self-interest has overridden our development as none of the 5, 10, 15 or 20 year development plans were seriously executed. The dichotomy of the North and South views on everything has also been a major drawback to sustained development. The best example is the abuse and misapplication of federalism to mean only a ‘skewed federal character’. This is an on-going 35 year hidden ‘Second Civil War’- with abandonment of basic honest sharing principles on the altar of warped principles, census, LGA and revenue figures and domination or dependency. The spin-off was the conservative versus progressive struggle, usually won by the powerful conservative elements of all ethnic groups. The cost of this stranglehold on Nigeria was a serious lack of three things- development, devolution of power and funds nationwide. This cost is reflected in Nigeria’s woeful showing in sports, electricity power supply, education, medical treatment, railways and abandonment of the well-entrenched colonial culture of building and road maintenance.

    Historically, the Public Works Department would mark a date in five years on the wall and it would return on that date to repaint the house. We abandoned that inherited colonial working civil service maintenance culture. Those who sat at meetings which abandoned such maintenance strategies should be exposed. Note that UK spent over £22m pounds on citizens’ compensation claims for potholes.

    Little could be done by individual citizens and states to cancel out federal abdication of its national responsibility and abandonment and deliberate neglect of the railways or the failure of the national power grid or the bad roads. Of course all used and still use generators etc to substitute for power deprivation. This is preventable suffering. Nigeria would have saved trillions annually if no generators had ever been imported to substitute for a failed government. The grid would have been forced to grow at 1,000Mw per annum to 25-30,000Mw by now, short of the needed 100,000Mw but better than our 5,000Mw. Who pays for this ‘preventable suffering’?

    Every pothole and diversion for development must be studied to reduce ‘preventable suffering’. Remember the anguish at Ogere and Ore? All ‘Preventable Suffering’ is easily solved. Government is not God and must create solutions to prevent suffering even during construction. It is not necessary for citizens to suffer excessively for government development! Government should supervise and force contractors to take care of citizens during construction.

    Nigeria’s failure to develop railways, roads and power and cancel history from schools was no mistake but a deliberate punishable criminal conspiracy against Nigeria. It was deliberate government policy. Those civil servants, politicians and military adventurers who sat at Federal Executive Council and Ministerial Meetings vetoing power grid development, standard gauge railway line, East West roads, second Niger Bridge and history from the curriculum know each other. We want to know them before they get more misplaced national honours. Such people have no business lamenting ‘Nigeria Today’ or advising current governments on the ‘way forward’. All their lapses have paralysed the nation while countries with fewer resources have leapt ahead of us in almost every ranking except corruption and other negative areas. They should be exposed under the Freedom of Information Act and in properly informative biographies like the exciting new 627 page autobiography by Nasir El-Rufai titled ‘The Accidental Public Servant’. Agree or not with him, you should get a copy if you are writing a biography or are hopeful for the future of Nigeria. Criminal politicians beware. We the people will get access, a la El-Rufia, to what you say and do, irresponsible or not, in governance and your deeds will appear in the public domain. Look at the recent sack of judges.

    Government is often people with greed and ambition with little vision. Government’s failure in railways made life a misery and a death trap. Government intentions to perpetuate the railway blight failed when its search for an international container port license for Lagos required railway evacuation of containers. The citizens made do with nothing in some parts while in progressive areas the citizens substituted for federal losses by investment of their resources in their children’s education.

    Happily a few of these areas are finally receiving attention mainly because the conservatives have finally agreed to be dragged into the 21st Century. But the pace is slow relative to need to compensate for ‘preventable suffering’.

    Recently we have seen some movement in solving these problems and serious attempts to achieve the MDGs but at what mega-cost and corruption? Inexplicably, simple mass action solutions like UBEC-led ‘Emergency Operation Textbooks, Science and Sports Equipment Boxes’ still elude millions of Nigerian students stuck in over 70,000 schools mostly unworthy of the simplest dictionary definition of ‘school’ –enlightened inspired teachers, teacher and child friendly school environment, books, books, books. Preventable suffering?

  • Ogun PDP: The Abuja ‘coup’

    Ogun PDP: The Abuja ‘coup’

    There has been an upbeat in the polity. From all indications, there is a looming volatile and combustible confusion that is capable of tearing into shreds the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the party that claims to be the biggest in Africa.

    There’s no doubt that the PDP is a party run by ‘big people’, which has offered too little to Nigerians in the last 14 years of democratic governance. Therefore, those who call the party an alliance of strange bedfellows may not be too wrong after all as most of the members seem to be united in only one accord – the love of the stomach and filthy lucre.

    Every now and again, the rumbles that tear through the soul of the party are far greater than a volcanic eruption with devastating consequences. I am sure, Bamanga Tukur, the national chairman of the party, cannot be sleeping with his two eyes closed at the moment. This is because some elements within the party cannot really come to terms with his style of administration. To them, he has come on board to ‘chop’ and not to offer any valuable legacy in leadership.

    For now, Tukur seems to have held the rampaging tempest trying to dislodge him from his post at bay. One moment, it is as if he would not survive yet another day in office; the next moment, he is on the offensive again, fighting real and imaginary enemies. By the last count, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, the former national secretary of the party, and Bode Mustapha, the national auditor, have been yanked off their offices. If Oyinlola’s ouster was through the instrumentality of the law, Mustapha’s case was quite curious, dramatic, intriguing and strange. The latter was the culmination of several subtle but treacherous moves aided and abetted by Tukur and his lackeys. In this latest chess game, Bode George, the discredited party chieftain who is going about with a moral baggage of an ex-convict, played a prominent role.

    George had, a fortnight ago, surreptitiously corralled chieftains of the party from the South-west into Abuja for a meeting with Tukur. Some of the leaders of the party who could read between the lines stayed away from that purposeless extravaganza. But others, who were goaded by vaulting ambitions and greed, could not smell any rat. They consequently rail-roaded their motley crowd of followers into the Golgotha that had been prepared for them in Abuja. What followed is the mass slaughter that was unleashed on the unsuspecting party faithful.

    Though the ‘family meeting’ was cloaked in the façade of a reconciliation gambit, those at the meeting were dumbfounded when they discovered that they had voluntarily walked into a booby trap set for them by Bode George and others. In one fell swoop, all the contending groups in Ogun State PDP – the Olusegun Obasanjo’s, Jubril Martins Kuye’s and Gbenga Daniel’s groups – were all deposited inside the trash can. The only man left standing is Buruji Kashamu, who, apparently, had a fore-knowledge of the tsunami.

    It was a well- orchestrated coup d’état. A few hours to the Abuja parley, Tukur, through a top legal practitioner based in Abuja, went round the courts and withdrew all the pending cases instituted against Buruji’s group by one of the other groups. The dummy that was sold was that Buruji would follow suit and withdraw all his court cases to pave way for genuine reconciliation. But this was not to be. As soon as the other cases were withdrawn, Buruji became adamant and would not take part in such a charade. That action actually sent a danger signal to the other groups. But alas, it was damn too late in the day to do a rethink or a re-map of strategy. That was how the other contending groups were led to the slaughter slab.

    With power now fully in Buruji’s kitty, the businessman turned politician was said to have thoroughly lambasted Gbenga Daniel, the immediate past governor of Ogun State, who is widely believed to have contributed enormously to the streak of misfortune that has trailed the party in Ogun State in recent times. He was said to have pointedly told Daniel that he (Daniel) was an impostor having left the PDP in 2011 to pitch his tent with the Peoples Party of Nigeria, PPN, the party he founded and funded to achieve a selfish motive.

    Daniel has been desperate to return to the PDP ever since because of the messy situation he found himself soon after the 2011 election. In that election, his favourite PPN came a miserable third behind the PDP and the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, who came second and first respectively. Not even his attempt to ‘romance’ Kunle Amosun, the incumbent governor of the state, now his nemesis, had paid off. Instead, Daniel has been at the receiving end of a barrage of legal cocktails which have greatly unsettled him. He is, therefore, believed to be seeking sanctuary in the PDP as one sure way to wriggle out of the political cobweb in which he has been trapped.

    During the campaign for the 2011 general election, Daniel had confidently boasted to whoever cared to listen, including President Goodluck Jonathan himself, that he was capable of winning the governorship election in Ogun State, through the PPN. At that time, his illusion was that he could win the election and then ‘decamp’ with his PPN followers almost immediately back to the PDP. By doing this, he was obviously infatuated with a false sense of superiority and unfounded popularity even at a time it was clear that his public rating had plummeted.

    It appeared that Jonathan and the party hierarchy in Abuja was sucked in by these vainglorious and delusive promises. This is apparent from events leading to the 2011 election. Daniel had so much sweet-tongued the president to toeing his line of thoughts that any contrary opinion expressed over the delicate position of the PDP in Ogun State election at that time was easily dismissed with a wave of the hand.

    Today, Daniel is like a fish out of water, hence his desperation for a reunion with Ogun PDP by all means. Unfortunately, in trying to reunite with the PDP in Ogun State, he is not willing to follow the laid-down procedure of the party -go back to his ward and rejoin the party. Perhaps, he believes that as a former chief executive of the state, it would be too demeaning for him to be subjected to such party procedures. He has not also helped matters by his blunt refusal to make up with those whom he had stepped or even crushed their toes during the 2011 general election. Above all, there is also this problem of trying to seize the control of the PDP in Ogun State, a move many of the stakeholders consider insulting and outlandish.

    Apart from the kid’s gloves with which Mr. President, Tukur and the party hierarchy in Abuja are treating Daniel for reasons best known to them, some of the past governors of PDP, namely Segun Oni, Olusegun Agagu and Adebayo Alao-Akala, are also believed to be fronting for him and doing whatever is possible to bring him back to the fold. Of particular mention is Oni, who, as former vice-chairman of the party in the South-west, preoccupied himself with the task of bringing in the embattled former governor. Unfortunately, that solo effort has led to his sudden ouster from the exalted position.

    By now, all the powerful men of yesterday must have seen the nakedness of power. They are now like political lepers, courtesy of selfishness and greed. What is certain is that Tukur may have only scored a Pyrrhic victory as the South-west PDP, particularly Ogun PDP, gets further enmeshed and embroiled in internal wrangling. Until genuine reconciliation is effected, the crisis in Ogun State PDP is far from being over. In fact, it has just begun!

  • Tackling Bayelsa’s infrastructure challenge

    Tackling Bayelsa’s infrastructure challenge

    Infrastructural development is one of the major components of economic growth of any developing nation. Leadership at all levels of government places premium on infrastructural development, as it creates the enabling environment to stimulate business and industrial activities which in turn enhances productivity, check undue rise in cost of operationa, employment generation and as well poverty reduction.

    Good governance to the average citizen of a developed or developing nation is all about provision of social amenities at affordable rates, meaningful and long lasting development. And, to achieve this, the leadership must be prepared to tackle the challenges of basic infrastructural needs of the citizenry.

    Some these basic amenities include efficient, stable and reliable power supply, safe and potable drinking water, functional public transportation system, effective communication system, functional and affordable healthcare and educational facilities.

    Irked by the age long infrastructural decay in the oil rich Bayelsa State, Governor Seriake Dickson on assumption of office on February 14, 2012 officially declared a State of Emergency in the educationand other critical sectors of the economy.

    Created in 1996, the issue of security in the state has been of great concern to successive administrations in the state. The Internally Generated Revenue of the State nose dived on daily basis, as efforts at attracting investors hardly produced the desired results, largely due to insecurity and the chaotic situation infrastructure in the state among others.

    Local and foreign investors never saw Bayelsa as a safe and viable investment destination. The state was always in the news for the wrong reasons. It was either rival cult wars, kidnapping of mainly expatriate workers of multi-national companies, illegal oil bunkering, financial fraud, and other related vices.

    In order to tackle this problem and make the state investment friendly, Governor Dickson, as a former security operative, put in place a security outfit code named: Operation Doo Akpor to checkmate the activities of criminals in and outside the state capital.

    This decision is paying off, as night life has gradually returned to Yenagoa, the state capital.

    The heatwarming news is that, investors, local and foreign are now jostling to invest in the state.

    The Special Adviser to the Governor on Security Matters, Colonel Bernard Kenebai (Rtd) said with the security gadgets and personnel put in place by the Dickson-led administration, the state is no longer the safe haven for criminals.

    In the last one year, the operatives of the security outfit”Operation Doo Akpor” have arrested over 600 suspects for criminal offences and handed them over to the appropriate security agency for further interrogation and prosecution in accordance with the law. Prior to the advent of the administration, there were high incidents of criminal activities in Urban and other metropolitan cities of the state. The waterways, then were not safe as there were reported cases of sea piracy and other related vices. The impact of a state of insecurity is quite obvious. Criminals were taking institutions of government in open confrontations. There were reported cases of kidnapping, assassinations and the activities of some purported amnesty agitators.

    However, with the installation of TETRA Trunk radio, the first of its kind in the West Africa sub region and purchase of over 85 patrol vehicles and 15 patrol boats, the residents of the state can now sleep with their two eyes closed.

    Also, as part of the security measures put in place, the government has built 13 emergency response centres in some designated areas of the state. The areas are: Oloibiri, Ogbia town, Opume, Otuabagi junction, Emeyal 1/Otuoke junction and Otuasega/Shell camp junction.

    Other areas are: Onuebum, Agbura, Okaki/Yenegwe junction, Igbogene/Okolobiri/Glory Drive round about, Okordia-Zarama market and Opokuma and Sagbama junctions.

    With the security measures put in place, Governor Dickson has turned the entire state to a massive construction site with work on 41 roads, 75 block-low cost Housing Estate, civil servant quarters, building of model secondary schools in the three senatorial zones, commencement of work on 500 bed hospital, world class referral centre, the three senatorial districts roads, Transparency building, the Five-Star hotel, the four secretariat annexes, Multi Door Court House, Governor’s Lodges in Yenagoa, Sagbama and Nembe.

    Conducting newsmen round some of the project sites, State Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Lawrence Ewrudjakpor said, ‘when we took over, there was nothing to write home about and that is why the governor was angry to develop the state. All the ongoing projects as well as the ones earmarked for construction would be completed within the tenure of the present administration.

    The government embarked on this massive construction of projects because the state is backwards in terms of physical development compared with its contemporaries, especialy in the southern part of the country.

    The target of the administration is to restore the lost glory of the state and put it on sound footing to be able to catch up with the rest.

    Also, the Government has invested over N4bn in rural electrification projects with the award of over 23 contracts. These include; Obunagha-Sagbama 33KVA line, extension to Ofoni community through Ebedebiri, Bolou Orua, Angiama and Toru Orua, 2 by 7.5 MVA injection sub-station; Agbere-Odoni, 1000KVA gas-fired CAT generating station including cabling, upgrading and modification of Angiama sub station to import electricity to communities in Southern Ijaw local government area among others.

    In the area of human capacity-building, a total number of 557 scholarships have been awarded in the last one year. Governor Dickson stated that his administration has made huge investments in the education sector because of its commitment to developing the human capacity of the state.

    According to him, Government made an initial provision of N1bn for the postgraduate scholarship scheme, but has since overshot that amount in view of the massive demands it got from Bayelsans.

    “The sums involved are quite staggering, but we believe it is a good investment. Because of our passion for human capacity development, we have since overshot the N1bn originally earmarked for the scheme.” Dickson explained.

    • Ajibola writes from Yenagoa

  • Edo’s 2013 budget

    Edo’s 2013 budget

    Can you really satisfy the people of Edo State? Of course, yes. Aren’t they more demanding than state resources can carry? The answer is in the affirmative. Could it be because to whom much is given, much is expected? Again, yes. The truth is – the people of Edo want more from Governor Adams Oshiomhole despite his overwhelming scorecard in the past four years in office.

    Oshiomhole, on his part has vowed to post more mouth-watering dividends. His 2013 budget christened “Taking Edo to the next level” is one among three others before Oshiomhole will call it quits.

    Successive governments in the past have had budgets tagged with flamboyant adjectives but unfortunately they hardly yielded the much trumpeted result. Today, the difference is clear. Whereas the budget used to be an opaque instrument; now it’s a self-reliant and fiscally prudent tool.

    Edo State is one of the few states where Fiscal Responsibility legislation was passed into law and we all know the import of that. While the state benefits from the 13% derivation fund as a marginal oil producing state, this fiscal advantage does not translate to any significant edge in financial transfers and key indices when compared to other states in the Niger Delta region.

    The proposed Budget size for the year is N150,045,377,060 billion. Of this, the sum of N87,407,475,855 billion, representing approximately 60%, is being proposed as Capital Expenditure; while the proposed Recurrent Expenditure is N62,637,901,205 billion, which represents approximately 40% of budget size.

    By the above figures, government is sustaining the tradition of putting more funds into capital expenditure, while reducing recurrent expenditure.

    The sum of N116, 479,778,045 billion is proposed as recurrent revenue, made up of the following components: Statutory Receipt – N86.51 billion, Internally Generated Revenue – N26.97 billion

    The projected capital receipts amount to N64,341,876,840 billion, while there is a projected deficit of N23,065,599,015 billion to be funded through the World Bank Budget Support Facility and additional credit lines.

    The Recurrent Component of the 2013 Budget, which is N62,637,901,205 billion, is made up of Personnel Costs – N25.46 billion, Overhead Costs – N16.40 billion and Consolidated Revenue Fund Charges – N20.76 billion

    Government is concentrating the bulk of it’s Capital Expenditure on key priority areas. Roads Project is allocated the sum of N33,351,000,000 billion. This will be used to complete ongoing intra and inter-city road projects, in addition to funding new road projects. The designs of these road projects, according to government sources, are ready.

    The sum of N 13,293,000,000 billion is proposed for Flood and Erosion Control and Environmental Protection. Of this amount, N8.00 billion is allocated for the execution of projects under the Benin City Storm Water Masterplan. Also, a substantial sum has been earmarked for the continue desiltation and dredging of the Benin Moat.

    Similarly, the sum of N2.55 billion is set aside for erosion and flood control infrastructure in Edo Central and Edo North senatorial districts, while the sum of N1.20 billion is proposed for Beautification and Urban renewal projects across the State.

    The total budget provision for education is N26.7 billion comprising of N14.6 billion capital and N12.1 billion recurrent expenditure excluding salaries to primary schools teachers.

    The state owned university, Ambrose Alli University has a provision of N4.82 billion of which N1.02 billion is for capital projects. N4 billion has been provided for construction and renovation tertiary institutions in Edo State. The technical schools reconstruction/renovation has a provision of N500million.

    The sum of N6.78 billion has been allocated to the Health Sub-Sector, comprising of N2.8 billion capital projects and N3.98 billion for recurrent expenditure.

    Edo people should expect the procurement of rescue ambulances to cover Benin-Auchi, Benin-Ore, Benin-Agbor and Benin-Warri roads at an estimated cost of N30,000,000 million. It is expected that this will complement the on-going Accident and Emergency facility in the new complex at the Central Hospital, Benin City.

    The administration has also promised to continue to transform the agriculture sub-sector to ensure increased food and raw material production. In this connection, government plans to provide necessary inputs to farmers and encourage our teeming youth to engage in agricultural activities. The sum of N400 million is proposed for this sub-sector in Year 2013.

    Sure, the budget is intended to strengthen the administration’s resolve to galvanize the people of Edo state towards developmental action and make the state competitive economically as well as make it self-reliant.

    This is more so as Oshiomhole is sworn to carry out institutional reforms necessary to guarantee and sustain irreversible development. “The thrust of our policies is to achieve concrete development. In this regard, the fiscal governance measures we adopted at the beginning of this administration will be sustained.”

    Edo State has been acknowledged as a rapidly developing state in Nigeria by local commentators, investors and development partners. Oshiomhole and his team have creatively managed the state’s resources efficiently to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number of the people. He has worked consciously with the people to deepen their partnership for our overall progress.

    The administration must be commended for its efforts at improving the state compared to the work done by its predecessors. But as with everything in life, there is room for improvement if continuity is sustained. The state is blessed with abundant resources which have barely been tapped and transformed to cash-cows. Apart from tax earnings which cannot even sustain its recurrent expenditure, the states’ major financing source is the Federation Account.

    Without handouts from the Federal Government, will the state exist in the form it does now? The answer is no. It definitely needs an improvement in federal allocation. Has the state provided a thriving environment for SMEs to play an active role in its economy? It is trying but needs to do more. Is the government investing in physical infrastructure and human capital or is it just maintaining what it has inherited? The state’s performance in education and spending on roads answer this question affirmatively.

    To a great extent, leadership is like beauty, it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it. Oshiomhole has proved himself a model in self-confidence, vision, virtue, plain guts, and reliance on blessed impulse. He has learned from everything, more importantly from experience, adversity, and mistakes. He has learned to lead by leading.

    There are a lot of goodies for the people of Edo in Oshiomhole’s 2013 budget. All we need to get the best from this government is to simply support the government, criticize constructively, pay our taxes and maintain whatever public infrastructure the government must have succeeded in building in our environment. By so doing, Edo can be said to be on the path of sustainable development.

    • Mayaki is a founding member, Coalition for Good Governance and Economic Justice in Africa

  • The Berende challenge

    The Berende challenge

    It is not often that personnel of Secret Service agencies around the world come out in the open to reveal their identities or what they are working on , let alone call a media conference to do so. But since the Boko Haram terrorism onslaught on Nigeria, the State Security Service has been more than willing to report breakthroughs and progress.

    But while we have been inundated with efforts being made by SSS to crack Boko Haram, albeit with limited success, the revelation last week by the service that it had been able to burst an Iranian sponsored terrorist cell in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic capital could end up being a major breakthrough for the organisation.

    Parading 50-year-old Abdullahi Berende as leader of an Iranian sponsored terrorist group in Nigeria before the public in Abuja Wednesday last week, SSS spokesman Marilyn Ogar named two others, Saheed Adewunmi and Sulaiman Saka as members of the terrorist cell being handled by Iranians to spy on Israel and American interests in the country. A fourth person, Bunyamin Yusuf is said to be at large.

    In addition to spying on American and Israeli interests in the country for possible terrorist attack, the suspects were said to have also drawn up a list of prominent Nigerians that could be attacked and whose attack could set up a chain of reactions capable of destabilizing the country.

    Of course Iran has denied ever running a terrorist cell in Nigeria or planning to do so and blamed enemies of the growing cordial relationship between the two countries for cooking up the story to not just cause disaffection between both nations but also permanent damage and enmity. And when Iran talks of enemies, the State of Israel and the United States of America come to mind.

    When it comes to state security matters it is very difficult to know the actual truth as all the parties tend to exaggerate or “sex-up” the facts to present a convincing evidence to justify their respective and often different positions. Remember former US Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell presented to the whole world, at the UN, what America said was solid evidence of Iraq’s weapon of mass destruction to justify US and allied forces attack and decimation of Iraqi armed forces and to a large extent the country’s infrastructure all in a bid to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. Britain, in her own intelligence report even said attack on western targets in Europe by Iraq was just few weeks away and called for pre-emotive attack to destroy Saddam Hussein and his army. Of course they attacked and destroyed Iraq but no weapon of mass destruction was ever found because none existed in the first place. Virtually all the intelligences services in the west had similar report of Iraq’s weapon of mass destruction. So, were they deliberately misleading the world to justify their planned destruction of Iraq or they got their intelligence wrong?

    Nobody could say which now, but because Iraq was such a bad guy nobody bothered to give the country the benefit of the doubt or even seriously blame the west after the fall of Saddam and destruction of Iraq and no weapon was found. The general conclusion was even if Iraq had no weapon of mass destruction, the world would be a better place without the Iraqi dictator.

    The same could be said of Iran now as the country battles biting western economic sanctions over its nuclear programme. While the world is accusing Teheran of enriching uranium to produce nuclear war heads/bombs the Iranians are insisting that their nuclear programme is for peaceful purpose.

    While it is very difficult to believe Iran on anything, we only have the words of Berende and the SSS on the alleged Iranian sponsored terrorist cell in Lagos. So, who do we believe?

    Iran in the past had sponsored attacks against Israel’s interests, notably in South America and anywhere it considered the weakest link in the Jewish state’s seemingly impregnable security network. So, if truly the country had plans to attack Israel’s cultural centre in Lagos, it won’t be much of a surprise as it had done so elsewhere. And remember the previous Shia Muslim unrests in Nigeria had the hand of Teheran as the Islamic Republic appeared bent on having more than a mere economic footprint in Nigeria but also political/ideological and religious presence.

    But if Iran is saying no, then could our SSS be lying or merely carrying out the wish of Israel and America, fighting western war against Iran by proxy? It is very difficult to fault our security service in this regard not only because one is not in a position to do so, but also because it would be unpatriotic to do so when there is no evidence to the contrary. It is also unthinkable that the SSS would be protecting any other interest apart from Nigeria’s. So from the evidence at hand Iran is guilty, but then what are the options open to Nigeria to seek redress. One is to strongly protest this clandestine operation by Iran within Nigeria’s territory to the authorities in Teheran and if we are truly convinced about it, we could summarily expel all or any Iranian diplomat here engaged or involved in one way or the other in this plan to carry out terrorist attacks in Lagos or anywhere else in Nigeria. We could also in addition to expelling the diplomat(s) recall our own envoy to Iran if we feel strongly about the alleged Iranian action. But are we on a strong footing on this matter? Because issues like this should not be taken lightly. So if our position is so strong, then let’s go ahead and do whatever we could to show our annoyance to Iran, after all we are a sovereign state.

    But beyond this, the choice of Lagos should trouble every right thinking Nigerian, just as the alleged involvement of a Yoruba man from Ilorin, Kwara state in particular to cause destruction and mayhem in a largely Yoruba city/state of Lagos should worry every Nigerian. Aside Lagos being largely populated by Yoruba, it is also home to all the other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria and remains the economic capital of the country. Apart from oil and gas that come from the Niger Delta region, Lagos accounts for virtually every other business and commercial, activities that drive Nigeria’s economy, so, any terrorist attack in the emerging mega city could be inimical to Nigeria’s shaky image of a stable country. An attack on Lagos could be seen by the rest of the world as a sign of insecurity in the country and this could scare foreign investors.

    In addition any such attack could cause ethnic unrest that could ultimately lead to fratricidal conflicts across the federation, hence the need to take the Berende’ s Iranian terrorists plot very seriously. It is not enough to just parade the suspects, SSS should also endeavour to pursue not just the investigation to its logical conclusion but also charge the suspects to court and put a lie to the Iranian denial. It is about time our security services including the police and even Immigration intensify their surveillance of religious places and organisations to detect any foreign ideological infiltration that could harm our well being as a nation and a people. The Immigration Service in particular should monitor (but not unnecessarily interfere) the movement of Nigerians to such volatile countries that have the tendencies to indoctrinate young and often idle minds towards harmful causes to their nations and their people. Most important however is a commitment by the Nigerian government at all tiers to providing employment for our youths. Most of these unemployed youths are easy targets for evil minded people recruiting terrorists all over the place. The fact that Berende and co and heir minders have Lagos in mind shows that the city and indeed the entire southern Nigeria is not immune to terrorist attack. We should all be vigilant.