The Nation Newspaper

Category: Saturday

  • Miserable lives of Nigerian Students in Russia

    Miserable lives of Nigerian Students in Russia

    Nigerian students on the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) scheme in Russia and other European countries are helpless as infants. HANNAH OJO, who traced the plight of some of the students, reports that students of Rivers State origin under the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency scholarship scheme are also not spared in the hardship of unpaid allowances.

    Many times I had to go to the lab on empty stomach and my supervisor will tease me about eating the wheat samples marked for experiments.  We trek to campuses in the winter because we can’t afford public buses. We owe hostel fees. We borrow from other students to survive while the ladies face unspeakable options.

    These were the words of Nigeria’s wonder boy,  Ifesinachi Nelson Ezeh, who made history when he completed his master’s degree in Agronomy at Saint Petersburg State Agrarian University in Russia, graduating with a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 5.0, the highest the country has ever recorded.

    Nelson,  who arrived in Russia for an undergraduate degree in 2008 with 40 other Nigerians who passed the federal scholarship exams, were beneficiaries of a Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) between Nigeria and Russia. Under the said scheme, Russia pays the tuition, while Nigeria takes care of the living costs of the students of the students with a monthly stipend of $500 dollars.

    The scholarship is awarded to Nigerians under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) between Nigeria and a number of countries, including Russia, Cuba, Turkey, Egypt and others.  At present, there are over 350 Nigerian BEA scholars in Russia from the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory undergoing their undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate studies. Under the agreement, the Russian Federation takes care of the students’ tuition fees. The Russian government fulfils their side of the bargain as long as the student maintains a very good academic record.

    Findings made by The Nation revealed that the stipends, which the Nigerian government is supposed to pay the students quarterly, have, however, not been consistent in the past seven years.  The last two years have been particularly gruesome as payments were not made for 12 straight months between 2015 and 2016.

    The cost of unpaid allowances is devastating to the scholars. The psychological impact is also immeasurable as the students live in fear of what could happen next.

    “The financial insecurity adds to the academic cross. The school authorities are either on your neck or fellow students are asking for their money back. You can’t hide because the Russian law provides that you stay where you were registered,” added Ezeh, who likened trekking in cold spring morning to walking in a freezer.

    We are asked to work as janitors to offset hostel costs

    Their faces looked thinned with hunger and they appear grumpy in their winter jackets and backpacks.  Many of them travelled long distances spending between 10 to 20 hours to get to Moscow, the Russia capital where a peaceful protest was staged to demand the payment of their 12 months long allowance.

    “Is it fair? Pays us; Pay hostel allowance for medical students,” were some of the inscriptions on the placards the student displayed during their protest in October 2016.

    Speaking on their grievances, the scholars alleged that the non-payment of their allowance was not occasioned by economic recession but incompetence and malpractices on the part of the scholarship board. The students recalled that as far back as 2014 when Nigeria had the largest GDP growth in Africa, they were owned allowances. In the protest video released online, one of the students said they are sometimes asked to work as janitors to offset their hotel bills.

    “Many of us are high achievers. We represent our schools in various competitions. We are doing our own part and all the government does is to treat us anyhow. We have tried all diplomatic means but there was no response.  It has gotten to the extent that a  church had to set up a fundraiser for Nigerian students,” the leader of the protest said in a video obtained by The Nation.

    In a recent chat,  Faith Olapade,  President, Association of Nigerian Scholarship Students in Russia told The Nation that after the protest in Moscow, the government reacted by paying a  token which barely added up to two of the 13 months owed.

    “What the government paid is not even enough to pay back what the students had borrowed to survive the 13 months of non-payment. We were also told that the token is part of our 2016 stipend. We really don’t understand why it is so since we are still being owed some months in 2015.

    “The situation surrounding the Bilateral Education Agreement, the Federal Scholarship Board funding and students’ stipend is very complicated. We will appreciate if someone from the Federal Scholarship Board explains to us and the rest of Nigeria why the scheme pays in bits and we are subjected to suffering,” asked Olapade, a Computer Science student at Tver State Technical University, Russia.

    Among other countries participating in the BEA with Russia, Nigeria is known for lateness and delays. For the instance, the new BEA scholarship students from Nigeria arrived in Moscow on November 9, two months after the 2016/2017 academic year started.  This is aside from the fact that Nigerian students are also known for paying their hostel and insurance bills late.

    “The non-payment of allowances has literally turned Nigerian scholars to beggars. Most of us can’t afford to eat even once a day and others can’t make it to classes due to the lack of transport fare. Some have even been evicted from their hostels because they could not pay the fee, while others are hanging on with a weekly threat of eviction.

    “It’s really difficult for us right now as Russia is also going through an economic crisis and prices of commodities are inflated. Also, surviving the cold weather is difficult without warm clothing. To make matters worse, we all have student visas and this makes it legally impossible for us to earn on our own. The current economic crisis in Nigeria, unrealistic bank rates, strict laws of outbound transfer and recent limits put on ATM cards make it really difficult for our parents to assist us in these trying times.

    “We are pleading with the government to remember us by coming through with the remainder of our 2015 stipends and full 2016 payment. We didn’t sign up to be scholars to suffer this way,” Olapade further stated.

    A source who pleaded anonymity in the office of Bilateral Scholarship Board, Abuja confirmed to The Nation that the allowance for scholars in the BEA scheme is usually included in the annual budget of the ministry of Education.

    Also, the BEA department is not known for honouring requests for information on some of its activities, even in some cases where an FOI request would have been made.

    For the federal government scholars in Russia,  calls made to the Nigerian Scholarship Board to inquire about their allowances are usually met with the response that the budget has not been implemented or they are waiting for the Central Bank.

    A postgraduate student in Russia, who pleaded anonymity for fear of victimisation, told our correspondent that the hardship they face by non-payment of the allowance is made worse by the fact finding a job in Russia as an African is like finding a needle in a haystack.

    “The image of Nigeria is at stake. Russia has bilateral education agreement with a host of countries but the Russians, from the workers at the Russian Ministry of Education to the staff of respective universities, will let you know that Nigeria will always bring their students late.

    “Nigerian students will always be the last to pay for their hostel accommodation and they always ask for a grace period before they purchase the compulsory medical insurance. The list goes on.

    “A number of churches where some of our scholars worship now organise fund-raising services to help out those of us who can’t  pay for hostel accommodation so we don’t end up sleeping on the streets in the cold weather,” the student said.

    Israel Ojonugwa Ibrahim, another Nigerian student in Russia, also decried the situation they are faced asking the government to help redeem their dignity as human beings.

    “There are times when you weren’t sure of what to eat the next day. We try to look for jobs but to no avail because we are studying with students’ visa and it is not legal to work,” Ibrahim lamented.

    Like FG, like Rivers

    Another body that has reneged on its commitment to students on scholarship is the Rivers State Government. In December 2015, Governor Nyesom Wike concluded plans to withdraw Rivers students on scholarship in foreign countries back to Nigeria on the basis that the government can no longer continue to fund the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency’s oversea scholarship scheme.

    The state Commissioner for Agric, Ominim Jack, was reportedly quoted to have said in a meeting with parents that the state government could no longer sustain the scholarship scheme as a result of the current economic situation in the country. Thereafter, the state government then initiated the transfer of the students back to Nigeria in order to continue at either the University of Port Harcourt or the Rivers State University of Science and Technology.

    The development was greeted with disapproval from parents of the students, who also pleaded with Governor Wike to consider other means of sustaining the scholarship programme since some of the students were midway into their programme.

    “The curriculum can never be the same,” one of the parents was quoted to have said.

    However, it was learnt that before the governor reached the decision to stop the scheme in 2015, the students’ allowances were not paid for almost a year.

    At the time the news of the planned deportation of Rivers state students abroad broke, a Canadian,  Benedicte LeMaitre, from Winnipeg, took to GoFundMe a crowdfunding platform to raise $250,000 for some RSSDA students studying at the University of Manitoba in Canada. The fundraising did not turn out successful as only $944 was raised since 13 months ago when the campaign was launched.

    Canada was home to nearly 250 Nigerian students who were studying at 14 Canadian universities on the RSSDA scholarship. On the average, international students pay $7,000 to $11, 000 tuitions per term for a full load of classes.

    Kennedy Roland, a medical student studying at the University of Pecs Medical School, Hungary, confirmed to The Nation that only about seven of them were left since the government stopped paying stipends to students.

    He said: “It’s been so bad that other students had to accommodate some of us. For 27 months and still counting, we have not been paid our upkeep. I’m being helped by a student who is accommodating and helping me with feeding. Sometimes, my family tries   to send me money for feeding but it has not been easy since ATM has been stopped abroad.”

    Roland, who hopes to graduate in the middle of 2019, has an outstanding $15,300 as fees for his third year. He is presently not able to pay for the current semester.

    However, the Director, Press and Public Relations, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs Chinenye Ihuoma, said government owed the students $500 per person stipend for only one year and two months, not for two years as earlier claimed.

    She added that the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, had given approval for the payment of the money.

    “The FBS (Federal Scholarship Board) is awaiting the release of money to that effect,” Mrs. Ihuoma said, adding: “The debt is for all the scholars in our BEA (Bilateral Education Agreement) countries and not only Russia.

  • EFCC, whistle-blowers and vagrant, orphaned loot

    EFCC, whistle-blowers and vagrant, orphaned loot

    IT may amount to jumping the gun to describe the horrendous amounts of money being recovered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from unorthodox places in recent times as proceeds of crime. But with the exception of a few persons who admit ownership of monies traced to them, nearly all the others have furtively avoided being linked with the recovered loot. Yet each of the recovered loot is so indescribably and mind-bogglingly huge that it is difficult to believe it is owned by one person. In one week alone, and in two separate places, the EFCC discovered N.45bn and N.25bn at two locations. Then shortly before the week came to a close, about N15bn in foreign currencies was also found virtually abandoned. No one has been brave enough to claim ownership of the three stashes. In fact those whose names were mentioned with the apartments where the stashes were found have violently rejected any linkage. All together, in about a week, some N16bn has been found, and not one brave soul has owned up.

    The EFCC gives assurance that the owners of the abandoned monies will be found, for there was not one find that was made without the assistance of a whistle-blower. If no information has been volunteered to the public by the anti-graft agency regarding the ownership of the monies, it does not appear the problem is knowledge of the monies’ circumstances. The reticence may be tactical. The shops where the monies were found have identifiable owners, and the ones meant to be converted into foreign currencies were brought by identifiable owners. There is indeed no mystery about the monies, only bewilderment about the value, and perhaps shock that each recovery seemed to be owned by one person.

    Though neither public commentators nor the anti-graft agency itself can be hasty about ascribing purposes or motives to the stashing of the monies, especially determining whether they are the proceeds of crime, the value of the sums and the contemptuous manner they were disclaimed by their alleged owners suggest they were illicit monies procured and stashed away from the prying eyes of the  authorities. Nor is it clear that somewhere along the line, someone would still not come forward to claim association, especially after the initial shock must have worn off and the alleged owners invented a reasonable explanation to justify the ownership of the humongous sums. A few weeks back, a former Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Andrew Yakubu, had, after initial hesitation, claimed ownership of a little less than $10m found stashed fairly unobtrusively in a nondescript apartment in Kaduna. He attributed it to gifts from unnamed well-wishers, an explanation his neighbours and traducers sneered at. Justifying ownership of more than $43m would be nearly impossible.

    More of such illicit cash will likely be discovered in the coming weeks, often in very unlikely, embarrassing and demeaning places. With the whistle-blower policy firmly in place and immeasurably enticing, owners of illicit money will no longer trust anyone. To them the streets and neighbourhoods are brimming with betrayers. But to the nation, those unlikely ‘loot havens’ are brimming with patriots. Guaranteeing the safety and security of the whistle-blowers, some of them poised to earn in excess of hundreds of millions, will be the government’s next headache, if not nightmare. For no one can tell whether some of the stashed loot are not owned by more than one person, a few of them relentless and vicious.

    The government and its EFCC will henceforth work with a few basic assumptions. If the stashed monies are in naira, they will be difficult to hide, and even more difficult to keep next to the owner. Their owners will need to prepare ready alibis to disown the monies. But if the owners elect to change the monies into foreign currencies, in order perhaps to miniaturise the loot and make it a little easier to launder, how can they tell which forex dealers would keep secrets secret in the face of tempting whistle-blower commission huge enough for any struggling dealer to retire on? These are doubtless difficult times for owners of illicit money. Their monies in the banks are been traced, and sooner or later the trace will point in their direction. And to keep money outside the banking system, whether in septic tanks or abandoned houses and shops, some of them in wealthy areas and others in poor areas, is the greatest dilemmas they face.

    It is not certain that the media has identified whose brilliant idea it was to adopt and adapt the whistle-blowing policy. Whoever were behind the idea have done Nigeria a whole lot of good, far beyond what words can describe. If the policy is not abused, if the authorities can sustain it faithfully, and the whistle-blowers are not double-crossed or short-changed, more illicit cash will be recovered until, in frustration, public officials find it a great disincentive to fiddle with public funds, at least on the scale that now beggars belief. The measure may be insufficient to stamp out corruption, but it will contribute, among a welter of other policies and controls, to reducing it so drastically that funds for infrastructural development should be more readily and reasonably available.

    Even then, the nation still has a lot to do to find an explanation for why, particularly under the last administration, public officials found it so easy to embezzle public funds and for a long time get away with that crime. More, it is important to do a study of the lax controls, bureaucratic and economic structures, and conniving policies that made the looting bazaar flourish so recklessly and so brazenly. Finally, it is also important to document  for posterity the hundreds, and possibly more, of the public officials who promoted and energised the criminal bazaar in the past few years and turned it into such a destructive force. Now the image of the country is worth very little in the estimation of the world. The law, even if it is severely enforced, requites the crime somewhat adequately, but it is doubtful whether, given the insouciance those engaged in that unprecedented and mind-numbing stealing have demonstrated, enough deterrence has been put in place to discourage the crime. But one thing at a time

  • A tiger’s tigritude

    A tiger’s tigritude

    Reacting to the implicit racism and Eurocentric superiority complex particularly in French colonialism that sought to liberate black Negroes from their supposedly inferior and backward pre-colonial cultures and traditions into an assumedly higher French culture and civilization, a number of African intellectuals came up with the concept and philosophy of negritude.  Their intellectual exertions had the objective of celebrating African cultures, beliefs and values. They sought to rekindle pride in African historical achievements and to demonstrate that African civilizations were at par or at least not inferior to those of other races and in particular to debunk the racist insinuations of colonial political and philosophical thought as regards the alleged barbarism, superstitious inclination and savagery of pristine African cultural beliefs and practices.

    Speaking at a conference in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, a clearly impatient and apparently unimpressed Wole Soyinka famously criticized the negritude movement with the immortal quip that ‘A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude; he pounces”. Elaborating on what he meant by that biting phrase in Berlin in 1964, the Nobel laureate explained that “a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: I am a tiger. When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker; you know that some tigritude has been emanated here”. Rather than dissipating energy on waxing lyrical about the greatness of African culture, history and traditions, therefore, I infer that Soyinka’s criticism implied that it will be much better to make the case through Africa’s concrete achievements in our contemporary world.

    Soyinka’s reference to the tiger and its tigritude came to my mind, once again, in contemplating the rather unpleasant, uninspiring and unanticipated trajectory the President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war has taken particularly in recent times. The administration has suffered at least four serious setbacks in its bid to bring perpetrators of brazen acts of corruption to justice and recover for the benefit of the Nigerian people the humongous amounts of public funds stolen by a microscopic and unscrupulous minority. These are the acquittal and discharge of a judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Adeniyi Ademola as well as his wife and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) for corruption allegations following a no case submission made by the defence and upheld by the court. Others were the court order unfreezing the account of Mr. Mike Ozekhome (SAN) holding the sum of N75 million legal fees paid the senior counsel by Governor Ayo Fayose and believed to be proceeds of corrupt enrichment; the unfreezing by another court of the sum of $5.9 million belonging to former First Lady, Mrs Patience Jonathan, which the EFCC argued was the proceed of legal infractions and the discontinuation on the directive of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Alhaji Abubakar Malami, of a charge of criminal diversion of the sum of N1.9 billion from the amount voted for the construction of the East-West road.

    While some have attributed the serial failure of these high profile anti-corruption cases to scale judicial hurdles to what has come to be popularly known as ‘corruption fighting back’, others have blamed the fiasco on a perceived judicial gang up against both the Buhari presidency and the anti-corruption war. Of course, there has not been a scintilla of evidence to back up the latter conspiracy theory. This column finds it difficult to disagree with renowned human rights lawyer and activist, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) when he contends that “Having reviewed the circumstances under which the corruption cases were lost by the Federal Government, I can say, without any fear of contradiction that there is no basis blaming the judiciary. It is also not a case of corruption fighting back. As far as I am concerned, the cases were lost due to official negligence and lack of inter-agency cooperation by the federal Ministry of Justice, the anti-graft agencies and the State Security Service”.

    Anyone who has followed the absolutely unnecessary turf war between the EFCC and the Department of State Services (DSS) particularly with reference to the so far abortive effort to get the Senate’s confirmation of Mr. Ibrahim Magu, Acting Chairman of the EFCC as the agency’s substantive head, will see that the Buhari administration is prosecuting the anti-corruption war with a badly polarized and dangerously fractured army. It is common knowledge that a house divided against itself cannot stand. In contradistinction to the Buhari administration, the anti-corruption forces stand firmly united in their common greed and ferocious tenacity to uphold the iniquitous status quo and retain their criminal loot at all costs and by all means.

    Yet, spokespersons of the Buhari administration continue to proclaim the so far largely impotent tigritude of the anti-corruption tiger. Speaking on a recent Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) Hausa programme tagged ‘Hannu Da Yawa’, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, pledged the determination of the administration to fight corruption to a standstill despite the strong resistance by some individuals and groups hell bent on thwarting the effort. In his words, President Buhari “To keep that trust of ordinary Nigerians who voted him into office, he has vowed to give corruption a good fight. He will not let them down…The war against corruption in Nigeria is one of those clashes between good and evil where good is determined to triumph”.

    No less vehement is the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed in affirming the unwavering commitment of the administration to taming the contagion of corruption. Urging Nigerians not to be discouraged by the recent negative judicial outcomes against which the federal government has appealed, the minister averred that “The war against corruption is going to be long, tough and arduous, but this administration is equipped physically, mentally and intellectually for the long haul. We must win this war because the law is on our side. This is only the beginning, so any setback will not deter or discourage us”.

    Of course, both Garba and Mohammed have undertaken their duties with the requisite professional competence and diligence. But achieving concrete success in the anti-corruption struggle must go beyond well crafted and sweet sounding words that amount to no more than the anti-corruption tiger proclaiming its tigritude. Rather, it must become manifest in judicial convictions that can serve as a deterrent against future acts of graft. It is not enough to raise the expectations of the public through sensational media reports of the uncovering of stupendous cases of embezzlement of public funds or the discovery of obscene cash hauls in the most unlikely of places.

    What are two crucial factors making it very difficult for Buhari’s anti-corruption war not only to loudly proclaim but also demonstrate its tigritude by pouncing on and vanquishing those caught in its web? The first is the perceived nepotism in the president’s appointments, which are widely seen to be unjustly skewed in favour of the North. In a context in which, public appointments are seen as opportunities for criminal accumulation of public resources for private gain, nepotistic appointments are likely to be read, rightly or wrongly, as a deliberate and conscious creation of avenues for the beneficiaries to empower themselves financially contrary to the spirit of the anti-corruption war.

    The second and not unrelated factor is the seeming reluctance of the administration to subject those of its top functionaries accused of alleged corruption to the strictest standards of accountability and integrity. Such exhibition of double standards creates the impression that in the anti-corruption war, all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. If the administration is able to address these shortcomings and demonstrate its honesty of purpose in the war against graft; it will enjoy such tremendous public good will and support that will make a compromised legislature or a judiciary minded to give corruption a soft landing through vacuous technicalities think twice.

    El-Rufai as enfant terrible

    It is instructive that one of the most devastating and unsparing critiques of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has come from none other than the gadfly and enfant terrible, Mallam Nasir El Rufai, governor of Kaduna state. For a man believed to have unfettered access to the President, it is baffling that El Rufai would be willing to commit to paper and thus risking its leakage to the media in the intrigue-laden inner recesses of shadowy presidential caucuses, his severe put down of both the person of Buhari and his administration, which he says comprises mostly inexperienced and clueless officials who do not share the vision of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Speaking with State House correspondents shortly after joining Buhari for the Juma’at prayer at the Presidential Villa yesterday, El Rufai expressed his disappointment that such a sensitive private communication to the apex office in the country could have been leaked by sources he claims are right within the presidential villa. Yet, El Rufai maintained that he acted with the best of intentions and would not hesitate to fire another memo to the presidency if he considers it necessary. While El Rufai’s courage is admirable, his incendiary missive is not unlikely to become a veritable weapon in the hands of Buhari’s opponents and adversaries as the race towards 2019 gathers momentum. Going by an earlier April 2015 memo from El-Rufai’s to the president, Buhari surely has much more to worry about than the so-called ‘Lagos group’ within the APC, which Rufai accuses of exaggerating its role in Buhari’s electoral triumph without stating why Buhari’s three previous attempts at the presidency failed without the support of the South-west. He asserts without proof that members of the ‘Lagos Group’ of his imagination were scheming to control key revenue generating agencies suggesting that his memo was fuelled more by the frustration of his own agenda by cleverer factions around the Buhari presidency than by any altruistic commitment to the public good.

  • Waiting for Edo sport’s rebirth

    This is the third – and the last – time I will be writing on sports in Edo State. Permit me the indulgence, but I don’t want to bore you. The late Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia’s ideas worked because he structured them to accommodate the athletes’ future.

    Sportsmen and women who could go to school were called programmed athletes. They were given stipends, aside the payment of their school fees – provided they retained their places in such teams. University graduates among them were promoted to the administrative cadre, where they could grow to head the Sports Council or reach the management level. The exceptional ones were encouraged to head for the United States (US) for further studies.

    Those who didn’t have the capacity for education became coaches who were encouraged to upgrade their knowledge, if they had the requisite credentials. This group could also become secretaries of sport federations. Others with secondary school certificates became grounds men and volunteers, among many others during competitions after retirement. The athletes knew what to expect after being spotted. They were not used and dumped.

    Those who couldn’t cope with education at all became gatemen, artisans or drivers. They weren’t disregarded and this helped to build a synergy between the retired athletes and those who replaced them. There was something to play for, with the job opportunities.

    The structures to make sport thrive in the Ogbemudia era were built on models, with the Bendel Sports Council serving as the clearing house to midwife talents discovered, nurtured and exposed through competitions.  Aside, the medal hung on the necks of athletes, the late Ogbemudia personally signed congratulatory citations, which the athletes cherished. The citations gave athletes a sense of belonging, knowing that their efforts were appreciated. Coaches whose teams were successful got notches on their earnings, which motivated them.

    Aside from the Afuze College of Physical Health and Education which served as training grounds for coaches, technical staff, secretaries and those who plotted the strategies of the Ogbemudia era, a model for sports development was found in the sport council.

    The sport council system worked in the Ogbemudia era because he cut off the bureaucratic bottle necks in the civil service. Ogbemudia had the penchant for visiting camps unannounced. And such visits left in their wake sanctions on recalcitrant athletes, coaches, team officials and other ancillary staff. Ogbemudia’s visits ensured that everything in the camps worked. He ate with the athletes and sought their views on the services rendered. Athletes’ welfare and daily allowances, kitting, provisions etc were top notch and delivered daily to them. Support staff, such as doctors and physiotherapists, lived in the camp.

    Ogbemudia segmented the operations of the camps, with discipline enforced by camp commandants. This ensured that the athletes were focused. There were other checks done by trained staff of the Sports Council.

    After Ogbemudia’s exit as the military governor, his ideals and philosophies were whittled down and, in many cases, corrupted by self-serving models. Sport lost its course when the administrators jettisioned the Ogbemudia model. It got so bad that corruption among hitherto efficient Sports Council workers crept in. Would you blame them? Of course, when the cat is away, the mice will seize the home.

    Nepotism crept into the Sports Councils operation. Cabals sprang up to destroy the unity in the place. Reward system for athletes was done by who you know than the results from competitions. Gross acts of indiscipline and breakdown of law and order among the council workers affected the athletes’ performances. Those who were victims of inherent double standards in the council defected to other states.  Attempts to change things at the Sports Councils came late and those assigned to effect the changes were insincere, self -serving and corrupt.

    The Sports Council died. Rather than produce athletes, it provided touts, body guards for privileged people, with many becoming traders, who spent more time in selling their wares than on the pitches to discover, nurture and expose athletes.

    Interestingly, the zonal offices around the state were extinct. It was difficult to spot new athletes since those officials in zones migrated to the state capital.

    I’m an advocate of the sports commission system. Listening to discussants at the two-day sessions at the Randekhi Royal Hotel’s Conference Centre in Benin during the week, I felt sad that they advocated to a complete sweep in the council.

    Most of them gave the impression that since the Commission system is working in Delta and Lagos states, it must be adopted / or domesticated in Edo. Foul. The commission system in Delta had its flaws, such that an outsider came to head the place. The workers felt the headship should be on career rankings. The workers working on the Delta and Lagos States’ models have alleged that their bosses run a one-man show type of administration.

    What I deduced from the conference amounted to a change in nomenclature from “sports council” to “commission” without giving it the hub to operate. If the Obaseki-led administration accepts what has been submitted, the athletes will revolt. They won’t give their best during competitions, knowing that they can aspire to anything in the council, which would be hijacked by these new converts.

    Sports commission, for me, shouldn’t be hinged on getting a part-time or full time chairman and five members. No. The membership of the sports commission should be from the eminent chairmen of the 28 sports associations, who will elect their leader through a proper election. That way, members of the commission won’t be strangers to the workings of the sports associations.  The spiral effect of this arrangement will cut off the power play in which some chairmen and their secretaries run the associations while members become onlookers.

    Indeed, the benchmark for anyone seeking to be a member of the sporting associations must be elevated to ensure efficiency. We have seen a remarkable improvement in the Cricket Association under the chairmanships of Uyi Akpata, a big player in the corporate world. Today, there is a veritable league for clubs and cricketers to improve on their game. Akpata has used his clout to source sponsorship, which means there will be the culture of accountability, transparency and results, largely because the driver (Akpata) of the outsourced funds will lay a marker on the end users to give an account of the cash they collected. This invariably, answers the question of accountability and transparency. Not forgetting ensuring that defaulters are punished, asked to make refunds, sacked and prosecuted.

    Barrister Dele Edopayi is the chairman of the Edo Athletics Association. I know that he won’t be running cap-in-hand to the governor for funds. As a distinguished lawyer cum businessman, he can source for funds to run the association’s operations. He has friends he can persuade to identify with athletics while enumerating what they stand to gain from such sponsorships. Edokpayi will have zero tolerance for corruption or sharp practices in the disbursement of funds.

    Those postulating that sports can’t be run from sourced funds in this recession must seek tutorials from Akpata and Edokpayi. If all the association chairmen have the clout and integrity of Akpata and Edokpayi, picking the commission’s chairman and five members from the body of sports associations would have provided the Godwin Obaseki-led administration’s platform to provide the enabling environment for the industry to thrive.

    Besides, the Governor will have the liberty to give the sports commission money to run its operations, knowing who Akpata, Edokpayi et al are.

    Funding of sports should start with a legislation from the House of Assembly which will spell out the sports commission’s tenure, such that there won’t be frequent changes. Sports have two results -win or loss. Indeed, anyone expecting quick fixes now in Edo State sports must do a rethink.

    The tenure for the commission should be four years. The commission should be given seed money (take-off grant) which must be sourced to further challenge the commission’s members to execute their jobs from the prism of business and not a reward arising from the loyalty to the party. Indeed, the legislation by the Assembly should give the commission the power to take decisions, even if it will hurt top politicians, some of who love peddling their influence by forcing unqualified people on key components of governance.

    Periodic time lines should be embedded in the legal instrument of the commission to keep the members on their toes. Such checks and balances will strengthen accountability and transparency.

    But can we talk about a commission without schools sports? The second friction that the Obaseki-led administration will encounter with the commission is the tussle for power. When the athletes start winning competitions, the need to identify the party responsible for the feats will arise. The only non-elective person in the commission should be the Director-General of Schools Sports in the ministry.

    He will ensure that the ministry and the commission’s objectives are in tandem. I feel strongly that any effective sports development programme not hinged on the ministry won’t stand the test of time. Sports development takes its roots from the grassroots, where the talents are in abundance.  And most of the people at the grassroots who can be discovered, nurtured and exposed to competitions are the primary school kids, the secondary and tertiary schools.

    The Afuze complex should be fixed. The government could initiate a fund-raising ceremony to get the required funds. The reputation and astuteness of the departed unionist will surely draw donors. A structure named after such an icon should never be left in such derelict conditions. Once the Imoudu College of Physical and Health Education is fixed, it could, with time, be elevated to a university.

  • Flip – Flop diplomacy, security and democracy

    WHILE the US media is making merry with the embarrassment of the new American president’s double talk on his campaign promises and his actions on the diplomatic scene this week, a governor in Northern Nigeria Mallam Nasir el Rufai took his fight on transparency and accountability to new heights when he insisted that his state does not distribute public funds the way the National Assembly is famed for dealing with such funds.

    Tomorrow in Turkey, that nation goes to the polls in a referendum that will decide whether the Turkish people will continue with their Parliamentary system or change to a presidential one in which they already have a clear grasp of the flow of such political power and usage under President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan who is driving the change to executive presidency. Which was what Nigeria too was changed to by the military from our Parliamentary democracy at independence in 1960. Also in the greatest threat to world peace in recent times, North Korea through its leader got more hawkish in its threat to annihilate the US with nuclear weapons.

    The N Korean leader seem undeterred but even more belligerent as global media showed a US war ship on the high seas sailing ominously towards the vicinity of North Korea in the Pacific. Donald Trump, new US president met with the NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg this week and said that NATO was no longer obsolete as he has said during the presidential election of 2016 in the US. Earlier, he met with the Chinese President Xi and announced that China and the US are now getting along and later hailed the Chinese for stopping a consignment of coal import to China from N. Korea as a sign that China was teaming up with the US on sanctions to deter N. Korea from staging missile tests, one of which is scheduled to go on today. Just as the US Vice President Pence is due in the Pacific today for trade and security matters on the N Korean threat. Yet during the campaign Trump singled out China for underhand practices on world trade which he threatened to stop if elected.

    Donald Trump’s supposedly diplomatic hiccups are not as horrible as the US media has portrayed them in recent times but for the bias against his victory and new, if macabre diplomatic leadership style . When he started rolling out executive orders on Obama care and migration as he promised the same media jeered rather than cheer him and when the courts stopped his migration ban on 7 Muslim majority nations the media applauded to high heavens. It is therefore to be expected that any deviation from campaign promises will be derided massively by such quarters and that is what has happened on NATO and China. But one can still point out to such biased media and organizations that Trump is showing crass diplomatic pragmatism different from what we have been used to and such realistic diplomacy is more engaging and inclusive than the Engagement Diplomacy of Obama and Hillary which froze up relations with Russia and threw the Middle East into turmoil with the 2011 Arab Spring which ended up as a diplomatic tragedy for those seeking democracy at the instigation of Obama in those heady days. Any way, diplomacy’s major realistic dictum is that in diplomacy there are no permanent friends or enemies but permanent interests and Trump seems on a right path that is tested and well known with his so called diplomatic flip flops.

    Let us now go back to Kaduna State governor’s challenge and indictment of the use of security votes and its disclosure by both state and National Assemblies. The Governor is doing a salutary and civic duty on behalf of all Nigerians who clearly do not know how much their elected representatives earn and how much is spent on security by our rulers. Indeed the general belief is that security votes are sacrosanct and are not to be revealed. That was until the Buhari Administration came to power and investigations revealed that huge funds meant to fight Boko Haram had been diverted to fund the reelection campaign of the last Jonathan Administration. It is in the light of that, that Nigerians are following keenly the security vote disclosure and public funds usage challenges, between a sitting governor who has revealed his security budget and the National Assembly which has not followed suit, but is accusing the governor of insufficient disclosure. Which in this instance is not only diversionary but begging the issue.

    It is the duty of the National Assembly to debunk the challenge by the Kaduna State governor that his state does not swallow public funds like the National Assembly. It is an odium of lack of accountability and transparency that our revered legislators should cast aside by simply putting their earnings and emoluments in the domain of public opinion from which they rode to power in both the luscious red and green chambers of the National Assembly. Turkey’s referendum tomorrow is a romantic story of how democracy and popularity can be mobilized to consolidate party and personal power. Turkey’s President Erdogan has been PM before and his political party has won three back to back elections as a very Islamist party in a Turkey that is constitutionally secular with its secularity guaranteed by the military as decreed by Kemal Ataturk who founded modern Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Erdogan has tamed the military and thrown former generals into jail.

    A failed coup last year gave him another opportunity to clean the politics of Turkey as he jailed security officers in the army and police, journalists and academics randomly for the botched coup. Now he is ready to consolidate his leadership and legitimize his presidency when he wins tomorrow the change of the constitution to a presidential one, which is most likely and one can only wish him and the Turkish people good luck as they aim after that to pursue their nation’s membership of the EU which has been elusive for almost 60 years now. One cannot but compare Turkey’s new steps in the direction of presidential system with those of Nigeria under military rule. The military in changing our constitution from parliamentary democracy to executive presidency then, wanted to consolidate power and make governance easier. It never however bargained for the extravagant tastes and accountability values of both the Nigerian politician and even the gullible electorate. Now our presidential system has become so corrupt and expensive that we all clamor for our past regional system of governance and parliamentary democracy which was more people oriented and open than our enigmatic and self serving presidential system which has made our leaders wealthier beyond their dreams and our people poor beyond redemption. Yet this is what the Turks will be voting for, all things being equal, tomorrow. Surely one man’s food is another man’s poison. Once again long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

  • Another Chibok anniversary

    ANNIVERSARIES come with memories, and for Chibok, a small town in the north of Borno State, April comes with the grimmest. It was in that month and in that town that 276 girls were kidnapped from their school by the Islamist group Boko Haram. Another anniversary is upon us, and Chibok will be haunted yet again. Not only Chibok. Nigeria and the human race will be haunted again. Last year the horror of that abduction and of the cluelessness of the Jonathan administration was the subject of my write-up in this space entitled “Two years without the girls”. This week it is yet another year, the third, since the girls were gone.

    The torment endures but the last one year has not been without hope. In October 21 of the girls were freed thanks to Red Cross and the Swiss government, and the Buhari administration which seems to have the appetite to bring the girls home. This week President Muhammadu Buhari said negotiations were on to free the remaining girls. Considering that six months ago 21 of the girls regained freedom, it won’t hurt to believe that some more can still return. But President Buhari will do well to know that all eyes are on him to see if he will succeed where his predecessor failed. Some of those eyes are those of Chibok parents who last year viewed a video footage of their daughters in captivity. I reproduce here, marginally edited, part of that piece written on the second anniversary of the abduction: “Time does wonders. But in Chibok, its magic of healing wounds may well have disappeared or, at the least, waned. On the gloomy anniversary of the abduction, grief surged through mothers’ plagued bodies afresh, clouding their eyes. One woman grabbed her head with both hands, moving her upper body in a split second of 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 hijabclad girls believed to be among those abducted two years before. It was a CNN scoop.

    The women peered intently. One pointed to an 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. 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-notbelieve- 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 illfitting 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.”

  • Gov Yari’s controversial hypothesis

    Gov Yari’s controversial hypothesis

    GOVERNOR Abdulaziz Yari’s response to the outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) in Zamfara State has grated badly on the nerves of many Nigerians. Far worse is his Freudian slip that signposts the leadership dilemma and difficulties with which Nigeria grapples. Zamfara, with a casualty figure in excess of 200 out of a national total of about 336 so far, appears to be the epicentre of the epidemic. In his response to the CSM outbreak, the Zamfara governor was not reported to have summoned an emergency meeting or a task force to check its menacing march, nor did he demonstrate the franticness agitated leaders show when they are confronted by a new and frightening problem. Instead, he seemed convinced that the CSM outbreak was a reflection of the country’s spiritual health. This piquant reasoning in place of a hard-nosed approach might explain why Zamfara has accounted for about two-thirds of the casualty figures in the latest CSM crisis.

    Responding to a question by a BBC Hausa service reporter on the CSM crisis, the governor gave his own analysis of the problem by suggesting that the sins of the people might be the cause of the problem. Said he: “The World Health Organisation has carried out vaccinations against the Type A virus not just in Zamfara, but many other states. However, because people refused to stop their nefarious activities, God now decided to send the Type C virus, which has no vaccination. People have turned away from God and he has promised that ‘if you do anyhow, you see anyhow’; that is just the cause of this outbreak as far as I am concerned. There is no way fornication will be so rampant and God will not send a disease that cannot be cured. The most important thing is for our people to know that their relationship with God is not smooth. All they need to do is repent and everything will be alright.”

    Appalled by Gov Yari’s response, commentators, among whom was the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, furiously excoriated him and dismissed him as ineffectual in the face of a modern health emergency. Stung by the overwhelming abuse he has received so far on his linkage of the epidemic to the people’s spiritual health, the governor quickly authorised a rebuttal through his Special Adviser on Media and Public Enlightenment, Ibrahim Magaji Dosara. Mercifully, the rebuttal did not suggest that the misunderstanding was due to interpretational difficulties, considering that the interview was given in Hausa language. Instead, the spokesman suggested that the governor’s remarks on the CSM outbreak was mischievously twisted and quoted out of context.

    Said Mr Dosara: “The Governor noted that the situation was unfortunate because the state does not have enough vaccines yet for the Type C Meningitis. The governor thereafter enjoined all Nigerians to embrace prayers, as God who is aware of the outbreak of the  ailment surely has antidote for it. The Governor specially appealed to Nigerians to make deliberate effort to be closer to God by shunning sins of fornication and other forms of disobedience so as to receive his divine health and other blessings, as he is closer to those who obey him and distant themselves from sins.”

    He continued: “No doubt, as a God-fearing man, and a Muslim, the governor believes in the powers of Allah to inflict whatever punishment He decides on the human race. However, the governor who spoke in Hausa had a particular audience in mind when he spoke to the BBC Hausa reporter. The governor added, for example, that fornication should not spread so much in society that it becomes common place, and if that happens, Allah promises to inflict, on its perpetrators (people) a sickness that would have no cure. Let it be known too that the governor still insists that all diseases come from Allah and that at no point in his interaction with the reporters did he insinuate that Allah was punishing Nigerians but instead drew from the teachings of great Islamic traditions to buttress the point he was trying to convey.”

    Mr Dosara should not have bothered, for his rebuttal was in fact no rebuttal at all. The governor was fairly copiously and eminently quoted on the subject. There was apparently no interpretational error, for even the governor himself did not suggest that language accounted for what he thought was a misunderstanding. After a lengthy and prefatory rigmarole, the rebuttal itself ended up by reiterating that there was a distinct connection between a nation’s spiritual health and their physical health. Given the magnitude of the health challenge Zamfara faced over the CSM outbreak, particularly its undiscriminating attack, the governor had no reason to speak of the connection between sin and health. He chose to do that, and must bear the reprimand of the public bravely. What the public wanted to hear him say, even if he would pass the buck, was to give the background to the health crisis, indicate what steps his government had taken to combat it, and suggest why those steps had seemed inadequate and what amelioration the government in Abuja could offer. Indeed, he began his response by giving the public a background to the latest CSM outbreak, but immediately derailed.

    Two things emerge from Gov Yari’s initial response and the correction he authorised. First is the obvious fact that the governor actually and disturbingly forgets that he is not presiding over a theocracy that adduces open spiritual interpretations to physical phenomena. He is presiding over a secular state where his religious persuasion is of little significance in the face of serious challenges, such as the current health crisis. This persuasion, as the Emir of Kano suggested while responding to Gov Yari’s shocking hypothesis, can be a restraining factor in marshalling rapid and adequate response to a crisis that needed a totally different kind of approach, a response the state is nevertheless equipped to handle. Furthermore, how would this religiously minded governor determine what point of sinless existence the state must get to in order to attract a clean bill of health? He spoke principally of fornication as the cause of the CSM outbreak. Why not financial malfeasance, shedding innocent blood, oppression by the executive, bad and unfair laws by the legislature, perversion of judgement by the judiciary, etc.?

    Second, Gov Yari’s heartfelt response to the BBC question represents in some ways the enduring lack of profundity manifested by many Nigerian governments at the state and national levels in the face of critical challenges. Most Nigerian leaders are poorly equipped for leadership and cannot respond quickly and competently to serious challenges. They are more obsessed with the benefits that come with power than the responsibilities that undergird it. Even if the state and the country were not prepared for the Type C strain of CSM, when they had been used to Type A, why must the Zamfara governor and the Nigerian government assume fatalistically that an annual outbreak of the familiar strain was inevitable? Are there not other predisposing factors they can battle to mitigate? Can a better urban and regional planning paradigm not obviate the predictable outbreak or consign the disease to medical history?

    Both Governor Yari and his spokesman, Mr Dosara, are wrong to assume that anyone had reason to twist the governor’s remarks out of context. Zamfara may be important as a component of Nigeria, but it is a rustic state, far too remote from the commentariat belt to elicit deliberate attacks of the kind they seem to imply. The governor goofed. Rather than blame phantom detractors and accuse them of trying to tarnish his ‘rising reputation’, he should use the harsh and vivid mirror held to his face by critics to retool himself and his leadership style and content. If he is overwhelmed by a health crisis that announces itself religiously (no pun intended) every year, which has apparently induced a complacent response, and he cannot also find the ingenuity and innovativeness to tackle it, how can he be trusted to face and solve the bigger and more visionary challenges needed to uplift the standards of his state, prepare his people for the future, and leave Zamfara far better than he met it?

    Governor Yari, like most other governors, needs a radically new paradigm of leadership. The CSM outbreak shows why and how urgently he needs a new and intelligent administrative focus. He needs a team of thinkers and builders to help him conceive a great paradigm for the Zamfara project. He should seek out these experts wherever they can be found rather than ensconce himself in the bucolic philosophy and distorted theocracy that explain nothing and proffers no solution.

  • Magu in the belly of the whale

    Magu in the belly of the whale

    Nothing illustrates better the disabling dysfunction that characterizes the Muhammadu Buhari presidency as a whole and its anti-corruption war in particular than the executive’s protracted face off with the senate as regards the stalled confirmation of Mr. Ibrahim Magu as substantive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Twice the presidency’s request in this respect has met a brick wall at the upper legislative chamber and the senate is now pushing an even harder line of refusing to confirm President Muhammadu Buhari’s nominees to fill vacant positions of Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) for two weeks in the first instance until Magu ceases to act as the commission’s in line with the legislators’ demand.

    The 8th senate has confoundingly grown in confidence and arrogance despite its low esteem in the eyes of the discerning public and the questionable moral integrity of a number of its members that taints the body as a collective. Most amazingly, though standing on a higher ethical pedestal largely because of Buhari’s own untainted personal anti-corruption credentials, it is the executive that is bending over backwards to seek a truce with a legislature widely perceived as morally crippled and that from what is obviously a position of weakness.

    It is difficult in the first place to understand why Magu had to act for so long before his name was forwarded to the senate for confirmation. He had proven his bona fides as head of the EFCC operations under the chairmanship of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu. Magu was reputedly responsible for some of the high profile investigations that exposed the vulnerable underbelly of many otherwise untouchable political big wigs including the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki when he was governor of Kwara State (2003-2011). It was because some of these politicians had come to acquire considerable influence during the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency that Magu was hounded out of the EFCC, persecuted and punished unjustly by the police authorities, detained briefly and even had to flee the country at a time. Yet, the Department of State Services (DSS) cites the allegations against him by his traducers as one of the reasons why Magu failed its ‘integrity test’.

    Given his diligent and dogged prosecution of the anti-corruption war as Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Magu had made many enemies for himself among the decadent political elite. There is no way he could have had a smooth sail through the Senate, for example with not only the head of the upper chamber but no less than a dozen other senators  being under the rigorous and uncompromising searchlight  of the EFCC under Magu’s supervision. There are also reports that a number of governors worked against his confirmation particularly because of the EFCC’s ongoing investigations into alleged   illegal diversion of Paris Club bailout funds by some states. It would surely have been a completely different scenario if his name had been sent earlier to the senate and he had resumed office as substantive chairman of the agency ab initio.

    But then this kind of lethargy and systemic immobility on the part of the Buhari presidency is not exclusive to the Magu case. Nearly two years into this administration, ambassadors are yet to be posted to several countries including those very critical not just to the country’s foreign policy but also her domestic economic policies particularly in these recessionary times. In the same vein, boards of most federal parastatals are yet to be either constituted or reconstituted. Those appointed in the preceding dispensation are still sitting pretty on the boards even as the presidency continues to exhibit a paralysis of the will that is simply inexplicable.

    Part of the problems with the administration’s anti-graft war despite Buhari’s undeniably honest intentions is the President’s apparent disdain for partisan politics. This is not necessarily a bad thing especially as we have had cause to condemn his predecessors who cheapened and devalued the exalted office by descending without caution into the partisan arena. However, if the President is averse to politics, he must have a competent and skilled team with the network and diplomatic astuteness to manage this critical area for him. This is especially so because the signature policy of his administration, which is the anti-corruption war, is being fought within the context of politics.

    Thus, the President’s anti -corruption war is being hobbled, for example, partly by lack of cooperation from the legislature, an arm of government indispensable to the fight against graft, largely because of Buhari’s initial indifference to the character of those who emerged as leaders of the National Assembly. It is not enough for the administration’s functionaries to complain at every turn that corruption is fighting back. That refrain can be very annoying. Of course, corruption is not expected to sit back and fold its arms while it is clubbed to death. It will necessarily fight back and it is doing so effectively under the current headship of the senate, whose political dexterity one cannot but respect despite the huge moral albatross under which he labours. His ability to command the support and allegiance of majority of the senators across the board despite his immense vulnerabilities is truly remarkable.

    The management of the President’s politics has not been helped by the sheer complacency as well as lack of purpose or focus of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) under the chairmanship of Chief John Odigie Oyegun. Is it not astonishing that it was only this week that the National Working Committee (NEC) of the APC met formally with the senate caucus of the party nearly two years after the inauguration of the 8th Senate? Such complacency and incompetence is inexcusable. Oyegun may have been an outstanding federal Permanent Secretary and performed creditably as Edo State governor on the platform of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the aborted Third Republic. However, the blunt truth is that he seems out of his depths in his current assignment. The Buhari presidency is in dire need of a party that is more dynamically, vibrantly and proactively led if it is to make more meaningful progress with its anti-corruption war and other key planks of its policy platform.

    Equally uninspiring is the administration’s handling of the intra-organizational politics of its own presidency. This is why it is so difficult to blame the senate for stone walling on Magu when another agency under the presidency, the Department of State Services (DSS), provided it with a damning security report to nail the embattled Acting EFCC Chairman. To be sure, President Buhari must be commended for giving the DSS a free hand to do its job. As far as I know this is the first time in this dispensation that the secret service is being given the organizational autonomy to do its work professionally without undue presidential interference. Even then, this statement must be qualified when due note is taken of the DSS’s continued illegal indefinite detention of former National Security Adviser (NSA) to President Goodluck Jonathan, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd) and spiritual head of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), Mallam El Zak Zaky in defiance of court orders that they should be released. It is difficult to believe that the motive here is genuinely that of protecting the national interest.

    Nobody says that the DSS should automatically clear any nominee for public office simply because the President desires it. What appears incongruous is that the secret service apparently gave Magu a clean bill of health with the presidency before the latter forwarded his name to the senate only for the same DSS to ambush him at the latter end. The greater embarrassment is not for Magu but the presidency which comes out of it all looking amateurish, unsure and uncoordinated. It would have been tidier for the DSS to make its report on Magu available to the presidency so that his name would not have been forwarded for confirmation at all.

    Some of the allegations against Magu by the DSS cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Perhaps the most serious is his reported fraternization with an allegedly shady businessman under investigation by the DSS. Yet, no business links have been established between Magu and the said businessman. Magu’s vehement denial of the allegation that the businessman paid for his official accommodation has not been disproved either by the DSS or the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) responsible for securing and paying for the residence. No nexus has been established between EFCC official documents reportedly found in the businessman’s residence and Magu. No conflict of interest against Magu has been established. He has not been found culpable of any corrupt practices. At best he can be blamed for some degree of indiscretion. But compared to the moral putrescence of some of the senators who gleefully adjudged him as failing some nebulous ‘integrity test’, Magu is a veritable saint.

    Buhari may be tempted to offer Magu as the sacrificial lamb whose blood will be shed to propitiate the senate gods with feet of clay in the purported interest of more harmonious legislative-executive relations. But if the capacious corruption whale succeeds in swallowing Magu and mortally decapitating his EFCC career, will the next Chairman of the agency who receives the senate’s approbation,  not tread ever so cautiously and timidly so that he or she does not ultimately end up in the Leviathan’s belly? Will this not signal ominous portents for Buhari’s anti-corruption war?

  • Credibility, security and prosperity

    SOME Nigerian protesters in Abuja reportedly claimed that the Nigerian Senate and House of Representatives should be allowed to do their work without hindrance by the executive arm of government which is the Buhari Administration which came to power in the 2015 presidential elections. Similarly in the British Parliament Opposition leader Corbyn railed against the visit of the British PM May to Saudi Arabia which he accused of using British arms and ammunition to commit mass killing against defenceless civilians in war- torn Yemen, leading to a humanitarian tragedy of gargantuan proportions.

    In the Middle East the new US President Donald Trump at last acknowledged that the US has sent missiles to the sources of chemical weapons used to kill Syrians by the government of Bashar Assad , thus emphatically reversing the Middle East policy of his predecessor whose red line for the Assad regime was violated while the former US President Barak Obama indulged in rhetoric and hand wringing to the consternation and anger of a keenly watching civilized world .Also in the US, the president Donald Trump hosted Chinese President Xi to dinner even though he has admitted expecting a difficult hosting of the Chinese strong arm because of what he called Chinese stealing of American jobs. On the surface these raised issues look normal and innocuous and should not lead to any raised eye brows. But that is not really the case.

    This is because they are issues bordering on the topic of the day namely credibility, security and trade. The topic provides their context as they cannot exist in a vacuum which nature diligently and naturally avoids. Elucidating on that fact therefore is the kernel of our discussion today. Starting with the pro National Assembly protests, to the British PM’s reply to the Opposition leader as well as the return of American arms to the battlefield in Syria, dominated on Assad’s side by the Russians and the missiles attack threat posed by North Korea to global peace, we shall show today that credibility matters in leadership and politics and that trade and prosperity can only blossom in an environment that is safe and very well secured.

    We go back to the pro-National Assembly protests and call them a massive and failed charade which is not shared by most Nigerians. This is because the National Assembly has feet of clay in terms of credibility and leadership and Nigerians have not lost their memory over how the present senate leadership evolved and the many charges for corruption that the senate president is facing and pursuing in the law courts.

    In spite of these, he has not resigned his position to clear himself of all charges as should be expected in any mature democracy. To claim now that the existence of the National Assembly is the only measure of our claim to be a functional democracy is a fallacy because the members of the National Assembly are tenured representatives of their various constituencies and have no locus as representatives of their own personal and selfish interests, which seems to be their rationale for representation in our funny and bizarre democracy today. That surely is not acceptable to most Nigerians who also concede that the senate must function but definitely at best like a disabled institution given the albatross of corruption charges on the neck of its leadership.

    The senate must do its work without hindrance from the executive but the legislature must know it has a credibility problem arising from the emergence of its leadership and learn to accept the dictum in law that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands. Surely credibility matters in matters of state and governance and no pro legislature protests can change that in any democracy in any part of the world including our very own Nigeria. At the British House of Commons the Opposition leader Corbyn accused the PM Theresa May of ignoring the human rights record of Saudi Arabia and paying a visit to a regime that has no regard for human and feminine rights. The British PM, to me gave an eloquent reply by saying that she was going to Saudi Arabia to secure British business interests and to create more trade and prosperity for the UK as Britain cannot be on the sidelines of global business sniping like dog whilst the traffic of world trade passes it by.

    On her visit to Jordan she said that by helping Jordan through trade and improving its economy, Jordan would be enabled to take care of migrants fleeing to Europe and the UK and that too would mellow down the threat of lack of integration of Muslim migrants fleeing wars in the Middle East and exacerbating the security dangers that Europe and Britain are facing from the dangerous and unprecedented influx of refugees nowadays.

    That again appears like nipping the refugee problem in the bud and is comparable to the earlier visit of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel to some African nations bordering Somalia, like Ethiopia and Kenya, to help such nations’ economies so as to stem the tide of refugee influx to Europe at the source. Such moves are pragmatic, diplomatic innovations that can only make for a more secure world not only in Europe but also in the nations and societies that the mass of migrants are bolting from, for dear life. With regard to the US missile attack on the facility in Syria, – the Shayrat airbase – from which the plane that dropped chemical gas on Syrians took off , it seems to me that the US has restored its credibility with both friends and enemies in the Middle East.

    Especially with the opposition in Syria which applauded the strike and the Russians which called it an act of aggression against a sovereign nation Syria, which Russia fully supports. But then the Russians were told about the raid by the Americans but they did not send any plane to stop the Americans . The UK naturally has supported the American missile attack which is expected to deter the Assad regime in Damascus against future use of chemical weapons. The Trump presidency has thus restored credibility to American foreign policy and Middle East diplomacy which was highly fractured by the Obama’s foreign policy of highlighting American values over the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime and just doing nothing to deter a repeat.

    This is what the Trump government has done and I give it kudos for making the Middle East safe by just one act of punitive deterrence over the potential or real use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, or any government in the Middle East for that matter. Predictably when the US President Donald Trump hosted the Chinese President Xi he was at his best in public relations.

    This was in spite of the fact that he campaigned on dealing with China for its well known unfair trade deals. He went on to say he would look for reciprocity in dealing with the Chinese on world trade. But he should be cautious because the Chinese are the biggest global investors in US treasury bills or treasuries. If reciprocity means an eye for an eye, which is Moses’ law then the Chinese too can play the ball of reciprocity to the detriment of US business and economic interests. With regard to trade imbalance and stealing of American jobs the new US president needs to be tutored on the concept of outsourcing which he has labeled job stealing. It is American companies outsourcing jobs to China which has a huge population.

    Outsourcing is just about buying skills you don’t have and it is a hard nose business decision with the goals of efficiency and profitability driving it and that surely cannot be called job stealing. Anyway, the Chinese President Xi told his American counterpart during this week’s visit that –‘we have a thousand reasons get China- US relations right and not one reason to spoil China – US relations ‘The Chinese President later invited Trump to visit China. For now both Trump and Xi are credible world leaders popular in their nations and that is good for world trade and security. Better still, global peace will get a boost if both can use their new found amity to formulate a strong policy that will deter the rogue regime in North Korea that is, like ISIS, threatening the entire world with annihilation and disturbing our collective peace of mind. Once again, long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

  • Jonathan finds his voice too early

    FORMER president Goodluck Jonathan’s recovery is amazing. About two years ago he had little cause for cheer and few words to mutter. Beyond the fact that he wisely conceded defeat in the March 28 election, and was praised by some, including yours truly, for doing so, there wasn’t much to lift his spirit. On a personal note he became the first incumbent president in these parts to lose a reelection bid. On a national scale, his failure at the polls captured a nationwide frustration with his many deficits while in office. Such a reality would silence anyone, anywhere. But there were other reasons Dr Jonathan kept mute. The Buhari administration came after prominent members of his government. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission or EFCC, inspired by the new government’s anti-graft drive, put the heat on Dr Jonathan’s principal officers and soon started to publicise what it claimed were their stinking records in office especially what they allegedly did with public funds. Billions of dollars were quoted to have been either pocketed, mismanaged or simply wasted by these individuals. That was enough to keep the ousted commander-in-chief quiet. But there was yet another reason for Dr Jonathan’s low profile.

    There was some talk that perhaps it was unfair to merely go after these individuals without inviting their boss for a chat over some withdrawals which only he as the C-in-C could authorise. As yet, that invitation has not been extended to the former president, partly because, as some have reasoned, it would, as they say, heat up the polity, something the Buhari administration would not quite like. Part of that heat could come from some of Dr Jonathan’s diehard supporters, a good number of whom are believed to have the capacity to blow up a few things. Perhaps, this emboldened Dr Jonathan to come out of his shell and chalk up some courage to make public pronouncements as often as he pleased. He may also have been buoyed by some marginal calls to stage a comeback in 2019. Add to that the fact that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is also just as fractious as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which it knocked out of power.

    And throw in too the other little matter that the economy is not in the best of times, though it remains a subject of debate as to whether you should put the blame on Dr Jonathan for wrecking it or on President Muhammadu Buhari for not fixing the faults as quickly as he came in. Whatever the case, Dr Jonathan has since waxed lyrical, in my view too lyrical. He has been speaking here, there and everywhere. He has spoken to the British and to the Americans, to Nigerians and other Africans. His submission, in the main, is that he and his party did quite well, in fact creditably well, as he put it, and that he is not half as bad as being portrayed. For instance, he once said that he could not have handed over an empty treasury, as President Buhari has said repeatedly, asking where his successor got the funds to bail out cash-strapped states. But Dr Jonathan seemed to have ignored, or was probably unaware of, the fact that such funds could be sourced from anywhere.

    At his Abuja house in February, Dr Jonathan expressed his excitement at plans by some of his party members to regain power after a “temporary setback”, as he put it. While playing the unifier on Thursday before a divided crowd of PDP stakeholders in the same city, Dr Jonathan reportedly said Nigerians still believed in his party. He also credited his administration with “purposeful leadership” through which “we reformed our institutions, rebuilt the nation’s confidence, regained international goodwill and rekindled hope in our people.” Pray, what purposeful leadership was he talking about? Which institutions were reformed and what confidence was rebuilt when he held sway? What international goodwill was regained under him, and what hope was rekindled locally? So far, Dr Jonathan has been left alone by those who should have asked him a few questions, and who can begrudge him his peace? But it leaves me utterly breathless that a man who presided over such waste and plunder of such a consequential country as Nigeria has found his voice so early as to make such wild claims.