The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Agricultural revolution in Osun

    Agricultural revolution in Osun

    The State of Osun’s agricultural programme is gradually yielding the desired results as the good people of the state are being empowered through land preparation and free distribution, credits for improved seedlings, fertilizer, etc and commercial production of honey, fish, cattle and birds. The O’honey apiary project that the Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola embarked upon became a reality when it was commissioned at Oyan in Odo-Otin local government, the first of its kind in Black Africa.

    The Bees farm covered about 11.56 hectares of land that will not only produce honey in commercial quantities but will train at least 300 youths annually and by implication reduce unemployment among the youths of the state.

    The largest job creation for mankind is farming, the only way out of food scarcity is a return to land but the petro-naira has made many Nigerians to neglect agriculture in which today we are not only importing foods to feed ourselves but we are importing fertilizers to impoverish the land that is naturally fertile because of our sharp practices and made get-rich quick attitudes.

    For over 30 years in Nigeria, the military governments and the succeeding civilian administrations have not been sincere about the need to take agriculture with all seriousness and to motivate the farmers though incentives to cultivate in commercial quantity. The few commercial farmers were majorly the ex-military generals who knew that there is wealth in tilling the land and a few others who are currently enslaving the youths who are on their payroll tilling the land for them instead of training the youth to become farms owners.

    It was Chief Obafemi Awolowo who declared at the convocation ceremony of the then University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University in 1971 that “except we urgently go back to agriculture our country may soon be importing food to feed the population”. But the government and people turned deaf ears to the political prophet of our time, rather the Udoji awards made the few farmers to abandon farming, migrate in large numbers to cities for white collar job, with the result that we import various kinds of food to feed our people today.

    When in the late 70s the frozen fish was introduced by some of our leaders to complement nutritional needs of the populace, only a few Nigerians patronize the imported frozen fish for one reason or the other. I remember my grandmother refusing the consumption of the frozen fish because of its peculiar smell and many Nigerians distanced themselves from the said fish, it was then derogatorily called “Oku Eko”. Today it is a delicacy that no family can ignore. Many homes eat the meals without meat or fish and the people are becoming malnourished and sick for lack of balance diet.

    The state government of Osun has taken its battle against poverty and unemployment to fish farming and the O’Fish farms have put smile on the faces of the people as the youths are currently undergoing training that will make them not only fish farmers but owners of such farms in the sort possible time.

    Just few weeks ago, the Cattle Ranch at Oloba Farm, Iwo Farm Settlement was revived by the government of Ogbeni Aregbesola who declared that the ranch is open to whosoever is interested in the cattle business and that his government will not only support the individual financially but guarantee security of lives and properties at the ranch. It was the late sage Chief Bola Ige that established the ranch that was later abandoned by successive administrations.

    It was this vision that made the government of Ogbeni Aregbesola to partner with the German government that sent a seven man experts drawn from their agricultural sector State of Saxson Anhalt to meet the farmers’ cooperatives in the state, soil scientists, animal husbandry experts and others on how to improve agricultural products in the state.

    At Okuku in Odo-Otin local government council area of the state, the governor and the state executive council members were more than surprised to see a huge fish farm covering acres of land and with 120,000 fish under production and is now ready for sale, a product of the fish farm initiative of the administration.

    The state Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Production, Wale Adedoyin told the mammoth crowd that came to welcome the governor at the fish farm that the government took the risk of standing as surety for the granting of loan for the commercial farm and also involved in the supervision of the projects to ensure that the money or loan obtained from the bank is judiciously utilized for the purpose.

    The true story is that governor who within the space of one and a half year did not only employed over 20,000 youths of the state but is currently on a mission to revolutionise farming and empower the people to kick out poverty. The rationalization of poverty on paucity of fund has now been exposed as a product of misapplication of resources.

    Just about two years into this government, much impact has been made on good governance and empowerment. By the time the first four years is over God helping the government, the better judge of this administration will be the very people who lived through the aimless and vision-less seven and half years of locusts that added little or nothing to the lives of its citizenry but misery and death, poverty and woes.

    This government is not saying that it has reached the state of Utopia but the hand writing is on the wall for those that care to see that the little resources available would not be consumed by political termites neither would it be poured on project that will not add value to the lives of the people, but rather this administration on the long run bring about the dignity of the people who have a great history and antecedent to stand shoulder high above the ordinary. There is a clarion call from all our people to Ogbeni Aregbesola to not only lift up the standard life of our people but to move our state to a state where we shall eat in plenty and feed other state in Nigeria. With Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola we can.

    • Obaditan writes from Osogbo, Osun State

  • Government College, Bida centenary

    Government College, Bida centenary

    For two days early December last year, Government College, Bida, where I had my secondary school education between 1965 and 1969, celebrated its centenary. As you can imagine it was a great homecoming for many of the students of the school which, by sheer longevity alone, has produced some of the most pre-eminent citizens of this country.

    The celebration was prefaced by the sad and sudden demise of one of the school’s most eminent old boys, Ambassador James Tsado Kolo, Waziri Doko. JT, as his friends called him, was among the pioneer senior staff of North West State, today’s Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto and Zamfara states. A humble, diligent and upright gentleman, he rose to the rank of permanent secretary in the old state and eventually served as the Secretary of the Niger State Government before he ended his civil service career as an ambassador.

    Ambassador Kolo was billed to deliver the keynote lecture about the journey to date of his alma mater on the night of December 7, the first day of the celebration, and had indeed prepared his paper. He died at 74, apparently from heart failure, a little over two weeks before the lecture and a day after the very day the centenary organising committee put out the first newspaper advert announcing the programme of the event.

    In the end it fell on his old teacher as a secondary school student, Professor Jonathan O. Ndagi, himself one of the most eminent educationists in the country and pioneer Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, to deliver the lecture. The occasion was chaired by former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Alfa Modibbo Belgore, who though not an old boy, had sentimental ties to Bida as the closest childhood friend of Alhaji Umaru Sanda, the late Etsu Nupe, whose late father, Alhaji Muhammadu Ndayako, was one of the emirs in the North to plant the seed of Western education in the otherwise conservative and hostile region.

    As you’ll expect Ambassador Kolo’s history of his alma mater was full of reminiscences about the good, but at times not-so-good, old days of diligent and stern teachers, simple but delicious meals, notably nyanboci, the Nupe staple food of tuwon shinkafa served with bean soup or gbegiri soup as the Yoruba with their affinity with the Nupes, would call it, and of the senior boys all too often lording it over their juniors, etc.

    The one thing Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the pioneer premier of Western Nigeria, was justly famous for was his policy of free education in his region. In a sense his Northern compatriot, Sir Ahmadu Bello, was one better than the chief; JT Kolo and his fellow pupils not only enjoyed free education, they were actually paid to learn. For, in addition to free tuition, primary and secondary school pupils in the North right up to the seventies enjoyed free meals and free uniforms, and received allowances which were princely sums in those days. Such was the great store the great Sardauna put on education and such was the strength of the momentum of his legacy.

    As the college celebrated its centenary its good old days seemed light years away. Although academically it was not in the premier league, to use a football metaphor, it produced a few odd brilliant students that went on to set academic records in other schools. One such student was Malam Yunusa Paiko whom Professor Ndagi singled out from the audience for mention in the course of reading Ambassador Kolo’s lecture. To date Malam Yunusa’s record of six distinctions in West African School Certificate examination in 1959 remains unbroken. He went on, according to Professor Ndagi, to set a similar record in King’s College, as a Higher School Certificate student where he made three straight A’s.

    Modest as the school’s academic record is, it has produced more than its fair share of the country’s most pre-eminent citizens. It holds the record as the only secondary school to have produced two military leaders of this country –Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar – both of them Class of ‘62. The same class has also produced the single highest number of senior military officers in the country. These officers, with the exception of Colonel Sani Bello who was retired as military governor of Kano State, left the military as major-generals. These were Muhammadu Magoro, now a senator, Muhammed Gado Nasko, a former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Sani Sami, the current Emir of Zuru in Kebbi State and the late Mamman Vatsa, he too one time FCT minister. Another exceptional classmate of theirs was Garba Duba who retired as a three star Lieutenant-General.

    The trail blazer for them all, however, was Lieutenant-General Muhammadu Wushishi who was their senior by two years. Along with the late Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo, the military governor of the old Kwara State who was killed in the coup attempt against General Murtala Muhammed in 1976, and late Col Garba Dada Paiko, they were the first to be enlisted into the army by their old teacher, Alhaji Tako Galadima, as Nigeria’s first minister of state for the army.

    The military, however, was not the only sector in which the early products of the school proved their mettle. In the judiciary, broadcast, banking, bureaucracy, academia, and among traditional rulers many of its students have come to occupy prominent positions. In the judiciary, for example, a recent former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi was a student (Class of ’54) and its head boy. Then there was Justice Abdullahi Mustapha, one time president of the Federal High Court. Again there is the current Chief Judge of Niger State, Justice Jibrin Ndajiwo, and before him a few other chief judges. This is not to mention many serving judges at various levels of that arm of government.

    Among traditional rulers the school has produced the late Lamido of Adamawa, Sarkin Sudan of Kontagora, Alhaji Sa’idu Na Maska, the longest serving emir of Lapai, Alhaji Muhammadu Kobo, who was both student and teacher in the school, the current emir, Alhaji Umaru Bago II, the late Ohinoyi of Ebiraland, Alhaji Muhammed Sani Omolori, the current Sarkin Zazzau of Suleja, Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim and Sarkin Sudan of Wurno, Alhaji Shehu Malami.

    Several of these old boys, along with some of their teachers, notably Professor Ndagi, Sheikh Ahmed Lemu – now famous for his hard hitting speech during the submission of the report of his presidential committee that investigated the 2011 post-election violence – the late Professor Albert Ozigi, also a prominent educationist, and the ageless Malam Iliyasu Bida who is most likely in his eighties but is always looking 60, came up for award on the second day, December 8, of the centenary.

    Of the seven categories of awards on that day, the most interesting and telling for me was the Special Award that went to two of the school’s pioneering students – both of them females. Telling because, first, mixed schools were rare, if not unheard of, in these parts at that time. This apparently explains why the old boys of the school who initiated the establishment of their association in October 1975 chose to name it Bida Old Students Association (BOSA). Second, I thought the award was interesting and telling because the elderly Hajiya Jibabatu Mohammed, who, of the two recipients of the award, was present in person to receive her award, spoke such perfect English in accepting her award you would be pardoned if you thought she attended some of the best schools in England; you would never imagine that all she got was Middle School education between 1945 and 1948, when the school’s status as mixed came to an end.

    Certainly, it would make you wonder whatever happened to Western education in the country, especially in the North which had been a laggard in that field.

    However, even by the school’s rather modest academic performance, the last result of its WAEC was exceptionally dismal; out of 200 of its students who sat for the exams in June, less than half a dozen had four credits and above.

    All stakeholders in the school – students, teachers, parents, old boys and the state government – must share in the blame for the terrible decline of the college. But the least blameworthy are the old boys for the simple reason that under the chairmanship of Col Sani Bello, BOSA has done virtually all that any group can do to restore the past glory of the college. Along with his team, he has used a judicious combination of carrots and sticks to get many of the high-net-worth old boys to rehabilitate the schools buildings, infrastructure and equipment.

    So successful was he as chairman in the last five years that the school today stands out among its contemporaries like Barewa College, Zaria, Rumfa College, Kano and Government College, Keffi, as probably the best in these three areas.

    If the old boys are the least to blame, the worst culprit must be the state government. Like most states in the country, especially in the North, education seems to be Niger State’s least priority, whatever the state authorities, going all the way to its self-styled chief servant, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, may claim to the contrary.

    And unless the state authorities begin to give primary and secondary schools their due and unless there is transparency and efficiency in the handling of what goes into the sector, things can only get worse than the dismal record of the school in recent times no matter what anyone else does or says.

     

     

     

     

  • Let us pray

    As we commence a new year today in line with Gregorian calendar, it would be necessary as a country and a people to seek the face of God who led us through year 2012 successfully for another success in year 2013. After going through the events of 2012 I feel compelled to offer the following prayer for our dear country Nigeria and I invite you to join me.

    Let us pray.

    Almighty God, we thank thee for seeing us through the year 2012 successfully. Though not all that started the year twelve months ago are here today to witness the beginning of year 2013, it is not by our good deeds that those of us still alive today are here but by your grace, and those that have passed on can not be said to have offended you. It is Thy will that they come back home when they did and we should remain behind to complete our term. As we are enjoined to say always; let Thy will be done.

    Oh Lord, it is universally agreed that apart from corruption, bad leadership has been a major problem of this country, we know it but unfortunately we’ve been unable to correct that problem.

    After several decades of failed leadership we had the opportunity to turn a new leaf in 1999 with a new democratic dispensation and indeed we thought we have turned the page when retired General Olusegun Obasanjo, a one time military Head of State was elected president and commander-in-chief., but alas we ended up with 8 wasted years of that presidency.

    God you know the story. Obasanjo not only wasted that golden opportunity but inflicted further pains on us when, having failed to illegally extend his tenure, he forced a reluctant president on us as a successor in the person of late Umar Yar’Adua. God, the jury is still out on Yar’Adua’s tenure but certainly not a few Nigerians will declare his tenure a failure.

    When you decided to take Yar’Adua away, Obasanjo again manipulated the system and forced another colourless and reluctant leader on us in the person of President Goodluck Jonathan. Even though he still has two years to end his tenure the jury has already returned a verdict of failure on him.

    Oh God our Lord, even though we have no authority to question you we want to humbly ask why you have allowed those who never had the intention of ruling Nigeria become president or Prime Minister of this country, while those who genuinely aspired did not get there. From Tafawa Balewa to Jonathan, with the exception of the Babangida and Abacha interregnum, all the leaders got there either by accident or reluctantly. Babangida and Abacha wanted to rule Nigeria and they got there, but what did they make of that opportunity.

    God, power belongs to you and you only can give power and anoint leaders. We cannot question your judgment, but as we begin the countdown to the 2015 election we pray that you give us leaders at each tier of government, who are genuinely interested in serving us and not just ruling us, leaders with compassion who will feel what we feel not those who because they have power supply 24/7 in the government villas across the country forget that majority of us are still living in darkness or on “I better pass my neighbour” power generator. Not leaders who will fly their children and spouses to specialist hospitals in Germany even for common cold leaving the rest of us to attend the glorified clinics that we call hospitals here. Not those whose children and relations will attend elite schools in Europe, America, Asia and even in nearby Ghana while watching our educational system nose dive. Not those who because they can fly around in state funded executive jets forget that our roads are bad; not those who because they cruise around in fleets of government fueled limousines would want the rest of us to go around on bicycles or pay through our nose for a litre of fuel.

    God, the sins of our leaders are many but even in these closing stages of their tenure preparatory to the 2015 elections, we pray that you touch their hearts to turn away from their evil and wicked ways and serve the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians. Beginning from today our Lord, we pray that our leaders will rule with the fear of God and respect for us the people.

    While not blaming our leaders entirely for the woes that have befallen our country, we equally recognize the ignoble role some of us followers have been playing in bringing the nation on to her knees. Just as we pray for guidance for our leaders we also pray for committed and sincere followers who will not sell their conscience or birthright for a mere pot of porridge.

    God we agree that not all our leaders are that bad, there are rays of hope of better leadership tomorrow within the ranks of our present State governors, and to a little extent members of the National Assembly. We are still waiting for those in the State assemblies and local governments to show their true colour.

    But of recent God there has been a disturbing trend within the ranks of our governors that is giving cause for concern. In the course of the year 2012 the ranks of our state governors have been visited by tragedy leading to death in at least one instance and on two occasions, close to death. Governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State was flying a small aircraft from his home town in Taraba State to Yola airport in nearby Adamawa State when the aircraft crashed as he was approaching the airport. All on board were badly injured and Governor Suntai almost lost his life.

    Almighty God as you know, our health facilities are nothing to write home about, not even our best hospital; the National Hospital in Abuja could handle the treatment of Suntai and the others on board that aircraft; they had to be flown to Germany for treatment. As at the time of this prayer, we are not sure whether they would survive but we pray that through your mercies they will survive and come back home to their loved ones in good health. Our First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan recently returned from a medical treatment in a German hospital, we don’t even know what was wrong with her.

    God in this New Year please direct our leaders to establish that kind of German hospital that is good enough to treat our First Lady in at least each of the six geopolitical zones in the country, for the rest of us to also enjoy good healthcare.

    God as the year 2012 was drawing to a close you decided to recall back home Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State. He died in a military helicopter conveying him, former National Security Adviser Gen. Owoye Azazi and three others including the crew to Port Harcourt airport from Bayelsa when it crashed into the creeks killing all on board. God this is one air accident too many. We are yet to fully recover from the tragic air crash involving DANA Air in Lagos. We recall similar ones in the past involving some of our domestic airliners. If this was due to our sins please God forgive us and prevent such tragedies from befalling us this year and in years to come.

    Just as we are about drying the last drop of tears in our eyes as a result of the death of Governor Yakowa and co, Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State was involved in a fatal road accident that claimed the life of his ADC but left him badly injured. On top of all these accidents and death are wicked rumors flying around announcing the death of no fewer than three other State Governors. God what is happening to our governors? Please deliver them from all evils.

    The accident involving Governor Wada has once again highlighted the carnage that daily takes place on our roads, especially highways. God, in our country today, as you know, road accident has taken more lives than any known disease due in part to poor conditions of the roads and the reckless suicidal driving culture in this country. .God please in this New Year direct our leaders to fix our roads for us even if they won’t build new ones and touch the hearts of our drivers.

    Lord our prayers are by no means limited to these, but the space here is too small to accommodate them all, but you know what is in our hearts, please grant us those ones that will make us a better people and a better nation. In your mighty name we pray.

    Amen.

     

  • Annus Horribilis 2012

    Annus Horribilis 2012

    Tatalo Aremu, The Nation on Sunday columnist that takes no prisoners, as he snoops around, launching his fearsome Sunday-Sunday heavy bazookas at those who trouble Nigeria’s Israel, plumbed the depth of pessimism the other day.

    In his 23 December 2012 piece he titled “An avoidable tragedy”, Tatalo wondered why, with a touch of combative hyperbole, Nigerians could in all good conscience regard 2012 a horrible year, when their irresponsible leaders had always connived and conspired to make things horrible for luckless Nigerians in their care.

    “What you have in Nigeria,” he thundered with patriotic rage, “is not Annus Horribilis but Homo Horribilis”! That is as dire a sentence as can ever be.

    Is Tatalo justified? Maybe. Maybe not.

    But nature and nurture did conspire in 2012 – a horrible year by all accounts – to expose the dirty underbelly of Nigeria’s unconscionable power elite, and their antediluvian thinking; as well as the masses who they so ingloriously mislead to, not to love their neighbours as themselves as the Bible and the Quran command, but to hate with passion on as intensely private a business as religion and ethnic make-up.

    In 1899, Joseph Conrad found the European Heart of Darkness down the river in Belgian Congo, in blind and mindless greed. In 1954, William Golding, Nobel Prize winner located, in his Lord of the Flies, that the human core might well be more evil than good, contrary to previous thinking.

    Both Conrad and Golding, were they to still be alive, would have found further validation, for their fictional theories, in 2012 Nigeria; with mass murder and free-wheeling mayhem that have been the evil signature of Boko Haram; and the bumbling response by the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, which spread the fog of hopelessness beyond measure.

    Year 2012, the Annus Horribilis Nigerians would rather forget, had pretty little to cheer. But it at least showed the troubled republic in its true state – closer to the Thomas Hobbes’s pre-Social Contract state of nature, where life was nasty, brutish, cruel and short; than to the modern welfare state, where the security of the citizen is guaranteed; and the welfare of all is the chief business of state.

    Taraba and Kaduna states, united in religious chauvinism, though on opposite sides of the religious divide; and ironically too, united in grief, epitomised the dysfunction of the Nigerian state, as much as did a year of limitless tragedies.

    Taraba, a state that would, only over its dead body, harbour a Muslim governor, finally faces the spectre of one – spectre, because to the power lobby in that state, the sceptre of power in wrong religious hands, is nothing but some hell, never to be contemplated.

    Yet, the 1999 Constitution puts citizenship above religious leanings; and therefore guarantees, at least on paper, access to political power to whoever is qualified, no matter his or her faith.

    Since the unfortunate aircraft crash of Governor Danbaba Suntai on 25 October 2012, Taraba has waited with bated breath. Everyone hopes and prays the governor would be all right. But what if it goes the other way, should the state suffer a needless crisis? And not because the Constitution is not clear on what should be done but because the power elite over there think their own will should trump the Constitution?

    This is one institutional shallowness that the horrible 2012 exposed, despite grand pretences. That power heart of darkness – shaped, no doubt, by past decades of illicit domination across the religious divide – must have triggered the reported rash attempt to expel, from his official quarters, the then deputy governor and now Acting Governor, Alhaji Garba Umar, as if such rashness could vitiate constitutional provisions in case of any eventuality.

    That the man is acting governor now, and may well become governor, underscores the futility of passion over-riding cold constitutional provisions, when the rule of law, and not arbitrary passion and power, is the issue. But it shows a dangerous gulf between the cold print of law and the hot, not-so-lawful ardour. That may yet be explosive, if that gulf is not bridged.

    But flip the coin and you are faced, at Kaduna, with the Muslim opposite of the power drama playing out in Taraba. Kaduna power players, who would tolerate a Christian governor only over their dead bodies, got subdued when Goodluck Jonathan nominated Namadi Sambo as his vice-president, and the former Kaduna governor yielded the gubernatorial seat to the long-suffering, tested but hardly trusted (it would appear, given developments after his tragic death) Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa.

    Before his ascendance to the Kaduna power pinnacle, Governor Yakowa had done everything that could possibly earn him the office – a top grade state and federal civil servant, a loyal and amiable two-time deputy governor and a level-headed governor that, from reports, saw neither Christian nor Muslim but one Kaduna.

    But at his death in that chopper crash, religious lunacy ate at the soul of the state. What the law had compelled, technological freak had undone – and it was time for the religiously bigoted to rejoice! Why, a lunatic even posted praises, on his Facebook wall, to his peculiar “Allah” for the death of another, who never did him any wrong!

    To the conventional mind, these were raw savagery, unbefitting of 21st century Nigeria – just as the conventional global mind expected the British public school tradition and discipline to have held Golding’s fictional school boy characters in Lord of the Flies from descending into savages, just a few days after being marooned on an island, after an air crash.

    But just as Golding’s novel was a wake-up call for the darkness of the human heart, though the globe boasted civilisation and evolution, the Kaduna and Taraba tragedies and the evil reactions to them by the power elite, accurately reflected the darkness of the Nigerian power mind, which needs a blinding flash of constitutional reforms to treat. Add Boko Haram, the mass murderous gang to the mix, and the stark, tragic reality of today’s Nigeria is all but clear.

    The greater tragedy, however, is that while the grim situation is all but clear, the authorities efface comical optimism that borders on wilful determination to see the house entirely collapse, while playing the ostrich.

    The Nigerian state is terribly sick. It is weak and tottering, bordering on total collapse. To be saved, it needs a radical constitutional fix. Yet, with the current attempt at constitutional amendment, the federal pretenders offer no more than effete palliatives, reminiscent of the failed efforts of the Abacha and Obasanjo eras.

    This may sound a dire New Year’s Day pronouncement, ala Amos the Biblical prophet of doom; but the political elite and the powers-that-be must work harder at an all-inclusive constitutional talk, where nothing is taken as given.

    Anything short of that radical restructuring may well make the horrible 2012 the signifier of a well and truly horrible era for a country battling for survival. That won’t make 2013 much happier than 2012!

    Despite this dire prognosis, a happy New Year to you all, readers of this column.

     

  • The lottery of life

    It is the tradition of the ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE UNIT of the weekly British Magazine,THE ECONOMIST, to make a global survey of values of life in countries.

    A month ago,the unit published the result of its survey for the year 2013 in eighty countries.

    According to the UNIT, it was aware that despite global economic crises, times have in certain respect, never been good owing to decline in output growth rate.

    On page 85 of THE WORLD IN 2013, printed by THE ECONOMIST, Nigeria is listed as the worst place for a baby to be born in 2013.

    It was an article written by LezaKekic on the verdict of the ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE UNIT. It earnestly attempts to measure which country will provide the best opportunities for a healthy, safe, and prosperous life in the years ahead.

    Switzerland is the best country to be born in 2013,according to the UNIT, followed byAustralia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Singapore, Newzealand, Netherland, Canada, Hong Kong, Finland, Ireland, Australia, Taiwan, Belgium, Germany and United States of America.

    South Africa is ahead of Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Morocco and Jordan, while Nigeria is below Kenya, Pakistan and even Syria, which is at present at war.

    ‘Its quality-of-life index links the results of subjective life-satisfaction surveys- how happy people say they are- to objective determinants of the quality of life across countries. Being rich helps more than anything else, but it is not all that counts; things like crime, trust in public institutions and the health of family life matter too. In all,the index takes 11 statistical significant indicators into account. They are a mixed bunch: some are fixed factors, such as geography; others change only very slowly over time (demography, many social and cultural characteristics); and some factors depend on policies and state of the world economy.

    A forward-looking element comes into play,too. Although many of the drivers of the quality of life are slow changing, for this ranking some variables, such as income per head, need to be forecast. We use the EIU’S economic forecast to 2030, which is roughly when children born in 2013 will reach adulthood’,Mr.Kekic declared.

    By co-incidence,the same magazine on page 81, published the Economic predictions of Nigeria’s Finance Minister,NgoziOkonjo-Iweala on Africa, Nigeria included.

    In the article titled,’EMERGING FROM THE FRONTIER’, Mrs.Iweala said Nigeria, Ethiopia and Angola will have a robust economy in 2013.

    She used all the economic jargons,typical of World Bank officials, which had never worked so far, to project Nigeria’s economic future in 2013.

    Reading the two articles,I got addled and befuddled on who is credible and plausible.

    If Mrs.Iweala, whom we regard as our economic miracle woman here, could be precise in her prediction, how come THE ECONOMIST,was able to regard Nigeria as the worst place to be born in 2013, If she can not convince THE ECONOMIST, how can she convince us all here.

    Anyway time will tell whether Mrs Iweala’s projection is a mere fantasy or day-dream typical of her or whether the findings of THE ECONOMIC INTELIGENCE UNIT could be precise and exact.

    As they say, NAPOLEON IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

    But morning shows the day.

    No American President has cared and loved Nigeria more than BILL CLINTON. In and out of office he has visited Nigeria several times.

    In his 953 page book titled ’MY LIFE’ which he wrote in 2004 after he left office, he revealed his hope for Nigeria while in power.

    On page 856 of that book, he wrote,’ I got up at four in the morning to watch the inaugural ceremonies for Nigeria’s new president, former general Olusegun Obasanjo, on TV. Ever since gaining independence, Nigeria had been riddled by corruption, regional ad religious strife, and deteriorating social conditions. Despite its large oil production, the country suffered periodic power outages and fuel shortages. Obasanjo had taken power briefly in a military coup in the 1970s, then had kept his promise to step aside as soon as new elections could be held. Later, he had been imprisoned for his political views and, while incarcerated, had become a devout Christian and had written books about his faith. It was hard to imagine a bright future or sub-Saharan Africa without a more successful Nigeria, by far its most populous nation. After listening to his compelling inaugural address, I hoped Obasanjo would be able to succeed where others had failed’.

    That was vintage Bill Clinton on Nigeria in 2004.

    Has there been any improvement so far?

    We are now in 2013, a fresh year and the year should offer us new opportunities and new challenges. Certainly 2013 should be a judgment year for Nigeria so as to avoid jumble and clutter in this country. Things can not go on as they are now.

    Our situation is near lamentable and our plight and agony was even mentioned by the Pope in his last Christmas message.

    My hope for Nigeria is the same hope you have for Nigeria too.

    May 2013 bring new light into our dark chambers of pessimism.

    May 2013 lift us from the mid-night of desperation to the day break of joy.

    May 2013 lead us through life’s dark valleys into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfilment.

    • Teniola is a retired Director in the Presidency, now lives in Lagos.

  • A President’ New Year promise

    A President’ New Year promise

    Welcome to 2013, a year declared by President Goodluck Jonathan as one that will witness improved governance. Just as it is natural at this time of the year for individuals and households to project on the promises of the immediate future, our President, in addition to his charming Goodluck, seems to have taken to the ancient mystical art of crystal-ball gazing in the bid to assure us that the journey to his Nigerian Eldorado is on course.

    First, was the occasion of the foundation laying ceremony of Living Faith Foundation Bible College in Kaduna on Christmas Eve where the President spoke of better times for the citizens in the New Year. His words: let me assure all of you and indeed Nigerians that 2013 will be better for us than 2012 in all aspects of the nation’s history (sic). The New Year shall be better for us in terms of job creation, wealth creation and improved security among others”.

    Days after – this time at the Christmas Service in Abuja, the President broached on the subject of perception of his administration as being a slow one.

    Again, his words: “people say this government is slow. Yes, by human thinking, we are slow; but I can say that we are not slow. He added, perhaps for emphasis, that “the government will not, because of the perception, begin to rush….”

    Although, the latter must have come to many Nigerians as a new one, from the President, it may well be evidence that the cries and anguish on the Main Street have finally pierced through the impervious walls of the Villa.

    A snail speed administration? C’mon, that would be far more tolerable than the astonishing inertia or even the outrageous but expensive presidential indulgence of outsourced governance – the variant of which finds expression in irrational fatalistic abdication; the practice of leaving routine matters of governance in the hand of the supernatural in a supposedly secular, presidential democracy.

    Without taking anything from the rare candour of the presidential admission that the past year was a colossal disaster as far as governance went, I have struggled in vain to find the substance in the so-called solid foundation on which the President plans to erect his transformational infrastructure.

    Let’s begin with the touted claims of achievement. The most obvious one of course is the “improved” performance in the power sector. Considering the state of power generation which is said to have hit the 4,500 Mw, it must be galling to most Nigerians that a federal government that has poured over $20 billion in the last decade has been on an orgy of wild jubilation over the incremental achievement – a notional improvement that is no more than 25 percent – in electricity supplies.

    Or the railways. Amazingly, the nation is supposed to be in frenzy that the railways has been primed to run –on the same old, disused Lugardian tracks. How about touting the “feat” of the overpaid Chinese contractors in fixing the relics in the age of high speed trains as “transformation”!

    In the last year, more industries closed shop than we have had new start-ups. We know why: the same old, worn, recycled but nonetheless valid tales of inclement policies, infrastructure deficit, high interest rates, and other countless bureaucratic impediments which constitute the body and soul of industries’ lack of competitiveness.

    And the result? Manufacturing remains at the abysmal low level of 4 percent contribution to the GDP – the level it was at independence. We remain net importer of just about anything – from refined fuel to domestic consumables, and to industrial spares.

    We have since found a magic in starting our charity abroad. Not for Olusegun Aganga, Jonathan’s Trade and Commerce minister, the reciprocity subsumed in global trade relations. Progress, Nigeria style, is denominated in foreign investment: the higher the number of those high-octane cocktails in off-shore hotels packaged as foreign investment drive, the more progress is said to be made. The question of how foreign investments would thrive in an environment littered with carcasses of dead industries hardly matter. How about herding our policy wonks for a refresher course in Globalisation 102?

    Today, the single greatest threat to the nation’s socio-economic stability is unemployment. The figure is said to be some 25 percent with youth unemployment put at a frightening 50 percent rate. That’s nearly twice the population of our neighbour, Ghana. What’s being done? The last I heard was that the inelegantly couched Sure-P headed by Christopher Kolade, an extra-constitutional contraption very much like the PTF, has been drafted to the rescue.

    What more can be written about the security situation that is not already known? There is war with the Boko Haram in the North; kidnappers are threatening to overrun the South. The capacity of the nation’s military is stretched thin – bogged down with internal security operations with no signs of respite on the horizon. The police, being no match for the sophistication of the criminal gangs on rampage appear overwhelmed.

    Why the picture of these realities? It is to show where the nation is coming from. It seems to me the only way to evaluate the President’s prognosis for the year. After all, isn’t it said that were wishes to be horses, beggars would ride?

    So much for the President’s exaggerated picture of 2013; last year for instance, it took a paralysing protest over the fuel price hikes to move the President to act on the racket of fuel subsidy funds administration. Twelve months after that holy rage forced the President to commit his administration to the establishment of three new refineries, it has since backtracked: the refineries are no longer on the table.

    In the year ended, the nation spent N1.3 trillion on fuel imports; this year, the figure is likely to be much higher. Lost on the hierarchs of the administration are the drag-on effects of the avoidable fuel import regime on the nation’s foreign exchange reserves and the economy as a whole.

    Consider also that it took the threat of impeachment to prod the President to implement the capital provisions of the 2012 budget. Thanks to executive-bureaucratic inertia, the roads remain a picture of abandonment. Sprucing up airport terminals may be Minister Stella Oduah’s idea of modernisation, the aviation sector is nowhere modern or safer any more than new entrants are willing to venture into the sector.

    My prognosis for the year? Nothing will change. Not in the quality and pace of governance. The bazaar driving its processes will continue no doubt. Industry capacity utilisation is likely to remain, pretty even. Surely, no one expects unemployment to come down; Not the interest rate. The monetary authorities will continue their ‘inflation targeting’ while the real economy grinds to a halt.

    You ask why? I say there is too much thinking within the box. Isn’t it said also that ‘what you see is what you get’?

    Happy New Year!

     

  • The year that was 2012

    The year that was 2012

    n a two-part column for this newspaper (December 6 and December 13), the historian Jide Osuntokun called the year just ended our annus horribilis. I doubt whether, if they are true to themselves, other persons reviewing the major occurrences in Nigeria over that period will come to a different conclusion.

    Right up to its closing hours, 2012 has been a year of horrors.

    It began with a callous ambuscade. Nigerians woke up on January 1 to find, contrary to assurances from on high, that the price at the gasoline pump had gone up 120 percent, ending, it was claimed, a subsidy that had for decades subverted the nation’s quest for economic greatness.

    Nine days of people’s power centered fittingly on the Gani Fawehihmi Freedom Square in Lagos forced the government to retreat somewhat. But the harm had been done. The uncertainty and confusion that heralded the New Year governed most of the year, putting investment decisions and the launch of new ventures in abeyance. A measure allegedly designed to perk up the economy ended up crippling it.

    As part of its climbdown, a panicked government embarked on what it called palliatives, to cushion the impact of the hike in gasoline prices. Suddenly, some more than 1000 passenger buses bobbed up in Abuja, as if conjured out of President Goodluck Jonathan’s fedora, to serve with several hundred more expected shortly. The full assembly would work out 2.5 buses for each of the nation’s 774 local government areas.

    Where are the buses today? What is the status today of another palliative, under which each state was going to get federal assistance to put 10, 000 young men and women to work? And just how much relief has the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) delivered with savings from the abolished “subsidies”?

    It would turn out, as was obvious to anyone paying even cursory attention to the matter, that subsidising was not petrol consumption but corruption of the most brazen kind, carried out on a scale almost beyond belief by government insiders, heir cronies and their proxies.The government has been going through the usual pretence of making them disgorge their loot and bringing them to justice.

    The pains arising from cutting the phantom subsidy continue and have in some cases grown worse, but relief is in short supply. Meanwhile, “subsidy” payments continue, almost doubling projections.

    Nigerians were still figuring out how to cope with this government-made disaster when they were zapped by a natural disaster of almost biblical proportions. From the parched Sahel to the mangrove swamps of Nigeria’s Atlantic coast, flood waters raged and swelled and swallowed everything in their path.

    An equal opportunity visitation, the flood waters spared neither the tin shacks of the poor nor the marbled palaces of the wealthy. Even Dr Jonathan’s country home in Otuoke, Bayelsa State, went under water.

    For the better part of a week, vehicular traffic from the south could not reach Abuja. And for the same period, millions of Nigerians displaced from their homes and farms were left to fend for themselves. When relief finally came, it was vitiated by poor distribution and corruption. Some families reported getting only a cup of noodles. For many of the displaced persons, life will never be the same again.

    And then, there was Boko Haram, carrying its campaign of terror to the heart of the military establishment – the Command and Staff College at Jaji, near Kaduna, after more or less completing what General TY Danjuma called the ‘ Somalianisation” of Northeastern Nigeria.

    Just this past week, some 40 gunmen believed to belong in its ranks attacked the Adamawa border town of Maiha, setting alight the police station, the court house, an official residence and freed prisoners in the jail house. It ended the year with a deadly note at the weekend, with the killing of 15 people in a Borno State village.

    Kidnappers stepped up their game. Among their trophies: Delta State commissioner for Higher Education, Dr Hope Eghagha; the 82-year-old mother of Finance Minister Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and retired professor of sociology, and the wife of retired Brigadier –General Oluwole Rotimi, lately Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States.

    All have returned to their families, but their experience just goes to illustrate how perilous life has become in Nigeria, even for people of privilege.

    Amidst these travails, the nation was treated to a harvest of deaths of the prominent and not-so-prominent, and to reprise of the UmaruYar’Adua health saga that is playing even at this writing. Kaduna State Governor Patrick Yakowa and former National Security Adviser General Owoye Azazi were killed in a helicopter crash.

    The President’s wife dropped out of sight, reportedly “resting” in Dubai, exhausted after hosting a summit of the African First Ladies Peace Initiative, only to be traced later to a German sanatorium where she was being treated for an undisclosed ailment.

    Dame Patience’s prolonged stay led to rumours that she had died. Since her televised return some six weeks ago, she has stayed discreetly on the sideline. And the public is none the wiser about her condition.

    Rumours of death have also been swirling around the heads of Enugu State Governor Sullivan Chime and Cross River State Governor Liyel Imoke. Chime left Nigeria last September for treatment of an undisclosed illness and was not heard of or from,until he reportedly issued two weeks ago a statement of condolence to the Yakowa and Azazi families.

    Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, who claims to have met with Imoke recently in the United States, says Imoke is not sick, much less dead. The governor, he said, was only enjoying a well-earned vacation

    But, according to government sources, Imoke actually served notice that he was travelling to the United States to attend to a minor ailment and formally transferred power to the Deputy Governor as required by law.

    Chime’s condition remains uncertain, and not even Imoke’s Facebook postings have settled the matter.

    Taraba State Governor Danbaba Suntai, who suffered critical injuries when the plane he was piloting crashed near Yola, Adamawa State, last October, is in a bad shape, according to a prominent Nigerian who saw him several weeks ago on his hospital bed in Germany. It is doubtful whether he can return to duty.

    A gruesome end-of-year crash near the state capital Lokoja almost claimed the life of Kogi State Governor Idris Wada.He is said to be responding to treatment in Abuja. His aide-de-camp Idris Mohammed was killed on the spot.

    But it has not been all doom and gloom.

    The government says it has finally taken measures that would help ascertain just how much crude is lifted from Nigeria’s oil fields, some 32 years after the University of Lagos polymath, Professor Ayodele Awojobi, established in testimony before the Irikefe Commission that the barrel being used in Nigerian oil fields was four gallons larger than the standard international barrel.

    The economy grew by 5.8 percent, slower than in previous years but still one of the highest rates in the world.The rehabilitated railways, a key element in the Transformation Agenda,ferried 450 newly recruited soldiers from Zaria to Lagos, completing the 613-mile journey in just under 26 hours.

    Above all, we have Dr Jonathan’s assurance that, while 2013 may not be annus mirabilis, it will be much better than 2012. Don’t mind those kvetching that he had said the same thing about 2102 at the end of 2011. And don’t mind those complaining that he is slow. He has himself admitted that much

    They conveniently forget that our GEJ is also steady. They forget the old saying that “slow and steady wins the race.”

     

     

  • Disappointed Vultures

    Disappointed Vultures

    When I contemplate Nigeria these days I focus on the vulture. The bird preys on carcasses but Nigeria, in spite of its fascination with death, has defied the day of the vulture.

    Some analysts think oil is the reason, and the fluid of life will sustain this country afloat over the stormy waters of ethnic and sectarian malice and the failures of the state to convert hope to joy for the teeming masses.

    Some say Nigeria is too interwoven in culture and history to cave in under superficial fisticuffs of cousins.

    But whatever it is, Nigeria has dared the vultures for long.

    The past year that ends today encapsulates how a country lives dangerously and still carries on as though immune from the temptations of the devil.

    The country has been flogged by Boko Haram, harassed by flood, whipped by kidnapping, boxed in by inelegant electoral jousting, jousted by corruption, pockmarked by robbers, grinded by poverty, immobilised by impotent leaders, steamrolled by road accidents, gutted by air crashes, pin-fallen by failed institutions and knocked out by despair.

    Yet Nigeria sleeps through all these and wakes up as though to a day of great expectations. It is like the character Nostromo in Joseph Conrad’s novel of that name. The character, a glorious thief just like Nigeria, has carted away great volumes of silver, and sleeps afterwards in a forest glade for over 12 hours. He wakes up to the presence of a vulture glowering greedily at him. But the thief stands up in his full masculine glory and exclaims to the disappointed bird, “I am not dead yet.”

    We can say same of this country. We never die, we just live, hoping and clutching at an existence of false peace and majesty.

    We see all the evils and the low moments. But we live with them. The problem with Nigeria is that it does not want to die and be born again. We want to live, even if imperfectly, if with corruption, if with probes without answers, if with bad roads comingling with deaths, if with the poor dying daily of preventable diseases, if and when we can have free and fair elections, if we can turn Boko Haram boys to assets of development.

    This thought crossed my mind when I attended the launching of Wole Soyinka’s new book, Harmattan Haze on an African Spring. The famous poem Abiku written by the Nobel laureate was advanced as a metaphor for Nigeria, with respect to corruption.

    Those who looked at the point included Soyinka, Pat Utomi, Oby Ezekwesili and they agreed that corruption was an Abiku and it keeps coming over and over again.

    I did not get the chance to rebut their position.

    Corruption, like many of the vices and institutional stumbles of our history, has not encountered the Abiku syndrome. The vices never die, they just come in different guises. They are more chameleons than carcasses. They have not witnessed the vulture visit.

    Can we say poverty has ever died, or educational malaise or corruption has ever died? They just come in new colours and aggressions. We need to let them die. But for them to die, the whole system giving them life must die with them. We are not ready for that sacrifice. For corruption to die, we must have rule of law. For education malaise to go, we must insist on standards. To have these virtues all those persons and practices that allow them must go. But they will not.

    “To be born again, first you have to die.” Those are the opening words of Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel Satanic Verses. So we do not have Abiku yet.

    Boko Haram is festering in the North because we did not address what gave birth to the sect. On the surface, it is religious inferno. At bottom though, it is poverty. It is the result of the absence of government. A government that allows an alternative society to breed under its very glare.

    President Jonathan set up an al majiri school as though that will create a new set of educated young in the North. What that kind of school will breed is alienation. They will be branded the al majiri graduates, and rather than integrate them, they will become outsiders.

    In the Niger Delta and the Southeast, we have had kidnapping, so much so that the Christmas was celebrated there mainly by the humble who had nothing to offer the greed of the rampaging goons.

    Primary education is at an all-time low, but billions of Naira goes to the purchase of primary school books. Most of the schools don’t have them.

    Roads are in permanent disarray; power in spite of the low boasts of the Jonathan administration is still epileptic. Something needs to give way.

    The oil subsidy debate raged through the year. We saw strikes, and then probes and then reports. In the end, the Nigerian was duped by the Jonathan administration. The money they collected in the name of subsidy was never accounted for in terms of revamping the infrastructure and education and health sectors. Rather, President Jonathan is seeking more subsidy removal while his finance minister is asking for another loan. This is the same minister asking for us not to spend money in a nation where spending will ease the infrastructure deficit plaguing us.

    The fuel scarcity is on us because the government that guarantees marketers to import fuel will not pay them. So they would not supply.

    So what happened to the fuel subsidy money fleeced from the fuel consumer all year?

    We also saw tragedies in high places. The air and road crashes that affected the mighty tell us that those in the marble places of power cannot avoid the tragedies their policies inflict on the poor.

    As I write this piece, four governors who were in the saddle when the year began are not fully in charge as the New Year dawns. One is dead tragically through an air crash, another is hospitalised over an avoidable air crash, one is mysteriously ill in an overseas hospital and the fourth is in the hospital over a road mishap.

    Never in our history have we had this sort of executive paralysis, except during the Gowon era when governors left the country on flimsy alibis.

    In spite of all these, the nation walks as though in a swagger. How long shall we push our luck and think, like Conrad’s Nostromo, we can always wake up to a disappointed vulture?

    We need the sort of leadership that wants to kill things in order to birth things anew. The Bible says: “Except a corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it abides alone. But when it dies, it brings forth new fruits.”

    In Soyinka’s Abiku, also J.P. Clark’s poem of the same title, the child dies first before it comes back to life.

    We cannot live a life of life-support. We must be willing to let the vermin go.

    Many of them are half alive, half dead. The education sector, the oil sector, infrastructure, are all half dead. So the vultures hover, waiting for the time of the vanquisher.

    In Chinua Achebe’s poem, The Vultures, he sees the bird

    Perching high on broken

    Bone of a dead tree

    All these sectors are bleeding on broken bones. Let them die so as to be reborn. This New Year, we can start that process.

  • Jonathan’s New Year resolution

    Jonathan’s New Year resolution

    When President Jonathan spoke last week on the goodies awaiting Nigerians in the New Year, it must have been to allay their frustrations in the inability of his regime to deliver since it came on stream. He had told his audience in Kaduna not to lose hope as the New Year will be better in all aspects of their lives. He said things will be better in 2013 and he will perform better in the New Year.

    Hear him, “the New Year shall be better in terms of job creation, wealth creation and security”. For a people who have been living in utter despair on account of the daunting challenges facing the country, these new year promises must have come as a very pleasant surprise.

    Coming on the eye of the New Year, these promises might as well pass as Jonathan’s New Year resolutions. It is very common in our clime for people to make resolutions on what they intend to do or not do in the New Year as part of the pact they have with their God.

    Most often, these resolutions come in form of a promise to turn a new leaf in the New Year as a way of atoning for the mistakes and human failings of the past. The practice draws a lot of support from religious tenets which encourage repentance with a firm promise not to fall back to ones decadent life style. If it is this religious zeal that is behind the high hopes the president reposes in the New Year, there is cause to give him the benefit of doubt. It is to be expected that since the promises are measurable, there must be concrete issues on the ground that may not be palpable to the people that give him such hopes. We do not seem to have an alternative than to believe him and then wait for those good things to come especially as the New Year is here.

    But the experiences we have had on this clime have been the relative ease with which New Year resolutions are kept in the breach. That is why that practice seems to be on the decline today. Most of those who have been involved in such promises will confess their inability to keep faith with them. We do not expect Jonathan’s will be one of those fading New Year resolutions. And since hope plays a very vital role in sustaining life, we must not be seen to be losing hope in the prospects of the future. The future or the social dynamics of history has a way of resolving nature’s numerous problems. So we must be prospective as a people.

    There is therefore very good reason for us to believe our president. Admitting that the changes might be coming slowly, he was optimistic that soon they will manifest in terms of better well-being of the people. Jonathan further cited the slight improvements in electricity supplies, as evidence of the good things to come if Nigerians exercise some patience.

    It would appear that we have no alternative than to take the president the way he has presented himself to us. After all, we have managed to live with these problems. Now we have been told that some respite is underway, we should have cause to heave a sigh of relief.

    The issues Jonathan touched on hinge on the survival of this country and its people. Unemployment is so grave today that something urgent has to be done to remedy the situation. It is a matter of grave concern that with the astronomical increase in the number of universities, not much has been done to create jobs for the products of those institutions.

    This is so despite the huge resources which mother nature has bountifully endowed this nation. In the face of this, much of our resources are filtered away in bogus projects that have little impact on the lives of the people. Added to this is the embarrassing corruption in official quarters. Despite all the grandstanding on the fight against corruption, the facts on the ground indicate that not much progress has been recorded in this direction.

    It will be difficult to create wealth in the face of the unbridled corruption in this country. Today, many families find it extremely difficult to eat one square meal a day. Yet they are daily treated with the embarrassing affluence of those who have had the opportunity to hold positions in government. Nobody cares to ask the source of this overnight wealth. But the many scandals involving politicians, sundry businessmen and critical institutions of government have tended to give out the sources of the questionable wealth. We have heard of the payment of billions of dollars to phoney companies as fuel subsidy without a litre of the commodity brought into our shores. It is good a thing that efforts are being made to put a stop to that scandal. Such efforts should be sustained to free the nation’s resources from the stronghold of sundry buccaneers masquerading as politicians and businessmen. Without confronting corruption in high places it will be neigh impossible to create wealth for a broad segment of the population. It is sad that recent ratings of the nation in the corruption index have made a mess of all the pontifications on the fight against the malaise. Today, politics has become the most profitable business drawing into its fold all manner of characters and charlatans. The lure of politics stems from the fact that it has become the quickest source of easy wealth.

    So it is not enough to raise the expectations of the people on the good things that will come their way this year. By this time last year Nigerians were treated with fuel price increase that precipitated riots in many parts of the country. Since after those protests, it has now dawned on our people that fuel subsidy payments have turned out the biggest scandal of our time. Yet we are being told at the slightest opportunity that the only solution to the abuse of the subsidy regime is its complete removal. The purport of this constant reminder is that we should be prepared for another round of fuel price increase. That is why the government has failed to implement those palliatives which it promised would come with the increase.

    It is therefore important that the current prosecution of those implicated in the malfeasance should be dutifully pursued. We are desirous in seeing the successful prosecution and conviction of some of the accused as evidence that government is seriously committed to the mater. The cases of former governors standing trial for corruption do not give hope that there is no official plan to cover up these cases through poor prosecution.

    Perhaps, the greatest challenge which Jonathan should convince our people that he has a handle to is the issue of insecurity. Even as he was promising that we should hope for the better in that direction, the killing of several people inside a church by religious fundamentalists on the eve of Christmas casts a serious slur on the promise. Insecurity, the type posed by the Boko Haram threat is one challenge that can undo this country. Yet we want to share in the president’s optimism of a brighter and more prospective New Year. As humans we must be optimistic that the New Year will put smiles on the faces of Nigerians. After all, Jonathan is not one of the new generation prophets that win coverts by giving them false hopes.

  • For Justus and Justina

    For Justus and Justina

    As this brutish year finally takes its brutal blow before the court of history, most Nigerians would be wondering what had hit them. Like a heavyweight boxer pole-axed with savage precision, Nigerians are distraught and disoriented. Even by the standards of their cruel bondage to an unhappy fate, never in their history has a year been more punitive of the soul and destructive of the body.

    Even at the very tail end, the year has lost neither its poison nor its potency, sending a gubernatorial convoy into a fatal clinch and snatching away our own Chief Wumi Adegbonmire, a master political combatant and journalistic warrior of distinction from the land of tigers. This was shortly after celebrating his beloved wife’s seventieth birthday. A childhood romance cannot terminate in more awry circumstances. Akure, Yorubaland and Nigeria mourn their illustrious son.

    At the very last count, at least three governors are all swapped up in hospital beds. Sullivan Chime has not been seen anywhere in over a hundred days. Suntai Danbaba of Taraba State is reported to be comatose in a German hospital. As this is been written, Idris Wada of Kogi is reported to be battling for his life after sustaining serious injuries in a convoy crash which left his ADC dead. And the First Lady is making expeditious recovery from a strange ailment whose provenance is as mysterious as the arcane rituals of governance in modern Nigeria.

    To God be the glory. But one must be careful about which divine praises to utter. Even the celebrated author of that phrase is said to be in hospital somewhere on the planet. With spiritual, economic and political escape routes seemingly blocked , tragedy cannot be more comprehensive. Yet somehow and somewhat, a way has to be found out of this national logjam or we are all goners in the short run.

    In such circumstances, Nigerians should not wish themselves a happy new year. Even divine graces and favours are earned and merited. God is no longer a Father Christmas. You cannot plant unhappiness and expect to harvest happiness. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Rather than wishing themselves a happy new year, Nigerians should be happy that it is a new year. A new year is a time of renewal and rejuvenation. We must roll up our sleeves. The Chinese are coming, and may be some Africans.

    This outgoing year is remarkable in at least one respect. It is the year Nigerians probably lost the last shred of illusion about the ability of the Nigerian post-colonial state to provide solace and succour to its citizens. It was the year when the falconer finally lost the falcon. If Nigerians were expecting a messiah and a quick fix to their political and economic woes, they finally got the message. It was the year of yearning in hope and expectation and of yawning in impotence and terminal frustration.

    True enough, the year began on a turbulent and tempestuous note with the provocative removal by government of a yet to be established petroleum subsidy. It drew the implacable ire of Nigerians. For a week, it was a tense and fraught affair, with tottering democracy on a lifeline. The great pan-Nigerian political mass which had not been seen in 20 years since the annulment of the June 12 presidential election made a dramatic return. Something was about to give, or so it seemed.

    It turned out to be a damp squib, as they say. It turned out that there was no real synergy between Labour and the mass-movement. It was a revolutionary moment without real revolutionists. There was no real linkage between refulgent radical forces waiting in the wings and the masters of the masses. Given the limits and limitations of their political consciousness, the leaders of the movement were waiting for a Deus ex machina to be thrown up by the commotion and combustion.

    It was a foolish and forlorn hope, but an accurate reflection of the balance of forces at play. A revolution is not a congressional mass of fevered devotees, but a congregation of hard and hardened men and women of intellectual faith. No wonder, Labour slunk away leaving labourers in the lurch and only to reappear in even more perfidious circumstances. A country throws up the Labour Movement it deserves.

    With their reformist, work-a-day consciousness steeped in opaque under the counter negotiation with officialdom, the new Nigerian Labour aristocracy are not Gdansk Port workers. The Poles are a tough race whose history is steeped in heroic martyrdom against local and external oppressors. For centuries, the Russians took them for lunch while the Germans often had them for supper. But they never give up.

    In fairness to Nigerian Labour, they did make a telling point which ought to absolve them of historic responsibility. They were not fighting for regime change but for the reversal of harsh pricing of petroleum products. In that, they achieved a limited and partial success. You cannot ask the children of squirrels why they are not tigers. In the animal kingdom, no genetic miracle can achieve that feat.

    But it will be the height of intellectual folly for anybody to assume that the sacrifices of affronted Nigerians and those who summoned them to the barricades have been in vain. Throughout history, men and women fight for something or some ideal only to discover that what they have fought for is not what they have achieved. It is then left for others to carry on in the perpetual struggle against oppression and injustice.

    Probably unknown to both sides, the January protests achieved a dramatic and telling effect which might have altered the Nigerian political psyche forever. In panic response to the protests, the government began hurriedly probing itself. In the process, it exposed the rotten innards of world-historic corruption and official malfeasance for all to see. It simply means that we cannot continue like this and that something will have to give, sooner than later. We may all have Goodluck Jonathan to thank for this epic feat of elite collective suicide.

    Jonathan has helped to demystify the Nigerian post-colonial state in a way that has never been done before, and in a way that has never been thought possible, to the ire of his sponsors. They have given the shoeless boy from Otueke platform shoes to wear and he had laced them with explosives. It will be Mount Krakatoa later. No onomatopoeia of impending volcanic eruption can be more appropriate. The government has its back to the wall and no one believes it anymore. You cannot transform a stone country. This house has not fallen, but it cannot stand the way it is.

    Let us expect more unintended miracles from the explosive laden shoes. Meanwhile, please step forward as the Person of the Year, the eponymous protester on the streets of Abuja and the Gani Fawehinmi Square in Lagos. After the protest, Snooper stumbled on a pair of abandoned uni-sex shoes at the Ojota end of the park. They must belong to either Justus or Justina. May their tribe multiply.