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  • I started life learning from my weaver mum, says renowned artist Jimoh Buraimoh

    I started life learning from my weaver mum, says renowned artist Jimoh Buraimoh

    Jimoh Buraimoh is in many ways like the Biblical prophet who is without honour in his land. In Nigeria, his homeland, very little is known about Buraimoh and his achievements. But in the US, he has successfully etched his name in gold in the city of Atlanta, US.

    Though a successful hotelier in Osogbo, Osun State, Buraimoh made his marks as an artist. He has also made his marks as a member of the Osun Festival Committee.

    In the US, he was honoured with a honorary title for his contributions to the development of the city of Atlanta.

    He also received an Award of Excellence from the Atlanta Urban Design Commission as the Best Mosaic Mural of the Year.

    Interestingly, the success which Buraimoh enjoys today came from doing something seemingly impossible when he introduced bead painting in 1965.

    At the time, the feat was a revolution of sort in Africa because the only thing they were conversant with was oil painting. He made fortune from his paintings. The fortune he made from his unique painting before veering into the hospitality business.

    While it is true that it is his unique style of painting that brought him international recognition and fame, it was his entrance into the hotel business in the early 80s that earned him the little fame he enjoys at home.

    And since then, he worked hard to remain in business despite the very unfriendly business climate. Almost three decades after, his hotel, Heritage Hotel, in Osogbo is waxing stronger, leaving its contemporaries in its trail, while pointing to the ruins of many others in the capital city.

    Asked what his staying power is, Buraimoh smiled, then slowly shot back: “I work hard to maintain a standard. I also make sure that we are not left behind. So we moved with the trend, making sure that we are ahead of our competitors.”

    Aside his hotel business, the life of the first African bead painter revolves around culture. And his early hours are still dedicated to painting, a routine he has faithfully kept for ages.

    “My hotel started about 29 years ago. The reason for its establishment being that when Duro Ladipo died, we were not able to use the place we were using for arts because that was where he was buried. So, we could no longer have exhibitions where we used to have them. This situation made me to think of creating a studio for myself at home. I later created a place where other people could do their exhibitions like what we used to do there at the hotel.

    “Primarily, it wasn’t a big hotel, but a nite club. The club was for people around here to bring life into them. But back then, there wasn’t any life at all. That was how I started my own hotel. But after some time, there were a lot of demands. So, I started by including five rooms. Later, I increased it to 10 rooms. Now, we have about 49 rooms in the hotel. Mine was not intentional, but to create an awareness and to create life in Osogbo.

    “However, getting the land to build the hotel was not a tea-party business, as he had to face many battles and protests from neighbours. But he refused to give up, scaling all the hurdles that came his way.

    “In order to stop me from continuing with the hotel plan, one of my neighbours’ decided to start a farm to raise pigs beside the hotel. The idea then was to discourage me from embarking on the project. You know anywhere they do piggery, the place is bound to have offensive odour, emanating from the faeces of the pigs. But I remained undaunted.

    “The battle was much then. And when Sunny Ade saw that I could expand the hotel, I approached the owner of a property beside me to sell the property to me. Initially, he refused, but finally gave me conditions.

    First, he said I should get another property for him and pay him certain amount of money. I got the property for him in town which was to cost about N1 million. But because I could not raise the money, the property was sold.”

    Rather than give up, Buraimoh kept faith with his dream, and finally got another property for his man at a place very close to the hotel. “He agreed to take over the property. That was how I was able to acquire the property where the hotel is standing today”,Buraimoh said.

    Though a highly successful businessman, Buraimoh’s early childhood was rough. Born to poor parents, young Buraimoh seemed condemned to a life of poverty. But his resolve to extricate himself from the firm grip of poverty which had dealt severely with his parents later paid off when he fell in love with arts.

    “I was born in Osogbo on April 3, 1943 to Mr. Oladapo Buraimoh of Alagba’s Compound, Osogbo and Simbiatu Abeke from Igbesa in Ogun State. I was not the first child of my parents. The first child died very early, perhaps a few months after I was born. This event thus made me, at least in a functional sense, the first-born. My mother had a total of eight children, including two sets of twins. Only Lasisi, the last born and one of the last set of twins survived Thus, for very many years, I was the only child,” he said.

    His first contact with the arts came from his mother who was a mat weaver. Watching his mother weave, young Buraimoh gradually fell in love with the arts that would later in life earn him fame and wealth. But he almost ended up not going to school.

    “I really worked hard. I had so many sleepless nights. When I started my art, I never knew where I was going. I tried my hands on so many things that I hardly slept. My parents had little or no money; they were both poor. Even when I wanted to go to a technical college in Abeokuta and Ijebu-Ode, they couldn’t afford it,” he said.

    Though he failed to attain his dream of a university education, Buraimoh is happy to have found love and happiness in the arts.

    “My aim was to go to the university or any higher institution and end up as a white collar job-man. Though I was pained that I didn’t go to the university, but I later realized that it wouldn’t have helped me or my inner talents. Perhaps, I would have wasted away with many ideas. But entering into arts has allowed me to express myself freely, promote the African culture the way it should be done.

    “I have no regrets as I have duly realised that arts is my life. It is the blood that flows in my veins. It is the water that I drink every day. I am happy that someone was able to discover me very early in life, and this is the reason I also have done many trainings for the young ones that are arts inclined,” he said.

    Inasmuch as he would have proceeded to secondary school after his primary education, but the fact that his father could not afford to send him to there made him opt for modern school.

    Buraimoh further said:”I did not even bother to seek admission into such schools. Rather, I focused on the modern school because the required fees were considerably lower than those for the secondary schools. Soon after I completed my primary education in 1959, I sought and gained admissions into two modern schools in Ilaro. One was the I.D. C. Modern School.”

    But his parents’ inability to pay his school fees somehow altered his destiny. He later became an apprentice to an electronics repairer before fate took him to the late Duro Ladipo with whom he grew and rose to become the Manager of the Duro Ladipo Theatre Group. But he left the group to concentrate on bead painting in 1965.

    He said:”I keep a good record of my paintings, since I don’t have to sell all I produce to live well. When you talk to any artist, you will find that artists produce works that they will prefer to keep. Regrettably, many artists are

    painfully compelled to sell these special works, sometimes at ridiculous prices to meet their obligations. In my case, I don’t have to. If I fall in love with any piece I produce, I keep it until such a time I can afford to part with it. And you can be sure I won’t sell such pieces at prices less than I think they are worth.

    “I’ve got some followers both in Nigeria and abroad. I have trained some people and others that I have influenced. Among them is David Dale, while others that are not known are using beads. It costs more to produce bead painting than oil.”

    Though he struggled to have the little education he has, his children are enjoying the best of education in Europe and the United States. His passion has brought him honours and laurels. He was the first Nigerian to be awarded a membership in the Contemporary World Association of Mosaic Artists (Associazione Internazionale Mosaicisti Contemporanei), an organization based in Ravena, Italy. In 1996, he was also the recipient of a lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for African American Art and Culture, California; and in 1997, his work, mosaic mural, The Elders, commissioned by the City of Atlanta, Georgia, United States and installed in the City Howell Park received an Award of Excellence from the Atlanta Urban Design Commission as the Best Mosaic Mural of the year. He was one of the judges in the art competition organized by Access Bank for youngsters.

  • Eagles must whip Malawi silly

    Eagles must whip Malawi silly

    Ordinarily, the game between Nigeria and Malawi in Calabar ought to be the lead discussion in this column today. Not so. Malawi are minnows in global football. And if Nigeria wants to be counted as a soccer nation, matches against countries such as Malawi should be a piece of cake, irrespective of the squad (Europe-based or home-based) that we parade.

    It is on this premise that I want to assume that Nigeria will whip Malawi silly, given the pedigree of our players in Europe and the Diaspora. Super Eagles players should bash the Malawians groggy with goals, if they must assert themselves as African champions.

    The Eagles must stop the Malawians from the blast of the referee’s whistle. An avalanche of goals will suffice to warn any country wishing to be our next foes in the last stage of the 2014 World Cup qualifiers to surrender as soon as the draws are made next week.

    A convincing victory will silence their loquacious coach. Tom Saintfiet has stirred the hornet’s nest with his mind games. Saintfiet’s antics have captured a casualty in Stephen Keshi, who must prepare soon his defence for Zurich, Switzerland at FIFA’s headquarters.

    But I’m sure that Keshi won’t need to visit FIFA’s headquarters, if the Eagles beat the Malawians silly today. If that happens, we can seize the friendly atmosphere at the post-match conference to get Keshi to apologise to Saintfiet.

    After Keshi’s post-match apology, we should get Saintfiet to assure the international media that he won’t press for further sanctions against Keshi, in the interest of peace.

    If I were a photographer, my first shot would be Saintfiet’s reaction, when he meets with Keshi inside the UJ Esuene Stadium in Calabar. I urge Keshi to swallow his pride and walk up to the Belgian to apologise. No one should sacrifice Keshi on the altar of neutrality. Keshi is our best and must reap the fruits of his labour by directing the Eagles’ affairs from the sidelines, if we eventually qualify for the 2014 World Cup slated to hold in Brazil.

    The Big Boss shouldn’t listen to those who think that there is nothing FIFA can do. I’m not interested in what FIFA can do or not. My concern is for the good of the Nigerian game since our young boys need the national teams to blossom under a coach, which is what Keshi has shown us with his feats since November 2012 when he was employed.

    I’m sure Keshi would have been told by his employers NFF that they have received FIFA’s letter on the issue. Saintfiet is a gentleman. His grouse with Nigeria rests with the uncanny manner in which he lost the country’s technical director job. But he knows that cannot be the end for him with Nigeria.

    In the event that Keshi sticks to his gun, the NFF must seize the platform of the post-match dinner that the Cross River state governor is to organise to get Saintfiet and Keshi to talk the brouhaha over. That post-match party could also be used to compel Keshi to mend fences with Saintfiet in conjunction with the Malawi FA chiefs.

    Keshi must lead us to the 2014 World Cup. We need to keep Keshi busy through refresher courses or allow him to understudy any foreign coach whose style of play he wants to adopt for the Eagles.

    There will always be a lacuna in our preparations for the next stage of the qualifiers. I won’t be surprised if Keshi tells us after the game that he wants to head for California for a deserved rest. He would be granted but when he goes, there won’t be a plan until we draw a big country such as Cameroon as our next foes.

    A calculated plan must be instituted to get Keshi fully prepared for the 2014 World Cup. Our players have shown capacity to compete and excel over other nationals. What we should do is to make sure that our coach enjoys this advantage by ensuring he is not idle at any point leading to the World Cup matches in Brazil. Good luck Keshi, good luck Super Eagles. Up Nigeria!

    No Gaiya no!

    House of Representatives Chairman on Sports Godfrey Gaiya wants the industry to grow, albeit through improving the welfare of the athletes.

    He has lofty ideas for the industry but what he lacks is the will power to push through these ideas such that cash to implement his thoughts are released to athletes. Gaiya has this tendency of playing to the gallery. There is nothing wrong with that, if he can back his claims with facts.

    Gaiya wants to rock the boat again by stating that the NFF must pay the players $10,000 to beat Malawi. I hope he knows that the Malawians would be paid $500 if they beat Nigeria. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t cost the Malawians to promise their players $10,000, knowing that such a feat won’t happen. The Malawians haven’t done that because they don’t have the cash to back such outlandish promises.

    This is the point that Gaiya must understand, beyond playing the nice guy that he wants the players to perceive him. NFF is cash strapped. I don’t know of any legislation by Gaiya and his co-travellers in the National Assembly to encourage the government to provide waivers for firms that support sports.

    Even if there is, Gaiya needs to focus his attention on ensuring that such novel ideas are implemented. In other climes, efforts would have been made by the Gaiya-led body to visit firms to support sports.

    Visits by such policy making unit will instill confidence in the corporate world to identify with sports. I would have been excited if Gaiya had told us that his committee has gotten a firm to pay more than $10,000 per player without recourse to government cash.

    Gaiya must learn to be a team player. Smacking the NFF or deriding our sports administrators raises the question of the role of his committee in prospecting for sports at the National Assembly.

    Good riddance!

    Change produces new ideas. But when changes don’t bring some freshness, the smart way forward is to discard such innovations.

    The biggest news from the National Sports Commission (NSC) is the scrapping of an ill-informed concessioning of some sports. I deliberately retained the headline – “concession my foot” because the last time I wrote on this issue with the headline, I was called names. Rather than look at my suggestions, I was maligned by those who introduced it.

    The truth is for any sport to be considered for the concession plan, it has to be popular and have a large followership. No sponsor will splash cash on a sport that has few followers. Any attempt to bankroll a sport with empty stands amounts to winking in the dark.

    One thing about the Bolaji Abdullahi-led NSC is that it doesn’t shirk from taking key decisions. He could also find a way round the concession theory. Perhaps, the NSC needs to shop for technocrats with the pedigree of revamping moribund companies to run some of the designated sports.

    In asking for those sports to be concessioned, what the eggheads at the National Sports Commission (NSC) ought to have done was to visit those firms that bankrolled those games to return. They should have guaranteed those firms some tax waivers. They should also have allowed the firms’ nominees to run the show themselves since the general reason why they pulled out was because there wasn’t proper accountability of the cash pumped into such federations.

    Chief Molade Okoya-Thomas has singlehandedly bankrolled a table tennis competition for over 43 years. Sponsors fell over one another in the golden era of the game.

    The mood in the sports hall was always electrifying, with the spectators cheering ceaselessly, as players exhibited their skills. No sponsor would stop exploiting such platforms especially, if their goods are the consumables. The feel good setting that comes with watching the fans sip from sponsors’ products on television is unquantifiable.

    It must be stated here too that our sports didn’t lack sponsorship in the past. The administrators of yore were honest. They spent the cash on what it was earmarked for. They organised competitions that compelled sponsors to advertise their products. They accounted for the cash spent and introduced innovations that made the events exciting.

    Adequate funding will come when federations’ boards are made up of credible people. The presence of men and women of integrity in these boards will restore confidence on those who want to commit cash to such sports.

    Good leadership is infectious. It propels all other components of the sport to always produce their best. It elicits discipline within the rank and file of such federations. It reduces suspicion among members, athletes and coaches because they trust their leaders.

  • Under fire on Taraba

    Under fire on Taraba

    My column last week on Taraba State and the aftermath of Governor Danbaba Suntai’s return (“Is there no more decorum in Taraba?”) earned me intense fire from our readers. Bile was a distinct component of some of the responses, as were barefaced disrespect and outright insult. I intend to publish those responses, giving ample space to the most venomous of them, even as I will also print a few which dared to hail my exertions.

    But it bears restating the object of that article since it seems clear that my responders, for some reason, missed its letter and spirit. Some of them thought I had lost my mind. One nearly swore I was a Suntai supporter. Another claimed my Christian background got the best of me and that the governor is “your Christian brother”. There were several wilder allegations, most of which you will see in full presently. Before then, however, I will say that I have no link, direct or indirect, to Suntai or to any of his representatives anywhere in any capacity whatsoever. Nor did I need any such link to write that article. Contrary to another responder’s allegation, no one commissioned me to put that piece together. It came off my conviction that there are better, civil and decent ways of sorting out the Suntai matter which has done nothing to flatter Taraba people or Nigerians as a whole. If the state stakeholders sense that their governor is still not fit to run the state, and that he is not forthcoming in admitting it, surely, they can devise a means of establishing his health status and present it to the relevant authorities for appropriate action. It pays no dividends to engage him in a fight or to order him out of town before due process is followed and exhausted.

    Well, before I launch into another full piece, here are the readers’s responses:

    •It is very obvious that you are a good supporter of Suntai but people can see beyond the ordinary… +2348178794280

    •The piece on Taraba is awesome. God bless you, Sir. Isaac, +2348162364333

    •Ikeje, you are a misfit in media profession. You are not morally, mentally, medically, constitutionally and politically enlightened, with the rubbish you fed the enlightened readers with in your kindergarten piece on Taraba. Did you read and listen to yourself? You need medical check. I am not from Taraba and don’t care who governs but your piece irritates one. Give the piece to your wife and ask her to comment. She will hiss on you. Will you as a student agree to sit in a class and take lecture from today the way you see him? Spade this issue and call it a spade. Don’t bring Christianity issue into this open fact. Garba is not disputing your Christian brother as governor, just that he is presently unfit to rule. Be reasonable, boy. +2348036333016

    •I read your article a lot but this one is completely written out of misconception. You are not a doctor neither a psychologist (please correct me if I am wrong). How then do you figure someone’s state of health by his look alone? As a journalist you should investigate a case properly before you pick up your pen. I am highly disappointed by this your write-up. What else do you need to know that the governor is still ill and is being smuggled in to be used as an instrument to deep hands in government’s coffer (sic) by some greedy politicians in Taraba State. Mr writer, can’t you read between the lines? Why are crying more than the bereaved? I am sure you are part of the criminals and you are disappointed for not sharing in the loot if they had succeeded.

    MJ, Abuja +2348187953058

    •They have learnt nothing and forgotten all. Because we tend to behave like pitiful citizens otherwise no one needed telling Suntai to throw in the towel. Where he failed doing so, he should be impeached rather than administering unfittedly (sic). Taraba elders should wake up from slumber.

    Lanre Oseni, 2358023023745

    •A good opportunity to resolve the Taraba circus is here. His Excellency Governor Suntai should lead Taraba State delegates to the PDP special convention in Abuja. He should pilot the plane that will bring the delegates.

    Col. Idris Danjuma (Rtd), Abuja, 2348054377696

    •A brilliant write-up. It takes greatness of character and good depth of intellect not to follow the bandwagon. I will forward to you the comment I sent to your back page colleague, Segun Ayobolu on his write-up today on the Suntai saga. +2348188884775

    •I share your sentiments concerning the Suntai saga. However, what we have presently are just those sentiments and nothing more. There is neither scientific nor legal basis to say the man should not resume and continue as governor of Taraba State and the reason is simple: there is no valid medical report declaring him unfit for office, and the letter to the Speaker of the House of Assembly which he is required to send as a condition precedent to the resumption of office has been transmitted to the Speaker. The furore is uncalled for and shouldn’t have arisen. The man should resume (has indeed resumed) and can subsequently be removed from office by the House where it becomes clear that he is not or is incapable of discharging his office and/or is empirically established that he is medically unfit for office. The Deputy Governor and Speaker erred badly. +2348188884775

    •You are wide off the mark

    +2347036619333

    •You article is a disgrace to your personality. You should always try to be investigative and objective while writing. +2348025444443

    •Your article is unfortunate. If you are a journalist I advise you to embark on serious research on what you intend to write on before you begin to use your pen. If you continue to write in this manner your readers will think you are one of those journalists that are commissioned to write on serious national issues for money. I am sorry if you fee offended but as an indigene of Taraba State, your write-up portrayed you as insensitive. Do you love Nigeria? A.B.M, +2348096526580

    •I find your write up on this topic very amusing. The only conclusion I could draw was that perhaps you intentionally argued the way you did in order to agitate a large number of readers enough to respond. If that was your intention, well… you succeeded in my case.

    Please, the ambitions of the Acting Governor and Speaker are not relevant here at all. Everybody has got ambitions…including your goodself. What is also irrelevant is our individual feeling about the misfortune that has befallen Suntai. What is relevant is the question of Suntai’s fitness to steer the affairs of Taraba state. If I know politicians very well, were he truly fit, he wouldn’t leave anyone in doubt. Remember Sullivan Chime? The Lawmakers met with him and concluded publicly that he is unfit. Unless something is indeed very wrong with him, you shouldnt be the one holding brief for him. Let him resume work in his office at the Secretariat to convince us and prove that his deputy and the Lawmakers are bloody ambitious conniving liars! Don’t you find it strange that the Presidency summoned only his wife and the Acting Governor to Abuja in respect of this crisis whilst he didn’t get such an invite? And you think he is fit? I don’t think so. Let Suntai and his wife spare us this needless crisis.

    And please, if your write up indeed represents your true position on this issue, respectfully, I must say that you do yourself a great dis-service…you have put your analytical prowess to question.

    •Michael Orisabiyi, Orisabiyi@rtbriscoe.com

  • Political hangovers, costly  jokes and  diplomacy

    UN  chemical  weapons inspectors are due to leave  Syria today,  that is if the US  and some of its allies have not attacked Syria   by now, albeit on a limited scale  , as was  being drummed up   with frenzy on the world media by Thursday this week.  Ed  Milliband,  UK   Labor Party Opposition leader put spanner in the works on attacking Syria  for  a war mongering PM David  Cameron by insisting that he would wait for the report of the chemical weapons inspectors,  as he is learning  the lessons of the Iraqi  invasion by Tony Blair , then British PM  and former US President   George Bush in 2003. That  is the first  political   hangover  we identify today and that   has  caused  British diplomacy to halt in its stride as it prepares for  an attack on Syria  with the hangover of the 2003  Iraqi  invasion premised on false information on the availability of weapons of mass  destruction, dogging its tail.

    Hangovers of the type we take on today in global diplomacy and politics are very much like the alcoholic type that prevents the victim from thinking straight the following morning or taking most of the morning to get his acts   right. That really was what   happened  on  Syria  to the US  and its allies this   week and which provoked a most undiplomatic joke from the Russians whose Deputy Foreign Secretary brought the house down with the cruel though hilarious joke that the US in the Middle East and on Syria was behaving like a monkey  with a grenade. That  joke too was vintage  hangover that left the US  and its president not knowing whether to cry or laugh at least judging from the sober mood of the US  president in the CNN interview in  which he sounded so solemn but still ended up saying nothing, except that he had not made a decision to attack even he  though  he  insisted that  no  one denies that chemical weapons had been used in Syria. Before we examine the prevarication and dithering of the US president on a decision that he could not take even though he had admitted that a war crime has been committed,  let us digress a bit, to look  at  situations  rather   similar    in anxiety   and humor in Ghana and Nigeria, over two very important issues, namely  post election litigation in the   presidential elections in Ghana and the conduct of census in Nigeria.

    According to reports, Ghana   in the last  few months  became  literally a huge court room because of the televised  hearing of the petition against the election of incumbent President John Mamah  by the man he defeated  Nana Akuffo Ado. Mamah got 50.7 %  of the votes cast four months ago and has been  in office for five months and Ghanaians find it difficult to believe that he could lose office if the Supreme Court in Ghana,  which is hearing the case,  rules that his election is illegal . Poor Ghanaians, they  should take tutorials in Nigeria where it is the norm rather than the exception for any election to  be visited with post election litigation .Indeed some state governors have almost completed their terms before post election tribunals ruled they were elected illegally and truncated their tenure . So  Ghanaians  should brace themselves for any eventuality from their  Supreme   Court as the heavens will not fall, in spite of the huge deployment of Police men all over Ghana in anticipation of the decision of that court. Such anxiety is a way of life in Nigeria and the joke is usually  on the loser which is what democracy and elections are all about – no cheating.

    Another joke on a very expensive side but on   census  – an  issue that Nigeria’s democracy  heavily depends,  was that by the Kano State Governor  Rabiu  Kwankanso  on the utterances of the newly appointed Chairman of the National Population Commission –NPC Chief Felix Odimegwu, former MD  of the Nigerian Breweries Ltd. The Census boss was reported to have told the press that Nigeria has not had any credible census since 1816 and blamed the  situation  on the distortion ,and falsification of figures for selfish reasons. According to the report,  Odimegwu said  ‘even the census conducted in 2006  is not credible. I have the records and evidence produced by scholars  and  professors of repute. This is not my report. If the current laws are not amended, the planned 2016 census will not succeed.’  The Kano State Governor not only faulted Odimegwu utterances in criticizing past censuses  and his predecessors in office, he asked the president to revoke Odimegwu’s appointment on the grounds that he had worked only in the brewery all his life. According to the Governor, ‘my guess is that he is taking a lot of   his products and that is why we feel that his appointment is a mistake because he cannot be the Chairman of NPC and at the same time attacking what his predecessors  have done‘

      Jokes  apart,  however,  both the governor and the NPC  boss  are both right in their observations on the census.  So the issue of the former brewery boss’ ‘hangover’ on census matter and history in Nigeria, is a trite issue and is indeed diversionary, as the NPC  boss of Public Affairs  Committee has been quick to point out on the matter. Census  in Nigeria  has been tainted with fraud  and irregularity   from time immemorial. What Odimegwu said was very correct. However it is not his duty as the new census boss to say that publicly. Indeed  I have confidence that the new census boss will conduct a credible census both if he is allowed and not sacked before the 2016 census and if he himself does not shoot himself in the leg with his utterances. As  for the governor he is using the brewery connection to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. I don’t think he will succeed but I know the race is on to get rid of the new census boss  and the reason is simple.

    The north has been the main beneficiary  of skewed census figures inspite of its  physical terrain which cannot support the figures that have always been ascribed to it from previous censuses. It  is only in Nigeria that the population  of  destinations  of migrations have lesser population than the source of the migration. This is the Achilles heel  of the censuses conducted in Nigeria so far and the bane of their credibility and integrity.This  is where the joke really is on the Kano State governor in his anxiety to defend the present   census status quo and get rid of Odimegwu. Again, jokes and hangovers aside,  I am sure the NBL,  over which the new census boss presided  so successfully, has very illuminating  figures on consumption patterns of   all its   products, and not only the alcoholic ones,  all over Nigeria,  especially the north and that knowledge will  certainly  assist Nigeria to  conduct a proper census in 2016,  if the new census boss gets that far,  on his new seat.

    Let  us now go back to the diplomatic hangover of the Iraqi  invasion on British  diplomacy   as well as the Russian monkey and grenade joke on the US over the Syrian crisis. Again nothing illustrates the hang over     with  Britain more than the debate in the British  Parliament  this last  Wednesday and its comparison with a similar debate when the Parliament gave Tony Blair the authority to invade Iraq. Last Thursday the leader of Tony Blair’s party   Ed  Milliband was   indecisive and did not want to make the mistake that Blair made then . But then Blair spoke so eloquently  then that the Leader of Opposition then  now Foreign  Minister    Alex Hague gave his support by saying that this Opposition as it was then, ‘stood shoulder to shoulder with the PM‘  then, as Tony Blair was,  and it was a fine time for British diplomacy and collective responsibility, in a time of crisis. Of  course the moment lost its allure  and glory  when it was later discovered that the intelligence on availability of weapons of mass destruction was lacking . That  discovery poisoned the political career of Tony Blair leading to his removal  from office and has haunted his political and diplomatic fortunes since. But then, what have his opponents and so called friends made of it?  Nothing  as the debate in Parliament last week showed. Instead,  Blair’s error and an urgent need not to repeat it, pervaded the Parliamentary debate like a bad odor leaving a paralytic smell of inaction  and indecision to act on a clear violation of international law. Evidently Blair’s enemies are having a dose of their own medicine but this time the joke is on them as they now appreciate the anguish of those who took action in 2003  only to find  out   later that intelligence was incorrect   and  those waiting for intelligence   now, while infants and women are being killed with chemical weapons under their nose and they cannot be men   enough to act in the name of  humanity to effect a mere deterrence. Instead they jaw , jaw as if in a secondary school debating  society. Really  I  think Tony Blair  is having the last laugh that he at least was decisive when it mattered. Which really is the difference between real men and boy scouts in the British Parliament last Thursday   over Syria  and the use of chemical weapons.

    On  the Russian monkey grenade joke I think the Russians may soon discover that that may be one joke too many. Following  the giving of asylum   by Russia to the US security contractor who leaked US official secrets to the internet, the joke may be costly in terms of US reaction in Syria . At least to make the Russians laugh with the other side of their mouth the Americans may hit some   military   sites  in Syria this week . Barak Obama’s body language  on CNN  on Syria this week  was guarded , but his posture was that of someone trying to manage a bad joke or live through a nightmare. Especially during a week   in the US commemorating the scion of Non – Violence, late civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. But  again, the hangover of the   2003 Iraqi invasion which Obama condemned to get elected, is playing a bad joke on the same Obama going to action without the evidence of weapons inspectors like his predecessor and Tony Blair   did  in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Really  in diplomacy as  in  politics, one  man’s meat can also be another man’s poison and   vice versa.

  • FIFA shouldn’t ban Keshi

    FIFA shouldn’t ban Keshi

    Stephen Keshi needs help. We must save his coaching career. Keshi has unwittingly fallen into the mind games trap set for him by Malawi’s coach Saintfiet, who feels that is the best way to distract him. He must be joking.

    We know why the Belgian is crying wolf over Keshi’s seemingly uncouth utterances, which at that time he thought was an expression of his angst against the coach for daring to insinuate that Calabar was unsafe. We mustn’t make Keshi Sainfiet’s fall guy.

    Nigeria will beat Malawi groggy, but it shouldn’t come with any price – FIFA ban on Keshi. It is on this score that this writer feels that a ground work should begin to free Keshi from this trap. It is good to read Keshi’s comment that he didn’t mean what he said the way in which the Belgian interpreted it. Good talk, Big Boss. Now you know that English isn’t our mother tongue and we need to watch our utterances.

    This writer warned Keshi in this column on the need to address foreign coaches as Europeans instead of whites. My comments arose from what he said in dismissing the contributions of foreign coaches to African football. Rather than heed the advice, he tagged me an enemy. Keshi knows better now.

    We have led Keshi to this path because we have condoned his jibes at his employers. Perhaps, Saintfiet’s case will compel the Big Boss to choose his words carefully, especially when addressing those whose views are different from his.

    However, we cannot allow a coach that we rejected disgrace our best, no matter what. When FIFA’s letter comes, NFF chiefs must get good lawyers to respond to it. Given where Keshi has been in the last decade or more (California, US), such terminologies don’t mean any harm.

    We must explore the possibility of using diplomacy in getting Saintfiet to take it easy when he comes for the game in Calabar. The Belgian is angry with the way in which he lost the Nigerian job. Malawi FA chiefs could be persuaded to talk with him on the need to embrace peace. Such soft landing mechanism can provide the platform for Keshi to apologise to him at the post-match meeting.

    Sports Minister Bolaji Abdullahi should exploit the possibility of speaking with the leader of the Malawian delegation to urge Saintfiet to back down on his pursuit of justice from FIFA over what he has termed Keshi’s racist comments.

    The allegation is weighty. Nigeria will lose more, if Keshi is axed by FIFA. Without any doubt, Keshi would be found to have infringed on the rules of the game, given the Luis Suarez vs Evra precedent in the Barclays English Premier League. Suarez called Evra a “negro”, a word used in his native Uruguay to describe a dark-skinned person. Between “negro and white dude,” the difference is the same because it describes the colour of the skin of the individuals concerned. On that score, Keshi is culpable. What we don’t know is what the punishment will be. But it could be a lengthy ban. If it happens that way (God forbid), Daniel Amokachi cannot sustain the good foundation Keshi has laid.

    Going through a FIFA document on racism, it appears that Keshi may be banned for five weeks or even more. There is also the clause for first offender or a minor case, depending on how FIFA eggheads classify Keshi’s matter. My worry about the FIFA five-match ban is its description. Is it five FIFA World Cup matches or any five matches that Nigeria plays? It could be five FIFA World Cup matches, depending on when the decision is taken, then no 2014 World Cup for the Big Boss (God forbid). If it isn’t, then Keshi could sit out any five games. Sincerely, Keshi must learn how to talk to people respectfully. It won’t take anything away from who he is.

    We should save Keshi from this organised chaos by employing diplomatic moves through government-to-government discussion or FA-to-FA jaw-jaw. But I must warn that these two meetings must be done after the game, perhaps at the post-match conference. Only post-match discussions will suffice, lest we are accused of match fixing.

    If Keshi escapes this ban, his public speeches should be curtailed, especially those in the foreign media. Keshi should know now that he is the face of our football. Whatever he says counts. He can do with some polish ing by his media men.

    One is miffed that Saintfiet is being given cheap publicity, with this needless saga. But, who is to blame when you have a talkative of a coach? Who?

    Victor Moses’ cross

    Victor Moses must be cursing himself for joining Chelsea now that the “Special One”, Jose Mourinho, isn’t favourably disposed to having the Super Eagles gem in his squad.

    Mourinho’s decision is shocking because he had showered encomiums on the Nigerian, until he left Chelsea for Nigeria’s game against South Africa on August 10 as part of activities marking the Mandela Challenge in Durban.

    When the story broke that Mourinho had declared Moses missing from the team, I knew that his days at Chelsea were over. Mourinho doesn’t tolerate indiscipline. There is no second chance for defaulters. So, for Moses, the game is up.

    Moses needs to leave Chelsea to plan his future. He must remain in England to show Mourinho what he is missing. Moses should be prepared to pay the difference in whatever negotiations is struck to have him out of Stamford Bridge.

    With the 2014 World Cup in Brazil looking like a reality for Nigeria, Moses has no business sitting on the bench of any club, irrespective of the glut of stars there.

    We are told that Moses could join Liverpool next Monday, which is good. If it doesn’t happen, Moses must quickly decide on his future before the next transfer window opens in January 2014.

    Cry for D’ Tigers

    I’m not a fan of Nigerian coaches. So, I’m surprised that Nigeria’s senior basketball side lost to Senegal at the AfroBasket tournament holding in Abidjan, Cote d’ Ivoire.

    After the 2012 London Olympic Games, I wrote here that D’Tigers’ major problem was coaching. Our coaches exhibited poor understanding of the matches in London. I canvassed refresher courses for them. I was shocked when the coach resigned his appointment. I expected the NBBF not to look in his direction when the opportunity to recruit a new coach became necessary. But they did, making it imperative to ask if they are shocked that D’Tigers lost the game to Senegal?

    In Nigeria, we have this habit of engaging the reverse gear and expect the car to move forward. Ordinarily, NBBF ought to have sent the coaches who handled the squad at the London 2012 Olympic Games for refresher courses where they would be taught the finer details of the game, especially how to read matches.

    With this failed adventure, I expect the NBBF to send our coaches on refresher courses. If it cannot raise the cash, the federation can invite renowned basketball coaches to retrain our coaches. Their methods are archaic for a game that is dynamic. The rules of basketball change by the day and except our coaches are shown how matches are read they would continue to increase our pain with myopic decisions on the court.

    It hurts that the Nigeria side that has collegiate students in the US and some others who play in the reputable NBA won’t be in Portugal for the World Championships. We cannot continue with this trend. It must change.

    Welcome Robinson Okosun

    Psychologist Robinson Okosun returns to the Super Eagles after being dropped due to paucity of cash in the NFF. At that time, the body’s president, Aminu Maigari, promised to return to the status quo when its finances improve.

    Now that Okosun is back, one only hopes that he concentrates on his job. The players spoke glowingly about his contributions in lifting their spirit, especially before the quarter-finals game against Cote d’Ivoire.

    I had written about the need for Okosun’s return, largely from the perspective of his being knowledgeable. The Eagles would have been the only team in the world without a psychologist.

    Maybe soon, Coach Silvanus Okpala would rejoin the team. It is a possibility and I look forward to it. Welcome Okosun.

  • Is there no more decorum in Taraba?

    Has civility deserted Taraba State, especially its leaders? Since late last year there has been pretty little to lift the spirits of the people, and so much to ache them. First, about 10 months ago, Governor Danbaba Suntai’s aircraft crash-landed, leaving him between life and death. Immediately an unhealthy and unnecessary controversy swept into the incident. Initial reports said Suntai, a pharmacist who also qualified as a pilot, was flying the I’ll-fated aircraft. Another report emanating from the governor’s camp denied that position. Now, virtually every account agrees that the Taraba leader was in charge of the small plane on October 25

    Did it matter? Yes. Public officers are entitled to some privacies but their health does not fall under such entitlements. Infirmity is no respecter of persons but the more open and forthcoming the afflicted public officer is the easier it is for the people to stand by him in his time of need. Besides, openness and truth show the respect the indisposed leader has for the electorate.

    In Taraba this was not the case, but things were to get worse. No sooner was the injured governor flown to Germany for better medical care than the structures that supported his administration were pulled out in a matter that many read to be the ambitious machinations of Deputy Governor Alhaji Garba Umar. Everywhere, and especially in traditional African societies, ill-health is viewed gravely and with positive concern; it is scarcely exploited for selfish ends. In Taraba of our day things are different. In all this, where do you picture the people who supposedly elected these leaders into office? I imagine they must be agonising as the subject of ill-health is turned into a platform of manipulation and subterfuge, if not outright political war.

    Now, 10 months after that fateful crash, Suntai’s return on Sunday has only worsened the bad blood running in the state, not only to the discomfiture of the Taraba people but also the horror of every Nigerian. Yes, he needed to be assisted out of the aircraft. And, yes, it made the headlines, and why not? The media has an obligation to report fact. If Suntai returned with a limp, say, reporters must report it, but his apparent frailty should not be a potent weapon in the hands of ambitious Taraba politicians. That Suntai needed help to debark from the aircraft in Abuja should not dampen the joy and excitement of his return. That the governor survived the crash should trigger happiness across the state, including the camp of the most ambitious politicians in the state.

    Suntai has also sent a letter to the state House of Assembly formally indicating his return and intention to resume duty. That was what the law required but upon receiving the letter, the leadership of the fractured House launched into fresh subterfuge disguised as protocol or due process. They said Suntai would not return to office before they had deliberated on the letter. After reading the governor’s letter, they said Suntai did not write it and that his signature was forged. When he addressed them, they said the manner of his speech was even more evidence that the governor was not fit to govern.

    In those 10 months of Suntai’s absence, the deputy governor who has been in acting capacity may have discovered a few sweet things about the office and is probably finding it difficult to back off as his boss returned. He may not be working alone; a report suggested that House Speaker Haruna Tsokwa will be happy to be number two to Umar, with Suntai out of the picture.

    This is as disgusting as it is befuddling. To start with, it is no business of Tsokwa and his gang if Suntai did not personally write the letter transmitted to the state House. He could dictate it. He could instruct someone else to write it, provided its content conveyed his desires.

    Finding much of the executive council disagreeable, Suntai sacked it, going ahead to also appoint two key officers, the Secretary to the State Government and his Chief of Staff. But that was what his deputy Umar needed to unmask his ambitions by promptly urging Taraba people in general and the sacked officers in particular to disregard Suntai’s directive. Tsokwa himself has told the governor he is unfit to govern and that he should return overseas for further treatment until he regained full health.

    How uncivil and indecorous can things get in Taraba?

    Some have questioned, even pooh-poohed the Tsokwa gang’s actions in their bid to turf out Suntai but there is still another unsettling dimension of the governor’s opponents’ judgments. They arrived at the conclusion that Suntai could not govern simply because, as they claimed, his manner of speech did not betray any impressive well-being. This is ridiculous. Suntai was away for 10 months under the expert eyes of probably the best physicians available. If they cleared him to go, Tsokwa and his co-conspirators are therefore unfit to declare otherwise.

    The anti-Suntai camp is making some disguised allusions to the Yar’Adua scenario but the facts and circumstances are not the same. The late president was not seen at all, or heard. The Yar’Adua cabal was brazenly manipulative and was widely condemned. In Taraba, the anti-Suntai forces are simply operating beyond the realm of reason and decorum.

  • Taraba and the vicious cycle of stupidity

    Taraba and the vicious cycle of stupidity

    It was the Nobel Prize literature laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, who in a moment of exasperation once lamented what he described as the vicious cycle of human stupidity. He was no doubt denouncing the tendency for generation after generation of the human species to repeat the same recurrent errors responsible for much of the available misery, grief, exploitation and injustice in which the world is enmeshed today despite the phenomenal increase in man’s technical and intellectual capacity to create an infinitely better world.

    Nowhere is this capacity for recurrent acts of destructive stupidity more apparent than here in Nigeria, the great Kongi’s own homeland. The way our politicians play the all- consuming game of politics today – the obsession with power devoid of service, the pursuit of self- aggrandisement and pecuniary accumulation, the cynical manipulation of ethno-regional, religious and other fissures – shows a political elite that has learnt little or nothing from past failures.

    It is simply difficult to imagine that a country that went through the harrowing experiences occasioned by the late President Umaru ‘Yar’Adua’s protracted physical incapacitation could allow the veritable theatre of the absurd playing itself out today in Taraba state. Despite Yar’Adua’sinherent personal dignity and nobility of character, a cabal capitalized on his physical frailty to hijack the machinery of governance and run the affairs of the country in his name.

    Completely indifferent to the debilitating physical condition of the ailing President and the excruciating psychological torture he was going through, this feral cabal kept him imprisoned in Aso Villa. They subjected him in his infirm state to the strenuous burdens of governance when a good rest out of public life in his native Katsina could probably have prolonged his life span. While the cabal furtively ferried him across the world in search of an elusive medical succour, they kept the country fed on a steady diet of falsehood as regards the President’s remarkably improved health and enhanced physical vigour.

    At the height of their treasonable antics, the cabal flew the obviously dying Yar’Adua back into the country from a Saudi Arabia hospital under cover of darkness and with a massive deployment of troops in Abuja that remains a mystery till date. By this time and following intense pressure from civil society groups and the opposition, the National Assembly had invoked the utilitarian ‘doctrine of necessity’ to declare Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan Acting President of the country.

    Yet, the cabal remained determined to prevent Jonathan from succeeding his terminally ill boss in office as demanded by the constitution. Appropriation estimates were signed and other activities undertaken in the name of a President who was clearly no more conscious of his environment.

    It is perhaps because those responsible for the treasonous antics of the Yar’Adua cabal, during his health travails, were never brought to book and made to account for their actions that the nation is being subjected today to another round of ‘cabalistic’ stupidity in Taraba State.

    Of course, the story of Taraba is straight forward. Until he crashed in a Cessna 208, 5N – BMJ jet piloted by himself in Yola, Adamawa state on October 25, 2013, Governor Dambaba Suntai was in sound health. Following the crash, however, he reportedly suffered severe injuries in the head and had to be flown out of the country; first to Germany and then the United States for sophisticated medical attention. During his 10-month absence, the Taraba State House of Assembly authorised the Deputy Governor, Garba Umar, to act as Governor pending the recuperation and return of his boss.

    In the absence of Governor Suntai, the Taraba cabal, in a manner reminiscent of the Yar’Adua days, fed the media with all kinds of stories and visuals portraying the man as making rapid recovery. Certainly none but the most gullible and mentally vulnerable could be persuaded by such crude and deceptive propaganda. The drama reached a climax on August 25th, when a supposedly fully recovered Suntai was flown into Taraba State from the United States. The visuals portraying his return were a public relations disaster.

    He was supported on both sides by hefty aides. He looked unnaturally blank and could not even manage a wave to his ‘teeming’ supporters. After a controversial 10-month absence, he could not even spare a word with news hungry journalists at the airport. Yet, the following day, he had purportedly transmitted a letter to the House of Assembly signalling his recovery and readiness to resume work. He followed this up by purportedly dissolving the state Executive Council and appointing a new Secretary to the State Government and a new Chief of Staff.

    These actions were naturally bound to generate intense controversy given the hovering uncertainty as regards the Governor’s health. The state was virtually plunged into crisis. Motivated perhaps by principle, a commitment to constitutionalism or their own sectional partisan considerations on Taraba’s treacherous and complex terrain, 16 of the 24 state legislators led by the Speaker insist that the governor has not demonstrated sufficiently that he either wrote the letter intimating the House of his return or that he is fit to govern and that the status quo thus remains.

    Emboldened by the stance of the House of Assembly, the Acting Governor has described the purported dissolution of the Executive Council as null and void attributing the action to a self-seeking cabal and not the Governor. Here I think both the 16 members of the House and the Acting Governor must tread carefully.

    Even if they believe that a pro-Suntai cabal is acting unconstitutionally, that must not be an excuse for them to also toe the path of lawlessness. They must thus be on firm ground that one, the letter did not emanate from the Governor and two that they are in a position to authoritatively pronounce on his state of health. Two unconstitutional wrongs after all do not make a right. This is especially because of the evidence that Suntai addressed the state and actually swore in his two new aides no matter how frail he looked or sounded.

    Having said that, let me stress that whatever may be the presumed motives of those who question his mental and physical fitness to rule, the onus still rests on Governor Suntai to demonstrate convincingly that he is fully ready to resume office.

    Taraba is too important, strategic, complex and sensitive a state to be left in charge of a man not fully in control of his physical mental faculties even for one second. And it is even more dangerous to leave the state in the charge of an unelected, mercenary cabal ruling in the name of a helplessly incapacitated man.

    It must be said here that the drafters of the 1999 constitution had envisaged and made provision for this kind of situation. Section 189 (a) of the constitution requires members of the State Executive Council to determine by two-thirds majority if the governor or Deputy Governor “is incapable of discharging the functions of his office”.

    And if the State Executive Council comes to that conclusion, section 189 (b) provides for a medical panel to verify the decision after which the Speaker will cause the result of the medical panel, if it confirms, the Governor or Deputy Governor’s incapacitation, to be gazetted and the Governor ceases to hold office.

    But then, can a State Executive Council appointed by the Chief Executive ever decide that he is incapacitated to rule no matter how true this is? The constitution certainly assumes that the Executive Council members are honourable persons and that their loyalty is first and foremost to the constitution and not the Chief Executive.

  • Reforms, Corruption  and Justice

    When  a former  Minister of Nigeria challenges Nigerian legislators  to a public debate over their salaries  and fringe benefits she is saying boldly  and clearly that it cannot  be business as usual on the cost  of governance in  Nigeria. In  Brazil  the President of the nation accepted the challenge of the demonstrators in Brazilian cities who disturbed the matches at the last FIFA Confederation Cup in June   and made proposals to Parliament that certain percentage of Brazilian oil royalties shall be devoted to education and   health. Yet  in Nigeria strikes by Nigerian lecturers  have become a way of life rather than lecturing in the universities because the lecturers claim they must strike to resurrect  the  comatose university system while their students   become victims of the idle mind and hands  with the attendant  socio  economic  consequences. In  Egypt, believe it or not former despot Hosni Mubarak  has been freed by an Egyptian court  and the judge said the judgement is final while the man who succeeded him as the elected  President of Egypt Mohammed Morsi is in detention in  a  place that nobody knows  in the land of the Pharaohs;   and in Zimbabwe  89  years  old President Robert Mugabe has been sworn in to  seventh  presidential term in a ceremony  in Harare  boycotted by the man he defeated Mr Tsivirangai.  Surely, one can say c’est la  vie  or such  is life as the French are wont to say.

    But  then in  all these issues  there  is  struggle  going on and a titanic one at that,  between those  defending the status quo obviously because it  pays them to do so at the expense of the rest of society. Just  as in some cases those fighting for their perceived rights don’t bother if the baby is thrown away with  the bath tub as long as they get what they want or what they think is their right. All  these struggles however take place in an atmosphere that calls for justice and order  as expected in a democracy powered by a rule of law which seem to have gone to sleep  while on duty on its watch. Or  why should Nigerian legislators abuse  Oby Ezekwesili  because she quoted authentic figures from the Federal Ministry of Finance on the salaries  of the legislators?  Why  should Brazilian legislators  now refuse to pass  the reforms proposed by President Dilma Rousseff  into law a month after the riots in Brazilian cities that saw these same legislators diving for cover for dear life at the time of the Confederation Cup? Why  should Mugabe still be grinning like a school boy winning his first prize at his seventh coronation as it were,  as the president of Zimbabwe after a rigged election like the opposition has  done a lot to substantiate?   And  pray, why should   Mohammed Morsi be in detention  in Egypt while Mubarak who was carried to court on a sick bed, in a cage  to face corruption charges , is now  a free  man – while the victor of the elections that strangled  and confiscated  the Mubarak regime to the dustbin of history  is  nowhere to be found in public? Obviously  there is something rotten in all these events that leaves   a sour taste in the mouth  but then we have to face the facts that unpleasant as they may  seem to observers, they are issues that will not go away just by wishing them so, and that is why we have to dissect them here and now today.  At  least to show that we are not totally befuddled by them and can at least  occasionally read between the lines.

    Taking them serially we start with the Ezekwesili revelations  which are not  original because she was quoting  statistics from the Ministry of Finance. What is unique is that she  has the guts to say that these salaries are not fair in a nation bedeviled with the poor welfare conditions of our citizenry and she  should know,  having been at the Mount Olympus of exploitation of the Nigerian masses as a Czarina of the sale of our public enterprises and  as a  Minister of Education. However,  her records while in office are immaterial  here, and should not disqualify her from the salutary task she has set herself in telling our legislators that their salaries are out of this world and make the cost of governance prohibitive. For her   guts and diligence in sourcing for vital statistics on the matter she has my unfettered admiration and l  enjoin our legislators to listen to her soft voice now or find out what happened to the rich and mighty in France  with the storming of the  Bastille during the French Revolution against  the ruling class in  France.

    In  Brazil  the President a lady like our  Oby Ezekwesili, Dilmar Roussef responded positively to the demands of the rioters that disrupted the staging of the Confederation Cup by FIFA in Brazil. One could say she did this to forestall a bigger disruption in the 2014  FIFA world Cup to be hosted by Brazil as well as the 2016  Olympics also slated by Brazil and one could be right. No  president will want his or her nation to be disgraced after going to great and very expensive lengths to win such glamorous and prestigious hosting rights. But it is in the nature of the reforms to placate the demonstrators that the Brazilian president has won my heart while I have scant respect for the Brazilian legislators trying to stall her proposals in Parliament. This  is because the demonstrators had complained about  increased transport costs and long hours spent in traffic  in commuting to and from work and the fact that   Brazil’s  riches in sports are not trickling down to the masses. So a responsive president  proposed to Parliament a huge $14bn bill for transportation and another bill that gives a huge percentage of new oil royalties to education and health  so that the masses can benefit from the riches of Brazil before next year’s World Cup and the 2016  Olympics  and the legislators in Brazil are trying to stall on the passage of these public spirited and pragmatic socio economic palliatives. Really l  feel sorry for these legislators as the Brazilian public knows the zeal and sincerity with which their president has pursued their welfare  and should know at the appropriate time what to make of their elected representatives in Parliament.

    In  Nigeria   however the issue of education especially in  the ivory tower is being handled with levity and a rather cruel one at that. Now  our youths spend eight years for a 4- year course and in most cases are not sure of when they are to graduate. Really I am fed up with the strikes and the lecturers as well as the government who is their employer as both have made a mockery of the tenet and objective  of industrial relations which is industrial harmony. For now  the Nigerian university  system is in disequilibrium and shambles  and the ultimate scapegoats  are our Nigerian students who are the   undoubtedly  the future of this nation. However,  the Minister of Finance complicated issues  further  and said the Federal   government could not afford   what  the striking   dons were asking for. She  quoted a figure which the striking dons denied  although they gave a lesser figure all the same . The Minister  obviously missed the fact that the matter  was beyond a budget issue and she should not have used the affordability concept in that context. Obviously people have asked if her children are schooling in any Nigerian university and she deserves the question and should  answer or resign. All  Ministers or legislators should also be asked that question and if   their wards or children are schooling overseas  they should just leave office. This  may sound stern now, but a time will come when it will be a litmus test to know those who have a stake in leading Nigeria now and in the future and especially  out of the present paralyzing strike syndrome. For now, I grieve with the Nigerian undergraduate in Nigerian universities who should be telling both the unyielding government and the strike loving lecturers what Shakespeare put in the mouth of the dying fighter in Romeo  and Juliet – a plague on both your houses, for you have made worms meat of me‘.

    I  take  Egypt and Zimbabwe  together in that in  terms of despotism and tyranny they are birds of the same feather. Indeed  in both nations this week you may say  of the two despots – Mubarak and Mugabe –  as it is usually said of successful  businessmen,  that they were smiling all the way to the bank! Mubarak was flown by helicopter out of prison to a military hospital for house arrest, what ever that means as his generals have Egypt’s democracy very well under their boots and have used even the courts to free their master and leader in the best spirit of spirit de corps you can find any where in the world today . So where is justice in all that?. Yes, the  army in Egypt has  made a bloody ass of the law  and made a mockery of the rule of law in that ancient land. But   then,  I  blame the Muslim Brotherhood which was patient for decades till Providence gave it power to tame  the army,  its ancient enemy in Egypt. But the MU   with  Morsi, frittered its  unique opportunity away in less than two years,  because it forgot an ancient dictum of the law that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands,  especially  in a democracy. So  the Brotherhood’s  high handedness and undue haste in establishing its values estranged it to those with whom it upstaged Mubarak in the first  street  revolution of 2011,  only for  it and Morsi to be consumed by a fiercer   democratic tsunami two years later,  with its elected president nowhere to be found and its spiritual leaders back in the custody  of Egypt’s  power loving and blood thirsty army. As  for Mugabe he has had his swearing in this week and must have sent a message to Mubarak  on his new status of house arrest. Mugabe obviously must have blamed Mubarak for trusting the Americans   in 2011  and  must have assured  him that what happened to Mubarak   in Cairo could never have happened to him in Harare. And he could be right,  as at 89,  there is not much time to spare to enjoy his  seventh coronation or  swearing in  after the ritual of a stage  managed election, as expected of a democracy which he has hijacked again and again  in Zimbabwe.

  • Averting the revolution to come

    Averting the revolution to come

    Although it manifests itself as a crisis of the economy, the various maladies that have brought Nigeria to the very brink of collapse have their root causes in the structure of the Nigerian state, the character of the country’s politics and the sheer moral bankruptcy of its ruling elite. This was the submission of the late Professor Claude Ake, in one of his characteristically insightful pieces titled ‘What is to be done?’

    The solution to the country’s protracted crises of poverty, instability and underdevelopment thus lies largely in the political realm and not in the supposedly a-political IMF/World Bank economic technocrats to whom the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have handed over the country’s destiny over the last one and a half decades.

    So severe has the Nigerian crisis degenerated; so alarmingly has poverty deepened and so appalling has become the inequality between social classes that fears of the possibility of a mass revolution have been echoed in the most unexpected, conservative quarters.

    Former Minister of Solid Minerals and later Education in the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, has once again drawn public attention to one of the key manifestations of our dysfunctional political system. A key member of the Obasanjo administration’s economic management team and ‘due process’ enforcer, Mrs.Ezekwesili has a way of making government officials catch cold anytime she sneezes. Speaking at a one day dialogue session on the ‘Cost of governance in Nigeria’, Madam ‘due process’ threw another bombshell, when she disclosed that members of the National Assembly have expended over N1 trillion over the last eight years.

    Coming on the heels of the disclosure last week by The Economist magazine, that Nigerian legislators are the highest paid in the world, Mrs Ezekwesili’s assertion naturally touched the raw nerves of the legislators and put them on the defensive. Just as presidential aides did when Mrs Ezekwesili accused the Jonathan administration of financial profligacy earlier in the year, spokesmen of the National Assembly largely ignored the message and went crudely after the messenger.

    They would like to know, they said, how much was allocated to her office when she was a Minister. Some wondered why she focussed only on the legislature and neglected other arms of government when computing the cost of governance. A member of the House of Representatives accused Ezekwesili of mischievously lumping together salaries and allowances of the legislators and their aides, salaries of civil servants, capital projects and the running costs of other institutions under the National Assembly.

    Now, many of these observations are pertinent and the former Minister would do the public a lot of good by shedding more light on these questions. Luckily, the former Minister has challenged the legislators to a public debate on her assertions. Such an open debate will most certainly enable her amplify on the issues raised in her lecture. Much more importantly, it should shed light on exactly how much our legislators take home as salaries, allowances and other perks that are now treated as classified and confidential information.

    This column agrees entirely with the legislators that in all probability members of the executive and their innumerable aides may also be receiving humongous amounts from the public till. Again, the whole issue of outrageous salaries and allowances for elected public officers is not limited to the federal level. It is also necessary to go down the line to reveal what public officers are collecting as remuneration and other perks at both the state and local government levels. Such information will enable the country come up with remuneration for public officers at all levels that is commensurate with the productive capacity of the Nigerian economy and is sensitive to the abysmal living conditions of the vast majority of Nigerians.

    Of course, Mrs Ezekwesili is not the first to call attention to the outrageous amounts that our public officers award themselves in a society where the majority survive on less than one dollar a day. At a public lecture last year, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi LamidoSanusi, caused uproar when he disclosed that 25% of the Federal Government’s overheads went to the National Assembly. And speaking recently at the Second Annual Capital Market Retreat in Warri, Delta State, the CBN governor said the country spends 70% of its earnings on salaries and entitlements of civil servants.

    In his words “At the moment 70% of Federal Government revenue goes for payment of salaries and entitlements of civil servants leaving 30% for development of 167 million Nigerians. That means that for every naira government earns, 70 kobo is consumed by civil servants…The various tiers of government should cut down their recurrent expenditure and use the funds to provide basic infrastructure like schools, hospitals etc”.

    Pointing out that Nigeria does not need 109 Senators or 457 members of the House of Representatives to make laws for her, Sanusi condemned a situation in which the bulk of the country’s total revenue is consumed by the executive, lawmakers and civil servants.

    There is no doubt that the degree of impoverishment in the land coupled with the criminal inequality between a microscopic wealthy elite and the majority of poor Nigerians is a time bomb waiting to explode. Already a full scale class war is being fought although it manifests as kidnapping, armed robbery, communal violence, religious intolerance, ritual killings and other sundry acts of wanton criminality.

    On the streets of Lagos, you now have scores of urchins who ought to be in school but are armed with bottles of liquid soap and brushes to forcefully wash the windscreen of cars stranded in traffic for a token fee. If something urgent is not done to ameliorate the situation in the land, such street urchins may turn nastier. They may forcefully extort money from motorists by threatening to destroy their vehicles. It is that bad.

    I agree entirely with Mrs Ezekwesili that “We must debate public policies as a nation because if we don’t debate public policies, we are going to make silly mistakes because we didn’t involve the stakeholders so policy debates must be encouraged”. Coming from Mrs Ezekwesili, this is a most welcome, even surprising position. For, I had always associated her with those World Bank and IMF technocrats who believe there are no alternatives to their strange brew of neo-liberal cocktail, which they administer in equal measure to all their patients irrespective of the ailment!

    In this respect, I was highly impressed and encouraged by the excerpts of a paper delivered by the Deputy Governor, Financial System, of the CBN, Dr Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for Scholars in Washington. Lamenting the continued dependence by Africa on the developed world making it difficult for the continent to maximise the inherent opportunities of globalisation, Dr Moghalu said: “We should also note that in this context (extraction of the natural resources), growth could be taking place, but no structured transformation, which creates real wealth is happening…the status quo, based on unrestrained free markets without a conceptual grasp of the opportunities, limitations and even the different kinds of capitalism and their implications for African countries, as well as the exact role of the government and the structure of world trade, cannot create an ennobling environment for Africa to matter in the world economy.”

    With such fresh, out of the box thinking by a key member of Nigeria’s policy establishment, there may yet be hope that new ideas can emerge from Nigeria to liberate the country from poverty, underdevelopment and gross inequality while also helping to avert the revolution knocking so impatiently on our creaky door.

  • Eagles’ coaches’ tantrums

    Eagles’ coaches’ tantrums

    Super Eagles coaches like to heat the polity with every good outing. They enjoy putting their employers NFF on the spot. Eagles’ coaches disparage NFF with their convulsive decisions. Sadly, we are emotional when dealing with matters concerning the Super Eagles, hence the despicable monster status the coaches now enjoy. I have decided to pluralise this discussion by using the term coaches instead of being specific, even though I know where the buck stops with the team’s technical crew because I don’t have any grudge with any member of the technical crew. I also feel that decisions emanating from the Eagles are binding on the group.

    Eavery time the coaches choose to make the NFF look like puppets either through their utterances or decisions on the team, the world laughs at us.

    A simple decision shouldn’t be made difficult because of a coach’s tantrums. Employees cannot dictate to the employer. They either obey or look for another job.

    I cringe when I read about NFF’s poor financial status, especially when they plead with the coaches to appreciate their position. So, when an employee chooses to do things that would incur more costs, it is either he doesn’t believe them or just wants to be mischievous.

    Global practices suggest that coaches don’t change winning squads. I wonder why ours is different. Our coaches have perpetually changed the squad since February 10, when the Eagles clinched the Africa Cup of Nations diadem, such that pundits have asked when this rebuilding will stop.

    That coaches who are being owed salaries submitted a 42-man list to prosecute the September 7 qualifier against Malawi in Calabar shows the height of insensitivity to the issues at stake.

    Nigerians applauded the clinical manner with which the Eagles dwarfed Bafana Bafana in the Mandela Challenge played on August 10. We are, therefore, shocked that the coaches could submit on August 20 a list that suggests another rebuilding.

    We must encourage the NFF to stop this drift, if the coaches cannot call themselves to order. Equally unacceptable is the fact that our opponents don’t think it is worth their while to stay in camp for the Eagles game. They know that Nigeria and Malawi are not on the same pedestal, irrespective of what their coach is saying- pure mind games. So, why our coaches so desperate to camp 24 home-based players at grave costs to the NFF, only to pick five of them for the main team? Who doesn’t know the five best home-based players? They are Sunday Mba, Godfrey Oboabona, goalkeeper Chigozie Agbim, Azubuike Egwuekwe Muhammed Gambo. Why do they want 24 players in camp?

    The Eagles squad that beat Bafana 2-0 in South Africa needs perhaps Victor Moses, John Mikel Obi, Emmanuel Emenike and goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama to strengthen it. If the coaches are sincere, they should know that these additions will rip Malawi to shreds.

    The talk of using the opportunity to prepare for the CHAN 2014 is laughable because the 2014 World Cup appearance is sacrosanct.

    As for the Europe-based stars, we know that they must play their weekend games before coming to the camp. The earliest time they can get to the camp is Tuesday morning. The team’s camp will be full by Wednesday; so, what is the talk of camping? Is this not what happens in other climes? Our coaches must grow up and work in tandem with the NFF, lest they remain unemployed after this appointment with Nigeria.

    Coaches and their FA chiefs work in concert when picking squad members, with the coaches having their way in the final selections.

    NFF must ignore these coaches and dictate what they want done. I agree with pruning the squad to 23. We have played enough matches for the coaches to easily pick 23. These 23 players must be highly populated by home-based stars. After all only 14 players can play a game and that includes the stipulated three changes. We must cut costs. We don’t need to break the bank to beat Malawi. If we spend fortunes beating Malawi, how can the NFF be solvent?

    The coaches can have their say on technical issues, but the NFF must have its way in administrative matters. He who pays the piper dictates the tune. Not so?

    Where is Osaze?

    He is alone, pondering where he got it all wrong? He must have learnt his lessons, if he thinks he caused his problems. In his solitude, he will be thinking about his future, a future devoid of conflicts. He will learn to respect people and understand that no one is an island.

    Osaze Odemwingie has burnt his candle on both ends. He was the pearl of all the clubs that he played for, until his success got into his head. He threw decorum into the dungeon, preferring to pillory his coaches and mates on the social network. Many tagged his conduct as childish. But Osaze thought otherwise. For him, it was simply an expression of his fundamental human rights, no matter whose ox is gored. Now he knows better.

    A gifted player whose presence in his hey days drew applause from everyone, Osaze’s now attracts hisses and sighs. But some people feel that he will surely get right when he returns. Those in this school argue that he needed this rude reawakening to be a better player. At 31? What is left in his career? Perhaps, Osaze could be another Roger Milla. It is possible, only if he can convince Super Eagles coaches that his old ways are past. Will they believe him? Is he talking about playing for Nigeria again? His double-speak on this issue has made it difficult for people to know how to rescue his brilliant career from being extinct.

    Should we fold our arms and allow Osaze’s career crash? I don’t think so; after all, he is not injured. We should cousel him. He needs to be told that conduct counts for more than all the millions he has acquired. He must change his attitude. He must learn to respect constituted authority. He should know that there areseveral ways of seeking redress.

    Reports from West Bromwich Albion suggest that Osaze has been shown the door. He has until September 2 when the current European transfer window closes to decide if he would still play soccer at the top level again.

    West Brom has, however, left a caveat where he could be reconsidered, if he fails to get a club at dusk on September 2. Is this what Osaze is worth? No way, only if he does not appear to think he is too big to play in the lower league- the English Championship.

    Osaze should learn from Obafemi Martins’ mistakes. Martins dumped Newcastle simply because they were relegated. Newcastle is in the Premier League but Martins’ career is dwindling. Had Martins gone down with Newcastle, he would still be in the Premier League, showing his stuff like Shola Ameobi.

    Interestingly, Queens Park Rangers (QPR), which caused his last problem, wants him. But he feels too big to play in the lower rung. A word for Osaze: grab the QPR deal and reinvent hiyour career. I would be shocked if QPR doesn’t get promoted to the elite Barclays English Premier League next year.

    Besides, playing for QPR will offer him an opportunity to show the elite sides some useful lessons about the depth of his talent. Harry Redknapp is renowned for doing the impossible with clubs that he handles. He won the English FA Cup with lowly Portsmouth. If Redknapp wants Osaze, he should go immediately. Osaze can reinvigorate his career by offering to buy out his contract or pay the difference of whatever QPR is offering. He needs to start playing again.

    For now, QPR fans don’t love him. The manager has blacklisted him. The club is making it difficult for him to leave by insisting on three million pounds transfer fees. It would have been chicken change for him but for his unruly conduct under the guise of being fearless.

    Osaze’s future is in his hands and it is sad that a boy who gave everything playing for Nigeria is rotting away in Europe because of his conduct.

    With unforgiving coaches in the Eagles, Osaze must stoop to conquer. This includes going to QPR to shock the football world. Redknapp holds the key for an exciting season for Osaze. Come on boy, take the chance.