The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Changing lives through scholarships

    Changing lives through scholarships

    Nelson Mandela, one of Africa’s most respected leaders once described ‘education as the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world’. All over the world, leaders in the mould of Mandela know that education is not just a just a tool employed for the development of human mind but also a veritable means of the developing the society.

    With a consciousness that a well educated citizenry will ultimately give birth to a civilised society; such leaders devote time, money and other resources to the education of their people. They build schools, furnish classrooms and libraries, employ the best hands as teachers and most importantly give scholarship to deserving students.

    In Nigeria, giving scholarships to students is a trend that is gradually waning. Some years back, government at all levels; corporate organisations and individuals who had the wherewithal considered it part of their civic responsibilities to reward outstanding students with scholarships. Some of the Nigeria’s brightest academicians and public officers today were at some point in their lives beneficiaries of various scholarship schemes.

    Unfortunately, that is not the case for Nigerian students today. Despite the rot in the educational sector, outstanding students who sacrifice a lot to succeed are often not rewarded due to the lack of scholarship opportunities. They graduate with the best grades only to join the burgeoning army of hapless unemployed youths.

    It is in the light of the above stated fact, that Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta state should be commended for his investments in education through scholarships. While it is undisputable that there is a deficiency of scholarship opportunities for students in the country, it is not so in Delta State. Since he took over the reins in the state, the governor has initiated and sustained several scholarship scheme that have contributed in no small way to the human capital development of the state.

    The most evident and perhaps the most appreciated of Dr. Uduaghan’s scholarship initiatives is the overseas scholarship for First Class graduates from Delta State. Under this noble scheme, Delta State students with a First Class degree in their respective disciplines are given full scholarship to further their studies for Masters and PH.D any institution in the United States United Kingdom or any other country in the world.

    Geared towards the attainment of the ‘Delta Beyond Oil’ initiative of Uduaghan’s administration, the overseas scholarship scheme has recorded more than 135 graduates from various parts of the state as beneficiaries since its inception in 2010. There are still more beneficiaries waiting to be mobilised for the next round.

    One cannot help but commend Dr. Uduaghan for his vision and firm belief in education as a potent tool for development of Delta State and Nigeria. In country that relies solely on crude oil as its mainstay, it is important for us to diversify and see the possibility of living without oil.

    As the governor noted during the presentation ceremony for the last set of beneficiaries in Asaba recently, investments in human capital development is the only way to build capacity that will ultimately lead to the overall development of the state and the country at large.

    China became a major force in world economy today because its leaders diversified and invested massively in education. In the 1970’s the country assembled its best brains and sponsored them to Europe and America for further studies. That singular investment generated a pool of skilled personnel that has made China one of the best economies in the world today.

    Another commendable thing about this scholarship scheme is that the beneficiaries are not under any bond to work for the Delta State government when they return. They are free to work in any organisation within and outside the state. Some of them may even go as far as setting up their own organisations and employ people to work for them. It is also open to students from both private and government owned institutions. In all ramifications, the scholarship is geared towards the development of Delta State and Nigeria.

    Beyond the overseas scholarships, Dr. Uduaghan’s massive investments in education through bursaries and other grants cannot be overemphasized. Delta is perhaps the only state in the country where funds are earmarked for scholarships at every level of education.

    At the twilight of his first term in office, the governor increased the annual bursary of Delta State students in every higher institution in Nigeria from a meagre N8, 000 to N20, 000. Since the increase was effected, more than 10,000 students benefit from it every year.

    Aside from this, Law graduates from Delta State who have to go through the Nigerian Law School before applying for the overseas scholarship are paid N100, 000 each as incentives. At the last presentation ceremony, there were 354 of such graduates present. At the same event, the governor revealed plans to float an aviation scholarship for students who may be interested in aviation.

    With this avalanche of investments in education, the current administration under Dr. Uduaghan has shown a commendable dedication to excellence, which should be sustained by subsequent administrations and emulated by other state governments. Although the rewards may not be seen at the moment, it will be seen someday. By time the beneficiaries return and contribute their quota to the development of the country, we will all see reasons to commend Dr. Uduaghan for transforming lives with his scholarship schemes.

     

    • Ohwofasa writes from Lagos

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The shame of our police barracks

    The shame of our police barracks

    Even by Nigeria’s standards, few events have evoked as much shame as the decrepitude at the Police College, Ikeja,recently unmasked by Channels Television under the dynamic leadership of our former student, John Momoh.

    But early official reactions came close.

    After seeing with his own eyes the decay that has overtaken the facilities and the degradation that is the lot of the students at the College, a discomfited President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly turned to one of its senior officers and demanded to know how the media “penetrated” the place. He went on to gripe about how the disclosures had given his Administration a bad image.

    It certainly did not enhance the Administration’s image any more than Dr Jonathan’s recent CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour did. By its serial failures on a broad front, by its actions and even its inaction, the Administration has given itself an image so unflattering that its most resourceful adversary will have to work exceedingly hard to make it less appealing.

    As regards “penetration,” it is as if the college was a fortress, a depository of classified state secrets that must be kept off-limits to prowling journalists and other “spoilers.” It made no difference that its huge compound was often rented out for owambe carousals to just anyone who can pay, which may well include the drug barons and Four-One-Niners the police should have put out of business long ago.

    The college and the sprawling barracks in which it is located were, pardon the cliché, hiding in plain sight.

    From the road leading from Maryland to the domestic airport, one of the busiest in the nation, you could see a row of residential quarters with peeling paint and broken light fixtures and nondescript washing hung out to dryand all manner of junk piled high on many of the balconies. If this was the face of the barracks fit for public viewing, it was not hard to imagine the decrepitude within.

    Nor is the rot limited to the Police College in Ikeja. It hits you between the eyes in Ijeh especially, with police barracks in Idi Oro, alongWestern Avenue, at Sabo and Pedro just a shade less decrepit. The Falomo Barracks that used to be something of an exception has now been turned into a seedy market spilling over into the streets, with no consideration for security.

    For sheer hideousness, however, the police barracks at Ijeh has got to be the frontrunner. By some accounts, when Police Affairs Minister, retired Navy Captain Caleb Olubolade paid an official visit to the barracks early in October 2011, he got an earful of pathetic stories of misery arising from the dilapidated conditions of the housing facilities from the traumatised wives of the residents.

    No running water. No electricity. No toilet facilities. Threat of flooding, with the risk of being attacked by reptiles.

    No remedial action followed.

    In the face of the latest disclosures, Olubolade has taken a leaf from the repertory of Ms Deziani Alison-Madueke,the beleaguered but untouchableMinister of Petroleum Resources,an institution mired irretrievably in syndicated sleaze. He hurriedly empanelled a commission to inquire into how funds earmarked for police colleges over the years were spent, apparently in a pre-emptive bid to absolve himself.

    The panel, which has just one week to submit its findings, is made up almost entirely of officials of the Ministry and the police establishment. It includes no independent outsiders. This is hardly the most reassuring way of getting at the truth, but there you have it.

    Practically every Nigerian motorist has a story about being shaken down by the police. The process could be benign, such as when they call you by some flattering designation or ask after your family.

    My friend and former colleague Sully Abu once told me of how an armed policeman emerged literally from nowhere and frantically flagged him down at an unmarked check point. Abu stopped, and the policeman ran up to the car. Abu wound down his car window, brought out his vehicle identification papers from the glove box and handed them to the policeman, wordlessly daring him to find anything amiss.

    The policeman shook his head, like a person who had been grossly misunderstood.

    “No be for this I stop you, now,” he said. “I just want to wish Oga merry Christmas.” Abu rewarded the policeman’s solicitude with a N50 note. It sent him into a rhapsody.

    Sometimes, the solicitation could be brazen, such as when the policeman lapses into a prolonged yawn and tells you he has not eaten all day, or when he says he needs money to buy batteries for his flashlight.

    The policeman – for it is usually the men who operate in this manner — may well be telling the truth. It is no longer a secret that policemen and policewomen have to pay a bribe to get their equipage and other statutory entitlements. They probably paid a bribe to be recruited in the first place,to be promoted, and thereafter to enjoy the benefits commensurate with their new ranks.

    Nor is it anymore a secret that they are assigned to or retained on “lucrative” beats on the strict understanding that they will deliver appropriate returns to their superior officers.

    Can they reasonably be expected, then, to be more upstanding than the institution that recruited them, trained them, and nurtured them?

    The rot goes a long way back, to be sure, and the degree of Olubolade ‘s culpability will have to be measured only from the time he was appointed Minister; A long line of former ministers and inspectors-general and chairpersons of the Police Service Commission will have to be summoned to render an accounting.

    It is time, too, to reopen the case of the Police Equipment Fund, for which one-time presidential brother-in-law Kenny Martins and his associates harvestedN300 billion from compulsory deductions from local government funds and from other sources. Of this haul, N200 million was squandered on an Arabian Night feast. The balance went for the most part to serve dubious causes, or disappeared without trace.

    I take that back. Some of it went toward creating the illusion of accountability. A helicopter that was presented as a glittering purchase from the Fund and flown around Lagos briefly, to the delight of the police high command who thought they had acquired a strategic asset for fighting crime, found its way back several days later to the Ukraine – or was it Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan — from which it had been rented for display.

    Finally, it is time to proceed with greater resolve to recover the N42 billion-Police Pension Fund that was looted by its custodians and their confederates in high places.

    It would be cruelty most unspeakable if the policemen and policewomen who have suffered so much abuse and degradation during their years of service to find on retiring that they had been swindled right to the end.

     

     

     

     

  • Kalu’s desperation to return to PDP

    Kalu’s desperation to return to PDP

    Who says leopard can change her colours anymore than a snake can give birth to anything short? The aphorism best describes and captures the recent cowboy show by former governor of Abia state, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu when he arranged his allies at his home in Igbere to present to him what he claimed was a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) membership card.

    Kalu’s recent show appeared to be the last of his political gimmicks, a desperation to force his way back to PDP, a party he has criticised and destroyed before now, when he was in control of the state resources. Before now, Kalu had made two failed attempts to return to PDP. First was when Chief Okwesilieze Nwodo assumed office as the national chairman of the party and Kalu was losing grip of the government of his state with Governor Theodore Orji’s exit from Progressive Peoples’ Alliance (PPA) which was Kalu’s political party. What Kalu adduced as his reason then was that his return to PDP was in fulfilment of the promise he made to Nwodo that he would return to the party if Nwodo emerged national chairman of the party. After his unsolicited visit to Nwodo at the party national headquarters in Abuja in 2010, the party leadership shut the door against Kalu and his allies. That was how he went and contested the Abia North senatorial election on PPA platform and lost woefully to Senator Uche Chukwumerije of PDP. After the election, Kalu said that he was no longer interested in active politics. It did not take him long to resurface again with another trick under the guise of Njiko Igbo. He shouted to whosoever cared to listen to him that Njiko Igbo is a non-political platform to unite the Igbos ahead 2015 general election, so that Igbo presidency would be actualised. He pretended as if he was not interested in joining any political platform, while it is an open secret that he was busy nurturing his dead empire called PPA.

    While the Igbos are keenly waiting to see how far Kalu can unite the Igbos through his Njiko Igbo platform for the actualisation of the Igbo Presidency in 2015, the news of yet another of Kalu’s secret plot to return to PDP through the backdoor broke. Protests by the party major stakeholders in the state to the national leadership of the party nipped the plot in bud and the door was shut against him again. Kalu’s hatchet writers took on the party stakeholders in the state especially Governor Theodore Orji for questioning the plot to re-admit Kalu into the party through the backdoor without consulting them. Some of them in their write-ups in defence of Kalu suggested that he has not told anybody that he wanted to return to PDP; but rather that he was busy with his Njiko Igbo for the unity of the Igbos.

    Known for inconsistency, it did not take long for Kalu and his allies to come up with another subterfuge of registering him as PDP member in his house in Igbere. Even the former governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose was not re-admitted into PDP by being registered in his house, rather he was transparently re-admitted by the national leadership of the party. But the question is why Kalu’s desperation to return to PDP by all means and at the same nurturing PPA for dirty jobs?

    It is obvious that he has some tricks up his sleeves that might be detrimental to the party successes in 2015. That is why the party must apply caution and look deep into Kalu’s antics.

    Kalu and his allies have been trying to rewrite the PDP history in order to justify his recent moves. This is even when most of the 18 founders of the party who are automatic members of Board of Trustees of the party are still alive. Kalu said that his action was prompted by former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s resignation as (BoT) Chairman of the party and that his other co-founders of the party have been calling him to return to the party.

    Every Nigerian who is a good student of political history knows that Kalu was not among the founders of PDP. He was brought into the party alongside some of his colleagues who were governors between 1999-2007 by the retired military oligarchy led former President Ibrahim Babangida and General Theophilus Danjuma who hijacked the party from the original founders to ensure that Chief Obasanjo, who was just released from prison, emerged the presidential candidate of the party at the party’s national convention in Jos. This was against the popular choice of Chief Alex Ekwueme, one of the founders of the party. Kalu and some of his colleagues were the foot soldiers of the retired generals in the party. So it is wrong for Kalu to claim that he is a founding member of the party. The records are there for Kalu to factually dispute, and failure to do so amounts to deceit.

    Most times, what matters most or challenging is not the building of a house, but the maintenance of such house. Imagine how PDP would have been today if some people have not stayed back in the party to rebuild it for better. If most members had toed the line of Kalu, only to force their way back into the party after their selfish ventures have failed them, the party would have gone into extinction by now. Shutting Kalu permanently out of the party will not only instil discipline in the party, it will serve as deterrent to other members who might contemplate toeing Kalu’s line. Readmitting Kalu into the party under any disguise will do more harm to the party than good, especially in Abia State because Kalu as at today has no political value or structure to bring into the party.

     

    • Omeneogor, a system analyst wrote from Houston USA

  • Jona e don come again

    Jona e don come again

    Here lies our mutton-loving king,
    Whose word no man relies on,
    Who never said a foolish thing,
    And never did a wise one – John Wilmot (1647-1680), Earl of Rochester, on Charles II (1630-1685)

    Jona e don come again – what does that remind you of? Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his immortal number, Fela e don come again? Fela, that with his stinging lyrics and brash irreverence whipped wayward Nigerian leaders, military and civilian, into line?

    And who does the Wilmot quote above, on King Charles II of England, remind you of? Change “mutton-loving” to “cassava bread-gobbling”, and you would probably see Charles II leap into 21st century Aso Rock; and our own Goodluck Jonathan dive into 17th century Court of Saint James!

    There are differences in specifics, of course. While Charles II loved his mutton and Goodluck Jonathan loves his cassava bread, the jury is still out on whether or not, like Charles II, no one ever relies on Jonathan’s word, whether Jonathan never said a foolish thing or ever did a wise one – since his first term is still counting; and he is busy, very busy, ogling a second!

    What is without controversy, however, is that like Wilmot’s rather unflattering impression of Charles II (who should have been wiser, for his father Charles I – 1600-1649 – was executed by the Oliver Cromwell mob), Nigerians are nervy about the their president’s lack of verbal rigour, since they hold their breath anytime the president speaks extempore – and he never disappoints by the seeming sheer shallowness of his thinking; and the seeming eternal grudge in his psyche!

    It is true: Ibrahim Babaginda peppered us with subversive slipperiness, Sani Abacha sapped us with Stone Age starkness, Olusegun Obasanjo bombed us with empty superiority complex, and Umaru Musa Yar’adua (Allah rest his soul!) teased us with health-challenged taciturnity.

    Might Goodluck Jonathan be adding a lack of gravitas and executive inferiority complex to the mix? That brings to the fore the president’s latest gaffe, during his surprise visit to the Police College, in Ikeja, Lagos.

    Now, without reference to the merit or demerit of the president’s points, that outburst followed a disturbing pattern, which always sends many a concerned Nigerian reeling.

    As a dutiful president, highly paid and generously maintained by the citizens, his job was to go there, after the Channels TV expose, to find out the level of the rot and fix it.

    But alas! The president, from his comment, was sadder at the PR disaster the decaying Police College was giving his government than at the scandalous decay of Nigeria Police’s premier training college! How can a president justify his keep with such grudge reasoning?

    O yes: a committee has been set up to probe the rot and make recommendations and all that “Jonathanistic” predictable! But by that tragic Freudian slip, of a president fishing for motive when the reality of the situation was sobering enough, most would continue to doubt the appropriateness of Jonathan’s temper for leadership; and even his competence to analyse problems and solve them.

    So, Jonathan is more interested in smashing his self-conceived agent provocateurs who allowed “penetration” into the sorry college than he is in fixing the mess. Now, what sort of self-misguided president is that?

    But that was not the first time President Jonathan would evince such abhorrent traces. In January 2012, after the “fuel subsidy” removal ill-advised by his Breton-Woods radicals, bent on making Nigeria the eternal peon of their Western metropolitan masters, Goodluck Jonathan fumed without end on how his enemies sponsored the protests; and how these presidential traducers provided Lagos protesters with choice victuals and bottled water; that even his own presidential villagers of Otuoke could not afford!

    To start with, such un-presidential whining was absolutely uncalled for – both as private riposte and public presidential counter. In a democracy, the legitimate job of the opposition is to paint government black to ease its own way to power, just as the government, if it falls into opposition, is perfectly entitled to same tactics, to claw its way back from power wilderness.

    But the disturbing pattern then – as now in the Police College case – was that the president would blame people protesting a heinous policy rather than rebuke himself that pushed that policy. As it has turned out, the so-called “subsidy” was partisan election gravy which Jonathan wanted Nigerians to, willy-nilly, pay back. What if those protests had not partially checkmated that unconscionable plot!

    To compound the Jonathan presidential tragedy, he has surrounded himself with “elders” pushing his cause who nevertheless are no more than juveniles – and wilful, misguided ones at that!

    The other day, Elder Godsday Orubebe, minister of Niger Delta affairs, pounced on Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi, for no crime than a rumoured aspiration for presidential ticket 2015; and for not “respecting” the president – as if Jonathan were a god to be worshipped willy-nilly and not a republican chief public servant to be judged, rewarded or punished strictly by the worth of his work.

    Then on January 24, Edwin Kiagbodo-Clark, Ijaw nationalist, took up the president’s case, descending on the PDP Governors’ Forum for not bowing and trembling before his protégé; and former President Olusegun Obasanjo for subverting the PDP party order.

    To be sure, Clark’s attack on Obasanjo is not unjustified, for Obasanjo really ruptured the PDP hierarchy by amassing both presidential and party powers. But is Pa Clark piqued because Obasanjo grabbed power or because Jonathan has the governors to contend with, in his own sorry attempt to repeat Obasanjo’s power-grab rascality?

    Pa Clark, with all due respect to him, speaks like one without a sense of history. As a younger man, he served under the young Gen. Yakubu Gowon (1966-1975). Sure, Gowon back then, had his own share of gaffes, like the claim that Nigeria’s problem was not money but how to spend it.

    Still, Gowon boasted no doctorate when he ruled (though he earned one later); and was far more callow than Jonathan. But was Gowon a tell-tale of fumbling, and lack of rigour and wisdom like Jonathan, with his PhD, now? Yet, Clark would bad-mouth anyone saying Jonathan is unfit for second term, as his disastrous first-term record is clearly showing – just as he libelled anybody that opposed Jonathan’s presidential bid in 2011.

    Well, there is news for Pa Clark and his protégé. A time was, when some power brokers thought you just needed a stamp of the North, no matter how defective you were, and you were as good as president. That prompted the disastrous Bashir Tofa-Sylvester Ugoh 1993 presidential ticket.

    Now, Clark and co think if only Jonathan can muscle the PDP nomination (like Obasanjo before him), his presidential encore is assured. Let Pa Clark, and his ilk, dream on. Someone needs to be sacrificed, anyway, to clear the illusion that only the worst is good enough as president for Nigeria.

    Jonathan, with his utterly uninspiring present term and clearly illogical fixation with a fresh term, has done enough to earn that electoral disgrace.

     

  • Amaechi and Orubebe feud

    Amaechi and Orubebe feud

    Recent altercations between Rivers state governor, Chibuike Amaechi and Minister of Niger Delta, Godson Orubebe, may after all, stand out for their dialectical value. The issue is not that some quarrel erupted between the two brothers. Quarrels or contradictions have long been recognized as integral part of the human society. It is therefore not enough that some argument ensured. What serves the society better is that at the end of such arguments, the society is able to move better through the lessons they throw up.

    The goal of society is better served when such inquisitions come with some heuristic value. If there are lessons for society in the diatribe between the two kinsmen, then we are better for it. And I think there are.

    What are the issues? Amaechi had criticized the Niger Delta ministry for its inability to re-build the East-West road notorious for frequent accidents. He had also boasted that the nine Niger Delta governors would take up the reconstruction of the road to underscore the failure of the ministry.

    Apparently irked by these uncomplimentary remarks, Orubebe took up Amaechi accusing him of inability to address the developmental challenges of his state in spite of the enormous resources at his disposal. He said it was ridiculous for Amaechi to be pontificating on the East-West road when Port Harcourt is a ghost of its former self with many roads crying for urgent attention. Besides, he berated him for his disrespect for President Jonathan because (he) Amaechi is nursing a vice presidential ambition in 2015. According to him, it is sad that Amaechi sees himself as bigger than the president and uses the resources of Rivers State to bribe the people of Nigeria for whatever purpose. Orubebe was further piqued that if there are any set of people that should work against the interest of President Jonathan it should not be governors from the South-south as Amaechi has lent himself to.

    But in a swift reaction laden with intemperate language unbefitting of the office of the governor, Amaechi gave it back to Orubebe. He refuted allegations of non performance citing what he considered the remarkable development projects that stand out his administration. He argued through his spokesman that he gave the president the highest votes by any single state in the last presidential election and this to him, underscores his love and respect for the president. Accusing him of diverting attention from his inability to perform, Amaechi challenged Orubebe to show him any single project that has been completed in the Niger Delta by his ministry.

    On face value, there is nothing inherently wrong in the two key public functionaries constructively engaging themselves in the court of public opinion. If the motivation is to serve the overall public good, then the exercise is worth the trouble. After all, those in public offices have it as a bounden duty to regularly give account of their stewardship to the people to whom real power belongs. The need for regular accountability by public functionaries is further reinforced in our clime that has been notorious for corruption and official cover up of sundry misdeeds by public functionaries.

    It was therefore good a development reading the duo engaging themselves in what they ought to do to enhance public confidence in their capacity to deliver public goods and services. If such open confrontations especially from members of the same ruling party have been part of our political culture, the festering culture of sleaze among public officers would have waned very considerably. But that has not happened. What has played out over the years has been the mindless looting of our collective patrimony by sundry buccaneers who circulate power amongst themselves and their cronies; doing all sorts of things to protect selves from facing public scrutiny.

    That is why till date, no former governor has been successfully prosecuted and jailed by the EFCC in spite of the drama that usually trail such arrests and subsequent arraignment. With such a background, it will be hard to convince any one that Amaechi’s unsolicited inquisition into the activities of the Niger Delta ministry is guided by altruistic considerations. Nobody will buy that. And as Orubebe argued, there are many projects in Rivers State requiring his attention than this self-assigned senior prefect role in the Niger Delta ministry. If this is true, then there must be more to it than we are being made to believe. By lampooning the Niger Delta ministry, Amaechi is vicariously accusing President Jonathan of inefficiency because the buck stops on his table.

    The inevitable impression the development conjures is that it may have to do with Amaechi’s speculated ambition to run for the vice presidential slot with a northern candidate in 2015. And there are other events that lend credence to this. A couple of months back, the same Amaechi was said to be the brain behind the protests by some traditional rulers from his state accusing Jonathan of ceding some of the oil fields in Rivers state to Bayelsa. The dust of that is yet to settle. Only last week, Amaechi again told Rivers State indigenes in the United States of America USA that the federal government was working against the interest of their state. According to him, waivers sought by that state from the federal government on the purchase of security helicopters and agricultural equipment are being frustrated by the same authorities. All these are clear indications that Amaechi is not getting on well with his brothers in Aso Rock. In the face of this glaring inability to have some of his ideas sail through official quarters, he has opted for the court of public opinion as events have clearly shown. He is entitled to whatever option he consider appropriate for his crusade. But in them can be gleaned some form of desperation and frustration. More so coming from a high ranking governor from the Niger Delta region that is now enjoying the comfort of the highest political office in the land. What could be the matter except he is seen to be working against the interest of the presidency which mother luck gave them?

    Jonathan is said to be interested in the 2015 race. Amaechi by the same account is eying the vice presidential seat within the same time frame. Assuming it is possible for Jonathan to be voted for a second term, does it make any sense for any Niger Delta person to be talking of a vice presidential seat when one of theirs could comfortably win the presidency? This is the contradiction that has been brought to the front burner by the issues in contention. Jonathan was vice president under Yar’Adua for two years. By 2015 he would have been president for four years. If he has not been able to transform the region in his current capacity, what is there to repose hope that a ‘spare tire’ would perform any magic. Is it possible for a vice president in the person of Amaechi to serve the interest of the Niger Delta better than a sitting president who even has the prospects of securing another term?

    It is clear that the Niger Delta has been trapped in a complex web of contradictions that will do it no good. The same forces that held the region down these past years are at it again. Even the idea of the region retaining the vice presidential slot after Jonathan is funny in a multi-ethnic and plural society like ours.

  • Photocracy

    Photocracy

    We all love pictures, and we all resent them. We are not indifferent to that piece of technology that can record in still accuracy what we do not want seen for the ignominy it broadcasts, or what we want to keep as evidence of glory.

    The word accuracy was celebrated in the early days of photography. It announced the concept of the picture as the sacrosanct reporter. The phrase, “a picture cannot lie” became part of the lore of story telling. The picture canonised journalism, vindicated and defamed witnesses, convicted felons in court, exonerated the noble, froze for posterity earthquakes, floods, a war hero’s soldiery, a coward’s perfidy, a traitor’s kiss, a cuckold’s evidence, a son’s fidelity.

    It comes in evidence in a family tiff as it erupts for salvation in a political quarrel. We just had it in the past week over governors who propounded evidence of pictures to assure us of their health status. The two men are Governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State and Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State.

    Before the pictures came to light, speculations filled the air. Suntai, who was away at a hospital in Europe, had apparently survived a plane crash that he piloted into a crisis. Stories flooded the media about plots to succeed him as some of his foes believed he could not return with mental acuity and his active limbs.

    Then he jolted us with pictures. One of them was about him sitting upright with his twins and wife. The other one was with another governor, Jonah Jang of Plateau State. He stood full length with his colleague. The family photo preceded that picture. He looked better relaxed in the picture with his colleague as though family asphyxiated his ability to project an expansive mood.

    Last week, Chime also reinforced the trend. He appeared in full length with three governors, Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State and Gabriel Suswan of Benue State. All four were apparently in a chat not unaware of the camera click, not unaware that it could travel to the front pages of newspapers. Their outfits and background reflected a car park in a wintry Europe.

    But the pictures have failed to answer some questions for those who believe that still photography, as definitive evidence, is passé. The naysayers say both governors are not saying the truth with the pictures. Some have said the Enugu State Governor’s publicists sandwiched a photo of pre-illness Chime between the governors. Some other cynics have argued that Chime took the picture sometime ago with the governors when they were in Europe.

    The same tirades of doubt came from Suntai’s critics. They say the family photo betrayed a sick man propped up for a credulous public.

    One thing is clear: the picture has lost its innocence. In the post-modern age of Facebook, Twitter, blog, Photoshop, television, films, and what technologists call media convergence, it is difficult to vouch for the integrity of any medium.

    The governors did not err by sending us their pictures, but the issue of transparency is not about pictures alone. It is about transparency. When the late President Umar Yar’Adua’s illness hid inside a fog, his publicists sent us a voice tape, and it did not answer many questions.

    Part of the problem is that the governors have failed to understand that transparency is about faithful updates from the beginning. When they fell ill, they should have told us. When they undertook tests, the publicists should have sent a press release. Before they travelled, they should have unveiled the state of diagnoses and why they had to travel abroad. Then they ought to have told us what hospital and in what country.

    While in the hospital, we ought to know step by step how the treatments went. Were they making progress? The doctor would tell us and also report the prognosis. If there were complications, we ought to know.

    If they followed these steps, no one would be speculating as to what kind of illness they suffered or whether they were dead or alive. They leaped over those stages by sending the pictures. Expecting many Nigerians to believe the pictures was therefore a leap of faith.

    Last week, a source told me that Chime was operated successfully for cancer around the nose area. Before that, speculations were rife about the man dying from leukemia. Some speculated AIDS.

    When the governors’ men came out with the pictures, they expected Nigerians to believe them instanta.

    The pictures were clear but they befogged the mind. If they had followed these steps, they would have fulfilled the fundamental feature of modern democracy: communication between the governed and the elected. A chasm gaped between them and that is why the pictures did not settle the matter. They eased the general frenzy in some circles, but doubts still linger. The absence of evidence gave them away to critics as evidence of absenteeism. What is at stake is not the governors or their health, but the integrity of the rule of law and due process but above all, decency and honour. There are hospitals to improve, roads to build, schools to upgrade, and lives to elevate.

    It is an irony that our military leaders understood this more than some of our modern democrats. When military president, Ibrahim Babangida, had leg injury known as radiculopathy, no Nigerian ached with doubt. Before he left the country, we knew about it. A picture of him squinting with pain at the offending leg revealed him. He travelled abroad and we knew the hospital, his progress and he returned in the full view of television. The Guardian ace reporter Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo counted for posterity the number of steps he took on the tarmac.

    When General Domkat Bali took ill, he told us. Even in this democracy, Senate President David Mark, a former soldier, also was transparent about his situation. We have some redeeming evidence when Abubakar Atiku was ill as vice president and when Governor Bola Tinubu went abroad to treat his distracting leg.

    We don’t have such transparency today.

    We live in a world of technology, and technology trumps technology. But what we needed in this matter was an old and thriving technology: the written word.

    For the governors to follow the steps of communication, all they needed was to convey them in words couched in press releases. They were sure to subvert the photo.

    If pictures are worth a thousand words, it is not the case in this instance. Words would have created the right pictures as novelists, poets, dramatists and, of course, reporters would. Words did it in the case of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Hilary Clinton of the United States and Viktor Yushchenko of the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. When the words are credible, the pictures come alive. Or if the pictures come out early when the illness begins, its truth will inspire sympathy like the story of Tancredo Neves of Brazil whose infirmity drew tears and group prayer sessions across the country.

    Up till the time of writing, the governors have not told us anything other than still photography. But what we want is not just pictures but facts.

  • The Emir of Kano attack

    The Emir of Kano attack

    Then Sambo Dasuki was appointed the national security adviser, his first mission was to visit and solicit the support of the emirs and royal fathers of the North over the surge of militancy. In my column titled: A Prince and the Pauper, I mused that the problem went beyond the royal fathers since class inspired the crisis. The underclass militants looked askance at the northern traditional elite, and the emirs are also targets of their rage. They had no solution to the problem.

    So I thought Sambo’s pick and approach did not address the matter. The unfortunate attack at such a lofty and apparently impregnable position of the Emir of Kano only puts my column in perspective. If the Emir of Kano is vulnerable, then we must understand that the royal fathers of the North also cannot offer the kind of intelligence that Sambo or any other top flyer of Jonathan’s regime needs to stop the problem.

  • Ajimobi and the myth of Iwo Road

    Ajimobi and the myth of Iwo Road

    By all traditional indices and parameters, Iwo Road is qualified to be called “the crossroads that troubles the visitor”. It is a major road with several intersections. A section of the road takes you to Ife; another one leads you to Iwo Town; one also takes you to Oyo via Ojo.

    The other two lead you to “Gate” in the heart of Ibadan and Lagos respectively. Iwo Road also has its own traditional narratives. The myth about the road is that it is the crossroads where deities and other weird creatures converge in the dead of the night; and it is believed that such assembly is good for the state because of its divine returns. In Ibadan, as in other major Yoruba towns, the visit of the gods at any point in time is always a sign of blessing. It is therefore in the interest of the state to allow the deities ascend and descend at will to avoid blessing deficit. It is this myth that was said to have constrained past administrations in Oyo State from lifting Iwo Road from its accustomed labyrinth.

    The convocation of metaphysical agents and forces within and around Iwo Road and the conspiracy of previous administrations in Oyo State, evident in their unwillingness to liquidate this evil assemblage, confirm the cultural indulgence the notorious road had enjoyed in the past years. But whatever may be the myth around Iwo Road should not conflict with its political metaphor.

    Each time I pass through Iwo Road, I see the vacuity of our political leadership, the depravity of humanity and the desperation of a struggling people. I see the rejects of the society that are in the world but as mere walking corpses. I see disgruntled and angry women strapped their future to their back with a loose sash, looking askance into a tomorrow that is already dead to them. I see a colony of malcontents dramatising the vanities and inanities of an unjust society. I see a people with mangled aspirations drooping their heads in total submission to their failed visions and the remnant of their expectations.

    Even in its present appearance of grandeur, Iwo Road remains the theatre of the absurd where people of diverse destinies connect with their existential realities. Iwo Road is the crossroads that leads some people to their destinations and frustrates others from reaching their destinies.

    Iwo Road is home to different human characters: the money changers, hawkers of anything under the sun, madmen and specialists, beggars of diverse tactics, touts and thugs, assassins and apprentices of evil, food vendors and their consuming multitude, jobless graduates roaming around and about, urchins with their tools of crisis, labourers and their implements of grit, security agents and their revenue collectors, street sweepers with their brooms of pity, goggle-eyed intellectuals and their observatory ladders, government officials with their tax files. The list is endless. Then the traffic. This is the major phenomenon of Iwo Road. It is a disservice to grammatical expression to say that what people experience daily at Iwo Road is ‘go slow’. No, it is more than that. Without being hyperbolic, it is a gridlock. On a daily basis, travellers are trapped for hours in the gridlock, workers get late to office because of it. The traffic wardens end up creating traffic stalemate. They stand in the midst of the traffic not knowing what to do, where to start from or who to blame. The confusion begins from nowhere and ends at nowhere. This gridlock is tied to its mystery.

    The Abiola Ajimobi government with its ‘consensual sloganeering credo must have been intrigued by the Iwo Road mystery hence its resolve to unravel it. Ajimobi must have realised that the secret of the success of his administration lies in his ability to deal with this mystery through a systemic despatch of its nuisance contents. The governor, therefore, decided to engage the Iwo Road mafia in a battle of wits which he seems to be winning. The first move was the relocation of the parks. Though, some of them have refused to obey this relocation order, it is not as bad as it used to be. Then, some structures encroaching on the road were demolished while some traders were sent packing. Some of the illegal bus parks are now undergoing beautification and landscaping evolution. Thus, a new Iwo Road stripped of all forms of traditional razzmatazz is emerging.

    No responsible government in this modern age will subscribe to a risible myth or succumb to the fallacy of a witch-cult fantasy. Why should Iwo Road not undergo a revification simply because some weird creatures are said to have turned the place to a midnight eatery where they feast on “appeasement menu” in assorted calabashes brought by patrons of herbalists and promoters of “IÌc¹Ìce”? The best the government can do for them in this regard is to relocate their eatery to places like Dugbe, Yemetu, Orita Challenge, Idi-Arere, Beere, Oje and the rest. Ibadan, and indeed, Oyo State as a whole, does not appear to me like a state that will lack a convenient venue for the convocation and revelry of midnight principalities and other entities of darkness.

    All previous administrations before Ajimobi were unable to solve the Iwo Road mystery because they lacked the creativity to deconstruct its metaphor and understand the contemporariness of its social construct. These days, governance requires depth of ideas, good thinking, poetic logic, political theatrics, oratorical dramatics and above all, divine wisdom. When you lack all these, you lack initiative. Any inspirational and creative administration must understand and appreciate the economic dynamics of roads. When you have gridlock spots where vehicles are trapped for several hours, there is an alarming decline in economic activities and by extension, in revenue. Unrestricted movements of human personnel and the facilitation of their economic goods are revenue-friendly to a government that develops and maintains its infrastructure, especially roads.

    The massive road constructions going on in states like Lagos, Osun, Ekiti, Ogun, Oyo, Edo and Imo, confirm the linkage between roads, economic growth and other development indicators. Strategic road networking is key to development and is also a major boost to regional integration. Since all the states in the South West are determined to forge ahead with the process of integration, all efforts must be made towards upgrading their infrastructure by making it trade-friendly. This way, they will stimulate and create massive opportunities for their peoples and invariably guarantee their economic prosperity.

    The rehabilitation work at Iwo Road is, therefore, the elixir that the Ajimobi government needs to provoke the inspiration it requires in unlocking the problematics of other projects and similar policy gridlocks.

    With the new law banning street begging in Oyo State, the transformation of Iwo Road is nearing total completion. Besides, the Oyo State Traffic Management and the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) have deployed personnel to the road for effective monitoring. These days, movement around the road is somehow smooth and stress-free.

    What Ajimobi is doing in Iwo Road was what Babatunde Fashola did to Oshodi some years back.

    I am not too sure if Oshodi had its own myth but what I do know is that Fashola’s intervention has demystified the notorious Oshodi. Since that intervention, Oshodi has remained quiet, fomenting no crisis, witnessing no trouble and engendering no conflict. The gridlock had since disappeared. Vehicular and human traffic now flows without the stress of the past. Ajimobi and Fashola’s action on Iwo Road and Oshodi respectively exemplifies how visionary leadership and administration should respond to obstacles of development. Myths are obstacles to progress and until they are disparaged and treated with contempt and disdain, our society will be held hostage by mere soporific narratives and antiquated traditions.

    While crediting the Ajimobi administration for its creativity and sagacity in coming up with the magic for the revival of Iwo Road, I am proposing that the government should come up with the mechanisms including legislations, that will give an enduring value to the various measures and structures that are being put in place at Iwo Road.

     

    •Thomas, a former Special Adviser to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is a lecturer at the Department of History and International Studies, Lagos State University.

     

  • A grisly summons to enfield

    As snooper was landing in harsh and wintry London on Friday morning, we received a grisly summons to suburban Enfield to attend the funeral of Bimpe Ojerinola, nee Osibodu. A funereal gloom descended on yours sincerely which was compounded by the cold Arctic blast. Snooper had long been expecting a reunion with Bimpe, our late friend’s wife, but not a final farewell. Such is the ephemeral nature of life and the brutal contingency of human existence.

    Snooper was too overwhelmed and exhausted to make it to Enfield, but almost all the funeral eulogies painted a life of unblemished generosity and selfless love. Bimpe lived her life at the behest of others and was the nearest thing to a secular saint. A scion of the illustrious Osibodu family of Ilishan Remo, the departed was the wife of Segun Ojerinola, a Nigerian diplomat who fell in the course of duty to his fatherland in the Nigerian embassy at Belgrade in the late nineties where he was Head of Chancery.

    The ever swankily turned out and swaggering Segun Ojenrinola, a.k.a Jagger, was one of the rising stars of the Nigerian Diplomatic Corps until sudden death snatched him away in faraway Belgrade. Affable and clubbable to boot and full of witty pranks, Segun was a pure delight to be with. He was kind, courtly and courteously solicitous of the wellbeing of others. Now, he has been joined by his equally virtuous wife. May their worthy souls find eternal repose and may their orphaned children reap the fruits of the goodwill and kindness their parents have sown.

  • Osun: Two years on

    Osun: Two years on

    One of the major characteristics defining Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State is his style of ‘government unusual’. For instance, he does not believe in being addressed as ‘His Excellency’, a thing many governors cherish as if they were born with it. This ‘government unusual‘ has almost made the governor ‘Mr. Controversy’. But one thing that cannot be taken away from Aregbesola is the fact that he is pulling his weight in terms of governance and delivery of democratic dividend to the people of Osun. In a little over two years, he has started leaving imprints that would be difficult to wipe off from the history of the hitherto beleaguered state. When we consider what Osun went through in the 90 months that Olagunsoye Oyinlola was governor, we would see clearly that a lot has happened in the state in the last two years.

    It is when people do not have a clear idea of what to do that they spend eternity planning. Conscious of the fact that he has only four years (at least in the first instance) to convince the people of the state that they did not make a mistake at the polls, Aregbesola hit the ground running. In line with his campaign promise to take away from the streets idle able-bodied young men and women, he introduced the safety net programme called OYES (Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme) within 100 days of his assumption of office. With it, at least 20,000 of the idle youths were taken away from the streets on a monthly stipend of N10,000 each. With it, about N200million is being injected into the grassroots economy monthly. This might look so small in many big cities of the country, but it is a lot in a predominantly civil servants’ state like Osun.

    It is even fascinating that Aregbesola is not thinking in terms of Osun alone concerning this programme. Indeed, he has calculated how much it would cost the Federal Government should it decide to set up such a scheme. According to his projections, about 740,000 direct jobs can be created at the federal level, and another 3.7million indirect jobs. This would imply the injection of about N7.4billion into the grassroots economy. Of course following the Osun pattern, about 1.48million uniforms would be sewn for the participants, with about six million yards of cloths to be produced by the textile industry.

    A beautiful aspect of the OYES is the fact that it penetrates virtually every strata of the educational order, from the illiterate cleaner to the roadside mechanic, as well as the graduates who may have to use the scheme as a transition camp. The scheme provides for exit strategy apparently in recognition of its limitations that it cannot serve as permanent employment for everybody, particularly the skilled persons.

    The way Aregbesola is going about the business of governance gives him away as a man who really understands the issues and is determined to address them. You see in him a man pregnant with ideas and this shows in most of his projects and policies. For instance, in education, the state operates the elementary school, middle school and the high school, without necessarily affecting the 6-3-3-4 education system of the Federal Government. The elementary school caters for children from age six to nine, and they are basically neighbourhood schools in which the pupils do not travel beyond 100 to 500 metres from where their mothers are. All the pupils in the elementary school are given lunch to help them develop mentally and physically for learning.

    For the high schools, the government is working on the provision of 150,000 computer tablets (Opon imo) for the students and their teachers, in realisation of the importance of information technology to learning. The idea is to make education more attractive by storing in the computers dedicated books, lesson notes, and past examination papers for school certificate and even the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examinations. If the project works, it would be the first of its kind, at least in this part of the world.

    Aregbesola’s ingenuity in developing the local economy also deserves mention. Apparently, the governor is not impressed with the reference to the state as a ‘civil servants state’. The implication is that it is a poor state. Most of the policies of the administration are therefore geared towards reversing this impression. Empowering the people, as far as the government is concerned, is key. We have seen this in the OYES; it also manifests in the government’s decision to harmonise the uniforms of all its pupils and students such that the uniforms are procured and sewn centrally, thus creating jobs for the manufacturers and the local tailors, among other artisans in the chain.

    In spite of all these, there is a shortcoming; Governor Aregbesola can do with less controversy. Yes, he may have his point in some of the cases, but the most important thing is that he would be assessed at the end of his first four years, not by the number of controversies he ignited or survived, but by the tangible things he has been able to do for Osun people. As much as possible, major policy decisions must be subjected to rigorous debate so that seemingly good policy initiatives do not end up in acrimony. And, from experience, such debate does not have to be done by in-house people alone for obvious reasons, but by people who have nothing to lose by saying it as it is, irrespective of whether it is sweet or bitter music to the governor’s ears.

    All said, you would see the passion of a man who loves Nigeria and wants it to work in the Osun governor. Apart from, say, the projections he has made on a national scale for the OYES (just in case the Federal Government is interested), select editors who met with him in Lagos last Sunday, in the hope of dwelling essentially on his activities in his state in the last two years ended spending more time analysing Nigeria and trying to proffer solutions to some of the national challenges. These included the attack on the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero and the deployment of Nigerian troops to Mali. For instance, he believes the Boko Haram crisis is, by and large, a national problem that should not be left for the northern governors alone to handle, and that the problem would abate if the idle youths that are serving as foot soldiers for the sect are gainfully engaged.

    Considering what the state government has been able to do in two years, the question naturally arises as to how the government is getting money for the projects. The free lunch for pupils alone is estimated to cost the state about N3billion annually; the government requires about that much for the free uniforms. Yet, it gets between N3.6billion and N4billion from the Federal Government and is only able to rake in about N600million monthly as internally generated revenue. Yet, it has other programmes, including its ambitious agricultural programme as well as massive road construction and reconstruction, maintenance and rehabilitation programmes. There are salaries to pay monthly. Perhaps amidst these competing demands and limited resources the intriguing thing is that the government is not eating up its children’s tomorrow, today. In spite of not inheriting a buoyant treasury, the government does not intend to leave an empty one either. So, it is saving every kobo the state realises as its share of the excess crude account. There is at least N10billion in that account. This is a feat in our kind of country where many governors have become gaming machines, literally swallowing money (and always asking for more) without anything to show for it.