The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Cynthia and the beastly cousins

    Parents and children alike have lessons to learn here

    Sometimes, I feel tempted to agree with former Chief of General Staff, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, who once said (I think at a press briefing) that the Babangida government that he was second-in-command in would ‘arrest and jail’ some suspects. Aikhomu characteristically forgot that after the police have made arrest, the judiciary is supposed to take over, and that it is only the judiciary that has the power to jail or convict. Even after one of his aides had allegedly reminded him of this serious error of omission, Aikhomu amended his statement to read that yes, they would ‘arrest, prosecute and jail’ the felons! The point, nonsensical as it seemed, was that the military had no patience for the rule of law. The point I am also making is that there are times when matters have resolved themselves, and we need not belabour issues by looking for what is not missing all in the name of rule of law.

    Two recent incidents in the country seem to have vindicated this position. The first was the death, on August 17, of Clifford Orji, and the second, the brutal murder of pretty Cynthia Osokogu, the daughter of Major-General Frank Osokogu (rtd), by two satanic cousins, on July 22. Orji came into limelight when people began to suspect his activities under the bridge at the Toyota Bust Stop area of the Oshodi- Apapa Expressway in Lagos in the late 1990s. He was arrested and subsequently arraigned on February 19, 1999, at the Ebute-Metta Magistrate’s Court in Lagos.

    Perhaps the most curious thing in his case was that for the 13 years that he was at the Kirikiri Prison, he was never tried in court for the allegations of cannibalism and being in possession of human parts over which he was arrested, ostensibly because he was mad. And no psychiatric hospital in the country could treat him! The next thing we were told was that he has died. So, we may never know whether it was some big men that actually planted him under the bridge to source for human parts for them, or not.

    We were yet to digest this when Cynthia’s death hit the news waves. The 24 year-old was the last child and only daughter of Major-Gen. Osokogu (rtd). She was killed in an hotel in FESTAC Town in Lagos. Two men who had reportedly admitted that they murdered her were paraded on August 22 by the Lagos State Police Command, Ikeja. The suspects are Echezona Nwabufor, 33, and Ezekiel Nnechuwu Olisa Eloka, 23. Eloka said they killed Cynthia because they thought she had a lot of money in her possession.

    From what they reportedly said, and as captured by journalists during the police parade of the duo, it would seem Cynthia’s blood was crying for vengeance. Otherwise, the two suspects would not have been singing like canaries the way they did, after they were caught. When the story broke, some people felt there might have been more to it than was initially reported. Unless those paraded are later found not to be the ones that lured pretty Cynthia to Lagos, or unless they repudiate the story they told the press when they were being paraded, it was clear there was nothing between the suspects and the late Cynthia. The suspects themselves admitted that they met on Blackberry group chat and began communicating from there.

    No doubt, one expected a lady doing post-graduate programme to have been more circumspect about the kind of people to trust, and not to jump at offers, particularly from strangers (that was a creed many of us were taught when we were growing up; I do not know whether such things are still being taught today), that might have been a weakness, and Cynthia’s eventual undoing. From what is in the public domain however, one gets the impression that she possibly might not have been in dire need of the free air ticket and hotel accommodation that her suspected murderers used to lure her. Parents have a job to do here. People addicted to the social networks also have to watch it. At any rate, whatever Cynthia might have been, sinner or saint, she did not deserve to die the way she did in the hands of the brutes in human skin that killed her.

    The suspects themselves probably realised this, and the consequence; hence, the song they have been singing that they never meant to kill her; that all they wanted to do was dispossess her of money and other valuables. As a businesswoman, they had thought she would come to Lagos with a lot of money to buy the cheap goods they promised they were going to offer her. But one should wonder what that means, considering that they admitted drugging her with 10 tablets of Rohypnol, which they injected into three packs of Ribena juice that they served her in her hotel room. They did not meant to kill her, yet, they kept her under ruffling sheets for 12 long hours, a thing they denied, yet, traces of semen were found on her private part! I do not know whether even professional prostitutes could have survived such assault.

    Again, the suspects denied having sex with her; they denounced the condoms found in the hotel room and stuff like that. Yet, they claimed she was about their fifth victim and that they had only always robbed and raped the other victims, that none of them ever died in their ‘protective custody’. The kind of stupid things they have been saying, and so incoherently too, once again shows that many criminals hitherto thought to be men become lily-livered when finally apprehended. How do people who claimed they had only been raping their other victims now say they never did in Cynthia’s case? And they want us to believe that? What pleasure would the lady have derived from using a vibrator (sex toy) on herself when she had two able-bodied suspected serial rapists in the same room with her? They want us to believe that, too? Cynthia’s first striking feature was her captivating beauty. Not to have ‘known her’ as the suspects want us to believe would probably have meant that their other victims were paragons of beauty too, whose shoe laces Cynthia would not have been qualified to untie. They did not mean to kill her, yet, they tied her mouth and hands; they also chained her legs! What bunkum? These beastly cousins should go tell all these to the marines! They did not mean to kill her, yet they referred to her as ’bastard’ after they were through with her.

    If we take into cognisance the items allegedly recovered from the suspects: seven driving licences (three belonging to Ezekiel, four belonging to Okumo with different names); the deceased’s belongings, including her shoes (found in Okumo’s house); 17 mobile phones, two Diamond Bank rubber stamps, two syringes, a pack of Ribena, 22 SIM cards, a chain, 12 debit and credit cards, we will know that they are big time suspects.

    In conclusion, it was a lawyer friend of mine who led me into the temptation of wanting to see some sense in what Admiral Aikhomu said: that we don’t have to take the luxury of the rule of law in cases that seem to have decided themselves; we should just ‘arrest and jail’ the suspects, when she said that if the suspects in Cynthia’s matter get a good lawyer, they might escape being charged with murder, or even receive a mere slap on the wrist for whatever the court eventually finds them guilty of. However, we should wait to get to that bridge before crossing it.

  • Why should the soldiers be withdrawn when I now have electricity?!

    it would be difficult to support the call that soldiers be removed from manning power stations when we are still having it so good

    I don’t know about you but in my city, many people have now been reporting that they have been experiencing some steadiness in electricity supply to their houses for some time now. When I asked what magic could be responsible, I was told that soldiers are now manning the power stations. Hurray, I thought, that makes sense. Soldiers manning power stations, unemployed youths manning traffic posts and civil servants manning the seas. Now, who mans our security posts, fishermen? What a penkelemesi!

    I’m just joking. It’s not the best thing to have soldiers doing anything other than soldiering but I am very happy indeed to welcome electricity once in a while now. You just can’t imagine what joy it gives one to return from a hard day’s work, turn into one’s street and be able to complain joyfully that some of one’s neighbours have once again forgotten to turn off their security lights! You see, after being so used to lighting our ways in the house alternately with Aladdin’s lamp, Luggard’s bush lantern or some smoke-belching generator and being afraid of every shadow because no one could see quite clearly, we can now run around corridors with our eyes closed and leave security bulbs on all day. What a warm glow that gives one.

    The problem with this country is that the government enjoys watching us all not doing our work with too lazy or sleepy an eye. Perhaps, because it does not do its own work, I don’t know. All along the government knew that the billions and billions of naira it doled out to provide a steady stream of electricity currents to my house (I honestly don’t know about yours) have, somewhere along the line, disappeared. While complaining very loudly about the problem (if only because the suffering populace will not let them sleep), the same said government had known all along where the problem was. Instead, it simply equipped its government houses, including Aso Rock, with the most powerful generator sets in the neighbourhood. Yet, the engineering manpower in PHCN can, if they connect their heads together, conduct enough electricity round Africa and the world if the rest of mankind would not mind. So, where was the problem? I am told that the problem is the Nigerian factor, and I just hate that.

    I cannot begin to count here many of the unconscionable things I am told PHCN field staff have done. I, writing this, have been present though when a then-NEPA staff told a woman he had been sent to cut off her electricity supply for not paying a crazy bill but he would hold off if she was ready to bring a certain amount of money. She accused him of being hardhearted; he said she was stingy and should stop wasting his time because he still had many houses to visit that day. So, he just upped on the tree and cut her off, just like that, one snip. Yet another now-PHCN group held off connecting a businessman’s hotel to the grid for the simple reason that he had failed to ‘see them’. I have listened to so many tales about electricity company workers and connections. What I have failed to understand, however, is why I had electricity constantly when a then-NEPA staff member lived in my neighbourhood; and when he moved out of my neighbourhood, the constancy moved with him. I just cannot figure out what changed.

    My take on this whole lot is that the government is to blame. It has been too slow on justice, just like our Almighty. Someone once said though if the Almighty were not slow on justice, where would I be? Touché! But just think, the government is not our Almighty; powerful yes, but not Almighty, so it has no right to be so slow. Otherwise, it should have drafted in the soldiers decades ago to man our power stations. Just think what unnecessary headache, heartache and whatever else ache I would have been spared when all along, it had the solution. And what a solution!

    So, are the PHCN people really serious about asking the government to withdraw those wonderful soldiers? I mean as in serious, serious? Has it ever occurred to these PHCN people that people do not really like them? The businessman and the woman I talked about do not and I also don’t. I don’t know how many articles I have written on them on this page and elsewhere but they have remained adamant like an adamantine stone. So, that makes three of us that I know, and I’m still counting. Now, how on earth do they think people can support them?

    Worse, the NLC now wants to sponsor them in a strike. I sincerely hope that that otherwise serious body will not attempt to test their popularity once again by sticking their necks out too far. They would just find themselves swallowing humiliation down a long throat after the head has been cut off. You know what our problem is? Our problem is that we lack a sense of history. I was going to leave this subject for another day, but we might as well tackle some of it now. The place of history is so clear that, right now, only the blind of this nation are seeing it clearly. The sighted are going around blinking like an owl and asking, where on earth did we leave our personality? You know how I know? Secondary school pupils do not take history any more.

    When I asked a recently graduated SS pupil if he did history, he wrinkled his brow and queried, history? It was clear he had forgotten what on earth that was. Another one said he did not take it but he thought one or two people offered it in their school. Then he laughed. It was clear he thought that those two must have been a little wanting in the head.

    The beauty of history is that it helps us evaluate our position at all times. By keeping us in constant touch with our ancestry, our hopes, desires and aspirations may remain in sight. What has evolved into this modern Nigeria from the ancient ruins of old Nigeria would be a sore disappointment to our ancestors were they to wake up into our midst right now. The only thing is that we would all run away from them as if they were ghosts (oh yes, they would be ghosts!). We do however still venerate their names. They, on the other hand, would throw stones at some of our names because we have turned their dreams into ashes. It would be a case of the dead casting out the living. Someday, we will still talk about history.

    The great members of staff of Nigeria’s power company have had their day. They have failed the history test because rather than move the nation’s generic dreams forward, they have hurled the country down spiral staircases of loss, regret, hopelessness and destruction. Ask people who have lost relatives to generator blow-outs, fumes or in hospitals. Ask people who have been laid off work because companies could no longer afford the overhead. Ask …

    Yet now, these same people want the nation to care because they perceive that they are being cheated. How can we when we are still chaffing from their tyranny? Few will support any attempt to deny any group of workers their entitlements, but it would be difficult to support the call that soldiers be removed from manning power stations when we are still having it so good. I’m not sure how long this arrangement will last but as I am writing this, I have electricity for the first time in a long time. That should count for something.

  • Ferment in Nigeria

    Ferment in Nigeria

    We have received an unusually heavy correspondence in connection with last week’s piece titled “The Rise of the Gainfully Unemployed”. These are unusual times in Nigeria. The nation is in ferment. There is a growing unrest, a radical disaffection among the young and a total disconnect between the governing and the governed that can no longer be ignored. Things cannot just continue like this. Something will have to give.

    In keeping with the promise of making this column an interactive coliseum of ideas in which there is no master voice, we are publishing some of the reactions this morning. If our rulers cannot learn from the pundits they can at least learn from the people. The House of Commons is not that common. This column will publish any reaction no matter how adversarial and personally offensive as long as it conforms with the ethics of civility and the law of libel.

     

    Tata Tata

    There would be no massive movement of the Nigerian poor from the village

    to the cities…quite on the contrary, in Nigeria the social cultural

    development trajectory is such that everyone comes from a village and

    commutes frequently. Most importantly, within a generation in Nigeria,

    you could move from being absolutely poor to unhealthily rich, and back

    again. It is fun, enjoy it. Revolution is for retards.

     

    Bola Awoniran

    Oga Tata, revolution is for the retards? So your Boko Haram boys are all retards then, for what they are doing in the northern realm of our fatherland is revolutionary – even though in a contorted and convoluted form. Since when has an emir been targeted for assassination?

     

    Tata Tata

    You are getting yourself all twisted up. We are conducting a proselytising Jihad, not a revolution. An emir is a commoner dressed up in funny robes in the eyes of Allah. We know no emir, only Allah and his messenger.

     

    Bola Awoniran

    O you old codger, Oga Tata you are now combining your jihadism with apostasy. Aren’t emirs Allah’s elect and his emissary on earth? And yet you are making fun of them about their funny robes. You know the emirs copy their funny sartorial styles from the House of Saud and the House of Saud are allergic to your kind of freelancing jihadism, alloyed with wicked, brilliant witticism at their expense. Please I don’t want you losing your limbs to that atavistic sadistic lot, for that will make my sojourn in the lands of the Maya very miserable.

     

    Tata Tata

    I lose a limb, I get an extra virgin.

    Bola Awoniran

    Oga Tata, at the rate you are going, there will not be enough virgins left in Aljannan to compensate you for lost limbs and consequences of evisceration. Remember there are competitors, from Afghanistan to Algeria. E ro dada oooooooooo, sheath your sword as Sir Snooper admonishes before it is too late.

     

    Sususu

    Tata has finally been congratulated by Prof Snooper on his recent appointment as OPC spokesman which takes immediate effect. Prof, what is always missing in your commentary is your “blindness” towards the primitive accumulation and elitist form of government. I know that you also “break your fast” and chop from there, hence the difficulty in criticising the “progressives”, therefore Prof, I ask that you please mind the gap.

     

    Ronke spot on

    Tata Tata

    How ya husband? You tell am before you come yab for Internet for Sunday morning? So re…

     

    Tata Tata

    What exactly does OPC stand for whose spokesperson I am supposed to be?

     

    Bola Awoniran

    Oga Tata, I think Sususu made a mistake, you are too nihilistic for OPC to accept you as a member and you are also too modernistic for their atavistic ways. You are at home with your Boko Haram boys. In OPC you will be a fish out of the water.

     

    Tata Tata

    Nihilistic? I testify that no one is god but Allah, alone, without a partner, and I testify that Muhammad is his slave and messenger. O Allah, make me among the frequent repenters and make me among the purified. Praise and thanks be to you, o Allah. I testify

    that no one is god but you. I ask you for forgiveness and I repent to you.

     

    Bola Awoniran

    Oga tata ,forgiveness and repentance ke, think the N.S.A. and his boys are getting closer to nabbing you guys, but Oga tata you and your acolytes must forget about it – that forgiveness and repentance boat has sailed. You are now indeed in a troubled shark infested shallow water.

     

    Imagine_2012

    Bola, please leave tata tata alone. Stop wasting your time. For me, just read, enjoy and ignore him. He is everywhere and nowhere…..just ignore.

     

    Xanthos

    Sat Guru Maharaji has been missing, we have not heard from him lately. Oga Snooper, help send Okon to Ibadan to find out from the perfect living one why the silence when obodo is on fire.

     

    Tata tata

    Guru has moved to Lagos. He had problems with the iwarefas, which we are trying to resolve.

    Bola Awoniran

    Oga tata, which one you dey? Are you of Ogboni Confraternity or a jihadist? We are getting tired of your osakala shokolo shaka position.

     

    Tata tata

    There is a saying where we come from, you do not lie on one side and sleep till dawn. Who knows who is going to stand at the gate at the time of judgment? Anyway, when certain forces are disturbed, those who know are called upon to setlle the land…only the deep can call to the deep.

     

    Bola Awoniran

    Oga tata, settling the land through your mayhem? So now you must destroy the land in order to save it a la Iraq and Afghanistan? Oga tata, Allah is my witness we will not permit that.

     

    Tata tata

    We? You and who?

     

    Bola Awoniran

    Me and the masses

     

    Obinnna75

    As Mommsen said in his History of Rome, about the first Caesar, the ordinary man does not disdain being led, so far as he is led by a master. Snooper’s literary mastery is acknowledged.

     

    Tata tata

    And as Prophet Muhammed said masters are anointed by Allah, not created.

     

    Imagine_2012

    The picture says it all. Unfortunately we are all on our own. One day this bomb shall explode.

     

    John

    Shalom, The Socratic Plato of our time, I am proud of you. To say the least, you are an amalgam of Socrates, Shakespeare, and the sum of the founding fathers of the American Constitution (1776). That you could stoop to notice this phenomenon called “gainfully unemployed class’, stands you out as a philosopher, human manager, seer, a patroit, and sociologist par excellence.

    I am a member of the ‘G U class 4.’ It’s saddening the ruling class has no vision for the frustrated youth. One day, the ’critical mass” will form, we the class 4 will speak, and the rest will be disastrous, revolutionary conflagration. We salute you.

     

    D_Oracle

    “The rise (and rise) of the gainfully unemployed” is a ticking time bomb. Sir, your generation has sown and continues to sow the wind. Surely you all will be alive to reap the massive whirlwind cum gale cum hurricane. You have the ears of these vagabonds-in-power especially those that populate the South West… the discontent in the land is getting to an alarming level and it’s almost a cinch that the unmanageable commotion will begin from the South West.

     

    Tata tata

    Yo know for a fact that you are a Yariba…Obasanjo onyejekwe is also one.

     

    Bola Awoniran

    Sir, it is very unusual and very uncharacteristic of polymath intellectual avatars to combine humility with intellectual prowess, and your easily combining the two had in my humble opinion elevated you to the realm of greatness in our national pantheon, as flawed as it may be to apostates of our national creed.

    But sir your contention that “Gone are the days of infallible leaders of men who treat fellow citizens as ignorant and feckless children. Gone are the days of writers as oracular supermen dispensing nuggets of wisdom to lesser beings from their Olympian fountain “is not in conformity with the duplicitous arrogant reportage of the Western press, listen to CNN, and you discern right away that the duplicitous verbiage they are spewing and spinning is pure and unadulterated mendacity.

    Listen Sir to Bill Oreilly, listen to Rush Limbaugh, listen to Christian Amanpour, listen to Fareed Zakaria, read Rupert Murdoch newspapers, read about all their characterisation of Africa and what is coming out of Africa.

    Until recently when they are in competition with China for African resources they start reporting about Africa rapid growing GDP, and conveniently failing to report that this growth was fueled by mineral exploitation, and that poverty index and corruption index in most of these African countries are rising exponentially.

    Sir, have you heard them saying anything negative about Equatorial Guinea? And they are hand in glove with the tin pot dictator bedeviling that part of the mother continent.

    What about the Tony Blair and Collin Powell spin that led to destruction of Iraq? It was actively promoted as gospel truth by the Western press and their neo-con intellectual rabbis.

    Now the rabid atavistic and obscurantist House of Saud who name a country after their own family name, and the despotic, imbecilic and equally obscurantist rulers of Bahrain and Qatar are now being promoted as champions of democracy in Syria.

    They want to give Syria what they don’t have; they want to teach Syria what they don’t know. What a theatre of the absurd! Terrorists are being financed and armed to destroy Syria, blatantly contradicting the West’s avowed declaration of war on terrorism. It is in this light we must be wary of their ambivalence in declaring Boko Harama terrorist organisation.

    Sir, the information they daily disseminate to the world is absolute arrogant falsehood and aberrant propanganda. Sir, on your supplication that “ God forbids a revolution in Nigeria in which gainfully unemployed  suburban scum return to the metropolis, that will be holocaust itself. “On whose behalf are you making this supplication? Obviously not on your behalf, for Chief Okon  is already overhauling intermittently the existing societal order and also intermittently fomenting sporadic revolution in your household ,yet you adapt and evolve, unlike our diabolic pedestrian thinking pathetic caricature of homo politicus. Sir, bo ba le ya koya, elulu ti o fajo ori ara e ni o fajo le.

    Sir, if they don’t return to the metropolis where are they to return to? Sir, as you earlier proclaimed they are youth, and flower of this fatherland and now they are suburban scum, by your dictum. who procreate these suburban scums?Your generation Sir, now you are all afraid of Frantz Fanon prognostication about the future that awaits you guys from the Frankenstein monster your generation has created. Sir, I wonder who is afraid of the barbarians at the gate?

    Obviously not you, but your friends. Sir, please admonish journalists and opinion molders in our fatherland to shine their search light on the beneficiary of our fatherland ethos of crony capitalism and pseudo capitalist comprador bourgeoisie, expose them  for the fraud that  are. The resurgence of countries like China, India, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Russia is the result of efforts of their patriotic capitalist bourgeoisie.

    The fulfilment of American manifest destiny was the manifestation and culmination of the efforts and struggle of this class.

     

    RealityCheck

    Government saw men only in mass; but our men, being irregulars, were not formations, but individuals…Our kingdom lay in each man’s mind. T.E Lawrence. I once asked a truck-driver why they conduct themselves so dangerously not mindful of other road users.

    His reply: Which other road-users? We see only flies and ants driving. About the over-crowded train, let me break it down. Our almighty government doesn’t see individuals, it see “ants “and “flies.”

    Sususu1

    Answer correctly and win!!!!

    What is the name of the political party that Dr Olu Agunloye will decamp to in Ondo after the gubernatorial elections? Star prize is an oil subsidy contract and a chance to become part of the “Bugatti Boys.”

  • Enters Falana, the Comrade Learned Silk

    As we all bask in the fascination of Mr. Femi Falana’s elevation to the prestigious rank of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), we cannot afford to gloss over the consensus that his “elevation”, like that of late Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAM), (SAN) was long overdue and an embarrassing commentary on the credibility of both the rank and the process of its conferment. As you may know, this concern has long culminated in the vigorous campaign by the “Abolitionist Group” led by the respectable Pa Gomez seeking the total abolition of the rank for failing to deliver on the core purpose of the award as well as exposing the entire profession to abuse, ridicule and corruption. No doubt, such tendencies have, in the past years dragged our collective reputation to disdain; threatened the cohesion in the association and polarized the association along the lines of those in supports and against.

    In interrogating this resentment, we speak to the necessities of reforms and improvements in the affairs of our profession. Surely, for a conservative organization such as the NBA, operating in a perverse society like Nigeria, there must be direct victims of any serious reforms. Falana like his professional progenitor, Fawehinmi clearly falls within this category of direct victims. As we worry over this factual reality, we must intensify our collective determination to re-examine the integrity of a process that mortgaged the respect, confidence and support of its members and thoroughly scandalized the general public who, albeit, knew very little about the pre-conditions for the elevation, yet could not help wondering what manner of association it is, that deliberately subjects some of its shining bests’ to ridicule and deprivation.

    A week before the announcement of his elevation, I wrote Falana expressing my confidence that the battle was won and over this time around in the following words:

    “I can see that your long tortuous journey to ‘SANship’ is almost over. You have over these long years bore the burden of history as defined by tough principles, integrity, courage and conviction with grace and candour. As we get set to mark this watershed, remember that we are not scandalized to travel this path of honour with you as that alone has crystallized the contents of our collective history and identity. We are proud of you sir”.

    In 1996 and 2008, Falana was the proud recipient of two international awards which were resounding testimonies of his professional competencies amongst several other awards for his human rights crusade and credentials. They were the International Human Rights Award by the American Bar Association (1996) and the prestigious Bernard Simons Award for Human Rights which was conferred on him by the International Bar Association at Buenos Argentina in 2008. He was the third African to receive the award after the inimitable Gani Fawehinmi and the former counsel to Nelson Mandela George Bizos. Both awards were global acknowledgements of his modest endeavours towards the growth of the Nigerian legal profession as well as his rigorous campaigns for the human rights status of Nigerians.

    About the same time under review, he was consistently denied the title of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria by the Nigerian legal community. I have focused on the Comrade Learned Silk amongst other eminent recipients of the present award for obvious personal reasons. It is only natural that I should seize an occasion such as this to testify that Falana has been my benefactor in so many respects and at very critical times.

    First, in 1999 when I eventually graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Nigeria, the university authorities seized my degree certificate while the Faculty of Law refused to recommend me and my associate Comrade Princewill Hillary Akpakpan to the Nigerian law school for the compulsory one year programme. My era at the UNN coincided with the repressive military juntas of the duo of Babangida and Abacha. I recall with pride, that in 1996, I mobilized nine other students and dragged the UNN to the Federal High Court Enugu where we successfully challenged the over 3,000% increase in our school/service charges . That obnoxious policy was by Prof. U.D Gomwalk who was imposed on the institution by late Abacha as a sole administrator about the sometime he made Major Genaral Kontangora the Sole Administrator of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. Understandably, such radical affronts against a constituted authority in a conservative institution like UNN earned me series of arrests leading to the seizure of our degree results and refusal to recommend us to the Nigerian Law School.

    Yet, we were not completely demobilized as they intended because I was immediately absorbed into the National Secretariat of the Committee For the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) led by Falana as the then National President and ably assisted by an administrative guru –Jiti Ogunye – a highly cerebral and dynamic, lawyer, National General Secretary and Head Legal Aid Services of the organization. With this leadership setting, it was only a question of time before Falana constituted a team of eight tough” legal practitioners” scattered all over the country led by himself but effectively coordinated by Ogunye. We had “fighters” like the former Vice President of the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO), Barr. Uche Duru Eke at Owerri, Imo State, Barr. Chuka Obele Chuka, the intrepid former Branch Chairman of NBA Onitsha, Anambra State. In all it was a team that successfully wrestled the university authority to its knees until our degree certificates were retrieved and released to us.

    Although, the court matter was effectively over in 2000, but we were not admitted into the Nigeria Law School until the end of the first semester of the law school programme for the year 2001/2002 session. By May, 2002 when I was called to the Bar, Falana instantly offered me an opportunity to join his firm as a junior counsel in his chambers just as Mr. Obele Chuka bought me a wig and gown before our Call to Bar. I concluded my Youth Service programme there and spent two additional years with him before I ventured out to establish my own firm in 2005. Till this day, I am considered a part of that chambers by both Falana himself and his wife in terms of access with an appreciable increase in collaborations.

    Within the time under review, I fully encountered Falana in his elements. A man of great courage, industry, conviction, deep intellect and knowledge, he was already an accomplished lawyer, a leader both within his professional circle where he was generally called “authority” because of his mastery of law and decided authorities and amongst his comrades where we simply call him FF. It was no joke for those of us who were closely associated with him because of his pace and speed of operation as well as the expectation of the public.

    On an occasion like this, we know that your joy will be deeper if you realise that, it is the ordinary Nigerian people whose lives you have touched by your tireless crusade for social justice that are rejoicing. They probably do not understand the full purport of this development, but the mere fact that the recognition is extended to “one of them” ignites the genuine joy that presently resonates in every down trodden Nigerian.

    I write not as one of your beneficiaries but as one who is in touch with the people whom you have rescued from the grip of their oppressors. They request that you continue to wear those harmless smiles even when you deal deadly blows on their oppressors. They are assured that with this elevation, the potency of your weapons will become more effective, while your professional colleagues are optimistic that the prospects of realizing the much deserved reforms in the legal profession are brighter knowing that you are likely to carry the battle to them and remain a resounding voice for the oppressed. Such will be the greater benefit of this investiture for a professional body like the NBA whose role in a developing economy like ours is pivotal. In exiting the moribund and unproductive past, we must clearly locate this fresh role that must be strategically discharged.

     

    • Ugwummadu is a Lagos-based lawyer.

  • Re: Sons and fathers

    Re: Sons and fathers

    A reader of your column in The Nation of Thursday August 23, excited by your generous comments about me directed my attention to your piece entitled“Sons and Fathers” of that date. I thank you for the said comments and salute your courage for expressing them even as a regular columnist in The Nation.

    However, permit me to react to some of the facts, opinions, and conclusions expressed in the said piece. In an attempt to justify Tinubu’s imposition of Fashola as governorship candidate for Lagos and the imposition of candidates that is the order of the day in ACN today, you said Tinubu was only following in the footsteps of AD elders who “handpicked” him as AD governorship candidate for Lagos in 1999 when “it was general knowledge that Tinubu was already campaigning for the senate.”

    As the National Chairman of the party at the time, I state categorically that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, you are being unfair to Tinubu when you said he was handpicked to be the governorship candidate of the AD in Lagos in 1999 when the truth is that he contested and won a three-cornered fight at the primary with Senator Kofo Bucknor-Akerele and the late Funsho Williams. It is true that the late Funsho Williams (backed by the late Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu the Lagos State chairman of the party and also one of the AD elders) disputed Tinubu’s victory claiming Funsho Williams’ votes had been short-changed by not adding the results of polls at Ebute-Metta Mainland and Ikorodu constituencies. The electoral body from Oyo State set up by the party to supervise the Lagos State primaries rebutted this explaining that their representative was not present when the polls in the two constituencies were counted. The leader of Afenifere at the time, the late Pa Abraham Adesanya ruled that the results submitted by the party supervisors should be upheld. I was therefore directed as the National Chairman of the party to forward Tinubu’s name as the party’s candidate to replace Funsho Williams’ name which had earlier been forwarded to INEC by Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu in his capacity as state chairman of the party.

    Please check to confirm the above facts from Asiwaju Tinubu, Senator Afikuyomi and Mr. Dele Alake. From the above facts, therefore, Afenifere elders could only be accused of following “Due Process”. It would be certainly mischievous and uncharitable to accuse them of handpicking Tinubu as AD governorship candidate in 1999.

    With respect to your statement that the recent attendance of Afenifere leaders including myself at Governor Mimiko’s second term declaration rally at Akure “was informed more not by love for the acclaimed hardworking Mimiko but by disdain for equally successful Tinubu and ACN”. You state as reason in support for this charge that although I acknowledged the good work being done by Fashola yet I have not led a solidarity visit to him even after his successful performance in his second term.

    But Jide, Governor Mimiko specifically invited me and other Afenifere leaders to attend his rally. In fact, he pleaded that I should arrive the night before with comfortable accommodation provided for me. On no occasion has Fashola invited me to any of the government functions since he has been in office. On the contrary, I have challenged him on more than two occasions why I was not being invited to his government functions. One such occasion was when I met him at Senator Biyi Durojaiye’s house when both of us were on a condolence visit to Senator Durojaiye when he lost his wife. I remember on one occasion I told Fashola “Bi ko ba si eni ana ko ni si eni oni” (meaning literally “Without yesterday’s men there will be no today’s men”).

    On more than two occasions, I also have sent him text messages to congratulate him on his performance during television interviews such as when he painstakingly explained his role as head of government and that of Tinubu as leader of his party and that there was no clash of authority. Fashola acknowledged none of the text messages. May I ask, when I am not invited to any of Fashola’s functions, how can I then demonstrate my support for him? At my age Jide, you will not expect me to attend any functions I am not duly invited. The Yorubas say “Omo ti o ba na owo e ni iya re ma gbe” (meaning “a child who stretches forth his hands is the one the mother will lift). Mimiko appreciates and acknowledges the political leadership of Afenifere leaders but this cannot be said of Fashola and ACN leaders. In fact the body language of ACN leaders is to keep Afenifere leaders at a distance when they cannot spite us. They forget that a river that forgets its source will certainly run dry. Afenifere leaders’ attitude to ACN leaders can aptly be illustrated by the Yoruba adage which says “Ewure o ni oun ko ba aguntan tan, Aguntan lo ni Iya oun ko bi dudu”, literally meaning, “the she-goat does not deny her relationship with the he-goat, it is the he-goat that says his mother has no black child”.

    I don’t know your source of information that I ever supported Oyinlola against Aregbesola. This would certainly be inconsistent with what you quoted me as saying in your article that “I feel proud that the ACN have done well…For instance I feel proud that the ACN has succeeded in taking power from the PDP in the South-west. If I have to make a choice between the evil of the PDP and ACN, I will choose the ACN. PDP is an evil in this country.” As a matter of fact I sent congratulatory text messages to Aregbesola after his victory in the court. Ditto to Dr. Fayemi who acknowledged his own text but Aregbesola did not, but confirmed to me that he received the message when I met him sometime later.

    As for Afenifere”s solidarity visit to ex-governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State, our visit as we stated then was to dissociate ourselves from the newspaper trial and conviction of Daniel on the allegations leveled against him. We went to hear his own side of the story and as we stated then, we were satisfied with his explanations and would not join in condemning him until the court makes its pronouncement. On our part we so far feel vindicated as the EFCC after over a year’s trial has failed to get Otunba Daniel convicted on the charges originally leveled against him, but rather has reduced the charges of fraud from a whopping sum of over N58 billion to N200 million.

    Finally, you inferred that our visit to Daniel was informed more by an attempt to further fuel the secret rivalry between Tinubu and Daniel who were once political allies in AD. This is rather unkind to put it mildly. As elder statesmen, Jide, what do you think Afenifere stands to gain by fuelling the rivalry between two eminent sons of Oduduwa? If you know our pedigree, you would recognize it is not in our character to fuel rivalry among our children but to reconcile them for the progress of Yoruba land.

    I believe your criticisms and observations in the piece “Sons and Fathers” were written in good faith. Some of the issues raised are indeed of public interest. I will therefore appreciate it if you don’t deny me the right of reply by giving this rejoinder adequate space and publicity in your paper in order to keep the records straight.

    NOTES: The son knows the father and the father the son. I am not one of the privileged few that know intimately the highly revered fathers or their illustrious sons. Mine was therefore an opinion of an outsider, a labour undertaken in good faith, as part of the freedom guaranteed by our highly developed culture, to look at our leaders in the face and ask questions without prejudice to the fact that they earned their positions. I hope Pa Adebanjo’s clarification reassures those who are nervous about the present schism between fathers and sons.

    • Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • The oil marketers’ revenge

    The oil marketers’ revenge

    For weeks, many outlets were running skeletal services, using only one or two pumps to dispense fuel. They knew what they were doing. It was a dress rehearsal for a full blown scarcity of petrol. Whenever filling stations start to behave like that, an alarm goes off in my mind.

    The alarm went off a few weeks ago when I started noticing some funny behaviours in some outlets and I consciously made it a duty to  always have a full tank. But I was afraid for my wife because I knew that she would not pay attention to such ‘’little things’’. So, last weekend, I did a small test for her after checking the fuel gauge of her car, which as expected was a bit below half tank.

    After my check, I asked why she did not fill her tank when there are signs of an impending fuel shortage. She disagreed, saying that the filling stations are selling,‘’ how can there be scarcity?’’.

    I looked at her and laughed. I told her that all the telltale signs are there of an upcoming scarcity. I reminded her that for sometime the filling station on the road leading into our estate has not been selling fuel regularly. ‘’What does that tell you?’’ I asked her. She could not answer. When she went out on Sunday, she saw things for herself. Queues had built up all over Lagos, heralding the coming of another fuel scarcity.

    Many motorists, at least those who are not vigilant, were caught napping by this sudden development because it did not follow the usual pattern of tanker drivers threatening fire and brimstone or labour calling workers out on strike to protest one government policy or the other. The scarcity crept in like a thief in the night last Sunday, causing anguish and pains for many people. There is nothing that disrupts people’s lives more than fuel scarcity.

    Once, there is fuel shortage, everything virtually grinds to a halt. In a commercial city like Lagos, things are even worse. Moving around becomes a problem as the roads are choked up with vehicles queuing for petrol. There is chaos on the road; at homes and offices things are not better because we need fuel to power our generating sets.

    Nigerians run a mini-government of sorts in their homes, providing their own light, water and security. We have a government, yet we don’t see the effect of government in our lives. There were abundant signs that this scarcity was on the way, but the government did nothing to nip it in the bud.

    It preferred to wait for the problem to come before adopting its usual fire brigade measures to address the challenge. This scarcity wouldn’t have hit Lagos, if the government had moved swiftly to tackle the problem when it reared its ugly head in Abuja and other parts of the country. Although the government may have been lax in addressing this fuel scarcity, we should not blame it too much for the problem.

    Marketers are the brains behind this scarcity, as they have always been, and it all boils down to their greed for money and more money. With little investment, they want to reap maximum profit. Where is that done in the entire business world? You know the answer already, it is Nigeria.

    The present scarcity has its taproot in the January 1 ill-advised hike in the price of petrol from N65 to N141 per litre before President Goodluck Jonathan graciously (don’t chuckle please) brought it down to N97.  Since then, marketers, who bought products based on the then prevailing rate of N65 per litre, but sold at the new price of N97, have been looking for ways to disrupt the process again for them to make another killing. They are not satisfied with the huge profit they made in the heat of the January fuel crisis.

    This is why today, they have resorted to the old argument of subsidy payment to cause another untold hardship in the land. Must we continue to be at the mercy of these oil sharks? Can’t the government do something about checking the excesses of these marketers? For long, we have been held to ransom by these marketers, who use all sorts of gimmick to perpetrate fraud under the guise of fuel importation?

    Should fuel importation be the sole business of these marketers? Is there no other area of the economy that they can play in to aid the growth of the oil industry? From all indications, they are, for now, only interested in importation where there is easy money to make rather than be burdened with the serious business of  drilling and refining.

    Marketers are a curse to the oil industry and until the nation is able to call their bluff, they will continue to ride roughshod over us. In our bid to do so, they will want to fight back, which should be expected, but we should not allow them to gain the upper hand. No matter how powerful they may think they are, they cannot take on the nation and expect to win and they know this too well. But to be able to fight them and go the distance, the government must be on the people’s side.

    Once the government decides to join forces with the people and not their oppressors the battle is won. Will the government ever be on the people’s side? I doubt if it will, but we must never give up until we force these marketers to treat us as human beings and not as mere numbers that should be added to their balance sheets.

    Shouldn’t they first balance human beings before balancing their books? To marketers, people count for nothing, they are tools to be used to achieve the businesman’s selfish goals. This is why they pay peanuts, but cart away huge profit at the end of every business year. But then they seem to forget that human beings count in the business equation. Without the people that they so despise, they cannot be making the huge profit that has got to their heads and made them believe that they are now tin gods. Nobody knows when the scarcity will end, with the Federal Government’s silence so far.

    There were signs yesterday that the scarcity had started easing. On its part, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) seems confused. It is blaming the vandalism of its pipelines at Arepo in Ogun State for the scarcity.

    If NNPC wishes to be sincere, it must know that, that is not true. I do not believe that the vandalism of those pipelines is the major cause of this scarcity. The major cause, I say with all emhasis at my disposal are the marketers, who have refused to import fuel despite an  agreement reached with the government last month. The pact followed their threat not to import fuel until they are paid their outstanding N200 billion subsidy. The government has since paid N42 billion out of the money, but the marketers are insisting on full payment to save their businesses. Since a labourer is worthy of its hire, the  government should pay them, but such payment must come after an audit.

    This means that the marketers must have done genuine business. Woe betide them if their hands are not clean, that means they will not be entitled to a kobo. Let them refuse to import fuel from now till thy kingdom, the government should not be moved to pay them except there is ample evidence to back up their claims. Any one of them found involved in any shady business should be made to face the music. By the way, what happened to the trial of those indicted in the fuel subsidy probe? Their trial should go on to its logical conclusion.

    The marketers will fight back, as they are doing now, but we should be ready for them. We should all remember that nothing good comes easy and cheap. It is at a price, which we should be prepared to pay or else remain in perpetual bondage.

  • ACN’s quest for Internally Generated Revenue (IGR)

    ACN’s quest for Internally Generated Revenue (IGR)

    One of the basic responsibilities of a citizen is payment of taxes. Classical Athenian democracy divided responsibilities within the state. Citizens enjoyed participation-direct democracy while slaves and non-citizens did most of the work. But by the time of Pericles, citizens not only participated in decision making but also paid taxes and defended the state under the pressure and example of Sparta. Military service became one of the hallmarks of citizenship. When representative democracy became the norm, taxation became the rite of passage of citizenship. The United States arguably the oldest democracy in the world was founded on representation and taxation. The 13 American colonies rebelled against King George of England III because he imposed onerous taxes on the people without their being represented in government. Since then taxation has become a necessary condition of citizenship.

    In Nigeria, the history of taxation dates back to as far back as the 14thCentury in the Hausa states. By the time Usman Dan Fodio took over and established the Caliphate of Sokoto, he was able to systemize a form of taxation which still exist till today. This was the Jangali-(Cattletax) and also poll tax on farmers. These taxes became the nucleus of the so called “Native treasuries” or Beit-el-mal during the heydays of the indirect rule system of Sir Fredrick Lugard and Sir Richmond Palmer. This system was extended to Yoruba land with the fulcrum around which a native treasury was built. Attempt to extend the system into the acephalous societies of Igbo and Ibibio met with resistance and rebellion. Even in Yoruba land revolts in Okeho and Iseyin in 1916 and a much bigger revolt in Egbaland in 1918 followed the imposition of taxes. The levying of taxes succeeded without problem in the Islamic North, but in the non-Muslim areas of the North, it was rebellion all the way. This long introduction is necessary to prove that people in Nigeria except in the Muslim North do not like paying taxes. The Tiv area throughout colonial times and after, was up in arms against the regional government partly because of the people’s opposition to taxes.

    The Action Group government in Western Nigeria lost the federal election in 1954 because it was portrayed as a tax and spend party. The Agbekoya revolt of the late 1960s was a tax revolt by farmers who felt they were not getting anything in form of development for the taxes they were paying. The revolt did not end until those taxes were abolished.

    I examined a PhD thesis in the University of Ibadan some years ago and the conclusion of the student was that we have not witnessed a people’s revolt in recent times because people in the villages and on the farms are more or less excluded from paying taxes. The import of this conclusion is that government must move gingerly in imposing taxes on the poor people particularly, in the villages and yet before people can become stakeholders and take interest in their government, they must at least pay taxes. One of the reasons why the elite has gotten away with rampant corruption and thievery is because the money being stolen is not tax money but commissions and corporate tax skimmed off the petroleum industry.

    If taxes have to be imposed, they would have to be restricted to the cities and municipalities but not the villages. This is why IGR involving direct taxation would have to be restricted to the cities only. In most countries of the world it is easier to collect revenues through consumer tax-value added tax (VAT) because most people do not even realize that they are being taxed when they pay VAT. It is a pity that VAT in Nigeria is collected by the federal government. In a federation, VAT should be state tax. Imagine if Lagos can get all the VAT collected in the state, it would not have to levy the present onerous land use charge it imposes on all and sundry. It is this land use charge that the ACN states having seen how it has boosted the IGR of Lagos to N20 billion a month now want to extend to all of them. Whether they would succeed is a moot question. Edo State saw this being used by the PDP against Adams Oshiomhole in the last election which he handily won. But there may be problems introducing land use tax outside Lagos. I am in support of it. But it must be done in such a way that old people and people living in their homes would not pay much and that the bulk of the taxes would be paid by corporate bodies, industries, institutions and houses rented out. But everybody should pay something perhaps graduated from as low as one thousand to one hundred thousand.

    Now that we are talking about constitutional review, this is the time the VAT collected in states should belong to where it is collected rather than first sending in it to Abuja and later distributing it to all the states. This should be a case for constitutional review. The ACN leaders outside Lagos where the land use charge has succeeded must educate the people before levying them. Success in Lagos of the levy does not automatically guarantee its success in all the states under the ACN administrations. It is safer to impose a state VAT in addition to the federal tax than a land use levy which may elicit some opposition.

  • Of fuel and other crises

    Of fuel and other crises

    POOR Dr Goodluck Jonathan.

    I wonder what the President will be telling Nigerians on October 1, the National Day. Will he deliver a message of hope to a people who are weary of tightening their belts and enduring more of the pains they are feeling? Will he reel off a long list of achievements – laced with cold statistics and esoteric figures – which the average Nigerian cannot identify with?

    In vain have I searched the neighbourhood stores for a loaf of the cassava bread, which has become regular on the presidential breakfast table since it made its debut a few months ago. Those who have been privileged to have a bite tell me the taste is great, but the question remains: when will ordinary folks get the loaf? The You Win – what a name – programme may be a revolutionary tool for addressing poverty among women, but where are the beneficiaries?

    These and more may be on the list of the administration’s achievements, but one item that has regularly featured will, without doubt, be missing this time. Fuel.

    From Abuja to Sokoto and Kontagora; Calabar and Lagos to Umuahia, the queues are lengthening. A litre costs about N150 in Ekiti and Ondo states. In some parts of the North, it is about N200. Incredible! The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says the scarcity is artificial, caused by inscrutable people who vandalised a pipeline. An attempt to repair the pipeline that was ripped open in Arepo, Ogun State, was resisted and three engineers were killed, the NNPC said. Now, it is using trucks to move fuel.

    But, the popular thinking is that the corporation has not told the truth. Our refineries, old, often sick and vulnerable, cannot supply all that we require. And now, marketers who import fuel to bridge the gap are not paid.

    The bold attempt to expose and punish those who have turned the subsidy regime into a bazaar of fraud and robbery – every young man with a glittering briefcase and a sharp Oxford Street suit is an oil and gas executive – has somehow compounded the pains it was supposed to remove. The Petroleum Product Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) has done a lot to separate the original from the counterfeit, but the Ministry of Finance is yet to pay those who have passed the PPPRA test . The banks are holding such marketers by the throat and there is no cash for them to import more fuel. This is where the problem lies.

    Marketers are being owed some N100 billion. The debts, according to the Ministry of Finance, are being verified. Can this go on ad infinitum? Do we really have the cash to pay? If we have exceeded the budget for subsidy because we under projected, why won’t Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala go back to the National Assembly to ask for more money? Ego? The fear of what the World Bank will say, having warned about budget deficit and balancing to bring down recurrent expenditure and shore up capital expenditure?

    Whatever the situation may be, we need not go back to those days when men slept at filling stations. No. Those who have been found to have defrauded the system should face the law and those whose bills have been verified should be paid right away. Nigerians do not deserve another fuel crisis, considering its agonies.

    It is unfortunate that the government blames everything on everybody except itself. Just on Tuesday in Abuja, the President, in a remarkable flashback, blamed the Occupy Nigeria fuel subsidy protests of January on a particular class who he accused of manipulating the crisis. I disagree. When petrol price jumped from N65 a litre to between N138 and N200 on New Year’s Day without a corresponding increase in workers’ pay, the masses didn’t need any prompting to resist what they saw as an act of crass wickedness.

    As it was then, the subsidy removal argument remains puerile and galling. The government said it spent N1.3tr on fuel subsidy last year. The cash, it said, should have gone into reviving our dead infrastructure, but it went into some people’s pockets. To end the robbery and make fuel smuggling unattractive, fuel price must go up. Some strange logic. The public kicked, saying: why don’t you go after the fraudsters?

    The government, as lethargic as ever, seemed reluctant to seize the suspected criminals. As it dithered about it all, the National Assembly moved in. It set up a probe of the subsidy scam. The exercise has spawned more scandals.

    As I was saying, Dr Jonathan recalled the fuel price protests. He said: “There was a demonstration in Lagos…somebody was giving pure water that people in my village don’t have access to, well packaged bottled water, expensive food that ordinary people in Lagos cannot eat. They hired the best musicians to come and play and the best comedians to come and entertain in that demonstration.

    “Are you telling me that demonstration is coming from the ordinary masses of Nigeria who want to communicate something to their government …?”

    What message was the President trying to pass on? That a spontaneous mob action that will result in cataclysmic losses of human and material resources is better than a peaceful rally to appeal to the government’s conscience that it should never be against the people? That even with the senseless price increase that would have resulted in higher prices of goods and services the people had not had enough?

    Didn’t the demonstration achieve its aim, with the roll back of the fuel price and the subsequent exposure of the subsidy cartel? Is it true Otueke – host of a huge construction site that is a federal university, among other projects – folks do not have access to sachet water ? Haba! Mr President, spare us the hyperbole.

    The government must look inwards for its enemies – remember the President said Boko Haram had infiltrated the government – instead of blaming every headache and catarrh on the opposition. If the opposition keeps quiet, even as the government fumbles and stumbles, where then will be the place of politics? If Dr Jonathan thinks he is going to get some peace from the opposition, that is building a castle in the air; they will keep pummeling his actions and inaction. He is the one who should convince the world that he has a strategic vision to address all that ails this beautiful country of confounding complexities.

    The infrastructural deficit remains as staggering as it was at the inception of this administration – safe for some jump in power supply, which some hawks in high places are trying to reverse with their greed and mercantile disposition.

    Apparently tired of it all, lawyers in Abia State, launched a unique protest on Tuesday. They designated the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway a “valley of death” and challenged the state and federal governments to wake up to their responsibilities. The lawyers, decked out in rain boots and their customary black-and-white court dress, marched in Aba right on some of the bad roads. Can it be more bizarre?

    Health workers in federal institutions are on strike, pushing for better pay and a more conducive working environment. In aviation, thousands of jobs are gone, even as the government sets its priority on building 11 more airports. What for?

    The Jonathan presidency may be remembered not for its creative approach to resolving the numerous problems that assail Nigeria, but for its capacity to –perhaps innocently or deliberately or ineffectually – create more trouble. Perhaps.

  • What manner of dialogue?

    What manner of dialogue?

    WHERE is National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki? The gentleman seems to be so quiet nowadays.

    When Col. Dasuki got onboard, he launched a bid for dialogue with the Jamaatul Ahlis Sunnah lidaawa wal Jihad, otherwise known as Boko Haram (Western education is a sin). The sect has been leading a bloody campaign against its perceived enemies. Thousands are dead; many are injured.

    With a brief lull in suicide bombings, we all thought that, indeed, dialogue was on. How wrong we have been! The eerie, spine-chilling sounds of flying bullets from booming guns are being heard again. Borno State Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General Zanna Malam Gana was killed on Tuesday. Former Prisons boss Alhaji Ibrahim Jarma was shot on Monday. He died on Tuesday. The Acting chair of Maiha Local Government, Adamawa State, Lawan Datti, was shot dead on Monday by gunmen believed to be Boko Haram members.

    What kind of dialogue is going on? Dialogue of bullets, bombs and blood?

    But Nigerians, apparently, tired of it all, have resorted to sardonic jokes about the situation. A friend sent this to my mobile:

    “A man was arrested in Lagos by LASTMA officials for driving on the BRT lane. He was fined N50,000. Despite his begging, the officials refused to release the car.

    “Okay, may I know where you are towing my car to?” the man asked.

    “We’re taking it to Alausa,” replied one of the officials. “Ha-ha-ha-ha,” the Fulani laughed. The officials were surprised.

    The man brought out his phone and began to speak: “Abu Qaqa, Ina kwana?(Good morning in Hausa).

    “No sir! In less than 30 minutes, it will explode. The car has been arrested…

    “Only 20 out of those new bombs are inside the car…They are taking the car to Alausa! I am coming back to Yobe alive now. Thank you sir. Greet other faithful for me o.”

    He rounded off his imaginary call. When he looked back, there was no LASTMA official in sight. He entered his car and sped off, saying: “Shege! Dan borouba…Waka!”

  • Enter Femi Falana, SAM II

    Enter Femi Falana, SAM II

    Falana ran tie, t’ara eni l’anran! (Falana, mind your own business!)
    On 10 September 2001, Gani Fawehinmi (1938-2009), Nigeria’s first Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM 1) became SAN; and cured the Nigerian legal profession of its open sore: of shutting Gani out of a well-deserved silk – at least in the eye of the hoi polloi.
    When the great and universal Gani eventually became SAN, it was clear the SAN institution needed Gani more than Gani needed that institution – for how could that body claim to be real when the greatest socially-conscious attorney of this generation, and perhaps for generations to come, was kept out of its ranks?
    As it was with Gani, so was it, on 12 September 2012, with Femi Falana, Nigeria’s second Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM 2), when he took the silk.  Like Gani before him, the institution of SAN needed Mr. Falana more than Mr. Falana needed it.
    True, Mr. Falana was not formally crowned SAM by scandalised University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) students, who felt Gani deserved the silk, for his stellar contributions to social justice, law as a tool for development, human rights and more.  But the Gani-Falana parallels, en route a thorny road to SANship, is remarkable.
    Like Gani, Falana is a people’s lawyer.  Like Gani, Falana is a legal iconoclast, especially when he jousts with the lawless, over-pampered ruling class, who like to play god with the lives of the rest of us.
    Like Gani, Falana is a courtroom dramatist: and the newspapers, ever on the side of the perceived underdog, respond equally dramatically with “Gani/Falana wins round one …”, after clinching an opening injunction, even if the case is far from final determination.
    And like Gani, Falana, though a fire-belching courtroom revolutionary, is at heart a legal reformist who does the establishment a load of good by constantly reminding it of its dirty and stinking underbelly; and asking it to clean up or risk being cleaned out.
    Of course, a bullying panicky ruling class misconstrues this explosive activism as rebellion; misunderstands this fervent peaceful reformation, through the instrumentality of the law, as revolution through the back door.  As a result, it reaches for the sledgehammer by denying such “radicals” their due.
    That logically explains Femi Falana’s belated admission into the SAN institution, like Gani before him, until the whole thing bordered on the ridiculous.  Until September 12 when Mr. Falana got his due, 11 years after Gani’s belated elevation and three years, almost to the date, after his glorious passage (Gani died on 5 September 2009), the conclave of SANs without Mr. Falana looked odd.
    But when comes SAM 3, after Gani and Falana, the next brilliant legal mind to be denied his or her professional due, because of legal activism or radicalism?  That, to be sure, is a humbling question for a society that sorely needs an equal opportunity reward system to snap out of the current paralysing mediocrity and pervasive corruption.
    Yet, neither Gani nor Falana could lay claim as the purest legal mind of their respective generations, which somewhat dovetailed.  That honour without doubt belonged to the late Chief Fredrick Rotimi Alade (FRA) Williams, QC [Queen’s Counsel] and Nigeria’s first SAN.  In every respect, the great FRA was a giant in law as he was in build.  Indeed, FRA was worth every pound of law his massive frame could boast.  He was not called “weight of evidence” by gawking peers for nothing!
    Indeed, FRA was the classical lawyer, a veritable approximation of the lawyer’s creed: that everyone is entitled to legal defence.  So, in his long and remarkable career, his fixed ideology was to render legal services and apply his prodigious forensic intellect to whoever could afford them, was apolitical in taking briefs and, if law were not some codified morality, many would even wager good, old FRA of blessed memory was amoral: just an unfazed servant of the law, when it got to legal brass tacks.
    Indeed, a cynic once growled FRA would take a brief from our Lord Jesus Christ, would avail the devil himself the same privilege, and promptly plead the lawyer’s creed of legal representation to all!  Strictly in law, he was right.  But in the unlearned eye of the hoi polloi, he was fatally flawed.
    But that took nothing from the sheer depth of his learning, the sheer breath of his brilliance, his sweeping contribution to legal scholarship and the sheer formidability of his advocacy skills, so much so that he was a near demigod in the courtroom, revered by friends, feared by foes and honoured by judges, the closest, if any, to the approximation of a living legal institution.
    Indeed, whoever growled over FRA’s latter-day legal progression, and his apolitical professional bent would do well to study the politics of the First Republic, and capture how involved he was in the Action Group’s Awolowo-Akintola blowout.  Did that scalding experience sober FRA and made him swear to ever after put politics at arm’s length?
    Still, these ratiocinations would only resonate with the legal patricians.  To the hurting plebs, victims of military impunity and the dictators-wannabe of the intervening democratic republics, including the current Fourth Republic, all these must be empty air to justify the late FRA’s perceived social insensitivity in his law practice.
    It is in the streets therefore that the likes of Gani and Falana are kings.  No one can take anything away from Gani’s profound scholarship, prodigious learning and Spartan character.  The same can be said of Mr. Falana.
    Indeed, Mr Falana cut his teeth in the radical advocacy tradition of the Alao Aka-Basorun (in whose chambers he started legal practice) school.  So, far he has stayed true to that narrow and risky path.
    Besides, the Falanas of the Nigerian legal cosmos reacted splendidly to the challenge of military rule with all its abuses; and made the piquant point that even the military could not claim to operate above the laws of the land which, by the way created the military establishment itself, ever before some smart alecs in Khaki dreamed the profitable business of coups for personal fortune but collective ruin.
    That is the proud legacy of Mr. Falana.  That is the crux of his “crime” against the establishment.  That is the simple explanation of his scandalously belated admission into the apex professional conclave of lawyers in the country, which he thoroughly deserved.  Though the battle was long, he has won his race – and gloriously too!
    Falana ran tie, t’ara eni lanran!  But this Falana, against conventional wisdom, has made it his professional business not to mind his own business, but that of the weak and the underprivileged that needed to be protected by law – and many times, gratis!
    That is the abiding sweetness of the legacy of Femi Falana, SAN, SAM.  May your tribe never shrink, however loud the establishment roars!