The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

A word on Nigerian coaches

They have caused us pain. They have brought us shame. They have stained our sports. They have refused to change. They are unwilling to improve on their skills. They still do things in the past, yet expect to compete with the world’s best. They are unperturbed by the downward slide in our sports. They insist it is their birthright to tinker with our sports, despite the shambolic results. But I ask, can we not do without these coaches for a while? For me, Nigerian coaches should just leave us alone.

Nigerian coaches are not ready to learn. I have witnessed several coaching clinics. Nigerian coaches don’t attend them. I tried to ask some of the big ones why they didn’t participate in those courses. I was shocked to hear them say what was it that they hadn’t read in the past? Some of them described such courses as waste of time and another attempt by the organisers to grease their palms wit free cash.

I have heard Adegboye Onigbinde cry over the poor rating of Nigerian coaches. The respected tactician is miffed that Nigerian coaches still rank in CAF’s grade C (the equivalent of primary school certificate) and has taken pains to upgrade our coaches. Yet, they are not prepared to move with the times. Onigbinde has, however, blamed the NFF for foot dragging on the matter. The truth is that Onigbinde didn’t wait for any NFF for him to be eminently qualified to perform in FIFA’s and CAF’s technical matters.

Onigbinde sir, this is the way forward. Our coaches must emulate you by upgrading their knowledge. Our coaches must know that learning is a continuum. The only way that they can be relevant is to attend courses. We are tired of their archaic tactics.

Honourable Minister sir, Chief Molade Okoya-Thomas stirred the hornet’s nest when he lampooned Nigerian coaches. He identified our coaches’ incompetence as the problem with table tennis – a sport in which Nigeria was Africa’s King Kong, but has, sadly, fallen on bad times.

He didn’t stop there. He urged the National Sports Commission (NSC) to head straight to either Sweden or China to recruit ping pong coaches to rejuvenate the game. Okoya-Thomas’ therapy for table tennis is the elixir that sports needs to compete with global giants. Indeed, a Nigerian international of yore, Kasali Lasisi, led Congo to qualify for the table tennis event at 2012 London Olympic Games. Lasisi achieved this feat when his wards beat Nigeria at the Africa Championships. In recognition of his tactical savvy, the Africa Table Tennis Federation named Lasisi to lead the continent’s squad to the world tourney. Is anyone asking questions about Lasisi’s whereabout?

Yes, only the Sports Minister, Bolaji Abdullahi. Interestingly, Abdullahi is talking about the need to involve the private sector in funding sports. Okoya-Thomas has the clout to get Nigeria three good table tennis coaches, with all the expenses paid by blue chip companies, who know his worth.

Okoya-Thomas has singlehandedly sponsored the Asoju Oba Cup for 44 years. This year’s edition is the 44th. The amiable business guru knows his onions, when it comes to ping pong. He could have kept quiet and concentrated to his competition. But he passionate about the game. Having seen the tourney through 43 years, he knows that the standard has fallen and feels strongly that it can be revived, with the good coaching of emerging stars at the grassroots.

The sore point of Nigeria’s participation at the last Olympics was the coaching. We saw how our coaches couldn’t match their foreign counterparts. We lost at crucial stages due to our coaches’ inability to read games well and provide counter strategies. It is three months since we returned from a medal-less outing, yet no action plans have been drawn up, except for the Presidential Sports Retreat held in Abuja. The talk in high places is that we are waiting for the current sports federation’s term to lapse. I ask: what are we doing with those federations whose tenures have lapsed? Should the members surrender the running of such federations? Is this not the time to remove them? Shouldn’t we show those waste pipe federations still hanging in there the new direction for our sports by replacing their members?

Let’s swallow our pride and do what others have perfected. Emerging sports nations borrowed from working templates of winning countries. They sent their coaches to learn new tricks. They also sent their administrators, technical hands and ancillary staff to countries with comparative advantage in the sports in which they chose to excel. Today, little Jamaica (in terms of population) is a world beater in a sport that was America’s birthright. The Americans taught the Jamaicans what to do after the reggae-loving country fumbled at the 1996 Olympic Games. The Jamaicans learnt well; now, the Americans are considering going to their students for tutorials on the way forward in the sprint events.

So, who are the Nigerian coaches? They are former ex-internationals and retired athletes who were not fortunate to hit the limelight. No problem with such call list, yet the disadvantage, as we have seen is that they are not equipped for the job. They have failed to appraise the finer details of their trade. It is alright that they played the game, but they must be trained in the rudiments of coaching. Coaching is an art that is dynamic. It requires that the coaches should be retrained periodically to appreciate the new trends in a particular sport.

Many will argue that countries that have clinched the World Cup did so with their nationals as coaches. It must also be said that they have thriving domestic leagues- in the case of soccer- and that they made deliberate attempts to train and retrain potential stars into coaches. They have workable templates that predate this era where coaches have emerged. They have data which they rely on in times of crises. They have established institutes to train and retrain coaches. Things work in these climes because the blue-chip firms trust the administrators. Accountability is not negotiable, simply because laws exist to punish those found guilty of financial misdeeds.

All hail Ameobi, Ideye, Ejide

Watching the Super Eagles confront Venezuela in the wee hours of Thursday (from 2am to 4 am) in Miami, United States, three things remained on my mind. The first bothered on how well the new imports would fare in the game. Shola Ameobi, Bright Dike, Onavi and Austin Ejide provided the answers with their performances.

The second poser that was answered was the fact that our best players are in Europe. There is the urgent need for Stephen Keshi to either compel some players to play in unfamiliar positions at the Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa, if he wants to compete with the best in the continent. These players will have to function in key areas in the team’s defence, given the glut of talents in other positions, such as the midfield and attack.

The third poser answered was that some players, such as Emmanuel Emenike, Oboabona, Ejike Ezeonye and others are not needed in the evolving Eagles side.

Ameobi may be 31, but his contributions for the over 30 minutes that he played, after replacing Obafemi Martins, showed that he is the right replacement for fumbling Emenike. The uncanny manner in which Ameobi held off his marker before passing the ball to an unmarked Onavi, underlined the reason why he is revered at Newcastle. He was a pain in the neck for the Venezuela defenders. His imposing presence on-and-off the ball gave the defenders a nightmare. Those who tried to muscle him off the ball were light weight. He didn’t play as an upstart. He was easily one of the men of the match.

For goalkeeper Austin Ejide, his heroics ensured that Venezuela didn’t beat us. His timely saves held the game for us to seal the third goal off Ameobi’s visionary play.

I hope that Keshi saw the way in which Ideye played with ease on the left side, striking a telepathic understanding with Ameobi. As the game ran its course, I pitied Keshi as I reflected on the team’s potentials. Osaze Odemwingie, Ikechukcu Uche and Ahmed Musa must fight for shirts. Still, it will be early to say that the Eagles will lift the trophy in South Africa. What I can say is that Keshi has a date with destiny, if he picks players on merit, not on what they had done in the past. The fact that certain players got Nigeria qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations should never be the reason for picking them- if others are better. I don’t envy you, Keshi.

November 17, 2012
Re: Okada riders’ suicide mission in Lagos

•Why can’t okada riders obey simple instructions meant for their own safety? What kind of country is this? Those who produce okada are not riding them in their country as a means of public transportation. Why here?

Gordon Chika Nnorom, Umukabia, Abia State.

What was responsible for the heartless vandalisation of public property? Let the truth be told for once in this country. What were government’s plans for these okada riders. Government will cause more harm than good with this policy. Okada riders are jobless people because and it is impossible for government to provide jobs for all of them. There should be orientation and training programmes for them, not proscribing okada. Thanks.

OIK, Minna.

•Thank you, Vincent, for your balanced judgment over the conflict between the Lagos State Government and okada riders. Granted that the cyclists had offended the law and should be punished, the government resorting to the destruction of the confiscated motor bikes instead of imposing some fines or taking other restrictive measures against its owners is akin to applying jungle justice to the okada riders, which no government with a true sense of purpose ought to do to its citizenry, no matter the level of provocation.

Sentiments apart, crushing one’s source of income can be provocative. In legal parlance, provocation is classified as temporary madness and a madman on the rampage can go to any length to inflict harm or damage on anybody or anything, not minding the likely unpleasant consequences of his action. Although the okada riders have done no better, those who destroyed their bikes in the first place committed greater sin and are to blame.

Emmanuel Egwu, Enugu

•I agree that okada riders did wrong by attacking public buses. But the government did the abominable It means that nothing good will come out of the existing social system. That is why the oppressed should organise and wrest power from the present bankrupt ruling class.

Amos Ejimonye, Kaduna.

•Okada riding is one of the businesses people have resorted to in order to battle hunger and hopelessness. The same government that is responsible for the alarming rate of unemployment has no moral justification to impound or destroy anybody’s source of economic survival. If the government provides gainful employment for the youth, no reasonable person would ride okada.

Ifeanyi O. Ifeanyichukwu

•I don’t know why you people have nothing to write except on okada, instead of asking the government to provide good roads, which would have discouraged people from going on okada. I know that many of you junk writers are on the payroll of the ACN government.

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•Whichever way anyone looks at the above subject, it is the responsibility of government to provide security by way of adequate infrastructure that will aid security itself. It should also provide sufficient recruitment of law enforcement, military and para-military agents as well as CCTVs and street patrol.

Seizing and destroying motor bikes is the most crude and wicked way of checking insecurity. So, crime will stop or/and has stopped with the vandalization of people’s bikes? Not at all. Provide jobs. Let education and health services be made free and 60 per cent of the present okada riders will quit voluntarily.

When taking a drastic action like the Lagos State Government has done, it should have adequately prepared for protection against reactionary possibilities like the destruction of BRT buses. The society is tough, Vincent. In suffering, you do not apply the advanced countries’ solutions in a less developed world where alternatives are hardly provided.

Lanre Oseni.

Re: Tell them, Tambuwal, budget is no ritual

•Let us believe that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, spoke the mind of every Nigerian on the poor implementation of the 2012 budget and the nation’s infrastructural decay. Democracy is taking shape since the Speaker can speak to the President eye ball to eye ball on the state of the nation without compromise.

Democracy is about checks and balances between the three arms of government. All the three arms should sit up to move the nation forward.

Gordon Nnorom, Umukabia, Abia State.

•I think your friend, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, deserves our collective pity because it is clear that he lacks the intellectual capacity and legislative sagacity to understand that a budget which began in April cannot hit 100 per cent performance by September. Please, let’s tell them to focus on how to reduce their jumbo pay and begin the process of impeaching those who turn oversight functions into ‘farouklized’ functions.

Ogbaisi Godfrey.

•With the melodrama on the presentation of the 2013 budget by the President, between the executive and the legislative arms in recent times shows the beauty of democracy. However, I would have wanted a situation where we can effectively check the legislature. Sometimes, they wield power dishonestly.

The executives are hereby advised to execute our budget honestly and committedly. Sometimes, followers and members who actually are supposed to execute and implement are worse culprits than the President., the Senate President and the Speaker we accuse.

Lanre Oseni.

Re: Labaran Maku’s penance at National Assembly

Labaran Maku is working hard to save his job through his utterances to Nigerians and the lawmakers. He should apologise to Nigerians over his outburst.

Gordon Chika Nnorom

November 17, 2012
RIBADU REPORT: Jump, Diezani jump

Our dainty dame of the Petroleum Ministry, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, sure knows how to heap it on us. She takes the coal in furious shovelfuls, red-hot, crackling and throws it at us in a devil- may- care manner. Her latest assault is that anti-reform forces are behind the call for her sack? She insisted that those who want her fired are enemies of President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda especially as it concerns the oil sector which she supervises. Hear her:

“Those fighting the government in the media are doing so because we have been able to frustrate their efforts in strangulating the economy through their devilish black market and questionable profiteering at the expense of the Nigerian people.

“I would not want to join issues with those criticizing me because they are crying foul that through us, Mr. President has broken the old order where things were done without coordination.

“What is hurting them is that we have put policies in place where they can no longer cheat the government and cause untold hardship to millions of Nigerians.”

Diezani’s woofing is particularly galling coming on the tail of the sordid presidential soap opera re-enacted during the submission of the Ribadu Committee report. Recall that Diezani had set up a series of committees in the wake of a national protest that greeted the yanking off of the so-called petrol subsidy last January. One of such panels was the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force (PRSTF) headed by Malam Nuhu Ribadu. But not even a thousand committees can cover up for Dieziani’s inadequacies since she was appointed to the federal cabinet about five years ago. Her incompetence has become more glaring since she was put in charge of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources. That heart beat of the country has never been in a worse mess since the creation of Nigeria.

Indeed, were she not a minister of the Federal Republic, one would have accused her of either being rude to the extreme or harboring mischief of the most devious kind. Perhaps she is gangrened by a combination of the two conditions because that is the only circumstance under which she would dare to heap so much insult on the festering injury she has inflicted on the people of Nigeria in the last few years.

How dare Diezani talk to us about reform in the midst of a debilitating fuel scarcity and surreptitious price hike? What reform in an industry with anaconda-sized corruption? Only last August, The Economist described Nigeria as the world capital of oil theft with about $7 billion lost annually. This crime has grown exponential in her time and she obviously has no clue as to how to solve the problem. Dieziani is the supervisor –in –chief of a corruption crippled industry that cannot adequately refine petroleum products, cannot import, cannot store, cannot distribute. What is the nature of this so-called reform for a minister who does not know the quantity of crude oil we export nor does she have statistics of the quantity of petroleum products we import? Where does the so-called reform start and end for a maladroit minister who cannot explain to Nigerians how trillions of naira of the so-called subsidy fund was signed away to a confederate of rogues who claim to be oil importers?

Why are our pipelines being shut down under her watch? Why are major oil firms like Shell and Total suddenly selling off their assets and migrating? Why is the nation bugged down by perennial scarcity of petroleum products yet we reform? Somebody sure needs reformation if in all this we accuse ‘anti-reform forces’.

We insist that Diezani has clearly become an albatross around the neck of the president, the presidency and the nation. We advise she takes a dive. The most honorable thing left for her now is to jump. She must jump while she can; she must jump while there is still some dignity left. She must jump before she is pushed.

AYO ORITSEJAFOR: My PJ is bigger than yours

“Thus says the Lord God: Woe to the foolish prophets, who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!” Ezekiel Ch. 13vs.3 (KJV)

So this is what it’s all about; all the shadow-boxing and hullaballoo is all in aid of acquiring a private jet (PJ) just like all the other ‘big boy’ preachers and ‘men of God’. The news last weekend from Warri that flamboyant Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) had acquired a PJ did not surprise many watchers of Nigeria’s Christendom. What may have baffled many was the slant that the nearly $5 million (about N750m) bird was a gift from his church, Word of Life Bible Church. It was meant to be reward for 40 years of toil in God’s vineyard.

But Nigerians ask: how could the church write such a fat cheque to the Founder, Visioner, General Overseer and Papa of the church? Can the tail wag the dog? Why would our dear man of God show such inefficiency in managing the truth of his new luxury toy?

Could it be that Papa is ashamed of his monstrous new-found wealth? He need not be. Have we not been taught that their god is not a poor god and that poverty is for ‘true’ Christians? He has company; he is now among the super-rich, jet-set ‘ men of God’. Some of them even have more jets than some one-jet, Nigerian commercial airlines. In a time of unspeakable rot in the polity and extreme privation and impoverishment of the people, our ‘men of God’ have got themselves into a race for acquiring billion naira private jets. They are in the race with corrupt politicians, oil thieves and ‘banksters’. They are in competition to show opulence, to exhibit their material worth.

Why would a true preacher of the Word be in such a hurry as to need a PJ? Some heads of state do not own PJs. I am not aware that the British Prime Minister owns one. Where on earth would a true preacher want to fly to in such private- jet hurry? Even Christ could not get to Lazarus in time enough yet he got the job done when he eventually got there. When did this spiritual labor become a race to conquer space and time? Expresso thinks something does not add up in this new wave of mind-numbing flamboyance. Which god is this we are talking about that allows our vanity to grow expensive wings? Can anyone see Mammon peeking from somewhere?

LAST MUG: Your turn: anything to smile about? Is Expresso an incurable pessimist or is our country truly a mirthless, cheerless entity that only makes us sad? This is the question for you to answer dear readers as this space is hereby thrown open to next week Friday November 23, 2012. Please text information about any person or thing in Nigeria that gives you hope, cheers you up, inspires you or makes you proud and happy to be a Nigerian. Ensure that your contributions are short, simple and verifiable; including your name and location.

Warning: another sad piece awaits you if we don’t have adequate responses to fill this space by Wednesday. Have a great weekend.

November 16, 2012
Twenty-first century slaves

Today, complaint is often made of what we call the failure of the Nigerian dream. Today, we lament how monstrously many forces of society fulfill and fail to fulfill their work; how the ruling class is perpetually functioning in profligate, chaotic, and altogether, insensitive manner. But today, as usual, we fail to look inwards, probably because we know if we endeavour to do so long enough, we shall find in you and me, the summary of all other failures and disorganizations—a sort of heart, from which, and to which all other confusion and monstrosity gravitates in our fatherland.

Complaint is often made that our problems persist because we refuse to convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). I wish to believe that there is depth and a semblance of truth in such frivolous mindset even as it becomes more glaring daily that a trillion SNCs will not save Nigeria. For any consensus or practicable solutions arrived at the conference would be the result of self-serving efforts of generations of louts, hired assassins, ex-convicts, treasury looters, armed robbers, advance fee fraudsters, decadent clerics and bloodthirsty political godfathers to mention a few. What manner of surplus could result from a gathering of crows?

That we undermine ourselves and underestimate our self-worth are old stories told. Now that we have failed us, we pursue the comfort of cheap consolations. Nigeria hasn’t failed us. Mr. President hasn’t failed us. Our politicians haven’t failed us. You and I have failed us. You and I are the thorny thickets shielding our shoots from the sunny spokes of daylight.

Who connived with foreigners and the ruling class to plunder Ajaokuta and pilfer NITEL? Who bursts our pipelines to steal our gas for export? Tell me, who steals at night to strip our streets of floodlights? Is it Mr. President, his deputy, perhaps the Senate President? They couldn’t achieve such bestiality on their own even if they tried, could they?

We are the hoodlums causing chaos at random, according to the whims of our cowardly godfathers. We are the policemen mounting road blocks at random to fleece hardworking compatriots of the little they manage to scrounge, everyday.

We are the bankers pilfering the lifesavings of poor and struggling compatriots after we deny them the benefits of patronizing us. We are the bank chiefs stripping Peter to pay Paul and robbing the downtrodden to feed our wantonness and greed.

We are wives to the thieving governor, and councilor, gigolo to the rogue bank chief. We are the journalists pandering to the whims of predators we have learnt to endure on our power plinths. We are the practitioners who sold out, the watchdog who became lapdogs and then, dung-dogs.

We are the Lagos big boys and drama queens desperate for groove and splendour in the midst of too much rancour, and squalor. We are the armed robbers and thieves. We are the foolish according to the leadership of the sick and imbecilic.

We are the activists exploiting the pains of the trodden to perpetuate our grand schemes of wantonness and greed.

We are the clerics selling salvation to monsters we adorn with power, unquestioningly. We are the prophets of doom and eternal damnation. We are the critics capable of nothing but unsubstantiated claims and clamour. We are the ones who see nothing good in anything.

And even I who write this epitomize the grandest of all evils, your high and mighty columnist and intellectual terrorist as nothing distinguishes me from the errant breed selling truth to the consistent bidder piece-meal and wholesomely, every time.

Now there are as many truths as our vanities. We whose job is to salvage by truth and candour have joined the prodigal breed in calling our motherland a failed state. What is a failed state? A failed state is a nation peopled by you and me. There is fundamental evil in our souls hence the vileness of our norms and culture. What evils should we set out to abolish in our modern society? To this, I bet very many well-meaning people would answer poverty, though they ought to answer slavery.

Face to face every day with the shameful contrasts of riches and destitution, high dividends and low wages, and painfully conscious of the futility of trying to adjust the balance by means of charity, private or public, they would answer unhesitatingly that they stand for the abolition of poverty.

But poverty is merely a symptom, slavery is the disease. The extremes of riches and destitution follow inevitably upon the extremes of leadership and bondage. We are not enslaved because we are poor; we are poor because we are enslaved.

Yet we have all too often fixed our eyes upon the material misery of the poor without realizing that it rests upon their deliberate degradation into slavery. The evils of power in the present system are greater than is necessary no doubt and to imagine that they might be immeasurably diminished by a more suitable form of democracy, federalism or whatever political contraption catches our fancy amounts to an exercise in futility.

Like class scum perpetually enslaved to the villainous benevolence of their feudal lords, we have learnt to condone all manners of irregularities in leadership and industry. Every day, we are compelled to work so hard in pursuit of everything and nothing in particular. And almost all who work have no voice in the direction of their work; throughout the hours of labor we are mere machines carrying out the will of a master.

Work is usually done under disagreeable conditions, involving pain and physical hardship. The only motive to work is wages: the very idea that work might be a joy, like the work of the artist, is usually scouted as utterly Utopian.

But by far the greater part of these evils are wholly unnecessary. Just like Russell said, if we all could be induced to desire our own happiness more than another’s pain, if we could be induced to work constructively for improvements which we could share with all the world rather than destructively to prevent other classes or nations from gaining an inch above us, the whole system by which the world’s work is done might be reformed root and branch within a generation.

From the point of view of liberty, what system would be the best? In what direction should we wish the forces of progress to move? Should we continue to place our destinies in the hands of dinosaurs desperate to take with them to their grave, all that’s promising and true of our great nation?

Should we continue to serve as muscles to the attainment of dreams of creatures of cruelty we have learnt to condone on our power plinths? Desperate times call for desperate measures; except that it is never some desperate measure to seize our destiny from savages doling unequal laws unto our clueless race. It is hardly some desperate measure to pay heed to the riotous yearnings of every human reserve within our battered State as our ability to identify and unite with them in partisanship and ache, inures them time and over again, against the temptations of leadership we loathe and grieve over.

• To be continued…

November 16, 2012
The Lam Effect

The passing of Alhaji Lam Adesina, former governor of Oyo State, has created another gaping hole in the landscape of progressive leadership, not just in Oyo State, but in the country as a whole. That statement sounds humdrum, given the human penchant for hyperboles especially in the wake of events such as this. Appearance notwithstanding, I am persuaded of the veracity of the claim in this regard.

At least three qualities are central to progressive political leadership. First is an empathetic understanding of the challenges that face the folks that they lead. This is a quality of mind and heart. Second is the ability to intelligently identify and execute policies that are designed to overcome those challenges. This is a quality of the intellect. Third is the manifestation of courage and boldness and determination to confront all obstacles in the chosen path to deal with those challenges. This is a quality of the spirit, what the Yoruba refer to as igboya. All these go together. Empathetic understanding without adequate policies is impotent. Policy sans empathetic understanding is blind.

It is true, of course, that different individuals can lay claim to the possession of the qualities identified above. However, in a democratic system, in which ideas and policies compete for the support and acceptance of the public, birds of the same political feather must flock together. And a lone ranger in a crowd of antagonistic ideas and policy options may discover the inevitable choking of his ideas. This is why good men and women sometimes find themselves in politically incongruent circles and ultimately regret their inconsequentiality to effect change.

Lam was a compassionate human being. We may attribute this to his background as a self-made man. Yet this would only be partially right. There are many with his background who later found themselves in position of authority where they could right wrongs and sooth human pains but chose otherwise. Lam was an intelligent man who brought the passion of an intellectual to governance. And if nothing else did, Lam’s unceasing political jabs at civilian and military dictators must earn him credit for courage and boldness.

With those qualities as his driving force, he made a choice early in his life to align himself with like-minded patriots to promote an agenda of abundant life for all. He had an intellectual endowment that facilitated the move. His career in teaching, a profession that makes the development of the human person its mandate, revealed to him the imperative of political action for the right policies to empower the masses. Early on, he joined the foremost progressive political organisation of the day and never wavered even in the face of an atrocious recourse to the brutal use of power by opponents. From Action Group to UPN, to NADECO, then AD, and ACN, Lam fought valiantly in the trenches of progressive battles for better lives for the masses. As a “prisoner of war” in the military-declared political battle of 1994-1998, Lam had the scars of war to prove it.

In 1999, after the cessation of hostilities and the defeat of militocracy, civil governance was ushered in, and who else could have merited the gubernatorial crown of the pace-setter state than the Great Lam, a title which his empathy, intellect, and courage earned him?

He approached governance with a determination to enlarge the freedom of the people and make life more abundant for them. Following the populism of the old UPN, AD would provide education, health, employment and improve the conditions of rural life. The welfarist manifesto appealed to the people who never forgot the good times of the foremost welfarist. But times had changed. The federal system that made possible the magical achievements of the 50s and 60s was no more. The unitarists had ensured that states would be better served as appendages to the centre and would survive only on hand-outs from the Federal Government. This was bound to jeopardise the effective execution of any progressive agenda. Added to this was the heritage of a bloated bureaucracy.

The dilemma of any progressive government is how to reconcile the existence of a run-away bureaucracy and its huge overhead with the provision of essential services for the rest of the citizens who are in the majority. On the one hand, labour is not only an essential part of the progressive coalition it is also a segment of the citizenry with needs that government has a responsibility to meet. On the other hand, in a state with meager internal and external resources, the more the resources that go to servicing a disproportional workforce, the less is available for every other need, including welfare programs. There was no doubt that Lam struggled with this dilemma, which confronted him immediately he assumed office, with a bitter labour dispute. It is not a dilemma that can be ignored and, though Lam is gone, as he would say, the search must continue for a workable resolution of this dilemma.

The electoral hurricane of 2003 swept off Lam and his colleagues from government houses in the Southwest with the exception of Lagos. There are truckloads of blames to go round. What is important, however, is that to their credit, Lam and his colleagues never lost hope; neither did they waver in their commitment to progressivism. Outside of the power structure that they once controlled, and in the political desert that was Southwest for eight years, they fought on with the power of ideas. Without any skeleton in his cupboard, Lam was able to hold his head high, sneering at the godfathers of rigging and political chicanery. He assailed the deliberate impoverisation of the masses and served as a headhunter for candidates. To his credit, and the credit of the national leadership of his party, Oyo State and the Southwest are back in the column of progressives.

This is the Lam effect and legacy. A peaceful rest is assured for him because he left the scene as an achiever and overcomer. He fought the right battles and secured victories for the people. But while it is over for him, it is just beginning for the rest of us, and especially for his former colleagues, every progressive, and particularly in the pace-setter state, his foremost political son, Governor Abiola Ajimobi. To paraphrase the late Senator Ted Kennedy, the work must go on, the cause must endure, the hope must live on, and the dream of empowering the people to excel must never die.

To the matriarch of the Lam Adesina family, Alhaja Saratu Lam Adesina, and Dapo and his siblings, there is every reason to celebrate a life that was fulfilled in every respect. You cannot ask for a better inheritance. For all of us, in the memorable title of his brilliant column, the search continues.

November 16, 2012
Intrigues, rage in high places

Nuhu Ribadu seems so unlucky.

When the former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chief was asked to head the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, he was obviously excited – not in anticipation of any material reward; it was all in his remarkable passion for fighting corruption. He did the job with all his heart, but now he must be feeling awful, ruing the day he signed up for it. The assignment has become a subject of bitter acrimony between the committee and the government on one hand and between Ribadu and some members of the team on the other.

I do not remember the last time such a seemingly simple job turned into an open show of recriminations. It was shameful watching Steve Oronsaye and Mallam Ribadu exchange verbal blows right in front of television cameras-like kindergarten pupils brawling over a cup of ice cream. On Oronsaye’s side was Ben Otti, who joined the former Head of Service to pillory the report as if it was all rubbish that was not worthy of the paper on which it was written.

Was the government and its troubled baby, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), expecting a clean bill of health from the Ribadu Panel? Would the Presidency have come so hard on the panel, if its report had read like a romantic poem written by a love-struck man to the woman of his dream, despite the hard facts and figures? If Oronsaye and Otti disagreed with the process, how about the content? Where is their own report, the one with a flawless process? What protocol allowed Oronsaye to publicly disagree with the chairman in so theatrical a manner and right in the presence of the President? Did somebody have prior notice of the drama? If Oronsaye did not participate in the committee’s work – he said he was away overseas – on what basis was he attacking the report in such a blistering manner? Ego? Just playing the spoilsport? I doubt whether the respected former civil servant will do that. But then, why?

The committee submitted a “final report” to Petroleum Resources Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke. She said it was no final report because another committee had to look at it and get the government’s input before it could be said to be the final report. What is that? Does that obliterate the existence of those scary facts and figures?

Consider these: 47 oil companies owing the Federal Government royalties; $5,830,261 recovered; $3.027billion outstanding; N86.6billion underpayment to the government’s purse in 10 years and more. Add these to the blazing N382billion petrol subsidy scam. Shouldn’t we be ashamed of our impetuosity? Or is it all part of the barefaced official robbery that has kept Nigeria toddling and bleeding since 1960?

Dr Doyin Okupe did more harm than good when he followed the Oronsaye line to lampoon the report and its authors. But, why leave the message to go after the messenger? Whose story sounds more believable? Does the Okupe railing, coming days after the President had promised to consider the report because, according to him, the government has nothing to hide signify a change of mind? I hope not; the implication will be, to put it mildly, bad for the administration.

Seen Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala recently? A crowd of policemen, secret service agents and others has woven a security ring around her. It is alleged that the Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy and Finance Minister’s life is under threat from oil barons who feel threatened by the probe of the multi-billion naira subsidy scam that has thrown up a long line of suspects, including the sons of the rich and the powerful. The matter is said to have caused some resentment in the cabinet, with some members believing that the government should not go all the way to punish those indicted and others insisting on justice. We are watching.

It is not only the oil sector that has got Nigerians wondering: where lies our hope? The other day in Abuja, the swearing in of Court of Appeal justices – a simple ceremony, ordinarily – became a complex anti-climax when Justice Ifeoma Jombo-Ofo was denied her turn to take the oath. Chief Justice Aloma Mukhtar would not allow her because of her state of origin. She is, by marriage, from Abia and by birth from Anambra. The CJN was mindful of the Federal Character principle. Good.

For how long are we going to carry on this way, killing talents in the name of a federal policy that is all controversy and no character? I do not blame Justice Mukhtar for playing it by the book. But, shouldn’t somebody have told Justice Jombo-Ofo to stay away from the ceremony? If she has worked in Abia for 14 years, isn’t she eminently qualified to be in the Court of Appeal on account of that? If the state government, which has expressed some anger over the development, says she is its nominee, shouldn’t that be enough? Would anybody have questioned her elevation based on state of origin? I doubt it.

I am sure our lawmakers have seen this discomfiture and will do something about it. That is why the battle for true federalism and all its corollary of fairness, justice and equity will keep raging. Any system that fails to recognise skills and talents because of the origin of the person endowed with such will surely collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Well, the Constitution Review Committee has its work cut out for it.

In Sokoto State, it was a different kind of anger; executive anger. For some time, Wamakko, the village from where Governor Aliyu Magatarkada Wamakko hails, had been in darkness following a long power failure. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) manager, Moses Osigwe, was summoned to the Government House where His Excellency whipped out a horse tail (koboko) and dealt the poor man some hot lashes. He then handed him to riot policemen who descended on him like hungry wolves. They turned him into a punching bag, hitting him hard, until the man collapsed.

Not satisfied, His Excellency summoned two more officials of the company. They got the same treatment as their senior colleague.

To Wamakko’s aide Sani Umar, it was all in a day’s job at the Government House; nothing to worry about. Nothing unusual. He said the governor’s village had suffered power outage for over one year. Wammako, according to him, gave PHCN N17million for a new transformer but the equipment was not supplied. His Excellency was furious. Right. But why did he take the law into his own hands? Why the jungle justice and utter lack of decorum that goes with his office? Is it legal for PHCN to collect cash for transformers? Why did His Excellency encourage the officials to collect the money – if, indeed, he handed them the cash? What kind of transformer was he paying N17million for? A golden one?

Osigwe should go to court to demand compensation for this reprehensible abuse of his person. If Wammako can’t be sued because of his immunity, his accomplices should be made to face the law. Being a governor’s guard is no licence for savagery; is it?

The local Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has demanded a public apology, threatening to teach His Excellency and his henchmen how to relate to fellow human beings. It should get it. Otherwise, those in whom power has been vested will continue to abuse it, taking us all back to the jungle. Should we allow them? Never!

Abubakar Olusola Saraki (1933-2012)

Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, was throbbing with dignitaries yesterday. They came to witness the end of an era in the state’s politics. It was the funeral of Dr Abubakar Olusola Saraki, former Senate Leader and godfather of Kwara politics, who passed on yesterday in Lagos.

The elite outside his camp may not like his politics – that isn’t strange – and his confidence – some call it bravado – but one fact remains incontestable: Dr Saraki was in control of Kwara politics for more than 35 years. No break. He loved his people. His people loved him. Oloye (the chief), as he was fondly called, understood their aspirations. Many made the hajj on his ticket. He wanted to be president, but never made it. Even then, his political stature did not shrink.

From the first day till the end, the late Saraki never lost touch with the grassroots. He built a solid political structure. He was consistent and loyal to his people. That is the lesson of the Saraki school of politics.

November 15, 2012
Opposition party politics in Lagos State

Opposition plays a vital role in the democratic process. It does not just proffer alternative view on the ruling party policy thrust, it helps the ruling party to periodically review or consolidate what it had initially considered an unassailable position. Because it gives hope to the party in waiting and reminds the ruling party of its vulnerability, opposition guarantees stability in a democracy. We saw the beauty of opposition party politics in the recently concluded American presidential election.

The divisive issue in that election was taxation. President Barack Obama’s party favoured tax cuts for the middle class. His republican opponent favoured tax cut for the wealthy employers of labour. The Republican Party did not attempt to invalidate the Democratic Party’s thesis that the middle class is the salt of life that guarantees development of societies all through the ages, but instead tried to impress it on the over 10% unemployed Americans that they and they alone could create jobs. Rather than dissipate energy over self evident facts, Obama focused on the twin evil of capitalism- greed and individualism which make the wealthy live on the sweat and blood of the overwhelming poor – his core supporters. Obama won through the Electoral College while Americans are evenly divided as shown by the result of the popular votes. That is the beauty of opposition in party politics in a democracy.

Unfortunately, as against application of intellect in the battle over the minds of the electorate, what we have seen in Lagos since the beginning of the fourth republic has been opposition bereft of ideas, an opposition that strives to alienate the electorate by its acts of open hostility to those it aspires to govern and an opposition that has consistently demonstrated at every point its lack of faith in the electoral process.

In 1999, one of the major problems facing Lagos was traffic gridlock, made worse by indiscipline of commercial bus drivers. It was claimed Bola Tinubu, supported by his young intellectual Turks, after a thorough study of the problem decided to organise and empower the transport unions as stakeholders in his planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project. The new administration then introduced Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) to control the unruly behaviour of other would-be traffic offenders.

Instead of coming up with idea that could improve the state government’s initiative, the response of Lagos Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) opposition under the leadership of, Bode George and Ogunnewe, the then transport minister, was to unleash newly recruited and uniformed federal thugs on LASTMA men, bringing more chaos to an already chaotic situation.

When the Tinubu administration initiated the ENRON electricity project to improve the electricity supply needs of Lagos, the nation’s economic capital, President Olusegun Obasanjo was quoted to have jokingly quipped during the inauguration that Lagos would soon be like London. The project, designed to take three months dragged on for three years because of bureaucratic impediments erected by federal authorities under the then President Obasanjo.

Lagos State PDP opposition and its federal backers were not done. The state government created development centres to ensure even development. Claiming creation of local government was on the Exclusive List, an assertion which had nothing to do with the state government’s commendable initiative; the opposition prevailed on the Federal Government to withhold the local government statutory allocations. Even after a judicial pronouncement as to the illegality of such vindictive action, President Obasanjo, under pleasure from Lagos PDP, did not budge, stalling in the process development efforts such as the then ongoing construction of General Hospitals in all the Local Government areas.

Now, the National Conscience Party (NCP) has taken over from where PDP left off after its leading light had been consumed by its own war of attrition over sharing of federal patronage. Like PDP, the party has embarked on peddling lies, and the use of blackmail instead of providing alternative policy thrust as government-in-waiting.

Early in the year, it pitched a battle against Governor Babatunde Fashola over his resolve to reclaim the Makoko water front from illegal squatters who had turned it into a slum. NCP at the time reduced the argument to the protection of the poor and under-privileged fishermen without telling us what their alternative policy on immigrants who erect illegal structures on Lagos water fronts would be.

And in the past two weeks, Governor Fashola has been under severe strains because of his resolve to put an end to the okada menace in the city. When months after the state assembly’s passage of the Lagos State traffic law, many more months of education and sensitisation of stakeholders, the okada riders chose to defy the law and visit violence on law-abiding Lagosians in search of their daily meals, the Lagos State Chapter of the NCP claimed ‘the restriction of motorbike operators on highways and major roads was a confirmation that the ACN administration of Governor Fashola lacked any serious plan to solve the chaotic transport issues in the state’.

For Mr. Tunde Agunbiade, the state party chairman, Lagos State Government is to be blamed for not providing employment for those who are defying the laws of Lagos. For him, the state governor should do nothing as thousands of non-Nigerians shipped to Lagos by Lagos greedy businessmen who care only for their pockets kill, maim and create anarchy on Lagos major arteries. Agunbiade probably having little value to add to the debate further accused Governor Fashola of ‘imposing an anti-people law without consulting with stakeholders’, when every resident of the state knows this to be untrue.

Mr. Akele, the party’s governorship candidate in the state during the 2011 election also wants the traffic law abrogated. He crudely described Mr. Fashola as ‘a pathological liar”, who used loot from the state treasury to buy and lure voters for his second term in office. He and his NCP, he said, are now set to ‘mobilise other political parties, civil society organisations, international human rights outfits as well as Amnesty International and other relevant masses-oriented organisations at home and abroad to intervene’ in what he said was a ‘genocidal policy against the people’.

Lagosians who massively voted for Fashola will feel insulted by Mr. Akele’s unguarded outbursts and half truths. His efforts along with those of other civil rights groups in ending military rule in Nigeria no doubt deserve our commendation. But beyond this, I think it is equally appropriate to suggest he restricts himself to his area of core competence – civil right activities, where he can best serve the nation. It was obvious during his debate with Fashola and other governorship candidates in the run-up to last year election that his passion for civil right activities left him little time to adequately equip himself for party politics and the intellectual challenges of modern governance. During that public debate, Mr. Akele did not know the number of schools or projected number of teachers needed by the state he had wanted to govern.

And since Fashola, the elected governor of the state who is in possession of records of those killed, maimed, robbed and raped has sworn to implement the traffic law as enacted by his state house of assembly, Akele and his party, in the absence of fresh ideas, should join the governor in advising those who cannot comply to go back to their villages where they will learn the hard way that even there in the village, they cannot pollute the environment, drive against traffic, molest innocent people or because of claim of poverty put up structure on a land not approved by the Village Head.

November 15, 2012
The Presidency and Ribadu-phobia

Not many who watched the drama on television that night will forget it in a hurry. It was a show not fit for the hallowed grounds of the Presidential Villa, but there it happened right under the nose of President Goodluck Jonathan and some of his key aides. Channels Television transported millions of Nigerians to the scene with its brilliant coverage of the debacle. But for the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), it was its usual style of drab and pedestrian reporting, which told viewers nothing about the drama which overshadowed the main event.

As it is wont to do, NTA left the meat of the story, which was the exchange between former anti-graft czar Nuhu Ribadu and former Head of Service (HOS) Steve Oronsaye. Ribadu and Oronsaye were at the Villa to submit the report of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force of which they were chairman and deputy chairman. By now, almost every Nigerian knows what happened that Friday, November 2, when the duo threw brickbats over the authenticity or otherwise of the report. Ribadu stood for the report, but Oronsaye was against it because as he claimed the process adopted is flawed.

With a bold face, Oronsaye not only condemned, but also bore down on the president with his uncouth language. That is what normally happens when people allow anger to becloud their reasoning. ‘’What I’m saying is that the president has said come and submit the report, so what? If we are not ready, we are not ready’’. Coming from a former HOS, who should be an exemplar in public conduct and decorum, that was too harsh a statement and the president deserves a public apology for it.

How can Oronsaye address the president like that in public? With those words, he showed no respect for the high office of the president. As expected, neither the president nor his aides saw anything wrong in what Oronsaye did because they were more interested in his rubbishing of the panel’s report. They wanted something with which to discredit the report and they seemed to have found one in Oronsaye’s statement. Did Oronsaye play into their hands? Or was the former HOS acting a script? It is not unlikely considering how his excesses were overlooked on that occasion.

Could Oronsaye have looked former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who he served as HOS, in the face and say to him, ‘’the president has said come and submit the report, so what?’’ We all know that he could not have done that to Obasanjo without the former president given it back to him in kind. Unfortunately, rather than rebuke him, those who should complain are not doing so. Why? The reason is as clear as daylight; they are happy with the tearing of the Ribadu report by no less a person than the deputy chairman of the panel. They don’t come bigger than that, do they?

Contrary to what the Presidency wants the people to believe, nothing will satisfy it more than to get a pole on which to hang the Ribadu report. It seemed to have found that pole in Oronsaye’s statement. Will the Ribadu report be accepted and implemented by the government? The answer is no and I will show you why presently. Shortly after he received the report, the president, who sat through the exchange between Ribadu and Oronsaye, invited the former HOS to write a minority report, if he so desired. Must it take the prompting of the president for an aggrieved person to state his case?

Oronsaye is not a dimwit; he knows what to do if he is aggrieved. For him and his ilk, who are not happy with the report, not to have written a a minority report, shows one thing : they don’t have their hearts where their mouths are. If they do, they don’t need to be goaded before they make their case in the approved manner. What Oronsaye should have done was to have come to the event with his and Ben Oti’s minority report, stating the areas where they disagree with the Ribadu report. They didn’t do that, but chose to come and make noise at that ceremony.

Now, the government is trying to assist Oronsaye and Oti to finish the job. From the look of things, it is the government which instigated the theft that is shouting ‘’thief, thief…’’ in order to catch the culprit after the act. But Nigerians are wiser than that. If the Presidency is not happy with the recommendations of the Ribadu report, it should just dump it instead of looking for excuses, where there are none in order to rubbish the work done by the panel.

If the government has no hidden agenda, why will it appoint Oronsaye and Oti members of the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) after it had saddled them with the task of auditing the corporation and others in that category. The government acted in bad faith. It knew what it was doing by bringing Oronsaye and Oti to the NNPC board; it was preparing for a day like this and it knew that when the day comes it can fall back on these men, just as it is doing now.

The president was not so tact

ful in his handling of the is

sue; if he had been, we would not have seen through his failed attempt to use some members of the Ribadu panel against the larger house. Hear him : ‘’Of course, government will take the majority and minority reports, but in this case, there is no clear minority report. The issue is that there are some lapses in the processes, probably not everybody agreed on some of the conclusions’’. Mr President sir, the truth of the matter is that there was no minority report submitted to you on November 2. At best, what you got that day was a verbal complaint by Oronsaye.

Can that pass as a minority report? No, it cannot. What Oronsaye intended to do was to rubbish the Ribadu report publicly in order to render it valueless and become unacceptable by government. He never knew that he had to write a minority report to make the government’s job of rejecting the report easy. Now, the government is in a dilemma over how to reject the report and make it look as if it did in the best interest of the people. The job that Oronsaye and Oti started but could not finish, is now being taken up by a presidential aide, Doyin Okupe. Who else but him?

In his characteristic manner, Okupe opened wide his mouth to vomit rubbish about the report. The report, he says, is incomplete and not capable of indicting anyone. What about the panel’s finding that over N800 billion oil revenue cannot be accounted for by the NNPC? Is that not indicting? Are there no people in NNPC ,who can be held responsible for the missing oil money? Okupe is his master’s voice. He is telling us what the Presidency expected Oronsaye and Oti to have highlighted if they had written a minority report.

Albeit in the absence of such report, the Presidency seems to believe that a disclaimer by a loose cannon like Okupe will do the trick. That is where the government is wrong. The people have seen many of the likes of Okupe and have come to know them for who they are. Okupe falls in the category of those Nigerians will not like to wake up and see. To wake up and see them is a bad omen. Nobody prays for that whenever the day breaks.

The government should save us from the antics of people like Okupe and be honest with us on what it wants to do with the Ribadu report. Does it want to accept or reject the report? The Presidency should answer this question in a straight forward manner and stop speaking from both sides of the mouth the way it has been doing in the past 13 days.

November 15, 2012
Nigeria of my dreams

My children who have had to leave Nigeria largely because of unfulfilled expectations and are now living in white man’s countries, where they are settled and doing materially well for themselves, but largely lack psychological fulfilment have always asked me what I thought was Nigeria’s main achievement since independence in 1960 apart from the fact that we have remained a country in spite of the various fissiparous tendencies that have been pulling us apart and culminating in a civil war between 1967 and 1970. The euphoria over independence in 1960 now seems to have been misplaced and for many of us, it is a distant dream that has now become a nightmare.

In 1960, I was a strapling teenage boy in class 5 at Christ School Ado-Ekiti, arguably one of the best boys schools in Nigeria. Every time I write about Christ School, I’m always full of emotions. When I tell my children about Christ school, they always think of an idyllic environment until they get to the place to find out that Christ School is not out of this world. Christ School remains for me the source of my inspiration and the reason for whatever success I have in life. I remain eternally grateful to our teachers especially to the young Britons who left the comfort of their homes to come to Ado-Ekiti where there was neither pipe-borne water nor electricity in those days. Our school had a giant generator that worked between 6:30pm and 10:00pm in the evening, during which time we had evening prep and evening devotion before light out. It is a matter of joy that even up till today, through the efforts of the old students and the government of Ekiti State, Christ School has maintained its reputation, distinction and its environmental uniqueness in its location at the Agidimo Hills. How I wish Nigeria had made as much progress as Christ School has made since 1960.

In 1960, we celebrated independence with joy and dancing and we were feted to a sumptuous dinner while female students from Anglican Girls Secondary School, Ado-Ekiti were invited. To us boys, this was the icing on the cake, because many of us were too shy to look girls in the face, not to talk of talking to them. But on that day, some of us learnt how to talk to girls. When I tell my children this story, they always marvelled at our innocence in those days. But that was the truth. I remember that we always felt that students who had so-called girlfriends were doomed to failure so instead of wasting valuable time on poppy love and letter writing, we were advised to spend our time in reading books. Our strict upbringing then reflected positively later on individual and collective achievements of Christ School Boys all over the country. Our discipline was also rooted in the love of Christ and the struggle for righteousness which when attained, made us excellent citizens. Our people would not steal; tell lies, compromise with evil. Some people have suggested that this is why there are not many rich Ekiti people, which is probably true, but I believe we are a contented lot, because of our peasant integrity we are able to speak truth to power and if possible suffer the consequences without flinching.

I do not want to sound arrogant and to think that there were no other schools that were operating at the same wave length with us. I’m sure there were. The various Government Colleges in Ibadan, Umuahia, Ugheli, Benin, Barewa, Keffi and their female counterparts were also operating on the same wave length. There were also sectarian colleges like Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha; St. John’s Secondary, Kaduna; Holy Ghost College, Owerri; Loyola College, Ibadan; St. Patrick’s College, Asaba; Stella Maris, Port Harcourt; St. Gregory’s, Lagos; were all involved in training future leaders of our country and bringing them all in the ways of the Lord. The point that I’m making is that if we had followed the slow and steady way of doing things before the so called oil boom era, when we were overwhelmed by the corruption and the curse of oil, Nigeria would have been a better country than what it is today.

In my youth, we could travel from Lagos to Kaduna, Kano Enugu and Port Harcourt and Kaura Namoda and Maiduguri by train. Admitted that the pace was usually slow, but one was sure to get there in one piece. There were even what we called passenger and goods trains. Road haulage was almost unheard of then. The roads were safe and there were no armed brigands and robbers waylaying people on the roads. In fact, people who had cars preferred driving in the nights and many times when I was involved in this as a child I used to wonder why we had to do that. We were told it was safer because the oncoming automobiles or trucks would have seen the headlights and therefore slowed down. There was no fear whatsoever of being waylaid. The Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) provided lights in the cities. Each city or district had its own generating plants. Unlike the behemoth that we have today where everything is concentrated in one centre and once the centre fails, the whole country is plunged into total darkness. As a young lecturer in the University of Ibadan, Jos Campus in 1972, I still enjoyed regular supply of power generated by the private English company in Jos that provided power for the Plateau before it was taken over and run down by the National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA). Schools in those days provided excellent education. The standards were very high and our A levels that is, Advanced levels and Higher School Certificates which were pre-requisites apart from concessional entrance examinations to entering university, were of high standards and probably the equivalent of first degrees nowadays. So what happened to this idyllic picture?

We used to have five years development plans at Federal and Regional level and even at the University of Ibadan our Vice-Chancellor, Kenneth Onwuka Dike also ran quiquennial plans which means that there was planned development and this was measurable in those days unlike what we have now, where there are no plans at all or in the words of the military “rolling plans”. We are daily told about contracts being awarded but which were usually abandoned unfinished. The result is the growth without development that we have now in this country.

A lady colleague of mine and an excellent medical scientist tearfully told me of the unbelievably high incidence of sickle cell anaemia in Nigeria. This she said can be prevented through education and counselling. We have the data; we know that millions of Nigerians, probably one out of every two carry the sickle cell traits and are blindly going into marriage without advice and bearing sicklers who would become permanent sources of worry, if not sorrow to the couples involved. In a caring and civilised society, there would be policies to tackle this, but not in Nigeria.

As individuals, there are brilliant and brainy Nigerians who can match their equals anywhere in the world. A Dutch friend of mine said years ago that some of the most brilliant individuals he has ever met are Nigerians but as a collectivity, Nigerians are also the most stupid people that he has ever met. We are like a country of the blind being led by the blind. We all celebrate Obama’s victory and delegations upon delegations of Nigerian officials troop to China yearly in search of so called foreign investment. Yet some of the same officials cart our money to deposit in Chinese, Lebanese, British and American banks. We are a country of importers, but hardly would you find exporters. Our industry lies in selling other people’s goods and not in production. We make cheap money as commission agents and brag about it. We build palaces and even some copy palaces they’ve seen abroad and wear gaudy dresses and make attires from damask and laces that are ordinarily used for window blinds and chairs in civilised climes of the world.

We need to change course. We need to go back to planning. We need to go back to God. We need to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness from our children. If we don’t do these, in the words of James Baldwin, it would be the fire next time. Our mono economy that is totally depended on hydro-carbons would soon crash and chicken would come home to roost when either hydro-carbons become environmentally unfashionable or America and even China, and India become energy self-sufficient. This may sound alarmist, but these three countries that I have just mentioned are working seriously to solve their energy problems as quickly as possible. This would leave us high and dry because after 56years of hydro-carbons production and refusal to diversify our economy and to industrialize while totally neglecting the agricultural sector, we would find out that we have nothing to fall back on.

If we were a serious country and have invested hugely on education as was done in places like Japan, Germany and the USA, then we would have been able to tap our people’s grey matter and harness this for production. But as in everything, our policies of neglect, abandonment of what is good and needful would haunt us for a long time to come.

November 15, 2012
State Assemblies condemn impeachment of Kogi Speaker

The Conference of State Legislatures of Nigeria (CSLN) yesterday condemned the impeachment of Alhaji Abdullahi Bello, the Speaker of Kogi State House of Assembly.

CSLN Chairman and Gombe State House of Assembly Speaker, Alhaji Inuwa Garba, addressed reporters in Abuja.

He said: “Following the crisis that led to the impeachment of the Speaker of Kogi Assembly, the conference set up a six-man fact-finding committee, headed by the Kwara State House of Assembly Speaker Razak Atunwa.

“Based on available evidence, it is clear that the purported impeachment of Abdullahi Bello was not done in accordance with the provision of the 1999 Constitution, which requires a two-third majority of members to impeach a Speaker.”

Garba said the Kogi House of Assembly has 25 members and that two-thirds would be 17 members, who are required for an impeachment.

He said only 12 members sought to impeach the Speaker, adding: “This is a breach of Section 92(2) (e) of the Constitution.”

The chairman said CSLN frowns at the breach of the Constitution by some members of Kogi State House of Assembly and would continue to address Bello as the legitimate Speaker.

Garba urged the President Goodluck Jonathan and the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) to protect the Constitution by ensuring that the Kogi State House of Assembly returns to the status quo.

He appealed to the Inspector-General of Police to restore Bello’s security details, because they were “improperly” withdrawn.

Also, Nasarawa State House of Assembly Speaker Musa Mohammed said the conference was not against the impeachment of any Speaker, if he has been found wanting.

Mohammed added that as lawmakers, they were concerned about the process that led to Bello’s purported impeachment.

He noted that the lawmakers, who reportedly impeached Bello, did not follow the provision of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

The lawmaker restated the CSLN’s commitment to democratic norms and procedure, respect for rule of law, transparency and accountability in governance.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Bello and other principal officers of the Assembly were impeached on October 16.

Bello described his impeachment as illegal because 12 of 25 members signed the petition against him.

November 14, 2012