The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ogochukwu Ikeje

  • History beckons on Kachikwu

    History beckons on Kachikwu

    Minister of State (Petroleum) Ibe Kachikwu is not one of the most popular men in town at the moment.

    Just about every petrol user in one form or another has been sulking and griping.

    Many petrol stations say they have no product to sell. This drives motorists far afield searching. And when they find it, the queue is too long, service too chaotic, cost too prohibitive and, sometimes dispensing stops just before it is your turn. Non-vehicle users such as barbers, millers, vulcanisers and sundry artisans and traders also join the search armed with their plastic containers. But their fate is none better.

    This is hardly the picture envisaged when the votes were cast last year. And when Dr Kachikwu responded to media queries, he seemed to worsen the public agony. When journalists in March demanded his explanation on a crisis that seemed to have no end, he blurted out his own apparent frustrations, saying he had no magic wand to wave the conundrum away.

    That cut deeply. It took the influential voice of National Leader of the All Progressives Congress Bola Tinubu to soothe the collective nerve, although it came in a way that probably jolted Dr Kachikwu and possibly sent some opposition elements into momentary cloud nine.

    Asiwaju Tinubu told the minister he needed respect and hard work more than a magic wand. Dr Kachikwu promptly apologised, something that was rare in our recent experience with people in high office.

    There were more demons ahead, though. Following up with his apologies, Dr Kachikwu promised that the fuel crisis would abate in a week especially in Lagos and Abuja. It was not to be. Less than two weeks after this, further promises came but as the month closed out, the problem was not getting worse, but neither was there any apparent remarkable progress.

    All this certainly dampened the enthusiasm that trailed Dr Kachikwu’s appointment or, before that, his great showing on the floor of the senate, where he wowed his interrogators with not just his sparkling academic profile but his industry depth. Sector watchers called him a great fit in the change regime.

    Is he still one? Yes, a thousand times. And, more than that, history beckons on him. We must ignore his PR gaffes. No public officer is immune to them anyway. Besides, his apologies speak to his enlightenment and noble breeding, both in minimal supply among leaders in the era just gone by. I imagine also that Dr Kachikwu believes he puts in sufficient effort to crack the fuel puzzle, but is only sabotaged by people who seem too practiced in the act. Seeking to soothe sore nerves, he would rush off to address the public confident that his consignment would get to destination.

    Naivety? Perhaps, but not cluelessness or laziness.

    Everyone knows the nation’s oil sector is probably the most corrupt, a development that has for decades made the simple business of putting petrol in vehicle tanks a most difficult affair in the world. Even pricing the product has left everyone in a huff. Thus, every regime from Gowon saw the wisdom to top up the price to the pain of Nigerians. Even such short-lived administrations as those of Ernest Shonekan and Abdusalam Abubakar jacked up the fuel price. Chief Shonekan who held the reins of some kind of power for all of three months shot it up by an unparalleled 614%, from 70 Kobo to N5 a litre in 1993. Sani Abacha would reduce it to N3.25K but only to raise it to as high as N15. Of the lot, Olusegun Obasanjo increased the petrol price most frequently, going down, yes, down in history as the only elected president who would do so a record eight times.

    All of that came amid great grief and anger on the part of Nigerians. Nor did the scarcity go away with the increases.

    President Muhammadu Buhari and Dr Kachikwu have done no such thing. Yet, many have hurled the worst kind of insults at the present administration because of the challenges.

    But history beckons, still. President Buhari has found in Dr Kachikwu an ally who can help blow the stench in the oil sector away. We have heard that the national oil firm NNPC had been cornering what was supposed to be handed over to the federal government. Now, under Dr Kachikwu it will toss over what it has been keeping illegally. Also, phoney marketers with imaginary vessels on phantom high seas with cooked-up fuel imports just to get millions of subsidy money are getting to realise that they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    Dr Kachikwu has not tidied up the sector. He has to find a way to deal with fuel diverters so that he does not end up whining about it. He must also find a way around the vandals by reaching out to their communities. As for illegal refiners, he must decriminalise them, refine them and refine their technology since the official refineries cannot give us what we want. He must also look for that university professor who builds small refineries that work, and work with him.

    That Dr Kachikwu does not make the popularity cut is quite a shame. But I know that won’t be for too long.

  • Two years without the girls

    Time’s famous therapy has failed to heal the Chibok wound. The schoolgirls, all 276 of them, were reportedly busy prepping for their exam on April 14, 2014 when Boko Haram insurgents showed up in their school in Chibok village, Borno State and took them away. En route to captivity, 57 managed to escape, we heard, leaving 219 with the abductors till today. It was two years on Thursday since that grim event.

    Usually, good old time has a way of sucking off grief and pain in the human system after a period, making it possible for estranged lovers, say, to make up, look each other in the eye and say I forgive you. A cheated businessman grits his teeth and says, Well, I can’t live the rest of my life brooding over that crook. A robbery victim, like the biblical Esau, with murder in his eyes, finally learns the wisdom of forgiveness.

    Time does wonders.

    But in Chibok, its magic may well have disappeared or, at the least, been dulled. On the gloomy anniversary of the abduction, grief surged through mothers’ plagued bodies afresh, clouding their eyes and, I guess, their minds as well. One woman grabbed her head with both hands, moving her upper body in a split second downward jerk. It was a gesture with a clear message, one of something too hard to bear.

    The women were before a computer screen on which was being shown a video recording of some 15 hijab-clad girls believed to be among those abducted two years before.

    It was a CNN master report, a scoop, in industry language. The women peered intently. One pointed to one image, as though saying, That’s her, alright. Another reached out and touched the screen, appearing to draw momentary comfort from virtual contact with her beloved daughter.

    That footage has been beamed to the world in what has been dubbed the hope of life, almost in the same manner as the image of such celebrities as Michelle Obama clutching BringBackOurGirls placards were viewed globally in those ineffectual days of the Jonathan presidency. Across the world, from Europe to America and beyond, and before world leaders and entertainment icons, such as Wesley Snipes, Nigeria was making all sorts of hideous headlines.

    How did the then president and commander-in-chief respond? He responded with an emphatic I-do-not-believe-it, a disposition that would last for nearly three weeks before he set up a committee to determine if it was true or not. Before the committee turned in its report, which in any case confirmed the obvious, it was a good one month since the girls were taken away, in which time hope of rescue was all but foreclosed.

    If Dr Goodluck Jonathan realised that he had lost valuable ground, that the missing girls were as tormented, wherever they were, as were their parents, and that the eyes of the world were on him, he did not show it convincingly. Thus, when he was dressed up in some ill-fitting military battle gear and headed for the Northeast, then stomping ground of the sect, he could only draw a hopeless sigh from the people over whom he presided. When he announced languidly on national TV that the military had combed the much-trumpeted Sambisa forest and found nothing, even he knew that he could not in all honesty expect even the obligatory applause.

    As the  nation and its people resigned to fate on the abducted girls, to say nothing of Boko Haram’s other atrocities, Dr Jonathan would kick off such an ambitious reelection campaign whose funding schemes may yet go down in the country’s history as the most bizarre. And while we struggled to come to terms with all that, the Office of the First Lady or OFL came alive with some reverse entertainment, especially on the Chibok issue.

    If Dr Jonathan lost his reelection bid simply because he failed to prove his leadership bona fides, his handling of the Chibok matter did him little good. His super minister Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has reportedly said her boss had no will to save money, a failing the Buhari administration is now paying for.

    It is also safe to say Dr Jonathan blew the opportunity to rescue the Chibok girls, leaving his successor with quite a mountain to climb. Two years after the Chibok and other abductions, and about 11 months into the Buhari presidency, the Boko Haram profile has thankfully diminished but the sect’s horrors endure.  That much was clear at the screening of the Chibok 15 video in Abuja. Chibok parents are no longer keen on talking to reporters or showing up for protests. All they want is seeing their daughters again.

    Can President Muhammadu Buhari pull it off? Yes, but probably not with military efforts. The sect seems to want a negotiated release. The government should negotiate, but be sure with whom it is negotiating. The administration before it had little discretion in this regard and the nation was the worse for it.

    One last word. Some have said the whole abduction thing is a scam designed to throw Dr Jonathan out of power. If it is not all faked up, they ask, why has none of the captured Boko Haram fighters volunteered any information on the missing girl’s whereabouts?

    Supposing the captured insurgents have such information and do share it, is it now being contemplated that the full complement of the military should risk swooping on their location and expect to safely ship out all 219 girls?

    Perhaps only credible negotiation leading to the safe return of the girls will heal this two-year-old wound.

  • Sylva, Kwankwaso: A puzzle

    Sylva, Kwankwaso: A puzzle

    Is the world fair to politicians? Or are politicians fair to the world? Deciding this week to write on two politicians-Timipre Sylva and Rabiu Kwankwaso- I did a quick check on the world’s favourite professionals and found that politicians are not among them. Indeed, most of earth’s walkers hate politicians.

    That may be unfair, if not unwise considering the age-old warning that all of us are indeed political animals and that from the house to the neighbourhood clubhouse, the playground, the farmland all the way to the school, the church, the local pub down to the smallest political gathering and from there right up to Aso Rock itself, there is politics aplenty.

    That’s not all. Hated as politicians seem to be, we depend on their decisions on almost everything we care about. They decide which roads to build, for instance, when to build, where to build, and which community to give water and which to deny.

    Bicker and twiddle your fingers all you want or scratch your head interminably, the decision on when to pass the budget, say, or what to knock off it or add, is not yours or mine to take; it is the politicians’, their prerogative.

    Isn’t it about time the world revised its rating of this breed or brood of professionals?

    In these parts we reserve the most uncharitable words for our politicians, though we are less persuaded and forthcoming when it comes to documenting our rating of them against other professionals. Elsewhere, though, in America, say, great trouble is taken to ascertain how much their people love or hate their professionals. In one poll taken back in the year 2006, 63 per cent of 1,020 people said they preferred their firefighters over and above anyone else. Next and roughly in that order, most people surveyed chose doctors, nurses and scientists as closest to their hearts. Military officers also did well in the people’s minds, even first responders in crisis situations (Remember September 11, 2001). So did teachers, specifically mathematicians.

    What about the politicians? They were neither here nor there, hated more than loved, and doing perhaps just a bit better than lawyers, for whom some 21 per cent polled said they had no respect whatsoever.

    In 2011 teachers trumped everyone else followed by medical people such as nurses, even physical therapists. Politicians were overlooked more by design than by oversight.

    This year, it has been suggested than most Americans would first embrace a pilot and then, again, those who help the weak regain their health before considering who next to bestow their love on. No mention was made of those who campaign for votes and then proceed to decide, for good or ill, the fate of their compatriots and their nation.

    Hate or love them, Mr Sylva and Alhaji Kwankwaso, at least once in their political career, did indeed prove they had a mind of their own and were not afraid to declare where they stood on issues or personalities. Several years ago in those unfortunately conspiratorial days of the ailing Umaru Yar’Adua presidency, when the word ‘cabal’ was nearly as frequently used as, if not more so than, the word ‘president’, when the president’s wife, with help from a few hirelings, carried on as though she were the de facto president, Mr Sylva did remind everyone that Dr Goodluck Jonathan, then a much sidestepped vice president, was indeed the right person to take up the office of president. Mr Sylva made his case for Dr Jonathan quite early, if not earlier than anyone else. Before a book presentation event at which I played a minor part, the then governor of Bayelsa State seemed to speak out of conviction and courage and a sense of propriety. What would later become a clamour, even a movement, for the Jonathan presidency against the cabal, had not begun at the time. A Niger Deltan was fit to rule the land, he told everyone.

    At that event, Mr Sylva also revealed something rarely seen in our political class, especially among those who govern us. He spoke of a poem he wrote and then proceeded to read it by heart so effortlessly and so confidently.

    So our governors do read and write?

    I was just as pleasantly surprised at his Mr Sylva’s literary side as I was deeply concerned when he fell out with the same Dr Jonathan he fought for. Such was the disagreement that Mr Sylva would blame his failure to govern his state twice on presidential machinations. Eventually he fell out of the PDP altogether, pitching his tent with the APC on whose platform he contested and lost the December 5 governorship election. Last Saturday Mr Sylva was suspended by the party for, among other alleged infractions, visiting a PDP governor and attempting to form a parallel state executive of the party. The state party chiefs suggested the matter was being investigated and I suggest the investigation should be thorough so that, at least in one instance, it will be determined when a visit to a rival party governor amounts to antiparty activity.

    If the Sylva profile is not a puzzle I don’t know what else is.

    About 16 years ago, Alhaji Kwankwaso, then governor of Kano State, had gained quite a stature in the state and would so build on it that in the run-up to the presidential election he was quite a pillar in the APC house. Such was his relevance that when Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose was firing his ill-advised salvos against Candidate Buhari, it was Alhaji Kwankwaso who seemed to be speaking for the North in defence of not just the APC presidential candidate but also in defence of good old decency and propriety. The result of that election in the North spoke volumes of the efforts and loyalty of people like Alhaji Kwankwaso.

    Today Alhaji Kwankwaso is being accused by no less a person than a former protégé Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of plotting against President Muhammadu Buhari’s political ambitions.

    Is this what is usually referred to as the murky waters of politics, which can mean anything from the more you look the less you see, to you never know with politicians? Did Mr Sylva and Alhaji Kwankwaso show their good sides when they needed to, only to reveal their true colours when they felt the time was ripe? Or is there a rock-solid conspiracy against them?

  • Before cattle have right of way

    THESE days of reckless slaughter, all manner of decisions including bizarre ones are being taken in the name of ending the bloodbath and ensuring peace. The federal government’s plan to map out grazing routes and reserves for herdsmen’s animals is one of such wacky decisions. One is not ignorant of the need to stem the blood-flow. As hinted in the opening line, the wanton killings can move a stone statue. Boko Haram fighters are running wild in the North, wasting thousands of lives and wrecking businesses and social infrastructure valued in millions of naira. They have sent families fleeing their homes and sources of livelihood. They have attacked military facilities, even claiming lives in those confrontations. Three states in the North are under emergency rule, yet insurgency seems to be increasing in frightening proportions, one of the latest instances being the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in Borno State. Any wonder why the Jonathan administration, among other things, contemplated talking things over with the terrorists? Lay down your arms and renounce violence, and we will forgive your atrocities, even rehabilitate you, the federal administration told the fighters. What was the answer? We will have none of your overtures, Boko Haram replied. If anything, we are the ones to forgive you if we choose to. Deadlock? Yes, deadlock, but the bloodletting has worryingly continued apace.

    Consider, too, the onslaught of the presumed herdsmen. They have run riot across the land. Of the 36 states in the federation only a tiny few have been spared their attacks. In Ogume in Ndokwa-West Local Government Area of Delta State, 10 youths were reported killed by invading herdsmen on April 6, 2013. The killings reportedly resulted from a disagreement with host community farmers. Nigerians are well acquainted with plenty of such invasions and killings in Plateau State. Although many attacks go unreported, everyone knows that herdsmen’s clashes with farmers are as much an issue in Taraba as they are in Nasarawa, and indeed in much of the federal land. In Benue, local residents have been reduced to refugees, huddled up in primary schools or open camps after their homes were attacked and their farms and produce wasted by invading herdsmen.

    Any wonder that federal authorities are about to establish tracts of land, from the North to the South, where cattle will literally have right of way?

    A panel has been reportedly set up to, as we say, work out the modalities of such dedicated grazing reserves. This is strange and unlikely to help in any way. It may well be argued that since the herdsmen are Nigerians, they reserve every right to graze their cattle everywhere within the confines of their country. This argument is cheap, too simplistic and even likely to create more problems than it may solve. Here are the reasons why. One, the days of innocence seem over in the country. To the shame of the populace, ethnic harmony has since been replaced by mutual suspicion and in some cases even hostility. In Jos where I lived for a decade and relished my time there, I hear the tin and temperate table land has since been divided along ethnic lines, destroying the peace and harmony we knew back in the 80s and early 90s. Back then, the sight of Fulani herdsmen in their wide-brimmed hats and trademark sticks across their shoulders was not frightening. They led their animals up and down the rocky hills with hardly any incident with farmers or locals. In all my time in the Tin City, I never saw a herdsman clutching an AK 47. That is why some of us ask, why do otherwise simple herdsmen now carry sophisticated weapons? Where do they get such arms from? Who is backing them?

    There is another reason why the dedicated grazing reserves will not solve any problem. There is nothing to convince anyone of the willingness of the authorities to genuinely resolve herdsmen’s squabbles with farmers? How many troublemakers have been tracked down and punished according to the law after such clashes? How many of those who killed the 10 Ogume youths have been arrested at least to explain why they did what they did? How many killers in those Plateau attacks have been apprehended? Has anyone been held by the police and the law for throwing Benue farmers out of their homes and farmlands and into misery? Why should anyone be hopeful that the grazing reserves will end the hostilities? Before cattle start roaming and grazing freely in reserved land from North to South and from East to West, the federal government should consider these few points. Since some of the reserved land is likely to be someone’s source of livelihood, what compensation, if any, will be adequate for the farmer? Will it be fair to dedicate a Northern community’s fishing waters to, say, the Ijaw who mostly depend on water and fishing for sustenance considering that much of their waters is polluted by multinational oil firms? What about hunters from the Southwest and Southeast having the go-ahead to hunt game in designated parts of the North, and as frequently as they please?

    In the final analysis, it is even unhealthy, crude, backward, risky and costly to take animals across the length and breadth of this vast country in search of grazing fields. With the huge resources available to government, it is wiser, healthier and more economical to breed and graze cattle in the home states of their owners. What is required is developing and fertilizing the land for the animals. That way you solve more problems than you would create allowing the animals a free roam up and down the country.

    • This article was first published during the Jonathan administration.

  • One day for our own butchers

    On Thursday one of the world’s most notorious bloodthirsty figures was sent to jail for 40 years. Twenty-one years after the Bosnian war in which he played no small part, Radovan Karadzic evaded arrest for 13 years, and even after his capture in 2008 and arraignment, it took nothing less than eight years to find him guilty. The wheels of justice ground slowly, even too slowly, at least from the perspectives of his victims, but, at last, the man who was dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia will now pay for his crimes.

    In 1995, during the war, in a district called Srebrenica, Mr Karadzic, president of Bosnia at the time, was accused of inspiring the killing of some 7,500 Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, a campaign that was said to be “aimed at killing every able-bodied male”.

    Yet, that was just one of the many crimes the butcher was accused and convicted of. Justice was indeed long in coming.

    In our own country, and in the face of dizzying daily revelations of atrocious financial conducts, one can say that indeed we do have our own butchers and that one day they too will pay for their crimes.

    On Tuesday it was reported that some of our erstwhile leaders who served as governors, ministers and in other capacities in the Dr Goodluck Jonathan administration and possibly others before, managed to stash away a cool $200b in the United Arab Emirates. Apart from the cash, there were mansions said to be owned in Dubai, not by the rich Arabs whose land it is, but by our own leaders. One ex-minister said to be a front for a former a First Lady, allegedly owns two houses there. Another reportedly lays claim to malls.

    Two of President Muhammadu Buhari’s ministers have reportedly jetted off to repatriate the cash and officially impound the properties believed to be illegally acquired. By the way, one of the President’s often lampooned foreign trips is said to have paved the way for the discovery and expected recovery. Thanks to the new order and the heat brought on by the Buhari Presidency pact with the UAE, some of those with dodgy cash and questionable properties in Dubai have starting moving out to such presumed safer places as Singapore, Casablanca and even islands belonging to the United Kingdom. We also hear that Dubai parties hosted by such Nigerians have since thinned down.

    One week before the Dubai report, our front pages chilled us with some N3.2 trillion said to have been kept away from the federal coffers by authorities in the national oil firm NNPC. That report evoked memories of a certain former governor of the Central Bank who essentially revealed that the federal oil corporation was up to some of the dirtiest financial practices Nigerians had known since we struck the liquid gold in the late 50s. The Central Bank chief, much harassed at the time for his guts, has since gone on to mount a befitting throne.

    A little over a week ago, word was out, again, that a memo from the Presidential Villa authorised the release of some N3.145 billion allegedly to be split among chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party and the Goodluck Support Group. A Permanent Secretary generated that memo, it was learnt, but it is unclear who directed it to be generated.

    Some of those implicated in these shady deals have been charged to court. More will sooner or later have their day in court. Possibly, some will be discharged and acquitted. But it is clear that people we had in positions of authority set out from day one to fleece the country, suck it dry of its lifeblood and leave it to stagger on its bones until it can stagger no more. They had no more love for this country than Mr Karadzic had for Bosnian Muslims and their Croat compatriots. Mr Karadzic played a major role in a war that consumed over 100,000 souls and led to the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

    The 70-year-old butcher was found guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, among others, and was put away for 40 years. What verdict will justice hand our own butchers, whose brazen and systematic approach to greed and criminality must have wiped out only the good Lord knows how many souls? How many of our troops were cut down by better-equipped Boko Haram fighters? How many doctors fled to other countries because they could no longer watch patients die for lack of drugs in the hospitals? Can we quantify the degradation of our school infrastructure as a result of diverted funds?

    Mr Karadzic had guts and fooled the security community with his cucumber-cool composure. He dressed smart, sporting some cool suits and was a master of disguise. When he was running away from the law, it was said that he still managed to travel under a fake name to Italy to watch Serie A matches. A fugitive in Belgrade, he worked at a private clinic, claiming to be an alternative medicine practitioner and treating patients for sexual problems and disorders, again, under a false name. A man who usually sported a clean-shaven face and  hair longer than John Kerry’s, Mr Karadzic was once seen in a full-blown grey beard, his full hair tied into a pony tail, a visage doctored by a pair of professor’s reading glasses.

    A man who studied psychiatry and neurotic disorders and depression, caused his people such mental problems and disorders. Mr Karadzic also seemed to mock his people and his patients claiming to be a passionate physician with answers to their private worries.

    Mr Karadzic got away with butchery for so long. But in the end, all the tricks in the book could not shield him from the day of reckoning. Our own butchers have been quite smart too, affecting in their day to be the best we could find. And we couldn’t tell the difference. But like the Butcher of Bosnia, their day will come too.

  • Keep pushing the equality bill

    Senator Abiodun Olujimi (PDP, Ekiti South) should cheer up. And so should everyone who supports the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill she initiated and presented before her colleagues on Tuesday. Her efforts produced some chilling results, though, for the male-dominated Senate of over 100 men against seven women shot the bill down as soon as she could read out the title. In other words, Olujimi’s bill did not go beyond First Reading. It speaks volumes of the senators’ intolerance of the idea of gender equality, of their aversion to the very words, and of their impatience with a woman’s audacity to contemplate the unheard-of. It hints of a bunch of male chauvinists feeling almost dismantled by the thought that someone was bent on having women stand shoulder to shoulder with some special people who pay their bride price. For all the senators cared, Olujimi could as well ask that women immediately start picking up the bills covering rent, house upkeep, school and sundry fees, as men have been doing long before she was conceived.

    Considering the bill’s imperatives, if not urgency, Olujimi might feel a bit deflated and discouraged. It is natural but she need not be. Here’s why. She has chosen a modern path -the law- to tackle an ancient dinosaur that has simply refused to be extinct. We have heard of women who poisoned the domestic chauvinists, also known as their husbands. We have heard of those who physically attacked their domineering male spouses, or denied them conjugal rights, or quietly pulled out of their marriage simply because their men insisted on being known, addressed and treated as gods rather than human partners.

    Such methods of righting a wrong are unhelpful. But Olujimi’s parliamentary effort is great because whenever it sees the light of day every woman and the entire society will benefit. This should lift the spirits of the Ekiti senator. She should also be encouraged by the fact that not all men in the Senate are chauvinists. Some, however few, indeed supported the bill.

    What was the senator fighting for with the bill? She was seeking an end to “all forms of discrimination against women”, aiming to protect women against violence, including the physical and sexual kind. It made a case against anything amounting to “inhuman, humiliating or degrading” treatment of women. It craved for women being free to vote and be voted for, and that they “shall have the right to an equitable share in the inheritance of the property of their husbands.”

    I not only see nothing wrong with the provisions or particulars of the bill but also make bold to say that they are supposed to be, in the first place, the inalienable rights of women. Yet, on Tuesday, some alpha-male chauvinists in the Senate smashed the bill citing portions of the Quran and the Bible to support their positions.

    I know the Bible refers to the man as head of the home, and that the wife should submit to him but I know of no scripture which bars women from freely choosing a candidate to vote in an election, for instance. I have read enough of the leadership qualities of such biblical women as Miriam and Deborah to know that men sometimes want to put women in subjection more out of ignorance, sheer chauvinism or outright mischief. When men tend to keep women quiet it is to massage their misplaced ego or to play the good custodian of culture and tradition.

    Such attitudes and tendencies are anachronistic and therefore untenable in the modern era.

    When my Dad passed 10 years ago, there was pressure to have my Mum lie beside his corpse just before he was buried, according to tradition. I resisted it even though I was warned that my Mum could come to some harm if she said no. She is now in her late 70s and in appreciable health.

    My Mum was lucky. Some of her counterparts in other parts of the country must shave off their hair, keep themselves untidy and in some cases drink their deceased husbands’ corpse-bathwater. Some are stripped of everything they and their late spouses acquired together and then thrown out of their homes.

    What should Senator Olujimi do in the face of rejection? The first thing is to know that she is on the right side of history. Secondly, she must not give up. She must keep pushing the bill as long as she in the Senate or even as long as she has breath. Keeping women quiet, which is what the rejection of the bill amounts to, is not peculiar to Nigeria, though. Some other nations have done, some still do it, to their shame. One good thing is that some other nations, still, know the difference between the age of the dinosaurs and a forward-looking, tech-driven era. At some point, it was unthinkable for a black man to vote in America; now one is serving out an eight-year tenure as president and commander-in-chief. In that same country, women could not cast their ballot; now a black president could hand over to a woman in the Fall.

    I realise that we have so many rivers to cross. Our politics is still dirty and blood-soaked, for instance. Our standards fall far short. Our houses continue to collapse, killing our people. Our schools and are not worth much. If life itself means little to us, how can we expect our men to easily accept that women are equal?

    But as long as we continue to live in the ugly past, so long should the Olujimis in our midst keep pushing for equality. History beckons.

    CORRECTION

    I erred last week in this space when I referred to Olumba Olumba Obu as the head of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Crescent. Everyone knows that O.O.O. leads the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star. I must thank a reader who pointed out the error, warning me not “start another problem”.

  • Before the next pilgrimage

    Before the next pilgrimage

    CAN anyone please come forward with facts and figures on the dividends of state-sponsored pilgrimage? I will speak only for myself. Beyond a few goldcoloured teeth here and there, the title of JP (for Jerusalem Pilgrim) or an appellation announcing that you have indeed visited the holy land, branded caps, some rare souvenir grains and not a few inflated egos, there is little else to justify the billions of taxpayers’ cash shoveled into the

    annual pilgrimage ritual. Saudi Arabians and Israelis, who cope with the horde of the world’s pilgrims every year, including a significant mass from Nigeria, love their well-ordered countries. The Saudis relish their functional infrastructure. The Israelis pride themselves on the transformation of a once arid land

    into a green, prosperous nation. What do their Nigerian guests thump their chests for? Pretty little, indeed. And what do the state governments, which sponsor them, celebrate? Um, um and more um! That is why the Akinwunmi Ambode administration in Lagos State deserves praise, as does the Abubakar Bello government in Niger State. Lagos announced this week that it will no longer pay out state money to pilgrims going

    to Mecca or Jerusalem. Similar words have also issued from Minna, the Niger State capital.

    It is about time, too. Every year the states, from Sokoto to Bayelsa, fork out billions of nairas covering pilgrims’ flight

    tickets, meals and whatnot on a religious exercise that is purely and exclusively personal. One unconfirmed report

    said that Niger State paid as much as over N5b in such sponsorship in one year just over two back. Governor Bello

    has questioned the logic in paying as much as N1m per pilgrim per year. Governor Ambode has similar worries.

    They are both right. Such cash from across the states in one year over five years would probably be enough to scale

    back the infrastructure deficits that have made nonsense of the entire country and its people. There are no clean public water sources to speak of. Therefore, youths have no idea what a public tap looks like. Most borehole facilities are no more than deep wells whose water is not fit for drinking.

    Any wonder why water-borne diseases ravage the country? Roads remain woeful, in fact, public enemy No 1. It is

    doubtful if the hospitals are any better than mere consulting clinics, as someone labelled them years ago. It is also

    beyond debate that in the clinics these days, the consultants are few and far between considering the huge number of ailing people seeking diagnoses and treatment. Public school infrastructure has so decayed that almost everyone

    wants to have as little as possible to do with them. But the tragedy is that the private institutions, except those of the

    rich churches, are also decaying, leaving one with hardly any choice as to which to send one’s kids, that is, supposing

    the cash were there.

    Apart from the woeful infrastructure narrative, the states are broke, unable to pay monthly salaries, an obligation

    that is otherwise basic. This required the painful intervention of the newly-formed Buhari administration which had

    to bail out the cash-strapped constituents. Even in the best of times, all the states had was little more than the federal

    government would allocate from the oil cash vault. Now the central government is struggling for breath, its oil revenue

    down to a mere pittance. To whom will the states run for cash?

    As in almost everything Nigerian, opinions are divided as to whether or not Government should stop the pilgrimage

    sponsorship. So many want it to stop but some also made a case for its perpetuity. Olumba Olumba Obu,

    leader of the Brotherhood of the Star and Crescent, reportedly wants Government to keep sponsoring pilgrims but

    he also wants the pilgrim contingent to be expanded and diversified to include worshippers of other religions, not

    merely Christians and Muslims. O. O. O. did not, however, name the other faithful he deemed deserving of the sponsorship cover, nor did he mention which destination they would be headed in the event of their inclusion in the

    annual party.

    Another pro-sponsorship respondent was quoted as essentially arguing that pilgrims go to the holy lands to

    pray and renew their spirituality, a disposition that enhances their prayers and makes for a better country.

    While it is impossible for me to make light of the efficacy of prayer or of its national value, I think it is incontestable

    that ours remains a very religiously volatile nation, in which we often hack down one another on matters relating

    to faith and ethnicity. As I tapped out this piece, a colleague called on the telephone to report one of such clashes in a

    part of the country whose soil has soaked much of its inhabitants’ blood.

    I am persuaded that if our faith is any good or better, it is not because Government pays our way to Mecca or

    Jerusalem. Neither is our interpersonal relationship or national cohesion any smoother on account of the annual

    flight to other people’s lands. For Muslims, the pilgrimage is only the fifth obligation;

    even then, it is for those who can afford it, not those who rely on state sponsorship. For Christians, it is not mentioned

    at all. Also, after doling all that money, Government commits much resources into ensuring through talks and

    workshops that the pilgrims do not defect or annoy their hosts in any way especially by breaking their laws.

    Before the next pilgrims’ flight to Mecca or Jerusalem, every state government should hands off all pilgrimages

    and make some restitution even if only by a public broadcast saying they are sorry for wasting the people’s money

    for so long

     

  • Apex court rulings: Let’s just swallow hard and move on

    It is unclear who first coined the phrase ‘The law is an ass’. For sure, Charles Dickens penned those words in his famous work Oliver Twist published in 1838. In that novel, a man in court over issues with his bossy wife was told that “…the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.”

    The man, Mr Bumble, replied with a fair amount of frustration and impatience, “If the law supposes that, the law is an ass.”

    Scholars have asserted that the words were not original to the famous novelist and that indeed they appeared hundreds of years earlier in a work entitled Revenge of Honour published in 1654 by English dramatist George Chapman.

    A portion of that work reads, “Ere he shall lose an eye for such a trifle…For doing deeds of nature! I’m ashamed. The law is such an ass.”

    Is that the end of the controversy? No. Another playwright would come into the picture, credited with Chapman’s play under the title ‘The Parricide, or, Revenge for Honor’ said to be written around 1620, in other words, much earlier than Dickens’ or Chapman’s efforts.

    Still, it has been said that neither Chapman nor that other playwright, Henry Glapthorne, wrote the play.

    But before our own governorship candidates who lost their appeals at the Supreme Court begin to comfort themselves with that phrase, supposing that it means the law is sh*t or something worse, they should be informed that the ass in question is the other name for a donkey, not the posterior quarters of humans or animals.

    The ass is known for its stubbornness, sometimes of the incomprehensible kind. So in the case of poor Mr Bumble or the other fellow on the verge of losing an eye for a minor offence, the law is viewed as too rigid.

    How then do we or should we view the recent judgements of the Supreme Court especially on the Rivers and Akwa Ibom states governorship election cases?

    It is impossible to have a unified position, it must be said. The atmosphere in the camp of the All Progressives Congress’ candidates has been understandably subdued and plaintive, sometimes accusatory. In the People’s Democratic Party corner, on the other hand, there is exultation.

    Beyond the partisan divide, can we have any position whatsoever? Do we feel that justice has been served beyond every reasonable doubt, as lawyers like to say? Is there credibility in the verdicts?’ If we have some reservations, what do we do? Do we hold our peace in respect to the learned Justices, blink a few times, swallow hard and move on?

    We are supposed to hail the judgements. For, they were delivered by seasoned Justices whose professionalism and patriotism are not in doubt. But on the other hand, I hope that anyone who was dissatisfied with the rulings will be permitted to ruminate on the areas of their private discontents, however ignorant they may be.

    As Mr Bumble wondered how he could possibly lose a case against his domineering spouse, so also someone was amazed that a guy who committed a minor offence could risk losing a body organ as important as an eye. They wondered what the law or its application was coming to.

    I am under no such torments. Our laws and their interpretation are appreciably in good health and in good hands, if we slice off the small margin of the antics of the proverbial bad eggs in the bar and on the bench. I only persuade myself to study these things a bit more thoroughly and always remember that those who hand out the judgements mean well too. The fate and future of the country are as important to winners and losers of court cases and elections as they are to the judges and justices who decide them.

    But to a mere columnist like me, unlearned in the fine and refined arts of law and the end to which it is put, some of these rulings may remain a bit of a puzzle for a while until I am better schooled and groomed.

    One eminent lawyer, Itse Sagay, a professor in the field, has reportedly described the rulings as “very strange”, “unprecedented”, even Draconian, in the sense that they seemed essentially alike, in other words, one verdict for all cases.

    Both the Rivers and Akwa Ibom governorship elections were reportedly marred by appreciable irregularities and not a little bloodshed, among other forms of violence. The trial tribunals and appeal courts dismissed the polls, indicating that the victories of Mr Nyesom Wike (Rivers) and Mr Udom Emmanuel (Akwa Ibom) were suspect. At the Supreme Court, the lower courts’ verdicts were emphatically reversed. In both cases, the Supreme Court Justices ruled, inter alia, that Wike and Emmanuel were legally and validly elected; that they were denied fair hearing at the lower courts; that it was wrong for the appellate courts to base their judgements on guidelines of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on the use of card readers, and that, in the case of Akwa Ibom, it was wrong for the lower court to rely only on the facts and not the provisions of the law.

    For me, a few questions pop up. Did the prosecution at both the trial tribunal and appellate court do such a shoddy job? If so, the prosecution team need as much legal schooling as I do. Secondly, if the prosecutors made a messed up their cases, why did the Appeal Court judges rule in their favour, after all, the judges are presumed no less professional, reputable and patriotic? Thirdly, if, and only if, our prosecutors and judges do not quite measure up in matters as consequential as election arbitration, is it not about time we collapsed every legal and judiciary structure in place and started all over again? Meanwhile, those who are as puzzled by the rulings as I am may only need to blink hard, swallow hard and move on, hoping for the best especially in matters electoral and judicial.

     

     

  • How to graze in peace

    It has been an eventful week. In Kogi State, on Wednesday, Alhaji Yahaya Bello walked into Lugard House, the state’s seat of power, a much lonely figure. He had no deputy walking in with him. So when the litigants come charging in, as they sure will, seeking to toss him out of his cosy seat, he won’t have much top-level company from which to draw comfort. Poor him.

    In Rivers, that same day, Governor Nyesom Wike must have felt he had the last laugh. The wise Justices at the Supreme Court unreservedly declared him the rightful winner of last year’s governorship election. That ruling would have stunned the equally judicious appellate court team which could not stomach Wike’s victory as earlier announced by INEC, the nation’s electoral body, after the polls, and promptly nullified it. Dakuku Peterside who won the appeal, and his team, must be bewildered, too, but they must accept it and move on.

    The day was not done. In Ogun and Ebonyi, where less noise was made on the elections, Mr Ibikunle Amosun and Mr Dave Umahi also got the Supreme Court clearance to carry on with governance without having to worry about challengers and court cases.

    But even before all of that, on Sunday, blood had flowed freely in Adamawa. It was not the usual suspect Boko Haram. It was the other suspects, Fulani herdsmen versus local farmers. Some accounts said 30 people were killed in the clash. One of the dead was a Divisional Police Officer Mr Okozie Okereofor, barely two months at his new post. According to the report, the violence occurred in four villages namely, Demos, Wunamokoh, Dikajam and Taboungo after Fulani herdsmen invaded them. Apart from the police officer, not much is known about the other casualties, but to their families and friends, as well as the entire country, their death should be just as painful. It doesn’t matter whether the dead were simply herdsmen and growers who sized up one another or other folks who were simply cut down by the brutes. What is important is that lives have been taken so violently in a country governed by reasonable people and laws.

    Apart from the terror group Boko Haram, it is difficult to find any other combatants as bloodthirsty as herdsmen and farmers. Of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, there is hardly any spared the herdsmen-farmers bloodletting. They have caused as much misery in Kaduna and Adamawa as they have in Plateau or Taraba or any other state. In Plateau, the violence would have been admitted into the realm of proverbs. Was that not where we heard, in 2010, of a pre-dawn raid which all but wiped out a community called Dogon-Nahawa?

    Why should people die repeatedly because of animals? Why is it impossible for breeders to graze their cattle peacefully?

    The answer is simple. Government whose job it is to protect life and property through effective policies and enforced laws has consistently failed to do so. In a country brimming with lawyers and lawmakers, social scientists and public administrators, to say nothing of people with good old commonsense, it is curious that we simply have not discovered how to guide our animals to where they can eat grass quietly or drink water without upsetting the local population or spilling blood. I find that unacceptable. It is about time we started holding our leaders, especially those at the centre, accountable for the herdsmen-farmers violence, for every drop of blood spilled when they clash.

    It is true that herdsmen, finding less and less pasture for their growing stock, risk the hazardous trek from North to South and in so doing routinely encroach on farmlands. It is also true that when their cattle hoof through farms and destroy crops, the nomads do not quite manage the disagreements enough to avoid clashes, many of which turn out bloody. A young farmer in Delta State reported how he found a herd of cattle on his cassava farm and urged the herdsman to take them away to prevent more damage. The herdsman reacted, according to the grower, by raising and aiming his AK-47 at him. Thankfully, he did not squeeze the trigger, and eventually led his animals away but not before they had chewed up or trampled a good deal of the farmer’s crops. The breeder is not always the aggressor, though. Sometimes, and this seems to happen more in the North than elsewhere, armed thieves, called rustlers, simply rob them of their livestock, something the Fulani would rather die than let go unchallenged.

    Can the breeders avoid violence while grazing their animals? Yes. The federal government is reportedly planning to provide grazing areas, where they will have exclusive rights to look after their livestock. This will help but only in the interim. The politics, logistics and realities of grazing areas can be daunting. For instance, will people’s farmlands be acquired by government to keep herdsmen happy?

    Ranching is the answer. Every breeder should be sufficiently supported by government to own their breeding grounds, which they do not have far to seek. With support, ranches can be developed right in the herdsman’s home state, no matter how arid it may be. Deserts are reclaimable and can become fertile. It cannot be as costly as is sometimes feared. Besides, it is certainly cheaper to save lives. Ranches will save the breeders much foot travel. Their animals which the whole population munches on everyday will be healthier, their milk enhanced.

    With ranches in place, even the newly sworn-in state governors and others who no longer have to fear for their seats will also not worry about breeders and growers violence. Diners can eat fufu and chew beef in peace.

     

  • The President’s friends

    Few can deny that leaders are as good as the advice they get. Wise counsel, taken and implemented, leaves the leader on the warm side of history and of their people’s hearts, long after they have moved on. Bad advice, on the other hand, does not merely cut off the leader’s name; that would amount to a reward; it subjects him or her to constant attacks, even in death.

    A certain ancient Egyptian ruler, on the advice of an aide, according to legend, decreed that male children born to some promising settlers in the land be killed at birth or cast into the Nile to swim or drown. There were more hideous counsels to follow, taken and implemented, but which, in the end, left Pharaoh altogether a much reviled figure, even in death, to say nothing of how he ended up.

    In contemporary history, former President Goodluck Jonathan demonstrated just how unloved that Egyptian king was (and still is) when he exploded in exasperation, really, with critics of his lack-luster style, that he was no Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar or such other maximum rulers.

    On the right side of Egyptian records, though, one young man named Joseph, twice a slave, once a prisoner, would prevent what would have been a national disaster probably of unrivaled proportions simply by giving good advice to the king.

    What was his advice? In years of plenty, O King, save for the rainy day, for the seasons of scarcity that are sure to come. He didn’t say save up for yourself and the palace, and leave everyone else to their devices.

    That wise counsel saved Egypt starvation and large-scale death.

    Who are President Muhammadu Buhari’s best friends? Who are his advisers? Are they those who give him a bear hug, smile in his face and say, ‘Shame on bad people, they couldn’t keep you away from Aso Rock forever, you got it in the end’? Are his best associates among those who simply count themselves lucky to land some comfortable appointments in these hard times and will resist every nudge to offer wise, if uncomfortable, counsel? Or can we class as his friends any in the National Assembly who will say, Scratch our backs and we will scratch yours? Or those, God forbid, who will say in spite of the President’s aversion to ostentation and waste, they will spend the people’s money as they please? Are they the aides who swear they know just how his mind works and will help him get whatever he wants whether he approves of the means or not?

    On the flip side, who are the President’s enemies? Are they those, like writers, commentators and analysts, who spot a derailing, a foot put wrong, a miss-carrying policy, and speak up?

    Whatever a leader does, if he cannot tell his genuine friends from self-seeking lackeys, I think that leader is doomed. He must, for the life of him, know for sure those who understand his vision, if he has one, and who, despite all odds, are determined to help him achieve it.

    Readers who have endured my exertions in this space in recent weeks, I believe, have a fair idea what my perspective on the Buhari vision for the country is. But if the readers can humour me one more time, I will reaffirm that Mr President is on a mission to clean up a much-tarnished country, and that if he keeps at it, he will end up as the leader we have been looking for since independence in 1960. The stench of fraud has so spread that people in far-flung places practically feel sorry for us. Corruption has become so deep-rooted that not a few seem to mistake it for the rule rather than the exception.

    This year’s federal budget estimates, presented today-missing-tomorrow-and-declared-never-lost-at-all-the-day-after, inspires inquiries. What happened? Who are the President’s advisers and their role in what happened? What is the condition of the heart of the federal lawmakers to whom Buhari presented the estimates? And what class of prank would we term such a disappearance and then appearance of such an important document at such an important institution as the National Assembly? Or the retort that it was not lost?

    Of the two sides to the matter, the Presidency is clearly the more tight-lipped. When the Senate spoke, whether through its president Dr Bukola Saraki, his aides or other senators, all we heard was either that the missing budget issue would be sorted out as soon as a committee met on it, or that we were making a mountain out of a mole hill and that the proposals document was not really missing.

    The Presidency’s taciturnity is as unhelpful as is the wave-of-the-hand dismissive approach of the senators and their assistants.

    It would have been appropriate for one or even both arms of government to issue a full-disclosure statement on the matter, realising that it was too important to Nigerians to be glossed over. Many suspected all kinds of foul play, none of which flattered the Presidency or the Senate. President Buhari has now formally written to the National Assembly to withdraw the document and edit it.

    That move was late, and, in any case, shouldn’t put an end to the matter. It has been said that the President’s liaison aide on Senate matters, Ita Enang, brought in another version of the budget proposals different from the one his principal presented earlier. Was he acting alone or with the connivance of some senators or staff of the chamber?

    The point to note is that this foul affair does not lift the spirits of believers in the change regime or anti-graft campaign.

    Something can still be done to restore confidence. The guilty in the matter should be appropriately sanctioned. Some have asked whether Enang was plain overzealous, seeking to please his boss whose first budget as president has received mixed reactions, some saying there were instances of padding and the vain old order in which ridiculous sums were unnecessarily attached to some items on the budget. If the charge sticks, the President’s senior special assistant to the National Assembly should be fired. That is not how to assist or advise the President.

    One more point: if the President realised too late that his advisers padded up the budget by inventing unnecessary things on which to spend scarce cash, such as furnishing kitchens and acquiring new pots, cookers and whatnot at exorbitant prices, he should fish out those advisers and give them the proper treatment.

    If their disposition does not chime with his frugal nature, it is unlikely that they can help him achieve his vision for the country. He should dispense with their advice. They are not his friends any more than are lawmakers with some outsize luxury-car tastes.